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There's nothing better than munching on your favorite snacks. But when hunger strikes, it's hard to stay in control. But don't get stressed. Get creative. And take your mealtime to the next level. Oh, whoa! Check this out! They've got a bag of chips and now they're throwing in stuff! Some tomatoes, some fresh onions, a bit of cheese… Oh, and an egg! Now they're shaking the heck out of it!

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Okay. Phew. That's so much better. Look! Our snack is done cooking! It looks amazing! Let's slice this up. Good thing we don't need a knife. Let's add some herbs to this too. Really make it fancy. Are you ready to try it? I think it'll be great! Oh wow! This is so delicious! Genius! I'm gonna press it. And our appetites are ready! Are you? Cool! Mind if I go first? Alrighty then.

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Now that's one interesting-looking soda! I wonder what it tastes like? I'm on a mission to find out! Whoa! Looks like I'm chewing on this drink! But look how pretty it is! Mmm! That's pretty chewy! Not bad! Nice! Mind if I… Squeeze it really hard! I'm ready! Bullseye! Whoa! It's still coming out! Now let's do it standin' up! Now that's one way to enjoy a beverage! Your turn now! And for me?

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Check out that green hue! It's like alien water or something! Well hello there. You're all mine. Mmm! Why can't I move my face? A little help here? Where am I? Is that snow? Are those frozen TikTokers? He's handsome. Wow! That's insane! Hey, they're dancing now! Well, should we join them? It's fun! Come on! Don't have to twist my arm! Hey! Check this video out! Whoa! That's looking cool!

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No wait, what? They're boiling the bag of chips? It came out as a roll! Now they've cut it up! And our dip in it! Okay, we've really gotta try that. I'm starving! Holy cow! Looks like the stuff is already waiting for us! Wait, what the heck is this? Let's see what's inside. Ooh! A fancy coin! I bet this can buy us everything we eat! Oops. Are you serious? Did you just lose the coin?

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What do you think will happen next? Look how fast that cotton candy is melting! Wait, what's inside? It's a pop-it! No way! Look! They're doing another one! There it goes! And it's gone! And this time there's candy! I kinda wish I had candy right now. You know what? I totally think we can do this too. Nice! Look at all these covers! Time to see what's in them! All right!

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We've got a bunch of cotton candy balls! Ah! It's the soda in the bowl! I'm gonna put some cotton candy in it. Wait! Hold up there! I wanna go first! What do you think's gonna be inside them? Let's see… There it is! Nice! It's a piece of candy! Time to eat it because I need a snack. Mmm. Candy is the best. It's just what I've been wanting. Wow. That does look pretty tasty. I'm hungry, too!

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All right! Come on, cotton candy! Do me a snacky favor! Wait a second… What's this? This isn't candy. It's a ring! I got a piece of jewelry! Well what the heck? I want jewelry too! There it goes. It's melting away. I hope it's a ring. What? Candy again? Ooh! This bracelet is even better than the ring I got! Ugh! How is this even fair at all?! Check out my new tiara!

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Okay then, time for me to bring out the remote! Now I'm royalty! Now's my chance to grab one of her cotton candy balls! Gonna get myself some jewelry! Maybe a whole crown! What the heck?! Candy again? This is ridiculous! I can't move! She's stealing my candy! You can just stay there with your jewelry. Next TikTok challenge, please! I don't know about this one. Time to get sporty up in here.

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Good luck beating my score! Aww. I just need to get warmed up. This is not gonna taste good. So disgusting! Smell it! Ooh, I don't want to throw up today. Oh boy. Just as bad as I thought it would be! My turn! Here we go! Gotta aim… And fire! Cereal and ketchup? You've gotta be kidding me. This is no hearty breakfast. Smells like absolute garbage. Bet it tastes like it, too. Yup, that's bad.

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I can barely watch you eat it! A little extra weight oughta help. Check out these biceps! Let's put them to good use! And go! Yes! I get to eat a slice of cake! Come to me, sweet chocolatey morsel! Whoa! It actually worked! Time to reward my talents! Mmm! I want some! Just a bite? I'll just have to earn one myself. I feel the muscles forming already. Okay, I think I'm ready now. So nice out.

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Whoopsies! Hey! It's toothpaste! And I forgot to brush this morning! Nice. Well that was…interesting. You're welcome, I guess. Let's keep things moving. Any day now. Hey! A pepper? You should be the one to eat it! Think the chocolate offsets the spice? Ooh, that looks really disgusting. That's really hot! AHHHHH! Maybe if I don't press too hard… Anything but raw eggs! Any chance we can skip mine?

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Okay, well now what the heck are we going to do? Wait! I've totally got an idea! Stay right here! Phew. At least she's not mad. Wait! What the heck? There's another one! Nice! It's a bag of chips we need! All right, I've got to find some money. Eh, not in here… Mmm! These chips smell so salty and fresh! Excuse me! I just need to check these real quick! Ugh. These are so good. I feel so hungry.

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Looks like someone's showering later. No! Not on the face! It smells super icky! You're up, Leo! Hah! Oh no… Everyone likes flowers, right? Boop! No! Wait! Not into this kind of flower. Looks like it's snowing in here. And here comes an avalanche! An unfortunate side effect of snow, huh?

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Yoink! Sorry! I need these more than you! Oh no! She's coming back! Hide the evidence! Phew. That was a lot of work but I got us some chips! Gosh. That was a lot of work. Okay, but we're ready now, right? We are! Let's start adding in the stuff. That's the cheese and onions. The tomatoes. Can't forget those. And now I have to carefully crack this egg into the bag. That's fun!

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RICH VS BROKE DIY DOLL MAKEOVER || Cute Tiny Crafts & Transformation Hacks by 123GO!

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Huh? Oh no! I stepped on her! Aw, I got her! She's seen better days, huh? You thinking what I'm thinking? Challenge time! This is gonna be her best work yet! Who doesn't love a good bath? Especially with a little bit of sugar. Think all this will fit in there? Here you go! She could definitely use this! Here you go, little lady! Ooh. And this brush is needed as well.

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RICH VS BROKE DIY DOLL MAKEOVER || Cute Tiny Crafts & Transformation Hacks by 123GO!

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I bet she's feeling better already! Just a little bit left… Done! Such a travesty! All those gorgeous locks! What a waste! Wait a minute. How did this get in here? Hey! Gimme that! You want hair? Sit back, this may take a while. Lots of holes on this head. But I'll get them all, don't worry. I can already tell it's fab. Just look at all these layers! Wow! It's my best work yet.

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You like it, Barbie? I think she does. Hey, whatcha doing there? Aw, love scratches. For me. Blue hair, huh? Fine! Aw, shucks. Huh? Olivia? Hi there! Whoa! Your hair! It's so blue! I guess you could say I was inspired. I'm fine with that. Are you ready? Yep, this should do it. These numbers have to be just right. And the waist? As I suspected. Yep, let's get started. Time for a little snipping.

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Ooh, we're getting somewhere. These should work. How's this color? You like? Ugh, no! Maybe not. BLEH! These! Huh? Breathe! Breathe! Is that fashion? Can't hear you. What? We have to do better than this. Hold up. I got this. Here you go. Blow. Like this. Yep, you're doing it. This should calm you right down. You're welcome. Where was I? What's going on here?

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Let me see that… I think I can use this. Yep! You're gonna love this, just wait! First, fold your deflated balloon in half. Then snip off the very tip. Now do the same at the base. Nice! Now unfold the balloon and slide it up over your legs. The perfect fit! But we're not done yet. Who doesn't want a defined waist? And a little vest adds a special something. This looks complete to me!

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She's ready for a photo shoot! Love the material! Hey! It's a great start! But there's more work to be done! She can't have naked nails! Woah, those are long! Don't worry, I'll cut them. She won't be able to do much with these. Which is why they're getting snipped. Perfect! And these? Nice! They're awfully sharp, though. Just keep those things up! Ugh, what a horrible sound. It's all worth it!

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She's done! Teamwork makes the dream work! Huh? High five! High five! Here you go! You're welcome! Hmm… You think she really loves him? I don't know… Wait, she's shaking her head! Ugh… Shhh… Huh? Look! It's Barbie! She stole the phone! It's mine now! Ugh, she's rude! Hold it! I got this! Actually, I know! I'll make Barbie her own phone! Cute, right? But why not add some sparkle? Like with this!

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Exfoliation is the key to smooth skin. Doesn't this feel great? Oh yeah, that's the spot! Looking fresh as a daisy! We did good! Who's that? Hey, can you give this to Barbie for me? What does it say? He's asking Barbie to prom! Well? Yes! Cool! Aw, it's so romantic! We've got work to do! There are more split ends than I can count! Which can only mean one thing… Haircut time!

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I'll use it to line the border. Keep it going all the way around. It helps that it's sticky. perfect fit but let's add stuff in here like some money honey this plastic will hold it in everything looks better with some glitter and I have lots of it lying around perfect if I say so myself huh that thing is adorable and you made it yep and it's all yours it works where were we

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This thing better have Wi-Fi. Wanna watch? We're ready! Just gotta get the right angle here. This video's hilarious! I love this! If my calculations are correct… Hey, you smell that? Oooh. Hmm. That's gotta be you. No way! There it is again! No! Put your arms down, girl! Those armpits are kickin'! I can't take much more of this. I'm going in. Now hold still, okay? I can't breathe. So dramatic.

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Phew. I don't know what just happened. Smells better. And look how smooth that is! I've never seen anything like it! Do me next! I want some smooth bits too! Ugh! What do you think, Barbie? Yeah, don't do it. Don't! You ate the doll! What? It's not that bad, is it? Ooh, I should start wearing deodorant. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Ditto. I'm starving. What's that? I'm hungry too! Feed me!

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Aw, I feel bad. I know. I happen to have a cake in here. Well, a super tiny cake. Here. Eww! Awww! Geez. What do we give her? I don't know. What do you want? My purse? Oh, she wants her own purse! I can help you with that! You want this little thing. Oh, and these too! Got it! But first comes some hot glue. Then stick the beads right on. And after some time, it'll look like this! One spot left!

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Oh yeah! Finished! Nailed it! Although it could use one more thing… Like this guy! Boom! That was easy! It's the cutest little purse! And it's all yours! Huh? Is that mine? So awesome! It was no problem! Now what? I gotta pee! Seriously? Hold on, Miles. She can just have this. See? It's a teeny tiny toilet. See? Now go! Ooh! Ooooooh! It's comin'! What's that awful stench? Let's get outta here!

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That sure was a relief. You sure have come a long way! Seriously, Miles? This new look has us both emotional! Talk about a makeover, right? It's getting late! Look! It's Ken! And he's on a horse! Hi! She's waiting for ya! Go ahead, you're ready! Hang on tight! Wow. What is this place? We did a good job. I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

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Let's see here… An inch here… Okay… It's go time! Don't worry, Barbie. This won't hurt a bit. And we're taking lots off. Did he say lots? You sure you know what you're doing? Oh, definitely. I'll be the judge of that! Huh? Hey! Trust me on this one, Miles! Olivia! No! Things are about to get buzzin'! No! I can't watch! This is what's in today! You'll see, don't worry!

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In September of 2007, Cassie threw a party to celebrate her 21st birthday. The party was at a hotel in Las Vegas. In photos, you can see her wearing shimmery pants and a white tank top. She's smiling, holding a glass of bubbly. According to Cassie's lawsuit, Combs showed up to the party uninvited. He brought some of his celebrity friends along too, including Britney Spears.

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Combs and his longtime girlfriend, Kim Porter, had reportedly broken up. They were together on and off for about 13 years and raised four children together. In her lawsuit, Cassie alleged that Combs forcibly kissed her in a bathroom that night of her birthday party and that she did not consent to his unwanted contact.

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That fall, according to Cassie's lawsuit, Combs invited her to come to Miami by herself under the pretense of a work obligation. She says he hired a party promoter to make fake flyers for an event that she was supposed to host. But Cassie's lawsuit claims there was no party. It was all a sham.

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The suit says Cassie was, quote, stunned at how easily Mr. Combs was able to recruit others to lie for him. Alone with Combs at his Miami home, Cassie alleged he pressured her to take drugs. She felt she couldn't say no because it might hurt her career. And after she took the drugs, the lawsuit says, she became more intoxicated than she ever had been before.

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And that's when she alleges Combs had sex with her. Then, Cassie alleges, Combs used his wealth, power, and influence to take control of different parts of her life. First, renting her an apartment in New York within walking distance of his, then doing the same in LA. He paid for her car, and when she went to events, he paid for her clothes and makeup too.

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To this day, Me and You is the track Cassie is best known for. A song that would go on to peak at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. A song that stayed on the charts for about six months. In other words, back in 2006, Cassie's song was one of the country's most popular singles.

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She alleged he used drugs to keep her complacent and compliant. Cassie alleges that she became increasingly isolated and frightened as her relationship with Combs escalated into sexual and physical violence. As the years ticked by, she says she was, quote, unable to see a pathway out of Mr. Combs' abusive hold on her life. Sean Combs categorically denies these allegations.

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In 2008, Cassie released a new single with Bad Boy called Official Girl, featuring Lil Wayne. As Cassie promoted the track on radio stations across the country, she kept getting asked, when are we going to see your next album?

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Now it's 2009. A few years have passed since Cassie's first album came out. That summer, Cassie does an interview on a hip-hop station near Albany, New York.

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Cassie says the album was pretty much done, that it was being mixed, and that she even had a title for it.

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But by the fall, Cassie's sophomore album was still M.I.A., About a month after that radio interview, Cassie made an appearance at Diddy's white party for the first time. It's the same party that we told you about in episode one, where Ashton Kutcher swung across the pool Tarzan style.

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Cassie wasn't officially Diddy's girlfriend at this point, but the young artist caught the attention of the cameras.

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Cassie looked radiant in a white mini dress and gold strappy heels. Her image had changed from the Me & You debut single days. Now, she was in her early 20s. She'd recently shaved one side of her head, giving her an edgy look that made her seem older and kind of punk rock. This was a daring hairstyle that got Cassie a lot of attention.

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But years later, stories start emerging to suggest that bold look wasn't Cassie's choice. In 2022, rapper Young Jock told YouTuber and music journalist DJ Vlad about the time he says he was hanging out with Cassie and Diddy in Miami. He says they were partying at a club when Diddy saw a woman with one side of her head shaved. The way Young Jock recalled it, Diddy rushed over to Cassie.

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We searched, but it doesn't appear Diddy or Cassie responded publicly to Young Jock's account. But back in 2009, Cassie said in interviews that she'd been thinking about shaving her head for a while. it would be several more years before Cassie and Combs hard launched their relationship in a public way. In 2012, they started appearing together at glitzy events like Paris Fashion Week.

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They were both always dressed to the nines, but it was clear who the bigger star was. At the 2017 Met Gala, the couple was photographed wearing couture. Diddy talked to Vogue's André Leon Talley about what he was wearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is it.

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For me, this song brings back memories of being 18 years old and driving around with my friends in my mom's car. It was the kind of song where if you heard it on the radio, you'd tell your friends, yo, turn that up. It was this song that caught Diddy's attention.

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Cassie waited a few steps behind until André motioned her to come over.

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Here's ABC News Entertainment contributor Kelly Carter talking about Cassie's shift from musician to girlfriend.

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Cassie's new role as Combs' official girlfriend starts to redefine how she was treated and also perceived. And Combs had a hand in shaping that perception. Like in 2015, he came out with a new fragrance called 3AM. He produced a risque video starring him and Cassie to promote it. The scenes of them embracing and kissing are intercut with the suggestion of violence.

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Cassie slaps and shoves, combs his hands, and circle her neck. The minute-long ad was so explicit that some television networks reportedly refused to air it. This was the same year the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey came out, and this ad was compared to that. Combs went on Andy Cohen's Bravo talk show, Watch What Happens Live, to show him the video. Now that's your real girlfriend.

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In the video, Cassie is straddling Combs, her body naked and exposed. Combs doesn't say anything in this interview with Andy Cohen about Cassie being a recording artist on his label. For the purposes of this conversation, she's his girlfriend and a model. Remember, Cassie had been modeling on and off since she was 12.

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Side note, Cassie's not from Europe. She grew up in Connecticut. Anyways, what stands out to me here is that Cassie, the recording artist, she's no longer in the frame. It's like she's become more of an accessory, an extension of Combs and his brand. In 2015, Bad Boy Records celebrated its 20th anniversary. The next year, Diddy organized a 24-city family reunion tour to celebrate.

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He told everyone gathered at the conference table that the song had been haunting him in nightclubs, and that he thought Cassie had a personality that, quote, the whole world could fall in love with. Before Bad Boy released a remix, Me and You was already an underground hit, even without the backing of a big record label. Cassie Ventura had built up a fan base DIY style.

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He was the headliner, and he invited legacy bad boy artists like Lil' Kim, Mase, and Faith Evans to share the stage. Some of the shows included special guest appearances from artists like Jay-Z, Usher, Snoop Dogg, and Mary J. Blige. Cassie performed at some of these concerts, but she wasn't a headliner, and she doesn't show up in the press release. And if you look for her, you can find her.

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She's there, at least at some of the shows. But she's not out front and she's not being promoted. She's clearly part of the supporting cast. So maybe that makes sense. After all, she hasn't had another hit song in 10 years. She's sort of a one-hit wonder at this point. At least that's one interpretation. But maybe she's not out front because she's being stifled.

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People like DJ and culture critic Megan Wright began to wonder if Cassie's career was being held back intentionally.

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But she was still recording music. Back in 2012, an anonymous fan posted 66 unreleased Cassie tracks on a social media site called Tumblr that was popular at the time. It isn't clear how the fan got these songs or why some of them had never been released by Bad Boy. The collection was titled The Cassie Trilogy.

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And if you search around the internet, you can still find a link with all of the leaked recordings, including this track titled Sound of Love. We don't know if this collection of leaked songs put pressure on Bad Boy, but a year later, in 2013, the label released a Cassie mixtape called Rockabye Baby. A mixtape isn't the same as a commercial studio album.

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It might be less formally produced, with songs meant to please the fans or offer tracks that don't make the cut for an album. A lot of times you can download it for free, and that was the case for Cassie's mixtape. Even so, the online music magazine Pitchfork gave Cassie's mixtape a glowing review, saying that now Cassie is more than a singer. Now she's got flow and a remarkable range.

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Here's one of the singles from Cassie's mixtape. It's called Numb. When Cassie's mixtape dropped, she did interviews on television and local radio shows to promote it. And she was asked the same question people have been asking her for years. When is her actual album coming out? Here's Cassie in an interview with a radio host named DJ Ski in May of 2013.

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The secret ingredient was early social media. Remember MySpace? MySpace was only about three years old at the time. It was the beginning of social media for millennials like me who grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. My profile had posts about soccer players I liked, like Ronaldinho, Zizou, and Henri, and some of my favorite music.

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Cassie explains that over the years, she put out some songs here and there, but they didn't really take off. And the reason she never released a new album was because she needed to prove herself more. She needed to earn the respect of her label. Remember, this label she needed to prove herself to, it was controlled by her boyfriend, Sean Combs.

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Coming up, Cassie starts working with a new and talented producer who tells us what she glimpsed of Cassie's troubled relationship with Diddy.

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In 2015, Cassie started working with a Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter named Tiffany Redd. She and Cassie are around the same age. As they collaborated in the studio, they became friends. Tiffany was one of the first people with access to Cassie and Diddy's world who spoke out publicly about the alleged abuse after Cassie settled her lawsuit.

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Tiffany remembers this one night she was out with Cassie in Miami. They were celebrating Cassie's birthday at a club, and then they decided to go to McDonald's. As they were driving, she says Cassie's phone lit up. It was Diddy.

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Tiffany says it was the first time she witnessed this kind of dynamic firsthand. She found it shocking and disturbing.

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When asked to comment on Tiffany Redd's account, Combs' attorney in a statement to ABC News said, Mr. Combs cannot comment on settled litigation, will not comment on pending litigation, and cannot address every allegation picked up by the press from any source, no matter how unreliable.

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I probably posted a picture of me working my after-school retail job at Hollister. I hope to God that picture doesn't still exist. Today, it's pretty common for artists and influencers to get famous off of social media alone. But when Cassie was starting out, it was pretty new to release music without a label, to build connections directly with fans without going through a gatekeeper.

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Tiffany says there was one night, actually another of Cassie's birthdays, where she saw a particularly menacing and controlling side of Combs that alarmed her. Cassie also described this incident in her lawsuit. It was her 29th birthday, and Diddy was throwing her a surprise party. As the party was winding down, Cassie told Tiffany and some other friends that she wanted to leave to go do karaoke.

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Soon, Tiffany says, people from Diddy's team circled around them.

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A warning. This episode includes discussion of sexual violence and abuse, so please take care when listening. In 2006, more than a dozen people sat around a long conference table scattered with water bottles and shiny folders emblazoned with the Bad Boy logo.

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Despite the pressure to stay, Cassie and Tiffany made their way to the karaoke club. Later, Diddy showed up with his security detail and Tiffany says they zeroed in on Cassie again. She says all of a sudden, things got really tense when Diddy showed up.

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At around 3 or 4 in the morning, Tiffany says Cassie and Diddy return to Cassie's house. Tiffany was sleeping over that night, and she says Cassie seemed sluggish and sedated.

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Cassie's lawsuit includes allegations that Combs supplied her with excessive amounts of drugs and coerced her into sexual encounters that he orchestrated, directed, and also allegedly filmed. These encounters are described in the lawsuit as freak-offs or FOs, and they often involved one or more male sex workers. Sex workers he allegedly instructed Cassie to hire.

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The lawsuit describes how Combs treated these forced encounters as a kind of personal art project. He controlled the lighting and the camera shots in the videos he took. He allegedly told Cassie what to say and what to wear, even down to the shade of her nail polish. Sometimes, these events allegedly lasted for multiple days at a time.

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Cassie allegedly often got IV fluids afterwards so she could recover. Combs' defense attorneys claim in a court filing that videos depicting sexual activity between the rapper, Cassie, and male sex workers confirm Mr. Combs' innocence because they show sexual activity among consenting adults. To Cassie, the videos had another purpose.

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She alleges that Combs used them to remind her that he was the one in control. According to the lawsuit, there was one time when they were on a flight and he showed her a video of a freak-off she thought had been deleted. Seeing that video, it underscored how trapped she was. He had this collateral, something that he could use to enforce his power and keep her compliant. Here's Tiffany Redd again.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Here's Cassie and the producer she'd been working with, named Ryan Leslie, talking about this in a video blog.

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Within three weeks, this record propelled Cassie to the top 10 artists on MySpace.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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And that's when the major labels came knocking, including Bad Boy Records, Sean Combs' company. As an attorney, I can tell you that the terms of any deal like this are usually private. We later find out Bad Boy reportedly offered Cassie a contract to make 10 albums. That was huge and also pretty unusual for a new artist without a proven track record.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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I could only find a couple of examples like this, including the 10-album deal a teenage LL Cool J reportedly got in the 1980s with Def Jam Records. Just think about it. Here's Cassie. She's at the very beginning of her career, only a couple years out of high school. And one of the biggest record labels in hip hop and R&B offers her a chance to make not just one, but 10 albums? That's crazy.

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Cassie was pumped and talked about it in an interview with Fun Radio France.

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But those 10 albums, they never happened. It's hard to watch some of these early videos of Cassie before everything changed, because now we know her dreams got derailed. And this legendary label she was so excited to join, she alleges the person who ran it became her tormentor and abuser. That's according to a lawsuit Cassie filed against Combs and his company in 2023.

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The lawsuit describes in excruciating detail how she allegedly got trapped in a toxic relationship with Combs that lasted for more than a decade.

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Cassie's allegations include disturbing accounts of abuse that lasted for years, that Combs forced her to use drugs and have sex with male sex workers, that he was controlling, even at times having her medical records sent directly to him, and that he was prone to rage and frequently beat her.

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When Cassie filed her lawsuit, Combs' attorneys issued a statement saying he vehemently denied these offensive and outrageous allegations and that Cassie's lawsuit was riddled with baseless and outrageous lies aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs' reputation and seeking a payday.

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But within a day of filing her suit, Cassie Ventura and Sean Combs reached an undisclosed settlement agreement with no admission of guilt. Combs issued a statement saying, we have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best.

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This was the era of flip phones and DVDs, so people glanced at paper handouts inside their folders as they scribbled down notes in actual notebooks. Sean Diddy Combs had gathered everyone to tell them about a new artist he'd signed to his Bad Boy Records label.

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I think it's fair to say that Cassie's lawsuit was the first domino to fall in the complicated web of civil and criminal allegations that Combs is now facing. And if he's convicted, some of those charges could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. For his part, Combs denies all allegations and has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges he's about to be tried for.

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But if we go back 20 years to when Cassie and Combs first met, what can we learn about how we got here? In this episode, we're going to focus on Cassie. We'll retrace the steps of her relationship with Combs and how some people we spoke with say dating him seemed to hurt her career more than it helped it.

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We'll speak to a friend who claims she witnessed Combs abusing Cassie, and we'll ask, what are the mechanisms and forces that fuel the kind of abuse that's been alleged and allow it to stay hidden for so long? Because to be clear, the abuse Cassie alleged in her lawsuit, it's much bigger than one powerful person. I'm Brian Buckmeyer, and you're listening to Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.

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Episode 3, Me and You. Cassie Ventura grew up in a small city in Connecticut that sits about halfway between New York City and Boston. Her family is a mix of cultures. She's described her mom as having Mexican, Black, and West Indian roots. Her dad's side of the family is Filipino. Cassie started modeling when she was 12.

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As a teenager, she attended a performing arts school where she studied ballet and jazz. Cassie moved to New York City in the fall of 2004 with her best friend. At first, she found work as a model. But Cassie wanted to be something more. She looked up to artists like Sade, Janet Jackson, and Aaliyah. She wanted to be an artist too. And not just that, she wanted to be famous.

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She said as much in a 2006 documentary on YouTube called Cassie Ventura, The Beginning.

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Once her deal with Bad Boy was finalized in 2006, Cassie started working on her debut album. The album cover is a close-up of Cassie's face. She's staring straight at the camera with a serious and mysterious expression. Her hair is parted on the side and falls in loose waves over one eye.

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The day of the launch, Cassie and her producer, Ryan Leslie, drove to Virgin Records, a big music store in Times Square, to celebrate. They were greeted by a crowd of fans holding up CDs they had just bought.

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Diddy was in the middle of a successful run with Danny Kane on his MTV show Making the Band, and he was getting ready to release the debut album of Atlanta rapper Young Jock. But Diddy wasn't happy with the label's recent performance. He said publicly that he was trying to get things back on track. So now he had another up-and-coming artist he wanted everyone in the room to meet. Cassie Ventura.

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Now that she was a bad boy artist with a hit single, Cassie was becoming more visible on a national stage. She had a big moment in the spotlight in 2006 when she performed in front of a live audience for the popular TV show 106 and Park on Black Entertainment Television, or BET. Both the cable network and the show were a really big deal at the time. Here's DJ and ABC News contributor Megan Wright.

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As a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s, 106 & Park was the place to see my favorite performers and check out up-and-coming artists. The show brought hip-hop to the forefront in a way that was mainstream, big, and just cool. Everyone watched it. So if you missed it and showed up to school the next day, you'd be lost in the conversation.

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Cassie appearing on 106 & Park meant she had made it onto one of the biggest and coolest stages there was. The day of Cassie's big debut on 106 & Park, she looked nervous.

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Her voice sounded shaking, tentative. You could see her eyes dart across the audience.

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Put your hands together for the Princess of Next Collection. Make some noise. Cassie, come on.

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At one point, the camera pulls back to show the crowd, and there's only a few people dancing. The whole thing feels very low energy.

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Jamila Lemieux is a writer and cultural critic. She remembers Cassie's BET debut.

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Some fans didn't think Cassie met those high standards for Bad Boy. I found an online petition to get Cassie kicked off the label that referenced both this BET performance and another one on MTV. The petition got over 3,000 signatures, so not tons considering she had hundreds of thousands of followers on MySpace, but still, it was pretty vicious.

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The petition was titled, We Prefer Lassie Over Cassie, and whoever started it complained of Cassie's penguin-moaning vocals. But after the BET performance, Diddy seemed to stand by Cassie. He told MTV, At the time, that might have seemed like a label exec defending his artist, standing by her. Maybe even a bit of fatherly advice.

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But those comments to MTV, where he described Cassie as cute, actually showed up in Cassie's 2023 lawsuit against Combs. The suit said that by pointing out how young and naive Cassie was, Combs was actually laying the groundwork for his, quote, manipulative and course of romantic relationship with a woman nearly two decades his junior.

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That day, she wore her long, dark hair tucked behind her ears and big gold hoop earrings. She dressed casually, with little to no makeup. Combs was in his late 30s. He sat at the head of the conference table while 19-year-old Cassie was at the other end. She was there with a producer she'd been working with. They'd release a song you've probably heard of called Me and You.

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A lot of what we've learned about Cassie's experience of her relationship with Sean Combs comes from this lawsuit, allegations that he, again, vehemently denies.

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But because the lawsuit was settled quickly and the details of the settlement were sealed, all we have is her 35-page complaint to share her side of the story, her account of how their relationship started, what the alleged abuse was like for her, and how she says it impacted her life and her career. Cassie hasn't spoken about the alleged abuse since the settlement.

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It's common in settlements like this for the two sides to agree not to say bad things about each other. So all we've heard from Cassie is an Instagram post where she thanked fans for their support, but didn't mention Diddy by name.

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So what happens if we take the accounts of hidden abuse Cassie alleges in her lawsuit and compare them with the parts of her life that were visible to the public these last 20 years? What picture emerges? That's coming up after the break.

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No criminal charges were ever filed for the Stampede, but civil lawsuits from victims and their families went on for years, directed at Diddy, Heavy D, and the City College of New York. A judge in one lawsuit filed by four victims found that Diddy, Heavy D, and the college were equally responsible for the injuries and deaths. Here's what really stands out to me about the City College Stampede.

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When it happened in 1991, Diddy was, as the New York Times put it, a largely unknown rap promoter. Writer and music journalist Doré says Diddy was buried in bad press.

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But by 1999, some eight years later, when many of the lawsuits from the stampede were coming to an end, Diddy was a millionaire with a couple Grammys. His career hadn't been stunted at all.

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Some of that perceived invincibility came from his earlier success at Uptown Records. He moved up pretty quickly from intern to executive. Torres says Diddy thrived because he was tapped into hip-hop at the street level.

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Diddy helped turn Mary J. Blige and R&B group Jodeci into stars. But that success led to a power struggle between him and his boss, Andre Harrell. So, in 1993, Harrell fired his eager young protege.

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Before he got into the music business, he spent a year in the NFL as a defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams. In 1995, he was running one of hip-hop's two big record labels, Death Row Records out of LA. Now, after thanking God, Suge didn't go on to give a standard acceptance speech.

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Those rappers were Craig Mack and Biggie Smalls, and Diddy knew what to do with their talent. Justin Tinsley, the reporter from ESPN's Anscape, says in particular, Diddy had a strong vision for Biggie.

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As Biggie became one of the most famous rappers in the world, Diddy signed more artists to Bad Boy. By 1997, the year Biggie died, Bad Boy had an impressive roster of talent, including The Lox, Mase, Faith Evans, and 112.

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And it wasn't just about the music. Bad Boyz artists had an era-defining style, a look, baggy, bold, flashy clothes.

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But after an incredible rapid rise to the top of the charts in cultural power, Bad Boy hit somewhat of a sophomore slump.

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In 1998 and 99, Bad Boy put out new albums by Faith Evans, Total, and 112. But initially, only 112's album was meeting the high expectations for the Bad Boy label. What were those high expectations? The album's going platinum, selling more than one million copies quickly. Diddy's second album, Forever, was also not as successful as his first.

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Forever debuted at number two on the charts in 1999, but fell to number 13 within three weeks. He was nominated for a Grammy for the single Satisfy You featuring R. Kelly. But they lost to The Roots and Erykah Badu's You Got Me. The label's revenue dropped significantly. Bad Boy Records was mostly riding on the clout and running off the royalties of its legendary earlier albums.

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Still very well-known and cool, but kind of stalled. A cover story in the December 1999 edition of Vibe magazine wrote that Sean Combs was fighting to prove he still got it. This was just two years after Rolling Stone had called him the new king of hip-hop. And in 1999, Diddy faced setbacks beyond Bad Boys dropping sales. He got into more legal trouble.

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And I can kind of see Suge Knight's comment about Diddy wanting to be in music videos hanging over him. Because this legal trouble started with Diddy trying to control his image in a music video. Diddy was featured on the rapper Nas' song, Hate Me Now.

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They were producing a music video to air on MTV, just as more people than ever were watching the network. So a lot of time and money was put into music videos and the expectation was that millions of people would end up watching them. Nas and Diddy's music video was meant to be flashy, edgy, and attention grabbing. It depicted both rappers being crucified like Jesus Christ.

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But after filming, Diddy had second thoughts.

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Steve Stout alleges that Diddy punched him in the face and bashed his head with a phone. Diddy was charged with a crime of assault, but he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser non-criminal charge of harassment, a violation, and was sentenced to a one-day anger management course. He and Stout reached a separate civil settlement out of court. It was all bad press for Diddy.

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But culture critic Jameela Lemieux says besides his reputation as a hit maker, he had another source of perceived invincibility. He knew how to redirect attention and put his cool guy image back in the spotlight. In 1999, when Diddy was turning 30, that meant getting headlines for a new relationship with It Girl actor and singer Jennifer Lopez.

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She had recently had her breakout role as a star of the Selena movie, played a glamorous queen in the music video for Diddy's song, Been Around the World, and now she was making her connection to Diddy and his music world official.

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The cover of Jet Magazine read, Puffy Combs and Jennifer Lopez, showbiz's most talked about couple. Other headlines said, call it chemistry, Jennifer Lopez and Puff Daddy. And Bright and Hot, superstar couple riding rollercoaster romance. A couple days before New Year's Eve in 1999, the influential couple went to a club near Times Square.

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While they're in the club, there was a dispute with a guy named Scar, who's deceased now. Derek Parker is a retired NYPD detective who responded to the scene at the club. I think money was thrown in his face, or money was thrown at Diddy or something like that. A shooting broke out, and three people were injured. Diddy and Jennifer Lopez fled the scene and got into a car.

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When they were pulled over, police say they found a gun in the front seat. It was a lot of chaos back then. When we went to the precinct, there were over 300 reporters outside.

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Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges against Jennifer Lopez, but Diddy and his bodyguard were charged.

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As the criminal case moved forward, news reports pointed back to the City College Stampede of 91 and the attack on Steve Stout earlier in 99. And they began to ask whether Diddy had a pattern of causing violence.

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Everyone knew who he was talking about, Sean Diddy Combs, or, as he was known back then, Puff, Puffy, or Puff Daddy, the head of the other big hip-hop label, Bad Boy Records, based in New York City. Unlike most producers and record execs, Diddy wasn't happy just sitting in the crowd or getting on stage to accept an award. He was an aspiring rapper himself and craved the spotlight.

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Diddy and his bodyguard pleaded not guilty to the weapons charges and were ultimately acquitted at trial. But someone was convicted for the shooting. A young rapper from Belize named Shine who Diddy had signed to his bad boy label. Shine had run out of the club that night with a gun in his waistband and some officers caught him while others chased after Diddy and Jennifer Lopez.

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Shine was convicted of multiple assault charges, gun possession, and reckless endangerment. He went to prison for nearly nine years and was deported back to Belize after his release. He spoke to ABC News about the shooting and his relationship with Diddy last year. Was Diddy a good coach? He was an extraordinary coach. He was able to bring the best out of me.

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Shine admits he had a gun and used it as the fight broke out, but he says that he shot it into the air, not at anyone. He thinks that Diddy should have stood up for him in court. Even now, he calls himself the fall guy.

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Diddy's representatives told ABC News he categorically denies Shine's allegations, including any suggestion that he orchestrated Shine taking the fall for him. Shine became a politician in Belize, but his music career? Well, that ended that night in 1999. But once again, Diddy's did not.

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Jameela Lemieux, the culture critic, says the assault on Steve Stout and the shooting just didn't stick in most people's minds.

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His relationship with Jennifer Lopez was much more compelling, more tantalizing. The couple was a mainstay on red carpets and eventually, Jennifer Lopez's fashion headlines drowned out the more negative press. There were two outfits in particular that really defined her time with Diddy.

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That's a green and blue sheer dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000. It was so low cut, you could see her belly button.

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And this is when Sean Puff Daddy Combs became Diddy.

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In fact, when artists from his label went up to perform a medley that night, he joined them. Well, he actually started the whole thing. Suge Knight and Diddy were already rivals, businessmen vying for their record label to be king. But Justin Tinsley, a reporter at ESPN's sports, race, and culture outlet, Anscape, says Suge's speech at the Source Awards was a turning point.

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After the break, his new image was all about being more than a rapper and record executive. It was focused on being an all-around mogul, someone even more powerful and unavoidable, even more invincible.

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By 2010, when Diddy was in his 40s, it was hard to believe he had ever floundered as a businessman. Sure, his Bad Boy record label wasn't as hot as it was when it first started, but he still had a popular catalog of artists he helped make famous. And in the 2000s, Bad Boy put out new music by Boyz n the Hood, Mase, and Young Jock.

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Diddy also released an album of remixes of bad boy songs that showed his deep connections in the music world. It included hit artists like Usher, Ludacris, and Missy Elliott. But Diddy knew the way to get really, really rich and stay powerful was to diversify his brand. It's what other rappers like Jay-Z were doing too. So by 2010, he wasn't just a music guy anymore.

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He had influence and money in fashion, TV, and alcohol. His wealth skyrocketed.

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He seemed to encapsulate the word mogul. And that's why in 2010, ABC's Nightline profiled him for a segment called Modern Mogul.

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Diddy was an early adopter of the idea that a celebrity should extend their reach beyond just one industry. And he proved to be really good at building a sprawling business empire. One of his first steps in becoming the curator of cool was launching his Sean John clothing line. The idea behind the brand was to introduce hip-hop fashion to a global audience.

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Music writer Toure says Sean John was really successful. Diddy even won the Council of Fashion Designers of America Menswear Designer of the Year Award in 2004.

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On an August night in 1995, the four corners of the hip-hop world gathered at the Paramount Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Artists from the South, the Midwest, and from the East and West Coast were all under the same roof.

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Diddy got into another popular celebrity investment, the alcohol business, by partnering with Ciroc. He showed up in many of their ads.

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Jameela Lemieux, the culture critic, says Ciroc was huge in building his wealth.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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their rivalry became much darker. About a month after the awards, they were both in Atlanta for the birthday party of a rapper and producer, Jermaine Dupri. Tinsley says tensions between Suge and Diddy and their entourages were high.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Atlanta police said Diddy's bodyguard, Anthony Wolf Jones, was their prime suspect. Jones' attorney said he had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, and no one was ever charged. But the shooting made the friction between Diddy and Suge worse.

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And that's partly because their beef was part of something much bigger, the East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry, which people have obsessed over for decades and we could probably write a whole other podcast about. But here's what you need to know to understand what happened next. Diddy represented one of the East Coast's biggest rap stars, the Notorious B.I.G., or Biggie Smalls.

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Suge Knight represented one of the biggest West Coast rappers with his own unique approach to music, Tupac Shakur, or Tupac. And both rappers and their styles were vying to be the biggest in the country. So the beef between Diddy and Suge was also connected to a rivalry between Biggie and Tupac. And I'm not just talking about a couple of diss tracks like Kendrick and Drake today.

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Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. This podcast was written and produced by Camille Peterson, Vika Aronson, and Nancy Rosenbaum. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Associate producer, Amira Williams. Production help from Shane McKeon. Fact checker, Audrey Mostek. Story consultant, Sweeney St. Phil. Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian.

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Original music by Eben Viola. Mixing by Rick Kwan. Arielle Chester is our social media producer. This podcast was powered by the journalists at Impact by Nightline, 2020, GMA, and the ABC News Investigative Unit. Thanks to those teams. And special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Liz Alessi, and Katie Dendas. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming.

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Laura Mayer is our Executive Producer.

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Tupac was shot and killed in 1996. Biggie was shot and killed in 1997. The two stars, only in their 20s and at the start of promising careers, were suddenly dead. Their murders captured international attention and really marked this era of hip-hop music. Their deaths also generated tons of unsubstantiated theories.

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In particular, there were theories that each rapper was killed by someone tied to their rival's label. No one has been convicted for either Tupac or Biggie's deaths. But this is the bottom line. A feud heated up after Suge Knight publicly called out Diddy's need for attention.

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Just like at the Source Awards, Diddy took center stage. He put out his first album as Puff Daddy in 1997, the same year Biggie died. It was called No Way Out and included the hit song I'll Be Missing You, a tribute to Biggie featuring his widow Faith Evans, who was also an artist on the Bad Boy label. That song was the first hip-hop song ever to debut at the top of the Billboard 100.

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And that year, Diddy received seven Grammy nominations, including for Best New Artist.

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They were all there for the second annual Source Awards. It was a celebration of hip-hop, a music genre that was rapidly moving from underground to mainstream. The event felt like a pretty standard award show. An eager crowd filled the auditorium waiting to hear the results.

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Suge had made fun of him for wanting to be in the spotlight. But lo and behold, there he was, basking in it. In an interview later that year, Diddy was asked about the perception that he was exploiting Biggie's death. It wasn't just that one of his album's singles was a tribute to the late rapper. He also used some of Biggie's lyrics for the album.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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1997, the year Biggie died, was a wildly successful year for Diddy. Vibe magazine reported that his Bad Boy label sold $200 million worth of records and had the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 22 straight weeks. Rolling Stone approached Bad Boy Records about putting someone associated with the label on the magazine cover. Kirk Burrows was the president of Bad Boy at the time.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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In 2024, he told Rolling Stone that he urged Diddy to put Biggie on the cover. His posthumous album, Life After Death, had been at the top of the charts all year, and he was still on people's minds.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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In response to the Rolling Stone piece that included this story from Burroughs, one of Diddy's attorneys said he cannot address every allegation picked up by the press. Diddy ended up on that 97 Rolling Stone cover, and Kirk Burroughs lost his job later that year. He unsuccessfully sued Diddy in 2003, alleging he was wrongfully fired. In the cover shot, Diddy is shirtless with B.I.G.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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written on his chest. He's wearing white Versace shorts and an oversized brown overcoat. There's water dripping down him and he has black paint under his eyes like a football player. The title of the story, The New King of Hip Hop, Puff Daddy. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. From ABC Audio, this is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy. Episode two, Invincible.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

606.855

Sean Diddy Combs knew how to put himself at the center of things. That started with music and lavish A-list parties, but eventually it became much bigger. He ventured into fashion, alcohol, and TV. The whole time he proved himself to be an expert at branding and reinvention, cultivating this cool guy image and protecting it fiercely.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

630.273

In this episode, we'll trace Diddy's rise from musician to mogul, from the center of hip-hop to the center of American culture. But that rise wasn't always a smooth ascent. Long before he was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, he was associated with moments of violence and brushes with the law.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

64.548

West Coast rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, also known as Snoop Dogg, won Artist of the Year. East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G. won Album of the Year for Ready to Die. And Outkast, a duo from Atlanta, won Best New Artist of the Year. The night was filled with performances and acceptance speeches. And one of those speeches turned the 1995 Source Awards into one of hip-hop's most infamous nights.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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Were they just lapses in judgment or warnings that signaled a much darker side to his success? That's after the break.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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Before Sean Diddy Combs was crowned the new king of hip-hop by Rolling Stone, he was a kid with a temper. In fact, that's why he says he got the name Puffy. He'd huff and puff whenever he got angry. Combs was born in Harlem, but grew up about 10 miles north in Mount Vernon, New York. Writer and music journalist Tore interviewed Diddy many times.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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Diddy's father, Melvin Combs, was believed to be part of a heroin selling operation, and he was killed in what some think was a drug deal gone bad.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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His single mom sent him to private Catholic high school. He then went on to attend the prestigious historically black college Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1987. But he knew he wanted to be in the music industry. So he started working on convincing Andre Harrell, who at least I consider to be a godfather of hip-hop and R&B, to hire him as an intern.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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Harrell was a former rapper, but is better known for founding and running Uptown Records in New York City. In a 2017 Vanity Fair interview, Diddy talked about why working with Harrell was so important to him.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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Diddy wanted to be at the pulse of music too, and his determination to get the internship paid off. He dropped out of Howard his sophomore year and started promoting rappers in New York City, really starting to build his music network while interning at Uptown Records. In 1991, he and rapper Heavy D organized a charity basketball game at the City College of New York.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

90.829

Yeah, yeah. Record executive Suge Knight and rapper Danny Boy won the award for Best Motion Picture Soundtrack for their work on the movie Above the Rim. Suge climbed on stage in a bright red button-down shirt. First of all, I'd like to thank God. Suge is not a small guy by any stretch of the imagination. He stands at maybe 6'2", and is definitely over 260 pounds.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

908.291

It was advertised as a chance to see New York City rap stars like Run DMC and Boyz II Men compete on the court. And people flocked to the game. It was clear, even then, that Diddy understood how to create and market an event everyone wanted to go to. but he was young and inexperienced. The gym had a 2,700-person capacity, but almost 5,000 people showed up.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

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As the crowd rushed to get in, 29 people were injured and nine died in a stampede. One headline from that day read, The Carnage at City College. Days later, a 22-year-old Diddy gave a press conference at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He looked so young, so defeated. At one point, he put his hand over his eyes and nose as if he were overwhelmed and exhausted.

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Bad Rap: Invincible

967.552

That incident followed Diddy for years. In that same 1997 interview when Diddy was asked about capitalizing on Biggie's death, he was also asked to reflect on the City College stampede.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

1182.992

20-year-old Latasha Norman was last seen leaving a class at Jackson State University.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

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A beloved young Christian woman fighting a battle undeserved. We thought she was God's gift, but she was a liar.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

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From the number one smash hit podcast. It was only a matter of time until Amanda's whole world came tumbling down. You're not going to believe this. Scamanda. New episodes Thursday nights on ABC and stream on Hulu. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

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The body of a missing college student from Mississippi has been found and her ex-boyfriend is charged with murder.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

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We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder. You have caused her parents, other family members, and friends enormous grief. As punishment for this murder, you're hereby automatically sentenced to life in prison.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

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20-year-old Latasha Norman was last seen leaving a class at Jackson State University.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

835.925

On the 13th of November, 2007, 20-year-old Latasha Norman was last seen.

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Death in the Dorms Season 2: Episode 6: Latasha Norman

840.648

Latasha Norman was a junior business major at Jackson State University.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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And while he said he didn't do an exhaustive search, Steve could not find a car with a bumper that was low enough to do the job.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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It's not that big. Steve goes back to this idea that law enforcement had that maybe the dent was caused by the tow truck driver who pulled it out of the culvert that night. Pipkin and the FBI tested it for cement residue and didn't find any. But Steve is skeptical.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Where Pipkin thought there was circumstantial evidence to suggest a second car, Steve doesn't see it. Again, he can't definitely rule it out. But as he spoke, I felt the phantom vehicle get even more shadowy.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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And then Karen Silkwood's sister, Rosemary, spoke up. But her question wasn't for Steve. It was for A.O. Pipkin's daughter.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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And it's the culmination of weeks worth of effort, that drive to Albuquerque to photograph the dent in the bumper, collecting every scrap of original evidence we could find from all the different accident reports from Troopers Fagan and Owen, A.O. Pipkin, and the FBI.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Steve acknowledged the heaviness in the room. For the last two hours, he was explaining Karen Silkwood's fatal car crash in technical terms, the way he might typically do in a courtroom. Now he was speaking to family members who knew the driver of this car, loved her, family members who for years had been grasping for some kind of resolution that kept evading them.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Steve has told us that's why he does this work. The science can help families know more about what happened and maybe give them some sense of peace. He wasn't able to answer all the questions we had going into this, but he did answer one big one, and Karen's sister Rosemary was grateful for that.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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We took all the photographs, diagrams, hand-drawn sketches, witness interviews, and report narratives and uploaded them to Steve's team in Dallas to see if new tools and technology could tell us something that wasn't possible to know in Karen's day.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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That with 50 years of technological advances since Karen died, Steve could now tell us, without a doubt, what happened in the moments leading up to the crash.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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We wanted that closure for them, for everyone.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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But Steve's presentation brought up some feelings for Christy. She wanted to remind us about some of the fundamental questions in this story that continue to matter, and how our attempts to try and get definitive answers about Karen's fatal car crash might actually not be the way forward as we think about where we want to go next in our own investigation.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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We asked her to record part of the message she sent us.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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She wanted safe working conditions, and she tried to do something about that.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Well, in the end, the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant did shut down. It wasn't long after Karen died, actually. The company couldn't reach a deal for a new contract to keep manufacturing its fuel rods. So on November 13th, 1975, on the first anniversary of Karen's death, Kerr-McGee announced it was closing the plant. And by the end of that year, most of the workers were laid off.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Karen probably wouldn't have wanted her friends and co-workers to lose their jobs. But I've come to see the closure of the Kermagee plant as some kind of vindication for her. That in the end, maybe she got what she wanted, even if it wouldn't have been how she wanted it. She wanted a safe plant, and she wanted the rest of us to know about the hazards that alarmed her.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Well, consider that a mission accomplished.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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I think it's fair to say Karen's story, the publicity around her contamination, death, and the civil trial were all part of that. There was also the partial meltdown of a big nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island, in 1979. It was a huge story that really frightened a lot of people.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Altogether, the late 70s was a time when the risks and potential health issues of nuclear power started to feel real to the American public, visible, tangible in ways they hadn't before.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

2115.97

Karen's friends and family told us she wasn't necessarily anti-nuke, or at least she didn't start out that way. I think of her more as an underdog fighting for other underdogs. That's the way I'll always remember her.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Yeah, there's a bunch of us. There's a bunch of us. Steve Irwin peers into a Zoom screen. A couple rows of faces stare back at him. It's not his usual audience.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Steve Irwin feels the weight of this moment.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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We're both in our 70s, but we're going to keep chasing any leads that need to be chased. I guess we don't know any other way. So if you know something about Karen Silkwood, her work as a whistleblower at Kerr-McGee, her contamination, her death, whatever it might be, Get in touch with us. We've set up a phone line where you can leave a message. The number is 347-901-9102.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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That number again, 347-901-9102. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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We invited Karen to be on the Zoom, too, given how she had held on to the Silkwood bumper, waiting for the moment it might be needed. She and Steve hadn't met before. Hi, Karen.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Steve stands by a big screen where he can display his simulations or magnify the smallest scratch in photos.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Steve's team created an animation showing how the car could have smashed into the cement wall and came to rest on its side in the red mud.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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So we have a pretty good sense of the moment of impact. Now Steve and his team must work their way backwards to think what set of forces acted on the car to get it to this crumpled state. And here's where the evidence gets thinner.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Remember, the highway patrol thought that Karen had been unconscious, possibly under the influence of a sedative and asleep at the wheel. And that's the reason for the crash. Lieutenant Larry Owen said that there was no evidence of braking or trying to steer after the car left the road. What did Steve find?

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

455.1

He pulls up a photo Pipkin took a couple of days after Karen's crash of tire marks in the grass next to the highway. The highway patrol and Pipkin measured marks once Karen drove off the road that ran 255 feet. Imagine, 85 yards on a football field. But it's hard to see much detail in Pipkin's photos.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Trooper Rick Fagan, one of the first officers on the scene, reported that just before impact, the tire tracks appeared to turn right.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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So there was a final steer to the right, an action.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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It wasn't passive coasting. And here's where we want to remind you that Karen was a skilled driver. She'd gotten into car racing with her boyfriend, Drew, and she raced that little Honda, even won a trophy that we saw at her sister Rosemary's house.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

60.289

But today, he's presenting to members of the Silkwood family. They've gathered to hear what he has to say about the fatal crash that killed Karen Silkwood 50 years ago. Maybe Steve Irwin will finally have some of the answers they've been waiting for.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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The evidence Steve finds of braking and steering are important. Remember, the highway patrol thought that Karen was asleep at the wheel. Steve comes to a different conclusion.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Now, could Karen have fallen asleep and been woken up by going off the road? It's possible, Steve says.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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So, what made Karen drive off the road in the first place?

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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The murkiest part of this crash has always been what happened to Karen while she was on the road to make her lose control.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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In another, she goes off the road to the left and can't get back on the road.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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He pulls up A.O. Pipkin's original photograph, showing the damage to the rear of Karen's car. Two dents, one is on the fender, just behind the left rear tire. The other is on the bumper. But first, there's something else in the photo that catches Steve's eye.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

85.071

Seven miles into her trip, exhausted, stressed out from her multiple contaminations and scrub downs, maybe clouded by her prescription sedative, Did she fall asleep at the wheel, as law enforcement has always said?

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Then Steve shows us a simulation of what it would have looked like if a second car comes up behind Karen, taps her from behind, and keeps going.

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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle

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Then there needs to be some kind of force that's powerful enough to make Karen's car go over to the left-hand side of the road. That force could have been her steering. Maybe she's scared and reacting to what's happening. Or maybe she hit the brakes. But when it comes to a phantom vehicle, dinging Karen's bumper and fender and forcing her to go left... Here's the question Steve asks.

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Explosive Secrets

36.865

A pipe bomb designed to obliterate everything. But could a fresh look at DNA change what we know about the case? An all-new 2020 starts right now.

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Explosive Secrets

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The Triano family filed a $10 million wrongful death civil action against Pam Phillips.

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Explosive Secrets

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And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, good night.

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The Lies Beneath

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I'm Kendall Windsor. I'm Travis Filmer's mother. Lori was lovely. It was like he was with us one day, and then the next thing you know, he's living with Lori.

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The Lies Beneath

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I was told they were getting married this day, that time, and I showed up.

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The Lies Beneath

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And so we're sitting on bales of hay. My dad walks her down the aisle.

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The Lies Beneath

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Good morning, America. Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC.

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The Lies Beneath

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I'm living in the Twilight Zone and I can hear the theme song going on.

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The Lies Beneath

31.721

Tonight, the sensational trial that just finished. Why would a beloved family man suddenly disappear on his family and friends?

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The Lies Beneath

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We were sitting in the fire pit, by the fire pit, not knowing that Michael is under that fire pit. That's where I sat.

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The Lies Beneath

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So this whole scenario, it's like I'm living in the Twilight Zone and I can hear the theme song going on. That's what's going on in my life.

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The Lies Beneath

49.349

I'm living in the twilight zone and I can hear the theme song going on.

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The Lies Beneath

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Lori Shaver was recently sentenced to life in prison for Michael Shaver's murder. She says she plans to appeal her conviction.

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The Lies Beneath

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And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.

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Run, Run, Run

1015.696

Yes. And not long after is when Alan Helmick walked through the door of the dance studio where Miriam worked.

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Run, Run, Run

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So Alan and Miriam decided to build a house together, and they chose the community of Whitewater. The house was set pretty far back from the road, and it was about a 40-acre property.

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Run, Run, Run

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There's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next. Run, run, run.

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Run, Run, Run

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So far, investigators don't seem to have much to go on. But about an hour into that police interview, Miriam says something that would raise the eyebrows of any homicide detective.

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Run, Run, Run

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Had Alan's killer made an earlier attempt on his life? After Alan Helmick is found murdered in his Whitewater, Colorado home, his wife Miriam is interviewed by investigators. And she tells them about a shocking incident that happened just six weeks earlier.

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Run, Run, Run

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Here in this parking lot, less than two months before he was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on Allen's life. Someone tried to set his car on fire. It looked like something straight out of a movie. But for the Helmicks, this brush with death was all too real. Tell me about that incident. What happened that day with the car?

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Run, Run, Run

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You ever seen anything like that before? No.

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Run, Run, Run

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It was pretty obvious someone had tried to start that fire. Correct. So if someone was trying to set the car on fire, it didn't quite work. Correct.

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Run, Run, Run

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Were they able to glean anything else from the crime scene?

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Run, Run, Run

1313.623

Allen mentions two bankers with whom he had prior dealings, but quickly downplays their potential involvement in the arson.

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Run, Run, Run

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Out here in the Western Colorado countryside, the wide open spaces can stretch for miles. In a place this remote, it might seem unlikely that two lonely souls might find each other and a second chance at love. But that's exactly what happened here until one warm summer day when the peace of this place was shattered by unimaginable violence. This was a big story that shocked a small town.

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Run, Run, Run

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Investigators will ultimately determine that those bankers are not involved, but they're exploring every avenue, even asking Alan if he thinks it's possible Miriam could have been responsible for the car fire.

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Run, Run, Run

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And besides, what reason would Miriam have for trying to kill Allen? He'd always gone out of his way to make her dreams come true with lavish gifts. and gestures.

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Run, Run, Run

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Alan loved Miriam, and he was always happy to dote on her, buying her lavish gifts like her own dance studio and even a horse training business, always intent on making her lifelong dreams a reality.

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Run, Run, Run

1465.612

And his desire to open up that dance studio came from where? Oh, it had to be Miriam. You had your concerns about him investing in these things.

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Run, Run, Run

1477.899

Sounds like you really wanted to make Miriam happy.

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Run, Run, Run

1481.722

Alan was always very good with his finances, but with the horse business and the dance business, they were hemorrhaging money.

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Run, Run, Run

1490.851

As investigators began digging into Alan's finances, they found that bad business decisions had left him in a serious financial hole. But were his money troubles enough of a reason for someone to want him dead? Or could the murder have been more personal?

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Run, Run, Run

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Investigators will soon learn about some long-standing Helmick family tension.

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Run, Run, Run

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One week after his untimely death, Alan Helmick is laid to rest.

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Run, Run, Run

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In the days after Alan Helmick's murder, investigators had diligently chased down leads and conducted interviews with people in his orbit, but they hadn't announced any suspects. There was, however, one thing they were pretty sure of. This was not a robbery gone wrong. What stood out to you?

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Run, Run, Run

1705.417

It was odd. You had property still in the house. that was, you could assume, was a value that a normal burglar would take.

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Run, Run, Run

1717.618

Computers, phones, jewelry. The normal type of stuff you would expect somebody to steal.

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Run, Run, Run

1737.842

Correct, in the kitchen. throughout the house. It just did not sit right. It did not feel right. It was looking staged.

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Run, Run, Run

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And Alan's autopsy confirmed that he probably had not walked in on anyone committing a burglary.

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Run, Run, Run

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There was no indication that Alan had tried to fight off his attacker. It was very clear that he was caught by surprise as he was shot right in the back of the head.

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Run, Run, Run

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But there was someone in Alan's life that Miriam had told investigators he'd been wary of. At one point, Miriam starts pointing fingers at Alan's son, Alan Jr. What did she say about him?

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Run, Run, Run

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And after that car fire six weeks earlier, Allen had also mentioned his strained relationship with his son to those investigators.

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Run, Run, Run

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Allen's personal issues with his son, coupled with the fact that he may have known his attacker, was enough for detectives to bring Allen Jr. in for an interview.

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Run, Run, Run

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When asked, Allen Jr. insists he would never hurt his father, and he had an alibi. He was working out of state at the time of the murder.

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Run, Run, Run

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There were no suspects. We didn't know if this person could come back. I never thought it would happen here or anything like that would ever happen here.

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Run, Run, Run

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Alam Helmick was a fixture in this community, a man who dedicated his life to helping others achieve their dreams, getting small businesses off the ground and families into their first homes. In fact, he was known as the broker of Main Street.

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Run, Run, Run

1966.587

Had there been a murder in my home, would not want to stay there, especially not a few days after. But she said it was her home. She said she felt closer to him there.

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Run, Run, Run

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But if Miriam says she felt safe enough to stay in her and Alan's home, that was about to change. And then two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat at the house.

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Run, Run, Run

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Was the killer now coming after Miriam?

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Run, Run, Run

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The baffling murder of businessman Alan Helmick had left the community desperate for answers. Detectives were taking a close look at everyone in Alan's life, even close friends like Ed Benson, who was brought in for an interview.

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Run, Run, Run

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And there was that mysterious car fire just weeks earlier. Everyone wondering, could the two incidents be linked?

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Run, Run, Run

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As days passed with no suspects in custody, Miriam became convinced she was being watched. She reported seeing a white pickup truck with a driver she didn't recognize circling the property, leaving her to wonder whether the same people who killed Alan were now coming after her.

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Run, Run, Run

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Alan Helmick was a prominent businessman. He had a mortgage business. Everybody respected him. He was firm, but he was very friendly.

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Run, Run, Run

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She was finding lights on. She was finding medicine cabinet doors open that shouldn't be.

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Run, Run, Run

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But the strange happenings at the home weren't the only thing worrying Miriam. With Alan, the sole breadwinner, gone, there wasn't any money coming in. During her police interview, Miriam had explained to investigators that they had a prenup.

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Run, Run, Run

2187.518

Miriam's financial situation was fairly dire. In fact, she started selling off some of the property they had together.

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Run, Run, Run

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An avid outdoorsman, Alan took advantage of all western Colorado had to offer.

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Run, Run, Run

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And then, as Miriam is struggling to stay financially afloat, an ominous message shows up on her doorstep.

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Run, Run, Run

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She was with her friend Penny. They had just gotten back from shopping. She goes up to her front door and she sees an envelope sticking out from under the map. And when she opens that envelope, there's a card inside that says, Alan's first, you're next. Run, run, run.

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Run, Run, Run

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I was given a copy of the card. It said, to the grieving window in block letters. On the front is a picture of a middle-aged female. And it said, insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And then inside, Allen spelled A-L-L-E-N.

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Run, Run, Run

2284.5

Misspelled.

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Misspelled. Your was also Y-O-U-R. A grammatical thing, okay.

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It looks like Miriam might be the next target.

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After Miriam received the threatening card, she left and she went back to Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, where she's from. She moved in with her son, Chris.

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Back in Colorado, that bizarre greeting card gives police something they have been desperately searching for, a solid lead.

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I had actually seen this card before.

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Just coincidentally, you had seen the card?

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It's kind of a unique front on a card.

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It's at this city market that investigators finally get the break they've been waiting for. The person who bought that card with the threatening message from Miriam is caught on surveillance tape here. And just who that person is will take everyone by surprise. You see, clear as day. Then a bombshell discovery from decades earlier.

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The piece of evidence that was really the smoking gun, almost literally, was recovered from that lawn in Delta.

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What investigators find buried here will crack this case wide open.

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Run, run, run.

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You want twists and turns, there's no shortage of that here.

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She's trying to get on with her life in a new state, but another incident with a gun comes to the surface.

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Could what they find buried in this yard be the smoking gun? On June 10, 2008, 62-year-old respected businessman Alan Helmick was found dead in his home by his wife Miriam.

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Alan had grown up in the nearby town of Delta and settled into Grand Junction to raise a family. What was Alan Helmick like?

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When we arrived, Alan was on the floor in the kitchen. He had been shot in the head, and we had a bullet casing next to his body.

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A tragic ending to what appeared to be a perfect second chance at love.

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Both Alan and Miriam were widows. She was his dance instructor for ballroom dancing lessons.

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Miriam told police she'd been running errands all morning and provided receipts to back up her alibi.

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Police were at a loss as to who would want this well-liked businessman dead. Alan had some enemies, but nobody was going to kill him. As investigators began to dig deeper, the story took a frightening turn.

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He was a great athlete. Bob Caccetti was Alan's friend and longtime accountant.

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After Miriam received the threatening card, she went back to Florida, where she's from.

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In Florida, Miriam turned to old friends for support, reconnecting with her former neighbor, Aline Lee.

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While Miriam tries to restart her life in Florida, detectives in Colorado are continuing to work the case, trying to figure out where that threatening card she received came from.

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They got in touch with the manufacturer of the card. He was able to tell them where these cards were sold. I checked the Hallmark.

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I checked the Hobby Lobby. We finally get to the city markets. I contacted their loss prevention guy. They found two cells. One person paid in cash, didn't know who that person was. The other one was with a credit card. So we had a name and then he found one more purchase. He called me and he's like, I've got video.

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That store uses VHS tapes?

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That particular store was not as up to date as their others. And they did use VHS and they used it over and over and over again. So by the time we got this tape, it was kind of delicate. It was her. She was wearing the same style of shirt that she had walked in with her interview. It was just a different color combination.

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So now it appears that Miriam, the grieving widow, seemingly afraid for her own life, had actually sent that threatening card to herself. But when investigators confront her about this, she says she has an explanation.

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What Miriam told them is that she felt like the police weren't paying enough attention to the case. They weren't doing much. And so she wanted to kind of jog that with this card.

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Did that greeting card incident change the way you and investigators approached the case?

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But remember, when she was interviewed by investigators, Miriam said she had very little to gain from Alan's death.

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did a prenup okay everything he has is his everything mine is mine he has more than i do okay with no clear motive inside the mesa county sheriff's office turned their attention to miriam's past learning about that double tragedy she and her family suffered years earlier in florida there was the sudden loss of her daughter and then a shocking development with her first husband

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While Miriam and her first husband, Jack, were in bed, Jack shot himself in the head. Now you say, okay, she's had not one, but two husbands shot in the head.

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Police ruled it a suicide. There were some strange circumstances, though. Things like he used his right hand to pull the trigger. Jack was a lefty.

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And definitely not one to shy away from attention.

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Investigators then start looking back at your father's death.

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Yeah. Was the death of her first husband, that case, ever reopened?

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No, it was Rule Day suicide.

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But with clouds of suspicion gathering over Miriam about the death of her second husband, she does something unexpected.

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Investigators are starting to wonder if they could actually have a black widow on their hand.

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I mean, she was finding the husband, she was looking for the money, and then moving on.

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With suspicion now mounting that she may be the person who killed her husband, Alan, Miriam Helmick does something unexpected. She goes looking for love again.

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Miriam even opens up about the recent loss of her husband.

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Miriam may have been trying to move on and put Alan's death behind her, but back in Colorado, investigators are taking a closer look at her, starting with her alibi from the day of Alan's murder.

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To show up at the police interview with a pocket full of receipts. Suspicious or just thorough?

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I would say very odd. That is not a normal thing.

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And investigators weren't the only ones with suspicions about Miriam. M-I-R-I-A-M.

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So it didn't surprise those who knew Alan that after his first wife unexpectedly passed away, he wanted to meet new people. So he decided to try something different, dance classes. And his instructor is this woman, Miriam Giles.

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Remember that local reporter who sat down with her after Alan's murder? She couldn't shake the feeling that something was off with her story.

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It's tomorrow at 10. I start to get a weird feeling as she's talking.

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It was all about her. And these interviews are really supposed to be about the deceased.

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As I was speaking with her, it went from feeling really bad for her to being suspicious.

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That was it.

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She started looking to the side. It's just like when you're talking to somebody and you know that they're lying because of non-verbal cues that they have. When I left that house, I've never scurried away from a place so quickly in my life. I was genuinely scared.

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And while Miriam is talking to the media, investigators are talking to those closest to Alan. You continue with the investigation. Actually, you interview Alan's children.

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Yes. Right after Alan passed, we were speaking to the daughters and they had expressed concerns of an inability to get ahold of their dad.

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He wasn't answering phone calls. He wasn't returning voicemails.

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It appeared that he was being distanced from them.

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And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to, oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.

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Allen's kids couldn't help but wonder why Miriam seemed to be keeping them from their father in the months leading up to his murder. Could it have been something to do with a sudden decline in his health?

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The more investigators dig, the more troubling details they uncover, like a gun that seemed to have disappeared from Miriam and Alan's home.

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One of Alan's children said she specifically remembered seeing a .25 caliber pistol in his sock drawer.

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Police learn of a shooting incident that had happened outside this house decades before. Could what they find buried in this yard be the break they need?

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Coming to ABC and Hulu. Amanda Riley was a mother, wife, speaker at her church. And then she got diagnosed with cancer. A beloved young Christian woman fighting a battle undeserved. We thought she was God's gift, but she was a liar.

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Detectives will often say that when it comes to investigating, there are no coincidences. And for those working the murder of Alan Helmick, they were certain that attempted car fire just weeks earlier was somehow connected to their case.

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Since investigators learned that Miriam had been standing at the trunk right before Alan discovered the fire, they decided to bluff him, telling Alan there was surveillance video of the incident to see if he thought his wife could have been responsible.

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Is she on there?

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Miriam was 10 years his junior, but Alan didn't let that discourage him. He described meeting Miriam in an interview he did shortly before he died.

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The crime scene reminded investigators of a movie scene.

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As police are looking into this, they discovered that the Hellmicks had rented that movie about four days prior to the incident.

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Was this the smoking gun or smoking car?

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And the detectives now investigating Alan's murder are still searching for any hard evidence that Miriam pulled the trigger. After all, they still hadn't recovered a murder weapon.

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There was the issue of the firearm that was missing from the home. And in talking to the daughters, we knew that there should have been a .25 caliber Lorsen in the house.

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Because people had seen that gun there before?

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As luck would have it, there was an old Helmick family story from decades earlier of Allen's first wife's stepfather firing that same gun into the ground during a domestic dispute back in 1989. Could this gun, now missing, be the murder weapon?

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And then investigators bring in a metal detector into the case. Right. Detectives come up with a long-shot idea. Go back to the property where that domestic dispute happened back in 1989. Could they recover the bullet fired from that gun and compare it to the bullet that killed Alan?

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Carol Quarles is a retired law enforcement officer who has experience using a metal detector to search for missing evidence. So your reaction when they asked you to get involved in this case?

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And you started over here?

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And they were getting nervous. The investigator said, well, maybe you're not going to find it.

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Right. To what you said.

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Where did you find that bullet?

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The evidence is building up against her.

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But this is a woman who police believe orchestrated an attempted firebombing and shot her husband in the head in cold blood. Is she just going to go quietly?

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In the fall of 2008, just a few months after Alan Helmick's murder, Miriam was living in Jacksonville, Florida, attempting to move on with her life. But her past in Colorado was about to catch up with her.

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Did you have an inkling that she might be a suspect?

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Six months after Alan's death, Miriam is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder for that car fire, and forgery. She pleads not guilty and is extradited from Florida back to Colorado.

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A year after being arrested and charged, Miriam Helmick goes on trial here at the Mesa County Courthouse. Prosecutors argue that the grieving widow is actually a cold-blooded killer.

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So why do prosecutors believe Miriam killed Allen? They argue the motive was as age-old as they come, money. Financial motive was the critical part of your argument.

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But the defense pushed back, saying that Miriam had Allen's permission to write those checks, both as his wife and his secretary.

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It's June 10, 2008, typical beautiful Tuesday morning in Whitewater, and Miriam leaves to go run some errands. Alan was going to get his car serviced, and then they were going to meet up for lunch.

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Prosecutors put Alan's daughter, Portia, on the stand to testify about the way Miriam seemed to be isolating her father in the months leading up to his murder.

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And when they would call Miriam, there was excuses as to, oh, I'll have him call you back, or he's not around.

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How would he have reacted if he had found it?

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And prosecutors argued that Miriam had tried to kill Alan not once, but twice. The first time in that failed attempt at blowing up his car, they called Miriam's horse breeder and friend, Jerry Yarborough, to the stand.

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Jerry told jurors about a conversation she said she had with Miriam after that failed car bombing.

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Pretty much. But the defense pointed out that if Miriam was after Alan's money, why would she try to blow up his car while he was holding that large cashier's check he had just received?

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The piece of evidence that was really the smoking gun, almost literally, was the bullet that was able to be recovered from that lawn in Delta.

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How pivotal was that in tying Miriam to the crime?

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But as Miriam's defense pointed out, roughly matched is not the same as a perfect match. Couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Then the defense did something you don't often see at a murder trial. They called Miriam to testify in her own defense.

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Miriam stayed on that stand for two days, denying that she had anything to do with Alan's murder. When prosecutors got their chance to cross-examine her, they pressed her on the infamous run, run, run card that she admitted sending to herself.

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She went to City Market to pick up his prescription and found out that he hadn't dropped it off. So she called him, could not get a hold of him.

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After 16 days of testimony, the jury gets the case.

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They come back with a verdict in five hours for a first degree murder case. You just don't see that. Five hours was very fast.

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The verdict, guilty on all counts.

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There was a little bit of a sigh of relief.

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But Miriam says the jury got it wrong, and she had a lot more to say when we spoke in her first interview since being convicted. Miriam, are you telling me that your husband, Alan, started the car fire himself? Why would he do that? It's now been 15 years since Miriam Helmick was sentenced to life for killing her husband, Alan.

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Since then, she's been at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, where she recently called me from.

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An incarcerated individual at Denver Women's Correctional Facility.

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Hello, Miriam. Hi. How are you doing over there?

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This is the first time she's spoken publicly since her 2009 sentencing. I asked Miriam about first meeting Alan back when she was his dance instructor in Grand Junction. And was it love at first sight?

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He was very persistent.

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And eventually you fell in love with him.

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Alan's kids say that you were isolating him from them in the months prior to his death. Was that true?

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Miriam, after 15 minutes, decides to leave and head home. Miriam gets home. It looked like the house had been ransacked.

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Prosecutors say that you fraudulently had written about $40,000 in checks on Alan's money that he was about to find out, and that's why you killed him.

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You mean to tell me that Alan started the car fire himself? Why would he try to do that and possibly hurt himself?

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Miriam says Alan may have tried to set the car fire for the insurance money.

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It's a claim that's hard to back up, but Allen was adamant with authorities that he did not believe Miriam would ever try to kill him.

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What about the gun that was missing from your home and Alan's home?

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It had an unusual family history, that gun.

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Now authorities also questioned your alibi. All the receipts that you had, it looked like you were trying so hard to create an alibi. Were you?

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Miriam, did you kill your husband, Alan?

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Do you think you'll get out of prison someday? What do you think will prove your innocence now? Wouldn't the blood spatter and the gunshot residue be easily washed off if you took a shower?

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How often do you think about him?

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After the trial, did you see your mom again?

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I have not seen her since the trial. After so long, what did Miriam finally have to say to her son?

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This past November, Chris Giles and his wife, Kelly, flew to Colorado for a much-anticipated visit to see his mom, Miriam, in prison.

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Over the years, one by one, Chris lost his entire family to different forms of tragedy.

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That new husband dies, and then she's arrested.

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Our cameras were not allowed inside the prison, but Chris tells me that reuniting with his mom, while complicated, was also healing for him.

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Robin Martin is a detective who worked the case. When the first officers arrived on the scene, they find Miriam distraught and kneeling over her husband.

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I do not. With your father? I do not, no. Seeing your mom was a big step for you after all these years. Yes.

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But when it comes to Alan's family and friends, there are some things that they say they would rather forget.

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What do you think Alan would have wanted people to remember about him?

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Alan was on the floor in the kitchen. It looked like he had been shot in the head and we had a bullet casing next to his body. They did a very quick security sweep to make sure there wasn't a suspect still on scene.

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There's no one in the house. As they conduct their sweep, deputies notice drawers pulled out in the kitchen and a trash can tipped over in Allen's office.

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In the newsroom, we have police scanners and we heard the call go out saying there was a robbery homicide out in Whitewater. I packed up my camera gear and went out there immediately. What I saw when I got out there was a scene that was taped off. Multiple officers going in and out of the house conducting their investigation.

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It was. Very much so. And everybody wanted to know what was going on.

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It's Detective Work 101 that you start with the people closest to the victim. But in this case, Alan's wife, Miriam, was running those errands, expecting to meet Alan for lunch. She even had the voicemails to prove it.

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Miriam gets home. It looked like the house had been ransacked. She sees Alan laying on the kitchen floor. He was shot right in the back of the head.

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Things did not add up. Everybody knew him. Everybody loved him. Who would do such a thing?

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After finding her husband Allen dead in a pool of blood on the floor of their Whitewater, Colorado home, Miriam Helmick is brought in for an interview with the Mesa County Sheriff's Office.

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Miriam was at our office. They, as we do with all, what were you doing today? Can you go through your day for us?

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And what did she tell investigators about her whereabouts that morning?

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She started listing off everywhere she had been. She told us that she was calling Alan several times, was getting his voicemail. Hi, Alan.

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Here in this parking lot, less than two months before Alan was murdered, there was an earlier attempt on his life. Somebody tried to torch our car.

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15 minutes in, you're never late, so would you call me? Miriam's entire morning is accounted for. She even offers up proof of where she's been.

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She was tested for gunshot residue?

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They take those items to check them for any kind of gunshot residue or blood spatter that might indicate Miriam had something to do with this. And those results came back negative.

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She's also caught on several surveillance cameras throughout the morning. Miriam seemingly has an airtight alibi. So naturally, investigators are anxious to ask her who she thinks may have wanted to harm Alan.

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Miriam said Allen was generally well-liked, but detectives also knew he'd been a local mortgage broker. Could he have turned someone down? Maybe had a disgruntled former client or coworker who was out for revenge?

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And he had started his own business here decades earlier. Alan had married his high school sweetheart, Sharon, and had four children through 37 years together. But on New Year's Eve 2003, she died of a sudden heart attack. How did that affect him?

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You ever seen anything like that before?

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When Alan met Miriam, I know she had a policy of not dating her students, but Alan was pretty relentless.

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We didn't know if this person could come back.

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Karen Wilson was a local journalist in Grand Junction, Colorado, who covered this case. Just days after Alan's murder, she spoke to an emotional Miriam.

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Miriam had been dealt her own difficult hand in life, having faced not one, but two unimaginable tragedies back in her home state of Florida. Chris Giles is Miriam's son. Grew up in Jacksonville, mom, dad, a sister. What was it like?

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In 2000, Miriam and her first husband, Jack, were devastated when their eldest child, 23-year-old daughter Amy, died suddenly after an accidental overdose. How did the family cope with this, with her death?

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And then two years after your sister dies, tragedy strikes again.

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Miriam's husband, Jack, shot himself while he and Miriam were in bed.

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Two weeks after Alan's murder, Miriam finds a dramatic discovery under her doormat.

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The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

1703.259

Robin, George, Michael, GMA. America's favorite number one morning show. The morning's first breaking news. Exclusive interviews. What everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA.

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

1721.068

Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC.

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

825.453

Nicole Kidman returns for the Hulu original Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2.

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

842.033

Breathe out. Why are you resisting? Is it too late to get a refund?

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

846.136

The all-new season of Nine Perfect Strangers is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu and Disney+. New episodes May 21st.

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

859.25

Robin, George, Michael, GMA. America's favorite number one morning show. The morning's first breaking news. Exclusive interviews. What everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA.

20/20

The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity

877.035

Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

0.189

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

11.232

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1348.048

Jody's life was in danger. She would either live or she would die.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1368.015

The million dollar question is what would have forced her to do it?

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1376.802

It was Travis' continual abuse. And on June 4th of 2008, it had reached a point of no return.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1395.123

Her fear and her panic about what had happened led her to tell different stories. He threatened to kill her, and given her experience with him, she had no reason to not believe him.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1568.474

And do you believe in your expert opinion that Jody was a battered woman, or is a battered woman?

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1586.721

How would you characterize their relationship at this point in time, given your expertise in the area?

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

1605.745

And calling her a whore?

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

178.864

Yes. Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. There is no question about it. The million-dollar question is what would have forced her to do it.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

195.903

It was Travis' continual abuse. It had reached a point of no return.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

2393.359

We are so very thankful for the opportunity to gather here as friends with Travis.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

2629.989

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

2641.036

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

374.469

911 emergency. A friend of ours is dead in his bedroom. His roommate just went in there and said there's lots of blood.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

402.881

He has an ex-girlfriend that's been bothering him. And do you know the ex-girlfriend's name? Her name is Jodi.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

805.859

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

Untangling The Lies of Jodi Arias

816.903

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1009.44

Until now, Farras has done everything he could to protect his brother at any cost. But in court and under oath, he's about to be caught in a lie.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1025.255

No. No? But prosecutors introduced evidence recorded on prison phone lines that the Isser brothers did discuss exactly that.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1058.637

For us, Issa is dismissed for the time being so he can consult with an attorney. Through it all, Yazeed looks on, seemingly unmoved. The same way Detective Gary McKee remembers him when he questioned Yaz three weeks after Rosie died and first developed his own suspicions about those calcium capsules he'd given her.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1092.853

Yazeed was apparently unconcerned about handing over the remaining pills to police, but Julie DiPuccio believes he was actually in a panic.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1109.121

The proof, she says, came just days later when Yazeed Issa vanished.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

111.694

Rosie was rushed to the hospital. She went unconscious and died shortly after that. Her death immediately was suspicious because she didn't suffer any physical injuries from her car accident.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1123.109

And when the lab results came back, police discovered Yazeed Issa had good reason to run. The evidence was in those calcium capsules. She died of cyanide poisoning. In the second week of Yazeed Issa's murder trial, the state focuses on his bizarre disappearance and on a startling piece of evidence Dominic and Julie DiPuccio discovered in his house almost immediately afterwards.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1187.463

After Yazeed disappeared, the DiPuccios took on an even bigger burden, making a home for Yaz and Rosie's children, Armand and Lena. They already had four children of their own.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

123.98

His life crumbled. His wife's dead. And he was gone. Boom. We got to get out of here. Poof. He's gone.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1233.467

In April 2005, just two months after Rosie's death, FBI agent Phil Torsney, a veteran fugitive hunter, was assigned to figure out where the successful doctor and businessman was. This is the location where Dr. Issa purchased his ticket, where the investigation started for us.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1251.639

Torsney picked up Issa's trail at this travel agency and soon uncovered evidence that Yaz had used a kind of underground railroad for his escape.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1296.022

Using a network of family and business contacts, Yazeed Issa made his way all the way here to Beirut, Lebanon, where at first he went underground, moving from safe house to safe house all over the city. Lebanon was no random destination.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1314.524

This country doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States, so while authorities use credit cards and emails to track Issa to Beirut, they wouldn't be able to lay a hand on him if they found him.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

132.944

Bye-bye. He fled the country before the coroner had even ruled that her death was a homicide.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1346.491

Yazeed's protector in Lebanon was this man, Jamal Khalifa, a self-described businessman who had once lived in Michigan where his family knew the Issa's. If I was trying to stay one step ahead of the law and I was in Beirut, you could help me. Yes. You could provide me with a new passport. Yes. You could get me a new identity. Yes. You could help me stay out of jail. Hell yes. Hell yes.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1379.062

So Jamal took care of Yazeed. He gave him a gun, a slew of fake IDs, and safe houses to hide in. But Yaz didn't remain underground for long. Here he is at a wedding with Jamal while he was in hiding. Was he living large in Beirut? Yeah, he was living large. Suñez was living a bit too large for his own good.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1407.15

He spent his days drinking in pubs and cafes on Beirut's waterfront, and his nights partying in discos all over town. To support his lavish lifestyle, investigators say he had his brother Feras wire him thousands of dollars at a time.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

143.437

He was spotted in Toronto, Syria. He was in Lebanon.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1445.719

Naila Suki met Yazeed Issa in an online chat room about three months after he arrived in Beirut. What was his email address?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1456.313

Fugitive at hotmail.com.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1458.895

The 38-year-old teacher says she never thought that was suspicious.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1469.143

By the spring of 2006, Yazeed's relationship with Naila was getting serious. He cut ties with Jamal and moved to her neighborhood. You live here.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1487.131

They saw each other every day.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1495.517

They had a lot of time to talk, and Yazeed Issa had a lot to say.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1507.867

Did you ever ask him, The question directly, Naila, did you kill your wife?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1537.128

But Jamal says Yazeed wasn't acting smart at all. Well how was he behaving?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1553.161

Have a lower profile?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1561.313

But in October 2006, Yaz boarded a plane to Cyprus, a country that does have an extradition treaty with the United States. His recklessness finally caught up with him. Interpol and the FBI had tipped off Cyprus police that Yazid Issa might be on board, traveling under an alias. Sergeant Marius Ioannou of the Larnaca police was waiting at the airport when the plane landed.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

158.346

He lived a double life. Family man on one side, playboy on the other. It causes you to ask yourself how well you can ever know someone else.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1599.893

Maurice Khalife was Jamal's cousin. Yazid had been using his identity for months. As passengers filed off the plane, Ioannou compared them to a grainy photo he'd been given. What did he look like in the photo?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1617.24

Ioannou was beginning to think his information was bad when the last passengers came into view. One looked vaguely familiar. This is the passport that you saw?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1654.636

Yazeed was arrested for using a doctorate passport and held in the Cypress prison for US authorities. He had changed his appearance. He had done a lot of things, but fingerprints don't lie. After 19 months, Phil Toursney finally had his man. For two years, Yazeed Issa would fight extradition until Toursney was finally able to put him on that plane to Cleveland in January 2009.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1681.96

Yet it didn't take nearly that long for his former protector, Jamal Khalifa, to turn on him, says prosecutor Matt Meyer.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

17.358

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

170.967

There is so much spin in this case. He fled the country. He's got to be guilty. But when you look at this very closely, I think you see something completely different. He got scared to death. He's not a killer.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1700.979

including something so explosive that prosecutors will bring Calife all the way from the Middle East to the Midwest to testify at Yazeed Issa's murder trial.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1727.657

What if the solution to our problems lies where people normally don't go? A treasure from the deep sea, millions of years old, but which really exists and which some now want to lift.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1742.324

The fight for the deep sea has long begun. This is Enten, Land unter, from Andan and the Futurium. From now on on Spotify.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1761.031

As Yazeed Issa's murder trial enters its second week, the state calls its star witness. Do you know the defendant, Dr. Issa?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1769.053

Yaz is one-time protector, Jamal Khalifa, who has traveled all the way from Beirut to lay out the sordid details of Issa's Underground Railroad escape. And his 19 months on the run.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1790.299

There's one detail that Assistant DA Matt Meyer hopes will turn this case into a slam dunk for the state. Jamal knew things that nobody knew.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1818.584

Defense attorneys Mark Marine and Stephen Bradley know they'll never win this trial without discrediting Jamal Khalifa. And they've got a lot to work with.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1828.149

In a 29-count charging money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, mail fraud.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1834.373

Turns out Jamal became a fugitive long before Yazeed Issa ever was.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1839.596

Possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of a firearm with an altered serial number, and laundering of money instruments. Is that true?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1850.592

No. In 1994, Jamal was under investigation for money laundering and a weapons charge in Michigan. Potentially facing a long prison sentence, he fled the US for his native Lebanon. He always wanted a way back to America, says the defense. And when Yazeed Issa walked into his life in 2005, Jamal saw his chance.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1883.835

Defense attorneys are convinced Jamal has cut a deal with the state for his testimony, but getting him to admit it is a different matter.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1940.862

Actually, Jamal Khalifa gets a lot more than that. Two days after testifying against Aziz Issa, a judge ruling on those Michigan charges lets him off with probation.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1953.128

He cut a deal and the proof's in the pudding because he's back in the country and he's not in a jail facility.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

1965.095

The defense hopes exposing Khalifa's plea deal will discredit him with the jury. But the Issa defense is about to be handed a stunning setback that nobody is expecting. You remain under oath, obviously. Two weeks after he was caught lying on the stand, Yazeed Issa's brother, Firas, suddenly reappears in court.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2005.905

It must have been nerve-wracking for you to testify.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2015.447

If he lies again, Farras faces up to 16 years in prison on perjury and obstruction of justice. I don't know. What he says at this moment could very well seal his brother's fate or seal his own.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2061.913

After everything Dominic DiPuccio has been through in the last five years, he can't believe his ears.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2080.487

In closing arguments, the defense reminds the jury to stick with the basics. There's no motive in this case, and investigators found no DNA and no usable fingerprints. There's still no proof, they say, that Yazeed Issa ever actually possessed cyanide. Nor is there an explanation for why he gave the murder weapon to police.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2102.148

Presumably, an intelligent individual who had spiked calcium capsules would have taken those capsules and flushed them down the toilet or done something with them. He did nothing.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2115.192

In the state's closings.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2121.587

Prosecutor Anna Faraglia says Yazeed Issa did plenty.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2132.129

With all eyes on him, Yazeed Issa decides not to testify, leaving the lawyers to argue about whether he's a victim of circumstance or a predator who planned the perfect murder at the expense of those who needed him the most.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2195.763

The jury begins to deliberate Yazeed Issa's fate. One agonizing day turns into two. Then three. On the fourth day of deliberations... What do you expect, sir? Finally, a verdict.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2221.36

For Rosie's family, the tension is unbearable, as Judge Dina Calabrese delivers the verdict.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2237.543

Guilty of aggravated murder. For the DiPuccios and their loved ones, five years of pain and exhaustion give way to tears.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

225.945

FBI Special Agent Phil Torsney remembers the moment in January 2009 when this cell phone video was taken. The moment a three-year international manhunt came to an end. That's our guy. That guy is Dr. Yazeed Issa, charged with the mysterious murder of his wife Rosemary in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family has been waiting ever since to hear the truth about what happened to her.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2257.615

Prosecutors savor an emotional victory.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2273.252

The defense team is in no mood to linger.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2277.554

We're disappointed. Four days later, after Yazeed trades in his expensive suits for prison clothes.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2288.539

Rosie's family addresses the court.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2308.803

After years of struggling to face his worst fears about Yazeed Issa, Dominic DiPuccia will finally address his sister's killer directly.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2339.226

Protecting his chances for a successful appeal, Yazeed Issa doesn't say a word and barely flinches as the judge reads the sentence.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2384.27

For us, Issa will have to cope with the knowledge that he, more than anyone, helped send his brother to prison.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2430.396

Dominic DiPuccio has become legal guardian of Yazeed Issa's children. And he is looking into changing their last names to his own. cutting Yazeed's ties to the son and daughter he left behind in honor of the woman he took away.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

2502.469

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

261.488

and her husband's odyssey in five countries. Forged documents, foreign prisons, safe houses, and secret affairs. It's a story Issa's friends say is too bizarre to believe.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

281.185

It's also a story his lawyers Stephen Bradley and Mark Marine believe.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

285.168

Are we going in?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

286.397

is too bizarre to be true.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

289

A cold-blooded, calculated, intentional killing.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

294.587

Two months before Yazeed Issa goes to court, they're conducting a mock trial.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

302.797

I think it was pretty powerful. Mission accomplished.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

306.929

It's a high-stakes mission in a case that Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Leila Atassi says has taken on a high profile, too.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

314.973

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone in the greater Cleveland area who hasn't heard of this case. Just the mere mention of the last name Issa will dredge up, you know, at least details, shadowy details of what happened. There you go.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

329.295

What happened to Rosie tore a hole in her tight-knit family. Parents Rocco and Gigi still host their kids and grandkids for supper most Sunday nights.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

341.686

Rosie's brother Dominic, an attorney, says she always loved a good dinnertime debate.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

352.293

And he says his little sister never missed a chance to look out for others.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

370.509

That calling led Rosie to become a nurse at Cleveland's now-defunct Mount Sinai Hospital. She was on ER rotation in 1995 when she met a dashing young doctor named Yazeed Issa. Everyone knew him as Yaz. And so I said, well, who's this guy Yaz everybody's talking about? Dr. Bob Kadar became Yaz Issa's best friend.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

411.36

Yaz's brother Firas says growing up in a Palestinian-American family, they learned about life on the mean streets of Detroit before they moved to Cleveland in 1988 for Yaz to go to med school. As if Yaz wasn't busy enough with his studies, he and Farah started a beeper business. They would eventually own a satellite TV company worth millions.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

443.97

Alexandra Herrera wasn't looking for love when she met Yazeed Issa at work in the hospital in 1995. but she found his lust for life impossible to resist. So you were drawn to him?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

459.464

Within months, they were living together, but about a year later, she began to suspect he was seeing someone else. Sure enough, one day while she wasn't home, Yaz suddenly packed up and left.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

491.033

She says Yaz couldn't stand her suspicions and told her and Rosie he found someone who didn't ask questions. About a year later, Rosie and Yazeed got married. It was September 11, 1999.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

516.202

The next year, they had a son, Armand, and a daughter, Lena, two years after that. She liked being a mom?

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

531.591

Her sister-in-law, Julie, says they seemed to have it all. A comfortable home, loving marriage, two beautiful children, and even planning a third. But tragedy struck on February 24th, 2005. At about 2 p.m., Rosie left home to meet her sister for a movie.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

554.655

She was only driving about 10 miles an hour when, at this intersection, she had a fender bender with another car, and her near-perfect life came to a bizarre halt.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

582.506

But it was bad. Rosie was pronounced dead at 3.02 p.m., an almost impossible reality for her family because she was just 38, otherwise healthy. And her brother Rocky says she didn't have a scratch on her.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

611.03

It was so emotional. As more relatives gathered, Yaz stood quietly apart. His behavior struck everyone as strange.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

634.041

Yaz said he had no idea how Rosie could have died. Nobody else did either.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

646.824

Now, Yazeed Issa is about to go on trial for murder. This is going to be contentious.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

652.588

Sir, listen to my questions. It's going to be a ball-busting, down-in-the-trenches trial.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

690.188

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

709.932

On January 25th, 2010, nearly five years after Rosemary Issa's mysterious death... She's right here, always.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

748.579

Right away, defense attorney Stephen Bradley and prosecutor Steve Dever begin a battle to define Yazeed Issa for the jury.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

77.728

When first responders arrived at the scene of Rosie's car accident, they found her on the brink of unconsciousness, slumped in the driver's side seat, clutching her open cell phone. She was trying to call her husband.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

772.6

As the state presents its case.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

777.083

Rosie's family is forced to relive that horrible day in the hospital.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

790.169

Julie remembers that Yaz remained distant as the DiPuccios gathered later that evening. A gathering that took a chilling turn about two hours later when Dominic got a phone call from Rosie's best friend, Eva McGregor.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

813.984

Eva told him Rosie had called her that same afternoon from the car on the way to the movies. Do you solemnly swear to testify? Now, five years later, she tells the jury the same story.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

833.03

Yazeed had insisted Rosie take calcium supplements that morning. Eva immediately suspected he'd tampered with those capsules and testifies she confronted him at Rosie's funeral.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

863.539

In retrospect, Dominic says, Yaz seemed fine much too soon. He refused the family's offers of help with the kids and instead hired a pair of nannies, Margarita Montanez and Michelle Madeline.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

881.753

Detective Gary McKee began investigating the strange case for the Highland Heights Police Department soon after Rosie died and discovered Yazeed's nannies were taken care of more than the children.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

905.972

Back in court, one of those women, Nanny Margarita Montanez, tells the jury she met Yazeed at one of his beeper stores and started sleeping with him in 2001 while both of them were married.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

931.229

Yazeed's other nanny, Michelle Madeline, is still struggling to put the relationship behind her and asked the judge to prohibit the media from showing her face on the witness stand. Were you falling in love with him? Eventually, yes.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

952.421

Michelle testifies she also became involved with Yazeed before Rosie died. They worked together at the hospital, but would meet regularly on Wednesday nights in an apartment he kept upstairs from his satellite TV office.

48 Hours

The Cyanide Killer

981.394

But for us, Issa says Yazeed only cared for his wife and children. There were no problems in the marriage. Not that I was aware of.

48 Hours

With God as a Witness

0.169

The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, OK? We don't say it out loud.

48 Hours

With God as a Witness

2549.917

Robert Frada was executed in January 2023. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay.

48 Hours

With God as a Witness

719.301

The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great?

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

157.692

An eye for an eye.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

1865.718

I submit to you that once you follow the timeline, once you say, show me the money, once you talk about dealing with time of death, you will then make the conclusion that this case is exactly what reasonable doubt is all about.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2082.127

There's never anybody that's ever said they saw him give him anything, so there's nothing that connects Dr. Schwartz, any money he got with Mr. Bigger.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2099.469

Hogwash. Hogwash. Just that simple. Because when this homicide happened, Dr. Stortz had gotten his license back. His practice was well on the upswing. He had been drug free for over a year and a half to two years.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2128.224

What was interesting about Mr. Walsh is that he was involved committing these crimes in and around the medical complex where Dr. Stidham had his office.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2197.997

Mr. Bigger isn't the killer.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2212.485

Not one drop of blood or any other evidence of any violent crime is seen on Mr. Bigger. A, when he makes the calls from Denny's. B, when he gets into the cab. And C, when he gets to this restaurant Is that the car that you worked on? Yes, it is.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2310.128

Part of the theory of the state.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2329.776

If that's the case, Mr. Bigger couldn't have been the killer because he was with Dr. Swartz with Lisa Goldman.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2355.117

And because Dr. Swartz was a bore and talked about things that he had no business shooting his mouth off about and liked to apparently have quite a stable of female acquaintances, that doesn't make him a murderer.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2403.117

The state has not met their burden to prove Dr. Bradley Swartz guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2420.3

And if the case was clear cut and defined, then I think we would have to assume there would already be a verdict.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

2535.615

Bruce Biggar was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

48 Hours

An Eye For Murder

60.867

The search is on tonight for a car that belonged to a man found murdered in Midtown.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1014.099

Cassandra was never charged with Bill's attack, but she was tried for resisting arrest. Murphy Classing prosecuted her.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1028.704

Retaliate? Against you?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1039.63

Even the judge told Cassandra, quote, you scare me very bluntly. And he took the unusual step of telling Cassandra the jury thought she was A pathological liar, he sentenced her to seven months in the county jail. But the real drama was just beginning.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1060.226

Before the state had the chance to prosecute Cassandra's husband, Charlton Andrus, for attempted murder, he went looking for a hit man to finish the job on Bill Flint.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1092.108

Hello. Charlie. How you doing? What's going on, Derek? I'm over here in the criminal court. Cassandra's husband, Charlton Andrus, learned the hard way that finding a good hitman can be tricky.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1116.082

Sadly for Andrus, the contact he was phoning from the courthouse hallway... was taping the calls and turned everything over to the district attorney.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1131.194

Andrus was about to be set up. The DA's chief investigator, Johnny Bonds, had just the man for the job. He's our resident hitman.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1151.087

Gary Johnson is an investigator for the DA's office who is very good at making people believe he's a hit man, right up to the point where they're arrested.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1167.534

Showing his face, obviously, would be bad for business, and business could be very good if only he was for real. He's been offered nearly a quarter of a million dollars for one hit. What's the least you've ever gotten?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1187.318

Did you take the job?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1189.522

Luckily for Bill Flint, when Andrus went shopping for an assassin... he bought Gary Johnson's act. Here he is on his way to meet his make-believe hitman in a local Denny's restaurant. Why do you choose Denny's?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1214.585

Just to spice things up, Johnson told Andrus to use a special password when they first met.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1233.326

While police cameras were rolling, Andrus and Johnson, who was wearing his white hat, moved to the parking lot to seal the deal.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1245.93

Andrus explains why he wanted Flint dead.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1255.529

Charlton Andrus offered Johnson $3,000 to kill Bill Flint, more if Bill's body was never found.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1292.787

Charlton Andrus was charged with soliciting capital murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, and because of the lengthy sentence, the attempted murder charges for shooting Bill Flint were dropped. Bill Flint was safe for the time being, but his problems weren't over. Since Cassandra now had a criminal record, Bill hoped he would finally get his daughter back.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1320.719

But this time a judge said both parents were unfit and explained to Bill there was still no evidence to clear him of those old molestation charges. So in May of 1996, Bill and Cassandra's six-year-old daughter was put in a foster home.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1350.161

Bill told a reporter back then that he was hurt, but still hopeful.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1371.192

Five years after Bill's battle for his daughter began, a new judge ordered a psychologist to review the custody case. This time, the psychologist said Bill would be a better parent. So the judge finally awarded Bill full custody of Jane.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1400.327

Jane now says her mother made up the story about Bill molesting her and talked her into accusing her father when she was younger.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1428.33

You loved your dad, didn't you?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1435.629

About a year after Bill Flint had been reunited with his daughter, he cheated death once again.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1456.963

After they went to a hit man. Yeah. And then a light fell off. Yeah. This time, everybody believes it really was an accident.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1475.885

While recovering from his injuries, Bill had difficulty finding work. And then, at the end of 2001, Bill Flint got in touch with a man he had met about 20 years earlier, Joel Brock. Brock gave Bill a job at his real estate appraisal company, and shortly after that, he moved in with Bill.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1508.035

But Bill's family and friends thought this old friend was no friend at all.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1574.718

After three brushes with death, it's not surprising Bill Flint was suspicious of everyday life.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1593.089

And then on the morning of May 3rd, 2002, he went to appraise a house for Joel Brock. And at the age of 44, Bill Flint faced death again for the last time.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1613.845

Bill was last seen alive when he rushed into this pizza joint desperate for help. Witnesses told investigator Johnny Bonds and Flint's friends what happened. He came in.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1654.815

An autopsy determined that Bill Flint had clogged arteries and died of a heart attack. But his friends and family, who remembered the ugly custody fight and the previous attempts on Bill's life, didn't believe it.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1684.4

What kind of foul play?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1689.025

It was the way he died that troubled them at first. Witnesses told investigators he was clutching his stomach, feeling like he was burning up.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1699.878

What is that?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1703.717

Well, why didn't you believe at the time that Bill Flint just had a heart attack? Happens all the time. The history of attempts on his life. I mean, there have been two prior attempts to kill him. And then, after Bill's death, his family says the behavior of his roommate, Joel Brock, also seemed odd. After Bill was buried in New England, Bill's mother was given temporary custody of Jane.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1729.537

But Brock, by many accounts, seemed very anxious to reunite Jane with Cassandra.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1745.806

Joel Brock says he never told anyone where he thought Jane should live.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1752.932

But Bill's friends and family wondered whether Cassandra and Brock were secret allies and whether he could be part of a deadly plot to help Cassandra get her daughter back.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

177.964

Bill Flint spent his life cheating death. Not once, not twice, but three times.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1774.26

In fact, Brock says he hadn't even spoken to Cassandra in 13 years, not since Bill married her.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1787.006

He says that if Bill's death was a murder, he had nothing to do with it. Brock said the same thing under oath at a custody hearing. You can look me in the eye and tell me you had nothing to do, nothing at all to do with Bill Flynn's death.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1809.989

And to this day, Brock says, he mourns his lost friend.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1817.377

You're emotional right now about this? Right. You were that close to him? Yes, I was. Two years after Bill died, there was no real evidence of foul play. But the doubts lingered, and Johnny Bonds wanted answers. Were you suspicious?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1842.833

Law enforcement officials have done all they can, so they've turned to one of the few men left who can help. Tomorrow morning, Professor James Stars, who's world-renowned for solving some of the toughest cases, will come here and start digging for answers. What is it about this case that attracted you to the middle of nowhere in Massachusetts?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1872.025

Professor Stars is a forensic scientist who studied the case and was bothered by what he considers hurried findings from the first autopsy. He believes Bill Flint might not have had a heart attack, even though his arteries were clogged. Was Bill Flint's heart healthy, in your opinion?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1902.731

Stars is prepared to exhume Bill's body because he believes strongly there could be vital evidence in Bill's grave. So strongly, Stars is putting his money where his mouth is. May I be rude and ask you who's footing the bill for all this?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1920.605

I'm paying the whole bill. Two and a half years after Bill was buried, the exhumation begins. Top is intact. Intact top. It's an eerie scene in this isolated graveyard. Bill's remains are carefully transferred from the casket to a body bag and into a hearse.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

1959.608

that would make you feel better than another outcome?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2003.866

They've done all they can here. It will be weeks before there are any answers, and until then, the pressure is on.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2017.762

But when Professor Starr studies Bill's x-rays, he finds something, something not included in the autopsy report. So you think they just missed it? I think they missed it, absolutely. The exhumation of Bill Flint was a drastic step but his family and friends wanted to find out what really killed him.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

204.158

His friends say this is a story of how a lot of bad things happen to a really good person.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2063.627

I think you kind of do, too.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2081.398

It is the first thing the experts look for when they perform this second autopsy.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2090.25

Toxicologist Bruce Goldberger asked for as many samples of Bill Flint's tissues as possible.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2104.253

He'll look at them for traces of poison.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2111.615

After weeks of testing... Goldberger could find no evidence Bill was poisoned, but he still can't rule it out because Bill's remains weren't preserved well enough. Are Bill Flynn's tissue in good enough shape for you to say that he was not poisoned? No, definitely not. The poison theory might not pan out, but STARS has a new theory. He's discovered new evidence, and it is tantalizing.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2151.751

Stars believes Flint's ribs were broken before he died, but he needs another specialist to confirm that.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2159.617

These are recent acute fractures. Dr. Gil Brogdon is one of the leading experts in reading these types of x-rays, and he believes the ribs were broken shortly before Bill died.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

216.522

He was kind enough to support his friends and tough enough to survive his enemies right up to the end.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2187.719

Starr says the fractures were too low on Bill's rib cage to have been caused by CPR. And he believes an injury like this is severe enough to kill someone through what's called a pneumothoracic reaction.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2204.331

The broken ribs can puncture a lung, which can cause fluid to build up, putting pressure on the heart and causing a heart attack. Could he have broken the ribs by accident?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2226.855

There was nothing in the first autopsy report about broken ribs. And when Bill Flint stumbled into that pizzeria the day he died, witnesses say he never mentioned being attacked.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2255.842

Stars wants to run a few more tests before writing his final report. But based on his findings so far, he believes there is enough doubt about Bill Flint's death for Johnny Bonds to begin a real investigation into whether Flint was murdered.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2274.632

So you going out to reopen this case?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2285.848

The Houston medical examiner is also waiting for some new information. He's willing to consider making a change in the official cause of death if he finds real evidence of homicide in Starr's final report.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2307.885

Are you satisfied that you know what killed Bill Flint? No, I'm not satisfied, but I don't have anything to work with. After Bill's death, Cassandra Andrus was asked under oath at a custody hearing if she had anything to do with it, and she swore she did not. Cassandra was living about three hours away from Bill, and Charlton Andrus had an airtight alibi.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2330.138

At the time Bill died, he was in prison for trying to have him killed earlier. They both refused to talk to us on camera. With Bill gone, Cassandra once again asked for custody of Jane, who was then 12 years old. But Jane told the judge she was scared of her mother. So she was allowed to stay with Bill's mother. And at age 15, she's still there.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

236.457

Bill Flint's life started out simple. He grew up in rural Massachusetts, one of four children. His uncle, Tom Gage, remembers him as an easygoing child. What do you see in your mind when you think about him?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2371.309

As of May 2005, Cassandra was once again living in Texas with Charlton Andrus, who was paroled after serving less than eight years of a 25-year sentence for trying to have Bill murdered. Cassandra has allowed only limited phone and email contact with her daughter.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

2404.072

In spite of everything, Jane holds out a daughter's hope for some kind of future with her mother.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

259.858

Bill grew up, moved to Texas, and became an industrial electrician, but he always stayed in touch with his family.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

279.022

His simple life started to get complicated in 1988. He met Cassandra Smith at Livingstone's church. A few months later, they were married.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

298.255

According to Bill's close friends, Liz and Tim Engledow, the true love of Bill's life arrived a year later, his daughter.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

320.127

Bill's daughter asked us not to use her real name. We'll call her Jane.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

341.758

You loved your dad, didn't you?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

345.361

But not long after Jane was born, Bill and Cassandra's marriage was in trouble. The couple started seeing Larry Deutsch, a marriage counselor.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

366.731

But it just seemed that way until December of 1993 when Bill Flint learned, to his great surprise, that he and Cassandra were divorced. What was his first clue that he was divorced?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

388.18

That's right. Cassandra Flint not only pursued a divorce without telling her husband or her marriage counselor, she got one.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

406.221

Okay, I'm coming. According to Betty Yarter, the Texas country lawyer Bill eventually had to hire, Bill never knew a divorce trial had been scheduled because the court only had an old address for him.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

425.006

Bill's absence from the courtroom cost him enormously, and set in motion a battle that would rage for the next seven years over their daughter. Cassandra claimed that Jane, when she was two years old, had told her Bill had molested her.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

446.667

Without Bill there to defend himself, the judge believed Cassandra's charges, granted her a divorce, and ordered that Bill Flint could have only supervised contact with his daughter. Did you talk to Bill after these charges were made against him? He denied them.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

484.659

And when the abuse charges were presented to a grand jury, it refused to indict Bill.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

499.306

Even though Bill Flint had been cleared of criminal charges of abuse, the accusations were still on the books in family court. And just as Bill started fighting those charges, trying to win unsupervised visits with his daughter, Cassandra made her next move.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

521.52

Cassandra didn't just say Bill tried to kill her, she pressed charges.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

539.56

And this time, Bill faced a jury trial, but it didn't take long at all. In fact, almost as soon as the jurors went out, they were back with a verdict.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

559.126

I know this is- The verdict was not guilty, but it was not over for Bill. He decided to fight for full custody of his daughter And that's when things started getting dangerous.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

601.101

Bill Flint's life was being threatened by his ex-wife's brother, Ralph Smith.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

619.738

Bill was frightened enough to file a complaint with the police, claiming his ex-wife Cassandra had also threatened him, saying he wanted it documented in case anything happened in the future.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

649.218

A month after he filed that complaint, he headed out the door for work and into an ambush.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

672.028

Bill's landlord, Howard Hester, says even as Bill lay bleeding on the ground, he wasted no time identifying his attackers. Cassandra's brother, Ralph, and the new man in Cassandra's life, Charlton Andress, whom she had married just four months earlier.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

708.938

Detective Kevin Chrislip was amazed Bill Flint was still alive after being attacked and shot. A bullet had missed Flint's spinal cord by just two millimeters. The bullet had passed through his neck and exited out near his ear. When he recovered, Bill Flint told a television reporter he was sure his ex-wife was behind the shooting.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

740.766

Despite his suspicions, Bill never saw Cassandra that morning. When the police went looking for her brother, Ralph Smith, he had vanished. And when they found her husband, Charlton Andrus, he denied everything. But then Detective Chrislip got a call from Charlton's own daughter saying he had confessed to her. He finally admitted to her that he had, in fact, shot Mr. Flynn.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

764.372

and charlton's daughter said something else about cassandra she reluctantly signed an affidavit saying her father quote told me that cassandra had not seen anything because she was two blocks away but he also told me that she knew what he was going to do to the guy you think his wife was involved i believe everything that that we investigated pointed to the fact that she was

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

791.109

Still, there wasn't enough evidence to arrest Cassandra, but police did have enough to arrest her husband, Charlton Andrus, for attempted murder. And when they showed up to bring him in, Cassandra gave them more than enough reason to take her to jail too, on a different charge.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

813.807

Cassandra slapped Lieutenant Susan Clifton a second time and both women fell to the ground. Clifton tried to arrest Cassandra, but it wasn't easy.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

837.364

Would it be fair to say you were not having a great evening?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

841.328

Charlton and Cassandra were both taken into custody and charged. Cassandra with resisting arrest, Charlton with attempted murder. Within a couple of days, they were both released on bond. Despite the charges he was facing, Charlton Andrus was allowed to move back in to the house he was sharing with Cassandra and with Jane, whose father he had just been accused of trying to kill.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

867.17

Bill was determined to get his daughter out of that house, but once again, he was blocked by those molestation charges Cassandra filed four years earlier.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

879.491

Even though he had never been indicted, he was still being asked if there was any truth to the abuse charges.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

887.735

And Bill was convinced Cassandra was turning his daughter against him.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

901.102

And then Jane started to leave messages, very disturbing messages.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

914.178

Bill was convinced Jane was being told what to say.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

947.784

But there was some good news. Police had finally caught up with Cassandra's brother, Ralph Smith. He was charged and convicted of attempted murder. I hit him in the pipe. He's halfway through his 16-year prison sentence. You hit him that hard? How many times did you hit him? About three times. You hit him with that steel pipe?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

973.832

While he admits his role in the attack on Bill, Ralph to this day will not implicate his sister, nor will her husband, Charlton Andrus. I'm here, and I'm telling you, she wasn't there. She wasn't there. Was she in the neighborhood? Because I was there. You were there. Yeah.

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

991.142

Did Cassandra... have anything to do with that attack on Bill Flint that morning? Did she ask you to do it?

48 Hours

Exhuming the Truth

999.568

Who asked you to do it?

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1303.702

Jeff could go across the street and get a divorce and have to kill his wife to do that.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1319.471

I'm saying, so what? I'm saying they've charged him because he's an odd guy having an affair, but that doesn't make him a murderer.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1487.869

Ramona lived in the house for 25 plus years. She might have bled like all of us bleed in our own house.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1503.053

Yeah, I think it's absurd.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

162.739

Strange truth.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1652.229

Jeff Croteen did not commit this crime. And if the Brook Park Police Department had done their job today, there might be another person sitting at that defense table. We think that Ramona left the party and was apprehended by either one or a group of people, robbed, beaten, and shot.

48 Hours

Strange Truth

1711.807

At some point you thought somebody might be doing something to a person, am I correct?

48 Hours

Strange Truth

2073.803

If for one minute you thought your father brutalized your mother in that house, what would you do?

48 Hours

Strange Truth

758.335

As far as you know, she didn't go to work Friday.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1.164

Was ist, wenn die Lösung für unsere Probleme dort lauert, wo Menschen normalerweise gar nicht hinkommen? Ein Schatz aus der Tiefsee, Millionen Jahre alt, den es aber wirklich gibt und den manche jetzt heben wollen. Der Kampf um die Tiefsee, der hat längst begonnen. Das ist Enten, Land unter, von Andan und dem Futurium. Ab sofort auf Spotify.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1001.358

Police believe it was on that walk, in the early morning hours, that Peggy Hetrick's murderer struck. And despite hours of denials from Tim Masters, Detective Broderick was growing more certain Masters did it.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1034.48

Die Polizei war überrascht, als sie auf der Autopsie lernte, dass diese Mutilation auch zu einer weiblichen Zerstörung gehörte. All das war ein Teil des meisterlichen Planes, dachte Broderick.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1061.914

The knives police found lay on the dresser. One had a scalpel inside the handle. And there was another scalpel on a table nearby. But there was no trace of Peggy's blood on any of them. Nor did they find her blood on any of Tim's clothes or shoes. They even searched the drains. Nothing.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1123.892

Much as Peggy had been dragged, he thought, but as incriminating as the drawing seemed, the case was completely circumstantial. Weeks, then months passed, Mit keinem Arrest. Die Beweise consistierten im Grunde genommen an den Bildern und dem Fakt, dass er nicht das Körper berichtet hat? Genau. Was anderes? Nein. Keine Haare, Fibern, Fingerprinten, Blut, nichts?

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1150.853

Nichts überhaupt? Nicht ein bisschen Forensische Beweise, die ihn zu dem Bild verbunden hat?

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1157.176

Die Polizei hat endlich einen Plan gegründet, um die Beweise zu bekommen, die sie benötigten. Peggy Hetrick wurde fast genau vier Jahre nach dem Tod von Tims Mutter getötet. Die Theorie war, dass Tim von seiner Mutter verletzt wurde. Und so, die Polizisten dachten, wenn der Tag wieder zurückkommt, vielleicht kann er sich in etwas inkriminierendes machen.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1175.583

Die Erwartungen waren, dass Timothy Masters verrückt werden würde, wenn man will.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1182.791

Dann-Patrollmann Troy Krenning war einer der mehreren Anwesenden der 92-Mitarbeitenden, die Tim Masters beobachten mussten. Er war nicht zufrieden. Es war eine 24-7-Operation, die für etwa eine Woche dauerte.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1194.158

Wir sind aus der Suche nach diesen Blödsinn-Theorien, dass ein 15-jähriger Kind in den Besuch gehen wird und Menschen töten wird.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1206.058

They first scouted out vantage points at neighboring houses, including that of the eye surgeon, whose home overlooked the crime scene.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1214.808

It's pathetic. It's embarrassing.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1216.731

Krenning watched Tim's house from a construction trailer.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1220.695

Most of the time he wasn't there. He would get up and go to school, come home, go to bed.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1224.748

and others staked out Peggy Hetrich's grave.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1227.43

I remember at this briefing, one of the things that was talked about was that he might go down to the grave and revisit Peggy Hetrich's grave and maybe even lay on the grave. What? Lay on the grave? You know, what kind of silliness is that?

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1242.342

But the plan went still further. At one point, police duped a newspaper reporter into writing a phony story, saying an arrest was imminent. Sie haben sogar eine Kopie von Tims Mothers Obituary auf dem Windschutz eines Freundes-Trucks gelegt.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1265.484

Tims ehemaliger Anwalt, Eric Fischer.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1279.72

And what did this elaborate psychological experiment produce? Zero.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1294.004

At that point it wouldn't have mattered, he says. The investigation already had wrecked his life.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1312.504

He remembers thinking that someday, surely, everyone would understand that this had been a terrible mistake. But he'd not counted on one very determined cop.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1365.981

Vier Jahre nach dem hektischen Mord dachte Tim Masters, er habe seine Reputation endlich gerettet.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1397.764

Linda Wheeler learned she'd been picked to reopen the case. And her marching orders were clear.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1410.329

She worked for a year with Masters in her sights before she stumbled on that apparent missing piece of the puzzle. Something Tim had mentioned to a friend.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1431.3

She was sure it was a detail police never had made public. And I went, all right, we got him. In July of 1992, armed with an arrest warrant, Jim Broderick and Linda Wheeler hopped a flight to Philadelphia, where Tim's ship was in port. They grilled him again for a day and a half.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1457.569

He told them that their big secret was in fact common knowledge at the high school, because incredibly, police had enlisted the help of students, explorer scouts, to search the field for body parts.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1478.319

To the detective's complete shock, the former scout confirmed Tim's story.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1497.07

The cop who'd been first to tie Tim Masters to the crime, now was the first to think she'd been wrong.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1522.823

Wheeler wanted to reinvestigate, start from square one, enlist the help of the FBI.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1543.507

Sie hat 1995 die Fort Collins Polizei verlassen. Jim Broderick hat sich mittlerweile frisch zu Supervisor eingeladen. Und er hat den Fall bald wieder geöffnet, fokussiert auf seinen Lieblingssuspekt.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1564.941

Er hatte keine neuen Beweise, aber 1997 fand er einen Alli. Jemand, der einen neuen Spinn auf die beste Beweise, die er hatte. Tims ehrliche Bildern und was sie bedeuten.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1587.589

Dr. Reed Molloy ist ein international bekanntes Experte auf sexuellen Verbrechen, interviewt hier im Jahr 2000.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1607.674

Ein 15-Jähriger hat zwischendurch Müsings, bizarre Kunstwerke und Geschichten über Gewalt, Zerstörung und Tod. Disturbing? Sure, Tim said. For a nerdy kid trying to get attention, that was the point.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1656.704

Einer zeigt, wie er glaubt, dass Tim Masters Peggys Körper bewegt hat.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1674.35

Der andere Bild zeigt grafisch, was Dr. Molloy für Tim gemacht hat.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1690.072

Malloy concluded that this was a textbook sexual homicide. An outgrowth of Tim's fury at being abandoned at 11 when his mother died.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1716.886

Jim Broderick fühlte, dass er endlich seinen Mann hatte.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1723.249

Er führte nach Kalifornien, wo Tim arbeitete. Er wurde von der Armee verurteilt und ist jetzt 27 Jahre alt.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

1744.739

Als Broderick das Haus untersuchte, fand er Waffen, Knöpfe und Schilder, ähnlich zu denen, die er 1987 gefunden hatte. Ein paar Monate später brachte die Polizei Tim zurück nach Colorado.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

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Er ging auf Trial für den Tod von Peggy Hetrick im März 1999. Theories, but no physical evidence. Prosecutors Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair admitted soon after the trial, they thought their case was pretty thin. There were times when Terry and I were looking at each other like, what are we doing?

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He'd grown into an imposing figure, looking fully capable of the crime. Have you ever had any doubt that Tim Masters was innocent?

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Eric Fischer defended Tim at trial.

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Seine beste Beweise waren diese inkriminierenden Schriftstücke und die Interpretation von Star-Expert-Witness Molloys, die sie bezeichneten.

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As for that one incriminating drag drawing, Tim has always said he made it after seeing the body.

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David Wymore, der Masters repräsentierte, sagte, der Staat hat seinen Fall nicht um Beweise gelegt, sondern um Angst.

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Mehr als eine Dekade nach dem Verbrechen dauerte es dem Gericht nur einen Tag und einen halben, um Tim Masters zu beurteilen.

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Er wurde verurteilt nach einem Leben hinter den Bars, ohne Parole.

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But many birthdays would go by before a startling revelation that would challenge Tim's conviction.

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Was there a much more likely suspect?

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Prosecutors were delighted with the guilty verdict in the Tim Masters case. Which way are we going?

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Die Antwort auf diese Frage war, wie es Tims Berufe sagten, in einem Haus in Tims alten Gemeinschaft, das auch das Gebiet, wo Peggy Hetrichs Körper gefunden wurde. Vier Jahre bevor Tims Anruf, wurden die Polizisten dort zu einem anderen schrecklichen Krimi-Szenario ermordet.

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Dann hat Patrol-Officer Linda Wheeler die Heimat eines prominenten Augenärzten, Dr. Richard Hammond, besucht.

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Eine Verwirrung mit einigen ehrlichen Vergleichen zu der Peggy Hetrick-Fälle, die im Gäste-Bath-Zimmer der Hammond-Haus-Familie gespielt wurde.

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Sie war richtig. Hinter dieser Ventur und zwei anderen kamen Dr. Hammonds Bathroom-Video-Kameras weg. When you walk in the bathroom and hit the light, it activates the camera. Each of them, says Masters-Lawyer David Wymore, positioned with loving care.

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David Michelson says that when the puzzled house sitter heard an unmistakable sound, zzzz, zzzz, she started investigating.

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Dann wusste sie, dass es eine Kamera war. In einem geschlossenen Raum, neben dem Kühlschrank, haben sie ein elaboretes Taping-System gefunden. In einem nahen Storage-Locker, ein estimate 13.000 Dollar wert von pornografischem Material. Ja, er hat die Receipts gehalten. And everywhere detailed files and stacks of videotapes.

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A file for each victim, house sitters, family, friends. Seventy-eight victims in all, Wymore says. Among them this woman.

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Nach seinem Angriff hat Dr. Hammond mehrere Tage in einer Psychiatrie-Unit verbracht und wurde dann auf Bond eingeladen. Nach einigen Tagen hat er sich in dieses Denver Motel eingeschaut, hat sich auf einen IV gefüllt mit Cyanid und hat sich verurteilt. Hast du jemals so etwas gesehen?

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Aber das erstaunlichste Ding, sagen Meisters Berufe, ist, dass die Polizei Dr. Hammond nie in Verbindung mit dem Mörder von Hedrick beobachtet hat. Könnte also Dr. Hammond die Location des Körpers von seinem Haus sehen?

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Dr. Hammond, ein Voyeur mit klinischen Fähigkeiten, besessen mit weiblichen Körperpartien, die so nah am Krimi-Szenario lebten, wie die Meister. Trotz dieses handgeschriebenen Notens in der Hammond-File, Blick auf Hetrick, war Broderick am Show.

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Special Prosecutor Don Quick, who years later would review this entire case, says that camera receipts provided by Hammonds wife show he'd started the taping years after the Hetrick murder. No reason police should have linked the two. There's no physical evidence tying Dr. Hammond to the crime. The same could be said about Tim Masters.

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Whether or not Dr. Hammond really had anything to do with Peggy Hedrick's murder, probably never will be known, in part because of what police did here, at the Larimer County Landfill, just six months after Dr. Hammonds' suicide.

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They're out at the landfill, mashing up with a grater, all these tapes.

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They destroyed all the evidence? Every bit of it. Why?

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Pass Broderick, er ist der, der es bestellt hat.

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Because Detective Michelson wondered, what if Dr. Hammond had been secretly videotaping years earlier than police thought? What if, in all those hours of stored videotapes... You thought Peggy Hedrick might be on those tapes?

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Aber bei Tims Trial hatten seine Berufe noch nie von Dr. Hammond gehört. Und Eric Fischer ist nicht überrascht, dass die Berufe ihn nicht erläuterten.

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Fort Collins Police kept the specifics of Dr. Hammonds activities from the public. His name never was brought up in court. That alone, Tims outraged attorneys say, justifies a new trial.

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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

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Tim Masters fuhr 1999 ins Gefängnis und lebte für viel Zeit in diesem krampfen, dreckigen Gefängnis. Er wurde für einen gruseligen Mord verurteilt, den er nicht verurteilt hatte.

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Tim Masters hat nur die Hoffnung für Freiheit. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.

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Es sah einfach nicht real aus. Nein. Nichts von diesem sah real aus.

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Weil nach Jahren von Beratungen und Petitionen und unschuldigen Abläufen... Es ist klar ein konzertierter Versuch, Evidenz zu verstecken. Es ist meine Sache. ... ein Gericht am Ende ist, ein Gericht zu machen, das Masters frei setzen könnte.

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The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 1

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Jetzt eine spezielle 2-Part-Edition von 48 Stunden.

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Wenn er es tut, wird er eine kleine Armee von unmöglichen Unterstützern danken. Er war ungewohnt.

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Alle, die behaupten, sie seien jahrelang sicher gewesen. Tim Masters hat es nicht getan.

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Neun und eine halbe Jahre hat er im Gefängnis verbracht. Er ist seit 20 Jahren unter dieser Flasche von Überraschungen.

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Masters, 37, ist seit 15 Jahren im Schatten dieses Mörders gestorben. Am Morgen des 11. Februar 1987 wurde ein halb nacktes Körper einer 37-jährigen Frau namens Peggy Hetrick in einem Feld in Fort Collins, Colorado gefunden. Ein Sturm aus Tim Masters' Haus.

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Und einer von ihnen, 1987, war Veteranenkopf Linda Wheeler. Ich glaube, es war um 7.13 Uhr morgens.

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Der Anwalt, der es beobachtet hat, hat es zuerst für ein Manneken verletzt. Das Körper war sehr sauber, wenn man es anschaut.

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Es gab eine tiefe Stabwunde an Peggy Hetrichs oberen Rücken.

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When Officer Jim Broderick arrived at the scene, he was struck by footprints along that trail, leading back to a pool of blood by the curb. And he was struck by the body itself.

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Her Pants were pulled down to her knees. Her shirt pushed up to her chin. Part of one of her breasts had been removed.

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The prospect of a madman sexually mutilating his victims created near panic. And Jim Broderick and the Fort Collins Police went into overdrive. Among the early persons of interest, Peggy Hetrick's one-time boyfriend, Matt Zollner.

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I think she was seeing somebody else. She had mentioned it.

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Then was released. Police, meanwhile, were canvassing every house near the crime scene. Talking with businessmen, housewives, even with a prominent eye surgeon, Dr. Richard Hammond. Jahre später würde Dr. Hammond in diesem Fall feststellen, aber damals war er nur ein Nachbar, der nichts Besonderes gesehen hätte. Aber Linda Wheeler war sicher, dass jemand etwas gesehen hätte.

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Zu Hause für Clyde und seinen 15-jährigen Sohn Tim, der wenige Freunde hatte, aber keine Geschichte von Problemen.

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Tim's mother had died four years earlier, when he was only 11 years old. Usually Tim cuts straight through the field to catch the school bus. But his father told police that on that morning he'd seen his son hesitate.

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Tims Footprints were in the field, but he hadn't reported a thing.

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A few hours later, police appeared at Tims High School and yanked him out of class for questioning. As Broderick recalled in this interview in 2000.

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The passerby who called in the crime also first thought he'd seen a mannequin. But police weren't buying that story from Tim. Broderick searched the master's trailer and hit pay dirt.

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Hier, Clyde, ich wundere dich. Mit Tims Vaters Erlaubnis, interrogierten Roderick und ein Team von Polizisten den 15-Jährigen für mehr als 10 Stunden. Ohne einen Lehrer. Kannst du mir sagen, was passiert ist?

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Der offizielle Bericht der Testresultate wird heute verloren, aber Broderick sagt, Tim fehlte.

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Und der Leiter des Packs war Jim Broderick.

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And Broderick was about to find evidence that for him erased all doubt. Tim Masters killed Peggy Hetrick.

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Fort Collins Polizei begann ihre intense Interrogation von Tim Masters, am Tag, an dem Peggy Hetrichs Körper gefunden wurde.

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And that evening, another officer, miles away in Florida, quietly made his way to the Hetrick family home.

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There to break the terrible news to her father and brother, Tom.

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At those words, he says, time stopped.

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The gruesome details were doubly hard to grasp, he says, because his older sister had been such a force of nature.

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And this is in Libya?

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The Hetricks had lived all over the world, moving as Mr. Hetrick's job in the oil business required.

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Peggy war rothaarig, unabhängig und er sagt, leidenschaftlich exzentrisch. Im Westen hat sie eine geile Interesse in der nativamerikanischen Kultur entwickelt.

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What she was not interested in, he says, was getting married, although she'd had boyfriends, among them her ex, Matt Zollner.

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Zollners on-again, off-again relationship with Peggy had been stormy at times.

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Sein Tag bestätigte seine Geschichte, dass er mit ihr bis um 3 Uhr war. Aber er war einer der letzten, die Peggy lebendig gesehen haben. Er war in einer Parkplatte in einer Bar, um 12.30 Uhr, sagte er. Das war die erste Zeit, dass er sie gesehen hat, seit sie eine Woche vorher verbreitet haben. Und sie war nicht glücklich, ihn an einem Tag zu sehen.

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Did you wrap him in an electric blanket and set him afire?

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Do you know the circumstances surrounding David Nixon's murder? No. While Hallmark had his suspicions about Tracy Frame, he had little to go on. As far as physical evidence, you don't have much to work with, do you? No. No. No gun? No gun. No bullets? No. No blood? No blood. And an exhaustive search of the crime scene, the storm drain, yielded few clues.

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The area had already been washed down by firefighters.

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The police did find a set of tire tracks at the scene, providing Hallmark with an important clue.

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And Hallmark soon caught another break. Security cameras at a Tom Thumb supermarket near David and Tracy's house captured fleeting images over that weekend. Blurry at best, but recorded at very precise times. The videotape shows a Penske moving van that looks similar to the one Tracy rented driving through the parking lot.

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Also on tape, someone abandons David's white Lexus in the lot three days after his murder. The cameras show a woman walking outside the store. Inside, she's seen buying several items and then leaving. Now she's going to come out of the store right there. Is that woman Tracy Frame? You're sure that's her?

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But it wasn't you?

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Were you at the store with the truck that night? No. You weren't there?

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But if it is Tracy caught on tape, she's caught without an explanation. What's your theory? What happened that night?

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How does a woman weighing 145 pounds dispose of a body weighing 245 pounds?

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Homework says Tracy tried but failed to shove Nixon's body down into the storm drain. You believe that she dumped the body here and then two days later returned to set it afire, to get rid of the evidence completely. Right.

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That alleged plan fell apart after a passerby spotted the fire. But the question remained, why would Tracy want David dead? Money, greed, that's the only thing that I had to go on.

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Tracy is about to counterattack, and the new man in her life is leading the way. You'd believe that she knows nothing about the circumstances surrounding David Nixon's murder.

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Tracy was released on bond and fitted with an electronic monitoring device to be worn until her trial.

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But Tracy has her defenders.

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And none is more loyal than dentist Roland Taylor, a native of Great Britain who settled in Texas. Everybody goes, what a bitch she is. And she's totally the opposite. And in her hour of need, He is standing behind her. Who would want David Nixon dead? Probably the people that he owed money to.

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It would behoove her to keep him alive because he owed her a ton of money. Roland and Tracy were longtime friends from Grapevine Lake. I've never met anybody like her. She's very smart.

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And when they say, Roland, you better watch your back. That's why I put a ring on her finger. Roland and Tracy are engaged to be married.

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Donald Fear is Tracy's defense attorney.

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Fear has worked on only three murder cases in his career, but he's confident he can quickly win an acquittal for frame.

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Fear says an ambitious Detective Hallmark got it all wrong from the beginning.

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Fear says the case against his client doesn't add up, pointing out that no incriminating evidence was found at the house or in the moving truck.

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He says the videotaped interview with detectives was designed to trap his client. Did you find her evasive during that questioning?

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Secrets and Lies on Grapevine Lake.

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Donald Fear and Tracy Frame also dismissed the videotape evidence, allegedly showing Tracy abandoning the white Lexus, parking the Penske truck, and shopping at the convenience store. Who is that shadowy figure?

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Tracy says no one can tell who that is. But more than just a blurry figure is being recorded in this transaction. Store records show that whoever this person is, she uses Tracy's store discount card at the checkout, saving 19 cents. Someone using your discount card the weekend Dave went missing.

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But it wasn't you?

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Tracy admits the discount card is difficult to explain.

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Frame and her attorney throw out several theories about who may have killed David Nixon. First, they suggest Nixon could have been murdered during a robbery. Was it common for David to walk around with big wads of cash in his pocket?

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Or that it was payback over gambling debts.

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And they point an accusing finger at someone who knew both David Nixon and Tracy Frame very well.

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Hey, Paul, this is Jerry Val at Best Auto Sales in Fort Worth.

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In the business of helping people who want to borrow money.

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Fear stops Tracy from finishing her sentence.

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I'm an easy target. I sell used cars. I'd take $1,000 for it. At one time, David loaned me some money, and right after Christmas, I paid him back.

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Jerry and David had a plan to meet the night he disappeared. Tracy and her lawyer insist the meeting was to discuss David's interest in a new boat.

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No, David didn't carry large sums of money. He didn't owe anybody money. We were going to get together for a drink. Well, we ran out of time. It was just getting too late for us to go out and meet. And so I spoke to him on the telephone. And that was the last time I spoke to David.

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And Donald Fear raises questions about yet another possible suspect. Did Tracy Frame stand to gain anything financially with David Nixon's death?

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Two months before he died, David Nixon took out a life insurance policy for half a million dollars. And Nicholas was named the primary beneficiary? Yes.

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Did you receive anything from David Nixon's estate?

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It was the middle of the night when forensic death investigator John Briggs got the call to report to the scene of a homicide.

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So when you found out that Tracy was arrested, what was going through your mind? Did you believe it was possible?

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Insisting that the police never investigated other suspects.

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More than three years after David Nixon's murder, Tracy Frame is finally about to stand trial. I feel fine.

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What do you make of the prosecution's case against you?

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Tarrant County, Texas, Assistant DA Sean Colston is prosecuting the case against Tracy Frame.

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Tracy's fiance, Roland Taylor, says prosecutors are trying the wrong woman. Is that Tracy inside the Tom Thumb store? No.

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No. Not at all. She says she was never at the Tom Thumb store. Do you believe that? Absolutely not. She says that someone else used her Tom Thumb card. Do you believe that? Absolutely not.

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With little forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, and a washed-down crime scene, the defense believes the prosecution simply cannot make a case for murder.

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So who's responsible for David Nixon's murder?

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In the courtroom, Tracy's defense was to go in the offense, arguing that the prosecution failed to offer proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was no real evidence linking Tracy to the crime. that no blood was found at the house, nothing was found at the storm drain, that these tire tracks could have come from any number of other trucks, and that this woman is not Tracy Frame.

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And along with no apparent motive, there's no murder weapon, no gun. Or was there? Did your dad have a gun?

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And where did he keep it?

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You saw that?

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You saw the gun? Yeah.

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David's safe was in the bedroom of the house he shared with Tracy. The police didn't find a gun in the safe in his house.

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Where is it?

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The body was still smoldering as Riggs carefully rolled it over, hoping to identify the victim.

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Tracy. Did David keep a gun in the house?

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He never did?

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He didn't keep a gun and a safe in the house? No. Police did not find a gun, but they did find two key witnesses to bolster their circumstantial case against Tracy.

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John Wright and Mike Heaton remember the day Tracy Frang came into their janitorial supply company shopping for cleaning products to remove odor and blood.

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It was one day after David disappeared. I mean, she was, I don't even want to use the word desperate, but appeared desperate for, it's got to work. So Tracy asked the salesman if there was a foolproof way to remove blood stains. Then we told her about the muriatic acid, which we don't sell.

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The next day, the shadowy figure who prosecutors say is Tracy Frame is at the Tom Thumb store buying just that, muriatic acid.

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And as for the defense suggestion that Donna may have had more to gain from David's death and Tracy, Investigators say there was nothing to it.

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But will the jury agree? On the eve of the verdict, Tracy Frame, who did not take the stand, seems subdued and uncertain.

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When police first arrived at this crime scene in Grand Prairie, TX in April of 2002, the intense heat from the fire had damaged the body to such a degree that crime scene investigators had to spend hours delicately recovering the remains. The police found tire tracks and some fiber materials, but little else by way of evidence.

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After a two-week-long trial, it is judgment day for Tracy Frang. Scared? Yes, of course. Very. If convicted of murder, she faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

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Defense lawyer Don Feer is anxious.

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The day, March 9, 2005, would also have been David Nixon's 43rd birthday. Nicholas is feeling the stress. Members of David's family from New Hampshire have attended the trial.

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Whatever the outcome, for Donna and Nicholas, some questions may never be answered.

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Yes. And the moment of judgment finally arrives.

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Judge Mike Thomas has not permitted cameras to cover the trial, but he does allow us inside for the verdict. You can stand, please. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the offense of murder as charged in the indictment. The jury takes less than four hours to find Tracy guilty. The sentence, 40 years.

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David's family is elated. But later that night, the mood becomes thoughtful.

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Donna worries how Nicholas is coping without his father.

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Donna wishes that somehow she had done more.

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I know in my mind Tracy killed David. Jerry Vowell is sure the jury got it right. She probably just said, heck with you, bang.

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The medical examiner determined the victim was a man in his 40s killed by a single gunshot wound to the heart. But his identity was a mystery. Dental records would later confirm the victim as 40-year-old David Nixon, a successful realtor from nearby Grapevine, Texas.

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So the motive was money.

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Entitlement, says Detective Larry Hallmark, to her fair share of the house. David Nixon was killed for $80,000.

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Roland Taylor remains loyal to his fiance. Aren't you setting yourself up for many years of heartache? No, it's not heartache. Being engaged to a woman who's serving 40 years in the state penitentiary. No.

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Do you think you have strong grounds for an appeal?

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Tracy Frames spoke to us just weeks after her conviction. How did the prosecutors manage to convince the jury that you were guilty of murder?

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Do you think you have the inner strength to get through this?

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What are you scared of the most, seriously?

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14-year-old Nicholas is David Nixon's son. That's your favorite picture?

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You had a great smile on your dad. He idolized his father, a bear of a man, at 6'4", 240 pounds.

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Nicholas's mother, Donalella, is David Nixon's first wife. They married in 1990.

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Love surprises.

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Nicholas, their only child, was born the following year. Anything for Nicholas.

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Tracking a Crime

353.041

David soon found success selling real estate, becoming a top agent, eventually brokering million-dollar deals on high-end properties in the affluent suburbs north of Dallas.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

374.849

Their marriage ended badly in 1995 after David had an affair with flight attendant Lisa Hill. They married and divorced within two years. But David wasn't single for long. Before his divorce was final, he met another woman, an attractive 27-year-old accountant named Tracy Frame.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

411.579

And convincing. So. David and Tracy soon started living together in this house in Grapevine. They lived extravagantly, often taking ocean cruises together.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

428.147

Did he have a taste for the finer things in life?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

435.931

Did he live beyond his means?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

443.051

At home, David and Tracy were fixtures in the social scene at Grapevine Lake.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

454.397

That lake is a painting place, I'm telling you right now. It was amazing to see who woke up with who in the mornings. Jerry Val knows that scene very well. Everybody knew everybody, and there were a lot of really good times, a lot of fun times. Tracy and I just became friends. Tracy was especially popular among men. Good-looking. One of the most attractive women out there, I would say.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

481.122

Some people didn't like her, maybe because she was that good-looking. But Tracy only had eyes for David. At the beginning, when I first met him, they loved each other. They were spending time together. They enjoyed doing things together. But their relationship was volatile. Most of the time, they were a lot of fun to be around. But boy, when they argued, you just wanted to get away from it.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

503.677

The loudest and longest arguments were over finances and David's gambling debts. So the money was going out faster than it was coming in.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

516.897

In fact, the arguing got worse.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

525.683

Sometimes it got rough. Did he batter you?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

531.746

Not on a regular basis. Did he ever batter you?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

539.731

In the spring of 2002, after almost four years together, it was over. And so you said, we're done?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

559.209

But going their separate ways would be complicated. David reportedly owed more than $100,000 in back taxes to the IRS. To protect his property, he had the house put in Tracy's name. You wanted full ownership of the house.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

581.135

David disagreed.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

608.803

The police helped settle that argument. So after that domestic disturbance call on April the 9th, things were civil between the two of you.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

621.315

Almost two weeks later, David Nixon was dead.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

637.706

Tracy says she was stunned by the news. You must have been thinking, like, who could have done this?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

651.428

Donna Lella, David's first wife, could believe it.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

720.749

To hear Donalella tell the story, David Nixon, her ex-husband, had a premonition that he would be murdered.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

731.365

And what's more, he knew the person who would kill him.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

744.251

He didn't call the police with his suspicions or his fears?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

754.715

Donna went to the police and reported David missing after he didn't return phone messages from their son, Nicholas. Donna then confronted Tracy Frame over the phone.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

784.455

Tracy wasn't worried about David's disappearance. What were you thinking?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

802.958

She says David sometimes snuck off to Las Vegas for a weekend of gambling. What else happened in Vegas?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

823.553

Despite their differences, Tracy and David were still living together at the house in Grapevine. But David had found another place to live and was making arrangements to move just days before his murder. You were discussing plans for him to move his things out of the house. And what did he ask you to do?

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

847.796

Tracy did rent a Penske moving van and furniture dolly, but David never returned.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

861.324

Grapevine Police Detective Larry Hallmark was assigned to investigate the murder of David Nixon.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

890.992

The detective is quoted as saying that you asked immediately how did they identify the body.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

898.58

That's not true.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

900.908

Frane told detectives that she was home alone the night David disappeared. She agreed to be questioned on videotape at the police station. Tracy tells them that she and David were having problems in the months leading to his murder. Tracy learned she was pregnant the previous fall, just as her relationship with David was crumbling.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

937.014

Tracy now says health complications forced her to terminate the pregnancy. But at the time, she blamed David, writing to him, I have given you everything, heart and soul, including murder of her unborn baby. I hope you are happy because I am not. The loss of her unborn baby and David's reaction left Tracy bitter. But he was unapologetic. He could be cruel.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

965.637

But was she angry enough to commit murder? Hallmark and another detective, Matt Gudgel, start pressing Tracy for answers.

48 Hours

Tracking a Crime

997.564

Did you shoot David Nixon?

48 Hours

Heartbreak in Williamsport

160.473

A shot in the dark, a 48 hours mystery

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1003.817

Aber Schuyler wusste, dass er Hilfe benötigen würde. Das war dann, als er diesen Mann entlassen hat. Alonso Machaine, ein junger Gefängnisarzt, den er, als er auf der Berge aufgetreten war, kennengelernt hatte.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1027.168

Am 6. November 2004 gingen Skyler und Alonso zum Wasserfront, um Tom und Jackie zu treffen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1043.279

Und Thomas Hawkes war ein bisschen lehrig. Tom Hawkes fragte 435.000 Dollar für den Wettbewerb. Skyler sah einfach nicht so aus wie der Typ, der so viel Geld hat. Als Jackie mit ihrer neuen Tochter zufrieden war, sah Skyler seine Eröffnung, seine Familie.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1093.837

But the Hawks fell for it. Convinced they had a real buyer. They couldn't imagine the trap that was being set. No one could. The disgraced Marine sized up the lifelong public servant. Physically. Mentally.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1120.169

The gang of two needed a tough guy.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1129.977

It gives a sick new meaning to ironic. Arrested more than 20 times, John Fitzgerald Kennedy joined the plot. Skyler setzte ein Datum, um das Boot zu testen, während Jennifer zu Hause saß, ihr Kind, das ihr Zweck sorgte. Es war November 15. Alonzo kam mit und JFK hat sogar eine Schuhe gewonnen. Skyler hat Tom und Jackie gesagt, Kennedy sei sein Accountant. the well deserved, headed out to sea.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1170.325

You were able to fool him? I think so. You're that good of a liar? I hate to say yeah, but I think so. Das Gute und das Schlechte versprachen sich in den Flächen von Newport Beach. Tom und Jackie Hawks führten den Wohlverdienten aus dem Schelter des Haarbergs. Aber als das Licht über die Wälder führte, setzte sich die Dunkelheit hinab.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1217.61

Sie wurden von den Passagieren, die sie anbieten mussten, aufgehoben. Alonso Machaine, John Kennedy und ihr unheilbarer Führer Skyler de Leon.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1240.538

On the boat. That is one of Skylers lies. The truth is, everything was deadly serious and meticulously plotted weeks before, when Skyler and Jennifer used their very own baby to con Tom Hawks into believing they were honest buyers.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1262.55

Detektiv-Sergeant Dave Byington und Sergeant Evan Saylor würden alles über Skylers Pläne wissen, bis zu den Tasern und Handschuhen, die er an Bord gebracht hat. Das gibt einen ganz neuen Sinn zum Konzept von Prämeditation, nicht wahr? Über alles, was ich mir vorstellen kann. Das ist, weil das Stehlen des 55-Fuß-Jahres nur der Anfang des Plans war.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1292.983

Wegen der Arbeit von Byington und Saylor würde das Wohlwollende Evidenz werden. Das unglaubliche Detektivwerk der beiden Polizisten würde am Ende jeden furchtbaren Moment des Tages am Meer zeigen. Aber das war wirklich ihr Zuhause?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1326.527

Das Boot war nun weit außerhalb von Newport Beach Harbour. Skyler DeLeon ging nach unten. Momente später kam John Kennedy, der hölkische Gangbanger, der Skylers Vertreter war, auch runter, um Sehnsucht zu vermeiden.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1348.015

Jackie bleibt auf der Bühne mit Alonso Machaine.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1384.876

Bünd, jetzt Tom und Jacky Hawks, würden verletzt werden.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1396.66

Tom und Jackie huddled together on their bed. These are the details their sons Ryan and Matt would come to know. Agonizing flashbacks that will never fade.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1445.538

Letztendlich wurde die Depravität von Schuylers Plan entdeckt. Er produzierte dieses Set von komischen Dokumenten und schickte den Hawks eine Penne. Was war das Papier, das sie signen wollten?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1472.537

Es ist alles hier festgelegt.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1495.657

Jetzt war es Toms Zeit, das ehrliche Leben, das er so hart gearbeitet hat, zu signen. Für einen Mann, der einen ehrlichen Tag in seinem Leben nicht gearbeitet hat.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1522.344

The phony paper signed, the well deserved powered further out to sea.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1532.151

And he knew exactly where he was going.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1534.853

Out towards the deep waters off Catalina Island, where Tom and Jackie had so many good times. Hi Jackie. And were only days before they had enjoyed a final cruise with friends on the well deserved.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1554.116

Handcuffed, gagged and now tied to one another with nautical ropes. Tom and Jackie were dragged up on deck. That is when they heard the sound.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1612.831

With the anchor chain tied around the couple, Skyler threw the anchor overboard. The chain fed out into the sea, yanking Tom and Jackie into the icy waters.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1640.422

The deed now done, the well deserved, headed back to Newport Beach. Skyler DeLeon called his wife Jennifer on his cell phone.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1729.89

Freunde und Familie glaubten, Tom und Jackie hätten nur das Beste verkauft. Sie gingen nach Prescott, um ihren neuen Sohn zu sehen. Matt und Ryan konnten nicht warten.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1758.795

Jim Hawks ist Toms Großbruder. Sie haben vor ein paar Tagen darüber gesprochen, wie Skyler und Jennifer das Boot kaufen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1774.905

Aber es war schon seit einer Woche nach der letzten Konversation. Jim besuchte sein Bruders Boot, welches in Newport Beach befestigt wurde.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1792.632

Dann standen Jim und ein Freund auf der Bühne.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1819.341

Eleven days after Tom and Jackie last left port, Jim Hawks filed a missing persons report. That's when Byington and Saylor drew the case of a lifetime. At what point then did you first hear the names Skyler and Jennifer DeLeon?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1843.383

Within days, Skyler agreed to be interviewed.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1851.441

Cool, calm and collected, the con man spun his tale.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1859.507

Sure, Skyler told the cops, he'd just bought the well-deserved.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1865.511

But he'd never taken it out of the harbor. Skyler said he had paid Tom Hawks in cash. And that Tom and Jackie had said something about heading down to Mexico.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1882.967

When asked where he got over $400,000 in cash, Schuyler came up with a doozy, saying the cash was profit from a drug deal.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1899.617

It threw detectives off, Schuyler confessing to a crime. Plus, he had all the paperwork to prove the boat was legally his. All those documents he had forced Tom and Jackie to sign.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1918.686

Police also spoke to Jennifer. And for the most part, the cops bought the couple's story.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1925.549

Just like the Hawks had.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1930.771

But their story began to fall apart. when the DeLeones went to Tom and Jackie's bank. With that phony power of attorney document, they tried to make a withdrawal.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1950.865

Und dann bekam die Polizei einen Tipp vom Parole-Officer von Skyler. Er hat gelernt, dass er die Verabschiedung von dem Land verlassen musste.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1960.631

Das war dann, als Skyler DeLeon verhaftet wurde. Aber nicht wegen des Mörders.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

1971.738

Das Gefühl dauerte nicht lange. As police moved in, searching the cramped garage apartment, Skyler and Jennifer had so desperately wanted to leave behind.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2010.193

Es war Zeit, mit dem Bürgermeister zu sprechen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2017.118

Matt Murphy mit seinem Lieblingssurfing Und seine Leidenschaft für Gerechtigkeit hat schnell die Enormität von dem passiert.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2034.429

Verteidiger Matt Murphy hatte ein Problem. Er hatte niemals mit so einer Krimi-Szene diskutiert. Und er wusste sehr wenig über Boote. Aber er wusste jemanden, der das gemacht hat.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2047.208

Salty Sam, a.k.a. Gary Burns, ein Freund von Murphys, 6000 Meilen entfernt in Darwin, Australien.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2058.216

Matt hat Gary angerufen und die schattelnden Ausgaben des Fortschritts beschrieben.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2085.301

Nun hatten die Bewerber ihre Theorie. Was sie brauchten, war ein Ereignis. Und Skyler hat einen gegeben. Sein Name ist Alonso Machaine. Alonso Machaine. Skyler hat den Polizisten erzählt, dass Alonso mit ihm war, als er das Boot gekauft hat. Und er konnte seine Geschichte beurteilen. But Skyler bet wrong on Alonso.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2111.66

After briefly fleeing to Mexico, Alonso returned to Newport Beach and made a full confession about his involvement.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2125.004

And every horrific detail of the murders.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2148.399

Gangmember John Fitzgerald Kennedy. March 2005. Alonso, JFK, und der Mastermind Skyler DeLeon sind alle verurteilt mit den Mördern von Tom und Jackie Hawks. Jennifer DeLeon sagte, eine lokale News-Crew, Skyler, sei wütend. Würde dein Mann jemanden für sein Geld töten wollen? Nein. Das ist nicht er. Aber Murphy & Co. waren noch nicht fertig.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2181.713

Sie hatten die sogenannten Tötungen, die auf dem Boot waren. Now it was time to focus on the one who dialed into the murder on a cell phone.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2217.486

Ein Monat nachdem ihr Mann, Jennifer DeLeon, auch mit einem Erstausgangsschaden verurteilt wurde.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2232.954

Matt Murphy war überzeugt, für Tom und Jackie Hawks Gerechtigkeit zu bekommen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2274.162

Verteidiger Matt Murphy arbeitete über die Zeit, bereit, Skyler DeLeon und seine Crew zur Gerechtigkeit zu bringen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2287.006

Mit Skyler als erster Ziel, Murphy beobachtete seine Frau Jennifer mit einem Deal.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2293.988

You basically gave her a full ride out of any trouble.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2299.792

And she said no?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2302.074

Jennifer refused to testify against her husband. But Skyler was willing to tell us about Jennifer. Whose idea was it to kill them?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2321.434

A young mother could spend the rest of her life in prison. First to stand trial, Jennifer DeLeon.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2328.398

And on November 17th, 2006, Jennifer is found guilty of first-degree murder and is sentenced to two life terms in a California prison. Schuyler would be tried next. What are your thoughts on him testifying?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2348.932

Das von Skylers eigener Anwalt Gary Polson. Und warum ist das?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2355.494

Und es scheint, Tom und Jackie können nicht Skylers einzige Gefühle sein. Wer ist J.P. Jarvie?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2376.38

Aber Gary Poulsen würde Skyler nicht über diesen Mann, John Jarvie, erzählen. Skyler hat Jarvie ein Jahr vorher getroffen, bevor er Tom und Jackie getroffen hat.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2407.336

Skyler ist verurteilt mit John Jarveys Mord, ohne die Frage zu stellen, dass der Kahnmann auch ein kaltblutiger Mörder ist. Hast du Tom und Jackie Hawks getötet?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2428.932

The three killings are merged into one trial.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2434.754

And it didn't take long.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2439.756

Schuyler is convicted of the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks and John Jarvie. Now Gary Paulson was only fighting for one thing, keeping Schuyler off death row. That's all I'm going for. Aber diejenigen, die die Erinnerungen von Tom und Jackie besuchen, hatten sehr unterschiedliche Ideen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2470.499

Bist du Angst, zu sterben? Nein. Skylers Leben lag in der Balance. Aber er blamierte immer noch alle, aber sich selbst. Und the people did. On April 10th, 2009, Skyler DeLeon is sentenced to death.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

2531.66

In der Todesgeschichte, wie auch in der Lebensgeschichte, haben Tom und Jackie Hawks alle, die sie jemals getroffen haben, getroffen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

256.423

Es sitzt kalt wie ein Turm. Wie geblasene Böden, die das Geheimnis zu einem Verbrechen, das die Menschheit enttäuscht, beurteilen. Das ist wahrscheinlich die 30.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

278.092

Newport Beach-Detektiv Dave Byington rattert nicht leicht.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

312.449

Das Einzige, was den Schock der Nacht ausweist, ist die Kraft des Liebes von Tom und Jackie Hawks. Es ist eine Fairytale-Romance, die hunderttausende Meilen entfernt vom Ozean begonnen hat, in den Bergen von Prescott, Arizona. Where Tom was raising two sons alone.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

353.35

Sons from a first marriage that ended in an amicable divorce.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

373.963

It was a life where toughness was taught early on.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

383.662

Vor allem hat dieser Mann die Regeln gespielt.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

390.905

Tom hat mit dem Probation-Office von Yavapai-County gearbeitet, um die Menschen, die in Schwierigkeiten sind, eine zweite Chance zu finden.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

405.371

John Ryder, Brian Gray und Bill Piano waren Toms Mitarbeiter und wussten, was für ein Mann er war.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

420.9

Aber etwas Großartiges war missbraucht. Dann hatte der schwere Vater sein Herz von Jackie O'Neill aufgelöst.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

455.691

Sie war sehr begeistert und sehr glücklich. Und bald waren Ryan und Matt auch so, weil es einen Vorteil gab, wenn man alleine mit dem Vater lebt.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

476.69

Glücklicherweise haben sich die Dinge geändert, als Tom und Jackie wehren.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

484.734

Both Matt and Ryan were still in elementary school. Did you think of Jackie as your mom also?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

508.949

So it came as no surprise when Tom sold their house... Und Jackie sagte Ja zu einem Traum, den ihr Mann jahrelang genutzt hatte.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

534.506

It was here in Newport Beach, California, that Tom and Jackie Hawks came to find paradise. Their dream was rooted in two simple things, being together and being on a boat. Few people had lived better lives, so it seemed almost like fate when the couple bought a 55-foot yacht that was already named the well-deserved.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

565.323

For Tom and Jackie, a dream had come true. Life was an endless cruise. We're heading out for these islands over here. Hi. Filled with good times and best friends.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

601.017

Von Catalina-Inseln nach Mexiko-Sea-Cortez. Das ist, worum es mit dem Reisen geht. Oh, ja.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

635.008

Während die Haare auf dem Meer lebten, war etwas Wundervolles in den Bergen von Prescott, Arizona. Etwas, das ihre Leben für immer verändern würde. Matt und seine Frau Nicole haben Baby Jace begrüßt.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

669.064

Nach drei Jahren am Meer, haben Tom und Jackie entschieden, dass es den Großeltern wert war, mehr als alle Sonnenscheine im Süden.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

683.743

They put a small ad in a boating magazine. The well deserved was on the market. All they needed now was an honest buyer.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

712.165

Skyler DeLeon.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

722.144

If the Hawks are all about family, Skyler, the man who answered the ad for the well-deserved, is all about the lack of it. Was it a happy childhood? No, my childhood, I hated it.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

777.038

Drei Male. Dann, ehrgeizig, sich von einem verletzten Zuhause zu entfernen, ist Skyler in die Marines eingegangen. Ich bin in die USA gegangen. Warst du AWOL?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

787.905

Skyler war fast driftenlos. Ich glaube, ich hatte einen Lebensplan. Und dann hat Skyler de Leon eine kleine Mädchen mit großen Ideen getroffen. Wie habt ihr euch getroffen?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

804.993

Jennifer grew up in Long Beach, California in a devoutly religious home. She'd finished high school and ended up working in a hair salon. After they chatted for a few weeks online, she and Skyler agreed to meet at the mall.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

825.353

Orange County Prosecutor Matt Murphy now knows everything about these two aimless young adults and their twisted relationship.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

848.931

They'd marry and soon Haley was born. Pressure mounted for Schuyler to support his new family. und seine Werte zu Jennifer zu zeigen.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

866.336

Aber Skyler konnte keinen Job halten. Er konnte keinen Weg finden, um seine junge Familie aus seinem Ehepaar-Garage-Apartment zu entfernen. Er wurde bescheuert. Hättest du jemals einen Krieg verursacht, bevor all das anfing? Nicht bis ich Jen getroffen habe. Skyler's new ambition led him to a new line of work, burglary.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

889.521

But he was arrested and ended up here, California's Seal Beach City Jail, leaving Jennifer to care for their baby.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

918.907

Es war diese Druck, die Skyler bei Tom und Jackie Hawks führte. Dort hat er die eine schreckliche Fähigkeit verwendet, die er wirklich hatte. Wie rate du Skyler als Kon-Artist?

48 Hours

Anchors Away

950.021

Das ist alles, was von Tom und Jackies Traum übrig bleibt. Das Wohlwollende ist jetzt in Dry Dock in einem Süd-Californien-Lot. Selbst diejenigen, die für ihre Lebensmacht Schreck fangen, sind enttäuscht von der Unabhängigkeit von dem, was hier passiert ist.

48 Hours

Anchors Away

976.178

It all began with that simple ad in a boating magazine. The ad that Tom had placed so he and Jackie could spend more time with their family. I called and I talked to him. Were you planning on buying the boat?

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

14.073

Bob Dorotek was a successful engineer and a proud father of three. His wife, Jane, was a medical company executive.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

2245.087

Coming up... They just read the verdict.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

23.155

Married for 30 years, they lived with their daughter, Claire, on a beautiful horse farm.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

2475.134

After new DNA testing, Jane Dorantik's murder conviction was overturned. Just before a planned retrial in 2022, the charges were dropped.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

37.579

Bob disappeared.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

43.356

But the truth was more sinister than that. It was obvious to me that it was a homicide. Imagine the shock when the trail of suspicion led right back home. Erin Moriarty investigates.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

56.346

Only one person that could have done this. It's Jane who is charged with the murder.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

63.031

Daughter Claire swears her mother is innocent.

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

69.075

But does Claire have something to hide?

48 Hours

A Deadly Family Secret

73.471

A 48 Hours Mystery of Family Torn Apart.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1001.777

While away at college, Piper caught the eye of another admirer, her communications professor, Fred Jablin.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1013.752

Fred Jablon was 29 and very driven. Piper was a free spirit and eight years younger.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1044.811

They married two years later, in the fall of 1983.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1057.13

Professor John Daly knew Fred and Piper as newlyweds and was one of Fred's best friends.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1093.077

Fred was also proud of his wife, Piper, and her plans to become a lawyer.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1105.723

After graduating from law school, Piper landed a big job in Austin as an assistant district attorney.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1125.876

Her sister Tina settled in Houston and became a nurse practitioner. A few years later, Fred and Piper started a family. Fred's brother Michael says the marriage was solid.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1143.929

But for Piper, a working mom, life was hectic.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1174.494

Then in the summer of 1994, life for the Jablon family changed. Fred accepted an offer to teach at the University of Richmond and uprooted the Jablon family to Virginia.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1222.503

Piper decided to change the focus of her life and become a full-time mom to Callie, Paxton, and Jocelyn.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1245.485

Annie Williams was Piper's friend.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1261.49

But Piper missed the rest of her family back in Texas, and her marriage started to suffer. You started to drift apart?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1276.133

Tina Roundtree never forgave Fred for moving her sister so far away.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1291.601

Eventually, Piper told Fred she was leaving him.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1299.286

And that's when the real trouble began. Fred Jablun decided to fight for sole custody of the couple's three children.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1317.131

While the idea of losing her children was devastating to Piper, it was inexcusable to her sister, Tina.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1340.55

Piper's sister, Tina, doesn't try to hide her hostility towards Fred Jablin, even after his brutal murder.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1359.226

But did Tina Roundtree hate Fred Jablun enough to kill him? On the afternoon of the murder, Detective Kelly was hoping for answers. Police officers were at Houston's Hobby Airport, primed and ready to greet the plane carrying a passenger named Tina Roundtree. But what happened next surprised everyone.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1398.727

The afternoon of Fred Jablin's murder, police were working their first big lead, a tip that a Tina Roundtree was en route to Houston after spending the past two days in Virginia. It was Saturday, October 30, 2004. Detective Brett McDaniel had raced to the airport, hoping to meet the plane before it landed.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1428.337

Although the ticket was booked in Tina's name, Houston police were also on the lookout for another Roundtree, the dead man's ex-wife, Piper, who may have had more of a motive than her sister.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1462.027

We stopped probably at least a dozen women. After the last of the stragglers, the officers realized their target had slipped through their fingers.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1484.358

In fact, that mysterious passenger had managed to pick up her luggage at baggage claim without being noticed and then vanished. She was gone. The next day, with the investigation now focused in the city where both sisters lived, Detective Kelly hopped a plane to Houston from Virginia.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1507.954

48 Hours wanted Detective Kelly to show us what happened next, so we flew him back to Houston to retrace his steps.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1525.469

Detective Kelly met up with the Houston team working the case.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1529.732

And together, they headed over to Piper Roundtree's house.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1546.067

With no answer, they decided to pay a visit to her sister, Tina.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1553.902

But just in case, one of the officers stayed behind at Piper's. Did Piper ever come out of the house?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1568.023

And he followed her. Sergeant Ferguson stayed on Piper's tail and relayed the route she was taking to the rest of the team so they could turn around and join the pursuit.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1610.049

The pursuit ended on a residential street in central Houston.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1623.117

Piper had driven to the law office of trial attorney and friend Marty McVeigh. As it turned out, McVeigh wasn't alone.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1634.924

Tina Roundtree, also a friend of McVeigh's, had arrived a few minutes before Piper.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1686.105

But Piper says she had only one thing on her mind, who was taking care of her three children.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1696.704

Until that meeting, almost 36 hours after Fred's murder, Piper hadn't been told her children were safe with Fred's brother, Michael.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1727.844

The meeting was cut short because McVeigh had to leave to pick up his son. Later, Detective Kelly decided to try another tactic. He and a few other officers drove to Tina's house, hoping to speak with her alone.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1763.243

Meanwhile, Piper was doing her own detective work. She needed to firm up her alibi, putting her in Houston, not Virginia, the night before Fred's murder. She asked the bartender if she remembered seeing her. Piper returned to this bar, The Volcano, where she claimed she'd been on Friday night to see if anyone remembered seeing her there.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1785.319

Bartender called me and said, do you remember her? And I said, yeah, I remember seeing her. She wanted our phone number so that she could give them to the police to substantiate that she was here. All right. You said you did remember seeing her here. Right. What made you remember? Distinctive features and petite and pixie haircut. You know, she's cute. Gorgeous.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1804.513

Yeah. It was the alibi Piper was looking for, and she passed it on to Detective Kelly.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1827.856

So now Piper had witnesses who saw her in Houston the night before the murder to go along with her lawyer friend, who saw her on the afternoon of the murder at the same time the airplane from Virginia was landing. If what you say is true, it would be difficult for her to get to your office at 4.30 in the afternoon.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1866.411

But Tina Roundtree says she couldn't have been on the plane either because she was seeing patients all day.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1874.784

At her women's health clinic. Detective Kobe Kelly didn't know what to think, but he was sure of one thing about the Roundtree sisters.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1898.441

And it wasn't long before the investigation would zero in on just one of them. Did you kill Fred Zeldin?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1939.682

As Detective Kelly learned more about the Javelin's nasty divorce... It was very, very, very bitter. ...he started to see the scars it left with Piper and her sister Tina.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1970.151

They've been married for nearly 19 years, and it hadn't been working for quite some time. A year and a half before the divorce, Piper got a warrant charging Fred with domestic violence and filed for a protective order against him.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

1990.066

Tina Roundtree only knows and believes what her sister told her.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2003.851

According to Tina, Fred's abuse was also directed at their three children.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2028.477

In February of 2001, Piper finally moved out of the house and later filed for divorce.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2041.134

In July of 2002, the divorce went through.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2051.522

According to Tina, that's when Fred really tightened the screws.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2064.372

Fred decided to fight for full custody of their three children. And according to Tina, Fred Jablon was a trained expert at winning arguments.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2083.763

At the custody trial, Fred pulled out all the stops. He wants to win and everything.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2094.571

Fred painted Piper as an unstable mother.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2106.1

And he told the judge that Piper had racked up more than $50,000 in debt without his knowing.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2114.947

Fred also accused Piper of being unfaithful.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2125.858

Michael Jablon wouldn't go into details with us, but he believes his brother's accusations, and he wasn't alone.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2146.886

In July of 2002, Fred Jablon won full custody of their three children.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2181.487

Remarkably, Piper Roundtree not only lost her children, but she was ordered to pay Fred Jablon almost $900 a month in child support, in part to pay back some of the thousands of dollars in debt she owed her ex-husband. Now, you were paying child support to your husband?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2200.014

Which is the reverse of the way it's normally done.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2205.658

Was that difficult for you?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2208.841

Piper had failed the bar exam in Virginia. So after the divorce, she struggled to find a job.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2235.549

So Piper moved back to Texas to find work.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2241.703

She had to leave Virginia.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2274.946

Her three children stayed behind in Richmond, Virginia with their father.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2313.018

She had a bitter divorce with her ex-husband. Her ex-husband actually got custody of the children. Piper Roundtree ended up paying child support. Marty McVeigh shared a law office with Piper in Texas. That's correct. Was she bitter about that? Did that bother her? Yeah, she was bitter. When she talked to you about it?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

232.546

Two wigs, a gun, and a murder.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2330.37

What'd she say?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2356.203

Jerry Walters became close to Piper shortly after she moved to Texas. and he too says Piper never voiced any hostility towards Fred.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2390.157

If Piper was bitter towards her ex-husband, she hid it well.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2422.726

Piper says she'd come to terms with her situation long before Fred was murdered and so had no reason to kill him.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2456.368

And although she's not naming names, Piper says she's pretty sure she knows who did have a motive to kill Fred Jabba. Is it someone that might hate your husband? Have a grudge against your husband? Yes. So much so that they'd be willing to murder him?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

2474.486

But the truth was about to catch up with Piper Roundtree. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

250.137

In the fall of 2004, this sleepy suburb of Richmond, Virginia was all dressed up for Halloween, ready for its annual visit from pint-sized ghosts and goblins. But for this close-knit neighborhood, the spookiest day of the year arrived early.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

293.416

Megan McCreary shrugged it off and went to the gym for her morning workout.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

369.426

Lying in his driveway was Fred Japlin, a well-respected 52-year-old college professor, a devoted father to three young children. I yelled to Doreen, I said, call the police back.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

390.163

Around that time, an unsuspecting Megan McCrary returned home from working out at the gym.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

436.303

Police entered the home and found Fred Jablin's children, his 12-year-old son and his two daughters, ages 10 and 15.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

456.617

Officer Boyd took Fred's children to his home nearby. Did you have an opportunity to sit them down and explain at some point what happened?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

484.09

Their uncle, Fred's older brother, Michael, lived about two hours away in Northern Virginia.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

504.795

Fred's ex-wife, Piper Roundtree, says she too was stunned when she learned of his murder.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

516.962

Piper was living in Houston, Texas, where she'd moved after their divorce.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

531.547

Back in Richmond, homicide detective Kobe Kelly was put in charge of the investigation.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

540.934

Detective Kelly's theory was that Fred Jablin was on his way to pick up his morning newspaper.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

567.518

It made sense to Detective Kelly that Fred Javelin may have known his killer. So he talked to him, walked away, and was shot in the back.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

586.098

After analyzing the crime scene, Kelly went to work on suspects.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

613.925

Police went to the University of Richmond to check out that angle.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

627.274

But Colby Kelly knew what all homicide detectives know when looking for suspects. Start close to home.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

643.195

Detective Colby Kelly reached Piper Roundtree in Houston.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

655.801

At the time of the murder, Piper and her ex-husband had been apart for almost four years, and she had started a whole new life in Houston. Not only that, but police would soon learn that Piper had an alibi for the day of the murder.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

673.678

A family friend and attorney, Marty McVeigh, remembers Piper stopping by his Houston office on the very day her ex-husband was murdered, more than a thousand miles away.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

704.487

While detectives continued to check out Piper's story, another name surfaced.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

712.411

And unlike Piper Roundtree, this woman had nothing nice to say about Fred Javelin.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

724.371

Piper's sister, Tina.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

767.358

On the afternoon of Fred Jablin's murder, Detective Colby Kelly got a major lead from airport officials in Virginia.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

783.618

So you determined that there was a Tina Roundtree with a flight booked, a purchase ticket to Houston?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

790.082

Airline records showed that two days before the murder, Piper's sister, Tina Roundtree, had flown from her home in Houston, Texas, to Virginia, where Fred Jablin was killed. And now, on the afternoon of the murder, record show Tina is booked on a return flight back home to Houston, a flight that is already in the air. So did you make any contact with Houston PD at this point?

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

851.952

At that time, around 4.30 on the afternoon of the murder, Detective Colby Kelly didn't know what he, and we at 48 Hours, would soon discover. The Roundtree sisters have a remarkably fierce devotion to one another, and learning more about the extent of that devotion would become one of the stranger twists in this already twisted tale.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

910.467

Tina Roundtree is eight years older than her sister Piper, an age difference that mattered when they were younger.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

937.977

Today, Tina and Piper are best friends.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

963.905

By the time Piper was in high school, the Roundtree family was living in a small town in Texas near the Mexican border. But Piper had bigger plans.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 1

978.856

Piper headed off to the prestigious University of Texas at Austin with dreams of becoming a lawyer.

48 Hours

Scripting a Murder

1338.922

I need to kill him.

48 Hours

Scripting a Murder

201.019

Screenplay for Murder, tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

1500.462

Oh, Brian, you're serious?

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

1503.064

Oh, my God. I'm so excited. Thank you so much. You have just given me so much hope.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

1777.817

His head still is completely mobile. He can still turn it side to side, raise his neck.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

2087.89

Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

2095.513

In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

2110.74

Don't miss Star Trek Section 31.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

2608.608

In 2020, Susan Wright was released from prison after serving 16 years.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

2623.196

Did this look like an accident or something else? Something entirely different.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

30.504

Streaming on Paramount+. Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

34.965

We don't know what we're looking for.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

37.146

Their bodies are the scene of the crime. Their symptoms and history are clues.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

407.165

It was nicked. It was a superficial cut. It was more of a slicing.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

43.407

We're doctors and we're detectives.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

47.948

Solve the puzzle, save the patient.

48 Hours

A Fight for Freedom

725.191

It's a place for our community.

48 Hours

False Identity

1006.94

And Patrick Welsh was allowed to continue his life in Galveston as Tim Kingsbury. But because of the forgery conviction, he had to use his old social security number, triggering a chain of events in Ohio that would ultimately lead to his arrest. And the model citizen left Galveston in handcuffs.

48 Hours

False Identity

1032.694

Coming up... It's too simple to say, why did you do it? Patrick Welch faces his family... I had questions for him. ...for the first time in 15 years.

48 Hours

False Identity

1118.877

When Elizabeth Walsh discovered her ex-husband was alive and well, she had a difficult decision to make.

48 Hours

False Identity

1147.013

Where could I go right? Elizabeth pursued the man who had faked his own death and abandoned them 15 years earlier.

48 Hours

False Identity

1158.841

When that didn't work. Did you hear back from him? No. She went to Galveston without Pat knowing. What did you see?

48 Hours

False Identity

1169.26

With a Ford Explorer and a convertible in the driveway of his waterfront home.

48 Hours

False Identity

1183.268

Elizabeth's sister, Claire.

48 Hours

False Identity

1188.39

Did that make you angry?

48 Hours

False Identity

1193.817

Elizabeth felt she had no choice but to call the authorities and have him brought back to Ohio.

48 Hours

False Identity

1230.341

His defense attorney, Sam Weiner, is trying to get his $300,000 bond reduced.

48 Hours

False Identity

1240.123

So he can be released to his girlfriend, Ann Anderson, and wait out his trial back in Galveston.

48 Hours

False Identity

1283.212

With Pat Walsh sitting in jail... I'm not angry.

48 Hours

False Identity

1286.994

...unable to run from his problems this time...

48 Hours

False Identity

1293.742

Elizabeth and her sons finally had a chance to confront him face to face for the first time in 15 years.

48 Hours

False Identity

130.726

In 1964, Elizabeth Shank, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, began dating a boy who would change her life forever, Patrick Hennessy Welch.

48 Hours

False Identity

1312.457

What do you think he wants?

48 Hours

False Identity

1317.441

Out of jail?

48 Hours

False Identity

1320.985

30 minutes later.

48 Hours

False Identity

1389.973

Pat Welsh pleads no contest to eight felony and four misdemeanor counts of fraud and non-support. So he not only needs his family's forgiveness.

48 Hours

False Identity

1403.979

He's also at the mercy of the court.

48 Hours

False Identity

1417.771

Judgment Day for Patrick Welsh. And for that, you will be punished.

48 Hours

False Identity

1427.899

The tide turns in Galveston.

48 Hours

False Identity

146.051

And so Elizabeth Shank became Elizabeth Welch. Elizabeth, whose nickname is Peachy, and Pat had two sons.

48 Hours

False Identity

1475.866

While Patrick Welsh sits in an Ohio jail, back in Galveston, the tide of public support has begun to turn against him.

48 Hours

False Identity

1487.069

A.R. Schwartz is known to everyone here as Babe.

48 Hours

False Identity

1497.572

As majority owner of the local radio station, Schwartz hired Patrick Welsh, alias Tim Kingsbury, as general manager.

48 Hours

False Identity

1513.036

Schwartz, a former state senator, admits he's one of many people in Galveston who got duped by Welsh.

48 Hours

False Identity

1523.948

And Schwartz says the Galveston County District Attorney, Mike Guarino, was also conned. I have written the district attorney and I've told him he got conned too. Even though Guarino charged Welsh with forgery and knew that this well-known public figure was living a lie, he never announced that accusation publicly. This man goes before the court, goes before the district attorney.

48 Hours

False Identity

1544.73

How come nobody in the community knows about this?

48 Hours

False Identity

1552.839

Some people thought the district attorney should have called a press conference, should have had his picture plastered out there for the entire community to see. What's your response to that?

48 Hours

False Identity

1575.542

He admits he knew about Welsh's abandoned family in Ohio.

48 Hours

False Identity

1586.432

But at the court hearing to determine Welsh's sentence, Guarino never informed the judge about Elizabeth and their two sons.

48 Hours

False Identity

1605.434

District Court Judge Frank Carmona confirmed to 48 Hours that he was not told about Welsh's family. Guarino says he never brought it up because it was not a legal issue relevant to the forgery case. Did you feel it was your responsibility to try to seek out and locate the wife, the children of Patrick Welsh?

48 Hours

False Identity

1644.053

But Schwartz is far more upset at his partner, Vandy Anderson, co-owner of the radio station and brother of Kingsbury's girlfriend.

48 Hours

False Identity

1655.66

Vandy was on the air every day. Schwartz believes Anderson had an obligation as a news reporter to inform the public.

48 Hours

False Identity

167.874

And by all appearances, the Welshes were happy.

48 Hours

False Identity

1672.972

Because of that, Swartz fired Anderson as news broadcaster. According to Babe, this man known as Tim Kingsbury conned you, conned your sister, conned everybody. Sure. Do you feel like you've been conned? No, not at all. Anderson's sister, Ann, remains loyal to him as well.

48 Hours

False Identity

1729.589

Doug McLeod, chairman of Moody Gardens, a top tourist attraction, worked with Kingsbury in various civic groups.

48 Hours

False Identity

1746.095

McCloud believes the people of Galveston are wiser from the whole experience. If a new person came to town tomorrow and donated a lot of time to community efforts, do you think you'd still check him out? I think... I think I know the answer to this.

48 Hours

False Identity

176.867

But after a few years of marriage, there were money problems.

48 Hours

False Identity

1793.472

It's been seven months since Patrick Walsh was brought back from the dead.

48 Hours

False Identity

1805.614

Judgment day for the charges of non-support and insurance fraud.

48 Hours

False Identity

181.531

Problems which Pat had kept secret from Peachy.

48 Hours

False Identity

1819.194

...Pat Welsh must also face his family, including his own father. Elizabeth Welsh comes to court with a new look and new determination that what she did was right.

48 Hours

False Identity

1845.921

Welch has pleaded no contest.

48 Hours

False Identity

1850.763

And will be sentenced by Judge Gregory Frost.

48 Hours

False Identity

191.787

The problem was Pat had stolen $23,000 from Ohio State University.

48 Hours

False Identity

198.249

Where he worked as a fundraiser.

48 Hours

False Identity

1987.196

And finally, with Elizabeth, Chris, and Pat's father, Richard, watching. You have no conscience.

48 Hours

False Identity

2010.315

Four years of prison and over $92,000 in fines. Is this ever going to be over for you?

48 Hours

False Identity

2060.174

Patrick Walsh has never spoken publicly about his disappearance.

48 Hours

False Identity

207.692

In 1980, Welsh was convicted of embezzlement, sentenced to 30 days in jail, and ordered to pay restitution.

48 Hours

False Identity

2074.643

We've seen pictures of you with the boys, and you look so happy. You look like the model dad. What happens to a guy?

48 Hours

False Identity

2142.875

48 Hours showed Pat's interview. I did a bad thing. To Elizabeth and her sons.

48 Hours

False Identity

2187.024

You say you did this for your family.

48 Hours

False Identity

224.372

For over two years, Pat did try to make things better.

48 Hours

False Identity

2312.512

Thank you.

48 Hours

False Identity

238.262

Until January 21st, 1983. We had made...

48 Hours

False Identity

24.722

Their lives seemed picture perfect until dad suddenly vanished. The last thing I remember is waiting for him to come home at night. Then they found his suicide note.

48 Hours

False Identity

255.456

But during dinner, Pat called from his office to say he wasn't going to make it.

48 Hours

False Identity

312.433

Fifteen years ago?

48 Hours

False Identity

315.215

Five days after Pat disappeared, Elizabeth received a letter.

48 Hours

False Identity

330.732

Overwhelmed with debt and humiliated by his past crime. I wish I could kiss you goodbye. Pat Welsh told his wife of 14 years. Please have my body cremated and not buried. That he had gone to San Francisco to commit suicide.

48 Hours

False Identity

357.637

And despite an exhaustive search by the FBI, local police, and the Welsh family, Pat's body was never found. With two young sons and a mortgage, Pat had left Elizabeth with few options. She didn't sleep.

48 Hours

False Identity

372.348

Claire Bailey is Elizabeth's sister.

48 Hours

False Identity

396.666

Awash in Pat's bad debts.

48 Hours

False Identity

401.93

And with only $250 in a savings account.

48 Hours

False Identity

406.433

Elizabeth had to move her sons into this apartment.

48 Hours

False Identity

413.378

And five years later, Pat was declared dead.

48 Hours

False Identity

432.555

And that's exactly what Elizabeth Welsh did. She worked her way up really fast. Today, she is president of the Chamber of Commerce in Licking County, Ohio.

48 Hours

False Identity

448.688

But 15 years after Elizabeth first read Pat's suicide note, a shocking revelation arrived in the mail.

48 Hours

False Identity

46.473

Now, after 15 hard years on their own. My first thought was, could this possibly be true? A stunning discovery.

48 Hours

False Identity

486.067

Five years after Pat Welsh disappeared without a trace. As far as you were concerned, there was no reason for you to think that he was still alive. Elizabeth divorced her husband and had him declared dead.

48 Hours

False Identity

500.504

She was then able to collect a small amount of life insurance.

48 Hours

False Identity

508.15

And some Social Security survivor benefits for her sons.

48 Hours

False Identity

516.035

Little did she know those benefits would later provide the first clue to 15 years of lies and deception. My first thought was, could this possibly be true? Elizabeth received a shocking letter in the mail.

48 Hours

False Identity

544.14

According to the government, Pat Welsh was still alive. I was thinking, no, wait, Elizabeth. And they were demanding back their $56,000.

48 Hours

False Identity

558.033

Sally Testa was an aide to Elizabeth's congressman at the time, John Kasich.

48 Hours

False Identity

567.919

Elizabeth was starting to grasp a difficult reality. She called me and said, Elizabeth, sit down.

48 Hours

False Identity

582.722

Was using his social security number. And you're thinking what?

48 Hours

False Identity

590.874

In the winter of 1983, Patrick Welsh left his name and his past behind and pulled into Galveston, Texas on a bus with just a few dollars in his pocket. Residents say Galveston is a friendly and forgiving city, just the kind of place you might go if you wanted to reinvent your life.

48 Hours

False Identity

616.793

Kevin Doherty was just a teenager when a stranger named Tim Kingsbury moved into his mother's boarding house. What did you think of Tim? Nicest guy I've ever met in my life. Kingsbury told Doherty and others that he was a student here at the Galveston branch of the University of Texas Medical School.

48 Hours

False Identity

633.589

Would it surprise you to know that we checked with the folks at the medical school, and they said he was never enrolled there?

48 Hours

False Identity

642.694

It was the first of many deceptions as Tim Kingsbury slowly established himself in Galveston society. In his early years, he developed a reputation as a local character writing for a small newspaper. He wrote about learning to scuba dive, to sail, and running a marathon, complete with photos of himself.

48 Hours

False Identity

664.605

Responding to a feature on Galveston's eligible bachelors, the man who had abandoned his wife and two sons wrote, quote, Can you imagine my surprise to find out I was not mentioned? For a man on the run, Kingsbury didn't act like a man with much to hide. Six months after his arrival, he was hired as a part-time publicist for the prestigious Galveston Historical Foundation, referred to as GHF.

48 Hours

False Identity

694.111

He was eventually appointed president. This is a recording of his acceptance speech.

48 Hours

False Identity

705.123

While working at the foundation, he met Ann Anderson, a woman from a prominent Galveston family. He moved into her waterfront home, where they lived together for 10 years. Kingsbury eventually made his way into the inner circle of Galveston society, known as B-O-Y, born on the island.

48 Hours

False Identity

753.51

Kingsbury made other close friends, all prominent Galvestonians.

48 Hours

False Identity

776.221

Dr. Brent Mazel says Kingsbury was his best friend.

48 Hours

False Identity

783.442

Gerald Sullivan, a businessman and cattle rancher.

48 Hours

False Identity

793.821

But even his friends had some suspicions along the way.

48 Hours

False Identity

827.708

For 13 years, he lived in Galveston, a pillar of the community. Then one day, late in the winter of 1996, everything started to unravel. We had a citizen who came to us.

48 Hours

False Identity

851.837

Some partially filled out social security cards, a birth certificate or two. Now, just after you had seized those fraudulent documents, did you have suspicions about him? Certainly. Did you think that maybe he wasn't Tim Kingsbury? Oh, absolutely. At that point, Kingsbury confessed everything to the DA and to his friends.

48 Hours

False Identity

877.245

And maybe just as incredible, no one seemed to hold it against him.

48 Hours

False Identity

916.689

Gerald Sullivan's wife, Suzanne.

48 Hours

False Identity

975.414

Kingsbury pleaded guilty to forgery and got four years probation, along with a $2,000 fine. But word of his false identity never got out into the community, never made the newspapers, never made the local news.

48 Hours

A Love Affair Turned Deadly

0.738

Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

A Love Affair Turned Deadly

18.865

What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy. Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

A Love Affair Turned Deadly

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48 Hours

A Love Affair Turned Deadly

8.361

In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+. Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

48 Hours

A Love Affair Turned Deadly

821.481

Morris Chestnut is Watson. Now streaming on Paramount+. And new episodes return Sunday, February 16th on CBS.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Ivy League Murder

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Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command. Gather your people. We're going to need every one of them. In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+. Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Ivy League Murder

18.862

What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy. Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | Deputy Spivey on Trial

0.738

Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command. Gather your people. We're going to need every one of them. In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+. Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | Deputy Spivey on Trial

18.862

What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy. Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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The phenomenon is back. The new season of Yellow Jackets, streaming February 14th on Paramount Plus with Showtime.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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The only way to truly be safe is to be the only one left.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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This season, the past will come back to hunt you. You really are insane. Yellow Jackets, new season, streaming February 14th on the Paramount Plus with Showtime.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1274.085

Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules. Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits murder. What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy.

48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1015.031

But Erin ended her relationship with Folly almost as soon as it began.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1030.869

With what Erin says were evil intentions. What was actually in Ben's hands? What did Ben have?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1045.811

Neither did task force detectives, who continued questioning Folley about Taylor's disappearance. As they delved deeper into his past, they discovered a disturbing pattern.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1068.317

In fact, Folley was convicted of assaulting one former girlfriend in 2003.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1079.964

But the task force needed evidence linking Ben Folley to Taylor's disappearance. Under questioning, the only thing Folley would admit to was having sex with Taylor. But Taylor was a minor and that violation gave detectives what they needed to search Folley's apartment. What they found here disturbed even the most experienced investigators. A massive amount of child pornography.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1121.735

Folley claimed it had been left behind by the previous tenant. Still, possessing child pornography is a felony.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1131.241

The police immediately arrested him.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1148.1

But the search of Folly's computers yielded an unusual clue that led investigators to an unlikely crime solver.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1172.469

Ben Folley, now 38, was in jail under arrest for the child pornography police had found on one of his six computers.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1183.718

For Detective Jeffrey Dean, revelations about Folley began with the sheer volume of data he'd stored away.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1198.402

In an endless variety of random photos, abandoned buildings, secluded locations, maps and weapons, the truly bizarre, along with photos of Taylor, investigators sensed a jigsaw puzzle of evidence.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1218.1

Ben Folley was now a prime suspect in the disappearance of Taylor Beal, and police were looking for someone who could link the talented student to the temperamental college dropout. Erin Crable would be that someone.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1239.668

Erin, as a one-time girlfriend of Folly's, soon figured out just what the police were beginning to conclude.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1264.201

So when they showed you this, and it says Home Sweet Home, what was your reaction when you saw this picture?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1273.123

And how did the detectives react when you said that?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1288.337

After Erin Crabill told two VCU cops how she had once taken Ben Folley to this house in the photo, it was pure police instinct that led them to rural Virginia's Matthews County, 90 miles from Virginia Commonwealth University. Still, Erin wasn't sure what, if anything, police would find.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1317.35

It was a month since Taylor Beal had disappeared. Erin Crable led the way. First officer said, do you smell something?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1373.325

that Ben had killed her. It was not just the news of her daughter's death that hit Janet Pellisara so hard, but how Taylor died.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1413.01

That's what Ben Folley told the police. In a rambling statement, he adamantly denied killing Taylor Beal. But he did admit he was with Taylor the night she died. It's not like we were hiding. But that would be virtually the only part of his story.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1449.048

Folley claims that everything about that evening was consensual.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1455.59

Starting with his picking up Taylor at her college dorm. Police discovered Folley on the college security videotape waiting just outside Taylor's dorm at 10.21 p.m. Minutes later is when the same camera captures Taylor leaving. Folly says they ended up at his apartment. He started drinking, and she started egging him on. How much had you been drinking? It was a bit. Narcotics? Yeah.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1486.835

A daring teenager out for a thrill. That's how Ben Folley tells the tale. And he adds, there was much more that Taylor Bia wanted to do. So they drove her car out towards Matthews County and started to play a different, far deadlier game.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1512.879

Ultimately, this is how 38-year-old petty thief Ben Folley claims 17-year-old college freshman Taylor Beale died at her own game, a sex game known as erotic asphyxia.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1530.916

And she's the one who came up with this idea?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1535.064

You had never heard of erotic asphyxia? Never. We only have your word for this.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1540.108

We only have your word for this. And I'm aware of that. And what are you saying that Taylor wanted you to do that night?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1557.916

So Folley claims at her urging, during sex in the backseat of her car, he tried various ways to restrict Taylor Beal's breathing.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1573.968

What do you do with it then?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1598.212

Then he claims, unable to wake Taylor up, he froze into a stone cold panic. Why didn't you call for help?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1625.195

You might have been able to save her. I might have. I don't know. And no one ever will, because Ben Folley then claims he panicked again, that he drove the body of Taylor Beale back to Richmond, left her in her car, went to sleep, and then a day later returned to Matthews County, dug a shallow grave, and left the once vibrant girl by the side of the road.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1653.783

By the time her body was discovered, a month later, it was impossible to tell exactly how Taylor Beale died. You thought you could get away with it?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1667.748

Ben Folley was charged with first degree murder, but he may not be the only one who was on trial.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1691.462

One day after what should have been a celebration of Taylor Beal's 18th birthday, family and friends were instead mourning Taylor's death.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1716.477

On that wet, gray October day, Janet Pellisara was filled with grief and rage for the man believed to have murdered her daughter.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1745.267

But Ben Folley claims that Taylor's death was an accident, the result of a sex game that went horribly wrong.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1764.813

Prosecutors Jack Gill and Chris Bullard disagree.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1774.778

You know, he says that Taylor Beal's death was an accident. I mean, isn't it possible it was?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1790.809

The prosecution's theory? Foley took Taylor for a drive to a secluded area to have sex. When Taylor rejected him, an angry Foley strangled her.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1813.424

Prosecutors point out that in Folley's own statement to police, he admits he flipped out and told Taylor to shut up.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1838.442

Prosecutors also say Folly duct taped Taylor's wrists, not as part of a sex act, but to restrain her.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1860.692

What is that to you?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1864.557

Her hands, according to your own statement, were tied behind her back.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1869.278

Isn't that more consistent with an abduction than a sexual... I did not abduct Taylor.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1879.36

In his statement recorded by police, Foley insists the duct tape was simply part of the game.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1895.207

Do you think the jury is going to believe that this 17-year-old girl came up with this idea?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1919.969

Attorneys Chris Collins and Bill Johnson are defending Ben Folley. How would Taylor Beal have any kind of knowledge about this bondage or any of these sexual practices?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1943.446

And at trial, the defense plans to show that Taylor wasn't a naive college freshman.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1957.356

It sounds as if in order to save Ben Folley from a long time in prison, you're going to really have to put the blame on Taylor Beale, the victim here.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1976.289

Not according to Taylor's best friend and confidant, Glynis Keough says the defense theory is simply ridiculous.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1990.234

Did she ever talk about being interested in bondage?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

1999.443

In fact, prosecutor Chris Bullard says he was unable to find any evidence, other than Ben Folley's word, that Taylor had any interest in bondage and risky sex acts.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2021.017

What's more, prosecutors say they can prove that Ben Folley is lying about how Taylor died that night. by reenacting Folley's story. Richmond police showed us what they learned.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2041.124

The two young Richmond police officers are the same size as Taylor and Folley, and the car an exact replica.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2053.354

Detective Jason Hudson read from Folley's own statement as a script.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2063.034

And this is Folly's voice.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2089.977

The obvious takeaways say the officers... Someone could not get any kind of enjoyment out of this.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2111.752

But will this be enough to prove that Folley intended to kill Taylor? Or, as the defense is counting on, will 12 jurors have their own doubts about the victim herself?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2134.42

and Matthews County is as rural and conservative as it gets. Jan, you're on 1140 WRVA.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2156.755

The quiet conservative community of Matthews County, Virginia was bracing for a sensational trial in the death of Taylor Beale.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2180.2

Everyone seemed to know about the 17-year-old college freshman abandoned by the side of a country road.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

219.196

For 17-year-old Taylor Beal of Vienna, Virginia, happiness was sipping cappuccino and listening to live music at her favorite neighborhood coffee shop.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2202.065

Janet fears the trial will force her to confront the horror of what happened to her child. What scares you the most about this trial coming up?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2234.434

The trial seemed set to begin when suddenly defense attorneys learned about a startling statement made by Ben Folley from behind bars. Even from the isolation of his cell, Folley managed to do what he had done all his life.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2256.593

In a flip jailhouse conversation with an officer, Folley described his previous statement to police as nothing more than a cynical strategy to beat the system, leaving the impression his story about erotic asphyxia was completely made up. It put his lawyers in a very awkward position.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2291.694

And then there was this jailhouse letter, penned to an ex-girlfriend.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2306.141

Prosecutor Chris Bullard plans to use that letter against him in court.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2321.465

The letter, coupled with his description of the proceedings against him as nothing more than a chess game, left Ben Folley with few options.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2344.303

Trapped by his own boastful words, Ben Folley could only manage a whisper as he agreed to a plea deal.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

235.7

But on Labor Day 2005, having spent the long weekend at home, all Taylor wanted was to get back to her freshman year of college. She was so excited.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2368.962

Yes. The deal? Second-degree murder. And the child pornography charges dropped. Instead of life in prison, 30 years, which Folley's lawyers thought was a pretty good deal for him. If this is a big chess game, did you win or lose?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2411.3

But Taylor's mother, Janet, had something to say to her daughter's killer.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2458.827

But Janet Pellisara has vowed to keep going. She's written a book, Love You More. And this is what she left me when she went off to school.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

2470.853

That special little phrase she and Taylor always ended their conversations with.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

253.581

Virginia Commonwealth University, known as VCU, was only two hours away in Richmond, but too far away for Taylor's mother, Janet Pellisara.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

285.146

The two were inseparable.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

313.585

Matt Beale, Taylor's dad, and Janet divorced when Taylor was almost two. But they shared a profound love for their daughter.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

331.519

When I say the name Taylor Beale, what first comes to mind? Her smile, actually.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

347.369

So on that Labor Day weekend, no one wanted to see Taylor leave as she headed back to VCU.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

372.032

A few hours later, Taylor arrived here in Richmond at her college dorm. She unpacked, chatted with a few friends, and then called both of her parents to let them know she was okay. But later that night, Taylor Beal disappeared.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

397.106

Those were the last words Taylor said to her roommate, Emma Ellsworth. When did you really become worried about her?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

416.306

Emma notified the VCU campus police, who told Janet that both her daughter and her car were missing. I paced around the house thinking, okay, do I panic? Did you try calling her on her cell phone? Yes. No answer. VCU police questioned friends and acquaintances. Could Taylor have simply wandered off?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

456.726

A desperate mother turned to the press to get the story out. The search for Taylor went nationwide. Police in Richmond, Virginia say there's still no sign of a college freshman.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

483.467

Ten days after Taylor's disappearance, VCU turned the case over to the Richmond Police. Chief Rodney Monroe organized a task force made up of university, state, and federal investigators.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

500.97

Let me hit you back. Richmond Police Captain John Venuti.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

511.12

Investigator Les Lozier of the Virginia Attorney General's Office feared the worst.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

531.975

Then Folly was one of the last people to have seen Taylor the night she disappeared.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

546.274

But when police interviewed the boyfriend, Jacob Cunningham, they learned that he and Taylor had dinner that night and had made up. We were on good terms. We left holding hands. Richmond Police Detective Jason Hudson.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

567.057

After dinner, Taylor told Jacob she was planning on going skateboarding. Could you find anybody she had made plans to go skateboarding?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

576.121

Not for that night. This is the last sighting of Taylor the night she disappeared, captured on campus surveillance video at 10.24 p.m.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

605.003

Twelve excruciating days pass, and finally a break. Taylor's car is found on a quiet residential street not far from campus. Did that give you hope?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

632.321

Detectives showed us how the bloodhound they called in picked up a scent around the car. That scent led them to a home five blocks away. Where did that scent ultimately take you?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

649.566

So who's Jesse Schultz?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

663.573

Let me ask you something, Jesse. Do you know Taylor Beale? Almost two agonizing weeks had passed since the disappearance of Janet Pellisara's 17-year-old daughter, Taylor.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

708.275

Task Force members Les Lozier, Jason Hudson, and John Venuti worked around the clock searching for clues.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

723.4

A train coming straight at 23-year-old Jesse Schultz. Why would the police who are looking for Taylor Beal come to you?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

739.201

A bloodhound led police from Taylor Beale's car to Schultz's relative's house. Investigators searched the house but came up empty until they asked one last question.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

759.011

So detectives brought Jesse in, questioning him for several hours. Later, they asked him to take a polygraph. And how did he do on that polygraph?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

777.169

Did you know Taylor Beale? No. Had you ever met Taylor Beale?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

785.615

As days passed, Jesse Schultz's story began to ring true.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

795.302

As for the scent picked up by the bloodhound?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

801.808

Just as Jesse Schultz was being cleared, police were taking another look at Ben Folley, one of the last people to have seen Taylor before she disappeared.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

820.373

Then Folley was known around campus for his colorful hair and his equally colorful van. A van so distinctive it was featured on local television.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

854.03

Folley first met Taylor in February 2005 when she and her father Matt visited colleges and checked out the VCU campus. A very different looking Folley talked with us about the encounter.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

876.243

Taylor planned on staying over with a friend already enrolled at the university. Folly was the friend's roommate.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

894.775

Taylor's dad, Matt, spoke with Folly before leaving Taylor for the night. Did you have hesitation leaving Taylor with really a stranger?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

921.044

What Matt didn't know was that Ben Folley was no longer a student at VCU. Even more alarming, Folley was 37 years old. How old did you think he was?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

936.931

And he didn't volunteer that he was much older than that?

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

941.263

Back home, while still in high school, Taylor continued communicating with Folly by email. And when she visited the campus again, this time on her own, she again saw Folly.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

958.55

Folly, an amateur photographer, took this series of pictures during one of Taylor's visits.

48 Hours

A Campus Mystery Unraveled

974.6

But at one point, Taylor shared with her best friend, Glynis Keough, that she and Folly had been intimate. It was a one night thing. She didn't regret it, but she didn't want to do it again. Erin Crable, another of Taylor's VCU friends, understands how Taylor could be drawn to folly. The 24-year-old once dated him. What attracted you to him?

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

104.336

Nobody disputes that Charla was there that morning in Darren's garage to drop off her daughter. Charla was so afraid of Darren, so most people think he must have made some sort of promise that he was going to end the fight over their divorce if she would just come in and talk to him. That is the only reason most people think she would have gone into that garage.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

158.934

At one point, I think the Macs were a happily married couple. They did enjoy an alternative sort of lifestyle. They were swingers. They went to sex clubs and sex parties. They enjoyed swapping partners. They led a wild life, and by most accounts, they both enjoyed it. But there was absolutely no love in that garage that morning. There was bitter, bitter hate.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

200.942

We've heard the official version about what happened that morning. Now we're going to hear Darren's story.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

21.494

Multimillionaire Darren Mack is facing life in prison for the murder of his beautiful, sexy wife, Charla. There is a mountain of incriminating evidence against Darren. Is this the end of the story? Not by a long shot. When a sniper opened fire on the morning of June 12th at 11.05 in downtown Reno,

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

212.146

Darren's defense attorneys say that Charla was the aggressor. Charla attacked Darren.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

2203.783

Darren is a spoiled brat. Darren is the most selfish person I think I have ever come across in my years of reporting.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

2225.742

The circus is closing down.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

225.151

The Charla and Darren Mack story is far from over.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

622.081

As this trial begins, we're going to hear two versions of a terrible story, a terrible murder.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

633.359

We're going to hear Darren's story and we're going to hear the prosecutor's story. They're both going to be brutal and they're both going to be ugly.

48 Hours

Deadly Divorce, Part 2

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the judge was rushed to the hospital in critical condition no one could have imagined the horror that had taken place only a few miles away two hours earlier in an upscale condominium complex. A woman had been brutally stabbed to death in a garage. Nobody knew what was going on and nobody had put the two events together.

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Who's There?

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And Mengelsdorf doesn't believe Melinda Harmon was involved either.

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Back in Olathe, the unsolved Harmon murder had been shelved for almost two decades, but never forgotten.

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Who's There?

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As detectives Bill Wall and Steve James began going over the 19-year-old evidence, they found it odd that blood spatter was all across Melinda Harmon's pillowcase.

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Who's There?

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With so much blood on the pillowcase, Wall and James were surprised how little blood was on Melinda and her nightgown.

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Who's There?

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The only blood was at the bottom of the gown.

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Who's There?

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They also had doubts about Melinda's story of being knocked out by intruders.

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Who's There?

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Evidence was mounting, but they still didn't have a case. They needed to re-interview the suspects. In December 2001, Detectives Wall and James showed up at Melinda's home in Ohio.

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Who's There?

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What happens?

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Who's There?

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and what happened next would forever change the course of this case had she not let you in where would we be today we would not be sitting here today so When Melinda Harmon left Olathe, Kansas in 1982, she never looked back. She moved to this Columbus, Ohio suburb and started over.

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Who's There?

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Known here as Melinda Rash, she's a soccer mom with two children, married to a successful dentist, active in her community and her church.

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Who's There?

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So when detectives Bill Wall and Steve James showed up out of the blue at the Rash home in 2001, they didn't expect her to talk to them.

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Who's There?

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Instead, she invited them in.

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Who's There?

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As they sat in her kitchen, Rash told the detectives about the night her first husband, David Harmon, was murdered.

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Who's There?

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This isn't the same story as two decades ago.

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For 19 years, detectives had waited for this kind of break.

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Who's There?

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And Melinda didn't stop there. Instead of ending the conversation or calling her lawyer, she kept talking.

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Who's There?

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She just wanted you to go away.

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Who's There?

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But they didn't go away. In fact, after three hours, Rash agreed to continue talking at the Sheriff's Department. Only now the interrogation would be videotaped. Because he'd established a rapport with Rash, Detective Bill Wall conducted the interview.

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Who's There?

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Investigators had always believed Melinda Harmon Rash and Mark Mangelsdorf conspired to murder David Harmon so they could be together. Now Bill Wall needed details of their romance to prove motive.

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Who's There?

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But according to Rash, Mangelsdorf wanted more.

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Who's There?

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With their romance established, Bill Wall now needed rash to connect Mark Mangelsdorf to the murder.

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Who's There?

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She told Wall she didn't see Mangelsdorf that night, but sensed his presence.

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Who's There?

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Why is she saying she felt Mangelsdorf's presence rather than, I saw him bludgeon my husband?

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So she's holding back?

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Rash wanted to know the consequences before giving up any more information.

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Who's There?

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Yeah, I need to know where I stand. Bill Wall called District Attorney Paul Morrison in Olathe.

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Who's There?

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and told him Rash wanted to discuss a deal.

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Who's There?

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After almost two decades of frustration, Morrison finally had a toehold. But it would take two more years of poring over every piece of evidence to make a case.

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Who's There?

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In 2003, with those ducks lined up, Melinda Harmon Rash was finally arrested and charged with her husband's murder. The news stunned Mark Mangelsdorf.

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Who's There?

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Melinda Rash's new story of the murder was the end for Mark and Christina Mangelsdorf's quiet life in Pelham, New York.

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Who's There?

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Living with a cloud of suspicion for 23 years, Mark Mangelsdorf knew this day could come. But for Christina, there was no preparing for what happened next.

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Who's There?

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Mark Mangelsdorf was arrested and escorted back to Kansas to face murder charges for the 1982 slaying of his close friend, David Harmon. He was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, the same charges Rash is facing. Just one week after Mangelsdorf's arrest, Melinda Rash goes on trial for the murder of her first husband.

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Who's There?

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By her side, showing support, is her current husband. In spite of the dramatic interrogation tapes, prosecutor Paul Morrison knows getting a conviction after 23 years will be tough. He begins by setting out to establish a motive for the crime.

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Who's There?

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Morrison sets out to prove a case largely built on circumstantial evidence. Evidence of an alleged love affair. They were just standing very close together. And lies. First, Rash said she was in bed while her husband was being beaten to death. But prosecutors show her pillow covered in blood. Then there is her claim she was knocked out for more than an hour.

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Who's There?

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Prosecutors begin unraveling Rash's story of what happened that night, weaving a different story.

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Who's There?

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Prosecutors produce a stack of cards and letters found in Mark Mangelsdorf's apartment, suggesting signs of an intimate relationship.

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Who's There?

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As the evidence mounts, it is the 2001 police videotape that cements the case against her and Mark Mangelsdorf.

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Who's There?

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As prosecutors slowly built their case, Rash's defense team knew they had to confront the allegations of an affair and murder head on. To do that, they turned to the person at the center of this case to testify. But it was not their client, Melinda Rash, they called to the stand. It was Mark Mangelsdorf.

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Who's There?

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And for the first time in 23 years, Mark Mengelsdorf and Melinda Rash are together again. This time, the only thing they are sharing is the charge of murder.

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Who's There?

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Yes, I do.

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Who's There?

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Mengelsdorf's testimony is crucial for Rash's defense. and ultimately his own. The defense wants to show Mangelsdorf is not capable of murder and that he and Rash couldn't have conspired to commit such a crime.

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Who's There?

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Mark Mangelsdorf's defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, says it's a gamble worth taking, even though anything Mangelsdorf says could be used against him. Why were you so willing to have him testify?

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Who's There?

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Questioned by Rash's defense attorney, Tom Bath, Mangelsdorf answers questions point blank about accusations of an affair.

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Mangelsdorf looks calm on the stand, even under tough cross-examination from prosecutor Paul Morrison.

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How did he do on the witness stand?

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For defense attorney Mickey Sherman, this was a dress rehearsal. He got to see how his client will do as a witness. But true crime writer Andy Hoffman believes Mengelsdorf taking the stand may not have been the best defense, for Rash or for himself.

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Who's There?

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Melinda Rash never took the stand or spoke publicly about the murder of her husband. After nearly three weeks of testimony and over 60 witnesses, Rash's trial comes to a close. After two days, the jury reaches a verdict.

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Who's There?

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Did Mark help or hurt her on the stand?

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Out on bail, Mark Mangelsdorf was at home with his wife, Christina, when they learned of Rash's fate. When you saw the word guilty, what was your reaction?

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You thought she was innocent?

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As Mangelsdorf now starts to prepare for his own trial, Melinda Rash, facing life in prison, sits in a Kansas County jail awaiting sentencing. But as he will learn, she's not sitting quietly. Here in Olathe, Kansas, Melinda Rash is behind bars, facing life in prison for the murder of her husband, David Harmon.

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Who's There?

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Back in Pelham, New York, Mark Mangelsdorf begins to prepare for his trial, confident a jury will find him innocent.

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Who's There?

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Defense attorney Mickey Sherman is on the offensive. What's your best evidence?

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While Sherman makes his plans for Mangelsdorf's defense, he's unaware Melinda Rash is making plans of her own.

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Writer Andy Hoffman.

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With few choices, Rash makes a stunning move and turns to prosecutor Paul Morrison, looking to make a deal. In exchange for a lighter sentence, she says she'll finally tell the truth of what happened that night her husband was brutally murdered. Melinda Rash admits for the first time she took part in the murder of her husband, David Harmon, and she says she did it with Mark Mengelsdorf's help.

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Who's There?

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It sounds like a big break for the prosecution, but it could be a bigger break for the defense.

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Who's There?

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The usually confident Mickey Sherman knows this could be trouble.

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Today, Olathe, Kansas is a major crossroads, a fast-growing suburb of Kansas City, home to a large conservative Christian community. But back in 1982, it was just a dot on the map.

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Who's There?

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The stakes are high. If convicted, Mangelsdorf, now a father of five, could spend the rest of his life in prison. In February 2006, appearing in court for a pretrial hearing, Mark Mangelsdorf shocks everyone with a statement of his own.

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Who's There?

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After 24 years of maintaining his innocence, Mark Mangelsdorf now admits he helped kill his close friend David Harmon.

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By his side is his wife, Christina.

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Pleading to second-degree murder, Mangelsdorf stands there while prosecutor Paul Morrison reads Melinda Rash's confession.

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Who's There?

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And in the confession, Melinda Rash related a chilling scene. At her husband's funeral, Mark Mangelsdorf whispered in Rash's ear he got rid of the murder weapon. Remarkably, for a couple who now admits they committed this brutal murder to have a relationship, it was the last time they were together.

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Who's There?

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All rise. On May 12, 2006, in two separate hearings, Mark Mangelsdorf and Melinda Rash are sentenced for the horrific murder of David Harmon.

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Who's There?

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They are both sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.

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Who's There?

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But for David's father, John, Melinda and Mark's apologies will never be enough.

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Who's There?

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It took 24 years, but for this small town of Olathe, Kansas, the memory of a haunting murder can finally be laid to rest. And for David Harmon, a 24-year-old injustice has come to an end.

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Who's There?

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There weren't a lot of homicides in Olathe, so the unsolved murder of David Harmon was a nightmare that stayed with them for more than two decades.

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It might have stayed cold, if not for a simple request in 2001 and some new technology.

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Who's There?

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The Harmon case moved out of the evidence vault and into the hands of detectives Bill Wall and Steve James.

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Who's There?

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They went through all the evidence to learn what happened back in 1982. Once we get started to it, it's so intriguing, you don't want to put it down. There were accounts from police officers, including J.W. Larrick, then 27, one of the first responders.

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Who's There?

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He found David Harmon's body upstairs in the master bedroom.

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Harmon had been beaten repeatedly with a blunt object.

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David's wife, Melinda, was the only witness. She told police two men, possibly black, had broken into their duplex.

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She said they demanded the keys to the bank where David worked.

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melinda says when she came to she ran next door for help her neighbor called the police then melinda asked her to call friend mark mangelsdorf it was a horrific incident a very close friend of mine was murdered and you know i was close friends both with he and his his wife they kind of took him in they'd have him over for dinner frequently he'd be over there hanging out

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Who's There?

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Their friendship began at Mid-America Nazarene College, where Melinda was a secretary.

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Who's There?

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Don Stelting was dean of students at the college and Melinda's boss.

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Who's There?

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One of the students she befriended was Mark Mangelsdorf, the student body president.

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Who's There?

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Melinda introduced Mark to her husband, David.

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Who's There?

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They shared a passion for sports, business, and their church. As word of David's murder spread, it stunned Olathe's Nazarene community. I remember when the phone call came, how unreal it was.

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His friends at the Patron State Bank were shocked. Why? Why would this happen? Why, David? Joy Hempe and Hazel Hendricks.

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Paul Morrison is now the district attorney, but back in 1982... I'm just a guppy back then, you know. ...he was still learning the job.

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Who's There?

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Police immediately staked out the bank in case anyone tried breaking in. Of course, it never happened. Stealing David's keys baffled Joy Hempe.

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It didn't take long for investigators to realize the pieces of the puzzle just weren't adding up.

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Who's There?

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As doubts grew about Melinda Harmon's story, the focus of the investigation shifted.

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Who's There?

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Did they believe that Melinda Harmon was involved in her husband's murder? And they suspected she had help.

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Who's There?

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Even after all these years, the memories are still very painful for Pam Stelting. I thought I could talk about that crime, but... Pam and her husband Don still can't believe Olathe Police suspected Mark Mengelsdorf was involved in the murder of David Harmon.

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Who's There?

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But police and prosecutors say there were no signs of intruders. Instead, all the evidence seemed to point to those closest to David, his wife, Melinda, and his best friend, Mark. And what's more, investigators believed they knew the motive.

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Who's There?

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Andy Hoffman has covered the case for more than two decades. And what were they saying?

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Who's There?

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District Attorney Paul Morrison believed Melinda Harmon was unhappy in her marriage and caught up in a secret affair with Mark Mangelsdorf.

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Who's There?

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But because of their strong religious beliefs, Morrison doubts it was sexual.

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The conservative Christian world they lived in had strict rules of behavior.

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Who's There?

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Mark Wood was a student at Mid-American Nazarene College at the time.

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Who's There?

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And when you marry, you marry for life.

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Who's There?

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Mark Mangelsdorf and Melinda Harmon always denied they had a romantic relationship. And at first, they cooperated with investigators. But that soon stopped, and leads dried up.

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Investigators had a bloody murder scene, but no footprints or fingerprints and no murder weapon. Not enough evidence to prosecute.

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Who's There?

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With no charges against them, Mangelsdorf and Harmon both left Olathe. Melinda Harmon headed back home to Ohio with her parents. Mark Mangelsdorf went off to Harvard Business School and became a successful corporate executive.

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Who's There?

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He and his second wife, Christina, live in a million-dollar home in Pelham, just outside New York City. He's the father of four, with one more on the way. The Mangelsdorffs sat down with 48 Hours for their only television interview. When's the first time that you heard about this?

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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This is Leavittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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Gary Lighterman died in prison in 2019. He was 76 years old.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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This is Leavittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.

48 Hours

The Mystery of Jane Mixer

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This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Peggy Hettrick Case - Part 2

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In 2011, Tim Masters was exonerated by the Colorado Attorney General. He received $10 million in settlements for wrongful imprisonment.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Upfront and honest? Not exactly. He was still married and living with Jocelyn.

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Marriage Secrets

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As soon as Jocelyn learned her husband was cheating, they separated and she filed for divorce. It was a nasty split. According to prosecutor Randy Krantz, to get through it, Jocelyn had been seeing a therapist.

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Marriage Secrets

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Defense attorney Joey Sanzone disagrees.

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Marriage Secrets

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Well, she was certainly on medication. What about the idea that her medication was increased?

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Marriage Secrets

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These are Jocelyn's journals, 17 spiral notebooks authorities believe hold the key to her life and her death. After his split with Jocelyn, Wesley Earnest took a job three hours away as an assistant principal at Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake, Virginia.

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Marriage Secrets

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To teacher Tim McGovern, Ernest was a boss and a friend.

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Marriage Secrets

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It seems Wesley Ernest was a man of many faces. At trial, teacher Sonya Stevens says Ernest told her he was well off. He did not have to work for a living.

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Marriage Secrets

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Teacher Molly Sullivan said Ernest told her he wasn't just rich, but single, and even refused to accept her condolences after Jocelyn died.

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Marriage Secrets

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As Wesley and Jocelyn started divorce proceedings, it was the lake house, his prized possession, they fought over. She wanted it sold. He, investigators say, didn't want to let it go.

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Marriage Secrets

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He had tried to sell the lake house for about $2.9 million, but couldn't. It was 2007, and the housing bubble had burst. Ernest, in charge of the couple's finances, was in a fix with loans, credit card debt, and that more than $6,000 a month lake house mortgage.

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Marriage Secrets

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When you say plenty, what do you mean?

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Marriage Secrets

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It turns out the math major and assistant principal, Wesley Earnest, was more than $1 million in debt.

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Marriage Secrets

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But after Jocelyn died, the bill collectors kept calling, and another person pitched in to bail Ernest out of debt, his new love, Shamika.

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Marriage Secrets

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Investigators thought they had their motive. Wesley Earnest killed his wife Jocelyn for money. But there was that puzzling phrase in the purported suicide note, Jocelyn's new love.

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Marriage Secrets

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Jocelyn's coworker and friend, Marcy Shepard, thought she knew who the new love was and stunned the courtroom with her answer. We kissed maybe three times.

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Marriage Secrets

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Prosecutor Wes Nance described their relationship as little more than a crush Marcy had on Jocelyn.

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Marriage Secrets

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What do you make of their relationship between Marcy and Jocelyn?

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Marriage Secrets

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Unhappy and afraid of Wesley Ernest, according to her best friend, Jennifer Kearns.

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Marriage Secrets

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Even more revealing, Jocelyn chronicled her feelings in these spiral notebooks she used as journals.

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Marriage Secrets

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What'd you think when you read that?

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Marriage Secrets

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It was explosive information. But the prosecution had a problem. Because Joslyn couldn't be questioned by the defense, her journals were considered hearsay. The judge ruled they couldn't be used as evidence.

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Marriage Secrets

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And you see that in her journals?

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Then, 15 months after Jocelyn's death, another bizarre twist.

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It happened while Assistant Principal Ernest was out on bond, awaiting trial.

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The multi-million dollar lake house was burning to the ground.

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The cause of the fire was inconclusive. The judge ruled it could not be used as evidence in the murder trial because the fire could not be linked to Jocelyn's death. But, according to prosecutors, Ernest's behavior that day was suspicious.

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Prosecutors were confident Wesley Earnest was the trigger man. But without the journals, without the fire, could they prove it?

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Marriage Secrets

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Ernest believes justice is on his side.

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Marriage Secrets

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Bring the jury here. Thank you. He claims he never had any money problems and that he didn't know about Marcy Shepard.

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Marriage Secrets

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I did. Or the journals, or that Jocelyn was frightened of him.

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Marriage Secrets

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The women who stand by Wesley Earnest believe the evidence against him does not add up.

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Marriage Secrets

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Jocelyn's father, Bill, was now face to face with an alleged murderer who used to be his son-in-law.

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Marriage Secrets

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The defense won't be easy. The prosecution painted the assistant principal as a manipulative, desperate, and greedy man who executed his wife. A few days before her death, Ernest borrowed a co-worker's pickup truck. He was on the highway for hours, they say. driving from Chesapeake to Jocelyn's home on Pine Bluff Drive.

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Marriage Secrets

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It was Wesley Earnest, prosecutors say, who cranked up Jocelyn's thermostat to 90 degrees to make it appear she had died much earlier in the day.

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Marriage Secrets

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They insist the note was not a suicide note, but a homicide note Ernest typed to stage the murder scene. Do you think that Wesley's capable of writing a fake suicide note?

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Marriage Secrets

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And that truck Ernest borrowed a few days before Jocelyn died? Oddly enough, he borrowed it again two weeks after her death.

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Marriage Secrets

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And if you're the next witness, come forward, please. Tire store manager Rick Kuhn remembers that truck and Wesley Earnest.

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Marriage Secrets

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Then, on April 1st, 2010, April Fool's Day, the star witness, Assistant Principal Wesley Earnest, would finally tell his side of the story.

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Marriage Secrets

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Earnest told the jury when he learned of wife Jocelyn's death.

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And he testified about the weapon found near her body.

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Marriage Secrets

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It was a gift, he says, for Jocelyn so that she could feel safe.

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Marriage Secrets

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Prosecutor Randy Krantz grilled him about his lies and deception.

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The questioning was heated.

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Marriage Secrets

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But Ernest seemed to keep his cool.

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Marriage Secrets

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When asked about his whereabouts on the day Jocelyn died, Ernest testified he left work around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

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Prosecutors believe the assistant principal's sore throat story was just one more lie, one more piece of his premeditated murder plot.

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Marriage Secrets

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Three hours and 35 minutes of deliberations, and then... If they do have a verdict, defendant, sir, if you would stand, please. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder... Assistant Principal Dr. Wesley Earnest was guilty of murdering his wife, Jocelyn.

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Marriage Secrets

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A heartbreaking defeat for Earnest's family. He was now a convicted killer. But one month later, while waiting for sentencing...

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Marriage Secrets

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A bombshell that could change Wesley Earnest's fate.

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Marriage Secrets

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The guilty verdict was a victory for prosecutors. But it wouldn't last long. A posting on the local newspaper's website was about to turn this contentious case upside down.

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Marriage Secrets

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Turns out those journals, Jocelyn's handwritten heartfelt thoughts, had been placed in the wrong box and taken to the jury room.

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Marriage Secrets

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A special hearing was called and the jury admitted to reading the journals. The jurors said they based their guilty verdict on inadmissible evidence, Jocelyn's very own words.

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Marriage Secrets

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the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

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Marriage Secrets

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Ernest would get a second chance, and Jocelyn's family would have to face their nightmare all over again.

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Marriage Secrets

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We can do it for Jocelyn. Defense attorney Joey Sanzone believes a new jury will see reasonable doubt.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Nearly seven months after the first trial, more than two and a half years after Jocelyn's death, assistant principal Wesley Earnest would once again face a jury for the murder of his wife. There were no TV cameras allowed at the second trial.

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Marriage Secrets

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The prosecution focused on the purported suicide note, Jocelyn's fear through the voices of her friends, her relationship with Marcy Shepard, and Earnest's debt and deceptive ways. The defense hammered on the unreliability of the fingerprint evidence and Ernest's alibi. And once again, the assistant principal, Wesley Ernest, would take the witness stand.

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Marriage Secrets

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Same judge, new jury. But this time, Ernest would be given more leeway to explain his answers, and it seemed the defense was gaining ground.

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Marriage Secrets

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They desperately needed a new approach. Prosecutor Nance came up with an idea at 4.15 in the morning.

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Marriage Secrets

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The plan was to confront Earnest about a very unusual timeline handwritten by Jocelyn, a detailed history of her life she'd been keeping as part of her therapy. It was discovered inside her home, and prosecutors were certain Wesley Earnest had altered it.

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Marriage Secrets

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Jocelyn's mother will never forget the question Prosecutor Nance asked her former son-in-law.

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Marriage Secrets

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The second time around would be swift and deliberate.

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Marriage Secrets

2589.79

Once again, Wesley Earnest was found guilty of first-degree murder. The jury recommended a sentence of life in prison plus three years, and the judge agreed.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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All the faces of Wesley Earnest hardened into one defining image, pale and resigned. Still, to his mother, he's a victim.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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There's an old photo of Ernest, a joke from his days as an assistant principal that seems like an eerie prediction. The prisoner for a day is now locked away for life.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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In March 2010, in this scenic southern community nestled near the Blue Ridge Mountains, 37-year-old high school assistant principal Wesley Ernest is on trial for his life. So how are you feeling heading into this trial?

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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On December 19th, 2007, six days before Christmas, Jocelyn's close friend, Marcy Shepherd, who'd been texting with her all day, became concerned when Jocelyn never responded to messages she sent that evening. The next morning, Marcy drove over to Jocelyn's house. She let herself inside with Jocelyn's spare key, discovered her body, and called police.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

386.431

When investigators Mike Mayhew and Gary Babb stepped inside Jocelyn's home, they found a shiny revolver beside her, a bullet wound to her head, a note by the front door. What'd the note say?

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Financial problems, a new love. The notes seem to raise even more questions than answers. Did it seem like a suicide note?

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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The note contained 83 typed words and those two fingerprints that authorities say matched Jocelyn's estranged husband, Wesley Earnest.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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But Wesley Earnest had been living and working in another city more than three hours away.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Ernest hired a well-known and rather unusual defense team from Lynchburg, Virginia. Joey Sanzone and his daughter Blair are firmly convinced this case is not what it seems.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Sanzone says forensic tests determined Ernest's fingerprints were not on the gun, and his DNA was nowhere to be found at the scene. Investigators believe she was shot sometime between 7.30 and 9 p.m. the night before, and her body had been moved. And there's no way that she could have moved herself.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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The heat inside her home was overwhelming. The thermostat had been jacked up to 90 degrees. Jocelyn's home appeared untidy, but there were no signs of forced entry. Her faithful black lab, Rufus, was discovered locked in his crate in her bedroom without food or water.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Prosecutors Wes Nance and Randy Krantz believe the murder scene was set up to deflect attention away from the killer.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

630.754

It turns out the words on that mysterious note would reveal even more clues about a husband, a wife, and their very troubled life.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Jocelyn, a 38-year-old financial services manager, had a playful sense of humor on the job and at home with her dad, Bill Branham.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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On the high school basketball team, she was number 21, a star shooting guard, team captain, and all-state honorable mention.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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At West Virginia University, Jocelyn was praised as one of the Mountaineers' best three-point shooters ever. Then, her junior year, Jocelyn, a business and economics major, met Wesley Ernest, a mathematics student.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

807.828

What kind of couple were they? Cute. Ernest's mother, Patricia Wimmer.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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The newlyweds moved to Bedford County, Virginia. Jocelyn began working at Genworth Financial in Lynchburg. Ernest was the assistant principal at a high school.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Despite their marriage troubles, they would start a new venture together. They built a luxurious weekend getaway on Smith Mountain Lake. Wesley Ernest had loved the lake since he was a boy.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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Their combined salary was nearly $200,000 a year, but this new second home would be expensive, a multi-million dollar project.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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The Lake home seemed to be on solid ground, but the couple's nine-year marriage was crumbling. Wesley Ernest says Jocelyn had an unconventional proposal.

48 Hours

Marriage Secrets

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It was no joke to Wesley Earnest. He began seeing this woman, Shemeika Wright.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1017.005

By February 1996, Elizabeth McClendon finally had enough of the lies and cons and told Stanko it was time for him to move out.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1079.596

McClendon did everything she could to fight him off.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1098.772

Bound and gagged, Stanko dragged her into the bathroom.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

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While you're sitting there tied up. Mm-hmm. Stanko says he has little memory of the events from that morning, just like the blackout he claims to have experienced during the Ling attacks.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1145.013

Stephen Stanko was arrested three days after the attack on Elizabeth McClendon. He pled guilty to charges of kidnapping and aggravated assault and was sentenced to a 10-year prison term, but was released after just eight and a half years. Two months later, he met Laura Ling, a librarian and a divorced mother of three.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1172.503

that you had served time in prison. Yes, sir. You're a little fuzzy with the details. Laura Ling was never given the full story from Stanko about the McClendon attack when she asked him to move in with her and her teenage daughter.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1214.278

From all accounts, Laura was happy, seemingly unaware that Stanko was back to running cons.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1239.391

You told people you were a paralegal? Yes.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1247.575

You own several successful restaurants.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1262.696

Greg Hembree speculates Laura Ling may have learned what was going on and confronted Stanko, and that's what led to his rampage.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

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The physical evidence against Steven Stanko is overwhelming, but the defense believes it has uncovered new evidence, medical evidence, that just might sway a jury.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1303.57

It's the first time in South Carolina history where a defense team says they can show a jury an actual picture of what insanity looks like.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1341.798

Steven Stanko, once a gifted teenager brimming with promise. I was a top athlete, top student, loved by everyone. Is now, 20 years later, a man facing the death penalty.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1363.8

Growing up in Goose Creek, South Carolina, Stephen Stanko, along with his four siblings, was raised under his parents' close supervision.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1383.716

Stanko had high expectations as well. His dream was to attend the United States Air Force Academy.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1416.669

It was a setback that Stanko says he never recovered from.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1426.275

After finishing high school, Stanko spent a short time in community college. But he lost interest and turned to a life of petty crime. Small hustles, small lies, and small cons.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1449.793

but small time cons pale in comparison to the violent crimes Stanko is on trial for now. Look at the facts of this case.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1470.819

Although Stanko has been treated in the past for personality disorders, attorney William Diggs believes his client is suffering from a far more serious condition.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1490.441

To do that, Diggs hired a team of medical experts from around the country. Using cutting-edge PET scan imaging technology, they put Stanko under the microscope, analyzing the structure of his brain and, more importantly, how it functions. What they found surprised them all.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1523.14

Dr. Thomas Saatchi, neuropsychiatrist and founder of Georgia Pain and Behavioral Medicine, evaluated Stanko's test results for the defense.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1589.804

For almost three days, the court heard from a team of medical experts.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1609.574

This mountain of complicated scientific theory eventually boils down to one very simple idea.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1620.659

Is someone with this kind of brain defect a psychopath?

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1656.474

According to the expert defense witnesses, Stankos suffered medical complications shortly after birth, including jaundice and a blockage in his airway that may have deprived his brain of oxygen.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1686.857

Diggs is convinced the evidence presented amounts to a persuasive insanity defense.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1712.685

But there are some in the courtroom who don't see it quite the same way.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1807.161

Prosecutor Greg Hembree dismisses Stephen Stanko's defense with just two words.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1863.218

No. Henry now tries to score points by cross-examining defense witnesses.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1872.52

To prove that his complications at birth had nothing to do with his crime spree all these years later.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1891.476

For two days, prosecution witnesses testify that although Stephen Stanko had some serious problems, insanity wasn't one of them.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1927.771

Roger Turner is the son of Henry Turner, Stanko's last murder victim. He believes the insanity defense is simply Stanko's final con.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

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which leaves Roger with even more questions about his father's murder following the attacks at the Ling house.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1973.793

Stanko refused to discuss the details surrounding the Henry Turner shooting since he has yet to be tried for that murder. You went to Henry's. Right. And that's where I'm going to stop talking. So what does it take for you to go into one of these episodes where you act out violently?

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

1998.675

Stanko maintains that both Elizabeth McClendon and Laura Ling provoked him before their attacks.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2017.585

But Laura's ex-husband, Chris Ling, has his own theory, that Stanko is simply just a bully.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2031.352

To back that up, Chris Ling points to Stanko's prison record.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2079.144

Stanko told us he had 39 fights during his time in prison, but when we checked, there was no record of any such violent behavior.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2102.895

This trial has never been about who committed these heinous crimes, but rather, should Stephen Stanko be held responsible for them? And as they make their final arguments... It's always somebody else's fault.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2117.823

The state and the defense have very different opinions of who this man is.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2151.252

Now, 12 jurors will decide if Stanko was of sound mind when he killed Laura Ling and raped her teenage daughter. And if he was, should he die for it? As we accompany Stephen Stanko on one of his final rides to the courthouse, he seems almost resigned to his fate.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2193.816

Which picture of Stephen Stanko will the jury believe? The killer, who knew exactly what he was doing, or the insane man who was a victim of his own anatomy. Please bring in the jury. Just two hours later, the jury has an answer.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2225.063

They hold him responsible for the death of Laura Ling and the rape of her teenage daughter. He never apologized to you in court?

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2235.367

Do you need to hear an apology?

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2244.15

Just one week after finding Stanko guilty. Ready for the view. Overcast. It'll be good then. The same jury must now rule on whether he lives or dies.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2313.594

Once again, the jury just takes two hours to make their decision.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

232.561

Count four, kidnapping.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2356.678

Although the defense failed to prove their theory, their lead expert, Dr. Satchi, still believes in the science.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

237.663

It is the summer of 2006 in what is known as Lowcountry, South Carolina, just north of Charleston.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2393.914

we brought some of the jurors together to see what they thought of the scientific defense.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2431.493

The defense argued that Stephen Stanko was born with a brain defect. Couldn't that explain his behavior? I don't believe he had one. I don't believe he had one.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2450.034

In the end, what the jury found most compelling was the evidence from two of Stiko's victims.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2484.674

I had tears. I couldn't hold back. And while she was not there herself, the jurors felt like they had heard from Laura Ling.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

250.725

For a change, it's not the heat everyone is talking about.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2517.806

These days, Laura Ling's daughter clings to the good memories of her mother.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2534.755

while trying to erase from her own mind the damage left there by Stephen Stanko.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2566.532

Stephen Stanko received two death sentences for the murders of Laura Ling and Henry Turner.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2578.112

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2585.999

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

2589.161

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

259.433

It's the havoc one man wreaked on this small coastal community.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

275.765

This is the county's first death penalty case in nearly a decade. On trial is Stephen Stanko, who stands accused of committing some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in Georgetown in recent memory.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

315.084

It's hard to believe that Hembree is talking about the same highly intelligent, seemingly polite 38-year-old.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

335.241

Friends say it was that quiet confidence and intelligence that first attracted 43-year-old Laura Ling to Stephen Stanko when they met in the fall of 2004.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

351.064

Victoria Loy is Laura Ling's sister.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

361.19

They knew each other just two months before Stanko moved in with Laura and her teenage daughter. And from all accounts, everyone got along.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

378.914

But then came the early morning hours of April 8, 2005.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

388.18

When Stephen Stanko simply snapped.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

399.42

As the lead investigator on the scene, Lieutenant Bill Pierce arrived at the Ling home and learned the grisly details.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

440.49

Laura's daughter was the prosecution's key witness. We have agreed not to name her or show what she looks like today.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

454.353

Although the teenager kept her composure, No one was quite prepared for her testimony, especially her father, Chris Ling.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

493.215

When she regained consciousness, Stanko was on top of her.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

541.21

After the attacks, Stanko took a shower where he claims he regained his memory.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

580.361

That's Stanko's story now. But at the time, he stole Laura's car, went to the ATM machine, and emptied her bank account. He then drove to nearby Conway, South Carolina, where his friend and business associate, 74-year-old Henry Turner, lived.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

623.095

By this time, a nationwide manhunt was underway.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

649.932

Stanko was now armed with a gun and more money, both of which he stole from Henry Turner. To further elude authorities, he ditched Laura's car and took Henry's truck. Most fugitives at this point would hide out, go underground. But Stephen Stanko was not your average fugitive.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

704.726

That Saturday night, Stanko once again hit the bars. This time, he was mixing and celebrating with the crowds that had gathered for the golf tournament. And meets a girl.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

723.944

Charmed, Dana Putnam would testify that she spent the entire evening with Stanko, even bringing him home. Then he went to sleep on my couch. That Sunday morning, the two of them went to church together, seen here on the church's weekly broadcast. And over the next couple of days, an unsuspecting Dana Putnam found herself being courted by a cold-blooded killer.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

755.307

Putnam was at work when she got a call from a friend.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

766.593

What'd you see?

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

769.094

Putnam immediately went to the sheriff's department where authorities tapped her cell phone and monitored Stanko's calls.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

782.315

Just five days after killing Henry Turner, Laura Ling, and raping her teenage daughter, unbelievably, Stephen Stanko had romance on his mind.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

798.482

Within hours of this phone call, it was finally over for Stephen Stanko, as US Marshals, SWAT teams, and local authorities surrounded him in a parking lot in Augusta, Georgia. Suddenly, being lovesick was the least of his problems.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

8.071

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

819.341

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

827.223

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

830.384

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

882.25

These are the questions on everyone's mind as Stephen Stanko is on trial for his life.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

893.219

But the man asking them is Stanko's own defense attorney.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

916.272

William Diggs has to try and defend his client against damning evidence.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

942.095

As it turns out, Laura Ling was not the first woman to suffer at the hands of Stephen Stanko.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

954.48

Elizabeth McClendon first met Stanko 14 years ago.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

962.807

Soon after moving in together, McClendon realized Stanko was not the man she thought he was.

48 Hours

The Mind of a Murderer

975.414

Now, prosecutors want the jury to hear her story.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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The judge made a ruling, directed the jury to return verdicts of not guilty.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Barbara Labrador collapsed. She kept saying over and over, where is the justice? Where is the justice? They immediately put handcuffs on him and whisked him out the door.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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A special 48 Hours Mystery. Four young Americans, accustomed to the good life, were enjoying a taste of paradise.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Lois McMillan, their friend and artist, was also there, spending the holidays with her family at their Caribbean retreat. Then, one night, she never came home.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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The unthinkable, Lois's body was found. Something happened and she was out of fear, fleeing from an attacker. Even more shocking, the four friends are arrested, charged with murder.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Their families say they were framed.

48 Hours

Murder in Paradise

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Susan Spencer investigates. Where will the evidence lead? You had apparently bloodstained clothing. There were scratch marks on their arms. William Labrador, the key defendant, speaks out. You do not convict innocent human beings. And a dramatic new twist that will turn this case upside down. A 48 Hours Mystery, Prisoners in Paradise.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

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Is it possible that he was such a good actor he really fooled all the doctors?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

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With millions of dollars and their reputations at stake, Scott Struthers' doctors are fighting back by pointing the blame at Penny's own family.

48 Hours

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Cleveland Clinic attorney Jim Malone says doctors did all they could for both Struthers and the Changs, including taking the extraordinary step of calling the Chang family to tell them of Struthers' release. But was that phone call sending a mixed message? You're discharging him because you think he's safe. Why then do you feel an obligation to inform the Changs?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1091.968

That sounds like you weren't quite sure whether he was safe. Cleveland Clinic psychiatrist George Tessar.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1113.202

So there was a little concern?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1120.584

But the Changs say that phone call led them to believe they no longer had to worry about Struthers.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1147.194

But the hospital left out an important fact. Their assessment of Struthers was only meant for the short term. Did anybody tell the Changs that? Did anybody say, okay, today we think he might not be a risk, but a month down the road, it's anybody's bet and you better be careful.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1172.209

Do you think, in retrospect, that warning was enough for the Changs?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1178.755

Whether or not the warning was adequate is an issue at trial because of what happened nearly three months later. The Changs claimed that phone call is the reason why they didn't become alarmed when out of the blue, Scott Struthers made contact again.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1200.652

This time, it was in the form of emails. Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Mike Tobin.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1214.867

The same angry, rambling emails written in the third person were sent to Penny, her brother, and her father. But the Chengs didn't find them threatening.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1228.154

Nothing dangerous, just anger?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1230.376

Complaining.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1238.24

In fact, the Changs reached out to Struthers after receiving them.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1254.789

When you emailed him, what did you say back?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1262.515

You are ruining yourself. Isn't it possible that Changs were still relying on the word of the hospital three months earlier? He's no longer a threat, and that's why they didn't react to the emails.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1281.224

One month later, just days before the murder, Struthers emailed the Changs again.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1294.627

This time, the Changs didn't read them, thinking they were simply more of Scott's harmless complaints. And I saw nothing dangerous in the first few pages. Had he read further, he would have been horrified. Buried within the 60 pages, Struthers spells out his plan to kill Penny.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1330.543

That's really creepy. He was warning them of what he was going to do and they didn't realize it. I thought he was doing better. Neither did Raina Krell, the therapist who had been treating Struthers at the same time he was writing out his murderous intentions.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1369.81

But Cleveland Clinic attorney Jim Malone says since only the Changs knew about the emails, only the Changs could have prevented their daughter's death by notifying the police.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1396.4

Was part of your strategy to deflect blame away from the hospital and onto the chair?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1422.665

Now it's up to the jury to decide.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1441.506

After just two hours, the jury agrees.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1455.972

The Changs will get nothing from the clinic or the doctors.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1470.431

What should we take from this case?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1491.613

But Dr. Chang still believes the psychiatrist could have done more. And since we first brought you this story, he's filed an appeal for a new trial.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1514.778

What advice would you have for a family that's in your situation?

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1580.872

Energetic meteorologist George Kessler was the top-rated weatherman in Duluth, Minnesota.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

161.595

Outside Cleveland, Ohio, Mathematician C.L. Chang found what he couldn't in his native China, academic freedom and a culturally rich and diverse neighborhood where he and his wife, Yun Hua, could raise their four children.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1613.126

I know. Is that frozen now? Kessler felt right at home in Duluth with his wife, Sheila, and their small children.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1640.503

But for George Kessler, the childlike security would turn into agony and fear in the very town he embraced at the same TV station he loved. It all began to unravel one day in March of 2000 when Kessler arrived for work.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1680.864

The caller was a man Kessler had never met. 42-year-old Sean Wayne Thorson, a psychiatric patient with a reputation for violence.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1730.865

Thorson ignored warnings from police, even a restraining order, to stop making the phone calls. For that, he spent four months in a mental institution. But after he was released, Thorson went straight back to the phone.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

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there was nothing more Kessler or the police could do.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1793.219

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz has spent years investigating and testifying against serial killers and stalkers, including Jeffrey Dahmer and John Hinckley. Dietz says stalking of television news personalities is an occupational hazard that few in the TV industry are willing to discuss.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1819.67

Take a look, satellite picture in motion. And while George Kessler's ordeal wasn't unique, stalkers more frequently target women.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1845.666

Anchorwoman Melanie Moon was a rising star at WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia, when in 1996, she started getting dark, suggestive letters from not one, but several viewers.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

185.679

Joanne Chang, the oldest, loved growing up in Shaker Heights.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1883.157

By the fall of 1997, the FBI was searching for Melanie Moon's stalkers. Then she began hearing from 47-year-old David Lee Duff.

48 Hours

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1914.068

Even after all she'd been through, Melanie Moon didn't think David Lee Duff was out to harm her. After all, he had only sent what she believed were fairly innocent tokens of his affection. But on November 5th, 1997, Duff crossed the line and came to visit Melanie at work. The confrontation was caught on videotape. Duff was told to leave, and he did so without incident.

48 Hours

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Roanoke police then warned him to stop contacting Moon, but the harassment didn't stop.

48 Hours

Stalking Shadows

1954.051

It almost came to that. In March of 1998, Melanie Moon saw her stalker for the first time at the Roanoke City Courthouse.

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So you ready?

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David Lee Duff was convicted of stalking, but all he got was a six-month suspended sentence.

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Joanne is a medical student. Sean is pursuing a master's degree in computer graphics.

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Melanie Moon got out of Roanoke, taking a new job in another city where she's better prepared for unwelcome attention. Tear gas on my key chain. Carrying tear gas on her key chain and a stun gun in her purse.

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It's a warning, Dietz says, that not enough television personalities take seriously.

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Warren, the youngest, is a high school junior. And then there was Penny.

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Minutes later, police arrive at the Wildwood Apartments and make a horrifying discovery. Popular local TV reporter Catherine Detman's nude body on the floor of her bedroom.

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The 36-year-old Detman had been on the verge of an important career move. She was taking a new job at a much larger TV station in Dallas. This would be her last day of small-town life in Temple, Texas.

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How did you name Penny?

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The suspect was 21-year-old neighbor Anthony Gary Silvestri. Police found him hiding in Catherine Dettman's bedroom.

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Friends of Catherine Detman say Silvestri had been stalking her. One co-worker told us Catherine had complained to him that Silvestri was following her at the apartment complex and showing up at her car when she came and left home.

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Yolanda Johnson was a receptionist at the station where Catherine worked and a close friend. She remembers Catherine mentioning Silvestri by name.

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You must have really liked Pennsylvania.

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Paula Brown considered Catherine Detman her best friend. She says Detman was a trusting person and just didn't recognize Silvestri's interests as potentially dangerous.

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Detman's naivete doesn't surprise Park Dietz, who says many on-air personalities aren't even aware they're being stalked.

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And did she speak Chinese very well?

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Anthony Gary Silvestri pled guilty to the murder of Catherine Detman and is serving a 40 years to life prison sentence.

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Police searched Silvestri's apartment and found this pair of binoculars, which they believe he used to spy on Detman. And a friend of Silvestri's told authorities that Silvestri had been watching her.

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In Duluth, Minnesota, weatherman George Kessler heard about what happened to Catherine Detman. Yeah, this is Sean again.

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And after enduring nearly a year of Sean Thorson's menacing phone calls, he made a drastic decision. Kessler quit his job and no longer works in television.

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A child who thrived in her adopted community, where no one would have predicted what happened.

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Mike Tobin, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, says the problems began for the Chang family in the summer of 1998. Penny had a summer job working alongside Scott Struthers, her brother's best friend since middle school. How would you describe Scott back then?

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Penny was a bright and trusting 15-year-old.

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Scott had almost grown up at the Chang house. and went on to become Shawn's college roommate. He's just so nice, and he's just such a close friend of my brother's. Which is why no one was too concerned when Scott and Penny spent a lot of time together, although Penny was only 15 and Scott was 21. Did your parents think anything of it, that they were spending a lot of time together?

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But the family didn't realize how serious Scott's feelings were. Penny was pretty important to him.

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But to Scott Struthers, a family friend, Penny became an obsession. He started stalking her. There were threats.

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Scott Struthers began a journal later that year that described his relationship with Penny.

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There was only one problem.

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When the summer ended and Penny began ignoring Scott, the Cheng family phone began ringing off the hook. How many phone calls?

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Stalking Shadows

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Midnight. Midnight.

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How many phone calls?

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Stalking Shadows

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Days later, the police arrested Scott Struthers, Shaker Heights Police Chief Walter Ugrenic. Would you describe Scott Struthers as a stalker?

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Stalking Shadows

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Scott was arrested, hospitalized. He's in their psychiatric ward writing, how cool will you look when I walk up and blow your brains out? Then the unthinkable. Erin Moriarty has some tough questions. Are the doctors who treated him responsible for Penny's death? Are her parents? And they are the familiar faces on your local news. Are they in danger?

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Struthers was charged with telephone harassment and misdemeanor arson. But right before sentencing, he voluntarily admitted himself to this hospital for observation. Do you think Scott Struthers went to the Cleveland Clinic because he really wanted help?

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Stalking Shadows

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Whatever his motive, Struthers stayed here for five weeks. He was released on Thanksgiving Day, 1998, after doctors determined he was no longer a threat, even though the journal that Struthers began as part of his therapy here contained some very threatening entries.

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The tone of Scott's writing becomes increasingly menacing.

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Three and a half months after being released from the Cleveland Clinic, At 7.30 on a cold March morning, Scott Struthers stalked Penny Chang one more time as she walked to school. He approached her from behind and shot her three times in the back of the head. Penny was rushed to the emergency room, but it was too late.

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This had been a best friend. What was your reaction to that?

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Six months after the shooting, Scott Struthers pled guilty to murder. He's now serving a sentence of 23 years to life.

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But for the Cheng family, Scott isn't the only guilty party. Do you blame someone for Penny's death?

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Stalking Shadows

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For the entire five months prior to Penny's death, Scott Struthers was receiving psychiatric care. First as a patient here at the Cleveland Clinic, and then when he was released from a private therapist. The Changs believe these professionals could and should have stopped Struthers from killing their daughter. They're suing them for $20 million.

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Stalking Shadows

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A stalker chased this reporter out of town.

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Paul Kaufman is the Chang's attorney. What do you see as the biggest failing on the part of Cleveland Clinic?

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Everyone agrees that when Struthers first arrived at the Cleveland Clinic after stalking Penny and facing charges of harassment, he was a severely troubled young man. Do you remember meeting Scott? Yes, I do.

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Dr. Quinn says Struthers exhibited a number of behaviors which made him a significant risk for violence, including severe anger, homicidal thoughts, and a desire to obtain a gun.

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What's more, Struthers made no secret of his desire to kill Penny in his journal. But Struthers appeared to improve, and after just five weeks of treatment, he was discharged, even though hospital records show doctors still had some concerns.

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This reporter never had a chance to run.

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George Tessar was the attending psychiatrist who authorized Struthers' release.

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In an exclusive interview with 48 Hours, Dr. Tessar says he released Struthers only after seeing great improvement in his patient.

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Troy Roberts on being watched a little too closely. What did you want from her?

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According to Tessar, the homicidal thoughts expressed in Scott's journal were all in the past tense. At one point in his journal he writes, basically I was thinking how cool and superior will you look, bitch, when I blow your brains out into the ground. You can just get rid of those feelings a week or two later?

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Stalking Shadows

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Attorney Jim Malone is defending the Cleveland Clinic.

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He says expecting psychiatrists to predict violence that far into the future is expecting too much.

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48 hours investigates to catch a stalker.

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If the Cleveland Clinic couldn't predict that Scott Struthers would become a killer, what about the private therapist who picked up his case and saw him regularly, right up until he bought a gun to kill Penny? Scott Struthers met with Raina Krell regularly for three and a half months. On March 12, 1999, Struthers bought a gun, took it to this shooting range, and practiced firing it.

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Stalking Shadows

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Although he had seen Crowell two days earlier, she saw no sign of his escalating anger. How did Raina Crowell not see that?

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Crowell refused to talk with 48 Hours, but she told the court.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Tony Sirico is the actor best known as Paulie Walnuts of The Sopranos. But 30 years ago, Sirico was a Brooklyn tough guy trying to make it in Hollywood. Here he is in a 1978 movie, Fingers.

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Krista's roommate, who to this day is too frightened to talk publicly, also told detectives that Tony took some of Krista's furs and clothing. At the time, police never questioned Tony.

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But in 2006, when the new detectives took over, they paid him a visit. Have you spoken to him?

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Has he been cooperative?

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According to detectives, Sirico denied going to Krista's apartment and denied he even knew the roommate.

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Years later, most of Krista's missing things did turn up at the home of Krista's closest friend, Lenny Baron, her designer and confidant.

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Police now think it was Lenny who sent Tony Sirico to clean out Krista's apartment to protect her.

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If he had so many of her things, her personal effects, is it possible that he may have been the one who had the audio tapes and the written diary?

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Possible, but Lenny can't tell us. He died about 10 years ago. And Tony Sirico's manager says Tony didn't want to talk to us. But there's another new clue, this time from Krista's friend Darlene, who never spoke with police until now. Right before Krista died, she sent Darlene a postcard with a cryptic message.

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Without Krista Helms' sex diary to guide them, detectives Tom Harris and Larry Brandenburg have had to dig deeper to find people who were involved with her.

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They've discovered that Krista may well have been in over her head.

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So job one has been tracking down all those people Krista socialized with in her two years in Hollywood.

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So far, though, few of them remember much or are saying much.

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Brandenburg and Harris returned to the crime scene with the one witness who is happy to cooperate.

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Okay. 83-year-old retired Los Angeles detective Larry Gansey.

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They're hoping to jog the memory of the original investigator.

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About the night Krista died.

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They also opened the box of evidence Gansey started 31 years ago.

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What strikes you as odd or unusual or interesting about this case?

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Hollywood Secrets

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22 times? Yes. Bludgeoned?

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This doesn't strike you as a random act of violence?

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there was a side to Krista that seemed to provoke people. You sound almost charming. Because while many thought she was a barely passable actress on camera, Off camera, she was an infamous drama queen.

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One of her recurring dramas starred her beautiful and younger sister, Marisa, who learned the hard way the lengths Krista would go to.

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In an apparent jealous rage, Krista cut her sister off and threw her out of the apartment.

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Would she use people? Yes, I would say so. Is that possible that that has played into what happened to her?

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Harrison Brandenburg thinks so, too, and wonder if Krista might finally have crossed the wrong man. As they dig deeper into the case, they find a startling confession of sorts.

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His name, Rudy Mazzella. And he was known for his anything goes parties where Christo was a frequent guest.

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But Mazzella was also a known drug dealer.

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With a bad reputation.

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What was Krista doing with him?

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In this interview in July of 1977, a woman who frequented Mazzella's house told police what she had heard about him.

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And was that followed up on back then?

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With no other evidence tying Mazzello to the crime, the original investigators left it at that.

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And now, three decades later, the cold case squad can only wonder, is there any other lead?

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It does seem like something or someone had Krista spooked. My last visit with her, she had actually said that she was leaving Hollywood. Nicole now believes her mother realized she was in some kind of danger.

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31 years into the Christa Helm case, detectives Larry Brandenburg and Tom Harris have uncovered a long string of boyfriends and girlfriends that Christa left in her wake. They now suspect jealousy may have been a motive in her murder.

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So she had relationships with both men and women. Yes. And felt no compunction or loyalty to be with any one person. No. And no one person was off limits to her.

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The detectives are now focusing on Krista's final stab at fame, a recording session she set up in the winter of 1977.

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They've gotten a first-hand account of the session from backup singer Debbie Danilo. She and Krista became good friends.

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The detectives now believe that the session exploded in a storm of jealousy and betrayal. It began when Krista apparently got involved with the record's producer, well-known DJ Frankie Crocker.

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Debbie also claims Krista was having an affair with the other backup singer. Her name was Patti Collins, and Patti didn't like to share.

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As if things weren't complicated enough, the Sessions' keyboard player, Blair Aronson, has told detectives that he was casually involved with Debbie.

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Then Blair dropped a bombshell. He told detectives that he slept with Krista the night before she died and that Debbie caught him.

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Debbie adamantly denies any involvement with Blair, or that she saw him in bed with Krista. And Blair declined to speak to 48 Hours. But detectives find the entire recording session suspicious, especially since Debbie and Patty were both abruptly pushed out. It seems Patty took the news especially hard.

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When Debbie talked to the original investigators about Krista, she pointed the finger squarely at Patty.

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Just days after Krista's murder, Debbie packed up her entire LA life, disguised herself in a wig, and then made a mad dash out of town.

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Frankie Crocker is now dead. Still, the Colquet squad is left to wonder, could Krista's killer have been a woman? It just seems like a pretty violent, really vicious attack for a woman.

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Then investigators get a break. One of Krista's fingernails, preserved for three decades, yields DNA.

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Even more intriguing, that DNA is from another woman. Did you try to match the DNA to a specific person?

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One of those people is Debbie Danilo. Do you consider Debbie Danilo a suspect?

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Debbie Danilo put Hollywood and Krista Helm behind her many years ago. But she never really got over the murder that struck so close to home.

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Krista Helms' daughter, Nicole, doesn't want us to mention her last name or reveal where she lives because her mother's killer has never been caught.

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But detectives Harris and Brandenburg didn't just want Debbie's memories, they wanted her DNA. And what they really wanted to know was if it matched the scrapings they had found under Krista's fingernails.

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So now I'm letting go. There is no other evidence tying Debbie to the murder either, and she has told police she had nothing to do with it.

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Hollywood Secrets

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With the help of an anonymous tip, the Colquet squad finally tracked down the woman they believe was Krista's girlfriend, Patty Collins.

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Patty was happy to talk to the detectives and willingly gave them a DNA sample. But they were stunned by what she had to say.

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Not only that, Patty claimed she was never in Southern California.

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But not until they get the DNA results and confirm her identity. Meanwhile, they'll go after other leads.

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Hollywood Secrets

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The Colquet squad's best lead might turn out to be the oldest lead of all. And it comes from the man who first worked the Christahelm case, 83-year-old Larry Gansey.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Remember, Sal Mineo was murdered a year before Krista on the same day, and in the same way, a stabbing, and in the same neighborhood.

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Hollywood Secrets

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The man ultimately convicted of Mineo's killing was 21-year-old Lionel Williams, and he was thought to be in jail at the time of Krista's murder. But the cold case squad recently learned that Williams wasn't arrested until after Krista's death. Even more surprising, he was never questioned about Krista's death.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Shortly afterwards, Gansey and his partner were reassigned, and then Gansey left the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for good. That's when the Krista Helm case went cold.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Meanwhile, Lionel Williams served 12 years for the murder of Salminio. In 1990, he was released from prison.

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Hollywood Secrets

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So after sifting through all the drama of Krista Helms' life, the myriad lovers, the diary and the sex tapes, the tales of jealousy and betrayal, could it really be that detectives will discover that Krista was simply the victim of a random, late-night street robbery at the hands of a career criminal?

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Hollywood Secrets

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Krista's daughter, Nicole, now 40, hopes that discovering the truth about the murder will finally bring solace. She was 13 years younger than I am right now, and she died. All Nicole has to remember her mother by are a scrapbook, a couple of B movies, and the stuff nightmares are made of.

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But Nicole still has a child's hope that justice will somehow be served, even after all this time.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Krista Helm had the kind of story that Hollywood legends are made from. Smart, sexy, and stunningly beautiful. She was the classic small-town girl with a big Hollywood dream. Krista was determined to become a star, and she had the energy and unyielding ambition to make it happen.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Darlene Thorson was Krista's lifelong friend.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Not even a shotgun wedding when Krista was just 17 years old. She was a teenager.

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Hollywood Secrets

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That was back in 1967. Nicole came along a few months later. But within a couple of years, Nicole's young and ambitious mother grew restless and took off to follow her dream. The first stop, the bright lights of New York, where she found work as a model. Taking the city by storm would be impossible with a toddler in tow, so Nicole was left behind in the care of a good friend.

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Hollywood Secrets

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But Krista promised mother and daughter would one day be together.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Until then, Nicole was a visitor in her mother's life.

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Hollywood Secrets

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Her motto good looks and splashy personality made Krista unnatural for New York's party scene in the early 70s.

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Krista's sister, Marisa Rahm, was also a sometime actress. She was often at Krista's side. Very driven, very ambitious, really, yeah. One of the first people Krista met in New York was a wealthy patron of the arts named Stuart Duncan. He took an interest in Krista's career, opening doors for her.

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Krista also picked up a fancy new best friend for life. a flamboyant New York clothing designer named Lenny Baron.

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Hollywood Secrets

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And then in 1973, Krista got the break she'd been waiting for. Stuart Duncan gave her a starring role in a movie called Let's Go for Broke.

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Hollywood Secrets

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The movie opened up in Cincinnati in 1974 and promptly closed in just four days. Undeterred, a few months later, Krista headed straight for Hollywood. But there's only going to be one winner in this contest and you're looking at her. She landed bit roles in Wonder Woman.

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And Starsky and Hutch.

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Nicole remembers visiting her mother at a Beverly Hills home.

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That mansion belonged to a famous financier, Bernie Kornfeld, who was once profiled by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

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Krista was not only ambitious and adventurous, she also liked to keep score. Her friends say she kept a secret sex diary complete with a rating system.

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Hollywood Secrets

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While Krista partied in Hollywood, Nicole prepared for that much talked about mother-daughter reunion. But it would never happen. Krista Helm was stabbed to death.

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Actor John Grise was 19 then. He was staying at his mother's house just down the street from where Krista was attacked.

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Grise stood in his yard but didn't hear anything more or see anything and went back inside.

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Turns out Grise had his own connection with Krista.

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As the detectives started to investigate, they soon realized the case would be very difficult. With Krista's complicated life, there were plenty of people who might want to kill her.

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At first, detectives thought Krista Helms' murder, that night back in 1977, might be connected to another sensational killing, the stabbing of actor Sal Mineo, best known for co-starring with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. The papers had a field day with the similarities. Krista had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death in front of her agent's house in West Hollywood.

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Mineo was murdered one year earlier on the very same day, February 12th, in the very same neighborhood. There were no known witnesses in either case. But the Sal Mineo lead fizzled. The suspect in his murder was believed to be in jail when Krista was killed.

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The 21-year-old murder suspect had to say in his jail cell when advised of his charges... So detectives started to look more closely at Krista's celebrity-studded love life and her infamous diary. Research, perhaps, for a tell-all book.

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But Krista's scandalous diary had vanished. It may have been in her purse, which was missing from the crime scene. With that crucial piece of evidence gone, investigators hit a string of dead ends.

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Nicole mourned the loss of her mother and the life they were supposed to have together. She raised her own family in the Northeast, but a few years ago, she felt compelled to find out what really happened.

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After years of pressure from Nicole, a new generation of detectives took the case. Larry Brandenburg and Tom Harris are L.A. Sheriff's Department hotshots, homicide detectives with the Cold Case Unit. How do you go about investigating a murder that occurred three decades ago?

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Krista's written diary wasn't the only way she kept track of that long list of lovers. It turns out Krista was tape recording her sexcapades with all those celebrity boyfriends.

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There's a well-known list of people? Can you tell us any of those names?

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How significant do you consider those tapes?

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Nothing but pleasure. Because those sex tapes could have supplied a motive for someone to kill Krista.

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Her friend Darlene warned her against making the tapes.

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But here's a shocker. Just like Krista's diary, most of those tapes have also disappeared. The hunt for the missing tapes has led detectives to another new twist. It's an angle right out of The Sopranos.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

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A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. How much do you make? Who paid for that fancy dinner? What did your house actually cost? On every episode of What We Spend, a different guest opens up their wallets, opens up their lives, really, and tells us all about their finances. For one week, they tell us everything they spend their money on.

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This is a podcast about all the ways money comes into our lives and then leaves again, which of course we all have a lot of feelings about. I really want these things. I want to own a house. I want to have a child. But this morning, I really wanted a coffee. Because whatever you are buying or not buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance.

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A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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I'm Courtney Harrell, and this is What We Spend. Listen to and follow What We Spend, an Odyssey original podcast. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

677.717

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Preacher's Secret, Part 2

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 2

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Two wigs, a gun, and a murder.

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Two Wigs and A Gun Pt 2

2381.166

Piper Roundtree became eligible for parole in 2020. Her first parole petition was denied. Tina Roundtree died in 2020.

48 Hours

A Toxic Relationship

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Mark, there's no question about that. And the only person that could have done that was you.

48 Hours

A Toxic Relationship

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What can you tell me to disprove that? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I don't know. I honestly don't know.

48 Hours

A Toxic Relationship

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The Letter. Tonight's 48-Hours Mystery.

48 Hours

The Imposter

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New CBS Saturday. A young girl found dead in a swamp.

48 Hours

The Imposter

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A decades-old mystery with a surprising answer.

48 Hours

The Imposter

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48 Hours is all new. CBS Saturday, 10, 9 Central and streaming on Paramount+.

48 Hours

Coerced Confessions

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Tonight, new evidence is pointing toward another suspect in the murder.

48 Hours

Coerced Confessions

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The most shocking news of all is that police may have had this evidence all along.

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Coerced Confessions

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We are Theresa and Nemo and that's why we switched to Shopify.

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Coerced Confessions

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Finally, our Nemo Boards shop also makes a good impression on mobile devices. And the illustrations on the boards are now much, much clearer, which is also important to us and what also makes up our brand.

48 Hours

The Black Dahlia Mystery

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And this is Hollywood Boulevard, the business and theater center of the film capital.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

2514.528

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

2522.413

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

2525.575

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

665.347

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

673.228

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

676.389

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

A Family Affair

8.071

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

0.825

Nestled in the far reaches of Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, you can find a chain of gorgeous, tranquil islands.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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and her new lover.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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Throughout this case, detectives wondered, who was the hunter and who was the hunted?

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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We don't have the truth yet. We have some of the truth, but we don't have all of it.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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I'm Peter Van Sant. From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

18.495

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

42.93

The scene was at the house of a popular dog trainer named Mark Stover.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes and the dog trainer to the stars. He could speak dog. They knew that he knew them.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

58.271

There was blood on Mark's driveway and blood on the floor throughout his house, but there was no sign of Mark.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

9.93

It's so beautiful, but it's changed for me now. I don't... It's marred.

48 Hours

Introducing Trained to Kill

94.331

A love triangle between Mark Stover. He couldn't control his obsession. You know, he chronicled his obsession. This is war. This is goddamn war. You've worked my life enough. An heiress who wanted a new life.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Detective Jonathan Vander Lee says the pressure was on to locate any evidence of what happened after Christy and Hilda met David Pierce that night.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Police did have some luck, starting with this footage from outside that warehouse party, which they say shows the women leaving with Pierce, Osborne, and a friend of theirs, 47-year-old Michael Ansbach, on their way to Pierce's apartment. Police also uncovered this text exchange from moments earlier when the women were still inside that party. Do you want Coke, asks Hilda. Yes, replies Christy.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1075.668

Hilda texted back, I'm in the kitchen, let's do a line. Witnesses say Pierce supplied that cocaine, which Jan says was not a common choice for Christy.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Police determined the group arrived at Pierce's apartment a little after 5 a.m. The women aren't seen again until 11 hours later when, at 4.30 in the afternoon, A security camera recorded this grainy image showing Pierce with Christy over his shoulder at the top of the stairs. Police say Osborne is carrying her bag.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1117.211

35 minutes later at the hospital, Pierce, wearing a black sweatshirt, helps take Christy's body out of the car. Osborne looks on. A full hour and a half later, this dark image shows the men leaving the apartment again, with Hilda. Police say Pierce is carrying her, and Osborne has her boots and coat.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1143.726

Half an hour later, the Prius arrives at that second hospital, where the men take Hilda out of the car together. It had been more than 13 hours since Christie texted Hilda, let's go. For two weeks, Hilda was on life support. With no hope of regaining consciousness, her family gathered to say their goodbyes.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1223.53

the family decided to donate Hilda's organs. Her mom remembers the medical staff lining the halls as the family accompanied Hilda to the OR.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Like Christy, Hilda had suffered a drug overdose. Toxicology reports would later reveal that she had cocaine, MDMA or ecstasy, and elevated levels of fentanyl in her system. Police would also learn that while the women were in that apartment, the downstairs neighbor heard someone in pain and moaning on and off for six hours. Police believe that was Hilda.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1279.465

Neither Pierce nor Osborne nor Ansbach called for help.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1312.057

But the district attorney at the time went public, asking other women who knew Pierce to call in so police could better understand what he did to Hilda and Christy.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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As police continued building their case, Jan received a call that Pierce and Osborne were on the move. He recorded this video of the men loading up a moving van the day after Hilda died. Police say Pierce had also changed his phone number and it took them a week to locate him again. So the pressure is on. You got to get this guy. I got to come up with something quick, yes.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1369.702

On December 15th, 2021, David Pierce, Brant Osborne, and Michael Ansbach were arrested in connection with Hilda and Christy's deaths. The detectives still knew next to nothing about what had happened inside that apartment. Vander Lee says they decided to take a gamble and bring the men in. This is the only way we're going to get the info we need.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Once the men were in custody, police conducted interviews with them one by one.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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They secretly recorded Pierce and Osborne while Ansbach was talking to police.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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When it was his turn, Pierce denied giving the women drugs.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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This was suspicious because information that the women had likely died from fentanyl had not been released. I knew these girls died from fentanyl, but nobody else knew. Two months after his arrest, Ansbach reached out to police with details of what he says he witnessed that night.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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He says Piers had offered the women a ride to an after-party and then said he needed to make a quick stop at his house. Ansbach says Pierce was very insistent they stay and have a drink, and after the women talked about leaving, Pierce gave all three of them so-called special cocaine.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1466.279

Ansbach says he, Christy, and Hilda got sick immediately, and when he woke up hours later, he saw Christy without any signs of life. Ansbach says he told Pierce to take Christy and Hilda to the hospital and says Pierce then said repeatedly, quote, dead girls don't talk.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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But police had at least one woman who could talk about David Pierce at his upcoming trial.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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January 9th, 2025, opening arguments begin in the trial of David Pierce, charged with felony murder, and Bran Osborn, charged with accessory after the fact.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Prosecutor Catherine Mariano has marshaled the forensic evidence to make her case. The toxicology results that found fentanyl in both women and the date rape drug GHB in Christy. Also, Pierce's DNA discovered on Christy's body and under Hilda's fingernails.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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But in order to prove felony murder, she must show that Pierce incapacitated Christy and Hilda to rape them. Without their testimony, she needs to establish he had a history of doing this to other women, putting drugs in their drinks, and then sexually assaulting them.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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But defense attorney Jeff Vahl says the fact that Christy and Hilda were using drugs before meeting Pierce that night means there is no case for murder.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Vall is sixth in a long line of lawyers who have represented David Pierce in this case. He knows his client is problematic.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Mariano has her own version of who David Pierce is, based on the accounts of the women who talked to investigators and chose to be anonymous.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Jackie is Jane Doe number two. No cameras were allowed in the courtroom for any of the testimony, but she agreed to talk with us about her experience with Pierce in 2010 when she was a 24-year-old law student looking for a room to rent. She testified about her meeting with Pierce at his apartment on West Olympic Boulevard, where he gave her a tour and offered a drink.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1721.796

According to Jackie, he continued to assault her.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1728.94

When she tried to take her phone out, he grabbed her arm so hard the phone flew and smashed into the wall. Unsteady on her feet and unable to call for help, she did everything she could to escape.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1754.563

Though seriously injured and traumatized, she did not report it.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1764.389

But when she heard about Christy and Hilda, she decided to act. In all, 20 women came forward. Pierce was charged with seven sexual assaults. Detective Calvin Yu thinks that's just a fraction of those who suffered at the hands of David Pierce.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1810.872

And as the women testified one by one, defense attorney Voll could see what was happening. The prosecution strategy was working.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1840.011

After the Jane Does testified, the prosecution called Pierce's friend, Michael Ansbach, who was in the apartment that night and later arrested along with Pierce and Osborne. Ansbach took this video of Christy and Hilda minutes after Pierce gave them wine and cocaine at the apartment.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1866.477

In his testimony, Ansbach again said he also used the same cocaine, got violently ill, and then passed out. When he woke up, he said, Pierce asked him to check on Christy, and when he did, Ansbach said, it looked like she was not breathing. Hilda, he said, was in Pierce's bedroom. According to Ansbach, this is when Pierce told him, dead girls don't talk.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1895.703

Like Pierce and Osborne, Ansbach never called for help. His charges were later dropped. On day 11, and against the advice of his attorney, David Pierce, who pleaded not guilty, was sworn in and testified.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1926.269

On the 12th day, Pierce's roommate, Brant Osborne, who also pleaded not guilty, takes the stand.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1949.739

Osbourne testified he was dumbfounded by Pearce's behavior and was emotional, crying more than once on the stand, saying he played no part in a cover-up because he didn't have a complete picture of what was really going on. Jan, for one, was not buying it.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

1981.31

The question is whether the jury will believe either man. After three weeks, the trial took a toll on Christie's family.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2014.716

In closing, Prosecutor Mariano hits back at the defense. Just because Christy and Hilda did drugs on their own that night doesn't make them responsible for their own deaths. David Pierce took care of that, Mariano argued.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2040.754

And she repeats the words of Ansbach attributed to David Pierce, the words that rang in the ears of everyone who loved Christy and Hilda.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2060.763

Attorneys for Osborne and Pierce told jurors there simply was not enough direct evidence linking them to the crime and that there's a strong case for reasonable doubt. Now it's up to the jury to draw its own conclusion about Brandt Osborne and David Pierce. Justy Giles made her decision a long time ago.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2113.055

For Christie's family, it's been a long and wrenching road to get here.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2131.045

And for Hilda's mother, who could not travel to be in court, the last three years without her daughter have been its own trial.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2151.658

February 4th, 2025, after two days of deliberations, the jury is back.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2173.049

David Pierce, guilty.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2190.524

And then guilty of all the sexual assaults of seven Jane Does.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

221.457

And in November 2021, Detective Jonathan Vander Lee and Detective Calvin Yu had to figure out why a lifeless woman was left at this emergency room. This video from Southern California Hospital shows staff pulling a woman out of a black Prius and helping her onto a stretcher while two men look on. When the stretcher moves into the ER, it becomes clear the car has no license plates.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2223.956

But the jury is deadlocked when it comes to Brant Osborne. A mistrial is declared.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2278.926

Now there's an unbreakable bond between the mothers who must live without their daughters.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2299.939

And before she leaves the courthouse, there is a final plea from Dusty.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

2359.54

Two young women who loved their families, their animals, and their lives.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

254.353

Detective Vander Lee would later learn that the two men told the staff they found the woman, quote, passed out on the curb somewhere nearby, and they were trying to be good Samaritans. They left without giving their names or phone numbers. They were masked, disguised.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

282.099

The woman was Christy Giles, and her mother, Dusty, will never forget the call that came from the hospital, telling her her 24-year-old daughter was dead from a drug overdose.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

304.024

Two hours later, at a hospital just two miles away, a second woman was left at another emergency room by the same two men, also in a black Prius and wearing masks.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

324.545

That was Hilda Marcela Cabrales. The 26-year-old architect was still alive in the ICU and fighting for her life. And in Durango, Mexico, her mother, Hilda Marcela Plascencia, was getting the news about her eldest daughter and namesake.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

357.799

And in the earliest hours of the investigation, there were only questions. How could this happen to Christy? It was an unimaginable ending to a life bursting with exuberance.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

373.632

Christy was an adventurer, traveling the world as a high-fashion model for Wilhelmina. She ultimately made LA her home.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

387.651

At 21, her life took a dramatic turn. She met Jan Sillier, a South African-born artist, photographer, and special effects editor, 17 years her senior. They'd been together seven months when the couple went to Burning Man, an arts festival in the Nevada desert, where impulsively, they took a big leap.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

423.984

After they got married, Christy started studying interior design in Los Angeles, which led to a new friendship with Hilda Marcella. Hilda had just moved there to start her dream job, recalls her father, Luis.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

446.258

No one was surprised that the cum laude graduate of the prestigious university in Monterrey, Mexico, was thriving in LA, especially her sister Fernanda.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

470.649

Dancing, as this video shows, is what the two friends were doing that night. Christy's husband, Jan, was out of town visiting his father. He knew she and Hilda had planned a girls' night out, starting at Soho House and then on to a warehouse party after midnight to see a favorite DJ. A friend who was with them said they did ketamine, a popular club drug.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

496.769

But by the next day, Jan was on his way home, knowing Christy was gone.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

510.234

Hilda's father and mother rushed to be by her side. When they arrived, they found their daughter on life support.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

550.592

Christy's autopsy revealed that in addition to ketamine, she had cocaine, fentanyl, and GHB, known as the date rape drug, in her system.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

573.191

Jan needed answers, so he began to build a timeline based on the digital trail Christy left behind. Information gathered from her messages and phone, which he was able to track.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

588.881

He already knew what she'd been doing before she went out for the evening.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

614.643

Jan was able to track Christy's phone to a residence located at 8641 West Olympic Boulevard. At 5.30 a.m., Christy sends Hilda a wide-eye emoji and says, let's go. Hilda replies, I'll call an Uber. Ten minutes away.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

640.884

That was the last text message that Christy or Hilda ever sent. That Uber arrived, waited five minutes, and drove away empty.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

696.002

Acting on information supplied by Yon, LAPD detective Jonathan Vanderley and his partner headed here to 8641 West Olympic Boulevard a little after midnight on November 14th, only a few hours after getting that call from the second hospital.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

727.879

It was the home of 39-year-old David Pierce. Police would learn Christy and Hilda had met him for the first time at that warehouse party. Police also discovered Pierce had a registration for a black Prius and found it parked behind the building. It matched the car seen at both hospitals down to the black rims. Pierce lived on the second floor with a roommate, Brant Osborne, 42.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

774.545

After about 15 minutes, he says, Pierce and Osborne came out. Pierce denied owning a Prius.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

789.77

At first, he says, Osbourne denied seeing Christy and Hilda at all.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

807.421

Vander Lee says Osborn eventually admitted the women had been at their apartment, but said he'd been asleep and when he woke up, realized Christy and Hilda were in distress. He said he and Pierce chose to go to two separate hospitals because, quote, we didn't know how it would look. Pierce, police say, did later admit he owned the Prius, but lied again, saying his license plates had been stolen.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

834.998

Vander Lee says he saw those plates on the ground by the vehicle. Then the men agreed to let detectives inside.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

862.025

By now, Vanderley says he knew Pierce and Osborne had dropped Hilda and Christy off and believed Pierce had drugged them, but he didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest. He thought he beat us that night for sure. He was happy. He smiled and said goodbye? Yeah.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

881.687

No, not by a long shot. Vander Lee knew he needed more evidence and turned to his colleague, Detective Calvin Yu. You hear the name David Pierce. What goes on in your mind?

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

900.851

Detective Yu had investigated Pierce in 2020 for sexually assaulting a 19-year-old.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

911.67

The victim said Pierce had given her drugs to knock her out during a date, but the investigation had stalled and wasn't prosecuted at the time. Detective Yu knew Pierce had other prior charges, including another rape charge from 2014 that was also not prosecuted.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

946.489

Pierce relies on lies, detectives say, to set his trap.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

964.195

They say his next step is to drug his victims and incapacitate them, often with a drink.

48 Hours

"Dead Girls Don't Talk"

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Police would learn both Christy and Hilda showed signs of sexual assault, but they feared they would face challenges making the case.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits murder.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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One day I will get to see Kevin again, yeah, in heaven and when everything is made right. I thank Ms. Liu and Mr. Jiang for raising such a fine young man and for bringing him into the world.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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If this world falls apart, it will be all right because we have each other's hearts.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

18.865

What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

23.587

Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

2340.024

To charge the mother of Penn 35 years in prison is too short and too light.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

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I wanted to address Pan specifically. Although your sentence is far less than you deserve, there is also mercy. May God have mercy on you, and may he have mercy on all of us.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

5.16

Gather your people. We're gonna need every one of them.

48 Hours

The Ivy League Murder

8.361

In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount+.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1009.606

Did you feel like your moods were up and down too during the time you were getting those shots? No. Do the shots affect your mood?

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1018.728

Renard had already told police the two were arguing on that fatal night.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1027.81

And what'd you say to her?

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1031.158

Security footage in the Spivey's home recorded some of the couple's movements.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1050.969

Renard says he was curious why Patricia was hiding her phone from him. After they went to bed, thinking that his wife was asleep, he says he grabbed her phone from her nightstand and brought it into the closet.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1080.601

Bernard says Patricia followed him into the closet with a gun.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1108.433

Tension between Renard and his wife Patricia turned frightening, he says.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1118.142

When Patricia threatened him with his gun.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1148.976

Renard says he tried to do just that, and things unfolded quickly.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1178.469

Two more times, he says. Patricia was hit in the chest and then hit by another bullet in her arm, as illustrated in the CBS News animation based on defense theory.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1190.256

We're certain that the first shot that hit her went into her left chest, through her lungs and into her heart. We think that the second shot that hit her, hit her in the right arm and went basically in and out of the bicep and then into her upper right chest.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1209.727

But former prosecutor Lisa Andrews says it is not certain that only two shots struck her. The medical examiner thought it was possible Patricia's wounds were the result of three shots, one to the left chest, one to the right arm, and a third to her right chest.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1233.698

One shot is an accident. Three shots? Well, I mean, that's the question, right? Investigators poured over the home surveillance. Three gunshots are heard clearly. But authorities suspected Renard actually fired the gun four times. Three bullets fired at Patricia, and then one Renard would have fired at himself, wounding his leg to make it seem that Patricia shot him.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1268.154

Investigators identified one piece of sound. You can hear it over the alarm ringing. Now this next clip picks up the tap. They say it's the gunshot recorded about a minute and a half after the three other shots. Different sound, different sound. There was a reason they say it sounds different than the others.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1304.464

Renard Spivey denies there was a fourth gunshot.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1314.284

Renard's attorneys, Dick and Michael DeGaran, also listened to that surveillance tape.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1323.108

They say the sound most likely is the click of another camera in the room being activated.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1329.511

And keep in mind, there were three empty cartridges that were found.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1335.433

But Lisa Andrews says there were other things that could point to Renard's guilt, like his call to 911.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

135.049

whose finger was on the trigger.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1373.86

It took Renard two and a half minutes to say he accidentally shot his wife.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1399.42

But Renard says he wasn't hiding anything.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1410.905

It's on... You can hear the strain in his voice, so you know he's in pain. He was confused and probably going into shock.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1423.37

But there are other things on that tape that caught Andrew's attention.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1443.29

You can hear what sounds like Renard doing chest compressions.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1449.295

But a little while later, you can see on the home security cameras, Renard takes a break without mentioning it to the 911 operator.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1478.308

Renard says he went to unlock the garage door to make sure medics could get to his wife as soon as possible.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

152.18

This is the actual gun. It's cocked now. There is no external safety on this gun. And so any slight pull of the trigger We caused it to go off.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1520.737

Renard's twin sister is not surprised her brother was emotional.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1534.244

But Patricia's close friend Ezra Washington says just two days before Patricia died, she told him she was fed up with Renard's controlling ways and his suspected steroid use, which she blamed for the lack of intimacy in their relationship.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1557.802

Ezra says on the day of the shooting, he had multiple phone conversations with Renard and that Renard told him they were getting a divorce. Ezra claims he confronted Renard about steroids.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1586.969

Ezra says he told Renard to just leave the home, but Renard made a comment about Patricia not getting the house.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1599.452

Ezra says he feels guilty for not reaching out to Patricia to warn her that night.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1607.114

But he told authorities about his conversations with Renard.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1615.638

As Petrina and Sybil waited for the case to go to trial, they had arrived at the same conclusion with Ezra, that Renard had intentionally shot and killed Patricia.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1634.574

But Renard Spivey's loved ones were convinced he would walk out a free man.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1663.627

As Patricia Spivey's family waited for their day in court, the coronavirus pandemic stalled the proceedings. Four and a half years passed by.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1676.03

Renard remained under house arrest, but after some time, his lawyer successfully filed a motion to remove his ankle monitor, and Renard joined the world of dating apps.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1697.754

On November 28, 2023, Renard Spivey was back in court, this time not as a bailiff, but as the accused facing a life sentence if convicted.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1715.22

The state told the jury Renard shot Patricia intentionally after she threatened to leave their marriage.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

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But according to Spivey's attorneys, this was simply a case of self-defense.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1737.858

Self-defense fits because she was threatening him with a gun, and he grabbed her wrist and the gun in his own defense.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1747.703

They say what happened next was an accident.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1751.055

It was an unintentional discharge of the gun. Several discharges of the gun. When he told me what kind of gun it was, I'd had experience with that particular model of a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic. You have it right there. There is no external safety. on this gun. So if someone's finger is on that trigger, all it takes is a slight pressure and it goes off.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1783.43

With someone that's gripping and trying to wrestle with the gun, that's enough pressure to engage the trigger and to fire the gun.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1792.135

Dick DeGaran says once fired, the semi-automatic reloads itself instantaneously.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1798.624

It recharges in split seconds. Each time it's fired, it's ready to fire again.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1804.738

We went with DeGaran to the doorway of the closet in Spivey's house. It's a pretty sizable closet.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1809.782

It's like a big closet.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1812.064

Where he showed us what he says happened.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1814.606

He saw that she had her finger on the trigger. With his left hand, he grabbed her right wrist and put his right hand on the top of the gun to force it down. And she pulled back away from me. And when she did that, it shot, hit him in the left thigh. And as they fell, he grabbed her again and grabbed the gun and tried to twist it out of her hand. Her left hand came off. Okay, left hand comes off.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1845.384

And the gun went off again and shot her in the chest.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1849.709

Then Dick Aaron says the gun went off one more time and the third shot hit Patricia in the arm.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1856.775

Her hand by that time was in relationship to her body, almost vertical to her body. That's why when the bullet went in, it went in by her elbow, came back out and went into her chest.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1869.368

DeGarren says the powder burn mark on Renard's right hand proves he grabbed the gun as Patricia fired.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1876.516

When the gun fires, This is where the gunpowder that's been fired comes out, and that's what burned his right hand.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1885.663

But there was something that puzzled the prosecutors, and they raised it at trial.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1890.705

She's laying on the floor. In Renard's telling, he and Patricia were fighting at the entrance of the closet. But Patricia's body was found deep inside the closet. Prosecutors believe it was because he cornered her.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1907.811

Well, it ended up over in about the area that you are. But then after.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1914.613

Because that's where they fell. Where she fell.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1916.973

At trial, the defense team painted Patricia as the aggressor. And they point to her Internet activity that evening to demonstrate, they say, that her frustration with her husband was building. At 2.49 a.m., Patricia posted this meme on Facebook. Characterize people by their actions and you will never be fooled by their words. At 2.59 a.m., Patricia is seen on camera for the last time.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

192.695

Natalie Morales reports. Deputy Spivey on trial.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1946.79

At 3.01 a.m., prosecutors suspect Patricia had enough and you can make out her saying the words, it's the same thing over and over again. But DeGaran says it is not clear what Patricia really meant.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1966.865

Maybe that's what she said, but what did it mean? It's ambiguous. What is she complaining about over and over again?

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1974.09

At 3.03 a.m., Renard is seen in the kitchen, and then he goes into the bedroom. Four minutes later, at 3.07, you hear those three gunshots.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

199.62

It was just after 3 a.m. in the warm Houston summer of 2019 when first responders arrived at Renard and Patricia Spivey's home and found 52-year-old Patricia dead in the closet from multiple gunshot wounds.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1993.001

They were in quick succession, inside of four seconds.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

1996.704

And at trial, Renard Spivey told the jury his wife Patricia was the one firing.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2010.575

DeGaran says there is no evidence to contradict that. He says that a crime scene technician acknowledged at trial that the trigger was never separately swabbed for DNA.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2020.64

She said, well, I was afraid that the gun would go off again. Now that tells you how dangerous that gun was.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2027.626

But Petrina says her mom was not the type of person who would pull a gun on anyone.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2038.235

Instead, Petrina believes her mom was in the closet that night because she was packing.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2049.79

Prosecutors had Ezra Washington tell the jury about those phone conversations with Renard, where Renard talked about his frustrations.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2066.291

But the prosecutors ran into a problem. They say Ezra told them he spoke to Renard using apps on his phone, and they were unable to find records of those calls. DeGarren says he doesn't believe those conversations ever took place.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2089.636

I wouldn't call him a key witness, particularly when we were able to show that there was no record of those calls.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2100.882

I mean, why would he make that up?

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2104.123

And Renard says he had no reason to kill his wife.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2121.827

As the case went to the jury, no one knew who the jurors were going to believe.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2140.43

If you were on the jury, what would be the most important evidence in this case? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X. I've never stopped having hope and have faith.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2158.083

On December 6th, 2023, after 12 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury in Renard Spivey's murder trial reached a verdict.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2176.685

Happy anniversary. Not guilty.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2199.673

Renard's sister, Renee, was relieved.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2215.101

But she says there were no winners.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2228.01

On the other side of the aisle, Patricia's family and friends say they couldn't believe the jury's decision.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2252.386

Renard's attorney says the jurors just weren't convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that his client was the one who fired that gun.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2260.99

I think was very important to the jury that the prosecution never proved whose finger was on the trigger. And it's very important because the prosecution has a burden of proof. And the gun was so important. The fact that it's such a dangerous design of a gun that will go off so easily.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

229.844

Her husband, Renard, had a bullet in his leg. He told officers the two had been arguing and fighting over a gun when it fired.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2299.363

Since the trial, Patricia's family say they've had a hard time processing their loss.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2369.195

Renard says since his acquittal, he has been active in his community.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2383.139

Leaning on his family and friends.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

2403.842

But, he says, he still misses his wife.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

243.464

Renard Spivey, a sheriff's deputy with Harris County, worked as a bailiff in courts. And played a bailiff on TV for Justice for All with Judge Cristina Perez. Renard didn't say much more about what happened. Police detained him and had him transported to a hospital. Patricia's 83-year-old father, who suffered from dementia, was also living with the Spiveys.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

284.114

He was sleeping when the gunshots erupted.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

293.698

First responders on the scene wondered how a gun could go off multiple times by accident.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

303.841

That's what I'm saying. And why a man of Renard's size, around 6'3 and weighing around 290 pounds, would need to struggle with his smaller wife to take control over a gun.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

335.482

Petrina Marshall, Patricia's daughter from a previous relationship, arrived at the scene.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

350.356

Petrina says an officer told her her mother had died during a struggle with her husband.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

380.182

Petrina says she regrets not seeing her mom for one last time.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

395.247

Petrina never thought her mother's life would end this way. Her mother fell quickly for Renard.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

405.033

And it was Patricia's first marriage, Renard's third.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

412.557

Five years after Patricia's death, Renard shared with us his feelings for Patricia.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

426.261

Renard had popped the question in 2013 after Patricia pointed at a ring she liked at a store.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

439.364

And she said yes right away.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

445.351

And then they built their dream house, a 3,000 square foot home with a three car garage. But within a few hours of Patricia's death, Renard found himself under suspicion for murder. At the hospital, detectives wanted to interview Renard, but he refused. He would later tell us why.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

477.779

While investigators tried to figure out how exactly the shooting unfolded, the medical examiner was conducting an autopsy on Patricia. According to the report, Patricia had multiple gunshot entry and exit wounds. The fatal shot piercing through her lungs and heart. 48 Hours consultant and former prosecutor Lisa Andrews reviewed the case for us.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

514.63

On July 29th, 2019, Renard Spivey was charged with his wife's murder.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

534.119

Renard's twin sister, Renee Spivey Frazier, says she found out her brother was arrested when she got a call from a relative.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

547.472

Renard's friend Gerald Graham, who Renard has mentored over the years, couldn't believe it either.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

55.839

Renard Spivey was a longtime deputy sheriff.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

570.049

Renard Spivey hired prominent criminal defense attorneys, brothers Dick and Mike DeGaran and Mike's son, Michael DeGaran.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

588.297

We wanted to see if there was anything there to provide a motive for wanting her to be harmed or dead or that there was trouble in the relationship. It was a very loving relationship, as I could tell.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

60.362

And the deceased was his wife, Pat or Patricia Spivey. Spivey, who also worked for a time as a TV judge show bailiff, is now charged with his wife's murder.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

607.682

It looked like she went to bed angry. He did not.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

626.64

48 hours after he was charged with the murder of his wife, Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Renard Spivey posted bond, $50,000.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

639.895

And returned to the house he used to share with Patricia, where investigators believed he intentionally shot her.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

657.619

Renard Spivey insists his wife's death was an accident.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

670.343

But Renard never gave a statement to police about how the events unfolded that night. And Patricia's family questioned the circumstances around her death and why Renard was free on bond. Patricia's cousin, Sybil Shepherd.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

699.655

Patricia's loved ones call her the caregiver of the family.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

72.22

There was a lot of publicity because he had been on a very popular reality TV show, Justice for All with Christina Perez.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

722.687

Patricia worked as an executive assistant for the Methodist Hospital in Houston.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

743.7

She was very accomplished.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

745.862

Renard's attorney, Dick DeGaran, says the Spiveys had a good life.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

750.646

They were very happy. They went on cruises together. Every Friday night, they had a special dinner.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

768.574

Renard has been a bodybuilder since his 20s. In the aftermath of his wife's death, he was placed under house arrest, but was allowed to continue with his training.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

787.793

He was also free to go to church and spend time with his family, but he resigned from his career of more than 20 years with Harris County Sheriff's Department. His TV career also took a hit.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

811.672

Renard had portrayed the bailiff for nine years and taped more than 100 episodes. He told us it was something his wife really liked about him. And what did Patricia think of your television career?

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

830.977

Patricia's childhood friend, Ezra Washington, had a small part as an extra on that show and remembered meeting Renard when Patricia and Renard got together.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

843.499

Renard and Ezra became close friends. But over time, even before Patricia married Renard, Ezra says Renard was controlling with her.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

867.861

The couple got back together, but their problems hardly went away, says Ezra, and eventually impacted Patricia's relationship with her cousin, Sybil.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

92.779

When it comes to how your mom died, do you think it was accidental? No. It just, it didn't make sense. It didn't line up.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

924.195

Petrina says her mom and Renard had no business being married. She says their relationship became strained once they moved into their new house.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

961.773

Petrina says her mom looked up some of Renard's pills and told her she found proof Renard was using steroids.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

977.182

Renard says he was never controlling with Patricia, but he doesn't deny there were issues in their marriage and says they began about a month before the shooting.

48 Hours

TV Bailiff Spivey on Trial

996.092

Renard says a doctor had prescribed him testosterone shots.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

0.389

Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. It was going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1122.11

He was, in many eyes, a saint. He was loved by his patients.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1133.115

Dr. Sills was a great doctor, and Susan was a great advocate for women as well. And they were a team, not just married, but a team, and working well together.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1151.32

She sounded like she was whispering. It was so different from the happy, jovial, excited voicemails I got before. This one was definitely things weren't good.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1169.608

She said it was a topless photo of her that had appeared on a blog. This was some discussion she didn't want to have.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

118.605

Dr. Sills was an infertility specialist.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1182.056

one family two deaths a haunting crime scene with a tangle of provocative evidence 48 hours peter van sant hosts a true crime limited series podcast blood is thicker the hargan family killings available wherever you get your podcasts subscribe now

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

124.087

They ran their clinic as partners. Suzanne took care of all the business side of things.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1345.481

All of a sudden, there started to be another woman in photos, and he was out on dates, and they were going around town.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

135.307

She was his number one supporter in everything that he did. They really looked like they had it all.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1476.325

She and Scott were in a really rocky place, and she was thinking about leaving him.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

1488.513

Whatever was going on between her and Scott and this picture was just a pivotal point for her.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

17.338

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

18.739

From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2163.638

What do you make of the defense that the dogs may have played a role in her death?

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

245.964

Tracy Smith reports the puzzling death of Suzanne Sills.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2483.761

Thousands of women felt him to be a saint. From the saint all the way down to the devil. That's how it ended up being.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2522.159

Scott Sills will be eligible for parole in 2033, though it could be sooner with good behavior. He is appealing his conviction. Need more time with 48 Hours? Go deep behind every true crime episode with firsthand accounts from 48 Hours Investigations. Were you at all prepared for what happened in this case?

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2544.589

Get inside the twists and turns and get in on the case. Listen to Postmortem from 48 Hours, now available wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2553.206

Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. It was going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2562.392

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2570.137

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

2571.538

From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

43.852

We all live two lives. Only the most intimate people that we know really know who we are.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

714.758

Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. We're going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

723.965

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

731.69

His whole life is a lie.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

733.091

From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Perplexing Death of Susann Sills

9.614

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1023.516

What do you think about these fibers?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1051.248

In all the questioning, the prosecutors focused more on Patsy than John, following their belief that she was the killer.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1117.411

These tapes don't always show the Ramseys at their best, but remarkably, it was the Ramseys who made them available, saying they want all the information on this case out in the open. As for the Boulder police and prosecutors, they denied repeated requests from 48 Hours to discuss these tapes or any of the issues we're raising tonight.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1140.117

Their only comment on the Ramsey murder investigation is no comment.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1228.371

100 miles away from where JonBenet Ramsey was murdered, in a modest home in Colorado Springs. How often do you think about this case now? Probably every day. 67-year-old Lou Smit works every day, alone, trying to find her killer.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1246.402

You have JonBenet in your wallet?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1249.944

This is the same Lou Smith you saw interrogating John Ramsey back in 1998.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1262.71

With such an impressive record for solving homicides that the Boulder District Attorney hired him on the Ramsey murder case.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1272.455

And when you started, who did you believe killed John Bonnet Ramsey?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1277.981

But as Smith followed the evidence and questioned the Ramseys, the more he became convinced that the Boulder police were focusing on the wrong suspects.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1298.739

Smith quit the investigation in disgust.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1320.788

What is it that convinces Lou Smith that someone other than the Ramseys killed their six-year-old daughter? First and foremost, the brutality of the crime. Nearly every medical expert who has seen the autopsy report agrees on one thing. This was not an accidental death. JonBenet Ramsey was cruelly and deliberately murdered. We need to warn you that what you are about to see is very disturbing.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

134.659

I'll have more from that interview later. But first, a time capsule. A look back at how 48 Hours covered this story in 2002.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1347.426

What do we see here? John Bonnet was strangled not once, says Smit, but twice with this intricately made device known as a garrotte that had to have been made by the killer during the murder.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1365.456

It's a device, says Smith, that was not left there for show. Whoever killed JonBenet used the garrote to strangle her. Smith believes she was fighting for her life. There were marks that look a lot like scratches on her neck.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1387.938

At some point, the child was then hit over the head with such force it crushed her skull. But her nightmare wasn't over. Shortly before she died, investigators believe she was sexually assaulted with a piece of the paintbrush that was used to make the garrotte.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1406.614

The evidence, says Smith, simply does not support the popular theory that the Ramseys struck their daughter and then tried to cover it up.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1433.646

But what about those fibers from Patsy Ramsey's jacket that police say were in the paint tray and on the sticky side of duct tape covering JonBenet's mouth? Is the fact that there were fibers that were consistent with Patsy Ramsey's jacket incriminating?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1450.236

But does that shake your faith that the Ramseys were not involved?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1459.881

What's more, says Smit, there were also dozens of unidentified fibers that didn't come from the Ramseys. And Smit is unaware of a single case where a parent used a garrote like this to kill a child.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1485.555

Smith's not the only one.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1491.897

Colorado private detective Ollie Gray and his partner John Santagustin were hired by the Ramseys two years ago.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1502.48

Even when the Ramseys ran out of money, Ollie and John stayed on the job.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1510.034

Even though you're not getting paid?

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1512.257

They became convinced of the Ramseys' innocence after seeing this lab report.

48 Hours

The Search for Jon Benet's Killer

1528.871

Just days after JonBenet was murdered, her parents were asked to give DNA samples to the Boulder police. The two of you have given DNA evidence to the police? Absolutely.

48 Hours

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Their DNA was compared to foreign DNA found under their daughter's fingernails and in her panties, which may have been left by the killer. Does any of that DNA match anyone in the Ramsey family?

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If not the Ramseys, then who killed JonBenet?

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Retired homicide detective Lou Smith was still working on the official investigation when he concluded that a stranger came into the Ramsey home.

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And killed their six-year-old daughter.

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A scuff mark that Smith believes was left by someone either climbing in or climbing out.

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In fact, he has, as you can see in this video shot as part of Smith's investigation.

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But why would an intruder who intended to kill JonBenet leave the bizarre two-and-a-half page ransom note written with paper and a pen belonging to Patsy? Boulder police have always believed that Patsy used it to make the killing look like a kidnapping. But if someone had been targeting JonBenet Ramsey, wouldn't he at least bring the paper and the pencil to write this ransom note?

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No expert could eliminate Patsy Ramsey as the writer of the ransom note. That's damning, isn't it?

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But more than any other evidence, Smith believes small marks left on JonBenet's face and back prove an intruder killed her.

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A stun gun, an electrical weapon used to incapacitate the little girl in order to move her to the basement. Smith believes only an intruder would need to use one.

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Was there any indication that the Ramseys had ever owned a stun gun?

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What's significant about these injuries, says Smith, is that those on the child's face and those on her back appear to be an equal distance apart.

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Much like the prongs of this stun gun.

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And if I push this... Dr. Michael Doberson... You can see...

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The coroner for neighboring Arapahoe County also believes the marks on JonBenet were left by a stun gun.

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Three other pathologists agreed, but the Boulder police are relying instead on this man's opinion. How sure are you that it's not a stun gun?

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Dr. Werner Spitz, a nationally known forensic pathologist who has worked on major cases including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

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Unfortunately, with only photographs to go by, no expert, not Dr. Spitz, nor Dr. Doberson, can be 100% sure. Wouldn't that have been the best way to know or come the closest to knowing is if you could have exhumed the body and line up a stun gun and see if it matches those injuries?

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Lou Smit admits that in the months following JonBenet's death, investigators considered going to court to have her body exhumed, but decided against it.

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But, Jon, that might have been the one way to know for sure. That could have resolved the whole issue, because if a stun gun was used, it was not the parents.

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But you would have known with 100% certainty if you had exhumed the body. As tough as that would have been.

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Still, Smith believes a stun gun is the key to JonBenet's murder. And he's searching for a killer or killers who own one.

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On the cold December night that marked the one-year anniversary of JonBenet's murder, dozens of mourners showed up for a candlelight vigil outside the Ramsey home. One man, in particular, caught investigator Lou Smith's eye.

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He's Gary Oliva, a 38-year-old convicted sex offender from Oregon who lives in Boulder.

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Smith is convinced that a pedophile came into the Ramsey home and killed their daughter.

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Among the files he's keeping on sex offenders in Boulder, Gary Oliva's name stands out. In 1991, the year after he sexually assaulted the little girl, police reports say he tried to strangle his mother with a telephone cord. And in December 1996, Oliva may have been only a few houses away from JonBenet's bedroom window. This is the alley behind the Ramseys.

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John Santagustin and Ollie Gray, the Ramseys' private investigators, say Oliva frequented these buildings owned by a local church.

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But why is this relevant?

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What did the Boulder police do with this? Nothing. According to Lou Smith, the police didn't follow up on 95 percent of the more than 3,000 phone tips that came in. In Oliva's case, they didn't investigate him until nearly four years after JonBenet Ramsey's death, when he was caught with drugs. And guess what else? A stun gun. Did you ever use that stun gun on a child?

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Oliva, who was wanted in Oregon for parole violations, turned himself into the Boulder police two weeks ago. Did you hurt or kill JonBenet Ramsey?

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Didn't you tell your friend that you were attracted to little girls?

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You were living in Boulder at the time JonBenet was killed?

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Just down the street?

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What he will admit to is an obsession with JonBenet.

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As it turns out, we're not the only ones interested in Oliva. A Boulder police officer showed up to take notes.

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Former Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter says police tried to follow up on pedophiles, but admits that early on, the force was clearly overwhelmed. Didn't your office have to tell police officers, you've got to look at these other leads? You can't just focus on the Rams.

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Why didn't authorities take a sex offender like Oliva more seriously? Just this week, Boulder police said Oliva is not a suspect. Sources say his DNA doesn't match evidence at the scene.

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What do you think of that? I think it's a double standard. Don't you? Is it fair to say, then, that the state of the evidence right now, there just isn't enough to convict the Ramseys beyond a reasonable doubt?

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But Alex Hunter believes this case someday can be solved, although he doesn't think Lou Smith is the man to do it. Do you feel that Lou Smith's feelings for the Ramseys clouded his judgment?

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Hunter believes Smith, a devout Christian, crossed a line when working as a DA investigator, he prayed with the Ramseys. Do you think maybe you've gotten too close to Ramsey's?

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JonBenet Ramsey would have been 12 years old this year and in sixth grade. Instead, she's buried in a Georgia cemetery while her brutal killer or killers go free. Next, a new interview with John Ramsey. Remarkably, not much has changed since that 2002 program. The case is at a standstill. But with the passage of so much time comes the loss of some key figures, most notably Patsy Ramsey.

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who died of cancer in 2006. She was 49. John Ramsey remarried five years later. I think back about Patsy, and I remember Patsy saying that your lives could not go on until the killer was found. How much weight was that on Patsy before she died?

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Their faces are instantly recognizable. But John and Patsy Ramsey are famous in a way no one would want. Although they've never been publicly called suspects or charged with the 1996 death of their daughter, JonBenet, they are resigned to a painful reality.

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Investigator Lou Smith worked on the case almost until the day he died in August, 2010. His family continues to pursue leads. John, do you believe this case could be solved?

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In November 2024, the Boulder Police Department released a statement which said, the assertion that there is viable evidence in Leeds we are not pursuing to include DNA testing is completely false. The department said there is an ongoing investigation, and they're looking into the recommendations made by a recent cold case review team, Police Chief Stephen Redfern.

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John Ramsey remains hopeful that these new efforts may finally reveal the killer, a killer he believes was already waiting in their house when the family came home from dinner that Christmas night.

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When you look back, are there any things you wish you had done differently?

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Do you ever dream about JonBenet or wonder what she would have been like now?

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Did your daughter have a bedwetting incident that night? Did you get up? Did you get angry? And did you hurt her?

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What is your reaction when you know many people think that's what you did?

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Over the last several months, we have spent a great deal of time with the Ramseys, these favorite villains of the tabloids, and have seen them in a way few others have. On this day, just this past summer, John and Patsy Ramsey are moving.

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They are selling their million-dollar home in Atlanta and moving to a smaller townhouse just down the road. John Ramsey, once the head of a billion-dollar software company, hasn't worked for four years. while Patsy has been quite literally fighting for her life. This is my self-portrait.

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Without her makeup, without her wig, without even her eyebrows drawn in, you can clearly see the damage left by the return of her cancer.

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Nine years ago, Patsy learned she had stage four ovarian cancer. She made what she hoped was a full recovery. But earlier this year, she again went through debilitating chemotherapy.

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In fact, Patsy Ramsey has much bigger concerns. Almost from the moment the body of their six-year-old daughter, JonBenet, was discovered, Boulder police believe Jon and Patsy killed their daughter and then staged a kidnapping, complete with a rambling two-and-a-half page ransom note to cover it up.

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Police say they haven't ruled out other theories. To this day, the Ramseys remain the prime suspects, as you will see in this videotape obtained exclusively by 48 Hours.

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While testifying under oath in a civil case just last November, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner admitted what he had never before said publicly.

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Why do you think you remain probably the prime suspect in the eyes of the Boulder police?

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But because police didn't have enough evidence, sources within the investigation tell 48 Hours, the police tried to psychologically break the Ramseys, hoping one or both would confess.

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That strategy by some in the department, claims John Ramsey, included a relentless campaign of leaks fed mostly to the nation's tabloids that had a devastating effect on public opinion.

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Lynn Wood is John and Patsy Ramsey's attorney.

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The Ramseys believe that the Boulder police still, to this day, continue to ignore evidence pointing to other suspects.

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You say it makes you angry, but you don't seem angry. Do you think that's also hurt you in the eyes of the public?

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Angry because John Ramsey says a killer or killers remain free.

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A year and a half after JonBenet was murdered, Jon and Patsy Ramsey, sitting in separate rooms at the same time, were questioned by Boulder authorities in a Colorado police station. These tapes have never before been seen publicly. There's been a lot of

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She is forever frozen in time. JonBenet Ramsey, six years old, dressed for a beauty pageant. And we still don't know who killed her. The day after Christmas in 1996, JonBenet was reported missing with a rambling ransom note left at the scene. Several hours later, she was found dead in her own home. bludgeoned and strangled. It was a media sensation.

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Detective Tom Haney questioned Patsy, who at the time was taking medication for both anxiety and depression.

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48 Hours Investigates has acquired these tapes, hours upon hours of footage that take you inside the investigation. While the tapes show how strongly prosecutors believe John and Patsy Ramsey were responsible for the death of their daughter, frankly, there isn't a lot of physical evidence that links them. So questioners looked for inconsistencies and focused on minute details from the crime scene.

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The Ramseys told police that JonBenet had gone straight to bed that night and had not eaten at home. But autopsy results did find undigested pineapple in JonBenet's stomach. And police discovered fingerprints on a bowl of pineapple left in the family's dining room on the morning of the murder.

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The fingerprints on the bowl are Patsy's, according to police, suggesting that she's the one who gave the fruit to her daughter. But if Patsy did give it to JonBenet and is lying about it, then investigators wondered, could she be lying about everything?

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I can't recall putting that there. After three days of questioning, the interrogation in 1998 ended. And even though the Ramseys were not indicted, Boulder authorities continued to believe they were guilty. So in August of 2000, prosecutors flew to Atlanta, where the Ramseys were living, asking to see and hear new evidence. 48 Hours has also acquired those tapes.

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Suspicion fell on her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. The couple was never charged, but early on there was a police theory that Patsy Ramsey may have killed her daughter in a fit of rage over bedwetting and then covered it up. Now in his 80s, John Ramsey is still trying to clear his and Patsy's names.

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With John, prosecutors asked questions mostly about leads he had uncovered on other suspects. But with Patsy, interrogators were more accusatory, suggesting they had new evidence, clothing fibers that would tie her directly to the murder.

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It's like a pea coat. Bruce Levin from the Boulder District Attorney's Office led the questioning.

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The paint tray is significant because a brush from it, along with some rope, was used to strangle and sexually abuse JonBenet.

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were found on the blanket that she's wrapped in were found on the duct tape that's found on her mouth i have no evidence from any scientist to suggest that those fibers are from any source other than your red jacket well but yeah that's come on i mean what other sources did they test patsy's attorney lynn wood asked prosecutors to produce the evidence when they wouldn't he refused to let patsy go on the record but she did go on the record with us just

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First Love, Then Murder

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

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First Love, Then Murder

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The veteran detective wasted no time.

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First Love, Then Murder

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They were ascending a rural mountain pass 20 miles outside town.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detectives descended the wooded ravine and pulled back that tarp, revealing that just six hours after that 911 call, they had found Aaron Fryer.

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First Love, Then Murder

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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First Love, Then Murder

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When you found out your husband was dead, what did you think?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Maggie says the police hadn't yet told her Ellie was in their custody being questioned or even that she had been found.

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Maggie then faced the unimaginable task of sharing the news of Aaron's death with their two younger daughters. The reality was almost too much for then 11-year-old Sierra.

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While investigators began processing the scene, Detective Ford drove Russell Jones back to police headquarters. He says Russell was claiming that all he had done was help dispose of Aaron's remains.

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Russell was saying Gavin was Aaron's killer, but that Gavin had been provoked.

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So making it seem like a self-defense because if he had a gun pointed at him.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Back at the station, Detective Ford returned Russell to the interrogation room while detectives gathered for a briefing.

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First Love, Then Murder

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That's when Russell began taunting them through the camera.

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First Love, Then Murder

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This, I imagine, got everybody to stop what they were doing and gather around the monitor and watch this.

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And Russell was claiming he still hadn't been totally truthful.

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First Love, Then Murder

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For her part, Ellie was now saying Russell was the one responsible.

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First Love, Then Murder

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With the conflicting claims, Detective Ford decided it was finally time to interview Gavin McFarlane.

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Gavin started by saying how volatile Aaron Fryer could be.

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First Love, Then Murder

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One month earlier, Gavin had called the police, claiming Aaron had shown up at his house, banging on his door, threatening to kill him.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detectives discovered at least one reason, Gavin's age. He was 19 years old, dating 15-year-old Ellie. And making things worse, Gavin was now claiming Ellie was going to have his baby. While Gavin was admitting to having a sexual relationship with a minor, itself a crime, he was accusing Aaron of being the one who had been abusive to Ellie.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Gavin was claiming he and Russell had gone to the house that morning. But unlike what Russell said, that Aaron had not confronted him with the gun. Instead, Gavin was saying Aaron had been in the living room, asleep on the couch, and that Gavin had crept in, armed with a baseball bat. Then Gavin made a startling admission.

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First Love, Then Murder

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The physical evidence would back up Gavin's story. Aaron had died from blunt force trauma to his head, and a bat was recovered from a tree branch above where his remains had been found.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Testing would confirm the blood was Aaron's.

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First Love, Then Murder

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So time was of the essence in this case.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Explaining that dinging sound Sierra Fryer had heard.

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First Love, Then Murder

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An investigator soon found evidence that Aaron's murder had been meticulously plotted for weeks. They discovered notes, some in Russell's handwriting, at Gavin's house.

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First Love, Then Murder

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And based on what you could see from the planning, who's the mastermind of all of this?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Ford says he believes it was Ellie who wanted Aaron murdered. Pointing to messages Ford says she sent to Gavin. In one, she says, we need to make sure he's dead by the time we leave his house. And in another, she asked, you want to kill him now, don't you? And then you can kill him in less than a minute, right?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Ford says Ellie might have made up those abuse allegations, possibly as a way to motivate Gavin to kill her father.

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First Love, Then Murder

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After several hours, Ellie did eventually admit some of her role, even saying that she had handed Gavin the murder weapon.

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First Love, Then Murder

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With evidence, they all conspired to kill Aaron. Gavin, Russell, and Ellie were charged with his murder.

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First Love, Then Murder

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I imagine that moment haunts you still. Of course it does. My child never came home. After hours of worry, Maggie Fryer was finally told her 15-year-old daughter Ellie had been located.

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First Love, Then Murder

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But worry morphed into anger when she was then told Ellie had been arrested for her father's murder.

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Aliza Kaplan eventually became one of Ellie's attorneys. She says the narrative about Ellie Fryer has been wrong from the very beginning.

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First Love, Then Murder

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But Kaplan says this crime actually happened because of the alleged abuse Ellie suffered at the hands of her father, Aaron.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Abuse that Ellie described in her police interrogation.

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First Love, Then Murder

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I picked out a bunch of things, but... Reading from the case file, Kaplan recounted several allegations of molestation and abuse. Warning, the following may be disturbing to hear.

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First Love, Then Murder

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As the police report shows, three of Ellie's friends told investigators that Ellie said her dad abuses her. Ellie shared that her dad was rough on her and emotionally and physically abused her. And Ellie said her dad mentally and verbally abused her. But Ellie admits she never told her friends about the sexual molestation.

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First Love, Then Murder

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And neither Ellie nor her friends told the police about any kind of abuse before her father's murder. And as far as allegations of abuse, was there any evidence whatsoever that your detectives could find to back up what Ellen Fryer was saying happened to her?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Ford says with Aaron's death, the possibility of proving abuse may have died with him.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ellie told Detective Jackson that the first time she had told Gavin was two days before he bludgeoned her father to death.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Shannon Reynolds says 11-year-old Sierra was asked if there were any problems at home.

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First Love, Then Murder

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When Detective Reynolds interviewed the youngest friar daughter, she recalled the last conversation she had with Ellie, minutes after their father's murder.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Both of Ellie's sisters told Reynolds that what Ellie had called abuse was actually their parents disciplining her for sneaking around with Gavin. Because they took her electronics away and they yelled at her.

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First Love, Then Murder

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You know, you describe her as this protective older sister, but yet she left them there at the house. How is that protecting them?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Ford says that with no evidence to back up Ellie's abuse claims, he remains suspicious that she may have made it all up to manipulate Gavin, seen here with Ellie on a store security camera hours after the murder. And it turns out Ellie was never pregnant.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ellie's legal team says Ellie did think she was pregnant, which is why she bought a pregnancy test while at the store. Investigators say it's clear Ellie Fryer has an issue with the truth.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Kaplan says much has been made of the many lies Ellie told during her police interrogation. As a parent, we all know that our kids sometimes do that. But Kaplan says the real focus should be on the hours and hours and hours Ellie spent in that interview room.

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First Love, Then Murder

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A minor without a guardian or attorney. Is it normal to keep a 15-year-old in an interrogation room for 10 hours like that?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Kaplan says that although it may have been legal in Oregon, it wasn't right.

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First Love, Then Murder

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A kid who Kaplan says was taken advantage of by someone she calls another abuser, 19-year-old Gavin McFarlane.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Reynolds says she saw some of that controlling behavior on display in letters Gavin wrote to Ellie after they were arrested.

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First Love, Then Murder

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But there would be no trial. In January of 2019, a little more than a year after her father's death, Ellie Fryer took a plea deal. How did you feel about that decision?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ellie Fryer pleaded guilty to an adult charge of conspiring to murder her father, Aaron. The deal was brokered by a different defense attorney. According to court documents, that attorney wrote that Ellie Fryer's co-defendants, Gavin McFarlane and Russell Jones, were going to be testifying against her and say that she was the mastermind behind all of this. It was her idea from the beginning.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ellie's text messages would have been used against her at trial, too. Aliza Kaplan began working on Ellie Fryer's behalf in 2024.

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First Love, Then Murder

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McFarland and Jones also took plea deals, with Gavin McFarland pleading guilty to murder and murder conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Russell Jones entered a no-contest plea to conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to 15 years. Kaplan is fighting to reduce Ellie Fryer's sentence.

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First Love, Then Murder

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She says Ellie should not have been sentenced to 10 more years than Jones for the same crime.

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First Love, Then Murder

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The idea that Ellen is the master manipulator, I mean, she's a 15-year-old. I mean, don't they bear more responsibility because they're the adults?

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First Love, Then Murder

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Detective Shannon Reynolds isn't as certain as her husband about Ellie Fryer's role.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ford says regardless of who crafted the plan, all three are responsible in the eyes of the law.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Ellie Fryer, now 23, has been serving her sentence in a juvenile detention center. In December of 2026, she'll be moved to an adult prison. And she recently earned two master's degrees, one in psychology and another in justice studies.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Sierra has joined the National Guard, something she says her father always wanted for her.

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First Love, Then Murder

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A life Sierra has had to live without her father, whose memory has been marred by those abuse allegations. A 48 Hours producer asks Sierra about them.

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First Love, Then Murder

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The quiet city of Medford, Oregon was shaken by Maggie Fryer's desperate 911 call in the early morning hours of October 2nd, 2017.

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First Love, Then Murder

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Sierra is just as guarded when it comes to her thoughts about her sister Ellie, though the two have maintained a relationship over the years.

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First Love, Then Murder

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But Sierra's feelings about her father are very clear.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

2582.412

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

2585.574

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

269.048

Maggie Fryer's ex-husband, Aaron Fryer, and their 15-year-old daughter, Ellen, nicknamed Ellie, were missing.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

288.765

When Medford police officer Logan Boyd arrived at Aaron's house, he found that gruesome scene.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

298.888

Blood spattered walls, shattered glass, and a trail of blood to nowhere.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

310.865

This led investigators to notice what also was missing, Aaron Fryer's car, seen here on a neighbor's security camera leaving the Fryer home around 5.30 that morning.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

328.219

An all-hands-on-deck call went out to every Medford police detective, including Detective Bill Ford.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

342.403

Detective Shannon Reynolds, Bill Ford's colleague and wife of 20 years, had a different take.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

355.393

So a case like this, where did this one sort of fit in?

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

366.269

Investigators hoped Ellie's younger sister, 11-year-old Sierra, might shed light on the unknown. Detective Reynolds, who specializes in crimes against children, was tasked with interviewing her.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

389.502

Sierra, 18 years old at the time of this exclusive interview, still finds it difficult to speak about the day her father and sister vanished.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

406.589

The second of three girls, Sierra says she loved being in the middle.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

420.464

Sierra says her older sister Ellie loved music and could play many instruments. A skill Ellie seemed to have picked up from their father.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

439.372

In 2016, Sierra's parents, Maggie and Aaron, ended their marriage. Sierra says the divorce took a toll on her and her sisters.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

455.788

Sierra says that when her parents separated, her dad moved into that small two-bedroom house. Maggie and Aaron shared custody, and the girls would stay with their dad every other weekend. In September 2017, Sierra decided to live with her dad full-time. I want to be around him and fill my life with him. Then, around 5.30 a.m. on October 2, 2017, the Fryer family was forever broken.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

489.274

Ciara was asleep in the bedroom she shared with her younger sister.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

507.052

The sound was coming from the living room. So then what does she hear? Because she really is sort of an ear witness to all that happened.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

533.208

When Sierra finally did come out, she found that horrific scene. It had to be so scary, though. So scary. Sierra told Detective Reynolds that before leaving her room, she had seen something out of her bedroom window.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

551.98

Sierra saw two young men outside of her dad's house. One was a person Sierra didn't know. The second was someone Sierra immediately recognized. It was Gavin McFarlane. He was Ellen's boyfriend at the time.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

582.834

This was the break investigators had been hoping for.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

591.54

The search for Aaron and Ellie Fryer, and now Gavin McFarlane, was on.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

608.17

Ellie and Aaron's phones were found in the house. Investigators now began tracking Gavin's phone.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

620.321

Patrol officers immediately headed in that direction.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

628.365

As the officers approached Aaron Fryer's vehicle, they realized that something wasn't right.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

646.44

But no Aaron and no Ellie. But the car was still warm, so the police knew they were close.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

658.584

And then just an hour later, investigators couldn't believe who they found next.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

669.835

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

677.716

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

680.877

They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

713.761

Then, just four hours after that 911 call reporting her missing, Medford police found Ellie Fryer. She was alive, seemingly unharmed, and had been walking down a busy street with Gavin McFarlane.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

732.756

In plain sight.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

737.318

Which made two things clear. Aaron Fryer was the victim. And based on all that blood in his car and at the house, time was quickly running out to find him.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

756.771

Walking along with Gavin and Ellie was someone investigators hadn't been looking for.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

768.102

He turned out to be Russell Jones, a friend of Gavin's.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

776.645

Russell had apparently made an impression on Sierra Fryer, says Detective Shannon Reynolds. He matched the description of that second young man she saw at her father's house that morning. So she got a really good look at this person. Yes, yes. Investigators now had a witness placing Gavin and Russell at the crime scene.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

796.434

Detective Ford says he wasn't sure what to make of Ellie being found with them.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

8.071

Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

804.462

But Ford says that she, Gavin, or Russell might hold the key to finding Aaron.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

822.99

Hi. Hello. Detective Stephanie Jackson was tasked with getting Ellie Fryer's account of the previous 24 hours.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

84.086

Where are we, officer? Set the scene for us.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

841.704

Where were you? Ellie was saying everything had seemed normal when she left her father's house for a long walk. According to Ellie, she had run into those friends, Gavin and Russell, only by chance, not long before being spotted by police.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

881.358

So am I. Ellie was saying she had no idea where her father was or what happened at the house.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

894.111

I don't know. Around that time, Detective Ford was preparing to interrogate the other two detainees. Strategically, he decided to let Gavin wait in a holding cell and began interviewing Russell.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

921.351

Russell was ready to talk, but he wanted something first, a cigarette.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

929.355

Detective Ford took him outside.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

936.519

The camera didn't record audio, but Detective Ford says Russell began telling him that he and Gavin had gone over to the friar house early that morning.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

953.337

That bad situation, according to Russell, was Aaron Fryer.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

962.842

Aaron Fryer's not a good person?

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

965.944

He didn't elaborate further about Aaron, but Russell was claiming he and Gavin were only there to secretly move Ellie out.

48 Hours

First Love, Then Murder

997.616

Detective Ford decided it was time for a new tactic and tried appealing to Russell's conscience.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1005.259

Wendy says Angela was furious when she found a tracking device in her car and two hidden cameras in the house.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1022.745

Chris Pritchard seemed to have vanished in the vast wilderness. Even the police dogs had lost his scent, says Dustin Henningsen. How do you find somebody that doesn't want to be caught? This is where our local resources really help us. Right from the start, Henningsen had corralled state and local law enforcement agencies, even farmers and hunters, to help determine where he might be.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1059.666

Cattle farmer Jeff Junk and girlfriend Kim Klein were once close friends with Chris Pritchard. Neighbors called them about the rumor racing through town. Pritchard had shot his wife, Angela.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1074.648

A Jackson County chief deputy stopped by Junk's house to warn them. Pritchard was on the run and might be looking for help from his friends. Then there was a knock on the door. The knock on the front door, the one they'll always remember, came around 8.15 that October night, Kim Cline says. She and boyfriend Jeff Junk were not expecting company.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1122.888

I see Chris. Chris Pritchard, their old friend, now a hunted fugitive suspected of murder, was standing in the dim light, holding a shotgun.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1139.682

Jeff and Kim knew they had to call the police, but until they could do that safely, Kim says they were playing along. Chris told them he'd been running all day from the cops and their dogs.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1159.411

The couple told him Angela was dead. Did he express any remorse?

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1171.417

The moment felt so surreal, Kim says, she snapped a photo.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1187.385

And the time was finally right, says Jeff, to text the chief deputy who had stopped by earlier. I said, he's up here and he has passed out. Come get him. When police arrived around midnight, Chris was still in the lazy boy chair, out cold. He didn't know what was coming.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1218.778

Special Agent Henningsen collected the evidence Chris Pritchard had left behind, a 20-gauge shotgun and his torn clothes.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1233.885

Special Agent Kedley escorted Pritchard to the Jackson County Jail.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1245.332

Shortly after 1 a.m. on October 9th, a despondent Chris Pritchard was booked into the county jail, eventually charged with first-degree murder and robbery. After hours on the run through Iowa's wilderness... I'm going to have you look right at me, okay?

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1266.36

Pritchard found himself surrounded by concrete and steel, largely put there by the weight of a single word.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1280.703

Wendy says the day Pritchard ended her sister's life followed months of increasingly erratic behavior and escalating rage, which Angela had documented.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1300.212

Dozens of Angela's brightly colored sticky notes told a dark story. The scribbled entries became Angela's diary of domestic abuse.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1340.88

Wendy invited her sister to move in with her. Angela gratefully agreed.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1352.898

The next day, Angela requested a second temporary no contact order, granted September 1st, 2022. A no contact order means just that, no contact of any kind with the protected person. In the state of Iowa, a single violation requires a mandatory arrest.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1381.987

And it was in place when Angela went back to the home she once shared with Chris Pritchard to pick up a few things, says Wendy.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1391.449

You were with her along with police. The Bellevue police were there just in case Pritchard showed up. The court had ordered him to move out temporarily.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1439.8

There's nothing we can do is what they say to you.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1444.139

Under Iowa law, with a no-contact order in place, Bellevue police should have taken Pritchard's guns. But for reasons unknown, he was allowed to keep them. Wendy and Angela's sons say throughout September, the frightening violations continued. Not physical assault, but psychological terror.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1475.23

Bellevue police arrested Pritchard just once on September 15th for sending Angela a text message, another violation of the no contact order. He spent one night behind bars before posting bail. The next day, says Wendy, he resumed his flurry of offenses.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1499.978

One night, says Wendy, Pritchard drove by six times in one hour.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1519.272

But instead of making arrests, the Bellevue police were making excuses, St. Angela's sons, for not enforcing the law.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1570.839

It was 5 a.m. at the Jackson County Jail. 21 hours after Angela was found dead, Chris Pritchard waved his Miranda rights and talked about the encounter at the dog kennels with Special Agents Dustin Henningsen and Ryan Kedley.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1613.302

Pritchard pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and robbery charges. His trial began February 7, 2024.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1629.827

To prove premeditated murder, prosecutors Nicole Leonard and John Keyes told jurors Pritchard put his plan in motion on October 7th, 2022, the day before he shot his wife, the same day Angela's temporary restraining order became permanent.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1663.688

Before taking Angela's life, Chris Pritchard took steps to cover his tracks, say the prosecutors. He borrowed this white pickup truck to avoid using his own vehicle.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1678.925

Prosecutors say Pritchard secretly parked the borrowed truck inside a barn belonging to Lori and Mike Blaser, just a few miles from the Mississippi Ridge boarding kennels. We walk in, you know, notice this white pickup truck. With a note from Chris Pritchard saying he had gone hunting. Keys are in the truck if you need to move it. I'll be back. Chris.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1709.045

The Blazers would soon become crucial witnesses for the prosecution. Shortly after finding the truck and note, they heard the news about a shooting at the dog kennels.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1753.14

Clear in here, Jim. Prosecutors later viewed home surveillance footage from a camera on the Blazers' property, showing Chris Pritchard entering the barn, where the Blazers kept their horse trailer.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1775.488

Pritchard left the horse trailer in the middle of the night, hiking through the dense woods to the kennels, says Prosecutor Leonard.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1804.788

To prove it, the prosecutors played audio clips from Pritchard's police interviews for the jury.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1836.317

And Pritchard kept adding details to the story of the accidental shooting, say the special agents.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1849.248

But at trial, an Iowa State medical examiner testified the gunshot had a downward trajectory, meaning Pritchard had the weapon in his hands and was standing when he fired, say prosecutors.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1870.116

Angela was shot dead center in the chest, testified the medical examiner, and died in seconds.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1900.482

Prosecutors say Chris Pritchard's last words on the 911 call prove his actions were premeditated, a final explosion of violence.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1931.43

Pritchard's defense attorneys, who declined our request for an interview, maintained the shooting was accidental and the case against Pritchard was a rush to judgment. After four days of testimony, the case went to the jury.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1952.615

This man was also waiting for the verdict and already preparing for another trial, a federal lawsuit against the Bellevue Police Department. It failed Angela, he says, time and time again. If police took action, would Angela be alive today? Absolutely. In February 2024, 16 months after Angela's death, her family's wait for a measure of justice was over.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

1998.926

The jury found Chris Pritchard guilty of first-degree murder and robbery.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

20.276

He's calling her every vile name he can think of.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2011.61

In March, Pritchard was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2049.508

Civil rights attorney Dave O'Brien represents Angela Pritchard's family. She would be alive today, he says, if the Bellevue Police Department had enforced a judge's order of protection.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2066.755

Why? Because they didn't do their job. And it's that simple.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2071.796

That lawsuit lists multiple failures to arrest Chris Prichard. O'Brien says this led to what's called a state-created danger. Meaning the officers' alleged inaction and indifference actually increased the threat to Angela Pritchard. Can a police officer decide, should I arrest him or not?

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2090.749

Is it up to their discretion? Absolutely not. Here in Iowa, only a judge can show discretion not to enforce this restraining order.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2103.115

Starting September 1, 2022, when Angela's second no-contact order was issued, until her murder 37 days later, Chris Prichard violated the restraining order repeatedly, says O'Brien.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2118.092

A dozen times during this relevant time period, Angela Pritchard called the Bellevue Police Department, and they failed to follow that law, that judge's order.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2129.414

That's because O'Brien says the Bellevue police officers showed Pritchard favoritism.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2135.856

We have reason to believe that he was friendly with law enforcement officers.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2149.956

Well, just by the sheer number of times that it was not enforced.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2155.96

In October 2024, Chief Federal Judge C.J. Williams dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety. The Bellevue Police Department, he ruled, did not put Angela in a more dangerous situation, and the three officers simply did not commit outrageous conduct. The judge added there was no evidence of police favoritism.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2178.834

The alleged facts, even taken as true, are a far cry from establishing that any of the defendants were friends with Christopher. Dave O'Brien was granted a hearing in December 2024. After learning he says the three Bellevue officers had withheld evidence and made false statements, allegedly concealing their friendships with Chris Pritchard. Accusations they denied.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

219.477

On the morning of October 8, 2022, the serene Mississippi River town of Bellevue, Iowa, population about 2,500, woke up to a calamity. News of an apparent homicide, the first in nearly a decade.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2205.788

O'Brien argued the officers were well aware Chris Prichard was a serious threat to his wife. Nine days before her murder, the Jackson County attorney warned the Bellevue Police Department in an email, Chris Prichard had 24 hours to turn himself in. If he does not report, I will be requesting a warrant. I wanted all of you to be aware as I'm afraid he might try to do something tonight.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2235.447

The next day, when Pritchard failed to appear at the county jail, the arrest warrant was issued. Seven days before her murder, O'Brien says this body cam footage of a Bellevue police officer speaking with Wendy and Angela... Because right now, I guarantee he's not thinking straight.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2254.714

...confirms police knew Angela was in danger.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2265.598

During the final week of Angela's life... My job is to protect you at all costs. O'Brien says Bellevue police could have protected her by finding and arresting Chris Pritchard, but they never did. Is it hard to find Chris?

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2295.066

We have not been provided with any record showing there was any effort made to enforce the arrest warrant once it was issued on the 30th of September.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2308.214

Absolutely. He should have been in jail.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2311.216

At the December hearing, defense attorneys insisted the new information presented by O'Brien was improper, should be stricken, and not considered by the court.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2322.412

Our ideal outcome would be just complete reversal of the judge's decision.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2327.213

In January 2025, Judge Williams refused to reverse his dismissal. Bellevue Police Chief Dennis Schroeder issued this statement to a local newspaper, which read in part, We are pleased with the decision. We continue to strengthen our services and response efforts to prevent domestic violence and provide support to those in need.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2356.397

I've heard people say that no contact orders aren't worth the paper they're written on. And in this case, that was true. But I firmly believe that they are worth something, but they have to be enforced.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2413.817

Chris Prichard's life sentence also helped bring her family some comfort and the courage to move forward. They believe Angela would want them to make this public plea.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

2439.57

According to the Violence Policy Center, nearly three women in the US are killed by an intimate partner each day. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

251.363

Dozens of investigators from six different law enforcement agencies were combing the crime scene at the Mississippi Ridge boarding kennels with body cameras rolling. The woman who ran the kennels, Angela Pritchard, 55, had been gunned down.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

271.733

Her sister, Wendy Buddy, believed she knew who was responsible. Angela's husband, Chris Pritchard.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

288.559

Wendy says Angela had been trying to leave him for months and lived in fear he would kill her.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

299.816

Ryan Kedley and Dustin Henningsen are special agents with Iowa's DCI, the Department of Criminal Investigation. Bellevue's small police force with just several officers invited the state police to lead the investigation. While Angela's family was convinced Chris Pritchard was the killer, the special agents had to connect all the dots.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

352.116

Those were the last words spoken by Angela and the first clue investigators had to identify her killer.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

416.936

Pools of morning light illuminated pools of blood surrounding her body. Angela was lying face down in the kennel's washroom where she bathed the dogs.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

452.351

How do you track him down? The special agents spotted a barely visible blood trail.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

481.65

Digging into Chris Pritchard's life, the special agents soon learned about his volatile history with Angela, which included violence and violations of a restraining order.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

511.73

Investigators reviewed the footage starting at midnight the day of the shooting. For hours, there was nothing to see. But just after 4 a.m., there was something to hear.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

536.431

Henningsen believes Chris Pritchard entered the kennels and lay in wait for nearly four hours.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

565.35

Angela Pritchard had less than six minutes to live.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

584.494

About two minutes after the gunshot, at 7.41, the man they now suspected to be her killer, Chris Pritchard, appeared.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

603.556

Outside the kennels, miles of thick woods stretch to the horizon, an area the northeastern Iowa locals call the wilderness. It was rugged terrain. Chris Pritchard knew well, says Wendy.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

674.226

The manhunt for Chris Pritchard was widening.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

687.692

Fanning out from the kennels, heavily armed officers searched nearby neighborhoods, house to house, barn to barn.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

731.423

Angela Pritchard's world revolved around family, especially her two sons and six grandchildren.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

752.765

Angela's sons, Josh Close and CJ Hancock.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

776.695

And making memories with their mom later in life was Chris Pritchard, the very man investigators were now chasing. Wendy Budde and her husband Jim had known Pritchard for years.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

802.549

Pritchard, a longtime Bellevue resident, was an established electrician in town. Soon, Angela found her calling.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

820.043

After dating for nearly two years, they moved into this Bellevue home and even got married here in March 2019. The newlyweds were over the moon for about eight months. When did things change?

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

842.707

Fired and charged with first-degree theft, a felony, after he allegedly stole $36,000 worth of supplies from the electric company where he worked.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

858.843

Awaiting trial, Pritchard was out on bail and out of work, says Wendy.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

874.812

Pritchard finally took some odd jobs and helped Angela at the kennels. But in the summer of 2021, Wendy says Angela discovered her husband was using methamphetamine.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

893.898

The simmering tension reached a boiling point on April 18th, 2022. She said, Chris hit me.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

927.268

Police didn't have to go far to find Pritchard. He was in the garage.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

941.276

Chris Pritchard was arrested and charged with domestic assault.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

952.127

Chris spent the night in jail and was released awaiting trial, staying with family. Angela sought and received a temporary no-contact order.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

977.912

Each had been married before, but had hoped this would be their last marriage, says Wendy. Angela withdrew the no-contact order.

48 Hours

Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved?

996.296

Promises he failed to keep, says Wendy.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1000.409

He lost that race, but he and little Reggie stayed in the family home, which today has fallen into disrepair. So this is it. What's it like for you to just come back here? I know you don't like to, but what does it feel like?

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1028.77

When you were playing Nintendo with your father the night that your mother was murdered, was that here?

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1038.415

Reggie went on to attend college and later got an MBA. He moved out of Hammond and began working for a pharmaceutical company. There were no new developments on his mother's murder until 2011, when Lieutenant Barry Ward of the Louisiana State Police got involved.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1081.983

As far as Ward could determine, the crucifix and screwdriver found within days of the murder led nowhere. But the detective was drawn to several life insurance policies Reginald had taken out on Salonia that paid out more than $700,000. Some of those policies were taken out the same month that Salonia was murdered. Ward wanted to re-interview Reggie Jr. in 2012.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1109.602

Reggie was 31 years old and living in Texas. Ward sent a Texas Ranger to begin the questioning.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1123.169

And the Ranger then told Reggie something he said he'd never heard before.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1151.311

It's true that the insurance policies had been discovered by the original detectives, but Lieutenant Ward had organized them in a way that he felt was damning. The Texas Ranger asked Reggie about those policies.

48 Hours

The Day My Mother Never Came Home

1171.921

Did you all of a sudden say, I need to get to the bottom of this or what?

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Reggie said he finds it hard to square what the investigation revealed with the loving father who raised him.

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Ward took a deep dive into the case file and focused on that Winston cigarette butt found in Salonia's car. He sent it out for DNA testing, something that was not widely available in 1987. There was a match in the National Crime DNA Database, CODIS, but not to Jimmy Ray.

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Billy Ray was Jimmy Ray's identical twin brother. And the DNA supervisor had another surprise.

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Lieutenant Ward decided he had to interview Jimmy Ray. And it turned out that Jimmy Ray had been holding on to some key information all these years.

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In July 2012, Lieutenant Barry Ward went on the hunt for Jimmy Ray Barnes, who had become a prime suspect in the Salonia Reed murder case after his DNA was linked to the crime scene. Ward found Barnes in the Atlanta area, where he said Barnes told him he'd fled Hammond because he was afraid of Reginald Reed. Barnes said back then he'd been shot at three times and hit once in the neck.

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Barnes suspected the shooter was Reginald, but had no proof.

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We are on. Barnes was ready to talk about Reed without a lawyer. I ain't got nothing to hide. Barnes told Ward that a few days before Salonia was killed, Reed asked him if he would, quote, knock off his wife.

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Yeah, he did. He discussed the money. Ward pressed Barnes to tell him how much money.

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That's the amount he offered. But Barnes told Ward that he would not repeat the story in court.

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Ward confronted Barnes about that polygraph test from the original case file. Barnes allegedly had passed that polygraph, but Ward suspected Jimmy Ray secretly had asked his identical twin, Billy Ray, to take that test.

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I don't know if I'm not gonna answer that because I know I'm the one who took the polygraph test. Ward believed he had a solid case to finally bring charges. He had Jimmy Ray's DNA connected to the crime scene and his videotaped statement about Reggie offering him $50,000 to kill Celonia. But, Ward said, prosecutors always wanted more.

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It was busy work. Then, in 2018, a newly hired prosecutor, Taylor Anthony, got assigned the case. Why reopen a 35-year-old case? What was the trigger?

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Anthony was impressed by all the investigative work done by Lieutenant Ward, so he reached out. But Ward told Anthony he was too busy and that he felt he'd been let down by other prosecutors.

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But Anthony was undeterred and promised Ward that this time things would be different.

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Like Ward, Anthony was sure Jimmy Ray Barnes knew a lot more. So he and Ward took a road trip to Atlanta.

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But this time, the new prosecutor had with him an agreement, approved by a judge, giving Barnes complete immunity if he testified to everything he knew about Salonia's murder. So to the layperson, you offered him a deal?

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He did not want to talk to us. Ward and Anthony were about to drive back to Louisiana when Barnes said something that took them by surprise.

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The date was June 21, 2019, more than 30 years after Salonia's murder.

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Reggie Jr. put up his father's $250,000 bail bond.

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Now that you are both adults, did you ever ask him those questions that you have, that you're questioning even now as we sit here?

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Sitting in another Hammond jail cell was Jimmy Ray Barnes. He now had a lawyer and asked to speak with Detective Barry Ward and Taylor Anthony.

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The homicide trial of Reginald Reed was scheduled for November 2022, and Jimmy Ray had agreed to testify. Reggie Jr. hoped to hear never-before-revealed details of what had happened to his mother.

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In November 2022, the murder trial of Reginald Reed began in Amite, Louisiana. Reed was represented by the mother and daughter defense team of Vanessa Williams and Latoya Williams-Simon. What makes you think that he did not murder Salonia?

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Williams-Simon says the state's case was weak. There was no murder weapon, no fingerprints or DNA tying Reed to Salonia's homicide.

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But prosecutor Taylor Anthony believed his prosecution would deliver justice to Salonia.

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Anthony told jurors about the $700,000 from the insurance policies on Salonia's life. So what was your theory once you put all these pieces together?

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The case that they're presenting, which is this man takes out all these life insurance policies on a young, healthy 26-year-old woman. What is his rationale for having done that?

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Prosecutor Anthony was frank with jurors, telling them that the state would not produce a murder weapon or the exact location where Salonia was stabbed. He focused on what the prosecution did have, including that white lotion found on Salonia's body.

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The prosecutor also showed jurors a photograph of some scratches on Reed's neck taken on the day Salonia's body was found. They wanted to take photographs of his neck, and he was very hesitant. Anthony said Reed told police two different stories about how he got those scratches. But after forensic testing, it was determined that none of Reed's DNA was found under Salonia's fingernails.

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William Simon pointed to Jimmy Ray's long criminal record of arrests.

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But William Simon says Jimmy Ray's arrests were for violent crimes.

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Jimmy Ray Barnes ultimately took the stand as part of his plea agreement. Jimmy, will you please tell me... There were no cameras in the courtroom, so this recording is taken from Barnes' police interview conducted by Ward before the trial. He told the same story when he testified.

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On the night of the murder, Barnes said he promised to meet Reed in the parking area outside John's Curb Market, where Salonia's body had been found. Barnes said Reginald asked for his help in moving Salonia's body. Barnes says that Salonia was fully clothed when he saw her and sitting in the passenger seat.

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Prosecutor Anthony contends that after the men drove away, Reed returned and staged the crime scene, stripping off Salonia's clothes, covering her with that white lotion, and leaving other evidence to make it appear as a sex crime. And what does your dad say to that?

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William Simon had her own theory of what happened that night.

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Sitting through the trial, Reggie admitted that the relentless focus on his mother's murder was upsetting, especially as he watched that crime scene video, which he had never seen before.

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Reginald Reed never took the stand. And after less than a week of testimony, the case went to the jury. Reggie Jr. braced for the verdict.

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Some of Reginald Reed's brothers and sisters were waiting as well. Kennedy Reed, Belinda Reed Cox, and Claude Reed. Claude, you don't believe your brother murdered Celonia?

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But on this day, November 18th, 2022, Reginald Reed was found guilty of second-degree murder after the jury deliberated for just over three hours.

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Reggie tried to recapture the moment his father was found guilty in his book.

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Reggie says sitting through the trial was excruciating. But when it was over, he still wanted answers.

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Lieutenant Ward has told you that one of his theories is that your mother may have been killed in this room.

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Questions Reggie cannot answer because he simply cannot remember. On January 30th, 2023, everyone popped back into the same courtroom where Reginald Reed was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He did not offer any kind of explanation or statement and said nothing.

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So my question is, do you believe that your father murdered your mother?

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Salonia's sister, Gwen Smith, always believed Reginald was Salonia's killer. Although she and Reggie Jr. are estranged, she still worries about him.

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What do you want people to know about this case, if you could sum it up for me?

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For Barry Ward, who worked on the Salonia Reed case for a decade, the conviction was just, and he appreciates that Jimmy Ray Barnes agreed to testify. Jimmy Ray Barnes was the key. Barnes served his sentence for being an accessory after the fact to murder. He was freed from prison and, shortly after, on January 27th, 2024, he was killed in a car accident.

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He was in Hammond to attend the funeral of his identical twin.

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Charles Mewes, the Hammond police officer who found Salonia's body, is pleased he got to see the outcome of the case.

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You say that you wish you would have gotten to know her better. But then you realize too, you must, that she's living through you, that she's here because you're here.

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As for Reggie's father, he calls Reggie from a Louisiana state prison once or twice a week.

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Yeah, how you? A 48 Hours producer was present during a recent call.

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These days, Reggie has his own family. His son Lathan is nearly the age he was when Celonia was killed. And they often play games, just as Reggie did with his father. And in January 2024, Reggie and his wife Paula were blessed with a baby girl.

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The Day My Mother Never Came Home

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

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It's been decades since Reggie Reed Jr. last saw his mother, Salonia.

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Reggie was only six years old on August 22nd, 1987. One of the last things he remembers is his mother buying him a chocolate chip cookie here at the Hammond Square Mall in Louisiana. He told police his mother kissed him when she left the house later that night. But the rest, he says, is a blur. When you think about that,

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The Day My Mother Never Came Home

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Reggie's memories are at the heart of the memoir he's written about his mother's murder, The Day My Mother Never Came Home.

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Charles Mews, now retired, was the police officer who found Salonia's body after taking the initial missing persons report from her husband, Reginald Reed.

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Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Barry Ward would eventually be assigned to the case years later. He was only 16 years old when Salonia was murdered.

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When he eventually did pick up the case file, he took note of the lack of blood in the car.

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That market was about one and a half miles from the Reed house on Apple Street. At the scene, Officer Mews noticed something else about Celonia's naked body.

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Police believe the white lotion may have spelled out a word, but if there was a message, it had become illegible in the Louisiana heat.

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Detectives bagged any potential evidence, including the butt of a cigarette. A Winston cigarette. Police canvassed the area, but Ward says they didn't find any eyewitnesses or a murder weapon.

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Given the nature of Salonia's injuries, police at first believed the screwdriver might be the murder weapon, even though it had no visible blood on it. It was early in the investigation, and detectives looked at all the angles, including Celonia's job at Citizens National Bank.

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Salonia and Reginald, who was a Marine and later a car salesman, met during their high school years. Salonia was known for being devoted to Little Reggie, as everyone called him. But the night she disappeared, she left the six-year-old at home with his father, according to what Reginald told police.

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Officer Mews interviewed that friend, who denied she and Salonia had plans that night. Reginald told police he suspected Salonia had a boyfriend and admitted he and his wife had personal differences. But Ward says the police found no evidence of an affair.

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The day after her body was found, investigators searched the family home on Apple Street.

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Detectives looked for evidence that Salonia may have been killed there, but all they found was a freshly vacuumed carpet and the gold clasp of a necklace. Reginald gave investigators permission to interview little Reggie, the only other person in the home the night of the murder. In this police video, a detective questions Reggie as his father fidgets with a beanbag intended for his son.

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Reggie Jr. became his father's alibi. The boy said he and his father played video games and then slept together in the same sofa bed on that August night.

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When little Reggie agrees that everybody stayed home, his father looks at him.

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In the aftermath of Salonia's murder, her family came forward with more information. Some of it directed at one of Reginald's friends, Jimmy Ray Barnes. Turns out, Barnes smoked Winston cigarettes, the same brand found in Salonia's car. And Salonia's sister, Gwen Smith, said that Salonia did not like Jimmy Ray.

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The Day My Mother Never Came Home

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

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The Day My Mother Never Came Home

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes.

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In the days after Salonia's murder, there was one name police kept hearing, Jimmy Ray Barnes, a friend of Reginald Sr.

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Lieutenant Ward learned about a disturbing incident at a local beach where Salonia was swimming with little Reggie just days before the murder.

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The next night, her sister Gwen said Salonia became frightened when a relative who was visiting Salonia spotted Jimmy Ray Barnes near her home.

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Ward would learn that Jimmy Ray, along with Reginald, came under even more scrutiny two days after the murder. A witness came forward to say she had seen two men around John's Curb Market on the night Salonia was murdered.

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Some two weeks later, police assembled this photo array and showed it to the witness.

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Jimmy Ray was given a polygraph test and police at the time said he passed. But it wasn't long before Jimmy Ray left Hammond. Reginald denied having anything to do with Salonia's murder. But neighbors told police the marriage was trouble. Family members say Salonia had accused her husband of physical abuse, and there was talk of divorce.

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The police continued investigating, but prosecutors never brought the case to a grand jury.

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Facing a Monster 

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Soon after this incident, Lori ended her romantic relationship with Doyle. Lori told Jennifer they agreed to be just friends and that he was fine with it. And I was like, no, he's not.

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Despite the breakup, Doyle would still drive three hours from Hudson Falls to visit Lori, oftentimes hanging out at the bar where she waitressed late at night. Sean always called me and said, He'd call me to get advice. Dorothy Tucker lived down the street from Doyle in Hudson Falls and considered him a close friend.

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However, after the relationship with Lori ended, she says Doyle told her he had followed Lori and watched her as she went out on a date. I was like, Sean, you can't do that. She does not want to be with you.

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On Friday, April 29th, 2005, Lori, who was living with Jennifer, moved to a new rental apartment.

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Lori's nephew, Dustin De La Torre, who was 15 at the time, helped with the move.

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Also helping with the move was Sean Doyle, who offered up use of his truck.

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Jennifer says the move went smoothly until Doyle decided to hang around and stayed with Lori in her new place for days. It was starting to get on her nerves now. Five days after the move, Jennifer says Lori told her Doyle was finally leaving because Lori had plans to go to Albany for the afternoon. She was supposed to go pick up the tickets.

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Tickets to a Yankees game, a gift from someone she had met at work. Were you concerned at all about her going to pick up tickets from a stranger? Yes, yes. But that was how she was. She was very trusting. On Wednesday, May 4th, Jennifer called Lori in the afternoon, hoping to catch her while she was heading to Albany. And it kept going straight to voicemail.

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24 hours later, when Lori never called or returned home, Jennifer notified the Chittanango police.

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Lead investigator Wade Irwin searched Lori's rental apartment.

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And he said there was something else unsettling about the scene.

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Investigator Irwin says he was determined to speak to one person.

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But before investigators could reach out to Doyle, Jennifer says she tracked down Doyle's number and called him herself.

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As the days went by, Cheninango investigators reached out to everyone who had contact with Lori Leonard prior to her disappearance, including the man she was supposed to get Yankees tickets from in Albany.

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Detective Wade Irwin says the executive waited for Lori in Albany, and when she never showed up, he called her and even left a message.

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His alibi checked out, but Lori's phone records would reveal a lot more about another person who hadn't called.

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Sean Doyle.

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When Chittanango police went to interview Lori's former boyfriend, he told them that on the day she disappeared, he left her apartment about 3 p.m. and then drove three hours home to Hudson Falls.

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When they checked out his alibi, Detective Irwin says they couldn't clear him. Yet Doyle was cooperative and even allowed investigators to search his truck and take photos. When they searched Doyle's glove compartment, they found something curious.

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as investigators kept an eye out on Doyle and continued to search for Lori. Jennifer says her family struggled to explain Lori's disappearance to her two young sons.

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To make matters worse, Austin and Zachary were now separated, staying with their fathers and only seeing each other on weekends.

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Jennifer suspected Sean Doyle had something to do with her sister's disappearance. So weeks after Lori vanished, she headed to Hudson Falls and held a demonstration, hoping someone there would know something about Doyle that could help investigators.

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Dorothy Tucker says when she heard Lori's family was in town, she immediately called Doyle.

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Later that day, when Dorothy passed Lori's family rallying on the streets, she says she did something she has come to deeply regret.

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As months passed with no sign of Lori, the family's hopes began to dwindle.

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And then on July 24, 2005, three months after Lori went missing... We had a report that a fisherman had been going by in this area here Captain Tony LeClair is with the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

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The box was locked and emitting a foul odor, so police were called. And when they broke open the lock, authorities discovered a body inside.

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Also in the box was a photo of Lori's two sons.

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The medical examiner would rule that Lori died of asphyxiation.

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Detective Irwin says that's when Sean Doyle went from a person of interest to a suspect in the case.

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During their search, police found sand tubes in his garage that matched the sand tubes inside the toolbox used to weigh it down.

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Remember the key investigators had discovered in Sean Doyle's truck? It matched the lock of the toolbox, tying Doyle directly to the crime. When investigators checked the bridge near the canal where the toolbox was found, they discovered scratches on the bridge railing that matched scratches found on the bottom of the toolbox.

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Just one day after the discovery of Lori's body in the toolbox, investigators arrested Sean Doyle. What was that moment like for you?

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Jennifer says it was time to break the news to Lori's two young sons. Zachary remembers the moment, even though he was only five years old.

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Then it was time to tell nine-year-old Austin.

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Jennifer says she couldn't truly mourn her sister because she had to prepare for Doyle's upcoming trial.

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In late summer of 2005, CeCe Opanowski received a phone call from her father. Her ex-boyfriend, Sean Doyle, had been arrested for murder. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

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When Cece learned the victim was 33-year-old Lori Leonard, a single mom of two young boys, she said she was overwhelmed with extreme guilt. That was a breaking point for me.

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Cece says she was haunted by the choice she made as a traumatized and scared teenager. And all I can think about is, if I could go back, I would have done it differently.

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So just weeks later, when investigators reached out to CeCe and asked if she would testify at Doyle's trial, she was determined to help.

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But CeCe was not Doyle's only ex-girlfriend who investigators hoped would testify against him. Five years after Doyle attacked CeCe, he allegedly tried to kill 23-year-old Sarah Vollmer.

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48 Hours reached out to Vollmer and received no response. But she did speak with the CBS affiliate in Albany about the attack in 2005.

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Doyle was charged with unlawful imprisonment in the second degree and assault in the third degree. But again, a deal was made. Doyle pleaded guilty only to the charge of unlawful imprisonment. A judge sentenced him to three years probation. On January 23rd, 2006, Sean Doyle's trial began. It was a day that Lori's sister Jennifer had waited for.

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I was going to speak for the boys. When Doyle entered the courtroom, Jennifer says she was caught off guard because his appearance had changed. What did he look like? Choir boy. He'd grown his hair, he had a sweater on. Kevin Courtright, now retired, had only been district attorney for less than a month.

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He says key to his case was making sure Doyle's other victims, CeCe and Sarah, would be allowed to testify. Oftentimes, judges do not allow a defendant's prior bad acts to be brought into trial.

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Despite the defense's objections, the judge ruled that CeCe and Sarah could testify. But first, DA Courtright presented the jury with all the pieces of physical evidence that pointed to Sean Doyle, like the items they found in Doyle's garage and home, the sandbags and handcuffs. And what about that bandana?

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And then there was that toolbox. Courtright called to the stand a clerk from a local AutoZone store who says she sold Doyle the toolbox just one week before Lori disappeared.

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And the most important piece of evidence, that key found in his glove compartment that tied Doyle directly to the box.

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Retired journalist Don Lehman covered the trial for the Postar newspaper.

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Then Courtright called Dorothy Tucker, Sean's once-close friend, to the stand. He says she was a major witness because she provided information as to how they believe Doyle transported Lori's body from Tinanango three hours over to Hudson Falls after he murdered her. He just kept calling me. Dorothy told the jury that the day that Lori disappeared, Doyle stopped by her house.

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In the back of his truck, she says, was a very large cardboard box.

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DA Courtright believes Lori's body was in the box and that at some point, Doyle transferred her body to the toolbox. Dorsey testified just days after his first visit, Doyle showed up at her house again, and the cardboard box had been replaced by a large toolbox.

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Dorothy said Doyle told her he was going to fish by the Champlain Lock Canal area, a place he knew well and frequented often. Doyle had even taken CeCe there many times when they dated.

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District Attorney Courtright called CeCe Opanowski as his last witness.

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I was very, very nervous. CeCe told the jury about the attack and the long-lasting mental anguish Sean Doyle caused her. What did you want Sean Doyle to see? That I wasn't afraid. That you're not my scary anything anymore. When it was the defense's turn, Lehman says they tried to poke holes in the prosecution's case.

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We reached out to Sean Doyle and members of Doyle's family, but they declined to be interviewed. After three long days of testimony, the case went to the jury. Lori Leonard's family members held their breath.

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Despite all the evidence against Sean Doyle, retired journalist Don Lehman says no one knew which way the jury would rule.

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On January 26, 2006, after just two and a half hours of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict. Guilty of second-degree murder.

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For Cece, it was difficult to process the fact that a person she once loved was convicted of murder.

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One month later, before Doyle was sentenced, a judge listened to testimony and read over victim impact statements from Lori's friends and family.

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Austin and Zachary, Lori's sons were too young to attend trial, but both wrote letters to the judge.

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Sean Doyle was sentenced to the maximum, 25 years to life with the possibility of parole. Was that enough?

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Dorothy Tucker, who initially stood by Doyle, says she feels betrayed by him.

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Never saw that side of him. Dorothy hopes Lori's family will forgive her for how she previously treated them when they came to rally against Doyle in Hudson Falls.

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Facing a Monster 

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Don Lehman, who has covered many domestic violence cases in his almost 30 years as a reporter, says there are important lessons that can be learned from Cece and Sarah's attacks and Lori's murder.

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Facing a Monster 

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CeCe, who bravely came forward to tell her story, hopes that others can learn from her.

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Facing a Monster 

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She says she is ready to let go of the guilt she has felt for what happened to Lori.

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Facing a Monster 

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For Jennifer, she longs for the life she always thought she would have with Lori.

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Facing a Monster 

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Join me Tuesday for Postmortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.

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Facing a Monster 

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For CeCe Opanowski, it has taken almost 30 years to talk about the day her former high school boyfriend, Sean Doyle, attacked her in her family's home in Hudson Falls, New York, and then used scissors to cut off her ponytail. What was it like to have your hair cut off in this way? Demeaning.

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Facing a Monster 

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Just to make sure he could knock me down somewhere. On that day, January 27, 1996, as Doyle went in and out of violent rages, at one point holding the scissors to her throat, CeCe says she wasn't sure she would make it out alive until she says her college roommate, Shannon McAuliffe, called. When she finally picks up the phone, what did you hear in her voice? Fear.

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Facing a Monster 

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Shannon says she knew that Doyle had been harassing Cece. So when Cece told her Doyle was there, Shannon notified police and then rushed over to Cece's house.

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Facing a Monster 

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Cece says she thought when police arrived, they would make her feel safe, but that's not exactly what happened.

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Facing a Monster 

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I was like, why are we here? Why is he not, why are we in the same room? CeCe says instead of separating them, police questioned them together.

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Facing a Monster 

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When 48 Hours reached out to the Hudson Falls Police Department, they acknowledged that law enforcement's response to domestic violence has evolved over the past several decades to better work with and support victims. Police arrested Doyle and charged him with menacing harassment and trespassing.

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Facing a Monster 

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Cece Opanowski and Sean Doyle grew up in the small town of Hudson Falls, located in upstate New York. To protect Cece's privacy, we chose not to show the actual house where she lived. He was nice to me. He was really nice. When Cece started dating Sean Doyle, she was just 15 years old, a sophomore in high school. Doyle was one year older. You know, we would go and do lots of things together.

48 Hours

Facing a Monster 

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You know, we just hung out all the time. Cece says Doyle had troubles at home. During his junior year, Doyle told her his parents kicked him out. So Cece begged her parents to let him move in with them. Did you feel sorry for him? Oh, definitely. Soon after he moved into Cece's family home, She says she saw a change in Doyle's behavior.

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Facing a Monster 

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Cece says he became jealous and would secretly follow her around, something she says she didn't think at the time was a big deal.

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Facing a Monster 

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And Doyle showed even more possessive behavior that CeCe found troubling.

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Facing a Monster 

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I love you. Was it a red flag? Definitely. During his senior year, Cece says Doyle dropped out of high school and was working odd jobs that he couldn't keep.

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Facing a Monster 

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But Cece says she stuck by him, writing in her senior yearbook, I Love You, Sean. And in the summer of 1995, when she left to attend what is now Russell Sage College in Albany, they agreed to stay together and see each other on weekends. But at the end of September, things took a scary turn when Cece told Doyle she would not be coming home every weekend to see him. Doyle showed up at her dorm.

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Facing a Monster 

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So he was arrested. Doyle was charged with harassment and trespassing. It was the final straw for CeCe, who says she broke it off with Doyle for good, and he moved out of her parents' house. Later that winter, that's when Sean Doyle showed up and viciously attacked her at her home.

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Facing a Monster 

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Not in that way. After the attack, CeCe returned to college and finished up her freshman year. But Shannon says her friend had changed.

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Facing a Monster 

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Awful, awful. So eight months after the attack, when it was time to take the case to trial, Cece, who was still just a teenager at 19 years old, told prosecutors she couldn't go through with it. She says she was too traumatized and scared.

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Facing a Monster 

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Doyle was offered a deal. He pleaded guilty to menacing in the second degree and was sentenced to just three years probation. CeCe transferred colleges and moved hours away from Hudson Falls, New York. I needed peace. and I didn't know how to get it. Cece tried to forget her past, but she says she was haunted by a conversation she had with the prosecutor.

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Facing a Monster 

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Say hi. Lori Leonard was a single mom who lived with her two sons, Austin, who was nine at the time, and Zachary, five, in Chittanango, a small town outside Syracuse, New York.

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Facing a Monster 

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In 2003, Lori met a man on a dating website, Cupid.com. His name? Sean Doyle. Online dating was new back then, so Jennifer was skeptical about him.

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Facing a Monster 

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She only saw the good in people. She would say, you know, he's misunderstood or he's shy. Jennifer says Lori told her very little about Doyle, except that he lived three hours away in Hudson Falls, New York, and worked at an ice cream factory. She also mentioned that Doyle was on probation.

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Facing a Monster 

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Jennifer says after her sister met Doyle, Lori became distant. I would talk to Lori three times a day. And then when Sean came into the picture?

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Katie and John were known to have gone there, too. The friends made their way to the basement. They were horrified by what they found. One of them called 911.

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Katie Blauvelt's body had been stuffed into that cold, concrete box. You believe Katie was killed outside the house and brought in?

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And if she's screaming, there's no one to hear?

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And you live with that every day?

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Doesn't get easier, does it?

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It was October 26, 2016. Investigators made that official death notification visit to Blauvelt. They got their first sense of the resentment he held towards Katie. She flipped my life upside down. Morcraft and Schofield wanted more information from Blauvelt. And so, just a week later, they spoke with him.

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He told them he visited Katie at the funeral home.

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Blauvelt said he hadn't seen Katie in months. Their marriage had been a nonstop argument.

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Sitting across, talking to this man, what are you sensing in John Blauvelt?

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You do. Investigators confront Hannah, sensing she must know something.

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And while they suspected Hannah might know something, they did not know exactly what. I can tell you already you're lying to me.

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Investigators showed Hannah an autopsy photo of Katie. Look at her. She's right here.

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With no help from Hannah, police hands were tied. We had to let him go. Potential hard evidence had to be processed, including Blauvelt's cell phone records and his DNA.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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John Blauvelt, trained in survival and combat, suddenly loose on the open road.

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And so did Hannah Thompson. Police believed she was with Blauvelt. Prosecutor Kinley Abe would begin building the case with the chilling evidence she says he left behind.

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Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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What you're holding there is what I'm seeing on this X-ray.

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Simpsonville police knew they needed help to find John Blauvelt.

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On October 24th of 2016, Katie Blauvelt went missing.

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On November 18, 2016, John Blauvelt, still on the run, was charged with Katie's murder.

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U.S. Marshal Will Cook based near Simpsonville, would become the point person in the hunt for Blauvelt, who had been skilled at evasion.

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Investigators remained uncertain about Hannah Thompson's involvement in the murder, if any. but they knew for sure she was traveling with Blauvelt. They uncovered photos of Blauvelt and Thompson shopping and Blauvelt at an ATM. His red Yukon truck passing through Texas and New Mexico heading west. Were you able to get hits on where this vehicle was from time to time?

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Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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But by the time police were able to respond, Blauvelt was gone. In a game like this, all the seconds count. Then, after a month, investigators caught a break. Hannah Thompson made contact with her family from Eugene, Oregon. She wanted to come home to Simpsonville. Cheryl Schofield couldn't wait to talk to her. Hannah's story was that John had left her in Eugene, just up and walked away.

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She had no idea where John was headed, but apparently she had enough of life on the run.

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Any romantic notion Hannah may have had was derailed when John got the Yukon stuck in the mud in the Pacific Northwest. Couldn't get out. Could not get out.

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The couple was reduced to panhandling for change. And they use that for food? Sustainment. Hannah says while on the road, Blauvelt confessed, sharing the awful details of the killing.

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an adult can psychologically take advantage of a child. Do you believe, in a way, that's what was going on between John and Hannah?

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Hannah told conflicting stories about her involvement, eventually saying she dropped Blauvelt off by PetSmart the day Katie disappeared and then left. Hannah says she did not know he planned to kill Katie, but later that day, he asked her to help hide Katie's car. She also admitted she had lied in her first interview just days after Katie's murder.

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Investigators did not charge Hannah right away because they needed her.

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They hoped she might lead them to Blauvelt.

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But if Hannah knew where John was, she wasn't ready to tell them.

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Blauvelt was still out there. Months turned into years. Lives changed. He's beating us, and we don't like to lose. It's driving you crazy. It's driving us crazy. Was it frustrating that you retired with this case still out there?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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Those who knew Blauvelt thought justice for Katie might never come.

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The cops in Simpsonville interviewed Hannah repeatedly over the years. Then in 2022, six years after Katie's murder, Hannah finally revealed a secret. She had been in regular contact with Blauvelt for years.

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Hannah told investigators how they communicated.

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Authorities believe Hannah had matured, with time and distance away from John. She told them she realized what she had done was wrong and gradually offered more leads. John might still be in Oregon, and she added John told her he had been living with another woman for years.

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Medford, a small city in the Northwest. Investigators jumped on the lead and discovered a phone number that John had used to text a mystery woman. And this sounds tantalizing, isn't it? Very tantalizing. Marshal Chris Tamayo is Will Cook's colleague in the Northwest. His team got an address that corresponded with the mystery woman's house. He took us to the scene.

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But six years after John allegedly murdered Katie, how could investigators be certain they had their man?

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It was a quiet morning in Medford.

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John disappears and he is on the run.

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The marshals made their move.

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He was just coming out shirtless. But was it for sure John Blauvelt? A pirate told the tale.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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On July 20, 2022, some six years after Katie's death, Chris Tamayo joined marshals and other law enforcement for the takedown of the man they believed killed her.

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John Blauvelt goes on the run. Where's Hannah?

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Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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John Glauvelt under arrest. He's getting handcuffed. Handcuffs. But the suspect told the marshals they had the wrong man. He said, I'm Ben Kline. I said, no, you're not.

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When the marshals went inside the house, they realized the raid could have taken a fatal turn.

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All of it was apparently news to the woman Blauvelt was living with when she returned to the house later that day.

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Tamayo recorded audio with her at the scene.

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Blauvelt's girlfriend told the Marshalls she had no idea who he really was.

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She loved him. She loved him. The news hit Simpsonville like thunder.

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John Blauvelt would go cross-country again, this time handcuffed, brought back to a South Carolina jail to await trial. Just three months later, Hannah Thompson would be charged with five felonies, including obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact. She would plead not guilty and be released on bail.

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Prosecutor Kinley Abey, who began putting the case against Blauvelt together a few months after Katie was killed, would team with John Metters, preparing the case for trial, starting with that blade investigators found in Katie's neck.

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He's been trained on how to defend himself. He's been trained on how to kill. Does that make him a unique fugitive? It does. So we don't know where he's going to go. We don't know what he could be doing next. When you heard that he was on the run, what'd you think?

48 Hours

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they focused on that abandoned farmhouse where kids once partied, where they found Katie.

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So do you think John was making a statement by placing her body... Absolutely. ...in this bin that normally you put trash?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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Prosecutors say Blauvelt blamed Katie for the abrupt end of his military career. It's all Katie's fault. He's not responsible for what he did. He's blaming his wife. Yes. And there were John Blauvelt's own words. While on the run, he kept a journal that the marshals found. Like a diary, correct? Correct. And it held a damning entry. So at the end, it says boldly, I did it.

48 Hours

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In September 2024, eight years after Katie's death, John Blauvelt went on trial for murder. Patti Piver described the child she adored. Ali Somerville stared at the man she once called a role model. He looked like a stone-cold killer to me. The prosecution's key witness was Hannah Thompson, she would admit to helping Blauvelt the day Katie died.

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And prosecutors played this grainy video. Hannah says it shows John Blauvelt getting out of Katie's car and into his. Hannah was at the wheel of his Prius.

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Once on the run, she says he told her the details of the murder.

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But Blauvelt's defense team, Paul Neely and Anna Walker, made Hannah admit that her story changed over the years.

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Then the defense zeroed in on the lack of DNA evidence at the scene. Was there any DNA that tied John Blaufeld to this murder? No.

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Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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And what about John Blauvelt's journal, in which he wrote, I did it? His lawyers told 48 Hours much of it was a fantasy.

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The prosecution pointed to the importance of her testimony.

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The trial lasted four days. The jury was out for some five hours.

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Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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John Blauvelt has been found guilty for the murder of his estranged wife, Katie Booter Blauvelt.

48 Hours

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Taylor Farmer covered the case for WSPA.

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It was very emotional in the courtroom. Kind of quiet, but you could tell Katie's family was very emotional. As soon as the jurors got out, I just started crying.

48 Hours

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John Blauvelt was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

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And what did the family think about Hannah Thompson, who allegedly covered for Blauvelt for so long?

48 Hours

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In the soft South Carolina night in the city of Simpsonville, Katie Blauvelt was missing. It had been two fearful days for her mom, Patty Piver.

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What would you say to your sister today, if you could?

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Then, past midnight, October 26, 2016, investigators Cheryl Schofield and Keith Moorcraft were dispatched to the scene. Katie's mangled body had been found in an abandoned farmhouse, 22 years old, a knife blade left in her body.

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Katie's mom was overwhelmed.

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Katie's stepsister, Jennifer Piver.

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Moorcraft and another investigator went to tell John Blauvelt his wife's body had been found. We went to make the death notification.

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At first, Blauvelt appeared distressed. But as the conversation progressed, his demeanor changed.

48 Hours

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John Blauvelt did have one question, but it wasn't about Katie.

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Right away, you sensed this could be our guy.

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But they couldn't arrest him on a feeling. First, Moorcraft and Schofield had evidence to gather and a case to build. But just as they got started, John Blauvelt took to the road. Traveling with him, Hannah Thompson, his new girlfriend, all of 17. How concerned were you about Hannah's safety?

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But John Blauvelt hadn't always been considered threatening. Back in 2014, in this quiet city of some 20,000, he was a welcome part of the community, the larger-than-life public face of the U.S. Army. A person of principle, someone willing to sacrifice for his country. Yes, that's what I think. These are all admirable traits, right? Exactly.

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It was then that John met Katie, just yards from his recruiting office, at this sub shop where she worked. Katie turned 20. John was 26. They started dating.

48 Hours

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In the summer of 2015, recruiter John Blauvelt convinced Katie to enlist. But after just two months, a health issue prevented her from finishing her training.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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She got a medical discharge out of the Army. While Katie's military hopes were dashed, John told friends he had found his calling.

48 Hours

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With his war stories about his deployments in Iraq, his sharp uniform decorated with service ribbons, John impressed local teenagers.

48 Hours

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Allie Somerville, a close friend of Katie, says she often ate lunch with John at his recruiting booth in her school. She adds he also sometimes showed up at local hangouts. I thought he was cool. He was very interested in your life, what you were up to and things. Yeah, he made sure I was okay. But as he began dating Katie, her family was never half sure about John Blauvelt.

48 Hours

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She touched a lot of people's lives.

48 Hours

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Did he seem interested in you, in the family?

48 Hours

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Then, after about a year and seemingly out of the blue, Katie surprised her family with an alarming announcement.

48 Hours

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Staff Sergeant John Blauvelt and his new bride were putting down roots in the community. Katie had taken a job at the local PetSmart. Yeah, she's going to love that. And she did. And she was passionate about animals.

48 Hours

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This could be a career for her. As for John, he already owned this four-bedroom home in Fountain Inn, right next to Simpsonville, where investigator Cheryl Schofield worked.

48 Hours

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Katie moved in, and soon the house was crowded with kids, but not the kind Katie imagined.

48 Hours

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John had invited Katie's niece to stay with them. And later, Hannah Thompson and Allie Somerville crashed there, too. Allie says it became a party destination for kids from their high school, where John often worked as an Army recruiter.

48 Hours

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He was a recruiter for the military. He was someone that was respected by the community.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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And Ali claimed it wasn't just weed that was the draw. She said at times there was booze, acid, and cocaine. This is with the U.S. Army recruiter, right?

48 Hours

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Patty says it wasn't long before Katie grew frustrated with all of the partying and told John it had to stop. Her dream house turned into a party house. Right. And that's the last thing your sister wanted, right? Absolutely. As Katie and Blauvelt drifted, Hannah Thompson was there to fuel the fire.

48 Hours

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And what was the nature of Hannah's relationship with John as time went on?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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It was all too much for Katie. According to police records, after being married less than three months, Katie moved out. Captain Schofield says John and Hannah wasted no time.

48 Hours

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Simpsonville is a tight-knit community. It's got that small-town Southern charm. This is a place where you bake a cake and take it to your neighbor next door.

48 Hours

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Hannah's father went to the police and told them he hadn't seen his daughter for two weeks. That night, on February 26, 2016, cops showed up at John Blauvelt's house. When they arrived, what happens?

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Allie Somerville was inside the house with John and some other minors when police arrived.

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These are people with weapons. Were weapons out?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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A veteran of the Iraq War. and they're having to pull their guns to get him out of the house. Yes. It's kind of extraordinary, isn't it?

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John eventually opened the door and was questioned by police. On February 27, 2016, he was arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. His soldier's image replaced with a mugshot.

48 Hours

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And soon, Blauvelt's troubles would get even worse. Police talked to Katie the day Blauvelt was arrested. She told them about a more troubling incident she says happened a month earlier.

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John was a catch for Katie. She married him, was happy, wanted to have kids and get their life started.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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Pulls out a gun, points it at her head, says what?

48 Hours

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Threaten the family, what do you mean?

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A restraining order was issued preventing Blauvelt and Katie from seeing each other.

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That consequence came... just a few days later, when the Department of the Army cut John's pay and suspended him from the recruiting duty that defined him.

48 Hours

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The Army reassigned him to a small back office and began an investigation that might lead to his dismissal.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

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Katie quickly moved on from her short, disastrous marriage and told her mother she planned to divorce John. Your daughter moves out. Does she move back with you? Yeah. But despite the restraining order, Katie and John still had some contact, including visits to the house she had shared with John.

48 Hours

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901.157

As for Blauvelt, the military career he cherished was in tatters. And according to Allie Somerville, he planned to get revenge. Did he ever say anything about harming Katie?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

91.482

What did John and Katie seem like as a couple to you?

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

923.942

you destroy my career, I'm gonna destroy you.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

928.328

Do you think he'd really go through with it? No, never.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

948.51

Police say Katie Blauvelt was last seen alive on October 24th, 2016 at her job at PetSmart. But come morning in Simpsonville, no one had heard from her. Calls to her went to voicemail. Her mother reported her missing. Did she tell the officers she spoke with that she was suspicious of John Blauvelt? She did. The desperate search and the painful waiting began.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

99.244

They had a little honeymoon after they got married, and once they got back, things were no longer as good as they were. It seemed like ever since then, just everything went downhill. Their marriage had fallen apart. Hannah Thompson and John were hanging out a lot.

48 Hours

Cati Blauvelt: Death of a Soldier’s Wife

991.662

But after midnight, two of Katie's friends followed a hunch that sent them deep in the woods to the old abandoned farmhouse.

48 Hours

A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder

1631.972

What do you make of Garrett Discovery's findings? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X.

48 Hours

A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder

216.752

Her case was before the Prisoner Review Board in an effort to get clemency. People have to know the truth. I have to keep pushing, fighting no matter how much it hurts. I want people to know I'm innocent.

48 Hours

A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder

237.854

Erin Moriarty reports, unraveling the case against Melissa.

48 Hours

A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder

37.159

You may remember in 2009, Melissa Kaluzinski was working at a Lincolnshire daycare. She was given 31 years in prison for the death of a 16-month-old who was in her care. Since then, she and her supporters have been fighting back, calling this a wrongful conviction.

48 Hours

A Day Care Worker Convicted of Murder

422.132

I have a child who's foaming, who's not breathing.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1001.356

So McDonough enlisted the help of the Texas Rangers and began piecing together what happened to Livy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1011.984

Sean Dunn is an old friend of Matthew's.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1022.814

Sean, a former Texas oil and gas man... once employed a then 20-year-old Matthew as a supervisor on his pipeline.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1041.904

Sean was also once a deputy sheriff and says in his personal and professional opinion, Matthew is innocent.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1063.275

Sean believes Matthew when he says he has no memory of what happened. The cause of death for that girl is not natural. And thinks this moment... Did they tell you her name? Libby. ...was very real.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1097.225

Sean won't name names, but Matthew and his mother Cindy have insinuated that someone else killed Livy. Montana.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1136.485

This is one of the last photos ever taken of Livy. She is with Montana, and they are at that party Matthew told investigators about at Bobby Ozan's place.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1151.208

Including Matthew and Montana's sons. Bobby told investigators Matthew spent the night watching Livvy and Montana party with everyone but him.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1169.122

Investigators learned that Livvy had broken up with Matthew just weeks earlier and he had taken up with another young woman in town.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1190.714

So you just know him a week?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1193.495

But it was clear to Bobby that Matthew wasn't over Livvy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1205.319

Bobby says Matthew was stewing at the party.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1215.188

And the more he drank, the angrier he got. Exactly.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1230.126

As the party at Bobby Ozan's was winding down, Matthew Edgar says he called it a night.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1241.192

That's where Matthew's memory goes blank. But his ex-wife, Montana Bockell, remembers much more. The day is October the 31st. In this audio recording, Montana told investigators Matthew suddenly came back to the party and learned that Livvy had decided to stay overnight at Bobby's.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1288.663

That was too much for him. That was just too much. According to Montana, Matthew was so angry, he even took it out on her.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1317.269

Montana says she and Libby left in separate cars. In search of safety, Montana says she headed toward the home where Matthew's mother and grandparents lived, and that's where Matthew caught up with her.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1334.323

Their children were in the back seat of Matthew's van.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1342.279

In all the racket, Montana says Matthew left and headed for his own home a short distance away on the same property. A shaken Montana says she asked to stay the night with Matthew's mother and grandparents and then began texting with Matthew.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1361.345

What does he say? You took part in it and you are guilty as she is, wrote Matthew, as he angrily accused Montana of playing a part in Libby's decision to spend the night with Bobby Ozan. Those texts would become damning evidence in the case against Matthew Edgar. He said, you knew what was going on. A decision that appears to have enraged him.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1391.282

Mark my words. At 3.22 a.m., Matthew texts, I'm leaving. Better get here and get your kids. McDonough says evidence shows that a drunk and angry Matthew then got behind the wheel of his truck, where he kept his rifle and went hunting for Livy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1427.366

12 minutes after texting, I'm leaving, Matthew texted, I'm home. I got Libby's keys and her phone. Montana asked, where is she? Matthew's response, dead. Montana told investigators she didn't call 911 because she didn't believe he was serious. Instead, Montana texted Matthew, can I come down there? His reply, yeah.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1454.755

But Montana claims that Matthew's mother wouldn't let her leave, so she just fell asleep.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1469.024

But Matthew didn't go to bed. McDonough says evidence shows that not long after sending that text that Livvy was dead, Matthew did something no one can explain. He went back to the crime scene. this time in his cousin Zach's truck. It's that truck that was found parked behind Livvy's car. Why would he go back then? Why would he return to the scene of the crime?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1493.964

That would be a question you'd have to ask Matthew. I can't explain that. Also hard to explain, Montana's failure to call 911. It made no sense to Livvy's friend, Bailey.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1519.91

McDonough says he and his team of investigators wondered if Montana had been to the crime scene that morning to try and help Matthew cover up Libby's murder.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1534.988

Two months after the crime, Montana was given a polygraph exam.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1543.415

After monitoring her physiological responses, Montana was told she failed the polygraph.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1553.888

But after an in-depth multi-agency investigation, investigators concluded that Montana was never at the crime scene and had nothing to do with Libby's shooting or any coverup. And so to all those who think somehow she's involved, you say... Not true. Not true at all. All the evidence, says McDonough, points to one person, Matthew Edgar. Is there a motive in your mind? Jealousy. Jealousy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1585.285

Plain and simple. In February 2021, the COVID pandemic shut down the courts and this case. With no grand juries being convened, a judge was forced by law to release a still unindicted Matthew Edgar on a reasonable bond, $50,000. For them to set it so low was insane to me. Months after Matthew's release, Darcy was at her local convenience store when Matthew just strolled in.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1632.24

Matthew pressed charges against Darcy, and she was arrested. The charges would eventually be dropped, but Darcy says she just wanted some answers.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1650.883

On March 16th, 2021, four and a half months after his arrest. The charge is going to be homicide. A grand jury finally heard the evidence against Matthew Edgar. and indicted him for the murder of Livy Lewis. But Matthew, who was still out on bail, wasn't done breaking the law and tormenting Livy's family.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1689.105

As January 2022 and the trial of Matthew Edgar approached, Darcy Bass was confident that the evidence in the murder of her daughter Livy would finally prove that Matthew had killed her.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1715.753

Then there were all those venomous texts between Matthew and Montana that Taylor and Bailey say ended with a clear confession.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1728.097

Because who would know that except...

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1731.617

And remember that text that read, I got Livvy's keys and her phone? Well, Livvy's phone was found in the truck Matthew had driven to the crime scene. Her keys were found on the driveway at his grandparents' house and reluctantly handed over to investigators by Matthew's mother, Cindy Hogan. Is it true, in your opinion, that she tried to keep Livvy's keys from investigators? That was the indication.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1758.965

Cindy Hogan also tried to help her son by suggesting that Livy had been killed by a drug cartel because Matthew owed them money.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1790.719

On Monday, January 24th, 2022, the trial of Matthew Edgar began with jury selection. Matthew, who was still out on bond, walked in and out of court every day like a free man.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1815.501

On the first day of testimony, the state began presenting its case, which included DNA lab results that detected a tiny speck of Livy's blood on the pants Matthew was wearing when he was found at the crime scene. How important is that piece of evidence? It's critical. It puts him there at the time that that injury caused her death.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1838.337

But Matthews' court-appointed defense attorney, Rob Hughes, argued that a tiny drop of blood doesn't prove a thing. How else could that speck have gotten on his pant leg if not coming from blood spatter from the shooting?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1856.093

Hughes says there's no telling how long that blood had been there. And all that blood on Matthew's face that McDonough swabbed and had tested, it wasn't Livy's or Matthew's. And once they were excluded, investigators didn't pursue other matches. Hugh says there were additional DNA tests that also raised questions about who else may have been at the crime scene.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1888.311

Hughes tried his best to argue that the DNA should be considered reasonable doubt, but admits that his biggest obstacle in defending Matthew were those texts and Matthew's insistence that he has no memory of sending them.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1903.411

In your entire career as a defense attorney, have you ever had a client who was functioning during the course of a crime, texting, conversing with people, driving an automobile, who then said they had no memory whatsoever of the events?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1926.16

Hughes also asserted that the murder weapon had not been tested for fingerprints or DNA, but conceded the rifle belonged to Matthew. After a second day of testimony, the prosecutor notified Hughes that he would be resting his case the next morning And it would then be Hughes' turn to call witnesses.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1948.739

Sean Dunn says that he had been Snapchatting with Matthew, who was feeling optimistic about his chances.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1962.924

But the next morning, as Rob Hughes arrived at the courthouse, he got a panicked call from Matthew's mother, who told him her son was now a fugitive.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

1989.289

Authorities say Matthew had simply waited for the battery on his ankle monitor to die and then left home, most likely on foot.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2010.928

Roughly two miles. Meanwhile, Matthew's trial went on without him. That very same day, defense attorney Rob Hughes began presenting his case. The jury was not told that Matthew had fled, but they must have wondered.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2037.128

No one was surprised when after deliberating for about an hour and a half, the jury found Matthew Edgar guilty of murder. But he was still on the loose, out there somewhere, an armed threat to himself and the community.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2070.973

Darcy says it felt like no one was searching for Matthew, so she became a mother on a mission and hung this homemade wanted poster all over town. But she wasn't alone. J.P. McDonough had been joined by Jeff Coulter, a special deputy with the Eastern District U.S. Marshal Service, and they were on the hunt for Matthew. Do you consider him right off the bat to be a dangerous fugitive?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2121.456

This is the very spot where 19-year-old Livy Lewis was murdered, now a memorial lovingly tended to by her mother, Darcy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2139.474

It's also a place that Darcy is convinced Matthew Edgar visited after becoming a fugitive.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2150.382

Darcy says she also heard rumors that Matthew's mother had been spotted buying her son's favorite cigarettes and liquor in large quantities.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2161.701

One week after Matthew ran from the law, Jeff Coulter, a special deputy with the U.S. Marshals, was asked to take over the manhunt. When you first begin your investigation, do you start with his family to see if they've heard anything?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2183.615

Coulter says he quietly spent nearly a year working with the sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies around the country to chase down every lead that came their way. We had put in a lot of hours, a lot of weekends, a lot of late nights. Then a tip that Matthew might actually be hiding in plain sight, just yards from his grandparents' property in this house.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2216.574

The house, which belonged to a family friend, was surrounded by woodlands. So Coulter enlisted the aid of two wardens with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The plan? To get as close as possible, under the cloak of darkness, using night vision to ID their man.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2245.702

While Coulter led a team of three men into the woods, J.P. McDonough and his deputies were on the opposite side of the house, near the driveway, but out of sight in their vehicles.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2262.083

If Coulter and his men made a positive ID on Matthew, they would finally have him cornered.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2296.554

They were 30 yards from the house when a second storm hit, but there was no giving up.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2304.26

This needed to end tonight. Drenched and exhausted, Coulter and his team could hear voices on the back porch of the house, but couldn't see faces. until about 8 p.m., when a man stepped off the porch.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2320.85

One of Coulter's men immediately recognized that man as Matthew Edgar. He goes, he's here. I got eyes on him.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2366.067

I have not. Colter says that's not all Matthew had to say that night. He said, please don't shoot my mother.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2397.819

Cindy Hogan was eventually charged with hindering apprehension. We reached out to her attorney for comment, but did not hear back. On January 3rd, 2023, Matthew Edgar was formally sentenced for the murder of Livy Lewis, 99 years in prison with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2443.593

Darcy hopes to be there when Matthew comes up for parole and Taylor and Bailey say she won't be alone.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

2459.969

Meanwhile, Darcy is trying to save up enough money to buy a headstone for Libby's grave. How do you carry on and honor your daughter's memory?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

272.65

Not a single one. The world seems to think that Matthew Edgar is a murderer. Do you believe that? I do not. Do you believe that someone else pulled that trigger?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

331.074

In the early morning hours of Halloween 2020, a day when the boundaries between the living and the dead become blurred, Libby Lewis was discovered draped over the steering wheel of her car, dead from a rifle shot to the neck. Here's her ID. Libby had just turned 19. I don't know if dispatch has notified her next of kin or not.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

354.983

It happened in Hemphill, a tiny town in Texas with a population just over 1,000, the kind of place where no one is a stranger and news spreads like wildfire.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

370.23

Yeah, that's what I was... That is how Livvy's mother, Darcy Bass, heard the news when a friend called to say that Livvy had been shot.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

399.697

By all accounts, Libby Lewis was a remarkable young woman, a straight-A student and recent high school grad with a scholarship to a local college.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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Libby was already a certified nursing assistant at a local nursing home.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

433.228

That's a tough job, too.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

438.325

That's also where she met one of her best friends, fellow nursing assistant Taylor Barnett.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

448.671

Taylor was nearly six years older and had a young daughter, but she says Livvy fit right in.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

458.457

Bailey Williams met Livvy in kindergarten.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

468.715

That's probably why Livvy fell for an older man, Matthew Edgar, who was 23 when they met.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

484.848

Livvy was still a senior in high school when she and Matthew began a secret relationship. Matthew was married to Montana Bokel, the mother of his two young sons. Phone records indicate that Livy and Matthew began texting each other in November 2019, when Matthew wrote, you do realize you cannot say a word to anybody that we are even texting, LOL.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

511.268

Livy responded, well, obviously I'm not gonna brag about texting a married man, but thanks for the clarification. It appears that after a very brief affair, Livy quickly and firmly ended things. But Matthew wasn't done. About four months later, he texted to complain about how unhappy he was in his marriage. I cheated again, he said. But Livvy held her ground.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

540.531

I'm not really down for being a homewrecker, she wrote. Nearly two months later, Matthew ended his marriage in this text exchange with his wife, where he said, ain't you, it's me. Me always cheating on you. Four days later, Montana hired a divorce attorney. Matthew moved out and circled back to Livy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

564.988

At just 18, Livy was now navigating a relationship with a man who had two young sons and a soon-to-be ex-wife.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

613.311

You can call it that, absolutely. Sabine County Sheriff's investigator J.P. McDonough questioned Matthew about his relationship with Montana and Livvy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

645.18

But Taylor says that as time went by, it was Matthew's behavior that became the most menacing.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

670.06

Phone records show that the relationship was a rollercoaster ride. while at times Matthew sent texts to Livvy like, Good night, baby. I love you. Livvy's texts alleged physical abuse. I don't know why you keep putting your hands on me like that. My body hurts today.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

701.88

Livy had been planning on moving to her new college campus. But in the summer of 2020, she stayed on that roller coaster ride, agreeing to move in with Matthew and help take care of him and his sons. She even redecorated the boys' rooms.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

721.396

But things seemed to have quickly turned ugly. In August of 2020,

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

740.646

I'm scared of you. You've laid your hands on me multiple times. I deserve better than that. Had she told you at that time that she had been violent?

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

758.072

Livy did tell her cousin, Sidney Ebar, what was going on. She sent you a disturbing photograph.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

777

It's not clear what caused the altercation, but texts would later show that Matthew was cheating on Livvy with, of all people, Montana. On October 4th, 2020, Livvy's birthday, Matthew texted Montana. I didn't cheat on Livvy with multiple women, just you, LOL.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

812.952

Livvy broke up with Matthew. But in a small town like Hemphill, you can run, but you can't really hide. In the early morning hours of Halloween 2020, Matthew and Livvy would end up together again. On the side of this road. The morning Livvy Lewis was killed on the side of the road, her ex-boyfriend Matthew Edgar found himself in a hospital bed, claiming he had no idea how he got there.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

863.416

Despite the blood on his face, Matthew wasn't injured. But he did admit to Sheriff's Investigator J.P. McDonough that he'd been drinking.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

876.425

Anything else? a few beers earlier in the day. He said he'd been at a party the night before at his friend Bobby Ozan's house. That's when he claims he last saw Livvy.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

898.57

And that's where Matthew claims he blacked out. and simply can't explain how he ended up in a fetal position between a black truck that wasn't his and Livvy's car.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

919.812

McDonough took swabs of the blood on Matthew's face for DNA testing. All right, Matthew, I'm going to do this one on the chin. and Matthew's clothing was taken into evidence. I'm going to go through some of your clothes, okay? Yes, sir. Then McDonough placed Matthew under arrest.

48 Hours

The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

977.56

But he didn't say, you're going to do what? I didn't do anything. Nothing at all? Nothing at all. With Matthew jailed, McDonough was on a legal deadline. According to Texas law, the district attorney's office now had 90 days to present enough evidence to a grand jury to indict Matthew, or they would have to release him on bond.

48 Hours

The Boy Across the Street

21.002

This is Up and Vanished Weekly.

48 Hours

The Boy Across the Street

2667.031

This is Up and Vanished Weekly.

48 Hours

The Boy Across the Street

679.153

This is Up and Vanished Weekly.

48 Hours

The Boy Across the Street

86.975

Katina Salarno was only 18 years old when she was shot in the head and killed by her boyfriend.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

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Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. It was going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

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From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

210.082

Anne Marie Greene reports the hit-and-run homicide of Davis McClendon.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

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Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. It was going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

2507.117

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

2516.262

From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

665.748

Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. It was going through your mind at that time.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

674.954

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

684.079

From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer, available now on the binge. Search for Finding Mom's Killer wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

48 Hours

The Hit-and-Run Homicide of Davis McClendon

9.614

His best hope? To team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now. Somebody who's going to help me find out what happened to my mother.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

0.529

This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. Underwear drawers are like the Wild West. You never know what you're going to pull out or what shape it's in. So upgrade your collection with the buttery soft comfort of MeUndies. MeUndies signature fabric is as soft as a warm hug from your favorite sweater. Plus, it's breathable and oh so comfy, making it ideal for all-day wear.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1017.545

By now, Dee's family was growing suspicious of Dale. On the day Dee went missing, Dale told each of them what happened, but they say they all heard slightly different versions.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Zach says Dale told him he had had a fight with Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1055.492

But Raquel says Dale told her the fight was no big deal.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1067.017

And there was another odd detail in the story Dale told Dee's family and police that Sunday.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1086.229

Raquel, Zach, and Greg all say he showed them that ring on Sunday too, seeming to offer it as proof that Dee had left intentionally and maybe for good. But Greg says that ring is worth as much as $40,000. And leaving it behind didn't sound like Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1119.343

As time passed, the family's suspicions that Dale had harmed his wife only grew. About six weeks after Dee went missing, Greg says he confronted Dale about how he thought the investigation was progressing.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1166.803

But believing Dale had something to do with Dee's disappearance was very different from being able to prove it. The Michigan State Police and the FBI helped the county sheriff conduct a large-scale search of their properties again in October. But there was still no sign of Dee alive or dead.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1193.658

In February 2022, 10 months after Dee had gone missing, Shelly was watching an episode of 48 Hours featuring an investigator named Billy Little.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1244.076

Greg Hardy was convinced Dale Warner was behind his sister's disappearance. Did she love living here? She did. Although the sheriff's office had conducted at least seven searches and interviewed Dale several times, Greg was growing impatient by what he saw as a lack of progress.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1263.262

Authorities, says Greg, told him that without a body, it would be difficult to charge Dale with murder, which is why Greg called Billy Little.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1280.731

Missouri-based attorney and investigator Billy Little made his first trip to Lenawee County in the spring of 2022.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

1298.036

Billy Little got to work on his own investigation and learn from Dee's family that the couple argued frequently, especially about money.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee's adult children told him their mom had often talked about divorce, but that she didn't want to split custody of their little sister Lena with Dale. Still, the day before Dee disappeared, they say something had changed. Had you really seen your mother like that before?

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee's kids say that she had finally had enough and was going to tell Dale that night she wanted to sell the profitable trucking business and end her marriage. This was Dee's life. Why did she want to sell the business?

48 Hours

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Greg told Billy Little that he thought Dale was moving money between the businesses after Dee disappeared. Greg had already filed a civil suit to protect Dee's interests and to get more information about what Dale was doing.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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In court documents, Dale says he did move money on the advice of professionals. The more Billy Little learned, he says, the more he, like the family, became convinced that Dee was no longer alive.

48 Hours

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Greg and Billy Little tried to increase the pressure on Dale. Friends had started a social media campaign called Justice for Dee, and Greg paid for this billboard that he says he wrote sarcastically saying, Help Dale Find Dee. It went up at a big intersection near Dale's farm, where Greg says drivers from the trucking company would be sure to see it every day.

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But Little says he and Greg were mostly focused on trying to find evidence to help build a murder case without a body.

48 Hours

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And they continued to search relentlessly for any trace of Dee.

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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This property, about three miles from Dale and Dee's home, is one of the places that stood out to Greg. Six months after Dee disappeared, there was a fire where the old farmhouse used to be. And Greg says the neighbors told him they thought Dale who owned the property with Dee, had set that fire. The fire was determined to be a controlled burn, which are common in the area.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Police searched this site in October 2021, just a few days after that fire. It's not known what, if anything, they learned. Greg and Billy Little came here themselves the next year.

48 Hours

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They found nothing conclusive, but that old farm was just one site they thought was suspicious.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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There was a field near Raquel's house that Dale had farmed. Which one?

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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and another field two towns over that Dale had access to. And many more places Greg wanted police to check further. And isn't the really hard part about this, Greg, is there's just so many places.

48 Hours

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In August 2022, the Michigan State Police took over Dee's case. Greg and Billy Little had pushed for this because they say the State Police had more experience and resources than the County Sheriff.

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After the state police took over the case, they interviewed Dale again and pressed him on his story. Dale told them that the argument with that employee just before Dee disappeared was partly about Dee taking money from the business.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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But police did not have evidence that Dee had stolen money. In September, the family filed another suit to have Dee Warner declared legally dead. Greg says he wanted to be able to file a wrongful death suit against Dale one day. The family waited for news on the criminal case.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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On November 21st, 2023, two and a half years after Dee Warner went missing, the news came that her husband Dale was under arrest. Stephanie was preparing for her mother's funeral when she got the call.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale Warner was charged with the murder of his wife, Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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He pleaded not guilty, and Dee's family braced themselves for a long legal battle ahead.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Take your father's strength. His name is Maximus.

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Paul Meskel, Pedro Pascal, with Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington. Strength and honor. Strength and honor. Gladiator 2, directed by Ridley Scott. Now streaming on Paramount+.

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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We were running around.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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On May 1st, 2024, just a little more than three years after Dee Warner disappeared, her friends and family gathered here at the Lenawee County District Court for the first day of Dale Warner's preliminary hearing.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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It would be up to Judge Anna Freshour to decide if the case should move to trial.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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There is no body. There are no body parts. Dee had been recently declared dead in civil court. But Dale Warner's defense attorney, Mary Chartier, said this was a fact prosecutors would need to establish themselves in the criminal case.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee Warner hasn't been seen since late April.

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the truth?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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But the state was determined to show that while there was no body, there was also no evidence that Dee was still alive.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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And prosecutor Jackie Wise worked to show there was no evidence that Dee had taken off on her own.

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She asked Stephanie Vogel about that secret phone that Dale claimed his wife had.

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Michigan State Police Detective Daniel Drouillard is the lead investigator on this case. You swear to tell the truth. He testified about the exhaustive searches law enforcement did to find any trace of activity from Dee over the three years she had been missing.

48 Hours

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All their searches came up empty. But Dee's daughter, Raquel, had noticed something curious at the Warner home. On the stand, she said that on the day her mother disappeared, she saw tire tracks by the back of the house.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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There were no security cameras pointed at this part of the property, but the prosecution suggested that the tracks Raquel saw were left by Dale using the farm's JCB front-end loader to remove Dee's body from their home.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Remember, Dale said his wife was asleep in the living room when he left that morning, close to those sliding doors.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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In his 2022 interview with police, Dale had an explanation for those tracks. He said he thought he used the loader to go back to the house and get his worksheet for the sprayer at around 6.30 a.m.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The FBI searched Warner's Franklin Township property. They've looked everywhere.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The defense emphasized there was no evidence Dale Warner had anything to do with Dee's disappearance. And in fact, his statements about what he was doing that morning were supported by security videos around the farm. The videos, played in court, showed Dale at 7 a.m. using that front-end loader. At 7.45 a.m., police say he texts Dee, going to be spraying, call you later.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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He is seen three minutes later driving a sprayer onto the road and returning at 8.13 a.m.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The defense also argued that Dale had not acted like a guilty man. He allowed police to search his properties and spoke to them many times after D disappeared. Only parts of a few of those interviews were played in court, but his attorney said that Dale had repeatedly denied harming D.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Over and over, the defense underscored the lack of physical evidence in the case. Do you have a murder weapon in this case?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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They hone in on Mr. Warner from the beginning. In her final statement to the judge, Mary Chartier argues that there is no basis for the charges.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Prosecutor Jackie Wise maintained that the state's case was strong.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Authorities say they are constantly following up on tips.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The decision was now with the judge, and Dee's supporters were worried. Would Dale now face the murder charge at trial, or would he walk out as a free man?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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It's been more than two years since Dee Warner's disappearance.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Gather your people. We're going to need every one of them.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Don't miss Star Trek Section 31. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

2260.626

On June 7, 2024, Judge Anna Freshour returned to court with her decision. She first spoke about Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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And there was nothing she heard, the judge said, that made her feel differently.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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She's got a second phone.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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But there was enough evidence, she said, to believe that Dee Warner was dead and that her husband was likely the one behind it.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale Warner has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of his wife. But Billy Little knows the real work is still ahead.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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law enforcement was still searching for physical evidence. And in August 2024, two months after that preliminary hearing concluded, that's exactly what they found. Breaking news in the case of Dee Warner. Dee's family heard about it first.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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They met detectives at Greg and Shelley's farm. Police told them they had gone back to a property that Dale and Dee owned and taken away a large metal tank that was used to store fertilizer. According to a search warrant, that tank had a non-factory weld on the back and a sign on it that said, out of service, do not fill.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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When the tank was scanned, investigators finally found what they had been looking for. It was my mom.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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It took just days, authorities say, to confirm that the body inside that tank was Dee Warner. Her death was ruled a homicide.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Authorities are not granting any interviews about this case before the trial, but that warrant also says that security video from the day Dee was reported missing showed Dale in one of the farm buildings searching for something near the welding equipment.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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For three years, police had been looking for Dee's body underground, and now they had come to believe that she might have been concealed above ground.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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So Dale would have access to all this. He did. Greg says he has no doubt now that Dale killed Dee and hid her body.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale's defense attorney declined to speak to 48 Hours on Camera, but she told us that Dale maintains his innocence and said in this email, they're prepared to vigorously fight for him in court and present his defense. Isn't it likely that Dale's gonna argue, well, that was a cylinder sitting out in a barn.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel says finding her mom's body after these three long years gave the family a sense of peace.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee's family laid her to rest in a private burial soon after her body was identified. Her daughter Lena, now 12, was with them.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel and Zach say they miss their mother deeply and that her death has changed them in profound ways.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Your children will grow up hearing about Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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What will you tell them about your mother?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale Warner's trial is scheduled to begin on September 2nd, 2025.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Join me Tuesday for Postmortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Think about how screwed up we would be if we had survived a plane crash only to end up eating each other.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The only way to truly be safe is to be the only one left. You really are insane. Yellowjackets new season streaming February 14th on the Paramount Plus with Showtime plan. Let the bodies hit the... The phenomenon is back. The new season of Yellowjackets streaming February 14th on Paramount Plus with Showtime.

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Think about how screwed up we would be if we had survived a plane crash only to end up eating each other.

48 Hours

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This place will follow us for the rest of our lives.

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The only way to truly be safe is to be the only one left.

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This season, the past will come back to hunt you. You really are insane. Yellow Jackets, new season, streaming February 14th on the Paramount Plus with Showtime Plan.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Aaron Moriarty reports The Nobody Case of Dee Warner.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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It was Sunday, April 25th, 2021, a spring morning in the farmland of Lenawee County, Michigan. Raquel Bock drove the short distance from her house to her childhood home for her weekly breakfast with her mother, Dee Warner.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel says that when her mom was not there and not answering calls or texts, it just didn't feel right.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Hello? One of Dee's cars, a Hummer, was parked at the farm office just down the road. What about your mother's car that she drove all the time, the Cadillac?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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No. The fertilizer sprayer, usually parked in a barn, was gone, and Raquel's stepfather, Dale Warner, was out on it working. Was that normal?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel went down the road to Dee's brother Greg and his wife Shelly's house.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel and her aunt Shelly went driving to look for Dee. They returned to her house with only more questions.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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They looked upstairs in the bedroom and bathroom for clues.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Later, they learned Dee's phone and passport were missing too. The feeling that I had in my stomach was nothing but fear. Zach Bach, another of Dee's four children from her first marriage, soon came over to join the search. He went down to the farm office to look for any sign of his mom.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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There was a security camera inside the office and a few more outside.

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And there was something else out of the ordinary. Their nine-year-old sister Lena, Dee and Dale's only child together, had stayed at her cousin's house the night before. And Dee hadn't yet called or come to get her.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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And would she ever leave Lena behind with Dale? Never.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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By now, it was late in the day on Sunday, and the Lenawee County Sheriff's Office sent a deputy to talk to Dale. the conversation was recorded on a body camera. This and other body cam footage has been adjusted at times for clarity.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale told police he had last seen Dee that morning before he went out to work.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale seemed to believe his wife was alive and well and that she left intentionally.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale also told police that Dee had been upset and suffering from a migraine the night before after an argument with two of her employees.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale and Dee ran three main businesses from their farm. Zach was their bookkeeper.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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There was a trucking business with about 15 employees that Dee managed.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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And there was the farm itself and a chemical company that sold fertilizer and seed. Which was the most successful? Which did the best? 100% the trucking company. Stephanie Vogel worked for Dale and Dee and describes Dee as a good business person, tough, generous, and hardworking. But Raquel says that running that trucking business was not easy for Dee.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale told police that conflict between Dee and their employees was nothing new. I don't know.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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On Saturday, the day before she went missing, Dee had texted Stephanie asking her how to block the driver who had quit from the company's Facebook page. I told her how to do it.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee's sister-in-law, Shelly, wondered if the pressures had just become too much for Dee. You're thinking at that point she might have taken her life?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

735.481

What if there were a medicine that could heal almost anything?

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The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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But they didn't want you to know about it. Sorry, who's they? Some people are following me, and I brought my tortoise.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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No. After hearing nothing from Dee Warner, some of those closest to her feared she may have harmed herself. And they noticed that Dale, her husband, didn't seem very worried.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dale had told police that Dee, when upset, had a history of spending the night elsewhere.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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And he said he thought she might come back eventually.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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But the sheriff's office did not wait for Dee to show up. They came out on Monday and Tuesday to conduct interviews and search the property. On Thursday, four days after Dee disappeared, they searched the farm again. And Dale agreed to talk to them at length at the kitchen table. Dale now told investigators that he and Dee had had a fight on Saturday.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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He said she had accused him of talking about her behind her back to the employees she had fought with, which Dale denied. He said he didn't talk to Dee again until that evening at home when their fight continued. Dale and Dee had been partners in life and business since they started their first company together in 2005, the year before they got married. Was this a love match?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

916.678

Did you feel that way?

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

925.24

They weren't an obvious pair. Dee's family and friends say she loved to have fun, dress up, go out, and dance. Dale, they say, just seemed to work a lot.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Raquel says Dale helped feed Dee's insecurities.

48 Hours

The "No Body" Case of Dee Warner

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Dee's family later learned she had been having an affair. It didn't surprise them, they said, given the state of her marriage. But police say her affair partner was out of town the weekend she went missing and could not have had anything to do with the case. A week after her disappearance, Dee's brother Greg organized a search of the land around her home.

48 Hours

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48 Hours, The Widow on Solway Road.

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A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1.98

If you grew up in the United States, you most likely learned about the massive military battles and large-scale political fights that shaped the course of the American Civil War. Major moments in the history of the country carried out by names like Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

100.757

It sounds like it's coming from the river and it's bizarre, like hundreds of voices singing out in unison. The young man runs down the path and the sound gets louder. As he approaches the riverbank, he shields his eyes from the sun, and what he sees is even stranger than the sound.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1007.02

Later that night, Jeb returns to the Sabres and Roses ball. As his wounded men are tended to upstairs at Landon House, he does his best not to alarm the guests and to enjoy the party that's still going. But he can't shake the feeling that something might be really wrong.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1022.365

He knows a reconnaissance mission when he sees one, and the northern troops he just exchanged fire with were definitely out scouting. But he needs to figure out if they came this deep into Maryland just to get basic information about Lee's army, like troop locations and numbers, or if the North has something else planned, something he doesn't see coming.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1044.947

It's the following morning, September 9th, 1862, outside of Rockville, Maryland, about 30 miles from Robert E. Lee's Confederate encampment. Union Major General George McClellan sits at a desk inside his tent reading intelligence reports that have been coming in from scouting parties across the state. Jeb Stuart managed to push back one of his scouting parties, but others have broken through.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1067.168

And while the Confederates believe the bulk of the Union's Army of the Potomac retreated to Washington, D.C., McClellan has actually been moving his troops into Maryland. And now, he knows the size and location of Lee's forces. McClellan reads over the intelligence reports again. He's only been in charge of this campaign a few days and he wants to make sure he's not missing anything.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1088.965

Following the Union's disaster at the Battle of Second Manassas, President Abraham Lincoln turned to McClellan to lead the reeling army of the Potomac. But McClellan is fully aware that the President's decision was not celebrated by everyone. Over the past year of the war, McClellan has served as the general-in-chief of all federal armies, only to be removed from that position of power.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1111.499

Because much of the frustration of Union military leaders, and to President Lincoln himself, McClellan has earned a reputation for being overcautious. He's often slow to make decisions, weighing every possible option to the point of paralysis. And unlike his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee, McClellan despises the idea of ever going into battle with smaller numbers than the enemy.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1133.786

In fact, the fear of being outmanned is such an obsession with McClellan that some critics believe he's convinced himself that Lee's army is triple the size it actually is. Because of this, several other Union generals heavily questioned Lincoln's decision to give McClellan leadership of its largest fighting force in the East. But President Lincoln had one simple reason for his choice.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1155.481

Fighting men love McClellan. McClellan's soldiers call him Little Mac, in part because he's relatively short, but far more as a term of endearment to show they see him as one of their own. Unlike some other high-ranking officers, the men believe McClellan truly cares about them and that he doesn't see himself as being above them. That's why Lincoln called on McClellan.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

117.781

For a second, he can't wrap his mind around it, because in the shallows of the river, it looks like an army of dead men are waiting towards him, and they're singing. As they get closer, he sees sallow faces, hollow eyes, emaciated bodies. The young man hears something behind him and he sees a few other people from town approaching the riverbank. They look just as confused as him.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1176.21

He needed a general to boost the morale of his men and get them ready for their next fight. But sitting at his desk, staring at the intelligence reports, McClellan still isn't confident as to where and when his army's next fight should take place.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1192.0

He can't decide if he should concentrate his attack on Frederick, Maryland, where General Lee is stationed, or if he should split his troops and send help to a Union garrison holding the nearby West Virginia town of Harper's Ferry. McClellan knows Harper's Ferry sits along an important supply line, and if the Confederacy takes it, Lee would be able to equip his army much faster and easier.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1213.155

And since McClellan never leaves any stone unturned, he also considers that Lee might be staging an elaborate ruse, and that everything the Confederate general is doing is simply to draw McClellan and the Army of the Potomac further away from Washington, D.C., which would leave the capital vulnerable to attack.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1230.953

McClellan takes a breath, clears his head, and searches for an answer, and he's certain one will eventually come to him. He gets up and walks out of his tent. Some of his men greet him with a cheer, and he tells them it's time to get ready to move. He has decided to begin a slow, deliberate march towards the town of Frederick and General Lee's army of Northern Virginia.

A Twist of History

Robert E Lee's Lost Orders

1252.025

It might not seem urgent enough to others, but McClellan believes that a slow march will provide time for God's plan to become clear. While some consider McClellan overcautious, he always trusts that in time, providence, God's divine guidance, will show him the correct path. Because there's something about McClellan that very few people know.

A Twist of History

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While he does love his soldiers, he doesn't see himself as being the same as them, or the same as anyone else for that matter. In fact, Major General George McClellan believes he is God's chosen warrior who will lead the Union to victory. It's later that afternoon, September 9th, 1862, on Bess Farm in Frederick, Maryland.

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Robert A. Lee walks through his camp with Major General Jeb Stuart, and Lee can't believe the conversation he's having. Following last night's skirmish with the small Union force, Jeb and other scouts in the area have discovered that the Army of the Potomac has reached Maryland, and they're on the move.

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This information stands in stark contrast to what Jeb told Lee when they first arrived in the state. And now, instead of having weeks or even a month before he has to battle Union forces, Lee knows he'll be lucky if he has a few days. On top of that, there's no time to see if his proclamation to the people of Maryland will stir support and bolster his army's numbers.

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Lee doesn't bother to ask what went wrong with the intelligence gathering, or if it had anything to do with the massive party Jeb organized and then threw the previous night. That's a problem for another time. Right now, Lee needs to come up with a new plan and he needs to do it fast. He tells Jeb to get back to his camp, ready his men and await his orders.

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Soon after Jeb's departure, General Stonewall Jackson arrives. Lee fills Jackson in on the latest and asks the legendary tactician for help. Together, the two men go over all their options. Lee doesn't realize it, but he's cycling through almost the same possibilities as McClellan is doing on the Union side.

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Should he keep his army intact, or should he split his troops and send some to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia? Lee and Jackson continue to talk and they come up with a strategy they believe they can execute quickly and effectively. Jackson rides off to prepare his men and Lee summons an officer to his command tent again to take dictation.

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Lee tells the officer he is issuing what is to be known as Special Orders 191. The officer takes up his pen and writes out Lee's orders to the letter. When Lee finishes, he tells the officer to write out seven copies of the orders and prepare them to be distributed to Confederate leaders in the region and to Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia.

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While the officer sets about his task, Lee joins several of his lieutenants to prepare his troops, and he tells the men that the break they all thought they were getting is about to come to an abrupt end. It's four days later, September 13th, 1862.

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One woman says the group of men looks like a pack of ragged, lean and hungry wolves stalking through the river. The young man says it's more like something out of a circus sideshow. The singing gets louder and the two of them can make out the tunes. It's their state song, Maryland, My Maryland, and they can see the wet and tattered coats on some of the marching singers.

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45-year-old Union Corporal Barton Mitchell clutches his rifle in his hands as he creeps along an isolated road outside of Frederick, Maryland with a small group of fellow soldiers. Barton is a member of the 27th Indiana Volunteers who are serving under McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. It's only about 10 am, but Barton is already tired.

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He and the rest of the Indiana 27th were awakened by the Reveille Bugle at 3 am, and they've been walking since 6. Barton also feels on edge. He knows this small group of soldiers is heading right towards the spot where a huge part of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was recently camped, and he has no idea if some of them have stayed behind, waiting for Union soldiers like him to arrive.

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Barton and the others make their way down the road, staying low and ready until it dead ends into a stream. The men scan the area but they don't see a bridge, so they test the depth of the water. It doesn't seem too deep. Barton steps into the stream and the water feels warm and as he moves further, it never comes up above his knees.

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Barton and the others quickly make it out of the water and find themselves in front of a large, open field. They look out over the field and then at each other. They all have the same idea. They're exhausted, the weather is nice, and there clearly aren't any Confederate soldiers lurking nearby. One by one, the men sit down in the field, stretching out and resting their feet.

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They talk for a while, but as Barton looks around, something laying on the ground just a few yards away catches his eye. He gets up, walks closer, and stares down into the grass. It's something white, and it's wrapped around something else. He reaches down to pick it up, and that's when he sees it's a piece of paper, and it's wrapped around three uncut cigars. Barton can't believe his luck.

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Those cigars would be the perfect treat while sitting in the field and relaxing for a bit. Barton grabs it, and that's when he notices writing on the piece of paper. As he reads it, he immediately calls for one of the other soldiers to come look at it. Both men stare at the note. There's no way this can be what they think it is.

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Their sergeant joins them to see what's going on, and now all three of them look at the note in shock. The sergeant grabs the note, calls to the other soldiers, and they run back the way they came. Two hours later, just after 12 noon, at the Union Army's camp outside of Frederick, Maryland, Major General George McClellan looks at a note that has just been handed to him by a messenger.

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And McClellan has the same look on his face that Corporal Barton Mitchell had earlier that morning. Because McClellan is reading Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Special Orders 191. In the Special Orders, Lee has laid out the entire plan he and Stonewall Jackson discussed.

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Lee is going to split up his army and send his generals to attack multiple Union-held outposts in the region, including Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Martinsburg, Virginia. According to the orders, while those attacks get underway, Lee will lead the remaining part of his forces, and the bulk of their supplies, west through Maryland, where he'll prepare for the march on Pennsylvania.

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Once the other generals have completed their tasks, they are to rendezvous with Lee and launch the South's single largest attack on the North. After reading this, McClellan springs into action. He sends out messengers to his field generals in the area. He wants to report to see if recent Confederate troop movement mimics what is written in Lee's orders.

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This shocks them almost as much as an army of dead men would, because they realize they're witnessing something that has never happened before. The men's coats are gray. These are Confederate soldiers fighting for the South against the North in the American Civil War, and they're crossing the Potomac from Virginia into Northern Territory.

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Because as excited as McClellan is, he of course isn't about to act on impulse. After all, the note that was found by one of his men in the middle of a field could simply be part of a ruse that Lee's been playing all along. But as soon as McClellan receives replies later that day, he knows this isn't a trick. Lee has been moving his army according to the orders.

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God's plan is now clear to McClellan, and he knows exactly where he has to go. He won't split up his army like General Lee. He'll keep his unit fully intact, even if that means losing Harper's Ferry, because his goal now is to cut Lee's troops off and rout them before they can ever head for Pennsylvania.

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Sometime after 6 p.m., about eight hours after Bart and Mitchell discover the note and three cigars, McClellan calls over an assistant to take dictation. McClellan says as soon as they're finished talking, he needs this man to get to a telegraph machine in Frederick and to send a telegram to Abraham Lincoln. McClellan is giddy as he relays the following message to the president.

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I think Lee has made a gross mistake and that he will be severely punished for it. I have all the plans of the rebels, and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency. All well, and with God's blessing, we'll accomplish it. It's almost 5.45 a.m. on September 17, 1862, four days after McClellan read Lee's Special Orders 191.

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McClellan rides past a 24-acre cornfield near Antietam Creek outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland, as the sounds of drums and fifes echo from the Union's infantry bands. After sending the telegram to President Lincoln and communicating with his generals, McClellan has used his knowledge of Lee's army's movements to cut off the Confederate forces.

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Some in Union leadership believe McClellan could have moved faster, that he should have set upon Lee right away. But McClellan waited a couple of days because he wanted to make sure that he had superior numbers before making his move. There are roughly 45,000 Confederate troops amassed around Antietam Creek. The Union soldiers number 87,000, nearly double the South's number.

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Still, in the time it took McClellan to get here, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and Lee's other generals took Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg for the Confederacy, and they've rallied to Antietam Creek with some of their men to fight alongside Lee. But McClellan doesn't second-guess his decision. He has the numbers and the position to crush Lee, and he believes he'll prevail.

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McClellan rides along the front line of one of his regiments and looks out at a sea of blue uniforms. Thousands of men with Springfield rifle muskets on their shoulders, ready to fight the Confederates who are lined up on the other side of the field. McClellan addresses his men and tells them that the future of the Republic is at stake. It's up to them to stop the South's march into the North.

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The men cheer for Little Mac, then their voices and the music go quiet, and the silence just hangs there as the men wait. Minutes later, shots ring out. McClellan shouts commands to his men, while one of his generals leads the first charge against Stonewall Jackson's troops. The battle has begun. Union Corporal Barton Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers rushes across the main battlefield.

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Barton had discovered the letter that helped lead McClellan and the Union Army here, but he's not thinking about that right now. Right now, he's just trying to stay alive. The deafening sound of gunshots and explosions from the 500 cannons surrounding the battlefield rings in his ears, and it mixes with the wailing of wounded men.

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Thick smoke clouds his vision, but Barton keeps pushing forward, firing, reloading, firing. He's been in battle before, but nothing has felt like this. It's like he can't breathe, and there's no escape from enemy fire.

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In September of 1862, the 34 states that make up America at the time have split apart and the Civil War has been raging for almost a year and a half. Tens of thousands of soldiers have already been killed. The issue at the heart of the war, of course, is slavery.

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Barton can feel his heart pounding in his chest as he passes men on the ground who look like they've been ripped in half by cannon fire, and he can't shake the smell of gunpowder and blood. But he just keeps pushing forward, until something cuts off his path. A line of dead bodies piled two and three high in some spots.

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The Civil War, fought between the North and South from April of 1861 to April of 1865, remains the deadliest military conflict in the history of the United States. The number of those who died fighting in the Civil War, estimated to be at least 620,000, is more than the number of Americans who died fighting in the War of 1812, the Revolutionary War, World War I, and World War II combined.

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Without thinking, Barton climbs over the wall of dead men as bullets come from every side. Suddenly, he sees something on the edge of the battlefield. It's like a vision out of a dream. A woman in a white cap and long white apron stands there as smoke swirls around her.

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But the dream quickly shatters when he watches the woman, a battlefield nurse, wring blood out of the bottom of her skirt, drop to the ground and desperately try to save a soldier from bleeding out. Barton keeps going and firing, struggling to breathe, when a mini-ball rips through his calf. Barton feels searing pain shoot through his entire body.

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He screams and falls to the ground as blood pours out from a gaping wound in his leg. The battle rages throughout the day. McClellan and Lee cannot believe the toll the fighting is taking on their armies, but neither will relent. Along with the main field of battle, fighting also takes place in the nearby woods and along parts of Antietam Creek.

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Over 12 square miles of land are covered with bodies and drenched in blood. McClellan rallies his men. For all the criticism against him, this is where he shines as a leader. This is why Lincoln entrusted the Army of the Potomac to him. McClellan implores his men. They cannot stop. No matter what happens, they have to push the Confederates back.

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His men respond, and very slowly they gain ground, forcing the Confederate lines back across the battlefield. At about 5.30pm, almost 12 hours after the battle began, the fighting finally slows. McClellan and Lee reassess their positions and gradually, both sides stop firing their weapons. That night, the nurses who risked their lives to tend to the wounded continue their work.

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One of them, a woman named Clara Barton, who will come to be known as the Angel of the Battlefield and founder of the American Red Cross, argues with officers on both sides that men who have been captured also need and deserve medical care. But even as Clara works tirelessly, she realizes there's nothing she can do for so many of the wounded.

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Despite the sheer violence of the day, McClellan remains optimistic. He tells his Union men to hold their positions in case Lee tries to launch another strike. But he's confident that going into battle with far superior numbers like he wanted has won him the day. It's dawn the following morning, September 18th, 1862. The night has passed without any more fighting.

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While slavery had been abolished during the 19th century by major European powers like France and Great Britain, it continued to remain legal in several states and territories in America.

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Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jeb Stewart stare out at the battlefield near Entitum Creek in the pale glow of the rising sun. Lee doesn't know how many men he's lost, but he's clear on one thing. He lost the battle. McClellan's forces have taken the field and cut off any route for Lee to stage a counteroffensive. Lee knows there's only one option now. Retreat.

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Over the course of several hours, Lee, Jackson, and Jeb lead their troops on a march of about five miles to the closest shallow crossing on the Potomac. But this time, the men, many of whom are badly wounded and bleeding, are not singing Marilyn My Maryland as they wade into the shallow water and slowly make their way back to Virginia in the south.

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Antietam, as the battle would come to be known, proved to be the single deadliest day in American military history up to that point. In just 12 hours of fighting, over 3,600 men died, over 17,000 were wounded, and over 1,700 were captured or went missing. All told, over 22,000 combined casualties.

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After getting shot in the calf and suffering significant blood loss, Corporal Barton Mitchell, the man who discovered Lee's Special Orders 191, remained in the hospital for eight months. During that time, other soldiers tried to steal credit from him for finding Lee's lost orders.

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When Barton was well enough to rejoin his regiment, he sent letters to military and political leaders fighting to get credit and compensation for what he did for the Union cause. Unfortunately, Barton would die years later from an illness without ever receiving the full honors and money he believed he deserved.

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President Abraham Lincoln, government leaders, and abolitionists, many of whom are free black men and women who escaped slavery like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, have pushed to outlaw slavery across the country.

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On September 22nd, 1862, just five days after Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued what would be called his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which stated slaves in the Confederate States would be freed on January 1st, 1863.

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Despite the fact that General McClellan's victory helped pave the way for Lincoln's historic announcement, the two men immediately found themselves at odds, because in the days following the battle, Lincoln urged McClellan to pursue Lee and his badly beaten men.

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Lincoln believed that this could be the Union's best chance to wipe out the Army of Northern Virginia, but McClellan chose caution instead, to not go after Lee, and Lincoln had had enough of the Major General's over-cautious nature. On November 5th, 1862, Lincoln removed McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac.

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McClellan would never forgive Lincoln for this, and in 1864, while the Civil War was still raging, McClellan ran against Lincoln for President, but Lincoln won in a landslide. Months after the election on January 31st, 1865, the 13th Amendment passed in Congress, and the eventual ratification of the amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

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Then on April 9th, 1865, Robert E. Lee, without his generals Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart, who had both died from wounds suffered in battle, surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. The Civil War would soon come to an end. Following Antietam, the story of the lost copy of Lee's Special Orders 191 transformed from fact into folklore as debates and wild theories about the orders arose.

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Some people claimed a Union sympathizer with the Confederate Army must have purposefully let the orders fall in that field. Others said the officer who took dictation from Lee must have simply dropped one of the copies he made. Some people wondered if Jeb Stuart's night at the Sabres in Rose's Ball left him distracted enough the following day to lose his own copy of the orders.

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But other government leaders and many everyday people vehemently opposed them, especially in the southern states, the ones that used slaves to support their agricultural economy, by doing the back-breaking work of cultivating and picking crops like tobacco and cotton.

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Regardless, many historians and people who were there at the time remained focused on the same key elements.

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Somewhere in a Maryland field, a volunteer soldier found a note wrapped around three cigars, and that note spurred on a Union general, who was famous for inaction, to ride out, face the Confederate army in Northern Territory, and send them retreating back to the South in a battle that turned the tide of the Civil War. From Ballin Studios, this is A Twist of History. A quick note about our stories.

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They're all heavily researched, but some details and scenes are dramatized. A Twist of History is hosted by me, Joel Blackwell. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin and Zach Levin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Produced by Perry Kroll. This episode was written by Mike Federico. Story editing by Mike Federico. Sound design and audio mixing by Colin Lester Fleming.

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Post-production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacazio. Research and fact-checking by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, Alex Paul, Patricia Nicole Florentino, Calvin Riley Holgate, Matt Gilligan. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Thank you for listening to A Twist of History.

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And the South's opposition to anti-slavery grew to the point that they were willing to leave the United States and go to war, a war that tore the nation apart and, as people would say, pitted brother against brother. By 1862, 11 southern states that refused to abolish slavery have seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.

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They've recently elected their own president, Jefferson Davis, who leads from the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The 23 northern states, still called the United States of America, or the Union, have predominantly outlawed slavery, and they're led by President Lincoln from Washington, D.C.,

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So far, every major battle of the Civil War has been fought on southern soil, and the Union Army outnumbers the Confederates almost two to one, so they have stayed on the offensive to keep the war from ever coming north. But now, these soldiers wading through the Potomac into Maryland are changing everything.

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Because their leader, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, believes it's time for the South to become the aggressor. At 55 years old, Robert E. Lee is one of the most respected military minds in both the North and the South. In fact, at the onset of the war, President Lincoln offered Lee command of all the Union forces. But Lee, a native of Virginia and supporter of the Southern cause, declined.

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Instead, Lee became the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, one of the Confederacy's largest and most important field armies, and Lee and his troops have just won a decisive victory and potentially turned the tide of the war. Less than a week earlier, Lee led his troops at the Battle of Second Manassas.

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The fighting took place in Manassas, Virginia, and Lee's forces left the Union army decimated and retreating north having suffered major losses, with more than 1,700 soldiers dead, almost 8,500 wounded, and over 4,000 missing or captured.

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The battle was such a catastrophe that now President Lincoln has decided to make major changes to military leadership, and he cannot fathom how the Union got beaten so badly. Because the Union army doesn't just outnumber the Confederates, it has far more professionally trained soldiers and is much better supplied.

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In fact, some Confederate soldiers, who Union leadership see as a ragtag group of undisciplined fighters, have to steal shoes from the dead so they don't have to go into battle barefoot. While the South's victory at Second Manassas has left Lincoln searching for answers, it's emboldened Robert E. Lee in the Confederacy.

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So on the morning of September 6th, the Southern General is bringing the Civil War to the North as his men reach the riverbank outside the town of Frederick, singing, "'Maryland, my Maryland.'" It's later that day, September 6th, 1862, on Best Farm in Frederick, Maryland.

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General Lee stands outside his command tent, watching his men set up camp on acres of farmland that stretches out in all directions. There's an army of about 55,000 men spread out between the encampment and other locations within a 10-mile radius.

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Maryland is located just on the other side of the Potomac River from Confederate territory in Virginia, but geography isn't Lee's only reason for choosing this town and this state to start his push into the North. Along with Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, Maryland is one of the four slave states that have not seceded from the Union.

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But amidst the well-told stories of the Civil War, there is one that is much lesser known. And it's this hidden moment, a chance discovery really, which set off the bloodiest day in American military history and changed the entire outcome of the war and the future of the United States. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. On today's episode, Robert E. Lee's lost orders.

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That means a large number of wealthy Marylanders are slave owners. Because of this, towns in the state, especially those not far from the Virginia border like Frederick, are filled with Confederate sympathizers. As Lee looks out at his men setting up camp, he's happy they'll get some good food and extended rest to help them get back into fighting shape. In fact, Lee could use the rest himself.

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A few weeks earlier, he fell from his horse and suffered multiple injuries, including having hurt his wrist badly enough that he can't even hold a pen to write. Outside his tent, Lee hears shouting and the sounds of hooves pounding on a dirt road. He looks up and sees a man approaching on horseback in the distance. Even though the man is still pretty far away, Lee knows exactly who he is.

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because the rider wears a gray Confederate cape with fine red lining, a bold yellow sash across his chest, and a hat cocked sideways on his head with a huge ostrich plume sticking out of it. This is Lee's flamboyant 29-year-old cavalry commander, Major General James Ewell Brown Stewart, or better known as Jeb to his fellow soldiers.

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When Confederate troops crossed the river, Lee ordered Jeb to take his cavalry into a village about eight miles southeast to set up a command post of his own. Lee watches as Jeb rides into camp, dismounts, and offers a salute. Lee shakes his hand and leads him inside the command tent. The two men sit down at Lee's desk and get to work.

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Lee knows Jeb is young, brash, and loves attention, and that puts off some of the older soldiers in Lee's command, but Lee trusts Jeb implicitly. because Jeb has proven himself to be a master of reconnaissance. He's known for leading his men deep behind enemy lines, getting a read on troop movements, and disappearing without anyone knowing he was there.

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He's so good at this, in fact, that once, in the middle of a battle, Jeb crept into a Union command center and stole $35,000 in cash in a general's uniform. Jeb also has scouts all over the North and South constantly feeding him information. So now, Lee just has one question for him. Where is the Union Army? Jeb says he has good news.

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He tells Lee that after suffering defeat at Second Manassas, Union forces continued the retreat north, and now the majority of the Army of the Potomac, which is the Union's primary force in the region, has gone to Washington, D.C. and stayed there. On top of that, Jeb has news that their leadership is in shambles.

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He says it's not even clear who's commanding the Union's Army of the Potomac at this point. At hearing all of this, Lee breathes a sigh of relief. His biggest fear was that Union forces would quickly rally after the retreat from Manassas and march right back through Maryland towards Virginia. But it looks like everything is lining up just how Lee had hoped.

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The Union's full retreat means he has a couple of weeks or even a month to get his troops some rest, acquire more supplies, and restock his artillery before making his move. He also believes if a major portion of the Union army is garrisoned in DC, they must have expected Lee to push into Union territory just like he's doing, so they're protecting the capital.

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Lee tells Jeb this is great news, because Lee has no intention of marching on Washington DC, at least not yet. Instead, he plans to lead his troops through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. That's where he'll mount his first major attack in the north. Lee tells Jeb he'll have a full plan soon. In the meantime, he needs Jeb to do what he always does, keep track of the enemy and keep him informed.

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Lee knows he has northern forces on the run, and if he plays this right, he could bring the Union to its knees. In the two days following his arrival in Maryland, Confederate General Robert E. Lee formulates a plan for his march further north to Pennsylvania.

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And he meets with his other top generals stationed in the area, including the brilliant military tactician, 38-year-old Thomas Stonewall Jackson. Both Lee and Jackson are known to be huge risk-takers, believing the only way for a smaller, undersupplied army like theirs to win is to surprise and mystify the enemy. But neither of them are naive.

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Invading Pennsylvania will be the biggest military risk the South has undertaken so far, and they know it could quickly turn disastrous if they're not careful. And Lee and Jackson agree on one obvious fact. The march north will be much safer if the people of Maryland support them. On the night of September 7th, Lee calls one of his officers into his tent.

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This is a twist of history. It's early morning on September 6th, 1862 on the banks of the Potomac River outside the town of Frederick, Maryland. A young man walks down a path toward the riverbank enjoying a pleasant summer day. But as he gets closer, he hears something in the distance and he stops.

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Since Lee can't write with his injured wrists, he asks the officer to take dictation. The officer sits at Li's desk, dips his quill in ink, and writes while Li paces and talks. Lee begins by saying this is a proclamation to the people of Maryland. Lee says that the Southerners have great sympathy for Maryland because he believes Maryland shares deep social and political ties with the Confederacy.

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He also believes Maryland has been overrun by the United States government, a government that has no respect for Maryland's history or traditions, and Lee says his army has come to restore independence and sovereignty to their state. At the time, Lee and many Confederate leaders contend that they are fighting the Civil War to maintain states' rights.

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That decisions in the country should lie with each state and that the federal government should have limited power. This, of course, includes the southern states' right to own slaves. But in this proclamation, that is not stated outright. Instead, Lee focuses on subjects like regaining freedom and throwing off the yoke of a foreign government.

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In his tent, Lee finishes his dictation with a call to arms, telling the people of Maryland they will be welcomed into his army should they choose to join. The officer finishes writing and by the next day, September 8th, Lee's proclamation appears in publications throughout Maryland.

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Lee hopes that he laid the groundwork to reinforce his alliance with Marylanders who believe in the South's cause, and he hopes they'll make his march north as smooth as possible. This way, when he arrives, his troops will be in peak fighting condition, and for once, he might even have the numbers to overwhelm his enemy.

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It's the night of September 8th, just hours after General Robert E. Lee's Maryland proclamation went public. Confederate Major General Jeb Stuart stands in a large open room in the Landon House, a mansion in the small village of Urbana, Maryland, about eight miles from Lee's camp.

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Jeb wears his finest uniform and his hat with the ostrich plume while he listens to the music of a military band and flirts with a local woman. This is the Sabres and Roses Ball, a huge party Jeb and his men are throwing to thank the people who've welcomed them into Maryland.

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Since they have some downtime before they have to go on the move, Jeb is taking full advantage, and he leads the woman he's flirting with onto the dance floor. But before they can really get going, a young Confederate messenger covered in dust rushes into the room and heads right to Jeb, and the messenger looks completely rattled.

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Jeb leans in close so he can hear over the music, and as the young man talks, everything about Jeb's demeanor instantly changes. He steps away from his dance partner and calls out orders to a group of men. Moments later, Jeb and about 50 Confederate soldiers are armed and on horseback, riding fast down a dark dirt road.

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After riding about four miles, they approach Hyatts Town, Maryland, and they hear rifle fire. And soon they're galloping headfirst into a skirmish between some of Jeb's reconnaissance scouts and a small band of Union soldiers. Anyone who doesn't know Jeb would find it hard to believe that less than an hour ago he was dancing and flirting at a party, because now he's totally focused and decisive.

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Jeb shouts to his men that they cannot let the Union soldiers get through or they'll learn the size and location of General Lee's army. The moon and stars provide the only light, and it's hard to get a clear read on the enemy. This is why battles are rarely fought after sunset. It's usually these accidental run-ins between scouts that lead to nighttime skirmishes.

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But Jeb is better in the dark than most. He focuses on the sound of the Union rifles, swings his body in that direction from atop his horse, and fires his rare 9-shot .42 caliber Lematt revolver. Immediately, a mini-ball, a small but deadly lead bullet shot from a Union musket, whizzes past Jeb in the dark.

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He hears one of his men cry out as the ball tears through the man's coat and rips a chunk out of his arm. Jeb quickly rounds his horse on the road and leads a strike right at the enemy. He wants to end this now. Jeb's men prove up to the task, and before long, they overwhelm the small group of Union soldiers and send them fleeing north into the darkness.

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It's late at night. You've had a long day at work. You're exhausted. You finally turn out all the lights and go to bed. But, of course, you get a notification on your phone. You have to check it, right? You're not sleeping yet, so you take a quick look. And that's when you see that it's about that story that you've been following all week.

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Unlike some in the newspaper business, he had already predicted the wireless telegraph would be the wave of the future, so his papers are equipped to use it. That night and the following morning, staff from the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror send messages to spots all over the world.

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In addition to opening a direct line of communication with Captain Kendall, Alfred wants to make sure that the London staff is in contact with their special correspondents on the continent and overseas in Canada and America. He wants to cover the story of the father and son fleeing on the Montrose from every possible angle. It doesn't take long for a fuller picture of the story to come into focus.

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Reporters in London track the father and son's whereabouts back about two weeks earlier. It appears they fled London on the underground. Special correspondents in Paris and Antwerp pick up the trail after that.

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The correspondents send messages back to London that place the father and son at various restaurants and hotels in Europe days before they boarded the Montrose for a near two-week journey across the sea. Following that, new wireless messages come in directly to the mail and mirror from Captain Kendall.

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He says he suspected the father and son were not who they said they were almost from the moment they boarded the ship. He says that he saw the pair squeezing hands immoderately and whispering to each other. Then, he ate dinner with them on the first night at sea.

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He watched the boy pick up a piece of fruit from a serving plate on the table, and that's when he felt sure that he knew who this father and son really were. Alfred and his team know that each new message from Kendall and the special correspondents will serve as the basis for new stories that could keep readers on edge for weeks.

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But as all of this is happening, they get word directly from Scotland Yard that the story is about to change again. Because Chief Inspector Dew himself, the man who once tried to hunt down Jack the Ripper, has boarded the fastest ship he could find. He is currently racing the Montreux's across the Atlantic, and he plans to be in Quebec to greet the potential murder suspects when they arrive.

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And Alfred wants someone waiting there too. It's late July at a theater in London's West End. Bernard Grant, a photographer for the Daily Mirror, sits in the audience and watches a variety show performer hit the final note of a song and take a bow. Bernard stands and applauds along with everyone else. The electric stage lights dim and then electric lights come up in the audience.

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Bernard doesn't think much about it, but a lot of the audience members around him look like they're in awe. West End theaters are some of the first buildings in the country to be lit entirely by electric light, and a lot of people still aren't used to it. Bernard walks past some of these people towards the lobby, thinking he might grab a drink during the interval between the next act.

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Suddenly, he hears someone shouting his name behind him and he sees an anxious-looking theater attendant standing in the aisle. Bernard signals to the young man who rushes towards him. The attendant catches his breath and says the theater received an urgent message. Bernard is needed back at the paper right away.

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Bernard's first thought is that some catastrophe has hit London, and the paper needs him to get photographs right away. He runs out of the theater, hails a motor cab, and tells the driver to get to Fleet Street as fast as possible. Ten minutes later, Bernard sits across from the Daily Mirror's photography editor, confused and annoyed.

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There was no catastrophe he needed to cover and he's pretty sure his editor is playing a joke on him and that he rushed out of the theater for nothing. But his editor assures him that this is very serious. Bernard needs to get on the fastest ship he can find right away. The editor says Chief Inspector Dew is already chasing the Montrose across the Atlantic.

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It's July 9th, 1910 in London, England. A 16-year-old boy flies down four flights of stairs of a concrete office building and steps out onto Borough High Street on the south bank of the River Thames. The noise hits him immediately. People rushing down the sidewalk, the road filled with a mix of horse-drawn buggies and rattling automobiles. The street is so crowded it overwhelms the boy.

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The paper needs Bernard to get to Canada, beat everyone to the punch, and take the first photos of the potential murder suspects that Dew is tracking down. If there was a faster way to catch up to them, Bernard can be sure that the paper would have him do that. But since the Wright brothers' first airplane flight only took place about seven years earlier, a fast ship is still the best bet.

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Bernard gathers his equipment, rushes home to pack a suitcase and heads for the docks, and within hours, he's aboard a ship sailing across the ocean. He believes if everything goes just right, he could be the one to provide the perfect ending to the Cora Crippen murder story.

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It's July 31st, 1910, at about 2.15pm in Alfred's office, nine days after Captain Kendall sent his first wireless telegraph about the Cora Crippen murder. Alfred and his staff listen to an out-of-breath crime reporter who has just come from Scotland Yard. He has major news. Earlier that morning, Inspector Dew arrested the two suspects aboard the Montrose when it landed in Quebec.

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A jolt of energy runs through everyone in the room. Some writers and editors start laying out plans for their next editions. Others dash out to work the wireless to get in touch with Bernard and other photographers and correspondents in North America. But as reply messages start to come in, Alfred feels like it's a letdown.

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Nobody has much more information than what Scotland Yard already provided because, somehow, Inspector Dew managed to arrest the suspects and hide them away aboard the ship without anyone, including Bernard, catching a glimpse of them. Dew isn't allowing any photographs of the suspects, and he's refusing to answer questions about the case.

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Alfred knows whatever story his staff runs about the capture will be a compelling one, but he wants more. He's sure other papers will use artists' renderings of what the arrest might have looked like, but he believes that's like something from the past, something that worked in the days of Jack the Ripper. Now, people want proof. They want to see these suspects with their own eyes.

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Alfred's papers will keep running stories with information they have, but he tells his team to send another message across the sea. Bernard's plan is still the same. Get photos of the suspects and give the people a proper ending to the story. It's August of 1910, several weeks after the Mrs. Crippen saga began.

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At 4 a.m., Bernard shakes himself awake in his room at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec, Canada. He grabs his camera equipment and tries to get dressed. He's barely slept, but that doesn't matter right now.

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Bernard has just gotten word from a correspondent that Chief Inspector Walter Dew is in the process of transferring the murder suspects from a Quebec jail to a ship called the Magantique that will set sail for England. In order to achieve this, Dew will journey up the St. Lawrence River on a tugboat and connect to the McGontique via gangplank.

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And since the arrest, there still hasn't been a single photo taken of the suspects and Dew has refused to talk to reporters. Bernard has it on good authority that Dew is particularly fed up with the press from America and Canada. Bernard rushes out of his room, carrying his equipment and trying to button his shirt. He knows Dew has a head start and a part of him believes all of this is futile.

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Du has already outrun him once and has outsmarted the press since arriving in Quebec. But Bernard hears a phrase in his head that his editors and his bosses at the Daily Mirror love repeating. It is better to do wrong than to do nothing. Bernard picks up his pace, sprints out of the hotel and heads down a dark street towards the nearby dock.

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A tugboat captain, who looks like he's already been awake for hours, greets him and asks if everything is okay. Bernard quickly tells him the situation. There's another tugboat on the water that he needs to beat to a steamship waiting at a port down the river. The captain tells Bernard to come aboard and not to worry. His is the fastest tugboat in Quebec.

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He quickly pulls his hat down further to partially cover his face and starts weaving his way through the foot traffic. He darts his eyes back and forth, convinced that someone is going to recognize him. He can feel his heartbeat all the way up in his ears. He keeps rushing and scanning the street, but nobody pays any attention to him, so the boy finally relaxes a little.

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Bernard clutches his equipment and hops on board. Minutes later, he listens to the captain shouting at the crew to push the craft to its limits. The journey takes hours and all Bernard can do is wait as he watches the sunrise. Finally, Bernard sees the steamship Magantique looming ahead, and he also sees the other tugboat stopped alongside it with a gangplank between them.

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Bernard fears he's already too late, but then he sees a man step off the tugboat and walk onto the gangplank. It's Chief Inspector Dew. Without thinking, Bernard leaps up onto the roof of the tugboat's wheelhouse and points his camera right at the gangplank. He sees Dew glance down at him.

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The two men have crossed paths in London, so Bernard knows that Du recognizes him, and he's sure the chief inspector will concoct some new plan to hide the suspects from the camera. Instead, Du gives Bernard a nod and walks on to the waiting steamship.

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Bernard doesn't know it, but Du is so annoyed with the American and Canadian press that he is willing to let his guard down for a moment and allow a fellow Englishman to take photos of the suspects. Within minutes, Bernard sees police escorting the two suspects across the gangplank. He snags a photo of each. But it's not a father and son. It's a man and a woman.

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And for a second, Bernard isn't sure who he just took pictures of. But then it all clicks, and he realizes he is the visual proof that everyone is waiting for. The murder suspects, the father and son who fled on the Montrose, are really Cora Crippen's husband, Dr. Holly Harvey Crippen, and his mistress, Ethel Leneve.

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Ethel had taken on the disguise of a teenage boy right before she ran down Borough High Street, and she and Crippen made their escape from England. After taking the first photographs of Dr. Crippen and Ethel since Cora Crippen's murder, Bernard travels to Liverpool, England on the Megantic alongside Chief Inspector Dew.

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And over a week later when they arrive, Bernard knows that he'll have to scramble to get his photos prepped for publication. But before he can do that, he watches Dew lead Crippen and Ethel off the ship and he sees a massive crowd of onlookers desperate to just get a glimpse of the potential murderers.

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And in that moment, even though all of this has been going on for weeks, it finally hit Bernard and Chief Inspector Dew that while they were rushing across the Atlantic Ocean, the entire world was watching. Dew's pursuit of Crippen would come to be known as the first modern manhunt and the first major murder case of the 20th century.

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While sensational coverage of crimes has been around a long time, and it caught fire during the Jack the Ripper murders, this was the first time a global audience was able to follow a murder investigation step by step in as close to real time as possible.

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As wireless messages came in from Captain Kendall aboard the Montrose, from Do In Pursuit, and from special correspondents around the world, papers like the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror had been publishing regular updates.

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Readers from all over were able to chart Dew's path across the ocean with bated breath, as he gained three and a half miles per hour on the Montrose for over a week until he overtook it before landing in Quebec.

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Readers also learned the intimate details of the personal investigation Captain Kendall had conducted aboard the Montrose, and how when he ate dinner with the father and son aboard his ship, he started to see through their disguise because the son used table manners that were only common to women at the time.

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He slows down to a normal walk and makes his way to the entrance of a nearby London underground station. A few minutes later, the boy sees his father coming towards him, holding a single small suitcase. The boy greets his father, and they run down the steps together in the underground, just in time to catch the next train. The boy watches the train doors close and the mass of passengers exiting.

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like delicately picking up fruit with the tips of her two fingers instead of simply grabbing it. The public's obsession with the manhunt led papers to sell millions of copies across the globe. This event would alter the way murder investigations were presented in the press forever, and the use of the wireless telegraph would change how police conducted these investigations.

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Dr. Crippen was eventually found guilty of murder and hanged. Ethel was acquitted of all charges. But it wasn't even Crippen's end or even the brutality of the murder he was accused of committing that would cause this case to have such a massive effect on the culture at large.

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It was the fact that it took place at a moment in history when all of these seemingly disparate elements converged to create something new. The invention of the Marconi wireless telegraph and its use on ships at sea. Publishing giants like Alfred Harmsworth embracing new technology

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and filling their papers with short, crisp stories about crime that appealed to people of all classes and the public's growing need to see photographic proof of what they were being told. All of this would set the stage for the rise of the modern tabloid and it would help fuel the public's growing desire for real stories about cops chasing killers.

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A desire that persists to this day, and often causes a lot of us to stay up way too late scrolling and digesting every sensational detail about the latest true crime story that everybody will be talking about. From Ballin Studios, this is A Twist of History. A quick note about our stories. They're all heavily researched, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

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A Twist of History is hosted by me, Joel Blackwell. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin and Zach Levin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Produced by Perry Kroll. This episode was written by Mike Federico. Story editing by Mike Federico. Sound design and audio mixing by Colin Lester Fleming. Post-production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacazio.

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Research and fact-checking by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, Alex Paul, Patricia Nicole Florentino, Calvin Riley Holgate, Matt Gilligan. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Thank you for listening to A Twist of History.

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He looks around to make sure that he still hasn't been recognized by anyone and follows his father on board. As the train car continues to fill up, the boy and his dad lower their heads, avoiding eye contact with their fellow passengers. And finally, the train starts to roll down the underground tracks, and the boy and his father exhale. Their escape from England has begun. Four days later.

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It's July 13th, 1910, in the office of newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth on Fleet Street in London. 44-year-old Alfred sits at his massive leather-lined desk, looking over the recent editions of the two most popular newspapers he owns, runs, and publishes, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Both papers are huge in London. In fact, they're two of the best-selling newspapers in all of England.

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The international manhunt that's basically the next smash-hit true crime docuseries in the making in real time. and updates are coming in rapid fire. You sit bolt upright, take a deep breath, and begin scrolling. For the next two hours, you devour every delicious detail about the grisly crime, the search for a fugitive, and the mindless commentary that goes along with it.

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But Alfred isn't satisfied. He knows he can always sell more. He flips through the pages of the mirror and shakes his head. The writing's fine and he loves the layout, but there's no hook, no story to keep people's attention day after day. He tosses the paper aside, stands up, and comes face to face with a bust of Napoleon that he displays on the windowsill nearby.

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The dead French general and emperor serves as a reminder that Alfred is a conqueror. Alfred opens a desk drawer and pulls out boxes of cigarettes. He marches across the plush carpet in his upstairs office, opens the door and walks to the top of a stairwell. Alfred stops and listens.

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Any frustration that he might be feeling just disappears, because hearing his writers banging away on their typewriters downstairs is one of his favorite sounds. Alfred descends the steps and walks into one of the newsrooms housed in his building.

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He opens a cigarette box, tosses the loose cigarettes to his reporters and shouts, The reporters shout back, And this has been a near-nightly ritual for years. It gives Alfred a chance to mingle with his staff and remind them that he wants short, crisp, exciting stories. Cigarette smoke starts to fill the room as Alfred heads back upstairs to his office.

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He sits down at his desk and looks over the pages of the mail in the mirror again. Alfred knows what's missing, and so does everybody downstairs, because explain, simplify, clarify isn't the only phrase Alfred is fond of using with his reporters. He's also famous for shouting, "'Get me a murder a day.'" And right now, there's no murder or any gripping crime stories in his papers.

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Alfred takes a deep breath and tries to relax. He's fully aware that most people would be jealous of him and would find it ridiculous that he puts so much pressure on himself and his reporters. After all, Alfred is really rich, easily the equivalent of a multimillionaire in today's money.

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A few years earlier, the king even gave him the title Baron Northcliffe, which means Alfred is a member of the English aristocracy. But that's not where he started. Alfred was born to a large working-class family in Dublin, Ireland. And because of that, he's always believed that he has to work harder and differently than people born into wealth.

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And he knows that there are two big reasons that he and his newspapers have been so successful— First, Alfred embraces new technology. The Daily Mirror is one of the only true illustrated newspapers that uses photography throughout its pages, as opposed to mainly relying on artist drawings like a lot of other illustrated papers. And this alone is already transforming how people consume the news.

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Alfred is also one of the few publishers who uses mechanical typesetting and rotary printing machines, which allow him to print more copies of his papers faster and for less money than most of his rivals. But more importantly, Alfred has never forgotten where he came from. He makes sure that his papers appeal to everyday working-class people. He features stories that he thinks they want to read.

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Sensational, thrilling stories. Preferably with a bit of blood and scandal involved. A loud knock breaks his concentration. He shouts, come in, and a crime reporter, Henry Barlow, enters with a huge grin on his face. Alfred asks why he looks so excited... Henry says he's gotten a tip from a police contact at Scotland Yard, and he has a murder story.

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Our collective obsession with true crime stories has, of course, exploded in the last several years, and movies, books, podcasts, social media, daily news stories, they all feed this obsession constantly. it's pretty easy to think that this is a relatively new thing. But of course, it's not.

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Alfred's face lights up, and Henry's grin gets even wider. He says it's way bigger than just an average murder story. The dismembered, headless body of a dance hall singer has been found in her own cellar, and the cop's two biggest suspects have disappeared. It's later that night, in Camden Town, North London. Henry makes his way through a neighborhood lined with run-down stone houses.

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The flicker from the gas lamps casts strange shadows on the ground, and he can feel himself tensing up. He's not scared, but knowing someone got killed and hacked up nearby has him on edge. He shakes it off and focuses on the job at hand. He understands that he could be onto a huge story. It's not every day the police find a dismembered body in a cellar.

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Henry hears voices coming from outside a house further down the street, so he quickly moves through the shadows. He wants to get a feel for what he's walking into before he lets anyone see him. He approaches the house and the voices get louder. He crouches down and peers at three men standing near the front steps, and he can't believe his luck.

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One of the men is Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Walter Dew, one of the most famous cops in London. Dew was a member of the Yard's Murder Squad, a unit of elite detectives committed to solving violent crimes. And when Dew was a young man, one of his first major assignments as a police officer was to try and hunt down the most notorious killer in British history, Jack the Ripper.

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Henry can barely contain himself. His boss, Alfred Harmsworth, cannot get enough of Jack the Ripper. Alfred still draws inspiration from the salacious Ripper coverage from over 20 years ago that dominated the penny dreadfuls. These serialized stories obsessed with crime and the dark side of society that only cost a penny.

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Henry knows having Chief Inspector Duell on the case will make it easier to compare this new murder to the still unsolved Ripper murders. He steps out of the shadows and says hello to Dew. The annoyed look that Dew gets on his face makes Henry want to laugh. It's well known that Dew has a love-hate relationship with the press. Henry fires off a series of questions.

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Can Dew confirm the identity of the dead body? Does he know the cause of death? Have the yard's two main suspects really disappeared? Henry watches Dew wrestle with how much information he's willing to give. And finally, Dew says that they believe that the body belongs to a dance hall singer named Cora Crippen. They need to wait for a coroner's inquest to determine the cause of death.

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And yes, their two main suspects seem to have fled. Henry doesn't waste any time. He leaves Dew and the other men and starts knocking on doors and talking to neighbors to get as much information about Mrs. Crippen as he can. In addition to Mrs. Crippen being a singer and entertainer, he learns that she was married to a mild-mannered American, Dr. Holly Harvey Crippen.

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And while it may be difficult to pinpoint a single moment in history when this cultural phenomenon began, there is one story which may be the very reason why you're up late at night doom-scrolling. One story about a brutal murder, the heart-pounding pursuit of the killer, and a revolutionary new technology which sparked a cultural obsession that we still can't get enough of.

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And all the neighbors are shocked. They can't believe something so horrible could happen to someone as lovely as Mrs. Crippen. Late that night, a few hours after Henry left the Crippens' house, he stands in Alfred's office along with several other reporters and editors. They all watch Alfred pace back and forth behind his desk. Alfred stops and looks at them.

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He's sure they all know that this is the kind of story they've been waiting for. He wants tomorrow's papers to grab readers' attention. He wants a photo of the dead woman, a beautiful actress who was killed in cold blood. And he wants photos of the suspects. When people walk down the streets and see the papers for sale, he wants these fugitives staring back at them.

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But more than that, he wants to entice readers and get them to understand that this is just the beginning They can keep coming back day after day to watch the story unfold, just like people did when the Ripper was on the loose. And after kicking around a bunch of ideas, the team comes up with what they think is a simple but evocative headline for the next edition of the Daily Mirror.

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How Murder Went Viral

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Strange Camden Town Mystery. Police find a woman's body underneath cellar floor. The following morning, July 14th, 1910, that Daily Mirror headline, a short article, and the photos of Cora Crippen and the murder suspects hit newsstands. The Daily Mail also runs a more detailed story. This news ignites the imagination of readers across London.

A Twist of History

How Murder Went Viral

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And by the end of the day, all anyone wants to know is, where in the world are Cora Crippen's killers? It's the night of July 22nd, 1910, eight days after Alfred broke the news that captivated London. He sits behind his desk, again surrounded by writers and editors. He stares at a telegraph message in his hand, and he's more excited than he's been in a long time.

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He feels like this message is something he's been waiting for, for years. It's like the perfect combination of his two real passions, crime stories and new technologies. The telegraph itself had actually been invented over 60 years earlier. It allowed people to send messages in Morse code across landlines to telegraph receivers.

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A telegraph operator would translate the Morse code, which looks like a series of dots and dashes, into words. And then they would pass along the message to whoever it was intended for. But the message in Alfred's hand is not a standard telegraph message. It's something different. Something new.

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because it originated from the SS Montrose, a ship sailing in the Atlantic Ocean from Antwerp, Belgium to Quebec, Canada, which at this point is still part of the British Empire. To send it, the Montrose's captain, William Kendall, used what Alfred considers to be one of the most important new technologies in the world, the Marconi wireless telegraph.

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Named after the man credited with its invention, Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi, the Marconi wireless telegraph does not rely on the same physical wires or cables as the traditional telegraph.

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Instead, Marconi's machine used radio waves to send messages through the air, making it way faster and cheaper to exchange messages between distant and remote locations around the globe in a way that was never even possible before. In 1910, Marconi's wireless telegraph is already revolutionizing mass communication.

A Twist of History

How Murder Went Viral

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History always has a twist. A single, unexpected, and often forgotten moment that changes everything that comes after it. In this series, each week, you'll hear a riveting story about a twist that you've probably never heard of. But it's these stories that have shaped the very world we now live in. On today's episode, how murder went viral. This is A Twist of History.

A Twist of History

How Murder Went Viral

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This has made it easier for companies to conduct international business, for families to stay in touch with loved ones overseas, and for news to spread. But what Alfred finds truly exciting, and what is most important to him in this moment, is that the wireless telegraph now enables ships at sea to send telegraph messages back to land.

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And that is something that was impossible before Marconi's invention. Captain Kendall initially sent this message to his bosses in Liverpool, England, and somehow, Alfred has gotten his hands on it. He begins reading the message to the group and he watches their stunned faces. The message itself feels even more mind-blowing than the equipment used to send it.

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How Murder Went Viral

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It says that Captain Kendall believes that two people aboard his ship, a father and a son, are the missing suspects in Cora Crippen's murder. Alfred finishes reading and everyone in the room springs into action. For the past week, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror have been publishing story after story about the Mrs. Crippen case and the search for her killers.

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How Murder Went Viral

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The public remains completely enthralled. But Alfred has to admit that the stories have gotten a little thin. The Daily Mirror even recently published a letter from a woman who had a dream that Mrs. Crippen's killers were in Spain. Alfred knows those kinds of articles can take a backseat now. He tells his staff there is one person above anybody else they have to talk to, Captain Kendall.

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They need to find out exactly how he came to believe two potential murderers are on his ship as it steams towards Canada. Alfred watches his staff take their marching orders and he feels a rush, because he believes he is one of the few men in the world who is ready to rise to this moment. His love of technology has often kept him one step ahead of his competitors,

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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Take a second. Think about whatever it was you were just doing, just before you began listening to this. What if I told you that whatever it was, no matter how ordinary, there's probably an incredible origin story behind it? Maybe you were finishing the last episode of that true crime series everybody's been talking about. Those shows are everywhere you look today.

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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In this brand new weekly series, we'll tell the epic stories that have shaped the world we now live in. And these are the history stories you won't soon forget. Also the ones you'll want to tell everybody else about. From Ballin Studios, join us for the most heart-pounding podcast in history. This is a twist of history. Follow and listen to A Twist of History wherever you get your podcasts.

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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New episodes every Wednesday. Ordinary Things. Extraordinary Beginnings.

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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But did you ever wonder about the very first murder mystery that went viral? It's more than 100 years old, and it involves a wild transatlantic boat chase to catch a fugitive killer in disguise. It's a story you'll have to hear to believe.

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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Not just because of the grisly crime, the daring escape, and the thrilling hunt that followed, but also because of the way it captured the world's attention and sparked a cultural obsession. These stories are all around us. The things we take for granted. If we just trace them back in time, they often lead to a singular moment that reverberates through history.

A Twist of History

Introducing: A Twist of History

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Like you probably didn't know that the banana that you had for breakfast wouldn't have been so readily available if not for the CIA, two military coups, and a political assassination. How about the set of keys that you left on the kitchen counter on your way out the door? A minor inconvenience for you, but back in 1912, one misplaced key may have led to the sinking of the Titanic.

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Introducing: A Twist of History

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Why doesn't America use the metric system anyway? Because pirates stole it from us? How did Hollywood become the movie mecca? Because Thomas Edison was a bully. The course of history never follows a straight line. And very often, we can pinpoint a remarkable, thrilling twist which changes everything that follows.

ADHD Chatter

ADHD & Relationship Issues - 17 Ways To Fix Them | Karen Doherty

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Karen Doherty is a leading neurodiversity couples therapist. who's helped thousands of people with ADHD experiencing difficulty in their relationships. Her mission is to help those with ADHD be understood by their partners and build happier relationships.

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And the work they're doing, testing for anthrax spores, is especially difficult.

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Agents carefully swab everything in the apartment, and then they've got to wait for results from the lab. But on Hatfield's computer, they find a clue that feels straight out of a bad movie.

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No hard evidence against Hatfield, but claims there are a number of coincidences that make investigators interested in him. Hatfield wrote an unpublished novel about a bioterrorism attack.

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a hard drive with a draft of an unpublished novel he'd co-written called Emergence, about a terrorist who attacks Washington, D.C. with a lethal bacteria.

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Written three years before the anthrax attacks, the villain was a Middle Eastern terrorist. Through the eyes of that antagonist, Hatfield's novel states the U.S. was, quote, an incredibly easy target for biological terrorism. Suddenly, the FBI feels like they've got their man.

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The timing of the Cipro prescriptions, the fact that he lied about them, the security clearance and direct anthrax experience now coupled with this book concept all have got the FBI's full attention. and the media's too.

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Joby Warwick of the Washington Post was deep into the anthrax story at the time.

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But despite all this momentum, there still isn't any hard evidence against him.

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No anthrax residue, no handwriting that matched the letters. They were hoping for more. On the other hand, would one really expect a highly educated scientist to grow anthrax at his home? Or leave incriminating handwriting around his apartment? But there still might be some forensic clue waiting to be found in Hatfield's apartment. So the agents decide to take things to the next level.

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What was it exactly that brought FBI agents and U.S. postal inspectors to the Maryland apartment of a former bioweapons researcher last week for a second search? The answer, it turns out, is dogs.

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The FBI reached out to Ted Hamm and his team in Southern California. They're hoping his dogs can track a scent on the anthrax case that's now three months old.

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so that these dogs could get out and work. Agents collect a human scent from the actual anthrax letters, and they go to Hatfield's apartment complex so the dogs can sniff for that scent. There are three bloodhound teams, and they all search at different times so the dogs don't give each other any spoilers.

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For his part, Ted isn't told where he's going or who the suspect is, and he's banned from using his cell phone. He arrives in the neighborhood he's told to go to, ready to sick his new dog, Knight, on the case.

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This is where Ted's dog marks a particular step with that pile of poop. And for Ted, standing there in that stairwell, thinking about his history with Knight, that poop means something. He's not wanting to leave.

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Ted and his dogs got a reputation for finding criminals who were long gone, simply from the scent they'd left on items they'd touched. Which is why, in late 2002, the FBI got an idea. Could Ted and his dogs track a scent from a letter? Specifically, a letter sent by the anthrax killer?

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To Ted, it's clear his dog smells some connection between the anthrax envelope and this landing.

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All three dogs had clearly signaled outside Hatfield's apartment. The dogs also signal at Hatfield's ex-girlfriend's house.

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The dog's findings don't look good for Hatfield, but the FBI still doesn't have anything solid enough to charge him or even officially name him as a suspect. But since his name is already out in the press, the FBI feels like they have to say something. So Attorney General John Ashcroft speaks to the press.

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Person of interest. Today, people throw around that term all the time. It's even the name of a TV series. But in 2001, person of interest is a highly unusual term, rarely if ever used. In fact, when John Ashcroft said that phrase, almost no one in the general public had heard it before.

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Whatever it means, the FBI officially has one, a person of interest. That and soon another break in the case from Trenton, New Jersey.

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I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

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From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.

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Back in Trenton, New Jersey, the U.S. Postal Inspectors and FBI hazmat teams had been dutifully swabbing mailboxes in the dead of night for weeks. They'd started to lose hope. But all of that changes on a hot day in August 2002, three days after the FBI publicly named Stephen Hatfield as a person of interest.

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This mailbox is only steps away from Princeton University's campus, literally in front of one of its sororities and right on the college's main drag. And now, nearly a year after the anthrax letters were mailed, the blue box still has live spores inside it. FBI agents on Terry Kern's hazmat squad test its toxicity.

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And that one mailbox was only a few hours' drive from Frederick, Maryland, where Stephen Hatfield lives. So the FBI tries to find any evidence that he'd been in Princeton.

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They show pictures of Hatfield to store owners. Nobody recognizes him. And he's not in any security camera footage either.

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Those couple dogs were about to make headlines. And one of them would leave a mark on the case that's hard to forget.

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And the FBI doesn't find Hatfield's prints or DNA anywhere on the mailbox. After months of swabbing mailboxes all night and scouring their suspect's home, they've basically got nothing but a lot of circumstantial evidence and dog poop. So Hatfield seizes the moment and fights back. My name is Steve Hatfield.

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Of all the media attention this case gets over the years, the press conference Stephen Hatfield calls maybe the moment people remember the most. Hatfield calls out the attorney general for the FBI's new phrase.

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On the heels of Hatfield's press conference, and given the overwhelming lack of evidence, one of two things are clear. Either the FBI is chasing the wrong guy, or Hatfield is exceptionally good at hiding his tracks. At this point, Agent Decker starts to have doubts.

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As a scientist, when Decker looks closely at Hatfield's background, he's not sure Hatfield has enough microbiology experience to properly grow the anthrax bacteria. But many agents disagree. They can't ignore his history, his proximity, the novel, the Cipro. And they refuse to fumble this lead. So they watch Hatfield's every move.

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In fact, the FBI and Hatfield are in such close contact that at one point an agent even accidentally runs over Hatfield's foot with a surveillance car. And they interrogate his friends and his colleagues and boss. Hatfield continues to push his perspective to the media.

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This is the story of how that crap leads to the FBI's first person of interest. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 6, Adult Male Loner. It's November 2001, and there's mass panic about the anthrax attacks. Four letters that appear to have been sent by the same person have arrived in the mail.

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Yeah, intentionally. In many agents' minds, there was no doubt that Hatfield was the guy. But they still don't have anything. We didn't have a good lead.

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Decker's personal life was taking a hit, too. Trouble had started even before he'd disappeared into this case. He and his wife had decided on a trial separation a few months before anthrax showed up in Florida. And now the anthrax case was taking its toll.

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He and his wife officially divorce. The anthrax case is unrelenting. It demands everything. And Decker gives it.

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Then, in turning over those stones, they uncover something.

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The FBI calls the bloodhounds back in. Decker and the FBI and Ted and his dogs all head to the hills.

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Ted has three teams taking turns, each examining all these little trails and turnouts, scouring for a scent taken from the anthrax letters. Ted's dog, Knight, doesn't find much.

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This little pond is part of a reservoir with drainage ponds, little lakes, where all three of the dogs independently picked up the scent that was on the anthrax letter. It feels like a potentially significant break in the case. Could Hatfield have worked here or dumped evidence in these lakes?

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They don't know, but it's a lead, and they have so few of them that agents come up with a kind of crazy idea.

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They decide to search the ponds underwater. They call in FBI crime divers. Agent Bobby Chacon created the Bureau's first national crime diving team.

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Bobby had dove on a bunch of high-profile investigations, including the TWA Flight 800 crash. So now he goes to the lake to size it up.

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The FBI puts a team of over 100 divers under Bobby's control. And that many divers creates a spectacle.

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So with helicopters and news vans watching, Bobby and his team prep for the search. First, they divide the lake into dozens and dozens of 10-by-6-foot grids. Then he and his teams dive under the surface and begin to search, feeling their way along the bottom of the cold lake with guide ropes. And here's the crazy thing. It's pitch black down there.

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Two sent to media companies in New York City, and two mailed to the nation's capital. The handwriting and the contents of these letters are all similar, but investigators still have no idea how to stop them from coming.

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Bobby and his teams pull up every single item they find from the lake. It's grueling, unpleasant work.

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While the underwater operation continues, Agent Scott Decker gets more personal bad news.

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As if the pressure of both the anthrax case and his marriage falling apart aren't enough, Decker has to stop everything to do emergency surgery.

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I didn't want to be home anymore. So Decker calls his boss and begs to be allowed to go back to work.

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As Decker slowly heals, alone in that patrol car, the dive team isn't coming up with anything significant. It's getting late in the year, so they take a break for the holidays of 2002. And when they come back in January, Bobby Chacon's fear has come true. The lake is now frozen over.

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After several days of work, one of the divers finds something that, at first, seems about as mundane as can be.

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To Bobby and the divers, these are just pieces of plastic. I found stuff, but I don't think anything I found was of value. But to a scientist like Decker, that unremarkable plastic looks like something that could be more important.

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At this time, Dan Mihalko is part of a little-known special division of America's mail system, the United States Postal Inspection Service. It's a law enforcement agency that investigates mail crimes.

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A glove box is used in scientific labs. You've seen them in movies and TV shows. Basically an airtight, clear box with holes attached to a pair of gloves. Scientists use them to handle dangerous materials without being exposed.

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If this box is what the FBI thinks it is, this would be their first physical evidence in nearly a year and a half. Decker sends the box to be analyzed. He's hoping they could find something. Anthrax? Fingerprints of Stephen Hatfield? Some other clue? But they decide not to wait for the results.

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After all the work done by the FBI scouring the region, bringing in the bloodhounds, the hundred divers risking their lives under the frozen water, they make a bold decision.

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the FBI decides to drain the entire one-acre lake, just in case there's residue or other evidence at the bottom. As the water level goes down, they haul in sump pumps and rusting pipes and lots of garbage. It takes a couple of weeks to finally reveal the mucky lake bed. And once they can see it all clearly, the only out-of-place items they find are one old gun, a bicycle, and some fishing lures.

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And on top of that, once all the tests on the box they found in the pond come back, they're either negative or inconclusive for anthrax. It seems the glove box is just a regular plastic box, probably from Home Depot.

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And it's here that Decker's doubts really skyrocket. He hears about another case where the very same bloodhounds they'd used had gotten it all wrong and the charges were dropped. What if that dog poop is just dog poop?

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While Decker and the FBI doubt them, Ted Ham stands by his dogs.

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Whether the dogs were right or not, there was just no evidence. No traces of anthrax, no witnesses, no evidence of any kind besides a few suspicious actions to show that Hatfield had touched anthrax in years. Most agents working the case at this point moved on from Hatfield. And for Joby Warwick, the Washington Post reporter, his trust in the FBI took a major hit.

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The very thing the FBI was trying to avoid had happened again. They had accused the wrong suspect in a very public way. They had told themselves a story.

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Stephen Hatfield eventually files a lawsuit accusing members of the FBI and the DOJ of violating his rights with a, quote, coordinated smear campaign. The Justice Department eventually settles with Hatfield for $4.6 million. The government didn't admit liability, but said that the settlement was, quote, in the best interest of the United States.

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And now, this unit from the Colonial Times is facing its biggest, most public mail crime ever.

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The FBI and the DOJ had now spent nearly two years on the anthrax case and millions upon millions of dollars.

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They'd focused so much of that time on Stephen Hatfield, and now had so little to show for it. But not everything went down the drain in that lake. As ice divers scoured under the pond, Agent Decker was struck by an odd event that took place on the shore.

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That may not sound so strange to the average person, anthrax expert at an anthrax investigation. But agents knew this expert. He worked at USAMRID. So as a potential suspect, the FBI would never allow him at a possible crime scene. Yet this guy had found a way in.

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Why did anthrax vaccine expert Bruce Ivins travel over ice and snow to serve coffee at a crime scene? Next time.

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I remember reading that and immediately having a terrible sinking feeling. Just a gut feeling.

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And this is where the breakthrough happens.

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Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and Digg Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written, and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Digg Studios.

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But Dan's unit, the Postal Inspection Service, gets an important clue. It wasn't related to the content of the letters or the strain of anthrax. It was actually on the envelopes themselves.

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Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio, and Janiel Kastner at Spoke Media. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf. Story editing by Janiel Kastner. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnett. Original composition by John O'Hara. Production by Spoke Media. Production support for USG Audio by Josh Laulangi.

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Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer. Or you can binge the whole series ad-free by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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Now that they have a location, the postal inspectors and the FBI develop a theory about how the killer mailed the letters.

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If you're going to drop off mail, you'll either do that at the post office itself or at one of those little blue mailboxes you see on street corners. It would make sense that the anthrax killer wouldn't want to be seen at a public post office.

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This is a CBC Podcast. In the 1990s, Ted Hamm was a veteran search and rescue worker living in Southern California. Most of his work involved tracking down hikers or hunters who'd gone missing. Until one day, two strangers approached him and his team.

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625 blue collection boxes, to be exact. Postal inspectors and the FBI put the boxes under surveillance. They decide they need to check every single blue mailbox to see if they can find any anthrax spores. Specially trained FBI hazmat agents from Philadelphia, Boston, and as far away as San Francisco are brought in to help.

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But once again, they have to balance their need to test in public places with the risk of creating panic.

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they decide to test all of those mailboxes under the cover of night. Here's what that looks like. Teams of disease detectives, two each, decked out in white Tyvek suits, purple nitrile gloves, rubber boots, and respirators, fanning out into the quiet suburbs around Trenton, New Jersey, in the dead of night, using Q-tips to test the mailboxes for anthrax.

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Each team is then trailed by a New Jersey state trooper, all hoping to avoid detection.

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But at the very least, if the Postal Inspection Service could find spores in one of those blue mailboxes, they'd have pinpointed the exact spot the anthrax killer mailed those letters. And if they knew that, they could start to search for other clues there. There might be closed-circuit cameras, fingerprints, or eyewitnesses even who saw something.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Scanning 625 blue collection boxes night by night might be the long way of getting there. But if it works, the payoff will be huge. While that painstaking search is underway, the FBI, in the hopes of finally getting some leads, makes a bold choice.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Remember, weeks ago, the FBI had sent off copies of the anthrax letters to their forensic psychologists, and that team had come up with a profile of the killer. So far, agents had kept it to themselves to avoid tipping that person off, wherever they might be. But now, two weeks later, still without any real suspects, the FBI shows its hand.

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That's Agent Scott Decker.

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After sharing the profile wide, leaders in the FBI, like Assistant Director Van Harp, push for somebody, anybody, to speak up.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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The first place they send this profile is to a spot where Decker knows a lot of folks personally.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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They're looking for matches. It's like, desperate FBI seeks adult male loner, non-confrontational, quiet, and knows a lot about microbiology.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Given the crowd, a lot of the guys there might fit that profile. But if it works, it would be a quick way to narrow down the field of suspects.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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And it works. They get some hits. One of them comes from anthrax vaccine whiz Bruce Ivins at USAMRID, the Army's biological weapons lab in Maryland.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Princeton is just 11 miles from Trenton, New Jersey, where the anthrax letters were postmarked. It's a promising lead, and yet the FBI had just experienced a media frenzy when they questioned an innocent public health expert from Pakistan. The attention from being a potential suspect had nearly ruined his life, not to mention made the FBI look terrible.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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That moment led Ted down a career path he'd never imagined, using an unusual and pretty special tool.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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They've got to be even more careful to make sure they're separating solid leads from racism or personal grievances, those poison pen leads.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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One microbiologist suggests that vaccine whiz Bruce Ivins himself may be guilty. A former colleague tells the FBI that he was overly friendly and asked personal questions about her college days, including her sorority, and now her personal life.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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It's a bit of a leap from uncomfortably friendly scientist to anthrax killer. But all of a sudden, there's a bunch of head turns and squinting at colleagues in the world of microbiology. Anthrax expert Paul Keim in Arizona, who'd helped the FBI identify this anthrax strain to begin with, says it became a strange time to be an anthrax scientist.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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To be safe, the FBI subpoenas samples from Keim, Ivins, and any scientist they can find who's known to have had access to anthrax. And agents give lie detector tests to key experts at USAMRID. None of the scientists seem particularly suspicious. Until they get an anonymous tip about one particular anthrax scientist. Stephen Hatfill, until recently, worked at a major defense contractor.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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But three weeks before the anthrax attacks began, his top security clearance there had been suspended. The reason why he lost that security clearance is debated. But at the time, it's widely reported that he'd failed a polygraph test.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Ted had gotten interested in bloodhound dogs a few years back. He was so impressed with their abilities. Some experts say they can track a scent for nearly two weeks. So he began training them and using them in his search and rescue efforts. And since then, he's always had his dogs close. In fact, it's hard to talk to Ted without them making their presence known.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Stephen Hatfield lives in Frederick, Maryland, just three miles from Fort Dietrich and the Usamerid Lab, where he'd been a research fellow until 1999.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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The FBI begins months of research on Hatfield. A search warrant records what they find, that in the late 1970s, Hatfield worked as a mercenary for the Rhodesian military, who, it's believed, during those years used toxic chemicals and biological agents against rebels in a civil war.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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The search warrant also records that during his time serving there, the rebel-held areas of Rhodesia experienced the worst anthrax outbreak in world history. It killed 182 people and infected more than 10,000.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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So the FBI questions Hatfield in March 2002. And Decker says he's cool.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Hatfield wants to help with the investigation so much that he agrees to have the FBI search his house, his car, and a storage locker he rents.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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But his story seems to have holes. Hatfield tells agents he had taken the antibiotic Cipro in early 2001. Cipro is the drug you take before or after an anthrax exposure. It's what Congress took after the Daschle letter and what Johanna was clamoring for at the drugstore with her fellow New Yorkers. Cipro works on other bacteria too, so there are plenty of reasons Hatfield might have taken it.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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But he specifically says he hadn't taken any in the couple of months leading up to 9-11 and the anthrax attacks. But when the FBI reviews his pharmacy records, they find a different story. Hatfield had filled prescriptions twice in those months, exactly two days before the New York letters were mailed, and again, two days before the Capitol Hill letters were mailed.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Perfect enough for the FBI to put Hatfield under surveillance. And remember, Hatfield had agreed already to let them search his apartment. In exchange for that, Hatfield says the FBI promised him something too, that the process would be very discreet, which it is until the day of the search.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Someone, potentially within the FBI, had leaked to the press that they were going to search Hatfield's apartment.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Media swarm Hatfield's suburban neighborhood. As he later told Matt Lauer on the Today Show, this felt like a huge betrayal of what the FBI had promised him.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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I mean, this is, what a show. For the investigators inside Hatfield's apartment, that show is all very real. And the pressure is mounting.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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But until that moment with the detectives, he'd never considered using the dogs in criminal cases. But the idea appealed. To Ted, at least.

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Episode 6: Adult Male Loner

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Terry Kearns was one of the FBI agents in a hazmat suit that day searching Hatfield's apartment.

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Ershad served as the city of Chester's health commissioner. He's not a lab guy, but he is a medical epidemiologist, a disease detective who investigates viruses. And these FBI agents have questions for him about anthrax. At his home, his wife tells him the truth. Irshad isn't there. He's already at his office in City Hall. Soon, federal agents descend on his workplace.

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But it's all a mystery to Irshad. He has no idea why the agents are there. But being from Pakistan and not yet a U.S. citizen, he's terrified. The mayor's office down the hall jumps in to help.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Of course, New York is also dealing with the terror of the anthrax letters. They've been sent to top media stations in the city, infecting about a dozen people. In Washington, D.C., thousands have been exposed. But tonight, in Yankee Stadium, it seems NYC has hope. While the fans forget their worries, officials can't. They're concerned there might be more than hope in the air.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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At his home, agents are tearing through his house, turning everything inside out, looking for clues.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Agents lead his wife out of the house and she watches, cuffed, as they dig through all of her belongings.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Inside Irshad's office that morning, FBI agents dig into his history.

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The we Irshad is talking about is his brother Masood, who lives with them and works for the city too. What they don't know is that at the exact same time, another team is searching the office of their friend, Asif Qazi, who's an accountant in the city's finance department.

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That brotherhood has caught the attention of the FBI, who now suspect that Irshad, his brother, and their friend Asif may be tied to the anthrax attacks.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Agents ask him about that strange cloudy liquid in the silver canister. Far from anything sinister, Irshad claims it's dish soap. Asif had been fixing his broken dishwasher. But the FBI has a no stone unturned policy on this case, so they keep the questions coming. Irshad tells them he isn't the scientist they seem to be looking for.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Irshad has a point. His background is studying disease patterns. And neither Irshad nor his brother or friend are experts in microbiology. So those points don't square at all with the FBI's profile. After four hours, the agents say he's free to go home. For now. But when he starts to leave, he finds that word has gotten out.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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FBI agents dig into the men's backgrounds. They question their friends and family members, and they search for anthrax in their homes.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Those hazmat teams scour Earshot and his friends' and family's homes and businesses. But they struggle to find anything even related to anthrax. No writings, no manuals. Agent Decker suspects he knows why this lead isn't panning out. He knows well that tips from the public aren't always credible, especially when they're reported against someone with darker skin.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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They keep looking, but the nagging suspicion remains. Had they turned a man's life upside down for nothing? As the agents in Pennsylvania continue their investigation of Irshad, agents in Washington, D.C. are hunting for that second anthrax letter that Decker's colleague suspects was sent to the Capitol.

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So they've put in place a top-secret technology that's working in the stadium unseen, behind the crowds.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Agents know that if that letter is there, it's a ticking time bomb, lethal if it leaks or gets opened. Their answer is to build a custom clean room in a warehouse to safely sort through all that mail.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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The capital system processes more than 250,000 letters a week. So trying to find one letter is tough.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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They want to neutralize the threat of that unopened letter, but there's another reason they're anxious to find it.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Decker and the FBI need more anthrax powder so they can study its makeup and figure out who made it. In order to find it, they start the painstaking process of carefully opening and testing 642 individual mailbags by hand.

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And then, two weeks in, one agent yells out. He's holding an envelope with blocky writing. Just like the other letter in D.C., the return address is from a fourth-grade class at Greendale School in New Jersey, which doesn't exist. And it's addressed to a different senator. We found Patrick Leahy's letter, which was unopened.

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Inside this envelope, addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy, they find exactly what Decker and the FBI had been hoping for.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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It's a brand new biohazard detection system that, according to FBI agent Scott Decker, had been rushed to the city for the series. The operation was so classified that, as far as we can tell, it's never even been reported in the press.

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In order to analyze this new sample, they turn once again to the scientists at USAMRID, the military's top biological weapons lab. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, USAMRID, had pretty much been the only game in town ever since it had made a name for itself and for anthrax in the early 1990s.

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Back then, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was known to have been experimenting with and stockpiling anthrax. So the U.S. government turned to its USAMRID researchers to develop an anthrax vaccine that would protect their soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. And it had been successful.

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One of the co-inventors of the vaccine was a scientist named Bruce Ivins, who still worked at USAMRID. And when he takes a look at this new sample closely, he's stunned. He says, quote, these are not garage spores.

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Another top scientist at USAMRID says, I've never been this scared in my life. The stuff is done well and it's weaponized correctly, which is not easy to do. Unlike the anthrax sent to New York, this powder from the Washington letters mailed three weeks later is extremely light.

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All of that casts serious doubt on the involvement of public health expert and non-lab guy Irshad Shaikh.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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The FBI rules him, his brother Massoud, and their friend Asif Qazi out as potential suspects. It seems the FBI had, in fact, acted on a bad tip. But for Director Robert Mueller, it was just a matter of the FBI doing its job.

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A lot of tips sent to the FBI were bogus, especially since post-9-11, Islamophobia was at an all-time high. Some of the calls were well-intentioned, others misguided, but some were weaponized.

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Ershad lost his faculty position at Johns Hopkins, where he'd worked for seven years. And he was banned from a promotion with the federal government because he was still on a DOJ watch list. Ershad says his neighbors stayed suspicious of him until he eventually moved away. Both brothers had applications for U.S. citizenship get blocked. And Ershad's name stayed on an airline watch list for years.

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Despite all of that, somehow, Irshad has made peace with what happened.

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Heading into late November 2001, as the FBI was still investigating Irshad and looking for the Leahy letter, the anthrax killer struck again.

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another patient has symptoms of inhalation anthrax. This time, it's not in the nation's capital or in the news center of America. It's in rural Connecticut. About 80 miles northeast of New York City, a 94-year-old woman named Audalee Lundgren arrives at the hospital with what seems to be a mild illness. But a few days after she's admitted, doctors confirm she has inhalation anthrax. And then...

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On November 21, 2001, Audalee Lundgren is victim number five.

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Audley's lifestyle and location don't match any of the previous targets. Yet, Dr. Marcy Layton, who tried to solve Kathy Nguyen's death after the Yankees game three weeks earlier, feels like this new investigation in Connecticut mirrors her own.

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Two more deaths in less than a month, and neither case has any envelopes to examine or any real way to know how they happened. Marcy forms a worrisome theory about how Audalee and Kathy got sick. She thinks trace spores of anthrax infected them at home.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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If it's true that the U.S. mail is carrying trace spores of anthrax along its path, it could mean that anyone with a mailbox between D.C. and the Northeast is now at risk. As if the pressure to find the anthrax killer isn't enough, an unexpected hurdle has now thrown the case into chaos. ABC News broke the story.

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Officials want to safeguard that potential target, especially since there are rumors that President George Bush himself might show up at the game tonight to throw out the first pitch as a sign of support. Just the day before, the White House had issued a broad warning to all Americans about some kind of looming threat, so the president making a public appearance would be bold.

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Bentonite is a mineral used in chemical engineering that can help make anthrax fluffier and float more easily. And ABC calls it telltale because there's someone in particular who's known to mix it into anthrax.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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ABC News says that well-placed sources believe the anthrax is made by Iraq. And those sources are about as well-placed as it gets.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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The federal government now has two very different theories out there. The FBI believes it's a single, well-trained scientist in the U.S. And the White House is saying it's Iraq, using the same kind of anthrax Saddam Hussein allegedly used in the 1990s against his own people.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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So the strain doesn't match Iraq's. But what about bentonite, that telltale sign of Saddam's handiwork? The FBI decides to run more tests and quickly come to a conclusion.

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No chemical additives, which means no bentonite, which means no Iraq.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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That doesn't stop more rumors, though, or the insistence by the White House that Iraq is involved.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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It's been almost exactly one month since the New York Yankees won that third game. They won the next night, too. But they lost the series. Remarkably, in that month, anthrax has killed two more people, the FBI has raided the homes and offices of innocent suspects, and the White House has begun tossing around Iraq as a central suspect, despite the FBI disproving it.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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But agents have no evidence to prove their own theory either, and they're running out of ideas. So Decker turns to what he knows best, science. If they can crack the genetic code of the anthrax, it could lead them to the killer's lab. It's a long shot. until he gets a call from a startup.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Unbeknownst to him and the FBI, Dr. Paul Keim from Arizona had sent this startup a sample of the anthrax cells from Robert Stevens, the very first anthrax victim. And this startup had been working on trying to find a genetic fingerprint of the AIM strain that infected him.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Let me translate. That startup? They're onto something. So far, to oversimplify it, the key info the FBI has been able to extract from the powder is that the anthrax was Ames, and that it's from a lab. But remember, dozens of labs around the world use that strain, and the FBI wants to trace the anthrax back to its exact source, because that source can tell them who made that batch of anthrax.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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So to match the male anthrax to its source, the FBI needs to do what's called whole genome sequencing, basically mapping an organism's DNA. And in 2001, it just isn't possible. Until that startup called.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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TIGER is an acronym and a pretty cool name for a lab. It stands for the Institute for Genomic Research. And they'd actually been working on cracking the DNA of anthrax for years. And now Claire Frazier, a microbiologist and the president of TIGER, meets with the FBI for the first time.

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Decker and the FBI know that with the Leahy letter they've just found, there's enough anthrax powder for Tiger to start mapping the DNA.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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It's a patriotic moment. President Bush struts out to the mound, totally confident. Derek Jeter, the Yankees' star shortstop, had been giving the president pro tips in the dugout. Bush gives a thumbs up to the crowd, steps on the mound, winds up his pitch, and... Nails it. He throws a strike. It's a good omen for the night. The game comes down to the wire.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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It's a chance the FBI wants to take.

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What they don't know is that building that technology will take them on a path they never imagined. And they have no idea how far they are from identifying the real culprit, but how close he already is. Next time on Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Decker and the FBI find a bioweapons expert for the U.S. government whose security clearance was suspended just two weeks before 9-11.

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Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and Dig Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written, and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Dig Studios.

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Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio, and Janiel Kastner at Spoke Media. Aftermath is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and Dig Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf. Story editing by Janielle Kastner. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnett.

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Original composition by John O'Hara. Production by Spoke Media. Production support for USG Audio by Josh Laulangi. Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer.

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Or you can binge the whole series ad-free by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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In the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees are winning. Two to one. If the Yankees can shut this last hit down, the game's theirs. The Diamondbacks hit a grounder. Right to the Yankees' famous shortstop.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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The Yankees get their win. And the biosensor works, confirming no biotoxins were present. For a moment, it feels like New York City is going to be okay. That lasts a day. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Less than 24 hours later, Dr. Marcy Layton, the assistant commissioner for the health department, is once again dealing with a new case of anthrax.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Marcy had helped to diagnose the anthrax infections at NBC and the New York Post just a couple of weeks ago. And now a Bronx resident named Kathy Nguyen, who's 61, with no connection to any of those newsroom attacks, is struggling to breathe.

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Marcy needs to speak with Kathy to figure out where this exposure could have come from. But when she arrives at the hospital, Kathy's already unconscious. The little information Marcy does have scares her.

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So where did Kathy come into contact with anthrax? Was it somehow loose in the city?

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Marcy learns Kathy immigrated from Vietnam in 1977 and that she lives alone now and doesn't go out that much. When she does, it's mostly just to work and back or to the market to buy food she cooks for herself and her neighbors.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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These were fighting words for a city that was down and out. The date was October 30th, 2001. It had been less than two months since 9-11, and New York City and the country were mourning. But like a scene right out of a movie, the New York Yankees had climbed their way into the World Series. And this is the ad that played just before Game 3.

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Getting to know Kathy makes it harder when Marcy hears the news.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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61-year-old Kathy Nguyen's death from inhalation anthrax is baffling investigators and complicating the entire anthrax investigation.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Three days after she checked into the hospital, Kathy Nguyen is the fourth anthrax fatality.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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That guessing game is Marcy's job. She's got to consider any potential avenue of exposure. And there's one she dreads to even think about.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Marcy knows that Kathy took the 6 train to work every day. And with more than 3 million other people also riding the subway system every day, transferring lines, all of them interconnected, if there were anthrax spores in any one of those train cars, the reach could be catastrophic.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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If they close the subway for testing, they could cause real panic. So Marcy and the health department are discreet as they swab the walls near air vents at subway stops on the Six Trains route. They do this all along Kathy's usual path to work from the South Bronx to Upper Manhattan. Then, Marcy has to wait for the results.

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Finally, the test results arrive.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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This suggests that Kathy's subway route is safe. But then it leaves the giant question of how she got infected and what that danger poses to the city. While Marcy's working on the how, the FBI is focused on the who. And they're about to get a breakthrough.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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About a week before the World Series, agents had discovered the letter that infected Johanna Huden, the reporter at the New York Post, inside the newspaper's offices. They sent the powder and the letter for testing, and now the results were in.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Considering all they're up against, for Decker, finally getting some information is a big win. And even though it's a small sample, this trace amount of anthrax tells the FBI a lot.

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And the letters themselves reveal clues about that person. First, the white six-and-a-half-inch envelopes look identical. And more telling are the markings on the outside of the envelopes. The letters were postmarked in New Jersey. If you haven't mailed anything in a while, a postmark is that official ink stamp the post office puts on the outside of envelopes.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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And both of the New York anthrax envelopes are stamped with the same one. September 18th, Trenton, New Jersey.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Decker and the FBI also find that in addition to the New York letters, the D.C. letter addressed to Senator Daschle passed through that same processing center. It's postmarked Trenton, New Jersey, October 9th, three weeks after the letters that went to New York.

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All of this tells agents that the Trenton, New Jersey area is likely the location of the mailer, or at least a place the mailer has relatively easy access to. To Decker, that means the mailer probably drove to Trenton.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Decker believes that reasonable drive time is roughly 100 miles. So theoretically, he now has a working radius to hone in on the killer. 100 miles in any direction is hardly a pinpoint, but it's a hell of a lot narrower than anyone anywhere in the world. And on top of that, the FBI now has some clues inside the letters as well.

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The World Series had been delayed over fears of another terrorist attack. And when the games did begin, New York played the Diamondbacks in Arizona for the first two matchups and got beat badly, losing both 9-1 and then 4-0. It wasn't great. So in Game 3, back in New York, the Yankees are up against it.

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Linguistic and behavioral experts examine the words to create a new tool in the investigation, a psychological profile.

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According to Decker, this assessment suggests the author is trying to pose as a foreigner. That idea confirms what he and other agents have suspected, and reveals for the first time a specific kind of suspect.

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Domestic person in the U.S. working alone. From this angle, Decker thinks the letters do seem strange. Phrases like Allah is great seem to be trying maybe too hard to tap into the fear of September 11th. The letters themselves are actually dated 9-11-01. And that date stands out, not just because of the reference to 9-11, but for the way the number one is written. It's not just a vertical line.

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Whoever wrote it added the serifs, the small lines at the top and bottom of each number one. To some analysts, that suggests someone who's formal, detailed, meticulous, like a scientist.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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Decker and the FBI now know a potential location of the killer and what kind of person they're hunting.

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Their suspect is a quiet, meticulous scientist in the United States with detailed knowledge of bioweapons. A person a lot like Agent Scott Decker and the scientists he knows personally. Which to him means one thing.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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This could be an inside job. Possibly a scientist working for the government who lives or works around southern New Jersey. The net is tightening. And then agents get a tip. Someone calls the FBI about their neighbor. He's a Middle Eastern looking man who's been mixing a strange cloudy liquid with a silver canister in his backyard.

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Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

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They know he also works for the government and is close friends with a disease scientist. The two men live in Chester, Pennsylvania, a small historic city that's only 50 miles from the mail center outside Trenton, New Jersey.

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It's about a two-hour round trip. Certainly seems possible. So agents spring into action. On an early morning in November 2001, about 30 FBI agents with guns and battering rams and a hazmat team and gas masks jump out of black SUVs and rush the scientist's house.

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It's early in the morning, and Farah Shaikh is asleep. Suddenly, the sounds of her front door being kicked in jolt her awake.

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It's the FBI, and they're barking orders at Dr. Irshad Shaikh's wife. They zip tie her hands behind her back at gunpoint.

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Episode 4: Machine 17

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Scott Payne spent nearly two decades working undercover as a biker, a neo-Nazi, a drug dealer, and a killer. But his last big mission at the FBI was the wildest of all.

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Episode 4: Machine 17

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The latest letter to have been discovered, addressed to a congressman, is thought to contain literally billions of spores of the deadly disease.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 4: Machine 17

27.011

Listen to Agent Pale Horse, the second season of White Hot Hate. Available now.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 4: Machine 17

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All across the country today, it was precaution in the face of peril.

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In the current atmosphere, anthrax scares and hoaxes, rather than real attacks, have all but paralyzed parts of the United States.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Scott Payne spent nearly two decades working undercover as a biker, a neo-Nazi, a drug dealer, and a killer. But his last big mission at the FBI was the wildest of all.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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The Brokaw letter appearing at 30 Rock has left New York City in a state of fear and panic, and the FBI is feeling powerless. They still have no evidence in their possession. There's nothing yet to examine or hope to get clues from. So back at 30 Rock, the search is on.

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A CDC agent and a security director are now going through the building floor by floor, literally asking everyone where suspicious mail might have been sent. Agent Decker says that this trail, it leads to the basement.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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They can see there's visible powder leaking inside the bag. The hazmat team seals off the area. There's no return address on the envelope, but there's a postmark, September 18th, from Trenton, New Jersey. And inside this envelope is a handwritten letter. It's written in black ink, and the handwriting looks blocky, like a child in grade school wrote it.

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There's a lot to unpack there. But right at this moment, they have a baggie with possible anthrax sitting in it. They need to know what they're dealing with. So Decker's colleague from the CDC packs it up carefully and gets it to the lab for testing.

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The FBI now knows for certain that anthrax is being distributed on purpose.

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And they now have the physical proof that their theory about the letter in Florida was correct. Someone is using the mail to deliver anthrax. It's a huge break for investigators. But that doesn't quiet the rising panic in New York City.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Marcy and her team were designing a simulation of a bioterror attack on New York to try to understand how the city could respond effectively. And to accomplish that, they'd hired hundreds of police academy cadets and fire department trainees to act as victims.

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That reassurance was short-lived.

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And that same Friday afternoon, while this is all happening at NBC, at ABC, a producer's seven-month-old son, who had a sore on his arm after visiting the office a couple weeks earlier, now tests positive for anthrax. At CBS, a news aide who had a mark on her face also tests positive. And then finally, reports of our New York Post reporter Johanna Huden's infection come in.

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With the infections mounting, the only shot at stopping them is now finally in the hands of the FBI. They've got the letter and the envelope from NBC, the one with zillions of spores, which means they have access to a bunch of new forensic clues.

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There's also the language. Allah is great and Death to America certainly make it seem like it was written by an extremist, maybe even someone from Al-Qaeda. But for Decker, it's what's leaking out of the envelope that has the biggest possibility for clues.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Decker didn't see the anthrax from Florida. Remember, they hadn't found any physical evidence for that case. But he knows that victim had died from inhaling it. That anthrax had to have been lighter than this, a finer powder, something that could float through the air.

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The whole thing was nearly ready to go. The NYPD, firefighters, the FBI, FEMA, all the volunteers, and even the mayor at the time, Rudy Giuliani, were all going to show up in two days. There was now a sea of stretchers and a bunch of medical equipment on the pier. There was even a delivery of fake antibiotics on the way.

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So given the different consistencies, was this grainy anthrax made by the same person? The FBI hopes to figure that out by analyzing it under a microscope. And right away, they find a clue.

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The AIM strain. The same strain that was found in Florida. That suggests that though there are two different textures, it might, in fact, have been made by the same person. They'd need to try and match the DNA to know for sure.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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But there were two problems. That kind of DNA analysis that could trace an anthrax strain's precise genetic makeup still didn't exist yet. The other problem? At that crucial moment, there was a major mishap in the lab.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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It takes weeks of cleaning and revalidating protocols. That mistake is an unbelievable setback for the FBI. Agents have so little powder left to analyze. But there's at least one lead they can still follow.

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If he wants to analyze the letter, Decker has to destroy any remaining anthrax to make sure it doesn't infect anyone in the forensics lab.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Much like cancer treatments use radiation to damage the DNA of cancer cells, the FBI lab uses radioactive cobalt-60 to deactivate the anthrax spores. It works, so they're finally safe to examine the envelope for a print. And the result is nothing. No legible fingerprints on the letter or envelope.

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All they've got is the mechanism by which anthrax has been infecting people, the mail. They finally know the how. But the why and critically the who still remain mysteries.

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Part of that big question, really the biggest part of that big question, is whether one of those labs is linked to the Middle East. So far, the FBI has no evidence to point the finger at al-Qaeda. But the White House doesn't hesitate.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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For weeks, the public message in Florida had been, isolated incident and no connection to terrorists. But now that New York is under attack, things change.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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The New York Post takes that cue and runs with it. What happens next is not something Johanna Huden likes to discuss.

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It took weeks before she would even talk to us, and months to agree to be interviewed. Here's why. She told us that the trouble began a day or two after she had that blister removed. That her editor saw the bandaged finger and got an idea. A way to bring Johanna and the New York Post right into the anthrax story itself.

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The piece was a short first-person article about being infected with anthrax.

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The article and Johanna's photo go on the front page, full cover of the New York Post. It's her face, and in the foreground, her bandaged middle finger sticking up. There's a headline, huge, in bright white letters, that says, anthrax this.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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And along the bottom, there's a subtitle that reads, Stricken New York Post girl's message to the terrorists. A full half of the cover is Johanna's face. She's looking directly at the camera, with her forearm raised, her middle finger pointing at the sky. So yeah, it looks a lot like she's flipping off Osama bin Laden. The New York Post didn't respond to our request for comment.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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As for Johanna, she hadn't looked at the piece she wrote for years. But during our interview, we asked if she'd read it. Here it is. Okay.

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70,000 M&Ms, divided by color, to stand in for the medicine. They were scheduled to arrive the next day, a Tuesday. Tuesday, the 11th of September. They never arrived.

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Johanna says there are a few things wrong with this article. First, it wasn't what she wrote. She never mentioned bin Laden. She says her editors changed it, making it sound like she personally made nasty accusations against him. And the even bigger surprise was the photo.

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Because it looks like she's now personally antagonizing the terrorists.

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Today, if that sounds a bit over the top, it's not. In New York, like many places after 9-11, honestly, anything seemed possible. Planes had just been flown into skyscrapers. Letters with anthrax were showing up seemingly everywhere. The question, what's next, was on everyone's mind.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Johanna's worst fears never came true. No one ever harmed her, at least not physically.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Despite what the ending of her article says about not leaving, Johanna did quit her job. And she did move away from the city of her dreams. So Johanna survived the anthrax infection itself. But what started as that little blister, it took a toll. For the FBI, by that mid-October weekend in New York, things had gone from bad to shitshow.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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A few cases in Florida had now been joined by five more in America's densest city. And Decker and the FBI are nowhere close to finding out who's doing it, much less stopping it. The anthrax sample they had was contaminated. They haven't found any fingerprints. And all they've got is an empty envelope and a letter. And they know that the perpetrator has the entire U.S.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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All of those white hospital beds became ER stretchers for victims of 9-11. And in the wake of that, Marcy, who had spent so much time preparing for a hypothetical biological attack, was about to face the real thing.

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mail system at their disposal. The only question is when and where will the next letter show up? And how can they possibly stop it? The FBI couldn't know it. But one more thing happened on that wild Friday, October 12th.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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That same day that all those new cases of anthrax were found in 30 Rock and all around New York, down in Washington, D.C., an intern inside the nation's capital finds a letter with blocky grade school handwriting at the top of the mail stack. She doesn't open it yet. There's so much mail. It's going to have to wait until Monday. Next time on Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer.

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Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and Digg Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written, and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Digg Studios.

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Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio, and Janiel Kastner at Spoke Media. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf. Story editing by Janiel Kastner. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnett. Original composition by John O'Hara. Production by Spoke Media. Production support for USG Audio by Josh Lalonghi.

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Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer. Or you can binge the whole series ad-free by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 3, Anthrax This. One month after the attacks of 9-11, the FBI is caught in a conundrum. three people at a news office in Florida have been infected with anthrax.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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And despite lots of signs that suggest it may have been a second wave attack by al-Qaeda, the FBI doesn't have any evidence to support that theory. And on top of that, unlike the plot of 9-11, there's no clandestine chatter or public statements that link al-Qaeda to anthrax.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 3: Anthrax This!

27.011

Listen to Agent Pale Horse, the second season of White Hot Hate. Available now.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Special Agent Scott Decker is charged with helping find that proof. He's at the center of it all, at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. His office was just down the hall from Robert Mueller, who was the new director of the FBI, and by sheer bad luck, had been sworn in only one week before 9-11.

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Now, less than a month into the job, he was facing both the 9-11 and anthrax cases, which would soon become two of the largest investigations in FBI history.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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But so far, none of those stones are turning up much. All the FBI knows at this point is that a letter with white powder that made its way through that Florida news office may have been what infected the victims.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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There's something maliciously simple about using the U.S. mail to poison U.S. citizens, much like there was about exploiting American airplanes to crash into American buildings. But was the mail really the delivery mechanism? One month after waiting for those M&Ms on September 11th, Dr. Marci Leighton is still bracing the city for a fight against an enemy she can't even see.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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This is a CBC Podcast. It's a breezy day outside a warehouse on a pier on the west side of Manhattan. It's September 2001, before 9-11, and before anthrax showed up in Florida. A group of health officials are setting up hospital beds inside the warehouse.

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Marshy's lab had sent out dozens of biosamples in the last few weeks, monitoring for anthrax and other biohazards. And now the phone was ringing before dawn.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Marcy's office had tested a tissue sample from a woman who worked in Midtown. The woman had found a black lesion on her chest. Doctors had been back and forth on what it was. And now the CDC's verdict was in.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Anthrax had gotten through the gates of New York City. Put yourself in Marcy's shoes for a minute. She's been theorizing about hypothetical bioterror attacks for years, planning for a second wave attack after 9-11 for weeks. And now, it's go time. As the city comes to life early that morning, a police car races to pick up Marcy. She opens the car door and finds members of the CDC and the NYPD.

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She gets in, and they speed towards Midtown.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Their destination is in some ways as scary as the anthrax itself. Marcy is racing towards one of the most iconic buildings in New York City, 30 Rockefeller Center, aka 30 Rock. It's a skyscraper full of thousands of people, smack dab in the heart of Manhattan. And on top of that, Marcy's also struck by where in the building the victim worked. NBC News.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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NBC is the second news company to be hit in 10 days. And Marcy worries there could be many more anthrax infections about to show up. She learns the victim here is an assistant for legendary news anchor Tom Brokaw. She'd spilled white powder on herself when she'd opened a letter addressed to Brokaw.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Remember that in Florida, the FBI and local investigators had suspected that a letter had been the source of infections, but they'd never found one. So if Marcy, the FBI, and police can find an envelope at 30 Rock, they'd have the case's first physical evidence.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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And the CDC and a hazmat team. Together, they start scouring the building, looking for that envelope or anything that can tell them how anthrax got inside the building. As they search, NBC finds itself in an unusual spot, not just reporting the news, but being the news.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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The reaction in New York City is bonkers.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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What President George Bush doesn't say here, but what many Americans are beginning to fear, is that with anthrax surfacing in both Florida and New York, these exposures aren't accidents. An attack is unfolding. And what no one knows yet is that NBC isn't the only new case.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Dr. Marcy Leighton was the assistant commissioner for the health department in New York City.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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About a week after 9-11, and well before the FBI or anyone knows anything about anthrax in New York or even Florida, someone else also had a suspicious lesion.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Johanna Huden was 30 years old at the time, and before she got that lesion, before 9-11 happened, she had her dream job, writing a column at one of New York City's fabled tabloid newspapers, the New York Post.

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Then September 11th happened. Suddenly, she and everyone else at the paper was on the 9-11 beat, covering terrorism full-time. The newsroom turned into a microcosm of the city itself.

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Then Anthrax showed up in Florida. The target there had been a tabloid newspaper, one with big, loud headlines, just like Johanna's paper, the New York Post.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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What Johanna didn't realize is that by this time, she'd already become part of the story. Because three weeks before anthrax even shows up in Florida, Johanna had developed that strange cauliflower lesion. It was about the size of a penny on the knuckle of her right middle finger.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Still, she went about her business. Remember, this is happening before the case in New York and before the case in Florida. So Johannes freaked out, but she doesn't know what to make of it. She hopes it'll just go away. But it doesn't. She goes to a doctor. He tells her it's probably a spider bite. He gives her antibiotics and tells her to come back if it gets worse. It does.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Which is why Marcy and the team set up those emergency beds all around them. They've been planning a drill for months, and now it's time to set it in motion.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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Soon, the whole midsection of her middle finger is black and raw. Johanna goes to the emergency room.

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After that, she thought maybe she'd put the whole strange infection thing behind her. But less than a week later, on Friday, October 12th, Johanna is working late at the New York Post.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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She's terrified. She's had symptoms for weeks. Johanna rushes back to the ER, but the hospital is now packed with people, many panicking that they have anthrax. Once she finally gets in to see a doctor again, he's got a very different take than her last visit.

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This doctor sends a biopsy for testing to confirm his suspicions. Until then, he can't say for sure it's anthrax, because previous doctors had already cut out the lesion. But Johanna? She's got no doubt.

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The doctor had prescribed the only antibiotic that might help her. By now, it's the middle of the night. She heads out to find it.

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The pharmacy is packed with people scared about anthrax. They're also trying to get Cipro.

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Episode 3: Anthrax This!

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All of this was to make sure that they were ready in case of a large-scale biohazard attack, like the release of a lethal toxin, gas, or maybe powder, that could kill thousands of people. And one kind of toxin was front and center in her mind. Anthrax.

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They bump her to the front of the line. And finally, she gets the Cipro. But now, on her way back home, she's consumed by the thought of what else might be contaminated.

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The fear that she's feeling now is the same fear gripping New York now that everyone knows anthrax has hit the city. What started as hope that this might be an isolated incident in Florida has turned into the grim realization that once again, the nation is under attack. And no one knows where the next trace of white powder will appear or who will be the next to get sick or die.

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Episode 8: This is What I Do

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By now, six years in, it seemed Maureen might never really know who took her husband from her. Anthrax had become one of the largest cases the FBI had ever taken on. It'd gone down many rabbit holes, but if you asked anyone still following the case, it seemed like all the FBI had done was publicly accuse the wrong suspect more than once.

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Over a period of several months in 2007, Decker and his fellow agents called Bruce Ivins in for questioning multiple times.

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In one of those conversations, Bruce does let something slip. He admits to sometimes mailing packages using false names and return addresses at locations far from his home. It's a revealing admission. And it's possible Ivins realized it was too revealing. When the FBI calls him to another meeting, he brings a lawyer. Agents ask him again about those late nights in the lab.

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In November of 2007, agents approach Bruce after work. When he says he wants to go home, they inform him that his house is being searched at that very moment. Then they tell him to get in their car.

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The FBI talked with his wife and two children while agents searched the house.

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They find a 2003 Baltimore Sun article about former person of interest Stephen Hatfield and articles on handwriting analysis. There's also a 10-point typewritten list musing about the reasons why one of his colleagues, a co-inventor of the anthrax vaccine, could have been the anthrax mailer. Most curious, they find a note titled Themes in Bruce's own handwriting.

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Each explanation for why he might be the killer is enumerated, and he has quotes around the same phrase each time. One, that psychiatric problems, quote, made me do it. Two, that political reasons get Patriot Act plus other legislation passed, quote, made me do it. Three, that financial reasons make money off new vaccine made me do it.

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Four, that I deliberately submitted anthrax samples that were either contaminated, altered, adulterated, or otherwise different from what they were stated to be. By 2007, the FBI and Bruce Ivins have been locked in a bizarre dance for more than two years. There have been no charges against him, and he's still working at one of the most top-secret government bioweapons labs in America.

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America had even gone to war in Iraq, citing the search for anthrax as a key motive. But despite all that energy and military action, no one in the American government could point to the person who'd mailed those letters. Most Americans took it as fact that the anthrax attacks had to have been linked to 9-11. The president and his administration certainly had.

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He has guns in his basement and anthrax in his freezer, and the FBI are monitoring his every move. But despite the weapons and suspicious notes, FBI agents haven't found any of the token Federal Eagle envelopes or anything else concrete. They haven't found anything that draws a straight line from Bruce to the actual mailings.

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What they do know is that he lives near the post office that sold the precise batch of envelopes used in the mailings. And some of those letters were mailed in Princeton, New Jersey, right outside a sorority that Bruce Ivins is oddly fascinated by. They know he has a history of using the mail to impersonate people and letters to make threats.

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That he did an unauthorized decontamination of his workspace in 2001 after finding stray AIM spores. And they know he's the custodian of the precise flask that holds the anthrax batch that killed five people. Most crucially, they know that he appears to have intentionally withheld that very evidence. And that allegation alone is enough to press charges.

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The Department of Justice decides not to go after Ivins yet. They want to build the case to see what else they can find. It's a gamble, especially because of something agents did find at Ivins' house that gave them pause.

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Agents interview Bruce again to learn more about his mental state, and he unexpectedly opens up about his decades-old interest in the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma.

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Greg Satoff, the FBI behavioral analyst, is surprised at the degree to which Bruce talks when agents ask him about his interest in the sorority. Bruce tells them bluntly, Oh no, you don't understand. It's not an interest. It's an obsession. You can't understand.

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Bruce says that sometimes while his wife is out of town, he drives long distances at night to visit different KKG sorority chapters all over the Eastern seaboard. Charlottesville, Philadelphia, Durham, Knoxville, He tells agents that at one point he even broke into a sorority house to steal their cipher book.

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The fact that the anthrax letters were dropped into a mailbox outside a KKG chapter in Princeton, New Jersey, now feels less like an odd coincidence and more like a glimpse into the fuller picture of Bruce Ivins' secret life.

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It's also at this moment that Bruce admits that he had stolen the lab notebook of his former colleague and KKG member, Nancy Hagwood. And then, shockingly, he admits that he had planned to kill someone. He had developed a grudge against another former colleague and sorority member who had moved to upstate New York. He was supposed to go visit her one day and came up with a dark plan.

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But after those six long years, Maureen has a different theory. She thinks that this anthrax wasn't at all related to terrorists overseas, but came from someone inside the United States' own bioweapons lab, USAMRID.

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In the end, Ivins didn't follow through with his plan. But the FBI has heard enough to convince them to stay on high alert. They continue to surveil and interview Ivins. And according to his friend and colleague at USAMRID, Jeff Adamovich, that took a toll.

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And Greg Sathoff, the forensic psychologist, says that Ivan's behavior reached critically dangerous levels in early 2008. On March 17th, he spilled some anthrax he was working with on his pants, but then didn't take the necessary steps to deal with it securely.

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Usamrid dismisses him with a sort of honorable discharge. He can do administrative duties and retire with a pension, but he's not allowed to step inside any lab at Usamrid. The next morning, Diane Ivins, Bruce's wife, discovers him unconscious. Believing he'd taken sleeping pills or Valium along with alcohol, she calls 911. He's rushed to nearby Frederick Memorial Hospital.

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He survives the overdose and is discharged. Soon after, he goes to Bethesda's suburban hospital for treatment, where he's prescribed antipsychotics. He tells doctors then that he constantly pops Ambien and drinks 12 shots of vodka a day. Jeff Adamovich, his friend, says Ivan's behavior is not that of a guilty man about to be exposed, but an innocent man being harassed by the FBI.

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In early May 2008, Ivins goes to a treatment facility to get sober. When he gets out, a few weeks later, the U.S. Attorney's Office makes him an offer. Full immunity, if he comes in with his lawyer and tells the whole truth. But if he lies, the penalty is steep. Ivins agrees.

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And with that, the FBI races to prepare an arrest warrant. It's not like what you see on TV when it happens overnight. This is a federal case with blunders and press galore, a history of false starts, and a bureaucratic machine guiding the way. If the DOJ had already pressed charges for obstructing justice, it's possible Ivins would be behind bars by now.

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Instead, on July 6th, a surveillance team finds Bruce walking erratically down the street, talking to himself. And then he shows up at Usamrid, ranting.

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Maureen is convinced she's correct, and she's not afraid to publicly criticize the FBI and the media for not pursuing her line of thinking.

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A few days later, Bruce goes to his regular group counseling session in Frederick. His addictions counselor, Jean C. Dooley, was so alarmed by his behavior during that session that she spoke publicly about it to CNN years later.

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What stood out to Gene wasn't just the threat of violence. It was the specificity of his plans.

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Local police pick Bruce up and take him to a hospital for involuntary psychiatric care. From the hospital, Bruce leaves harrowing voicemails for his psychiatric counselor. This is one of them.

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Bruce stays involuntarily committed in the hospital for 10 days. He then stays voluntarily a few days longer, before being discharged on July 24th and heading home. The next night, he writes his wife a handwritten note. Please let me sleep, he writes. Please. Then he consumes a mix of sedatives and over-the-counter drugs that a PhD and former pharmacy worker like him would know are fatal.

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Soon after, his wife finds him on the bathroom floor, breathing, but unconscious. He's rushed to the hospital, where, for a while, he drifts in and out of consciousness. A nurse asks Bruce if he was trying to kill himself. The 62-year-old scientist doesn't move. Then, without a word, he nods. The next morning, it all comes to an end.

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From Agent Decker's perspective as an investigator, Ivins' death isn't just about the loss of a suspect's life. It's about the loss of an entire process of justice.

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What Maureen doesn't know is that the FBI agrees with her. They have the same theory, and they have for a while. They've just been waiting for the right evidence that will point to the exact scientist who turned his expertise against his own country.

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After all the dead ends, false leads, PR screw-ups, not to mention over 5,000 grand jury subpoenas, 10,000 witness interviews, and 600,000 hours on investigators' time, Decker and the FBI finally felt like they had their man. They were getting ready for a trial. And now, Bruce Ivan's death throws it all into question.

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Once the news of Ivan's death gets out, the FBI is put under tremendous pressure to prove, now posthumously, that Ivan's really had been behind the anthrax attacks.

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Nine days after Ivins died, the Department of Justice holds a press conference in which they unveil the details of their case against him.

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The FBI wants conclusions, but everyone else has questions. Here's Senator Chuck Grassley grilling FBI Director Robert Mueller.

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Congressman Rush Holt, whose district covers Princeton, New Jersey, doesn't buy it.

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And what they can't tell her or the public yet is that after years of investigating, they now have a clue that puts their number one suspect firmly in their crosshairs. They might finally get their guy. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 8, This Is What I Do.

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Most of that is right, except for the fact that Ivins had admitted to decontaminating Ames Force outside of his lab when investigators found evidence of that cleanup. But what many people really want is the story. What was Ivins' motive? Why would he do this? Mueller and the FBI released their internal findings publicly, revealing for the first time their theory of what set Ivins in motion.

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In September of 2001, the new anthrax vaccine Ivins was creating was facing a giant potential bureaucratic slowdown. In an email, Ivan said the slowdown would be a terrible thing that will postpone all sorts of things. More alarming to him, it seems, was the fact that the vaccine he'd helped create was beginning to fall out of favor.

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It was under fire for its use in the 1990s Gulf War, after some vaccinated soldiers had become ill.

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The FDA had enforced new standards the vaccine had to meet, which was taking significant time. Decker thinks it made Ivins fear for his own future.

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Just before 9-11, Ivins emailed a colleague outside USAMRID, revealing that the government's stockpile of anthrax vaccines was now down to its very last lot, so soldiers wouldn't be able to be vaccinated in the field anymore. And critically, Bruce Ivins would himself soon not be allowed to enter the hot suite to do his anthrax research because his own vaccinations wouldn't be up to date.

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So management had proposed a solution.

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Ivins got upset, telling his manager, I am an anthrax researcher. This is what I do. Consider what this moment would be like for the man who'd walked the streets of his hometown, proud of the person he'd become, a researcher at the top of his field.

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After everything the FBI had learned about Bruce, his paranoia, his instability, not to mention his obsessive commitment to even minor vendettas, it's not hard to imagine the lengths he might go to to keep the entirety of his work afloat.

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If Ivan's motivation behind the anthrax attacks was to make anthrax seem more necessary in order to keep working in the field he loved, it worked, probably better than anyone could have imagined. Within a few months of the anthrax attacks, the FDA fast-tracked the approval of his vaccine funding, even though it hadn't yet met the FDA's new standards.

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His research became so important that 18 months after the first attack, the government awarded him the decoration for exceptional civilian service, equivalent to the Distinguished Service Medal if he was a soldier. All of that wasn't enough for the FBI to convince the government of his guilt. In September 2008, Robert Mueller gets called before a Senate Judiciary Committee.

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He tells Congress that to make sure that the science that pointed to Ivins was trustworthy, the FBI would seek an independent review of the case by the National Academy of Sciences. This process puts Agent Scott Decker in a weird spot. He finds that he's suddenly in an adversarial relationship with the scientists he knew, who are now scrutinizing every detail of his work.

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And from the very first meeting, the energy felt off to Decker. I felt betrayed.

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The Academy covers a lot of ground, and one part of the FBI's investigation becomes a sticking point. How conclusive was the genetic fingerprinting around RMR 1029? How certain was Tiger that they'd traced the right anthrax variation back to Ivins?

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Once they'd found that door, Ivins became the sole suspect, in large part because RMR 1029 had narrowed down who had access to that anthrax. Eight matches.

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A couple years before Maureen gave that interview, an FBI colleague of Agent Scott Deckers paid an unannounced visit to a particular lab at USAMRIT, one that was run by anthrax vaccine whiz Dr. Bruce Ivins.

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But now the Academy's investigative committee brings up what seems like a bombshell. All eight, with the exception of one, came from Bruce Ivins' lab. with the exception of one. It turns out USAMRID isn't the only lab with access to RMR 1029. The eighth one came from a different laboratory, a contract laboratory in Ohio that had government contracts.

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Of the eight samples that match, they know Bruce is personally responsible for seven. So what about number eight? Couldn't that prove Ivins isn't the only one who could have made RMR 1029?

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Still, even if Ivins made the anthrax, someone else with access to it in Ohio could have mailed the letters. which Decker says the FBI had already thought of.

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In the end, the National Academy of Sciences spent two years investigating Decker and the FBI's work. They found areas for improvement but didn't come to any concrete conclusions. In fact, that's the one thing they were confident about, which they repeated over and over again in their report, that, quote, it is difficult to draw conclusions.

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The committee's report also says they didn't review any classified material and that they aren't qualified to analyze the criminal evidence. They were reviewing the science, not the strength of the case overall. For agent Scott Decker, that makes all the difference.

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Decker says he learned to marry those two sides of himself, the scientist and the detective. He'd gone from being a tried-and-true lab rat to stopping bank robbers on the streets to hunting the most famous bioterrorists in U.S. history. So putting the criminal evidence and the scientific evidence together on this case, he has no doubts about Bruce Ivins.

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Agent Decker spent several years processing the case, writing a fact-filled book on that preponderance of evidence. But even after the book, and that almost decade-long investigation, and now having retired from the FBI, there's a part of the case that he still can't shake.

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There's something else the public got cheated out of, a decisive ending to the story. And that seems to have led us to losing track of the story altogether. In thinking about why that happened, I thought of something I learned from the U.S. Postal Service in the process of making this podcast. Have you seen those little barcodes on your mail?

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If you look, you'll see there's a long series of variously sized vertical lines on the front of your letters and packages, usually right above or below the address. That's what the US Postal Service calls intelligent mail. It's a unique identifier for each parcel that shows who mailed it, where it was mailed, and exactly how it got there. That entire system was born out of the anthrax attacks.

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Postal officials say it would help find a mailer a lot faster than it took back then. Those little lines were a big deal when they were invented. But today, we hardly even notice them. Which to me, feels like a kind of metaphor for this whole case. The anthrax attacks changed forever the lives of five victims and their families.

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Robert Stevens, Joseph Christine Jr., Thomas Morris Jr., Kathy Nguyen, and Audalee Lundgren. Their loved ones, like Joan Jackson and Maureen Stevens, are still reeling.

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But for the rest of us, despite the months of national panic these attacks caused, leading the nightly news, even shutting down Capitol Hill, it's like the story just disappeared.

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Joby Warwick is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who tracked the story for more than two decades. He thinks part of the reason we've forgotten about the attacks is that so many of us bought into the wrong story to begin with.

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As the truth moved away from those preconceived notions, the story got murky, even for the press. And then it just faded away. Because of that, even all these years later, I don't think we fully understand the implications of what did happen. Because the ripple effects of those attacks and this investigation were felt widely.

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Remember, way back in 2001, the government had asked all the labs in the country with the AIM strain to send samples of each batch of that strain in their inventory. And Bruce Ivins had sent some, but not all, of the samples in his lab. On top of that, it even looked like he may have intentionally sent in the wrong sample in one case. He explains it all as an oversight, but... He had the subpoena.

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From law enforcement telling themselves the wrong story about their suspects.

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To leaders misreading danger signs.

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To the nation, kick-starting a war for the wrong reasons.

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But in the midst of all the tragedy, there are some positive ripple effects, too. You just have to look closely for them. In the wake of the anthrax attacks, the US Postal Service installed biohazard detection systems in every mail processing facility in America. Local hospitals developed their first emergency operation plans for biological disasters.

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State labs got funding to test for anthrax and other toxic agents so they didn't have to wait for federal agencies. And the Department of Defense instigated a dual-entry rule in its most lethal contamination labs. Now, at least two people have to be together at all times, and they're monitored by cameras.

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The anthrax killings have transformed so many different aspects of our lives, from the huge geopolitical to the tiny procedural. But just like those barcodes on our mail, they go unnoticed today. Unnoticed, but still reverberating. It's like something Joe Christine Jr. 's sister Joan Jackson pointed out.

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Someone told themselves a story and acted on it. Not just the anthrax killer, but the FBI, the CDC, the President of the United States, and so many others. And every action creates a ripple that creates an aftermath that makes a real difference in people's lives. Whether we remember the story or not.

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Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio and Dig Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Dig Studios.

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Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio, and Janiel Kastner at Spoke Media. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf. Story editing by Janiel Kastner. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnett. Original composition by John O'Hara. Production by Spoke Media. Research and fact-checking by Haley Nelson.

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Podcast art designed by No Ideas. Voice direction by Athena Karkanis. Additional reporting, Aaron Schrank and Sarah Schleid. Research and additional story support, Ben Cunningham, Astrid Landon, Zach Kligler, Leigh Hamgartner, and Mohamed Farouk. The executive team at Spoke Media includes Aaliyah Tabakolian and Travis Ballinger. Our senior cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox.

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Our video producers are Evan Igard, Tamina Aziz, and John Lee. Senior digital producer, Emily Connell. Cross-promo associate producer, Kelsey Cueva. Data analyst, Ashley McDonough. Transcriber, Natalia Ferguson. The executive team at CBC includes Cecil Fernandes and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager at CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

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He knew what he was supposed to do. The FBI puts Bruce Ivins under surveillance. They also start combing through everything they can find about Ivins' actions around the time of the anthrax attacks, both at home and at work. And that's how they discover something surprising. There's a special room deep inside USAMRID. It's called B313. It's a hot suite, a lab specifically designed for containment.

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And a special thanks to Trey Jones, Caroline Hamilton, Jenna Burnett, Carson McCain, The Opperman Report podcast, Ben Steiner, Tamar Wolf, Dr. Rita Colwell, Dr. Dan Hanfling, John Hefner, author Susan Jones, former assistant U.S. attorney Rachel Carlson Lieber, attorney Rosemary McDermott, U.S.

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Postal Inspector Kai Pickens, foreign policy aide Tim Reiser, and extra special thanks to the author David Willman. And you for listening. Thank you.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Heads up for our listeners. This episode contains mentions of death by suicide and alcohol and drug abuse.

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In this case, the thing that's being contained is anthrax. Access to this room is strictly monitored. You can only enter with your own personalized keycard. And access logs show Bruce Ivan's keycard had some unusual activity in B313.

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August 2001. In that month before the first anthrax letter, Bruce Ivan's after-hours time in the lab jumps 10 times compared to earlier in the year, with noticeable spikes around the dates the anthrax letters were mailed.

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Working late and alone, without any of the detailed notes he usually took.

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The hot sweet hours are very suspicious, but they're certainly not a smoking gun. The missing anthrax samples, late nights at the lab, this is circumstantial evidence. A case against Ivins would need something incontrovertible, some way to show that the anthrax found in those letters mailed across the country was unquestionably the same anthrax as the one being stored in his freezer.

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And on top of that, they would need to prove that Ivins was the one who put it there. It's a daunting task.

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Remember Tiger? Some of their scientists had, in fact, made revolutionary progress in the field of biosciences by helping to crack the human genome. And for the past four years, they've been working quietly in the background of the anthrax case, trying to identify the DNA of anthrax. In March of 2005, they gave the FBI a call. They finally cracked it.

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They now know what's genetically distinct about the batch of anthrax used in the letters, which means they can finally start to compare it to those thousands of samples they'd subpoenaed years ago from labs across the country. The agents are meticulous. It takes months. Until eventually, when they test a batch from Usamerid.

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That place is a large glass flask labeled RMR 1029, and it's located in Anthrax Hot Suite, room B313, with one person in charge of it. It was under the care and custodianship of Bruce Ivins. Bruce Ivins made the batch that was sent in the Anthrax letters, and it remains under his control. This is like a giant neon arrow pointing directly at Ivins. But there's a hitch.

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So they do background checks, review access logs, interview these scientists and their colleagues. We went to that extent to rule out all the employees. And they find that none of Bruce's colleagues or employees are suspicious. They've all got alibis for the times the letters were mailed. So the real question now is, does Bruce Ivins?

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This is Maureen speaking to the Palm Beach Post in the fall of 2007. By this time, she is so desperate for answers about who killed her husband that she feels her only recourse is to turn to the media to raise awareness. Robert Stevens had been the first victim in 2001, the photo editor who died in Florida.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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It was time to approach Bruce and tell him what we knew and see what he was able to tell us. At first, FBI agents keep their conversations with Ivins kind of casual, not accusing him of anything, but they've got some questions, including several new things they've turned up.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Like an incident report from USAMRID that says that back in 2001, Ivins had voluntarily decided without authorization to swab for stray anthrax spores all around his lab and shared office. And he'd actually found Ames spores, but only in the area he worked in, and then decontaminated everything without telling his supervisors. What was that about?

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Or what about those late nights in the hot suite before the anthrax attacks? How did he account for those? And why had those late nights completely stopped after the last anthrax attack?

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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For the first time in years, it feels like the FBI finally has clues. Plural. But after all the false leads and many mistakes, they're not going to risk blowing it. So they test and retest the genetic samples in different ways for months. And every time, it matches back to the same single source. Agents get a search warrant for Ivan's lab.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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They go by night without him knowing in the fall of 2006, looking for stray anthrax, lab logs, federal evil envelopes, notes about New York City or D.C. or senators. And they turn up nothing.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Decker's team turns Bruce Ivan's computer and emails over to Greg Sathoff, a forensic psychiatrist and consultant for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Greg learns that back in 2000, Ivins was experiencing significant stress in his home and work life, enough that he sought professional help from a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with depression and paranoid personality disorder and was prescribed medication. Greg also reads emails from that time in which Ivins describes how he's seeing the world.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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In one, he writes, it's like I'm not only sitting at my desk doing work, I'm also a few feet away watching me do it. In another, he writes, what is really scary is the paranoia. I get these paranoid episodes. Of course, I regret them thoroughly when they're over, but when I'm going through them, it's as if I'm a passenger on a ride.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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And by this point, his story and the story of anthrax in general had long faded from the headlines. It seemed no one was talking about it anymore. But as Maureen said in her interview, she was still thinking about it. And she was going to make sure the public remembered, even if she had to do it herself.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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It's clear to the FBI that, at the very least, Bruce Ivins has a troubled relationship to himself, his work, and his reality. They need to learn more about who this scientist really is and where his story started. So they head to his hometown, Lebanon, Ohio.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Ellen Hefner grew up in Lebanon and knew Bruce from childhood.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Bruce may have gotten his knack for lab work from his dad, who was a pharmacist. Thirty miles northeast of Cincinnati, his father's pharmacy in Lebanon had been a town staple since Bruce's grandfather opened it in the 19th century. Ellen worked there for five years as a teenager.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Ellen didn't see Ivins as just a science geek. He also played the piano and enjoyed photography. He was a quiet guy, but nice.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Ellen says that while Bruce's dad was a chatty, somewhat bumbling pharmacist, his mother, Mary Ivins, was a different story.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Reportedly, she hit her husband in the head with a skillet and may have stabbed his hand with a fork. And Ellen says she had an intense relationship with Bruce.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Ellen didn't see what went on behind closed doors, but she got a small glimpse of Mrs. Ivan's relationship to Bruce when he asked her to be his date to the prom. She recalls that his mother was so strict that the couple was required to come back home before their other classmates had even arrived.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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Ellen says she never heard Bruce say anything negative about his mom. He was a good son, despite it all.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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The pressure his mom put on Bruce seemed to have paid off when he got a PhD in microbiology and went to work in D.C. at the Army's lab. Ellen ran into him once while he was back home in Ohio visiting.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 8: This is What I Do

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A dutiful son, an accomplished microbiologist, a man fulfilling everyone's expectations by working at the top of his field. So what happens when that man becomes a suspect in the worst biological attack in U.S. history?

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 1: Isolated Incident

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All this coming just a day after the FBI warned Americans that another terrorist attack could be imminent.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 1: Isolated Incident

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The deadly bacteria have now turned up in the American capital.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 1: Isolated Incident

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House of Representatives is closing offices today until— What is perhaps worrying Americans the most is that they still have no idea who is behind these attacks.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Episode 1: Isolated Incident

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Thousands are dead and injured. The skyline of New York and the psyche of the American population has been forever changed.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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This is a CBC Podcast. In the fall of 2001, while Americans were still grappling with the horror of September 11th, another terror was quietly brewing.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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So who was responsible for the anthrax attacks? What really happened during one of the FBI's most intense and controversial investigations? And why do so many questions remain, even now?

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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From Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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Envelopes filled with white powder started showing up at media outlets and government buildings. It turns out that there's another letter.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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These letters dominated the news cycle. They created panic, ruined lives, and helped start a war. It was the deadliest bioterror attack in U.S. history. But what's strange is if you ask people now what happened with the anthrax case, almost no one knows. It's like the whole story just disappeared. Who mailed those letters? Do you know?

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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In Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer, we go inside one of the largest investigations in FBI history with the agents, scientists, and experts who were there racing to find the killer.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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We'll follow insiders through the twists and turns of this truly wild investigation.

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer

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And we'll explore the people this case left its mark on. It'll haunt me for the rest of my life. And its impact on our lives today.

All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues

Gluttony: It's Not Just About the Donuts

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Here's another show you can enjoy in the True Story FM family of entertainment podcasts. Hey, Pete, ever wonder what Steven Spielberg's favorite film is? You know, Andy, I've heard he loves classics like Lawrence of Arabia, Meet Me in St. Louis. Imagine chatting with him about why those films resonate with him so much. That's exactly what we do on our podcast, Movies We Like.

All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues

Gluttony: It's Not Just About the Donuts

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All the Feelings presents Sins and Virtues. This episode... Gluttony.

All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues

Gluttony: It's Not Just About the Donuts

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Yes.

All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues

Gluttony: It's Not Just About the Donuts

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They share their favorite films and the impact they've had on their careers, offering fascinating insights into the craftsmanship and storytelling techniques that make these movies so special.

All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues

Gluttony: It's Not Just About the Donuts

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Join us on Movies We Like as we explore the movies we all like with the people who make them. And Stephen, our people will call your people. Let's make this happen, puppy. Subscribe today.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?

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Open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wes. Nice.

American History Tellers

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Picture this. You're transported back in time, witnessing history unfold right before your eyes, without any modern-day interruptions. That's the magic of Wondery Plus. Immerse yourself in the stories that shaped our nation with ad-free episodes, early access to new seasons, and exclusive bonus content.

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You swallow hard. Lizelle looks at you with suspicion and disdain. You've seen that look a thousand times since you've arrived at West Point. It's clear he doesn't believe you. Lizelle pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and holds it up.

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In the fall of 1880, the death of the Apache leader Victorio helped restore peace to West Texas and New Mexico. But a group of Victorio's followers had escaped capture, and they were determined to avenge their leader's death. Among them was an aging warrior known as Nana. He was 75 years old and walked with a limp, but he had a reputation as a fearsome fighter.

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And after Victorio's death, Nana took refuge in Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains with 15 men. They spent months collecting guns and ammunition to plot their campaign of revenge, and in July 1881, they crossed the border into the United States and began raiding farms, ranches, and army supply trains in the New Mexico Territory.

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Nana recruited more men along the way until his force numbered 40 warriors. Their campaign quickly became a problem for the Army and the Buffalo soldiers stationed in the region. General John Pope later complained, They rushed through the country from one mountain range to another like a pack of hungry wolves, killing everybody they met and stealing all the horses they could get their hands on.

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That summer, Company I of the 9th Cavalry was stationed in Fort Craig, a lonely outpost on a main road between Mexico and New Mexico. Among the men there was a seasoned 1st Sergeant named Moses Williams. When Williams first enlisted in the Army in 1866, he could only sign his papers with an axe.

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But after learning to read and write in the Army, he was able to sign his name when he re-enlisted five years later. By 1881, he had spent 11 years with the 9th Cavalry and had far more experience than his white commanding officer, Lieutenant George Burnett, who was just one year out of West Point.

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And it was on August 16, 1881, while Company I was on patrol near Cuchillo, New Mexico, when a panicked Mexican man ran into their camp. He announced that Nana had murdered his family at a nearby ranch. Burnett, Williams, and 14 other soldiers hurried out and, when they arrived, discovered the mutilated bodies of a woman and three children.

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The soldiers set off in pursuit and caught up with Nana and his band in the foothills of New Mexico's Cuchillo Negro Mountains. Bullets started flying from the rocks and crevices where the warriors had taken cover. Moses Williams led repeated flanking attacks, rallying his fellow troopers to regroup and keep fighting, and in so doing, forced the Apache to retreat deeper into the foothills.

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But still, the U.S. Army soldiers struggled to dislodge Nana's men completely. Then, hours into the battle, 9th Cavalry reinforcements arrived at the scene. Their commander ordered the soldiers to fall back to a stronger position. Burnett, Williams, and another Buffalo soldier, Private Augustus Wally, held the Apache at bay while the remainder withdrew to a ridgeline behind them.

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But then a voice cried out for help, and Burnett realized that three of his soldiers had been left behind at the front. They'd been pinned down behind prairie dog mounds 200 yards away and couldn't flee without exposing themselves to enemy fire. Burnett, Williams, and Wally jumped to the rescue, braving a storm of bullets to reach the stranded men and carry them to safety.

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Meanwhile, as night fell, Nana and his men disappeared into the hills. Burnett, Williams, and Wally would eventually receive the Medal of Honor for risking their lives to rescue their comrades. Burnett praised Williams for his coolness, bravery, and unflinching devotion to duty that day. But their work wasn't done, and the 9th Cavalry kept up pursuit.

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By that fall, they drove Nana and his followers back across the Mexican border, and the task of subduing the final remnants of Apache resistance fell to other regiments, including Colonel Benjamin Grierson's 10th Cavalry. The soldiers of the 10th Cavalry took up the pursuit of Geronimo, a medicine man and the last major Apache war leader.

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When Geronimo was a young man, Mexican soldiers massacred his wife, mother, and three young children. This experience instilled in him a deep-seated hatred for anyone who threatened his people's freedom. And he found a new enemy as the United States extended its reach into the Southwest. In 1874, the U.S.

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government forcibly removed 4,000 members of Geronimo's tribe to the San Carlos Reservations in eastern Arizona. Soldiers dubbed the barren landscape Hell's Forty Acres because summer temperatures hovered between 100 and 120 degrees with no shade and little water or game. These conditions made it impossible for the Apache to hunt or grow their own food, and U.S. government rations fell short.

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In 1877, the U.S. Army captured Geronimo and relocated him to San Carlos, but he refused to give up on his dream of securing his people's freedom. In the fall of 1881, he broke out of San Carlos with 75 followers. They spent the next several years raiding the Southwest and sometimes killing civilians, all while evading Mexican and American forces, including the 10th Cavalry.

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His stamina became legendary. One white veteran remembered, Geronimo could march 70 miles during a night, fight all day, and appear no more weary than an ordinary man after an ordinary day's labor. In 1884, Geronimo agreed to return to the reservation, but he didn't stay long. Only a year later, in May 1885, he fled San Carlos again, this time with 130 followers.

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To win sympathy? You shake your head, fighting to control your rising frustration.

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The army put thousands of soldiers into the field to hunt them down, and the men of the 10th Cavalry spent months in the saddle guarding watering holes and mountain passes with no success and having to endure extreme hardship. One trooper recalled, "...in the fall of 1885, we encountered a very severe snowstorm. We got lost in the mountains for four days and we could not get out."

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This same soldier claimed later to have developed symptoms of scurvy, including the loss of teeth and a bladder disorder that affected him for the rest of his life. A blacksmith that served with the regiment would also later recall, "...that is where I lost my health in the line of duty, trying to protect my country." Eventually, one quarter of the entire standing U.S.

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Army was deployed to track Geronimo and his tiny band. At last, in August 1886, Geronimo finally surrendered in exchange for the promise that he and his people would be allowed to return to Arizona after a period of exile in Florida.

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The vast majority of Apache had remained on the San Carlos reservation during Geronimo's resistance, but army officials decided to punish the peaceful Indians along with Geronimo's followers. They too would suffer the pain of exile to a strange and distant land. Imagine it's August 1886, and the afternoon sun is beating down on the dry, cracked earth of the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona.

American History Tellers

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You're a soldier in the 10th Cavalry, and you and your fellow troopers are rounding up dozens of Apache families for relocation. You approach an older Apache man who sits in the shadow of the commissary, watching his grandson play nearby.

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The man looks up, his gaze defiant.

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You shift your stance, feeling uncomfortable.

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His stare is too much to endure, so you glance away just as your commander rides up on his horse. You snap to attention and salute.

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The commander turns his horse around and rides off in the direction of another family. You return your gaze to the old man.

American History Tellers

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Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts and experience American history like never before. A listener note. This episode contains graphic descriptions of racial violence and may not be suitable for everyone. Imagine it's April 6th, 1880, and you're a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. You're sitting up in a bed at the infirmary.

American History Tellers

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You have no choice but to obey. So you push yourself out of bed, wincing as you straighten up to salute Lizelle. You begin to stagger out of the infirmary, cold knot forming in your stomach. You've endured years of harassment and isolation, and you've never felt so alone. Still, you refuse to give up.

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his drawn, hollow-eyed expression makes you wonder if he even heard you. But at last, he rises. The boy clings to his grandfather's pant leg as they walk toward the line of Apache families being ushered into wagons. You tell yourself it's just another order, that you're doing your duty. But the weight of your uniform suddenly feels unbearable.

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After Geronimo's surrender, half of the companies of the 10th Cavalry were tasked with arresting and transporting 400 Apache men, women, and children to Holbrook, Arizona, where they would board a train bound for Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. It was a place they considered even worse than San Carlos, far from their cherished homeland.

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Later that fall, the 10th Cavalry captured the last hostile Apache chief on the Arizona frontier. This surrender marked the end of Apache resistance in the West. Several black soldiers received official commendations for their performance against the Apache. By then, more than a dozen Buffalo soldiers had carried out acts of bravery that would earn them medals of honor.

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It was a record of service that made Grierson proud when he finally gave up his command of the 10th Cavalry in 1888. He recalled the regiment's splendid record of nearly 22 years' service to the government, in the field and at the most isolated posts on the frontier, always in the vanguard of civilization and in contact with the most warlike and savage Indians of the Plains.

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Despite the outstanding service of Buffalo soldiers on the frontier, Black cadets at West Point still faced severe opposition. In 1889, Charles Young, the son of a Civil War veteran, became the third Black man to graduate from West Point, following Henry Ossian Flipper and another cadet named John Hanks Alexander.

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Twelve black men had been admitted to the military academy since 1870, but violent harassment and discrimination had caused nine of those twelve to leave before they graduated. And the advent of Jim Crow segregation ensured that Young would be West Point's last black graduate for nearly half a century.

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Soon, Buffalo Soldiers would take part in the final chapter of the Indian Wars and the federal government's long and bloody quest to displace and subjugate Native people. But despite their service and sacrifice, their own opportunities for advancement and equality began to disappear.

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By 1890, the United States had seized millions of acres from the Lakota Sioux, driven them from their homelands, and confined them to half a dozen reservations in the Dakotas. The Lakota chafed under the restrictions of reservation life. White settlers and sport hunters had annihilated the buffalo they depended on.

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The once free-roaming people were forced to farm plains stricken by drought, leaving them no choice but to rely on government-issued rations for survival. But in 1889, Congress slashed the Lakota rations budget. Severe winter weather pushed families to the brink of starvation. In this harsh environment, many Lakota became drawn to a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance.

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It promised a future utopia in which Indians would be free from white oppression and a trance-inducing ritual that would allow Indians to glimpse this new world. The Ghost Dance swept through Sioux reservations in 1890. It was a peaceful movement, but the sight of large numbers of dancing Indians alarmed white settlers.

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In November 1890, the new agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota dashed off a panic letter to Washington demanding that the Army restore order. In November 1890, five companies from the 9th Cavalry and eight white units arrived at Pine Ridge and the neighboring Rosebud Reservation.

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Their presence frightened the Lakota and prompted hundreds of families to withdraw to a remote corner of Pine Ridge. Tensions worsened after the Lakota learned that the influential leader Sitting Bull had been killed by U.S. agents during a botched arrest attempt. Some fled Pine Ridge. The 9th Cavalry was ordered to track down the Indians who had escaped.

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On December 29th, the soldiers of the 9th were still in pursuit when, 20 miles away from Pine Ridge at Wounded Knee Creek, the 7th Cavalry committed one of the most notorious massacres of Native Americans in U.S. history. The soldiers surrounded a Lakota camp and opened fire, killing as many as 300 Lakota. Most of the dead were unarmed, and many were women and children.

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The day after this slaughter, furious Lakota warriors trapped the 7th Cavalry in a canyon and fired on them. Major Guy Henry and the soldiers at the 9th mounted their horses and hurried to the rescue. They charged and scattered the attackers, saving the white soldiers' lives. The clash that day was the final battle between Buffalo soldiers and Native Americans.

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In the weeks that followed, the remaining Lakota returned to Pine Ridge and surrendered. Wounded Knee marked the end of Indian resistance to the U.S. Army. After decades of bloodshed, the Indian wars were over. The White regiments quickly returned to their regular posts, but four companies of the 9th Cavalry spent a frigid winter at Pine Ridge on guard duty.

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One private composed a poem calling out the injustice of their extended service in South Dakota, writing, We were the first to come. We'll be the last to leave. Why are we compelled to stay? Why this reward receive? In war barracks, our recent comrades take their ease while we poor devils and the Sioux are left to freeze.

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Finally, in March 1891, the troopers filed out of the reservation for the last time. But there was good news awaiting them. Major Henry was so impressed with the courage and effectiveness of the 9th Cavalry that he fought for the regiment to be rewarded with an assignment to the prestigious Fort Myer, located just outside Washington, D.C., in Virginia.

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His efforts paid off when the 9th Cavalry's K Troop was stationed at Fort Myer in May 1891. The soldiers took pride in performing ceremonial burials at Arlington Cemetery and serving in the Presidential Parade Unit. The assignment of Buffalo soldiers to Fort Myer prompted the Army and Navy Journal to declare the death of prejudice against blacks in the Army.

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Despite the Journal's optimism, black and white soldiers would be kept segregated in the military for another 50 years, and in broader society, racial segregation would worsen in the late 19th century. In the 1890s, Southern states enacted ruthless Jim Crow laws to legalize discrimination and disenfranchise Black Americans.

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The 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson established the doctrine of separate but equal and gave Jim Crow the backing of the highest court in the land. Still, Black men continued to serve in the Army after the Indian Wars. Buffalo soldiers were among the first National Parks Rangers.

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When America intervened in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain, the 9th and 10th Cavalries joined Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders in the famous charge up San Juan Hill. When the United States invaded the Philippines, West Point graduate Charles Young was named captain of a 9th Cavalry troop.

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Despite their accomplishments, many veterans in the Indian Wars discovered that their struggles were not yet over. After leaving the Army, they would continue to fight for support and recognition. Imagine it's September 1904 in Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

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You are a veteran of the 9th Cavalry, and for hours you've been seated in the waiting area of the Fort Hospital, avoiding the gaze of white soldiers and veterans who eye you suspiciously. You've come here today to see a doctor about your kidney condition. The nurse at the front desk tried to turn you away, but you refused to leave until you received care.

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The nurse walks back into the waiting area, accompanied by a doctor wearing a crisp white coat. He looks like he's just out of medical school.

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You stand and step toward him, trying to ignore the pain in your stiff knees. But he holds out his hand to stop you.

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The doctor folds his arms and frowns.

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The doctor's gaze flicks to the white veterans in the seats beside you.

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He turns to help an older white veteran, and you lower yourself back into the hard chair, feeling the stares of everyone in the room. You're forced to reckon with the bitter truth that you've been forgotten by the very nation you served. In 1904, a veteran Buffalo soldier named George Jordan sought treatment for kidney disease at the Army Hospital in Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

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Jordan had enlisted on Christmas Day, 1866. In the years that followed, he won promotions to corporal and sergeant and received a Medal of Honor for his bravery during the Victorio campaign. Despite his service, the doctor at Fort Robinson turned him away. He died soon after at the age of 57. He had just $11 to his name.

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The fort's black chaplain wrote that Jordan had died for the want of proper attention. Even the most distinguished Buffalo soldiers found they had little to show for their sacrifices. The Army provided retired soldiers with transportation home, the possibility of a bed in the old soldier's home in Washington, and in some cases, a small pension.

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But it was far short of what most veterans needed in order to survive. Reuven Walder was a 10th Cavalry veteran who'd taken part in the famous rescue of George Forsythe's White Scouts in 1868.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2328.431

Years later, he reflected, "...we were regular soldiers, and we had to make the West safe for the soldiers of the Civil War to get homesteads in and $72 per month pensions, while we poor regulars got nothing." Many of these veterans returned home to the South where they faced racial violence, Jim Crow segregation, and limited economic opportunities. Even so, Black men continued to enlist.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2352.191

Black soldiers served courageously in segregated regiments in World War I and World War II. It was not until 1948 that President Harry Truman finally desegregated the Army. Some of the Black regiments in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War wore buffalo insignia on their shoulder patches, calling back to the generation that paved the way for their service.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2373.88

For 25 years after the Civil War, thousands of Black men faithfully carried out the nation's agenda of supporting westward expansion. In extreme conditions, they protected shelters, built roads, and laid telegraph lines. Complicating their legacy, they helped subjugate Native people and remove them from their homelands.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2391.98

For many Black soldiers, service in the segregated military was one of the only available avenues for honor, dignity, and opportunity. But in the end, they found little reward for their dedicated service and sacrifice on behalf of their country. From Wondery, this is episode three of our three-part series, Buffalo Soldiers, from American History Tellers.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2415.183

On the next episode, I speak with Lieutenant Colonel Rory McGovern, an associate professor in the Department of History at West Point, and the co-editor of Race, Politics, and Reconstruction, the first Black cadets at Old West Point. If you like American history tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2440.315

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Audio editing by Christian Paraga. Sound design by Molly Bond. Music by Lindsey Graham. Voice acting by Ace Anderson.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

245.819

In the spring of 1880, West Point authorities accused a Black cadet of staging a brutal attack on himself to win sympathy. Once again, a Black cadet faced widespread hostility and distrust while battling to be accepted at the nation's leading officer training school.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

2463.806

This episode is written by Ellie Stanton. Edited by Dorian Marina. Produced by Alita Rozanski. Managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Senior managing producer, Callum Clues. Senior producer, Andy Herman. And executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marsha Louis, and Erin O'Flaherty for Wondery.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

262.293

And meanwhile, in West Texas, West Point's first Black graduate faced difficulties of his own, when a careless mistake led to a court-martial for embezzlement, while the rest of the Buffalo soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalries grappled with systemic racism while enduring relentless warfare on unforgiving desert terrain.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

280.305

They fought against skilled Apache warriors determined to resist displacement from their ancestral lands, and they stood guard during the final campaign of the Indian Wars— But when their service was no longer needed, they found themselves cast aside by their country. This is Episode 3, The Last to Leave.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

301.776

On the morning of April 6, 1880, a black West Point cadet named Johnson Chestnut Whitaker failed to appear at morning roll call. He was found unconscious in his room. His arms and legs were tied to his bed. His ears had been slashed with a razor and his hair had been shorn in several places. He was covered in blood that also splattered the floor and the door to the room.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

325.56

Whittaker was born enslaved in Camden, South Carolina. After the Civil War, his mother sent him to a school set up by Northern missionaries. And after attending the University of South Carolina, he won a congressional appointment to West Point and passed his entrance exams in 1876.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

342.013

During his first year at the military academy, he roomed with Henry Ossian Flipper, who became the first Black cadet to graduate from West Point the following year in 1877. West Point was home to the U.S. Military Academy, the training ground for America's future military leaders.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

358.843

Nestled along the banks of the Hudson River in West Point, New York, it served as the gateway to becoming a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army. It was founded in 1802, but it did not accept Black cadets until 1870. And the handful of Black men who first attended West Point faced the same high standards and rigorous training as their white classmates—

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

379.019

Upon graduation, they would lead troops as commissioned officers, putting their lives on the line to serve their country. But the environment they encountered at West Point was charged with hatred.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

389.728

Like the two black cadets who had preceded him, Whitaker faced hostility and abuse from his white classmates, culminating in the violent attack Whitaker experienced in April 1880, just weeks before he was set to graduate. The cadet who found Whitaker unconscious in his dorm room ran for help and summoned a doctor to examine him.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

408.539

After noticing a flicker in Whitaker's eyelids, the doctor decided Whitaker was exaggerating or faking his injuries. Lieutenant Colonel Henry M. Lazell, the commandant of cadets at the academy, arrived on the scene and commanded Whitaker to get up and be a man. Whitaker rose and limped to the wash basin, and then began to recount what happened.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

428.452

He said that in the middle of the night, three men wearing cadet gray seized him by the throat and choked him until he almost suffocated. Then he reported that he was struck on the left temple and on the nose with something horrid. The attackers overpowered him and threw him to the floor.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

444.081

And there, one of them slashed his earlobes, declaring that they wanted to mark him like they do hogs down south. Finally, the attackers tied him to the bed and warned him to stay silent about what had happened. After interrogating Whitaker about the attack, Lizell sent him back to class.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

460.712

And despite Whitaker's detailed account of the attack and his serious injuries, West Point authorities quickly made up their minds that he had staged the incident. Lizell led the investigation and accused Whitaker of inflicting his own wounds, cutting his hair and binding himself.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

475.703

He even had Whitaker's soiled room and blood-stained clothes cleaned, destroying what could have been illuminating evidence. Then he offered Whitaker a choice. Withdraw from the Academy outright or face a court inquiry into the matter. Whitaker chose the court of inquiry, similar to a grand jury investigation, which convened on April 9th.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

494.813

The case dragged on for weeks, and Whitaker's ordeal became a national news story. West Point superintendent gave a series of interviews with major newspapers, casting doubt on Whitaker's account, and the press debated his guilt and offered competing theories on what had actually happened. In the meantime, the court of inquiry decided to bar Whitaker from attending the sessions.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

50.29

Last night, you were brutally attacked by three masked men in your dormitory. Your head is pounding, and you can feel bruises forming on your neck where you were choked. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lazell approaches your bed, and you brace for an interrogation. Good morning, sir.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

515.64

So his knowledge of the proceedings that would determine his fate was limited to what he read in newspapers or overheard in the halls. Yet despite the stress and isolation, Whitaker remained composed. Even the Army and Navy Journal, the military's main media organ, praised his nerve, coolness, self-possession, and defensive power that excited astonishment amongst all.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

537.04

Then, finally, at the end of May 1880, the Court of Inquiry issued a report concluding that Whitaker had staged the attack, and U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered that Whitaker be tried by court-martial. In June 1881, Whitaker was once again found guilty, and he was sentenced to expulsion from West Point and dishonorable discharge from the military.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

558.82

The case would later be overturned by President Chester Arthur, who cited procedural issues. But it made no difference. Citing an exam he had failed in the weeks after his attack, West Point finalized Whitaker's dismissal, and he would not graduate.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

574.071

Commenting on the case, newspapers like the Washington Post compared Whitaker's character to that of another black cadet, former roommate Henry Ossian Flipper. The Post wrote that many consider Whitaker ignorant and low in all his instincts. By contrast, the newspaper described Flipper as gentlemanly, intelligent, and brave.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

593.938

But within weeks, Flipper would find himself, pending his own court-martial, confined in a six-by-four-foot cell in Fort Davis, Texas. Flipper was a second lieutenant in the 10th Cavalry, and America's first black commissioned officer, a promising start in the Army.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

609.65

After fighting in Victorio's war, he won praise from both his commanding officer Nicholas Nolan and 10th Cavalry Commander Colonel Benjamin Grierson. In the fall of 1880, Flipper was transferred to Fort Davis in West Texas, where he served as quartermaster and commissary officer, responsible for managing the store's cash.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

628.122

During that time, he developed a close friendship with a white woman named Molly Dwyer, the sister-in-law of Nolan. The pair often went horseback riding together, But things took a turn in the spring of 1881, when Colonel William Shafter took command of Fort Davis.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

643.868

Shafter had a reputation as a harsh commander, and his former company, the All Black 24th Infantry, had leveled several harassment and misconduct charges against him.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

653.391

So that July, when Flipper discovered a large shortage in the commissary funds caused by his sloppy bookkeeping and willingness to extend credit, he feared Shafter's severe judgment and tried to cover up the mistakes by writing a personal check for $1,440 to replace the missing money.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

670.998

Flipper had recently published an autobiography about his time at West Point called The Colored Cadet, and he believed that royalties from the sales of this book had been deposited in a bank account in San Antonio and that there would be more than enough to cover the shortfall.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

685.328

Unbeknownst to Flipper, there were no funds in his name at the San Antonio bank, so without realizing it, Flipper had submitted a fraudulent check. His desperate attempt to cover up his mistake threatened to put his hard-won career in peril. Imagine it's August 13th, 1881, a sweltering day in Fort Davis, Texas.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

709.156

You take a seat across the desk from Colonel William Shafter, the commander of the fort. First Lieutenant Frank Edmonds stands in the corner observing. You believe you know why Shafter summoned you to his office, so you try to keep your expression as neutral as possible as Shafter puts down his pen and levels you with a stern gaze.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

759.807

Shafter scratches his mustache and leans back in his chair. It creaks under the weight of his stout figure.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

781.027

Your heart hammers in your chest so hard, your certain shafter can hear it. You try to keep your voice steady.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

806.708

Shafter sighs and locks eyes with the lieutenant standing by the door.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

812.33

The lieutenant nods and exits the office. As you turn back to Shafter, it feels like the room is spinning.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

826.825

You nod, but inside you're screaming. It seems unlikely that your superiors will believe that you didn't steal the money, but you have to fight the charges. You've worked too hard to get where you are to lose everything now. Flipper planned to replace the missing money with his own funds. But before he had the chance, Shafter discovered the discrepancy.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

850.205

He accused Flipper of stealing the money and had him arrested for embezzlement. Flipper's friends pooled money to replace the missing funds, but it changed nothing. Shafter convened a court-martial in Fort Davis' chapel in September 1881. During the proceedings, fellow soldiers and local white civilians testified to Flipper's good character.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

870.182

Colonel Grierson wrote a long letter praising Flipper and asking the court for leniency. He declared, Lieutenant Flipper's character and standing as an officer and gentleman have certainly been beyond reproach. Although he may have been careless and indiscreet and may have committed irregularities from want of experience, my confidence in his honesty of purpose has not been shaken.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

89.604

You almost laugh at the absurdity of the question.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

891.07

Then, when Flipper himself came before the judges, he acknowledged the shortfall, but insisted that he had no intention of defrauding the government. His defense attorney argued that the case was about something more than missing funds, telling the court, "...the question before you is whether it is possible for a colored man to secure and hold a position as an officer in the Army."

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

911.187

That question was answered in December 1881, when the court finally issued its verdict following months of testimony. Flipper was found innocent of embezzlement, but guilty of conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. He was promptly dismissed from the Army. Despite appeals, President Arthur upheld the sentence, and Flipper would spend the rest of his life contesting the charges.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

933.917

He believed that he was a man marked for retribution when Colonel Shafter and other white officers noticed his developing friendship with Molly Dwyer, Captain Nolan's white sister-in-law. So with the court-martials of Flipper and Whitaker, the U.S. Army was without a single black commissioned officer, and West Point was once again without a single black cadet.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

954.454

These two men's experience revealed how even the most determined struggled to escape the burdens of institutional racism within the Army. And those burdens persisted into the 1880s, as Buffalo soldiers continued supporting the government's agenda of westward expansion. It was a policy that would enact a devastating toll on Native American lives.

American History Tellers

Buffalo Soldiers | The Last to Leave | 3

973.953

And in the years to come, these Plains Indians who resisted the Army's advance were betrayed, expelled from their homes, and forced to suffer deadly violence.

American History Tellers

The Wright Brothers | Fliers or Liars | 2

1131.458

He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

American History Tellers

The Wright Brothers | Fliers or Liars | 2

1153.949

But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

American History Tellers

The Wright Brothers | Fliers or Liars | 2

1174.769

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.

American History Tellers

Listen Now: Scam Factory

0.458

You know, those suspicious text messages and scam calls that we all get. Well, behind them and the spam flooding your inbox lies a nightmare that's all too real. Scam Factory is a gripping new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposing a multi-billion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight.

American History Tellers

Listen Now: Scam Factory

17.951

Every suspicious text you ignore masks a vast network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

American History Tellers

Listen Now: Scam Factory

357.719

Binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

American History Tellers

Listen Now: Scam Factory

37.803

You're about to hear a clip from Scam Factory where one character, Jella, learns horrifying news while she's trapped inside the Scam Factory. While you're listening, follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anatomy of Murder

Justice Delayed (Vickie Lynn Belk)

1808.456

I'll explain the reason why I showed you her picture. August of 1979, her body was found in Brian's room. When I say her body, she was deceased.

Anatomy of Murder

Justice Delayed (Vickie Lynn Belk)

1822.41

She was sexually assaulted and she was shot in the head.

Anatomy of Murder

Justice Delayed (Vickie Lynn Belk)

1883.563

I clearly had sex with her at some point. Probably.

Anatomy of Murder

Justice Delayed (Vickie Lynn Belk)

4.133

I'll explain the reason why I showed you her picture. August of 1979, her body was found in Brian's ribs. When I say her body, she was deceased. Okay. She was sexually assaulted and she was shot in the head.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

1798.7

Lamont Jones's world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

1819.525

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

1842.722

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

1901.209

Right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Reid Hoffman Returns (on an optimistic AI)

1937.148

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Reid Hoffman Returns (on an optimistic AI)

3784.082

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Reid Hoffman Returns (on an optimistic AI)

7460.708

Did you see this?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

1816.866

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

1882.397

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

1903.031

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

1928.607

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

3511.415

Can you imagine if you fucked up your line twice?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

3684.652

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Armchair Expert

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

5428.363

Thank you.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Seth Rogen Returns Again

6092.474

No!

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

1420.788

Oh, my God.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

1823.119

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

1829.525

Imagine this, you help your little brother land a great job abroad, but when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

1850.168

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

1875.723

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Blaise Aguirre (on overcoming self-hatred)

4188.984

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

131.629

Yeah. All right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

1806.069

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

1814.372

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

1835.011

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

1860.587

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

3114.368

I do. I do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

3446.521

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

3688.713

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

4656.421

Thank you. We're so glad we finally got you. Thank you so much. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

535.733

So I got six hours.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

5390.501

I'm extra. Hurt. No, no, no.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

6385.395

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mary Claire Haver (on menopause)

6436.96

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

1835.689

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

2660.915

It was crazy. And Mitch Rouse.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4045.405

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4074.626

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4082.153

Paramount Plus brings you an exclusive all-access window into the life of America's biggest soccer star with its brand-new docuseries, Pulisic. Go behind the scenes on and off the pitch as American captain Christian Pulisic navigates his stellar season abroad with AC Milan, leads the U.S. men's national team internationally, and and prepares for the 2026 World Cup on home soil.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4102.931

Catch the all-new Paramount Plus original docuseries, Polisic, presented by Michelob Ultra. Featuring soccer legends Clint Dempsey, Weston McKinney, Zlatan, Jurgen Klopp, and more. Streaming now on Paramount Plus. Sign up at ParamountPlus.com today.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4119.448

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids instantly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4138.286

Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com slash wondery. That's greenlight.com slash wondery.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

4686.726

Stay tuned for the fact check.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

5735.454

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

5741.744

Now more than ever, people are relying on their community pharmacy. Fortunately, CVS pharmacy team members are passionate about their local communities. In fact, 87% of pharmacists wish their customers would ask more questions about their health needs. Does your CVS pharmacist go above and beyond for you? We'd love to hear your story. Share it at cvs.com slash stories.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

5764.692

That's cvs.com slash stories. CVS, making healthier happen together.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

6938.519

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, There were many questions surrounding his death.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

6962.166

The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director)

6985.827

Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jonathan Haidt Returns (on the Anxious Generation)

1883.762

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jonathan Haidt Returns (on the Anxious Generation)

1904.397

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jonathan Haidt Returns (on the Anxious Generation)

1944.99

Scam Factory

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jonathan Haidt Returns (on the Anxious Generation)

462.12

Good guess.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

1857.122

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

1863.709

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

1884.328

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

1909.905

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

3818.934

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

5398.774

Right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Suzanne O'Sullivan (on over diagnosis)

5958.951

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

1851.17

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

3287.521

I was going to say,

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

3888.641

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Acquired Podcast on the NFL (with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal)

5529.117

You got along so far?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Herman Pontzer (on evolutionary anthropology)

1843.999

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Herman Pontzer (on evolutionary anthropology)

3671.626

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Herman Pontzer (on evolutionary anthropology)

783.916

Wikipedia says 12 feet. 12 feet.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: New Heights

0.449

Calling all 92 percenters, Jason Kelsey and Travis Kelsey are football's funniest family duo, and every week they provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. In New Heights, the two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about their games and share unique perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: New Heights

19.443

Plus, entertaining stories from a combined 21 years in the league. Off-field interests and engaging conversations with incredible guests like LeBron James, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, and Caitlin Clark, just to name a few. Here's a clip of New Heights. Follow New Heights on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: New Heights

323.504

Vincent St.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: New Heights

37.37

You can listen to new and exclusive episodes early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: New Heights

439.79

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

0.37

You've heard her name in headlines, during trivia nights, and as a punchline, Monica Lewinsky. She's been a major reference in pop culture since she was 24 years old, when a scandal made her a household name overnight. Since then, she's fought to redefine her reputation. And now she's ready to use her experience to encourage others to take back their power too.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

20.315

On her new podcast, Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, Monica leads honest and wide-ranging conversations about what it means to write your own narrative. Each week, guests share how they've rediscovered purpose, rebuilt relationships, and redefined success after their most vulnerable moments.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

34.767

A single incident can shape how the world views someone's life. It might be a public scandal, a viral moment, a career setback, or a personal struggle thrust into the spotlight. Through raw conversations with actors, athletes, activists, and everyday people, Reclaiming explores what happens after the headlines fade and how to find your voice when the world thinks it already knows your story.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

413.826

That was just a preview of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Wondery Presents: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky

55.353

You're about to hear a preview of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. While you're listening, follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Eiza Gonzalez

1834.545

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Eiza Gonzalez

3583.501

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

1397.973

Exactly.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

1944.347

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

3939.452

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by ZipRecruiter.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

4545.573

Smoke coming out of the pulleys.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

5736.969

Because the absurdity is very clear to a nine-year-old.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

7320.66

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Ollie. Gosh, I love Ollie.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Josh Gad Returns

8921.886

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

1765.431

No, I do the PRP. There we go.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

1795.157

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

1865.366

Exactly.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

1936.842

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.711

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.731

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.751

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.771

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.791

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

2763.811

.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

3092.723

Oh, great.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

3690.364

I found them, man. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Ike Barinholtz Returns Again

4703.165

Oh, that's so sweet.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

0.31

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth. Hi. Hi. Our sweetest friend, Adam Scott, is here today.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1005.306

Just like the cool uncle you'd guess. He didn't mind too much. Yeah. He understood what was going on.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1012.449

I didn't say that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1018.756

Again, I did steal. And then I said, no, I did steal a parking meter.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

103.749

Yes, big time. Parks and Recreation, Step Brothers, Big Little Lies, Party Down, The Good Place, and alas, arguably the greatest show on television, which returns to Apple TV Plus on the 17th. Severance.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1033.151

I was pretty hammered. What is that? That's a nicotine spray. You've certainly seen me use these on our yearly vacation. Yeah, I've got. Yeah, what are you rocking?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1043.942

You're a Zin man. So stupid.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1046.605

Zin is like a little pouch of chemicals.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1059.714

Bandits are made in an atelier in Rochester.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1063.676

So are Zins, one by one. Gorgeous atelier in Terre Haute, Indiana. Very bespoke, very artisanal.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1078.9

By the way, that's a great source for trigger words is agents. Because agents, kind of like Silicon Valley bros, there's a lexicon and you got to stay abreast.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1105.34

Okay. Now I got to go all the way back because when I talked about your hair- So basically we're getting into this era where the Faustian promise could be, we're nearing a technology that at eight I could have injected myself with something and my hair would have looked like that for the rest of my life. That's where I was going with that entire story.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1121.91

Like the notion of freezing your face at 16 is kind of interesting. I don't have a moral judgment on it quite yet.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1186.058

it's hard to say what's better or worse. Is that better or worse than you and I thinking you got to look like Brad Pitt and there's no chemicals or I can't freeze my, there's nothing you can do. No, I'm not sure if it's getting better or worse. Yeah. Okay. But my sci-fi fantasy is this. So if we just think really quickly that your cells divide and they make perfect copies of themselves. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1205.953

So there's this great mystery. How then does your body evolve and look differently? If it's making perfect mirror copies of each cell, what is this aging process? How are the cells changing? And there's a lot of science that's getting close to figuring that out. So let's just say there is a future in which you take it and then that's it. You're arrested exactly where you're at from now on.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

122.223

It's so good. It's so, so good. And I got to do the Severance podcast that they're doing, which is really, really fun.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1224.386

Your cells will just duplicate as they should. That's an interesting sci-fi movie where everyone is 28. The wise elders are 28 and everyone is immortal. Probably unless they get hit by a car, unless some kind of accident happens, their cells are just going to make perfect copies of themselves. So that would be an interesting sci-fi movie where everyone's 30.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1244.518

One guy's 130 and one guy's 30, but they look exactly the same. And it just makes me wonder like status wise and how you treat people at a grocery store and all this weird stuff. If everyone was the same age, what would that do? That would be really weird.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1271.443

I did think of that as once you get the procedure, it'll heighten your fear of accidental death. Because you're not going to have any diseases.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

128.667

Yeah. I do recommend. It's been three years. I have a pretty good memory. I don't remember anything. It is so worth starting it from the get go. It's so enjoyable. I had forgotten so many great things about it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1287.502

That's when they always say you just start going downhill from there.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1322.415

Fun stuff to think about is not the actual big juicy tech. Cultural reverberations of these. Like if a guy that's 130 is dating an actual 30-year-old woman, but they look the same, do we throw out that whole thing we care about?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1352.298

Right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1355.019

What if? OK, so these new meta glasses, they have a speaker right behind whatever the arms. I'm told that you could be in China and you can have the AI be translating what someone's telling you in Mandarin and you'll hear it in English. I think we're really close to the Star Trek. Like we're wearing glasses, Chinese guys wearing glasses and we're just communicating. So knowing that that's close.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1375.547

Now, what if back to the 300 year old, let's call it a woman dating a 30 year old man.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1380.75

That's safer. We like that. And then the 30 year old man goes, I loved this new show, Tabika Wee Crossing. It's a great show. It is a good one. And then the woman in her ear hears, I'm watching this new show. Dawson's Creek. The AI knows where this reference is going so they can communicate. They can have the conversation. Different references. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1405.503

Like you'd be talking about Taylor Swift. Like let's say you and I were on a date. You'd be talking about Taylor Swift and how great she is, but I'd be hearing Madonna so that I understood. It's a cultural equivalent.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

144.436

Oh, you did? Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1455.213

No, no, no. See, I mean, my version of this cultural translator, you're saying Taylor Swift and my equivalent of that was Madonna. Now, I actually feel about Madonna however I felt then. Right. So maybe I thought she was. I don't think this will. I just think she was a stage show. She wasn't really an artist. Let's just say that's what I thought.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1471.965

That's not what I think. None of us think that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1475.149

So I'm hearing you talk about someone who's a perfect comp and then I feel the way about it. And then I go on. She's not for me. I don't like.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

148.198

Please enjoy Adam Scott. We are supported by Mint Mobile. It's time to leave your overpriced wireless plans jaw-dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. Get huge savings with Mint Mobile. They're offering any three-month plan for only $15 a month, even their unlimited plan. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1510.113

So in your version, like a liberal and Democrat are wearing the glasses and the liberal goes, I'm so afraid the earth's going to catch on fire. And the person here is, I'm so afraid of immigration. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1525.887

Yes, I'm scared too. Oh, that's wild. Okay, this actually brings me to a real question. First of all, and I told you this privately, so I'm not just fluffing your pillows now that we're in public. Fluffing your pillows, I like that. Not a really common colloquial. We go on this trip every year. It's the funnest trip of the year for us. Yes, so fun.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1542.691

Our friend Jimmy Kimmel hosts all of us in the most generous possible capacity. The loveliest. And there's a lot of things you could say were the bells and whistles of it, the location, the accommodations, the activities. But for me, it's dinner every night.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1574.353

So you can't miss no matter who you're seated next to. But, and I don't want to rank, it's not polite to rank, but if you and I get seated next to each other, I'm like, this is going to be the greatest three hour dinner. You're the funnest person to talk to.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1640.296

Same. So, so much of our conversations, and this is where one of my questions comes in. We have a lot of nostalgic conversations. Yes. We have a lot of the same favorites from the 80s and 90s. We did, I don't know, 90 minutes on Against All Odds. Oh, you had Jeff Bridges. I did. And I brought up the car chase scene and I asked how much of the driving he did.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1659.691

Questions only you and I would want answered. Yeah. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1668.056

That's a pretty good comp. He talked about that being the first movie he started physically training for and how it created a lifetime interest in exercise.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1703.654

And then a couple of beers. A couple of beers and a doobie and let's get to sat.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1707.857

But I guess what I was wondering is you have this deep nostalgia. I want an explanation for it. And I'm wondering, do you think we're just that way? Or is there something about childhood that was so comforting? You would recognize you're more encyclopedic about that whole error than most people you talk to.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1726.89

You always blow me way out. Once we start talking, yeah, you've watched the behind the scenes of Temple of Doom. I have. Right. In the last three months, I've gone and looked at that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

174.574

You can even bring your current phone and number. Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy. Sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. Switch to Mint and new customers can get half off an unlimited plan until February 2nd.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1784.568

Why do I think you had a crazy hip hop phase in high school? I didn't.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1790.394

Oh, I don't know if I am. If I could count the amount of times.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1804.041

But I think people would think it was Macklemore posing as Adam, probably.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1820.859

We are supported by Quince. You know, Kristen's been ordering a ton from Quince.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1826.623

Yeah, and I told her, you know, they're a sponsor. And she couldn't believe it. Being stylish and comfortable allows you to feel your best, making you ready to tackle anything that comes your way. That's where Quince comes in.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1847.757

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1865.873

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1890.825

We are supported by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like you know to check your sunroof first before driving through the car wash. Like you know to put the leash on your dog first before you open the door to go for a walk.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1907.292

Not that I've ever made that mistake and had my dog run outside without me or screamed his name repeatedly over and over and over again until I found him. Or, you know, to check that the guy who asked you out is an armcherry first before you agree to go on a date with him. Sage advice. Essential. Checking first is smart. So, check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

191.444

To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month and to get the plan shipped to your door for free, go to mintmobile.com slash dax. That's mintmobile.com slash dax. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1930.646

You're in good hands with Allstate. This content is intended for audiences in the U.S. only. Savings vary. Terms apply. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Northbrook, Illinois. We are supported by BetterHelp. The start of the new year brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Maybe you're ready for a plot twist.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1953.417

Or maybe there's a part of your story you've been waiting to revise. Think of therapy as your editorial partner helping you write new chapters and become the author of your own life. I know for me, I want 2025 to be filled with a lack of codependency.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1969.749

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

1994.302

Visit BetterHelp.com slash DAX today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash DAX. OK, last thing I will say about this. Then I started watching this Brat Pack documentary.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2021.401

Oh, my God. Pretty in Pink. Yeah. And the psychedelic furs and how that was making you feel. But I was watching the Brat Pack doc and I was having the realization like, oh, we also lived in a very peculiar time where five of the biggest movie stars alive were 21 years old. I think of that now. And of course, that would seem crazy that there would be this conversation. cadre of enormous stars.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2040.573

But that was a unique thing that was happening when we were kids that we didn't know was unique. They're greenlighting like 12, 15 teen movies a year.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2055.074

Sophisticated and adult. Like, of course, they were driving a Porsche and dressed nice and had a big apartment. And they were 21. Yeah. Did you have that, Monica? Am I wrong about that? That's a unique aspect. You didn't have that when you were 12.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2067.765

Yeah, where there's like a whole crop of movies every weekend. Who would that have been? Zac Efron? A little bit before.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2133.835

E.T. is a very divorce driven movie. I was in a divorce family. I'm my maybe second stepdad feeling like I want to just be in the world on my own a bit. And all these kids, these protagonists in these movies were just kind of on their own. The parents weren't figuring prominently into any of these things. No. And I think that was really appealing. It sure was.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

215.771

We are supported by ZipRecruiter. Oh, get recruited. According to research, a major challenge many employers face is the pressure to hire quickly. It's a tough hurdle to overcome. It's so time-consuming to search for great candidates and sort through applicants. Well, if you're an employer who can relate, I have a question for you. Have you tried ZipRecruiter?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2155.621

Get them out of here and let me run the show a little bit. Let's see what we can do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2169.249

So when I went back to consult your previous episode, I would have not guessed this. What number do you think Adam was?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2180.656

I would have gone 40s. What would you say? First five? Seven. Stop.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2195.506

Yes. Not only seven, but Monica, as I listen to it, the episode starts with housekeeping and it's me explaining. Monica is a part of the show. She's going to talk. She's not interrupting. Like I read in comments that she's an integral part of the show. It's me explaining.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2212.706

Oh, I got sweaty listening to the whole thing. How long ago was that? Seven years ago in February. Congratulations, you guys. But obviously so much has happened since then. Yeah. Seven years. What I learned in a bunch of interviews I listened to of you today. One was I heard you on Fresh Air saying, which I thought was really funny. That you were just obsessed singularly on TVs and movies.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2239.781

And that's all you thought about. Yeah. And I was thinking, if you go into acting, that was a great use of time. But if you're just an average person, this is not all I've ever thought about and obsessed about is TV and movies. Somehow that sounds like a losery endeavor. Yeah. Right. I was thinking like just by the fact that you landed in it means that it was totally justified.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2258.836

And what a great thing to be focused on your whole life.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2345.931

I was a vomiteer, but do you know what his role was? I don't know if you knew your role the last time we talked. Guy in bar? Fan at bar.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2353.318

It is way worse.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2364.649

Yeah, I think so.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2372.376

Have you seen it? I've seen it. I don't want to get bogged down in that, but you want to know who else was in that movie that I doubt you know was in it? Rebecca Gayhart. Rebecca Gayhart, Nev Campbell, of course. And then our two leads, which I looked at the poster this morning. Our poor two leads are in the deep, deep background. And Nev and Rebecca are front and center.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2389.807

And they maybe had like, I don't know, three scenes. Nev was playing like a big star. Hence you being a fan. Fan at bar. At bar, yeah. And me being well mature at the party. That's right. Alfonso Cuaron was in that movie.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

239.802

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2402.535

I remember he and Dean were good buddies. Yeah, he played a director in the movie. That is so wild. So you and I have been in a film with Alfonso Cuaron. Absolutely.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2419.384

So obviously since then you have done a ton of stuff, but severance is the most spectacular thing. And as you know, cause Chris and I sent you voicemails almost after every episode. I'd like to play a couple of these.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2449.632

These are the kind of messages you would receive. You son of a bitch. You wanted the compliments? Well, here comes the fucking complaints. Belle and I just sat here.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2459.057

on the edge of our seat waiting to find out what happens when you guys come to you fucking prick you piece of shit prick and that goes for ben too losers oh buddy are we fucking pissed that this episode just ended when the switches were thrown so you wanted the fucking cake and now you got to take the rat poison too you piece of shit Okay, so that's kind of an average. Was that for the finale?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2487.288

It was, I think, one before the finale.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2489.95

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This ended up being free. Oh, another thing. It's going to be a long fucking week for us and for you. Yeah, because we're waiting. So either block my number or get used to this shit.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

25.251

We discovered, which I would have not guessed. Yeah. I forget now. Seven. Seven. In the interview, we realized he was the seventh guest. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2501.799

You piece of shit. Okay, and then the last one. Big update you'd probably find funny. My wife just ran through a plate glass window off the second

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2548.612

But you went into severance and I learned this from you. I don't know if this is secret or not, but you were involved and then maybe you weren't involved for a minute and then you were involved. So it doesn't start on the firmest footing, maybe, or I don't know what you go through before you end up there. You go right at really what point in the pandemic?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

258.102

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2656.948

I didn't notice that your mom had died as well, right before, I guess it would have been that table read. Two days before the table read. I think the most interesting part of this is, so then the memorial gets kicked all the way to December or something. December of 21. Okay. So very far away, but-

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2674.125

What immediately happens after she dies is you go into quarantine with your family and it's like groovy, right? You're with your family. I think in particularly a time like that where there's the loss of this person, but at least you're connected to the fact that the whole thing just carries on and that's comforting and maybe misleading.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2692.297

And then you get completely by yourself in an apartment in New York in this very lonely situation already. And I'm imagining everything kind of must hit the fan at that point.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

276.519

Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash DAX right now to try it for free. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-X. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. He's an uptake star. Steal yourself. Is that the expression?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2764.479

I hate to say it was a good coincidence, but by God, if you have to go through this, the fact that you got to play someone who's grieving the loss of somebody and you're lonely as fuck in real life. Yes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2808.57

When you shut the door to the apartment and you go, we got some dealing to do. Are you overcome with fear? Fear for that process. What's your reaction to knowing that? Oh, we're going to go through some stuff now and we're going to be by ourselves and we're going to get into this.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2903.595

It's really hard to imagine someone exists and they don't. As dumb and simple as that is to say, it is so weird that you can exist and then not exist.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2970.157

Well, it's the thing you're most tethered to. Yeah. So when my dad died, I had these conflicting feelings of like, A, he had become a dependent of mine. You were taking care of him. Supporting him. So unfortunately, a lot of our conversations over those last few years were like, I need this. It's just not a great dynamic.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

2989.23

And then, you know, I lived with my mom primarily my whole life. When he was dying, it was a lot of work for me. So I had this conflicting... I felt a sense of relief when he died. And I was like, okay, this battle's over. We got him through it without too much carnage. That's a win. I had a misleading sense of relief for a few months.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3009.385

And then opened up the door to like, oh, I'm never going to chat with him again. Or he's not going to see anything I do, you know. But... Through all of that, I was like, also, thank God it's not my mom. Because my mom for me is the thing you're talking about. Like Dax wants to live in the woods and fucking be annihilated drunk all day.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3027.793

And anything I've ever done positive was because my mom believed enough that I was a good boy and I needed to make her happy. And so I've often thought if she's not around for me to even think, what would she think? That feels like a very scary place for me to be in. Yeah. I really rely on her to almost be my super ego.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3082.572

Well, they're who you are to be scared in front of vulnerable.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3095.937

You know, to your point, guaranteed. I'm feeling better when I get off the phone with my mom. 100%. She'd somehow find the silver lining.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

312.939

Thank God there's no buttons on your slacks like Camilla Anthony.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3146.153

I almost think good for you.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3148.735

Sometimes when they tell me off, I'm like, good for you. You got some backbone. Yeah, not bad. Yeah. You're supposed to hate me from time to time.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3169.136

It is scary. We have the great luxury and gift of I think what you do with that is you just turn it on your kids. It's like I don't have that thing. I miss that thing. I'm never going to have that thing. But I have this thing. Yeah. Imagine when you don't have kids and you go through the loss of a parent. It's got to be really destabilizing. Yeah. Kind of now not tethered to really anything.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

324.027

Hold on, Adam. You're a thousand percent sexy as fuck.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3269.297

Jesus. Well, yeah, you shut the door to an apartment in New York and that had some justification. But the notion that you'll be shutting your door to your home when Frankie leaves, you'll go, we're going to have to do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3279.663

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

330.211

I've always known you've had good hair, like enviable hair, but this photo, I can't do things like, like you can take big swings with your hair.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3349.346

huh okay yeah you're here now she had processed she had already moved on so there was some adjusting to happen the baby boomers did it quicker they knew how to get through something really fast that's right okay now back to severance so those are kind of unique circumstance in which you were filming the first and so here's what happened as you know it's my favorite show told you non-stop we got six screeners for the upcoming season oh you did

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

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Which we were ecstatic about. I came in and I lured these few things I get over because Kristen has access to everything in the world. I'm never offering something cool. And I'm like, I guess who's got six episodes of next season. So, so excited. Sign in to watch them. And I go, let's watch the recap. I wonder if you've done the same thing.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3416.784

But that's not why I didn't watch the new ones. I watched the recap and I was like, hon, are you remembering this? Yeah. And she's like, not as much as normal. And Kristen can really remember a TV show. Monica will tell you. Come back from Game of Thrones.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3432.111

So I was like, I'm inclined to start over, which I've done. I can't recommend this enough to people. You should start right now in anticipation.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3459.176

I can't believe how much I forgot about it. And I can't believe how much I'm enjoying rewatching. I think more than I've ever enjoyed rewatching. There's a lot of it that feels like I'm watching it for the first time. Oh, that's great. I think because of the gap between seasons. Long time. But then also the density of it and the subtlety of it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3475.294

And it's interesting watching it, knowing more about it. I think you get more from it. But anyways, all that to say, I didn't watch any of the new season because now I'm on episode four. Kristen went out of town. I already decided, fuck her. I'm going on without her, which is another rare. I don't do that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

348.422

No. Adam, listen to me. You can own this. Can I hold this up? Can you see that, Rob? But look at this. This is great.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3497.817

Yeah. Three viewings before we. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I guess my fear, because I love the show so much, is what do you do with a second season? Right. How long did that take for them to crack that? Also, Dan, is that the writer, creator's name? Yeah. The only thing he had ever written for before this was Lip Sync Battle. Yeah, man. Do you know this story? He wrote for Lip Sync Battle.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3519.061

He sent the pilot for Severance as a writing sample to Red Hour.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3548.723

Yeah. In what state?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3551.184

Pure somewhere. Good for us. We're manufacturing doors. I thought that was more of a Wisconsin thing. Listen, without doors... What are you going to do?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

358.532

I'm stealing this from Arnett. He would call it the 40-yard stare, like that Vietnam.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3613.82

It's really fun. How much of Ben's fingerprint is on it directorially? Because and I'll admit this, I had not seen Escape from Dannemore. Or I saw the first one. I don't know why I didn't continue. But we just watched it, I don't know, three weeks ago and fucking loved it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3630.467

I just rewatched it too last week. And did you see the parallels? Yes. It's a similar thing. You're like trapped in a world. You don't have your autonomy. You're trying to escape.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

367.14

Like, am I seeing a sniper in the background that you're not?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3673.913

And in Severance, it almost seems dangerous. You're looking at all those hallways. They're stark white. They're meaningless. And then the painting that he hangs up, it's like the most exciting. It's like the fucking sphere in Vegas in that world.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3746.737

As much love I have for the show as I have anxiety about how we perpetuate this world in a way that ends up being satisfying. Logically, it's a big endeavor.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3790.501

I have no business saying this, evaluating his career in this way, but I'm going to. So it's like he did Tropic Thunder. He made that movie so big and glossy and actiony, which is cool. He showed he could do that. I was watching Dannemore. I was like, OK, so this is him saying, like, I don't have to fuck with comedy. I know exactly how to do drama. And I feel like Severance is the beneficiary of.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3814.296

of him having proved he can do everything and now letting in some of the comedy and the weirdness. This to me just feels like the total synergy of all the previous work. That's really interesting. There's just like a confidence. It can be anything because the show's often hysterical, I think. And it's just all things now. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3842.136

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3861.388

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3879.176

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3896.249

And it functions.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

39.782

No, I just didn't think he was that early. I felt like we were up and running for a while and I reached out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3901.174

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3902.775

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Adam Scott Returns

3923.97

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3944.318

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3970.224

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

3989.749

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4023.472

Doesn't sound like you got to bond with them in season one too much because you guys were in lockdown.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4105.062

After you'd bragged to your buddy the night before. Yes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4129.118

Okay, so you finally show up on set. Presumably, you know, these two legends who you can't wait to work with. They've been told our lead actor. Yes. We can't find him. I just had to go apologize.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4181.031

I might have been tempted. I don't know if this is manipulative. It's also just dead honest. I probably said to them, you're to blame. I was so excited to work with both of you that I couldn't go to sleep till 4 a.m. That would have been a good move. Maybe bury in some flattery. But also that might have sounded like, God, this guy's a pathological liar on top of being, this guy's a drug addict.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4199.048

Probably.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4214.198

I have so much curiosity about both those gentlemen. They're in a similar category for me where there's this group of actors where I'm like, they're so intrinsically interesting and unique and different that I almost can't believe they can also act. They're so genuinely authentic.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

429.333

Well, we have overs in this podcast, which people don't have over. They line up in a line.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4296.81

I like you describing him as beautiful, and I have often described that. That whole storyline on Severance, it's hard to imagine that show without it. I know. It's really the heart of the show. It really, really is. It's beautiful. It is fucking beautiful. They're both beautiful. The way they play it is just impossibly perfect.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4345.323

I'm going to put you in that category, which is I think the most impressive thing about those two from the outside, not knowing them at all, is just going, yeah, man, these two are still fucking starving to make art. Like they're still dying to express themselves. I don't have that as much, sadly, but I see that you have that a ton. I think that'll be you as long as you want it to be you.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4366.558

That's very kind of you. I'll close on this. But you're doing that here. I'm doing a different version, I guess.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4371.707

Yes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4373.751

I mean, we're just three should be a fire right here, you guys. The last thing I'll close with is just an interesting conversation that we had this summer. And I've played it back in my head a few times to double check. It didn't at all offend you. But we were talking about the people that recognize you. I don't know if you remember this conversation.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4395.507

And there is an enthusiasm people have towards you that you have a hard time accepting. I think as we all do. But I was trying to explain to you why I understand it very much so in regards to you, which is I think you are for people what Nicolas Cage was for me, which is this guy isn't the high school quarterback. He's one of us. And he did it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4422.386

He got invited to the big party and he's the star of the big show. And. I see myself in him. And I think that's a rad space to occupy. And I don't know how you took that, but I know that's how people feel about you. That's how I feel about you. I'm like, oh yeah, the dude I was making jokes with in the classroom about the popular people, he somehow is there.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

444.478

I'm a storyteller at heart. That's worse. I'm even scared to admit out loud how much I hate that because so many people I love I've heard use that term. I know. And it's true. We are story animals. Stop it. Just cut it out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4454.295

Have you gone down the full YouTube rabbit hole of his compilations of talk show appearances? No, I should. He's number one of all time. The best. I'm just going to tell you, he's talking to Letterman about, you know, Dave, you know, I have this King Cobra, it's Daryl or whatever his name is. You know, I just love getting home from work and I go over to... See how Daryl is.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4474.503

And I, I put up the sheet and Daryl just kind of like, he looks at me and he's saying hi. And then all of a sudden he just says, fuck you.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4488.408

Screaming at Letterman, he's doing this cobra attacking the cage.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4581.805

And I'm grateful that you're doing this, Monica.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4588.549

That would be incredible. Rob, what would it be? Oh, damn. Oh, my God. That's a lot of episodes. So I just don't want you to let 832 episodes go by between the next visit.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

46.908

But yeah. So this is his second trip. Oh, this will be good because I remembered this. There's a point in the interview where I go, weren't you super into hip hop?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4602.895

All right, everybody, see Severance. It comes out on Apple TV Plus on January 17th, and the podcast comes out on January 7th. Two episodes initially, and then weekly as the show unveils, yeah?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4628.812

Okay, wonderful. That's a complicated schedule. I just got to say, this new season, we also add Alia Shawkat, who we're obsessed with.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4636.075

Merritt Weaver, who I loved on Nurse Jackie. Gwendolyn Christie, Brienne of Tarth.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4644.299

These casting choices are as good as it gets. Yep. All right, that's all. I love you. Can't wait for our next chit chat. Thank you. Everyone watch Severance. Thank you, Monica.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

466.735

Yeah. You've seen people you love say it, right? Of course. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure I've said it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4665.405

Old shirt. New attitude.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4675.55

I'm a motocross racer. Oh. Is that you, Rob? Oh, okay. Did you take a little fall?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4689.412

Great segue to talk about don't die that doc because he was working so tirelessly on his splits, which I guess he had identified as something that was youthful.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4708.857

Yeah, it's just such a specific goal, the splits. I can see myself making one like that because a lot of my goals aren't totally logical.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4720.245

To do the splits.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4725.809

I think there's an anatomic reality to all this, but maybe I'm wrong.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4731.793

That's nice. You remembered his name.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4735.816

For people who don't know, it's a doc about a guy who has sold an internet company and has some $400 million or something and is spending $2.5 million a year to reverse his aging and try to live as long as possible.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4763.56

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4766.502

Oh, you didn't finish.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4789.039

I did, too. Not in that order, but I did see Conclave last weekend, which is not the type of movie I'm going to run towards because it's the Catholic Church. Sure. But I'm going to get derailed by that. I'm a little bummed you didn't finish because, again, there's so many knee-jerk, immediate things you want to say about this. And...

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4808.957

I was just kind of wading through those and trying to resist that urge. And you're watching all these pundits who just they have vitriol for this man, like hatred. They're so mad at this man for doing it, which I who cares? Ultimately, it's his life. Yeah. He made this money. He can spend it any way he wants. If anything, he's dumping it right back into the economy.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4830.837

So maybe they should be delighted about that. But there's some obvious things. First and foremost, you're right. It appears at least from the doc that it's his entire day.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4842.203

And then so, yeah, the first question begged for me is like, well, what's the point of being alive if the only thing you do while you're alive is try to stay alive?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4850.186

Which I think is semi-relevant, but then also, no, that implies there's some qualitative way to measure how one's spending their time. I'm choosing to spend my time one way. That would not be pleasurable for me to do it his way. So, yeah, for me, that would be a bad cost benefit. But for him, I think he's very, very lonely.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

486.133

I have too much of it to the degree that I'm not proud of myself. Too much of what? I am hypersensitive to words people are using in pop culture to the degree that I have to be a little self-reflective and go like, this is the kid in high school. Like, I'm still looking for reasons that all the popular kids have their code.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4887.984

Sure.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4893.428

I thought about him this morning. I was like, I am incredibly envious of his 30 days in a row of a 100 sleep score.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4922.237

Yeah. You weren't really towards the end. I think you're about. Halfway through.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4932.402

Yes. And his mom and dad got divorced and the dad was had his own struggles.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4937.584

Coke, which made me like the dad right away. Sure. And was in jail as a drinker.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4949.648

This overlaps nicely with the Aaron Rodgers doc, which I keep bringing up because he was raised in, by his account, a very, very constrictive, dogmatic version of Christianity that he found very, very cumbersome. And you weren't allowed to question things and all the normal pushback.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

4971.658

But there does seem to be a little bit of a pattern where people who are raised in that and escape it find their way back into another version of it. Just missing the deity.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

505.502

I think that's why it's such an acute. Because Monica will tell you, I've called out words like artisanal. The second artisanal, I said, you watch. That's going to be on a fucking Arby's sign. It wasn't on Arby's, but it was on Subway. My current one I'm tracking is atelier. This is the new word. Wait, I don't know this one. Great. You're getting it on the ground floor.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5053.223

Right, right, right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5060.746

13,505. Thank you. That's it?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5064.327

365 times 37?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5082.088

I did it in my head. That's something Aaron Rodgers can do insane amounts of math in his head. Oh, whoa. Yeah, like his one kink is he can square anything real time.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5091.736

He can throw any number and he can square it, which is cool. That is cool. But at any rate, he has a very... Militant and somewhat applaud. And I have no actual opinion on it, but he is he's in a five day silent room with no light. He's on an ayahuasca trip every few months. He's like that. If he's not playing football, he is pursuing the spiritual path he's on.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5118.152

But with a veracity that just feels very still religious.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5123.676

And then I, of course, I'm like, yeah, I don't believe there's a guy in the sky. I understand why you're rejecting that. But then there's also a lot of angles of this ayahuasca thing because you get to see him practice that a lot where it's, you know, to me, it's just as you know, you got to play drums and do the whole thing and the incense and the.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5139.927

And I'm like, are you just out in another on another ledge?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5149.712

Yeah, I guess you really just communities, the religion community is the superpower, the magic power, the deity. I do think when people get together and they agree on something and practice in a way, it's whatever. Yeah. So he's back to the dude. So, yes, he was raised Mormon. And so in some ways that he brings that same diligence and work ethic to this pursuit.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5172.601

But what gets really sweet and sad about it is he's very, very lonely. You know, he had this really bad experience with this one woman after he had been divorced who he broke up with when she had cancer.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5187.305

And she sued him and said he should support her forever because he's rich. And, you know, I'm like, you don't get a severance package when you date someone. It's just not even the person's rich. That's how dating works. You're not you don't get a severance. You're not owed. Yeah. So the guy very publicly got sued by this woman.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5205.822

And of course, people just because he's rich, he's the oppressor and she's the oppressed. Forget the other stuff.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5221.511

Well, again, you assume they left because the person had cancer.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5235.255

It's a bad look.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5236.936

But you can't imagine you've been with someone for a year. You're already on the verge of breaking up and then they get a cancer diagnosis. So you're like, I was already out. There's no way I have the capacity to now care for you for two years when I was already not wanting to be with you. I don't know. Anyways, let's not get hung up.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5251.604

He's lonely and he has this boy and his son and him are so, so close. And his son also had left the religion. So he's dealing with the same. They can relate on that. And the kid's going to go to college. And you can tell he's really, really scared about losing his buddy.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5268.034

And all that's really touching. And by the end, I liked the guy, I guess is what I'm saying.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5273.357

Yeah. So he does have a company that's helping him, but he also he's going down to this little, you know, there's a smidgen. It's called like Opportunity Land or something down in Honduras. They've carved out this little Prosperia. I think it's called. Geez. The government granted this little area on a peninsula and basically total free market everything you don't have. There's no FDA.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5298.363

So there's a lot of experimental medicine happening down there. There's a lot of like crypto weird financial stuff happening. It's just free for all. It's a free for all. Wow. And he goes down there and he gets this gene therapy, which is just not allowed anywhere but Prosperia. So it's like he has got a company and a protocol, but he also. He's going rogue a little. He goes rogue.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

531.099

Yes. Atelier, which I learned this from Monica. This is like a small bespoke handcrafted luxury item. And it's the studio for it, which I'm fine with those Italians having their ateliers or French, whatever it is.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5318.059

And when you enter a path like this, I don't know if you can help but go rogue. Because, yeah, I'm on the ladder somewhere like I'm doing things with the goal of living a long time to see my grandkids. And I'm doing a lot more things than other people do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5331.852

And they likely think I'm spending too much time doing that or whatever.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5336.977

And for me, it feels completely normal and it's not taking over my life. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5367.512

Got divorced over, worked nonstop.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5396.542

I would like to do something very self-serving, but I don't really know how else to get the message out. I desperately need a tattoo artist in L.A. Oh. I don't want to fly anywhere. I don't want anyone to have to fly here.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5405.771

I want a good tattoo artist who is open to, this is a total transaction, going in and altering all of my tattoos enough that it is now an original piece of work and then sign me over the rights to that. And I will pay for that so that I own my art and can go short sleeve in commercials again.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5431.841

That's a good way of saying it. Experienced in cover ups. Yeah. If you could hit me in the comments of this episode and I'll find you. But I definitely need to sit down and have someone go through and alter every single thing so I can have my arm back. That was self-serving, but I've been meaning to. I don't know how else to solve that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5448.514

Anything else? Any appeals to the audience you want to put out there? You looking for any specialists in any categories? No. No. Not Conclave. What a movie.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5461.563

Please see it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5499.446

The things I liked right away is they are encased in traditions down to the tiniest things, like the way it starts and the way you take the ring off the pope. And there's a device that already exists. You put the ring in this thing, you chisel off this one piece and like that instrument exists.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5516.799

And then the wax press and every single thing has a way of doing it and an order to it and all these little devices that go along with it. Yeah. I think to add validity and credence to the whole thing, I mean, I think it's very calculated, but there's something I loved about watching all these little weird customs that go along with this whole process.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

554.977

I just started hearing Atelier a little too much. And I was like, Monica, you watch. The Gap's going to have an Atelier. Okay, so we have storytellers. That's rough for me. That's rough. And again, so many people, I love it. I see you. Sure. I don't think people can get through an interview without saying it these days. Holding space. Can't you just do that without talking about it?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5542.556

Shout out to Tucci.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5548.958

Yes. Ralph Fiennes is good, too.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5552.559

Can you explain to me why Ralph Fiennes is Ralph Fiennes? That still is a big mystery to me.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5558.801

OK, but his name is R-A-L-P-H Fiennes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5562.902

And you pronounce that Ralph Fiennes. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5598.176

Right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5607.46

I'm a little more cynical. I think a lot of people try to do it and then there's just cracks everywhere in pursuit of that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5629.507

Why is it good to not have had sex with a woman?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5637.91

Got it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5677.462

Of course.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5678.823

Scotty had it all.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5681.805

He had the brains. He had the brawn and the firefighting skills.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5686.207

By the time this airs, I'll have gone to see the Lions play. Oh, fun. Which I'm so excited about.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5692.77

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5697.52

They had a bye week, so they got to sit out the first round of the playoffs. And now we commence.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

57.837

And he's like, no.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5704.243

They're going to play the Washington Commanders. Commanders. Yeah. Okay. Were they not? So they were the Washington Redskins. Correct. Which is a no-no for obvious reasons. So they got rid of that name. But weren't they for several years, Rob, just called like Washington football team?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

573.513

Does that trigger you at all?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5737.958

Are you going to go to the Washington football team game?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5743.064

Yeah, there's a Utah hockey club right now. The Utah Hockey Club. That sounds so AAA. It sounds really far down. It doesn't sound like NHL.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5752.956

Hockey club. Hockey friends. Detroit hockey friends.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5759.998

Yes. I mean, I'm taking my boyfriend, Aaron.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5765.4

We also get to be on the field during warm-up and stuff.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5768.781

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

577.096

This is where the left is losing people, by the way.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5770.441

Oh, I'm very excited.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5773.322

I mean... I don't deserve to be the McConaughey. Nobody can be the McConaughey. But of course, I would love to be the McConaughey. And I haven't earned being the McConaughey. McConaughey has not missed Longhorn's game, I think, in 30 years. He has left vacations.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5790.769

You know, that incredible story I told that Kutcher told me that he heard him partying very late at night in the Bahamas at four in the morning. Then when he woke up at nine and turned on the football game, McConaughey was magically standing on the field.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5806.459

Yeah. So I just I don't even deserve that. But and I'm also wondering if I'll bump into other Detroiters like, well, I see Sam Richardson or, you know, I see any of these folks. That's very funny. I see Eminem. I've never met.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5823.565

No.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5830.828

I've been twice for work. I went once for Ellen and once to promote chips. And as I said, it's the only two times in my life I've been nervous somewhere.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5843.372

I just don't like what kind of... Target it. I don't know. I just start ruminating. And then I enjoy the Super Bowl so much being at home and eating the snacks and being able to actually follow the game. This was even a decision when I was like, do I go to one of the early playoff games or, you know, God willing, they'll go all the way. Do I go to a later one?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5863.995

And I was like, no, as it's getting more and more intense, I actually need to be at my house watching play by play with a close up and hearing the calls and all this stuff because I can't follow things all that well in person. Yeah, I'm not great at that. A little distracted.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5881.687

Yeah, it's not my sport. I'll watch two or three games throughout the year, tops.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5885.25

But I do generally watch the playoffs because I want to be very excited about the Super Bowl.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5889.633

Because I love the Super Bowl just as a holiday. Yeah. And I feel like I can amplify it if I actually know the stakes and who went through what to get there.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5897.558

So I generally will start watching and maybe the second round of the playoffs. But the Detroit thing adds a whole new thing. I watched a ton of Detroit games. I put it as a season pass and I actually watched all the games.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5914.152

Yeah, I think you got to fight the inclination to stop being interested in anything. I think that's the natural arc of life. Yeah. Interest in less and less things. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Prime Video. You know that feeling when you go to log into a streaming service and you forgot your password?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5941.56

Or when you have to switch from app to app trying to find the movie you want to watch? Stop wasting time toggling between the apps and start watching the content you want to watch right away with Prime Video. On Prime Video, you can add over 100 subscriptions like Max, Apple TV+, and Paramount+, all in one app. That means more time watching and more time relaxing. I've got the perfect example.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5965.173

Armchair-y favorite, Matthew McConaughey, is in so many of our favorite titles. You could have a Matthew McConaughey marathon day. Start with True Detective on Max, then check out The Lincoln Lawyer on MGM+, and top it off with rom-com classic How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days on Paramount+. That's a good way to spend a day.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5983.82

You can watch all of those titles and more without ever leaving the Prime Video app. I think I may take a little Nicolas Cage binge on Amazon Prime.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

5996.025

Oh, sign me up. Streamline your streaming today. Check out subscriptions on Prime Video. Have you seen the coach, Dan Campbell? Dan Campbell's bigger than all of the players. He is an enormous he's an ex player.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

60.219

And I was so... discombobulated by that because i'm like i know i remember this okay and it hit me after this interview and i text them and i was like oh my god you know what i think i'm confusing is were you obsessed with do the right thing and spike lee and started wearing african gear and he's like a hundred percent oh So that's what it was.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6018.93

And he just has an enormous head and neck and shoulders. And it's really encouraging for your leader to look bigger than the players.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

602.546

Well, I think it's more often used in like, I just want my husband to be able to hold space for me to have my emotions or hold space for a coworker or a friend. Right. It sounds a little too sanctimonious. I think I tuned that one out. So I use one that probably people hate. I will say often my story. My story about you and I is this, or my story about losing that job is this.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6029.559

Like yet at any moment he might pad up.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6035.223

Walks the walk.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6042.086

Oh, they do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6042.947

They have to serve some time.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6047.449

Uh-huh. Break up a couple thousand fights at 2 a.m.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6055.374

Okay.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6059.506

We're putting Rob to the test. You know, the funny thing is Rob knows fantasy football. Is that fair to say, Rob? Yeah. Yeah. Like he doesn't have any coach on his roster.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6080.389

So the running back right now for the Detroit Lions is absolutely insanely talented. And he got four touchdowns in the Viking games, which was a Lions record. I mean, he is young, very tiny and unstoppable.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6112.481

Oh, okay. This is now the age bracket you've entered.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6127.708

Well, you're unnerved. I think you can measure your age in this very predictable way where it's like for a long, long time, all the players are older than you. Then you have a moment in your early 30s where you go, oh, geez, I'm older than all the professional athletes. And that's startling.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6143.243

But then you still have the coaches. Yeah. And now I am at the age, Monica, where I am older than quite a few of the NFL coaches, which seems impossible. Growing up, those were all old, old men.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6159.356

I think they are. They are.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6162.218

Yeah. Speaking of age, because we were really trying to figure it out while we were watching it. Nate and I had an impromptu dinner last night.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6170.264

At Morton's, our home base.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6173.263

He was saying how much he liked watching the clips of Brolin and just how masculine Brolin is. We just kept talking about how could there be anyone more masculine? Then we're talking about No Country for Old Men. And then I was like, we got to watch that shit. We still watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood together. And then I just had this moment of recklessness.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6192.888

And I go, should we go right now and watch No Country on a school night? Wow. And we did. We came back here and we watched No Country for Old Men last night. Damn near. He left at like 1130 at night on a week night. But Brolin is 38 in that movie. Oh, but he carries himself like he's a little over 40. We concluded.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6216.136

You know, he looks like a man that's been around for a while. And then Javier Bardem.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6229.222

It's so long ago. Woody Harrelson's very young in it. Brolin's 38. Great movie. Very unsatisfying ending, but great movie.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6242.29

Interesting. Okay. Tom Cruise and Spielberg.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

625.22

That to me feels a little more honest, which is I know I'm a storyteller.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6253.874

He's a movie file.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6255.915

A cinephile, yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6267.382

Oh, there is?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6275.714

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6277.195

It's high end.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6278.215

It means high end.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6280.036

No one says that now?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6283.417

Oh, I was thinking you were saying it was canceled and I couldn't wait to hear the connective tissue between elevated and some kind of abrasive.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6294.522

But I don't think so. Elevated's already a little pedestrian, though.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6298.787

It's not foreign. Elevator, elevator, atelier and artisanal. Those have the, you know, appeal of being foreign and very exclusive.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6327.793

My trigger isn't, did I already say about glimmer?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6331.256

That was the thing that came up in comments a while back. We were saying there should be a positive version of triggered.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6337.301

And a lot of people wrote, oh, there is a term for it and it's glimmer.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

634.789

We thought our pants were going to explode, but they've retracted. It's the opposite.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6341.492

Yeah. It's when you're activated. Like if you're triggered, you're activated.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6346.557

By a word.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6347.759

In a negative way, generally. But a glimmer is something that activates you, but in a very positive way.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6354.206

Because some fact checks ago, I was talking about being triggered in a really good way.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6359.331

Oh, right. But I was like, the word feels wrong. And I learned there is a term and it's glimmer glimmer. And I like that. Yeah. But my specific trigger about Atelier and artisanal artisanal is it feels elite. It feels like it's someone trying really hard to sound super sophisticated and And so that's my trigger. It reeks to me of being a snob. Whereas elevated doesn't do that for me.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

639.963

Were you wearing three belts when you walked in?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6399.7

Sure. Which is a little bit of snobbery.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6407.608

Raleigh-Durham.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6427.583

This is a little bit tempting for me to get back on Chewing tobacco. The notion that I could be getting it fresh off the line in Nashville is very tempting. Fresh.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6439.154

Minutes old.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6442.094

Brings me back to the time we put the roof on the hot dog and hamburger bun factory in Detroit. And we got to have hot dog buns that came right out of the conveyor belt. And they were one of the most delicious things I've ever had in my life. You can't imagine how good they are a second after they're made.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6462.77

I guess. But then you're kind of getting into placebo effect.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6466.351

Which is real.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6470.552

Hawaiian Sweet Roll.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6473.193

Yeah, King's Hawaiian Sweet. That.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6477.894

And what do you think? How did those taste?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6491.47

But it's like it's not even set yet. Like the molecules haven't even totally formed. The thing that also made that King's Hawaiian Sweetbread Factory Tour so awesome is that at the tasting station where we were eating them right off the conveyor belt, there was a block of butter the size of that refrigerator. I know. I've never seen a block of butter that big in my life.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6514.858

It must be what they dump into the mix. And we just had these fucking spades that we were just carving off huge chunks of butter and slathering it all over.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6526.483

No.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6537.307

Yes. Chisel every part that's not David.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

655.01

Right, right. In 2015, which by the way, you would have known that already. That's right. You know what no one's playing with, which they should be, is that as we see drugs like Ozempic become ubiquitous and people will more and more have the same body shape. It's almost interesting that no one's projected that in the future, everyone just virtually will be like three versions of people.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6560.445

Yes, I think I'm superior to my 27-year-old.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6564.589

Four 7-Eleven chili dogs a day and a 12-pack of beer at night and a pack and a half of Camel Lights.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6577.98

This morning when journaling, I'm like, what is going on? I couldn't sleep for longer than an hour last night. I woke up with a headache and my body's so sore. I'm like... What happened to me? Sprinting is not helping for sure.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6596.394

I'll leave this to you to decide if this is too gross for the fact check. It likely is. But at the same time, I am proud as a peacock about this. As you know, and maybe I've shared in the past, a weird hobby of mine is I do like to weigh myself in the morning right before I go evac. Sure. Because I'm curious.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6614.59

I want to know how much that weighs.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6616.552

And I have been doing that for a year or two.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6621.016

It's never above a pound and a half.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6624.798

There are times I look and I go, well, buckle up. We're going to, this is okay. Okay. Never been a more than a pound and a half. I swear to God, this was four mornings ago, three mornings ago. I couldn't even finish journaling. I had to go evac and it had been, I didn't have a couple of good days prior to that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6642.689

The first round was robust. Then I was doing some posting, then round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round, round.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6652.135

I'm in there for probably 30 plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6656.859

People hate that. They're convinced I'm going to get hemorrhoids. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6660.863

And they can have a good laugh if I get them. But I haven't. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6664.386

No, never had a hemorrhoid. Thank goodness.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6668.389

I wouldn't believe this if I told if someone told it to me. I got on the scale. I was one ninety seven point eight. I was on there for a half hour. It's not an experience I never had in my life. Got on one ninety three point eight.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6685.06

Yes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6686.921

No, because I'd already peed a bunch.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6689.382

Very little pee came out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6693.324

What do we call diarrhea? It was like water. There wasn't water, but but it was mud.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6701.432

Whatever the case. Okay. I 3X my previous. I thought about that every 20 minutes the whole rest of the day.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6710.92

It's like hard to compute. Four pounds. Like at your body weight, that's almost 5% of your total mass in 30 minutes. I've never had an experience like that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6722.331

It was wild.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6725.354

I felt so much better. I had woken up that morning, cranky, headachy, body achy, got all the poison out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6732.722

Yeah, I felt good. Then I did my sprints that day.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6739.595

There's no way for me to know. I just run as fast as I can. I'm just clicking my clicker, my clicker.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6756.525

Oh, interesting.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6757.646

This is really.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6759.308

Speaks to the how hard it is to get facts right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6786.351

OK, but six years after. But actually upon reflection.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6790.774

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6792.075

So he's right.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6796.718

I'm not surprised he's right. Not because I think you're prone to be wrong, but just he is such a steel trap with these.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6816.576

Great names.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6819.799

Yeah. I already can't compute. Let's get some of the animals that live outside to live inside our house. Although I caveat to that. There are three birds that going on now four months. It used to drive me a little crazy because I'll be in bed journaling. I hear a whapping on the window. They fly out of the tree and then they try to sit on a little piece of the window. There's a little green guy.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6842.885

He's a little guy. He's about this big and he's green. And he sits there. And he packs at the window and he flaps his wings. Then he goes back in the bush and he comes back up. Then we have these two larger birds with a big red crest and long tail feathers. They are also on this one. There's something about this window into the bathroom.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

686.576

I wish I was alive when they were 90 so I could see how perfect they look. I bet it's really going to work out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6862.866

And I can't decide if they want to come in or they're just curious or they're confused. I don't know what's going on, but we have a veritable possibility. aviary just outside the window.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6875.035

No, I was kind of laughing at that. Like the amount of effort I put into getting crows to woo crows to no avail. And I'm doing nothing for these three birds and they want to get involved.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6885.799

Hard to get. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6888.44

They don't. No.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6892.141

That's everything.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6894.662

Well, I sure do love that boy.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6896.523

He is. He is the loveliest man. I'm just delighted I got to meet him.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6906.69

Was it audible? I didn't hear it. Okay.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

6929.6

Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

714.656

Did you ever have these days when you were in elementary school? I'm plagued with a lot of cowlicks. I don't have the head of hair you do. Back to your hair. Cowlicks. You know, where your hair juts this way and then that way. It's all skating wampus and back. I have a swirl. So the middle part with a feather when you and I were kids was king. Totally. You had to have that hairdo.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

733.724

Bo and Luke Duke had it. And I just couldn't get it on the middle. It was always off to one. It was like a 60, 40 split. Yeah. And so occasionally I would have a morning like in fourth grade where I would feather it. It would look great. And I would make this weird promise to the deities. I'd say like, I commit to this hair for the rest of my life. If you can keep it looking this way.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

803.357

Thinking that it was imminent. Okay, what you stumbled upon right there is called the call of the void. Do you know this term? No. So the call of the void is very, very common for people to experience this. You're on an extremely tall building. You're looking over the edge. And the voice is going, jump, you fucking pussy, for some reason. It's taunting you. Yes.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

822.286

And that's what licking that lead was. And I would have done the exact same thing. Like, whoa. Yeah. It's pretty powerful.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

829.851

But you got to be on the other side of answering the call of the void, which is you laughed. I did it. And it sounds like you had immediate regret. Yeah. It was a stupid thing to do.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

84.8

I knew he went through a phase and he was wearing like the tricolor Africa shirts and it was do the right thing. So I'm not I wasn't totally insane. There's some connective tissue.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

927.352

Yeah, I must have been a good kid. I can really relate to being the younger brother who he'd leave the house to go do something fun. And I would run to his bedroom like a chimp, just like hold his objects. A hundred percent. Covet them.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

965.645

I was staying at my grandparents' roadside motel in the summertime. And I had an Uncle Rob who was five years older than my brother. So this guy was... on top of the world. He had a 68 Camaro. He played the guitar very well. He had a dirt bike. And I got into his room when he was out and I found just a treasure trove of firecrackers. Oh, shit.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

982.873

I was like, this motherfucker's got major power moment in here. Firepower. I was like, oh, there's 60 of these. I'm going to steal one. Black cats. And then later I was out in a field next to the motel and I lit them off. And I was like very scared and excited. And then I just hear, they're loud, aren't they? Oh, fuck. And I turned around and it was Uncle Rob. And he fucking called me red-handed.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Adam Scott Returns

99.307

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

1975.6

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

2041.021

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

2061.848

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

2085.043

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

3573.636

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

5358.195

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Bert Kreischer

877.4

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mo Amer

1034.933

Wow.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mo Amer

1964.748

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mo Amer

1981.621

From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern. Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mo Amer

1997.765

With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mo Amer

2465.815

Oh, scary. Oh, my God.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

1258.09

Yeah, because your opinion means nothing. I can't gang up.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

1820.406

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

1826.693

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

1847.351

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

1872.906

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

3422.162

How?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

3697.822

Armchair Expert

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Lauren Graham Returns

5506.968

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Armchair Expert

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1792.803

Holy shit. How many claps?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1865.203

According to them. According to them. Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1944.589

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1950.834

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1971.658

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

1994.872

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

3924.121

I loved it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

3929.127

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Armchair Expert

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

4931.187

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

935.574

There's no... I like that.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Jon Bernthal

952.891

Very cool.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

1770.311

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

1897.192

Scam Factory

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

3696.553

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Armchair Expert

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

6842.992

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

7307.646

The retrieval.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

7310.929

Yeah.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Mindy Kaling

7488.036

Well, the city is not going to acknowledge it, but the buyer is going to acknowledge it.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Best of Friday 2024

3324.793

Yeah, it's really bad.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Best of Friday 2024

4334.011

Oh, my God.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Best of Friday 2024

4907.011

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science, to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Best of Friday 2024

4922.051

Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Best of Friday 2024

4943.889

These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Children's Party

855.674

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Children's Party

876.328

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Children's Party

901.883

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: DNA Testing

944.716

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: DNA Testing

965.335

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: DNA Testing

990.912

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

841.297

Lamont Jones's world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

862.122

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

885.314

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

950.978

What if your mind could trick your body into feeling sick? Or even worse? In Hysterical, I investigate the bizarre medical mystery that unfolds in a high school in upstate New York. It starts with one girl developing strange, violent symptoms. And then another. And then another. Rumors begin to swirl. Is it something in the water, inside the school, or is it all in their heads?

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

975.913

Hysterical is my search for answers, and along the way, I uncover surprising connections to unexplained incidents around the world, events that challenge everything we think we know about our bodies and our minds. Named Podcast of the Year at the Gambies, Hysterical is a mind-bending, unforgettable ride. Binge all episodes right now exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cedar Point

997.869

Start your free trial of Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Public Transit

2005.003

We follow each other on Instagram.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Public Transit

843.26

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Public Transit

864.064

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Public Transit

887.278

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: I Quit

595.953

Yeah, that's a lot.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: I Quit

685.057

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: I Quit

705.697

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: I Quit

731.253

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cults II

1156.519

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cults II

1177.343

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Cults II

1200.54

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card VII

1022.858

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card VII

1043.512

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card VII

1069.068

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Sports Event

790.791

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Sports Event

811.427

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Anonymous: Sports Event

837.004

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

0.049

You two are bad friends.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

159.014

Yeah, yeah. I'm a sidekick.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

1787.163

That's why I'm here. I'm sorry.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

2866.881

. . . . .. a, P P P P P P P P P,實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a ac a in in in in in in in in in in in in a. Ch P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P PGà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà boà

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

3.571

A white dude and an Asian dude.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

3375.384

No. Because weirdly, you put a little vocal on there. You put your voice in.

Bad Friends

More Heart, More Fart w/ Lisa Gilroy

3721.219

Boo! Love it again. Fuck you!

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

0.229

Hey, bad friends! I have only two cities left on my tour before I film my special. This weekend, Boston, Massachusetts. Boston, I love you so much. You've always done me right. I have four shows at the Wilbur in Boston this weekend. Bring your loves out for Valentine's Day. Then, February 21 and 22, Minneapolis. Let's go, baby. I'm shooting my special for Hulu in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1011.103

Kevin. Kevin. Yeah. You don't pay attention. What's up? And your essays are late, and I want to know who you think you are screwing up my class, not paying attention, and goofing off.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1036.94

Well, you're failing.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1050.655

I don't even know how to look that up, but that kid was so powerful. He had such a great speech. I could have never snapped back at a teacher. We never did that. We never did that. Dude, we got in so much trouble all the time. You couldn't say shit back. You couldn't go to the bathroom. If you go to the bathroom, you're fucked. I have to go to the bathroom. Too bad. Well, I'm going to go.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1100.725

End scene. Even the teacher doesn't know?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1106.53

I don't know what that is.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1113.155

You got a lot of knowledge.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1129.898

Star Trek. Star Trek. You could do film or television theory. You could do TV theory, right? Production theory. Maybe, maybe. Media, what is that? Media production, you could do that. You could do an entrepreneurial class, a digital entrepreneur. You think so? How to start your own business on the internet. It's literally your whole life. But you could do more than me. The fuck I could.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1148.353

I don't know math. I don't know science. Dude, bowling. Sports, yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1164.067

Yeah, but I don't think a white red-headed guy can teach that.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1179.421

You could do all music.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1180.481

But by the way, think about this. Now the generations below us, how old is like Nirvana to them now?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1187.567

Think about that.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1189.148

We have a radio station here in LA called K Earth 101. And when I first moved to LA, it was the oldies, which was the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Yeah. Now it's the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I can't believe it. That's oldies. The 90s.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1218.632

Chapel Roan. That's a newie. Fuck. Sabrina Carpenter. That's a newie.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1225.275

We're oldie, buddy.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

123.187

So what do you mean? It's like every day for them.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1233.697

Yeah, because you got to think. Remember that kid that was at the show? He was 16 years old. You think of his world. We're old. We're fucking old, dude.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1294.266

You're not doing a good job, that's for sure, because no one does selling better than Shopify. It's home of the number one checkout on the planet. We've been shipping you guys merch since we started this show, and thankfully for Shopify, it makes it so simple, so easy, put into one easy-to-use place for us and everyone.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1342.184

Go to shopify.com slash bad friends to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com slash bad friends. HelloFresh.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

135.683

Scared.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1365.577

That's right. It's easy to find time to eat well with 50 wholesome, hassle-free meals to choose from each week delivered to your door. Look, Bob and I are on the run. We're on the road. We're on the move. We're moving and shaking. And we need something fast and wonderful and delicious and easy.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1378.18

That's why HelloFresh's 15-minute meals are done in just three simple steps so you can eat better this year without all the hassle.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1388.87

It does taste restaurant quality.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1391.351

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Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1414.666

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Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1436.318

A tiny little pick-me-up for getting through the day or days ahead. A tiny little bottle and very big energy.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1454.604

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Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1477.266

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Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1492.341

Check out the one-hour energy shot and conquer your day. Visit 5hourenergy.com to find a retailer near you and try the limited-time one-hour energy shot. One less hour in the day, challenge accepted.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1517.729

Oh, my God. For that generation, is he not? Chalamet is kind of like I was going to say Newman, but Chalamet is kind of like, who's the best comparatively old actor to Chalamet? He would be like, Paul Newman's not too far off.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1535.064

Brando. But De Niro was very brand specific, right? Brando was more broad. Newman was more like him because he was very traditionally handsome. Jimmy was more, Jimmy had a lot of character based stuff too. Like he was very kind of, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard. Think about this.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

159.767

Mm-mm.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1663.144

What is cinema is going to be us, I guess. It's just going to be alive. It'll be a thing that's happening. I think performance art will morph into life. Art will just become life. They'll be merged into one. You'll just be seeing live performance art. Like now, I walked down the street the other day in New York and these girls were doing a fucking full TikTok coordinated dance.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1680.892

Their phone was on the window. They're in the middle of the street. They don't even care about the world around them. We'll just continue to be immersed in this where people are making their own... their own realities through virtual reality.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1692.418

And they'll just live through that.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1769.085

Imagine what that feels like.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1774.309

Yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1775.691

Yeah, but we never put out an award-winning performance.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1778.995

Hmm. You think so? I don't think we'll- No, I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. You know what this is? What? This show should be called Bare Minimum.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

190.146

I don't know, but let me say this. Donald Trump, please don't get rid of Koreans. Like, please. Mexicans are fine. Get rid of them.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1926.923

Oh boy, that hurt. It hurt. And what toppled that over the worst? The server comes to the table the other night, right after you tell that story, and the server goes, sorry, I don't know who you guys are. Yeah. That's okay. She goes, do you know Adam Ray? Yeah, I remember that.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1940.411

I didn't get mad. You were bummed.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

1996.801

Oh, wow.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2028.681

Well, you're my hero. And every time I do bad in front of you, it breaks my heart.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2034.244

Did you like that? That's not even remotely true.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2037.626

You know, that's not even remotely true. In fact, in fact, in fact, in fact, in front of like famous people? No, I don't have any good stories of like famous people coming to see me. The only good story I had was when Catherine O'Hara came to see me.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2048.713

At the improv.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2052.835

I've never told that on the show.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2054.576

I have told this story.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2056.236

I was auditioning for a show. He did a TV show for HBO. Okay. I auditioned for the show. Yeah. And then by way of somehow through a manager or something, she obviously is so close with guest, she came and saw me at the improv and somebody was like, hey, I think Catherine O'Hara is here to see you. Wow. And I was like, fuck, really? I was so bummed. I was by the bar.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

207.046

we're law abiding i gotta say something while the woman who cleans the house sometimes your house i got scared because i thought what if she is she gonna get gone and then i asked her and i said uh i said hey you know if uh you know if i gotta blow the whistle you know what what do i do yeah i did and she said i'm from new mexico and i was like what

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2077.468

I was like, fuck, this is not good. Because what the fuck am I going to do, right? I go up. I have a fine set. It was good. Of course you did. Well, the rhythm was nice. The room was good. And then I go back. I nervously walked by. And then I go into the green room. And I was like, oh, I wanna go say hi, maybe. And then the guy that was working at the booth was like, she left.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2102.446

I was like, fuck, dude. And he was like, no, no, no, no. She sat, watched your whole show, was laughing. And then as soon as you got done, she got up and she went back home. And I never heard about it ever again.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2113.292

I never spoke to him about it. I never heard anything about it. Wow. Kind of crazy. That's cool, dude. It felt so rockstar. I don't know if she caught wind. I don't even know how it happened that it was like, I'm going to go watch that guy.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2151.165

No chance. And Josh, by the way, reach out. He's not mad.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2159.407

Imagine if he emails carlosonthebooth at gmail.com and he's like, please tell Bobby that I do love him.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2170.669

Sometimes we foul tip it. We're gonna foul tip it.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2175.982

Who's here?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2194.727

I think you nailed it. That's it, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. Welcome back to the show, Dax Flame, everybody.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

22.189

Come see me. Go to andrewsantino.com for those tickets. andrewsantino.com

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2209.32

What did we do in the exercise? What did we do?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2213.443

Can I see your three-point stance? Wow.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2219.748

Uh, no, just shooting. You guys were just shooting together? Mm-hmm. How long do you shoot for? Uh, maybe 30 minutes to an hour. And do you break a sweat or no? Yes.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2253.542

Those are, that's like Normandy.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2260.728

No. Do you go to the beach?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2265.312

You shouldn't. You don't know what's out there.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2285.131

Would you play dead in war, do you think? In a movie or in- In real war.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2305.363

Those boats. U-Boat. Well, no, U-Boats are the submarines, right?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

232.437

Yeah, she's from Albuquerque.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2410.376

I would use you as a human shield. Yeah, me too. I think I would grab you and I would just have my flame shield. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're just getting... Let me see what that looks like. Yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2452.206

Dude, that was a brutal scene. What's been going on with you, Dax? What's been happening in your life? Somebody told me that you're seeing somebody now. I heard a rumor that you're dating somebody famous. Do you know this?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2463.977

He's got a famous girlfriend. He's being shy about it.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2470.804

He's dating Emma Watson. He's been seen. Paparazzi have caught them out in public.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2493.434

There was a paparazzi photo. I don't know.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2499.24

No, they are.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2513.758

It's hard to get the owl up at night.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2529.127

That's so easy. Bluetooth tablets are made here in the USA. They're prepared and shipped directly to your door. Take them anytime, anywhere, day or night, so you do it right. You can plan ahead, okay? Bobby's been using this for a long time now, and I'm not kidding. The effectiveness is crazy. This guy gets hard as a rock, lasts forever. That's why he's late to the show all the time. Why not...

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2551.027

Get bricked up like Bobby Lee. You ready for the best sex of your life? We got a special deal for our listeners. Make life easier by getting harder and discover your options at bluechew.com.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2608.505

You can filter based on specific preferences, whether it's looking for a male doctor, speech-specific language, si puede, has availability that fits your work schedule, or has an opening in the next day or so. Look. You're going to find the right doctor on there for you. I moved to a new neighborhood. I jumped on ZocDoc. I thought, how good is this? It's very good.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2624.055

And also, appointments are made through ZocDoc. They can happen fast. Typically, you can get it within 24 to 72 hours of booking. You can even score same-day appointments if you're lucky. It's amazing.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2639.862

That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash BadFriends. ZocDoc.com slash BadFriends. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy, dude. So how did you guys meet? How'd you meet Emma Watson? I went to a Harry Potter thing. Like a meetup or a convention or what was it? A book signing. Oh, okay. Right on.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2660.4

Who was signing the books? Emma.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2664.343

Did you just run game on her? So I'm Emma Watson.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2674.975

That's my publicist, Ramon. Would you like me to sign a book? Yeah. Wonderful. What's your name? Dax. Dax, you're cute. Thank you. So are you. Thank you.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2686.279

Oh, wow.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2688.18

Is this the script for American Psycho? Listen. Are you a big fan? Yes. You want a photo? Yes. All right. Anything else?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

270.348

Of course. I do love her so much. What would I do? I said she could live at our house. Mine? Live with us.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2702.064

Oh, my God. I mean, not bad at all, really. Okay.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2725.08

I love horchata.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2727.882

Yeah? Yeah. So?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2731.503

Love salsa verde.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2742.629

Okay.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2747.492

Really? Wow. Wow. You've got quite the confidence little man. Thank you.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2755.563

Are you cut or uncut?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2765.706

And how big is it limp? Normal.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2781.966

Oh, close your ears.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2786.108

Great. Uncover.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2791.81

Really? Yeah, he's going to ask you out. Well, give me your number and take me out on a date. Okay. I can't wait to see you.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2807.242

hi-ho that was the place hi-ho hamburger it's owned by after the date what would you sugarfish what do you want to do to me um uh maybe i'm yours dex oh uh what would you do to me in the villa we have a villa

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2832.393

I'm comfortable with all of it. Tell me what you like. You want me to spit on you, kick you, pull your hair?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2852.702

Dude, I see how you got her.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2855.223

Well, let me tell you something. We've had a lot of submissions to break up your relationship. You know this? We've had women who have submitted to date you. Do you know this? Okay, cool. Put on your headphones so you can hear this woman you like. Right there.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2868.929

There's a lot of women out there. You really are dating Emma Watson, so some of these women need to get in line. People need to know. So this woman will be second. Let's see.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2929.818

She's a babe. Brood. She's a babe. She works with animals, babe. Hockey, babe.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2946.106

Yeah. Is this someone that might be your type? Yeah. Right on. Do you like hockey at all?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2953.849

Yeah. All right, check it out. We're at the hockey game. We're at the Anaheim Ducks game, and they're playing the Edmonton Oilers. Look at them out there. Which one do you like the most? That guy. Who are you rooting for? Oh, the Oilers. No. No. Fuck, dude. We got to get that part right. Yeah. The Ducks. Anaheim. Ducks. Anaheim.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2971.734

Orange County. Okay. Yeah. What position do you like the most on the ice? Who do you like? Goalie. You love the goalie. Nice, dude. You like to protect. Yes. Yeah. You seem like a protector. Yeah. Right on, man. And she has a four-year-old son. You can be comfortable with another young man around. A child. Yeah. Oh, now a puck comes towards you.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

2998.755

Well, no, he grabbed it. What if he puts it in his mouth afterwards?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3001.799

Wow, did you catch the puck? Do it again.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3015.554

In real life.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3018.457

Okay, before you do, her four-year-old son is right here. This is Milo.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3022.84

And you have to tell Milo that you're gonna take his mom out on a date because he's a little uncomfortable. He's got a tic.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3064.198

John Wayne Gretzky.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3068.092

So, I don't know if you're willing to leave Emma Watson, but bad friends will pay for you to take a girl on a beautiful date. If you'd like to take any of these women on a date, we will pay for the date. And I'm talking start to finish. Okay. We'll get you a car service. We'll get you a nice dinner. We'll pick up the bill. You know, movie. Whatever you want to do afterwards. I'll be there.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

307.906

This woman is like the love of my life. I love her. She's honestly like a member of my family. I trust mine. Do you play games with yours? All the time. We play hide, go seek.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3086.163

Bobby will have to chaperone.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3087.904

Would y'all both be there?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3117.682

You don't know. True. Exactly. Would you like me and Bobby to go on a double date with you and one of these girls?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3137.752

How about this? We'll pay for a date with you and one of these nice young ladies if you feel like, or many if you'd like, and you just report back and tell us how it went.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3144.781

Do you want us to be there? I don't think we'd want to be there. Okay. Do you want us to be there? Be honest.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3161.454

Thank you. Congratulations. You got a new car? No, it's not new. But I mean, you got a car.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

317.313

And she never comes and finds me. Yeah. She just goes to work. I go, Marco.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3178.462

I will say there's a couple hockey games coming up. Maybe we can get you to one of those hockey games with that girl.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3182.143

If you're interested.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3198.45

I believe that. I believe that. If you had an unlimited budget to take a girl out on a date to a restaurant or whatever, where are you taking her?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3210.924

Bad friends are paying.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

325.129

Pollo.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3256.43

Park Hyatt?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

327.89

Let me say this, Trump. Come on.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3276.583

We're sinking right now. Yeah, yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3280.205

You wanna go see Euro on the subway?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

33.792

Hello. Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, you waited for it. You wanted. We're coming to London and Dublin. We are. We're coming, dude. Tomorrow, pre-sale for the artist starts tomorrow. The code is BADFRIENDS. We're going to be in London and Dublin July 18th and 19th. 18th and 19th. We'll be there.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3302.432

That'll be cheap. That's cheap. Thank God. Yeah. This guy's going to buy a bullet train or something. Yeah. Have you been to Japan before? Yes. And you loved it?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3375.002

Did you ever write a song about this? No. You should. Okay. Sick in Japan.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3379.406

Sick in Japan. Let's hear it. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the debut of Sick in Japan by Dax Flame.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3410.193

Yeah, what's going on? You said unlimited budget.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3414.436

I gotta be honest with you. I kinda wanna send him to Japan.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3418.739

I want you to go. I'll go. Okay. Should we pay for him to go to Japan? I think that's a fucking rad move. Would you love that? I would love that, but no pressure. But how about this? Here's the twist. You've got to go to LAX right now. Twist would be you have to leave from the podcast and you have to go literally now. You might not even be able to go home.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3452.47

What do you think, Dax? Would you go to Japan right now if we bought you a ticket? There's two flights tonight. I do need my laptop.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3475.122

No, he's got to go alone because he wants to relive that solo experience in Japan. That's the beauty of Japan. Am I right? Yeah. Who shoots with you normally? My friend.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3485.148

Yeah, we met him. Yeah, I like that guy. I think we should send him to fucking Japan, dude. What's cheaper? What's cheaper? Mongolia or something.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3532.113

now I'm watching that's you and me and Bobby imagine that life the fresh air it does look really refreshing and interesting I really want to send him to Japan I really mean it I'm not even fucking kidding for the show I really want to send him to Japan well let's just fucking do it man okay fine we're going to send you to Japan look at that though cool

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3572.978

What time is it right now? What time is it?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3577.661

Is there a midnight flight? Would you really go tonight if we booked you a flight?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3582.485

Yeah, we'd send you home.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

359.014

Up, up, up. That's a good.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3593.267

Would you rather go to Japan? Could I do both? We'll fly you a round trip from LA to Japan and back. So you would leave tonight at midnight, 1120 p.m. You lose two days. You know that, right? Let's see.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3610.714

When you come back.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3614.996

There's only a stop at night. There's no direct at night. Huh, 22 hours. You willing to stop?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3622.48

Yeah. Yeah? Because you want to go to Japan. Can we stop him in Mongolia at least? There's got to be a cheaper way.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3638.167

He wants first class though, dude.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3647.467

$20,000? That's how much it costs to go to fucking Japan. Both ways or just one way?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3667.856

Imagine how many little Japanese guys can do that. They just do that all the time. Like little Japanese businessmen, they fly that all the time. Why do you have to be little? Huh? Some of them are bigger. Which ones? That's true. Yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3679.686

Let me say this, and I'm not kidding. I'm not making a joke. When you get back from New York, you call the boys, and we are immediately going to book you a flight to Japan.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3690.636

No, I want to now. Cool. So we will do it. The boys know we will book you a flight to Japan. I want to go though.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3723.384

Will you go to Korea with us? Yeah. Dude, how funny if he got sick again in Japan? Oh, I'm going to get him sick. The second time? Yeah, yeah. We can plan that. One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. We get him sick on purpose for the second trip to Japan. Do you speak Japanese? No. Try.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3739.257

Good.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3739.898

Very good. That's all you need to know.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3741.519

Dude, I thought it was a Japanese dude. Say it again. When they walk into the restaurant? Yeah. Yeah, I get that.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3751.307

I know.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

385.229

I know what a sickle is.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3857.482

Okay. How many? One, two. You seem to be losing your accent, sir. Where are you from?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3864.943

Texas. You're from Texas? Yeah. What part? Dallas. Really? Where? Oh, my cousins live in Dallas. They just moved there. Which area? North of Dallas.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3881.969

Nice.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3887.972

No. Wow. That's like a flight to Japan.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3901.718

Is that what you're doing? You selling everything because you're moving to Japan? Yeah. Did something happen?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3972.56

Did you say Dak smells weird? One of our brothers- Yeah, smells weird.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

3983.253

How do you feel about that, bud? Do you think Dak smells weird? Is that how you perceive him?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

403.876

You dumb dumb. I'm shocked. You're all dumb dumbs, dude. Slow down there. All right. For once I'm right. It's almost the exact same thing.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4040.812

Because Bobby's willing to apologize. Because let me say something about my best friend, Bobby Lee. He will make up for his mistakes. Always. Am I right? Am I right?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4053.546

You make good. You always make good. You always have. He's done everyone right in this room.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4089.135

I believe every second of it.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

410.221

What? A sickle? A scythe is just a longer handed.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4190.832

From COVID? So you can't smell at all?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4193.753

Seriously?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4194.994

Nothing?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4196.475

Oh, my God. Now do you feel bad?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4206.223

You don't.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4277.307

Thank you. But you know what? Buffy occasionally will use comedy to deflect when he's uncomfortable. So maybe her beauty blew him away.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4288.956

Okay.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4290.217

No, that's not, no. What? It was a joke. Tell her, clearly he's kidding.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4296.042

Okay.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4304.632

Have you ever been offended by us on this show?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

4307.794

Good.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

438.575

Number one. Yeah. How do they pick cotton today? I do want to know. I actually don't know. It's got to be a big machine, a big machine that forks it up. Right. Today, cotton is almost exclusively picked by using large machines called cotton pickers, which sounds racist. But, dude, you know, little white boy, get away from that cotton picker.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

466.65

No way. You and me, we'd fold immediately. My back would hurt. You would be sweating.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

497.138

Dude, we would get nothing done.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

499.699

And then you would smoke and light a field on fire on accident. Oh, yeah, yeah. We would get fired. Oh. Well, it's interesting they never got little people to do cotton painting because it's so low to the ground, you don't have to bend over.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

509.683

You send them out.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

513.865

We would never last if we weren't in this. Do you realize if we weren't living right now, you and I would be fucked?

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

53.624

We may not come for a while after that. London and Dublin, we're coming to see you. We're so excited. Artist presale starts tomorrow. The code is bad friends. And then it's on sale to the public on Friday, February 14th. Get the artist presale ticket so they don't jack up the prices. Everyone on the internet. Go get them. Go get it. Code is bad friends.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

549.994

You think so? Because a lot of people went and starved to death because they did the bare minimum. If you couldn't contribute, you were gone. You were dead. Bare minimum today, you get away with anything you want.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

560.727

Yeah.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

562.889

No, keep saying. Because bare minimum today, just you can get by, but you have so many resources. Back then, what would you do to get food? You're not going to hunt.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

575.945

What do you think your skill set would have been? That's my point.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

606.074

Okay, well, that's not the minimum. That's good. That's good work ethic.

Bad Friends

Sick In Japan

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Oh, I see it now.

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Sick In Japan

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Get them in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Sick In Japan

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Well, no hats, no loose fitting clothes.

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Sick In Japan

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Yeah, no Timberland boots. I know what you're... Yeah, yeah.

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Sick In Japan

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You a hooker. This all is just a front for you being a hooker.

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Sick In Japan

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I've tried to have sex on opioids.

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Sick In Japan

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You can't get hard. It's hard.

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Sick In Japan

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Right from the opium.

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Sick In Japan

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Gotta do it. Yeah, yeah. I saw a TikTok video the other day. There's people just posting how to make cocaine on TikTok. Do you know this? Yeah, I want to know. They put it behind different kinds of music. But there was like guys, it was just like with music. And he was just showing like the coca leaves in the barrel and all that stuff. Now, coca leaves are different than cacao. Cacao is chocolate.

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Sick In Japan

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But they're cousins. really chocolate and coca coca cocaine coca leaves and coca chocolate i think are like cousin plants

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Sick In Japan

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I think so.

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Sick In Japan

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Yeah, coca, the plant.

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Sick In Japan

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It's worldwide psychoactive alkaloid cocaine. So if I, first of all- And then chocolate plant is the coca plant, right?

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Sick In Japan

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Well, they started chewing on it. That's how they found out the powers of it. They chewed on it and it gave them energy.

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Sick In Japan

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Who started cocaine? Mexicans. And how?

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Sick In Japan

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Like, here's what we're saying, right? Albert Neiman isolated an active ingredient called coca leaves, which he named cocaine. Well, that's like I found out, you know how microwaves were invented?

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Sick In Japan

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There was a guy who had a bar of chocolate in his pocket and he was working near a radiator, a radioactive radiator or whatever, and it melted because he was standing next to it. And he was like, oh, shit.

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Sick In Japan

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Look it up, how microwave. Watch, the first microwave. It was a guy, he had a fucking bar of chocolate in his pocket. And it melted because he was too close to this radiator or whatever that's called. I'm saying it wrong. American engineer Percy Spencer. Spencer was working with a radar set when he noticed a candy bar in his pocket had melted.

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Sick In Japan

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He discovered the magnetron tube in the radar set was emitting microwaves that generated heat, melting the bar of chocolate in his pocket. That's how fucking dumb we are.

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So all accident.

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No, you have to.

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Yeah.

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A pet rabbit? Yeah.

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American, American, I love you. Did you see the protest this morning in San Diego?

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Sick In Japan

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Also.

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Also that teacher. What? We got to get that guy. We do? Where the fuck is he? Yeah, yeah. Belittling my friend in front of people? That makes you mad? That pisses me off. I wouldn't put up with that shit. Really? Leave him alone.

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You know, you don't really care about us as youth. You don't invest in us. You don't care about our issues and what we care about. All you want to do is get a paycheck, and that's disappointing to me. And maybe if you showed a little bit more love to the students and cared about our world and what was important to us, maybe, just maybe, we'd create a better environment and a better future.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

Party's Over

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This Friday, the amateur arrives in IMAX. I want to find and kill the people who murdered my wife. Critics rave the amateur is a tense, unpredictable ride. You're just not a killer, Charlie. Train me. That constantly finds new and inventive ways to up the stakes. The first one you kill, you let the other ones know you're coming. I want them all.

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Party's Over

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Academy Award winner Rami Malek and Academy Award nominee Laurence Fishburne. The Amateur, rated PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters and IMAX Friday. Get tickets now.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

Party's Over

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Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC. The final season of The Handmaid's Tale has arrived.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

Party's Over

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This is the beginning of the end.

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Party's Over

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And the revolution.

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Party's Over

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What's happening?

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

Party's Over

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Rebellion. Has begun. How many bodies are you going to throw in the fire? When is enough enough? When there's no one left to fight. Where is June Osborne? Rise up and fight for your freedom. The Hulu original series, The Handmaid's Tale. New episodes Tuesdays, only on Hulu.

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Party's Over

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Don't miss Good American Family.

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Party's Over

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Wait. The Hulu Original Series. Good American Family. New episodes Wednesdays.

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Party's Over

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Streaming on Hulu.

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Downfall

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The Hulu Original Series. Good American Family.

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Downfall

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Streaming on Hulu.

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Downfall

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It's graphic surveillance footage that appears to show Combs repeatedly hitting his then-girlfriend Cassie inside of a hotel. This is back in 2016, and we do want to warn you, what you're about to see is very disturbing.

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He donated another million to the football program at another historically black college, Jackson State University. And at a time when artists like Taylor Swift were speaking out against music executives for profiting big on their music and controlling the rights to their creative work, Diddy announced that he was giving some bad boy artists and songwriters their publishing rights back.

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Revolt reported that Combs wanted to, quote, see more creators flourish and profit as much as possible from their work. He hoped the move would inspire the rest of the music industry to change the status quo and spark a new way to compensate artists.

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Diddy's critics say that in the past, he'd been known for taking a hard line with bad boy artists, pressuring them into taking less than fair deals and reportedly feuding with them over ownership and fair compensation. So this move in 2023, it seemed like a reversal for him. He gave Biggie's estate, Faith Evans, Mace, and 112 their rights back, among others.

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The terms of the deals weren't disclosed, but the assets were reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even though not all of his artists got their rights back, it still seemed like maybe Diddy was trying to make up for past mistakes, like he was trying to be a stand-up guy.

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This is just... He thanked Andre Harrell, who famously hired and then fired Diddy from Uptown Records, and his ex, Kim Porter, who had died from pneumonia several years earlier. He thanked artists he worked with early in his career, like Heavy D and the Notorious B.I.G., also Howard University, his lawyer, the fans. And then he said...

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Surprise, surprise, he called it the love album, Off the Grid. The R&B album featured a bunch of other popular artists, past and present. The Weeknd, Mary J. Blige, Busta Rhymes, John Legend, and Justin Bieber, to name a few. The album got nominated for a Grammy, but it didn't perform as well as his earlier music.

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Where his previous studio album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, this one debuted at 19. And its first week of sales were much lower. But the very same day the Love album dropped, Diddy got the key to New York City.

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But just barely two months after the release of the Love album and the Key to the City ceremony, Cassie filed her lawsuit.

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Cassie filed her lawsuit just eight days before an important deadline for the New York State's Adult Survivors Act. If you were a survivor of sexual assault and the statute of limitations had expired, this law opened a one-year window to file a civil suit.

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Diddy's attorney responded to Cassie's complaint on his client's behalf, saying, Mr. Combs vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations, describing them as riddled with baseless and outrageous lies aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs' reputation.

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But then, as we said in the last episode, Cassie and Diddy settled, just a day after she filed, for an undisclosed amount with no admission of guilt. Both parties said it had been resolved amicably.

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Culture reporter Justin Tinsley looks back on all the accolades Diddy collected and goodwill he garnered right before news of Cassie's lawsuit broke, and wonders if there were signs maybe Diddy knew the suit was coming. Justin suspects there was a PR move at play.

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As an attorney, I can tell you that often the person getting sued knows ahead of time that the suit is coming. The plaintiff might reach out to the other party before even filing to see if they can agree to something without having to go to court. And there are some suggestions Diddy might have known something was coming.

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For one, a producer who worked with Diddy during this period, Rodney Jones, claims in a lawsuit to have irrefutable evidence that Diddy was taking steps to soften his image ahead of Cassie's lawsuit.

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Second, Diddy's lawyer alleges that prior to the suit, Cassie was demanding $30 million under the threat of writing a damaging book about their relationship, which if true, would suggest Diddy might have known Cassie was considering coming forward with her allegations in some way. Though again, we don't know for sure he was aware ahead of time about her lawsuit.

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So looking back, all that good press for Diddy preceding Cassie's filing Was that coincidence or preparation? After the break, Cassie's lawsuit inspires others to come forward with their own allegations against Diddy.

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Continue on ESPN and ABC. The cultural phenomenon The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is back with an all-new season now streaming on Hulu.

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The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives now streaming on Hulu.

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Oscar Wilde is credited with saying, quote, everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power. I've thought about this quote a lot as I've read the allegations against Diddy. The idea that power may have been at the heart of it all. Once news of Cassie's lawsuit broke, the floodgates opened and more alleged survivors of Sean Diddy Combs came forward.

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And one other person, a bit of a surprise call-out, to be honest.

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There was a woman who claimed she was raped by Combs in the early 90s when she was a college student. She claims Combs drugged her before the attack and distributed a recording of it as what she calls revenge porn. There was a second woman who alleges when she was 16, she and a friend were raped by Combs and a singer-songwriter, also in the early 90s.

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She alleges that Combs came back the next day and choked her until she passed out, concerned the girls would tell others about the alleged rape. There was a third woman who alleges that in 2003, when she was 17 years old, she was given drugs and alcohol, gang raped and sex trafficked by Combs and two other men.

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Combs said in a statement following these suits that he did not do any of the awful things being alleged. He called them sickening allegations by people looking for a quick payday. And Combs' legal team says he's, quote, never sexually assaulted anyone, adult or minor, man or woman. But then came a lawsuit from Rodney Jones, just three months after Cassie had filed and settled hers.

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Rodney Jones, or Little Rod as he's known professionally, had been a producer on Diddy's Love album, and he alleges that between 2022 and 2023, while working on the album and living with Combs, the mogul grabbed Jones' genitals and anus without consent.

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According to the lawsuit, Combs tried to groom the producer, attempting to make him comfortable with having sex with men, promising Jones he'd win Producer of the Year at the Grammys if he'd engage in homosexual acts. The lawsuit claims Combs attempted to pass Jones off to male friends. In his lawsuit, Jones talks about freak-offs, just like Cassie did.

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Why was this shout-out to Cassie such a surprise? Well, it had been four years since Diddy and Cassie had broken up. She was married to someone else, and they had two children. She hadn't yet gone public with her allegations of abuse against Diddy. But that was about to change.

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He alleges that Combs forced Jones to hire sex workers and to participate in sex acts with them, and that there were underage girls at Combs' parties too. The lawsuit described a web of people beyond Combs who were involved in supplying these parties with sex and drugs, sometimes drugging guests without their knowledge or consent.

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The court has already weighed in on parts of Jones' lawsuit, dismissing some of his claims and narrowing the list of defendants. Diddy is still on the list, but one of the biggest wins for the mogul was getting the criminal enterprise claim dismissed. The judge said Jones hadn't made a good enough argument that Diddy had conspired with others to harm the producer.

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But another big claim was allowed to move forward. Sex trafficking. Combs' legal team says Jones' lawsuit is, quote, pure fiction. They say there is no criminal conspiracy, and that Jones was not threatened, groomed, assaulted, or trafficked. They say they look forward to proving Jones' claims are made up and must be dismissed.

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Jones' lawsuit is still pending, and Combs hasn't settled with any of the alleged victims except for Cassie. Jones' complaint is over 70 pages long, and the thing that most stood out to me is that he says he's got receipts. His lawsuit contains images he claims are taken from videos he has. They allegedly show people named in the suit around the time of the alleged crimes.

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Images of Jones with Diddy. People who Jones says are sex workers at parties. Diddy kissing a person Jones says is an underage girl. Jones with a male celebrity, his hand on the inside of Jones' thigh. Many of the stills are bathed in pink or red light, reportedly something that was characteristic of Diddy's freak-offs.

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Jones' lawsuit also alleges Diddy had hidden cameras in every room of his homes, suggesting the possibility there could be more video footage out there. Again, I'm not involved in Jones' suit or the criminal case against Diddy, so I don't know the prosecutor's strategy. But here's what I can tell you based on my professional experience.

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When I saw Rodney Jones' complaint and the level of detail it went into on what the supporting evidence allegedly is and where it could be found, I immediately thought, which detective and which prosecutor is reading this and thinking, let's go investigate. Sometimes lawsuits can be written in a way that tips off law enforcement and gives them a roadmap.

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I see it in my own civil litigation practice all the time. This suit by Little Rod felt like an invitation to build a criminal case against Diddy, served up on a silver platter. The initial burst of lawsuits, Cassie to Rodney Jones, were only the first of many lawsuits against Diddy. There'd be dozens more to come in the following months.

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Because according to Rolling Stone, Cassie didn't see that public thanks from Diddy as the sweet gesture it may have seemed to fans and viewers. To her, it was distressing, part of a pattern of behavior by a person who allegedly tormented her for years. And it was reportedly this BET moment that compelled her to file her bombshell lawsuit.

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But eventually, the attention surrounding the allegations began to fade. For about six months, much of the public seemed to move on from Diddy's legal troubles. The news cycle moved on, too, until something surfaced that made everyone pay attention again, something that appeared to confirm at least some of Cassie's allegations.

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And then law enforcement made its move.

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That's next time on Bad Rap, the case against Diddy. If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-HOPE. Or go to rainn.org. If you like this podcast, please share it and give it a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening. Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer.

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This podcast was written and produced by Vika Aronson, Camille Peterson, and Nancy Rosenbaum. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Associate producer, Amira Williams. We had production help from Shane McKeon and Kiara Powell. Fact checker, Audrey Mostek. Story consultant, Sweeney St. Phil. Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian. Original music by Evan Viola. Mixing by Rick Kwan.

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Ariel Chester is our social media producer. This podcast was powered by the journalists at Impact by Nightline, 2020, GMA, and the ABC News Investigative Unit. Thanks to those teams. And special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Liz Alessi, and Katie Dendas. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.

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Cassie even referenced this BET speech in her complaint, using some of the language Diddy had used to thank her, saying that she was the one who was held down by Combs and that the dark times were the years she allegedly spent trapped in his cycle of abuse, violence, and sex trafficking, made to participate in freak-offs against her will.

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This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Please take care when listening. In 2022, Diddy was on BET jumping up and down on a stage, stomping his feet and pumping his arms. He wore a matching black top and pants, maybe silk, not a wrinkle in sight, with dark sunglasses and a handful of diamond necklaces. He looked classy, chic. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

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In the years since their relationship ended, the trophies and accolades kept coming for Diddy. He built massive wealth too. And according to other lawsuits, Diddy's abusive behavior didn't stop. It continued with other alleged victims. It would take Cassie coming forward with her lawsuit in November of 2023 for things to start to change, for more people to break their silence.

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In this episode, we'll look back on Diddy's life right before and after the allegations against him went public. He was flying pretty close to the sun with a daring rebrand, a new album, and some big time awards. But those last few years can be seen in a very different light now. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. From ABC Audio, this is Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy. Episode 4, Before and After.

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Sean Combs may have been born with that name, but he's rarely used it professionally. First, he was Buffy, Puff, and Puff Daddy in the 90s.

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Then P. Diddy in the early 2000s. Then in 2005, he became just Diddy. He explained why to MTV.

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There was also a Sean John period, and believe it or not, a swag era. That only lasted a week, though. And in 2017, Diddy announced a new name for himself on social media.

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He declared he'd entered his love era, even legally changing his middle name to Love. He told the New York Times he was remaking himself with the help of therapy and psychedelics. And this name change, this rebrand, it was something he'd been trying to make happen for years. He talked about it in interviews like Vogue's 73 Questions.

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And on talk shows, like the BBC's Graham Norton Show, even using the marriage equality slogan, love wins. This is the ultimate goal. I have become love, and love wins. Love wins!

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Culture reporter Justin Tinsley says just like all of his other name changes, this new one was a way to get attention and stay relevant.

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In 2018, Diddy went on The Breakfast Club, a popular radio show out of New York that for a while was simulcast on his television network, Revolt. The host said they noticed he was in fact different from the Diddy they used to know.

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He said that he was no longer the antagonistic, hot-tempered Diddy that people might have seen in the past. The Diddy that came from a certain environment that he says made him act out.

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The Breakfast Club hosts brought up the 2015 UCLA incident, the one where Diddy had allegedly assaulted his son's college football coach with a kettlebell. Diddy said, quote, I put all of that in my past. He continued to push the idea of spreading love, being love, bringing people together, getting closer to God.

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And culture critic Jamila Lemieux says he really embraced the family man persona, too.

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After the unexpected death of Kim Porter, Diddy's ex-girlfriend, he really began promoting his image as a single dad. He took custody of their 12-year-old twin girls, posting on social media, New day, new life, new responsibilities. Kim, I got this, just like you taught me. People magazine referred to Diddy as a proud papa and highlighted quality time he spent with his kids.

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I honestly say I'm the luckiest man in the world.

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They're really kind, great people. If the late 2010s were Diddy's soft launch of the Love rebrand, then the early 2020s were the hard launch. He started a new R&B record label called Love Records. He named his seventh child Love Sean Combs, and he was projecting love in the media too. A 2021 Vanity Fair cover shows a 50-year-old Diddy shirtless and fit.

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He's got the word love tattooed down his side vertically. He's in profile against a pink and orange backdrop with his fist in a black power salute and his mouth wide in what looks like a scream. He told Vanity Fair reporters in that cover story, quote, the Me Too movement, the truth is that it inspired me. It showed me that you can get maximum change.

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But despite his best efforts, Diddy's love persona didn't stick. Here's Jameela Lemieux again.

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Chance the Rapper, Janelle Monáe, and tons of other celebs were cheering for Diddy. And then, instead of launching into a song, Diddy started a 10-minute speech.

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Maybe it's because he was in his 50s by the early 2020s, a seasoned artist that the public had gotten used to rather than a fresh, new voice. And his music wasn't hitting the way it had back in the 90s and early 2000s either. Jamila says his biggest artists were behind him too.

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So maybe that was the reason Love didn't catch on. People just weren't interested enough in his music. He couldn't pull fans along for yet another name change. Or maybe it's because Love is so grandiose and kind of egocentric, right?

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Like when I heard about the name change, I thought, Diddy's about to show up on some podcast and announce a new religion, or try to sell us on a new spiritual practice or something. Could anyone get away with naming themselves Love? Or maybe it was because Love felt tone deaf to people who had been following Diddy's career for decades.

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Maybe it didn't match the reputation he'd made for himself all these years. The self-proclaimed bad boy with an allegedly bad temper. A guy who generated rumors about the way he treated women in his life.

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Kim Porter had once been asked about the rumors of abuse by OK! magazine, and she denied that Diddy had been abusive towards her. She said, quote, He has a little temper. Sometimes he talks to people in ways they don't like, but he's never been physically abusive to me. There had been rumors about Cassie, too. Rumors on gossip sites that he beat her.

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In fact, people honed in on an incident that Cassie later alleged in her lawsuit, how in 2009, Diddy allegedly pulled her out of a club in LA. They got into a fight in the car, and when they got to his house, she tried to run away. Diddy followed her and allegedly kicked her in the face. She bled badly from the injuries.

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Sean Diddy Combs was in his 50s. His greatest hits as a musical artist were behind him. but he was being honored with BET's Lifetime Achievement Award. Like an elder statesman of the music industry, he was being recognized for his years of service. Before the show, he joked that the honor was five years overdue. But standing on the stage that night, he had a long list of people he wanted to thank.

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Looking at the gossip site side by side with the lawsuit now, the echoes are uncanny. But the rumors, the rebrand flop, they didn't seem to slow Diddy down, at least not for a while. Coming up, a series of career highs for Diddy, then a crushing blow.

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This is the next phase in my therapeutic work.

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Breathe out.

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This is safe. We take you back to a core trauma. Breathe in. Breathe out.

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By 2022, Diddy was doing very well for himself financially. He'd picked up waterfront property in Miami Beach for reportedly almost $50 million and an LA mansion worth $39. He was seen cruising the seas on super yachts chartered for upwards of almost a million dollars a week.

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Ciroc's partnership with alcohol manufacturer Diageo was a huge source of wealth for Diddy, reportedly making him around $60 million a year. Daily on Tequila and his TV network Revolt were also big earners for him, as well as his music catalog. He was on the road to becoming a billionaire, hip-hop's third billionaire after Jay-Z and Kanye West.

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And by most accounts, in the early 2020s, the entertainment world still loved Diddy. This was when he won that BET Lifetime Achievement Award. He also won MTV's Global Icon Award at the VMAs.

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Diddy also seemed to be turning over a new leaf in terms of philanthropy and better treatment of his artists. He showed up to Howard University's 2023 homecoming with one of those goofy, oversized checks for a million dollars. He spoke to ABC News 7 in D.C. after the event.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

Introducing 'Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy'

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The Diddy parties were parties that everybody went to. Every celebrity, every influencer, everybody that wanted to be at the most lit party wanted to go to Diddy's party.

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Me & U

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To find her.

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Me & U

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The Stolen Girl series premiere April 16th on Freeform and stream on Hulu.

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Me & U

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Please, let her come back home safely. April 16th. The kidnappers plundered meticulously. If money is what it takes to get her back, we're going to pay it. The secrets they hide. You can't talk about this. You can't write about it. Are the clues.

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When it happened in 1991, Diddy was, as the New York Times put it, a largely unknown rap promoter. Writer and music journalist Doré says Diddy was buried in bad press.

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Before he got into the music business, he spent a year in the NFL as a defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams. In 1995, he was running one of hip-hop's two big record labels, Death Row Records out of LA. Now, after thanking God, Suge didn't go on to give a standard acceptance speech.

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But by 1999, some eight years later, when many of the lawsuits from the stampede were coming to an end, Diddy was a millionaire with a couple Grammys. His career hadn't been stunted at all.

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Some of that perceived invincibility came from his earlier success at Uptown Records. He moved up pretty quickly from intern to executive. Torres says Diddy thrived because he was tapped into hip-hop at the street level.

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Diddy helped turn Mary J. Blige and R&B group Jodeci into stars. But that success led to a power struggle between him and his boss, Andre Harrell. So in 1993, Harrell fired his eager young protege.

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Those rappers were Craig Mack and Biggie Smalls, and Diddy knew what to do with their talent. Justin Tinsley, the reporter from ESPN's Anscape, says in particular, Diddy had a strong vision for Biggie.

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As Biggie became one of the most famous rappers in the world, Diddy signed more artists to Bad Boy. By 1997, the year Biggie died, Bad Boy had an impressive roster of talent, including The Lox, Mase, Faith Evans, and 112.

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And it wasn't just about the music. Bad Boyz artists had an era-defining style, a look, baggy, bold, flashy clothes.

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But after an incredible rapid rise to the top of the charts in cultural power, Bad Boy hit somewhat of a sophomore slump.

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In 1998 and 99, Bad Boy put out new albums by Faith Evans, Total, and 112. But initially, only 112's album was meeting the high expectations for the Bad Boy label. What were those high expectations? The album's going platinum, selling more than one million copies quickly. Diddy's second album, Forever, was also not as successful as his first.

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Forever debuted at number two on the charts in 1999, but fell to number 13 within three weeks. He was nominated for a Grammy for the single Satisfy You featuring R. Kelly. But they lost to The Roots and Erykah Badu's You Got Me. The label's revenue dropped significantly. Bad Boy Records was mostly riding on the clout and running off the royalties of its legendary earlier albums.

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Still very well-known and cool, but kind of stalled. A cover story in the December 1999 edition of Vibe magazine wrote that Sean Combs was fighting to prove he still got it. This was just two years after Rolling Stone had called him the new king of hip-hop. And in 1999, Diddy faced setbacks beyond Bad Boys dropping sales. He got into more legal trouble.

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And I can kind of see Suge Knight's comment about Diddy wanting to be in music videos hanging over him. Because this legal trouble started with Diddy trying to control his image in a music video. Diddy was featured on the rapper Nas' song, Hate Me Now.

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They were producing a music video to air on MTV, just as more people than ever were watching the network. So a lot of time and money was put into music videos and the expectation was that millions of people would end up watching them. Nas and Diddy's music video was meant to be flashy, edgy, and attention grabbing. It depicted both rappers being crucified like Jesus Christ.

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But after filming, Diddy had second thoughts.

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Steve Stout alleges that Diddy punched him in the face and bashed his head with a phone. Diddy was charged with a crime of assault, but he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser non-criminal charge of harassment, a violation, and was sentenced to a one-day anger management course. He and Stout reached a separate civil settlement out of court. It was all bad press for Diddy.

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But culture critic Jameela Lemieux says besides his reputation as a hit maker, he had another source of perceived invincibility. He knew how to redirect attention and put his cool guy image back in the spotlight. In 1999, when Diddy was turning 30, that meant getting headlines for a new relationship with It Girl actor and singer Jennifer Lopez.

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She had recently had her breakout role as a star of the Selena movie, played a glamorous queen in the music video for Diddy's song, Been Around the World, and now she was making her connection to Diddy and his music world official.

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Everyone knew who he was talking about, Sean Diddy Combs, or, as he was known back then, Puff, Puffy, or Puff Daddy, the head of the other big hip-hop label, Bad Boy Records, based in New York City. Unlike most producers and record execs, Diddy wasn't happy just sitting in the crowd or getting on stage to accept an award. He was an aspiring rapper himself and craved the spotlight.

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The cover of Jet Magazine read, Puffy Combs and Jennifer Lopez, showbiz's most talked about couple. Other headlines said, call it chemistry, Jennifer Lopez and Puff Daddy. And Bright and Hot, superstar couple riding rollercoaster romance. A couple days before New Year's Eve in 1999, the influential couple went to a club near Times Square.

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While they're in the club, there was a dispute with a guy named Scar, who's deceased now. Derek Parker is a retired NYPD detective who responded to the scene at the club. I think money was thrown in his face, or money was thrown at Diddy or something like that. A shooting broke out, and three people were injured. Diddy and Jennifer Lopez fled the scene and got into a car.

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When they were pulled over, police say they found a gun in the front seat.

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Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges against Jennifer Lopez, but Diddy and his bodyguard were charged.

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As the criminal case moved forward, news reports pointed back to the City College Stampede of 91 and the attack on Steve Stout earlier in 99. And they began to ask whether Diddy had a pattern of causing violence.

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Diddy and his bodyguard pleaded not guilty to the weapons charges and were ultimately acquitted at trial. But someone was convicted for the shooting. A young rapper from Belize named Shine who Diddy had signed to his bad boy label. Shine had run out of the club that night with a gun in his waistband and some officers caught him while others chased after Diddy and Jennifer Lopez.

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Shine was convicted of multiple assault charges, gun possession, and reckless endangerment. He went to prison for nearly nine years and was deported back to Belize after his release. He spoke to ABC News about the shooting and his relationship with Diddy last year.

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He was an extraordinary coach. He was able to bring the best out of me. Shine admits he had a gun and used it as the fight broke out, but he says that he shot it into the air, not at anyone. He thinks that Diddy should have stood up for him in court. Even now, he calls himself the fall guy.

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In fact, when artists from his label went up to perform a medley that night, he joined them. Well, he actually started the whole thing.

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Diddy's representatives told ABC News he categorically denies Shine's allegations, including any suggestion that he orchestrated Shine taking the fall for him. Shine became a politician in Belize, but his music career, well, that ended that night in 1999. But once again, diddies did not.

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Jameela Lemieux, the culture critic, says the assault on Steve Stout and the shooting just didn't stick in most people's minds.

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His relationship with Jennifer Lopez was much more compelling, more tantalizing. The couple was a mainstay on red carpets and eventually, Jennifer Lopez's fashion headlines drowned out the more negative press. There were two outfits in particular that really defied her time with Diddy.

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That's a green and blue sheer dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000. It was so low cut, you could see her belly button.

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And this is when Sean Puff Daddy Combs became Diddy.

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After the break, his new image was all about being more than a rapper and record executive. It was focused on being an all-around mogul, someone even more powerful and unavoidable, even more invincible.

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Suge Knight and Diddy were already rivals, businessmen vying for their record label to be king. But Justin Tinsley, a reporter at ESPN's sports, race, and culture outlet, Anscape, says Suge's speech at the Source Awards was a turning point. their rivalry became much darker. About a month after the awards, they were both in Atlanta for the birthday party of a rapper and producer, Jermaine Dupri.

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By 2010, when Diddy was in his 40s, it was hard to believe he had ever floundered as a businessman. Sure, his Bad Boy record label wasn't as hot as it was when it first started, but he still had a popular catalog of artists he helped make famous. And in the 2000s, Bad Boy put out new music by Boyz n the Hood, Mase, and Young Jock.

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Diddy also released an album of remixes of bad boy songs that showed his deep connections in the music world. It included hit artists like Usher, Ludacris, and Missy Elliott. But Diddy knew the way to get really, really rich and stay powerful was to diversify his brand. It's what other rappers like Jay-Z were doing too. So by 2010, he wasn't just a music guy anymore.

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He had influence and money in fashion, TV, and alcohol. His wealth skyrocketed.

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He seemed to encapsulate the word mogul. And that's why in 2010, ABC's Nightline profiled him for a segment called Modern Mogul.

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Diddy was an early adopter of the idea that a celebrity should extend their reach beyond just one industry. And he proved to be really good at building a sprawling business empire. One of his first steps in becoming the curator of cool was launching his Sean John clothing line. The idea behind the brand was to introduce hip-hop fashion to a global audience.

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Music writer Toure says Sean John was really successful. Diddy even won the Council of Fashion Designers of America Menswear Designer of the Year Award in 2004.

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Diddy got into another popular celebrity investment, the alcohol business, by partnering with Ciroc. He showed up in many of their ads.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Tinsley says tensions between Suge and Diddy and their entourages were high.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Atlanta police said Diddy's bodyguard, Anthony Wolf Jones, was their prime suspect. Jones' attorney said he had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, and no one was ever charged. But the shooting made the friction between Diddy and Suge worse. And that's partly because their beef was part of something much bigger, the East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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which people have obsessed over for decades and we could probably write a whole other podcast about. But here's what you need to know to understand what happened next. Diddy represented one of the East Coast's biggest rap stars, the Notorious B.I.G., or Biggie Smalls. Suge Knight represented one of the biggest West Coast rappers with his own unique approach to music, Tupac Shakur, or Tupac.

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Thank you.

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and both rappers and their styles were vying to be the biggest in the country. So the beef between Diddy and Suge was also connected to a rivalry between Biggie and Tupac. And I'm not just talking about a couple of diss tracks like Kendrick and Drake today. Tupac was shot and killed in 1996. Biggie was shot and killed in 1997.

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knew his power, especially a young singer hoping to make it in a cutthroat world like Cassie Ventura.

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They were all there for the second annual Source Awards. It was a celebration of hip-hop, a music genre that was rapidly moving from underground to mainstream. The event felt like a pretty standard award show. An eager crowd filled the auditorium waiting to hear the results.

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Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. This podcast was written and produced by Camille Peterson, Vika Aronson, and Nancy Rosenbaum. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Associate producer, Amira Williams. Production help from Shane McKeon. Fact checker, Audrey Mostek. Story consultant, Sweeney St. Phil. Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian.

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Original music by Evan Viola. Mixing by Rick Kwan. Arielle Chester is our social media producer. This podcast was powered by the journalists at Impact by Nightline, 2020, GMA, and the ABC News Investigative Unit. Thanks to those teams. And special thanks to Stephanie Maurice, Liz Alessi, and Katie Dendas. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming.

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Laura Mayer is our Executive Producer.

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The two stars, only in their 20s and at the start of promising careers, were suddenly dead. Their murders captured international attention and really marked this era of hip-hop music. Their deaths also generated tons of unsubstantiated theories. In particular, there were theories that each rapper was killed by someone tied to their rival's label.

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No one has been convicted for either Tupac or Biggie's deaths. But this is the bottom line. A feud heated up after Suge Knight publicly called out Diddy's need for attention.

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Just like at the Source Awards, Diddy took center stage. He put out his first album as Puff Daddy in 1997, the same year Biggie died. It was called No Way Out and included the hit song I'll Be Missing You, a tribute to Biggie featuring his widow Faith Evans, who was also an artist on the Bad Boy label.

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That song was the first hip-hop song ever to debut at the top of the Billboard 100. And that year, Diddy received seven Grammy nominations, including for Best New Artist.

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Suge had made fun of him for wanting to be in the spotlight. But lo and behold, there he was, basking in it. In an interview later that year, Diddy was asked about the perception that he was exploiting Biggie's death. It wasn't just that one of his album's singles was a tribute to the late rapper. He also used some of Biggie's lyrics for the album.

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1997, the year Biggie died, was a wildly successful year for Diddy. Vibe magazine reported that his Bad Boy label sold $200 million worth of records and had the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 22 straight weeks. Rolling Stone approached Bad Boy Records about putting someone associated with the label on the magazine cover. Kirk Burrows was the president of Bad Boy at the time.

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In 2024, he told Rolling Stone that he urged Diddy to put Biggie on the cover. His posthumous album, Life After Death, had been at the top of the charts all year, and he was still on people's minds.

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West Coast rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, also known as Snoop Dogg, won Artist of the Year. East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G. won Album of the Year for Ready to Die. And Outkast, a duo from Atlanta, won Best New Artist of the Year. The night was filled with performances and acceptance speeches. And one of those speeches turned the 1995 Source Awards into one of hip-hop's most infamous nights.

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In response to the Rolling Stone piece that included this story from Burroughs, one of Diddy's attorneys said he cannot address every allegation picked up by the press. Diddy ended up on that 97 Rolling Stone cover, and Kirk Burroughs lost his job later that year. He unsuccessfully sued Diddy in 2003, alleging he was wrongfully fired. In the cover shot, Diddy is shirtless with B.I.G.

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written on his chest. He's wearing white Versace shorts and an oversized brown overcoat. There's water dripping down him, and he has black paint under his eyes like a football player. The title of the story? The new king of hip hop, Puff Daddy. I'm Brian Buckmeyer. From ABC Audio, this is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy. Episode two, Invincible.

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Sean Diddy Combs knew how to put himself at the center of things. That started with music and lavish A-list parties, but eventually it became much bigger. He ventured into fashion, alcohol, and TV. The whole time he proved himself to be an expert at branding and reinvention, cultivating this cool guy image and protecting it fiercely.

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In this episode, we'll trace Diddy's rise from musician to mogul, from the center of hip hop to the center of American culture. But that rise wasn't always a smooth ascent. Long before he was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, he was associated with moments of violence and brushes with the law.

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Were they just lapses in judgment or warnings that signaled a much darker side to his success?

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Before Sean Diddy Combs was crowned the new king of hip-hop by Rolling Stone, he was a kid with a temper. In fact, that's why he says he got the name Puffy. He'd huff and puff whenever he got angry. Combs was born in Harlem, but grew up about 10 miles north in Mount Vernon, New York. Writer and music journalist Toray interviewed Diddy many times.

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Yeah, yeah. Record executive Suge Knight and rapper Danny Boy won the award for Best Motion Picture Soundtrack for their work on the movie Above the Rim. Suge climbed on stage in a bright red button-down shirt. First of all, I'd like to thank God. Suge is not a small guy by any stretch of the imagination. He stands at maybe 6'2", and is definitely over 260 pounds.

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Diddy's father, Melvin Combs, was believed to be part of a heroin-selling operation, and he was killed in what some think was a drug deal gone bad.

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His single mom sent him to private Catholic high school. He then went on to attend the prestigious historically black college Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1987. But he knew he wanted to be in the music industry. So he started working on convincing Andre Harrell, who at least I considered to be a godfather of hip-hop and R&B, to hire him as an intern.

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Harrell was a former rapper but is better known for founding and running Uptown Records in New York City. In a 2017 Vanity Fair interview, Diddy talked about why working with Harrell was so important to him.

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Diddy wanted to be at the pulse of music too, and his determination to get the internship paid off. He dropped out of Howard his sophomore year and started promoting rappers in New York City, really starting to build his music network while interning at Uptown Records. In 1991, he and rapper Heavy D organized a charity basketball game at the City College of New York.

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It was advertised as a chance to see New York City rap stars like Run DMC and Boyz II Men compete on the court. And people flocked to the game. It was clear, even then, that Diddy understood how to create and market an event everyone wanted to go to. but he was young and inexperienced. The gym had a 2,700-person capacity, but almost 5,000 people showed up.

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On an August night in 1995, the four corners of the hip-hop world gathered at the Paramount Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Artists from the South, the Midwest, and from the East and West Coast were all under the same roof.

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As the crowd rushed to get in, 29 people were injured and nine died in a stampede. One headline from that day read, "'The Carnage at City College.'" Days later, a 22-year-old Diddy gave a press conference at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He looked so young, so defeated. At one point, he put his hand over his eyes and nose as if he were overwhelmed and exhausted.

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That incident followed Diddy for years. In that same 1997 interview when Diddy was asked about capitalizing on Biggie's death, he was also asked to reflect on the City College stampede.

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No criminal charges were ever filed for the Stampede, but civil lawsuits from victims and their families went on for years, directed at Diddy, Heavy D, and the City College of New York. A judge in one lawsuit filed by four victims found that Diddy, Heavy D, and the college were equally responsible for the injuries and deaths. Here's what really stands out to me about the City College Stampede.

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The Trial: Star Witness

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Hello, it's Robin Roberts here.

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Hey guys, it's George Stephanopoulos here. Hey everybody, it's Michael Strahan here. Wake up with Good Morning America.

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Robin, George, Michael, GMA. America's favorite number one morning show. The morning's first breaking news, exclusive interviews, what everyone will be talking about that day. Put some good in your morning and start your day with GMA.

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The Trial: Star Witness

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Good morning, America.

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The Trial: Star Witness

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Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC. FX presents Welcome to Wrexham. For the last four years, it's been this rollercoaster of magic. The Emmy Award-winning series returns. Come on, Wrexham! With an all-new season. We're going into a really tough division.

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Birmingham, our absolute favorites, with the arrival of Tom Brady. It's a friendly competition. Oh! Well, not so friendly.

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Imagine the opportunity to beat Tom Brady in sports.

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FX's Welcome to Wrexham. All new Thursdays at 9 on FX. Stream on Hulu.

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The Trial: Star Witness

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The cultural phenomenon The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is back with an all-new season now streaming on Hulu. Where is everyone at? MomTalk has gotten to a really hostile point. Demi's willing to kick Jesse out of the group. I feel like I'm walking into a lion's den. It's going to get messy, for sure.

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MomTalk is turning on each other left and right. The police are here. I can't see this going any other way but a pure bloodbath. This is so toxic.

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The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives now streaming on Hulu.

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Good morning, America. Put the good in your morning. GMA 7A on ABC.

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The Trial: Star Witness

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Yeah, the NBA playoffs are here. And it's about to be ridiculous. Unbelievable. Unfair. Downright nasty. Straight up. Can't miss. Don't blink. Grab your popcorn and strap in cinnamon. This isn't about who's next. This is about who's now. This time is different. The NBA playoffs presented by Google. Continue on ESPN and ABC.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

The Trial: A "Good Juror"

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The Sean Combs sex trafficking and racketeering trial in New York is expected to have a jury seated by Friday. The judge currently has 45 prospective jurors in place. Both the prosecution and defense anticipate the jury will be finalized by the weekend.

Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast

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Starte dein Testen heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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Wow. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

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Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2779.33

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2794.71

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2804.217

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2812.823

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2822.634

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

2838.854

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3978.05

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3989.133

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3997.236

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1628.497

Products. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1648.795

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1658.3

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1666.906

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1676.733

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1692.941

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3701.189

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3716.559

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3726.081

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3734.688

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3744.496

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3760.724

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

404.091

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

415.174

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

423.277

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

4499.838

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

4510.944

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

4519.028

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

2309.105

What are you looking for in a new smart TV? 4K picture quality? High quality and immersive sound? A sleek design? All of those are givens, but only the new Roku Pro series has all of those and the Roku Streaming Experience, an award-winning OS.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

2324.796

Get fast, easy access to all your apps like iHeart, where you can stream all your favorite music, radio, and podcasts all day, and regular, all-inclusive trips to Roku City. The new Roku Pro series, a smart TV built by the streaming pros.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

242.604

18 plus terms and... Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

262.458

Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One Medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical. Healthcare just got less painful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

274.184

When it comes to playtime, never let your squad down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Push your gameplay beyond performance with 13th Gen Intel Core processors. Upgrade to smooth, high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E. And maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search and head to Lenovo.com.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

304.172

Did you know you can now buy a Hyundai on Amazon? The same place where you order yoga mats, a toothbrush, and pretty much everything else. All from the comfort of your home. Just locate a nearby dealer. Pick your color, your options, check the price. And with a few dotting of some I's and crossing of some T's, voila, your Hyundai is ready for pickup. It's that easy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

324.886

Visit HyundaiUSA.com for more details. Limited availability. Pick up through a participating Hyundai dealer in select markets.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3651.124

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have supervision, enhanced hearing, extraordinary reflexes to be, dare we say, superhuman? Well, Roku's new Pro Series TV can't do any of that for you. But with a 4K screen, side firing speakers and a blazing fast refresh rate, it'll sure feel like it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3670.712

Elevate your entertainment using all your favorite apps like iHeart and play all your music, radio, and podcasts with the new Roku Pro series. Your senses aren't better. Your TV is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

5634.048

Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

5652.392

Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One Medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical. Healthcare just got less painful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

5664.153

When it comes to playtime, never let your squad down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Push your gameplay beyond performance with 13th Gen Intel Core processors. Upgrade to smooth, high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E. And maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search and head to Lenovo.com.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1809.502

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1822.69

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1840.263

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1850.774

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3638.089

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3651.275

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3679.341

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

386.243

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

5081.207

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

1867.325

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

42.185

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

4239.512

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

7624.829

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2189.569

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2204.929

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2214.456

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2222.522

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2232.873

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2242.623

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

2249.093

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

387.964

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

399.049

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

407.152

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4088.599

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4103.965

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4113.47

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4122.077

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4131.905

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4141.63

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

4148.113

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

183.614

You're listening to an I heart podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

1880.113

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

200.361

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

272.445

I clinically died. The heart stopped beating. I was dead for 11.5 minutes. In return. It's a miracle I was brought back. Alive Again, a podcast about the strength of the human spirit. Listen to Alive Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

2968.005

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

4207.14

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

4309.248

I clinically died. The heart stopped beating. Which I was dead for 11.5 minutes. In return. It's a miracle I was brought back. Alive Again, a podcast about the strength of the human spirit. Listen to Alive Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2078.671

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2094.055

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2103.573

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2112.155

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2121.976

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2131.735

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2135.736

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2138.197

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2171.627

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

292.637

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

303.742

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

311.825

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

332.75

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3469.466

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3484.838

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3494.358

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3502.945

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3512.773

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3522.52

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3526.521

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3528.982

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3562.41

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

4889.159

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

4900.244

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

4908.347

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

4929.27

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1241.092

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1254.278

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1271.836

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1282.364

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1467.439

When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1482.361

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw the whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

1513.792

Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

167.052

Great. He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

203.573

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I, like, saw a whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3209.52

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3222.707

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3240.263

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3250.794

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3435.867

When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3450.788

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I saw the whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

3482.222

Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

4810.526

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

4845.535

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I, like, saw a whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

119.491

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

142.767

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

1421.926

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

1442.515

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

1462.787

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

2776.943

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

2797.532

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

2817.804

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

4005.652

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

4028.928

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

4152.325

Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

13.178

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1480.575

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1495.941

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1505.467

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1514.069

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1523.87

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1533.626

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1540.089

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

1717.561

On that tape were ten vile... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

2.091

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

21.283

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4047.708

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4063.078

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4072.6

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4080.641

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4091.003

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4100.762

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

4107.224

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

8502.333

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

8513.421

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

8521.527

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

140.39

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1873.683

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1879.426

He went to a local church. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1886.871

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1898.922

He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1904.45

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1908.436

Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1914.955

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1964.065

Titanic. Charles Manson.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1986.22

It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery, big, big news.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

1991.926

When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

2006.843

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw the whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

2036.559

Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3376.57

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3382.293

He went to a local church. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3389.756

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3401.806

He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3407.312

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3411.296

Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3417.842

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3489.087

It was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery, big, big news.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3494.793

When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3509.713

A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I saw the whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

3539.444

Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

4494.642

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

103.95

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

113.448

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

121.51

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

131.873

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

141.613

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

148.076

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1804.346

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1819.718

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1829.221

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1837.287

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1847.654

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1857.381

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1863.863

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3687.162

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3702.546

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3712.054

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3720.12

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3730.467

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3740.213

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

3746.696

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

5613.92

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

5625.003

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

5633.106

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

88.562

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1514.432

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1529.805

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1539.324

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1547.911

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1557.739

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1567.486

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

1573.948

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2727.401

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2742.773

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2752.293

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2760.88

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2770.708

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2780.455

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

2786.917

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

326.273

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

338.098

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

345.442

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3979.924

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3991.03

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

3999.114

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1456.926

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1472.287

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1481.794

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1490.4

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1500.211

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1516.431

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

1549.884

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

165.592

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

177.416

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

184.778

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

205.705

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3311.48

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3326.848

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3336.354

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3344.96

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3354.787

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3370.996

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

3404.44

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

6035.012

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

6046.095

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

6054.198

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

6075.122

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

1926.972

She worked hard. Up at 7 in the morning, all day in school, and jobs between classes to earn a little extra money, and then home to earn a room and board to help me with cooking and dishes and a little ironing. and then study until midnight, I don't think she ever had more than six hours sleep.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

0.129

You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, so you say... Hey Meta, how do I make a latte?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

10.201

After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you're ready for some beats.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

15.368

You head to meet some friends, but can't remember the place.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

21.155

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, the next generation of AI glasses. Just say, hey, Meta, to harness the power of Meta AI. Shop now at meta.com slash smart glasses.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

7529.849

You wake up, put on your Ray-Ban Meta glasses. You're living all in. You realize you need coffee, so you say, Hey Meta, how do I make a latte?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

7539.863

After Meta AI gets you caffeinated, you're ready for some beats.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

7545.008

You head to meet some friends, but can't remember the place.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

7550.833

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, the next generation of AI glasses. Just say, hey, Meta, to harness the power of Meta AI. Shop now at meta.com slash smart glasses.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

0.529

He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

227.301

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

233.024

He went to a local church. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

240.489

But he was leading a double life.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

243.151

He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do. He then began entering the houses.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

252.54

He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

258.048

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

262.034

Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

268.576

Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

347.802

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Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult.

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A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

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A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I, like, saw the whole thing that happened. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder?

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He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father, but he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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It Could Happen Here Weekly 177

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In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos.

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In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos.

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It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen.

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He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity.

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He was an adrenaline junkie, and he was the star of the show.

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Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen.

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Has spent 24 of those years in jail.

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He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity.

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Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen.

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In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ended in tragedy. But the official narrative doesn't add up. We came to the forest. A new investigative podcast from Wondery, Campsite Media, and Tenderfoot TV peels back We'll see you next time. and allegations of a cover-up reaching the highest levels of law enforcement.

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From the idealistic dreams of young environmentalists to the complex motivations of local officials, this story challenges our understanding of justice, activism, and the lengths people will go to protect what they believe in. What actually happened in the forest? Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior. He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated.

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Andre Oswald falls. Lee Oswald has fallen. A shot has rung out here. A struggle is being in place. A struggle has rung out. And ladies and gentlemen, Lee Oswald. Lee Oswald has just been shot.

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It Could Happen Here Weekly 163

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In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ended in tragedy. But the official narrative doesn't add up. We came to the forest. A new investigative podcast from Wondery, Campsite Media, and Tenderfoot TV peels back at you. We'll be right back. and allegations of a cover-up reaching the highest levels of law enforcement.

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From the idealistic dreams of young environmentalists to the complex motivations of local officials, this story challenges our understanding of justice, activism, and the lengths people will go to protect what they believe in. What actually happened in the forest? Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ended in tragedy. But the official narrative doesn't add up. We Came to the Forest, a new investigative podcast from Wondery, Campsite Media, and Tenderfoot TV, peels back the layers of secrecy surrounding a deadly confrontation that shook a community to its core.

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Through exclusive recordings and never-before-released eyewitness accounts, host Matthew Scher exposes the hidden truths behind a nighttime shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. As you dig deeper, you uncover a web of conflicting testimonies, missing evidence, and allegations of a cover-up reaching the highest levels of law enforcement.

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From the idealistic dreams of young environmentalists to the complex motivations of local officials, this story challenges our understanding of justice, activism, and the lengths people will go to protect what they believe in. What actually happened in the forest? Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You know who he is because of his pattern of behaviour. He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated.

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We'll be right back.

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In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ended in tragedy. But the official narrative doesn't add up. We came to the forest. A new investigative podcast from Wondery, Campsite Media, and Tenderfoot TV peels back. We'll be right back. and allegations of a cover-up reaching the highest levels of law enforcement.

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From the idealistic dreams of young environmentalists to the complex motivations of local officials, this story challenges our understanding of justice, activism, and the lengths people will go to protect what they believe in. What actually happened in the forest? Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior. He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it. He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated.

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Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1043.297

Nobody could figure it out. I mean, they fished the same waters, had their fish inspected by the same officials, and weighed them on the same scale at the same time as everybody else's. How much luck was reasonable?

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1160.613

Another team followed them because they thought Chase and Jake knew a shortcut. But no.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1178.092

We know this because the other team had a dash cam in their truck that was recording, and they asked Chase what he was doing with all those extra fish. If you missed it, let me translate. Chase is explaining that he has a new lady friend in his hotel room who has never eaten walleye, so he's just going to cook one up for her. I have doubts. Do tell.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

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Yeah, Chase was reminded of that. And he had an explanation.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

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And let's not forget, nothing less than the reputation of Rossford is at stake here, too. Nobody wants to be the walleye cheating capital of the world.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1325.303

Even more for the walleye. That summer 2022, a quiet controversy followed the boats from tournament to tournament like a strange little storm cloud on a sunny day. As the walleye migrated east to colder, deeper waters, the fishermen and the cloud followed. Along the way, Chase and Jake kept gathering checks.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

139.655

By that, he means transforming Rossford, population 6,300, into a major destination. Here's what he has to work with. Five square miles on the edge of Toledo, a handful of budget hotels next to the Turnpike, an Amazon distribution center, and a Bass Pro Shop. Oh, and there's one more thing. A river runs through it.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1415.541

This is Mike Miller. He's been fishing tournaments since 2005, though he took a few years off to get his deck building business established. He's been suspicious of Chase and Jake from the very beginning, especially Chase.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1480.271

Summer turned to fall, and the walleye were surely getting tired. It's the end of September, and boats are gathered in Cleveland for the Walleye Trail Championship. That's Jason Fisher's big tournament. The event is also a fundraiser for a little boy with cancer. Giving back is not unusual in this community. Free rods for kids, a little swag to get the next generation excited, that sort of thing.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1510.211

At the end of the weekend, Team of the Year will be crowned. Chase and Jake are top contenders. Here's Jason Fisher.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1568.396

That's a fraction of their usual haul. In Rossford, they brought in more than 30 pounds of fish on both days.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1648.345

Mike Miller is watching all of this from the lawn.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1660.536

Jason, who weighs hundreds of walleyes every month, knows that.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

1768.466

What happened next was so weird, so shocking.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

203.328

Walleye are predator fish with big milky eyeballs that help them hunt in dark, murky lake water. Because you might be wondering, no, they are not in fact walleyed. Both eyes point in the same direction, but that doesn't make them any easier to catch.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

225.842

Locally, they're a cultural touchstone. Walleye are to Lake Erie what lobster is to Maine, or saltwater taffy is to the Jersey Shore.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

240.665

In Ohio, you can even get a walleye on your license plate.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

257.677

Competitive walleye tournaments happen all up and down Lake Erie from spring through the fall. Weekend after weekend, you see fleets of fishermen towing their boats from town to town along the lake for these walleye competitions. They usually fish in teams of two, and the basic rules are mostly the same.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

275.314

You fish in a designated area, the five biggest walleye you catch that day or weighed that day, and the heaviest catch wins.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

345.859

Aspirations of global domination. I see no way this plan could go awry.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

419.737

Rossford aimed for VIP service, and word got around. The next year, there were twice as many teams, and the purse was twice as big.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

516.489

That's Jason Fisher. He owns and runs the Lake Erie Walleye Trail, a series of roving tournaments that run all season. You just heard him at the end of the 2021 season when Chase Kaminsky and his fishing partner, Jacob Runyon, dominated with wins at the Walleye Fall Brawl, the Walleye Slam, and the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship. That's a walleye triple crown.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

541.832

And yep, the man who runs the fishing tournaments is named Fisher. He's probably so tired of that.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

62.995

Every small town that wants to be a bigger town has to come up with something special, claim to fame, has to be hyper-local and plentiful, which means it may be a little odd.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

657.694

The tournament regulars, they pretty much know each other. They fish together and against each other month after month and year after year. For the most part, they're friends or at least friendly. I mean, nobody is really a stranger here, at least not for long.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

738.772

In December 2021, their names and fish had just disappeared from the website, quietly and without any initial explanation.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

761.281

So really, only the walleye knew that a murky little mystery was about to unfold. On Thursday, April 14th, boats started pulling into Rossford for the 2022 Walleye Roundup. Chase and Jake arrived in style, hauling Chase's $100,000 Ranger 662 light gray. Two days of fishing would commence the next morning.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

818.393

There are storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Mayor Neal does not notice because the next morning is perfect. Sunny, 50 degrees, 20 grand on the table.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

833.524

Every other year, the boats had launched from Rossford. But remember, that's eight miles up the river from Lake Erie. So for 2022, the launch moved to Cullen Park in Toledo, right on the water.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

867.781

It's late afternoon and all the boats putter back to Cullen Park with their five biggest walleye. A tournament official inspects the boats as usual, looking in the live well. That's the compartment on your boat full of water. It's like a well that keeps the fish alive. And he looks in there and he counts the fish. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

888.658

And he makes sure that they're all still alive. That's part of the rules.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

919.16

That's 20 minutes alone, unsupervised, with your walleye.

Big Time

Dead Fish Tell No Tales: Part 1 | 2

924.784

Super unhappy by the time they're put on a scale in Rossford. But as police chief Todd Kitzler knows, dead fish tell no tales.

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But that would be cheating. After the first day, there's no clear frontrunner, no big trophy fish to get everybody stoked. Chase and Jake had a good catch. Nothing of remarkable size, but heavy enough to be in contention.

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It turns out that stealing bees from Lloyd and Steve are only worth something if you know how to get the value out of them.

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When bees go missing, these guys know to look to their left and look to their right. Because being a beekeeper and looking like a beekeeper is part of why it's a perfect crime.

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If you're a civilian driving along a gravel road and you see a bunch of guys in beekeeping suits with beekeeping equipment working on bees, even the most nervous and annoying among us probably aren't calling the cops, are we?

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And knowing that it's a beekeeper, someone who understands how hard this work is, it's a deeply unsettling thought to guys like Lloyd and Steve and Rowdy.

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After Lloyd's theft, folks who'd been only moderately worried about this problem were now on edge. It was undeniable. The problem was getting worse. So they started asking, what can we do? What can all of us do? One thing I've learned about beekeeping is that it's a really tight-knit community. All these guys know each other.

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When they're faced with hard times, anything is on the table. We're not so different, us and the bees. There's a saying in the beekeeping business. Take care of your bees and the bees will take care of you. That's beekeeper Steve Godlin, and he knows well that when you're in the honey-making business, essentially you're really in the making bees happy business.

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It's a business built on loyalty and firm handshakes.

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But this recent uptick of hive thefts put a stick in the spokes of all that. When word spread that Lloyd and others were losing their whole outfit in the fog overnight, everyone started getting paranoid. Like even Rowdy.

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Lloyd and Steve and Rowdy had no idea who was stealing the hives. But what they did have an idea about was how someone was stealing their hives.

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Thanks for watching!

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Despite the outpouring of support on his Facebook post and the sympathy he felt from the beekeepers, and despite the reassurances from the authorities that they were taking this crime very seriously... Lloyd didn't hold on to any hope. He struggled to put one foot in front of the other. He had nothing. Well, almost nothing.

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Lloyd drove his truck back to Montana, broken. But then, a few months later, something that no one was prepared for. A tip, a break, a miracle, really. This story is hard to believe, but more than one person told us that this is how it went down. In April of that year, 1500 miles away in Missouri, there was a beekeeper talking to his beekeeper friend who works for a bee company in California.

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At some point, their conversation turns to the topic of bee theft. And the guy in Missouri is like, yeah, I actually had some of my hives that I sent to California disappear just before almond pollination this year. And as they're having this conversation, Missouri and California guy, the California beekeeper is working on bees in the field. He's surrounded by hives when he's talking on the phone.

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And Missouri guy's like, why don't you put me on FaceTime and let me see the boxes you're working on right now. And California guy's like, sure, here. And he starts walking around the hives, showing his friend the boxes, when suddenly, Missouri Guy sees something very familiar. Here's Detective Andreas Solis from the Agricultural Task Force in Fresno.

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So Missouri Guy hops the next plane, comes out, and goes to where his buddy was with local law enforcement.

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The bees were swarming, mixing, attacking the other bee clans like a battle from Lord of the Rings.

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That night, they headed back to the site, a place Detective Solis was familiar with.

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When they went in that night, they were relieved to find that the bees were a lot more drowsy. So they were able to have a look around.

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Different colors and sizes of boxes piled high. Many toppled over. Several with the names and phone numbers of the owners scrawled or stenciled on. But when the search party happened upon a series of workbenches littered with routers, paint, and work lights, it was very easy to see what these crooks had been up to.

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If you're hoping for lots of honey, that's the main metric. And how does one make a bee happy? Well, if you do your best to keep the bears away and place your hives near fresh water and a delicious smorgasbord of seasonally staggered blooming vegetation, you're gonna get more honey than you can give away. You can raise honeybees pretty much anywhere we live.

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So as authorities started making contact with the victims whose numbers they could decipher, word spread rapidly through the beekeeping community, with the news reaching even Lloyd, the saddest beekeeper in Montana, who hopped a plane to Fresno. But as he arrived on site the next day, he couldn't believe what he saw.

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In addition to switching boxes, repainting and re-stenciling on bogus branding and phone numbers, the thieves had been splitting hives in an attempt to double their money on the Almond contracts.

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In the following couple of days, dozens of beekeepers were arriving from out of state. And after all the anger and paranoia and side-eye of the past few months, news of this discovery was a very welcome rallying moment in the industry.

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All of a sudden, the strength of the community was on full display as everyone sifted through the damage and tried to identify the rightful owners of the hives together.

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As beekeepers kept arriving, hoping to find their bees, Solis saw their emotions run the gamut. One beekeeper was almost in tears she was so happy.

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As Lloyd worked through the night to identify all of his boxes and try and do some damage control on the hives, he noticed that the police would hang around the perimeter at all hours.

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Just because Lloyd had miraculously been reunited with his colonies didn't mean he was out of the woods yet. No one knew what these thieves were capable of, or what sort of scene would ensue if they were to arrive at the site. They still didn't know how many of them were out there, or if they were armed. The only thing they knew for sure was that they were still nearby.

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Because that first night, Lloyd had packed a truck with all of his recovered stuff, but he had to leave some of his hives behind until the next day.

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But there are definitely places that they tend to do the best. Different states average different amounts of honey per hive. And the place the honeybees always seem to thrive the most, the place that is the Disney World, the mecca in American honeybee life, is in Montana. Montana.

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By the time Lloyd was able to get his second load onto the truck, he couldn't get out of the state of California fast enough. He knew he had a lot of work ahead of him, building new hives, quarantining the recovered bees. But after a winter spent stewing in despair, he was up for the challenge ahead.

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This was a rare happy ending for the victims of bee theft, almost an unheard of one. Everyone involved was jubilant that spring. But the thing that made them even happier than folks getting their bees back was news that local law enforcement had charged two suspects with the crimes, Pavel Tverdnov and Vitaly Yurashchenko.

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Pavel was the first name in the authorities' crosshairs, after Detective Solis was led to him sorting through some boxes at the original site.

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Once they had Pavel's name, they were able to piece together the locations of a few vehicles and properties that were in his name, which led them to suspect number two.

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Vitaly Yershenko.

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On the property, there was a small trailer among the discarded bee boxes where they'd heard Vitaly had been living. And a short time after that, he was found and told he was under arrest with the right to an attorney.

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Who steals bees? Ryan Friedman is a criminal defense attorney in Sacramento and was representing Vitale. After getting up to speed on the case, it was clear to the lawyer that neither of these guys were caught with a smoking gun. There was no strong evidence that definitively proved that they had taken these hives.

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But as for circumstantial evidence, as Solis explains, there were a lot of reasons he suspected these two. There was one time that Pavel reported his own truck as being stolen.

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Another time, both suspects were stopped in a rural area near Northfield just for a routine field interview. A sort of, what are you guys doing up here? And they were like, we just were at the casino and we had to pee. So we're looking for a place to do that.

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And then there was the time Vitaly had a falling out with another beekeeper just before that beekeeper left town for a family vacation in Jamaica.

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It just went on and on. But again, all circumstantial.

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Lloyd Cunniff is a third generation beekeeper in Montana. He learned about bees by tagging along with his grandfather when he'd head out to the hives.

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But the case kept getting delayed again and again. And public interest, which was once ferocious, started to wane. And surprisingly, even among beekeepers, the initial excitement and calls for blood died down too. And they died down because there was one data point that everyone in the California bee community was talking about. Hive thefts were way down.

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And while everyone was initially convinced that these guys were two cogs in a much larger machine, there were so few thefts after their arrest that people started thinking, shit, maybe it really was just these two guys. And then, just as prosecution looked like they were finally nearing a trial date, everything ground to a halt. Here's Ryan, Vitaly's lawyer again.

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And with Pavel, the assumed leader of the operation, dead and no smoking gun in sight, Vitale pleaded no contest to three counts of receiving stolen property, which meant his originally proposed 29 years and deportation sentence decreased significantly.

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And after that, things carried on like normal. Steve still loves being a beekeeper and talking about beekeeping. I should get a beer. If I popped a beer, we'll never get out of here. Lloyd got his hive strength back up and even started sending them to California again.

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And as for Rowdy, the beekeeping detective, he continues his work with his eyes on the data. I ended up being the person that would track the deaths from year to year. And in the two years after Pavel's death, the numbers continued to drop.

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And the numbers remained there into early 2020.

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In 2022, the most recent year for which we have data, reported hive thefts were at an all-time high.

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When he was a kid, the honey was always flowing, and the bottom lines were right where his granddad liked to see them. But then, beginning just a couple decades ago, even in this bee Eden, Lloyd started to see that something was changing.

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And after a couple weird years, he joined the growing chorus of beekeepers who were observing big spikes in their bee mortality rates, like Rowdy Freeman and Steve Godlin.

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There's no shortage of theories of why this is happening. The consensus among the beekeepers we talked to is that it's some cursed confluence of climate change, parasitic mites, GMO crops, and the use of pesticides and fungicides. But whatever the reason, Lloyd Cunniff's honeybees were disappearing, and the ones that remained seemed more fragile than ever.

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The yields that Lloyd had always counted on were getting smaller year over year. And for the first time, he was vulnerable to an especially bad year. That year was 2016 and he found himself tight for cash. But luckily for Lloyd, he had an option, an obvious one in the world of beekeeping. Because it turns out that there's a way to make more money off your bees than with honey.

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We've all seen beekeepers tending to hives in their beekeeping suits. I always assumed that as the beekeeper walked among the hives and started pulling screens full of honeycomb, that the suit was the only thing standing between the beekeeper and a thousand angry stingers. That once the hive is opened, all the bees think they're under attack and launch a counteroffensive.

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And as he took stock of his paltry honey harvest that year, he could hear something on the wind that he could ignore no longer. California was calling.

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For over a century, farmers have been paying beekeepers to bring their bees to their crops because they've learned that if you have lots of pollinators at the right moment, you're going to create healthier, more productive crops. So farmers pay big money for pollination. so much so that they've birthed an entire migratory beekeeping industry.

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If you're good at caring for your bees in different places, and you're comfortable living life on the road, you can make really good money renting out your bees. It also helps to have a good bee broker, basically a talent agent for your bees who books the best gigs.

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And on the migratory bee circuit, the sort of master's tournament on the migratory beekeeping calendar is in the almond pollination in California during February and March. It's the largest pollination event in the world.

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Lloyd had usually resisted the temptation of California because he knew the reason his bees outperformed others in the honey business was because he cared for them with a gentle hand, gave them space, took their lead, and only put them in terrain that he was familiar with. But for Lloyd, or most people, everyone has their price.

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If he took his outfit to California for two weeks and allowed them to be bees and land on flowers, a farmer would transfer him $100,000 up front. I mean, it's hard to pass that money up. Lloyd got down to work. His broker secured him a pollination contract with a reputable almond farmer, and he made plans to drive all 488 of his hives to California himself.

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Now, if your life's work has been spent caring for bees, pretty much the last thing you want to do is strap them to a truck and fly down a Montana highway in January. But that's exactly what Lloyd did. And it's an anxious moment. There's pressure on beekeepers to not only deliver bees on time, but to deliver them in good shape. Here's Stephen Rowdy.

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If for whatever reason the hives didn't make it on the trip, or something out of his control happened to the bees along the way, Lloyd's $100,000 could quickly become $0. So as he hummed down the highway through the snowy landscape with the metal music cranked, Lloyd could feel the literal weight of his livelihood teetering on the icy flatbed behind him.

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But I've learned it's not like that. Bees only sting when they need to. when they get pinched, when they feel that the hive is under attack, or when they're not getting what they need. When the honey is flowing and the plants are in bloom, one beekeeper told me that you could walk through the clouds of bees in a bathing suit and they wouldn't unsheathe a single stinger.

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48 hours later, when Lloyd pulled over on a gravel road near Yuba City, California, I imagine part of him must have been dreading this moment of truth when he'd walk to the back of the flatbed and crack open a bee box to see how his soldiers had fared. But to Lloyd's great delight, every hive he opened hummed with very happy-looking bees.

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He worked to spread out all 488 hives in four locations given to him by his bee broker, 120 hives per location. And when the sun started to dip, he bid his bees farewell and called his wife on the way to where he was staying to give her the good news. The bees had never looked better. That night, a thick fog rolled in.

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The tule fog in central California is known for two things, causing freeway pileups and helping produce some of the most beautiful orchard fruit in the world. It's one of the reasons that 80% of the world's almonds come from where they do, here. The fog helps the flowers and fruits stay just the right temperature during the winter months.

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In the place where Lloyd's bees were resting for the night, it's not uncommon for the visibility to go all the way to zero. The fog was still burning off the next morning when Lloyd headed back out to where his bees were. And it's here, as he pulled up, that Lloyd experienced the same unfortunate thing most of us will experience at least once.

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When you walk out to your car or open your locker or the front door to your place and you are confronted by the empty space where your shit is no longer there. He stared at the empty lot, where he was quite sure he had just left 120 beehives. This couldn't be right. He must have the wrong gravel road. He didn't know the area very well, and the fog was still clinging to the valley.

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But all four areas where he'd spread out his hives mere hours ago, boxes and all, were gone. What the fuck? In a frenzy, he called his broker. And at first, she thought he was joking. Until she remembered that Lloyd isn't the joking type. They alerted the local authorities. And while he waited, he did what we all did when the world wronged us in the year 2017.

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He went on Facebook to be like, Get a load of this misery. My livelihood has vanished. Someone stole my bees.

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As his angry posts ricocheted around online, he began to come to grips with the new reality staring him in the face. Losing bees is a uniquely hopeless position to be in. It's not like they're branded and tagged. They don't come when you call them. The only thing that connects you to them is the box you put them in. And boxes aren't exactly the most difficult thing to switch out or counterfeit.

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So Lloyd started driving around, scanning the fields, looking for someone, anyone who maybe saw something.

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But if it's a bad year, the opposite is true. If there's drought or flood or fires or if it's unseasonably hot or cold, the bees will get angry and frantic and desperate. If there isn't enough food or honey to go around, they'll wage war on the other hives, eating all the honey for themselves, killing the other workers and queens in hand-to-hand bee combat.

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In one of the fields nearby, Lloyd saw a young man in a beekeeping suit and he pulled over to talk to him when he received a very discouraging piece of news.

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Sorry, someone stole 300 hives from this kid too? That's just something that happens in these parts? What is going on around here? It turned out that what happened to Lloyd wasn't an isolated incident, not even close. While theft on this scale was unlike anything Lloyd had ever seen, for the beekeepers in California, they'd been hearing more and more horror stories about this kind of thing lately.

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Steve Godlin again.

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For the past few almond seasons, beekeepers all the way up and down the Central Valley were hearing about thefts big and small. Sometimes it was a handful of hives here or a couple dozen pulled out of a field. But some of the thefts sounded the exact same as what happened to Lloyd, right down to the fog.

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Steve keeps his bees in Visalia, California, and he was hit in the same way. And like lots of other folks trying to make a buck in pollination, Steve knew exactly how Lloyd felt to lose his bees.

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For the beekeepers hit, they knew that it was hopeless.

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It was obvious that the bees weren't just taken and shipped out of state. No. If you're stealing bees, the way to turn them into big money is to take them directly into a paying farmer's almond crop.

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And good luck figuring out which orchard they went to.

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I'd describe it as a perfect crime. That's Rowdy Freeman again. Rowdy is uniquely qualified to talk bee theft. He's not only a beekeeper, but also a police detective. And to understand why he describes stealing bees as the perfect crime, you need to first ponder this question. Who the hell would steal bees? A lot of times the thefts are what we consider an inside job.

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Mike Miller, Lake Erie walleye tournament veteran.

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Ten days in jail and $2,500 in fines, apparently. That's the sentence the judge handed both. He also gave them 18 months probation and took away their fishing licenses for three years. Before they were led away, both men apologized, said they were super embarrassed and very sorry for whatever that's worth.

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Meh, it's not worth much. This might have been Jake's first major run of the law, but this wasn't the first time Chase had been charged with a crime. For him, it was small-time stuff. Trespassing, theft, all misdemeanors. Plus, in 2013, he pleaded guilty to tattooing a minor.

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And in February, just months after he'd done that super embarrassing thing with the fish, he was arrested with his son for passing fake $100 bills at a bowling alley. Not counterfeits, fakes. Prop money. For movies. Says so right on the front. For motion picture purposes, not legal tender. Chase's son pled guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation.

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And Chase pled no contest and was sentenced to six months to a year behind bars.

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The Lake Erie Walleye Trail, Jason's tournament series, rebounded from the scandal just fine.

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Jason is holding up a small, oblong lead weight. Nobody is shocked because a lot of people already suspect Chase and Jake are cheaters.

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It's in Ashtabula, Ohio. Coincidentally, Jake's hometown. He's not here.

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Here's Mike Miller again.

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That wasn't the sentiment everywhere.

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That's Mayor Neal in Rossford. When this story went viral, global, there was a picture that often went with it. It's of Chase and Jake at the 2022 Rossford Walleye Roundup. Jake is holding up a big wrestling-style championship belt. Chase is on one side with one of those giant novelty checks. On Jake's other side, smiling, almost beaming, is Mayor Neal.

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Mayor Neal, a public servant who only wanted to make the best damn walleye tournament in the universe. He certainly didn't deserve any of this.

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To be very clear, Rossford got rolled by Chase and Jake, just like everyone else. But when it's your picture in the New York Times, well, the 2023 Walleye Roundup was canceled.

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We need to figure this out. Chase and Jake gave walleye fishing such a black eye, the Roundup's main sponsor, Bass Pro Shop, pulled out. Mayor Neal says it was a mutual decision. But this, he hopes, is only a bump, a temporary stumble.

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And yet everybody is shocked because, holy hell, they stuffed a fish full of lead. So that's how they did it. Total chaos. It goes on for a while.

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Of course they will. When you're a small town with big dreams, you don't just give up. You stay focused on the dream.

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On the scale, those fish weigh almost 34 pounds. Disemboweled, it's closer to 25 pounds. Inside the five total fish are seven pounds of lead and almost a pound of walleye fillets, which keep the lead weights from clanking around.

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It's a clever touch. Clanking would totally give it away.

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Everybody's recording the outrage and zooming in on the weights and the sad autopsy fish and zooming out to capture the bedlam.

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Jake is all by himself.

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That's Mike Miller, a veteran of the Lake Erie walleye tournaments. He's been suspicious of Chase and Jake since the previous season.

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Jason did his best to keep Jake from getting pummeled.

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There was so much wrath.

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They only needed 17 pounds of fish to win. They didn't need to cheat. About 100 miles to the west, in tiny Rossford, Ohio, Mayor Neal was not closely following the late-season walleye tournaments.

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Mayor Neal did not, at first, recognize the names or the faces.

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But it didn't take long to make the connection. Those same two guys, Chase and Jake, had won the Rossford Walleye Roundup back in April. And they'd been accused of cheating, which meant that in the Rossford Walleye Roundup record books, there appeared to be a pretty big asterisk next to 2022.

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Okay, pause. I have questions.

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No, I mean a fundamental question. The cliche is all fishermen are liars, right? I mean, the internet knows this, and yet that went viral. Like, it was a shock to people.

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September 30th, 2022. Cleveland, Ohio. A gorgeous fall day on the shore of Lake Erie. Dozens of people are gathered in a park for the end of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship. They're restless, agitated. Because the winning catch, Chase Kaminsky and Jacob Runyon's five walleye, well, those fish don't look right.

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Well, because it is. It's one thing to lie when there's nothing at stake. Every fisherman's got a story about the big one that got away, and ain't no way, no how anyone can prove him wrong. But here, the evidence just tumbled out in the most damning and humiliating and undeniable way possible. At this level of fishing, there's actually quite a bit at stake.

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The day they got caught, Chase and Jake were about to walk away with more than $28,000 in prize money.

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For a small-time crook, competitive fishing is a pretty good mark. Low risk, high reward.

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Unless somebody cuts your fish open, and then there's proof. Heavy lead proof that you cheated to win $28,000, which is actually stealing. So, a lot of tournaments hire people like Stan Fulmer, a polygraph examiner.

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Stan's been a polygraph examiner for 44 years.

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He's been told pretty much every kind of lie by every kind of liar.

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People have been known to hide fish to catch big ones ahead of time and keep them in a trap under a dock or near a secluded bank so they can grab them when no one's looking. You could have friends out fishing too, buddies who aren't officially in the tournament, but who'll bring you any big ones they reel in. The thing about fishing tournaments, they happen on open water.

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Lake Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes, but it may as well be an ocean. It's not hard to slip out of view.

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I caught up with Stan at a redfish tournament, Redfish Madness, in North Carolina, right after he'd polygraphed the winners, who were not, for the record, suspected of cheating. It's just protocol.

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Hiring a polygraph examiner like Stan is not uncommon in the big money tournaments or even the medium money ones. Knowing there will be a polygraph at the end is both a deterrent and an assurance. People who don't win want to believe that those who did, did so honestly.

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I knew that there was something wrong. That's Jason Fisher. He runs the tournament. He's inspecting those suspicious fish. He has his hands on one, and he feels something hard inside.

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Well, there's not a lot of room for mercy. You can't get arrested for failing a fishing tournament polygraph. But you will get disqualified and ostracized. But wait. Why didn't Chase and Jake take any tests?

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They did, but not all tests are equal. A lot of tournaments use what's called a voice stress analysis to see if anyone cheated. But a voice stress test is pretty much worthless. A study by the National Institute of Justice found that they're no more reliable than a coin toss. Heads you're lying, tails you're not. Not hard to beat. Polygraphs, like the ones Stan administers, are much more reliable.

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And we know that Chase and Jake failed at least one of those. Remember at the end of the 2021 season, when they won the big fall brawl, and soon after that they were mysteriously disqualified? At first, nobody knew why. But then it came out that one of them, either Chase or Jake, failed the polygraph.

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But that hadn't been enough to stop them. Failing a polygraph is not a crime. In the context of the tournaments, that would merely suggest that you had cheated. It wouldn't prove anything. But actual lead weights tumbling out of your fish, that's different. That's proof that you cheated. And if you cheated to fraudulently obtain $28,000 in prize money, that's a crime.

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It's called attempted grand theft. And in Ohio and most other places, it's a felony. Not a rules violation, though I suppose it's that too, but a real crime. And when there are viral videos of the shenanigans, the authorities, like, say, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, they're going to notice.

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Fishing is all fun and games until someone's charged with felonies, which both Chase and Jake were.

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Two weeks after those walleye were gutted, a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted Chase and Jake on four charges each. One was a misdemeanor, and kind of a weird one. Unlawful ownership of wild animals. It's perfectly legal to catch a walleye and kill it and eat it. But you're not allowed to stuff pieces of it into another walleye to keep your cheatin' weights from clankin' together.

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That apparently is an impermissible use of your dead fish. In legalese, unlawful ownership of wild animals.

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The other three charges were felonies. One was cheating. Really, there's a crime called cheating. And there was attempted grand theft. And finally, the coup de grace, possessing criminal tools. That's Chase's very expensive vote.

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In the spring of 2023, Chase and Jake sat behind a defendant's table in a wood-paneled courtroom in Cleveland. They wore matching gray suits with black dress shirts. Prosecutors played a selection of those viral videos on a screen up front. There's stuffed fish being sliced, close-ups of the weights, a whole bunch of angry people yelling at Jake.

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In the courtroom, Jake mostly stared straight ahead with a hanged dog look on his face. Chase seemed more alert, more tuned in.

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By now, everybody has their phone out, recording.

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They were there to be sentenced. A few months earlier, in March 2023, Jake and Chase had both pleaded guilty to two charges, cheating and illegal possession of wildlife. The other two, attempted theft and possession of criminal tools, were dismissed. But they still had to forfeit the boat. Here's prosecutor Andrew Rogalski explaining why to the judge.

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Jason cuts open the belly of the walleye.

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A secret compartment. A hidey hole. That doesn't sound like something you'd use only once. Here's the prosecutor again.

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Jason Fisher, the walleye tournament director, he had a few things he wanted to tell the judge before he passed sentence.

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We got weights and fish.

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That was nice, to acknowledge that. For all the attention that Chase and Jake's shenanigans generated, it was usually sort of a giggle in the background. But to folks involved, this was seriously unsettling. The emotion you hear in those videos, that's not people reacting to anonymous grifters, some faceless burglars. This was personal, and it wasn't just about the money.

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Now, as you might have already guessed, Shirley Sack, alas, could not influence one nation's whole economy. And General Coonsaw, on top of being a drug trafficker, was a warlord. One diplomat had referred to him as the worst enemy the world has.

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Beyond that, Deborah says the ruby deal Shirley was hoping for fell through. The gems weren't as valuable as everyone had hoped.

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She returns home from Myanmar defeated. This was a woman who survived and thrived in prison. But after this major loss, something changed. This was the first time Shirley couldn't charm her way into a better situation. After this failed Ruby scheme, she's drowning in debt. She has to close her once lucrative jewelry business. So Shirley, now almost 70, goes back to art dealing.

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Albert continues to help his wife, connecting her with wealthy clients, his own contacts, and associates. She rebrands herself. Shirley Sack, who never made it past 12th grade, would recount tales of going to Radcliffe and studying art history, which wasn't true. But the problem, Deborah says, was that Shirley was in a lot of credit card debt. She would go on shopping sprees to alleviate stress.

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And it got out of hand. Not even Albert's high-end antique sales could pay off her bills. Shirley's granddaughter Alyssa, now a preteen, would catch whispers of the adults talking.

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At the height of his career, Albert was an eligible bachelor. But that would change when a colleague introduced him to a woman named Shirley Dorothy Zaks Silberg Silton Machinist. Shirley was a successful art dealer in Boston. She was elegance incarnate. She looked like Grace Kelly, and she had the air of a movie star, too.

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Shirley leaned on something she'd been doing her whole life, scheming and scamming in the art underworld. In 2001, Shirley teamed up with a man named Arnold Katzen. They hatched a plan to sell two paintings to a drug dealer they just met.

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This is Shirley on a phone call with a conspirator trying to set the terms of the deal.

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You can hear her pushing for what she wants, but she's nervous. Something to know about art sales, or at least high-end art sales, is that they're monitored very, very closely. Because buying art is such an easy way to launder money, the government keeps close tabs on these deals. Especially if they're in cash.

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The sale of these paintings was supposed to take place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, in cash.

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There was a catch. This drug dealer she was planning to sell to was actually something worse for Shirley. He was an undercover agent. The FBI was after Shirley again.

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Shirley's sitting on the couch in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room, her hair piled high in a ponytail. Arnold Katzen and the undercover agent are there, too. It's tense.

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Right after the video ends, the FBI swoops in and Shirley and Arnold are arrested. They're charged with attempting to sell two paintings for $4.1 million to an undercover agent. Deborah gets a call later that day about what had gone down in Boston.

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After the dust settles and reality hits, the anger dissipates.

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The evidence is all there against Shirley. The FBI recorded her talking about money laundering and skirting around laws. Combine that with her previous conviction and friendliness with General Kunsa, and Shirley doesn't exactly come across as a Girl Scout.

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If convicted, 73-year-old Shirley Sack could have faced up to 20 years in prison. But the case never makes it to trial. She pleads guilty for her participation in the scheme, and she has good lawyers. They argue that she was a victim of entrapment by an FBI informant. And she agrees to a sentence of three years probation.

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As the story goes, on their first date, Shirley met Albert at the airport in a frilly dress. She looked at him and said, half-jokingly, Will you marry me? He was hooked. They became a couple right away. But then one fall day, when the relationship was still new, there was a knock at the door. It was the FBI. Shirley, glamorous, charming, perfect Shirley, was under arrest.

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Katzen pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge for conspiracy to fail to pay estimated taxes on the attempted sale of the paintings. He got three years probation, the same sentence as Shirley. From initial arrest to final plea agreement, Shirley's legal battles took over three years. The whole ordeal was incredibly costly for the couple.

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After all this, Albert and Shirley are broke. So they pack up and move to North Carolina to live with Deborah and her family. Watching Shirley self-destruct with Albert in the passenger seat was incredibly frustrating for the whole family.

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Shirley's granddaughter, Alyssa, again.

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He doesn't leave her. It's fascinating. Deborah was also in awe of Albert's devotion. Did you say to him, Albert, what the fucking fuck? Yeah, I did. Okay, good. Staying with Shirley might have been the only time anyone ever questioned Albert's judgment. He had built his reputation on his integrity and eye for excellence. He could spot an original Tiffany lamp and a sea of stained glass fakes.

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He wrote the rule book for collecting American antiques, because in his world, following the rules is how you were successful. Shirley Sack didn't follow the rules, but that was never something she tried to hide about herself. When Albert met Shirley, his sensibility went out the window. In his world of dusty old antiques, Shirley was a live wire. She was the most exciting find of all.

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Their fancy New York apartment was a peek into their baffling relationship. It was impeccably decorated, and the walls were covered in famous paintings.

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Shirley's fake masterpieces displayed next to Albert's priceless antiques. I bet the room looked pretty fabulous. Albert died in 2011 at the age of 91. Shirley in 2019 at 96. After their deaths, their belongings were packed up. Albert's furniture got sent off to archives and museums as pieces of history. As for Shirley's fake paintings, they're still with Deborah, proudly displayed on her walls.

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That's Deborah Friedman, Shirley's oldest daughter. Shirley had two daughters, Deborah and Donna. Donna passed away a few years ago. Debra knew her mom always wanted to be noticed, but not in this way.

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Shirley wasn't born into this elegant lifestyle. Her parents were Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Russia who moved to the States in the early 1900s. They lived simply, but somehow Shirley got the taste for the finer things. She had an insatiable appetite for design and decorating, which led her to pursue a career as an art consultant in Boston.

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She'd had several failed marriages and needed to support herself. Deborah remembers her mother being hardworking, sure, but she also remembers her mom approaching things differently.

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Deborah says Shirley managed artists, too. helping them commission and sell paintings. Like a man named Desi, who sometimes drank on the job. She'd employ young Deborah to supervise him.

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It was a particularly dramatic time to be involved in the art world, especially in Boston.

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In 1972, the first art heist ever pulled off at gunpoint happened just outside the city. Shirley saw an opportunity. She watched how these thefts played out.

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That's Anthony Amore. He's an art theft and security expert and New York Times bestselling author on those subjects. When he started doing research for his books, Shirley's name would come up a lot. Shirley's entrance into the art underworld started innocently enough. Debra remembers her mother was working at an antique store in the swanky Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston.

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There was a burger joint around the corner.

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Debra says Shirley was such a regular, she made a new friend there. Eddie. Eddie.

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Anthony Amore again.

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Shirley was the brains. She became Eddie's fencer, the person who sells the stolen goods. In this case, fine art.

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Shirley grew close with Eddie and his crew of shady characters.

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Debra remembers these guys coming over to their place a lot around this time, bringing Chinese food or pizza for dinner. We don't know everything this crew got up to, and we probably never will. But we do know of one big job. A heist. They would steal art from Harvard University. Actually, from the president of Harvard, Derek Bach. Bach lived in a private residence in Cambridge

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a sprawling mansion with 12 rooms and walls covered in art from Harvard University's own collection. On the night of July 7, 1976, some of Shirley's buddies found an inconspicuous rear window at Derek Bach's house and forced it open. They took a colorful French Impressionist painting by Eugene Beaudin and a moody landscape by Sanford Robinson Gifford, among a few other pieces. In. Out. Done.

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They made off with over $350,000 worth of paintings, all while the Harvard president and his family were sound asleep. Afterwards, they broke the paintings out of their frames. It was like their version of cutting off the price tags on shoplifted clothes. Now it was Shirley's turn to try and fence the paintings and turn a profit. It's around this time when Shirley is introduced to Albert Sack.

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Right away, Albert won over Shirley and her daughter, Deborah.

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Then there was that knock at the door. the FBI had caught on to Shirley and Eddie's plans to sell those stolen paintings from the president of Harvard. Shirley was found guilty of conspiracy to transport stolen property. In addition to a short stint in prison, she'd earned a nickname for her role in the Harvard theft. Deborah says the FBI called her the Finger. The Finger.

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What would become of Albert and Shirley's budding relationship? This well-respected antiques dealer was now associated with the finger. The optics were not great. This is when things could have gone very differently for Shirley. She could have had a terrible time in prison. She could have been sad, heartbroken, scared. But Albert Sacks stayed by her side.

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He read her love letters and visited her in prison.

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No one wants to plan a honeymoon around a prison sentence.

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Albert M. Sack was a pioneer of American antiquing. He was born in 1915, and he's helped turn collecting old stuff into a hobby, thanks to his popular guidebook, The Fine Points of Furniture. He was even a regular on Antiques Roadshow.

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For Shirley, her time in prison seemed like a generally positive experience. Her records detail a pretty active and rich time. Prison staff list her as polite, friendly, cooperative. She takes classes and maintains her social life. Family and friends visit it often.

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After a year in prison, Shirley was released into Albert's arms. He drove her to their new apartment in Manhattan. It was in a building on East 56th Street called the Bristol. Deborah and Albert had painstakingly fixed it up for her. It's around this time that Shirley becomes a grandmother and Deborah becomes an aunt. Alyssa was Shirley's first grandchild.

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So Albert was your grandpa. I mean, you thought of him as your grandfather.

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To Alyssa, Albert and Shirley's home was the epitome of posh.

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SDS. What was Shirley D. Sachs? Is that what it was?

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So it was all Shirley. There was no Albert in the monograms. It didn't say, like, Shirley.

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Even with a new last name, Shirley couldn't quite shake her past. Word got around about Albert's new wife and what she'd done at Harvard.

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Shirley needed to find a way to strike out on her own, to get the spotlight back on her. So she became a gemologist. Rubies, sapphires, diamonds. If it shimmered, Shirley knew all about it.

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By the late 80s, her interest in gems brought her back to the Boston art underworld. Through her unsavory contacts, she eventually hooks up with someone who has access to really valuable rubies, a man named General Khun Sa. Khun Sa was a military leader in Myanmar, which was known as Burma. Deborah says Shirley's interest in Myanmar was largely humanitarian.

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Shirley knew that General Khun Sa and his people were involved in the opium trade. She also knew there were rubies in Myanmar. She was going to help them sell gems instead of drugs. Of course, there was something in it for Shirley. She'd bring home the rubies, make millions of dollars on them, and step out of her husband's shadow.

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Fine furniture was a family business for the Sacks, but for Albert, it was more than that. It was his life. This was a man who'd happily travel hundreds of miles to hunt for a rare side table or stool. He had celebrity clients like Barbra Streisand. Harrison Ford knew him by name. There's even a section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to his family furniture collection.

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So Shirley flew down to Myanmar to visit Khun Sa and help orchestrate a deal. Albert stayed home, but he was thrilled for his wife. This trip would be a fabulous new adventure for her. Shirley records the whole trip on a camcorder. Later, she'd make DVD copies for her family.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

10. The Silent Witness

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

10. The Silent Witness

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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And in this particular episode, pregnancy and child loss is also mentioned. Content warnings for each episode are included in the show notes. Resources for drug addiction and domestic abuse can be found in the show notes and on our website, blinkthepodcast.com.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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So while Jake didn't quite understand the changes in behavior from his wife, he was determined as ever to communicate again. Working daily with a speech therapist at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital, Jake worked on getting his voice back. Here's Michelle Braley, the speech and language pathologist who was assigned to his case.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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It would take him about 45 seconds to blink in response, but he could do it, and gradually he moved up to using a letter board to communicate. The board contained five rows of color-coded letters, A-E-I-O-U, in the first column, and the person who wanted to communicate with Jake would go row by row, and he would stick out his tongue to signal yes.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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From there, Jake graduated to the Megabee.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Helen was still spending time in the hospital with Jake, and Michelle recalls her interactions with her.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Michelle remembers that Ellen had set up the letter boards throughout Jake's room so that he could study it and become faster at communicating.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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I asked Jake if he had memory of this, and he did. She wasn't a guest on the show, which is what I initially thought. Rather, she was front row, outside, with Jake on FaceTime, talking to one of the hosts as they walked onto stage, attempting to tell this host about her hospitalized husband in the few seconds they had before the show went live.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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So it sounds like, while the hospital staff struggled to reach her, Jake still did have occasional contact. But I guess occasional is the key word here.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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There wasn't much Derone could do with a restraining order, but a couple of months later, when his sister Varda traveled up to Massachusetts for Derone's trial, which was the trial involving Ellen and the stairs, Derone asked Varda if she wanted to go with him to see Jake.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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For the next 48 hours, Jake cried on and off in the hospital, refusing all medications, food, and therapy. The last year and a half had been absolute hell for him. But Jake had had Ellen. She somehow always knew what Jake needed in every moment.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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She'd lay next to him and paint a picture of their future, what they'd do together when he recovered, and the home that they would have, the family they would create. And for Jake, this hope was his lifeline, and Ellen was the love of his life. But then she was gone.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Jake did bounce back. On the third morning, when medical staff entered his room, he stuck out his tongue to accept his medication. He may have lost his wife, but that didn't mean he couldn't get her back. He was now more motivated than ever to recover fully and to prove to Ellen that the magical recovery they dreamed of was just around the corner.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Jake has told me that he feels that he's a very powerful manifester, and I agree. He's so driven and motivated, and he puts all of his effort into obtaining a goal that he visualizes for himself. In this moment, getting better for Ellen, despite their strained relationship, was all the motivation he needed. And just two weeks after asking for divorce, that wish seemed a little closer to reality.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Ellen came to visit again, and with her carried a life-sized teddy bear.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Hospital staff and a social worker inquired about this new home. Did it have the proper equipment? What preparations had been made? Jake had been making incredible strides in the hospital. Did he really want to leave now?

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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He could be transferred to a different rehabilitation hospital in western Massachusetts, close to where Ellen had bought their new home. Jake's speech therapist, Michelle, assured him that this was going to be a good option.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Unbeknownst to Jake, a family member had tracked him down at Spalding.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Jake's belongings were packed and he was transferred to Western State Hospital, which is a little over a two-hour drive from where he previously was being treated. Jake tells me that this was like moving from a five-star hotel to a Motel 6. But Ellen had put in a lot of extra effort to make the room feel more homey.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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She had decorated the walls with photos of the two of them, and Jake was trying to be optimistic.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Jake asked the hospital to help him make contact. Ellen wasn't answering calls, and she hadn't visited. They helped Jake set up an email account for himself, and his very first email was sent to Ellen.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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The hospital wanted to set up a call with Jake's family to go over medical history and care routine, as they do with all new patients. But at this point in time, Ellen was Jake's only family. Finding a time that worked for her took some time.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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The call did eventually take place, and Jake remembers it going well. He was in a wheelchair in the room and listened as the hospital staff went over everything in his care plan with Ellen, who had called in. After that, Jake said that Ellen never returned to the hospital. He was now abandoned in this hospital, hours away from his now estranged family, with no way to get in contact with anyone.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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With no one left, he chose to focus his efforts on his recovery. First, he needed to get his voice back. I've mentioned to him a few times how impressed I am with his attention to detail during his storytelling and just how much effort he puts into providing facts. And he reminded me that he was without his voice for so long and he is so determined to never be misunderstood again.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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in the hospital, that was something that happened pretty frequently. And Jake recalls one of these humorous moments.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Jake was now missing, the home seemingly abandoned, and looked to be that way for some time. Where was Jake? With Ellen having power of attorney over Jake's care, there was no legal obligation for medical personnel to divulge any information that they may have on his whereabouts. And so Derone began a months-long search for his son.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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practice that for like three months finally his speech therapist thought he had the phrase down perhaps it was time to use it it was suggested that ellen could be invited to a therapy session to see jake's progress and to hear him speak i'm like i don't think that'd be a good idea guys

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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Despite the opportunity to be with Ellen again being the main motivator for Jake in his recovery, he was hesitant to reach out after everything that had happened. They had been exchanging texts and emails briefly during this time, mostly about his care, given that she was still his healthcare proxy and his power of attorney.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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He thought about his speech therapist's suggestion for a week, and then decided to FaceTime Ellen instead.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

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The testimonies and opinions expressed by guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or affiliates of this podcast. After timing out of hospice care, Jake's motionless body was physically removed from the bed. The borrowed medical equipment stripped away, and then, just like that, he was left on the floor. It's almost impossible to wrap my head around.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

2619.304

Jake's face deflates as he revisits this time in his life. I apologize to him that he has to relive all of these memories. And he says it's okay, but that he still doesn't quite understand why everything happened the way that it did.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

2648.962

it seems that everyone who ever cared for Jake, despite him being under their care or not, still tried to follow his case and still tried to help.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

2718.695

Thank you for listening to Blink. This podcast is hosted and produced by me, Corinne Vien, alongside my co-creator and survivor, Jake Handel. Our original music is composed by the brilliant and talented Michael Marguet. We're so grateful for your support. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating, reviewing, and sharing this story with others.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

2738.525

For additional resources, updates, and behind-the-scenes content, visit our website, BlinkThePodcast.com. Blink will return with a new episode next Sunday.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

284.658

Jake's story is unlike anything most of us could ever imagine. The idea of being trapped, completely aware but unable to move, speak, or signal for help, is the kind of nightmare that feels almost too horrifying to be real. When people hear about Jake's case, they think about the isolation, the months spent in silence. But what's even more unthinkable is the pain.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

307.802

Jake wasn't drifting into some unconscious dream state. He was awake, and he was alert. And he felt every ounce of agony coursing through his body.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

334.983

the mental endurance it took to survive that, and while his own family whispered their goodbyes and told him that it was okay to let go. It's just beyond comprehension. But Jake refused to let go. He fought. And I had to know. Where did that strength come from? When surrendering seemed like the easiest escape, what made Jake keep fighting?

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

495.569

Jake describes to me how the voice from his heart was panicked, constantly asking questions about his life to the deeper, wiser voice that lived in his head. The wiser voice would answer and prompt him to seek the answers from within, guiding him to where he needed to be mentally to break down these barriers and face his demons.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

513.926

And it reminded me a bit of EMDR therapy or even hypnosis, but Jake had never done either of those before. yet he was somehow acting as his own therapist and patient, and then there's this placement of the voices. I couldn't help but make the connection between how Jake was describing these voices and where they existed in his body relating to the chakras.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

534.331

The wise one at the crown of his head, aligning with the crown chakra, which governs wisdom, awareness, and inner peace, and then the wounded one in his heart, the heart chakra, which is associated with self-love and the ability to forgive and find acceptance."

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

54.318

How could this happen? How could someone so vulnerable be discarded like an afterthought? Every new detail in Jake's story just leaves my jaw on the floor. Just when I think I've heard it all, there's something else. While Jake lay there, his family was left in the dark, desperate for answers. For all they knew, he was dead. Had he suffered in his final moments? No. Had he been in pain?

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

549.676

Jake's case is already challenging science's understanding of the brain and consciousness, but moments like this makes me wonder, what else could his experience unlock? Hi, it's Corinne, your host. You may not know this, but I'm also the co-host of Two Girls, One Ghost, the most haunted podcast in America, with my sister witch, Sabrina.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

634.437

For two months, Jake would engage in these really difficult conversations, the sort of self-help therapy retreat. At one point, the wise voice told him that he had not yet grieved his mother's death properly. His heart disagreed, yet he was forced to face the pain of that experience again.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

78.746

And the most haunting question of all, was this the end of Jake's story? Would they ever see him again, even if only at his funeral?

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

853.382

It made me wonder how many other people there are that have to have those conversations with themselves. How many people are trapped in their bodies, unable to communicate with the outside world, thought to be brain dead, lacking awareness and any sort of comprehension. It's a really scary thought, and a topic that we will get into in future episodes.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

872.752

But luckily for Jake, he would not be stuck in this state for much longer. After hospice timed out, Jake's wife did not call an ambulance. Rather, she contacted Dr. Venna, the chief of neuroimmunology and neuroinfectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Venna had been one of the only doctors to give Jake hope, telling Jake... He thought he would survive.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

895.803

And I haven't been able to secure Dr. Avena for an interview as he's incredibly busy working on the world's most complex cases. But I am so curious how he felt when Ellen had contacted him. Did he really believe that Jake would survive?

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

911.741

Dr. Venna, hearing that Jake was still alive and needing help, had Jake brought back to Massachusetts General Hospital to the same floor that he had been in months before. But now he was under the care of Dr. Stephen Levison, who was the head of complex care at MGH. July of 2018, over a year after Jake was first admitted to the hospital, something in Jake's body changed.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

938.305

There was a small movement in his wrist, and Dr. Levison took notice.

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

6: Blink Twice

976.567

This was a miraculous medical recovery. Jake had been in stage four of acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy. No one had ever recovered from the stage before. And yet here was Jake communicating through eye blink.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

1.133

In the 1980s, a rosé swept the country.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

103.389

Welcome to Blood Vines. You can binge all episodes of Blood Vines exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

33.08

At its top was an imposing patriarch. Jack was a linchpin. Arguably California's best connected grape broker. While below him were his two sons, Robert and Michael.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

49.405

And beneath their wine empire, the Lichardis harbored secrets.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

59.95

What started as a scheme to mislabel wine, a multi-million dollar fraud, spilled into a blood-soaked battle for succession. It's a story of deceit.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

7.315

White Zinfandel. Millions of Americans flocked to the bright pink drink. Hey, Mike, I really like this White Zinfandel. Well, good, good. Now put it down. I'm going to try another one. White Zin even became America's top selling wine. But what you may not know is that this sweet drink has a sour history, linked to a powerful family in the industry, the Licciardis.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

78.053

And murder.

Blood Vines

Introducing: Blood Vines

85.519

It's a shocking case that almost brought the wine industry to its knees, with every Lichardi determined to come out on top.

Blood Vines

The Grape Broker: 2

11.339

White Zinfandel was an inexpensive wine, and the economics of it were difficult if your grape pricing got much above $500 a ton.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 5 - Like a Little Kid

1514.354

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 5 - Like a Little Kid

16.861

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 5 - Like a Little Kid

2119.31

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 5 - Like a Little Kid

2811.282

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 4 - Horse and Buggy

44.229

What happens when we come face to face with death?

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 4 - Horse and Buggy

54.793

When we step beyond the edge of what we know. I clinically died. The heart stopped beating. Which I was dead for 11.5 minutes. In return. It's a miracle I was brought back. Alive Again, a podcast about the strength of the human spirit. Listen to Alive Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Bone Valley

Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser

1.124

And just like Bone Valley, this podcast is a riveting listen that will open your eyes and tug at your heart. We've all seen the Taser carried by cops, seen it in the news and movies. Have you ever wondered how they became so ubiquitous? Nick Berardini and Lava for Good are taking a close look at Taser Inc., now known as Axon, the 800-pound gorilla in the paramilitary police equipment industry.

Bone Valley

Introducing - Absolute: Taser Incorporated, Teaser

43.665

Their story is one of ambition, hubris, and technology overtaking the very people it is meant to serve. Look for Absolute, Taser Incorporated, wherever you hear this, and check out this clip from Episode 1.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 3 - Never Turned Her Back on Me

11.607

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 3 - Never Turned Her Back on Me

1456.082

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 3 - Never Turned Her Back on Me

2428.535

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

Bone Valley

Jeremy | Chapter 3 - Never Turned Her Back on Me

730.79

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: The Rudy Of Dating

1278.42

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there, or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: The Rudy Of Dating

30.871

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Love On The Rocks

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Love On The Rocks

1295.683

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing Pickle Lover's newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Love On The Rocks

1316.542

Packed with 14 grams of protein and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Love On The Rocks

216.236

Oh, please. Let us see.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Love On The Rocks

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

1.101

The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new. The Girlfriends Spotlight, where each week you'll hear women share their stories of triumph over adversity. You'll meet Luanne, who escaped a secretive religious community. Do I want my freedom or do I want my family? And now helps other women get out too. I loved my girls. I still love my girls. Come and join our girl gang.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

129.51

On this week's episode of Eating While Broke, a podcast presented by the Black Effect Podcast Network, Nick Cannon joins us to discuss his journey from teenage comedian to entertainment mogul.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

1299.466

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new. The Girlfriends Spotlight, where each week you'll hear women share their stories of triumph over adversity. You'll meet June, who founded an all-female rock band in the 1960s. I might as well have said, we're going to walk on the moon. But she showed them who's boss.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

1321.937

They would rush up and say, not bad for chicks. Come and join our girl gang. Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

1430.471

On this week's episode of Eating While Broke, a podcast presented by the Black Effect Podcast Network, Nick Cannon joins us to discuss his journey from teenage comedian to entertainment mogul.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

1448.031

Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Eating While Broke and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

147.078

Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Eating While Broke and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

231.416

Second date update.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

27.984

Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

621.408

Second date update.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Phone Paux

78.752

Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

1268.154

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

1288.568

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

1371.767

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

281.032

It's awkward. It's Tuesday. It's awkward Tuesday phone call.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

30.449

And I'll see you next time.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

684.018

It's Tuesday. It's Awkward Tuesday phone call.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Worst Best Man

99.921

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

133.513

Are your money skills total trash? Well, trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve. Think, Matt, if your emergency fund was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now. Ouchies. Investing, it is ultimately a necessity, but you've got to keep that emergency fund accessible.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

1360.28

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

1369.504

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part. This is Leavittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

1433.036

Are your money skills total trash? Well, trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve. Think, Matt, if your emergency fund was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now. Ouchies. Investing, it is ultimately a necessity, but you've got to keep that emergency fund accessible.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

1453.297

It needs to be cash parked in your savings. It's time to learn, and How to Money is here to bring the knowledge. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

153.793

It needs to be cash parked in your savings. It's time to learn, and How to Money is here to bring the knowledge. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

61.156

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: A.I Fail

68.683

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part. This is Leavittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update UPDATE: We Built This Thing Together

130.13

Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update UPDATE: We Built This Thing Together

1331.291

Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

119.617

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

1250.762

Is there another radio show we could call?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

1255.926

Introducing Pickle Lover's newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

1279.201

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

1354.38

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business. The Edge of Daybreak, Eyes of Love, was supposed to have been followed up by another app.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

1375.251

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

442.599

Oh, no.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Frat Man's Last Stand

98.748

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business. The Edge of Daybreak, Eyes of Love, was supposed to have been followed up by another album.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1015.451

If it was something I did when I lived with you, could you please give me a specific example that I could grow from?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1023.815

Sure. But remember, when we write these, we don't have the answers back one at a time. We send them all in one mass email.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1036.147

I will accept it.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1039.73

I feel optimistic about where this is going. So his response was, OK, you want more? Yeah. What about Netflix Sundays when we would plan on watching a movie together every Sunday? And then once we were a half hour in, you'd pause the film and tell me the ending.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1057.146

You thought it was hilarious and did that 10 times until I stopped watching movies with you. Oh, bro.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1069.515

I am so offended. Sometimes it's better to spoil the ending so you don't suffer through a bad movie.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1100.884

Wow. I mean, Brooke is really offended over the spoiling of movies.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1112.072

Oh, wow. diabolical. That's hysterical.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1116.575

He likes that one. Give him ideas. Maybe if you need a new roommate, Brooke's husband could be it.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1126.047

No, he did. Yeah, Brooke, this is not a closure call for you and your movie watching and book reading. This is for Adam with his old roommate, Roy.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1138.57

Question number three that we sent to Roy. Yeah, I don't even know if I need to hear anymore. Well, Brooke needs to hear it. She's invested. I am upset. We sent, I know it's been a long time, but it would really mean a lot to me if you came to my birthday party next month.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1153.914

I would love to see you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1158.308

I'd like him there. It's my birthday.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1162.475

So Roy responded back saying, are you trolling me with this? Don't you remember the great birthday disaster?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1171.158

Oh, no, there's a birthday disaster.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1174.159

You threw me that surprise birthday party but forgot to invite me. Or did you do it on purpose?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1180.982

I came home and the party was done. All my friends had left. Then you showed me the pics on Instagram.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1188.144

What happened there, Adam?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1211.88

We were having fun. I'm sure you left him a slice of cake for when he got home, right?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1236.772

It was a really good party that he threw, obviously.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1242.817

Hold on. We have time for one more question here. Oh, This could salvage the entire friendship and maybe even have him moving back in with you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1253.244

Adam wrote, no matter what I did, do you think you could ever forgive me?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1260.027

Brooke doesn't forgive you, but that doesn't matter.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1273.533

The cat you kind of stole and renamed and locked in your bedroom. So he responded, no. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And I know all this would happen again if we hung out. You're way too immature and life's a big joke to you. Like every time you'd ask me to stop at the drive-thru on the way home and pick up food, then you'd call ahead and tell the workers I was a missing person.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1299.262

It got old.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1303.626

He's laughing.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1306.911

That was funny, though. And it was creative. Even Brooke's laughing at that one.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1341.532

You know, at the end of the day, the goal was to get some closure for you, Adam, about what happened to your roommate. Do you feel like you got it?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1365.899

Anyway, go ahead, Adam. Feel free to hop on Craigslist and get yourself a new roommate.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

1375.062

And happy belated birthday to Roy, by the way.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

304.895

Who knows you better than anyone else? You may think your mom or your sibling or your spouse, but no, the truth is nobody sees you like a roommate sees you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

322.939

Yeah, they know all your annoying little habits, your lazy tendencies, and what your soapy silhouette looks like through that shower curtain.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

332.942

That's why one of our listeners is so distraught because he and his roommate became real close friends until everything suddenly changed on a random day four years ago. Oh. And he has never got the answers for what really happened on that day. That's why he's enlisted our help for a brand new closure call. We're going to get some answers coming up right after this.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

356.479

Who knows you better than anyone else? You may think your mom or your sibling or your spouse, but no, the truth is nobody sees you like a roommate sees you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

374.5

Yeah, they know all your annoying little habits, your lazy tendencies, and what your soapy silhouette looks like through that shower curtain.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

383.244

They've seen. That's why one of our listeners is so distraught because he and his roommate became real close friends till everything suddenly changed on a random day four years ago. And he has never got the answers for what really happened on that day. That's why he's enlisted our help for a brand new closure call. We're going to get some answers coming up right after this.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

421.223

It's a little confusing. But today is interesting. Because I'd say not a lot of people feel like they need closure from a past roommate.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

435.404

I mean, I try to avoid most of mine, but apparently that's what our listener Adam is looking for today. Closure with one of his past roommates. So, Adam, welcome to the show. Hey, y'all. Thank you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

482.726

And because this is a closure call, how long has it been since you were roommates with this guy?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

569.045

What? I thought you said that you guys were like good buddies.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

615.399

Well, did he label it?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

630.053

If you didn't want me to eat it, don't put it in our fridge. It's a shared space. You're going to label each side of the couch now?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

694.481

Okay.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

697.042

Yeah, so if our audience doesn't know or remember how this segment works, Adam does, obviously. Our producers have been working with him to track down his roommate, Roy, and we went to Roy's Instagram, actually. Our producer's been sending him a lot of messages, and Roy finally responded. We asked him if we could send him four questions from Adam.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

724.929

Yes, with help.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

732.536

He did agree to answer four brand new questions.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

736.119

And we got his responses ready right now.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

739.862

This could get a little bit intense for you, Adam. Are you ready for it? Did you already read them? Do you already know what he said? I haven't read them, no.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

748.468

Well, I'm just guessing.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

754.151

We're all going to read them together and find out what happened to your old roommate, Roy. Hopefully give you a little bit of finality on it when we do what, Brooke?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

766.639

If that's not in the questions that was asked, then we don't have an answer.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

772.1

The cat is sitting by my feet right now.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

788.164

Well, maybe earmuff that cat when we come back and do the rest of your closure call right after this. Thank you. If you're just joining us, we're in the middle of a closure call with Adam, who, just to recap, had a roommate named Roy. And four years ago, Adam came home to find Roy was gone.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

808.923

Along with most of his belongings, left behind his cat and a video game system.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

822.289

No note or indication as to where Roy went. So Adam's been wondering for years, where did my buddy go? And who's going to do my dishes now? Because Adam, you admitted there were certain things you did as a roommate that were not so good. Certain things were really good. But what was the overall dynamic between you and Roy? If I were to paint a picture,

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

860.643

Exactly. And before we get to these questions, that's the reason that Adam reached out to us in the first place, because hearing stuff like that must hurt.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

875.292

oh no you know him he wouldn't say that all right well let's get right to it because we have the four questions that you sent to roy he has answered all four of them let's get to question number one you said hey man it's been almost four years i still don't know why you moved out without telling me or leaving a note i felt like we were great friends and i'd like some closure

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

901.325

Not much of a question. That's more of a statement there, but you know, I'm not going to critique you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

906.147

Okay. Yeah. There was no question. It's like, can you explain?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

911.35

So Roy responded. He wrote, really? You have no idea, Adam.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

918.475

For starters, you stole my cat.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

926.638

Yeah, he left the cat here. That's it? He says, I was the one who brought the cat into the house and called him Paul. You changed his name to Fluffy Bottoms and even got his tag changed to reflect that.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

965.117

Well, there's more to his first answer. He also said you would keep him in your room at night, then lock your door and pretend to be asleep when I wanted to see Paul. So that's one example of your incredibly toxic behavior right there.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

981.727

The cat wanted to sleep with me.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Closure Call: Case of the Missing Roommate

998.243

Okay. The only person who could honestly answer that is his cat. And so we don't have time to do a whole questionnaire for the cats. We have to stick with the questions to Roy here. Let's go to number two. It says, I know I wasn't the perfect roommate.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

121.263

So hang on because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

1316.891

You had to grab the lamp and smash it against the walls.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

1331.249

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall, voice of Harrison Doolis, Spectre 2.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

136.052

From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Setup. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

1360.031

So hang on because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

150.964

He actually is too good to be true.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

159.891

Listen to The Setup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

46.122

You had to grab the lamp and smash it against the walls.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Textual Healing: Hot Teacher Nick

92.478

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall, voice of Harrison Doolis, Spectre 2.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Blind Love Is? Fluent in Flirting

1.07

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Blind Love Is? Fluent in Flirting

1294.671

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business. Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Blind Love Is? Fluent in Flirting

16.841

The Edge of Daybreak, Eyes of Love, was supposed to have been followed up by another album.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Blind Love Is? Fluent in Flirting

21.945

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

1203.024

Yay.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

1206.877

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing Pickle Lover's newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

1227.715

Packed with 14 grams of protein and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

188.289

Hey, boys.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

235.86

Hey, boys.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

241.882

It's Awkward. It's Tuesday. It's Awkward Tuesday phone call.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Cut, Color & Flirt

627.011

It's Awkward. It's Tuesday. It's Awkward Tuesday phone call.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

0.189

You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there,

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

116.113

Which is just a very extra way of saying... A podcast! Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

1312.597

You say you'd never give into a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there. The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

1331.983

But if we're honest, most people run from them, staying silent, missing chances, and holding themselves back.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

136.487

The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

1377.642

Are your ears bored?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

1398.413

which is just a very extra way of saying a podcast. Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

1418.792

The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

16.772

know it can happen one in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out never happens before you leave the car always stop look lock brought to you by nizza and the ad council the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations but if we're honest most people run from them staying silent missing chances and holding themselves back

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Say Yes To The Ex: Exes Have Layers

95.351

Are your ears bored?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

1121.638

Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's dill pickle pizza.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

1144.744

Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

1148.331

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

23.582

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

31.727

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Awkward Tuesday: Ex-Expectations

574.469

It's Awkward. It's Tuesday. It's Awkward Tuesday phone call.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1.018

Hey, all you women's hoops fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1082.196

Hey, all you women's hoops fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1094.944

The most parody we've seen in years with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1141.405

Are your ears bored?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1173.595

From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Setup. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1188.526

He actually is too good to be true.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1197.452

Listen to The Setup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1204.065

The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. But if we're honest, most people run from them, staying silent, missing chances and holding themselves back. I know this is true because I used to be like that until I realized that negotiation isn't a talent. It's a skill that anyone can learn. And once I did, everything changed.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

122.887

The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. But if we're honest, most people run from them, staying silent, missing chances and holding themselves back. I know this is true because I used to be like that until I realized that negotiation isn't a talent. It's a skill that anyone can learn. And once I did, everything changed.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

1225.319

I went from people pleaser to confident communicator. And now I teach Fortune 500 leaders and top executives how to do the same. Listen to Negotiate Anything on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

13.748

The most parody we've seen in years with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

144.142

I went from people pleaser to confident communicator. And now I teach Fortune 500 leaders and top executives how to do the same. Listen to Negotiate Anything on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

30.233

From the producers who brought you Princess of South Beach comes a new podcast, The Setup. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator, but when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

45.146

He actually is too good to be true.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

54.056

Listen to The Setup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

60.163

Are your ears bored?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Cowboy Confusion

755.77

That's so awkward.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

1133.891

That's right.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

1136.933

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

1157.764

Packed with 14 grams of protein and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

23.573

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Whack Beach Wedding

53.18

Start your test today for 1 euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: I Got the Ick

1167.105

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: I Got the Ick

31.727

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Secret Mission

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Secret Mission

1159.158

Yeah. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Secret Mission

1187.602

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update Classic: Secret Mission

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Hockey Fan Gets Hosed

119.156

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Hockey Fan Gets Hosed

1200.028

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Hockey Fan Gets Hosed

1220.902

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Hockey Fan Gets Hosed

98.288

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called The Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business. The Edge of Daybreak, Eyes of Love, was supposed to have been followed up by another album.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

1067.664

Can I text it? Not say it out loud? Yes.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

1171.932

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

1195.229

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Claus For Concern

368.003

I'd like some privacy.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

1142.611

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing Pickle Lover's newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

1163.451

Packed with 14 grams of protein and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

1177.271

Or if hypnotism is real? But what's inside a black hole?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

23.586

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Ex-Aversary

32.658

Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Red Flaggy Much?

1.07

45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Red Flaggy Much?

1261.089

The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business. Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Red Flaggy Much?

21.945

Listen to Soul Incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: After Date Double Trouble

0.449

The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The Girlfriends Spotlight. Each week, you'll hear women triumph over adversity. You'll meet Tracy, who survived a terrifying attack.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: After Date Double Trouble

1249.175

The number one hit podcast, The Girlfriends, is back with something new, The Girlfriends Spotlight. Each week, you'll hear women triumph over adversity. You'll meet Tracy, who survived a terrifying attack.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: After Date Double Trouble

1275.495

Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: After Date Double Trouble

17.313

And turn that darkness into light.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: After Date Double Trouble

23.235

So come and join our girl gang. Listen to The Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Offline and Oblivious

106.289

The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Offline and Oblivious

122.966

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Offline and Oblivious

1385.982

The more you listen to your kids the closer you'll be. So we asked kids what do you want your parents to hear?

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Offline and Oblivious

1402.659

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: V-Day Pass Out

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: V-Day Pass Out

1124.162

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: V-Day Pass Out

1145.251

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: V-Day Pass Out

23.586

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: That Name Sounds Familiar

1226.882

On the new limited podcast series, Dub Dynasty, we hear from head coach Steve Kerr on how Steph Curry almost never even joined the Warriors. In fact, I thought we had a draft day deal to end up getting him to Phoenix. For the entire behind-the-scenes story of Golden State's incredible 10-year run, listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: That Name Sounds Familiar

234.346

Second date update.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: That Name Sounds Familiar

593.38

Second Date Update.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: That Name Sounds Familiar

6.458

On the new limited podcast series, Dub Dynasty, we hear from head coach Steve Kerr on how Steph Curry almost never even joined the Warriors. In fact, I thought we had a draft day deal to end up getting him to Phoenix. For the entire behind-the-scenes story of Golden State's incredible 10-year run, listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

1152.563

Brooke and Jeffrey in the morning. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

1173.788

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

1192.99

On this episode of Dope Labs, poet and relationship expert Young Pueblo breaks down the psychology of love and provides eye-opening insights and advice we all need.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

23.586

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

Brooke and Jeffrey: Second Date Update

Second Date Update: Philippines or Bust

37.89

On this episode of Dope Labs, poet and relationship expert Young Pueblo breaks down the psychology of love and provides eye-opening insights and advice we all need.

Campus Files

Harvard's Secret Court

1702.715

A chancellor having a pornographic double life is an extremely rare case.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1041.212

Since the advent of Christianity, Christ as King has been a cry for connection to the divine, a declaration of faith, a moving signal between Christians of their shared values. But what happens when it becomes a manipulation tactic designed to deceive Christians? Mentions of Christ as King have increased five-fold on platforms like X in just the past four years.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1063.433

At first glance, it would seem hopeful as people begin to reinvestigate faith in the face of increasing secularization and chaos in the world. But the NCRI, an organization at the forefront of monitoring deep trends in data, observed a striking and nefarious development around the phrase Christ as King beginning in 2021.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1082.586

In 2024, more than 50% of all engagements around Christ is King posts were driven by extremist influencers. The word extremist gets used a lot, and many are understandably skeptical at its use. But we're talking about people like this. I used sex as a tool to make women love me so they'd obey me and live in my house and make me money.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1116.366

Posts like these achieved over 13.6 million views and more than 100,000 engagements during Easter 2024 alone. While co-opting the phrase for their toxic narrative, figures like Candace Owens and Jake Shields repeat hateful blood libels. And shockingly, by 2024, the most frequently associated term with Crisis King was the word Jew. The intent is clear.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1140.737

Manipulate well-meaning, faithful Christians into having their beliefs tethered to psychopaths. This is nothing short of diabolical. We're caught watching Christ is King being taken by the supremacist right more and more each day. These connections matter. The spiritual, the linguistic, the interpersonal. They shape us, they shape our society, and they shape the world.

Candace

I’m “Just Asking Questions” About The Daily Wire | Candace Ep 159

1162.849

So what kind of connections do we want to build? And more importantly, what kind of world will we help create? Help retake our values.

Candace

Harvey Speaks: Jessica Mann & The Five Year Affair | Ep 3

1912.324

Mann says she completely broke down on the witness stand when it came out in court that she had been sexually assaulted when she was younger. She left the courtroom and could be heard screaming from a back room. And some questioned whether her emotional collapse would affect the trial.

Candace

Harvey Speaks: Jessica Mann & The Five Year Affair | Ep 3

1974.437

At the close of the trial, Mann read a letter to the judge aloud, explaining her screams that day.

Candace

Uh Oh, Ryan Reynolds! Hugh Jackman WILL Be Deposed. | Candace Ep 160

235.533

No. It's not every day a guy gets to interview the love interest of his best friend's wife and the guy trying to replace Ryan as a husband and me as his best mate. Holy s***. What the hell are you doing messing with my best buddy's wife? Sir, I have no idea what's happening at all today.

Climbing the Walls

I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1

1677.882

There was a huge fight keeping out adults and then women.

Climbing the Walls

I didn’t want to have ADHD | 1

1690.467

You don't usually get to be there at the birth of a whole new way of looking at human beings. And that was what it was. That was why it was eye-opener. It was like, wow, we can look at these people and ourselves through this new lens.

Club Random with Bill Maher

Charlie Kirk | Club Random

2336.977

This podcast is brought to you by Aura. your identity stolen, your financial future at risk, and the company that lost your data, they'll just apologize and move on. This can all sound really scary, which is why I'm so glad we're partnering with Aura. Hackers don't wait, so why should you? Aura monitors the dark web 24-7 for your phone number, email, and social security number.

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Club Random with Bill Maher

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Club Random with Bill Maher

Charlie Kirk | Club Random

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I'm right there with you.

Club Random with Bill Maher

Charlie Kirk | Club Random

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This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Aura monitors the dark web for users' phone numbers, emails, and social security numbers, delivering real-time alerts if any suspicious activity is detected.

Club Random with Bill Maher

Charlie Kirk | Club Random

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For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14-day trial plus a check of your data to see if your personal information has been leaked online, all for free when you visit aura.com slash defense. That's aura.com slash defense. to sign up for a 14-day free trial and start protecting you and your loved ones. That's aura.com slash defense.

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It's not to live in.

Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend

Conan, Sona, and Matt Discuss the LA Fires

2.921

Fall is here, hear the yell. Back to school, ring the bell. Brand new shoes, walking blues. Climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.

Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend

Conan, Sona, and Matt Discuss the LA Fires

2341.079

Yeah, we are.

Consider This from NPR

Tariffs will boost prices a lot — here's how much

734.895

On Trump's terms, we have followed the first hundred days of this administration.

Consider This from NPR

Tariffs will boost prices a lot — here's how much

741.861

Elon Musk and Doge. We will make mistakes. Deportations. Litigation.

Consider This from NPR

Tariffs will boost prices a lot — here's how much

748.086

Those first hundred days are coming to a close, but the pace of the news will likely continue. Follow NPR's coverage of President Trump trying to do things no other president has on Trump's terms from NPR.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

0.62

On February 12, 1993, President Bill Clinton took the lectern at a public health center in Arlington, Virginia. Thank you. He was surrounded by kids sitting on the stage in front of him. Some had just received vaccinations.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

102.193

Catherine Wells is the director of public health in Lubbock, a city near the heart of the current measles outbreak in West Texas.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

114.066

So far, there have been around 500 cases in West Texas since late January. Two kids there have died. The outbreak has spread to neighboring states, including New Mexico. On top of that, the Federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, announced it would terminate hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

134.403

Lubbock is one of the cities which will lose that money. Consider this. 25 years after measles was officially eliminated in the U.S., the disease is once again spreading in West Texas and New Mexico. What can be done to get the virus under control? From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

15.823

Clinton was just a few weeks into his presidency, and he was announcing what would become a major initiative of his first term, a massive push by the federal government to vaccinate children.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

232.611

It's Consider This from NPR. The last major measles outbreak in the U.S. was 2019. More than 1,200 people got sick. At the time, NPR spoke with Anthony Fauci, who was then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

294.03

That's Dr. Caitlin Rivers of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She just wrote a book called Crisis Averted about the history of public health victories, and I asked her what the U.S. needs to do to avert this crisis.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

31.681

One virus was top of mind.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

345.92

From your research on the book, is there a specific example of a public health victory that you think is especially useful here today?

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

39.877

Remember, this was 1993. A prolonged measles outbreak between 1989 and 91 killed more than 100 people and sickened tens of thousands. A federal advisory committee found that pricey vaccines, cuts to federal support for vaccination, and low vaccination rates among young children had caused the outbreak to be so severe. This is what Clinton wanted to fix. So did lawmakers.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

404.844

You said messaging from the federal government isn't as clear as it needs to be. Of course, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long history of vaccine skepticism. Earlier this week, he said the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles. Do you think that message did what it needed to do?

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

444.969

And on funding, we have seen widespread cuts across the government, including in the public health establishment. Do you think that is going to trickle down to states that need resources to fight measles outbreaks?

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

477.352

Just to return to the question of whether a country is declared to have measles eliminated, if you've got children dying of the disease, if you have regular outbreaks, if you are not doing everything that could be done to fight this disease, why does it matter whether it is officially, formally declared to have been eliminated or not?

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

523.137

That was Dr. Caitlin Rivers of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We had additional reporting from Olivia Aldridge of member station KUT in Austin. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

64.675

Six months after that event at the Public Health Center, Congress passed Clinton's Comprehensive Childhood Immunization Act. The law helped the government purchase vaccines and negotiate prices with drug manufacturers. It made vaccines free for many children and helped the Department of Health and Human Services track childhood immunizations.

Consider This from NPR

What will it take to get measles under control?

83.581

By the end of Clinton's second term in office, the World Health Organization had declared the elimination of measles in the United States. Fast forward 25 years.

Consider This from NPR

Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law

676.882

A couple months ago here at Planet Money, we stumbled across our favorite kind of economic mystery.

Consider This from NPR

Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law

685.208

A deal that seemed way too good to be true.

Consider This from NPR

Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law

691.914

Join us on our adventure to find out exactly how much a diamond is worth. Planet Money from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts. At Planet Money, we'll take you from a race to make rum in the Caribbean. Our rum, from a quality standpoint, is the best in the world. To the labs streaming up the most advanced microchips.

Consider This from NPR

Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law

714.475

To the back rooms of New York's Diamond District. What, you looking for the stupid guy here? They're all smart, don't worry about it. Planet Money from NPR. We go to the story and take you along with us wherever you get your podcasts.

Consider This from NPR

Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law

727.545

Having news at your fingertips is great, but sometimes you need an escape. And that's where Shortwave comes in. We're a joy-filled science podcast driven by wonder and curiosity that will get you out of your head and in touch with the world around you. Listen now to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Consider This from NPR

AI and the Environment

178.091

This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at mintmobile.com.

Consider This from NPR

AI and the Environment

814.129

Shortwave thinks of science as an invisible force showing up in your everyday life. Powering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the Shortwave podcast from NPR.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

23.604

The president has been talking about his day one actions, and it's believed 200 orders will be executed.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

340.552

In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled the former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts related to their core constitutional powers.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

350.857

Orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

355.779

This decision was written as if America has never had a corrupt president.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

36.113

The administration plans to issue a new memo in the coming days directing agencies to prepare for large-scale firings.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

361.463

organizes a military coup to hold on to power. Immune. This is one of the worst opinions in American history from the Supreme Court. Immune, immune, immune, immune.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

649.497

Chief Justice Roberts, he was my colleague. He was just down the hall from me. And tonight I'm honored to announce that I am nominating him to serve as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Alito was in the Reagan administration. I'm pleased to announce my nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Consider This from NPR

How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term

674.197

Judge Clarence Thomas, to serve as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

0.209

Last week, more employees across the federal government received termination notices as the Trump administration forged ahead with its plan to drastically reduce the federal workforce. One agency hit hard by layoffs was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Taylor Sonney was a compliance examiner at CFPB based in Houston, Texas.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

112.378

Days later, Goggin received the fork-in-the-road email sent to nearly every federal employee, giving them a deadline to resign and stay on the payroll through September.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

130.968

Goggin came to the VA a decade ago and loves working with veterans. But she thought if she could resign and keep getting paid through September, it might be the best move for her family after her husband lost his income.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

165.008

Goggin got an automated reply saying her response had been received. But a few days later, she got an email from the VA saying she isn't eligible to resign.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

193.107

Consider this. The Trump administration's chaotic federal overhaul is underway, and that's left many federal workers scared, confused, or out of a job. From NPR, I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's Consider This from NPR. President Donald Trump is forging ahead with his plans to dramatically shrink the government.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

226.347

Federal workers are facing mass layoffs as the Trump administration takes aim at agencies across the federal government. Thousands, likely tens of thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs, with many more expected to follow. So with us now is NPR's Andrea Hsu, who has been talking with federal workers as all of this unfolds. Hey, Andrea. Hey. All right.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

248.307

So there's been so much disruption, so much chaos. How are people reacting to the layoffs?

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

29.992

He'd been working at the CFPB for 11 months, just one month shy of the end of his probationary period, when he found out he'd lost his job.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

325.213

At the same time, I understand that these workers want to get their story out, but they're in this weird limbo, right? And I imagine because of the precarity of their situation, they don't want to talk on the record necessarily.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

458.331

I can't imagine that kind of work was going to continue if, you know, Trump and Doge crew like continue at this sort of clip.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

497.004

You know, it does seem like the Trump administration is pursuing like multiple paths all at once for downsizing the government, right? Like you just mentioned, there's that crackdown on DEI. There are the layoffs of probationary employees. But also there's the requirement that everyone return to office full time, you know, ending telework. How's that going?

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

56.317

Sonny and his colleagues are weighing what happens next. There could be opportunities for recourse, like filing an appeal if they believe they were fired for partisan political reasons. But for now, Sonny is processing the loss of his job and what mass layoffs could mean for the future of the CFPB.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

668.381

You know, I think anybody who's worked anywhere ever for a long time, if you ask them, really, they'll be like, OK, I see there's some waste. There's some bloat here. I can imagine some cutting. And, you know, Trump was elected on the promise that he'd make the government better and more efficient and smaller. Is that message resonating with any of the federal workers you've heard from?

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

797.883

That's Andrew Hsu, NPR's labor and workplace correspondent. Thanks, Andrew.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

803.342

This episode was produced by Catherine Fink and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.

Consider This from NPR

After weeks of chaos, the future is uncertain for thousands of federal workers

88.128

Across federal agencies, many who still have jobs are worried about what will happen next. Liz Goggin is a licensed clinical social worker for the Department of Veterans Affairs who lives with her family in Washington, D.C. After Trump's funding freeze, her job at the VA was safe. But her husband's foreign aid job wasn't.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

111.013

Coming up, NPR's Frank Langfitt reports on a liberal church in North Carolina with a rich civil rights history, yet it pushed out its pastor, who had spent years promoting racial justice and who had repeatedly called out Donald Trump. From NPR, I'm Sasha Pfeiffer.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

204.355

It's Consider This from NPR. Publicly, church leaders at the liberal-leaning Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, North Carolina, say the recent move to oust their pastor had nothing to do with politics or his preaching, but some congregants feel betrayed. They say the conflict inside their church reflects a broader one within the American left. NPR's Frank Langfitt takes it from here.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

22.464

That's Episcopal Bishop Mary Ann Buddy giving a sermon at Washington National Cathedral earlier this month. This was at an interfaith service held the day after the second inauguration of President Donald Trump. In her sermon, she spoke directly to the president, who was seated up front with Vice President J.D. Vance and their families.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

42.413

Bishop Buddy went on to talk about immigrants who may be at risk of deportation under new Trump policies.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

54.841

Reactions to her sermon lit up social media and national news outlets. The backlash from Trump supporters was immediate and intense. Lorenzo Sewell is the pastor of Detroit's non-denominational 180 Church. and he spoke at the Republican National Convention. He attended that sermon and shared his outrage on Fox News.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

702.298

NPR's Frank Langfitt reporting from Charlotte, North Carolina. This episode was produced by Elena Burnett and was edited by Catherine Laidlaw and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sasha Pfeiffer.

Consider This from NPR

A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation

91.977

Consider this. Across the country, people are wrestling with how to approach issues of racial and social justice in a polarized environment. And divisions aren't just between the political left and the political right. Even people with shared political views often disagree on how much is too much.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

0.566

In Israel, the voices opposing the resumption of the war against Hamas are loud, and they are many. Last weekend, more than 100,000 took to the streets in cities across the country, according to protest organizers. In Tel Aviv, protesters chanted, if an agreement isn't reached, it is murder for the hostages.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

107.95

which was conducting a separate investigation into his administration. And he's also trying to push through an overhaul of the judicial system that would give him more power. That effort has prompted mass protests. Netanyahu needs the far-right parties in his coalition to keep his government afloat. In particular, he needs his ultra-nationalist finance minister, Batsalal Smoltrich.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

136.172

who had threatened to collapse Netanyahu's government if he did not resume the war on Hamas. Consider this. Where Israel's war in Gaza goes next might depend in large part on B'Tsalal Shmultrich. So what does he want? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. But Salah Smoltrich's views were once fringe in Israel.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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He's an ultra-nationalist, a West Bank settler, and he has repeatedly called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip. His rise to power in Israeli politics has been a long one. NPR's Hadil Al-Shalchi takes the story from here.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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Israel believes there are still 24 hostages alive in Gaza, along with the bodies of many more. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he resumed the war and ended an earlier ceasefire in an effort to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin says this is risking the hostages' lives.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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Back in 2011, he negotiated with Hamas to win the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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That was NPR's Hadil Alshalchi in Jerusalem. That sound of protest from the top of the episode came from reporting by NPR's Kat Lonsdorff. This episode was produced by Michael Levitt and Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Hannah Glovna. It was edited by William Troop and James Heider. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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Before we go, a quick thank you to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the show. Your contribution makes it possible for NPR journalists all around the world to do their jobs. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

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Polls show Israeli public opinion is not on Netanyahu's side. But in this moment, Netanyahu's fate does not depend on public opinion. depends on holding together his coalition.

Consider This from NPR

Why did Israel restart the war? One answer: Bezalel Smotrich.

85.755

Alan Pincus is a former Israeli diplomat who served under Netanyahu's predecessors. He has no political life expectancy outside the prime minister's office. Netanyahu is also still on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. And if convicted, he could face prison. And he's also trying to fire the head of Israel's internal security service.

Consider This from NPR

The long history of Russia's broken promises to Ukraine

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These include 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and some 1,500 warheads targeted at the United States.

Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Introducing the Thais Gibson Show

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Hey guys, if you're enjoying our show where we delve into high achieving people with transformative lives, then I have an exciting recommendation for you. Introducing the Thais Gibson podcast, a show that dives deep into creating long lasting change by starting at the subconscious level. Did you know 95% of our conscious decisions are actually determined by our subconscious?

Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Introducing the Thais Gibson Show

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Thais, an expert in attachment theory is a creator behind the podcast. She uses her expertise to help you transform your relationships, health, career, and every other area of your life by leveraging the power of your subconscious mind. So if you're ready to break those limiting patterns and create the life you truly desire, tune into the Thais Gibson podcast.

Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan

Introducing the Thais Gibson Show

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You can find it on all major podcast platforms. Trust me, you won't want to miss it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He burst into the room, pitchfork held aloft, and ran them through. Over and over, he plunged the fork into their tangled bodies before finally leaving them pinned, one on top of the other, to the bed beneath them. Looking at the bloody mess he'd made, Abel found his rage had not diminished. This seemed curious to Abel, but it dawned on him why when he spied a picture of his family on the mantle.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Maybe it was just survivor's guilt. That's rough. After a very long couple of seconds, Alina kissed me back. My brain went fuzzy. I almost had to stop. It's tough to kiss with a grin. This guy's a player. This guy needs to get beat up at least once. It'll be good for him. It'll just humble him a bit. Did he stoke? He's happy. Can a man not be happy? Yeah, I guess, I guess.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I was kissing Alina Amenev. I slipped my fingers through her wild hair. Alina, who ran track. I could feel my leg pressed against hers. Alina, who smelled like vanilla and smirked when she used to smile. I tried to press my leg between hers, but she... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Tried to press my leg between hers, but she kept her legs closed. And that was fine.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I was just happy to be kissing her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Anyways, go ahead. We spent the next few minutes on that love scene. It wasn't the sort of first kiss you imagine. I was nervous and she was still. At the time, I remember thinking it was more intimate than passionate, but that made sense to me. She wasn't in a real good place. Being with her was going to be like building a house of cards.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It'd take a slow hand and the slightest misstep could bring her crumbling down. She wanted to drive me home before her parents returned from work. As we were getting our coats on, I said, let's see a movie. She didn't answer immediately. I thought for a second she hadn't heard me. I can't. I can't. I kissed her and asked again. Oh, man. This man's an animal.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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But, I mean, again, this is very, like, 16-year-old coded. To be like, oh, I can do that now? Well, guess what I'm going to do all the time. Yeah. I kissed her and asked again, but it didn't help. What if someone sees us? I wanted people to see us. I didn't care what people thought about her. I didn't even give a rat's ass what Fletch thought about her. She broke down. I held her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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As I lay in bed that night, I found myself fantasizing about Alina. It wasn't sexual. Hell, it wasn't even about the kiss. It was about the most mundane things. Spooning her while we watch TV. Holding her hand while we walk down the hallways at school. Having little arguments over who'd sit at whose lunch table. God, dude, I'm cringing to death. It's too real. It's too real. I want to die.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That's what I was going to say. This is the most high school. I want to fucking die. I'm almost positive that when I was like 15, 14, this was the exact kind of thoughts I was having about girls I liked.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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oh it's rough it's rough that this author was a 16 year old boy and very clearly remembers what it was like because i'm getting flashbacks where he's talking about this stuff that's when i resolved that i had to find the spire in the woods right in the middle of fantasy alina apologizing for not wanting to sit with my friends and telling fantasy me that i was the most important thing in the world to her i had to find it for alina

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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His children didn't look anything like him, nor like their mother. They were all exceptionally tall, with full heads of somewhat greasy black hair.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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to get her out from under some of the guilt she held on her shoulders. And was it really so crazy to think there might be some truth to it? Even if I was skeptical of the connection to the widower's clock, couldn't Robert Edward Kennan have followed the sound of bells? Couldn't he have discovered a spire sticking out of the ground?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He goes from like, this is fake to being like, well, for Alina, could it be so frivolous?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That's what I think. That's what I think is happening. That's what he's thinking. He's like, well, if I can find it, I'll be like the knight who slayed the dragon. Yeah. Which is awesome to be together, which is awesome. I mean, the most dangerous, foolhardy things men have ever done in history have been for God and women. That is, that is the only two things we've ever built altars for.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Hey, and Pokemon cards.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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His little corkscrew cock. Maybe even found a body. Hadn't Fletch mentioned someone had gone missing from that trailer park? If he had found a corpse, that could have certainly pushed him over the edge. thoughts and a shiver up my spine. The last couple of weeks before Christmas vacation were always filled with midterms and projects, and that year was no exception.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was the last thing in the world either of us wanted to do, but with the group project due Monday, I had to meet Scary Carrie at the library. After bullshitting while I busted my rear end looking for sources for our presentation on Robespierre, I had practically carried Carrie through the first half of European history. When I told her that I had changed my mind, I wanted to visit the Quabbin.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Carrie was thrilled.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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There you go again with that voice.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just don't hit me. That would be great. If the story takes that direction, like she just starts punching them. Okay.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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A hundred percent will be a problem. Yes, absolutely. And also it's like the only reason he now wants to do this is for Alina. Yeah, dude. Right. Cause he, Hey, Carrie wanted to do it from the beginning.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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just like to imagine you're just like floating through like a portal like like spinning like in circles the the just the stupid decision looking back in hindsight being like why on god's earth was i there why what was i doing yeah what did i think was gonna happen what kind of that was not a tactical decision at all it was not a tactical decision Well, that backfired.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Standing in the puddle of blood only moments ago that had been coursing through Mrs. Blood and her lover and stewed in his ever deepening anger. He was a cuckold. He had no heir. He had no heir. He'd been raising another man's children. A man who had been bedding Abel's wife. For years, Abel waited and stewed for several hours until his four children arrived home from school.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I think back to like high school when like a girl kind of subtly implied, like I should do something. I'm like, yeah, I'll hang off the side of this boulder above like a foot drought. Why not? Or like jumping over that Ridge like that. Like, of course, why don't like places? I wouldn't have gone with a gun.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You have like a desert eagle in your hand. Me standing outside of a Bank of America with a rifle like, okay.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I've got a suicide vest on. The crazy things I do for love. If this makes Veronica happy. Only one of my haunted New England books told the story of the widower's clock. And maybe it was because I'd initially been skeptical that the story was grounded in any sort of reality. But it honestly never occurred to me that there was anything more to know.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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But if there was a clockmaker, he had to have made clocks. And if there had been a murder, there must be an obituary. Gary disappeared into the basement where the library kept their micro... Microfiche? Microfiche. What is that? Ha! Whatever. I assume it means microfilm. Probably.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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With her gone, I was able to finish researching our paper in short order, and by the time I wandered downstairs, she found out quite a bit. The clockmaker was a German immigrant named Adolf Reifler, born in 1857. He was hired sometime between 1905 and 1907 to construct the clock for the Custom House Tower in Boston by an architect named Robert Swain Peabody. The clock was a failure.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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In an effort to show up his two brothers, who were also master clockmakers, Reifler attempted to miniaturize several of the motor's components. While the clock ran, it failed to keep accurate time. The clock was referred to by some as Adolf's Folly until the mid-1930s when Hitler's infamy outstripped Reifler's. The bride was Robert Swain Peabody's niece, Amy Lowell Putnam, born 1892.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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She was just 16 when she married Reifler, who was, by that time, 51 years old. I suppose the age difference wasn't that unusual in those times, but back in 1999, when Alina was 17, the idea of her with a man in his 50s made my skin crawl. That is so funny that he hears a story about, like, a girl who was 16 married a 51-year-old, and he's like, uh, that's almost like Alina.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Don't you dare touch her. don't you touch my beautiful vanilla cupcake don't if i see my grandpa come towards my my russian flower sweet kitten i'll fucking kill him my russian vanilla kumquat i ain't nobody gonna get near her it also made me regard amy lowell putnam with more sympathy Imagine being married off at 16 to a man more than three times your age.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Imagine 20 years of marriage to that man. Waking up to find yourself in your mid-30s, still in the heart of your sexual prime, with a husband in his 70s. Of course, she was attracted to other men. Couldn't find any obituary for Amy Lowell Putnam, nor for Amy Lowell Reifler, nor for Amy Putnam Reifler.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Scary Carrie took it as a sign that the Putnams, Lowells, or Peabody's all-powerful families had covered up the scandalous manner in which Amy Lowell had died. I, on the other hand, chalked it up to the microfilm being a bitch to work with. What we did find of interest, though, was a picture of Enfield in 1938.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It depicted a large hill with most of its trees cut down, a tractor pushing aside some debris, and a lone man standing with his back to a large colonial building. The large colonial was the only one still standing, and it had a little tower.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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They say his sons and eldest daughter put up a noble fight. They were children fighting a grown man whose muscles had been hardened by a lifetime of farm labor. Only Abel's youngest daughter, barely five years old, made it out of the house alive. She sprinted as fast as her little legs could carry her in a desperate attempt to reach her neighbors.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We couldn't tell whether or not it had a clock, the old microfilm viewscreens didn't exactly have great resolution, but based on its proximity to the hill, it was easy to see how the loose soil could have enveloped it, or another building very much like it, when the floodwaters came pouring through, leaving just a spire peeking out above the earth.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We only found one more reference to Adolf Reifler, an obituary published by the Boston Globe in 1941. I wish I could remember the date. It mentioned that he was wanted for questioning in regards to a disappearance, but that was all. Riefler had died in Munich. The cause of death was omitted, but at 84, it was probably just old age.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Riefler must have fled the country sometime in the mid-30s, at a time when the Germany he returned to must have been very different from the Germany he had originally left. I don't know why, but somehow knowing these historical details made the story of the widower's clock so much more plausible.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was no longer a story of a man with an unfaithful wife, the characters defined by nothing more than their relationship to one another. It started to become the story of two people. Amy Lowell Putnam, restless and starved for marital attention, shackled to an old man incapable of giving her what she needed, and proud Adolf Reifler.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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obsessed with proving himself after his failure designing the clock for customs house tower too busy and too old to see that his young wife was up to since her mom had the car that day when we got hungry carrie and i had to choose between waiting for my mom to pick us up or hoofing it down to the hometown omitted house of pizza to grab a bite despite the cold we opted for the latter

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Settling into a booth, a hot slice in front of both of us, thanks between Carrie and me felt right again for the first time since our trip to Greenfield. We quickly fell into discussing the plans for our trip.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just as the words left my mouth, Fletch plopped down right next to me, his friend Murph lingering behind him. Hey, I didn't see you guys come in. How long you been here? I didn't know what I felt exactly. Embarrassment? Shame? But even though... This guy's a jerk, dude. Well, I thought he was going to be pissed.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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No, you, cause the last time he talked to Fletch was when Fletch let him see the letter. Right. And the two of them had like that whole, like heart to heart about it. So they're fine, but it's his embarrassment about being seen, not even in a dating sense, just seeing. Oh, you think it's still with her? Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. Embarrassment, shame. Yeah, yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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But even with her head start, her little legs were no match for her father's powerful strides. Just as she scrambled up over the stone wall separating their farm from the Hollis's, April picked up one of the stones, smashed it down on her head. These days, if you go there, on the road that borders the cemetery, you'll see this curve full of skid marks.

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But even though there was nothing in Fletch's face to indicate that he'd heard me, I got the feeling you get when your parents tell you, we're not mad, we're just disappointed. And this also coming off the back of immediately seeing a girl who has all this trauma about a guy who she is blamed for the death of. And he's like, oh, her smooth legs. I kissed her. I kissed her twice.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I want to go to the movies with her.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And then immediately after, he's like, oh, my flesh sees me with this animal.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Come on. Fletch. Have you, have you seen the stock market lately? Fletch? There's no time for this. It's do or die. Fletch is do or die. Fletch. Come on. Fletch. Come on. Throw me a bone. Fletch. I've been so wrapped up in the fun of going on a ghost hunt and clicking with scary carry again, that I lost sight of the fact that Rob Kenan had killed himself.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I'd forgotten that the only reason I knew about the spire in the woods was because of his suicide notes and had actually been happy about the whole thing while two guys who had lost a good friend, quite possibly because of the spire, were sitting right behind me.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I really didn't. Sure. Carrie said.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Because I have sure there's, there's two men and a woman speaking for the audience that you are speaking of. All right.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Now she is neither ugly nor beautiful in my mind. Now she is like, what is that Sam Elliott? It's like Sam Elliott on the other side of the booth. I'm a Marlboro man. Marlboro. Come on, dude.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Murph had just found out that he'd been accepted via early admission to UMass Amherst. Topics Gary Carey found intriguing. Like many unhappy high school students, Carrie hung a lot of her hope on the idea that her life would get better in college. She knew she didn't have the grades to get into a top-tier school.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Hell, she knew that UMass Amherst was a real reach, but she had hoped to get into UMass Lowell and transfer after a year or two. Of course, Murph hadn't thought he'd be accepted either. Definitely apply early.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Kerry was hanging off Murph's every word, but I wasn't paying much attention to what he was saying. I was too busy hoping against hope that after we dropped Kerry off, Fletch would announce he wanted to hang out with Murph some more and, as such, would have to drop me off next. That didn't happen, and we were soon alone together in the car.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The second the door closed behind Murph, Fletch dropped his mask, and I knew that he heard me. You're going to Quaben? That's what I told you? You're going to the Quaben?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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People say that they are caused by cars swerving to avoid an oddly dressed little girl who runs out into the street each night. Oh, that's cool. I got, I got to say this, like this being your setup for like your haunted town is so cool. Well, yeah. The blood cemetery. That's awesome.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. It was going to be a huge deal. But when the story got optioned, because of that, the story became the copyright of the studio. So anyone who... had ever covered this story got nuked into orbit. Like all the creepypasta readings of it got taken down. All of the reposting or audio versions of the story got taken down. The story itself got removed from r slash no sleep and creepypasta.com.

CreepCast

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just making sure like you know i'm just i'm trying to hold the piece here boys you're not saying that the character in the story is saying that you're reading the quote come on you you have read that this woman carrie is fat and you yourself made moo noises earlier so i think this is the least of your come on man you know what what are you trying to do to me here Fletch was a pretty big guy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That, coupled with the hurt and anger in his voice, intimidated me into silence. We drove on, listening to nothing but the heater struggling in vain to dispel the cold. After a few miles, I found myself resenting Fletch. Who was he to speak to me like that? And why should I feel guilty for his sake? He'd lost a friend and he had my sympathy, but that didn't entitle him to treat me like garbage.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What'd you tell me for? Fletch didn't answer my question. He just kept driving. Huh? Why'd you tell me about it if you didn't want me to look into it? Fletch tightened his grip on the steering wheel and ground his teeth together as if he were literally chewing over the question. We were in our neighborhood before he finally answered.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Fletch's anger had left him. By the time he pulled into the driveway, he looked deflated. I thought you'd believe me. Or could disprove it or shit. I don't know. It seemed like both Fletch and Alina were looking to me to absolve their sins. Lena wanted me to prove that Rob had found a spire sticking up from the ground in the middle of the woods, and it was the reason he'd taken his own life.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Fletch wanted me to tell him it was just a ghost story. I honestly couldn't say what I believed, but I had to know. I haven't even told Murph.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Fletch wouldn't look me in the eyes.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I had no idea how Fletch intended to stop us. It's not like we needed his permission to visit a public park and I told him as much. Fletch looked at me like I was an idiot.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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If he felt guilty for letting Rob go looking for the spire in the woods alone, maybe being there with Carrie and me would help him get over it. As Fletch backed out of the driveway, I realized there was another reason I didn't protest. Scary Carrie. Yes, things that day had felt normal again between us, but I was still gun-shy about spending that much time alone with her.

CreepCast

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Especially on the shore of a moonlit lake. And as an added bonus, now we didn't have to worry about getting Ecto-1 for the night. Alina kept her distance at school, especially after I attempted to steal a kiss from her the Wednesday before winter break. I had left class to use the bathroom and bumped into her on my way back.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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There were these moments, a few minutes here and there, where she seemed like nothing was wrong, where her smile and her laughter would come easily. Walking her back to class that day was one of those moments. The corridor was nearly deserted. Just before we reached the door to her classroom, I stopped her. I slid one hand around her.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Were you, what were you one of those people? Did you kiss girls in school? I never did it. I never did it in school. That was way too weird. I'm too embarrassed. Strange. I had, I can't say some of them on the podcast, but I had some awful stories of guys and girls just middle, like 2 PM, middle of economics class. Oh yeah. Oh man. Awful, awful times.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just before we reached the door to her classroom, I stopped her. I slid one hand around her slender waist and slipped the other through her hair towards her neck. I leaned in to kiss her and she withdrew from me, from my touch, as if I was on fire. Yeah man, you're going like, you're going to 11 on the way back from class.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And just like that, the old Alina was gone and the broken one was left in her place. We stood there apologizing to each other, her reassuring me that I had nothing to apologize for, me doing the same, before she finally backed into her classroom and shut the door. I was thankful Thursday was our last day. Winter break couldn't arrive soon enough.

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By the way, this is the classic rom-com dynamic of like the guy is all about like, oh, the popular girl, the cheerleader, even though that's not Alina, but she's like the stand in for that. Meanwhile, he has a friend who's actually into him who he doesn't see as attractive as the other girl. Typical teen comedy set up. Yeah.

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Yeah, I just want to keep everything out of public, especially why people see me this way. He's like, got it. So grab your waist in the hallway as you're walking into a class. That's what she meant. Yeah, exactly. I saw Lena twice over the break. Once before Carrie, Fletch and I went to the Quabbin and once after.

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Alina's parents had a cabin at the foot of Shawnee Peak in Maine, where they usually spent New Year's Eve. But that year they decided to go up on the 27th and come back down on the 30th so Alina wouldn't miss her weekly therapy session. The day after Christmas, she came over to our house for dinner. My parents were wonderful. I had warned them about how nervous and anxious she was likely to be.

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I didn't say a word about suicide notes or the spire in the woods, but I had told them that Rob had had a crush on her and that Alina wasn't coping well with his death. They couldn't have been more understanding. Ordinarily, my dad would have delighted in teasing anyone I brought home for the first time, but he refrained.

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Instead, whenever there's a lull in the conversation, he teased my younger brother, who had got in for Christmas that year, among other things, a Furby, and insisted on bringing it to the dinner table. Don't let me catch you feeding that thing after midnight! My brother was too young to catch the reference and looked up, confused. It's only 6.30. Okay.

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I like the thing. That's what he says. Hey, get the hell out of here. I like the idea that one day, like 15 years from now, we're going to be old. We're going to be sitting around with our kids at a dinner table. And you're going to be like, don't feed that thing after midnight. And your kid's going to be like, huh? And you're just going to beat, you're going to beat the brakes off.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You little son of a bitch. Just right there. No one blinks. Just completely normal. Hunter does this all the time. Well, it's always midnight somewhere. My mom, for her part, also resisted her natural instincts. Usually whenever someone came over to my house for the first time, she'd practically interrogate them, stopping just shy of shining a spotlight in their face.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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This habit of hers had been particularly rough on Scary Carrie, who my mom was briefly convinced was on drugs. What do you mean? Shut up. That is a very mom way to view a goth girl in the 90s. I bet she does drugs. I bet she does weed. Yeah, she does weed. After dinner, my dad suggested that I show Alina the TV that I had gotten for Christmas the day before. The TV that was in my room.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He really was a great dad. Now that is a dad. That's a player move. That is a player. That is a player move. Hey, son, why don't you show her that TV? You got her up there. Come on, son. Come on. What are we doing here? Come on. As soon as you get up there, I'm going to have the staircase taken out.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Alina said, once the door shut behind us, I scoffed. Believe me.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

11592.422

Drew DeLuca was a firm advocate of the idea that a romantic movie was not the best movie to watch with a girl you wanted to get romantic with. For starters, most of them were, in his view, very crappy movies and the good ones ran the danger of actually holding a girl's interest.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

11609.586

What you wanted was a movie that was pleasant and charming, but light enough that you could miss a good chunk of it without feeling lost and needing to rewind. The sort of movie you'd stumble across while watching TV on a Sunday afternoon and finish even though it was already midway through. I threw in Maverick.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Alina sat on the floor and I followed suit, but not before grabbing a couple of pillows off my bed. Her movements were stiff as she settled down on the pillow. I tried not to appear too eager. As I got down behind her and draped my arm over her waist. What is he describing there?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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oh they're spooning yeah yeah okay okay i was thinking she is laid down like away from the tv and he just like slides underneath her slides underneath her i was like what kind of a move is that okay but spooning got it got it as the movie started i kept thinking about those fantasies i'd had the night gosh Like you said, the story's too real.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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As the movie started, I kept thinking about those fantasies I'd had the night after our first kiss. About how pleasant it'd be just to lie next to Alina watching TV. Just being near her and nothing more. I was right. But actually being beside her, my hand resting lightly against her flat stomach, I found other ideas even more enticing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I pulled myself closer to her, savoring the fragrance that her vanilla-scented shampoo left in her wild hair. My fingers crept slowly, almost imperceptibly, up her toned body. Alina stopped my hand.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Every time. No interest in watching that shit, I'm telling you. That was actually, so that was my move. It was to put on a war movie or an action film that I knew for a fact. You can't put on Hamburger Hill. No, no, no. You gotta be subtle. No, no, no. Nothing that's like she looks up and she sees a man holding his guts crying for his mom. Nothing that intense. Mom! Mom! Mom!

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, nothing that or nothing too loud either. The trick is you got to turn on a movie that you're like, oh, it's great. People talk about all the time. It's a classic, but you know she's not going to care for it. Like a Taken or like... I'm trying to think of old... Or like Band of Brothers or something, right? Right.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Like it's good and she's heard of it, but she's going to lose interest and she is going to be looking for anything else to do. So... It'd be like, well, I guess if you don't want to watch the movie, I guess something else.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, I think it's cool. Back home, we had a rite of passage. As soon as you, one of your friends, were old enough to drive, you had to trespass into the blood cemetery at night and make a rubbing of the blood family's gravestones. I did it, and you should feel free to. Be prepared to be disappointed because none of the Bloods died on the same day. A lot of ghost stories are like that.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Okay, what was your move? What did you do?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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So actually, since you disclosed that, one of my first, not like first kiss levels, but like one of the first intimate times I remember was Children of the Corn was on. Okay. Little Children of the Corn action. Damien in the background.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. So it's very similarly, I have very mixed feelings about that. Sure. Now, like, cause I remember being like super engaged in one thing and then like, it catches my attention for a second. It's like kids screaming through town. It's like, okay, well maybe I'll just turn away from that. That's funny. Anyway, this is a really good story because every single part reminds me of something.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I'm having PTSD. Yeah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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This is your stolen valor, Hunter. This is literally my stolen valor moment, yeah. Okay, so she just shot him down. He's like, oh, that's cool. I said, mentally cursing the day DeLuca had been born. I spent the next hour knowing the agony of a man without any fresh water. Stuck on a live draft, a drifted scene. After the movie, my luck didn't improve much.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

11944.011

The crowds began to roll and I had it in my head that Alina might feel more comfortable expressing her affection for me if she felt like she was in control. Oh gosh. I kissed her neck where it met. I kissed her neck where it met her jaw and pulled her life little body on top of mine. Oh my gosh. Good man.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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This is insane to read. This is insane to have this voice clip of me out there on the internet. The pressure of her weight pressing down on me was an excruciating pleasure. My eyes rolled back in my head. Conscious thought melted away.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. All five of them. Yeah. Yeah. All five, all, all seven women who tune into this podcast, seven, six, excluding your wife. Cause mine doesn't listen to it. My fingers found their way to the bare skin of her lower back. I could feel the slight bumps of her vertebrae raising up her skin. It was oddly intoxicating. It does have a bit of a serial killer vibe, doesn't it?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Doesn't mean they're not fun, but once you come to realize as you get older is that they're mostly a form of social control. Jennifer Wilkins really did die a horrible death, but the story of Abel Blood is nothing but a fantasy story with a rather dark, misogynistic message. Cheat on your husband and he'll kill you. I loved ghost stories growing up. Loved them.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

12041.692

The next line is, when had I become attracted to spines?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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put her there, bro. Yeah, it goes for me and you being like, oh yeah, get in there, bud. Woo! To like, wait. Hold on. You what? I brushed my cheek against hers and angled my face so our mouths aligned. Her lips parted tentatively. I listened for the subtle changes in her breathing that would tell me when it'd be safe to make the next move. Her breathing deepened.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I slid my hands up, up, up her back, all the way to her satiny bra strap. I had never touched a bra before in my life, and had only a vague idea of how to guide the hooks from the eyes. I nibbled her ear as my fingers fumbling beneath Alina's shirt, and that's when I felt that she was crying. Oh my god!

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I whispered while pulling my hands out of her shirt. See? Oh, I'm cold. I've got chills everywhere. Oh, my gosh. She sniffled and turned her head away from me.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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i was so scared i knew i couldn't be too eager with her i knew i couldn't press her too hard she was in a fragile state and there i was thinking with anything but my head my only defense was that i just wanted to make her feel good i that is the most 16 year old justification yeah no shit i thought since she liked me she'd like my touch as much as i craved hers but i thought wrong on many levels

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I gently pushed her chin up to look her in the eyes. I didn't mean to push you too fast. You okay? She nodded and I held her until she pushed herself up off me. Yeah, you were really, I won't say bear trap necessarily, but you were right earlier when you were talking about the similarities between him and Robb. like how Rob only saw it. Like he thought he knew her, but didn't really know her.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Uh, and now we kind of see that with our main character where he's like, Oh, I thought she liked me, but we really haven't had any indication of that. She just wants someone to be a comfort to comfort her in this time. And she's putting up with your sexual advances because you're one of the only people who will talk to her about the stuff and she feels comfortable around.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And you're kind of taking advantage of that so that, um, you know, you can speak to her because that's what you want out of it. Even though she just wants some company out of it. She doesn't necessarily like you.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Or to prove his love or whatever? I don't know. It wouldn't be out of nowhere. It is kind of setting up that direction. Yeah, exactly. Alina paced around my room doing a breathing exercise her therapist had taught her. I went downstairs to grab us a couple glasses of water. It was less than the least I could do.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That's what gave me my not entirely unearned reputation as the spooky kid. It was the reason that about a month after he died, Rob Kennan's suicide note wound up in my lap. there buried in the middle of apologies to his family and clear evidence of severe depression was my first push towards the spire in the woods. The only ghost story I truly believe. Oh, brother. Oh, what a, what a opening.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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While I was in the kitchen, my dad gave me a questioning look and a thumbs up behind my mother's back.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I shook my head no and felt like a failure. Once she was calm enough to sit down, we sat on my bed, far apart from one another, sipping the water and talking.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Bro, dude. Oh my gosh. Alina gave a little nod as she stared down at her water like, uh-huh, yeah, sure, sure.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I mean, you can make out and go to movies and make out.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You can get back to being a loser. Alina got up and started pacing again.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just the idea of like, like teenage making out and this to the background.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just gently, just like tear, like he doesn't know how to kiss her. So he's just like licking her lips. It's also that scene in hamburger Hill where he's talking about how he went home from war and like he found his wife cheating on him. And, uh,

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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like they were making fun the hippies were throwing like dog poop out and he's like and that was all right and that was all right like that very impactful scene yeah he's just like fondling with a bra he's never touched before elena stopped practically mid-step and stared at me i hadn't noticed until just then but she had bags under her eyes that help when are you going tomorrow elena stared at me the energy of the room had changed

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I could practically smell her desperation as easily as her vanilla scented shampoo. She needed me to find the spire in the woods and prove that it was the widower's clock. Prove that Rob hadn't killed himself because she broke his heart. but because he'd been haunted by the ghost of Amy Lowell Putnam. And if Alina Amenev needed it, so did I. To hell with Fletch.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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To hell with just hearing the bells. I was going to find the spire.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Places I wouldn't go with a gun. Places I wouldn't go with a gun. Yeah, that's my boy. That's your boy, all right. That's my boy. I really, I do want to say that like, we've been joking about it going on. I feel every one of these characters is so well thought out. Yeah. They feel legitimate. I want to see them succeed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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There's kind of, there's this interesting dynamic, which our author kind of highlighted where it's like, he's going to the spire in the woods, but for opposite reasons, because he's, Alina needs him to prove that the spires real and Fletch needs him to prove that the spires fake. Right.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And it's like he obviously his loyalty lies more with Alina because he's horny, but it creates this interesting kind of this conflict with himself. And it's neither like Fletch and Alina are both understandable, but they're also not necessarily in the right either of them because Alina is like, well, I need to prove that it's not my fault and that he was possessed by some ghost thing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And it's like, well, that's kind of, it seems like a lot. Yeah. And then meanwhile, Fletch is like, I need to prove my friend's not crazy. And that stupid chick did it. And it's like, well, that's also like selfish. Yeah. A lot of the onus comes back on your friend. Yeah. It's an interesting position. It's a very unique dynamic. I like Fletch. I like Fletch a lot. Yeah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I think he's going to be one of the more legitimate actors, I think. And everything's going down because he's just he's just reacting off emotions for a friend of his that died. It's true. It doesn't really have any ulterior motives like some people do. And Carrie, I like Carrie. I feel like she's just got Delta bad hand, but she seems loyal. She seems like a good friend, I think. Okay, part five.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Are you ready, Hunter? Part five. What's with the bag? Fletched ass as I tossed my duffel bag onto the back seat and got inside the car. If memory serves, it had been 25 or so that day. Felt even colder in that little Civic.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I think he was 17. I think he was also 17. I think they were the same age. Um, Yeah. And Rob also burned to death in his car, which is a brutal way.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Fletch acknowledged he heard me with a soft grunt. We were on our way to pick up Scary Carrie. I'll also say, I know we keep diverging the story, or I do, to talk, but that's what the podcast is for, I guess. I like that little mention where he's like, if memory serves, it was 25 that day.

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So that tells us immediately that what happened on this day was important enough that years later, writing the story, he remembers what the temperature was. So it's like, okay, well, what's about to happen? Just a neat little storytelling to pull out.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Truth be told, while the bag did have my mother's Bible and the flashlights, the miscellaneous crap I borrowed from Carrie was actually a bicycle pump and a pool raft shaped like a small boat that I'd borrowed from Christy McDowell earlier that day. I didn't see the sense in telling Fletch yet that I wanted to do more than just hear the bells.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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At least not while we were still in my driveway and he could back out. Better to wait until we were down there, and the worst he could do was leave us without a ride home.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We grabbed Carrie, and we're probably on our way shortly after 8 o'clock. For the first hour or so, the drive was surprisingly pleasant. Kerry asked Fletch questions about where he was hoping to go to college, which schools were his safeties, and how he was going to pay for it.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Fletch answered all of her questions and was even joking around a bit, but as we got deeper into Massachusetts, his nerves started to creep in. He fell silent around the time we cleared Worchester. It didn't take a mind reader to know he was thinking about Rob. It was impossible not to. we were retracing the steps of a boy who had killed himself.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Whatever he'd found down there, whether it was supernatural or not, whether it was something or nothing, Rob had blamed it for driving him to madness and death. I'd never been scared on any of my other ghost hunting trips. Not really.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Usually I was filled with a sense of anticipation, a giddy feeling that I could soon make a discovery that would forever change the way I saw the whole world, accompanied by a touch of anxiety that I might get caught trespassing. Trespassing. Trespassing. Trespassing. Trespassing. That I might get caught trespassing somewhere I didn't belong.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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But as we pulled into the trailer park, my heart was pounding in my chest and my palms were covered in a cold sweat. 10-13. Fletch said, cutting the engine. If we hustle, we might be able to hear the bells to 11. Kara and I nodded dumbly. I could tell she was feeling it too. This was different than the blood cemetery or the Eunice Williams covered bridge.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We were walking into the ghost story of Robert Edward Kennan. And the only thing we knew for certain was that he was dead.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Okay, this is him talking to Carrie. Thank you.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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i said to carry as we said oh my god i said said carry my bed no you know what i'm like no you don't get to redo that line you don't get to redo that line because that was that was your malice for this woman and we're leaving it okay that's what he said to her pass me my bag no no no no you went even worse it's him it's the author talking to carry pass me my bag shut up fledge wordlessly led the way the crunch of the dead leaves beneath our feet echoed out into the forest

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Even though the moon casts more than enough light for us to see, I fished the flashlights out of my bag just to have something to do. It hadn't snowed yet that year, or at least not at the Quabbin, but it was cold. The temperature had dropped into the high teens and the wind ripping through the bare trees wasn't helping matters any.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was no surprise we didn't see anyone as we crossed into the park. We were in the middle of nowhere. Hell, if it weren't for the metal pole that served as a gate stretched across Old Ware-Enfield Road, we probably could have driven in without anyone noticing. The smell of wood smoke hung faintly on the wind.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Somewhere, miles away, people were sitting around their fireplace, probably commenting on what a good night it was for a fire. I bet they felt cozy. Fletch rubbed his nose and sniffled. It could have just been the cold making his nose run a little, or maybe he smelled the smoke too. Either way, it reminded me of something I'd read once.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Firemen say that when a person burns to death, their flesh smells like pork. I pitied Fletch. Thank God I hadn't been there to smell Rob burn. By the time we reached the fork where the access road splits off from the old Ware infield, my legs felt like blocks of ice. We hadn't been stupid.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We had warm hats and jackets, but a two, two and a half mile walk at night in late December is too much for just a pair of jeans. Stopped my feet to warm up.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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At least you brought some gloves. Carrie said. She had one hand buried deep in her coat pocket. The other holding the flashlight I'd given her with her sleeve pulled down over her fingers. Fletch cast a baleful eye in our direction. Even though we hadn't been particularly loud or said anything disrespectful, he looked at us as if he'd caught us dancing on Rob's grave.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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As far as Fletch was concerned, we were on hallowed ground. We pressed on in silence until, just ahead of us, we heard whispering gently through the trees. It sounded vaguely like the Friday the 13th soundtrack was being carried on the wind across a great distance. What the hell's that? Harry hissed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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People think of ice as an object, solid and inert, but ice expands and contracts a great deal. Slight variations in temperature, small eddies, and imperceptible currents prevent the water from freezing uniformly. Little fissures turn into big cracks as the ice strains against itself until it buckles and splinters into plates.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What we were hearing was like continental drift in miniature, big ice plates pressing against each other until something snapped with the resulting sound echoing over the reservoir's frozen surface. We cleared the tree line and, sure enough, the Quabbin was frozen. I was surprised. Bodies of water as big as the Quabbin don't usually freeze until mid-January or so.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Guess we won't be needing the raft. I thought. That's when the bells chimed eleven. Bliss. My body shuddered. I felt like I was beneath Alina, her weight pressing down on the parts of me that strained to meet her. My flesh tingled. It was as if the smooth skin of her back that my fingertips had danced lightly across now surrounded every inch of me. In that lingering moment, I was sated.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The bells had nourished me like a feast nourishes the starving. I wanted nothing but to be exactly where I was, hearing exactly what I was hearing, feeling exactly what I was feeling. Then all was silence. I was, once more, out in the cold. I heard them. Gary breathed. I turned to her and saw that she had a wistful gleam in her. It was the first and last time I ever saw her truly happy.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He was laboring to breathe. That was... That was beautiful. I sat down beside him. The dirt beneath us was hard as rock. The echo coming off the eye sounded like a gentle tide lapping on the shore. I looked up at the sky. So far away from the light pollution of Nashaw or Boston or Lowell, I could see a myriad of stars I'd never noticed before.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's the sort of thing that makes some feel small, but not me. I just peeked behind, realities fail and discovered. Well, I didn't know exactly what, just that there were more. Not up there around distant stars, suspended on the far side of an unfathomably great abyss, but right here. Nothing between us and this undiscovered country but a few hundred yards of ice in an hour's time.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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When the bells would toll twelve, we should have left. We said we only wanted to hear the bells. The only reason Fletch was even there was to make sure we turned back. I had witnessed what I'd been searching for throughout all of my ghost hunts. I had evidence of the supernatural. Wasn't that all I'd ever wanted? One experience to bolster my faith?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just one that I could point to, cling to, whenever I found myself besieged by doubts? I'd certainly thought so. Until I heard those damn bells. I'm not sure which one of us was the first to tentatively step onto the ice, but I recall clearly none of us voiced an objection, not even Fletch.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I think I know where this is going, because he had that line about Carrie where he said it was the first and last time I ever saw her truly.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, yeah. And we've already had all the buildup about the ice breaks easily, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. The ice was slick, and we fell hard more than once. But we were all of us New Englanders, no strangers to shuffling across an expanse of ice. The trick was to keep your weight centered above your feet.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We talked in clipped bursts about what the bells had felt like to us, speaking in broken analogies, unable to fully share what the bells had awoken inside of us, but straining to convey it as best we could.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The echo was louder than we'd heard it from the shore.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You know, you're the only man I know who would make fun of a woman on her way to the gallows. Like, well, here's the problem.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Don't worry, Hunter. She's about to be out of your hair. It sounds like the way this is going. Fletch grunted his acknowledgement. What time is it? I checked my watch about a quarter past. It must have been right on top of where the ice was grinding against itself. We froze. Each of us strained our eyes and ears, trying to determine if the ice was safe.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We knew if the ice wasn't safe, it'd be dangerous to press on. We knew it, but we didn't care. Maybe you should go first. You're the lightest. Yeah. I said, and shuffled ahead. Being closer to the bells felt worth the risk. Any risk. Carrie and Fletch followed in my wake. neither following directly behind me so as to spread our way to cross a broader area. We pressed on. The conversation died.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The wind blew hard across the reservoir and tore through our clothes like a knife. We didn't care. The sound was growing fainter. We had crossed nearly three quarters of the distance to the island that housed the spire. I never heard the ice crack. Just a sharp inhalation of breath for a scream that never escaped her lips. Carrie plunged through the ice.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I turned just in time to see her head go under. Carrie came up thrashing, but as she hit the sides of the hole, she'd made more and more of the ice broke away, expanding the hole to the size of a kiddie pool. I shuffled my feet as fast as I could towards the edge. Fletch screamed for me to stop. "'No, no! It's not stable!' Cold water sucks the heat from your body 32 times faster than air.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Every second Carrie stayed in that water increased the likelihood her arms and legs would go numb and she wouldn't be able to pull herself out of the water even if the ice stopped breaking. Laying on my stomach to spread as much of my weight across the surface as I could, I dragged myself over to the water's edge. Grab on!

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I held onto the shoulder strap and tossed my duffle bag into the water as close to Carrie as I could. Her hands fumbled, already rendered useless from the heat loss, but she managed to wrap her arms tight around the bulk of the bag. I pulled her up to the edge. She got most of her body out of the water before the ice cracked and she fell back in, almost taking me with her.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Strong hands grabbed my ankles and pulled me away from the hole. Fletch grunted as he struggled for traction on the ice. I don't know how he did it, but Fletch managed to get enough of a purchase that we were able to drag Carrie out of the water. Oh, thank God. Scary... I was getting worried there. Scary Carrie was white as a bone and panting for breath through chattering teeth.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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She struggled to get to her hands and knees. We've got to get her out of here. Fletch said. The pull of the bells had been broken.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13347.301

had we been thinking bring the car around we'll meet you the car was easily two miles away fletch nodded and was off shuffling his feet across the ice as quickly as he could i was afraid to stand too close to carry out on the ice but what choice did i have she was still struggling just to crawl i grabbed her by her ankles and dragged her across until we were far enough away from the hole that i felt comfortable enough to pull her to her feet still the ice went

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13374.656

So I watched Fletch slip out of sight behind the trees. Didn't sound gentle anymore. I put her arm over my shoulder. We shuffled along best we could. Each time one of us slipped, I thought the ice had given out again. My heart would race and I'd think, This is it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13393.769

but instead we would just be slammed down against the rock-hard surface. Carrie followed my instructions. She didn't seem confused, but she wasn't talking either. By the time we reached the access road, her lips had turned pale blue and the water in her hair had frozen.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13408.342

At the fork on Old Ware Enfield Road, I insisted that we trade jackets and I gave her my hat and gloves, one of which was wet from pulling her out of the water, but I figured it was better than nothing. Carrie fumbled and struggled to get out of her jacket. We had to stop walking so I could help her with the zipper.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13424.825

She fought me as I tried to get my hat over her enormous head and with slurred speech complained that she was hot. I knew what that meant. Carrie was in trouble. If I had had a cell phone back then, I'd have bitten the bullet and called her an ambulance, but I didn't get my first cell phone until 2001. I made Carrie run the rest of the way, even though she moved like a drunk in an old cartoon.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13447.588

Fletch saw us approaching the gate and, leaving the engine running, ran out to meet us. How is she? He asked, putting her arm over his shoulder.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13459.113

Fletch and I were moving as quick as we could while dragging Carrie along between us.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13473.091

Fletch put the car in drive and started heading towards Amherst, figuring they'd have a hospital there and we'd see signs for it on Route 9. Had we gone the other way, back towards the Shaw, we'd have been at a hospital in 11 minutes. Fortunately, the way we chose, the nearest hospital was in North Hampton, over an hour away. Oh God. Even with the heat on full blast, the car was freezing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13494.775

Practically, as soon as the doors closed, Carrie started stripping out of her clothes. You got to get back there with her. He was right. Before our week-long winter hike, our instructor chaperones taught us what to do in the event that someone displayed any signs of hypothermia. You get them out of their wet clothes, you strip down, and you get into a sleeping bag with them.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13513.501

It's called passive rewarming, and Carrie clearly needed it. Crawled over the emergency brake into the back seat with the half-naked scary Carrie. She didn't fight me or complain about being warm. But it was difficult to get close to her. Kia wedged herself down on the floor, mostly behind the passenger seat, a space I would have never imagined could accommodate me, let alone both of us.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13535.759

You got a blanket back here or anything? I said, looking around in the mess of clutter that Carrie sat on top of. No, but hang on. Fletch wrestled himself out of his jacket while he drove. It occurred to me that I could use the uninflated raft as a blanket, but when I looked for my duffel bag, I realized I must have dropped it somewhere between the reservoir and the car.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13556.351

Fletch threw his jacket back to me. It'd have to do. I stripped down to my underwear. Scary Carry was completely unresponsive. I did my best to move her into a position where I could lay next to her, draped Fletch's jacket over my shoulders and mine over our legs before spreading myself across her corpulent belly. That's a crazy word.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13579.622

I'd like to say I spent the next hour concerned only for the well-being of my friend, but that's not true. A million thoughts ran through my head. Yes, I did think about Carrie. I thought she already looked dead and hoped that at least some of her pale complexion was just the moonlight. I noticed how slow her breathing was. I could barely feel her cold gut moving at all.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13605.89

But I also thought about Rob and the rumor I repeated when I was in the sixth grade. The one about how he'd been found naked in the woods with a mentally handicapped girl. I thought about how everyone said he tricked her into sleeping with him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1361.578

Rob was a senior. He wasn't what you'd call real popular. Part of it was that he wasn't born in my hometown, but moved there in the seventh grade, right when kids are at their cruelest. The first I ever heard of him was a year later. There was a rumor floating around that he and a mentally handicapped girl were found naked in the woods together.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13621.668

And even as my friend lay beneath me for all I knew dying, there was a small part of me that was thankful we were so far away from home and nobody would hear about this. Shortly before 1.30 in the morning, we pulled up in front of the emergency room at Cooley-Dixon Hospital. Fletch got out of the car and ran for help.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13640.356

Carrie was unconscious when a pair of nurses or orderlies or whatever they were pulled her out of the car and put her on a stretcher. When they asked me, I couldn't remember the last time I checked to see if she was still breathing. It had been a few minutes, at least. They couldn't find a pulse.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13659.241

Fletch and I were forced to stay in the waiting room. We couldn't do anything else for her. Carrie was in their hands now. In a way, that was worse. At least for us. When we were in the car, we had a goal. Something to focus on. We had to get Carrie to a hospital.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13676.516

Once we'd arrived, the adrenaline that had been coursing through our veins returned to whence it came and left us with nothing but doubts. Could we have done more? Had we been fast enough? Should be fine. Should be fine. Let's rock back and forth in his chair, repeating his little mantra as if he could will it to be so. Should be fine. Should be fine. Should be fine. Should be fine.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13701.847

It was over an hour before we were able to get an update. Carrie had survived.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13708.935

I wasn't ready for that. That was so rough. Okay. When they initially checked her vitals, Carrie's core temperature had fallen to 64 degrees Fahrenheit, and her heart rate had slowed to 29 beats per minute. For a girl Carrie's age and size, you'd expect her resting heart rate to be in the neighborhood of 74 beats per minute.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13732.008

The emergency room doctor felt Carrie's hypothermia was too severe for external warming techniques and elected to irrigate Carrie's stomach and colon with warm saline solution. Every 15 minutes, the saline, by then cold, had to be pumped out and replaced with more warm saline.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13747.898

We had hoped we'd be able to see her, but at that point they'd only managed to raise her body temperature about four degrees. Carrie was still unconscious. She also had third or fourth degree frostbite on several of her fingers and toes and one of her ankles, but they wouldn't have to worry about that tonight. There's a saying about frostbite. Frozen in January, amputated in July.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13770.029

The nurse, a young, homely woman, looked at us like we were criminals. I guess she blamed us for the state Carrie was in. Even now, I'm not sure she was wrong.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13786.817

Payphone? Follow me. The nurse turned and led me back to the admittance desk. It's funny. As scared as I was that my friend's life was still in serious jeopardy, somehow I was also scared to be in trouble with her mom. By extension, mine. What can I say? I liked perspective, and the enormity of the situation hadn't fully sunk in. The nurse let me use one of the hospital phones.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13816.03

Mrs. Peterson screamed into the phone. Carrie's been in an accident.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13829.039

I could hear Mrs. Peterson lumbering through her house and bellowing for her daughter. She certainly had her faults, but liking affection for her daughter wasn't one of them. I'd often suspected that Mrs. Peterson had been one of those sad sacks who had known their marriage wasn't going to last and insisted on having a kid anyway.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13845.93

Not to save the marriage, but just to have one person in the world that loved them unconditionally. What happened? Where is she? That is such a depressing paragraph. I know, dude. Oh, God. This is, I'm getting beat. I'm having, I said I had Boroska flashbacks earlier. I'm having them right now because I'm getting sad. All I told her was that her daughter had fallen through some ice. Nothing else.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1385.628

The implication being that he tricked her into having sex with him. A couple of years later, I heard another that his parents were forced to move because Rob had been molested by their old priest down in Amherst. Those are some rough rumors to spread around about a guy. Oh man. To the best of my knowledge, these stories are entirely untrue.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13872.214

Emphasized at every turn that she was alive and being cared for, which was true. But I also promised that she'd be fine. It was a promise I had no business making. I just couldn't stomach hearing the hurt in her voice. I would have said anything to make Mrs. Peterson feel better. I handed the phone back to the homely nurse so that she could give Mrs. Peterson directions to the hospital.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13895.44

Two and a half hours later, Ecto-1's tires screeched to stop in the parking lot. My daughter, where is she? I could hear her even before she was through the doors. If the kids at school thought Carrie was frightening to behold, it was only because they'd never seen her mother upset. Mrs. Peterson ran up to the admittance desk wearing her jacket over her bathroom.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13916.34

The sweatpants she slept in peeking out over her snow boots. Her face was red and puffy from crying and her hair looked not just uncombed, but as if someone had tied it in knots and then dipped it in grease. By comparison, the homely nurse looked like Helen of Troy.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13935.145

Mrs. Peterson said, pounding the desk in front of her. Being a mother was the reason Mrs. Peterson got out of bed in the morning. It was the reason she worked a thankless, poorly paying job. It was the reason she wasn't about to let anyone keep her from being there for her daughter. Fletch and I jogged the short distance down the hall from the waiting room.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13953.709

The hospital staff was looking nervously at Mrs. Peterson's red face and bulging veins. A pair of nurses moved in close behind the homely nurse to support her. You can't see her until she's been stabilized. The nurse said, her voice quivering. Mrs. Peterson let out an inarticulate scream that shook her whole body. It was a desperate noise that sounded like a wounded animal.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13975.054

The homely nurse flinched. Fletch took an involuntary step back, and one of the other nurses peeled off from the pack and ran down the hall, probably to get security. She needn't have bothered. After her scream, Mrs. Peterson collapsed to the floor in tears. I laid my hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. Mrs. Peterson looked up and saw that it was me.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

13995.99

I thought for a moment I'd received the same treatment as the nurses. Instead, she pulled me down on top of her and hugged me, clinging to me like I was life itself. Mrs. Peterson buried her face in my shoulder and cried. I wish she had yelled at me. And not just because my face was pressed into her hair, which smelled of sweet, deli meats, and feta cheese. I'd nearly gotten her daughter killed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14019.254

I didn't deserve to be embraced like a member of the family. And something about the way Mrs. Peterson so desperately held me reminded me of the trip her daughter and I had taken to Greenfield. I'd been reckless with Carrie in so many ways.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14032.699

I really liked that last line because there's so much there, like when he was in the back of the car with her and I didn't comment on it then, but when he made the comment about like, I remember I used to spread that rumor about Rob hooking up with the disabled girl. And it's like, it's not, when he mentions it, it's not just like, Oh, ha ha. That was funny. I'm glad no one sees me here.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1405.191

And I'm deeply ashamed to admit that when I was in the sixth grade, I did gleefully repeat that first one. I found it funny at the time. The second I also repeated, just not as glibly. I whispered it to my friends, adopting a sage tone and offering it as an explanation for why the first rumor was probably true. I felt so damn smart.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14054.259

It's like, he's having this grown up moment where he's like, huh? I guess like just because of appearances, I shouldn't think of someone else like that or shouldn't spread rumors about it. And now the things he normally would care about, like her hair's greasy or she smells bad.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14069.551

It doesn't matter because, you know, what he really feels is unworthiness that a woman, that a mother would give him this kind of grief. And now he relates that back and says, I've been reckless with Carrie in so many ways. Yeah, it's like he's growing up.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14124.284

yeah i've been reckless with carrie in so many ways it's a very it's a very grown-up line at this point in the story yeah fletch helped the two of us to our feet and we led mrs peterson back to the waiting room we stopped at mcdonald's on the way home but neither of us could bring ourselves to eat anything fletch and i had stayed at the hospital until nearly 10 a.m by that time carrie's temperature had returned to normal but at no point had she regained consciousness

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14150.066

We would have stayed longer, but we'd been awake for nearly 24 hours at that point and our bodies were beginning to shut down. I left Mrs. Peterson my parents' number and told her to call me if she needed anything. She took it and thanked me for watching over her little girl. Sitting beneath the fluorescent lights, waiting for Fletch to finish his coffee, I felt like Judas minus the silver.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14177.827

I should have stayed at the hospital, but I copped out. I couldn't stand Mrs. Peterson being nice to me. I should have never brought you. It was the first thing Fletch had said in hours. We'd have gone anyway. I said smearing ketchup around my tray with my hash browns, so I wouldn't have to look him in the eyes.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14210.302

Fletch didn't respond. I guess he still felt like it was his fault.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14219.564

I hazarded a glance up and wished I hadn't. He was giving me the same look I'd given Mrs. Peterson an hour earlier when she thanked me for watching over Carrie. Neither of us were ready to be forgiven yet.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14236.447

I couldn't argue with him there. Fletch finished his coffee in silence. After he was done, neither of us moved to get up. It was probably around 10.30 or so at that point, and neither of us had called our parents. We knew we should have found the nearest payphone. We knew we couldn't hide what had happened. Couldn't lie. At least not about Carrie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1424.474

had the inside scoop something interesting to say and everyone wanted to listen to me i wish i kept my mouth shut i wasn't smart i was just kicking a kid while he was down spreading the lies that may have contributed to him killing himself the rumors followed rob everywhere he was a quiet kid by all accounts very bright and kind and i want to be clear here he did have people who cared about him friends not many and maybe they weren't too popular either but they were there and they were nice guys

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14256.518

But even if it was only for a couple hours, we wanted to push the eventuality off for as long as possible. Our parents would know soon enough. We got back in the car and rolled down the windows, hoping the cold air would help keep Fletch awake long enough for the coffee to kick in. Fletch stopped for the light at the intersection of Amherst Road and the Daniel Shays Highway.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14276.575

We needed to go left, which would take us north towards New Hampshire. Fletch hadn't hit his blinker yet.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14285.943

Fletch had struggled to get out each word.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14291.274

part of me wants to go back i want to hear them again so did i all we'd have to do is go right do you if we did do you think we could get there by 11 the light changed we didn't move until the car behind us started honking let's hit the blinker we went left my cheeks burned with shame we probably wouldn't have made it in time We can't, we can't, we can't, we can't go back there. Not ever.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14325.776

No, never. But even as I said it, I knew I would. The bells felt like home.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14373.348

Yeah, I think they're going to go back. It's so good to have all of that intensity around Carrie and all of that trauma that happened and then them being like, we could hear the bells again. That's how enticing they are. That's the grip they have over this group of guys.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14396.468

Yeah, I don't think Carrie will go back. I think that Fletch and our author will. For sure. Potentially, I think what may happen is he tells Alina and she wants to go.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14412.254

Is this story not so good? It's wonderful. This is great. All right. Well, part six. Part six. My parents woke up on the morning of December 28th, 1999 to a quiet house. Nothing unusual about that. They were typically the first ones up. My mother made coffee and my father turned on CNN and got on the treadmill. My brother woke up next and my mother made him French toast.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14435.505

She made some for me as well, figuring I could reheat it whenever I came down. It was a couple of hours before my absence was felt. No big deal. They figured it was vacation. They might as well let me sleep in. Then around 11 o'clock, they got a call from Mr. Fletcher. He was in a bad mood.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14462.932

My mom covered the receiver with her hand and hollered for my dad to go wake me up. That's when they found out I was missing. Fletch and I showed up in the driveway two hours later. I'd say my parents were more annoyed than angry. My parents weren't strict disciplinarians. I'd slept over at Drew DeLuca's without consulting them on more than one occasion.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14480.718

And while they were never exactly thrilled with me, they trusted my judgment and preferred letting me exercise that judgment to being woken up by a late night phone call looking for their permission. When they found my bed empty, they had figured we'd stay up late playing video games or, at worst, watching Skinamax movies over at some friend's or another's, and were just too tired to drive home.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14503.811

Fletch's parents weren't so understanding. They'd called everyone Fletch was friends with, then called my parents looking for the names of my friends. Nathan, you better get your butt home. my dad said. Then he held his thumb and forefinger up about an inch apart and added, Your dad sounds like he's about this close to going through the phone book in an alphabetic order looking for you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14524.418

He was trying to be funny, but Fletch and I weren't in much of a mood to laugh. We exchanged one last tired look, both knowing things were going to get worse before they got any better and parted ways. I stood on the front steps of my house with my father watching Fletch drive off down the road. Boy, am I glad I'm not him right now. He didn't know the half of it. Dad, we, uh...

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1453.877

One of them was my ride to school, Nathan Fletch Fletcher. Fletch and I lived in the same neighborhood. We were never all that close, but we got along well enough. He was a lovable goofball, always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but it never got him down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14545.066

I have to tell you something. They didn't yell and they didn't scream, but the days of my parents trusting my judgment were over. I'd stayed out all night without permission, driven deep into another state, and gone out onto unfamiliar, recently frozen ice in the middle of the night. That was stupid. That was so stupid. My father got up from the table and headed for the phone.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14568.781

He'd never been good at sitting still when he was agitated. Why were you even in Amherst? My mother asked. We wanted to visit Sam. I mumbled. I'd never been a particularly good liar, but Fletch and I had agreed to leave Rob's suicide notes and the spire in the woods out of our story.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14587.269

Fletch was convinced that if Dad caught even the faintest whiff that his son believed in ghost stories, he'd be stuck on meds as fast as the nearest psychiatrist could write the prescription. My mom stared straight at me. I couldn't hold her gaze and pretend to be interested in the French toe she'd reheated for me. That could have been you. Do you understand?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14605.326

That could have been you that fell through the ice. And with no one around. My mom was too choked up to finish her thought. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn't want her to look at me. Yes. You have a patient there named Carrie. My dad stuck the phone under his chin and asked, What's Carrie's last name? While my dad was concerned for Carrie, he was also motivated by self-interest.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14629.123

I could hear it in his voice. He had spent the first ten years of his career working in litigation at the law firm of Ropes and Gray and believed in the importance of CYA, covering your ass. It didn't matter how slim the chances were that Mrs. Peterson would attempt to hold our family, or the Fletchers, accountable for what happened to her daughter, that risk was unacceptable.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14649.277

If you need any help... He said once he got him Mrs. Peterson on the phone. You know... We're in the house, driving Carrie to school. He was feeling her out, trying to get a sense of whether or not Mrs. Peterson blamed us for what had happened to her daughter.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14669.972

Whatever you need, just say the word. He also wanted to dangle the carrot. He knew Mrs. Peterson wouldn't be able to cover Carrie's emergency medical care out of pocket, and he doubted slicing the meat at the deli counter in Market Basket conferred with it Amazing Health Insurance. Mrs. Peterson would need help, but it would come with strings attached.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1468.543

He had this grin that stretched from ear to ear, and he always managed to get me excited about his latest musical discovery or restoration project. Fletch used to buy old cars, fix them up, and resell them. While it helped pad his savings for college, it also meant he was stuck driving whatever hunk of junk he hadn't managed to fix up enough to sell yet.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14688.413

Looking back at my father's actions, they seem cold, and maybe they were, but isn't protecting their kids what good fathers do? Don't they protect their children even when their children don't particularly want to be protected? Had Mrs. Peterson a vengeful bone in her body, I'd have deserved the brunt of everything she could muster. Despite my exhaustion, I had trouble falling asleep.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14711.901

I kept thinking about Carrie. She was in the hospital, and it was my fault. I didn't talk her into anything, but I had involved her. I brought her along and now she was the one lying in a hospital bed with her mother crying over her. As a Catholic, you're taught that God created us as rational beings. You're taught that he gave us the dignity to initiate and control our own actions.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14733.876

That he imbued us with the ability to hold our own counsel so that we may choose our own paths. and that we alone are responsible for the fruit that our choices bear. I didn't believe that everything was part of a plan.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14747.871

And the people that did, the people who saw God's hand in every mundane, earthly event, from athletes who credit Jesus for their ability to hit a curveball, to teenagers invoking the name of the Lord to secure a date on Saturday night, drove me crazy. I never accepted predestination. How could we have free will if, like clockwork, everything was preordained to happen? I believed these things.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14771.889

I did. But lying there thinking of the Petersons, I couldn't stop myself from wondering if God was teaching me a lesson. I'd been taught that God doesn't cause car accidents or tornadoes, but in that moment, I felt that God had broken the ice beneath Carrie's feet to punish me for both doubting his existence and having stolen a glimpse of the secret knowledge no one but God was meant to have.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14795.747

I cried and whispered Hail Marys and Our Fathers to myself until I was finally overtaken by exhaustion. Dim light filtered in through my blinds. The windows in my room face south, and in my semi-conscious state, I wasn't sure if the sun was rising or setting. My stomach growled, but I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed and face my parents. The bells tolled.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14830.746

being torn even in this like in this like test of faith through the whole time but yet still in all this haze the only thing that rings true was the bells chime the bells that's the only thing he's sure of right now yeah i set bolt upright in my bed the room was still and silent and yet i could hear the bells as they continue to call out the hour two three they were beautiful but i didn't lose myself in them as i had on the shore of the quabbin four

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1486.981

That year, Fletch was driving a 1984 Honda Civic. I still hate that car. I found out something was wrong on Tuesday morning when Fletch's rust bucket didn't show up in my driveway like it usually did. It said his dad, an Air Force officer, nowhere near as affable as his son, was waiting for me. I liked Mr. Fletcher fine.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14860.279

Sounded like a song stuck in your head. Five. Stopped. I was still lying in bed. Either I never set up or had lain back down without realizing it. Had I heard them? Or had I remembered them? At the reservoir, we'd heard them toll eleven. Had it just been a dream? I set up for what may have been the second time and looked at my clock. It was five.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14885.677

In the past two days I'd only slept for three hours, but I couldn't handle being alone in the dark. I went downstairs and spent the rest of the night studiously avoiding eye contact with my family. Thankfully, I didn't hear the bells again that night. The next morning, bright and early, my father drove me over to Carrie's house.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14904.92

My parents had put together a care package for Mrs. Peterson, a large basket filled with food so she wouldn't have to cook, gift cards from our local gas station to offset the back and forth to the hospital each day, and a few books to read in the waiting room. When she opened the door, Mrs. Peterson was so grateful that she cried.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14923.382

Once she regained her composure, the two of us got into Ecto-1 and headed out on a two and a half hour drive to Cooley-Dixon Hospital. My dad had volunteered me to go and keep Mrs. Peterson company. He may have had an ulterior motive, but this was something I wanted to do. Something I had to do. The drive was awkward.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14941.631

Under the best of circumstances, as a teenager, spending time alone with one of your friend's parents was always a little uncomfortable, and these were far from the best of circumstances. As I learned on the drive, Carrie was in a coma.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14956.401

Although Mrs. Peterson got virtually none of the medical terms correct. I love that. Come on, dude.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14973.291

Every single description he gives of Mrs. Peterson, he's like, her hair smelled like feta cheese. She was so oily and nasty. It's like, anyway, then she cried over her daughter who's in a coma. She's sleeping or something. Couldn't get any of the words right. Probably can't even pay for this.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

14995.365

Yeah, if it wasn't for that Shell Station visa, she probably may not even know where her daughter's at. They could move her. She'd never know. Probably can't afford a phone bill either. It's like, gosh, kid. Calm down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15010.379

Her only real exposure to medicine came from having watched a lot of ER. Okay. I managed to get the gist of what she was saying. As Carrie's heart rate slowed, so had her breathing. Her blood had failed to supply her brain with the oxygen it needed to run, and it was this lack of oxygen that probably contributed more to Carrie's blue coloration than her body temperature.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15031.996

The doctors had given Mrs. Peterson only one tiny piece of good news. Because hypothermia lowers a body's metabolism, it reduced the likelihood that the oxygen deprivation had damaged Carrie's brain. That was it. That was what we were pitting all our hopes on. That the cold which nearly killed her had also slowed her brain down enough that it hadn't noticed it was suffocating.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15052.277

When we arrived at the hospital, Carrie's mom led me to her new room. I could tell from the looks the staff was giving her along the way that Mrs. Peterson was not their favorite person. Maybe she'd been a pain in the ass the day before, but I didn't feel like that was it. Not exactly. The nurses were giving Mrs. Peterson the same looks the kids at school gave her daughter.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1506.03

He was a good, if not particularly affectionate father to his boys and a respectful neighbor. But his presence in my driveway was odd, especially since I could see that Fletch wasn't in the car.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15071.886

In movies and television, people frequently comment on how peaceful coma patients appear. They say, it's like they're asleep, they look like an angel, or it reminds me of when they were a baby and I used to hold them. I don't know if that was Mrs. Peterson's impression, but it certainly wasn't mine. Ordinarily, Carrie wore a lot of concealer to cover up her acne.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15092.87

At some point between plunging beneath the ice and having saline pumped in and out of her stomach, most of it had disappeared. She had a tube running into her nose, although I'm not sure why. Heart rate monitor on her finger and an IV in her arm. And that was to say nothing of the frostbite.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15108.971

Along with the big toe on her right foot and most of her left foot below the ankle, which we couldn't see beneath the blanket, ice crystals had formed in two fingers on her left hand and the thumb on the right. The blood trapped in her fingers swelled them almost to the same thickness as her wrists. They were red and raw. It was difficult not to stare at them.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15141.851

Every time, dude. It's like, bro, at some point you got to be like, you know what? My bad. Like, no, maybe this woman doesn't have any problems. Maybe me who got her daughter thrown into a river. Maybe I'm the problem. In her mind, nothing was too trivial.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15164.978

From the time she caught Carrie washing the dishes with cold water, which is apparently something you shouldn't do, to the time they went to Applebee's for her birthday and both forgot to tell the server and wondered why they didn't get any cake. But what her stories liked in content, Mrs. Peterson made up for in sentiment.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15181.701

She couldn't touch Carrie's hands, so she held her daughter's upper arm as she spoke.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15203.117

This is so... Because, you know, the links our author has gone to to point out that they're not doing great, the Peterson family. But in spite of that, there's like... Oh no, it's just like the sweet moments that her mom remembers is like going to Applebee's.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15222.827

Yeah, this is okay. I'm so happy right now. I'm so happy and not depressed. If Gary was able to hear her mother, it wasn't outwardly apparent. Her face didn't twitch, her eyelids didn't flutter, even her pulse on the heart rate monitor held steady.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15243.154

As Mrs. Peterson began to break down, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me to her daughter's bedside, forcing my hands to replace her on Carrie's arm.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1526.064

I'll explain on the way. Mr. Fletcher turned around and started back towards his car before he'd even finished speaking. I grabbed my backpack and hustled after him. Did you know the Kennan boy? He asked as we pulled out of my driveway.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15266.365

But this story is cruel to show people.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15280.248

100%. What if I beat myself to death with a bat? I don't think that's going to help. Would that get me out of the rest of this recording? It might. We'll find out. It could, but there's a potential. There's a potential. You would probably find a way to make me keep going. Oh, my cheeks burned.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15308.441

I didn't know if Carrie had told her mother we were dating or if Mrs. Peterson had just gotten the wrong idea about us, but either way, I couldn't correct her. Not there. Wow, what an altruist you are. I know. What a man. Yeah. I'd had enough trouble rejecting Carrie when we were alone in Greenfield.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15326.353

The thought of rejecting her again, this time in front of her mother, and stealing from Mrs. Peterson whatever sense of pride she derived from her daughter having a romantic life was more than I could bear. which is a special place in hell for people who humiliate children in front of their parents. I was very aware of my hands resting on her arms.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15342.993

She was so much warmer than the last time I touched her. I've never been quick on my feet. I had no idea what to say, especially with Mrs. Peterson thinking I was Carrie's, what, boyfriend? I took a page out of Mrs. Peterson's playbook and stood over my unconscious friend and recounted meeting her on the hike and a few anecdotes from class.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15362.374

I tried to muster up something more sentimental, but it wasn't until I pretended it was Alina laying there in front of me that any words came. Oh, brutal.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15378.836

Okay, I understand that he's not attracted to Carrie. That's whatever. But the fact that he can't say sweet things to her in front of her mother unless he imagines a girl that he's known for two weeks and has a crush on laying there like, dude, come on. This girl's been your friend for a while. Come on. I can't stop thinking about you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15400.522

It's like, you would say that you would say that to your honor. If you were frozen to death on a bed and I was standing there, I would say, I wish we could talk. I'd do anything to make you better. Like you don't need to imagine it as like a romantic partner to get those words out. It's okay. Maybe. Is that what you would do if I was frozen in a hospital bed? What would you do?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1541.6

Mr. Fletcher nodded, never taking his eye off the road. He killed himself last night. He said it as evenly as if he'd been announcing we needed to stop for gas. He what? My brain couldn't even process what I was hearing. I'd seen Rob Kennan in the hallway yesterday. How could he be dead? Mr. Fletcher proceeded to lay out the cold, dry facts.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15435.122

You wouldn't, you couldn't trust yourself to say what you want. Okay. If your wife wasn't there, what would you say? Isaiah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15453.393

Hey, seriously, bro. Feel better, man. Hey, look, you know what? Between me and you, I hope you don't die. Well, thank you. Yeah, that's all you can say. Well, I just hope you don't die. I'm not happy this happened to you. Okay, not to become too strong or anything, but I don't I want you to be normal again. I would really appreciate if you could get normal soon. Yes. Thank you. Bye. Okay.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15485.891

That's, that's enough. Let's get out. Let's go to Applebee's lost in the little scene I'd created for myself. I leaned down and kissed Carrie's waxy forehead. God, Mrs. What do you have? Waxy, waxy forehead. That's rough. Mrs. Peterson put her arms around me and squeezed. I looked at the tears in her eyes and wondered if I had done her a kindness by playing along. The lie seemed harmless enough.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15510.182

Carrie probably just wanted to save face with her mom. Maybe make her proud. Let her think her child was happy for her change. But eventually the truth would come out. I wasn't attracted to Carrie. It'd be nice if I was, but I wasn't. You ain't got to say it right now. She's in the hospital. I also resented being blindsided.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15529.237

If Carrie had asked my permission and said, look, this is embarrassing, especially after Greenfield, but I need your help making my mom happy. Is it okay if I tell her you're my boyfriend? I might have said yes, but she hadn't. The whole charade made me feel gross.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15542.005

Oh, you mean almost like how you immediately assumed you and Alina were in a relationship because you misused the time that she gave you to kiss her and now you say... I feel like, okay, I was 16 too. And I was also like, you know, raging with emotions and all that. But at the same time, I feel like if my friend who was a girl was in a hospital bed, I wouldn't be like disgusting.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15566.026

I can't pretend to like this cow. What? Like it's, it's too much. He's too evil. Oh, look, we're back talking about Alina now. I'm starting to resent Alina because of his not resenting. I love how you are becoming a student of this school who's hating Alina for literally no reason. I am literally Fletch right now, yeah. Alina's family returned from Shawnee the following morning.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15593.204

I would have liked to have been outside their house waiting for her when they arrived, but I was still a month away from getting my driver's license and my parents weren't exactly in the mood to help advance my social life. I left a message on the Amenev's machine in the morning around 10. I called again at noon and won, but hung up both times before the machine began recording.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15614.123

It was the strange poker game you play when you're in love for the first time. You feel like you'll die if you don't speak to the object of your affection as soon as possible, but you know how crazy you'd seem if you filled up their answering machine with increasingly redundant messages. I think you actually, the more this is going on, the more you called it about him becoming Rob.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1562.852

Rob had hand-delivered a letter to the house around 7 p.m. Fletch wasn't home when Rob dropped it off, so he didn't open it until later that night, at 9.45 or so. Upon reading the letter, Fletch went white as a ghost and tore out of the house without permission. He raced to... I'm going to omit this detail, just know it's the location that Rob killed himself.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15635.148

Like, this is absolutely what I feel like Rob was like. Maybe, maybe. The trap went off. We don't know if there's a bear in it yet. No, that could be a cow.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15669.502

That feels like a joke we've been accidentally setting up for two months. Yeah, eventually. It feels kind of perfect for the story, doesn't it? That afternoon felt like an eternity. She called me back shortly after five, and even though I was sitting directly next to the phone, I let it ring twice so she wouldn't know I'd been sitting directly next to the phone. I missed you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15695.478

Yeah, she absolutely isn't into him. He's just the one guy who's not evil to her right now because he can use her sexually.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15705.288

Can we make out more? And can I put my leg between your legs but you try to hold them together but I pretend like I don't take the hint and keep forcing it?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15719.898

No, you'd love that. I know how much you liked that last stop. She sounded tired. Maybe she hadn't gotten that much sleep before driving home, or maybe she was strained from therapy. Either way, it wasn't exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15747.262

Yeah, he is such a headache for her that she is trying to show as little interest as possible in hopes that it'll drive him away. And he's like, I bet it's the therapy for the guy that set himself on fire in front of her workplace.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15773.138

Her cancel tilt seems slightly off. Perhaps that is something about Raw. Stop bringing up the cancel tilt.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15790.565

Well, is that not, is that not the thing that like those red pill guys talk about all the time? It's like, Oh, you'll never, a woman will never love you because you're like cantle tilt and something else is like two degrees off. So you're not like prime marriage material. So you need to be, you need to lift weights and hate women your whole life. Right? Yeah. Right. Right. A hundred percent.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15817.904

I wasn't sure what I wanted to tell her about my trip to the Quabbin, or rather, I wasn't sure how to tell her. The whole idea of going was to alleviate her guilt. Having heard the bells, I knew that the story was at least partially true. There was more to the spire in the woods than the side effects of an antidepressant. But I also knew that Alina wouldn't take the news of Carrie very well.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15838.35

For that matter, I wasn't taking it all that great either. How was Maine?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1584.048

But when he arrived, the car was already burning. Apparently the letter was a suicide note. Nathan's too upset for school. Something in how he said it made it seem like Mr. Fletcher was implying there was something unmanly about his 17-year-old son being too upset to sit through pre-calculus after one of his best friends killed himself.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15843.467

short i'm trying to convince my parents to drive us back up if not tight then tomorrow but my dad's sick of driving i wanted to tell her everything but it had to be face to face if she took it hard i couldn't comfort her from i couldn't comfort her from halfway across town not properly there gosh this kid he's like oh when i break this devastated news to her i have to be there to touch her

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15870.865

There was a long silence as I weighed my options. When she broke the silence, her voice sounded small and young and distant. Did you?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

159.338

Yeah, it is like lost media territory of like treasured relics, right? Because it was a very beloved story that now you cannot buy, you cannot read anywhere because of the way optioning works. Now, it was to be made into a movie, and to my knowledge, it's still in kind of like production hell or purgatory, so to speak, right? Of like, we don't know where it's going.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15901.169

Do you think you could also wear that plaid skirt I like and stockings? Hey, do you think you could wear those see-through panties I got you? You could wear a raincoat so no one looks at you weird on the way over, but I don't want it on when you're in the house. You take it off. There's another silence, though not as long as the last one.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15931.872

That is the voice. That is the voice. That was the desperate for. There it is. The pleading, the pleading in the back of his throat. Yeah. I stood by my window looking out at the front lawn. It's yellow grass illuminated by a couple of our tackier Christmas decorations. The wind shook the dead branches of the tree that grew next to our driveway.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15955.152

Something about the scene reminded me of the Quabbin and the sound of ice makes when it's quiet. It was nearly midnight, and I wondered if Carrie would dream of the bells. Being in a coma might not be so bad if they sounded as lovely in sleep as they did in real life. There have been times in my past when I've been lonely, considered the virtue of trading the world for a lifetime of dreams.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15977.113

Today, I'd make that trade in a heartbeat if it meant never hearing the bells again. Headlights flashed into my window, interrupting my thoughts. As Alina pulled her little beetle into my driveway, I crept downstairs to meet her. Despite everything that had happened in the last couple of days, I couldn't help but feel excited.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

15992.704

She was shivering when I opened the door and didn't appear to have showered that day, but she looked so beautiful, framed as she was by the Christmas lights surrounding our door, with the porch light behind her head casting a glow around her. It was like she was separated from everything dark and dead outside. I hugged her. She hadn't worn a jacket.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16012.354

Just the sweat she probably slept in during the winter. She stood stiffly as I rubbed her back in arms in an effort to warm her up. I figured she was nervous about what I'd tell her, but was still disappointed she hadn't greeted me more enthusiastically. This guy's insufferable. This...

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16035.865

Why is she not into me? What's her problem?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16061.958

They're still on the porch. It's still snowing. She's freezing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16075.963

He's like, I see you haven't used the vanilla scented shampoo today. We'll have to fix that. I got you cosmic brownie body soap. Very excited. I let her into the kitchen and set about making us a couple of mugs of instant hot chocolate. Alina leaned against the island behind me, but that didn't last for very long.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16098.78

Before I'd even gotten the mugs into the microwave, she was pacing and chewing nervously at her lower lip. So what happened? I handed her a mug. Do you want to sit?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1610.745

My initial shock gave way to resentment. No one could have made Rob Kennan's suicide pleasant news, but it was difficult to imagine anyone being more callous than Mr. Fletcher. No wonder Fletcher complained about his father so much. Don't worry about it. He rode the rest of the way in silence. I got to school and found it changed. Compared to the day before, it was an alien landscape.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16112.404

I brought her into the den, which is further away from my parents' bedroom. The embers in my father's wood stove still glowed brightly, and I added a couple of small pieces of kindling. Please, please tell me what you found. I told her. I told her everything, how cold it was, what carrying Fletch had been like, what the smell of the smoke reminded me of.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16131.642

I told her about the sound the ice made, and I told her about the bells.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16151.614

She was looking at me as I spoke, and I could almost see the part of her I was talking about behind her eyes.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16172.144

Now that is... That is a classic 16-year-old guy move to have this whole grand experience and then tie it back to her at the end. Like, well, you're all I want.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16192.221

The most, like, Nicholas Sparks set up ever. Exactly. Eat, pray, love. What I missed was you. What my soul misses is you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16213.355

So, didn't, other than Alina, because he's horny, didn't our author get everything he wanted? Because his whole idea was, I want to go to the bells to get some proof of the supernatural so that I can, like, believe in the afterlife, believe in God again. Let me tell you something, Isaiah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16264.369

be able to go in that direction i think that that what you just said is like the stereotypical sunday school lesson i had throughout my pre-teen years of like guys one day you're gonna run into a woman and she's gonna hate god she's gonna want you to hate god and whatever whatever she says extremely based sunday school teacher

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16287.985

And what's really funny is that thinking about all this in hindsight, you were the exact kind of person that VeggieTales warned me about. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16299.734

It's your picture. It's like VeggieTales that you're on a wanted poster behind them.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16317.701

He's going to be into heavy metal music. He's going to talk about drugs and sex.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1633.43

It reminded me of Tartarus in Greek mythology. A bunch of people milling about, a vacant and lost look in their eyes, unsure of what to do, what to say to one another. Friends clustered silently in small groups. It was like Rob's funeral was being held in the hallways. Classes weren't canceled, but nothing was done.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16343.642

No, he was celibate. That's a big deal with it. Like Christian belief and stuff like that. You sell, but his whole life, he was the last of the prophets.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16357.279

Okay, we gotta cut this. This is insane. If they haven't made an episode about you yet, they're about to. God's building a church.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16372.951

You and Alina here are cut from the same cloth of the kind of people that my mom warned me about growing up. Very scary. Uh, but you are right. But no, at the same time, like his whole thing was, I want, uh, his whole thing was, I want to know that the supernatural exists in some capacity.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16395.166

Now he has evidence of that, but he doesn't really seem to be internalizing that now, even though that's what he, I mean, that's a huge deal to like see proof of like the paranormal, you know? Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16431.004

yeah yeah i i don't know i i feel like i feel maybe i'm just a super imposing but if i like saw proof of ghost i feel like that would be a bigger deal to me you know anyway um but getting laid and he likes this girl this russian chick and yeah blah blah blah yeah

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16450.731

It was a bit embarrassing, describing to her how the bells had reminded me what it felt like to lie beneath her, but how else could I have conveyed the contentment in their presence and the need in their absence, the bliss and the longing? It was romantic too, I thought.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16465.981

What could be more flattering for Alina to hear than my admission that my purest desire was to lie close to her, to feel her body against mine? that it quieted my soul, but she didn't react as though she were flattered. Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what she wanted to hear, dude. Alina stared straight into the stove at the flames consuming the wood and said nothing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16484.749

It took me a moment to realize that she was probably thinking. She was also what Rob heard in the bells. What quieted his soul. She was his bliss and longing. Even if she never wanted to be. We sat in silence for a long time and watched the wood burn. Then I told her about how we had pressed on. And about what happened to Carrie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16504.456

Even though it wasn't her fault, I knew Alina would blame herself for Carrie falling through the ice. Just like she had blamed herself for Rob's suicide. It was the sort of negative feedback a looped person gets into when they're depressed. Everything's their fault. What I hadn't considered was how much I'd blamed myself.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1652.19

Mainly, the teachers made us aware of special counseling being offered for anyone closely affected and told us that we could come to them if we ever needed to. Their nerves were also frayed. I recall specifically my study hall teacher, normally a very soft-spoken man, banging his hand on his desk and swearing that it was COMPLETELY FUCKING UNNECESSARY

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16521.104

Beyond answering a few of my parents' questions about how Mrs. Peterson was doing, I hadn't told anyone about my return trip to the hospital. For that matter, I hadn't really told anyone how I felt seeing Carrie turning blue or struggling to warm her up on the floor of Fletch's car. Telling Alina about it opened up the floodgates inside me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16537.071

Alina let me speak until I couldn't get any more words out. Then she slid along the couch to my side, wrapped me in her arms, and held me like a child. For a moment, I felt shame. I had never judged other guys for crying. I had sat beside Fletch when he was overcome by grief, but this was different. Carrie hadn't died, and I was with Alina, who I wanted more than anything to think of me as a man.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16567.173

I felt so small. She ran her hand up and down my back, little by little. I became more aware of her and her closeness to me than I was of my emotions. Her face was cradled against her neck. My cheek brushed hers as I moved to look up at her. Her eyes looked as though she had been crying too. I kissed her and it, oh, come on, dude. We were having a moment.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16590.924

This was like, I was like, oh, well, she's like, she's cradling him in like a comforting way because she knows that she gives comfort to him and it's like a kindness. And of course he had to, I don't think that was the vibe she was giving off, but whatever.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16607.171

I don't, I feel like that ruins it. Does it not? I mean, obviously not for him, but like, like he went from like, I needed to her to think of me as big and strong, but like, I felt safe with her. I was able to let my emotions out.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16649.96

I guess, whatever. I don't know. I just felt like that was like, that was maybe the one legitimate moment of affection he's had with Alana Alina thus far.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16664.052

I mean, I mean like that it's been reciprocated. Because every other time it feels like he's just pushing Alina as far as she'll go before she says something. But this was like she held him and let him cry. That was like a very sincere moment.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16684.378

I think if anything, she's manipulating him to get more of what she wants. But we'll see. I love that red pill answer, dude. Yeah. No, maybe that was a little bit. I'm saying I've seen zero signs that she's attracted to him and now she's going along with it. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. All right. He deserves to be manipulated to be clear for this level. Alina should be like, you know what? Sure. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16710.569

Go ahead. Here's this. Go find the bells. Go get them boy. Right. I kissed her, and it was like the first time. With her lips slow to respond, slowly, we inched our way back onto the couch until I was lying on top of her. It felt like the bells. My hand traced its way down her arms and over her shirt. My pulse beat faster than it had before.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1672.702

Adding a moment later that... No one needs to do that. No one. We, all of us, drifted through the day in a haze. You'd hug your friend and ask them how they were holding up or how well they knew Rob. You'd hear about who was there that night at the omitted location. It was a popular teen hangout. And you heard about the cops that could have saved him, but didn't.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16731.847

I was actually aware of my body, how it felt, where it was in relation to Alina's, but had lost all consciousness, thought. Aware of nothing but touch and pulse. I slid my hand beneath her clothes. She didn't stop me. Her sweatpants came down easily. She trembled. She was nervous. So was I. My hands shook as I took my own pants down. I never exposed myself to anyone. Her face was inscrutable.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16762.401

I don't feel right describing the details of her body. We were kids then. I'm an adult now. I didn't know what I was doing then. I now know. It was my first time. I don't know if it was hers. We don't exactly talk these days. It was short and fumbling and awkward, but I thought at that time... that it was divine. Afterwards, I didn't want her to leave, but she got dressed anyway.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16790.094

She was shaking as she pulled... Gosh. She was shaking as she pulled up her pants and crying by the time she reached... See, this is what I mean. It was a legitimate moment and now it's this. Now it's complicated, weird, and she feels uncomfortable. She was shaking as she pulled up her pants and cried by the time she reached the door.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16812.173

I thought maybe she was scared because we hadn't used a condom or that it was her survivor's guilt. I was wrong. Hey. Hey, you. She was reluctant to let me hug her. It's okay. We didn't do anything wrong. She said yeah and ran her hand back through her wild hair not to get it out of her face. But like you would if you didn't know the answer on a test.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16837.786

After she left, I stood at the window for a long time staring out into the night at the place where her taillights had disappeared. Okay, was I not right then? That he shouldn't have taken it to that degree? That it was not the time? I mean, probably no.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16872.11

You were all about him going for it a second ago, to be clear.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16882.352

I was like, no, it was stopping. It was starting up the romantic scene. And you're like, Oh, I think this will be romantic. Like that's not a bear trap.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16899.262

You did say you are right that you didn't say you wanted it to happen. So I'll let that one lie. I didn't sleep easily that night. I felt like I should have been more excited than I was. A lifetime of coming-of-age movies and pop culture had led me to believe I'd feel somehow different about myself and the world, but I didn't. The view from my bed looked exactly as it had the night before.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16920.383

Carrie was still in the hospital, and far from restoring Alina to her former self, consummating our relationship had left her as unhappy as ever. I tried to imagine a future with Alina, one where I made her as happy as she made me. Why'd you laugh there? Because he's just insufferable at this point.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1694.817

I mentioned earlier that Rob Kennan was left in his burning car for four hours. This is not an exaggeration. It was four hours. Later reports said less time had passed, but Fletch was there, screaming himself hoarse. Screaming at cops and firemen and anyone who would listen that that was his friend in there and he was dying. It was four hours.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

16941.438

He's insufferable. He's talking about the girl who likes him, who's been his friend for years, who he put in the hospital. In the same breath, he talks about how he's trying to do the best for Alina by pushing her to the furthest possible place that she will allow him to push her every time. It's not so bad. It's not so bad. And I

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17000.448

Do you know that? Do you know the Top Gun song during that romantic scene? Take my breath away. It's like the all time best like hookup track in a movie ever.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17017.081

Yeah, it's great. Take my breath away. It's so good. The entire soundtrack's good, but anyway. God, I fucking love.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17051.561

Remember that you've got like 20 years on me. So like my first exposure to Dito was when I went back to listen to, uh, uh, Stan. So, and like the feature there, that was like the first time I ever heard Dito. So, I'm a child. You have to remember that.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17090.804

Well, this character was in high school in 1999, right? I was born in 1999.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17114.687

All right. Anyway, I tried to imagine a future with Alina, one where I made her as happy as she made me, but I only wound up thinking about the bells. Maybe she needed to hear them. Well, I don't like that. I fell asleep shortly before 3 in the morning, which, unbeknownst to me, was almost exactly when Carrie woke up screaming. I'd love to tell you what Carrie's first words were.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17136.758

Unfortunately, I can't. When her heart had slowed down, an area of her brain, located beneath her left temple, hadn't received enough oxygen. Essentially, she'd had a stroke, which left her with a condition called expressive aphasia. She can make sounds. That was no problem. And with effort, she could say words, but she couldn't form sentences. My God. Man.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17168.942

permanently maiming a girl who was your friend who cared about you yeah she's just talking you planted the ape style of course mrs peterson and i didn't know when she picked me up the morning of new year's eve all we knew was that carrie was awake mrs peterson shook with laughter as we drove down 495. she was going so fast i thought ecto-1 was going to disintegrate like one of those experimental jet planes you see in old stock footage

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1718.049

Being teenagers, we were quick to question the actions of the police, but I now believe that, while their delay proved to be without merit, they made the best decision they could have with the information available to them. Rob hadn't lit himself on fire to be dramatic. He didn't intend for there to be a fire at all. Rob had wanted to shoot himself but couldn't acquire a gun, so he built one.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17193.902

Carrie's mom, beaming with pride, clapped her hand down on my knee and said, Bye!

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17205.544

Bro. What? This is so sad. Yeah, I know.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17221.608

I would let Carrie say it. I would like Carrie soon.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17228.932

No, no, because... Well, yeah, well, yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17253.8

funny visual like a teenager who like has zero accountability is like scary tell your mom we're not together and it's like yeah she's like drooling at the side of her mouth and shit she's like she just starts crying it's like no i didn't say cry i said tell your mom she starts barking and that's when our protagonist turns to mrs peterson he does see we're just friends

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17307.323

Oh, my word. I smiled back at her, honestly did. Thinking Carrie was essentially out of the woods, I was thrilled, but I didn't know what else to say. Or maybe I was too busy worrying that now that she was awake, Carrie might not be quick enough on the uptake to figure out what was going on and her mom would realize our relationship was a lie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17329.139

I wouldn't have worried had I realized how severe Carrie's aphasia was. Mrs. Peterson was humming arithmically as we pulled into the parking lot. She walked into the hospital with a spring in her step.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17342.736

She looked at the nurses like they were old friends or comrades in arms, as if to say, we've been through some rough times together, but now that all that's behind us and I couldn't have made it without you. But she couldn't be bothered to stop and speak to any of them. The look in Mrs. Peters' eyes and the spring in her step lasted until we reached Carrie's door.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17369.366

wrist bad wrist wrist mom medicine her speech was labored i can see you're struggling with each syllable not only like now she has a speech impediment but the fact that you are still doing the gruff man voice through the speech impediment is diabolical

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17395.496

You're a monster, I think.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1740.583

This is such... There's so many dynamics happening and so much... This... I'm... OK, this is good. I'm very invested. I'm getting progressively more upset that you can't find the story anymore by legitimate means.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17400.839

Come on, man. That's the voice for the story. Okay. Mrs. Peterson told me to go get a doctor. And that simple sentence. I could literally hear the happiness drain from inside her. The woman who had practically skipped down the hospital corridors deflated as she took her place by her daughter's side. I think what I feel the worst about, at least in regards to Carrie, I saw coming in that moment.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17426.794

In most regards, Mrs. Peterson wasn't much of a person. She was, oh my gosh, dude. Oh, she wasn't, she didn't amount to much. Still, I thought he would say that like her life had less value. Yeah, she's barely human.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17441.405

She wasn't smart and she didn't have much of a sense of humor. She never been a great conversationalist or within a stone's throw of attractive.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17450.882

don't throw up attractive this kid is red this kid's awful like at first it was like oh well maybe he's you know he's a 16 year old kid he's horny whatever but now it's like no he's a bad person and her cancelled tilt is totally wacky so you get it you see where I was coming from she was dirt poor and her personal hygiene left a lot to be desired in most ways she was society's definition of a failure

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17480.199

But there was an air of grace in the resigned way she stepped to her daughter's bedside. Yes, what little light she had in her life seemed dimmer. All the hope she'd had for her daughter had been snuffed out. But she wasn't going anywhere. She was going to shoulder the load and give her daughter everything she could.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17497.317

I tell myself that, accident or no, Carrie and I would have drifted apart anyway during college. After all, even if her aphasia had fully dissipated, there's no way we would have gone to the same school. But the truth is that, after that morning, I never could stand to be in the same room as Carrie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17515.101

Every time she stammered or shifted her weight on her crutches filled me with self-loathing, and I couldn't take it. I went to the nurse's station. They told me that they'd have to call in a doctor with a background in neurology. About a half hour or so later, Dr. Walsh stepped into Carrie's room.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17531.614

I don't remember much about him other than that he had a silver hair and his bedside manner could be charitably described as detached.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17558.962

You have another line?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17563.544

Take your time. Get it out.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17608.795

It is very much so like, Amy, want orange. And the zookeeper's like just pelting it with oranges. Mrs. Peterson asked Dr. Walsh why her daughter couldn't speak properly. And he explained to us what they expected to find once they gave Carrie a CT scan. See, people always talk about how we don't use more than 2 or 10 or 12% of our brain, but that's a load of crap.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17633.081

We use all of it, and because every part of our brain has certain tasks and functions associated with it, even a small injury can cause very serious and pronounced effects, like Carrie's expressive aphasia. It didn't affect any other aspect of her cognition. She probably even knew what she wanted to say, but she couldn't get the words out.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17668.476

Throughout our conversation with Dr. Walsh, Carrie would attempt to interject. If it seemed like she needed something or was asking a question, we would try to figure out what she was saying. Otherwise, Mrs. Peterson would just stroke her daughter's hair until she settled back down. Mostly, Carrie seemed concerned with pain from her frostbite.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17686.931

Just as Dr. Walsh was excusing himself, she said something, or shouted really, that made my hair stand on end.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1769.065

I think we're about to get an explanation to it. I'm sure. Cause it's enough that our author is saying like, I get, I now understand why the police did that. So it's gotta be something right.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17756.829

I mean I was gonna make before you I was gonna make a comment about how haunting that is

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17789.463

You know? Yeah. Yeah, like it's constantly in her head. Because it's the last thing her brain, like, with full... It's one of the last things her brain, like, fully consciously remembers. Um, yeah, that's a nightmare. Nightmare scenario. You somehow did the man-gruff voice as you were saying ring.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

178.971

Now, typically, this is where me and Hunter's martyrdom comes into play. Yes. Typically...

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17812.269

Yeah. Yeah. Mrs. Peterson looked up at Dr. Walsh. What does she want? After your voice acting 12 times. What is it? What? Huh? Dr. Walsh. Dr. Walsh took out a small flashlight and shot it into Carrie's eyes. Her pupils were unresponsive. She may also have damaged her auditory cortex.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1783.489

I mean, it takes, well, it'd be, it'd be shorter than four hours. If you're, but if you're on fire, you don't die that quick.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17840.072

I glanced down at my watch. It had just turned 10.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17848.98

According to your acting, it's 23 o'clock. Yeah, exactly. I looked down at my watch. It's 23 o'clock.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17891.12

He might kidnap her. He might throw her in her trunk and take her there knowing this guy. God, man. Come on. I know. Just the way of how hard he's pushing this girl and he like... If he had some level of remorse, because I don't fully blame him for what happened to Carrie. Sure, it was his idea to go there, but she stepped out onto the ice willingly. He didn't have to coax her or anything.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17911.147

And also, when Carrie fell through, he's the one who pulled her out, crawled across the ice to get her out, right? So I don't fully blame him for what happened to Carrie, but just his dismissal of it for the sake of... Like obsessing over Lena and stuff like that. I don't know. It just doesn't sell to me. He seems like a selfish guy, even beyond just being a horny teenager, you know? Sure.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17934.696

But maybe he'll grow out of it. Maybe that's part of it because he has had a bit of a character swing. Like I talked about when Carrie fell through the eyes, he had a bit of a self recognition of where he was at. So maybe that'll continue, I hope. But we'll see. I will say he's a very complex character.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17949.02

Like he's he is an accurately written 16 year old rather than just like, you know, a stereotypical high school movie kid. Right. Right. All right. Part seven. Most people have largely forgotten about all the hysteria surrounding the Y2K bug, and rightly so. It was a fundamentally silly concern.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

17966.553

I'm not saying it was outside the realm of possibility that a few systems would crash or that there wouldn't be a couple of automated billing issues, but an embarrassingly high percentage of the population believed, like my father, that it could cause a nuclear holocaust. We've been fighting about it since Thanksgiving.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18019.417

I've been fighting with my parents for weeks to get me to go to Drew DeLuca's New Year's Eve party. But in addition to the imminent threat of thermonuclear war, they thought 15 was too young to stay out all night at a co-ed party. Originally, they had wanted to pick me up by 10 after I brought Alina home. My dad suddenly reversed his position. I could stay over at Drew's.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18038.343

Man, dad is such a... Dad is a team player. The ultimate wingman. You know what? Yeah. You'll be all right. You know what? I don't have to see it until 2001 at this rate. Have fun. In the past, I had always been at home when the ball dropped. Usually my brother would fall asleep around 11 and my parents had long since outgrown the compulsion to make New Year's Eve special.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18061.882

This usually left me alone with Dick Clark and my daydreams of having someone to kiss at midnight. Of course, that was all immaterial. There was no way Alina would turn up at DeLuca's, and after finding out what it happened to Carrie and having to tell my parents about it, well, I didn't exactly feel like celebrating either. My dad actually stayed up with me that year.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18082.591

He was convinced the power would go out at midnight. Part of me hoped he was right. Sure, it might have meant the end of the world, but at least it would have taken my mind off how crappy I felt. At midnight, the ball dropped. So many things had happened to me that year. So many things that I'd thought would make me feel happy or maybe just fulfilled. But the girl I loved was still miserable.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1809.887

Two minutes, I would say. I think it would depend on the heat of the flames and like the ventilation.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18104.874

One of my best friends had brain damage, and there was nothing I could do for either one of them. The world was the same miserable place it had been that morning. No more, no less. I tried calling Elena before I went to sleep, but hung up when her dad answered. The next day, we spoke only briefly.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18120.104

She seemed more distant than ever, but assured me that it was only because her parents were in the next room. At my parents' insistence, Mrs. Peterson joined us for a late dinner on her way back from the hospital. The dark wood surface of our dining room table was polished to a mirrored finish and Mrs. Peterson looked out of place sitting at it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18138.031

Her old t-shirt and stained khaki work pants reflected back up at her. My little brother was visibly uncomfortable to be sitting across from her. He had the same expression on his face as he had the first time we'd gone to a socks game by ourselves and, heading back to L-Wife, a homeless person had sat near us on the tee.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18155.16

None of us spoke much, but before leaving, Mrs. Peterson did accept the name of a speech therapist my dad had tracked down from one of the partners at his firm earlier that day and had agreed to let us help her pay for it. I knew he had ulterior motives, but I got the impression from the look in my dad's eyes that he did really want to help.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1817.353

You'd black out. It's an awful way to go out. Oh, horrible, horrible. Of course, yeah, yeah. But I do think, yeah, I think within two minutes, you're dead, I'd say. Let me see. Let me pull up my statistics on this. Let me pull up my catalog of times it takes people to die by different means.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18173.145

My dad was a bit of a shark, and I think that may have been the first time I'd ever seen him look at someone with pity. Monday morning, I saw Fletch for the first time since Carrie had fallen through the eyes. It had only been a week, but it felt like a lifetime. Fletch looked tired in a way you don't see often in teenagers.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18188.912

He looked like my grandfather right before he decided he couldn't take any more chemo. He looked beaten. If he didn't know already, I didn't think he could handle an update on Carrie's condition. We wrote in silence. School was a torture. Everyone was laughing and smiling.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18205.734

They complained of being back from break, but were eager catching up with friends, swapping stories about New Year's and Christmas, and commiserating about the lack of fresh powder anywhere on the East Coast that year. They had no idea Scary Carrie was lying in a hospital bed, practically unable to speak.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18223.208

At least when Rob had killed himself, his death had been so public, we all went through it together. With Carrie, aside from Kim Murray and Dan Bergen, Fletch and I were the only ones who even seemed to notice she was missing. It's only being miserable in a crowd of happy people. Drew teased me about having missed his party, but quickly realized I wasn't in the mood.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18249.435

Shaking my head was all I could do without crying. Drew squeezed my shoulders in a half hug. They gave me some space by turning back to our group of friends. I disappeared wordlessly into the crowded hallway in search of the only person that could make me feel better. I found Alina right before the bell rang for first period. She was sitting against the lockers with Sarah Cohen.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18269.93

I couldn't hear what they were saying, but based on how quickly they stopped talking, I got the impression it had been about me. All I wanted to do was to put my arms around Alina, to melt against her and bury my face in her shoulder, to lose myself, even if just for a second, and the sensation of holding her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18289.321

But the bell rang before I could even get a word out, and Sarah dragged her off to class with scarcely a backwards glance. The rest of the day crawled by in a meaningless cacophony of lecturing teachers and jabbering students. With each passing minute, I felt like it was harder and harder to breathe.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18305.391

I spent the last period staring at the second hand of the clock, willing it to move faster until it struck three. That's when I heard them. The bells. One. I was in my den. I was inside Alina. Two. writhing against her. It felt as though I'd melt and explode all at the same time. Three. I never wanted the chimes to end. But they did. I was sitting at my desk, breathing hard.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18335.383

Everyone else around me was packing up their things. I took a moment to collect myself and followed suit. It sounded as loud as they had from the shore of the Quabbin. as loud and as beautiful. That Wednesday, Fletch and I were in a CarX. Wow, that's a crazy turnaround. I think like,

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18354.966

With the bell, it makes sense to me that one of, like, a feeling of ultimate euphoria is, like, when you're 16 and you have, like, your first experience with a girl. Like, that feeling of nothing's wrong in the world, everything's okay. I don't think it's just because he's super horny for Alina.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18371.453

I think it's also because, like, that is the closest thing his mind can trace to bliss, and that's why the bells keep taking him back there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18381.657

Not caring about anything else, just euphoria. Sure. That Wednesday, Fletch and I were in a car accident. It was on the way to school. We were running a little late for some reason, although I don't recall why. Fletch had slowed down the car to make the turn onto Cold Springs Road and then froze, letting the car drift into the trees on the side of the road.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18399.063

For my part, I was yelling, but he didn't seem to notice for a full eight seconds. He just sat there, his foot lightly pressing the gas, his car pressed up against a grove of small pine trees, its wheels spinning up dirt and falling needles. I didn't need to ask what had happened. It was eight o'clock. He heard the bells. When he snapped out of it, Fletch was visibly shaken.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18422.803

I was fine. The only real damage was a crack in the front bumper and a bent sapling. We'd been lucky. If we'd been a few seconds earlier or later, it would have struck eight while Fletch was going 30 or 40 down our winding streets and the trees would have been a lot less forgiving.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18461.254

I didn't. The bells were too beautiful, or so I thought at the time. I was actually a little jealous Fletch had heard them more times than I had. We arrived after first period had already started. Too late for me to have had any chance of seeing Alina that day. I hadn't seen her all week and every time I called her house, it seemed like her father answered and I just missed her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18482.186

Awfully social for someone who still ate all her lunches with the guidance counselors. Although in fairness to Alina, I got it. I found the general din of the classroom intolerable and the cafeteria even worse. Everyone else seemed so happy, so carefree. I'm not sure when exactly I began checking the time compulsively. It may have been the day Fletch went off the road.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

185.026

with these optionings, the way it works is whenever the story goes up for option, there is an amount of time where like a company buys it and then they remove like other people who are, it's so dumb, but they remove other people talking about the story, other editions of the story, because that's what happened.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1850.806

But anyways. Yeah, you're right. We should conduct more research about it. Back then in the 90s, in a pre 9-11 world, terrorism wasn't part of the zeitgeist. It was bad, absolutely terrible, and we knew it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18501.821

It may have been later in the week. Regardless, the time seemed to be the only thing I could focus on at school. Suddenly, I was holding my breath whenever a new hour approached, each time hoping that I would hear the bells again. I remember thinking that it was funny. Back before I knew for sure there was something lying beyond the realm of our senses, I'd always turn to prayer.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18522.873

And now, after years of seeking out the supernatural as a way of bolstering my faith, After having found the evidence that I was searching for, I found myself unable to complete so much as a simple Hail Mary without my thoughts strained to the sublime beauty of the bells. I guess it was foolish of me to think that finding the widower's clock would reaffirm my Catholic faith.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18543.213

I still didn't know if there was a God. All I knew for sure was that there were the bells and the bells were housed in a spire in the woods on an island in a reservoir just a car ride away. I'd be getting my driver's license in a little over a week. I tried to dispel thoughts of returning to the Quabbin, but the unhappier I was at school, the more I longed to return.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18562.915

There was no question Alina was avoiding me. I kept trying to call her and kept getting her parents. I didn't want them to think I was a pest, so I tried to keep my calls down to one a day, but it was so hard. I checked her calling and hanging up if she didn't answer. Pathetic, I know, but I couldn't help myself.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18579.703

We were taught in Sunday school that hell's worst torture is how exquisitely your soul feels the absence of God. And if that's true, surely a teenager's worst torture is how exquisitely they feel the absence of their first love, especially when it's a rejection. The dirty looks started on Tuesday the 11th, just over a week after we come back from break.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18600.189

I'd gone looking for Alina in the junior's hallway, same as I had every morning, and there was Sarah Cohen, looking at me like I was filth incarnate. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn't know Sarah very well, but she'd always seemed so friendly. Seeing that disgust directed at me, it was shocking. I wasn't real popular, but I never elicited that sort of reaction.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1862.658

We'd had Timothy McVeigh and the failed bombing of the Twin Towers, but we hadn't entered into the neo-McCarthyism that marked much of the early 2000s, where the mere whisper of the word to get you thrown off an airline or placed on a watch list.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18625.767

Mostly at school, away from my handful of friends, I was invisible. The next day at lunch, I noticed it wasn't just Sarah. When I went up to get my food, I noticed that the whole table of sporty girls that Alina used to sit with before Rob's suicide were staring at me. It was the sort of reaction I'd seen people have to Scary Carrie, like they simply didn't want me to be there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18645.067

While I didn't know any of these girls especially well, I'd met one or two of them through Christy and thought we were on good terms. I tried giving them a smile and tilting my head back in that hey gesture. Some turned away quickly. A few of the others pursed their lips in an expression I couldn't read. After that, I noticed they kept looking over at me throughout the rest of the lunch period.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18666.335

I picked up my tray for a while, then left without eating. I miss feeling invisible. I tried calling Alina again that night. I knew I wouldn't like hearing whatever it was she had to say, but I had to hear it. Her answering machine picked up. Thought about leaving a message, but didn't see the point. How could she treat me like this? Here we go. Here's our man. Our cancel tilt guy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18691.826

Has he been seeing her at school, by the way? No, he says he hasn't been seeing her and she eats all her lunches in the cafeteria. She's also a year older than him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18706.914

I don't know if she's gone, gone. She's probably not there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18719.023

I think her parents would have just moved her to a different school. Because I don't think you would go to the Bells unless you were obsessive like these guys. Because the reason they want to go back is because they heard them. But Alina's never heard them, so she has no supernatural draw to go to them in the first place.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18745.396

Maybe. Maybe. You could be right. We'll see. How could she treat me like this? All I ever wanted to do was help her and make her feel good. I felt like someone had scooped out my insides and left me a languid husk. I couldn't imagine a worse feeling. I couldn't sleep. I stared up at the ceiling and tried to convince myself that she really did care about me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1875.525

And there was a certain cachet, a mystique, that some of the equipment and ideas surrounding terrorism carried in the imaginations of adolescent boys, which is probably why Rob Kinnan, like virtually every other guy I knew growing up, had copies of the Anarchist Cookbook and the Terrorist Handbook, saved up to a 3.5 floppy disk that he had stashed in his room.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18764.847

That her happiness that we were together and had made love had brought her survivor guilt rushing back. God, I was practically praying the girl I loved was suffering from psychological problems. I don't remember if it was three or four when I heard them, those bells. They sounded so sweet and so clear. I felt like I had after the first time I'd kissed Alina.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18786.349

I saw the version of us from my daydreams, walking the halls, holding hands, smiling and laughing as we argued about whose friend to sit with that day. I felt full again. The next thing I knew, I was waking up. Thursday the 13th was snow day. As desperately as I wanted to see Alina again, even just bump into her, it was a relief to not be in school.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18811.293

I stayed in bed until nearly noon, and then had breakfast with my brother. It was so calm, so peaceful. Nothing to do but play video games and watch the snowfall. Maybe I'm romanticizing it now, but January 13th, 2000 was the last normal day of my life.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18832.609

The story does that a lot, you know, where it's like, oh, I think it was 25 degrees that day. That was the last time I saw Carrie happy. Like, yeah, it's just a lot of these like, oh, what do you mean by that? Why? Why was that the last normal? Exactly. Friday was my birthday. 16 years old. It should have been one of the happiest days of my life. But all I really felt was resolve.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18855.363

I decided I had to know what was going on. Enough was enough. If I couldn't catch Alina at school or get her on the phone, then I'd just have to make Alina's house my first stop as a licensed driver. Fletch and I got to school early. Ever since the bells made him drift off the road, he insisted we leave early enough to be sure we were parked before 8 o'clock.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18874.816

I skipped my locker and went straight for the junior's hallway. Halfway there, Drew DeLuca intercepted me, pulling me into an empty classroom.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18882.924

drew was co-captain of our swim team and the year spent swimming laps had left him absolutely ripped he moved me about as easily as he would have a small child when the door oh what are you doing to me drew he moved me about as easily as he would have a small child when the door shut behind us he didn't loosen his grip dude what's going on with you and alina

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18906.988

There was something very accusatory in his voice. I tried to step back, but he yanked me forward, maintaining his uncomfortably close distance. That's what I want to know. I mumbled.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18917.656

Drew staring unblinkingly into my eyes like he was trying to see right through me as I told him about how Lena had come to me at his birthday party, asking me about a reference and Rob's suicide note, about how we kissed at her house, about how Carrie had fallen through the ice, and about how Lena and I eventually made love. I left out the part about the bells.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18939.571

Drew dropped his hands from my arm and turned to walk away. The angry edge was gone from his voice, but he didn't sound relieved.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1896.615

When he failed to get a gun, he built one. I'm a little wary to Google it, but if my memory serves me, the instructions for it were listed in one of those text files as the Homebrew Blast Cannon. Rob's blast cannon consisted of little more than a lead pipe capped at one end and filled with gunpowder and bits of metal.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18961.772

I sat down hard. I felt like the room was spinning, like the wind had been knocked out of me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18975.886

What's his name? From Bishop Gordon? What's his name was Ryan Dorsett. They met at a track meet two years earlier. Ryan Dorsett was rich. Ryan Dorsett was tall. Ryan Dorsett was handsome. And although I may not be the most objective source on this, Ryan Dorsett was a douchebag.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

18994.67

First time I'd ever spoken to him, I was wearing a Radiohead shirt and he quizzed me about their album titles as if I was some bandwagon follower who had to justify my fandom to him. Okay. I am. I was completely right. By the way, that's my bear trap that Alina was just letting him get to these degrees. She never showed any interest in him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19015.326

She just needed him to find out more about the bells to get this out of her mind. Now it's a hundred percent in Alina's wrong to not to do that to him. If she had a boyfriend, if she had zero interest to let him push that far. But I was right that she never showed any interest and that he was just he was superimposing what he wanted to believe on to her this entire time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19043.963

She was cheating on this other guy, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she was cheating on this other guy. And she may have been like, well, I have to cheat on him so that I can have... I have to cheat. I have to cheat so that I can have, you know, more... I can know more about the Bells and figure out this whole Rob thing or whatever her justification was. She shouldn't have done it, obviously.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19062.389

But at the same time, she's a high school girl who's very scared. So, you know.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19074.463

I'm joking. Oh, oh, oh. Okay. I'm engaging with the story seriously, Hunter. Thank you very much. Yeah, you son of a bitch. You jerk. Hunter's like, ha, ha, you care. Look at you. You care. You're engaged. You're enjoying it. Loser. Okay. How could Alina do this to me? Take my virginity and then backslide with an old boyfriend? How could she be so shallow? Brian Dorn said, happy birthday to me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19105.163

I love that. Happy birthday to me, asshole. I would have liked to have stayed hidden in that empty classroom, but the bell rang. Emerging into the crowded hallway, I could feel people staring at me. Whispered conversations halted at my approach. John Landry, who was on the track team with Alina, shouldered me as I came out of the stairwell near the gym's locker rooms.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19126.811

It's weird how quickly gossip can change your whole world. I would exactly call John Landry a friend of mine, but we had sat next to each other in bio the year before and had always gotten along well enough. Robert Kinnan had learned, through no fault of his own, what a rumor could do to your life. And so had Alina, which made her doing it to me somehow extra painful.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1914.662

It did the trick, but it also launched burning gunpowder all over the interior of his car. Some of the people at the scene thought they had seen someone else in the car with Rob, a girl, and relayed this information to Officer McCullough, who was the first emergency responder to arrive. Officer McCullough hadn't seen anyone else in the car.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19148.687

She knew how much the whispers and sidelong glances could hurt, and she was subjecting me to it anyway. Of course, in fairness to her, what she said about me wasn't a lie. Not exactly. If only she had talked to me. I wouldn't have had to go to her house that day. Oh, no. Here we go. Oh, no. Here we go. Oh, no. Bro, your prediction earlier about maybe our main character is going to become like Rob.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19188.559

Just a trail of bodies behind her. My mom picked me up from school a little early and took me to the DMV. I passed the written exam and the driving test with flying colors. She offered to let me drive home, but I declined. It would turn four while we were still on the road and I didn't want to risk an accident. If my mom thought it was weird, she didn't say anything.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19207.887

After we got home, I lied and said I wanted my first car ride to be a visit to Scary Carrie, who had been released from the hospital the week before. My parents thought that was sweet, even complimented me on what a good person I was. I thanked them and forced a smile, even though I felt that inside. I headed out for Alina's around a quarter to five.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19225.782

her parents wouldn't be home for another hour or two i swear to god all i wanted was to talk to her i never meant for anything else to happen oh no please believe me when i say that please oh no dude bro where's this about to go what hunter i don't know hunter i'm scared oh no When I arrived, there was a car parked behind Alina's Blue Beetle that I didn't recognize. Here we go. Here we go.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19257.235

I went up to the door, but something stopped me from ringing the bell. It was a queasy feeling. Sort of feeling you get when you know your life's never going to be the way you want it to. Took a closer look at the car. It had a Bishop Girton parking pass. The son of a bitch was there. Like it's his fault. Like it's this guy who definitely got cheated on. Bitches here.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19281.222

I walked through the yard around the back of the house. Part of me wanted to catch them red handed. That was her boyfriend.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19303.417

You are. You are so right. We have had, we have had both folk tales and I made the theory earlier that they're both based off the widow makers clock, but now we have the exact same position with our protagonist, bro. That's so cool. Oh my gosh. That's so cool. All right. I walked through the yard around the back of the house. A part of me wanted to catch them red handed, though.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19320.821

It's not clear to me what there was anything to catch. If they were together, I couldn't exactly call it cheating because if Lana wouldn't even talk to me, clearly we weren't going out. I guess I just had to see it with my own eyes. I crouched down beside one of the basement windows and peered in. There she was on the couch where we had our first kiss, lying on top of Ryan Dorsett.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1934.517

All he saw was a burning car, a crowd of teenagers who all reported having heard an explosion, and the lead pipe that had rolled out of Rob's unconscious hand and onto the passenger side of the floor. Terrorism may not have been a big part of the zeitgeist at the time, but school shootings were.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19342.977

His hands were inside her shirt, and hers were working aggressively to undo his belt. Okay. This can't lose. This is going to go so bad. I wanted to leave. This is so bad. Look, you saw your evidence. Get out.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19360.194

Just get leave, dude. It's like, yes, it sucks. I'm sorry this happened. Leave. I wanted to leave. I wanted to run away. Scrunch my eyes closed and pretend that I had never seen anything, but I couldn't. I was held in place by a morbid fascination. It was almost like in a dream when you're not in control and just watching yourself from the outside.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19379.327

My mind was screaming to go, but my feet stayed planted and my eyes drank in every detail. To this day, I remember what I saw from that window. Oh, gosh. Oh, no. Even better than I remember our first kiss or the way Alina always smelled like vanilla or how it felt when I gave her my virginity. What I saw was Alina unfastening Dorset's pants and sliding her hand into his fly.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19407.311

It was tough to see her face, but I could tell she wasn't crying. I could tell she didn't feel conflicted about what she was doing. I realized some months later that I'd never seen her look that way at me. I'd always been the aggressor. Okay, thank you. Some accountability. Cool.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19425.498

I guess I hadn't noticed because at 16 years old, I had internalized the idea that that was what guys were supposed to do, and that good girls were supposed to be, well, not reluctant, exactly. I wasn't so far gone as to think girls didn't also want sex, but I believed they'd be more demure, less eager.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19445.104

But at the time, standing there outside her basement window, I wasn't thinking of Alina's perspective. I didn't consider how she felt about Ryan Dorsett or what she must have thought of me. I could only stare as they wriggled out of their clothes and watched as Alina guided Dorsett inside her. I felt like Adolf Reifler. There you go. There you go, dude. There it is.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19467.97

That's when it turned five and I, oh no. Oh no, the bells. That's when it turned five and I lost myself completely to the bells. One, I felt warm, but not like before. This was different. It wasn't like a blanket, it was like a fire. Two, my heart pounded in my chest like thunder in a storm.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19492.12

Three, I was acutely aware of my body, my arms and legs pumping like pistons, the wind blowing past my face. Four, I could feel the weight of something solid in my hand. Five. Once when I was 11. Oh gosh, this is so good. Five. Once when I was 11, I had gotten into a fight at school and it took two teachers to pry me off the other boy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1950.45

The Columbine Massacre had happened only six months prior, and Officer McCullough was looking at a fairly typical teen loner, reports of an explosion, and what very well could have been an undetonated pipe bomb still in the burning car. He made a tough call. It may have cost Rob Ken in his life, but then again, he might already have been dead. You have to ask yourself about what the officer did.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19517.49

I'd given him a black eye and knocked out the last of his baby teeth. Anger can also feel good. Bloodlust can also feel like home. When the last of the bells tolled, they were replaced by the sound of a car alarm. Alina, only half-dressed, was screaming and crying and sobbing all at the same time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19537.681

I looked up just in time to see Ryan Dorsett, wearing nothing but boxers and a pair of sneakers, punch me in the face. I fell down hard onto the pavement of Alina's driveway, which was covered in broken glass. Apparently, I'd been smashing in his car windows with a large rock. Okay. Oh, I thought he was about to go in there and kill them. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19555.78

I thought he was about to, I thought he was about to straight up widow maker clock. Just run them through with a pitchfork. Yeah. Well, that's kind of what I, you know, that's what it was prepping up to me. I thought. Yeah. Oh man. Hmm. Dorset grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me up into a seated position so he could get a good grip on my throat. Stop it. Stop it. Alina shrieked.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19578.745

I'm sure somewhere one of her neighbors was already calling the cops.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19586.089

Dorset asked. He maneuvered his body weight on top of me, pinning me down as his fingers dug into my neck. It's an awful feeling, having someone you don't want to be there on top of you pressing down. The rock was still... Oh, no. The rock was still in my hand, and I swung it with everything I was worth. It hit the side of his face with a sickening crunch.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19605.583

I'd broken Ryan Dorsett's jaw and sent him rolling into the Amenev snow-covered front lawn. He must have been in shock because it took him a second to realize how hard he'd been hit and for the pain to set in. I could see the realization, the fear in his face. It made me feel good. It made me feel big. Oh, dude, we were so right about this, by the way.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19628.016

Just everything about the red pill guy, about him wanting to be bigger. Oh, dude. Dorset slowly began to crawl away on his hands and knees. I got to my feet and held the rock up high above my head. Please, please. Alina whispered. All the color drained from her face. Every bit of her was trembling. Tears rolled unchecked down each of her cheeks. She was looking at me and what she saw scared her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19655.977

I looked back at her. Her eyes were red from crying. Her lip quivered. She looked a lot older than 17. Suddenly the rock felt heavy and I didn't feel so big. I let the rock fall from my hand. Landed in the snow with a soft plop. Okay. I thought he was about to kill this guy. I mean, from Ryan's perspective too, he's completely justified. Your girlfriend's like, hey, this dude's been stalking me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19678.261

And then he breaks your windows at her house. Like, yeah, you'd go out there and beat the guy up. But yeah, Alina shouldn't have played I can't tell how much of this is Alina's fault or how much is his like, because we've already said that he's misattributed her feelings towards him. How much of this is like the bells messing with him or his perception being wrong, you know? Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19699.662

Certainly an unreliable narrator, I think.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19704.463

Yeah. Yeah. Ryan began to blubber in pain. His words were unintelligible, or maybe I just don't want to remember what he said. Blood was gushing from his mouth, stained the snow beneath him as he crawled. I not intended for things to turn out the way they did. Alina was terrified of me, and that was the last thing I ever wanted her to feel, especially about me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19723.42

I opened my mouth and found no words. I reached out towards her, desperate to comfort her, and she recoiled for me with a gasp. Her eyes squeezed shut, bracing for an impact I could hardly blame her for fearing. I didn't know what else to do, so I just left. This was the last time I ever saw Alina Amenev. Found myself on the highway with the music blaring. I was driving fast down 495.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1974.191

Was it worth risking more lives to find out? So what do you think about that call?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19747.911

It had to have been at least half an hour since I'd left Alina's. I had no memory of the intervening time. I couldn't go home. I couldn't. I'd be arrested. This wasn't like a shoving match. Brian Dorsett would need medical attention. He was the second person in less than a month that I'd put in the hospital. Then again, where was I going to go? What was I going to do? Make a run for Canada?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19771.161

Even if police wouldn't soon be looking for my mom's car, I probably had $7 or $8 on me and access to another $250 or so in my Bay Bank savings account. Hardly enough to get far. I felt dead inside. There was only one thing that could make me feel better. I wanted to hear them again. One last time. For real. I was going to the Quabbin. The sun sets early in the winter.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19797.54

Hell, it had started going down even before I'd arrived at Alina's. By the time I'd hit the Quabbin, it was a little after 8.30 and dark. I parked the car near the trailer park. As Fletch had done, the night carry fell through the ice. I remember wondering how close I was to where he'd parked the night Rob found the spire. The walk to the lake took a little longer than last time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

1981.772

Four hours is excessive, but if all that they saw was like the pipe weapon roll into the passenger seat, you know, I mean, you could think that's a pipe bomb, right? Oh, sure. And also, if Columbine was six months ago, one of the things they did at Columbine was rig up explosives. They didn't go off, but that was like part of the police mindset.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19819.495

There was about four or five inches of snow on the ground, and the plows had turned the sides of the road into little snow banks a foot or so high. It made walking on the side of the road slow going. Luckily, I only saw one car drive by and they didn't pay much attention to me. It was bitter cold.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19837.482

I hadn't noticed at first, but with each step, the wind was cutting further and further through that dead feeling. I just kept walking. It was like being back on the hike with Scary Carrie. You're hyper aware of your body and all of it aches and pains, but if you just keep walking, your brain goes blank. It felt good not to think.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19858.695

I was only about halfway between the entrance to the guabin and the reservoir when I heard them. So sweet, so lovely, so warm. Suddenly it wasn't so cold anymore. I didn't feel the wind, or at least not a winter wind. I felt a warm breeze on my cheek. It smelled dewy and sweet. The full moon shone down on the lush green forest surrounding either side of the dirt road.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19885.006

Hadn't it been paved only a moment ago? I could hear crickets. A tiny light flitted past the corner of my eye. Then another, and another. Fireflies, dancing through the air. It was so warm. I took off my jacket and stood watching the fireflies trying to find one another in the hopes of mating. Then the bells finished their call and I was standing in the snow, holding my jacket, staring at nothing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19912.509

I quickly struggled back into my jacket. I looked back the way I came. The moonlight bouncing off the snow bathed everything in a weak blue light. It was beautiful, but sterile. A much harsher environment than the one in the vision I just had. I'd returned to hear the bells one last time, but looking back in that direction of the trailer park, well, there was nothing for me back there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19936.169

Nothing good at any rate. So I turned back towards the reservoir and started walking. One foot in front of the other. Just me and one last smile. When I finally reached the shore, it was nearly 9.30. The wind had blown the snow into little drifts, leaving some patches of ice bare. In the moonlight, it looked almost like the Quabbin was made of white and blue marble.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19959.851

It was scenic, but I barely noticed. I was looking off at the larger of the two islands.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19966.662

trees frosted by snow left it almost invisible against the horizon i wondered dimly if the bag with christie's raft in my mother's bible was laying somewhere out on that ice it had been cold that last couple of weeks and the ice was silent either it had grown thicker or the snow was dampening the sound of its choo-choo-choos i stepped out onto the quabbin's frozen surface

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

19991.67

It was easiest to walk where the snow was thickest. With each step, I drew closer to the place where Carrie had fallen through the ice, sinking deeper into my self-loathing as I did. I almost wanted the ice to give out beneath me. The thought of plunging into the dark depths of the freezing waters below, of having what little warmth I possessed sucked from my body, leaving me numb...

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20014.704

physically unable to feel anything, was enticing. I didn't want to feel. I didn't want to think, and I didn't want to feel. Not like this. I'd barely caught a glimpse of Carrie's face as she fell through the ice, standing there, trying to picture it. All I could see was Alina, and the horror I'd filled her with.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20035.895

I considered for a long moment, stomping my feet in an effort to open up a fissure in the surface of the reservoir. but there was something else I wanted more than the anesthetizing relief the cold offered. I wanted the bells. Being close to their source strengthened the memory of how they made me feel when I heard them. It was as if I had been pulled towards them by an invisible string.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20058.028

Actually, it was more like I was underwater, holding my breath, being sucked along by a gentle current. It felt like, if I ever wanted to breathe again, I had to go where the waters wanted to take me. I had to find the spire. The wind pushes snow around capriciously. If the snow can catch somewhere, more snow will pile up on top of it, forming little drifts, like sand dunes in a desert.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2006.221

And if he shot himself in the head, even if it was with a makeshift gun, he's probably dead. Probably don't send another officer close to a car that's on fire and might have a pipe bomb in it, right?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20079.958

If there's enough wind, eight inches of snow might result in some spots where the ground is barely covered and the others where the snow runs two, three feet deep. I didn't see anything that extreme that night on the frozen surface of the Quabbin, except for one oddly blocky little snow drift.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20097.113

As I drew near, I could see, in the moonlight of a cloth strap peeking out of the snow, it was my duffel bag, the one I dropped after pulling Carrie out of the water. The bag had been soaked and left outside for weeks. It felt like a solid block of ice, and probably weighed close to 30 pounds.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20114.964

I doubted there was much in there that could be salvaged, maybe the raft, but my mom's Bible was almost certainly done for, and the incense and various things Carrie and I had accumulated were probably ruined. But I took it up anyway. Leaving it there so close to the source of the bells seemed as disrespectful to me as leaving trash behind in the pews of a church.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20133.982

The ice and its frozen straps cracked as I slung the bag over my shoulder and pressed on. It must have been 9.58 or 9.59 by the time I stepped off the ice and onto the shore of the large island, because I'd scarcely reached the wood line when the bells tolled ten.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20149.301

I found the ankle-deep snow replaced by a broad dirt road and the snow-capped trees with colonial homes, but these colonials weren't like the McMansions that dominated my neighborhood. No, even in the near darkness, I could see that these were much more solidly built, and each looked different enough from the others that they couldn't possibly have all been from the same plan.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2017.765

I remember thinking that Officer McCullough, at that point only known to me as the cop who always gave kids a hard time for riding their bikes without a helmet, was a bastard. And maybe he was a bastard, but if he was, it wasn't because of this. He couldn't risk more lives. Besides, whether or not it was a suicide, if there had been a second person in the car, where the hell was she?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20172.458

The bells rang out like thunder. I fell, shaking to my knees, letting their raw power wash over me. I could feel the sound waves reverberating through my bones. I was vibrating to the frequency of the universe. It felt like staring into the true face of God. My whole body tingled. My whole being cracked with energy. I wept because it was so beautiful. I wept because I was unworthy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20202.791

I wept because I could do nothing else. The call of the bells washed over me like a wave at the beach and sucked me into their undertow. I thought I was leaving this world. I thought my next breath would be at their source. I felt like a weary traveler finally able to rest and a dreamer waking from sleep all at once. Then the tenth bell sounded, and I was lying in the snow.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20229.055

It was silent, except for the wind, and I wept for a different reason. I was alone in the darkness, alone in the cold, in a world where I'd lost my place. There was no way but forward. There was nothing for me but the bells.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20274.167

We could be. It could also end the same way it did with Rob. It could. It very well could. I mean, he is writing this years later, though.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20289.521

You know, he's heard... He could be writing this from, like, a mental asylum or something, because he said that was the last normal day of my life.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20324.668

Part eight, me thinks. I had no thoughts of Rob. Out there on that island, I never considered for a moment that the bells had played a role, a large role, a huge, monstrous role, in his suicide. He'd heard them. He'd found them. In the end, he put a homemade shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I'd like to think that if I had, I might not have pressed on.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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But when I'm being honest with myself, I know I would have. What's death compared to knowing? What was so great about my life that it'd be better than hearing the bells at their source? When I stood up, I realized I wasn't at the shore of the island. I couldn't even see the shore.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20363.911

I looked around, trying to figure out how I'd gotten so deep into the woods and noticed there weren't any footsteps behind me. But there was a deep track. It looked like when I fell to my knees, my body had been dragged through the snow. I should have stopped, but I didn't stop. I pressed on. Colonial houses. The broad dirt road I'd seen when the bells rang.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2037.793

Nobody who knew Robert Edward Kennan at all, even people like me who barely knew him, believed for a second that he was out to kill a whole bunch of people. But there was something else that could have been going on. Rob had a crush on a girl that bordered on obsession. It had lasted years and only seemed to be getting worse.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20386.025

It felt like I could still perceive where they'd been. Some of the trees, the ones nearest me, were wrong. They were too young. They didn't belong here. The road was real, even if I couldn't see it. The houses loomed on all sides, even if I couldn't see them. Even if decades earlier they'd all been moved or destroyed, it was like the present had been superimposed on the past.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20408.801

Everything I saw felt less substantial than what I knew had been there before. I'd seen the island's true face. I was on a road, and the road would lead me to the spire. The spire housed the bells. And no new growth force could hide that from me. It was slow going. My feet were numb.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20427.992

Each time I tripped in the dark, I had to pull my hands from my warm pockets to catch myself before I hit the frozen ground. Some snow had made it into my shoes and was melting, but like the hike where I befriended Carrie, I kept going. Even if I wanted to complain, who would I complain to? I trudged my way deeper and deeper into the woods.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20448.102

I might have been the first person to walk there since Rob had made his way to the spire back in late August. It's a weird feeling to be that alone. It's not privacy, it's isolation. When I stumbled into the clearing, I almost didn't see it. The spire. Oh shit. Everything else around me was frosted in snow, but not the spire. It was pristine.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20472.082

It stood twice my height, its whitewashed facade nearly invisible against the snow. The spire had a clear design, four large flat faces tapering up to a sharp point, the sort of wooden spire you'd expect to see topped with a cross on a Protestant church.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20487.493

I don't think I'd have seen it at all if it weren't surrounded by a half-circle of withered, long-dead trees that looked as though they'd been rotting for ages. All my hair stood on end. This was the source. The spire in the woods housed the bells. I approached it with reverence, like I used to approach the tabernacle after receiving communion. There was an energy in the air, electricity.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20512.26

I could sense it. The spire was invisibly warping the space around it. It was like when you were a kid and your teacher had you sprinkle iron fillings around a magnet. Tonight, there'd be no deer crossing signs, no air conditioners, no dates that didn't line up on a family's tombstones. Soon there would be the bells. Right here. Right in front of me. My hand shriveled as I reached out towards it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20539.596

The cold fingers traced their way across the spire's wooden surface as lovingly as they had Alina's skin. And it was even more luxurious. I circled around the spire, trailing my hand along its seamless joints, across its flawless paint. I found the window with its panes kicked out and wished I had the skill to fix it. Then a better thought occurred to me. I could go in.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2056.363

The girl in question, Alina, worked at the omitted location, and Rob would go out of his way to stand in her line or linger in the parking lot after hours hoping to speak with her as she was heading home. Everyone immediately wondered if the mystery girl in the fire had been Alina.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20566.06

I could be in the room with the bells when they sounded. I pushed my duffel bags through the window, then, cautiously, gently, I poked my head in. I didn't meet any resistance, not exactly, but the energy the spire radiated built in intensity. My scalp tingled, my face felt flush, and my brain sang with excitement. as if all my neurons were firing all at once.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20595.046

Eagerly, I pressed my shoulders through the gap in the window. It was a tight fit, and I wriggled and squeezed my way into the darkness until I managed to get my hips through. I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust, but it was no use. Outside, I could see by the moonlight. Trees and their shadows stood out starkly against the white snow. But inside, there was nothing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20621.817

I struggled to open my duffel bag. Ice had formed between the teeth of the zipper and my fingers. Still numb from the cold, I had trouble gripping the slider. But eventually, it opened enough for me to get my fingers in and force it the rest of the way. The flashlights were, of course, gone. The incense was completely destroyed and my mother's Bible only fared a little better.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20642.293

Half of its pages had gotten wet when I'd used the bag to pull Carrie out of the water and were now frozen together in a block. by my grandfather's lighter beneath the raft I borrowed from Christy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20654.083

Lighter fluid's freezing point is absurdly low, something like negative 240 degrees Fahrenheit, so despite having been left outdoors on a frozen lake covered in snow for a month, it actually lit on the third try. The meager orange flame seemed so bright. I was on a small landing at the top of a flight of stairs.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20673.609

The landing was no bigger than a coffee table, and made of plain, unfinished wood that, unlike the beautiful exterior, had been badly warped by years of trapped moisture freezing and thawing inside of it. There was a hand railing in a similar condition. I was hesitant to lean against it as I held the lighter out over the abyss and peered down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20693.976

The stairs wrapped around the outer wall of the spire and disappeared into the darkness. In the flickering light, I could barely make out a heavy beam stretched across the gap between the winding stairs, two floors below me. That had to be where the bells rung. It never entered into my mind that I'd find anything down there but the bells.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20712.602

It never occurred to me to wonder how Amy Lowell Putnam would feel about me descending into her home, into the room where her husband had threaded metal rods into her flesh while she was still very much alive, into the bowels of the clockwork that hourly displayed her to the townspeople so her friends and neighbors could be entertained as her corpse zipped along on its track.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2073.653

Did he pull her into his car to once more profess his love for her and, unable to handle another rejection, take his own life before her eyes? Or, God forbid, try to take Alina with him? Alina's friends and co-workers shouted her name. When she didn't respond, they fanned out to look for her. It was the manager, Mrs. Jaffrey, who found her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20734.213

I wish I had, but my every thought was occupied by the damn bells. My first few steps down the weathered stairs were slow and cautious. I'd test each step with my foot before fully shifting my weight, ready to pull myself back at the very first sign of danger. They were slick, their surface covered in a fine layer of frost, and they bowed and creaked beneath me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20756.959

But they held, and with each step I grew bolder, my pace quickening. I do have to say, I know we're in the vibe right now, but I love how his entry into the spire is described very similar to his first experience with Alina.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20783.058

yeah the kind of delicate dance he did with Alina as well it's erotic yeah like the same way he described like oh I touch Alina's back I feel her spine I like slowly touch her here I move my hand here he was describing touching the paint of the walls and pushing his shoulders into the window and stuff like that it's like there's it's romantic the way he's describing the um um spire itself like that's how much his mind attributes to it what's what's the word for phallic it's almost phallic in a sense the way he goes into detail about it

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20813.945

By the time I'd reached the next landing, I was coming down the stairs like a kid on Christmas morning. I felt like one too, eager to unwrap the presents waiting for me below. I started taking the stairs two at a time. The lighter's orange flame sputtered as I gained speed, threatening to blow out. A laugh, a mirthful, childish giggle bubbled up from deep within me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20836.716

I could just make out, faintly, the shape of the bells. They were right there. From the next landing they'd be so close I'd be able to reach out and touch the nearer of the two. I leapt down the last three steps, the lighter went out, and the landing collapsed beneath me. I fell through two pitch black stories.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20856.916

My body flailed, desperate to find purchase on anything it could, but the only thing I managed to connect with was the floor. My feet hit first, and I had the queasy feeling of the wood shattering beneath me. This time, though, only one or two floorboards gave out, and I came to a stop with a sickening crack as my chest slammed into the ground. Oof.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20878.702

The wood floor, though bowed and weathered, didn't afford my hands any purchase, and I could feel the weight of my legs and stomach dragging the rest of me towards another fall through God only knows how much more inky blackness. I kicked with all my strength, but couldn't get my legs up high enough to climb out of the hole I'd created. In that moment, I can't even truly say that I felt panic.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20901.371

I was a cornered rat, all claws and gnashing teeth, a primal thing, incapable of thought or feeling, covered by adrenaline and the basest of instincts, survival. curled my fingers into hooks and thrashed with everything I was worth, clawing my way to safety. The pain of it all crept into my mind slowly as the adrenaline wore away.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20921.659

The fall had knocked the wind out of me, and, as I'd later find out, broken two of my ribs. I can't say how long I lay there on my back, struggling to pull air back into my lungs, but I can say that every breath I took felt like it was going to rip me open from the inside. I gritted my teeth and attempted to sit up. My chest felt like I was on fire.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20942.399

I put my hands back behind me to push myself into a seated position and felt the sharpest pain in my life. I'd lost three fingernails, those of my left index and middle fingers and my right ring finger, while pulling myself out of the hole in the floor.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20958.017

But what really hurt, what felt even worse than my ribs, was the four-inch splinter that had stabbed beneath the nail of my right index finger and slid out to the other side just above the first joint. Oh. So he's hanging over this threshold and he was clawing into the floorboards and just ripping wood into his fingers. Oh, man. I collapsed back to the ground.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2096.267

Completely overwhelmed by Rob's suicide, Alina had retreated into one of the walk-in freezers. She was bawling her eyes out as Mrs. Jaffrey threw her coat over Alina's shoulders and led her to the manager's office. Oh, it's not your fault, the older woman whispered into Alina's ear, but it didn't do any good. No one else was unaccounted for, and no mystery woman was ever found.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

20982.77

My hand trembled as I brought my finger to my mouth. I hesitated for a moment, trying to think if there was any way to avoid what I was about to do, but there wasn't. I was four, maybe five stories below ground, in the woods, on an island, in the middle of a frozen reservoir, surrounded by more woods, miles away from the nearest soul. No one was coming to help me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21001.388

I bit down on the splinter and pulled it back out the way it had come in. My mind screamed the profanities my lungs couldn't bear to push out, and it was just four slender inches, nothing compared to what Amy Lowell Putnam had endured. Though they were raw and bloody, my fingers probed the floor around where I lay, searching for the lighter.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21021.896

The only thing I found was one of my fingernails embedded between two floorboards. Goddamn. I thought about prying it out, but couldn't imagine what good it'd do me. It's not as though I could slide it back into place. Once I was sure the ladder wasn't within arm's reach, I found myself wondering if I ever wanted to find it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21039.729

Part of me knew I'd eventually have to if I didn't want to starve or freeze to death beneath the spire, but it hurts so much to move. And hadn't I come here to surrender myself to the bells one more time? Wasn't that what I really wanted? It was. So I sat alone in the cold and dark, waiting for the widower's clock to strike eleven.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21060.731

The clapper of the bells struck their surface with the force of a cannonball. In that instant, suddenly there was light. It was a soft light, but after the total darkness at the bottom of the clock tower, I found the way it glinted off the innumerable gears and tracks and coils filling the room, blinding, like glare of the winter sun bouncing off the snow. A man spoke, his voice small and distant.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21086.74

So, you've heard my bells. Oh dude, this, this story, because every time that the bells strike, he's transported back to the 19 tens. Yeah. Yeah. So he's, he, now that he's in the tower, Adolf's there all the way back. He's back in 1910. Like while the bells are ringing, he is back there with the man who invented them.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, yeah. Man, this is such a cool story, dude. Like, the supernatural elements to the way the characters are written and everything. Gosh, this is great. Adolf Reifler stood, a bent old man, before his workbench. His face was wrinkled and he leaned heavily on a cane, but his eyes burned with an intensity that bellied his frail voice. When he spoke again, I noticed his lips didn't move.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You're missing what you've come so far to see. I stood almost automatically. I was surprised to find that although I could still feel my injured ribs and see the blood trickling from my mangled fingers, I could move with relative ease. Adolf turned back to his bench. The stairs behind you will lead you out. I marched across the wood floor where the hole I just created should have been.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I was dimly aware of the same dreamy feeling I'd had outside of Lena's house when I felt compelled to watch her screw Ryan Dorsett. I'm not sure if I listened to Adolf because I wanted to, although, make no mistake, I did want desperately to see the widower's clock, or because I had no choice. It felt almost as though I was watching myself as I headed toward the stairs.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2117.265

No second bomb ever exploded, and no accomplices ever turned up. I guess we all assumed that those eyewitnesses were mistaken that the smoke and the flames had played a trick on their eyes. We were wrong. I just got to say the way this story gives us information where it's like, well, this is the tragic case that happened here, but Rob had a crush on a girl and then it like reads about the death.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21187.58

The stairs dumped me out into the middle of a well-appointed room. An oriental rug ran down the center. Ornately framed paintings hung on the walls between each of the windows. It looked like quite a grand foyer, the perfect entrance to any courthouse or place of business out to impress the public. The carpet led to a huge pair of double doors, and I went to them without a second thought.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21211.0

They opened with ease, despite their size, onto a summer night in what appeared to be a party. This is so cool. It's so cool. Oh, it's so cool. There were maybe two dozen or so men and a half dozen women, all sporting old-fashioned suits and dresses, the sort of things they'd likely only wore to weddings and special occasions.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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They all stared up over my head, expressions of awe plastered dumbly over their frozen faces. I thought for a moment, just a moment, that they were staring at me. I quickly realized they were watching what I'd come to see. The dance of Reifler's automatons. and unbeknownst to them, his wife and her lover. I made my way through the crowd. The bells chimed for only the second time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21259.994

Time seemed to have become loose, more elastic. My feet were moving at the proper speed, but each tick of the great clock dragged out for several seconds. Tick. It was nauseating. Talk. I took a spot beside a table full of refreshments. A man in a smart-looking uniform stood behind it, but like all the others, he had eyes only for the clock.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21287.153

Helping myself to a plate of marble cake and a heavy silver fork, I turned to finally get my first glimpse of the widower's clock in all its glory. The clock tower was illuminated by electric lights, which surprised me as I wouldn't have thought Enfield had been electrified in the early 30s. It was easily five, maybe six stories in height.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Its base was almost as broad as the width of the rifler's house, and it tapered slowly until it reached the spire. Its white wood paneling gleamed in the electric light. As grand and audacious as the Tower of Babel, it blasphemously penetrated the starlit sky." Oh, we go for references like he needs the clock to find God, but now the clock is the Tower of Babel. I'm so good.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21344.963

Because if you, like, just remembering the clock at certain times of day, it can transport you to a better place. If you are at the source of it, you are to the source of the clock. It's like a portal, almost, where you go, like, oh, it's so cool. Okay. The second floor was dominated by the tracks where the automatons hourly performed.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21363.149

Adolf Reifler, for all his faults, was truly a masterful engineer. His creations zipped along with such grace and fluidity, it was almost impossible to believe they weren't alive. Except for two. A sluggish southern belle and a stiff-limbed confederate soldier. Ironically, the two most wooden figures on stage were the only two made of actual flesh and blood.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21385.218

Behind Amy Lowell and her lover, a backdrop, which must have been nearly Astorian height, of a grand plantation house on fire rotated slowly into view. The Union automatons, each equipped with small electric lights designed to look like torches, charged towards the plantation house. They touched their torches to the cutouts painted up like cotton fields as they went.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And everywhere the torches touched, a red light turned on beneath the cutouts, illuminating the cotton flowers, revealing they were made of glass and sparkling as though they were actually on fire. As the troops reached the plantation house, another group of automatons rose to greet them. Slaves. I cringed when I saw the slave automatons. They were such racist caricatures.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2141.568

And it's like, we assumed that they were mistaken. They were, we were wrong. Like those little end of paragraph, like, oh, what's this? What's this? It's such a fun, because every detail we're getting is interesting. And then at the end of that information, it gives us like a little clue to new information. It's just a very fun way to like give out a story like this. I like it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21430.309

Slaves set about beating their former owners, much to the delight of the New England audience who hooted and cheered as the Rebs received their comeuppance. Southern Belle and Confederate automatons crumpled beneath the attack, their bodies holding in on themselves in a way that was only possible if their spines had been broken in multiple locations.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21449.974

The slaves grabbed Amy Lowell's corpse and dragged it offstage. Two of the slave automatons turned as they departed, flashing toothy grins at the spectators. Adolph Reifler was not a subtle man. The bells rang once more, just as the Union soldiers shot the prone Confederate automaton. The onlookers burst into applause. Well, most of it did.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I noticed a man just off to my right side hadn't celebrated. He looked bored, as though he'd seen this all before. Something else was off about him, too. He wasn't dressed like the others. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I wasn't the only one who heard the bells. I wasn't the only one who'd found the tower. And I wasn't the only one watching the automaton's endless dance.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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My eyes scanned the crowd. There was an emaciated man in a park ranger's uniform, the bones of his face plainly visible beneath his skin, leaning against the end of the refreshments table. There was a boy in a tie-dye shirt who looked to be about 13. His slashed wrists covered his corduroys in blood, but he gave his injuries no notice. Were they dead? Was I? Had the fall killed me?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Then I noticed another figure, sitting alone near the woodline. A young man with a slender build, about my height. Skin burnt to a crisp. It was the color of charcoal, and most of his jaw was missing. Robert Edward Kennan. Oh, my gosh. Oh, it's like a purgatory. Oh, if you go to the bells, you're forever there to watch the clockmakers dance. Oh, this is so good. Okay.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What was left of his skin flaked off his neck as he turned his head and fixed me with his gaze. Beneath his blackened eyelids, his watery eyes were as blue as a clear sky. Rob pounded the ground next to him. The bells chimed once more and Rob and I shuddered in bliss. Took a seat next to him. Tried to speak, but his injuries made it impossible to understand him.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I think he was trying to apologize for killing himself. Or maybe he was just sorry to see I'd followed him to the bells. I don't know. We sat together in silence, watching as another glass backdrop rotated into view, the glasswork of Atlanta. The lights made it flicker as though it was on fire. Time seemed to return to full speed, and the bells finished calling out the hour.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21599.863

My body shivered and my ribs screamed. It was pitch black once more, and I was sitting with my back against something, a wall maybe? My ribs let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they did not appreciate this position. Slowly, I slid down until I was lying on my back. I couldn't fully process what I had seen.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21617.871

In his note to Fletch, Rob had said, I will soon join them, staring at her face as she runs the endless race. Had he known he'd be stuck there when he died? Stuck watching the widower's clock? Stuck watching Amy Lowell Putnam endlessly running around and round in the automaton her husband had concealed her in? Was I going to be stuck too? All I could say for sure was that the spell was broken.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2163.235

Yeah, the story is setting itself up really well. Fletch wasn't in school for the rest of that week, and I didn't see him around the neighborhood either. I hate to admit it, but it was sort of a relief. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. What do you really say to someone whose friend has just killed himself?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21641.833

I never wanted to hear the bells again. The cold had numbed my fingers to the point where I could feel little more from my missing nails than a dull ache. And while I was thankful for that small blessing, it also meant that hypothermia and frostbite couldn't be far behind. I needed to find the lighter.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21658.725

I needed to find a way out of there or my questions about the afterlife would be answered all too soon. I tried pulling myself along the ground with my arms, but the stress of my ribs was too great. I had to push myself across the ground using my legs. It was painful, but bearable. The darkness was so absolute. I had no idea which way I was facing or where the hole was in the floor.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21679.919

I moved slowly, dancing my fingers over the wood like an insect's antenna, hoping to find that little metal lighter that could mean the difference between life and death. I was beginning to panic. I'd searched an area maybe twice the length of my body and found nothing, not even the far wall. The room had to be huge. I could barely move.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21698.614

What if the lighter had fallen through the hole I'd made when I hit the floor? I was never going to find it. I began mumbling prayers to myself, just to keep my growing sense of despair at bay.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21722.39

Amen. Amen. The Virgin Mary, the most exalted woman in all of Christianity. What could be more comforting than praying to her, Mother of God? Isn't I a child in despair? Don't all despairing children cry out for their mothers? So why did it feel so empty to pray to her now? I didn't know, but elected to continue my work in the oppressive silence.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21744.548

My fingers were so cold and numb, the lighter didn't even register when they sent it sliding deeper into the darkness. I only knew I'd found it because of the sound it made sliding over across the warped planks. I flicked the flint once, and nothing. Twice and it sparked, three times and it lit. To suddenly see the flame was like staring at the sun.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21763.024

It took my eyes several seconds to adjust, to when I noticed I wasn't alone. Figures stood all around me, casting long shadows along the floor that disappeared into the edges of black beyond the lighter's reach. I panicked. I couldn't run. I couldn't fight, but I scrunched up my face and braced for an impact that never came.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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In the weeks that followed, a new form of gossip slowly crept into the hallways of the school. Special counseling held in the cafeteria every morning before homeroom was supposed to be a safe space where anyone could share their feelings without fear of judgment and be secure in the knowledge that it would go no further. So naturally, it was all anyone wanted to talk about.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21782.039

Slowly, I reopened my eyes, and much to my relief, realized that the figures were automatons. After 60-some-odd years of neglect, they were all in a state of disrepair. Their plaster faces were spiderwebs with cracks, pieces, sometimes full limbs, laden heaps around their bases.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21799.11

I was surprised I hadn't encountered any of the tracks which lay everywhere on the floor, but I supposed I hadn't covered very much area lying around on my back, nor would I be able to leave by doing so. I gritted my teeth and, despite the pain, forced myself up onto my feet. The plaster bodies of the automaton seemed small, scarcely five feet in height, as I picked my way slowly between them.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21822.924

It made Amy Lowell and her lover, having been hidden inside one of these things, seem all the more grotesque. There was no way Adolf could have done it without chopping off their hands and feet. One by one I climbed the stairs, taking frequent breaks when the pain in my ribs grew too intense for me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21839.307

Eventually I drew even with the bells, which appeared to be rusted fast to the thick iron rings from which they hung. I don't know why this surprised me so much. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought they'd be made of polished silvers, sparkle like starlight. In time, I reached the collapsed landing, or rather reached where it should have been.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21860.042

Now there is nothing but a gap, five feet across, with the staircase continuing its upward climb on the far side. It would have been easy enough to jump if my ribs weren't broken and I trusted the wood on the other side to hold my weight, but they were broken and I was terrified of taking another fall.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21877.717

I sat down on the steps and cried, utterly convinced that I would die there and join Rob and Adolph and Amy Lowell in front of the widower's clock every hour on the hour for all eternity. It wasn't fair. Yes, I had chosen to investigate the spire in the woods, but I didn't choose to crave the bells. I didn't choose for them to warm me when I was cold or comfort me when I was scared.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21901.045

I didn't choose to black out at the sight of Alina melting around Ryan Dorsett's member. And I certainly wouldn't claim to have been in my right mind when, just an hour earlier, I chose hearing the bells one more time over searching for a way out. The lighter closed with a snap that echoed in the darkness.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21917.571

I'd been a Catholic my whole life, but as I sat there on the edge of the broken stairs, straining to see even the faintest silver of moonlight from the window that laid beyond my reach, I knew that my faith was gone. I had set out to find evidence that there was more to creation than could be explained by science. And though I'd certainly found that, I felt more alone in the universe than ever.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21939.209

What kind of God would create a world so cruel that it contained the bells? How could I pretend there was a design and a moral underpinning governing the universe when something as innocuous as a beautiful sound could rob you of your free will, and by all indications, damn you for it? Eventually, I got tired of staring into nothing. It was too cold to keep sitting there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21962.744

I looked at Zippo and headed back down the stairs. I needed to find a way to warm up. I'm My duffel bag was set in a few feet from the hole I had created in the fall. I pulled out the raft and briefly considered inflating it. It would have been nice not to have to lie directly on the cold, hard floor, but ultimately I decided it would be best to use it as a blanket.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2198.871

There's a strong backlash against the kids that the other students didn't feel deserved to be there. People who presented themselves as having been very close with Rob, but who in truth rarely spoke with him. Several of my close friends had been at Omitted that night.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

21982.649

It occurred to me that there might be something useful on the floor below. I crept as close to the edge of the hole as I dared, held the lighter over the chasm, and peered down. It looked like most of the room below had been claimed by groundwater that had frozen solid. If the planks that broke my ribs hadn't held, I doubt I would have survived slamming into that ice.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22002.785

Climbing back down hurt like hell. The raft didn't seem like it was going to do much for me, but my insulation was better than none. Reluctantly, I closed the lighter. It didn't have an unlimited supply of fuel, you have to be careful with that. Waiting for midnight, shivering in the dark, my mind's eye kept conjuring images of Rob Kinnan's burnt face. His one good eye watering.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22026.132

I really didn't want to join him, but at the same time, I couldn't wait to be warm again. With a deafening clang, the bells tolled. It was midnight, and I once again found myself lying on the floor of Adolf Reifler's workroom. You're back. He never looked at me, just continued to scan the rows of wretches that hung from the wall.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22053.193

I'm sorry to hear that. His voice was filled with pity, but his unmoving lips retained their scowl. He took a wrench from the wall and began picking his way back through the tangled mess of gears that seemed to only exist when the bells were ringing. I followed him to a hidden corner of the room where the southern bell and Confederate soldier automaton stood.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22072.591

Adolph's deft fingers pushed the dress down over the Southern Belle's shoulder, exposing a bolt on her back. I slipped the wrench over it and set to work. From beneath the lacquered wood, Amy Lowell's bones splintered and popped. My stomach revolted at the sound, and I looked for a place to retch. Adolf continued to smile as he gave the bolt another half turn.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22095.148

You mustn't judge me too harshly, came his sad little voice.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22108.444

He pulled her dress down farther, pausing only briefly to admire his handiwork as he exposed the majority of the automaton's body before continuing on to the next bolt.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22125.714

She was mine. His hand slid up her body, pulling her dress back into place. But there was no pleasing her. He lifted her arm up by the wrist and let go. Her hand hurt and jerked as it fell back into place.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2213.837

They had watched Rob burn, seen him die, and although they were deeply affected, they weren't even entirely comfortable being there amongst his handful of close friends and, of course, Alina. I felt terrible for Alina Amenev. Sitting there in the cafeteria, surrounded by Rob's grieving friends, listening to everyone tiptoe around blaming her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22143.934

He yelled, his lips moving with each curse. He grabbed the automaton by her head and twisted it violently in a way no neck could bend. It sounded like cracking knuckles. The automaton's blank eyes seemed to stare right at me. They were such a lovely shade of brown.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22160.802

I was lost in those eyes and thoughts of Alina until Adolf's wrench returned to work and the sound of bones crunching shook me from revelry. You mustn't doubt my love for her. Adolf whispered through closed lips.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22210.717

I felt compelled to speak. I've always hated it when someone challenged my experiences. It makes me feel so small. But it was more than that. My mouth moved, and it was like I was outside of my body, listening to myself tell Adolf all about Alina, what I'd done to Ryan Dorsett.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22230.241

He sounded relieved, as if I'd just given him absolution for his sins. The bells tolled. Adolf gave the bolt on the automaton's elbow a full turn, splintering Amy Lowell's bones. It was loud, like a branch snapping off a tree in a storm. He again lifted her arm and let it fall. He must have been pleased with the result because he sat down his wrench and headed towards the stairs.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22252.18

I followed him without thinking.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22284.31

Yeah, I like the... it's like, obviously his connection, this girl, Lena, isn't as much as the connection of like someone's wife who cheats on you. But I like how it's like very similar to a tower of Babel thing. It lets him give into his pride. Like being here lets him be like, well, actually I do have a good reason for what I did. Blah, blah, blah. And like the clockmaker agrees with him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22307.086

I was like, Oh, at the start of the story, he talked about how he needed to find the bells to reaffirm his faith. And now that he's in the bells, he feels like his faith is gone. Um,

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2234.124

They never came out and said it, but they talk about how girls wouldn't give him the time of day. How someone had recently ripped out his heart. Jesus. That's pretty rough. That's brutal, man. It's a weird place to be because it's like if someone dies, you know, the dead have settled their debts. You don't want to talk bad about them. Right. And you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22369.096

Yeah, I think so. All right, well, two parts left. You ready? Yeah, I'm stoked, man. All right, part nine. Adolf Reifler slid through the crowd, exchanging pleasantries with farmers and businessmen, neighbors and travelers alike. No one seemed to notice me following in his wake. They never looked at me or reacted to anything Adolf and I said to one another.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22387.93

They also didn't seem to notice any of the others that were, like me, stuck. Most of the conversations Adolph had with his guests were brief. They'd offer him the sort of enthusiastic pleasantries I imagine you hear any time a work of art is unveiled. And he'd respond graciously enough, until the man he addressed as Edwin inquired about Amy Lowell's whereabouts.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22408.535

Something in Edwin's tone made me think he was interested in more than paying his respects.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22420.08

Adolph's voice dripped with condescension. The couplet Rob left in the suicide note to Alina floated to the force of my mind. Every hour I see her face, she runs the endless race. and I'd first heard the story of the widower's clock, I had thought it was cruel that one could be damned just for laying eyes on Amy Lowell's corpse. After all, we hadn't killed her. We hadn't put her on display.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22445.189

What I realized watching Edwin calling it a night was that the partygoers weren't stuck watching the endless race. If they had been, they wouldn't have been able to leave. No, only those of us who had heard the bells and followed them to the spire were stuck. But why? They'd heard the bells. They'd heard the real bells. Why weren't they stuck with us?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22465.001

Midnight marked the end of the automatons' reenactment with Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Once Lee had signed the Articles of Surrender, the tent backdrop zipped out of view and dozens upon dozens of automatons took their curtain call, dancing behind the generals like something out of a Bisbee Berkeley musical.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22483.339

The freed slaves came out in a chorus line, doing the can-can as if they were the Rockettes. The partygoers howled with laughter. I wanted to be disgusted. It was every bit as racist as the minstrel show. But no matter how much of Adolf Reifler's cruel indifferences was reflected in his work, the widower's clock was still too fine a thing to look away from.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22504.105

When the Southern Bell Automaton returned, I couldn't help but notice how sinuously its arms moved. Her arms moved. The bells tolled once more and I was alone again, freezing in the dark. It was so cold the blood from my fingers froze before it could clot. The raft wasn't much of a blanket. I needed to make a fire or I was going to wind up with frostbite.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22526.599

Half of my mother's bible was a chunk of ice, but the top half was dry. I began ripping the undamaged portions out. The delicate work was slow going with my fingers. I twisted up the torn pages and set them in a small pile near the hole in the floor. I wasn't worried that the floorboards would catch. They'd absorbed far too much moisture over the years.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22546.459

Besides, paper burns fast and at a fairly low temperature, especially when each page is as thin as the Bible's. After a few minutes, my hands weren't quite as numb, but it was clear my meager kindling wouldn't hold out until morning. I needed more fuel if I wanted to survive. My ribs were thrilled to be moving again. It would have been so much easier if the bells were ringing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22568.825

I didn't want to leave their sound, but they were like an X you just can't get over. As bad as they are for me, even today, I still crave them. The automatons hung lifeless on their post. Their clothes had largely disintegrated. Moisture had penetrated much of their lacquered finish, spotting them with mold.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2258.328

But at the same time, just because someone's dead doesn't mean they were virtuous. Right.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22586.118

Even though the years hadn't been kind, looking at them in the flickering glow of the lighter, they were still marvelous. I ran my hand down the arm of a rebel soldier, almost as lovingly as Adolf had done with the automaton that encased his wife's remains. If I wanted to survive, I'd have to burn it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22604.162

The area that had once been Adolf Reifler's workspace was littered with rusty tools and ancient gears. I took up one of the wrenches from where it had fallen. My fingers ate just holding it. I set about dismembering the nearest automaton. The bolts were rusted. It was tough to get any of them to budge.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22620.031

Straining against the wrench made my ribs feel like they had been replaced with broken glass and fish hooks, but eventually the bolts turned and the arm fell to the ground. The wood portion of the arm is no more than a quarter of an inch thick, just enough to cover the clockworks inside and hold the paint and finish. It wouldn't burn for much longer than the paper. I had to burn them all.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22641.531

The only upside was that I wouldn't have to unscrew another bolt. The wood was brittle enough that I could smash it to pieces with a wrench, and if I used my offhand, well, it still hurt like hell, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. I smashed the Confederate and Union soldiers. I smashed Lee and Grant and Lincoln.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22659.506

I smashed women and children and slaves and then gathered up the pieces. I'd already ripped apart and burnt the pages of my mother's Bible, but somehow smashing the automatons felt worse. I felt like a small child watching the tide wash away a beautiful sandcastle. I'm sure Adolph's going to be stoked about that.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22676.817

Yeah, I'm sure next time this bell tolls in like 10 minutes, he's going to be like, oh, you destroyed all of these? That's cool. I'm glad you did that. I'm very happy that that happened. I had the thought, couldn't he, if everything's restored when the bells are chiming, couldn't he wait for a bell chime, then work his way back up the staircase?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22695.253

And then when the bells quit chiming, he'd be at the top. I think, I don't know. You would assume so, right? I would think so because like everything's back in order.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22707.335

So the staircase would be back together. The part that he broke hypothetically. We'll see. There would never be another clock like this. The rack that had once held Adolf's wrenches on the wall made a decent grate and soon I had a sputtering fire. It wasn't great, but it was warm enough that I'd live. I draped the raft over my shoulders and slowly laid myself back down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22729.194

I was out of immediate danger and could feel my body shutting down. I woke when the bells tolled one. The fire was gone. Adolf's workshop was warm. Before I could so much sit up, their call ended and I was back where I'd begun. I threw more splinters of wood on the fire and laid back down. Sleep didn't come easy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22748.153

The automaton's nude clockwork, exposed for the first time in decades, cast intricate shadows that seemed to dance in the firelight. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was bothering me about them. I woke again at two o'clock. It was dark inside the workroom, but when the doors opened for the slave automatons to zip out, the electric lights illuminating the clock poured in.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22769.199

A southern bell hung limp on her post. Her eyes stared blankly in my direction. A large backdrop swung out through the door, blocking the light. I was alone in the dark with Amy Lowell's corpse. So wait, this isn't... Is he talking about while the bells are ringing and he's transported back? Or him laying in the dark building sees the southern bell?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22793.732

Okay. At least that's what... So there are... Yeah, the electric lights illuminating the clock poured in. So maybe some of it's still working 60 years later? Maybe. Who knows? Once the backdrop rotated out of the light, I saw the southern bell slide out after it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2280.146

Yeah. Cause like, you don't want to like blame him. Right. But you want to blame something. So a bunch of them are like, Oh, well, girls right am I right girls led to a problem and it's like it's kind of like an easy out because you're not thinking about the girl who is affected who's still alive by what you're saying yeah It's very human. It's very natural.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22806.938

For just a split second, I thought I saw the southern bell's head swivel on her neck, as if she were tracking me with her eyes, but it had to have been the clockwork getting her in position to perform, right? Then I realized what had been bothering me about the automatons.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22822.486

Fletcher told me Rob put his fingers inside the eye sockets of a human skull, but all the automatons, before I'd smashed them up for firewood, had their lacquered faces intact. Amy Lowell's corpse returned to its starting position, its limbs swung forward like a rag doll's when it came to an abrupt stop. She was looking at me again.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22843.825

Could a sculpture have ubiquitous gaze, or was that only paintings? My heart was racing as I waited for the bells to ring a second time. Why had Adolf painted her face with such a creepy little grin? I couldn't stop staring. I rose to my feet and turned her head away from me. I did it quick because I couldn't stand to touch her. The bells tolled once more.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22866.435

Was Amy Lowell's body going to be waiting for me in the dark? Okay, so yes, this is... Because he said electric light. So this is while the bells are tolling, he's back in the 1930s.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22878.48

He's back in the shop watching because he still sees the face and he's worried that when the bells quit tolling, he'll be standing in front of a corpse that's just a rotted skull. Yeah, yeah. Amid the kindling, there were only a couple of pieces of wood large enough to use as a torch.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22893.332

Took a painfully long minute, my eyes straining to detect anything out of place in the darkness to get one of them to catch. I held the torch aloft in my left hand, and even though I doubted in my present condition that I could ever swing it, I held one of the larger wrenches in my right. The weight of it felt good. It reminded me of the rock I'd used to attack Ryan Dorsett.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22913.407

The floorboards groaned beneath my feet as I moved from automaton to automaton, examining each intern. The faces weren't designed to move. Beneath the wood, each of them had a little metal knob that could never be mistaken for a skull. There was a stairwell in the far corner going down to the room below.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22929.098

I had twice used it while the bells were ringing, but now there was nothing down there but ice. Had Rob gone that deep? I doubted the groundwater would have been lower in the summertime, but I couldn't say for sure. Cautiously, I went down, one creaking step at a time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22950.829

Dirt and other particulates made it impossible to see much of anything in the ice, although I thought I could make out some of the furniture I'd seen on my way out to view the clock. I was reluctant to venture too far into the room, lest I slip on the ice and break another bone, but I was sure there was nothing of interest to be found. My heart slowed.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22970.407

I was relieved not to have found Amy Lowell's automaton. Rob could have touched anything in the dark. Maybe he was touching her automaton while the bells rang and then found himself alone in the dark after their last toll, or maybe Fletch got part of the story wrong. Who could say? I can. I crept back to my fire, wrapped the raft around me, and let my exhaustion overtake me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

22994.027

My fire had burnt out while I was asleep and I awoke shivering violently. There was plenty of wood, but I was almost out of Bible pages. As I carefully arranged a twist of paper beneath some of the thinner splinters, I heard a dreadful sound. It was quiet, but impossible to miss, like fingernails on a chalkboard. I froze. The fire could wait. The noise stopped.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23019.618

I held my breath and strained my ears to listen for even the faintest sound. Nothing. Maybe an animal had gotten in here with me and scratched its claws against a metal surface. A raccoon or a rat could live down here. Maybe an owl nested in the old gears. I wouldn't exactly call myself an animal lover, but I found the idea of another living thing being nearby very comforting.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23042.867

I returned to the work at hand. When you're building a fire, airflow is key. If the wood presses down on the paper too much, you'll smother the flame before the wood can catch. My hands were shaking from the cold, and it was tough getting the wood to sit right, but I managed it after several tries. Just as I flicked the lighter to light the paper, the noise came again. It was a long, dry screech.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2306.298

And when the counselor spoke about how challenging it can be to cope with the insensitivity of other teens, many in the room cast sidelong glances in her direction, waiting for her reaction before adding in their own two cents. The year before Rob's death, Alina had suddenly found herself with a kind of unexpected popularity.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23066.269

sort of sound a metal gate makes when its hinges need oil there's no way an animal was making that noise do you think it's the automaton moving on its own i think that's what it is yeah pretty sure that's where this is going it's going to be the one it's going to be uh the one of uh putnam's body the skull that robbery shot and grabbed desperately i groped along the ground for the wrench ignoring the cries of pain for my raw still bleeding nail beds the sound grew closer and fits and starts

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23095.765

I couldn't find the wrench in the dark. I could use the lighter, but it was coming from the direction of the automatons. Couldn't have been very far away. 10 feet, maybe 15. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to see what could be making that noise. I gave up on the wrench and crawled backwards trying to get away. It drew closer.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23118.993

My hand found nothing but air, and I was momentarily filled with that sickening feeling of falling until my back slammed hard into the wood at the edge of the hole. With my shoulders stretched over the ledge, the pain on my ribs was unbearable. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out in pain. The lighter was my only chance to get around the pit. I didn't want to look.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23140.047

I was shaking so badly I nearly dropped the lighter. And then the noise stopped. I sat in pitch black in total silence, my heart still racing, unsure of what to do. Light my way around the hole? Search in the dark for the wrench? Whatever it was didn't give me long to ponder. The small thud of something heavy hitting the wood echoed through the room, followed by a dragging sound.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23163.564

I flicked the lighter once, and nothing. The sound grew closer. Twice, and it lit. Standing over me was the Southern Bell Automaton. The polished wood veneer was badly burnt in places. The left half of its face was broken away, revealing the hollow eye socket of Amy Lowell Putnam's skull.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23185.649

I screamed until my broken ribs forced me to stop, but what remained of Amy Lowell's wooden face just stared back at me, as blank as ever. Her head was still twisted around like it had left it at two o'clock. Her head was still twisted around like I'd left it at two o'clock. She stepped unsteadily towards me. Her limbs were stiff, her movements spastic and unnatural.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23207.056

It was almost as if she wasn't in complete control of her own body. The pole, which had once pulled her along the clock's tracks, making her dance, hung down from between her legs and dragged on the floor behind her. My eyes darted down, looking for the wrench. She was standing right over it. For a moment, as slow as she moved, I thought I'd be able to outrun her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23226.54

But as I stood and turned to skirt the hole, she showed me I was mistaken. Her arms sprang forward with such force they almost knocked me to the floor. Her wooden fingers dug into my shoulders, pinching my flesh against the bone. Her face, all the while, remained as impassive as a porcelain doll's. I couldn't bear her looking at me, so I dropped the lighter.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2323.37

She was born in Russia, but her parents had managed to immigrate to the United States when Alina was still an infant, which was during the tail end of the Cold War. So no easy feat. Kids used to tease her about her family being Soviet spies, but when she started to come into her own, the teasing turned to flirting.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23246.052

We struggled there in the dark, on the edge of the hole. Crying and sniveling, I begged for my miserable life as she forced me down to my knees. I felt the heavy metal pole that impaled her corpse brush against my leg as she continued to maneuver my body against my will. She turned me around, forcing me first to my hands and knees before finally shoving me down onto my stomach.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23267.102

Her hands pinned my shoulders to the ground. I could feel her torso folding itself. The remains of her spine must have been bent at a right angle. The metal pole rose and fell, rose and fell, each time smacking the floorboards with a dull thunk. Her chest kept twisting, like a wasp moving its abdomen into position to sting.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23287.022

I didn't fully process what was happening until the pole came down hard on my inner thigh. Amy Lowell Putnam intended to treat me to some of what she'd endured at her husband's hands. I stopped thinking. I stopped feeling. I was too terrified for that. I flailed my limbs. I scratched at the wood floor with my remaining fingernails.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23307.391

When my hand came down in the hole, I didn't even consider the consequences. It was the only way I might possibly avoid being sodomized with... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23339.683

Oh, that would be, that'd be insane. It's like, Oh, the, the monster thing that kills you. It's like, ah, the monster.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23351.532

Like she was impaled. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I would imagine the same way that she was like stabbed with a pitchfork. We'll see what she's intending to do. I hope so, man. That makes this way more terrifying. Yeah. It was the only way I might possibly avoid being sodomized with the automaton, and I took it. I pulled with every last ounce of strength I could muster.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23373.651

My ribs screamed in agony. Blood started gushing from my fingers once again, but I kept pulling, dragging myself and Amy Lowell right to the very edge. The pole came down on my leg again. It felt like being hit by a hammer. When she raised the pole once more, I pulled my upper body over the ledge and rolled my shoulders down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2339.415

She never quite reached the ranks of our school's alpha females, but her je ne sais quoi was undeniable. Alina was pretty sure, but not unattainably so. She was smart, but not so much so that it was intimidating. By the way, have you ever been intimidated? Every story I read, I feel like that's like, oh, she wasn't, she's like too smart or she's intimidatingly smart.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23391.4

Amy Lowell's weight must have been off balance because she went spilling over the ledge, landing on the ice below with a sickening crash. I was back where I started, lying in the pitch black, struggling for breath. From the hole came a small sound, almost a scratching noise, and a thud, followed by more scratching. Amy Lowell was still moving.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That is so absurd. It's ridiculous. It's very stupid. Now, here's the thing. You can currently right now still upload stuff related to Wabbit or Rabbit, right? Because that period's done.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I fumbled about on my hands and knees until I found the lighter. It lit on the third try. Held it over the hole in the floor, Amy Lowell's head had been twisted to nearly 180 degrees in the fall. A chunk of her skull from just over her eye socket had been knocked out, along with more of the southern bell veneer, but hadn't slowed her spastic movements.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Her wooden hands and feet struggled to gain purchase on the ice. My feet started moving. I had no clue where to go. Where could I? There's no way out. I just had to get as far away from Amy Lowell Putnam as I could. I grabbed the wrench as I passed and took the stairs. The flame sputtered as I climbed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23451.558

I had no idea how much lighter fluid I had left and found myself wishing I had grabbed another piece of wood I could have used as a torch. It held out, though, all the way to the topmost stair I could reach. I sat down and quietly closed the lighter. My mistake became obvious the moment I heard her pole rise and fall on the first step of the staircase. Thump. I had nowhere to go. Thump.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23474.662

I was more trapped than I would have been in a wide-open room below. Thump. I had to get out of here, out of the spire. Thump. I lit the Zippo once more and held it aloft. Thump. Could I make that jump? How stable were the beams holding up the stairs? Bump. Beneath the gap in the stairs, Amy Lowell's corpse continued its climb. Bump.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was only five feet, give or take, separating me from the surface. Nothing. Bump. Of course the stairs were higher on the far side of the gap. Bump. And the wood probably couldn't support me landing on it. Bump. And I was in no condition to jump. Bump. There was no way I could make it. I was stuck and she was coming for me. Bump. I slumped down on the top step.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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All I could think was, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Bump. Then I thought that dying might be preferable to what she had planned for me. I could just lean back and fall, splattering my brains all over the floor below. Thump. But what if I didn't die? What if I only broke an arm or my legs? She'd turn around, thump, and come get me. There was no running.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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If I was going to survive, I'd have to fight. I had the wrench. I had the high ground. Maybe I could get lucky and toss her over the edge, or worst case, take her with me. There were 18 steps between each landing. The pole hanging down from between her legs prevented her from standing. She had to crawl on all fours. Her hands and feet sounded like hard-soled shoes against the wooden steps.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Each time she reached a landing, the pole would drag across the ground. When she reached the landing below me, I sparked the lighter and set it against the wall, hoping that'd be enough to keep it from getting knocked over in the fight to come. Amy Lowell didn't react. She just kept climbing. I stood and raised the wrench over my head. My breathing was rapid and shallow.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Her head was still twisted around on her neck, staring off into the darkness. She stopped just outside my reach. Still as a stone, she appeared every bit as inanimate as all the other automatons. Was she trying to lure me in or draw me away from the edge? Why was she just sitting there? My arm was beginning to shake. I couldn't hold the wrench up for much longer. It was now or never.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Before my foot could hit the step below mine, her arms and legs uncoiled and she exploded forward. My wrench hit feebly on her back as her wooden hands latched onto my throat. Together, we began falling backwards towards the gap in the stairs. Just before we slipped over the edge, the bells tolled. My back slammed against the stairs. The automaton was gone. God, you lucky son of a bitch.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Perfect timing. Incredible timing. I was also right that if you wait for the bells, the staircase will reappear.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23642.573

Yep. Yep. My brain was still panicking. I couldn't think of anything but her. Where was she? Where was Amy Lowell Putnam's body? She was running the endless race down at the bottom of the stairs. I scrambled to my feet, determined to put more distance between us. Stairs were solid beneath me. It was a good feeling. One we take for granted most of the time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2365.894

Have you ever got that feeling from a woman?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

23664.434

The bells rang a second time just as I reached the slanted windows at the top of the spire. A dizzying notion bubbled out of my subconsciousness. If I was standing here when the bells stopped ringing, what would happen? When the bells had finished tolling eleven, I had been shunted inside, but not back to where I had begun. Could I leave? Could it be that simple? I raised the wrench in my hand.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It would make short work of thin wooden slats. But I couldn't do it. This was the spire. Ah, it still got him. It still got him in his trap. This was the spire. The real spire, and not its decrepit remains. It housed the bells. The note they sang was beautiful beyond comprehension. I knew it was crazy. I knew it was my life on the line, but I couldn't destroy any part of the widower's clock.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Not while the bells were ringing. You can't understand unless you've heard them ring. The vibrations penetrate you, infuse you, permeate you. You would do anything to hear the bells, sacrifice anything, no matter how much you regret it later, no matter how much they scared you, made you question your humanity. To hear their call is to be owned by them.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I laid the wrench on the ground and began removing the slats one at a time, careful not to chip the paint. I felt like a fool. I knew I should have bashed my way outside. I knew it, but I couldn't do it. Instead, I was treating the removal of each slat as if it was an artist restoring the Mona Lisa. The bells would ring again any second, and that'd be it. Maybe I'd be up here on the landing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Maybe I'd be back on the stairs where I'd started. Maybe Amy Lowell's automaton would be with me, or maybe I'd be alone in the cold and the dark. Finally, I'd remove enough slats to squeeze through into the moonlight. Clinging to the spire for dear life, I hazarded a downward glance.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The party appeared to be over, but I could still make out those poor lost souls I'll join one day, stuck watching the endless race for all eternity, and I could see some of the automatons illuminated by the harsh electric lights, two of them moving stiffly, zipping along their tracks. The bells rang for the third and final time. I scratched my eyes closed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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If it hadn't worked, I didn't want to know. I stepped off the ledge.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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This has been a journey. I'd say what we've gone from like, Oh, me and scary carry. And like this guy killed himself and. He was into this girl, and now I'm into her, but then she's cheating on me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2382.443

I'm too stupid. I've always heard that as stories. It's like, Oh, she's so smart. It's intimidating. It's like, wouldn't you, wouldn't you want that? That'd be like, Oh, what if like your partner, what if she like was magically super good at one thing? It's like, sure. Why not? Like, why would that be a problem? If we're on the same side, what did that be like an asset for me? Why is it jealousy?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's incredibly well done. I'm a huge, huge fan of it. Well, old buddy, old pal, are you ready for part 10? Let's dash towards the finish. End of the line. Part 10. The first thing I was aware of was the cold. Then the pain in my hands and ribs. Then I noticed the wind. I opened my eyes to see snow glistening in the moonlight and the long shadows cast by trees.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I'd stepped off the spire and dropped only a foot or so, falling to my knees in the snow. My eyes brimmed with tears of joy. I wanted to kiss the ground and throw the snow up in the air and wallow around in it like pigs in its own filth. But then I recalled the way Scary Carrie had looked at the hospital, swollen black lumps of necrotic flesh where Frostbit had set in.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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My mother's car was a solid hour, hour and a half's walk away, and I wasn't moving as quickly as I usually did. I got walking as fast as I could bear. I heard the bells, truly heard them, for the last time near the fork where the access road joins Old Ware Enfield Road, but they didn't fill me with warmth like they had before. No, they stopped me dead in my tracks. They tugged at my guts.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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They called me home, but also filled me with the sensation of being watched by eyes in the darkness. To this day, I still hear them hourly whenever I go off my meds. There were two police officers waiting for me when I got to my mom's car. You might think I would have run all over again. After all, it was the fear of arrest that had sent me chasing the bells. But I didn't. Instead, I cried.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was cold. I was tired. My whole body hurt like hell. I didn't care how much trouble I was in. I was just happy to see real people again. People who were alive. Ha ha ha. I nearly killed a kid, but I was being arrested because someone else had ruined a garbage can you could get from Home Depot for $35. I don't recall the officers' names, but I wish I did so I could thank them.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Their attitude towards me changed immediately when they saw the condition I was in. One of them took a blanket from the trunk and wrapped it around me. He tried to ask me what had happened, but all I could do was cry. I'm not sure I would have had anything to say anyway.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Explaining the bells to someone who's never heard them is like trying to explain the color blue to a dog that was blind from birth. They ushered me into the back of their squad car and we took off for the hospital. The one Fletch and I didn't know about. Twelve minutes later, we arrived at Mary Lane Hospital and I was admitted to the ER. The doctors picked up where the police had left off.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What happened? Were you in a car accident? Were you in a fight? What? But I remained unresponsive. They ran their fingers through my hair, checking me for a concussion, but couldn't find any physical indications. My pupils responded normally. It's like he's in shock. You don't say. Since I wasn't helping, my clothes had to be cut off of me, just in case there were injuries they weren't seeing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The right side of my chest was one gigantic purple bruise. I needed five stitches where the splinter had gone into my finger, and another two where it had come out. The rest of my fingers were cleaned and bandaged. Then one of them had the bright idea of giving me something to help me sleep. I wish they hadn't. All I dreamed of was her.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Amy Lowell Putnam's corpse danced on its post, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth as the bells rang.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24093.533

you know that's interesting because every other time the story when he says her it goes to alina but now it's like a new more terrible woman has taken that place yeah he's being haunted by a new woman yeah it was late afternoon the following day before i woke up to find my parents staring at me and my wrist handcuffed to the bed they were looking at me like i was behind glass in an aquarium particularly nasty deep sea fish that turned their stomach

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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or something that might be what it is that might be what like it like same note of thing I don't know I hear that in every story and it's never I've never understood what it's talking about yeah like what do you mean intimidating that's like oh she's too beautiful I can't stand it like too beautiful I can see people being insecure about being like I'm too ugly she's gonna like fuck somebody else or maybe that's what it is I feel like you don't deserve someone who's too smart I think inevitably that's what it boils down to yeah insecurity for sure

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24118.22

There was pity there too, but mostly disbelief and fear. I wasn't really their little boy anymore. I was a thing, twisted and disturbed, a danger to myself and others. Seeing my parents looking at me like that hurt real bad, but it was still preferable to the blank stare of Amy Lyle's automaton, which was my company at two o'clock, and again at three and four.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24143.171

Ryan Dorsett's parents never formally charged me with assault. A civil suit was settled between our families out of court. As a condition to their not pressing charges, I had to seek psychological help. I spent the next six months of my life at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. It was probably for the best. The first two weeks, I didn't say a word to anybody about anything.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I can't exactly say why. Shame was certainly a big part of it, and I know I was afraid that they'd think I was crazy. Then again, given where I was and why, well, the SS Sanity had probably already sailed.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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After weeks of hearing the bells and watching the automatons reenact their tableaus, after weeks of seeing Amy Lowell dragged about on her pole, I finally broke down and told them what was happening. A woman I'll call Dr. Laura was assigned to me. She was in her early 40s, her hair was always messy, and she used a lot of Yiddish expressions.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I didn't get most of her jokes, but they still made me feel like we were sharing something and that I could trust her. She diagnosed me as bipolar, leaving my attack on Ryan, my experience hearing the bells, and my belief that I'd visited a haunted clock tower in the middle of a reservoir most likely stemmed from what she called a mixed episode.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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A state where symptoms of depression and mania occur simultaneously and auditory hallucinations aren't uncommon. Her theory was horseshit. But there's no way to argue with a psychologist without sounding like one of those guys in the old horror movies screaming, I'm not mad, I'm not mad, while an orderly crams them into a straight jacket.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You just say, well, yeah, that sounds about right, and take whatever pills they give you. You can't win, but you can lose less badly. And I have to admit that after they began injecting me with Haldol, I stopped hearing the bells every hour. She may not have believed my story, but Dr. Laura taught me a lot.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We would look at the decisions I regretted and examine not only the effects of those decisions, but everything that led up to them. What was I doing? How was I feeling? We'd list it all, from my emotions to my bodily sensations, and try to find the pattern that led to my worst decisions. She helped me isolate my self-destructive triggers.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Then we discussed how I could continue on in life and accomplish my goals without stumbling blindly into those triggers. After I got out of McLean, We thought it was best that I didn't go back to my high school. My mother bought the state-approved curriculum for homeschooling, and I spent the rest of high school at her kitchen table.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We had to meet with the superintendent of schools a couple of times. He seemed perfectly happy not to have me in his school system. Can't say I blamed him. Must have seemed like another Robert Kennan waiting to happen. In September of 2000, the week before his 13th birthday, a little brother asked if he could be homeschooled too. In his grade, he had been a fairly popular kid.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Then one day, he came home with a bloody nose. Two weeks later, a black eye. Fat limp. Limp. He was being bullied because of me. I remember one day in particular, with perfect clarity, an older boy had knocked him down on the hardwood floor of the gym and dislocated his shoulder. He had to go to the hospital. My dad went ballistic. He directed most of his anger at Mr. Delvino, the principal.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He even threatened to sue the school. But I got some of it too. He gave me a look that practically screamed, this is your fault. When he returned home that night, my brother got me alone and asked me a question.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Full circle, man. Full circle with full circle. Full circle with Rob. The exact same. I don't think they ever said that Rob raped her. That was an accused.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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the uh like wasn't it with like a disabled girl or something oh yeah oh no you're right you're 100 right that was rob that the rumor was about that he had hooked up with a disabled girl yeah there's some some sexual miscreant story being passed yeah and now these are the these are going to be the things other people are saying about him yeah and i mean like on the one hand it's like

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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From, from his perspective, Alina was cheating on her boyfriend with him and he was never privy to the boyfriend who went to a different school. So she seems like the bad guy there. But again, we only have this entire story from his account and he's clearly an unreliable narrator. So maybe it was more like a coercive rape, you know?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That's more reasonable, I think, yeah. She had fair skin and wild hair. Her eyes would sparkle whenever she said something clever, and she had this smirk that spread like a wave from left to right across her lips. Most to learn of all, Alina had this attitude, this way of carrying herself. It was like she was sure wherever she was, was the place to be. It was infectious.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I mean, he clearly was like the initiator and everything and she was crying after they did it. So, you know, that's not good. No. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. It very well could have been. He could have, like... Maybe in his mind, he's like, no, she wants this and stuff. And, like, I was talking about, like, he seems like he's forcing himself on her and she's letting him go to a certain degree. But maybe she was scared of him. And, like, he's calling her house every day and he's trying to find her after class and stuff like that. And, like...

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I don't know. Maybe, maybe there wasn't initially. I thought maybe there was a tinge of like, she was leading him on to get what she wanted. Uh, but again, this has all been from his perspective. Maybe that wasn't there at all. Maybe he was like backing her into this situation. Um, Which may be in that case, the automaton use of the word sodomizing may have been the other direction.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Because maybe if the bells give you hallucinations, maybe it's just like what he saw, like a female figure that was tormenting him. Maybe it wasn't actually alive and moving towards him. Maybe that was, again, part of his hallucination. Who knows? But I don't know. Anyway, at first I was shocked. I thought I misheard him. I was his brother and he knew I loved Alina. How could he ask me that?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24508.9

After the incident in their yard, Alina's parents had decided to enroll her at Bishop Girton. She hadn't wanted to. Who wants to leave their friends behind senior year? But between Rob Kinnan and myself, they just thought it'd be best for her to get a fresh start. After she left, Sarah Conan had been very vocal in blaming me. I never held that against Sarah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I figured I deserved the fallout for what I had done to Ryan Dorsett. But I hadn't seen this coming. Denials poured out of my mouth. Yeah, we had sex, but it wasn't. I couldn't even say it. She never said no.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I was saying, I was saying a hundred percent true. We were right. That was from his diluted perspective. And he was like forcing himself on her. Yeah. A hundred percent. That's what, what was happening to what did it sound like? I said, was it sound like I said, a hundred percent that he wanted to make her feel good. Oh, I don't know.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Just to clarify, for the sake of everything.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Hunter immediately putting a dome of protection over me. Like a lot of people, especially guys, I had an image in my mind of what a rapist was. A lone predator. Man in sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt, hiding in a dimly lit garage with a knife in one hand and an improvised gag in the other. I had an idea that they were a breed apart, depraved and wicked.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Mean things, aware of the harm and the hurt they caused, but determined to do it anyway. That was my idea of what a rapist was, and I didn't fit any of my own criteria. Yes, it was true that I had wanted to make Alina happy, but each time I'd kissed her, she'd frozen up. I took it as nerves, but I didn't stop. Each time I'd run my hands up her body, she started to cry.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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In short, Alina Amenev was exactly the kind of girl that an unpopular guy could fool himself into thinking he had a chance with. God knows I did when I found myself suddenly talking to her in late November of 1999. Alina had grown quieter in the weeks that followed Rob's death. Even as the rest of the school began to show signs of moving on, she continued to retreat.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24630.623

I thought it was survivor's guilt, but even if it was, pushing her clearly hadn't made her feel any better. And when we, when I, got in on top of her and wormed my way beneath her clothes, persisting past stillness and tears, she hadn't said no, but she never said yes. What I had thought, what I had wanted, they didn't matter. Not next to what I did. It's easy to see that now.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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At the time, I got defensive, unleashing a torrent of vile obscenities about a girl I'd only moments earlier considered the love of my young life. That night, once everyone was asleep, I made my first of three suicide attempts. Hunter... In part one or two, when you said maybe we'll see some similarities between Rob and our main character, I think that was a whale trap.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24682.511

You said a giant bear trap at the bottom of the ocean, and you caught a whale in it. You were so right, King. You were just batting 100 with that one. That was great.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. That night, I made my first of three suicide attempts. Tiptoeing my way into the garage, I took the garden hose off the wall and pushed one end into the tailpipe of my mom's car. The other end I ran up through the driver's side window. The note I left was addressed to Alina. It read simply, This is your fault. It was pure projection. I got comfortable and started the engine.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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As the car began filling with exhaust, I became dimly aware of a sensation creeping up the back of my neck. Was it the carbon monoxide? Was I being watched? Thump. Had Amy Lowell been the mystery figure people saw inside Rob's car the night he killed himself? Did she collect the souls of those she condemned? Is that how the automaton's face had been burnt? Let her come.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24749.396

Anything's better than this. But the thump I'd heard wasn't the sound of Amy Lowell Putnam's post on the garage floor. It was the doorknob slamming into the wall when my brother threw open the door to the house. He saw me and screamed bloody murder until my parents came and three of them could pull me out of the car. The garage was beneath my brother's room.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He had heard the engine start, but didn't hear the garage door open. So after a couple of minutes of wondering, he got up to see what was going on. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in the living room with a splitting headache. My mom was hugging me and crying hysterically. It was the first time anyone had held me in nine months. The next morning, I was back in McLean.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Dr. Laura and I spent a lot of time talking about Alina. I was surprised she was still willing to work with me, knowing what I'd done. But she was as patient and kind as ever. After two months, I still struggled to wrap my head around how anyone could think what I'd done with Alina had been wrong. To Alina, what I had done to Alina. Why didn't you just say no?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

248.716

The heat around it's done. So even though everyone who's talked about Spire in the Woods has been launched into orbit, Hunter and I think that it has been long enough that this story can now get posted without us immediately getting shot in the back of the head. This is going to get deleted so quick. So fast. It's going to get deleted. But here's the thing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was a textbook example of blaming the victim, but I genuinely didn't understand. I would have stopped.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I nodded. We weren't in a session. Strictly speaking, Dr. Laura probably shouldn't have been talking to me at all, and especially not about anything that was at the heart of my treatment. But from time to time, she would. I think she knew I needed human contact.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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She quit her job and, though I don't quite remember when the season started and stopped, either quit or never signed up for cross-country that year. She just sort of shut herself off from the world and everyone in it. Which was why I was so surprised to see her at Drew DeLuca's birthday party. She looked nervous.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24854.879

I can't know. Oh, saying like where she's coming from. Yeah. Her perspective would have been. Yeah. I liked it when she called me Bubba. What's that got to do with me? She might have thought that if she said no, you do the same. Alina, if you're out there and you're reading this, I'm sorry. I apologize unreservedly. It was not your fault. I take full responsibility.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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If you want to press charges against me, I would not refute them. You can get word to me through my parents. If there's anything you want from me, anything that will bring you the slightest amount of closure, it's yours. I was so stupid, so hurtful, so wrong. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's like he, um... She probably just let him do that. Like it wasn't, it wasn't even cheating.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was like, I mean, it was like logistically. Um, but in her head, she's like, well, the last guy that liked me killed himself and I don't want that to happen to this guy. So I guess I should let him do stuff, you know? Like, yeah. And that's the problem with awful position for a high school girl to be in, dude.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24933.348

Yeah, and I mentioned earlier when we were talking about it, I'm like, well, maybe there's some redemption because he's writing this years later and he has the gift of hindsight to write this with. And I'm right. Well, not I'm right. I got what I wanted out of the story that here in the end, he's like, yeah, that was wrong. I shouldn't have done any of that.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24951.841

So it's like progression for the character, even if it's just him writing about stuff he doesn't agree with anymore. Yeah. In May of 2003, I received my high school diploma. My parents didn't think I could handle living on my own, but I had to get as far away from the spire and the way they looked at me and my reputation around town as I could.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

24970.61

My aunt lives in San Jose, California, and I managed to get into a vocational school 20 minutes from her house. Eventually, my parents relented and let me go. Fletch wound up getting into BC, which was a big coup for him. As fate would have it, so did Alina. From what I understand, the two of them actually wound up becoming pretty close.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Last time Fletch and I spoke was in November of 2002, right around Thanksgiving. He had stopped hearing the bells before the end of his freshman year. Oh, well, that's good, so you can get better. You can, like, if you're far enough away from it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25003.48

For a while. That's encouraging. Okay. Two of Scary Carrie's fingers had to be amputated, along with her thumb. She also lost her left foot from around the mid-calf down. Eventually she recovered from her aphasia, but not before the school moved her into the special education program. She never made it to college. Mrs. Peterson got her a job at Market Basket bagging groceries.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2502.988

She used to be her element, and no one at Drew's that night was inclined to blame her for Rob's death. This was not his circle of friends, this was hers. but whenever she approached someone or tried to join in on a conversation, she looked like a gazelle approaching a watering hole it wasn't sure was safe.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25026.836

My mom sees her from time to time and usually does her best to avoid her register. Neither Carrie nor her mother have asked about me since the incident. I don't know if she still hears the bells, but I doubt it. As for me, I'm unhappy but alive. I only hear the bells now when I don't take my Zyprexa, but they're not too far from my mind.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25050.044

Someday, I'm going to die, and Amy Lowell Putnam's going to claim me. There's nothing I can do to avoid it. Part of me wishes she'd just hurry up and do it already. The bells really do sound lovely.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25153.318

It's like a coming-of-age story, but you never went anywhere. It's the frustrations that teenagers have to get through, but he never really got through them. And a lot of that is the sexual frustration that we're talking about.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2519.222

And once she was in the conversation, she mainly shifted her weight from foot to foot or fidgeted with some part of her outfit, never really engaging anyone unless they addressed her directly.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25206.058

Like at the very beginning, that was so interesting how he became the folk tale.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25251.687

What's interesting is we have here where we get the mention that Fletch got away. That after a few years, he quit hearing the bells. But now we have... our main character who's still so obsessed with them that he's like, I'm going to die and she's going to take me. And I can't wait for her to do it. The bells are beautiful.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25268.401

Like it's like, yeah, bad things happen to both of them, but one like grew from it and left that behind as a piece of his life. And the other could never move on from it. So he's still as much committed to the bells now as he was back then.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2528.184

I was telling a friend of mine about a recent trip I had taken to Greenfield with Scary Carrie, the only one I could ever drag along on my ghost hunting trips, when I felt a gentle tug on the back of my shirt.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25356.423

All of the sexual experiences with Alina made me incredibly uncomfortable. Just like the reading them and hearing his depiction of them was so... Because like you said, even before we knew that it wasn't as consensual as he thought it was, it was just so personal. like the details or when he would talk about like laying on top of Carrie, like the way he would describe his stuff.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25379.596

It felt so felt like I was hearing secrets. I wasn't supposed to, you know?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2540.543

turned around half expecting to see the lucas kid sister but it was alina can we talk oh yeah sure outside she looked over my shoulder at my friend before adding alone hunter you right now you're in this position the russian girl comes up to you it's like can we can we go alone hell no hell no why not get away from me commie freak was what i'd say Yeah, there we go.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25425.856

No, no, he was never an altruist.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25481.42

Carrie suffered more than, I mean, I mean like, yes, Elena was put in an incredibly uncomfortable position. Uh, but Carrie also like was a huge victim in this story. Um, cause she just liked this guy and wanted to do stuff with him and, you know, probably saw a lot of their trips together. It's just for him because he wanted to be around her. Uh, and she suffered for the rest of her life.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25505.205

Horrific. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know. What's that line he said early on where he was like, I had been so reckless with Carrie? Uh, yeah. Yeah. And that led to a lot of consequences are a lot of our authors. Recklessness led to a lot of consequences and it's tragic on the one hand because he was a teenager and he didn't have the expertise to like handle these complicated situations.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25528.713

But at the same time, he never really cared to never really cared to ask what he was doing or what decisions he was making. So it is partially his fault, but I don't think the same would have happened if he was a bit more grown and a bit more mature. So it's tragic that it happened to him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25542.436

Even though he is responsible for a lot of stuff that happened to Carrie and Alina, it's just such an interesting, it's like a tragedy that could only happen when you're 16 years old. And it's played out so well where it's like both your fault, but also like you're all at the same time, a victim of circumstance. It's it's such a unique tragedy to push a character through.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25647.426

I mean, the bells certainly were the inciting incident for it, but he was, like he said, he was reckless with a lot of the way that he went about it. And it's funny, like, how the only monster we really see, other than, you know, the widower who put all this together, was like, in part nine, we had the possibly real or apparition of Amy Lowell Putnam's automaton, like, chasing him down and stuff.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25691.277

It was the cook-off at the end of the story, but the story wasn't about that.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25747.064

And then now it's like that dictates way too much in him. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. And sure. And sure. The, the bells did make him lose his inhibition, but that inhibition was already there. You know, like that underlying emotion. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. So overall, this was great. This is one of the better stories we've read for sure.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2579.621

Alone? You don't want everyone involved? That kind of seems a little hypocritical if you ask me. Seems kind of selfish. If it had been spring, I would have been thrilled by the prospect of Alina MNF pulling me out of a party to talk alone. But it wasn't spring. It was New Hampshire in late November.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25793.0

especially for a guy it's almost like being like remember all of those weird emotions you had around women when you were a teenager okay now imagine that you didn't control any of those inclinations and like everything like you kept telling yourself it was okay that's why it creates a horror story to me the most horrifying parts was like the instances with Alina that like made me way more uncomfortable and freaked out than anything to do with the clock woman's body my anxiety my anxiety

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25846.238

It's like I wanted to get through all those segments quickly.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25907.09

I loved it. This was a ton of fun. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed a lot of the developments. I liked the tone of it. I like how Tony was so smart to write the story in such a way where just the grammar and adjectives he would use to describe different people kind of gave hints to the fact that our author was biased until eventually then he's turned... He's full blown unreliable.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25928.287

And I think that he's peppered in details really well. The way information was divulged to us was really good where we would get little hints of the next thing to come along. Like, yeah, it was very well written. A very cool story. Very unique. Like it started as a coming of age thing that took a very different direction. And I think it did it well. Very haunting. Overall, great story.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25948.963

I really enjoyed this a lot.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25954.667

Yeah, no one may see any of this.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

25983.592

We may have to cut a lot of deals with Steven Spielberg here. Yeah, I know.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2600.466

We stood on the back deck, our jackets pulled tightly around us, our breath hanging in the air, plain to see. She said she heard from Christy McDowell that I knew a lot about ghost stories. Christy was quite possibly my oldest friend in the world, and yes, it was true. I knew a lot about ghost stories.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

26011.202

New merch, wearing it right here. Eat me like a bug. Let's go. After this incredibly traumatizing story about a childhood, you know, interactions. Eat me like a bug. Ha ha, remember the good times.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

26029.175

There we go. That's the spirit. That's the spirit. All right.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2616.15

I was raised Catholic and blessed with kind, warm-hearted parents whom I was always eager to please. This meant that I took my Catholicism and my schoolwork very seriously, which eventually led to a struggle between my rational and spiritual beliefs that was only exacerbated by my growing awareness of the sexual abuse scandal and the church's subsequent cover-up. I'd hated losing my faith.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2637.865

I wanted desperately to believe as I had as a child. So when most teenagers had shut the book on ghost stories, relegating them to little more than childhood memories or an excuse to scare a girl you wanted to put your arm around, I doubled down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2650.563

I thought if I could find something, some shred of evidence in support of the supernatural, that would keep the door to the spiritual world open for me, even if only for a time. Of course, I didn't share all of that with Alina. Instead, I tried to act casual. Casual bordering on slightly disinterested. Yeah, well, kinda. Why? Alina began fishing around inside her jacket.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2679.468

Alina pulled her hand out from her coat. Her dainty fingers clutched an envelope like it was a particularly delicate piece of glass. She handed me Rob's suicide note. Opening the envelope and unfolding the pages felt like a profound invasion of privacy, but who could resist reading it when it was handed to you? What were Rob Kennan's last words to the girl he'd been obsessed with for years?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

270.77

The moment we get upload with that in the title, we're gone.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2701.454

girl many of his peers believed was the reason he killed himself 13 years had passed leaving me with little more than an impression of what that note said but even if i remembered it exactly i think this would still be where i draw the line What I will say is that it was very earnest. Rob had been depressed for a long time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2721.417

He felt horrible about leaving his family and friends to deal with the aftermath of his suicide. But he also felt isolated in a very profound way and more than anything, just wanted it to stop. I also don't mind sharing that he was very effusive in his praises for Alina. But I got the distinct impression he didn't know her as well as he thought.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2743.131

He wrote about her in these florid terms full of superlatives. Twice he said he didn't think he could live without her, but ultimately nothing he said was very specific. Everyone thinks the first love of their life is the most special, most attractive person in the world, and that no one could ever appreciate them as deeply as they do. I fell for him, I really did.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2765.762

But reading it, I didn't feel as though I'd gotten to know him any better. Not really. As I finished reading, I looked up and met Alina's gaze. She was looking at me expectantly, but I wasn't making the connection.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2780.684

Alina pointed to the bottom of one of the paragraphs expounding on why Rob wanted to take his own life. It read, Her face? I'd assumed he was talking about Alina and her years of running track and cross-country, but if that was the case, why would he write her and not your in a letter that was to Alina? A shiver ran up my spine. It wasn't the cold.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2809.597

It was more like someone had walked over my grave. The endless race. Yes. For a split second, Alina was her former self again. I was starting to think I'd imagined it. Tell me you remember where it's from. I mumbled the line. And every hour, I see her face, and she runs in this race. A couple of times under my breath. I knew that I had heard it before, but where?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2831.218

I was positive it was a ghost story, but I'd read literally hundreds, if not thousands of them. They had a tendency to bleed together.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2840.981

Shit. Lena banged her fist hard against the railing of the deck. But it's a ghost story, right?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2848.616

I know. I know it. I just can't. I trailed off, racking my brain. Alina started drifting back towards Drew's house. If you think of it, absolutely. I cut her off, so much for slightly disinterested. As she reached the door, she turned and looked at me. She stared at me for a long time, longer than any pause in a conversation should be.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

286.628

We will pay whatever you want. To read stuff. Yes. But if it's unreasonable like this, yes. Several publishers reach out to us and they're like, look, we just want, you know, a cut. We, we have never ignored that. We've always said, yes, absolutely. Here's our payment. Here's us paying dues. We get it. Yes.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2869.653

I think you mentioned it in the one he wrote to Nate Fletcher, too. I stared back at Alina. Fletcher's letter?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2879.564

That was the line I didn't think I could cross. Yeah. Interesting. End of part one. End of part one.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2903.55

Well, that's what the question is, because everyone who saw Rob died said that they saw a woman in the car. Exactly. So I see her face running the endless race. That must come from some Gus story.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2929.255

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe only kids can see him that, or like he's the author also said that kids were the first to show up. Yeah. Um, so maybe like there was a face there initially that disappeared and just got there.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2943.286

So it could be that, or it could just be the kids see him. Cause all the people who seem involved, at least so far in the story with the ghost itself are the kids. Yeah. This is an interesting dynamic because Alina has a letter from him, a guy that she clearly, clearly creeped her out, you know, was wait, he literally took his own life over her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2962.052

So way to like pair socially attached to her and stuff like that. But yeah, the mention of the girl in the car and maybe her feeling like she maybe owes him something because the other kids have kind of like pointed a finger at her, even if wrongly to say that she was involved somehow. In some way, it seems like Alina was kind of friends with Rob too.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

2982.822

away like i don't think that she totally i think she was nice to him but the idea of like yeah because she was probably nice to him that's why rob felt like he had a chance um especially because rob was social outcast but it also says that rob would come to her place of work constantly and just like try to profess his love for and stuff like that so that's desperation for sure yeah Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3006.907

Um, but she still feels kind of maybe this obligation to figure out what it was about or curiosity to figure out what it was about. Right. And also I like that paragraph that was like, um, it, he said twice that he couldn't live without her, but he never said anything specific. That is very, uh, accurate. I think to a lot of like high school young love sessions and stuff like that. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3028.319

And that thing about like, everyone thinks that, um, they are never going to be able to get over their first love. Um, it's also true because I, I, especially with guys, you'll hear that joke a lot where girl girls will be like, well, yeah, I can't date a man because he's still over the girl. He broke up. He's not over the girl he broke up with when he was 16. Right. Uh,

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3048.593

I think it's because a lot of guys like associate that period in their life being like young, dumb and like in love with that person. So they think that they're never going to get over to that person when in reality, they're just not getting over like being a kid that's in love and doesn't know that they have the potential to not.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3070.74

So it's a, I just like the wording on that. That felt very legitimate. I love a lot of the language in the story so far. I love the way information's doled out. This is very, this is great. So it's not very bought in. It's hot. It's hot. It's very hot. Very hot. All right.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3084.051

So now part two, a few days after Rob's suicide, a handful of young reporters showed up at school, trawling for quotes before the faculty could chase them out. They pushed hard for someone, anyone to give support to the lone wolf school shooter angle.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3099.011

Rob's girlfriends flatly refused to speak to the reporters, but there's a certain element among young people who only want attention, and the same kids who showed up for the grief counseling, despite never having been particularly close to Rob, were the first in line to provide quotes. The next day, the local paper was filled with statements like, For Fletch, it was a slap in the face. What?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3121.203

Because she didn't know him. Nobody could. About a week or so after Rob died, Fletch resumed picking me up in the morning. I don't count. Murph doesn't count. Fucking bullshit. Listening to him rant about the story in the paper made me think that maybe I should have spoken to the reporters.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3136.39

I wouldn't have pretended to have had any special insight into Rob's mental state, but it might have been nice for his friends and family to have seen something simple and honest, something that didn't fit into the lone wolf narrative. Even if it was nothing more than saying... He had friends. They're just not talking because they're grieving. You heartless parasite.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3157.388

I wish I had done that, but I didn't. I also wish I could tell you that I was the one who wrote an op-ed the following week roasting the reporters for coming into a school and pushing students still reeling from the shock of losing a classmate and spouting a whole bunch of pop-psych pseudo-scientific nonsense. But that wasn't me either. That was some senior I didn't know very well.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3177.559

I'd made a few tenuous attempts at getting Fletch to open up about Robb, The best I had managed was to get him ranting about the kids in the grief counseling sessions that didn't belong. Talking about them got the normally placid Fletch so angry I thought he might have an aneurysm. After that, I quickly gave up.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3195.709

Once I resolved not to pry into Fletch's life, our morning ride settled into something almost comfortable. Our casual friendship was like a knee recovering from an injury. Fine, so long as we didn't put any weight on it. And that was still the state of things the day we returned to school after Drew DeLuca's birthday.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3212.621

Today, tracking down the story that led me to the spire would have been a piece of cake. For me, anyways. For you, I've changed too many details. I could have typed that little rhyming snippet of Rob's suicide note into Google and had my answer in seconds, but the internet wasn't as robust back then. While I'm pretty sure in 1999, I was still using Hotbot.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3234.334

Nonetheless, from the second I returned from Drew's until school started on Monday, I spent every waking minute scouring every haunted places book and paranormal website I could find looking for the phrase, and every hour I see her face and she runs the endless race. Or some variation.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3253.476

By the end of the weekend, half the contents of my bookshelf had been redistributed throughout the house, and I had skimmed countless GeoCities pages, scrolling past Dancing Ghost GIF after Dancing Ghost GIF until my eyes bled. I still had nothing to show for it. I knew I couldn't bring it up with Fletch. Not directly, at any rate.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3271.925

Rob's death was still a raw nerve, so I went to the only person who knew even more about ghost stories than I did. Scary Carrie. Growing up in the woods of New Hampshire at the foot of the White Mountains wasn't all bad. My school had a hiking club that also taught us elementary wilderness survival skills.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3289.002

It was immensely popular, mainly because it culminated in a week-long hike, which meant you got to miss a week of school. As freshmen, my friends and I all signed up to go together that fall, but two weeks before the big event, I came down with a case of antibiotic-resistant strep throat that had to have my tonsils removed. Fun.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3308.795

Since the program was extremely popular, each student could only partake once. Even though I was allowed to make up my hike the following winter, it was still a bit of a letdown since none of my friends could come with me. I was intensely jealous when my friends returned from the hike closer than ever with a slew of in-jokes and stories from their weeks in the woods.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3329.864

But by the time I left for my hike a few months later, things in my circle of friends had already returned to normal, and I was mainly just concerned about being stuck in the woods with random classmates I had little in common with. If you've never spent all day hiking with a large frame pack, you may not appreciate how grueling it can be.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3346.394

There's a high washout rate of kids who get sick or throw in the towel and have to be picked up and taken home. There's an even higher rate of kids who never shut up about how much their feet hurt. By the time we stopped for lunch on the first day, any concerns I had of loneliness were replaced by my seething hatred for that group of kids. This is true.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3364.631

Anytime you like rock anywhere, there will be people complain. It's just God, my legs help. It's like, yes, that's the point. Your body's not used to an extra 60 pounds on its back. That's how it works. It doesn't know what's going on. Your legs are scared. Those of us capable of keeping our mouth shut, at least about our feet quickly bonded.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3387.964

That's how I became friends with Scary Carrie Peterson, the last person on Earth I'd ever imagined I'd become close to. Carrie was one of those unlucky people that seemed significantly designed to be picked on. She was nearly six feet tall, quite overweight, crap at school, poor by the standards of my admittedly affluent town, and cursed with the head size of a large pumpkin. God damn, Carrie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3412.881

Just roasting this girl left and right. I'd had classes with Gary on and off for the last nine years. And before the hike, I doubt I'd spoken more than two words to her. Although in fairness to me, in middle school, she had deepened her own isolation from most of the class by becoming intensely goth in the baby bat way of the late 90s teens. Okay. Hold on. She's a six foot tall golf girl. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3442.303

All right. Hold on a second. She's, she's the woman of my dreams. Well, hold on a second. What's, what's everyone being mean to carry about? Like scary, scary. Why is he the little, what do you, what, what was overweight even mean in the nineties? What?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3461.448

There was a blonde girl on the hike. I think her name was Stephanie Foster that two hours earlier I found very cute. And despite her whining, I was still thinking I might like to get to know her better before she let this gym slip. God, I just wanted to miss school. Why do we have to walk so much? I rolled my eyes, but didn't say anything. Carrie, however, could not let it slide.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3484.519

What the hell did you think a hike was? All right. Don't don't do that to Carrie.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3495.029

What the hell do you think a hike was, sweet chicks? See, now you're mocking me. Now you're mocking my people, my group. What the hell did you think a hike was? That's closer. That's better. You're getting there. I need you to channel your best Margaret Qualley. I think that is...

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

351.849

So that's what we're doing today. Hunter and I are basically heroes right now, okay?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3521.266

Overweight in the 90s means filled out.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3532.189

You're right. Fair enough. You know what? What the hell did you think a hike was? Stephanie looked at her like Carrie was something she'd scraped off the bottom of her boots. Nobody's talking to you. And nobody wants to fucking listen to you. I still denounce your voice for Carrie, but Carrie's special to me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3565.978

You're my little sweet pea. Other than the voice you're doing, that sounds lovely. Obviously, I'm a married man, and my wife is the six-foot-tall golf woman in my life. But in high school me, a million percent. Like, yes. I don't know what you're making fun of. This sounds perfectly reasonable. I'm not giving her a voice. That's that. Yes, but there's a tone there. There is a tone of bitterness.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

359.641

Hunter and I are basically heroes. Yeah. Because, like... The two of us are like the nukes went off, right? It is so bad that the only audio version of the story I could find is someone ripped Mr. Creepypasta's audio reading and uploaded it in three parts to SoundCloud. Okay. That is the level of devastation.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3594.392

That doubt my insecurity. Definitely not yours. Assigning your voice is like a 40 year old trucker.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3607.317

I couldn't help it. I laughed. I still didn't think of scary carry as a friend yet, but it was suddenly a lot harder not to like her. After lunch, our line of hikers silently and seemingly unconsciously rearranged our marching order with the whiners taking up the rear and those of us who could keep our aches and pains to ourselves leading the pack.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3627.396

By dinnertime, Stephanie and three other kids from her clique, perhaps unimpressed by the franks and beans we'd be having, decided to throw in the towel. Gets dark early in winter. Dark and cold. On the fall hike, after dinner, my friends were able to wander around the campsite quite a bit, but for us, there was only one thing to do. Stick close to the fire.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3647.707

And that's where Carrie and I really bonded. Someone half-jokingly asked if anyone knew any good ghost stories. There was the usual student reluctance to step up and put yourself out there to be judged, and our chaperones weren't terribly interested in anything but double-checking our work setting up the tents.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3663.927

But after a few false starts from the other kids, I decided to tell an old standby, the story of an old woman that lived in Maine who had been caught abducting pets and small children. It was said that she was a witch who ate the flesh of her victims that turned their bones into China. Sick. It's pretty cool.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3681.053

Also, did you ever, I think I've talked about me doing this before, but did you ever have those moments in like high school, middle school where you like you told stories by the fire, like at a sleepover or something? No, not really. Okay. I guess I'm cooler than you. The second I finished, Carrie started telling one of hers.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3697.345

We took turns telling stories the rest of the night and continue telling stories every night after dinner for the rest of the week. Between campsites, we walked next to each other, chatting about the kind of crap that seems important to teenagers and quizzing each other on local paranormal hotspots. Back at school, after the hike, maintaining my friendship with Carrie proved to be tricky.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3715.832

My friends never really understood the bond. They weren't mean to her, not exactly, but despite my efforts to bring her into the fold, they never embraced her. As for the few friends Carrie had, some couldn't mask their disdain for my taste in music and clothing, while others were the sort of kids that were desperate and clinky, two things I had always found it hard to stomach.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3733.864

Carrie was one of the only people I could talk to about losing my faith, and she was always game to get together and go on one of my very fruitless ghost hunts, so we stayed in regular contact. I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you right now, you've got Carrie all wrong. In my mind, Carrie's beautiful. She's a king. She's a king. I don't like your word king.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3756.308

If you said queen, I'd be in agreement with you, but I feel like there is a respite to the way that you're using that word that I don't appreciate. Okay. The Monday after my conversation with Alina, I tracked down Scary Carrie in the cafeteria setting with a few other goth kids.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3769.895

We had talked a lot after Rob killed himself, in part because I knew that Carrie, from time to time, had suicidal thoughts of her own. It may have been the height of stupidity, but until Rob Kennan actually did it, actually ended his own life, I never thought it could happen in my town. At least not to anyone I knew.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3786.579

After Rob had done it, though, I knew I couldn't let Carrie slip down the same path. For a while, I doubled my efforts to spend time with her. But after one particularly awkward night ghost hunting in Greenfield, well, we'd fallen back to the status quo. Carrie, you wonder if I steal you for a second? I asked, pointing back out into the hallway behind me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3804.769

As Carrie rose to leave, Kim Murray's leaned over to one of their other friends and said, Aww. Like she'd just seen something cute. Carrie's face splotches of scarlet, shot Kim a look of pure hatred. Forget it. Forget it. Come on. See, you're about to do Carrie's voice. No, that was my throat. No, no, no. Then you realize you're doing this character.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3827.791

So you adopt a less masculine voice for the man. I know what you were doing. I know 100% what you were doing. No, no, you can't because that was a strategic sore throat. My throat sore. I think I'm disgusted by your, your characterization of scary Carrie. I think that this is a beautiful relationship.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3846.201

I think he should embrace because that all met that Carrie has mentioned to her friends that she likes our author. What is that? Are you in the bear noise? Do not do the bear noise. There's no bear trap. What is your bear trap?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3864.837

Oh, now she's a cow. Now she's a cow. Okay. All right. So you took her from a trucker to a cow. You're moving backwards. All right. No, I don't need this. I don't need you. I don't need your, your, your interactions, your two cents regarding this. Forget it. Come on. I said, I didn't know what Carrie had told Kim about Greenfield, but sure. Didn't want to deal with it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3885.828

Once we were in the hallway and out of anyone's earshot, I recounted the events of Drew DeLuca's party. She let you read the note? He left her? We're gonna fight, me and you. We're gonna throw down.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3899.113

Even though, just a month ago, we'd spent several hours being lectured by our guidance counselors about the differences between depression, true depression that was a psychological illness, and being sad, I think Carrie still had trouble believing anyone was more miserable than she was. Carrie stepped closer to me and dropped her voice to a whisper.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3922.602

You're trying to ruin this for me, and I'm not going to let you. I'm just going to ignore you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3931.367

I'm going to read this. In my head, I'm reading it in a different voice. How? What does she sound like in your head? She looks like my beautiful wife. She looks like my gorgeous wife whom I love deeply. I'm sorry.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3945.515

Yeah, okay, whatever. Shut up. I hate you. I trusted Carrie, but I was reluctant to share too much with her. I hate to admit it, but in spite of having counted Carrie amongst my friends for the past year, Alina's pretty face had flipped my loyalties completely to her in one conversation.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

3989.878

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. While my story begins with Rob Kennan killing himself, the story of the Spire in the Woods begins almost a century earlier in the former town of Enfield, Massachusetts, a few years before it was destroyed. In the late 1920s, an elderly clockmaker from Boston married a beautiful young woman. The two of them settled in Enfield.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4011.394

He was a master craftsman, the finest in the world, able to create machines of such complexity and precision that he was often called the Da Vinci of clockworks. No small feat, considering Da Vinci himself had designed clockwork automatons. She was a great beauty, refined and cultivated.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4029.788

Before meeting the clockmaker, she had been celebrated by the Boston brahmin for her wit and for throwing the very best dinner parties. The clockmaker had amassed a great fortune, but he, like all great artists, was unsatisfied by all of the products of his lifetime of labor.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4045.935

He wanted to build one more clock, a clock that would surpass even Munich's Rathausglockenspiel in its artistry and complexity. He completed his plans in the spring of 1931, and they were beautiful. His designs were classic yet modern, complex yet clean.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4063.058

Each hour, when the bells called out the time, the automatons would dance forth from their hidden chambers and symbolically reenact different battles of the Civil War, each day telling the story of how the North came to vanquish the South. Lowell and Boston both desperately wanted the clock tower, as did a few of the large manufacturing and shipping companies.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4083.254

But before construction could begin on any town hall, courthouse, or corporate headquarters, the Depression hit. All the suitors disappeared in short order, one after the other, leaving the clockmaker alone with his plans. Miserable and depressed, the clockmaker feared he would die before he'd ever have the chance to see his vision complete.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4103.288

He resolved that he wouldn't let that happen, and began spending his considerable fortune building the tower of his own, as an addition to his own house in Enfield. One day, the clock tower nearly complete, the clockmaker returned home from picking up a custom-made part. He arrived much earlier than anticipated to discover his wife in bed with another man, one of his laborers.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4126.58

The clockmaster burst into the room and screamed at his wife and her lover. He had never been so angry or humiliated in all his life, but he didn't yet know what humiliation was. Rather than beg his forgiveness or cower before him or even flee the room in shame, the clockmaker's wife and her lover laughed at him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4145.575

They told the clockmaker that he was an impotent old man, and they were unafraid of him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4166.626

There is. This is our second instance. I hope there's more.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4187.119

You know, I've never thought of it before, but you're actually right. It's so true, right? I'd be mad enough to stick around, too. Oh, my God. I would burn the earth down forever. I would not leave. I'd be like, I'm staying right here at anyone who comes here. I'm going to mess with, I'm going to be upset. I'm going to bother him. Are you sure?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4206.442

That's not like, so my kind of woman is like, you know, tall goth, whatever your kind of woman is. Any woman that's with another man.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4236.298

She's just Triple H. Well, she's just about as fucking big as I'm goddamn.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4249.229

I... okay. Her talent, this story being told is now in high school when they're both 16, 17. But he said, he said a couple of years earlier, they went on a hike together. I imagine that was like, okay. Yeah. My bad. Yeah. Where they became friends was years prior, but this is now caught back up to 1999. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4271.867

Yeah. Kayla, Kayla, my wife, she was six foot in the sixth grade. I think seventh grade. She like immediately shot up. She was like six foot. She was old, so yeah. Cool. It's possible. You're such a jerk. Whatever. The clockmaker, in a state of shock, slunk back to his gears and springs, but rather than going to work on the clock, he went to work on a plan.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4305.023

He removed the automatons from their post and set all of his meager strength to coiling the huge spring that ran beneath their tracks. He laid out his tools so they would be near at hand, and then he waited. listening to the rhythms of his marriage bed slamming again and again against the wall. Brutal. Oh my gosh.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4326.117

Eventually, the rhythmic thuds reached their... The rhythmic thuds reached their crescendo, then fell quiet. Soon after, he heard his wife call out to him, but he said nothing. Her calls grew in urgency and repetence crept into her voice, Could she really be concerned for him? After what she did, after what she said, still, the clockmaker stayed silent.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4352.272

When the laborer entered the room, which was little more than a giant gearbox, the clockmaker stared at him, but did not move. The laborer leaned back out of the room and called to his lover. He's in here! He hasn't done anything stupid, has he? No, he's fine. The clockmaker was not fine. The laborer approached the clockmaker as cautiously as a man approaches an unfamiliar dog.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4376.641

It's your fault, you know. The clockmaker, his watery eyes unblinking, only responded by staring as the younger man approached him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4393.902

It was at that exact moment that the laborer stepped across the path of the automaton's tracks and the clockmaker yanked out the pin holding the spring coiled. The post, unburdened of a man-sized figure brimming with heavy metal gears, raced along the track and collided with the soft flesh of the laborer's leg. The crack of the bone splintering was even louder than the man's screams.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4415.531

The clockmaker's wife called out at the sound of her lover's cries.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4424.482

The clockmaker picked up a large wrench and moved beside the door. As his wife rushed in, her eyes searching for her lover, the clockmaker crept up behind her and brought the wrench down on her skull. She awoke hours later with shooting pains running through her legs. She tried to look down, but her head was agony to move.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4443.35

The clockworker stood over her, his mallet hammering the metal support rods into her thighs. Her lover was already mounted to the post, ready to fill in for the automaton and dance when the hour struck. Just as with the Rathaus Glockenspiel in Munich, the clockmaker's creation was hailed as a great artistic achievement.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4461.996

Crowds gathered on the formerly quiet street to watch the myriad Union and Rebel automatons zip along their tracks, round and round in an endless race. It was weeks before anyone noticed something wrong with two of the automatons. Their lacquered veneer bulged in weird places and looked slick as if it were wet.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4480.253

Then one day, the finish gave way and the crowd, which was mostly children at this point, watched in horror as two corpses zipped about the track, chasing and stabbing each other with their bayonets.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4494.097

That's so cool. That's so cool. He hooked him up to be the giant automatic like soldiers. They say even after the clock was stopped and the lovers were laid to rest, all those who saw the wife's face were haunted by visions of her endlessly running along her track. That's cool. What a cool ghost story. That's great. I love that.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

451.796

I'm telling you guys that are like, Oh, I've heard of Tony. Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4514.392

I didn't have to ask why Scary Carrie hated the story of the widower's clock. She was the one who pointed out to me how ghost stories were frequently used as a form of social control. Here was another story where an unfaithful woman was put to death by an angry husband, and crueler still, children were also punished.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4530.697

Children whose only crime was having seen the corpse of the unfaithful woman, a corpse that the enraged husband put on display. I couldn't wait to tell Alina. I didn't have any classes with her, but we had lunch the same period. Alina was sitting at a table with her friends.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4546.173

Ordinarily, it would have been intimidating to walk up to a table of girls, most of whom were pretty and toned from years of soccer, field hockey, and track. But I could tell by the way Alina was sitting with her tray in her lap, her chair pushed back from the table, that she would like nothing more than an excuse to leave.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4561.377

We were allowed to eat our lunches outside, but no one ever did during the winter. We got some funny looks pushing open the doors and slipping out onto the yellowing grass. I've been looking forward to telling Alina the story of the widower's clock for hours, but now that I was alone with her, I hesitated to jump straight into it. Are you okay? Alina shifted uncomfortably.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4605.672

I started telling her the story exactly as Carrie told it to me, but it barely begun when the switch flipped in Elena's head and she remembered where she heard it before. East Boston Camps. Pretty much everyone in our town went to summer camp there when we were kids because it was only 15 minutes outside of Nashaw.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4622.66

One of the counselors there had been like Carrie and me, and he used to delight in telling ghost stories to the younger campers. He loved it when the kids were too scared to sleep and kept their cabin chaperones up all night. For a second, I forgot why we were trying to track down the story and got lost in old memories of camp. But Alina didn't.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4643.509

Her voice was steady, but she fixed me with her eyes and I could see how desperate she was for me to say yes. Desperate to believe that it wasn't her fault. I think you suffer from depression. Alina's lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears. I hugged her. Hey, listen to me. You didn't kill him. Alina gripped the collar of my flannel shirt and buried her head against my chest.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4664.341

I stood there, holding her as she cried. The two of us were late to fifth period. At the end of the day, Fletch was waiting for me in the parking lot. He'd already turned his car on and cranked the heater up to full blast. Even still, we were halfway home before it was warm enough for me to open up my jacket. He stared out the window. Dude, what's going on with you and Alina?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4684.383

I turned to look at him. His jaw was set, and for the first time in our lives, Fletch reminded me of his hard-ass father. I really don't want to answer him. She asked me about a ghost story. Fletch's only answer was to let his eyes drift from the road. He studied my face for a long moment before he finally said, Which one? The widower's clock. It's the one where I know the one.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

469.301

Look, look, look, this is the equivalent of like in the fallout video game series. Like all the nukes have fallen. Hunter and I are the first vault dwellers to like step into the wasteland.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4705.538

Are you in a hurry to get home?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4710.029

Fletch pulled over to the side of the road, took a shuddering breath, punched the steering wheel twice and started bawling. It's funny. That's actually what happens every time I go anywhere with you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4744.245

Every time I'm at the corner now, I think about you looking at me going, get me out of here. Oh, you remember that, that the day that you weren't hanging out with me, how you said you went to like a little bar area called the dungeon. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And you said you enjoyed it there, right? Yeah. Okay.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4764.343

I was walking through the city a couple of weeks ago and I was talking to a guy who was a tour guide and he mentions the dungeon. I'm like, Oh yeah, I've heard that place is cool. And he's like, yeah, it's a BDSM club. They tie people up upstairs and they have these whipping parties. Listen, Dan.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

478.484

like see what's out there and maybe we get shot in the head maybe we explode yeah and then that is a sign to the other vaults like give it some more time yeah exactly wait a little bit exactly give me exactly it's like give it a tad more time youtube's copyright system are the giant demons walking around lurking like those giant monsters and fall out whatever the uh the uh deathclaw

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4786.273

I just think it's interesting how you tell me there's like this place you found that was really cool. And then I later come to find out that it's a leather. No, absolutely not.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4811.672

And there wasn't, there wasn't a single.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4850.781

Scary Carry, if I had to say anything, I guarantee you they do not have Sprite Zero here. Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. There's no way. I'm like, I can get you a Dr. Pepper.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4864.708

Maybe a Diet Coke, but I think that's all you can ask. Now we're watching it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4890.102

It took you over. He let it out. Everything that he'd been holding in at school, everything that he'd been holding in around his dad, everything. Elena had been sad. Fletch was purging. During the days following Rob's suicide, seeing people break down like this was common, and it continued on longer in the morning counseling sessions. But at some point, people put their guard back up.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4912.776

What had been appropriate emotions one day was suddenly back to being taboo the next. For people like Fletch, they weren't ready to be in that emotional space again. Once he got most of it out, we started talking. Really talking. I know it's unfair.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4933.603

I just fucking hate her. I didn't exactly blame Fletch for how he felt. It was a good guy. He knew that Alina wasn't obligated to reciprocate Rob's feelings simply because he was nice to her. But he watched his friend, dead or alive, burn for four hours, and a part of him wondered if it would have still happened if only Alina had given Rob a chance.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4958.524

I reminded Fletch of everything that the counselors had told us. That feeling sad when you've been rejected is natural. Normal behavior. Healthy behavior. You should feel sad whenever someone doesn't reciprocate your feelings. It is sad.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4973.226

But while there's always something that makes a person decide they want to kill themselves now and not tomorrow or last week, it's not the final straw that breaks their back. It's all the weight that came before it. The underlying mental illness. Fletch looked down at his hands. Yeah. There was no conviction in his voice.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

4990.236

Fletch pulled his t-shirt up to his face and wiped the last of his tears away. He then started the car. We were moving, riding in silence. After a few minutes, Fletch spoke again. He thinks he thought he found it. What? The widower's clock. It was my turn to stare at Nate. That's impossible.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5012.977

In the period of time between the end of the Civil War and the start of the 1920s, the population of Boston, Massachusetts more than tripled. In fact, there were more people living in Boston in the 20s than there are today. This put an amazing strain on the city's resources, particularly on their drinking water.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5029.221

To solve their water problem, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts undertook a number of public work projects redirecting rivers and creating reservoirs, the largest of which is the Quabbin Reservoir in the Swift River Valley of western Massachusetts. The Quabbin covers nearly 40 square miles and sports an impressive 180 miles of shoreline.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5049.857

Creating the Quabbin meant flooding much of the Swift River Valley, and the Swift River Valley was home to four towns, Dana in the northeast and Prescott in the northwest, with Grinwich wedged between them. and Enfield in the southwest. Enfield, where the widower's clock was supposedly built, now sits mostly submerged by 412 billion gallons of water.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5071.51

How in the hell would Robert Kennan have found anything there at all? What would there even be to find? 60-something odd years in a flood after the fact. And it's not as though the Swift River Valley was flooded overnight. The people had had years to move their homes and relocate out of the flood zone. why would they leave behind a whole building?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

508.478

Pit boy, yeah. Maybe Hunter and I are like, you know, we're putting on our little blue jumpsuits. We're like, all right, Hunter, let's reclaim the world. Maybe the vault door opens and there are 15 deathclaws with sledgehammers. waiting right outside the door. That's what it has to be. And if that's what happens, then that means give it some time.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5092.042

And if it was there, wouldn't a clock tower peeking up from the water tend to draw the eye? I never felt comfortable in Fletcher's house. The first floor felt like a museum. Mr. Fletcher was strict, but it was Mrs. Fletcher who wanted her house to always resemble the cover of an interior decorating magazine. Call me crazy, but what's the point of having a house you're afraid to live in?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5111.853

Fletcher's room, on the other hand, had the opposite problem. The first time I came over at Mrs. Fletcher's insistence, I had to take my shoes off to go upstairs and then put them back on in Nate's room because while he was sure there was broken glass somewhere, Fletch wasn't quite sure where. As you can imagine, Nathan Fletcher and his mother fought quite a bit.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5130.878

Fletch gestured to his bed and I parked myself on the corner of it with the fewest dirty clothes. What few prized possessions he owned, Fletch kept in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, but that's not where he pulled Rob's letter out from. No, the letter he kept tucked in the book on top of his nightstand. It occurred to me that I must have been reading it often.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5150.798

The evasion of privacy I felt when I read Alina's letter was nothing compared to reading Fletch's as he sat next to me. The letter was exponentially more personal. Rob was exposed on the page. Reading it made me feel like I had walked in on him naked.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5164.94

Whereas the letter Rob gave to Alina revealed a little about himself, next to nothing about her, this letter revealed a great deal about Rob as well as Fletch. Fletch and Rob had bonded when Rob was new and Fletch was going through his awkward phase. Apparently, I had been wrong about Fletch not getting down whenever he said the wrong thing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5183.707

Warm and funny and confident around his friends, Fletch had spent most of his early teens afraid to speak in public. Maybe I hadn't noticed because he was older and I sort of looked up to him. Or maybe I was just too absorbed in my own insecurities to see that anyone else had their own. Either way, it was news to me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5199.82

Rob's note to Alina had expressed a measure of guilt for leaving everyone behind to deal with the aftermath of his death. But in the letter he gave to Fletch, the guilt he articulated feeling was for having lived. He apologized profusely for having been a burden. He described himself alternatively as a baby and a leech, a drain on anyone foolish enough to move too close on him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5223.15

And though he knew no one would see it like he did, Rob viewed his suicide as a charitable act. He was ridding his friends and his family of himself. Despite my discomfort reading such a personal letter, I devoured every word. I consumed the letter, hoping after each line that the next would finally illuminate for me what Rob Kennan had to do with the widower's clock.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5246.027

Finally, tucked amidst a list of his reasons why he was going to go through with it was what I'd been looking for. I looked up, disappointed and annoyed with how little Rob had written about the widower's clock, to find Fletch rocking back and forth in his chair. It made me feel like a piece of shit. You said he thought he'd found it? Yeah. How?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5272.45

Nathan Fletcher looked up at me with watery eyes, told me everything. Man, I can't remember the last time I've been so, like, hanging on every word of a story, you know? Like, what's next? What's next? Yeah. Rob's medication had his depression mostly under control over the last three years. He still had bouts, but they were less frequent and less severe than they had been before.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5293.583

Along with his much improved disposition, Rob had also been sleeping better, eating more, and his energy was way up. But he was never exactly happy. See, that's something most people don't understand about depression. It's not a mood. It's a disorder. Having the symptoms of his disorder in check didn't make Rob happy. It made him not depressed. Rob still struggled to fit in and enjoy life.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5318.216

He was still unpopular. he was still misunderstood. One of the few things that Robert Kinnan really enjoyed was running. He especially enjoyed cross country. If I had to guess what appeal long distance running held for Rob, I'd say that for someone who always felt their loneliness in a crowd, it must have been a relief to actually be alone. Just him, the woods, and the next mile.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5340.686

and the Quabbin Reservoir offered a lot of next miles. Rob had been exploring its trails since he was a child. When they lived in Amherst, his family used to visit the Quabbin on the weekends. They'd hike or picnic. Occasionally, Mr. Kennan would take his two sons fishing. As a teenager, Rob looked for any excuse he could find to get down there and just go.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5360.248

One foot in front of the other until sundown when visitors had to leave. That summer, the summer of 99, Rob made a lot of excuses to visit the Quabbin. He had, for the third time, mustered up the courage to tell Alina Amenev how he felt about her. And for the third time, he had been rebuked. This time, a little less gently than before.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

5379.946

It left Rob with a growing impression that the love of his life found him creepy. Running was the only thing to get his mind off of it. The Fletchers had three boys. The oldest, Samuel, had gone to UMass and, after graduation, found work in the university's IT department. Fletch visited his brother often, and whenever he did, Rob would hitch a ride down to the Quabbin.

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Usually Fletch would drop him off in the morning, and Rob would either get picked up by family, he still had an Amherst, or he'd call Fletch's brother from the visitor center at the south end of the Windsor Dam, and Fletch would come get him. Once, Rob had lost track of time and found himself, after sundown, miles from the visitor center. That's when he heard them for the first time.

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bells tolling the hour. They were scarcely detectable, as if they'd traveled a great distance, and they had an odd, muffled quality that made them sound soft and deep. Rob stopped running and listened. He forgot all about Alina, forgot about contacting Fletch, forgot that he was an hour's drive away from the nearest person he knew.

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He stood in the woods, turned into the wind to listen to this beautiful sound. If he was anything like me when I first heard them, he was overcome by a physical sensation, a feeling like slipping under a warm blanket on a cold night, and then they were gone. Rob found himself once more in the dark woods with no idea how he'd get home.

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I'm excited as well. We'll go ahead and get into it. Thank you guys for the support. For the 15 of you who managed to watch this before we're beat to death. Yeah, be proud. Stand tall.

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There's a trailer park, somewhat unusual in Massachusetts, a couple of miles southeast of the visitor center. Rob was lucky enough to get picked up on the road by one of its residents. She was probably barely 40, but looked like she was pushing 60, smoked continuously, and was the one who told Rob about what she called the Spire in the Woods. To her, the Spire in the Woods wasn't a ghost story.

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It was simply a fact of life, and like blind curves and sinkholes, one that was best to be avoided. She didn't have a first-hand account of her own, but she'd heard plenty of stories. She knew that some of the boys from her trailer park enjoyed getting drunk, getting stoned, and pissing in the reservoir late at night.

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They got a little thrill out of the idea that somewhere in Boston, some Harvard grad was drinking their urine. Occasionally, one of these boys would come back to his trailer unsettled at having heard the eerie beauty of the bells. The Quabbin Reservoir is peppered with islands.

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The woman said that the source of the bells was one of them, an island just to the north of where the old Ware-Infield Road turns into Quabbin Hill. Somewhere, hidden in the island's wild-grown trees, the peak of an old spire, the sort you might see on top of a church, juts up out of the ground. Now and again, someone went looking for it and never came back.

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River around the trailer park was that, back in 1996, John Wilkins and his cousin Anna found it, but only John came back. He killed himself about a month later. Since then, the Park mothers have kept an extra close watch on their boys. Hold on. Wilkins is the last name of the woman who died in the school, right? I thought so, but I'm not sure. Yeah. Huh. Interesting.

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Rob didn't really believe in any of it. He wasn't like me. Spire in the Woods wasn't a spiritual quest. He wasn't trying to cling to the last lingering shreds of his faith. He just wanted to hear that sound again. Hear the bells as they chime the hour. Have that feeling of warmth and security wash over him. In the weeks that followed, Rob thought of nothing except the sound of the bells.

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Fletch thought that Rob was embellishing the incident, letting his memory get the best of him, but Rob was adamant that they were the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. He insisted that something in the aging bells, or the wind as it carried the tolling through the woods, or the acoustics of the rock and dirt surrounding the spire, lent to them an ethereal quality.

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He was determined to find the spire. Rob began researching the Quabbin, and it wasn't long before he realized the connection between the spire and the widower's clock. He dismissed the ghost story, but he was thrilled that a master artesian had lived in Enfield and sunk his fortune into constructing a clock tower complete with bells and chimes. Fletch was skeptical.

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If Rob had heard anything at all, It must have come from somewhere else. A neighboring town, a proper church. Tower bells weigh hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. What would be ringing them? The wind? It'd take a hurricane. But Rob was unfazed. He was going to find the spire in the woods. He was going to hear the bells again. Fletch didn't see the harm in letting him try.

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A week before school started, Fletch set off for Amherst with Rob in tow. The pair of them spent the evening with Sam and his friends before cutting out around a quarter to ten and heading down Route 9 until they reached Old Ware Enfield Road.

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They parked the car near the trailer park and hoofed it the two miles or so up Old Ware to the shore of the reservoir near the islands, one of which, Rob was positive, housed the spire in the woods. each having worn swimsuits under their clothes. They simply stripped down, stashed their things, and slipped into the water.

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Let's get into it. Part one. Part one. Robert Edward Kennan killed himself in the fall of 1999. Already off to a good start. Already.

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The nearest island lay about 200 yards from the shore, and Fletch, never a strong swimmer, quickly realized he didn't have it in him to make it there. After a brief argument while treading water, Fletch turned back and Rob went on alone. They'd agreed Fletch would meet Rob back by Route 9 at 4 a.m.

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Fletch sat on the trunk of his car for hours, swatting mosquitoes and listening to the frogs and crickets. At first he was worried about Rob, then he was pissed that Rob had gone on by himself, then he was worried again. Fletch set the alarm on his watch around 1.30 or so, laid out on his backseat and drifted off to sleep, wishing he was drinking at his brother's.

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Fletch awoke to the passenger side door being thrown open. Rob jumped in and slammed the door closed. Drive! Drive! Fletch scrambled into the front seat, assuming park officials or the police were in hot pursuit. He gunned the engine and pulled out of the trailer park. Fletch was already back on Route 9 before he hazarded a glance at his friend. Rob was panicked. What happened? Rob said nothing.

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He just labored to catch his breath as he looked back towards the reservoir. Rob's adrenaline slipped away as Fletch drove. By the time they reached Sam's apartment Rob was practically catatonic.

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Brother, I tell you what. Sometimes you just feel good.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, it's like the story... is in a spot where it's like, we're going to get, we're going to get our worth out of this concept, right? Yeah. No shit. It does feel like that. Yeah. Yeah. It, yeah, I've, I'm, I'm all over this right now. This is banging.

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I mean, I just, here's what I, here's no, no, here's my prediction, right? And I think it was confirmed by the name Wilkins getting brought up. Cause that is the name of the girl that died, right? The teacher that died. I think it's saying that a lot of the ghost stories that have been happening around this town are, are just side effects of stuff that really happened, right?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I'm ready. So behind the death clause that are the copyright system, there's a bunch of those. What are those? The big wasp things from Fallout New Vegas. No, the centaurs. I've never played any of them. The big morphed humans, the centaurs, right behind the deathclaws are those. And that is the YouTube, not copyright, the content ID system.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Like the story gets passed around, it changes hands, and the details change. Like, I don't think there ever was a blood cemetery. I think what happened is people knew the story of the widower's clock and the details got changed so much that it became the story of the blood cemetery. So I think there was one...

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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cuckold story which the important thing there is not the cucking but instead the fact that a man found another man sleeping with his wife and he killed both of them and hooked them up to his like clockwork machine and then that story became so well known that it eventually became other stories like the blood cemetery i think that's where it's going that all of these urban legends came off the true story of the widower's clock i see yeah

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That's my prediction.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We haven't seen that though. Have we? We haven't seen it, but it sounds like it's pretty well confirmed because it says that, uh, Rob threw out the ghost story part and was just fascinated that someone built a clock tower in infield. Right? So the clock tower has got to be real.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The details about his wife, uh, cheating on him and the ghost story and all that stuff may not be, or the dead bodies hooked up to the mechanism may not be. I, considering this is a horror story, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that they are real or something similar happened. Um, But it seems that him being a clockmaker that built a clock is definitely real. Okay. I think at least.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. I think you're right. I'm, I'm fully bought in right now. Hmm. Alright, so with that, we are now into part three. Part three. Rob had reached the first island. He had been searching fruitlessly for nearly 40 minutes when he heard them. The bells. Being so much closer now, they were even clearer. He fell to his knees, letting their sensation, their warmth, wash over him.

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For a moment, he knew bliss. The bells rolled back like the ocean at low tide. Rob found himself shivering on the ground. He could hear nothing but frogs and crickets. He rose on unsteady legs, sure of only one thing. In an hour, he'd be there. He'd be standing before the spire. He'd hear the bells, feel them up close. He ran to the shore and dove into the waters.

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Something else I want to mention is we get hints because our author has established that he's writing all of this in the future. Like early on when he was like, if we were doing this nowadays, it'd be easy because of the internet. But in 1999, I didn't have that. And there was that brief mention right before part two ended.

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Where he said, if it was anything like my first time, then Rob probably felt the euphoria of it. So that means eventually our author finds the bells and hears them. So that's a thing to note. Yes. Rob emerged from the reservoir onto the rocky bank of the second and far larger island. He stumbled barefoot through the woods, increasingly aware of how dark it was beneath the trees.

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Because now we're talking about killing yourself immediately into an episode. So if the deathclaws don't get us, then those centaurs back there will.

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As the bell siren's call faded in his mind, he began to doubt himself. The island was nearly two miles long and half a mile across. He could search it all night and never find a damn thing. The bells chimed once more. He turned to face them. There it was. In the center of a grove of dead trees, the spire jutted out of the ground like a pike set to receive a charge.

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Its white paint was oddly untouched by age. Small windows adorned each of its sides, framed by the dead trees and bathed in moonlight. Called. Unable to resist their song, yet too overwhelmed by their warmth to walk, Rob crawled to the spire like an infant to its mother. Pushed against the slats of the window, they gave way and he squirmed his way inside. Rob landed on top of a staircase.

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As the bells continued to chime, he pulled his shuddering body down the stairs, deeper and deeper to the enveloping darkness within. until he lost himself once more in the ethereal sounds of their radiating warmth. Once the silence returned, Rob strained in vain to see. The air was humid and black as ink. He could feel wood, dank, and rotting pressed against his bare calves.

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It gave him the impression he was sitting Indian-style inside of a living thing, like Jonah in the well. Gosh, this story's so good.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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know right so so crazy oh it's so good oh the the unfathomable creature of a bell in the woods that calls to you oh it's so so good okay once the silence returned rob strained in vain to see i already read that slowly rob rose to his feet yelled his hands out in front of him and groped blindly he hoped he'd find a wall or a banister to the stairs anything that would give him a clue about his surroundings

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Instead, he found nothing, forcing him to shuffle deeper into the impermeable darkness. His outstretched fingers recoiled from the soft surface they encountered. What was it? He shook as he reached out, letting his hands land once more on the chest-high object in front of him. It was wrapped in cloth. It only extended out to about the width of his shoulders.

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fall at new Vegas is a, is an old timer.

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The cloth hung loose over something hard that his hands couldn't identify. Rods? Dowels? His probing fingers traced up the object's outer edge until he felt something he could identify. He froze. His fingers were in the eye socket of a skull. His tongue rested on its teeth. The bells rang again, if only inside Rob, as his mind's eye showed him the endless dance.

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Sat there in the dark, his unseen eyes transfixed by the clockmaker's wife as she was dragged on her post through the twirling gauntlet of Union automatons. He saw her, alive and dead, the blush of youth, the maggots of decay, twitch and scream and moan as her body was pierced by countless bayonets. He saw her face as she ran the endless race. Oh my god.

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It's so good. Oh, man. He saw her alive and dead. The blush of youth, the maggots of decay. It's great. And it's all, he's in the basement of this spire in the woods and like this, it's, it's almost like the clock maker when he built this clock and he attached these bodies to it. He invited some, some inhuman presence to dwell there.

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Uh, maybe by some people, but, uh, I think it was, it's one of the last, we are so off topic. It's one of the last like old school, choose your own adventure, like kind of sandbox games where you can have

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It's like he made an altar for some dark entity to take part in and to like make this its vessel. Oh, it's so good. And it's still running beneath the earth on this Island out in a flooded town. Gosh, Rob shrank and shriveled collapse into the floor.

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Like a wounded animal, he crawled and clawed his way back, back, back, back, until he hit the wall, and even then he didn't stop but pushed against it with all his strength, hoping to retreat further. His flailing limbs struck a step, the first of many, with what little control he had over his frenzied mind bolted for the surface and an escape from the moist pit of the clockmaker's wife.

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Rob scrambled up the twisting stairs on all fours like a dog. He tore his way through the window and collapsed on the ground. The fresh air felt alien in his lungs as if it were his first breath. He took two more as he lay there on the ground before realizing that although he hadn't a clue what time it was, he couldn't be there when the bells chimed.

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He ran and swam and ran and swam and didn't look back again until he was in his car. Fletch put his face in his hands.

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I had so many more questions I wanted to ask, but I didn't think Fletch could take it. He choked up several times while relaying Rob's story, and the way his shoulders were slumped reminded me of the way Rob's parents had looked at their son's funeral. I should have gone with him, he said without looking up at me. I let it lie. As I left Fletch's house, every hair on my body was standing on end.

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But at that point, as much as I wanted to, I still wasn't ready to accept the story of the spire in the woods. Not at face value. When we'd studied the fall of the House of Usher in English earlier that year, we were talking about Poe, the story. Oh, double platinum. We got to hang up its jersey. It's doing too good. Got to hang up its jersey.

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We studied the fall of the House of Usher in English earlier that year. Mrs. Thorne had made it a point to draw our attention to two of Poe's opium references and to how Roderick Usher displayed symptoms of withdrawal.

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She explained that Poe's stories frequently incorporated both blatant and subtle references to intoxicants and hallucinogens in order to enhance the sense of phantasmagoria and help more skeptical readers suspend their disbelief. We've got analysis of Poe and drugs. We've got the word phantasmagoria, bro, in the rafters. We've got to get this guy up there.

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Yes, yes. To be honest, at this point, I know this video is going to get taken down. I know. It's so sad. Isn't it? I was thinking about it, too. I was like, oh, God. What if we find a way? There has to be some way to get this out there. Even just the story. The story's too good.

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Let's just start from the top. One more time in case they didn't get us. In the back. Robert Edward Kennan killed himself in the fall of 1999. I wasn't there, but it's where my story begins. It begins with Rob, 17 years old, sitting in a burning car in the middle of a crowded parking lot one Monday night in October.

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So good, okay. I knew very little about depression, even less about antidepressants, but at the time, I didn't think it was beyond the realm of possibility that Robert Kennan's encounter with the clockmaker's wife had more to do with the sudden onset of a major depressive episode than with the dead woman. I spent the night reading about depression, MAO inhibitors, and SSRIs.

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There were no answers, just endless possibilities. It wasn't unheard of for major depressive episodes to be accompanied by delusions or even outright hallucinations. Psychotic disorders were something less obvious in patients whose presenting problem was depression. Hallucinations were rare side effects of SSRIs. MAO inhibitors could cause serotonin syndrome, which could cause hallucinations.

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And that was before getting into the countless drug interactions, which, without knowing exactly what Rob had been taking, I couldn't even begin to map out. I knew scary Carrie would love to hear every last detail. Fletcher told me about the spire in the woods, but on Tuesday morning, I just didn't feel like tracking her down. I wanted to talk to Alina.

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The ride into school hadn't been as awkward as I had anticipated. Fletcher also did a six foot tall goth girl. Also being explicitly mentioned in this story. This video has to get shot down.

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have you ever had a meal that was so good that you're like it should feel it feels illegal yeah it's like well i guess now it's gonna suck because every meal after this isn't gonna taste that good yeah it's never gonna be as good as this yeah no i know exactly it's like well since i don't live here this this sucks because i i've got to remember this now that's how i feel about this story at the moment oh

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The ride into school hadn't been as awkward as I'd anticipated. Fletch was quieter than usual, and I was content to stare out my window and daydream about what I was going to tell Alina. I wondered how she'd think about Fletch's story and whether or not I should gloss over my own doubts. I also wondered if she'd cry.

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I feel embarrassed, even after all these years later, admitting it, but a part of me was hoping she would. Then I'd have an excuse to hug her again. That's my boy. That's my boy right there. That there is what a man I could be. Is that scary? Carrie looking on.

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put her there come on i could be dependable comforting boyfriend material it was the kind of fantasy that marked me as a beta male that's whoa and we get mentioned a beta bell in the story and dude we've got cucking twice if youtube doesn't copyright this video i will yeah no shit The sort of guy who, even in his own daydreams, couldn't think of a single reason he deserved the girl.

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I roved the junior's hallway and the cafeteria, but couldn't find Alina anywhere. I heard from DeLuca that she called out sick. I spent the rest of the day in a funk. Kara and I had gym seventh period, the last class of the day. It was too cold to go out to the fields, so we had to choose between three or four indoor activities.

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He burned for nearly four hours before the police let the firemen near enough to put out the flames and pull out his body. I didn't know him. Not really. We lived in a small town. I knew him by sight, knew his name, but I doubt we'd ever exchanged more than a few perfunctory words. It makes me feel funny talking about him, like I'm not justified doing it.

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Ordinarily, I'd have opted for floor hockey, the only gym class activity I'd ever enjoyed, but I felt obligated to update Carrie on what I learned about Rob and the Spire, so I joined her in the auxiliary gym for a little ping pong, a game I had no idea she was good at. She gets it, bro. And she's good at ping pong!

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Leave it. That was okay. You did it. Or it could have happened exactly like that. Ping pong. Carrie said, AC me for the third straight time. I was surprised that scary. Carrie wasn't as skeptical as I was. I mean, sure. Carrie absolutely believed in ghosts. And of course I desperately wanted to, but we weren't completely credulous about every story we heard.

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We didn't relish wandering around graveyards and old buildings for no good reason. We weren't looking to kill time. We did it because we wanted to find something. We wanted to pull back the curtain and glimpse the grandeur of creation. We wanted to feel small in the presence of the infinite and know, if only for a moment, there's more than food, sex, and the petty minutia of social interaction.

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What it came down to was while I believe Fletch and I believe that Fletch believed Rob, it didn't follow that I believe Rob. It was the difference between lying and just being wrong. Karen and I had developed criteria for identifying the more promising leads. Inspire in the Woods had a lot going against it. Secondhand accounts. Stories with an undercurrent of social control.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Witnesses with a history of mental illness. There were red flags. Rob's story had all of them.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's kind of far. Yeah, look at you not doing the voice for her that time. Thank you. Finally.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You're never going to be a good man. What does that mean?

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I thought you were letting me have that by not being overly critical of her. I see what you were. Okay. Yeah. I thought it'd be nice. All right. Okay. Okay. You cannot blame me. I'm going to do this. No, I'm going to do this.

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Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's kind of far. Of course, there was another reason I was reluctant to head all the way out to the Quabbin Reservoir with Scary Carrie. She looked at me like I had just insulted her. She knew precisely what my other reason was. Our last ghost hunting expedition had been a disaster. A very personal disaster. Carrie was old for our year.

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She turned 16 at the tail end of freshman year and had gotten her license the very first day of summer break. It was perfect, save for one thing. No car. Carrie's parents were divorced, and her dad had moved to New Jersey for a job. He paid his alimony and child support every month, but he just wasn't a very wealthy man. Carrie's mom had never gone to college.

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She had to work full-time at the deli counter at her local market basket just to make ends meet, which meant most days she had the car. But at night, when the store was closed, Carrie had access to the world's oldest, crappiest station wagon. For the most part, Carrie's newfound freedom changed her life very little.

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Mainly, her trips involved picking up the members of her small group of friends and delivering them to Dan Bergens to watch anime and old horror movies in his basement. Go ahead. Say something. Say something. Go ahead. I think it's cool.

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But if I'm going to tell you about the spire, it's unavoidable. I have to tell you about Robert Edward Kennan and how the suicide notes he left behind tangled my life up with his. Back then, we both lived in a sleepy town in New England, a little over an hour northwest of Boston, just across the New Hampshire border.

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You think it's cool. Awesome. Now, Scary Carrie's cool. Now it's cool. Me who believed in her up until this point, and I'm going to be vindicated by the comment section, by history. By the end of the story, I have been right the entire time. You know what? You know what, Hunter? Bear trap. Scary Carrie is the... That's not a bear trap. This is a bear trap.

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If you get to pull a bear trap over just reading one paragraph ahead in a story, I get to pull it over Scary Carrie being cool, which I said from the get-go. We only hung out twice that summer. Both times, Scary Carrie picked me up in what I called Ecto-1, and we went ghost hunting.

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our first trip was to the blood cemetery that's how we discovered the story of able blood was a steaming load we dressed in all black par for the course in carrie's case yeah brother and brought flashlights wax paper and crayons you bet your bottom dollar I also took the silver crucifix my parents had given me as a first communion present and my mother's Bible, just in case we saw something.

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It was fun scrambling over the old stone wall, sneaking through the cemetery with our flashlights held low, trying not to step on anybody's grave. Even after seeing that the years of death didn't line up, we still checked out the curve where the ghost of the little girl supposedly ran out in front of passing cars. The blind curve was indeed full of skid marks.

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It also had, about 20 feet in front of it, a deer crossing sign. Two or three weeks later, we went to a charity auction at the rec center and slipped up the stairs to the attic. Stairs squeaked beneath our feet, and even though, at worst, we'd just be thrown out of the rec center, we were terrified of getting caught. The attic hadn't changed in the seven or so years since my last visit.

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A couple of card tables housed bins full of crafting materials, a pair of filing cabinets set against the back wall gathering dust, and most importantly of all, despite it being June, there were still cold spots. We stand just outside one of them, reach an arm in, try to define the boundary of the warm and cold air. It was tricky.

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The shift in temperature wasn't as great as I remembered from when I was a kid, and there were no hard, fine edges between the hot and cold air. The temperature just seemed to bleed from one area to another like brine in an estuary. I experimented sticking my crucifix into the heart of the cold spot and felt nothing. If anything, it felt like the cold spots were fading away.

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Carrie suggested we try talking to the spirit of Jennifer Wilkins while we still could. I shrugged. After you. We'd forsaken most of our ghost hunting kit, as it would have been awfully conspicuous carrying around a Bible and a couple of flashlights. Still had my crucifix, but I doubted it'd be necessary. Stories of the Silver Spectre were all quite tame.

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We had, however, brought a couple of sticks of incense, which we lit with a very old zippo that had once belonged to my grandfather. Carrie had bought the incense from a new age store, the sort of place you'd shop at. If you were inclined to believe in neo-paganism or healing crystals, saleswoman told her it was like, I'm just, Carrie is dangerously close to Kayla. This might be my wife.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's the sort of place that's nice to live if you're the sort of person that doesn't like doing very much. There's really only three reasons anyone ever steps foot in my hometown. The first is that they're on their way to Nashaw, the shopping mecca of the Northeast. The second would be the ice cream.

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She, like, Kayla goes to these places constantly. She dresses like this. She looks like this. The saleswoman told her it was supposed to make it easier for spirits to pass into our realm. But to me, it just smelled like sandalwood. Carrie spoke in a lifting tone. Jennifer, are you here with us? I burst out laughing and Carrie went beet red.

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She punched me in the arm and whispered for me to be quiet, pointing to the floor where beneath our feet the auction was taking place. Carrie tried again. Jennifer, if you can hear me, give us a sign. We stood still in absolute silence, waiting for an answer. It came in the form of the industrial air conditioner mounted to the ceiling of the floor below us, cycling on.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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A few gaps in the floorboards lined up perfectly with one of the AC's large vents. We couldn't stop laughing as the spirit of Jennifer Wilkins returned the cold spots to full force. I also want to mention, since I brought it up, that I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I actually met Kayla going ghost hunting. Really? Have I told you? Yeah. Have I ever told you that?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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No, you've never told me that. The way we met is there was, where I went to college, there was an abandoned elementary school nearby that there were stories that there's ghosts that haunt it. There was a story about a teacher that had died there in like the 70s. And it's like, oh, if you go to it, you can still see the teacher roaming the halls.

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So me and three of my friends were like, okay, we're going to go check it out. Part of the story was you had to go at midnight. Like, you know, you had to be there between midnight and 3 a.m. or something. Right. So we were meeting at a grocery store to all carpool over there. And then one of our friends was a girl and she was like, hey, can I bring my roommate?

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And we were like, yeah, we don't care. And her roommate was Kayla. So y'all got in the car and then we went ghost hunting that night and like freaked out. And then I also pulled a great prank on everyone that night. Okay. So there was a place nearby the college that a legend has. It used to be an old orphanage. I think I looked into it at one point and it wasn't an orphanage.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It was actually like a, like an apartment store or something, but it was some old brick building that burnt down in like the sixties. Sure. Uh, but legend has it, it's an old orphanage that's now next to a church to add to the creepy factor. And there was this, uh, like, I guess you could say challenge or like ritual people could do.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We have a dairy farm where they sell the world's best ice cream, all of it made right there on the premises. And the third is because they bought one of those haunted New England books. Usually, you can find our town listed in those books twice. First entry will likely be the story of how our high school, which is one of the 10 oldest in the country, came to have the Silver Spectre as its mascot.

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So the story is you drive your car up, has to be between midnight and 4am and you have to get out on the gravel road and you have to throw a piece of gravel towards the old burned out building. Okay. Then you get back in the car and you drive around to the other side of the abandoned school and you turn the car off.

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And then if you wait for a few minutes, you'll start to hear footsteps around the car. After you hear the footsteps, you drive away from the school. And if you get out and look at the car, there will be handprints all over it. Right? Okay. So that's how the legend goes. So me being evil... We pull down in the car.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's like six of us packed into a Honda, like a little, like, you know, two, two door thing. We're all packed in. We get out of the car and everyone else goes to get a piece of gravel to throw. But I walk around to the back of the car while everyone's facing forward and start putting my hand all over the car. That's so fucked. I laid out handprints and then we go do the whole thing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Everyone's like, oh, I hear something, blah, blah, blah. Also, this is like down a back road, middle of the night. It's like down a back road, middle of the night. And like, if you turn the car all the way off, it is pitch black. You can't see anything.

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Like right outside of the car. So that's the creepy factor. Um, so then we drive away and we pull into a McDonald's in town and we get out and they shine a flashlight and see the handprints and the girls just started. Yeah, definitely.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And I'm like, Oh, we could have done that. Blah, blah, blah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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So that's it. So that, so that's the night Kayla and I met. Right. Yeah. And then over the next several weeks, like we were, we were friends for a couple of months and like, I would talk about horror movies and I would like talk about scary stories and stuff like that. And then we start dating a year after we're dating.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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My Kayla was over at my house for dinner and I had never brought up that, that night since then. Right. I was just like mission accomplished. We're sitting around the dinner table and my dad randomly goes, did you ever tell Kayla about the night you pranked those girls by putting your hand all over the car?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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He sold me out. Immediately. Kayla was like, what? And my dad goes, Oh wait, she was one of those girls. Oh damn.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. My dad was like, oops, sorry. And immediately Kayla told every one of those girls and people. She's like, guess what? Guess what? Remember that night that we all to this day counted as a real ghost encounter. This was also all pre YouTube. So I had no outlet for like the devilishness. So yeah, but yeah, fun story.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Anyway, just to further prove that I think scary carry might actually be my wife transmitted through time. Scary carry. Scary carry. After that cute anecdote, this episode's definitely getting canned. Once we'd regained our composure, Kara and I decided to head over to the Bickford's for a bite to eat while we conducted the post-mortem on our latest failure.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Now, a deer crossing sign and an air conditioner don't necessarily disprove that the Blood Cemetery and our town rec center are haunted, but they certainly had made us feel rather foolish. So while I gorged myself on Eggs Benedict, which I had only recently discovered, and Carrie nursed a cup of coffee, we started tossing around ideas for other expeditions.

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I always loved the Spectre. It reflected how steeped in folklore rural New England once was, and as mascots go, it's much more interesting than the fighting, fill in the cat species here, everywhere else seems saddled with. Bro, I got called out by that one every single town around where I grew up. I can think of the fighting bobcats, the fighting tigers, the fighting lions, the cougars, yeah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You just don't want hearing your little voice. You son of a bitch. Yeah. Carrie, in mock anger, reached over, grabbed a home fry off my plate, and threw it at me. It had taken her a long time to get comfortable with me teasing her. I guess after a lifetime of being mocked about her weight and appearance, the idea that it was the only way I expressed affection took some getting used to.

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Also, since I've made the comparison throughout this entire video, I want to clarify my wife is not overweight, nor do I think that, if she ever sees this conversation. That is the one aspect of scary. I was going to say, you better watch your shit, boy. I'm like, you better watch your shit. I'm laying that out clearly right now.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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No, no, no, no. Look, in my head, she's 90s overweight, which means not anorexic. That's right. That's what it means in my head. Right. Well, that only makes sense. Yes, so that is what I'm telling myself, until further notice, until the story explicitly outlines otherwise.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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There were a few places in and around Boston we wanted to check out, but most of them were landmarks or buildings that were still in use. Neither of us was eager to get arrested, particularly not Carrie, who was going to have a hard enough time getting into college. So Boston was out, and most of Lowell too.

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We just missed a couple of nearby leads, the Gilson Road Cemetery, which had no actual history surrounding it, just a hodgepodge of random urban legends, and the Blue Lady out in Wilton, New Hampshire, who sounded somewhat promising, but was most frequently sighted during harvest moons, which we wouldn't get until late September.

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Eventually, we settled on the Eunice Williams Covered Bridge in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It had everything going for it, a traumatic death, consistent sightings, and no air conditioning. The only downside was that, for us, Greenfield was a solid two-hour drive each way, and that was if the MapQuest directions were up to date. A mighty big if. I didn't see Carrie again that summer.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Life just got in the way. For Carrie, it was difficult to work around her mom's schedule, especially after a tiny little accident she had backing out of a space at the mall resulted in her losing her driving privileges for a month. While for me, it was the pool Christy McDowell's parents had put in that June.

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While my feelings for Christy and our other mutual female friends were mostly platonic, I was 15 and they were in bikinis. Oh, man. Gosh. This story, like, this guy was a teenager in the 90s. He knows exactly. He knows the lay of the land. By comparison, ghost hunting just didn't seem quite as exciting. Knowing how my friends... Now, I'll make the counter that I was both.

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I was into the girls in bikinis and the ghost hunting. I was a man of many tastes. I was a man of many pleasures. Which is probably why I didn't have much success with the women in the aforementioned bikinis. But I catered to both flavors, so to speak.

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I was a man of multiple palates, all right? I... Knowing how my friends felt about her, I never invited Carrie to tag along. Of course, in fairness to me, pool parties weren't exactly her cup of tea. When school started up again in the fall, Carrie and I resumed talking about our trip to Greenfield.

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But it wasn't until Rob Kenning killed himself and I made an effort to spend more time with her that we got around to actually going. Carrie picked me up early one Friday evening in mid-November. Mrs. Peterson had opened the store that morning and would be closing the next day, meaning we had Ecto-1 all night. We just needed to get the car back before she woke up and she'd be none the wiser.

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Driving around with friends was still novel at that point in my life. Two hours passed by in a blur of jokes and gossip and screaming along to what little music Carrie and I could agree on. She used to have this mixtape dominated by Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine. Any thoughts on that, Hunter? I mean, I like Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine. I like both of them.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Oh, yeah. It was either that or the bulldogs. I feel like every, that was my high school.

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I've just further proven to you that there are more points in Carrie's camp than especially Alina. It's fine. She's fine. Uh-huh. That was a staple of our time in Ecto-1. Yeah, whatever you say. Bear trap. Bear trap for me. My bear trap. I think we listened to it straight through two and a half times that night.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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We only got turned around once and arrived at the Eunice Williams covered bridge absolutely pumped. Pulled into the bridge, got the motor, honked once, and waited for Eunice. Eunice Williams was not a resident of Greenfield. She had actually lived in nearby Deerfield back in the 1600s.

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At the time, Deerfield was the northwestern-most outpost of New England, deep in the heart of the former Pocomtoc Nation? Pocomtoc Nation? I think that's right, yeah. Pocomtoc? Come on. The Poc... Let's see. I'm not making fun of it. You are. That's a, that is Hunter Hancock on the record, making fun of native American names. Go ahead and write that down. Get that post.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Before the settlers had arrived in Deerfield, the Pocom tuck had already been weakened by European disease and war with the Mohawk people. When the settlers in Pogumtuk clashed over resources, the settlers easily drove the remaining Pogumtuk from their land. Pogumtuk, however, were not ready to admit defeat.

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That's funny. I like, uh, immediately this kind of world building, how it feels, it feels like, uh, natural, right? Like his description of like, well, we have the world's best ice cream. It's also haunted. Silver specter is a cool mascot.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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They allied themselves with French settlers and other French-aligned First Peoples in Canada and, in 1704, led an offensive raid against Deerfield's English settlers. The French and Native Americans killed 56 settlers and burned much of the town to the ground. They captured over 100 survivors and forced them to march through brutal winter conditions into Quebec. The march would take months.

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Among the captured survivors was Eunice Mather Williams, her husband, Minister John Williams, and five of their seven children. Her infant daughter and six and a half year old son were both killed during the raid, but John and Eunice were determined to be strong for their other children and fellow captives.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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The Williamses quoted scripture, led the group in prayer, and took turns carrying their younger children until they reached the Green River. Eunice fell during the crossing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Despite having survived her plunge, a Pocomtuc warrior decided that Eunice's exposure to the icy water had weakened her too much to continue the march, so he hacked her to pieces in front of her husband and their remaining children. Legend has it that Eunice appears on the bridge over the waters where she was killed, asking any mortals she finds there of news about her children and husband.

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Locals say she can be summoned simply by cutting your engine, honking your horn. I love ghost stories like that. That is so cool. You think a lot of this folktale shit is real, by the way? It might be. It could be like local. I bet if you Googled a bunch of this stuff, there probably would be local legends of it.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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That or like Tony here has an incredibly creative mind to come up with all these. Well, yeah.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, so The Spire in the Woods, also known as The Bells, is a story that was written by Tony Lundy around 2013, 2014, I believe. And everyone really liked this story. I don't think I ever read it, but I remember people talking this thing up as being like one of the greats.

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Yeah. Yeah, it probably is. I would agree. We'd been sitting there in Ecto-1 with the engine off and no heat when a thought occurred to me.

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I could see the gears turning in Scary Carrie's head as she processed the anachronism.

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I laughed as Carrie turned on the car to get the heat going again.

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We waited for a bit. They got out of the car and poked around the bridge on foot. I've always liked covered bridges ever since seeing Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon as a kid. There's a nifty little plaque at this one that tells the whole story of Eunice Williams. We scrambled down to the banks of the river.

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It's not exactly the Mississippi, but it was easy to see how difficult it would have been to Ford, especially under the strange circumstances Eunice was facing. Skipped a few pebbles, difficult feet, and fast-moving water before we got cold and decided to return to the car.

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Maybe it was the increasingly likely prospect that another of our missions was going to prove to be a waste, or maybe it was just the hour and the warm air of the heater blasting in our faces, making us sleepy, but whatever the cause, our energy was fading fast and our conversation had turned serious. Well, serious by high school standards.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Thank you. There we go. I know he gets some humanity redeemed. Look at that kids. Hunter gets to go to heaven. Hunter has a heart. They say his heart grew three sizes that day. He died of a heart attack like Seabiscuit. Turns out your chest cavity is not nearly equipped to handle a heart three times its size, so it ripped against his inner rib cage and exploded on the podcast. It's terrifying.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. Very Stephen King deal. Yeah. That's what I was about to say. That explains Spielberg's interest because this feels like a classic, like old Stephen King type film, you know? Way back in the 1890s, there was a terrible blizzard. a proper nor-eastern. It dumped several feet of snow across the whole region.

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Kim Murray. I did not think she was pretty, but that put me in a precarious position. Physically, Kim had her faults, but objectively speaking, she was significantly more attractive than Carrie. Aww.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's like, what do you mean?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Her cantle tilt was far off. Her cantle tilt. Her cupid's bow was not nearly developed enough for someone of high IQ. Objectively speaking, she was significantly more attractive than Carrie. A girl Drew DeLuca once described with what was for Drew a considerable amount of sympathy as unfortunate looking. Damn! Poor girl. Carrie shifted in her seat to face me.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Whoa. Okay. Just flying in from the top, from the rafters, just straight in. Like, okay.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Okay. All right. We're reading. So she says, she was talking about how much she likes it. Those are guys do it. And then our boy do it. We don't even know our author's name yet, right? I don't think we actually do. I don't think he's introduced.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah. So, but our author's like, I don't like maybe we don't do this or can we talk about something else?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's kind of gross and you're back. There he is. There was a pause. When Carrie spoke again, her voice caught in her throat.

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Yeah, that's, oh man, my cheeks burned with embarrassment. I didn't know. You know what? Honestly, I was trying to say as we were reading the story, I'm like, I'm getting flashbacks to some other story we've read. Uh, Boroska, uh,

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Like the way early on, like Kim, Kimber and like, you know, or sorry, Kimber and Kyle and stuff were described like they would have these little conversations like this and they'd be very chummy and stuff. That's what this is reminding me of. Yeah, that's fair. No, I could see that. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I didn't know what to say.

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I never imagined Carrie would share her sexual insecurities with me, in part because I never thought of her in sexual terms. My gosh, dude. On some level, I don't think it ever fully processed for me that Carrie was a girl.

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There were many, many casualties, mostly the very young and very old stuck in their homes without heat. One of the exceptions, who was neither very young nor very old, was Jennifer Wilkins. She was a teacher trapped in the school when the blizzard hit.

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I remember being in high school and like middle school and stuff. And there'd be like friends of mine who were girls who I've just, sometimes I'd be like, Oh yeah, I guess I could be attracted to them if I wanted to be. Cause they're, you know, like you don't really think about it. And then one day you're like, Oh yeah, I guess I could. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean.

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That's not to say I was confused about her gender identity, but that because I found her unattractive, my mind had neutered her and significantly reduced her as a human being. Okay, well, me and you were trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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And then he literally says, my mind had significantly reduced her as a human being.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Sometimes he goes his own way, so to speak. Yeah, my boy's on the MGTOW for sure. He's 100%. He loves being shirtless and smoking cigars on podcasts. I just want to say, I fucking, I love this story, by the way. I love it. This is like a top five for me already.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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If it bombs out right now, it's a top five.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Oh, when's it my turn for popcorn reading?

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What's funny is, too, I was like the super annoyingly studious kid. So I'd always be like, yes, my turn. I know exactly where we are. I don't need to ask.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Anytime, anytime. I'm ready. I'm ready.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Well, I hope we wouldn't get along if you were like 22 and I was like in the sixth grade. Hey, let's hang out. Come on. That is so funny to imagine that you were like literally child predator age compared to me. How old are you again? I'm 25. Okay.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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What little food there was in the schoolhouse couldn't have lasted more than two days, and folks say by the 5th, she had resorted to boiling her boots to soften up the leather for eating. It was two weeks before anyone was able to reach her. They found her, body thin as a matchstick, wrapped up in a gray wool blanket. If only they'd had paste in those days, she might have made it.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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21 years older than me. 100%.

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I don't know because it depends on the age if we were in high school I think we would have got along if we were in middle school I don't think so because I was so socially awkward and like where I was like raised super religious I was like kind of afraid of like kids that listen to like heavy metal and stuff like that I feel like that would be prime like you bullied me age but if it was like later high school I think we would have got along cool dude

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You know what? No, I would have called the police. Cause I've been like, this guy is definitely a shooter. He's trying to talk to me. Help. Someone help. Literally. That would be me. That's what I sounded like. That's how the call would have been. Oh God. Oh God. Someone else. Exactly like that. Yes. Correct. I agree. Carrie started to cry. Oh, this is brutal. Now she's starting to cry, Ned.

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It happens. Oh, man. Carrie started to cry, and I leaned over to give her a hug. She let a few hush sobs out into my shoulders. Come on. As I patted her broad back. Okay. Maybe I've been a little too generous. Her broad back.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I have not heard anyone describe this broad back.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Goddamn, dude. Come on. Whoa. At some point she stopped crying. It took me a second to notice, but what I thought was her taking a shuddering breath or maybe just a tear covered cheeks sliding over my skin was actually Carrie kissing my neck. Oh, here we go. Come on. Get on in there.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I'm so conflicted right now because it's going between my interpretation of Carrie versus what the author wants me to think.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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You know what? And if she looked, and if she looked like my wife, if she wasn't, as the story was trying to describe her, if she was like the dare, I bring it up the Jacoby that's in my mind right now, it'd be great. It'd be awesome. But I feel like the author is dissuading. This is a bad thing.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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Yeah, I agree. I hope the story ends and it's like me and Carrie are married. Now we have like three children. Yeah. God, of course you would say that. What do you mean, of course I would say that? It's just funny.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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With that attitude, sure. Of course you would say that. Like, of course I'm the guy who wants a happy ending with two characters he likes. Yeah, what a jerk move of me to pull. Yeah. What a horrible idea. I wanted to leap into the backseat to lurch away from Carrie and retreat into the furthest recess of Ecto-1.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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I wanted to throw open my door, sprint to the nearest house, and demand that its occupants permit to shower. Oh my gosh!

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's not that I couldn't literally cannot be that bad.

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Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

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It's fun. But I couldn't do that now. Now my brain's going the opposite way. Like I made the jokes about her being six foot goth and all that stuff. Now in my head, she's like the, she's like comedically beautiful. Like she's like typical like goth girl. And he's like, and she's like trying to kiss his neck. And he's like, I've got to share.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8603.296

And she's just like, she's like a dream boat in like fishnets and like tall boots. And he's just like, this is the most disgusted I've ever been in my life.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8623.163

As revolted as I was, my actions and intentions had been so wildly misconstrued. Carrie was still my friend, and she was vulnerable, and she didn't deserve that. I like how he has to talk himself into not being openly replied. Yeah, he's like, he's like throwing up in his mouth. Hold it together. Oh, God. I froze, hoping she'd realize I wasn't reciprocating. The nuzzling and kissing continued.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

863.459

That's kind of mean. It's like, oh, maybe if they had glue there, she could eat that, idiot. That old schoolhouse is now our town rec center. Supposedly, old Jenny still haunts its halls, wrapped in that gray wool blanket. Her hollow, emaciated visage, searching in vain for something to eat.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8648.603

I guess she didn't, or maybe she didn't realize that this was a red flag. We never spoke about what happened in Greenfield, but either way, she needed a clear stop sign. I put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed myself away from her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8663.492

She got the message. I'll just, I don't know. I don't think if you like that, I had trouble spitting it out. She nodded. We're friends. Uh-huh.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8691.004

You earlier referred to her by cow noises. There you are.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8703.812

Normally people have like an angel and devil on their shoulder. I think you're the devil. And every now and then I show up on your shoulder and I'm like that.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8718.664

You just move to yourself to be a good person. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. The trip home was one of the longest car rides of my life. Carrie never turned on the radio. The only words out of my mouth were the turns I called off on our MapQuest directions. I felt shallow. I think we both knew that I'd only said we're friends to soften the blow.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8741.055

I wouldn't have dismissed the affections of any of my other female friends so readily. Even Christy McDowell, whom I'd been friends with since the third grade, I would never have pushed away like that. Damn! The fu-

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8759.464

Think about what are you surprised by?

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8772.513

No, no, no. What, what do you say? Okay. A hundred, put yourself in his shoes. If you were 15, Sure. And a girl started kissing your neck and touching you. Oh yeah. How rough would it have to be for you to go? Um, no, thanks. I don't think I would. I don't think I would. Exactly. Exactly. That's I can't, I can't, I refuse to think of a single woman.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

881.472

Once, when I was eight or nine years old, long before I knew the origins of the Silver Spectre, I went up into the rec center's attic alone. It was August, and I had snuck away from the rest of the summer reading program and my own interminable boredom. The dusty attic was filled with broken furniture and plastic bins containing the crafting supplies for all of the daycare programs.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8817.53

Look, I'm like that right now. And I'm married. So with regards to my wife was 13 feet tall. I'd be like, Oh, I need, I need carried. Please. Please. Thank you. I don't know. Please don't hold me. Okay.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8837.194

Please don't rock me gently and kiss my forehead. Um, No, I'm saying that, like, if you were 15 years old, how bad's it got to be for you to be like, um, I'll pass. Especially with a girl that you're already comfortable with and hanging out with. I'm telling you.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8874.397

The follow-up, which, again, it's funnier if you imagine she's beautiful, she just wears dark lipstick, so he's like, ugh.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8897.444

Yeah. Well, this is all flashback, right? Because he's saying that he's awkward coming to her now to tell her about the spire in the woods because of how this interaction went. Right.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8918.24

Yeah. There's serious. Someone's dead. Someone burned to death in their car. Like you gotta get, you gotta enlist carry self.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8931.773

Come on, man. The following Monday, I made it a point to talk to Carrie in class like nothing had happened. She played along for a bit, but then asked me for a little space. Frankly, I was relieved to give it to her. This kid. This fucking guy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8976.64

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

8980.922

No, now you have to do it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9012.266

I've never heard you like this telling a story.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

902.646

It would have been entirely forgettable if not for the drafts. The summer had been hot and humid, but in the rec center's attic, if you stepped in the wrong spot, it'd get so cold you could practically see your breath. I told my mom about it. She was the one who told me about Jenny. I never went back up there alone. The second story you typically find in those books is about the Blood Cemetery.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9066.147

It's too real. It's hitting a little too close to home. You've been there. You've been in that seat.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9074.813

They're cruel. Kids are cruel. And there's also the fact that when you are like that age, you don't have as much empathy. You're not thinking about how the other person feels. Of course not. You're constantly afraid of your social standing.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9097.451

Oh, that's so sad. But at the same time, like, you know, you're, you're a young guy. You're just thinking about how other people perceive you. You're not thinking about her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9106.194

That's what's going through your head. with me that's what I'm worried about and the fact that you're regretful and understand it now like obviously the story doesn't speak negatively of your character or anything that's just how kids are which goes to further prove like you said that this story is accurate in the way it's describing like a 16 year old thinking about it yeah yeah Yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9127.493

No, I think that's fine. I think the fact that now, if you were talking about it now and you were like, there was, yeah. So I'm not married. I'm just like, so yeah.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9140.144

It'd be like, okay, Hunter, let's not, we're going to work.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9145.208

But you were in the sixth grade. Yeah, exactly. I'd set out to make Carrie feel better about herself and had done nothing of the kind. And I never thought of myself as the sort of guy who judged a girl based on her looks, but apparently I was. Alina didn't return to school for a whole week after our last conversation.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9163.3

She told everyone who'd asked that she'd had the flu, but later confessed to me that she couldn't take being surrounded by people. Too noisy. Too overwhelming. Too many eyes staring at her. She needed to be alone. I didn't see her at lunch that day or ever again. The anxiety she felt being surrounded by people was at its worst when she was trying to eat.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9183.631

So her parents arranged for her to eat in her guidance counselor's office. When I found out, I knew it was good for Alina, but I couldn't help but feel like my days would be a little drearier without being able to see her across the cafeteria. Her wild hair, that smirk if it ever returned. And that was to say nothing of the wonder that years of tracking cross-country had done for her legs.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9210.554

Oh, I actually hadn't thought about that yet, but there's a little bit of the amount of time to talk about it.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9234.389

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that before. I will say it's different because Rob like confessed his love to her several times.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9244.457

That's true. He could, I'm just saying it could be the same track. Exactly. That's all I'm saying. That'd be an interesting similarity, especially considering how our author kind of views Rob as like a spectacle, almost like everything that happened to him.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

925.865

Okay, all right, now we're talking. There we go. Its real name is the Pine Hill Cemetery, but nobody calls it that. They call it the Blood Cemetery because it's supposedly haunted by Abel Blood and his family. According to legend, Abel Blood lived in the center of what is now the cemetery back when it was farmland.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9265.424

Yeah, that's a good point. I can see that. I finally caught up with her on Friday morning. She was at her locker. To cut down on the amount of time she had to spend jammed between chatty classmates, Alina had taken to cramming every book and binders she'd need until lunch into her backpack. She looked like a freshman.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9283.172

She didn't look up.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9286.154

I dropped down next to where she was crouching and lowered my voice. I spoke with Fletch. Alina froze. I couldn't tell if she was nervous or excited. She took a couple of deep breaths as she turned towards me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9303.955

She deflated, but I continued. But then he told me what happened. You going to be at lunch? She bit her lower lip as she considered for a second.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9322.233

I never cut class in my life. Absolutely. See, I'm telling you, he's a little dirty dog. He is, he is. But it's like you said, it's realistic. He's constantly thinking about girls and he's thinking about his standing and stuff like that. This feels like a... Okay, so I see now why people like Spielberg were attached to the adaptation and stuff like that, or probably still are.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9343.694

This is such a great coming-of-age story so far. Well, that's what I was going to say too. It was so high school.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9382.493

And it's like, I mean, we, we just spent that long talking about like an awkward interaction he had with Carrie, right? Just like a side character. And it was interesting. I didn't feel like the story dragged or pulled anywhere. It went, it was like, it felt relevant. Even if it was just set dressing, it felt important to know all of that. Um, yeah. This is such a... It's very expertly written.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9402.004

I love all the characters. I love the direction. This is great. This is awesome. This is like... If the rest of it sucks, it's already top five. Like, even with what it's built right now.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9442.429

If it pulls off a good scary reveal, this is going to be an all-timer.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

945.302

He returned from the fields early one day to find his wife in bed with another man, a tall, dark-haired stranger. Abel was stunned. How could Mrs. Blood, a good Christian woman, do such a thing? Obviously, the scoundrel was forcing himself on his wife. Abel retrieved his pitchfork and charged back into the house, his mind full of vengeance.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9450.093

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, this is stellar. I'm in love. I'm in love. I'm in love. I didn't have any classes with Fletch and rarely saw him in the halls, but I had two classes with Drew DeLuca and he had lunch the same period as Fletch, so I had him pass along that I wouldn't need a ride. When 6 period let out, I made my way over to the parking lot where Alina was waiting for me next to her blue 98 Beetle.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9477.862

We got in and blasted the heat. Unlike Fletch's ancient Civic, Alina's Beetle actually warmed up pretty quick. Everything but the silence was comfortable.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9490.23

Alina looked at me out of the corner of her eyes. They were so blue. She shook her head.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9496.856

We rode in silence until we pulled up in front of a good-sized colonial house.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9510.649

Alina looked relieved as she hit the garage door opener. It was like she thought bringing me over to her house was really putting me out. In and out of the car, I noticed the garage was otherwise empty. We were alone. Abby, an aging golden retriever that the Aminevs apparently didn't kennel, greeted us with her tail wagging and her leash in her mouth. I have to take her out. Make yourself at home.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9533.924

Just being inside Alina's house felt so intimate. Identity is everything to a teenager, and to bring someone else into your home was to expose a part of you that was beyond your control. It was laying bare the environment that had produced you. When I had first entered Fletch's house, his discomfort was evident. His house was just a place he passed through to get to his room.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9555.316

For Scary Carrie, her house was a source of shame. Mrs. Peterson's small, ill-kept home was a constant reminder to Carrie, not just of her parents' failed marriage, but of her mother's lack of achievement. lack of education. They were both stuck there in a house that smelled of deli meats and the water that feta cheese is packed in. Ew.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9577.279

It's not fucking gross.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9586.305

The water that's left in the package after you pull it out. I hate that, dude. A smell that started in Mrs. Peterson's work clothes but now infused everything they owned. I entered Alina's house with the same reverence I would a church. It had a feeling to it that put you in the mood to sip hot chocolate and watch the snow fall.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9606.795

There were candles and tea lights on the tables and holiday-themed knickknacks on the walls. The piney scent of a Christmas tree filled the air, and as I collapsed onto their overstuffed couch, it occurred to me that, for the first time all day, I felt relaxed. After she returned, Alina led me downstairs into the game room, a finished basement dominated by a full-size pool table.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9630.66

She offered me a soda from the mini fridge behind the wet bar, then we sat down on a loveseat in front of the big screen TV. Alina stared at me while I spoke. I stared back. It was impossible to look anywhere else. I recounted the story Fletch had told me, as faithfully as I could. All the while, I was very conscious of where her legs were in relation to mine.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9651.747

They tugged at me as if they had gravity. That is the most teenage boy thing ever. What if I cross my legs this way and our ankles touch a little bit? I guess we're barely touched.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

966.657

But as he drew near, he heard his wife, mid-coitus, proclaim her love for the black-haired stranger. and with a note of satisfaction to her call that Abel had never heard before. Mr. Blood Saw Red. That's rough. Not only is she calling out for him, but that note of, with a note of satisfaction he never heard before.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9664.875

So yeah. Oh, she threw her arm back and like my wrist touched like a little bit below her elbow. So we kind of we're kind of an item. We're basically dating. We're basically dead. She's having my kid next month.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9684.076

Yes, I will never financially recover from this. She seemed fine the whole time I talked, but the moment I was done, she began gasping for air like she'd been holding her breath. Then the sobbing started. I was quick to close the gap between us. I held her for several minutes while her slender frame shook and quivered.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

97.613

As a matter of fact, it got so much traction that the story got optioned for a film, I believe, that Steven Spielberg was set to produce.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9707.743

When she regained her composure, she slowly withdrew to her end of the love scene. Oh God, I'm sorry. She said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Don't be.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9739.269

So you don't believe any of it? Her right leg began bouncing up and down on the ball of her foot. I thought you were Mr. Ghost Hunter. I scoffed. The corner of her mouth twitched as if she were about to smile, and for a fleeting second, I felt connected to her. To the old Alina. I didn't run around telling everyone I met why I cared so much about ghost stories.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9761.373

I didn't wear anything that personal on my sleeve. But I told Alina. She listened and nodded and understood me.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9805.629

Lena pulled her legs up to chest and hugged her knees. I remember being struck by how much she looked like a little girl. It seemed strange at the time, but in hindsight, at scarcely 17, Lena practically was a little girl. A kid realizing for the first time that her classmates felt entitled to opinions about what she did with her body and affections.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9826.26

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't true, that no one really believed she was a snob about money or shallow or a bitch. I wanted to, but I'd also heard the whispers. The truth is, the only thing I really know about him is that he made me uncomfortable. I moved beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. I could feel how tense she was as she stared straight ahead. It's not your fault.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9851.501

Her hair smelled like vanilla. God damn, dude, this guy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9856.227

This fucking horndog, I know.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9863.794

Every time she's like crying, talking about like, and it's my body. And I just feel like everyone else looks down on me because I wanted to do with myself what I saw fit. I didn't owe him anything. And our author's like her shaved legs. Which is actually.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9882.908

it's actually kind of uh like well written in that sense like as she is like we we see it through like aha he's like a young horn dog or whatever uh like put her there bro totally me but as she's talking about like how she doesn't feel like she has an agency to her own decisions because everyone's judging her based on something that really wasn't in her control and she reacted normally with the guy is still like ogling her well yeah she's still being yeah

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

992.165

That's rough, buddy.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9928.769

which it's it's uh interesting to write that way and it's also not like our protagonist is evil because again this is like he's a 16 year old boy he's a 16 year old boy yeah yeah alina look at me she looked so full of uncertainty scared i put my other hand on her wrist i'm gonna go down there to the quabin she grabbed me by the shoulder and held me like i might fall it's okay

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9954.386

I couldn't help smiling at her concern. God damn, dude. Come on now. I won't go in. We're just going to listen for the bells. She studied my face. We were only inches apart. My heart was racing. Besides... I said as I leaned in. I want to... And I kissed her.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9979.343

There he is. I'm going to go listen. I'm going to go listen to the ethereal Lovecraftian bells that call out from a time now past.

CreepCast

Spire In The Woods | Creep Cast

9997.125

Average 16-year-old when confronted by a single Eastern European woman. Her lips were slow to respond. Doubts raced through me. Was she surprised? Was this a rejection? Did I cross the line? I felt like Scary Carrie must have back in Greenfield. But Alina didn't withdraw. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe it was just survivor's guilt. Oh! Oh! I don't like the wording on that one.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10017.848

No, Will's the guy who ran off with Diana. I'm saying the one who, when they were in the room with the car who turned out to be a ghost.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10035.576

You know what? Just just for that attitude, I think I'm going to draw it out a little bit longer. Vinny, however, looked unsure, as unsure as I felt inside. I remembered that Wyatt had babbled to us before throwing himself overboard.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10048.928

If they got that pissed off to serve as a suggestion to rob them, and even more about trying to sabotage the engines, what will they do to us if we try and set the ship on fire? My heart of hearts, I knew it was a bad idea. I knew that as the captain second in command, I was de facto leader now. Even if the ship I would have been leader of was long gone.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10068.527

But I also knew that if I tried to force the others away, there might be another fight. One that could clue our host aware of our intentions. So instead, I quickly jotted down another note. I honestly don't know if trying to burn the ship is a good idea, but I'll put it to a vote. If you want to burn the ship, write an X beneath this. If you don't, draw a circle.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1008.454

And with that, he turned and left the wheelhouse, heading back outside to help the others store the gear in preparation for our departure. I could hear the faint sound of them yelling to each other as they rushed about, the music playing again as well. I walked to the starboard windows and gazed out. The storm appeared closer now. The lightning flashes were becoming more frequent.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10090.694

Quickly, I drew a circle and passed the paper to them. Andrew and Spencer scribbled their answers down instantly. Finney took a while longer, all the while shooting glances at the others who gave him almost judgmental eyes. Finally, he took the pen and jotted his answer down, passing the paper back to me. Three X's stood beside my circle. Shit. I took a deep breath and looked at them.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10112.423

I knew I'd been right. Any attempt to dissuade them would make things worse. But was making things worse now worse than what might to come? I didn't have a chance to ponder that for long as I saw the others regarding the map of the ship. Andrew's face lit up as he tapped the half-moon-shaped room at the very front of the promenade deck, one that was marked Observation Lounge.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10133.323

He tapped at the label below it, Cocktail Bar. I knew what they wanted to go there for, alcohol, which they could make into Molotov cocktails. I shut the laptop down and closed it up as they stood, moving to the door as quietly as possible. As they did, the memory of being called to through the door suddenly forced its way to the front of my mind.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10153.078

I remembered hearing the three voices calling to me. First, Will.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10175.638

I like how every character in the story gets a British accent, but the one that's explicitly British. I refuse to give the actual British character a British voice. Then finally, the words that had followed me into my dreams, my nightmares. Those of the captains speaking directly to me. Nathan, we were so wrong to have been afraid of them.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10205.183

but i'm okay now i promise please open the door and come have a drink with me it's funny to imagine like this old soggy captain like pressed up against the door like nathan nathan i'm sorry nathan you gotta take me back could you also send a picture of you with your pants now

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10231.063

you know that okay where my bit was going in my head is there's that you know that thing that's like can you send a picture of you like from the front from the back one you know i'm talking about where it's like all right i didn't know whether it truly had been the man i looked up to for so long or just another facsimile to torment me i don't know which would be worse After a moment, I didn't.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1027.89

A particularly bright flash came. For a moment, my eyes locked on a particular cloud formation that had been silhouetted in it. I blinked my eyes rapidly, the rational side of my brain attempting to wrangle in the other. No, there's no way you just saw that. You know full well storms play trick on your eyes.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10278.314

The hallway was deserted as we slowly made our way towards the staircase to the upper decks. As we walked, I noticed with growing unease, and yes, dread, that there seemed to be more signs of life on the ship than there had been when we first arrived.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10291.141

Sets of period shoes ranging from men's wingtips to women's high heels had been left out in the hall next to closed cabin doors for someone to come and shine them. Ashtrays were passed contained cigarette butts. and as we stepped onto the landing, saw a sign on the concierge desk that read, Sorry, we stepped out for a moment. We'll be back shortly.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10313.156

It is like the ship is slowly coming back to life, like the ghosts on board are becoming more active the more the ship steams along. The thought caused another shiver to shoot up my spine. I couldn't understand why I'd had the thought, not right at that moment, anyways.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10329.178

climbed the stairs until we reached the landing to the promenade deck i've been looking down the steps as i climbed lost in thought when i accidentally walked straight into vinnie's back i stumbled backwards a little feeling as though i were about to begin tumbling back down the stairs like a scene from a comedy movie my nose painfully throbbed and i shot a look up all three men had come to a dead stop looking down the hallway to the right at something i couldn't see

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10356.616

Despite our situation, a pang of irritation bubbled up inside me and I pushed past Vinny, beginning to speak in a whisper. Why the hell did you guys... But my words died in my throat as I saw what they'd been looking at. Or, to be more precise, what they weren't looking at. The captain's body was gone. From where we stood, we could plainly see the entrance to the lounge where he'd been killed.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10381.264

We could even see the bloodstain which still stained the carpet. A mop and bucket standing next to it as if someone had been about to try cleaning it up. But the captain's body no longer lay there. And to make matters worse, there didn't appear to be any sign he'd been tracked off. As if he just vanished.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10399.505

Dread and tension permeated the air as we stared, and I felt the biggest chill yet run up my... He has had a lot of chills run up his spine, hasn't he? So many. It's cold. It's a very cold chill. It's a very chilly, chilly ship. This ship is freezing. Felt the chill run up my spine as I imagined the man's bloody corpse standing on the other side of the cabin door knocking. A smile on his face.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

104.417

And I don't see any links on their stuff to like any books or offsite, but they are an incredibly prolific no sleep writer. There are a ton of stories, titles like I used to love driving late at night or I don't shower with the door jar anymore. Or my wife and I went to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. They have a ton of stories. And this one comes highly recommended, at least on No Sleep Itself.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10427.828

I don't know about that. I would be more likely to say I think he'll run and scream. Oh, okay.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10436.938

Yes, so here's the order of events I think I'll have. I think he will see something and he'll almost scream. Oh, true. He'll choke on his words. He'll choke on his words and he'll almost scream, but then he'll see something else and that will cause a chill up his spine that causes him to run and then he'll scream as he's running. Yeah, okay. That's what they call it. That formula seems correct.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10458.752

That's my call. Yeah. Come on. Andrew finally whispered the move forward heading for the bow of the ship. As we followed the signs to the observation deck and cocktail bar, I began to feel sure and sure that this wasn't just a big mistake. This was going to be a fatal one. Along with it came a new feeling, a new thought. Why the hell am I just playing along with this malarkey?

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1046.283

Shaking my head, I returned to the helm, turning off the autopilot and nudging the throttle forwards, hearing the rumble of the engines increase. I kept telling myself that I'd been seeing things, but another shiver ran up my spine as I couldn't shake the image from my mind. The image of a cloud formed to the shape of a human skull. What a delightful trip. Absolute hell. Nothing bad happening.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The captain chose me because I always knew what's best. I laid him down by doing this. That thought was what decided for me. Picked up the pace and sped past the three, coming to a stop in the middle of the hallway and shooting my arms out to the side to block the way. I spoke, my voice low. Guys, no.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10505.531

Guys, stop it. Guys, think this through. Let's talk about this.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10515.218

I saw a surprise enter Vinny's face. On Andrew and Spencer's, I saw irritation, even anger flash. Get the hell out of the way, Nate. Spencer hissed, shook my head.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10533.159

If you keep doing that voice, I'm enjoying myself. If you do that voice, me and the audience are going to immediately lose it.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10577.184

Veins popped out of his forehead. I could see any rational side of him had been overtaken by emotion. He wasn't thinking. He wanted to lash out one final time at them for the deaths of our crewmates. I knew what would come next, but I didn't budge. Instead, shaking my head and standing my ground. Even though I anticipated it, the punch still caught me half by surprise.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10597.371

I didn't realize just how strong Andrew was with how wiry of a build he had. I crashed into a heap on the floor. My head smashed into the wooden wall as he loomed over me, fistballed as if ready to take another swing at me. He leaned down and got right in my face, spit striking my nose and cheeks as he spat at me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10623.816

With that, he strode past me. Spencer only stopped and just spit at me before following. I looked up at Vinny, feeling a small trickle of blood begin dripping from just above my eyebrow where Andrew's ring had caught me. Please don't. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to agree with me. Then he shook his head, his shoulders slumping as he succumbed to the peer pressure of the others.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10644.303

I'm sorry. He whispered softly before following after them. That's funny how he went from like, the captain shows me. I'm the new captain. Like men stop. And now he's like on the ground bleeding. He's on the ground.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I turned and watched him hurry down the hall before disappearing out of sight around a corner. I fought the urge to scream after them. Sangry and hopeless as I felt, I didn't want to bring the spectral horde their way. You stupid fucks. I whispered quietly to myself before slowly hauling myself to my feet. I stood there, trying to calm myself for a moment. Felt almost impossible to do.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10692.412

And in the heat of the moment, I made the grade A mistake I will forever regret. The one that will eat away at my soul forever. I didn't follow after them. Instead, I turned and stalked away in the opposite direction. The rational side of my brain screamed at me how dumb an idea this was. What are you doing? You're not supposed to split up. This is leaving you so damn vulnerable and open.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10713.497

But I didn't care. The anger that consumed me silenced my inner warnings, and I walked back onto the landing. I stopped there, breathing heavily. I again cursed the others. You fucking morons. As I stood there trying to compose myself, a familiar but most unwelcome feeling washed over me. A massive shiver shot up my spine. Ah, there we go. Another shiver up the spine.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10737.738

That's one for the bingo card. The light of so cold.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10746.524

Mate, it is frigid. Did I mention it was five degrees Fahrenheit?

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1075.371

I know. Let's get on the point of no return. Let's go out farther than we're supposed to. Watch Perfect Storm.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10758.815

Washed away by a surge of fear and terror.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10764.701

Oh, hell, dude. Slowly, I turned to look behind me and I felt my blood run cold, still cold, skin cold, at what I saw.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10783.838

Oh, God, I can't. It's so cold. The scene of him, like, stamping, like, he's on a ghost ship where, like, you can get trapped in hell. And he's like, well, I know I shouldn't go off on myself, but I'm just so upset.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10812.03

Oh, that's right. I forgot how cold it was. I'm shivering. Yep. Standing almost directly on the spot where the captain's body had been lying, in the middle of the bloodstain was one of the shadowy figures. It stood dead still, and even though it had no face, I could tell from the feeling I'd had that it was looking directly at me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10830.233

Then a new fear began to flood into me, one that came with a thought that, as I might, I couldn't push away. What if that's... the captain? I let out a gasp, feeling my heart begin to beat harder in my chest. I couldn't take the thought that I might be about to be attacked by the spirit of the man I'd looked up to as a father figure.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10851.282

So I turned and hurried into the opposite hall, heading in the direction of the stern. The feeling of being watched intensified as I hurried down the hall, and I mentally cursed myself for letting my emotions lead me into such a dangerous spot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I shot glances over my shoulder, feeling that at any moment I'd see the figure shoot around the corner in pursuit of me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10871.968

Or worse, see all of them appear. Trying to find someplace I could duck into to potentially hide. A sign appeared, hanging down from the ceiling with an arrow pointing to the right. Theater. Not knowing where else to go, I jogged right until I saw the large door with an identical sign above it. Yanking open the heavy door, I jumped inside and pulled it shut behind me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1088.781

uh having an unsuspected storm that's not being caught on your radar i don't know i like that it's fun it's a classic like ocean mystery setup i think i did yeah very like scooby-doo we only made it about seven or eight miles west when the storm overtook us i've been on the water my entire life and i've been fishing on commercial vessels since i was 18 years old

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Trying not to breathe loudly, I pulled back on the inner handle as hard as I could, seeing with a sinking feeling that there was no lock on this side of the door. Not like it would do much good if they went in here. But as the moments ticked by into minutes, nothing came. No force ripped the door out of my hands. I began to breathe a little easier.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10912.092

Feeling my heartbeat begin to slow as relief swept over me. Feeling safe that I wasn't about to be swarmed, I finally turned around to look at the room I'd entered. I found myself staring past red drapes, which had been pulled back. In the low light, I saw dozens, no, hundreds of empty red seats stretching out away from me towards the back of the room, and blue carpeting covered the floor.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10934.048

I only had a moment to look at the ivory white walls before I froze, realizing something. It should have been dark, almost pitch black in there. There was no windows to the outside, meaning it should have been like trying to walk around with your eyes closed. But it wasn't, and my eyes flickered up at the back wall. I realized why. The projector was playing.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

10960.247

I suddenly became aware of sounds playing from the speakers on the walls. A lump formed in my throat, and even though every fiber of my being told me to leave, I instead stepped from the entryway into the theater itself. taking half a dozen steps or so until I was halfway up the far right aisle. I turned to look at the screen.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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A movie was indeed playing, and not knowing what else to do, I sat down in one of the seats. I could tell the movie was old, both by the fact that it was in black and white, and the scene of what had to be London in the mid-50s.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Well, the craziest thing to, to me about it, because it was like the family sold the rights to the story or something like that. The craziest thing to me is how he's depicted, especially in the movie where in real life he was, I think they like adopted him when he was like 14, 15 and he was already like a pretty good football player. And they just kind of like helped him get into a good school.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But in the movie, it's like he's so stupid. He doesn't know what football is. So the eight year old white kid has to explain to him how football works.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11083.607

Oh yeah, almost certainly. Like, I... The real story seems so... That's a fucking horror film right there.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11094.793

The real plot of it, yeah. Oh, you can say with us. Don't worry. Um... Now, it's wild to me to be like, imagine you adopted like a kid who sure was from a troubled background, but he was like fine. And like, you know, you like took care of him and stuff. And then when it's time to make the movie, you're like, what if we make him stupid?

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1110.916

I've seen many strange and sometimes unexplainable things, and I've seen my fair share of storms, some very bad. But I'm not exaggerating when I tell you I've never seen a storm as fierce as this one. Twenty minutes after the dark gray, almost black clouds slid over my head. The point of no return was being hammered by twelve to fourteen foot swells crashing water under the deck.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Because the whole movie, it's like, oh, he actually has a heart of gold because the character in the film is too dumb to say things. There's the scene where he gets into a car wreck and he sticks his arm out to save the kid.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And he can't just be like, He can't be like, Oh, I'm injured. My arm hurts. Cause I was trying to take care of the kid. He's covering it.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11232.091

I do remember that. You're going to Bama.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11281.366

He's like, oh, there was that whole era of like the white savior films that happened for a while.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11299.164

I grew up evangelical, like, well, maybe not even adjacent to evangelical stuff. So that movie was like all anyone talked about. That was a big deal for us.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1134.056

The wind howled as fiercely as a banshee, and the world around us turned almost pitch black, the only illumination coming from the almost blinding flashes of lightning, which were followed by roars of thunder. I gripped the helm with hands that had begun turning white at the knuckles, bracing my legs for each impact.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11348.321

There was a lot of that growing up where it was drilled into my head for so long. When you get out of churches and Christian schools, because I went to Christian school growing up, it's like, they're going to hate you. You're going to like you're going to be the enemy.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Everyone's going to be like like I see tick tocks about now where people are like what I thought the world would be like outside of church. And it was like, oh, you want to go to you want to shop at the Starbucks? Well, you have a cross on your necklace. So security, if you get this idea, you're going to be like super persecuted. So like that was that kind of gave it.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11405.799

But no, the idea of a college professor being like right down on a piece of paper that you renounce your religion is insane.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11421.991

Yeah. Just like, this is, this is insane. Malpractice.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11436.482

I'd visited the city in 2004 as a teenager, and I instantly recognized Trafalgar Square as different as I was seeing it now. The scene began to follow a woman in a trench coat who always walked with her back to the camera as she got into a cab and was shortly dropped off. As she walked, I suddenly noticed something. The woman had very familiar platinum blonde hair hanging down to her shoulders.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11462.918

Instantly, the little curiosity I had vanished, and I felt a heavy pit begin to form itself inside my stomach, but it was as if I had been paralyzed. I could do nothing but watch as the scene continued, the woman reaching a door and attempting to open it before hiding as what looked like an old thunderbird rounded the corner.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11480.748

As another woman got out and the music began to swell, I felt my heart begin to thump in my chest, dread washing over me in waves. But not because of the tension the movie was clearly trying to give off, it was because I felt sure of who I was about to see.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And as the blonde woman reappeared again, pulling a revolver from her purse and aiming it at her, the camera changed, revealing her face, and she began to fire. I let out a strangled scream. He screamed so much. Fuck Nathan. You're looking at a screen. You know where you're at.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1151.121

The captain stood beside me, gripping the metal railing next to the helm to keep from falling. Just keep going! He yelled at me. Some of the crew stood behind us, staring out at the maelstrom with wide, frightened eyes. It was a fear that I found infectious. For as much as I kept calm for all outer appearances, inside I was terrified.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The one I'd seen with her arm around him in the pool. Diane. You know, this was my proudest moment as an actress. I felt the blood drain from my face. The voice, sultry one with an unmistakable British accent. The same one. The same one I heard calling to us through the door last night hadn't come from the speakers. Come from directly behind me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Feeling my body begin to shake as fear and adrenaline surge through my system. Slowly turn and look behind me. and a pair of sapphire blue eyes gazed back. That did it. I leapt out of the chair, spinning to face the woman as she rose from her own. She gestured to the screen where the movie continued to play.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11600.481

The wistful... I'm British. The wistful look left her eyes and focused on me.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11615.39

Every fiber of my being was screaming at me. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to run. But it was as though I'd once again been paralyzed. I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak. Only stand and stare. That's when her face changed, instantly turning from the half-warm, half-eerie smile to ice. You're right, you know.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11645.545

All it's going to do is make us mad. My eyes went wide as the realization hit. Renewed horror filling me. They know. You know how we get when we get angry, Nathan. I finally managed to take a step back, seemingly able to speak again. The words of one of you that I'd often seen flash through my mind. Of asking these ghosts, demons, whatever, a question. My mind still screamed at me to run.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11673.527

It was a slight hope that I could reason with them, perhaps convince them to let us go was too much. So, I asked, my voice trembling.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11686.658

Instantly, I realized how dumb my choice had been as Diana began to laugh. Small snickers at first, then blossoming into loud giggles. They stopped as she smiled at me, one that, despite the fact it made her look strikingly beautiful, made me feel as though I wanted to scream. We want you, Nathan. We want all of you. She took a step forward. I took a step back.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1170.37

As horrifying as horror movie monsters are made out to be, they don't hold a candle to the existential dread and terror that Mother Nature at her worst can instill you with. Suddenly, Wyatt, one of our engineers, flew up the stairs from below. Captain, we're taking on water somewhere, and I can't find the source! So many of the crew's faces go pale, but the captain remained calmed.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11709.794

My eyes flicker into the exit behind me as she spoke again.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11745.08

Her eyes flew open again, locking on me. I just began to take a step back when I again felt rooted to the spot.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11763.311

Her face suddenly contorted into the most wicked, evil smirk I've ever seen in my life.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11771.258

Her words stabbed into my soul, filling me with horror the likes I'd never felt before. In that instant, I knew there was no reasoning with them. There was no bargain that could be made for us to leave. They would never let us leave. They wanted to take us back to where God only knew. And they'd done it to countless other people. How many people lost at sea is due to them.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11793.536

I let out an involuntary gasp as I finally manage... You know what? If I know anything about my boy Nathan, I know he's working up a scream. If I, you know, shot in the dark, if this man gets a noise out, it either is a scream or it's working its way to his scream.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11818.932

Yeah, and run and get cold. I let out an involuntary gasp as I finally managed to take another step back and froze. See? Cold. My blood turned to ice in my veins. See?

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11843.641

I finally did scream because Diana's eyes weren't the only ones on me anymore. There were hundreds of eyes. Hungry eyes that occupied every seat in the room. I turned and ran. Ran for the exit as every person in their seats melted into the horrific shadowy figures that had chased and terrified us ever since we'd come aboard.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The whispering, laughter, and screaming which had plagued my nightmares was so loud in my ears I felt as though my eardrums burst and began bleeding.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11969.246

It's like, I'm not going in there. Would you do it for two Scooby snacks? Yeah, yeah.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

11982.858

I think you're right, but I don't think it will be an item. It will be like an emotional thing. Like you'll remember like literally it might literally be a dog treat. I don't know. That'd be great. Okay. My arm stretched out and reach to the door of the hallway. I slammed into it with all my might and bounced off it, crashing back onto my ass on the floor. What the hell?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I stumbled to my feet, running for the door and slamming into it again. And just like the first time, it didn't budge at all. No! I screamed out, ramming it a third time. But the metal refused to give. It was locked. I froze, my body beginning to violently shake as the voice reached me. A voice I knew well. A voice which had called to me through the door last night, along with Diana and Will.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

1201.842

For a moment, nobody moved until he barked again. Do you want to end up at the bottom of the ocean? Move your asses! That got their attention, and they quickly followed Wyatt down the stairs to the crew quarters and lower decks. As we crested another huge swell, I spared a glance at the radar screen.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I slowly turned to look behind me. All the shadowy figures stood less than ten feet away from me. The whispering, laughter, and screaming had stopped, allowing the speaker to be heard. One of the shadows took the first step forward, and then it spoke again. It's time for you to join us. I turned and began hammering on the doors the captain's word echoed in my ears, sheer terror fueling my screams.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Somebody open the fucking door! I began to cry. This is it. These are the last moments of your life, all because you screwed up. You're dead. My mind began to shut down, trying in some physical reaction to spare me the horror that was about to happen to me. I snap back to reality. That's a dude. Okay. All right. I'll give you one. I'll give you one.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But the third time of making me think about Eminem in the middle of a ghost story, the main influences for the ghost ship story was, uh, I snapped back to reality as the voice came from the other side of the door. For a moment, I thought I'd finally snapped like Wyatt had. Then the voice came again. Nate, are you in there? It's Vinny, my mind screamed at me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I began furiously pounding on the door again. Seeing out of the corner of my eye, the figures began to sweep towards me. Vinny, unlock the door for God's sake. I heard the sound of him beginning to fumble with the lock. I shot a glance over my shoulder and screamed. I shot a glance over my shoulder and screamed again as I saw the figures less than a foot away from me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Now in my head, it's like, it's like a Oni plays animation of like, ah! The door wrenched open and I was suddenly falling forwards, crashing to the floor and feeling pain as the abrasive carpet tore at my hands and elbows. For a moment, I was unable to think, the realization that I'd been saved causing my brain to short circuit.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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till the horror of realizing where Vinny stood smashed into me like a brick wall. I flipped around, my eyes wide, as I screamed at my friend. Vinny, get away from the door! But it was too late.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The only way I can describe what happened in those next moments is that it happened exactly like the scene in the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill, the one where Chris Kattan's character opens the basement door to let the others out and is snatched and dragged into the evil mass inside. So I went to Vinny.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I caught a split-second look of the horror on his face as he saw the figures reaching out to grab him. The next, he was gone. Yanked inside the theater, the door slamming shut behind him. I screamed helplessly, reaching out a hand as if I could pull him back through the door with sheer will, but nothing happened. Vinny! The ship became deathly silent again for a moment, but only for a moment.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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It still showed no sign of the storm on its green screen as the line made its way around in a circle. I shook my head, feeling a strange feeling, one I couldn't place come over me. But I pushed it away, forcing myself to focus. Everyone's counting on you, Nate. Keep your head in the game, and pray to the good lord above you make it out of this. I shot a glance at the captain.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The sound of racing feet suddenly sprang up from behind me. I spun around, beginning to frantically crab walk backwards as my mind screamed at me that the figures were now coming for me. Instead, I felt a wave of shock as Andrew and Spencer flew around the corner, terrified looks in their eyes. Knight, get the fuck up!

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Spencer screamed at me, reaching out a hand and almost tearing my arm out of my socket as he wrenched me into my feet. Run! Run! I didn't question him, I just ran. I ran after the two as the ominous, terrifying sounds of whispering, laughing, and screaming began filtering down from the hallway they'd emerged from.

CreepCast

My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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It scared me almost more than anything in how pissed it sounded, more than when they'd caught us trying to sabotage the engines. We sprinted for the stairs, taking them down two at a time, and only able to think about staying a step ahead of our pursuers. I don't know how long we ran, only that I was only able to keep going from the sheer amount of adrenaline that kept filling me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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That, and the image of Vinny being dragged into the theater to fade I can only pray was quick. We headed for the only place we knew, our cabin. We slammed inside, shut it, locked it, and proceeded to pile as much furniture in the room against it, trying to make what was likely a futile barricade, but one nonetheless. It was the only thing we could think to do.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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When we finished, I turned to the two men. What the fuck happened? I demanded. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Andrew spoke, his voice shaking.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Looked down at the floor, unable to speak anymore. There was silence in the room for a while.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Andrew finally asked. My eyes flashed up to him, and I felt the heat of rage burn in my stomach. I wanted to scream at him, strike him like he'd done to me, but I held it back as I saw the look in his eyes. He was broken. So I simply answered. He didn't make it. In my words, I saw both men's shoulders slump. We're not getting out of here alive, are we?

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I took a deep breath and spoke, a voice calm and authoritative, like the captain had always spoken.

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I didn't say the last part out loud, but I didn't have to. And so as the sun began to set again on the horizon, we planned. Their sleep now both passed out on the bed, but not after each went into the bathroom for a few minutes and then softly crying to themselves. Part of my heart felt for them, but another still burned with the fire and hatred of a thousand sons.

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You really think we're going to make it through this, Gabe? I asked, the seriousness in my using his first name, making him look hard at me before clapping a hand on my shoulder.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's where, where did that come from? If it hadn't been for their harebrained idea, everything that happened today wouldn't have. It was your idea. Didn't you make the... Okay, whatever. If Andrew hadn't punched me, I wouldn't have stormed off.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Unable to think straight. I would have gotten to that theater and video and still be alive. This dude sucks. Yeah, I hate Nathan. He's so annoying. But as much as it kills me inside to say, I'm as much to blame as they are. No, Nathan, you are more to blame. He's like, I'll admit a little fault.

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Did I tell you the other guys cried earlier? Crumb of accountability. But they cried. That's the more important factor. I should have been more level-headed. I shouldn't have let my emotions get the best of me. And part of me thinks I should have just let the figures take me. That would have been best for everyone. Instead of him ending up as a sacrificial alternate for me. Benny, I'm so sorry.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I'm so, so sorry. I'm staring out the porthole now as I type this out. I watch the moon rise in the sky and glimmer off the waves. It's all I feel like I mentally can do now. But I know I have to pull myself together before dawn. We want to have any chance to escape off the Queen Elizabeth alive.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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There's no choice but for it to be tomorrow, because as I said here typing this, another program was jammed underneath the cabin door, flying under our barricade. When I flicked on my flashlight, I saw that someone had written in black ink at the bottom, for Nathan only. When I flipped it open, I noted two things. The first is that the date on this one doesn't say 2023 like the last one.

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The date says Monday, June 25th, 1956. Second, it's the first notice at the top of the left page. Two days until arrival in New York City. If you have not already bought your travel papers in the purser's office, please do it no later than 4 p.m. tomorrow evening. Thank you. I honestly don't know if the words that Diana told me are true or not.

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about the past ever dying, simply moving to a different dimension when it changes, where the world stays stuck forever in one time period, endlessly repeating over and over for eternity. But I honestly don't want to know. The idea of such a world horrifies me almost worse than everything we've been through.

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And I think if she's right and we don't escape tomorrow, the New York City we'll arrive in won't be ours. So I'm going to try and rest. The music's beginning again from the lounge. Not a big band song this time, but a slow love ballad. A song my grandfather used to sing to my grandmother. Earth Angel by the Penguins.

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He declared, pulling out a pipe from his pocket and lighting it. Thick, hazy smoke filled the room as he spoke again. I've been through far worse than this, after all. Somehow, I doubted the man's words, but I tried to let them bring some much-needed comfort to me. A large wave crashed over the bow, splashing the front windows with water and obscuring my view ahead for a few moments.

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As much as I dread the nightmares that are going to come, seeing Vinny be taken, I need my rest. Need as much of it as I can get. If we're going to carry out our plan, dump all the lifeboats off the starboard side of the ship, then leap off the stern far enough away from the propellers where we won't be sucked in and swim for them. Hopefully make it back to land.

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I'm not going to ask you guys for advice this time. This is the one time I don't think you can help us. I can never thank you enough, all of you. You've helped us, kept us going when we didn't have any clue what to do. You've given us the hope to keep going, a tiny connection to the world, to sanity, and everything good. You're all wonderful people, and I'm indebted to you for life.

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But now, now's the part we have to do on our own. But if we don't make it, thank you for help giving us a fighting chance, at least. I do ask you one thing, though. Please, wish us luck.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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All right, final part. It's finally over. As I sit here typing these words out on the laptop with the ocean spray splashing my face, I almost can't believe it. The last few days have felt like nothing more than one long, continuous nightmare that I can never wake from. It's what I imagine it must be like for someone in a coma, locked in endless sleep. But it's over. The nightmare's over.

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Before I tell you what happened, let me just say one thing to all of you reading this, all of you who did all you could to help me and give me advice. I know I've said it so many times now that I probably sound like a broken record, but I need to say it one final time. Thank you. I forget any of you for everything you did for me, and if I can ever return the favor, I will.

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That being said, it's time. Time to tell you what happened. When the three of us woke up, it was still dark out. According to my wristwatch, it was only a little after six in the morning. None of us said a word to each other, only exchanging nervous but determined glances as we packed the things we thought we needed to a single bag, including all the food and water we had left.

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As I shoved the final things in, Andrew came up beside me, holding out another sheet of paper on which he'd written something. Nate, I'm so, so sorry about yesterday. I read the note and looked up at the man's somber face. I still felt the angry heat in me, but I pushed it down and simply nodded at him. Now wasn't the time to hold a grudge, regardless of whether it was deserved or not.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I took the pen and wrote a message back. Let's just focus on getting out of here. Nothing else matters. He read it then nodded, seeming a bit relieved. I cast one final look at the program, which had been shoved under the door last night. I lay on the room's writing desk, the declaration of reaching port staring up at me like a tombstone. Freedom or death, I thought. One of them happens today.

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Stealing myself, I motioned to our barricade, which I gratefully managed to hold through the night. Trying to remain as quiet as possible, we pulled the chairs, nightstands, and other items away until the door was clear. I took a deep breath, feeling a mixture of fear and anticipation be unrising. then reached out and took the doorknob in my hand.

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I looked up, locking my eyes with Andrew and Spencer. He slowly nodded at me. Here we go. I turned the knob, pulling the door open. In silence, we crept down the hallway, looked as deserted as always, though the shoes still sat next to cabin doors. I became aware of one difference from yesterday, though, something that made the fear and uneasiness increase. The ship was no longer silent.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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When it cleared, the world outside was again pitch black, the outer lights of the boat barely illuminating twenty feet around us. Strong vibrations suddenly emanated from the floor beneath my feet and I shot a glance down at the metal. What the hell was that? My answer was given a moment later as another crew member, Andrew, ran up the stairs.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The intercom had been turned on again sometime during the night. As I listened, I realized the first ever song that had played when we'd powered the ship up was filtering out from the speakers. You belong to me. I shivered slightly, but listening to the music strengthened my resolve. Yeah, see about belonging to you.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And also just the premise, the title of it seemed really cool. My crew and I are stuck aboard an abandoned ship and we don't do like I'm terrified of the sea and I like nautical stories and like nautical horror and stuff like that. So I am eager for any excuse to crack into a story like this. So I'm looking forward to it.

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Making sure the bag over my shoulder didn't make any sound, we entered the landing. The first thing I noticed was that a sign had been set up next to the floor's concierge desk. I stopped for a second to read it. Horse Racing Sign Up. Next to it was an open ledger, inside which many people had signed their names, along with their cabin numbers.

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My eyes flickered down the list, seeing many names that I didn't recognize. Ones of people who had passed from this world decades ago or longer. Then I froze. It felt like someone had dumped the frigid seawater down my back. My eyes read and reread the last three names on the signup list. I saw Will's name, the captain's name, and Vinny's. Wait a minute. That means that Wyatt isn't trapped, right?

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Wyatt and Kenny? Yeah, maybe. That means that it's... Okay, so we're back to your plan, Hunter, of throwing ourselves into the ship propeller. It works. Thank God. I closed my eyes and turned away from the ledger, feeling as though my emotions were about to overwhelm me. Seeing his name, knowing that all three of my crewmates were among them, shattered a piece of my soul.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Especially because I knew there was nothing I could do for them. Not now. Someone patted me on the shoulder, opened my eyes, turning to find Spencer standing beside me. He wore a grim expression on his face and looked from me to the letter, having seen the same horrific sight I had. For a moment, I did nothing. Then I nodded at him, turning to follow him and Andrew up the stairs.

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The lifeboats were hooked up on the promenade deck, which is where we were heading. The plan was to hide the bag of supplies near the stern railing of the ship behind a few of the giant cleats used for mooring. Then ready all the lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship to drop.

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Normally they would slowly be lowered from the davits via steel cables, but I had noted there was a sort of quick disconnect switch, which would allow the small boat to simply free fall to the water. All of us knew damn well that the moment the ship's inhabitants realized what we were doing, they would send everything they had after us to stop us.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And that meant the second we launched the last of the lifeboats, we would have to quite literally run for our lives to the stern, snatching up the supplies before leaping overboard. From there, it was simply a matter of making it to one of the lifeboats, climbing inside and rowing like mad away.

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The idea conjured up an image from an old horror 80s horror movie I'd seen about a possessed ship of it turning to run down its escaping prey. It was replaced by the horrific sight of the Queen Elizabeth coming about to do the same to us. I pray to God that doesn't decide to do that, because we'll be sitting ducks.

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He was soaked with seawater and his eyes darted around in their sockets in panic.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Shaking the thought and image from my mind, we reached the top stairs of the promenade deck, looking around. The music continued to play, the song changing to Mr. Sandman by the Chardettes. Aside from that, though, the ship was silent in the gloom, which meant that they hadn't caught on to our plan yet, and that gave us more of a fighting chance.

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I whispered the first words any of us had uttered that day. Motioning to them, I knelt down into a crouch and slowly began moving down the corridor, two following close behind. As we reached a corner, a sign hanging overhead pointed in the direction which showed the way to the outer deck. Something filtered out from down the hall in the other direction, in the direction of the theater.

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It was the sound of laughter. Not eerie, sinister laughter, but the genuine, infectious laughter of people who have been bowled over by something hilarious. Even still, the sound sent chill after chill down my back. They're watching a movie, I realized. For a moment, I wondered if our lost crewmates were sitting beside them, watching. I shook my head. Knock it off, Nate.

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I jerked my head, putting my finger to my lips as we reached the door to outside. Feeling my entire body tense up, I reached out, grabbing the handle and slowly pulling it down. It opened, the smell of the ocean immediately rushing into my nostrils in the hall. Moving quickly, we stepped outside and closed the door behind us.

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Andrew easing the door shut as quietly as he could, then he finally spoke, his whisper almost torn away by the whipping wind.

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Together, the three of us descended a few sets of stairs until we reached the stern deck. Thankfully, it seemed as deserted as the rest of the ship. Moving quickly, we scuttled over and set down the bag. Step one was complete. As we slowly began to back away, the hairs on the back of my neck stretched straight up.

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I froze as the shiver, which came with the sensation of being watched, passed over me. My heart began to beat hard and fast in my chest.

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shit swallowing I slowly turned and looked at the massive decks over our heads expected to see a shadowy figure staring down at me no one was there what what'd you see Andrew hissed at me steered up for a moment longer before shaking my head nothing nothing I just thought we were being watched for a moment their faces paled slightly at my words but they nodded come on let's get back upstairs

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So the color began to come back to their faces, the fearful looks melting back into the determined ones they had until now. I shot a look off the side of the ship. The sun was beginning to raise itself over the horizon, the orange glow giving way to the yellow glare as it looked to be pulling itself out of the sea. Turning back, I jerked my head forwards. Let's go.

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We made our way back up to the promenade deck and began readying our potential escape vessels to drop. It was extremely, almost painfully slow going, especially trying to be quiet. Some of the hinges had formed patches of rust, making the davits hard to swing out and the levers even harder to raise.

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But eventually, every single lifeboat on the starboard side of the Queen Elizabeth dangled high above the water, which moved by below. The three of us stopped for a moment to wipe our brows, and we allowed ourselves a small smile at our accomplishment. We might actually make it out of this. We might actually pull this off. Thoughts in a surge of hope, almost giddiness to flow through me.

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Not giving me a chance to answer, he turned away, beginning to head towards the companionway stairs. I just turned back to look out the window when the brightest flash of lightning came, turning the world around us for night to day. It also revealed something dead ahead, something that made my heart almost stop. Oh, fuck my life. Racing towards the point of no return was a rogue wave. Oh, fuck.

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When I get back home, I'm going to literally kneel down and kiss the ground beneath my feet, and I'm never setting foot on or in the ocean again. Now came the final task, making sure that the coast was clear and that we hadn't been spotted and swarmed. None of us had discussed this portion of the plan yet, mostly due to the fact of what it entailed.

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Simultaneous looks of guilt and relief entered the other men's eyes, and after a moment in which I saw them inwardly fight with themselves, they nodded. I began to turn away when Spencer spoke.

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I looked back, seeing the barely disguised fear on his face. Not fear for him, for me. Yeah? I asked, took a deep breath, and answered.

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A small bit of gratitude for the gesture flooded me and I nodded at him.

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With that, I opened the door and slipped back inside. Tension filled every fiber and sinew of muscle in my body as I crept forwards, hearing the pounding of my heart inside my eardrums as sweat began trickling down my face. Everything seemed the same. The music still played over the speakers and the ship still remained silent.

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I didn't hear the laughter anymore, but that could just be because whatever film they were watching wasn't in the middle of a funny scene right now. At least, I hoped. Took another few steps towards the T-junction ahead, straining my ears for any abnormal sound. Still it remained quiet, but they really don't know what we're up to.

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Keeping my breathing as quiet and shallow as possible, I finally reached the T-junction, taking a single, deep breath before stepping out into the middle of it. I cast a look in all directions I could see. Nothing moved in the stillness. Time to leave. I turned and gave the two faces in the door's porthole a thumbs up, then crossed my arms and made a slicing motion.

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Both of them burst into elated grins and disappeared, dashing to begin dropping the boats as I turned to joy them.

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The voice from over my right shoulder froze me on the spot, my feet rooting themselves to the floor. Every ounce of hope and happiness I had was sucked away from me like a loved one in the grip of a tsunami, replaced by the mixture of horror, fear, and dread. Oh, fuck. My breathing became ragged and I felt tears begin to spill from my eyes. Slowly, I turned my head to look behind me.

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Will stood there, looking as alive and human as he had the last time I'd seen him, next to the pool. He cocked his head, slowly giving it a shake as a sad, pitying smile played over his lips. It was a valiant effort.

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He jerked his head towards the door leading outside to the last hope of my salvation.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Especially getting those two bird brains to work together with you. A second voice spoke up to my right. But the game's over now, darling. My head swiveled to see that Diana now stood between me and the exit. And she wasn't alone. It looked like at least a dozen men, women, and children stood beside and behind her, all wearing clothing from the mid-20th century.

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They all wore amused smiles on their faces, their eyes fixated on me. Behind them, I could hear the dull thunk of the lifeboats being released. My dear boy, Nathan. The biggest chill yet ran up my spine, and I slowly turned around to find three of the four hallways packed with people. Hundreds, no, thousands, were stretched away and out of sight.

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Wearing not only old clothing, but crew uniforms as well. They're all here. Then my eyes fixated on the man who'd spoken. Spoken with the voice I'd heard through the radio that second day, welcoming me aboard. He was dressed in a captain's uniform, a white cap sitting atop his head. I knew instantly who he was. It was the man that Andrew and Spencer had seen.

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I tried setting on fire and then running from the captain of the Queen Elizabeth. He smiled an ear-to-ear smile that reminded me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Only this grin wasn't going to be followed with raising any philosophical points or trying to cheer me up. This grin held a wicked hunger and it made me feel as though I were staring at the devil himself.

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One that dwarfed all the swells around us. My mind screamed at me that it had to be at least 30 or 40 feet high, enough that it blocked out the sky ahead. Captain! I screamed at the top of my lungs. I heard him stop and the sound of his footsteps as he dashed back next to me.

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Then two figures stepped out behind him. Two figures had made the blood drain from my face. The captain spoke again. I think you know what you have to do now, everyone. And I finally wrenched my mouth open and screamed. Why? Why would you? He's scared. I know. He's scared. He's so scary.

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Scream was all the air in my lungs as I watched him, Vinny, and the captain, my captain, and all of them melted to the shadowy figures that had stalked and pursued us from the day we'd stepped aboard. I didn't wait for them to make a move. I turned and ran. I ran in the only direction that was available to me, back down the hallway that led to the lounge and the stairs.

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Sparing a glance behind me, I screamed again as what I can only describe as a maelstrom flew after me. The maddening whispers, screams and laughs emanating from them melting together into what I can only assume is what hell itself sounds like.

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Running faster than I ever had in my life, I reached the landing and made a dash for the stairs, but I'd only taken a few steps down when I heard even more of the infernal noise rising up from down below. I peered over the banister and down the space between the stairwell, and I felt a new surge of terror as I saw even more swirling figures surging up the stairs. Shit!

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I yelled, turning and sprinting back up the stairs. I emerged back onto the landing just as the figures which had originally started chasing me entered. Black, soot-like arms reached out to snatch me, and I ducked, managing to dodge them with less than an inch to spare.

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I ran towards the open doors to the lounge, my momentary thoughts of running for the observation room squashed, as I heard yet still more whispers coming from around the corner of the hallway to it. I had no other choice aside from turning around and letting them take me, and that was not happening.

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I burst into the lounge, almost tripping over one of the chairs that still lay on its side and racing forward the crew hallway we'd first entered the ship from. As I made it to the center of the room, I could see it, the door hanging slightly open. I have to make it. It's my only way to escape.

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Momentary surge of hope filled me as I reached it, heaving it open, and then died as a shadowy hand thrust out from the darkened companionway, trying to snatch me and pull me in. I stumbled backwards, almost falling as I turned to run the other way. Panic and fear that was slowly driving me now as I made it to the middle of the room. And skidded to a stop. I was completely surrounded.

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Spun around in a circle, feeling the strongest wave of horror burst forth as I saw the shadowy figures had made a circle around me. There was nowhere left for me to run. I began to shake uncontrollably as I watched them slowly close the circle more. Tears began to fall from my eyes as the grim reality of my situation slammed into me. There's nowhere for me to run anymore. Nowhere for me to go.

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I'm not getting out of this. I'm going to die here. I just hope Spencer and Andrew manage to make it off. And then one more thought. God, please don't let it hurt. I closed my eyes. Nate! My eyes shot open, flicking over the shoulders of the shadowy figures as they stopped and turned back to look. At Andrew and Spencer, who had dashed to the doorway of the lounge, panicked looks on their faces.

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Their eyes found mine, and I saw their faces go pale, and they saw my situation. Then, to my horror, some of the figures turned and began to move towards them. "'No!' I began screaming. "'Hey, I'm here!

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Figures turned back to me, and I heard the whispers morph until the only sound I could hear was them laughing. It's when I heard Andrew scream at me. Nate, look out! I looked up to see him pointing his finger. Behind me, I spun around, catching a glimpse of something rocketing towards me.

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With a terrified realization, I recognized it as one of the giant lamps that had been set up in the four corners of the lounge. And at that speed, the huge marble and glass behemoth was traveling. I would be killed instantly if it hit me. It was what was meant to kill me. I didn't think there wasn't time to. I simply turned and dove to the floor.

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The carpet slammed into my face as I felt the monstrosity whizz less than a foot over my head. Seconds later, I heard it slam into the opposite wall with a thunderous crash. For a moment, I could do nothing but lay there, the shock of not being dead all I could feel. Then I got to my feet.

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I turned to see him snatching for the microphone handset, which connected the wheelhouse to the ship's intercom as I began ripping the helm to port. Oh my gosh.

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Andrew and Spence's faces were horrified expressions at how close I'd come to death, and they could do nothing but stare at me. But as I did, I realized something. Something that sent a bolt of hope through me. Some of the figures were still moving towards the two men. Quite a few of them, in fact. Enough that they made a mistake and left a narrow but noticeable gap in the circle. I ran.

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Instantly, the figures realized their error and attempted to pluck the hole in their line. But they were just a moment too slow as I managed to sprint between them, feeling the tips of their fingers brush the collar of my jacket. A new sound rose from them as I flew out of their grasp, one that spurred me to move faster. A single, unanimous scream of rage.

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Rage at having to have me dead to rights and then letting me slip out of their grasp. As I broke free, I shot another look up towards the others. I'd been ready to yell at them to run, to head for the stern of the ship, but I saw I didn't need to. They were already bolting for the exit. I felt fresh tears begin to well up in my eyes, this time ones of hope.

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I crashed into the corner as I saw them ripping open the exit door, sheer adrenaline powering me on as I raced to catch up to them. Come on, you're so close, move! I spared a look behind me, fear adding more fuel to my escape as I saw the mass of figures spill around the corner I'd just come from. They were desperate to keep us from escaping.

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I slammed into the door, yanking on the handle as it flew open. The sun momentarily blinded my eyes. It slammed into the outer wall with a crash, and as I caught sight of Andrew and Spencer racing down the stairs, they shot a terrified look back at the sound.

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I was too focused on staying ahead of the horde to say anything, the only sound I made being the labored breathing as I took the stairs down two at a time. The stern section came into view and I raced down the final set of stairs, and I saw Andrew snatching up the supply bag. The screams of anger and desperation behind me now filled the air, drowning out the cry of the gulls overhead.

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I saw my two crewmates take two bounding steps, jumping and pushing off the stern railing with their feet, and they disappeared out of sight. A moment later, I jumped as well. The frigid cold water took my breath away as it enveloped me. For a moment, I thrashed underwater, then my head broke the surface. I sputtered out sea water and looked around. The lifeboat. I saw that our plan had worked.

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At least half a dozen of the small boats had successfully survived their fall and floated away from the ship. I began swimming for them as hard as I could, seeing the others do the same. Behind me came the biggest scream yet. I spared a glance over my shoulder to see the Queen Elizabeth steaming away from us. For whatever reason, they couldn't pursue us. The sight slammed the reality home to me.

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We made it. We're free. Moments later, we reached the closest one and hauled ourselves on board. For a few moments, we could do nothing but lay there, gasping for air as the sun rose higher in the sky. The warmth that radiated down felt like heaven to me. Slowly, I heard Spencer begin to chuckle triumphantly. Andrew joined in a moment later. Finally, so did I.

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It's all we were able to do, being so mentally and emotionally fried from what we'd experienced. You know what? I'm sorry. But I can't. I can't lie to you. Not after all you did for me. I know that's what you wanted, though, wasn't it?

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You wanted to read about how the three of us managed to beat the odds, managed to escape the nightmare ship, and are floating somewhere in the Atlantic, that we're going to be alright. Am I right? Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to burst that bubble. I can't imagine you sitting there now, all of you reading this. Wait, what? You'll scream a shocked expression on your faces.

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He lied at the start. But did I? I said at the start that it was finally over. I said what I felt was a night... I said what I felt was a nightmare was finally over. I never said I escaped, though. You only took it to mean as much. Fuck off. Yeah. The truth is, everything I just told you actually happened. Until the point where I turned to see the giant lamp fly towards me.

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I never dove out of the way. I didn't have time to. It slammed into me with the force of a 747. I can still remember it. I remember flying across the room before being crushed into the wall. Truth be told, it was so quick that I didn't even feel anything. I didn't suffer, if that makes you feel better. I actually kind of want Nathan to suffer because he's so insufferable.

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I also didn't lie about standing up to the horrified looks on Andrew and Spencer's faces. They did indeed have horrified looks, and they did look back terrified as they slammed open the door to chase after them. Because I was rushing after them to tell them how wrong we'd been, how wrong we'd all been.

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I realized it as soon as I stood up, looking down at myself and seeing the shadows clinging to my body. They were right. Will, Diana, the captain, they were all right about it being beautiful. About the past not dying, the other reality, all of it. There truly was never anything to fear. Because I feel so happy. I never have to worry about death again, about growing old.

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I never have to worry about things changing, about the world moving on, whether I want it to or not. To tell you the truth, I feel so silly for being afraid this whole time. If I'd known the truth, I never would have run from them. I would have let them take me. I didn't lie about them escaping either. Injured Spence, I mean.

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Behind me, I heard Andrew let out a strangled scream as he spied the behemoth racing toward us.

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They really did leaf off the stern of the ship into the water and swam to a lifeboat. I can see them now, actually. I can see them trying to row away as I lay on a sun lounge on the promenade deck with others. The laptop I left in our cabin in my lap. Diana and Will are smiling and laughing together as they share a drink on my left. Vinny and the captain are lounging on my right.

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My heart warms as I see them shoot me smiles, almost as warm as the beating summer sun. But I can't help feeling sad for Andrew and Spence. They're never going to be able to experience this, just like Wyatt and Kenny won't.

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I even asked the captain of the Queen Elizabeth if they could return, if I could try and convince them to come back to us, but he said because they tried to burn the ship down, it wouldn't be possible. As much as that sucks, I could see his point. But I can't help but feel a little bad for them.

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Seeing their little lifeboat get farther and farther away as the storm rolls in to swallow them up, I hope they don't suffer too much. We're so close to arriving in New York City. I'm so excited. When I look over the railing towards the bow, I can see the first glimpse of it on the horizon. And it looks so amazing, seeing it as it is, 1956, without any of the ugly modern buildings ruining it.

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Diana told us that she's going to show us around the city, that she's going to take us to her home in Los Angeles. We're even going to go see Elvis perform. I can't wait. After the traditional horse race and party tonight, of course, which brings me to something I wanted to tell you about. You see, Diana also told me that when newcomers arrive, they do have to do something.

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They need to contribute to help them. Queen Elizabeth will eventually leave New York, heading back out for open sea. She'll cruise between here, over to England, and then back through the Atlantic, where we first came across her. Crossing from this world to ours, to yours, thanks to the tether that the floating hotel her sister ship became.

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But because after enough time, the four of us will stop being new faces to everyone here. We'll stop being new faces to us. And it gets ever so lonely not seeing any new faces. So, I'd like to do something for you. Before I finally lose the signal the computer has back to you. Before we fully cross over. The entire reason I'm posting this last update.

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Below, I heard the terrified shouts of the crew spring up. I clenched the helm in a death grip as tears silently poured out of my eyes. In my head, the scene from The Perfect Storm flashed. The Andrea Gale being flipped and driven into the ocean. I only had enough time for one quick thought. Please, God, no. smashed into us with all the force of a dozen runaway semi-trucks.

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Remember at the start when I said, if I could ever return the favor for all you've done, for all the advice. If I could do anything in return for you all being such kind-hearted people, I would. Well, there is. I'd like to extend you all an invitation. If you're able, charter a boat and sail for the Flemish Cap, or for the route the ship used to take in your world across the Atlantic.

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Look for the dark and storm clouds and steer course for them. You'll be battered about a great deal, unfortunately. Won't be pleasant, but you'll eventually see the great ship appear on the horizon. Steer course for Come On Board, where we wait to welcome you with open arms. We're always looking for new people to join us.

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There it is. Okay. So I still, I still thought it was fun. I still like it. Um, it's good. Uh, it needs a second draft. Uh, but the author has talked about that in some of his posts and whatnot. Um, where he's like, I'm going to rework it for book. I think if you, I think if you shorten it, condense it down, um,

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cut out some of the filler, change the verbiage a bit to where there's not as many repeating words. Um, and then I, I like, I know it's part of no sleep saying, but if you remove like the Reddit stuff, I feel like they didn't contribute that much. I feel like this is a very workable, very good. And I love the concept of a ghost ship in the middle of the ocean. Like what's not fun about that.

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Um, so I drew, I enjoyed it. I thought it was good. It just bogged down a bit. And I don't like the, it was all a dream ending. Um, However, I will add that that is my ultimate pick for how it ends, that the guys who hated him, Spence and Andrew, they make it out and Nathan dies. So I am happy about that part.

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Like his solution at the end. Even if this isn't Nathan at the ending and it's like his spirit that's been altered or whatever, at least play that off some way with...

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because the only real mentions we get of Nathan's like he talks about the horror of his family around a cross that's made for him and stuff so maybe like a return to his family and then at the end there's like a rejection of it but well even if it wasn't that it was him looking for family the whole time and at the end he could find it in this new crew and it could be like a bittersweet

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So say that like, well, if it's the 1950s, we can go find your aunt. When we get to New York, we'll find her, you know, she'll be younger. You can spend, you know, she could be your friend or whatever. And like, you could play off of his emotions.

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The port side windows of the ship shattered into a thousand pieces and the freezing sea water rushed over us in a seemingly unending wave. For a moment, my mind was unable to comprehend what had happened. And then it began screaming at me as I felt the world begin to rotate. We're underwater. We're flipping underwater in the wave.

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The realization horrified me, and I felt certain that we would begin sinking like a stone to the bottom of the ocean. I led a silent prayer for my death to be quick. And then, to my astonishment, we emerged back into the world above the waves. The shock at still being alive froze me in place, and then I looked around.

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I spied the captain, locked his arms in a death grip around the metal bar next to me. Andrew had been tossed to the back of the wheelhouse. I saw a large gash in his head as he stumbled to his feet, coughing out water. Instantly, the captain ran to the stairs and shouted down them.

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As he did, I looked down at the screens in front of me. I felt a wave of despair wash over me as I saw most short-circuited after their meeting with the ocean. The radar still glowed green as the screen crackled and flickered as though it would go out in a second. Wyatt appeared at the top of the stairs, blood dripping from his right arm and soaked to the bone. Give me some good news, Wyatt.

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The captain yelled over the howl of the wind that screamed into the wheelhouse through the broken windows. To me, it sounded almost more like a plea than a demand. Wyatt shook his head.

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I let out a shaky breath and looked at the floor before finishing.

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For a moment, nobody spoke. The implication of the man's words hung like nooses around all our necks. The pumps were dead, and so were we. It was only a matter of time before the ship filled up with too much water and foundered. We're now running on borrowed time, I thought numbly. When the captain spoke again, his tone was more subdued.

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Just do it! Wyatt took a step back and turned wordlessly and headed back down the gangway. and then turned to Andrew, who had begun shaking slightly, a result of both the freezing water covering him and fear.

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You know the drill. For a moment, the younger man stood as still as a statue. Then he rushed to the radio and jammed his hands down on the transmit button.

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I tuned his words out as he began to repeat, turning instead to look out the broken windows. I didn't say it out loud, but I knew we were royally screwed. Wyatt's right. These waves will tear the raft to pieces long before anyone reaches us. The numbness began to spread as I was faced with the unavoidable thought that these might be the final minutes of my life.

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Moments of my past flashed in front of my eyes. Growing up as a child in Portsmouth, Spending weekends at friends of my mother's in Kittery Point. Visiting BG's boathouse with my mother and aunt. My relationship with Dana, my ex. A single image suddenly appeared in my mind. My friends and family, crowded around a cross commemorating us, crying.

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My breath began to come in short, ragged gasps as I tried to force away the image. Bing. The sound snapped me out of the inner battle with my mortality, and I blinked for a second. What the? Then it came again. Bing. The realization suddenly crashed into me as hard as the wave had. The radar. Looking down, I watched the flickering screen as the line made its way around again.

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This time, as the sound rang through the wheelhouse a third time, I saw the large shape appear. And it sent a bolt of renewed hope through me.

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Be sure to continue to like and support us on audio platforms. Thank you all for your time. Be sure to support the author. You know the drill. You all are great. Great community and we're lucky to have you.

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The sound of Andrew's distress call stopped as both men turned towards me.

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Instantly, the man was at my side, gazing down at the screen. I don't believe it! You're right! He breathed out in an astonished tone, then he locked eyes with me. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Nate? He asked. I swallowed.

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He looked at me for another second before nodding. Head approximately south, southwest, and pour on the power. For the next 20 minutes, we crashed through the storm in silence, aside from Andrew, who returned attempting a distress call. Finally, he gave up. Captain, the rogue wave must have snapped off the radio antennae. Still, we continued on.

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I strayed my eyes against the lashing wind and rain pouring through the windows, praying to catch sight of our only chance at survival. And then, in the flash of lightning, I saw it. Even a few miles away from us, I could tell the ship was huge. She rose, almost imposingly out of the water, rolling up and down in the waves of the storm.

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Another flash of lightning showed that her hull was black, while her upper decks were painted white. Two large red and black smokestacks rose in the sky, almost disappearing out of sight. I heard the captain let out a low whistle as he spotted it as well. She's gotta be, what, 800 feet long? I called over the wind. Try more like a thousand!

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By now, most of the rest of the crew had reappeared from the below deck. They brought the gear the captain had ordered up and had packed it into waterproof bags. I'd also requested that the satellite phone and laptop be brought up as well. Unfortunately, the phone was very much dead from being submerged, but the laptop, according to Will, was able to be salvaged.

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When they caught sight of the giant ship, they let out cheers and turned to hug one another. I realized I hadn't been the only one feeling that death was breathing down our necks. As we drew within half a mile of the ship, I realized something was off. Captain, she's dead in the water. Not moving at all. If she'd been under power, it would have taken longer to draw near.

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Saw the crew's faces at the news. So what do we do now? Kenny, the other engineer, asked. Captain turned to them as I steered us closer. We stick to the plan.

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We transfer our equipment on board and then we'll go from there. The look of hope returned in some of their eyes, but I saw apprehension in her others. I didn't blame them one bit. Fear still coursed through my veins. All it takes is one screw up, one mistake, and we're all dead. The captain ordered me to move around to the ship's port side so as to give us a small bit of shelter from the storm.

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He then snapped on the powerful searchlight, which thankfully, had it been taken out by the wave and traced it over the ship. A few minutes later, I heard him let out a triumphant laugh.

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He was right. I saw the white lines and wooden steps flailing about in the wind. Sparing a glance behind us and seeing that the ocean was beginning to creep over the back of the transom, I hastily maneuvered the point of no return over to the ladder, nudging the throttle into neutral as we drew alongside.

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Sparing a glance out of the open side door, I saw Spencer and Will reaching out with boat hooks to snatch the ladder. Yes, the two men hooked it and lashed it onto our railing.

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Slowly, almost painfully, the eight members of our crew made their way up the ladder and onto the ship. As I watched Wyatt climb out of sight, a sound caught my attention. I looked down to see all of the remaining gauges die, and the sound of the remaining engine idling died away. Crap. Almost immediately afterwards, I became aware of a new sound. It was one that spurred a new wave of panic in me.

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It was the sucking sound of the sea rapidly flooding the point of no return.

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I screamed, snatching up the last bag of supplies. I saw the man give an almost pained look as he cast a final look at the vessel he'd worked his entire life to afford before shouting at me and Kenny, last to aboard besides himself.

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Kenny went up the ladder first, unable to wait for him to make it all the way up. The captain and I unsnapped the ladder from our railing and began climbing after him. We were halfway up when I heard the sucking sound increase to a fever punch. Stopping and sparing to look below me, I saw the point of no return bow lift out of the water as we turned to slip below the waves.

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She rapidly began to sink, and I turned to continue climbing. That was when a scream came from overhead. I snapped my gaze up to see a body fall past me, missing me by less than a foot. For a moment, shock kept my mind from working until I realized who I'd seen in the split-second flash of lightning.

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I screamed out into the dark, but when the lightning flashed again, I saw no sign of him floating in the waves, only the bow of our ship as it finally slipped below the waves. I shouted the man's name again, the wind tearing the cry from my lips and off into the storm. Nathan, he's gone! Came a cry from below me. I shot a look down, seeing the captain looking up at me with a horrified expression.

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Get at the ladder! I fought my emotions for a moment, then climbed as quickly as I could for the railing. A few moments later, both the captain and I hauled ourselves over, collapsing onto the wooden deck with sputtering coughs and groans. When I raised my head, it was to see the ashen face of Wyatt looking down at us. Where's Kitty? I took in a shaky breath and shook my head slowly at him.

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I saw the shock and horror flash into his face. The same happened to all of the men standing behind him. For my part, I simply felt numb. Even though I'd lost my aunt to ovarian cancer in 2009, lost one of my mom's family friends to a brain tumor in 2012, I'd never actually seen someone die before. Not in real life, anyway. My mind was a jumble. I couldn't think properly.

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Thankfully, though, the captain stood up and spoke up, his voice shaking only for a second before hardening.

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His words seemed to bolster everyone, even myself, and we all stood, gathering our supplies and moving to find a door inside. After a few minutes searching, we found one. And after snapping on the waterproof flashlights we all had, we stepped inside the ship. Again, I've got to say, that was awesome.

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That entire sequence of like the ship going down and the storm and them rolling and everything and having to catch the ladder. Oh, that was so good. You just said yeah without the British accent. Yeah. Yeah, there we go.

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Anyway, that whole thing was great. I really loved it. The descriptions of like the captain in the final moments, watching the ship go down, like the terror of it, the intensity. That was great. That was awesome. And now how cool of a concept. There's a ghost ship in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of this storm that they have to go on to. Oh, man, that's so cool. This is great.

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This is stellar. I love this. Okay, anyway. Instantly, the sound of the howling wind grew fainter as we found ourselves inside a companionway of some kind. It seemed like it was meant for the crew. It seemed more spartan and function over form than what I'd seen from the rest of the ship. Nobody said a word as we made our way down until we came to another door.

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Will, being the first in line, reached out and opened it, and we stepped into what I can only describe as the most luxurious lounge I've ever been in. The walls were plastered with wood that reflected back in the glow of our lights. What appeared to be marble lined the ceilings overhead.

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Actually, while you were doing whatever it is that you're doing, I was scrolling through his Reddit, and I have an exciting announcement about this guy. He is incredibly active in r slash creepcast.

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I saw dozens of tables and chairs, ones that had been once scattered across the room, lying overturned or on their sides, no doubt thrown about by the storm. Walking further into the room, I turned to the left and aimed my flashlight at the wall. It nearly jumped out of my skin as my light reflected off a huge face that gazed back at me. Jesus! Feeling my heart begin to marathon in my chest. What?

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What is it? I heard Andrew call out. All the men ran to me and aimed their lights at what I'd seen. Instantly, the tension that filled the room was replaced by the sound of laughter.

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So Vinny, another one of our crew, asked as he fought for breath. I let out a shaky breath of my own as I played the light over what I now saw was a painting, one of Queen Elizabeth II. Then I began to laugh along with him. Good lord, Nathan, you really are a pussy. For a minute, we all stood there, laughing and feeling the mood lighten somewhat.

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The levity helped lighten the sadness that we all felt. It was cut short by the captain's voice as a loud rumble of thunder came from outside.

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And with that, everyone began to fan out, finding a lone corner to change in without being seen. As they did, I approached the captain. Gabe. I sat tapping the man on the shoulder. He turned to look at me and I instantly saw the haunted look in his eyes. The poor man blames himself for Kenny. I wanted to say something, say that it wasn't his fault.

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Instead, I told him I wanted to stay up a little, get the laptop out and try and get a signal from the satellite connection, try and find a way to send out a call for help. After a moment's hesitation, he agreed, gesturing towards the vast amount of chairs and tables. Go ahead, just try and get some sleep afterwards. I nodded, patted him again on the shoulder before turning away.

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That's where I am now. I changed into dry clothes and found a thick, cushioned armchair on its side. I set it upright and pulled out the laptop. The battery was, thankfully, fully charged. I have a solar charger if it gets low, which survived. But, as I said at the start, it had to have sustained some kind of water damage because it won't let me go to many, if any, sites. Only this one.

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I'm the only one of us left awake now. All around me I can hear the snores of my fellow crew members, hear them rolling over to get comfortable on the carpeted floors. I still hear the rain pounding on the roof of the great ship, hear the thunder rubble, and feel the ship lurching up and down in the waves. I pray she doesn't hit any rocks during the night.

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Someone mentioned his story in our subreddit, r slash creepcast, saying the guys have to read this soon. And the author replied and says... I do indeed plan on eventually when I have the money to do the cover art and editing justice, release it as a novel. So he has plans to put this story that we're about to read into a novel and seems very hyped.

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We don't need another problem on our hands. There is one final thing I have to say, though I can't help but feel foolish about it. I know that we're the only ones on board. Otherwise, people would have already come by now. We'd be swarmed with crew or passengers. And yet, I can't shake the feeling of being watched. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't make the feeling go away.

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I feel like a goldfish with its owner staring in at me. And I don't like it one bit. I even took a walk around outside this lounge to reassure myself nobody else is here. I know the captain wouldn't have liked me doing so, but I wouldn't have been able to sleep otherwise. If anyone reads this, can anyone help us?

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We're only fishermen who've dealt with a 70 foot long liner, not a giant cruise ship or ocean liner. Does anyone know what we have to do to get power going again, where we have to go, if we can get power restored? We might be able to get the radio on board working again and let people know we're out here. And is there anything else important we should do tomorrow? Anything at all you can think of?

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Please let me know if anyone sees this. Check back in the morning, see if anyone has. Oh, and one final thing. I don't know if it'll help, but when I went for my walk to prove to myself no one else is here, I found a life ring which had the name of the ship stamped into it. Maybe someone can look to see if the ship has been labeled missing or something?

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Which would work to try and get someone to know where we are. The name of the ship bears the same name as the huge, almost creepy-looking painting on the wall that, in the dark, I try not to look at. The RMS Queen Elizabeth.

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I got to say, I got to say. Go ahead and say it. What do you got to say? I like it. I like this a lot. Just the uniqueness of the premise. We were a fishing vessel that found this abandoned cruise ship, it looks like, but no one's on it. And like, we don't know where we're at. And there's a storm. And I feel like there's some entity watching us. Just got to say,

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Like I already have it like a soft spot for like ocean stories or nautical stuff. And this is hitting every checking every box I have for a story like this. It is so cool. I'm I'm liking this a lot right now.

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Um... I thought that name, Queen Elizabeth, was familiar. And I was like, what's that? So I look up RMS Queen Elizabeth. In 1972, while she was undergoing refurbishment in Hong Kong Harbor, a fire broke out aboard under unexplained circumstances, and the vessel was capsized by the water used to fight the fire.

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The following year, the wreck was deemed an obstruction to shipping in the area, and in 1974 and 75, it was partially scrapped on site. Well... Well, that doesn't seem too good. Well, that's not great. Just got to say, being on that ship now, not a good thing, I would argue. Anyway, so, yeah, they're on a ghost ship.

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You know what? I was thinking about that. I was like, there's a skull in the cloud and there's a mention before the wreck of the captain lighting a pipe. But I'm also having so much fun with the tone of the story. It's great. The ship and like, Captain, we're taking on water or whatever that I'm willing to forgive it. I'm willing to look over it. Yeah, it's okay if it's a little cheesy.

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I mean, they're on a ghost ship in an ocean, right? Yeah, no, I'm having a great time with it. All right, so we are now on to part two. Thank God. To say I'm relieved that the first post got through would be an understatement of massive proportions. Even though it seems like not many people saw it, the fact that anybody did is a blessing in itself.

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Gives me hope that all of us might make it out of this situation yet. First and foremost, to the people who did see it and commented, I can't thank you enough. Especially to the person who suggested a plan for what to do and regarding the power. It was actually thanks to you that I was able to give the captain and the others a suggestion of what to do today.

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Unfortunately, due to the fact we were so excited to get off the point of no return before she sank out from under us, we didn't bring the life raft with us. Only the supplies we thought we'd need. We were too caught up in the fact we had a better alternative to remember to lug it up the ladder. I do have to confess one thing to you all, though.

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He says at the end, I'm hoping the guys will see your recommendation and cover it in a future episode. So, well, that's pretty cool.

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When I first woke up this morning and checked the comments you left, I thought people were either pulling my leg, thinking I was bullshitting you all, or that you had to be mistaken. After all, if the Queen Elizabeth caught fire and sank years, if not decades ago, how the hell could we be on board? Ghost ships, legitimate ones, only exist in horror films, not real life.

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There'd be a mistake made here. However, after some of the things that have happened today, I can't help but start to wonder if you're right. And if you are, we're in a whole lot bigger trouble than I thought we were. I'm jumping the gun though. I should tell you what went down today. When I first woke up, the first thing I realized was that the storm had passed.

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The rain no longer pounded on the roof of the ship and it no longer twisted about in the swells. For a moment, it was so calm that I forgot where we were, what had happened yesterday. Then everything came crashing back to me, causing me to sit up straight in my sleeping bag. The first thing I saw was the captain, who sat in one of the lounge chairs. He must have woken up a while ago.

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His head turned in my direction as I pulled myself out of the bag and to my feet, and he gave a short nod. Winding my way around the sleeping forms of the others, I made my way over to him. "'How long you been up, Cap?' I whispered as I picked up another chair and set it beside him. He shrugged. A little well now.

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I could still see that losing Kenny still weighed heavily on his shoulders. The man likely had got much sleep due to it eating away at him. I decided to say something.

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For a moment, I saw his eyes harden and his mouth open as if to snap at me. Then he slumped into the chair, his body seeming to sag.

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I wanted to argue, but I saw that no amount of it would change his mind. Instead, I nodded and turned to look out across the massive room. We roused the others a few minutes later, and as they opened up the supplies we'd brought to bring out some food and water, the captain reminded me to check the laptop.

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Booting it up, I saw the battery was low, making a mental reminder to set the solar power charger in the sunlight outside to charge it back up. Then I checked the post it had made. Hope and excitement surged through me as I saw comments left below. You guys. People saw what I wrote. In seconds, I was surrounded as everyone crowded around me.

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I will. So I'll say this. If we like this story, we will finance it. The cover art, at least that part of it. But if Hunter does not, if we cannot break his accent by the end of it.

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A bottle of water and a granola bar were shoved into my hands as they read the comments you all had left. There was silence for a few moments, then Spencer spoke up. That can't be right. He said softly. He looked up at us.

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Do you know if there was a ship called the Queen Elizabeth that did catch fire and sink? He stayed quiet for a moment, seemingly lost in thought before answering.

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He stood up, seeming to push away any remaining thoughts of the matter from his head.

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point out a particular comment that gave an idea of what to do he leaned down silently reading it before nodding that's our plan for the day he declared before splitting us up into two teams one team comprising of myself andrew spencer and will would explore as much of the ship as we could while the captain wyatt and the only other remaining member of our crew a tall muscular italian man named vinnie would try and find their way down to the bowels of the ship to restore power

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With the plan made, and a set of walkie-talkies given to the captain and me to maintain contact with each other, we exchanged a last, good luck and stay safe, left the lounge. Flicking on our flashlights, the four of us slowly walked back through the hallway we'd taken to get inside. A moment later, we emerged into the bright light of day.

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The sun felt nice and warm on my face, and I couldn't help but let a small smile cross my face. It disappeared, though, as my eyes looked out beyond the railing. The endless ocean surrounded us, stretching far beyond the horizon. No sign of land anywhere.

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Small shivers shot through me as the image of our ship slipping beneath the waves replayed in my mind, along with watching Kenny fall to his doom. I shook my head. Snap yourself out of it, Nate. Keep focused. I pulled the solar charger from my pocket and set it down next to the open hatch. Pick it up later when we came back this way.

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Andrew spoke up, pointing to the row of lifeboats that hung from Davids that spread out away from us. You think those would still be safe to use? I shrugged my shoulders.

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I will finance it entirely myself. But if he breaks at any point from here on out, we have to split it.

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I pushed the hair out of my eyes and pushed my glasses up my nose. All right, let's keep moving, guys. For the next few hours, the four of us explored both the inside and outside of the ship, occasionally stopping to radio our position back to the captain. The Queen Elizabeth was indeed a luxury ship in every sense of the word.

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The wood on the outside decks was well varnished and teaked, shining brilliantly in the sunlight. The same was true for the miles of wood that plastered the walls of the carpeted hallways and rooms that crisscrossed the inside like a maze. I was almost in awe of how beautiful it was. However, there was one thing that surprised me, and I wasn't the only one to notice.

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As we walked through another lounge, Will said the words that incessantly reverberated in my head.

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His words reassured me a little, but I still couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable. The entire time we'd been exploring the ship, an indescribable feeling had followed me like an annoying dog. And to make matters worse, the feeling of being washed I'd had last night hadn't gone away. Every so often, I would shoot a look behind us as we had walked away.

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aiming my light back the way we'd come. I saw nothing, but for whatever reason, it felt like something had been there and pulled back just out of sight every single time I'd look. As we entered what, according to the sign above the door, was the first class smoking room, the radio on my belt chirped.

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There's a layer of static above everything due to the massive amount of steel and wood in the way, but the words of the captain were unmistakable.

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Can you help us? Part one. Go ahead. If you're seeing this, then that means the prayer that I've been making with every single ounce of hope left in my body has been answered. Thank God. I've been trying for the last three and a half hours to get through any way possible to the outside world with no luck.

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I heard a small trace of surprise in the man's voice as he continued.

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Spencer's face crunched up in confusion.

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I shrugged my shoulders and hit the transmit button. Can you get the power going? There was another wave of static before he answered.

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remember seeing on a map on the wall that there's a first-class gym on this deck the four of us could go and lift some weights until they get everything going or if we fancy a swim there's a swim pool as well or hell we could even he kept speaking but i'd stop listening to him the feeling of being watched at return this time with the vengeance that caused a cascade of shivers to shoot out my spine for a moment i resisted the urge to look around then i cast my eyes towards a set of windows to the outside

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where someone peered in at us on the outside of a cruise ship. Oh man.

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Oh, well, I mean, it's, he's looking outside. So it would be on the side of the ship, right? Well, I assume that he's probably like on a deck looking in is what I would assume. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

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I only caught a glimpse of the figure for a moment before they realized they'd been spotted and yanked their head back out of sight, but it was enough to see what looked like a small boy or young teenager. Hey! I shouted out, rushing over to the window. It didn't open, but I was able to crane my neck enough to look around the corner.

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The deck was empty in all directions, but I knew I hadn't seen things. There had been someone there. Hey, guys! Did any of you see that? There's no answer from behind me. I can imagine them looking at me like I just groaned two heads. They probably think I'm nuts. Seriously, I'm not kidding. I saw someone out there. They still didn't respond.

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I felt a slight ping of irritation flow through me and turn back, beginning to speak. Guys, don't be assholes. I'm asking you... The smoking room was empty. My voice died in my throat, and I felt a wave of confusion wash over me. What the hell? I looked around, my eyes wandering to the ornate wooden bar that lined the back of the room. There's no movement over there either. What the hell?

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I breezed out incredulously. The irritation I'd felt a moment ago reared its head again, and I strode to the open doors to the hallway.

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I'm no computer expert, but the water damage my laptop has suffered must have severely screwed up the satellite link up something fierce. Any attempt to reach any website, be it the official Coast Guard one, or even most social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, have all yielded with the computer crashing and rebooting.

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My voice echoed away into the gloom, bouncing off the wooden walls and dying away, but nobody answered. A thought suddenly entered my mind. Oh, this better not be a prank. This is not the time or place for that shit. I knew that the three men loved to play practical jokes on themselves and the rest of the crew, but I would have thought they'd known better than to pull them with this predicament.

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I let out a deep sigh and began to walk down the hall, my footsteps muted by the carpeted floor. If this is a joke, I'll fucking wring your necks. I muttered, reaching a T-junction and shining my light down it. Empty, empty and silent. Kept going straight, passing by a sign showing the direction of the gym and movie theater. I remembered hearing Spencer talk about it and quickened my pace.

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I expected the sound of their voice to slowly begin filtering down to me. But as I approached the door to it, I still heard nothing. And when I shone the light inside, reflecting off rowing machines, stationary bikes, and other exercise equipment I didn't recognize, my exasperation grew. Know what? Screw this.

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I said through a grid of teeth, snatching the walkie-talkie from my belt and thumbing it.

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Wall of Static greeted me as I let go of the transfer button. Nobody answered. I hit the button again.

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Wall of Static began to fiddle with the dials, changing channels. Interference. Stupid piece of shit. I hit the button again. Hello? Does anybody read me? Over. The static suddenly stopped. The hallway went silent, a silence I've never experienced before, one that seemed to be alive, if that makes any sense. Then a voice suddenly tumbled from the walkie-talkie speaker. Hello, Nathan.

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My eyes shot down to the radio in my hand, my breath catching in my throat. It felt like someone had just poured a bucket of ice water down my back. That wasn't the captain's voice. That wasn't any of the crew's voice. For a moment, I debated saying nothing, and I slowly pressed down the transmit button. My throat had gone as dry as cotton.

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My voice coming out gaspy and ragged. For a few seconds, there was no reply, and then came the voice again. A man's voice, deep and low. Welcome aboard, to all of you. My heart began to thump hard in my chest, and my breathing quickened. What the actual fuck, man? I forced myself to hit the button again, forced my voice to come out much calmer than I felt. Who the hell are you?

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There's another stretch of silence in which I began to furiously look over my shoulders, the feeling of paranoia growing by the second, and then my blood turned to ice as a new sound emanated from the radio speaker. Sound of the man beginning to laugh. Another laugh joined the first, this time a woman.

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But for reasons unknown to me, Reddit, or I should be more specific and say this particular page on Reddit managed to load perfectly without any issues. So I'm asking here and now if anyone reads this for help. For the record, my name is Nathan Rogers. I'm 33 years old and I am, I mean, I was the helmsman of fishing vessel called The Point of No Return. That is a bad idea to name a boat. Right.

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I stared at the radio as if it were possessed as more and more people's laughter began to filter out of it, sounding as if an entire room full of people had just found what I'd said the most hilarious thing they'd ever heard. Fear began to fill every fiber of my being, a new kind of fear different than the one I'd felt in the storm last night.

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And then it climaxed as a horrifying scream, one that sounded like a woman being brutally murdered tore from the speaker. I practically flung the walkie-talkie out of my hand to the floor, clapping a hand over my mouth as I backed up into the wall. As soon as the scream finished, the radio went silent. Dead.

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For a few moments I stood there, hands still clapped over my mouth and staring at the radio like it was about to sprout legs and chase me. I fought to get my racing heart shuddering, breathing under control. The logical part of my mind trying to make sense of things. You're panicking, Nathan. You're panicking and you're panicking so much that you're beginning to experience auditory hallucinations.

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When the mind breaks, it conjures up things that aren't there. What you need to do is get outside into the fresh air. The fresh air will do you good. I took a deep breath, feeling myself beginning to calm down. The fear I'd felt began to melt away like ice in spring. I shook my head. Yeah, you're supposed to be the calm and rational type, Rogers. I whispered to myself.

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I let out a soft laugh and took a step towards my dropped radio, but I stopped as I felt my foot step on something. Something that wasn't the carpet. I looked down at the floor. There, crushed under my foot, was what appeared to be a folder of some sort? No, not a folder. I crouched down, aiming my light as I picked the object up. There was artwork on the cover.

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I could see a violin, a film reel, shuffleboard, and other items decorating the cover. Big, blocky black letters in the middle of the cover read, Program for Today. And in the bottom right-hand corner was the word CUNNERED in cursive scrawl. I looked at the cover as I walked over and picked the radio up, clipping it back to my belt.

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Focusing my attention on it was helping me rapidly calm, and I started to quickly flip it open and see what it said. There were only two pages inside. The top of the left page was adorned with the word notices, while the right page was headlined by program of events. My eyes began to slide down them, silently reading it out, until my mind caught up with my eyes. Wait, I didn't just see that, did I?

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flash the light back up to the top right of the page where the date was stamped thursday june 21st 1956 i blinked my eye a couple times silently praying that the date would change i was seeing things but no it remained the same i began to feel my heart pound in my chest again

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For a moment, my mind flashed back to the comment I'd seen that morning about the ship having sunk decades ago. I shook my head, tried to stay calm. Just get the hell outside, Nathan. Taking a breath, I turned to head back in the direction of the smoking room and froze. The program fell from my hand to the floor. My heart thundered in my chest and my breathing came in short, ragged gasps.

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There were figures standing in the hallway down by the T-junction. I couldn't tell how many, but there were enough that they blocked the way back. In the gloom I couldn't see any features, just the dark outlines of them. Remembering the flashlight in my hands, I began to raise it to aim at them. That's when the light flickered out.

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I was plunged into gloom as I stared down at the light, smacking it and mentally pleading for it to come back to life, but it was no use. The light was dead. Realization suddenly filled me as my mind screamed at me that I'd taken my eyes away from the figures. When I snapped my head up, I almost screamed. They had drawn closer.

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Packing the hallway from wall to wall, they made no noise at first, and then I heard the whispering begin. It started quietly, almost to the point I thought I was hearing things, but then it began to grow louder. I couldn't tell what was being said, the voices were so low it was impossible to distinguish individual words.

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Even so, I felt a new bolt of terror shoot through me at the sound, and then my fear compounded as I saw the figures take a step towards me. I began to violently shake as I slowly began to back away. Then they came for me. The figures were suddenly a blur of motion, moving far faster than any human being could. They streamed towards me, the whispering suddenly intensifying to a fever pitch.

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Caught off guard, I stumbled backwards, tripping over my own feet and falling to the floor. My right elbow slammed into the wood paneling, and I felt a bolt of pain shoot up my arm. The figure swarmed over me, the whispering morphing into laughter, laughter and screaming. A moment later, more screaming began. My screams. I raised my arms over my head, covering my face and curling into a ball.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Exactly. Sometimes they'll give like warships brutal names like that. Right. Like the ones that the Northwest Passage crew were lost on were called the Erebus and the Terror. They were only called that because they were previously war vessels.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

3860.7

Tears began rolling down my face and I felt at any moment I'd be torn apart. The shout cut through the silence. I stopped screaming but kept my arms over my head protectively. Then I felt a hand begin to roughly shake me. The terror returned and I lashed out. The voice came again.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The realization made me lower my arms and open my eyes. Three faces, etched with panic and fear, looked down at me. For a second, I fought to find my voice.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Relief crossed the faces of my crewmates. He's back! Andrew said quietly, wiping visible sweat from his brow. I uncurled myself and sat up, looking around. I was lying on the floor of the smoking room, close to the windows I'd seen the figure outside. Sunlight still streamed in, landing on where I'd collapsed to the floor. I looked up at the others. What the hell happened?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Spencer shook his head, still looking rattled, but Andrew again answered me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Let out a shaky breath of his own. You scared the ever-living shit out of us. I blinked rapidly, my mind trying to make sense of his words. Had I really hallucinated everything? Had it all just been in my head? I stumbled to my feet, aided by Will and Spencer. Andrew just kept looking at me, a concerned look on his face. It's a deep breath of my own. I'm okay.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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My voice sounded far calmer and sure than I felt. You sure? I nodded.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I could see the other two relax immediately, taking my words at face value, but Andrew continued to look at me for a moment, seemingly unconvinced. Finally, he nodded. The sound of static stabbed through the air, causing me to almost jump out of my skin. Then the sound of the captain's voice rang over the radio on my belt.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I heard him declare happily. A moment later, I felt the floor beneath my feet shudder slightly from what must have been the boilers coming to life. Then the lights came on all throughout the ship. The smoking room became ablaze with the yellow light of what had been the incandescent bulbs, banishing away the gloom that lurked in the corners like monsters in the closet.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I began to say something to the others when a new sound began. Music. Music began spilling out from what had been the hidden speakers in the walls or ceiling. It echoed all throughout the deck. I could hear the instruments, along with the woman's crooning voice reverberating far down the hallway, likely all throughout the ship as well. Spencer looked up the walls.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Man, that's one hell of an old song. Andrew nodded, still looking hard at me. Will suddenly snapped his fingers. I know this song. My grandmother used to play it all the time when I was a little kid. He began snapping his fingers again, thinking hard. It's by a singer from the 40s and 50s called, I think, Joe Stafford. Now Andrew did take his eyes off me, looking over at him.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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the terror too i just want to say great show if you haven't seen the show it is it's a great show um check it out because it's bloody brilliant um it takes a lot of like historical liberty the terror tv show does it takes a lot of historical liberties and like some of the visions or maybe stories they had or what was talking them but as far as the actual like setting and timeline and like the people involved it's actually very accurate

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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What's the song's name? He asked, mildly interested. Will thought for another moment before answering. You belong to me. as if on cue the singing voices sang out the four words. Couldn't help but shiver slightly at them, still feeling as if I'd jumped through from Kansas to Oz and then been booted back to reality. Cleared my throat.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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They looked at me for a moment, thinking.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Feeling relieved, I nodded. Spencer spoke up. Come on, we should try and meet back up with the captain. Figure out what to do next. With that, he walked out of the room, Will following close after him. Andrew shot me one more look. Sure you're alright? I nodded.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I lied. I raised my right arm to rub the back of my neck as he began to leave the room. but I stopped as a throbbing pain suddenly shot up my arm. I let out a small gasp of pain, bringing my left hand over to feel the back. As soon as my fingers touched my right elbow, another sear of pain rippled out. I turned and looked at where I'd fallen.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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There was nothing there for me to have slammed my elbow into, and the carpet had been thick and plush, too plush to have hurt myself. The mental image of falling back in the hallway suddenly burst forth in my mind, falling as those figures rushed towards me, whispering and laughing and screaming. Maya slowly rose to look down the now brightly lit hallway.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Even from where I could see the sign showing the location of the gym, it shuddered. It was just a hallucination, wasn't it? I swallowed hard, forcing the thought from my head and hurried to catch up to the others. We met the captain and the others back in the lounge we'd spent the night in. They found a way to turn the music off, and for that I was thankful.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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All we'd heard as we walked through the ship had been songs that sounded like they were 70 years ago or older. All they did was remind me of the program I'd clutched in my hand, seeing the date on it. We could tell they must have been breaking their backs to get the boilers going. Sweat and black stains covered their faces and clothes. The captain glanced down at his watch.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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We all nodded and hurried after the man as he led the way. The room wasn't hard to find at all. Once we'd entered the upper levels of the ship, ones I could tell were meant for crew only, signs led us right to it. My hopes of being able to get off rose with each step we took, and then were dashed as we reached the closed door to it.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The captive reached out and attempted to turn the handle, but it refused to turn. A few of us gathered up next to him and attempted to force it to open, but it wouldn't budge a single inch. Damn it! It's locked! Captain growled as he finally gave up. I felt my heart sink. I could see the same expression in everyone else's face. But then the captain continued.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I felt equal parts dismay and anxiety as I followed the others back to the lounge, and as much as I tried to ignore it, I still felt watched. The lights didn't help one bit. I kept looking back over my shoulder, afraid I would see the boy I'd seen in the smoking room window again, or worse, the shadowy figures.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Thankfully, though, I never did, and we made it uneventfully back to the lounge where we ate our dinner, packages of MREs that had been part of our emergency supplies, and then began to settle down for the night. I used the solar charger I'd left outside all day to charge the laptop. As I booted it up, Will came over to me. You truly alright, man? He quietly asked me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I nodded at him, giving him a false smile. He sighed.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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He let out a soft laugh, then patted me on the shoulder and walked away to his sleeping bag. I watched him go, then looked over at the captain. Gazed around at everyone, looked over at me, and I started slightly. I saw something in his eyes that I wasn't used to seeing. Worry. Worry and fear. Did he see something down in the engine room?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Also, but my prediction, by the way, is what was that guy's name who just got Will? Will 100% is going to get like sucked into the 1950s time loop after that quote.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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He is going to the abyss. He's going to the time prison on the ship. Just as quickly, it washed away and he nodded at me. I returned the gesture and he pointed at the laptop in my lap. It was an unspoken question. Are you going to try sending a message out again?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I nodded and he stood up, stretching his arms over his head and yawning before shaking his head slightly and heading for his own sleeping bag. And now here I am, the only one left awake again. The captain turned out most of the lights in the lounge, something I really did not like. So I moved over to a table that remained upright, one that had a lamp built into the middle of it, turned it on.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I now sat here typing this out. but I can't help but look up, my eyes darting around the dark, expansive room. I'm terrified every time I take my eyes off the screen. I'll see those figures again. I standing in the dark and staring at me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I wish so much that we could just jump into one of the lifeboats on the side of the ship, lured into the sea and row away from this godforsaken place as fast as we could. But with only about a week and a half's worth of food and supplies, no idea where we are. We could end up rowing directly into the middle of the Atlantic if we're not there already.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The point of no return seems like an intense name for like a fishing vessel. Seems a bit metaphorical probably, right? Yeah, probably, yeah. What I'm afraid is I'm going to get used to the accent and I'm going to quit thinking about it. I'm afraid that's going to lie.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Like I said at the start, when I first started this day, I felt for sure you all had to be wrong. That just because this ship was named Queen Elizabeth, it didn't mean it was the same one that caught fire and sank long ago.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But after what I saw in that hallway, both the program from 1956 and those things, things that I truly don't know whether I hallucinated or not, I'm starting to believe you might be right. As much as my logical mind tries to tell me it's impossible, I think we might have jumped out of the frying pan of our sinking ship and into the literal fire. And honestly, I'm beyond terrified.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I have no idea how I'm going to sleep tonight. I think in the morning I'll see about getting myself some kind of weapon. A chair leg, a knife, something. May not do anything against any kind of ghost, but it might make me feel better, at least. Please, if you're still there, if you end up reading this, please let me know what we should do tomorrow.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Should we try and find the keys to the radio room like the captain suggested? Should we do something else? Is there anything that I might be missing here? Does anyone know anything more about the Queen Elizabeth? Anything that might give me a clue as to why this is happening or just to direct us to any important places? Anything you can think of might help us.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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God knows right now we need all the help we can get.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Yeah, I think it's... It is a theoretically corny idea, but it's played in such a way here where it's more personal torment and like... I think I'm just so in love with the setting that I'm willing to look over any... Any other issues?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Yeah, every time you quote him, I imagine Captain Price from Call of Duty. It sounds in my head. But then I like the idea of Andrew being kind of skeptical of him and stuff like that. It's playing it pretty well so far. On to part three. The only phrase I know how to describe our current situation right now is up shit creek without a paddle.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

4675.32

Things have gone from bad to far, far worse since last night. And to tell the truth, everyone now is scared out of their damn minds. Well, almost everyone, but I'll get to that in a minute. Before I say anything, let me again say thank you to those of you who commented on last night's post.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Despite everything that happened today, we managed to make some progress and I can't help but think it was thanks to you all giving us some direction. Let me quickly answer a few things that you have brought up.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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First and foremost, as soon as I opened the laptop and saw the comment, I went and pulled one of the maps of the ship off the wall, looking to see if there's indeed any sort of chapel or religious gathering areas for us to hole up in. Unfortunately, the Queen Elizabeth seems to never have had one built aboard her, so that idea is out.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I say was because currently she's thousands of feet beneath my feet and the churning surface of the North Atlantic. Then I'm getting ahead of myself. In case anything happens to us before anyone reads this or I permanently lose connection, I should give as much of a detailed account as I can. That way someone might know where to find us or at least know what happened.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Secondly, the reason why we set up base camp in the lounge is because it was the first place we reached when we came aboard. It's the place we know best. After yesterday, though, and specifically with our current predicament, I'm beginning to think moving to one or two adjoining cabins might be a better idea. Not as much room for anyone or anything to creep on us.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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That being said, let me tell you what happened today. We were aroused by the captain just after 10 in the morning. Come on, Nate. He said softly to me, shaking my shoulder. We've got work to do today. Then he moved away to wake the others. For another minute, I simply lay there, staring up at the ornate ceiling high above our heads.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The horrible mental images of the shadowy figures had followed me into my nightmares, and I dreamed of running down dark and seemingly endless hallways, the figures always just a step behind me. I shivered slightly as I remembered the voice welcoming me, welcoming all of us aboard. I attempted to force the image out of my head as I pulled myself from the sleeping bag into my feet.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Once everyone was awake, we all quickly had breakfast before I broke out the computer to see what people had said. I quickly scrolled down to the comments I saw were there as the others came over. As much as I wanted to tell the others about what I'd seen yesterday, a small part of me whispered that none of them would believe me.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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especially after what Andrew, Spencer, and Will said they saw happen to me. If anything similar happens to me or anyone else, I'll tell them, but not until then. Everyone gathered around to read what you all suggested. I could tell to them it was like a lighthouse beacon, helping guide them to safety.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I couldn't help but feel a small ping of disappointment flow through me as they again dismissed the ghost ship comments, even though I'd known it was coming. Apart from potentially the captain to me, nobody else had seen anything out of the ordinary.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I shot a glance his way as he leaned in to read the screen, but any trace of fear I'd seen last night had been wiped away, replaced by his usual calm, calculated expression.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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He said finally, standing back up and seeming somewhat pleased, Wyatt leaned in and pointed at another comment.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Just as the same as yesterday, we were paired off into two teams. Captain Andrew and Spencer would head off to the crew quarters to try and find the keys, while myself, Wyatt, Will and Vinny tried to find any food we could add to our slowly dwindling supplies. I very much didn't want us splitting up again, not after both what you all had said and what I'd experienced.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But try as I might to say so to the captain, he remained steadfast. We need to cover as much ground as possible, mate. He said after we dumped our stuff into some adjoining cabins near the lounge. And with that, he turned and hustled the other two in his group away. I watched them go, saying a silent prayer for them to be safe before turning to the others.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Finny asked, gesturing to the many hallways that branched away from us. I looked down and studied the map of the ship for a moment. My eyes drifted past the maze of rooms and lounging areas before settling on a large area near the stern of the ship. How about we start here? At what looks like a restaurant called the Veranda Grill? The three men craned to look at the map. Sure, why not?

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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We left our home port of Portsmouth, New Hampshire about a week and a half ago. Oh, they're not even British. Their home port's New Hampshire.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt said, shrugging his shoulders. With our destination set, we turned and began heading aft. Passing through the lounge, we found ourselves in more hallways that seemed to stretch on forever. Man, they had a lot of cabins just in first class alone. Vinny said as we passed a small setting area, looking out onto the starboard side of the ship, and he lowered his voice slightly.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The question caused me to stop dead in my tracks. What do you mean weird? Everyone stop now. Wyatt let out a soft groan.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But I could tell he wasn't being completely honest. Will's brow furrowed. What are you guys talking about? Took a step towards Vinny.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt let out another protest, but Vinny seemed to ignore him.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Vinny shot a slightly irritated stare at him before turning back to Will and me. I just need to know, did any of you have anything weird or unusual happen to you guys yesterday? In exchange to glance with Will, his expression was that of a perfect poker face, but the look in his eyes portrayed what raced behind them. For a moment, neither of us said anything.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I debated whether to come clean about my experience, but Will spoke before I did.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Yeah, they shouldn't do that. That's a horrible idea.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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He should be like, no, this is a thing that happened. We don't know what's going on. We need to have all the cards on the table. This is not time for whatever this is. Yeah, absolutely not. I felt a wave of surprise shoot through me. The entire time I'd known Will, I'd never known him to deliberately lie. He was someone who always told the truth, even if it ended bad for him.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Where the hell did this side of him come from? There, see? All is as well as it can be. Wyatt said triumphantly. Happy now, Vin? We saw him study our faces for another moment before shrugging.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And with that, he turned and began walking down the hall again. I spared another glance at Will, but he simply shrugged at me and turned to follow them. I stared after him for a moment, unable to move, until a familiar shiver shot up my spine, one that indicated I was being watched. I swung my head around, looking behind me back down the hallway. Nobody was there. Nobody I could see, anyway.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Until another shiver passed through me, I turned and jogged to catch up to the others. We found a set of stairs that, according to the sign next to them, led down to the restaurant deck from where we were on the main deck. Heading down a few flights, we found ourselves on yet another landing. Will suddenly let out a small laugh and pointed. Hey guys, check it out!

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Across the landing from us was what looked like a small booth. Glass and metal bars separated the person who sat inside from everyone outside. Looking up, I saw a sign hanging over the window. Purser's office.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Then he said in a displeased tone. Now it was Wyatt's turn to give him an irritated look. He's just kidding, jeez. He looked down to the floor. Killjoy. For my part, I gave him a long look, then looked over at the purser's office again. I don't think it'd be anyone on land who'd be pissed if we stole anything, I thought. If anyone else could say anything, the radio let out a squawk.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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My heart momentarily began to thud in my chest. For a moment, I was terrified I'd hear the man's voice from it again. Instead, the elated voice of the captain came. A feeling of relief washed over me, and I pulled the walkie-talkie from my belt and thumbed it as I saw relieved smiles cross the other's faces. The man spoke again, a sharp burst of static masking his voice.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Now the man's voice came in loud and clear.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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veranda grill this way four of us made our way down the hallway a porthole stood open halfway down it as we passed it the smell of the ocean filtered in i slowed to take a deep breath of it letting it invigorate me a bit it froze I didn't just see that. I did not just see that, but I knew I had.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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As we passed the porthole, I'd shot a glance out, hoping to catch a quick glimpse of the relatively calm waters, and I'd caught a split-second glimpse of someone walking past it. It had been too quick to see anything besides a blur, but it had been enough. I felt the fear of yesterday return. Oh shit, not again, man. A heart raced in my chest, and I felt a lump in my throat.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Hey, you all right, Nate? The voice snapped me back, and I looked up to see the others had turned to look at me. All of them were confused expressions on their faces. I thought to find my voice for a second, then spoke, trying to sound calm.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wilcox just headed me, giving me an odd look, but didn't say anything. Fusing the urge to look out the porthole again, I started walking, pushing past them to begin leading the way. Come on. Let's go get this over with. For a moment, I heard nothing behind me. And then I heard the others follow. Holy freaking shitballs. Wyatt breathed out. That's... Wow.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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We stood at the entrance to the restaurant, next to a small sign that read, Please wait here to be seated. For my part, I couldn't blame him for such a reaction, even after what just happened. I couldn't help but feel in awe of the expansive room in front of us. Like the rest of the ship, wooden paneling covered the walls.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The only difference was that in here, squares of tiles of aquamarine had been indented into them. Some had ornate shapes and across the room saw a massive painting or stitching of what appeared to be a woman clad in ancient Greek or Roman clothing. Below her, four horses reared up as if to charge, while several men seemed to hold everything up in the midair.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Tables with expensive-looking tablecloths littered the room, the sea-green upholstered chairs around them almost inviting people to come and sit in them. Shooting a glance to my right, I saw a huge grand piano set against the far wall and a huge aquamarine curtain covering what must be a window to the stern deck.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Vinny said, causing everyone to laugh softly. You're not joking. I replied, then pointed across the room at a metal swinging door. Look, there's the door to the kitchen. Winding our way through the sea of tables and chairs, we reached the door and stopped in front of it. I turned back to the others.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Taking a deep breath, I put my hand to the metal and pushed. We found ourselves in a huge industrial kitchen, pots and pans of all kinds hung from hooks on the ceiling and multiple stoves stretched away on the far wall. Fading out, we began to explore the room, opening cabinets and drawers. Got what looks like flour here. Benny called, holding up a large white bag. That's something, at least.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt suddenly yelled, slamming the fridge closed with a slam. He leaned back against the door, leaning his head back. Benny spoke softly.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt's eyes snapped open and he glared at the man.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I realized the situation must have been eating heavily at him, and it was finally bursting out. Then he narrowed his eyes and took a step towards him, clenching his fists.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The two of them began to shout at each other, their voices filling up the room and bouncing off the metal walls. I shot a glance at Will, who wore a helpless expression on his face. Finally, it got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. Shut up, both of you! I screamed out the top of my lungs, feeling my own anger flare up at their petty squabbling.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I stood there, breathing in deeply as the two went dead silent, turning to look at me with slightly astonished looks on their faces. I'm not someone who yells often. Usually, I'm quiet and calm. When I yell, people take notice. For a few moments, there was nothing but silence in the kitchen as we all stared at each other.

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Looks of shame and guilt felt over Wyatt and Benny's faces, and I saw them open their mouths to speak, likely to apologize. Whatever words they might have said died away as a sound suddenly sprang up behind us, back through the metal door. the sound of a piano began to play. That wasn't the sound that caused all of our faces to go pale, though.

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That made the blood in my veins turn to ice and a gas to escape my lips. No, that was because, along with the piano, came the sounds of people talking and laughing softly.

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occasionally the sound of cutlery or glasses being picked up and put down punctuated in between my breasts began to come in short ragged gasps as I slowly turned to look at the swinging door Vinny was the one who spoke first his voice barely above a whisper oh fuck I turned back to look at him his mouth hung wide open his lower lip trembling slightly sight frightened me more than the sounds emanating from back the way we'd come

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Vinny isn't someone who spooks easily, after all. Then again, this isn't exactly your normal level of creepy shit. The sounds continued. I heard what sounded like a woman let out a particularly loud laugh. Wyatt spoke up. Um, what do we do? The unspoken answer was one I've been trying to avoid in my head. Aside from the door, there's no other way out of the kitchen.

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I forced myself to take a step towards the door. Nate.

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Vinny hissed at me, but I ignored him, taking another step forward. With each step I took, the feeling of terror I'd had yesterday returned, rearing its ugly head to begin tearing apart my insides. I pictured dozens of shadowy figures waiting just on the other side of the door, waiting for us. Waiting for us to step out so they could rush us.

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But it was either set in the kitchen until the sounds went away, if they go away, or open the door and peek out. By the time I stood next to the door, my heart felt like I had just finished running a furlong, and sweat rolled down my face. God, please, don't let it happen again. Don't let them be there.

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Slowly, I reached out with a trembling hand, watching as it made its way to rest on the metal, which felt shockingly cold to the touch. I turned and gave one last look at the others. They looked absolutely petrified. As I began to turn back, a new sound came, this one louder, almost ear-piercing. "'Toot?' I ripped my hand away from the door, clapping both over my ears as they threatened to burst."

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What the shit? It continued for a few moments and the realization slammed into my brain what the source was. It's the freaking ship's horn. Then it ceased, dying away but leaving the sound echoing in my head. Slowly pulled my hands away, looking up to see everyone else doing the same. That's when I realized everything had gone dead silent.

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Sounds of the piano and the people no longer came from the other side of the door. It was as if they'd never even been there in the first place. Turning, I saw the others had realized it as well. Wyatt suddenly strode forward, pushing past me and slamming his shoulder into the door. Flew open, softly hitting the wall behind it with a thunk, revealing the empty restaurant.

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As empty as it had been when we'd entered. For a moment, he simply stood there as we gathered behind him and looked out. Then he took two steps into the room.

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He softly muttered to himself. He swung around an almost wild look in his eyes. I mean, you all heard that too, right? Slowly, we nodded. His eyes darted around as he looked at the floor. That's freaking impossible. We're alone in the ship.

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He suddenly swung around, raising his arms and screaming into an empty room. What the fuck is going on? The three of us slowly left the kitchen. Vinny went to stand beside Wyatt, trying to calm him down, but I could see that the experience had, for lack of a better phrase, royally screwed up the man's brain. That wasn't even half as terrifying as what I saw yesterday.

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Thought made me snap my head up and look around the restaurant, half expecting to see the shadowy figures emerging from the corners, but nothing stirred. The radio on my hip squawked. I reached down, trying to steady myself, took a deep breath, and thumbed the walkie-talkie. I'm here. What's up, Cap? The man's voice came again. I noted with a ping of surprise that there was a trace of anger in it.

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I looked up from the radio, seeing that everyone had turned to look at me. I saw the same expression of confusion and worry as I must have had on my face. I hit the button again. We're on our way. Sparing a last look around the restaurant, I motioned for the others to follow as I hurried for the hallway.

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The captain demanded, the veins in his neck bulging out from barely disguised rage. Everyone stood in front of the radio room, which now hung wide open, the metal door swinging slightly, letting out soft creaks. I looked inside, seeing the ancient setup sitting along the left wall of the room.

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My eyes ran over all the equipment stacked neatly on top of each other, finally coming to rest on the place where the microphone used for transmitting radio calls stood. I should say where it should have stood. Instead, the space lay bare, and I saw that it hadn't been gently pulled out of the system either.

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Freight and snap wires hung from the jack still hooked into the radio, showing someone had ripped it out with great force. I finally found my voice.

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Shadow glared at all of us and shook the keys in his hand for emphasis.

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The man's eyes snapped up to look at him. I saw Spencer shoot an accusatory look at us.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Then you said that you guys were on your way and you'd meet us here. A mix of shock and further confusion began to rise in me as I saw Wyatt and Vinny exchange puzzled looks. No, that ain't right. Wyatt finally said.

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Captain turned an incredulous eye on Wyatt.

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Everyone began to argue, but the sound was drifting away from my ears as my mind raced. He's right. He never said anything to me about restaurants before we split up. Just supplies. A shiver shot up my spine as another dot connected. I never said anything about the restaurant when I replied to him. He was the one who the realization slammed into me like a truck.

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I felt all the blood drain from my face as a simple but terrifying conclusion came to the surface. That wasn't the captain. Everyone stopped arguing to stare at me. What? Andrew asked, seeming confused. I slowly turned to look at the three who'd been with me, quietly repeating myself. That wasn't the captain who was talking to us.

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I saw the realization slam into Wyatt and Vinny's faces, saw their faces turn as pale as mine was.

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Wyatt whispered, his eyes beginning to frantically dart around in their sockets. Somebody want to explain to me just what the hell you're saying? Captain demanded, but I didn't answer. I stared at the shocked and frightened faces of my crewmates. My two crewmates. Forced my voice out in a squeak.

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Everyone went silent as they began to look around. Then they began to call his name. Finally, everyone began to run around, searching for our missing friend. Spencer dashed up the stairs to the bridge, returning later to confirm it was deserted. Panic began to well up inside me as he moved from the bridge back down to the promenade deck. The guy was here not even five minutes ago.

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How the hell did he slip away? Will! I heard the captain call as he led the way to the main lounge, which stood as empty as it had when we left. He looked around, a look of panic on his face. Where the hell did he go? As he continued to run for the other end of the room, a thought slowly began to push forward in my mind.

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For the life of me, I still can't explain why it came to me, but the more it persisted, the more I became convinced I was right. The Veranda Grill! I shouted out. Everyone turned to look at me, realizing most of them didn't know what I meant. I stabbed towards the aft section of the deck. The restaurant we went to! White and Vinny's faces changed as their minds clicked.

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Moments later, the three of us were racing down the hallways, the others struggling to keep up. We took the stairs down to the restaurant deck two at a time, the marble steps threatening to fling our feet out from under us. Reaching the landing, we sprinted past the purser's office and down the hall. I didn't even spare a glance at the still-open porthole.

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I didn't look at anything until we reached the entrance to the veranda grill, where I stopped dead in my tracks.

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The captain began, but his voice died away as he heard it as well. Everyone stood as still and silent as a statue, listening. There were voices coming from inside the restaurant, just out of sight around the corner. I felt my pulse quicken and my heart begin to pound again. The first voice I instantly recognized as Will's. The man's snorting laughter was unmistakable.

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But it was the second voice, a woman's voice, that, for yet another time that day, froze my blood in my veins. Like Will's voice, the voice spoke too softly for me to be able to make out any specific words. But it was loud enough I was able to make out one specific detail. The woman spoke with a clear British accent. Redeemed.

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What the actual fuck? Andrew managed out. I slowly turned to look at the captain. His face had turned white as a sheet. I saw his lower lip quiver slightly. Then it set and he strode forward. I whispered, reaching out to snag his arm, but he tore himself out of my grip and walked into the restaurant.

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Instantly, the voices stopped speaking and he simply stood there, staring at something out of sight. Then he gestured for us to come and join him. We all walked quietly to stand next to him. The restaurant was empty, looking exactly as it had when we'd left, with one exception. At a table near the piano, Will sat with his back to us.

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He didn't turn around as we entered, simply continued to sit and stare at the wall. Everyone exchanged a look. The captain led us over to him. As we approached him, I suddenly became aware of a smell which hung in the restaurant, one which was impossible to miss. Perfume?

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It grew stronger as we stepped next to him, and for a moment, I was terrified that we'd see him dead, his mouth retched open in a silent, unending scream. Instead, to our surprise, a happy, content smile adorned his face. His eyes were glazed over, almost as if he were drunk or hypnotized. Will? The captain finally asked, his voice low and gentle.

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At his words, he swung his head to look at all of us.

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He said, his voice sounding almost like a character in a cartoon who'd been struck by Cupid's arrow. Wyatt spoke up.

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You scared the hell out of us. Will shrugged his shoulders.

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A chill ran up my spine in his words. What woman? I managed out. He smiled.

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Then he turned more towards us, exposing the other side of his face. If I hadn't felt so mentally fried, I might have gasped. There was a red lipstick mark on Will's right cheek. The kind you get when a woman wearing it kisses you. It stood out clear as day, and even from this distance, I could still see it looked...

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wet will smile grew she likes me you know he declared looking like the happiest man in the world in any other situation it'd be a sight that would warm my heart and make me happy for the man in this situation scared the ever-loving out of me okay this is too creepy Spencer finally said, his voice trembling slightly as he looked around the restaurant. You're not kidding, man, I silently said.

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The captain turned to us, where he now clearly etched on his face. Does anyone know what the hell is going on? It's time to come clean and tell him. To love him the truth, I forced myself to speak.

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Everyone turned to me, took a deep breath, then I began to speak, told them everything. That all the things you guys said, the things they denied, about the horrifying things I saw in the dark hallway yesterday, and about what the four of us experienced. Not even half an hour ago, right in this very restaurant. As I spoke, I saw some of my crewmates' faces go pale.

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Others seemed to fight what I was saying. I saw Spencer and Andrew didn't believe a word I said, or at least didn't want to, but I saw that the captain did. When I finished, there was a long silence. Then the captain spoke.

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But this... He gestured to Will's still smiling face and the lipstick on his face.

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At his words, Will's face suddenly turned worried.

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The captain grabbed Will by the arm and hoisted him to his feet. The younger man began to protest and struggle, trying to wrench himself out of his grasp, but the captain was stronger and he pulled him towards the exit. He was almost shouting as we entered the hallway.

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I felt a chill at his words, but continued following the captain. We just reached the bottom of the stairs when a huge vibration surged up through the floor and to our feet. It was so strong that I nearly fell on my ass.

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Vinny spoke the same words aloud. A new sound began filtering up from beneath our feet, a deep, low-pitched hum that slowly began to intensify. I suddenly saw the captain's face pale even farther than it already had. No. He breathed, then began tearing up the stairs, dragging Will behind him. As we followed, I suddenly realized why he reacted the way he did.

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When I was a little child in the 90s, I traveled aboard a cruise ship with my aunt and uncle, and I clearly remembered the noise the giant engines made as they powered up before we left port. The engines are starting. Everyone raced for the nearest door to the outside deck. I prayed that I was wrong, that the ship would still be dead in the water when we emerged outside. I wasn't.

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When we emerged on the deck in the fading light, it was to see that the ship had begun moving, accelerating far quicker than I thought such a huge ship ever could. The water at the stern stretched out behind us in a foam, churned up by the ship's huge propellers. As we stood on the deck, I felt a sinking, hopeless feeling fall over me. We can't escape in a lifeboat now.

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We'd be sucked under and torn apart. Slowly, silently, everyone turned away from the sight, unsure looks in their faces, except for Wills. or grinning, ecstatic look. We're back in our cabins now. We've partnered up, each having three or four people per room. Nobody wants to be alone now. The captain took Will into his room, refuses to let him out of his sight.

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The doors are firmly locked, though I doubt after what I've seen, if they truly want in, they'll find a way. and the fire axes we've brought into the rooms with us won't do a damn bit of good. Somehow, the others have fallen asleep. Spencer and Andrew on the giant bed, Wyatt on the floor with a blanket and pillow. I think I'm the only one still awake. The ship doesn't want us to leave.

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About a week and a half ago, bound for the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, The point of no return is a long liner, and our aim was mainly to catch swordfish, along with cod and haddock. The prime season for a good haul was coming to a close, and with our haul during the summer falling short of our usual quota, we decided to make one final run to try and make some extra dough.

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Enough to fire up its own engines to take off or where, I don't know. I'm terrified. I don't know what's going to happen to us. I want to ask you what we should do now, but I don't know if any of you would have any idea of what to do in a situation like this. And yet, I have to. It's the only shred of hope I have left. So please, what should we do? How can we attempt to stop the ship?

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How in the hell can we defend ourselves against things that are already dead? And what the hell's happening to Will? And did that woman he spoke of, Diana, what did she do to him? I was about to finish, but I have to tell you of two final things. Two things that scare me almost more than anything that's happened today. The first is that I hear music.

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Not music over the intercom, but actual live music filtering in through the door and walls. It's an old song, one I recognize, a song my grandmother used to listen to constantly. A big band song called In the Mood by Glenn Miller. Worse is that I hear voices. I hear laughter and occasionally I hear screaming. But that's not the part that scares me the most. That fills me with an existential dread.

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As I was sitting here typing, something was forced under the door. When I flicked on my flashlight with shaking fingers and aimed it, I saw one of those programs, like the one I found yesterday. When I went over to it, though, I saw it was different.

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A smiling cartoon octopus stared up at me from the corner, one that was playing a trumpet and violin, stenticles holding the same objects that had been on the other program. When I flipped it open with shaking hands, I saw two things that made me want to scream. The first was the date in the upper right-hand corner, Wednesday, December 6th, 2023.

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can you help us part one of part six you know me i like boats in the sea so i'm very excited to read this story he found out an hour ago that this story involves british people and he has not quit the accent since you might be a little more culture this episode because i might do the whole thing in this accent So this story is written by an author, goes on Reddit as JLGoodwin1990.

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Second was what was on the left-hand page under the notices bulletin. We would like to welcome aboard our newest passengers, Gabrielle Lerner, Wyatt Strosky, Vincent Gaetano, William Jenkins, Andrew Weber, Spencer Michaels, and Nathan Rogers. We hope you enjoy your stay with us. God help us.

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Maybe not specifically, because my idea of The Shining was it was all about Jack's mental break, like the members of the hotel were convincing him to murder his family, right? This seems more so like everyone's screwed. Like maybe they're pulling in Will with a seductress route.

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There's a horror example. I know there's several about like a place where you die and your spirit doesn't leave. Right.

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during that wave, like when the ship... Oh, that's an interesting idea, yeah.

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What is, oh, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, right? You flip the ship and you're in the underworld, right? You're on the other side.

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Well, no, you remember the scene where, like, they have to go get Jack from the afterlife, so they flip the boat by running back and forth across both sides of it?

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When we arrived, we started off hauling in many good-sized fish. Everyone was happy.

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Okay, okay, okay. Those movies are incredible. They are great. I'm not saying they're not. I'm just saying I haven't seen them in a long time. You are putting it down a little bit with that attitude. No, I'm not. But there is a scene in the third one where they have to go into the afterlife and you do it by flipping the ship at sunset. So they like flip the ship by running back and forth.

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The point I'm making is that similar here, maybe the ship flipped, they all died, and they're in this afterlife, and everything that's happened since then, like coming across the Elizabeth, was a part of that. Or the figure in the clouds or whatever is just kind of like a vessel that this Queen Elizabeth ship travels through. Who knows? But as mentioned with the earlier parts... This is great.

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This is so much fun. There's not a lot... And I understand why. But there's not a lot of horror stories we read that just want to have fun. Right? Like, a lot of them are so... And they're good stories. I'm not saying they're not. But a lot of them are so, like... It has to be a home invasion or it has to be like there's this one scary monster. It needs it. It takes itself seriously.

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And a lot of them deserve to be taken seriously. But this one's just like fun. Like you have a crew of like salty sailors who are a board to go ship that burned down in the 1970s. Like, that's great.

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It's, it's doing very well. Uh, I'm stoked. I couldn't be happier with where it's at right now. So part four, the captain is dead. Oh, Oh, that's so rough. No, I'm sorry. Come back.

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When we first started today, the seven of us were thoroughly creeped out, terrified of what might lie in wait for us as we woke in our cabins. Me especially, after hearing the music, voices and screaming filtering in from down the hall, and the very lounge we'd slept in for the last two nights. But I never imagined that when the day would end... there would be two less of us. Three, technically.

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As hard as it may be to concentrate on anything but that horrible fact, I'll try and get to what you guys have said and commented. To say I appreciate everything you've suggested, to say all of us are thankful would be a massive understatement. I feel like you guys are what's helping me to cling to the last vestiges of sanity remaining in my mind.

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To the people who have commented about making it to either the engine room or the bridge to try and stop, sabotage, or even change the course of the ship, that was the very idea that the captain came to us with when we gathered.

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But as I'll explain in a minute, it seems the, I don't know what to call them, ghosts, entities, evil spirits, hell, demons, for all I know, anticipated the move on our parts. So I'm sure like this is part of the thing, like the ARG interacting with the comments and stuff like that.

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With like a super strong, like... Colton Spencer, the youngest member of our crew, as the first fish was hauled on board. But it was short-lived. After a few days, we began to fail to catch anything. It was as if all the fish had disappeared from the area. With our holds not even a quarter full, Gabe, our captain, made the call to sail even farther east, to the Flemish Cap.

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But I never get that from these stories because every time I scroll the comments, the first five are like, have you thought about killing yourself? Yeah.

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Just rip it out of... Yeah, you know, sometimes it's nice.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Yeah, yeah. And thankfully, it seems to just be the first couple and last couple paragraphs. But I'm with you.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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cutthroat so i mean i mean i wouldn't be surprised if they have to include it in every segment that they do you know yeah yeah there's a good chance yeah yeah salt was one of the few ingredients we didn't seem to find in the veranda grill though from what the map of the ship shows there are numerous more restaurants on board so we're going to keep our eyes open for it i just hope you'll be right about these things being unable to cross it

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To the person who mentioned the Morse Co. transmitter, I'd forgotten to mention last night that it had been torn out along with the radio microphone. These things very much do not want us trying to call for help. We're most definitely not splitting up anymore, either. Knowing what we do now, it's just too dangerous, even if it means more slower going. But I should get on and tell what happened.

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The four of us were woken up by several rapid bangs on our cabin door. After seeing the program, which had been shoved under the door last night, I was only able to catch small spurts of sleep.

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Ones that were all interlaced with horrendous nightmares of dozens, hundreds, thousands of the specters outside pressing up against our cabin, asking us to open the door and inviting us to the party down the hall before bursting into laughter and screams.

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So when the knocking began, I shot up from where I'd been curled up on the room's left seat, my clouded, half-asleep mind filling with panic and terror. They're here. They're here for us. However, the voice on the other side of the door filled us with a momentary sense of calm. It was the captain's voice.

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But remembering what had happened with the walkie-talkie yesterday, Wyatt shushed us and crept to the door, putting his eye against the people. He stood there for a moment, pulled away, a look of relief in his eyes. It really is him. He breathed out before unlocking the door. Instantly, the captain strode in, followed close behind by Vinny.

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For a moment, the relief returned, until I realized that they were alone. He answered my unmasked question before I was able to open my mouth. Will's gone. He put a hand over his face, taking a deep breath before continuing.

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The man's words hung and the tension and dread filled the air. Every single one of us knew exactly where he'd gone. He's gone off to find that woman again, Diana. Finally, the silence was broken by Andrew.

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A pained look crossed the captain's face.

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I shook my head and began to turn to boot up the laptop when I caught sight of the program line on the floor. I knew if I showed it to them, the already palpable fear infecting our group would grow. At this point, hiding anything might end up being a fatal mistake. They need to see it. I cleared my throat.

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I picked up the program and handed it to the captain. Everyone crowded around as he flipped it open. Saw the men's faces turn pale as they read the notice inside. Saw their own names written there. Andrew let out a shaky breath.

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Thanks to a few of us making the mistake of watching the perfect storm to pass the time on the trip out, a few of us understandably had reservations about going so far from any landmass, but the captain pointed out the obvious. "'Boys, I wish it weren't necessary to do,' he began, rubbing his thick white beard."

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After that, we quickly broke out the laptop and checked her comments. After reading them for a few moments, Wyatt pointed, smiling slightly.

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The captain stared for another second at the screen before nodding. Then that settles it.

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Shut a glance back at the open door to our cabin.

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Putting away the laptop, I quickly took a moment to set the solar charger on the lift of the porthole together to charge. The laptop's battery had gotten precariously low, and the six of us moved out in the hall, closing the door behind us. We now carried three fire axes we'd taken from red emergency boxes scattered around the ship.

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My head swung on a swivel as we passed each T-junction, half expecting something, or now someone, to lunge at us from around a corner. The silence, only broken by the low throbbing sound of the ship's engines rising from far below us, didn't help the tense atmosphere that had fallen over us. I didn't know if I was more afraid of running into the ship's inhabitants again, or our own colleague.

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So what's the over-under that one of them has a hallucination and kills another one with an axe?

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I agree. I think my money says that's how the captain dies. That's my prediction. Yeah. When we reached the door to the lounge, however, all thoughts evaporated in my head as we froze, staring into the room. It still looked the same as it had yesterday, with two large exceptions.

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The first is that the raised section of floor near the back of the room where a band would play, one that was desolate and empty when we'd arrived, no longer was. Even from across the room, I saw instruments set up on it. Violins, trumpets, bass, a drum set, and more were set up as though they'd just been put down by a band. A realization flashed through my mind.

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The music I heard last night wasn't a hallucination. It was real. Second noticeable change in the room was the clear after remnants of a party. Confetti and balloons, which had lost the helium needed to keep them afloat, littered the dance floor. And on a few tables, we could see half empty wine and cocktail glasses. They had themselves one hell of a shindig last night.

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Vinny said softly, shut a glance at him. The look on his face mirrored the emotions I felt. In any other situation, the scene would have been one to feel happy about, people celebrating something. Here now, though, it evoked the sort of dread and fear that one would get stepping into a haunted house. The captain shook his head slowly, the gesture to us. Come on, let's keep moving.

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and moving quickly across the lounge, kicking balloons out of our way before heading to the bridge. "'What the hell?' Spencer exclaimed as we stood in front of the hatch which led to the bridge area of the ship, which yesterday had stood wide open, held in place by the metal hook which had been set into an eye swivel on the wall. But now, as we stared in disbelief, it had been tightly shut.

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He looked to the sky, which looked clear. Besides, the radar says there shouldn't be any storms for the duration of our trip. Up until now, I've never believed in the concept of jinxing, but I can't help but swear that he jinxed the hell out of us with those words.

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Not just shut, but locked. Try as hard as we might to the point our hands turned red and stung from exertion, the handle refused to spin."

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Andrew muttered as the captain began patting at his pockets. His head snapped up, his eyes wide as he realized something. The keys are gone. He said before shaking his head. Will must have lifted them from me before he snuck out. The realization that we've been effectively blocked from reaching the helm caused the hopeless feeling we had yesterday, seeing the ship moving to return.

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I let out a sigh and put my back to the hatch, resting my head on the cool metal. After a minute, we slowly made our way down to the bowels of the ship. I already knew full well what we'd find, but we still followed the increasingly hunched shoulders of the captain down the narrow, graded steps, flicking on our flashlights as the incandescent bulbs over our heads became fewer and farther between.

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When we reached the hold and rounded the final corner, I saw what I expected. The metal hatch, above which the words engine and boiler rooms were stamped, was closed. Wyatt suddenly burst into a sprint, pushing past the captain to the door, where he frantically, almost hysterically, began yanking on the handle.

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It was as if he hoped he'd be able to wrench it open by sheer will, but it remained steadfast. Finally, he stopped and began kicking the door. Fuck you, you stupid fucking ship! He screamed, his voice bouncing off the grated floor and pipes echoing away in the gloom.

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He collapsed to the floor, beginning to cry softly. I couldn't do anything but watch, stunned by the man's apparent mental breakdown. Andrew, the captain, and Spencer moved to comfort him, leaving me and Vinny standing in the hallway. I shot a look to my left, seeing another closed and likely locked hatch. The sign above this door declared it the auxiliary machine room.

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Sign, I placed my head in my hands. They knew we would try this. They knew, and they got ahead to cut us off, likely with Will's help. I was just trying to calm myself when the sound, one that was almost so quiet I missed it, reached my ears. Nathan. I froze in place. A massive shiver racing up my spine at the call. It was replaced by a steady stream of chills as my eyes widened behind my fingers.

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For a moment I waited, barely breathing as I strained my ears to hear. My heart was doing the Macarena inside my chest. All I could hear was the soft hissing of the pipes that ran alongside us and over our heads in the ceiling, along with the soft voices of the men ahead of me. I forced myself to let out a deep breath, trying to relax. You're hearing things, buddy. It's just the pipes.

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It was the man's voice I'd heard on the radio on the second day aboard. The one I'd heard through the radio. It called out to me in a mocking, sing-song manner. Without seeing anything, I knew the owner of the voice was smiling. Not a pleasant smile, either. I slowly stood up straight, pulling my hands away from my eyes as my breath became ragged and shallow.

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Then, just when I thought it was impossible to feel any more frightened, the feeling of being watched came again. Now, from directly off to my right, another chill shot through me as I realized where I was standing. I was standing almost directly in the middle of a T-junction. Oh, shit. Swallowing hard, I slowly turned, ebbing my flashlight with shaking hand down the hallway. I almost screamed.

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The shadowy figures were back. They stood at the end of the hallway underneath the sign labeled Water Softer and Air Conditioning Plant. I couldn't tell how many there were, but they packed the hall from one side to the other, standing just out of reach of my flashlight's beam. Horror and dread filled every crevice of my body, and I felt myself begin to shake.

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I attempted to speak, but the voice seemed to catch in my throat, and then they took a step forward. The horror I felt increased as I saw the overhead lamp wink out, pledging the next section into darkness. I found my voice struggling to pass a single word over my lips. Fuck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vinny turn and look at me.

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Slight curiosity on his face immediately melted as he caught sight of the expression I wore. "'Nate, what the hell's wrong?' he asked. Faintly, I heard the others stop talking, as well as them slowly begin to make their way back to me. I kept trying to force more words out. I have to warn them, my mind screamed at me, but it was as though I'd lost my grasp on the English language.

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I felt Vinny step next to me and saw his flashlight aimed down the corridor.' and then I felt him go stiff as a board as he caught sight of what I'd seen. Oh, shit. And then a little louder. Um, guys? But now the rest of our group had reached us, and everyone collectively aimed their lights down the hall. I heard Wyatt suddenly begin to hyperventilate as the figures took another step forward.

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The captain whispered. Spencer said nothing, but I knew he had to be scared shitless. Finally, face to face with what he denied about until now. As the third light went out, I finally found my voice again. Gabe. I felt the captain put a hand on my shoulder. What is it, Nate? I swallowed hard and spoke the words I knew in the marrow of my bones to be true.

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The next moment, all of us were turning and sprinting back the way we'd come. Behind us, I more felt than heard our pursuers give chase, and I heard a noise that chilled me to the bone. The sound of the overhead lights just behind us, not just clicking off, but shattering in their housings.

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The metal halls rang out with our screams and shouts as we urged each other to move faster, reaching the stairs and beginning to climb. Move your asses, everyone! The captain shouted as he dragged Wyatt off the top of the stairs. As we climbed, my eyes flashed to the metal signs indicating what deck we were on. We passed G deck, then F deck, making our way up.

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As we reached the top of the landing, I spared a look down, and this time, I did scream. The figures were swirling up after us. Some didn't even touch the floor, flying through the air in pursuit. I heard the whispers, laughter, and screaming I'd heard when I'd been cornered by the gym. This time, however, the voices somehow held even more malevolence than they originally. They're angry.

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They're downright pissed that we just tried to sabotage the ship. I raced to keep up with the group. We just reached EDEC when a loud clanging sound came from above us. I reached the bottom of the next set of stairs when the others had gathered and looked up. and I almost screamed again. More shadowy figures were swirling down from above towards us.

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We were trapped in a pincher moment, no way to escape. For a moment, the existential dread I'd felt facing the rogue wave that night came again, and I felt sure this was the end of us all until Spencer let out a cry. Look there! Spinning around, I saw a closed hatch standing a few feet away from us. The sign above it read, Cargo Motor Car Hold.

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Just want to point that out. Right, right. It's partially their fart as well. Right. We made way for the cap and reached it about a day or so later. To our shock, and of course our elation, we began to haul in a metric ton of fish. Any apprehensiveness we had melted away like butter in a pan, and we all became infected by the thought of how much money we were going to make.

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I was the closest to it and leapt for it, my hands locking around the handle and praying that it wouldn't be locked. To my relief, though, the handle spun and the hatch swung open. Come on! I yelled, moving out of the way to let the others in. As soon as the captain dragged Wyatt through, I slammed the hatch closed as I heard the man's voice ring out again.

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I felt someone slam into the hatch next to me, turning to see Vinny begin locking the hatch. Reaching up, I did the same on my side. Not a moment too soon either. As soon as the last lock had flipped into place, something slammed into the hatch with the force of a speeding freight train. The two of us leapt back as the banging continued for a few seconds. Then abruptly, it stopped.

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An eerie, unsettling silence fell over the hold, and after fighting to get my breath back, I turned to look into the room. Crates and other large boxes rose high around us, seeming to go on forever. Directly ahead, my light glinted off something powder blue. Focusing my light, I saw it had found what looked like an old mid-50s Cadillac convertible.

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The top was down, and I saw a matching blue leather interior, excellent with white stitching. For a moment, everyone fought to find their breath. Then the captain spoke.

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Trying to stay as close to each other as we could, we began to move across the huge fold to find it. I stopped as I reached the Cadillac, reaching out and putting a hand on the quarter panel. The cool metal felt nice against my sweaty hand, and I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I was about to collapse. My legs felt like jelly under me. I needed to sit for a minute.

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Sliding down, I put my back against the car and slid to the floor, putting my head in my hands. I felt myself begin to shake as the image of the figures chasing us replayed in my mind. Get a hold of yourself, Nate. You're okay. You're okay. Just keep it together. I whispered. Suddenly a voice came from nearby.

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It was Vinny. Not wanting him to see my fragile mental state, I chose to keep my head in my hands and nodded.

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I sighed. He was right. I know, man. I began before letting out a shaky breath. Just, I honestly don't know if we're going to get off this ship alive, and that scares me. Speaking the truth felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt the car rock slightly, indicating he'd leaned against it. I let out a deep breath.

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For a moment, the man's words comforted me, knowing someone else felt the same. Then he continued. But, I mean, maybe it won't be so bad. And another one bites the dust. Vinny is gone. Goodbye. Vinny. Speaking of another one biting the dust, there's six of them, right? Or seven counting our narrator, right?

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The, so, so Vinny Vinny's about to die or he's going to be the next, uh, will the same thing that happened to him. Uh, but the line Vinny said where he was like, you shouldn't walk away from the group like that. Did our narrator walk away from, And that's what caused his hallucination early on? I think so. Because I figured that was... Okay, okay. Yeah. Confusion washed over me. What?

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Until, that is, the dark clouds began to move in on the horizon. I'd been at my station at the helm, and I'd looked out the starboard windows to see the ominous darkness rolling towards us. What the hell? According to the weather reports, the nearest storm was hundreds of miles away, and yet here I was staring one dead in the face. You gotta be fucking kidding me.

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Oh, man. He let out a sort of laughter, but it hadn't sounded like the way I knew Vinny laughed. His laugh was a deep, booming laugh. This one had been short and nasally. Another chuckle came. The realization suddenly flashed through me as I remembered the radio call yesterday. They can imitate our voices.

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Oh, a fresh dose of fear coursed through my veins as I slowly pulled my hands away from my head, suddenly feeling extremely vulnerable, realizing just how stupid I'd been. But there was nobody there.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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So, for one, that's really cool. Because Will could have been like that the whole time yesterday or whatnot. And anyone could be like that at any point. You constantly have to do a head count. But also, do you think everyone else can see him or just our narrator?

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telling each other what they've seen or what they, you know, everyone's being way too bravado, tough guy about this and it's getting, it's making everyone confused and die.

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It's like if I acknowledge it, then it becomes real, right? So if I don't think about it, then it's all figurative until then, yeah. Yeah. The voice came directly over my head. I began to violently shake, began to hyperventilate as I heard all pretext to my crewmate's voice melt away. I was terrified to look up, but I couldn't help myself.

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Slowly, feeling as though I were about to die of a heart attack at any moment, I craned my neck to look above me. A pair of eyes stared down at me, peeking over the side of the Cadillac's hood, one that held both amusement and malevolence to them. The next few moments are nothing but a blur to me. The only thing I can remember is hearing my own shrill screams.

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That and blindly running away as I heard the confused, terrified shouts of the others as they attempted to chase after me. I didn't even become cognizant of anything until I found myself in an unfamiliar foyer. Snapping back to reality. Oh, there goes gravity. Oh, snapping back to reality. I looked around. I could hear the other's voices filtering up from below, calling out my name.

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Okay, our narrator's got to keep it together. He screams way too much. He's running. He's sprinting. I understand this is a stressful scenario, but you're making things way more complicated. There's one segment back there where I think he said he was about to scream five times in a row. I'm fully imagining... I'm about to scream. I'm going to do it.

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I'm fully imagining shaggy levels of like, oh, let's get out of here.

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Yes, yes, 100%. And it makes that noise. It's like... Like the legs winding up. Yep, yep. What just happened? Swallowing, I turned and looked over the railing. I could see the flashlights wildly aiming around. I swallowed, then yelled, Here! I'm here! A light flashed up, hitting me in the face, momentarily blinding me. I found him! I heard the captain's voice call.

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I muttered, flicking on the ship's autopilot and walking for the door that led outside. I pushed it open, the thick smell of the ocean and fish wafting over me, looking down at the aft deck. I saw the captain helping the others ready the lines for their next drop. I yelled out, raising my voice to be heard above the boombox blasting out hard rock music.

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We're coming up. Alright. I called back down, but took a step back, aiming my light to see where I was. My light flashed off the sign which declared I'd somehow dashed all the way up to C deck. Three decks? Then the image of the eyes staring down at me swam forward in my mind, began to shake again, hearing the thing's voice imitating Vinny echo inside my head.

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Trying to calm myself, I took a few steps into the middle of the foyer, aiming my light around. It reflected off another sign, one that stuck out from the wall. First class swimming pool. Beneath it were a set of double doors which stood open, the light inside spilling out into the landing. I couldn't see much inside, so I took a few more steps until I could see clearly. I blinked a few times.

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Am I seeing things? I wasn't. A swimming pool was packed. I saw people in old-style bathing suits swimming in the pool. A woman wearing a bathing cap swam by heading left during the butterfly stroke. A happy cry of children laughing could be heard. And two suddenly flashed by the doorway as they chased one another. I realized music filtered out from the room as well.

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Old swing music, which was playing from an intercom inside. None of that was what caused me to gasp. It was who I saw standing across the other side of the pool. I struggled to find my voice before calling out, Will. At my call, he turned to look at me. A huge grin spread across his face, and he raised an armed wave at me.

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He looked nothing less like the happiest man on the planet, and he wasn't alone. A second pair of eyes had turned to regard me at my call.

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pair of blue almost sapphire eyes ones that for a moment made me feel as though i were falling under some kind of spell platinum blonde hair bobbed around the shoulders and voluptuous lips pulled back into a smile one that held equal amounts of warmth and eeriness to them she wore a white turtleneck and slacks that accentuated her figure her bracelet dangled from one wrist

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The lips contorted into a smirk as she snaked an arm around Will's shoulders. One eye closed in a wink. I'd never seen the woman before, but instantly I knew who she was. Diana. Do you want to explain what the moaning is that you were doing during that whole paragraph? Excuse me? Okay. Then the doors to the pool slammed shut on their own. Will! Will!

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I screamed, sprinting for the doors as I heard the others reach the landing. I heard them call out to me, but I was ramming my shoulder into the doors, trying desperately to get them to open. What's happening? I heard the captain cry out. Will, he's in there! I screamed. Instantly, the others joined me in pushing. After a moment, the doors suddenly swung inwards, almost sending us into the pool.

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I glanced up, shielding his eyes so he could see me better. I stabbed my finger towards the gathering storm, which occasionally flashed with lightning. Still perfectly remember how the captain's face filled with shock and surprise as he turned to see it. The rest of the crew turned and spotted it as well.

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Diana. Then the door slammed shut. I trailed off, looking at the others. Some held frightened expressions on their faces, but some, like Andrew and Spencer, I saw it confused, disbelieving looks on theirs. I felt a wave of anger flash through me. I'm not crazy! I suddenly began screaming.

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Not if the hell we just went through or down below. Instantly, I saw reality crash into them. Looks of guilt and shame passed over their faces. They know they're in the wrong cure. Saw Spencer begin to open his mouth. Okay. From everyone else's perspective. They ran through the porthole and then our narrator starts freaking out and screaming and sprints away.

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And then they find him three stories up and he's like, but, but Will was here and Diana and a party.

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He seems to be like, sure, him and the captain happened simultaneously on the first day or the first full day on board. But like, even then, the captain got a hold of himself, at least outwardly.

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That's good. Well, I don't know if he killed the captain, but they still give him his laptop and let him type out the story.

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Then maybe I see what you're saying. I got you. Like in one of his deliriums, he does it right. Nathan definitely seems the most susceptible. but I was cut off is why I began to scream behind them. You know what? Fuck this. The others turned to see him running for another of the red boxes, which contained a fire hose and ax.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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To my shock, he punched straight through the glass with his bare hands, something that should have broken them. Somehow, he yanked an axe from it without a glance at his shredding and bleeding hands. His eyes danced wildly around in his sockets, and I instantly recognized that he'd gone off the deep end. He began to scream again, both at us and around him in general. Fuck this, man.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Well, that's fine, because I'm coming for you. And with that, he turned and bolted up the stairs for the upper decks. Wyatt! Just let that guy go. Wyatt, wait! The captain yelled, but he was already out of sight.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I heard him scream. The captain turned to us. Come on!

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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We all began sprinting up the stairs, following the man's voices, ranted and raved about wiping them all out. He really has gone over the deep end. He's yelling about killing already dead people with an axe. Pursuing Wyatt, we reached the promenade deck and stopped on the landing. Wyatt had stopped screaming. The entire ship had gone dead silent.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Will, another of our crew, shouted out exasperatedly, dropping the hooks and lines to the deck. The rest of the crew let our curses and some turn to the captain, asking him questions I couldn't hear over the music. After speaking to him for a minute, he walked over and turned off the boombox before making his way up the steps, standing beside me. Where exactly in the hell did that come from?

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Not just dead silent, a deadly silence that held the worst connotations to it. Oh, oh no, I thought. I saw the same realization reflected in everyone else's face. I swallowed. What? I called out, my voice muted, bouncing off the carpet and wooded paneled walls. There was no answer. White, buddy, talk to me. Where are you at? Andrew yelled out, still nothing.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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And then, slowly at first, a new sound began reaching us. The sound of sobbing and mumbling.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt? Come on! The Captain urged us, leading the way down the hall towards the lounge. The door still stood open, and I could see the balloons and decorations still on the floor. As we drew close, my blood turned to ice as I heard Wyatt begin to scream, half angry, half terrified.

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The captain yelled out. Wyatt! We're coming! He was the first to reach the doorway. The axe suddenly swung around from the right side of the doorway faster than I thought possible. In that horrible split second, my lips began to yell out a warning, but it was too late. The axe buried itself into the captain's stomach, stopping the older man dead in his tracks.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I heard him let out a strangled cry, more of a gasp as he doubled over. The axe pulled out of him, blood spilling to the floor from the man's wound. A moment later, White emerged from around the corner. A wild, insane rage plastered on his face. I got you, you fucking ghost. He screamed in the captain's face. I saw him raise the axe again, this time high over his head as he screamed again.

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Bleed, you shitter! I saw Vinny and Andrew begin rushing towards him, trying to stop what they saw was coming. But again, I saw it was too late. I closed my eyes and turned away quickly. I didn't want to see the axe slam into the captain's head. I had the man who'd taken me under his wing and kept me from going broke. To help pay for my aunt's funeral when she passed away, I couldn't bear to.

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But I heard it, and it's a sound I'll never be able to forget. Horrified silence settled over the room, and I turned back feeling like I was about to vomit as I saw the axe buried into his skull. He lay on his back on the floor, a rapidly spreading pool of blood beginning to surround him, staining the carpet.

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Wide, horrified eyes stared unblinkingly up at the ceiling, and his mouth was frozen open in shock. The man was very, very dead. I swung my gaze up. Vinny and Andrew had frozen in place, their arms still stretched out as if to still try to stop the atrocity that had just occurred. Spencer clapped his hands over his mouth, his face white as a sheet as his body shook uncontrollably.

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My eyes lifted to the blood-splattered face of the captain's murderer. The look of insane rage and bloodlust lingered in Wyatt's eyes for another moment. Then I saw it die away. I saw him snap back to reality. He asked in a whisper, looking down at the corpse. His breathing quickened, and he lifted his own hands to stare at them, as though he were just beginning to comprehend what he'd done.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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His eyes lifted to us, and I saw the panic begin to reappear in them.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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He muttered, pulling his hat off his head and scratching at the tufts of gray hair that remained there. I don't know, sir. I admitted, watching another bolt of lightning flash inside it.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I swing for my life, and... He cut off, beginning to shake as violently as Spencer was. He looked directly at me. Then he turned and began sprinting through the lounge, towards the companionway we'd taken to get inside the first night. We remained frozen for a moment, then began to chase after him. Wait, wait! Finney shouted at him.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Wyatt's terrified, hysterical scream flew back at us as he rounded a corner. Fuck you! I'm not staying on board this ship! I'll swim home if I have to! He slammed into the final corner, and a new, horrific realization hit me. I remembered what I thought about the lifeboats when Queen Elizabeth had begun moving. We'll be sucked under. And... Wyatt, don't!

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I screamed out as we reached the corner, but it was too late. I caught a split-second glimpse of Wyatt flinging himself over the railing. Then, he was gone. Out of sight. None of us heard a splash. We ran to the railing and peered over. For a moment, we saw nothing. Then, White's head broke the water's surface. Coughing out waters, he began to thrash, attempting to swim away from the ship.

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Then he was pulled under. Oh, fuck! Spencer yelled, then began running for the stern of the ship. Vinny, Andrew, and I right behind him. Part of me prayed that he would miss the propellers, that he'd be spat out the back of the ship. Drowning would be a less painful way to die than this. but as we reached the stern railing, I felt despair and horror flood into me.

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Seeing the dark red stain emerge from beneath the ship, spread out with the foam which drifted behind us in the ship's wake. We stood there for a long time, staring out at the water as if doing so would return our lost crewmate, our lost friend. Could have been their minutes, could have been their hours.

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All I know is, the next thing I knew, I was looking up to see the sun beginning to set on the horizon. None of us knew what to do. We were numb. Numb and unable to function. So we did the only thing we could do. We went back to our cabin and locked the door. That's where I am now. There's only five of us left now. Others have. For the life of me, I don't know how, managed to fall asleep.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I can only guess how much mental and physical energy was sat for them, to the point they couldn't stay awake, even if they wanted to. Me? I'm too afraid to sleep. Afraid I'll dream of the horrifying things I've seen today. Of the figures. Of the voice. The eyes staring hungrily down at me from the hood of the car in the hold. Of Wyatt, either driven insane or hallucinating.

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A false image brought on by these ghosts plunging the axe into the captain's body. And of him disappearing into the water. Of him being sliced to pieces by the giant propeller blades. The ship is doing everything it can to drive us insane, have us kill each other, or just flat out take us. It's already taken Will. I know he's lost now. There's no way to bring Kim back. He's one of them now.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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It makes me realize something. I said that there is only five of us left, but in reality, there's only four. For how much longer, though, I don't know. The compass I have in my supply spins around non-stop. I can't even tell which direction we're heading in, and I don't know how to position our location by the stars. The only person who knew how to do that was the captain, and he's dead.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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For a moment he stared down at it, then lightly began to smack at it.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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All I know is this. I'm not going to roll over and let the ship take me. I'm going to fight and try to find a way off.

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help get myself and the others back home or die trying will might have wanted to stay in the 1950s forever but i want to go back to the peace and normality of 2023 compared to this hell the relative peace and normality anyways i don't know though do any of you guys have any ideas any ideas at all of what to do now even if it's the dumbest idea in the world i'll take it

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Anything's better than just letting the hopelessness overwhelm me. Just please give us any direction to take that might help us get off this damn ship. Please. The music started again. I hear it filtering through the walls. Different tune now, but again, one I recognize. Sing, Sing, Sing by Benny Goodman. It's not the worst part, though.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Someone began softly knocking a few minutes ago on the cabin door. Then began calling in, asking for us to come and join the party. The voice that asked it was Will's. And then another voice joined him. A woman's voice. One that asked the same question with a British accent. And finally, a third voice. One that made me want to break down in tears. The captain's voice.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The implications pierced my heart and soul like a dagger. To Will, the ship was, is heaven. A place where he can eternally spend frozen in time period he wanted to go back to. To me, it's hell.

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So I like this. It's a lot of fun. Something I like about this that a lot of like set piece horror doesn't do, because we'll read a lot or you'll see a lot of movies about like a horror movie set in, I don't know, a shopping mall, a farm, whatever. Is there not unique enough with the kills a lot of the time? Like they don't use it to their advantage.

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But so far, we've had one person get murdered by an axe. We've had one person succumb to the demon's temptation. We had another one get like physically captured or overwhelmed by them in the staircase. And then we had someone jump off the boat and get crunched up by a propeller. Like that's, that is utilizing your setting and it's excellent. I love it. Yeah.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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A small wave of confusion swept over me. I'd personally repaired the system the last time it wonked out, and as far as I knew, it had been working perfectly. But as I stepped next to him, I saw he was right. No storm clouds were displayed on the radar in the direction the storm was coming from. What the... A shiver rushed up my spine, one I didn't understand why it had.

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This is, this is an incredibly fun story to me. So it's a will to the captain to everything. Like it's, I'm having a great time. Got to say, um, good one. It's looking pretty good for, uh, me and Hunter paying your, uh, book cover as soon as I get Hunter to break.

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but I will keep doing the voices. Okay. All right. Part five. So I've got good news and bad news. Good news is we have a plan. If all goes as smoothly and precisely as possible, tonight will be the last we spend on this God forsaken ship. I'll tell you about that in a minute, but as uncertain as we might be, seems like the only chance we have of making it out alive.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The bad news is what started this morning as four of us. It's now into just three. So it's one of those good news, bad news, good news. We got a plan. Bad news. One of us is dead. Also, like, does this sound like a heaven to you? Because to me, this just sounds like torment, like being in one place for eternity. But it's just like a place like a party, you know? Yeah.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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I mean, you could say that about heaven, though.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Here's, here's the difference though, to me with heaven. It's like, you are like an altered form of yourself. You're like a different creation and you're among like infinity, like infinite creation. So there's always something else to be on a boat from the 1950s forever. Yeah. I feel like that is just like a purgatory.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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Yeah, yeah. And I can't help but feel consumed with guilt because the only reason that is is because I made a stupid mistake. A grade A dumbass move that most people would yell at a character in a horror movie for doing. Shit. Let me get to what you've said first and foremost. I feel myself beginning to precariously dangle near to insanity.

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Focusing on your comments will help keep me going the way of Wyatt. Mentally breaking. To the person who made the biggest, most detailed comment, any of the ideas you suggested along with others and what is going to ultimately go into our plan, so for that, thank you. Fortunately, your idea about crossing out our names in the activity program, as good an idea as it was, is impossible to do.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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When we returned to our cabin to hole up for the night, I noticed that it had been taken. Whether that's because an action like that would have worked or not, I don't know. As much as the idea of dropping the anchor seems like a decent idea, none of us dares tread down into the crew decks and bow to the ship again. Not after yesterday.

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As for the idea of holy water, while I may consider myself a believer, it's been many years since I've stepped inside a church, let alone kneel down and prayed. Any power of faith I might have is so damn weak it'd effectively be like flicking the nose of a hungry tiger and hoping it'll make it go away. And the others, as far as I know, are not the religious types.

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But there's others who have said things I appreciate. But I should and need tell you about today. When the four of us first woke up, nobody said a word. The first few days aboard, we'd all gathered round and discuss aloud what the plan for the day was. Now, though, after the horrific and soul-destroying things we saw yesterday, any attempt at conversation seemed pointless.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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The cabin was warm and comfortable, and yet it felt as if we'd just walked through thick fog. Finding my voice, I looked at the captain, who held a thoughtful gaze. So, what do we do? He took a second to answer, then sighed.

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Without any prompting from anyone, I booted up the laptop, hoping against hope that someone might have an idea which would germinate into an escape plan. I felt the numbness which had settled over me lift somewhat as I scrolled through your comments. My eyes flickered over the suggestions, and I began to open my mouth to call for the others to join me.

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But I shut it just as quickly, seeing the comment one of you made about the specters likely listening to us. I silently cursed myself at the realization hit me, they're right. They've likely been listening to us the entire time. It's been how they've managed to always stay a step ahead of us. Just because we can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

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The thought made me cast a wary and somewhat paranoid eye to the far corners of the cabin, ones filled with shadows that even the bedside lamps couldn't banish. The mental image of a grinning face slowly appearing out from the gloom swam forward in my mind, and I felt myself beginning to breathe quicker. I forced it away, willing myself to calm down.

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Instead, I snapped my fingers and beckoned the others to join me. Putting a finger to my lips, I pointed to the screen. The others crowded around me and read as I silently scrolled past the suggestions. Then, fumbling around for a moment, I found some stationary, likely one-shoes to send letters while aboard, along with a pen. I hastily scribbled down a message and passed it around to the others.

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Any of these ideas seem good to you? After a moment, the three of them took turns writing things down quickly before sliding the paper back to me. Bidding over, I saw the ideas about jumping from the stern of the ship, ejecting as many lifeboats as possible to use, and even feigned insanity to throw chairs and tables overboard to use as flotation were all ideas they liked.

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Okay, now we're getting somewhere, I thought, feeling a little lighter, until I saw the final thing my crewmates had written. The idea of burning the ship, making her catch fire like she did in the 70s. Yes, let's burn this thing down.

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I feel like, I feel like you're, I know they're in dire straits, but to be like, okay, plan a, we jump off the ship, but we throw off chairs and we'll use those after we jump off the ship.

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My Crew And I Are Stuck Aboard An Abandoned Ship | Creep Cast

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But what if you die and then you just still are stuck on the ship?

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So you're in eternity with, like, your Diana, your blonde-haired lady, and after, like, 2,000 years, you're like, well, at least I tried to jump. Yeah. At least I did something.

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I looked up, arching my eyebrow and gesturing to the line. I saw Andrew and Spencer immediately nod enthusiastically. Vinny, however, looked unsure, as unsure as I felt inside. Wait, isn't Vinny dead?

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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Today's episode is sponsored by Aura. Now recently on this podcast, we spent four hours talking about how identity theft and hacking someone's personal information led their life to near ruin. Xander was framed, lost money, and even the people around him were affected. And our main character could have avoided all of these issues with today's sponsor, Aura.

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But this is one of the only stories we've read where it, because of its length and the way it's written, it actually kind of feels like the tone of someone who is in this situation.

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I mean, it's nice to go like. It's you're stepping into this pit effectively, or like if the staircase keeps going, who knows? It's like, it goes all the way down to hell, right? You have this like infinite staircase, but they can't see it. Like it could be one step at a time right in front of their feet, or it could be this chasm that's opened up. Um, but then being blind adds a layer to it.

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The way that it's worded makes it feel very real. Uh, given our situation and stuff like, yeah, I, I really liked that. That was, that was a great intro.

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This is I would say no, because the title of this story is I am blind. So it's like that's the unique thing there. And then a bunch of our other stuff doesn't. None of the titles seem to do that.

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Yeah, it's got me hooked. I certainly liked it. Even if that was just a standalone vignette by itself, I'd be like, that's cool.

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So, part two. As I typed out the first post, actually dictated it, I would stop from time to time to listen. The creaking was not consistent and almost imperceptible. A normal person couldn't probably hear it, but my remaining four senses were overly sharpened. I guess what scared me most was the silence in between.

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You have absolutely no idea what's going on. It really does feel like your house just gained more steps all of a sudden.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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You have no visual on it? Yeah, yeah. I'd speak to dictate. I'd hear the creaking. I'd stop. The creaking would stop too. It's almost as if it was mocking me. I didn't want to think of the thing I'd bumped into. It felt like bumping into a coat rack or something, but I didn't stop to feel around. I have a consistent urge to flee any dangerous situation I'm in because I know I can't fight it.

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Even if I were fast, even if I were strong, I can't fight something I don't fully understand. They could be standing right in front of me, and if they were still enough, I wouldn't know. As I finished writing, I reached for my phone. I figured I'd call my sister. I was starting to feel the warmth of the morning light on my shoulders through the windows and hear some birds.

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Judging on how stiff I felt, I must have been up all night.

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creaking had stopped and it made its way up to my door was it standing on the other side hey siri call daphne my voice sounded so hoarse usually i talk to myself a lot i sing whatever i play music this time i've been so quiet so afraid to make a sound so afraid to breathe the phone was ringing hi there you good it's kind of early what time is it

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I stopped. Slowly, I grab up to the door and place my ear on the oak wood to listen. I can feel someone's presence outside, waiting. Oof, that's creepy.

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I think you do count them because I think you are very aware of every like spatial thing around you. Right. Because like I've talked to blind people who are like, yeah, I know how to get through my house because I know exactly how many steps it takes to get to every part of my house. They know how to talk.

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No, I think you're right, where it's like, everything was fine up until, do you have a key?

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Also, Daphne's response, you would think would be more intense, where she's like, I think someone's in my house, right? You think it'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm calling the police. I'm good. Whatever. But she's just kind of like, that's creepy. Well, I have to be at the office at nine. She's kind of almost dismissive of it a bit.

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Do you have a key? Silence. Do you have a key? No. And then you did, but I didn't take it. I felt weird having a key to your house.

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There might be something there that's interesting. I think you're right, though, that there's definitely a tonal shift on purpose there.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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On seeing if you can hold it in or the story?

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Okay. All right. If that, if that milk gets too bad, you need to let me know.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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Okay. All right. Okay. i'm imagining now that like the camera's cutting back and forth between my normal setup and you like in a dark bathroom with the phone right under your chin and like you can just hear very loud toilet noises i don't want to come to that please read i hung up and sat on the floor back against the door waiting listening nothing was going on did i scare it off

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She texted me she had 10 more minutes until she got to my place. Okay, finally, I stood up and unlocked the door. I stood there in silence for a while. My options were very limited. Normal people could literally look around and make out if they were alone or not. I couldn't. All I could do was listen. If whatever was there was being really still, really silent, my worst option was to feel around.

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That terrified me. I've talked to others, but something similar for them was sticking their hand out in complete darkness. The thought of touching that thing made my skin crawl. The direct contact was so unbearable, so much more dangerous, but I had no choice. Because everything was silent, so I stuck my hands out. My heart raced with every step.

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I wanted to keep going, but at the same time, I wanted so badly to stop and turn around. Made my way to the stairs. 14 steps back to normal. I was barefoot and the hardwood floors felt so cold, so unusual against my skin. I thought that bothered me until I stepped into something sticky. Ugh.

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I gagged and wiped my foot on the carpet. I was gonna ask Daphne what that was. Made it through the door without any other occurrences. I unlocked it and was greeted by the familiar voice of my sister.

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Yeah. Yeah. They're just like, they're just throwing clothes and they're eating. You don't have terrified that I've never considered that. If you were blind in a really big house, there is, if they, if someone was really quiet, really sneaky, they could just live in the house with you. Yeah. A hundred percent.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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oh my gosh no sir no sir that would be oh man I could tell she didn't want to based on her hesitation eventually I heard her climb the stairs and walk around a bit so anything please speak there's nothing weird upstairs and no one anywhere it's pretty neat that bothered me for some reason

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

177.518

Yeah, it's a pretty good name. Uh, I checked her out. Uh, her name is Helena. No, watch out. Let's let's all focus. Let's all focus on Hunter making fun of blind people. I think that's the important thing here. As a matter of fact, I'll add it to the list of things he hates the disabled. I love, uh, what are we going to say?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1822.695

I had to ask her, even though she was going to think I'm crazy.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1837.594

Okay, for one, I want to call out Daphne's comment where she says, our author says, I bumped into something, and Daphne says, in the middle of the night, in the dark, how unusual. That was a jerk thing to say. That was very rude to be like, oh, it was dark out? How could you see?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1867.862

I don't know. I feel like there's something up with her. I also feel like Yes, I understand. If my sister called me right now and I came over, she was like, I think someone's been here with me. Granted, my sister's not blind, of course. But I'd probably be like, have you considered the possibility that you're stupid? Have you considered not being dumb? Have you ever thought of that?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1890.69

I don't know if I'd immediately be like, you're right, I'm calling the police and telling them that there's a man living in your house that's not broken into. So I kind of get it, but...

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

19.702

Aura has identity theft protection which monitors your personal data, including your social security number, and searches billions of data points, including public court records and the dark web, to alert you about potential danger. And if your credit file has been compromised, you will get alerted in minutes thanks to Aura's financial fraud protection.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1913.468

This is great so far, by the way. Just the premise of like a blind person having someone live in their house is terrifying. I definitely felt I had flipped a switch with that question because after that question, the way she talked to me changed. She was overly patient, overly calm, kept telling me to put on some music, distress, take a bath, listen to one of my audio books and don't panic.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1934.572

I felt an ounce of heartbreak to think my sister didn't believe me, but I moved on. After that, a few days passed when I kept staying alert, but nothing happened. No weird stuff. Everything had gone back to normal. Christmas came and I hosted, had friends and family over, and forgot about how lonely and desolate I'd felt in that house. Maybe I just had an episode of wandering.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1960.066

Maybe my mind had just been somewhere else. When you live with a disability, sometimes it's hard to stay on track.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1978.211

Like just, yeah. Well, I get granted. I'm not in her position, but I feel like a hundred steps.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

1994.315

So what if my mental health had taken a hit? I was aware of it and decided to see a therapist. Months passed and nothing happened. I was happy. My new book had been published and I hadn't felt scared or watched in ages. Things were good. One night I was on the couch drinking some wine and watching The Bachelor. Well, not exactly watching, but listening. You know what I mean.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

201.83

That's what I thought you were going to say. I do. That's even worse. That is even worse. Okay. Her name is Helena Castellan. I believe it's pronounced or Castellan. Uh, she seems like a very prolific, uh, no sleep writer, a bunch of different stories on her subreddit, uh, and on a Reddit.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2017.329

It's still entertaining. The AC was on and blasting waves of warmth around the house, and I was starting to feel sleepy. I reached out my leg out of the blanket and touched the floor. The cold floor. Reached my hand out and felt the couch. Cold, too. This coldness was everywhere. How could it be? I had the AC on for the whole evening. Why was it so cold?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2042.673

I reached for the remote and turned up the AC. It wasn't working.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2053.118

I told you I talk to myself a lot. So I pressed the big button. The AC beeped.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2059.981

The beep was wrong. It should have been lower. It's higher when it turns on. Was it off this whole time? Couldn't be. I literally felt its warm breeze on the back of my neck. It's like a gut punch.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2101.273

So it was like, Oh my word. And like, it's just like, she's just watching TV and it's just there with her the whole time. And it could be anything. It could be a giant fucking baby monster. Don't like that. I wonder if like, we have to have some blind viewers, right? Well, listeners, I guess we have some, some blind audience members, right? Is this like,

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2125.137

Is this like, I guess it would be a recurring fear or a common fear about someone being in a room with you you don't know about, right?

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2157.864

Yeah, I wonder if that's like a common thing because now that I'm thinking about it, that would be, I mean, obviously as someone who like isn't used to it and just like afraid from a distance, I feel like that would be like nightmare fuel story. I feel like stories like this would be like terrifying.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2183.399

But yeah, I stood there in silence trying to process. It was as if I was just stalling, delaying the moment of realization, because I didn't want to. I didn't want to admit someone or something had been breathing on my neck. It was probably still there, but the breeze had stopped. I turned the TV off. I needed absolute silence to focus. I stood there for what felt like hours, listening.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

219.036

She also has a buy me a coffee account it seems, but otherwise I don't see any links to her being published anywhere, at least from like a, just a cursory glance. This is actually an interesting model. I haven't seen a lot of people on her Kofi, like her buy me a coffee. You can purchase like extra parts to stories and stuff like that, which I think is a cool idea.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2216.314

The floors didn't creak. I could almost make out the carpet being pressed. Steps. Normal people wouldn't have noticed, but I did. The steps were irregular. The pattern was weird, the pacing uncoordinated. I heard when it left the carpet. Then the thump indicated it was right next to me. The couch shifted. I was over it. People hallucinate.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2249.405

I stuck my hand to the side, ready to feel whatever was there. I didn't get the chance. Suddenly, the couch shifted back up and I heard a whoosh. The thing had seen me try to reach and it moved. It didn't want me to touch it. Then I heard a click. My TV turned back on. Whatever it was, it was telling me to ignore it. Why? I was not going to sit around and watch TV with that thing next to me.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2272.66

I was going upstairs. After I counted the 14 steps, for some reason, I knew the 15th would be there. Went back down, 17. Went back up, 19. Back down. I was 20 extra steps in and counting when I realized it was not going to end. Stairs were tweaking again. Turned around, went back up into the bedroom, door locked. The TV's still running downstairs. After a while, I heard it turn off.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2297.495

Others would have been terrified. I was relieved. That meant the thing was downstairs and not here with me. Wonderful. This is wonderful. I'm having such a good time with this one. What a banger, dude. That whole segment about like from, from the breath on the neck to like, you could hear it on the carpet, setting down on the couch to like, it's also just no fat.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2323.285

Just it's very, just like to the point to the point. Yeah. Just bam. Here's your story. Yeah. Gosh, what a, this is sick. You know what? You were right. We needed something after last week, and I think this is our medicine. I think this is doing a great job right now.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2340.912

I'm down. Part three. Let's go. How's the milk doing?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2350.099

Okay. I'm proud of you. All right. Part three. I've decided to install some cameras around to be safe. If anything peculiar happened, I wanted to have a friend check them out, or at least tell me I was being crazy. I set them up the next day, after the incident I posted earlier. After that, I kept minding my own business. I was terrified, and I know what you guys would say.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2378.959

Well, there was this odd feeling I had. Something was definitely off, but somehow I was able to go through that, be okay. Almost as if you're walking on a tightrope and you know that it's dangerous, but you don't want to hesitate or stop or even slow down because you somehow feel that the less you think about it and go on, the safer you are from falling.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

238.142

Show a lot of the story free. And if you want more of it, well, there it is.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2401.101

Although, in my case, I didn't exactly know what my fate would be.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2432.028

The story has done, in my opinion, three things right now to not make me think of that option until she brought it up. Cause I feel like any other story you or I read, uh, we would be like, why are you just drive away, get out. Right. But it's done three things for one, our characters blind, which limits options. Right.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2450.912

Uh, assuming this is out in the countryside, like she said, it's implausible for her to just start walking down the road. Right. Um, she can't drive.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2458.654

And then the other thing is it's already pre-established in the story that maybe part of this is her mind playing tricks on her and her blindness causes her to have these moments of not really delirium, but she gets too caught up on one thing and doesn't realize what's happening around her. You know, her senses are impaired. Um,

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2474.562

So like that's two good reasons to not immediately leave because maybe she's overreacting. And even if she wasn't, how could she? And three, this writing has been doing so well and I've been so hooked in. I didn't even consider that an option.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2489.055

The story brought it up, which goes to show that a lot of your plot holes and like issues with stories. If you just write everything around it really well, most people won't care about. It's true. It was Thursday. I had just come home from my job. I also teach creative writing at a university. It's important that I write down my routine that day. So, wait, how did you...

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2510.02

I guess she said out the countryside, but I imagine there must be like public transport or something like that.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2520.747

I locked the door, got inside, locked it back, took my coat off and hung it up, took my shoes off, put my keys on a table, went upstairs, changed, washed my hands, came back down to cook dinner. Chopped, stirred, turned the oven on, set the table, worked my way around the stove, sat down and ate my dinner, washed the dishes, so on. Then went upstairs, bathroom, sent some text.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2543.73

Went back downstairs and turned on the TV. After a while, I began dozing off. I could not keep up with whatever fight was going on on the show, and my mind began lazily sweeping away, until a dream made its way in. Mixed with reality, I fell asleep. I awoke and was greeted by silence. No eerie sounds, no movement, silence. Weird, hadn't I left the TV on?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2572.647

I reached my hand out for the remote, which wasn't in the usual spot. The whole room was silent, so the thing was either very still or it had left. I needed to call my friend and ask them to come over so that I could have them check the cameras. The house remained silent for a while until I heard his car in the driveway. Good. I let him in and he asked me if he'd noticed anything unusual around.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

258.592

So, yep, it looks pretty sweet, but for now we'll go to get into it. I got a bit, this one is a hundred fine. So, you know, those are few and far between. And I got to say, I like the title. I think, sorry, I got choked up complimenting you. Good fucking Lord. I say, I like the title. I think it's an interesting topic. I do think it's interesting. I don't really think about like,

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2598.652

Not really. I opened up my laptop and had him access the footage.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2613.864

I heard the keyboard clacking for a bit and then we waited until he said...

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2645.475

I even thought the thing might not even show on camera. I didn't need another person to think I was crazy, but then the silence had gone on for too long.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2697.133

That's terrifying, man. That's terrifying. His voice was shaking a bit, and I knew he was trying to be calm, but his movements were too rushed, too unhinged. He was freaking out. Put my coat on, took my wallet and keys, and we left. We got inside the car. He immediately turned the engine on and hit the gas without saying a word.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

281.408

how life is different for some people. I remember when I was reading House of Leaves, in the intro it talks about the police are investigating an apartment building that someone died in. And they're like, at first the police had questions as to why none of the What was it? Nothing in the house had labels. The light in the fridge was out, stuff like that. It's like, oh, he was blind.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2839.395

She's riding in front like a giant spider thing.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2849.678

It's staring at you. It wears your clothes. It makes your bed for you. It turns the TV off for you. It breathes on the back of your neck. After he finished talking, we sat in silence for a while. I didn't know what to say. He parked his car and we went up to his apartment. Sat down to download the rest of the footage.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2889.557

I felt sick all this time when I thought I was alone. And this isn't even the weirdest thing.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2904.818

Oh, it's her hair. Oh, my gosh. Two months ago, it didn't have hair.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2930.556

I'm back to paranoid Isaiah. I've got the door open. I'm angling to the right monitor.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2943.464

Oh my gosh, dude. Gives me chills, man. Just the idea of it being like right behind you all the time. It being up in the corners, like looking down at you. Ugh.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2969.756

I knew for some reason, and I didn't even need proof, I just knew it had to come from the stairs. Climbed up from whatever portal I'd been there, and I knew it was trying to lure me down there. So it could take my place. So it could become... me. I explained everything to my friend. There was nothing I could do, except get out.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

2991.021

I didn't know how to close the portal, and I needed my friend's help if I wanted to try. I was trying to evaluate my risk, my options, but my friend said something that made my blood run cold.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3010.56

Yeah. So the only logical solution is to never go home and firebomb the house.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3017.77

If you go back, this thing is certainly going to kill you.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3021.956

There's no question. All right. Are we ready for the final part? Oh boy.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3033.467

It's going to be awesome, isn't it? And then while you're doing it, you can think about a hunter, a spider hunter right behind you. Yeah, a gangly spider hunter who's learning how to have diarrhea.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3057.864

Yeah, Hunter just makes friends with it. Yeah, I'm like, you want some more sour milk? This big nasty cicada person.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

308.736

And it's like, oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn't need the light bulb in the refrigerator.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3086.498

This is great. I think Emma Watson Badummer has proven herself quite well, if I do say so myself.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3094.142

Last part, I'm ready. Let's go. My sister knew now that I wasn't crazy anymore. Everyone had seen the footage. It's become some sort of news around my family, friends. They were all dying to watch it. Some morbid curiosity making them want to see what traumatized me for the past months. I was grateful they saw it too, but at the same time I had to move out and sell the house and that was a bummer.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3135.462

don't know if that'd be legal advice but i think uh that that's what i would come to that's the decision i feel like there's no regard you could show the police this and they would believe it and just be like okay that's all right thank you for that yeah i was struggling financially and i knew i couldn't just buy another house i had to sell this one first and that obviously meant i had to go back there and get my things i was not planning to go alone though or not it's i mean maybe it's its things now i think i can just like get a new tv i think that's fine

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3164.008

I'm only going back if I have like a SWAT team, you know, if I, if I, if I can walk in with seal team six around me, you know, well, here's the thing, right? She assumes that it is a thing that lives in this house because of the staircase and because it showed up when she got there. Right. But like, could this thing be anywhere? Why does it have to be part of the house? Right.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

319.322

There were more layers than that, actually.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3204.996

Oh, that'd be sick. Would you, what would it take for you to go back into the house?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3230.461

What about a pet? Would you go back for a pet? Yeah.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3236.686

I don't know. How many guys would you bring with you?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3254.285

And I'm pressed up against the window like, oh, no, no, no, no! You could see it pulling the hair out of my head. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, well... Out of place! Yeah.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3270.882

You would be the one that, as I'm being torn apart, would be like, he has big lips. It's funny. It would look like its face would be your drawing of me.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3289.267

Okay. When I said I die, you said that's what I get for what? What were you about to say? Oh, I can't remember. Okay, I'm sure it was something.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3305.425

I wonder how much longer if I keep rambling until you trap yourself on the podcast.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3312.948

What if I didn't, though? It took a while to try to convince my friend to come with me. He was really scared, but I had to get all my stuff. It'll be even longer with me reading no shit. All right, all right. It took a while to try to convince my friend to come with me. He was really scared, but I had to get my stuff out, and that meant spending a few more nights there. Why? Why would you do that?

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3335.54

Anyway, so last month, me and my friend went back to the house. Just one friend, by the way. Unarmed, I imagine. As soon as we entered, he let out a sigh. I asked what was wrong, and he just replied with, He's been making some changes around here.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3365.379

Yeah, there's a weird language here and stuff like that. Maybe English is the second language. I don't know. I'm going to assure that thing that I'm not staying. I'm going to make sure it knows that I'm not sticking around. This is its house now.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3404.525

How's that milk doing, buddy? It's not good. Not good. So we started packing and cleaning. It was a bit harder for me, and we called for backup. My other friend, Jessica... She refused to come without her boyfriend. Now, the four of us versus that thing meant it would be too scared to do anything. Yeah, you hope. Yeah, what the fuck?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3429.584

I didn't know much about it, but from its behavior, I learned it mainly focused on me. And when its transformation would be complete, it would try to take over my life and send me to the other place down the stairs.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3442.81

we worked on it for a few days, and what we'd left was just some furniture to be moved I was extremely grateful for my friend's support who, like my sister, believed me from the beginning we'd had so little to do left, just some furniture, as I said so little, I hadn't expected it to end like this it was me, my friend, the one who saw the footage first, we'll call him Adam, and my sister Lisa

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

345.598

That's impressive, man. Wow. His apartment, however, didn't come close to anything envisioned by Joel. Okay, hold on.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3468.814

They were downstairs, wrapping up the TV, and I was upstairs lifting up the mattress. I could hear their voices downstairs.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3493.294

I'd mostly ask them to speak more just so I wouldn't listen to the silence. Silence for me meant danger. After a while, they stopped talking. I could only hear the sound of footsteps and things being dragged around.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3526.565

Whatever. Lisa. Adam. No answer. Feeling around, the house was empty. No one was in the living room, no one was in the kitchen, just boxes and clothes. I sat on the couch, listening, hoping to hear some footsteps, but I was only greeted by silence. So heavy, almost a being of its own.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3552.389

I had the urge to leave, made my way to the front door, but just as I was about to turn the doorknob, something, this feeling, stopped me.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

358.367

Until... Okay, here it is. Sure, his place was eclectic, but hardly grotesque or even that far out of the ordinary. Until, of course, you took a more careful look and realized, hey, why are all these candles unused? Why no clocks? Not on the walls? Not even on the corner of a dresser? And what's with these strange, pale books or the fact that there's hardly a bulb in the whole apartment?

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3614.165

The moment of realization hit both of us gradually. I knew who was on the couch or what was on the couch, and I knew that wherever I was, that wasn't my house anymore. I'd finally managed to go down to the other place, and the thing had come back up, but this time with a more efficient disguise.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3665.559

I didn't hear much next, just movement. Then I could hear her say, Oh my gosh, true. What do I do now? Well, I'm scared.

CreepCast

I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

3687.714

don't know because if it does then it also knows it no then it also knows it no jesus christ no then it also knows it no i felt helpless for the first time in my life i wish i could see so badly i just wanted to get out of whatever this place was back to my real house but i could not find the staircase i was stuck what if i wasn't going to make it out of this place please stay on the phone with me okay adam come here

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

37.378

Plus, if someone tries to open credit cards or take loans out in your name, you can instantly lock your file with a quick tap on the app. David was able to drain Xander's bank account and sign him up for less than savory magazines. And all of this suspicious activity would have been stopped in its tracks with Aura.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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I heard some muffled voices and then Lisa again.

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I couldn't make out what she was saying. At some point, I thought I heard Adam. I was still desperate to feel around for that staircase. I heard a thud, meaning she dropped the phone, and some screams, then muffled crying, and some sounds I could not make out. At this point, my whole body was tensed up, and my heart was beating so hard I was about to faint.

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Not even in the refrigerator? Well, that, of course, was Zampano's greatest ironic gesture. Love of love written by the brokenhearted, love of life written by the dead, all of this language of light, film, and photography, and he hadn't seen a thing since the mid-50s. He was blind as a bat.

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The more noises I heard, the more I was convinced something sinister had happened, and as much as I tried to deny it, I knew. I had no chance but to listen to this scene through the phone, unable to help, and even if I'd been able to get out of this place, I couldn't see anything either.

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At some point, after I had screamed my lungs out, my face drenched in sweat and tears, the noise stopped and the silence remained. The silence. I hate silence. I kept wailing, hoping someone would respond. Could have been hours until I got a response, but not the one I hoped I would get. I heard some harsh movement and then this hoarse, rotten voice.

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That wasn't even a voice, but something like an animal trying to mimic a human. For some, it would have been comical, but I knew that was just one of the phrases I used to say. It had just mimicked me again. I listened petrified. Meanwhile, my foot hit something. Stairs. Was it letting me go? I climbed up the stairs and found myself in the hallway. I could feel the familiar carpet under my feet.

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I went downstairs and sensed the smell that I couldn't identify. The floor was slippery.

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I heard something run up the stairs, just like that I knew the thing had left, for now. But my mind wasn't on the creature, but on Adam and Lisa.

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Walking around on the slippery floor, my foot hit something. It felt like... hair. Nothing in the world could describe how I felt in that moment. There's nothing I can type down here which will help you visualize, because not everything feels like something else. There's no analogy I can make. When you discover a crime scene, you usually see it first. I hadn't.

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I've just been walking around the bodies clueless for a good few minutes. You know how it feels to not know something is blood until you slip on it? To have to see if someone is alive by desperately feeling around her to find their hand, neck, pulse. Just crawl around in their blood, running your hands through the mess, trying desperately to see any signs of life. Calling out their name.

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I heard the door open. I realized the police had come. Adam had probably called them, and they had finally managed to make an appearance. They found me, obviously, covered in their blood, next to them. I didn't even know what the creature had actually done to them. No matter how hard I tried, they would not listen to me. They thought I was crazy. The next following days were a blur.

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Luckily, I had the footage of the thing from the past months and the testimony of my remaining friends and family, plus Adam's call that clearly said, something is pretending to be my friend and it may hurt us. They had downloaded the footage of the actual murder, but they refused to describe it to me. They just asked me to rest. But I can't. Because no matter what, I want revenge.

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Listen, the reason that's significant is because when they police investigate his house, it's covered in writings. There's like stories written across books and books and books and there's journals everywhere and he's been writing on the wall, but then he's blind. So how was he doing that? And that's where the question comes from.

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I'm determined to find out the story of this thing, the story of this house, and its weird portal staircase. And I want to kill this creature. Even if it's the last thing I do. For now, this is my final update. I might post more on my account, depending on what I come across. For now, I need rest. I've begun seeing a therapist, and I'm recovering. I still get nightmares.

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I wonder what I could have done better, but the truth is, I think I was doomed from the beginning. From the moment I counted one extra step on my staircase, the nightmare had begun. And that is the story! And that is the story. That was good. I enjoyed it. Yeah. The tension was really well done. Yeah. I feel like... I feel like she is not justified for going back to the house.

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And I think she's directly responsible for her friend's death.

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yeah that was a bit too much i also feel like uh i am glad it didn't do the thing i thought it was gonna do where it's like i am now in jail for my friend's murder but it was like no the police like saw the footage and then they were like uh you should go home yeah i think uh

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That's what I was thinking. That's what my mind was that there's like a house underneath the house and they switch. It's like a mirrored.

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I honestly think that that segment where she's sitting on the couch watching The Bachelor and she goes from turning on the AC to feeling it set down is like an all-time moment. Like that was so well done.

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Is that your favorite moments? Is that your favorite moment from any story we've covered? Which moment? The, the pen pal river moment.

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I'm Blind, I'm Not Sure How Many Steps My Staircase Has | Creep Cast

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know just trying to i guess justify the thoughts i'm having that are running through my head right now but i'm also diarrhea ridden so you are so we'll we'll go ahead and get over it i will say uh one last time that you could check out helena over please buy me a coffee coffee whatever uh and you can buy uh more parts to this very story so that's a cool model to have like your story set up and then it's like well there's a sequel to it if you want over here so

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If you're interested, you can check that out or just support her online. Check out her Reddit at Emma Watson, but dumber. But yeah, thank you very much, Helena, for such a cool story. That was great. I really loved that. And a much needed change from last week's, if I might add.

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Well, that was a little harsh. I'll just say that I love you and I hope it was creepy. Bye. Checkmate, Hunter.

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Listen, no, I have had a garage fridge. We know every white middle-class family has a garage fridge, right? You know what I'm talking about? No comment. Okay. That fridge, you're not holding up a sign right now or anything, are you?

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Because you do that to me sometimes. I'll have a sign that's like psychopath or whatever. That fridge out there, I've had the light go out there, but everyone just leaves it because they're like, well, it's a garage fridge. Who cares? It is possible for the light bulb to go out of a fridge.

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So you would never know. That's true. Yeah.

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If you didn't enjoy that, then I don't know who you are because I was having that time of my life.

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You're him. If you didn't enjoy that, you were me. And you didn't know that Fridge's light bulbs could go out? That's you. That's what you sound like. God, my stomach hurts today. Fuck.

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If it's bad, throw it out. You and Kayla are the same way. She will eat rotten food because she's like, I don't want to be wasteful. It's like it's already gone to waste.

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An alert would have come, he would have locked his card, and Xander would have found out that David was messing with him a lot sooner. Plus with Aura, you also get a password manager that lets you store and access your password securely across apps.

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Okay, can we go through the story before you say something else I don't like? Sour like a warhead. Yep, let's do it.

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milk should not be okay actually I'm going to step right here to my mini fridge and I'm going to grab a drink so one sec you pull out a giant a giant bottle of vodka alright I was actually sitting here listening to see if you had anything snarky to say and you did so you failed I thought you could hear me I was obviously talking to you and that time I got up actually to get the drink so I tricked you twice uh huh

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What are you talking about cat and mouse game?

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All right. Let's get into it. Can we get to, okay, let's get into it. I've always been blind and that's fine by me. I'm glad I never got to see and then lose my sight. That would have been too depressing instead. I don't get to mourn something I've never had. I've lived in this Upper East Side flat for a really, really long time. As a rider, it's important for me to have my own space.

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This could have also kept David out of his social media so that Xander could have made more deniability when the police tried to pin the crimes on him. So don't be like Xander and instead get this all-in-one app in one affordable price. I don't know about you, but I'm not leaving myself and those I care about vulnerable to data breaches and data brokers.

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I've been told my riding style is exquisite because I cannot see. I focus on the other senses and my riding shines by stimulating them. I don't say a red apple. Red has no meaning for me. I say warm, firm, and sour. A bit sweet, fits in your hand, smells of grass at childhood. I'm not going to lie. This flat was nice for a while, but really tiny. And I want to learn to play the piano.

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So naturally, since I've saved up a lot of money for my works, I bought this beautiful mansion in the suburbs. At least that's how my friends and family called it. I don't care. I can't see anyway. I just needed to feel the warm sunlight in the kitchen and the crisp air from my balcony. I drink my coffee in the morning and listen to the birds, and I work day and night.

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Eventually, I got used to it, and I even started going up and down the stairs faster since I knew exactly how many steps I needed to climb. That's the thing when you're blind. Some movements become reflexes. Since you live alone, you learn how to position certain things and you always find them in the same place. One day, however, I was going down the stairs and I tripped.

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Where I expected the floor to be, there was this additional step. I didn't think much of it, figured I must have not paid attention. I mean, yes, it was odd because after 30 years of being blind, tripping wasn't really a common thing, but I don't look much into it. Haha, look. However, when I went up again, I tripped at the top. That was definitely unusual. Sure as it was, one extra step.

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The fuck? Sure enough, 14 steps. Whatever. I went to sleep. A few days passed and I didn't trip anymore. I played it off as some error my tired mind made. Then one night, as I went downstairs to get a glass of water, I tripped again. This time, I really fell down on my foot. That was not a skip step. There were at least two additional steps. I felt around and stood up.

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It's funny because there's no quotes here just coming in to say the obscenity. Yes. That's really funny. I like it. That's good. Keep it going. Sure, you mess up. You count one more or one less, but two more. The house was so still, so silent. No birds, no bees, no cars passing. Normal people fear the darkness. I fear the silence. I went down the stairs again, counting.

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And if you don't want to be either, then you can go to aura.com slash creepcast to try two weeks for free. That is right. Two weeks free. Just go to the link in the description at aura.com slash creepcast to see if any of your personal data is exposed and see if Aura is right for you today. Thank you so much to Aura for sponsoring the show. And we are now back to the episode.

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By the time I reached the bottom, I counted 14 again. I went up again, 18. That was absolutely ridiculous. Was someone messing with me? How could they even mess with me like that? I've never heard of a burglar, burglar, burglar. I've never heard of a burglar to break into someone's house and add steps to their stairs. Still, I went to check to see if I locked the door.

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I can make my way around pretty neat, through the kitchen, then into the hallway. And then I bumped into something. I froze. My organs tensed up, my hair stood up, all ears. I never felt so much fear in my life. Decided to go on and check the door. Yeah, locked. I made my way back upstairs. This time I didn't bump into anything, or anyone. Eighteen. For fuck's sakes. Almost...

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All night, all I did was go up and down like a lunatic each time I got different results. Back upstairs, I decided to go down and make one final count. 14, okay, it's probably going to be more. 15, nope, still going. 17, 19, 21, that's a record. 27, 33, that could not be possible. 52. 88. I could absolutely feel the sense of impending doom.

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Something was there with me, and it was vile, disgusting, and unnatural, and this staircase was never ending. 102. I finally gave up. Whatever this was, I didn't want to reach the bottom. I went back up. The moment I turned my back to go up, I tried to be brave, but something got over me and I ran on all fours, desperate to reach the top, desperate to run, run, run back to my bedroom.

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I don't remember how I got inside and locked my door, but I did. And I'm sitting here and typing. This house is strange. It's eerie and disturbing. And I think if I'd gotten to the bottom of the staircase, I would have left this world. I don't think that was my house anymore.

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However, no matter what stupid, cryptic, eerie, unnatural staircase I unveiled, it is important not only that I don't go down there, but that nothing comes up here either. And right now, I can hear it creaking. End of part one.

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That's the end of part one. That was sick. Okay, so we don't really talk about this a lot because we're kind of... Like we operate under the impression of like, well, this is a horror story that's submitted to no sleep. Uh, and then the author has to act like they're really there or whatever. Right.

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Think about the person that you trust most. The person that knows all of your secrets. Who sees you when you're vulnerable and comforts and smiles. Now picture them sitting quietly across from you, nodding and laughing, while secretly deciding how they're going to end your life. No break-ins, no warning, just betrayal. All wrapped up in a familiar face.

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And police were curious about this, but they were hesitant on buying it completely because the evidence was starting to stack up. So without any proof that intruders actually came into the house because they couldn't find footprints or other DNA evidence, they would charge Jodi with first degree murder. And only after her arrest did the truth actually come out.

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And this is what actually happened June 4th, 2008. So Travis was in his house and Jodi would show up unannounced and uninvited, but Travis would let her in nonetheless. And after talking for a bit, they would slip into old habits, having intercourse, laughing, and taking some photographs.

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And at around 5.22 PM, Jodi would pick up Travis's brand new camera and start taking pictures of him in the shower. And this would be that last photo that we would ever see of him alive. And something at this point had shifted. Maybe Travis said something that she didn't like, or maybe he told her that this was really the end of their relationship. But whatever it was, Jodi completely snapped.

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And in a sudden explosion of violence, she attacked Travis with everything she had in her, stabbing him repeatedly. And Travis would naturally fight back, trying to get away, and he would leave those bloody handprints on the wall in the process. But she was relentless and animalistic. And she would go on to slash his throat so deeply he was nearly decapitated.

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Then after he was almost dead, she would shoot him in the head as well. And afterward, in a panic, she would try to clean up the scene, deleting the photos and throwing the camera in the washing machine. And then she would get in her car and drive off to Utah for a work conference. And she would even go so far as to meet another man in Utah and take pictures smiling next to him just days later.

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And later, during interviews and in court, Jodi would lie again and again, just changing her story constantly. And she would eventually change her story to self-defense. But the evidence told a completely different story. It was basically chalked up to cold-blooded, calculated revenge from a woman who couldn't let go.

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And she would eventually break down in court as the prosecutor recounted the details of the stabbing and slashing. And in 2013, after a sensational trial that gripped the nation, Jodi Arias was found guilty of first degree murder. And she was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2015. And Jodi continues to serve her sentence to this day.

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with David, but he was missing something in his life. And that was Stacy. And when he met Stacy, everything just felt right and whole. And like David's life already, being with Stacy just felt comfortable and practical because Stacy was really organized and reliable. David had a really regimented life and she fit perfectly into that.

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Despite the verdict, people still love her for some fucked up reason. And she's even selling some artwork from behind bars. Let's take a look at that. This is so weird. I hate all of this. I hate it. Mostly because she murdered a, you know, person. So I won't be buying, won't be purchasing. She would also appeal in October of 2019, but the original conviction was upheld.

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And in the end, Travis Alexander escaped his broken childhood only to be caught in a nightmare he never saw coming. And the person he once hoped to share his future with became the architect for his own violent end. Though there are many that maintain Travis was not as innocent as many versions of the story try to paint him.

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In a Reddit post, somebody actually claims that Travis wasn't who he claimed to be essentially. And you can read the post here if you want to, but either way, killing is wrong and I don't think it's ever justified unless it really is in self-defense. just a sad horrible situation all around but with that let's move on to our last case Betsy Faria was the kind of person you just don't forget.

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She was born on March 24th, 1969, and she was warm, bubbly, and a little scatterbrained, but who isn't, you know? She was a bit short on cash, but she was rich in laughter and in friendships. Betsy actually worked at a local gas station, which gave her the time to pursue her passions.

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Because Betsy actually ran her own DJ business called Party Starters, which is very fitting for a woman who could just light up any room with her smile. And Betsy also had a ton of hobbies. She loved to spend time outdoors. She loved to play tennis. She loved to go camping. And she also loved cards and board games. And to top it off, she met somebody that she fell in love with.

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And in 2000, she would marry Russ Faria. And together they would raise their two beautiful daughters. And he would even utilize his computer expertise to help with her business. And he would actually create a computerized DJ playlist for Betsy. So they were able to live together, work together, and it was just a harmonious relationship. Life wasn't necessarily perfect, when is it? But it was good.

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But a decade would go by and things would start to change because Betsy would be diagnosed with breast cancer. And Betsy being Betsy didn't wanna waste the time that she had left because she already lived life to the fullest. So she was gonna do that when she was given the diagnosis. So she made plans for a celebration of life cruise with Russ, their daughters, and their friends.

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And in late 2011, before they took their cruise, the news actually got worse because her cancer had spread to her liver and the doctors told her the clock was ticking. So Betsy chose to take advantage of the time where the effects of treatment were minimal. Because once you start treatment for cancer, you just feel sick most of the time.

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So they would go on this cruise and she would laugh and have fun with her loved ones. And she would focus on memories and not endings. And there was one friend in particular who stepped up during Betsy's battle and her name was Pam Hupp. And the two had actually met years earlier at a state farm office. And they would just kind of hit it off and become friends.

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And after Betsy's diagnosis, Pam started driving her to her chemotherapy sessions. And Betsy was so grateful. Pam was just helping out whenever she could and was just a very comforting presence and was just a loyal, steady friend. And obviously she had help from her husband and her daughters as well. So December 27th, 2011 felt ordinary enough.

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That morning, Betsy went to Siteman Cancer Center for her chemotherapy. And later that afternoon, Betsy would text Russ to say she didn't need a ride home because her friend Pam had offered to give her a ride in his stead. And at around 7 p.m., Pam had dropped Betsy off at her house in Troy, Missouri.

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So Stacy basically had everything that seemed to complement the life David had already built for himself. So they would get hitched and marry in August of 2003. Now, Stacey had two daughters from a previous relationship. So when they got hitched, he moved Stacey and her two daughters, Ashley and Bree, into his own life.

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And Russ, meanwhile, was at his usual Tuesday night game night with his friends, just laughing and snacking and watching movies. So Russ would finish up with his friends and then he would get into his car and head home. And supposedly he grabbed some fast food before arriving. And it was at around 9.40 p.m. that Russ would walk into the front door and his world would be shattered.

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because Betsy was lying on the living room floor covered in blood, a knife still protruding from her neck.

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And Russ, being completely frantic and horrified, would dial 911, just sobbing, telling the dispatcher it looked like his wife had killed herself because she had been depressed about her cancer after all, so he didn't know why she would, but it was definitely a possibility because who else would do this to her? But when the police arrived, it was very clear to them that this wasn't a slewer slide.

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Betsy had been stabbed 55 times. So whoever had done this had been furious. So naturally the investigators would zero in on Russ immediately. It was Betsy's husband, she had cancer, there was insurance money involved. It just made sense.

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But despite the fact that he had an airtight alibi, because he had witnesses because he was at that game night that night, and he also had a timestamped Arby's receipt from a stop on his way home, police would barely look beyond him and Russ would be detained just days later.

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They essentially just ignored the witness statements that he was with his friends the entire evening and ignored the alibi receipts. So Russ would go to trial and there would be numerous witnesses, one of which was Betsy's best friend, Pam. And she would testify against Russ, painting a picture of an angry husband who wanted Betsy's life insurance money. And naturally, the jury bought it.

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And in 2013, Russ Faria was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Case closed, or so it seemed. Because two years later, cracks in the case started to show. New attorneys picked up Russ's appeal and uncovered staggering problems because they found evidence suggesting Betsy's life insurance had been changed just four days before her death.

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In the name of the sole new beneficiary, Pam Hupp. And allegedly, they were just worried about how Russ would handle the funds. But they would find proof that Pam kept the entire $150,000 payout, despite promising it would go to Betsy's daughters. And there were records of Pam showing that she was giving inconsistent stories about where she was that night.

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First claiming she never went inside Betsy's house at all and then admitting that she had. But it all pointed to one chilling direction and that was Pam Hupp, not Russ, who was currently in jail. So in 2015, Russ was granted a new trial. And at this time, the truth unraveled very quickly.

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And without Pam's extremely misleading testimony and with clear evidence that he could never have been at the scene, Russ was thankfully acquitted. And he would walk out of prison a free man. But for Pam Hopp, the walls were slowly closing in. And in 2016, Pam would make another move. One even more bizarre and horrifying. Pam would go on to lure a man named Louie Gumpenberger into her home.

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And Louie would have mental and physical disabilities from a car crash, but she would bring him in nonetheless under the pretense of being a Dateline producer offering money for a reenactment, which is ironic given this whole case I believe was actually on Dateline, but I digress. But as we know, Pam was not a Dateline producer and she would just shoot Louis in the head.

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though it was not without friction, because David had a life with no kids and not any sort of responsibility in that way. And now he had two teenagers that were, well, teenagers. So David's relationship with the girls was rocky to say the least. And like I said, David had a very regimented life.

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And then she would claim self-defense. But police thankfully would quickly realize it was all bullshit and it was staged. And they would also find a hastily written note on his body. And it was clear that this was an attempt to create a fake kidnapping tied to Russ Faria. So Pam would naturally be arrested. And when the arrest occurred, Pam would request to use the restroom.

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This woman has plan A, B, C, D, E, F, G. I swear to the Lord. Oh my God. So she would go to the restroom and then she would proceed to stab herself with a ballpoint pen in the neck and the wrists. In an act described as consciousness of guilt. So glad you realize that you're a piece of shit and trying to take the easy way out. And after all that, she was still alive.

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She would even go on to get her mug shots with bandages around her neck and wrists. And moving on to trial, prosecutors would seek the death penalty for her. And she would initially plead not guilty, which like... How? And later, at her trial in June 2019, she entered a Alford plea.

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And this is where one pleads guilty to accept a plea bargain, but maintains that they're actually, in fact, innocent. Just the piece of shit plea, basically. Because people only do this because they see the evidence stacked against them, and they know that they would be fucked, basically. So she would take the plea, but she would be sentenced to life in prison.

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So the Alford plea basically just allowed her to avoid the death penalty. And in July of 2021, nearly a decade after Betsy's murder took place, Pam was officially charged of the first degree murder of Betsy while she was already serving the sentence for the murder of Louie. And Pam's story garnered so much attention that it inspired a true crime drama called

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The Thing About Pam, which was an NBC limited series starring Renee Zellweger. That cover is crazy. I can't get over that cover. Oh my God. That is so scary. So Betsy spent her last day surrounded by friends she thought she could trust.

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And the person she trusted most, the one who drove her home that night, the one she believed was helping her this whole time, just turned out to be the one who betrayed her in the most brutal and unimaginable way. Pam Hopp wasn't just a friend, she was a killer in plain sight. So that concludes our three true crime stories. I'm just glad justice was served in all of these.

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They're all absolutely terrible, but I mean, the most common thing is the people that are closest to you, so watch out.

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goes out to the families involved and i'm glad all these people are rotting in jail hopefully thinking about what they've done every single day of their lives and i hope it it ruins them and uh haunts them constantly every second of the day but anyway i appreciate you all if you have any other cases you want me to check out let me know down in the comments below i always read your comments i very much appreciate it and be safe out there all right i will see you in the next one

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So when he became a new stepfather, he was pretty strict, demanding that they follow all of his rules without any sort of question. And as we know with teenagers, they don't really respond to that very well. It's like me when I was a kid with my stepdad, I would just be like, you're not my dad. That was me slamming the door. Jay, put in a door slam.

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Bye.

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But still, from the outside looking in, this family seemed pretty stable. You have a hardworking man like David and a very supportive wife like Stacey, and just this big blended family just trying to figure things out. But beneath the surface, a darker reality was starting to take shape.

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Because on August 22nd, 2005, two years after David and Stacey got married, Stacey would place a very frantic 911 call. And David, she said, had locked himself in their bedroom after an argument and he wasn't answering. And when the police arrived, Sergeant Robert Willoughby knocked on the bedroom door, but nobody would answer.

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Because sometimes the last thing you see isn't the danger coming toward you, it's the person you thought would never hurt you. And once you realize the truth, well, it's already too late. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, intellectually twisted, beautiful-minded freak.

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So he would bang louder and louder, but there was no response from David. So with nobody answering and him being worried that something's wrong with David, he would force himself in opening the door. And what he would find would look like David had just taken his own.

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Because when he busted through the door and into the bedroom, he would find David just laying across the bed, sprawled out completely naked and deceased. And on the nightstand sat a glass of bright green liquid alongside a bottle of apricot brandy, cranberry juice, and on the floor, an open container of antifreeze. And it was just lying there almost like too casually.

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And after the sergeant broke in and examined the area, obviously Stacy came into the room and would see David's body sprawled across the bed. And Stacy would just be beside herself and collapse into hysterics. I mean, her brand new husband was now dead.

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So she would just be screaming and sobbing, just unable to control her emotions and telling the officers that she didn't understand what happened, but she did say that he was very depressed and had been drinking very heavily recently. And the scene told the same story that Stacy was putting forth.

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There was no sign of any sort of struggle in the room, no bruises, no wounds, just a mand and a drink. So an investigative team would be called and they would start combing through the bedroom. But as they were combing through the bedroom, they would start finding tiny inconsistencies.

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Naturally, they would test for fingerprints on the antifreeze glass, given that that's how they assumed he took his own life. But they couldn't find his fingerprints on the glass. And they also found that there weren't any of David's fingerprints on the antifreeze either. And the only fingerprints that they could find were Stacy's fingerprints, but it was her room.

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So they weren't thinking much of it yet. But then they found the turkey baster. Yes, the turkey baster. So while investigators were searching the rooms and the rest of the house, they would start digging through the kitchen's garbage. And investigators would find a turkey baster. And on the inside, they would see a substance and they would find out that it was just sticky with antifreeze.

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And the tip was covered in David's DNA. And this just painted a horrifying picture. Someone had clearly taken this turkey baster and forced it into David's mouth, just force feeding him poison until he passed. And investigator suspicions would deepen when they looked into Stacey's past and found another husband. And her previous husband would be Michael Wallace.

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And he actually died five years previous under mysterious circumstances. But his death was just written off as a heart attack at the time. And an autopsy was requested, but Stacey would deny it. Hmm, strange. And she would just say that she was satisfied with the doctor's heart attack diagnosis. I bet you were. In 2007, Stacey actually invited her oldest daughter, Ashley, to join her for drinks.

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And this would be an early celebration for her 21st birthday. So Stacy and her eldest daughter sat together, just laughing and relaxing and talking. And then Ashley, naturally trusting her mother, drank what she was given. But 17 hours later, Ashley was found unconscious in her bed. And she would be discovered by her sister, Bree. And beside Ashley would be a slower slide note.

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And today, we're getting into some M. Night Shyamalama Ding Dong true crime twisted stories. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seat belts, go Mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into these twisted true crime cases together. David Castor lived a life that most people would consider quite ordinary. He was born in Syracuse, New York in 1957.

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20.

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Is she clashing? Yes, she's making noise. Is she breathing normally? No. An entire bottle of vodka, Ashley. Is that her? No, she's throwing up. She left a letter. She left a letter? That's a no. Oh my God. And she was scared that her daughter had died, but her daughter hadn't actually died. Ashley luckily survived and unluckily for Stacy.

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So when Ashley woke up in the hospital, confused and terrified, she swore she had no memory of writing any such note. And forensic analysis later proved that that note had been typed up at the time when Ashley had been sitting in class, miles away from the family computer. And the note also included mispronunciation for antifreeze as anti-free, which was noted earlier in the police interview.

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Girl's just giving herself up. So the truth was now unmistakable. Stacey Castor had poisoned her own daughter trying to stage a slower slide.

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and forged an entire confession all to frame her eldest daughter for her other crimes so given all this information investigators would exhume Michael's body Stacy's previously deceased husband and forensic testing would uncover crystals of ethylene glycol which is the chemical found in let's all say it together antifreeze antifreeze and it preserved in his tissues.

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So two husbands, same woman, same poison. Needless to say, it wasn't a coincidence. It was an MO. So detectives set up surveillance on Stacey, tapped her phones and watched her every move. And during a police interview, Stacey made a critical slip. She started to say she poured her husband the anti, I mean, cranberry juice. How could you fuck that up, you dumb bitch? I mean, I'm glad you did, but.

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So it was a simple stumble, but in a murder investigation, it was like a gunshot. And they made note of this interesting mispronunciation. And in September of 2007, Stacey would be arrested. And at her trial in 2009, Stacey would actually stand in her own defense. And she would even claim innocence, just spinning stories, trying to sow doubt. But the evidence was just stacked against her.

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From the fingerprints, to the turkey baster, to the toxicology reports, to the forged note. And it would take the jury less than two days to find her guilty. Thank God. And Stacey Castor would be sentenced to 51 years to life in prison. But this wouldn't be a sentence that she would ever complete.

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Because in 2016, while serving her time at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Stacey would die of a heart attack. And she would never confess. And she never apologized. She just slipped away. The same way her husband's had, and the same way she almost claimed her own daughter. So the woman that everyone once saw as the perfect wife had been hiding in plain sight.

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A predator, a manipulator, a killer. And I say, good riddance. Bye bye, waste of oxygen. And with that, let's move on to the next story. Travis Victor Alexander didn't have the type of childhood you'd expect from someone who would grow up to inspire people. He was born in 1977 in Riverside, California. And let's just say Travis's early life was rough. The kind you survive and not live.

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Because his parents both struggled with severe addiction. So his home life was just utter chaos all the time. So by 11 years old, Travis just had enough. And he would move in with his paternal grandparents. And throughout his childhood, he would just search for something his birth home just couldn't give him, which was stability.

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So it was in that new home under the strict but loving care of his grandmother that Travis found two things that would define him, ambition and faith. So eventually he would become a very devoted member to the Church of the Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. And from there, he would just start to dream big and he would succeed at most things that he did.

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And by his early 20s, he was a rising star at the prepaid legal services. So he was a part-time salesman and he was also a part-time motivational speaker, just pulling people left and right into his orbit with his sheer charisma. And people would say Travis was funny, ambitious, and charming, and that he always just wanted to make something of himself. So he had become very successful in his job.

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And one day he would have to go to a conference in Las Vegas. And this was in 2006. And at this conference, he would meet Jody Arias. And that's when his whole life turned upside down and everything changed. And Travis's close friends say that their chemistry was instant. Jodi was beautiful and magnetic, and Travis was just hooked from the start.

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So right after that conference, they would start a long distance relationship, stretching between Mesa, Arizona and Palm Desert, California. But eventually they didn't want to do long distance anymore. So she would move to Mesa to be closer to him. And Jodi would even go so far as to convert to Mormonism and Travis himself would even baptize her.

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So they were in love and happy, but that wouldn't last forever and cracks would begin to show. Friends of Travis would notice how Jodi just clung to Travis all the time. She's very codependent. And not only was she codependent, she was also very jealous and very possessive of Travis.

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And Sky Hughes, one of Travis's closest friends, last remembered warning him, quote unquote, I'm afraid we're gonna find you chopped up in her freezer. Whoa.

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that's not good and it was just a joke at the time but unfortunately it wasn't a joke for too long so their relationship would get a little rocky and they would kind of be off and on through the years but they would never really sever ties even when they broke up they would continuously keep talking and sleeping together so it's almost like a friends with benefits situation when they weren't actually together

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But it was at some point during this weird friends with benefit relationship thing that Jodi's behavior kind of went off the rails. She kept popping up uninvited and reading his emails and quite literally stalking him. And Travis's friends were terrified because Travis was telling them what was happening and they're like, Run! What the fuck are you doing?

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So Travis was just in the middle here, caught between guilt and affection, especially because Mormonism forbid premarital sex, but it couldn't seem to pull him away from Jodi. But no one, not even Travis, could have guessed just how far things would go.

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So on June 9th, 2008, after days of unanswered calls and missed meetings, Travis's friends broke into his home, because they didn't know where he was. And the scene inside the home was their friend's worst. nightmare. They would get into the house and they would see a blood trail that led to the master bedroom. So they would follow the blood trail into the master bedroom.

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And that's where they would find Travis slumped in a very awkward position in a pool of blood inside of his own shower. And at this point he had been dead for days.

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days so naturally the friends would call the police and when the police arrived even seasoned investigators were shocked at the sheer violence of the whole scene because Travis had endured 27 stab wounds a throat so deeply cut it was nearly severed and a bullet wound to the head just overkill, beyond overkill.

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And David just had this overall steady presence. And he built his entire world around him with good old hard work. He owned his own heating and air conditioning business and was pretty successful with it. And he would fill his free time with outdoor activities like boating, snowmobiling, and anything to feel the cold wind come across his face. So all was well.

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So whoever had done this wasn't just trying to kill Travis, they were trying to destroy him. And friends were obviously very quick to point fingers at Jodi. So they would tell police about Jodi's obsessive behavior, the break-ins, and the pure jealousy that was just constant in their relationship. But at the time it just sounded too obvious because wasn't it always just the crazy ex?

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So police would tread carefully and open up an investigation carefully. So they would go on and examine the house and they would actually find a damaged camera in Travis's washing machine. And they were actually able to recover photos from the camera. And the images that they would see from this camera were so disturbing because the images would show Travis in the shower

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and not just alive, but right before he was murdered in the shower. And through searching the house, DNA evidence would pop up as well. They would actually find a bloody palm print on the wall and it would contain two DNA profiles. One was Travis's and the others was, you guessed it, Jodi's. And this would obviously be enough to bring her in.

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So investigators would bring Jodi in and they would interview her. And when questioned, Jodi just played it cool as a cucumber. First, she denied ever being there at all. And then when pressed even further, Jodi came out with the truth. She told them that masked intruders had actually broke into the house while she and Travis were there and killed Travis, but that ended up letting her go.

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However, he would be later caught by police on the 14th of February, 2000. after irregularities in his passport were found. And he would then be sent back to Hong Kong for the 17th of February trial. And the Yongshin Cho was put on Interpol's most wanted list, so he was sent back to Hong Kong as well to bring justice to Fan Manyi finally. So on October 20th, 2000, the trial would finally begin.

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Ah Fang would testify in this trial in exchange for her immunity. And during this trial, Chan and his accomplices denied intending to kill Fan. okay, stating that they were just meaning to rough her up. Tell you what, you come over to my place, I'll rough you up, all right? However, they did not deny the fact that they dismembered her body in such a sadistic way and also hid the remains.

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Why? Why? For what? And the court was obviously fucking mortified. And the prosecutor describing it as one of the worst cases in Hong Kong's history. And the defendant's faces, while the crimes were stated, showed a complete lack of remorse, especially from Cheung, who was just stone faced the entire time, just punchable faced the entire time.

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And apparently during the trial, Leong Wai Loon's sister experienced a mental breakdown and his brother would smash and break a court door when the guilty verdict was called. And unfortunately, they were only charged with manslaughter an unlawful imprisonment. Make it make sense. So they were charged with life imprisonment somehow with the possibility of parole.

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And then the men who were examined at Castle Peak Hospital and Sulam Hospital described the trio of men as remorseless, even though the court had not learned of a case as depraved, brutal, and vicious. And what's absolutely mind-boggling to me is that Liangshen Chou was actually let out early in 2011 despite being sentenced to life. And after his 18 years, he was completely freed.

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Therefore she had to get a job and that led her into falling into desperation, which led her into Lady of the Nighting, if you know what I mean. YouTube really doesn't like me using literally any type of terminology that involves Lady of the Nighting for some reason, which I think is weird because it's a very real thing.

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However, he was then charged again and put in jail in 2022 for indecently assaulting a 10-year-old girl for 12 months. Don't let monsters out of jail. Because monsters remain monsters. And the media was obviously shocked, to say the least. Horrified that there were people so cruel in the world, let alone in their backyard.

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And they were glad that the vermin, at the time at least, were off the street and locked away from the public. And TVB reporters themselves even felt sick, describing the trial as crazy and scary. And many, many articles have been written about this, but many have been lost in time. However, two movies would be made about the case. One called Human Pork Chop, which... No words, basically.

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And another called There is a Secret...

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in my soup the titles alone are tone deaf and terrible but i mean this is from a different time from a completely different place where i'm from so i don't i don't want to i don't i'm not i don't have a lot to say about that um but if they're anything like what actually happened i'm sure they're extremely horrifying and brutal even the movie art for the cover alone is pretty horrifying but the aftermath of all of this finally let fun have her rest

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Thank God. And the rest of her corpse was burned and cremated on March 26, 2000. And the apartment building now linked with this horrifying murder was eventually demolished in September of 2012 and has since been rebuilt into a hotel named Soravit. Soravit? I'm not sure. In 2016. And it's still heavily debated whether these people got what they deserved.

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I don't think they did, but no doubt if this was committed today, there would have been a lot more serious of a punishment, at least I hope. However, what we can all agree on is that this murder was completely brutal. And all that's left to remember, fawn by, is this story and also a necklace that was found at the apartment where she died in that was actually given to her son after the fact.

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So at least he's able to have something from his mom. But man, this case broke me pretty good. Just the brutality and inhuman people involved. It's hard to wrap my head around. I mean, I know I talk about a lot of these cases and can remain somewhat stoic, but this one was hard to get through. Anyway, I just want to say thank you for watching the video.

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If you have any other cases you want me to go over, let me know down below. Anything from crime, conspiracy cults, serial killers, murder, whatever paranormal Anything down below. I I would love to read the reason why I did this video is because so many of you suggested it Um, but yeah until next time I will see you a beautiful face in the next video. All right. Bye

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But anyway, eventually at 21 years old, she was able to get a job at a brothel called Romance Villa in Shamshuipo, where she would be able to pay for her addiction. So right out the gate, I mean, she started off in a terrible situation

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went through another terrible situation which was being in an orphanage and then was kicked down into the street at 15 years old and not that she is the villain at any point in the story but she is the victim and I feel like so many victims we see of serial killers or regular killers or just people wanting to take advantage of women specifically often come from this lifestyle and it's just it's heartbreaking but that is exactly what would happen to Fan Manyi.

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which is kind of concerning, a lot of you requested I go over the Hello Kitty case. Now, I've heard of this here and there. I hadn't heard all the details, and my lord, is it grim. So all the trigger warnings there, from torture to horror, hauntings, this case shocked all of Hong Kong and the world. And they called it one of the worst and most horrible sides of humanity ever seen.

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But anyway, she would go on to work at this brothel, and eventually she would cozy up to one of her clients, Ong Chi Yuen, and get married to said client in 1996. And this guy was a piece of shit, okay? He was not stable at all, and to boot, he was also a drug addict. And eventually, she would give birth to a son two years into her relationship in November of 1998.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

199.406

And their relationship was not great, as you could probably guess. Both of them were addicted to drugs. They had quite an abusive relationship as well, with neighbors constantly reporting loud shouting and arguments. And the child, of course, of them doing drugs and yelling at each other would be crying and screaming, so the neighbors would constantly send noise complaints because of them.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

223.441

So it was a less than peaceful environment as you can imagine. And realizing this was no place to raise her son and her habits were getting in the way of her child, she decided she wanted to turn her life around. So she quit drugs and Lady of the Nighting. Two very dangerous things in her life that didn't benefit her son in any way and decided to work at a different place.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

244.042

And she would eventually get a job as a hostess at a nightclub called Empress Karaoke Club. Love karaoke. And to ensure that her son was truly safe, she would leave her piece of shit, drug-addicted husband and fly solo to take care of her child. But although that she was living a much safer life now, she was not making as much money and was really struggling financially to help her baby.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

266.989

and herself. And it wasn't until about a year later in 1997 that she became close with another one of her clients named Chanman Lok, a 34 year old man. And Chan was not the best person to be friends with if you were wanting to turn your life around. And Phan would begin to fall back into her old life and drug addiction. And after a while, Chan realized that they had a lot in common as well.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

291.194

Fan was a lady of the night and drug addict, and Chan just so happened to be a pimp and a drug dealer. So just a... Match made in hell, basically. And eventually, after spending so much time with Chan, she would become very familiar with his crew as well. Particularly his two henchmen who were beneath him named Leong Shing Cho, aged 26, and Leong Wei Loon, aged 21. And Chan wasn't just any pimp.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

319.095

He was a straight up gangster, okay? Being a part of the Wo Shing Wo triad, a very long standing gang in Hong Kong. But despite the frequent business, money was still tight and Phan was hanging out with gangsters who were throwing money like no tomorrow. And she started to become really used to that and she just wanted more and more money.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

341.458

But the next thing that she would do would change her life entirely. And it would change her life for the worst. So on one of their drug binges in 1999, Vonn stole Chan's wallet with 4,000 Hong Kong dollars in it, which is about $500 USD.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

356.992

And she would do this because she was struggling with money and with these guys throwing money at her constantly, she was starting to get used to having a little bit more money and she was so desperate to have more money that she thought that this was some sort of solution, but it just made things so much worse.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

373.806

And Chan, of course, would find out that he was $500 or 4,000 Hong Kong dollars short, obviously. And the only person who he could blame was the girl that he was drug binging with and the only person that he was around when the money had disappeared. So he would then send his goons to contact her, stating that she needed to pay the money back.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

395.306

Which, I mean, she did steal the money, and paying him back, I mean, that's fine, that's all civil, nothing necessarily wrong there, the only wrong thing is that she stole money, but it gets worse than that. Because since she went behind Chan's back and stole his money, he kind of wanted to make an example of her.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

411.62

So he said, you know what, you also need to pay a fee of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, around 1300 USD, which is more than double than what she stole. And this was considered interest for stealing his money, basically. And the intention behind that, not only making an example of her, was that now he could force her to work under him to pay off this debt.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

43.545

So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go Mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into this gruesome case together. So born in 1976 in Shenzhen, China, Fan Manyi was a troubled child. It began with her living with her parents who decided to abandon her as a child, leaving her to end up in an all girls orphanage in Matawai.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

432.401

And this amount of money to recuperate would take a very long time for Fan, especially if she was pooling it into her child and drug habits. So she would eventually pay that initial $500 or 4,000 Hong Kong dollars back to Chan, but the rest would take a long time and Chan was getting... impatient. Obviously, Chan wanted Fan to learn a lesson.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

453.079

The lesson being not to steal from someone who has been so gracious to you and who also had a reputation to uphold as well. Therefore, Chan would send his two henchmen, Liang Weilun and Liang Xingqiu, to her flat, which was located in Liyu Estate on March 17th, 1999. However, it wasn't just the two goons that Chan would send to grab Fan, but also a

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

478.456

14-year-old girl named Ah Phong, who will be important later in the story. So they would take Phan from her apartment and take her to a different apartment on number 31 Granville Road, Shim Sa Sui. And this was a very large apartment complex with over five bedrooms. And it was rented by Chan, not owned. However, he had full access to it due to his rent.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

501.416

And the original idea was to teach Phan a lesson forcing her to work completely under Chan until he was satisfied, pimping her out to any man who would have her. However, before she could get back to work, they would begin to torture her. And this is where all the trigger warnings apply, so just a heads up.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

518.883

Chan, like I said, had changed his mind in getting her to be a lady of the night for him, believing he should make an example of any of the girls who dare cross him. Therefore, she would instead be tortured in this abandoned building, muffling her screams with a dirty rag. And her torture was absolutely brutal. Like there is a special dark place in hell for the people that did this to her.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

542.994

And it ranged from physical to psychological abuse to eventual SA. So supposedly she was beaten with metal bars until her bones were all fractured. And she would also be tied up with metal wires that dug into her skin and they would continually beat her all through the day and all through the night, just taking turns. And the torture would just progressively get worse and worse.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

567.456

These people were incredibly sadistic and would just experiment essentially on her in different ways. to torture her. She would be strangled with a metal wire until she couldn't breathe. They would whip her as well. And she would often dive in and out of consciousness throughout these ordeals with the pain just being so severe.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

589.054

And to ensure the pain was even worse, these pieces of shit would put chili powder into her open wounds just to make it hurt more just because they're... spawns of Satan. They would use other torture methods as well, such as burning her with lighters. And even on one occasion, Chan forced Fan to eat his own feces. Are you okay? I mean, nobody's okay. None of this is okay.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

619.502

But like this, just this poor, poor, poor girl, like so awful. But in short, all of the people that were involved with Chan would take part in this torture against Fang. And the young girl, the 14 year old Laming Fang, known as Ah Fang as a pseudonym, would also reportedly take part in the torture towards Fang.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

642.17

Now, just a little bit about Afang, she was one of the girls that was currently being groomed by Chang. So, I mean, in this situation, I'm going to safely assume she didn't really have a choice. She sees another woman that went against this person that she's with. Also, she doesn't want to be going through that. So she was, I'm going to safely assume. forced to go through this, just awful.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

667.998

And on one occasion, she would recollect seeing Chan kick Phong in the head over 50 times. And Ah Phong then also kicked her in the head, like joining in essentially. And during all of this, just all of this, horrible pain and suffering, Fawn was forced to say she enjoyed it the whole time.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

688.836

And they would say that she had to say this in order for it to stop, but they would often just continue to do it and torture her anyway and in more severe ways. And eventually, as you can expect, Fawn did succumb to her torture. Surviving around a month of continuous torture on either April 14th or April 15th, 1999, that is the day that she died.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

712.49

And this would spark an argument between them, believing that one of the torturers didn't watch over her hard enough, and that she probably got access to methamphetamine to overdose on it. Which again, we don't know for sure. Either way, they now had a corpse that they needed to get rid of, and they had a sinister idea of how to do that. Just more trigger warnings of getting rid of a body. Just...

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

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putting it out there. So they decided they needed to get rid of this body. So they would drag Fawn's body to an empty bathtub. They would then grab a hacksaw and begin to cut her up into small pieces, therefore making it easier not only to relocate, but also get rid of However, you can't just throw a body in the trash.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

759.627

The smell will lead others to investigate and throw off their entire operation. So they decided to do something else. They would boil each body part two at a time in a big pot. And by boiling the body, it would kill the DNA and germs and be easier to get rid of, leaving little trace.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

779.326

And this pot and stove that they boiled Fawn's body on was the same place that they would cook food that they would eat as well, which is just sickening. But their sadistic thoughts somehow did not end there because they had extra plans for her head specifically. So due to boiling body parts, most of the time, everything would fall off the bone, leaving just the bone exposed essentially.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

80.16

And in the time she was there, she would never be adopted. And with an age limit set on taking care of young girls, she was sent into the world alone at the age of 15.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

806.088

So after the head was completely boiled, they would take the skull and do something completely unthinkable. Supposedly, the home was decorated with a decent amount of Hello Kitty memorabilia.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

818.777

So these insane f**ks, instead of throwing out the head, would take the skull of Fawn and grab a Hello Kitty mermaid doll and remove the Hello Kitty mermaid doll's head and then stuff Fawn's skull inside the doll and sew it back onto the Hello Kitty mermaid's body. So Fawn's skull was now inside the Hello Kitty mermaid doll. And they would just set it back on the shelf like nothing ever happened.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

849.044

And this is where the story of the name of this case comes from. So a few weeks would go by after this whole

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

858.115

up event and they seem to have gotten away with their crime however the child in our story the 14 year old child ah fong felt different from what she had experienced and felt urged to go to the police now why do you ask would she just randomly decide to go to the police especially with the danger of chan finding out anything you know but it was because she experienced some paranormal

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

882.417

On May 24th, 1999, Afong would go to the police and tell them that she had been haunted for days and nights, even in her dreams, by a woman who was bound with electrical wire and who was tortured to death. Sound familiar? And the police would just blow her off thinking that she was just a teenager with a very descriptive imagination. and they wouldn't think anything of it.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

904.734

However, she would clarify that this ghostly presence she was feeling was due to her involvement in the murder of this exact woman that was currently haunting her. That'll do it. And willing to show them everything that had happened, she would do so if, in exchange, she was granted protection.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

922.191

So again, that just kind of coincides with she was just afraid that entire time that she was living in under Chan, which is Again, just so incredibly sad. And she would then begin to describe everything that happened, everything that we already spoke about. And completely shocked, the police would get up and immediately go run down to the flat to which a Hello Kitty doll was sitting on the bed.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

93.906

And as expected, it was an extremely hard life living out on the streets. She experienced the worst type of things and eventually she would get herself into the wrong crowd and get addicted to drugs. And this habit would lead her to rely on them as it happens with drugs. And the only way to afford said drugs is with money.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

943.713

And inside the Hello Kitty doll, the police would find a skull and a ton of rotting insects as well. And all that was left of Fawn was a few teeth and a fridge with internal organs stuffed in it as well, and the skull that was retrieved from the doll. And the apartment and living conditions she was left in were disgusting and absolutely mortifying.

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

964.95

Trash was left all over the floor and it was just a decrepit place. So the police would try to be swift with their arrests, knowing how serious this crime was and his connection to the triads. The arrest was an absolute must. And Chan was just living it up, absolutely clueless to the events that were about to transpire. He would be at his home with his wife. A wife, what?

Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder

Ep. 34 | The Hello Kitty Murder | **SHOCKING CONTENT**

989.983

Spending quality time with a newborn child. Just letting that sink in. And that is when a SWAT raid team would come in early morning on May 28th and rip his dumb fucking bitch ass out of there. And this arrest would be announced in the news and the paper. And Liang Weilun fled to mainland China before he could be arrested as well.

Crimeatorium

60 Seconds of True Crime | Grandmother is Accused Of The Unthinkable

0.009

Hyde Park is a small town located in northern Utah and it is the home of 75-year-old Ruth Worthen. Multiple individuals have come forward accusing Worthen of sexually assaulting them when they were children. The alleged abuse occurred over a span of 30 years.

Crimeatorium

60 Seconds of True Crime | Grandmother is Accused Of The Unthinkable

19.414

The individuals, which include both male and female and ranged in age from 18 months to 13 years, claimed Worthen repeatedly raped and molested them and forced them to engage in sexual activities with other children and adults. Some of the alleged victims were relatives of Worthen, a woman they should have felt safe with.

Crimeatorium

60 Seconds of True Crime | Grandmother is Accused Of The Unthinkable

42.512

The assaults are said to have taken place at a turkey farm, a park, Worthen's home, in the mountains, and in the church bathroom. It is alleged that the use of objects, as well as psychological abuse, including threats of physical violence, were used in the commission of the assaults against these children.

Crimeatorium

60 Seconds of True Crime | Grandmother is Accused Of The Unthinkable

63.274

One victim described Worthen's predatorial nature, claiming that she took every opportunity to prey on her victims at family parties and other events. Friends and neighbors of Worthen are shocked by the allegations. A secretly recorded phone call with one of Worthen's relatives was made during the investigation.

Crimeatorium

60 Seconds of True Crime | Grandmother is Accused Of The Unthinkable

83.489

This person claimed to have known about the sexual abuse due to a vision he had, but decided to let it go. Worthen was arrested and booked into jail on 18 felony offenses, including aggravated sexual abuse of a child and object rape of a child. Ruth Worthen is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

100.566

But according to records, this employment didn't last long. Suzanne took a job at a skin bank for burn victims. By 1981, Suzanne had carved out a wonderful life for herself. She had a good job, a good circle of friends, and an apartment. She often spoke with her mother, Louise, about the possibility of starting a family of her own, if, of course, the right man came into her life.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1009.81

Finally, after two weeks of watching transactions, trying to follow Suzanne's car, Gillies and Logan were arrested for her murder. During his arrest, Gillies asked what would happen if found guilty. The officer responded that he would face the gas chamber. Gillies' response was, All that for killing that bitch?

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1036.489

Gillies remained closed off to investigators, but his partner in crime, Mike Logan, was more than happy to sell his friend down the river in exchange for a lighter sentence. Logan agreed to testify against Gillies in exchange for Arizona not seeking the death penalty. Days after his arrest, Mike Logan led a team of investigators to the site of Suzanne's murder and grave.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1066.18

The team were horrified by the level of brutality inflicted upon Suzanne. Court documents noted that it took two officers to remove the rocks that had been placed on her body. The state's report also noted the right cheek of the victim had been crushed and the eye was missing from the right socket.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1088.376

The medical examiner described various lacerations, abrasions, avulsions, and fractures to the skull and body of the victim. The victim tested positive for seminal fluid. Suzanne's parents were shielded by investigators from a lot of the details and promised that her body would be returned.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1111.892

Both Jesse Gillies and Mike Logan were deemed fit to stand trial, with the latter being sentenced to life with a minimum of 25 years for his cooperation. Jesse Gillies, on the other hand, who was also found guilty, was sentenced to death. The court spent several days determining whether the crime met the criteria for death, which it ultimately did.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1138.962

Mike Logan's testimony was vital in building the case against both men and it culminated in the pair being found guilty. No guilty plea or death sentence will ever pay for what they did to sweet Suzanne. Her kindness was exploited in one of the most monstrous ways imaginable. In January 1999, Jesse Gillies was executed by the state of Arizona.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1168.875

For his last meal, Gillies requested a rare cooked steak with mushrooms, two eggs, ten pieces of bacon, toast with butter and jam, milk, apple juice, and a large chocolate milkshake. Gillies refused to give any final words, simply telling the officers, let's get on with it. Unfortunately, Peter Rossetti passed away in 1992, never living to see Jesse Gillies or Mike Logan face any real justice.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1205.677

Following Peter's passing, Louise continued to keep her daughter's name alive. In 1992, a Louise Rossetti's Women 5K race was created to pay tribute to Suzanne. Also, the Suzanne Maria Rossetti Memorial Juried Art Contest was established 42 years ago in her memory as well.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1229.116

In 2002, Louise carried the Olympic torch for the Salt Lake City Games, naming her run in honor of Suzanne and her two surviving children, Donna and Peter Jr. In June 2014, Louise Rossetti passed away at the age of 93. Michael Logan never saw parole as he is reported to have passed away behind bars in 2021. In 2012, Ronald J. Watkins published a book called Evil Intentions about Suzanne's case.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1266.366

While Suzanne's family supported Watkins, they asked that no pictures of Suzanne be included in the book. Suzanne Rossetti's life was cut short by two disturbed individuals who took pleasure in exploiting others. Jesse Gillies paid for the crime with his life, and Mike Logan died behind bars.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

1289.937

Suzanne's parents gave a handful of interviews in the 90s where they felt no punishment on earth could match the acts they had committed against Suzanne.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

129.524

Peter and Louise visited Arizona every winter to be with Suzanne. The winter of 1981 was no exception. Peter and Louise Rossetti arrived in Phoenix in early January of that year. They planned to spend three weeks with Suzanne before returning home on January 29th. The first few weeks were unremarkable.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

153.704

Suzanne was said to have always had a packed social life, so Peter and Louise didn't mind roaming around the city alone while Suzanne met with friends. January 28, 1981 was one such day. That afternoon, Suzanne unknowingly said goodbye to her parents for the last time before heading out with friends. According to reports, Suzanne and friends attended the 8 p.m.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

180.033

showing of the Broadway show, Danson, following which Suzanne would reunite with her parents and drive them to the airport for their 3 a.m. flight. But Suzanne never made it. Peter and Louise would later tell the police they had arranged to meet at the rodeo inn, leave their rented car behind, and get a ride from Suzanne to the airport. When midnight came and went, the Rossettis became worried.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

2.811

Suzanne Maria Rossetti was born on May 3, 1954, in Saugus, Massachusetts.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

208.821

They waited a little while longer, but they were under a time constraint and risked missing their flight home. The pair decided to head for the airport, thinking Suzanne had forgotten their plans and was planning on meeting them there. But as they arrived, their hearts began to sink. There was no sign of Suzanne. The time was crunching closer to 3 a.m.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

233.64

and the last call for their gate was announced. Knowing their daughter would never abandon them, Peter and Louise missed their flight home and headed for their daughter's apartment. Wild thoughts and scenarios played through their minds. Had Suzanne had a medical episode? Had she fallen asleep after a long night with friends? Or had something far darker taken place?

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

259.157

Sometime in the early morning hours of January 29th, the Rosettis reached Suzanne's apartment, but again, there was no sign of Suzanne. Her apartment was in disarray and bizarrely, the clock had stopped ticking at 12.47. Peter and Louise became frantic as hours ticked away.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

28.726

She was doted on by her parents, Peter and Louise. People described the Rossettis as an honest and hardworking family, with Peter and Louise working to set an example for their children, Suzanne, Peter Jr., and Donna. Suzanne displayed a bright intellect from an early age and dreamed of attending college.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

281.815

Suzanne's neighbors hadn't seen her the night before and the last person to see her alive, Joe Heckel, had no idea where she could have gone after the theater closed. While Suzanne's parents searched every inch of the apartment complex, Suzanne's fate had already been sealed. At 11 p.m. the night before, January 28, Suzanne had deviated slightly from her route to the Rodeo Inn.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

310.782

She had stopped off at the U-Totem convenience store to grab a few items. For a few minutes, Suzanne milled around the store before grabbing chewing gum and leaving. When Suzanne approached her car, she realized she had locked her keys inside. She initially asked the store employee for help, but he advised her he wasn't allowed to leave the store. Suzanne returned to her car, but she wasn't alone.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

340.369

Two men approached Suzanne and introduced themselves, Jesse Gillies and Mike Logan. The encounter made Suzanne somewhat uncomfortable, but with no other options available, she told the men what was wrong. Gillies and Logan assured her they would be able to help and that they were not a threat.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

362.403

The two spoke about their lives to Suzanne, saying they were interested in nature and conservation like her, putting her at ease. What they neglected to tell her was that they were career criminals with checkered pasts, and they had been sizing her up this entire time. Upon purchasing a screwdriver from the U-Totem store, Gillies managed to wiggle the window open just enough to retrieve the keys.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

392.054

Relieved, Suzanne unlocked her car and asked the pair what she could do to thank them. The two looked at each other, giving the signal. Gillies requested a pack of beer and a ride home, telling Suzanne this would make them square, but the night was far from over. The U-Totem employee watched the entire event go down and sold Suzanne this six-pack of beer.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

417

This would be the last time she was ever seen alive again. The U-Totem employee did not raise the alarm, believing he had witnessed two kind Samaritans coming to a distressed woman's aid. Suzanne had also told Gillies and Logan she needed to be quick as she was meeting her parents to take them to the airport in a few hours.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

443.574

As Suzanne drove out of sight of the store and toward the ranch, she felt a warm trickle on her head. Gillies had struck her several times in the head, causing the Ford Pinto to come to a halt. Confused, Suzanne was dragged out of the driver's seat by the pair. Gillies announced that it was now Logan's turn to have fun with Suzanne.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

468.895

Logan attacked Suzanne, raping her before holding the screwdriver to her head. Terrified, Suzanne complied with the men, telling them where she lived. Logan and Gillies bundled themselves into the front of the car, taking directions to her apartment. When they arrived, they forced Suzanne into her bedroom, where she would be raped several more times by each man.

Crimeatorium

The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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While one man attacked her, the other would search her apartment, looking for valuables and other things to steal. In a last-ditch effort to save herself and leave behind evidence, Suzanne grabbed the clock, stopping it at exactly 12.47. Hours later, her parents would discover the scene and find the clock. They would know that whatever had happened to their daughter happened after midnight.

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By 1976, that dream had come to fruition, with Suzanne proudly walking across the stage in her cap and gown. But now, the real test for Suzanne would begin. What did she want to do with her life and newly gained degree? Well, it turns out that Suzanne wasn't too sure.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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Once the pair were satisfied with looting her apartment, they dragged her out to her Ford Pinto, throwing her in the back. The pair drove around Phoenix thinking of ways to get rid of Suzanne while she lay in the back covered with a blanket. During the raid of her apartment, the two found her ATM card and decided to try their luck. Under the threat of further violence, Suzanne gave them the pin.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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CCTV cameras captured the pair withdrawing $200 from her account. The bank declined further transactions at this hour, leaving Suzanne to once again be beaten and assaulted. Suzanne had earlier let it slip that she had a handsome sum of a few thousand dollars in her account, so the pair slipped her card into their pockets for safekeeping.

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Several hours had passed since they had first kidnapped Suzanne, and the pair were growing tired. They knew the longer they had her in the car, the riskier it became. After much discussion in earshot of Suzanne, the pair decided to drive her Ford Pinto to the Superstition Mountains east of downtown Phoenix.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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At that moment, Suzanne knew she was going to die, and it is horrific to imagine what she may have been feeling. As the Ford Pinto came to an abrupt halt, Gillies and Logan grabbed Suzanne out of the car, forcing her to walk the rocky and unpredictable terrain. The trio approached the edge of the cliff, where Suzanne uttered, I guess you're going to kill me now. And she was right.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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The pair threw Suzanne off the cliffside, sending her plummeting 40 feet below. Incredibly, she was still alive. Gillies and Logan sensed this immediately, racing down the side to catch her. Unsatisfied, the pair repeated the process, but Suzanne prevailed. Bloodied and bruised, Suzanne asked for a final act of mercy, telling them to leave her alone as she was going to die anyway.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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Mike Logan coldly responded, That's right, bitch, you are, before grabbing a rock and smashing her in the head. Gillies joined in with the pair, calling her a bitch and a whore. By this point, Suzanne had suffered significant damage to her body, with the left side of her face being almost completely crushed and her eye dislodged from her socket.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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Even after suffering several blows to the head, Suzanne was alive, whimpering and begging for her life. Gillies and Logan were now growing frantic. No matter how many cliffs they threw her from or how many times they hit her, she prevailed. The two concocted their final plan, one that would get rid of their problem once and for all.

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In court documents, Gillies testified the plan was to bury her alive, but the pair didn't have a shovel. Instead, they covered Suzanne's battered and broken body in large rocks until she was completely entombed. As Suzanne's whimpers grew weaker and weaker, Gillies and Logan took the moment to sit on the cliff and smoke a few cigarettes.

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Following graduation, Suzanne traveled across the country for a while, tasting different ways of life in various states before settling in Arizona. Despite being far away from home, Suzanne was only a call away. She kept a regular schedule of calling home to speak with her family. Suzanne had settled in Arizona after accepting a job at the Grand Canyon National Park.

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Unbeknownst to Gillies and Logan, Suzanne lived for a further 10 to 20 minutes after being buried alive. Not that either man would have cared. Some documents state in her final moments, Logan told Suzanne, sorry, but this was how it had to be. It is unclear whether Logan had experienced a brief lapse in his conscience or whether he was simply taunting Suzanne.

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Once the cigarettes ran out, Logan and Gillies trekked back to Suzanne's Ford Pinto and continued to ride around the city. Twenty-year-old Mike Gillies had a rough start in his life. His mother made it very clear she did not want him and he was left to his own devices. By his teen years, Gillies had already committed a slew of crimes and was known for his violent behavior towards his family.

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The downward spiral continued into his late teens, culminating in several prison sentences, including one at Juvie for stealing a car at the age of 12. Prison is often heralded as the school of crime, and Gillies learned a lot of valuable information from hardened criminals and lifers.

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By 1981, Gillies had been released and found his way to a ranch just outside of Phoenix where he would meet Mike Logan. Like Gillies, Logan was also a lifelong criminal, one who in 1981 should have still been behind bars. A hardened drinker, Logan had just escaped a Michigan prison and wanted nothing more than to leave the country.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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Gillies, seeing himself in Logan, quickly forged a friendship with the man on the run and wanted to help him raise the $2,000 necessary to flee to Australia. This is how the dangerous duo came to be. On January 28, 1981, the two went on the prowl, looking for unsuspecting victims to rob. They had no idea where the night would take them, but it was clear that murder was on their minds.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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While Gillies and Logan paraded around in Suzanne's stolen Ford Pinto, Louise and Peter Rossetti were out of their minds with worry. They had tried to report Suzanne missing at 5 a.m. on January 29, but were told they needed to wait at least 24 hours. Three hours later, a Phoenix police officer finally met them and gave them an unconventional solution.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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There may have been a 24 hour wait for missing persons, but there was no wait on reporting a car missing. Thankfully for investigators, Gillies and Logan were still using Suzanne's Pinto and it didn't take long for them to track the vehicle down. The pressure was mounting and Gillies began to crack.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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Hours after murdering Suzanne, he returned to the ranch with Logan, where he proceeded to brag about his crimes. His colleagues were horrified, but Gillies claimed it was all a joke. This would come back to bite him weeks later. Peter and Louise continued to stay at Suzanne's apartment, awaiting news from the police. Suzanne's number plate and bank card had been flagged several times in the city.

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The Tragic Murder of Suzanne Maria Rossetti: The 1977 Crime That Shook Saugus

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According to Arizona v. Gillies documents, Logan and Gillies accessed Suzanne's bank 28 times between January 28th and February 3rd. Out of the 28 attempts, 13 were unsuccessful as they had exceeded the $250 daily withdrawal allowance. Investigators were keeping an eye on the transactions as it gave them a similar area of the city to work in.

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That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash criminal to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash criminal. Growing up in the Javari Valley in the 1980s, Iliesio Marubo said he felt very safe.

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Iliesio says they would sometimes meet people from a state agency who gave them toys.

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Iliesio moved to the nearest city to go to school.

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This was in a part of northwestern Brazil called the Javari Valley. It's near the borders of Peru and Colombia. There were two men on the trip. One of them was Brazilian, Bruno Pereira, an expert on indigenous issues who lived and worked in the region. The other man was a British journalist named Dom Phillips.

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When Iliasio returned to the Javari Valley, he says he noticed a change.

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Today, the entire Amazon rainforest is home to about 30 million people. A lot of people came in the early to mid-1900s to collect sap from rubber trees and sell it.

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They called it Operation Amazon, and the military built highways through the forest.

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The Javari Valley is designated indigenous territory, meaning non-indigenous people are not allowed to hunt there. But lots of other people live in the region, near the indigenous territories, and it's hard to make a living. In the nearest city, only 7% are employed.

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He had lived in Brazil for over 15 years, but was visiting the Javari Valley to write about Bruno's work. They'd planned to set out from a small town and sail down the Ittaquai River, which cuts through the rainforest. The night before they left, Dom Phillips stayed in one of the only hotels in town.

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Organized crime and drug traffickers are said to control a lot of the illegal poaching and logging in the area, and don't want reporters or scouts coming around. Over the past decade, at least 300 people, many of them indigenous, have been killed in the Amazon. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil.

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At a press conference for international journalists, Dom Phillips asked Bolsonaro about some of the threats facing the Amazon. Bolsonaro replied, the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours. And at one point, he said data showing a rise in deforestation was lies.

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Before Bruno Pereira started working with Univasha, he worked for a government agency. One day, poachers attacked their base, firing shots at the building. There were at least eight attacks in a year. And then, one night in 2019, one of Bruno's colleagues, a man named Maxiel Pereira dos Santos, was shot in the back of the head and killed while sitting on his motorcycle.

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The murder has not yet been solved. Bruno requested a leave from work. He wrote that he needed a break after the murder of his friend and colleague and because of the, quote, climate of tension. He told people that he was waiting for Bolsonaro's term to end before he would return to the government agency. Instead, he went to work with Iliasio Marubo and Unavaja, training indigenous scouts.

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Univaja started receiving threats, delivered to Iliasio Marubo's office.

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We'll be right back.

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But actually, they were heading south. Terry McCoy is the Washington Post's Rio de Janeiro bureau chief.

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In 2022, Washington Post Bureau Chief Terry McCoy traveled to the Javari Valley. He wanted to find out what had happened in the weeks and months leading up to the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips. He read the scouts' reports and spoke with people who knew Bruno.

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And he learned about something that had happened while Bruno was out on the river with the scouting teams, weeks before he disappeared.

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They saw a man they knew well. They knew he was involved in illegal fishing, and the scouts had collected information about him. He led a team of six men who carried shotguns and went into the indigenous territories at night to fish illegally.

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As they passed his stilt house on the river, he fired a shot. It went over their heads.

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A few weeks later, Dom Phillips arrived in the Javari Valley. Dom and Bruno spent a couple of days along the river, interviewing people. Sometimes they shadowed indigenous scouts. On the second day, they saw Pilato in his boat, and he raised his shotgun at some of the scouts as a warning. Months after their deaths, Bruno's phone was found in the forest.

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It contained photographs of Dom interviewing people, and also two videos of Pilato sailing past them. Terry McCoy decided to take the same trip down the river that Dom and Bruno had taken months earlier.

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They'd made a plan to go and visit one of Bruno Pereira's friends and collaborators when they got back, an indigenous lawyer named Iliesio Marubo. They'd worked together protecting indigenous territory in the rainforest. Bruno had called Iliesio to let him know they would be coming.

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On the last day of their trip, Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira knew they would have to sail past Pilato's house to get back to town. So they decided to leave early in the morning.

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Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, or Pilato, and another man named Jefferson de Silva Lima confessed to the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips. They told police what happened that morning. Pilato said they shot Bruno and shot Dom, and that Bruno returned fire but didn't hit them.

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And how were they caught?

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In a statement, then-President Bolsonaro called Dom and Bruno's trip, quote, "...an adventure that isn't recommendable for anyone." Bruno Pereira's wife, anthropologist Beatriz Matos, told Brazilian TV that she was hurt by the statements which, quote, contradict the extreme dedication, seriousness, and commitment that Bruno has with his work.

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The police arrested Pilato Jefferson and Pilato's brother for the murders.

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A Murder in the Forest

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Terry went to the small community on the river where Palado lived.

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In 2001, the area was turned into an indigenous territory to protect the uncontacted tribes. Other riverside communities could no longer fish and hunt the way they used to.

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Pilato and Jefferson da Silva Lima are awaiting trial. Pilato's brother was just released after 27 months in prison. A federal court ruled there wasn't enough evidence against him.

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But then, on Sunday morning, Iliasio received a phone call.

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Last year, police arrested another man, who is believed to be the leader of an illegal phishing network. He's been charged with ordering the murders. And then, another man was arrested for assisting him and for interfering with the investigation and intimidating witnesses. Last year, Brazil got a new president, Lula da Silva.

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And Brazil got its first indigenous minister, heading a newly created Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. Last year, she took a trip to the Javari Valley, along with Dom and Bruno's wives, Alessandra Sampaio and Beatriz Matos. She told an audience of mostly indigenous people, we're here to reestablish the presence of the Brazilian government in the Javari Valley region.

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But some people say not much has changed.

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Today, Iliécio Amorubo lives in hiding.

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Iliasio told The Guardian that he thinks the police investigation needs to continue. He suspects there's been a cover-up of the murders, and he said he believes the case goes beyond the people who've been arrested so far.

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Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

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This episode was fact-checked by Michelle Harris. Special thanks to journalist Julia Carnero. A group of journalists are at work completing Dom Phillips' book titled How to Save the Amazon, Ask the People Who Know. It will be out next year. We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus.

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A Murder in the Forest

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Once you sign up, you can listen to Criminal episodes without any ads, and you'll get bonus episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Laurence Borer, too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast.

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Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminals. Support for criminal comes from better help. That back-to-school feeling can come at any age. I know a lot of people love it. It's not my favorite feeling. I like summer. But the fall is a good time to take stock of where you are and where you'd like to be.

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They talked again later.

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A Murder in the Forest

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Eliezo Marubo is speaking to us in Portuguese. Reporter Julia Carneiro translates.

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Eliezer organized a search team.

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Then Terry McCoy talked with Iliasio Marubo.

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Iliesio started worrying that other people might be attacked too. Things felt so unsafe to him that he left his home.

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This is Criminal.

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Elieziu is my first name, and my last name comes from our people, the Marubu people. Elieziu grew up in the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, one of the most remote areas in the world. It's about the size of Portugal. The territory is home to 26 indigenous tribes. 19 tribes are what's called uncontacted, and basically have no communications with the outside world.

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The Javari Valley is home to the largest known number of uncontacted people. There are no roads in the territory. People use the rivers for transportation. Iliasio says his community largely lives off the forest, hunting and fishing, and keeping small plantations.

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A tapir sort of looks like a pig crossed with an anteater. They're sometimes called the living fossil, because they've been around for 55 million years. People illegally hunt the taper, along with yellow-spotted river turtles and a prehistoric fish that looks like a giant snake. It's known as the Amazon giant and can grow up to 10 feet long. There's also illegal logging.

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People cut down the forest to sell the wood and to make space for gold mining and large cattle farms.

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A few years ago, a government agency captured a video of a member of an uncontacted tribe. The man was the last survivor of his community. The government agency believes everyone else was likely killed by ranchers or illegal miners. The man lived alone in the forest for over two decades, avoiding contact with other people. His body was found in 2022.

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Iliasio Marubo works as a lawyer for a small organization called Unavaja, or Union of Indigenous People of the Javari Valley. In 2020, Iliasio Marubo filed a lawsuit against American evangelists trying to approach uncontacted tribes in the forest to convert them. Bruno Pereira was also working with Unavaja when he disappeared on the river,

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Iliasio and Bruno had known each other for years and had first met through Iliasio's brother. The three of them all had daughters who were close in age.

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Bruno Pereira was born far away from the Javari Valley, in a city in the northeast of Brazil. He often went on expeditions into the forest that lasted for weeks, and he learned to speak at least four indigenous languages.

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A Murder in the Forest

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At Univasha, they felt that the authorities weren't doing enough to protect indigenous populations from poachers or people encroaching on their territory. They decided that if the government wouldn't investigate criminal activity in the forest, they would do it themselves. They formed groups of people who would work as scouts.

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They would travel the forest and the rivers to find out about people who were poaching, fishing, or logging illegally.

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So Bruno would go out on the water with the scouts, and then he and his colleagues would share what they found with the police, hoping that they would arrest the poachers. British journalist Dom Phillips wanted to write about Bruno's work with the Scouts.

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They decided to spend a few days on the river. During his 15 years in Brazil, Dom Phillips had written about the impact of agriculture on the rainforest, especially big cattle farms. He'd written about JBS, which is the world's biggest meat processor. They sell meat under more than 100 brands. The U.S. is the second biggest importer of Brazilian beef.

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Dom Phillips reported that some JBS beef comes from cows raised on land that's been illegally cleared.

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He was inspired by what he saw on his reporting trips, how indigenous communities hunt and grow things with no fertilizers. And he was going to write a book. He got a grant to go on reporting trips and interview indigenous people, including the scouting teams fighting illegal poaching and logging that Bruno was leading.

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His river trip in the Javari Valley with Bruno was one of the last reporting trips he'd planned. And then they disappeared. Ten days later, their bodies were found deep in the forest. We'll be right back. Thanks to Squarespace for their support. These days, whenever you're curious about a business or brand, the first place you usually look is online. That first impression matters.

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Visit squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Support for Criminal comes from Quince. Now is the time to think about sweaters. Quince has a lot of very nice, affordable sweaters that cost 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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In May of 1996, the issue went to print. The whole cover was a picture of Joanna McClay as Jolene Strickland.

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This is journalist Barry Yeoman.

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And how long was the profile inside? I mean, this wasn't a short article.

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Jolene Strickland was 48. She always wore red. She once told her mother she hoped that someday she wouldn't have to clip coupons. And her mother said, Joe, you stop practicing thrift and the devil will move into your kitchen.

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Her campaign manager told the Independent that they'd returned a $10,000 campaign contribution because Joe believes the governor of North Carolina should be elected, not bought. She had a husband named Bob and a son named Bobby. The dog was named Mercy Me. Jolene met Bob when she was 18, on her way home from her job at the Utterly Butterly Dairy Barn.

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Bob was participating in a strike for better working conditions at a poultry plant. They dated for five years. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and got her teaching certificate from UNC. They got married, and her parents gave them a book of baby names and a year's supply of ground chalk.

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She described teaching public school during the day and watching news from Vietnam at night. Quote, anyone not in a coma was getting the political lesson of a lifetime. Bob is quoted as saying, Jolene can smell a pile of you-know-what from a mile away, and she doesn't rest until it's cleaned up. She went on to become the mayor of the, quote, storybook town, Pine Hill.

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And one of the things she focused on in her campaign to challenge Jim Hunt and Robin Hayes and the governor's race was crime. She said building new prisons was a wasteful and useless so-called solution to a serious problem. She wanted job programs for nonviolent offenders, drug rehabilitation and education programs. She was quoted as saying, Crime does not pay is such a tired cliché.

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We've got to teach kids that a life well lived does pay. She wanted clean rivers, affordable health care, and strict rules about money and politics. What was the reaction?

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Did anyone say, oh, no, they're sending in contributions and they're buying buttons? What are we going to do?

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Robin Hayes also suggested that people could use Lysol to prevent STDs, leading some people to refer to him as Lysol Man.

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Two weeks after the article about Jolene Strickland ran, the Independent published a follow-up article. They dropped more obvious hints, reiterating her campaign slogan, Too Good to Be True, and saying outright that her campaign was conveniently headquartered here at the Independent. They quoted three readers who said they doubted that there was a real Jolene Strickland.

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They repeatedly referred to her as the Independent Candidate. But they also published Jolene Strickland's response to her skeptics.

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And my daddy once said that too many politicians are like that monster Dr. Frankenstein brought to life, loud, scary, and held together by some rich guy's money. The paper sought comments from her opponents. A spokesperson for the Republican candidate, Robin Hayes, said, she's for universal health care and she's very pro-abortion.

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He went on to say, if she does the right things, she might catch on. The press secretary for the sitting Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, said that the governor would be willing to debate Jolene Strickland.

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His mother had contributed a million dollars to his gubernatorial campaign and an additional $500,000 to the Republican National Committee, telling a reporter that she made the donation because, quote, "...my son is very anxious to continue the things he started in the legislature."

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The follow-up article also announced that there would be a press conference on May 30th at the state legislature so that Jolene Strickland could answer questions in person. It would be the first time that Joanna McClay would be in front of other journalists and have to respond to their questions in real time.

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Barry remembers that they gave her a list of talking points and a statement to read, but that was about it in the way of prep. Still, everyone was confident that she could make it seem believable.

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They also hired someone to play the part of her press secretary.

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One journalist asked about her claim that her town, Pine Hill, wasn't on any maps because it was too small. Jolene Strickland said, Well, you know maps. You know mapmakers. You know, they're not perfect. Someone asked how long she'd been mayor of Pine Hill. She said since 1986. But her own campaign had printed her election date as 1993. The reporters kept asking questions.

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Joanna McClay.

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At the time, Barry Yeoman was working for an alt weekly based in Durham, North Carolina, called the Independent Weekly. The newspaper was covering the governor's race closely. In 1996, Barry's editor was Bob Moser. Bob had started out as the calendar and arts editor. He was only 32 when he became the editor-in-chief.

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Joanna McClay remembered finally telling one reporter, look, all these questions you're asking, it sounds like you're trying to say that I'm not real. The reporter said, that's right.

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The column read, We Made Her Up. Jolene was one of those inspired ideas that springs from frustration. We wanted to address real issues. How to have universal health care. How to give everyone a fair chance at a prosperous life. How could we address such complicated issues without putting everyone to sleep? If you believed in Jolene, you're an awfully good company.

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Not only the company of a couple of astute political reporters and a bunch of shrewd readers, but also the offices of the actual gubernatorial candidates. Maybe we made Jolene too believable. And maybe in the process, we eroded your trust in the basic factuality of what we report. If so, we sincerely apologize.

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The disclaimer read, And they kept writing about her. In one article, the reporter described Jolene Strickland's visit to a polluted river, where she waded through dead fish and picked up trash, fortified by a glass of iced tea and a cheese sandwich. and gave a statement, quote, it's a question of who really owns these rivers, the businesses that pollute them or the citizens of North Carolina.

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We need a governor willing to withstand the wrath of big money. The pieces were a mix of policy and personal details. Jolene speaking about the loss of generational family farms to land developers while putting peanuts in her Coke. Jolene speaking against tax deductions for corporations in front of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store.

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A reference to her cousin Donna's You Pick Strawberry Farm in the middle of a piece about the state's Department of Transportation. Jolene at a fiddle festival. How did the other politicians and their campaigns react when they realized this was all a stunt?

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And did you get any strong criticism from anyone else, from other newspapers, from people writing in saying, why would you do this? I don't trust you anymore.

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One reader named Jim Emery from Chapel Hill wrote in a letter to the paper, Boy, do I feel deflated. This profile was exhilarating to read, and it stirred up a lot of talk. But how will we know if future stories are truth or fiction? It goes on to say, The overall feeling I'm left with is like a bad taste in my mouth. Sign me a hurt admirer of your paper.

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The Augusta Chronicle in Georgia wrote an article about Jolene saying, Faster than you could say liar, liar, pants on fire, the newspaper's senior staff writer admitted that it was not factual reporting, but a stunt to bring out certain issues during the summer's campaign. The article quoted Barry Yeoman, who said, Newspapers have a lot of functions.

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One of them is reporting what happens in government. One of them is helping readers imagine the possibilities. He was also quoted saying, Every politician is in some way fictitious. The Augusta Chronicle wrote, Mr. Yeoman is, of course, full of it. Real newspapers don't make up candidates. They do their best to expose bad ones.

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That piece reads, "'Irony is a marvelous tool, but its uses are regrettably limited in a modern newspaper. A specialized publication like The Independent is freer to experiment.' And by supplying a foil for the real politicians, a fictional Jolene Strickland has the potential to clarify what the race for governor is really all about. The writer said, We'll be right back.

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So what were some of the ideas?

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Was everyone glad they did this?

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Jim Hunt won re-election in the 1996 North Carolina governor's race. He went on to be the longest-serving governor in the state's history. Robin Hayes, the Republican candidate, went on to become the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. In 2019, he was accused of bribery and pled guilty to lying to the FBI. He was later pardoned by President Trump.

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Barry Yeoman remained friends with Joanna McClay.

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So when you went back to Bob Moser and said, okay, you wanted us to come up with something, here's what we came up with. We're going to create our own candidate. What did he say?

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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Are you nostalgic at all for a time when Alt Weeklys were more of an institution?

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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Barry Yeoman wrote the last piece about Jolene Strickland for The Independent. It's set on election night, 1996, and describes the scene at her campaign headquarters. 200 people crowded together eating ham biscuits, macaroni, and lemon chess pie. He described everyone watching the results roll in, and then Strickland giving a concession speech.

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She tells her supporters it's impossible to get elected in North Carolina unless you have lots of your own cash or know how to kowtow to those who do. At the end of her speech, she says, the struggle continues. Besides, there's plenty of food left, and Bob and I don't have enough Tupperware to take it all home. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

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We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes.

Criminal

The Pride of Pine Hill

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The first alt-weekly in America is generally considered to be The Village Voice, which was first published in New York City in October of 1955. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote, quote, For many oddballs and lefties and malcontents out in America's hinterlands, finding their first copy of The Voice was more than eye-opening. Here was a dispatch from another, better planet.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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There was nothing else like it. Dan Wolf, the editor and co-founder, said, The Village Voice was originally conceived as a living, breathing attempt to demolish the notion that one needs to be a professional to accomplish something in a field as purportedly technical as journalism. The Village Voice didn't take itself too seriously.

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The first edition included a short piece by a four-year-old titled A Joke by Philip. It read, A horse can't say yes or no, but a donkey can. But the paper didn't hold back. They ranked the worst landlords in New York City. They reported on abortion suits in the 1960s before Roe v. Wade, covering the most famous abortion doctor on the East Coast.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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To cover an anti-prostitution measure in New York that said that women could not be served at bars and restaurants if they were not in a group that included men, a group of women voice reporters went from restaurant to restaurant and demanded to be served.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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When a bartender seemed to panic about the big group of women at the bar, the author of the article wrote, What do you think we are, a whorehouse on a field trip?

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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Especially when sessions with a traditional in-person therapist can cost hundreds of dollars. But with BetterHelp Online Therapy, you can do something good for yourself on your schedule while saving as much as 50% per session. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp says they're the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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This is Tricia Romano. She started as an intern at The Village Voice in 1997 and worked as a writer and fact-checker there for many years.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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She published an oral history about the village voice. In it, she writes, These factors have shrunk the media landscape, whittling it down to the largest, most powerful publications, leaving a void most largely felt in local and independent news. Barry Yeoman says at The Independent, the writers and editors wore their values on their sleeves, for better or for worse.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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But still he said, go ahead with it.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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little bit about the character, the politician that you created. Who was she?

Criminal

The Pride of Pine Hill

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She would be perfect. We'll be right back. Thanks to Squarespace for their support. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform designed to help you make a great website. Whether you're just starting out or trying to grow your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to choose a URL, show off what you're selling, reach more customers, get paid. And do it all while looking professional.

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Your well-being is worth it, and now it's within reach. Visit betterhelp.com slash criminal to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash criminal. What was going on during the 1996 campaign season here in North Carolina? Who was running?

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The first draft of the first article about Jolene Strickland was written by a journalist at the Independent named Melinda Rooley. Barry Yeoman says that the hope was that, quote, everybody would know that this was fictional, but they would have this really happy place where they could go and just dream about what an election would look like with a candidate who actually spoke to their needs.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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But he says the first draft was so believable that he and the other journalists at The Independent worried that readers wouldn't be able to tell that this wasn't an actual candidate for governor.

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The Pride of Pine Hill

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And how would they know?

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They realized they needed to include a photograph of their candidate. So they had to find someone who looked like a retired school teacher from a small town. Barry Yeoman said he knew the perfect person. She was the mother of a friend of his named Joanna McClay. Joanna McClay was a professor at the University of Illinois, but was in North Carolina that spring on sabbatical.

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So you set up a photo shoot?

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Joanna McClay, speaking to Barry Yeoman in August of last year.

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I sure am. They even found a dog for her to pose with. They decided Jolene Strickland would have a dog. Do you remember the night before the story was going to be published, thinking, well, this is exciting, I wonder how this is going to go over?

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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I remember seeing Mike a lot when I was a kid. Of all my dad's friends, he was my favorite. Sure, he was big and loud and the perfect picture of an 80s-era Chicago firefighter. But I think it's because I've never seen my dad laugh as hard as when he was around his buddy Mike. Plus, he rocked the best mustache I've probably ever seen.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Ken war nur ein Feuerwehrleiter für ein Jahr oder so, bevor Mike an der gleichen Station eingeladen wurde. Aber auch so früh in seiner Karriere hatte er bereits einen Namen für sich selbst gemacht.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Listen to the hit iHeart Podcast that inspired the new TV series. Happy Face tells the story of Melissa Moore finding out her father was the notorious Happy Face killer in 1995. Listen to Happy Face on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

1162.275

He tells me a story about Ken's first partner before he and Mike became partners.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

1234.817

Weißt du das alte Sagen? Du kannst den Jungen aus der Mafia nehmen, aber du kannst den Jungen aus der Mafia nehmen.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Mit Ken und Mike, die jetzt zusammengearbeitet sind, bekamen sie schnell eine Reputation als bossig und konfrontierend. Und wahrscheinlich ein bisschen psychotisch.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Rule or not, Mike and Ken are gonna do what Mike and Ken are gonna do.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Yeah, it's about time. So,

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Krupp County is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to hear the whole season right now, it's available ad-free on Tenderfoot+. For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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I asked Mike what he thinks about this.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Er erzählt mir ein paar andere schreckliche Geschichten von Polizistbrutalität. Aber dieser nächste war so krank und weich, dass es mich wirklich erschreckt.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Als erstes wusste ich nicht, warum die Verbrechung von Mördern für diese kranken Polizisten eine benötigte Teil der Arbeit wäre. Und noch mehr, wie nicht zu tun es unsere Familie zerstören könnte. Aber Jeff Cohen von der Chicago Tribune ist nicht überrascht und hat eine interessante Perspektive auf diese traurige Realität.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Aber diese Verletzungen sind nicht nur ein Symptom der Klausel der Chicago-Kriegsfamilie in der Gefängnisverwaltung. Denn es gibt eine andere Familie mit ihrer eigenen Regelung, die diese Art von Ungerechtigkeiten ermöglicht hat, zu wachsen.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

171.705

Vorher auf Crook County.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

1832.142

Growing up is tough, but finding out your dad is not who you thought he was is downright terrifying.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

1843.991

Listen to the hit iHeart Podcast that inspired the new TV series. Happy Face tells the story of Melissa Moore finding out her father was the notorious Happy Face Killer in 1995. Listen to Happy Face on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

194.224

Der Turfkrieg brach über die Stadt aus.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

2090.193

Mike tells me there were other hints, too, that Ken was probably connected. One incident in particular took place at my parents' wedding, which was right around the time Mike and my dad became partners and a year before I was born.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

214.667

My name is Kyle Tequila. Welcome to Crook County. Crushed by the wind, I'm tired.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Ob Mike gut für den Scrap war oder nicht, von dem, was ich über meinen Vaters Vergangenheit gelernt habe, denke ich, dass Mike richtig war. Ken hat wahrscheinlich sein Leben am Tag gerettet. Und so nahe Mike und Ken waren, bin ich sicher, dass mein Vater alles getan hat, was er konnte, um diesen dunklen Weltraum von seinem Freund wegzuhalten. So wie er es von uns weggehalten hat.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Auch wenn es sich direkt über den Kopf drehte.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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Ich sage es einfach. Krook County is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV in association with Common Enemy. All episodes are written, produced and hosted by me, Kyle Tequila. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsey. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Main title song is called Crush by the band Starry Eyes.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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End credit song is called Aloha also by the band Starry Eyes. Sound mix by Cooper Skinner. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the excellent team at UTA for their support and to my fearless attorney Wendy Bench for her guidance. To stay updated on all things Crook County, follow us on all socials at crookcountypodcast or leave us a voicemail by visiting crookcountypodcast.com.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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For more podcasts like Crook County, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening. The story continues next week.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

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And life did go on. And it was good. A few years after I was born, we welcomed baby Cory into the family. Mom retired from work to focus on raising the kids and dad was full time at the firehouse. It couldn't have been more different from the nightmare Ken was living only a few years prior. Just a regular, boring, suburban family doing regular, boring, family shit. Exactly how he wanted it.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

437.528

You remember my brother, Cory.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

455.718

Well, maybe not exactly perfect.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

474.689

Und der Vater von dem Kind war nicht glücklich, dass Ken... Ken war Coach. Er war der Coach auf der Hockey-Team. Der Vater auf dem anderen Team war nicht glücklich, dass Ken seinen Sohn ausgelöst hat.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

489.312

Er versucht, sich über den Tisch zu werfen. Oh, der andere Kerl? Ja, der Vater versucht, sich in die Box zu werfen, um nach Ken zu gehen. Und Ken legt den Arschlöcher raus.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

504.417

Und natürlich geht das ganze Gebäude wie Bananen. Es ist nur Chaos. Und dann kommen die Polizisten und die Feuerwehr kommt.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

515.143

Es gibt Anwesende. Er hat versucht, in meine Box zu kommen und meine Kinder zu schützen. Und sie haben ihn verlassen. Und sie haben den anderen Mann verhaftet. Es ist einfach so großartig.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

530.882

Es gab natürlich die gewöhnlichen Flaschen von Gewalt, die wir als Erwachsener erlebt haben, die uns schockierend und verwirrend machten. Aber andere Zeichen, noch subtiler, aber noch gefährlicher, waren uns damals unbekannt, obwohl sie uns richtig unter die Nase hielten.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

620.68

Ich weiß nicht, wie man die Details einer Wunde vergessen kann, auch wenn es nur zwei sind. Aber ich glaube, wenn man das Leben lebt, das er gelebt hat, sind ein paar Schüsse am Arm nicht wirklich viel wert. Das Schreckliche ist, dass diese Blutwunden nach meinem Geburtstag geschehen sind. Nachdem er das Outfit verlassen hatte.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

658.348

I asked my mom about these gunshot wounds and here's what she had to say.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

674.81

Ich finde es so interessant, dass sein Job als Feuerwehrmann, die Stunden sind 24 auf und 48 ab, also ist es der perfekte Beweis für ihn, wenn er etwas für das Outfit tun muss, um zu sagen, ich nehme einen zusätzlichen Schiff. und einen Tag oder zwei weg zu gehen und das zu behandeln.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

69.241

Das sind mehr Zuschauer als jede Saison von The Bachelor zusammen. Schaut es euch an. Das ist ein Fakt. Und um zu feiern, haben die guten Leute von Tenderfoot TV diese unglaublichen Crook County T-Shirts geschaffen. Das ist richtig. Jetzt können Sie meinen eigenen persönlichen Familiennachtmerk unter Ihrem wunderschönen Körper zeigen.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

755.043

So what the hell was happening all that time? Why is my dad getting shot at if he supposedly left the mob?

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

88.609

Growing up is tough, but finding out your dad is not who you thought he was is downright terrifying. So who is your dad and what is he known as?

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

903.763

Growing up is tough, but finding out your dad is not who you thought he was is downright terrifying.

Crook County

7 | The Devil Won't Leave Me Alone

915.605

Listen to the hit iHeart Podcast that inspired the new TV series. Happy Face tells the story of Melissa Moore finding out her father was the notorious Happy Face Killer in 1995. Listen to Happy Face on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Crook County

6 | Fire In The Sky

1016.356

The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

Crook County

6 | Fire In The Sky

1033.015

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Crook County

6 | Fire In The Sky

1664.234

The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

Crook County

6 | Fire In The Sky

1680.882

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Crook County

6 | Fire In The Sky

174.773

you're listening to crook county the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast this episode also contains subject matter including graphic depictions of violence which may not be suitable for everyone listener discretion is advised previously on crook county

Crook County

1 | Give Me Your F**kin Money

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you're listening to crook county the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast this episode also contains subject matter including graphic depictions of violence which may not be suitable for everyone listener discretion is advised chicago

Crook County

Welcome to Crook County (Official Trailer)

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Dad was a heroin addict. He was a freaking crazy man.

Crook County

Welcome to Crook County (Official Trailer)

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He is my father. And I had no idea about any of this until now. Welcome to Crook County. Available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crook County

Welcome to Crook County (Official Trailer)

28.753

From iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV comes a new true crime podcast, Crook County.

Crook County

Welcome to Crook County (Official Trailer)

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He lived a secret double life as a firefighter paramedic for the Chicago Fire Department. I had a wife and I had two children. Nobody knew anything.

Crook County

Welcome to Crook County (Official Trailer)

67.086

Dad was a fucking crazy bastard. Welcome to Crook County. The true story of one man's life inside organized crime and his family left to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong. You could see why he could be an enforcer.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

0.189

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

110.575

Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep. Until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2083.409

I was going to say golf simulator.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2087.028

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2104.742

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2107.964

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2123.33

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2132.856

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2141.443

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2151.271

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2167.482

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2183.018

There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2192.642

Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2206.087

7,000 bodies out there, or more. All former patients of the old state asylum.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2213.27

And nobody knew they were there.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2217.411

But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

2225.094

When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3212.421

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber, good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months auto pay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3229.365

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3241.181

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3248.546

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3259.373

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

3270.935

Shame. Guilt. Propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep. Until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

80.806

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

831.443

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

846.818

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

856.32

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

864.926

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

874.753

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

88.172

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

884.48

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

890.965

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

906.499

There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

916.104

Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried. Until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

929.571

7,000 bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

936.737

And nobody knew they were there.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

940.901

But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

948.59

When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.

Crook County

Inside Crook County: Behind the Mic with Kyle Tekiela

99.021

In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

0.543

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. In the war for Gotham City's soul, the first shots have been exchanged at a terrible cost. Following the horrors of Halloween, Thanksgiving may prove to be no haven for the guilty as the mysterious serial killer nicknamed Holiday continues.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

24.774

Hot on the trail of an assassin targeting DA Harvey Dent, Batman finds his path blocked by the undead brute Solomon Grundy. And now, The Long Halloween.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

828.123

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman, The Long Halloween. Batman, The Long Halloween comic written by Jeff Loeb with artwork by Tim Sale. Directed by Fred Greenhalgh and John Brooks. Audio adaptation by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Starring Jason Spisak as Batman.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

853.94

Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon, Adam O'Byrne as Harvey Dent, Reba Burr as Catwoman, Dan Gill as The Joker, and Mike Starr as Carmine Falcone. Also starring Jesse Burch, Joel Brady, Tommaso John DeBlasi, Fiona Jones, Christina Rosato, Al Sapienza, Marcella Lentz Pope, Rachel Rosenblum, and Simon Vance.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

879.998

with additional voices by robert bettel paul karafotis robert katrini andy cowell matthew quern darren de paul fred greenhalgh todd haberkorn charles halford andrew kwan jeff loeb michelle lukes ronnie marmo ian o'brien gabriel oliva mike palotta Daniel Ramirez, Roshan Singh Sambi, Kevin Smith, and Christina Telesca. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Moorman, CSA.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

912.135

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepherd. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional music by Marcus Thorn-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

939.45

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez and Daniel Brunel. dialogue editing by joey fishground additional production support by andas productions assistant editors chia yam chong and jamie lightwinger associate producer andrew kwan production services provided by realm recorded at real voice la city vox and edge studios this podcast was recorded under a sag after agreement

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 2

966.121

based on characters from DC. The characters and events depicted in this podcast are fictional. Any similarity to any actual person, living or dead, or to any actual events, firms, places, and institutions or other entities is coincidental and unintentional. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

0.578

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. In Gotham City, crime has a name. Carmine the Roman Falcone, who floods the city's veins with his dirty money, corrupt power, and criminal influence. He reigns beyond the law, beyond justice, untouchable. It is a time for hardened hearts and steeled resolve.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1605.154

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman. The Long Halloween. Batman The Long Halloween comic written by Jeff Loeb with artwork by Tim Sale. Directed by Fred Greenhalgh and John Brooks. Audio adaptation by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Starring Jason Spisak as Batman.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1630.954

Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon, Adam O'Byrne as Harvey Dent, Reba Burr as Catwoman, Dan Gill as The Joker, and Mike Starr as Carmine Falcone. Also starring Jesse Burch, Joel Brady, Tommaso John DeBlasi, Fiona Jones, Christina Rosato, Al Sapienza, Marcella Lentz Pope, Rachel Rosenblum, and Simon Vance.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1657.029

With additional voices by Robert Bettle, Paul Carafotis, Robert Catrini, Andy Cowell, Matthew Quirn, Darren DePaul, Fred Greenhalgh, Todd Haberkorn, Charles Halford, Andrew Kwan, Jeff Loeb, Michelle Lukes, Ronnie Marmo, Ian O'Brien, Gabriel Oliva, Mike Pallotta. Daniel Ramirez, Roshan Singh Sambi, Kevin Smith, and Christina Telesca. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon, CSA.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1689.147

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional music by Marcus Thorne-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1716.491

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez and Daniel Brunel. Dialogue editing by Joey Fishground. Additional production support by Andas Productions. Assistant editors Chia Yamchong and Jamie Lightwinger. Associate producer Andrew Kwan. Production services provided by Realm. Recorded at Real Voice LA, Cityvox, and Edge Studios. This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1743.137

based on characters from DC. The characters and events depicted in this podcast are fictional. Any similarity to any actual person, living or dead, or to any actual events, firms, places, and institutions or other entities is coincidental and unintentional.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

1760.174

This podcast is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries and its unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 1

27.742

It is a time for those willing to do what must be done, like the newly promoted Captain James Gordon, firebrand District Attorney Harvey Dent, and the Caped Crusader. And now, The Long Halloween, Chapter One.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

0.543

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. The search for the elusive killer holiday continues. The city's criminals are shaken, but so are its defenders. As Batman, Gordon, and Harvey Dent struggle to uncover the truth, Poison Ivy makes an entrance to steal away Gotham City's most eligible bachelor. It's Valentine's Day in Gotham, and a little more than love is in the air.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

30.535

And now, The Long Halloween, Chapter 5.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

305.954

Would the gentleman like to buy the Lady Rose?

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

635.84

No man can resist poison ivy. You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman, The Long Halloween. Batman, The Long Halloween comic written by Jeff Loeb with artwork by Tim Sale. Directed by Fred Greenhalgh and John Brooks. Audio adaptation by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Starring Jason Spisak as Batman.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

728.718

Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon, Adam O'Byrne as Harvey Dent, Reba Burr as Catwoman, Dan Gill as The Joker, and Mike Starr as Carmine Falcone. Also starring Jesse Burch, Joel Brady, Tommaso John DeBlasi, Fiona Jones, Christina Rosato, Al Sapienza, Marcella Lentz Pope, Rachel Rosenblum, and Simon Vance.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

754.779

With additional voices by Robert Bettle, Paul Carafotis, Robert Catrini, Andy Cowell, Matthew Quirn, Darren DePaul, Fred Greenhalgh, Todd Haberkorn, Charles Halford, Andrew Kwan, Jeff Loeb, Michelle Lukes, Ronnie Marmo, Ian O'Brien, Gabriel Oliva, Mike Pallotta. Daniel Ramirez, Roshan Singh Sambi, Kevin Smith, and Christina Telesca. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Moorman, CSA.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

786.901

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepherd. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional music by Marcus Thorn-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

814.23

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez and Daniel Brunel. Dialogue editing by Joey Fishground. Additional production support by Andas Productions. Assistant editors Chia Yamchong and Jamie Lightwinger. Associate producer Andrew Kwan. Production services provided by Realm. Recorded at Real Voice LA, Cityvox, and Edge Studios.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

837.557

This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement based on characters from DC. The characters and events depicted in this podcast are fictional. Any similarity to any actual person, living or dead, or to any actual events, firms, places, and institutions or other entities is coincidental and unintentional.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 5

857.925

This podcast is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries, and its unauthorized duplication, distribution, or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

0.543

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Previously... Gotham City is on the brink. Pressure mounts on all sides for Lieutenant James Gordon. His stand against corruption has earned him powerful enemies, while his affair with Detective Essen threatens to compromise both his family and the ideals he swore to uphold.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1642.645

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Year One, Chapter Four. Batman Year One comic written by Frank Miller with artwork by David Mazzucchelli. Directed by John Brooks. Audio adaptation by John Brooks, Fred Greenhalgh, and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1671.874

Batman Year One stars Jason Spisak as Bruce Wayne and Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon. Also starring Adam O'Byrne, Brian Finney, Mike Starr, Reba Burr, Rachel Rosenblum, Molly Hager, Matthew Quirn, and Simon Vance. With additional voices by Makira Alexander, Marcus Thorne-Bagala, Ajarae Coleman, Will Collier,

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1698.453

Kyle N. DePorter, Victor Diaz, Jason DuBarnes, Edward Gelhaus, Matt Gergel, Aaron Hendry, Marcella Lenz-Pope, Carl MacKinnon, Ronnie Marmo, Byron Mark Newsome, Levi Nunez, Joe Aukman, Mike Pallotta, Roshan Singh Sambi, Michael Uslan, Juan Francisco Villa, Laith Walshlager, and Shelby Young. Casting by Sundae Bowling-Kennedy and Meg Moorman, CSA. Loop group casting by Barbara Harris.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1731.188

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Somby. Executive producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepherd. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional Music by Marcus Thorn-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1760.034

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez. Additional Production Support by Ondas Productions. Assistant Editors Chia Yamchong and Jamie Leidwinger. Production services provided by Realm. Recorded at Real Voice LA, Cityvox, and AP Studios. This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement, based on characters from DC. The characters and events depicted in this podcast are fictional.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1785.384

Any similarity to any actual person, living or dead, or to any actual events, firms, places, and institutions or other entities is coincidental and unintentional. This podcast is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries. and its unauthorized duplication, distribution, or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1820.669

Subscribe to DC Universe Infinite to read the Batman comic adapted in this episode and thousands of other DC comics and graphic novels. U.S. listeners of DC High Volume Batman can enter promo code HIGHVOLUME at checkout for a 30-day free trial to the DC Universe Infinite standard monthly subscription. Visit dcuniverseinfinite.com slash join slash HIGHVOLUME

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

1847.063

Offer valid only for new or returning subscribers who sign up through the website before 1-31-2026. Auto renewal and other terms apply. Offer is subject to change without notice. See site for details. DC Universe Infinite is not intended for children.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 4

23.55

Meanwhile, Batman's relentless war on Gotham's underworld pushes the city closer to a breaking point. An explosive showdown is coming between those who thrive on Gotham's corruption and the few who fight for its soul. And now, Year One, Chapter Four.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

0.578

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. It's almost midnight. After December's tale of Yuletide terror, the new year dawns and holidays resolution is making Gotham City their stomping grounds. An enraged and jealous Joker takes to the skies for a deadly assault, with Batman in hot pursuit.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

24.628

It's an aerial showdown with the fate of thousands on the line, while another killer gains ground on their next victim. And now, The Long Halloween, Chapter 4.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

814.062

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman. The Long Halloween. Batman The Long Halloween comic written by Jeff Loeb with artwork by Tim Sale. Directed by Fred Greenhalgh and John Brooks. Audio adaptation by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Starring Jason Spisak as Batman.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

839.881

Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon, Adam O'Byrne as Harvey Dent, Reba Burr as Catwoman, Dan Gill as The Joker, and Mike Starr as Carmine Falcone. Also starring Jesse Burch, Joel Brady, Tommaso John DeBlasi, Fiona Jones, Christina Rosato, Al Sapienza, Marcella Lentz Pope, Rachel Rosenblum, and Simon Vance.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

865.936

With additional voices by Robert Bettle, Paul Carafotis, Robert Catrini, Andy Cowell, Matthew Quirn, Darren DePaul, Fred Greenhalgh, Todd Haberkorn, Charles Halford, Andrew Kwan, Jeff Loeb, Michelle Lukes, Ronnie Marmo, Ian O'Brien, Gabriel Oliva, Mike Pallotta. Daniel Ramirez, Roshan Singh Sambi, Kevin Smith, and Christina Telesca. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon, CSA.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

898.052

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional music by Marcus Thorne-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

925.385

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez and Daniel Brunel. Dialogue editing by Joey Fishground. Additional production support by Andas Productions. Assistant editors Chia Yamchong and Jamie Lightwinger. Associate producer Andrew Kwan. Production services provided by Realm. Recorded at Real Voice LA, Cityvox, and Edge Studios.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 4

948.725

This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement based on characters from DC. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1290.576

You've been listening to DC High Volume Batman. Year One, Chapter Three. Batman Year One Comic written by Frank Miller with artwork by David Mazzucchelli. Directed by John Brooks. Audio adaptation by John Brooks, Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1319.66

Batman Year One starrt Jason Spisak als Bruce Wayne und Jay Paulsen als Jim Gordon. Auch starrt Adam O'Byrne, Brian Finney, Mike Starr, Reba Burr, Rachel Rosenblum, Molly Hager, Matthew Quirn und Simon Vance. Mit weiteren Stimmen von Makira Alexander, Marcus Thorne-Bagala, Adria Coleman, Will Collier,

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1346.258

Kyle N. DePorter, Victor Diaz, Jason DuBarnes, Edward Gelhaus, Matt Gergel, Aaron Hendry, Marcella Lenz-Pope, Karl Mackinen, Ronnie Marmo, Byron Mark Newsome, Levi Nunez, Joe Achman, Mike Pallotta, Roshan Singh Sambi, Michael Uslan, Juan Francisco Villa, Laith Walschlager, and Shelby Young. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon, CSA. Loop Group Casting by Barbara Harris.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1378.87

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Salmi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliore. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional Music by Marcus Thorne-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1407.616

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez. Additional Production Support by Andas Productions. Assistant Editors Chia Yam Chong and Jamie Leidwinger. Produktionen von Realm, gedreht bei Real Voice L.A., Cityvox und AP Studios. Dieser Podcast wurde unter einem Vertrag von SAG-AFTRA gedreht, basierend auf Charakteren aus D.C.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1429.788

Die Charakteren und Events, die in diesem Podcast dargestellt werden, sind fiktional. Jede Vergleiche zu einer echten Person, lebend oder tot, oder zu irgendwelchen echten Events, Firmen, Orten und Institutionen oder anderen Entitäten, ist unentscheidlich und unentscheidlich. Dieser Podcast wird unter den Regeln der Vereinigten Staaten und anderen Ländern verteidigt.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1447.154

and its unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Subscribe to DC Universe Infinite to read the Batman comic adapted in this episode and thousands of other DC Comics and graphic novels.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

1477.937

US listeners of DC High Volume Batman can enter promo code HIGHVOLUME at checkout for a 30-day free trial to the DC Universe Infinite standard monthly subscription. Visit dcuniverseinfinite.com slash join slash HIGHVOLUME D.C. Universe Infinite is not intended for children.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

20.7

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Vorher. In Gotham City wächst die Linie zwischen Hero und Vigilante sehr tief. Batman hat seine Krusade gegen Kriminalität und Verbrechen begonnen, die Angst vor den Straßenkriminalen und der kräftigen Elite der Stadt in Bezug genommen hat. Aber seine Aktionen sind nicht unerwünscht.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

421.261

Sari hat Unit 3 ausgenommen.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 3

43.857

Das Gotham City-Polizei-Departement, lediglich von Riesenstar-Lieutenant James Gordon, hat eine offene Kriegsmacht auf der Dark Knight erklärt. Verletzt und verletzt in einem verlassenen Gebäude unter langweiligem Krieg muss Bruce Wayne seine erste große Herausforderung als Batman überleben. Und nun, Jahr 1, Kapitel 3. Sie haben Explosiven gesetzt. Sie haben das Gebäude gebombt.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

0.543

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. There's a serial killer on the loose in Gotham City, striking only on holidays. Christmas is drawing near as fear spreads with no leads in sight as to the identity of this holiday killer. As the bodies pile up, so do the questions like, what part does the Joker play in the mayhem? Just ask the family bound and gagged while a mad clown reads the papers.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

1023.157

This podcast was recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement based on characters from DC. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

33.719

And now, The Long Halloween, chapter three.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

888.482

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman. The Long Halloween. Batman The Long Halloween comic written by Jeff Loeb with artwork by Tim Sale. Directed by Fred Greenhalgh and John Brooks. Audio adaptation by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Starring Jason Spisak as Batman.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

914.301

Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon, Adam O'Byrne as Harvey Dent, Reba Burr as Catwoman, Dan Gill as The Joker, and Mike Starr as Carmine Falcone. Also starring Jesse Burch, Joel Brady, Tommaso John DeBlasi, Fiona Jones, Christina Rosato, Al Sapienza, Marcella Lentz Pope, Rachel Rosenblum, and Simon Vance.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

940.353

With additional voices by Robert Bettle, Paul Karafotis, Robert Catrini, Andy Cowell, Matthew Quirn, Darren DePaul, Fred Greenhalgh, Todd Haberkorn, Charles Halford, Andrew Kwan, Jeff Loeb, Michelle Lukes, Ronnie Marmo, Ian O'Brien, Gabriel Oliva, Mike Pallotta, Daniel Ramirez, Roshan Singh Sambi, Kevin Smith, and Christina Telesca. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon, CSA.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

972.491

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliore. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional music by Marcus Thorne-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: The Long Halloween - Chapter 3

999.804

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez and Daniel Brunel. Dialogue editing by Joey Fishground. Additional production support by Andas Productions. Assistant editors Chia Yamchong and Jamie Lightwinger. Associate producer Andrew Kwan. Production services provided by Realm. Recorded at Real Voice LA, Cityvox, and Edge Studios.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1361.607

You've been listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Year One, Chapter Two. Batman Year One Comic written by Frank Miller with artwork by David Mazzucchelli. Directed by John Brooks. Audio adaptation by John Brooks, Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1390.744

Batman Year One stars Jason Spisak as Bruce Wayne and Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon. Also starring Adam O'Byrne, Brian Finney, Mike Starr, Reba Burr, Rachel Rosenblum, Molly Hager, Matthew Quirn and Simon Vance. With additional voices by Makira Alexander, Marcus Thorne-Bagala, Ajarae Coleman, Will Collier,

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1417.422

Kyle N. DePorter, Victor Diaz, Jason DuBarnes, Edward Gelhaus, Matt Gergel, Aaron Hendry, Marcella Lenz-Pope, Karl Mackinen, Ronny Marmo, Byron Mark Newsome, Levi Nunez, Joe Achman, Mike Pallotta, Roshan Singh Sambi, Michael Uslan, Juan Francisco Villa, Laith Walschlager, and Shelby Young. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon, CSA. Loop Group Casting by Barbara Harris.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1450.027

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliori. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional Music by Marcus Thorn-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1478.831

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez. Additional Production Support by Andas Productions. Assistant Editors Chia Yam Chong and Jamie Leidwinger. Produktionen von Realm, gedreht bei Real Voice L.A., Cityvox und AP Studios. Dieser Podcast wurde unter einem Sagaftra-Verein gedreht, basierend auf Charakteren aus D.C.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1500.967

Die Charakteren und Events, die in diesem Podcast ausgeführt werden, sind fiktional. Jede Vergleiche zu einer echten Person, lebend oder tot, oder zu irgendwelchen echten Events, Firmen, Orten und Institutionen oder anderen Entitäten, ist unentscheidbar und unentscheidbar. Dieser Podcast wird unter den Regeln der USA und anderen Ländern gesichert.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1518.297

and its unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Subscribe to DC Universe Infinite to read the Batman comic adapted in this episode and thousands of other DC Comics and graphic novels.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

1548.994

US listeners of DC High Volume Batman can enter promo code HIGHVOLUME at checkout for a 30-day free trial to the DC Universe Infinite standard monthly subscription. Visit dcuniverseinfinite.com slash join slash HIGHVOLUME D.C. Universe Infinite is not intended for children.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

20.698

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Previously Es gibt einen Schmerz im Herzen von Gotham City. Lieutenant James Gordon, der sich für sich und seine junge Familie einen neuen Start sucht, kommt in die Stadt und wird gezwungen, die Korruption, die ihn infiziert, zu konfrontieren. Zuerst mit seinem eigenen Polizeidepartement.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

226.519

We need you too.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

41.928

Mittlerweile ist Bruce Wayne zurück in Gotham, mit jahrelangem Training und einem Wunsch, seine Stadt zu retten. Nur um seine erste Mission zu beenden, in der er fast tot ist. Beide Männer sind gebrüht, aber unverbrochen. Ihre Kriege haben nur erst angefangen. Und jetzt, Jahr 1, Kapitel 2.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

414.881

April 9th.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

443.669

I said you'd unplug it, Jim.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 2

453.674

Yes, Sergeant? Maybe you should call the zoo. Alright, alright, I'll get him. It's Merkel, something about a giant bat. Chicken will keep. Robbery in progress.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1566.869

You've been listening to DC High Volume Batman Year One, Chapter One Batman Year One Comic written by Frank Miller with artwork by David Mazzucchelli. Directed by John Brooks. Audio adaptation by John Brooks, Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger. Copyright and trademark DC. All rights reserved.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1612.14

Batman Year One stars Jason Spisak as Bruce Wayne and Jay Paulson as Jim Gordon. Also starring Adam O'Byrne, Brian Finney, Mike Starr, Reba Burr, Rachel Rosenblum, Molly Hager, Matthew Quirn and Simon Vance. With additional voices by Makira Alexander, Marcus Thorne-Bagala, Ajarae Coleman, Will Collier,

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1638.801

Kyle N. DePorter, Victor Diaz, Jason Du Barnes, Edward Gelhaus, Matt Gergel, Aaron Hendry, Marcella Lenz-Pope, Karl Mackinen, Ronnie Marmo, Byron Mark Newsome, Levi Nunez, Joe Aukman, Mike Pallotta, Roshan Singh Sambi, Michael Uslan, Juan Francisco Villa, Laith Walschlager, and Shelby Young. Casting by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Moorman, CSA. Loop Group Casting by Barbara Harris.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1671.413

Produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Roshan Singh Sambi. Executive Producers for DC, Mike Pallotta and Victor Diaz. Executive Producers for Realm, Molly Barton and Carly Migliore. Director of Production Operations for Realm, Devin Shepard. Production Manager, Jordan Acancia. Music composed by Sam Ewing. Additional Music by Marcus Thorne-Bagala. Supervising Sound Design and Mix by Jonathan Roberts.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1700.219

Additional Sound Design and Mix by Daniel Ramirez. Additional Production Support by Andas Productions. Assistant Editors Chia Yam Chong and Jamie Leidwinger. Produktionen von Realm, gedreht bei Real Voice L.A., Cityvox und AP Studios. Dieser Podcast wurde unter einem Vertrag von SAG-AFTRA gedreht, basierend auf Charakteren aus D.C.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1722.335

Die Charakteren und Events, die in diesem Podcast dargestellt werden, sind fiktional. Jede Vergleiche zu einer echten Person, lebend oder tot, oder zu irgendwelchen echten Events, Firmen, Orten und Institutionen oder anderen Entitäten, ist unentscheidlich und unentscheidlich. Dieser Podcast wird unter den Regeln der USA und anderen Ländern gesichert.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1739.648

and its unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Subscribe to DC Universe Infinite to read the Batman comic adapted in this episode and thousands of other DC Comics and graphic novels.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

1770.412

US listeners of DC High Volume Batman can enter promo code HIGHVOLUME at checkout for a 30-day free trial to the DC Universe Infinite Standard monthly subscription. Visit dcuniverseinfinite.com slash join slash HIGHVOLUME D.C. Universe Infinite is not intended for children.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

20.706

You're listening to DC High Volume, Batman. Lieutenant James Gordon, ein recent Transfer from Chicago, is on his way to Gotham City and about to learn of the rot that eats at its heart. Meanwhile, prodigal son Bruce Wayne returns after years abroad to honor a vow he made to his murdered parents. He will become the greatest crime fighter the world has ever known. But it won't be easy.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

52.073

And now, Year One, Chapter One.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

821.091

Ich habe es nicht. Wie alt bist du? So jung, wie du mich willst.

DC High Volume: Batman

Batman: Year One - Chapter 1

824.073

Ich habe das, was du gesagt hast. Wie du gesagt hast.

Dark Valley

Chapter 16 | On the Docks

1822.677

Tony wrote back in 1993. I know that the system will now make me spend time in jail. I accept the jury verdict and I will do the time even though I know that I was not responsible for Jessica's death.

Darknet Diaries

143: Jim Hates Scams

2082.663

I love this part. You can hear this guy's brain just breaking real time.

Darknet Diaries

143: Jim Hates Scams

2097.612

At this point, the entire call center is listening in on this call, like, what is happening here? And they even have them on speakerphone, and this new lady jumps on the call.

Darknet Diaries

143: Jim Hates Scams

2152.025

Now Priya picks the phone back up and she's really curious and wants some answers.

Darknet Diaries

143: Jim Hates Scams

2526.564

I love it. Jim caused such chaos in that scam call center.

Darknet Diaries

143: Jim Hates Scams

963.497

Gosh, that sounds even more bizarre. Have these victims never paid for anything in their life before? In what world is it normal to wrap cash up in pinfoil and stuff it in a book and then ship it somewhere to get your computer fixed?

Darknet Diaries

141: The Pig Butcher

3025.507

They gave him an amulet to protect him from gunshots. He still wore a bulletproof vest, though. But this is what I mean. The culture there is really big into this. And you know, luck is a weird thing. It feels like a mysterious force.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1004.43

You ended this story on a soundbite that I thought was just so beautifully poignant. I was actually watching this with Jay, my husband, and we were kind of doing our own things. He's listening and he hears the soundbite. His friend Dennis said, if there was ever a person that I knew that deserved to die peacefully in bed, surrounded by a loving family, it was John.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1023.167

And my husband goes, oh, that says it all. Right. I mean, it really did. I think we all hope to be kind of spoken about that way.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1034.015

OK. And after your break, we will be back here to answer some of your questions from social media. We have some fun social media questions, and these are audio questions, which makes it all the more fun. Here's Allie from X, formerly Twitter, and here's what she wanted to know.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

106.565

There were so many parts of the story that were just gripping. I think past the premonition, the person who found John's body, his nine-year-old neighbor, Zach, found his body. And this really gory scene. What was it like talking to him? Of course, many years later, but that was just a hard thing.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1060.726

Well, we usually do a lot of them.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1086.924

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if there's one that comes to my mind, very, very different from our typical dateline. Who killed Tupac? Who killed Tupac and Biggie. I would love to see that as a dateline.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1101.558

For Tupac, yes. For Tupac? But there's still a lot of unanswered questions about it. And I think it can make a great, I mean, there's so many twists and turns in that story. And then the Biggie case, you know, as long as we're bringing out undatelined cases, that would be an interesting one. Those would make good episodes. So we've got another one. This is from Instagram.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1119.643

This is Haviva Gordon Bennett with a question.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1181.922

Like they're the only ones who can do that. And it's hilarious. I love it. No, that's a fun question. Thank you for that. Um, Well, Andrea, I think that's it for Talking Dateline. We've talked a lot. It's been great to talk with you.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1194.728

Of course. Thank you. And thanks, everyone, for listening. You can judge for yourself the state of Keith and Josh's relationship next week when they go head-to-head on the next Talking Dateline to discuss Keith's all-new episode airing this Friday on NBC at 9, 8 central. And it's a good one.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

1213.912

So remember, if you have any questions for them or the Dateline team about any of our stories or just tips on other cases you think we should cover, reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC or send an audio message for your chance to be featured right here on Talking Dateline. And of course, we will see you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

145.225

I mean, you're forced to grow up, right? You're forced to, in that moment, grow up much faster and much more immediately than you would ever expect, right?

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

159.329

To find him. Yeah. And he was going over to look for a playmate. He was looking for his son, JJ, to play together. That one touched my heart. Like, oh, he just wanted to find a friend. And that's what he found. Oh, my gosh. I know. I want to talk about John, you know, 39 years old and clearly successful, right? I mean, he'd wanted all his life to be a dentist. He's always on the honor roll.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

178.418

He's a partner at his own dental practice where he used to go growing up. Like, it had to have been a really interesting full circle moment for him.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

192.226

I'm curious about full circle moments. I was thinking about this. I mean, it's something he always wanted to do. He was able to do it. Did you always know that you wanted to be a journalist? Like, is that kind of did you start off intentionally on this path?

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

24.44

Now, if you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on our list of podcasts. So just choose from that. You can go there, listen to it, or if you want to watch it, of course, you can stream it on Peacock and then come right back here.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

250.908

Like I grew up watching Today Show. Like I watched Tom Brokaw on the news as like a third grader, like a second grader.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

259.25

And I think that at some point I realized, OK, like the news tells people when things are important. Like, yeah, it was kind of my my realization. So I identified with that full circle moment, like, oh, gosh, I always want to be, you know, on the news and to do it. So so I definitely identified with John on that had to have been so cool to go back and actually work for that practice. Yeah.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

281.289

Let's talk about him meeting Michelle. He meets Michelle and they I mean, he falls head over heels pretty quickly. Like, I wonder how he felt. Do you think that he felt he was lucky to be with her when you kind of talk to his friends? Did you get that impression that he felt lucky to have found somebody like Michelle?

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

317.891

Sure. Yeah. And I think that that also kind of speaks to just the dynamics of their relationship, right? Like, Michelle already had two kids, but John was all in. Yeah. And not everybody would necessarily sign up for that, right? I mean, to come in and kind of parent to other kids. I wonder, I mean, I feel like that kind of tells us a lot about the person, the type of person that John was.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

36.464

When you come back, Andrea has an extra clip that she wants to play for us from her interview with Dr. Mark Perlin, the chief scientific and executive officer at Cybergenetics. And then later, of course, we're going to answer some of your questions from social media. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Okay. Let's talk Dateline.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

374.712

And speaking of JJ, I mean, when they have JJ, they have now their three children. And it really seemed like everything was falling into place. I remember looking at the home that they had and I said, this is gorgeous. Obviously, this was before Instagram. This is, you know, early 2000s. But when you think about seeing people's lives on social media and thinking, oh, my God, this is perfect.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

394.325

They would have been the people that you would have looked at and said, oh, they're perfect. They adopted a child. They're so cute. You know, to go from that to this very, very bitter divorce. You know, there's certainly a lot in there that we'll never know, but it was just really kind of an interesting fall, unfortunately. Yeah, and infidelity on both sides. Yeah, yeah.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

410.975

You know, that was one of the points Michelle admits that, you know, she cheated on John, but then he admits the same and she just like loses it. Like, talk about that dynamic.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

429.865

Absolutely. You know, I want to talk about kind of this heated custody battle for JJ. JJ really becomes at the center of this, right? One of the people that you interviewed was Maggie, one of John's friends, who said that at one point he was crying on the phone to her saying that he didn't think that he would see his son again. And that's just, you know, heartbreaking for any parent.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

451.138

It seems like a lot of these cases do stem from custody battles.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

464.069

When we come back, we have an extra clip from Dr. Mark Perlin, the chief scientific and executive officer at Cyber Genetics. His technology played a crucial role in solving John's murder. to talk about Corporal Janelle Lydic. She was kind of the MVP of the story. And I was so I've got a couple of questions about her.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

491.588

I just was really struck by her instincts, even though this was her first murder case. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it was. So the first thing that really stood out to me is that she gets the call. She's on like a family outing. Right. And she's got her husband. She's got her kids in the car. Yeah.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

5.728

Hello, I'm Blayne Alexander, and I'm here with Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. So this episode is called The Premonition. It's about the 2006 murder of a beloved dentist, John Yelnik, who predicted his own death and the obstacles that investigators had to overcome in bringing his killer to justice.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

506.917

Four kids. And they just try to go to the crime scene. It's like a family field trip.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

511.2

I was surprised by that.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

539.184

identify with that right but yes exactly what you said there's a handoff at some point you have to do something but i also thought that it was interesting because it kind of showed her dedication to the job she was like i want to get there i want to be there immediately i don't want to kind of waste that time going home and then at one point she kind of describes how she's standing in between the car and the house to block her kids and you know we went in that house we shot in that house and

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

582.092

But I want to talk about the psychics, the psychic sisters. Oh, my gosh. Have you ever had psychics involved in a story before?

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

616.494

where they were headed. It's so interesting to me. I think that time and time again, you see people when they turn to psychics or just some sort of kind of unexplained anything, people are really kind of at their most desperate point. They want to know, they want answers. They've gone through everything and they're like, well, maybe these people know something, right? That's kind of what we saw.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

65.92

Yeah. I have to tell you that this story, it literally had me hooked from the very first line, right? To say, hey, I paid you $10,000 to investigate my murder and I'm not dead yet. That's wild.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

680.245

Isn't that funny? So it's always interesting to hear people's, you know, experiences with that.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

698.351

Exactly. And why not at this point? Right.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

701.473

Why not? It can't hurt. So let's talk about the evidence. The bloody footprints at the scene. That was a big deal. They're brought up, of course, in the trial. The state calls the director of ASICS, the tennis shoe company.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

712.138

To talk about the shoe. So first off, imagine you're the head of ASICS and you get a subpoena to come testify in a murder trial. That had to have been shocking.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

738.997

What are the odds that you commit a crime and you're wearing these shoes that are so rare? He had to have been kicking himself for that one.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

749.426

Absolutely. It was. It was such a big piece of evidence, though. Corporal Lydic, she had some interesting instincts. The fingernails, she kind of kept them in an evidence refrigerator just because she thought, maybe I should just hang on to these.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

798.588

So cyber genetics was also presented during the trial. They've been now used to kind of solve a plethora of cases. Right. But at the time, this was something that was really groundbreaking, this kind of DNA technology. Their technology showed that the DNA under John's fingernail had a one hundred eighty nine. billion to one match to Kevin's DNA. And that was huge.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

820.664

That compares to the FBI's match of like one in 13,000. Yeah. Yeah.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

829.792

So we're going to hear a little bit more from your interview with Dr. Mark Perlin, the chief scientific and executive officer at Cyber Genetics. He's talking here about how he defended his work in the courtroom.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

909.215

Interesting. Yeah, very. You know, I think about DNA technology and nowadays it's used all the time to solve cold cases. But just kind of hearing from him, I mean, that was really stunning when you talk about that level of certainty.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

923.769

Yeah. The best evidence you have. Yeah. So at the end, I mean, Kevin was sentenced to life in prison. I think when we first started hearing about Kevin in this episode, we heard John's cousin say, say that she thought, hey, he's going to be a good influence on the kids. And one of John's friends even told you at some point that it was hard to see Kevin as the bad guy.

Dateline NBC

Talking Dateline: The Premonition

941.301

I'm curious, where did things go so wrong?

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1029.544

In October 2006, when Michelle was four months pregnant, Jason became deeply involved with another woman. and not just any woman. Michelle Money was one of Michelle Young's close friends from college, one of those Charlie's Angels. In early October, days before his third wedding anniversary, Jason flew to Florida to see Michelle Money. She testified they both knew it was wrong.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1068.254

Jason was crazy about her, his friend Josh Alton said. He basically told me that he thought he was in love with her. Michelle's mother, Linda Fisher, testified that in the final weeks of Michelle's life, she could see the toll the failing marriage was taking on her pregnant daughter.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

108.305

The caller was Meredith Fisher. She had just discovered, on the floor of the master bedroom, the savagely beaten body of her elder sister, 29-year-old Michelle Young, a woman who, in death, was about to be famous.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1109.703

Two days before she was murdered, Michelle phoned her sister Meredith to report yet another blow-up with Jason.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1124.694

Jason was telling one of his close friends the same thing. And prosecutors said just days before Michelle was murdered, he indulged in one last transgression. A casual hookup with an old friend named Carol Ann Sowerby in his own living room. Michelle was away at the time.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1183.252

Still, one big question remained. Was a good-time guy like Jason Young even capable of murder? Genevieve Cargo was engaged to Jason in 1999, before he met Michelle. And she took the stand to testify about a fight they'd had over Jason's excessive drinking.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1228.87

Prosecutors hoped to convince the jury it all added up to a motive for murder. So how would the defense counterattack? With a witness who could refute every charge...

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1271.938

And it would take a true artist to repaint the prosecution's dark portrait of Jason Young. So, what could defense attorney Mike Klinkeson do? Well, to begin with, as he told the jury, he agreed with the prosecution. Jason Young was not a good husband.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1295.876

The defense was not about to make any more concessions, mind you. That jewelry box in the bedroom, there was DNA on it. Didn't match either Michelle or Jason. The suspicious activity at the hotel? There was a fingerprint on that camera, and it wasn't Jason Young's. And there wasn't any forensic evidence that tied Jason to the crime scene. And there was no blood in his car.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1319.615

It was not a scratch on him.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1334.465

Who better to make that argument than Jason Young himself? But so far, remember, he had never said a word to anyone about that November night and almost five years' silence.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1350.458

Beth Karras is a former prosecutor and legal analyst. She covered the trial.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1358.877

Finally, after all this time.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1365.863

With his mother sitting in the front row, Jason Young prepared to do just that. Defense attorney Brian Collins hit it hard off the top. Did you kill your wife, Michelle?

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1380.162

But what about Jason's missing hush puppies that matched the partial shoe print? He no longer owned them, he said.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1389.634

No, sir. They were all ratty, he said. Told Michelle to give them to Goodwill. And as for the night of the murder, after he checked into the hotel, Jason testified, he left his room twice, the first time to get a power cord for his laptop. I was going over the sales call that I had the next day.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

139.92

As she spoke, Meredith was cradling her two-and-a-half-year-old niece, Cassidy, who had crawled out from under the bedclothes on her parents' bed just feet from where her mother lay. Cassidy's voice, chattering to her aunt, was caught on the recorded call. Had Cassidy witnessed the murder? Awakened, alone, to find this?

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1425.974

That newspaper run explained why he was seen at the front desk he's at around midnight.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

1437.824

No, sir. Next morning, after his sales call, Jason testified, he realized he'd left some eBay printouts sitting on the computer printer at home. They showed purses. He was thinking of buying one for Michelle as a belated anniversary present.

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Silent Witness

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So around noon November 3rd, he called his sister-in-law Meredith from the car to ask if she'd go to the house and get those eBay papers.

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Silent Witness

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He left Meredith a voicemail.

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Silent Witness

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Then he headed to his mother's place in the mountains nearby. And it was there, he testified hours later, that he learned Michelle had been murdered.

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Silent Witness

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Family members drove him back to Raleigh. During the drive, he said, his friends called.

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Silent Witness

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And then the explanation for his long silence.

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Silent Witness

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The defense also addressed the motives prosecutors had laid out that Jason wanted to escape a bad marriage and keep custody of Cassidy and spend time with his new love.

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Silent Witness

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As for that violent episode with his ex-fiancee, Jason had an explanation for it. Did you throw her around on the bed like she said?

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Silent Witness

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And they questioned him about the most important woman in his life.

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Silent Witness

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He also explained why he gave up custody of his daughter without a fight.

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Silent Witness

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So he didn't come off as contrived or phony? Like he had put this together very carefully in order to account for all the evidence that they had?

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Silent Witness

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How did Jason Young do? 12 jurors were about to decide.

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Silent Witness

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By now, Wake County investigators were descending on the house. And having secured the crime scene, Earp's job was done. But on his way out, he saw Cassidy again. She was still in her pink pajamas, still in Meredith's arms.

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It was riveting. Almost five years of silence about his wife's murder. I went back to my room. Broken here in this courtroom. I loved Cassidy and I loved Michelle.

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Silent Witness

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Now Prosecutor Becky Holt began pulling apart a story she had just heard for the first time.

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Silent Witness

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The cross-examination lasted a full hour, and the next day, the case went to the jury.

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Silent Witness

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It soon became clear jurors were having trouble.

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Silent Witness

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Four voted guilty. Judge Stevens declared a mistrial. Was serious consideration given to dropping the case?

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Silent Witness

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So the prosecutors decided they would try again, but this time with the one thing they didn't have the first time, Jason's own story. The second trial began in February 2012. This time, Howard Cummings led the prosecution, hoping to use Jason's own words to convict him. Put your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand.

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Silent Witness

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But first, prosecutors called that night clerk at the gas station, Gracie, who remembered Jason complaining about the locked pumps.

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Silent Witness

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And what time did this happen?

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Silent Witness

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A time when Jason said he was at the hotel. Call your next witness. Then prosecutors had new witnesses and new testimony. They wanted jurors to hear about Cassidy, whose bloody footprints, they contended, made her a silent witness to murder.

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Silent Witness

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Daycare worker Ashley Palmentier took the stand. I noticed what she was doing. She told jurors she watched Cassidy playing, alone, days after her mother was murdered.

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Silent Witness

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As unsettling as it was, the prosecutors wanted jurors to know the killer had left a silent witness behind, a witness he would never harm. The fact that Cassidy was spared, did that mean anything to you, or would that mean anything to a jury?

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Silent Witness

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Fiona Childs took the stand. Prosecutors pressed her about a life insurance policy Jason arranged.

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Silent Witness

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And Michelle had questioned.

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Silent Witness

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After Michelle died, Fiona found out the true amount of the policy was actually $4 million.

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Silent Witness

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And prosecutors also told the jury about civil lawsuits against Jason brought by Michelle's mother and sister. One was a wrongful death case filed in 2008, a year before he was charged with murder. Over the defense's objection, court clerk Lauren Freeman testified about that lawsuit.

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Silent Witness

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Yeah, somebody did. But who? Was it the same person who murdered the little girl's mother? On this November day, all they had were questions. Sergeant Richard Spivey of the Wake County Sheriff's Office probably knows the case better than anyone.

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Silent Witness

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Freeman went on to testify that Jason never responded to the allegations, and that led to a default judgment against him. That judgment said Jason killed his wife.

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Silent Witness

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And the prosecutor made sure the jury heard just who signed that ruling. I'm reading from this judgment, which is signed actually by Judge Stevens. Judge Stevens, the very judge sitting before them in this trial.

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Silent Witness

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Prosecutors also called the attorney involved in that custody case over her daughter Cassidy. And those same allegations were repeated yet again.

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Silent Witness

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But the headline act came when prosecutors played Jason Young's entire testimony from the first trial.

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Silent Witness

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And began to rip it apart.

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Silent Witness

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Prosecutors tried to show that Jason's call to Meredith to pick up those eBay printouts was merely a ploy to get her to discover the body and find Cassidy. Why else would he print an eBay auction ad and leave it on the printer and then hit the road where he couldn't bid during the actual auction? They called Sergeant Spivey to the stand.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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Just hours before the murder. Now prosecutors tried to prove Jason lied about his reasons for leaving the hotel room. I didn't pull the door all the way to the room. In his original testimony, he told the court he left the first time to get a power cord for his laptop.

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Silent Witness

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But Special Agent Mike Smith took the stand to say Young didn't use his laptop for work that night. It's an Internet site dedicated to sports. Jason said he went out a second time to smoke a cigar. But prosecutors contended Jason was a fierce anti-smoker. And the weather that night was freezing, windy.

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Silent Witness

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Jason chose not to testify this time, but the defense fought back, of course. They argued the gas station attendant's memory couldn't be trusted because of a childhood brain injury.

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Silent Witness

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They showed that Jason Young actually owned a humidor and he'd once made a purchase at a cigar store.

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Silent Witness

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And then it was over again. And time for another jury to consider whether Jason Young would go to jail or walk out of court a free man.

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Silent Witness

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For more than five years, Michelle Young's family and friends had been waiting for answers. Who killed their pretty pregnant Michelle? Many thought they knew.

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Silent Witness

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One jury failed to decide. And now attorneys were making their final arguments to a second jury.

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Silent Witness

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Soon that jury was behind closed doors in the Wake County Superior Court. After two days, they were back with a verdict.

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Silent Witness

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So detectives started investigating the victim and everyone else around her. Michelle Young was born and raised on Long Island, New York.

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Silent Witness

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Guilty of first-degree murder. Jason Young didn't flinch. Behind him, his mother was equally stoic. On the other side of the court, Michelle Young's bereaved mother and sister wept. Fiona at home got the news from a friend.

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Silent Witness

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Jason Young received a life sentence. Chose not to address the court. Even as the bailiffs led him away, he remained expressionless. The prosecutors were, they told us, relieved.

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Silent Witness

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But was it? A year and a half ticked by. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Silent Witness

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Stacia Grossman knew her from childhood.

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Silent Witness

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Michelle was a cheerleader in high school and a straight-A student. Jennifer Powers felt drawn to her.

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Silent Witness

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Lots of people did. And when she chose a college far from home, North Carolina State, she was soon surrounded again by an admiring group of women friends, best friends, buddies. Fiona Childs was her sorority big sister.

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Silent Witness

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It was sometime in 2001 when friends started hearing about Michelle's new guy. A fellow student named Jason Young heard how he'd grown up in the North Carolina mountains, how he loved to camp, how he was the life of tailgate parties. Michelle fell hard and fast.

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Silent Witness

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Michelle and Jason married in October 2003. The day after the wedding, they shared their big secret. Michelle was pregnant. Their daughter Cassidy was born early the next year.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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And when she came along, it was love at first sight. Michelle was an enthusiastic mother. Huh? By all accounts, Jason was a good dad.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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The Youngs moved into the big fine house on Birchleaf in 2005. Both of them worked. He a salesman, she a financial specialist. In the summer of 2006, Michelle got pregnant again. They kept the news to themselves, but it was clear something good was happening.

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Silent Witness

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But just a few months later, Michelle was dead. Jason was 170 miles away in Virginia on a business trip the night of the murder. He heard the news the next afternoon and returned to Raleigh. Stacia Grossman got word from her mother.

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Silent Witness

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The very questions that Wake County investigators were asking themselves.

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Silent Witness

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The facts were stark and ugly. One night in November 2006, while her husband was away on business, Michelle Young was attacked in her own bedroom and brutally beaten to death. Her body discovered the next day by her sister, Meredith, along with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Cassidy, who'd been left to wander in her blood.

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Silent Witness

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For the investigators who set out to find her killer, no way to get those little footprints out of their minds. Sergeant Richard Spivey, lead investigator.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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Michelle's husband, Jason, a medical software salesman, was 170 miles away the night of the murder. Even so, investigators had to look at him.

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Silent Witness

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Jason Young's business trip that night was routine. Security tape showed him getting gas about 7.30 p.m. as he left Raleigh. Two hours later, he was seen on tape at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Greensboro. Later, he checked into this Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Virginia. This is him, front desk, about 11 p.m. And him again at midnight. He also made a phone call around midnight.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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And that was the last time anybody heard from Jason Young until he made another call at 7.40 the next morning. A normal person would look at this and say, he was 170 miles away. He's got an alibi.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

573.419

Couldn't explain them. A jewelry box was missing two drawers. So was it a bungled burglary? Then there were footprints near the body that seemed to eliminate Jason. An obvious print on a pillow was a size 10, but Jason wore a size 12. But this was weird. There was another partial footprint. It defied easy identification. So they began calling in shoe experts.

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Silent Witness

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And now they wondered, were there two attackers? Of course, investigators discovered early on that Michelle and Jason's marriage was strained. And in the last weeks of Michelle's life, things were not good.

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Silent Witness

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Jennifer Powers told investigators about another fight that October. Michelle wanted her mother to stay with them for the holidays. And Jason, who had a tense relationship with his mother-in-law, wanted to limit her stay. And said so in an email, along with another nugget.

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Silent Witness

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So, of course, investigators wanted to interview Jason Young. Maybe he could tell them something. But he refused to talk to them.

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Silent Witness

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No. Perhaps, investigators thought, that business trip deserved a second look. So they went to the hotel, poked around, and discovered some odd activities that night in a stairwell near an exit.

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Silent Witness

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Really?

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Silent Witness

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Those who saw the footprints will not forget them.

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Silent Witness

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If that was Jason Young's work, is it possible he did make the 340-mile round trip? Could he have killed his wife and cleaned up his daughter all in seven and a half hours without ever being seen? To find out, investigators played a hunch.

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Silent Witness

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They visited every gas station along the route, showed Jason's photo, talked to the night clerks, and came across a woman named Gracie Doms in a tiny place called King, North Carolina. She took one look at that photograph and recognized it instantly. He was the foul-mouthed customer, she said, who came storming into the store to complain that the pumps were locked. And what time was it?

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Silent Witness

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5.30 a.m., morning of the murder.

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Silent Witness

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If that attendant was right, investigators may have undercut Jason's alibi. Still, it wasn't enough. So they plotted ahead. Painstaking work took time. And then, years after the murder, they finally got a match for that partial footprint.

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Silent Witness

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Throughout the investigation, Jason steadfastly maintained his silence. And rather than face a legal battle where he'd be asked some tough questions, Spivey said, he even gave Michelle's family custody of his daughter.

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Silent Witness

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It was the 3rd of November, 2006, early afternoon. Deputy Scott Earp of the Wake County Sheriff's Department had been dispatched to a quiet and leafy neighborhood called Enchanted Oaks, the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina. Here, because of the 911 call from this place, on Birchleaf Drive...

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Silent Witness

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Investigators had heard enough. They believed they had a case, circumstantial, but a case. And three years after Michelle Young's body was found on the bedroom floor, Jason Young was charged with her murder. Investigators and prosecutors knew that very little pointed directly toward Jason Young, but so far, nothing pointed away.

Dateline NBC

Silent Witness

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Jason Young went on trial for the murder of his pregnant wife, Michelle, in June 2011. By then, he'd spent 18 months in a jail cell. The guy who lived for tailgates, the guy who loved to party, that guy was long gone. Prosecutor Becky Holt opened for the state.

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Silent Witness

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With no murder weapon found, the prosecution's case was built on that partial shoe print. They knew now that Jason once owned a pair of hush puppies like these that matched the print. They were now missing. They also told jurors about that early morning visit to the gas station and the suspicious activity at the hotel. But the thrust of their case was this.

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Silent Witness

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Jason Young was trying in the most violent possible way to get out of a troubled marriage.

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Silent Witness

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I was well aware. Meredith Fisher, Michelle's sister, lived near the couple and for a period was Cassidy's nanny. As the young's fights intensified, she took on the role of a marriage counselor, too.

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Silent Witness

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Prosecutors called friends to the stand to paint a picture of a marriage that was unraveling, out loud and in public.

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Silent Witness

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And at parties, said Fiona Childs, Jason's X-rated tricks were famously over the top.

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Endgame

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Coming up.

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Deadly Obsession

102.211

One couple had extra reason to celebrate. You had never seen Mike and Karen so happy. No, they were especially happy that night. with no reason to think the fun would end anytime soon. You had no idea something was coming that was going to rock your family to the core.

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Oh, my goodness.

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That sounds like rage.

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Someone's sending a message with this killing, these killings. Yes.

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A message for sure. But from whom? The police are looking at everyone initially as a possible suspect.

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Deadly Obsession

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Including you.

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Deadly Obsession

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The families of Karen and Mike thought they might hear word of an engagement that Sunday afternoon. Instead, loved ones like Mike's sister Kathy and her husband Mark were processing news of the couple's murder.

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Karen's son, Chad,

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But on Sunday night, July 7th, Chad was spending time with lead detective Volley at the Topeka Police Department, where the conversation was anything but comforting. The police are looking at everyone initially as a possible suspect.

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Deadly Obsession

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Including you.

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Deadly Obsession

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For Detective Woolley, no one in the couple's orbit was in the clear. You have to start talking to everyone in their circle.

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Deadly Obsession

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And there's a lot of people. They have a lot of friends, a lot of family.

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Deadly Obsession

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That also included Chad's father, Karen's ex-husband. The divorce had been Karen's idea, not his.

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Deadly Obsession

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So was there any thought that this divorce maybe wasn't amicable or there was some money perhaps at play for Karen's ex or jealousy that he may have wanted to get, you know, Mike and Karen out of the picture?

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Deadly Obsession

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He too was asked to take a polygraph. Volley and his team also took a closer look at Mike's side of the family. That included his two teenage children, Haley and Dustin. Mike's son, Dustin, you learned was out of town.

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Deadly Obsession

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Lots of eyeballs on him. Yes. Around the time of the killing.

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Deadly Obsession

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Volley also learned that Mike had a good relationship with Dustin, but things between father and daughter had been strained.

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Things went from bad to worse when Mike started dating Karen.

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Then Haley started seeing a guy named Chris.

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Just a few weeks before the murders, Mike and Haley's issues reached a boiling point.

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Deadly Obsession

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So there's a lot of problems going on between Haley and her boyfriend and Mike. Yes. You had to take a hard look at that.

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Deadly Obsession

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Soon the police would show up. There'd be plenty of theories.

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Deadly Obsession

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The day after the murders, the detective asked Haley to come in for an interview. She told Foley she was with Chris at his parents' house in North Topeka the night Mike and Karen were killed.

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I don't know. Haley went on to suggest a theory police had already ruled out, that the crime was connected to Karen and Mike's casino winnings.

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And appeared to get emotional. Still, Haley's rift with her father was hard to ignore.

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Was that something that you considered?

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Deadly Obsession

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Then, not long after the murders, the detective got a big tip.

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Deadly Obsession

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Someone was stealing from Mike's bank account. Wow. I mean, this must really pique your interest. Certainly. Somebody pretending to be Mike.

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Deadly Obsession

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Did you think it was possible that the killer might have cashed the check?

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Deadly Obsession

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But would there be enough evidence? You've got all these receipts and gas and you're doing all the math, but... Nothing physical, no. The only thing certain in that moment, two people in love were gone. Their celebration over. It was the end of a long Fourth of July weekend. Mike Sisko and Karen Harkness had planned a small cookout for that Sunday afternoon, July 7, 2002.

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Deadly Obsession

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A new lead that would point Volley to someone close to Mike's inner circle. Close enough to kill? Investigators were running down a promising lead in the double homicide of Mike and Karen. Someone forged Mike's signature on one of his checks.

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Deadly Obsession

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And they did. It was a small-time criminal, one who had a connection to Haley's boyfriend. Was that a friend of Chris's?

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Deadly Obsession

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Did it lead you to focus back on Chris, that maybe Chris had something to do with Mike's murder and then gave his associate the checkbook?

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Deadly Obsession

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Turns out, though, the guy who forged the check was in jail the night of the murders. So he's out as the killer.

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Deadly Obsession

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But that didn't put the young couple in the clear. The detective had to be sure. Haley and Chris, you did have them take polygraph tests.

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They passed?

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Deadly Obsession

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And their alibis checked out, as did those given by Karen's ex and her son, Chad. They were all cleared.

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But the next name on the detectives' list seemed an unlikely one. Mike's ex-wife, Dana Chandler. Unlikely because she had recently moved to Denver, which was an eight-hour drive from Topeka.

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Deadly Obsession

1539.3

So she's not even in the area, presumably.

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Deadly Obsession

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Dana and Mike had lived in Colorado when their kids were young, and it's where Haley felt particularly close to her dad.

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Haley said her mom, who stayed home to raise her and her brother, worked hard to keep the household running.

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Deadly Obsession

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But those happy memories masked a troubled family.

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Deadly Obsession

1647.549

Ann Hammer, who met Dana in AA, says Dana worked hard to get her life back together. Both were recovering alcoholics and became instant best friends.

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Deadly Obsession

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Just the two of them and their parents on the back deck of Karen's house in Topeka, Kansas. Carol Sisko is Mike's mother.

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Deadly Obsession

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She did very much. Anne says Dana was driven, had gone back to school to get her master's degree in accounting. She also remembers the fun times they had together, like at a New Year's Eve party where she grabbed this photo of Dana. And just two days before the murders, during that long 4th of July holiday, she and Dana spent an enjoyable day in the mountains together.

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Deadly Obsession

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The next time you hear from Dana, she has some terrible news to share with you.

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Deadly Obsession

1723.038

Later that week, Dana drove down to Topeka for Mike's funeral. Detective Volley had already spoken to Dana on the phone, but figured while she was in town, they could meet.

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Deadly Obsession

1736.454

So she had retained a lawyer? Yes.

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Deadly Obsession

1756.633

Dana spoke so softly, she could barely be heard on the police recording. Did she offer any suspects for you of someone she thought might have wanted Mike and Karen dead?

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Deadly Obsession

1777.593

Like the time she said Mike got into a bar fight years earlier. And when the detective asked where she was the night of the murders, Dana said she was in her Colorado apartment. In fact, she shared what she did that entire weekend, saying she spent most of her Saturday shopping.

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Deadly Obsession

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After a night alone, she said she got up early Sunday to drive two hours west to Granby, Colorado. There, she said she went hiking by herself for a few hours. And she could prove she'd been to many of those places she stopped at that weekend. She had receipts. All that's adding up.

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Deadly Obsession

1826.676

The interview ended and it seemed like a dead end. But was there more to her story?

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Deadly Obsession

1857.119

A week after the murders, grief was suffocating both families.

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Deadly Obsession

1906.318

It was pretty great. Detective Volley had been asking the families a lot of questions. And he was still looking at Mike's ex-wife Dana, who seemed to have a strong alibi.

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Deadly Obsession

1929.253

First, that AutoZone visit.

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Deadly Obsession

194.966

they saw the sliding glass door was slightly open. They stepped inside, into the kitchen, took a bottle of wine out of the fridge, and made themselves comfortable.

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Deadly Obsession

1941.144

Dana told him she bought a cigarette lighter and didn't mention anything else. But Dana's bank statement, which showed the total but not what Dana actually bought, indicated more than just a lighter.

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Deadly Obsession

1967.611

The detective became more curious after he subpoenaed her cell phone records.

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Deadly Obsession

1980.117

Blank as in the phone wasn't used?

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Deadly Obsession

2000.108

And there was something else about Dana's story, that she drove west from Denver and went hiking in the mountains.

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Deadly Obsession

2016.671

I covered a murder there for Dateline. They record your vehicle.

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Deadly Obsession

2022.434

Was she on there?

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Deadly Obsession

2032.509

So the detective figured Dana wasn't telling the truth about where she was. And Dana's account seemed even more wobbly after he got a call from one of her friends expressing concern. His name was Jeff. Jeff told the detective Dana had asked him to help out with her attorney's fees following the murders. But first he wanted to know more.

Dateline NBC

Deadly Obsession

2087.085

Jeff was skeptical, and so was Detective Volley. Because Dana told him she spent Saturday night in her Denver apartment and left for the mountains on Sunday morning. He started putting the pieces together. A shifting alibi, an off-the-grid cell phone, and two gas cans. And he had a huge lightbulb moment.

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Deadly Obsession

2115.371

Instead of heading west to go hiking, what if Dana really drove more than 500 miles east on I-70 to Kansas to kill Mike and Karen?

Dateline NBC

Deadly Obsession

2130.813

You had a feeling that even though Dana Chandler had the gas cans, she may have stopped somewhere along the way between Denver and Topeka, perhaps to use the restroom.

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Deadly Obsession

2159.008

You're trying to catch her driving to Topeka?

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Deadly Obsession

2162.731

None of the gas stations had security camera video of Dana or her car. But about halfway along the route, in Kansas, the detective got lucky.

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Deadly Obsession

2184.129

Are they showing a photo then?

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Deadly Obsession

2192.128

Still, he knew he needed more. Was there anything at all that placed her in Topeka during the window of the murders?

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Deadly Obsession

2202.415

That's a challenge for you.

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Deadly Obsession

2204.336

You had no DNA, no fingerprints.

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Deadly Obsession

2210.2

No murder weapon.

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Deadly Obsession

2211.721

No confession, no eyewitness seeing her go into the house. None of that.

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Deadly Obsession

2221.363

Two months after the murders, he dropped in on Dana's close friend, Ann.

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Deadly Obsession

2235.532

Up to this point, all you knew was that Mike was dead, and that was it. And now it's a double homicide? Right. And Dana might be involved? Right.

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Deadly Obsession

2262.128

It would take more than two decades to put the whole story together. After secrets crawled out into the open... I had been recording our conversations. ...and danger never seemed far away. Did you worry your mom might try to seek revenge on you? Absolutely.

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Deadly Obsession

228.555

Karen's dad headed downstairs to her bedroom. Within minutes, he was back, his face pale.

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Deadly Obsession

2300.165

Thank you.

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Deadly Obsession

246.012

She was stunned. Her son Mike and his girlfriend Karen were dead.

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Deadly Obsession

2499.625

Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Deadly Obsession

2551.639

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Deadly Obsession

2653.038

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dateline NBC

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Richard Volley was a homicide detective for Topeka's police department back then. He was on the scene within minutes of getting the call.

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Deadly Obsession

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So this is your gut feeling.

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He talked briefly with Karen's dad, then headed downstairs.

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Deadly Obsession

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Deadly Obsession

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At first, the detective saw Karen face down on her bed. She had been shot at least twice. He assumed Mike had killed her before turning the gun on himself. But when he walked to the other side of the bed, he found Mike. His body was on the floor, wedged between the wall and bed, as if he'd just tumbled off.

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You're terrified of the one woman who is supposed to love you the most in this world. Absolutely. Dana Chandler was living in Oklahoma at the time. It was 2011, nearly a decade since Mike and Karen had been killed. Authorities caught up with her in a parking lot and arrested her with guns drawn. She was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

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Dana pleaded not guilty and went on trial in a Topeka courtroom in March 2012.

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Sherman Smith is editor-in-chief of the Kansas Reflector, covering state politics. Back then, he was an editor for the Topeka Capital Journal.

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The prosecution argued Dana was the only person who hated Mike and Karen enough to kill them.

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To prove motive, prosecutors called friends and family, including Haley, who was by then 27.

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The prosecutor said Mike was scared of Dana and got a protection from abuse order against her, which she violated. The defense countered that there was no physical evidence tying Dana to the crime scene. It took less than 90 minutes for the jury to find her guilty of both counts of first-degree murder. She was given two life sentences.

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Haley, who was just a teenager when her father was killed, says she felt almost reborn.

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Sergeant Volley, who had fulfilled his promise to Karen's dad to never give up on the case, retired in 2014. But this fresh start for all of them came to a screeching halt. You get some news that's going to rock your world.

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In 2018, six years after the trial, the state's highest court ruled the prosecutor had misled the jury about that protection from abuse order. It never existed, and the prosecutor knew it. Both murder convictions were tossed.

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Haley knew that if the state chose not to re-prosecute the case, her mother would walk free.

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The fate of Dana Chandler's case was in the hands of Mike Kege, the third district attorney to oversee it. What was your biggest concern going in, deciding to retry this?

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Kage believed it did. Dana Chandler would remain behind bars until her retrial. Her case and her cause began attracting attention.

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Daryl Burton is the founder of a nonprofit organization called Miracle of Innocence. Its mission is to help those who may have been wrongly accused.

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Convicted of murder in 1985 and exonerated in 2008, Darrell believed Dana's case mirrored his own. To him, the lack of physical evidence spoke volumes.

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towards her ex and his new girlfriend. But then there's that, you know, where's the smoking gun?

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His organization hired a top-notch defense team to represent Dana in her high-stakes retrial. What would this new jury think? I'm sure your stomach is turning.

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In August 2022, Dana Chandler stood trial for a second time for the murders of Mike Sisko and Karen Harkness 20 years earlier. Prosecutor Charles Kitt acknowledged the evidence the state didn't have.

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There's a killer at large.

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The prosecution's case remained largely unchanged from the first trial. Haley once again took the stand.

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Killer you need to find.

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She told the jury how her mom seemed perversely fixated on her dad and Karen.

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But the prosecution told the jury it wasn't just what Dana said. It was also what she did, like showing up in Topeka unannounced or incessantly calling Mike and Karen.

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Mike's brother-in-law, Mark, testified about Mike's growing concern over what his ex-wife might be capable of.

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He had no idea an investigative and legal saga was just beginning. It would span more than 20 years.

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And the state argued Dana's changing alibis for the weekend of the murders were full of holes. A weekend in which her cell phone went dark for more than 24 hours. Perhaps the most chilling testimony came from Dana's friend Ann Hammer. She now believed Dana was guilty and told the jury about a road trip Dana said she took about a month before the murders.

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Did you think that Dana's story about the drive was possibly a dry run for what she ended up being accused of? That's absolutely what I did think of it. She's just practicing.

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But Dana Chandler's defense attorney, Tom Bath, reminded the jury of the glaring holes in the prosecution's case.

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The defense argued this was a classic example of a botched investigation led by a detective with tunnel vision.

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Darrell Burton attended the trial to support Dana.

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The defense highlighted Volley's many missteps, hammering him on cross-examination about the parts of the investigation he failed to document.

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Right. And taking him to task for the things he did document that later went missing.

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and take trial after trial after trial. This is a soap opera moment.

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As for that dry run, the defense pressed Dana's old friend on her memory.

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Absolutely. The defense argued the rest of the prosecution's case was just noise. Dana wasn't angry or obsessed and never harassed Mike or Karen. All those phone calls, for instance, just a mom trying to reach her kids. And so what if her cell phone went dark for 27 hours? This was 2002. Service was limited. Roaming charges were sky high.

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And people weren't tied to their phones like they are today.

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Deadly Obsession

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And in fact, said the defense, there was evidence someone else was in that house. A hair found on a shell casing did not match Dana or either of the victims.

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Deadly Obsession

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Jury deliberations started after three weeks of testimony. One day passed, then another, then another. Day one, day two, day three, day four. This is going on almost a week. That wasn't good.

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I'm sure your stomach is turning. You're getting a bad feeling here.

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On the sixth day of deliberations, the jury filed back into the courtroom.

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The judge declared a mistrial. All right, thank you very much. And the families found themselves right back where they started. Oh, it hurt.

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And there was no getting off as the case careened towards a third trial. And this time, all bets were off. There is a big, big twist coming that you did not see coming.

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In the fall of 2022, despite two trials behind them, prosecutors decided to roll the dice again and try Dana Chandler for a third time. The victim's families were relieved, but the long wait for trial wouldn't be easy. Dana was granted bond.

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The prosecutor's decision to retry Dana was a major disappointment for her friend Daryl. He vowed to stick by her and for the next two and a half years continue to raise money to keep lawyer Tom Bath on the case. How are you feeling heading into trial number three?

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Deadly Obsession

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Dana's third trial began this past February in a county northwest of Topeka. The courthouse was different, but the players were the same. Until, minutes before opening statements, Dana made a stunning decision. She fired her attorneys. Dana would represent herself. She really flips the switch on this one. Yeah, that was a blind side. Even her staunchest supporters were dumbfounded.

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Prosecutors argued their now familiar case. Same motive.

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47-year-old Mike Sisko and 53-year-old Karen Harkness had been found murdered in her basement bedroom. Detective Richard Volley was trying to make sense out of what he was seeing.

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And the same disturbing stories.

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When it was Dana's turn, everyone knew they were in for something different. And sure enough, she threw the typical trial playbook out the window. For her first witness, Dana called herself, speaking in a monologue about herself.

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With her sisters and other supporters looking on, Dana told the jury she was a woman who'd been dealt a bad hand. She said her ex-husband left her impoverished and shut out of her children's lives. And she'd endured a lonely battle against alcoholism. Yes, she said some of her behavior was ugly, like those graphic messages she'd sent Haley about her dad and Karen's sex life.

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But that was the alcohol talking.

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She took the blame for that, but not for all the rest. She said she was actually getting along with Mike at the time of the murders. And that all those damning stories told by Mike and Karen's families were either misrepresented or never happened.

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And Dana said she hadn't changed her alibi about where she was the night of the murders. She'd slept in her car in the Colorado mountains.

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As Dana moved around the courtroom, she didn't always come across like a polished attorney. She struggled with her computer. Stopped testimony to put on her puffy coat. And she complained about our cameras.

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Deadly Obsession

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Of course, the fact that Dana was her own attorney meant that she got to question every witness herself, including the man she felt had tormented her for 20 years, Detective Volley. Morning.

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Deadly Obsession

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Dana worked him over on the stand, pressing him on every move he made during the investigation.

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She used a note he'd written to portray him as a man desperate to solve the case, not for justice, but to protect his reputation, an allegation he denied.

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Yet even though he turned her life upside down, Dana said the detective still couldn't produce a single piece of direct evidence that tied her to the crime.

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What was that like having your murder suspect keeping you on the stand for two days just line by line of all your work? I mean, the tables have turned. She's now interviewing you.

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Being questioned by Dana was equally surreal for Mark and Kathy.

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But the person who dreaded the face-to-face with Dana most was her daughter.

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What was your strategy with her, your approach, knowing that your mom's playing the role of attorney?

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He figured the couple had been sleeping when their killer opened fire. Do you believe that the perpetrator was inside the house waiting for them, or do you think they came in after? Any idea?

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You want me to seal? If Haley was Dana's child, you couldn't tell. She attacked Haley's memories, suggesting Mike was the unhinged parent after the divorce, not her.

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And she made Haley revisit disagreements they'd had in the past, laying bare their fractured relationship for the jury.

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Despite their problems, Dana insisted she tried to be there for Haley after her father was killed.

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Yeah, I didn't want to talk to you.

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Dana Chandler had had her say. Now, prosecutors would have a chance to question her. A double murder case that began on a 4th of July weekend was about to end with its own fireworks. Ms.

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Dana Chandler had conducted her defense her way.

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But the decision to represent herself came at a cost. There were constant delays as Dana sifted through documents and corralled her witnesses. She tested the judge's patience.

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By contrast, the prosecutors moved their case along like clockwork.

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The prosecution took advantage of Dana's inexperience at key moments. Remember the gas station clerk who believed she saw Dana in Kansas the weekend of the murders? Because that woman died, the judge had ruled her story inadmissible. But Dana asked the detective a question that allowed him to talk about it.

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The prosecutor played the revelation for all it was worth, showing the jury how the clerk had identified Dana in a photo lineup.

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The prosecutor also had a chance to do something he'd been wanting to do for years, question Dana on the stand. By testifying, she'd put herself in that precarious spot. The prosecutor asked Dana a series of yes or no questions and called her out when she refused to comply. Ms.

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He took aim at her alibi and got her to admit that she had told different stories about that weekend.

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The prosecutor also pointed out the sheer number of witnesses who Dana said hadn't told the truth about her.

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He was certain after he looked around a bit more. Was there any forced entry into Karen's place?

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When both sides rested and the case went to the jury, Mark and Kathy were optimistic.

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I was feeling great. And they wouldn't have to wait long for the decision. Three and a half hours after deliberations began, everyone gathered in the courtroom for the verdict.

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Karen's son Chad was also grateful it was over.

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On the other side of the aisle, Daryl was despondent.

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23 years after Mike and Karen were killed, their families are just starting to get used to life after Dana Chandler. But for Karen's daughter Erin, the pain of her mother's death is never far away.

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Haley feels that ache, too. She was just a teen when she lost her father. Now she's a mother of three. I'm sure he would have made a great grandpa to your kids.

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As police continued investigating the scene, Karen's parents and Mike's mom were busy calling their families.

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Who told you the news?

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Her grandmother continued calling the rest of the family. She said something awful's happened. Mike's sister, Kathy Boots, and her husband, Mark, could hardly believe it. They had just seen Mike a week earlier. They'd been fishing together.

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Always upbeat, they said, despite having weathered a divorce four years earlier. Mike was traveling constantly as a salesman.

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And raising two kids.

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Oh, those are nice. And then he met Karen during a night out with friends. She was also divorced with two kids. After that, his family said you couldn't keep the smile off his face. He lightened up when he met Karen.

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Cheering you on to keep going.

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Karen knew how to draw people in. Her friend Linda Bryden saw it every day at the Topeka Tourism Office where they worked together.

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Karen and Mike had just been to Linda's house for the fourth.

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That's likely why he had that brochure on his table, the one his mom saw. It was there among recent photos and a coffee cup. That cup caught the detective's eye.

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suggesting the couple had been out shortly before their deaths. But where? Maybe it was a place where luck, the good and the bad, collide. Did you see them on the video?

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Lead detective Richard Volley was working the case of his career, a double homicide with the killer still at large. So far, all he had was a lot of unanswered questions. The biggest unknown, who would want to kill Karen and Mike? And even more baffling, why?

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Deadly Obsession

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Volley and his team began at the beginning, tracking the couple's whereabouts during their last hours alive. One of their first leads, those two coffee cups found at the scene. From a, like a convenience store?

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Volley's investigators traced the cups to a gas station near a casino called Sack and Fox. Had the couple spent time there? Your investigators spoke to a neighbor about a conversation with Mike the night before?

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detectives made a beeline for the second fox.

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Volley wondered if they'd won some money and attracted the wrong kind of attention. Did you think that maybe someone followed them from the casino to rob them of their winnings?

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Just before 1.30 a.m., Karen and Mike left the casino. Did the cameras follow them outside?

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The fourth exploded on a Thursday that year, blazing its way into a long weekend.

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Is it possible that there was someone near their car that just wasn't picked up?

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Voli's investigators also paid a visit to that gas station.

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Minutes later, the couple could be seen pulling out in Mike's Ford Expedition. Anyone suspicious around them or anything going on with Mike and Karen?

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So that kind of you know, puts a damper on the possible idea of someone following them from the casino.

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Investigators believe the couple drove straight home from there.

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Which fits with your timeline.

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Then another sound. Michelle Delgado was 18 at the time and living a few doors down with her mother.

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And then she heard something even louder, several pops in a row.

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Hours later, her neighbors were found dead.

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Crime scene investigators spent hours processing the house, but in the end, they determined nothing of value was taken.

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Any electronics?

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So if robbery wasn't the motive, maybe the autopsies would offer a clue. The coroner's report revealed that Karen took three bullets in the shoulder, one in her arm, and one in the buttocks. Mike was shot at least once in the back, twice in his chest, and twice in the stomach. Did this feel very personal to you, the locations, the number of shots fired, the location of the victims in bed?

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The Devil Wore White

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There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Josh and Keith. Available Wednesday.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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And when she arrived on the dance floor, party time.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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But this party ended a little early. He pulled out a photocopy of her earring and I knew it was her. A brutal murder that left her boyfriend devastated and first on the list of people police wanted to interview. There's history of domestic violence. He hit her, she hit him. Case closed, not after investigators find a secretly recorded video, her last appearance before the cameras.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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Blonde and beautiful.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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Was a model's date with death caught on tape?

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Death of a Golden Girl

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Death of a golden girl. Death of a golden girl.

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Death of a Golden Girl

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A steamy Playboy model wannabe.

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The Premonition

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There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Andrea and Blaine, available Wednesday.

Dateline NBC

Poison Twist

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Still, her sisters never forgot a story Mary told them. It happened before her wedding, 38 years earlier.

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Poison Twist

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It was no secret that in the years that followed, Bill would often disappear on weekends.

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Poison Twist

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Janine kept wondering about that day Mary dropped by her house out of the blue. Did she want to tell her something about her marriage?

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Poison Twist

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And right after Mary died, she and her sisters were surprised that Bill didn't seem as distraught as they were.

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Poison Twist

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Mary, who lived nearby, was a chiropractor, loving wife and mother of three. It seemed Mary had something to confide that day, something to share.

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Poison Twist

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and certainly no one wanted to believe that Mary's own husband would harm her.

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Poison Twist

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Any fair-minded detective would need that evidence, too, along with a clear idea of a motive. Did Bill stand to inherit everything that was Mary's, everything in the marriage?

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Poison Twist

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Detectives told Mary's daughters not to talk about the investigation, especially not to their father.

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Poison Twist

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It had taken months for authorities to get involved in the case. And now that they believed it was a homicide, detectives decided to quietly keep tabs on the husband. After a few weeks of surveillance, they called Bill for an interview.

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Poison Twist

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Bill spoke to them for five hours, and he gave investigators permission to search the couple's chiropractic business, where deputies collected computers, a typewriter, and a fax machine.

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Poison Twist

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And they had a lot of questions for Bill. At the top of the list, something they'd learned while they were tracking him. It turns out Bill was already dating again. In fact, it was Mary's mother who first called it.

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Poison Twist

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Detective Nelson was the one to tell Sharon their mom was right.

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Poison Twist

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As the detective took a deeper dive into Bill's relationship, a new lead surfaced, and it would change everything. You might have a smoking gun here.

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Poison Twist

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Detective Robert Nelson was working Mary Yoder's homicide when he learned that her husband, Bill, had a girlfriend.

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Poison Twist

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Why is it important to determine now if this relationship started before Mary's death?

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Poison Twist

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That's kind of a big deal.

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Poison Twist

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Then an unexpected clue landed on the detective's desk, and it pointed the investigation in a whole new direction. It was an anonymous letter.

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Poison Twist

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Adam was Adam Yoder, Mary and Bill's son. The letter said he was the killer. The person who penned the letter claimed to be close to Adam, writing, "...he got a bottle of colchicine off online and put the toxin in one of her vitamins when he was over at his parents' house." With a jolt, the letter dramatically shifted the focus of the investigation from father to son.

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Poison Twist

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You might have a smoking gun here.

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Poison Twist

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Did Adam have any criminal history?

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Poison Twist

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Adam was in his mid-twenties, the youngest of the Yoder children. He had worked in the family practice as the office manager. Before he passed that job off to his girlfriend Katie, Katie's parents, Vin and Kathy, knew him well.

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Poison Twist

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If she had a secret to share, her sister Janine would never hear it.

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Poison Twist

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Did you at any point feel like maybe I should say something or did you totally stay out of it?

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Poison Twist

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Shannon and Sarah Conley are Katie's twin sisters.

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Poison Twist

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If there was any truth to the letter, what motive would Adam have? The letter itself seemed to have an answer.

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Poison Twist

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And the letter told authorities something else. The colchicine container is under the front seat passenger side of his Jeep until he figures out where to dispose of it next. What's your strategy going in with Adam?

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Poison Twist

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Soon, a murder investigation was underway, one that would tear a family apart.

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Poison Twist

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Was this a bit of a test to see if Adam would show up in the Jeep?

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Poison Twist

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And when Adam arrived to talk to the detectives, he was driving the Jeep in question.

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Poison Twist

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What was his demeanor over that letter? Shocked. Did you feel his reaction was genuine?

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Poison Twist

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While one detective talked to Adam, another called his sister Liana.

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Poison Twist

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Adam eventually gave investigators permission and they went outside to the parking lot. Moment of truth, you open the vehicle door and what do you find inside?

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Poison Twist

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And just like that, the detectives seem to have the weapon right in his hand. That's your big moment in this case?

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Poison Twist

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The anonymous letter had been right. The colchicine used to kill Mary Yoder was under the front passenger seat of her son Adam's Jeep. It was a pure form of the drug, far more potent than what doctors prescribe. And Adam? What's his reaction? I think he was shocked at that point when he saw us pull that out. The poison is in his Jeep? Yes.

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Poison Twist

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What's more, in the Jeep, along with the colchicine, there was a receipt for the drug. And on the receipt?

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Adam said he'd never seen the Colchicine before in his life. Someone must have planted it. In that moment, what are you thinking?

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Could Adam really have poisoned his mother? When they looked into his whereabouts on the day Mary got sick, they discover Adam was more than 300 miles away visiting his sister on Long Island.

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Then, a new ruling and new questions.

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It didn't entirely make sense to detectives either. You let Adam go?

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But I would imagine you're not crossing Adam off your list yet.

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The investigation led them to talk to Adam's cousin and roommate, David King. He's the son of Mary's sister, Janine. David told them that after Mary died, Adam was enrolled in college, but his life seemed to be falling apart.

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It was only when detectives were interviewing David that he realized Adam was a person of interest in Mary's death. Did that just floor you?

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It was a July morning in 2015. Dr. Mary Yoder's day began with a full schedule here at her clinic in Whitesboro, New York. At 60 years old, the respected chiropractor was the picture of health.

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At the time?

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David would later wonder if his cousin's behavior was the result of grief or guilt. Adam's sisters, on the other hand, had no doubt Adam was innocent. They were convinced he was being framed. Who did you think could have framed him?

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But detectives didn't have enough evidence to prove any of their theories.

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One possible motive, that new relationship Bill began so soon after Mary's death. Had it actually started while she was still alive? In his police interview, Bill denied cheating on Mary. He said the relationship began after she died. And when detectives looked into his phone records, they seemed to confirm it.

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Looking for new insight, detectives turned to someone outside the Yoder clan, Katie, who dated Adam and worked for Bill and Mary.

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Often employees are the ones who hear and see a lot. Katie was in the middle of final exams at college, but made time to come in for an interview. Did you wonder why?

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She was fit and beautiful. She ran triathlons. Janine and her sisters, Sally and Sharon, say Mary was the shining light of the family.

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Detectives thought Katie could tell them a lot about Mary and Bill.

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In what way?

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Did they have a lot of questions? They did. Investigators talked to Katie three times over the next few days. By the third interview, she started telling them the same thing Adam's cousin had said. Adam hadn't been himself lately.

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Is she worried about Adam, that maybe Adam had something to do with this?

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As detectives listen to Katie talk about Adam, her ex, they wondered where this was going. A light bulb went off for investigators.

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They had found the person who wrote that letter pointing the finger at Adam. But the discovery was about to point them in a new direction. That's a twist.

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Detectives had been trying to figure out who wrote that anonymous letter pointing the finger at Mary Yoder's son Adam as the killer. Now Katie, Adam's ex-girlfriend, admitted it was her. They started recording the interview.

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She said Adam confessed to her. He poisoned his mother with colchicine. In the letter, she said Adam hid the poison in one of Mary's vitamin pills. But Katie wasn't sure if he really meant to kill his mother.

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As for how she knew where Adam had stashed the poison, Katie said he told her when she was literally sitting on top of it.

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But as that busy day in July wore on, Mary began to feel sick. By late afternoon, she had grown violently ill. And the next morning, Mary's husband Bill reached out to their daughters, Tamron and Liana, who was a doctor.

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Katie and Adam had been friends since high school, but now she told the detectives she didn't know what he was capable of. She said she didn't report Adam sooner for one simple reason. She was afraid of him.

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Katie's admission that she was the letter writer seemed like the big break detectives needed. And it was, but not in the way you might think. You thought that possibly the killer wrote the letter.

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As the interview went on, the detectives pushed harder.

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At one point, Katie told the detectives Adam had threatened to frame her.

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She also said something they thought was just plain weird. She made an observation about who uses poison.

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Of course, that didn't prove Katie was Mary's killer. She was free to go. But she had not done much during that interview to dispel the detective's suspicions either. Far from it.

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They started to dig and quickly thought they were on the right track. For one thing, Katie had opportunity. She was with Mary at the office that day. Poison experts thought Mary had ingested the colchicine around lunchtime.

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You think it's Katie, but where's your hard evidence? How do you now go about proving it's Katie? Because she's now your prime suspect, correct?

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Digital records showed that it was Katie's computer, not Adam's, that had logged into that Gmail account, the one used to buy the poison.

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In fact, the entire digital trail seemed to lead detectives right to Katie's doorstep. On her phone, they found several searches for the word Colchicine.

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But there was a gaping hole in their theory. If Katie really was Mary's killer, why had she done it? By all accounts, this seemed like a very nice relationship between a younger woman and an older woman.

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A mentor relationship.

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So was this very surprising to you then?

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Doctors thought there was a possible infection.

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Thank you.

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Mary was anything but fine. By the time family members arrived at the hospital, she was fighting for her life.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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But Katie's defense said they were wrong. Far from being a criminal mastermind, it was Katie who had been framed. What's going through your mind when you learn of this relationship? Unbelievable. On day 11 of Katie Conley's trial, the defense began its case. Rooting for her were some unlikely supporters. She's on trial for murdering your sister and you're standing behind the defendant.

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Down in Florida, Mary's sister Sharon, a nurse, was getting updates.

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But there was another one of Mary's sisters who wasn't sitting on the defense's side. a sister they didn't talk to anymore. Her name is Kathy, and it turns out she is the woman Bill started dating so quickly after Mary's death.

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In court, Katie's attorney, Christopher Pelley, told the jury that Mary's killer wasn't Katie. It was Bill.

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According to the defense, Bill was no grieving widower.

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Bill said the romance with Kathy started after Mary died. Kathy told the jury the same thing.

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But this woman, one of Kathy's neighbors, told a different story. She said she'd seen the two kissing on Kathy's porch a couple of weeks before Mary's death. Bill was holding Kathy, and he was kissing her and looking in her eyes, and it was very intense. The defense said not only did Bill have a new relationship, he'd just received a big pile of money too.

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So if Bill had motive, did he also have opportunity? Bill denied he was in the office the day Mary got sick. Remember, her patients hadn't seen him. But Katie's defense said that didn't mean he wasn't there. This witness used to work with Bill at the office.

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The family kept vigil in the waiting room. Then came the awful news.

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Sometimes he might say, you know, don't tell the patient I'm here because they might want to see me. The defense also suggested Bill had a second opportunity to harm his wife when he was by her side at the hospital. Toxicologist Gina Maroffa told the jury she couldn't rule out the possibility that Mary got a second dose of poison.

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Did you feel that this case was just swimming in reasonable doubt?

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Katie's DNA may have been found on the colchicine bottle, but the defense said she handled all the deliveries to the practice. As for the sales rep who said she talked to a woman with a sweet young voice?

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And think about this, the defense attorney told the jury. Bill had access to Katie's work computer and office typewriter. If Bill were to frame Katie, you believe it wouldn't be all that hard.

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Bill told us he did not poison Mary and had nothing to do with her death. He served as a witness at Katie's grand jury hearing, and in New York State, all grand jury witnesses are given automatic immunity from prosecution. No matter what happens, is he protected? For life.

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But what about those searches for colchicine on Katie's phone? How do you get around that? She's looking up this very rare drug that I had never heard of until I started working on this story.

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The defense said the idea that Katie killed Mary to get back together with Adam was absurd. According to her sisters, she was the one who initially dumped him.

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As for the anonymous letter pointing the finger at Adam, the defense never explained why Katie wrote it, if Bill was the real killer. But he wanted the jury to see the lengths Katie had gone to help the investigation, enduring hours of intense questioning. You wanted the jury to know how cooperative... Katie was?

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Her attorney said detectives lied to Katie, falsely claiming to have footage of her at the store buying those prepaid credit cards, the ones used to purchase the Colchicine.

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That's why the defense said the jury should ignore anything Katie said during that interview.

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I think not. Detectives say their techniques were by the book. But Mary's sister Sharon couldn't believe what Katie went through.

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Sharon was more convinced than ever that Katie was innocent and Bill guilty. She said as much in open court. It is still my theory that he killed my sister.

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It was up to a jury to decide if Katie Conley was Mary's killer. In the courthouse, Mary's divided family waited, her husband and children on one side, three of her sisters on the other, still in Katie's corner.

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Thank you. But defense attorney Chris Pelley was confident Katie would be acquitted.

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Two days became three. What were they talking about in there? The detective hoped the jury would see past the pretty, put-together young woman in court. Was Katie really what she seemed?

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The jury deliberated all through day four. And on day five, they passed a note to the judge.

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There was no verdict. The crowd went silent. Mary's daughters were devastated. They'd hoped that a guilty verdict would be justice for their mother and also vindicate their father.

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Now they prepared to sit through it all again.

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Five months later, everyone filed back into the Oneida County Courthouse for trial number two.

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The prosecutor's case was virtually the same.

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But Katie had a new defense attorney and a new twist to her strategy. He said, yes, Katie was innocent. And yes, Katie was framed. But this time, her lawyer was pointing the finger not at Bill, but at someone else.

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Adam, Mary's son. Defense attorney Frank Policelli argued that the crime happened just the way Katie described in that letter.

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What killed Mary Yoder?

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As for how Katie's digital fingerprints ended up on everything related to the colchicine transaction, Katie's attorney suggested that could easily have been Adam.

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A key witness this time was Adam's cousin and former roommate, David King. In the years since Mary's death, David had come to doubt Adam and defend Katie. Do you believe Katie had anything to do with the murder of Mary Yoder?

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On the stand, David told the jury Adam was no novice with computers.

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Katie's attorney said Adam could have hacked her devices, or maybe he didn't need to. David testified he saw Adam with Katie's laptop.

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And the defense said Adam had access to Katie's work computer, too. David testified that years earlier, he and Adam used to drop by the office when no one else was there.

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And the defense said there was something else, something important. Remember in her interview with detectives how fearful Katie said she was of Adam?

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Katie's attorney said there was a good reason for Katie to be afraid.

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A year before Mary's death, Katie filed a police report accusing Adam of rape. The defense read a text message Katie wrote to Adam.

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Adam denied the allegation and Katie dropped the complaint. But the defense hoped the jury would see Katie as a victim, not as a killer.

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Adam Yoder had given his side of the story to detectives early on. What would he say now?

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At the first trial, the defense said Katie had been framed by Mary's husband, Bill. But at trial number two, the alternate suspect right from the start was Mary's son.

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Did it feel like your brother was on trial?

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And it just was one allegation after another. Now, in court, Adam took the stand to respond to the defense firsthand. Good morning.

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Adam told the jury he did not plant evidence on Katie's computers or phone. A prosecution computer expert said Katie's devices had never been hacked. And Adam told the jury he was hardly the hacker Katie's side portrayed.

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A case that spanned nearly a decade, an unlikely suspect, two trials, and now a new day in court.

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No, I do not. And no, I am not. To the defense's claim that Adam physically abused Katie, he did admit to one incident.

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But as for the alleged rape, no charges were ever filed against Adam. And he told the jury he had zero memory of the night it supposedly happened. He'd been drinking heavily.

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He said the next morning things seemed fine between them. It wasn't until about three months later that Katie accused him in that text message.

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As Adam testified, an accusation against Katie emerged. Adam suggested Katie might have poisoned him, too. A couple of months before his mother's death, he said Katie handed him a bottle of supplements to help him get through final exams.

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After taking the pills, Adam said he had to go to the ER with symptoms similar to his mother's.

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Do you believe that Katie gave him something that made him sick? Absolutely. The prosecution's suggestion was clear. Maybe Katie tried out the colchicine on Adam first.

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Katie's defense said she had nothing to do with Adam's illness, and a lab test on the remaining supplements found no contamination. In fact, the defense had been the one to bring up Adam's illness in court, suggesting that he made himself sick, handling colchicine he bought for the murder.

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Like his father, Adam also testified before the grand jury and received full immunity from prosecution. He was also cleared by authorities.

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And there was one last discovery that pointed away from Adam. The state's computer experts had gotten their hands on a digital backup of Katie's phone. In the files, they found evidence of more incriminating searches they said were done several weeks before the colchicine was ordered.

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Katie's defense disputed the timing of those searches and said there was no way to prove she was the one who did them. After both sides rested, Katie's fate was once again in the hands of a jury. It's inconceivable.

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The charge was second-degree murder, but this time around, the judge allowed the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter. To convict, the jury would only have to find that Katie intended to hurt Mary, not kill her. A day passed without word. On day two, the judge received a note.

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Mary Yoder's death was a sudden and devastating blow to her family.

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It was looking like another mistrial. We almost got to the point where we were like, is this all ever going to be worth it? The judge encouraged the jury to keep trying.

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And just two hours later...

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First, the most serious charge.

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Not guilty of second-degree murder. As for manslaughter?

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As Katie absorbed the news, her mom ran out of the courtroom in tears. Katie tried to reassure her family, but her sisters were distraught.

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Katie was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Was justice done with the guilty verdict? There's an accountability. Yes, she did not get away with it. But that wasn't the end of it. Not at all.

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Katie Conley was in New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, serving 23 years for poisoning Mary Yoder. Journalist and radio host Rocco LaDuca followed both trials and says not everyone agreed Katie belonged there.

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Among those calling for her release, three of Mary's own sisters still on her side.

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Katie did file an appeal, but lost. That's when she reached out to attorney Melissa Swartz, a specialist in post-conviction motions.

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A quick look at the warrant and Melissa saw red flags. What was the problem that you could see and Katie could see with the search warrant?

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The warrant didn't include any of that. Melissa agreed to represent Katie and began digging into what happened at both of her trials.

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The state's toxicologist told the jury that Mary was poisoned around noon, leaving Katie, the office manager, the most viable suspect. Melissa hired her own toxicologist, who believed that Mary could have been poisoned up to 16 hours earlier.

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She identified another mistake she says Katie's defense made, bringing up Adam Yoder's alleged poisoning. Remember, Katie's second lawyer wanted the jury to think Adam accidentally poisoned himself with colchicine.

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Mary was active. She was an avid gardener and a musician. Here she is singing a duet with her sister Sally. Her sisters say she was game for almost anything, even this.

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And then, of course, the prosecution runs with this, that this is Katie poisoning Adam.

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This defense that the attorney was launching just backfired spectacularly. Brutally backfired. Melissa says it added up to ineffective assistance of counsel. And in 2022, she filed what's called a 440 motion.

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The trial judge reviewed the motion and granted a hearing.

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On the stand, Katie's first lawyer, Christopher Pelley, admitted he made a mistake by not challenging the search warrant for Katie's phone.

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Her second trial lawyer didn't challenge it either. How important is that cell phone evidence in all of this?

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And Melissa succeeded. In December 2024, she argued Katie's case in front of the New York State Appellate Court.

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Days later, a judge ordered Katie's release.

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On February 5th, after seven years behind bars, Katie Conley was released from prison. Did she do anything special after getting out? Did she go anywhere on the drive home?

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The current district attorney could refile charges and try Katie again. He told Dateline he's reviewing the case.

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Whatever the DA decides, Katie's release is not an exoneration.

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It still doesn't change that someone was searching for, you know, poisons on Katie's phone. What is her story on that? Is she saying that someone was using her phone?

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As all sides process the news of Katie's release, Mary's daughters still mourn the family they once had. So many lives shattered. This destroyed an entire family.

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Mary grew up in upstate New York in a family of six sisters and two brothers.

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Mary's loved ones may be divided over who killed her, but there's one thing they can agree on. It's not how Mary died that should be remembered. It's how she lived.

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Bill and Mary both became chiropractors, opened a clinic together, and eventually started a family. Liana is the oldest. Tamarin is the younger sister.

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After high school, Adam helped out at the family business. Then his girlfriend Katie took his place as office manager.

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Katie says she had a particularly strong bond with Mary, considered her a mentor and a friend. You couldn't help but to like her. Did you feel inspired by her at all?

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Mary was a big believer in herbal supplements and often recommended them to her patients.

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In 2015, after 30 years in the business, Mary was thinking about slowing down. But then she was gone. How did you get the news that Mary had died?

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A few days after Mary died, daughter Liana, the physician, got a call from the medical examiner.

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The most you had to go on.

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Mary's sister Sharon, the nurse, questioned the explanation.

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She requested that the medical examiner do additional tests.

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While the family waited for those results, Janine ran into one of Mary's doctors, who made a stunning revelation. He didn't think Mary died of colitis.

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But identifying Mary's cause of death was proving difficult. The medical examiner sought the opinion of Dr. Gina Maroffa at the Upstate New York Poison Center.

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It was a roll of the dice, but Dr. Maroffa suggested checking for a drug called colchicine, normally used to treat gout, a form of arthritis. In a high enough dose, it becomes toxic.

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Dr. Maroffa's hunch was right. The ME called Mary's daughter, Liana.

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Three months after Mary's death, Sharon decided to contact the police. Lieutenant Robert Nelson, now retired, was a detective with the Oneida County Sheriff's Office.

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Do you feel that this is something that would fall under your purview?

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The detective learned there was nothing in Mary's medical history to explain why she'd be taking colchicine. Why would she have this poison, this drug, in her system?

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The notion that Mary intentionally took an excessive number of pills seemed impossible.

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That left one other scenario, a chilling one.

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now began the hunt for a killer. And some of Mary's sisters thought they knew where investigators should be looking.

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It was early afternoon on a Tuesday in central New York's scenic Mohawk Valley. That's where a woman who cherished life and family lived. On that midsummer day, she dropped by her sister Janine's house.

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Months after Mary Yoder's death, investigators told the family they were convinced Mary had been murdered. What is that moment like when your mom is now a murder victim?

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And Mary's daughters believed their mother hadn't just been killed. She'd practically been tortured.

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But this is real life now?

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Potential suspects? No, not at first. But Detective Nelson had to start somewhere. What about the person closest to Mary, her husband? What was it that was leading you in Bill's direction?

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Katie Conley was the office manager. She worked for both Bill and Mary. Mary ran the practice with her husband Bill? Yes. It definitely sounds like Mary was the popular doctor in the office.

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Mary's sisters had known Bill for decades.

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Investigators were at that moment collecting evidence. You found some clues at the crime scene?

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A crime scene investigator noticed a bullet peeking through leaves between the girls.

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Liggett believed the killer racked his gun to scare the girls into submission, not realizing the evidence he was leaving.

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ejects the bullet out the side and lands on the ground there was more as crime scene investigators moved abby's body they discovered a shoe and beneath that we found libby's phone they immediately sent the phone to a forensics analyst for testing meanwhile officers continued collecting evidence hoping for dna searched for surveillance cameras on nearby businesses and spoke to property owners

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Like Ron Logan, he spoke to WTHR shortly after the girls were discovered on his property.

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Investigators also talked to anyone who'd been in the area that day. Indiana State Police Lieutenant Jerry Holman.

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A trail that ends here at an old railroad bridge.

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Three girls described a man on the trail around 1.30, about 20 minutes before Abby and Libby arrived.

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Though they agreed, he was overdressed for the warm day and avoided eye contact. A woman walking close to the bridge thought she saw the same man.

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Others came forward but had nothing really to offer. One woman saw the story on the news and urged her husband to report he'd been out there that day. Did he see anything unusual? No.

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So you had to work with what you had to work with.

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But one woman did report something disturbing. She saw a man near the trails while she was driving. He was walking along the road covered in mud and blood. Are you thinking, wow, she witnessed the killer? Right. I mean, who else would have blood and mud on them like that?

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The girls' autopsies revealed they had been killed with a sharp object. There were no signs of sexual assault. Police kept those and many other details of the investigation from the public. Then, a major announcement. Police had obtained a photo of a man on the bridge that day.

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Police described him as a possible witness. Viewers responded, flooding the tip line. Several identified the same man, Ron Logan, that property owner.

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In the days after the murders, people in Delphi came out to support the families. They released lanterns in remembrance. They gathered for prayer vigils and hung ribbons with the girls' favorite colors. Libby's family says a CVS worker even made free copies of the girls' photos for their visitation. The line for it stretched the length of the building.

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But the small Delphi community was changing. People were fearful.

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The whole community was scared. And what about that man in the photo? Investigators described him as a possible witness. Was he something more? Were you trying not to scare the killer, maybe try to draw him in? Yeah, a little bit of both.

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When he doesn't come forward, he becomes your prime suspect that you have named Bridge Guy. They now believed he had to be the killer. Officers and agents from almost every corner of law enforcement were scrambling to figure out who he was. A week after the murders, they had an important update about that photo. For the first time, they revealed where the image had come from.

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One of the girls took a photo of the other, inching her way across the bridge. A final moment of innocence. Because the real danger wasn't beneath them. It was behind. A silhouette taking shape, growing as it picked up speed on the bridge, coming toward them. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Absolutely. When you think about these two girls, they knew something wasn't right.

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It wasn't taken by some random eyewitness or even a security camera. Incredibly, Libby herself captured the killer on her phone.

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It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

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When you think about these two girls. The phone's data revealed Libby hit record at 2.13 p.m., roughly six minutes after she posted that photo of Abby to Snapchat.

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Down the hill. Down the hill. The voice of the killer.

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To investigators, it sounded as though the man was ordering the girls down the hill to their deaths. And they thought they heard something else in that video, though they didn't reveal it at the time.

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A young victim recording her killer was more than enough to turn a small town's grief into a national news story.

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Tips were pouring in, thousands to sort through. When Connie Dillman learned where the girls were found, she believed she knew the killer.

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Ron Logan was Connie's ex-boyfriend, the man who owned the property where the girls were found.

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He just finally killed somebody. Connie said Ron once barricaded her inside his house. Another time, she said, he attacked her in his yard.

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Barbara McDonald covered the Delphi murders for Court TV. She spoke to some of those women.

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Oh, my gosh.

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But Logan was never charged with any crimes related to the women's allegations.

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Logan was a 77-year-old retiree living alone at the time of the murders. He told police he wasn't home the afternoon the girls were killed. He was out with his cousin running an errand.

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But then, two days later, he changed his story.

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As in, he had not driven Logan to the store. Why would he lie about that?

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Not only that, the cousin said Logan asked him to lie before the girls' bodies had even been found. It was time for investigators to take a closer look at Ron Logan.

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Police were moving in. An arrest was imminent.

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The hunt for a killer was still on, but some in town thought they already knew who it was. Ron Logan. His ex-girlfriend Connie wasn't the only person to report him. As many as 15 tips came in suggesting he was involved in the girls' murders. The investigation was nearly a month old when police arrested him, but not for the murders.

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All they had left in that moment, a cell phone, each other, and a split second to act. Delphi, Indiana, population 3,000, more or less. A rural community about an hour and a half's drive north of Indianapolis.

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Investigators pressed Logan about the murders to see if he'd confess, but he denied any involvement. They also searched his house.

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Logan pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge and violating his probation. He was sentenced to four years in prison. Police continued to investigate him, but Detective Holman had doubts Logan was involved in the murders. Did he look like Bridge Guy at all? His build, his age, his weight?

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They didn't find any direct evidence tying Logan to the case, and investigators eventually cleared him. But if not Logan, then who? What's going on?

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Where is this guy? Residents worried he would strike again. This was potentially a ticking time bomb with this killer. Big time.

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Five months after the murders, investigators released a sketch. It was based on information from that woman who'd reported seeing a muddy and bloody man.

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If the photo of Bridge Guy had been fuzzy, the sketch of him was detailed.

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Instead, it kicked up a hornet's nest. People were accusing each other on social media with little or no proof.

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More months ticked by. Libby's grandparents and Abby's mother, Anna Williams, tried to keep the case in the public eye.

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Along the way, the two families supported one another.

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The first anniversary of the girls' murders came and went. As the second anniversary approached, the families were frustrated there was still no arrest.

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Tony Liggett is the sheriff.

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Still, Libby's family remained hopeful.

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A few months after the second anniversary, Superintendent Carter held a press conference. His hope, smoke out the killer.

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Investigators believe their killer was someone living among them, someone from Delphi.

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One more thing to come out of that press conference. For the first time, investigators showed a short clip of Bridge Guy played on a loop.

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Still do, he says, though maybe a little less since that Monday, February 13th, 2017. The morning had started off promising. Blue skies, warm weather. Better yet, classes were canceled to make up for an unused snow day.

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The video generated more tips. None panned out. Then suddenly, there was a new name in the news.

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Who was this mystery man? And what did he have to do with the murders? You learned that Liberty had been in communication with shots.

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In early 2020, Delphi investigators were trying to figure out if the murders of Abby and Libby were linked to other crimes in the area. They reached out to Libby's sister, Kelsey.

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Kelsey told police in the days before the murders Libby had been chatting with Schatz.

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The profile showed a floppy-haired heartthrob with abs and tats who was rich and drove fancy sports cars. Police learned after the girls went missing, Kelsey looked for clues in Libby's social media.

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At the time, Kelsey didn't tell investigators about Schatz. But three years later, they knew a lot about him, including a disturbing connection he had with Libby. He had asked for explicit photos.

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Well, there wasn't a plan. Becky Patty is talking about her granddaughter, 14-year-old Liberty German, and her best friend, 13-year-old Abigail Williams, Libby and Abby. They'd had a sleepover at Becky's the night before.

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Becky wondered if he was part of a pedophile operation.

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And there was something else alarming. Police discovered the guy Libby had been talking to didn't exist. It turned out Anthony Schatz was not Anthony Schatz.

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Anthony Schatz was just a screen name?

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While investigating the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German... More than a year later in 2021, investigators asked the public for help.

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As journalists and true crime bloggers race to identify the person who created the fake profile, local NBC station WTHR tracked down the man in those photos.

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His real name is Vincent Kowalski. Once a model, he'd changed careers and joined law enforcement.

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Kowalski had nothing to do with sordid images of young girls or the murders of Abby and Libby.

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Even though he looked casual, interviewing as he worked out, this father of two girls was outraged when he learned someone had used his photos as bait.

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Police had a catfisher on their hands. But who was it? Are you thinking that this guy could be the killer, given the fact that he was talking to Libby over Snapchat not too long before the murders?

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To uncover the truth, the investigation would go into dark places. He's definitely a bad person who was doing bad things. And there would be allegations of something even more sinister.

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When investigators went public with the Anthony Schatz profile, they actually knew much more about the person behind it than they were letting on.

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So you just knew that he had been misrepresenting himself to young girls?

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Turned out he'd been the target of an entirely different investigation two counties away from Delphi. Back in 2017, a few days after Abby and Libby were murdered, the man posing as Anthony Schatz got an underage girl to send him her address. A day later, she saw a figure in a ski mask peeping through her bedroom window and reported the scary encounter.

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Police investigated and traced the account to a 22-year-old man named Kagan Klein. Who is Kegan Klein?

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Not long after that Peeping Tom incident, law enforcement raided Klein's home. They turned up more than a hundred sexually explicit photos and videos of underage girls on his electronic devices. It took three years, but he was arrested on child pornography charges. And that's when Delphi investigators spoke with him.

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Klein seemed to have a strong alibi that he was in Vegas at the time of the murders. But after a deep dive into the data on his phones, the Delphi investigators found out that wasn't true.

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The public trails on the outskirts of town. Kelsey dropped them off just before 2. They planned to stay for an hour, then call for a ride home. The hour came and went. Becky called Libby. Was it ringing or was it going straight to voicemail?

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not too long before the murders?

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When Court TV's Barbara McDonald learned Klein was in jail on child pornography charges, she contacted him. What happened? He talked to me. He gave me an interview from jail.

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But when it came to contact with Libby, Klein seemed evasive.

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Klein's phone activity showed he was at his grandmother's house 40 minutes from Delphi.

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And in the end, investigators couldn't prove he killed Abby and Libby.

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She alerted Abby's family that they couldn't find the girls. Then she reached out to her husband, Mike, Libby's grandfather.

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Another dead end.

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Klein would eventually plead guilty to 25 charges, including child porn and child exploitation. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Then, after years of dead ends, investigators would finally get a break. A conscientious volunteer happened to find a box and stumbled upon a new name on a tip sheet. I mean, could you believe it?

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The double murder case that law enforcement once thought would be solved quickly had haunted them for over five long years.

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By then, they'd received tens of thousands of tips, some from the earliest stages of the investigation hadn't been filed away properly.

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I'm here to help in any way. Over the years, a local volunteer named Kathy Shank dedicated countless hours organizing and digitizing those files.

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She was a former investigator with Child Protective Services and had an eye for detail.

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In September 2022, as the team prepared to move to a new location, Kathy was packing up files and stumbled on a box in the bottom of a drawer. Inside was a tip from early in the investigation before Kathy joined. It involved that man whose wife had seen the story on the news and urged him to report he'd been at the trail that day.

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Correct, yeah. To Kathy Shank, this could be their man. This could be Bridge Guy.

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Back then, a conservation officer met and spoke to the man who explained he'd been out of the trails around 1.30 to 3.30. The officer's report somehow got overlooked. Until now.

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The man who'd come forward all those years ago was Richard Allen, a 50-year-old Delphi man who worked at the local CVS. He was married with a grown daughter. So this is an average Joe, it seems like.

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Squeaky clean as far as law enforcement goes. Correct. Investigators went back over the evidence, including surveillance video from a business near the trail. In it was a black car. They couldn't confirm the license plate or who was driving, but they knew Allen owned something similar.

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But daylight was waning.

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He willingly went with you?

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Back to the investigation center, where Sheriff Liggett and another detective began their interview. Allen chose not to have an attorney present.

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When detectives showed Allen the picture of Bridge Guy, he bristled. He said it wasn't him, that he never saw Abby or Libby at the trail. And he changed his timeline. Now he said he was there earlier in the day. But what about that video of the black car? Did you confront him with that?

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The interview ended. He was free to go. But the investigation into Allen was just beginning. They got a search warrant and went back to his Delphi home. What do you find from the search warrants?

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Bridge guy? Yes. And they found something else, a Sig Sauer pistol like this one. They sent the pistol to the crime lab, where a state firearms expert tested it using .40 caliber bullets. She then compared markings on the bullets made by the gun with markings on the bullet found at the crime scene. Soon after, Sheriff Liggett got a call. Was it a match?

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This news is everything.

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Investigators thought they heard someone racking their gun on that video from Libby's phone. Now, with the bullet match, they were convinced it was Allen.

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Allen agreed to come in, again without an attorney. Lieutenant Holman did the interview this time and told Allen how the crime scene bullet matched to his gun.

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The tone in the interrogation room quickly became heated, and the lieutenant says Allen eventually threatened him.

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Liggett was a detective back in 2017. He figured the teens would show up soon enough.

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The detective had heard enough, and soon after that interview, police arrested Richard Allen for the murders of Abby and Libby. After so many false leads, Libby's grandparents were cautious when they heard the news.

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And on Halloween 2022, Today is not a day to celebrate. police unmasked the alleged killer.

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What was the reason, though?

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The case had become an international story, even more so after a stunning allegation surfaced. Could others have been behind the murders?

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For the people of Delphi, the news was still settling in that there'd been an arrest.

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Libby's grandparents were, of course, relieved. And as for the identity of the suspect, do you know Richard Allen? No.

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Many in Delphi did know Richard Allen. or at least had seen him working at that neighborhood CVS. A disturbing detail is that this man is the man who prepared the photos for the girls' funerals.

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For the victims' families, the arrest marked the first of many more startling revelations. The defense was about to drop an alternate theory of who did this and why, and it was a shocker.

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Eleven months after his arrest... Allen's attorneys surprised many with a pretrial filing, claiming the girls might have been killed in those woods by members of a pagan religion called Odinism.

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Though when he heard they'd been at the trail, he did wonder about the bridge.

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To explain that theory, Allen's attorneys met us in an area similar to the crime scene.

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Jennifer Ogier, Brad Rosey, and Andy Baldwin represented Allen. They say those sticks that were partially covering the girls' bodies were meant to send a message. and demonstrated for us how some of them were placed.

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Did not. They believe the sticks formed letters from an ancient alphabet known as runes, a way Odinism followers can communicate.

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And they point out that Libby's blood was found on a nearby tree and say it appears someone used it to create another Odinistic symbol that looked like this, an F. There's just no natural way that that shape

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While some thought the ritualistic killing theory was far-fetched, Allen's attorney said they weren't the first to bring it up.

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The Monon High Bridge is a relic from a past century. Trains once used it to cross Deer Creek, more than 60 feet below.

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Soon after the murders, it was the police who had looked into the possibility of a ritualistic killing.

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Sheriff Liggett says law enforcement concluded there was no connection between Odinism and the murders.

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Then, Allen's attorneys found themselves in hot water after some crime scene photos were leaked to several media outlets. Turned out, they came from their camp.

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Allen's attorney say a former associate who had access to their office copied the photos and unbeknownst to them sent the images around.

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The attorneys appealed the judge's decision and the state Supreme Court reinstated them. But the fallout from those leaked photos continued.

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A podcaster texted them to Becky. It was the first time she and Mike had seen the gruesome images of the girls.

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Libby's cousin, Sadie Mowdy, says the abandoned bridge was where young daredevils chose to hang out. I wouldn't even go out to the first platform.

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The defense now had to focus on the trial, which was just weeks away.

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The prosecution, on the other hand, had a possible ace up its sleeve, prison calls that would reveal some stunning conversations. When you heard that, did you think, game over?

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In the summer of 2024, Richard Allen's lawyers were revving up for trial. At a pretrial hearing, they presented that key part of their defense, that followers of a pagan cult killed Abby and Libby.

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Huge. Carroll County Prosecutor Nicholas McCleeland acknowledged that as strong as some of the evidence appeared to be, his case had holes too. Male DNA had been recovered at the crime scene, but the sample was too small to match to anyone.

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The image from the phone was grainy. The voice isn't perfect. So many things that... would be cons to a prosecution.

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Did you know if they were planning to venture out onto the bridge? No, we didn't.

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Nearly eight years after the murders, Richard Allen's trial got underway.

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Libby's and Abby's families did their best to drown out the noise. They sat on the same side of the courtroom in a show of solidarity.

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No cameras were allowed in court. Prosecutor McClellan set out to convince the jury there was only one man responsible for these murders, Richard Allen, a.k.a. Bridge Guy. He opened with this. This is about Bridge Guy, this is about a bullet, and this is about two young girls who were murdered. You made it very straightforward.

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He began his case by calling officers who described the crime scene and evidence gathered in vivid detail.

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he drove home the full horror of the murders by showing photographs of what had been done to Abby and Libby.

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McClellan laid out for the jurors his theory of how Allen carried out the murders.

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The prosecutor put the state's firearms expert on the stand. Her opinion was the bullet found between Abby's and Libby's bodies had to have come from Richard Allen's gun based on marks matching the gun's mechanism.

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McCleeland argued the moment Alan racked the gun could be heard on the 43 seconds of video captured by Libby.

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She was in death, almost your star witness.

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The prosecution said the phone provided a key timeline for the murders and a link to the killer. A number of witnesses testified the man in the video was the one they saw that day, including the woman who reported a man covered in mud and blood. All agreed he was Bridge Guy.

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As the trial progressed, the prosecutor used Richard Allen's own words against him. He argued Allen told law enforcement, before later changing his story, that he was on the trails during the window of the murders.

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It turned out that while he had been in jail, officers recorded some 700 phone calls between Allen and his wife and mother. In some of those calls, he confessed.

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Libby's family listened intently to the recordings. Did they seem believable?

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When the sun went down, Liggett started to worry. Soon, word was out and Delphi sprang into action. Its residents joined the search.

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And Alan didn't just make confessions to his family. Over the course of 21 months in jail, he made more than 60 apparent confessions to corrections officers, inmates, and also to the jail psychologist, Dr. Monica Walla. She said he told her he marched the girls across the creek and killed them with a box cutter, that he had planned to rape them, but got spooked by a passing van on a nearby drive.

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As the prosecution rested, it appeared it could be game over for Richard Allen. But Allen's attorneys argued nothing was what it seemed. They would counter that those weren't real confessions, that it wasn't Allen's bullet, and there was no proof he was Bridge Guy.

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As Richard Allen's defense team saw it, even though they had some setbacks before trial, the case against their client was thinned. There's just not much there.

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But the defense had some major obstacles to overcome.

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What's more, they argued, none of the witnesses could say for sure that Richard Allen was Bridge Guy.

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And while Allen stands about 5'6", some witnesses described Bridge Guy as medium height or even tall.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Neighbors and police, armed with flashlights, searched for hours in the dark, around trees and brush, along unsteady paths. But yet no one saw anything around the bridge area.

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The defense attorneys also poured cold water on the 43 seconds of audio and video captured by Libby. They argued the audio was muddy, the video grainy.

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But what about the unfired bullet found at the scene? The defense pushed back hard on the state's expert who said it was a match to Allen's gun.

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He argued there's a difference between fired bullets and unfired bullets ejected from a gun after it's been racked.

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But perhaps the most insurmountable evidence would be those 60-plus jail confessions.

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So they just vanished.

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The defense argued they were false confessions made under duress. Following his arrest, Richard Allen was jailed for months in a maximum security segregation unit. The state said it was for his own safety. His lawyers disagreed.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Liggett was at the station the next day when the call came in. It was a little past noon. It was the worst possible news.

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They argued those conditions also played into Allen's confessions to the psychologist.

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To bolster their argument, defense attorneys pointed to Allen's police interviews. Time after time, he insisted he was innocent.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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For nearly three weeks, jurors and the Delphi community were consumed by a trial that was as grueling as it was heartbreaking. Enduring it all and sitting together were Abby's and Libby's families.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Abby and Libby lay in a hidden depression of the forest floor about a quarter mile beyond the bridge. It was clear the girls had been murdered.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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In closing arguments, the defense told jurors not to trust much of the state's case, especially the testimony about the crime scene bullet matching Allen's gun.

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The prosecution hammered home that confession Allen gave to his prison psychologist about seeing the van on the day of the murders.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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The case was now in the hands of the jury. The defense felt confident.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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A verdict wouldn't come quickly. Hours soon turned into days. The jury goes out, and they're out for days. That's a long time for a jury.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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The judge read the decision.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Guilty on all charges. Outside the courthouse where the press and spectators had gathered, cheers erupted.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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A shaken town would want answers and an arrest. Neither would happen quickly. This was a long journey with a lot of suspects along the way.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Good morning. A few weeks later at a press conference, the prosecutor recognized an unsung hero of the case, Kathy Shank. She was the woman who five years after the murders found that file that led to Richard Allen.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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That sentence was 130 years, 65 years for Libby and 65 for Abby. Allen is appealing. Yet out of all the pain and sorrow came a ray of light.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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They checked with Abby's family and together came up with a plan.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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So they went bigger, much bigger.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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It's called Abby and Libby Memorial Park, a place where Delphi's heartbreak is slowly rewritten in every cheer, every moment of joy, a tribute to two best friends, forever together. What would you say to people watching?

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Sheriff Liggett, back at the station, could hardly believe what he was hearing. Two local girls found murdered near the Monon High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana. He raced to the area a short drive away.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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He was directed down a hill near the bridge and onto a patch of privately owned land.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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It was grim. Abby and Libby lay dead a few feet apart. Libby at the foot of a tree. Their throats had been cut.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Becky and Mike were searching in a different area when they heard the girls had been found. They raced back to the trail, assuming they were okay. Becky didn't realize her sister was one of the searchers who'd come upon the girls' bodies.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Investigators brought the families back to the station where they had set up a command center for the search.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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It fell to Mike to formally identify both girls. He remembered how surreal it felt. Just hours earlier, his granddaughter and Abby had been brimming with life, giggling during their sleepover.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Now the Patties and Abby's family had been thrust into a new, terrible kind of normal, one in which their girls existed only in photos and memories. I mean, there's so many beautiful photos of Libby and Abby, just two happy-go-lucky girls.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Abby had been the only child of a single mom. Libby and her sister Kelsey came to live with their grandparents after their mother and father split up.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Both Abby and Libby were good students. Abby loved crafts and music. Libby, music and sports.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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In fact, Libby was an all-around jokester at home.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Here she is giving a tutorial on shaving for the first time.

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She loved challenging anyone, especially her uncle, into ridiculous stunts.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Two girls, funny and sweet. Their families and the community were in mourning and on edge. Then, just hours into the case, investigators caught a break.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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I mean, this phone could be everything, depending on what you find on it.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Mike and Becky Patty knew nothing would ever be the same. Their granddaughter Libby and her friend Abby had been taken from them, and so violently.

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A Walk Through the Woods

90.631

Winter was masquerading as spring, teasing those tired of the cold to step outside. Two girls set out for a walk through the woods.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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I'm a mother of five girls.

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Yeah. The rest of the family gathered at the house to help any way they could.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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Sadie Mowdy remembers her Aunt Becky looking for Libby's older sister, Kelsey.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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At that point, police were still not releasing the girls' names. But everyone in Delphine knew. This is a small town, so word travels fast. This is a community that is hurting. Reporter Emily Longnecker covered the story for NBC's Indianapolis affiliate, WTHR. You could see it on people's faces.

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A Walk Through the Woods

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The investigation team included Indiana State Police. Doug Carter was the agency's superintendent. He was already fielding questions from the public, like, is this the work of a drifter, a serial killer, or someone already known to police?

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1001.587

That pin led them to yet another apartment complex. The family made their way into the building. Just started knocking on every single door. What are people telling you?

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1021.198

So you're just trying to narrow down which floor, which apartment.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1040.071

Finally, they got the perfect hit. Apartment 210. You knock on the door?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1049.953

So they knocked on the next door, apartment 212. A couple answered. The family asked if they'd seen anything. Seen? No, the couple said. But they had heard something.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

105.286

Especially if one of them was in trouble.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1082.485

The neighbors clocked that scream at 2.15 a.m., just three minutes before Jazzy dropped that pin. They said it sounded like it came from next door, apartment 210.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

110.754

This family went to the ends of the earth.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1101.579

Jazzy's mom was fearless, maybe even a little reckless.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1115.256

The family slowly made their way into the small one-bedroom apartment. Right away, something caught Katrina's eye.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1130.941

As you guys continue looking around the apartment, what else did you see?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

114.877

And the edge of the law.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1142.585

They opened it and saw a name. Jason Chen. And then we proceeded to call the police. For the second time that night, police met the family. The officer told them an investigator had already been assigned to the case.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1162.516

That was news to the family, who said they'd not been contacted by anyone.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

119.56

They'd only find out later if they had gone too far. Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2022, just two days before Thanksgiving. Jackie White and her family were heartbroken. The family matriarch, Granny, had cancer, and the prognosis wasn't good.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1198.874

The police issued a warning. Do not go back into the apartment.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1246.932

Jasmine Pace's loved ones had done all they could, and maybe more than they should, to find her. They'd broken into an apartment, then defied police instructions, and gone in again. What was it like to just be inside that apartment?

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1284.682

They didn't find anything new, but they were convinced Jazzy had been there. What's more, they were sure Jason Chen, the guy Jazzy had been seeing, lived in the apartment. His name was on the notebook and a neighbor confirmed it. Jason was the son of Chinese immigrants who owned a restaurant. The family lived 30 minutes outside of Nashville.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1308.484

But Jason moved to attend the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, where he majored in computer science. That's where Ryan Barrett met him in the summer of 2020.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1331.007

Ryan says he and Jason became good friends, that he was fun to be around. What was his demeanor like?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1342.892

The two got along so well, they became roommates and even landed jobs at the same place, a soap company.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1357.395

Now, Jazzy's family was convinced Jason had something to do with her disappearance. They took everything they'd gathered that could be used as evidence, Jazzy's driver's license and credit card, the cell phones and a tablet, and gave it to the police. And they didn't stop there. They had their family lawyer reach out to the district attorney general asking for help.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1392.031

Detective Zach Crawford headed to the apartment. When you got in there, how did you find the apartment? Was it clean? Was it messy?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1410.7

It smelled like it had possibly been recently cleaned.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1436.287

Then he noticed something.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1447.486

When you say blood transfer, you mean like a bloody footprint?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1452.288

So the crime scene unit comes in. What do they do?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1478.777

What do they find?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1567.457

It would now be Detective Crawford's job to find out. I mean, is your next step find Jason Chen?

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1589.147

Detectives searching for missing Jasmine Pace found so much blood evidence, they knew they had a homicide on their hands. What they didn't have was a body or a suspect in custody. It was now their mission to find both.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

161.704

The family all gathered at the hospital, including Jackie's cousin, Jasmine Pace. Jazzy, as the family called her, adored Granny.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1616.667

They homed in on the day after Jasmine disappeared. Jason's phone records revealed he went to Walgreens and Walmart, and security footage showed someone resembling Jason buying cleaning supplies.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1636.431

Once Jason Chen left his apartment on November 23rd, he never went back. Detectives continued to track his phone. Ultimately, where did you find Jason Chen?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1696.869

Jason refused to tell investigators anything. As news of his arrest spread across Chattanooga, one person listened with particular interest, his former roommate, Ryan Barrett. How unbelievable was it that your former roommate was wanted for murder?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1723.909

Ryan and Jason had their own strange falling out a few months before Jazzy disappeared. Ryan's online accounts were hacked. He suspected Jason was behind it, since he was the only one who had easy access to Ryan's phone.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1747.3

He even got fired from his job, he says, after some messages and social media posts from his account.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1761.141

Ryan says he doesn't know why Jason would do that to him, but he'd had enough and moved out.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1782.765

Ryan says they never spoke again. The day after Jason's arrest, Jasmine's family was on edge, desperate for the one thing still missing, her body. Talk to me about that process.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

1827.188

Detectives continued to search for clues as to where Jazzy's body might be. Location data from November 23rd put Jason on the banks of the Tennessee River. On December 1st, 2022, they searched the area and found her.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1880.239

Jasmine had been stuffed in a suitcase. She was handcuffed. And it got worse.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1891.366

60 stab wounds in all. As the family grieved, the man accused of killing Jasmine Pace sat behind bars. Thanks in large part, prosecutors said, to her family. How crucial was her family's involvement in all of this? Extremely. Hamilton County District Attorney General Cody Womp.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

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I don't know how the police department would have ended up getting a search warrant had it not been for her family.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1922.363

Crucial? Absolutely. But it was also a ticking time bomb. Jason Chen's attorney, Josh Weiss, says the entire crime scene was compromised the moment Jazzy's family stepped inside.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

1951.854

Police warned Jazzy's family about it that night.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

2001.977

Her family gathered in a courtroom to see Jason Chin stand trial for her murder. Jason's parents and brother were there too. What was it like for you to be in there, to be in that courtroom and be in the same courtroom as Jason Chin?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2023.496

By now, the judge had ruled to allow in evidence from Jason's apartment. Armed with that, prosecutors laid out their theory of what happened that night. The couple fought, and Jason launched a vicious, drawn-out attack. This wasn't heat of the moment, they said. It was premeditated murder. Prosecutor Paul Moyle, what would you identify as the challenges in this case?

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

205.152

Jackie grieved with her cousin Jazzy. The two worried about their moms. Granny had raised them both. So they made plans for the family to gather on Thanksgiving, just two days away. Jazzy helped lead the charge.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2064.07

They began by hammering home the brutality of the crime.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2067.753

This is the suitcase. in which Jason Chin stuffed the 98-pound body of Jasmine Pace. You know, he didn't just stab her 60 times. He then put her body in trash bags. He then put her body in a suitcase.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2089.462

The first witness up for the prosecution? Jasmine's mom, Katrina.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2093.984

Were you concerned at that point about the police investigation?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2110.711

Prosecutors knew the stakes. If they couldn't prove Jason meant to kill Jasmine, the jury could drop it to second-degree murder or even voluntary manslaughter. All of it was on the table.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2124.505

This was prolonged to some extent. We know that she was in his apartment until he leaves with the suitcase to go drop her body by the river.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2135.109

After that, prosecutors said Jason abandoned Jazzy's car in that parking lot where her family found it. Jason had pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder. So what his attorney, Joshua Weiss, said stunned everyone.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2159.032

It's certainly not often that you hear a criminal defense attorney say that his client's guilty.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2178.991

Weiss said Jason did kill Jazzy, but it wasn't premeditated, as prosecutors argued. Instead, he said, the evening began with the couple hanging out and drinking wine.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2226.696

stabbing Jazzy in a fight he didn't start.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2232.959

Prosecutors completely dismissed the self-defense theory and even brought in a forensic tech expert who testified that Jason was not on Tinder at the time Jazzy was killed. In fact, The only time he was on the dating app, they said, was the next morning.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2250.481

He's on social media, on Tinder, hitting on girls, and Jasmine is dead in his apartment, which really says everything you need to know.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2260.624

When it came time to cross-examine Jasmine's mother, Weiss tried to thread a very small needle, showing sympathy while still questioning the evidence.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2284.996

Both sides rested. Now, the case was in the jury's hands.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2292.86

Sarah Reed was juror number 11. There was no question that Jason killed Jazzy. The issue on the table was premeditation.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2329.893

Yeah. Surprising? I assumed that they were going to find Jason guilty, but that it might be over a period of hours or days. What we now know is that we had done our job.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2341.399

Now, Drewers had one more job to do, sentence Jason Chen. Before deliberating, they would hear from Jasmine's cousin, Jackie.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2360.563

Jurors had two choices, the possibility of parole in 51 years or life in prison with no chance of getting out.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

2377.501

Jason Chen is now serving a life sentence, no possibility of parole. Jazzy's family feels like they are serving a life sentence too. A lifetime of missing the beautiful spirit they all loved so much.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

246.67

The day before Thanksgiving, Jackie texted Jazzy to see how she was holding up.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

259.815

Was that a normal response from her?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

277.893

But then Jazzy texted to say she was spending Thanksgiving with a friend instead of the family.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

313.069

Jazzy's half-sister, Gabby Pace, also found it strange. especially when she got this Snapchat from Jazzy, a photo with the message, Baby, I'm good. What did you think?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

335.051

By that Friday morning, worry started to creep in. Jazzy's mother, Katrina, realized nobody had actually spoken to Jazzy in three days since the night Granny died.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

367.687

Her mom called Emma. The friend Jazzy said she was visiting.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

37.864

Her family catapulted the investigation. They took matters into their own hands.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

398.237

The search for Jazzy would force the family to go places and do things they never imagined.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

407.179

At this point, I mean, I'm not saying... It sounds like you all went into full investigation mode.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

436.081

November 26th, 2022. It had been four days since family and friends last saw Jasmine Pace. It was totally unlike Jazzy to disappear like that. Her family started tracking her down.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

460.225

Especially, they figured, for a bright and fun 22-year-old who was normally in constant touch. What was she like? Sweet.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

489.301

And also outdoorsy. She liked walking along the banks of the Tennessee River. Family friend Brianna Edge had known Jasmine since she was born. She always wanted to be where the adults were.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

512.341

As she got older, Jazzy wanted to be a part of the family business too. She started working at her mom and stepdad Scott's construction company.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

530.285

Jazzy had always been someone they could lean on in times of crisis. Her number one, I would say, was her family. Now, Jazzy might be the one in crisis. Her family kicked into high gear. Not only were they determined to find her, they were tech savvy. They went to the Verizon store and pulled Jazzy's phone records. One call in particular caught their attention. It happened on the day Granny died.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

557.75

A 71-minute call to a number they didn't recognize. The next day, her phone turned off. They couldn't ping her location, but they thought of something else.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

589.988

Once they got into Jazzy's email account... They found out that the passwords to her bank and social media accounts had been changed. It sounds like you all went into full investigation mode.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

608.979

By now, the family had accessed Jazzy's car app. Since the last time the family saw her, her car had been to two locations, and it was still at one of them, Mountain Creek Road. Jazzy's mom and stepdad raced over. Gabby arrived shortly after. And there it was, in the parking lot, Jazzy's SUV. But no sign of Jazzy. Jazzy's mom called the police. Hello.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

639.351

And before long, a patrol officer showed up, body cam rolling. So what's going on exactly? That's mom Katrina on the left, stepdad Scott on the right. They told the officer everything they'd learned so far.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

685.015

Just then, while the family stood in the lot, Jazzy seemed to emerge. A racy photo popped up on her Facebook account. That's when I got scared.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

720.914

Jazzy's mom wanted more. She asked them to pull any security footage from that parking lot.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

738.603

As Jazzy's family waited on that security footage, her mom remembered that long call Jazzy made the day Granny died. When she didn't recognize the number, she had called Jackie, who was helping from home.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

763.14

Jackie got right to work. While still on the phone with Jazzy's mom, she ran the number through one of her mobile payment apps.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

781.516

Katrina knew Jazzy had been casually seeing a guy named Jason Chen for a few months. Maybe he could help find her. So there, right in front of police, Katrina called him.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

812.987

Jasmine Pace's parents were busy tracking her digital footprint, trying to determine her movements since they last saw her. They learned she'd had a phone call with Jason Chen, a guy she'd met on a dating app. The two had been casually dating for a few months and had gone on a trip to Chicago together. Now, Jazzy's mom was on the phone with him.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

844.386

Jason told Katrina he hadn't spoken to Jazzy since that Monday, but she knew that wasn't true.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

864.386

Jazzy's mom pressed him.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

878.013

Jason said he did remember talking to Jazzy that day. He'd simply forgotten. For police, it wasn't much to go on.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

894.451

Katrina pushed them to do more.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

924.457

Eventually, the officers left. If police wouldn't follow the leads, the family would.

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The Pin at Apartment 210

94.322

How far would you go for your family? For the people you love most in the world?

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The Pin at Apartment 210

943.831

They went to the address they had for Jason, but all they found was an abandoned house. Frustrated, Jazzy's mom went back through Jazzy's texts from that night. And suddenly, Katrina realizes she has a text on her phone. Mm-hmm.

Dateline NBC

The Pin at Apartment 210

967.652

At 2.18 a.m., on the night she disappeared, Jazzy had sent her mother a pin with her location on it. Katrina was grieving Granny's passing, and never saw it. How shocking was that for her?

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A Little Patch of Perfect

4556.38

There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Keith and Andrea, available Wednesday.

Dateline NBC

11 Minutes

0.564

Did you shoot your parents?

Dateline NBC

11 Minutes

1020.481

So maybe Madison shot his dad to protect his mom? That sounds almost like you're offering him a story that you know fits the evidence and is also exculpatory.

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11 Minutes

1048.517

Back in the interrogation room, Madison stuck to his version of events.

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11 Minutes

1059.044

As the interrogation was wrapping up and the sheriff and Chris were walking out, Madison made a gesture in their direction. To the sheriff, that middle finger came out of nowhere. And later, investigators reported Madison was talking about homecoming on the way to take a blood sample.

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11 Minutes

1089.281

No, no. And here's a call that was recorded from jail a few days later.

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11 Minutes

109.063

Not available.

Dateline NBC

11 Minutes

1107.548

That kind of talk didn't prove anything, but it did strike investigators as odd as they continued gathering evidence. They decided to test some elements of Madison's story. Madison had said he didn't hear the gunshots. So law enforcement did an experiment, and they recorded it.

Dateline NBC

11 Minutes

113.442

School was a battlefield. Madison was picked on, the scrawny kid and a bit of a loner.

Dateline NBC

11 Minutes

1133.638

Madison's story is that he ran from his dad's house to a neighbor 200 feet away and that he didn't hear the shots on his way or once he arrived. Investigators listened closely. Here's what that test sounded like standing at the neighbor's front door. To investigators, that made Madison a liar, a troubled kid who had exploded into violence.

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11 Minutes

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You think Madison saw his parents getting ready to begin a process that might have resulted in him being locked up and he got angry and he decided to kill them?

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By the end of the week, 17-year-old Madison Holton was charged with murdering his mom and dad.

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The father had come home and found a lot of drug paraphernalia.

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Madison says he was no one's sitting duck.

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You're tougher than they thought you were.

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a polygraph generally guilty people do not ask for polygraphs madison stands by his story and supporters stand by him he didn't do it it's not possible i knew like he wasn't capable of that There is no more high school confidential. When a senior is charged with double murder, that is on every iPhone in class.

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Everything changed by Madison's senior year of high school. He sprouted to almost six feet and had less time for dad and mom.

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The sheriff believed that when Madison realized his parents were about to take him to juvenile court, he killed them and then lied about it to investigators. The sheriff also believed some time in jail might encourage Madison to come clean.

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That, however, did not happen. Not as the teenager sat in the county lockup. Mark. And not when he sat down to talk with us. Did you shoot your parents? No. Either one of them?

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Did you ever have your hands on that gun that day? No. You hear any gunshots when you're on your way over to the neighbors? No, I didn't. Under advice of counsel, Madison wouldn't talk specifics about the day of the shootings. He did tell us his story of how his family started to fall apart.

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Could you tell there was tension in the house?

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He says the Holton house became an unpleasant place to live.

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After his parents separated, Madison lived with his dad and was present when his father discovered April had a new boyfriend.

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Hannah Traylor and Madison grew up in the tiny town of Eclectic, Alabama.

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Madison was remembering all of this sitting in jail. Months and months contemplating the past. You wrote people letters. Yeah. Apologizing. in some cases, for things you've done. Yeah.

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You still thought you had a future. I knew I had a future. Madison's present, though, was the four walls of a cell. Time in jail did not motivate him to confess to crimes he says he didn't commit. His story never changed from the one he told the night his parents were shot.

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Generally, guilty people do not ask for polygraphs.

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As Madison crossed over into the land of teendom, his parents found themselves without a map.

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That polygraph never happened, and Madison remained a teenager facing two murder raps. Law enforcement was lined up against him. His mom's family felt differently. They saw Madison behind bars as just another tragedy.

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Mike hadn't even known Madison well before all of this.

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And he was pretty solidly in your corner.

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And Mike was going to make sure his nephew didn't spend his life locked up. He had worked as a police officer and was now hunting for anything that might prove Madison's innocence. He didn't do it.

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If Madison had committed this crime, if he'd shot both his parents at pretty close range, he'd have some blood on him. He'd have some forensic evidence on him. A former FBI agent joins the case. This is the same make and model of gun. Same maker, it's a .380 Cobra. With some intriguing detective work about the shooting. Two life sentences is a long time for anyone.

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When you're 17, it's unthinkable. Behind bars, Madison Holton prayed for the light at the end of the tunnel. And in December 2017... My wife and I were able to eventually bond him out of jail.

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Where'd you get the money for Madison's bond?

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Madison was out, but far from free. Now he was prepping for a murder trial with the help of his twin uncles. His uncle Mike discovered information critical to Madison's defense when he went through Madison's dad's autopsy report.

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Michael Holton had a cocktail of tramadol, oxycodone, and hydrocodone in his system at the time of his death. Was pretty much everybody in your family aware that Michael had a drug problem?

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And it's an embarrassment.

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Chris speculated that on the day of the shootings, Michael was using the latest problem with their son as a way to win April back.

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She says, it's too late for that conversation.

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Mike learned Madison's dad might have thought about suicide in the past. It was right there in the pages of his diary. To April, he wrote, I just can't go on knowing you were with somebody else, and it was either me or the both of us.

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Madison's uncles shared their discoveries with his court-appointed attorney. And they worried. The family didn't have money for fancy experts or the things they would need to make a strong case. As his uncles stressed, Madison went to church. And that's where everything changed in the form of Greg Biggs.

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They opened a door, and Madison walked through it.

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Greg is a former FBI agent and state's attorney. He knew his way around a case file and offered to help. He says the impressions deputies formed during the investigation were off base. But his parents have just been killed, and he's, what, talking about homecoming?

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April worried about where this road might take her son. So she begged her brother Chris, a police officer, to talk some sense into Madison.

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And if law enforcement didn't catch Madison in tears, Madison said he had a good reason and said as much in the interrogation.

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Greg says the physical evidence supports Madison's story that his parents had been fighting. April had Michael's DNA under her fingernails. Michael had scratches on his face. And If Madison had shot them during the fight, where was the proof of that?

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Law enforcement was never able to lift a full print from the gun. And the only DNA they found was April's on the trigger. And what about that head wound? The one a pathologist said made Michael's death look like a homicide?

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If investigators thought it was difficult for Michael to shoot himself at that odd angle, defense attorney Biggs demonstrated for us how easy it could be using an unloaded gun identical to the one found at the scene. This is the same make and model of gun.

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Greg said he didn't even need the forensics to show Madison was innocent. Common sense, he claimed, said it all. Remember, Madison's dad had handcuffed him behind his back. And when deputies arrived after the shootings, they found Madison still in those handcuffs.

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The sheriff's theory? Madison had been able to take the cuffs off using a handcuff key investigators found in the living room.

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At the same time Madison was going through his teenage rebellion, his parents, April and Michael, were separating. They were united in their message to Madison. Mess up again, and you'll go to jail. He had one chance left, and on September 11, 2016, he blew it. While his dad was at work, Madison threw a house party.

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Wait, wait, wait. That's what you think Madison did? You think he took his handcuffs off and shot his parents and then put the handcuffs back on? Yes. Yes. I think that's what happened. Did you slip out of the handcuffs? No. And commit murder and then put the handcuffs back on?

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Would you know how to do that?

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The state was moving ahead. A date for Madison's double murder trial was set. They seemed pretty determined.

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Some jaw-dropping news that no one expected. Did you have your suspicions about what was coming? No. Murder has a way of splitting a small town in two. That's what happened in eclectic Alabama after the killing of April and Michael Holton. Each side felt they knew what had happened on that September afternoon in 2016. To County Sheriff Bill Franklin, it was clear.

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Madison Holton killed his parents after their threats to take him to court.

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Just as sheriff's investigators said Madison could have gotten out of his handcuffs and committed a double murder, the lack of blood on him was also easy to explain. It was a small caliber weapon, and a small caliber weapon doesn't cause a whole lot of initial damage to a person. So it's conceivable that Madison was involved in that shooting and didn't get any blood on him. That's correct.

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Even if Michael was physically able to shoot himself, he'd hardly seem suicidal to the sheriff's son, who was that first deputy on the scene.

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Did your deputy, in that initial encounter with Mr. Holton, describe him or think of him as being under the influence of any kind of drug? None whatsoever. And he didn't seem excessively angry? No, no. The showdown was set for October 22nd, 2018, the first day of Madison's murder trial. This is the start of war, you know?

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That situation goes from calm to murder in 11 minutes?

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Madison, who'd always been so convinced he would be found not guilty, was worried. He'd found a new girlfriend while out on bond and told her this.

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In court, attorneys were about to start the last phase of jury selection. when suddenly the mood in the room seemed to shift.

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The sheriff was there too, waiting for proceedings to begin. Did you have your suspicions about what was coming? No. What was coming was a stunning announcement from the district attorney. We don't have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. After two years of investigating, prosecutors had decided they didn't have enough. We are ethically obligated at this point to dismiss those charges.

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If this had been a battle, then the DA had just retreated. The murder charges were dismissed, just like that. In a press conference, the DA explained the pathologist, who'd already ruled Michael's death a homicide, was not prepared to say on the stand that he was 100% sure. The most they could say was it's more likely than not a homicide, which is not beyond a reasonable doubt.

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And so the answers Eclectic was waiting for never came.

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Tony prefers to think about his friend Michael in happier times.

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Tanya says she thought of April every day throughout Madison's ordeal.

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For the sheriff, the murder case is far from over.

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you could refile against Madison? Absolutely. Which is why Madison doesn't want to discuss the specifics of the case. He's not cleared. He's just not charged.

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Madison is hoping to live out the rest of his life as a free man. He finished high school, and he's joined the Army to help pay for college. He's even considered becoming a criminal defense attorney. You ready to go back in the courtroom? Oh, yeah. Maybe not wearing handcuffs.

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Chris has a twin brother, Mike, who thought Madison's dad had good reason to be embarrassed. Michael Holton had a reputation to protect in Eclectic.

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They are dreams Madison shares with his mother when he goes to visit her grave. She's buried right next to his dad. You're visiting her grave, but he's five feet away or less.

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What do you say to your mom when you go?

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When Michael Holton walked into the house, he found the remnants of a teenage party. Homemade bongs were scattered throughout the house. A box that smelled suspicious.

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Bill Franklin is sheriff of Elmore County. and the deputy sent to the house that day happened to be his son. When Deputy Franklin arrived, Michael had something to say.

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Putting a kid in handcuffs says either I'm disciplining you and I'm serious about this or I'm afraid of you. Possible that that's what was going on there? Could have been. Could have been. The deputy reported April was in the living room, Madison sullen on the couch, his hands cuffed behind his back. Michael asked the deputy how, as parents, they could get the juvenile courts involved.

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Call it tough love if you want. To the sheriff, Michael and April just seemed to be grasping for a solution.

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But these were not people who were in the midst of some huge fight? No, no, not at all. The deputy left Michael and April with instructions about how to get a copy of the police report the next day, a Monday.

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Now law enforcement was rushing back to Michael Holton's house. Gunshots had been fired. Only three people had been in that home, and now one of them was dead, another lay dying. What had happened in just 11 minutes? We noticed trauma, what appeared to be blood trauma. A marriage on the rocks. What did you see?

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and bodies in the bedroom. We discovered what appeared like an entry wound to the back of his head.

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Michael Holton's front lawn was a disaster scene with everyone trying to make sense of what had happened. Inside, two people lay on the bedroom floor, a pistol between them. All arriving deputies knew for sure was that the situation had escalated in almost no time at all. About 4.48, our deputy leaves. 4.59, we receive another 911 call. So whatever happens, it happens in 11 minutes. That's right.

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Captain Chris Ogden was an investigator on the case. Madison left his residence and reported to his neighbor that his parents were involved in a physical altercation. Madison told investigators it all started. as soon as the deputy who'd been there about the house party left.

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After his parents came back in after speaking with the deputy, they went into the bedroom and became involved in a physical fight. Does Madison say what the fight was about or what sparked the fight? I believe the assumption was obviously it had to do with Madison. On the phone with 911, the neighbor said it was an attempted murder-suicide. Michael Holton was dead by the time deputies arrived.

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Madison's mom was unconscious but breathing. So investigators' first thought was Mr. Holton shot his wife and then himself.

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April's injuries suggested she'd been shot through her hand first, as if she'd put it up to protect herself. And then, as she turned her face away from the gun, she was shot in the head. Michael's injuries appeared self-inflicted. And we noticed trauma, what appeared to be blood trauma in his mouth. The first formulated thought is, well, he probably shot himself in the mouth.

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The long road of parenthood, always watching as your kids grasp at life. You cheer from the stands. Do your best to keep them safe, hoping they make it through this world in one piece. Madison Holton was born a handful. His parents, April and Michael... could barely keep up.

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Earlier, they'd seemed like two parents on the same page about their teenaged son. What had happened to this couple in only 11 minutes? April and Michael got together in high school. They married after graduation and pretty quickly became the parents of three kids.

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Made it seem effortless?

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Michael Holton's friend Tony remembers him as a fixture in Eclectic.

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He and April seemed happy.

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And then that changed.

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What did you see?

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Tanya says April felt she couldn't do anything right in the marriage. By summer 2016, she was done. April filed paperwork for a divorce.

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Was Mike at peace with it? No. No, Mike was not. Too late. April had made her decision. And on September 11, 2016, April only answered Michael's call because the latest family crisis was about Madison.

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Sounds like she didn't want to go over to Lex.

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So had Michael Holton just snapped in a fit of sorrow and rage? That's what it looked like to investigators. At first. So when you finally actually move his body. We discovered what appeared like an an entry wound to the back of his head. So that's the first false note here. That changed the dynamics of the investigation.

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The next morning, a state pathologist confirmed Michael Holton had a close contact wound at the base of his head. And to investigators, the angle seemed telling.

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Upside down and using his left hand. The thing about that is, Michael Holton was right-handed. Normally when men commit suicide, they use their dominant hand. Sure. Not their weaker hand. That's right. To the sheriff and his investigators, that made suicide improbable. And the pathologist agreed. He classified Michael Holton's death a homicide.

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This was now a murder investigation. And if there were three people in that house and two were victims, that simple arithmetic made Madison the prime suspect.

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Madison's dramatic story. Will police believe it?

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The doctor down there says they didn't shoot themselves. He didn't seem that upset.

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April Holton's twin brothers, Chris and Mike, were keeping vigil in the ICU. Their sister had been shot in the head, and there was little doctors could do.

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Worst day of your life?

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One person who did not get to say goodbye was April's oldest son. Madison was now a murder suspect. He'd been questioned that morning at the sheriff's office. After one round of the interrogation, the sheriff asked Madison's uncle, Chris, to join them.

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Tanya was Madison's mom's best friend. She says Madison was always sweet and a little different.

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Here's what Madison says happened after the first deputy left.

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Madison said he didn't see or hear what happened next, not even the gunshots while he was at his neighbor's house. The sheriff wasn't buying that one bit.

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Investigators thought Madison didn't seem like a kid who was sad about what had happened to his mother and father.

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And Madison's own uncle, an officer himself, knew the significance of this moment.

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Meanwhile, police blasted that sketch of the suspect everywhere.

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One officer went to the home of a man who resembled the suspect.

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A big disappointment for investigators, but the tips kept pouring in.

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And the man seen running just miles from where the boys disappeared. Anything to give us a clue. All of them turned up nothing. How low could you get in those choppers?

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As they continued to pursue more than 700 tips, police developed other theories about the case. Could someone who knew Susan be behind the kidnapping? They questioned friends and coworkers, including that new boyfriend of hers, Tom Finley. family members, too.

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Tonight, the tragedy that gripped a nation 30 years ago and still won't let go.

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including David Smith. Susan had custody of Michael and Alex. Could David or someone else have conspired to have the boys kidnapped?

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investigators gave David a polygraph test, which he passed. What did the sheriff, what did those investigators tell you privately about their theories, what they thought may have happened?

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Then suddenly, a new tip from 3,000 miles away, and this one sounded different.

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Day six in the search for Michael and Alex Smith was Halloween, warm and sunny. But fear hung in the air in Union as parents and kids headed out to trick-or-treat.

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Michael Cogdell was a reporter for WYFF, the NBC affiliate in Greenville, South Carolina.

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Alongside the fear, he saw something he didn't expect.

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Two brothers missing for nine agonizing days. A nationwide manhunt with a heartbreaking end. And the mother at the center of it all, speaking out for the first time in decades. While the father continues his fight for justice.

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What do you remember most about that period of time?

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It was the story that broke America's heart.

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I grew up in South Carolina and remember the extensive media coverage and the endless waiting.

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For you, day in, day out, the roller coaster of emotions, how did you grapple with it?

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He cooperated, hoping law enforcement would stop looking at him and find the carjacker.

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The national search for Michael and Alex continued while local investigators worked their way down the list of Susan's family and friends. They focused on her relationship with Mitchell Sinclair, the man she said she was going to visit on the night of the carjacking. Sheriff Wells was especially interested in Sinclair after seeing an interview he did with a reporter for Current Affair.

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Truth's gonna come out.

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Says it is. Police questioned him several times. Turned out, he wasn't even home that night.

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Investigators were also taking a close look at Susan as a mom and heard nothing but good things.

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Then on the eighth day, a true glimmer of hope. At 3.30 a.m., a call came into the command center, a sighting of a young boy who matched the description of 14-month-old Alex riding in a car with South Carolina plates. He'd been dropped off at a motel in Washington State.

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Sheriff Wells appeared elated.

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Susan and David rushed to the command center. Three hours passed. The town of Union held its breath. Then Sheriff Wells addressed the press once again.

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The news was crushing. The little boy abandoned in Washington State was not Alex Smith after all.

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Soon after, what everyone hoped would be a joyous appearance by Susan and David became yet another anguished plea.

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But almost as soon as Susan and David finished their nationally televised plea, the story took another turn. That night, Dateline got a tip that crime lab technicians were headed to Susan's home. Our cameras captured law enforcement going into the house. They took photographs, examined paperwork, dusted apparently for fingerprints, and went into the crawl space underneath the home.

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Can you tell us what you're doing? The search ended about two hours later with investigators carrying several paper bags out of the house. To outsiders, it didn't look like investigators were any closer to answering the painful question, where were Michael and Alex?

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But for insiders, the investigation was becoming laser-focused on the only witness in the case, the woman at its center, Susan Smith herself. For more than a week, the public saw a heartbreaking scene. Two young parents pleading for their children's safe return.

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But at the command center, Sheriff Wells had been verifying Susan's story. And not everything checked out.

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Information from the Department of Public Safety had landed on Sheriff Wells' desk. He learned there was no way that light could have turned red.

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Without another car, the light would stay green. The sheriff tried to keep his doubts about Susan's story under wraps, but other officers were coming to the same conclusion. What do you recall about how members of law enforcement were talking about the case?

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While retracing the steps Susan said she made that night, investigators discovered something astonishing. That night, you were actually having her followed.

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It all started in the tiny town of Union, South Carolina. A rural community, textiles and farming were the big businesses there. It had just a few traffic lights. Church-going neighbors would wave on their morning walks. The people here are friendly. Harold Thompson grew up in Union and is now the mayor.

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Tiffany continued to follow her.

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Tiffany then went to visit a friend nearby. And when she came back 45 minutes later, Susan's car was gone.

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Investigators couldn't find any witnesses who saw where Susan went that night. They were becoming more and more convinced she was hiding something. So they brought in SLED agent Peter Logan, a polygraph expert, to meet with Susan. We interviewed him back in 2000. Susan Smith showed up with her family, and I introduced myself to her.

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Agent Logan quickly built a rapport with Susan and asked her if she would agree to a polygraph test. She said yes. Then there comes a point where Susan says to you that she thought that she was probably a suspect. When she said that to you, what did you think?

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He didn't tell her the results. Instead, he said she'd done enough for the day and sent her home. But it didn't take long before rumors that Susan failed a polygraph circulated through the small town of Union.

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Susan was supposed to come back the next day to continue the polygraph. But that didn't happen.

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Agent Logan shared with Dateline this newly unearthed tape of that call.

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Then he brought up a rumor he'd heard that Susan told her mom she'd failed a polygraph. He tried to reassure her, saying the results were inconclusive.

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He asked her to write down everything she could remember from that night. She agreed and said she'd meet with him again the next day.

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When Susan returned the next morning to continue a polygraph, Agent Logan gently explained that part of her story did not make sense, that the light would not have turned red.

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But then she said the agent was right. The carjacking had happened somewhere else, 15 miles away in a town called Carlisle.

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She told him that when she was 18, she had an affair with a married man who used to live in Carlisle.

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By the time Susan and the agent left Carlisle, it had grown dark. So he told her to go home and write down exactly what happened at this new location.

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So Agent Logan alerted Sheriff Wells that Susan had changed her story. Then they put their heads together and came up with a plan for the next day. A carefully orchestrated dance that would lead to an unimaginable admission.

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But that all changed the night of October 25th, 1994. Around 9 p.m., a young woman banged frantically on the door of this house. Homeowner Shirley McLeod answered.

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November 3rd, 1994. For nine days, Americans had been glued to their TVs, hoping for the safe return of two young boys.

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That morning, Susan and David Smith appeared on the Today Show.

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The public had no idea Susan had changed her story, but it was clear feelings toward her were shifting. Katie Couric asked about the police search of her home the night before.

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Just hours after that interview, Susan handed agent Pete Logan a written statement of her new version of the car jacket. Logan recorded their interview that day.

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Agent Logan says he could tell she was getting tired. It was time to set in motion the plan he and Sheriff Wells had worked out. He asked the sheriff to come into the interview room and explain that Susan had changed her story, pretending the sheriff didn't already know.

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Susan repeated her news story that the carjacking actually happened in Carlisle. That gave Sheriff Wells an opportunity to pounce.

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After nine days of intense investigation, hundreds of tips, and a search that consumed the country, Susan Smith finally told the truth. She'd killed her two young boys.

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They gave her a pen and paper, and she wrote down her confession. I dropped to the lowest when I allowed my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. She told the sheriff where to look for her car. A few hours later, divers found it at the bottom of John D. Long Lake, two small bodies strapped in car seats in the back. Sheriff Wells alerted the press.

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Shirley's son immediately called 911.

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Did you think initially maybe

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No. The question of what happened to the boys had been answered, but why it happened would take years to untangle. A highly emotional trial would rivet the nation and have neighbors taking sides. What were people saying leading up to the trial?

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Family secrets would spill out, setting the stage for an emotional showdown.

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It was a heartbreaking end to an already tragic story.

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What was the initial reaction? Anger.

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Susan's attempts to blame a black man inflame painful stereotypes. Union Sheriff Jeff Bailey.

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Susan's brother, Scotty, addressed the racial issue at a press conference.

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Amidst the tense climate, police drove Susan to the courthouse the day after her confession.

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Three days after Susan Smith confessed to killing her sons, Michael and Alex Smith were laid to rest. Their father, David, inconsolable as he walked into the church to say a final goodbye.

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Forever?

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Scores of strangers felt his pain and gathered outside the church to pay their respects. You still can't grasp and say, why would somebody do anything like that, let alone a mother? Nearly a month later, David gathered the courage to face Susan.

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Did she ask you to do anything during that conversation? Did she ask... For you to testify on her behalf, did she ask? No, she didn't even ask for my forgiveness. Did you ask her why?

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David did not buy Susan's apology or her apparent remorse. and neither did prosecutors. They believed Susan's actions were premeditated and decided to seek the death penalty. Despite her confession, Susan pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder. What were people saying leading up to the trial?

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Many in the community were uncomfortable with the idea of sentencing a person to death, especially a woman. But the young prosecutor in charge of the case, Tommy Pope, decided that shouldn't matter.

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Susan and her husband David lived in Union and had two little boys, Michael, three, and Alex, 14 months.

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Less than a year after she killed her boys, Susan stood trial for their murders.

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Once again, news crews from all over the country descended on the small town of Union.

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The prosecution was ready to present its case.

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Prosecutors told the jury Susan's guilt was not in question. Her handwritten confession made that clear. Then they presented their theory of why she did it.

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That man was Tom Finley, the wealthy coworker Susan dated after her marriage fell apart. The prosecution argued Susan was in love with him. There was just one problem.

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Prosecutors showed jurors a letter Tom wrote to Susan a week before she killed her children. In it, he explained why he ended their relationship. Susan, I could really fall for you. But, like I have told you before, there are some things about you that aren't suited for me. And yes, I am speaking about your children. The fact is, I don't want children.

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And I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's children either. Prosecutors argued those words pushed Susan to murder.

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The prosecution argued that Susan's carjacking story was a cold, calculated plan. Her failure to try and save her own sons was proof.

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Experts testified it took six minutes for Susan's car to sink, and played the simulation video for the jury.

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Day after day, David listened to testimony about the deaths of his sons. And each day, he was forced to look at the woman who killed them. As you sat there, what was going through your mind?

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But now they were missing. Sheriff Howard Wells raced to the scene.

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I did. Of course, David never acted on those thoughts. He was hoping the state would put Susan to death. But defense attorneys would have something to say about that. They had a very different explanation for why Susan killed her children.

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Susan Smith's lawyers had done everything they could to keep the death penalty off the table. Was there ever a plea deal offered? Absolutely, yes.

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Lead attorney David Brunk.

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The defense saw just one option, lay out the case for why Susan should not be sentenced to death.

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The time that you spent with her, preparing for her defense, what was she like?

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Out of the gate, they offered a very different explanation for why Susan killed her sons.

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They argued Susan wasn't homicidal that night. She was suicidal. To prove it, defense attorneys would present the details of Susan's past attempts to take her own life. Law enforcement agents were also called as witnesses to share what Susan told them.

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Agent Pete Logan spent days observing Susan during the search for her boys. He testified he believed her account, that she tried to take her own life as well that night.

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They told the jury Susan didn't kill her children to be with a wealthy man. To be clear, there was a wealthy boyfriend. Yes. Okay.

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The defense argued what happened at the lake stemmed from trauma far older than a recent breakup. It began when she was a child.

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Susan told him she was driving with her boys that night to visit a friend named Mitch Sinclair and stopped at a red light. She said that's when a black man suddenly accosted her with a gun. After giving her statement, Susan called her husband David. What do you remember about that?

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The defense hired a renowned psychiatrist to evaluate Susan and testify about her past.

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And the defense argued those untreated scars and depression led to suicidal thoughts.

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The last attempt, so serious, Susan, was hospitalized. While you were dating, even when you were married, did she seem like she was mentally ill at any point? No. No depression? No. No. Seemed totally normal. Yes.

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Susan's attorneys presented even more evidence to shed light on her behavior. It involved her relationship with stepfather Beverly Russell.

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Susan reported the abuse to a teacher. Social services investigated and Russell confessed. But after a closed court hearing, no criminal charges were filed. Russell did agree to move out and undergo family counseling. After Susan's arrest, it was Russell who took out a mortgage to pay for her defense. Bev Russell's quite the interesting character in all of this.

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She's an abuser, and oh, by the way, he hires you to represent her. Yes. Expert witnesses testified the sexual abuse was a major contributor to Susan's depression, promiscuity, and insecurity. And it all came crashing down at that lake.

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In the year leading up to the boys' deaths, the defense told the jury that Beverly Russell had more sexual encounters with Susan.

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The defense argued Susan worried it would come out during her divorce.

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The defense had done all it could to garner sympathy for Susan Smith and rested its case. But the trial would have one more twist. At the last minute, the judge allowed jurors to consider a lesser charge. It took the prosecution by surprise.

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Would the jury spare Susan Smith's life? On July 22nd, 1995, in the sweltering heat of a South Carolina summer, the jury and the Susan Smith trial started deliberations. Do you remember what it was like, Tommy, waiting for that verdict to come back from the jury?

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Just two hours later, the jury returned with the verdict, guilty on two counts of murder.

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Now, Susan Smith breaks decades of silence. Should she be released?

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And right on cue, Mother Nature offered the town a bit of relief as well.

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The prosecution had won the first battle, but another lay ahead. The penalty phase. Given the evidence, given the confession, given the mounting publicity, how worried were you that she was in fact going to be executed?

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This time, the defense could call character witnesses to testify, people who knew Susan well. What was the strongest testimony that you had?

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But the defense's most riveting testimony came from Susan's stepfather, Beverly Russell. He read from a letter he'd written to Susan after her arrest. In it, he acknowledged his sexual abuse and apologized for the damage he'd caused.

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But the prosecution had a completely different take and reminded the jury that Susan wasn't the victim in this trial. Her sons were. David took to the stand to share his fondest memories.

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The prosecution wanted Susan to pay for the terrible agony she'd caused and hoped the jurors would too. They deliberated just two hours before agreeing on a sentence. Life in prison.

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Lead prosecutor Tommy Pope says it was a hard loss to accept, but he has no regrets.

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The sheriff put out an APB while David and Susan went on camera to appeal for help.

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A few weeks after the verdict, Dateline's Dennis Murphy talked to five of the jurors.

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But that life sentence didn't guarantee Susan would spend the rest of her days in prison. After 30 years, she'd be eligible for parole, something David could not live with and would fight tooth and nail to prevent.

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In the years after his boys were murdered, David Smith's heartbreak was so all-consuming, he sometimes thought about taking his own life. There were a few times. Take me back to one of those times.

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But thank goodness he didn't do it. Susan's life sentence didn't put David at ease. She would still be eligible for parole after 30 years, and it weighed on him.

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At first, David put the thought of Susan's potential freedom in the back of his mind. He and Tiffany, who'd remained by his side, focused on building a life together. They married in 2003.

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And while David didn't think he would have more kids, along came a daughter, Savannah. How does something like that change you as a father? When you lose two kids the way you lost them,

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As for Susan, her name still made headlines periodically, mostly when she found herself in trouble. In 2000, two guards were fired and later convicted of having inappropriate relationships with her. Susan was transferred to a different prison. She was also punished several times for possessing illegal drugs.

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When you heard those things, did it surprise you?

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Not much else was known about Susan's life in prison. And then, in 2004, Dateline producer Carol Gable wrote to Susan asking for an interview. Though South Carolina doesn't allow prisoners to do on-camera or phone interviews, Susan was allowed to write letters.

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The correspondence would continue for 20 years and give a rare look into Susan's life in her own words. When you wrote that initial letter to her, what were you hoping to accomplish?

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Susan would end up sending more than 50 letters, some casual, others more revealing.

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In her letters, Susan wrote about her struggles with mental health.

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She said she drove a few miles until the man told her to stop.

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She also said she attempted suicide three times while in prison.

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As the years passed, Susan sent cards. She wrote about getting therapy, medication, and a job.

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One thing Susan can never change is what she did at the lake that night. In a recent letter, she included what she says is her best explanation for what happened.

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She said she stopped the car from going into the lake several times before finally jumping out, and then she let it roll in.

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Susan says she accepts responsibility for what she did. David disagrees.

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You don't think she's sorry?

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By November 2024, Susan was 53 and believed she was ready to reenter society. She would argue as much at her parole hearing, but David would also be there fighting to keep Susan in prison. You don't think she's been rehabilitated?

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The months before Susan's parole hearing were anxious times for David and Tiffany Smith.

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The day finally arrived, a rainy November morning in 2024. For David and Tiffany, it was deja vu.

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But Susan would not face the cameras outside. She appeared virtually from prison where she'd spent decades. Her trial attorney, David Brunk, believes Susan should be released.

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Michael and Alex are beyond harm or help. Susan's parole attorney, Tommy Thomas, told the board Susan's untreated mental health issues led her to the lake that night.

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He said Susan would live with her brother back in Union and try to become a counselor if granted release.

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And then, for the first time since 1994, Susan Smith appeared on camera to speak on her own behalf.

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The board asked what she would say to the law enforcement community who worked tirelessly for nine days to find her children.

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Susan acknowledged she hasn't been a model prisoner but claimed she's changed.

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In closing, she begged the board for her freedom.

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For Sheriff Wells, it was an all hands on deck moment. He sprang into action, ordering his deputies to hunt down the carjacker and find Michael and Alex.

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But the hearing wasn't over. David and Tiffany were about to address the board. They filed into the room, flanked by family and friends, all wearing a pinned photo of Michael and Alex on their chests. Tiffany cautioned the board not to be swayed by any of Susan's arguments.

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And then, all eyes were on David Smith.

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After three decades, Susan's fate lay in the hands of the parole board. Its decision was just moments away. After an hour of tense, emotional testimony at Susan Smith's parole hearing, the decision came quickly in the end. The board denied Susan's request. By that point, she had left the Zoom hearing. Once again, David spoke to the swarm of cameras outside.

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For now, Susan Smith remains in prison. But going forward, she'll be up for parole every two years.

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But what police hoped would be a quick search stretched into nine days that captivated the country. We'll take you inside the investigation with newly unearthed audio tapes.

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And every time he goes up to the parole board, Tiffany says she will be there with him. How hard has this been on you over the last 30 years?

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David and Tiffany don't live in Union anymore. They have a home near Spartanburg where David continues to get up every morning and work at a manufacturing company. How have you been able to do it? What has been the secret to not letting what happened define your life?

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But he says there's another painful struggle he faces daily, trying to remember his boys.

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the place where this whole tragedy began. Stopping at the memorial the community erected for the boys, people still come here to pay their respects. Michael and Alex have touched so many hearts. The lake, he says, looks a little different.

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revealing jailhouse letters and exclusive interviews.

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For one thing, that boat ramp that Susan used is gone.

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David listened to the quiet wind blow over the lake, then shared a few final words for his little boys.

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That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Craig Melvin and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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All from those nine fateful days and the unspeakable crime that left everyone asking one question. Why?

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Right.

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A powerful new interview with a father whose loss still aches.

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In the early morning hours of October 26th, deputies scoured South Carolina searching for a kidnapper.

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Sheriff Wells asked Susan for a more detailed description, and she was happy to comply.

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Susan described a tall black man, 30 to 40 years old, wearing a knit hat.

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As daylight broke, reporter Heather Hoopes Matthews drove into work at WISTV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina. How did you actually hear about the case initially?

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What are you hearing? What are folks saying?

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As Heather and the other local reporters began digging around Union, they started to learn a lot more about Susan and David Smith. What were your impressions of them initially?

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A mother's unthinkable crime. A father's unforgettable courage. The case of Susan Smith. Tonight, a revealing new look. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Craig Melvin with Return to the Lake.

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Both Susan and David had grown up in Union in modest, church-going families. How did you meet? We were both working at a local grocery store. Winn-Dixie?

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Small talk soon led to dating, and the young couple married in 1991. Susan was 19. David was 20.

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Susan later left her job at Winn-Dixie and got a position as a secretary to the CEO of a major textile company in town. David says she was an attentive mom.

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But not long after Alex was born, David and Susan's marriage started to fall apart.

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The couple separated in the spring of 1994. By the next fall, David had a new girlfriend, Tiffany. Yes, the same Tiffany who knew Susan in high school.

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Susan had started dating someone else too, Tom Finley, a coworker at that textile company. But with the boys missing, David knew he had to be there to support his wife any way he could.

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As Susan and David got their message out to the media, deputies and volunteers widened their search to the woods surrounding Union with bloodhounds on the ground and helicopters in the air.

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Mark Keel is now the chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, known as SLED. But in 1994, he was attending law school and working as a pilot. So he joined the search team.

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You're flying around South Carolina. What are you guys looking for?

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Reporter Heather Hoopes Matthews began following along with the search teams.

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What were your folks at law enforcement saying initially to you?

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As the search expanded, so did the media coverage. What happens to that small town?

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Union was now in a hot media spotlight, but still with no sign of those little boys. With time slipping away, police released a new bit of video to jumpstart their investigation. Would it work? October 28, 1994, a Friday. Michael and Alex Smith had been missing for three days. The family released this video of Susan with the boys celebrating Alex's first birthday.

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What did that do for the story?

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While David stood by Susan, his new girlfriend Tiffany joined the search. What do you remember about that eight or nine day period?

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How did Bob talk about his work and what he did for a living and what he wanted to do?

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Bob and Krista had their first child in 2005. A Star Trek-themed wedding followed in Vegas. Honeymoon on Rigel 7.

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By 2008, they were a family of four.

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As the Lee family grew, so did Bob's influence in the tech world. Here he is at MobileCoin's 2021 conference.

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Financial success followed and all that comes with it. Lavish trips, VIP lounges, private parties.

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Correct to say that money and success changed him or it just allowed him to be who he always would have been?

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Generally, divorce in America equals friction of some kind. Sure. But not here.

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In 2022, Bob moved to Miami, but made frequent trips back to San Francisco to be with his kids. In fact, when he was killed, Bob had come to San Francisco to see Scout perform in a school play. It's difficult for her to talk about.

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Now, Bob's family was talking with investigators and learning more about his final minutes. On those security videos from near the crime scene, police found something heartbreaking. Moments after he's been stabbed, Bob approaches a car stopped at a red light, and it looks like he's asking for help. Instead, the person drives off, and a badly wounded Bob drops to the ground.

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Well, it is tough to watch because he is stumbling down the street. He's clearly been hurt.

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In life, Bob Lee's name was once known primarily to tech insiders. Now, in death, he was about to achieve a whole new level of notoriety. Elon Musk is talking about it and saying, calling you out specifically. Yes.

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Krista Lee was stunned. The father of her two children was gone.

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When you hear about Bob, you hear words like, you know, brilliant, innovator, visionary, selfless, right? Murder. Not one of them. No.

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He fumbled with his phone and then somehow managed to get up and take a few more steps. Within a few minutes, officers arrived to find him unresponsive.

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Police are trying to solve a murder mystery. It happened early Tuesday morning. Especially when that dramatic video of his collapse outside the apartment building... became public.

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Reporter Sergio Quintana said many believed Bob's death was a symptom of a bigger issue in Bob's beloved San Francisco.

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Even Elon Musk joined the discussion about Bob Lee's murder, writing, violent crime in San Francisco is horrific, and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately. Although that clearly was not true, it made an impact.

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In the post, Musk mentioned District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who had recently taken office. Elon Musk is talking about it and calling you out specifically.

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At that point, nothing was known about who'd killed Bob Lee, whether it was a repeat offender or whether it was a person living on the street or whether it was something else.

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With all that attention on Bob's death, his friend Ajit was left angry and shocked.

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They did CPR. The average adult male has about five quarts of blood. One, two, three. This guy had already parted ways with a lot of his. San Francisco has long been a destination for pioneers and explorers, up to and including the more modern gold rush of the digital age. Then as now, a place to stake your claim in the California dream.

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Krista knew Bob would never put himself in a dangerous situation. That made his murder even more puzzling.

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Sergeant Brent Dittmer was sure from early on that the person who stabbed Bob to death wasn't after his money.

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The idea of a mugging didn't seem plausible to you, but Bob being targeted, that's even harder to believe.

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Confused and scared, especially after Krista received a mysterious text message.

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Bob's impact was discussed in all corners of Silicon Valley. You have layers of processors and ISOs. In the tech world and beyond. As his family and friends gathered for memorial services.

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his brother Oliver caught a glimpse of Bob's generosity as he handled Bob's finances after his death.

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Except the feeling that I helped somebody. Yeah. Now investigators were trying to figure out why anyone would want Bob dead. They had already dug up a possible lead from that security video they pulled at the crime scene. On it, you can see a white car.

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In another video, where Bob lifts up his shirt, maybe to see how badly he's wounded, there's the white car again in the background.

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In other videos, police saw what looked like the same white car speeding away from the area. They were able to follow the car as it got onto the Bay Bridge. Then they lost sight of it. Had the driver seen something or was the driver involved? Can't get a license number. No. But you start looking for that car on other cameras of other buildings? Yes. Sort of backtracing where it came from? Yes.

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How many other angles of that car do you get along its trip? Probably six or seven. Can you tell who's inside? No. Then they got a break. A friend of Bob's told police that on the night he died, Bob might have gone to a luxury high-rise called Millennium Tower. Everybody in San Francisco knows the Millennium Tower.

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Like as luxury as it gets.

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For years, the 58-story high-rise has been plagued by structural issues that caused it to lean and sink. sparking countless lawsuits from its wealthy residents. A lot of units in that building. A lot of people live there, and almost all of them have money. Yes. It was the same building mentioned in that alarming text to Krista.

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It's also a city where you can become both famous and infamous, and where success and failure get an equal amount of ink. So when fated fortune collided in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, people may have thought they knew what happened. Well, this was no ordinary crime, nor ordinary circumstances. And that man on the ground was no ordinary victim.

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Without saying who it was they feared, the texter provided Krista Lee a clue.

Dateline NBC

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That was exactly what police were doing. And fortunately, the Millennium Tower had security cameras. Lots of them. Sergeant Dittmer sent an investigator to pull that footage for any sign of Bob. Right away, they saw something interesting from a camera outside the building.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima Momeni. Police now focused on him. there was just one problem.

Dateline NBC

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Speculation about Bob Lee's murder continued to dominate the headlines. What wasn't on the news was that police now had a name to go on, Nima Momeni. It was still unclear how Nima fit into their case, so Sergeant Dittmer decided to put off talking with him.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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And maybe you're not on the right track here. That's possible. When you run him, ask people about him, learn more about him, what picture emerges of Nemo Momeni?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Investigators would learn Nima was born in Iran, and at 14, he moved to the Bay Area with his mother and his sister, Khazar. His mother, Manaz Tehrani. How did your son adjust to moving to the United States?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Manas says she and the kids all worked hard and scraped by. it all seemed to pay off. By 2023, Nima and his family appeared to be doing pretty well.

Dateline NBC

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Eleni Balakrishnan is a criminal justice reporter for the news site Mission Local, who did some digging on Nima.

Dateline NBC

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His personality? Quiet, low-key.

Dateline NBC

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For all the information investigators gathered on Nima, one thing was missing.

Dateline NBC

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If this involves Neiman and Bob, that seems maybe off a little bit because these guys aren't friends. They're not in business together. They don't even really know each other.

Dateline NBC

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Khazar, Nima's younger sister. The two were about a year apart, and by all accounts, extremely close. Your son and your daughter have always got along really well. Yes. Is your son protective of your daughter?

Dateline NBC

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Nima and his sister spent a lot of time together. And if Nima was fairly muted... Khazar was anything but. Reporter Sergio Quintana.

Dateline NBC

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Khazar is also married to Dino Eliasnia, a top plastic surgeon in the Bay Area.

Dateline NBC

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San Francisco Police Sergeant Brent Dittmer got the call.

Dateline NBC

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Investigators soon discovered that while Bob didn't know Nima, he knew Kazar and knew her quite well. The two seemed to run in the same social circles. They'd met about eight years earlier at The Battery, an exclusive social club in San Francisco.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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It was Khazar Momeni, not Nima, who lived in the glitzy Millennium Tower. police discovered she and her husband lived in separate apartments on separate floors. That living arrangement appeared to mirror their lifestyle and their marriage.

Dateline NBC

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Had Bob somehow gotten into the middle of Kazar and Dino's marriage? He and Kazar clearly had a relationship. Whether this was some sort of love triangle remained unclear.

Dateline NBC

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Sergeant Dittmer went to the scene at the corner of Main Street and Harrison in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.

Dateline NBC

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For detectives, it all felt like a possible motive.

Dateline NBC

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She was at a party that included Bob, some friends, and some pharmaceuticals. It was not uncommon for Bob to use drugs.

Dateline NBC

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Soon, the investigation would follow a trail of drugs, blood, and anger, and it would lead to a suspect, a shocking video.

Dateline NBC

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And a high-profile trial.

Dateline NBC

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Silicon Valley has a reputation among its success stories lies also a culture of extremes.

Dateline NBC

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Thank you.

Dateline NBC

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Thank you.

Dateline NBC

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Still unknown.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Uniformed officers followed that blood trail to this fence. about half a block from where the man collapsed. They scanned with flashlights, and then there it was.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Yes. That blood was on the blade of this small paring knife, the blade only three and a half inches long, and the brand, Joseph Joseph. Police sent that to the crime lab, looking for a DNA sample. What's the time lag from when they log it in to when you actually get some kind of result back?

Dateline NBC

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cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom in which prosecutors Omid Talai and Dane Reinstadt would present their case.

Dateline NBC

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Prosecutors argued this was simple. Nima Momeni was the last person to see Bob Lee before he was stabbed. And they had plenty of security video to prove their case.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Either Nima is aware that there are cameras and he's concealing how furious he is at Bob, or he wasn't furious at Bob yet.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Prosecutors first played that 911 call. In court, that was a painful moment for Bob's family. They had never heard that call before.

Dateline NBC

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And they played for jurors that body came video, showing officers trying to revive a close-to-lifeless Bob Lee.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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One question. Had Nima's sister and mother helped him go on with his life? That's because in those first few days, police were not able to find that white BMW.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Then jurors watched that undercover police video of Nima speaking with his attorney's private investigator. the court required Nima's mouth to be blurred, so the jury couldn't try to make out the conversation.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Beyond the reenacting, prosecutors believed they had a powerful piece of evidence, video of the actual killing. It's low quality. Police recovered it from a building right across from the crime scene.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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There they are at the bottom of the screen. It's hard to make out, so we put a spotlight on them. Prosecutors believe the darker figure is Bob. The lighter one is Nima. Talai says the video shows Nima lunging forward toward Bob. and then throwing the knife over the fence to dispose of it. That video is pretty blurry.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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You're confident that that's Bob and that's Nima?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Down here? Detectives started knocking on doors. Maybe someone had seen or heard something. This is Main Street, after all. Except, the 911 call came in around 2.30 a.m.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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While prosecutors argue the videos place Nima at the scene, The backbone of their case was the forensics. Those DNA tests ordered on the knife had come back.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The state is not required to prove motive, but prosecutors wanted to address the burning question. Why would Nima want to kill Bob?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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To answer that, they called Kazar Momeni, Bob's friend and the defendant's sister.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Reporter Eleni Balakrishnan was in the courtroom.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Through a subpoena, Kazar was forced to testify against her own brother. It was clear she did not want to be there.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Because Kazar refused to give a formal statement to police, prosecutors were not sure exactly what she would testify to in court. They hoped she would talk about that party at Jeremy Boivin's place. And she did. She told jurors she was high on LSD, cocaine, and nitrous oxide. After Bob left... Jeremy gave her GHB, known as a date-rape drug, and she willingly took it.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Then, Kazar said, something horrible happened.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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In fact, that tense phone call Bo witnessed between Bob and Nima was all about the alleged sexual assault. What kinds of things is Nima saying in that phone call?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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When Bob visited Nima and Kazar at the Millennium Tower later that night, prosecutors believe Nima was furious.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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On the stand, at least, Kazar insisted there was no beef between Bob and Nima.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Still, prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to piece together their motive.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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That's a very convoluted motive, that Nima is angry enough at Bob to want to kill him for something Bob wasn't even present for. Why isn't he going after Jeremy?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Now it was the defense's turn, and they were about to challenge the state's motive and Khazar's credibility.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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No, no, no, I don't. For nearly a month, Nima Momeni's mother, Manaz, watched prosecutors portray her son as a cold-blooded killer.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Sergeant Dittmer's team began pulling videos from buildings around the area. Is that an area where there are a lot of cameras?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Defense attorney Sam Zanganeh came from Miami to represent NEMA.

Dateline NBC

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That's it. He insists Bob Lee's stature in the tech business added a different layer to the case.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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He sought to take apart the prosecution's case, starting with the murder weapon. The blade's this big.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The defense went after that grainy video prosecutors say showed Nima stabbing Bob.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Also not credible to the defense, that undercover police video of Nima speaking with his attorney's PI.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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And Zangaday said there was a reasonable explanation why Nima's family tried to sell his white BMW after his arrest.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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According to the defense, the weakest part of the prosecution's case was the motive. What reason would Nima Momeni have to want to kill Bob Lee?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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It was during the search for video that Dittmer got a call. The victim had been identified.

Dateline NBC

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showing two people who looked friendly and calm.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Zanganeh told jurors she had no credibility and to disregard her version of what happened that night. You believe anything comes out of Kazar's mouth?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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On the stand, Kazar said she had sought help for her substance abuse problems and completed a rehab program. Jeremy Boivin was never called to testify. While he admits smacking Kazar's backside, he denies ever assaulting her.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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In court, Kazar acknowledged Jeremy stayed in her apartment after Bob's death. She didn't remember for how long and said it wasn't sexual. After her testimony, Jeremy claimed Kazar apologized to him for making the assault allegation. And she said, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that? Yes. So to you, at least, she's admitting to lying on the witness stand.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Whatever happened at Jeremy Boivin's apartment didn't matter, argued NEMA's attorneys. They were about to offer a whole new theory about what happened that night.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nemo Momente's attorneys were prepared to turn the case upside down. While the prosecution blamed Nemo, they were going to blame Bob Lee.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The defense focused on Bob's partying in the days and hours leading up to his death. Bob, they said, was sleep-deprived and full of drugs and alcohol. Neva's attorneys argued a drug-fueled bender like that could have caused Bob to become violent.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Zanganeh said Bob, not Nima, was the one with a knife. And it could have come from Khazar's or somewhere else.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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So, who was Bob Lee? And just as important, What brought him to that downtown street in the small hours of that April morning?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Even though he pleaded not guilty, Nima was about to admit he was responsible for Bob's death. He said it was self-defense.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Reporter Sergio Quintana was in court for Nima's testimony.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima said the night unfolded like this. Yes, Khazar told him Jeremy assaulted her. At first, he was upset. But when he spoke with others at that party, he concluded his sister was probably exaggerating. He denied being angry at Bob. Nima also said a couple of other things. He confirmed his sister had an open marriage. And he said he, Khazar, and Bob all did coke together.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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before Nima and Bob left the Millennium Tower. They'd talked about going on to a strip club, and Nima offered to give him a ride.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima told jurors he pulled over to that area underneath the Bay Bridge to help clean up the mess.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima even had an explanation about why he threw the knife over the fence and drove away.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Defense attorneys were prepared to show jurors exactly how they claim Bob attacked Nima. We had a digital animation made. That's Nima on the right wearing the beanie.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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That trail would lead to some strange places.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The defense said it was at this moment that Nima grabbed Bob's arm and pushed the knife toward him. That's how Bob got stabbed in the chest.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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And according to the defense, that's how Nima's DNA got on the knife handle. Nima's attorneys had hoped to play that animation in trial. The judge did not allow it.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Bob's brother Oliver watched the trial and thought Nima's story was ridiculous.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Even Nima's own attorney admits his client lost his temper during cross-examination.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Respectfully, to me, those are the actions of someone who knows that they did something wrong and is trying to avoid responsibility.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima's attorneys thought their case was strong enough to sway the jury, and they still had one last card to play.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Jurors had heard two different accounts about what happened in the early morning hours of April 4th, 2023. In one of them, Nima Momeni was the attacker. In the other, he was the victim. During his closing arguments, defense attorney Sam Zanganeh had one more surprise.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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and the family at the center of it all.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Reporter Sergio Quintana was in the courtroom when the defense played a new security video.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The defense told the jury Bob was doing cocaine using a small object.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The defense said this was proof Bob had a knife that night, not Nima.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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All culminating in a trial about what really happened under the Bay Bridge.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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That's not Bob Lee doing cocaine off the knife that ended up being the murder weapon?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Bo told us he never saw Bob with a knife that night or ever. What would jurors believe? As they filed into the deliberation room, all everyone could do was wait and wait.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The first day goes by, there's no verdict. You're not worried. Correct. Second day, third day, you're okay.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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You didn't answer as quickly that day.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Finally, after seven days of deliberations... The jurors sent word. They had reached a decision. But it was late in the day. Everyone would have to return the next morning. How'd you sleep that night?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Honestly, I threw up a couple times that morning. And you've got to be thinking to yourself, why has it taken so long and what does that mean? All of that.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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And perhaps it wasn't enough. Nima Momeni was found not guilty of first-degree murder.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Well, the jury wasn't done. The verdict for second degree murder? Guilty. Guilty. Second degree.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Nima Momani will face 16 years to life when he's sentenced. He plans to appeal the conviction. His mother spoke after the verdict.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The Lee family say they plan to sue the Momenes in civil court for wrongful death.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The skies were still dark over San Francisco Bay when Krista Lee felt the first inkling. Something was just not right on that Tuesday morning in April.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Krista sees every day how much Scout and Sirius miss their dad.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Three missed calls, in fact. All from the same unknown number. So she looked it up.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Who's calling you from the hospital?

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Dad was Bob Lee, divorced from Krista for years, but maintaining a close friendship and co-parenting relationship for their two children.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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And then Scout, 14 at the time, told her where the phones seemed to be located. It was at the police station. Specifically, the SFPD's Southern Station.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Krista reminded herself locating a phone that way was an inexact science. And besides, Bob was staying at a hotel nearby since he'd recently relocated to Miami.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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So Krista got on with the morning rush, dropped Scout off at school, and when she got home, she tried that missed number from the hospital.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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So she sent Bob a text.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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So that's weird.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Krista did hear from someone else, a friend of Bob's.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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The friend told Krista he'd go down to the police station just to check.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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That's never good when they ask that. And it wasn't good. The police told the friend Bob was at the hospital.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Bob, she was told, had been fatally stabbed. He was 43.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Krista rushed home to her children, Sirius, then 17, and Scout, who'd been taking an after-school nap.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Sergeant Dittmer spoke with Bob's family. And when you say to Krista, is there some obvious suspect, she says... There wasn't.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Now it was up to police to figure out if this was a random crime or whether someone in Bob's life would want to hurt him. Police were about to learn the late Bob Lee was no average guy. At first, police knew little about Bob Lee, the man stabbed to death in the shadow of San Francisco's Bay Bridge. Reporter Sergio Quintana covered the case for NBC Bay Area.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Soon police were starting to learn what the tech world already knew.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Bob's friends and former co-workers, Ajit Varma and Carlos Witt. He was building some of the best tools on the planet. You've probably heard of and maybe even used some of Bob's tools. He helped develop Android for Google. He founded the financial service Cash App, and he was a top executive at Square and MobileCoin, just to mention a few.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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You must have been proud of him.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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They grew up a world away from Silicon Valley, outside of St.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

93.489

from this lonely block on the streets of San Francisco. The man never gave his name. He had only one desperate plea for the operator on the other end of the line. And he kept repeating it. Security cameras captured the man as he staggered to the front of a luxury apartment building, grabbed onto the call box, and then fell to the pavement.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

943.325

By high school, Bob was creating computer games for his friends and even programs for the school. He was their tech expert for the high school. Bob went to college, but not for long. The dot-com boom of the late 90s beckoned. He was at the breaking wave of tech.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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In 2001, Bob first made a name for himself by solving a major problem. He developed a fix for a dangerous computer virus called Code Red. Oliver said his brother had big money offers to sell the software he had created.

Dateline NBC

Under the Bay Bridge

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Life was not all computers for Bob. Not long after Code Red, Bob met Krista.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

12.035

Young women, murdered or missing. Families in anguish.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

1309.192

Takeout with a killer. It is spicy.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

1784.428

Coming up... A suspected serial killer, acting as his own attorney, turns the case against him upside down.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

1798.85

When Dateline continues...

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

2169.258

An angel whose job isn't done.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

24.494

A serial killer at work, and maybe he had a friend. That's crazy.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

2507.947

Thank you.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

34.061

Two suspected killers on the hunt, hunting them, a detective devoted to justice, and more.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

49.231

Here's Keith Morrison with Good and Evil.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

537.227

Coming up, four young women in two neighboring towns now missing or dead. Was there a link?

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

549.757

And mothers united by love and loss.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

896.877

Coming up.

Dateline NBC

Good & Evil

902.083

Tracking a killer, victim by victim. Or is it two killers? They were in the same car. They were in the same vehicle. When Dateline continues.

Dateline NBC

A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.

1003.969

And it is important to note that at some point in the last several years, Mr. Lusota faked his death, we believe, to escape investigation at that time.

Dateline NBC

A star defense witness takes the stand. The Zizians' leader in court. And a new scam called pig butchering.

634.15

Jack Lasoda, who identifies as a woman, Michelle Zico, and Daniel Blank, they face trespassing and handgun charges here in Maryland. All three were arrested Sunday in Frostburg. People who've interacted with them say they act like a cult. Consisting of mostly transgender tech workers who subscribe to what's called radical veganism.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

135.072

What the whole world saw on that tape was so vile and so horrifying, there was a sense that something had to be done.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

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It's the whole enchilada. Everything that was required to facilitate these freak-offs is what the prosecutors say is racketeering.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

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It's a criminal enterprise that involved a whole bunch of people who existed to fulfill Mr. Combs' every desire, including his criminal desires.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

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It's not international, but according to the indictment, it's across state lines.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

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The defense will want their jurors to think, Mr. Combs is a cat. I wouldn't want him to date my daughter. But that's different from saying that he ran a criminal enterprise. And the defense will also say... When the prosecutors wave all this baby oil and lube in front of you, they want you to think about sex. But you know what? Sex is not a crime.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

2303.211

Her testimony makes or breaks their case. The defense is going to try to destroy her on cross-examination. I think the portrayal will be that she's a party girl, as much of a freak as was Diddy.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

2344.595

The defense will want the jurors to think it's a wretched, dysfunctional relationship. And if there's a crime, it's domestic violence, and that's not what Mr. Combs is charged with.

Dateline NBC

Sean Combs on Trial

34.208

That tape made people take notice. That tape counts as smoking gun evidence. A federal trial.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

102.842

It was Jessica who fingered Nick Sampson after they showed her a picture of the guy. At least, he looked familiar, is how she put it. Which, if she was telling the truth, would back up Matt Liver's confession rather nicely. Now, it was the job of the Wisconsin detective, Jim Rohr, to find out if she was telling the truth. They had a confession in Nebraska. If she recognizes a picture...

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1062.513

Add to that two more test results. Ballistics tests confirmed that the gun found under Nick's bed was not the murder weapon. And do you remember detectives found a spot of what looked like blood on mixed genes? So that was tested. And it was not human blood at all.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1085.25

And now the arrests of those teenagers from Wisconsin, two people clearly present at the crime scene, but never mentioned at all in any of Matt Leiber's hours and hours of police interviews. Come on. Julie Bear knew what she had to do. She marched over to the jail to ask Matt Livers face-to-face about these alleged accomplices, Reed and Fester.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

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It's a bit of a cliche that some defense attorneys won't ask their clients if they committed the crime they're charged with. Some attorneys just don't want to know. In this case, Julie Bear had been assigned as Matt Liver's defense attorney, knowing full well that he had already confessed to the gruesome double murder of Wayne and Charmin Stock.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1149.355

Matt had since changed his story, insisting that he hadn't killed anyone. And Julie had been dutiful in her evaluation of the evidence, looking for anything that would confirm the truth of the confession or any proof of his guilt. And she found none.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

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And now, hearing about the arrests of Gregory Fester and Jessica Reed in Wisconsin for the same murders, she went over to the jail and asked Matt Livers directly if he knew who these two teenagers were. And?

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1185.143

Maybe he was lying to you.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1188.183

It would take another month for copies of those videotaped interrogations of Jessica Reed and Greg Fester to inch their way over to the defense attorneys in Nebraska. But when they finally did, well, now this certainly caught their attention. Jessica Reed had just been asked, who was with you? Who helped you commit the murders? Here was her response.

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

1227.438

There were no other killers, just her, just Greg. And that whole story about meeting Nick Sampson at Bulldog's bar, she had made it up, she said, after detectives showed her a picture of Nick. and asked her if it looked familiar. And she said yes back then, that he looked like the guy who helped them, and that turned out to be Nick. So, was Jessica telling the truth in that first interrogation?

Dateline Originals

Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

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Or now, when she flipped the script 180 degrees, said she'd never seen the guy in her whole life? That's when the prosecutor decided it was time to try a new tactic with Jessica. A very common tactic, by the way. Often used because it often works. And not to mention one that saves a lot of time and trouble and money. They would offer Jessica a deal, which was essentially this.

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If she would agree to testify against Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, if she would reveal once and for all that those two were in fact there at the murders, then the prosecutor could allow Jessica to plead guilty to a lesser charge, serve less time in prison, and potentially send Matt Livers and Nick Sampson to death row. The prosecutor set up a meeting with Jessica and her lawyer.

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of one of the people who were the subject of the confession in Nebraska, that's their verification of the original story, right? That helps. It certainly helps. Jessica's accomplice and paramour, Greg Fester, confessed that they had been directed to the Stocks farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska by someone he called Thomas. Detective Rohr found that helpful, too.

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His name is Tom Olson. Here he is.

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Next, on Murder in the Moonlight. Who was telling the truth about that awful night on the farm? And what would happen to Matt Libers and Nick Sampson now when Jessica told her tale?

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Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop is the producer. Brian Drew, Kelly Laudine, Bruce Berger, Marshall Hausfeld, and Candace Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

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From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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So while Jessica was being held in jail, the detective went over to the house where she had been staying, a sort of flop house for teens, as he called it. Seemed like a good place to start his search for some explanation.

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Like a cell phone. And like a piece of low-hanging fruit, there it was. And happily, Jessica had given him permission to get into it, into the cell phone. Take a look at her calls and contacts.

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But the phone was not the only thing Jim Rohr found in that flop house, though the rest of it wasn't quite so obvious. There was a picture on the wall near Jessica's little corner. A framed picture, and the frame itself stuck out a little bit. So the detective looked behind it and, well, what do you know? There was a cigarette box hidden in there. He opened it.

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And inside the box, a shotgun shell, 12 gauge, the same gauge as used in the murders. And alongside the shell, folded up in that cigarette box, was a letter written by Jessica Reed, apparently to Greg Fester. It read, quote, And this bullet... Well, Bunny, it's the only thing left. And I loved it, but that's something we'll talk about one day.

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But it's here also because that's something I did for you, me, and for you to love me as much as I love you. That is the end of the quote. Detective Rohr read it again. Took it in. Astonishing. When you read the material that you found, what did you think?

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Rohrer went back to his task, excited about it now, and pretty soon he found something else. It was a notebook, a diary of sorts, but no ordinary diary. Here were words penned by Jessica Reed herself. I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and I'll do it myself. Pretty scary.

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Four would have been even better, of course, there being four suspects after all, but three would certainly do for now. Confessions from family cousin Matt Livers. I did the shooting, he said. I just stuck it to him and blew him away. Confessions to having been there from the two hopped-up kids in the stolen red truck, Jessica Reed and Greg Fester.

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Mm-hmm. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Murder in the Moonlight, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 4, About Face. Detective Jim Rohr was driving back to the station in Beaverdam, Wisconsin, still shaking his head over what he'd found in that flop house used by Jessica Reed.

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Just don't expect to hear that from a young girl. No. Clearly, the detective needed to talk to Jessica again, and so he called the jail. And sheriff's deputies once again escorted Jessica from her cell to that dingy gray interview room, where this time there was no holding back.

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If there's anything like a holy grail, a gold standard in a high-pressure murder investigation, then surely that must be the confession. Skilled interrogator leads tormented killer to inevitable and satisfactory conclusion, saving everyone a lot of time and trouble. Not to mention giving the family the answers they so desperately need. But three confessions? This was very good indeed.

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Laughing about murder? Anyway, there, she'd said it. It was Greg Fester who killed the Stalks. But why did she write that note? The one found by Detective Rohr.

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She tried again to explain the words, and in doing so, she changed her story again, confessed to firing one gunshot.

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But the detective absolutely found Jessica Reed to be credible when she admitted one thing, that she enjoyed it.

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And that, investigators believe, might have been the most honest thing Jessica Reed said. The rest of the story, the Jessica and Greg part of the story, was told by the science. Ballistics tests confirmed that the shell found in Jessica's cigarette box matched the spent shells found at the murder scene. And the murder weapon?

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Well, that turned out to be a gun stolen from the same Wisconsin farm where they stole the red pickup truck. The truck they drove from Wisconsin to Nebraska and then dumped down in Louisiana. And then the forensics lab found blood still clinging to Jessica's clothes and shoes, and so they ran tests and confirmed that blood had once flowed through the veins of victim Wayne Stock.

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And also, while they were there, while they were at it, they teased out DNA from the gold ring and that marijuana pipe the cops found on the ground near the farmhouse. And there was no doubt whose DNA it was. Jessica Reed on the ring, Greg Fester on the pipe. So both of them were charged. First-degree murder.

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But over in Nebraska, with the exception of law enforcement, no one knew a thing about the discoveries in Beaver Dam. Even Wayne and Charmaine Stock's three adult children were kept in the dark as they struggled to grip the wheel of their new, strange lives. One thing to try to move on, quite another to actually do it, is daughter Tammy.

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The fourth, Nick Sampson, was a holdout, yes.

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Terrible questions. None of them ever thought they'd have to contemplate. And that second set of confessors, Reed and Fester, they might have done their talking on the moon, for all the family knew about it. Same for the accused killers, Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. Not a word of the confessions in Wisconsin got to them.

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And then, a few days later, Sampson's defense attorney, Jerry Soucy, answered the phone, and everything changed.

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So he waited, not patiently. And then, in his frustration, Jerry Soucy tried something unorthodox.

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Well, maybe... It's a tenet of police work, an important and accepted principle, though sometimes adhered to grudgingly. When big things happen in murder cases like the one in Murdoch, the public needs to be told at least something. It's understood, however, that crucial details are to be withheld. The arrests of Livers and Sampson had been trumpeted far and wide.

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But a little triangulation by two states' worth of detectives ought to put him in the frame, too. First, the Wisconsin investigators would have to dredge up evidence to support or refute the stories Greg and Jessica were telling. Both of them, remember, said they witnessed but did not commit the gruesome murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock on an Easter evening six weeks before in Murdoch, Nebraska.

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But now, two more murder charges in a case that apparently had been solved? The arrests of teens Jessica Reed and Greg Fester in, of all places, Wisconsin, were announced so quietly that the news, the little of it that was revealed, didn't even get to the people in Murdoch, Nebraska. They mostly remained in the dark.

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Even Nick Sampson's defense attorney, Jerry Soucy, knew only the barest of detail, which did not sit well with him at all.

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Those affidavits were a revelation. All those details culled from the hours and hours of police interviews with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed.

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Defense attorney Susie just couldn't believe his eyes as he read the story of the cigarette case, the shells which matched the shotgun, the marijuana pipe those two teenagers had dropped along the way, the gold ring that set off a whole new investigation, and most tellingly, DNA irrefutably linking Reed and Fester to the crime. Suddenly, it was all beginning to make sense.

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Remember, Susie's client, Nick Sampson, professed his innocence from day one.

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Meantime, defense attorney Julie Bear's client, Matt Libers, confessed, but then told her he didn't do it. So for weeks after the arrests, these attorneys had been asking themselves the very same simple question. Where was the evidence? And they had found, well, none. In fact, the evidence seemed to be pointing to the very real possibility that both Livers and Samson were factually innocent. Why?

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Well, for one, both accused killers had pretty good alibis. Matt Liver's girlfriend, a woman with an impeccable reputation, insisted that Matt was home all night with her, 30 miles away, in Lincoln, Nebraska, night of the murders. Same with Nick Sampson's girlfriend, who swore he never left their house that night. She took a polygraph and she passed it. Samson's attorney, Jerry Soucy.

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Then the defense lawyers went looking for evidence of those alleged phone calls between Matt and Nick in the days before the murders. Calls in which they supposedly planned it all. As Matt told detectives during his confession.

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But phone records don't lie. And they revealed there wasn't one call, not one, between Matt and Nick in the days before the murders. Matt's defense attorney, Julie Baer.

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But then somebody from Nebraska called him about that gold ring. And suddenly Jim Rohr was in a whole nother mystery altogether.

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There's an old saying that prisons are full of criminals who thought they were smarter than they really are. And that old adage would seem to apply here. It didn't take Detective Rohrer very long to figure out who the truck thieves were, and they were not exactly members of Mensa. They left quite a trail.

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Rohr followed it and discovered that before they swiped the pickup truck with the ring in it, inscribed from Corey to Ryan, they stole an SUV and sideswiped a couple of cars with it, which drew the attention of a crowd, and so they abandoned the SUV. And since they were in a hurry, they left some personal stuff behind.

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And so, finding the thieves was the easy part. In fact, they had already made their way back from Louisiana to Wisconsin, where somebody saw them hanging around a cemetery right near the farm where they stole the truck. There were two of them, a guy and a girl, and what a pair they were. The guy was Greg Fester, age 19, with a history of drug use and suicide attempts and anger issues.

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But the message was clear. Everybody could relax. And nobody was thinking of Voltaire just then. Ridiculous thought. Why in heaven's name would they? It was so far off and long ago when that famous French philosopher scribbled in his notebook... While doubt is not an agreeable condition, certainty is an absurd one. Or as somebody in Murdoch might have said, don't count your chickens.

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Fester was on probation for weapons and disorderly conduct convictions.

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Fester's alleged accomplice was a 17-year-old named Jessica Reed, a former honor roll student, cheerleader, Well, then her parents got divorced and she didn't do so well anymore. She got herself mixed up with drugs and then by extension with the lovely Mr. Fester. Not exactly master criminals, were they?

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Out of control. But Detective Rohr had no idea just how out of control these two had been. No one did, really. Not yet, anyway. In the spring of 2006, investigators in two states sought to solve a riddle that sprouted along with the corn. Two towns, Murdoch, Nebraska, Beaverdam, Wisconsin, more than 500 miles apart, now united undeniably by a single band of gold.

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That ring sold in a Beaverdam Walmart and then found days after the murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock, lying on the floor in the kitchen of the Stock farmhouse near Murdoch, Nebraska. What a lot of mischief that size 10 ring was getting up to. Good mischief? Bad mischief? Well, here is that part of the story. The main suspect was, of course, Matt Livers.

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He confessed, remember, and rather colorfully, about what he said he did to Wayne and Charmin's stock. But nowhere in his confession, or in his answers to lots and lots of questions, did he say a single word about a ring. Ditto about a stolen truck, or out-of-control Wisconsin teenagers. Not a hint, not a word about them. Like none of that even existed.

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Meanwhile, way off in Wisconsin, something kind of amazing happened when Detective Jim Rohr invited Jessica Reed to come in for a chat. And she said, sure. If all she had to do was cop to stealing a truck or helping to steal it, she couldn't be in too much trouble. Hello?

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Did she? In fact, as she settled in, young Ms. Reed seemed to view her visit to the police interview room as little more than a nuisance to be endured. In fact, this is her saying that very thing.

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Didn't go to Nebraska. Didn't know anything about a gold ring, she said. She and Fester just stole a truck, she said, and fueled by pot and massive doses of over-the-counter cough syrup, went off in search of the ocean before running out of gas and money and leaving that pickup truck in Louisiana.

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Then the detective showed her a picture of a marijuana pipe, which, along with the gold ring, turned up at the stock farmhouse. And Jessica Reed looked... Okay, I did steal.

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And then, well, then Jessica just blurted it out. At that farmhouse, now apparently to her surprise in Nebraska, Greg Fester sneaked in through a window and let her in the back door. In the kitchen, she said, she found $500 in an envelope. And then, she said, they left. Swear to God. Oh, in the ring? Well, now Jessica Reed admitted, yes, she found it in that stolen pickup and she put it on.

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But then inside the night dark farmhouse, as they were making their getaway, she felt it slide off her thumb in the kitchen. Didn't stop to look for it. And where was all this going anyway?

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I'm Keith Morrison and this is Dateline's newest podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. Episode 3, The Ring. The arrests of Matt Libers and Nick Sampson brought a measure of relief to the Stalk children. Even though Matt was a member of the family, there had been issues.

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Well, somebody did it. And remember, two men, Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, had been arrested and were already in jail. Matt said they committed the murders, confessed in excruciating detail, and named Nick Sampson as his accomplice, though Nick denied it. Which led to a puzzle investigators had to ask Jessica about. Tell us who you were with.

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But wait a minute. She must have known Matt and Nick. So the investigators showed her pictures of them. And she said, no idea who they are. Never saw them before. And then the visiting investigators from Nebraska informed her that Nebraska's electric chair stood ready for her if she refused to cooperate. And Jessica reconsidered. She pointed to one of the photos.

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That was Nick Sampson, who looked kind of familiar. And from there, as the hours wore on, Jessica's story shapeshifted, as did the players, time and again, until it evolved eventually into a tale that began Easter night at Bulldog's Bar in Murdoch, where Nick Sampson worked, remember? And then they followed Nick out to the farmhouse where they stole the money. And Nick got crazy.

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And then with that off her chest, Jessica looked again at the photo of Nick, the man she had claimed was the mastermind of the murders.

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And with that, Jessica reads well-planned day with her grandmother. In fact, all of her plans evaporated in a jail cell. Well, detectives focused next on Jessica's partner in crime, Greg Fester. Again, Jim Rohr. You're in that. I was. Tell me about the atmosphere in there.

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Reserved and, to the surprise of no one, Greg Fester wanted to blame it all on Jessica.

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It was all Jessica's idea, said Fester, stealing the truck, the ridiculous trip across the country. And as for the murders in the farmhouse, well, after investigators showed him photos of Murdoch and Bulldog's bar, Fester told a story of meeting a guy there who, he said, squeezed into their stolen pickup truck and led them straight to the Stalks farmhouse. And then, he said...

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And Nick, Matt's cousin, they didn't know him as well, but now at least they could try to move on, as they knew their parents would have wanted them to. Daughter Tammy.

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And the guy went upstairs and just started shooting.

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But then? Well, surprise, surprise. Fester insisted the man who committed the murders was not Nick Sampson. And it wasn't even Matt Livers, either, who'd already confessed that he was the killer. No, Greg Fester told detectives that it was some friend he'd communicated with by a text message. A guy he called Thomas.

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Well, that was all just a little confusing, perhaps. But for the investigators from Nebraska, it seemed to be starting to come together. What was their sense of things after that first day of questioning?

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Now, with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed in jail, detectives set about finding physical evidence to cross-reference with their stories. And, incredibly, once again, one little thing. Not a ring, that key piece of evidence found on the Starks' kitchen floor, but... But this time, a cigarette box was about to turn the case upside down all over again. Next on Murder in the Moonlight. I killed someone.

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He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. When you read the material that you found, what did you think?

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Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop is the producer. Brian Drew, Kelly Laudeen, Bruce Berger, Marshall Hausfeld, and Candace Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

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From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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And as Andy, the youngest sibling, put it... It's not going to bring them back, so why agonize over it?

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And with Livers and Sampson behind bars, the slow grind toward their inevitable trial could begin. Naturally, the same system that had caught the alleged killers also provided them with competent legal counsel, as the law requires. For Matt Livers, attorney Julie Baer...

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They all say they didn't.

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After all, that confession was very graphic. Very.

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And yet, when Julie Bear asked around a bit, she started to hear things. Things like this. Both Matt Livers and Nick Sampson and their live-in girlfriends swore up and down that on the night of the murders they were at their respective homes, sound asleep, miles away from the Stock family farmhouse.

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And so, when the Cass County Sheriff's Office announced, just two weeks after the murders, that one of the most shocking crimes in this part of Nebraska in decades had been solved... Well, you can hardly blame them for calling in the press and taking a victory lap.

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And for what it was worth, although Matt said, remember, that they planned it all out on their cell phones in the two days or so before the murders, Nick Sampson swore up and down that he didn't see Matt or talk to him on the phone, in person, or any other way during that time. Not once. But how could that be? Nick Sampson got a defense attorney, too. His name is Jerry Soucy.

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Of course, as the law requires, the investigators were getting ready to tell him and show him what they had on his client. They were just in the aforementioned mop-up mode at that point, and that's when the MacGuffins showed up. A MacGuffin, of course, much loved by writers everywhere, is some object or device, often apparently insignificant, that can flip a plot upside down.

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They came across this thing in Charmin Stock's kitchen. And not during the first few CSI-type go-arounds right after the murders. In fact, not the next day either. After who knows how many dozens of investigators and first responders had tromped through the place. It was after all that when a sharp-eyed young cop noticed, just lying there on the kitchen floor, a gold ring.

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Well, that could have been anybody's, of course. One of the cops, probably, or... Well, who knew? But there it was. And now, crime scene investigator chief David Kofod would have to find an explanation for it.

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But at the time, it could have belonged to the victim. Right. It could have belonged to anybody. It could have. Exactly. Except... Remember, one thing people knew about the stock farmhouse, nothing was ever out of place. The meticulous housekeeper, Charmin, made sure of it. Anyway, they bagged that gold ring and they tagged it as evidence.

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It was a size 10, a man's ring, 10 carat gold, and it was engraved with a very personal message.

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Who was Corey? Who was Ryan? Detectives asked the Stark children, of course, and, well, none of them knew anybody by those names. They didn't recognize the ring either. It was a sort of glitch within a mystery that will keep bugging a man or a woman forever. By which I mean one of the women on Kofod's detective squad, who noticed, on the inside of the ring, three tiny letters. A. A. J.

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And of course, just about everyone was shocked that the culprits would turn out to be who they were. But there it was, Wayne and Charmin Sock's own nephew, 28-year-old Matt Livers, that actually told the whole ugly story, confessed to shotgunning his own aunt and uncle.

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That manufacturer turned out to be a place called A&A Jewelers. It stamped all the products it made in Buffalo, New York, with the letters AAJ for A&A Jewelers. And so it was in Buffalo where Kofod's investigator found a woman working at AAJ by the name of Mary Martino.

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Mary Martino was running what was left of Buffalo's A&A jewelry office just then. Why what was left? Because the place was going out of business. They'd already laid off the workforce 200 jobs. Gone. Just like that. By the time that Nebraska investigator started calling, Mary was one of only three people left. Their job was to clean up the Buffalo office and... close it down.

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And right in the middle of that crushing and depressing work, Mary gets a request to track down a single, not very fancy, not very unusual ring that the company had likely shipped away somewhere years ago. And you said, what? You gotta be kidding.

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And that is when Mary Martino heard that the ring had been found at the scene of the double homicide of Wayne and Charmin Stock in far-off Nebraska. And it might be important. And then the Nebraska cops said that she, Mary, was literally the last person on earth who could, at least possibly, solve that last vexing little mystery.

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No surprise there. Wild goose chase like that? Because even if there was still a record of that ring, finding it in the chaos of that office, right in the middle of closing it down forever? Well, good luck. And anyway, she already had a mountain of depressing work ahead of her. But Mary Martino, dependable Mary, said she'd see what she could do.

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It was possible, after all, the company might have taken the order, might have made that very ring and inscribed it, Love Always, Corey and Ryan, and shipped it somewhere. That's what the company did for a long time. So Mary went out to the warehouse, where tens of thousands of old order forms were stuffed into hundreds of boxes, just waiting for Mary to throw them all away.

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Instead, she opened up the first one, and page by yellowed page started reading.

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It was pretty impressive, all things considered, the investigation, that is, into the murders of Wayne and Sharman Stock. The people of Murdoch, Nebraska, had been deeply shaken, and quite understandably so, if the Stocks weren't safe in the sanctity of their own bedroom, then who in Murdoch was safe?

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And then, well, then she had a thought. There might be one more way to go about it. So she abandoned the warehouse and asked one of the few colleagues she had left to help her narrow down the search on the company computer, make a kind of grid. First, she entered the stores A&A shipped to, more than 3,000 of them, coast to coast, which didn't narrow it down at all, of course.

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But then she took a guess that the ring was ordered within the past few years, and she entered those dates, and, well, that narrowed things down quite a bit. And then she input the inscription, Love always, Corey and Ryan. And out came a printout. And lo and behold, after three days and two nights of searching, there it was.

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And if his 21-year-old cousin Nick Sampson had managed to resist the confessional urge, well, that wouldn't be unexpected, would it? But Matt had fingered him, and that was that. And now that itch in the back uncertainty, the fear that vicious killers were on the loose, had been put to rest.

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Wait, Wisconsin? Not Nebraska? What in the world would a ring sold in Wisconsin have to do with a double murder a day's drive away in Nebraska? When Mary Martino finally found the record that made her say, bingo, she picked up the phone and she called back that investigator who'd asked her to somehow track down the origins of the gold ring found on the floor of the stock farmhouse.

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Now, all these years later, we can only imagine the look on the Nebraska investigator's face when Mary mentioned where the ring had been sent. It was Wisconsin. Actually, she was far more specific than that. A&A had sent the ring to a Wisconsin town about 500 miles from the farm where the murders occurred. They sent it to the town of Beaver Dam.

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Beaver Dam bills itself as a sort of outdoor paradise. Fishing, boating, snowmobiling, that sort of thing. It's northwest of Milwaukee. And in Beaver Dam, as in thousands of other towns like it across rural America, there was a Walmart. That store is where Mary's company sent the gold ring. And so, investigators from Murdoch contacted the Walmart in Beaver Dam and...

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unearthed a sad and oft-repeated story. Once upon a time, learned those detectives, there was a girl named Corrie, who thought the world of a boy named Ryan, and she bought him that symbol of permanence, the gold ring. She had it engraved with the words, Love Always. But it was not Love Always. And after Corrie and Ryan broke up, The gold ring gathered dust in the cab of Ryan's red pickup truck.

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And that is where the strangest thing happened and why it appears in our story. That red pickup truck was stolen. Somebody just took it from Ryan's farm outside of Beaver Dam. Naturally, Ryan filed a police report. It was dated just a few days before Wayne and Charmin's stock were shot to death in far-off Nebraska. But of course, it was a Wisconsin detective who took the theft report.

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Experience suggested police would likely find the truck somewhere nearby. But instead... There was another surprise.

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Meanwhile, said Cass County Sheriff Bill Brueggemann, they could get on with the legal stuff, button up the case.

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Wait, Louisiana? That was a thousand miles from Beaver Dam. How did they know to call you? Because of the registration to your town?

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And thus, yet another emotion was added to Tammy's grief.

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But Matt Livers had been with them at Easter dinner. And then just a few hours later, according to him, he returned with Nick Sampson in tow to kill his aunt and uncle? Her parents? Tammy tried to focus. Things needed doing.

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Tammy's brother, Steve. Did it give you any sense of, well, at least somebody has been found responsible to make it feel any better?

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And just who was the accomplice? Nick Sampson? Just an ordinary guy, the investigators figured. Unlike Matt, he had a job, two jobs in fact. By day, he reconditioned propane gas cylinders. Evenings, he was a cook at Bulldog's Bar in Murdoch. Anyway, once he was printed and processed, they sat him down in an interview room and they asked him straight out, why did he think they were talking to him?

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But Nick Sampson was not like Matt Livers. While Matt initially denied any involvement before changing his story and confessing, Nick stuck with one story and one story only. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. During three hours of questioning, Nick denied everything. What I need from you is absolute honesty. I am being 100% honest.

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Then, one of the detectives employed a frequently used and often successful technique, the what-if question.

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There were arrangements to make, a funeral to prepare. It was apparent that the local Methodist church would be too small to accommodate all those who wanted to pay their respects, so it was decided they'd have the funeral in the Murdoch High School gym. It was the right thing to do. The place was packed to the rafters. There were speeches lauding the stocks and everything about them.

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Then, like Matt, Nick agreed. In fact, he volunteered to take a polygraph.

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But again, the result wasn't quite what Nick was obviously hoping for. The polygrapher said the tests showed that Nick Sapson was deceptive when he denied being at Wayne Stark's home when Wayne was shot. Just as he had done with Matt Libers, the polygrapher told Nick his own subconscious body had done the confessing for him.

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Polygraph results in hand. The detectives went back at it. Hard this time.

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But the investigators did not believe Nick Sampson. After all, Matt Livers had already told them Nick was there. He was behind the whole thing, actually. Matt said they planned it all out in the two days or so before the murder. They talked it through on their cell phones. So, said the detectives, they knew Nick Sampson was lying. just like the polygrapher said.

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But was he? Because the test results from all that physical evidence at the murder scene were beginning to come back. As was the background check on Nick Sampson. Samson, all of 21 years old at the time, had a problem with marijuana as a teenager. He had done two separate stints in boys' homes.

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And while he denied being a marijuana user anymore, remember, investigators had found that marijuana pipe at the scene of the crime. Then, when detectives visited Nick's grandfather in Murdoch, the old man told them that a month before the murders, Nick had borrowed a 12-gauge shotgun from him... That's the same gauge weapon that was used in the murders.

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Then investigators executed a search warrant at Sampson's home, and among the items seized from under the bed, that very 12-gauge shotgun borrowed from his grandfather, and a pair of blue jeans, which were examined by CSI chief David Kofod's team. Remember, Kofod was the big city CSI guy from Omaha who had been brought in to help.

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Remember that car apparently seen by the newspaper carrier parked just a mile from the farmhouse on the night of the murders? The one described as tan or light brown, a sedan? No. Then later passed the newspaper carrier going pretty fast, 60 or 70 miles an hour on a gravel road. Well, detectives found it. A 1997 Ford Contour owned, believe it or not, by Nick Sampson's brother.

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And the car had been cleaned, detailed actually, at 5.30 Eastern Monday morning, which was just a few hours after Wayne and Charmin's stock were gunned to death. Who details a car at 5.30 in the morning?

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So they examined the car again, and Kofod himself, using sterile filter paper, wiped the interior surfaces of the car. And just below the steering wheel, on the dashboard, he found it. A stain.

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And before long, tests confirmed that what the CSI chief found under the dashboard was indeed blood. The blood of Wayne Stock, the victim. And the only way anyone could figure out how it got there was via Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. So there it was. Persistence had paid off. With a confession and some real physical evidence to back it up, the murders of Wayne and Charman Stock had been solved.

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So it certainly seemed, and of course around the sheriff's office they felt pretty good about that. Certainty set in. They'd bet their careers on it now. And the whole apparatus of the law began to relax a little. Except... Except for the one who found, stumbled on it really, an overlooked little curiosity everyone else missed somehow.

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What was that like, that funeral?

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It was a ring, a gold ring, just lying there in the farmhouse, quite unobtrusively, in a place it had no business being. And no one seemed to have any idea who the thing belonged to. Such a mystery. Coming up in future episodes of Murder in the Moonlight. There were three words in the inscription, two names, and three tiny letters.

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A puzzle, the key to a secret, and the start of a very strange trip. That must have been a shocker to get that information, to have it across your desk. A huge shocker.

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Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop is the producer. Brian Drew, Kelly Laudeen, Bruce Berger, Marshall Hausfeld, and Candice Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

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From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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Leading that huge crowd of mourners were, of course, the many members of the Stock's large extended family. watched by a quiet, sharp-eyed contingent of people from the sheriff's office. Detectives scanning the crowd. And not long after, they began to focus on one particular member of the family. I'm on suspicions. Oh yes, families can be complicated with their secret feelings, their resentments.

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and private rages. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. First of all, the fellow investigators we're keeping an eye on was not Andy Stock. In fact, the police cleared the Stock's youngest son, and it didn't take very long. Andy's Easter weekend was entirely accounted for. He couldn't have been the one.

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So they returned the grief-stricken man to his family. Now, the name of this man, this person of interest, was not Stock at all, even though he was family. His name was Matt Livers, and he was Wayne and Charmin's 28-year-old nephew. In fact, Matt attended the Easter dinner at the Stock Farmhouse a few hours before the murders. But he wasn't there by virtue of being a family favorite. No.

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In fact, Matt Livers was considered something of a black sheep, quite unlike the industrious Stocks. Matt had bounced around from one dead-end job to another, never seeming to find his niche, never seemed that interested in having a niche. Instead, he lived with his grandmother, took advantage of her, in the opinion of the rest of the family.

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It was 1966 when the archetype of what would come to be known as the true crime novel barged into the culture. In no time at all, that book, in cold blood, was as famous as a book could be. And so was its author, Truman Capote. Unusual man, unusual book. In Cold Blood reads like a novel, though it was a true story, the mean, hard facts of it exhaustively reported.

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Even so, Matt's Uncle Wayne had frequently gone out of his way to help the young man get going in life. Not that it did much good.

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Still, when family members learned that detectives were looking at Matt, they had opinions. For one thing, they told police, he seemed a bit slow and different. But more to the point, some of them had noticed problems between Matt Livers and the Stalks. They described heated disagreements. Said Charmin disliked Matt. But, said the surviving Stalks, their parents didn't complain about him.

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Literary critics called it a masterpiece, though the story was as disturbing as a story could be. Somehow, Capote's masterpiece caught the mood of those turbulent years. In Cold Blood tells the story of a wealthy farm family called the Clutters, Herb, Bonnie, and their two children, murdered during an apparent robbery at night in their farmhouse in Kansas in 1959.

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Still, after the murders, well, everyone was a suspect. And Matt was no different in that respect. Again, the Starks' son, Steve.

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So, a few days after the murders, detectives visited Matt Liver's former employer, asked about his personality, asked about rumors that he had a temper. They assigned officers to keep watch on him. They even went through his garbage. And then, on April 25th, eight days after the murders, investigators asked Matt to come down to the station and answer some questions.

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Certainly, said Matt, happy to help. And he took a seat in the interrogation room. The conversation was recorded.

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Well, I'm here to cooperate with you, gentlemen. Okay. He was, or seemed to be, courteous, deferential. He said, almost with a sense of childlike wonder, that he'd never been interviewed by police before. Things proceeded from there.

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Of course, the investigators wanted to know where Matt Libers was when the murders happened. Who could vouch for him? And he told them that after the big family Easter dinner with the Stocks, he drove to Lincoln, Nebraska, about a half an hour away, and tucked in with his girlfriend, Sarah. Stayed there all night. Sarah could confirm it, he said.

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Oh, and Sarah's young son and a roommate were there, too. Mind you, he told the investigators, he hadn't always been in his uncle Wayne Stark's good books. He knew he was not exactly a family favorite. And he and his uncle had, well, they had disagreed about a thing or two. A tiff, Matt called it, a minor thing. But this questioning session went on for quite some time, five hours in fact.

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So naturally, a lot of those questions were asked again and again and again. Just a different way of putting it each time. Why so long? Well, there was a reason for that. Matt seemed to know more than he was saying. It seemed like he was hiding something. So, finally, the detective asked him if he'd agree to take a polygraph. And Matt said, yes, he would. So they hooked him up.

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And here he was, getting caught. and answering the big question. With that simple no, Mad Livers tried to put an end to it. Surely those cops who'd been badgering him for all these hours, who didn't seem to believe him, would be convinced by the polygraph, right? It would prove he was telling the truth, Matt believed. And now he could finally get out of there and go home.

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And, well, the police believed in the polygraph. Yes, they did. But not quite the way Matt was hoping for. Because the polygrapher told Matt quite bluntly, he failed.

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So they went back to the interview room, where the tone of the questions became quite pointed, accusing even. I, like I said, I want to get my name out of this. I had nothing to do with this. Again and again, Matt denied having anything to do with murdering Wayne and Charmin Stock. More than 100 times.

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The story was so influential, such a cultural touchstone, that even decades after its release, people just couldn't help but see the parallels between the Clutters and the Stock families. They were both good people, successful farmers in the middle of America, attacked in their sleep, murdered in cold blood.

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But the more he said it, and the more insistent he was... Guys, I need nothing to f***ing do with this.

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The more sure the detectives were that Matt was lying, they were quite certain, in fact.

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Why were investigators in Nebraska so convinced Matt Libers was lying? Well, in addition to the polygraph, there was a state profiler who suggested that this was the kind of crime committed by young males who knew their victims. And add to that, said the profiler, this was the sort of crime that appeared to be very personal to executions.

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A crime very likely driven by intense personal emotion toward the victims. Feelings like jealousy, anger, revenge. Oh, and finally there was this. The Starks lived in the middle of nowhere, and it made sense that a family member would know exactly where to find them. But a stranger? A stranger would have no idea. If those factors were bells, Matt Livers rang more bells than a royal wedding.

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Loudly. And in that interview room, detectives were losing patience.

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Eventually, they got quite explicit, telling Matt that he was headed for death row, unless he would start giving them what they knew to be true.

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And it was that technique that finally produced the desired effect. Rough, perhaps, yes. But Matt Livers admitted it. As if his denial was too heavy a load to carry, it happened rather suddenly. Here. You got a gun. Right or wrong? Right. Among the traits of a good detective is persistence, and it is prized, because once the door is opened, things spill out. And spill out they did.

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Six hours, enough time to cook an 18-pound turkey or watch two professional football games. And six hours was enough time, in the face of intense questioning by the detectives, for Matt Blivers to finally break and begin to admit his involvement in the murders of his aunt and uncle, Wayne and Charmin Stock.

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One line in particular, penned by Capote, seemed fitting to describe what had happened to Wayne and Charmin's stock. They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense. Those days that followed the murders were dreadful ones for the three adult Stog children. There was shock and grief and confusion and anger, a whole catalogue of emotions. They tried to keep busy.

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Now that the cat was out of the bag, Matt began filling in more of the blanks, the awful specifics of how he killed them, for one thing.

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And then a bonus. Remember that blood spatter and the void on the wall behind? That was clear evidence that a second killer was involved. And Matt Livers filled in the blank.

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And who was that second person? Lamatt was beyond denial now, beyond hesitation. He simply offered the name, gave it up without protest. Who was with you that night? Nick Sampson. Nick Sampson? He was a 21-year-old cousin on another branch of that big family tree. And that is how the interview ended.

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They cuffed Matt then, led him off to the county jail, and they sent someone to pick up Nick Sampson. And they charged them both with murder. It was late in the evening when Andy Stock answered his phone and heard the news from one of the detectives. Andy called his sister, Tammy.

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If Rob Lamone was upset by the way his wife looked at this young stranger, the way she stood so close to him as the night wore on, he said nothing. At least, not there. Rob had plenty to say to Sabrina once they got home.

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The Bernatines say they might have accepted that explanation at face value, if not for the fact that soon after that night at the bar, Jonathan began texting Jason.

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The reward was for information leading to an arrest and conviction. A hundred grand. And wouldn't you know it, the tip line phones soon started ringing.

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The Bernatines told Detective Meyer that a few weeks later, Rob was over at their house helping with some remodeling work. It just so happened that while Rob was there... Jason received another text message from Jonathan.

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Suddenly, this thing with Jonathan seemed as serious as a heart attack. Jason knew where this was going, and he didn't like it, not one bit.

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And you're thinking, oh, God, this is the last thing I wanted to hear.

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It was then that Jason walked back to the house and handed his phone to Rob.

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Rob told the Bernatines that shortly after the March Madness outing, he and Sabrina had gone to a wedding and Sabrina had too much to drink. On the drive home, she evidently sent out a group text that included Jonathan Hearn. Rob told them Hearn had responded to that text with a flurry of text messages of his own.

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This is the story of that hunt for a killer and of the twisted trail that led to a conspiracy to hide the truth. Truthful people usually don't get caught in those kind of traps. In this episode, you'll hear how the murder of Rob Lamone shined a bright light on high times in the high desert.

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Rob told the Bernatines he and Sabrina made up the next day and that he'd bought her a new phone. Rob had hoped that would be the end of it. But now, here was Hearn again on the phone.

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The Bernatines were as good as their word. For more than a year, they kept the Lamone family secret from the rest of the Wolfpack. As far as they could tell, everything in the Lamone household was back to normal. They assumed Sabrina's affair was a thing of the past. They were wrong.

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Kelly Bernatine was in a hurry that day in February 2014 when she decided to quickly dash into the Costco in Victorville to pick up a few groceries. Normally, she would have texted Sabrina to ask if she was working that day so Kelly could say hi. On that day, she did not.

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Naturally, when Kelly told Jason about that encounter, he hit the roof.

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And you're like, yeah, now you've got it.

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Rob Lamone was dead. Jason told Detective Meyer how at first he did not think Rob's murder and Sabrina's affair could possibly be connected because he couldn't imagine a straight arrow guy like Jonathan Hearn having anything to do with murder. Then Jonathan left him that voicemail.

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Jason was curious enough as to what all of this was about that he pressed play.

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Was this about the affair? As far as Jason knew, Jonathan's affair with Sabrina had ended months earlier. Now he wondered if perhaps Hearn's tone was hinting at something else.

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Jason listened to all of it. Then he listened to all of it again.

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You'll hear how that murder destroyed close friendships.

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That was on a Friday morning. It was later that afternoon when Jason Bernatine dug out Detective Meyer's business card and first gave him a call. The following Monday was Labor Day. the day Jason agreed to meet with Detective Meyer. And even before that meeting took place, Kelly was able to add a new piece of information to the puzzle. This one came from Sabrina herself.

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and how the investigation revealed some stunning secrets that many were desperately trying to keep hidden.

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Absolutely. Along with the flowers, Sabrina told Kelly how Jonathan had written her a sympathy note that read in part, quote, All the things that I have read in the paper and on Facebook about Robert was that he was such an amazing man. I'm going to try to live my life like him. Unquote.

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As far as the rest of the wolf pack was concerned, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Sabrina filled the role of grieving widow just the way everyone expected she would. She posted a glowing tribute to Rob on Facebook. She sent out thank you cards to funeral guests. She was somber and emotional when speaking of her late husband.

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None of the other members of the Wolfpack knew anything about Sabrina's relationship with Jonathan Hearn. Well, except, of course, for the Bernatines. In the weeks after Rob's murder, they say, their feelings for Sabrina began to change from sympathy to suspicion. Coming up next on Deadly Mirage.

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Deadly Mirage is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Ryan Drew, Kelly Laudeen, and Marshall Hausfeld are audio editors. Carson Cummins is associate producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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Deadly Mirage - Ep. 2: The Man on the Motorcycle

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Episode 2, The Man on the Motorcycle. It was late afternoon on the Friday before Labor Day. Detective Randall Meyer rocked back in his office chair, leafing through the Lamone murder file. Police reports, witness statements, tip line leads. Two weeks had gone by since Rob Lamone's murder, and as far as Meyer could see, it all added up to a nickel's worth of nothing.

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Coming up next on Deadly Mirage... My wife and I and Rob and Sabrina would engage in sexual activities, but it was not wife swapping. Good morning, sir. Can you tell us your name and spell your first and last name for the record?

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He tossed the file back on the desk and stared at it, half hoping a solution would pop out of that pile of paper, like a fly ball to shallow right. Well, none did. So he reviewed it all again. The limping man seen on security camera video? Well, investigators found a man living nearby who matched that description. However, he had a solid alibi for the time of the shooting.

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There was also a theory going around that Rob Lamone's killing might have been a case of mistaken identity because Rob had only been filling in that day. And on short notice at that, some wondered if a killer had come looking for somebody else.

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That theory even seemed plausible when the guy Rob was covering for told investigators he'd had a run-in with someone in a bar the night before Rob was killed.

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The bar's security camera seemed to confirm the railroad man's story. Except... All that unblinking eye saw that night was some alcohol-fueled jawing.

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Except it was the night before Rob Lema was killed. Yes. One of the more promising leads in the file had come from the tip line. a gunsmith in Tehachapi called in to say the day after the murder, one of his regulars, a man named Mark, had brought him a .44 caliber Ruger to repair.

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I'm no gun expert, but how often do people change out the firing pins in their guns?

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Cops went to work tracking down that gun's owner. Turned out, Mark was an older guy who owned a business there in the industrial complex. He did not limp, and he did not own a motorcycle. At the time, all investigators knew about the murder weapon was that it had been a large caliber weapon.

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Rob, that was impressive.

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Then the report came back from firearms analysis, and it turned out the slug pulled from Rob Lamone's brain was a .45, not a .44. meaning the Ruger with the new firing pin, was not the gun they were looking for.

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It also attracts train robbers or tweakers who prey upon any trains that might break down there. Keeping those tracks clear and the trains moving is the job of the rapid responders who work out of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe shop east of town. That was the job Rob Lamone was doing on the day he died in August 2014. Remember, this wasn't his normal gig.

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Of the remaining clues, one still nagged at the detective. It was the security camera video of that motorcyclist riding through the industrial park on the afternoon Rob Lamone died. the man was wearing a backpack, a helmet, long sleeves, and long pants. The timestamps on that video made for a compelling timeline. At 4.15, the rider is seen traveling east toward the railroad shop.

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The detective knew Rob Limone was not at the shop at that point because the same security camera had recorded him leaving the complex minutes earlier. About an hour later, Rob returns. Now, here's the thing. According to cell phone records, Rob's last text message, his last sign of life, really, was at 528. And the motorcyclist? Well, at 548, the rider is seen headed west out of the complex.

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Where had that rider been for those 20 minutes? The detective didn't know. He did, though, he needed more facts before he could get beyond a lot of unanswerable questions. It was about then that his phone rang. On the other end of the line was a man's voice, said his name was Bernatine, Jason Bernatine. He told the detective he was a firefighter in Hellandale and a close friend of the Lamones.

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He said he knew some things about the Lamones he thought the detective should know. Then he said something about a creepy voicemail he'd received that morning from a fellow firefighter.

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The detective told Jason Bernatine he'd meet him on Monday at the firehouse in Hallandale. It was a little after 5 when Detective Meyer arrived at San Bernardino County Fire Station No. 4 in Hellendale. It was Labor Day 2014. Soon after he walked in the door, he recognized Jason Bernatine. Meyer had met Jason and his wife Kelly a week earlier.

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At 36, Jason Bernatine looked like an Eagle Scout, clean cut and wide eyed, as wholesome as a tall glass of milk. After shaking hands and finding a quiet place to talk, Jason got straight to the point.

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This is the story of what happened that afternoon in 2014 and why. But it's also about much more.

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Every day they roll through Tehachapi, California by the dozens. Freight trains, some several miles long, are traveling what's called the Tehachapi Loop. It's a 19th century engineering marvel, one that enables heavy trains to cross the Tehachapi Mountains, climbing 77 feet in less than a mile. The loop is essentially a big helix, which attracts train buffs from around the world.

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A prior affair with Sabrina Lamal?

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Who had told you there were no problems in her marriage? Yes. According to Jason Bernatine, the affair started a couple of years earlier when Sabrina got involved with a firefighter Jason used to work with, a guy named Jonathan Hearn. Jason told Detective Meyer that he'd thought the affair had ended.

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But then days earlier, he'd gotten some texts and an odd voicemail from Jonathan Hearn that made him think maybe he was wrong.

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Jason Bernatine played the message for Detective Meyer.

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To the detective, the voicemail sounded like the anguished cry of a guilty conscience. There was a lot of talk about contrition and forgiveness and the almighty.

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Rob usually worked 90 miles away at the big train yard in Barstow. He just happened to be filling in that day, doing a favor for a friend. Had Rob been killed by a tweaker, someone who'd wandered into the train shop looking for something to steal, That's what Rob's friends thought.

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The first sign of trouble came at 6.48 that evening when Sean Ware, the rapid responder who was supposed to be relieving Rob called 911.

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Detective Meyer's attention was now laser focused on Jonathan Hearn. He wanted to know more of the backstory. So he listened intently to what Jason Bernatine and later his wife Kelly had to say about Jonathan Hearn and their good friend, Sabrina Limon. According to the Bernatines, it all started back in the fall of 2012.

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That's when Sabrina Limon got a part-time job handing out free food samples at the Costco in Victorville, a town about 15 miles south of Hellendale. It was there that she met a young fireman who was doing the shopping for his firehouse. Soon after, Sabrina mentioned meeting the fireman to Jason and his wife, Kelly.

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And that was all there was to it. Or so it seemed at the time.

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That year, the Silver Lakes Wolfpack celebrated Christmas and New Year's together. as they always did.

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Sabrina, wearing a black blouse and hot pink pants, lifted her wine glass and toasted the camera with a smile and an air smooch.

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The alcohol flowed freely that night while love and laughter filled the room. Though none of her friends knew it at the time, Sabrina Limon's life had already taken a turn. According to the Bernatines, the first sign something was going on with her came a few months later in March 2013 at another Wolfpack gathering.

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Alright, what I mean is flat on his back. Okay, very gently, as easy as you can, turn him over flat on his back. He's got a big knot on his head. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay, okay. Is he getting flat on his back? I can't get him on his back. Okay. Okay. Alright, put your hand on his back or his chest and see if you can feel any air coming in and out.

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Since five members of the Wolfpack had birthdays in March, the group typically celebrated those birthdays with a big night on the town. They called this annual outing March Madness. This particular year, the Wolfpack caravan to a bar called Beefo Brady's in Hesperia, a town about 20 miles south of Silver Lakes. Kelly Bernatine remembers the evening this way.

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Small world, isn't it? Jonathan Hearn was a tall, handsome guy, clean cut, a thick thatch of brown on his head, conservatively cut, blue-gray eyes, bright as high beams. Hearn said he lived there in Hesperia. He looked younger than the Wolfpack crowd, and he was, just 22 that evening. Even so, Kelly says, he seemed to mingle easily with the older men at the bar.

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The Man in the Black Mask - Ep. 2: The Twilight Zone

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So why would a cop, bullheaded or not, remain so determined that this young married father had somehow made a perfect stranger vanish from the face of the earth? Strange things come to light under the northern sun. especially with the aid of a search warrant. One of the items seized from movie maker Mark Twitchell, as mentioned earlier, was his office computer.

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And on the computer's hard drive, they found the actual raw footage of Twitchell's horror movie, filmed right in that dank little two-car garage searched earlier by the police, the movie Twitchell told the detective about the first time he was questioned.

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House of Cards is what Twitchell was calling it. A promotional film. Get enough people talking about this and he might persuade some investor to ante up the money for a feature-length movie. We're rolling. Action. Action. In House of Cards, a male killer poses online as a flirtatious woman to entrap his victim, a philandering husband, who tells his wife he's heading off to the gym.

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So the 4 a.m. intermission in this cat-and-mouse play was a time for Clark to dream up an act, too. Almost like he and Twitchell were going through some weird inverse improv routine. Each one in that little room, acting a role without a script, trying to outperform the other.

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But once he arrives at the rendezvous site, the victim is dropped with a stun baton by an assailant wearing a hockey mask.

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Okay, that was terrible. The victim is then duct-taped to a chair and stabbed with a samurai sword of all things. Murdered. Cut up into little bits. Imagine a cross between Friday the 13th and that Showtime series Dexter, but on a much lower budget.

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In one take of that scene, as the killer thrusts the sword into a dummy, a wad of white stuffing comes poking out the other end. And in a snap, a tense drama is transformed into a comedic farce. And that delighted the crew.

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The victim in this teaser version was played by Edmonton comedian Chris Hayward.

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So the police decided to have a little chat with Mr. Hayward. But Hayward, no slouch when it came to the entertainment business, thought the visit from the police must be a prank of some sort.

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Police also tracked down Toronto actor Robert Barnsley, who played the starring role in House of Cards, that is, the deranged, mask-wearing murderer.

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Playing a serial killer was almost too much fun, said Barnsley.

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While one set of detectives was questioning people who knew or worked with Mark Twitchell, another group surfed around Twitchell's computers, looking for anyone who may have had contact with him online. And that's when they discovered that right about the time Mark Twitchell was filming House of Cards, he had friended a 30-something animal trainer and aspiring filmmaker in rural Ohio.

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A woman named Renee Waring. So an Edmonton detective flew all the way to Cleveland just to question her, where she, quite upfront about it, told him and later us about clicking on an intriguing Facebook profile, Dexter Morgan, the murderous main character in that Showtime series, Dexter.

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And particularly fascinating.

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So when Waring saw that Michael C. Hall Facebook profile, well, she fired off her friend request. Did you think you were friending the actor himself?

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Except she actually got a response.

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Still, the whole thing was kind of exciting to find a fellow Dexter devotee. So she continued to exchange messages with this imposter. He had expressed interest in you, this guy?

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So was this flirtatious tone something that kept going back and forth?

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Yeah. $40 for a used car? It couldn't possibly be true. But why admit that you had the missing man's car and then lie about the price you paid for it? It made no sense. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is The Man in the Black Mask, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 2, The Twilight Zone.

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Finally, Renee's Facebook friend relented. His name, he said, was Mark Twitchell.

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Now that is interesting.

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Because Renee Waring's lifelong dream was to be a movie maker herself. And now, out of the blue, here was this guy who had the skills and connections to make that happen.

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Dark? Oh, yes. But all in fun, of course, and entertaining. And so they passed story ideas back and forth almost every day. It was later when Edmonton detectives dug out the content on Mark Twitchell's computer and found... That very kind of thing. Here's the opening paragraph, as read by a voice actor.

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There's a magic in stories. The alchemy that brings imagination, fantasy to life. The cops' job was to figure out, was this fiction or was it real?

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Coming up next on The Man in the Black Mask.

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The Man in the Black Mask

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The Man in the Black Mask is a production of Dateline and NBC News. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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But just as Detective Clark was getting set to rejoin Mark Twitchell for the start of Fact 2 of their little drama, a patrol officer reported in. The one who'd been sent out to look for that missing red Mazda. The red Mazda that belonged to the also missing Johnny Altinger. He had found it. And it was right where Mark Twitchell said it would be. The patrolman searched it, of course.

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And now, during a break, a decidedly drooping Twitchell pulled out a cell phone and punched in his wife's phone number.

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But Detective Clark acted like he knew everything from the moment he opened the door and re-entered the room. It was all bluster, of course.

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He's any place, anywhere, as stressful, as confining, as exhausting as a police interview room at 4 o'clock in the morning. Filmmaker Mark Twitchell had been in that little room for five hours, patiently answering Detective Bill Clark's questions about this guy, Johnny Altinger, who'd been missing for more than a week.

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Now that it was clear to Mr. Twitchell that he was being questioned not as a witness, but as some sort of suspect, he dropped the chummy act like a bad script.

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Of course, he wasn't exactly alone. At that moment, he shared the space with a microphone and a camera so that outside the room, Detective Bill Clark could watch and listen. But all Mark Twitchell did was complain to his wife.

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Once, around the time dawn was contemplating a start on the day, Mark Twitchell mumbled something about reality seeming more like some sort of fantasy. I just feel like I'm in the f***ing Twilight Zone right now. But in the face of Detective Clark's best portrayal of a bad cop, Mark Twitchell never wavered.

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The whole Long Prairie night, he was unfailingly polite, helpful, seemed to have no interest in calling a lawyer.

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Or maybe Clark was just too suspicious and the guy was not up to his neck in anything. Anyway, about the time the sun was rising out there in the real world, Mark Twitchell let Clark know he'd had enough.

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Yeah. And Twitchell simply walked out of the interrogation room, leaving Bill Clark standing alone on his empty stage. And none the wiser. Twilight Zone, indeed. There's no knowing what Mark Twitchell said to his wife after his long, strange night in the bowels of the Edmonton Police Department. No telling if he knew that bullheaded detective was still somehow fixated on him. Oh, but he was.

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So now, Detective Clark and colleagues began poking about in the story of Mark Twitchell. As in, who is this guy, really? And it didn't take long. Twitchell was a hard-working local boy. No criminal history. Never been arrested. Good parents. Nice young wife. Sweet little daughter. And he was on his way to becoming an Edmonton celebrity.

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His movie production company, called Express Entertainment, detectives discovered, was not some sham front, but a perfectly legitimate, licensed business. More than that, actually. His was a promising effort to help Edmonton, often northern Alberta, get some national attention as a potential center of movie-making, like what had happened in Toronto and Vancouver.

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And Mark Twitchell was very good at drumming up attention and money from local investors like John Pinsent.

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Detectives even got a look at the teaser film for Twitchell's next project, the three and a half million dollar buddy comedy, Day Players, in which Mark played the role of director, even as he was the director. Sort of a Hall of Mirrors type story. A movie about a movie about making a movie or something.

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Fantasy and reality all mixed up somehow. Just to cover the basis, the police interviewed Mark Twitchell's crew members. They vouched for him completely and revealed they all shared a passion for Star Wars. They loved the whole tale about the Force and the dark side. Loved it so much that their first project together was a Star Wars fan film called Secrets of the Rebellion.

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Detective Clark was asking so many detailed questions because... I know I'm not getting the truth.

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Mark was wildly successful that time at drumming up local media coverage, which is when he started becoming kind of a big deal in Edmonton. He was even interviewed by the CBC. We keep pretty good pace with Lucasfilm, actually, when it comes to producing the films. His was, no bones about it, a low-budget production.

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But even so, Twitchell was able to land one of the original Star Wars actors, Jeremy Bullock, who played the bounty hunter Boba Fett. That was enticement enough to get Toronto-based actor Sean Storer to sign on for a part.

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Sci-fi is not Storer's thing, though. And once he got to Edmonton, he found the atmosphere on Mark Twitchell's set a little too playful, unserious, at least for him. One cringeworthy moment happened when Twitchell paraded around the set with a pillow stuffed under his shirt.

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That's what everybody had him as. Which certainly fit Mark's reputation, which was that he was a prankster. Well, maybe you have to be if you're trying to start a movie business. Anyway, Mark Twitchell came off squeaky clean. His film company was respected, as was he. And Bill Clark and the Edmonton police? Back at square one, by the look of things. What do we got? We got nothing.

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Edmonton homicide detective Bill Clark, along with other members of the Edmonton Police Service, felt a little like Alice in the Rabbit Hole. Their missing man, Johnny Altinger, had vanished without a trace.

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If anything, that is, because really all Clark had was just a feeling that Mark Twitchell had been handing him a whole load of nonsense, fully expecting Clark to believe it. He didn't, but... He'd been letting things develop, organic-like, if you will, patiently. Like he bought it all.

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The only person of any interest at all was a wholesome, aspiring movie producer who was once known to love pranks and publicity stunts, and who stood up to a Bill Clark grilling with his manners intact. At which point, they might have left the poor guy alone. But not quite. Twitchell had implicated himself in Altinger's disappearance by admitting he had the man's car.

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So police were able to get a warrant now to search Twitchell's garage slash soundstage and his car and his home.

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Of course, I expected it, right? And so police looked through Twitchell's home and found very little, at least on the face of it. They seized his computers, which is pretty standard. And when they searched those computers, they uncovered, well, it was an affair. Twitchell had a girlfriend. So inevitably, then his wife found out, and she kicked him out.

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And in a matter of days, Mark Twitchell went from happily married indie filmmaker to just another 20-something guy living in his parents' basement. And so Detective Clark paid Twitchell's dad and mom a visit. That is, a little bit of dad, a lot of mom.

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They set up a surveillance team, 24-hour watch to keep an eye on the house, and Twitchell. but his behavior was anything but suspicious. He went on about his business, took meetings with investors about his Day Players movie project, even picked up a $35,000 check from financial backer John Vincent.

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And in Detective Clark's world of up arrows and down arrows, there was one other huge up arrow in Twitchell's favor. Motive, or that is to say, the lack of one. Twitchell had nothing at all to gain by killing Altinger. There was no love triangle, there was no rivalry, no robbery. And to put it simply, Twitchell was not a criminal, didn't have a record, hadn't ever been arrested even.

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It was a happy habit, their evening walk. A summer habit, of course. Too soon now that crisp bite in the air would turn bitter cold. But not yet. That day, Friday, October 3rd, had been uncommonly warm for Edmonton, and twilight seemed to linger as they ambled along the path that wound its way through their neighborhood.

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In fact, this is Mark Twitchell explaining to a detective named Mike Tabler that he'd been using the rented garage as a poor man's soundstage to shoot a short film. It was designed to drum up publicity, buzz, if you will, and with any luck, investor money, to allow him to produce a full-length feature movie.

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And then, as if on cue, another man appeared, seemingly in pursuit.

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Of course, he had a crew in and out of the place during filming, said Mark, and several actors. Maybe one of them was up to something? But it seemed unlikely, and none of them had ever asked to borrow the set for anything.

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Anyway, he said he didn't need the garage anymore. He'd removed all his camera gear and props and this and that and moved on to a real film project he was shooting elsewhere.

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Which mattered not at all to Detective Tabler. Point was, where was Johnny Altinger? And who was that woman he'd been flirting with online? The one who gave him directions to the garage, told him she'd meet him there and spirit him off to Costa Rica. The woman who'd signed her emails, Jen.

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Attacker? Looked that way, at least. Whoever it was was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and a hockey mask. Just like the serial killer Jason in all those Friday the 13th movies.

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Mystifying, said Mark Twitchell. He had a bad feeling about this. A man disappears after telling his friends he was going to the very place Mark's movie had been shooting to meet some actress Mark had never heard of. And now police were involved.

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And on top of that, now he'd just discovered somebody changed the lock on his garage studio. That was all Mark Twitchell had to say. He didn't know a darn thing. Had nothing else to add. Unless this actress, Jen, was some sort of phantom, and the garden-variety backyard garage was like a magic portal. Like in some sci-fi movie.

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Detective Clark's thoughts were more practical at that moment and maybe urgent.

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What a strange coincidence it was. The rented backyard garage an independent Edmonton film crew was using as a studio was the very place the missing man, Johnny Altinger, was supposed to meet his mysterious blind date, Jen. Odd. Especially since the movie's producer-director, Mark Twitchell, expressed exactly the same confusion as the police did. He didn't get it either. The dots didn't connect.

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Mark Twitchell said he didn't know Johnny from Adam, didn't know this Jen woman either, and besides, there was no evidence Johnny ever made it to the garage at all.

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Detective Bill Clark wasn't in on the Mark Twitchell meeting, but he was curious. Was the guy truly on the up and up like it seemed he was? So Clark pulled up the video recording of Twitchell's chat with Officer Tabler.

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Oh, but now this case was under his skin. Bill Clark is, he doesn't mind admitting, an old school detective, the sort that seems to exist mostly in the movies these days, kind of like a 50s film noir.

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But what guy or woman, who was the bad guy to get in the Johnny Altinger case? Was there a bad guy? Was there even a crime? Well, who knew, really? So Clark kept himself on a tight leash. He had yet to smell anything like blood. You must have come to some point where you thought, oh, this is definitely foul play. No, not yet. Not at all.

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All the cops had, after all, was a missing man who might just have run off somewhere with or without some mysterious woman named Jen, which would certainly account for the fact that his red Mazda coupe was gone, too. But really, aside from a few curious emails that might or might not make any sense... There wasn't much for investigators to go on.

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So, being cops, Clark and his colleagues employed standard procedure. They doubled back for a second look at things. Like that garage Johnny was apparently headed for when he vanished. The first time the cops went there, it was very once-over.

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And then, said Marissa, the masked man did something quite unexpected.

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And so they applied for a search warrant to look more thoroughly, give the place a real forensic going over.

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Clark expected the detective to return in an hour or so with the key and consent form. But no, the detective called Clark instead with news that just couldn't wait about a story Mark Twitchell had just told him.

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So Clark invited Twitchell to come back down to the station for a meeting at 10.30 on a Sunday night. And Twitchell agreed.

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Pretending? Maybe they really were friends.

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But two arrows? If that's all you had, it wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee in a weird investigation like this one.

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But as the interview proceeded, the young filmmaker was the very picture of cooperation.

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He volunteered information. He answered questions without hesitation or any apparent guile. Clark watched his body language and it was open, comfortable. So... They got to the story about the red Mazda. And what a story that was, said Mark. He was sitting in his own car. He'd stopped, for some reason, just a few blocks from his rented garage.

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And his knee-jerk reaction was?

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As can happen anywhere, Edmonton included.

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Except what he wanted to do was not even close to normal, said Mark. The man was desperate to get rid of his car. Offered to sell it, right then and there, to Mark. For practically nothing. And the reason? It's crazy.

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Now convinced this was some sort of choreographed mugging, Marissa took off running.

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Apparently, said Mark, there was no catch and nothing wrong with the car. except it had a standard transmission, which he didn't know how to drive. So he left it parked in a friend's driveway. Does he live close by or what?

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A detective listening in from another room sent someone out to look for the red car. And meanwhile, Bill Clark left the interview room, partly to regroup... but also to see how Mark would act when they left him alone. And if he was rattled, he certainly didn't show it. Instead, he calmly placed a call to his wife. Hey.

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What in heaven's name was going on? Bill Clark didn't have a clue, beyond his suspicions, that is. There's something about this guy. He was just too, too something. So Bill Clark, good cop, decided to become Bill Clark, bad cop. Right or wrong, he was about to lean in on Mark Twitchell. The game's on.

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but not Trevor. He stayed behind, still not quite sure if the man lying at his feet begging for help was in need of saving or out to do him harm.

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Coming up in future episodes of The Man in the Black Mask.

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And Liz Cole is Senior Executive Producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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Trevor said the man in the hockey mask then calmly walked away and disappeared back into the alley from which he came. But not the man lying on the path. He stayed right where he was. What in the world was going on? Trevor was done trying to solve this mystery and ran after Marissa, leaving the man on the path behind, still pleading for help.

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Rather like a seasoned method actor, like it was an episode of The Twilight Zone. Trevor and Marissa got home quick as they could and called the police, telling them about the man in the mask and the guy begging for help.

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A report was taken. Squad cars prowled the streets and alleys nearby, though by then it was too dark to see much of anything.

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And no victim ever came forward. No one ever reported to police that they had been assaulted in a quiet neighborhood by a man in a hockey mask.

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So, was this some sort of staged robbery attempt? No. Or someone's idea of a sick prank?

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Or was it something else altogether? Did you feel sometimes like you were in the middle of, you know, Alice in Wonderland or The Matrix or something? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, The Man in the Black Mask. Episode 1 Where's Johnny? Edmonton, Alberta doesn't always get quite the attention it probably deserves.

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It was a good neighborhood, safe, established, not quite grand, but not modest either. So they wandered, the two of them, and listened to parents calling in kids from the park. Almost dark now. There, out of nowhere, there it was, sudden, shocking, terrifying.

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That generally goes to its flashier sibling, Calgary, a three-hour drive south. Edmonton, on the other hand, is the provincial capital. home to a million people, birthplace of all kinds of famous types like Michael J. Fox, K.D. Lang, Tommy Chong, and booming on and off, courtesy of the massive oil sands a hundred or so miles to the north.

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Edmontonians are used to the roughnecks and roustabouts who blow through town on their way to and from the oil patch. Which is perhaps why a particular sort of case often sucks up the time of the Edmonton Police Service. Missing persons. Though typically such cases tend to solve themselves once the victim sobers up.

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So when veteran homicide detective Bill Clark got a missing person case dumped on his desk... I'm not thinking much is going to come of this. That is Bill Clark. Shaved head, thick mustache, built like a cannonball. And in that moment, Bill Clark was not happy. To call out a veteran homicide cop like him on a missing person case? Well, that just wasn't done.

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The missing person in this case was a guy who, no surprise, worked in the oil fields. Johnny Altinger was his name. The friends who called it in said he was 39 years old, tall, lanky, with short brown hair, a friendly open face, and a lopsided grin. They said they hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks. Wasn't like him, they said.

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So, with a grumble from Clark, they opened a file on Johnny Altinger. No idea, back at the beginning, how important that name was going to be. Anyway, Clark and the other investigators put together a list of Altinger's known friends and family members and started making calls to see if the guy really was missing or just out on a bender. One of those friends was a woman named Deborah Tykrobe.

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We talked to Deborah, too, and she told us she met Johnny Altinger on a dating website.

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Debra looked to be in her early 30s, petite with bobbed brown hair. She said nurses training had kept her far too busy to even think about dating. But now she was done and maybe ready for a man in her life.

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Deborah has, well, would it be fair to call it a nurse's personality? Smart, hardworking, and quite obviously compassionate. And she was looking for those same characteristics, maybe unrealistically, in a guy. But the ones she was meeting just weren't cutting it. And then she saw Johnny Altinger's upbeat dating profile and agreed to meet him for coffee.

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There was a but, however. While Johnny certainly saw sparks, Deborah said she did not.

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But you liked him. Yeah, but he was... You liked him more like a brother.

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And, as friends do, they began to pal around together.

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And so their friendship grew.

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That is Marissa Guarini, remembering the young man who stumbled out of an alley and collapsed at their feet.

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Everything had a... Hi, sunshine girl?

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A friendship so close that the two were comfortable talking about all the different women Johnny was meeting up with on that Plenty of Fish website.

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When he told you about these women, he told you about them?

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Then, around the middle of October, Deborah got an email from Johnny saying...

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Mind you, Johnny sent a message to a male friend or two as well. Detective Clark got hold of that one. It didn't mention heaven. He says, if anything happens to me, you know where I'm at.

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So stumbling along, yes. Marissa's partner, Trevor Hossinger, was alarmed too, but something about it seemed off somehow.

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39-year-old oilfield worker Johnny Altinger was missing. Maybe. Friends hadn't seen him around since early October, and yet those same friends were getting email messages from him saying he was on vacation in Costa Rica with a new love in his life. One email seemed to explain everything.

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It said, I've met an extraordinary woman named Jen who was offered to take me on a nice long tropical vacation. We'll be staying in her winter home in Costa Rica. A phone number to follow soon. I won't be back in town until December 10th, but I'll be checking my email periodically. See you around the holidays. Johnny. Johnny. Which, to homicide detective Bill Clark, seemed perfectly reasonable.

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Not hard to imagine that a love-struck man might want to leave the snow and ice of Edmonton behind and skip off to the tropics. Who knows? Maybe he did go to Costa Rica. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? You don't know. Still, just to be thorough, investigators did a little tour of Altinger's condominium. And it was messy, for sure. Dishes in the sink, clothes strewn about.

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But it certainly did not look like a crime scene.

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Oh, and his car was gone. His red Mazda coupe. So, let's find the car.

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Since Johnny Altinger's email said he'd taken off for Costa Rica, officers went to the airport, of course, and looked for that red Mazda of his. They searched in every parking lot. But it wasn't there. They combed through airline passenger lists. He wasn't on any of them. And just as the police were contemplating that puzzle, one of Altinger's friends surfaced with yet another intriguing email.

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This email was sent to Johnny while he was still in Edmonton. And it was from Jen, that woman he'd apparently accompanied to Costa Rica. It was sent to him the evening of their first date, October 10th. It was driving directions to her home. And Johnny hadn't met her yet, after all, so he forwarded the email to a friend just in case.

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There wasn't a phone number, not even an address, but there were detailed directions to her place. So two patrol officers drove the very route. And the directions led them to a quiet residential neighborhood and along a back alley... to a detached two-car garage. What an odd place to meet.

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The officers did some checking and found out the garage had been rented to a local celebrity of sorts, a guy named Mark Twitchell, who was making a name for himself as a scrappy young independent filmmaker. So they called him, and this Twitchell character readily agreed to leave his wife and daughter at bedtime and drive all the way across town and open up the garage.

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But when he got there, he took one look at the padlock on the door. and realized somebody had changed it. He couldn't get in. So, with Twitchell's permission, the cops broke in, had a quick look around, and found... nothing. Except for an empty work table, few tools, and a trash drum. The place was empty. Just the same, why would someone change the lock?

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And why did that woman, Jen, direct Johnny Altinger to that backyard garage... the very day he disappeared. Don't know, said Mark Twitchell, but he'd be happy to tag along to the police station and help out any way he could.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Got it. Fascinating. Sergei, how much longer do you think this will go for?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

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The state is painstakingly laying out the evidence it says proves Sementilli and her lover, Robert Baker, planned the stabbing of her husband, Fabio, to collect his hefty life insurance policy. They were allegedly helped by a third person whose identity remained a mystery for years. Last week, prosecutors presented the jury with video of Monica and Robert immediately after their arrest.

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OK, well, thank you for staying on it. Thank you so much, Sergey.

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Up next, it's Dateline Roundup. We've got updates in the case of Adnan Syed, the convicted murderer whose story went viral in the podcast Serial. And more on the upcoming retrial of Karen Reed. And in Hawaii, there's been a verdict in the murder trial of the husband accused of killing his wife's ex-lover.

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Plus, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen is back, and she wants you to know about a scam targeting drivers. Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline producer Sue Simpson. Hey, Sue. Hey, it's great to be back. Yes, and we are back in Dedham, Massachusetts for another Karen Reid update.

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She is the woman accused of drunkenly backing her SUV into her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, back in 2022 and leaving him to die in the snow. Her trial last summer ended with a hung jury, and her retrial is scheduled for April. She has denied having anything to do with his death.

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Last week, the judge in the case stopped a hearing halfway through the day citing grave concerns about the defense's work with crash reconstruction experts in Reid's first trial. That hearing started up again this Tuesday. What did we learn, Sue?

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And, Sue, one last piece of Karen Reid news, the findings from a federal investigation into the Karen Reid case, which we think has been going on since about April 2023.

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Definitely a hit to the defense. We'll stay on top of the Karen Reed case, of course, Sue, you will. For our next story, we're off to Baltimore, where there is a big development in a case true crime podcast fans will probably recognize, Sue.

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Video, they say, that captured the unraveling of their plan in real time.

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OK, and for our final story, we are off to Honolulu, Hawaii, for a big update on a trial we've been following here on the podcast for the past few weeks. Eric Thompson is accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist ex-lover in 2022. This is his second trial. His first one in 2023 ended with a hung jury. They've been in deliberations, the jurors, for days. Sue, do we have a decision?

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For those of you listening in the car right now, our final story is for you. Drivers in the U.S. pay billions of dollars in road tolls each year. But sometimes you might not even know that you've gone through a toll until you get some kind of notice, like a text or an email that you owe money. But what happens when that notice is a scam?

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My next guest, NBC News Chief Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicky Nguyen is here with some safety tips. Welcome back, Vicky. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. So why are you worried about this now, Vicki? What's going on?

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Dateline producer Chetna Joshi is back to bring us up to speed on the latest in the case. Chetna, thanks for making time for us again. Thank you for having me. Sure. OK, so the last time we spoke, Chetna, you told us that prosecutors were telling the jury how investigators had zeroed in on Monica and Robert Baker.

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So, Vicki, these scammers, do they know that we use these passes or we use tolls? Or are they just casting a wide net to as many cell phone numbers as they can, hoping that it resonates with someone? Yeah.

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You know, and in most states, tolls are collected electronically. So you might not know or remember being charged or the rules can change. You know, it's confusing for people.

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So we know what not to do. What should you do if you do get one of these text messages?

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Recently, prosecutors have focused more on what they say was their suspicious behavior after they were arrested. And a lot of that was actually caught on tape. Monica and Robert were arrested together and placed in the back of a patrol car. Chetna, what happens in that patrol car?

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Good point, good point. So the road toll texting scam, it's just a great reminder that these scammers, they just continue to create new tactics to get money from people. Absolutely. All right, you have the best information, the best tips. Thank you so much as always for being here. Thank you for having me. And to get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.

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Coming up this Friday, Blaine Alexander has her first all-new two-hour dateline since she officially joined the team. In 2016, a young woman's body is found in an abandoned farmhouse, a place known locally as the Haunted House. As fear grips the community, investigators' search for answers takes them from a crime lab to a house of worship.

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Watch The Haunted House Confession, airing this Friday at 9, 8 central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock. And don't forget to check out Keith's new podcast series, Murder in the Moonlight. It's about a double murder in the Great Plains and an investigation that came down to one single shiny clue —

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Dateline Premium subscribers can binge the entire series, and episodes one through four are available for everyone else. Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Koroloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir.

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Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer. Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.

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Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's February 27th, and here's what's on our docket. In Kansas, a woman accused of murdering her ex-husband and his longtime girlfriend almost 25 years ago is now on trial and representing herself. Last week, she cross-examined her own children.

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I'm sure the defense can spin that in a different direction.

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So in court, Chetna, we also heard audio of Monica in a jail cell.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

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It's time for the Dateline story meeting at 30 Rockefeller Center.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

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Remind us who the police believe this man is and how he fits in.

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Other stories on our radar this week, a verdict in Hawaii where the man accused of murdering his wife's ex-lover has been on trial. In Baltimore, a big ruling for convicted killer Adnan Syed, whose story you may know from the podcast Serial. And we've got an important update in the Karen Reid case.

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Christopher Austin, the third person involved in all of this, he has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, will be sentenced on April 30th, and he's going to testify.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

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Okay, well, you will let us know when this big piece of testimony is coming, and we will have you back to hear about that, what presumably could be explosive in that courtroom. Thank you, Chetna. Thanks for having me. Coming up, just before opening statements three weeks ago, murder defendant Dana Chandler fired her attorneys and took over her own defense. She's called herself as a witness.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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In July of 2002, Michael Sisko and his longtime girlfriend Karen Harkness were found shot to death in bed in Topeka, Kansas. Ten years later, a jury convicted Michael's ex-wife, Dana Chandler, on two counts of first-degree murder, and a judge sentenced her to 100 years in prison. Then, in 2018, came a reversal. The Kansas Supreme Court overturned Dana's conviction.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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A new prosecutor took Dana Chandler to trial again in the summer of 2022, and that jury didn't return any verdict. Now, Chandler had little reaction when the jury announced they couldn't come to a decision today. So this month, Kansas is trying Dana Chandler for a third time with one major difference. After the jury had been selected, Dana made this head-snapping decision.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Dateline producer Sergey Ivonin was in the courtroom as the prosecution presented its case last week, calling Dana and Mike's children to the stand. Sergey, thank you for being on the podcast.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So why don't we start with the prosecution's theory of this case? They haven't wavered much in the last 15 years.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Dana has maintained her innocence from the very beginning.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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But still, she was convicted in 2012, and it was super fast.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Plus, Vicky Nguyen, NBC News chief consumer investigative correspondent, has a warning about a new texting scam targeting drivers.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So Dana won her appeal and the county tried her again in 2022. That trial ended in a hung jury, which brings us to the third trial that's underway now. Two of the prosecution's main witnesses are Dana's own children. They were just teenagers when their dad died, right?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So what did the prosecutors ask them about on the stand this time?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Producers are discussing this week's big stories in true crime.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Yeah, this one exchange happened when Dana was telling Haley she didn't want to communicate with her anymore. Dana brought up an accusation she'd made before that Mike had raped her during their marriage, which Mike's family disputes. The prosecutor read Dana's part in these exchanges, and Haley, she read her part.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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That is so sad. What did the son say on the stand, Dustin? He actually tried to get his mom to confess, right? I know one time he recorded a conversation they had in the car.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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But before all that, we're heading back to a Los Angeles courtroom where the widow of a famous hairstylist is on trial for allegedly plotting his murder. The prosecution's case against Monica Sementilli has entered its fifth week.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Okay, so this is awkward then. Dana representing herself. How does she handle her own children on cross-examination?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So are both children saying on the stand that they think she killed Mike and Karen? I know out of court they've said it.

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So we're in the defense portion now of the trial. Who is Dana calling to the stand?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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So how does she, she can't really question herself. So what is she doing? Giving a statement on the stand?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Audio of a jailhouse sting. A woman's third murder trial in three decades. And the latest on a new texting scam.

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Yeah. And she said she was deeply embarrassed, right, about her exchange with her daughter that she'd been drinking to the point of blacking out when she sent those AOL messages. It was a monologue and she's not done yet. Has she even been questioned yet by the prosecution?

Dateline: True Crime Weekly

Sean Combs: Cassie Ventura returns to the stand.

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The bombshell court testimony is Sean Combs' former girlfriend accuses him of abusive and explicit acts. Cassie Ventura.

Death County, PA

Introducing: Death County, PA

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I'm Joshua Vaughn, an investigative reporter for PennLive. And this is Death County, PA, a new limited series from Wondery, the makers of Gladiator and Exposed. Who's gonna feel my pain? Who's gonna say my name? Ain't no joy but to be Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

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Introducing: Death County, PA

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You can listen to Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I remember feeling like I sat there and I watched my staff kill somebody.

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Period. A lot of what happened here was a secret. Something that people in power tried to hide. They would pick and choose when they turned their cameras on when they were beating the hell out of somebody. We can talk about that as well. I knew I was going to die in there. I could feel it. And I was like, you got to get me out of here. Lamont got out.

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For over three decades, Lamont Jones's life has been consumed by one particular building in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. From the outside, it seems harmless. It's one story in beige, just down the street from the Pizza Hut. It looks kind of like an elementary school or a public library. But inside? It's something else entirely. It was brutal. It was brutal.

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But when his young cousin dies in that same building, he'll have to go back to expose it all.

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And soon, an entire community rose up to demand the truth.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. The crime scene at the City Gas and Diesel mini-mart is grim. The store's clerk, a 23-year-old Indian immigrant, lies dead behind the counter. A single bullet wound in his chest.

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where the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite police unit, turned into a criminal empire, robbing suspects and falsifying evidence while the city looked the other way. When the truth finally came out, it exposed a culture of corruption that went far beyond one rogue unit. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

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Discover exclusive seasons, binge new seasons first, and listen completely ad-free on Wondery Plus. Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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This is just the first of Graham's many insights. He's like a modern day Sherlock Holmes. He even figures out the victim's time of death just by measuring his temperature with a thermometer. When Graham gets the body back to his morgue, he personally conducts an autopsy.

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When James Lebomski arrived at Dauphin County Prison the morning after Ishmael Thompson died, he knew it was going to be a long day. I do remember feeling anxious, just anxious. James was in charge of training the staff at Dauphin County Prison. He's a big guy, kind of intimidating. He rides a motorcycle. He's got a mustache and a goatee.

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He looks like someone who would be in charge of training prison guards. It was his job to make sure that correction officers understood procedures and best practices. And on that morning, James had gotten a call. He hadn't been given many details, but he knew something had gone very wrong.

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He now needed to review video of an incident that had occurred the night before, the death of Ishmael Thompson. After Tyreek died, correction officers had to wear body cameras. They still weren't admitting that anything went wrong with Tyreek, just that it would be good to see what the guards were seeing when there was an incident. At the start of the video, Ishmael is with a sergeant.

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They are in the processing center at DCP.

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But that isn't happening.

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In the video, Ishmael just walks off. He's naked. And he still seems hell-bent on taking a shower. Right now. And in fact, there is one there in the processing center.

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He is clearly in the middle of a mental breakdown, and that is obvious to the people working at DCP, but they continue to treat him like an average disruptive inmate. The sergeant calls for backup, and then he goes over to get Ishmael out of the shower. Ishmael gets upset. He throws a punch, and it lands. The sergeant pulls out his pepper spray and sprays it directly at Ishmael.

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Now it's pandemonium. Several backup officers storm into the room, including a supervisor.

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The first thing pepper spray does when it hits you is it inflames the mucous membranes in your nose, throat, and lungs. That means your eyes and nose will start running. It gets harder to breathe. Your throat's whole airway starts to feel like it's on fire. You're gonna snot up, you're gonna wheeze, you're gonna spit. The county's own use of force manual named all of the effects of pepper spray.

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It says they can last up to 45 minutes.

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Ishmael is spitting because of the pepper spray. But that doesn't stop the officers from grabbing something called a spit hood.

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But Ishmael had been pepper sprayed. The combination of coughing and gagging and those tiny holes for breathing can be dangerous. James watched Ishmael continue gagging and spitting inside of the spit hood. The officers handcuff his arms behind his back. They bring out a restraint chair, which looks like a heavy-duty, high-backed wheelchair with straps.

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They sit Ishmael down and start wrestling to get the straps on him. But they can't quite do it properly, where they take off the handcuffs.

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Strapping someone into a restraint chair, handcuffed with their arms pinned behind their back, it compresses the chest cavity, making it way more difficult to get air into your lungs.

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Medical staff are supposed to check to make sure restraints aren't too tight. The person in the chair can breathe and see if there's anything medically they need. A nurse enters the room. She doesn't stay long.

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It's the bullet. Graham realizes the clerk must have been shot while he was bending over to get cash from the register. The killing was a robbery in progress, likely by someone the clerk knew. Graham cracked the case. The detectives find the killer, get him to confess, and the crime is solved. That's not what happened.

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They weren't DCP employees. They worked for a company called Prime Care, which DCP contracted to provide all medical services. But James remembers looking at that video and thinking, that's it? That's all they're going to do? Did they check for a pulse? Did they check that he was breathing properly? From what James was seeing, Ishmael was in bad shape.

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Several minutes go by. Ishmael is still in the restraint chair, and a corrections officer is in the room. But he doesn't have a clear view of Ishmael's face. which is why it takes longer than it should for him to realize that Ishmael has stopped breathing.

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All across his screen, everyone is scrambling. They're trying to talk to Ishmael, but he isn't responding.

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The nurse comes back into the room, but Ishmael is still unresponsive and stuck in the chair, which makes it hard to administer medical attention. The officers finally manage to get Ishmael free and onto the floor. At this point, not only is he not breathing, he no longer has a pulse.

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Medical staff administer CPR, pressing hard on his chest, trying to pump air into his lungs with a respiratory bag. But there was still pepper spray on Ishmael's face.

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They use a defibrillator on him to try to get his heart to start beating again. They give him two doses of Narcan, no response. Two officers come in and rush Ishmael off, still unconscious. Five days later, on July 29th, 2021, Ishmael Thompson was pronounced dead. He died at Harrisburg Hospital. You had to watch a video of basically, you watch somebody die.

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James had trained the staff on the use of pepper spray, how to wash it off with water to stop the gagging and spitting. He had trained them to take the handcuffs off when putting an inmate in the restraint chair. That way they could breathe properly. He had trained them to continually monitor someone in a restraint chair to make sure they were okay. James knew that what he saw was wrong.

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And if officers weren't following the training, something needed to change. He was ready to speak out to prevent a death like this from happening again. But the people in charge had a different plan. After Ishmael Thompson died, there were no protests, no press conferences. Graham Hetrick didn't get up and do a PowerPoint explaining the manner of death.

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Unlike Tyreek, Ishmael wasn't a Harrisburg local. He had family who mourned him, but they were in his home state of Delaware. And because Ishmael died in the hospital, his death officially didn't happen at Dauphin County Prison. That meant that the county could get by without reporting his death to the state or federal government. It seemed like nothing was going to happen following his death.

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Michael McClurg, who goes by Mac, was a deputy coroner who worked under Graham Hetrick for 12 years, starting in the late 90s.

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But inside DCP, James could tell that Ishmael's death was a big deal.

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In that meeting, James assumed there would be some discussion of what needed to change after Ishmael's death and whether any DCP staff would face disciplinary action.

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This all made sense to James. He had already taken notes on the incident, how the COs hadn't followed the protocol. But as the meeting went on, it became clear to James that the warden had other ideas.

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James couldn't believe it. Despite a request from the director of corrections, the warden refused to follow through. And even worse, the director of corrections just accepted it. We asked DCP about this. They said they couldn't comment due to the terms of a settlement with Ishmael's family. DCP denies any liability in Ishmael Thompson's death.

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but they did pay his family $4.2 million in that settlement.

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James knew what he saw. He knew it was wrong. But now, it seemed as though everybody at DCP was going to move on.

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What happened next was that the county commissioners put out that press release about Ishmael's death. the one where they claimed the DA had said there was no evidence of physical assault. The county seemed content to shrug it all off. Nothing to see here. This was salt in the wounds for James.

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Not only was the county not holding the officers accountable, they appeared to be lying about the incident. James took his concerns to his boss, who was the director of security at DCP.

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Mack remembers this specific case, and he remembers watching this episode. He knew from the get-go it wasn't what happened. Because Mack responded to the murder at the mini-mart, not Graham. And Mack knew that even if Graham had been there that night, he wouldn't have been analyzing evidence at the crime scene. The coroner doesn't do that. And it didn't stop there.

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Despite James speaking up to his boss, it looked like nothing would happen. What he saw in those videos, the brutal and preventable death of Ishmael Thompson, would not lead to any accountability. In the end, none of the officers involved were disciplined, but someone was let go. Six months after Ishmael's death, James was laid off.

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And that supervisor who was in the room while Ishmael was incorrectly restrained, he was put in charge of training. James was at a loss. So he was willing to talk with me.

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A few months after Ishmael died, and no one got so much as a slap on the wrist for what happened, there was another death at DCP. it would show just how negligent the jail could be. But this time, it was primarily the medical staff and not the guards who failed. When Tyreek Riley died, his cousin Lamont Jones had gone searching for answers.

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He hadn't gotten them, but he was determined to keep pushing for the truth about Tyreek and about what was happening to all the inmates at DCP. Lamont hadn't known Ishmael and he hadn't known about his case. But this new incident would once again hit close to home for Lamont. And this time, he was going to be in a better position to fight for the truth. Why is he in prison?

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That's on the next episode of Death County, PA. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. From Wondery and PennLive, this is episode two of six of Death County, PA. Death County, PA is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke.

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Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound Sync. Senior managing producer is Lutta Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Beloga and Matt Gantt. Senior Development Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Development Producer is Olivia Weber.

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Executive Producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive Producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.

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So the notion that Graham was some super detective who also personally conducted autopsies was completely made up. But the most ridiculous thing of all to Mac was the way the episode showed Graham helping to solve the crime from clues on the dead body. That was just flat out false. As soon as the police arrived at the mini-mart, they looked at the store's surveillance video.

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Which Mac understood. The coroner, I speak for the dead, was cable TV entertainment. But there was something that really bothered him about it.

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To Mack, it felt like Graham was putting on a show. And voters kept rewarding Graham by electing him over and over and over. He said he was doing a great job and everyone seemed to buy it. But after Tyreek Riley's death, things started to change. People in Dauphin County started getting more skeptical. They started asking hard questions, demanding real answers.

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The bulletproof glass surrounding the counter is splattered with the man's blood. Two Harrisburg police detectives arrive at the scene. There are no witnesses, no fingerprints, and no obvious leads. The detectives are stumped, but they know who can help. The dead speak in patterns.

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Three seasons into The Coroner, I speak for the dead. Graham Hetrick was at the height of his celebrity. The local minor league baseball team, the Harrisburg Senators, even gave out a bobblehead of Graham posed next to his dog, Sherlock. He was also working the local media circuit, giving interviews about the show to Penn Live, the newspaper I work for.

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When Graham got a platform like this, he typically wanted to talk about a lot more than his job. He liked to share his personal philosophies, trends he was observing in the world, lessons he thought we should all live by.

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Graham kept returning to this theme, individual responsibility. It seemed like the lens through which he understood the world. You could see it in the way he had talked about Tyreek Riley's case. At the press conference, he suggested that Tyreek's brain inflammation might very well have been caused by cocaine use, even though tests confirmed that there was no cocaine in his blood at the time.

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What he didn't want to talk about was what the corrections officers, or anyone else at DCP, had done to Tyreek. Graham liked to say he spoke for the dead, but there was only a certain kind of story that Graham seemed to want to tell. When I came across the name Ishmael Thompson for the first time, it was on a spreadsheet of inmate deaths at Dauphin County Prison.

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Ishmael had died on July 29th, 2021, a few months before I started working at PennLive. There wasn't much information on him available publicly, mostly just a short press release from the Dauphin County commissioners, which said, At Dauphin County Prison, Thompson physically struggled with staff, punching one officer in the eye before he was housed in a cell.

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He was being observed in a cell when he stopped breathing. Dauphin County Coroner Graham Hetrick ruled the manner of death as undetermined. Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo's Criminal Investigation Division reviewed the death and found no evidence of physical assault. No criminal charges will be filed.

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That press release caught my attention, not because of what it said, but what it didn't. What happened between housed in a cell and stopped breathing? And when I read that Ishmael's manner of death was undetermined, it immediately triggered my bullshit detector. There was clearly more that happened in this case.

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So, when I got the files I had requested from the county about Ishmael and some of the other inmates who had died at DCP, I was eager to get a better sense of what had gone down. The very first document I read was the use of force report submitted by COs at DCP. I was only partway through the very first page of the very first document when I knew that I was reading something incredibly damning.

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They call in a signal 12, a death.

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The autopsy reports weren't readily available at this point, but I was able to get my hands on other official documents, like the police reports from Ishmael's arrest. And the story was very different from what was in that press release. Ishmael was from Delaware.

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About a week before his death, he had driven to Harrisburg and for reasons that no one understood, marched into a comfort inn and demanded to use a shower. When the hotel staff refused to let him, Ishmael became belligerent and erratic. He stripped naked in the parking lot, got half dressed again, then went back inside, walked up to the hotel manager and punched him in the face.

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The responding police officer thought Ishmael was likely suffering from a mental health issue, but he still ended up in processing at DCP. That night, according to those reports that I had gotten from the county, Ishmael had acted a lot like he had at the Comfort Inn, and corrections officers had responded with a series of increasingly harsh measures.

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Eventually, Ishmael was subdued in a restraint chair with a spit hood placed over his head. There, he seemed to be gasping for breath, crying out he couldn't breathe. He lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. He was likely brain dead before he arrived. The county had concluded that Ishmael had died from a, quote, medical event.

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I wanted to ask the district attorney, Fran Chardo, about Ishmael. So I dropped by his office at the county courthouse. It's a large room on the second floor. You have to pass through multiple locked doors to get there. I brought the press release with me. Can I see that? Yeah, absolutely. I handed the press release to Chardo.

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In this episode of The Coroner, I speak for the dead. Graham Hetrick does just that. He drives to the convenience store and greets the detectives. It's the middle of the night, but Graham is wearing a bow tie. He begins to examine the crime scene.

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I didn't understand how he could say that there was no evidence of physical assault. I would not have phrased it precisely that way. he told me it was most likely a misunderstanding, that whoever wrote the press release just got that detail slightly wrong.

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But to me, that was an incredibly important detail. By saying no evidence of physical assault, it completely changes how someone might look at this case.

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Chardo implied that the CO's use of force wasn't unreasonable. It was just that Ishmael was so medically fragile. And that was in line with Graham's findings that Ishmael's manner of death was undetermined. At one point, Chardo actually pulled up the autopsy report on his computer and read from it. It was the autopsy report I hadn't seen yet. which gave me an idea.

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When the interview was over, I shut off the recorder. I stood up and made a slight turn towards the door before turning back. I tried to be as casual as I possibly could. No big deal, but like, can I get a copy of that autopsy report? The DA paused for a second, but agreed to email me a copy.

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Graham Hetrick's autopsy report contained a lot of the same information as the use of force reports, but there were even more details. It seemed pretty clear to me why Ishmael died. I just didn't get how the coroner could say the manner of death was undetermined. I knew I needed to get a second opinion, so I sent it to someone I know.

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Roger Mitchell is a Howard University professor and a former forensic pathologist. He's nationally known for his work on deaths in custody and how they're often ignored. I got on the phone with Roger to ask if he agreed with Graham's findings that Ishmael's manner of death was undetermined. I disagreed with Graham, but I'm just a reporter. I needed someone who knew what he was talking about.

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And right off the bat, he was clear. The short answer is no, I don't agree. Roger didn't think Ishmael's death was undetermined at all.

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A homicide. As Roger saw it, the guards at DCP killed Ishmael.

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And for Graham to call Ishmael's death undetermined Roger felt that he wasn't doing his job.

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By not calling Ishmael's death a homicide, Graham was letting DCP off the hook. He was saying, case closed. We tried. No point in asking further questions. I wanted to make sure Ishmael's story didn't end like that. A year after Ishmael died, PennLive published my investigation into his death. The headline was, Hiding a Homicide.

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After the article was published, someone who had worked at the jail reached out. He knew a lot about Ishmael's death. He hinted this went way beyond Graham's ruling. And there was a video that he had seen. And he wanted to tell me all about it. In Death County, PA, Lamont Jones thought freedom meant leaving Dolphin County Prison behind.

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But when his cousin dies under mysterious circumstances, Lamont uncovers a web of corruption, a reality TV corner, and a system designed to silence the truth. If you're drawn to stories of justice gone wrong, you'll be gripped by American Scandal, Police Corruption in Baltimore.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. A doctor is doing his rounds in the psychiatric unit of a prison. He walks up to the cell of a man being kept alone, John Powell. The doctor sees that the inmate has stopped eating and drinking. He has lost a lot of weight and become extremely lethargic.

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The document was a report with recommendations from the judge. Essentially, the judge had laid out all the facts of Tyree's case and made a recommendation on whether or not the case should proceed. At the top was a lot of information that Lamont already knew, including what Tyreek was going through before he was arrested and sent to DCP.

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But when Lamont got to the point where Tyreek made it to DCP, he found pieces of the story that he and his family had been missing for years. According to the report and videos submitted as evidence, what happened to Tyreek was far from natural. It detailed how more than once an officer put his knee on the back of Tyreek's neck while he was in handcuffs.

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As Lamont read on, he was flooded with a mix of emotions. He was glad to finally see the truth. But it also hurt.

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Tyreek's family hired a forensic pathologist to take a second look at all of the autopsy materials. And he completely disagreed with Graham's findings. Graham had said that inflammation in the brain, encephalitis specifically, was the cause of death. But according to the family's forensic pathologist, not only was it not the cause of death, he couldn't see encephalitis anywhere.

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But the forensic pathologist went further. He said that the injuries caused by the officers during the confrontation with Tyreek had played a role in his death. After reviewing all of the materials, he determined that the manner of death was homicide.

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But Graham was just the end of the chain. His findings protected all the people at DCP who were involved in the deaths that took place there, preventing any accountability. Lamont thought about all the work he had done at the prison, all the times he was in meetings with jail administrators and corrections officers.

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One detail from Tyreek's arrest always stuck with me. There's a dash cam video of Tyreek in the backseat of the police car on the way to DCP.

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It seemed like an interesting coincidence. Nothing more. Then a few years later, he received a letter. By then, he moved on from working at the prison and got a job on an Air Force base in Georgia. This letter, it looks serious. It was from the Pennsylvania Department of State in Harrisburg. Dana took it to the lawyer on the base.

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All right, yeah. Keep it calm, man. Don't make it any worse. As they pull up to the jail, Tyreek is fidgeting in the back seat. He seems agitated, anxious, and confused. What are you scooting around for, man? Just calm down. So I'm going away for life. Tyreek asks, so I'm going away for life. Even though Tyreek was never even tried, getting incarcerated at DCP was a death sentence for him.

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Based on the recommendations in the report, a federal judge allowed the case to move forward against the corrections officers who the family alleged killed Tyreek. They are still waiting to go to trial. Lamont recognizes the changes at DCP, but every time he hears about another terrible thing that happens there, he's frustrated.

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That concern is real because the deaths at DCP have continued.

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A death at DCP was nothing new. But this time, Lamont, Justin, the family, and the entire community rallying around them took their fight directly to Graham Hetrick's door. About two dozen protesters were gathered outside the gates of DCP. They were there because of a death. The man who died was Justin Cofield. His death probably sounds all too familiar at this point.

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He was a young black man, a father of four. He went to DCP on drug charges and couldn't pay the $30,000 bail. He was in there for months and months awaiting trial. Until the morning of February 23rd, when a guard discovered him unresponsive in his bunk. There were no obvious signs of trauma on Justin's body, like in the Tyreek Riley and Ishmael Thompson cases.

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But there's a similar playbook from the county. Officials gave vague, hollow statements with words like undetermined and ongoing investigation. Justin's family felt shut out. But Justin's mom, Nicole Banks, had followed what's been happening in Dauphin County. And she wasn't about to wait for this whole process to play out.

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She called Lamont, as well as the community, to come out and pressure the county.

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Justin Cofield's family had requested to see their son's body. According to former staff, other families had been granted those privileges before. But so far, Nicole's request had been denied.

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After protesting for an hour in front of DCP, folks hopped in their cars or marched about a quarter of a mile down the road to Graham Hetrick's office. As the crowd walked up to the entrance of the Dauphin County Coroner's Office building, something unexpected happened. Graham Hetrick himself appeared in the entrance to the building. Nicole led a group toward Graham.

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The Pennsylvania Department of State was charging the medical staff listed in John Powell's file, including Dana, with medical malpractice. She advised me to hire a private attorney, which I did. This was all very troubling for Dana. He could lose his medical license because of a patient he never saw. Why was Dana's name in John Powell's file in the first place?

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I don't represent the VA. The family and crowd seemed ready for a confrontation. They moved even closer to Graham, who leaned into Nicole.

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Graham then hugged Nicole. It was awkward. It made Nicole's daughter wince.

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This happened. Yes. Right, a total disbelief. Graham isn't a psychologist or a social worker or any kind of licensed counselor. He does have a master's degree in psychology from an online for-profit university. But legally, he's not allowed to provide mental health services. So like on his TV show, Graham is playing fast and loose with the truth, and not very effectively.

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Justin's father cut Graham off.

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Lamont had been standing there silently up until that point. But when he heard Graham doing his usual shtick, he jumped in.

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He felt like he'd heard this all before.

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No, no. No, no. Nicole and her family kept making the same request. We want to see Justin's body. And Graham gave in. Kind of.

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It was still a no. But Graham did agree to talk more with the family inside the office. I wasn't invited, and neither was Lamont, so we waited outside. And that's when someone else arrived. Justin Douglas walked up to where we were standing. He asked me where the Cofield family was. I pointed inside, and Justin quietly entered the building.

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And here's where it feels like things have truly changed at Dauphin County Prison. Graham could deny me and Lamont access, but he had to respect Justin's authority as county commissioner. Justin went inside and spoke with Graham and the Cofield family. He offered to sit in and observe the autopsy. He'd be a pair of eyes for the family.

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It wasn't perfect, but it was progress, and the family agreed to it. Graham has repeatedly said he is proud to speak for the dead. But what's really needed in situations like this is someone who will speak for the living. Someone who will understand the pain of the families impacted and treat them accordingly. And that's not all that's changed.

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First, I finally got a tour of Dauphin County Prison. All these years of reporting, I'd had to rely on phone calls to prisoners and photographs and lawsuits to conjure up an image of this place. On this day, about 30 people, including myself, stood at the entrance to the jail. The door in front of us slowly slid open and we went inside.

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His boss, Dr. Carl Hoffman, knew exactly why. Carl was both the head doctor and the owner of the company providing medical care at the prison. He had also been the physician on call supervising John's care. After he died of dehydration, Carl had taken a look at his records and saw a missing entry right before his death, which meant that he and his staff had failed to check in on an at-risk inmate.

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I saw the tiny rooms, no bigger than a couple hundred square feet, where 10 to 20 men had to live. I saw the dark, dank hallways that led from one block to the next. And I came away thinking, even cleaned up for a press visit, this place is awful.

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Then, after Justin called for interest from health care providers, the county received proposals from five companies, which could mean that as early as this summer, prime care could be replaced at Dauphin County Prison. The death rate at DCP has also been studied by a research team at UCLA that has been documenting why so many Americans lose their lives in jail and during arrest.

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In the case of DCP, they determined that the coroner's office appeared to have habitually misclassified in-custody deaths as natural, even when attributable to traumatic violence. This was especially true for cases involving deceased black men. They also found that the jail appears to have subjected black prisoners to injurious and potentially lethal violence at higher levels than white prisoners.

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We reached out to Graham Hetrick numerous times for this series and did not receive a response. That could be because Graham's got a lot on his plate at the moment. He now has a challenger for the Dauphin County Coroner's position for the first time in 16 years. During a candidates forum in March, Graham was asked about DCP.

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He responded to the repeated questions by saying it was quote, not my job to advocate or call out problems he sees at the jail that lead to bodies showing up in his morgue. Pennsylvania law requires coroners to determine the cause and manner of death. but also to identify where a death may have, quote, resulted from a criminal act or criminal neglect. Graham tends to leave that second part out.

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It isn't Garth or Samantha or Imhotep or Lamont's job to speak out about the jail. It wasn't Justin's job until after he was elected. In fact, no one who you heard from during this podcast had an obligation to come forward and expose the problems they saw at DCP. But they did it anyway because they felt it was the right thing to do.

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As one community member said after the forum, we all have an obligation to call out problems when we see them so that change can be made. Graham isn't the only one who is going to be on the ballot in November. Lamont was sitting at a table, in the kind of place where all great political ideas get their start, a sports bar.

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Next to him were his friends and advisors, who helped him get elected to city council.

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If Lamont's meteoric rise in Harrisburg politics hadn't been shocking enough, he wanted to go even bigger.

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Lamont made it official. He was running for mayor of Harrisburg. It's a far cry from where Lamont started. From surviving DCP, to helping those inside, to now holding real political power. When he was younger, Lamont was held accountable for his crimes. Now he chooses to be accountable for all the people of Harrisburg. On behalf of everyone who looks around and knows we can and must do better.

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So Carl backfilled an entry, wrote in an after-the-fact medical instruction. Shower twice a day for fluid intake. Below that, he wrote, per Dr. Dana Powell.

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Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. From Wondery and PennLive, this is the sixth and final episode of Death County, PA. Death County, PA is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke.

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Additional production support from Malachi Wade. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound Sync. Senior managing producer is Lutta Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Beloga and Matt Gant.

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Senior development editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Development producer is Olivia Weber. Special thanks to R&D producer Yo-Wei Shaw.

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Burke Noel, Teresa Bonner, and Christine Vendel from PennLive, Destiny Brown, Patricia Stringer, Ona Osai, Amanda Arbor, Keith Saltzball, Dina Jangdari, Pamela Parson, Pamela Roberts, Judy Lavia Jones, Kia Hansard, and the countless others who for years have tirelessly worked to improve the conditions at Dauphin County Prison and advocated for the people inside.

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Executive producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.

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With help from his attorney and testimony from a nurse he'd worked with, Dana went before the medical board and got the charges dismissed before the case could go to trial.

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Carl Hoffman also had to face the medical board. He argued that he'd simply amended the record to reflect what he thought actually happened. the medical board didn't believe him. Instead, they noted that Carl likely panicked after John Powell died and made a quote, misleading, deceptive, untrue entry to make it seem as though the inmate had received the appropriate amount of care.

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In the end, they fined him $1,000 for manipulating medical records and issued a formal reprimand on his medical license. Now, John Powell hadn't died at DCP. This happened at a state prison. The Department of Corrections banned Carl Hoffman from the grounds of any state prison.

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An internal investigation, they said, had raised, quote, very grave concerns about the adequacy of medical care provided to Mr. Powell. The department ultimately forbade Carl's company from bidding on any future contracts. But that wasn't the end of Dr. Carl Hoffman. He lost his state prison contracts, but he kept his contracts with the county jails, including DCP.

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Only after this scandal, his company rebranded. It became PrimeCare. When Justin Douglas became commissioner, one of his first questions was, how was a company with that history, with its ongoing record of complaints, lawsuits, and inmate deaths, able to keep its contract with Dauphin County for decades? It turned out, PrimeCare had a man on the inside, a Dauphin County commissioner.

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Typically, this is when a doctor might prescribe IV fluids. Instead, the doctor recommends frequent showers, hoping that is when the patient will drink even a little water. On Powell's medical log that day, the doctor writes, shower twice a day for fluid intake. But it's not enough. A couple days later, John Powell dies.

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And Justin would soon learn that the scale of corruption went far beyond DCP. From Wondery and PennLive, I'm Joshua Vaughn, and this is Death County, PA.

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This is episode six, Exposing the Wound. Justin Douglas walked into the Dauphin County Commissioner's meeting room and took his seat on the dais.

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He had a binder and a stack of papers in front of him. To his left, his two fellow commissioners took their seats, both wearing suits and ties. Justin, on the other hand, was wearing jeans and an untucked collared shirt. Even though he was dressed casual, he was taking the meeting seriously. There were reporters, community activists, and other residents of the county in the audience.

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A video of the meeting was being broadcast on Facebook. They were all going to be in for a show. For nearly two decades, former County Commissioner Jeff Haste had been maybe the biggest power player in Dauphin County.

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This is an address from 2021. As commissioner, Haste was in charge of providing social services, emergency services. He led economic development projects.

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He also touted his role in what he said was making Dauphin County Prison more transparent, overseeing monthly meetings at the county jail that are open to the public. And even though Haste resigned as a county commissioner, he was still deeply involved in the county. He sat on several county boards and was a liaison for a major outdoor event.

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But that's not what Justin was so angry about at that commissioners meeting. Because not too long before that meeting, I was able to uncover a contract between Jeff Haste and PrimeCare. During his last four years as a county commissioner, Haste had also been a paid consultant for PrimeCare.

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Haste was paid $60,000 a year to help PrimeCare win contracts from other county governments outside of Pennsylvania. And he was working directly with the owner of PrimeCare, Carl Hoffman. The same year Haste was hired at PrimeCare, Carl Hoffman made a deposit of more than $225,000 to Haste's bank account. Money that Haste would use months later to make a $225,000 down payment on a new house.

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Haste had never disclosed any of this. His co-commissioners insisted they never knew. He had recused himself from votes about PrimeCare between 2017 and 2020. But during that time, Dauphin County had increased their annual payments to PrimeCare by over $1 million. Haste had seen the conditions at DCP firsthand. He could have done something, anything, to improve the conditions at the jail.

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Instead, he protected PrimeCare and lined his own pockets with over $525,000 from Hoffman and PrimeCare. Over those same years, 14 inmates died. Justin was furious when he learned about Jeff Haste's relationship with PrimeCare. But there was more.

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While under the constant watch of corrections officers, doctors, nurses, and other staff, he died of dehydration, a cruel and unnecessary death. I didn't even know of his death until 13 days later. Dr. Dana Powell, no relation to the man who died, was at home when he got a call from his mother about something she'd read in the local paper.

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Around the time I was looking into Haste's connection with PrimeCare, my colleague, Juliet Ryle, started investigating corruption in the county, which led her deeper into the activities of Jeff Haste.

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Juliet's reporting revealed ties between Haste and another local official. Back in 2010, when the county was looking to build a solar farm, Jeff Haste directed them to buy a specific property on the edge of town. It was owned by none other than Graham Hetrick. The county went ahead and bought that land, land owned by an elected official, apparently without really looking at other options.

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This revelation, that the head of the Dauphin County Commissioners was living on Graham Hedrick's property, and getting the county to pay Graham for land that would become a failed solar farm, really cemented the idea of the Good Old Boys Club, a group of men who were looking out for each other's interests. Juliet did call Graham up to ask about this arrangement.

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Isn't this a conflict of interest?

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When Justin got to that commissioner's meeting in November, he had plenty to be fired up about.

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In just a few months, we had uncovered five potential conflicts of interest about Jeff Haste, including one involving his wife and the local tourism board, and another involving a county contract for the NRA. And that's just what we knew so far. Justin called for a vote to remove Jeff Haste from all his remaining county positions.

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The two other commissioners seemed to want this episode to be over as quickly as possible. They both murmured, I. And with that, Jeff Haste was officially retired from Dolphin County business and all the extra money that came with it. Haste responded saying he was always doing the will of the county.

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His attorney told us that Haste did not admit any wrongdoing and that he had a personal and professional relationship with Hoffman. Justin was determined to have the county turn over a new leaf. Calling Hays to account was a sign that the old way of doing things around Dauphin County was over.

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My mom had called and asked, did you know that a prisoner died and he had the same name as ours? His name was Powell. It just so happened that Dana worked weekends as a physician in that same prison. taking on a few shifts Saturdays and Sundays to help pay down his med school debt. But he'd never come across this inmate who shared his last name.

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Justin then turned his attention to prime care. Earlier that year, Justin had called for PrimeCare to be audited. That hadn't been done even once in the time they'd been operating at DCP, over 30 years.

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Justin called for a request for proposals, an RFP, from companies that could potentially replace PrimeCare to provide health care at Dauphin County Prison.

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If people had questions about whether or not Justin would shake things up as a county commissioner, they didn't anymore. For Lamont Jones, many questions lingered. He and his family still didn't have answers concerning Tyreek's death, and it seemed like that mystery would remain. But then the judge in Tyreek's case weighed in. After almost six years, Lamont was finally going to have answers.

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As soon as Lamont had the court filing in his hands, he wanted to read it. It nagged at him. but he had to wait until the evening to dive in.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. The contacts in his phone range from local politicians and business leaders to formerly incarcerated men and women he's worked with in the prison system.

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Thomas sat Jamal down in a chair and started to take off his uniform. Only that wasn't all that was coming off.

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Jamal wasn't unconscious, but Thomas couldn't get him to talk.

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Doctors in the ICU found Jamal's core body temperature had dropped to 85 degrees. He had severe hypothermia. Jamal arrived at the ICU, and they slowly warmed him up. Doctors diagnosed the sores and scaling on his skin as a life-threatening condition called toxic epidermonecrolysis.

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They wanted to send him to a burn unit in Pittsburgh for treatment, but Jamal was still in DCP custody, and jail officials chose not to transfer him. Sending him out to Pittsburgh over three hours away would mean DCP would have to pull around eight correctional officers from the jail to watch him 24-7 in shifts.

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When Lamont walked onto the block, he saw a familiar face.

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Or they could get the DA to agree to reduce Jamal's bail and effectively release him from custody. Either way, it wasn't happening. The jail kept Jamal at the hospital in Harrisburg. Jamal's family was notified he had been hospitalized, but they were also informed they couldn't visit.

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Jamal was still a prisoner, and after a month, doctors determined Jamal's condition had become stable, and he was sent back to DCP. Neither Samantha nor Thomas thought that made any sense.

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What made matters worse was it was now mid-January. Now, deep winter had set in. The nighttime temperatures were well below freezing. Jamal's cell still didn't have heating. He'd already survived severe hypothermia, and yet the jail wouldn't provide Jamal with additional clothes or blankets.

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One week after Jamal was released from the hospital and returned to the jail, a guard doing his morning rounds looked in and saw Jamal lying down on his bed. The guard called out to him and Jamal didn't respond. The guard noticed a pile of unopened brown bag meals in Jamal's cell. Other COs should have seen them and had them cleaned up. It was a red flag that something was off.

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The guard unlocked the door, walked over to where Jamal was lying and tapped Jamal on his shoulder. His skin felt cold to the touch. Jamal still didn't move.

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Lamont was horrified to see him there on M Block.

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And that answer wouldn't come anytime soon. Jamal's family would have to wait several months to find out why he died. They had to sit with that uncertainty, wondering what happened. the person they had to wait for, the person releasing that info was the coroner, Graham Hetrick. When he finally put out his findings, there were more questions than answers for Jamal's family and for me.

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It was more than a year after the death of Jamal Crummel, and I was sitting in Coroner Graham Hetrick's office. It looked institutional. An L-shaped desk with a desktop computer, filing cabinet in the corner, generic office chairs. But then you looked more closely, and Graham's macabre flair came out.

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There was a human skull on a shelf, a skeleton off in a corner, various bones arranged on his desk. My editor, Christine, was there with me.

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Graham's report on Jamal concluded that his official cause of death was cardiac fibrosis, heart disease. This was the same person who had gotten hypothermia twice at DCP. Graham did acknowledge that the hypothermia was a, quote, significant contributing factor.

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But it felt to me like Graham was saying the same thing he had in Tyreek Riley's case, that an underlying health condition, not brutal or negligent treatment at DCP, had been responsible for an inmate's death. So I asked Graham about his report.

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Lamont didn't know it at the time, but Jamal had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD. He struggled to get the care he needed. And when he struggled, he often ended up getting arrested. But even though it was tough to see Jamal in such rough shape, Lamont was still grateful to bump into him at DCP.

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But I felt I needed to continue. I asked Graham what the holdup was in releasing his report on Jamal, and whose fault was it that it took so long. Three months passed from when all the forensic testing was done to when the report finally came out. Graham said the pathologist must have been busy. Busy for three full months?

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I wanted to know why Jamal's family had to wait, so I pressed him more, and Graham simply responded, it is what it is.

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Graham is an elected official. He's dealt with reporters plenty of times before. So Christine and I were thrown off by his reaction.

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The Crummel family had told me that they hadn't been notified about Jamal's death in a timely manner. So I asked Graham to confirm what his record showed.

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But in every other case of an inmate death that I've been able to find, Graham's office had logged when they'd notified the family.

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I was taken aback. It was just so intense and so aggressive. I was kind of fumbling for what to do next, not really able to form a coherent thought, much less a sentence. But Christine stayed cool.

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I actually did take a forensic investigator course. It cost $750, consisted of three months of part-time classes about things like scene management, identification, and notification to families. Which is all to say, I left that interview feeling like I'd learned a lot about Graham. But I still hadn't gotten answers about Jamal.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Around that time, Lamont Jones was trying to get answers to some of the same questions I had. He wasn't going to march into Graham's office. He had a better venue for asking official questions. Just a month before Jamal died, Lamont had been invited to join the Dauphin County Prison Community Advisory Committee. It was a new group created in the wake of Tyreek Riley's death.

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And its purpose was to provide a bridge between DCP and the Harrisburg community. especially the families and friends of inmates there. The other committee members wanted Lamont because he had been on the inside of DCP. He would be able to call BS when prison officials weren't telling the whole truth.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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After Jamal's death, Lamont felt like he had a particularly urgent mission. When Jamal died, it hit him hard.

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And now he wanted to force county officials to give him real, detailed information. In one of those earlier meetings, he was sitting across from the warden and three county commissioners. In Dauphin County, the county commissioners run the show. They make the big decisions. They manage the budget. And they are in charge of Dauphin County Prison.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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They are the three people who can actually change things at DCP. And Lamont now had a direct line to them. Lamont had been carefully following Jamal's case.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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He'd read a story I'd written about Jamal in PennLive, which had some details, but still plenty of holes. When Jamal's name came up at the meeting, Lamont pounced.

Death County, PA

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Lamont wanted to know if there was a real investigation going on, if anyone was going to be held accountable. The county officials repeated they couldn't say more, which pissed off Lamont.

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Around this time, the prison board started allowing members of the community advisory committee to go on walkthroughs of DCP. Lamont hadn't been on M Block since his days as a jailhouse barber. It had been nearly a decade. He wanted to see the place where his friend had spent the last months of his life. It was February. When Lamont got there, the first thing he noticed was the cold.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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He remembered feeling that same cold during his years at DCP.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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While Lamont would leave DCP behind and build a new life for himself, Jamal was stuck cycling in and out of the jail.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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Lamont, the community advisory member, was thinking about systemic fixes. But Lamont, Jamal's friend, Tyreek's cousin, was having a different experience.

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When he got to Jamal's old cell, he stopped. He looked inside. In his mind, he could see his friend there. The guy he knew, who struggled, yes, but who was also fun, vibrant, so alive. Lamont gave a silent prayer to Jamal's memory.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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When Lamont looked around, he was struck by something else. He was standing there in the middle of M block, the medical block, and he only saw a medical staffer once.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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When Lamont left that day, he was still thinking about all the ways the system had failed the people who ended up at DCP.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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But the closer he got to the people who held the power, the harder it seemed it would be to change that system. He could shine a light on DCP. He could bear witness. But at the end of the day, other people made the decisions. An idea was growing inside Lamont. Maybe Dolphin County was ready for something new. A new kind of leadership. And it turned out...

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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Lamont wasn't the only one having that thought.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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That's on the next episode of Death County PA. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. From Wondery and PennLive, this is episode three of six of Death County PA. Death County PA is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesun Sync. Senior managing producer is Lutta Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Beloga and Matt Gant. Senior development editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Development producer is Olivia Weber.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Executive producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery. When Lamont Jones walked out of Dolphin County Prison, he thought he was leaving the darkness behind.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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And Lamont worried that at some point something would go wrong. DCP had a reputation for a reason. People were dying. And Lamont didn't want Jamal to be the next death. From Wondery and PennLive, I'm Joshua Vaughn, and this is Death County, PA.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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But when his cousin dies behind bars under suspicious circumstances, Lamont is pulled back into a world of secrets, lies. and a reality TV coroner who seems more interested in fame than justice. Now, he's fighting to uncover the truth and what he finds could bring down the powerful forces running DCP. If you're inspired by stories of resilience and resistance, You'll love Black History for Real.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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This series introduces you to the most overlooked Black history makers you should already know about. It's a no-nonsense, un-whitewashed account of history's most overlooked moments with a mix of storytelling and candid conversation. Follow Black History for Real on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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You can listen to episodes of Black History for Real early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Most nights, Lamont would put on the local news while he was winding down. That's what he was doing on a night in September 2021 when a crime segment caught his attention. The night before, a 45-year-old man had been driving his Ford Escape through downtown Harrisburg when he saw a group of six pedestrians crossing the street.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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He had allegedly stopped his vehicle, then suddenly slammed the accelerator, zooming his car in the direction of the pedestrians. They all managed to jump out of the way. The pedestrians were state troopers out of uniform. The driver was arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault. His bail was set at $150,000. The reporter said the man's name. It was Jamal.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Jamal's family thought he was probably texting while driving, that he hadn't intentionally tried to hurt anyone regardless of the state he was in. But he was going back to DCP, and Lamont was terrified about what that could mean for his friends. Lamont remembered just how violent things could be inside DCP, especially if an inmate was hard to control.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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He has deep roots in Harrisburg too, so he's always checking in with family and old friends he's known since childhood. One of those childhood friends was a guy named Jamal Crummel.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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And things could get a lot worse than that. Lamont was still reeling from seeing the bruises and cuts on Tyreek's body. He hadn't been able to do anything to protect his cousin back then. Now, maybe he had the opportunity to protect his friend, Jamal. So Lamont jumped into action. He knew the chief of police in Harrisburg from helping former prisoners get jobs after their release.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Now, he gave the chief a call.

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Lamont thought the police chief would be able to get his message to leadership at DCP. And, you know, he was like, okay, thanks. Lamont was mostly worried about the corrections officers, about what they could do to Jamal. But it would turn out Jamal's biggest threat wasn't being beaten up. It was being ignored by the people whose help he needed the most.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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This is a woman I'm calling Samantha. She doesn't want her real name used because she's afraid of retaliation from Dauphin County officials. She was a corrections officer at DCP for nearly 20 years. Jamal was at DCP a lot, sometimes for new criminal charges, sometimes for breaking probation or parole violations. Samantha felt like she got to know him.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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But Samantha also saw how erratic Jamal could be. During bad mental health episodes, he needed support that Samantha and the other COs couldn't provide.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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The nearest state mental health facility was a three-hour drive from Harrisburg with a long waiting list, which meant DCP was pretty much the only place Jamal could go. After his arrest in September 2021, he seemed to be struggling even more than usual. Fewer jokes, less sneaker talk.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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But overnight, Jamal went from listless to amped up. He started yelling and banging on his cell door. Then, at some point, he turned on the metal sink in the corner of his cell and stopped up the train. Soon, water was pouring onto the floor, pulling under the small desk and metal toilet, and spreading out towards the hall.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Thomas was another officer at DCP. He also asked that his name be changed. He had worked at the jail for a little over a decade and had also gotten to know Jamal. Thomas made it a point to say hi whenever he made his rounds. Still, every time Jamal came to DCP, Thomas worried.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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But getting through this was going to take a different level of care than Samantha and Thomas could provide. And as Jamal's condition worsened, the medical staff at DCP was going to find itself stretched thin and in short supply. In Death County, PA, Lamont Jones is fighting to uncover the truth about his cousin's death in Dolphin County Prison.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Those were their teenage years. But then Lamont got arrested for dealing drugs when he was 18. And Jamal ran into legal trouble of his own. They were both in and out of jail, and they lost touch. One of the last times Lamont was at DCP, he was working as a barber.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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But standing in his way is a reality TV corner and a system built on secrets. If you're captivated by stories of betrayal and cover-ups, you should check out Wondery's podcast, Exposed. This series reveals the horrifying crimes of Dr. Robert Haddon, an Ivy League OBGYN who assaulted hundreds of patients while the system protected him.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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From the prestigious halls of Columbia University to the courtrooms where survivors finally got their day in court, this is a story of power, accountability, and the courage it takes to fight back. Follow Exposed on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Exposed exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.

Death County, PA

Hell Froze Over | 3

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Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Nearly everyone recognized DCP was not the right place for Jamal. Lamont Jones knew it. So did Samantha and Thomas, the two corrections officers. And according to Jamal's family, county prosecutors knew it too.

Death County, PA

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They remembered that at the preliminary hearing on Jamal's aggravated assault charges, all the lawyers seemed to agree that Jamal belonged in a mental health facility. To Jamal's family, it seemed it was only District Attorney Fran Chardo who disagreed. He continued to pursue the case against Jamal for aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and driving under the influence.

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And as the months went on, fall became winter. It was getting cold in central Pennsylvania. All the public areas inside DCP were heated, but the individual cells on M Block didn't have heating vents of their own. It was so cold on the blocks that COs like Thomas were issued parkas to wear while they made their rounds. But the inmates had no such luck.

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They could buy extra clothing at commissary, socks and thermal shirts. But if they didn't have the money in their accounts, then they just had their regular uniforms, short-sleeved shirts, and pants made out of thin, cotton-like material. Jamal was even worse off.

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And the floor was flooded with an inch of standing water.

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Jamal was just wearing the basic uniform and socks. And his cell was ice cold. The temperatures in Harrisburg had been below freezing the night before. Jamal was not moving.

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But Thomas knew the medical care at DCP was woefully lacking. Medical services are provided by a third-party company called PrimeCare. And when Jamal was booked in DCP in September 2021, their daily team largely consisted of just a handful of nurses and medical assistants. The prison population hovered around 1,000 men and women. And PrimeCare's mental health services were even worse.

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Their staff only worked during weekdays. There were no mental health providers working nights or weekend shifts, which of course was when most of the urgent problems happened.

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The medical block, known in DCP as M Block. That was where inmates with special physical and mental needs were housed. M Block was just as dirty as the rest of the jail. But it was a little colder. It often smelled bad. And the noise was relentless.

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So, after Thomas told the prime care staff that something was wrong with Jamal, he basically just had to hope that a nurse or medical assistant would go and check on him. Clean him up, dry him off, and make sure he wasn't sick.

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Hell Froze Over | 3

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But the next morning when Thomas came into work, Jamal was in his cell, on the floor, still soaking wet. Nothing had been done. So Thomas cleaned up Jamal himself. Then he called Samantha. She'd known Jamal for a long time. Maybe she'd be able to figure out why Jamal was acting the way he was. Samantha went down to M Block and walked over to the door of Jamal's cell.

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Thomas and Samantha went back to the prime care team. This time, a supervising nurse came down to M Block right away. She was alarmed.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The AI election deepfakes have arrived

1001.974

One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The AI election deepfakes have arrived

1038.091

Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The AI election deepfakes have arrived

946.263

Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The AI election deepfakes have arrived

965.569

That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

1691.554

We'll be right back.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

774.417

Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

793.743

That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

830.129

One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Why AI image editing isn’t “just like Photoshop”

866.234

Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

122.089

The phone started ringing, and it was the FBI. When he finds out this money's gone, he's gonna hurt me too. You can listen to Underbelly season three, Killing Kurt, from Entropy Media, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

48.381

So you had people lining up to see it. The legacy of this trial was the end of the Chicago outfit as we knew it. It ended right then and there.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

57.15

In season three of Entropy's Underbelly franchise, we're shedding new light on a family drama so intense, it led to an infamous mob trial. And it all started with one man.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

6.328

Pushkin. Take a listen, and if you want to hear more, Underbelly Killing Kurt is now available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

77.616

This man, Frank Calabrese Sr., terrorized everyone, including his two sons.

Deep Cover

Introducing Underbelly: Killing Kurt

92.179

Fearing death, one of the Calabrese sons went to the FBI to help them put his father away for good. The other son, Kurt, was in the middle of it all. And he says there is a lot the public still doesn't know. But for years, he's kept it buried and it almost killed him. Now, finally, Kurt Calabrese is telling his story. There was conservatively a million and a half to two million dollars there.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

1252.193

So this crowd of agents is standing there in Sarah's front yard, debating whether they should break in the door. And it's snowing, freezing cold. So what does Donnelly do? Turns out he's got Sarah's cell phone number. He's never actually spoken to her, but he figures, hey, maybe before I bust this door down, I should, you know, give her a ring. Very considerate.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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You never see that in the police movies, right? Detective gives suspect a courtesy call. But that's what he does. He calls her. And she picks up.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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Kate is one of the very first people we reached out to when we started reporting this season. I sent her a message using my work email from the university where I teach.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

1326.701

While they're all waiting on Sarah, an agent notices there's a back window that's unlocked. So he shimmies through it and opens the front door for the rest of the agents. By the time Sarah pulled up, the search was in full swing.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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And Donnelly laid eyes on Sarah for the first time.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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This video was taken by an officer as he walked through the house. They were looking for Sarah's work phone and any computers, checks from charities, that uniform that she'd been photographed in, any evidence that would corroborate their case. Meanwhile, Sarah was watching agents come in and out of the house. Sarah didn't say much. She just looked dazed in Donnelly's words.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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According to Sarah, by the time the feds searched her house, she was already in rough shape mentally, exhausted by the stress of all her lies.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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For Sarah, the day of the search was kind of surreal.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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Standing in the snow-covered driveway, Donnelly tried to talk to Sarah.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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The team of agents went through the house methodically, placing items in evidence bags.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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That's amazing. That's your beat is like the buttocks beat.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

1567.52

They also found her VFW membership card and VFW polos, mail from the Wounded Warrior Project. And inside a closet in her home office, Donnelly found something else, something very curious, a green-colored notebook.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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That's right. He'd found what looked like a war diary. Sarah, by the way, doesn't remember this at all. But Donnelly told us it included detailed entries from Afghanistan.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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Later that same day, after Sarah's psychiatric evaluation, she was cleared and released. Her wife, Nicole, was waiting for her at the hospital and drove her home. It's easy to forget that Sarah had a wife. This story is so twisted and complicated. But she did. They shared a home and a life together.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

1859.212

And her wife, she thought she knew who Sarah was until that day when the police searched their house. For Nicole, that was the moment of truth. So that night, when they finally returned home, Nicole had questions. And there would be a reckoning. Next time on Deep Cover.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

1921.724

Deep cover The Truth About Sarah was produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Tali Emlin. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwit.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Guerra. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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And I'm Jake Halpern. You can binge the entire season of Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of our other true crime podcasts throughout the year. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

223.303

If you've listened to her show, you've heard Kate and her co-hosts trying to help other veterans however they can, often plugging veteran charities. Kate's a big supporter of a charity called Hunter 7.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

260.905

Hunter 7 has something called an immediate needs program. It's for veterans who struggle to pay medical bills and have illnesses connected to their service. They, or someone on their behalf, can submit a request. And that's what Dex had done for Sarah, submitted her application. And now Hunter 7 was publicizing Sarah's tragic story online.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

345.1

Kate does everything she can to spread the word. She donates herself, but she also posts on her social media account, trying to rally as many people as she can to help Sarah. And then, at some point, she gets a call from the woman who's the director of Hunter 7.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

397.054

Shortly after this, Kate goes public on her podcast. Here's a clip from that episode where she's talking to her co-hosts about what happened.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

454.366

Kate was more right than she knew. Law enforcement officials had already started investigating Sarah Kavanaugh on the down low, trying to keep it quiet. And now, Kate's podcast would put pressure on investigators to go into overdrive. Over many years, Sarah had built a house of lies. The people she deceived lived in separate, shuttered rooms, hidden from one another.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

482.128

But now, the foundation was cracking, as were the walls. And the truth was seeping in, piercing in its brightness, as her carefully built world came undone. I'm Jake Halpern.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

514.109

And this is Deep Cover Season 6, The Truth About Sarah. Episode 4, The Suspect.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

6.328

Pushkin. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Just a heads up, in this episode, there's a reference to suicidal ideation.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

662.998

Now Donnelly is looking at more than just a scammer. He's got someone working the system from the inside, like a mole in his own ranks. So he opens an investigation, and he's just a few days into it when Kate's podcast comes out on Barstool.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

703.574

But here was the good news for Donnelly. Right from the start, he had some incriminating evidence, an important set of documents. These documents, they all came from Hunter 7, the charity. They were actually documents that Sarah herself had submitted to bolster her lies, to support her false claims of being a veteran and a cancer patient.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

726.795

These records would help Donnelly do two really important things. First, they'd help him get a warrant to search Sarah's house. Second, like a trail of breadcrumbs, they'd lead him right to the doorstep of several people Sarah had deceived. And this, in turn, would spark some pretty tough conversations. We'll get to the search warrant in a bit.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

767.223

But first, I want to tell you about those conversations. Donnelly contacted Justin, Sarah's friend from the VFW. He was the one battling stage four lung cancer. At this point, Justin had heard the rumors about Sarah being a fraud, but there was still so much that he didn't know. Donnelly arranged for them to meet at the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

793.226

Justin recalls that they gathered in an old conference room, a forgotten, run-down, beat-up place. Old furniture was stacked haphazardly, like it had been cleared out for some event and never put back. Looking around the room, Justin saw agents from a number of federal agencies.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

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They explained how they'd put together the pieces. One of Donnelly's colleagues had noticed something interesting about Sarah's medical records from Hunter 7.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

859.159

And that person was Justin. When investigators compared the two sets of medical records, Sarah's and Justin's looked pretty much identical. Justin's doctor had even made a few typos, and those exact same typos were in Sarah's records. It was a cut-and-paste job.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

891.207

You might recall from our last episode, Justin had given Sarah money, supposedly so she could pay for her own cancer treatment. Sarah had taken this money under false pretenses. But as Donnelly had discovered, she'd also done something far more devious. Using her privileges as a social worker at the Providence VA, Sarah had accessed Justin's medical records.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

918.05

She'd stolen them, doctored them, and passed them off as her own.

Deep Cover

Episode 4: The Suspect

966.092

Justin laid out his side of the story for investigators, how he'd given Sarah thousands of dollars for her treatment. Justin was able to provide them with very specific evidence, dates, amounts, and transaction records for every electronic transfer, all of which would be helpful to Donnelly's investigation.

Diddy On Trial

What’s life like for Diddy in prison?

1526.286

I've never seen anything like that before.

Diddy On Trial

What’s life like for Diddy in prison?

530.209

I've never seen anything like that before.

Distractible

Order Matters Too

0.289

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Leary Bob sees a starship blow, has issues with his hose, and asks the guys for the perfect setups. Wincy Wade slips in time, perks for peaks, has horror-invoked paranoia, and hunts frogs. Masonic Mark molests metals, goes chucking, is a moving maestro, and fingers without protection. From deja vu to flat packs. Yes!

Distractible

Order Matters Too

33.395

It's time for Order Matters 2. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Illegal Advice Too

0.069

Good evening, gentle listeners and watchers, and welcome to Destructible, this episode. Mosquito-maskering Mark gets ponderous party performance and asks the gents for remedies to rage. Bouncing Bob nearly loses James, suggests a stitch-up.

Distractible

Illegal Advice Too

18.177

miasmas, creed cripplings and cloning wise guy Wade gets vandalized by Serviday advises stuffing tailpipes Jason, Hammer Time and Steve Rogers from lint free nostrils to kissy beads yes it's time for illegal advice 2 now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show What is up, people?

Distractible

When Was That Again?

0.189

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Burly Bob loves cutlery cannons, Mane's prop hunt, and Tester Jen's tactical recall rate. Sticky Munitions Mark has misfired love bullets, advises cocaine, and knows the history of tubes. Wipable Wade hasn't touched his balls in over a decade, and diverts from nuclear Armageddon.

Distractible

When Was That Again?

26.718

From re-lubing bullet condoms to replicant replacement. Yes! It's time for When Was That Again? Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

When Was That Again?

2882.543

No, that's fair.

Distractible

When Was That Again?

3447.583

You did great.

Distractible

Merry Christmas, Bob!

0.248

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This bumper episode, buoyant Bob blasts Hollywood, claims his godhead, then demands donatives from the dudes. Weak-willed Wade gets reflux from a bad reflex, enacts poo-poo, offers pumping Bob, bread houses, and bad clowns. Mercenary Mark wants a wick stick, bags an eagle, and gifts eternal earnings, farmyard flyers, and everything.

Distractible

Merry Christmas, Bob!

30.828

From trigger discipline to Zoltar. Yes! It's time for Merry Christmas, Bob. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Merry Christmas, Bob!

3818.965

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Distractible

The Perfecter Crime

20.134

Guten Abend, liebe Zuschauer und Zuschauerinnen, und willkommen zu Distractable. In diesem Episode findet Maudlin Mark eine Bibliothek-Bärin, dann challenge die Jungs, um Spy vs. Spy zu spielen. Der liebevolle Bob fragt über Wade, kommt in alte Männer und hat Hyperhearing als weiblicher Warden.

Distractible

The Perfecter Crime

40.371

Wetter Wade meint für Charity during staycation, flushes himself, clubs guards and attempts a prison break. From pumper melons to grayness. Yes, it's time for the perfect crime. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

We've Never Done This Before

0.189

Good evening, gentle listeners and watchers, and welcome to Destructible. This episode... Brain-damaged Bob gets boned by the Doc, then wants to get closer to the boys. Monster Wild Wade ranks hard, has Sheev as a shrink, and snaffles a shit kebab. Mendacious Mark has amazing girth, but never finishes, and gets screwed by exchanges. From suing over long ones, to cooking... Yes!

Distractible

We've Never Done This Before

31.081

It's time for We've Never Done This Before. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

The Council of Distractible (Part 2)

0.129

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Well-born Wade the Dino Dude suggests distractible doobies, disengages, and tests his tribunate powers. Magneto Mark abuses caffeine, creates convolution, then defends democracy and magic bowls. Barbarian Bob is Fry the Fiend, refutes his legal cred, suggests extra spins, and slams the subreddit.

Distractible

The Council of Distractible (Part 2)

2595.723

Another wheel spin.

Distractible

The Council of Distractible (Part 2)

28.564

From disturbing dentistry to rewritten regulations. Yes! It's time for The Council of Distractible, Part 2. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Even More Broken News

0.189

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Morbid Mark discusses the profit and loss of parrots, then unleashes oddities on his hombres. Bulldozing Bob goes top-down, bloviates about blowing, channels Kris Kringle, and shows interest in penises. Rangan Wade contradicts his comrades, reports on Portland Pea, and goes full Tepej.

Distractible

Even More Broken News

2624.98

I have no idea.

Distractible

Even More Broken News

28.123

From pizza to saggy truck nuts. Yes! It's time for even more broken news. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Three Word Sales Pitch

33.254

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Destructible. This episode, Biscuity Bob gets his print on, Ghostful Squidward, and asks the studs to whet his appetite. Wallachian Wade goes to the movies, loses a weekend, has a car update, experiences bloodlust, and does draculises. Minecraft Mark fails an unboxing, trolls to buskets. and advertises ghostly gastronomy.

Distractible

Three Word Sales Pitch

62.085

From imaginary assaults to sick deforestation. Yes! It's time for Three Word Sales Pitch. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Three Word Sales Pitch

88.138

Distract!

Distractible

September 10th

0.421

Good evening, Rough Riding listeners or watchers, and welcome to Destructible. This episode, Maneuverable Mark gets reamed by Reddit, acts the alchemist, then gets the boys to fuck with reality. Bookworm Bob loves the library, threatens explosions, pilfers Pokemon, and emancipates Kemet. Well-received Wade goes after Dumbass, receives the Lash, and apes J.T. Kirk.

Distractible

September 10th

30.126

From various equities to the Second Amendment. Yes! It's time for September 10th. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

WordPad Broke

0.269

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, war-headed Wade loses his D&D doodles, has superhero relatives, and Microsoft eats his notes. Bullying Bob lays into Wade, finds ninja apartments, talks tosh about wingspan, and the biggest Mac muncher. Melting Mark talks AI, big chests, needing to exercise. pee, bigger beds and inappropriate oils.

Distractible

WordPad Broke

29.181

From lubed were-clowns to killer bidets. Yes! It's time for Word Pad Broke. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Nah, I'd Win (Part 3)

0.209

Good evening, gentle listener and watchers, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Maze-like Mark leads a terrible trio into catastrophic conundrums. Bragging Bob builds for his boy, plays in pizza. Grease Gary gets zapped and squashed, but escapes via estuary. Birthday boy White Whiskered Wade fucks his former day family, survives sex, and is victorious over Venus.

Distractible

Nah, I'd Win (Part 3)

2305.806

Thank you.

Distractible

Nah, I'd Win (Part 3)

27.671

From calamitous cams to malevolent meteors, yes, it's time for Nah, I'd Win, Part 3. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

The Distractible Paradox

0.129

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Buoyant Bob, as paternal about his progeny's flatulence, claims animals have no animus, then throws down the gauntlet. Wipable Wade boosts the bangles, slanders streetcars, proposes universe-sucking wood, and beefs on brand. Gerrymandering Mark respects divine indifference, rizzes on rustles, and gets irate over infinity.

Distractible

The Distractible Paradox

28.504

From kidnapping quarterbacks to thirsty asses. It's time for The Distractible Paradox. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Right In The Sauce Box

0.149

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Wide Ty Wade, the huge-handed, demands his dudes uplift anachronistic idioms. Munching Mark propounds making peens, drops a F-word, cripples with crinkling, and cooks the ketchup. Bumbling Bob talks door cams, wants tail or a penguin penis, and knows his sarcophagi and shyness. From soup snaffling to microchoppers.

Distractible

Right In The Sauce Box

33.195

It's time for Right in the Sauce Box. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Faster or Slower?

0.209

Good evening, gentle listener or watcher, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, ball-drooping Bob gives a righteous update, demystifies Mammon's machinations, then asks the fellas to factor fleetness. Woven Wade has a stroke for splashing cash, focuses on faeces, Armageddon, the fiscus, and follicles.

Distractible

Faster or Slower?

22.722

Moderator Mark manifests industrialism and emissions, explains being sprayed, and bogus biopsies. From actively assenting to orifice exploration. Yes! It's time for Faster or Slower. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Faster or Slower?

3597.027

Stop! Stop talking!

Distractible

Who Want Million?

0.129

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Meredith Mark ails in Amsterdam, assaults Ethan, explains CNC construction, then asks the big buck questions. Warmer Wade plows hard with his powerful tool and is frankly brilliant about his grapefruits. Building Bob fastens his feathery nest, sees Canadian scrappiness, Topsy's Tata and Sir Siri Swine.

Distractible

Who Want Million?

1880.431

Hey, Bob.

Distractible

Who Want Million?

29.303

From Shakira's well-being to Matt Murdock. Yes! It's time for Who Want Million? Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

The Best, The Worst

0.129

Good evening, gentle listeners and watchers, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, well-received Wade loses pet access, burns the bangles, then asks for opinions. Multicultural Mark invokes pretty privilege with Prusa, slams the evil echoes of spelunking, and enjoys bambi blasting. Barely Bob clamps for carpentry, gives great tidings, explains organized sports, and heckles headgear.

Distractible

The Best, The Worst

29.674

From irritating lube to crap concepts. Yes! It's time for the best, the worst. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Mark's One Man Show

0.209

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, business-like Bob diagnoses Dr. P, benches Wade, cautions drivers, asks more easy questions, and gets horrific. Wildcat Wade muppets out, cuts the Colombian, and slings out softies. Medicinal Mark crusades against caffeine-penile shrinkage, and performs a tour de force while being battered by the boys.

Distractible

Mark's One Man Show

30.114

From René Descartes to sempiternal stingers. Yes! It's time for Mark's One Man Show. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

[Insert Topic Here]

0.209

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Moneyed Mark comes out for AAA creators, knocks Nintendo, and comes up random. Blighted Bob is still sicky, balks at buying unfinished BS, and suggests,

Distractible

[Insert Topic Here]

16.815

more festies wealthy wade rejects evil and goes into exile argues the nickels and dimes and gets into grannies from single sausage orgies to hogwarts hand cannons yes it's time for insert topic here now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show

Distractible

Our Shirts Are Out

0.189

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Weiner gagging Wade, whops out his tool, rejects modernity, and tasks the trio to identify outdated idioms. Muggle managing Mark, props for Prusa, ocular golden showers, and amazing avatar erections. Heartbroken Bob, needs your love for Lexi, touts battlefield breeding, and suspects Semaphore.

Distractible

Our Shirts Are Out

30.043

From tragic news to fucking foxes. Yes! It's time for Our Shirts Are Out. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

0.149

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Massacring Mark threatens a micro-knifing, plays a trailer, points out ploom-boom poisoning, and butthole biology. Bizarre Bob gets goosey, and Agent Anus doesn't get wood, recollects eating chalky octopi and tungsten tootsies.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

1055.117

Have you ever felt the chill run up your spine? Well, it was like something trapped me on the shoulder, but when I turned around... Get ready to forget everything you know about everything.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

1068.667

A whole city of...

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

1069.748

people just turning round and round endlessly all right if someone doesn't say they're smelling what i'm smelling i swear i'm oh my god what happened to the moon you expect me to believe we're surrounded by gases that we cannot see i know what clouds look like those are clouds welcome to the show that was formerly known as don't look up but we were sued by some dumb ass in a movie studio this is it's in the air

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

1101.218

Viewer discretion is advised.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

21.934

Whittling Wade talks melting piles and crouching crabs, antagonising the Arbiter and Riz's radiologists. From dominating Cincinnati to crispy babies. Yes! It's time for Mark Prepared for This. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

2744.003

Have you ever felt the chill run up your spine? It was like something tapped me on the shoulder, but when I turned around... Get ready to forget everything you know about everything.

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

2757.553

A whole city of people just turning round and round endlessly. All right, if someone doesn't say they're smelling what I'm smelling, I swear I'm...

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

2765.98

Oh, my God. What happened to the moon?

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

2769.341

You expect me to believe we're surrounded by gases that we cannot see? I know what clouds look like. Those aren't clouds!

Distractible

Mark Prepared For This

2784.766

This is It's In The Air. Viewer discretion is advised.

Distractible

Slice of Life

0.169

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Warrior Wade gets wheels for his wife, then drives the dudes down Diagon Alley. Bishop Bob buys a miter, manifests a meme, is scared of soccer, but not Brosnan. Motorist Mark gets his own storefront, solves swappiness, stares at Sol, wow, and the frigid wall. From Distracti-babies to Paradise Lost.

Distractible

Slice of Life

2764.496

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Distractible

Slice of Life

29.958

Yes, it's time for Slice of Life. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

idk, some "Q"s

33.123

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Wooden Wade admits to weeping, claims penury, then asks questionable quandaries. Maiden Fair Mark frightens Yogi with these nuts, has issues with halting James McCarthy, and avoids a nutectomy. Ball-bashed Bob gets soaring, haunts dongs, performs covert nudity, and wants to taste beaver.

Distractible

idk, some "Q"s

61.983

From a frozen open to Mr. Silver, yes, it's time for IDK Some Q's. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Hide The Penny

0.209

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, befouled Bob screws his printer, then challenges the boys to hide and seek. Maneuverable Mark wants to shill bamboo, tools up for a tantrum, manhandles a cashier, and frees a naked freshman. Waist-weakening Wade rips on toddler truckers. reports Mark to the 5-0 and searches condoms. From doggy drinks to Abraham Lincoln.

Distractible

Hide The Penny

2694.253

It's a race against time now.

Distractible

Hide The Penny

30.882

Yes! It's time for Hide the Penny. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Acronyms, But Better

0.149

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, this episode. Bronzed Bob becomes Rorschach and Batman, butchers Le Francais and attempts to improve annoying abbreviations. Wasteful Wade gets blown off by support, collects frozen feces, sniffs of fists, and advises dicking. Maneuverable Mark clears colossal poops, evokes empathy, and gets crusty.

Distractible

Acronyms, But Better

1420.137

Oh, you raised your hand.

Distractible

Acronyms, But Better

25.936

with blood-sucking boners, from shit-talking to telekinetic porn. Yes! It's time for Acronyms But Better. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Distractible

Distractible Travel Guide: Cincinnati

0.189

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Bumbling Bob builds his March Madness, and the Terrific Triad trade tour tips. Wishing Wade stocks up on Scout Snacks, berates Babel Coasters, Crackers, Ballers, and Ass Chili. Monstrous Mark the Render Ranger gets railed by the Power People. Miss Lays Tyler favors Phantoms and rags La Rosas.

Distractible

Distractible Travel Guide: Cincinnati

28.909

From sartorial satisfaction to plush parks. Yes! It's time for Distractible Travel Guide Cincinnati. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

Dumb Blonde

TBT: Viking Barbie

183.625

Bonnie, who used to be a former sex worker, now hosts the podcast Dumb Blonde.

Dumb Blonde

TBT: Viking Barbie

2959.121

You know what I mean?

Dumb Blonde

TBT: Viking Barbie

3408.559

You know what I mean?

Dumb Blonde

TBT: Viking Barbie

4412.859

Come on, just do it.

Dumb Blonde

Ask, Tell, Confess: I Hate The Way My Vagina Looks

1449.778

tinder story is not mine but a friend of mine now obviously that raises you know we're not necessarily big fans of big fans of that but you know it works it works crazy some suspicions yes absolutely some eyebrows this story happened in vienna my friend met a guy on tinder and went on a few dates with him about for about a month one day she decided after a date to finally invite him to her house for a drink

Dumb Blonde

Ask, Tell, Confess: I Hate The Way My Vagina Looks

1477.079

During these drinks, she started feeling some weird vibes from him. So when... Sorry. Weird vibes from him. So when it was time to go to bed, she asked him if he would be okay with sleeping on the couch in the living room. He said yes. Good man, as you should. For some reason, she decided to lock her bedroom. She's always been a little bit paranoid. And then she went to sleep.

Dumb Blonde

Ask, Tell, Confess: I Hate The Way My Vagina Looks

1498.819

In the middle of the night, she heard her door handle move. She woke up and asked him, are you okay? Thinking maybe he was looking for the bathroom and he didn't answer. She got very spooked and called the police. The police arrived and she warily opened the door and told them he was in the living room. A police officer went into the living room down the hall and came back.

Dumb Blonde

Ask, Tell, Confess: I Hate The Way My Vagina Looks

1522.012

He got on his walkie-talkie immediately and told her not to go into the living room. Apparently, there was a bunch of knives in the living room floor and plastic over some of the furniture. Had she not locked the door, she would probably be dead. Unfortunately...

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

0.089

Warning, this program contains graphic material including disturbing descriptions and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1002.941

Mark O'Leary was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, menacing, and burglary.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1020.612

There were other victims. Police searching through O'Leary's photos would learn he violently assaulted two women while living in Washington State years earlier. One was an 18-year-old who reported being raped in her home, only to be charged for making a false report by police who did not believe her. Her story became the basis for the Netflix series Unbelievable.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1067.408

Jeffrey Dugan, attorney with Marathon Law and O'Leary's defense attorney.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1092

Almost three and a half years after his first violent attack, Marco Leary pled guilty to 28 counts, including rape and other felonies.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1116.127

The judge agreed, handing down a sentence of 327 and a half years for the Colorado attacks. O'Leary would get 68 more years in Washington. You've lost your privilege to be free in society. Facing a life in prison, O'Leary started talking and gave investigators a glimpse inside the twisted mind of a serial predator.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1236.84

This has been in collaboration with Fox Nation. Go to foxtruecrime.com for more series like this or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

1260.753

Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

130.324

a disturbing call to 911 would reveal just how ruthless he was the call came in from a woman who had said that someone had entered her home and raped her

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

168.107

A real-life horror story unlike any that Detective Stacy Galbraith had ever heard before.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

187.49

The masked assailant held her down, bound her, and sexually assaulted her for four hours. Somehow, she managed to keep her wits about her, hoping to get information on her attacker.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

217.757

Robert Weiner, senior deputy DA in Golden, Colorado.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

254.939

She also recalled one more distinct feature.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

272.27

As the victim was taking mental pictures of her attacker, he was taking pictures of his own. As if the assault itself wasn't traumatizing enough, he used a pink Sony CyberShot camera to snap a series of photos.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

298.266

In other words, he was good at it. And that had police very worried.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

313.769

Detective Galbraith was right, but she had no idea just how big this case was going to become.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

335.393

What started as a discussion about work led the two to believe this assault may have been linked to other attacks in the area.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

382.375

Six months prior to the Golden attack, a masked intruder came through the window of a 59-year-old woman living alone in Westminster, Colorado. He sexually assaulted her for hours. Ten months before that, in Aurora, Colorado, a 65-year-old reported being raped by a masked man who tied her up, took pictures, and threatened to post them online.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

410.616

Then, the assailant stole her pink Sony Cybershot camera.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

432.29

and he meticulously cleaned all of the crime scenes. But he made simple yet costly mistakes in both Aurora and Westminster.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

461.932

Simply turning that timer left valuable evidence.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

494.535

So they reached out to other local jurisdictions.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

515.962

It was the fourth case Detective Galbraith learned about. But this one had a very different outcome. Just one month before the Westminster attack, a woman who lived alone was startled awake by a noise in her hallway. A masked intruder holding a knife entered the room and straddled her. He attempted to bind her wrists, but she refused to go down without a fight.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

571.232

Four violent attacks over two years all led to one unknown suspect. Although he was good at covering his tracks, investigators were a formidable foe, and the hunter was now the hunted.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

615.287

Fox News Audio presents the Fox Nation Investigates podcast, Evil Next Door. Exploring the life and crimes of five serial predators from across the United States. It's a very disturbing case. Never before heard interviews and firsthand perspectives.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

634.118

The Fox Nation Investigates podcast, Evil Next Door. Listen and follow now with Amazon Music. Must listen to podcasts from Fox News Audio.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

67.708

For a span of three years, the suburbs of Seattle, Washington, and Denver, Colorado were plagued by a sexual predator. Beginning in 2008, police received reports of a serial rapist who would break into women's homes, bind his victims, and rape them for hours on end.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

673.987

It appeared to be the same truck that was reported near another crime scene.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

705.694

Police had their first suspect, although his name didn't raise any red flags, 32-year-old Mark O'Leary, an Army veteran with no criminal history. He was studying at Red Rocks Community College.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

743.841

His appearance may have been right out of college central casting, but Professor Melinda Wilding says his schoolwork was not.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

801.843

belongings that police were anxious to look through. But to get a warrant, they needed more evidence. So they put his home under surveillance.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

83.159

The violent perpetrator was meticulous about not leaving any evidence behind at the crime scene, making the hunt for the expert criminal all the more difficult. This is Evil Next Door, Episode 2, Mark O'Leary.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

835.263

Turns out that guy was the wrong guy. Investigators back at the house learned that when they knocked on the door.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

865.363

The DNA investigators pulled from the diner was a match to the crime scenes.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

881.84

Police had just one last piece to complete the puzzle, to make sure Mark was the O'Leary they were looking for.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

966.144

and what they found was a treasure trove of damning evidence. Lock picks, pocket knives, a handgun, gloves with prints matching those found at the crime scene, Adidas sneakers, same size as the assailants, and a collection of women's underwear hidden in a speaker, and a pink Sony CyberShot camera.

Evil Next Door

Marc O'Leary

97.631

Golden, Colorado. A former gold rush town, this scenic area sits in the rolling hills of the Rockies. In January of 2011, this quaint neighborhood became a hunting ground for a serial sexual predator who was stalking unsuspecting single women in the Denver area, spending weeks learning their schedules and waiting for the perfect moment to creep into their homes.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Start/Sit Courage + Hungry For More, TNF Preview - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/18

1630.703

Thursday Night Breakdown

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Start/Sit Courage + Hungry For More, TNF Preview - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/18

292.752

Welcome to Hungry for More, presented by Uber Eats.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Start/Sit Courage + Hungry For More, TNF Preview - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/18

3562.932

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Start/Sit Courage + Hungry For More, TNF Preview - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/18

577.776

News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Start/Sit Courage + Hungry For More, TNF Preview - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/18

81.228

The Fantasy Footballers Studio is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

112.426

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

2.11

DraftKings has the tools to help you play within your limits. Don't budge on your budget. With the options to set time limits and deposit limits, schedule time away from play, manage your payment methods, and keep track of your recent stats, you'll have all the tools to create a winning game plan. Because when it comes to betting, it's more fun when it's for fun. The crown is yours.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

24.325

Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Visit rg.draftkings.com for more info.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

344.028

We're going. Oh, my gosh. We're doing it live.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

4122.025

Goodbye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: WRs Part 2 + Where’s Jason? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/4

707.085

News and notes from around the league.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: QBs Part 2 + Deep Dives, Pendulum Swings - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/21

1014.112

I think I'm entitled to that. You want answers? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth. So did you.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: QBs Part 2 + Deep Dives, Pendulum Swings - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/21

4003.272

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: QBs Part 2 + Deep Dives, Pendulum Swings - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/21

94.703

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Draft Fallers + Combine Buzz, New Offenses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/27

240.27

News and notes from around the league.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Draft Fallers + Combine Buzz, New Offenses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/27

3670.253

Thank you for listening to another episode of the fantasy footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join the foot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FF ballers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Draft Fallers + Combine Buzz, New Offenses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/27

5.894

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 17 Breakdown, RAIN Alert! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/26

150.316

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 17 Breakdown, RAIN Alert! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/26

1770.278

It's time for Fantasy Forecast, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 17 Breakdown, RAIN Alert! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/26

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News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Mock Draft! Top 12 Picks for 2025 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/20

3258.61

Goodbye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Mock Draft! Top 12 Picks for 2025 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/20

5.916

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast, with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Mock Draft! Top 12 Picks for 2025 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/20

918.578

The Fantasy Footballers Mock Draft.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 16 Breakdown, Playoff Pressure - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/19

1741.117

It's time for Fantasy Forecast, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 16 Breakdown, Playoff Pressure - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/19

3926.898

It was once he said the first game tomorrow and it was Titans.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Starts of the Week + Week 16 Breakdown, Playoff Pressure - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/19

81.516

The Fantasy Footballers Studio is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Scramby Daniels - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/16

4332.733

Fantasy Face-Off, presented by DraftKings.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Scramby Daniels - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/16

610.697

News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Scramby Daniels - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/16

822.681

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Scramby Daniels - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/16

94.807

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 17 Matchups + Championship Choices, Weather Worries? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/27

1346.383

It's time for Fantasy Forecast, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 17 Matchups + Championship Choices, Weather Worries? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/27

150.346

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 17 Matchups + Championship Choices, Weather Worries? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/27

3174.687

Fantasy Face-Off, presented by DraftKings.

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Week 17 Matchups + Championship Choices, Weather Worries? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/27

584.672

News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

1271.256

It's time for Fantasy Forecast, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

2942.674

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

2959.131

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Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

2973.547

This episode is brought to you by AWS. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI assistant from AWS. Many tasks can make business slow, like wading through mud. Help! Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data to help you streamline tasks, like summarizing quarterly results or doing complex analyses in no time. Q got this.

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Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

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Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

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Fantasy Face-Off, presented by DraftKings.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

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Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

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Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

631.294

News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance.

Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast

Week 15 Matchups + Inside Thoughts, Wheel of Shame - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/13

65.915

The Fantasy Footballer Studio is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Hunting, Bourbon, and Ag Tech: Hanging out with a Doctor! - Eric Scherder

106.177

All without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Hunting, Bourbon, and Ag Tech: Hanging out with a Doctor! - Eric Scherder

1395.938

Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist Herbicide the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are. Flexible tank mix options and neighbor-friendly applications.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Hunting, Bourbon, and Ag Tech: Hanging out with a Doctor! - Eric Scherder

1416.306

All without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Hunting, Bourbon, and Ag Tech: Hanging out with a Doctor! - Eric Scherder

85.802

Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist Herbicides the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are. Flexible tank mix options and neighbor-friendly applications.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Farmers Say the Funniest Things: Listener Comments of 2024

17.577

There is a podcast in Iowa. Fought for profit was named by the Facebook.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Farmers Say the Funniest Things: Listener Comments of 2024

26.18

Making Buffet was their first goal, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go Before we knew, conversations grew, growing corn even said FU So won't you join tenor, decor, and crew, please like, share, review Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go

Farm4Profit Podcast

8th-Generation Farmer Zoe Kent on Running a Farm & Owning Her Story

84.197

It was their first goal, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go Before we knew, conversations grew, growing corn even said, So won't you join tenor decor and crew, please like, share, review Soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun One day when the recording's done, we'll take our mics and go

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

1207.205

Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist herbicides the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

1224.257

Flexible tank mix options and neighbor-friendly applications, all without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

28.621

Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

3814.117

Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

60.174

Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist Herbicides the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Soybean Cyst Nematode: The Silent Threat Stealing Your Yield

77.218

Flexible tank makes options and neighbor-friendly applications, all without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

111.082

Flexible tank mix options and neighbor-friendly applications, all without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

1243.488

Right. Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist herbicides the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

1262.004

Flexible tank makes options and neighbor-friendly applications, all without the need to jump through hoops. See what you'll gain with America's most trusted herbicide system protecting your Enlist E3 soybean fields at Enlist.com.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

3250.244

Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

3269.409

What will you be doing there?

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

3325.179

Where have you guys been?

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

62.273

Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Making Smart Crop Insurance Decisions for 2025

94.031

Farming comes with trade-offs. An extra pass means dinner in the cab. An early morning becomes a late night. Unnecessary restrictions turn into headaches. But when you make Enlist Herbicides the foundation of your herbicide program, the trade-offs will be in your favor. Effective weed control that's ready to work when you are.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Inside the Farm Plan: Corey Talks Growing Season Strategies w/ AgXplore

26.454

Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Inside the Farm Plan: Corey Talks Growing Season Strategies w/ AgXplore

4743.745

Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Breaking Down the November WASDE Report: Andrew Kaabes - Lighthouse Commodities

31.334

Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Farm4Profit Podcast

Breaking Down the November WASDE Report: Andrew Kaabes - Lighthouse Commodities

3438.159

Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.

Fest & Flauschig

Du kriegst das Geld, ich krieg das Tier!

3746.236

Die großen fünf. Definiert von Böhmermann und Schultz.

Fest & Flauschig

Du kriegst das Geld, ich krieg das Tier!

4680.132

Die großen Fünf. Definiert von Böhmermann und Schultz.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Why is Carissa ghosting Dave?

376.553

First date follow-up. Powered by the Advocates Injury Attorneys. Online at advocateslaw.com.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Why is Carissa ghosting Dave?

67.321

First date follow-up. Powered by the Advocates Injury Attorneys. Online at advocateslaw.com.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Why is Carissa ghosting Dave?

852.233

Thanks, guys.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Why is Carissa ghosting Dave?

858.712

Jubal's First Date Follow-Up. Powered by the Advocates Injury Attorney. Online at advocateslaw.com.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Greg Said What On Their Hike?

1114.213

Bombing with Eric Andre.

First Date Follow Up - The Jubal Show

Greg Said What On Their Hike?

31.213

Bombing. Bombing. With Eric Andre.

Freakonomics Radio

EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)

186.864

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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The experiment was designed to go on for two weeks. 24 volunteers, all male college students, were randomly divided into inmates and guards. The inmates were arrested at their homes and brought to a makeshift prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. Immediately, their individuality was taken away. The guards called them by ID number rather than name.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Again, that was Philip Zimbardo. Does that name ring a bell? If you ever took Psychology 101 in college, think back to that. You remember reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment? That was Zimbardo's experiment back in 1971, in which some student volunteers played the role of prisoners and others acted as guards. Things got ugly fast. Zimbardo died in 2024 at the age of 91.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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They wore stocking caps to cover their hair and a short smock with no underwear. The guards, too, were dressed alike, essentially becoming anonymous.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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A third of the guards started to exploit their authority, taunting prisoners, making them simulate sodomy, clean toilets with their bare hands. Zimbardo himself began to play a role.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Meaning he firmly believes that people aren't necessarily good or bad, but that their behavior is strongly dependent on their situation, on the role they're expected to play. During the Stanford prison experiment, the situation was so intense that after just 36 hours, some prisoners began to break down.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Instead of lasting two weeks, the experiment was canceled after six days.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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And not only are you a grown up, but you are the administrator of this thing. And it's amazing to me. I mean, now, 40 some years later, you can talk about it with the perspective of someone who was a participant and who understands what happened to you. But did you have any sense that what was happening to you was happening to you at the time?

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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So does Sleep No More offer a better lesson in human behavior? No. To answer that question, I called my Freakonomics friend and co-author, Steve Levitt. He's an economist at the University of Chicago and host of the podcast, People I Mostly Admire. Over the course of his academic career, Levitt has run and observed a lot of experiments, both in the lab and in the field.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Hey, let me ask you this, Levitt. I'm sure you're familiar with the famous Stanford prison experiment, Philip Zimbardo, yes? Sure. So what do you think that says about anonymity or the power that a circumstance, a place being put in a place and playing a role, the power that that has on us?

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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In his everyday life, he liked messing with people.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Well, you know, let me read you. Here's what a couple of the volunteers who played guards back then, 40 some years ago. Here's what they said recently. One said that he was playing a role from the outset, trying to create drama to, quote, give the researchers something to work with. And another guard said, I didn't think it was ever meant to go the full two weeks.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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I think Zimbardo wanted to create a dramatic crescendo and then end it as quickly as possible. I felt that throughout the experiment. He knew what he wanted and then tried to shape the experiment by how it was constructed and how it played out to fit the conclusion that he had already worked out.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle class backgrounds, that people will turn on each other just because they're given a role and given power.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Steve Levitt's intuition turned out to be pretty good. Since we first published this episode, there's been more evidence that challenges the integrity of Philip Zimbardo's findings.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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In 2018, journalist Ben Blum and researcher Thibaut Le Texier published separate investigations based on archival recordings and interviews with participants, which argued that the Stanford prison experiment had been significantly manipulated. Zimbardo himself acknowledged that there were methodological problems with the experiment.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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He shouldn't have played the role of the warden, he said, but he stood by the experiment's main conclusion. The Stanford Prison Experiment is hardly the only high-profile psychology experiment to have been found shaky. If you want to know more, check out a two-part series we ran in January 2024 called Why Is There So Much Fraud in Academia?

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Coming up after the break, can theater take us to places that psychology can't? I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. A study like the Stanford Prison Experiment could never happen today, at least not in the U.S. When it was over, the American Psychological Association imposed new standards for how research subjects could be treated.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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So if you really want to mess with someone, manipulate their mind, your best bet may still be the theater. Felix Barrett, years before he created Sleep No More, staged a show that was so unorthodox and rarefied that only four people ever got to experience it.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Wow. So you do really love to mess with people. And I say that not pejoratively at all. As a theater creator, you see the audience member differently than other theater creators do, don't you? It strikes me that you are half theater creator and half social scientist. Yeah.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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That's one of the pleasures of seeing Sleep No More, watching your fellow audience members get lost in the work. They don their masks and cast off their social mores. Yes, a few of them act out. They interfere with the cast. They steal.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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And there is empathy, too. During Sleep No More, one character tries to poison Lady Macduff. Here's Maxine Doyle, the show's choreographer and co-director.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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And here again is Tori Sparks, who plays Lady Macbeth, and Nick Bruder, who plays Macbeth.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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In the end, Sleep No More is too wooly, too freewheeling to think of as a social experiment. But it does look a little bit like society itself. Rules are established and sometimes broken. Morays are adopted, but not by everyone. What's most interesting, most encouraging perhaps, is how in Sleep No More, as in society in general, what we don't end up with is total chaos. Here's Steve Levitt again.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Okay, so Philip Zimbardo is the man responsible for the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous social science experiments in history. We will hear more about that and some new revelations about the experiment later in this episode. But first, let's get to the real inspiration for today's show. It is a theater piece, an immersive, interactive theater piece called Sleep No More.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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So the next time you're at the grocery store or in church or in an elevator, ask yourself, am I behaving the way I am because of who I am or simply because of my surroundings? What would I do if I were wearing a mask? Am I as much of an individual as I think I am or am I more like a lump of silly putty just waiting for society or a theater director to mold me.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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I hope you enjoyed this updated bonus episode. Punch Drunk's latest production, Viola's Room, arrives in New York in June. And we will be back very soon with a new episode of Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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This episode was produced by Susie Lettenberg and updated by Dalvin Abouaji. Special thanks to Jonathan Hochwald from Immersive and Jake Smith.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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The Freakonomics Radio network staff also includes Alina Kullman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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You can find our entire archive on any podcast app or at Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Sleep No More is the creation of a British theater group called Punch Drunk. It opened in New York in 2011 and ran until January of 2025. Sleep No More is a mashup of Macbeth and Hitchcock and film noir, but it's even stranger than all that.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Sleep No More is designed to throw you off balance. It begins before you even go inside. The location is called the McKittrick Hotel, but in fact, it's an old warehouse in Chelsea. The whole thing is cloaked in secrecy.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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So I hope you enjoy this bonus episode. As always, thanks for listening. Sometimes you see a piece of theater and it completely scrambles your brain.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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psychologically intense, I would agree. Now, what makes it so? Let me offer two thoughts, control and context. First, control. If you are the kind of person who likes to have a lot of control over your surroundings, if you're not exactly a go with the flow type of person, and yes, I'm kind of describing myself here, Then Sleep No More presents you with a bit of a challenge.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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It starts while you're waiting in line on the sidewalk. A bouncer requests a photo ID, doesn't say why, just requests it. And everybody in line complies wordlessly. Once you're inside, there's a mandatory coat and bag check. Everything must go, every computer, every purse. And then you're shuffled through a long pitch black hallway. Out of the blackness, you emerge into a bar.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Nice bar, with a good jazz band. Place has the feel of a speakeasy, and you're thinking, hey, what year are we in here? You're offered a drink, absinthe perhaps. A fortune teller looks you over from a corner table. After a while, you're summoned into a freight elevator where you are given a mask, a beautifully creepy beaked mask.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

4.704

Hey there, Stephen Dubner. We are in the middle of a new series on the economics of live theater, which got me thinking about another episode we made way back in 2012 about the psychology of one particularly fascinating piece of theater. Such a fascinating piece that it only closed finally in early 2025. The episode also gets into one of the most famous experiments in the history of psychology.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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And then you are told what you may and may not do for the rest of the evening. Here's Tori Sparks. She plays Lady Macbeth.

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Okay, so you've surrendered your valuables at the door and you're now dispatched on a three-hour adventure about which you are told next to nothing, during which you may not speak, and yet you're also told that fortune favors the bold. So yes, you have given up a bit of control. Okay, now for the context. Where are we? Where's the stage? Well, there is no stage.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Or really, the stage is everywhere. Six floors of warehouse that have been turned into an unbelievably elaborate set. There's an old hotel and a town. There are lodgings for the Macbeths and the Macduffs. There's a grand ballroom, a forest, a hospital, a cemetery.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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You are allowed to wander anywhere and everywhere, to open drawers and read letters, to eat candy from the glass jars in the sweets shop.

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Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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But what about the actors? Where are they?

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But then you start seeing them and trying to figure out who they are, their relationships. You think back to what you were told, that fortune favors the bold. And you learn that you have to follow the performers from room to room, even chase them, or they might bring you with them.

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The context is further muddied by the fact that none of the performers actually speak. But over the course of the evening, you will see a lot.

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That's Philip Zimbardo, the renowned psychologist.

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And don't forget, it's very dark and you're wearing a mask.

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Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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That's Felix Barrett. He's the artistic director of Punch Drunk and co-creator of Sleep No More.

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Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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One night Tori Sparks, who plays Lady Macbeth, was dancing inside a sort of glass box.

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Fortune favors the bold. Exactly.

Freakonomics Radio

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Every detail of Sleep No More, the music, the mask, the choreography, has been carefully designed to crush your expectations that going to the theater means just sitting in a square room and watching people on a stage speak their lines. Here's Felix Barrett again.

Freakonomics Radio

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Before Sleep No More came to New York, it played in Boston, in an old school building.

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So how would you behave if you were thrust into an unfamiliar situation, given a set of off-putting rules, and then told to hide behind a mask? That's coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio. Sleep No More, for me, was a thrill, unsettling on many dimensions, but also a thrill.

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What it really made me think about, however, wasn't Macbeth or Shakespeare or Hitchcock or all the awesomely grisly ideas promoted therein. I was mostly thinking about the audience. What it really made me think about... was Philip Zimbardo, his Stanford prison experiment, and how people change their behavior depending on their surroundings. Here's Zimbardo again.

Freakonomics Radio

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In a way, Sleep No More does to the audience every night what social scientists like Zimbardo have been doing in experiments for decades. They put people in a situation, fiddle with the variables, and see how they behave.

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Like Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments at Yale in the early 1960s to see whether a volunteer would administer an electric jolt to someone if told to do so by an authority figure.

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Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)

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Milgram's experiments took place shortly after Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem for Nazi war crimes. Here's Philip Zimbardo again.

Freakonomics Radio

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After the Milgram experiments, Zimbardo got the idea to set up a fake prison at Stanford with some volunteers acting as guards and some as prisoners.

Freakonomics Radio

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)

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It can be treated with antibiotics, but it's a long and fairly complicated course of treatment. And as deadly as TB is, it doesn't draw the attention or the funding that flow to other diseases.

Freakonomics Radio

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Do you ever have harmonious decisions in your personal life, maybe with your family?

Freakonomics Radio

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Do you personally routinely do premortems, even just a quick in-your-head one when you're about to make a decision?

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Did you pre-mortem this interview today, Gary? That was a no. After the break, we ask the CEO of a startup if he would like to try Gary Klein's pre-mortem idea. I guess I disagree with Gary. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. In 2018, Will Coleman left his job as a partner at McKinsey, the consulting firm, in order to launch a rideshare startup called Alto.

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A lot of those words sounded as if they were chosen to be contra Uber and Lyft. Is that essentially the case?

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How many markets are you in right now?

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The rideshare market is tough to break into. Uber and Lyft dominate both the drivers and riders in most places. Coleman hopes that Alto's business model can set it apart. Instead of using freelance drivers who have their own cars, which is how Lyft and Uber do it, Alto employs the drivers directly and leases vehicles from manufacturers. Will that work?

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The history of the rideshare industry is already littered with firms that tried to challenge Uber and Lyft. There's Juno, Sidecar, Fasten, and more. We asked Gary Klein how he might help Alto stay off that list.

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We went back to Will Coleman to ask what he thinks of Gary Klein's suggestion.

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Javed runs a tuberculosis research lab at the University of California, San Francisco. He has also worked at labs in Beijing and at Harvard. His kind of research comes with a lot of failure.

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I hate to keep leading you down the road of potential failure, but I do want to ask, let's say this doesn't work and a couple of years from now, you need to close up shop. Can you envision what that would feel like for you?

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A couple of months after we spoke with Coleman, we learned that Alto shut down service in San Francisco. Later, they stopped operations in two more cities. This all came with significant layoffs. Does this mean they will join the 90-some percent of failed startups that Coleman mentioned? I, of course, have no way of knowing.

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But if they do fail and fail spectacularly, they might end up with this man.

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And so it was that Samuel West invented the Museum of Failure. It's a pop-up museum that has been traveling the world since 2017. Helsingborg, Sweden, Paris, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. When we spoke with West, the museum was in Brooklyn.

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As it turns out, running a traveling museum is not easy.

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The museum includes more than 150 failures, most of them inventions and commercial products. They range from trivial to fraudulent.

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In case you couldn't hear that, it's called the Euro Club, not Euro, E-U-R-O, just U-R-O.

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The first drug that was found to successfully fight TB is called streptomycin. It was discovered in 1943. It won a Nobel Prize for Selman Waxman, the main scientist behind it.

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The museum of failure will make you laugh, but West hopes that people walk away with more than that.

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We also got Samuel West into a studio to talk about failure more generally.

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I agree with you, but it seems as though most of the world, certainly the business world, thinks the opposite. We are addicted to success porn. People read the books written by successful entrepreneurs and they say, okay, that's what I'm going to do. People listen to popular music or watch popular films and emulate that. It seems that there's

Freakonomics Radio

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pretty much consensus that the best way to succeed is to copy success.

Freakonomics Radio

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Since we spoke with Samuel West, the Museum of Failure itself seems to be failing. West and his former business partner are engaged in a bitter public dispute. West has encouraged people not to buy tickets to the museum. He says the partner stole his collection of failure memorabilia. partner denies this.

Freakonomics Radio

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So if the Museum of Failure isn't the place for instruction at the moment, how else might you learn from failure? Throughout this series, we've been speaking with Amy Edmondson, a scholar of failure at the Harvard Business School. She argues that, for starters, we should not be hiding our failures.

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Talk to me for a moment about the ways in which failure is a good teacher, but we ignore its lessons. And I'm particularly thinking about the lack of publishing of null results and things like that.

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Should there be a journal of failed results somewhere? Yeah.

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You want to be the editor-in-chief and I'll be your amanuensis or something?

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Oh, I failed in my request to Tom Sawyer you into painting the fence there.

Freakonomics Radio

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Okay, so that's one vote for a journal of failure, but Edmondson doesn't want to run it. Maybe we can persuade this person. My name is Roy Shalem. I have a PhD in economics. Shalem teaches at Tel Aviv University, and he studies the economics of competition and regulation. He once published a paper called The Market for R&D Failures.

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Patent races are quite common. Think about when pharmaceutical firms are competing to find a disease treatment. But this goes way beyond pharma companies.

Freakonomics Radio

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A typical patent race is winner-take-all. The competitors work hard, invest a lot of resources, but only the winner reaps the rewards and the loser or losers are left with pretty much nothing. Roy Shalem, based on his research around corporate innovation, thinks this model is due for an upgrade. He thinks the losers should also have a way to monetize their efforts.

Freakonomics Radio

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What interested Javid was this second function, the drug causing the bacteria to make mistakes as they are creating the proteins that produce the symptoms of TB. So he went looking for other ways to trigger those mistakes, and he found some, but it turned out this wasn't enough to...

Freakonomics Radio

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If Shalem had his way, there would be, as he titled his paper, a true market for R&D failures.

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So far, at least, such a market does not exist. So what else can we do if we want to seriously consider the idea of learning from failure? Maybe we learn from failure in the old-fashioned way, in a classroom.

Freakonomics Radio

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After the break, Failure 101. I'm Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio. Do you remember Teresa McPhail? She is the medical anthropologist who initially thought that COVID-19 wouldn't be a big deal.

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McPhail's day job is teaching undergraduate engineering students at Stevens Institute of Technology.

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And then in terms of careers, what's typical? What sort of careers?

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And within engineering, is it software, mechanical, electrical, everything?

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All things I don't want to fail.

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Now, for someone studying engineering who sees a future designing things where the stakes are high, an airplane, a bridge, whatever, how do they think about failure generally in their work?

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So Macphail got to thinking about whether there was a better way to talk to her students about failure, a more direct way.

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And she felt the stakes were high, higher than most of us are willing to admit.

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And that's when Teresa McPhail started teaching a course she calls Failure 101.

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When I read your course description and you describe teaching about failures in all realms of science, and then you write that death is the ultimate failure, my response was, well, that's not fair. My reasoning would be that failure implies at least some small level of inevitability, whereas death has a perfect record as far as I know.

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Okay. But Professor McPhail, I've gotten nothing but A's the last 13 years of my life, and I'm not going to stop now. So would you please not say things like that and get out of the way and start lecturing and give me an A?

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Give me an example of a culture that dealt with or deals with failure very differently than 21st century American.

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I would have thought there have been many cultures and societies through time where... Where it's fine.

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I definitely don't think great. But I mean, here's the way I'm thinking. If you look at our track record, humans, we're pretty darn fallible. We screw up all the time in so many ways.

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And so it's surprising to me that we haven't developed a philosophy or science of failure that would be fairly timeless and robust and so on.

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I know that the researchers Lauren S. Christ-Winkler and Ayelet Fischbach have done work looking at why we hate failure so much. And it comes down to a pretty obvious point, which is that ego is real and failure threatens our ego. And universally, it feels bad. So if we were to reduce it to that finite and concrete psychological response and emotional response,

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Have you encountered any way to sort of take the sting out of that response?

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Man, I came in thinking you were going to have all sorts of.

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I went back to Amy Edmondson, the failure expert at Harvard, to ask what she would like to see taught in a failure 101 class.

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Here's what Teresa McPhail writes in her Failure 101 syllabus. Some assignments will intentionally be set up for you to fail to complete them in full, but I expect you to cope with this as best you can and turn in something. I will not warn you which weeks are impossible to complete. McPhail has now taught the course seven times. The only grades she gives are an A for passing or an F for failing.

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She's only had two students ever fail the class. McPhail says she has gotten positive feedback from students, their parents, and according to some students, their therapists. She would like to see her course taught at other schools.

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I'm looking at your Rate My Professor rankings.

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And you have a perfect score. I've never seen that before. Here's one review. Quite possibly the best professor I have ever had. Confident and knows what she's talking about. She's enthusiastic about her lectures. And that enthusiasm is truly contagious to students. She just loves what she does. Also, she is so cool. She's had such an interesting life. Low-key want to be her. All right.

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So what's your review of that review?

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What is the upside of embracing or at least processing failure in the way that you're describing?

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Okay, but the people designing our airplanes and bridges, I don't care if they feel free and light.

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And in that space, what does one do? Does one grieve, for instance?

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I'd like to thank Theresa McPhail for teaching all of us a new way to think about failure. And thanks to everyone who spoke with us for this series, How to Succeed at Failing. I'm curious to know how you think we did with this series. One key ingredient of learning from failure is getting good feedback. And I want yours. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com.

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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and you are about to hear the fourth and final episode of our series, How to Succeed at Failing, which was first published in 2023. If you missed any of the earlier episodes, they should be right there in your podcast app. For this version, we have updated facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening.

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You can also leave a rating or review on your podcast app. Coming up next time on the show, let's play a guessing game. Who operates in the shadows of the global economy, but often dictates the fate of nations? They're also involved at one point or another in the buying and selling of just about everything you touch. Wherever there is history being made, the commodity traders are there.

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Jack Farchi and Javier Blas have written a definitive book on the commodity trading industry. We're not talking about the desk warriors who trade financialized commodity futures. These are the people who buy and sell the actual petroleum products and metals and agricultural products.

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Adaptive mistranslation. Think about that for a minute. And let's think about it outside the realm of tuberculosis research. It's the idea that errors in the right context and degree can strengthen an organism, can make it more resilient and lead it to innovate. Now, that sounds like a magic trick, doesn't it? But if it can work for TB, can it work for us?

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Just beneath the surface of the global economy, there is a hidden layer of dealmakers for whom chaos, war and sanctions are often a great business opportunity. We'll hear all about them next time on the show. Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

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This episode and this entire failure series was originally produced by Zach Lipinski and was updated with help from Dalvin Abouaji. It was mixed by Greg Rippin and Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Kullman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Morgan Levy, Sarah Lilly, and Tao Jacobs.

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If I asked you to name the world's deadliest infectious disease, what would you say? COVID-19? That was the biggest infectious killer for a few years, but not anymore. How about malaria? Influenza? HIV? Those are all deadly. but not the deadliest. So what's number one?

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You can find our entire archive on any podcast app or at Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

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Today on Freakonomics Radio, the final episode of our series, How to Succeed at Failing. We will hear about another counterintuitive way to fight off failure.

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We ask if failure should be taught formally in the classroom.

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How to succeed at failing the final chapter starting right now.

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Gary Klein is a cognitive psychologist who advises organizations on how to respond to failure. His latest research is around what are called wicked problems.

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And what share of problems in the world are wicked problems?

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In any of those conflicts that Klein is describing, any of those disruptions, let's call them, we suddenly crash into a complex situation that's also fogged in by uncertainty. And now we have to essentially guess what's going to happen next. And those guesses often turn out to be wrong.

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That is Teresa McPhail. She is a medical anthropologist at the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the country's top engineering colleges. And yes, McPhail is an appropriate name for a professor discussing her own failure in a series about failure. But just wait, it will get even more appropriate later in this episode.

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Anyway, McPhail had studied the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, so her expertise was in demand when COVID came along.

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Now, what might have happened if Theresa McPhail and not just McPhail, but let's say everyone in the realm of pandemic preparedness, what if they had all thought a bit differently about this wicked problem? What if before the failure happened, they pretended that there had already been a failure?

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You are probably familiar with the idea of a postmortem or what the military calls an after action review. By that point, of course, the damage has been done. So what if you flip the order and conduct a premortem? That's what Gary Klein called this strategy when he invented it in the 1980s.

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At the time, Klein was running an R&D firm that studied decision-making in organizations.

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You may think of TB as a 19th century disease when it was called consumption. It killed John Keats, Anton Chekhov, and at least two of the Bronte sisters. It killed the heroines of both La Boheme and La Traviata. And today, it still kills more than a million people each year, most of them in the developing world.

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Can you explain from a psychological perspective why that works?

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So interesting. I mean, we always hear about how humans perform poorly under uncertainty generally. So you're saying you're just removing the uncertainty of whether it will work. You're saying it didn't. Now tell me why it didn't. And that provides clarity. Right. So what happens next after people voice these ideas? What happens now?

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And you're saying the person who spoke up was the most junior or among the most junior in the room? Yes, he was. So I've seen this myself many times, not in a premortem, but just in a meeting generally, where junior people, they have very little incentive to speak up. It seems like there's more downside than upside.

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It strikes me that American meeting culture is dominated by noisy people who have a lot of confidence, which is often unearned. And I'm curious if you have any advice for having better ideas come through in meetings. Yeah.

Freakonomics Radio

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)

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I would think that anonymity would be a useful tool here. Why do you not use that?

Freakonomics Radio

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Does it sometimes get personal, even ugly?

Freakonomics Radio

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)

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Can you talk about how to encourage candid feedback generally? Again, it may be the more junior employees, but whoever it is that might have a valuable insight, how can you best float that insight up to leadership?

Freakonomics Radio

The Show That Never Happened

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The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.

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This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

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We had tried several times to interview Stokes before he dropped out. We finally got him and the studio booked, but he canceled the day before. I didn't know what it meant to leave a show for personal reasons, and it didn't seem right to pry too much. But in the absence of fact, rumors flew. Maybe Stokes dropped out because he just didn't think the show was good enough.

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Maybe he didn't want to spend a few months living in a hotel room in La Jolla. Maybe in this moment of such fractured politics, he didn't want to draw attention as a black actor playing Abraham Lincoln. Or maybe at 67 years old, he just didn't feel up for a long out-of-town run. He did perform in public shortly after quitting Lincoln.

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The song has the Lincolns thinking about going back home to Illinois if Abraham loses re-election for the presidency, which, considering how badly the war is going, seems likely.

Freakonomics Radio

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In New York, he starred in a five-day run of Love Life, an old Kurt Weill, Alan Jay Lerner musical. And he was a featured performer on a five-day Broadway cruise from Miami to Cozumel. I went to see him in Love Life and he looked as good as ever. Whatever the case or whatever the cause for his departure, Three Summers of Lincoln needed a new Lincoln ASAP. So they called in their casting director.

Freakonomics Radio

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Here's Christopher Ashley again.

Freakonomics Radio

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Coming up after the break.

Freakonomics Radio

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I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. With Brian Stokes Mitchell out as Lincoln, Ivan Hernandez was in. After several weeks of rehearsal, the director Christopher Ashley declared himself pleased with the new casting.

Freakonomics Radio

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Hernandez has a strong musical theater background, including on Broadway. But in recent years, he's been doing mostly TV, movies, and commercials. He played Carrie Bradshaw's love interest on the recent Sex and the City reboot. I sat down with him backstage at the La Jolla Playhouse to see how he is adjusting to Lincoln.

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The three of them are sitting around DiPietro's dining room table. They've got laptops open to a Google Doc and to RhymeZone.com, the modern lyricist's best friend. They work together with the ease and trust of collaborators who've by now spent hundreds of hours like this.

Freakonomics Radio

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I asked Hernandez what tech rehearsal is like from the actor's perspective.

Freakonomics Radio

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Especially you. You're the late addition. Yeah.

Freakonomics Radio

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Are your fellow cast members particularly sympathetic to your situation?

Freakonomics Radio

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The dialogue is one thing. His Lincoln character also has nine songs, including an early establishing song called This Impossible Position.

Freakonomics Radio

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I also caught up backstage with Lincoln's foil, Frederick Douglass, played by Quentin Earl Darrington.

Freakonomics Radio

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How much of it is mental?

Freakonomics Radio

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Could you give an example?

Freakonomics Radio

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So I think when the average ticket buyer, especially someone that doesn't know much about the theater, maybe doesn't see a lot of theater... When they come to buy a Broadway ticket, you know, it's pretty expensive. I think when you pay that much for something, you just want to sit back and say, okay, entertain me.

Freakonomics Radio

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My sense is that many theater goers may not know or care or bother to think much, why should they, about what it takes to get this thing on stage in front of them. So for them, it's an entertainment that they've bought. But behind that ticket are, as we're seeing in the theater there during tech rehearsals, hundreds of people working for months and months. Oh, yes.

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And when I look at it from the economic side, a $200 or $400 ticket, it's a lot of money, but it begins to seem like chump change when I look at what it takes to do this. Indeed. So from the performer side, how does it work? Can you describe for me... how it has been for you to earn your living as a theater performer?

Freakonomics Radio

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So you got a new Lincoln between when we last saw the show and now, right? Yes. What's that transition been like for you?

Freakonomics Radio

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How did you have to adjust your work in this show to playing with a different Lincoln from Stokes to Ivan?

Freakonomics Radio

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They spend a few minutes searching for the right word before Watts comes up with it.

Freakonomics Radio

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The songs in Three Summers of Lincoln fit comfortably in the Broadway idiom, but there is a freshness about them. The composer, Crystal Monet Hall, is a first-time Broadway composer. Here is Carmen Cusack, who plays Mary Lincoln.

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These tech rehearsals run for hours, sometimes late into the night. The pace is remarkably slow. The performers are in costume with full hair and makeup, but they spend most of their time just standing in place while technical decisions are made and memorialized and rehearsed. The creative team takes notes, notes, more notes.

Freakonomics Radio

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It's easy to find yourself asking, what exactly does all this add up to? Yes, it's a commercial enterprise, but what's the larger purpose of all this work? It tells a story that's important today. That is Alan Shore, the producer in Boston who came up with and commissioned the Lincoln idea. It talks about leadership.

Freakonomics Radio

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Do you want to do like a little sing through of this?

Freakonomics Radio

631. Will "3 Summers of Lincoln" Make It to Broadway?

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Let's talk about the capitalization of this show. What do you expect it to be capitalized at or cost to get it to Broadway?

Freakonomics Radio

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Miss Crystal, see if this works. Hall now sings Mary Lincoln's section of the song.

Freakonomics Radio

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Talk about how much you've raised so far and then what the plan is for the next 12 months or so.

Freakonomics Radio

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How many investors are involved in that?

Freakonomics Radio

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Can you just talk about the state of investing now? You know, what's a typically small investment and typically large investment?

Freakonomics Radio

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After the break, Three Summers of Lincoln opens, and maybe the future of theater isn't so bleak. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. In 2023, the culture critic Isaac Butler wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times with the headline, American Theater is Imploding Before Our Eyes. And he called for a federal bailout of nonprofit theater.

Freakonomics Radio

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There's certainly plenty of evidence to back up his imploding thesis. Beloved regional theaters shutting down, the donor class, especially younger donors, showing a lack of interest in theater. And live theater faces massive competition from Netflix and other streamers. In response to Butler's piece, the Indiana University arts economist Michael Rushton wrote this.

Freakonomics Radio

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You cannot save an art form if people are not interested in attending. But Rushton, when we called him up, noted that Butler's claim is not new.

Freakonomics Radio

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I've seen data from the Broadway League. that the average annual household income of a Broadway ticket buyer is, do you want to guess the number?

Freakonomics Radio

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How do you think about the population of Broadway ticket buyers then? Are they just rich by definition? Is a Broadway ticket therefore a luxury good? And if so, is that a good thing or bad thing?

Freakonomics Radio

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You recently published a book called The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts. What can you tell us about cause and effect with cultural institutions? Is it that successful economies and cultures have the wealth to support these institutions and that's why they exist? Or... Do those cultural institutions contribute to the success of an economy and culture?

Freakonomics Radio

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Do you feel that the arts in the US have contributed to a greater culture of understanding and insight and appreciation of beauty?

Freakonomics Radio

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I happen to be on your team, Michael. I feel very much the same way personally that you're describing. That said, when I look at the relatively tiny number of people who attend theater, who attend opera, who attend classical music, even who go to museums, I think, well, there is a small portion of any population that likes that stuff.

Freakonomics Radio

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And then Abraham's section.

Freakonomics Radio

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And the vast majority in our country at this moment in time simply don't. So what's your best argument that it does deserve public funding, even though the share of the population who partakes is relatively tiny and that share of the population tends to be able to afford it themselves already?

Freakonomics Radio

631. Will "3 Summers of Lincoln" Make It to Broadway?

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What's the last thing you saw, a live performance, that moved you?

Freakonomics Radio

631. Will "3 Summers of Lincoln" Make It to Broadway?

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Musical theater is a magic trick. That's Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer on Hamilton, Rent, and others.

Freakonomics Radio

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Will three summers of Lincoln be able to do that? To lift people out of their chairs and take them to a place they've never been? We're about to find out.

Freakonomics Radio

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Audiences at the La Jolla Playhouse loved Three Summers of Lincoln. Tickets sold very well. And Christopher Ashley told me that the Playhouse's surveys showed that roughly 95 percent of the audience was either satisfied or very satisfied with the show. The San Diego Union Tribune called it a thrilling and handsome production.

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and noted that the show seems to kick into a higher gear whenever Quentin Darrington is singing as Frederick Douglass. Carmen Cusack as Mary Lincoln and Ivan Hernandez, the last man at Abraham, were also well-received and well-reviewed. Although, to be honest, I did find myself missing Brian Stokes Mitchell as Lincoln.

Freakonomics Radio

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And I did hear some audience members grumbling that they had come to see the show expecting Stokes in the lead role. But who knows? Maybe he'll be back in the show if and when it makes it to Broadway.

Freakonomics Radio

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The producer Alan Shore told me they hope to bring the show to New York in 2026, provided they can raise the rest of the roughly $20 million it costs to mount a show this size, and provided there is a suitable theater available, neither of which are guaranteed. Between now and then, there will be more rewrites, more streamlining, more reconsideration of everything. Here's Christopher Ashley again.

Freakonomics Radio

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He brought along Daniel Watts as his co-lyricist and then the composer Crystal Monet-Hall. After three years of development, the Lincoln team held some workshop performances in New York that persuaded them they were ready to give the show its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, or at least almost ready.

Freakonomics Radio

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For now, everyone in Lincoln is back to juggling their other projects. Quentin Darrington is producing a show called I Dream about Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. Joe DiPietro wrote a play that recently opened in Kansas City called An Old-Fashioned Family Murder. He told us that murder mysteries and comedies are what regional theaters are looking for these days.

Freakonomics Radio

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And how about Daniel Watts, the super energetic co-lyricist and co-choreographer on Three Summers of Lincoln?

Freakonomics Radio

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I asked Joe DiPietro how he was thinking about the show's premiere at La Jolla.

Freakonomics Radio

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Is it a whole other podcast? I've heard worse ideas. This series was a blast to make, and I'd like to thank everyone for letting us watch them work.

Freakonomics Radio

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The entire Three Summers of Lincoln crew, the La Jolla Playhouse crew, and all the producers and academics and others we spoke with, including a lot of people who were very helpful, but whose voices you didn't hear, including Jane Abramson, Sue Frost, Frank Rich, Michael Riedel, and Scott Zeiger. Big thanks to everyone.

Freakonomics Radio

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Coming up next time on the show... You take a film like the Martha Stewart film. I'm told between 30 and 40 million people saw that movie. Documentary film used to be thought of as the unsmiling cousin of its flashy Hollywood counterpart. Thanks to streamers like Netflix, that has changed. And the director, R.J. Cutler, is one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Freakonomics Radio

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We talked to him about celebrity culture... life lessons from baseball and what he won't do for his art. I'm not going to make a propaganda film about anybody. That's next time. Also, we need your voice if you are willing to lend it. We are working on an episode about how seemingly obsolete technologies like the candle continue to thrive.

Freakonomics Radio

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So tell us about something that you are not willing to let go of and why. Use your phone to record a voice memo and send it to radio at Freakonomics.com. Make sure to get yourself in a quiet place and include your name and where you live. Again, send that voice recording to radio at Freakonomics.com. Subject line obsolete. We will be back next week. Until then, take care of yourself.

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And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This series was produced by Alina Kullman and mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston.

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Thanks also to Jason Gambrell for field recording in New York and Alec Moore for field recording in La Jolla. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski.

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Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening. My big takeaway is that podcasts make the world go round.

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Creating a show like this is both high wire act and marathon. Having tagged along with the Lincoln team for a couple years, I came to see their project as a bit like war itself. Every breakthrough haunted by setback, every confidence tempered by anxiety. For instance, this new song, 12 Rooms in Springfield, was put into the show with great excitement, but then... wound up being cut.

Freakonomics Radio

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And as we learned earlier in the series, there was much worse news than that. The actor who had been playing Abraham Lincoln quit the show exactly one day before tickets went on sale at the La Jolla Playhouse. This had me wondering, what's more surprising, that one person backs out of a project that takes so long to develop or that anyone stays in?

Freakonomics Radio

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Today on Freakonomics Radio, in the third and final episode of our series, Broadway has always been the intended destination for Three Summers of Lincoln. Will it actually get there?

Freakonomics Radio

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The La Jolla Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Mel Ferrer and Dorothy McGuire. Summer stock for Hollywood luminaries, as one producer puts it. There are actually four theaters on the site. It is set on the campus of UC San Diego and it is a favorite out-of-town destination for ambitious new projects. Over the years, it has sent 37 shows to Broadway.

Freakonomics Radio

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But as part of its nonprofit mission, the Playhouse also collaborates with schools and the local military community. And producing a big new musical like Three Summers of Lincoln is expensive.

Freakonomics Radio

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As we heard earlier in this series, live theater suffers from what economists call cost disease. Any industry that requires a lot of human labor as opposed to automation is bound to get more expensive over time since human wages keep rising even while technology gets cheaper.

Freakonomics Radio

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For a nonprofit theater like La Jolla, that means collaborating with commercial producers in what's called an enhancement model. La Jolla actually started the enhancement model going back to Big River. Big River was a 1980s musical that we heard about in part one of the series. It launched the career of Broadway producer Rocco Landesman.

Freakonomics Radio

631. Will "3 Summers of Lincoln" Make It to Broadway?

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In the first episode of this series, we heard about the creation of a new musical called Three Summers of Lincoln, as in Abraham Lincoln. The show is set during the Civil War and it centers around Lincoln's relationship with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The producers Alan Shore and Richard Winkler commissioned the playwright Joe DiPietro to write the script.

Freakonomics Radio

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Give me a sense of how much money a commercial producer might put toward a production like yours, dollar figures and or percentage figures.

Freakonomics Radio

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Could it be as much as 30 or 40 percent? Yes, it could be. So when a show that originates at La Jolla does move on to Broadway, what's that deal look like from your end? Is it a dollar figure that you'd be guaranteed? Is it a percent of first dollars or after recoup? How does that work?

Freakonomics Radio

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Let's talk about the Playhouse budget overall. What are the major contributors? Where does box office come in? Where does philanthropy come in? Government funding?

Freakonomics Radio

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Three Summers of Lincoln would have its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February of 2025. That meant starting to assemble cast and crew, a big cast and crew, in January for rehearsals, costume fittings, choreography, tech rehearsals, and much more. We flew out to see for ourselves, and we checked in with Christopher Ashley, the show's director.

Freakonomics Radio

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For the past 18 years, Ashley has also been the artistic director at La Jolla, although next year he'll be moving to New York to take over the Roundabout Theater Company. Ashley has already won a Tony Award for Best Director, and it would surprise no one if he were to win at least one more someday.

Freakonomics Radio

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He started directing theater in high school, studied English and math at Yale, and afterwards went to work at a bank.

Freakonomics Radio

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Ashley took an internship at an off-Broadway theater, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for early career directors.

Freakonomics Radio

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Just give me your – however you want to do it. Day in the life, general job description. Artistic director feels like you're wearing a different hat every 10 minutes. Can you just tell me what that job is?

Freakonomics Radio

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That actress is Carmen Cusack, who has twice been nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway. And so DiPietro had Daniel Watts and Crystal Monet Hall come to his apartment on the Upper West Side to work on a new song for Mary Lincoln, a duet with Abraham. Hall played a demo she'd made on her own, a song called Twelve Rooms in Springfield.

Freakonomics Radio

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And when Ashley is also directing a show, as he is with Three Summers of Lincoln, there is another leveling up.

Freakonomics Radio

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On an afternoon in early February, after four weeks of rehearsals for Three Summers of Lincoln, Ashley is now leading 130 people through tech rehearsals.

Freakonomics Radio

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As Ashley describes the minutia of tech rehearsal, I feel like he's giving a perfect illustration of what economists mean by cost disease.

Freakonomics Radio

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They did get through all that and they pretty much were ready to run the show with a brand new actor in the title role. For most of the show's development, Lincoln had been played by the Broadway veteran Brian Stokes Mitchell. When I asked Ashley about this late change, he found a positive way to spin it.

Freakonomics Radio

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Stokes, as everyone calls him, was extraordinarily popular with the rest of the cast and the creative team. He was always checking in on folks, almost like a player coach. So he had a lot of goodwill in the bank. Still, his sudden departure made people edgy. I asked Carmen Cusack how she took the news. As Mary Lincoln, Cusack had been working across from Stokes since the New York workshops.

Freakonomics Radio

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Did you think the show might fall apart?

Freakonomics Radio

Should America Be Run by … Trader Joe’s? (Update)

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This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Freakonomics Radio

623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?

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This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

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623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?

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In my experience, rats are better for self-administration of drugs.

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623. Can New York City Win Its War on Rats?

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The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.

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630. On Broadway, Nobody Knows Nothing

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Okay. If we're talking production costs and efficiency and inflation, it's probably time to bring in an economist.

Freakonomics Radio

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I have to say, you are a small group because even you weren't easy for us to find. Yes. So why are you trafficking in this area that seemingly few people care about?

Freakonomics Radio

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OK, we need to slow down here for a second because this theory that Rushton just mentioned, cost disease, can explain a lot about the theater industry and some other much larger industries. The theory is famous among economists, but not as widely known as it ought to be. The original paper by Baumol and Bowen was called On the Performing Arts, the Anatomy of Their Economic Problems.

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So here's their foundational paper. This is from the American Economic Review of 1965. They wrote, but to continue to do so into the indefinite future.

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That is Luis Miranda Jr. His son is Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Freakonomics Radio

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Otherwise, they must at some juncture fall behind the technologically progressive industries and experience increases in costs, which stem not from their own decisions, but from the inexorable march of technological change in other parts of the economy. On a scale of zero to 10, how true did that prediction become?

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So I don't mean to insult your profession, but here's a question. This was a paper written, you know, nearly 60 years ago that laid out exactly the problem that we're seeing not only in theater and the other performing arts, but in, as you said, health care and education, which are much, much bigger sectors.

Freakonomics Radio

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It strikes me that a lot of people are still flabbergasted that costs in things like education and health care have risen so much relative to other things. In other words, Baumol's cost disease has been around and understood and preached by economists for nearly 60 years, but it seems that no solution has arisen to actually combat the problem. Why do you think that is?

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Is that a failure of economists to communicate the problem? Is it a failure of economists and others to come up with viable solutions? Is it a failure of policymakers? Or is this just the way things are and humankind has to figure out different ways to do things?

Freakonomics Radio

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So, Michael, I guess if you wanted to put a positive spin on this, you could say that we as an economy, as a culture, as a civilization are rich enough to spend an ever larger portion of our income on important things like education and health care.

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We all have to work together. Hamilton wound up becoming one of the most compelling successes in any form of entertainment at any time in history. It made the dimming distant star of Broadway shine very bright, and it gave Luis Miranda a new full-time job.

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Once you know how cost disease works, you see it in a variety of places, including Hollywood. The economics of the movie industry is easily as weird and interesting as the economics of live theater. Maybe we'll do a series on that someday.

Freakonomics Radio

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It used to be that successful films would generate a lot of money for their creators, but that is no longer necessarily the case, especially for independent filmmakers. Two of the most acclaimed films from last year were Onora and The Brutalist.

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The filmmakers behind them, Sean Baker and Brady Corbett, have both described how the costs of making the film were so extreme that they were barely able to pay themselves. So what do you do if you are making theater and losing money? Here's the producer Jeffrey Seller again.

Freakonomics Radio

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Can you explain that? Where it looked like it was destined for an early and huge loss, and then it ended up recouping like the week before it closed.

Freakonomics Radio

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Was the theater already spoken for?

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Coming up after the break, yes, paying all those performers and backstage personnel is a huge cost center for a theatrical producer. But you also have to rent a theater. And the economics of that are particularly tricky. There's only so many blocks that make up Broadway. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

Freakonomics Radio

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As we started putting together this series on the economics of live theater, we spoke with all sorts of people, producers, writers, performers, economists, historians. There are a lot of people in this ecosystem, and we wanted to hear from all of them. But there was one group of people that would not speak. The big theater owners, the landlords.

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They are the ones who own the buildings and decide which shows are coming in. They employ ticket takers and ushers, bartenders and security guards. The landlords are thought of as members of the Broadway community, but that's a bit like saying that the royal family are members of the British community. Their position comes with a guaranteed level of wealth and leverage.

Freakonomics Radio

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There are 41 theaters in New York that qualify as Broadway houses. 33 of them are owned or operated by one of three groups, the Schubert Organization, the Nederlander Organization, and ATG Entertainment, formerly known as the Ambassador Theater Group. The Schuberts and Nederlanders have been around for generations.

Freakonomics Radio

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ATG is a British newcomer that is majority owned by a Rhode Island private equity firm. All of them declined our interview requests. I mentioned this to Hal Luftig. The landlords don't want to talk. The theater owners have no interest in talking. Schubert, Nederlander, Disney, ATG, none of them want to talk.

Freakonomics Radio

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Everyone knows that Lin-Manuel Miranda became a major player because of Hamilton. But his father was the original player. He's a longtime political operative and activist in New York City who has worked with mayors, senators, and many others.

Freakonomics Radio

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I mean, it sounds like what most economists would think of as a monopoly. They have pretty total control over a limited capacity of places where people like you can do your work. Is that the way it seems from your end?

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Of the three major Broadway landlords, ATG is both the newest and the smallest. They bought out a firm called Jujamson, which had been run for years by Rocco Landesman. He's one of the producers we heard from in part one of this series. You will remember he got his start by producing a musical called Big River, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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I asked him what it was like to compete against the bigger and more established landlords, the Schuberts and the Nederlanders.

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A couple of years ago, Jude Jampson was sold to ATG in a deal valuing their theaters at around $300 million. ATG is thought of as a comer in large part because of this woman.

Freakonomics Radio

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That's Sonia Friedman. She is the most prolific theatrical producer of our generation on Broadway, in London's West End and beyond. She's produced more than 200 shows. She's won dozens of awards. It was Friedman, by the way, who brought in Lea Michele to save Funny Girl. By the time ATG headhunted her, she'd already had a good bit of success.

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But in reality, theater is a tiny universe when you compare it to all the other flashier forms of entertainment like TV and film, live music and sports, video gaming. the theater universe looks like a distant and dimming star. And yet, believers still believe. And every now and then,

Freakonomics Radio

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I mean, if we jump to the end, you kind of have done it, have you not?

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Same model, bringing the fearless model into the commercial world.

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Totally separate or were they an investor?

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As an essentially independent producer, though, you have access to their real estate.

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Which owns five theaters in New York, I believe.

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Not that I disbelieve you, but what makes you say a force for good? Because, you know, private equity.

Freakonomics Radio

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So Sonia Friedman professes optimism for a more corporate form of theater ownership, but not everyone feels that way.

Freakonomics Radio

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If you could wake up tomorrow and be magically turned into a landlord, a Broadway theater owner. Or you could be you, which means having to reinvent the wheel every time to come up with a show that you then rent space from them to try to put on and maybe, maybe make a bonanza the way you did with Rent and the way you did with Hamilton. Which do you choose?

Freakonomics Radio

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There's one more factor that makes New York a particularly expensive place to produce theater. Labor unions. There are 13 separate unions involved in Broadway productions with three additional contracts that govern how people are paid. Every producer I spoke with for this series named unions as a major driver of production inflation. I asked Hal Luftig for his take on the Broadway unions.

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What's a, for instance, what's a way that a producer might have been either taking advantage or not looking out for the safety of someone that became codified in a union contract?

Freakonomics Radio

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Of all the potential problems faced by a Broadway producer, the most severe by far is that their show will simply be a flop. I was very devastated. I didn't understand it. Coming up after the break, how to salvage a flop. And what do you do when the star of your brand new musical suddenly drops out? I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We will be right back.

Freakonomics Radio

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If you choose to produce the kind of high stakes, high dollar theater we've been talking about, you just have to deal with the vagaries and vicissitudes of the industry. A huge hit can come out of nowhere. And what looks to be like a sure thing can cave in on itself and burn 20 million dollars.

Freakonomics Radio

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Of course, the vast majority of new shows live somewhere in the middle of these extremes, but it's the extremes that come to define the industry. Consider one highly anticipated show from last season, a revival of The Who's Tommy with music and lyrics by Pete Townsend. The first Broadway production, which was based on The Who's 1969 rock opera, played for more than two years in the early 1990s.

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This new revival was capitalized at around $15 million, but it lasted only a few months.

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He's one of the lead producers on Three Summers of Lincoln, the new show we're following in this series. He was also a co-producer, one of many, on The Who's Tommy.

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It's hard to predict, isn't it?

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You're going to laugh a lot.

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But Lin-Manuel wanted to do something different. When he was an undergrad at Wesleyan, he started writing a musical called In the Heights, a boisterous story about the spirit of community set in Washington Heights, a New York neighborhood close to where the Mirandas lived.

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So what does that say about just the, I don't want to say risk, but the unpredictability of what you do? What would seem to be the can't fail project like Tommy fails on Broadway and Oh Mary, which comes from nowhere, from nobody, relatively speaking.

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So that was William Goldman talking about Hollywood, but it applies here too, I guess.

Freakonomics Radio

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Oh, Mary is an absurdist slapstick comedy created by Cole Escola. The New York Times called it an unhinged historical fantasia that imagines its protagonist as an alcoholic cabaret singer married to a gay guy. The protagonist, by the way, is Mary Todd Lincoln, and her husband, the gay guy in O'Mary, is Abraham Lincoln.

Freakonomics Radio

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If Three Summers of Lincoln does make it to Broadway, it's hard to imagine there could ever be two shows on two stages about the same historical figures that bear such little resemblance to each other. O'Mary was a small and simple show to mount, capitalized at just $4.5 million. It was also the first show of the season to recoup its investment after just four months, and it's still going strong.

Freakonomics Radio

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Like Richard Winkler said, nobody knows nothing. In 2007, the producer Hal Luftig opened Legally Blonde on Broadway. It was a musical adaptation of the movie starring Reese Witherspoon. It ran for a year and a half, but as Luftig told us, it made back only around 60% of its $11 million capitalization.

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So what do you do with a big musical that loses millions on Broadway? You might take it on tour. Broadway may be the epicenter of live theater with the most attention and the highest ticket prices, but the theatrical touring economy is robust and global.

Freakonomics Radio

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After The Who's Tommy lost its $15 million Broadway investment, the producers announced they were raising another $5 million to take it on the road. Here's Richard Winkler again.

Freakonomics Radio

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There was an appetite for a tour of Legally Blonde. Here is producer Hal Luftig again.

Freakonomics Radio

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In addition to costing less, producers usually get much better terms on road tours, a bigger cut of ticket sales, for instance, than they do in the Broadway hothouse environment where the landlords have so much leverage. And a show like Legally Blonde can also generate licensing fees from productions much further down the chain.

Freakonomics Radio

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Oh, my goodness.

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That is Stacey Wolfe. She is the author of a book called Beyond Broadway, The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theater Across America. And she teaches theater and American studies at Princeton.

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For many, many, many, many people, not all, but many. To them, Broadway and the theater are one in the same. To many others, they know many different parts of the ecosystem. But in terms of public perception and in terms of, you know, size of industry and number of participants and so on, how do you see it? Broadway is, to the whole ecosystem... Tiny.

Freakonomics Radio

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Persuade me that when you call the non-Broadway or even the non-commercial side of theater the lifeblood, that that's not an emotional description versus an empirical description.

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That compares to around 12 million people who see a Broadway show in a given year. So, yes, technically, the audience for high school musicals is at least three times bigger than the Broadway audience. But without Broadway, high schools wouldn't necessarily have shows to produce.

Freakonomics Radio

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In the Heights eventually made it to Broadway, where it won four Tony Awards and ran for nearly three years. Not long after that came Hamilton, which turned out to be a billion dollar franchise. There's an old cliche about Broadway. You can make a killing, but not a living.

Freakonomics Radio

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OK, so what does it cost if I'm a high school teacher? and I want to put on Newsies or Three Summers of Lincoln, let's say three years from now, what's it going to cost and how does that licensing work?

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So if I'm the originator of a show that played on Broadway, it succeeded, it failed, it was somewhere in the middle, whatever. I hear you say some high school wants to license it for somewhere between $700 and $3,000. How many productions might there be in a given year and how much money might that represent?

Freakonomics Radio

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Let me just tell you a little bit more about Three Summers of Lincoln. So it's a musical. It's got comic moments. It's got serious moments. It's got some gospel. It's got some kind of Broadway music. It's got some field music. It's got some jazzy-ish, bluesy stuff. Honestly, it sounds challenging. Because why?

Freakonomics Radio

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There is an occasional smash hit like Hamilton, but much more common are the failures and the flops, which don't cost any less to produce than the hits. and leave behind a trail of regret. And yet there is no shortage of producers, investors, writers, and composers willing to give it a try. Why? Because almost no one gets into the theater just to have a career. Like I said, The believers believe.

Freakonomics Radio

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How have issues around free speech and hate speech and identity politics, how has all that affected which shows get chosen to be produced in high schools?

Freakonomics Radio

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Okay, so if Three Summers of Lincoln isn't going to make its money back on high school productions, it better hope it succeeds on Broadway, or at least hope it makes it there. When we last heard about Lincoln in part one of this series, they had just produced a successful workshop performance in New York.

Freakonomics Radio

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After that would come another round of revisions and then a world premiere at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in early 2025 with the hope of moving to Broadway sometime in 2026. But if you remember... The actor playing Lincoln, Brian Stokes Mitchell, announced that he was dropping out of the production the day before tickets went on sale at La Jolla.

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That is Debbie Buchholz, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse. I'd called her up after I learned that Stokes was leaving the show. I'd heard all sorts of rumors about what his quitting meant. But the official line was simply that he withdrew for personal reasons and that the show must, you know, go on. I asked Buck Holtz if anyone involved had thought about postponing the La Jolla premiere.

Freakonomics Radio

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I can recognize that for your theater, a postponement would probably be a big drag, right? You don't have something that could be slotted in right there, I assume. That's right. That's correct. On the other hand, if I think about the commercial producers, they are playing the long game.

Freakonomics Radio

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And so if they're hoping to get to Broadway in whatever, a year, 18 months, they might say, well, you know, this was a big step back. And We need to reassess and or wait for Stokes and or find someone that we won't be able to find as quickly as this. So what if they came to you and said, hey, you know what, Debbie? We love La Jolla Playhouse. We love you. But we're pulling out of this production.

Freakonomics Radio

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What would happen then?

Freakonomics Radio

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Do you have a dream replacement for Lincoln?

Freakonomics Radio

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Coming up next time in the third and final part of our series, we will meet the new Lincoln. I felt like if I still want to be an actor, I have to do this. We'll hear from Mary Todd Lincoln, not the alcoholic cabaret singer from Oh Mary, but the Mary from Three Summers of Lincoln, about losing her original Abraham.

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And we'll ask the commercial producers how they're feeling. I believe that after La Jolla, people will be throwing money at the project. That's next time. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

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You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Alina Kullman. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston.

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The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouagi, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening.

Freakonomics Radio

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The people who make theater exist in a sort of parallel universe. From inside this universe, it can seem vast. There are so many projects. The work itself is so immersive. And let's be honest, there is a lot of gossip to keep up with.

Freakonomics Radio

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Luis Miranda recently published a memoir about his work in politics and beyond. It's called Relentless. As nice as I seem, he writes, I was and continue to be relentless. I don't back down. I try to work with people, but if I can't, I throw an elbow and see where it lands. Today on Freakonomics Radio, part two of our three-part series on the economics of the theater industry.

Freakonomics Radio

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Last week, we started following a musical called Three Summers of Lincoln as it was being built from scratch. We will get back to that story later, but today's episode is mostly about something else. Today's episode is about how to be relentless.

Freakonomics Radio

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Someone takes a shot that is so unlikely, so audacious, and if that shot lands, it rejuvenates the whole enterprise and makes the larger world take notice. In other words, this tiny universe really can produce one singular sensation.

Freakonomics Radio

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When Seller and I spoke, he had two shows running on Broadway, Hamilton, which is about to celebrate its 10th season, and a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. His past credits include Rent and Avenue Q. Seller is also about to publish a memoir called Theater Kid. He grew up in a chaotic working-class family in a Detroit suburb.

Freakonomics Radio

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But Seller kept at it and defied the odds to become one of the most successful Broadway producers of his generation. We should say here that the word producer can mean a few different things in live theater. It can mean that you originate a project, whether financially, creatively, or both. That's what Seller calls a holistic producer.

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Or it could mean that you are primarily just a cash contributor.

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What Jeffrey Seller didn't say there was that a modern Broadway producer needs all those outside investors because it has become so much more expensive to create and run a show. We'll get into that as we go. I asked Seller to tell me how he came to take a chance on Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Freakonomics Radio

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So Jeffrey Seller produced In the Heights on Broadway, where Lin-Manuel Miranda announced himself as a rare double threat, a theatrical writer who starred in his own shows. And while performing In the Heights, eight shows a week, he began developing Hamilton. Seller first read the Hamilton script in 2014.

Freakonomics Radio

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Hamilton had its opening run at the non-profit Public Theater, a downtown institution known for producing Shakespeare in the Park and for having originated a number of Broadway hits, including A Chorus Line. After a few months at the Public, Hamilton moved uptown to Broadway and quickly became a monster hit with premium tickets selling for over $1,000.

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And what about the other show that Jeffrey Seller had on Broadway when we spoke?

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That was Doris Kearns Goodwin was the other conversation.

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The hip-hop musical about a founding father was, of course, Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton was such a sensation that it seemed to change the rules for producers, creators, performers, the audience. It opened up new possibilities. But for Joe DiPietro, there was a puzzle to solve. Alexander Hamilton had been relatively obscure to most people. Abraham Lincoln, quite the opposite.

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When you feel like you're getting overwhelmed by American political history, it must be nice to have Doris Kearns Goodwin on your side.

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When he was starting out, the thing in his imagination was a musical that he wanted to call Big River. The plan was to take an American literary classic. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. It was my favorite novel. And set it to music with new songs by the country legend Roger Miller.

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DiPietro did get hooked, but he's a playwright, not a composer, and a musical isn't a musical without music. So coming up after the break.

Freakonomics Radio

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I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We will be right back. The playwright Joe DiPietro had been commissioned to write the script for a new musical about Abraham Lincoln. DiPietro is white, as was Lincoln, but the story is really about slavery, ending slavery. And the other main character is the Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

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As a kid growing up in the Carolinas, Watts played sports. He took dance and gymnastics. He has always had a high level of energy. Everyone was like, sit down. Daniel, sit down. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure, sure, sure. I got things to do. Watts has been performing on Broadway since 2006. He was nominated for a Tony Award for playing Ike Turner in Tina, the Tina Turner musical.

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He has also appeared in The Little Mermaid, The Color Purple, and yes, Hamilton. So what did he think about the idea of a Lincoln musical?

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When Landesman heard that Miller was playing a club date in New York, he went to the show and afterward he talked his way backstage.

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The music and the lyrics, to me, it seems really, really hard to write lyrics for a musical first without the music. Is that not really hard?

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A composer perhaps like this one. And warning, there's a bit of off-color language here.

Freakonomics Radio

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Sign me up for that church. And you went to the University of Virginia, correct?

Freakonomics Radio

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You got a master's in education as well. Is that right?

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What's that like?

Freakonomics Radio

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Rent, like Hamilton, was another huge and groundbreaking Broadway hit, the kind of show that changes how people think about what's possible. Later in this series, we'll hear from Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer of both Rent and Hamilton. For Crystal Monet Hall, performing in a Broadway hit was a great gig, but even a union acting job barely covers the rent when the rent is in New York City.

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Almost every theatrical performer has a side hustle. Hall taught herself guitar and began writing songs. She went on tour with Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, and she released a record of her own. At one point, she moved to California, but she soon came back to New York. She performed in the Alicia Keys jukebox musical Hell's Kitchen at the Public Theater before the show moved to Broadway.

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And then she got a call from Joe DiPietro and Daniel Watts about a new musical they were writing called Three Summers of Lincoln.

Freakonomics Radio

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Making something out of nothing is hard. In the beginning, all you have is your imagination. It's your only tool, your only muscle. But if you are determined and lucky, that thing in your imagination can become real. And then if you are very lucky, people will pay to see it.

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Two years, three, four years. Yes, it can easily take that long to create a musical. And who pays for all this? Well, it depends. In this case, the producers Alan Shore and Richard Winkler were writing the checks.

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So Landesman flew out to Reno where Miller was performing. And once again, he went backstage afterwards.

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Are you willing to tell me what you're making for composing Three Summers of Lincoln?

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Older me is like, Daniel, you're doing a lot. How does your salary shooting a TV show compare to your salary and the time it takes also creating a musical?

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So by the time Three Summers of Lincoln makes it to Broadway, assuming it makes it to Broadway, you will have been working on it for years by then, right? Years, yes. Years. And the fee that you get for being the co-lyricist and choreographer on this show, you could make that much money in how many days or weeks of shooting TV or film? I can make that in an episode. Oh, my God.

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I made it this weekend. So basically, we should be very grateful to TV and film for subsidizing theater work. Essentially, honestly, yeah. Thank you.

Freakonomics Radio

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Freakonomics Radio

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Now, there was no book yet. There was no book.

Freakonomics Radio

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Thank you. Thank you.

Freakonomics Radio

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But of course, Landesman did have a career, a big one. He produced several more hits, a Guys and Dolls revival, Angels in America, The Producers. And he wound up running Jujamson Theatres, the third largest Broadway landlord. So when a Freakonomics Radio listener wrote in to say that they'd always wondered about the economics of live theater and that we should make a series about that.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Freakonomics Radio

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Rocco was one of the first people I thought of, not just because he knows things. There are plenty of people in the industry who know things, but because he is willing to say them, which many people are not. For instance, I asked him about a couple of recent Broadway disasters, $25 million musicals that bombed.

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Quentin Darrington, who goes by Q, has been performing on Broadway for more than 15 years. His credits include Cats and MJ the Musical. He is a deeply religious man who sees his talent as something to be shared. Here he is offstage, out of character.

Freakonomics Radio

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When did you discover the gift?

Freakonomics Radio

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It's hard for me to imagine that.

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Before that, though, I mean, you were singing in the choir. What were you missing from that?

Freakonomics Radio

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And here's a scene from the workshop. Frederick Douglass is at the White House about to meet the president for the first time. Lincoln's valet, William Slade, introduces Douglass.

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The two men talk about their favorite authors. For Douglas, it's Charles Dickens. Because, Douglas explains, he writes of society's injustices. Lincoln's favorite author is Shakespeare, he says, for he writes of the burdens of kings.

Freakonomics Radio

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The relationship between Douglas and Lincoln and the interplay between Quentin Darrington and Brian Stokes Mitchell is riveting. And even though this was just a workshop, the story and songs and performances are undeniably moving. Yeah! I was sitting next to Debbie Buchholz, who runs the La Jolla Playhouse.

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As soon as the performance was over, a friend rushed up to her and said, you better start practicing your Tony speech.

Freakonomics Radio

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It was exciting to see and hear so much excitement, to see the coming together of a story that was just a flicker in someone's imagination, to see it live and breathe and make people laugh and gasp and grieve. The gestation period for a new musical is so long and difficult and expensive that every time it moves forward, it feels like a major accomplishment. But there's a lot more to be done.

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They fall in love with the shows. So today on Freakonomics Radio, investors who fall in love with shows, performers who fall in love with the stage, and audiences who fall in love with the whole enterprise. There is, of course, one huge problem.

Freakonomics Radio

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Next will come some rewrites and then more workshopping with the actors and then a whole other layer of creative work that will feed into the production at La Jolla. Lighting design and scenic design, costumes and choreography. The La Jolla Playhouse has a strong subscriber base, and this new Lincoln show has begun to catch their attention.

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Subscribers are particularly jazzed about Brian Stokes Mitchell in the lead role. To have a performer of that caliber star in a new Broadway-bound musical at a regional theater is a real attraction. But then, one day before tickets go on sale for the world premiere of Three Summers of Lincoln, I hear from one of the show's producers. Brian Stokes Mitchell has quit the project. Personal reasons.

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That's all anyone is saying. Everyone is shaken. Rumors fly. We'll hear more about that later in the series. Coming up next time in part two, is the theater business actually a business? We're not a real business. We go up and we go down. We have hits. But in between those hits, we have four flops in a row. That's next time on the show. Until then, take care of yourself.

Freakonomics Radio

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And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This series is being produced by Alina Cullman, and we had research assistance from Julie Canfor. This episode was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy Johnston.

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The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abawaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thanks for listening. Nice work if you can get it, yeah?

Freakonomics Radio

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So here's the question. In a time with so much entertainment, including an infinite stream of digital and virtual entertainments, how can it be that this very expensive, handmade, live every night thing even exists? Theater isn't going away. People telling stories is not going away. We take a hard look at theatrical finances. Are you trying to get me killed?

Freakonomics Radio

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And we follow one new musical from the very beginning.

Freakonomics Radio

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Please take your seats. Our show is about to begin.

Freakonomics Radio

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The live theater industry in the US is estimated at under $6 billion a year with around 27,000 employees. So not very big, but there is a lot going on beneath the surface that most of us don't see when we buy a ticket. You could imagine a pyramid with Broadway at the top.

Freakonomics Radio

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Broadway is both a goal and the engine that drives a lot of the activity further down the pyramid in regional and repertory theaters, most of which are nonprofits. in community theater, in high school and college theater, and in any number of church halls and garages and living rooms where someone decides to put on a show.

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But the Broadway economy is by far the most visible and the most influential. Over the past couple decades, it has gotten much more expensive to produce shows on Broadway, and ticket prices have also spiked. The average now is around $130. This leads some people to conclude that Broadway is unsustainable, that it is sick and perhaps dying.

Freakonomics Radio

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But keep in mind that people have been saying that forever. One of Broadway's many nicknames is The Fabulous Invalid, which comes from a Kaufman Hart play first produced in 1938. Lately, you may have seen encouraging headlines about Broadway box office, like when George Clooney decides to star in a play for a few months.

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This led one producer to complain that throwing movie stars at the Broadway model is just a way of cauterizing the bleeding. By the way, that producer was Scott Rudin, who had been sent into exile for throwing a stapler at his assistant, among other allegations. One thing about Broadway, it is not dull. This series won't be dull either.

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We will tell you about the real estate cartel that controls Broadway, the theatrical unions that get good wages for their members and drive producers absolutely crazy. The performers and other creatives who in pursuit of their dreams are willing to scrape by on relatively low pay. So, let's start with...

Freakonomics Radio

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DiPietro remembers exactly how he started down this career path. His parents took him to see the musical 1776 on Broadway.

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He's now been writing for more than 30 years. His credits include the musical Memphis, for which DiPietro won two Tony Awards, and All Shook Up, an Elvis Presley jukebox musical. So what is this new show he's working on, Three Summers of Lincoln?

Freakonomics Radio

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Richard Winkler worked for years on Broadway as a lighting designer.

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That was 16 years ago. Alan Shore, who lives in Boston, spent most of his career in financial services. He started producing around 12 years ago. So what does a Broadway producer actually do?

Freakonomics Radio

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Diana, as in Diana, Princess of Wales. It was a musical, also written by Joe DiPietro, and it was scheduled to open on Broadway in March of 2020. Then came COVID. All 41 Broadway theaters shut down for what turned out to be 18 months. So what do you do now if you're a producer who has already spent millions to develop a show?

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And so a filmed stage version of Diana premiered on Netflix in October 2021. Critics hated it. And so did viewers. Cringeworthy, they called it, and exploitative and tawdry. The Guardian named Diana the year's most hysterically awful hate watch.

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The producers did finally bring Diana live to Broadway. It didn't work there either. It closed after barely a month and reportedly lost around $10 million. Maybe Princess Diana just wasn't the right character to build a new musical around. So how about Abraham Lincoln? I asked Alan Shore to explain the genesis of that idea.

Freakonomics Radio

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I'm a Broadway producer and the former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. I've known Rocco for a long time. He was one of the first important people I got to know when I was starting out as a writer in New York. And he was easily one of the most interesting, too. Very sharp and also very blunt, with a reputation as a bit of a rogue, which he seemed to enjoy.

Freakonomics Radio

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Because why not, Richard?

Fresh Air

Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?

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American Amanda Knox entered an Italian courtroom.

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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?

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At rush hour downtown, the otters would swim toward each other and there are literally tens of thousands of people who are on their way to work.

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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?

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At Planet Money, we'll take you from a race to make rum in the Caribbean. Our rum, from a quality standpoint, is the best in the world. To the labs streaming up the most advanced microchips. It's very rare for people to go inside. To the back rooms of New York's Diamond District. What, you looking for the stupid guy here? They're all smart, don't worry about it. Planet Money from NPR.

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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?

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We go to the story and take you along with us wherever you get your podcasts.

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Amanda Knox Is 'Free,' But Is That Enough?

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Amanda's MySpace nickname, Foxy Knoxie.

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The Gutting Of The Department Of Education

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On the Embedded Podcast. No. It's called denying a freedom of speech. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality. I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole, trying to get him back. Listen to Alternate Realities on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. All episodes available now.

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ICE Campus Arrests & The 'Struggle For The Soul' Of America

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Do you remember when discovering a new artist felt like finding buried treasure? At All Songs Considered, NPR's music recommendation podcast, we put that kind of magic back into discovering new tracks. We're here to make the hunt for new music easy, delivering you the cream of the crop from every genre. We'll help you make music feel fun again, only on All Songs Considered from NPR.

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ICE Campus Arrests & The 'Struggle For The Soul' Of America

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We care about whether we're seen as a good person, whether others see us as a good person, and whether we feel like good people.

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ICE Campus Arrests & The 'Struggle For The Soul' Of America

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These days, there is a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR.

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Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth

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When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.

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Melinda French Gates On Giving Away Her 'Absurd' Wealth

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That's not what you said when we signed up. You said it was just going to roll out everywhere.

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Making time for the news is important, but when you need a break, we've got you covered on All Songs Considered, NPR's music podcast. Think of it like a music discovery show, a well-deserved escape with friends, and yeah, some serious music insight. I'm gonna keep it real. I have no idea what this story is about. Hear new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts.

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The Campaign To Silence Journalists & Undermine Free Speech

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These days, there's so much news, it can be hard to keep up with what it all means for you, your family, and your community. The Consider This podcast from NPR features our award-winning journalism. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a news story and provide the context and analysis that helps you make sense of the news. We get behind the headlines. We get to the truth.

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The Campaign To Silence Journalists & Undermine Free Speech

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Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR.

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It would have been a crisis. The man who saw a dangerous omission in the U.S. Constitution and took it upon himself to fix it. Find NPR's ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Campaign To Silence Journalists & Undermine Free Speech

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Listen wherever you listen. Bella DePaulo is glad if you're happily married, but she is perfectly happy being single.

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From yourself to your dog to your spouse are significant others. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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On the ThruLine podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government.

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Listen to ThruLine from NPR wherever you get your podcasts.

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The 'Fog Of Delusion' In Biden's Inner Circle

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You have your job, but you also have a life. And you're not just one thing. Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast. Every weekday, we break down the biggest story of the day and something else, like a new trend everyone's talking about. It's Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR.

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Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid

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It would have been a crisis. The man who saw a dangerous omission in the U.S. Constitution and took it upon himself to fix it. Find NPR's ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.

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Comic Bill Burr [Extended Version]

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Here on Shortwave, we believe that science is for everyone and that every question is worth asking, no matter your age.

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Comic Bill Burr [Extended Version]

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Tools for managing our emotions. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR.

Fresh Air

Comic Bill Burr [Extended Version]

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On the Embedded Podcast. No. It's called denying a freedom of speech. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality. I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole, trying to get him back. Listen to Alternate Realities on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. All episodes available now.

Fresh Air

Comic Bill Burr [Extended Version]

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Our podcast is for the curious at heart. Come embrace your inner child when you listen now to Shortwave from NPR.

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The Dark Secrets Of Johnson & Johnson

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Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out? Well, don't sweat it. The NPR Politics Podcast makes politics a breeze. Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you.

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The Dark Secrets Of Johnson & Johnson

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When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.

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The Dark Secrets Of Johnson & Johnson

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On the Indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs. It's called in game theory a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy-esque ring to it. To what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For insight every weekday, listen to NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money.

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The Dark Secrets Of Johnson & Johnson

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Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

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A Dominatrix/Writer Takes Readers Into A Dungeon

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Extreme weather disasters like wildfires and floods can devastate communities. On the Sunday story from Up First, we ask, are there places that just aren't safe to live anymore? People are going to die. They will be me and my neighbors, and I don't want that to happen. How we respond to disasters in an era of climate insecurity. Listen now on the Up First podcast from NPR.

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Jason Isbell On Love, Heartbreak & Songwriting

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A couple months ago here at Planet Money, we stumbled across our favorite kind of economic mystery.

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Jason Isbell On Love, Heartbreak & Songwriting

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A deal that seemed way too good to be true.

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Jason Isbell On Love, Heartbreak & Songwriting

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Join us on our adventure. Talk to me, show me what you got. To find out exactly how much a diamond is worth. Planet Money from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?

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This message comes from Penguin Random House with Everything is Tuberculosis. Best-selling author John Green tells the story of a young TB patient in Sierra Leone and systems of injustice fueling the world's deadliest infectious disease. Available where books and audiobooks are sold.

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Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?

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Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual, but that doesn't mean we're going to church. Nope. The girls are doing Reiki. The bros are doing psychedelics. And a whole lot of us are turning inward to manifest our best selves. On It's Been a Minute from NPR, I'm looking at why maybe you and your closest friends are buying into wellness for spirituality.

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That's on the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR. On the embedded podcast.

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Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?

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No. It's called denying a freedom of speech. It's misinformation. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality. I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole, trying to get him back. Listen to Alternate Realities on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. All episodes available now.

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Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?

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Support for NPR and the following message come from the Lemelson Foundation, working to harness the power of invention and innovation to accelerate climate action and improve lives around the world. Learn more at lemelson.org.

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This message comes from today's Open Book with Jenna podcast. Each week, Jenna Bush Hager is joined by celebrities, experts, bestselling authors, and friends who share candid stories and exciting new projects. Search Open Book with Jenna to follow now.

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Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates

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When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.

Fresh Air

Best Of: Richard Kind / Melinda French Gates

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We go to the story and take you along with us wherever you get your podcasts.

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Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu

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Support for NPR and the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Moan, thanking the people who make public radio great every day, and also those who listen. Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Crott,

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Best Of: Comic Bill Burr / Actor Simu Liu

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whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR be the model for high-quality journalism in the 21st century.

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Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham

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Convicted of a horrid crime in a foreign land. Sentenced to 26 years for killing a roommate. Her pleas for innocence seemed more cold and calculating than remorseful.

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Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham

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You have your job, but you also have a life. And you're not just one thing. Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast. Every weekday, we break down the biggest story of the day and something else, like a new trend everyone's talking about. It's Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR.

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Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham

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Cell phones, cars, coffee. How do these goods make their way to us from overseas? And what will President Trump's tariffs mean for their price tags? Join the 1A podcast as we explore supply chains and costs associated with some of your favorite products. It's our series, How Did This Get Here? Every Wednesday, listen to the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU.

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Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham

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These days, there is a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Some classic performances are run full length. Others are sampled in cleverly compiled montages and mashups. It's such a solid, well-selected overview that I can think of only one SNL music performance I really wish had been included. Paul Simon, backed by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, on their thrilling 1986 rendition of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. But Questlove covers a lot.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Not only infamous appearances by Elvis Costello, Sinead O'Connor, Ashley Simpson, and Kanye, but even comedy sketches and videos built around music. The infamous Dick in a Box Christmas song, with Justin Timberlake and SNL cast member Andy Samberg, is deconstructed. So is another classic SNL musical moment, featuring guest host Paul Rudd and musical guest Beyoncé.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Timberlake tells how that got on the air, with Timberlake, Samberg, and cast member Bobby Moynihan as her music video backup dancers. Partway through Timberlake's account, we hear the start of the actual single lady's sketch.

Fresh Air

Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Morgan Neville's SNL documentary series is broken into four episodes, each one looking at a different aspect of the show and its history. The first one looks at the original audition tapes by many of the people who tried out for SNL, with those same people watching and reacting to their younger selves. Some scream, some cringe, some cry, some, like Pete Davidson, laugh.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Another episode spends a week observing how an installment of SNL is created by following the process from start to finish, mostly from the point of view of the writers. A third episode gets even more laser-focused, spending an hour on a single sketch. And it's a brilliant choice, coming from the midway point of the show's 50-year run.

Fresh Air

Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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It's the sketch Recording Session, featuring guest star Christopher Walken and cast members Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, and others. You may know it better by the name most associated with it, More Cowbell. It's a sketch Walken and Farrell elevated after the dress rehearsal by going all out in character.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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The sketch was set during the recording session for Blue Oyster Cult's 1970s hit Don't Fear the Reaper. Farrell plays a very loud cowbell, and Walken portrays the track's very enthusiastic music producer. Jimmy Fallon remembers.

Fresh Air

Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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Once the sketch began on the live show, Farrell, who had written it, knew they had connected big time with the studio audience.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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I'm like, oh, they're in. They're in. Oh, goody, there's more coming. In this new recounting, we do not hear from Christopher Walken himself, which Dana Carvey says is writing character for him. Carvey even slips into character as Walken to make his point.

Fresh Air

Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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The final episode of Neville's documentary series hones in on one seemingly random but ultimately seminal year. The 1985-86 season, when executive producer Lorne Michaels, who had left the show after its first successful five-year cycle with the original cast, was asked back by NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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SNL was in free fall, and the common wisdom was that Lorne never would return to a sinking ship. But he did.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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I kind of enjoyed being me. It's one of the few times in either documentary we hear from Michaels. Clearly, he prefers to let the cast and crew and the shows speak for themselves. And they do. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, among others, tell some really great stories.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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There may not be enough screen time given to some SNL veterans in their stories, from Bill Murray to Kate McKinnon and Sarah Sherman, but there are an awful lot of laughs and memories and music and insights. And just the right amount of cowbell.

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Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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The two new Saturday Night Live documentaries come from filmmakers who bring their own interests and perspectives. NBC's Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music comes from Amir Questlove-Thompson, who's both a musician and a music historian.

Fresh Air

Questlove Digs Into 50 years Of 'SNL' Musical Hits (And Misses)

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And the four-part SNL 50 Beyond Saturday Night, now streaming on Peacock, comes from Morgan Neville, who's as interested in the creative process as he is in letting people tell their own stories. Questlove, in his movie-length study, mines the archive of a half-century of musical performances, as well as the emergence of hip-hop and other genres, into the show and the culture.

Fresh Air

Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'

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Great conversation makes for a great party. But how do you ask the questions that really make the room come alive? Well, here at Life Kit, we've got you. What is a path you almost took but didn't? On our latest episode, how to ask the magical questions that'll make your party sparkle. Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR.

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Sarah Snook Almost Didn't Audition For 'Succession'

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I thought the crazy jukeboxes playin' Out above the hole in the police The people overseeing Perubu's Facebook page included this statement in announcing his death.

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Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're remembering Marianne Faithfull, the recording artist and actress who died last week at age 78. We'll listen back to two interviews Terry Gross conducted with her, one from 1994, the other from 2005. In 1994, Marianne Faithfull had just published her autobiography.

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Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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She survived that, as later in life, she also survived heroin addiction, breast cancer, a decade-long bout with hepatitis C, and most recently, a hospitalization for COVID-19. But when she could, she performed as a cabaret artist and acted on film and television, including playing God in three episodes of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull, speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. Marianne Faithfull died last week at age 78. After a break, we'll hear more of their conversation. And critic-at-large John Powers reviews I'm Still Here, the Brazilian film nominated for an Oscar this year as Best Picture. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull recorded 22 solo albums, and the range of songs she covered over the decades was breathtakingly diverse, just as her vocals were raw and intense. She recorded songs by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Kurt Weill, and collaborated with Steve Earle and Angelo Badalamenti.

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Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Terry Gross first spoke with Mary Ann Faithful in 1994 upon the publication of Faithful, an autobiography. In the book, she writes that when she went into rehab in 1985, part of the therapy process was for each person to tell his or her story. That's when she realized there was a blank in her life.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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She had a sense of being in the Rolling Stones scene when she and Mick Jagger were lovers in the 60s, but she had no idea what her own story was.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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When she was 17, a chance meeting in London with Andrew Lug-Oldham, who managed a young blues group called the Rolling Stones, led her to record before they did one of the first compositions by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It was As Tears Go By and was a hit for Marianne Faithfull in 1964.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull, speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. The singer, songwriter, and actress died last week. She was 78 years old.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews I'm Still Here, the Brazilian film that's nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year. This is Fresh Air. In the new film I'm Still Here, the Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salas tells the true story of a Rio de Janeiro mother who reinvents herself when Brazil's military dictatorship goes after her husband.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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The movie has been Oscar-nominated for both Best Picture and Best International Feature Film. Its star, Fernanda Torres, has been nominated for Best Actress. She already has won the Golden Globe. Our critic at large, John Powers, says that I'm Still Here is a moving, inspiring, beautifully made story about learning to confront tyranny.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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John Powers reviewed the new movie I'm Still Here. On Monday's show, Questlove returns. He'll talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone. His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, premieres February 13th on Hulu. Questlove won an Oscar for another of his music documentaries, Summer of Soul. I hope you can join us.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Diana Martinez.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Valdonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Hooper.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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Marianne Faithfull speaking to Terry Gross in 1994. After a break, we'll listen to a later conversation from 2005. This is Fresh Air.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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She had a string of popular recordings in the UK and established quickly a reputation she would develop and build upon all her life, interpreting the songs of others in her distinctly emotional way. She appeared on TV lip-syncing her hit records, but seldom looked at the camera, caught instead in some sort of pensive mood. And she acted on stage in film as well.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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We're continuing our remembrance of singer, songwriter, and actress Marianne Faithfull, who died last week at age 78. Let's switch now to an interview Terry recorded with her in 2005. Marianne Faithfull had just released a new CD called Before the Poison, featuring several songs she had co-written with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave. This song, Mystery of Love, has words and music by PJ Harvey.

Fresh Air

Remembering British Singer Marianne Faithfull

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In 1967, she appeared on stage opposite Glenda Jackson in Chekhov's Three Sisters. In 1969, she appeared in a film version of Hamlet, playing Ophelia. But with success came complications. Famously, she became Mick Jagger's girlfriend, then overdosed in a suicide attempt and fell into a coma.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Our guest today is bestselling author and New Yorker magazine staff writer David Graham. Gran has a knack for finding little-known stories from history and turning them into books that are page-turners. His non-fiction book The Wager, now out in paperback, is no exception. It's about a shipwreck and mutiny in the 1700s.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Exactly. David Graham speaking to Sam Brigger in 2023. His book, The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, is now out in paperback. We'll continue their conversation after a break, and I'll review the new Netflix series, The Four Seasons, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Let's get back to producer Sam Brigger's interview with bestselling nonfiction author David Grand, who's also a staff writer for The New Yorker. His previous books include The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. His latest book, now out in paperback, is about an 18th century British warship that crashed on a remote island off Patagonia.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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The castaways faced terrible conditions and eventually mutinied against their captain. Some of them were able to reach safety on a makeshift boat by sailing nearly 3,000 miles to Brazil. The book is called The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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David Grand speaking to Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger in 2023. More after a break. This is Fresh Air.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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David Grand, speaking with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger in 2023. Grand's book, now out in paperback, is called The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder. After a break, I'll review the new Netflix miniseries, The Four Seasons, starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell. It's based on the 1981 movie of the same name. This is Fresh Air.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Netflix has just launched a new miniseries based on an old movie. The movie, written and directed by Alan Alda and released in 1981, was The Four Seasons. It was a comedy-drama about three middle-aged couples who meet for short vacations four times a year.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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The movie's structure came from nature, the music from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and the cast was led by Alan Alda and Carol Burnett as Jack and Kate. The other vacationing married couples were Nick and Ann, played by Lynn Cariou and Sandy Dennis, and Danny and Claudia, played by Jack Weston and Rita Moreno.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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All had been together and known each other for a long time, but over the course of the film, events included several arguments, one breakup, even a death. The idea of expanding the Four Seasons movie into a TV miniseries was done once before by Alan Alda himself in 1984. Now, more than 40 years later, a new TV version has just surfaced on Netflix.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Its creators are Tina Fey and two writers from The Mindy Project, Lang Fisher and Tracy Wigfield. They've made some significant changes and updated the setting and comedy, but the basic plot and tone remain the same. Like the original film, Netflix's The Four Seasons is a mature, laid-back piece of entertainment.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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The humor evokes more smiles than belly laughs, and the dramatic moments work without evoking any tears. The eight-episode miniseries devotes two episodes to each season, starting with Spring. Jack and Kate, the uptight and verbally sparring couple, are now played by Will Forte and Tina Fey.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Nick and Anne, the couple about to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, are now played by Steve Carell and, from Reno 911, Carrie Kenny Silver. And the big difference in this new adaptation is that the final couple, which in the movie was Danny and his Italian wife Claudia, is now Danny and his Italian husband Claude. Coleman Domingo plays Danny, and Marco Calvani plays Claude.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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In spring, they all gather at Nick and Ann's lake house to honor their silver anniversary. At the dinner table, Jack, played by Will Forte, gives a toast and prompts quite a response, starting with his wife Kate, played by Tina Fey, and ending with an observation by Danny, played by Coleman Domingo.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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OK, here's what I know. When you're young and in love, it's beyond your control. You can't help it. Think about all the people in our 20s that we were in love with who did not deserve us. But what we have now as a result of knowledge and experience, you know, we have chosen each other.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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The TV version of the four seasons stretches to about four hours, giving the show's various writers time to delve more deeply into relationships and subplots. At times, this isn't necessarily an improvement. A few scenes feel forced and fall flat. but in others, the dialogue and acting are sharp and the updating works.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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As in a summer installment, when Kate and Jack are talking privately after just meeting Ginny, the much younger woman brought along on vacation by Steve Carell's Nick.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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With its changes of locale and its occasional visits to resort hotels, The Four Seasons might look like a close relative of The White Lotus. But the drama and mystery aren't anywhere near as heightened here, just as the comedy isn't as broadly played as it would be in an Adam Sandler buddy vacation movie.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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The Four Seasons is like a rom-com, but offering a much wider and wiser perspective than many. After you've met Q to overcome obstacles and fallen in love, what's next? And what's in store for the next 25 years? The Four Seasons may not have all the answers, but at least it asks some of the right questions.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. On Monday's show, we talk with Sarah Snook. She's won an Emmy and two Golden Globe Awards for playing Shiv Roy on the show Succession. She's now on Broadway as the only actor playing 26 different roles in the play The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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She performed the role in London last year and won an Olivier. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Thea Chaloner. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman and Julian Hertzfeld.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shurock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

Fresh Air

A Story Of Shipwreck, Mutiny And Murder

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Martin Scorsese plans to adapt it into a film. Scorsese already adapted another of Gran's books into a movie, Killers of the Flower Moon. An earlier Gran book, The Lost City of Z, also was adapted for the movies. Our producer, Sam Brigger, spoke with David Gran in 2023. Here's Sam.

Global News Podcast

Trump and intelligence chiefs play down Signal app group chat leak

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Bitcoin-Mining didn't build Zengamida Hydro Plant, but there's no doubt it's been a win, not just for the energy company and the Bitcoin miners, but also for the local town. However, the plant has received a huge amount of investment and will soon be expanding. They hope to sell any excess energy eventually back to the grid.

Global News Podcast

Trump and intelligence chiefs play down Signal app group chat leak

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So Philipp and team have got to hit the road and find a new place as perfect as this.

Global News Podcast

Trump and intelligence chiefs play down Signal app group chat leak

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Immer schon Immo. Die Baufinanzierung der Sparkassen. Jetzt Banner klicken und zeitlos gute Infos erhalten.

Global News Podcast

Trump and intelligence chiefs play down Signal app group chat leak

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Meine Uroma wünschte sich ein Haus im Jugendstil. Mein Opa im Bauhausstil. Meine Eltern haben ein Bungalow. Und ich habe auch schon Pläne für mein eigenes Zuhause. Übrigens immer mit dabei die Sparkasse.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

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This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

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Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet of Jupiter versus Saturn. It's very well done that, because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

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And also in this series we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

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And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a planet of Jupiter versus Saturn. It's very well done that, because in the script it does say wrestling voice. After all of that, it's going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

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And also in this series we're discussing history of music, recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature's shapes.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

29.125

Deine innere Stimme, die dir sagt, wie du dir den Job für deine Zukunft vorstellst. Mit Freude und Unterstützung im Team und Projekten, die dich und andere weiterbringen. Dann hör auf dich, finde ihn auf sparkasse.de slash karriere. Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse, weil es um mehr als Geld geht.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky says Trump 'living in disinformation space' created by Russia

6.09

Hörst du das? Nicht mich, dich! Deine innere Stimme, die dir sagt, wie du dir den Job für deine Zukunft vorstellst. In einem Team, das zusammenhält. Bei einem Unternehmen, das unsere Gesellschaft voranbringt. Dann hör auf dich. Finde ihn auf sparkasse.de. Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse. Weil's um mehr als Geld geht. Hörst du das? Nicht mich, dich!

Global News Podcast

Man detained after Russian general's assassination

1655.854

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Man detained after Russian general's assassination

1677.268

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Man detained after Russian general's assassination

1701.599

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with a hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Man detained after Russian general's assassination

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

US says it's cautiously optimistic that a deal to end fighting in Gaza is within reach

2122.816

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

US says it's cautiously optimistic that a deal to end fighting in Gaza is within reach

2144.233

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

US says it's cautiously optimistic that a deal to end fighting in Gaza is within reach

2168.576

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

US says it's cautiously optimistic that a deal to end fighting in Gaza is within reach

2248.953

World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

26.516

where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

39.602

World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

6.554

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed and in this new series we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

932.645

World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry, following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

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where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation.

Global News Podcast

Talks between Israel and Hamas continue in Qatar

965.685

World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

0.089

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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Still to come... Now it's being claimed that they have been brought back into existence. Is that true?

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

13.753

Jeden Dienstag und Freitag mindestens 10 Millionen Euro im Eurojackpot. Das Leben könnte so Jackpot sein. Mit Eurojackpot. In jeder Lotto-Annahmestelle und auf lottobayern.de. Lotto Bayern. Nimm dein Glück in die Hand. Spielteilnahme ab 18. Chance auf den Höchstgewinn 1 zu 140 Millionen. Glücksspiel kann süchtig machen. Hilfe unter bzga.de. Lotto Bayern. Wünscht viel Spaß beim folgenden Podcast.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

1680.722

Die Direwolves sind mehr als 10.000 Jahre hervorgegangen. Es wurde gedacht, dass sie weggingen, weil der Verlust großer Herbivore, wie Mammut, sowie klimatischer Veränderung und Wettbewerb von anderen Speziesen. Jetzt, Texas-based colossal biosciences claims to have brought them back. That is the howling of the six-month-old pups Romulus and Remus and a three-month-old girl called Khaleesi.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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To create them, scientists took DNA from a 13,000-year-old dire wolf tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull. They identified genes they believed accounted for the species' distinctive characteristics, such as its powerful build and white coat, and inserted these into the genetic information of a grey wolf.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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The researchers then made embryos, which were put in the wombs of domestic dogs and brought to term. Pontus Skoglund is the group leader of the Francis Crick Institute's Ancient Genomics Laboratory. He says these hybrid beasts can't be called direwolves.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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Heute ein Audi, morgen dein Audi. Mit attraktiven Leasingkonditionen ab sofort bei den Audi Gebrauchtwagen Plus Wochen. Sichere dir jetzt eines der zahlreichen sofort verfügbaren Audi Modelle bei deinem Audi Gebrauchtwagen Plus Partner. Nur bis zum 28.04. bei Fischer Automobile in Ursen-Sollen.

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Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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I mean, are we talking about some clients losing millions just in a matter of minutes?

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

558.649

Luca, wie ist es für dich in den letzten paar Tagen, all das zu sehen?

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

598.15

I mean, $6 trillion were wiped off the US stock market since the tariff announcement last Wednesday.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

7.251

Irgendetwas fehlt mir noch zum Grillen.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

9.372

Wie wär's mit einem eigenen Sternekoch? Nur für die Soßen.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

942.799

No supplies, humanitarian or commercial, have been allowed into Gaza for more than a month. The Fourth Geneva Convention requires Israel as the occupying power to ensure the population has food and medicine. Hospitals and health workers must be protected. Essential services like water and sanitation must be maintained. None of this, Antonio Guterres said, is happening in Gaza.

Global News Podcast

Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people

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He urged a renewal of the ceasefire, pointing out that previous pauses in fighting had allowed Israeli hostages to be released. And he paid tribute to aid workers in Gaza, describing them as heroes who were doing all they could to help people. Er beantragte eine unabhängige Untersuchung über die Taten von 15 Arbeiter, die letztes Monat von israelischen Kräften getötet wurden. Imogen, folks.

Global News Podcast

First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA

1179.533

Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

Global News Podcast

First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA

2054.54

Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion.

Global News Podcast

First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA

2082.894

Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

Global News Podcast

First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA

34.394

Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

Global News Podcast

Trump says US to 'takeover' and 'own' Gaza

1876.741

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Trump says US to 'takeover' and 'own' Gaza

1898.158

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Trump says US to 'takeover' and 'own' Gaza

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World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with a hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Trump says US to 'takeover' and 'own' Gaza

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

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BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors. We cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

1918.809

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

BBC team reaches Khartoum and finds overwhelming destruction

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

1004.335

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

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Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

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Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Sudanese military accused of carrying out massacre in Darfur

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Britain announces biggest increase in defence spending in decades

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Britain announces biggest increase in defence spending in decades

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Global News Podcast

Britain announces biggest increase in defence spending in decades

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Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1467.42

And then there were none. The passing of Group Captain John Hemingway marks the end of an era, and his wartime exploits were extraordinary. Originally from Dublin, he joined the Royal Air Force before World War II. At 21, he was drafted in as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1484.548

Across the summer of 1940, British Empire and Allied airmen defended the skies of southeast England against a rampant German air force. Hitler was looking to invade, but needed to knock out the RAF first. He couldn't. Those who fought in the battle came to be known as the few, after a speech by the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Hemingway was shot down four times.

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Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1507.543

He was forced to bail out of his single-seat fighter twice, once dropping into the North Sea. Another time he was forced to abandon his aircraft, little more than 180 metres above ground. He broke his hand on the tail section, then his parachute failed to open. Fortunately, three branches broke his fall. Decorations followed.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

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In 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, a military medal for courage and valour. En route to accepting the gong from the king, he had a lucky escape. His aircraft crashed on take-off. The current Prince of Wales has paid tribute to his passing. We owe so much to Paddy and his generation for our freedoms today, Prince William said.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1548.969

Their bravery and sacrifice will always be remembered. Speaking to the BBC in 2023, the centenarian was humble about his role in the country's most important battle. We were just fighting a war which we were trained to fight, he insisted. I'm not a great man, I'm just a lucky man.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1566.242

Four years earlier, the old soldier was in the news when the wreckage of his Hurricane aircraft was recovered in English marshland. The plane's control column and gun button were frozen in time. It was still set to fire.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

1717.48

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

938.328

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Israel launches waves of strikes on Gaza

952.515

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

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Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

1222.515

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

1230.379

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

2017.526

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

2022.829

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

2031.713

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

2039.577

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Canadian PM Mark Carney says he wants to reduce security reliance on the US

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House

53.556

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House

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Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

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Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

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Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

741.331

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Pakistan militants attack train in Balochistan

755.517

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump again accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace

1536.161

On June the 21st, Ruth Ellis was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey and sentenced to death in accordance with the law. On July the 13th, she was executed in accordance with the law. But Britain's conscience was uneasy. During those three weeks, while public controversy mounted, one man had a terrible decision to make, Home Secretary William Lloyd George.

Global News Podcast

Trump again accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace

1559.98

As he went about his public duties, he had to decide whether or not to write the grim words, the law must take its course. But in the end he had no choice. As the law stands and as precedent dictates, Ruth Ellis had to die. For the hundreds who waited at Holloway Jail on execution morning, and for the millions who stayed away, three questions remain. Should a woman hang? Should anyone hang at all?

Global News Podcast

Trump again accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace

1586.868

Or should there be degrees of murder?

Global News Podcast

Trump again accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace

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Trump again accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace

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Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1001.288

In Lebanon, the authorities say around 4,000 people were killed and almost 18,000 wounded in the conflict. A ceasefire was agreed in November, but it didn't put an end to the suffering here. Kifakila was one of the border towns almost completely destroyed by the Israeli military during the war.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1022.951

I've come to the top of the hill here and I can see the whole of Kifakila and it is just very difficult to describe the scale of the devastation here, the destruction. It really compares with the result of an earthquake. There's nothing really left standing here. Alya, a mother of three, came to see what she could salvage from her home.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1061.824

No one knows who is going to help pay to rebuild what's been destroyed. Lebanon's international allies say they will only provide help if the government acts to curb Hezbollah's power, because Hezbollah's opponents see this as a unique opportunity to disarm it. For some supporters, like Alia, that's unthinkable.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1098.288

It isn't surprising that people here remain defiant. For many, Hezbollah is a fundamental part of their lives. In Lebanon, the group is more than a militia. It is also a political party and a social movement. But there have been whispers of dissent within Hezbollah's ranks.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1125.513

This is a Hezbollah supporter who is now critical of the group. To protect his identity, his words in English and Arabic are spoken by our producers.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1151.238

Any discussions about disarmament are likely to be difficult, full of risks. Pushing the group too hard too quickly could result in even more violence. Many here are tired of conflict, but there are plenty too who still really believe in Hezbollah, its purpose and the role it plays in their lives.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1696.158

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1974.164

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

1988.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

900.678

This is Adam. He's a Hezbollah member who works as a nurse at a hospital in Lebanon. On the 17th of September last year, pages of Hezbollah members across Lebanon suddenly exploded, killing around a dozen people and wounding thousands.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

926.221

Adam lost his thumb and several fingers and was blinded in one eye and still has shrapnel in his chest and head.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

955.634

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by countries including the UK and the US. But here, being a Hezbollah member doesn't necessarily mean you are a fighter. Adam himself says he's never been one. The Pager attack was carried out by Hezbollah's great enemy, Israel. It was a turning point in the conflict.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence

976.051

For almost a year, the two sides had been exchanging fire after Hezbollah launched strikes on Israel in support of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on the 7th of October. What followed was a devastating Israeli bombing campaign and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel said it was acting to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks and to allow its displaced residents to return home.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Auf unserem Podcast Good Bad Billionaire erklären wir, wie die Welt's Billionaires all their money made.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Popstars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors. We cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Yeah, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Popstars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

2068.548

Yep, we're talking about Markus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

2076.392

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

25.983

Auf unserem Podcast Good Bad Billionaire erklären wir, wie die Welt's Billionaires all their money made.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire?

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

37.871

Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump officials accuse journalist of lying after Signal app leak published in full

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Der Ostern-Pre-Sale ist da. Sichere dir jetzt mit deiner MyKick Vorteilskarte 50% Rabatt auf unser vielseitiges Ostersortiment. Wie festliche Dekoration, Bastelartikel, Süßwaren und mehr. Schnell zuschlagen und vor allen anderen sparen. Auch online auf kick.de. Kick. Mehr als du denkst.

Global News Podcast

Donald Trump wants to abolish the US emergency response agency

1625.188

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Donald Trump wants to abolish the US emergency response agency

1646.605

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Donald Trump wants to abolish the US emergency response agency

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World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Donald Trump wants to abolish the US emergency response agency

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

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Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

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Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

1774.801

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

1809.716

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

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Trump threatens Russia with sanctions

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Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

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Guilty verdicts and jail sentences in France's biggest rape trial

1748.447

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

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Guilty verdicts and jail sentences in France's biggest rape trial

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But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Guilty verdicts and jail sentences in France's biggest rape trial

1794.21

You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Guilty verdicts and jail sentences in France's biggest rape trial

1874.584

World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Last minute hitch in Gaza ceasefire deal

1230.08

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Last minute hitch in Gaza ceasefire deal

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Last minute hitch in Gaza ceasefire deal

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Last minute hitch in Gaza ceasefire deal

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Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

0.089

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Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

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China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

1871.149

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

1879.032

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

931.331

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

945.497

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

China says it won't bow to pressure from Trump tariffs

953.381

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

UN Secretary-General warns US against 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be.

Global News Podcast

UN Secretary-General warns US against 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza

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This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

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UN Secretary-General warns US against 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza

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This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

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UN Secretary-General warns US against 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza

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New Orleans attack: death toll rises to 15

16.136

She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself.

Global News Podcast

New Orleans attack: death toll rises to 15

24.585

There's a real sense of urgency in them, that resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake deaths surpass 1600

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Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake deaths surpass 1600

1477.366

Es ist nicht klar, wie viele französische Firmen die Botschaft erhalten haben. Es erzeugt Sorgen über extra-territorialen Überreichtum. A French official quoted by the Reuters news agency said France will remind the US that practices differ in the two countries.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake deaths surpass 1600

27.012

Spielteilnahme ab 18. Chance auf den Höchstgewinn 1 zu 140 Millionen. Glücksspiel kann süchtig machen. Hilfe unter bzga.de.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

1021.443

Despite the closures of school, girls in Afghanistan remain hopeful and determined to learn in any setting they can.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

851.801

Amina's hopes of becoming a doctor were halted when the Taliban government banned girls aged 12 and above from going to school.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

873.845

I met Amina in a cold, dimly lit basement in Kabul. Teenage girls huddled together, reading books and sewing together material with a yellow and red flower pattern. Once finished, it will be addressed. They are students, not at a mainstream school, but at a madrasa, an educational centre offering mainly a religious education.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

903.383

Since the Taliban banned schools for girls, some have expanded the teaching of subjects like languages and science. While schools remain closed, madrasas are the only option available to girls over the age of 12. Before the Taliban returned, the number of registered madrasas is believed to have been around 5,000. The Taliban say there are now more than 21,000.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

931.688

There is fear among critics that limiting education and focusing on religion is pushing a hotline agenda. I wanted to visit another madrasa to get more of a sense of what is being taught in the classes they offer. At a madrasa in the centre of Kabul, I met 13-year-old Takwa, who told me about her studies.

Global News Podcast

Mayor of Istanbul dismisses charges against him

984.798

The focus on religion seemed much stronger here. When I asked about what other subjects were taught, the teacher showed me a handful of tattered maths and science textbooks. While they do offer opportunities to learn and socialise, one of the teachers in Amina's madrasa is adamant that they are not enough.

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Gaza special: Three freed hostages back in Israel

23.231

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Gaza special: Three freed hostages back in Israel

996.866

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

1683.14

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

1704.577

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

1728.906

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

34.393

Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

Global News Podcast

Netanyahu issues warning ahead of Gaza ceasefire

965.505

Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

1005.745

The Taco Fashion Action Deal of the Week. Airy, light ladies' muslin blouses and men's linen shirts. For every $9.99 instead of $19.99. But only until Sunday. Discover the cheap prices to continue at Taco Fashion. Now in the store or at taco.com.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

1021.212

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

1026.514

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

1035.398

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

1043.261

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

2007.355

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

2012.677

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

2021.541

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

2029.425

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

26.892

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

35.756

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen's Houthis

43.64

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

1243.368

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

2066.365

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

2087.779

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

2112.131

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with a hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Six-day state funeral for Jimmy Carter begins in Georgia

23.231

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

1013.263

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

1573.981

It's like a nice katana. You can fight the ninjas with it, or you can use it as a cane. Great stick.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

1856.132

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

443.579

Last time this happened, for example, there were retaliation on things like Florida orange juice, Tennessee bourbon, places which were strong Republican Trump supporting states was where Canadians felt they had most leverage. Do we expect that again?

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

465.996

Justin Trudeau is stepping down. You've got candidates vying to succeed him within weeks. Is there a danger that the candidates to be the next leader will try and out-tough each other to the point of not being very pragmatic for Canadian interests in this?

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

57.003

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'

708.766

One day they'll come to Burundi. We're not going to accept war. It will be regionalised. We have a threat in the region. It's not just Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya. It's the whole region. It's a threat. If Eastern Congo has no peace, the region has no peace.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

1179.835

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

1804.113

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

1825.55

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

1849.884

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Putin 'ready' to discuss Ukraine war with Trump

53.556

Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1116.334

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1121.636

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors. We cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1130.5

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1138.384

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1964.915

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1970.218

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1979.102

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

1986.966

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Erdogan condemns Turkey protests as dozens arrested

6.141

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand

1732.247

This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand

27.717

Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand

36.407

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand

880.353

This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

11.465

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1213.587

It combines the door-to-door convenience of the private car with the speed and relaxation of public transport at its best.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1231.298

The undercarriage slides under the track and the star car begins to glide along an electrified rail.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1400.333

You press a destination button on a dashboard route map... and electronic controls take over.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1790.137

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1795.44

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1804.304

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

1812.188

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

20.331

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

28.217

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

814.318

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

819.641

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

828.505

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Is Putin serious about a ceasefire in Ukraine?

836.369

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

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Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

11.465

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

1191.314

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

1196.636

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

1205.5

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

1213.384

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

20.331

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Ukraine's Zelensky meets US vice-president at Munich security conference

28.217

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The secret police's grip on Syria under Assad

1937.236

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

The secret police's grip on Syria under Assad

1958.67

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

The secret police's grip on Syria under Assad

1983.001

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

The secret police's grip on Syria under Assad

2063.372

World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1181.135

I had done a bicycle trip when I was a But I did 13,000 kilometres in eight months and a half, something like that. And since I'd never been nowhere in North America or South America, it was kind of an easy choice to travel from North America to South America.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1212.396

Probably the most intense one was definitely starting in the Arctic because it was like minus 40 minus 50 i traveled like for 100 days by backcountry skiing and snow kiting without seeing like i spent two times one month without seeing anybody and i didn't see any trees for like 100 days and then also probably for sure uh the amazon which is also very different So that was also very special.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1249.461

Yeah, people helped me a lot. Like a lot of people welcomed me or offered me a meal or things like this. Everyone was really nice and welcoming. But definitely, again, like the Arctic, I started in Nunavut. I think the Inuits, they have a very specific bond with nature. And it's the same in the Amazon as well, even if it's very, very different.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

126.741

Nothing is impossible. And if you prepare well and you understand what you're getting into, I think 99% of the time you're going to have an amazing experience.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1270.379

People living in the Amazon also have a special link, like a relationship with nature. I think that was very special to me.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1281.449

First, I learned to know myself better, which was one of the main goals. You learn also your limits and also that, well, what are your limits and also that you can do much more than you think you can. And also, I guess that everything is about perspective. And a lot of times when you're in a difficult situation, you cannot change the situation itself, but you can change the way you look at it

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1330.856

Yeah, well, it's definitely like it's a big sport challenge. So when you get into that, you have to get to be aware of what you're getting into. So for sure, like the polar bear was something possible. I knew it was possible that it happens because I was in polar bear country for a very long time. But yeah, it's something you have to be aware of because definitely it's dangerous.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1355.717

And not just polar bears, the fact that it was my niece. 50, it's a very dangerous environment.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The woman helping thousands of premature babies

1367.4

I would say believe in yourself. We are much more stronger than we think we are. Nothing is impossible. And if you prepare well and you research things and you understand what you're getting into, I think 99% of the time you're going to have an amazing experience.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1020.803

Before setting sail, Craig talked to my colleague Shabnam Yunus Jewel and told her why he decided to take on this challenge.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

107.098

Und warum ein ehemaliger Soldat und Triple Amputee einen Solo-Sailing-Rekord setzen wollen.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1268.178

Craig Wood, talking to the BBC's Sports Hour programme, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. We heard earlier about Brian and Stephanie getting engaged in the unusual surroundings of their burnt-out home. Our next story also involves a couple who found love in circumstances not normally associated with romance, a car accident.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

127.363

Let's start with the story of a man who feared his marriage proposal plans had gone up in smoke in the LA fires. Brian McShea had been planning to pop the question to Stephanie Rayner and had hidden the engagement ring at their home in San Gabriel Valley until the right moment. But when their house and all their belongings were destroyed, he assumed the ring had been lost.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1289.296

Our Asia-Pacific editor Celia Hatton has been telling Rebecca Wood the unexpected story.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

148.433

The couple, who met at Music College in 2013, told their story to my colleague Harry Bly.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1508.073

Celia Hatton reporting. Now to a group that's tackling loneliness and mental health issues all through the simple idea of going for a walk. It was set up by a Scottish couple in Glasgow to help people make friends and benefit from the restorative powers of getting out into nature. One of those who joined the group, Sam, explained what it meant to him.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1570.703

It was set up by Jack Glass and Billy Allen Mandeville, who got the idea after they were left feeling isolated by the Covid pandemic.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1712.088

Now as the seasons change, for many of us getting out into nature can bring extra happiness at this time of year with warmer weather and blossoming flowers of spring or a welcome autumn chill in the air after a long hot summer. We'd like to hear what you love about this time of year.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1803.018

And if the changing seasons are bringing you joy in your garden or when you're out and about, we'd love to hear about it. Drop us a voice note. The email address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And that's all from the Happy Pod for this week. This edition was mixed by Mark Pickett. The producers were Holly Gibbs and Rachel Barkley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

1829.553

And until next time, goodbye.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

26.224

Hörst du das? Nicht mich, dich. Deine innere Stimme, die dir sagt, wie du dir den Job für deine Zukunft vorstellst. Neue Karriereziele setzen und erreichen und unsere Gesellschaft voranbringen. Dann hör auf dich. Finde ihn auf sparkasse.de slash Karriere. Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse, weil es um mehr als Geld geht.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

418.127

Wenn die Zeit kommt, wollen die Leute gut tun, was ein tolles Gefühl ist. Glückwunsch an Brian und Stephanie. Wir haben letztens darüber gesprochen, was die Großeltern von ihren Großeltern gesagt haben. Aber in der afrikanischen Inseln der Madagaskar sind ein Gruppe von Großeltern auch dabei, Energie für ihre Familien und Wälder zu bringen.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

432.619

They're being trained to install solar panels in remote areas. Grandmothers were chosen for this, as they were thought to be the most likely to return and then stay in their villages after learning these skills. The scheme hopes to train more than 700 by 2030, bringing electricity to around 630,000 homes. Sira Thierry has been to meet some of those who benefited.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

46.24

If you leave something behind at an airport, what are the chances you'll ever see it again?

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

63.268

But what if it's something really important, like a much-loved soft toy? Stay with us.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

661.976

That report from Sira Thierry. And you can hear more about renewable energy projects on People Fixing the World, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now, we all know how upsetting it can be for children to lose a much-loved soft toy. So when a cuddly rabbit got left behind at Pittsburgh International Airport, staff there were determined to reunite it with its young owner.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

686.792

Rather than simply adding it to the lost property pile, they made Bunny a social media star. documenting adventures from exploring baggage claim to taking escalator rides. Word soon spread and reached the relatives of six-year-old Waylon, who dropped Bunny on the way home from Florida. Rachel Carson from the airport's social media team talked to my colleague Tony Livesey.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

78.666

This is Andrew Peach and on the way how Stephanie and Brian's engagement ring survived the LA fires.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

914.992

On the way in the happy pod, how going for a walk can improve your mental health.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

93.951

We did, we were inside the house. The grandmas bringing solar power to parts of Madagascar.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

939.478

70% der Anleger verlieren Geld. Der Handel an den Finanzmärkten kann eine einsame Angelegenheit sein. Wenn Sie also wissen möchten, wie man den Dunkelmodus auf Ihrer Plattform aktiviert oder wie Sie auf Ihr Konto einzahlen können, dann ist es gut, wenn Sie mit einem echten Menschen sprechen.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

979.542

Bei Capital.com sprechen unsere Teams Deutsch, Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch und viele andere Sprachen. Setzen Sie sich mit uns in Verbindung und wir helfen Ihnen gerne bei der Beantwortung Ihrer Fragen zum Thema Trading. Capital.com. Entdecken Sie einen Broker, der Ihre Sprache spricht. CFDs sind mit einem hohen Risiko behaftet. 70% der Anleger verlieren Geld.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Getting engaged in the ashes of our home

998.234

Craig Wood was just 18 when he lost both of his lower legs and his left hand in a roadside bomb while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan. 16 years later he's hoping to become the first triple amputee to sail solo non-stop across the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to Japan.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

1036.535

That's seven-year-old Lacey talking about five-year-old Betsy. The two girls have a very special friendship. They live close to each other in the Welsh town of Bridgend and they attend the same school, but they did not meet until April 2023 when they received the same diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia within three weeks of each other.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

1061.328

Betsy's mum Charlotte said she received a text message from a mutual friend who had heard about Lacey's similar diagnosis and put the families in touch. A message which Lacey's mum Jess says she was thankful for.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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Since then, the families have become very close and formed a support bubble. Charlotte says the girls have found comfort in each other during their treatment.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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Acute lymphoblastic leukemia affects around 440 children a year in the UK. The parents of Betsy and Lacey couldn't believe two girls in the same school had the same diagnosis. The girls' nurse, Leslie, visits them every week in school. She says she's watched the friendship flourish.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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Betsy and Lacey are in the maintenance phase of their treatment, which is due to be completed in 2025. They still have to take daily medication and have frequent hospital appointments. But, as both the girls say, they have each other.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

1737.867

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with a hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: The professionals and tradespeople cleaning up Ghana

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

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Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

1063.384

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

1779.764

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

1785.066

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

1793.93

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

1801.814

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Learning to play the guitar one handed

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: From security guard to sculptor at the Met Museum

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Delve into a world of secrets. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: From security guard to sculptor at the Met Museum

1768.157

Delve into a world of secrets. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world.

Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: From security guard to sculptor at the Met Museum

39.974

Delve into a world of secrets. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1002.321

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1007.643

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1016.507

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1024.39

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1863.345

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1868.668

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1877.532

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

1885.396

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

20.328

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Turkey protests: More than 1,000 people arrested in 5 days

28.212

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

US inauguration special

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

US inauguration special

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Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life.

Global News Podcast

Washington gears up for Trump inauguration

1987.56

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Washington gears up for Trump inauguration

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But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Washington gears up for Trump inauguration

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world of secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed in this new series we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations you just get sucked in so gradually

Global News Podcast

Washington gears up for Trump inauguration

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

1972.543

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

1986.73

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump and Putin to hold Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday

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Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

1023.328

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

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Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors. We cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

1037.515

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

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He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

11.463

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

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On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

1888.579

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

1897.463

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

1905.326

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

20.325

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Arrests made after many fatalities in North Macedonia nightclub fire

28.208

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Starmer warns US backstop needed for Ukraine peace deal

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Hörst du das? Nicht mich, dich. Deine innere Stimme, die dir sagt, wie du dir den Job für deine Zukunft vorstellst. Neue Karriereziele setzen und erreichen und unsere Gesellschaft voranbringen. Dann hör auf dich. Finde ihn auf sparkasse.de slash karriere. Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse, weil es um mehr als Geld geht.

Global News Podcast

Starmer warns US backstop needed for Ukraine peace deal

938.456

Next to Mexico and the singer they call the Queen of the People.

Global News Podcast

French ministers arrive in Mayotte after devastating cyclone

1755.376

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

French ministers arrive in Mayotte after devastating cyclone

1776.793

But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

French ministers arrive in Mayotte after devastating cyclone

1801.135

You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

French ministers arrive in Mayotte after devastating cyclone

1881.512

World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Hundreds, possibly thousands, feared dead in Mayotte cyclone

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Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

Global News Podcast

Hundreds, possibly thousands, feared dead in Mayotte cyclone

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But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

Global News Podcast

Hundreds, possibly thousands, feared dead in Mayotte cyclone

2006.65

You just get sucked in so gradually.

Global News Podcast

Hundreds, possibly thousands, feared dead in Mayotte cyclone

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World of Secrets, Season 6, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky offers exchange of North Korean soldiers

1342.483

Mohamed Al-Fayed was like an apex predator.

Global News Podcast

Zelensky offers exchange of North Korean soldiers

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Mohamed Al-Fayed was like an apex predator.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

1746.707

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

1752.029

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

1760.893

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

1768.756

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

968.311

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

973.633

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

982.497

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Syrian government says operation against Assad loyalists over

990.36

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1000.647

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors. We cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1009.511

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1017.374

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1789.71

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1795.032

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1803.896

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

1811.759

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Hamas says it will postpone Israeli hostage release

995.325

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

1823.379

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

1837.565

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

931.331

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump threatens to escalate trade war with China

945.497

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1133.749

The Taco Fashion Action Deal of the Week. Airy, light ladies' muslin blouses and men's linen shirts. For every $9.99 instead of $19.99. But only until Sunday. Discover the cheap prices to continue at Taco Fashion. Now in the store or at taco.com.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1149.218

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1154.52

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1163.383

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1171.265

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1849.215

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1854.517

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1863.401

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

1871.265

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

26.893

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

35.757

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Global stock markets plunge amid Trump tariff turmoil

43.641

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1004.184

As an academy of science, the Royal Society, based here in the UK, does not routinely make news headlines. It traces its roots back to the 17th century and its usual mission is to promote excellence in science for the benefit of humanity.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

101.77

Their task, how to lead the charge in ending fighting, despite Donald Trump's very public spat with the Ukrainian president at the White House on Friday. But Moscow has responded with derision, saying Western governments are fragmenting. President Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said peace can't be achieved while Europe pumps more military aid into Ukraine.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1019.941

But a meeting of the prestigious Academy's fellows later on Monday may just draw wider interest because of a proposal to expel one of their number, the billionaire Elon Musk. More than 3,000 scientists have signed an open letter claiming the Tesla and SpaceX founder has broken their code of conduct by promoting unfounded conspiracy theories. Esme Stallard reports.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1099.073

The Democratic Republic of Congo's Prime Minister, Judith Seminwa-Tuluka, has told the BBC the government will only hold direct talks with Rwanda and not rebels. This is despite calls from regional leaders to engage rebels in dialogue to try to resolve the conflict in the east of the country.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1117.458

In the last few weeks, the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have captured swathes of territory, including the cities of Goma and Bukavu. More than 8,500 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in the fighting. Last week, the British government suspended its bilateral aid to Rwanda and asked the country to withdraw its troops from the DRC.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1141.554

The Prime Minister spoke to the BBC's senior Africa correspondent, Anne Soy. who began by asking what impact Western sanctions will have on the conflict.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

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The DRC's Prime Minister, Judith Saminwa-Tuluka. An antiques dealer in Singapore has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after he admitted to secretly selling a client's 18th century vase and replacing it with a copy. More from our Asia-Pacific regional editor Celia Hatton.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

142.182

Mr Peskov also said no coordinated peace plan was on the agenda yet. Here's Danny Eberhard.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1426.647

Celia Hatton reporting. The Nigerian-born US-based author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. Over the years, she's written award-winning novels such as Half a Yellow Sun, as well as poetry and short stories. Now her new book, Dream Count, heralds a hotly anticipated return to fiction after more than a decade away. So why the long wait?

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1455.847

She spoke to the BBC's Emma Barnett.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1606.174

The Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking to Emma Barnett. To Kenya now, where an investigation by the BBC has found that TikTok is making profits there from live streams that sell sexual content, some involving teenagers as young as 15.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1624.456

Whistleblowers from the company that moderates the social media platform say TikTok knows it's happening, but is failing to take adequate action, despite its own guidelines which ban the selling of sex. Dabula Kamoli has this report from Nairobi.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1815.328

Debula Kemmerle reporting. To hear the full investigation, search BBC The Documentary online or wherever you get your podcasts. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

1840.889

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Kai Perry and the producer was David Lewis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Bernadette Keogh. Until next time, goodbye.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

187.361

Ukrainian officials and media have expressed scepticism about the outcome of the London summit. Vitaly Shevchenko is from BBC Monitoring.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

259.943

Vitaly Shevchenko. And we'll be putting your questions about Ukraine, that Trump news conference and the subsequent diplomatic fallout to our BBC correspondence. Let us know what you'd like answered by sending us an email or a voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. The UN's human rights chief has said he's concerned by what he called a fundamental shift in the United States.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

285.272

Volker Turk didn't mention Donald Trump during his annual speech on the state of human rights worldwide, but he warned of a climate of disinformation, intimidation and threats against journalists and other public officials.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

333.12

Mr Turk also expressed alarm about the dehumanisation of migrants in Europe and pointed to serious rights violations in countries like Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As we record this podcast, reports from Germany say that a car has been driven into a crowd of people in the western city of Mannheim.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

357.759

Videos posted on social media showed police vehicles and ambulances rushing through the city streets. More details from David Lewis.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

38.035

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Russia says Western governments are starting to fragment over the war in Ukraine, describing Friday's public row between Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump as unprecedented. Police in the German city of Mannheim say at least one person has died after a car drove into a crowd of people.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

400.486

There's been widespread condemnation in the Arab world of the Israeli decision to withhold aid supplies going into Gaza. When the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced in January, Israelis and Palestinians celebrated.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

414.274

But now, after the first phase of the deal came to an end at the weekend, there are fears that the fighting, which reduced Gaza to rubble, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and threatened the lives of hostages, could resume. I heard more from our chief international correspondent, Lise Douzette, who's in Cairo.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

518.224

Lise, why is Israel blocking aid going into Gaza?

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

604.738

The new chancellor is Christian Stocker, and he will lead a coalition that excludes the far-right Freedom Party, which came first in September's poll. Our correspondent Bethany Bell reports from Vienna.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

63.265

Anora, the story of a stripper in New York, sweeps the Oscars board.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

657.572

Bethany Bell. Last week, Donald Trump announced plans to impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, saying he didn't think enough was being done to prevent drug trafficking. Imports from China already face taxes of 10% at the US border after a tariff that went into effect in February. Now we appear to have Beijing's response.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

680.672

State media in China claim a series of countermeasures have been prepared, raising the prospect of an all-out trade war between the world's top two economies. Our China correspondent Laura Bicker reports.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

732.389

It's been 95 years since the first Oscars were awarded to recognise the best achievers in film. So you'd be forgiven for thinking there's not much new ground left to break. But Sunday night's Academy Awards did make history. The writer and director, Sean Baker, became the first person to pick up four awards in the same year for the same film.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

753.923

Anora, about a stripper who marries a Russian playboy, also took the gong for Best Actress. Our Los Angeles correspondent Emma Vardy reports.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

81.823

Stinging words from the UN on what they see as happening in the United States. Over the weekend, a raft of international leaders descended on London for talks on Ukraine. President Zelensky was there, as were the heads of government of France, Germany, Italy and Canada.

Global News Podcast

Moscow says West "fragmenting" over Ukraine

955.178

TikTok is accused of failing to act despite knowing children are selling sexual content via its platform.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1743.445

The weasel testicles one, the theory probably is sympathetic medicine, that this part of an animal might have healing properties for a corresponding part of the human body. Medieval people lived in a world that was divinely ordained and created for So that's probably the theory behind that particular slightly odd treatment for infertility.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1768.453

You take the sourest apples that you can find, roast them in a fire until they're soft and then mix quicksilver, mercury, in with them and then slather this on your body and this will destroy all the lice on your body. I mean, I'm sure it will do a few other things as well and I don't recommend people try it.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1811.289

There is no tidy, clear division in the medieval period between science and magic. They're not in their mutually opposing spheres like they are nowadays. So medical practitioners were also trying these ritualistic treatments that involved reciting certain words, making signs of the cross. And there's one treatment for fevers called

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1835.953

which involves writing certain formulae on a person's hand, washing it off the person's hand, and then making them drink the liquid that's washed the writing off.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1910.649

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1915.971

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1924.833

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

1932.716

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

79.164

Also in this podcast... You take the sourest apples that you can find, roast them in a fire until they're soft, and then mix quicksilver, mercury, in with them, and then slather this on your body.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

850.327

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

855.629

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

864.493

Yeah, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Myanmar earthquake kills at least 144

872.377

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

1884.403

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

1889.726

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

1898.59

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

1906.454

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

945.325

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

950.648

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

959.512

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

European leaders reaffirm support for Ukraine

967.376

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

0.009

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1006.34

Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse. Weil es um mehr als Geld geht.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1496.215

A perilous journey across the river Rusesi from the DRC to Burundi. Possessions including jerry cans are used as a life raft. The journey is frightening for both adults and children. In the distance, in the middle of the river, I can see a man wearing a cap, being pushed by the current. He's clinging on to a huge black bag, which he pushes in front of him.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1523.853

As he emerges from the river, he wipes his face and takes a deep breath. He then goes straight to Burundian forces nearby, who want to make sure he's not carrying any weapons. His name is Jordan Bita.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

153.456

Ich kam hier für Gerechtigkeit, um endlich herauszufinden, warum so viele junge Menschen verloren wurden. Um endlich herauszufinden, warum es Accidents gibt, die die Leben jeden Tag riskieren.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1554.562

The BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim. In the last two weeks, at least 20 people, including children, have been swept away as they attempt to swim up to 300 meters across a river, which at some point is 10 meters deep. It is thought many of the drownings have been unreported. Jordan is among the lucky ones who made it. They say the choice is stark.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

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Either stay and risk forced conscription into the M23, or swim and risk the waters of the Rossisi. Amani Sebakungu agrees with Jordan.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1610.696

We are interrupted by the Burundian troops who order us to vacate the area. Sie haben M23-Rebel, die nach der Berge reisen, beobachtet. Safety in Burundi means living in makeshift camps like this one here in Rugombo. As many as 25 people share a tent and food is rationed to only one meal a day.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1637.409

87 years old and blind, the lines on Magega Mwarui's face tell the story of the hardship she's endured since the 1960s due to instability in the DRC.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

1662.931

With the recent rapid advance of the M23 rebellion, Granny Magega must be wondering if she'll ever go back to her home country. Or whether she's even safe in this one.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

6.09

Hörst du das? Nicht mich, dich! Deine innere Stimme, die dir sagt, wie du dir den Job für deine Zukunft vorstellst. Neue Karriereziele setzen und erreichen und unsere Gesellschaft voranbringen. Dann hör auf dich, finde ihn auf sparkasse.de. Wir machen den Job wahr, den du dir vorstellst. Sparkasse, weil es um mehr als Geld geht. Das ist der Global News Podcast von der BBC World Service.

Global News Podcast

Huge protests in Greece over train crash justice

983.361

In der Distanz, im Mittelpunkt des Rivers, sehe ich einen Mann, der eine Kappe trägt, die durch den Strom gedrängt wird. Er klingelt auf eine große schwarze Tasche, die er vor ihm drückt.

Global News Podcast

Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen

1829.082

I've spent a fair bit of time in India.

Global News Podcast

Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen

6.408

We'll be right back. Remember, no matter who you are, there's a Lisa just for you.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1140.325

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1145.647

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1154.511

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1162.394

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1712.287

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1717.59

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1726.454

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

1734.338

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1077.321

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1082.644

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1091.508

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1099.372

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

11.464

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1819.488

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1824.791

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1833.676

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

1841.54

He made a billion, but is he good, bad or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Putin responds to Trump's ceasefire plan

28.214

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

1906.155

This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

27.717

Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

36.107

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

898.339

This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

928.393

Do you hear that? Not me, you.

Global News Podcast

Dozens killed in clashes in Syria

931.397

Your inner voice that tells you how you imagine the job for your future. In a team that holds together. In a company that promotes our society. Then listen to you. Find it on sparkasse.de slash career. We do the job you imagine. Sparkasse. Because it's about more than money.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1539.411

I was living for a few weeks alone in the Dolomites, sleeping in these bivaki or mountain huts, which are tiny unmanned sort of shepherd huts that are very high up, which climbers and walkers use to sleep in safety overnight. So I was there on my own with a camera, a rucksack and a field recorder.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1557.534

Just spending time there and trying to be amongst the mountains and really sort of listen and experience. I ended up recording wind and cowbells. And as I hiked, I found things that were stranger and stranger.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1569.763

Like on top of one mountain, I found this organ of chimes, which is just this huge wooden pole with thousands of metal chimes on, which blew in the wind and made music and was just kind of inexplicably there. So that was an amazing recording. The more I listened and the more I heard, the more I kind of started to see this place as a soundscape.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1593.587

And building on that, I started to see it almost as a choir. And from that experience, I wanted to create a piece, which was a choral work for the mountain and for me. All these mountain huts have little guestbooks in them, which are used by most visitors to write about their experience spending the night there. They're actually quite funny.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1642.705

Musik ist ein wichtiges emotionales Fahrzeug. Ich denke, Musik ist wirklich besonders, weil es sich nicht an Sachen wie Sound, Skate, Rekordungen oder Schreibung oder Bildung interessiert. Musik ist nicht referenziert. Es ist sich selbst. Es spricht nicht zu etwas anderem. Und ich finde immer, dass Musik Emotionen erreichen kann, die subtiler, detaillierter und seltsamer als andere Dinge sind.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

1666.24

Und es fühlt sich sehr wichtig an, dass es solche Preise gibt, die Musik und Natur erkennen. Musik und Natur.

Global News Podcast

EU agrees to boost defence spending

826.253

Still to come... The sound artist who turns nature into music.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

11.465

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1200.325

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1205.647

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1214.511

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1222.394

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1965.956

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1971.259

Pop stars and tech titans, founders and filmmakers, inventors and investors, we cover them all. And for the first time, we're talking about a video game designer.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1980.143

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

1988.007

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

20.331

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

As stock markets tumble again, Trump calls for a cut to interest rates

28.217

He made a billion, but is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire, listen on the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

1019.338

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

1033.504

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

20.33

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

2032.748

On our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire, we explain how the world's billionaires made all their money.

Global News Podcast

Trump tariffs trigger steepest US stocks drop since 2020

2046.934

Yep, we're talking about Marcus Persson, the Swedish coding king who programmed the world's most successful game, Minecraft, all by himself.

Good Guys

Love is NOT Blind with Paige O'Brien Peck

3789.855

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

Good Guys

Mob Adjacent with The Queen of Melrose

1.331

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Good Guys

Mob Adjacent with The Queen of Melrose

1161.951

Welcome to Chloe in Wonderland. I don't know how many people remember this. Oh, shit. You are one decision away from a different life. I know for a fact that it was her who sold this to the media.

Good Guys

Mob Adjacent with The Queen of Melrose

1178.569

I do explain to Mason how drinking affected me. I think it breaks them so much more that you forgave them. Every week, I'll sit down with fascinating guests

Good Guys

Mob Adjacent with The Queen of Melrose

1190.561

It wasn't nearly as bad as what I went through emotionally with the pregnancy I had with my daughter. For real conversations. You remember when we wrestled? Like straight up crazy drunk wrestled. That's how rumors get started. Was it helpful for people to come in when you were with like your ex-husband and be like, you should be with somebody better?

Good Guys

Mob Adjacent with The Queen of Melrose

1208.853

If people are broken, they have to fix themselves. This is a window into my world and the stories that make it meaningful. Welcome to Chloe in Wonderland. New episodes drop every Wednesday on X and on Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. See you there.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The One Who Got Away | 7

0.389

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all six episodes of Guru ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The One Who Got Away | 7

754.562

As a contractor for the NSA, Edward Snowden had access to a range of top-secret government programs. But as he learned more about these clandestine operations, he came to understand a devastating secret. The government was conducting mass surveillance on its own citizens. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The One Who Got Away | 7

775.161

history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, whistleblower Edward Snowden changes the national conversation about privacy on the Internet as he risks his own freedom and his family's well-being. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The One Who Got Away | 7

792.562

Listen to all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The One Who Got Away | 7

855.407

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

0.389

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all six episodes of Guru ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

1468.59

As a contractor for the NSA, Edward Snowden had access to a range of top-secret government programs. But as he learned more about these clandestine operations, he came to understand a devastating secret. The government was conducting mass surveillance on its own citizens. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

1489.186

history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, whistleblower Edward Snowden changes the national conversation about privacy on the Internet as he risks his own freedom and his family's well-being. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

1506.593

Listen to all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

599.944

In 1976, a Georgia native, Navy veteran, and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter won his bid for the presidency. What Carter didn't know then was that the next four years would be the most difficult he could ever imagine. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American History Tellers.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

616.113

We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we explore Jimmy Carter's time in the White House, from his unexpected presidential victory as an outsider vowing to clean up Washington, to his remarkable diplomatic breakthroughs and legislative accomplishments on energy, education, and the environment.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

636.784

But Carter also faced crushing challenges as he worked to lead the country through energy shortages, sky-high inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

657.783

Start your free trial today. Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

680.462

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

After the Spell | 6

703.66

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1004.843

For the first time in a long time, Angie felt like she had some understanding of what was going on between her and Ron. And like she had some hope.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

103.206

It was July 2019, Toronto. An average hotel meeting room. Beige carpet, rows of gray chairs, a platform at the front. Dozens of people milled around waiting. Among them was Victoria Bonilla.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Jeff and Shalia's classes weren't cheap, like over $2,000 a year not cheap. But Angie scraped together all she could. And she signed up. The classes happened over online video every Sunday night, 7 p.m. There are no recordings of her first classes, but a later one shows how Jeff and Shalia diagnosed Angie's problem.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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As usual, Angie saw her face pop up on screen, the lower row of a Google Hangout with 11 other classmates. Jeff's smiling face was front and center

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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He was sitting next to Shalia in front of a grand brick fireplace, the usual backdrop for the Twin Flames classes, with their golden doodle occasionally jumping into the shot. Eventually, it was Angie's turn to speak. She filled them in on the whole Ron situation. Jeff butted in.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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He said the problem was not out there. It was within herself.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But Angie was still confused. What was stopping them from getting together?

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Then Shalia spoke up.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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That struck a chord with Angie. Her cancer treatment had taken a heavy toll on her. She lost her hair, had a hysterectomy. She was feeling disconnected from her body, from her identity as a woman.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Jeff had no doubts. Reconnecting with her femininity would solve all of Angie's problems. It would draw Ron to her.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie thought over their advice. The problem sounded simple enough, but the solution? Changing her appearance, behavior, how she thought about herself? It was a tall order.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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If it would help her win Ron over, Angie was determined to try. She started small, jewelry. She put on earrings for the first time in years. She bought pretty, funky, fun wigs while her hair grew back. Then she worked her way up to painting her nails, wearing makeup.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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The transformation was striking. She'd started getting compliments. For the first time in years, Angie felt pretty.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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With Jeff and Shalia's help, Angie was reconnecting with her femininity. Now it was time for the next stage of their plan. It had been a few months since Ron had seen Angie. He'd been away at college. But then, he told her, he was moving back to town. It was time for Angie to claim her man. And it wasn't long before she had the perfect opportunity. Angie knew Ron's birthday was coming up.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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People gathered in groups. Some fumbled through small talk. Others stared at their phones.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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And so she worked up the courage and she sent him a text.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Then she waited.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Ron wanted to hang out with her. Alone. In the weeks that followed, Angie racked her brain and scoured the internet, trying to find the just right thing for Ron's birthday present. Eventually, she found it.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1349.857

Ron was a Gemini, but also... Because, you know, twin flames. Naturally. The morning after his birthday, she baked a sweet little cake and packed a perfect picnic.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1370.4

And she spent every moment that she had that day making sure she looked as beautiful and special as the spread she'd prepared for him.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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She arrived at the cabin around noon. As she pulled up, she could see Ron waiting at the door. She got out of the car, her hands full with the gifts and the cake. Ron came out to meet her.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Even so, she was looking forward to their day together. Ron helped carry the picnic and presents into the cabin. He loved the gifts and the food. He dug in immediately.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But then the atmosphere changed. It was time.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie took in her surroundings. The cabin was rustic.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But there were also no distractions. For the first time in a long time, Angie and Ron were alone. As evening fell, the weather got worse. Inside, Angie and Ron cozied up, drinking wine and talking, lying on the sofa.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie thought she must be dreaming.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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All eyes turned to the entrance. People craned and stretched, desperate to see.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Brutal. All the way home, Angie kept turning it over in her head.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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I blew it. The next day was just as rough.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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It wasn't quite the romantic overture she'd been hoping for. Ron had been using the drill to open up the cabin shutters the day before.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

156.997

And a young couple walked in.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Ron never gave her a response. Days went by. A week. A month. Finally, toward the end of June... Ron sent her a message.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1602.863

Ron cut ties with her.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie felt like it was over. She left the Twin Flames group.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1635.18

And because, despite it all, Angie still had some hope left, she listened.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1654.56

In Jeff and Shalia's class, Angie opened up about her predicament.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

167.885

A man stepped onto the stage. He was in his early 30s. His wavy brown hair was shoulder length. He wore designer ripped jeans and a suit jacket. The woman took her place next to him, dressed in a T-shirt, fitted pants, high heels and makeup. The man raised his arms.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Jeff shot Shalia a look. He had an idea.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie wasn't sure, but Jeff seemed so certain.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1710.606

She needed to drive to Ron's house and claim him by giving him his drill.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But it was Shalia who sounded a note of caution. It was not going to be easy.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie still wasn't sure. Ron had told her not to get in touch. So wouldn't it be a better idea to, like, send an email?

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1771.484

Yeah, fuck appropriate. Angie was convinced. She was going to march on up there and give Ron his drills. It was time to claim her man. The next morning, Angie woke up feeling nervous. She went through the motions at work, all the while working through her insecurities, her fear, setting her intentions.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1798.274

And shortly after 4 p.m., there she was, walking up the winding driveway and knocking on Ron's front door. But when it opened, it wasn't Ron.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1821.445

Angie decided it might be, I don't know, a little awkward to wait around on Ron's doorstep for an hour.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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The door closed.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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That had not gone the way Angie had hoped. As soon as she got home, she went on Facebook and reported back to the group.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1863.639

Jeff's criticism stung. Angie sat down at her laptop and started writing. She poured out all her feelings for Ron in one long email.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1880.875

Then she waited. Ron emailed back.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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In that moment, everything Angie had dreamed of with Ron was shattered. She felt like her last chance at finding love was over.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1933.742

Ron, by the way, didn't want to speak to us for this series. Looking back, this was a moment when Angie could have walked away. Jeff and Shalia's advice hadn't worked. They hadn't lived up to their guarantee. They had told her to pursue Ron, and he had turned her down. It was a moment where she could have logged off and never seen them again.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But Angie still had hope, and she still had belief in Jeff and Shalia. And she stayed.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

197.142

Jeff and Shalia had arrived. The room was buzzing with excitement. This was the first time many in the audience had ever seen the couple in real life.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

1995.683

It's good advice. Learn to love yourself, and then someone else can love you. But to find that true love, that twin flame, Jeff and Shalia would demand a level of sacrifice that would have huge and dangerous consequences. And not just for Angie. That's next time on Twin Flames.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

2057.294

From Wondery, this is episode one of six of Twin Flames, a series about true love, power, and how far some people are willing to go to get what they want. Twin Flames is hosted by me, Stephanie Beatriz. Senior producer is Russell Finch. Producers are Tracy Egbes and Zachary Stauffer. and Jen Sargent for Wondery.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

222.556

Here it is. On stage, Shalia beamed at Jeff. You'll get used to me.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

232.499

Jeff smiled. The audience was eating out of their hands. As the speech neared its climax, Jeff closed his eyes, suddenly serious.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

266.856

He promised to give the audience a secret. The secret of finding your twin flame. Perfect partner. Soulmate. The ultimate lover. But that wasn't all he promised that weekend. He was going to show them how to get the perfect career. A beautiful home. A fat bank account. A Corvette.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

347.484

No one in that room could have predicted what Jeff's promises really meant.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

359.127

that there were people in that room, people she knew, who would soon find themselves grappling with just how badly they wanted that true love Jeff promised, and how far they were willing to go to get it.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

423.234

From Wondery, I'm Stephanie Beatriz, and this is Twin Flames. Carolin! How do we do love? Like, romantic love, I mean. Seems like kind of a silly question on the surface. But not so long ago, I had just gotten out of a relationship that lasted nearly 10 years. And I was in a tailspin grappling with this question. I knew I wanted big love story love in my life.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

476.389

I wanted to get married and have a family. I wanted a partner who would support me and understand me and make me laugh. Someone to go through this life with shoulder to shoulder, us against the world. And I wanted to be that partner to somebody. But my faith was shaken. I just spent a third of my life with someone who I thought was the one. They weren't. And I was getting to be of an age.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

503.329

And all my friends were getting engaged, and I didn't even know where to begin. How do I do love after I'd already gotten it so wrong? How do I meet a new somebody? How do I know if they're right for me? How do I know when to commit or whether to commit? How hard should I fight when things get tricky? How do I know if this is a till death do us part kind of thing? I'm one of the lucky ones.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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I found my partner. I cracked the code. I think. Not everybody is so lucky. But what if there was someone out there, someone who seemed to have it figured out all for themselves? Someone who seemed to have all the answers and who guaranteed they could help you find that one special person you were meant to spend your life with?

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

551.804

Someone who promised to unite you with your one true love, with your twin flame. They would ensure that once you found that twin flame, you stay connected and would teach you to never let them go. Wouldn't you listen? This is episode one, Follow Me. In 2015, Angie Moggy had been mostly very happy with her life. Mostly. Mostly.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

579.858

Angie is of First Nations descent, and she lived in rural Ontario, Canada, where she worked as an administrative assistant for the government. Filing, mailing, data entry, Monday through Friday. It wasn't exciting, but it paid the bills. She was a big music fan. Classic rock. Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, nothing past Pearl Jam.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

598.248

And she was fairly active online, especially on a forum for dog lovers called Dogster. She met a lot of friends that way. But there was one thing missing.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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At 41 years old, she'd never been married, never had kids. She'd had a bad breakup in her 20s. Since then, she'd struggled to find the right person.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

631.802

So she'd given up on romance. Instead, she kept herself busy with her day job, her pets, and hobbies. Until one sunny Friday afternoon in late May. She was coming back into the office from running an errand, passing the reception desk headed toward the stairs, when she looked up.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

660.589

That bolt out of the blue came in the form of Ron. Not his real name, by the way. He was small, with a slight build. A sparse, stubbly beard and long, dark hair obscured his delicate features.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

685.92

But there was a problem. Ron was an intern and he was 22, younger than Angie by almost 20 years.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Monday came around, as Monday does, and Angie was back to work, where she would have to see Ron again.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But it was hopeless. She couldn't avoid him forever. Angie made a decision.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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At first, Angie and Ron would take smoke breaks together. Then, when their bosses weren't around, they'd talk over long lunches. Soon they became fast friends. And it seems like there could be something more.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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So she confided in one of her friends from the dog message board.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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That's Melissa.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Melissa lived in the States, but she and Angie would talk late into the night, trying to understand the ups and downs of her and Ron's not-quite relationship.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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Angie was confused. She felt an intense and immediate attraction to Ron, and she felt that he felt it too. But it was on again, off again, hot and cold. Nothing romantic had happened yet, but she had a feeling for him she could not shake. Then, in late 2016, Angie was diagnosed with cancer.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

848.742

Today, she's cancer-free, but at the time, she had to have a hysterectomy, and she was getting ready to start chemo. But even with all that happening, she could not stop thinking about Ron. It made no sense.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

877.313

Love was making her be crazy. At home, recovering from her surgery, lounging on her sofa, Angie was scrolling through YouTube. And that's when she came across a video of a young couple.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

914.169

Twin flames. The idea that two people share a deep connection, or even that they're two parts of the same soul.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

928.598

The existence of twin flames wasn't a new idea. There were plenty of online psychics and YouTube tarot personalities who had talked about the concept. An instant recognition, followed by an intense and often tumultuous connection. Many claim that having a twin flame was a rare occurrence. Angie had even come across this couple's videos before.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

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But this time, Jeff and Shalia's unique take on love really hit her.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

965.098

Not only is every single person created with a twin flame, but they are destined to find and achieve perfect union with that unique and special person.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames

994.91

That described how Angie was feeling exactly. Without Ron, she felt she was suffering.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

1006.868

But Carter also faced crushing challenges as he worked to lead the country through energy shortages, sky-high inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

1027.856

Start your free trial today.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

110.123

Last year, long crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. Listen to episodes of Karen, the retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

90.413

Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

920.365

As a contractor for the NSA, Edward Snowden had access to a range of top-secret government programs. But as he learned more about these clandestine operations, he came to understand a devastating secret. The government was conducting mass surveillance on its own citizens. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

940.963

history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, whistleblower Edward Snowden changes the national conversation about privacy on the Internet as he risks his own freedom and his family's well-being. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

958.362

Listen to all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. In 1976, a Georgia native, Navy veteran, and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter won his bid for the presidency.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

976.992

What Carter didn't know then was that the next four years would be the most difficult he could ever imagine. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams.

Guru: Don't Cross Kat

The Making of a Beauty Queen | 8

992.819

In our latest series, we explore Jimmy Carter's time in the White House, from his unexpected presidential victory as an outsider vowing to clean up Washington, to his remarkable diplomatic breakthroughs and legislative accomplishments on energy, education, and the environment.

Hidden Brain

No Hard Feelings

163.641

Don't let people live rent-free in your head.

Hidden Brain

Marching To Your Own Drummer

1412.447

And so my eyes got wider and he carried on and he said, no, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Hidden Brain

Marching To Your Own Drummer

2673.525

But these figures are likely to be conservative.

Hidden Brain

Marching To Your Own Drummer

2678.869

One in four of them said that they had lied about a question on the survey.

Hidden Brain

Marching To Your Own Drummer

325.507

I carried on. I carried on having the CT scan. And I was like, oh, this is not working. People are not registering my discomfort. And so I just lay back in the scanner and was perplexed.

Hidden Brain

Marching To Your Own Drummer

471.428

That's right. He thanked the massage therapist and then paid him and gave him a tip and then had a very painful subway ride back home.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1.095

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Otto Lilienthal was a 19th century design engineer who was fascinated by the idea of flying machines. He meticulously studied the shape of the wings of birds and invented a flying apparatus that allowed him to glide short distances. On Sunday, August 9, 1896, Otto went to a hilly region about 50 miles from where he lived in Berlin.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1001.29

So some years later, after he returns to France, he hears about an interesting project involving the Suez Canal. Tell me a little bit about this. The Suez Canal was being built and they put out a call for sculptors.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1061.135

So the Suez Canal project goes nowhere, but Frederick Bartholdi returns to Paris and he gets in touch with a friend of his. And this friend of his has an idea about a statue that he once built in America. Why America, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

112.85

The rest, of course, is history. Otto Lilienthal had built a machine that mimicked the mechanics of birds. He was an actual engineer. The Wright brothers borrowed from the much more unlikely source of bicycle physics. The history of invention is full of stories like this. People who have knowledge and training and skills can find themselves stuck.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1127.299

And what is the idea that Frederick Bartholdi comes up with?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1244.835

Wow. So to summarize, a French artist draws on Egyptian sculptures to design something for the Suez Canal. When that plan falls through, he teams up with a friend in France to raise money for a sculpture in America. He draws on a local coin and his mother's face to design the sculpture, but the story doesn't end there.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1263.559

Today we see the statue, especially with its location in New York Harbor, as a symbol of hope for immigrants and refugees. How did that transformation come about, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1304.443

Emma was a descendant of Spanish and Portuguese refugees.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

139.366

And then someone comes out of left field and solves the problem. Today, we take a close look at the process of creativity. Insights and epiphanies often seem to arise without explanation. But researchers increasingly find there is a science to generating them. The Alchemy of Invention, this week on Hidden Brain.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1424.144

You know, it's striking, Sheena. I've seen the Statue of Liberty a few times, and it's really, you know, so dramatic, so iconic. And of course, when I think of it, I have all these associations already in my head. But really, what you're showing here is that this was less of one, you know, magic moment of epiphany and more about a series of recombinations of past ideas and past events.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1499.201

Now, of course, lots of people had seen giant Egyptian sculptures before Frederick Bartholdi, but he did not just look. He actually noticed something. He filed it away in his memory. You tell another wonderful story about the power of observation. In the late 19th century, a physical education teacher in Springfield College, Massachusetts, was dealing with a problem.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1519.034

James Naismith students played football, baseball, lacrosse, rugby, and soccer, but in the winter, they were all cooped up. How did he solve this problem, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1678.658

One thing this suggests, though, and it's striking as you talked about his process, his process was not just, you know, I have a task. I've been set a challenge. I'm just going to sit inside my head and try and figure out this challenge on my own. He actually looked at everything that he knew from his past life. He looked at examples from soccer, from rugby, from lacrosse, and he recombined them.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1702.014

And it's worth pointing out that it In some ways, I think we have this illusion that the inventor is the person who sits in a room by himself or herself and comes up with a genius idea. This paints a very different picture of it, Sheena.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1747.133

You say that besides a capacity to observe the world carefully, multiple studies have found that creative people tend to have one personality trait in common. Can you talk about the power of curiosity?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1789.286

I returned myself recently from a visit to Paris where I went to the Louvre and I fought through crowds to get a look at the Mona Lisa. You say that the painter Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most iconic examples of curiosity driving creativity. How so?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1864.42

And in some ways, I think one of the things you're pointing to, Sheena, is that when we're searching for a solution, it might not be sufficient just to look in the domain in which the problem exists. Part of what made Leonardo da Vinci so successful was he was voracious in terms of where he was looking for ideas. He didn't care about limiting himself to one particular domain.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

188.347

Whether it's trying to solve a complex issue at work or figuring out how to get your toddler dressed in the morning, all of us grapple with challenges big and small. On the bright side, these problems often come with aha moments. You're on a walk or in the shower when boom, a big idea or a brilliant solution appears out of nowhere. Where do epiphanies come from?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

1943.854

You say that persistence turns out to be another driver of creativity, and you and others demonstrate this through the use of an exercise called the toothpick test. What is this test, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2082.754

From medical breakthroughs to great works of art, we like to believe that creativity, invention, and innovation happen in an instant. That artists and inventors draw from a mystical source of creativity and then inspiration strikes. But moments of inspiration do not necessarily strike in an instant. It's more accurate to say they are a process of gradual cultivation and recombination.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2108.889

When we come back, how to plant the seeds of inspiration to cultivate your own eureka moments. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. The famous French sculptor, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, got his inspiration for the Statue of Liberty from ancient Egyptian sculptures, a silver coin, and his mother's eyes.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

211.331

And what can we do to make them appear more frequently, more predictably? At Columbia University, social psychologist Sheena Iyengar has spent many years studying the surprising origin of powerful ideas. Sheena Iyengar, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2151.037

The actress Hedy Lamarr came up with a way to target torpedoes while playing the piano with a friend. Nancy Johnson invented the hand-crank ice cream freezer using spatulas in her kitchen and a bathroom tub. In many stories of human invention, there are common threads. Innovators take inspiration from outside sources, and they remember these sources as they are combining ideas.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2178.599

At Columbia University, Sheena Iyengar says all of us can learn from these insights. She is the author of Think Bigger, How to Innovate. Sheena, we've talked about how even the most prolific artists borrow from others and take inspiration from the outside world. But very often, inspiration doesn't come from the familiar, but the unfamiliar.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2201.206

In 2007, the researchers Lee Fleming, Santiago Mingo, and David Chen made a list of over 35,000 inventors who had worked on patents with at least one other person. Tell me about the study and what they found.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2266.417

I understand there was a similar study that looked at the television series, Doctor Who.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

228.898

Sheena, on September 13, 1940, a large steamship named the SS City of Benares left the United Kingdom on a 2,500-mile voyage. Who was on board, Sheena, and where was the ship headed?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2308.297

Why would this be the case, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2348.737

I want to talk about another component of innovation, and that is about identifying the right problem. In 2020, Stacey Boland was an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. She was working on a project that had her tracking different types of air pollution. At that point, COVID struck and her office shut down. And like many of us, Stacey went home.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2369.444

Can you tell me the story of what happened next, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

251.716

Why were they leaving the United Kingdom in the middle of World War II?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2516.184

Sheena says that one of the keys to the NASA team's success was that they picked the right problem. The researcher Paul Knott at Ohio State University has done research on this issue. He and others have found that half of the ideas and strategies that companies come up with fail.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2585.638

Inspiration often involves bringing together different ideas from our past. It involves learning and memory. But things often come together in novel forms in unexpected moments. Researchers call this mind wandering, which is basically a fancy term for daydreaming.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2650.376

So me just hanging out in the shower and waiting for inspiration to strike, that's not going to do it, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2664.964

One of the curious things about creativity is that we often believe that the more options and tools we have at our disposal, the better off we're going to be. Can you talk a moment about how constraints might not be the enemy of creativity?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2757.286

Yeah. I have to ask you to tell me again about that study you ran many years ago at a gourmet grocery store in Northern California. We've talked about it the last time you were on Hidden Brain. But can you tell me again about your famous JAM study, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

285.692

So around this time, the Germans had drawn something of a chokehold around shipping lanes to and from England. How had they done this, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2903.163

And they don't even have Tinder and Grindr.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2918.33

What do you think it is about the multiplicity of choices that has negative effects on our minds? And in the context of creativity, what do you think it is about constraints that actually might aid us, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2975.468

Yeah. It makes me think, as you're saying that, Sheena, that there are in some ways two problems. One is we might not have enough information, especially perhaps non-domain information in domains that we're not less familiar with. We might not have all the information we need in unfamiliar domains. So that's an a story about a lack of pieces that we can manipulate in our heads.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

2998.403

But there's also a twin problem, which is we may have too many. And if we have too many, they all end up swirling around in our heads and we don't know which ones to pick to actually recombine.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

3025.72

Sheena Iyengar is a psychologist at Columbia University. She's the author of Think Bigger, How to Innovate. Sheena, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

3041.656

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. For more ideas about creativity and many other topics, please consider joining our podcast subscription, Hidden Brain Plus.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

3068.131

You can access a free seven-day trial of Hidden Brain Plus, including episodes that you won't hear anywhere else, by going to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, you can find Hidden Brain in that app or by going to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Your subscription helps us to bring you this show week in and week out and we truly appreciate your support.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

3093.343

I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

32.637

He strapped into his glider like a human stork and took three successful flights. But on his fourth attempt, a strong gust of wind launched Otto up about 50 feet and then careened him toward the earth. He tried to wrestle the glider out of a crash, but failed to do so. The plunge broke Otto's neck. He died shortly afterwards.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

355.876

So four days into this voyage, a panic breaks out on the ship. It's being torpedoed by a German U-boat. Do we have any accounts of what that was like on the ship that night, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

403.18

So this tragedy makes news all over the world, and it catches the attention of a woman named Hedy Lamarr. We may need a minute to back up and explain who Hedy Lamarr was. I understand she has an interesting backstory that starts in Vienna, Austria.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

497.662

Wow. So she's now working in Hollywood. She's widely seen as a star and sometimes described as the most beautiful woman in the world. But because of her backstory, she also wants to help defeat Nazi Germany. She hears about the sinking of the SS city of Benares, and she talks about it with her friend, George Antheil. Was George Antheil also an entertainer, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

556.849

Legend has it that Hedy and George were sitting at the piano one day when they got an idea that would appear to be well outside their area of expertise. How to keep the Nazi U-boats from jamming Allied radio signals and sinking their ships.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

62.653

A few years later, two bicycle mechanics in Ohio realized what was wrong with Otto's glider. It required the pilot to move his body to change the center of gravity of the machine. This system gave the pilot limited balance and control. It would be like trying to maneuver a bicycle only by leaning to one side or another.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

643.266

And how would this work? So you have these two musicians now who are now playing the same song. And because they know they're playing the same song, even though they're in different keys, they can stay in sync with one another. How would this work with torpedoes and communications between allied ships?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

738.447

So in other words, instead of transmitting just on one frequency, if I keep changing my frequency as I'm sending my message, but you know the order in which I'm going to be changing frequencies, you can keep up, the message comes through, but someone trying to jam any one frequency is not going to have any success jamming my message.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

768.041

Now, it's worth pointing out, of course, that George Antile was the son of German immigrants, as you said, and Hedy Lamarr was from Austria. When they go to the U.S. Navy to say, we've come up with a way to fight Nazi U-boats, what happens, Sheena?

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

798.758

So Hedy Lamarr's invention is not used during the Second World War. But I understand that 20 years later, the military sort of wisens up.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

824.195

Hedy Lamarr died in 2000. She was 85 years old. Along with George Antheil, she was inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Solutions to complex problems sometimes come out of nowhere. Who would think two people playing a piano have anything useful to say about halting Nazi submarines? When we come back, the science and the psychology behind lightbulb moments.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

854.86

You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

87.501

Orville and Wilbur Wright knew a great deal about balance and control from their work on bicycles. While idly twisting a cardboard box one day, the brothers realized they could warp the shape of a fixed wing through a set of wires. In effect, they could provide a pilot with a handlebar. Tetz confirmed that this system provided significantly more control than Otto's glider.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

886.122

When we think of aha moments, we tend to think of them as miracles. Isaac Newton watched an apple fall from a tree, and bam, he came up with a theory of gravity. The Greek mathematician Archimedes lowered himself into a relaxing bath and came up with insights about density and buoyancy.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

905.578

He is said to have jumped out of the bath and run naked through the streets, exclaiming, Eureka, or I have found it. At Columbia University Business School, psychologist Sheena Iyengar has studied the steps that lead to lightbulb moments. Sheena, I want you to walk us through some of the components that you say are behind big ideas, and I want to use an iconic example.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

928.032

Many of us today marvel at the Statue of Liberty. We think it's meaningful, that it represents a powerful vision of the United States of America. We think of it as being a beacon of hope and freedom. But the story of the Statue of Liberty actually starts in a small town in France in the middle of the 19th century.

Hidden Brain

How to Be More Creative

945.82

A young man named Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi seems to have had artistic talent, so his mom moves the family to Paris to give him more opportunities. Can you tell me Frédéric Bartholdi's story?

Hidden Brain

Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much

170.151

Many problems we face are easy to solve.

Hidden Brain

Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much

2221.57

This is Hidden Brain.

Hidden Brain

Wellness 2.0: When It's All Too Much

3021.143

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Hidden Brain

Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity

1117.919

Most people love a little child. Some grownups, though, are bad. The bad ones look like good ones, like any mom or dad. So that is why you must not talk to strangers that you meet. Don't let them give you any toys or anything to eat. If someone that you do not know should offer you a treat, remember how he looks and talks, but run fast up the street.

Hidden Brain

When To Pivot

18.338

The supermarket shelves throughout America will have the new Coke by Memorial Day weekend, summer's kickoff, and the soft drink season.

Hidden Brain

When To Pivot

2020.757

Mr. Buckley, there's no reason on earth for you to feel personally persecuted. We may be the only phone company in town, but we sock it to everybody.

Hidden Brain

When To Pivot

29.304

Rounder, yet bolder. It's a more harmonious flavor. You're a pretty good copywriter.

Hidden Brain

When To Pivot

54.139

Dear Chief Dodo, what ignoramus decided to change the formula of Coke? The new formula is unexciting and it's as bad as Pepsi. Burn it.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

How Not to Die in 2025

61.991

Brian Johnson is a multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur and probably the world's most famous biohacker.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

How Not to Die in 2025

83.171

Often called a vampire for doing the first multi-generational plasma transfusion with his father and son, he spends $2 million a year attempting to reverse the aging process.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The UK Grooming Gangs and the Cowardice of the West

33.531

Well, the UK's rape grooming scandal, let's call it a rape scandal, not really about even grooming, it's just about people raping young, often underage girls, is a grotesque stain on Britain's standing as a world leader in morality and the rule of law.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The UK Grooming Gangs and the Cowardice of the West

58.428

One evening in 2006, a 12-year-old girl went into this police station. She reported that she had been molested in a local graveyard. The police officers here told her to sober up and come back later.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The UK Grooming Gangs and the Cowardice of the West

75.903

She was accosted by two further men who took her away in a car and raped her. They gave her money for a bus fare and dropped her in the streets in this town in Greater Manchester. She was picked up...

Honestly with Bari Weiss

Can America Win the AI War with China?

16.653

Yeah, John, we've got a bit of a tech sell-off this morning, and it's being caused by earth-shattering developments in the AI space. So let's take a look at this. Did you see the Dow? Down more than 140 points. On track for one of its worst days in the past two years. And here's why.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

Can America Win the AI War with China?

43.831

Let's talk about DeepSeek because it is mind-blowing and it is shaking this entire industry to its core.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

Can America Win the AI War with China?

57.88

Buzz started growing about DeepSeek's latest AI model being more efficient while running on a lot less, a lot less advanced NVIDIA chips. Released last week, it's already being called what is a major breakthrough, as the app shows. It's work, it's reasoning.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

Can America Win the AI War with China?

72.79

I mean, this tech route and massive market sell-off, it's a wake-up call. It is for me.

How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett

LIVE Approaches: Hear Me Chat Up Cuties IRL—Listen NOW to Get Numbers and Dates Tonight! (Part 4)

5351.45

Okay, so I give her a hug goodbye here.

How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett

Introducing ‘It’s Rom-Complicated!’ How to Find Love by Watching Rom-Com Movies (Seriously!) Episode 1: ‘Groundhog Day’

20.729

Whose living life won. Like there's no tomorrow. Don't drive angry. Because there isn't. I am an immortal. I have been stabbed, shot, frozen, electrocuted. You're a god. I'm a god. I'm not the god. Groundhog Day. Rated PG. At theaters Friday.

IHIP News

How Far Will MAGA Bend For Orange Skinned Old Man?

13.166

Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies.

IHIP News

How Far Will MAGA Bend For Orange Skinned Old Man?

20.088

This executive order would establish important oversight functions in the Office of Management and Budget and its subsidiary office, OIRA, supervising independent agencies and many of their actions, and also reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.

IHIP News

MAGA Reps FACEPLANT at Town Halls

266.192

In Wisconsin, constituents showered two Republican congressmen with booze in two contentious town halls. Elon Musk's role in the Trump White House was a concern.

IHIP News

MAGA Reps FACEPLANT at Town Halls

313.496

Ukraine also a topic of discussion with Congressman Scott Fitzgerald disagreeing with President Trump's false claim that Ukraine started the war. No, Ukraine didn't start the war.

IHIP News

MAGA Reps FACEPLANT at Town Halls

333.553

Congressman Fitzgerald then pivoted to defending Trump.

IHIP News

MAGA Reps FACEPLANT at Town Halls

342.602

According to CNN affiliate WTMJ, no Trump supporters spoke up at Congressman Fitzgerald's town hall.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1161.168

Yeah.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1171.154

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

16.817

And I thought I ought to tell you in case I fell.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1737.991

Mm-hmm.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1774.39

Right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1887.931

Yeah, right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

1996.303

Yeah.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2000.095

Right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2001.877

Right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2013.011

Yeah.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2025.222

Yeah.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2062.699

Mm-hmm.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

226.724

That's right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2365.687

Mm-hmm.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2653.035

And I thought I ought to tell you in case I fell.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2701.872

And a windbreaker.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2704.615

Running in a windbreaker.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2712.468

She could.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2819.296

Right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

2831.901

You did. For the boys. You did.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

496.218

I've been to Italy already.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

675.941

Right.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

757.217

Mm-hmm.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

862.209

Mm-hmm.

IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson

The Lessons Our Mother Taught Us

925.918

Yeah.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 1

2051.943

Tammy was the type of wife that literally would put on lingerie and do her hair and makeup when she knew Josh was coming home.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 1

265.977

He lunged at her across the table. He was like a bull seeing red.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 1

273.444

The FBI has been sniffing around, was asking them questions, and very often when the FBI starts, sometimes a criminal inquiry will follow.

Infamous

A Bitcoin Mystery and the Crypto Bros

1441.767

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Infamous

A Bitcoin Mystery and the Crypto Bros

764.56

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 4

809.48

He was putting on the big show. I mean, this wasn't just low-key, I need to do this. This is low-key. This is, I am the Joe Joe. I am the most narcissistic piece of human crap you have ever met. And if you don't believe it, I'm going to prove it to you. He's playing tennis with the wrong boy.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3

5.13

This episode contains descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3

621.636

With longer daylight hours, you may be spending more time away from home and that can create opportunities for break-ins. In fact, FBI crime data shows that burglaries are more likely to happen during the day than at night. SimpliSafe is the new standard in home security, offering proactive protection that helps stop threats before they happen.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3

640.768

Traditional systems usually only react once a break-in is already in progress, but SimpliSafe's ActiveGuard outdoor protection helps prevent intrusions from the start. AI-powered cameras backed by live professional monitoring agents can detect suspicious activity. The system lets agents intervene in real time.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3

659.475

Monitoring plans start at about a dollar a day, and there's a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. Visit simplisafe.com slash infamous podcast to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com slash infamous podcast. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

170.158

Are you serious right now?

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

830.11

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

835.993

She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

847.349

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

863.836

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

877.096

Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, wherever you get your podcasts.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 3

932.018

I put all of my energy into business because that's the one thing I was good at.

Infamous

From Conned to Cupid I Part 2

563.484

She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.

Infamous

Murder at Lululemon | Part 4

114.666

You want to say it was their executive VP of HR actually came by today?

Infamous

Murder at Lululemon | Part 4

763.146

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

1.212

Cold weather means more time indoors for both me and my cats. But the last thing I want is my cozy space ruined by litter box odors. Pretty Litter's advanced odor control keeps my apartment fresh, even when the windows stay shut. My old litter left a lingering smell no matter how often I cleaned it. But Pretty Litter traps odor, lasts longer, plus it ships right to my door.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

24.017

So no dragging heavy litter around on the subway. And Pretty Litter gives me peace of mind. It changes color to warn me about potential health issues in my cats, like UTIs or kidney problems, so I can catch them early. Indoor cats and indoor humans agree. Pretty Litter helps my apartment smell fresh and clean.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

288.595

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

307.627

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

328.979

What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

42.091

Go to prettylitter.com slash infamous to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. That's prettylitter.com slash infamous to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. prettylitter.com slash infamous. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. Hey, Infamous listeners. This is episode four of our series on Dubai's missing princesses.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4

72.578

If you haven't listened to the first three episodes, you can scroll down in your feed and listen to those now.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1

1000.571

Don't let them decide what you can see.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1

973.327

They don't think you should see this. Banned from television. Decide what you can see.

Infamous

Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 1

986.741

See rampaging animals and the carnage they leave in their wake.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

133.201

She turned a childhood passion into a profession when she went on to represent her country at the Olympics in Australia in 2000.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

1408.86

next time on infamous princess haya bint al-hussein the wife of the ruler of dubai has fled the united arab emirates the ruler of dubai sheikh muhammad al-matum has been found by the high court to have illegally hacked the mobile phones of those opposing him there is five policemen outside and two police women i can't even go outside to get any fresh air it showed that the uae had lied to the world

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

319.994

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

339.026

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

36.431

Hey, infamous listeners. This is episode three of our series on Dubai's missing princesses. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes, please pause this episode and scroll back in your feed so you can get all caught up.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

360.376

What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3

518.595

This private family matter has caused significant upset and distress for all concerned, most of all Sheikha Latifa. She and her family are looking forward to celebrating her birthday today, in privacy and peace, and to building a happy and stable future for her.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2

1225.349

The whole plan was for Hervé to help her escape. And once he got her out, the daughter was going to get to the dad and say, I want $3 million or else I'll tell all to the media. It was a con. It was a corrupt scheme gone haywire.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2

145.054

Avail was the best way to go around Dubai without being questioned or even addressed by another person.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2

405.37

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2

424.382

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2

445.749

What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1

103.186

Giant islands the shape of palms that could be seen from space. The world's tallest skyscraper, a modern day Tower of Babel.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1

156.599

Sheikh Mohammed, whatever the Sheikh wants gets done, and fast.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1

538.936

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1

557.948

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

Infamous

Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1

579.321

What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Infamous

What If Joey Buttafuoco Was Your Dad?

1136.248

Amy Fisher coming face to face with her victim. Amy Fisher?

Infamous

What If Joey Buttafuoco Was Your Dad?

324.258

Would you ride through the storm? Will you walk on a wire? Will you save me if I fall? Will you break through the madness? Set us down where we're safe? I'll be right here waiting till you find me again.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

1187.264

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

1206.276

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

1227.642

What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

1312.412

This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

1675.963

Bye. This is Infamous from Campside Media.

Infamous

Who Sold Pam, Paris and Kim's Sex Tapes?

820.325

Now they don't even have Ricks.

Insights Unlocked

How smart content drives better customer experiences

1311.5

Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes at usertesting.com slash podcast. If you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Insights Unlocked

How smart content drives better customer experiences

1333.72

And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.

Insights Unlocked

How smart content drives better customer experiences

36.155

Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.

It's Been a Minute

Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist

1.004

When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging, and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from NPR.

It's Been a Minute

Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist

597.199

Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out? Well, don't sweat it. The NPR Politics Podcast makes politics a breeze. Every episode will break down the day's headlines into totally normal language and make sure that you walk away understanding what the day's news might mean for you.

It's Been a Minute

Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist

614.567

Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Been a Minute

The Met Gala: the indisputable best & worst looks of the night

0.129

Support for NPR and the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Moan, thanking the people who make public radio great every day, and also those who listen.

It's Been a Minute

The Met Gala: the indisputable best & worst looks of the night

1205.805

Support for NPR and the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Moan, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.

It's Been a Minute

The Met Gala: the indisputable best & worst looks of the night

652.436

Support for NPR and the following message come from Jarl and Pamela Moan, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.

KAREN: THE RETRIAL

AVAILABLE NOW: Luigi by Law&Crime

0.129

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Karen early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

KAREN: THE RETRIAL

AVAILABLE NOW: Luigi by Law&Crime

350.387

Follow Karen in the Wondery app. You can binge the entire series early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast

GTA 6 Developer Rockstar Acquires New Studio! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 03.03.25

1.896

Jeder Läufer kennt diesen Moment, wenn es einfach klickt. Wenn deine Beine einfach mitgehen, der Schmerz nachlässt, die Zweifel weg sind und du nur noch das Runners High spürst. Das ist der Grund, warum du so früh aufstehst. Warum dich ein bisschen Regen nicht aufhält. Warum Laufen zum Ritual wird. Also laufe und fühle das Runners High.

Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast

GTA 6 Developer Rockstar Acquires New Studio! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 03.03.25

1504.354

It was a weird comparison.

LUIGI

COMING March 24: Law&Crime's LUIGI

12.644

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.

LUIGI

The Manhunt: 1

17.777

The following podcast explores an active investigation unfolding in real time. Luigi Mangione is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Last Podcast On The Left

Side Stories: Investigation Alien w/ George Knapp

1205.683

Fly from your grave.

Last Podcast On The Left

Side Stories: Investigation Alien w/ George Knapp

387.747

Live from Northland.

Last Podcast On The Left

Side Stories: Investigation Alien w/ George Knapp

515.067

It really was. It looks great.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 607: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part III - Bored to Death

2596.844

It's just the name. It's just the name.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 607: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part III - Bored to Death

6096.14

That's what this feels like.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 607: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part III - Bored to Death

9.15

That's when the cannibalism started.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2501.292

All right, my next story is by an author named Neon Minerva. Ooh. It's called Dreams of a Rotted Mind.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2516.524

Far away in a desolate, horrid, rotten land where almost nobody lives anymore, there lies a small man rotting on the ground, even his mind starting to rot. Don't you wonder what his dreams are like?

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2545.699

First dream. Six people sit in a waiting room. Pictures of teeth and eyes cover the walls. A nurse walks out and approaches a man. The wretch says you're weird. The man walks off, frustrated with this outcome. Several minutes pass before she comes out again and approaches a woman. The roach says you're stupid. She looks as though she's about to punch the poor nurse in the nose. She walks out.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2570.975

About an hour passes, and one man checks his watch. The nurse finally walks out again. The roach says you're a dead man. He feels all his teeth melting in his mouth and spits them out into the garbage can, nearly throwing up in the process. His eyes snap out of their sockets and blood sprays from them as if under high pressure.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2619.097

It was unlocked. Nothing could be seen in the room until she flipped the light switch. She saw things she never should have. Oh.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2626.903

Humanoid creatures were cutting into each other with knives. They had no blood, and they were easily cut through like clay.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2632.927

One had its head cut off and was still moving. Cool. She heard somebody call from the other room, and when she entered, another woman was trapped beneath a sticky, flesh-colored substance.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2643.954

That's exactly what she said.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2652.415

Help me! The woman cried, and her skin rolled down her face with her tears. A hand came out of the wall and ran through the woman's hair, pulling out clumps of coagulated blood. Become one! It said. The woman's head fell. The girl screamed and knew she had to get out. She will never forget what she saw that day.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2714.762

It's weird. Nobody I saw in the streets had any facial features apart from dents where their eyes should have been, which seemed to be colored in with black marker. Then I saw him, the odd one out among the crowd, a guy who still had his face intact. He motioned for me to walk into an alley.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2734.105

I don't know why, but I trusted him. I don't know why I trusted him, but I did. In the alley, two other people lay sleeping. I closed my eyes for just a second. And in that impossibly small bit of time, everything went horribly wrong. The man I trusted now had a radio for a head, playing a horrible, grating, static noise that nobody should ever be forced to hear. This is about the media!

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2752.822

The person on my right had only a large mouth on his face, constantly screaming in agony. Ouch! The person...

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2763.35

The person on my left had become a large, fleshy mass with a zipper down its front, trying to unzip itself with its spindly legs.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2780.666

Then the entire world fell apart. I don't even remember my name anymore. I don't remember who I am. I don't know where I am either. All I remember is that one day, the rotted man woke up. He started walking. A large green pyramid looming above him.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

2806.923

He walked and kept walking. Past all the remnants of a time where life existed, he just kept walking in his own personal nowhere.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

3197.008

I more imagine it like, Oh, yeah, that's Rex.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

600.419

This is an excerpt from the Clotted Book, being the scriptures and commandments for the Church of Letting Blood. Cool. The vein is the beginning. The vein is the end. The vein is all. This is our world. This is our world, of impure blood, scarred over from centuries flowing filth and disease, creating the prison systolic diastolic, making anatomy of sin. But there is only the vein.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

636.364

Both ends joined in incestuous Ouroboros. The vein suckles itself, mindless machinery, oblivious to its gullet-reared children.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

657.708

Make no mistake that we are filth-born. We have poisoned the stream from our first bubbling breath, choking it with our soiled selves. Would that we were fewer. That we had known what damage we were doing from the start. That we had known that this sickened meat creature was getting sicker still as our numbers grew. Would that we knew. Would that we cared. And beyond oblivion? Or redemption?

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

689.989

Absence or occupation? Which truly would be better? What is the threat of hell without a heaven?

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

703.893

It implies respite, however it may come. But none for us! But is this about blood? The vein has soiled us. It has raised us from the odorous chyme. And will return us there. For none remember the path. None remember death. We practice... or believe we practice it. Our vessels shudder and disgorge their contents. Our ventricles spasm and tangle the works.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

731.634

We think we would be lucky to die in sleep without pain. Our loved ones pray for this because it would be most convenient. They hold their vigil by our bedside, clutch our shaking hands, then, when the moment is gone, reassure themselves of the better place that they were so kind to lead us to. and in the casket or the flame, the dirt or the ash.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

757.173

Thus dying quietly, we are complicit in the deception. Death must come obscene and uncaring. It must shake foundations, ruin delusions. It must remind that life cannot be extended, that no favors are owed to grieving lovers, that bloodlines face extinction. Death will be dealt, and it must be dealt harshly. For in so dealing, the vein is dealt a slice in its cancerous carapace.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

787.211

Septic blood is spilled into the unknown void, hastily disgorging the infidel, the blasphemous soul who wore his wounds with pride, shook his exposed crimson bones and torn scraps of sinews to the outraged carrion flock. Then, serum speckled and silent, they cannot deny there is meaningful death. Then they will know that the Severance is at work beyond these cloying walls.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

814.58

Its Nephilim speak volumes in the quiet behind their masks. They were totems of our degradation, not to mock us for our fantasy, but to defy the patronage of our heaping host. They claim nothing. Not the favor of higher power, nor the enlightenment of heretics. The processes of anatomy are awake in the world even when the body is greatly reduced. The severance is inevitable.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

860.872

We serve the silver knives and the black gallops, the blades and claws and eyes of the severers. The unbelievers follow the flow of their filth, and thus we must damn the flow, push its path to them. Judasine, your task is this. Go to the vessels. Speak as they do. Deal as they do. Follow their paths until you surge to the front of the flock.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

887.589

Lead them to the blades, that you may know the severance as they will. "'Aeronite, your task is this. "'Caution the vessels. "'They will be young, with spite in their longing hearts. "'Tell them something of what lies ahead. "'Couch it in the fears their betters have known. "'Yours is a necessary task, "'and the Severance may choose to grant you reprieve from your suffering of age.

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 613: Creepypasta XXI - The Severance

910.891

"'Ensure that the tide flows true from now to the crumbling. "'The greater the pain of the vessels,' The wider the stain their blood shall reach on those who remain in the foundering vein. Let the blood spill the filth. Sever the flesh.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

0.45

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1013.175

It was just entertainment before, but now he's living it. Art feels nauseous as he begs John for more details. Anything. He didn't know his heart could beat so fast for so long. The police and community leave no stone unturned, and yet they find no trace of Nicole. Her parents decide to take a new tact. When Nicole is three days gone, they hold a press conference outside the police station.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1042.136

Jeanette stands at the podium, reading a prepared statement for the assembled press. Art stands off to the side, watching her closely as she leans into the microphone, her voice low and trembling. She asks Nicole to be returned. To come home. There's a quiver in her voice. Pens scribble. Cameras click. Art watches the way she looks out over the crowd. Not at it, but over it.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1069.751

Like she's speaking into a fog. Slight tightness around her eyes. Just enough to read as sorrow. As fatigue. As maternal grief. But curiously, Art sees something else. A performance. The way her shoulders lift on cue with the breath. The way she pauses perfectly between sentences. He wants to believe it's real, wants to believe that she's doing this because she's desperate.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1097.224

But that nagging feeling that something is off, it hasn't left him. In fact, it's only gotten louder. Art thinks about the polygraph tests, the ones that they had to take earlier. Of course, he complied happily, if that's the right word. He passed, but so did Jeanette. He never knew her to be an actor, but he's beginning to see her differently now. Jeanette's statement is short.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

11.826

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1123.995

The officers thank the press. Jeanette steps away from the mic, and Art knows what he needs to do next. He needs to take matters into his own hands. The police aren't moving quick enough. They aren't turning up any leads. He's frustrated and he needs to try something different. He's been spending more and more time in the apartment. And suddenly, it just makes sense. He'll move back in.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1151.519

But he's not falling in love again. No, he's motivated by a need to be close. Not just in case Nicole comes back, but to keep an eye on Jeanette. Her behavior. Her movements. He needs to know if she knows more than she's saying. And so, he asks. Jeanette consents. And soon, Arndt is moving his belongings into the high-rise, 20 floors up the very elevator where his daughter was last seen.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1181.806

The apartment still smells like Nicole. Sunscreen, bubblegum, the sweet scent of her shampoo. It lingers like a ghost. From the outside, maybe this looks like reconciliation to some. A divorced couple reunited. A united front. Especially for the reporters who keep coming and going. There are so many articles and somehow still never enough.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1207.666

Art and Jeanette play the part, a fractured family trying to hold together. But behind the door of their apartment, it's something else entirely. Quiet, frozen, tense. Every word carries weight, every silence a test. The distance between them has grown into something vast, and even this, even Nicole, can't bridge it.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1231.875

They make coffee without speaking, eat in silence, take turns sleeping on the couch. At night, Art stares up at the ceiling and tries not to relive every moment of that morning. They aren't a couple anymore. They're two people bound by something unspeakable. One afternoon, the police call him down to the station to chat. They want to ask Art about his church.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1259.445

His relationship with the congregation has been rocky since the divorce. Is it possible that someone from the church has taken Nicole to rescue her from what they thought was a broken home? He doesn't think so, but then again, who could rule it out? Everyone feels like a suspect. Time marches on, but the tips keep coming.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1281.666

Someone reports that they had seen a strange woman in the hallway the day Nicole disappeared. The 20th floor, thin, white, early 30s, holding a notepad like it meant something. No one knew who she was. No one had seen her before. No one has ever seen her again. But in a building so big, she could have been anyone. Someone visiting, someone passing through. How suspicious is she, really?

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1309.446

It's hard not to point fingers. Hard not to see shadows everywhere. November 2nd. Near Etobicoke Creek, close to the airport. A plastic bag. Inside, a newspaper with Nicole's face, a black jacket, and a pair of pants. The police call Jeanette and Art down to the station. They stand side by side, filled with that unbearable mix. Dread and anticipation. Hope and grief. But they recognize none of it.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1343.887

Nothing on the table belongs to Nicole. Again, each time, the same cycle, a flicker of hope and a quiet collapse. Inside the apartment, the rift between Jeanette and Art continues to widen, something stark, something beyond repair. They watch each other with tired eyes, with suspicion, with grief, with the heavy weight of everything unsaid.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1370.279

And all the while, that note lingers in the air like static. Art wants to believe, in some twisted way, that Nicole disappeared herself. That Nicole vanished on her own volition. That she's really alive after all. He thinks about Jeanette's appeal in front of the cameras back in August. He thinks about her at home, wounded, helpless, primal. He thinks of her at that podium.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

139.023

That means on top of watching her own daughter, Jeanette is watching half a dozen other kids and infants. Jeanette tries to keep a tidy home, but during daycare hours, it transforms into a loud, sticky, chaotic place. Toddlers in the kitchen, babies on the floor. Someone is always crying, shrieking, or laughing.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1395.847

He plays it over and over in his mind, the memory warped by grief. What really does she know? In that moment, Art has no way of knowing that as suspicious as he is of Jeanette, she's equally suspicious of him. Since the moment Nicole disappeared, Jeanette's wondered if Art knows where Nicole is.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1417.893

And if that gut instinct, a mother's intuition, is the only reason she allowed him to move back in, she, as it turns out, wants to keep a closer eye on him. The years start to stack up like unopened letters. Jeanette marks them quietly on anniversaries, on the birthdays Nicole never had. Other names start to surface.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1450.2

Girls from nearby towns, from across the country, all about the same age, and Jeanette reads about all of them. She clips their photos from the paper. They all ended the same way. Found, but never alive. And so, Jeanette thinks maybe it's a mercy that Nicole hasn't been found. Maybe, in a way, this could be a positive thing. She keeps Nicole's bedroom exactly the same.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1477.198

Every morning, she dusts the dresser, tidies the sheets, places Bluebell's old cage on the windowsill where the sun hits it just right. In March of 1986, the police disband the task force. The trail is cold, and they can't keep allocating so many resources. They had spent almost $2 million that first year, but for what? Not even peace of mind.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1503.198

Jeanette and Art are still living together in the apartment. She's not sure if it was the right decision after all. Nicole's disappearance has changed Art. When Jeanette looks at him now, she sees a man possessed by the specter of loss, driven mad. When she closes her eyes, she can remember him as he was all those years ago. A quiet, steady, hardworking man. The man she once fell in love with.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

1529.508

But that man has vanished too. She looks at herself in the mirror and clocks the toll that this has all taken on her. She sees a woman looking back at her with dark, hollowed eyes and creases unrecognizable. A flicker of recognition, perhaps, but she feels like grief has taken hold of and made a shapeshifter out of her. She dreams of Nicole more often now, not always as a child.

Late Nights with Nexpo

I'm Going to Disappear

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Sometimes she's older, a teenager, grown up, changed by time. Jeanette begins to wonder, what if Nicole really did run away? That handwritten message in her notebook, it still haunts her. I'm going to disappear. She wanted to think that it was nothing, but maybe it was something all along.

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It's the summer of 1987 now, and Jeanette is alone in Art's office, thumbing through paperwork, searching for something trivial. A phone number, a memo, newspaper clippings. And that's when a familiar word catches her eye. Her own name. Curious, she lifts the folder, heart tightening, and then she sees it all.

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Surveillance details, personal histories, private notes about places she's been, conversations she's had, her entire life dissected. Aren't tired a private investigator, and he's been spying on her this entire time. Her ears ring in the silence. She was never supposed to find this out. Jeanette crumbles. She confronts him. How in the world could he do this to her? She calls him paranoid.

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Jeanette can't help but shoot a glance at the clock on the wall, just to see how much time is left until lunchtime. Her heart sinks when she realizes that it's not even 11am yet. Needless to say, this is going to be a brutal day. As the baby she's holding takes its bottle, Jeanette pauses near a window.

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A man consumed. He defends himself. He's resentful. Who wouldn't be? He'll never understand how Jeanette could have given Nicole free reign to use the elevator at such a young age. Why did she just let their daughter walk out the door? Of course he was going to find his answers in the absence of Jeanette's. Jeanette can't live like this. She's suddenly aware of his watchful, almost hateful eyes.

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What had struck her as paranoia now has an entirely different quality to it. This man is suspicious of her. He always has been, and she's only just now realized it. No longer can she take it. What was once their home suddenly feels like a prison. And so she does something that would have been unthinkable for so many years.

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She moves out of the apartment and leaves the last trace of Nicole behind her. The year after Jeanette moves out, an American drifter claims that he kidnapped Nicole. This, however, appears to be a false confession. Police chase down other leads, other known child predators, but nothing turns up. Around this time, Jeannette quietly visits a psychic. The woman is warm, strange.

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She says Nicole's alive, on a farm in Calgary with a new name, a new life. Jeannette cries, heaving sobs. It's a release. She looks at the map the woman has drawn for her. Eight towns where Nicole could be alive. Jeanette feels something reignite inside her. She needs to go find her daughter. But when Jeanette tells Art about her plan, he laughs it all off bitterly.

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Of course, she's crushed by this response. She knows that they both have their own ways of finding answers. This was hers, a desperate attempt at a non-conventional route. It's unclear whether Jeanette ever visited the eight towns or not, but the case to this day stays open. It lingers throughout the decades, collecting dust and dead ends.

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Then in 2004, a child advocacy group gets its hands on some new technology, facial recognition. They run it against images taken from a notorious pedophile ring, and one result comes back. It's a girl who looks like Nicole. But even still, it's unclear how seriously this tip was taken or looked into. The Canadian police, to this day, haven't commented. In 2014, a woman calls in a tip.

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She had just seen a reenactment video on TV, and it triggered something. A memory, a scream in the woods, all those years ago. A girl's voice pleading on the day Nicole went missing, begging not to be hurt. The woman claims that her mother had heard it too. They had called the police, of course, yet it's unclear if the area was searched. Always in the background, the question hangs over Jeanette.

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What if Nicole left on purpose? What if someone helped her? What if she's still out there, living a different life, a different person? Could this be the reason that not a single shred of evidence was ever found? In the case of Nicole Moran, there's no body, no belongings, no witnesses, no struggle, no goodbye. And that's what haunts people the most about it to this day.

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From here, on the 20th floor of her building, she has an incredible view of the Toronto skyline. Then, a tiny tug comes at her pant leg. It's time to get back to work. Jeanette turns, expecting to find one of the daycare kids waiting there. But it's actually her kid, 8-year-old Nicole Moran. She's dressed for the pool in her bathing suit and wants to know where the sunscreen is.

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The complete unknown of all of it. She told her friend that she was on her way, zipped up her swim bag and walked out of the door. And then nothing, not a sound, not a trace, just the hush of an elevator ride that no one ever saw end. Nicole Moran's case ended up being one of the most extensive investigations in Toronto's history. 25,000 hours chasing leads, 5,000 people questioned.

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Jeanette and Art never found their way back to each other, and they never found Nicole. Jeanette spent her final days in a quiet resolve, exhausted from years of searching, before passing away in 2007. Since then, Art has kept the investigation alive and remains determined to find his daughter. Nicole Moran was just 8 years old when she vanished.

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If she's still alive, she'd be in her 40s now, and maybe, just maybe, she's still out there. Depending on who you ask, Nicole's story is a tragedy, a mystery, or perhaps even a miracle still waiting to happen. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Winters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

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This episode was written by Robin Miniter. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Ocasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

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Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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Jeanette tells her, and Nicole bounds off to fetch it. Jeanette's glad that her daughter has her own plans today. They'll be out of each other's hair. She's going swimming with a friend at their apartment building's outdoor pool, just a few floors down and across the courtyard. No need for a chaperone. The building might be enormous, but it's still a community. Neighbors know each other.

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They nod in the halls. They gossip. They walk each other's dogs. And Jeanette takes comfort in all of that. And Nicole. She's sweet, but wary. Appropriately cautious. Jeanette takes comfort in this, too. Her daughter knows not to talk to strangers, not to get in any cars with anyone for any reason. A buzz rattles the intercom and interrupts her thoughts.

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Jeanette wipes her hands, hoists another child onto her hip, and presses the button. It's 11 o'clock on the dot now. Nicole's friend is right on time. Jeanette calls out and Nicole bounds out of her room, her bag packed and slung over her shoulder. Her eyes are lit up. She's excited. Jeanette leans in and tucks a piece of her brown hair behind her daughter's ear. A grin.

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And just like that, Nicole's out the apartment door and running off down the hallway towards the bank of elevators. Jeanette stops the apartment door with her foot before it shuts all the way. There from the doorway, she watches as Nicole presses the button, then turns back to give her mom that smile she always gives.

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Although Jeanette wonders if there might be a twinge of sadness in her daughter's smile this time. She knows her daughter's life has been a roller coaster these past few years. Since separating from her husband Art, she's been doing her best to hold things together. They really did try to make a good go of it. Art still lives nearby. He pays support, $50 a week like clockwork.

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You knew the day would come. And here it is. Your young daughter is finally tall enough to reach the elevator button in your high-rise condo building. You made a deal with her. When she was big enough to press the button herself, she could have a bit more independence. It terrifies you that she now has the ability to disappear into the world so easily. but you try to see it as a good thing.

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He shows up for the big and small things. Birthdays, dentist appointments, ice cream cones. But he and Jeanette still argue. Mostly about money, sometimes about Nicole. Other times, it's just for no reason at all. This weekend, the plan is to go to a nearby amusement park in attempted normalcy of acting like a family.

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That divorce thing isn't Nicole's fault, but sometimes they worry that she thinks it is. Jeanette can see Nicole's elevator is about to arrive, and so she removes her foot and lets the apartment door swing shut. She returns to the daycare chaos that awaits her, but something gnaws at the edge of her thoughts.

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She reminds herself, the building is safe, the neighbors are watching, Nicole knows better. And yet, somewhere deep in her chest, there's a flicker of unease. Then, just as quickly as it came, it's gone. Jeanette gets back to work. These worries will have to wait. She has a job to do, after all. But right now, somewhere in the building, something is happening.

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And by the time Jeanette realizes it, it'll be far, far too late. 11.15. Nicole's friend Jenny waits in the lobby, arms folded, eyes fixed on the elevator doors as they slide open, then closed again. Open. Closed. Still no Nicole. She's been looking forward to their plan all week. Summer days are long, too long sometimes.

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There's only so much sidewalk chalk and only so many cartoons a kid can take. Thank goodness for Nicole, not everyone gets a best friend like her. Someone who just gets it. The way adults never quite listen. How parents can argue. Ginny waits. The elevator keeps going up and down. She tries to be patient. Nicole's probably fixing her hair or deciding which towel to bring.

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Maybe she's trying to find her goggles. Who knows? Ginny buzzes Nicole's apartment again. Her mom Jeanette answers and states that Nicole isn't there, that she left for the lobby on an elevator about 15 minutes prior. She tells Jenny to go look for her outside. The call drops. Jenny stands there for a while longer, just in case. The elevator arrives and dings again. Opens. Closes. Still nothing.

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She grabs her towel and heads outside, wondering if Nicole has somehow already left. And perhaps she just missed her. just before 3 p.m. The daycare portion of Jeanette's day is almost over, and she's grateful for that. The parents will begin trickling in to pick their kids up anytime now. The sun is slipping lower, casting shadows that stretch across the concrete outside.

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She is cleaning up the living room, scooping up blocks, wiping spills, tossing crumbs into the trash. She glances at the clock with a flood of relief. It's time for pickup. Nicole's been out at the pool for a long time now. She must be having a great time with Ginny. As the kids begin to leave with their parents, the apartment grows quieter. Still no sign of Nicole.

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As the last few come and go, Jeanette asks the same thing. Could they keep an eye out for Nicole on their way out and tell her to head home? They all agree, but they turn up empty-handed. Nicole should have been back by now. Wouldn't she be hungry? It's way past lunchtime. Jeanette makes a phone call to Jenny's parents, and her mom answers.

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She tells Jeanette that Nicole never came down, that her daughter has hurt feelings. Jenny's mother wonders out loud if something is wrong. Jeanette can barely bring herself to answer, and before long, it finally dawns on her. Something indeed seems very, very wrong. Jeanette opens Nicole's bedroom door, and it's exactly the same as it was that morning. Her toys are a mess. Bed made.

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It's a chance for her to experience a little bit of freedom. So when she asks if she can go down to your building's pool with her friends, you tell her to run along. You watch from the doorway of your apartment as she skips down the hallway carrying her towel and gets on her tiptoes to press the button. You consider calling out to her one last time to tell her to be careful.

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Her dresser just slightly ajar. Her beloved rat Bluebell is asleep in the wood shavings. Jeanette scans the room. Nicole's towel is still gone. Her bag too. She's not in the apartment. She's not at the pool. She's not with her friend. And just like that, the questions begin to form. By 6 p.m., the white hot sun outside has mellowed into gold.

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Jeanette knows that she should be cooking dinner and winding down with her daughter, but instead, she's at a loss of what else to do except to alert the police. Once that's taken care of, there's one last call to make. Her ex, Art. She tries not to talk to Art unless she has to. There's just too much fighting. It's amazing that they stayed married for as long as they did. She bites her lip.

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Despite it all, she knows that they need to be a team right now. She needs him. She dials and he picks up. She asks him flat out if he has Nicole. There's a pause. Her hand tightens around the receiver. She wants to scream, wants to accuse him of something, of taking her, of making a point, of being selfish and manipulative amidst the court battle. But his voice is steady, quiet even.

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No, he hasn't seen her. And just like that, something cracks open inside of Jeanette. But the panic doesn't come as a rush. It comes on like a hum. A low vibration in her chest. Her heartbeat seems to slow. The heat. The edges of the room blur. She realizes how long it's been. How many hours Nicole's been gone. And right now, the police and Art are all on their way.

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After 25 years on the force, Staff Sergeant John Luby has seen it all, and that includes missing kid cases. Most of the time, they turn up, out too late, lost track of time, maybe hiding to avoid a lecture, but they come home usually. The call from the superintendent's wife comes in just after 6 p.m. It's about a girl, eight years old.

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She lives with her mother on the top floor of a sprawling high-rise. She's been gone since late morning. She headed off to the elevator and that was that. Sergeant Looby arrives at Jeanette's building to scope out the scene. Maybe this girl's just playing a game, he figures. Maybe she got in a fight with her mom. Any way you shake it, this place has far too many places to hide.

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Basements and back hallways, elevator shafts and drains, garbage chutes and trash compactors. But Looby catches his mind wandering too far down that road and shudders. The missing girl's mother, Jeanette, meets him at the door. She's trying to stay calm, doing that thing parents do even though they're already halfway underwater. He studies her quickly. She's wringing her hands.

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Art, the girl's father, is there too. Luby scans his face, looks at his arms for scratch marks. He clocks their body language. They don't quite look like a couple, but they stand close. Jeanette and Art take him into Nicole's bedroom, and there's nothing out of place. A white canopy bed. A porky pig lamp. Her favorite stuffed teddy bear on her pillow. Normal kid stuff.

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Above the headboard, a small embroidered square hangs. Four angels around my bed. Two at the foot, two at the head. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Bless this bed that I lie on. He gives her parents the promise that he always does. That he'll start from square one. He'll search the apartment, the building, every inch. To prove it, he gets down on his knees and looks under the bed. Nothing. Nothing.

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But instead, you hold your tongue, reminding yourself that she's not even leaving the property. It's only an elevator ride. What could possibly go wrong? July 30th, 1985. The heat clings to everything. It presses into the corners of Jeanette Moran's top floor apartment like an unwanted guest. Her in-home daycare is busy today, busier than she's been in weeks. School's out and parents are working.

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More officers arrive and John splits the team up. Some will stay here with Jeanette and try to get a better sense of Nicole's mourning. The others will canvas the building, every floor, every stairwell. Inside, there are 429 units and they'll knock on every last door. On the seventh floor, the police meet a neighbor who tells them that she rode the elevator with Nicole that day. She's sure of it.

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She says that she saw Nicole get off in the lobby while she herself continued down to the basement. The Mounties are called in for perimeter coverage. A two-mile radius around the apartment building is sectioned off and searched with dogs and everything. John stays behind in the apartment to think. Nicole's been gone for over seven hours now. That's far too long.

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John doesn't say it out loud, but something in his gut twists. He hates these situations. He overhears the officers questioning Jeanette and Art now. Art is fumbling his words, explaining how hard it's been, how they've been trying to stitch things back together with his family. He and Jeanette aren't living together, but they've been trying to make things work.

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he answers questions the best he can he remembers that nicole had a dentist appointment coming up but she certainly wouldn't have run away over that he tells them how they had just gone to a local waterfront park the weekend before and that he thought that maybe she went there when jeanette first called him up to tell him that she was missing that was his first stop Then Art takes a breath.

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John and the officer sense him making a calculation, a hesitation, and then he comes out with it. A cryptic message in her school notebook, he tells them. They probably shouldn't have snooped, but they were worried about their daughter in the wake of the divorce. So one day they looked, and that is where they saw it. In her handwriting, Nicole had written four agonizing words.

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I'm going to disappear. The search for Nicole Moran has begun, and it's expanding rapidly. Diver teams are called in, helicopters, roadblocks are set up, volunteers print and hand out 6,000 posters. Art is watching it all unfold, a drama he never consented to. A nightmare he can't awake from. He's seen the police procedurals, of course. Watched them from the comfort of his own couch.

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Catherine is non-verbal, but Arthur doesn't need to hear her speak to know what's been happening. The staff, they've been beating her. Fury and guilt sweep through him. Fury at the monsters who would treat children this way, and guilt for actually believing that his daughter was being cared for. It's all Arthur can do to keep from marching up to Director Berman's office and doing the same to him.

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Across the state, special needs children are being neglected, mistreated even. Maybe it's the stigma. Maybe it's that families are reeling from the Great Depression and don't have the means to take care of disabled children. But the fact is, not enough people are stepping up to care for these kids.

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But he reminds himself that right now, what matters most is that he gets Catherine away from here. And so Arthur carries Catherine out of Willowbrook and brings her home. Enraged over what he witnessed, Arthur raises a fuss, and the governor orders an investigation. But it's clear from the start that the investigation is a sham.

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State doctors claim that they can't find anything out of the ordinary at Willowbrook. Once they've had a chance to tidy up, Director Berman and other officials from the Department of Mental Hygiene invite reporters to come to Willowbrook to see for themselves, stating, Our school is as fine as any.

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Arthur knows this is a lie, and he expects the other parents of Willowbrook students to rally around him. But that support never comes, at least not publicly. A number of parents confide their suspicions to Arthur in private, but they never speak out. Arthur realizes, to his horror, that many Willowbrook parents are terrified of being blacklisted from the school, even if it's hell on earth.

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Without Willowbrook, there's simply nowhere else to send their special needs children. There are no other options on the table. And so, the investigation runs its course, but nothing really changes at Willowbrook. Director Berman keeps his job, Dr. Krugman continues his research, and Willowbrook's young patients continue to be exploited. 1964

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Dr. Krugman has published his research into a hepatitis vaccine, including his methods. The medical community is outraged when they realize that Dr. Krugman developed his research by sidestepping countless safeguards designed to prevent such abuses. This time, the public pressure is too much, and Director Berman steps down. He's replaced by another physician, Dr. Jack Hammond.

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But sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Director Hammond takes control of Willowbrook near the height of its overcrowding crisis, with roughly 6,000 patients crammed into the compound, far beyond its maximum stated capacity of 4,000. Patient care is beyond abysmal. Patients are constantly dying.

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Even from activities as benign as mealtime or overworked attendance, take three minutes with each patient, shoveling a mushy mixture of corn, bread, green vegetables, and milk into their mouths. Since the patients don't get solid food, their teeth fall out. Sometimes patients vomit the mush up or even start choking. Attendants don't always notice.

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And one year, nine patients die from choking alone. The women's wards are packed so tightly with beds that patients and staff have to climb over one to get to another. The only way patients can pass the time is to lie there, staring up at the flaking and crumbling walls, day after day after day. In the children's wards, things are even worse.

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In an attempt to correct this horrifying trend, the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene is tasked with building an institution capable of housing all of them. A suitable tract of land over 300 acres in size is found in the borough of Staten Island. But the local residents immediately revolt. They're convinced that a mental institution will flood their neighborhood with insane criminals.

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Kids are either being kept in cribs like caged animals, or they get strapped into wheelchairs. When the children's ward showers malfunction one night, two of them are burned to death in the scalding hot water. Nothing, however, is as bad as the men's ward where the threat of physical violence is ever present.

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There, it's all the attendants can do to keep the patients from hurting and even killing one another. And things only get worse in 1970 when a hiring freeze causes the number of employees to drop by 25%. By this point, it's clear that the school's conditions aren't improving under Director Hammond.

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And this is when a Willowbrook employee named Dr. Michael Wilkins decides to actually do something about this. After several years on the job, Dr. Wilkins has become disillusioned with his work at Willowbrook State School. The patients are being subjected to inhumane conditions every day, and no one else seems to care, least of all Director Hammond.

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Half of Wilkins' job is navigating a treacherous network of fellow employees, many of whom are involved in illicit activities. There's an active black market at Willowbrook, where certain attendants deal in drugs intended for the patients. They even resell items stolen from the patients. When different dealers run afoul of one another, it isn't unheard of for violent fights to break out.

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There are even reports of attendants raping and killing patients. So many victims are dying at Willowbrook, in fact, that Wilkins can't even guess what the annual total might be. It's certainly dozens, if not hundreds. One janitor in particular creeps Dr. Wilkins out. He's got a large, flat nose, big, dark eyes, deep creases in his cheeks, and a thousand-yard stare.

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Sometimes he lingers a little too long near some of the children, and Wilkins has to shoo him away. It seems like the only one who shares Wilkins' concerns about Willowbrook is a social worker named Elizabeth Lee. Together, they appeal directly to Director Hammond to find ways to improve conditions.

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When their concerns are ignored, they begin telling parents of the patients about the terrible conditions at Willowbrook and urging them to seek reform. When Director Hammond catches wind of this, he fires Wilkins and Lee immediately. But even still, they refuse to be silenced. Right away, Wilkins and Lee decide to go to the press. They believe the public must know what's happening at Willowbrook.

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Not the version through rose-colored glasses, but the reality. What's actually happening? Because it's not that the public isn't aware that things are bad inside Willowbrook. They are. But it's a fictionalized understanding. Willful ignorance, perhaps. To people on the outside, Willowbrook is something of an urban legend.

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Summer campers in Staten Island tell each other stories about Willowbrook around campfires. And the most famous legend is about Cropsey. a deranged Willowbrook patient who's said to escape at night and abduct children. Even the adults feed into these legends, telling their kids that if they don't behave, they'll be sent to Willowbrook.

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But Wilkins wants the public to understand the truth, the raw, unspeakable reality that happens inside Willowbrook's walls every single day. 1972 Geraldo Rivera is a 28-year-old reporter with the New York City ABC affiliate. His phone rings for the hundredth time that day, and he's surprised to hear the voice of Dr. Wilkins on the other end. Rivera and Wilkins have worked together before.

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Department of Mental Hygiene Commissioner Fred McCurdy is spearheading the initiative. The last thing he wants is for the project to get mired in local politics and lose momentum. And so, he tells a little white lie. To get construction underway, McCurdy assures the residents of Staten Island that this new mental institution will be a school, not an asylum.

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Years prior, Wilkins gave Rivera a scoop about Native American nurses being underpaid at a government hospital. But this time, Wilkins wants Rivera to do another expose on the unspeakable conditions at Willowbrook State School where he used to work. Rivera isn't sure his producer will think the story's worth running on the 6 p.m. news.

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After all, everyone in their state has heard the urban legends, but Wilkins keeps talking how most patients get hepatitis within six months, how there are 5,300 patients crammed into just a few buildings, how his ward is literally filled with children lying in their own feces. Wilkins' descriptions of Willowbrook certainly paint a picture in the mind, and suddenly, Geraldo Rivera is all ears.

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He meets Wilkins and Lee at a local diner, and there, they provide Rivera with specific details as well as something even more valuable, a key to Ward No. 6, which director Hammond forgot to confiscate when he fired them. Rivera wastes no time. He and his crew arrive at Willowbrook that same day, completely unannounced.

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What Wilkins told him about Willowbrook's staffing shortages are obviously true. Not one employee even tries to stop them from entering the grounds, cameras rolling and all. They approach the front door of ward number six without issue. Rivera instructs his crew to spread out once they get inside in order to capture as much footage as they can.

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Adrenaline coursing through him, Rivera delivers his opening monologue just outside the ward, nailing the delivery in one take.

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He warns viewers that they're about to see some of the most inhuman conditions possible.

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With that, Rivera unlocks the door. And despite all the preamble, he was in no way prepared for what was on the other side.

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The story plays that night on the 6 o'clock news.

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New Yorkers are outraged, and so is Dr. Hammond, but for an entirely different reason. He can't believe that two of his own employees broke ranks like this. Sure, the conditions are deplorable, but that's the state's fault, not his or any other employees. When reporters start calling, he declines to make any comment. Following this, he tries to save face, just like his predecessors taught him.

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Hammond wants to get the media on his side, and so a few days later, he gives a different news crew a guided tour and shows the kids well-dressed and well taken care of. But by this point, it's far too late. The cat is already out of the bag. Resultingly, parents organize and demand change at Willowbrook.

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While he'd previously told a New York Times reporter that there were only a few deaths at Willowbrook, Hammond is forced to admit that 129 people died at the institution in 1971 alone. And in the end, all of the chaos is too much for Dr. Hammond. He dies in 1973, obstinate to the end.

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It'll only house children, and they won't be a danger to anyone. Their community will not be negatively impacted, and rather, Staten Island's residents will be lauded for accepting these vulnerable children with open arms. This line ends up working, and construction begins.

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In 1975, new guidelines are laid out for the school and goals set for the gradual reduction in the number of patients. The public thinks that Willowbrook's darkest days are behind it. However, unfortunately, there is one final flurry of horror that's yet to play out. October 24th, 1978. An employee named Ethel Atwell arrives at the Willowbrook compound around 6 a.m.

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She parks her car in the shrouded parking lot and heads for the front door. But before she can make it, someone grabs her from behind. Inside the school, her fellow employees hear her scream, but the parking lot is far too dark to see anything. They call the police. However, Ethel is never seen again. That same year, the body of another employee, Shin Lee, is found on the grounds.

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Her murder goes unsolved. As the years go on, women and children continue to mysteriously disappear from the area. The Pied Piper of Staten Island, as the individual supposedly responsible comes to be known, evades capture year after year. Although the police suspect that they know exactly who it is.

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A man with a flat nose, dark eyes, and deep creases in his cheeks who camps on the outskirts of the Willowbrook grounds. This man's name is Andre Rand. Over the years, Rand has made quite the name for himself around Staten Island. He's been accused of sexual assault, stalking, and was caught trying to lure a group of kids away from a local YMCA.

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The police, however, have never been able to put him away for good. In 1987, Rand is seen walking near Willowbrook with Jennifer Schweiger, a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome. Shortly after, Schwager's body is found in a shallow grave on the grounds of Willowbrook, around where Rand was known to have a campsite. Police arrest him and charge him with kidnapping and murder.

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But as it turns out, Rand didn't just camp on Willenbrook's grounds. He worked there, too. He had been hired as a custodian and aide in 1966, and had been around the area ever since. Though never proven, it seems possible that at least some of the school's unexplained murders and disappearances were Rand's handiwork.

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And so, the legend of Cropsey turned out to be true, though it was an attendant, not a deranged patient, stalking local children. In truth, children were disappearing from Willowbrook going all the way back to 1949, yet we'll never know just how many ran away or were killed by monsters like Rand. Willowbrook was emptied out in 1987, the same year Jennifer Schweiger's body was found.

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Today, it's home to the College of Staten Island, a fitting end considering Willowbrook was always supposed to be a school. As for Dr. Saul Krugman, who infected countless Willowbrook patients with his experiments, he never faced legal consequences for his actions. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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The telephone rings, and a male voice is on the other end. Professional. Practiced. His voice is so measured, in fact, that it takes you a moment to realize the truth. This is a bad, bad phone call. The calm voice on the other end is actually giving you the worst news you've ever received in your life. Your little girl, the voice explains. is dead.

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Over the next few years, an imposing six-story red brick building rises up from the ground, looming high as the centerpiece of the eerie, sprawling compound. Finally, in the late 1940s, after the completed compound does a brief stint as a World War II military hospital, the so-called Willowbrook State School opens its doors to students.

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Dr. Krugman, as it turned out, went on to receive the prestigious Albert Lasker Public Service Award and became president of the American Pediatric Society. The terrible irony of Willowbrook State School is that it was built to protect the most vulnerable members of society. However, instead, its brick walls trapped them inside, subjecting them to new, unthinkable horrors.

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And while it's easy to point the finger at Willenbrook's administrators, staff, and researchers, we also have to acknowledge the indifference of those on the outside, who allowed the so-called school to carry out an unchecked reign of terror spanning over five decades. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

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Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Greg Castro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio.

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Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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But despite what it says on their sign, it's not a school at all. Very little education happens within its walls. Plus, Willowbrook isn't even exclusively for children, as McCurdy promised it would be. As it turned out, adult patients are quietly admitted to Willowbrook as well.

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McCurdy's uneasy about misleading the public, but the fact is, 20 adults with intellectual handicaps need somewhere to go, and so he accepts them into Willowbrook, telling himself that the adult patients can help the school by performing maintenance.

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After all, Willowbrook is short on staff, caring for the mentally disabled is demanding work, and McCurdy simply can't find qualified people willing to fill the needed roles. Word leaks out that Willowbrook is being loose with its age requirements, and within one year, the school's adult population has ballooned from 20 to 100.

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The child population is set to quintuple in size as well, as word about Willowbrook is spreading and families across the state are banging down their doors to get their kids enrolled. The school, which is already barely functioning from understaffing, is experiencing absolutely staggering growth and McCurdy quickly realizes that he's in over his head.

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he decides to hand Willowbrook off to someone more qualified. Someone who's able to give Willowbrook's patients the full-time attention they deserve. The job falls to Dr. Harold Berman, a respected physician who claims that he wants to help destigmatize mental illness and treat each patient as an individual. Berman says all the right things.

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However, transforming Willowbrook is easier said than done. And as it turns out, conditions do not improve when Berman takes over as director. In fact, this is when the children start to go missing. When director Berman first walks into Willowbrook, he finds patients crammed into wards and only a handful of aides scrambling to look after all of them.

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She passed away at her school and there was nothing the staff could do to save her. But what the voice doesn't tell you is that your daughter is not the first to die or disappear or be tortured within the walls of this school. In fact, this isn't even the first phone call like this he's made. And it certainly won't be the last. It's 1938 and New York has a problem.

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Right as they get one patient settled, another will undress and run down the ward, or start hurting themselves, or start hurting someone else. Berman attempts to secure more funding to help with the understaffing issue, but the money is slow to materialize. Change will not come to Willowbrook overnight, if ever. a quiet apathy starts to take hold of Director Berman.

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His dream of turning Willowbrook into a safe, effective care facility is already fading. He simply isn't being given the resources he needs. There isn't enough staff to look after all these kids, and it's only a matter of time before something terrible happens. And that day arrives in August of 1949. That month, an eight-year-old boy vanishes from the compound.

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Staff members scour every inch of Willowbrook's 300 acres, but the young patient is nowhere to be found. He's gone. And a few months later, in December, two more Willowbrook patients go missing. In less than a year, Director Berman has already placed more heartbreaking phone calls to patients' family members than he ever anticipated.

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He wishes there was something he could do to improve the conditions at Willowbrook State School, but with every passing day, the school becomes more impossible to manage. Hundreds of new students are flowing in each week, causing the staffing disparity to grow ever worse.

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Whether he's to blame or not, the fact is that Director Berman has checked out, and his Willowbrook State School has quietly become an extremely dangerous place to be a patient. And a new physician is about to arrive and make things even worse. There is one thing that keeps Dr. Saul Krugman awake at night. Hepatitis.

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Thankfully, Krugman doesn't have the disease himself, but he spent his entire career studying it. Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver often caused by a virus. It spreads in unsanitary conditions, such as the battlefields in World War II, where tens of thousands of soldiers contracted the often fatal disease.

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From his time as a flight surgeon in the war, Dr. Krugman knows that a cure is desperately needed, and so he begins to work on one. When Director Berman hears about Krugman's hepatitis research, he reaches out. Berman explains how hepatitis is running rampant at Willowbrook due to its unavoidable overcrowding and uncleanliness.

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Director Berman suggests that Willowbrook could provide a mutually beneficial situation. Krugman needs test subjects for human trials, and Willowbrook needs a cure. Intrigued, Krugman goes to the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board with the proposal and secures funding to begin his research at Willowbrook.

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But the research Dr. Krugman intends to perform is, to put it lightly, ethically questionable. He intends to actually infect the healthy patients with the disease, and he aims to do this by feeding them fecal matter. Director Berman surprisingly has no problem with this. If anything, he's excited about the optics of a prestigious medical professional performing research at their institution.

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But Dr. Krugman needs more than Director Berman's permission. He needs the children's families to agree to it, too. Director Berman helps by pushing consent forms on the parents, many of whom say yes because of the supposed quality attention and care that Krugman is offering. Parents fear that if they say no, their children will suffer untreated in a different ward.

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Soon, Dr. Krugman has all the human test subjects he could hope for, and Willowbrook is now his own personal laboratory. Dr. Krugman takes healthy patients from the wards and quarantines them. Then he mixes a concoction that is one part chocolate milk, one part infected feces from other patients. Following this, he monitors their infection.

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However, Krugman doesn't allow the children who beat hepatitis to return to their wards. Instead, he keeps them quarantined and reinfects them to see if they've retained any immunity. The children are completely unsuspecting. They all have various mental limitations. They see the world in different ways, understanding things to different degrees. They miss their families, their homes.

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They appreciate the extra attention Dr. Krugman gives them, but then their signs begin to hurt. They start to vomit, then cramp and soil themselves uncontrollably. They don't understand why they're in such pain. They don't understand why any of this is happening. It's a living nightmare for the parents as well.

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They aren't allowed to visit or even comfort their sick kids because of Krugman's strict quarantine orders. Once their consent forms have been signed, there's no going back. There's nothing they can do, nothing anyone can do. But in 1955, one parent decides to challenge that. His name is Arthur Devol, and he's worried about his young daughter, Catherine.

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He committed her to Willowbrook a few months prior, and he's now having trouble getting updates on her. He calls Willowbrook almost daily for any word about her. He gets different doctors every time. They give Arthur conflicting information. Catherine's fine. Catherine's sick. She's in quarantine. He can come see her next week. She's still in quarantine. He can't come see her.

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It's a complete mess and impossible for him to figure out what the hell is going on. A tight knot of worry and frustration starts to form in Arthur's stomach. A feeling that he's being lied to. That he's made a bad deal. That he's been conned into harming his own mentally disabled daughter. Arthur just can't shake the sense that he's somehow made a terrible mistake.

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At last, one day, he speaks with a staffer on the phone who lets it slip that Catherine is finally out of quarantine. And so, Arthur jumps on this chance and drives straight over to the Willowbrook State School campus. He parks in the shadow of the massive red brick building where his daughter is allegedly being kept. He takes a deep breath and barges in.

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Once inside, it's harder to locate his daughter than Arthur anticipated. It's room after room filled to the brim with patients, most of them naked. It makes Arthur think of the death camps he's heard about from the war. The patients exhibit a wide array of afflictions. Some present as neurotypical adults or children.

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while some are more obviously impaired and seem like they should be receiving special care. The more rambunctious patients are in straitjackets, struggling against them. Some bang their heads against the wall. Arthur cringes at the sight of a man scraping his skin against a concrete wall, blood and flesh peeling away with each blow. The aides do nothing to help him.

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In fact, they don't even notice. They're too busy dealing with patients who are fighting or having seizures on the floor. But despite all of this, what affects Arthur most is the smell. No matter which ward he pokes his head into, he's always hit with a wall of foul stench that he has no words to describe. But the stench's source is clear enough to see.

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Patients across Willowbrook are being left in their own urine and feces. And what's worse, these patients are sick. Their urine is brown, the feces chalky white. He has never seen anything like it. He gags. He wants to get out of this building so badly, but he pushes on. He must find his daughter. His eyes race across every face, trying to find Catherine. Until finally, there she is.

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At first, Arthur can barely recognize her. She's lying on the floor, most of her hair missing. She's shaking, covered in her own urine and feces. He picks her up and discovers two things. First, she's lighter than he expected. She's lost a shocking amount of weight. Second, he discovers that Catherine's body is covered in welts.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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Later that evening, around 5.30 p.m., three neighborhood boys make a gruesome discovery in Newburgh Heights. They're walking past a ravine behind the Republic Steel Yards when a horrifying sight stops them in their tracks. There's a body there, lying face up, wearing a yellow t-shirt and no shoes. It's Kurt Sova. His body is only 500 yards away from Susan's duplex.

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The kids run straight to the Newburgh Heights Police, a department so small that it has no forensic specialist and only one detective. They swarm to the scene. When the officers arrive, Kurt Sofa's body looks laid out, almost like he was crucified. But in spite of the dramatic pose, the body is not in poor shape. Apart from a few scratches, there's little evidence of physical violence.

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His right shoe is lying 10 feet away. The left shoe is nowhere to be found. There's no way the search party missed this ravine on Saturday. He must have been dropped here after death. The state of the body seems to confirm this. He's only been dead for 24 to 36 hours. This places the time of death sometime between Sunday and Monday. The police call the Sova family to give them the news.

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When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

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They think they've found Kurt's body. Someone will have to come to the coroner's office to identify him. And ultimately, it's Kenneth who makes the trip. They conduct the autopsy not long after. The medical examiner finds a bruise on Kurt's cheek and additional bruises on his shins. But aside from that, no visible injuries. He wasn't shot, stabbed, or injected with anything.

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And when they test his blood, they find that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.11. He had been drunk, but at no risk of alcohol poisoning. Other drug tests turn up negative. They cannot determine how he died, and his paperwork simply reads, probable accident. Dorothy Sova is baffled. How could the coroner not know how he died?

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He was a healthy 17-year-old boy with no previous medical conditions that would put him at risk. The investigation for her is merely beginning. There has to be something she's missing that'll shed light on the death of her son. What happened to Kurt between Friday and Tuesday? That gap of unaccounted for time would ultimately become the focus of Dorothy's investigation.

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Early on a Friday evening. A teenager named Sam Carroll waits on a curb for his friend to arrive. It's chilly already, the sun dipping below the horizon. He suppresses a shiver and tightens his jacket. At last, he spots his friend bounding across the pavement toward him, smiling broadly and concealing something in his coat. This is 17-year-old Kurt Sova, a small lanky kid with long brown hair.

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Meanwhile, only a few blocks from her home, a new clue drops into her lap. On Thursday morning, Judy Oros is opening up the record shop as usual. She's heard about Kurt's death, and it reminds her of the chilling encounter she had with the homeless man on Monday. How had he known that the Sova boy would turn up dead?

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As she's pulling out the keys to unlock her store's front door, one of the neighboring shopkeepers gets her attention. Someone's dropped off a delivery for her. It's a bouquet of flowers, and with it, a note. Judy opens it and reads, Roses are red, the sky is blue. They found him dead, and they'll find you, too. Weeks pass. Dorothy Soba's investigation is slowing to a crawl.

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She's gathered newspaper clippings, interview notes, maps and timelines describing her son's movements on Friday. She knows about the party. She's even heard about David Trusnick's sighting of Kurt that Monday. But none of it fits into a cohesive whole. There's still far too much missing information. And the police aren't holding up their end of the case either.

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At the record shop, Judy Oros had called the cops after receiving the threatening note, seemingly connected to Kurt's disappearance. The police had listened to her story, even taking the homeless man in for questioning. But ultimately, they wind up releasing him, dismissing him as just a crazy, harmless transient. When Dorothy hears this whole story, her frustration only increases.

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There's no coordination on the police side. They're treating her son's death as an accident that doesn't need investigation. With no new info coming to light, time rolls by slowly. Kurt's absence in the Sova household is a painful daily reminder. Then in December, a curious name pops up in the local headlines. A young man named Craig H. Franco is shot dead at a gas station in Cleveland.

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His employers offer a $10,000 reward for any information as to the perpetrator, but no one comes forward, and the killer is never found. The man's name, Franco, leads some to believe that he could have been driving the unmarked van Kurt got into the Monday after his disappearance. But there's no way to prove this. There are no apparent connections between Craig H. Franco and Kurt Sova.

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In February, another local news story catches the Sova's attention. One of their neighbor's kids, 13-year-old Eugene Kvet, has been found in a ravine across town. The similarities with Kurt's case are undeniable. Eugene, a teenage boy from the same neighborhood, had left for school, then somehow wound up dead at the bottom of a ravine. And much like Kurt, he was missing a shoe.

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However, in this case, the coroner doesn't hesitate to declare the death an accident. Eugene, it's determined, fell into the ravine and drowned in the stream. Police seem confident that there's no connection between Eugene and Kern's deaths. Any similarities are merely a coincidence.

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Dorothy accepts their explanation, and yet a small part of her has to wonder whether some other boy from the neighborhood will be next. Almost a year later, more shocking news arrives for Dorothy, this time from her husband. Kenneth arrives home after a walk, looking like he's seen a ghost. He frantically explains to Dorothy how just now, a woman named Angeline Reddix stopped him on the street.

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She apologized for not coming to him sooner because she has a piece of crucial information related to Kurt's disappearance. She believes she saw the men who killed Kurt. Dorothy's jaw drops. It's been ages since they've had any new leads, and this is an eyewitness account. She urges Kenneth to go on. He explains that Angeline lives near the ravine where Kurt was found.

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During the initial investigation, Angeline recalled looking out of her window and seeing two men dragging an unconscious teenage boy down the alleyway next to her house. At the time, she thought it was just a couple teens who had too much to drink. And when she heard of Kurt's death, her husband had told her to mind her own business.

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And so, for nearly a year, Angeline had kept this information secret from the police, from the Sovas, from everyone. But now, the cat was out of the bag. Dorothy says that they have to give this new info to someone, but contacting the Newburgh Heights Police Force seems increasingly pointless.

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He gives Sam a peek at what's hidden in his coat. It's a bottle of Everclear, already partly empty. Kurt hiccups and proudly explains how he convinced a liquor store patron to buy it for him. Sam's impressed. He hadn't thought of Kurt as much of a party animal, but his friend's been full of surprises lately. Sam asks for the bottle, and Kurt passes it over without hesitation.

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She's called regularly ever since Kurt's disappearance, and their only detective, Robert Karras, wants nothing to do with her. The feeling is mutual. Dorothy wants to go over his head and get a competent detective on the case. Since the Sovas live in Cleveland, she hopes that she can get a more well-funded police force to look into his death. Finally, she succeeds.

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The Cleveland police were lent to Dorothy's constant pestering, and they agreed to send a detective from their department to take over the case from Detective Karras. Dorothy is elated. For the first time in as long as she can remember, she has hope. Even if they can't get justice, maybe they can at least get answers.

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The Cleveland PD assigns Detective Al Figler to the case, and from the moment he arrives at the Newburgh Heights Police Station, he can tell why Dorothy Sova wanted him to come on board. Detective Robert Karras is a difficult personality, and he doesn't seem to be particularly good at his job either. After Karras hands the Kurt Sova case file over, Detective Figler can't believe what he's seeing.

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This so-called case file is a handful of pieces of paper and four Polaroids haphazardly stuffed into a manila folder. To make matters worse, all of the Polaroids show the body on the stretcher as it was taken away, not a single picture of how they found the body. And even more baffling, it seems Detective Karras wasn't properly following up on the developments in the case.

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The similarities to Eugene Kvet, the death of Craig H. Franco, Angeline Reddick's eyewitness account, none of it was being seriously investigated. It was the most amateur-looking case file Figler had seen in a long time. When he asks Karas about the incomplete file, the detective just answers with a shrug. There wasn't a lot of information, Karas argues.

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When word of the woefully incomplete case file reaches the press, the local police chief defends his department, saying that Detective Karras did a fine job with the sparse information he had. Figler is understandably irritated by this response. If Newburgh Heights was understaffed, they should have contacted Cleveland or any other larger police department to provide aid.

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But there's nothing he can do to fix what's already been mishandled. he dives into the case and fortunately has plenty to work with because for the past year, Dorothy Sova has been tirelessly collecting all of the information Detective Karras was supposed to be gathering. Detective Al Figler winds up working this case for eight years, following up on leads that Karras didn't even consider.

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With Dorothy's help, he rebuilds the case file from the ground up. There are some things they'll never be able to recreate, though. The original crime scene, for instance. But by pulling together info from the Cleveland PD, they could build a more complete timeline and catalog of evidence.

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Finally, in 1990, something begins to come into focus, and Figler begins to understand the reason why Kurt's initial investigation might have been botched way back in 1981. 1990. Nine years have passed since the death of Kurt Sova. Detective Karras drives through the darkened streets of Newburgh Heights. Everything seems to be going wrong for him. His career is in jeopardy.

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He didn't expect the chief to mind the beatings, but the drugs. Someone must have ratted him out. Fury rises in his chest with nowhere to go. Up ahead, he sees a car waver. He turns on his police lights and siren. Not your lucky day, pal. When the man pulls over, he has a heavy flashlight and walks over to his car. Karas demands that the man turn off the engine and get out of the car.

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The curb they're standing on is not far from where Kurt lives with his parents and three older brothers. These are the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, where the city gives way to rural neighborhoods, factories, and farms. Sam wouldn't exactly describe Kurt as a yokel, but he's closer to one than any of the Cleveland boys he knows. Passing the bottle back and forth, the two boys walk up the street.

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The driver does, hands up defensively, asking what's wrong. Karas accuses the man of drunk driving. When the suspect objects, Karas demands that he hand over his keys. He refuses. Karas hefts his police flashlight and clumps the man across the head. As he's stunned, Karas handcuffs him. He picked the wrong guy to talk back to.

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On the way to the police station, Kara stops the car behind JL Goodman Furniture. It's a desolate part of town, ravines and empty parking lots, the perfect place for him to let off some steam. He opens the rear door as if to give the suspect a chance to run. Let's play games. The suspect, holding his head, refuses to take the bait.

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Kara scoffs and slams the car door, and the two of them drive on to the police station. It wasn't until later that the suspect would realize where Karras had taken him. It was the ravine where Kurt Sova's body had been found. The unsolved death that Detective Karras has always seemed so disinterested in solving.

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In the years since Kurt Sova's death, it becomes abundantly clear that Newburgh's only detective is a menace. The driver Caras hit with his flashlight is the fifth suspect the detective has beaten in the past three years. Compounding the charges of police brutality, Caras is found guilty of 76 counts of drug trafficking. In January of 1991, he's fired from the Newburgh Heights Police Department.

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The police chief who had defended the handling of the Sova case had been banned from law enforcement five months prior. As the detective's career goes down in flames, he receives an accusation from a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor. Did he have any hand in the death of Kurt Sova? Karas denies any involvement, and afterward, refuses to talk to reporters.

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He vanishes from the case soon after, and no tangible evidence tying him to the Sova death ever emerges. And so, the uncertain question hovers over the case for years. Was he just a corrupt cop, or did he have more to hide than his drugs and taste for violence? In 2014, Dorothy Sova succumbs to a brain aneurysm, but the questions that drove her do not die with her.

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In 2019, there is only one member of the Sova family still alive, Kurt's older brother, Kevin. Out of nowhere, Kevin gets a call from the Newburgh Heights police chief. They're interested in reopening Kurt's case alongside criminal justice students from the nearby Tiffin University. Kevin is elated.

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He still has the closet full of evidence his mother left behind, and he takes it all back to Newburgh. The investigation again begins, and soon, word spreads far beyond Tiffin University into the greater true crime community. Today, Kevin maintains a Facebook page and tip line to monitor for any developments. There's a $5,000 reward for anyone who can give them a new lead about Kurt's death.

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It's understandable why this case continues to fascinate people to this very day. We know just enough about Kurt Soba's movements to provide a timeline, but not enough to have a grasp of what happened. That fateful weekend between October 23rd and October 28th haunts us with possibilities. According to the coroner, Kurt was alive for as many as three days after he vanished from Susan's party.

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If his friend David is to be believed, he was still active around that Monday, being driven around in a strange unmarked van by someone called Franco. If there's a connection between the 1981 murder victim, Craig H. Franco, and Kurt's death, however, it has yet to be definitively proven. The questions remain. If Kurt was out and about after Susan's party, why hadn't he checked in with his parents?

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The Everclear stings Sam's throat. It's strong. He might even have a good buzz going by the time they reach the party. When Kurt asks about the party, Sam explains that it's being held at a duplex that's technically outside the Cleveland city limits and the adjacent town of Newburgh Heights. Still, it's not far and they'll be able to walk there.

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Why hadn't any of his brothers heard from him? Even at his most rebellious, this was severely out of character for him. Had he been held against his will somewhere or cut off from a phone? the homeless man from the record store was able to perfectly predict how the case would turn out from a single glance. Perhaps the Cleveland PD had been too quick to dismiss this man as a lunatic.

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Even if he wasn't one of the killers, perhaps he had known something that only a man living on the street would have been able to see. There are plenty of other loose ends to choose from. The two mysterious men seen dragging a teenager down an alleyway. The abandoned cot in Susan's basement. Unexplained to this day.

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The threatening note left for Judy Oros, which may have been written by the homeless man or some unknown third party. And then there's Robert Karras, the lone detective in Newburgh Heights during the time of Kern's death. A man who was proven to be violent and unstable, as well as tied up with drugs.

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If he had some connection to the crime, he was in the perfect position to destroy the trail of evidence. And for all we know, perhaps he did. Even still, it's quite likely that the real culprit is someone who was never identified. At the heart of this case is a story of an everyday teen, growing more independent from his family.

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His parents didn't know many of his new friends, and he was increasingly interested in spending time away from his brothers. It's this very distance that enabled him to disappear so completely from their lives. Whether someone killed him or whether he died of some drunken mishap, it's this realization that's haunted his family afterwards. None more so than his dedicated mother.

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In her final years, Dorothy wished that she could have been closer to him, could have known his life a bit more. In any other context, this is a normal part of growing up. But in the case of Kurt Sova, it was an opportunity for the unspeakable to happen. It's a truth that all parents must eventually come to terms with. You simply can't protect your kids from everything forever.

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Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Diemstra. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media.

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Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Ocasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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The host of the party is a girl named Susan, who shares the upstairs unit with two roommates. Kurt doesn't know Susan or her roommates, but says he's excited to meet them. Sam doesn't doubt that. Kurt's been branching out a lot lately, meeting a lot of new people. People that Kurt's parents and brothers don't even know about. Kurt stumbles a couple times on their walk, but laughs it off.

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You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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Sam, though, is growing wary. He takes the Everclear bottle from his friend, hinting that maybe they should pace themselves. Kurt is already unsteady, and they haven't even reached the party yet. Sam quietly hopes that he won't have to babysit his friend all night. Kurt and Sam arrive at the duplex. They step inside and disappear into the noise of raucous voices and teenage revelry.

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Sam loses track of Kurt and the crowd, but before long, someone's tapping his shoulder to get his attention. It's one of Susan's roommates, frowning with their arms crossed. She tells Sam that his little friend Kurt is making a mess of the place. He's thrown up and is knocking things over. Someone needs to get him out of there. Sam tries to reassure her.

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His friend is a lightweight and he just needs some air. He locates Kurt and, with a little difficulty, guides him down the stairs and out into the cold October night. Sam immediately regrets not bringing their jackets along. He had been in such a rush to get Kurt outside that their boat's still in t-shirts, and it's well below freezing. Sam tells Kurt that he'll be right back.

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He's going to run upstairs and grab their jackets. Figuring Kurt's too drunk to feel the cold anyway, Sam leaves him leaning up against a chain-link fence and darts back inside. Upstairs, he locates his and Kurt's among the massive pile of coats, then returns outside, and Kurt is gone. The chain-link fence he had been hanging on is empty. Right away, Sam scours the area.

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The moment you see the yellow t-shirt, you know it's him. The missing boy. The one whose poster is plastered all over town. A number of emergency vehicles are on the scene by now, each contributing its own set of flashing emergency lights to the chaotic symphony of colors bouncing off every surface. All eyes are on you as you kneel beside the body and feel for a pulse.

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He expects to find Kurt passed out by the front porch, or maybe wandering aimlessly around the back of the house. But he's not there. He's not anywhere. Sam calls out into the dark, jacket clutched in his shivering hands. He starts walking through the neighborhood, shouting for his friend. He knows Kurt can't have gone far, not in the state he's in.

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And yet, the streets around the duplex are empty. So too is the nearby parking lot, which belongs to a J.L. Goodman furniture warehouse. Sam is baffled, because there aren't many places a teenager could hide around here, even at night. Eventually, Sam returns to the party. He figures that Kurt went home, probably picked up by one of his older brothers.

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After all, he disappeared so fast that he must have taken a car. Kurt can take care of himself, Sam decides. Newburgh Heights is a small, quiet town. There's no need to be alarmed. Right? The following morning, Saturday, October 24th, Kurt's mother, Dorothy Sova, waits in the kitchen for her sons to come downstairs for breakfast. She rubs the sleep from her eyes as she cooks at the stove.

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As the mother of four boys, she's accustomed to losing sleep over worrying, but last night was especially bad. She hasn't seen her youngest, Kurt, since yesterday morning. Dorothy didn't hear him come home last night either, although that's to be expected. The Sova household is a two-unit family home. Dorothy and her husband Kenneth lived downstairs while her four boys were side up above.

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The upstairs unit has its own entrance, so it would have been fully possible for Kurt to come home late last night without her noticing. Kurt's three older brothers arrive for breakfast. Dorothy anxiously keeps an eye on the door, hoping Kurt will cross that threshold next. But her youngest son doesn't show. Dorothy asks the others if they know where Kurt is, but they can only shrug.

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They didn't see or hear him come home last night, either. Unsettled, Dorothy picks up the phone. She's no helicopter parent. The Sova boys have always been given a long leash. But 24 hours with no check-in from Kurt is setting off alarm bells for her. She calls the neighbors to ask if Kurt is there.

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He and two of the neighbor's kids are inseparable, to the point that they're known around the neighborhood as the Three Musketeers. But the neighbors haven't seen Kurt. He didn't hang out with the Musketeers at all yesterday, not even at school, because Kurt never showed up to class. At this point, Kurt's father, Kenneth, grabs his keys and starts scouring the neighborhood in his car.

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Dorothy continues making calls. Word spreads fast, and many of the Sova's friends join in the search effort. By the end of the day, there are upwards of 40 people searching for him. They check nearby ravines, schoolyards, back alleys, and parking lots. Dorothy becomes so desperate that she even starts checking dumpsters. But none of them find anything.

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The next day, after another sleepless night, Dorothy escalates her efforts. She files a missing person report and prints out flyers. She wallpapers the surrounding streets with pictures of her son, handing them to local store owners and placing them on telephone poles. That afternoon, Dorothy gets her first tangible lead.

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Sam Carroll reaches out and tells her about the house party that Kurt attended Friday night. Dorothy is beyond grateful for the information and she drives straight over to Susan's duplex. There, a girl answers the door, one of the roommates who shares the house with them. Dorothy asks if she knows about the party that was held there the other night.

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it doesn't seem likely that the boy is still alive. But then again, stranger things have happened, especially with this case. Days ago, a prediction was made about this missing boy. It was dismissed as the crazed ramblings of a homeless man at the time. But now it might be time to reconsider. Because as unbelievable as it may be, his haunting words are proving true. October 23rd, 1981.

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Yet the girl, perhaps hoping to avoid trouble with an irate parent, insists that there was no party on Friday. But Dorothy doesn't buy it. By now, she's heard about the party from two separate sources, Sam Carroll and also a delivery man who delivered pizza to a rowdy party at this very address on Friday night. Dorothy demands the truth. She doesn't care about the underage drinking.

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She's just trying to find her son. She keeps pestering them, calling them, and knocking on their door repeatedly until the roommates finally reach their breaking point. They admit that there was a party, and they provide Dorothy with proof that Kurt was there. His jacket, which was left behind after all the other partygoers went home that night.

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Susan and her roommates insist that they don't know anything else about Kurt's whereabouts, and they demand that Dorothy stop bothering them about it. They even go as far as to report Dorothy to the police for harassment. Reluctantly, Dorothy agrees to stay away from the duplex, for now. But she's determined to find the truth. Someone knows more than they're letting on. She's sure of it.

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It's Monday morning now, a little over two days since Kurt Sova was last seen. A few blocks away from the Sova's house, a woman named Judy Oros is opening her record shop for the week. She's used to strange encounters with odd customers. It's just part of the job. But that morning, a strange man shuffles up to her shop, pointing to something in the store window. She's seen him before.

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He's a local homeless man, someone who usually doesn't cause much trouble. When Oro steps out to ask the man if she can help him with anything, he shakes his head. He's not pointing to any of the records, but rather at the missing persons poster of Kurt Sova. He tells her that she should take it down, and when she asks why, he responds with this chilling statement.

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They're going to find him in two days, and they're not going to know what happened to him. On Monday morning, at practically the same time the homeless man is making his cryptic prophecy, something else is happening a couple miles away across town. A young man named David Trusnick is out driving when he spots something up ahead. A teenager he knows from the neighborhood is out walking, alone.

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The boy has long brown hair, a yellow t-shirt, and skirt sova. At this point, Kurt's family hasn't seen him for over two days. Yet here he is, walking around town in broad daylight. But the driver, David, doesn't know any of this. He hasn't heard about Kurt's disappearance yet. He hasn't seen any of the missing person signs.

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The most surprising thing about this situation is that Kurt isn't at school on a Monday morning. He's not about to ride him out, though. Instead, David pulls over to ask Kurt if he needs a ride to wherever he's headed. He never gets the chance, though, because Kurt has just noticed something across the street. An unmarked van that David has never noticed around these parts before.

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Kurt's eyes light up when he notices it, and he jogs off towards it, shouting out a name and greeting, as he disappears into the vehicle. David thinks little of it and drives on. It's not until later, once he hears about Kurt's disappearance, that he realizes the importance of what he saw that morning. He is now the last person to have seen Kurt.

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The boy is alive, but for whatever reason, he hasn't made contact with his friends or family. When asked about the name Kurt shouted out as he jogged towards the van, David replies that it sounded something like Franco. Tuesday, October 27th. Day four since Kurt was last seen at the house party. The phone at the Sova household rings and Kenneth snatches it up immediately.

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His son is still missing and desperation is starting to set in. The voice on the other end doesn't introduce itself. All it says is that it has information that the Sovas need to hear. Kenneth presses the receiver tightly to his ear and asks the voice to go on. They explain that underneath the duplex where Susan's party was held, there's a basement.

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In this basement, there's a boy sleeping on a cot. Though the individual doesn't say it outright, the implication is clear. This is where Kurt's been for the last four nights. the family springs into action. Kenneth and Kurt's three brothers pile in the car and race over to see for themselves. It doesn't matter that the duplex's residents have accused Dorothy of harassment.

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This is their chance to find Kurt, and they won't be denied. Kenneth doesn't knock or even alert the duplex residents upstairs. He walks straight to the basement door and kicks it down. Calling Kurt's name, he and his boys rush inside. The basement is unfurnished, barren concrete with sparse light pouring in from ground-level windows. There's a cot on the floor, but no Kurt.

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If there was a boy being kept here, by this point, he's been moved. Deflated, Kenneth and his sons retreat back to their car before Susan or her roommates can add breaking and entering to their list of complaints against the Sovas. They return home to give Dorothy the bad news that they still have no clue where Kurt might be. This claim, however, is about to change.

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Someone in the area must know who she was, and this person is trying to send them a message. As the days roll by, the graffiti continues to taunt police. The question starts popping up on walls across the West Midlands. always in chalk, always in similar handwriting. And one of them in Old Hill reads, Who put Lubella down the witch-helm? Another says, What happened to Hagleywood Bella?

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The name varies slightly. Sometimes just Bella, sometimes Lubella, but always a variation of the same question. The police renew their inquiries, now specifically asking for someone by the name Bella. On April 7th, a Birmingham sex worker comes forward. She informs a detective that a woman named Bella, who frequented the Hagley Road, had been missing for about three years.

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However, for a woman like that, the police wouldn't know where to start. Hagley Wood, though mostly private property, is well known as a private place for people to have illicit encounters, either romantic or purely sexual. Anyone who knew this Bella from such an encounter wouldn't be keen to come forward for the sake of their own reputation. And this lead, like the others, goes nowhere.

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As the police investigation seemed to be petering out, word of the story reaches a private residence in Cambridge, on the other side of England. 79-year-old Margaret Murray, while finishing up a long day of sorting and cataloging ancient Egyptian artifacts, turns to a newspaper to relax. It's there that she sees the story about the dead woman in Hagley Wood.

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Murray is a folklorist and historian who'd lived in London before the war. When the news of the murdered woman reaches her, she comes to a different conclusion than the police. Ritual murder. Though Murray's primary trade is an Egyptologist, one of her more well-known works was on what she called the wench cult theory.

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Years later, you'll begin to wonder if you should have asked for the woman's ID as well. You assumed that she was undressed and hiding from shame, but she had been lying so still, as still as a corpse. In time, you'll grow convinced that you were mere inches away from one of England's most notorious unsolved murders. England, April 18th, 1943. Hagley Woods is an eerie place in the growing dark.

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She studied how paganism evolved from its primeval origins to the more obscure practices of the day. And when she hears about that Hagley Wood murder, a certain detail draws her attention. It's the severed right hand of the victim.

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In old European folklore, if you sever the hand of a sinner and preserve it, that hand becomes a hand of glory, a magical artifact that can protect a thief against discovery. Traditionally, it had to be cut from the body while they were hanging from the gallows, but some believe that they could have been taken from a sinner as long as they were still fresh from execution.

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If the original Bella had been a sinner, perhaps those who killed her saw value in severing her right hand before hiding her remains. Murray suggests that this wouldn't be the most recent ritual murder in the area, pointing to a chilling story that made headlines on Valentine's Day.

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Charles Walton, a resident owner of Lower Quinton, had left home with his pitchfork, ready for a day of slashing hedges. He was later found lying beside a hedgerow. Someone had taken his pitchfork and driven it into his neck, pinning him to the ground.

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This case bears a striking resemblance to another murder from the late 19th century when an 80-year-old woman named Ann Tennant was slain in the same fashion, stabbed through the neck with a pitchfork. Her murderer was a mentally ill man who believed the nearby villages were infested with witches. Murray, as an academic and an expert in folklore, earns a lot of public attention for these theories.

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A ritual murder in the woods sparks the imagination of locals, but ultimately adds more mystery to this case. But who would have perpetrated this ritual murder? Murray doesn't offer any suggestions, and eager theorists latch onto the question. it's clear that this Bella was not a Hagley local. Otherwise, there would have been plenty of townsfolk able to identify her.

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That meant that she was probably either an anonymous transient or someone from far away. There were all manner of people camping in Hagley Wood during the worst of the bombing years, so-called blitz campers who fled from England's more heavily populated areas to take refuge away from Nazi air raids. And then there were the Romani travelers, who frequently camped in those woods as well.

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For years, unfounded rumors and theories swirl. Yet it's not until the early 1950s that someone tackles the case with true journalistic dedication. His name is Wilfred Byford Jones, the deputy editor of The Express and Star. Writing under the pen name Quaestor, Biford Jones publishes three features about the murders, exploring the evidence and fighting back against the conspiracy theories.

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He writes that he does not accept the theory of Romani travelers committing a murder among their own. He acknowledges that the area has a large population of travelers, but they're always the first people blamed in every crime. The theory is wild speculation based on prejudice. The woman's clothing, the taffeta dress and crepe shoes, are not the sort of thing a traveler would wear.

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She was likely from a lower economic class, but the fabrics are out of step with Romani fashion. As for the evidence of witchcraft, he deems all of that fairly circumstantial. In his articles, Byford Jones implores the person who wrote the graffiti to come forward. He figures, much like the police had 10 years ago, that whoever wrote the message knew Bella personally.

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The individual is the only one who can give a definitive answer to the graffiti question. In late 1953, a letter arrives at the Express and Star offices. Bifer Jones opens it, expecting it to be an ordinary letter from one of his interested readers. But he's wrong. It comes from someone who claims to have inside info on the case. And so, gripping the letter tightly, he reads it over and over.

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It states, "...finish your articles regarding the Witchelm crime by all means. They're interesting to your readers, but you'll never solve the mystery." The one person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of our earthly courts. The affair involves no witches, black magic, or moonlit rites.

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The only clues I can give you are that the person responsible for the crime died insane in 1942, and the victim was Dutch and arrived in England illegally about 1941. I have no wish to recall anymore." Bifer Jones stares at the mysterious letter in shock. It's signed Anna from Claverley, though the author admits that this is nothing but a pen name.

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And for the first time in 10 years, someone finally has a lead. The Express and Star alerts the West Mercia police and offers a 100-pound reward for any new information in the case. Byford Jones and his colleagues hope that additional incentives would bring new information from their anonymous source. Eventually, Anna contacts them again.

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She's willing to tell the entire story, but not to the Express and Star. She's taking what she knows directly to the police.

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A woman enters the West Mercia police station, eyes nervously darting around her. The officers guide her to a private room, where she can give her statement. This woman is the so-called Anna, who wrote to the Express and Star about the Witch Elm murder. She identifies herself as Una Mossop, and the story, as she relays it, comes from her now deceased husband, Jack.

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Jack was a British Army officer during the war, handsome and well-liked. A little eccentric, he'd purchased the uniform from an RAF officer, even though he himself was not a member of the Royal Air Force. Jack was a man of secrets, and when the Germans started bombing England, his behavior became more and more cagey.

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Birmingham, as everyone knew, was a frequent bombing target for the Nazis, as it housed many manufacturers of airplane parts. Information on this area was valued highly by German spies, and Jack may have been involved in selling information to the Nazis, although his actual role was unclear. Una claims that one night in 1941, Jack had been traveling through Hagley in a car.

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Also in the car with them was a Dutch trapeze artist named Van Rolt and a woman by the name of Clarabella Dronkers. They had all been out at a pub, and Clarabella was three sheets to the wind. As they drove through Hagley, she passed out. Jack and Van Rolt decided, for some reason, to get rid of the woman. They took her into the woods and stuffed her inside a tree.

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Jack said that this was done in order to make her feel foolish when she woke up and realized that she shouldn't drink so much. But perhaps it wasn't such an innocent prank after all. This experience would haunt the British officer for the rest of his life. Jack would tell his wife that he was having nightmares of a woman staring at him from inside a tree.

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He had a mental breakdown later that year and was confined to a mental institution, where he died in 1942. Why the woman had to die, he never said, though Una suspects that this is because she'd overheard something sensitive. The police and MI5 attempt to verify this woman's story as best they can.

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The sun has just set, and mist obscures the silhouetted trees. Tommy Willits follows three of his schoolmates through the undergrowth. His eyes are wide, shooting from tree to tree. He's nervous because they're not supposed to be here. The gate was locked, but his friends went right over the top. Tommy, the youngest, had little choice but to follow the older boys.

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Some elements can be verified, including the identity of Jack Mossop, who was institutionalized and died, just as Una claims. However, facts like this only raise questions. How could you prove that this was a true story he told before his nervous breakdown, and not some delusion from a deceased mental patient? Una Mossop's story is compelling, no doubt, but it's not backed up by much evidence.

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The police can't prove that this is the one definitive answer. It's more plausible than the occult theories. But that's all it is, a theory. Bella's remains are the only evidence they have. Although, as they're about to discover, they may not even have those anymore. The West Mercia police keep working on this case for years, and no new evidence comes to light.

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However, the science of the police work continues to evolve. As the decades roll on, more and more cold cases are solved thanks to advancements in DNA testing. And police believe that Bella's case might be solved the very same way. There's just one small problem, though. No one knows where the bones went.

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In the chaos of the Second World War, the bombings of Birmingham and the surrounding area, and the media frenzy around the Witch Elm case, the actual bones appear to have been lost. Professor Webster, who retains some of Bella's clothes and shoes for study, claims to have passed the remains to Birmingham University for further tests.

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The university's records are dense, but unfortunately lack any mention of Bella's remains. Frustrated, but with no further recourse, the West Mercia police end the official investigation. They publish the case file. If there's any lingering interest to be found, the press can have a field day with it. And they do. In 1999, the Independent revisits the story.

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In their article, they interrogate the various theories about Bella's identity and origin, including the espionage angle, as well as the witchcraft and occultism. And The Independent points out that there's a missing piece of evidence that neither Biford Jones nor Margaret Murray would have had access to.

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Declassified MI5 files revealed that there was more going on in the West Midlands than even journalists knew at the time. And they reveal that there really was a German spy who parachuted into the West Midlands in 1941. He broke his ankle when he landed and was immediately arrested. And during his interrogation, he told a story that MI5 found captivating.

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It begins in a cafe in Hamburg, Germany, before the war. The spy, Joseph Jacobs, is entranced by a woman singing there. Her name was Clara Burrell. She had been born in 1906, and by the time she was an adult, she already had many close relationships among the Nazi party. She became a spy as the war began, and infiltrated the West Midlands as a cabaret performer in 1939.

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According to Jacobs, her English was so good that she even spoke with a Birmingham accent. Jacobs claims that she intended to rendezvous with him in spring of 1941, but he had never heard from her. And as rumors of this captured Nazi agent spread, the name Clara Burrell transformed into Clara Bella, which was then shortened to become the Bella we all know.

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It's a very different spy story than the one told by Una Mossop, and the two do not fit comfortably together. One seems to imply that Clarabella was a bystander, murdered seemingly by accident. The other suggests that she was somehow discovered as a spy and killed in secret. The identity of the Bella Woman continues to be a fixation of the British public.

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Rumors spread among the Home Guard, civilian volunteers who helped maintain order during the war years. One claims that he was tasked with holding onto a woman's body overnight before MI5 came back and spirited her away. Another says that he saw a man parked to the side of the road by Hagley Wood.

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Tommy tugs on the shirttail of the friend ahead of him, Bob Farmer. Tommy asks if he can turn on the flashlight now. It's getting really dark. Bob shakes his head. Not yet. Not until they absolutely need it. Every shadow looks like a person in the gloom. Tommy has to remind himself that there's no such thing as ghosts.

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And when the officer peered in, he saw that the man's coat was draped roughly over someone in the passenger seat. Someone who wasn't moving. Where once there were vanishing few to identify Bella, now everyone seems to have had a father or an uncle who had some connection to her death. The fog of war only grows thicker the more years roll by, and no new proof ever comes up.

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So, who put Bella in the Witch Elm? We've heard many compelling theories over the years. While far-fetched, the stories of witchcraft and occultism are not without their strong points. In fact, at the outset of the Second World War, self-proclaimed witches of Britain banded together to try and curb Nazi power with magic. A famous coven had cast spells aiming to prevent German invasion of the UK.

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However, the hand of glory was not something that was practiced by these particular witches. And the location of Bella's hand bones, while strange, is not inexplicable. It's possible that animals could have carried the bones away from the rest of the body. And then there are the spy stories. Was Bella a foreign national feeding information to the Nazis?

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Was she an innocent young girl caught in the crossfire of MI5 in Germany? If Joseph Jacobs knew the truth, he took it to his grave. On August 15th, 1941, he was executed by a firing squad, becoming the last man put to death in the Tower of London. Part of his story was verifiable. There was a cabaret singer named Clara Burrell, but she never left Germany, dying in December of 1942.

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So either Jacobs was lying to his interrogators, or the real Clara Bella was someone else entirely, someone whose true name has never been revealed. The most plausible story is likely hidden among the chaos of the war. As the Luftwaffe rained bombs on Birmingham, all sorts of people took refuge away from the cities, away from factories and population centers.

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Any one of these people could have died anonymous deaths among the trees. Though someone had to have known at least enough to stuff her inside the elm tree. That tantalizing graffiti written in chalk could have been a hoax. After all, the earliest recorded sighting of it was on April Fool's Day. So some might say that we can't even trust that her name was Bella at all.

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But someone knew a Bella who had gone missing. That much we know. The woman who spoke to the police the week after the graffiti appeared, telling them about the missing prostitute named Bella. This, perhaps, gives us a window into the true story. A quiet tragedy that's been completely obscured by fanciful theories.

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A sex worker who was killed in secret by a John Doe, leaving behind no family or friends to tell us who she really was. And now that even her bones are lost, all that's left is that enduring and haunting question. Who put Bella down the witch-oak? Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

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If he sees the shadow of a person, it's probably one of the travelers who sometimes camp nearby. There's nothing to be afraid of. The only people they'd be afraid to see are constables or members of Lord Cobham's staff, as he would not be pleased to learn that four teenage boys were trespassing on his estate. The four of them fan out, checking every tree. They're searching for bird eggs.

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Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Diemstra. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio.

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Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexbone. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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It's not like the Lord will miss a few eggs. I mean, not on an estate this large. The boys are excited for this kind of adventure. For an hour or so, it lets them forget about the greater England beyond. About the war, the blitz, the burning buildings and horror stories out of Europe. Bob is trying to get their attention from a nearby tree. Tommy and the others go over to him.

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The tree is a large one with bulbous roots and sharp-looking branches. Bob points to a hollow up on the side of the trunk and asks for a boost. This is just the sort of spot they've been looking for. The deep cavity is the perfect spot for a bird's nest. Bob gets his boost and peers in. He says he sees something white inside, as white as eggshells.

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He starts to pull something out, but halfway, his expression changes. His smile vanishes, and his eyes bug out of his head. He's stammering in fear, but Tommy can't hear what he's saying. He's focused on the object in Bob's hands. It's a human skull. Part of the scalp is even still attached, strands of old hair trailing off the white bone. Bob has no idea what to do.

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Tommy and the others tell him to put it back, and not wanting to touch the gross thing anymore, Bob puts it aside. He finds a stick on the ground nearby and lifts the skull up with it, and once it's wedged back inside the tree, the four boys flee as fast as they can. They don't stop until they've found their bikes by the edge of the forest, and are well on their way back to Hagley.

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No air raid sirens tonight, just an eerie silence. The trees loom around you, gnarled, barren branches reaching out like witches' fingers. You pull your coat tighter around you and continue your rounds. You're a member of the Home Guard. You can't get spooked by empty woods. Up ahead, you see a car by the side of a country road. It's an unusual sight.

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Tommy wants nothing more than to go directly back to his house, but he notices the other boys pulling over, and so he does the same. Now safely in the comfort of the village lights, they talk about what they had just seen. None of them can believe it. It's a skull in a tree, like a hidden treasure, or an offering to some pagan god. Every possibility only makes the discovery more unsettling.

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Then and there, they swear to each other that they won't breathe a word of what they saw. Whatever had happened to the poor owner of that skull, it's none of their business. With the promise made, the boys all peddle home. As he goes, Tommy passes a handful of desperate-looking strangers in the street.

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Ever since the bombing raids began on the nearby city of Birmingham, many people have been displaced, which means a lot more unfamiliar faces around Hagley. When he gets back to his house, Tommy lets his parents know that he's returned safe and sound. Yet as he settles in with a cup of tea by the window, he realizes that that's not true. He feels neither safe nor sound.

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He keeps thinking back to it. The skull in the elm tree. It had been old, at least a year, and who knows really how long it was laying in there. What are the odds of finding something so carefully hidden? Soon, overpowered by guilt and anxiety, Tommy goes to his dad.

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He tells him everything about the bird eggs, the trespassing with his friends, and as he speaks, he can see his father's expression shift from disapproval to concern. When Tommy mentions the skull, his father's eyes widen. For a moment, he fears that his dad won't believe him. But then Mr. Willits puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

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He assures Tommy that he did the right thing, before leaving to ring up the police. Tommy goes back to staring off into the night. He isn't nearly as certain, and there's an awful feeling in his gut. Whatever happens next, it won't lead anywhere good. The next day, August 19th, 1943. It's the West Mercia police's turn to navigate the thick undergrowth.

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They follow Tommy as the boy guides them to the skull's hiding place. In the light of day, the tree looks far less threatening than the boy had described it. It's a witch elm, spelled W-Y-C-H, which comes from an old English word for supple plant. There's nothing inherently spooky about the tree, at least from the outside. The policemen peer into the hollow where Bob had found the skull.

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The first officer shouts out an alarm. There's more than just a skull in here. It's tough to see, but it looks like there's an entire mausoleum in the hollow. However, they can't safely extract them, so they call a lumberjack to cut open the tree. The officers remove nearly a whole skeleton from the splintered wood. It's clearly been there a while.

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Along with the flesh, much of the clothing has rotted away. It's missing a right hand, seemingly amputated. But that part of the skeleton isn't absent for long. The police happen upon the hand bones a mere 13 paces away, scattered among the foliage.

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The skeleton's wearing crepe shoes on its feet and what looks like a gold ring on its finger, though closer inspection reveals that it's known as rolled gold, or a brass or copper ring that's been lightly coated in gold as a cheap alternative to an actual gold band. And last but not least, a scrap of cloth is found in the skull's mouth.

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There's only so much the police can tell from these remains, so they gather what they can find. And before long, they take them to an expert. The following day, Professor James Webster is at work at Birmingham University when the police come knocking. He's a home office pathologist who recently relocated due to increased bombing rates.

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There's been a fuel shortage since the war broke out, so you're not used to seeing cars this far out in the woods. You approach and knock on the window. The driver, a man, looks surprised to see you, but he doesn't hesitate to hand you his ID when asked. Looking at his papers, you're in for a surprise of your own. He's a member of the Royal Air Force.

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He's now a professor of forensic science at Birmingham University, the closest expert the West Marcia police have at hand. They need to tell them everything he can about the bones. Professor Webster's intrigued by the case. Not only was it a strange place to find a skeleton, but the bones tell a story of their own. The victim had died at least 18 months ago. It was a woman, around 35 years of age.

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She had probably given birth at some point in her life, judging by the state of her hip bones. Due to the cloth being wedged in her mouth, he suspects that she died by asphyxiation. He identifies the cloth as Tafeta, likely torn from her skirt and stuffed in. So this wasn't the remains of some accident victim or someone who had been long buried. This was a murder.

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And because the hollow in the tree was so narrow, rigor mortis would have prevented her body from fitting inside such a crowded space. Ergo, it's quite possible that she was left in the tree while still alive. Professor Webster also points out that the victim's lower jaw contains a scent of irregularly spaced teeth.

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He suggests that investigators should look for a dentist who remembers such a distinctive bite. Once his work is complete, Professor Webster reaches out to the Birmingham University Advent about taking control of the remains. After all, they have better facilities for storing and analyzing human remains. And maybe someone at the university will perhaps be able to tell the police more.

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Meanwhile, the West Mercia police go to work. They contact every dentist in the area, armed with a photograph of the skull for dentists to review. However, none of the ones that they contact can recall a woman fitting the description or matching the teeth in her skull.

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Since the dating of the bones put the woman's death in late 1941, the police checked back through their records to see if any unsolved reports match. The missing persons list is enormous thanks to the bombings, and there's no way to narrow it down. But there were two reports from October that caught their attention.

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On the very same night, a school teacher and local business owner had made separate calls to police. Both had claimed that they heard a woman screaming late at night from the direction of Hagley Wood. Police were dispatched to investigate, but found nothing. So was it her, the woman in the elm tree, who had screamed?

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Four days after the search begins, two German bombs strike the nearby city of Birmingham. Air raid sirens echo across the surrounding West Midlands. As May begins, the rains stop and the sirens fall silent. And the investigation, too, goes quiet. The corpse of a woman no one seems to miss simply can't be a priority right now. Not when there are so many people missing, lost in the chaos of the war.

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The case of the woman in the elm tree appears to have stalled out. And to get it started again, police will need something new to work with. And surprisingly, almost a year later, they finally get in. Hey, Nexpo here. As many of you know, Mr. Balan and Balan Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life.

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And if you like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you have to check out Mr. Balan's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. Every week, Mr. Balan weaves gripping tales of the strange, dark, and mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat.

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Mr. Ballin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it's free, just like ours. There are hundreds of episodes available to binge right now, with new episodes twice a week. So don't wait. Go listen to the Mr. Ballin podcast today.

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You're about to apologize when you see someone else in the car. The driver's coat is covering an adult-sized shape in the passenger seat. Whoever this is, she's clearly trying her best to stay out of sight. Your face flushes with embarrassment. You realize why he wanted such a secluded spot after all. You ask no more questions and continue your rounds.

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On Saturday, April 1st, 1944, a group of boys are playing in an abandoned house in Birmingham. Like Tommy Willits and his friends the year before, they have no idea that their innocent weekend playtime is about to make international news. Their fun comes to an abrupt halt when they come across a strange message. It's scrawled across the side of a house in chalk, too cryptic to ignore.

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Who put Bella down the witch elm in Hagleywood? The boys report the finding immediately. Local papers take up the news. And from there, the story spreads like wildfire. It's an enormous development. For the first time, the unidentified woman in the tree has a name. Bella. The West Mercia police are intrigued.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. You awake from a shallow sleep. For a moment you think it's morning already, but then you remember it's still night. During the summer in Finland, midnight is indistinguishable from dawn.

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At 50 years old, Carl owns the roadside stand that the four teens visited before heading to the lake. Though often day-to-day operations are handled by his wife and 12-year-old daughter, his wife had directly interacted with the victims on the day before the murder while selling them soft drinks and beer. Carl is the reason there were so few campers by that side of the lake.

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He's known to be a temperamental alcoholic who treats the shore of Lake Bodum like it's his backyard. He's had numerous run-ins with campers and day trippers over the years, and has been known to throw rocks at people, cut the cords of tents, and even fire warning shots with his shotgun.

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He looks nothing like the blonde man in the police sketch, but otherwise he fits the perfect profile of someone who would have a violent outburst at noisy teens. On top of that, he lives just a mere 800 meters from the scene of the crime. However, he too has an alibi.

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Carl's wife claims that he was with her and their two children the entire night the murders took place, and Carl's 12-year-old daughter corroborates this story. No new leads turn up, and the case starts to grow cold. August 1969, nine years after the murders by Link Bodum. Carl Chilstrom is drunk again, as usual. He's made his house a living hell for his wife and two kids.

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At the tail end of his most recent binge, his daughter, now 21, has had enough. The two of them get into a heated argument, during which she threatens to call the police. Carl leaves the house to cool off and finds a neighbor who will lend a sympathetic ear. The two men spend the afternoon together, and their conversation eventually turns serious. Extremely serious.

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Carl confesses that something has been quietly eating away at him for years. That he, Carl Chilstrom, is the man responsible for the Lake Bodum murders. Through tears, Carl asks what he should do. The neighbor, alarmed by this confession, replies that there's nothing for Carl to do. He might as well just walk into the lake, because he has no future but jail if he confesses to the police.

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Carl falls silent for a long time, then finally asks for another drink. That evening, someone tells Carl's son that his father was seen swimming in the lake a little before 6 p.m. Alarmed, Carl's son borrows a boat, speeding to his father's swimming spot, but he can't find him out on the water anywhere. The family calls the local authorities.

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Before long, Carl's body is found, three meters from where the murders took place. He's clothed, with a pair of wine bottles floating alongside him. At first, Carl's wife rushes to defend her dead husband, insisting that the neighbor must have misunderstood what Carl was saying. But in time, she changes her tune.

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After years of claiming that Carl spent the night of the murders with her, she ultimately admits that Carl had slept on the couch that night. She had been too afraid of her husband to not protect him. The press labeled Carl's death as a suicide, but this was never confirmed by police. For their part, they remain unconvinced that Carl is the killer.

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The confession was only witnessed by one person and under unreliable circumstances. Both men were drunk and there's still no probable cause. Even though Carl was a drunk who did hate campers with a fiery passion, there's a big difference between harassing people and violently killing them. For the second time in a decade, they dismiss the possibility that Carl Tilstrom is a killer.

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Meanwhile, the other long-dismissed Lake Bodum suspect, Hans Osman, actively cultivates a reputation as a Lake Bodum boogeyman. He eagerly tells fanciful, unverifiable stories of his life to true crime magazines. He claims, among other things, that he was a member of the German SS during the Second World War and that he was later employed by the KGB.

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Though he never admits anything about Lake Bodum, it's clear that he enjoys the limelight. Finally, in 1997, at the age of 73, he invites a journalist to his deathbed. In a rambling interview, he alleges his own involvement in a number of unspecified crimes. the journalist assumes that Hans is referencing another unsolved double murder in the area from 1959, just a year before Lake Bodum.

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This case, in which two young campers were killed in their tent at night, near a lake, bears undeniable similarities to the Lake Bodum case. However, when the journalist inquires directly about Lake Bodum, Hans doesn't confess. Ultimately, Hans Osman dies shortly thereafter, leaving his true life story clouded by exaggeration.

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For a while, it seemed like nothing new would ever happen to revive interest in Lake Bodum. Any hope at truth has been lost to time and crime scene mismanagement. The 90s roll into the early 2000s, and then, shockingly, there's a sudden development. Forensic science has advanced considerably since the 1960s, prompting re-examination of old evidence.

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This directs police to a new suspect, and it's one who's been hiding under their nose the entire time. April 2004. Nils Gustafsson has lived a normal life for the past 45 years. Now in his early 60s, he's retired with a wife and two kids. The events of Lake Bodum seem so distant now, like they happened to another man in another life. That is, until he receives a visit from the police.

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They tell him that he's under arrest for the murder of Anya, Myla, and Seppo, and he's shot. There's no statute of limitations on murder, but Nils had moved on from that traumatic period of his life. Or at least, so we thought. The blunders the police made back in 1960 make it a particularly thorny case to relitigate. But one particular piece of evidence seems to have opened up new possibilities.

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The bloody shoes that belonged to Nils. The ones that were found over a kilometer away from the scene of the crime. A forensic analysis of the shoes determines that the blood came from Nils' murdered friends, but none of it is from Nils himself.

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The other is driven by Nils Gustafsson, with his girlfriend Mila Bjorklund in the back. Myla's 16th birthday is coming up, so it's the perfect excuse for the friends to escape the city for a weekend camping trip. And soon, their destination, Lake Bodum, comes into view.

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The conclusion prosecutors draw from this is that the killer was wearing shoes when he attacked the tent, and the killer, by this reasoning, is Nils himself. The original description Nils gave of the attacker, that of the blonde man with the square jaw, is no longer considered relevant, as it was given under hypnosis. And so, Nils is held in jail for a year, preparing for his defense.

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While he waits, the case becomes a media sensation. Long dormant speculation about the murders splashes across tabloid headlines. It's now where they have a juicy new angle to explore in this case. The lurid story of a teen who murdered his girlfriend and got away with it for 45 years. August 2005. The trial begins.

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The prosecution paints a damning story of what happened almost a half century ago. They theorize that June 4th was a tense day by the lake. Nils had gotten drunk and became aggressive, fighting with his girlfriend Myla. It got so bad that he was exiled by the others from their shared tent. After midnight, Seppo attempted to calm him down.

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This was unsuccessful, sparking a fight between the two boys. Seppo had won this fight, explaining the blunt force trauma that Nils suffered to his jaw and skull. Seppo then returned to their tent, leaving the defeated Nils behind. Sometime after 4am, when he was sure the others were asleep, Nils returned to the tent with a knife and a rock.

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He viciously stabbed and bludgeoned his friends to death, then made it look like a burglary. He took the keys for the motorcycles, Seppo's leather jacket, their wallets and watches, and got rid of them somewhere nearby, likely the lake. This explains why the motorcycle keys were missing, but the murderer did not use either vehicle for a quick getaway.

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Once he staged the scene, Nils got rid of his shoes and returned to the scene of the crime, where he laid down beside his dead girlfriend and waited for their bodies to be discovered. The injuries Nils had received earlier that evening at the hands of Seppo helped make it seem as if the killer had attacked him as well. The prosecution's case hangs on two key pieces of evidence.

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The shoes which were likely worn by the murderer and the state of the tent which had been slashed to ribbons. Nils, who had been found lying on top of the tent, had only received wounds to his head. The prosecutor claims that he would have been severely cut as well if he had been inside alongside them. The other pieces of evidence are circumstantial.

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The state of the bodies implies things about the killer that the prosecution say can only be explained by their story. Of the three bodies, Miles was left in the worst state. She was stabbed many times, even after she died, and her lower body was stripped naked. This, the prosecution says, shows us that Nils was furious at his girlfriend in particular.

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A random burglar would not target one of the two girls so brutally. Neal's lawyer does not account for the blood on the shoes, nor does she account for the awful state of Myla's body. But she does provide a stirring rebuttal to the allegation that her client is some sort of mastermind at staging a crime scene.

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It's about 3 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide, surrounded by pine and birch trees that make it feel quite remote, in spite of its relatively close proximity to the city of Espoo. At an intersection near the lake, they stop at a roadside stand. The mature woman working the kiosk is less than pleasant to them. She seems wary of their group, and when asked, she suggests that they camp far away.

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If the prosecution is to be believed, then that means Nils committed a crime of passion out of blind rage, then arranged the scene meticulously to hide his horrible deeds. She implies that someone who has just murdered three people on violent impulse does not lie down and pretend to be unconscious beside his victims. Besides, there's a factor that the prosecution has completely overlooked.

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The severity of the injuries Nils received that same night. When he was picked up by police, Nils had a broken jaw and skull fractures. He was unable to speak due to his severe head injuries. Pictures of him at the hospital following the attack show his entire jaw bandaged and braced and one of his eyes swollen shut.

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The prosecution's story alleges that these injuries came from a fight with Seppo sometime after 2 a.m. while Myla was writing her diary entry and Anya was probably already asleep. This means that Seppo hurt his friend badly enough that Nils couldn't even talk the following morning. Would a young man with head injuries this severe be able to overpower three people even if he surprised them?

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Would he have been able to walk half a mile away from the campsite to dispose of his incriminating shoes before returning and pretending to be unconscious? Head wounds are temperamental things. They can impede clear thought, memory, motor functions.

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The version of Nils Gustafsson that the prosecution has painted is someone who was both severely injured and preternaturally controlled in his revenge. This picture of Nils, his attorney argues, does not square with the facts. Besides, there's always the fact that teenage Nils' hair was decidedly more brown than blonde.

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Nils, for his part, maintains that his own memory of the night in question is spotty thanks to his head injuries. In the end, the jury finds Nils not guilty. He's released from custody and is allowed to return to his quiet life with his family. But even still, he's not done with his life in the spotlight. The last year has been a harrowing relitigation of the most traumatic event of his life.

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And so, Nils sues the Finnish government for unjustified imprisonment, the case is settled, and Nils walks away with the payment of nearly 45,000 euros. Nils' life eventually goes back to normal, and his innocence is never questioned again. So, who's responsible for the Lake Bodum murders?

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Was it Hans Osman, the unreliable attention seeker, who loved to imply that he knew more than he let on, even making many suspicious statements on his deathbed? Was it Karl Kjellström who was often violent towards campers at the lake he considered his property? Was it Nils Gustafsson who committed a crime of passion that could never be proven in court?

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Or was it a random person long since disappeared somewhere in Finland? Curiously, another suspect came to light in the late 1960s, just a couple months before Carl took his own life. A man named Pentti Soinenen, who hanged himself while in prison. For many years, he bragged to fellow inmates that he committed the Lake Bodum murders.

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He did indeed grow up near Lake Bodum, but otherwise his claims were given little credence by police. Soinonen was only 14 or 15 years old at the time of the murders, and it seems unlikely he could have overpowered four people, two of whom were 18-year-old men. Though guilty of plenty of other crimes, Soinonen is considered innocent in the Lake Bodum murders.

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However, his alleged confession shows a chilling possibility. Perhaps the murderer's name was never known to police at all. The tall blonde man supposedly on the shores that morning and allegedly photographed among the crowd at the funeral in 1960 was never identified. Even if he was just a bystander who looked suspicious to passersby, the real murderer could be just as anonymous.

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A nameless face in the crowd that helped trample evidence after the killing. And lest we forget, the murder weapon has, to this day, never been found. Wherever it lies, whether at the bottom of Lake Bodum, buried on its shores, or somewhere else entirely, even the midnight sun may never reach it. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

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Confused but undeterred, the group buys some soda and beer, then heads off to find a campsite, as planned. As they pull away, Myla shoots a glance back at the stand. The woman is watching them go. Myla finds herself wondering whether it's safe to camp here. She's already noticed that there are not many tents set up along the lake shore.

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Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Winters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Teamstra. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway.

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Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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There are plenty of hikers and swimmers, and the occasional boat out on the lake. It seems odd that there aren't more overnight campers on the weekend. As they scour the lake shore for a campsite, Myla, Nils, Seppo, and Anya encounter a handful of day trippers, people there for hiking or fishing, but they make sure to find a nice secluded space to set up.

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It's not long before they find the perfect spot, a small outcropping on the south shore. They're right by the water, but screened from public view by the trees. They lean their two motorcycles against nearby trees and pitch a small tent that's just big enough to fit them all inside.

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Myla keeps thinking back to the woman who sold them their drinks, the look she gave to the four of them, her cryptic warnings. Myla hopes that they won't get in trouble for staying here. Since this is her birthday celebration, she'd feel awful if something happened. But her concern starts to evaporate as everyone settles in by the lake.

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It's been an especially hot summer, so the cool breeze over the water is just what they needed. The boys crack open their beers. Anya stops complaining about how annoying her dad was about letting her go on this trip. And finally, Milo relaxes as well. The day comes to an end, but the sun doesn't set.

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From where you lay inside your tent, the night sounds perfectly peaceful. Crickets chirp softly outside. Not far away, the lake's gentle waves lap rhythmically against the shore. It's idyllic. And yet, you can't shake the sense that something is wrong. Something imminent. Then you hear it. A crunch of foliage outside the tent. Then a quick twang. The sound of a rope snapping.

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They may be in southern Finland, but they're still close enough to the Arctic Circle that the sun never fully sets in the summer. It dips low until it's barely touching the horizon and stays there. And as night falls, the sky dims to a sort of warm twilight, a phenomenon known as a midnight sun. All in all, it gives everything a beautiful, eerie look.

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By 2 a.m., both of the boys are drunk and Anya is sleeping. It gives Mila enough privacy to make a quick entry in her diary made possible by the light of the midnight sun. She writes that the boys are still awake, that Seppo is out fishing. She doesn't write for long and soon she's putting away her diary to try to get some sleep. That entry would be her final words. Nine hours later.

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Morning, by the shores of Lake Bodum. The midnight sun has brightened to a warm summer's day once again. A local man, Esko Johansen, arrives with his two sons. They take in the stunning scene before them. If today's going to be anything like yesterday, it'll be perfect weather for swimming. They make a brisk walk towards the lakeshore, eager to plunge into the refreshing water.

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Yet, on their way, an unusual sight stops them. From a distance, it looks like a pile of trash. Suddenly, Esko seems tense. Uneasy. He stops both his sons from walking any farther and tells them to stay where they are. He's going to go investigate and make sure everything's alright. He approaches and sees that the pile of trash is actually a tent.

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It's collapsed in on itself and there are dark stains all over the shredded cloth. It looks like blood. As he draws nearer, his fears are confirmed. There's a bruised and mutilated boy lying on top of the tent, and the body of a young girl partially concealed by the torn fabric.

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Immediately, Esko runs to the nearest phone and calls 112, Finland's emergency services number, and within an hour, the police are swarming the scene. The body that had first drawn Esko's attention is that of Nils. He's barefoot and covered in blood. His face and skull show signs of intense blood force trauma, and the tent beneath him is slashed to ribbons.

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The other body spilling out of the tent belongs to Mila, and the state of her body is even more horrifying. Her bones are broken, and she's covered with deep stab wounds. She's been stripped from the waist down. Inside the tent, the police find both Seppo and Anya, with similar wounds all over their bodies. Though none as extreme as Mila's, Each of the teenagers have been stabbed and bludgeoned.

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They all have broken jaws and severely fractured skulls. While searching the tent, the police make a shocking discovery. Nils is still alive. The 18-year-old boy stirs, moaning in pain. Blood bubbles up from his mouth. He can't do anything besides moan. His severely broken jaw prevents him from speaking, and immediately an ambulance whisks him off to the nearest hospital.

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By this point, bystanders are already starting to crowd around the crime scene, morbidly curious about what all the commotion is about. As the number of bystanders grows, it becomes clear that the police have neglected to set up a perimeter. The crime scene becomes an absolute mess, with countless pieces of forensic evidence trampled or lost.

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Amidst the commotion, what police are able to piece together is this. There's no obvious murder weapon, though the tent has been slashed as if by some sort of blade. It seems the attacker struck at them from outside the tent and the teenagers fought to escape before succumbing to their injuries. Out of everyone, Nils was the only one who managed to get out.

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The tent itself seems to have been roughly ransacked, its contents scattered around the woods. A few key items are missing, including wallets and watches belonging to the boys, the shoes that Nils had been wearing, and the motorcycle keys. However, even so, the motorcycles have not been stolen as both are still parked near the campsite.

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Myla still has her diary on her, but it doesn't provide any substantial clues. It seems she was too busy relaxing by the lake to note if anything was amiss. The only thing of note is that she was still awake at 2am, and that both boys were drunk, though it's unsurprising for a pair of teenagers on a weekend getaway. The police also find the shoes that belonged to Nils about a kilometer from camp.

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They're half-buried in the undergrowth and covered in blood. a couple of birdwatchers come forward to police with the description of a potential suspect, a tall, blonde man with a square jaw. They claim that they saw him near the campsite in the early hours of the morning. This is corroborated by a 14-year-old boy who was fishing around 6 a.m.

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and claims to have seen a blonde man standing beside the shedded tent from afar. Neither the fishermen or the birdwatchers, however, were close enough to see the bodies. Locals continue to come forward with their own theories, their own suspects, and soon the police are overwhelmed. What they really need is for Nils, the sole survivor, to help make sense of all of this information.

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Someone is cutting the cords that hold up your tent. You try to escape, but the tent is already collapsed down around you, smothering your cries for help. June 4th, 1960. A pair of motorcycles drive through the countryside of southern Finland, carrying four teenagers and their camping gear. On one motorcycle sits Seppo Boisman and his girlfriend Anja Tuleki-Maki.

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He's recovering from his injuries, unable to talk to anyone, but the police are certain that once they have his account of what took place that night, the story will fall into place. But there's only one problem. As he lies in his hospital bed, Nils can't remember a thing. Later on, when Nils is finally able, he gives a short statement to the police.

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He remembers little to nothing of the day before. His only memory of the attack is that of a dark shape which he glimpsed through the holes in their tent. Any other crucial details have been lost in the head trauma he suffered. The police, drowning in clues offered up by locals, want to see if they can jog his memory.

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After he's discharged from the hospital, they pay him another visit, and with his consent, they hypnotize Nils and ask him again, Who killed your friends? What did you see? In his interview, the results are more concrete. Nils describes the attack, fighting to get free of the tent as the intruder batters away from the outside.

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He says he got free of the canvas, only for the mysterious man to kick him in the jaw, breaking it and knocking him unconscious. Afterwards, he was left for dead. Nils describes the attacker as a man around 20-30 years old, about 5'8", with blonde hair combed back and a strong chin. This is promising news.

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His description seems to match up with the figure multiple eyewitnesses placed near the scene. The police hypnotize the 14-year-old who claimed to have seen the blonde man, and again ask for a description. He says the same thing. A blonde man with a square jaw.

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Using the descriptions given by Nils and the eyewitness, the police are able to create a rough composite sketch of the man they're looking for. The three deceased teens are buried the following week. The event is photographed by the press, and when these photos are developed afterwards, they reveal something that no one noticed at the time.

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Among the crowd of heartbroken mourners, there stood an unidentified man, a blonde man, with a strong jawline. The authorities' first real lead on a suspect comes from the staff of Helsinki Surgical Hospital, located about 25 kilometers southeast of Lake Bodum. On June 6th, the Monday after the murders, a distressed blonde man is brought into the ward.

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He's requested urgent assistance, though the doctors don't notice anything physically wrong with him. His shirt is stained red with what he claims is paint. This man, as it turns out, is already known to the Finnish police. He's a 36-year-old German expatriate named Hans Osman. His background is shrouded in mystery due to his habit of lying and exaggerating his past.

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Unsubstantiated claims Hanses made about himself include that he was a Nazi guard at Auschwitz, was reassigned when he fell in love with a Jewish woman, and that he was recruited by the KGB after the war. In spite of his suspect backstory, Hans has an airtight alibi. He claims he was with a girlfriend in Helsinki at the time, and she and her family confirm this story.

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it would have been nearly impossible for him to drive all the way to Lake Bodum, commit a gruesome crime, and get back to Helsinki without them noticing. The authorities dismiss him as a suspect, confident that he's not the man they're looking for, and his red-stained clothes are never tested. Around this time, another suspect comes to their attention. It's a local named Carl Chilstrom.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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Ibrahim takes a tissue sample from the mummy and a wax sample from the coffin. Then she ships them off to a lab in Germany so they can undergo proper carbon dating. Ibrahim is excited for the results to come back. She's feeling very confident. In addition to all the quirks her team has discovered, the princess's facial structure looks, in Ibrahim's own words, quite Persian.

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Her optimism, though, would not last. In January, Iran sends a group of representatives to examine the princess and determine whether or not the mummy is Iranian. Dr. Ibrahim welcomes them and gives them all the access to the mummy they require. She's not worried. Everything in her research has pointed to the mummy belonging to Pakistan. Besides, she's a scientist.

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She just wants the truth to be known. Or, well, at least she thinks she does. Unfortunately for Ibrahim, the truth that the Iranians uncover is not a pretty one. During their investigation, the Iranians find a number of new unusual things about the princess.

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Until this point, any peculiarities with the mummy that Ibrahim and her team notice have simply been catalogued as a unique aspect of the Persian mummification process. After all, a Persian mummy has never been found before, so who knows how their preservation process differed. But the Iranian experts see it differently. They believe it means that the mummy is a fake.

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Firstly, the text on the breastplate isn't written accurately, as if the author had very little knowledge of the language he or she was writing in. Second, there are traces of detergents and other chemicals on the body, chemicals that weren't used until well after the Persian Empire. No longer interested in the mummy, the Iranian representatives depart.

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Pakistan's so-called Persian princess, they declare, is not a real mummy. It's a humiliating turn of events for Ibrahim and her team. They should have been able to pick out those red flags a mile away. Instead, they were so blinded by their excitement that they overlooked vital, obvious information. The mummy is not from the Persian Empire either.

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The Iranian cuneiform is too shoddy, and the chemicals on its skin are far too modern. So now the question becomes, where and when is it from? When the carbon dating results come back from the German lab, Ibrahim braces herself for the worst. Even so, she's completely unprepared for what the lab has uncovered. This mummy is not 2,600 years old. In fact, she's not even 100 years old.

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She's only been dead for about two years. It now occurs to Dr. Ibrahim that the body isn't a Persian princess after all. More likely, this is a victim of murder. The mystery is now back in the hands of the police. When the mummy was assumed to be 2,600 years old, the cause of her death could be left to academic speculation.

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But now that police know how recently she died, her death needs to be investigated. The police recruit a top forensic pathologist to carry out an autopsy. Dr. Ibrahim joins him and an entire team of archeologists and doctors assist with the endeavor.

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When Ibrahim and her team cut open the hardened muslin wrappings, they discover a woman with bleach-blonde tipped hair, a color that you will not find on any truly ancient Persian woman. Underneath the initial shell of cloth, the body's cover did even more wrappings. Once Ibrahim and her team unwrap her fully, it's easy to see how this woman was preserved.

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She had been covered in drying chemicals like salt and bicarbonate soda and left out to dry. Now that the wrappings are removed, the team decides to give her one more CT scan. This scan reveals something that they didn't notice before. The vertebrae in her neck suddenly veer in the wrong direction. Her death, it would seem, was violent.

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Not only does she have a broken neck, but her spine is also broken in a second location in her lower back. Her jaw, hip bone, and pelvis are broken as well. And none of these bone breaks had time to heal before she died, a strong indication that they came at the end. On top of this, her teeth have been removed to avoid dental record identification.

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And according to the forensic pathologist, they were removed before she died, not after. This woman, whoever she was, seems to have had an absolutely brutal, torturous death. Dr. Ibrahim's heart breaks all over again, this time for this poor young woman, barely an adult with her entire life ahead of her, whose life was stolen in the most traumatic way possible. But why?

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Why would this young woman have been tortured and murdered? And most bafflingly of all, why was she being passed off as an ancient mummified princess? Creating a mummy out of a murder victim is so absurd that there can only be one motivation. And it's simple, really. Money.

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A mummy as detailed and convincing as the Persian princess can have no other purpose but to fool a collector so thoroughly that they paid through the nose to own it. Pakistan has a booming black market for valuable antiquities. Both real and fake items are sold off as the real deal. And if the relic is convincing enough, then it can go for millions upon millions of dollars.

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That is why this young woman lost her life. It was so that a group of criminals could gain a fistful of cash. And Ibrahim does believe that an entire team was involved. They had to be. They needed someone to prepare the mummy. They needed a carpenter to create the ornate box. They needed a stonemason to carve the coffin. And they needed a metal worker to create the gold ornamentations.

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And, of course, they needed a few people who could kill a young woman. Or, at the very least, maim her body beyond recognition after death. After all, that was the only way she could look convincing enough to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Because that was the entire point, wasn't it? Taking a woman's body, along with her entire identity, and using it to line a man's pockets.

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It's a strange request because Ibrahim isn't a medical doctor. She's an archaeologist and curator of the National Museum. Archaeological emergencies happen in Indiana Jones movies, not real life. And yet, the police claim they need her expertise immediately. So Dr. Ibrahim doesn't ask questions, she just runs. Her lungs are burning by the time she reaches the police station.

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I'd like to be able to tell you that in the end, our Persian princess gets the justice that she deserves. But that's not what happens. No one is ever able to identify who she was when she was alive, nor are they able to uncover the truth behind her murder. And to this day, nobody knows what happened to her organs or teeth. The Karachi police launched an investigation, but it never goes anywhere.

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There are no known DNA matches and no leads. And eventually, they just stop looking. After all, the woman has no identity and no known family. There are no leads, and there are more urgent cases to attend to. Ones that actually have a shot at being solved. As for our mummy thieves, or as they may be, mummy makers, there's not a happy ending there either.

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Riki is sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempting to sell a dead body on the black market. And Baki, the man who Riki claims discovered the mummy, is never found. And so, the story of the faux Persian princess arrives at an unglamorous end. During the investigation, the mummy is kept at the National Museum. But once the case is closed, the museum relinquishes its hold on her.

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She's unceremoniously removed from the premises, as if she had never been there at all. In 2002, the body is handed over to a charity that provides mortuary services. And by 2005, the organization has run out of available space, and so they ask local officials for permission to give her her last rites and a proper burial. They never receive that permission.

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And so, in 2008, they bury the Persian princess in a mass grave full of other unidentified people. No one is ever charged with her murder. And with that, her secrets are buried with her, never to be unearthed again. But that doesn't mean that her legacy will stay underground with her. No, some truths have to surface.

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Because this so-called Persian princess isn't the only contemporary mummy out there. Within a year of her initial discovery, two more Persian mummies are found on the black market, being sold for millions each. The implications of this are staggering. This isn't some amateur job. It's detailed enough to have fooled an entire nation's foremost archaeological experts for months.

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And whoever made this mummy is confident enough to keep doing it again and again. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Alex Robinson. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

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Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden.

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Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo.

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There, she's quickly ushered into a side room where officers are crowded around something. Their excited whispers stop as Dr. Ibrahim enters, and the officers step inside. And then she sees it. At the center of the room stands a massive, ornate wooden box with flowers and trees carved along the sides.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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The lid of the wooden box is off, and one glance inside tells Ibrahim that she was right to rush over so quickly. A white stone coffin is inside. Ibrahim decides that it's probably made of alabaster, a valuable stone to carry a valuable passenger. The coffin's heavy stone lid is cracked, splitting the ancient script that adorns it in half.

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It's still legible, however, and Ibrahim feels a rush of exhilaration as she runs her fingers across the symbols. This, she knows, is no ordinary coffin. This is a sarcophagus, the final resting place of a mummy. The police weren't exaggerating on the phone. They actually found this stashed away in someone's basement. This ancient, priceless relic. A broad smile develops across her face.

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The police officers can't contain themselves either. They're practically jumping up and down with glee, saying over and over, We have a mummy! We have a mummy! A mummy in Pakistan! Everyone in the room agrees this is the event of the century. This is a historic moment, and no one understands this better than Dr. Ibrahim. The existence of a mummy in this region is nearly unthinkable.

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She knows that the contents of this box could challenge historical understandings of the Persian Empire. For Dr. Ibrahim, this is the chance of a lifetime. The police are excited to open the sarcophagus, and they want Dr. Ibrahim to examine its contents. Ibrahim is itching to dive in as well, but she knows a moment this monumental should be recorded, for both posterity and science.

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The only video camera in this room is a small, clunky device, the kind you might use to record a child's recital, but it'll have to do. The record button is pressed, and Dr. Ibrahim gets to work. Together, they lift away the cracked stone lid to reveal what's underneath. And there, lying before them, is a tiny body.

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Not even five feet in length, the mummy in the box had once been a wisp of a person. But now its presence fills the room like a thunderclap. The mummy is fully covered, wrapped in strips of brown muslin that are mottled with age. The cloth is hard to the touch, as if it's forming a protective shell around the fragile body inside.

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You descend the staircase slowly, plunging yourself further into darkness with every step. The air grows cold. Musty. As you reach for the flashlight on your hip, you hesitate. You can still turn around, go back upstairs into the house, let someone else be the first to step through the cellar door waiting for you at the bottom of the steps.

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Ibrahim will later discover that the effect is caused by resin that seeped into the wraps years ago, solidifying them into a cocoon. But for now, she can't wonder about that. She can't concentrate on any single detail. There's just too much to take in. A gold plate in the shape of a cypress tree rests on the mummy's stomach.

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On its chest, shining against the brown cloth, is a gold breastplate etched with an unusual script. The text, written in an ancient form of cuneiform, reads, I, the daughter of Xerxes, the great king, I am Ruduamna. Ibrahim has no need to decipher the cuneiform to know that this mummy might be royalty. Because right above the gold mask covering its face, a beautiful gold crown rests on its head.

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Dr. Ibrahim steps away for a moment to collect herself. It's a lot to take in. There's no way to overstate how huge finding a Persian royal mummy is. Because the thing is, before this mummy was found, no one knew of any Middle Eastern cultures aside from the ancient Egyptians that had intentionally created mummies. Now, there are, of course, accidental mummies.

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Technically, a mummy is nothing more than a dead body that's been preserved. In Iran, there are the saltmen who were trapped under the collapse of a salt mine, their bodies completely preserved by the minerals that they were buried under. And in Lebanon, there were the Maronite mummies who died in a cave in the 13th century. The dry air and high altitude kept them from decaying.

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But the ancient Egyptians are the only ones in this part of the world known to purposefully mummify their dead. And that is why this discovery is such a big deal. Concurrently, however, that's also why it should have set off alarm bells in Ibrahim's head. The mummies immediately transferred to a sealed nitrogen chamber at the Pakistan National Museum to be kept under Ibrahim's watchful eye.

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She gathers a team of experts, and together, they dive into the mystery, uncovering as much about the mummy as they can. After the most incredible whirlwind week of Dr. Ibrahim's career, a press conference is held to announce that Pakistani officials have discovered a 2,600-year-old Persian princess. But Dr. Ibrahim can't bask in the afterglow for long.

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Immediately, other countries begin to lay claim to Pakistan's discovery. After all, just because the mummy was found in a Pakistani's basement doesn't mean the mummy is from Pakistan and could have been smuggled in from anywhere on the black market. Iran alleges that the mummy wasn't a princess at all, but rather a prince, an Achaemenian dynasty prince from the 6th century.

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Iranian officials say that the mummy was stolen from them and that they already have the suspected thieves in custody. But the Taliban government of Afghanistan counters that claim, saying that the mummy was taken from their country during their protracted war. Even within Pakistan, infighting ensues.

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The Awan tribe of the Balochistan province files a court petition, alleging that the cuneiform etched into the mummy's breastplate belongs to the Awan royal family and that the mummy should be moved to one of their local museums. And on top of all of this chaos, no insurance company will agree to cover the mummy until more is known about it.

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They want ironclad proof that their investment is safe with a legitimate ancient mummy. And while that makes perfect sense, the National Museum needs their new princess to be insured. Without that safety net, the museum could be on the line for millions of dollars if anything were to happen to the body. And so, with multiple fires lit under her feet, Ibrahim gets to work.

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She needs to find the truth about this Persian princess, but that'll be no easy task. The man who had the mummy in his basement is currently in custody and cooperating, but the story he's telling police only raises more questions. Detective Superintendent Farouk Awan is intimately familiar with the Persian Princess case. After all, he's the one who tracked it down on the black market.

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But just as quickly, you put the thought from your mind, because you have to know. You click your flashlight on and continue down. A new scent is filling your nostrils now, and it becomes overpowering as you push the door open. You sweep the windowless room with your flashlight. It's cluttered with cardboard boxes and tools and the things you'd expect to find in a residential basement.

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But now, even though the mummy's been found and a suspect is in custody, the case still feels very unsolved. Only a few days prior, the Pakistani police had received a temp that a Karachi resident was hoarding a collection of antiques to sell illegally. And the crown jewel of that collection? An ancient mummy. Videos of the mummy had been passed around certain circles, shopping for buyers.

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But before any takers could claim the mummy for themselves, the video found its way onto Awan's desk. And as soon as he saw it, he ordered an immediate raid. Ultimately, police located the mummy in the city of Quetta, hidden in a basement. And now, Awan sits at an interrogation table, across from the owner of that basement, a tribal leader named Sardar Wali Riki.

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Awan tries not to let his frustrations show on his face, but the truth is, this interrogation is going nowhere. Riki's story makes no sense, and Awan can't bring himself to believe half of the notes he's jotting on his notepad. With a deep breath, Detective Superintendent Awan asks Riki to start over again from the top. Riki insists that he wasn't the one who found the mummy.

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That had been an Iranian named Sharif Shah Baki. This Baki person had been at an archaeological site in the Karan desert when an earthquake hit. The tremor shook the dig sign up, and when the dust settled, a mummy had been unearthed. Baki then approached Riki to cut a deal. Riki would use his political contacts to help Baki sell the mummy, and the two men would split the profits.

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And yes, there are buyers out there who would be very interested in acquiring a mummy. The mummy market has been thriving since the Middle Ages, and it's still going strong today. The difference is that now, trafficking ancient dead bodies is considered a crime. But that won't stop people from selling them or buying them.

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Ricky claims that the mummy is worth tens of millions of dollars and that he was already receiving offers before the police raided his basement. Detective Superintendent Awan sits back in his chair and warily rubs his eyes. Yesterday, this case had felt like one of the greatest triumphs of his career, but now he's worried the case might turn into a very public disaster.

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The police have been searching for this mysterious Iranian named Baki, but they've gotten nowhere. It's like he disappeared into thin air, or like he never existed at all. At this point, Awan is starting to think that the latter is more likely. Frankly, Awan is suspicious of this entire story.

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Confirmation of an earthquake out in the sparsely populated Karan Desert would be difficult to prove, especially because Riki can't provide the date when this supposedly happened. But if Baki never existed and the earthquake never hit, then where did this mummy come from? Detective Superintendent Awan excuses himself and stands from the table.

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He knows Riki won't be much help in answering that question. He clearly doesn't know anything else. Or if he does, he's not talking. At this point, Awan suspects that Riki knows more about the money the mummy's worth than he does about how the mummy was found. What concerns Awan most is that the police don't have the tools to investigate this case.

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He and his men aren't experts in ancient artifacts. They're just police officers. Officers who were very good at their jobs, of course. But law enforcement isn't what this case needs right now.

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That's when you suddenly let out a gasp. Because your flashlight beam has landed on something, or rather, someone, who shouldn't be there. October 19th, 2000. Dr. Asma Ibrahim dashes through the streets of Karachi, Pakistan as fast as her legs can carry her. She's been summoned to the local police station. An emergency requires her very specific set of professional skills.

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What they need is to know more about the ancient origins of the mummy, where it actually might have come from, because Awan has interrogated a lot of suspects over the years, and he doesn't believe Riki's Quran Desert story for a minute. He quietly hopes that Dr. Ibrahim's team is making some headway, because as it stands, the police investigation has stalled out. November

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The mummy's been at Dr. Ibrahim's museum for a month now. Her team is doing everything they can to learn more about their Persian princess. They hope the facts will prove that the mummy belongs solely to Pakistan. But so far, their discoveries aren't painting a clear picture. There's an 8-inch wound running from the princess's sternum down to her stomach, used to remove her internal organs.

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The missing organs aren't unusual for a mummy, but the length of the cut is. In Egyptian mummies, for example, the incision is much shorter. Ibrahim and her team take this as promising news. Since there's never been a Pakistani mummy, no one can say what preparation tactics might have been used. The mummy's little quirks simply support their hypothesis.

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They discover another quirk in the princess's body cavity. Her internal organs have been replaced with some kind of nondescript powder. Typically, expensive spices like myrrh would be used for this purpose, especially if the mummy was royalty. But this powder was nothing like they'd ever seen in a mummy before, especially not royalty. the mummy's heart has been removed as well.

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Typically, that organ is left intact for the dead soul's journey through the afterlife. In order to preserve her as best they can, they opt not to unwrap her bindings, but they still need a way to see her body inside. And so, Ibrahim takes the mummy to a local Karachi hospital for a CT scan. From this, they learn that the mummy died when she was only 21 years old.

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The Woman on the Tracks

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Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

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The Woman on the Tracks

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Lamont Jones's world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

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Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County, PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets— This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

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What Happened to the Sodder Children?

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In her mind, she returns to the moment after she hung up the phone. She closed the curtains, she locked the door, but no, she didn't turn the lights off before going back to bed. She left them on for her daughter. So if the house had electricity at the time, the lights should have been on, and they were. All at once, a realization rushes over them. Her eyes meet his, and the word on their lips.

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Arson. At this point, there's no stopping it. George and Ginny's minds are running wild, considering every possibility. They've lost so much, and the idea that someone could have wished this upon them, that someone could have actually done this to their family, is staggering. Everything Ginny thought she knew has been thrown into question.

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She asks herself, if it's possible that someone in their community had started this fire on purpose, then what else is possible? What else could the investigators and officials have been wrong about? Can she believe anything she's been told about the fire, about the fate of her five little children? Doubt begins to gnaw at her.

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she can't stop thinking about that night, picking apart every tiny detail in her mind. Ginny can't bring herself to accept that her five young children actually perished in those flames. Perhaps it's the wishful thinking of a mother who has suffered an unthinkable loss, but perhaps not. Because what really keeps Ginny awake at night are the facts of this case, or rather, the lack thereof.

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Why were there no screams or cries for help during the fire? Why are there no skeletal remains in the wreckage? They say burning flesh can be smelled from miles away, and if that's true, why in the world didn't they smell it? She begins to fixate on these details and on the bones. She hears about something that happened in a neighboring community, another fire.

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In it, seven people died, but in that case, seven skeletons were recovered. And this gnaws at her. She can't understand why there were no skeletons in the ashes of her home. she decides to conduct an experiment.

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She has plenty of animal bones in the trash from cooking chicken and pork chops for the family, and so she decides to take these bones and put them in her oven, making it as hot as she can. Interestingly, no matter how hot she gets the oven, she can't get the bones to turn to ash. Now, it's not the most scientific experiment.

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Everyone else has beds on the second floor. The older kids, John, Marion, and George Jr. share one room. The younger kids, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Ginny, and Betty sleep in another upstairs room. At this point, the Sauter children begin to trickle off to bed. But not all. Some of the younger ones are too excited about Christmas to go to sleep just yet.

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Her oven is not as hot as the house fire would have been, but to her, it's enough. Ginny in her state won't be convinced otherwise. In her heart, she knows that her children's bones could not have possibly been turned to ash. And with this, an employee at a local crematorium concurs, informing Ginny that human bones remain after being subjected to temperatures comparable to that of a house fire.

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It's not definitive proof, but it's more than enough for a mourning mother to cling to. No bones were recovered, which means that there's a chance, even if a small one, that the Sauter children weren't in the fire at all. And if they weren't in the fire, it's possible that they're still alive. But this is hardly a comforting thought, because if they are still alive, where are they?

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Ginny knows that there's no chance that they wandered off before the fire, or fled during it and somehow got lost. They were young, but not so young that they couldn't find help. Maurice, the oldest, was 14. And if they had escaped the fire, but succumbed to the elements, their bodies surely would have been found by now.

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So the Sauter children didn't wander off, and it seems like they didn't die in the fire either. This leaves one other possibility, but it's unthinkable. It's insane. Ginny and George both know it, and yet they can't bring themselves to believe any other explanation than this. That fire was nothing but a distraction, a cover for the real crime that took place that night. Kidnapping.

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Now, instead of grieving, the Sodders begin to think back on every strange moment from the months prior, every confrontation or mysterious occurrence, the kinds of events a person writes off as nothing to worry about, resurfacing and filled with sinister possibility. Which is to say that, to the Sodders, every acquaintance, every neighbor, is now a suspect.

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George thinks back, trying to recall any recent interactions that felt a bit strange at the time, and one in particular comes to mind right away. Months prior, a strange man showed up at the Sodder's home, inquiring if George, who owned a hauling company, was hiring. George said that he wasn't, and yet the traveler still hung around the house a bit, like he wasn't taking no for an answer.

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It was an uncomfortable situation. George followed him around the yard, trying to ride the line between being polite and getting the traveler to move on. The young man started to point out things about the yard, as if trying to impress him with his handyman knowledge.

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And circling to the home's rear, George recalls that the man pointed to the fuse boxes on their wall and said, this is going to cause a fire someday. In that moment, George concluded that this man had no idea what he was talking about. After all, he had just had the boxes looked at and approved by the power company. Eventually, the man left, and George put the incident out of his mind.

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But now, George can't help but wonder, had the traveler really moved on down the road? Or did he hang around, bitter about being turned down for work? In another instance, Ginny recalls something else. Another curious event that happened shortly before the fire. One day, she was working in the kitchen when, through the window, she saw the kids coming home from school.

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But in that moment, her eyes were drawn to something else. Behind her kids, a car she didn't recognize was parked on the street. Inside it was a man, and he appeared to be watching them. All of them, it seemed. The children, Ginny, the house itself, and the way he was looking at them. It felt unusual. Aggressive, even.

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And Marion, the eldest daughter, stays up on the couch to watch them play a little while longer. Though other children still have chores to do, Maurice and Louis must go outside to feed the animals before they turn in. It's not an enviable chore. Maurice and Louis layer on hats and coats and journey out into the freezing darkness to feed them.

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It made Ginny uneasy, but once her kids were inside, the car drove away, and she sighed in relief. But now, she's left to wonder, was this man doing some sort of reconnaissance? But unfortunately, that's only the beginning of the suspect list. As an Italian immigrant, George had strong beliefs about the leader of the country he left behind.

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He was an outspoken critic of Mussolini, which ruffled the feathers among Fayetteville's Italian-American community. George had one business associate in particular, who we'll call Nick. He and Nick fell out over their politics, and in their final fight, Nick allegedly shouted, "'Your goddamn house is going up in smoke!' and your children are going to be destroyed.

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You're going to pay for the dirty remarks you've been making about Mussolini. Finally, Ginny remembers the strange call she received on the phone right before the fire. It seemed like a wrong number, but now she thinks maybe it was the conspirators calling to make sure they were home. George and Jenny share their suspicions with the police.

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Though they're not convinced, they agree to investigate and put up notices around town and in the newspaper, asking for leads relating to the missing children or the fire. And soon after, a series of disturbing reports start rolling in. Around April 1946, a spectator from the morning after the fire reveals that they saw a young man remove something from the ashes.

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It's unclear if this was before or after the firefighters arrived, though once they got there, there was a crowd of people for the thief to blend into. The police track down this lead and identify the young man as Lonnie Johnson, a local thief. And with this, an item belonging to the Sodders is discovered in his possession.

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It's a block and tackle of sort of rope and pulley George often used to repair vehicles for work. Lonnie swears up and down that he had nothing to do with the fire, and yet when pushed, he admits that not only did he steal this tool, but he was at the house the night before the fire. In a stunning revelation, Lonnie says that he took the ladder and that he used it to cut the phone line.

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Ostensibly, this was so that if he was caught stealing, the Sodders couldn't call the police before he escaped. But he says he never did steal anything other than that block and tackle, which he only took after the house had already burned down. It's a very odd thing to admit to, while denying any further involvement.

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Like the man in the car, or George's business associate Nick, Lonnie by all accounts seems like an agent in a larger conspiracy. But in order to prove something of that magnitude, the Sodders are going to need a staggering amount of new evidence. And surprisingly, that's exactly what's about to arrive. In 1946, an eyewitness comes forward to the police. The man is a bus driver.

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He claims that while driving past the Sodders' home during the night of the fire, he witnessed a person throwing, quote, "'balls of fire' at the house." It's unclear why he didn't report this at the time. Perhaps he thought it was some sort of Christmas celebration or a controlled demolition. Or maybe he thought it was an act of violence and he just didn't want to get involved.

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It's a stark contrast from the warmth, joy, and laughter of the living room to the quiet, eerie stillness of the outdoors. Two hours later, a silence has fallen over their home. And then, at 12.30 a.m., the phone rings. Jenny, the mother, awakens with a startle. She looks around her bedroom, orienting herself. George and little Sylvia are sleeping soundly next to her.

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But nevertheless, it's enough to compel the family to return to the scene of the fire, to see if there's anything they might have missed. While the family's there, toddler Sylvia gets away from her mother. A strange ball-like object in the yard catches her eye. She travels across the lawn on her small feet, arriving at the object and picking it up.

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It's shaped like a ball, but it has a weird cap on one end. Her parents finally notice her and come over, taking the device from her hand. George has no idea what it could be, but his oldest, John, who's now home on leave from the army, identifies it immediately. It's an incendiary grenade, a weapon specifically designed to start fires.

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This would explain the thump on the roof right before the fire began, as well as the rolling noise that came afterward. It also supports what the Sodders have suspected all along, that the fire started upstairs and not in a downstairs fuse box as the police investigation determined.

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The Saunders are bewildered by this new evidence, but confident that it'll finally convince local law enforcement to investigate the fire as an arson case. But surprisingly, the police do no such thing. Military weaponry found at the scene is evidently not convincing enough. But even still, other jaw-dropping evidence continues to pour in. That same year, a pair of women reach out to the police.

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They claim to have seen the Sauter children alive. One of them who works at a roadside restaurant hours outside of Fayetteville says she saw them the morning after the fire. She served them breakfast and also noticed a car with Florida license plates parked outside.

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The other woman who works at a hotel in Charleston, West Virginia says she saw four of the five children check in around midnight a week or so after the fire. with a group of unfriendly adults who spoke Italian. When the Sodders learn of this, it sparks an array of conflicting emotions. There's joy because their kids might still be alive, but new horrors too.

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What if their kids were taken by fellow Italians as revenge for George's anti-Mussolini views? If that's true, the children could be back in Italy, thousands of miles beyond the reach of the police in West Virginia. By this point, the Sodders are beyond frustrated with the lack of results from law enforcement.

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For the past year, it's been one staggering revelation after another, yet the local police are behaving as though the faulty wiring explanation still holds water. The Sodders recognize that they must appeal to a higher authority, and so in 1947, they write to the FBI. They receive a response from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, but it isn't good news.

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Hoover maintains that this case is a local matter, and that the FBI has no jurisdiction. But even still, the Sodders refuse to be stonewalled, and in 1947, they hire a private investigator to get to the bottom of it. As the PI questions various people around Fayetteville, he keeps hearing one particular rumor again and again.

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That Fire Chief Morris himself, the man responsible for responding to the fire, discovered a human organ in the ashes. It's a bizarre and potentially major revelation. On Christmas Day, the firefighters claimed that there was absolutely no trace of the children's bodies. But this rumor, conflictingly, implies that they did recover human remains and hid the evidence.

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Even stranger, it's been said that they placed the organ in a wooden dynamite box and buried it somewhere on the property. It's a strange, strange story, and the PI doesn't quite know what to make of it, but he hears it from so many people that he's compelled to tell the Sodders about it. Right away, the family rushes back to the scene of the fire, and thereafter, they begin digging.

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It's painful to disturb the flowers they planted in honor of their lost children, but they'll do anything to learn more about what happened. And soon, sure enough, one of their shovels hits something. It's wooden, hollow. George, Ginny, and their surviving children gather around as the box is uncovered and hoisted to the surface. It's a dynamite box, just like their PI said it would be.

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Collectively, they hold their breath as the lid comes off, and inside, as promised, is an undeniable lump of dried and shriveled flesh. Resultingly, a local funeral director is brought in to examine the contents. But they're even more confused than the saunters are, because it's not a human organ. Rather, it's beef. A beef liver, to be exact. And even stranger, it's not even burnt.

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She gets out of her warm bed, clutching her nightgown against the cold. Bewildered as to who could be calling at this hour, she exits her room and crosses to the table where the phone is. The lights, she notices, are still on. They should be turned off now that all the children are in bed, all save for Marion, who's fallen asleep on the living room couch.

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At their wit's end, the Sodders decide to confront Fire Chief Morris face to face. And once pushed, Morris makes an astonishing confession. Except it's not a confession to some sinister conspiracy. Rather, he states that he was only trying to help, but made a mistake. Morris states that he's certain that the kids died in the fire.

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But watching the Sodder family desperately search for evidence to the contrary and destroying what was left of their own emotional well-being in the process was too much for him to bear. And so Morris says he did something very unorthodox. He got a hold of some beef liver, put it in the box, and buried it at the site.

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He then planted the rumors himself in the hopes that the Sodders might hear of it and dig up the box. From his strange, distorted point of view, he thought that this might be enough to get the Saunders to believe that their kins were truly dead. It's an odd scheme, one that doesn't seem likely to have ever worked. And it gets even stranger.

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When the Saunders go to retrieve the liver from the coroner, they find that it's disappeared from his office. But even as this line of inquiry fails, another rises. The PI has one more lead to pursue, and it's perhaps the most promising. In 1947, the family's PI investigates one final lead in his search for the missing Sauter kids.

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He's curious about George's former business associate, Nick, who George fell out with over politics. The one who furiously made the bizarre claim about their house going up in smoke. George tells the PI that Nick was actually his employee at one time. They were close enough that, when George needed a cosigner for an insurance policy on his home, Nick was willing to step in.

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However, they stopped talking after their fights over Mussolini. The PI secures a copy of the insurance policy, and shockingly, it's been updated since when George last saw it. As it turned out, Nick had increased the amount on George's home insurance by $250 right before the fire without telling George.

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It seems odd that such a move would even be possible without George's consent, but it does mean that, as a cosigner, Nick might have benefited if the entire Sauter family died in the fire. But that isn't even the most damning detail that the private investigator uncovers. As it turned out, Nick didn't just stand to benefit from the fire.

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He was actually a member of the coroner's jury that ultimately ruled the fire as an accident. Now, this fact is incredibly bizarre. A coroner's jury is made up of random citizens, like any jury, but their job is to look at the evidence presented in a mysterious death and determine if foul play was involved. Nick should not have been a part of this based upon his relationship to the family alone.

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And on top of that, as someone who could have benefited from their deaths, he's an obvious suspect. And yet, he was on the very jury that could have recommended he be investigated. Armed with this information, the Sodders go to the local prosecuting attorney and demand that Nick be investigated.

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It would seem like they had a decent case, but to their horror, the attorney looks at the evidence, then back to them and politely states, I don't want to bring a case against people with whom I live and eat. The Sodders are bewildered by this response. They're certain they're the victims of arson. Their kids are either dead or kidnapped, and they have strong evidence suggesting who did it.

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Ginny reaches the phone, grabs the receiver off the hook, and offers a blunt hello. But the voice on the other end doesn't introduce themselves. Instead, what Ginny hears is laughter. And it's not pleasant laughter either. It feels cruel, almost as though this caller is mocking her. And then suddenly it stops.

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On top of this, there's evidence suggesting that there was misconduct among the coroner's jury, and now the prosecutor is refusing to do his job. Is this man in on it? Is he a part of the pro-Mussolini elements in town that wanted to see his family burn? Has Nick paid him off? What secrets is this West Virginia community keeping from its own members? Years pass.

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It's 1953 now, nearly 8 years after the fire, and the family is out of ideas. All that's left to them is to take out a billboard on the side of the road near their house. It features pictures of all 5 children, and it reads, what was their fate? Kidnapped? Murdered? Or are they still alive? With a $5,000 reward offered for information.

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Over the next decade, George and Jenny frequently receive letters in the mail from all over the country, with people claiming to have seen one of the children. They chase every lead, no matter how tenuous. Once, George sees a picture in the newspaper of a little girl who lives in New York.

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He thinks she looks like one of his missing daughters, and so he goes all the way there and demands that her parents let him see her. Unsurprisingly, they refuse. Yet, in his mind, he believes that they could be the beneficiaries of the kidnapping. But at the same time, it's just as possible that they're frightened parents with no reason to let a strange man see their daughter.

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And ultimately, he has to respect their wishes and return home. Ginny also pursues some rather thin leads with a similar level of aggression. She recalls the woman's testimony from the roadside motel, the one that claimed to see the children taken away in a car with a Florida license plate.

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As it turns out, Ginny has a brother who lives in Florida, and she gets it into her head to call him to see if he had anything to do with the alleged kidnapping. It's unclear why she would suspect this of her own brother, but she actually has the police produce records to prove that all of her brother's kids are his own. 1966, 21 years since the fire.

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By this point, the Sodders are searching for children who have, officially, been dead longer than they were alive. But the leads don't stop, so neither do they. That year, the family received a letter from a woman who writes that she overheard two men talking to each other, evidently claiming that they were Louis and Maurice Sodder.

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George travels to Texas to meet with them, however, the lead goes nowhere. A year later, in 1967, the Sodders receive another mysterious letter. Enclosed is a photograph of a young man with the same features and complexion as the men in their family. And sure enough, on the back of the photograph, there's a note that reads, Lewis Sodder.

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But this letter didn't come from Texas and came from Kentucky, but without a return address, no means of contacting the sender. And so, the Sodders hire yet another PI to go to Kentucky to find out what he can. But once the PI travels to Kentucky, the family never hears from him again. Perhaps he was just a conman who took the solder's money and ran, or maybe it was something darker.

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Regardless, his disappearance is a final gut punch, because that is where the trail runs cold for the very last time. And so, we're left to grapple with the same questions that tortured the Saunders themselves. It is, of course, possible that the children simply died in the fire. Maybe all five bodies really were incinerated.

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The voice on the line finally speaks and asks for a name, someone that doesn't live there. And so Ginny informs them that they have the wrong number and hangs up. Unsettled, Ginny surveys the room around her. A number of unusual things pop out to her now. It's not just that the lights are all on. The curtains are wide open, too. And when Ginny walks to the front door, she finds it unlocked.

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Or maybe the firefighters just didn't search thoroughly enough to find what remained. But an accidental fire burning hot all night doesn't explain the many contradictions and lies embedded in the evidence. It seems at least possible that their kids were kidnapped. Yet in some ways, it might be less chilling to believe that they all died in that fire. Grief can do strange things to a person.

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By not accepting the deaths, Ginny and George became their own tormentors. As horrifying as the death of a child can be, there's nothing more terrifying than the unknown. Not accepting the simplest explanation meant that they forced themselves to imagine the worst.

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Forced themselves through years of false leads and disappointment, and led themselves to hurl terrible accusations at both strangers and family. The Unknown That is what ruined their lives. Not the fire, not the loss, just simply not knowing. The soldered children stared down from their billboard on the highway, asking every driver who passes, what was our fate?

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Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Greg Castro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.

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Fact checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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She sighs. Her children know perfectly well how to lock up for the night. She considers waking Marion to chastise her, but thinks better of it. It's Christmas, after all. The kids were probably just excited and forgetful. Ginny locks the door herself and closes the curtains. Then she hurries back to the warmth of her bed and slowly drifts off to sleep. A strange noise comes from above.

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Night. You're driving along a lonely stretch of West Virginia Highway. The only light comes from the headlights of your car, which shine on the dark forest lining the road. The scenery is a blur. Until suddenly, up ahead, you see it. A strange billboard looming low to the ground at the side of the road. From it, the faces of five unsmiling children staring back at you.

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Ginny's eyes blink open. She sits up groggily, trying to get her bearings, and still dark out. Now she hears a new noise overhead. A rolling sound, like something landed on the roof with a thud and rolled off. And then, silence. Ginny tells herself that it was just an animal. She tries to fall back asleep, but then an acrid scent hits her nostrils. Her eyes fly open. She's wide awake now.

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It's because she knows that smell. It's smoke. In an instant, Ginny's up and out of bed, hoisting little Sylvia into her arms and screaming for George to wake up. She sees smoke pouring into the bedroom from beneath the door. George, Ginny, and Sylvia burst out of their bedroom, and they're met with an apocalyptic scene. Their house is becoming engulfed in flames.

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They race to the telephone to call the fire department, only to discover, to their horror, that the phone line, which worked perfectly just a little while ago, is dead. Amidst the chaos, what springs to the front of Ginny's mind is a number. Nine. Nine of her children are in the house right now. Only two of Ginny's children are accounted for at the moment.

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Her youngest, Sylvia, is wailing in her arms. And nearby, her eldest daughter, Marion, has awakened on the first floor couch. Ginny locks her gaze on the staircase leading to the upstairs bedrooms. It's impassable. The heat coming from the upper floor is too intense. The smoke is too thick. And so, that makes it seven. Seven of Ginny's kids are trapped upstairs.

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Their photos are haunting enough. But then you read the words plastered above. What was their fate? Kidnapped or murdered? Or are they still alive? Christmas Eve, 1945. Just outside Fayetteville, West Virginia. Freezing temperatures make the trees creak and the river run still. But inside the Sauter family's house, it's warm. George and Jenny Sauter are there with nine of their ten children.

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Ginny screams up the staircase, her eyes stinging from the smoke. She keeps them open though, praying to see her children. Finally, a figure emerges from the smoke and hurtles down the stairs. Another follows close behind. It's two of the oldest boys, John and George Jr., and their hair is singed from the flames. The boys are hysterical.

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They tell their parents that they tried to get into their younger sibling's bedroom, but they couldn't. Now the noise, the heat, everything else disappears from Jenny's world. She casts a final glance upstairs as her husband pulls her away toward the exit. The number in Jenny's head is now five. Five of her kids are up those stairs and none of them are coming down.

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A moment later, Jenny, George, and the four kids who were accounted for are standing outside. It's freezing cold, and they're all still in their nightgowns. But George doesn't hesitate. He races off to fetch the ladder they keep against the side of the house. The others follow, their bare feet slapping against the icy ground. But around the corner of the home, another shock awaits them.

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Their ladder is gone. Following this, they go to their garage to get their truck, so they can drive it up to the window and climb up. Now, the Sodders have two trucks, but when George tries the ignition on both of them, neither engine will start. George can't believe it. Both trucks worked perfectly fine just yesterday.

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He bolts out of the garage, desperately searching for something, anything that might help. There's an old rain barrel near the home, and so George tries to throw some water into the flames, but it's no use. The water inside the barrel is frozen solid. Because of this, George is reduced to shouting the children's names over and over at the house.

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But in return, all he hears is the roar of the inferno. While the house continues to burn, the oldest daughter Marion dashes away, down the dark, freezing road. The solder's phone doesn't work, but their neighbors just might. She's still barefoot, and there isn't another house for quite a while.

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At last, she arrives, and tears of relief flow down her cheeks as the neighbor lets her in and points her to their phone. Shaking from head to toe, Marion manages to place the call, but the operator doesn't respond. Marion is beside herself. This can't be happening. The neighbor grabs his coat and rushes for the door, informing her that he'll drive into town and alert the fire chief in person.

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Fayetteville's fire chief, F.J. Morris, is fast asleep when the Sodder's neighbor arrives. Once Morris gets filled in, he begins the process of alerting Fayetteville's other volunteer firefighters. Their department operates by using a phone tree, which means one calls the other, calls the other, calls the other.

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It's time-consuming, and it takes a while for all the volunteers to be notified, assemble at the firehouse, and then drive out to the Sodders' home. But even so, the emergency response to the fire feels less than urgent. The Sodders' home is only two and a half miles from the firehouse, and yet the firefighters don't arrive on the scene until seven hours later.

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By this point, the sun is up and the house is gone. For hours, George and his family have helplessly watched the entire structure be reduced to ashes before their eyes, with their five children apparently trapped inside. There is no urgency from George or his family once the fire trucks finally pull up to the scene. There's no shouting or waving of arms. The time for that has long passed.

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For the past seven hours, George has experienced more emotions than in the rest of his life combined. Complete terror, complete helplessness, rage at the firefighters' lackluster response, and finally, the horrific bitterness of losing five children before his very eyes. Now, on Christmas morning, 1945, he's simply numb. The firefighters douse the smoldering wreckage with water.

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They search for the bodies of the missing children, but they can't find even a single bone. Fire Chief Morris says the fire must have incinerated them completely, and so he declares the children dead at the scene. The next day, December 26th, a coroner's jury declares the fire accidental, and by December 30th, death certificates are issued for the five kids.

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A state police inspector eventually arrives. Given that the house burned for so long and so completely, it's not easy to determine a cause, but in the end, he attributes the fire to faulty wiring. To George, it all happened so fast. Too fast.

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The fire department took so long to come put the fire out, but then afterwards, officials practically sprinted to declare the fire an accident and the children dead. It makes George uneasy. But what can he do? The Sodders try to move on. In the new year, George brings in dirt from off-site and covers the ruins. They plant a garden in remembrance of the children they lost.

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If the story ended here, it would be a mercy. The Sodders could mourn in peace. However, our story is just beginning. Shocking details are about to emerge. Details that suggest that this fire was no accident, and that the supposedly deceased Sodder children may actually be alive. It's spring. On a day like today, the sound of children's laughter should be echoing across the Sodder's property.

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Yet instead, it's silent. The surviving Sodders have been without a home for months, and the time has come to rebuild. But their new house won't be where the previous one stood, as the site of the fire is to remain a memorial garden forever. George is overseeing the construction of the family's new home nearby when he sees one of the workers approaching him.

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It's a telephone repairman, and he's discovered something odd. He leads George over to a nearby telephone pole and explains that when he ascended the pole on his ladder, he expected to find the remnants of the telephone wire that used to lead to the solder's old house. Instead, though, he found no burned wire dangling there at all. Rather, it was completely severed, cut cleanly, intentionally.

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Immediately, George realizes what that means. The phone lines didn't melt in the fire. Someone cut them and they would have needed a ladder to do it. A ladder. George thinks back to the night of the fire, and suddenly he takes off across the yard, searching wildly under bushes and rubble.

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It's not until reaching the back of the property where the yard falls off into a ditch that he finds what he's looking for. It's his ladder. The one that he kept propped up on the side of the house. The one that he could not find to save his children on the night of the fire. And it's here where he realizes it wasn't misplaced. Someone moved it. George feels dizzy. Nauseous, even.

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The only member of the family that's not present is Joe, the Sauter's second-to-oldest son, who's away serving in the army. The youngest children, who have just received some new toys from the local dime store, play happily in the living room. As it gets late, the parents retire to their bedroom on the first floor, taking their three-year-old daughter Sylvia with them.

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The blood is pounding in his temples. A whole new series of details are flooding his mind. The wrong number in the middle of the night. The thump on the roof. His trucks that wouldn't start when he needed them most. And this is when it hits him. This fire may not have been an accident at all. George forces himself to breathe and tries to clear his head.

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He reminds himself that the investigators already determined the cause. It was faulty wiring. And yet, George can't bring himself to believe it. He was in the house when it happened. The investigators weren't. Now, a final memory comes back to George. When he emerged from his dark bedroom into the living room, it was bright. And not just because of the flames, either.

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He's certain that the lights were still on. And if the lights in the house were on, it means the fire couldn't have been started by an electrical short. Otherwise, the house's power would have failed, and it would have been completely out. He rushes to tell Ginny, and she remembers it all the same way he does. In her recollection, the lights were definitely on when they came out of the bedroom.

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The Deadliest Song

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The record feels perfectly normal in your hands. A black vinyl disc about the size of a dinner plate. But when you set it on the turntable and the needle begins tracing the grooves, the music is curiously overwhelming. Music has never made you cry in the past, you're just not that type of person.

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A Beggar Sits on a Street in Rome People rush past. Some drop change in his outstretched palm. Others pretend not to see him. His mind wanders, and he begins whistling a tune he heard once, filtering from a nearby cafe. As he whistles, an errand boy stops to place some money in his hand. A generous amount, in fact. The beggar realizes that the boy has given him all the money he has.

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He looks up to ask the boy why, but he's already gone. The boy's running to a nearby bridge, and before anyone can stop him, he throws himself over the railing and into the river. It's 1936, and the international community is waking up to the terrifying, repulsive power of Gloomy Sunday. Even still, though, few believe the song's popularity will cross the Atlantic.

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The Deadliest Song

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In the United States, Gloomy Sunday is only available in one small music shop in New York, and its appeal is limited to Hungarian-speaking Americans. Some of the American papers are so sure that the song is harmless that they print out an English translation of the lyrics in their articles.

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This only makes more people aware of the song's existence, and it's only a matter of time before someone puts these English lyrics to music. Music publishers and record companies smell opportunity in the song's lurid reputation. They leap into action, each eager to become the first to produce an English-language recording.

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The Deadliest Song

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Eventually, the record company assigns the task of recording the tune to one of the most reliable composers of 1930s American jazz, Hal Kemp. Kemp gathers his orchestra and they begin working overtime to record the song. During the grueling recording sessions, the vocalist struggles to get through the song.

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The Deadliest Song

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The band around him, usually in high spirits, find their energy lacking as they play through Rezo Suarez's gloomy tune in Eb minor. And after 22 takes, they finally land on one that satisfies the record company. And so, here we are. The song is now ready for print in America.

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And print it will, under the title, The Famous Hungarian Suicide Song.

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The Deadliest Song

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The Famous Hungarian Suicide Song is poised to take America by storm. Almost immediately after Kemp's version is released, a Republican congressman proposes a preemptive ban on the song. He tells Congress a horrifying story. A 13-year-old boy named Floyd Hamilton Jr. recently hanged himself in his Michigan home. In the boy's pocket, police found a newspaper clipping with the song's lyrics.

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The Deadliest Song

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The congressman's plea makes local news, but it doesn't spur any federal legislation. If anything, the song grows even more popular. Tabloids eagerly spread news about the song's effects. A music dealer in Toledo, Ohio, provokes a local controversy by decorating his store with fake blood, as well as skulls and crossbones, and references to suicide.

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The Deadliest Song

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A murderer in prison requests a violin so that he can play Gloomy Sunday to himself. Even the stars of the day start to catch on to the song's cursed reputation. When she records what would become the most famous cover of the song, American jazz singer Billie Holiday adds a third stanza to the lyrics.

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In this new part, Holiday clarifies that her lover's departure and the thoughts of suicide it inspired were merely a bad dream. But it's not enough. Holiday's version is banned by the BBC after a woman dies of a barbiturate overdose while listening to it. Whatever the song's mystical source of power may be, it definitely seems to go deeper than the lyrics.

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The Deadliest Song

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1940.

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The Second World War is underway, and the original authors of Gloomy Sunday find themselves at a terrible crossroads. Ever since writing the tune, Rezo Serres has struggled. His song is a hit, but in a way that makes him ashamed. Though he gives measured responses to interviewers, in private, he's deeply concerned for his own reputation.

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He had thought the life of an artist would be easier in the city of love. But the only thing he found was a larger community of struggling artists. And now, after the love of his life left him, all he has are the gloomy streets of Paris. It's a quiet, wet morning. Most Parisians are clustered indoors. The buildings loom above him like melancholy tombstones as he walks. Passersby look like ghosts.

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He's proud of his work that has resonated so deeply with people, but bitter that this song's grown a connection to suicide. His co-author, Laszlo Javor, has already fled Hungary for America. Sores considers doing the same. He's Jewish, after all, and Europe has become a dangerous place for him, especially now that Hungary has joined the Axis powers alongside Nazi Germany.

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But Sores misses his window to flee. One morning, he wakes up to uniformed men pounding on his door. The soldiers grab Ceres and drag him onto a truck full of other men in shabby workwear. Without warning, he's been ripped from his life. Ceres is joining the war effort, whether he wants to or not, and he's forced to leave his mother and wife back in Budapest.

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The army ships Ceres off to Germany, where he spends the duration of World War II digging trenches and clearing minefields. He's as miserable as he's ever been, but he's about to learn the hard way that it can always get worse. While toiling away in desolate war zones, Ceres receives word from his wife. In his absence, she has left him for another man.

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Yet soon, even more devastating news reaches him. His mother was deported from Budapest and has died in a Nazi labor camp. Ceres, it seems, is bound for the same fate. He suspects he'll either die through hard labor or get executed on a whim. To pass the time during sleepless nights, he writes new lyrics to Gloomy Sunday, to which he retitles The World Has Ended.

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One day, late in the war, while digging a trench for the Germans, he hears the approach of a car. An officer, presumably coming to inspect his work. Serres stands at attention, trying to blend in and stay invisible. Perhaps this is just a routine inspection, nothing more. However, when the officer's eyes lock onto him, Serres feels his heart plummet.

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The man shouts at Serres, roughly pulling him out of the ditch. As the officer shoves him toward a nearby house, Ceres thinks his time has finally come. How many Jewish people have been dragged behind buildings and shot like this? But as soon as they're out of sight, the officer's demeanor instantly shifts.

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He stops hitting Ceres and apologizes, explaining that there was no way to get him out of there without such a show of force. The officer tells Seres he knows of his work. He had seen Seres perform back in Hungary and wants to save him from further brutality. The officer gives him clothes and a place to hide for the remainder of the war.

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And for the first time since 1936, Seres is actually grateful to have written the infamous Hungarian suicide song. He returns home, depressed but alive. His home city of Budapest bears the scars of intense fighting between the Germans and the Soviet Red Army. Bridges are destroyed, ancient buildings reduced to rubble. He reunites with his wife at his old home.

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Her wartime fling has ended and she wants to return to him. Ceres forgives her and the two move back in together. He hopes that his career as a songwriter can get back on track now that the world is returning to normal. But unfortunately for Ceres, Gloomy Sunday isn't finished with him. Years pass. The suicide reports linked to Gloomy Sunday die away.

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Rezo Serres, in spite of being a world-famous songwriter, struggles to make ends meet. He's heard nothing from Laszlo Yavor since the war, and his flow of royalties has apparently been disrupted by war-era regulations on money transfers. Once again, Serres is forced to live the life of a starving artist. He's hired at a local restaurant as a piano player. It's like 1930s Paris all over again.

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Only this time, at middle age, he feels like his career has passed him by. Shortly after the war, Budapest falls under Soviet regime, and any hopes Serres had of a musical career fully dissipates. This new regime has very strict rules about what's acceptable to play on the radio.

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Slowly, before his eyes, a familiar figure takes shape from the mist. Yavor's eyes light up with recognition. It's his good friend, Rezo Seres. They are kindred spirits in a way. Seres is a fellow Hungarian, a musician and songwriter, who came to Paris for much of the same reason. As the two men meet each other, Yavor notices that Seres is also downcast. The two of them start walking together.

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The songs Serres wrote before the war appear on lists of banned music, barring him from ever writing commercially again. He considers leaving Budapest, but can't quite bring himself to do so. Though he's never sent to a gulag, he would still feel imprisoned inside his own home. On the radio, songs by the Beatles and Elvis eclipse the jazz and tango music he's made his living writing.

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He feels like a relic, an echo of what he once was before the war began. One night after work, he comes home and pulls out a record he hasn't listened to in some time. The original Hungarian recording of Gloomy Sunday. He places the disc onto his turntable and allows the music to sweep over him. He understands the song's power more than most. He wrote it, after all.

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But this time, the song overwhelms him altogether in a completely new way. It's a sensation he's never quite experienced himself, only read about in newspaper headlines. Years go by, and Ceres begins listening to Gloomy Sunday more and more. Not only the initial recording, but the numerous covers as well.

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The Hungarian and non-Hungarian versions alike, which allowed his cursed song to spread across the world. Ceres sinks deeper and deeper into his depression. He's now listening to Gloomy Sunday for four hours every afternoon, and his neighbors grow accustomed to hearing the music play from exactly 2 p.m. every day. To him, every single day has become Gloomy Sunday.

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Well, that is, until January 7th of 1968. Sores finally reaches his limit. He steps out onto his balcony and jumps off. The fall, however, doesn't kill him. Broken, unconscious, and in critical condition, he's rushed to the hospital, and when he wakes up, he's bandaged all over, plaster holding his limbs in place.

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He has survived his suicide attempt, but once the hospital staff leaves him alone, he takes care of that. He slowly reaches out to grasp a wire connecting his plaster casts to a counterweight, and upon returning, the nurse finds that he strangled himself to death. Today, Gloomy Sunday lives on, both as a popular song and a piece of history from its era.

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There have been no documented deaths since that of Rezo Serres, and over time, the song's reputation shifted away from current events and into the realm of urban legend. In total, over 100 people worldwide have allegedly died by suicide and referenced Gloomy Sunday in the act. The BBC radio ban outlives both of the song's authors and finally lifts in the early 2000s.

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To this day, it continues to inspire cover pieces and adaptations, including one from an Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List. In a film that dramatizes much of the cruelty of the Holocaust, it's perhaps fitting that the famous suicide song written by two Hungarian Jewish men should play a small role in it. But what was it about this song that caused so much misery and death?

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Over the years, researchers have compared Gloomy Sunday to other Kerr songs, all of which have been linked to suicide at one point or another. These connections, as it turns out, do not only exist in the distant past. Ozzy Osbourne's 1980 hit, Suicide Solution, was cited in a lawsuit related to teen suicide. But that wouldn't be the only one.

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Several years later, Metallica's Fade to Black would gain similar notoriety. Public outcries would follow suicides from song to song, carrying into the 2000s and beyond. These songs have little in common beyond this strange, morbid connection. Some are metal, some are rock. Gloomy Sunday exists as a jazz song, a tango in swing time.

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And even though moral panics about suicide songs continue to this day, Gloomy Sunday maintains a higher, more well-documented body count than any of its successors. Could it be that the newspapers in 1936 were perhaps correct when they labeled Gloomy Sunday as an unholy, so-called fiend tune capable of influencing people supernaturally with black magic?

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The Deadliest Song

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Yavor tells Ceres about his broken heart, how his lover took a contract in Sicily, and how he has neither the funds nor prospects to follow her. Ceres understands his pain. His girlfriend has also left him. She'd long insisted that he get a stable job and quit pursuing his dream of becoming a successful musician. Ceres had hoped that she'd come around.

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there's actually a far more likely explanation for the Gloomy Sunday suicides and why they were bound up so tightly with that song in particular. The song that Rezo Seres and Laszlo Yavor wrote happened to strike a chord at just the right time to have such a perceived impact. The Great Depression hit Hungary in the early 1930s, causing waves of unemployment and poverty.

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The songwriters who struggled to live paycheck to paycheck were no longer writing a song about just themselves, but rather about their whole country. A country that was mere years away from falling to fascism and condemning thousands of its people to die in Nazi labor camps. It didn't matter that the song was about yearning for lost love, that despair was universal.

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The urban legend of Gloomy Sunday as a suicide song may, in the end, have things entirely backwards. The song does not cause suicidal depression, but rather, those suffering from depression find the song uniquely relatable. This music, with its profoundly unique words, expressed their longing to be free of despair, of heartbreak, and sorrow.

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This is a story not about a cursed tomb, but about one of the darkest periods in world history, and how a single song spoke deeply to that darkness. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Diemstra. Copy editing by Luke Baratz.

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Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locazio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden.

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Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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For a while, it seemed like he would become a famous songwriter. He did write a hit song in 1925 and made a decent living as a live accompanist of silent films. But now that silent films have been replaced by talkies, picture houses have no need for a pianist anymore. That period of Ceres' life is over, and he has no idea what in the world is next for him.

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Without much more to say, the men walk on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, but grateful for the company. Ceres starts whistling. It's a melody that he wrote earlier that day, seized by inspiration. The tune catches Yavor's ear and he shivers. If he was emotional before, this tune caused the sadness to well up inside him. It makes him think of a poem he wrote not long ago.

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And so he begins to recite it alongside his friends whistling. Two stanzas long, the poem is a prayer to a loved one who has passed on. In it, the unnamed narrator is so tormented by the loss of his lover that he considers suicide. The piece's title is fitting for a day like this. In Hungarian, it's called Sommaru Vasarna, or in English, Gloomy Sunday.

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Both Yavor and Ceres recognize something fortuitous about this meeting. Not only are they both pining for their lost loves, but the poem and the tune fit together almost perfectly. They work feverishly on the song for the rest of the afternoon, transcribing Ceres' tune into sheet music and adjusting Yavor's poem to fit the melody.

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Eager to get their song in front of an audience, they approach a band leader at the Shingi restaurant that evening. They ask him to play their tune, and the band obliges. Immediately, a hush falls over the restaurant. Everyone is enraptured. Interested murmurs wander from one person to another, but that's not the most telling sign. Yavor begins to notice shudders,

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Yavor and Saras look at each other. There's something potent in this song. They're certain of it. It could be a hit for both of them. And now all they have to do is find someone to publish their sheet music. Their first inquiries are promising. The second publisher they visit likes the song. However, after a while, they stop hearing from him. Eventually, word gets out that the man has died.

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And yet, there's a melancholy quality to this song that is so pure, so effective, that tears immediately rise in your eyes. A lump in your throat. The pain of the world almost seems reflected in the melody. Suddenly, you feel the urge to rise from your chair and cross to the window of your high-rise apartment. But you resist. You were warned that this song has a power unlike any other.

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Yavor and Seres are frustrated, but all around, believe this to be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. The songwriters press on, but as they struggle to get anyone else interested, publisher after publisher rejects the song as it's too depressing.

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For a while, it seems like their song is cursed to never see the light of day, but finally, they find someone willing to print the sheet music in their native Hungary. and Paul Kalmar, an internationally renowned Hungarian singer, signs on to record the song. After years of struggling at the edge of poverty, Yavor and Seres grow cautiously optimistic.

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Because maybe, just maybe, their depressing song won't be a hit after all. And it is. Cafes in Paris adopt a tango version of the song, which proves immensely popular among patrons, who request it as many as 30 times a day. The city that offered Yavor and Ceres nothing but heartbreak and failure is now embracing their music.

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It seems for the first time in their difficult lives as artists that things are finally looking up. Gloomy Sunday is a genuine hit and royalties are on the way. But the men's excitement won't last forever because their song is about to become world famous for all the wrong reasons. A few years later, it begins as an ordinary night at the Theater de Uypest near Budapest.

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The audience chatters excitedly as Olga Kerikes, a renowned singer and dancer, takes the stage. But the chatter dies away as the orchestra begins to play. Kerikes sings a song that catches the audience off guard. Gloomy Sunday. The performance is magnetic. Ketika seems carried away with the emotion of her song. There are tears streaming down her face, glittering in the stage lights.

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As the final note fades away, the audience sits in a strange silence. The intensity of the performance seems to have had a visceral effect on them. Kirikis thrusts her arms out into the audience as if reaching for help, then abruptly turns and exits stage right. The audience sits there waiting for her to return for her curtain call. She doesn't come back. Seconds turn to minutes.

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Troubled mutters begin to echo throughout the audience. The stage manager runs backstage to make sure that Kerikis is alright. He pounds on the dressing room door, and when no answer comes, he forces it open, uncovering a scene straight out of a nightmare. Olga Kerikis is lying on the floor by her makeup table. She is dead, with the vial of poison still clutched in her lifeless hand.

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This incident, by all accounts, is horrifying. However, it isn't isolated. It seems that by the mid-1930s, the hit song had thrust the city of Budapest into crisis. The Hungarian capital is gripped by an epidemic of melancholy, a rash of suicides apparently linked to gloomy Sunday.

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One night, not long after the death of Olga Kirikis, a fiddler in the Green Frog Cafe begins playing the song, aware only that it's a popular tune. One of the patrons beckons him over, and so, still playing, the fiddler approaches. The man begins to sing along with the music. He knows the words by heart.

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However, the moment the fiddler finishes, the man out of nowhere draws a pistol from his belt and shoots himself dead. The only motive left behind, a single note in his pocket, which explains he wanted to die singing along to Gloomy Sunday. Across town, a housekeeper is found dead, having drunk sodium hydroxide. Newspapers report that a crumpled up piece of paper is found in her hands.

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The sheet music to Gloomy Sunday. Newspaper speculation runs rampant. Was something in these lyrics responsible for this woman's death? After all, the song describes suicidal longing, and it's the closest thing the housekeeper left to a suicide note. Critics write this off as paranoia. A song can't have this kind of power over someone.

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It's just as likely, they say, that the presence of the music was nothing but a coincidence. But as these so-called coincidences continue to pile up, the theory becomes ever harder to dismiss. In an upscale part of the city, a married couple retires to their bedroom upstairs after hosting a dinner party. And there, a terrifying scene awaits them.

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In fact, for nearly a century, it's been banned by broadcasters across the world. Authorities have made desperate attempts to suppress the publication of its sheet music. Because when this song plays, people inexplicably die. The year is 1932. It's raining in Paris. Laszlo Jaber is taking a walk. He's an aspiring poet from Budapest struggling to make a living in post-war France.

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Their linens are shredded, as if by knives or scissors. Their paintings, too, have been brutally slashed. At first, it seems like some sort of act of burglary or vandalism, until they find the bodies of two housemaids in the adjoining room. The women, it seems, have taken their own lives after hearing the song from their employer's party downstairs.

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By now, well over a dozen Hungarians have committed suicide, leaving some reference to Gloomy Sunday. On one victim, police find a suicide note requesting that a hundred white roses be scattered on his grave, a phrase taken from the song's lyrics. And a similar note is found on the body of yet another man after he shoots himself in the back of a taxi.

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The Budapest community is paralyzed, unsure how to handle this bizarre trend. For a while, they do nothing, hoping it'll pass on its own. Yet it doesn't. One morning, a mother in Budapest finds the words Gloomy Sunday in a note left by her 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Guyilay. Fishermen discover the girl's body in the Danube River that same day.

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As it turned out, the teenager was one of at least two people who jumped into the Danube after hearing the song. The death of young Elizabeth scandalizes the people of Budapest. And it's not just tabloids either. A local archbishop publishes a pastoral letter to Hungarian Catholics, sternly addressing the wave of suicides. The public outcry starts to swell.

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They want this song banned as a safety measure. News of the Budapest suicides reaches the song's two authors, and both men are shocked. When asked by the press whether he feels responsible for the deaths, Rezos Arras gives a defensive response. Only 32 years old, he's had to struggle to make a living for himself.

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He lost his youth to military service in World War I and his young adulthood to poverty. If his songs are sad, it's because the music reflects his life experience, not because it's cursed. Laszlo Yavor, meanwhile, admits that this news disturbs him. When he wrote the lyrics, he had hoped that they might help validate or heal those experiencing pain in their lives.

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But instead, it seems that he's created a monster. Though Yavor tells the press he considers himself an optimist, his lifestyle has become undeniably dark in recent years. Everything in his home is black. His writing desk, the drapes, even his piano. On his writing desk, two objects stare at him. A skull and plaster casts of a woman's face and hands.

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The casts belonged to the woman who had inspired the lyrics to Gloomy Sunday. He had commissioned them as a memento when she had left him all those years ago. He last heard from her when she wrote from Sicily, informing Yavor that she was getting married to a man she met there. Yavor hasn't had the heart to write back.

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But then, all those years later, in the midst of public outrage about the song, he receives an unexpected telegram from her. And inside, it contains just two words. Gloomy Sunday. Yavor stares at this telegram for a very long time. He tries to convince himself that this is her way of congratulating him on the success of his song, but it still doesn't sit right.

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A terrifying possibility takes hold of him. He frantically runs to the post office to send a return message. He tells her that her life is worth living, that she's beautiful and has only happiness waiting for her. He sends the telegram, hoping it reaches her in time. But the next day, a small package comes for him in the mail. It's a ring.

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There's no letter attached, but he recognizes the jewelry as one that belonged to her. As it turned out, she has already committed suicide in Italy, and Euphor's telegram arrived too late to stop her. Whatever horrible curse this song carries with it has spread beyond Hungary. It's beginning to circle the globe, and there's nothing that Laszlo Javor or anyone else can do about it.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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At his home, Ferent reads the article with a clenched jaw. He's growing annoyed with this Sean Manchester character, and he doesn't appreciate that he's becoming associated with him in this way. What's clear to Ferrant is that Manchester does not fully appreciate the situation. Ferrant was actually there. He felt the temperature drop with his own skin. He witnessed the creature with his own eyes.

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He felt the creature's power. Ferrant knows that the Highgate vampire discovery is the most important work he's ever done and will ever do in his life. Meanwhile, Shawn Manchester is turning it into a circus sideshow. Farron glances back down at the newspaper in his hands, and only then does he realize that he's been clutching the page with fists so tight that the paper is torn.

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He relaxes his hands, trying to put thoughts of the article out of his mind, but he can't do it. And at last, Farron reaches an inescapable conclusion. Something needs to be done about Sean Manchester. On Friday, March 13th, David Ferrant shows up again to Highgate Cemetery. Unlike his previous visits to the graveyard, this one's taking place in broad daylight. This time, he's not alone either.

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A TV crew is setting up their cameras and microphones outside the cemetery gates when he arrives. The public broadcaster ITV had invited Ferent to give an interview and lend his expertise on camera. The prospect of appearing on the BBC is anxiety-inducing for Ferent, but it's too late for him to back out now. The host of the program, Sandra Harris, has already spotted him through the crowd.

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She's striding his way with her arm extended towards Ferent for a handshake. And so he takes a deep breath and proceeds to greet her. Sandra shows him where to stand, when suddenly there's a commotion among the crew nearby. Farron whips his head over and sees a cameraman in clear distress.

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The man clutches at his throat, his face going pale, yet there's nothing around his neck, no visible source of an attack at all. Farron freezes, shocked by what he's witnessing. Several other crew members rush over, just in time to catch the distressed cameraman as he falls. The on-set EMT quickly disappears, and the man is loaded onto a stretcher and carried away.

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David Ferrant looks over at his interviewer, Sandra Harris, and she's visibly shaken, but quickly composes herself. She tells Ferrant that they'll begin as soon as they can bring in a new cameraman, and then she hurries away. Ferrant reminds himself that this is why it's so important for him to do this interview. It doesn't matter how camera shy he might be.

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There are dark forces at play here in Highgate Cemetery, and they're a clear threat to the community. Determined, Ferrant steals himself. Eventually, a new cameraman arrives. Sandra and Ferrant are just about to begin when they're interrupted by yet another commotion among the crew. Ferrant fears it's another supernatural attack, but this time the shouts are shouts of excitement.

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The crew has noticed something. Ferrant follows their gaze, and his heart sinks. Evidently, he wasn't the only supernatural expert who ITV was going to talk to today. A tall man wearing bishop's robes strides their way, and he's immediately swarmed by the crew and onlookers. The man is Sean Manchester.

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He's carrying a briefcase, which he hoists high and declares to be a vampire hunter's kit, essential for any would-be slayer of demons. Ferent understandably rolls his eyes. feeling his face turn red at being forced to share airtime with this loony.

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He had spent hours of time carefully researching and investigating, only to have a man in a bishop's costume swoop in as if he were the true authority. When the interview finally commences, Ferrant speaks in his usual unassuming manner, doing his best to inform the public of the facts.

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He takes caution not to refer to the entity as a vampire, but rather a spirit that might have been awakened by recent Satanist activity. Sean Manchester, on the other hand, has no such reservation. He boldly declares that he knows what should be done. He claims that this very night, on Friday the 13th, he and David Ferrant will return to the cemetery, hunt down the vampire, and slay it.

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When asked how they'll do that, Manchester simply replies that he'll first drive a stake through its heart with one blow, chop off its head with a gravedigger's shovel, then burn what remains. The interviews air that evening, and the promise of a vampire hunt is enough to draw a crowd. Dozens of people from North London and beyond show up for what is sure to be a night to remember.

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Farron gets wind of this impromptu gathering shortly after the broadcast airs while drinking at a local pub. There, he's approached by a man who's about his own age, who introduces himself as Alan Blund, a teacher from Chelmsford, a city over 20 miles away.

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Blund, a self-proclaimed vampire expert, said that he saw the ITV reports and immediately brought a handful of students down to join in on the vampire hunt. Farron sighs and explains that there aren't favorable conditions to conduct a psychic investigation tonight, as the cemetery will soon be overrun with thrill-seekers and hoodlums.

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It's the night of December 21st, 1969. In North London, the historic Highgate Cemetery sits dark and completely silent. It'll be months before hysteria grips the city as the public becomes aware of what's really happening here. So tonight, there's no mob. In fact, there's only one living soul on the premises. A young man named David Ferrant.

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The teacher agrees on principle, but he and his students still decide to take part in the search, just in case. Farron wishes them good luck, but elects to stay behind, still seething that Shawn Manchester has gotten his good name mixed up in all of this hysteria.

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Highgate Cemetery is closed in the evenings, but that doesn't stop roughly 100 people from showing up with stakes, crucifixes, and beer cans, eager to take part in the hunt that night. The locked gates do little to deter them. They surge over the walls, climbing the fences, and rush inside to hunt the creature.

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Police cars roll up, and dozens of constables charge in, trying to keep the public at bay. At least 40 officers are there, blowing on their whistles and shouting at the top of their lungs. They restrain some of the public, but there are simply too many to be held back. Naturally, Shawn Manchester is there, soaking up the attention.

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With a glint in his eye, he watches the chaos unfold from the sidelines. Finally, once the police have their hands completely full, he makes his move. With a nod to a handful of his disciples nearby, their group scales a fence and slips off into a deserted part of the cemetery, the western side, the part which sleepwalkers like Jacqueline had found alluring.

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Unlike the mob, Manchester knows precisely where he'll find the vampire. He quickly refers to a photo in his pocket. This picture was given to him by a young woman named Louisa, who claimed to have a similar supernatural experience to Jacqueline's. In Louisa's case, she was drawn to a specific sepulcher on the western edge of the cemetery.

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The photograph in Manchester's pocket identifies the exact tomb that beckoned to her. When Manchester locates the sepulcher, he finds it shunt and locked, but that doesn't deter the stalwart vampire hunter. The cemetery is poorly maintained, ravaged by the unfeeling hand of time. Manchester examines the catacomb and notices that the roof is somewhat fallen in.

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He climbs up the side, then he and his disciples lower themselves down by ropes. It's dingy and dark inside. The only way they can see is by the dim beams from their electric flashlights. Fumbling around, eventually they find a large black coffin that feels somewhat out of place in this Victorian catacomb.

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Together, Manchester and his cohort take out their weapons and heave the lid off the casket, ready to stake the beast in its heart. The lid falls off the coffin and lands with a bang on the floor. The group lets out a collective gasp at what they find. The box is empty. Whatever soul was housed here had escaped.

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Manchester and the others anoint the coffin with garlic and holy water, hoping that with no home to return to, that the hauntings just might cease. Once they've left the cemetery, Manchester alerts the press to his daring encounter. He tells reporters that although he and his followers didn't stink the vampire, they have hindered the beast for now.

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Only time will tell whether this monster ever shows its face again. Months go by, and it looks as though the vampire frenzy might finally be dying away. But now, the phone rings at a North London police station. A constable answers. The voice on the other end sounds young. It's a schoolgirl who says that she and her friends just walked across something in Highgate Cemetery. Something disturbing.

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What the girl describes sounds so improbable that the constable isn't sure he heard her right. And so he decides to go check himself, just to be sure. The police officer assures himself that these schoolchildren probably just happened across a dead fox and got spooked. After all, the Highgate Cemetery seemed to be sparking a lot of wild claims these days.

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But strangely, as soon as the constable enters the cemetery, he stops cold. The schoolgirl was telling the truth. There, lying on the path directly in front of him in broad daylight, is a body. It's not a fox or any other common urban pest. It's no apparition either. It's an actual human corpse, burned black beyond all recognition. And for some reason, this body is missing its head.

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Walking among the century-old headstones and gothic mausoleums, Ferrant struggles to keep warm. His teeth begin to chatter. He zips his heavy coat all the way up to his chin. But Ferrant has no plans to leave the cemetery before dawn. Not until he catches sight of the apparition. Ferrant is the owner of a tobacco shop, but his true passion lies in the paranormal.

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More police arrive. They rope off the scene. Forensic specialists determine that it's the body of a woman and that it was no homicide. This woman had been dead for quite some time. It seems that someone unearthed the body from the graveyard and did exactly what Manchester said should be done to a vampire. This corpse has been staked, beheaded, and burnt. The constable is incredulous.

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This vampire nonsense has gotten out of hand. The acts of trespass and mild vandalism had been bad enough, but this was entirely too far. The media frenzy has all led up to this, actual desecration of the dead. The police step up their presence around Highgate Cemetery, and it isn't long before they catch the next uninvited guests.

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Less than three weeks later, on the 17th of August, 1970, the police hear noises from within the cemetery. They're not quite sure what's going on, but it sounds like a whole group of people. They blow their whistles and rush in, sweeping their flashlights across the gravestones. And up ahead, they hear footsteps, the sound of people fleeing.

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Objects clatter and the trespassers try to scuttle away, but for one of them, it's already too late. The London police are able to corner a young man with wild hair and thick sideburns, carrying only a wooden stank and a cross. The cops arrest him on the spot, and as they're handcuffing him, they actually recognize him. They've seen his face in the paper several times over the last few months.

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The trespasser, as it turns out, is David Ferrant.

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In September of 1970, David Ferrant appears before the court. He's confident that he had committed no crime and insists that the police had it out for him. He and members of the British Psychological and Occult Society had assembled in Highgate Cemetery in order to conduct a Wiccan ritual which would banish the evil spirit from Highgate for good. However, he keeps this explanation to himself.

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He knows the nuance of pagan and Satanism would be lost on the court. And instead, he defers to his lawyer to mount a defense. After a brief trial, the charges against Ferent are dismissed. The court rules that since Highgate Cemetery is not technically an enclosed space, Ferent can't be guilty of trespassing.

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There is no proof that Ferent had any intent to interfere with the graves themselves, and so the matter was settled. Well, at least, it should have been. Despite his close encounter with the law, David Ferrant has every intention of continuing his activities.

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A self-described Wiccan priest, Ferrant founded the British Psychological and Occult Society two years prior. The Society hasn't had much to investigate since its formation. Well, until tonight. In recent weeks, Ferrant's Society has received an inexplicable surge in attention.

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However, some members of his society begin to suspect that Ferrant isn't as interested in rooting out the mystical forces of darkness as he is in taking down his human foe, Sean Manchester. Though Ferrant and Manchester had nominally worked together in the early spring of 1970, their alliance was tenuous at best.

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Ferent has never cared for Manchester's bluster, and Manchester's disdainful of Ferent's wicked beliefs. Both men carry out their own hunts, Manchester for the vampire, and Ferent for rogue Satanists. And it's here where they begin deriding each other in the press. In 1974, David Ferrant is arrested again.

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This time, the police claim that Ferrant had defaced the graves of the dead and conducted ungodly ceremonies therein. The evidence presented includes pictures of satanic symbols drawn on the floor of a mausoleum, pictures of a headless corpse in a car, as well as scandalous photographs of naked women in coffins.

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Moreover, someone's been sending voodoo dolls and taunting messages to police officers. Ferent blames the vandalism on Satanists and claims that the naked women were symbols of purity as part of innocent Wiccan rituals. But the damage was already done. With all the hysteria in the air, the jury finds Ferent guilty of defacing the graves and the court sentences him to five years in prison.

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Throughout the trial and the decades following, Ferrant maintains his innocence, but does eventually admit that he was the one who sent Voodoo Dolls to the police. He only ends up serving two years and eight months, but his time behind bars does little to quell his feud with Manchester.

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In 1978, shortly after Farrant's release, flyers appear in London's underground stations, advertising the most outlandish escalation yet, a wizard's duel between David Farrant and Sean Manchester. It's not the first time the two occultists have threatened a duel. Similar threats were hurled five years prior, in 1973.

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Now, though, it seems like one might actually happen, and the public holds its collective breath. Ultimately, it's unclear whether the wizard's duel ever came to pass, at least with wands or swords. However, their public feud sees a dramatic escalation around this time and is, in reality, fond with the pen. In 1985, Shawn Manchester self-publishes a book entitled The Highgate Vampire.

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In it, he takes credit for killing the vampire with a wooden stake after the creature took the form of a massive spider. His book also takes aim at Ferran's personal life. He claims that at the time of the first sightings, David Ferran's wife had just left him for a different occultist. So Ferran was in a bad place in life when his fixation began.

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Unsurprisingly, Ferran takes issue with Sean Manchester's account, and so he publishes his own book, Beyond the Highgate Vampire, which disputes claims that there ever was a vampire in the graveyard, going forth to insinuate that Sean Manchester's previous account was chock full of lies and embellishments. Ferrant and Manchester's feud far outlives the high-gate vampire mania.

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Multiple people from the community have come out of the woodwork with stories about strange happenings in and around Highgate Cemetery. The first to approach Ferent is a middle-aged accountant, a well-respected professional in the community, and certainly not the type to believe in mystical nonsense.

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Manchester runs a blog for years, where he often took swipes at Ferrant, calling him a charlatan and a trend chaser. Ferrant himself created a webcomic called The Adventures of Bishop Bonkers, clearly ridiculing Manchester. As the decades wore on, Manchester became bored of talking about the high-gate vampire.

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He retires from the media in 2013, but reemerges for one occasion, to comment on the death of David Ferentz in 2019. Here, he claims that he wished to finally bury the hatchet, but Della Ferentz, David's widow, refuses to accept his condolences.

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With Ferentz passing, the Highgate vampire investigation loses one of its main eyewitnesses, and it begins to seem as though the question may never be answered. What exactly was behind the events at Highgate Cemetery around 1970? Throughout the investigation, the sightings of the vampire were all relatively consistent, at least until Shawn Manchester started expanding upon it.

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Once the media frenzy caught hold, it swiftly became impossible to distinguish real eyewitness testimony from creative license. The frenzy surrounding the Highgate Vampire is not a unique phenomenon. It would seem to share DNA with the satanic panic of the early 1980s, for example.

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But what makes the Highgate Vampire so appealing, and why the story continues to resurface again and again to this day, is the bitter feud that it created. A lifelong enmity between two eccentric yet passionate men. Whether they liked it or not, it's impossible to untangle the story of the Highgate Vampire from the men who sought to defeat it.

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So maybe it was a vampire that drew so many North Londoners to Highgate Cemetery in the late 1960s and 70s. Or perhaps it was a zeitgeist, or simply a legend that spun out of control. Whatever it was, though, the haunting was real in one form or another, and it followed both Ferent and Manchester until the very end. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

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Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Diemstra. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway.

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He explains to Ferent that on his way home late one evening, he had cut through the graveyard and gotten lost. As he made his way through the cemetery's winding overgrown pathways, he heard a clanging bell. The accountant followed the noise, hoping it would lead him to a recognizable landmark.

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Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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Yet instead, he felt a chill descend, and suddenly floating before him was a seven-foot-tall figure, shrouded in darkness. The accountant tried to move, but discovered that he couldn't. He was rooted to the spot. A moment later, the figure disappeared into the night. The accountant gradually recovered his mobility, but he was left feeling drained, sapped of his energy.

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Ferentz, intrigued by the accountant's claim, but doesn't see the need to take action. Well, that is, until a second person comes to him, and reports a strikingly similar encounter. This time, the witness is an elderly woman. She tells Ferentz how she'd been out walking her dog, when she too felt the temperature drop.

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Next thing she knew, a floating shape was drifting towards her through the mist. The woman describes the creature as tall, with glowing eyes. These two independent accounts are too similar for Farron to ignore, and so he decides to spend a night in the cemetery and see for himself. Tonight is that night.

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As Farron walks down Swain's Lane, the street separating the two main plots of the cemetery, he's doubtful that he'll actually see anything. By nature, he's a skeptical person and believes the two witnesses probably just saw someone in a costume or perhaps let their imaginations get away from them. Hours pass. Farron sneaks about, investigating the farthest reaches of the expansive graveyard.

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The mob is growing larger by the minute. More dangerous, too. You stand your ground, but secretly you're terrified. You and your men are woefully outnumbered by this crowd of lunatics. Suddenly, as though reading your mind, the mob surges forward. A wild-eyed man wielding a wooden stake is heading straight for you.

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But as he looks, he sees nothing out of the ordinary. Then, around midnight, he suddenly feels the already frigid air grow even colder. A sensation he'll later describe as walking into a refrigerator. His eyes dart around frantically, scanning the darkness. At last, his gaze lands on the creature. It isn't similar to how the accountant and old woman described it. It's exactly as they described it.

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The gray shape looms seven feet tall and floats in midair. Its eyes are two points of hellish red light, but the rest of its face is indistinct. Just as the witnesses foretold, Farron feels rooted to the spot, frozen in place. Realizing that he's under a psychic attack, Farron murmurs a Kabbalistic prayer, hoping it'll ward off evil.

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And immediately after, the figure promptly vanishes into the night. Now, left standing alone again in the cemetery, slowly thawing out of his frozen state, Theron knows the time for skepticism is over. He has seen enough. The stories are true, and the public needs to know what's happening here. Weeks later, early February.

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It's a slow news day at the offices of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, a North London weekly newspaper known as the Ham and High. The dreary clack of typewriter keys fills the air as staff members prepare the next issue for publication. But then the incoming mail arrives. An editor comes across a letter that's too outrageous not to share with his colleagues.

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It's from a local man claiming to have seen an apparition in Highgate Cemetery. The staff figures that it must be a prank, but they decide to publish it anyway. The letter gave them a good laugh after all, so why not give their readers something to chuckle about as well? What's really the harm in that? And so, on February 6th, 1970, David Ferrant's letter appears in the Ham and High.

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In it, he describes three occasions where a ghost-like figure was seen inside the gates at the top of Swain's Lane. Each encounter was brief, but Ferrant can't think of any other explanation besides a supernatural one. His letter admits that he knows very little about apparitions, which is why he's querying the readers, asking if anyone has had similar experiences.

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The Hammond High staff expect to receive some fun, light-hearted letters from readers responding to Farron's piece, but that's not at all what happens. They receive response letters, all right, but these letters are deadly serious. Across North London, residents are actually corroborating Farron's claims, and people are now coming forward with similar experiences at Highgate Cemetery.

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The joke, it seems, is on the ham and high, because the community certainly isn't laughing at David Ferrant.

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You tackle him, pinning him to the ground with your baton, but you can't stop the rest of them. Dozens of people are already swarming past you, scaling the high fence surrounding the graveyard. This is madness, you tell yourself. These people have been whipped into a frenzy over something that can't possibly be true. Surely they don't believe the rumors, or do they?

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Hey, Nexpo here. As many of you know, Mr. Ballin and Ballin Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life. And if you like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you have to check out Mr. Bolin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

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Every week, Mr. Bolin weaves gripping tales of the strange, dark, and mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat. Mr. Bolin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it's free, just like ours.

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There are hundreds of episodes available to binge right now, with new episodes twice a week. So don't wait, go listen to the Mr. Ballin podcast today. The most prominent of the response letters received by the Hammond High comes from a self-styled exorcist named Sean Manchester, the president of the British Occult Society. Not to be confused with Ferentz British Psychological and Occult Society.

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Manchester is a bishop of the Old Catholic Church, which is a conservative splinter group of Catholicism. He also has a keen interest in the supernatural. He writes in and reports that not only does he believe the hauntings in Highgate Cemetery, but he knows what's causing these occurrences in the first place. In fact, he's been tracking supernatural encounters of this nature for years.

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It's a bold claim, too bold to ignore. And so, the very next week, the Hammond High hits new stance with the headline, Does a Vampire Walk in Highgate? splashed across the front page. North London is immediately gripped with curiosity, not only about the vampire, but about the two masters of the occult who were hunting this creature, David Ferrant and Sean Manchester.

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The two men are complete opposites, and this only adds fuel to the media frenzy. Ferent is soft-spoken and not very charismatic in interviews. For a man claiming to have seen a supernatural creature in a graveyard, he exhibits an astonishing amount of restraint and reason. His story doesn't change, and he takes great care to remind reporters that the creature he saw was not necessarily a vampire.

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He pleads caution to the press. Ferrant comes across as a concerned citizen who isn't seeking attention. He truly witnessed an inexplicable event in a graveyard and believes Londoners should be aware. Sean Manchester, on the other hand, is a force of nature. He's tall and dons Catholic bishop garments wherever he goes. Where Ferrant's reserved, Manchester is bombastic.

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In his interview with the Hammond High, Manchester doesn't hesitate to make evidence-free pronouncement that the creature in Highgate Cemetery is a king vampire of the undead, an ancient nobleman from Wallachia who had risen from the grave. Moreover, Manchester claims to have numerous eyewitnesses to back up his theory, with accounts going back to 1965.

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According to Manchester, a schoolgirl named Elizabeth Wajdila had reported to him that she was walking down Swains Lane when she saw the tall figure in the graveyard. In the weeks afterward, she began having nightmares. She fell ill. In believing she was fighting against an evil presence, she contacted Manchester for help.

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You look into the eyes of the man under your baton, and there you find your answer. He absolutely believes in. All of these people do, with every fiber of their being. And in that moment, a horrifying thought occurs to you, taking root in your mind. What if these people aren't crazy at all? What if they're right? What if there actually is a vampire in Highgate Cemetery?

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When Manchester examined her, he found two puncture marks on her neck, the telltale sign of a vampire attack. He immediately spread garlic around Elizabeth's apartment and placed strategic crucifixes to ward off evil. Within days, her symptoms were gone, and she had effectively been saved from corruption.

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And as it turns out, Elizabeth's tale is hardly the only one Manchester claims to have been involved with. He tells reporters that another young lady was also affected by the corruption at Highgate. This girl, named Jacqueline, awoke one night in her bed to feel something cold and strong clutching her hand. She pulled and tugged, but the thing kept its iron grip on her.

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After a long struggle, she was able to wrench it free, and by the next morning, she awakened in her bed with deep, unexplained slices in the skin of her hand. Manchester says that from that day onward, Jacqueline had found herself afflicted with a strange compulsion.

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She felt drawn to Highgate Cemetery, as though something dark and powerful was beckoning her to go there, specifically to the western side of the graveyard. He theorizes that the Highgate Vampire is the one responsible. Reporters aren't quite sure what to make out of these claims, but they do know one thing for certain. They've hit absolute pay dirt with Ferent and Manchester.

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It's as though the two men are an odd couple designed in a laboratory to sell newspapers. And so, local news outlets continue interviewing both Ferent and Manchester, with each of them giving alternate theories about the mysterious events at Highgate Cemetery. Farron mentions to reporters that he's found corpses of foxes littered around the graveyard.

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It's unclear what killed them, and perhaps that has something to do with the hauntings in their cemetery. The reporter asks him if it's possible the perpetrator could have been a vampire. Ferrant runs a hand through his wild hair and grimaces. He acknowledges that it is indeed possible, but it isn't his main theory. Naturally, the reporters go straight to Sean Manchester next.

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They ask him if he too has seen the foxes. Manchester replies that he has indeed, and that by all appearances, they'd been drained of their blood. likely food for the king vampire. The Hammond High publishes yet another article on the case, this time titled, Why Do the Foxes Die?, detailing Ferent's story about dead foxes as well as Manchester's theory.

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It would be fair to label Barry Sherman's company, Apotex, as Big Pharma. Apotex's business model is to make generic versions of brand-name drugs, then sell their version of the drug for less. It's all common practice and completely legal, so as long as they wait for the brand-name drug's patent to run its course. You see, in the pharmaceutical industry, patents are a big deal.

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When a new drug gets invented, the inventor may be awarded a patent which gives them the exclusive right to sell that drug for a period of time, often for 20 years. Once the period of exclusivity ends, though, generic drug manufacturers like Apotex are allowed to flood the market with cheaper, virtually identical replicas. But Apotex doesn't always wait for the period of exclusivity to expire.

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Instead, they, like many other generic pharmaceutical companies, often introduce their products at risk. This means that they release their copycat drug before the original drug maker's patents expire, then try to invalidate the original patents in court in the meantime. If the original manufacturer loses in court, the generic manufacturer keeps the money they make from selling their drug.

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But if they lose, then they must pay the original drug maker damages. This is the risk Apotex and companies like to take on. They understand that they'll win some court battles and lose others. But as long as they win more than they lose, they stand to make incredible amounts of money.

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It's a legal strategy that Barry Sherman, who is neither a doctor or lawyer, was able to exploit again and again and again for years. Shortly before Barry's death, though, Apotex would lose a massive $500 million lawsuit, and this was hardly the only court battle Barry engaged in around this time. There are dozens, including one against members of his own family.

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It's the morning of Friday, December 15th, 2017. There's a for-sale sign in the front of the Sherman's home, and it's been there for weeks. The Sherman's realtor is scheduled to show their home to potential buyers at around 11 o'clock, but the Sherman's housekeeper, who arrives every Friday, is the very first to arrive at 8.30 a.m.

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In 2007, Barry's cousins claimed that they were owed a 20% ownership in Apotex and filed a lawsuit against Barry. On December 6, 2017, a decade after the court battle began and just seven days before Barry is last seen alive, a Superior Court judge dismisses the cousins' lawsuit and orders them to pay Barry $300,000 to cover his legal fees.

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So with this in mind, to Jonathan and his siblings, the police's murder-suicide theory feels improbable, irresponsible even. In their eyes, not only are the police wrong, but their theory is also destroying a great man's legacy in the process. No matter how you look at it, a targeted double homicide simply cannot be ruled out.

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Barry had too many powerful enemies and bitter business rivals who lost against him in court. And besides, who on earth commits suicide by ligature neck strangulation? It's outlandish. If they were a family of average means, Jonathan and his siblings might have had no choice but to quietly sit by and let the Toronto PD's investigation run its course. But Jonathan and his siblings are billionaires.

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They have the means to hire a completely independent team of experts and private investigators. They have the means to fund their own investigation, one that'll bring the truth to light and restore their father's good name. Jonathan and his siblings act quickly. They hire criminal defense lawyer Brian Greenspan to lead a private, parallel investigation into their parents' deaths.

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Greenspan's first order of business is to arrange a second set of autopsies. For this, he taps Dr. David Chason, a veteran forensic pathologist with an excellent reputation. Greenspan knows that it's crucial that his investigation is done by the book and in the light of day.

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And so he invites everyone who was present at the initial autopsies to attend the second autopsies, including a number of Toronto police officers and detectives assigned the Sherman case. Oddly, though, every single one of them declines. The Toronto PD, it seems, doesn't appreciate having their work picked over. Even so, however, there is one person who accepts Greenspan's invitation.

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Dr. Michael Pickup, the young staff pathologist who performed the initial autopsies of Barry and Honey Sherman. To Greenspan's surprise, Dr. Pickup takes no offense to having his work double-checked. Rather, he's eager to help. Pickup explains that he delivered his preliminary report days after the Sherman's bodies were found, but the official autopsy report would take about a month to complete.

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So the preliminary report was precisely that, preliminary. The only conclusion Dr. Pickup reached in this preliminary report was the medical cause of death, ligature neck compression for both Barry and Honey. But what this preliminary report didn't reach any conclusions about was the manner of death.

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The manner of death refers to the circumstances surrounding a death, whether it was natural or intentional, suicide or homicide, etc. And in this section of his preliminary report, Dr. Pickup merely listed out the three possible options, murder-suicide, double homicide, and double suicide, with the intention of narrowing the list down in his final report.

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Immediately upon arrival, though, a few things strike her as slightly unusual. First, the morning newspaper is still lying on the ground out front. It hasn't been taken inside. This only happens when the Shermans are out of town, but the housekeeper can plainly see that the Shermans are home.

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And so, on December 20th, Dr. Chaison carries out the second set of autopsies with Dr. Pickup and Greenspan's small team of private investigators in attendance. With this, Dr. Pickup proves to be invaluable. He tanks Dr. Chaison through his thought process and the incisions he made in his initial autopsies.

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He also brings crime scene photos that show Barry and Honey's bodies exactly as they were found on the morning of December 15th. Photos that Greenspan's investigation would not have had access to otherwise. Four weeks later, on January 19th, the Toronto Star publishes the findings of the second autopsies. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it obliterates the Toronto Police's working theory.

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First off, it's clear that Barry and Honey were not strangled to death with the thick leather belts found around their necks. The thin markings left on their throats indicate that they were both strangled by a very thin rope or strap, likely a garrotte as seen in mafia movies. This means that the leather belts were likely put around both Barry and Honey's necks after they were already dead.

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But no garrote or thin rope was found anywhere in the house, so the idea that Barry could have killed himself was out of the question. Barry couldn't have strangled himself, then gotten rid of the garrote afterwards. It's simply impossible. On top of this, there were thin markings on both Barry and Honey's wrists, indicating that their hands were bound at some point, possibly with zip ties.

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Once again, nothing of the sort was found anywhere in the house, implying that whoever bound them took that evidence with them when they left. Dr. Chaison's report also addresses the matter of Barry's intact hyoid bone. Chaison, who happens to have researched this exact topic extensively, points out that the hyoid bone doesn't always break during strangulation.

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His report also re-emphasizes a key fact that may have been overlooked in Dr. Pickup's preliminary report. That Barry's isn't the only hyoid bone that's intact. Honey's is fully intact, too. Likewise, Greenspan's team makes sure the press hears about certain pieces of crime scene evidence that haven't been properly emphasized by the Toronto Police.

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Like the fact that an exterior door leading to the basement was found unlocked at the crime scene, and that one of the home's windows was found ajar. The fact that there was no sign of forced entry doesn't necessarily make Barry Sherman the killer, as the Shermans lived in an extremely upscale and safe neighborhood, and they were evidently a bit lax about home security.

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For all they knew, their killer could have simply walked inside that evening, completely undetected. Greenspan's team also discovers that Toronto Police failed to collect all of the fingerprints and potential DNA at the scene, and their private team discovers at least 25 new palm or fingerprints that the police missed.

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Honey Sherman's Lexus is parked in the circular driveway, still dusted in snow from the storm Wednesday night. The side entrance most commonly used to enter the home is locked, second unusual thing. Even so, she knocks, expecting Honey or Barry to come let her in. However, no one comes to the door. Finally, she lets herself in with her key and goes to disarm the home security system.

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In light of all of this new information, Greenspan's team asserts that Toronto Police are headed down the wrong path, and that perhaps Barry and Honey were actually the victims of a targeted double homicide. The private investigation's findings begin to turn the tide, just as Jonathan and his siblings had hoped it would. And now, the pressure is on the Toronto Police to respond.

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A week later, the Toronto PD calls a press conference. They walk back their murder-suicide theory and announce that they're now investigating the Sherman's deaths as a targeted double homicide. With this, Jonathan and his siblings are relieved, but not satisfied. Their father's reputation might be saved, but justice has not been served.

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And so, they announce a $10 million reward to anyone with info leading to the arrest of their parents' killer, and wait to see what comes of it. But what about Honey Sherman? Why was she killed? If her husband was targeted by a business rival or something along those lines, then why did Honey become wrapped up in all of it?

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If a lifelong killer really did gain access to the home through their basement, the very basement where Barry was most certainly working, then why did they go upstairs in search of Honey? It's not like Honey could have accidentally stumbled in on a murder in progress in her basement. Her knees were far too weak to even come down the stairs.

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No, if Barry was the only target that night, then the killer could have strangled him, then left without bothering Honey at all. I don't know, it just feels like something else is at play here. Something personal, perhaps. After all, it isn't just Barry's enemies who stand to benefit from his death, as some people very, very close to them stand to benefit most of all.

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At the time of his death, Barry Sherman has his hands in a number of business ventures besides Apotex. He regularly loans his money to friends, associates, and family members. Massive amounts of money in the tens of millions of dollars.

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The so-called Bank of Barry is extremely generous to those in his orbit, and as a result, more than a few people have become dependent on the Bank of Barry to finance their reckless lifestyles and business ventures. One such person is Frank D'Angelo, someone who met Barry in the year 2000 and quickly became friends.

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The Bank of Barry starts lending Frank massive amounts of money to open restaurants and launch a line of energy drinks. But in the end, Frank squanders all of it, and in 2007, his company files for bankruptcy. It's at this point also where Frank owes Barry more than $100 million. But Barry still doesn't stop lending Frank money for some reason, as he can't seem to say no to him.

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Frank continues to use the money to fund a series of terrible B-movies and to defend himself against sexual assault and obstruction of justice charges in court. Expectedly, Frank becomes more indebted to Barry by the day. But because Barry considers Frank a friend, he never stops lending. But Frank is far from the only bottom feeder drawn in by Barry's generosity. There are others.

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Many others, in fact. And they're slowly sucking Barry's fortune dry. Meanwhile, Barry and Honey's four children are not happy about this. From their perspective, Barry is squandering his fortune, a fortune that they will one day inherit. But Barry's children have little room to complain. After all, they're dependent on the bank of Barry too.

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But surprisingly, there's no need to. It's disabled. This housekeeper has worked for the Shermans for three years, and this is the very first time she's ever seen the alarm system completely off. Something is wrong. The housekeeper can sense it. But she has a job to do, so she begins moving from room to room, cleaning and tidying as she goes and dreading what she might find around the next corner.

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Jonathan himself has accepted over $100 million in loans from his father to fund his own business ventures. But out of nowhere, in July of 2017, the situation changed. The bank of Barry stops lending. And Barry sends an email to Jonathan, warning his son that he may be facing a liquidity issue soon. As it turned out, the $500 million judgment from the Apotex lawsuit was looming.

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And on top of this, Barry's misguided loans to the likes of Frank D'Angelo were hurting him tremendously. It all comes to a head about a month before Barry and Honey's deaths, as Barry informs Jonathan that he needs his son to repay everything he owes, more than $50 million. Years later, Jonathan confesses to the Toronto Star that a rift had formed between him and his sister, Alexandra.

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According to Jonathan, Alexandra had accused him of being involved in their parents' murders, at which point he cut off communication with her. Jonathan, for his part, maintains that he had nothing to do with his parents' deaths whatsoever. Arguably, Jonathan stood more to gain from his parents' deaths than anyone, as Barry's financial troubles were about to drag Jonathan down with him.

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But when Barry and Honey died, it magically solved everything for him. he not only retained his $50 million, he secured his windfall inheritance before Barry could manage to fetter it all away. If this theory were true, it would help explain why both Barry and Honey were killed. Barry's will stated that his entire fortune would fall to Honey in the case of his death.

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But should Honey die as well, the fortune was to be split evenly among their four adult children. Alexandra never publicly accuses her brother of being involved in the killings, but she does hire additional security guards for herself, just in case she's next on the killer's list. A year and a half passes. The $10 million reward does not get claimed, and the murders remain unsolved.

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But out of nowhere, in 2019, security camera footage that supposedly never existed begins to surface. While it's true that the Shermans had no security cameras on their own property, one of their neighbors did. Because of the way the neighbor's cameras were positioned, they captured footage of the street in front of the Sherman's home. And on the night of the murders, these cameras were running.

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No, this footage was available to Toronto police officers from day one of their investigation. On the morning of December 5th, 2017, when police first taped off the crime scene at the Sherman's home, the neighbor walked over and told a Toronto police officer about his cameras. But because the Toronto PD believed the case to be a murder-suicide, they dragged their heels.

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The neighbor actually had to remind the police about the footage on four separate occasions before they finally came to retrieve it days later. But even then, they still didn't review it right away, and the footage became lost in the shuffle.

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But in 2019, and now that the case is being investigated as a double homicide by both the Toronto PD and Greenspan's private investigation, this footage gets dug up and finally receives the attention it deserves. and let me tell you, it definitely deserved it.

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According to investigators who have seen this footage, the most shocking portion takes place on the morning of December 14th, just hours after the Shermans were likely killed and a day before their bodies were discovered. A man parks his four-door sedan on the street in front of their home, and the car remains there for over an hour.

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During this time, a man takes three separate trips into the Sherman's home. And not just to the front porch, he physically goes inside their home three separate times. This unidentified man spends a total of 29 minutes inside the mansion, his facial features and the car's license plate too grainy to make out. But it's a shocking revelation. Could this man have been involved in their murders?

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Did he clean up or otherwise tamper with forensic evidence while inside? Was he the one who staged the bodies in their bizarrely casual cross-legged positions? If the police have any answers, they sure remain tight-lipped. But even stranger, as it turns out, this is not the only camera footage the police have been sitting on.

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In 2021, on the four-year anniversary of Barry and Honey's deaths, the Toronto PD released a second clip of security camera footage that has left them equally baffled. It comes from a different home in the area, located 1.3 kilometers away from the Sherman home. In this 22nd clip, an unidentified man is seen walking in the direction of their home.

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The bed in the master bedroom is already made, but Honey always leaves the bed unmade on Friday mornings for housekeeping to handle. In Honey's bathroom, the sink is dry, implying that Honey didn't go through her morning ritual at her mirror. A thought occurs to the housekeeper. She remembers that Barry and Honey were planning a Florida vacation.

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During the time window, police believe Barry and Honey were killed. And after poring through 2,000 hours of security camera footage taken from the area that night, this unidentified man is the only individual whose presence in the area police can't explain. It's unclear whether it's the same man who parked his sedan on the street on December 14th.

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The walking man, as he'll come to be known, is bundled up against the cold, making it impossible to see his face clearly. But it is strange that he would be out walking alone at night and below freezing temperatures, with no apparent reason in such a suburban area. The police have used cell phone location data to review the movements of everyone in the vicinity of the Sherman's home that night.

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Everyone else captured on security camera, the police are able to match to a cell phone. But the walking man evidently has no cell phone on his person. Cell towers cannot track his movements or verify his identity. And the Sherman's neighbors don't recognize his distinctive gait in which the walking man kicks up his right foot with every step. At last, investigators have a suspect.

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But unless they find him, he will forever exist as nothing but a phantom. Years pass. The investigation loses steam and the media frenzy dies away. The Sherman's mansion is demolished, from Jonathan and the siblings' request. No one comes forward to identify the walking man, and no other breakthroughs pop up.

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Based on the tireless efforts of many people, including the Toronto PD, Brian Greenspan's private investigation team, internet sleuths, and the Toronto Star's chief investigative reporter, Kevin Donovan, who followed the case closely for years and wrote a book called The Billionaire Murders, the general consensus about the case is this.

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The police's initial theory that Barry Sherman killed Honey in an act of murder-suicide is not widely regarded as viable. While it's true that the Shermans were having marital issues around the time of their deaths, the pathology reports essentially prove that Barry couldn't have done it.

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Given that both Barry and Honey were strangled with a thin cord before the belts were placed around their neck, there simply had to be a third party involved. And for what it's worth, there was no suicide note either.

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In the months preceding the Sherman's deaths, there were a number of residential break-ins in the area, and it's been theorized that the Shermans could have been victims of a home invasion termed double homicide. But nothing of value was taken from the Sherman's home, and the method by which they were killed, strangulation by Garrotte, feels awfully personal, awfully premeditated.

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There were no ropes or zip ties matching Barry and Honey's wounds found anywhere in the home, so these restraints were likely brought to the scene by the killer. Many believe that someone in Barry's orbit likely hired a professional hitman. Even Barry himself acknowledged that an attempt on his life was a very real possibility.

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In an interview in the late 1990s, he was quoted as saying, But who ordered the hit, and whether or not Barry was the only intended target, is still heavily debated. As for the strange, casual poses that Barry and Honey's bodies were found in, the police are still seeking answers.

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Perhaps those plans had changed and they simply left earlier than planned. Maybe as soon as it began snowing on Wednesday, the couple impulsively decided to bolt for warmer weather and overlooked a few things as they rushed out the door. The housekeeper reassures herself that this is what happened and continues her work.

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But many believe there to be a connection between Barry and Honey's bodies by the pool and the creepy junk sculptures in the hobby room. Both pairs, the two statues and the two humans, were posed with eerie similarities. Whatever the connection or significance is, it may have been a cryptic clue left by the killer for some unknown purpose. A clue that, to this day, still taunts investigators.

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As of 2021, the rift between Jonathan and Alexandra continues. And on the five-year anniversary of his parents' deaths, Jonathan Sherman announced that the reward was being raised to $35 million. To this day, it remains unclaimed, and the Sherman case remains one of the most high-profile murder mysteries of this century. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

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Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Luke Baratz. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beemer, and Stacey Wood. Fact checking by Abigail Shumway.

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Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night.

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Shortly before 11 a.m., the Sherman's realtor comes into the home with a pair of interested buyers. And to start, their tour begins on the upper floors. Oddly, they find Honey's iPhone lying on the floor of a small powder room near the front of the house. But otherwise, the house is tidy and the showing goes well. The buyers, at first, seem interested. But then it's time to show the basement.

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The realtor has shown the house enough times to know that the basement portion of this tour is where buyers always get cold feet. So as they descend the stairs, the realtor braces herself for the worst. The problem with the basement is that it makes people uncomfortable. It's almost completely devoid of color or decor. It's just beige and gray surfaces everywhere.

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But there is one room in the basement that has decor. And that's the hobby room. In the corner of it, two life-sized human statues sit on large speakers, with their legs and arms positioned in an attempt at being casual. The statues are so-called junk sculptures, constructed entirely of brightly colored trash. They do stand out in the otherwise drab space, but not in a good way.

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There's no other way to put it, the statues are creepy. So when the tour group reaches the bottom of the staircase, the realtor rushes them past the hobby room and towards one that they think will make a better first impression, the indoor pool room. This massive room is dark when they arrive. The realtor flips on the overhead lights and immediately there's a gasp from someone in the group.

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A moment later, the realtor sees why. Barry and Honey Sherman are in the room with them, across the way by the far edge of the pool. From this distance, the realtor can't tell what they're doing. It looks as though they might be doing yoga, but whatever they're up to, it's strange that they're doing it in a completely dark room.

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He does his best thinking at nighttime, and his employees are used to receiving emails and calls from Barry at all hours. But on this night, the night of Wednesday, December 13th, 2017, his employees received no late night messages from Barry at all. In fact, it's the first time they recall this ever happening.

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The realtor quickly ushers the clients from the room and mentions the scene to a gardener working on the property. In response, the gardener offers to go see what's up. The gardener enters the pool room and walks up to the Shermans. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the Shermans are not doing yoga at all. Barry is in his work clothes, and Honey in her everyday attire.

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Their legs and arms are positioned in an almost casual manner. They almost look like they're politely seated in a waiting room, except their posture is too unnatural. They're both reclined too far back, and it looks uncomfortable, if not impossible. Now right on top of them, the gardener can see exactly why Barry and Honey seem so uncomfortable.

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Two leather belts, one around each of their necks, are tied tight like nooses, tethering them to one of the pool's low metal railings so that they're left dangling in their strange, half-sitting positions.

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In no time at all, the realtor is on the phone with 911, frantically trying to explain the grotesque scene to the dispatcher, trying to explain that Barry and Honey Sherman are dead, murdered right inside their own mansion. One week later, the Toronto Police Department is settling into their investigation, but the case is making international headlines now and the public wants answers.

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It's December in Toronto. It's snowing tonight. A 12,000 square foot mansion stands dark. None of its windows are illuminated, not even the basement office. That's unusual. This is the home of billionaire power couple Barry and Honey Sherman, owing to the wild success of his generic pharmaceutical company, Apotex. Barry is both a workaholic and an insomniac.

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Everyone wants to know who killed Barry and Honey Sherman. At this point, the police have a working theory, but they're keeping it under wraps until they're more certain. So far, though, the facts are as follows. In November, Barry and Honey Sherman put their mansion on the market for just under $7 million. Their plan was to build an even larger $20 million mega mansion closer to the city.

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The mega mansion wasn't anywhere near completion, however, so the Shermans were still using their current home as a primary residence at the time of their deaths. Early Wednesday evening, just hours before they were believed to have been killed, Barry and Honey met with a team of custom home builders to go over the plans for their new dream home.

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The meeting was held at Barry's offices at Apotex headquarters near downtown Toronto, and their building security cameras captured the three home builders arriving for that meeting around 5 p.m. Honey left Apotex a half hour later, around 5.30, did some shopping, then drove home in her Lexus. Barry stayed behind for a few more hours to finish up his work that day.

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He sent his final work email at 8.23 p.m., then made his 25-minute drive home. At 9.01 p.m., there was an incoming call to Barry's Blackberry, but Barry didn't answer it. And as a matter of fact, Barry never picked up a phone call ever again. Weeks later, pathology reports will suggest that Barry and Honey likely died somewhere around this time, either late on Wednesday or early Thursday.

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What the employees don't yet realize, though, is that they'll never receive a message from Barry Sherman ever again. And it's because deep within the bowels of the Sherman mansion, something gruesome is happening, and it'll haunt investigators and the community for years to come. Two days later, the sun rises on the Sherman's upscale neighborhood. It's no longer snowing.

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The home shows no signs of forced entry. There are no security cameras on the Sherman's property, but there is a home security system. Interestingly though, the security alarm is never triggered during the time frame in question, and as we know, was discovered by the housekeeper two days later, unarmed and turned off.

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In the kitchen, some items that Honey would have brought in from her car, such as her purse and shopping bags, are placed on the table, right where they normally would be. Honey's cell phone, however, was not with those items. It was discovered in a completely different part of the house, in an out-of-the-way powder room where, according to the housekeeper, Honey never really went.

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At the indoor pool in the basement, the bodies of Barry and Honey are still dressed in the attire that they likely were wearing around 9pm, Wednesday evening. There's a wound on Honey's face as though she was struck, yet no such injuries exist on Barry. The housekeeper informs police that Honey had bad knees, and that the steep basement staircase was too difficult for her to manage on her own.

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As a result, Honey never went down there if she could help it. Two days after the bodies are found, police announce that, according to autopsies, Barry and Honey both had the same cause of death, ligature neck compression, aka strangulation with a rope or constricting band.

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The preliminary autopsy report for Barry notes that the fragile, U-shaped hyoid bone in his neck is still intact, unbroken, which is odd because typically, deaths involving strangulation break it. Because of this, investigators see this as an indication that this case was not a double homicide, but rather a murder-suicide, in which Barry Sherman killed his wife, then took his own.

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Self-strangulation is an extremely difficult way to kill oneself. Remember, Barry did not hang himself. His feet were touching the floor, meaning that he could have reflexively stood up at any time once he became desperate for oxygen. This is why ligature neck compression is such a rare way for one to commit suicide, yet it's not completely unheard of.

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Police investigators are intrigued by the murder-suicide theory because it fits with so much of the evidence they've gathered. If Barry Sherman is their killer, it would explain why there was no sign of forced entry, why the home security system never went off, and why no unexpected DNA or fingerprints were found in the house.

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And also, if Barry attacked Honey, it would explain why Honey's face showed signs of violence, while his didn't. On top of everything, though, another reason the police are pursuing this theory so aggressively is because of its potential motive. Barry and Honey's 40-year marriage, as it turns out, was secretly on the rocks.

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According to those who knew the Shermans well, Honey and Barry were a completely different couple in private than they were in public. Outside their home, Barry and Honey presented themselves as a happily married couple, constantly attending fundraisers and events on each other's arm. But within the privacy of their own home, Honey and Barry reportedly kept their distance.

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There were rumors that they'd begin sleeping in separate beds, and that Barry spent nearly all of his time at home, working in his basement office. These rumors were bolstered by emails and text messages obtained by police. Honey seemed frustrated with Barry's workaholic tendencies, while in return, he accused her of being quote, abusive to him and their children for years.

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And so, the Toronto police quietly adopt the idea that Barry Sherman killed Honey and then himself as their working theory, proceeding to investigate this as a murder-suicide. But police aren't quite ready to present their working theory to the press, as there are still some pieces of evidence that don't quite fit with the murder-suicide narrative.

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And investigators know they'll need to get them cleared up before they publicly accuse the legendary businessman and philanthropist Barry Sherman of something so heinous. That's the plan anyway, but it doesn't quite work out that way. Instead, the investigator's working theory gets leaked almost immediately, leading to all hell to break loose. The funeral is massive.

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More than 6,000 people show up to give their respects, including the Canadian Prime Minister. Also in attendance are Barry and Honey's four adult children, Lauren, Jonathan, Alexandra, and Kaylin, all of whom are now set to inherit an equal share of their parents' multi-billion dollar empire. Their son Jonathan stands at the podium and delivers a heartfelt eulogy.

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The Billion Dollar Mystery

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Today, he allows himself to grieve, because tomorrow, the battle to salvage his father's legacy and good name begins in earnest. The police's leaked murder-suicide theory is already being reported across the globe, but Jonathan and his siblings don't buy it for a second. They know that their father could never have done this.

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The Billion Dollar Mystery

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They don't understand why the police are investigating this case as anything but a double homicide. After all, their father has many enemies. As a businessman, Barry Sherman was notoriously aggressive and litigious. There are many, many individuals who would benefit from his death, some of whom are in attendance at this funeral.

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Siberia, August 1993. The river is freezing cold. Snow melts from the Kamar-Daban mountain range, which looms overhead. Your kayak cuts through the water. You take in the fresh mountain air and the rugged landscape. It's a long overdue escape from the city. Out here, the only signs of civilization are power lines running over the mountains, which are easy enough to ignore.

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Finally, at dawn, Liu and Mila tells them it's time to go. They must descend immediately. After a quick breakfast of canned stew, the group begins hiking back down the mountain to the south. While they're still roughly following their planned route, they've abandoned any attempt to summit the peak, and instead seek protection from the severe weather 2.5 miles below where there's tree cover.

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Everyone else is dead. a week earlier, August 2, 1993. Two hiking groups from Kazakhstan climb up a steep trail, away from the nearest town. They're heading into the wilds of southern Siberia's Khmar Dabon mountain range. They're a school-sponsored hiking expedition, mostly in their teens and early twenties. One group is led by a man named Konstantin Kazantsev.

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The heavy winds continue, making it difficult to progress. Visibility is dismal. Then suddenly, at about 11 am, Sasha falls down. The other hikers help him to his feet, but soon he collapses again. He's starting to fall behind. Lyudmila hangs back to help him, telling the other hikers to go ahead. She and Sasha will catch up.

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The five other students comply, grabbing onto each other to stabilize themselves against the wind. Like a phalanx of Roman soldiers, they make their way slowly and deliberately down the mountain. They're making progress and the treeline is beginning to feel achievable. But soon, they hear Liudmila's voice shouting from behind them. She's screaming for help.

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Leaving the phalanx, 17-year-old Valentina rushes back to help their leader. She arrives to find Liudmila crouched by Sasha's body, despondent. The young man who had been complaining of cold mere hours before isn't moving. Valentina looks closer, and she sees that his eyes are vacant, staring off into the distance. Sasha is dead.

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Overcome with shock, Valentina is momentarily unable to speak or breathe. It feels like she's stumbled into a nightmare. But the nightmare is only beginning. Because a moment later, Liudmila collapses as well. The other students see her go down, and panic sweeps through the group like a wildfire. The phalanx breaks. Valentina looks on in terror as chaos breaks out.

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Everyone is screaming, flailing, but not because they're afraid. They're all in pain. Valentina's fellow students are bleeding from their ears, eyes, and noses. They're foaming at the mouth. This doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. A couple of them are tearing at their clothes frantically, madly. Valentina has never seen anything like it.

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And suddenly, to her shock, more of them begin to collapse to the ground, one by one. Valentina tries to pull Victoria to her feet, only for the girl to rabidly bite Valentina's hand. She tries again, pulling the convulsing girl down the mountain with her. They're only able to make it a few more steps before Victoria fights free again, but she doesn't go far.

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She falls to the ground and stops moving. Valentina keeps going, maybe if she makes it to a nearby cluster of rocks, maybe then she'll be safe from this madness. But when she nears the rocks, she halts, stopped in her tracks by yet another terrifying sight. One of the other girls, Tatiana, is already at the rocks, and is bashing her own head against them, over and over again.

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A curtain of blood obscures her face from view. Tatiana keeps smashing her head into these rocks until eventually she stops moving. Valentina is frozen, paralyzed by complete shock and panic. In the span of minutes and with zero warning, her entire group has dropped dead. Suddenly, a hand shoves Valentina, shaking her out of her stupor. Someone is still alive. It's one of the boys, Dennis.

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He's on his hands and knees, bleeding from the ears and mouth. Yet he's able to muster up enough energy to give her one single command. Run. This shocks Valentina into action. She bolts downhill, making for the treeline. Behind her, Dennis tries to crawl after her, but he has no strength. She glances over her shoulder to make sure he's following, yet he isn't.

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He's lying face-flat in the snow, completely immobile. By now, it's just Valentina. Overcome with fear and a burning desire to survive, she advances downhill through the swirling wind and blinding snow. Stumbling, crawling, before at last, she finally reaches the treeline and a shelter from the wind. She digs a sleeping bag out of her backpack and crawls inside.

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She huddles into a bowl for warmth before she passes out. A day later, the weather subsides. Valentina wakes up on August 6th, and it's quiet. No screams, no howling wind, just the gentle rustling of trees and the drip, drip, drip of the melting snow. She cautiously emerges from her sleeping bag. The sun is out. Even though she slept for almost 24 hours, she doesn't feel rested.

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The horrific sights from the day before are clear in her mind's eye. She wishes that she could dismiss it as a nightmare, something caused by a lack of sleep or exhaustion. But she knows the truth. She can't kid herself. She's alone. Valentina slowly starts to trudge back up the mountain. She's gotta see her fellow hikers. She needs to have some sense of what happened.

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Before too long, the bodies come into sight. A cluster of four of them by the rocks, and two farther up the slope. They're all still and silent. Stealing herself, Valentina walks from body to body. She can't do anything for them now besides close their eyes. She passes Tatiana, the 24-year-old secretary, the one who smashed her face into the rocks not long ago.

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She passes the small body of Timur, who was only 15 years old. He was the youngest of the group. Victoria was also there. Valentina couldn't help but feel some kinship with the other girl. Only a year younger than her, she had been so eager to hike that she had her parents persuade Liudmila to let her join them, even though she was an inexperienced hiker.

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It breaks her heart to see Dennis, the boy who saved her, lying on the slope. If he hadn't told her to run, she might have died there as well. Once she's closed all their eyes, Valentina does her best to cover the bodies with one of the tents. She gathers whatever supplies she can from their packs, food, Liudmila's map, and a compass.

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But as it turns out, the map and compass are of little use, because Valentina is lost. The snowdrifts make it impossible to follow the path that Liudmila planned for them. They were less than halfway through the 40km route, and Valentina doesn't want to risk hiking over the snowy peak alone. Instead, she decides to head back down in the general direction their group climbed up.

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She needs to get to a more reasonable altitude as soon as possible. As she continues her descent, a promising sight greets her eyes. Thin cables running above the treetops. Power lines which run to the nearby peak of the mountain. Making her choice, she continues walking, her eye on the power lines, trusting that they'll show her a way to safety.

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The other is led by Lyudmila Korovina, an experienced hiker who has traveled these mountains before and who also happens to be the mother of one of Konstantin's student hikers. Lyudmila's group will be taken a high altitude route across the mountain range, before descending back down towards civilization.

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After all, when there's power, there's bound to be civilization. Even though it's entirely downhill, it's an arduous journey. Her supplies wear thin fast. She eats a dried golden root, foraged by the group several days before. It's rich in minerals and keeps her going. Her home feels impossibly far away in these desolate mountains, yet one thought pushes Valentina forward.

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The thought of her home back in Kazakhstan, the thought of her family who had trusted Liudmila to bring their little Valium home safe. Valentina has to survive to see them again. She travels from tower to tower, pausing to catch her breath, but never stopping. She treks for four days, growing delirious. And one fortunate night, she finds a winter hut, unlocked.

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She collapses inside, grateful for the shelter. But she's on her feet the next day, determined not to die alone in the mountains. She doesn't notice when she catches a cold, but she can feel a fever eating away at her, and has to pause every so often to allow herself to cough.

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At lower altitude, there is less snow, but aside from the cabin, she hasn't seen any civilization, not a town or even an outpost. Because of this, doubts begin to eat away at her. Perhaps she should have tried to retrace her group's footsteps instead, back to the town they started out from. Finally, Valentina reaches a river. This gives her some hope.

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Many of the rivers in the area flow from Lake Baikal, which is where they started their trip. She follows the rocky shore, heading upstream in hopes that someone will see her. And eventually, by the grace of God, someone does. On August 9, 1993, tourists from Ukraine cross her path. One of the tourists, Aleksandr Kovidnitsky, sees her and swims to her side. Valentina has done the impossible.

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She survived. When she's rescued, she is incoherent and is only able to give local police a scattered account of what happened. Nevertheless, while Valentina is sent home to her family, a search efforts mounted to find the bodies of her companions. And what rescuers find defies explanation, even to this day. August 24th, 1993. Helicopters fly over the peak of the Qamar Dabon mountain range.

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They've been searching for weeks, trying to locate the missing group of hikers from Kazakhstan. Finally, someone sees something and the helicopters descend. They found the summit group's final campsite, and with this, the bodies. The snow around the peak has melted, revealing a gruesome sight. After 19 days of exposure to the elements, their bodies are in poor condition.

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On the map, their route follows a rough arc across the mountains and back to a small lake called Lake Padovoi. They have two tents and will camp along the 40-kilometer route. While Liudmila's group takes the summit, Konstantin will guide his group along a lower altitude valley route following the river.

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The tent that Valentina draped over them couldn't prevent them from rotting. None of the bodies have eyes, and worms writhe in their empty sockets. With increased visibility on the mountain, rescuers are able to see that the hikers died only a few hundred feet short of Tytran's peak.

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A wooden tower is indeed there, which would have protected them against the elements far better than a flimsy tent on the side of a mountain. Why Liudmila hadn't fought to get there safely puzzles the search party, even as they gather the unfortunate victims. More puzzling is the fact that they find only a single can of stew by the campsite.

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Nothing else, no other food, not even a candy bar wrapper. It's this evidence that seems to indicate that this group was underfed and needlessly exposed to the elements. They zip up the bodies in bags and load them onto the helicopter. The smell is unbearable as they take them back to be autopsied. The bodies are found to be protein deficient and malnourished.

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The leader of the search party, Yuri Goliath, has seen enough. The can of stew, the hazardous placement of their campsite. To him, it's no mystery what happened to these kids on the mountain. And he knows exactly who to blame. Lyudmila herself. Yuri is familiar with Lyudmila and has long believed that she mistreated her students.

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Based on his previous encounters with her, Yuri claims that she often pushed her teenage students to their limits, including underfeeding them and not providing them with proper clothing for the elements. In Yuri's mind, there's no doubt that Lyudmila's poor leadership contributed to the deaths of the group at Kemar Daban.

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Even further, he claimed that he wouldn't put it past Lyudmila to choose a poor campsite in order to, quote, toughen her students up. But even still, not everyone agrees with Yuri's assertion. Valentina, after years of silence in the wake of this horrific event, spoke out in support of Lyudmila Korovinna.

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She claims that the summit group was well fed and cared for throughout the hike, and that Lyudmila knew that they were hikers of varying experience, and so she planned for a diet of 2400 calories a day. The official cause of death for the five students is listed as hypothermia. As for Lyudmila herself, it's believed that she died of a heart attack upon seeing Sasha die before her eyes.

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But the details of the event itself defy such an easy conclusion. For instance, why was Valentina able to survive if all of them were in the same state of malnutrition and exposure? How was she, a 17-year-old girl, able to outlast an experienced mountaineer and her own peers? And most of all, why did their deaths happen so suddenly and within such close proximity?

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Despite the lower elevation, Konstantin's group's route is technically the more difficult of the two. The difficulty of the Russian alpine routes are measured on a scale of 1 to 6, with 1 being a beginner slope and 6 being near vertical, only to be attempted by experts. Liudmila's route is rated a 3, which makes it a moderately difficult slope, around 35 to 45 degrees in icy.

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Satisfactory answers unfortunately remain elusive. However, as it stands, the facts are these. Six healthy individuals died very suddenly in close proximity to each other. All of them displayed strange, unexplained symptoms in their final moments that included self-harm, bleeding from the ears, eyes, or throat, and sudden, debilitating pain.

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All of these details come from Valentina herself, who describes the experience like a horror movie. Now, hypothermia could explain some of the symptoms Valentina noticed, such as the attempts to frantically disrobe. This is a phenomenon known as paradoxical undressing. In extreme cold weather, a person's blood vessels constrict to save heat.

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As hypothermia sets in, the constriction of these blood vessels fails, causing warm blood to flood back into the extremities, making someone feel like they're overheating even as they literally freeze to death. People in this state frequently tear off items of clothing, only hastening their own demise. But smashing your own head into rocks? Sudden, inexplicable bleeding?

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Neither of these are symptoms of hypothermia, nor should they be contagious in the way that they seem to be among Lyudmila's group. Another theory is that these hikers suffered from altitude sickness, which can trigger any number of adverse effects in the human body. Among these can be pulmonary edema, a buildup of fluid in the lungs, which can trigger heart palpitations and bloody coughing.

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Perhaps it could have been something they ate or drank. The strange behavior that Valentina witnessed could have been caused by a poisonous plant that the others had consumed and she had fortunately avoided. Or perhaps contaminated water was the culprit.

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Lake Baikal is known for high levels of contamination, and if hikers filled their water bottles from one of its rivers, they could have poisoned themselves without even knowing it. In the pursuit of truth, curious researchers have turned away from the direct events of the hike and towards increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories.

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The most dramatic of these is that these hikers were unwitting participants in a Russian weapons test, victims of some nerve agent that got unleashed under the cover of the storm. Novichok chemicals, for instance, were developed in the late stages of the Cold War by the Soviet Union.

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Phosphorus-based and designed to be undetectable, they cause disorientation as well as foaming at the mouth and can be administered in aerosol form. A similar, if slightly outlandish theory assumes that the sudden hysteria and death among the group was caused by infrasound. The term infrasound refers to low-level frequencies that can occur naturally, emitted by geophysical phenomena.

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These sounds, while not audible to the human ear, can be felt by the cochlea and the inner ear, causing extreme discomfort. In certain extreme conditions, infrasound has been known to cause sudden sickness and even death. At certain frequencies, it's theorized that these sounds could cause the internal organs of someone to vibrate, causing internal damage.

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But even still, what could have caused these sounds? Why would they have affected only six of the seven hikers? Every single theory inevitably runs up against the central question of this entire incident. How did Valentina survive? When a journalist asks her how she managed to live when the others didn't, her answer is simple. She was in very good physical condition.

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She lived on a farm her whole life and was used to high altitude and strenuous exercise. But this description could apply to any one of the hikers present. Even the youngest member of the group, 15-year-old Timur, was an experienced outdoorsman. The only hiker with questionable experience was the 16-year-old Victoria, who had previously suffered from fatigue on easy hikes.

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There just has to be something missing, some detail that got lost in the noise of Valentina's trauma and the punishing weather. But if there is a key that helps us understand what happened at Camar de Bon, it seems, unfortunately, to have been irretrievably lost. Like the dead, the mountain keeps its secrets.

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This requires confidence and sure footing, but it's not a grain that requires special equipment. Konstantin's route, by comparison, is a 4, which usually indicates some steep rocky sections at an incline of more than 55 degrees.

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And if there's one thing to take away from all of this, their campsites will forever hold a mystery. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Teamstro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

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Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Clarkston Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.

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I love you all, and good night.

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The plan is for the two groups to begin and end the multi-day hike together, with several days in between, in which the two groups will separate and hike their respective routes. So when the trail forks, the valley group will take the low road, the summit group will take the high road, and on August 5th, they'll meet back up at the designated lake.

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While it's still summer, weather up in the mountains can be fickle in Siberia, with snowfall beginning as early as late August. Anticipating this, Lyudmila contacted local weather monitoring stations ahead of time. They told her the worst she could expect is a mild chance of wind and rain. Nothing to be too concerned about. Well, except for this.

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They were given a stark, cryptic warning as they departed a nearby town for the mountains. One of the locals urged the hikers to be careful as wildlife in the area was behaving strangely, aggressively. No one could explain why, but something in the mountains was driving animals insane. And most recently, bears in the area had been witnessed throwing themselves in front of trains.

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Liudmila and Konstantin's groups arrive at the fork in the trail. Liudmila does a quick headcount of her six students. Sasha, Dennis, Timur, Victoria, Tatiana, and Valentina. They're all here, all ready to go. The groups say goodbye for now and part ways. Following her map, Liudmila guides her summit group along a river through a nearby pass.

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Before long, their group is walking uphill at a steady pace, through the trees and into the mountains. So far, the weather is favorable, warm summer air. Lyudmila is relieved that the weather forecast remains accurate, as there are some inexperienced hikers in her group.

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But out of nowhere, something catches your eye and the peaceful atmosphere dissolves. There's someone standing on the far shore of the river, framed starkly against the trees. It's a teenage girl. She's waving her arms frantically, screaming for you to stop. From this distance, you can't quite make it out, but it looks almost like her jacket is stained with blood. You don't hesitate.

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Lyudmila, aware that her group must keep up their strength, insists that they eat four times a day, including snacks during rest stops. She knows that some people think of her as hardened, a survivalist drill sergeant for her students, pushing them to their limits. But in her own mind, the safety of her hikers is always her first concern.

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They're making good time, and are able to summit the first ridge ahead of schedule. Even the least experienced hikers, the 24-year-old Tatiana and the 16-year-old Victoria, manage to keep up. For both of them, it's their first Grade 3 hike, a major milestone of any aspiring mountaineer. For now, the summit group is riding high, but they know a lot more terrain awaits them over the coming days.

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And something else awaits them, something they can't possibly know about, because they're miles from any remaining civilization. The winds and weather forecasts for Camar de Bon are shifting, and it's clear it's for the worse. August 4th. Two days into the hike. Liudmila's early confidence starts to wane. The group reaches a treeless alpine zone, and here their fortunes turn. The weather sours.

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Heavy rain and wind whips and tears at the seven hikers. Visibility is poor, and the temperature is dropping rapidly. Their progress slows to a crawl. Liudmila clutches onto her map like a lifeline, making sure that they stay on the proper path. One of the worst things that can happen in these conditions is to stray off course and get lost.

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Liudmila knows her students won't make the ridge before nightfall, and so she barks orders through the raging wind, instructing the group to make camp. The students spring to action and begin setting up their tents in an open flat area about two miles above the treeline. It's exposed, but Liudmila reasons that they had better play it safe and not push themselves.

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She urges her students to forage before it gets too dark. Keeping their strength up is important, and there's no telling how long they're going to need to wait out the storm. The group manages to find deposits of golden root in the area, and they hurriedly gather as much as they can. It's rich in minerals and nutrients, a perfect supplement to their cache of supplies.

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Once camp is set up, they cluster into two tents for the night, one for the boys and one for the girls. Liudmila hunkers down with Tatiana, Victoria, and Valentina, trying their best to stay warm. Outside, the temperature plummets, and the rain turns to snow. Liudmila does her best not to show it, but she's concerned. This isn't where they were supposed to camp for the night. It's too exposed.

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Also, for days, she's been growing increasingly concerned that her map of the area is inaccurate. At the summit, known as Titran's Peak, there would be a sturdy structure and firewood waiting for them, but Liudmila can't tell how close they are to it. She decides that it isn't worth the gamble to try and reach a wooden structure that may or may not actually be where her map claims it is.

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As of now, the students are shivering, but otherwise seem in good spirits. Liudmila's concern is growing. If the storm goes on for much longer, things could turn sour very, very quickly. But even still, she puts on a brave face for her students. She's been on worse hikes than this, and they all know it.

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It's her confidence and experience that gives courage to even the least experienced hiker, even if it's all for show. Meanwhile, far below, Constantine's valley group is having a perfectly pleasant time. At their lower elevation, there's no wind or snow, and they all get a restful night's sleep in relative comfort. On August 5th, they arrive at Lake Padovoy, right on schedule.

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The small lake is the agreed-upon rendezvous point where Constantine's Valley Group and Liudmila's Summit Group are to link back up. But there was no sign of the Summit Group when Constantine arrives. So he tells his students to unshoulder their packs and relax a while. They can wait. One of the members of this party is Natalia Korovina, Lyudmila's 16-year-old daughter.

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She takes off her backpack and helps the others set up their tents. She isn't concerned about her mother's tardiness. She understands better than anyone that Lyudmila is a cautious person. Plus, the summit group has several inexperienced teenagers. She'd want to make sure her group is safe before moving on.

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When they're finished setting up the tents, she starts to wander along the lake shore, looking up at the Camar de Bon mountains. From the lake, she doesn't have a direct view of where her mother would be, but she notices something strange about the trees in the distance. They aren't standing upright, but are at an angle, like they've been smoothed over by an enormous comb.

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You dive into the frigid water and swim to shore. And when you reach the girl, she collapses into your arms. She's delirious, inconsolable. You can barely make out half of what she's saying through her sobs. She says she's scared, that she's all alone. You wonder why this girl is out in the wild by herself. But what she says next answers your question and makes your blood run as cold as the river.

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Combined with some scattered clouds around the peaks, she assumes that means there are pockets of bad weather at the high altitude. Lyudmila and her students might be getting some rain and wind, which is concerning, but nothing she hasn't handled before. Suddenly, however, Natalia stops in her tracks. A set of eyes are staring out at her from the foliage nearby, unblinking. It's a moose.

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Natalia's mouth falls open and she wants to call the other hikers, but she doesn't. Mooses always steer clear of hikers, but for some reason, this one isn't intimidated by their presence at all. In fact, there's an almost aggressive air to its posture. It's an unsettling encounter, and that's when she remembers what the people in town told her about the bears in the area.

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Something isn't right, and the animals can feel it. Slowly she backs away. The moose boldly stands its ground. Natalia returns to her group and tries to put the moose out of her mind. She reminds herself that animals sometimes behave strangely, just like people do. She'll have to remember to tell her mother about this. A day passes, then another. The mood begins to shift, and concern sets in.

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There's a chance that the summit group isn't even on the mountain at all. Maybe when the weather got bad, they retraced their steps and went back out the way they hiked in. Or perhaps they hustled down to the rendezvous point early and continued on before the valley group arrived. But then again, maybe not. The uncertainty of it all weighs heavily on them, especially Natalia.

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On the second night, she dreams about her mother. In this dream, Lyudmila speaks directly to her, telling her that she can't get off the mountain. Natalia wakes in shock and has difficulty sleeping the rest of the night. Thoughts and fears about her mother's safety keep her awake.

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She tries to tell herself that she's just being silly, that her mother's group is so late simply because Lyudmila is being cautious about the weather. But after 48 hours, these excuses ring more and more hollow. At breakfast, she tells Constantine about her dream. She pleads with him to go back up the mountain in search. It is a grade 3 hike after all, and they don't need special gear.

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Constantine is sympathetic to her concerns, but reminds her that they only have enough supplies for their full trek. They don't want to double back in search of Liudmila, only to run out of food and put their own hikers at risk. He's reassuring, firm, a good leader like her mother, and so she accepts his reasoning.

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They're skilled hikers, sure, but they're not a professional search and rescue team. Soon after, they reach their final destination, a small town on the shores of the enormous Lake Baikal. But a cloud hangs over their arrival, because there's no sign of Liudmila's group here either. Natalia is beside herself now. They came together. The two groups were supposed to leave together.

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Lyudmila even has train tickets for the whole group. Natalia doesn't know what to do. She's always looked up to her mother for strength, confidence, and this uncertain danger has no easy solution. Constantine's eyes return to the high peaks looming in the distance. He begins to fear that he's made a terrible decision that'll haunt him for the rest of his life.

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What on earth, he wonders, is happening up on the mountain? The night of August 4th. On the pink, Lyudmila and her students aren't getting any sleep. In the early morning hours, one of the students from the boys' tent trudges over to Lyudmila's tent. It's Sasha, an inexperienced 23-year-old hiker. He's like a surrogate son to Lyudmila. He tells her that the boys are uncomfortable.

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The wind and the cold are too much to bear. At this elevation, there's no tree cover, no protection from the storm. Their tents are no match for the relentless wind. At four in the morning, the tether snapped. Everyone scrambles out into the bitter cold, struggling to re-secure their shelters. Snow seeps into the tents, soaking through the sleeping bags. It's a miserable, punishing night.

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. There's nothing wrong with the patient strapped to the operating table. He's terrified and fighting against the restraints. But otherwise, this man is in perfect health until your supervisor steps forward and shoots him in the leg.

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It seems only logical. No one outside of the army can have knowledge of his work, and there are always more test subjects to be found. He moves his operation a few miles away from their previous location to the Pingfan neighborhood of Harbin. There, the Japanese army forcibly removes 600 families to make way. Shiro again uses Chinese prison labor to construct his base of operations.

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But this new compound is a much, much larger project. It's hardly comparable to Togo Unit at all. Stretching out over 800 acres, this new compound features 150 buildings, offices, civilian housing, farms, and even a power plant. Everything it needs to be entirely self-sufficient. But that's all in service to his real goal. The goal of performing human experiments.

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There are entire buildings devoted to surgeries and autopsies. One even has refrigeration units to allow Shiro's men to conduct their frostbite experiments year-round. But buildings number seven and eight, hidden secretly within an even larger one, are the most important. Codenamed Ro and Ha, they house the male, female, and child prisoners.

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Shiro doesn't want any saboteurs attacking the new facility, so he keeps all of their activities confidential. At night, he has prisoners brought in through an underground tunnel, tied up in bags and hidden in truck beds. While they're mostly Chinese, there are also Russians, European Jews, Mongolians, Koreans, and by 1939, even Allied soldiers.

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The new prisoners are watched over by Shiro's own brother, the new prison warden. Having a family member oversee security ensures that the weakness his guards showed in the past will never trouble him again. Effectively, Shiro has absolute authority over this complex. And here he is a god. The cover story for this complex is that it's not a prison, but a logging facility.

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And so, Shiro starts referring to his prisoners as Maruta, the Japanese word for logs. With this, he makes sure all of his soldiers and scientists do the same. It's another step towards completely wiping away the humanity of these prisoners. Something Shiro understands is absolutely crucial. He now oversees thousands of Japanese soldiers and medical personnel on the compound.

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And if Shiro is to keep everyone in line, they must all view the prisoners the same way he does. All less than human. Shiro won't repeat the same mistakes from Toko Unit. The past is water under the bridge. Now, there is only Unit 731. Shiro develops a routine, traveling back and forth from Japan and China to further his work.

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As much as he relishes showing off for his superiors back home, his favorite times are always when he's back at the main Unit 731 complex, witnessing science in action. On one of his many routine inspections, he sits in as a young doctor performs his first practice surgery. They do these a bit differently at Unit 731 than at the universities in the motherland.

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Amused, Shiro watches to see how the young doctor reacts when he's told to perform surgeries on an otherwise healthy patient. The young doctor hesitates, and Shiro despises that. But once Shiro steps forward, allowing his presence to be known to this new doctor, he notices a shift in the young man's eyes. The doctor's confusion is replaced with understanding.

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Ignoring Shiro Ishii's orders would be a dangerous choice. The young doctor complies and takes up his scalpel. Content, Shiro steps back into the shadows and watches the doctor perform a human vivisection, cutting into the screaming, thrashing Chinese patients on the operating table, removing pieces of organ and flesh.

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However, when it's time to put the patient down, to throw the log into the fire, so to speak, The young doctor, again, hesitates. This does not impress Shiro, and so he marches forward, takes off his own belt, and wraps it around the patient's neck. He looks the doctor in the eye as he squeezes the life from the patient without a second thought. This is how it's done.

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This is all these creatures deserve. Shiro ensures that the doctor is scheduled for several more practice sessions, and he reminds him that only traitors hesitate. Shiro much prefers the work of the colleagues who have been with him for quite some time. He commends the perseverance of the doctors studying STDs.

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They have to contend with difficult female prisoners who were wrongly inseminated by male prisoners at gunpoint. And once the women come to term, the doctors perform difficult surgeries on them, operating on the women as they give birth to see how the infection has spread to the fetus and how trauma impacts it.

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When Shiro observes these surgeries, he can't help but find it fascinating just how much pain his lungs can endure. Shiro is equally amazed by the creativity of his men. As he walks through his 800-acre playground, he witnesses an experiment where a log is hung upside down to see how long it takes for it to choke to death.

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In another building, he happens upon an experiment in where a log's right hand is sawed off and moved to his left arm to see if it still functions. And at the final stop of Shiro's inspection, he watches with pride as some of his men construct a giant centrifuge. They strap logs to it and spin them around at extreme speeds to see just how much G-Force a human can withstand before dying.

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Though Shiro is unashamed of the work being done at Unit 731, he knows that they can't be too transparent when publishing their results. At least not until Japan is able to bring the Emperor's might to the rest of the world. So when the unit publishes its research, they claim that they used not humans, but monkeys as test subjects.

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Internally, the prisoners are logs, a resource to be used, and in the wider world, they're animals sacrificed for the greater good. But nowhere in this line of thinking, in Shiro's mind, are they ever considered humans. Shiro is fascinated by Unit 731's discoveries relating to the limits of the human body.

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However, Japanese high command is less interested in how best to protect soldiers from frostbite and infection, and more interested in how to better kill the enemy. That was, after all, how Shiro sold them on the entire Unit 731 program. And he hasn't been slacking on that front. One of the buildings at Unit 731 is entirely dedicated to rats. In fact, the building houses over 3 million of them.

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It's 1932, and deep in the heart of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, something monstrous is taking shape. Near the city of Harbin, Chinese prisoners are being forced to construct a mysterious compound. It seems to be part army base, part laboratory. But the prisoners don't know what they're building.

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The rodents are kept in special containment and are infected with fleas that themselves have been infected with a variety of deadly diseases. The rats eventually die, but the fleas are resilient and are collected and loaded into ceramic bombs. This may have been an odd delivery method, but Shiro has his reasons. Any kind of combustible shell will incinerate the fleas.

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He wants something lightweight and fragile. The ceramic will shatter and the fleas will survive, spreading throughout enemy territory and infecting the population. The West might have uranium, but Japan has Shiro Ishii, and what Shiro understands is that there's more than one way to build a weapon of mass destruction.

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He first tests his biological weapons in October of 1940, and by 1945, there are Unit 731 satellite facilities throughout China breeding their own infected fleas for deployment. The fleas are bloated into ceramic bombs, which crack open upon impact without incinerating the payload. The fleas' infections are passed along to Chinese villagers in the area who develop terrible, debilitating fevers.

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Essentially, they have contracted the plague. Yet it doesn't end there. They notice strange yellow blisters on their bodies. These blisters ooze yellow pus. Their bodies are rotting. They have been infected with anthrax. Shiro didn't just drop the bombs with fleas. Rather, he dropped a variety of them that infected both the land and water with everything from anthrax to typhoid.

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Not knowing this, the villagers do their best to improve sanitation. Rats are killed on sight. When a villager succumbs to the illness, their bodies quickly buried outside of town. But of course, it's not enough. Once the villagers get desperate, Shiro sends his men in. They set up triage centers, pretending as though they want to aid the infected populace.

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But once the villagers enter these triage tents, they never come out. Shiro's men learn what they can from the infected by dissecting the villagers alive. They don't bother using anesthesia. Shiro's biological weapon attacks will kill 300,000 Chinese civilians over the duration of this war. But Shiro's obsession with biological weapons and his blind loyalty to the Emperor comes with a price.

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World War II is about to take a sudden turn for the unexpected, placing Japan and Shiro in a precarious position. For the first time in years, Shiro has to stop thinking about how to kill others, and for once, start worrying about how to keep himself alive. On August 9th, 1945, Shiro Ishii receives orders from his superiors. Destroy all evidence of Unit 731. He wastes no time in complying.

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He has all prisoners immediately removed from their cells and cremated. It's as horrific an act as any Shiro has ever committed. Shiro sets about destroying the very compound he worked his entire life to build. He instructs his men to place dynamite throughout the main Unit 731 complex to reduce it to rubble. They, of course, obey his orders.

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Their Japanese oppressors make them wear blinders as they work, like horses, to keep them from grasping the full picture. Because the horrifying truth is, many of these Chinese prisoners will never leave this place alive. They're erecting a concentration camp for their very own extermination. Overseeing the construction is an army medical officer named Shiro Ishii.

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Shiro orders some of his men at the satellite facilities near the Russian border to do the same, and issues them potassium cyanide pills in case they're captured by the Soviets. Shiro, however, does not go down with the ship. Even after the deaths of so many prisoners, so many Chinese civilians, so many of his own subordinates, he still feels no guilt and takes zero responsibility.

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As always, this man is only focused on himself. And so, he attempts to fake his own death, spreading word that he was killed by the enemy. Japan surrenders to the Americans in September of 1945, and soon, American forces are sweeping both Japan and China to learn what they can about their defeated enemy's operations.

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General Douglas MacArthur, responsible for the Pacific Theater, eventually discovers Shiro's lab in Tokyo and the ruins of his facility in Harbin. But when American officials interrogate Japanese high command, they're repeatedly told that the Japanese authorities had zero knowledge of any biological warfare programs. Rather, they blame everything on Shiro Ishii.

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It seems that Shiro was far too infamous and left too much of a trail for the Americans to follow, because in January 1946, America locates him. But Shiro's always been good at sucking up to his superiors, and that's not gonna stop now. Even if they betrayed him to the Americans, Shiro is still deluded enough to have loyalty to the ruling class he was born into.

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It's acceptable for a commanding officer to throw an inferior under the bus, but that same inferior should continue to protect higher-ups. If nothing else, Shiro knows that sticking to this cone means he'll be rewarded when he comes out the other side of this ordeal, if he can play his cards right. Shiro has always been a complex man. His morbid curiosity, his lack of empathy got him this far.

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But now, his instincts for self-preservation kick in. Shiro knows that the Americans know what he's been up to. Unit 731 was already the world's worst-kept secret. Their research was too widely published and too well-reviewed for his blatant lie to still hold up. Students in Tokyo have been shown graphic photography of his vivisections as part of their curriculum. In essence, he's famous.

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And now MacArthur's men have had months to comb through the ruins, interrogate witnesses, and learn more about what Shiro was really up to. And all that's left to Shiro is survival. When he's interrogated, Shiro informs the Americans that he will talk under one condition, that General MacArthur grant him and the other Unit 731 staff full immunity.

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Shiro has destroyed all of the evidence, but he and his men have detailed memories of their research. They shared some things with the public through their research papers, but the most important data, how their weapons performed in the field, that is what the Americans want. And that information exists only in the minds of Shiro and his underlings.

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The US State Department is horrified at the proposition. For the past year, they've been prosecuting Nazis for war crimes, and by comparison, Shiro puts even their atrocities to shame. But MacArthur, and by extension, President Eisenhower, feel that the research is too valuable.

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As horrific as Unit 731's experiments were, they did provide insights into pathology that the Americans can put to use in their upcoming Cold War against the Soviets. Shiro's offer is accepted. He and his men go free, and their research is labeled top secret, meaning that it can't be used as evidence of war crimes.

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Shiro is a man of medicine, a man of ambition. This facility is the culmination of everything he's worked for. It'll be his personal playground, a place to perform unthinkable medical experiments on human beings with complete impunity. Only he knows the horrors that are to come. Shiro has always believed that people deserve the lives they're born into.

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On top of this, Shiro maintains his lie that Japanese high command knew nothing about his research. He goes to great lengths to protect them and the Emperor. In the end, there were thousands of soldiers and doctors in Unit 731, and yet only 12 are ever punished when the Soviets capture them and put them on trial. The U.S.

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government doesn't even change its mind in the 1970s when it comes to light that hundreds of American POWs were experimented on like lab rats by Unit 731. Shiro and his men are never held accountable. They go about their lives. They reintegrate into society.

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They go on to occupy some of the highest positions at Japanese medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, and even Japan's medical association. Perhaps this is the scariest thing of all, because whether they knew it at the time or not, every single Japanese soldier and doctor at Unit 731 contributed, at some level, to the unspeakable evil that took place there.

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But they weren't all psychopaths like Shiro Ishii. Many were average people, manipulated into following orders. These people were told it was for their country and their emperor. They were told it was okay because Japan is superior. Unit 731 is proof that it only takes a few monsters to turn an entire group into a terrifying horde.

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And with that being the case, the chilling question we're left with is, could Unit 731 ever happen again? Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Greg Castro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

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Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden.

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Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

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As a child, this meant that the peasants working his wealthy family's land deserved the brutal mistreatment they received from Shiro's father. Poverty and suffering were simply their lot in life. Shiro also believes he deserves the wealth and privilege he was raised in. The gods have smiled upon him. He's destined for greatness.

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Shiro considers it his duty to socially climb, and if lesser people get crushed under him along the way, well, then so be it. This attitude has served Shiro well. By shrewdly placing himself near powerful people, he's received incredible medical research opportunities and has rapidly advanced up the ranks of the Japanese army.

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But the real reason he stands here today overseeing the construction of a unique medical base catered to him is because an idea occurred to Shiro. An idea so horrific that few others would dare to even think it, let alone speak it out loud. But Shiro dared because he saw this idea as an opportunity to serve the most powerful person in all of Japan, Emperor Hirohito himself.

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Just a few years prior, as a curious student of medicine and biological weaponry, the idea comes to Shiro while he's familiarizing himself with the Geneva Protocol. This agreement, signed by the League of Nations in 1925, bans the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. Japan is emerging from a period of isolation, trying to learn from other nations and find advantages.

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Remove the bullet you're instructed, so you obey. You've performed this procedure many times in school, but never on a patient like this, who's been given no anesthesia or painkillers whatsoever. You work as carefully and compassionately as you can, but the patient screams and writhes the entire time. It's torture. Once the bullet's out, you receive your next task.

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But just because the Europeans decided to ban these weapons, doesn't mean Japan has to follow. In fact, Shiro believes that the greatest men in the empire are those who can out-thank those cocky Westerners. One of his heroes is Togo Hayajiro, a Japanese admiral who achieved incredible military victories by ignoring many of the European rules of warfare. Shiro wants to be just like him.

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Admiral Togo was a sailor who used innovative naval maneuvers. Shiro is a doctor who will use biological weapons. He thinks that they'll be of great use to the Emperor. After all, Japan doesn't have access to uranium like the Great Powers do. But then again, they don't need uranium for biological weapons.

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Shiro believes this may even be why the West banned their use, because biological weapons could give lesser nations equal footing with the Great Powers. The way Shiro sees it, if Western nations are so afraid of these weapons, then Japan should use them to make the West uneasy. And to realize his goal, Shiro just needs test subjects, humans specifically.

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The only problem is, the Japanese government that Shiro serves won't experiment on its own people. Performing medical experiments on the precious subjects of his majesty is simply a bridge too far. But as fate would have it, Japan invades China in 1931, looking to take control of resources to fuel their growing empire.

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Japanese high command might not be willing to experiment on their fellow countrymen, But they'll have no problem experimenting on foreigners. In fact, they don't even see them as fully human. So Shiro gets permission to carry out these human experiments in Manchuria, the eastern region of China that Japan has occupied.

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His base of operations, called Togo Unit after his hero, is established near the Manchurian city of Harbin, a mixing pot of Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian cultures. It'll provide him with diverse test subjects, and plenty of them. But Shiro's experiments will soon go beyond the horrors of biological warfare and into territory that is somehow much more disturbing.

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In the fall of 1934, one of Togo Unit's Chinese prisoners, whom we'll call Lee, has seen enough. For the past year, he's witnessed firsthand the cruelty these Japanese invaders are capable of. They experiment on Lee's countrymen as if they're lab rats, often killing their test subjects in the process. But at this point, Lee no longer fears death.

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He's accepted that it arrives for all Togo unit prisoners eventually. What concerns Lee more is how it'll arrive for him. Will he be fortunate enough to receive a quick and relatively painless death? Or will he go like so many of the others, screaming in agony from inside one of the compound's mysterious operation rooms? It's autumn now, which makes Lee uneasy.

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He knows all too well that the worst experiments come in the cold months. Lee will never forget last winter, when he and the other prisoners were given frostbite so the Japanese could learn how best to treat it in their own soldiers. Sometimes they were taken outside and forced to dip their hands in cold water. They then had to wait for hours while their hands froze.

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Others had to stand in the snow until their feet froze. And once they were thoroughly frostbitten, the prisoners were taken inside where their frozen limbs were plunged into different buckets of water. The Japanese tested different water temperatures, finding out that 98 degrees Fahrenheit was the optimal temperature for treating their affliction. Sometimes the prisoners' limbs recovered.

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Other times they were sawed off for further study. Lee used to consider himself one of the lucky ones because he survived. But now, a year into his imprisonment, he's no longer so sure. He used to love autumn. But now, as Lee looks out through the bars of his cell at the colorful foliage outside, he sees the bright leaves for what they really are. Like Lee himself, the leaves are already dead.

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He knows it's time to make a bold decision, because this may be the last opportunity he ever gets. The day of the local mid-autumn festival arrives, a time of celebration. Li watches the Japanese guards drink one bottle of sake after another. The usual patrols of the cell blocks slowly fall off as more and more guards are pulled into the festivities, leaving the prisoners unattended.

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The few guards left in the cell blocks are drunk and are falling asleep at their posts. As one guard after another slips into unconsciousness, Lee calls out to the prisoners in his cell block. They need to act now. He rallies them, telling them it's now or never. If they're gonna die, let them die as men, not lab rats. Li's fellow prisoners agree to follow him.

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Remove a piece of the patient's intestine. After that, a piece of his arm. And after that, a chunk of his brain. You understand now. This patient is not meant to leave this operating table alive. He's one of the truly unfortunate ones. He'll be kept conscious the entire time until scientific experiments become too much for his body to handle.

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He seizes a wine bottle from a nearby sleeping guard, smashes him over the head with it, and steals his keys. He opens every cell, telling the prisoners to get ready. They're about to make a break for the wall. Some of the prisoners have their feet shackled. Li didn't plan for this. but there isn't time to find every key for every pair of cuffs.

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The shackled prisoners will just have to try their best to keep up, even held back by their restraints. Moments later, the prisoners burst out into the night. The cold autumn air whips at their faces. They creep behind several buildings, careful to avoid the areas of celebration. Finally, they reach the wall and climb over a spot that the drunken guards have left unattended.

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Despite the cold, Lee is sweating profusely. He hisses at his comrades, urging them to scale the wall as quickly as possible. Two, three, four, five. Soon, most of the 16 prisoners are over the wall. and that's when they begin to hear shouting from nearby. The Japanese guards have spotted them. Now it's every man for himself.

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As the guards swarm towards them, Lee scrambles up the wall and hurls himself over the top. A moment later, his feet hit the ground outside, and he and the others who managed to get out bolt straight for the tree line. Lee shudders to think of what might happen when those he left behind are recaptured. What will happen to him if he's recaptured?

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Lee and his comrades press through the woods, traveling mostly at night. They have nothing to cover their hands and feet, and they're severely weakened from the Japanese experiments. Some of the less healthy escapees die of exposure before they finally stumble across a friendly Chinese village. Out of everyone, 12 of the 16 prisoners who attempted escape have survived.

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Though Li is now free, he has difficulty moving on. At night, he's haunted by the faces of the men who didn't survive, and by the screams of men who were taken into the operating rooms. And as much as he longs to enjoy his freedom, thoughts of revenge begin to consume him. When he learns of the escape, Shiro Ishii is furious.

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Until now, he's managed to keep Togo Unit's activities secret from the Chinese populace. But now that 12 prisoners are loose in the wild, the cat is out of the bag. He doles out harsh punishments to everyone involved, prisoners and guards alike, so as to ensure that no one ever escapes again. But the tighter he squeezes, the more things begin to slip through his fingers.

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A few months later, something explodes. The blast rocks the compound, and Shiro Ishii emerges onto the grounds to find a massive fire raging across several of the buildings and a huge hole blown in the fortress wall. He scrambles his men, fearing that this might be a full-on assault from the Chinese. But as Shiro watches and waits, no enemy troops appear.

Late Nights with Nexpo

Unit 731

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Eventually, Shiro pinpoints the source of the explosion, the guards' ammunition stores. Somehow, they were ignited. This time, Shiro isn't sure where to aim his range. Is this more weakness, more incompetence from his men? Have they lost the stomach for their important work here? Or is the Chinese resistance responsible for this blast?

Late Nights with Nexpo

Unit 731

93.189

And once his body is wheeled off to the crematorium, another patient, another victim, will be brought in at his place. Again, you take up your scalpel and make the first incision. You block out the patient's screams as well as your own conscience. This is no time to debate right from wrong. You've already seen what happened to the other doctors who questioned orders in Unit 731.

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Unit 731

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He can't even allow himself to fathom the possibility that the prisoner Lee and some of the other rebels could have overcome his defenses and sabotaged his facility. Shiro cannot and will not let it happen again. His career and his service to the Japanese high command are all that matter.

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Unit 731

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He aims to prove to the world just how strong he is by constructing a new facility, one that'll be bigger, more secure, and carry out even worse atrocities in the name of science and his own morbid curiosity. Shiro returns to Japan and uses his guile to seek funding for the new facility.

Late Nights with Nexpo

Unit 731

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Japan's high command is so impressed with Shiro's research results that they completely overlook the prisoner escape and explosion mishaps. And rather than chastising Shiro, they grant him funding and promote him to colonel. Shiro returns to Harbin with permission to construct a new facility that fully meets his needs. He orders the old one demolished and has all of its prisoners executed.

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Well, you are one of the special, chosen, foreseen ones going where I can't follow. So you got a bigger fish to fry than that old Revali freeway.

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Yeah, it's dark. It was sunset when you left. There's a beautiful bluish-violet color to the sky as the large moon rises. The stars out here look incredibly bright and large, and they twinkle just absolutely stunningly.

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Well, I think it's interesting that, so the statue of him cutting off the arm, how old was this boy? He looked very young, probably in his teens, late teens.

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So he was chopping the arm off. Yeah. And stabbing with the spear. Yep. Oh, I thought that you said he was the head.

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The raven was looking over him. And it was a young Corvathian soldier. And he was surrounding the feathers. Where he cut the arm off and he stabbed. And the feathers were surrounding. Yeah, I don't know what that was about.

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It seems to be the wear and tear from sitting on the road in the mud.

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You could probably deconstruct it, separate it from the handle and all of that, but it's not anything special or magical.

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It was something that he made. You know that he wasn't a huge fighter, but he was generally not an axeman.

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With that, you all enjoy the evening, enjoy each other's company. Iris, you leave your friends behind. You make your way through Mogra Kai, and no one stops you. You see guards, you see hawks flying around, yetis and tigers, but none stop you.

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You make your way to the gates of the town, the city, I presume, one of the many, and as soon as you make way to leave, you don't even have to ask, and the gates are raised for you, and you are undisturbed. The moon rises and shimmerers across the city and the various rivers and streams going through this town, and it paints this picturesque scene as you walk alone. What do you do?

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Okay. You do that. You continue walking.

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What direction are you walking?

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Okay. You do that. And you continue to walk. And you're gonna go as far as you can. And you pick a random direction. And you continue to walk. And then it gets late. Back at your camp, and Iris hasn't returned. I don't know if anyone is staying up for her.

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Could you make a... Are you looking for... You ride around town and you don't see her. She's nowhere to be seen. You look around and you see no Tabaxi at all. You just see orcs. Once again, they don't stop you.

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Golden Lotus will decide what will happen to him. It is our way.

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I would say there's really nothing.

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If, I would say that you can make, I would say that at the point you're going, there wouldn't be, it's been so long and there's so much, you see tiger tracks maybe and yeti tracks, but it's been, at this point, it's been all, any tracks you would've left have been swept away.

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I would say that you are told by certain guards that a tabaxi that wasn't a golden lotus left the city. And you get the sense that she is very long gone. Hours ago.

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Our clan has our traditions. She will know what to do. So Golden Lotus is a person, like one person.

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You guys go to bed? Yeah, I'm asleep. I'm asleep, yeah. Okay. As you all drift off to sleep, Iris, you go to bed and peace is... sleep is peaceful. And suddenly there's fire. Fire all around you. It dances and flickers.

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as you suddenly see you feel warmth all around you you feel exactly what you said to toe the warm desert winds and the sands whipping around you as you feel yourself in the flames and you You look as darkness past the fire starts to almost swallow you, but then you feel the smooth sandstone of what feels like a great tomb.

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As you look up above you as the fire now gone, beyond two flickering torches, besides a large sandstone seat. And sitting in this seat is a figure, muscular, dark, furred skin, wearing nothing more than barely concealed cloths and tunics. And adorned in simple but respectable-looking jewelry, you see the form of a man, three times the size of you at least.

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But where a man's head would be, you see two tall, pointed ears. I feel a lot better about that. Jesus. A long, pointed snout and a small nose. Two eyes. gold, that with paint going down around cheeks, makeup to look like a piece of artwork, as you see the jackal-headed god.

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You immediately, that's been more like that in the banter.

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You immediately bow down as you see Anubis sitting in his throne beneath the mountain, the tomb, And he looks down at you. And you hear his voice rumble out, firm, but warm. Personal, yet distant. Just how you think it. Exactly how you know and believe it to be true.

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Yes. We've heard him. You've seen him, but not had a full... Not like this. Yes. As... As you see his mouth move and you hear that low rumbling voice and it shakes the tomb.

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And the realm of death itself hangs in the balance. That is why you are here in Striga. It is why I sent you.

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Iris, when I sent you the vision in the flames for the first time, you understood where to go. But where I was sending you was not to a place. It was to a family.

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You have never let me down. And you hear kind of a rumbling in the stone.

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As Anubis stands up and you see two massive sandaled feet step forward, kicking up dust in the tomb. She's going to be dunking.

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You kneel to no one but me.

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You see as gold eyes blazing with brilliance. You almost for a moment feel the need to cower as you stare into the eyes of a god. And it's almost... You get the sense that if you weren't dreaming that this could be mind-melting, but you are... Oh, it is. You are...

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staring directly up, and you see his jackal snout move as it speaks, and you see in his hand is his massive staff in one and the crook and flail in the other. As he looks and he leans down, the end of your road, Iris,

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There will be times where you doubt your friends going forward. There will be times you doubt yourself going forward. It is impossible to trust when there's this much at stake. But you must continue walking your own path. Even if you decide to leave everything behind here tonight, you will have made it for me and for yourself. And you will always have my approval as your god.

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Until the end. The world turns to black. But until then, do what you think is right. Do what you think my teachings would instruct you to do.

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The land of death is in turmoil. Souls misguided, not being judged. a great atrophy threatening to disrupt the cycle of life and death from continuing.

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And it will be made right in the land to the east.

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I will make a note of it. And she pauses for a moment and looks over at Baruk, the orc that she had smashed in, and says, If you let your orcish savagery consume you again, my fist will go straight to your neck. And he kind of struggles a little bit, and then just kind of, after looking down at his arm that's been healed, he just hangs over dejectedly and does not move.

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You do that, and you feel a, you hear a low breath, and it almost shakes the tomb as the flame whips around you and disappears, and you drift off into sleep.

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Oh, you jolt awake immediately.

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Was that? Yeah. Yeah. He's, like, humanoid from the waist up, right? No, it's human feet, I apologize. Oh, he's humanoid. So he's humanoid, but, like, he's got the dark, like, his dark, thin, like, skin and dark, like, thin fur.

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Yes, he's very muscular and ripped.

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Okay, so you're not even stealthing in the camp. No. Okay, so you walk by. Once again, as soon as you approach, they open, and I would say... You were in the common room, right?

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Yeah, as soon as you're sitting by the fire, you all hear Iris approach. And as you're sitting around the torchlight, it is probably like... 4.30 in the morning, I would say, at the very least. And you are feeling tired. And then you hear soft footsteps and a rustling as you see the fire pit, the fire in the pit, catch on gold jewelry as Iris walks back into camp.

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And she extends her mighty gauntleted hand and says, I am Dokkani Sunfist. And she reaches out for your forearm.

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are orcs, beautifully armored with that beautiful ghost iron or ghost steel that you've gotten accustomed to being in Grond, and the one with the flag looks at all of you as they draw their weapons and point them at you. The one in the center is holding a large spear in one hand, and on her other, she has a massive golden gauntlet with spikes on where each knuckle would be.

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And everyone enjoys a long rest.

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You are far more high priority. Can we do both? I mean, there's a serious threat coming.

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She looks around and thinks, and just nods at the other female old woman with the shaved head. And she simply nods back and she lets out a and spins her finger around and says, let's ride out to the next town. And they all mount up, leaving Baruk behind. And Dokkani, their mounts let out a roar, and they begin to sprint off to, you see, a small town not too far from you.

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The entire camp, half of the campsite is now bisque.

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She happily licks it. She'll eat it. She actually goes to the ground and starts licking up all of it, and you see Revali's just like...

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Can you just be, like, more quiet while you do that?

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You see, finally, several stone steps carved into the mountain almost out of nowhere. The wind is howling, but then you hear the sound of this horrible, guttural howling.

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Says Toa as you hear the tap of the glade and you see Golden Lotus arrive and she smiles at you and says, I trust you all slept well. Yes.

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It seems to be a herding community. A great number of yaks and goats and pigs. running around, you can kind of almost smell the wafting manure from where you are. And you see that there's a number of wagons leaving as they begin to go assist in the evacuation.

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She leads you out of the courtyard and across the bridge to one of the more main thoroughfares, and you make your way back to her quarters, and she guides you up the steps into that same area, the antechamber and then the room where you had given your offerings. And then the door opens into the very small room where the pool and the two trees had been.

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And this was built into the side of the mountain. And you see as she reaches behind a hanging tapestry and she pulls it up and you see that there is a small passage.

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Okay, you do that. You feel the magic wash over you with the Arcane Guardian. And she holds it up and says, please, follow me. Not even the Warchief has been here. It is a sacred place, so please, be respectful.

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That will not be necessary. You will need them.

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And she leads you through a passageway that goes on for many feet. It's dark, but it's marked by several small lanterns. And you make your way through, and you see the end of this hallway. And it's dark, but not from any kind of tapestry. It seems as if by leaves. And...

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You see bits of the sun's rays poking through as she takes her glaive and presses it through and pulls it aside and immediately the beautiful pinks and purples of dawn wash over you as you step into a beautiful what looks like a valley grove, completely surrounded by the mountains and the peaks all around you, out of view from every single building of Mogra Kai.

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And you see the great wall, the great mighty wall that is before you with a number of gates, these several roads, all on the plains, snaking their way to various entrances with the great gates and, and, It's not long that you are alone with Dokani and Baruk, and she looks at all of you and says, I was told that you would be capable fighters, that you would be able to save us from the Calamity.

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However, you can see the sun cresting above the mountains as dawn is painting the sky, a tapestry of gorgeous colors. And you see a beautiful, tranquil, It almost feels like the air is still as the smell of saffron assaults your nostrils. And you all feel calm as there is a lick out in front of you. And... You don't see a single fish in it.

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The water is crystal clear, and it is ringed with these beautiful cherry blossom trees with petals of gold and white and pink. And this, you feel the, almost like a sense of touch of the divine. as you enter this sacred place.

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And as you all enter, she lets the bush go, and you can see that it's ringed with bushes, and out of sight, you don't even see a single hawk flying over, as you are basically almost, it feels like you're at the top of the world in this grove. And she, Golden Lotus turns to you and smiles and says, what do you think? Is this not the most beautiful place that you've ever been?

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I will take that as a beautiful compliment.

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Wonderful. This is my home. This is where I retire to every evening. This is the place where the Eternal Blossom sent me when I first came to Grond, those many decades ago. And this is where her... her agent, her... her representation, her emissary to us mortals. This is where he comes and communes with me.

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But first, now that you are trusted by the Warchief, and we are in this sacred grove, not even the powerful magics of Virgil Zurn can peer through this veil. I can tell you where you will be going and how you will be saving us from Baphomet, the Prince of Beasts. You know how we would lose this? I do.

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But you will not meet him yet. Oh, we'll meet him later? Yes, soon. It will be soon. and he will guide you. But I first must tell you of the plan, the great plan of the eternal blossom. There's only one thing in the multiverse. that can stop the calamity and the destruction and the entropy that is threatening this land. This name. Thanks. This name, I know, will not be new to you. The Rod of Law.

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You know it, don't you? And you do know that Virgil Zurn himself was seeking it, do you not? I am happy to inform you, he has not found a single piece of the Seven, the Rod of the Seven Parts.

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You're welcome. And if there's one thing that can send Baphomet and his horned legion back to the Abyss, it is this artifact, the Rod of Seven Parts, reforged into the Rod of Law. It is... My life's work. It is why I have lived this long. And there's only one piece remaining. And only you will be able to retrieve it.

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Decades. Decades of our time here on the Material Plane. Once the Rod was destroyed, all seven pieces were scattered across the planes, hidden, guarded. And if it were not for the Eternal Blossom,

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For you see, the emissary of the Eternal Blossom, the servant of the Eternal Blossom, is a traveler of the planes, able to travel where he pleases. and has spent decades for her, the Eternal Blossom, to find the pieces and return them to me. For it was foretold that this day, this week would happen.

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very soon, but I must tell you, I will not call on him until you agree to your destiny and tell you where you must go. The emissary of the Eternal Blossom has traveled across all of the planes, some more treacherous than others, but There's one place he has found it, but is not able to go. Are you familiar with the planes beyond the material?

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Then you will know when I say the final piece of the rod. is in the place that you would expect least, the place where it should not be and could not be, the plane of chaos, of course, limbo.

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Every time he does, it is very dangerous. And death is always a possibility every time. It is one of the most treacherous and dangerous of all the planes. She continues to smile.

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the the plane of chaos limbo yes it is held in a place that cannot be traversed by fiends by celestials by dragons elementals aberrations only humanoids and of course being an agent of the divine a celestial cannot penetrate the great adamantine citadel of maladraxxus how does he do it

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Well, he's a Kirin, of course. What's a Kirin? I'm sorry, a what? It is one of the most beautiful divine creatures in existence.

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Celestial, did you think a mere mortal could travel the planes and collect all the pieces?

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You're going to send us right now. Yes. Once you all agree, I will call upon Hizaki. How long will you be there? As long as it takes. It should not be long. With your skill, I have sent many orcs to attempt to retrieve it, and none have returned.

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I saw in the blossoms, I saw that there was a great calamity, a great chaos, and not just the chaos beyond, not just the chaos of Baphomet and the Hoenn Legion, but beyond, far worse, and only one thing to stop it. What could be worse? The evil that lies, the entropy, the chaos that surrounds all of us right now, threatening to be released. How does the rod do that?

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It is an artifact of law and good. It banishes chaos.

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Once it is reforged, we will know what to do. The blossoms will tell me, I am assured.

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And he's, like, rattling around.

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Yes, of course. How does that work? It is a process that is very involved and difficult, but once we have retrieved the pieces, I am certain we will be able to do it.

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And Revali raises his not-good hand. How is Revali looking?

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There will be a way to save us all.

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We have some of the best blacksmiths in the world. within these walls.

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We will attempt to do so, but I am confident in our craftsmanship and our skill. Well? We are blessed by the eternal blossom. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and we agreed to help, so you've got my agreement to go to Limbaugh.

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I will call on him, and he will come to greet you after I leave.

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He's still, he's rough, but he's not, like, on the verge of death. He's just looking kind of tired and haggard, like he needs his gonk-zonk. And... And he's got bags under his eyes and he says, well...

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Is he invisible? I would say that possibly Felix and Iris and Herja would loosely know that he's a divine creature, an interplanar divine creature. Do we know if they're inherently good? Yeah, they serve the gods, the good gods. Good gods.

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And you see Dokkani mount her tiger again, and she whistles up to the sky, and she raises her metal gauntlet, and you hear a screech as one of the gray hawks that is soaring above you circles around, and And begins to fly off. And with that, apologies, I can't do animal noises.

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I would love to go to Limbo. I should warn you it will be very treacherous. There is a very high chance of death and destruction on your part. However, I believe that you will be victorious. I have not seen one way or the other in the blossoms.

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But within Maladaxus, the Adamantine Citadel, is Shivatu the Awakened, a Githzerai who has taken the peace and is using it to bind an army of Sladi to his will.

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Sladi, horrific beings of pure chaos.

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No, you will have to kill him.

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What was that? Yes, Shivatu the Awakened. Shivatu the Awakened.

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Yeah, let's do this. Let's do the plan. I'm excited about the plan. That is so good to hear. I'm glad that the sleep did you well and purged all of the doubt that you may have had. But it is your destiny.

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I believe that she is not very well suited for that. You will not be able to ride her there.

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Okay. She nods and understands and says, let's see you soon. And she pops out.

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She gives a... She gives a moo, and she wouldn't have been able to get here with the tunnel and all of that, but that's fine. Okay. Yeah, you said goodbye, and she's fine. Okay. And so Lotus looks at all of you and says, So are you all ready? Yes. Yeah. Ready and willing. Very well. Wait here and stare at the blossoms in the water. Do we have to? Yes. Okay. Okay. And she turns.

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And she turns and she sticks the glaive through and pushes the branches aside and ducks. And you all look. As a light breeze whips through and the leaves, the blossoms fall onto the water. And right as the sun rises above the tallest peak that surrounds you, a ray of sunlight hits the water and the blossoms begin to swirl around. And they rise into the air as the water drips from them.

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And they swirl around and suddenly a burst of golden light. You're all nearly blinded as you have to shield your eyes. And as soon as the light dims enough for you to see, you see a huge, brilliant creature, floating above the water's edge by mere inches.

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You see what looks like a strange combination of deer and horse and dragon, as it looks at you with gold and green and red scales, two large antlers going back, but a singular, almost unicorn-like horn. you all hear in your minds telepathically a voice. It's so good to meet new friends. Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avantris podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session.

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If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier or higher to unlock Shroud Over Saltmarsh, a patron-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. You can find that at patreon.com slash legendsofavantris. If you want to chat about the episode with the Avantris community, join us on Discord at legendsofavantris.com slash discord.

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We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, so make sure you follow our socials at legendsofadventures.com slash social. And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5e supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

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And with that, it circles around and begins to fly away, and she looks at you and says, is this the only amount that you have?

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And with that, she guides you with a bark slumped over, the tiger not needing any kind of lead, just following behind Dokkane. As you make your way, you stop at a small farming village, and there is a family that gladly gives up a wagon that they have when they hear that Golden Lotus needs this wagon for the Eternal Blossom.

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And it looks like they were kind of packing it up and getting ready to get out. But then they start taking it off and just putting saddlebags onto their family yak. And you are all able to hitch up Peyton and all get in this wagon and move a little bit quicker.

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And she looks down at you, and you see that she has a very large nose ring, larger than all the others. Her tendrils on her chin are even longer than all of the others as well, with adorned in jewelry and rings. And she looks at you, not... gnashing or raving, no rage, but a stern, accusatory look.

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You know, Hersha, Sometimes words can cut deeper than a beast-plagued minotaur cleaving your hand off and slicing your face in half. And he just gets off of Peyton and gets in the back next to Felix.

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It is our way. We don't intend to get in your way.

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It takes you... I think it was just me. It takes you about two days travel. Oh. To, at your pace. Going considerably slower than a tiger's at full sprint, being in a wagon, but still moving along far faster than walking.

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You are no longer under arrest.

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Yes, there was a bunch of other knacks around, but the only thing from of your father's make was the axe. With that, it takes you about two days of travel. We enjoy a long rest. You enjoy a long rest. A small village allows you to stay at their house. once again, commandeered. It's for the good of the Golden Lotus. I'll play some songs for them. Yeah, and they enjoy it. They feed you.

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It's a warm meal. It's not much, but it is... It's good to get at least a home-cooked meal. It's not your rations. And you are eventually able to make your way, winding, and you see the great mountains to the north and to the east running down in its...

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in the cruck of, what do you call that, like the intersection of these mountain ranges, you see a great city built into the mountains, another wall as you make your way through that first massive wall going into the inner kingdom and you see it looming before you. A massive city built on large peaks of rock with huge ravines and chasms in between connected by huge bridges.

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Great shingled roofs glittering with gold and beautiful trees growing out of these tall, towering mountains and peaks. The very, very top of these, lightly snow capped, but it's not, it does get chillier, but not unbearably so. As you eventually see Mogra Kai in all of its glory directly in front of you.

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The wall's not even close to as large as Zentra's and not nearly as defended, but still a great number of warriors manning it. Some machines of war as well. And all above you see the hawks soaring above and the massive gate opens up

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for you as one of the many roads that you've shared with evacuees and refugees making their way, and you see that there were a great number of farmers, villagers that had been fleeing the Outer Kingdom. Many villages were overloaded, but relatively hospitable to each other and welcoming each other.

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That same kind of very peaceful, reserved nature that you're seeing from a lot of these orcs, not what you were expecting. As you enter Mogra Kai, and I'll change the music a bit.

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You enter this city, and it almost feels as if you pass into... It's very large, but as soon as you approach, you get the scent of saffron.

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This is our land, and you don't look like you're from here. In fact, you look like you're from Corovacchia. We have Corovacchian agents, and I wouldn't expect... You don't look like I'm from Corovacchia.

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The wind runs cool, but not unpleasant, as you see that despite the looming death, destruction, utter horrible evil of Baphomet and the Horned Legion, there is a peace. and tranquility to all of the individuals around. And the city, the guardsmen and the soldiers there are very regimented, orderly. Every motion perfectly in lockstep with the other.

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You see great braziers in the middle of all of the squares of the city going off to various districts. You see a market, a trader's area. You see a great barracks and a military quarter with smoke rising from various buildings. And you see what looks almost like a large temple sitting at the center of these peaks connected by these massive bridges.

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And as you see that the trees rising up have these beautiful petals of pink and gold, and you see rivers running through and lakes filled with colorful fish and you see the hawks all around perched on every single building.

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They ruffle their feathers and look at you, a little bit larger than the hawks you're used to, but they're gray feathered and look at you with large black eyes as you make your way and you see the streets being patrolled by more of these saber-toothed white tigers. padding along, incredibly peaceful, mighty and stern, but completely in control of these beastmasters.

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And occasionally, you almost jump as you turn a corner and you see a massive, white-furred, horned yeti. and it just looks at you and continues on its way with two or rather four guards on either side of it, not even chained, as it just looks around and controls the city with these forks. These people are badass. And...

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and you see that there's a large rookery for all of the Hawks, and as you finally make your way towards this large, mighty structure that looks like a temple or a palace, you're led off to a bridge that is besides the palace, but is much smaller, but far more adorned in gold and glittering gems and jewels.

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Um, you see, uh, opals, lapis lazuli, sunstones, uh, uh, uh, zionite, sardonyx, and you see it glittering in this, uh, what looks like a, uh, a shrine of some kind. And as you're all approaching, uh, Dokani looks at you and says, um,

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She takes it as an offering and it brings good fortune and luck.

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it is our way i don't want a fan you must decide what you wish to part with what you wish to give the eternal blossom you know like gift giving guidelines like nothing more than twenty dollars kind of thing does she want a gift raft

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While you look through your bags, I will take him. And she reaches out and knees Baruk. Please let her know.

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And she looks at you and says, I will tell her of your request.

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She will know what to do. And with that, she... She reaches down and grabs him. And even though he is massive, she slings him over her shoulder and carries him in. And as you get closer, you see that she enters these beautiful jade adorned doors and covered in gold plates. And the smell of saffron hits you even stronger.

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as the door opens, and you see this faint glow inside of low, but beautiful and gilded. As the door closes, you see that Barok seems to be struggling a bit more. His eyes are a bit more red, and the doors close, and you are free to discuss.

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She kicks her tiger, and it takes two massive steps, and its mouth is about 12 inches from you as it lets out a low growl.

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I'm going to give her a bread maker.

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It's not much longer. It's not much longer until the doors open up, and you see that Dukani still has a bark over his shoulder. And Bark, rather than struggling, seems to be incredibly docile now, and he's kind of slumped over. Oh my god, they lobotomized him. And she steps forward and says, this is where we part ways.

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I will do what the Eternal Blossom asks of me. Goodbye. And she turns, and you see as she turns around that Baruk is slung over her shoulder. He seems to be... In better health, his color looks better, and there's a bit of smile to the corner of his mouth as he looks down, and he just kind of looks back at you, and all of the red that had been in his eyes is gone.

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And he kind of then slumps back over, and they turn the corner.

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My eyes. I would say make an intelligence check at disadvantage. That she used to freak me out with those metal prior overs. I feel you. Intelligence? Just straight up? Nine. Nine.

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We'll be right behind you. You... You open the doors and that smell of saffron is almost overwhelming and it's incredibly calming as you enter a... a small antechamber that leads further into a room that is beautifully gilded in gold with gemstones and rich jades in tiger's eyes.

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And as you turn the corner, you see that there is a large, shallow bowl in the center of the room, and it's filled with gold pieces, strange knickknacks, trinkets, statues with gem eyes and strange jewels as...

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You do that, and no one is in this chamber yet. It's a circular room, and there's a door at the back, and you see that there are sticks of incense burning all around, and you see that there are actually panels built into the walls, and behind it, actually, it's filled with water, and there are fish swimming around. And you can...

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You can see that it's very pleasant and calming in here, and Iris just drops, replaces the climber's kit, and it kind of rustles and slides down. So there's nobody in here, though? Not yet. Don't you want her to see you put it in there? Yeah, it's like a tip jar. You've got to make sure they see.

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I don't know, but let's kill it and sleep in it. You're uncovering a statue, and almost the fervor that you feel to get rid of the snow, you're shoving it off. It's falling thousands of feet down below as you stand on this precipice, completely bathed in the wind. Pazuzu. No! Pazuzu. Pazuzu. Pazuzu. Pazuzu. Suddenly, you realize you're standing at the top of the mountain.

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Not much longer does the door slowly open and you see, once again, the fragrant aroma gets even stronger as you see a humanoid figure standing Dressed in a beautiful gold and green and red robes, holding a large, what at first you think to be a staff, but beautiful adornment. It actually seemed to be a large glaive with a golden dragon's head at the top with a blade coming out. Pure gold. As...

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She, as you see, a tabaxi, holding it, smiling, white fur with black stripes of a white tiger variety. And she looks at all of you and smiles and says, I have never received pittance before. You're welcome. I thank you for your offering. Of course. To the eternal blossom.

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I like collecting many things. It's made of canvas as well, as you can see. It brings me great joy, as all things here in Mogra Kai bring such great joy. How about that, Felix? Now, provide your offering. She stepped down several steps. and smiles warmly at all of you.

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Her eyes widen, and she smiles as you place it down, and she steps forward. Each step of the way, the beautiful glaive tapping on the ground, and she smiles and says, I have... not seen a tiger's eye in a long time. We have serpent's eyes and tiger opals, but a tiger's eye is a beautiful thing to see. Thank you, Felix Ackerman.

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She places a finger to her lips and says, ooh, is this a game? No, no. One of the rings on my finger is what I'm going to make my offering. They've brought me great luck and journeyed with me for very far.

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I like this one. And she points to if there is a smaller pinky ring, the smallest of the pinky ring, whichever side, she would select that one. Excellent choice. The Ring of Uncertainty.

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And... You have a way with words, Toa. Thank you. Thank you for such a wonderful offering. Oh, you're very welcome. And unorthodox.

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Water is very purifying and delicious.

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I'll sometimes have stronger tea, yes. Yeah, you better go.

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She, she looks at you and then her eyes narrow. You look Horvathian.

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I don't put it on bread at church because... I have visited many ranches here of the common folk. It is very quaint and inspiring to see their hard work. I thank you for your ranch concoction.

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Search him. And immediately, the orcs hop off their mount and they walk over to you and you get pulled, Felix is pulled aside.

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We must discuss philosophy later.

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And they roughly start searching.

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Everyone in... Oh, really? Everyone in Gron tells me the truth, yes. It is our way. But I will appreciate it as a gift from an outsider.

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It is down the hallway outside. You just make a right from the antechamber. All right, thank you.

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I thank you all for your offerings. I'm taking this ring back.

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She's got small hands.

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Nine coins fall in and jingle beautifully. And she smiles and says, Thank you for your offerings and respecting our culture and our traditions. You are going to love it here. Things are perfect. It seems pretty nice.

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These aquariums are amazing.

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And you all remember that Revali had elected to stay outside because he was not being expected. And the DM also just remembered him. And so that was the case anyway. He wasn't going to go in, but I'm just explicitly saying that he is outside with Peyton. So he's watching Peyton. They're the body cop.

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And one reaches into your coat and finds the emblem that Zurn gave you. And the other reaches for your dagger.

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And so as you finish giving your offerings, she smiles at you and says, so you have come to save our kingdom and you have come to join Mogrukai and join us.

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Yes, I was told by the Eternal Blossom that you would come, that you would be the saviors of Gron, the saviors of Mogra Kai. Does the Eternal Blossom have six eyes? Six eyes? No, she is a goddess that is in the blossoms, it is in the air, in the cosmos, in life.

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You have come to ally with us instead of Korovakia, yes?

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But surely you must not serve... Virgil, sir?

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No. It is a holy place. I think that your minds will change once you experience more of Mogra Kai. Things are nice here. Things are good here. Life is happy.

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And once we save it, Grodd will be the only happy place in Striga. Well, I hope that's not the case.

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You have been in Striga. You have been in Erius. There is nothing but misery, sadness, strife, and chaos. Well, not anymore. There is still... strife and chaos. All of the actors that form a government in Eerios, do you think that their goals will align and be in harmony with each other?

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Pain is a natural part of life, but we do what we can here to minimize it, to bring us tranquility and joy.

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Through inner peace, reflection, and the golden, the eternal blossom. I will show you. You perhaps do not know you have been deceived by Virgil Zurn. It's possible.

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I can show you what the hawks see. Oh.

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I'll join her. And you all... The door behind her that she came out of, she gestures to and steps up, and she opens the door. As you go into a... a relatively darkened chamber. And once again, this is circular, and you see that there's the low glow of embers of incense burning, and a pool.

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And you see that on either side of this chamber are two trees, very small, growing up out of a patch of grass around what looks like a very small pool, small pond. built into this chamber, and you see that the pool is crystal clear. And she steps forward, and as she steps forward, she says, come, join me.

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Please keep your clothing on. This is not for swimming.

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We will not be getting in. We will be observing. will observe. Thank you. She taps the glaive onto the ground and immediately a light wind whips up and petals fall down from the trees. These beautiful blossoms of pink and gold and white as they drift down and they fall into the water and they begin to swirl around as the ripples expand and shift and shape and you see crystal clear

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what looks like a bird's-eye view of a massive horde of beastmen. The size of the army that had faced, that had sieged Zentra, is, despite having, you thought, had been mostly decimated, now is even larger than before.

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You see centaurs, minotaurs, goatmen, giants, hill giants, ogres, all shaggy with black fur and hair and horns growing out of every direction, jagged weapons, and you see just a swath of destruction, smoke rising up. behind them and you see at the direct center of this massive horde as far as this pool of you can see of bodies a massive looming creature far larger than even the giants a what

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has four colossal black horns spiraling out, a massive nose ring, snorting flames with a jagged glaive as the bullhead that you had seen just over the treeline, you now see the massive form of this Avatar of Baphomet. that every single stomp it makes shakes the earth and shakes the army, and they get disrupted, and they continue on their way, as it looks like death is descending upon Mograkai.

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And... the vision changes, and you see the path of destruction being carved through, the land trampled and ruined, farmland, as you see more bodies marching, but not a horde, regiments in Grond, Korovakian soldiers marching into Grond, following in and setting up perimeters, taking territory. behind the destruction, now that all of the defending forces have been pushed back to the inner kingdom.

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And as it reaches down, you actually manage to swap one of the hands away. And it seems as if he's going to resist, but then he looks up, and then they pull out the emblem from Cern and start backing away, and one holds it up. And... And you see that this lead female orc, she's definitely a good foot taller than all of the other ones you can see now. She looks at you and says, Korovakian spy, huh?

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And once again, it shifts again, and you see the great mountain front that you had crossed through, and you see the defending fortresses and the great mining towns now completely occupied by Corvaccia. You see orc bodies laying strewn across these towns and camps.

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You see new structures being erected already, mining operations already beginning, and it shifts once more, and you see that there are... that Mogra Kai is standing there, and despite all of the horror that's descending upon it. The hawk flies through, and you can see through its eyes, people at peace, smiling, happy, going about their business as if nothing bad will happen.

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And it shifts back again, and the water returns to crystal clear, and the petals shrink and fade, and it's a crystal clear pool once more. Do you see?

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You saw the Korovakians, despite... Us not invading when they were being attacked by the Horned Legion. They are taking the opportunity to gain ground. They will take the entire Outer Kingdom before long.

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Defend themselves. We will defend ourselves, but I am calm because you all are here. You are the saviors of Mogra Kai. You will stop this, Menace. I have seen it in the blossoms. You are the key. I was told this would happen. Did that happen in the... You saw us in this pool here? How were you told by the pool that all of those... Yes, I was told.

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But not from what the hawks can see in my reflections when the eternal blossom speaks to me. But do you wish to ally with a government, with a man who... despite a threat that threatens us all, still capitalizes and still attacks those who are only trying to defend themselves against the menace from the abyss.

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and she taps the glaive to the ground again, and several blossoms fall, and it swirls around, and you see, now it's in the sky, and it's facing forward, and it's a difficult thing to track, and then you see a dark, what looks like a dark cloud, but it's not a cloud, it's a flock, or a, not a murder, of ravens, as they are soaring over Korovakia. Conspiracy of ravens. Conspiracy of ravens.

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As you see all around you, as hawks begin to meet this flock and begin to tear apart the conspiracy of ravens that are attempting to fly into Grann Skye space. And... you see that despite the scene of blood and feathers being torn apart and flying all around, these ravens stand no chance against these gray goshawks, and they've been very clearly trained to kill ravens.

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As the spurt of blood and feathers fills the pool and then shimmers away, and it's clear once more, Do you think that Virgil Zurn would be sending so many ravens if he did not know what was going on?

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We must stop Baphomet and the Horned Legion. But we must, you must, convince the Warchief that you can be trusted before we continue with saving this world.

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No, Warchief Frosfey, Shen'goro Frosfey, chosen by the Eternal Blossom. It is why I came all the way to Striga. It is why I have brought the blessings of the Eternal Blossom to these orcs, helped them suppress and contain their savage nature. and all of the prosperity that has brought. What was the warchief's name again? Shingoro Frostfang.

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Shingoro... The Dancing Blade was able to unite all of the tribes of Grond, and he was chosen by the divine and granted a naturally long life, as have I. That's a sweet deal. It is. The Eternal Blossom is eternal, and her true chosen are as well.

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He has... He is a very peaceful and calm and reasonable individual. But... He does distrust Korovakia, and the only reason that you would not have been killed on sight is because I told him it was the Eternal Blossom's will. But despite him following my counsel, it must be you that make your case and disavow Virgil Zurn and ensure that you are loyal to us, loyal to saving the world.

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There has never been such a dire situation in my many decades.

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He is very wise and a very good warchief. He has been my dearest ally and friend for as long as I can remember. He was the one I saw first in the blossoms. I traveled thousands of miles across the sea to give the Dancing Blade everything they needed to make them happy and peaceful, to bring order, to bring law, to banish the chaos. That is what I am here to do.

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You may meet with him at sunset. Which is roughly? Which is roughly probably about three hours. Okay. We've got some time. All right, that's fine.

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If we are lucky, and the defenses of the outer wall do what they must, and the great sacrifice of the warriors there slow them down, it will be perhaps a week and a half, if we are fortunate. Ten days? Not a lot of time. Ten days, but...

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We all must do what we can, perhaps longer, if the great warrior sacrifice does even more, if the eternal blossom is willing to grant them strength in a glorious death in combat.

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We have the defenses that we need.

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Your help is needed beyond crafting, but far more dangerous

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You're welcome. And your friend, he seems downtrodden.

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Perhaps, perhaps he will find a rejuvenation of spirit and inner calm just by being here. And it is very nice. I will take you to your quarters now.

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She looks at it and she just smiles and says, I will do what I can.

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Make an insight check. It's like a big number for me. Fifteen. She seems to be genuine. And she says, But I must speak with the Warchief first to make sure that he is in the appropriate headspace to meet with you.

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I'm not going to do anything horrible to him first.

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Oh, actually, I forgot I'm proficient. 13. 13. You get the sense that for an orc, that this is an orc that has probably experienced the war between Corvacchia and Grand for longer than any living person, possibly, and has experienced all of the potential war crimes and all of that, and probably does not like anyone allied with that. And you would say you get that sense that you already want to...

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head in a jar. Let me go clockwork orange him for a moment. You don't get that sense. And she says, is there anything else before you see your quarters? I hope you like them. I'm ready. Yeah, let's go. Wonderful. Follow me. And she leads you through the town and everyone who passes her, you can see that they all bow very reverentially to Golden Lotus as soon as they see her.

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And she just smiles and nods. And you make your way through the city, and it's not too far. There's another smaller peak where you cross a bridge, and there's a beautiful garden that sprawls out with a lake and a number of smaller structures that also smells rich with saffron. This whole area does. And you see that there seems to be a little courtyard

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three separate dwellings that she provides you with keys to each of these three dwellings. There are two plush beds in each, and there is a full tea set, and there's food already there for you, a tray, and a small fire pit in the center of this courtyard with seating. I love pistachios. She looks at all of you and says, this is for our most esteemed guests. I hope they are to your liking.

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Whichever one of these three dwellings you would enjoy.

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So there's like two in each? Yeah, there's two in each with a little center courtyard area. And then on the, like a little triangulated configuration, there's like a little lake with trees on the side. It's beautiful. And it's actually looking over a vast expanse. And you see just past it, the mountains rising up to the north and to the east. And you see mist all the way through.

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It almost gets shrouded in mist when you go past it. maybe 50 feet, and it is absolutely gorgeous. And she nods at you and taps the glaive on the ground again and says, well, it is such a pleasure to meet the, do you need help with that? And she reaches forward and extends a claw and effortlessly cracks it open. Thank you.

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And after you say that, they kind of, I would say, make a group persuasion check at this point. Yeah, proficient. And Revali kind of pipes up and says, my name is Revali Freewing, and kind of leans back on Peyton. And we're here to save all of your lives.

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Go for some of the more open ones first. Enjoy and rest and feel rejuvenated and find inner peace and calm. Thank you.

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You may fish anything you would like. It is the most delicious catfish on the continent.

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Absolutely not. The fish are there for us to consume.

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Yes, that is the point of this fire pit.

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I will come fetch you before sunset. Excellent. And she turns and bows at all of you and leaves.

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And he... He looks around and he kind of continues to grimace and says, this place gives me a strange feeling.

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And I would like... Toke, you make that advantage, please.

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Everyone's ready for the conversation. Hey, Felix, why don't we all take a, why don't we enjoy these pistachios? Goddammit, and he's like struggling.

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You're absolutely freezing as the wind is howling all around you. You are frigid. You're shaking. You realize now that you are thousands of feet up. Up on the top of the mountain. I just woke up upstairs. Up outside. Why did you go outside? They could be yetis. I felt called, Toa. There's a birdman statue with six eyes at the top. You look around and you realize... You're surrounded.

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Oh, thank you, thank you. So Revali steps forward and he leans against one of the trees by the pond and he picks up a little stone on it and he just chucks it and skips it along the pond. And he says, this is too perfect.

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Golden Lotus is the Tabaxi, the Eternal Blossom.

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And she stops for a moment and says, You were sent...

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And you see one of the orcs, it's another of the female ones, she's completely shaved head, and she steps and she whispers in the ear of this larger one who still has not dismounted. And you see immediately the orc looks around and says, Lower your weapons. These are the ones that Golden Lotus said would be coming. Although she only said that there would be six of you.

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It is weird. I... And they're orcs, too. She didn't, like... Grumsh, I've killed so many orcs, and they were savage. But they're the orcs not from Grand. Grumsh has corrupted all of them. I don't get it. What's Grumsh? Is their god and turned them all into bloodthirsty savages?

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And Revali raises his stump.

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You see that they all start to back off. The orc that had grabbed your medallion from Xurn hands it back to you, but the one that you had batted away from the dagger is standing there, and he's looking very upset. Are you serious?

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I kill it with mission. This is my property.

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Well, it was from your mother, who was a big wine person. So no. Get fucked.

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I do have 20 in, thanks for noticing. You take 10 minutes to do that, and you cast, and you get the sense that immediately around you, there's No magic that you can feel, but as soon as you get a ping of divination magic and you see a flapping of wings as a gray goshawk soars over and flies out of your range and it dissipates.

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And yeah, that would be the only magic that you, and how, what's the range on it? Sorry, I somehow closed my gate. It's not far, it's not far. Yeah, so you would get the Ping of Divination magic as the hawk flies over. And... Yeah, 30 feet. Yeah. Cool. And with that, the sun sinks

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beneath the mountains, and you see an array of golden and violet rays get fragmented in the mist, and it just washes all of Mogra Kai into this beautiful... It almost looks like a portrait, like a painting. As you can see, almost the entire city from the other side of your personal peak. And...

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You see despite, it doesn't feel like there is a horrific horde of beastmen crashing, as a massive wave crashing against this city in merely a week and a half. You do see that there are preparations being made on the walls of this city, and it seems as if there are, you see that there are preparations being made at each various bridge.

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They're Khorovakian agents.

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The massive ravines and spaces in between the peaks, a natural defense. and also being fortified, but done very regimentally, orderly. And...

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Once the sun is almost fully set, the sky is a rich purple plum, and you see a figure turn the corner around into the beautiful garden, the courtyard area, and you see the elegantly robed golden lotus holding her glaive, and she nods at you and taps the glaive to the ground and says, do you have a good rest? Yes, thank you. That was very pleasant. You look rejuvenated already.

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Revali heaves himself to his feet and he kind of looks around. He's still kind of hanging his head. There's still little deep bags under his eyes. And he's like, yeah, I'm feeling very tranquil. Thank you. And she just smiles to that and says, wonderful. Now you all seem very rested and ready to meet the Warchief. Are you all prepared? As ready as I'll ever be.

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He's far more amenable than he has been. I think that he just needed to calm his nerves and be sure that everything would be all right.

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And you all follow her as you make your way across the bridge to another courtyard of various buildings. You see, once again, the crafting quarter with the smoke billowing up, and you see the major palace with great statues of tigers, of yetis, and of hawks all around it.

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And you see a massive statue at the top of it, gilded in gold and in jade, and these brilliant orange and blue gems, as you see the figure of an orc, two long tendrils from his chin, wide, square-jawed, holding a massive spear in one hand and an axe in another. as you see that there are bodies on all sides of him. You see a human laid out on one side, an Aarakocra on another, and then an elf.

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Skinny, but a very narrow, almost gaunt face, all cast aside and dead, as you see this massive statue, what you can only presume to be Shingoro Frostfang. And... You make your way up many, many, many series of steps.

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It is almost exhausting to get up to the grandeur of this massive palace that looks like a great temple, almost, as the massive doors are already open, and you see rows and rows of temple and palace guards welcome you with a simple nod.

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and they all bow the second that Lotus steps within 10 feet of them, and immediately it's like a wave of bows, all at the exact same time, perfectly regimented, as you make your way through these glorious grand hallways massive pillars of red and gold and green as you see great paintings and murals all along the sides of very stylized exploits of

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of the Warchief, and you see him striking down enemies in Grondon, all side. You see Aarakocra. You see these strange-looking elves. You see humans, Korovakians, being slain. And you even see a... You even... And then as you turn, you see one picture that looks strange. And it seemed to be very stylized, but it seems a young boy that...

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has been attacked by the Warchief, and you see the white tiger pelt over his shoulder, the ghost steel armor elegantly adorned, and his spear stabbing into the chest, and his axe cleaving off the arm of a young boy. that seems to be surrounded by feathers, and behind him, the head of a raven, looking down menacingly.

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As you all see this ahead of you, and you see that there's another row of palace guards in a beautiful rug, and you turn the corner, and you continue to see all these great exploits on the sides of the walls, as you eventually see the massive throne room.

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of Warchief Shingoro Frostfang, as you see many great steps up, a mighty throne made of gold with two golden dragon heads on either side of the arms, and they almost seem to be spitting bursts of flame, but it seems to be perhaps a trick of the light, as

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you see that beyond the temple guards, there is also, perched on top of his thrones on either shoulder, a gray hawk, and directly at his feet is a massive white saber-toothed tiger on either side, peering at you with feline eyes, and then further down, not even in chains, are two huge yetis.

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And you see that as this orc who's standing directly above you, and he has his hand on a beautifully crafted sword, not very far from you, And he's looking at you and his head is kind of twitching around. We see a bit of, and Felix, you see this, that his eyes are starting to get like a little bit bloodshot and red as he's almost foaming at the mouth. Jeez. And...

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just looking at you, relaxing, but with the eyes, all six of these creatures look at you with the eyes of a predator discerning its potential prey, and you see on this throne a orc mightier and larger than any that you have seen yet. Skin, you've seen that kind of deep bluish-green skin that these have. This seems to be far darker, far bluer, and with tendrils going down all the way to his waist.

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Elegantly adorned in gems and jewels and rings, and you see that he is in a heavily gilded set of armor. No weapons that you can see, as He grips the sides of his throne and looks at you, and as you get closer, you see his tusks are both chipped, and his face, you can see wrinkles, and he seems to be, you can't really tell if he is ancient and old or youthful.

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and young, there's a strange look to him, as both his eyes seem to have a wisdom and an experience that you have not seen in any of these other orcs, and almost a weariness to it as he observes you, and Golden Lotus follows behind you as you all enter, and you hear, and he just seems to look at you, appraising you, and you get this look that is almost similar to the six beasts he has with him.

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A predator appraising his prey. And Lotus extends an arm. My warchief, these are the ones I told you that I saw in the blossoms that have been sent by the eternal blossom herself. They have come to disavow the Raven Queen, to disavow Zurn, to disavow Korovakia and pledge themselves to the safety of our city. And she steps to the side and she looks at all of you and, oh.

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You see the muscular, heavily armored Warchief with his youthful yet elderly face simultaneously staring down at you with discerning eyes.

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This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of Avantris and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night and a weekly Patreon exclusive campaign set on the high seas. Shroud over salt marsh.

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You can also go to thecrookedmoon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement, The Crooked Moon, a folk horror tome for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. And don't forget to snag all the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you.

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You, he looks back up at her and says, Dalkani, you know what happened to my family at the border.

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But if there is someone pulling the strings behind you, above you, it could spell our doom.

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You wish to help the people, but I have let you into my city. I have let you into my kingdom. Coming from a man who has worked every single moment of his life to gain more power, more land, more resources from my people, how can I trust you if you will not disavow him, if you will not show me respect in my own palace?

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I don't care. I'm going to kill them. And he immediately raises his weapon in a flash. The female orc has leapt off of the tiger and stabbed her spear in and blocked it as it is millimeters from you, Felix. She parries it, smashes his arm. You hear a loud snap as he yells in pain. Blood spurts everywhere as the bone snaps out of his skin.

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And with that, it looks like he's going to say something. And then Revali steps forward. You must be out of your God's damn mind if you think I am going to kneel before you, an orc above anyone. Bowing to any individual is why I'm missing my fucking hand, why I'm missing my fucking eye.

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And if you think I came all this fucking way to save you stupid ungrateful people and your stupid cult, how dare you? How dare you? And he's trembling, and immediately you hear a voice call out, now, now let's all be, let's take it easy. Let us all relax. And she steps forward and then taps the glaive on the ground. Let us all be, be calm. Let us find inner peace.

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You look, you look so pent up and frustrated. You look unwell. And you see Revali as he's... Gritting his teeth. And he is struggling. He calms down.

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I'm sorry. It's all right. Yes. Let us all think about this.

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Cheerio, sneaky bard. So you make a slight of handshake.

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15. Okay. You play, you pull out your violin, and you start playing a tune as... They all hear, your allies hear the effects, and you all feel more steeled, and you can feel the magic pull around you and may not be sure exactly what's happening. They only last around. Oh, got it. So just letting out a tune, but you're still continuing to play on your violin. And Lotus steps forward and says,

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My war chief, I understand everything that's happened, but perhaps there is another way. They have already come so far. How can they prove to you that they are trustworthy?

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She reaches out with the gauntlet and grabs him by the neck. And you hear him, You hear this orc sputter as his eyes are wide with his bestial rage, as this orc allegedly named Dokkani says, you would betray, or the orc says to this orc named Dokkani, you would betray our people for these outsiders. And she looks down at him and says, Baruk,

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I can see that. And with that, Revali steps forward, and he looks down at Toa, and he nods at you, and he looks up and gives you a sly look, very, very subtly and quickly. And he says, You're right, Toa. And he gets down on one knee.

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Mounting huge saber-toothed white tigers is a group of heavily armored orcs. You are all standing in a craggier part of these hills and steps as you look up and you are surrounded by eight massive beasts, white and black fur, huge fangs, slavering moth with razor sharp teeth and mounted on each, one with a large flag on her back.

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And he says, service to protect your people. That's not pledging ourselves to you. We're pledging ourselves to the people. And that I will do.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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I laugh I tremble in anger. And you see that he doesn't have any anger in him. And the disrespect you have shown me, I who have lived so long, I who have done so much, I who have, and then you hear a voice cut him off. Now, Warchief Sengoro, and she steps forward with her glaive in hand. Let us be calm. You are getting worked up. Is it not true?

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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And she throws him down and immediately other orcs pin him down, putting a foot on his head as he starts thrashing and they clamp manacles on him and throw him on the back of the tiger.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Is it not true that I have seen them in the blossoms? Do not trust me. I came all the way from Yulong. I have given you all of this. I have introduced you to the... Golden load, the eternal blossom. The eternal blossom has given you all of this. Would it not be the natural thing for great heroes, great heroes of legend, great servants of the gods to not wish to kneel before a mortal?

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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As what are we as mortals before the divine? The divine visited you. And she continues to approach him. And you can kind of see him as like he is breathing a little bit heavier and he starts to calm down a little bit.

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Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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You do that and you continue to play out and, and he, and, She gestures back. You understand that this one here has... And she points to gesture to Toa. He comes from a people of traditions just like us. He naturally kneels and respects you. The others have not... The Tabaxias myself. I stand tall. She serves a god. I serve a goddess. She walks out. Do not take that as a sign of disrespect.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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It was. She surely wants what's best for our people. Without them, they cannot. Without them, we are doomed. I have seen it in the blossoms. And you see him sit down.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Yeah, yeah, they went through it. They all failed, or... I don't think you get a sense of if they fail.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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As she passes through your zone of truth, you get the sense as if she steps forward and she fails the saving throw. And she continues to step forward. It is foretold that they must be the ones to stop the beast. The Horned Legion will destroy us all without them. They must find the final piece of our salvation. It is in the blossoms, my Warchief. We are in this together. It is your destiny.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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And they will bring about your destiny. And as she approaches him, she crosses the distance with the stairs. And he struggles and he's like, You're right.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

8659.272

Revali stands and looks around at all of you.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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And he nods as up at Lotus as she breathes out. See, now we can begin. Now we, now we can save this land. It is not lost any longer.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Escort them out of my throne room, please. Of course. Right away, my warchief. Whatever you say. Then she turns and she glides down the stairs and gestures you all out. Please come with me. And where were you heading?

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Back to the room. You make your way out. You make your way back to the room without incident. You get the occasional second glance from nothing but orcs as... that you see. But you are undisturbed. It's very heavily guarded. Guards are everywhere. And it seems as if there are even more yetis and tigers patrolling about than you had noticed previously. But you all exit the palace.

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Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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And as you're leaving, Golden Lotus looks at all of you and smiles. I think that went quite well.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Yeah, let's get to work. Well, you all must rest. You must go at dawn. Go where? To find our salvation. You will enter the Grove of the Eternal Blossom. Not even the Warchief has been there.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Because it is only those who are chosen by the divine to enter. And although he is the chosen of the eternal blossom, it is he, it is the eternal blossom that only has permitted myself to enter until the six of you came. And Nervali steps forward and says, I guess I'm not permitted Where they go beyond the grove is dangerous. You would not survive.

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Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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He looks down at his stump, and you feel his eye, and she steps forward and looks at him and says, You have been horribly injured, grievously injured. by the Horned Legion, and yet still you came. I see that your spirit is weak, but there is hope. There is a wild spirit within you. There's a tumultuousness.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Great. How much heals business do you do?

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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If you need me to heal you and want to join our healers at the healing pools, we can help you.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Let's go back. And she looks at all of you. Shall we return to your quarters, your dwellings? Yes, if you think that we should just rest until the morning. Yes, your meals will have been delivered by now. Excellent. I'm starving, great. Did you put in an order for extra rice? Because they always forget.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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She guides you through the city, and once again, everyone bows as she takes you all to your dwellings. Well, you all need your rest. Tomorrow is our destiny. Does it have to be at dawn? Can we sleep in a little bit? No. Caprice. It must be at dawn. All right. Unbelievable. I will come fetch you when you must awake. Thank you. You're welcome.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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I have not been able to help you.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Make an insight check.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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She seems to be telling the truth. She looks at you and says, I assure you.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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If it's centered on me? No.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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It's on a point, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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And it's also been, you know, it takes like 20 minutes to walk through the city. No worries. Probably about 30. And she smiles and says, I assure you, all will be well. All will be well.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Have a lovely night. We'll see you in the morning. Good night. Let serenity wash over you. And she turns and leaves.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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As you do that, could you make a perception check for me?

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Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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You all, there's a beautiful meal of whatever you would care to enjoy, and it seemed to be very well-made, hearty meal, it fills you with, it's warm. Sniff it, does it smell good? What was that? Sniff it, does it smell good? It smells delicious.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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It smells perfect. And it's some of the most fragrant and delicious food that you've experienced. Bacon cheese bread bowls for everybody.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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So before I eat, I want to go to the lodging where I would expect Iris to be. And she's there. Iris, they deliver these cheesy bread rolls out there.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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17. You notice that as he still looks at you, he's struggling, and as you put your paw on his wound, and it starts to just magically snap back and heal. and it closes up, and there's still a red patch there, but you see the pain in his eyes start to dissipate a little bit, and he seems confused, and he still looks at you with disdain, but he is speechless, as...

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Oh, yeah, Peyton's with Revali. She's taking a liking to him.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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She does exactly that. You feel a nuzzle of a slobbery muskox.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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What the hell just happened to her? She blinks out of existence.

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Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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He just looks down, but as you look down, you see the two tendrils on his chin, and they seem to be a bit shorter than all of the others. As Dokkani, the leader of these orcs, steps to the side after dismounting so swiftly and puts the spear on her back and says, I apologize for that.

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Why not? There must be magic that can do that, right?

Legends of Avantris

Beneath Dark Wings | Ep. 35 | Unnatural Law: Part 1

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Oh, right, so she goes back to Moradin's plane. You can recast the spell when you have time. So she goes back to whatever upper plane is Moradin, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Welcome to Legends of Aventress. Professor Azran immediately speaks up. Oh, oh, the church? Wonderful. Go grab the thing. Go grab the second MacGuffin. The greatest grudge of the dragons will also win. I walk into the room to get the skull. Anyway. Make an athletics check, please. All of us? Whoever's going to get the statue. Well, once I finish, I'll turn to Willow.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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How far over can I reveal this?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Is there a definitive end? Yeah.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Okay. Or it's not quite a wall. I don't know what it looks like. Hold on. It narrows for sure. So Willow would have gotten there well before, I guess, the rest of us, right?

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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It was Willow, Craw, Professor, whoever. Everyone was walking and talking, I will say, while this happens. You all arrive at this landing, at this cave, as it all looks incredibly dark as you peer inside. And as you get there, you smell the salt and the sea. is overpowered by this horrific stench. As the music stops. I shout stench.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Ah, blueberry. You owe me a health potion. It really is my ear.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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As Professor Azran holds, he pulls out a handkerchief and... What is that foul stench?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I'm surprised you're not nose-blind to all these things. Yes, I'm shocked you haven't noticed it before, Professor.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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It's not hard to vomit from this horrible stench. to be beaconing from this incredible, severe darkness that seems almost supernatural.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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What does that mean? Bullshit! Drah's going to start a book of grudges!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Taking off with a smelly dwarf!

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I just, I... Pen to paper. I start writing in the... Are we just in the mouth of a... You're at the very top of the mouth.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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As you look in, it is pitch black. Darker than you would expect it to be at this time of day. Almost as if by some supernatural means the stench from within is overpowering.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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My exceptional vision seems to be failing me right now. Wait, is this the magical darkness, then? To any of my comrades who would see... It seems quite supernatural.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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So even I am having trouble seeing through the dark. Gee, you are correct. Krah cannot see, and Krah never has trouble seeing.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Disperse it in any way Light it up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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We have any light Well, I was going to take light but doing character building everyone said Krah was stupid because he has night vision ha I don't want to point fingers, but it's definitely the smelly dwarf!

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Does... does Azran... Does Azran still have the torch? I can relight the torch if you want. But he doesn't... he lights it as he sticks it into the mouth. Of the cave. Not the cave of the mouth.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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The salmon cave? Literally, I can't help myself. I almost said it, too. The light around it seems to be totally swallowed. Do you see this?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I don't even... And tries to kill everyone. It's very similar. It's eerily similar, but that's neither here nor there, I guess, I suppose, at the moment. But I appreciate your forethought. Foreskin? Yes, I like your foreskin, Nikki.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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The darkness seems to swallow the torchlight. Oh, shit. Let me take a look at my spells.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I don't think I have shit, but... I need everyone passive perception, please.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Passive is fucking 9. Passive is... Shout it out. Passive perception. What was yours? 15.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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19. 19. It's the old reader, Ryder Rabbit over here.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Richard Ryder, Dick Ryder. Then, get this. As you all approach. Nova? You hear. Richard Ryder? A sound. The shuffling and scraping of, sounds like claw on stone.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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As a number of different, a number of different sounds seem to be approaching.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Multiple different. Fuck. But you're right. That is the new cave of the mouth. Multiple different... As Professor just drives off at his Ford... Ford Winston.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I need to go back and figure out what you said when you were like, he gets in his vehicle and drives off.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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He gets in his Ford Focus and drives away.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Give me the keys to the Jeep. You hear the scraping of claw and stone as if there's a number of different points of sound heading towards you.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legendsofavantress and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night and a weekly Patreon exclusive campaign set on the high seas, Shroud over Saltmarsh. You can also go to thecrookedmoon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement,

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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That's it. Like, are we sitting on... I'll say you're at a path that leads directly towards that, and you're looking in. Are you trying to understand elevation? Yeah. So you're basically on level with this.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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So does it sound like, and again, meta-knowledge out of character, does it sound like, to Reed, these creatures are climbing down the cliff face?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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It sounds like they're coming from the cave. Okay. Alright. Um, Professor, only one of us heard this, though?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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And only Vint has heard this.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Sorry, sorry, sorry. Only Vintis right now has heard it because of his passive perception. We haven't heard it. Professor, is it multiple different redundancy?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Multiple different things, Vintis. Isn't more than one different thing? You are all alerted. You are not... I didn't say the word different. You are not given... There's not a surprise round on you because Vin just noticed this.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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As you hear the scraping and chilling, as you hear... Now all of you hear... As you are able to finally listen and you see reptilian shapes appear from the darkness and drop down as the stench increases and one creature starts to just... You hear...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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as you see a flash of red from the magical darkness, and out of the darkness, still shrouded in this cave mouth, you see a horrible toad-looking abomination that looks wholly unnatural, and looks just as demonic as the insectoid creature that you saw. And everyone roll for initiative, and the stench nearly overwhelms all of you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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It needs to go first for everybody.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I think I wrote a natural 20 to fish. Wait, is it initiative?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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No, I would have said he looks like Aquaman. You guys can pledge yourselves. That's significantly longer than I thought it was. That's what she said. Holy fuck. Every night. I'm impressed. I got to give you the fist bump there, brother. I'm a pro or not a pro. Dang. Well, fuck!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I think we're rich, and I won't kink-shame you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I got a 17. I got a 15. 17 is Craw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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attend. Damn, you have not been rolling all initiative. But as long as initiative isn't that important, as long as you're rolling all your attacks, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Oh my god, is this F-Zero? Wait, this mutes it. You got it, dude. And if I can maintain concentration... Remember to hit the repeat button on the music.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Everybody loves this song. Every time it comes on, everybody's like, what is this? I love it. Are you freaking kidding me? Okay, as you see a number of humanoid-looking reptilian creatures with these large, pale eyes and dripping, slavering mouths looking at you, crawling along the walls. They look, they're not too far up.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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from the ground as they're crawling, as this massive, demonic, fiendish-looking toad stomps towards you, as the stench is nearly overpowering. Willow, you are up, but at the start of your turn, the stench is so powerful, I need to make a constitution saving throw.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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19, you pass it. You feel like you're going to be horrifically sick, but you manage to steel yourself against the stench. Is there no issue with obscurity at this point? They are crawling out of the magical darkness in this game. Okay, okay.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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This one and this one. Got it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Charisma troglodyte number one succeeds. Trollocluidite number two fails horrifically. And the Hezro also fails. So they're all, or those two are baned. Baned? The two in the back are baned. Do we need D4s to ban them? Yes. You want to put them on the two that are baned? I need a D4. The fire arises, brothers. It would be very painful. Okay, then turn them over. Say no! No!

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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So you see this glow in Shroudnum as they look like they're being held back by the blight of a ruined harvest. And with that, it is the creature's turn. That's what I said. No, that was me.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Oh, well, I'm sorry. I'm a bit slow. So are all your minis placed where you want them to be? Uh...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Everyone place their minis where they would be.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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That's fine. I would have been next to Bargrim, ready for the battle. This toad creature lumbers forward and then gets into an all-out sprint, massive clawed arms, lumber forward, heading directly towards Vintas and Bargrim. And with that... Which one? The big one? The big fucker. Fuck. He's going to get direct linear into both here. As he's going to loom toward you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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As he's going to lean in for a... Minus a d4. Minus a d4. Got it. Got it. And even with magic resistance, he's still... Okay. He is going to bite on Barg... Actually, can you move him to the left towards Westerface? Towards Willow? Apologies.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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He's still in range either way, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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And he's going to sink his sharp tooth-like teeth. Barg is being attacked.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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13 points of piercing damage as he sinks his... It hits with minus 4? Yep. It is very high. It's a 26 to hit. Minus 1, so he's dying. And then he's going to bring both of his claws to slice down on both of you. We'll see how he does. So we're gonna do, on Willow, minus the... 13 plus seven is 20, minus two is an 18. That hits. And so that is going to do... 11 points of slashing damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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And on Ventus... Oh, wow. That is horrible, he misses. As you manage to dodge out of the way. And that is its turn. Bargher, you're up. Make a con saving joke, please. That kind of stuff really fucks my concentration shit. You feel horribly sick and you're poisoned until your next turn.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I'm just saying it makes it harder to maintain concentration. Your turn.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Okay, so you feel like you're going to puke, and then you hold it back.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Oh, old friend, I knew you were resistant to poison. You've reminded me. What I will say is...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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I'm the Grudge against all fiends, and you're my mark! I'm going to use Channel Divinity to abjure enemy. It has to make a wisdom saving throw, and it's a fiend, so it has disadvantage on the saving throw. I don't even roll again because it's a natural one. Yeah, it fails. No one touch it! This one's mine! Clear the rest of them out! Its speed is zero, and it is frightened for a minute.

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Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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Until it takes damage. Okay! The clang of clang is so weird. echoes out, and this demon toad creature, its eyes go wide with horror as it looks at you, and it is petrified.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

1954.95

So, my question is, since I'm out of character next, I'm going next, would I understand that you're trying to tell me not to attack it? So I'm going to say, don't damage it in any way! He's held for now. You wouldn't have said that. I got what you were saying when you said your thing, but I'm saying, is Krah being a stupid... Motherfucker. Would he understand? I basically said, don't touch him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

1976.844

I would say that as a travel algorithm, you'd understand.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

1979.668

Okay. Then Krah will know. Krah will say, I won't protect my friends!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

1984.433

So move me over to the one, to the, just, for my movement, I'm gonna move to that guy over there in the far corner there, just to get up and escape.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

1998.571

So his speed is zero. And... Nine to hit. Okay, he fails. He lunges out with a bite, but he's unable to move.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2008.519

Wait, you feared the big guy? The big guy. So he basically told us all not to attack the big guy. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2014.565

Alright. Okay. Okay, so you run over to Tron the Dyke. That's climbing on the wall, getting ready to hit him with his claws. And you're up. Crawl. Speed zero. Ah, fuck. Uh, just con.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2024.634

Oh, you pass. That's pretty good. It's foul, but you pass, yeah. So I will, Kra will shout, Kra will protect Kra's friends! And I move up here. I use my bonus action to catch Dragon's Breath on myself. You do that. I shake the voodoo doll and touch my chest, and then I use my action to breathe acid damage in a 15-foot cone that direction.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2050.19

So I'm casting it at a level 3, so it's going to be 4d6 plus 4. And you have to make a deck saving throw, I think. Yep, deck saving throw for both of those guys.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2065.994

That's right, he was gonna pass and he doesn't pass.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2068.975

17 plus 4 is 21 points of damage. Both of the troglodytes, what kind of damage is this?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2074.897

Acid. You tap yourself and you channel the power of the ancient black dragon that you worship and you feel A-a-a sense of acid, and you see Craw breathe and bathe both of these reptilian creatures on the side of a wall in acid. They're unable to die, their eyes are wide, and they both immediately fall from the ground and get hit by the acid, twitching as they all die horribly from the acid.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2104.144

Okay. It is their turn. Both of them are heading directly towards you. Yeah, they're heading to Bargram. One of them is off the wall, and they both are going to attack you. And with that, the Troglodyte is going to do his multi-attack. One bite is going to be a horrible failure. The other one is going to be... One claw is going to be a horrible failure.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2126.651

The other one is going to be a horrible failure. Okay. Come on. This is my good die. Whoa. There we go. Nineteen. Okay. Claw. Okay. Another claw. Okay. Okay. Uh, you manage to just fend off both of these troglodytes as they're clawing and biting at you, and you see Bargrim with his greataxe, uh, not getting buffed. I have a battleaxe and a shield. A battleaxe and a shield, that's right.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2154.551

Okay, you're bashing off the shield and the battleaxe, and he's, he's defending. Con saving throw, please. Oh, well that's not good.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

216.226

That's right, so make sure he gets 40 oath gold and all that stuff. We don't want to be cheating the professor.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2168.922

Boss, as you're getting ready, the stench overwhelms you and you throw up a bit. You are poisoned until your next turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2174.567

But you may still take your turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2175.608

You can still take your turn. Oh, what poison?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2178.05

You're just disadvantaged on attack rolls. And you may take some damage over time or something.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2183.254

Uh, no, you're disadvantaged on attack rolls and deadly checks, that's it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2185.777

Okay. Yeah, until your next turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2196.184

That was 25 feet. Yeah, that's plenty. Well, yeah, I mean, that's throwing a line, so you're good there, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2210.634

Yeah, you do that. Because that won't be affected by disadvantage shit, right? Nope. They make it like a dex saving throw. They do.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2222.488

It's in a line or cone. One of them is going to succeed. If he's close enough, that's probably not in the fire, I would say. Because the cone starts like, yeah, it's like, and then it spreads out. It's a little yanky, but... In here it would have been different because it would have been one, two, three.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2241.749

Nine? Nine points of damage. Wait, plus anything or no? No. So you lean forward, you see a bright orange light emerge from his mouth. As he is alive, there's a jet of flame blast out. One managed to dodge. However, let's see. And then what are those numbers? Four and three. Four and three. So a three is going to two. as they both get sinned. One managed to dodge out of the way.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2272.606

However, the other one is looking rough as he gets the full brunt of this attack. He's looking rough. Anything else you're going to do, boss?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2285.363

Okay, G, you're up. Can you bonus attack the guy? Can I, am I the only one that can bonus attack? Uh, yeah, that's generally my favorite. Probably.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

229.335

Cry, you know that's not right, right? What? That's not right, man.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2296.35

Right, so when you use your dragon's breath, you forego your attacks, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2300.593

Uh, if I stand here, can I flame breath the two of them? What's the range on that? It's a 30. But I mean, can I just hit? Would they be in a cone together?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2316.247

You might risk hitting your teammates, but you can try. But if you can get back far enough, what's the range on that?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2321.489

It's 30 feet, but it's a width of 5 feet.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2324.33

You should be able to get back enough where you can probably get there. Yeah, and hit both of them. And right past Bargram. I would say that's fine.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2335.375

Okay. I flame up my fist and fire off my phoenix punch at him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2342.698

His one left leg talons, other left talon, they clack against the stone floor, and you see flame erupt around his clenched hand, and he punches forward, and a swirling phoenix erupts from it, arcing forward. And what do I got to do?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2359.263

Deck saving throw. Number three gets a 12. And then a 14 for number four.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2368.092

It's 14 to save. So I rolled 17 damage in total. So the one that got 14 takes half. The one that got 12 takes... Doesn't matter.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2377.704

You hear, Cray is... flame erupts, and both of them are unable to withstand as they both singe alive. Their eyes burst from the heat as they fall to the ground dead. God, dang. Okay. Make it constant. Dang.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2394.076

That would not have made it. Right, right, right. Bargain's not going to get his chance to 1v1 this bitch.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2402.368

Ten. Ten. You fail and you're pulling until your next turn, but it wouldn't have mattered. Vince got nobody else to attack. As you puke up a little bit, Vince is here. Kill him now. There's only one target left. Yeah. Prez is like, kill the demon, kill the demon, kill the demon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2422.265

Yeah, I know you wanted this one, but... No, I just didn't want it to move. You can't save all the fun for yourself.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2437.771

If he can't move a 9, it does not change his AC. His AC is 16.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2442.014

I vote we use one of our Twist of Fate. If it's okay with the rest of the party. For what?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2448.33

All right. Three rolls attack roll. Any other time we're gonna use it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2451.032

We have two choices to make. I mean, it's up to you guys. Use it. We haven't used it so far. We're 75% away from this thing.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

246.086

I hear him in a very offended... She blushes. I turn the color of my fire-bloomed tail.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2460.298

Use it. But no, but please tell me. I just said use it. We're all the freaking baddies. Use it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2468.18

One in 400. So you ignite your flame, this green, you ignite your blade in this green flame, and unfortunately, despite the gods of fate being in your favor, it does not, it just singes this massive, thick, natural demonic armor.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2486.916

And with that, Should I do a conceding throw? Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2492.38

Yeah, you pass. You overcome it. Willow, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2521.88

Radiant damage. As you say a prayer to Shantia and this radiating autumnal glow blasts out and lets out this as he almost throws up as the radiant light singes and splashes as he hisses back at you. He seems to be quite weak to it. With that, is that your turn?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2545.817

Nice. Okay. Fuck yeah. Jack them up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2561.847

Damn. It seems to do quite a bit. As he, as he hits it, and it looks like this horrible guttural croak, as the radiant damage sinches his flesh, and it bubbles and ruptures. And a monster's two is dead.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2591.96

She was maintaining integrity.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2599.325

There's the point. Because he's made a reaction anyway, so... Oh, yeah. So anyway, what does that do for your business? So it's broken. Is that frightened? No, that's not frightened. So he's no longer frightened as he is going to... He's gonna stand right there. He's gonna go in for a bite attack. It's gonna be a 19, but he's Bane still. 19 out of 15.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2619.6

It looks like he's gonna hit you with his horrible toad-like mouth. Minus 4?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2627.425

Man, just hold him back. Bane is so fucking good, dude. And he's gonna go in with his claw attack. That's gonna be a 21. Minus 1 is a 20. That'll hit you, Willow. Oh my god. Seven points of slashing damage, and he's going to slice around to you, Aventus. That is gonna be 17 plus 24 minus three. Nice. That'll hit regardless, buddy, you'll uncanny dodge this. 11 points of slash damage. Nice. Half.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2662.035

And that's a turn. Okay, with that, Borgren, con saving goes. Is 11 already halved?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2708.286

So you hack and you hack into this demon as he's looking rough. Move me up next to Ventus and Willow, please. Okay. You run up to be by your squishier allies and you're holding your great shield. Crawl your outcome saving throw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2729.656

Shit, not good. I don't think I pass. I will check, sorry, sorry, sorry. Con is gonna be plus two, so seven.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2738.578

I don't take damage though, correct? No, so you're poisoned, so it's a tackle and an ability check. So what's the second one? Ability checks. Okay, doesn't matter. So all I do is breathe in. I immediately turn from the two that I just killed. I breathe in and I breathe acid out, so it's gonna be a dex 15 saving throw on the big guy.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

275.68

I have two good friends. Just two. Yes, you do. Yes. Who are your two good friends?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2763.753

Oh, no, with Bane, yeah, it's a horrible fail with Bane. So you have to decide whether or not Voss is within 15. It's a 15 cone. I'd be aiming at this direction to not hit R3 to it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2778.042

Yeah, I would say it's barely that you dodge out of the way. Damn, I rolled almost max damage. That's pretty crazy. So 11 plus 4, 11 plus 8 is 19, plus 4 is 23. 23 points of damage. Damn. Acid.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2794.523

As you breathe in, and once again, you breathe in, acid coats this demon. He's looking very rough. You see that his horrible fiendish flesh is bubbling. He's looking horribly rough. Krah, the brave does not move. He stands fast. And with that, Boz, you're up. Count saving drop. How is he looking right now?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2819.956

23 points of damage wasn't enough. Wow. I'm shitting damage, too. I'm going to play a Sorcerer in Prime, too. You guys all heard it here first.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

285.471

It wouldn't be polite for Krat to say. They're not, Jesus. I hope that once this is all said and done, that we can be friends.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2867.81

Sorry. As you slice in, he rears back. He's holding on, barely. Not barely, but enough.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2888.527

Oh, the tushy tickler. Holy smokes.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2908.593

Okay? Yeah. So you slice into it, and as your first glaive attack slashes it, and its long tongue rolls out, you grab it, and you swing it around. It wraps around its neck, and you pull, and its eyes burst out of its skull as it pops, and this sickening crack as the neck snaps, as this demonic force, the life goes out, and the darkness fades from the cavern, the magical darkness. The stench,

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2939.033

Drops. Still smells foul, but it seems that all these four lizard creatures and this frog all had this horrible stench that they were exuding in life. Can we see? Is it still magical darkness?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2957

Is that a drop? Drops. I am using the last three of my sorcerer points to restore a third level spell slot. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2963.562

You channel your sorceress origin and you... You regain that magic power.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2969.464

I've just been doing it, I'm just letting you know.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

2970.705

You look in and you see as the magical darkness drops, you see the light from the remaining bits of sunset catch on rubies deep into the cave, remove all the rest of that. Wait, this direction? The whole thing? All of it. Get rid of it. You look ahead as you walk forward, the magical darkness dropping. You see a massive...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3024.699

And he pukes onto the ground again. What is this? I will explain. You all step in. I think I know. You probably do. As you look in, you see a large cavernous space that opens up and splits into two smaller sides. On one side to your right, the glint of light catches it. A beautiful, massive pile of... Coins. Gold. Silver. Platinum. Copper. Maybe even an Electrum piece.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

304.258

And Krah does have room for one more friend, and only one more friend.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3061.302

I'll immediately admit it was not what I thought it was. Okay. Wait, what did you say? Maybe even a what? A massive pile of coins. He made a joke. Electrum is a piece of currency that no one uses.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3073.995

Electrum doesn't use in any fanchers, so they're actually not Electrum.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3076.717

It's a joke. So ten coppers, one silver, ten silvers, one gold, one gold is ten platinum. Where does Electrum come into play? It's five. It's in between gold and silver. So I guess they added Electrum to try to make, like, making change.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3088.605

Electrum is a real thing, but it doesn't exist in Evantris.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3093.688

And so you see a massive pile of coins and strange trinkets, occasional weapons pointing out. But then your gaze is drawn towards the thing in the other side of this chamber. A massive statue.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3109.037

I'm going to move this in the wrong direction.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3111.338

Of this horrible black stone. Almost oily. And it's... Just to look at. As you see that it's carved into the effigy of a horrific looking beast. Sitting with its knees up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3131.938

As its knees are up, you see a creature that has a massive simian torso.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3137.38

Let's just see what happens.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3138.481

With two large heads that seem to be in the shape of mandrills.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3146.283

And each of their eyes is a glinting Red ruby. You see the creature with its knees, however, is not... Ape-like.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3157.689

It's a red gem, and its knees are pulled up, are not, however, ape-like or simian at all, but saurian, dinosaur-like, reptilian, scaling, with clawed toes. You see arms that seem to start with the shoulders, like apes, but then extend out and split into tentacles.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3181.935

I don't like this at all. No, this is not cool.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3183.436

And a tail that arcs up behind and splits into two, almost like two snaking snake tails. Does this look like a creature or like a statue?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3195.223

Okay. We shall see. Professor Azran looks in and his eyes go wide and he immediately starts stepping forward.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3223.165

We can see that... No, no, allow the Professor to go first.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3238.342

That's right. I'd also like to move up next. This will be a bargain.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3242.884

Actually move your pieces where they should be. Well, I'm going to hang back. You can do what you'd like, but I'm going to hang back.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3249.706

Hey, E.G. Mitchell, thanks for hanging out. I'd also like to note to the healer and the team that I'm quite rough, even though I didn't take any damage in that fight. been hit by.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

326.194

I think it was just an exciting time, you know? You broke Andy.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3260.451

You, as you take this time to investigate, you all enjoy a short rest. Oh, sweet. You can use your hit dice how you would. Do we show temporary hit points? They don't heal you. Short rests don't heal you. You can use your hit dice. A short rest allows you to.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3275.24

Alright, so here we go. DM, please. Master rules. Okay. Okay, so your hit die is a D8, so you have a certain amount of hit dice.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3289.55

I would recommend everyone just use all your hit dice.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3293.093

So here's the idea, right? At this point, if you need to heal, just use them.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3298.537

During a short rest, hit dice allow you to heal. You can use any number of them. Yes, you can use any number of them. On a long rest, you gain half of them rounded up back. So the idea is on a short rest, it's a way for you to heal if you don't have potions. Because you're taking the time to rest, steady yourself, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3317.993

And everybody's hit dice is going to be different based on your class or what your constitution modifier is. But if you need to heal at this point and you've never used any hit dice, you might as well...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3327.281

Top off. Do you cap hit dice?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

333.799

You broke him. Here are the three best friends anyone has ever had are charging through the arcane door as we speak and we move onward.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3342.417

I'm a little tankier. So you have 6 d8s to roll during this short rest to heal up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3347.702

So roll a d8, or two, or three, and for each one of those, add a compound. Because the idea is that you're going to regain half of them rounded up, or rounded down, each day. Rounded down. Half of them rounded down each day. So at this point, we've been adventuring all day. We're getting close to the night.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3366.859

If you want to metagame it, you know you're going to get a long rest soon, provided you survive. You might as well top off. They ain't going to do you any good when you're dead. Everyone should go into this fall. I would just like to point out that Krah has not taken a single point of damage today. Just wait and see. Not a single hit. That was my first hit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3390.667

Professor Azran walks up to this statue and he stands about 15 feet back as he flips over a blank page and he begins to sketch this thing.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3415.863

Well, while he does that, I ponder a lot.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3429.439

And when have we ever taken anything that Vaas has to say at face value?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3433.542

He was right about the fiends. Was he? We just encountered fiends.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3446.482

Well, I think he also knew they were in, like, towards the temple.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3451.703

He could not locate the direction.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3454.784

Specifically the direction, he can tell within a mile whether there is one. Okay, okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3476.867

While he's going for the money, I'd like to fly around the room and see if I can tell anything around the walls and the general room.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3484.853

You fly around and you see that there are small holes kind of pockmarked all around. The stone of this chamber is wet with sea spray and ocean. And what was that? I got a one. A one.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3499.765

So you roll around and you start to kind of dig through a little bit and you start to just see coins, handfuls of coins, and then you hear a loud roar booming out from behind you. Great. And you hear the flapping of wings beat. up behind you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3527.514

Cascos, do you think that's it? You hear a loud from outside of where you can see. As you see a shape, a shade that enters the cave. And... as it completely shades the entrance of this narrowing of the passage. And you see a glint of bronze as the final rays of sunset catch on the bronze scale as a huge bronze dragon enters the chamber.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

353.094

Yes, gee, best pal, you go first, my friend. Yes, excellent. All right, gee, let's do it. But while you go first, maybe you let the professor go first of all.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3573.43

And you look and you see it as the dragon enters and surveys.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3581.313

Greetings, Kassagos. My name is G. Firebloom. You're an extremely handsome dragon. Can I immediately cower behind Willow? Put me in front of the professor.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3594.028

These are my traveling companions. He's coming from this way. Oh, I apologize. Oh, well then I'm cowering the completely wrong direction.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3602.298

I'm cowering directly in front of the dragon. As you say that, it looks at you as it tilts its head. That has a strange lilt to it. Are you fucking kidding me? As you look as this massive... bronze dragon very clearly.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3626.496

As sprouting off the side where its head is looking at you, you see almost as very easy to see from the anatomy of a dragon where a head would normally come is a scarred Wound, as if the head was severed.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3641.464

We all see this. You all see this. Can I begin to scream? You may. No! No! No! No! Even for the horrible bronze dragons, this is not right!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

365.505

No, Warren. The reason we're being paid this oath gold is to protect the professor. No, but he knows so much. He's so intelligent. Would any of this pertain to a short rest?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3656.957

And I am fucking booking it. I am like...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3660.3

Good dragon, we've heard much, sir. We've heard about your wonderful great deeds. His head thing is very obvious. It's absurdly obvious. It looks at you. His eyes narrow all over you. It's like, the great deeds, yes!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3687.814

And it lets out a massive roar. And I give everyone a roll for initiative as it lunges towards you. Oh my god.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3695.95

And with that, the initiative is the worst. Natural 20.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3708.112

I boo for Rich. Boo. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm going to roll initiative for Tyler. He gets a four.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3725.323

15. 19 and 15. What do you got? Ooh, ooh. 10 and 15. 9. G got a nine. I got a nine. Vaz got a four. Yeah, four. Willow, what did you get? Apologies. Fifteen. Fifteen. G, Vaz, Vince, what did you get? Eight. Eight. Holy shit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3779.801

Yeah. Oh, fuck. God damn it. He goes first. After Bobroom. Oh, wait, who's over there? Oh, Bobroom.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

379.031

You've all enjoyed a short rest. Thank fucking god. That's making me waste my fucking spell slots on bullshit so I don't drown it down.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3790.799

Okay, Bargrim, as this dragon looks at you with a lilted head, seeing where its natural head would emerge is a horrible scarred wound. This other head looks at you with wild eyes after calling out that you would be a sacrifice to Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3815.818

Do you still think that it's just a battle wound? I mean, does Bargain honestly think that? Is it obvious that it had... Well, not now, obviously. He said he worships a demon, but obviously not now.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3827.26

Is it no longer the dragon's head? Is it a different head?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3830.461

Well, that's what we don't really know.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3836.042

Biologically, there would be a head coming out of this normal thing. Where there would normally have been a head is now just this horrible, scarred point if it would have been severed. And then out of the side is the bronze dragon head that you're looking at.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3850.955

So I will say what you're... So he's still got a head. You are dealing with imperfect information.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3854.981

But he's not headless. Correct. But he's got a head and he's got a spike coming out of his... No, it's just a little... The head is tilted.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3863.976

It's coming at an unnatural angle. The head is growing with this horrible scar where the natural head would look like it would be.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3870.622

He has this head growing out at a weird angle.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3901.102

Do we know if this is an ancient dragon? I would say you can make intelligent advantage. I'll wait till my turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3920.546

Casting is my bonus action to cast my Oath of Vengeance channel divinity with a vow of enmity, and I now have advantage on all attacks against him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

393.038

Azran opens the door as it slides open. And suddenly the breeze hits you. As if you've gone outdoors. And light shimmers through very faintly through the gloom. And as you open, you hear the roar of the sea. And you feel the cool air of the outside open. And Professor Azran looks up and he says, oh my. and the door opens, and you see that you are in a staircase. Don't need to open that quite yet.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3938.67

So I'm going to whip out... Oh, you gotta move one up to me.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3955.746

14 misses, a 29 does hit. Alright, alright. Yeah, five damage. Five damage. As one javelin clangs off the side of the other one, however it finds purpose, it pierces the scales and does not seem to do that much damage. As this massive beast looks at you and is unable to do anything with its reaction. With that, it's its turn. No, it's not its turn. It is... Pardon me.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

3994.454

As it's a later action turn, as it lets out the... Come, servants of Damagorin! And you hear a... As these two-headed snakes slither out of the small holes of the cavern. Oh no. And minions appear. Those are the holes I saw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4016.109

Those are the holes you saw. Oh, dear fucking god. And they slither out on the ground.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4030.615

The beast is upon me! The beast! As they all slither down to each of you, and we're just going to get a quick... Both of the bites are going to hit alt-attack all at once. And with that, I'm going... Where are my sea serpents here? We are going to get Willow first with a 13. Miss is on Willow.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4053.629

We are going to get a 14 on Crawl. That's a miss?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4055.712

Miss. We're going to get a 13 on G. No, miss. Bargrim.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4069.511

Okay, here we go. On boss, it does hit. As both of the heads clamp into you, dealing a good amount of damage as I attempt to figure out what the fuck I'm doing. Okay, here we go. That is gonna deal eight points of piercing damage. Constitution saving throw, please. 10 plus 13. 13, you manage to pass, you're gonna take half of this damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4097.584

Eight, 10, 13, half of 13, so you're gonna take six points of poison damage. As the venom seeps into you, you manage to resist a lot of it, but you do manage to resist it. And that is the lair action.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4110.908

And with that, it's cross turn. So I would like to do what you suggested, intelligence at advantage, to see if I know if this is an ancient legendary dragon. Just straight int, oh wow, I rolled an 18 and a 19, so my int is going to be a minus two, so 17.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4127.474

17, I would say with what you know about dragons, this dragon cannot hope to be amongst the ancient dragons that you know. It seems to be an adult.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4137.617

Okay, so with that knowledge, I'll say nothing. I will cast a mirror image upon myself. Got it. And that's my turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4144.565

So after gaining that information, and you also see, however, I'll give you this bit of information, that it seems to be moving a little bit slower. Crosses. With this check that seems to be moving a bit slower with not the same ferocity that whatever has been done to this creature has weakened it a bit. And then it crosses itself. You see multiple fucking craws appear in the same spaces now.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4172.995

Okay. Here's what I'll say. If it was, Crawl would have been screaming to run, run, run, run, run, right? So I don't feel the need, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4184.181

At this moment. It's not a...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4186.022

Hey guys, it's Chill. It's not instant death.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4196.186

It's not undead. But it's been corrupted by something. And it's not a fiend. It is a dragon. It is a dragon, but it's been corrupted by something. The king of demons, we can assume. The prince of demons. By Demogorgon, the prince of demons.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4223.174

That fails. It dies horribly. You hear the tolling of the bells of the harvest as it... as both heads, their eyes pop out and it falls to the ground. And you can please push those aside towards, yeah. Keep those all in that pile.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4256.322

And the Scarecrow holding the scythe slices both heads off the serpent and it slides down. I forgot I'm moving Professor Azran on layer action. And so he's like, oh, please protect me! And he's going to run towards the pile of gold moving 60 feet. That fucking shitter.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4273.72

Jesus. Fuck this guy. Into the gold.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4275.962

Yeah, he's gonna try to dive in.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4277.604

Dive in. He's gonna screw McDuff. He's gonna literally screw McDuff. This makes me change a lot of how I feel about a lot of things in Prime.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4291.741

And with that, he beats his wings. And he's going to use two lair actions. It would have done a lot of damage. He's doing a legendary action. Oh, what? Yep. Welcome to boss fights. As his wings beat, and he moves his full movement to be in between both of you. So one, two, so move. I can move myself and Willow. Let me just see how you move. Wing attack. Sorry.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4323.157

He can move half his movement, which is... Pardon me, I'm sorry about this. So he can move 40 feet.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4329.904

So he can move... Yeah, that's definitely... He gets hurt. He gets hurt.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4333.107

Yeah. So he's directly in between all of them. Half his 40. Half his 40. Yep. Holy fuck. And he flies towards you. Using two of his legendary actions, but now... He should have done that earlier, but I'm not great at running boss combat. With that, it's Jay's turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

434.268

You see that there, you step outside, and there's a large staircase. So we are physically outside. You step inside to what would have been a tower, but completely crumbled and ruined. And you get the sense that this may have been some sort of wizard arcane tower.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4347.941

These snakes are certainly no match for us. Bagram, you remember the old ghost arena shuffle? Oh, how could I forget? I'm going to fly up into the air and onto the dragon's back.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4361.677

You do that as you fly up with your wings effortless and you're fucking like 85 feet of movement and you land on the, with your talons, you try to land on the back of the dragon. Are you doing a dive bomb attack?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4374.443

Hell yeah, I'm doing a dive bomb. Are you taking notes? This is how we took down the green dragon back in the old ghost arena days.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4383.968

Out of character, I literally can't wait to get eaten in one bite.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4388.029

Skywarden attack! And I fly down with my Skywarden attack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4400.474

15 misses. Okay. As you bring your quarterstaff down, it misses and clangs off the natural armor of this dragon. Okay, well, okay, okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4408.437

I attack him again with a quarterstaff. 17.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4416.945

17, that will hit. Okay, cool.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4440.509

Nice. Eleven damage, and I would like to spend a ki point to attempt to stun this dragon. That's correct, you do that. It's going to use one of its legendary resistances. Oh for Christ's sake, fuck dragon. You bring death horn on its head as it uses one of its legendary three resistances.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4462.325

as you smash it and it looks like it's going to knock it out and stun it, but it channels this horrible bullshit power of boss fights and Dungeons & Dragons to knock it stunned. But it only has two left. That's value. There's value there.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4479.331

That was only my actions. You still have your bonus actions. Does that spend my ki point? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4487.874

Using legendary action is crazy valuable.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4492.056

We have a lot to talk about after this game. We have a lot to talk about.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4495.637

I will follow up with an unarmed strike then. Doesn't hit. Now I'll spend a ki point to do another unarmed strike.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4507.121

You're on his back, punching, punching.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4513.972

It uses its legendary action.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4516.174

How many ki points do you have?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4527.444

It doesn't hit me. That's fine. Also welcome to Mikey's eternal frustration. I'm using only my good die today. Mikey has boss blue balls. Constant boss blue balls. I act the agility of the wind. And I float like a leaf. Ez is going to turn and you have all strategically placed yourselves. I don't know what you mean, dragon. Ez is going to turn to be in the line of both Bargrim and Vaas. Ez is...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

453.824

But you look down at the cliffs, and there's rubble as half of a tower lay sitting upside down along the cliff of the sheath, directly beneath you. is the expanse of the ocean crashing up against the cliffs, and you look down at the stairway. Well, the stairs up have been completely destroyed.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4564.326

It breathes in, and you see the crackling of lightning around its jaw, and it opens its massive mouth. It literally goes, and a massive line of lightning. Does it kill the two guys that are standing there next to it?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4583.261

Yeah, it fries both of them. Yes, yep. I've already made that decision, so yeah, great. I bet. I'm great at boss combat. I fucking bet, Mike. Well, actually, the snake's also fucking done.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4594.545

God damn it! So, this is on fucking point tonight.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4600.808

Willow basically killed us. The two-headed snakes are immediately evaporated as both of you make dexterity saving throws. You fucking shits!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4621.79

But you're still going to take half of this. Which is fine.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4625.152

You're like one level shy of evasion. Really? I think seven is evasion.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4633.737

Evasion, you say? That's a lot of dice.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4639.039

Is Evasion complete, Dodge? So the idea is that, at least for rogues and probably monks, if you pass, you take no damage that happens. So dex saving throws are my favorite. As Vandross. 33, 39, 39, 40, 41, 51, 54 points of lightning damage halved.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4664.063

27. 27, and this massive line of lightning blasts out. You both take half that. You're able to dodge it, but it fries you. Vincent, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4690.145

17, that'll hit that snake. You fire the bow and it flies in, it pierces the snake, pins it to the ground. Seven damage? Plus sneak attack?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4699.367

It says, both heads lull and die. So time out. So from what I, well, it doesn't matter anyway, but the idea is that at least my understanding of rogues is that if there's another enemy to that rogue within five feet, you're good to go.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4714.311

Now, I don't know if arcane tricksters have something different, but the idea is that if you have an ally, so if the enemy of my enemy is within five feet, you still get sneak attack damage. But we can talk about that. Yes. It's death. So that's why you always look for teammates who are engaging the enemy you're fighting, because you get sneak attack damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4745.253

Or the Kraws. Kraw's name is Kraw!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4753.355

Oh, yeah, I am. You go run and sit next to all the Kraws. They're just shifting and moving. All four of them. As the dragon, uh, I don't even remember his name, Kalgos or whatever his name is. Kasagos. Kasagos. I can't remember my own fucking names. Thank you, G. Thank you, G. It's wings beat. I need the three of you to make a dexterity saving throw for me. Who's the three of you?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4779.322

G, Bargrim, and Willow. Is Mace within ten feet of me, would you say? Yes. Add three.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

478.826

There are stairs down leading toward the sea cliff, and you see a small path towards a small alcove in front of which are large number wrecked ships on huge rocks.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4796.65

Oh, that three's gonna be valuable. He's still pumped it up. 13.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4803.134

Might be okay. Venti. So both of you take 16 points of bludgeoning damage, and you're knocked prone. Who, me? And you are knocked off of the dragon as the wings knock you forward. You're both knocked prone as its wings blast you off, and it flies 40 feet towards you, Ventus.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4832.677

All three of you may reaction to... As a phone? Yep. Oh, I didn't know that.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4840.629

We're not? Really? I'm sure. Prone, you're still able to, like, you know, do crazy-ass shit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4851.561

I would think if Vandross was laying on the ground, he'd still be able to stab a motherfucker. Yeah, he would be able to... I mean, you're literally just, like, giving him... He knows, his arm is fucked, he knows exactly how to hit somebody, even if it's on the ground, you'd be able to... Yeah, alright, alright, I like the rationale, I like it, I just didn't know.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4866.667

Um... What's the... If I... Impatient Defense allows me to take the dodge action?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4871.509

Is that... That's not a reaction, huh? patient defense would be i don't know how patient defense works but basically dodge actually means that you everything against you is in disadvantage you're basically getting ready to dodge anything uh i got a uh i probably 16. 16 barely misses 17 is the ac which is very low for an adult dragon but still it's high gee what i'll show you that if you want to

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4897.981

I can Opportunity Tent. You can Opportunity Tent. The dragon is flying away from you towards the statue of Demogorgon. Even though I'm prone?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4903.807

Yes. Not to be that guy. Anzeroth is saying that all rolls prone are disadvantage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4910.653

He even cooked the pig. Got it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4913.216

Thank you, Anzeroth. I'm just saying.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4916.448

Well, I rolled an 18 and a 2. Yeah, you failed.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4918.67

So everybody misses. The dragon flies away as your prize. Thanks, Andrew. With that, it is Vaz's turn. Thank you, Anzereth. I apologize. Vaz, let it rip. Come on. All right. You're right. This is a man of tackles. I apologize.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4939.002

What is the Darius for? That's a spiritual weapon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4943.525

So you can stand in that because it is literally an ethereal thing. It takes half your movement to get up. Okay. So if you need to stand in the one, you can.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4957.576

Okay, I'm going to say 16. 16.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

4991.588

So it wouldn't be considered a fiend despite being corrupted. Despite being corrupted, it's still a dragon, but it is just a brawn dragon that happens to want to eat you. Got it. Alright, I'm going to... I'm going to do Incinerate Strike. Okay, you do that. Your glaive wraps around with a vine when you get ready to slice in.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

502.935

being thrashed about in the waves. In front of us, there's a tower that we just can't get to.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5023.951

I'm going to attack. Go for it, first one. AC 17. Just so this is easy. That's four.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5046.437

So I believe your blade is still wrapped with vine, and you're not able to hit it. And it is going to look at you and bring its tail down hard against you. Where is my d20 that I'm using this natural 20? Gotta give it up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5077.817

You have these deep shit. I rolled low. I rolled low.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

508.997

So you imagine in ancient times, there was a huge wizard's tower. Just imagine it. Perhaps an arcane tower to represent this. But it now lies in total ruin. And whatever may have failed of these protections, you get the sense that this may have been the... the arcane portion of this protection, has now laid in ruins. So we're kind of outside at this point? You're basically in a tower.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5088.649

16, 19, plus 24. Oh, that would put me at 14. At one health, literally 20, 24 points.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5096.033

Oh, welcome to the craw meme from last night.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5098.255

And the tail smashes down, hits you, you're not able to dodge, and the last of its legendary actions are used, and it smashes into you. He's got no more legendary actions? Correct. Until his next action is.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5110.863

What does that mean? Legendary resistances are different.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5128.454

You think of the lair as the field.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5184.492

Generally. Generally three. Right, you don't know. These are things you can only generalize.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5197.703

And I'm telling you right now, the master gets three legendary actions, one of the legendary resistances, one of those has been burned. Yes. Okay. With that, it's Bargain's turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5206.75

And even with all that information, you cannot trust anything he fucking says.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5211.032

I will run up, seeing that Vaz just got totally fucked and he's probably barely hanging on.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5284.966

Ten damage, as your axe slices in, dealing ten damage. You still smite it? I did, I did the damage, it's gone.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5300.819

Got it. With that is the lair action. Fuck. You see that Professor Azran and Scrooge McDuck need even further in the gold pile. And you hear a lot of rumbling of clouds as everything around you, the massive cloud, appears around this bronze dragon. I need all four of you in that general area to make a dex saving throw, please.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5328.059

I like dex. That one, yeah. No, no, no, don't fuck me. Don't you fuck me, Mike. Yep, dex. Thank god, 19.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5339.272

Pass, 18. Nine. Fail, pass. Oh, so only bargains.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5347.32

Seven points of thunder damage and you're deafened. As a loud, hey, boom, thunderous boom. Seven points of thunder damage, you can't hear shit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5355.408

I-I may be deaf, but I can still hear the sound of my own rage and hatred!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5360.411

Well, I can still feel my beard burn! Craw, Craw, you're up. Um, so, uh, with that, um, I am, I am... ...allusioned, I've got my, I've got my, uh, uh, sorry, what's it called? Yeah, Craw's mirror image, um, and, and, and Vint is in front of me, so I turn to Vint, I- Oh, however, I need to make a snake attack on you real quick. Okay. So the idea, here's what's gonna happen.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5384.11

Each time a creature targets you with an attack, I roll a d20 to determine whether the attack instead targets one of my duplicates. So I have to roll a six or higher. An 8. So it targets one of my duplicates and the duplicate's AC is 13. So it's less than my AC.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

539.626

You're in the ruins, completely exposed to the outside air. It would have been a tower going high up. So we're basically on a cliffside.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5402.79

Natural 20. And it destroys your duplicate.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5405.332

So the duplicate bursts, and that's it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5407.273

And you've managed to barely avoid both these two-headed snakes chomping in. And that's that.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5414.479

So with that, I turn to Master Vint and I say... Master Vent, this is no ancient, legendary dragon. We can do this, I wouldn't steer you wrong. I promise, I have your back. And I cast Haste on Master Vent.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5430.455

You do that, you feel his tiny hand touch you feel the haste as you hear music off in the distance, as you feel like this fast-paced jazz music plays in your mind, and you are ready to go.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5445.521

And I'm going to move six away, so I will take an attack of opportunity.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5467.127

Can I use a legendary action's will, or you're up?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5472.608

It's out. It's out. It's used all three.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5536.681

As you channel, all of you, or the three of you, feel the glowing warmth of... 12 hit points for you. Actually, the cool sensation of a pleasant autumnal night on a stroll... through the harvest fields. And you all enjoy some health, whatever the fuck that is, I don't know. And G, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

554.451

So I'm imagining like Shrine of Storms from WoW style. Yes, exactly.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5557.509

Oh, I'm emblazoned by the autumnal fires. I feel much better.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5568.286

I can't actually, can I move this over? I can't see. What can't you see? Are you blind? I can't see my freaking character.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5578.633

I apologize. I misunderstood. Stand up. And that kills half my movement, right? Yeah, you can stand me up. Sorry, my fault. My fault. I apologize.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

558.252

So we would, I guess, just looking around as myself, if I look up, do I see broken remnants of stairs or is it sheer cliff face?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5598.867

There's a lot of stuff we're learning.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5601.508

Our characters. Sylvie looks nothing like that, by the way. Not anymore.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5605.671

We're gonna get new Prime minis. I'm keeping that one. Well, you should definitely keep it. You're not gonna get a new... You don't even...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5621.981

I mean, to each their own. I mean, you have to like your mini, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5628.885

Would you ever just like... Just prime her and repaint her. Yes. Okay. She's my OG. That's the conversation for a minute, so I apologize. I apologize. Sorry. Sorry.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5643.664

Oh, I can still get up to him. Believe it or not, I'm already counting. Sounds like you're bragging. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5652.564

No, I'm not moving up to him. I moved where I wanted to be. No, no, you didn't. I'm saying you literally stood up and didn't move. I moved one square. I moved one square up into a line of attack on the dragon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5664.512

And I will cast Phoenix Punch. But if I were to punch you, like, 20 times, you would die.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5671.34

You see one talon clench and go to its hip, go to its hip, and the other talon clench and go to the other hip, and then all his body weight is his hands, so we'll the flame, and he punches out a Phoenix Flame. It merges, and he punches Phoenix Punch.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

569.016

So you look up and you see you're in this circular stairwell going up and going down. The stairs go up for about half a flight and then just break off as if, and then into ruined building and structure and bricks that are loosely stacked as it seems it would have connected to a tower going upwards. So, I mean, there's like no passage. There's no passage up. But there's passage down.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5691.979

Where is G from? Yulong. Oh, Yulong. Yeah. Yulong. We're from Yulong. We're proud murderers, and we don't even care.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5706.264

Oh, uh... I would absolutely devastate a crowd of two heads for about 30 seconds.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5710.665

That's a 9, and he's not going to use his... Okay, it takes 15 fire damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5716.927

I'm like, maybe an eye or maybe a tooth. Maybe a tooth.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5721.421

I then use the rest of my movement to fly up on him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5724.725

You hear as this phoenix emerges from his fist and singes the dragon. You are nothing compared to the sibilant beast. As he gets singed in the back and you fly up to him. That's your turn. It's his turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5741.122

What? I still have, like, way more. Oh, you do? Yeah. Because it's supposed to be one action, then I can second action attack, right? You know you can use the attack action.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5748.546

To do the unarmed strike, you have to use your action to take the attack off.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5763.256

But don't I get two attacks in my normal action? You forego them if you don't attack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5773.825

So I don't get a second attack and I can't bonus action attack if I cast a spell? Correct. Well, I will fly right back.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5781.973

What you should do is just fly up to him and attack him. I can't attack him. I just tried to attack him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5792.686

I apologize. I misunderstood. I'm saying instead of casting the spell, you could just fly at him and attack him if you wanted to. I would say it's fine. But it's up to you guys. I don't want to, you know, you're learning, right? So... But no, if you were casting a spell, I would not then approach into death range.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5814.121

But those are just my two thoughts, and that's it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5816.802

I'll cast a spell, and then... What are the other... You can do the health potion. You can do the health potion. I have two greater health pots.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5823.585

I thought we had regular. Oh, you have two regular.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5826.066

Apologies. Yeah, please let Nicky use these fucking things. They're fucking awesome. Yeah. Something goddamn helpful.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5837.515

He's already full. I'm full. Drink it anyway, you bitch. How do I find out what are like other... So go to actions.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5854.566

You can use Step of the Wind, but you don't really need that, and you can't do the Unarmed Strike. So really, you're... I'll chill. You can dodge, but, you know, you probably don't need it right now. I'll just hang tight. And turn. Save the message. Got it. I am going to read this message real quick.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5884.041

Okay, so I will... The dragon looks at you and it's going to use its horrific, frightful presence as a lilting head. And it lets out, it's like, Demogorgon will consume the world! And everyone needs to make a wisdom saving throw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5920.885

With my minus one, I tie. That's a pass.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5924.567

I pass as well. You ten. So Vaas is this massive dragon, rears up with his lilting head. It's where the original head was severed off. It looks at you, and you are horrified. That's horrible sight. You are now frightened for one minute. You can make the same throw at the end of each turn. And then it's going to make its attacks. At the end of each round? At the end of each of your turns.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

593.163

There's stairs that go down and you see a small narrow path along the cliff. leading towards an alcove. So that's the passage down? That's the passage down that seems to go down these stairs that are ancient, that are all, the sea spray all hits you, and the salt hits your nostrils, as you can tell that the sun is very close to setting.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5950.679

One bite and two claws is going to lean in for a bite against you, Bargum, because you are quite the tanky boy. Wow, tanky boy.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5986.209

The claw looks like it's going to slice in, and it...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5992.25

What's your guy's name? I'm going to turn to you, bitches. I'm getting 18 on the claw. Wait. Oh, shit. 18 on you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

5998.578

So he's going to slice in on you with your claw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6029.655

But I guess my question is why do you want to disengage from him? You can just turn around and attack him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6050.01

The blade erupts into this green flame and it slices the snake in half and both halves get incinerated in this green flame as you completely... My fucking man.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6058.918

No, I don't want to move back.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6059.979

I want to shoot him with the bow and arrow.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6068.087

No, no, no, I don't want to be up there.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6071.429

He didn't quite do the Vanjerson mini the justice I was hoping for, but that's okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6077.452

15 missives as you fire, and it plinks all the natural armor. With that, it's Vince's turn. Rather, if you do a legendary action, and he is going to... I thought it was another legendary action. No, it's his turn again. Oh, refreshes.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6097.283

That's how bosses are balanced. Get the fuck out of here. Action economy, Fred. See, we're learning. Now I'm learning how to fuck you with boss battles.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

61.904

So anyways, let's do it, lads. I'm already at the statue. I shout out from the statue and say, why are you guys coming? And you see this bird creature heaving this large statue. The rest of you are able to grab it and bring it into the center room. We place it in and... Let's see what happens. You place it in. And you... Bless you. It sinks in perfectly. And then as soon as both are... placed in.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6106.248

So let me ask you a question. How has this boss battle felt to you so far? Easy, medium, difficult. Medium? Really?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6114.195

Let me tell you about this time we fought a green dragon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6117.658

That was fucking hard. It's going in on you, Bargrim. And that's going to be a 23 to hit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6126.608

I'm just saying, get ready for your nipples to be twisted off your body. That's all I'm saying. Prepare for that kind of pain. All right. I'm just saying.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6133.998

Legendary actions going on every now and then. 21 points of bludgeoning damage. We have a lot.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6138.184

That's not kill shaming. That's what I live for. And max damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6140.908

It smashes into your tail. Vols, you're up. boss okay so he is frightened so we have to explain to him what that means so you're disadvantaged on and you cannot move towards the dragon but you already made a move so you can still attack yes you're just at disadvantage I'd like to move away

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6170.709

You won't be out of range, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6193.824

You can attack twice, back up, and chug a potion.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6200.591

You could. If you'd like to use the long bones, 100%. It'd be better for you to attack twice with your blade.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6208.979

We'll say you attack first twice. Roll two d20s, and we'll take the lowest. He still hits. He still hits. Roll damage. He's not very damaged.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6222.877

Jesus Christ. He's not very damaged? Who's he?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6230.46

I mean, I've been buffing everybody else. I hit him for max damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6233.721

Get your dick out of your hand and do something.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

626.706

Crocodiles? I've had a taste of that spell. It's rough. What? What? The haste spell?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6265.252

14. It managed to be revived, rip out, and it managed to rip out, and it succeeds. Okay. One more attack. Vote roll to your 20s. Did you give your damage? Yeah. I took it. Roll vote to your 20s again. Tyler? Hazard. Hazard.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6287.193

Fifteen, that's it. You're then able to back up. We'll say that's fine. You back up. And then, if you're doing a potion, you get to just unclog it and drop that out.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6297.48

So you're gonna... This is fucking awesome. I've been waiting for this for like four years. Three. Five. Five points of healing as you chug this little shitty potion. And, uh... No, it is a beautiful potion, you fuck. It's a beautiful potion.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6309.447

And so with that, it is... It's a beautiful potion. As the tail floss, smashes down towards you. Bargrim. Does he resolve fear? Roll the saving throw at the end of your turn. That is going to be a 15 to hit. Use a secondary legendary action to miss you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6332.185

Wisdom. Passes. So you are no longer frightened. Everyone is now immune from fear of cancer. Bargrim, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6369.085

And I will cast... Shield of faith on myself. You're playing and you're you're protected this day by clinging and then I will like to I think I'll stay moving one over towards Andy and Reed you do that right? One that way. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6389.884

Oh, oh the the people. Yes. Yes. No, I apologize

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

639.762

I lean in. Krah leans into Vind and says, There's more where that came from.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6397.327

Just one time. Yep, good. And then I will stand there and I will pump all 30 points of healing from Lay on Hands into myself. Okay, you place a hand. You feel protected and you feel the power, holy power of the plan of the Lord to heal you. And once again, Akatsugos is going to use his legendary action to hit you. And that is going to be a 23 to that. Barely. Tail attack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6432.165

Let's see if I can move that minimum, and I do, of course. Seven points of bludgeoning. Okay. Yep. Goddamn it. Okay, that's fine. With that is Monsters 1. As once again, he lives up to... Join me, servants of Daragorgon! And these snakes slither down on each of you. Just one on every single character. So, yep. And they're all going to make their tests.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6465.517

That is going to be a natural one on Bargram. We are going to get Horribly Miss on Ventus. We are going to get a natural 20 on G. Oh, okay. Uh, Bob, where are you, you little sneaky boy?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6481.814

That is gonna be... Out of character bargain, how much health do you have?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6489.578

Ten points of piercing damage. Con saving throw. Forty points.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6492.939

Con saving throw. Six. You fail, you take 15 points of poison damage. In addition to the 10 I just took? Yep. Jesus. As the fangs sink into you, we're going to... Ba is going to miss on Willow. Brent, get a, uh, natural, oh wait, no, you gotta roll a natural 20, I have saved up on you again.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

650.711

Wait, Miss Willow, wait! And Krah follows.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6522.296

Holy fuck, so if I get, alright, hold up, so.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6526.638

No, now it's eight, now it's eight. I have to get an eight or higher. Yeah. So it targets one of my... So I am now down to one mirror image.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

653.534

So Professor Asher's like, And he's trying to sketch and he says, what has been lost? As he's not even looking where he's going, he stumbles on all those trips as he's looking down at the cliff, the ruined former tower, alongside these cliffs emerging out of the sea.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6536.744

One mirror image. And then on Vaas, that's going to horribly miss. That has hit me fucking twice. From two crits. That is going to miss on everybody. And with that, it is cross turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6548.233

So knowing what I know, and I am going to... Yell, Bargrin, get down! And Krah begins to shake because he can't contain the energy, and he launches a fireball at the dragon. Hitting about here. I would say that you'd be able to hit far enough away that it would only hit him. I'm trying to get number three, too.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6573.545

Okay. So, dex saving throw from the dragon and the number three.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6580.93

Dex saving through on the dragon is going to be 20.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6583.733

Number three is incinerated immediately. It's going to be 9, 10. So that's going to be 25 points of damage. 27 points of damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6590.959

27, which is 13 points of damage. A fire damage, which it takes in full. No way. Yep.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6601.024

He is a bronze dragon, which you know is lightning of variety. So he takes all damage but lightning at full. As the fireball erupts, incinerating the two-headed snake and blasting it. Despite Cassigo's managing to avoid a lot of it, it's still taking considerable amount of damage. And with that, it is Willow's turn.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6645.67

And then as my bonus action, I'm going to whack it with my spiritual weapon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6682.426

And then with Bless... The Scarecrow's slicing them on the side to take the full damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6715.421

All right. Well, I hit this motherfucking snake. It's a goddamn face.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

672.969

almost like a monument to the loss of all the great arcane knowledge that these Dragonborn may have had, as he just looks completely forlorn, sketching in his book, as he follows you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6721.425

Well, I'm going to do this first. All right. I'm going to throw the D4 in the house. Come on. All right. Six plus something.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6729.55

Eight, 12, 14. Missed 17 is the ace. No, no, no. I'm a little guy. I'm a little snake. Oh, you're a little guy? A little snake. Yeah. You smash. You crack it and... And it does die. So minions, if you've learned by now, they have one hit. So as long as you hit, they die. Make sure we keep it all in the same space. Okay. In the same pile as, yeah. All right.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6752.907

I fly up to the dragon right next to the partner.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6778.22

That'll happen, that'll happen. 21, get fucked, 29.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6787.152

Okay, I'm just saying, that's a 29.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6789.355

Well, there's a D6. Unarmed, yeah. Two plus... You flew in a straight line, so add a D6 to that. Five, okay. plus three, eight, two plus five, seven, plus three, 10. And I'd like to attempt to stun him. You do that. You attempt to do that.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6818.011

And so he uses secondary legendary resistance.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6820.712

No, that's good, that's good, that's worth it. That's worth it, that's worth it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6823.954

It looks like you're gonna once again stun him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6825.875

You're burning that shit, right? You're burning it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6828.357

To pull it back itself together. With that, it's its turn. And it is going to see if it can retarget its breath.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

684.518

I'd like to briefly fly up, if I can, to see if I can discern any evidence of what caused the devastation, like scorch marks from lightning, claws from a dragon, any evidence of anything beyond just ruin.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6869.017

It does not. It is part of the shield, and he gets a cut.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6878.543

Once again, save Silverbeard.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6880.884

Green flame blade the snake. Number four? You do that.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6889.897

You hit it, and as you're, you're supposed to slice this sea snake in half, and your green flame incinerates both halves, and it is killed.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6909.684

You get sink attack damage, plus screen blade flame blade damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6918.844

Yeah, let's see. 1d something. Probably 1d10. It's 2d3. It should, but... 1d8, maybe? Yeah, 1d8. Oh, okay. My guess was 10. That's how little I use it on Mandras.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6943.399

Just roll them all at the same time. Let it rip, baby. Good roll.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6960.229

As you are stabbed in deep intruders, Dragolaterra roars as the flames singe and scale. It is looking bloodied at this point. With that, it is going to swing its tail down and smash on Juventus.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6977.264

You have plus two AC. And he does a minus 14.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6979.145

Nice roll. It dodged out of the way. That was bonus.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6985.07

That was somehow bonus for something, wasn't it? For attacking rolls?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6993.275

Oh, I did, I did, I did. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

6995.637

It's going to be 15. 15 hits. You slice it in half. and it collapses to the ground. Can we move it to the same pile? Who wants to read you guys? Vaz, you're up. You have one more attack. Why don't we put them in the same pile? They come back. The lair action is to say, hey, I summon all these snakes. We reuse them.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

700.811

Yeah, so you fly up. Why don't you make a perception check and an investigation check for me? I'll say because you have a bird's eye view advantage on both of them. Professor Azran is immediately behind both of the small folk as he immediately goes, oh, don't leave me behind, as he's looking longingly down as the stairs go down further. And further, and further.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7018.007

There's also a really great clip of Salt Bay Zombies on our channel.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7034.653

Look it up. Switch weapons, I think. Depends. You can drop your glaive and pull out a longbow. But you need to drop it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7045.939

I would say you're pretty sure that that's correct. So you drop your glaive onto the ground and you pull out your longbow and fire. Just next round you have to pick it up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7058.605

Which takes, yeah, it takes time to do so.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7061.766

It would be a free, so you would have to drop your long, so dropping is free, and you get one free object interaction each turn. So you can drop your longbow and grab your wave again and run in. But then it would be back there, right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7071.355

Right. You just have to keep in mind that eventually at some point they catch up to you, right? Those actions catch up to you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7084.045

Yeah, chug. Yeah, knock. Yeah, go. Come on. Shake it up. And with that, the tail slams out again on you, Ventus. Ventus looking. Nice! 18 hits.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7092.089

That's a fucking full heal. Double force. I have 18 AC. You dodge.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7102.174

18 ties, which means beat it. So you smash it down. You almost beat it. But you are unfortunately able to dodge the tail. God. You're looking pretty rough. Uncanny dodge. Yes, you can take half here. 20 points of blood because you have 10 points to heal. Wow. It smashes down. You may as well dodge.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7155.776

Okay. Uh, and then I will take an action to down a, uh... A bonus action. A bonus action to... So you hack and hack as these dragons are... The Symbol and Beast, Amagorgon, Prince of Demons! We'll corrupt all of you and swallow the whole of the multiverse! As it seems, his lilting head is roaring out, echoing, and you try to hurt him. What's his one?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7186.866

I believe it's going to be... Death Lair action. It's going to do the last legendary action, too. On you, Barclay. That is going to be a 25. That does indeed hit. 13 points of blood. The tail smashes down on you. And with that, it is monsters one. And so, because last time he used his snake business, it is going to...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7220.323

A massive fog cloud erupts around everything that's heavily obscured in a 20-foot radius. Can we get our 20-foot radius around the dragon? And everyone in that is effectively blind. What about the creatures outside of it? Outside of it, it is heavily obscured, so you're going to be disadvantaged. You can't see into it. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

723.066

As he says that, and I'm following Willow, I look back over my shoulder at Professor, and I say, Yes, Professor, please be careful. We wouldn't want anything horrible to happen to you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7243.623

Okay. That's lairs and craw. You're up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7247.421

Seeing this happen, Krah would be extremely worried about Master Ventus and attempts to Chaos Bolt the dragon. How does it work? Well, I mean, it's just an attack roll. I made an attack roll, so it's a disadvantage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7261.828

Your blast is a massive target, so you know where he was.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7272.616

It misses. The chaos fires out and hits the wall of the cavern.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7280.24

Cross saves where he is. Okay, he does that. Willow, you're up. Fuck, that feels good.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7317.591

The cirgo slices in despite the fall cloud.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7334.394

I didn't know that. It was Squeenix. Yeah, it was Squeenix. Didn't know that.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7338.817

Excellent song. Speaking of Squeenix, this is also Squeenix.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7353.109

Is it like a ranger? That's going to be a 14.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7355.409

It comes out from me. Oh, he fails. Okay. So he's dead.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7362.631

Yep, yep, yep, yep. He fails horribly as the... As both heads get singed by the radiant light of Trantia and fall to the ground at G, you're up. Perfect time. A fog cloud is around you. Everything, you're blinded, but you know there's a massive dragon in front of you, but you're going to be as advanced on your tackles. Oh.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

739.289

I hope that we all make it down okay. And he's sketching. As you make your way down, and there's more light coming down from the bottom of the staircase. and there's a small arch about 70 feet tall.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7390.984

If it's spell attack, then yes.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7393.666

Right, if you have to make a normal attack roll on the spell, then yes, you're disadvantaged. That's what just happened.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7397.85

But if he has to make a DC, then no, it doesn't have any effect. Right, right. Okay. And if you have any air stuff, you might be able to, as a bonus action, you might be able to clear some of it, but I don't know if you have any bonus action here.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7408.879

Who cast this? Dragon. Dragon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7411.966

That's what I thought. It was the lair, actually.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7413.887

Just making sure it wasn't my boy, Master Vint, over here.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7417.968

Not this time. I've learned from my mistakes. Do I get the sense that it's similar to the obscurity that Vint used? Yes, it's identical. It's identical, okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7429.951

When the forest went against the goblins and the owlbears, then you didn't see chat. Yes, it's identical, yes. It is a fog cloud.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7436.473

I would like to use Gust of Air just right, just my gantrip.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7439.755

That is an action, by the way.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7440.956

That's when people attack. Oh. Which is, I mean, but that's a team player activity. There's nothing wrong with doing that. You just don't get to attack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7449.422

Or it only clears right, like it doesn't. It clears like five.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7452.164

But you know that the dragon will also be disadvantaged as well if you keep it. So, as a dungeon master, it's probably better. It's up to you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7462.025

It's up to you. Okay, okay. I'm just going to attack him, then. I'm just going to attack him with my core staff. So that's two d20s.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7470.809

Take a lower. And add a d4 as well. Oh, and add a d4 because you're blessed.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7475.071

Six, unfortunately. And then add a d4 to it. Seven.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7484.024

You've missed, unfortunately.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7485.465

Okay. What? Follow-up. Sorry. Go ahead if I can. Follow-up with second attack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7512.517

And bonus action. Punch him again. Oh, wait. Actually, I'd like to try and stun him one final time. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7520.891

I've learned all of my key points.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7527.113

I know that it's hard for you to understand as a first-time player what you've done, but you have done more for the team than probably anybody else. Because you smashed your head down on its skull, and it looks like it, and through the fall... It's hard to fathom because you don't understand. You haven't done this enough where you get what that means, right? He's low enough. It's important.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7547.098

It's important. Bonus one final action, a last attack against him. You do that? Oh no, I'm surprised. Disadvantage. Disadvantage. Nine plus three, twelve, twenty. Full damage. Which I think is six. Nice. Plus five, ten. Yeah, Mace has been shitting damage.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

755.254

What was that? 28 for the perception and 18 for the investigation check.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7591.132

This is Undertale. 13 to hit, yeah. Mace says, horribly, the bite hits you. It's going to claw both Ventus. 17? 18. Okay. And then once again, a Barber. A 4 and a 5. Okay, every nephew misses everything, so the Vincys are up.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

761.156

I would say you look and this seems, you see the scorch marks and the arcing pattern of where Layton had hit the base and you see the great slash marks of massive claws alongside this tower.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7617.92

That hits? Yeah. So roll all your shit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7633

So just roll all of it. I'll give you some d6s, brother. How many do you need? From one rogue to another here, motherfucker.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7648.532

And then you'll add whatever you add. Yeah, plus eight. Yep. All right, so add eight to that. Yeah, baby, come on. I allow it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7655.36

That's right, that's right, that's right. Feels good to roll lots of dice, though.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7668.482

For two attacks, that's good.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7675.523

With the green flame blade. You do that. As through the fog cloud, you raise up your sword, igniting it in this green flame. It dissolves the fog around you. You see clearly this lilting-headed bronze dragon and you leap forward and you slice into it as the flame singes its scales and flesh. You cleave harder and harder and harder and like in a fucking anime, you go, And you slice through.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7712.068

You all see Ventus as you all turn forward. You see a gray skin pulling all of his energy as a figure with these large dark eyes and gray skin.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7728.519

flashes for just a moment and then shifts back to human and the blade cuts cleanly through the head of this dragon and it lops to the ground it looks like this roar and collapses to the ground in this lair you have slayed a casagos and gotta give it up gotta give it up

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7750.151

Master Ventus, are you okay? Flip that motherfucker over. Yeah, he's dead.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7754.832

I love you very much. Thank you, Mayo.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7756.493

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7762.435

LOL. That's gonna be a wolf for me, dog. Too soon. Master Ventus, are you okay? That was amazing! I'm very okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7793.493

It's literally ancient. Yes, it is ancient. I know GG wise. I would say even like StarCraft, like earlier than StarCraft, maybe good game, well played.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7804.863

It's just like origin gameplay talk. GGWP.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

781.326

Ah, fly back down to the group, mate.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7812.093

So, Professor Azrayan peeks his head out of the pile. Is it dead? Yes. You! You! You are even less courageous than Grah!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7837.127

Did you know this was not right?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7849.477

A bronze dragon should be good and benevolent. I've heard that Cossackos was a good omen of sailors.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

785.828

It seems like a great battle was waged out here between the primal forces of the elements and what I can only assume is the great dragon Kassigos. That sounds correct. Thank you for fact-checking me. Scorch marks lie above us and gigantic talon claws bigger than my entire body cleaved the tower clean from its stone bearing. Do you think it was a black dragon that did this? It's hard to tell.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7857.426

did anyone else notice it it seemed to have the same neck lotus as those of god smith i walk up to where um uh vint severed its head and i inspect its separation we are not safe we are not safe crosses we are not safe Thirteen.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7882.128

Thirteen. You look and you see as if, despite... You have a negative investigation? ...Fintest having severed the head, it looks like, biologically, from this dragon, you see that it's very clear that its original head had been severed before you ever fought it. And that this new head, lulting out from the side... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7903.547

Completely different head, or... You can tell that his original head had been lopped off, and the head that you had fought was not the original head.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7913.653

No, no, no, no. Crosses, this is not right.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

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No, no, I turn towards Master Vint, and I'm kind of shouting at Willow. No, no, friends of Crow, we need to go.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7965.502

Krall will give everything he has to destroy this statue. We should certainly destroy this statue. It's foul fiendish abomination.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

7974.205

This is not something to know. We must bring it down quickly. And you see he'll announce a regret. His eyes are wide.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8000.231

You can, absolutely. Make a persuading check at advantage. How about that? His eyes kind of shrink back as the green hand slaps him. I apologize.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8035.07

I will pull out the warhammer that is on my back and put away my battleaxe, and I will just start to just wail away on it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8045.892

And I would also, safe distance, try to use acid splash, try to melt the stash and melt the stone, like wear it away.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8056.829

You do that. You bless him. Make several attack rolls.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8062.133

Mine is unfortunately a death 15 saving throw.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8067.197

So it's going to be 2d6 plus 4.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8070.659

What does everyone else do? You're guiding a program. 10 points of acid damage. As you crawl a channel in and you hear... As we hear faint music, as he... And acid sprays out of his hands, and it drops onto the... As I shake my fetish. As you smash in, and this strange fetish dances almost, as he's... So I made four attack rolls, three are over 20, one's like 17.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8115.879

I don't have many attacks that would impact, like, a giant statue. I'm just continuing to ponder over the dragon. Okay. Ponder over the dragon. Ventus, you're the last one we have.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8129.683

I would say that... Shasty motherfucker.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8132.544

...making the investigation check. Uh, yeah. At advantage. How about that? Mmm. Bingo. Almost. Big one.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8141.667

Yeah. Five, 24. Professor versus... Well done, Mrs. Perhaps we'll... And he pours... He's pouring heaps of V-coins into his briefcase. You have no idea how much they pour into it. Just wait, you guys. As they pour in the gold V-coins. I haven't trusted this professor. He closes the middle room here. And he grabs it. Well done. From the back of your ear. Even grow! Even you, Krah! Even you, Krah!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8175.655

As the acid blasts blood in Krah, Willow and Bargrim are focusing. You're chanting the power of Trantia, blasting both of these creatures. The acid singes, the oily black stone seems to wither, and you see a crack form. And then Bargrim, you... And your massive warhammer hits a crack. You hear a loud crack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8203.877

And then two massive rubies roll into the cave as the statue of Demogorgon, the prince of demons, is destroyed. Are these rubies magical in any way? No. Please. I agree.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8242.113

And I'll very carefully put gold into my pack. No, no, no. As much as you can. And if there's ever a reason to play these characters again, you will enjoy a magical item of your choice at the next adventure. That does not forebode well. and you pour gold and you get the occasional thing as you pour as much as you can into your pack.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8265.924

And to answer Shatner's question, his briefcase is a bag of holding as well.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

827.087

It's definitely a dragon of sorts, I think.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8271.467

Which you can insinuate, but we did not know. Well, he called it a briefcase of holding. He did. He did.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8277.491

Did you steal that idea from us?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8297.915

As he mentions it, as he walks, do you have any idea how many threads, and I'm like, I'm full Charlie. No one has any idea. Yeah. Some people have some idea. Wait, we're all leaving. You're all leaving. Master Ventus, now please wait for crime! And you see sketching as he's stepping back, looking at the statue. Rune...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8325.851

If he lags behind, I'll fucking pull him forward. So we're all moving as a unit.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8330.732

Would it be reasonable at this point to tie the Prince of Demons to the god Faustus in Gauntlet? Why?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8342.754

I'm curious. Because the wilted head of the dragon... But what does that mean to you?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8348.498

Are you just making leaps in logic?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8350.46

Well, no. The wilted head of the dragon had a scar, and he worshipped the demon, and the statue of the demon was in his lair, and everyone in Gonsmith had the same wilted head. I'm just asking.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8364.837

I'm not saying you're wrong.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8367.62

I'm asking you to prove it. You would imagine that their human minds would just perceive a god and the might of a dragon would recognize it for what it is.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8378.273

I'm not saying you're wrong. That's just why I'm asking if it's reasonable to connect the two. I would say that it is You'd have to be a fool to not see the connection between the lilted head of the dragon and the lilted head of the humans of Gonsmith. But, but, as far as Foltus goes, whether or not they believe it and whether or not, you have no way of knowing.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8398.754

All you know is that every single human, except for the children of Gonsmith, have had the same lilted head.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8406.334

Which, seeing that the dragon's had its head cut off and reattached, we would assume is what happened to them.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8412.057

Right. There's a connection. You don't know how you, you have no idea what kind of leap of logic would happen. All you know is that they had a similar head lilt to the dragon.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8432.248

He's not saying that reattached is the right answer. Okay. Exactly right.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8455.087

Azran, I think, draws us back to... Was it Azran?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8462.012

Oh. He brought stranger things to all of our normie friends. Stranger things.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8469.637

The demon prince Demogorgon should draw us back to, uh... Gonspip. Gonspip for further investigation of the townsfolk. We need to get out of here right away. Agreed, agreed. Christ does not want to stay any longer.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8487.839

So we, I assume we all quickly just leave, go back up the cliff.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

850.649

Oh, Krafft, it's not like what you're insinuating.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8509.847

and you all make your way back through the ruins, the marsh following the path of the Swarm of Bloom. I'll say that you camp. You have to take a full night's rest. You all enjoy a long rest in the marsh. You're not attacked by any trolls or snakes or sturges of any variety. You enjoy a long rest through the camps. You arrive the next morning at about 11 a.m. Back in the town.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

852.929

If we were to consider the murals we saw earlier with the war of the brass dragons and the black dragons... The bronze dragons. The bronze dragons and the black dragons, it lends to reason that the black dragons Uh, lead siege to this castle.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8567.349

I don't know where everyone plans to go after this, but Kra has several ideas. Kra is looking for things and might be able to suggest where we all go next.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8586.107

Where might that be, Drakidraz? Well, well, I'm glad you asked. Krah's glad you asked. I miss the swamps, and there are several swamps not far from here that Krah would like to revisit. While we're talking, I'd like to see if there's a soul villager near an alleyway I can grab and pull into the alleyway. We're going there. All right. All right. I abduct a villager into a dark alleyway.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8619.81

You look around and make a perception check for me. As you say that, Craw, as G looks around, Professor Azran shakes his head.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

873.117

I-I-I repeat myself in saying that Krod's not like what you're insinuating.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8736.636

Or he could choose to fail. He chooses to fail.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8740.359

Okay. Oh, Karaki, do you not trust the good professor? Something's been off about him since the center room when he saw the murals on the wall. Professor? Yes, Falls? Is there something you're hiding from us?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

878.521

Other way, let's follow Miss Willow, as you call her, down the- No, no, I think Master Ventus has something to say.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8799.689

Make a true dent in archeology and history and the event as a whole. And I plan on making an impact on this world in a way that no

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8820.01

His eyes widen and he smiles. Genuinely, not a lie is told.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8876.769

How long does Zone of Truth last? A long time, at least. Maybe ten minutes. While everyone is talking to the professor while he's in the Zone of Truth, I want to lean in towards Vint and try to persuade him. Do I still have a citizen in the alleyway, pinned against a wall?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8896.043

You look around. You're looking around, and you're not able to find any individual...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8906.444

I want to lean towards Vint. And just whisper and attempt to persuade. So if that requires a contest, I'm happy to do it.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8913.808

You are able to persuade as much as Reed believes you are persuasive.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8917.87

And all I want to say to him quietly, and it's only to Master Vint, Master Vint, now is the time to ask about the book.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

897.994

That is an excellent point, Vintas. Master Vint, I knew you were very, very, very smart.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8973.033

Years when... No, don't even look at him.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

8977.415

Don't even fucking look at him. It was reported that it was a doppelganger that had broken in.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9034.785

Master Vint, it sounds like he has told no lie.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9038.448

Does it affect everybody in the zone?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9040.45

Yeah, is the zone... Can somebody step into it? It's gigantic. If you choose to, yes.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9059.665

Perhaps we should make our way outside. And as you're looking around for an individual... Yeah, okay, good. You see the lilted head in the gate. Is it Obadiah? Yeah, it's freaking Obadiah. Father Wilbur Rangel. As he steps forward. This motherfucker. He's forward. Well done. You have survived. The ruins and the marshes. And you see individuals behind him. One, two, dozens.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

907.397

As I examine, it seems to be far more recent.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9098.351

behind him as they're all walking towards you. Dozens? Dozens. Jesus.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9118.976

Oh, that's fucking good! Sleight of Hand shot. Do it. Do that shit, man. 19. He does not notice what it comes from. What are you intending to do with us? I want to rip his shirt off.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9136.725

So the father's, what is that called?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9139.667

An invisible force stops him in his tracks, rips the collar, and as his robe is opened up, you see... Where a neck would be. Oh, fuck. A horrible scar. Oh, fuck! Is this hailed lilt? It's the demon!

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9164.869

Now I can... He looks at you. Almost, he continues to walk forward. I can trust all of you now will observe the one true way. I fought us, and you will join us.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9190.098

He's about... What's the range of the whole person? 60 feet. He's exactly 60 feet away from us. Okay. Damn. As you step forward and suddenly he rolls a 5 plus... He rolls an 8.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9210.359

You will join us. And you have seen too much. So you have seen the one true. As he steps forward. He is held. He was about to tell us we see the one true God.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9223.483

And then all of a sudden more and more individuals start to walk towards you. I saw something say. Join us. And they all grab their collar. And pull. And you see the scarred original neck wound of every single adult.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9248.816

And Professor Edmonds, you should get out of here, and she immediately bolts after you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9258.826

You do that, self-punishment, everyone is immediately... the number of one and around every corner.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9270.816

Join us. How many of them are there, roughly? Hundreds. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9275.92

Hundreds and hundreds of the Gonsmith natives all start to begin to walk toward you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9285.447

So, quick question. I'm just curious. The past without a trace, how does... I mean, like... We're standing in front of them.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9291.07

You are running. You can attempt to dodge out of sight behind an alley, but they are popping out of every alleyway more and more.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9328.222

We can't literally vanish in the middle of the street is my point. Correct.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9332.043

Correct. They have your spell. No, I'm not saying we're banished. You cast it, and so if you attempt to try to find someplace high, but every single area you turn... That's fine. As more and more, their lilt starts to increase, increase, and they start to then book into a run as they all show their wound. There is beauty in the madness of Demogorgon. The prince of demons, join us.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9364.835

Let's go, Dory. I turn to Reed's character and I say, Miss Willow is gone. You are my only concern now, Mr. Ventus. Master Ventus, I will protect you.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9382.062

Is the professor with us? Everyone is booking it out and you see numbers of individuals as they're appearing from every corner as you are all booking it through the town and they are all barely out of range as some of them are wearing hoods and they cast their hand.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9401.01

They glow with the same horrible dark magic that you've experienced, but you're just barely out of range as you are sprinting through. What are you guys doing?

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9409.854

uh i want to be flying with the party and then crash in the ground and disrupt the earth behind us and then like scorch forward like fly forward how does that work i i mean it uh it's it's mold earth and it becomes i mean i don't know are we on a are we in like a city street you might you are now in a town street heading back towards the salt marsh from where it's you game

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9434.649

If it's relatively narrow, the street just behind us becomes... Difficult terrain? Yeah, the ground becomes difficult terrain.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9444.059

You see G take off far faster than all of you. His bright red wings radiating as he flies behind you, and you see a swarm hundreds... of these lilted-headed individuals.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

945.477

Master Vintas is so very kind and gracious. I mean, not as kind as Miss Willow, but Master Vintas is brave and smart. Not as smart as Miss Willow, but still I love Master Vintas.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9458.994

From his point of view, he can see.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9460.034

From his point of view, you can see now Flora. Hundreds now booking into this gate as they are shambling towards you. Join us! Join us! The sibling beast, the prince of demons! There is beauty in the madness! Join us, the one true path! And they're all screaming this cacophony of screams. As you die-bomb down, you see these smash down. Your hand glows with this green energy. As soon as you hit...

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9484.574

The earth is fully disrupted as you then leap back up and continue to fly with the group.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9490.199

All I'm doing is running behind Master Vint. That's all I can do.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9494.643

I'd like to attempt to hide with that disruption. I would say all of you make a stealth trap with the whatchacallit. Oh, I think I already did.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9519.086

17, unfortunately, with a natural one. I got, look, 23. Willow.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9532.089

You are at least a good 60, 100 feet up ahead of us. They don't even see you as you are gone. You're long gone. as the group you manage to dodge up out of the way. The shadow enshrouds you. She gets more than 30 feet away from me.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9550.279

You all dodge as you feel as you run up. You feel something tug at your wrist. Two of us? Something tug at your wrist and pull you as you roll into the tall grass.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9568.391

And as all seven of you roll into the tall grass, you then see the shambling gate of hundreds of natives of Gotham Smith run past where all of you are as you realize that Professor Asmon is clutching your wrist, clamping a hand on your mouth. As all seven of you hide in the tall grass, and the thundering footsteps of the wilted gates of these individuals rush past you. Until quiet returns.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9602.595

You are all silent. And eventually... You make your way slowly through the marsh. It is a very long journey away from the town as you eventually make your way out of the salt marshes, away, leaving Gonsmith behind you and all of the lilted-headed residents forever having survived the shadow of our Gonsmith. And that is where we'll end the session.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

965.192

As you're all discussing this, Professor Azran is continuing jotting in his notebook. As you leave the arch at the bottom of this that leads to a long constructed path along the sea cliff, going down and down along the cliff. The spray of the sea hits you, the smell of the salt water in the air as the sun is setting on this gloomy day and you walk down and down towards the ship graveyard.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9676.018

Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avantris podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier or higher to unlock Shroud Over Saltmarsh, a patron-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. You can find that at patreon.com slash legendsofavantris.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9693.628

If you want to chat about the episode with the Avantris community, join us on Discord at legendsofavantris.com slash discord. We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, so make sure you follow our socials at legendsofadventures.com slash social.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

9708.72

And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5e supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

98.353

You see that the clam shell lights up with this bright blue light, almost swirls like the ebbing and flowing of the tide. And then the statue, its metal plating shimmers with this bright platinum light. And you hear a and you hear a stone turning of some kind from the door beyond. And Professor Adams is like,

Legends of Avantris

Shadow Over Gauntsmouth | New Player D&D 5e One-Shot: Part 3

994.851

A large cavernous cove, it seems. It seems to lay at the end of this path. And as you turn, we'll be able to remove this map business. Not that, not that quite yet. That business, yeah. Could you please just quickly boink. So where are we? Ship, and then a little bit more. And you find a small landing where the path leads right there. Yep, the path leads directly there.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10007.649

Mahone Capone asks, do you guys ever play online? The only online we play is we have a quarterly one-shot with patrons at the Dragon tier and higher. And so that is, I think, the only online games that we play. Yeah, we're mostly an in-person group.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1001.306

Yes, the biggest casino in Galtica at the present moment.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10035.171

Seven plus what, sorry?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10037.953

Oh no. That's a lot of, that's a lot of damage. Oh no, my friend Phil. I need you. Constitution saving throw you said? Yeah. Nine. You are poisoned for one hour.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1007.788

Oh, yeah, probably is. I'm just very, you know, insular. I only care about Galtica, you know what I mean? I don't care about the rest of Avantra. Okay, yeah, continue. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10178.834

I'm going to turn around and say, are you stabbing at me? Are you stabbing at me? I'm speaking to you, you should look at me. I'm doing math.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10197.165

And I'll say, well, I guess I owe you one, and I'll pull out a meat hook.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10204.988

And I'm going to attempt to meat hook him at disadvantage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10216.134

Oh! Disadvantage, I still get an 18. That hits. And because he's next to Knuckles, I get to roll sneak attack, which would be 1d6.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1022.97

Oh, oh, that's where, oh, I see, I'm back here. I have it all written down here. So Miss Lady says, and I had this delivered via AOL. She sent an A-Owl, you know what I mean?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10270.516

Surfing dog hell for Gino's deli.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10390.379

You guys suck, and you should feel bad. He's disadvantaged after he gets hit by Mars.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1047.509

Yeah, why? Do you think that would incriminate us in case anyone intercepted it? As not only planning a heist, but also as the culprits of the previous heist would then be successfully executed? No. Undetected?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1059.417

Yeah, we're probably fine. You're right. Anyways, Silver Linings Casino is right next to Goodberry Square. What else is in 10 days? I'm sure you all know. It's probably not just me because I have a sports gambling habit. Habit, not an addiction.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10628.852

He's giving me advantage on my first attack. That missed. It may still miss. That hits. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10655.54

Well, I mean, they didn't diversify their crew. They seemed to have a mastermind, a safe cracker. They didn't have any muscle. They didn't have any explosive expert. They didn't have a distracting mom. Actually, fun fact, www.distractingmoms.com is on my AOL browser. You know just how owls bring their documents? And I open it up and I'm like, man, owl, you're a pervert, Mr. Owl.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10705.971

No, no, actually, that wasn't part of the plan. We can kill.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10715.124

What inconsistent rules. I would have said, hey, let's not kill any employees of the casino. They're just doing their job. But a bunch of heisters that were not part of the plan, I feel like we can murder them either.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1075.769

It's the big game. right oh that fleen flow game you're talking about yeah the grand fleen flow championship yeah who's playing this year you can see if it says uh stock up for the big game because the genie owns the right then if anyone uses if anyone says it in their their advertising he'll sue you so who's playing in the big game this year Oh, well, it's a bunch of different teams.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10845.157

Well, at least Mary Mary, quite contrary, is better off.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10904.613

What's the spell list on a beholder? What's the what? Spell list on a beholder. Oh, it's a lot. Oh, no, no spells because they use psionics and those aren't spells, sorry.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10918.823

No, they have rays, they have death rays.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

10945.068

Should we tell your beholder friend to behold the line?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1101.177

It's a whole championship. It's kind of like the World Cup, but also the Super Bowl.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

11028.815

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they need to be in the vault to get the treasure out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

11034.561

Oh, and I'll try to clean up the olive juice.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

11040.046

But we don't have much time. It'll just smear everywhere.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1107.221

Oh, I got a guy on the inside. I got a favorite team. The odds are really low. But I stand to make a lot of money if they pull through. That's my betting strategy. Look what I've had the biggest payout and just bet on that. It works for me.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

11204.076

You know, it's on a document and you get to keep it. So you'll have two next time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

11210.589

Yeah, it's rollover PTO. Oh my gosh.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1129.239

It's very sound. That's what I do when I go to the track. Anyway.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1141.967

Anyway. So the whole point of this casino, on the night of the big game, the finale, the finals. So we'll see who's in the final match. And then that's when I'll make my real bet, you know. But I have my bracket all filled out. Uh... You guys want to join my regular flamethrower team?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1166.204

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1175.687

Because we're in a fantasy world, I don't know, there's magic all around us. It's very whimsical. Anyways.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1193.527

You know? Okay, so anyway, here it says, I don't know how anyone reads any of this. Who's handwriting? Oh, it's mine. Okay, so typically the casino, you have to, on an average night, you have a few hundred thousand gold pieces.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1215.653

Oh, yeah, that looks a lot clearer. I can finally read it. Okay, but for the championship, people from all over Vantress are coming in to our great city, bringing in and they're spending their money. They're placing bets. They're even taking bets via AOL this year, I've heard. And there could be half a million to one million gold pieces.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1240.04

One million gold pieces at this casino on that night in 10 days.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1246.074

All in the same place. Can you believe that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1251.899

Well, I mean, probably literally and figuratively. There probably are some crazy demons or some shit. Aliens or something. I don't know. That's what I mean. That's why I thought of everything and prepared it. Oh, and I've had the foresight to prepare everything we need. but we need to spend the time. Oh, so we need to get in. We need to get out. That could also be up to 5 million gold pieces.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1301.431

also if there are really demons involved in the security i don't think i want my children to help with this one they should probably i mean why don't they just help around at the shop i mean i don't want to pass up on free child labor that's true but i also don't want to endanger them if there is out of this world security so i think knuckles had a lot of really important questions that you have kind of avoided answering boss yeah

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1329.115

Oh, no, because the championship regularly inflows a million gold, you silly billies. So the tournament's going to be three to five million at least.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1340.687

Forget the fucking game. No, no, no. They're showing up at the casino and placing the bets.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1346.181

That's why there's so much money, yes. You know how there's a section for like, oh, I could have gone to the track of the game, but I'm going to go to the casino and just look at all the money.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1355.546

It's going to be in a vault. It's going to be in a vault. Yeah, there's always a vault at these places where they keep them. You know what I mean? And they got the towers.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1367.512

Yeah, no, I mean, that's about all I got here. That's what I've done. Is there a map? Is there a map? No, there's no map. It's very secretive. I've squeezed all of my sources. Even Jeremork. Maybe Jeremork. He didn't know shit.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1391.997

Oh yeah, how was that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1405.683

What? I do love piña coladas.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1411.326

Anyways, the main problem with three to five million gold pieces is that, you know how much one million gold pieces weigh? Take a guess.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1425.535

Ten tons. I don't know. I'm not going to do the conversion. Twenty thousand pounds, actually.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1432.833

Do you know how much electrum piece is that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1439.936

Neither do I. It was a genuine question. A lot of electrum. I still don't know.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1449.39

You ask that every time. I just am curious. I'm just wondering.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1456.152

When was the last time you saw an electric anyways?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1461.914

So the best time, the vault is going to be at its fullest during the final game because all the last minute bets. It's very classic. So, and a flea and float game takes about two hours to four hours, depending on how clean the game is, the final game. So we have a window of two at about a minimum. If they clean up, that's two hours.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1481.764

But if they take a long time, they go on some overtime, four hours if we're very lucky. So, we gotta get in, get many tons of gold pieces out, And we also need to let them think that they've caught the culprits. They can't let it be a mystery, because then we'll live the rest of our lives in fear. And also they'll eventually catch us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1518.411

Potentially, if we're lucky.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1523.251

We need to get as much loot as we can.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1530.484

Yeah, how much is that? You think you can carry that, Michael? You're a strong guy.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1554.144

We have to let them think that they caught the fish.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1563.572

Yeah, we need a full gun.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1566.835

I'm still working on that.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1576.729

Arrived at my www.owlgino48. That's not your email, bro.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1687.222

It's like I'm really in the jungles of Chark. It's like there's really a Guralan. Oh, look at the papier-mâché face. You think these tanks of water used to have fish in them? Yeah, probably. It looks like an aquarium. Why does it smell like chlorine? Probably kill all the fish.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

17.674

You know, I saw on a document once.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1709.521

It's always dry. I don't understand it. They have a good flatbread, though.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1835.02

I mean, do you see the odds on the mighty Trump?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1841.743

It was like 75 to 1. I'm going to be rich.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1847.785

Yeah, on credit, too. Yeah, well, I borrowed the gold.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1856.352

Where did you borrow the gold from? I'm from a very, very nice customer. He said, hey, it looks like you want to, he was a shock fellow. He was the shock folk. I met him down at the docks, and he gave me a very, very reasonable loan. Very nice, very, you know, very reasonable.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1925.367

Oh, yeah, we're all Bunko buddies. Excuse me, what?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1952.085

Well, you know, I had a cousin named Bunko. He was Bogo's brother.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

1960.33

You know, like parents do that for the same kind of convention? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was Uncle Bongo. He was very, he was very proud of his name.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

20.015

How to make the one that you're fanning yourself with.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2022.225

That's where I'm going. You know where I'm going. I'm going to be right at the slots.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2036.323

Okay, well, I'm going to be at the slots. They have the best drink service there. Everybody knows that. I'm going to get so many ye olde fashions before the king's whistle. And you know what? I wanted to say before we all meet up, you know what's very strange? That every team is named after a monstrosity in this world, except for the mighty trunks. It's a whole different thing. Why is that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2056.248

Anyways, I'm going to be at the slots.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2064.159

Cosmogenic smoke. A man walks up. Ah, Gino, are you old fashioned? Ah, you know my good man, I'm going to be hacking up a great sludge soon enough. Wouldn't have it any other way. It's like my grandma's house.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2289.008

Where's the milk? Get this girl some milk.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

236.418

You're probably wondering why I called you over here today. I know I gave you the whole plan earlier. You know exactly what we're doing.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2471.879

Well, you know, they always say the first one's the warm-up.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2480.711

You know what? It's a very special night. Thanks for my third year old fashion, Gregory. His name's not Gregory. You know, Gregory, why is my straw soggy and made out of toilet paper? That's just a tube from the toilet.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2516.034

I just counted. This isn't my third Old Fashioned or Heavy. I'm gonna whip out my platinum pieces for this. Let's split five platinum pieces. It's the same return. You can only get gold back. I don't care.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

255.708

I mean, for the wire that I'm... I mean... I mean... What did I say about mentioning the feds? You're gonna give me a heart attack. I'm finally gonna have the big one. What my doc is always saying, Gino, you gotta stop eating all that gabagool.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2562.41

After three locks in a row, you're due for a win. Why don't we say double or nothing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2571.16

I don't think that's how the slots work.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2603.861

Ah, smell that cigarette smoke. It's sitting in my lungs. It's at the bottom of my lungs now. Look, this is the big one. I'm going to win that big prize, that big pot up there, Gregory, you know?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2719.211

Hey, I was watching Match Game the other day, and this fellow was a rat. He was talking about Smorgasbord. It's very funny. Let me just very quickly participate.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

280.399

Ooh, some galamar would be nice right now. How about we get some galamar and talk about the plan afterwards? What do you think? Oh no, it's tonight! It's wobbly here!

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2817.976

Oh, there's some chicken tenders. Thank you, darling.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

2888.898

I don't recall that. I never saw that one.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3007.072

Okay, how do I, you all hear, how do I turn this thing on? Why is, which Glitzy would be here to help me with this?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3017.778

Glitzy, how do I turn the shell phone on? We're not here. Where are you? I'm right behind you, boss. Help me up. There you are. It's go time. Go trunks.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

302.42

Well, I mean, I gotta get up the fryer, go. Here, let me get a little bit of some cabagool, and I'll snack on it. Here, let me go to... Oh, I'm still wearing my bathrobe. I wasn't expecting company, even though you arrived exactly when I told you to.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3033.503

Look at everyone there. They're all looking up at those major images of the game being displayed all over the walls.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3048.626

No, it's where they'll least expect us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3088.386

Yeah, the two guards that are at the checkpoint data They come into the deli for lunch every day, and they won't shut the fuck up about fling flow. I guarantee you that they are searching on the job. Also, the one on the left, his marriage is falling apart, so he's turned to drink. So he'll definitely not be aware.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3134.402

Now I need to pull up my character sheet. I need my toys.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3171.519

No, a stealth check is a dex check.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3176.243

So technically, it's a dexterity check, parentheses, stealth. It's like the way that you write that. Yeah, here it is.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3186.393

Oh, yeah. Oh, it was a footwork. Stealth check? I got a, what is this? Oh wow, plus nine. I am so stealthy, I got a 27.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

322.099

Okay, as long as no one's trying to trick me so I can put on any lifts. Does it mean you're doing that again?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3236.087

You can't say that about our very good friend, Orla.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3263.17

I'll stick to the pork slop.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3303.669

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Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3322.285

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Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

342.95

Gosh, all these healthcare regulations, that's why the belly is failing. Hold on a sec, let me just get some gabagool here, let me find my slippers.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3449.467

Oh, we did, but we did plan for this, of course. That's why, well, I'm a guard.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3456.069

Well, no, I'm going to put on my guard costume, and, you know, the guy what I stole this from, he was about a medium, so it'll definitely fit.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

35.383

Why? Because I got knuckles. We're gonna heist a museum.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3587.597

Hey, honey, can I get a ye olde fashion? Can you make it extra strong, please?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

359.914

I know, we're extra prepared. Remember, oh, we gotta spend this 100,000 gold pieces, not at the track. I'll be right back. I shall follow up to get something out of the room.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3599.503

I thought that you was going to give me one of them watered-down ye olde fashions.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3608.081

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I don't know how you carry those big jugs of milk. Anyways, we have great disguises. What a ragtag band. A security guard.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3621.637

You know what? It's like we all went to a Halloween party. A themed group costume.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3667.96

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna go to security guard here, the place.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3677.124

Oh yeah, I'll disable the cameras, great call. I'm disabling the cameras, Knuckles, let's split up. Let's all do what we agreed to do in our planning.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3691.572

Yeah, what your outfits are. That's exactly what you were supposed to do.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3702.6

No, no. You gotta go find how to get to the back of the back.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3709.303

Maybe like this gossip of the other waitresses. Oh, that's a great idea. Tiffany, she is a gossip. Go talk to Tiffany. She gets over here and I'm like, yeah, honey. Yeah, honey. Okay. Which one is Tiffany? You'll know right away.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3728.668

It's the one that I make sure I sit in her area every time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3790.043

Well, it will affect the advantage or disadvantage qualities of the soul.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3822.289

Hey. Hello, fellow guards.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3830.776

Taking five? Have you been out there since it started? What's happened? What's the score?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3855.454

Oh, yeah. No. Oh, yeah. The Mighty Trunks has scored real big. Oh, yeah? They say that they're actually the underdogs this year, and they're going to win. They have an underdog tail.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3870.505

Oh, wow. I know. They love the Trunks. That's right. Yeah. Do you guys bet on the game?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3879.039

Oh, yeah, no, I didn't mean that.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3884.283

You passed. Anyway, you passed. You passed your test. I've been your, I'm actually an inspector sent here from corporate.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3900.976

I don't, gambling is a sin. And it's very, it's wasteful spending. My name is, I'm from, I'm an inspector and you pass your security training. I'm an actual, I'm an expert trainer sent here from corporate. And so I also like you to show me where you keep your playbook for all of your sports betting to make sure that it's the code. the playbook for all of our sports betting.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3935.228

Yeah, the silver linings playbook.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3943.536

That's pretty good. At disadvantage. Wait, I gotta get some kind of advantage shit on this, right?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3956.246

All night. Literally all night. I don't think I get anything yet.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

3996.673

What did you say your name was again? Oh, my name?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4002.355

Oh, my name is Gene. Gene O... O'Malley. Gene O'Malley.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4019.105

There's a lot of O'Malleys, you know? They just, you know, they have a lot of kids. How long have you worked here? Oh, well, I'm from corporate, remember? I'm just visiting, on account of the big game.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4041.195

Bladen, ah, nice trick. Make a deception check at advantage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4058.985

I'm the one who's testing you, remember. I'm all the way from corporate.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4068.733

Do you even know the commander's name? Are you an imposter?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4078.104

Actually, I was told that there would only be one card here, actually, now that I think about it, from corporate. My itinerary here, as you can see... Oh, my God!

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4103.673

When I'm not inspecting guards on a sloppy job, I care about the fine arts, my good man. Anyways, according to my itinerary, there's only supposed to be one here, so why don't I see your credentials? And the lift pass, too. Prove to me that you know where the lift pass is.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4136.556

Bladen. Okay. Thank you. You know, I have a great nephew named Brayden and Bladen and Grayden or Grayson. I don't know what the name of the kid's name is. I can't believe that. Great. Thanks a lot. You're free to go. You've succeeded with flying colors. Your holiday bonus is going to be very large. I'll put in a good word for sure. Okay, you gentlemen have a very nice day. What?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4273.711

I got the path for the lift, good work.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4290.784

So there was right, you'll be right, okay, got it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4351.191

I've been trying to get this, see? I mean, this is our skeleton key. Can you believe this thing? It's our skeleton key. And now, with the gossip what Glitzy got from Tiffany, I'm not even there. It's just the three of you. Oh, that got from Tiffany. When she comes back, we'll have all the information we need to get to the back of the bag. They believe that I was a guard inspector.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4383.787

Can you believe these idiots? Where are you?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

443.201

I look like Tony Soprano in like half of the episodes. You can read louder then.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4456.83

Okay, sure. I look up.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4636.496

Oh, I don't understand.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4671.489

Oh, the classic coincidental. Got it. Okay. I love this plan.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4680.811

Oh, that's right. Everyone follow me. I got the crystal. Here we go.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4752.947

Do you know how many... No, they've had an inspector come in and take a look at this thing. I'd sub the code, I'm sure, if they got fancy wrist people.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4943.265

Good thing that we came prepared for that.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4949.467

Oh yeah, absolutely. It would be insane for them to allow magic at the Hyrolis table. Somewhere they could come in and say, oh, I can read your mind, B. Oh, I win the whole pot. So... That's why you have all those charges in your pack, right? That's why you bring in all that stuff.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

4969.816

Boom without the, you know, you got the boom and the boom. It's magic and not magic.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

503.196

Oh, oh, you're putting a pen back into a grenade. I bought enough for everybody and some of the down too. I couldn't help myself.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5056.272

Oh no, the guy I was talking to was an absolute mook. He definitely didn't have access to the back of the back of the bag.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5089.434

That is really hard to find.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5093.856

No, we don't care. That's very expensive to stock at the deli. We don't have those.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5100.778

But it was all sitting in the... I'll take the sour cream and onion. Okay, there we go. Well, first of all, we need to get this door open.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5120.112

I will definitely look around. How about that? Glithy, why don't you take a look over there? I'll help you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5192.379

They probably aren't watching us. All of my intel said that they didn't have a constant eyes on this place.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5205.22

You know, Orla, I know that I am the black bear what climbs, and that's kind of my thing, but since you've been lugging that ladder around, why don't you take a look at it on the ladder?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

522.239

You need it right now again with the milk.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

526.663

Again with the carrots. Oh, my goodness. What am I, an athlete here? Am I a Paralympian athlete? I have to go up and down these stairs. I'm an old man. I'm not going to make it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5285.066

Stab it with something.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5292.472

Does anyone have a hookshot? I mean, I do. Do you actually have a hookshot? Of course. That's what that literally was made for. It's a giant eyeball up high. You gotta use the hookshot to shoot it. It'll close and the door's gonna open. You don't know that? That's why you're not the mastermind, Knuckles. I can try. You should stop going to the beach so much. I'll pull out my hookshot.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5320.84

And I will... aiming at the eyeball and I'll shoot it. Then you gotta say, yeah! Then you do it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

5396.719

This is a beholder, yes?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

542.036

Fine, I'll go to my ice box. Hold on.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6011.764

No, just the way that beholder got stuck in reminded me of like a meaty spaghetti.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6023.19

Oh, like at the every Italian restaurant?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6026.552

Like a gazpacho. A gazpacho, yeah. Or it's like not real Alfredo.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6059.239

Oh, I have a special flask pocket if you want me to keep an eye on it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6124.888

Gosh, I hope that I hope those bloodhawks are choking. It's a legendary item.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6185.715

I got a special slash pocket. I've got something in my pocket.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6194.606

Oh, then that's the wrong one. Why do they look so similar? What are the chances of that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6208.865

Gregory's terrible at counting. He said three. I think I just had one. I just had one quick one while playing slots with that nice old man that I saw was waiting for me, sucker.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6222.704

Oh, good job, buddy. That was teamwork.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6238.235

That's what my intel said.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6250.632

I know that was going to upset you. I know that would trigger.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6257.998

Beholder today, be gone tomorrow. What? That doesn't mean anything. Behold on. Knuckles, while I go activate the lift.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6281.308

Well, maybe next time we'll have a conversation about it, but I think that we were all very unscathed. And they got beholden with all the fancy people. I mean, I feel like that's a reliability and a risk. That's a pretty impressive aberration they've got under their command.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6300.944

Well, maybe it's probably filled with people and gods that would probably execute you if you ever did that. Or they were not prepared to have an iron flask that we had prepared for.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

633.388

I thought that you had some olive soup. I couldn't help myself. I had like olive grease everywhere. And it just makes everything, oh!

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6486.355

All of the Pilates are really paying off. Well done, you should keep it up.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6535.441

This is why they call me Gino the Butcher of 42nd Street, also the Black Bear What Climbs. This is what I do.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6565.942

Well, I was going to take the much safer and reliable form of going up, climbing, instead of this crazy newfangled contraption of elevators and lifts.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6585.249

You think they would, well, just no one, no one opened any jars of olives and it won't get unstuck. And then I'll drop down a rope and y'all can climb up.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6618.306

I haven't climbed anything but the stairmaster at the Gold's Gym next to the deli.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6624.911

Oh, in the Electrum's Gym. In the Electrum's Gym.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6637.06

Electrum's Gym. In the Electrum's Gym. I signed up at the beginning of the year and I haven't been since. I went for two days and I climbed the stairs master, just the stairs in the building.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6812.277

This is a real sloppy job. It's like Billy May with the... You know what this fucking means, right?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6827.077

Who would do something like that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6834.971

Impossible. More informed, better plans. No, we are- Do they have a beholder in a flask? No.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

6846.036

They killed Paul and they killed Blar. Who cares? No one will ever care about their death.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

693.368

Hold on, hold on, here, let me dry it off. No, let me dry, hold on, hold on.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

701.451

No, I got it, I got it, I dropped it, I dropped it. Oh, there's some fur on this one, hold on.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7030.805

I'll never forget the smell when the shaman came in. I awaken from a nightmare. Are we at the top of the thing? No.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

707.953

Hold on, he, hold on, I'm gonna, I'm putting him under my arm as I'm picking him up. Here you go. Okay, eat up. You're gonna need this. Tonight's the night of the 10 days before the heist. Tonight's the big night. Well, I'm not gonna clean up always the 10 days of heist. Always for Vinny to come by to clean all this shit up. We'll leave it here.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7177.508

Just get all the dirt off. Fine, while you fix the thing, I'm gonna pick up my olives.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7394.499

Was there any tracks of blood? And do I recognize either of the guards as I pick up my olive?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

742.848

God, these young folks are so entitled these days. It's like, oh, it says Dino's Deli opened late every night.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7434.155

I'm breathing and you're not fine.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7485.413

Clean job, there's a bunch of dead bodies and all these olives and broken glass.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

751.537

Three in the afternoon. He's entitled. These entitled young folks, they come in and it's like, oh, hey, I demand and deserve avocado toast and rent that allows me to survive. So entitled, unbelievable. Can you believe these young folks?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7559.405

You know those things that you put in a glass of water and it makes like a Tyrannosaurus? I feel like that guy right now.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7569.631

No, I feel like the Tyrannosaurus with my skin that feels like that, and I'm covered in fur. Ugh.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7585.057

Those lights look very familiar. Have you been hanging out with Vinny and that quail?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7603.095

You've been corrupting my good boy Vinny?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7608.157

He goes to the shore?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7615.1

Gosh, that's where he's been. He's been lying to me. He said he's working on his homework.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7620.101

He certainly doesn't.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7652.681

Imagine. You know, I have a cousin named Molly, and she didn't think her name was very Barry enough, so she made her name Bailey. You can't survive this. Of course I can.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

772.134

What? Why are you whispering?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7755.888

You know I had, you know my cousin Paulie?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

776.515

You're a brand rich, you know that? What, my brand? I am Gino's Deli. It's in the name.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7761.831

Yeah, yeah, Paulie. And he's always trying to turn people into sheep. They said that was his dream.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7775.76

Oh, wow, is my whole family just down at the shore while I'm slaving away over a hot, greasy pan?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7787.672

Yeah, I mean, those condo fees, they're just absolutely egregious.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7868.92

I've been waiting a long time to do this.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7897.907

I am going to think back to when I first met Knuckles. And... I got to know him and I realized that he was a lot smarter than he led on. Through us playing games of checkers or something, I learned that he actually, the knuckles that we know, has lost a lot of extreme intellect and power that is locked away deep inside of him.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

7947.996

Oh, boy. I've been working for years to perfect the perfect thing to awaken those latent powers that he has that will solve this problem in whatever way might. And I will reach into my coat and I will pull out, I've been perfecting the recipe, perfecting every single piece of the Knuckles sandwich. I will feed it to Knuckles.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8008.962

I'll be back. That's a really nice picture there. I wouldn't expect you to be so much of an artist. What are those geometric shapes that you're drawing? It almost looks like alchemical in nature.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

801.96

He was spelled with an I and I just added three lines up there.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8027.857

I don't know. Maybe you're just sketching something. I don't know. Help me out here.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8040.986

I just need you to be the MacGuffin to save the day in whatever way you choose to, in whatever latent power you might have. And I'm going to activate it by feeding you a sandwich.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8053.353

For a temporary time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8067.565

I brine these pickles for a decade.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

813.644

Well, once Vinny gets back from visiting that quail fella, I'm sure he'll open up shop. I'm sure he'll be back at a reasonable time. He's a very responsible young lad.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8229.325

As white as a jar of mayonnaise.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

826.792

Oh, so tonight is the first night of the ten nights before the night of the heist night. You following?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

842.709

You think I should include it in the invite in case the feds get it?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8425.818

Just give them away. No, no deaths, right? Isn't that what Miss Lady said? It's figurative. Are we going to knock them out? Yeah, let's give them the knuckles. Well, not the knuckles.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

847.391

There's reptilian insectoid hands all over my plan.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

857.776

I'll let you know that AOL is very secure.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

864.756

The guy who sold it to me down at the hardware store.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8708.589

You can undo a charm.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

872.257

He said he sold me a disc and he said, hey, just shout into this very loudly. It'll be very secure. And an owl will come and bring it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8811.954

Yeah, just turn your back away from us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

885.66

Why it's called the Anytime Owl Lettuce? Letter, that's what I can really name. Anytime Owl letters, A-O-L. You can reach me at Gino Mufaletta, 64-Delhi, www.flash, and AOL.com.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8898.195

Very well done. Yeah, we'll be able to do better. We are a crack team led by the mastermind. and seeing how this isn't an emo battle of the bands of the local middle school, I think that we'll take a crack at this. How about that? Okay. You're with the cult, right?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8927.571

We're not with a cult, no. We serve Lolth, the great spider queen. Yeah, this is the cult.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8954.645

Well, you know, Glitzy, why don't you get this thing open here?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8962.984

Yeah, crack the safe with your safe cracking tool.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

8977.294

Like some giant the bomb for this? For like the volt bomb?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9147.607

I am unbearable. It's not like we need to wear these anymore. Once we get inside the vault, we'll just be zapped out by magical wish power and, well, excellent.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

919.261

Oh, is that what that says? How is anyone supposed to read this? How is anyone? Why do I prep sessions?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9212.902

Man, that's quite an age difference.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9223.787

Oh, she is quite contrary. The quietest and youngest one.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

930.985

Hold on, okay. I have all the details. I met with Miss Lady, and she gave me all of the details, so.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9344.33

Yeah. Yeah, is that what you guys like? There you go. There's some extra. Yeah, here.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9350.614

Oh, yeah. For love. Would you like a lovey pop? I got a couple of those.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9459.992

I say cold. Oh cold, that's nice.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

948.31

Oh, no. the last two weeks starting with us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9538.033

Aren't you all guys, you're like 4,000 years old.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9555.615

You get the sense that they, uh... Mr. O'Malley, come here, come here. I've been on this advantage for many years.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9565.117

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm saying, you're not too bright. You're probably like 800 years old or something, I don't know.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9576.6

Hey, hey, that's not very clear. That's not okay, first of all. Second of all, you're not gonna be able to provide if you couldn't figure out a cloud. I'm a mastermind, I should know.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

958.298

Hold on, no, I'm sure I have the details from this lady. Hold on.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9592.542

Cloud! Of course! Yeah, no, I think that you just need to go back to, you know, wherever. You can stop dating Mary Mary quite contrary. She's just, you're not smart enough to provide for her, you know what I mean?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9615.559

No, you gotta keep him away from this guy, the loser.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9652.993

I think we have a very limited time. Who won? Guys, do you know who won? Wait, if you stay here, that means that the Mighty Trunks won, right? Because you lose a friend's loss and you're not getting wished out?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

970.466

Hold on, it's gotta be somewhere. It's gotta be somewhere.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9716.923

It's chocolate coins? What are we gonna do with all this chocolate?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9724.445

My doctor said they're not full of that many antioxidants. Um, I don't know what to play.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

9740.35

Yeah, all we leave with all eight of us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 2 | Heist Story: Part 2

977.053

Be careful, be careful. Be careful, watch your foot, watch your step. Okay. So, Miss Lady had provided us with gold, as I said, she promised. So, the mark is the Silver Lining Casino, right next to Goodberry Square. You know the place.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1.857

Welcome to Legends of Avantris. Here's what happened last time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1027.536

Are you there? I want to know the outcome of the game! And you hear this sound and it's much, much closer now. You feel like you have 30, 45 seconds remaining.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1051.892

That is another important detail that you have yet to deal with. Perhaps the first thing you throw in the holes are four dead drow that are sitting on the floor.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

106.229

Instead, you find yourself standing on a great tower or citadel or castle atop of what feels like an impossibly huge mountain that stretches down all around you. The blue sky spans in all directions, for you are just above a cloud line which tightly circles the base of this massive rock, obscuring any hints of the terrain below.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1108.806

Very, very little limited time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1116.95

Okay, you put them on your person, perhaps in an inner jacket pocket, let's say.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1158.115

For your acrobatics and your intelligence checks.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1173.53

An acrobatics or athletics check and an intelligence check.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1192.171

for intelligence. Okay. I'll say, Gene, Knuckles, with your enhanced intelligence after the... Oh, you're right. It's a 16 instead of 14. 15 was actually what I was looking for.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1208.191

With your enhanced intelligence, you are seeing them now having filled the actual portable holes at 80% capacity, both of these 10-foot-deep chasms. There's no more coins. It's to the place where now you're putting in helms, putting in magical items, and you see Glitzy fly over to one of the hooks and pull a bag off of it and start to fly in order to throw that loot into the portable hole as well.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1269.518

You look inside. It's actually almost full to the brim with magical gems. You can see rubies, emeralds, diamonds.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1279.923

What you clearly have is a bag of holding. It had nearly been at capacity as well, but dumping it out as you did. You look like you have a question or a suggestion.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

130.922

Something tells you that you are impossibly high in the air, but it is not unpleasant. Cool winds whip around you as the bright sun warms your skin. Not everything has gone according to plan, or hasn't it?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1301.614

There's a dexterity saving throw to see if you get, it's like being blasted in outer space, like when a portal opens and all of a sudden it's like, like that.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1312.64

Notice I didn't say sucked out. It's blasted out. I watch a lot of science fiction. Wow.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1321.647

It's at this point that you have to deal with the bodies or choose what to do next, because you can see the head of what is clearly a massive giant just start to come up on the circular staircase that is around the perimeter. What do you think? What do you think?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1375.361

I've never used a disguise kit, so can you tell me the rules? I don't know the rules.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1400.728

I mean, I think a disguise kit would be almost, at least even a small one. So if you have makeup and you have some of the usual accoutrement, just because you had to transform from a customer into a maintenance person, for example.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1427.565

I see. So an ability check to create the disguise and then necessarily probably some deception checks later on?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1469.31

You're very quickly turning into a stereotypical circus bear, aren't you?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

148.136

You and your crew have been able to infiltrate the silver lining casino, navigate through the labyrinthine halls behind the gaming rooms, trick guards without setting off any alarms or traps, vanquish a sentinel beholder, and cleverly break into the vault. Running into another crew of thieves, a gang of dark elves, may have been a surprise, but it was a threat you were able to manage together.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1485.418

20, okay. It's at this point that, the cloud giant emerges and turns with this excited face as you see over the tessellated side of the tower. He starts to crash up. Walking up these huge stone slabs. Get the body, get the body.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1536.179

He turns and he sees what you're doing. And just to give you guys a picture before he reacts, this cloud giant is 29 feet tall. He's massively strong, clearly. Covered in brilliant clothing, jewelry, bands, light blue skin, and he carries, or at least around his back, you can see a massive platinum mace with a bulbed head at the top. He has a billowing white cape that flows like clouds behind him.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1572.812

You can see his face transform from excitement about the news of the game and what's to come next and what he was expecting. Almost certainly the people who would come here to collect the winnings for those who were doing the gambling to shock and horror. What in the hell is this? Who are you? You're not Arselin!

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1625.935

Make a deception check at disadvantage. Oh no.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1684.977

What happened to your other dark... Why?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1703.684

This is my secure vault. I am Arcus. Prince of the Cloud Giants.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1718.53

Well, it's also a cloud pun and I liked it at the time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1733.898

Oh no. Explain yourselves. They're drow that are- You're trying to steal my treasure.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

174.652

Until now, one could say this heist has been going fairly smoothly. Until now. The moment the vault door closed, surrounded by treasure worth millions and millions in gold, there was an extra planar shift, transporting you and this loot to the strange new place you now find yourselves in. The next few moments could spell victory or disaster for your effort. Here is what you know.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1775.652

Yeah, and I'm the demolitionist. You dress like a casino dealer. I'm dressed like a casino dealer. You still look like a maintenance person.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1783.86

So you look like you're coming from the casino.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1802.898

Where is Austalin? You three would know. He should be here any moment. I believe that the game is completed, yes?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1826.832

He looks over and leans over with his massive frame and glances at the top of the columns. And this seems to register true. He seems to acknowledge Oh, yeah, no, the vault won't be opening on the other side until I deactivate these rune wards that'll allow the Ostlin to come back because they only would have triggered once and you triggered them.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1852.929

You get all of this registration in just a moment in an expression via your insight, which I won't even make you roll because I'm just going to give it to you. Thanks! No problem. So...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1872.874

We will not be killing this remaining drow. You have a much more horrible fate in store for you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1884.624

Oh, no. And you hear the sound of... What the fuck?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1904.64

Does he turn to look at his guards as they're coming? He turns and shouts into the air around him.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1913.499

and you start to hear more wind blowing than there was before, and that's just starting to ramp, but I am going to be very generous in this moment and let you guys talk it out.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1933.666

Okay, make a sleight of hand check as he turns.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1955.308

15. You pull the first of the portable holes up and you bend down to get to the other one, but you're not fast enough. Out of the corner of his eye, you see he turns and he says, hold there. What are you doing? Why are you picking up the treasure?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

1990.592

Make a deception check and the sound of a whirring wind gets louder and louder when all of a sudden they start to create almost like humanoid shapes. Below the torso there's a miniature tornado and at the arms they are also these swirling cyclones but you can actually see the shape of the blowing wind

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2031.991

Typically you do it before the roll, but I'll allow it. Am I rolling a two or no?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2049.581

14, and, oh, that's gonna be an insight.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

205.464

The 42nd Grand Flim Flal Championship is over. Whatever the outcome, there are now guards heading back to the Vault to collect the necessary gold needed to reward those who bet on the games in full, and they'll be here in just a few minutes. On your side of the Vault, The sound of heavy footfalls grows louder and louder and louder with each step.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2061.367

At this point, I don't think that you can in the reality of this moment.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2069.15

You, in your haste and clear franticness, he seems to be at least not disbelieving that one of the holes seemingly disappeared, and he seems even more suspicious of this drow that you guys have accosted.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

21.988

Come on and slam and welcome to the jam. Welcome to the final 42nd grand fling flow championship. A giant fleshy orb behind the back of this bar, what appears to have multiple stalks of eyes pulling out from the top of its head.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2126.01

Oh yeah, it does. Make a group perception check and you can make one at an advantage. Perception or? Deception, deception.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2149.508

I'm hoping him as an owner of casino might know. 19, nice.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2168.955

The elemental start to wind forward towards Gino, and just before they get within five feet of you and start to attempt to encapsulate you, they hear that You guys are selling their master on this idea that he's convinced and they follow his orders. And then they hear the possibility of curses and they come to a stop just as Arcus puts his hand up and goes, pause, wait. Bartholoolahan, you say?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2221.382

This will require a smarter man than me to solve. Everyone stay where they are. Skitter, skitter, skitter. I'm going to reactivate the vault. Austlin should be here as soon as the game is over, and then we can discuss this out. And he walks over to the first top of the tower and hits it in runic magic.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

226.854

A booming voice tells you something massive is coming. Perhaps the owner of this vault and the casino in Galtica is on their way, and that this creature will be here in just a few minutes. The next step in your plan was to collect the loot. Thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps more than 100,000 pounds of gold pieces, gems, artifacts, some magical.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2291.443

I just am thinking about all of the nightmares that are happening simultaneously. With that understanding, I'm not gonna make you roll for initiative, but we're gonna have to walk through what happened. What music to use for this? I think I'll go to combat, because this has not gotten very goofy, and we need something that's like, how about some funky chunk?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2323.052

He hits the first column and he's like, the curse, the what? And he turns and the iron flask opens up with a And what emerges is a nightmare monstrosity, a huge orb. It doesn't look like it would fit inside the portable hole. It's so huge and fleshy, single wiry hairs coming out in different directions, but even more terrifying, these massive eye stalks, 13 of them in all, I think.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2356.597

Huge, crazy, impossible eye. a massive, slobbering mouth with these sharp fangs and teeth in both directions, his tongue lolling from side to side. It's brown and red patches all over in every direction, and immediately it looks at you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2395.211

It nods and it gives you a wink.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2401.833

And it turns with pausing. As it turns, the anti-magic cone that is the huge spread of coming out of his face does two things that you notice. The magical hole disappears. The one that you haven't picked up just vanishes. And the air elementals turn back into and evaporate, basically becoming invisible, just blown away by the natural winds in this moment.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2441.086

Your disguise is non-magical, and it turns to Argus, and In this moment, you can see a few things get a little duller. Whatever he happened to be wearing that might have been magical is now also affected by this huge cone that would affect anyone in the eyesight of the beholder. And attempting to abide by his new friend, the beholder, only knowing deep speech and undercommon, turns and goes.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2479.856

And in his mind, Basahulahan, very helpful.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2488.007

The cloud giant pulls out his mace and immediately swings in to attack. He hits it like a baseball, but it doesn't fly off into a direction. He just smashes into the side of it, leaving this disgusting mace-shaped hole that pops back into place, and the beholder loses it. All of a sudden, rays start going off as the chaos of these two titans begins to unfold.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

252.285

Time may now be limited, but for all this to be worth it, this crucial step in your plan needs to happen in the next few minutes. And you need to get away with it. However the next few moments play out, you need to get back home from wherever you are now with your millions and not get caught. Powerful people care about what you're taking, the approaching giant notwithstanding.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2522.934

What are you guys doing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2539.028

What are you guys doing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2542.551

What you see is a kaiju battle is a really terrific way of saying it. He's being forced back down the stairs. He's smacking into it as often as he can. Just wham, wham, wham. And it's clearly hurting the beholder. There's chunks coming out. There's skin spilling away. There's blood. This disgusting almost like silver metallic black ichor that's pouring out of these wounds. But it

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2568.73

is hitting it with ray after ray. One eyestalk turns and disintegrates a chunk of not just the armor, but of the muscle behind. You see him starting to lose this fight very quickly.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2593.14

You start to do that and as the beholder moves forward and continues to float and get hit back and forth, it's finally when the angle of the anti-magic cone no longer covers that part of the floor. It pops back into existence and you fall three feet. Into Scrooge McDuck style, into a giant pile of gold and platinum and other precious gold pieces.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2631.844

This fight will have them engaged for... Four or five rounds. So half a minute while you turn to your friends and you've bought some time for you guys all to continue to try to solve this problem, to get out of this with your lives intact at this point.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2653.497

He pushed the button that allowed the vault to be open from the other side.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

273.776

Without a way to take what you can and escape without fear of retribution, you'll end up in some prison somewhere, or maybe even dead. How you approach this moment, how you've planned for it, and how you work together to achieve your ultimate aim is up to you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2756.389

So it's more of a icebound style drink. But with a 19, you do some quick math in your bunny head and you go, you know, I think that someone could survive in there for about 10 minutes before they started losing air.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2837.153

You can still hear the screaming and the beating of these two titans against each other. He's getting weaker. He's making fewer hits. To me! To me! Guards! Guards! And air elementals are coming in and just evaporating in front of its sight before he gets hit by a ray of disintegration, fear rays, petrification. He is getting demolished by this, and you can see pieces of him flying away.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2860.886

He's almost stumbling over the edge of his own castle stairs before... realigning himself and trying before he is starting to really lose. I'd say he probably has another one or two rounds in him. Do the deck of cards that I have have any kind of magical, do I feel like it's magical at all? Make an arcana check at advantage, I would say. Because even holding them, there's something of a thrum.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2903.684

Make a persuasion check.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2908.166

Okay. And you're a swastika. 25. 25. You see all of the eyes turn on the back of his head and look right at you. And then he backs up. He keeps his main eye on the cloud giant who falls to one of his knees and says, please no more, no more. And has clearly at least paused for a moment. It didn't want to stop.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2945.529

It is frozen. It's just keeping its eye on the creature.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2973.436

The center eyestalk hadn't fired once, but with its death ray, it fires forward, and it takes 10d10, he takes 10d10 necrotic damage, and because it reduces him to zero hit points, there is no save. He dies, and the cloud giant, his light blue skin, Ugg,

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

2994.818

starts to turn gray, and he falls back and stumbles down a few of the stairs before just overbalancing at the edge and tumbling off into the cloud line, disappearing, which turns itself gray. The sky darkens, and you... A storm starts to occur all around you as the bright life that was in this plane, this space, disappears.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3060.067

You've never held something that feels this magical. With a 17, this feels... like the real prize. You almost forget about your gambling habit, habit, habit. You forget about this, your hobby. You forget about all things. You are shuffling the deck and the card feels so good. Even in your singed and bear-like hands, it's begging, begging for attention.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3093.91

But with a 17, you also are aware of the danger that you've put your friends in and are aware that you're in the middle of a heist. This is the loot. You can do this anytime. So the conflict rages within you as you are, this is a very magical item.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3113.663

What are you all doing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3124.986

Okay. And because he's not looking at you in this moment, and the flask is able to do its magic, and he gets pulled in. I don't know if he has to make a save a second time.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3137.714

But can he voluntarily choose to fail because he's friend?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3143.598

I think it's one of those, like, I'm going to say let's get the beholder out of here. Come on.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3154.729

He turns around and closes this eye and uses his other stalks to sort of guide himself in.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3168.567

On my side. For a moment, all is quiet. Looking at the sky, it appears to have darkened not because of some forthcoming threat, but almost of sadness for the loss of its prince. The sky itself turns dark, not as bright a blue. The winds are a little colder. It seems that the environment is reflecting this change of leadership in this space.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3305.717

When he says wasp, you almost can hear this faint...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3336.177

You start to fly down. What are you doing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3344.306

Oh, there are steps left, though. There are chunks of stone that have been blasted away, certainly. But these are cloud giant steps. So each one is like a good four feet. So you have to hop and then land, take a moment.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3360.79

Oh, okay, terrific. You bunny hop down each step with relative grace and ease. What are you doing? I'm going to use my climb.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3372.736

So you shimmy on down, and you stand in the center of the vault in order to... Oh, before I leave, I want to cast Burdick Inspiration.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3382.365

Because you're going to kill Ostwin.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3392.628

The three of you start to make your way down and you don't have to wait very long at all. It seems that they were, I mean, only five, 10 minutes have passed since this moment and probably they were trying the door over and over and over until finally it was enabled. And it's in this moment that the,

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3411.423

You see a door out of nowhere suddenly emerge and start to pull away and you are plunged into darkness because you are in a vault room now. It is the flip reverse. You are no longer in the elemental plane of air at all. You are back in the vault that was on the prime material plane in Galtica all by yourself and you are facing air as the door continues to open up. You see some sort of

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3441.061

artificer armor standing there and a second artificer armor and a third artificer's armor and another animated armor. These are looking massively powered. This is the highest top shelf security force of the man, the director, who owns this casino and works, worked, with Arcus in order to put the Silver Linings Casino on the map in the first place.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3465.633

Standing before you in front of eight of these animated armor pieces is a, what is clearly Ostelin, a human artificer who is looking very suspicious and now very angry at his empty vault.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3500.296

The door, this massive, huge, circular bank vault door, bank-style vault door starts to swing open. And you're expecting but one person on the other side in the center. But that's when you realize that he is a cadre of these impossibly strong-looking armored suits, for lack of a better word, that glow and thrum with arcane energy.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3524.901

And as soon as you see the first or second one, you look to see what you could possibly grab onto in order to pull it. This is a push-out style door. There isn't a handle on the back. But maybe...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3535.643

just maybe if you can grab the side, you might be able to pull, but you're pulling against the leveraged force of what is almost certainly one of these armored creatures on the other side who's turning the wheel in order to get this thing to open. It's going to be very difficult in order to get there, and also pull it closed.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3554.759

You'll need to make a dexterity check in a contest, and then you will have to succeed a strength check at disadvantage. 22. Wow. You race forward and you are able to grab onto the interior of the door. And you think that maybe, just maybe, you could save your fingers and get this thing to pop you back into the elemental plane of air.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3615.516

The stat block I'm using for the other side of things is a Helmed Horror. The Helmed Horror rolled a natural 16, plus four is 20. You put your fingers on the interior, and it's slick. It's very smooth metal. You try to pull, and you can't quite get the leverage that you need, and it starts to slip out of your grasp, and this door is opening.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3635.958

And to your horror, there are, what I described before, eight full... artificer made suits of armor, ready for battle, carrying terrible looking swords, shields on either side, and this artificer who's looking at you with great menace, fury, a twinge of fear for the treasure that is now missing from his vault. Let's switch back to the elemental plane of air.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3666.114

I know, I'm so sorry. What is Glitzy doing with Gino and Orla as you guys are making your way down into the center of this castle?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3679.978

My plan is going really well.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3685.467

Let me paint a picture for you. This center column or tower that you're coming down the exterior of passes a large framed doorway that looks into what is clearly the bed chambers of Arcus that was.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3702.432

Moving, continuing on your way down, it would lead into a central chamber, some sort of a living area where you can assume that this is maybe where there's a kitchen or a dining room, maybe a reading room, these kinds of things. Through that space, you can see that there are two large additional towers.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3721.598

And knowing that you have very little time, I'm going to assume that you are moving quickly as you continue to explore, waiting to hear news from Knuckles. And in this time, you make your way through that space and it's just as I described, they're living items. They're mounted hunting animals on the walls.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3741.01

Going through, you can take the left tower, you can take the shorter tower or the taller tower. I will say. I like shorter.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3759.642

The three of you make your way into the shorter of the two towers, and this appears to be some great aviary. As you walk in, the musk and smell of animals hits you. This is what clearly was Arcus's sort of pet room, and along the entire interior of the walls, there are a number of sleeping animals.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3785.032

each one of them seems to be a large griffin huge griffins who are all sort of slumbering and um uh waiting uh some of them sort of look up and look at you curiously are they behind anything they are they are they're in their um their play pens for lack of a better word uh i think these are terrible flesh-eating animals right

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3834.404

I don't believe that extra planar communication is possible with shell phones from Galtico. Maybe they are with other spaces, but in this moment, no.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3857.036

Roll a d20. All right. Holy shit. Natural 20. You got a natural 20?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3864.877

You got a natural 20? Well, you hear it extra loud. As soon as the door starts to slip, you guys are quite a ways away from the vault door and the button at this point, but you hear Knuckles respond as soon as you hear this message. I'm still holding on, right? Yeah, you're holding on, but you're being pulled along with it as it's starting to creep open. This is real bad.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3970.195

We're gonna go back to Knuckles, but I just wanted to hand you this so you can start thinking about it. And when you pull a card, don't forget to say, don't fuck me, Kimma.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

3986.389

Uh, Knuckles, you hear that they're gonna come and save you, but, uh, you're now staring at an armor, uh, uh, an army of, uh, motionless armors and, uh, Austin, Austalin, and he, um, he looks at you. Now, what you gonna do about my missing treasure, friend?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

40.602

a heavy iron reinforced door that appears to be closed and locked. I'm going to walk up to the door and open it. As soon as the door closed, you have jumped from wherever it was in the top of this building to some other plane of existence, staring out down the mountain, down the citadel, all the way around. You seem to be in a completely new place. place surrounded by mountains of treasure.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4012.478

Yeah, I see the drow. I was just checking if the drow still existed in my mind, and they do.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4029.085

I don't want to hear a word out of your mouth. We're going to sort this out, but we're going to do it my way. And he pulls into his pouch what looks like an orb of metal, and he whips it around softball style and shoots it at you. I need you to make... Oh, he gets to make a ranged spell attack against you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4067.655

Okay, on a hit, you suddenly, this ball just reaches your chest and then almost comes to a stop before elaborate iron bars start to come out like arms and hug and twist around you. You've seen this happen once before. When you were in the game room, you saw the drunkard who got immediately snapped up and pulled, and this is exactly the thing that has happened to you now. As you...

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4094.031

As much as you are trying to resist, it is magically containing you and pulling you into a armor, an iron band of different scraps and stuff. You are basically motionless and not paralyzed, but unable to get out of the way, but you can still speak.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4120.731

Tell me why that is. What happened to my treasure? What exactly is going on here?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4137.461

Make a deception check. Oh.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4157.267

I can do that surprisingly well. I have like a B plus. Yeah, all right, all right, all right. What kind of magical item?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4174.269

How did you make your way in here? Who are you?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4181.833

The Beholder. How can I trust any word you have to say?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4191.838

You could be trying to pull one over my eyes, friend.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4199.266

And why exactly is that?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

420.286

Oh, there's a plan. Is it over? You hear the sound of this voice boom out and it doesn't echo, but nor does it seem to disappear into a vacuum. So loud and booming is the sound of this voice.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4220.836

Now what happened on the other side of this vault then? Where's Arcus? He would have come running.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4245.553

We're gonna get to the bottom of this. He turns and he whispers to one of the armors. and starts to walk back to the lift and walks inside and starts to make its way down. Now, my friend is gonna go and get one of our chief security officers. He's gonna do a little magic magic on you. Make sure you tell him the truth.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4270.622

If you are, then there'll be a great reward and we'll find that treasure together, understand?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4289.512

Make one more deception check. He rolled a natural one on the first one.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4310.174

All right, but no funny business. I know how uncomfortable those things are. I fell into one of my own inventions once. He turns and he reaches behind the neck, and you feel a little click, and it suddenly collapses back into a ball, which he catches in his hand very dexterously. Now, if you don't mind, we're gonna stay real close. We're gonna stay inside this vault, understand?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4341.55

But that's what I just said.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4343.834

Now, we're gonna wait for my chief security officer and then he's gonna put a zone of truth on you, all right? All right. And we'll get to the bottom of this.

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For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4357.081

You walk backwards into the vault and you can see how picked clean this space is. There's a few dirty coins in the corners, perhaps, and perhaps one empty scabbard or sheath on the wall for a magical dagger of some kind. You're thinking about the fact that on your person is everything that used to be in this room. And that's where we'll cut back to the rest of you. What are you three doing?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

439.138

Do you approach the edge to look down? This is a pretty wide open citadel top.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4435.931

Before you look at that card that you've just selected. Oh, yeah. This one.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

444.842

You're effectively on top of a tower and looking over the tessellated edges of this tower beyond the sort of columns that make the formation of this vault room or what would have been the vault room before this transformation, you can see that there are two other smaller towers just adjacent as if you were on a castle of some kind. But you don't see any heads emerging just yet or anything.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4441.517

Yeah, that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to ask you to take a different card with my Twisted Dread.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4471.81

Gino casts paper towels out of nowhere.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4491.075

Okay. You agreed to one card as per the magic of the deck, and only you will be able to trigger its magic. You turn the card from its vellum side to its face, and you look at your fate, your new destiny. Dungeon?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4554.768

I did it because I wanted to make sure that whatever the shuffling that you were doing was accurate. I'll be completely honest.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4569.184

You look at this card and... Oh, that's probably a good thing.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4586.873

The world disappears. you feel nothing. There's no conscious thought. There's blankness, and for the two of you, you see him turn this card and suddenly drop it as his form disappears, and it feathers down to the ground, falling like a card, disappearing into, not disappearing, but just landing on the ground, ready to be reshuffled into the deck.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4629.955

And so that you have full player knowledge. Donjon, you disappear and become entombed in a state of suspended animation in an extra-dimensional sphere. Everything you were wearing and carrying stays behind in the space you occupied when you disappear.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4647.805

You remain imprisoned until you are found and removed from the sphere. You can't be located by divination magic, but a wish spell can reveal the location of your prison. You draw no more cards.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

469.056

You just hear the sound semi-distantly, and you're not sure how long it'll take a creature this size, depending on the size of this castle, to get here.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4710.088

Oh no, my bottle of pills on the ground. You talk into it, and you hear your own voice echo on the floor.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4764.77

okay well then you got to take the cards all right should i give them a little shuffle yep and uh let's resolve what the other card does oh okay so that we can put it back in oh comment comment what is this you can put that one back in if you single-handedly defeat the next hostile monster or group of monsters you encounter you gain experience points enough to gain a level

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4829.603

Roll a d6 for me. Oh, fuck.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4839.255

You worry if you turn this face that you'll disappear and end up wherever Geno is. You have no idea the nature of this deck, what it could possibly mean. But you turn the vellum face to see the image. Instead of blackness and darkness, there is what appears to be a beautiful illustration of Moon's face. And... It goes from waxing, just a thin crescent, to waning, and then revolves.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4872.937

And then revolves through full moon again, and then it revolves through full moon again before finally going dark in the face of the card, and the magic extinguishes.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4885.881

You feel this sudden revelation in your heart. You feel this growing sense of power. as though you have not just the ability to make a one wish, but three.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

4972.714

He's in some strange, he's like a super monkey ball right now. Just like rolling through some impossibility. There aren't even bananas out here.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

500.872

We didn't get them down.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5060.117

In 1.5 seconds. You are now level four.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5072.583

You have the option of drawing two additional cards.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5100.145

You do. And I would say I'm not, as a DM, going to say, like, make a Charisma saving throw or a Wisdom saving throw to see if you're compelled. You just suddenly, you always knew you could draw from this deck, but the idea is planted in your mind like a seed in a field. A carrot field.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5159.57

The sound of a bell toll suddenly resounds around you, and you turn, knowing what you will see before you see it. An avatar of death. A ghostly humanoid skeleton, tattered black robe, carrying a spectral scythe at its side. It appears just ten feet from you and raises its bony finger and hand outstretched to you. And you feel that...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

517.041

For some reason, I think there are Twizzies in there or something. Oh, those are my Twizzies. Oh.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5203.925

You must defend yourself or succumb to this avatar of beyond the veil. We're going to have to do some combat.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5237.219

Yeah, you just turn and you see an avatar of death. You hear a voice boom out as well. Glitzy, you hear this voice. This fight is only between us.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5250.924

Between Orla and death. You know that if you interfere with the battle that bad things will happen from just the sound of this crackling voice of this avatar. I'm going to switch back over to jazzy combat music.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5292.792

Maybe I'm the one with the gambling addiction. What is your maximum hit point amount?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5310.765

You don't get it. All right, roll for initiative.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5319.091

You go first. It starts to swing at you and raises its scythe up, but you're a fast rabbit, and you're able to make your first choice as to how you want to deal with this sudden threat.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5350.92

Okay, it has to... I think it's a wisdom saving throw.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5377.196

Prepare to face your mortality. And you say this and it goes... I am just an avatar! And it falls over, and in its drapes of tattered cloth, starts to roll around on the floor, unable to do anything. On its turn, can it make a save to try and stop?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5402.463

Unless there's anything else you want to do.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5408.689

This time it succeeds.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5413.232

Oh, it hadn't taken any damage. I took a natural 17 on my roll, so it finally succeeds.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5419.215

But it lost a turn, and it's prone now.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5454.655

We've roughed up weirdos in Rogue before. A ranged attack against a prone creature will be at disadvantage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5460.338

Because of the rules of Dungeons and Dragons.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5465.08

No, they can dodge as well. You have advantage on prone creatures if you do a melee attack.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5476.287

I'm assuming I can just like... Yeah, you can literally just jump on it and start doing this. I'm going to do exactly that. Jail shank it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5491.072

I had given you my prison shank. With those noises.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

550.849

So you're looking for portable holes, and you've heard of somebody who has a lot of magical items, somebody who is actually a tremendously smart and clever wizard, if not a little bit forgetful. And in the search for this person, you have finally been able to identify, talking to many of your underground contacts.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5507.499

I will say that just hits, which is table parlance for that's its AC.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5521.708

It's not the airbender avatar. That's how bad it is. You jump on the creature and you stab into it and you feel like you make a good amount of damage. It sinks into the ground incorporeally and disappearing and then immediately shifts back up right next to you with its scythe and swings down for an attack. It's going to do that and... I hate you all, by the way.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5558.212

I see why this is scary. I don't roll to hit, it just hits.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5571.914

You take five slashing damage as the scythe swings through you. It doesn't cut into you. It goes through you, but you feel the idea of slashing in your soul at the deepest, coldest part. And that feeling is so horrifying and painful, you take an additional seven necrotic damage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5595.168

Yep, yep, yep. I mean, you should subtract it from your HP, but... I'm adding negative numbers.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5605.737

You're go again. It's standing in front of you, having just swung, and it's clearly coming around for another...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5626.031

I didn't make her do this. I didn't call her a punk bitch.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5660.631

He gets a four plus three, seven.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5674.211

I will remember to do that. Is that until the beginning of your next turn?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5679.153

Before the end of your next turn. It starts to swing around and it... And it swipes through at you with its scythe again. You take... seven slashing damage and an additional two necrotic damage as it swipes through you from the side again, and it hurts. You realize that you're facing mortality, that you could die from this.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5707.038

If you aren't able to kill this thing very quickly, and you think you're doing progress, but you have no idea how tough this creature could possibly be, you're starting to feel a little scared, and the music is helping.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5743.512

Make an intelligence check.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5749.26

I would say that's an advantage if you want.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5760.311

Even between five and 10, you know that he has challenged you to like a duel of death. That his, not quarry, but his reason for existence via the magic of the card is to kill you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

577.057

And it turns out your target, your aim over the week that you're preparing for this mission, the one you're on now, is looking for someone named Tootles. A loxodon, a very learned and wise wizard who keeps a tremendous spellbook tome at her side at all times.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5774.1

A charmed creature might make him like you more as he kills you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5781.066

He actually sank through the floor and then emerged standing.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5790.493

You pull out your darts and whip them forward. That misses, unfortunately. It goes through the rib holes and out the back of his cape and he swings down again. This is going to be six slashing and one necrotic.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5888.443

That's going to... Wisdom 15. Wisdom 15.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5894.646

That is really, really good.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5898.428

He has a plus three wisdom. I rolled a 15.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5904.731

He gets a 14. He falls to the floor, laughing at your pathetic attempts to hold on to life. It's your turn again.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

592.705

This is your quarry for not only are there a million spells that you'd be able to find within this tome, but as a bookmark, she uses these portable holds, these unbelievably magical items. And so one late night, you call all of your other rhino folk friends, the other bouncers that you've met over the years, perhaps cousins, nephews, that sort of thing. And in this moment, you are in an alley.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5937.743

You hear this from the... So that bird that whispers, wherever that bird might be, it's not Knuckles, it's not Glitzy, but that bird, an avatar of death is summoned because it aided the person in the duel, and they're having their own fight now. But you do get the advice.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5966.71

Oh, it was a 17 and then a notch down to an 8. You're good to go.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5974.652

This damage is actually starting to seem to be slowing down. You feel that if you could do one more point of health damage to it, that you will have won this duel. Holy. But it's turn and once again, it uses its incorporeal movement to disappear into the terrain itself.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

5997.88

I didn't do the one from the previous round. So it...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6003.976

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She cast Hideous Laughter, and then I said it's her turn again, and that's when she just used Mind Slipper again. So I should have rolled previously. Yes, at the end of its turn.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6013.002

I failed that. So now I'm going to roll again at the end of my turn to see if I still am laughing.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6021.868

Now I will do the minus d4 again with 14. You just failed. And I rolled a fucking another four. So he fails again.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6032.683

With the humor of a mom, apparently, it's your turn once again. He's still laughing and prone on the ground.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6061.42

It's intelligence. He has a plus three.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6068.886

I'll take my d20 back. And you use it. It's screaming and laughing in insanity, staring up at the darkening sky.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6078.714

It takes six damage, and this avatar... dust in the wind. Holy fuck.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6099.44

I will say, you actually don't have any visible injuries.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6103.263

Siding through you is your face with mortality, not with physical damage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6122.672

And in this moment, yeah, you don't have to draw if you don't want to. You have full player agency.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6130.935

It's a weird way to say it. It should be like you have to draw two more cards, but...

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6136.676

it just says that you can take two more cards beyond your declared draws is there like a limit where you can only draw one card per player no it's sort of like the way that we do twists of fate when in icebound where you have to say how many you're doing before you start drawing so i usually i'm going to draw three cards and then you take the first one and then you take the next one and then you take the next one but there's nothing stopping you from declaring more cards yeah i picked one but i didn't declare that i was only going to pick one

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6166.095

You said you were gonna draw one card, which is what you did.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6175.318

You said, I'll take an additional card, and that would be, in my mind, satisfying the rule of declaring that you're gonna draw one card.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6193.764

And let's take a coffee break.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

623.366

and waiting for this person to turn, and as she does, there she is, you see not just one Loxodon, this woman that you're after, but another female Loxodon at her size, at her side, you're not sure of the name, as well as what is clearly

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6248.436

And don't forget to snag all of the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. Gino, you turn the card to see the face of your next fate, your destiny, and the card vanishes from your hand.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6271.586

And you recognize the smell. You recognize the sight. You are back in the second floor of Gino's Deli. You look around and you can see Knuckles standing there, his arms up. You can see Glitzy. You can see Orla, who's looking pale and terrified, but everyone is alive and you all four find yourself exactly where Glitzy wished you to be.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6374.175

You're holding them. I slap them down. Oh, well, thank goodness. There is not enough space in this tiny apartment for a six-foot hole. But to be fair, I did wish for us and all of the- Does that include anything that didn't fit in the- Oh, Gino, you're entirely nude. All of your things have been left in the element.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6390.411

Would anyone care for any old fashioned- Yeah, all of your things have been left in the element.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

640.68

a well-armored, almost holy man of a Loxodon at the other hip, and then adjacent to him, sort of rocking back and forth, a wild, strange Loxodon that you can hear his voice before you see him.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6414.651

Your bathrobe is right there where you left it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6544.58

This is an enhanced Donjon.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6559.945

This black card spells disaster.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6564.146

Your soul is drawn from your body. You see the entire genus Delia disappear into a very small place. Almost like you're traveling through the astral plane. You see Galtica. You see the curvature of Vantress as you disappear into nothingness. I have known all time. Your soul, your body stays where it is. So you just, all of you see Orla just collapse and hit the ground.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6595.015

The disgusting drab carpet of Geno's apartment. And your soul is drawn and contained in an object in a place of the dungeon master's choice. One or more powerful beings guard this place. While your soul is trapped in this way, your body is incapacitated. A wish spell cannot restore your soul, but the spell reveals the location of the object that holds it. You draw no more cards.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6629.628

You suddenly get this knowledge.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6643.966

I would say that your second spell occurs and is wasted. A wish spell cannot restore a spell.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6655.652

Oh, but it does reveal the location of the object that holds it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

669.551

Uh, uh, stop there. The Holy One stands forward and steps forward and seems to try to stop you, but in this instant, you are surrounded by rhino folk after rhino folk after rhino folk, a gang of them. What do you want?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

67.609

And it's not the clicking of the elevator that you hear anymore, but the loud thump, thump, thump of some massive creature walking. On the eastern shores of Yona there lies the great city of Galtica, staring out into a dark and turbulent ocean. But Galtica is not where the next chapter in this story resumes.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6734.536

Okay, there we go. Can I have another glass of milk? I come back after my R&D and you're drawing more cards?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6751.866

I see, I see. No, no, no, no. It will come to you before we end tonight's session. Go ahead. Sun.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6844.579

Okay. You are suddenly your level four. You feel suddenly much stronger. But more importantly, you look down and... Your penis is gone. Your penis is sheathed by a beautiful belt. And you recognize this belt. This is the belt that Arcus was wearing. And you suddenly realize that you feel stronger than you've ever felt. You have a belt of cloud giant strength.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6880.672

You have a 27 strength score.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6885.095

Oh, this is going to be good.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6919.437

Yeah, give him the regular card. Yeah, the next card has to happen, and then if you want to.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6936.406

Increase another one of your ability scores by two. The score cannot exceed 20, but it can exceed 20, but cannot exceed 24.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6957.868

I feel so sure. Here we go. Are you burning the cards? Yes.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6963.092

I think Knuckles is on gear.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

6976.803

Suddenly, jewelry from nowhere rains down upon you. 25 pieces of jewelry, each worth 2,000 gold pieces, suddenly appear at your feet.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7001.531

Which is actually very little wealth compared to the millions that you currently have on your person.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7026.135

You turn and look at the face of the card. Glitzy, in this moment, as you are watching this wealth get poured down, you get this image in your mind. Yeah, that sounds right. This image. You suddenly feel transported. You feel like you're looking at an extra planar space. You're looking at the Feywild.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7049.267

You can tell just by its ethereal and beautiful quality, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7056.694

This is the court of autumn. And you fly forward and you realize you're in the central city. And as you get closer and closer, you realize that the object is the broche on one of the arch fae of this Court of Autumn.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7087.77

Oh, they make great French toast out of that. This image hits you. It's a brioche.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7107.062

A brooch? A brooch? Brooch. Oh, I... Sorry, it's a brioche. It's a brioche! She's eating a sandwich.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7117.959

This knowledge suddenly comes to you. And what question did you have?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7131.512

All forms of wealth that you carry your own other than magic items are lost to you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7140.626

Portable property vanishes. Businesses, buildings, and land you own are lost in a way that alters reality the least. Any documentation that proves that you should own something is also lost to this card. The jewelry disappears. The Dwarven belt, the belt of cloud giant strength disappears.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

715.44

Well, I do, and Tootle speaks up, and she holds up the tome. You can see two of these slips of very fine, silky texture, very thin pieces of fabric leafing out from the top of this tome.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7163.179

All forms, yeah, you're right. Other than magic items. So you keep your portable holes.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7167.744

And you keep your... But all the shit in it is gone. All of the shit in it would be gone.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7178.638

return the card. No, no, no, I guess it's burned. I don't know how to fucking rule this shit.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7192.985

That's your final wish.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7207.773

Yeah, Ruin would not be in. Until after he comes back.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7213.797

Put it in the burn pile. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7223.023

You see, you get an image of ruin. I wish I got a king.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7229.044

Yeah, fan them out. Thank you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7234.505

The gems are back and you'd have to check the portable holes to see if everything is there, but you suspect that it is even though Knuckles seems sudden panic in his face.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7251.164

You are cursed. You look at the terrifying image on this card, and in this moment, you suddenly realize that this is bad luck. Your streak has ended. Even though the image of all of the wealth being lost isn't true and reality, the thought will haunt you of losing such great wealth for the rest of your life.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7278.416

You've inherited so much from your heist that it's this fear that will cause a negative two penalty on all saving throws moving forward.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7291.459

Only a god or the magic of the fates card, which you can also draw, can end this curse.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7307.547

You did commit to a certain number of draws, didn't you?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7317.536

You have one left. Yeah, it ruined but replaced by a wish.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7321.299

So you must draw another card.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7338.732

As long as, hey, why don't you transfer all of your wealth over to me? They don't call him Wally and McGillicuddy for nothing. Exactly right.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7357.566

You drop back down to level four.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7361.988

You must discard this card, and you must draw from the deck again, counting both draws as one of your declared draws.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7408.77

I think that's where we call the night session.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7414.782

Oh, the fates. So the fates, reality's fabric unravels and spins anew, allowing you to avoid or erase one event as if it never happened. You can use the card's magic as soon as you draw the card or at any other time before you die. So you don't have to use it.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7427.472

You don't have to do it in order to get your curse removed. You could use it to do whatever you like, undo an event.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7457.583

That's a good point. Everyone knows what you're saying when you say this in reality.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7481.458

Yeah, you're supposed to use it immediately.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7492.922

You feel that you have a, for the first time in the reality of the world, you have a twist of fate.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

752.341

Please, they probably just only want to observe the portable hold.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7525.191

How do you solve this problem? How do you anticipate this moment and the emotional insanity rollercoaster that you've been on?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7535.638

I will actually, before you, before you do this, I will ask if you were serious about,

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7593.516

You have this moment of foresight.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7598.318

You have this moment of foresight, and you go down there and... It's really dirty in the Feywild.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

760.565

No, no, Yancy. It is always important to trust your brothers and sisters.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7607.903

You go down, and these are the meanest quail, the meanest chickens. But you know how to handle them, and you're able to push them aside easily with your arms.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7621.471

You grab the brioche, and you feel that you have the loaf that contains Orla's soul.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7643.707

This is the second time during this weird ass three shot that you've forced a sandwich down an unconscious person's throat.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7667.277

You feed the unconscious body of Orla.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7677.472

But it's not sold brioche. You know how Glitzy can mispronounce words sometimes. She meant brooch, and she meant the Feywild.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7689.718

She meant bro-kay. Oh, you meant baroque? Oh, gosh.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7697.601

I don't know why, why can't I say this word?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7706.956

Your body remains... Yeah, I'm not well.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7714.903

You know, if I had an... They'll have to continue feeding you until they get the soul back.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

773.176

All of the world's creatures are brothers and sisters in the eyes of Gigantis.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7757.182

Oh, yeah, it would be easy enough to go outside and grab the... You boy would go by the biggest goose.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7809.183

He runs. He doesn't even see, like, take the gold piece. Like, it falls at his feet, and he's just like, and runs as fast as his little feet will take him.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7836.065

And that's where we'll end tonight's session. I tried to end it like 18 times. A little early tonight, but you guys solved the problem very smartly.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7861.757

And you've got, like, a timer on that friendship. So, like, he was only out for, like, six minutes. So every time you pop him out, yeah, yeah, every time you pop him out, there's, like, a beholder timer. He's hurt. He's very hurt. But you've got a pretty good item there.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7882.681

I will say that almost certainly you begin planning your next last heist. A heist into the Feywild. A heist to get the Broke.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7909.448

That deck of many things couldn't have gone better. What a fucking outrageous magic item.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7922.801

I would never give it in a real campaign.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7926.825

It has to be something like this. If you do it in a real campaign, it has to be like a deck of many things dream. None of it really happens.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

793.38

I'm glad to hear it. And you guys are talking, and in this moment, you've already grabbed the tone.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

799.4

You grab the tome, and the rest of the story plays out very quickly. Your rhino folk friends are on top of that. It's not just you.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

7991.223

Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avantris podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier or higher to unlock Shroud Over Saltmarsh, a patron-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. You can find that at patreon.com slash legendsofavantris.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

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If you want to chat about the episode with the Avantris community, join us on Discord at legendsofavantris.com slash discord. We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So make sure you follow our socials at legendsofavantris.com slash social.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

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And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5th edition supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

814.421

What quickly becomes a single item that you need to steal, it becomes a complete theft. And they are left with nothing, penniless in the alley, and you find yourself running and diving into the shadows, trying to escape. And that's where we'll pick back up.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

863.047

You slap down these portable holes, one and then the next, and the rest of you see the magical item effect take place. A six-foot round hole, 10 feet deep, suddenly appears in the stone floor. It's identical to the cartoon Acme product where all of a sudden there's a magic, yeah, you know the one.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

889.991

They do it in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, why can't I do it?

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

893.854

Oh man. So I can't, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

904.58

And it becomes immediately apparent. The four of you have but moments to get as much loot into these two holes as possible, shoveling and pushing any of the magical items and any of the items as you might.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

924.627

Make a perception check at advantage.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

966.057

With a 22, you glance around and hanging on magical nothing are a lot of different swords, a lot of different sets of armor, helms. There's a whole stack, shelf after shelf after shelf of tome after tome after tome. magical scrolls, map cases, these sorts of items.

Legends of Avantris

For What It's Worth | Ep. 3 | Heist Story: Part 3

984.221

But in the exact opposite side of you, as the three of you are starting to deal with the rest of the treasure and hauling, you know, bucket and bucket of gold coin into these portable holes, you see a small pedestal, and on top, what looks like a velvet, not velvet, vellum playing card stack right at the top there.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10024.883

I would say that you have a chance of making that connection roll a nature or arcana check. Or medicine.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1006.78

Tyshen will start to move in a way that looks very familiar to you. You start to see him make some gestures like this, and you realize he has learned a few things since his time in Drakkar. He begins to cast Create Bonfire. And he has learned this from the Frosthammer clan watching the other kobolds who had this same trick up their sleeves to avoid the need for having to carry fuel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10128.455

and then all of a sudden you are in there digging into his skin and I would say that having done so much damage that you do notice that your cuts are not being healed, the wounds that you're applying, something about the nature of the fire seems to make a connection in that moment.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10221.59

That's outrageous.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10245.914

You smash into this creature and you feel that you have killed it. It dies. There's no other way to say this. You crunch, you hit it in its head and spike it down and when it lands, there's a brief moment of silence where you smash into it and it starts to fall backwards and you're all waiting for that.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10269.875

is starting to regenerate, but because of the fire damage that Yornir was able to apply to it in this moment, it does not regenerate. Instead, it falls down to the side. You attack number three?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10308.723

I assumed that you were closer, and that you actually backed up, but let's put you at the 60 feet marker. Because I haven't moved, so I would be 60 feet from... And you'd even be a little closer at that point. Yeah, that's fine.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1035.806

And all of a sudden, this massive emerging flames out of nowhere ignites in one spot of the ice. And very quickly, you can see underneath it, the heat immediately starts to pool and turn to water. And he continues to do this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10398.213

I do one thing well, and I'm going to do it really well.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10442.047

So Sled's turn. You were at 15 miles per hour. It was two, four, two, four, and then whatever the third one was. I didn't know if it was either 15. Yeah, two, four, 15. Yeah. Because you're still grinding along, you're gonna go half that speed, so I will say that you're going... Oh fuck. 10 squares. I need a slight miscalculation. Now, you don't move, they move. And Tysha. Oh no.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10471.175

So you're all going to go... Hold on. Fuck! You're all gonna... Everything that's not on the sled is going to start to move because of the amount of speed. Because of how fucking fast, actually, that is. And so this is gonna go... Ten squares. Five, ten, five, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. As suddenly this acceleration happens. But Taishen was still wearing his sled belt.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10501.474

Oh, that's right. You're right. goes prone and lands and begins getting dragged behind. And because I'm an insane person, I created dragging behind a vehicle rules just for this encounter.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10522.065

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you have a white bee, then you can get rid of the web. Yeah, if we got it, we got it. If not, no big deal. Yeah, that works. As things start to move very quickly, all of a sudden, that friction that you've been experiencing unlocks, and the sled pulls forward, and you all watch the cavern walls start to fly past you faster, faster, faster, faster, faster.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1054.097

One minute, two minutes, it starts to push down and force its way into the ice, and he's effectively creating a shaft to try and dig down into the water to see if you can make a large fishing hole through this method.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10545.122

Top of the round, Taishen is up. He has to start his turn, and going at the speed that he's going, he's going to take 1d6 bludgeoning damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10555.746

But he has to make a dexterity saving throw to see if he can kind of ski it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10572.879

I don't have a DC, and that's the problem with this system. So I'm gonna say that the DC's 10, and that he succeeds. He takes half of three, so he's gonna take one bludgeoning damage as he is initially tugged and pulled to the ground, but he's already holding onto the rope and beginning to get dragged along behind it. For your information, since you're piloting Taishan,

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10593.537

The 30 feet that he is rolling, that he's being dragged, to pull himself up the rope if he wanted to would just be considered difficult terrain.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10607.86

Yeah. No, it's just part of your movement. If you want to not move and pull your way up, you can use your action bonus action and just continue to be dragging. You're trying to stay on your feet. It's very uncharted forum. That's very fun.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10622.817

Oh, yeah, yeah, not even close. You're good, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10629.822

It's difficult terrain, and he had to get up, so he... Well, he's still dragged, right?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10708.993

It's a better round. And my rule is always one round before I reveal the AC. It's 16 for the ice roll.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10758.188

like streamers and you see the creature ignite into flames. The web is still just starting to come down like molten candy and it covers him. He watches, he struggles down to the ground and starts to disappear into a pinpoint. You have the sense that he ain't getting back up. Love that.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10780.601

And that's his turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10790.264

I'm going to breathe fire. You know what we're gonna do? You know what we're gonna do? Not this round, but next round, we're gonna make it a little easier on you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10842.121

A dex save, he did not succeed. So 15 points of fire damage. So that's gonna be 15.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10894.797

Uh, it is going to, uh, use... I thought for sure it was my turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10965.362

So you'll only take one of those hits. Yep, well done. Then. So my technical parries. After you take 12 points of slashing damage, and five points of cold damage, let me know.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1098.553

You're able to avoid the constitution saving throw that was inevitable, except for this bonfire, and it takes a long time. Taishan is sweating from exertion by the time it's done. You are ready from minute one, but it isn't until I would say two and a half hours goes by that he is able to melt through the 15 foot thick sheet of ice that is above the ocean floor, above the ocean surface.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

10987.229

So you would take eight points flat, and then it's going to use it, replace its next action to attempt to shove you five feet. You need to make an acrobatics or athletics check?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11038.747

Oh, nice. But you get the intimidation effect. It slashes at you, and you feel that cold, and you make a constitution saving throw to see if you have disadvantage on your attack for the next round. But it intimidatingly pushes into you, and you get the sense that, suicidingly, it is attempting to push and pull you off the sled. 18.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11062.646

You're fine, you do not have disadvantage on your attacks for the next round. That is the conclusion of the monster's turn. Yorner, you just went, Scrim, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11169.375

And that is really cool. That's great. Because fire damage will be important mechanically in this fight.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11202.626

You endeavor to distract it with pain.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11206.867

That'll be your whole turn. Barnabas, you're up. You see Scrim make all of this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11233.397

While he's making his turn, Scrim, what did we decide the speed we were at?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11240.365

I know it was 2-4, and then I think you said 15. We're at 15 right now. 15 miles an hour. Thank you, thank you. I'm going to remember that.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11279.832

Holy shit! You punch in and what does it look like as you kill and fell this troll?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1131.548

But very soon. I'd be helping. A perfectly smooth, yard-like tube has been punctured, pushed through, and finally getting almost out of the distance of his ability to cast the spell, he pauses for a moment and wipes his brow, and you are able to dive in. you are hit by the surge of water, and you find yourself suddenly floating in a different kind of cold.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11313.708

Fae, this and this immediately fall off the sled and are careening down the tunnel as you are speeding away towards them. Queenie, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11328.544

What are you doing?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11342.255

That's fine.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11345.636

The sled moves forward, and it's just because I decided that, you know what? If you want your turn to mean something, I think that what we could do is we could have the sled go first, because you're about to collide an additional troll.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11398.563

There are more on the sides that don't manage to scrape their way onto the thing, which is to say, get rid of the other troll tokens because you are now speeding along. Oh, we gotta speed up. So, very quickly, I had to do a little bit of research about, like, what is miles per hour? And I found a really good, helpful thumb. A trick of thumb. Rule of thumb. Rule of thumb. Rule of thumb.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11421.457

Rule of cool. A rule of cool thumb, thumb cool. I love cool thumbs. Which is to say that whenever you want to ask yourself what you're moving in miles per hour in a given round, you just divide by ten. So if you move 30 feet per round, you are going 3 miles per hour. If you dash and go 60, you are going 6 miles per hour.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11443.428

Unfortunately, when you're simulating things like 20 miles per hour, 40 miles per hour, 80 miles per hour, that's like 30 fucking squares. And we don't have enough fucking battle map to do that, which is why everything is what it is, right? But when this is stationary, all of a sudden, all these fucking minis that aren't on the sled are rack rocketing. They just keep zipping by.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11463.145

So all of that goes 30 squares back at the speed that we're technically going at, which is 15 miles per hour. And that's 150 feet per round is how fast we're currently moving. And if you were to go to 30 miles per hour, you'd be going 300 feet per round. If you were going to go 50 miles per hour, you'd be going 500.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11481.984

It gets fucking crazy how many squares these... 100 squares would be 50 miles per hour on a battle map of this size. Jeez. So I just want to give it some scale here. Come around. Right. Amazing. As these ogres are flying past, how fast they are moving in comparison relative to you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11501.621

So that being said, these three collide. They are hurt by their injury, but they are stuck against the pilot. You are now racing through this culture of these insane ice trolls, and now you may take your full turn because all of a sudden they are healing and starting to crawl up the front of this insane ice sled.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11539.18

That is what you do.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11555.114

And I need to make sure that I have four, five, and six right here. And they have this much health points. and I'm going to roll for each of them. Four fails. Does 13 succeed?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11572.265

Nope. Does 16 succeed?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11574.907

Okay, so only six survives. Four and five are entangled by the honey.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11608.877

I don't know what Mace is thinking here, anyway. Well, because only recently did you get your focus. Oh, the guano. He didn't have the sulfur. It's sulfur for it. Yeah. Or is it guano and sulfur? It's back guano. I thought it was sulfur. Maybe it's both. No, it's back guano. It's just old back guano.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1162.629

Not biting, dry, icy cold with wind and howling all direction, but a triton cold, a cold that actually feels immediately like home for you. What are you doing?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11634.562

A tiny ball of bad guano and sulfur.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11743.005

Okay. Hunka hunka burning meat. They are on fire already. You are defending yourselves against these trolls to the best of your ability and seeming to be quite effective.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11773.261

Ten for five, okay. And four and five are restrained, so I can't... Yeah, yeah, four and five are restrained. What can I do with six? He can probably climb up the grate. Okay, he's going to climb up the grate and he's going to go after Scrap.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11811.735

So I dodge, you get out of the way. Seethrough Ice Troll with its insane underdark skin comes screaming at you with a rage you've never seen before. What does that sound like?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11828.006

It is on fire and it is screaming towards you, but it fails to hit you. It tries to bite you. It gets nothing. It finds no purchase. Much to its frustration, yeah, you tuck and roll. And as you tuck and roll, you look forward and you realize that in the distance, The illumination of the tunnel being what it is doesn't continue. Instead, it seems to sort of arc up like this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11860.268

We're gonna get some mad air. You're gonna get some mad air. What is that? Oh my god.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11872.853

And you continue to fly forward. That's the conclusion. The monster's turned to your ear, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11915.241

18 points of fire damage, wow. That's so much fire damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

11963.435

That's fair, that's your full name.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12037.131

It's like a six-foot penis. You see the ramp coming up as you are making the stab. You stab in and you're looking at it and you're like, are we going fast enough for this ramp? Shit.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12098.772

You guys are very effective, is what I will say.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12108.601

Do you say anything?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12149.54

You guess that you have about 15 seconds before you hit the ramp. Real time. Oh.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12228.204

That will hit. Uh, what are you hitting? Which one?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12279.102

A 27 on top of the amount of damage you just did? Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12285.185

You're beating the shit out of these trolls. Just roll a d20 for me. Get a 10 or higher.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12293.359

Okay, it's at one hit point. I was rolling to see if I could give you that extra hit point, but it survived. It's holding on. And it's holding on. It is clearly on the edge of death.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12304.625

From playing against the web and scraping forward full of wrath, but... I don't think I can bonus action to finish him off.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12333.386

Yeah, this is great.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12348.272

You do that. Up to 30. Oh, we were at. We were at 15, so we go to 30. Then we go to 30.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12357.889

Thank you for doing that. You all feel the acceleration, and you are seeing more trolls fly by. They're attempting to crawl through the spaces that they punched through in the cavern walls, but they're not reaching you in time, especially at this heightened acceleration. Do you want to do anything else with your turn?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12382.454

Nobody's being dragged, nobody's being pushed. We're all good and we're in the top of the round. Yeah, that's all I got. Tysha?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12444.472

That's good, yeah. So that's this person and that's... You're supposed to be going ham on... Fjord dies, and immediately starts getting crushed underneath the pilot. Oh no!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12513.883

Oh, both of these guys. They come down from the ceiling, and they're able to... Oh! Oh!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1252.22

Okay, one moment, give me 30 seconds. What are you all talking about as you wait for Barnabus to send back in? Tyshen is occasionally making sure that the ice doesn't freeze over, but you have to wait for him to sort of recover a little bit. There's a roaring bonfire around you like there has been for this period of time.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12527.474

They land down on the surface of the sled, and you can see that you are in this colony, almost. This is so bad. There is a huge number of them dropping down at this point, trying, but not all of them are succeeding. Some of them are slipping on the rails and tumbling off and sailing away, disappearing into tiny figures as you are moving, as quickly as you are moving, but...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12593.846

This is not a good thing. 11 points of slashing damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12605.462

I happen to roll maximum on the cold. Basically fate. Okay, yeah. Six cold, you said, right? 16 cold. I rolled maximum on the cold. So that's a big... So he's got some concentration in it again.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12631.674

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bite on Scrim. Going to miss.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12636.415

Then... This is not good. I'm still fancy footworking. Five is still stuck where he is. He can make a saving throw to try to unstick himself, right? I'm an idiot. Well, no, there is no more web.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12665.771

That's going to miss. So, like, they got to be, like, climbing on the side, right? Exactly right, exactly right. Nine points of cold damage to Taishen.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12675.575

Yeah. Oh, did it, wait, it hit him? Uh, I'm, I'm attacking with another troll. Yeah, so.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12683.819

Uh, yes, you can, and that is going to, I forget what I rolled the first time. I think it was a 20 total, or 21.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12696.408

Okay. So that's going to be nine points of cold damage to Tyshen.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12701.976

And then an additional seven points of slashing damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12719.267

He made his, did he make his constitution saving throws? Yeah. Against cold? Oh, against cold.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12726.073

No, no, no, no, no. Once he takes damage from one of these ice trolls, he has to make constitution saving throws to see if he has disadvantage on his attack. Oh, we didn't do those. Oh, we just did. I already failed those. Okay, so he has disadvantage on his next turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12741.544

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the number one is going to attack against Barnabas. Natural one. That definitely hits. That's going to be nine points of cold damage and ten points of slashing damage. Okay. Jeez. Nine points, so just five and four. Three is going to move up to Yornir. 18 to hit.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12776.05

Okay, make a constitution saving throw for me, Barnabas, and that's going to be two points minimum damage of cold to you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12792.241

15 points of slashing damage, however, and you make a constitution saving throw. I fail. Okay, so you are at disadvantage on your attack rolls next round until the end of your next turn. And one against Queenie. I've not been using my fence. Wow, three and one. What wild dice outcomes I'm having right now.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12811.847

That is the conclusion of the monster turn as you are starting to get swarmed by these creatures and the ramp is growing ever closer. You're up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12873.195

That's how that works, I think.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12881.259

You have 30 more seconds or you take the die. I am going to... Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

129.356

You're right.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12981.616

It's not that high up. It's like eight or nine feet from the surface of the sled, like the floor of the sled.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

12996.819

The idea is that he wants to... I think that Yornir would know three things. Okay. It probably would injure the mast. It would push Scrim and Barnabas. Or I'd get crushed just underneath them. And the additional weight of a creature of this size, given the coming ramp, would be a huge jeopardy to sailing across a potential chasm.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13092.435

Five crumbles? He crumbles. Oh, wow. And immediately sails away into the night. Okay. And then I...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

131.776

It's all going to go. This flame ignites, and you can all feel the heat. You feel the glass raining down. There's this slow... Shift. The creature in front of you melts. What will happen next? Is this the end? Is this all there ever will be? Answer me one question and you can go. Have you accepted anything from it during your time there? No.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13135.381

Okay, you cry a little. Okay. You don't want to move?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1317.641

You had the opportunity to take more wintery gear if you wanted to from Oakerton, but you are warm enough in these climate-appropriate clothes.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13217.507

Yeah, I'm just gonna give that to you. He streaks away. You hear the most disgusting squanching sound that's ever squanched.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13248.197

I get to choose, and I get a 20. Dirty. I get a 23.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13272.355

Yeah, yeah. Mechanically, that makes sense. I see no flaw in your logic. You drop down to the actual sled slip, and underneath your feet, there's this shuddering effect because there is a thin piece of wood between you and ice that is moving at 30 miles per hour. You... manage to land, and you can feel that shuddering underneath your feet, and you release, and you watch.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13302.956

The sound is incomprehensible, the sound of cracking bones and folding flesh as the sled, as heavy as it is, barely moves a bit, but he gets absolutely Play-Dohed out the ass of this sled. And I will say, that's him.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13326.683

15, 20. Because you had to drop down and get back up. I'm going to say that you're at 25 now, so you still have five more feet of movement or however much. I have 40. Oh, yeah. So 25 being here? You still have 10, yeah, exactly. So you still have 15 feet of movement. I'm going to go here, and I'm going to use my other crab claw attack to try to grapple number three now.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13393.727

Also, I'm sorry to put you in this position, but you still do not feel that you're going fast enough to hit this ramp.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13402.133

That's a horrible thing to do to steal your turn, so I'm going to say that you can use the free object interaction and then have the rest of your turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13416.14

It's done. If you have any movement or bonus actions you can use, please do. And if you don't, then I'm going to give you the biggest bonus action boon next to it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13440.407

That's very cute. Next turn. Sled's turn. Nobody is being dragged, nobody is off the sled. Everyone else got completely smooshed underneath. So Tyshen, you're up, top of the round.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13461.343

Oh my opportunity attack. This is literally the moment that the sludge should leave the oh, we've done two rounds. That's correct Yeah, this is literally the moment that these two seconds now three seconds.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13472.454

Yeah, there's there three seconds So it is hitting the ramp and you are eating really what was the how did you phrase it? You're getting sweet air sweet air Sick air, yeah. Sick air, sick air. Yeah, yeah, you're getting sick air now.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13484.364

This entire round, the entire surface of the sled is difficult terrain because you are actually mid-air as you are transitioning and hoping that you can get to the cliff. What I will say is that it still looks close, given the lateness of this 50 miles per hour being what it is. You kind of either need to jump or boost or push or turn us all into whales.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13522.73

But you're all suddenly very aware of the gravitylessness of the situation, and now it is Taishin's turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13551.387

Wait, is it? Is there a big cavern below? Looking down, there's a chasm that is dark. You see nothing. It could be hundreds of feet, perhaps thousands. No, so this is new, newly... Yeah, we haven't actually seen... No, the ground seems to be sundered here. There should be cavern, but you can see that a split was almost intentionally made, like it was blown apart. Oh, shit.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1359.722

It's something that you find you can compartmentalize. Because of the nature of the timey-wimey-ness of it, the stretching of time and whatnot, it feels like, oh, that happened to me. This was a terrible drama, but it happened almost as if in a dream, so I can close the drawer. When I open the drawer, it's still there, but I can close the drawer should I need to.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13653.197

Three's up. Eight. 13 points of fire damage. Sorry, three? To number three. Two and, okay, sorry, I added to the wrong person. I thought you were talking about two. Two is fine, and 13 is still here, or three is still here.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13673.423

13 more. Got it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13697.036

Five-minute turn. Yornir, Barnabas, and Scrim, who of you is looking the weakest? It's got to be me. Definitely not me. I don't have a scratch on it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13723.824

Well, certainly two is going to care about that. 56 for you? I'm approaching bloody.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13735.386

Hit, hit, and it's going to attempt to push you five feet backwards.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13758.681

I'm not tied to it either. I'm sorry this combat's going so late, but I'm having fun. That's not good. All right, so you're going to take quite a bit of damage, and it's going to have a 21 to try to push you back. Oh, push me? Yeah. 21, oh. Look at this jackass. Look at this fuckface.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13786.26

You take 14 points of cold damage. Me? Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13791.964

It hits you twice and then it pushes you. So we just resolved the push, but before that you take.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13798.688

Apologies. How much damage total? It's all that will be halved. 14 colds total. Seven. And then that's. Apply changes. 13 plus... So 19 points total of slashing damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13814.4

And you need to make a constitution saving throw twice. The DC is 15. You get disadvantage on your attack rolls because you get all slowied.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13830.567

And then the same is true for Tyshen. The first one's going to miss. 15, 15, sorry. Does that change anything? No, you're good. The DC is literally a 15. It runs up to Tyshen. It misses both of its claw attacks, but then it tries to push him off the edge. He needs to make an athletics or an acrobatics check.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1384.558

And you sort of fiddle with the drawer for a little bit and have that conversation with yourself about what to do with the fact that that new drawer exists in the first place. Queenie.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13851.295

I know, it's so weird. It's 10. The DC's 10, yo.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

13879.195

That's eight. He gets pushed five feet off. He's not hurtled backwards because everyone is flying. He's tied to it. He's tied to it, but you are moving through the air right now. He's gonna die. So he's no longer on the platform, and it's still unclear whether or not you will even make this jump in the first place.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14005.416

Right, 16? Not even close. I can't believe how low dexterity saving throws are for... 14 points of fire damage for number three.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14123.473

You've been a real dick to me, Taishan. No, you do that. That's what I'm going to do. Okay.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14133.101

Queenie, the ship is sailing through, the sled is sailing through the air, and looking down, it looks like it might just hit the edge of the cliff and crash, perhaps spilling everyone, doing tremendous amount of damage to yourself and the troll, not that you care, but to your friend.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14172.646

Oh, shit! I don't think it exceeds 500 pounds.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14175.948

I would say that it's definitely heavier than yours.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14254.417

If we're putting Tyshan at 170, I think that him and the troll would be just past 500 pounds.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14274.081

So you mage hand him onto the surface. Yeah. That is important.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1428.663

Make a, if you're using a feature, use the feature, but if not, then go ahead and make a nature or survival check.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14299.696

Thank you. Oh no. The sled collides with the side of the cliff. This is so bad. And it does not make it very far. Instead of remaining whole, it hits just the back of the two rails and crunches down. It does not hit the edge of the cliff, and it does not explode into splinters, but it does one of these violent collapse moments, and there's this sickening crash sound.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14335.4

You all hit the ground, taking... Except for me and Taishan. Except for you and Taishan.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14355.428

This is bad. You all take 21 bludgeoning as you crunch into the ground, and it skids and skates back and forth, in addition to the

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14384.571

Like when you take a straw wrapper and you just blow it off the straw. Yeah, yeah, yeah! He absolutely dies, and you green, starting to spin now, all together, before you crunch into the side. of the cavern wall, before you finally skid to a halt. Bleary-eyed, looking around, you have crossed this chasm threshold, and you've come to a stop.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14421.245

You can still hear the sound of the dragon statue blowing forward, but you're too great an angle. The sail is just flapping and making its sound, and looking across the chasm, where there's still a little bit of shimmering light, you can see dozens of these trolls. All standing there, but unable to cross the chasm without the same means of sick air.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14458.903

You have managed to cross the threshold, but there is still more tunnel in front of you. You need to repair the sled that you are on. You are all hurting. Tyshen is barely hanging on by a thread. That's true. And that is where we'll call tonight's session.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14505.506

Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avantris podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier or higher to unlock Shroud Over Saltmarsh, a patron-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. You can find that at patreon.com slash legendsofavantris.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14526.167

If you want to chat about the episode with the Avantris community, join us on Discord at legendsofavantris.com slash discord. We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So make sure you follow our socials at legendsofavantris.com slash social.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

14542.936

And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5th edition supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1472.014

You all have a sense that Queenie can take care of herself, and she walks into the night, crunching feet disappearing, becoming inaudible. Eventually, her figure is impossible to detect. Even against such a flat, plain, moon-filled night such as this, she almost disappears.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1491.357

You walk for 30, 45 minutes before you sort of have that instinct, that gut idea that there is going to be something in this direction, that ranger teaching that you have in the forest still applies in many ways here. And it is a grim sight when you find what is a dire wolf, a lone dire wolf, but it is not alive.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1519.159

It is clearly having, was trying to take another step, but you can see these, like, icicles pushed back. It is completely frozen solid, this wolf, dead in this pose, like a statue.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1541.323

It's considerably higher because of a feature I gave you. It's a big bee's hand.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1563.427

The strength of your bees being what they are, they are able to break this wolf popsicle free from the surface of the ice sheet and pretty soon float it. Looking at it, it looks extremely intact. You'd wager that it did not, to your guess, decay or mold at all. It would have waited until the sea had thawed and then plunged to the ocean floor had you not suddenly been there to pluck it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1589.628

And so with a idea that you'd be able to thaw this and perhaps gain additional rations from it, you start to turn back and return with your beef. Okay, awesome. Barnabas.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1604.426

Hold on. I actually have ration math for you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1618.096

We fought them in episode 2, was it? Episode 2, yep. This one's also frozen. Roll 5d10. Oh.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1651.324

40. 40. And then add 10. That was the original math. It would have been 50. Because it's starving, you will be able to procure 25 rations from this, which are still a shitload of rations because of the size of a wolf being what it is, but half of what you would normally expect given its starvation that probably ended its life. As you walk back, Barnabas, you are underneath the ocean.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1677.855

Are you looking for prey? Yeah, I'm looking for any kind of fish or prey or any kind. Make a, make your own nature survival check. If there are any kinds of, you know, seals.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

17.282

This is the same silhouette he saw in the light of a star. It's the same. You race forward, drawing your weapons, drawing your magics, stealing yourself for a fight with the unknown and hoping you will live to see the other side. Taishan. It's gonna be a tantrum. The sea is calm. The sky is clear. The day is young. You think of your duty to tend the light and of the lives you will never know.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

170.853

For your friends, this will be painless. This will not be easy for you. In the blink of an eye, you all find yourselves back in Drakkar, landed on an ice sheet. You will be reduced one death saving throw for the remainder of the campaign. Oh! You're where the tower should be. You're somewhere towards the end of the second month of the next year. 42 days have gone by.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1715.006

With a 19, you are floating there, and you're not seeing anything. I mean, your darkvision is limited, but you should have a sense that there are fish here, schools of fish. Perhaps you need to go deeper, and you start to let yourself, let your buoyancy sort of change and shift in the way that it needs to in order to sort of slowly sink in a certain depth. At least my ballast, my internal ballast.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1746.963

Yeah, they absolutely would have a balloon swim bladder. I don't know what to tell you, folks. You un-ballast yourself, let's call it, and you start to sink down more into the depths of this ocean. And you can't fathom how deep it is. You're nowhere near the bottom, you sense. But all of a sudden, you do see a creature. left, right, and almost certainly a hungry creature, this is a shark.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1771.749

Not a giant shark, but a shark nonetheless, a predator of the sea.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1799.598

As soon as you're in distance, make an attack roll. I can do it recklessly. Oh. That seems like it would decrease the accuracy of a harpoon shot, but here we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1828.498

Seven points. I'm not raging. The harpoon does stick into the side of this shark, but it does not do nearly enough damage to kill it, as it turns, swims immediately towards you, and gets a 14 to hit. That misses. I will say that it chomps in, but it doesn't do enough damage to cause you serious injury. Oh, it's advantage. Oh, you're right. Thank you. Now it's a 17.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1857.403

Okay, and that's going to be, thank you, Rich. Just maintain a game state. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He bites into you, and he does eight points of piercing damages. He digs his teeth into one of your arms, and you suddenly find yourself in an underwater fight, which has rules and dungeons and dragons that I don't know. We're just gonna quickly do this back and forth. Go ahead and make another attack.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1936.053

One of those underwater crabs that can, like, speed of sound attack. Oh, mantis shrimp. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1946.903

It's like an underwater bullet.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1961.776

You are able to gut this thing alive underneath the ground. It was underneath the water. It was clearly looking for its own meal, but didn't realize that Barnabas was, of course, who he is.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

1981.429

You are able to find your original harpoon easily, and you are able to find that the water has been kept frozen. You wait for a second, because for a brief period, a bonfire emerges just about the moment that you're about to go above the water, and then it dissipates, and you're able to find yourself cold air.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2025.66

You listen closely, and you hear her voice. It's no longer distant or warbled the way that it would be to any other creature listening to something underwater. That is how it feels to you when you are deep inland. But here it sounds like pure crystal. It whispers its own poetry into your ears. The voice nearly kisses you with every word. And you hear...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2064.725

A sorrowful goodbye just towards the end, beckoning you to come back when you can. Oh shit.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2097.194

You are all presented with two things at the same time. Queenie returns with a dire wolf being carried by her swarm, totally frozen, completely frozen through, something that'll take some time to process. And Barnabas Oh, crab legging. Yeah, crab legging. Yeah, thank you. Crab legging up the side of this frozen tube and finding your way to the Yornear's makeshift camp.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2127.642

You are starting to look like you are in rations for at least the foreseeable future.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

218.311

You have just awoken as though from a dream. The feeling of timeless lifetime ceases to distort and warp before you and you come back into yourself in the frozen lands of Drakkar. The memories of your strange experience at the tower, on an island,

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2185.445

and immediately, so he's starting to look a little more tired for the effort, creates another bonfire, not just to give everyone the renewed warmth, but he doesn't have to lower it the way that he did to push down.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2199.468

He can just sort of keep it right there, and so even though it creates almost like a smooth puck of a pool of water underneath it, the fire is stable, and as long as he just keeps doing that every minute or so, you'll be able to have warmth.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2277.256

You all have the pots and pans on your person that it would take to survive individually, and when assembled together, you are very efficient at creating almost a full kitchen. Pouring off scum, making sure that everything is pure, clean, delicious. You've got one of the best chefs in the world in all of Evantris, at least as far as he's concerned with you, and...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2303.772

It's amazing how efficient you are, how much more you are capable in this space. As cold as it is, with limited resources, you are starting to learn how to survive in this strange Arctic space.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

236.684

at a lighthouse, on the ocean, off the coast, within some other place and perhaps some other time, your strange experience collapses and folds and shrinks away into the recesses of your mind. Blinking, you realize it is the dead of night. The sky is cloudless and the moon is full. Looking around, you all stand haphazard on a familiar ice sheet.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

263.769

It is as though you were all trekking together moments ago before stopping here in mad silence. It feels impossible. And in some ways, you are glad for the biting cold that is already numbing your face and freezing your body. You are wholly here. Barnabas, you feel closer to the ocean here than you have in months.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2685.055

Taishan grabs your pocket money and leaves. You run and start running away.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2696.868

You sit down for a wolf broth and shark meat stew. There are no vegetables, and yet it is one of the most delicious things you've ever eaten, and especially with the tea that comes with the meal, specifically thoughtfully chosen by Taishan to match the flavor palette of wolf and shark stew. But it is particularly delicious because what survived wasn't your physical body, your mortality.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2730.575

What survived wasn't a town or your group or your hope or a continent or the cosmos. What survived the experience that you had was your sanity. And it feels extremely sane and grounded to have such a... Simple thing is a meal together, even in the biting cold of Drakkar. As you finish your meals, you see the sun peek over the horizon. It's still cloudless.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2764.325

There doesn't seem to be any weather on any horizon that you can see, and the illumination immediately hits the bright white sheet of ice that you find yourself standing on. It's pale red. very distant and cold sun, but it provides some amount of warmth. More importantly, it provides visibility.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2786.476

You now see that you are very close to that mountain range, what must be the southern bottom half of the spine. You can see very thinly along the wall, and you can see that traveling east in the direction that Yornir suggested that Tyshen was looking would afford you perhaps a new path.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2819.434

No, you have not, but I will say that when you landed, you felt energy. I'm not going to make you roll for exhaustion at this point. It's going to be a long day of trekking, but with a night of rest this coming evening, you feel like you'll be on track.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

288.858

Despite seemingly being on a coastal island moments ago, it is impossible to know how much ice separates you from the sea, but when you touch the shell at your side, you know deep down waves still surge beneath your feet, which brings you some comfort.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2888.561

So I'm clear on what you're agreeing to do as a group. You're saying that as the first sun rose after your first night getting the shark, getting the wolf, that you're going to get your rations and move on then, or are you going to wait an additional day for the following morning to trek onwards?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2922.26

I haven't been doing the timey-wimey, long day, short day thing.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2937.145

The next day. Then I'll say that you wait until the second day to trek on, but you go through the motions of survival. You make sure that you're taking care of yourselves. Occasionally, you'll all be engaged in conversation. Other times, you'll pair off, or three of you will be talking. Other times, long stretches of silence as you continue to process the experience that you went through.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2956.558

But it feels good to be taking care of these mundane tasks before you fill yourself up, and you would have had more than enough wolf rations and shark to do so. topping off your character sheet with whatever remaining inventory slots that you might have, you'll be able to trek onward. Is there anything else you want to do before you leave the morning of the second day?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2983.589

Yeah, Taishan asks you, and I'm trying to remember if mechanically I gave it to you for four or six hours. Do you recall?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2996.816

The joy of taking notes. I could look it up, too. I just couldn't remember if you had it in front of you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3011.188

When he wasn't assisting with the smoking of the shark meat and the wolf meat, he would have needed a good amount of rest. And so he would have asked for two. So then I would use a candle for overnight. And for like a little bit of rest and just processing himself.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3026.273

Two candles.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3044.008

And those last eight hours would last you well into the morning so that you could all get up and get around. Yeah, that's fine. You can go in first light. I'm not going to argue with the DM.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

306.365

Yornir, your eye scans the horizon, the stars, the moon and its fullness in moments you know two things with absolute certainty. You are standing where the tower was when you first encountered it five months ago, and again you have lost time to it. It is the 23rd day of the second month, the heart of winter. The hateful star in the sky appears no more.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3100.905

I'm not gonna make you roll for it because Queenie would have been able, wouldn't have to, and she'd be able to convey this information. What likely happened was this wolf was traveling, very weak, looking for food and got hit by a storm.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3116.295

This happens in real life in nature. Okay. On Earth, in our world. And it is possible that the creature just finally, out of exhaustion, stops, but is so frozen it slows down to the point where it just flash freezes. Damn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3141.313

Nope. I'm glad you asked. Yeah. That was not my intent to infer. I made that up on the spot because of some fact of nature that I had in my brain, and I wanted to make sure Queenie felt rewarded for her independence and bravery. You pack up your things, you enjoy a long rest, and feeling perhaps not refreshed isn't the right word, but capable of moving onward on this morning of the second day.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3168.565

You trek onward, passing jagged spires of ice that you find jutting out from this ice sheet that casts cold shadows on the frozen landscape. You continue to make your forward and you see all these abstract ice shapes. It's so cold here and the weather is so tempestuous that you occasionally come across enormous frozen waves of ice. It isn't perfectly flat in this direction, it's chaotic.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3195.772

Each of these waves, the size of a cottage or perhaps even larger, they dot the landscape, glistening caps shimmering like precious gems in the cold. And eventually you find an inlet. It takes you another day, but you pause and make your way down to, you pause for a moment, enjoy a night of darkness. There is no encounter, there is no challenge aside from the trekking.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3245.923

I would say that you would have collected the best ones to stay as lightweight as possible on the morning that you were packing up. And so between perhaps some of the skull pieces, perhaps some of the teeth from the shark, from the very backwards, thickest, perhaps the fins, you know, you found these flat, beautiful pieces of bone and you bleached them.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3271.012

You made sure that they were cleaned and ready for risting. Wristing being the word, for those of you just watching, for making a rune mark on a stone or on a bone. I just realized, can't Yornir just cast Goodberry once a day?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3294.773

It's full emergencies only. You are now you. You have survived through two arcs of Icebound, and you have leveled up. It would be easy to find food. Tyshen can create a bonfire with a snap of a finger. You are changed from your experience here.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3314.728

And so had you wanted to, or if you want to, when things get dire and you run out of wolf meat, you can create a bitter token that tastes foul but fills your belly for a day and gives you nutrients without starving to death.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

332.065

Queenie, instinctively you reach out for your magical companions, remembering the hurt they suffered during your shared experience. Your bond is as strong as ever, and you see those familiar spirits spring to your side with the same urgency, checking in to make sure all is well with you in return. Scrim, you are trembling even before the cold hits you. You feel cursed.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3352.347

Eventually, you find an inlet, very similar to the glacier you originally walked up when you were traveling along the western coast. You send upwards this inlet towards the feet of the mountain range that you know the Frosthammer clan called the Spine, this treacherous mountain range that stretches the full length of Jakar. I've described it all. That's right.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3372.428

You've walked its length once before, and you think of the hundreds of miles that you need to walk to get to the top, to the crown, to the forest where you encountered the Herald of Fear, where you eventually were trapped in Ogerton and experienced all of the things that happened in that strange space.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3388.322

And you remember the words of Secundus looking at those mountains and the violence that he described there. As you ascend, you spy a small mound of stones, and you recognize this to be a very familiar sight, a cairn, one of these standing stones that were all dotted along the western coast for navigation and occasionally for the storage of fuel or food or messages.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3415.811

And in the face of the mountain, just behind this cairn, you see an ancient stone portal one very similar to the couple that you have been told about and that you had experienced previously.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3473.595

You're speaking as you ascend, and the dot that is that shape is getting larger and larger, and you're realizing it's darker. This is not a frame with a cliff face behind it. but instead, this one seems to have been sundered well beyond those that you'd seen before. This has been broken, and the portal appears to be open to the elements.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3497.929

Staring inside, whatever trick or phrase or key or object the kobolds used to pass through this gate is meaningless here, for that illusion is gone. This mountain pass is totally open to you, and you can see that it shoots down into darkness, a shadow tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3522.309

It seems to be a tunnel that has been forged right through and underneath the mountains.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3531.531

The statues that would have been on the left and the right of that long-dead empire have been completely destroyed. But the frame itself is so broken that perhaps the magic itself was crashed. And you can walk inside if you want to. You can even see inside.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

357.472

Cursed from the moment you woke in that graveyard half a world from here. Cursed to voyage south and be trapped in the harsh realm of Drakkar where you must fight to survive. Cursed to be haunted and hunted as part of some unknowable contract. And now, cursed for simply trying to help your friends.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3661.113

He explains that When you guys found the first portal, he wasn't able to discern anything except that it was draconic in nature because of the things that were obvious to all of you. Wings and draconic-like faces and the statues that had been tossed aside, like those cool statues in that one scene in Goldeneye.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3682.236

And then he was able to discern some of the language, but only barely, roughly, the draconic, sort of having shared some sort of evolutionary language with the symbols that had been written, wristed into the... Cairns.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3699.873

He wasn't able to communicate draconically, or rather, it didn't come up that he talked about anything with the kobolds, and very little is known about the culture that was what these, I don't know, Sorry, I snapped. You know how easy it is? Oh, yeah. I just did the same thing! The fucking G2 pilots, they snap off at you. Anyways, yeah, he gives you very limited experience.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3729.23

You all shared that knowledge. He doesn't have more to give you as you are approaching this strange space. because he doesn't know these dragonborn. He knows his own culture. They didn't make tunnels like this one. He knows, and he doesn't know if it would require magic or literal physical tools and tunneling to get something like this over however many centuries it would have taken.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3759.944

But he tries to be very helpful about it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3774.068

You are approaching it. You're 300 feet away.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

378.615

Taishen, your mind returns to your purpose here, beyond the valley of the setting sun, and you think of those you met within the tower. Fu Zhao charged you to leave your village, to leave Mei Li, to learn the lessons of a vantress as he had. Your mind dwells on what lessons you've learned since your bid farewell. What lesson is there in this?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3780.72

And looking inside, you can see that it's dark because the sun is in the position that it's in. But it's this huge tunnel. It goes in and in and in, deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And you can see that just behind where the illusion would have been, whatever barrier or threshold you would need to cross in order to arrive on the other side, there's a small outpost.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3803.527

There's some sort of a wooden structure there. And even farther in, there does appear to be a smaller structure. It reminds you very much of the ship that you saw at the top of the river when you finally caught up to it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3898.753

Oh, of course. Greater Kreek would have opened this door for sure.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3951.523

She's 60 feet away from you by the time you realize what's going on. I will run to try to catch up. You attempt to catch up, and you eventually do, dashing as you do, and eventually you're side by side, and you are able to hear the sort of howling sound of the wind at this entrance. You look over, and you can see that this outpost is built right up against the interior of the tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3976.894

It would be fashioned for... Is this considered mountainous terrain? Oh.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3984.559

As soon as you step from the ice sheet to the fucking... Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3991.585

That's the name. Whoa!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

3997.388

It's got a single thin line underneath it, just to really emphasize it. You go from one level biome to another level biome, fucking Minecraft style, and for sure.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

400.87

For them, you look inward for answers, and you become deeply pensive. A full minute passes before anyone dares speak, as though breaking the silence might shatter reality and pull you back. But all that surrounds you is the howling wind and ice and cold and darkness of night. What happens next is up to you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4063.536

The feature you're using doesn't give you a number or directionality, but I am going to, because I want you to have the additional information. You do sense some of those things, but you do not sense them forward into this tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4077.723

You suspect that, given that that is 30,000 feet in all directions and a massive sphere around you as you bonk, bonk, bonk, use your ability, that probably some of these mountains have some. but you do not get a sense that that is six miles in front of you if the tunnel goes that deep.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4124.559

The path where she put her ear down was metal and she's now stuck to the actual floor. Oh, no. You've already failed, no. It's a wax strip. It's a giant fly trap.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4139.547

Brutal. It's a nightmare. No, you are looking out for things. I guess make some sort of a perception you checky.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4190.236

Right. You just tell someone you can't perceive. You just can't see.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4197.464

In historical Dungeons and Dragons land, it would have been like, I could have a monster here that's 35 feet from you. And you would not know that it exists until you move five feet forward because you can only see 30 feet forward with regular vision. But if you have darkvision 60 feet, you can see that thing, right?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4213.178

And it was all about those kinds of, that's where lighting matters as in like more of a dungeon.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4224.106

Not that I give a fuck. I'll roll disadvantage. We could go read darkvision right now. I don't care. I don't care. You're at the entrance. It doesn't mention it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4248.743

Yeah. I got a 10. This is not the place to simulate light, and with a 10, you notice the two things that I've described before. There's a structure, or at least a shape. It appears to be sitting in the center of the tunnel, and there's a large tarp over it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4263.57

It looks large, and there's this sort of like house sort of cabin-y type vibe that's pushed right into the cabin, and it looks like it could handle four or five people. give or take, like a guard tower almost.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4279.277

A gate checking in area type operation or a house, a little cottage type operation.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4291.141

caverns you'd like to go these features would be evident to you as well and you can see that the the light coming into this area um uh pushes uh well beyond that tarp structure that i mentioned um but the tunnel just seems to go deeper and deeper and deeper almost perfectly straight um i wouldn't go too far in i would just like to check to see if i see any um tracks that look like they would have been at all recent um any signs that there have been um

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4343.264

You feel very confident that maybe some beasts have wandered in and out of this space, but nothing like kobolds have visited here. It feels nearly abandoned, especially with the destruction of the portal being what it is.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4403.721

No, no, no. I feel like maybe I should draw it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4436.556

You guys are making your way up a path, sort of like this, to this area. This is where the threshold of the illusion would have been. But it is no longer. Ah, wow. Yeah. Straight in. Ah. There's a tiny little outpost. Uh-huh. And there's a tiny little thing right here.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4458.762

And that's all you see. You guys are standing, like, right here.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4477.759

For our audience. Fool of a skull. This is the path they're coming up. This is the cliff face of the mountain. This is where the actual illusion would have been, and you can see that there's a tiny little outpost cabin-y operation on one wall, and then there's this tarp structure here in the center, and the tunnel goes deep and deep and deep and deep.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4498.211

Light would shed into this, you know, pretty deep before you had to get to, like, pitch black USA. So the two dots represent where Scrim and Queenie currently are, and Barnabas and Taishan and Yornir are a little farther away.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4598.791

Taishen and Yornir and Barnaboze arrive next to you after you have this conversation, and you find yourself all standing, looking at this tunnel entrance.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

47.126

No more running. It's time to embrace this. You reach up and you grab the top of the hood and you yank down. Perhaps what Queenie was suspecting, you see in horror, the face of Taishen within the cloak. Taishen looks frozen eyed, staring up. You take 120 damage and the cloak falls to the ground, slumps into a pile and collapses against the frozen cavern floor.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4703.649

I'll say, for the sake of brevity, you go in 30 feet, 60 feet, 100 feet, 150 feet, to the threshold where it starts to get very dark. But you do not make it that far before you realize that there are grooves to... deep grooves, wide lanes on either side in what is very clearly like a smooth ice floor.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4725.383

The surrounding craggly cave all around you is made of rock, but it is almost as if a river once flowed through this space and has frozen to a completely flat surface, with the exception of these two grooves on either side, almost as though they were put there magically or manufactured, fashioned in some way.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4761.525

Okay, make an investigation check.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4789.373

15. You wouldn't need more than a 10 to see that this structure is empty. If this had had tables and beds and things like that in it, the only thing that's left remaining is the bleached wood that it was built on, that has been getting hit by the sun year after year for untold centuries. It's amazing it's still standing. But it's been preserved here. You don't see food.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4812.891

You think briefly, oh, well, the wood could be burned. But that is all that this structure represents to you when you look inside the window or open the door and creep in briefly. It's like walking into an apartment that doesn't have any furnishings.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4839.218

Yeah, you can pull some floorboards or the shutters or something. You pull that and you now possess one bundle of sticks. I will catch up with the rest of them. And you catch up with the rest of them. That's all that you're presented with, is this long, sort of almost endless ice tunnel, a large tart structure in the center, and the structure that Yornir describes as being empty.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4885.484

So not intentionally cut out, but worn down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not hard angles necessarily, but definitely deep enough to hold a wheels or a carriage or something like that, yeah. Roger.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

490.574

I would say that he looks the same to you as he looked on the island, and also as you've traveled with him in your journey and throughout your car. You probably don't have as depthful an understanding of his experience, given what separation you had during the time that you were within the entity, let's say.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4981.581

Make a perception check.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

4994.184

Everyone hears or sees something in this moment as you're talking.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5005.601

Not good. Yornir, Tyshet, and Barnabas, you're facing into the tunnel, because you reached and met with Scrim and Queenie. You are both facing them, looking out, and so as you are doing this... I can't wait to get eaten from behind. You just wait. The boring tunnel is... Something's boring into my tunnel!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5030.587

You look forward, and you realize you're looking at the back of what I've been describing as a tarp structure, and there's just enough wind for you to hear the flapping of that canvas, and underneath you can see that there are two almost sled-like rails underneath what appears to be perhaps a vehicle of some kind. Queenie and I can see it?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5056.037

Queenie and you both see this, but you're talking, they're not facing this as you are looking at the back of this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5135.249

Oh. You're in your ears for hundreds of years. He has no ideas.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5154.923

Oh! What? You see what is very similar but not quite the same as the river sledge or sled that you saw in the outside world, but this one is built to traverse this strange tunnel. It's facing the wrong direction, but it is definitely there with these two huge rails.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5181.64

and suddenly it clicks how these grooves would be made, would be these kinds of vessels traveling back and forth over the icy surface. This seems to be some way of transporting yourself. The mast looks like it has a sort of long crossbeam at the top with two little bells on either side, and this wider pole where you could attach or hinge very thick, this tarp as an example, some kind of a sail.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5215.479

At the front, in our parlance, it would be called a cowcatcher, but in the world of actual train engineering, I understand it's called a pilot. I had to look that up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5244.257

Just kidding. Just kidding. You realize that if you were able to rotate this object, that you would be able to set it on its grooves and continue into the cave, though how it would be propelled forward is still a mystery.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5312.863

With a 16, you find that this has been an emptied sled. However, there's plenty of room if you wanted to put supplies, and there's plenty of places to sit. There's a bench along the end. There's a rail on both sides. You see in the center, though, that there's a very unusual... Almost like a figurehead is what you think of, like at the end of a ship that you would normally be familiar with.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5338.02

There is this almost statue, and it's facing where the sail would be, and it's a dragon with its mouth closed, grinning, looking terribly forward with two smaller wings, just sort of arching towards the front of this vessel. You don't see a dute turnaround button, however. That being said, you got up on top of it. It's on ice, and it's not that heavy.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5367.46

It's possible that with enough brute force, you might be able to turn the fucking thing.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5395.679

Very green room Andy, I got it. And so, he's like, ah, you guys got it. I'll oversee from here. Taishan assists you as well.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5405.683

Yeah, I'm here, and you're in your seat. So I'm gonna go here. Why don't you start dollhousing yourselves?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5438.822

You don't have to help, but your swarm could assist.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5457.278

I'm not even going to make you roll for it. You are able to slowly... You start to turn this, and you do so, it is slick on this ice, and it is hard to get a grip with your feet, but that also benefits you because you're able to turn it. And once it is 180 degrees or so, you need only attach the sail and find some way to propel this thing forward.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5484.67

There's a separate sail. You suspect that, the tarp was huge, right? It covered the whole thing. You find a sail.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

549.45

Yes, you asked that, and the answer was no. The answer is that you feel yourself. You keep checking for, like, a wound or a missing piece of you, right? And... you feel like something is missing, a part of you, you've been diminished in some significant way, right? Mechanically, we know however that's presented. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the... Fuuuuck. There's the, like, um... What's the word for it?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5494.346

That's what I thought, too. I would say that you could fashion a sail, or I don't want to spend time on it. It's 10-10, so fucking, you get a guy to be on a sail.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5543.05

You make very secure work and eventually you make your way down. Even though there is the sound of at this entrance, there's not forceful enough wind to push this sail forward. Dracarys!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5570.236

On the back, there is a lever. I'm just going to tell you. On the back, there does appear to be some form of handle or wheel or drive.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5591.242

Just see what happens. It's on the back of the actual dragon statue. I pull the lever. You go up, you pull it.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5598.726

And mechanically, you have to use the use an object action to move it one notch. And you can see that there are... This is very fun. Six notches. And you move it from its resting position, where it was, into its first position.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5618.345

And the mouth of the dragon opens a little bit, and you hear the sound of wind being almost pulled in as you sort of, like, as you turn the lever, it sort of backs up just a little bit and lets a little of the air in, and it is hyper-focused, and the sail does push forward just a little bit. And all of a sudden, you all feel... Ah!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5641.486

You're going two miles per hour at this speed.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5651.328

Okay, you use object and you get four miles per hour. Again. And another six seconds pass and you use object and now you're going 15 miles per hour as this butt continues to push and push and push and push. You use object again, all of a sudden you are rocketing down this at 30 miles per hour. you're also afforded something that you did not know you would benefit from.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5676.132

Whatever attunement or connection this ship has with the tunnel itself, perhaps it's the minerals in the tunnel, but the tunnel alights. All of a sudden, it's like as the ship is getting there, the walls themselves are becoming luminescent, glowing, and you are afforded a tremendous amount of light. You can see

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5702.163

Shadows are moving back and forth across your face, exactly right. We see a chicken get decapitated. You see a chicken get decapitated. What the fuck is that? Violent imagery, no, no, no, you don't see any of that. It's like Frozen 2, is it better? 30 miles per hour for you would be a shockingly fast. Oh yeah, we're cooking. I'm hanging on to my hat.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5722.675

The fastest ship in the world doesn't go 30 miles per hour. You'd have to be a soaring eagle to be going 30 miles per hour. However, there is another gear.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5756.861

It is flying past me. None of us have moved this fast. V, looking backwards behind you, you can see the tunnel entrance, which is this massive, tall opening. disappearing into nothingness. You are traveling faster than you could have possibly imagined.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5774.609

You set into the grooves, and all of a sudden you realize that you're on a track. This is an engineered path. No wonder the kobolds are able to traverse Stracar so quickly. They travel under the mountains.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5815.947

You look confident. Oh, yeah. For the sake of three-dimensionality, because I don't have a three-dimensional ship, this is the sail. It's high up, right? You can pass underneath it and arrive at the front just at the pilot here. So Queen's on the bow. You are traveling this direction, so you would be literally in that space. I'm on the lever.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

583.485

The understanding that there's sort of like phantom limbs, right? I would say that the closest analog to this would be something like a phantom soul. Not that the whole soul is gone, but that there had to be some serious removal at a spiritual level in order to free you, because whatever had to be left behind had to be trapped in that same space where you and the rest were frozen for a period.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5835.997

You're here at the lever. Barnabo says, Queenie is on top of the world. The rest of you, yeah, you are flying, and yet it is- She's rosing and jacking the ship. It is a smooth experience. Yornir, it's gonna take a while, I think, for you to get used to this experience, but Barnabas, this almost feels like being on a ship.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5855.463

This feels like being on a, once the rushing of the wind acclimates, once you are settled, It's like standing in any other room.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5907.726

You push it into the final gear, and this is the largest boost yet. From 2 miles per hour to 4 miles per hour to 15 miles per hour to 30, you jump to 50 miles per hour. And all of a sudden, you are going at what feels like light speed. Screaming.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5965.325

You are rocketing through this magically created tunnel, this tunnel that may have been crafted over many decades or perhaps even centuries, feeling the occasional jolt left and jolt right of the grooves as they continue to keep you straight as an arrow through this deep, dark tunnel that is strangely illuminated by its magical presence, by its very draconic essence.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

5992.863

and you are starting to get used to it and starting to feel your way around. The wind is rushing past you, but chiefly you just feel that you are moving very quickly. It's easy to get dizzy looking left and right, right at the rocks that are flying past you, but if you fix your eyes on the point that you're headed or backward, it's easy to stable, or just looking into each other's faces.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6018.619

I'll also note here a few additional features that I hadn't mentioned when you first started rocketing, which is to say, at the heart of the figurehead, on its front, there appears to be something like a sapphire, a small, domed, almost gem-like rock. And in it, you can see that there's sort of a five-pointed light that's in the center, and it seems to be moving very, very, very slowly.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6047.401

It seems to be an indication of what time of day it is, even in this dark tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6054.263

Additionally, Damn! And Yornir, I think you might have been the first to notice, or perhaps Taishen, but here at the back, underneath the bench, you find tethers. You find what are clearly strong corded ropes that can be hitched onto your person, or around your belt, or tied to you. These seem to be, Taishen jokingly calls them sled belts, in case you fall off.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6081.946

These would keep you affixed to the ship, regardless of how fast it's traveling. And those are the additional features that you all start to notice as you climatize through the space, because pretty soon, 15, 30, 45 minutes, an hour has gone by with you moving at this 50 mile per hour rate, just screaming underneath these mountains.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6150.113

Okay, you make a sensation, and you have this sense, you expand your awareness out, and once again, you feel that the, if there are creatures, they're well, well above you, thousands of feet above you at the surface of these mountains that you're traveling underneath. You do not get a sense that there is any immediate presence or danger of those types of creatures.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6213.144

It would be easy to enjoy the experience. This is so unusual, and after so much... The last time you had experience with speed like this, you were on an escape vessel, trying to escape a nautiloid flying through space.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6231.395

You experienced it traveling through the sky at this speed, but this feels controlled, and you feel like you have control, being the person who's manning the lever, should you need to.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6257.07

Sort of glancing and looking.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6261.132

Exactly right, exactly right. Another hour passes.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6278.397

Have a little faith, Mr. Yarn Air, isn't that what you're all about?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6281.719

You hear this sound, and it's like a dunk, a crashing sound, and you look up and you can see the two bells on the crossbeam at the very top of the sail are moving back and forth, and you have just enough time, for those of you who are quick enough, to turn around and realize that there are bars that have intentionally passed through and clinked them.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6322.055

You start to slow down and you hear that second clink.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6328.917

Dropping to 30 miles per hour. I do it again. Dropping to 15 miles per hour. So very clink you're doing. And you see it very, very, very slowly. You can see these bars now as you're traveling 15 miles per hour, clink and sort of move past. Again. And sure enough, as you drop the speed, you see one of these outposts. Oh, that's cool.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6349.73

And you see that it opens up into this great almost ballroom expanse with this large domed area. It's been carved out especially. The grooves are going to come to a stop. You're going to be able to pull into almost a hub of sorts. And you're going to, you see that there is an outpost and you see that there are multiple different tunnels that you might be able to face your way down.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6380.395

You would make that decision pretty quickly and get down to the two miles per hour. You maybe even hit the two miles per hour before you get well ahead. Just coast in. Just to make absolutely fucking sure that you can reach this hub area and eventually you come to a, you close it off and you slide, slide, slide.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6399.631

to a halt, and there you find yourself, and the tunnel is still illuminated by the presence of this ship.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6413.316

There appears to be three tunnel entrances with their own sets of grooves moving forward. And you have a sense, looking at the top of each of these tunnels, that there are waypoints. The same icons that match the cairns on the other coast. One of them is very clearly matching with the fishing village that you initially would have gone to.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6436.391

Probably the path that the kobolds take, or at least this would... get you there eventually, and then another one that seems to be taking you straight north, Taishen interprets. This one he's not as familiar with.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6448.896

We don't have as much familiarity with those cairns, but the path to the right is gilded in silver, and it looks like the one that points to a city, the one that he also noted would have gone east through the mountains on the cairns that you'd seen, which I mentioned fucking two years ago.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6473.198

And you have your staff. It would be going east-ish, starting to curve to the right.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6495.748

You all get out and slowly push the ship.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6569.197

This is a similarly sized cottage. You walk up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6584.745

I just run over to them. Yeah, yeah, they just attract and pull into your fucking body. There aren't any pots, unfortunately, but there is a door and a scrim as eager as you are to see what could be in this inner outpost. You push it forward. This does appear to be very similar, but it is furnished, unlike the one that you saw at the other end, at the entrance to this tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6609.705

you see in my notes I have right here from two years ago, you kind of, that this looks like a post where there would have been a rotating crew.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6628.66

Not something that people would show up to on a day-to-day type operation, but something where you would either live and have supplies delivered to you, or something where you maybe spend a week and then rotate out and go back to the city where you're from, the fishing village or what have you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6648.093

There don't seem to be those supplies, but that's the deduction you can make as you start to go in through the different rooms and start to investigate this overall space. Make an investigation check and advantage if anyone's coming with you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6684.929

With a 19, you are thinking about your experience with these dragonborn, what limited experience you've had. You look under the mattresses, you look under the beds, and then you look at the fireplace and you think, well, when we were in that village.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6704.381

And you pull some of the boards in front of the fireplace away, and you find four additional Candles. Hot damn! We're up to nine.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6718.017

And who else is with Scrim in this moment? You're all sort of, oh, Queenie? Yeah. You're also looking around. You are doing this same work, and you're watching as he pulls the candles out from between the floorboards.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6733.96

And turning, you start to get a sense of the space, and you see the entrance, but having walked through it, you're now looking at the other side, and above the entrance, you spy an effigy.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6749.652

You look forward, and you can see something made of bones, of sticks and tendons, and it looks like a... like a snowflake. Looks like it has six points to it. It has been assembled to look like the delicate little flakes that occasionally land on your hand, so symmetrical and perfect. That strikes you as odd, given everything that you've seen here and how empty these spaces tend to be.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6776.869

But you also are just listening to Scrimm's exclamations of joy as he pulls out one candle, two candles. That's a pretty good impression.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6784.353

Hakuna Matata!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6794.736

It appears to have been... Yeah, I would say that there's definitely been some, like, pushes of, like, some kind of bone into the surface of the wood so that it could be hung there and then set into place.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6837.309

You gesture or communicate. See if it has any magical properties. Do you... What does that look like? Do you just, like, think it, and then all of a sudden the bees know to assemble underneath you? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Okay, okay. So that happens, and you're able to get right up next to it without having alerted any of the others.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6855.8

Make an arcana check to see if there's any magical properties to it, and make a...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

686.971

Five months ago, you remember being in this exact spot, checking with the captain in on the tower and then fleeing in terror from your brief interlude where you lost a little time and his leg broke, of course. You remember your encounter with the dragon, your second encounter with the Princess of Wrath.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6863.564

I would say Nature Check. Or Survival, your choice, whichever proficiency you prefer.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6873.195

And then 19 for Arcana. 18 and 19.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6882.285

With a 19 for Arcana, it does not thrum the way a magical item does. If this does have magical consequences, it's not innately magical itself. And it feels like it is made of bone and tendon and what I described before, it feels crudely crafted.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6903.2

The thing that strikes you especially, though, is the nature of the bones themselves feel very unusual, unlike bones you've seen before. They're almost sickly like lime green, and they have these markings all up and down them as if they had to be scraped very, very roughly, almost as if someone was trying to use them to make fire.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6927.595

but all along, every surface of all of these bones, there are these deep ruts and scratches and markings.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6939.12

Yeah, I would say that it's, to you, would be the size of a large shield, but you are able to lift it out of place, and you're able to... Is it light?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6952.445

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's light enough. It's going to count as a... two on your inventory if you plan on keeping it on your person.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

6964.411

Exactly right. But in this case, it has this very obvious snowflake in France. What'd you find?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

707.989

You remember finding the ship as it was being pulled into the ice, as it was being crushed by the ice into the sea, and then making your way up the coast, or at least along the mountains that are called the Spine, by the clan called the Frosthammer that you met. Hundreds and hundreds of miles you had to walk across that ice sheet. It took days. There was no food. There was no fuel along that path.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7075.741

So I want to make sure that it would hold up. You check it to your satisfaction. At no point am I going to make you make a dexterity check or a not making check. You pass because of your experience being what it is. You cannot fail at this. Yeah, it's like a 26. With the 10, 20, 30 minutes it would have been, you double check it, triple check it, look at the knot, look at it from all angles.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7101.707

By the time they return with the effigy and the candles and smiles on their faces because things are looking up for... Team Icebound. Team Scrim, more like. Sure. Wine candle, date candle.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7120.341

We're like yelling. You can hear the screams. By the time that happens, the...

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7127.766

You feel especially secure. You're there! And you even think to check the tethers and make sure that those were secured underneath the benches where they were originally being pulled. Taishen is still wearing his, feeling a little wary about the space, and one of them could have come free, but you've undone that with a 26.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7245.3

Ooh! You recognize the same markings that Queenie does, and you see that this is something that you would be able to make with bones and tendon. It would take some time, right? But eventually, when it cures, it actually holds its structure, and it's quite sturdy. It won't fall apart in your hands very easily. But it's the smell that is the doorway into unlocking where this came from.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7274.487

This has a briny smell. This smells sour, almost. It's as if perhaps this creature, it was either dousing it in some form of citrusy something, or it was itself innately acidic in this way. But you get this smell.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7301.54

Either or. Or the bone. It's hard to tell if it was treated intentionally, or if the creature itself was one of those fucking things from Alien or something.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7313.808

Like, that is what you get with the 23, is this additional information.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

735.407

There was the occasional animal, the occasional bear, the occasional starving wolf. But that was five months ago, and it hadn't yet turned to winter. And now you are here, and it is... 30, 60, 70 degrees colder than it was then, and what rations are on you, you can have, but this is a hard thing, a hard thing to start again, especially at this time.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7413.773

What you've come to learn about these ancient dragonborn who once perhaps ruled this land based on what you've been told is that They were great survivalists. They were connected to nature. They had these villages and everything that had bounce. They had control over magics. They had the ability to create these illusory doors and perhaps bore tunnels underneath mountains, right?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7441.09

They were not primitives that would create an effigy like this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7488.006

You're like swinging a watch, right? Yeah. Amazing. Make, I don't know how to whistle. A history or nature check.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7518.895

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! Nature. I think that's good enough.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7526.457

You spend a little more time with it, and it's the color of the bone, the smell you start to put together. This has a... This came from a species very similar to the ogres. There's a giant quality. This is the bone from some creature that almost certainly was related or connected in some way.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7682.494

I'm trying to remember when. what I told you to make sure that I am giving you the full information that Barnabas should have.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7704.237

No, no, Barnabas, if that's what you're asking, Barnabas absolutely knows that information, that kobolds were one of many clans that were all being called the banners to her, to wherever she may have been, probably the capital city.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

771.243

You have been transported here as if nothing had happened.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7727.247

And yeah, you would all have known that the kobolds had indicated that there was, there were like a dwarf-like race that they talked about, that there were. I remember the dwarf race. Minotaurs, I believe I mentioned. Yeah, yeah, if that's what you're asking, you all have that information together.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7760.809

If it does, you remember that perfect symmetry and this being a corruption of primality, this feels like a very primal ancient thing.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7914.33

You take a step onto the sled, and the first step, you use your right foot instead of your left foot, and from your butthole, you hear .

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

792.068

This is something that was not available to you before because to approach the tower and to be filled with such terror prevented you from going further east from this point. But the entire ocean was frozen and lays beyond the point that you stand on now. There is a new path.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

7983.542

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you watch that silvery glyph go over you and you begin to make your way deeper and deeper. You go from two miles per hour to four miles per hour. How fast do you take it?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8008.501

All right, you're manning the operation. You are listening. There's only the sound of rushing wind, the sound of the rails against the icy grooves. and the sound of your flapping fabric of the sail and of the clothes around you, and of whatever you happen to be discussing.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8029.189

15 minutes, 30 minutes go by, you're ramped up to 50 miles per hour at this point, and you're all starting to settle into what probably feels like another hour, two hours, it makes sense that these things might be at regular intervals, but if you're going 50 miles per hour,

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8047.757

Miles per hour doesn't connect with you, but thinking about how fast you are going, it's like, wow, we had to walk all those hundreds of miles, and have we gone 100 miles already? It feels like that might be the case. Another hour goes by, and we're at 150 miles? That could be a third of our journey all the way to the crown already. That's unreal.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8069.444

That's days or perhaps weeks, depending on the weather, of agonizing trekking and slow walking. in almost the blink of an eye, something that you can do between rests. And as you are thinking of this, you all sort of settle, some of you sitting on the back bench, just making sure that you feel your stomach with your taishen is right next to you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

809.495

It passed east, and you follow Taishen's line, his eyes, and it seems that the same idea has occurred to him, that why go back and retrace your steps when there is a new path that is before you, a chance to find whatever it is on the southern coast of Drakkar, or perhaps a path north that might eventually take you back to where you were originally heading, the capital city that you were initially heading towards before being teleported here.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8091.137

Queenie, Barnabas, you are walking up and down, checking the harnesses, looking at the sights.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8099.242

Well, then you and Scrim, who are keeping your eyes on the front, would see this first, which is illuminated for a moment what looks like a small figure right in the center of the road, and it gets faster very, very quickly. It looks almost like a white ghost as you crash into whatever this creature is. It is not a ghost. You do not pass through it ethereally.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8122.415

It is some sort of a white-skinned beast, and it slams into the pile, into the cowcatcher, You are unable to stop yourself because you are moving faster than you've ever moved in your fucking life.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8138.564

It's a PSA, ladies and gentlemen. There's no need to crash. You do not crash. You just fucking slam into this thing and all of a sudden it just disappears. You do not hear it tumble underneath. It seems to be stuck in the grate.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8161.48

You both immediately have to walk over and look down, and looking down, you can see the back of a hand. Scream will be like, ah! White hair smooshed into the surface of this thing. Broken bones crushed this thing's limbs. Scream will be screaming. That's what's happening right now.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8186.091

Queenie, you're the only person who can lean over far enough in your Rosenjack posture. You both, you all would hear a thud.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8196.395

It looks very dead, until. Oh. Is everything okay?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8211.947

It starts to inflate almost and piece itself back together. You can see crushed bits of skull pop back into its proper skull shape and start to pull like this. You can see broken collar bone and skin, bone shoved through skin start to sink back in and immediately start to close. You can see all of these pieces start to come together.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8236.015

This is happening slowly, but it is, whatever this is, regenerating.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8264.589

Barnabus, you're looking down, and you're seeing this same creature start to almost come back together. This is a massive creature. This is not a small human smashed against the windshield of a car. is a fucking large, gangly, impossibly lean-muscled creature bigger than you are. If I get the sense there's a monster and it's moving,

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8313.43

Given this strange situation. No free rides! You swing down with your anchor. Yeah. Roll to hit, or perhaps some sort of dexterous maneuver. I mean, I know you have the Crusher feat, so I'm kind of thinking to roll to hit if you want to get underneath it and try to pull it off.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8347.159

A 26, with a 26 for... Almost effortlessly, it takes all your muscles to pull it free, and you can hear it unstick. from the surface of the, given the speed that it was collided with, you can hear it unstick from the pilot, and you are able to whip it, but not fast enough to get it off and away from the ship, but instead underneath the rail.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8371.418

Going 50 miles per hour, this thing immediately play-dohs underneath, just . And you imagine if you were fast enough to look behind you, there would be a thick red streak in the groove of this moving sled, but you are still speeding along without having to

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8438.147

White matted fur. White skin. It was like an albino troll.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8454.951

I think that I have to fucking snipe that off. Yeah, I knew you could smell it. I knew it!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8461.439

Do you think that Barnabas would have encountered a troll? I would have encountered Scrags, sea trolls. Oh, yeah. I think very, they'd be probably.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8470.269

I think it would be, at this point, having been that close enough to attack something and pull it free, even in its disgusting state, that the nature of its limbs being what it is, and perhaps even you got a glimpse of its face in that moment, that you would have a sense that this looks like a creature, like a sea troll that hasn't seen light for millennia.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8536.808

That's a good question, and it's one you're starting to ask yourself, is all of a sudden you feel this... and you realize that there's texture. Under the right side of the groove, there's clearly some of the caves actually collapsed at this point, and you are going 50 miles per hour, very fast, rapidly starting to shake as you aren't sure if there's more tunnel left.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8559.508

The entire right side of this tunnel is completely pitch black. Whatever the illumination is, you're only getting left side information, and you could crash at any time.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8576.276

The rope is not six feet long. The rope is 30 feet long. You can walk up with it wrapped around even three times around your waist. You're able to stand and get immediately to the labor.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8625.392

You lean back against the railing and you look up and you can see this billowing shape of the sail and you push at it and it starts to flatten and flap chaotically. And that seems to do some work.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8638.235

It's a good thing that you were able to give the team a boost, because in this moment, you eventually come to a stop just as you anchor up against a large stone, something that almost surely, had you not slowed down, would have sent you into a barrel roll. And you find yourself coming to a complete stop here in the middle of this tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

87.307

You blink, and it is... Oh, whoops. white and blues and grays all around you, and you are looking at the bodies of your friends in snow, howling winds all around you, you realize immediately you are on the top of the tower.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8739.065

Actually, what you hear in the very, very, very far distance of the tunnel, an echoing voice of a scream coming from the direction of the smear.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8755.962

You know, I can't do it with my throat. I'm worried that I would destroy it. Yeah, don't. But the velociraptor, like, oomph, oomph. Like, that horrible, like, fucking, grippy, animalistic sound. Yeah. Yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8778.912

There's light on one side. If I turn that light off, it would feel immediately like this space because it's the right side of the wall where you can see that clearly the fashioning, the boring, has actually been pushed in. And looking even closer, you can see that there's holes almost to a network of additional pages.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8860.231

A firebolt goes 120 feet. Yeah. And so he fucking launches that thing, and you can see it sail down the, it's not that there isn't illumination, totally, it's not pitch black, right? But it does provide an additional illumination, and when it lands, it takes a moment for it to flicker out. And peering down, you do see a shape, a small shape, slumbering forward, and sure enough,

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8893.257

You can hear it scraping on the ice, moving forward, moving forward. What do we do?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

8928.256

You turn to the ship and it's not a matter of turning the ship around. It is almost at the angle because it's gotten up onto this ground. You need to get it up and off or over or find some way to get it onto the track and this section of the cave is not wide enough to turn it. all the way around, 180 degrees, no way.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9018.18

Looking at the terrain being what it is, this was the largest erosion spot. This section would be considered like a medium boulder, and it was not something that you collided with. The rest of the area largely is just erosion that has fallen onto the ice and into the groove. That's why you were able to go 50 miles per hour and just experience shaking.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9043.134

Had you collided with this, that's what would have sent you spinning. But if you had shaped this, you could probably start the sails up again and maybe start to go again as rough as the terrain is. Assuming you don't hit any more of those rocks, it might be well worth it to use the magic to get that blockage out of the way, given the impending troll.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9086.208

Okay. I'm going to use one of my spells. You literally just create a honeycomb wand shield barrier all around the perimeter of a wall of this.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9146.672

Okay. It's the walls of this tunnel going left and right quite a ways, so you can certainly seal up this particular area, but that doesn't account for everything to the left and to the right. Of course. That being said, you are able to

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9162.601

shape the stone, the blockage, the actual issue that would have crashed the sledge, and smooth it down, even being able to finesse it to create almost like a groove of stone. Yeah, I want to totally reshape it. Instead of, yeah, you reshape it perfectly, creating a New York subway system style Even with the little subway tiles, you know how classy those are. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9186.504

You do that, and it's at this moment that the troll arrives at the web wall, the honeycomb wall, and it stops. Fff, fff, fff, fff. Can you see it through the honeycomb? Looking through the honeycomb, you can finally get a sense of this large, primal creature. It is looking around, and you can hear it muttering under its own breath and then catching eyes with each of you.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9211.144

It is obviously furious for the pain that it just experienced. It is very evident to those of you who are close enough to it that this is the same creature.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9252.782

When you push it to two, it starts. tearing at this web. It sees what you are doing, and it is starting to try, and it's sticking, and endeavoring to get through this thick honey, but it is struggling. You do not move forward. The sail unfurls, but there's still too much friction for you to go two miles per hour. You are still stuck.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9275.304

You get it up to four, and you scoot for a moment, and then come to a stop, and then you get it up to eight, And then you start to continue to push it. You are hearing the screaming and it's in this moment that part of the wall that you tried to protect pushes away and you see more trolls start to push in and down into the tunnel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9308.48

Let's fucking go!

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9310.121

I roll like shit. Oh, good roll, not bad. You make it to the eight miles per hour sorry, the 15 mile per hour mode and you start to pull away. But it is in this moment that two trolls, these ice trolls, immediately lurch down and they look at the struggling ally of theirs down one way and they look up and they see the effigy that you have fixed to the front of this sled.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9347.143

They are immediately enraged when they see this thing. You can hear them screaming and murmuring. Yorneir, you speak giant. I do. And you, as crude as it is, you can get the sense of defilers. You can get the sense of infiltrators. You can get the sense of they are coming into our home and they are doing this. They seem to have hurt our friend. They are immediately agreeing.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9375.45

you must be destroyed. You see the anger well up in them, in their posture, in their eyes, in their face, and in their words. 20 to 30. Oh shit, I don't have fucking... 22 for Taishen, 21 for Yorner.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9395.596

Hold on. I am so sorry. I'm so underprepared for this. Where is the... I need one of these. Okay, you said for Tyshen?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9446.91

13 for Barnabus.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9469.171

And let's quickly roll for monsters. Wow. That's unfortunate.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9501.359

That's Yorinir, thank you. Jornair.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9587.144

Oh, okay. It would have been clawing at the web. What would it have had to roll?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9596.057

That's a lot of turns. It is entangled.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9685.767

It burns up. Is that Taishen's turn? That's Taishen's turn. And he doesn't have any more movement? That's where he is?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9692.87

Okay, you're in here, you're up.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9696.391

So it's how do I have a fire in my belly?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9720.19

Yeah, the only square that's illegal to stand is the actual on the dragon. You could stand here, you could stand on any of these side pieces with the railing being where it is. It's all legal except for that.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9745.702

They are not very dexterous, you feel.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

976.63

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frozen far out enough that you can no longer see where the ice sheet ends and where the actual ocean would begin this far south.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9760.538

22 points of damage to number three.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9778.409

Okay, and that's how much damage they got, and I'm also going to put a little burny here, and I'm going to put a little burny here. just to make sure I crack that.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9809.728

Okay. It's the monster's turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9843.097

Does a 12th get out?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9847.12

Okay, it continues to be on fire, screaming, screaming, screaming, and it is, Yornir, you're still hearing all of this jabber. You all hear just screams and grunts and breathy words coming out, but Yornir.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9872.339

Defilers of the Cold Maiden, they're screaming as they are continuing to chase after you more and more, but it is not able to break free. The other two, however, are going to advance onto the ship, one towards Barnabas and Queenie, and the other towards your ear. They crawl up and onto the ship, and they are there now.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9900.876

Oh no! And two attacks on Barnabas. That's going to be a 26 to hit.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9912.101

And another one on you. That's gonna be another 26. Wow, I rolled really great for those. And then a bite attack on Queenie. That's going to be a 15 to hit. That misses. That misses. Okay, so it's just going to be two of these guys. Do you have leather armor?

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9933.572

No. You're going to take 13 flashing damage. Uh-huh. 13 slashing damage, plus 10 cold damage.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9956.777

You take some of the cold damage, so I need you to make a constitution saving throw. Let's count.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9981.376

You feel the coldest you've ever felt. This creature is made of ice. It is literally something that survives underneath the mountains of Drakkar, and you will have disadvantage on your attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Legends of Avantris

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

9999.978

That's the conclusion of their turns as they scream and tear in. Scrim, you're up.

Lemme Say This

Encore: Keke Keeps a Check (with Sofie Pavitt) | 51

1414.564

This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Lemme Say This

Encore: Keke Keeps a Check (with Sofie Pavitt) | 51

1444.598

This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Lemme Say This

Encore: Keke Keeps a Check (with Sofie Pavitt) | 51

2488.431

He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

this one's for the bandwagon

1.328

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

this one's for the bandwagon

2324.96

Thank you.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

this one's for the bandwagon

3309.666

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

1.365

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

1995.256

Hi, I'm Lisa Rinna.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

1997.437

You may know me from Days of Our Lives, Melrose Place, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

2006.463

That's right. But there's a lot more to us than what you've seen on screen, let me tell you.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

2012.926

We have some crazy stories to tell. And on this podcast, we're going to own it, baby.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Role play and feminism with Sarah Schauer

2029.835

Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a thing.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

A strap in New York

1.328

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

A strap in New York

2518.947

Thank you.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Details of Mr President's spray tan and the elusive prostate exam

1.345

The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Details of Mr President's spray tan and the elusive prostate exam

1927.601

This is my first time. I'm kind of nervous. Wait, did you say come together?

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Details of Mr President's spray tan and the elusive prostate exam

1938.433

Hey, I'm Erin Danalici and this is my husband, Abe. Hey. We've been married for over 10 years. We have almost four kids and we've started and survived more businesses than we can count.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Details of Mr President's spray tan and the elusive prostate exam

1951.418

Reality TV, that's just part of our story. But TV has limits and this show doesn't.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

Details of Mr President's spray tan and the elusive prostate exam

1969.391

Nothing is off the table because let's be real, if you're not coming together, you're probably falling apart.

Long Winded with Gabby Windey

El*n m*sk n skid marks

2848.136

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

110.05

Someone killed four members of a family, two children and two adults. That was shocking. It just didn't happen here.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

142.05

He went to a local church. He was in charge of the congregation. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was going to the movies with us. I would have never guessed that. He was the guy next door.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

175.537

From the creators of Atlanta Monster comes the next installment in the Monster franchise. iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot present Monster BTK. The first two episodes are available wide on January 13th, along with the first six episodes on our subscription service, True Crime Plus. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

56.943

He wanted underwear, clothing that he would steal in the neighborhood. He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

72.401

He would imagine creating what he called girl traps, where they would be totally helpless. He would have complete control and domination over them.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

81.944

He liked the appearance of bondage, where someone is stuck, someone's in control, someone can't get away. As he began to age, he then began entering the houses.

Lords of Death

Bind. Torture. Kill. - ‘Monster’ Returns

94.567

He felt very powerful. He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. People were not there, but he would stand in their home. He felt that sense of violation.

Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates

The school | Lucky Boy Ep3

2267.823

That's awful.

Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates

The school | Lucky Boy Ep3

2493.712

Tortoise.

Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates

The school | Lucky Boy Ep3

39.206

Last time on Lucky Boy.

Mick Unplugged

Uncovering Hidden Money Triggers: Bob Wheeler's Financial Insights

1732.168

Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.

Mick Unplugged

Uncovering Hidden Money Triggers: Bob Wheeler's Financial Insights

5.031

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick.

Mick Unplugged

The Jason Aron Effect: Bridging Worlds of Film, Sports, and Culture

17.481

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership, and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go.

Mick Unplugged

The Jason Aron Effect: Bridging Worlds of Film, Sports, and Culture

3113.22

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at mickunplugged.com.

Mick Unplugged

The Jason Aron Effect: Bridging Worlds of Film, Sports, and Culture

3137.801

Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.

Mick Unplugged

Sabina Nawaz: Why Pressure, Not Power, Shapes Effective Leadership

1895.252

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mic Unplugged. If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next. Be sure to subscribe, rate and share this with someone who needs it. And most of all, make a plan and take action. Because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share?

Mick Unplugged

Sabina Nawaz: Why Pressure, Not Power, Shapes Effective Leadership

1914.618

Send us an email to hello at micunplugged.com Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.

Mick Unplugged

Sabina Nawaz: Why Pressure, Not Power, Shapes Effective Leadership

42.626

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go!

Mick Unplugged

Reinventing Ross Mandell: Success, Second Chances, and Redemption

2641.544

Thank you for tuning in to Mic Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.

Mick Unplugged

Reinventing Ross Mandell: Success, Second Chances, and Redemption

63.584

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick.

Mick Unplugged

Josh Drean: His Vision on AI and Culture

1717.384

Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.

Mick Unplugged

Josh Drean: His Vision on AI and Culture

6.078

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick.

Mick Unplugged

Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections

1375.657

Thank you for tuning in to Make Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.

Mick Unplugged

Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections

5.049

Welcome to Mic Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mic.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2597: Before You Take Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro Listen to This!

0.709

Saks Off 5th. Up to 70% off every day. Spring is in full swing here at Saks Off 5th, with so many exciting trends to try. From matching sets and floral dresses to wide-leg jeans and chic accessories, find all of this season's must-have styles. Plus, shop new designer arrivals weekly. Find Gucci, Valentino Garavani, Versace, Stuart Weitzman, and more.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2597: Before You Take Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro Listen to This!

22.32

Head to saksoff5th.com or a Saks Off 5th store near you for up to 70% off every day.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

0.309

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

2387.426

Got some questions here. The first one is, I have dual custody and my ex doesn't agree with my approach to health and fitness. How do you suggest navigating this?

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3047.193

My kids are picky eaters. Do you have any strategies?

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3148.51

What are some healthy snack ideas for on the go?

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3154.296

Any kind of protein.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3241.235

Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3260.948

Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2547: Stop Trying to Get Your Kids in Shape! Do This Instead!

3287.325

and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2594: Six Easy Steps to Good Health & More (Listener Live Coaching)

0.709

Saks Off 5th. Up to 70% off every day. Spring is in full swing here at Saks Off 5th, with so many exciting trends to try. From matching sets and floral dresses to wide-leg jeans and chic accessories, find all of this season's must-have styles. Plus, shop new designer arrivals weekly. Find Gucci, Valentino Garavani, Versace, Stuart Weitzman, and more.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2594: Six Easy Steps to Good Health & More (Listener Live Coaching)

1630.182

And Arthur just, I love Arthur.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2594: Six Easy Steps to Good Health & More (Listener Live Coaching)

22.32

Head to saksoff5th.com or a Saks Off 5th store near you for up to 70% off every day.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2545: Transform Your Body in 90 Days

0.329

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2545: Transform Your Body in 90 Days

1974.116

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2545: Transform Your Body in 90 Days

1993.994

Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2545: Transform Your Body in 90 Days

2020.367

And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is Mind Pump.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

2538: The Pros & Cons of Group Fitness Coaching & More (Listener Coaching)

26.732

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

108.62

Two-story concrete buildings all painted in a stark shade of white. Glaring fluorescent lights pouring out of the windows and doors. On the first floor was where they spent long hours, day and night, scamming. On the second was where they slept in cheap metal bunk beds. The roofs were studded with floodlights that only added to the prison feel. She looked down at the concrete beneath her feet.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

135.273

Such a sad contrast to the adventures on Thai beaches she thought she'd be having when she first met Charlie. A hush spread through the group as the boss began to speak. Beside him was a team leader and two translators. The boss started with an announcement. They were changing up the payment structure. It would now be tiered based on how much they were able to scam.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

181.508

But if you did not scam, you will only get $300. But if you were like Jella, this was terrible news. Jella was awful at scamming, like truly awful. She'd never gotten good at the dirty talk. She'd only gotten three clients to take it to video chat. But none of them were successfully blackmailed. She'd been moved over to another group with a new assignment.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

206.034

Scam people into buying things from a fake Amazon store. That hadn't gone any better. So she'd been sent to yet another group. This time, someone else was doing the scamming. Jella just served as a warm body on camera for video calls.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

227.503

Her coworkers would tell her what to say. And using an AI filter to alter her face, Jella would deliver her lines to the target. She didn't like doing this either. And now, she was being told that her already meager salary would be tied to her poor performance. Jella's anxiety shot through the roof. But that wasn't all.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

249.439

Her team leaders told them there would be harsher consequences for not meeting quota.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

263.47

Duck walking, where grown adults are forced to squat and walk across the field while everyone watched. It was humiliating. She did not want to do this. All Jello could think about was how much she fucking hated this place, how angry she was at Charlie, how desperately she wanted to get out. And then, one more update.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

293.371

A different compound? Jello was in a full-on panic now as her bosses explained that they were being transferred to another company. This new company operated out of a compound next door.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

312.072

Jella was freaking out. She'd heard rumors about this other compound.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

321.118

Jella had heard they beat their workers with electric batons and paddles to punish those that didn't meet quota. With her track record, Jella knew she was doomed.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

341.954

The one Charlie helped put her in. Before it cost her her life.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

54.332

Jella kept her eye on the clock, counting down the minutes until 1 a.m. and the end of her shift. She couldn't wait to get to bed. Jella and her teammates began to gather their things to leave. But their team leader told them, not so fast. Everyone needed to go out to the yard.

Morbid

Listen Now: Scam Factory

82.445

With the boss, the team leader, and the translators. This was never good news. Jelena and her nine coworkers made their way outside. The yard was kind of like a quad on a college campus, except with the guards around, it gave more prison yard vibes. They lined up, five in each row. Jella stood at the front of the line. She looked around.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

107.132

A box of medical masks, a seemingly mundane detail, yet one that completed the picture of a man on the run. and a U.S. passport that confirmed his real name, Luigi Mangione. As investigators pieced together the evidence, it became clear Mangione wasn't just another anonymous face in a fast food restaurant.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

129.508

He was the prime suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the manhunt that had gripped the nation had finally come to an end. And to the authorities, this was definitely the guy they say shot Brian Thompson.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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The NYPD, working in lockstep with the FBI and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, immediately dispatched detectives to Altoona.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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And for the American people, the unmasking of Luigi Mangione slowly began to expose another massive issue. On platforms like X, TikTok, and Reddit, initial reactions were a mix of shock, outrage, and conspiracy theories.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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Many were horrified by the apparent cold-blooded murder of a corporate executive in broad daylight, while others speculated about Mangione's alleged motives, digging through his digital footprint in search of clues. As more details about Mangione's background surfaced, including his criticisms of corporate greed and the healthcare industry, a segment of the internet began to lionize him.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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Following his arrest in Altoona, Luigi Mangione found himself facing a series of serious charges in Blair County.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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Prosecutors wasted no time charging him with multiple offenses the day of his arrest, including carrying a firearm without a license, forgery, false identification to law enforcement and possession of instruments of crime. Luigi Mangione's first appearance in Blair County Court on December 10th, 2024, was anything but quiet.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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As he was led into the courthouse in Hollidaysburg wearing shackles and an orange jumpsuit, cameras flashed while reporters shouted questions. But it was Mangione's own voice that cut through the noise. Completely untouched, and the impulse of the intelligence of the American people is like experience. He barked at the press, his frustration unmistakable.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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He carried himself with an air of defiance, but once inside the courtroom, his demeanor shifted. Seated before the judge, Mangione answered in short, clipped responses. His defense attorney, Thomas M. Dickey, leaned in often, the two whispering in hushed tones. Behind him, a row of NYPD officers sat like a wall of silent enforcers, their presence a reminder that New York was waiting.

Morbid

Introducing: Law & Crime’s LUIGI

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A falsified New Jersey driver's license under the name Mark Rosario hinted at an attempt to hide his true identity, the same alias he had used when checking into a New York City hostel before his arrest. A stash of cash totaling $10,000, including $2,000 in foreign currency, as if he had been perhaps preparing for a swift escape.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. The 14th.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Did you guys see that?

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

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Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Tell your husband we sent you.

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Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Like Trixie and Katya say. And not yours.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science, to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 641: Listener Tales 94

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We're here and we're getting back into the story.

Morbid

Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

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Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

24.699

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

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Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Morbid

Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder.

Morbid

Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Morbid

Episode 649: Listener Tales 95: Sleepover Edition

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No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

0.512

Hey weirdos, before we unleash today's macabre mystery, we were wondering, have you ever heard of Wondery Plus? It's like a secret passage to an ad-free lair with early access to episodes. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So it's like... So this smell of this... decomposing woman in the sun for what they think could have been, you know, up to more than a week.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Yeah. They think it was just kind of mixing with the, which tells you something about what the ocean smells like here that people were just like, man, well, there's probably like mad bodies in our oceans too. So yeah, there definitely are. Um, so she, yeah, so she could definitely smell it the closer she got. And, um, Their parents said that all they heard was her say, mom, dad.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Like she didn't scream. She just said, mom. So her parents went to see what was wrong and they discovered the body.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So this body was only found about a mile away from the Provincetown police station. Oh, wow.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Now, they immediately ran to the dune shack that they had been at and they contacted the rangers. Leslie's recollection was that the clothing on scene was very neatly folded and placed under this woman's head. She could see some clothing. And she said she immediately saw that this woman was naked, that her hands, she didn't see initially that they were missing. We'll get into that.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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But she said her hands were buried in the sand.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Gotcha. Luckily, Leslie didn't see that the head was almost decapitated. She said she seemed like she almost looked like she was asleep and sunbathing in the nude. Did it seem like she was face down? She was face down.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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There's a hundred more premium and specialty subscriptions to unlock a world of movies, TV, and sports all in one app. Super duper easy to not have to log in to like 45 different streaming services. Check out subscriptions on Prime Video. Apparently, the family friends who had rented the dune shack that summer said they never rented that shack again.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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They never returned to the dunes again because they were so disturbed by this whole thing.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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In the future. In the future. It's after the holidays. And we have a little business before we tell you why we're releasing this specific episode. There is a reason for the season. Turn, turn, turn. And Ash is really good at business. Business is my middle name. Also admin. She stands on it. Nicole is also my real middle name in case you're wondering. Don't steal it. So anyway, I don't know.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I would be too. And Leslie's sister, Alyssa, said their family had been visiting P-Town for years at this point. And it was a very safe area. Yeah.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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It was, like, very safe. I mean, kids could walk around without their parents. They could run around on beaches and in the dunes to play. No one... Not anything of it. It's that whole thing of like quiet, quaint little town.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And it is. This is weird. So Alyssa, the sister, also said that no one really interviewed them about their experience, the family, and likely just went off of the ranger's story for details. Usually papers and stories say that Leslie was walking her dog and just came across the body, but that's not accurate. And I did find many stories that started off with a 12-year-old girl walking her dog.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And that's wrong. I know it's not like totally pertinent to the information, like that she was chasing a dog that wasn't hers. Yeah, but still, you should get the information, right? But it makes it seem like this 12-year-old girl was just alone walking her dog and stumbled across it, and that's just not what happened. Well, and, like, to not mention that the parents also saw something. Exactly.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Because, I guess, I think the reason that they probably do that is, like, oh, it's a 12-year-old, so, like, that's why we didn't really interview her. Exactly. We just let it go. And it's like, eh. So, Park Ranger James Hankins was the first officer arriving on scene. And he said she was laying face down, naked, on a green beach blanket.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He could see red hair and that she had been severely beaten over the head. Oh, man.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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she was also seemingly missing her hands he said they were not buried he and other media outlets said the hands were shoved into the sands with pine needle piles around them like her arms like where her hands should be and it made it look like she was doing push-ups weird yeah and he was quoted as saying it was ghastly it was as if she had been laying there alone or on a blanket with someone and someone came up and clubbed her there was no signs of a struggle even the sand hadn't been disturbed

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Wow, that's so weird. And that's something that a lot of people talk about is there was zero sign of struggle. People say it did not look like she was fought here. It didn't look like it looked like she was there and was caught off guard. Well, and for there to not be even maybe blood splatter on the sand.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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that's what the that's honestly what a lot of people think is that she was asleep well and i feel like that's kind of an area too where you would go to sleep because like you don't have to worry about the water like the tide changing anything like that you're in the tall grass exactly she was hidden enough that she could have been sunbathing in the nude exactly and like hiding in the nude and just kind of fell asleep yeah and it's like but what who what happened were you with someone right

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So, like I said, there was some clothing that were found. There was a pair of Wrangler jeans that were folded up like a pillow under her head, which to me says she went to sleep with those under her head for like a pillow. And there was also a blue bandana under her head, and she was laying halfway on a light green blanket, like a beach blanket.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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um the uh warren tobias who was the retired acting police chief in provincetown said she was definitely posed there she was lying out on a beach towel as if she was sunbathing so he doesn't think that she was asleep she was either posed there or that's like where she what she was doing when it happened gotcha

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Don't use it for bad. Just don't steal it. Okay. Everybody with a middle name is like, let me maintain my middle name.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So James Hankins, the ranger, called Provincetown Police Chief at the time, James Jimmy Meads at home because they were friends. And actually, I guess Meads had given Hankins like some extra responsibilities. Like he could kind of like do more than a normal ranger could because he was like trustworthy. So he called him at home and he was like, you got to get down here.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Now, Provincetown Police Chief James Jimmy Meads felt like it was his duty to solve this case. So he was so trustworthy. He will know this was the police chief. Well, that's good. He's trustworthy, too. He felt very connected to this case and he took every opportunity to push it forward and like really push down doors to get things done for this case.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Like he had a forensics team come together at one point to create composites and claim models of her likeness. He literally said he wouldn't retire until he found out who she was. And for years, he actually had her skull in his office as a reminder to himself that she was unnamed and can't be forgotten. Wow. That is dedication. Yeah.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He also got her dental records and all information published anywhere he could and constantly brought up her case in any interview he did anywhere he could. He was really trying to keep her case in the forefront and make sure she was not forgotten. It's so interesting that they did get her dental records, but like or like.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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let me anyway back to the business next listener tale episode is going to be available on all platforms with video on youtube on january 2nd whoa whoa so i think we're doing two installments of listener tales for january because of you know the holiday you know the first one that we're releasing in january on the second with video on youtube is funny the costumes

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And we'll get into it. Don't worry, because she has very specific dental records, too, which makes it even weirder. So he said, quote, with most murders, you try to figure out who the murderer was. I've spent years trying to figure out who the victim was. As the years dwindle on, more dentists will retire or die.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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More dental records will be lost and the opportunity for identification will diminish. Awww. And each chief after him have all made it a priority to bring this case back up and try and solve it. That's good.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I'm glad. Every chief after him has been like priority number one is solving this case. So when Meade showed up after Hankins called him, he showed up with two other detectives that evening. And he saw the scene and he said immediately his head went to Tony Chop Chop Costa. Hey.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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we know all about tony we do if you remember we did an episode about tony chop chop costa another killer in provincetown and if you i don't know if anybody caught that jimmy meads is kind of a familiar name i thought it was but then i didn't know if i like knew somebody like personally with that name yep see meads was in our our costa episode i thought

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He had actually known Costa since he was young when he moved to P-Town. And he, Meads, had been the one to recruit Costa as a drug informant before he turned into a serial killer. Because of his help in the drug informant cases, Meads wrote him a letter to get him early parole when he was in jail for nonpayment of child support.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Because he basically wrote the letter to get him out so he could use him as a drug informant. But... So he got him out five months early in November 1968, and two months after he was let out, he murdered Pat Walsh and Marianne Wysocki. So Meads was part of the investigation.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He actually spoke to Patricia Morton, who was the rooming house owner, who told him that Marianne Wysocki and Pat Walsh had spent two nights at her rooming house, and that a man named Tony Costa had also been staying there at the same time. She had told him that they had interacted and that she had not seen the girls in a few days. And as we know, Tony had killed them both. Right.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So that's a bummer. So that's why their head immediately went to Tony. Exactly. So and it's very much like the dismemberment and stuff is very Tony Costa, Tony Chop Chop Costa. But not like him. Sorry, I'm probably jumping ahead of you. Oh, no.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Well, the big main thing was immediately he thought of Tony Chop Chop, but then he realized it couldn't be him because he had killed himself May 12th in 1974. All right. Well, that's out. So it couldn't be him. And I was going to say he didn't leave people out in the open. He wouldn't bury them in like the garden thing that he had. Yeah, he liked to do his little garden, his Tony garden. Yeah.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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They searched the surrounding areas around the scene for days, and they found literally nothing. Not a shred of evidence. That's crazy. They even used bloodhounds. Nothing hit. Couldn't find anything. I mean, it must be hard on the beach, too, because, like, wind blows and the sand moves.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And it buries things. And then there's water involved. It's just all this. It's like the worst thing ever. Yeah. So the autopsy was done Saturday, July 27th, 1974. What it came out was she was about 5'6", 135 pounds and estimated to be between 25 and 40 years old. Her build was described as an athletic build. She had long hair that was reddish or described as auburn in a lot of places.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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It was in a ponytail. They couldn't actually determine what color her eyes are because of decomposition. Oh, wow. So what happens is when you die, you stop blinking. And so you don't produce any kind of moisture in your eyes. And there's no more blood circulation to help with all that.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So there's no oxygen coming into your eyes once you're dead because the cornea needs to be moist for oxygen to absorb into it. And lack of oxygen affects the opacity.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

1779

of your of your cornea and the lens so it doesn't change the color of the eye technically but if you're looking at it it will appear bluish or white or like even gray because it's like because it'll be cloudy basically yeah it'll have that cloudy haze over it yeah that's so weird i never knew that before Yeah, it's like a weird thing.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So sometimes it can be, especially after, if they've been out for a while, that's really gonna, they're gonna have cloudy eyes. It's just so frustrating too when you're dealing with like an unidentified body. Yeah, exactly. So she also had pink toenail polish on.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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funny all the other ones dead serious but this one funny funnier than the last one i might add maybe i don't know we haven't even done it yet that's a pretty tall order well whatever but anyway elena back to you tell them i were re-releasing this episode the lady of the dunes So this was a crazy, like, mysterious case. There wasn't an answer for it. Unsolved, if you will. It was one of those.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I know that always gets me. It does. Ever since the Willie Pickton episode, because you had said one of the girls was found with red toenail polish. I paint my toes red all the time and I always think of it now.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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because you always think because i think that too doing autopsies i say it a lot that like little things always make me think like oh you had no idea because that was the last time you were going to paint your nails you know it's like such a personal thing that like you just do like you don't paint your nails thinking of dying it's like a self-care thing so it's like they just they either you or someone painted your toenails just and you had no idea that that was the last time you would do that and that it's sad it freaks it always gets me

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Now, now we're going to get into her teeth. Okay, because I'm interested. She had lots of teeth missing, but they are fairly sure that this was from the murder or circumstances, but not circumstances before the murder. They think that this was on purpose that her teeth are missing. She had a lot of gold crowns in her teeth. Huh.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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estimated between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of dental work in her mouth. They actually sent out her dental records to dentists all over Massachusetts and the country. Also the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Wow, and they didn't get anything? Nothing. What? That is nuts to me. Nothing. I'm like, what? And they think that the missing teeth were pulled out forcibly. Right.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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That they pulled them out intentionally. I remember hearing that. How? Are there, I don't know if you know this, are there certain teeth that are better for identification? I don't think so. I think it's more dental work. Just in general. Unless, all I can think about is if she had some kind of, like, maybe she had...

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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one tooth that severely overlapped another one right like that would be like very identifiable like if she had some really really identifiable specific to her thing that they wanted to remove for that yeah but like to just the teeth themselves there's i think that it's just really the dental work that you're looking for well and then does that say to you that this is probably somebody who's like killed before because they know that and they're like that like callous to freaking pull a tooth

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Yes, because when we get into the hands, those hands were definitely taken off to take away fingerprints. Right. So this is somebody who knows how to take away identification and did a great job because we can't identify her. So clearly has probably done this before. I feel like that. I feel like that. I think so. I don't think this is a one-off. That's a very experienced level of moida.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And we're going to get, at the end of this episode, we'll talk about the theories, who has been brought up over the years, and maybe talk about who we think could be it. She was also sexually assaulted with a wooden block, but they think it was done post-mortem, which is terrible regardless. But her hands were cut off, like I said, one at the forearm and one at the wrist.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So no fingerprints to identify her, obviously. Wow. Where her hands would have been, whoever placed her there had piled on pine needles, like intentionally. The left side of her head had been crushed in like an eggshell, they said. The medical examiner said it looked like the blow had happened from someone lying next to her or when she was asleep. There wasn't any signs of struggle.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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She was on one side of the blanket, so it seemed likely that she may have known her killer or was at least slightly comfortable with them and was asleep and didn't see it coming. Yeah. So it's either she was asleep, didn't see it coming, and didn't know the person, or she was on that blanket with someone, and she fell asleep or was just lying there, and they took her out.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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She was almost decapitated. They thought this was due to a combination of multiple strangulation attempts and also that blow to the head. It was done with a tool, which is called a military entrenchment tool. And that was actually the cause of death was the blow to the head. Yeah, I would think so.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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The military entrenchment tool is a collapsible spade kind of thing used by military and like survivalists. It's really sharp and usually made of like steel and shit. So I think it was James Hankins. Yeah. That said, quote, the only instrument that could have been used to hack off her hands was an instrument carried by almost all dune buggies. Interesting.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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You might say it was unsolved, but you can't say that anymore. Don't say that. Can't say that anymore because there's an update to the case. We know who did it now. We know who did it. We know who the Lady of the Dunes is. And I'm not going to spoil anything for you because we did a whole episode to update you guys on it. But if you need a refresher, here it is. Listen to the Lady of the Dunes.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Thank you. Thank you. Access up to $100 a day as you work and leave an optional tip. Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next paycheck. Download Earnin today, spelled E-A-R-N-I-N, in the Google Play or Apple App Store. When you download the Earnin app, type in Morbid under Podcast when you sign up. It'll really help the show. Morbid under Podcast.

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with a straight handle around 18 inches long. In hand-to-hand combat, you could use it to fight your enemy. Wow, so this is a versatile tool. It is, and it sounds like every dune buggy had one. Yeah, which is interesting. And that it's a good tool for campers, people who camp out on the dunes. So this is opening up many doors. A lot of doors.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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There was also a ton of insect activity on the body that they noticed. We'll also mention that again after we talk about the theories. Now, the stomach contents indicated that she had recently eaten a meal of burger and fries, which indicated to a lot of people that she had been in town that day. Yeah, maybe at one of the burger and fry joints. Right.

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um she had estimated to have been dead for at least 10 days but possibly as long as three weeks whoa dude uh they believe she was they were thinking that she was possibly killed somewhere else if it's not the theory of her being asleep okay just because of the lack of stuff at the crime scene right there was blood but like I think it wasn't as bloody as you would think it would be. Right.

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Say, oh my goodness, will we ever know what happened there? And then you can say, we do. We do. And then go to the next episode and bada-boop. Which will be next Monday. There you go. There's the update. So this is pretty fun. It's a little gift to you. It was a gift from the universe to the whole world to know who this woman was and to know what happened to her. So we're passing it forward.

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At that scene. And then when you get into the insect activity, does that kind of like skew it even more? It's honestly, it doesn't, but it's like, I think they just can't figure it out.

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They can't figure this out. It's like, she looks like she could have been asleep on that towel, on that towel. Or it could have been all set up to look like she was sleeping on that towel. Because it almost does seem like too perfect. Like posed. Right. Yeah. But it's like she's on. The other thing is she's on her. She's face down. Right. So it's like you would sunbathe that way.

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Like, you know what I mean? Like you would do that. But then it's like, would somebody place you face down? Yeah. Or would they place you face up? Maybe they would place you face down to make it look like you had been sunbathing. Exactly. Right. So they probably just don't want to rule out anything because it could be anything.

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Yeah, they have no evidence to say exactly what is going on here, which is so frustrating. I can't imagine working on this case. Even just like listening to it is frustrating. So frustrating. So no missing persons matched that description. None.

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They searched all local motels and hotels, asked if someone had seen someone matching that description or if someone had not returned to their room matching that description. Nothing. Like, how is she not connected to anybody? That's the thing. And again, no fingerprints. So we can't even try that. I know.

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Now, a detective named Detective Flynn said, quote, It's certainly unusual that no one misses her. She must have had a husband, boyfriend, parents, someone. She had been pretty well taken care of. We know that. So she was, like, in a state where, obviously, she had almost $10,000 worth of dental work in her house. Yeah, right. She was not just, like, floating around homeless. Right.

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So your mind just goes to all these different things. Yeah. Like, one of the first things I thought was, like, was she, like, a runaway? Like, and had been, like, had run away, like, a long time ago. And just was making her own life. And not dating anybody, like. Maybe. You know. It's, I, it's. There's so many ways you could go with it.

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Especially in the 70s, people were going off on their own, doing things on their own all the time. Provincetown was a perfect place to go. Look at Tony Chop Chop. His whole life was just floating around Provincetown. But she's not a drifter because she's well taken care of. Exactly. It's weird. She must have been staying somewhere. Her hair's nice. It's in a ponytail.

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Yeah, they don't describe it as unkempt or anything. Right. So it's very strange. There were two pairs of footprints seen in the sand around the scene. They appeared to be heading towards the body, but they never came right up to it. So that's interesting. There was also a set of tire tracks present about 50 yards from the crime scene. But again, it could have been weeks.

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So that could have just been like a dune buggy.

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So over 30 different police officers searched the entire Cape and they had zero leads. Zero. I could not imagine. Now, a few years later, they were getting a little desperate. So they sent Jimmy Meads to New York City to see a psychic.

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named yolana bard who was known as the queen of the psychics okay she had worked on a lot of cases a lot of well-known people and at this point they're like what can it hurt right as well just give it a shot sometimes it can though it can so apparently he placed case things in front of her but they were all in sealed packages okay So she wouldn't know what was inside of them.

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It was it was their test. Sure. They were like, you prove to me that you're the queen. So they were like, he was literally like, tell me something. I wanted to like, tell me what's going on in one of these. So she stopped over one of them and said, I sense blood in this one. And it was an envelope containing a bloody piece of evidence from the crime scene.

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Enjoy. Please enjoy. Bye. Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid and it's local to Massachusetts. The way you said, and it's local to Massachusetts.

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But also like there probably would be blood in one of them.

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So but then she said she saw dripping and she said there was a beach. Now she didn't know what she what victim she was talking about. Right. She said there was a beach where the victim was found and she said their hands were buried. That's what? Yeah, that's huge. So she gave him directions to where the hands would be found buried. Wow. And he went back to P-Town to look.

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He was like, all right, I'm going to go check this out. And he put everything she said together and decided that the place she was indicating, he thought, was a place called the Ace of Spades, which was a bar in town. And it had been there for a while. And what happened was the water, I guess, dripped onto the beach from some of the sinks. It was like known. So the dripping water. Yeah.

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And it all kind of matched up with the description. So he went there and she had told him that they would be buried like in the basement.

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and unfortunately found out that two months earlier they had cemented the basement oh my god and that's that's also a little little strange little strange why are you just cementing your basement out of nowhere exactly i mean maybe you have radon but still maybe massachusetts it's old we got lots of radon coming up in these these random dirt basements i know so it's really not that crazy to think it's really not but it's still like

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But it's curious timing. Well, and he was thinking he was going to be able to at least dig around and he couldn't even do that. So James Hankins, the ranger, said that he had walked away from the crime scene that night and he noticed something when he walked away. Oh.

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and he said he didn't say anything and it's always bothered him he said he saw pictures and words drawn in the sand a little ways away but he said he didn't it didn't look like kids drawings to him because he was like at first I was like oh kids draw in the sand all the time it's the cape like kids are here all day every day yeah

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But he was like, for some reason, it just didn't ring as kids drawings to me. And he says it always bothered him because he didn't investigate it or take a photo because he was like, whoever drew those things was definitely close to the body recently. Right. Because they would have been erased by the wind or the waves if it was done earlier. Right.

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So he's like, it always bothered me that I didn't take the second to go see what they were as well. I know. And the body was finally laid to rest at St. Peter's Cemetery in October 1974. Her tombstone says unidentified female body found Race Point Dunes.

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And actually, Alyssa Metcalf said she and her sister Leslie, who was the one who found the body, would often go to the cemetery and visit her grave.

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And they said they always felt like a weird connection.

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And it always bothered them that like they still don't know who she is. Well, it's like you have to like respect them like through the afterlife.

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Like flowers or something. Yeah. And it's like she's unidentified.

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Like somebody knows her and somebody. Somebody cared about her. You know, like, who are you? Right. Who are you that misses her and hasn't said anything? Right. But in 1987, 10 years after this, a Canadian woman came forward and said she thought this woman could have been a victim of her father's.

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Apparently, when she was young, which hurts my heart, she witnessed her father strangle a woman while she was visiting him in P-Town in the 70s. Oh, shit. Now, this woman thought that this was the woman. She was like, I think I recognize her as the woman. Wow. So they get this and they tell Meads about it. And he was like, I'll go up to Canada and I'll interview this woman.

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Like, I'm going. So then they try to contact her again to get more information. She had moved out of her home and they literally couldn't find her again. Bitch. And she never contacted them again. I have goosebumps. Look at my arm. Right? What?

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i mean i feel like that's really shitty like why would you call and like get them excited to fix this exactly obviously that must be like a really traumatic thing for you to have to like even call in the first place but it's like someone lost someone and like clearly you were trying to help so like what made you change your mind just follow through one day you have to wonder like is her dad still was her dad still alive well that's what i wonder and like she got scared and like he found out or something yeah like did

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someone find out in the family it was like you got to be quiet did he find out there's so much it's like we we don't even know i can't find any information about what this lady's name is or anything dude imagine if her dad like found out and he like also killed her imagine like that's not i need to i did tons of digging to find who she was i'm gonna keep digging to find who she was because i swear to you i want to find out this woman i'm gonna find this woman oh

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Come on. I'm just going to call Canada. Hi, Canada. It's me, Elena. Hello, it's me, Elena. And I'd like to talk to that woman.

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We do. Elena's calling 1-800-CANADA. Excuse me, that's spooky. Johnny and Tyler. Accurate, very accurate. Can you help me? I meant like contacts to like the police people. Yeah, Johnny and Tyler. They're very important people. Like they can help us out. I mean, they are VIP. They are. All right. So Johnny, Tyler, let's get on this together. More squad up. All right. We're making this squad huge.

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All right. So we got the Canada squad up. So we're ready. I'm good. But then there was also a Maryland woman who called and said she thought the woman was her sister. Right.

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I get excited about these. You should. I do. I like covering ones from Massachusetts. It's kind of my thing. It's kind of your thing. Well, do we have any business before we stay in Massachusetts? Before we stay in Massachusetts. So one weird thing happened that kind of goes along with this episode because it happened in Massachusetts. It happened in Provincetown, didn't it? It did.

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who had been she had just moved to boston i guess recently and before this like when this was happening the sister the sister and suddenly had disappeared oh and she was spending time in p-town right now very normal no one knew where she went that year she said she just disappeared vanished and she said her sister matched the height weight and hair color did she say anything about dental work at all

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Well, that's the important part because Meads actually asked for her sister's dental records and they were able to ship them out to Meads because he was like, let's do this. They weren't a match. Fuck you. No gold crowns, nothing like that. Wow. So it sounded really good. And I honestly, I feel bad for the girl, the Maryland woman, because now it's like, I wonder what happened to her sister.

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Well, and she probably had like some ounce of hope. Yeah, just that there would be some kind of closure. The crime scene now is, and at the time was, I guess in the 70s was the biggest tourist attraction was that place on the dunes. And even now it's a big pull for people to go look. I get it, but I'm also like,

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i know it's it's one of those things that it's like it's you can have a million opinions about it but it's one of those things that like it's never gonna stop that kind of like and you know it's seeing a place like that it's like going to the lizzie borden house you know it's like it's it's not gonna it's like going to the cemetery in salem exactly it's it's morbid curiosity definitely go to salem it's amazing oh my god i love salem so much salem

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It's also, like I said in the other episode about it, I think it's a profound experience going to Salem. Absolutely. When you go to the historical places. Well, and there's so many historical sites. We went to at least 42 when we were there the other day. Massachusetts has a lot of good history. Guys, come to Massachusetts. If you're from here, you get it. Hello, I'm from the Board of Tourism.

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I can't speak. I'm from the Board of Tourism.

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In Massachusetts, come. Visit Massachusetts. come little children yeah that was in massachusetts too see we have tons of shit all right so they did exhume her body in 1980 2001 and 2013 that makes me i know they have to but it makes me so sad i know but i'm one of those i think it's like the science in me i'm like nope bring them up Absolutely. But then you're just like, who are you?

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She's being so disturbed. Yeah, you just want her to rest in peace. But advances keep happening in science and forensic science. So every time something comes up, they're like, let's bring her up and see if we can use this. Exhuming her is eventually to get to the goal of her resting in peace. Exactly. And that's always the goal with exhuming a body is to eventually get them to rest forever.

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But honestly, nothing's come up. Every time they brought her up, nothing is moving forward. This is the strangest case. Now, a woman who people might know named Sandra Lee, she's a crime writer. She said when she was nine years old, she actually discovered the Lady of the Dunes first with her sister, but was too horrified to tell anyone at nine years old. Hmm.

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She was with her dog and stumbled upon her and she said, quote, I stumbled down an incline with my dog. The dog was ahead of me. My dog got excited about something. I heard a very strange noise. If you can imagine someone holding a string of pearls, I heard that sound. And then there was a horrible smell. At first, I attribute it to low tide. She was face down.

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It's happened in, actually, it happened in Cape Cod. Yeah. But like, so right around there.

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Her hair was a mess and I could see a gouge in the right side of her neck. Her arms were tucked down in the sand, so I didn't know anything was missing. I recognized the green blanket right away. The lower half of her body was covered with something.

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But yeah, this guy, Michael Packard, who is like a veteran lobster diver, which lobster fishermen? Wild. No joke. We have a cousin that's a lobster fisherman. We do, who's a lobsterman. Shout out to Annie. To Annie. Yeah, it's a badass job. It is a very dangerous job. And this guy, Michael Packard, got swallowed by a humpback whale and then spit out.

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um yeah she says she is sure that she's like i am sure either one or a couple other people must have stumbled upon this body in those three weeks and just were too scared to say anything that's a little messed up and she was like because she was like if it was kids there was kids all over this different story all over the speech always playing in these dunes so Think about it.

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These two people are two children, a 12 year old and a nine year old. I'm sure another kid ran across this and was like, I don't know what that is or ran across it and thought it was just a naked sunbather, especially from a distance. And now I have a question. How do you transport a bot? Like, how do you get the insects off of a body to transport it? Uh, usually they transport with the insects.

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So the people that transport, do they just, like, gown up or something? Yeah, they do. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Gotcha. Especially in a case like that where it's, like, so many. And then you must just, like, clean up the vehicle afterwards.

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You'll definitely try to, like, get them out when there's, like, hundreds of thousands.

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But then you don't want to wipe away evidence. They're just in the bag, basically. Have you ever opened a bag and had... I have insects be in there. Luckily. Which is a good thing. Sorry, just a little side note.

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Because I am not down for insects.

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They can exist. I just don't want to exist. Magots are not for me. Magots are not something I want to deal with. And that is really a great way to describe the sound of thousands of maggots. I don't want to continue to think about it. It's like a pearl necklace in your hand. That's actually my birthstone, so please leave. So please leave. Thank you. All right.

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Here's some of the theories that have come across, or people of interest. Okay. Somebody thought she might have been a woman named Rory Jean Kessinger. Now, this was a 24-year-old woman at the time, and she matched the height and the weight of the Lady in the Dunes. She was also known to be a drug dealer and a bank robber.

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She was picked up at one point running around naked in the woods in Pembroke, saying she had been sexually assaulted. And an off-duty police officer brought him to his home to call for backup. And when she got in there, she turned off the lights, stole his gun, and then said she had to kill him. What the fuck? And he wrestled it from her, but she went to jail for assault and intent to murder.

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Wow. She went to jail in Plymouth and on May 26th, 1974, she escaped from jail because someone smuggled her in a hacksaw and she sawed through the bars. Like, I hate to say this, but like bad bitch vibes. She was never seen again. Unless she's the lady on the dune. She was never seen again. Such a different Rory. No one knows where she went.

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Such a different Rory. Honestly, though... Not a different Rory. Rory Gilmore... She did go to jail. She did steal a boat. Huh? And she commits... She is part of many adulterous affairs, so...

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she's she's not she's robbed any banks i don't know we don't know we we didn't see her we didn't see her rob a bank but we didn't see her not rob i can't say she didn't i didn't see you not rob a bank so maybe it just didn't make the final cut i don't know But either way, it wasn't Rory Gilmore. Okay.

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And it wasn't this Rory because in 2002, DNA from her mother, they used like familial DNA, compared to the unknown body proved it wasn't her. You know, I didn't think it was her. I didn't either. But a lot of people thought it was because the other thing was you see a picture of Rory and you see a picture of this on the composite for this girl. They do have a striking resemblance to each other.

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I mean, we're happy for the latter part of that story. Very happy for the ending. Imagine having that life experience. Well, and I guess like his crewmate was on the boat and this guy was going down to check the traps. And he said he just watches like the bubbles to make sure that he's like still alive, essentially. Yeah. And he said all of a sudden he saw this like crazy explosion of bubbles.

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So it is interesting. Interesting. Now, one of my favorites and one that I think has a little bit of legs here. Okay. Is that James Whitey Bulger did this. And do you think this has a lot of legs? I think it has legs. Okay. I don't, I'm not sold. Okay. But I think I, it's one of those that I can see that it definitely could be him. And I can also be like, eh.

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So it's just like, it's one that I just will keep over in a corner. Well, and if you know anything about Whitey, like, in the whole beginning of this thing, I said, like, this is clearly somebody who's killed before.

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In my opinion, at least. Well, and, you know, we, especially if you're in Massachusetts, like, everyone knows Whitey Bulger. If you're in Massachusetts, you definitely know Whitey Bulger. Yeah, you're probably his cousin. And your grandparents are probably telling you that they should have just let him keep...

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being on the lam because he's a harmless old person yeah yeah sure papa that makes yeah sure uh so witnesses said that they saw because people would see whitey bulger all over the place yeah he was existing among everybody everybody was vibing everybody was just letting him do his thing. Whitey was a vibe and a half. He was scary.

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So witnesses said that they did see him with a woman who matched the Lady of the Dunes description in P-Town at this time. Interesting. He was known at this time to be in P-Town. What the fuck was Whitey Bulger?

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you want to know what he was doing he was frequenting a bar in the area uh called the crone and anchor i mean it makes sense but like yeah p-town is just such a chill vibe and whitey is such a chaotic vibe he is i think he's chaotic in boston and i think he chills and he's vacationing but if he did this then he's chaotic everywhere so it'll erase my view of him being chill in p-town

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But yeah, so this bar, the crone and anchor that he loved frequent down here was very close to where they found her body.

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His thing was to remove his victim's teeth. Right. He did have a thing for that. Sandra Lee, the crime writer, thinks that this woman may have been an Irish immigrant. And that she was groomed by Bulger to be forced into sex work.

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Because he was also a human trafficker.

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I feel like some people kind of like... He gets glossed over as just like... I feel like a lot of these mob bosses and crime families, they become a thing because you watch The Sopranos, you see The Godfather, and you see how terrible it all is, but somehow everyone just kind of is like, but that's a cool crime family. You know what I mean? Yeah.

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I think it's like a weird human thing that a lot of people do. And I think he's one of those characters that's so infamous that people just are like, Whitey Bulger!

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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It's like Hollywood makes it a thing. It is. He's become a Hollywood figure. So I think it glosses over the true atrocities that he did. He murdered his own girlfriend. He did. And he murdered his own right hand man's girlfriend, like made him help him do it.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Is that what I'm thinking of? Yeah. I mean, he definitely like murdered women and he did it in pretty and he would like strangle them, too, which is again, interesting. She may have been strangled. So she thinks this this could be that and maybe that's why we're not identifying her.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And he's like, oh, my God, he he died. And I can't do anything about it. Yeah. Like literally he's just sitting there helpless. And the guy, I guess, thought it was a shark that had got him. So he was like, oh, I'm dead. Like he was like, this is it. He said, I'm done. I'm dead. All I could think about was my boys. They're 12 and 15 years old. Oh.

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because she's not from here right um the new york times reported quote tales of his exploits were learned from childhood there how he shot men between the eyes stabbed rivals in the heart with ice picks strangled women who might betray him and buried victims in secret graveyards after yanking their teeth to thwart identification that is 100 true yeah if you grew up here you grew up

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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hearing tales of whitey bulger literally like there was like a whitey bulger like a book about like him on my summer reading oh yeah yeah black mass probably i maybe was it black mass i don't think it was it was i don't know i'll think of it later um but yeah so sandra lee actually thinks he's the guy she thinks that's right i mean i think you're right it does have legs

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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It's never been proven that she isn't one of his victims. They haven't been able to prove she isn't. They also haven't been able to prove she is. People hoped he would confess to it, but when he was arrested, but like he was beaten literally to an unrecognizable pile of meat by inmates in West Virginia, October 30th, 2018, when he was 89 years old.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He literally entered prison and they literally just beat him to shit. Yeah. So he didn't exactly get a chance to admit it, which is kind of a bummer. Kind of a bummer and actually kind of interesting that like inmates beat him to death because yeah, there is like, you know that like how there's a hierarchy in prison, you would think a mob boss would be on top. You would think.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He was so horrific. Like. i don't know it's a weird it's a weird uh it's a weird flex there i don't know it is but i mean he's a really bad guy so like yeah he was i mean he was 89 at the time he had also been on the lam for so long maybe it was like they were pissed that he got away with it for so long i don't know who knows either way he really got it he got got

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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But I really would have preferred him to be able to maybe get convinced to like admit a few things. I just feel like he would have had many things to admit. There's some families that I think would have liked to hear some closure and stuff. So it's like, that's a bummer. Yeah, exactly. That's why like prison justice, sometimes you're like, eh.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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okay but like i would have liked to get some information like you know it works when you're like throwing hot water over daniel morcombe's killer exactly or like tattooing to in katie's revenge on that guy's forehead when he killed the most iconic thing i've ever heard that stuff i'm like all right do that they can still talk Feel free. But, like, yeah, this is just tough.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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But, yeah, so that's possibly who it could be. Okay. There's another one. In 2000, a serial killer named Hayden Clark confessed to the murder of the Ladies of the Dunes. Okay. He confessed from prison while he was serving two 30-year sentences for the murders of a six-year-old girl named Michelle Dorr and a 23-year-old woman named Laura Hotelling. Oh, my goodness.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He claimed he killed up to 12 women and he said he buried some of the evidence on his grandfather's property, like in his garden on the Cape. That's a dick move. And Clark explained that he had buried evidence from the Lady of the Dunes crime in his grandfather's garden on the Cape. So did we go there?

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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which like kills me and he was breathing through like a breathing regulator at the time inside of a humpback whale he said humpback i made that up he said no it was a humpback whale yeah it was a humpback whale it's the morning it is and apparently he was like struggling because he was breathing through that apparatus right so he was struggling and the whale was like wow you

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And he said he knew the woman's identity, but he was not going to tell authorities because he said they were mean to him. So he's not going to tell them. And it's really not their job to like make you feel super welcome.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So he led police on December 15th, 2000 to his grandfather's former property. And they did dig in the garden and did find a big plastic bucket filled with more than 200 pieces of jewelry. Interesting. Among these things were Laura Hotelling's high school class ring. Wow. So he was telling the truth that he buried some of his murder victims things in there.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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He said they were literally trophies to him. Like he did that for a reason. Of course. Sick fuck. They couldn't connect anything to the Lady of the Dunes because they don't know who the fuck she is. So any of that jewelry could be her jewelry. Right. And we don't know. Police don't believe him, though, because one, there's no physical evidence that they can connect to him.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And then also he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. And so it's hard for him to tell reality from fantasy.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And he has moments where he is telling a story and spinning a yarn and it becomes a fantasy. Sure. So they think maybe this was just him. It happens all the time. That these people in prison who are there for atrocities will confess to other crimes. Like...

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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henry lee lucas oddest tool they they did the same thing they just like to do it's just to fuck with the investigators it's just to fuck with people and it's like mental illness and it's like so they were like this just isn't really credible so they were like yeah we're not gonna be able to really do much with that this whole fucking case is so frustrating and then there's my favorite theory oh okay in 2015

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, had a theory. He wrote in a blog post that he believed that the Lady of the Dunes can be seen alive as an extra in Jaws. Oh my god, how did I forget about this? I literally knew that this was a thing. Yeah. But the entire time we were doing this, my brain just forgot that piece of life.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And he said in his blog post, what if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn't even know they were looking at her? And he said, what if the ghost of the Lady of the Dunes haunts Jaws?

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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that freaks me there is a woman who looks just like the sketches and composites and is wearing wrangler jeans and a blue bandana i mean hello but there's a lot of women at that time that dressed exactly like that yeah um so he said quote this particular woman bears a shocking resemblance and appearance and wardrobe to the murder victim suddenly i tingled all over and came halfway out of my seat and for the barest of a moment i thought i had seen her and

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Now, Jaws had been filmed two hours away from the crime scene. So not that far away. They had never recorded the names of their extras. Oh, shit. And a lot of locals were extras. Like they would just show up and agree to appear in the final cut. Yeah. So police are skeptical, but they said they are not going to say it's not possible that that is her.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I mean, of course, a lot of women dress like that at the time. But the fact that this woman looks like her looks like her in the blue bandana is that's a big one. And did they ever find like a bathing suit top or anything? No, they didn't find anything like that. I know that's what's weird.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And and so Joe Hill said, quote, part of me thinks that my subconscious mind is so programmed, so trained to quickly generate ghost stories that that's all I've done here because he is Stephen King's son. I was going to say that is true.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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But Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb checked his production notes and he said this scene, number 130, with the extra that they're talking about, was filmed May 25th, 1974, two months before and only 100 miles away from where she was found. Interesting. So she would have been alive. Right. Two months is like a long time before. But I mean, she could have been living there.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Like, you're not what I eat. Right. And so I think the whale, like, felt bad that he had eaten him. And so he brought him to the surface to spit him out. We love a whale. We love a whale. Which I guess he said within, like, 30 seconds. But he said for a brief moment he thinks he was swallowed. Well, yeah, he must have been. Like, not just hanging out in his mouth.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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She could have just been there. Right. I know. I'm thinking of her as like a vacationer. Yeah. And she might have just been living there. Well, and then in 2019, investigators said that they were going to re-examine the case, trying to use new techniques. They were going to use DNA analysis and genealogical family building sites to try to do it.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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This is the same kind of thing they used with the Golden State Killer case. It's becoming a real, like... valuable thing for these kind of cases. And Cape and at the Island DA, Michael O'Keefe said, quote, we're going to examine everything we can with respect to the remains. Now, I'm just going to leave you with one exciting possible thing.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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american horror story season 10 is being filmed in massachusetts and it has hinted at a lady of the dune storyline bitch possibly as a subplot oh my god so i did i like combed reddit for some theories about this too because they are really good at like finding these things um they are filming in p town they are filming in p town you think billy lord is in feet is in p town yeah i think she was

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And Murphy, Ryan Murphy said, quote, he like put something on his social media that said, quote, something's washing up on the shore. Girl. Something like that. And then teased a photo with two hands on the beach. And as we said, a big part of this was her missing two hands. Right. And Murphy has teased out more teasers that have teeth in them. I mean...

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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If it's not like the main thing, because either way, this is set in Massachusetts. So I'm excited in P-Town. I'm excited to see what it is. Like, I wonder if there's like a Tony Chop Chop part or anything. But either way, it could definitely be like a subplot. They always put those little like nods. Well, then you have to wonder, like, is it going to be in the 70s?

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Because, oh, my God, I love to watch shit that is set in that time.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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i wonder i need to know so i'm excited to see i love american horror stories so good i would love to see it and that is the very frustrating tale of the lady in the of the dunes that we don't know who she is someday i think we're gonna update you guys i'm gonna manifest it I think we're going to do it. Let's do it. I think we're going to solve it. I think we, so far we have a good squad.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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We got Johnny and Tyler up in Canada. Sarah Turney, girl, come on squad.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I know you can get shit done. Bailey Sarian. Bailey Sarian, get over here. Make me look good while we investigate this, please. Yes. And yeah, I think we're going to do this. Let's get it, friends. We'll add some more. Don't worry. For sure. Who else should be on the squad? Everyone is going to volunteer. Oh, you know what? Jordan from the Nighttime Podcast. He's up in Canada, too. We got him.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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isn't that fucked up can you imagine going home and like your wife is like hey how was your day at work and you're like oh actually i got swallowed by a humpback whale how was your day sweetie i got swallowed by a humpback whale they initially thought he uh he had broken both of his legs yeah and they were like he at least broke one he apparently didn't break any bones when he went to the hospital yeah he went to the hospital he just had uh soft tissue damage

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And I guess an expert said that humpback whales are like gulp feeders. Like they just slurp and gulp. They just get as much as they can down. Yeah. So this was definitely like an accident. He just happened to be there and I think he was just...

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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gulping up food it's literally like i think that happens in finding nemo like actually yeah and then there's i guess there's um a marine mammal expert peter corcoran and he's from the new england aquarium which our cousin worked at hey i was just there the other day yeah she's amazing

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And he works there, and he was saying that basically the whale bringing him to the surface to spit him out, he said it's perfectly believable that the whale was trying to help him. Shut up. I love this whale. Because there's evidence that say that humpbacks can be altruistic towards humans. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. It's like how elephants think we're cute. Yes. Yeah, I love that.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Not that I want to get swallowed by a humpback whale, but like, wow, love it. But I think it was just like... It was a whoops moment for that whale. That would be... It was embarrassing, and he decided that he was going to try to make good at the end. It was embarrassing. He was probably really shamed. Imagine having that under your belt for two truths and a lie. Yeah. I was born here.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I like the color blue. And I was swallowed by a black whale. And they're like, okay, that's the line. You're like, I actually love the color red. I hate blue. I'm like... What the fuck? That's an amazing story. I thought I had a good one. Mine is just that I was born in Hawaii.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And people are always like, that's the lie. And you're like, no. But I was not swallowed by a humpback whale. No, you were not. Maybe I'll still use it in Two Truths and a Lie, though. I think it's a good one. And you know what, Michael Packard? I'm really glad that you're okay. Congrats. Yeah, congrats.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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make sure you tell your boys because they're gonna love that story also are you gonna go back to lobster i'm sure he will he probably will those people are always just badass yeah they're just they don't care like that's just they know the ocean they know the dangers of the ocean and they're just like yeah yeah I'm OK.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Like I think at one point he was like, at least it wasn't a shark, which you're like, yeah, but it was still a whale that swallowed you. You were in the bell of a whale. Yeah, that's scary. That's crazy. Also, it took everything in me and now I just like can't get past it. When you said like whales are gulp feeders, I was going to say same. Yeah, I figured. And I couldn't let that joke go.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Earnin is a financial technology company, not a bank. Cash outs are based on your available earnings. Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees. Option to expedite your transfer for a fee tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. See the cash out user agreement for details services not available in all states.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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I figured you had to bring it right back. It hits different after the fact, but it still hits. It does. You're welcome. I think a lot of people can relate. Yeah. But yeah, so that brings us nicely into the episode today. Which is? Which is the crazy, mysterious, and gruesome case of the Lady of the Dunes. And unsolved. Very unsolved. And now I want to solve it.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Whenever I get into one of these cases really hard, I'm like, hmm. Well, you know, things do happen after we cover cases sometimes.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And it freaks me out. I feel like this is, it reminds, this reminds me of like the Karina Homer case, the way I want to, I want to solve it. Like, I really want to solve that case. And I really want to solve this case. And they're both Massachusetts. Yeah. I solved the Karina Holman case. Yeah. I know who did it. I know what you did last summer. But I want it like solved. Yeah.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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You want a real detective to be doing that. I need to know more information. We need to solve this citizen detective style. Let's do it. We're going to solve this. Did you hear us?

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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and we'll go we should just get like a true crime squad together let's do it get Sarah Turney like she's clearly doing the damn thing Sarah Turney you're on the squad we have to get Bailey Sarian because we're newly best friends and she can make us look good too yes so while we're doing this yeah I think that's honestly that's the dream team it really is I'm sure we'll think of more later we'll add to the squad because it's early and I mean the entire morbid network has to come exactly everybody everybody all right so guys let's

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Pack your bags. Come to Massachusetts. We're doing this. See you soon. We're going to solve the Lady of the Dunes case. But let me tell you about it first so that you guys can decide afterwards if you want to join the squad. Yeah.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So first of all, if you happen to have any information about this case, because it is a pretty well-known case, especially around here, you can direct any tips, any information, anything that your grandparents may have slipped...

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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out at some point at dinner time at supper at the supper table if they sat there and they told you that one time they were in p-town and it was july it was hot and i stumbled upon this dead body Here's where you can tell the Provincetown Police Department, 508-487-1212 or 508-487-1213.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Or if you have any information about the unidentified body that we are going to talk about, call the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner at 617-267-6767. So make sure you call those if you have any information. Okay. So I'm going to start this off with a quick little quote that's going to like sum it up for you what we're going to talk about. Alrighty.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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For the last 47 years, investigators have been struggling to identify the Lady of the Dunes, a handless corpse that was found nearly decapitated on a Massachusetts beach. So that's going to tell you everything you need to know about what we're going to do. There it is. Whoop, there it is.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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It is wild to me. It's always wild to me when we can't find who did something, even if we have the identity of the victim. Because it's like, people should never be able to get away with this stuff, especially now. Right. But we don't even know who she is. That's the thing that is nuts to me, is that we don't know who this woman is. I know. No one's been able to identify her. It's so scary.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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There's a lot in life that feels like it should be guaranteed, but it just isn't. Things like your friends being on their way when they text you LMW, or getting out the same number of socks from the dryer that you put in. AT&T is introducing a new guarantee, the AT&T Guarantee, because there's a lot in life that's not guaranteed.

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Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And when I start telling you... who she was, how she was found, you're going to see that it's strange because as they say multiple times, she seems well taken care of. Right. You know, like she doesn't, she didn't come across as somebody who was like, you know, going from place to place or down on their luck or not, maybe wasn't connected to people.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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She seemed like she interacted with people quite often. Okay. So what happened was a bit after 6 p.m. on Friday, July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl named Leslie Metcalf was at Race Point Dunes in P-Town. She was following a barking dog. It was a beagle. And she had been with friends at the beach.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Leslie's sister, Alyssa, had said in an interview later that she was at the stables that day, but her sister and some friends had gone to the beach to play. They had been hanging around and at a dune shack that family friends were renting. And a dune shack is exactly what it sounds like. But they were originally built like a century ago or a century earlier than like 1974. Yeah, exactly.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So not now. But they were originally built as cabins for these crews of people who would keep watch for ships so they wouldn't run aground in bad weather. And they're exactly what they sound like, just little shacks all across the dunes. Yeah.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Now, after a while, they turned them into, like, beach rentals and places where, like, local artists or, like, you know, creators of any kind could set up and sell their wares out of. They're all over the place in B-town. Exactly. And on the Cape in general. Exactly. Now, her parents were there as well, and there were two dogs in the shack.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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When they were all ready to head home, they were just going to walk across the beach and the dunes and go back home. They started walking, and one of the dogs, the beagle, followed them.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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which was fine he was just walking down the beach with them but then he kind of veered off the path and started barking wildly like clearly trying to tell them something he was very clearly indicating something he had found right that was for sure so leslie was like hmm what because she's 12 and i want to know what that dog's doing i mean i'm 35 and i'd be like hmm i want to find out what that dog is barking up

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And she followed him, as I would. And when she ran off the beaten track after the dog, she quickly noticed a motionless form laying in the dunes.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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And it was surrounded by tall grass. Now, she said she thought the body initially was a deer at first. Not a mannequin this time. Not a mannequin. She thought it was a deer. And she said, you know, she was upset enough about possibly running into a dead or hurt deer.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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The AT&T guarantee means connectivity you can depend on, deals you want, and service you deserve, or they'll make it right. Visit att.com slash guarantee to learn more. AT&T connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com slash guarantee for details. Hello, brethren. Happy after the holidays. It's after the holidays now. Not now, technically. But where you are.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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That's still shitty. Of course. But then she saw the form completely... She made out some legs and feet, and she saw hair tied up into a ponytail and caked with blood. Oh, my goodness. And she realized that she was looking at a human body. This poor little 12-year-old finding that. She could also smell the scent of decomposition nearby.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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Like, you know, she had been there for a while in the summer sun. So she was baking. I was going to say. Now, what had happened, though, was... It was really hot. It's hot summers here and on P-Town. And it's right next to the... It's on the beach, right next to the water. Massachusetts water is not like crystal clear Caribbean water. Love that dirty water.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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So that smell of like the ocean and all that can be gnarly. But it's something you just expect here.

Morbid

Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

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That you're going to have that beach smell. You just get hit in the face with like red tide smell.

Morbid

Episode 666: Episode 666 - Listener Tales of the Beast

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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

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Episode 674: The Norco Shootout

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We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.

Morbid

Episode 674: The Norco Shootout

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Yeah, do it during the daytime.

Morbid

Episode 674: The Norco Shootout

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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

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Episode 674: The Norco Shootout

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Oh, that's so bad for Gary.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

29.028

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

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Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

3182.608

If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

55.273

Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

834.659

Lamont Jones's world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

855.483

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

878.677

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

885.862

Last year, Long Crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

906.545

But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen the Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

932.375

I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

936.717

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Morbid

Episode 664: David Carpenter: The Trailside Killer (Part 2)

940.558

Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit

18.567

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Morbid

Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit

3844.98

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about.

Morbid

Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit

3860.02

Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War.

Morbid

Episode 637: The Bobbed Haired Bandit

3881.838

These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

1086.019

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Morbid

Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

2023.655

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Morbid

Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

2044.473

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

2067.67

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Morbid

Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

24.386

Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

24.341

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

4074.841

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

4088.106

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

4100.23

This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

4104.432

And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery and left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Morbid

Episode 653: Spooky Lakes (Volume 2)

4125.914

No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

1085.63

I need to try orange vanilla because I bet that tastes like a creamsicle, and that's my favorite flavor. With flavored air, you can satisfy your oral fixation through a passive diffusion system that utilizes no electronics, vapor, or combustion. And there's no nicotine, so it's not addictive. It's also non-toxic flavors. It is a guilt-free alternative.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

1104.503

And no batteries, so you never need to charge it. That's a win-win-win. Fume has already helped over 400,000 people take steps toward better habits, and now it's your turn. Use our code MORBID to get a free gift with your Journey Pack. Head to tryfume.com, that's tryfum.com, and use code MORBID to claim this limited-time offer today.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

2096.205

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Lamont Jones's world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

21.229

Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

2116.061

From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern. Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried.

Morbid

Episode 670: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 2)

2132.185

With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

1856.598

Calling all dog owners! Your furry friend deserves top-notch nourishment, and Ollie delivers the clean, fresh nutrition your dog needs in five flavors they'll absolutely flip over. Ollie is made in U.S. kitchens, with ingredients carefully sourced from trusted growers and producers around the world, with absolutely no harmful fillers or preservatives.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

1876.061

With protein-first recipes like fresh beef with sweet potatoes, fresh turkey with blueberries, or fresh lamb with cranberries, you might start thinking, dang, my dog eats better than I do. And that's probably true when it comes to Ollie. Give your pup a fresh start this new year by letting them taste test a personalized meal plan with Ollie. Head to Ollie.com slash Wondery.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

1897.411

Tell them all about your dog and use code WONDERY to get 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a clean bowl guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash Wondery. And enter code Wondery to get 60% off your first box. Start your dog's new year off right with Ollie.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

1920.243

Start your dog's new year off right with Ollie. If you've ever considered a career as a licensed funeral director, Fine Mortuary College's online associate degree program can be completed in just two years. Fine Mortuary College provides an inclusive, engaging, and innovative educational experience that challenges and prepares tomorrow's funeral service professionals.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

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Being a funeral director is about human services, helping people, specifically helping the living as they navigate the grieving process. The curriculum focuses on all aspects of funeral service, including the psychology, science, and business requirements of the profession. To attend a virtual open house, please visit their website at www.fmc.edu and RSVP for the date that best fits your schedule.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

1969.084

That's www.fmc.edu. Use promo code WONDERY.

Morbid

Episode 633: Listener Tales 93

3688.836

At approximately 9 o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper.

Morbid

Episode 659: The Unsolved Murder of Kristin O’Connell

18.211

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 659: The Unsolved Murder of Kristin O’Connell

1888.061

Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect. For Patty, that friend was Desiree.

Morbid

Episode 659: The Unsolved Murder of Kristin O’Connell

1904.559

Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer.

Morbid

Episode 659: The Unsolved Murder of Kristin O’Connell

1913.658

A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Cat Torres. But who was hiding a secret? From Wondery, based on my smash hit podcast from Brazil, comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat, about a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb.

Morbid

Episode 659: The Unsolved Murder of Kristin O’Connell

1938.974

I'm Chico Felitti. You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 648: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 2)

24.699

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 648: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 2)

4942.927

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Morbid

Episode 648: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 2)

4956.211

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Morbid

Episode 648: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 2)

4972.535

And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Morbid

Episode 648: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 2)

4994.018

No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Morbid

Episode 671: The Murder of Carol Stuart

29.028

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 671: The Murder of Carol Stuart

3152.812

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Morbid

Episode 671: The Murder of Carol Stuart

4269.113

Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.

Morbid

Episode 671: The Murder of Carol Stuart

4289.919

Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 671: The Murder of Carol Stuart

4313.139

You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Morbid

Episode 661: Herbert Mullin: The Killer Hippie (Part 2)

15.038

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 661: Herbert Mullin: The Killer Hippie (Part 2)

3305.726

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Morbid

Episode 661: Herbert Mullin: The Killer Hippie (Part 2)

3319.018

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Doctor Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.

Morbid

Episode 661: Herbert Mullin: The Killer Hippie (Part 2)

3339.192

With Wondery Plus, you get access to exclusive bonus content, too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love, like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure. No, for sure he did it.

Morbid

Episode 661: Herbert Mullin: The Killer Hippie (Part 2)

3359.041

Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Morbid

Episode 634: Michael and Suzan Carson: San Francisco Witch Killers

18.533

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Morbid

Episode 634: Michael and Suzan Carson: San Francisco Witch Killers

4987.489

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about.

Morbid

Episode 634: Michael and Suzan Carson: San Francisco Witch Killers

5002.549

Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War.

Morbid

Episode 634: Michael and Suzan Carson: San Francisco Witch Killers

5024.367

These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Morbid

Episode 669: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 1)

24.386

Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 669: The Crimes of Robert Durst (Part 1)

3387.991

I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.

Morbid

Episode 650: Plagues of Hysteria with Andrew McMahon

24.341

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morbid

Episode 642: Rodney Alcala: The Dating Game Killer (Part 2)

29.049

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

Morbid

Episode 642: Rodney Alcala: The Dating Game Killer (Part 2)

67.924

You know that ding means you're going somewhere exciting. But do you know what this one means? It's the sound you hear when learning a new language with Babbel. Babbel's quick 10-minute lessons, handcrafted by over 200 language experts, get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. Let's get more of you talking in a new language.

Morbid

Episode 642: Rodney Alcala: The Dating Game Killer (Part 2)

91.041

Babbel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babbel.com slash truecrime. Get up to 60% off at Babbel.com slash truecrime. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash truecrime. Babbel.com slash truecrime. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

328.615

Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, bringing accounting, inventory, HR, and financial management into one platform. With real-time insights, you're closing your books in days, not weeks. Here at The Daily Wire, we're proud to partner with NetSuite because they're leading the way.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

350.542

Speaking of leading the way, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash morningwire. This guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash morningwire. Again, that's netsuite.com slash morningwire.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

435.426

I think you're going to see a couple of big trading partners do deals very quickly.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

615.081

Have we seen one of the worst drops in the stock market in over 35 years?

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

65.336

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SCOTUS Trump Wins & Stock Market Tariff Turbulence | 4.9.25

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Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

108.193

Many viewers said they felt hopeful and proud, with strong approval for Trump's plans on immigration, government spending, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Majority also believed he accurately described crime in the US and had a clear strategy for lowering prices.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

177.509

China is saber-rattling following Trump's new tariffs, which took effect earlier this week.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

313.556

A sharp drop in mortgage rates has sparked a surge in loan demand. Mortgage applications reached the biggest increase in months last week. As we head into home buying season, total mortgage applications leapt up to 20.4% last week, while refinancing applications soared to 37% and purchase applications rose 9%.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

333.854

The decline in rates comes amid some economic uncertainty tied to new tariffs on imports from China, Canada, and Mexico. which some fear could drive up home prices, especially for new construction.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

374.946

During Trump's speech last night, Democrats remained seated for most of the time, including when Trump honored several regular Americans in attendance. One of those was volleyball player Peyton McNabb. McNabb suffered severe injuries after a spike to the face from a male player who was allowed to play for a girls team.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

393.49

Trump praised McNabb's advocacy for women's sports and reiterated his pledge to cut federal funding for schools allowing male athletes in female competitions. Morning Wire spoke to McNabb today. Here's what she told us about her ordeal.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

495.097

All right, there's your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it this morning, we covered some major stories, including Trump's joint address to Congress and Senate Democrats voting against keeping men out of women's sports. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Auto Tariff Relief & ABC Braces for Layoffs | Afternoon Update | 3.5.25

92.54

President Trump's joint address last night is getting strong reviews from viewers. Among those who watched, 76% liked what they heard, while just 23% didn't. The speech was described by most watchers as, quote, presidential, inspiring, and unifying.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Joint Address to Congress | 3.5.25

502.938

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Morning Wire

Trump’s Joint Address to Congress | 3.5.25

520.933

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Morning Wire

Trump Executive Order Blocked & DeepSeek’s Back Door | Afternoon Update | 2.5.25

0.649

This episode is brought to you by Beam. Groggy and exhausted is no way to start off your day, which is why we're introducing Beam's Dream Powder, a science-backed, healthy hot cocoa for sleep. Head to shopbeam.com slash wire and use code wire at checkout for up to 40% off.

Morning Wire

Trump Executive Order Blocked & DeepSeek’s Back Door | Afternoon Update | 2.5.25

233.762

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Morning Wire

NPR, PBS Heads Testify & Trump’s Voter ID EO | Afternoon Update | 3.26.25

48.901

The new message appears to show timing and targets for the strikes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists no classified material was shared. The White House backed up that claim today while accusing the outlet of sensationalizing the leak. Vice President J.D. Vance and other officials maintained the information was already known to allies and not a threat to national security.

Morning Wire

NPR, PBS Heads Testify & Trump’s Voter ID EO | Afternoon Update | 3.26.25

67.811

Still, many on the left are calling for heads to roll, demanding that Hegseth and other officials step down. Meanwhile, US intelligence officials, including the heads of the FBI and CIA, testified today on Capitol Hill. Here's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Morning Wire

NPR, PBS Heads Testify & Trump’s Voter ID EO | Afternoon Update | 3.26.25

82.81

The President and National Security Advisor Walz held a press conference yesterday with a clear message. It was a mistake that a reporter was inadvertently added to a signal chat with high-level national security principals having a policy discussion about imminent strikes against the Houthis and the effects of the strike. The National Security Advisor has taken full responsibility for this.

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

373.759

Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. So Amanda, we've been covering Make America Healthy Again as a movement. What kind of changes could we see to SNAP?

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

40.004

And EPA Chief Lee Zeldin is taking swift action to dismantle cumbersome environmental regulations.

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

442.948

So about the opposition, what are we seeing in terms of the lobbying effort from the big food companies and soda companies?

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

480.652

Right. So there's been a lot of buzz about that online. What are these influencers saying or being paid to say?

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

623.064

Well, incredible that the American Heart Association is campaigning for soda. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. The second Trump administration could oversee one of the largest shifts in environmental policy in over a decade. EPA chief Lee Zeldin is leading the transition with an aggressive effort to cut extensive climate regulations.

Morning Wire

Signal Snafu & Soda Wars | 3.26.25

94.644

Top national security officials were on Capitol Hill yesterday, where lawmakers grilled them on how a journalist was added to a group chat about military operations.

Morning Wire

NSA Chat Crackdown & Bondi Warns Maine | Afternoon Update | 2.26.25

0.529

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Morning Wire

House Budget Bill Battle & NY’s Wildcat Strike | 2.26.25

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House Budget Bill Battle & NY’s Wildcat Strike | 2.26.25

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Morning Wire

House Budget Bill Battle & NY’s Wildcat Strike | 2.26.25

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Morning Wire

House Budget Bill Battle & NY’s Wildcat Strike | 2.26.25

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Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

203.194

Nashville police released their final report on the Covenant school shooting two years after the deadly incident. The newly released documents reveal the attack was being plotted for up to five years in advance. The 2023 attack by a trans-identifying teen girl left three third graders and three adults dead at the Christian school.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

222.674

The report states that the shooter did not leave a dedicated manifesto, but did leave behind a cache of writings and documents going back to 2017. Those documents included detailed fantasies about committing a Columbine inspired shooting. Documents also described fantasies about killing her father and her psychiatrist, as well as shooting up a different school in Nashville.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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Wilkie Farr and Gallagher became the third high-powered law firm to strike an agreement with the White House on Tuesday. The law firm is another one aligned with Democrats, and Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Imhoff, is a partner at the firm. The firm agreed to end DEI practices and spend $100 million on pro bono legal work for White House-approved causes.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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The agreement came after the firm was reportedly warned it would be sanctioned soon by the White House. A post on President Trump's Truth Social account said he is, quote, "...delivering on his promises of eradicating partisan lawfare in America."

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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All right, those are your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it this morning, we covered some big stories, including the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, HHS mass layoffs, and the massive decrease of border crossings under Trump. Thanks for tuning in.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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Elon Musk will step back from his Doge duties. President Trump told close advisors and his cabinet that Musk will soon be stepping down from his government role.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.

Morning Wire

DOGE to Become Musk-less & Adams Indictment Dismissed | Afternoon Update | 4.2.25

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As three sources told Politico, Trump continues to highly value Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, but the outlet reports that the two men have agreed that it's about time for Musk to shift focus back to his business ventures and take on a more limited role.

Morning Wire

Trump-Zelenskyy Talk & UPenn’s Federal Funding Paused | Afternoon Update | 3.19.25

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Trump-Zelenskyy Talk & UPenn’s Federal Funding Paused | Afternoon Update | 3.19.25

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Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Morning Wire

Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Morning Wire

Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Morning Wire

Putin Moves Toward Peace & JFK Files Released | 3.19.25

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Morning Wire

Congestion Toll Controversy & Diddy’s Charge Petition | Afternoon Update | 2.19.25

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Morning Wire

Congestion Toll Controversy & Diddy’s Charge Petition | Afternoon Update | 2.19.25

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Morning Wire

Congestion Toll Controversy & Diddy’s Charge Petition | Afternoon Update | 2.19.25

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Supporters argue that the rock opera has always featured unconventional casting, but critics accuse Hollywood of pushing an agenda. After the casting announcement, many took to social media to slam the move. Actor Nick Searcy said, Hollywood is just trolling us now. The production, set for August, marks the first return of musicals to the Hollywood Bowl since the pandemic.

Morning Wire

Congestion Toll Controversy & Diddy’s Charge Petition | Afternoon Update | 2.19.25

88.123

They're saying that things are being done are unconstitutional, but what they are doing is unconstitutional. They are guilty of the crime of which they accuse us.

Morning Wire

Boasberg Threatens Contempt & Letitia James Investigated | Afternoon Update | 4.16.25

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Boasberg Threatens Contempt & Letitia James Investigated | Afternoon Update | 4.16.25

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Morning Wire

Inflation Rises & Red Dye No. 3 Banned | Afternoon Update | 1.15.25

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Morning Wire

Inflation Rises & Red Dye No. 3 Banned | Afternoon Update | 1.15.25

171.263

Netanyahu says the final details are still being ironed out. Multiple mediators say the two parties agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of dozens of hostages. The deal comes after more than 15 months of war. Under the reported agreement, Hamas will release 33 hostages, including women, children, and the elderly, in exchange for Israel freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Morning Wire

Inflation Rises & Red Dye No. 3 Banned | Afternoon Update | 1.15.25

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The deal would also provide an opportunity to negotiate the release of the 97 other hostages. The first three hostages are expected to be freed on day one as a gesture of compliance.

Morning Wire

Inflation Rises & Red Dye No. 3 Banned | Afternoon Update | 1.15.25

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EU, Canada Impose Tariffs & Russia Strikes Ukraine | Afternoon Update | 3.12.25

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Morning Wire

EU, Canada Impose Tariffs & Russia Strikes Ukraine | Afternoon Update | 3.12.25

116.863

As of right now, the EU tariffs are set to take effect April 1st, with additional duties set to hit the US on April 13th. Meanwhile, Britain is holding off on its own tariffs, but says it will continue to press for a deal.

Morning Wire

EU, Canada Impose Tariffs & Russia Strikes Ukraine | Afternoon Update | 3.12.25

56.097

Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc says their 25% counter-tariffs, which take effect tomorrow, will hit nearly $30 billion in U.S. goods, including computers, sports equipment, and cast iron products.

Morning Wire

EU, Canada Impose Tariffs & Russia Strikes Ukraine | Afternoon Update | 3.12.25

68.604

Earlier in the day, the European Union also imposed counter tariffs on the United States, targeting things like textiles, home appliances, agricultural products, and iconic American products like bourbon, peanut butter, and jeans. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the U.S. tariffs disruptive and warned of rising prices and job losses.

Morning Wire

Tulsi Gabbard Confirmed & Cartel Drug Tunnels | Afternoon Update | 2.12.25

0.646

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Morning Wire

Tulsi Gabbard Confirmed & Cartel Drug Tunnels | Afternoon Update | 2.12.25

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Morning Wire

SCOTUS Halts Federal Worker Stay & Korea Tension Rises | Afternoon Update | 4.8.25

47.829

The nation's highest court granted an emergency stay and halted the reinstatement of over 16,000 probationary federal workers that were let go since Trump took office. The justices ruled today that the nine nonprofit groups that challenged the firings lacked legal standing. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson dissented.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Halts Federal Worker Stay & Korea Tension Rises | Afternoon Update | 4.8.25

64.693

The decision blocks a lower court's order that the government rehire the workers, many of whom were dismissed without the full protections granted to permanent federal employees. Plaintiffs argue that the mass terminations disrupted critical services at agencies like Veterans Affairs and the Forest Service.

Morning Wire

SCOTUS Halts Federal Worker Stay & Korea Tension Rises | Afternoon Update | 4.8.25

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Government lawyers warn that the reinstatement would create chaos across agencies and maintain the cuts were performance-based.

Morning Wire

Trump Trade War & Defunding the Ivy League | 4.8.25

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Trump Trade War & Defunding the Ivy League | 4.8.25

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Morning Wire

Trump Trade War & Defunding the Ivy League | 4.8.25

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Trump Trade War & Defunding the Ivy League | 4.8.25

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Morning Wire

Jack Smith Report Blocked & Congestion Toll Avoidance | Afternoon Update | 1.7.25

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Morning Wire

Jack Smith Report Blocked & Congestion Toll Avoidance | Afternoon Update | 1.7.25

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Jack Smith Report Blocked & Congestion Toll Avoidance | Afternoon Update | 1.7.25

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Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

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Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

151.55

Canada, China, and Mexico have hit back after President Trump's new tariffs took effect today. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pearce has the latest.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

315.925

A recall effort against LA Mayor Karen Bass is officially underway, with organizers launching a website to gather signatures. The movement follows severe backlash over Bass's handling of the January wildfires in Pacific Palisades, which burned thousands of homes and businesses while she was in Ghana, despite fire warnings.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

33.735

Daily Wire editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro has called on President Trump to pardon former police officer Derek Chauvin. Shapiro argues that evidence does not support Chauvin's conviction in the death of George Floyd. He says that pressure on the jury in the trial, as well as legacy media influence, played a major role in the verdict. Here's Shapiro.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

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The petition needs signatures from around 15% of LA voters to trigger a special election.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

391.571

A Senate bill aimed at barring men and boys from competing in female-designated school sports failed to advance last night. Not a single Democrat senator voted in favor of the measure.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

413.629

The legislation sought to define Title IX protections based on a person's reproductive biology at birth, aligning with President Trump's recent executive order on the issue. Democrats call it divisive and a culture war distraction, while Republicans argue the measure ensures fairness in women's athletics.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

431.463

And NASA is set to launch its SPHERE-X space observatory this week, aiming to map over 450 million galaxies and unlock the origins of the universe. The nearly $500 million mission will use infrared spectroscopy to analyze the formation of galaxies, the distribution of water in the Milky Way, and the early moments following the Big Bang.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

453.379

The observatory will lift off from California on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Scientists say SPHEREX could provide groundbreaking insights into cosmic inflation, which scientists believe shaped the universe billions of years ago.

Morning Wire

Pardon Chauvin Petition Launched & LA Mayor Recall Effort | Afternoon Update | 3.4.25

84.175

Daily Wire has launched a petition at PardonDerek.com in an effort to rally support for the dismissal of Chauvin's federal charges. Currently, Derek Chauvin remains in prison where he's serving a 22-and-a-half-year sentence on state charges.

Morning Wire

Trump-Zelensky Fallout & Tariffs Hit Canada, Mexico | 3.4.25

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Morning Wire

Trump-Zelensky Fallout & Tariffs Hit Canada, Mexico | 3.4.25

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Trump-Zelensky Fallout & Tariffs Hit Canada, Mexico | 3.4.25

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Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

108.626

President Trump is overhauling the U.S. military through sweeping executive action and out of the box appointments.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

21.664

How else is the president boosting military readiness?

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

344.062

Tech stocks tumbled Monday after a stunning announcement from DeepSeek, an emerging AI powerhouse in China.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

58.069

Gunfire erupts between Border Patrol and suspected cartel members just days after Trump labels them terrorists.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

622.634

Here to talk about the latest news on immigration and Trump's criminal crackdown is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pearce. Tim, so first, where was this shootout?

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

657.054

Alarming development, to say the least. And this comes as the Trump crackdown on illegal immigrants is really ramping up, correct?

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

798.576

So an aggressive media campaign that sort of matches its pace on deportations. Tim, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Hey, thank you for listening this morning. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

812.764

If you love our show and stand with that mission, consider subscribing, giving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.

Morning Wire

Black Sea Ceasefire & Signal Leak Hearing | Afternoon Update | 3.25.25

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This episode is brought to you by Old Glory Bank. It's time to put your money where your mouth is when you say America is back. Old Glory Bank supports hardworking Americans, small businesses, and your constitutional rights. No cancel culture, no woke nonsense. Head to oldglorybank.com and be part of something bigger. Again, that's oldglorybank.com.

Morning Wire

Black Sea Ceasefire & Signal Leak Hearing | Afternoon Update | 3.25.25

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Morning Wire

Car Maker Invests Big & Snow White Bombs | 3.25.25

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Morning Wire

Car Maker Invests Big & Snow White Bombs | 3.25.25

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Morning Wire

Car Maker Invests Big & Snow White Bombs | 3.25.25

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Morning Wire

Car Maker Invests Big & Snow White Bombs | 3.25.25

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Morning Wire

Trump-Macron Ukraine Meeting & Colony Ridge Raided | 2.25.25

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Trump-Macron Ukraine Meeting & Colony Ridge Raided | 2.25.25

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Morning Wire

Trump-Macron Ukraine Meeting & Colony Ridge Raided | 2.25.25

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Jeremy's Razors has crunched the numbers to map out the grim reality of a razorless American revolution. What if the founding fathers never shaved? The results? Horrifying. Suddenly, our founding fathers become a bunch of dirty, unshaven hippies whining about the man. The lesson? Without a damn good shave, history falls apart.

Morning Wire

Trump-Macron Ukraine Meeting & Colony Ridge Raided | 2.25.25

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Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

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Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

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Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

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Eighteen Democrat-led states and two cities have filed a lawsuit to challenge President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship. The order is set to take effect on February 19th. The challenging states and cities argue that the move violates the Constitution and longstanding legal precedent.

Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

175.931

But the Trump administration says the policy aims to strengthen national security and immigration enforcement. Here's Trump signing the executive order last night.

Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

263.837

Volume two of special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Trump has been blocked. Judge Eileen Cannon ruled that releasing details about Trump's classified documents case to Congress could risk prejudice. While Trump's legal team sought to block both volumes, the first volume covering election interference was partially released. Trump has dismissed the findings as a fake report.

Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

351.644

Over the weekend, Morning Wire spoke with Ryan's wife Anna about the ongoing negotiations and how both the Biden and Trump administrations were approaching it. She told a bit about the conditions Ryan has been living in.

Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

385.538

But now he's home, just hours after President Trump took office. A deal was reportedly struck in the final hours of Biden's presidency, which traded a convicted drug trafficker and terrorist for both Corbett and another American, William Wallace McKenty. Corbett's family said the following in a statement, quote,

Morning Wire

Gulf Coast Blizzard Warning & Ryan Corbett Returns Home | Afternoon Update | 1.21.25

403.698

Today, our hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God for sustaining Ryan's life and bringing him back home after what has been the most challenging and uncertain 894 days of our lives, unquote. Meanwhile, two more Americans remain in Afghanistan as Taliban prisoners.

Morning Wire

Putin's Partial Ceasefire & Stranded Astronauts Head Home | Afternoon Update | 3.18.25

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Morning Wire

Putin's Partial Ceasefire & Stranded Astronauts Head Home | Afternoon Update | 3.18.25

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Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

18.294

What can we expect from the high-stakes call between the two leaders?

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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A showdown over a plane load of suspected Trin de Aragua gang members has pitted immigrant activists against Trump. The administration is moving forward with deportation of over 250 individuals despite legal moves from the ACLU.

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

50.737

And new reports show both the U.K. and Germany had intel that the COVID virus was created in a lab but chose to suppress it.

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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Joining us now to discuss is independent journalist and author Michael Schellenberger. Hey, Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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So let's start with what we found out from the UK related to the origins of the coronavirus. What did we just learn and how does this change the way we think about how the UK in particular handled this situation?

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

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Now, you mentioned Fauci. Trump has just made the statements declaring that Biden's preemptive pardons for Anthony Fauci and others are invalid. His argument is that all of these pardons were signed by an auto pin, and thus Biden did not actively sign them and allegedly was not even fully aware what was being enacted in his name. Trump's going to try to make that case. We'll see if that holds up.

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

806.949

But related to this topic, a lot of people are looking for some sort of accountability, particularly from Fauci. What do you see coming on that front? What investigations are ongoing with congressional members? Where can we look for potential accountability?

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

867.13

What we've seen so far, this administration seems like it's pretty committed to transparency. Let's hope that holds up and we get some more transparency on this issue. Thank you so much for talking with us.

Morning Wire

Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

87.217

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Trump-Putin Phone Call & COVID Lab Leak Coverup | 3.18.25

99.929

President Trump will hold what could be a pivotal phone call with Russia's Vladimir Putin today as the two sides move closer to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Morning Wire

Russia-US Talk Peace & Border Apprehensions Plummet | Afternoon Update | 2.18.25

0.629

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Russia-US Talk Peace & Border Apprehensions Plummet | Afternoon Update | 2.18.25

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Trump’s Canadian Tariff Win & NIH Vaccine Hesitancy Research | Afternoon Update | 3.11.25

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USAID Programs Slashed & Anti-Israel Activist Detained | 3.11.25

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USAID Programs Slashed & Anti-Israel Activist Detained | 3.11.25

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Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

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Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

113.709

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's currently leading the controversial agency, says it may soon be abolished.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

150.68

FEMA has fired four employees allegedly involved in sending millions of dollars to New York City for housing migrants. DHS confirmed the firings this morning, which includes the agency's chief financial officer over the unauthorized $59 million in payments to luxury hotels.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

168.674

FEMA's acting administrator says payments have been suspended, but New York City officials dispute the claims, saying they haven't been notified of any funding freeze.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

180.253

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Morning Wire, all lowercase. Established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Head over to Shopify.com slash Morning Wire to start selling with Shopify today.

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Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

197.186

President Trump is doubling down on his plans for Gaza. While hosting King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House, Trump said the U.S. intends to take, hold, and cherish Gaza while relocating Palestinians.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

226.058

Despite some anger in Jordan, King Abdullah did make the following offer at the beginning of their meeting.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

252.418

The meeting comes as both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the ceasefire deal is off if the hostages aren't released by noon on Saturday. This all comes after Hamas announced it's delaying the next release of Israeli hostages. President Trump is reversing many of the Biden-era green energy regulations. Daily Wire reporter Mairead Elordi has the latest.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

26.775

A Pennsylvania teacher being held prisoner in Russia will be reunited with loved ones tonight after President Trump secured his release. Mark Fogel was detained back in 2021, according to a statement from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The president and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, announced that Mr. Witkoff had left Russian airspace with Mark Fogel.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

303.81

And a massive storm is rolling toward Los Angeles, bringing the risk of heavy rain, flooding, and landslides just before Valentine's Day. The National Weather Service warns this could be the strongest storm of the season with up to eight inches of rain in the mountains and four inches along the coast.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

319.463

burn areas face a high risk of mudslides, especially in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Los Angeles and Ventura counties have a 40% chance of extreme rainfall, while San Diego and the Inland Empire could see up to two inches. Officials urge residents to prepare for potential flooding as forecasters refine rainfall estimates in the coming days.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

339.639

Those are your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it, we covered some key stories this morning, including Trump's tariff war, Doge's legal battles, and FEMA progress and controversy. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.

Morning Wire

Marc Fogel Freed & Trump’s Green Energy Reversal | Afternoon Update | 2.11.25

88.231

A new report claims USAID funneled millions to extremist groups linked to terrorism. The Middle East Forum uncovered $164 million in grants tied to radical organizations, with at least 122 million benefiting terror-affiliated groups. Among them, a Gaza-based charity reportedly working with Hamas and an NGO whose staffers called for violence against Jews.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Retaliatory Tariffs & North Carolina Recovery | 2.11.25

336.883

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Trump’s Retaliatory Tariffs & North Carolina Recovery | 2.11.25

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Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

103.726

A Manhattan jury on Monday found 26-year-old Marine veteran Daniel Penny not guilty in the death of Jordan Neely.

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

21.547

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, December 10th, and this is Morning Wire. A lawsuit accusing P. Diddy of raping a 13-year-old girl has been amended to include rapper Jay-Z. Now the hip-hop mogul is speaking out.

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

3.177

A New York jury has found Marine veteran Daniel Penny not guilty.

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

391.673

Here with more on these allegations is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So Megan, the P. Diddy accuser claimed that he, along with another male celebrity, both raped her when she was 13 at an MTV Music Awards party. That was this past October that came out. She also claims there was a female celebrity watching. What is she now saying?

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

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So why would Jay-Z feel the need to file a suit against Busby prior to being named?

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

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Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

650.027

Here with the latest is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, a nationwide manhunt seemingly coming to a close. What can you tell us?

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

737.455

What do we know about Mangione's background?

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

830.693

So now what's going to happen with Mangione?

Morning Wire

Daniel Penny Acquitted & Suspected CEO Assassin | 12.10.24

908.277

Well, hopefully he doesn't inspire copycats.

Morning Wire

Mangione May Face Death Penalty & Russia-Ukraine Negotiations | Afternoon Update | 4.1.25

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Mangione May Face Death Penalty & Russia-Ukraine Negotiations | Afternoon Update | 4.1.25

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Mangione May Face Death Penalty & Russia-Ukraine Negotiations | Afternoon Update | 4.1.25

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No reporters or contributors were harmed in the recording of this episode, though an expensive piece of equipment almost was.

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India and Pakistan Conflict & Trump Fights Climate Rules | 5.8.25

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India and Pakistan Conflict & Trump Fights Climate Rules | 5.8.25

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India and Pakistan Conflict & Trump Fights Climate Rules | 5.8.25

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India and Pakistan Conflict & Trump Fights Climate Rules | 5.8.25

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Trump Backs Off Tariffs & Al Green Censured | Afternoon Update | 3.6.25

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Morning Wire

Trump Backs Off Tariffs & Al Green Censured | Afternoon Update | 3.6.25

44.012

Trump signed executive actions on Thursday to delay tariffs on goods covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement until April 2nd. In a Truth Social post, Trump first singled out the exemption for Mexico out of respect for President Claudia Scheinbaum, citing their cooperation on border security and combating fentanyl trafficking. Later in the day, though, Trump included Canada in on the pause.

Morning Wire

Trump Backs Off Tariffs & Al Green Censured | Afternoon Update | 3.6.25

66.799

The president noted that this is a temporary measure as leaders work together on these pressing issues.

Morning Wire

Federal Buyout Paused & 60 Minutes Transcript Released | Afternoon Update | 2.6.25

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Federal Buyout Paused & 60 Minutes Transcript Released | Afternoon Update | 2.6.25

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Tariff Retaliation Threats & FBI Busts MS-13 Leader | Afternoon Update | 4.3.25

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Tariff Retaliation Threats & FBI Busts MS-13 Leader | Afternoon Update | 4.3.25

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Tariff Retaliation Threats & FBI Busts MS-13 Leader | Afternoon Update | 4.3.25

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Lawmakers Probe Signal-Gate & Conservatives Swatted | 3.27.25

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Lawmakers Probe Signal-Gate & Conservatives Swatted | 3.27.25

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Lawmakers Probe Signal-Gate & Conservatives Swatted | 3.27.25

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Lawmakers Probe Signal-Gate & Conservatives Swatted | 3.27.25

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Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25

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Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25

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Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25

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Morning Wire

Shapiro Interviews Zelensky & Tren De Aragua Smuggling | Afternoon Update | 4.24.25

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Shapiro Interviews Zelensky & Tren De Aragua Smuggling | Afternoon Update | 4.24.25

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Taliban Frees George Glezmann & Trump Gives Maine Deadline | Afternoon Update | 3.20.25

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Taliban Frees George Glezmann & Trump Gives Maine Deadline | Afternoon Update | 3.20.25

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Kash Patel Confirmed & Vance Opens CPAC | Afternoon Update | 2.20.25

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Kash Patel Confirmed & Vance Opens CPAC | Afternoon Update | 2.20.25

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Trump-Zelensky Feud & MAHA’s Industry Impact | 2.20.25

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Trump-Zelensky Feud & MAHA’s Industry Impact | 2.20.25

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Trump-Zelensky Feud & MAHA’s Industry Impact | 2.20.25

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Trump-Zelensky Feud & MAHA’s Industry Impact | 2.20.25

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Trump-Zelensky Feud & MAHA’s Industry Impact | 2.20.25

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Morning Wire

Trump’s Budget Plan Passes & Hegseth Pens Panama Deal | Afternoon Update | 4.10.25

265.396

Hegseth announced a new U.S.-Panama partnership to safeguard the Panama Canal from what officials call malign Chinese influence, following high-level meetings with Panamanian President Jose Raul Molino. The deal includes a memorandum of understanding and a joint declaration that allows U.S.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Budget Plan Passes & Hegseth Pens Panama Deal | Afternoon Update | 4.10.25

281.287

naval vessels priority passage, and it boosts bilateral cooperation on cyber defense, intelligence sharing, and joint military training. Hegseth called the trip historic, crediting renewed trust under President Trump's leadership as key to securing the agreement. Here's Hegseth at a cabinet meeting today.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Budget Plan Passes & Hegseth Pens Panama Deal | Afternoon Update | 4.10.25

314.645

Defense officials emphasized the strategic urgency of countering China's regional ambitions and pledged continued U.S. engagement in Panama.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Budget Plan Passes & Hegseth Pens Panama Deal | Afternoon Update | 4.10.25

49.929

The GOP-led House passed a budget plan on Thursday morning that lays the groundwork for Trump's domestic priorities while overcoming resistance from a group of conservatives who want deeper spending cuts. The amended resolution was already cleared by the Senate and provides a blueprint for lawmakers to use the budget reconciliation process to craft legislation.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Budget Plan Passes & Hegseth Pens Panama Deal | Afternoon Update | 4.10.25

67.157

In the end, 216 Republicans and no Democrats voted in favor of the measure, with two Republicans voting against it. President Trump celebrated the vote on Truth Social, writing that the resolution sets the stage for one of the greatest and most important signings in the history of our country. He said it will be the largest tax and regulation cuts ever even contemplated.

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

378.76

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Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

417.876

Amid the terror fallout, the White House is working to make their economic case to Main Street Americans.

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

42.591

And will China hold out in the tariff war with Trump? We talked to a supply chain expert about what Beijing will do next.

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

58.004

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Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

601.155

Joining us now is Jim Nels, an expert supply chain consultant. Jim, thanks so much for joining us. So China retaliated against the U.S. and now Trump is turning up the pressure on them by raising tariffs even further. You've just returned from China. What did you hear on the ground there in terms of their response to this Trump tariff battle?

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

658.179

So when the Trump administration says they believe this is a good moment to apply a lot of pressure to China, do you agree? Do you think that they are correct in their assessment of China and its vulnerabilities at this time?

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

706.522

Now, what we saw from Trump initially was this blanket application of reciprocal tariffs. But you're saying that you're seeing this going in a more strategic, narrowed manner in the days to come. Is that what you expect?

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

75.794

Head to acorns.com slash wire or download the Acorns app to get started. Pay non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier one compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisor LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash wire.

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

800.985

With your familiarity with the Chinese regime and the industry there, how entrenched do you think they'll become? Are they in the end pragmatist when it comes to this kind of thing, or do they care more about the sort of symbolic wins in terms of fighting back against Trump?

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

870.379

Well, as we said, the situation is rapidly developing, so we'll see how this all settles out. Jim, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Take care.

Morning Wire

Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

93.106

In a stunning development Wednesday, President Trump paused tariffs on all trading partners with the exception of China.

Morning Wire

Will Trump’s Economic Gamble Work? | 4.27.25

3.191

After starting the week with another nosedive, the stock market rebounded as President Trump softened his approach to both tariffs and the Federal Reserve. The shift has some economists elevating their forecasts for the year, while others remain skeptical of the America-first policies.

Morning Wire

Will Trump’s Economic Gamble Work? | 4.27.25

777.659

Before we go, we want to share some big news. Starting on Monday, April 28th, we're launching Morning Wire video. You've trusted Morning Wire for fast, accurate news, and now we're bringing it to you in a new way in our studio on video. It won't change your audio experience, but it will add another way for you to enjoy our show. So look for Morning Wire video on YouTube starting Monday.

Morning Wire

Will Trump’s Economic Gamble Work? | 4.27.25

797.851

You can also find it on the Daily Wire app and Daily Wire website. And of course, you can still listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Morning Wire

Schweizer: Truth Behind Biden’s Family Pardons | 1.26.25

3.294

In the final minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden shocked the political world by issuing preemptive pardons for several of his own family members. The move has sparked renewed calls for investigations into Biden family corruption.

Morning Wire

Analyzing Trump’s Cabinet with Senator Mullin | 2.23.25

3.263

So far, President Trump is batting 1,000 on confirmations for his cabinet secretary nominees. Just this week, Kash Patel was confirmed as director of the FBI, while Labor Secretary Linda Chavez de Riemer seems to have secured the support of the Senate. This is the fastest pace since 2001.

Morning Wire

Faith and Freedom: Reclaiming America's Christian Roots | 4.20.25

3.131

The prominence of faith in public life in the U.S., particularly the Christian faith, is coming under renewed focus. This comes as the new administration makes moves to roll back what conservatives say has been an attack on Christianity and an abuse of the notion of the separation of church and state.

Morning Wire

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum | 3.2.25

3.197

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has laid out an ambitious agenda for his department, which manages one-fifth of the land and waters of the United States. Among his priorities, making America energy independent and making America beautiful again.

Morning Wire

Fools Gold: Newsom’s Bailouts, Beijing, and Broken California Dream | 3.16.25

3.171

Governor Gavin Newsom has made his way into the headlines in recent weeks, not just for the devastating California fires, but also his attempts to tack right on several of his left-wing stances. Now, a new investigative book peels back the curtain on Newsom's problematic political dealings, as well as other figures who the authors say killed the California dream.

Morning Wire

Decoding Trump's Win: 2024 Election Analysis | 12.15.24

3.015

In his third bid for the presidency, Donald Trump was able to overcome past shortfalls to put together a decisive victory, winning the Electoral College, the popular vote, and GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.

Morning Wire

Why It’s Time to Defund UNRWA | 1.12.25

3.166

Since the Hamas October 7 terror attack against Israel, a highly controversial Palestinian aid group has come under intense scrutiny. The United Nations Relief and Work for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA, has been revealed to have terrorist leaders and supporters among its staff. The Biden administration directed over a billion dollars to the group before pausing funds last year.

Morning Wire

How Cop Shows Survived the Cancel Mob—and Won 2024 | 3.8.25

3.214

Dan Abrams is one of the most prolific producers of law enforcement and legal content in the entertainment industry. His latest show On Patrol Live was the number one entertainment show of 2024 on Friday and Saturday nights. And it was just picked up for 90 more episodes.

Morning Wire

It Ends With Us...In Court | 2.8.25

27.133

In this episode, Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham speaks with award-winning journalist, author, and Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan to get insight into a drama only Hollywood could produce.

Morning Wire

It Ends With Us...In Court | 2.8.25

3.166

Actress Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni are continuing their public feud over their hit film, It Ends With Us, with both sides filing lawsuits. But even more than a legal battle, this has become an all-out PR war with leaked texts, calls, and film footage, as well as allegations of sexual harassment and spousal jealousy. The first trial date is set for March of 2026.

Morning Wire

Tesla Attacks, DOGE, & Government Waste with Senator Marsha Blackburn | 3.29.25

3.223

Amid a wave of protests and vandalism targeting Tesla and Doge, Republicans in the Senate are working to protect Tesla owners and make permanent the cost-cutting measures being carried out by President Trump.

Morning Wire

Is California Ready to Vote Red? | 4.26.25

3.018

A recent poll showed that 48% of Californians are considering voting Republican in the next election after years of failed leadership from Democrats.

Morning Wire

Is California Ready to Vote Red? | 4.26.25

913.642

You've trusted us for fast, accurate news, and now we're excited to bring you into our studio to see us on video. For audio listeners, don't worry. It won't change your listening experience. It's just another way to enjoy the show.

Morning Wire

Is California Ready to Vote Red? | 4.26.25

935.351

All right. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.

Morning Wire

Trump Targets DEI & Gender Policies | 1.25.25

3.114

President Trump has returned to office with an extremely ambitious agenda and has immediately taken executive action to jumpstart what he's promising will be a transformative year for the nation. Among the issues he's already begun to address is reversing the Biden administration's policies on gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Morning Wire

Global Coverup? Fresh Claims on Covid Origins | 3.22.25

3.146

New reports revealed over the last week that credible sources in both Germany and the UK allegedly informed government officials that the COVID virus escaped from the infamous Wuhan lab. The revelations have sparked renewed calls for investigations into who knew what, when, and increased demands for accountability.

Morning Wire

Reshaping the Deep State: Trump’s Buyouts & Reforms | 2.22.25

3.151

We are saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars with this buyout. In fact, I can confirm that more than 77,000 federal employees accepted this very generous buyout offer from the Trump administration.

Morning Wire

Can Trump Dismantle Iran’s Nuclear Program | 4.19.25

3.117

The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing the full dismantling of Iran's nuclear program, starting the first direct talks with the regime since 2018, with one sit-down already on the books and another on the docket.

Morning Wire

Held Prisoner in Afghanistan: A Family’s Fight for Freedom | 1.18.25

3.129

American businessman Ryan Corbett moved his family to Afghanistan in 2010, where he started a business and became active in the community. But the Corbett family later evacuated during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, leaving everything behind. Upon returning to his business in 2022, Ryan Corbett and several others were captured by the Taliban. Two years later, he remains a prisoner.

Morning Wire

Trade Deals, Tariff Truce & Trillions in US Investments

3.148

It was a historic week of dealmaking and positive economic news. President Trump and his team hammered out details of a trade truce with China, secured nearly $2 trillion in investment from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the stock market surged and inflation hit its lowest levels in years.

Morning Wire

The DOGE Data: Musk Slashes Billions in Government Waste | 3.15.25

3.168

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he was slashing more than 80% of the programs funded by USAID. The move comes as the Elon Musk-led Doge continues to add to its running list of cost-saving measures, which it says have now topped $100 billion.

Morning Wire

‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25

25.287

soldiers returning home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Morning Wire

‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25

3.302

Returning from war and reentering civilian life can be the hardest part of military service, particularly after wars mired in controversy like Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet that part of a soldier's story often goes untold. A new film produced by Gary Sinise and directed by Jake Rademacher takes an unflinching and personal look at the struggles and triumphs of U.S.

Morning Wire

The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25

16.677

One of the sources she allegedly drew from was the scholarship of Dr. Carol Swain, who has since written a book documenting the research that was stolen from her and the sequence of events.

Morning Wire

The Gay Affair: Exposing Harvard's Integrity Crisis | 2.1.25

3.171

Following now infamous congressional testimony on pervasive antisemitism at Harvard, the university's then president, Claudine Gay, was accused of widespread plagiarism, which ultimately caused her to step down.

Morning Wire

Wall Street’s Rollercoaster Ride & Trump’s Title IX Task Force | Afternoon Update | 4.7.25

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Wall Street’s Rollercoaster Ride & Trump’s Title IX Task Force | Afternoon Update | 4.7.25

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Wall Street’s Rollercoaster Ride & Trump’s Title IX Task Force | Afternoon Update | 4.7.25

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Trudeau’s Resignation & New Orleans Lawsuit | Afternoon Update | 1.6.25

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Morning Wire

Trudeau’s Resignation & New Orleans Lawsuit | Afternoon Update | 1.6.25

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Morning Wire

Le Pen Barred from Election & Wyoming’s Strict Voter ID Law | Afternoon Update | 3.31.25

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Morning Wire

Le Pen Barred from Election & Wyoming’s Strict Voter ID Law | Afternoon Update | 3.31.25

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Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ & ‘Tesla Takedown’ Protests | 3.31.25

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Morning Wire

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ & ‘Tesla Takedown’ Protests | 3.31.25

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Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

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Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

140.834

A new investigation reveals that a federal union boss collected a taxpayer-funded paycheck for 34 years without working a single hour for the Social Security Administration. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak reports.

Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

269.386

Two people are dead and many others injured after a driver plowed into a crowd in Mannheim, Germany. Authorities say the 40-year-old suspect is in custody, but they have not yet classified the incident as an attack. The crash follows a similar car ramming in Munich last month that was linked to Islamic extremism.

Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

287.131

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the violence while officials urged residents to avoid the area.

Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

35.478

Undercover footage from Project Veritas shows Colony Ridge sales staff appearing to admit that they sell land to buyers with foreign IDs. It can be a Mexican passport.

Morning Wire

Colony Ridge Footage & German Crash Kills Two | Afternoon Update | 3.3.25

54.782

Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist has more.

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

102.79

After a catastrophic meeting in the Oval Office, Ukrainian President Zelensky traveled to the UK in an effort to get more support from European leaders.

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

19.577

How are EU leaders reacting to the U.S. deal potentially falling through?

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

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Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

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Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

408.55

Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now to explain. So Megan, just a few years ago, BlackRock was a heavy hitter in the ESG movement. Even then, it was pretty controversial, but they seemed very committed. What's the evidence that they're now giving it up?

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

50.648

And hundreds gather outside Maine's statehouse, calling on Governor Janet Mills to protect women's sports.

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

543.371

So that was prior to the election. What prompted the change?

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

625.262

Well, a huge turnaround from the conversations we were having back in 2021, 2022. Yeah. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Following Trump's public showdown with Maine's governor, a state lawmaker has been silenced by her Democrat colleagues. Meanwhile, resident backlash culminates with a grassroots protest outside the statehouse.

Morning Wire

Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

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Zelensky Seeks European Aid & BlackRock Goes Woke-less | 3.3.25

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Morning Wire

The Last of the Greatest: Stories from WWII Veterans

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Morning Wire

The Last of the Greatest: Stories from WWII Veterans

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The Last of the Greatest: Stories from WWII Veterans

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Morning Wire

The Last of the Greatest: Stories from WWII Veterans

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Morning Wire

Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Morning Wire

Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Morning Wire

Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Democratic Infighting Grows & Wisconsin’s Judicial Showdown | 3.24.25

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Trump’s Title 42 Plans & Apple’s US Jobs Pledge | Afternoon Update | 2.24.25

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Trump’s Title 42 Plans & Apple’s US Jobs Pledge | Afternoon Update | 2.24.25

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Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

100.65

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen is back stateside after visiting suspected gang member Kilmar Abrego-Garcia in El Salvador. And the Supreme Court has stepped in to make similar deportations harder.

Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

18.973

How does a new Supreme Court ruling impact Trump's immigration plans?

Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

410.956

Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. So Amanda, Kennedy had a press conference this week. What did he say?

Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

46.922

And Democrats take aim at the president over his call for the Fed to lower rates, while Trump touts key economic wins.

Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

615.697

Well, it would be a major breakthrough if these studies find something. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. Democrats are up in arms about the president's latest economic moves, but Team Trump says he's doing exactly what Americans elected him to do.

Morning Wire

RFK Jr. Takes on Autism & Fed Fight | 4.21.25

853.616

Thank you for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

Morning Wire

Trump Sworn In & Ramaswamy Leaves DOGE | Afternoon Update | 1.20.25

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Trump Sworn In & Ramaswamy Leaves DOGE | Afternoon Update | 1.20.25

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Morning Wire

Democratic Party Divides & Trump Targets Houthis | 3.17.25

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Democratic Party Divides & Trump Targets Houthis | 3.17.25

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Democratic Party Divides & Trump Targets Houthis | 3.17.25

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Democratic Party Divides & Trump Targets Houthis | 3.17.25

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Democratic Party Divides & Trump Targets Houthis | 3.17.25

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Jack Smith Report Decision & Cartel Border Tunnels | Afternoon Update | 1.13.25

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Jack Smith Report Decision & Cartel Border Tunnels | Afternoon Update | 1.13.25

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A federal judge in Florida ruled that the Justice Department can release parts of Smith's report detailing decisions to charge Donald Trump in cases related to the 2020 election and classified documents. However, the judge blocked the release of sections tied to the classified documents case, citing risks to ongoing proceedings.

Morning Wire

Jack Smith Report Decision & Cartel Border Tunnels | Afternoon Update | 1.13.25

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Trump's legal team opposes any release, calling the report biased and unlawful. The Justice Department plans to release the election-related portion soon, while further court battles loom over transparency and accountability.

Morning Wire

Trump’s DOGE Double Down & Federal Worker Competency | 3.10.25

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Trump’s DOGE Double Down & Federal Worker Competency | 3.10.25

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Trump’s DOGE Double Down & Federal Worker Competency | 3.10.25

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Trump’s DOGE Double Down & Federal Worker Competency | 3.10.25

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Morning Wire

Migrant Hotel Money & Philly’s Chaotic Celebrations | Afternoon Update | 2.10.25

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FEMA Fires Partisans & February Jobs Growth | Afternoon Update | 3.7.25

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FEMA Fires Partisans & February Jobs Growth | Afternoon Update | 3.7.25

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Education Overhaul & RFK Jr.’s Bold Moves | 3.7.25

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Morning Wire

Education Overhaul & RFK Jr.’s Bold Moves | 3.7.25

377.37

Texting privacy policy and terms and conditions posted at textplan.us. Texting enrolls for recurring automated text marketing messages. Message and data rates may apply. Reply stop to opt out.

Morning Wire

Education Overhaul & RFK Jr.’s Bold Moves | 3.7.25

68.595

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Morning Wire

Education Overhaul & RFK Jr.’s Bold Moves | 3.7.25

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Morning Wire

USAID Cuts & Superbowl Preview | Afternoon Update | 2.7.25

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This episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Head to blackriflecoffee.com and use code DAILYWIRE for 20% off your purchase. That's blackriflecoffee.com, code DAILYWIRE.

Morning Wire

USAID Cuts & Superbowl Preview | Afternoon Update | 2.7.25

245.086

This episode is brought to you by Old Glory Bank. Co-founded in 2022 by Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder and John Rich, Old Glory Bank now serves tens of thousands of customers in all 50 states. Go to oldglorybank.com slash wire today to open your account and put your money in the hands of people you can actually trust.

Morning Wire

Vance Visits Greenland & Tesla Vandal Arrested | Afternoon Update | 3.28.25

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This episode is brought to you by Beam. Groggy and exhausted is no way to start off your day, which is why we're introducing Beam's Dream Powder, a science-backed, healthy hot cocoa for sleep. Head to shopbeam.com slash wire and use code wire at checkout for up to 40% off.

Morning Wire

Vance Visits Greenland & Tesla Vandal Arrested | Afternoon Update | 3.28.25

234.485

This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Support the tradition of American farmers and ranchers who have spent generations working to feed Americans with high quality meat exclusively and locally sourced right here in the USA. Subscribe now at goodranchers.com for free bacon, ground beef, seed oil free chicken nuggets or salmon in every order for a year, plus $40 off with code wire.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

105.788

The Trump administration and Doge are continuing their efforts to slash federal spending, with major cuts to the health department announced Thursday.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

18.821

It's Friday, March 28th, and this is Morning Wire.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

382.475

Hey guys, producer Brandon here. Did you know that over 140,000 family farms and ranches in the U.S. have closed down since 2017? But by subscribing to Good Ranchers, you can help prevent the closure of more. At GoodRanchers.com, you can rest easy knowing exactly where your meat comes from. Support those who work to feed Americans with meat exclusively and locally sourced.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

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Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

424.332

Here with the details is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. So, Amanda, what did Governor Mills say this week about Trump's order?

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

44.284

And voters in Maine overwhelmingly support taking men out of women's sports. But the state's governor is still defying Trump's order.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

550.372

Now, we know the majority of Americans disapprove of having boys and girls sports, but Maine is a more liberal state. Do we know how they feel there?

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

645.065

President Trump is taking action against top law firms that have ties to people who drove investigation and litigation against him.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

70.919

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Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

862.841

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

Morning Wire

DOGE’s HHS Overhaul & Maine Sports Standoff | 3.28.25

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Morning Wire

RFK Restructures HHS & Tourist Submarine Sinks | Afternoon Update | 3.27.25

0.129

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Morning Wire

RFK Restructures HHS & Tourist Submarine Sinks | Afternoon Update | 3.27.25

310.696

The National Diversity Council said its founder, Dennis Kennedy, and two top executives schemed to use donor funds to enrich themselves. A lawsuit said Kennedy paid himself a grossly excessive salary of more than $400,000 a year for 10 hours of work a week while using the nonprofit as a front for his for-profit diversity consulting business.

Morning Wire

RFK Restructures HHS & Tourist Submarine Sinks | Afternoon Update | 3.27.25

330.12

After Kennedy, the CEO, and the CFO tried to pay themselves $3 million in so-called back pay, the board intervened, and Kennedy allegedly set up a lookalike organization with the same name to trick people.

Morning Wire

RFK Restructures HHS & Tourist Submarine Sinks | Afternoon Update | 3.27.25

342.569

Despite the accusations, Kennedy is promoting a high-profile diversity conference next month in Los Angeles featuring Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, with ticket proceeds apparently going to his for-profit firm.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

108.015

Former Congressman George Santos was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft. The charges were tied to his 2022 campaign. The New York Republican broke down in court telling the judge he, quote, Santos must report to prison by July 25th. He pleaded guilty last year and agreed to pay $373,000 in restitution.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

132.967

Santos was expelled from Congress after a House ethics report found he had fabricated much of his personal and professional background. President Trump has left for Rome to attend Pope Francis' funeral. Several other world leaders are expected to attend, including former President Joe Biden. Trump says he'll meet with many world leaders to hammer out tariff deals.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

152.654

Meanwhile, Chinese importers say the country has quietly dropped tariffs on eight types of U.S. semiconductors, surprising companies during customs checks. The unannounced move signals possible pressure from Washington's trade stance, despite Beijing's tough public line.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

167.746

Chinese foreign ministry hasn't commented on the cut, but this could signal a softening in the ongoing U.S.-China trade standoff.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

203.072

Chinese companies have been covertly importing vapes into the U.S. to evade taxes and regulations. Daily Wire investigative reporter Spencer Lindquist has the scoop.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

27.21

FBI agents arrested a sitting Milwaukee County judge on Friday on charges of obstructing immigration enforcement. A U.S. Marshals spokesman confirmed the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan. Dugan is accused of directing federal agents away from an illegal immigrant wanted by authorities. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest on social media but later deleted the post.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

310.643

A federal judge has blocked Trump's executive order cutting federal funds from sanctuary cities. Daily Wire senior editor Joel Needler has the details.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

384.562

And a second innocent person was struck by a stray bullet in New York City this week. A 28-year-old plumber's apprentice was in town visiting a friend in the Bronx when he was fatally struck in the head on Wednesday evening. A 33-year-old female bystander was also struck but survived.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

401.989

This occurred just one day after a Harlem bodega owner was fatally shot under similar circumstances outside her apartment building. She ran outside to check on her grandson when she was struck in the head and killed by a stray bullet.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

421.248

You've trusted us for fast, accurate news, and we're excited to bring you into our studio to see us on video. For audio listeners, don't worry. It won't change your listening experience. It's just another way to enjoy the show.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

442.844

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news you need to know.

Morning Wire

FBI Arrests Judge & Trump’s Baby Bonus | Afternoon Update | 4.25.25

48.384

The incident marks a sharp escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. A charging document has not yet appeared in court records.

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

40.596

And the IRS is slamming the brakes on major audits as the agency braces for radical change.

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

407.048

Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter, Megan Basham. So Megan, every day there are more stories of arson, firebombing, gunfire, vandalism, all targeting Tesla. But it sounds like now the DOJ is cracking down. What do we know about these charges?

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

527.182

Now, during his interview with Fox News, Musk suggested that, quote, other forces may be fueling this wave of attacks and that the Tesla takedown protests aren't necessarily organic. Do we have any proof of that?

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

55.461

Right now, Renewal by Anderson is offering a free in-home consultation on quality, affordable windows and doors for no money down, no monthly payments, and no interest for a year. Text WIRE to 400-400 for a free consultation to save $379 off every window and $779 off every door. These savings won't last long, so be sure to check it out by texting WIRE to 400-400.

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

650.549

Well, the irony of the left targeting the most successful electric car company just kind of shows what a wild time we're in. Yes. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

76.212

Texting privacy policy and terms and conditions posted at textplan.us. Texting roles for reoccurring automated text marketing messages, message and data rates may apply. Reply stop to opt out.

Morning Wire

Education Department Dismantled & Tesla Terrorism Continues | 3.21.25

87.639

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to disband the Department of Education.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

104.235

Will TikTok get banned in the U.S. next month? The Supreme Court will likely decide. Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presa-Giacomo has more.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

151.684

The Federal Aviation Agency is cracking down on New Jersey's airspace following a rise in drone sightings. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pearce has the details.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

232.768

Concern has grown for one of the astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station. A holiday photo shared by NASA shows astronaut Suni Williams looking gaunt, sparking worried reactions online.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

244.231

59-year-old Williams and astronaut Butch Wilmore, who've been on the station since June, were scheduled for an eight-day stay but have faced repeated delays due to issues with their Boeing spacecraft. NASA now says their return is delayed until late March.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

292.401

A former high school volleyball star who suffered serious injury after a spike to the head from a trans-identifying male player is speaking out. Peyton McNabb is featured in a new documentary titled Killshot. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, partial paralysis, and other long-term effects from the 2022 incident.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

342.439

McNabb says she hopes her story inspires change to protect female athletes.

Morning Wire

Trump’s Border Wall Brief & Congress’ Funding Plan | Afternoon Update | 12.20.24

415.461

All right, those are your drive home updates this afternoon. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And for more in-depth reporting on the biggest stories of the day, tune into our full episode of Morning Wire every morning.

Morning Wire

Iran Nuclear Deal? & Birthright Citizenship | 5.16.25

329.781

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Morning Wire

Iran Nuclear Deal? & Birthright Citizenship | 5.16.25

348.909

Learn how private equity keeps American businesses growing at investmentcouncil.org, paid for by the American Investment Council.

Morning Wire

Schumer Supports GOP Budget & California Needs Money | Afternoon Update | 3.14.25

0.569

This episode is brought to you by Balance of Nature. Get your daily dose of fruits and veggies that you can take anywhere. Head to balanceofnature.com and use promo code wire for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com promo code wire.

Morning Wire

Schumer Supports GOP Budget & California Needs Money | Afternoon Update | 3.14.25

122.068

Officials inside Governor Gavin Newsom's administration are warning that the multimillion-dollar loan is the maximum the state can borrow and only covers bills through the end of this month. The shortfall is fueling debate over the state's $8.4 billion cost to cover undocumented immigrants this year. This is nearly triple the original $3 billion estimate provided to California voters.

Morning Wire

Schumer Supports GOP Budget & California Needs Money | Afternoon Update | 3.14.25

144.107

Assembly member Carl DeMeo says he was thrown off the budget committee after exposing the massive cost for illegal immigrant health care and the $3-plus billion loan. Morning Wire spoke to DeMeo about the massive cost overrun.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

0.129

This episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Head to blackriflecoffee.com and use code DAILYWIRE for 20% off your purchase. That's blackriflecoffee.com, code DAILYWIRE.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

170.18

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is calling for change, specifically to the city's sanctuary city laws. Adams is pushing for more police cooperation with ICE and immigration enforcement. The mayor made the remarks alongside President Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, on Fox & Friends this morning.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

197.35

Adams has also agreed to sign an executive order to open an ICE office on Rikers Island. Here's Holman on that.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

217.614

The move being considered would reverse existing laws that only allow ICE collaboration for violent felonies. While Adams still defends New York City's sanctuary city status, City Hall says current laws go too far in restricting law enforcement.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

260.253

The Department of Health and Human Services spent nearly $23 billion on migrant aid between 2020 and 2024, according to a Watchdog report. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce has more.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

299.588

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Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

359.045

House Democrats reintroduced a reparations bill this week as Trump cracks down on discriminatory DEI policies. Far left Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley refiled H.R. 40, which calls for the study of reparations for slavery and said it was more important than ever because white supremacy and anti-Black racism are allegedly on the rise.

Morning Wire

Education Department Exposed & NIL Guidance Changes | Afternoon Update | 2.14.25

380.831

Here was Pennsylvania Democrat Summer Lee in a presser Wednesday announcing the bill.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

0.53

This episode is brought to you by Balance of Nature. Get your daily dose of fruits and veggies that you can take anywhere. Head to balanceofnature.com and use promo code wire for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. That's balanceofnature.com promo code wire.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

104.952

Defense officials said actions seen as undermining the chain of command or the president's agenda would not be tolerated. Colonel Sean Lee has been appointed to take over leadership as the U.S. continues to strengthen its strategic posture in Greenland. The ousted commander wrote in an email, quote, I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

126.245

administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Patufik's space base.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

176.195

This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. Support the tradition of American farmers and ranchers who have spent generations working to feed Americans with high-quality meat exclusively and locally sourced right here in the USA. Subscribe now at goodranchers.com for free bacon, ground beef, seed oil-free chicken nuggets, or salmon in every order for a year, plus $40 off with code WIRE.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

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Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

200.74

Robert Kennedy Jr. gave his first interview this week since becoming Health and Human Services Secretary. In the sit-down, he urged Americans to get the measles vaccine, pledged to push food manufacturers to eliminate artificial dyes, and laid out possible changes for insurance coverage for GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

219.713

Kennedy said Medicare and Medicaid coverage may come after patients try monitored diet and exercise. He also addressed public health cuts and the layoff of thousands of HHS employees.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

246.233

Or that are faxing to each other, right?

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

283.917

Tragedy has struck the Dominican Republic, where a roof collapse has left more than 200 people dead. Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo has the details.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

330.729

And golf's most iconic major is underway. Crane & Company co-host David Cohn has more.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

36.531

China raised tariffs on U.S. goods again today, this time to 125%. The move sent the U.S. dollar lower for a fifth straight day while gold surged to new highs. The intensifying trade war continues to shake global markets. Major stock indexes have fallen as much as 7% since President Trump's tariff announcement.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

57.515

European and Asian markets have also seen declines as officials brace for more fallout and prepare potential countermeasures.

Morning Wire

Trade War Escalates & Coal's Comeback | Afternoon Update | 4.11.25

85.782

The commander of the U.S. Space Base in Greenland has been relieved of her duties. The Pentagon cited a loss of confidence in her ability to lead that follows Vice President J.D. Vance's recent visit to the U.S. military outpost. Colonel Susanna Myers had pushed back on comments made by Vance during his March trip,

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

0.399

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

109

With the boss, the team leader, and the translators. This was never good news. Jelena and her nine coworkers made their way outside. The yard was kind of like a quad on a college campus, except with the guards around, it gave more prison yard vibes. They lined up, five in each row. Jella stood at the front of the line. She looked around.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

135.173

Two-story concrete buildings all painted in a stark shade of white. Glaring fluorescent lights pouring out of the windows and doors. On the first floor was where they spent long hours, day and night, scamming. On the second was where they slept in cheap metal bunk beds. The roofs were studded with floodlights that only added to the prison feel. She looked down at the concrete beneath her feet.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

161.828

Such a sad contrast to the adventures on Thai beaches she thought she'd be having when she first met Charlie. A hush spread through the group as the boss began to speak. Beside him was a team leader and two translators. The boss started with an announcement. They were changing up the payment structure. It would now be tiered based on how much they were able to scam.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

21.036

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

212.419

But if you were like Jella, this was terrible news. Jella was awful at scamming, like truly awful. She'd never gotten good at the dirty talk. She'd only gotten three clients to take it to video chat, but none of them were successfully blackmailed. She'd been moved over to another group with a new assignment. Scam people into buying things from a fake Amazon store. That hadn't gone any better.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

239.597

So she'd been sent to yet another group. This time, someone else was doing the scamming. Jella just served as a warm body on camera for video calls. Her coworkers would tell her what to say. And using an AI filter to alter her face, Jella would deliver her lines to the target. She didn't like doing this either.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

264.598

And now, she was being told that her already meager salary would be tied to her poor performance. Jella's anxiety shot through the roof. But that wasn't all. Her team leaders told them there would be harsher consequences for not meeting quota.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

290.023

Duck walking, where grown adults are forced to squat and walk across the field while everyone watched. It was humiliating. She did not want to do this. All Jello could think about was how much she fucking hated this place, how angry she was at Charlie, how desperately she wanted to get out. And then, one more update.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

319.927

A different compound? Jello was in a full-on panic now as her bosses explained that they were being transferred to another company. This new company operated out of a compound next door.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

338.626

Jella was freaking out. She'd heard rumors about this other compound.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

347.695

Jella had heard they beat their workers with electric batons and paddles to punish those that didn't meet quota. With her track record, Jella knew she was doomed.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

365.313

She had to get out of this situation. The one Charlie helped put her in. Before it cost her her life. Binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

43.203

Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out. I'm about to play a clip from Scam Factory where one character, Jella, learns horrifying news while she's trapped inside the scam compound.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Listen Now: Scam Factory

67.109

While you're listening, follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Jella kept her eye on the clock, counting down the minutes until 1 a.m. and the end of her shift. She couldn't wait to get to bed. Jella and her teammates began to gather their things to leave. But their team leader told them, not so fast. Everyone needed to go out to the yard.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Death of a Salesman (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

129.864

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

The Good Neighbors (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

133.513

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Murder In America

EP. 193: WASHINGTON D.C. - She Gave Her Child To A Pedophile: The Disappearance of Relisha Rudd

1114.13

In April of 2010, the Child and Family Service Agency received another complaint that Shamika was neglecting her children when her son failed to show up to a doctor's appointment after surgery. It was also noted that the apartment they lived in was quote, environmentally unsafe.

Murder In America

EP. 193: WASHINGTON D.C. - She Gave Her Child To A Pedophile: The Disappearance of Relisha Rudd

1131.683

According to their records, when social workers arrived, they discovered that the home was filled with cigarette butts and trash. They also noted that the children, all being under the age of four, were allowed to bathe themselves without adult supervision, which is pretty crazy considering the fact that Antonio's little brother died in the bathtub when he was a baby.

Murder In America

EP. 193: WASHINGTON D.C. - She Gave Her Child To A Pedophile: The Disappearance of Relisha Rudd

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But even though the Child and Family Services noted that their home was unsafe, the children were not removed from Shamika and Antonio's care, and ultimately the complaint was dismissed. Sadly, it seemed as if history was repeating itself. Relisha and her siblings were not raised in a great environment. During her childhood, Relisha and her family were forced to move on multiple occasions.

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But from pre-K to first grade, Relisha attended Fairby Hope Elementary School, and one of her teachers, Shannon Smith, told the Washington Post that Relisha loved hugs. However, during their warm embrace each morning, Shannon noticed that Relisha always smelled like she hadn't taken a bath. So together, the two came up with a routine.

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Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

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Before school started, Shannon would take Relisha to the nurse's office and she would wash her up the best she could. She would also run a brush through her hair. and put lotion on her skin. She would even sometimes have to give Relisha a pair of clean clothes. Shannon said, quote, I didn't like the way she was a pretty little girl and never taken care of.

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The other little girls had bows and always looked all shiny coming to school, end quote. Shannon admitted that she loved Relisha and whenever she bought toys or gifts for her own grandchildren, she would always pick out a present for Relisha as well. One of the security guards at this elementary school, Regina Pixley, also noticed that Relisha was often left after school for hours after it ended.

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Over time, Regina developed a close relationship with Relisha. They had to spend a lot of time together after school. And then one day, Relisha actually came up to her and asked if she could come live with her instead of going home. That statement broke Regina's heart. How bad did home have to be if Relisha would rather stay with her?

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It seemed as if school was a safe haven for her, a place where she was surrounded by people who loved and cared for her. But sadly, after Relisha's first grade year, her family would move again, meaning Relisha had to go to a different elementary school.

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From there, Antonio Googled shelters, and he placed a phone call to a woman named Virginia Williams at the Family Resource Center. After that, a van was sent out to pick up the family, but due to the limited room at the available shelters, they were forced to live in a days-end hotel until something opened up.

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Antonio stated, quote, "'It was at night when they came and got us, "'so we went to Virginia Williams "'and sat in the empty building till the morning.'" until they put us in a hotel in the day's end. So we've been at the day's end for almost a year because it took them a while to place us in a shelter." But during the summer of 2013, they were finally placed into the DC General Family Shelter.

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Antonio said that when they first arrived, everything seemed okay. The people were nice and the staff was accommodating. However, he immediately knew that he didn't want his children growing up there. He was right. The D.C. General Family Shelter was no place for children. The shelter had once been the D.C. General Hospital. Most of the patients were poor.

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And when it closed in 2001, Washington, D.C. did not have a public hospital for nearly nine years. After the hospital closed, it became a warming center for homeless people during the cold months. But it eventually turned into a homeless shelter due to the high number of people that needed temporary housing. However, the living conditions inside the shelter were horrific.

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There were bed bug infestations, dirty showers, and across the street was a methadone clinic and a correctional facility.

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Now the D.C. shelter offered a childcare program called Homeless Children's Playtime Project. For a few hours each week, sheltered children would be allowed to play and socialize with the other kids. According to everyone there, Relisha loved the Playtime Project. She would dance and laugh and engage with the other children, play with dolls, and she threw herself into art projects.

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Despite being overly protective of her younger brothers, during playtime, Relisha allowed her brothers to go do their own thing. But once playtime was over, the children were forced back into reality. They were given moldy food and spoiled milk. Antonio admitted that when they were served hot dogs, he made sure to cut them open to make sure there was no mold growing inside.

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Each evening, dinner was served in the cafeteria and families would line up to receive their meals. And one of the men working in the cafeteria was 51-year-old Khalil Tatum, Khalil worked as the janitor at the DC General, but he also helped out the kitchen staff in the evenings. And almost immediately, Antonio noticed Khalil's generosity.

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While most of the other staff members were rude and standoffish, Khalil enjoyed socializing with families and their children. If Shamika and Antonio were ever late for dinner, Khalil started putting food aside for them, and he would even deliver it right to their door.

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No one had anything negative to say about Khalil. He was warm, friendly, and attentive, which was pretty rare at this shelter. Everyone referred to him as Mr. Tatum. And although he worked as a janitor, he was definitely unique. He was described as a sharp dresser,

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often showing up to work in a polo shirt or a suit and tie he was also known to give children money so they could get gumballs out of the machine and on special occasions he would sometimes hand out 20 bills one of the residents a woman named sharon woods said that her 11 year old daughter was excited to tell khalil that she had been given a pet turtle a few days later

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a brand new tank arrived at her door, a special gift straight from the janitor. Sharon said that she offered to pay Khalil, but he refused. He also told the young girl that he would give her gravel implants for her new tank, but her mother Sharon flat out told him no, they didn't need any more gifts. But that didn't stop him from giving her more money.

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Sharon said that this made her feel uncomfortable. In her mind, no grown man should be giving money to a child. even if it was for the little girl's turtle tank. When Sharon told Khalil this, he seemed to be upset. She said he just stared at her and then walked away. Now from the outside looking in, Khalil appeared to be a caring guy who wanted to help out the children of the shelter.

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He would often give them toys, clothing, and other presents. But if you were to have looked a bit more closely, you'd notice that he usually only did these things for the little girls like Relisha Rudd. Like many others, Khalil had started surprising Relisha with presents. And in the beginning, Shamika said that she was grateful.

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Khalil was giving her daughter things that she would never be able to afford. But while some people appreciated his generosity, others were very suspicious of him. and the liking he took to these little girls. And that intuition was right, because Khalil Tatum, previously known as Carl Lee Tatum, was a convicted felon.

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Now, for the people who worked there, they were required to sign a form that stated they would not develop personal relationships with the residents. But at the end of the day, no one was really checking to make sure this wasn't happening. So Khalil was able to continue having inappropriate relationships with the children here. And he had a pretty long rap sheet.

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In the 1980s, he was arrested a number of times. And between 1993 to 2003, And then again, in 2004 to 2011, Khalil was in prison for burglary, larceny, and breaking and entering. He had spent a total of 17 years behind bars. However, after his release in 2011, Khalil lived an ordinary and unassuming life. He lived with his wife,

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andrea denise tatum in an apartment on southeast washington neighbors described the couple as quiet and reserved both attended church and they had close relationships with their family members andrea's daughter from a previous relationship alexis kelly admitted that her stepfather khalil worshipped the ground that her mother walked on

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Residents would later say that Khalil always had a smile on his face and he always showed up for work on time. Khalil was extremely friendly to everyone, especially the young girls and teens. Staff members witnessed Khalil giving money to girls. but nothing was ever reported. For the residents, especially Shamika and Antonio, Khalil only wanted to help them out.

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But over time, he took a keen interest in Relisha Rudd. Witnesses would later say that he gave her gifts, money, and attention. He took her on outings to the mall in Disney on Ice. And disturbingly, Shamika also allowed Khalil to take Relisha overnight.

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She would later say that she thought this was good for Relisha as she was finally getting a break from the harsh realities of the homeless shelter. But of course, Relisha's home life at the shelter was only getting worse. In November of 2013, the Child and Family Service Agency received yet another complaint that Shamika and Antonio were neglecting and abusing their children.

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A social worker reported that they had witnessed Shamika physically abusing one of the younger boys by slamming him on the ground and busting his lip. They also reported verbal abuse towards the children, and there were reports that they were often left unsupervised on a regular basis.

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This time, police intervention was requested, but during their initial interview, they received conflicting stories about who hit the young boy. Ultimately, no charges were filed again and the children were allowed to stay at the homeless shelter with Shamika and Antonio.

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Now, during one occasion, while Relisha was with her aunt Ashley, a man called her on the phone and said he was on his way to pick up the eight-year-old. And Ashley panicked. Who was this man? And how did he get her phone number? Following the call, Ashley decided to call Shamika to figure out what was going on.

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And Shamika nonchalantly told her sister that the man was Khalil Tatum, Relisha's so-called godfather. It was definitely concerning. Ashley ended up talking to her and Shamika's mother, Melissa Young, about these concerns. But Melissa said that this man was just helping them out. But it was strange.

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Khalil took Relisha on outings around Washington, D.C., letting her explore all the historical monuments and museums. Eventually, she even started spending the weekends with him, leaving on Friday afternoon after school and returning back on Sunday. And no one even thought anything of it. Over time, Khalil had not only groomed Relisha, but he also manipulated her family members.

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He had gained the trust of Shamika and Antonio, making them believe that Relisha was in good hands. Even Relisha's grandmother, Melissa, admitted that during a visit at the homeless shelter, she had met Khalil and thought that he was a good and genuine person. She said, quote, I have spent time over at DC General when I spent time with my daughter and her kids.

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I've seen him when he was getting off work. I've had short conversations with him and felt very comfortable. I trusted him, I felt comfortable with him and I don't trust everybody." In fact, it seemed as if everyone trusted Khalil. When Relisha would come back to the shelter after an outing with him, she would have on a new fancy outfit or a manicure. In 2013 for Christmas,

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He even gifted her a brand new tablet. But in reality, Relisha was in danger. In no world should a grown man be spending this much time with an eight-year-old girl who isn't related to him. But her family wasn't worried. After all, Khalil always returned Relisha when he said he would, so no one feared anything would happen. But they couldn't have been more wrong.

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It was February 26th, 2014. Khalil wanted to take Relisha on yet another overnight stay and Shamika said she could. Video surveillance showed Relisha walking with Khalil down a hallway at the Holiday Inn Express in Northeast DC.

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around 7 pm relisha was shown wearing a blue winter coat pink boots and she was carrying a white plastic bag walking next to her was khalil wearing khaki pants a dark coat and he had an id badge around his neck in his right hand he appeared to be holding a child's backpack now looking at the surveillance video nothing seemed out of the ordinary relisha did not appear to be anxious afraid

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or even distressed. For anyone at the Holiday Inn Express, they could have seen the two and easily passed them as family members, the father and his daughter. Now later that same evening, surveillance camera footage would later show Relisha and Khalil at another Washington DC hotel, the Days Inn on New York Avenue Northeast.

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But unfortunately, this would be the very last time Relisha Rudd was ever seen again.

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Now, interestingly, no one had seen Relisha since February 26th, but days later on March 1st, her mother Shamika posted a video on Instagram where Relisha was seen on the video. It's believed that it was an older video because by that point, no one had seen Relisha in days.

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After not showing up to school for over a week, Payne Elementary staff decided to call Dr. Tatum, the person that Shamika said her daughter was with due to migraines she had been having. The school got his phone number from Melissa Young, Shamika's mom. And when he picked up the phone that day, he agreed that he had been treating Relisha for neurological problems,

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but stated that she was almost finished with her treatment and that she would be back at school within the week. School officials told the so-called Dr. Tatum that they would need written documentation about Relisha's condition in order to mark her absences as excused. He told the school to leave the paperwork at the DC General Family Shelter and that he would make sure it was filled out.

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Now, before we tell you about the life of Relisha, it's important for us to talk about the upbringing of her mother. Shamika Young had grown up in foster care from the age of nine. Her mother, Melissa Young, was a drug addict who struggled with cocaine and alcohol addiction, and her father was not a part of her life.

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But days and days would pass and Payne Elementary had still not received the paperwork from Dr. Tatum. By March 13th, over two weeks into her disappearance, Relisha had finally reached 10 unexcused absences. In total, Relisha had missed over 30 days of school by mid-March. So from there, school officials promptly reported the case to Washington DC's Child and Family Services. However,

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they did not consider Relisha's case to be a high priority due to her three younger brothers still attending school on a regular basis. But finally, on March 19th, a social worker finally arrived at the shelter to conduct an interview with Dr. Tatum, They went there to find out what was going on with Relisha's absences.

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In fact, the social worker had actually spoken with Dr. Tatum on the phone and the two arranged a meeting that same afternoon. But when she arrived at the shelter and started asking around where she could find Dr. Tatum, the staff members were baffled. They had no idea who Dr. Tatum was. But they did know a man named Khalil Tatum. However, he was no doctor. He was the janitor at the shelter.

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Now, as you can imagine, when the social worker heard this, she was horrified. This man confirmed to her that he was, in fact, the doctor, when clearly that wasn't the case. So why would he lie? The social worker was even more worried when she was told that Khalil had left his shift early that day, seemingly in a hurry.

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Throughout her own childhood, Shamika knew the insecurity of not having a stable home. While in her mother's care, she bounced around to different homeless shelters. While living at a homeless shelter in Alexandria, Virginia for several months, Shamika and her siblings witnessed their mother assaulting a police officer.

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Now, while all of this was happening, authorities desperately tried to get in touch with Khalil, but all of the cell phone calls went to voicemail. When they arrived at his apartment on Hay Street, no one was home. Later that same evening, authorities arrived at the home of Ashley Young. She would later say that the police had their guns drawn when she opened the door.

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She said, quote, they came to my door, they had their guns drawn and they asked me, Did they have permission to search because Relisha was missing? And I gave them permission to come in and to look around and basically to feel free to see that she was not at my home." Ashley admitted that this was the first time she had even heard that Relisha was missing. She hadn't seen her niece in two weeks.

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Investigators asked Ashley to come down to the shelter where she would be questioned alongside Shamika, Antonio, and Relisha's grandmother, Melissa Young. When Melissa learned that Relisha was missing, she immediately told the DC police that there was nothing to worry about. She was with her godfather, Khalil Tatum. No one seemed to be worried about Relisha.

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Antonio, her stepfather, was the most shocked out of everyone. Although he liked Khalil, he told Shamika that it wasn't a good idea to let him take Relisha, but it had now been 18 days since anyone had seen her, and her mother, Shamika, had never even reported her missing.

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In 1995, after Melissa Young was convicted for the assault, Shamika, her brother Antonio, and her sister Ashley went to live with their grandmother. but for whatever reason, it was too much for her to handle. And after that, she placed the children into foster care. In April of 1996, just one month shy of her 10th birthday, Shamika was taken to a home in Fairfax County.

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As the search for Relisha was underway, investigators spoke with Khalil's neighbors. One neighbor, Maurice Jackson, told News 4 Washington that he had seen Relisha at Khalil's apartment only three weeks prior to her disappearance.

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By March 20th, there was still no sign of Relisha Rudd, but soon enough, they would get a lead. Khalil's maroon SUV with the license plate Khalil was spotted at the Red Roof Inn on Oxon Hill Road. Immediately, authorities descended upon the hotel. and made their way towards room 132, the very room that Khalil had checked into just one day prior.

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As authorities approached the door, they didn't know what to expect. Would Relisha be inside? Would Khalil be with her? They didn't know, but soon enough, they would get some answers. However, it was not at all what anyone was expecting. After breaking into room 132, authorities would find a body, but it wasn't the body of an eight-year-old girl. It was the body of Khalil's wife, Andrea Tatum.

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She was found face down on the bed with a single gunshot wound to her head. There were no signs of a struggle and her artificial fingernails were still intact. But as authorities looked around the room, Khalil was nowhere to be found. Surveillance footage from the Red Roof Inn showed that Khalil and Andrea had checked in on March 19th at 10.04 p.m.

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However, there were no signs that Relisha had ever been with the couple. Three witnesses were also shown with the couple, but 90 minutes later, they left the room. One of these men later told the police that he returned to the hotel room on March 20th at 5.40 a.m. to pick up Khalil. But for whatever reason, Khalil did not allow him to enter the room.

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And from the beginning, Shamika exhibited behavioral problems. According to the Washington Post, her foster mother, Violet Nichols, stated that when the children arrived, they were, quote, wild. They threw things around the house and allegedly harassed the family's pet rabbit.

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The man said that he peeked inside and he could see Andrea face down in the bed. I'm assuming he thought she was sleeping. This man also said that when Khalil came out of the hotel room, he drove him to the Southern Avenue metro station and from there, he never saw him again. Now, after finding Andrea's body, the police would speak to her daughter, Alexis.

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And she said that the two had checked into the hotel because the heater at their apartment wasn't working. However, authorities believed that that wasn't the case. In reality, Khalil was desperate to get away. Detectives knew that Relisha was missing and it was only a matter of time until they learned that he was the last person to see her alive. So in an attempt to evade police,

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He fled to this hotel. The pressure was mounting. It was a cat and mouse chase. But unfortunately, Khalil was always one step ahead.

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When the word got out that Andrea Tatum had been murdered, her loved ones were shocked. They described the couple as, quote, caring people who had struggled with poverty, drug addiction, and incarceration, but they seemed stronger together, end quote.

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However, now Andrea was found murdered and the main suspect was her husband, Khalil Tatum, the same man who was the main suspect in the disappearance of an eight-year-old little girl.

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Then in 1998, after only two years of being there, Violet requested that the children be removed from her home with the case file stating, quote, problem behaviors, stealing, lying, being uncooperative, bedwetting, end quote.

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Through surveillance footage at the Red Roof Inn, investigators were able to determine that Khalil left the parking lot in a white GMC truck. A be on the lookout alert was issued. However, only days later, the truck was found abandoned in Hyattsville. So once again, they had reached a dead end.

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And by this point, it goes without saying that investigators believed Relisha Rudd was in grave danger and the urgency to find her only intensified. On March 22nd, a candlelit vigil was held outside of the DC General Family Shelter. Dozens and dozens of people gathered with signs that read, quote, bring Relisha home.

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Antonio Chimica and Melissa Young begged the public to help find their eight-year-old girl. But soon enough, they would start to turn on each other. They started blaming one another for Relisha's disappearance. Antonio stated, quote, if it was a mistake sending our daughter with Melissa, we accept that mistake. Any parent would send their kids with their grandmother.

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We didn't send her with Tatum, end quote. However, Melissa remained firm that she was not responsible, saying, quote, If law enforcement thought I had something to do with it, I wouldn't still be walking this street. I don't know how he came about getting her the last time, end quote.

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Shamika Young continued to deny that she had allowed Relisha to go with Khalil. She stood by her story that Relisha had been with her sister, Ashley. Now, as for why she never reported missing, she told reporters that she didn't want her other three children taken away. But when asked specifically about Khalil, Shamika flat out refused to talk about him.

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Over the next few weeks, everyone continued to search for both Relisha and Khalil Tatum. They focused their search efforts at the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. And finally, on April 1st, 2014, they made a shocking discovery. It was the dead body of 51-year-old Khalil Tatum. It appeared that he had died by suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

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Authorities believe that he had been dead for approximately 36 hours before he was found. Next to his body, they found his eyeglasses and a gun. Ultimately, it was the same exact gun used to kill his wife, Andrea Tatum. But the discovery of Khalil's body only led to more questions. Sadly, in his death, he left no clue as to where we could find Relisha Rudd.

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Investigators continued to search the park where Khalil was found, which also happened to be the park where his cell phone data pinged earlier in March. However, they were unable to find any clues.

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Weeks eventually turned into months, and soon enough, the searches dwindled. Tips stopped coming in, but the community that knew and loved Relisha Rudd continued to hold on to hope that one day she would be found safe. On April 8th, DC Mayor Vincent Gray ordered an investigation into how the city responded to the disappearance of Relisha. However, on September 2nd, part of that report read, quote,

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Even if all the policy and practice recommendations in this report had been in place and fully implemented, the review team did not find evidence that these tragic events were preventable."

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Many criticized the findings and stated that there were repeated red flags. They said that child and family services failed to intervene, despite having evidence that Relisha and her brothers were being neglected and abused. Even further, the lack of oversight at the DC General Family Shelter

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allowed Khalil to develop relationships with children, despite signing a document stating that he would not fraternize with family members and their kids. In reality, employees at the shelter had turned a blind eye when he repeatedly groomed children mothers and fathers. Not to mention, Khalil Tatum had a criminal record and the job allowed him to have easy access to vulnerable children.

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The shelter failed to protect the eight-year-old. They failed to track her wellbeing and investigators were not alerted to her disappearance until weeks later. Luckily, the DC General Shelter would ultimately close its doors in 2018. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser stated,

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Sadly, years would pass and there was still no sign of Relisha Rudd. By 2017, Relisha's mom, Shamika, and her stepdad, Antonio, and her grandmother, Melissa, all went on the Steve Wilkos television show. By that point, Antonio now believed that Shamika had something to do with Relisha's disappearance.

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With the entire world pointing the finger at Shamika, she agreed to go on the show to give her side of the story.

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So as you can see, Shamika had a rough upbringing. Growing up in foster care was hard on her, and she vowed that when she had children one day, she would never let them grow up in that environment. For years, Shamika counted down the days until her 18th birthday, the day that she could finally leave foster care for good. And when that day came around,

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In today's story, we are going to tell you about the Rudd family. In 2014, Shamika and Antonio, along with their four children, were living in a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter called the D.C. General Family Shelter. But this was no place to raise a child. It was dirty and filled with bedbugs.

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Shamika signed herself out and never looked back. For the first time in her life, she was able to live independently. Now, while she was in her late teens, Shamika met a man named Irving Rudd, who was 16 years her senior. Irving worked as a custodian at Catholic Charities.

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And after a brief romance, their first child, a daughter they named Relisha, was born on October 29th, 2005, after 18 grueling hours of labor. Shamika remembered her mother telling her, quote, be the best mom that you can be because it's easy for your children to go into foster care, but it's hard to get your children back home with you where they belong, end quote.

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Shamika said that she was completely smitten with her daughter, saying, quote, I was blessed. She came out at the end of the day and looked smack like me, end quote. Now, Shamika and Irving would go on to have another child, a son named Irving Jr. He was born in November of 2006. But shortly after his birth, Shamika and Irving would split up for good, which was probably for the best.

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Throughout the entire investigation, there has been no physical evidence that linked Shamika or Antonio to Relisha's disappearance. As the years continued, many theories have come out on what exactly happened to the eight-year-old little girl. Some people have even speculated that Khalil Tatum trafficked her.

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Khalil had a criminal background and was known to groom children and their family members. Andrea Tatum's cousin, Patrick Kelly, would later say, quote, He's a wolf walking out there among us. He's a demon."

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But many others believe that Khalil killed Relisha, a theory that even the DC Police Department has leaned towards, mostly because of the surveillance video of him at Home Depot buying what appeared to be a body disposal kit. However, to this day, no body or evidence has ever been found.

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Now, something I haven't mentioned was that Irving Rudd already had children of his own. In fact, in 1991, he had twin girls. But unfortunately, one of the girls would pass away only 18 months after her birth. And the story of that little girl's death was a tragedy in and of itself. In August of 1992, baby Tarika Rudd was rushed to the Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C.

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As an eight-year-old little girl, Relisha Rudd was supposed to feel loved, protected, and cared for, but that's not at all what her life was like. Instead, she was failed by her family. She was failed by the DC General Family Shelter, by Child and Family Services, by the school system, and by law enforcement. Cases like Relisha's often get overlooked due to their socioeconomic status.

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She was a poor African-American child living in a homeless shelter. And despite there being plenty evidence of abuse and neglect, the warning signs were ignored. And in response, it's widely believed that she's no longer with us.

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As of today, there is still a $50,000 reward for any information that would help police locate Relisha. With her body never being found, activists, community members, and close friends and family still hold on to hope that she's out there somewhere. They hope that she's alive and that she's doing better than she was when she was eight years old. But many others don't have that hope.

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She had a cracked lip, her skull was fractured, and she had bruises all over her tiny little body. Unfortunately, Tarika would not survive her injuries. and her father, Irving Rudd, was ultimately charged with first-degree murder. The investigation into the baby's death would reveal that the twins had been suffering from horrific abuse at the hands of their father, Irving Rudd.

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As for her other children, she said that she hasn't seen her oldest son since his fifth grade graduation and that she hasn't seen the two youngest since Relisha went missing. According to her, Irving Jr., her oldest son, was adopted by another family. Her middle son is in foster care in D.C. and her youngest is with a foster family in another state.

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Following Relisha's disappearance, her three youngest children were never allowed to go back into the care of Shamika Young.

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On the night of his daughter's death, a witness stated that Irving had thrown her into a table and then pounded on her chest with his hands. He then grabbed her body and forcefully slammed her down on the couch, saying, quote, Okay, you don't want to stand up? I'm going to sit you down on the couch, end quote.

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Horrifically, when he threw her down, Tarika's head hit the wooden back of the couch, and she immediately fell unconscious. Keep in mind, this little baby was just 18 months old. When Irving Rudd saw that his daughter was unconscious, he began to panic. He knew he was about to get in a lot of trouble.

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Relisha's case is a heartbreaking example of failures in our system. Our nation's children should be protected over anything else. But sadly, in many cases, children slip through the cracks. They are not protected by the system that is put in place to protect them. And I wish this story had a better ending.

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I wish Khalil Tatum could have been brought to justice for the murder of his wife and for whatever he did with Relisha. I wish we could know what ultimately happened to the eight-year-old little girl. But sadly, there is no justice in this case, and there are very few answers. After being seen on that hotel security camera on February 26th, 2014, Relisha Rudd has never been seen.

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That was nearly 11 years ago to the day that we are posting this episode. Today, Relisha Rudd would be 19 years old. And although many people believe that she is no longer with us, there is still a possibility that she could be alive.

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So if you or someone you know has any information regarding Relisha's disappearance or her possible whereabouts, please call the Metro Police Department at 202-727-9099 or text the tip line at 50411.

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He even began telling the people that were with him that he was going to tell the doctors that something had fallen on top of her. However, when she was taken to the hospital, the doctors knew that this was no accident. They could tell by one single look. that Tarika had been subjected to cruel and horrific abuse.

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When police officers arrived at the children's hospital, they pulled Irving aside and asked if he had ever assaulted his daughter before. Shockingly, he admitted that he had never abused Tarika, but that her twin had received spankings. He stated, quote, "'We both was involved in spanking the other twin too hard.'" and we broke her leg," end quote.

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When investigators arrived at Irving's house on the 400 block of Florida Avenue Northwest, they discovered that Tarika's twin also had similar injuries and she only weighed about 10 pounds. According to the World Health Organization, an 18 month old baby girl should weigh at least 23.4 pounds. Clearly, not only were the girls subjected to abuse, but they were also being neglected.

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The rooms and hallways were lined with drug addicts, vagrants, and drifters who were down on their luck. And for the children who lived there, there wasn't even a place for them to play. So for eight-year-old Relisha Rudd, it was not a happy place to spend her childhood. However, there was one person there who helped make things better, the shelter's janitor, 51-year-old Khalil Tatum.

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According to court documents, Irving eventually confessed to the police, but he still stated that Tarika's death had been an accident. He said, quote, although I killed her, it's not intentional. I realized that I have done something wrong, end quote. He told the police that he grew irritated when Tarika started crying, so he, quote, picked her up by the neck, and then let her neck go, end quote.

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But she refused to stop crying. He said he then took her into the bathroom, end quote, put her under the faucet. Her mouth was open from whining and the water just went in, end quote.

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For years, Irving Rudd believed that Shamika abused and neglected Relisha and Irving Jr. In fact, in 2007, when Relisha was only two years old, social services received a tip that Shamika was abusing her children. When they arrived at her apartment to conduct a welfare check,

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they discovered that there was inadequate food, poor living conditions, and that Relisha appeared to have bruises on her body that indicated physical abuse. However, the charges were eventually dropped when it couldn't be proven how Relisha received her injuries. And since the charges were dropped, the children were never removed from the home.

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Shamika would later say that this proved she was a good mother who was doing her best to provide for her two children. But things would start to change in Shamika's life when she crossed paths with a man named Antonio Wheeler. Now like Shamika, Antonio had also grown up in foster care. He was the oldest of nine children and he didn't have an easy life.

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In fact, when Antonio was just 12 years old, his stepfather, Michael Tudman, murdered his four-year-old sister, Monica. According to the Washington Post, in 1997, Michael was in a drug-fueled rage when he beat the child to death so he could finish smoking his PCP. And surprisingly,

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Just three years prior to that, in October of 1994, Antonio's two-year-old brother Andre was also found deceased in the bathtub. Andre's cause of death was ruled as an accidental drowning, but investigators had their suspicions. Now Antonio's stepfather Michael would end up taking a plea deal for beating his four-year-old daughter to death. And in exchange for this plea,

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Michael admitted that on the night his son Andre drowned in the bathtub, he had stepped away to take a phone call and to watch the Washington Redskins game. He said that he left the two-year-old in the bathtub by himself for 40 minutes. Michael said that when he returned, Andre was reportedly floating in the water. So from there, Andre's death was changed to homicide.

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He would often buy Relisha gifts. He would take her out to get her nails done and buy her new clothing. To an eight-year-old little girl living in a homeless shelter, these acts of kindness were everything, especially because she didn't have much. But in reality, Khalil Tatum was not doing this because he wanted to help her out. Relisha Rudd was being groomed.

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But because he confessed this in a plea deal, he would never be charged for this. Antonio Wheeler would later say that his father murdering his two siblings had a huge impact on his life. It also impacted the way he dealt with trauma and grief, saying, quote, When I was a kid, I was quiet. I held a lot of stuff in. That's another reason why I'm always angry. End quote.

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Like Shamika, Antonio grew up in a traumatic and unstable home. After his stepfather's arrest, he and his siblings bounced around between different foster homes. And during their time there, he admitted that he was subjected to cruel physical and emotional abuse. In one instance, one of his caretakers even put out a lit cigarette on his shoulder.

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Vanessa's family watched her go from a vibrant, passionate young woman to someone they didn't even recognize. Her mother even told her to rip up the army contract in front of them and come back home. But Vanessa was not one to give up. She reassured her family that she was going to be fine and that she would handle it.

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That morning wasn't your typical day at the base. There had been an increase of COVID at Fort Hood. So a lot of soldiers weren't working that day. It was supposed to be Vanessa's day off, but early that morning, she got a text to come in. Now they told her she could wear her normal clothes. So she got up, put on a pair of purple leggings, a black t-shirt and her fanny pack.

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And soon enough, the I Am Vanessa Guillen movement began. A movement that not only uncovered secrets at Fort Hood, but of the U.S. military as a whole and how they handle cases of sexual harassment and assault. So this is the powerful story of Vanessa Guillen. I'm Courtney Browen. and you're listening to Murder in America.

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she left her barracks and went downstairs to check in at the motor pool. It was supposed to be a pretty slow day. After checking in at 10.03 a.m., Vanessa walked to the arms room and set down her bank card ID and the keys to her barracks and car. Now inside the arms room was her supervisor,

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And according to him, Vanessa's job for the day was to inspect a piece of broken equipment and to validate the serial number of a machine gun. Now that machine gun was located in another arms room just down the hall. So at 10 15 AM, Vanessa left And several minutes later, she texted her supervisor the serial number.

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From there, she was supposed to come back to the arms room to finish up her duties for the day, but the clock ticked by and Vanessa still hadn't come back. By 11.05 AM, she had been gone for almost an hour. So her supervisor texts her and asks where she is, but no response. By now, it seemed as if Vanessa had left work, but all of her stuff was still in the arms room.

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At noon, her supervisor decided to put her keys, ID, and debit card away so that it was safeguarded. And from there, he and another soldier went to look for Vanessa. But when they went by that second arms room where she had been, the door was locked.

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By 8 p.m. that night, Vanessa's sister Myra had this horrible feeling. Vanessa would never go all day without responding to her loved ones. So it's here where Myra decided to call the base to see if Vanessa was okay. But her worries only grew when she learned that no one had seen Vanessa since earlier that morning and that all of her stuff was left behind in the arms room.

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So Myra called her family into the dining room and said, I have to tell you something. Vanessa isn't answering her phone. Juan called her at noon and she didn't answer. I've been calling her all day with no response and no one on the base knows where she is.

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Immediately, her family is sick with worry and it's here where Myra decides that she's going to drive the three hours to Killeen to see what's going on. She would later say that it was one of the longest car rides of her life. Along the way, she continues to text Vanessa. At 8.35pm, she sent her, Hello? Vanessa? No response. Myra said that something about this situation just felt wrong.

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So much so, she cried the entire car ride to Colleen. And Myra was right. Something was terribly wrong. And the journey ahead for the Guillen family was one... that no one expected. When Myra finally arrived at Fort Hood, it was late after midnight, but she immediately called the staff sergeant to let him know that she was there to look for her sister.

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Myra would later say that it was clear her phone call woke the sergeant up and he told her to just come by in the morning and they would go from there. Myra felt helpless. She didn't understand how they could be sleeping when one of their soldiers was missing. But without the army's help, There was nothing she could do, so she got a hotel room for the night.

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At 3.44 a.m., she sent Vanessa another text. It read, quote, I'm going to find you, I promise. Back in Houston, Vanessa's entire family wasn't able to sleep that night. Her mom, Gloria, stayed up all night long praying with her rosaries. And by that next morning, to everyone's horror... Vanessa still hadn't shown up.

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So the rest of her family all got into their cars and made their way over to clean. Disturbingly, when Gloria Guillen arrived, she said that the entire town smelled like death. There was an evil presence here that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Now they all arrived at Fort Hood at around 8 a.m. ready to look for Vanessa. It had now been almost 24 hours since she was last seen.

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And one of the first things they requested was for the army to look at the cameras. After all, this is one of the biggest military bases in the world. Surely their cameras would have recorded Vanessa's last known movements. But of course, her family was quickly informed that the cameras in the area where Vanessa went missing were all inoperable.

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But the Guillen family was confident that Vanessa had to be somewhere on the base. They knew that she would have never left the base without her ID, debit card and keys. So they were thinking that maybe she got hurt and was stuck somewhere or best case scenario, she got locked in a room or something.

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But that morning, both the army and local law enforcement searched Fort Hood and there was no sign of her. Vanessa's white Jeep eerily sat in the parking lot on base. A grim reminder that she couldn't have gone far. Fellow soldiers even looked at places that Vanessa would frequent, like the nearby track she was known to run, but nothing. Vanessa Guillen had vanished without a trace.

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In the meantime, the CID started their investigation by interviewing soldiers who were working that day. Like we mentioned, they didn't have cameras to look at, so eyewitnesses were the best they could do to get answers. And they started with the people who were working in the arms room with Vanessa.

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Now the supervisor who was with her that morning said that shortly after arriving, Vanessa left to go check the serial number in that second arms room. Minutes later, she texted him the serial number and that was the last he heard from her. So next... The CID look at the soldier who was working in that second arms room. His name was Specialist Aaron Robinson.

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Like Vanessa, Robinson was 20 years old, but he was one rank above her. He was also the only soldier in the arms room that day. So from what they could tell, he was the last person to see Vanessa. Now, when investigators spoke to Robinson, he was adamant that she had come in to get the serial number, And then she left. Investigators then asked him what he did for the remainder of the day.

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And Robinson said that after work, he went home and was with his girlfriend all night. Now his girlfriend was named Cecily Aguilar. And when investigators spoke to her, she confirmed that story, that they were together all night long. Investigators were also able to rule Robinson out after they spoke with another soldier who said that they saw Vanessa in the parking lot that day at around 1 p.m.

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So for the time being, it seemed as if Vanessa walked out of the arms room, went out into the parking lot and then vanished. Investigators speculated that maybe somebody picked her up or maybe she left on her own free will. But her family was adamant that something bad happened because Vanessa would have shown up by now.

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It was incredibly frustrating for the Guillen family during this time. They wanted answers. And at the very least, they wanted to know how the investigation was going, but the army was tight-lipped. So they continued taking matters into their own hands. They even put up a billboard in Killeen with Vanessa's picture, and they continued with their protests that went on for weeks.

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On the Find Vanessa Guillen Facebook page, it read, quote, please share. There will be a third protest in front of Fort Hood military base. Anyone is more than welcome to come and help. Drinks, snacks, flyers, posters, decal, and shirts will be provided. We will be posting updates about the action because unity makes strength and a difference. United for Vanessa.

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Raise your voices about Soldier Vanessa's case. post about it on social media, follow the account and use the hashtag Find Vanessa Guillen." Each Friday, the protest crowds grew larger as the family continued to demand answers from the military.

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When Vanessa's mom finally spoke with them, she told them that something fishy was going on here and that she was determined to get to the bottom of it. She even told the Colonel that she would get President Donald Trump involved if they continued to hide the truth. Gloria also mentioned something that had been on her mind

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It was the conversation she had with Vanessa shortly before she disappeared, where she told her mom that she had been sexually harassed by a male superior at Fort Hood. Ever since Vanessa vanished, her mom couldn't shake the thought that that was somehow connected to her disappearance. But according to Vanessa's family, the CID didn't seem very interested in the sexual harassment claims.

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They also didn't provide any more answers on where they were in the investigation. It almost seemed like they agreed to meet with Gloria just so they could check it off their list. But her family was not going to give up. And luckily for them, Vanessa's story was about to take the media by storm.

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Vanessa's family also decided to tell the world that she had been sexually harassed at Fort Hood shortly before her disappearance. On the Find the Vanessa Guillen Facebook and Twitter pages, they wrote, quote, how can someone go missing on a base and a sergeant sexually harassing a soldier? Justice needs to be served, end quote. Another post read, quote, why are these soldiers not speaking up?

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why sexually harass a soldier no soldier male or female should be disrespected end quote now vanessa's sister myra admitted that she was a little hesitant to share this part of her sister's story but almost immediately a movement was started her other sister lupe had been monitoring the facebook page and she said that hundreds of service women from around the country

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began sharing their own experiences of sexual assault and harassment within the military, especially when it came to superiors. Many of these women said that they didn't feel comfortable coming forward out of fear of retaliation or that when they did come forward, their claims were completely ignored.

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Soon enough, the hashtag I am Vanessa Guillen started spreading like wildfire on social media, as so many men and women around the world felt like they had been in Vanessa's exact same situation. And this also happened to be right around the same time as the Me Too movement, a movement where millions of people had come forward and said that they were survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

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For the Guillen family, the response was shocking. Before they knew it, protests were being held in Houston, Austin, California, and all over the United States. Murals of Vanessa were being painted everywhere. People were outraged at how the military was handling these cases, and they were demanding change. Here is Vanessa's sister Lupe during these protests.

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And now with the national spotlight on Fort Hood, disturbing stories about the military base started to hit the media. It would soon be revealed that Vanessa was just one of many victims at Fort Hood. In fact, years prior to this, in 2013, three female privates at Fort Hood came forward saying that a sergeant on base named Gregory McQueen had sexually assaulted them. Disturbingly,

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Sergeant McQueen was actually a sexual assault prevention officer at the base, the person in charge of making sure these things don't happen. In addition to this, McQueen was also running a prostitution ring at Fort Hood. Two girls would later come forward and say that they had talked to McQueen about money issues they were having.

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And in response, he took some naked photos of them and then showed them to all of these high ranking officers who would eventually pay the girls for sex. And keep in mind, this is the man that Fort Hood hired for sexual assault prevention on the base.

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Now he claimed that they interviewed everyone connected to Vanessa and they found no evidence that these sexual harassment claims were true. But Vanessa's good friend on the base named CJ Landy confirmed that these claims were indeed true. And CJ said that Vanessa had reported it, but she was scared of the consequences she would face.

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Now when this news conference hit the media, everyone was furious. Not only did Ford Hood not want to admit to their toxic work environment, but they also completely invalidated Vanessa's sexual harassment claims. Claims that many people believed were in direct connection to her disappearance. So with all the mystery surrounding this case, people were suspicious.

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Then you add in the fact that none of the cameras were working on the day of Vanessa's disappearance. The way the army was refusing to talk about what happened. something clearly wasn't adding up here. So the Guillen family, alongside their attorney and Texas U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, spoke with the media, demanding that Fort Hood be investigated.

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It was disturbing to know that Vanessa Guillen was just one of many who had been sexually harassed at Fort Hood, and now she's vanished. And something that was also disturbing is the fact that one of the last people to see Vanessa alive also had a history of sexually harassing women at Fort Hood, and that was specialist Erin Robinson.

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If you remember, he was the soldier in that second arms room Vanessa went into to get that serial number. It was confirmed that in 2019, Aaron Robinson sexually harassed a different female soldier at Fort Hood. The investigation included a quote, clear progression of events, cell phone text solicitations, in-person encroachments, and potential stalking.

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But surprise, surprise, there was no formal action taken against him. And soon enough, he would actually be the main suspect in Vanessa's disappearance. But how could that be? Robinson told investigators that he was with his girlfriend all night. and his girlfriend confirmed that alibi.

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Well, as it turns out, about a month into Vanessa's disappearance, two different soldiers would come forward sharing a very dark story. They told investigators that on the day of Vanessa's disappearance, they saw Aaron Robinson leaving the arms room, but he wasn't empty handed. he was pulling this large black plastic container known as a tough box.

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Now, the box had wheels, but the soldiers who saw him said that it was clear that whatever was inside that box was heavy. And they watched him as he wheeled the box over to his vehicle and put it in his trunk. Now, why these soldiers waited this long to come forward, we don't know. But when investigators hear this, they bring Robinson in for a second interview. However, he sticks to his story.

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He even allows investigators to search his phone. Now it would take some time to go through it all, but in the meantime, investigators started looking at specialist Aaron Robinson.

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Aaron Robinson actually met Cecily through his friend, Keon Aguilar. If you notice, Cecily and Keon have the same last name, and that's because they are married. Interestingly, about a year earlier, Aaron actually moved in with Keon and Cecily. So the three of them were all living under the same roof. Then after a while, Cecily and Keon started having problems in their marriage.

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And she started a secret relationship with her husband's friend and roommate, Aaron Robinson. Eventually, Cecily moved out of their home and Aaron moved out with her. Then from there, the two started dating. So at the time of our story, Cecily was still technically married to Keon, but they were estranged.

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So how does Cecily come into this story? Well, after finding out that Robinson was last seen pulling that large black tough box on the day that Vanessa went missing, investigators were thinking one thing, either Aaron Robinson had something to do with Vanessa's disappearance and Cecily was covering for him, or it was all one big suspicious coincidence.

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Now keep in mind, during this time, there are still search parties going on to help find Vanessa. Tim Miller from the Texas AquaSearch even offered up his resources to find her. And he's the best of the best. But for months, there was nothing. However, in June of 2020, a search party was out in Killeen once again, this time focusing on a field near the 3200 block of Florence Road.

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And as they walked through looking for any clues, they began to smell the unmistakable smell of death. The searchers began following the smell and with every step it got stronger until they eventually found the source. Deep in that field, searchers would locate a set of human remains. Everyone's hearts sank. Was the search for Vanessa finally over?

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Now, as we know, they would first have to identify the body, but everyone was pretty sure it was her. Well, that is until the professionals arrived. After looking at the body, something seemed off. This set of human remains was extremely decomposed. And Vanessa had been missing for several months now, so if she had died on the day of her disappearance, she too would be fairly decomposed by now.

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But not nearly as decomposed as this body. As investigators looked at the scene, they realized that this couldn't have been Vanessa. It was the body of someone else.

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Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

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After not showing up to work for several days, the army called his mother in Oklahoma, but she too hadn't heard from him. And then finally, the army listed him as AWOL, absent without leave. Sadly, no one even went looking for Gregory. The army told everyone that he just got up and left on his own free will.

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But like we just mentioned, Gregory was just days away from being discharged, so it wouldn't have made sense for him to just leave. But nonetheless, he was listed as a deserter. His mother said that for the next 10 months after his disappearance, she was completely heartbroken.

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She was a teacher and she would often just break down in tears right in front of her students, going months and months without information on her son's disappearance. was heartbreaking. But now, 10 months later, his mother learned that Gregory didn't go AWOL. He was dead. She also learned that he didn't die by natural causes. In fact, Gregory had been murdered.

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Vanessa worked hard in all aspects of life. She not only wanted to succeed for herself, but she also wanted to be a good role model to her siblings. And she was. Her little sister, Lube, said that Vanessa was the most beautiful and confident person she had ever met. The two spent a lot of time together growing up.

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Now, after this information came out, the army was able to give him back his rank and his benefits. He also received a proper military funeral. But sadly, to this day, Gregory's murder has never been solved. His mother was incredibly disappointed with how the army handled his case. Not only did they fail to protect him, but they never even went looking for him.

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His mom also never got a call from the army or anything to try and make things right. And the sad reality is that Gregory would have likely never been found if people hadn't been out there searching for Vanessa Guillen. When Vanessa's family learned about Gregory's murder, their hearts broke for him and his family. It also left them with this sinking feeling.

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If Gregory had been missing this whole time, what did that mean for Vanessa? Would they ever find her?

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But with everything going on, the CID was still looking into Specialist Aaron Robinson. Like we last mentioned, they had looked through his phone after that second interview and what they found on it was incriminating. Remember how Robinson said that he had been home that entire night? after Vanessa's disappearance?

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Well, that couldn't have been true because his cell phone data placed him in Belton, Texas at 1.59 a.m. by a bridge near the Leon River, which is approximately 20 miles east of Killeen. So Robinson wasn't home. He was out in the wilderness. But what was he doing out there? So from here, search teams decide to put their focus there.

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Soon enough, the FBI, local police, Texas Rangers, the CID, and Texas Equisert all descended upon the Leon River with canines, divers, helicopters, and ATVs. There were many hands on deck that day. And after a few hours, they would find something. Deep within the woods, where Robinson's cell phone pinged, searchers located a burn pile.

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And right in the middle of that pile was this melted black plastic. Immediately, they recognized it as a black tough box, the same kind of tough box that witnesses saw Aaron loading into his vehicle on the day that Vanessa disappeared.

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They went to church, they were involved in their community, and they even worked together at a local flea market to earn some extra money. But Lupe said that no matter what they were doing or where they were at, Vanessa's smile and contagious laughter always drew people in. Lupe recalled watching her sister and thinking she was the coolest person in the world.

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On June 30th, 2020, at around 11 a.m., a group of contractors were working on a fence near the Leon River when they suddenly smelled something. Knowing what decomp smelled like, they quickly called 911. But strangely enough, searchers had already searched the area where the smell was coming from, but nonetheless, they decided to come back.

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And after a few hours, they found what looked like a disturbance in the ground, so they dug it up. And after a few seconds, they knew that they had found human remains. Sadly, the remains were completely unrecognizable. But there was one characteristic that led everyone to believe that it was indeed Vanessa. And that was the hair. Vanessa had this beautiful, long, thick black hair.

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And immediately when they saw it, They knew it was her, but disturbingly, they didn't find all of her. Vanessa had been dismembered. Her partial remains were buried within a shallow grave, and whoever put her there tried to conceal her body by pouring concrete over it. Not far from this set of partial remains, investigators found another set buried in the ground, covered in concrete.

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Growing up, Vanessa was also like a second mom to her younger siblings. She loved her family more than anything. and she was an essential part of their household. But like with every child, they one day grow up and move away. So in 2018, as high school graduation was approaching, Vanessa sat her parents down and told them about her plans for after school.

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Then they found another. The search crews couldn't believe that they had missed this. Earlier that week, they had walked right over her body without even realizing. But finally, after two long months, the search for Vanessa Guillen had come to an end.

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And now that Vanessa's body was found, everyone could now focus on getting her justice. And they all knew exactly who was responsible, Specialist Aaron Robinson. The evidence against him was damning. Not only was he seen pulling that black tough box that was later found in a burn pile near her remains, but his cell phone records also placed him there on the night of Vanessa's disappearance.

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Now for her entire life, Vanessa had always talked about becoming one of two things, an astronaut, or a soldier. Starting at just 10 years old, she told her mom that she wanted to fight for our country or go to the moon. But her mom, Gloria, was quick to tell Vanessa that the military was no place for a woman.

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However, there was still one big question mark to this story. And it had to do with Robinson's girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar. Like we mentioned in the beginning of the investigation, she had given Robinson an alibi that night. They both said that they had been together at his house all night long on the day that Vanessa went missing. And clearly that couldn't have been true.

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So what exactly did Cecily know? What was her part in all of this? Well, investigators were about to find out. After finding Vanessa's remains, they brought her in for an interview. And one of the first things they brought up was the fact that Cecily said she and Robinson had been together that entire night, sitting across from investigators.

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She once again confirmed this, but in response, the detectives asked, well, if that was the case, then why did Robinson call you over and over that night? Cecily had been caught in a lie. Phone records show that Robinson called her several times, but if they were together that whole time, then why was he calling her? Cecily was nervous.

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Thinking quickly, she told investigators, well, I couldn't find my phone. It was lost somewhere in his house, so he was calling me so we could find it. Now, in theory, this would make sense, but then investigators bring up the fact that their cell phones showed They weren't at home. How do you explain that? They ask. Cecily gets even more nervous and she quickly changes her story.

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This time she says, well, we weren't actually at home. We were driving. My phone got lost somewhere in his car while we were driving down the road. And once again, he called me so we could find it. Investigators then ask, so why were you driving around at five in the morning? Cecily said that she and Robinson had gotten into an argument. So they decided to clear their heads and take a drive.

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Now, obviously, investigators didn't believe a word coming out of her mouth and they started turning up the heat. At one point, the detective turned to Cecily and said, do you smell that? The smell of decomposition in this room? That's the smell of Vanessa's body. We've been out there all day working this crime scene. So how about you start the story over and tell the truth this time?

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Cecily knew she was backed into a corner. she couldn't keep up with this lie anymore so finally she uttered the sentence quote robinson killed the girl from here cecily told investigators that on the night of april 22nd she was working a shift at the gas station when robinson walked in and picked her up she said that after they left he just started driving towards the leon bridge

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And along the way, he told her why. According to Robinson, he said that during a shift that day within the arms room, he grabbed a hammer and he bludgeoned Vanessa to death. After killing her, he shoved her into that black tough box and he brought her out to the Leon River.

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Now, as for why he bludgeoned her, Cecily told investigators that when Vanessa walked into the room that day, she looked over and saw a picture of Cecily as the background on Robinson's phone. And because Cecily was technically married to another soldier on base, Robinson didn't want to get in trouble.

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Not because she didn't think Vanessa was capable of being a soldier, but because she didn't think it was safe. In fact, in Gloria's mind, she felt like her daughter would be more safe going to the moon than being a soldier. But on this day, when Vanessa sat her parents down, she told them that she was going to join the military. The decision wasn't rash.

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Cecily said that Robinson thought Vanessa was going to tell the higher ups that he was having an affair with another soldier's wife. So to avoid that, he killed her. Now I will say, I haven't seen anyone that actually believes this. Who bludgeons someone to death over seeing a photo? Even further, people on the base already knew that Robinson and Cecily were together.

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So the fact that he would murder Vanessa after seeing a picture on his phone is pretty hard to believe. Cecily was adamant that that's why he killed her. Later that night, she said that Robinson drove her out to the Leon River.

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after parking they got out of the car and walked into the woods where he had put the tough box cecily said that he even opened it for her and showed her vanessa's body disturbingly also admits to investigators that she helped him dismember vanessa that night interestingly she said that robinson didn't want to remove vanessa from the box so she was the one who did it

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From there, they removed her clothes and started the dismemberment. Using machetes, both she and Robinson went to work packing her body into pieces so it would be easier for them to conceal. They cut off her head, arms, and legs. Once the dismemberment was over, they tried burning her remains, but... It wasn't working.

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So instead, they dug three different holes, putting pieces of Vanessa in each one. That night, when they got back home, they burned Vanessa's clothing. The two were out until about 5 a.m., so it was a long night. And over the next few days, they anxiously waited as the searches for Vanessa began. As you can imagine, they were terrified of her being found.

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The year 2020 was memorable to say the least. There was the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Me Too movement, and it was an election year. There was a lot of division, death, and unrest. With everything going on in the United States, many news stories from around this time didn't get a lot of attention.

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So much so, on April 26th, they decided to go back out to the dump site. But this time, they came with hairnets, gloves, and concrete. Cecily actually bought the supplies from someone on Facebook Marketplace. And once out there, they dug up Vanessa's dismembered remains and poured concrete over them.

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Vanessa had been thinking about it for years. Raised by immigrant parents, she learned the importance of a strong work ethic, determination, and resilience. all of which are needed to be a soldier. She was also in great physical health after years of working out, and she knew deep down that she was meant for this.

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Aaron Robinson was on edge, especially because at the time Cecily was being interviewed, he had been ordered into a conference room at Fort Hood. Now they didn't have enough to arrest him at the moment, but officials there were keeping an eye on him because they knew it was only a matter of time until that arrest warrant came through.

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So earlier that day, they told him he had to wait in the conference room. When Robinson asked why, they told him it was for violating quarantine. So he did what he was told. Over the next few hours, he lounged in the room and played video games. But as he was sitting there, he suddenly saw on his phone that a body had been located near the Leon River.

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And soon after that, Cecily called him from the police station and started talking about the crime. Robinson quickly started feeling anxious. he knew the walls were closing in. And that's when he decided that he was going to make a run for it.

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Unfortunately, the officials that were supposed to be watching him weren't keeping a close enough eye because when no one was looking, Robinson somehow slipped out of the conference room ran out of the building and hopped into his car. Security guards chased him down, but they weren't quick enough. And before they knew it, Aaron Robinson was gone.

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For the next few hours, investigators and Colleen looked everywhere for him. And eventually they spot him. He was found walking on the side of the road, roughly six miles away from Fort Hood. Quickly, the police surround him, but unbeknownst to them, Robinson had a gun, and before they were able to apprehend him, he pulled it out, aimed it at his head, and pulled the trigger.

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In that very instant, Genessa Guillen's killer had taken his own life.

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She even told her parents, quote, I've been given a mission, and I'm going to fulfill it, end quote.

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Upon learning that Cecily had been arrested, the Guillens were grateful that someone would be held responsible. But there were still so many unanswered questions, mostly revolving around Aaron Robinson. Like how did Fort Hood let him escape that day? He was supposed to be supervised in the conference room, so why weren't they watching him?

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Another question was, why was he allowed to have his phone in the conference room that day? Clearly the news of Vanessa's body being found was all over and learning of it was surely going to spook him. Everyone also wanted to know how he was able to get a gun when he was being investigated for Vanessa's murder.

Murder In America

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For months, CID investigators had known that Aaron Robinson was somehow involved in Vanessa's disappearance. And yet they allowed him to continue working at the armory. They gave him access to weapons. It was clearly a massive failure on all levels. Eventually, the army reported that there had been a miscommunication between the sergeant guarding the conference room and CID investigators.

Murder In America

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And because of this, Vanessa's killer escaped. And he didn't just escape Fort Hood that day, but he also escaped justice.

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In the spring of 2018, Vanessa would graduate from Cesar E. Chavez High School in the top 15% of her class. And just days later, she was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for boot camp. Now during this period, there are a number of people who realize that the army isn't for them. For 10 whole weeks, you have to wake up before the sun,

Murder In America

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Although Vanessa Guillen was now laid to rest, her family was not going to remain silent on advocating for change within the US military. Now there was still some confusion on whether or not Aaron Robinson was the one who sexually harassed Vanessa shortly before her death. And her family couldn't help but wonder if that's why he killed her. Did he come on to Vanessa that day?

Murder In America

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Did she reject his advances? One thing they knew for sure was that Vanessa had been sexually harassed by a superior at Fort Hood. She had also been murdered by a superior. So whether or not Robinson was responsible for the sexual harassment, there was clearly a huge problem going on at Fort Hood. A problem where superiors were taking advantage of people. So in the thick of their grief,

Murder In America

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the Guillens decided to channel it into activism. And this was only the beginning. In the months after Vanessa's funeral, they continued to make their voices heard. And specifically, they wanted to know what Fort Hood was doing about the sexual harassments and assaults that plagued their base and how they were going to make changes going forward. They also wanted answers on what went wrong

Murder In America

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You spend all day working out, doing training exercises, learning different skills, taking orders. It's not only physically draining, but it can be mentally draining as well. But to everyone's surprise, Vanessa absolutely loved it. During her time at Fort Jackson, she sent her family letters telling them how well she was doing. and how she had truly found her calling.

Murder In America

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In one letter, she wrote, quote, I am the fastest female, I can tell you that, and I am recognized for that shit. I got 31 out of 40 shots with my M4, and I threw some grenades today, qualified like a G in both activities, end quote.

Murder In America

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After Vanessa's death, the Guillen family would never be able to go back to their normal lives. Not only were they constantly fighting to advocate for her, but they were also still struggling with their grief of how Vanessa's life ended. Her mother, Gloria, was forever changed by Vanessa's death. It not only affected her mentally, physically as well.

Murder In America

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Because of this, Vanessa's sister Myra had to step in to care for her younger siblings. Her other sister Lupe, who had been in 10th grade when Vanessa disappeared, could no longer focus on schoolwork, athletics, or a social life. How can you, when your sister's disappearance and death completely consumed their lives for so long? Instead of being the carefree teenager she once was,

Murder In America

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Lupe had to grow up and fight for justice. But the Guillen family also discovered a newfound purpose for their lives, a powerful mission for justice and reform. That year, the Guillen started traveling to Washington DC with their attorney to advocate for systematic change within the military.

Murder In America

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They had hundreds of supporters who all participated in peaceful protests, demanding justice and the passage of the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act. The act would ensure that anyone who had been sexually assaulted or harassed within the military wouldn't have to go through their chain of command to report it.

Murder In America

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Instead, it would allow a third party to come in, making soldiers feel safe and comfortable coming forward.

Murder In America

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But sadly, even after meeting with President Trump, the Guillens learned that the bill never even made it to the floor for a vote. It was yet another setback in their quest for justice. But everyone knew that Vanessa's family, along with all of her supporters, would not give up. There was no way that this case would be swept under the rug like all those before her.

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Many even went to social media to vent their frustrations. saying, quote, this is a slap in the face to Vanessa, her family, and all sexually harassed and assaulted victims. I will be ready in 2021. It needs to pass. Another one read, quote, the bill needs to be passed to protect our military soldiers, my military soldier, my son, end quote.

Murder In America

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But the Guillen still had a long road ahead of them, not only with passing the bill, but also with Cecily Aguilar, who is currently in jail for her part in the crime.

Murder In America

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When Vanessa arrived at Fort Hood, she was full of hope. This was one of the largest military installations in the world, and it would be her home for the next few years. Now, Vanessa was a very friendly and likable person, so she spent the first few weeks getting acquainted with everyone around her. She was also assigned to work as a small arms and artillery repairer.

Murder In America

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Now, from the very beginning, officials at Fort Hood said that they never had any evidence that Vanessa reported any instances of sexual harassment. But after her death, an investigation was conducted. And in April of 2021, the report was released to the public. Disturbingly, despite what Fort Hood initially said, the investigation proved that Vanessa actually had reported sexual harassment

Murder In America

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on two separate occasions. On both of those occasions, she told her higher-ups. But sadly, her superiors failed to move the report up the chain of command. So in the end, nothing ended up happening.

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And believe it or not, the names of the superiors were never released. There's been speculation that it was Erin Robinson, but we don't know. However, we do know that Erin Robinson had sexually harassed a girl on the base before, so it wouldn't be that far fetched.

Murder In America

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And because of his disturbing past of sexual harassment, some people have theorized that Vanessa was murdered by Robinson, not because of the lock screen picture on his phone, but while he was in the act of sexually assaulting her. However, due to Fort Hood's poor investigation, we may never know the answer as to why she was murdered.

Murder In America

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Her job was to inspect, repair, and secure the weapons on base. And like with everything in her life, Vanessa took her position seriously. But every single weekend when Vanessa wasn't working, she would make the three hour drive back to Houston to see her family and her boyfriend Juan. Now the first few months when Vanessa would come home, her family said she was in good spirits.

Murder In America

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But one thing we do know is that there was a huge problem at Fort Hood, where leaders were sexually harassing, sexually assaulting, and in Vanessa's case, murdering soldiers on base. After the 2021 report was released, that proved Vanessa had reported the sexual harassment, Fort Hood faced a lot of scrutiny.

Murder In America

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Not only did they fail to take action after her reports, but they also failed to protect Vanessa. And then they lied about it, telling the public that Vanessa never reported the sexual harassment. So why did they lie? Did they know that Vanessa's sexual harassment claims would expose the giant problem they had on base? A problem that they clearly weren't interested in fixing?

Murder In America

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But there was one that took the media by storm, and that was the story of Vanessa Guillen. Vanessa was a soldier at the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas. She had wanted to join the army since she was a little girl, but her time at Fort Hood was not at all what she expected. For months, her family watched as Vanessa's smile slowly disappeared. And eventually, they found out why.

Murder In America

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Now for months, Vanessa's family spoke to Congress about the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act. Traveling to Washington DC was both physically and emotionally exhausting for Vanessa's sisters. However, they were determined to fight so that no other service member would have to go through what Vanessa did.

Murder In America

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She seemed to have been adjusting well. In March of 2020, she and her boyfriend Juan even got engaged. It was supposed to be a very happy time in her life. But after a few months, when Vanessa would come home and walk through her family's front door, something seemed off. Little by little, her glow was dimming.

Murder In America

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Now, like we mentioned, the Trump administration had not been successful in passing or even voting on the act. But luckily, the Biden administration would be. On December 27th, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bill And it went into effect on January 1st, 2022. The passing of this bill was not only a huge achievement for Vanessa's family, but for service members as a whole.

Murder In America

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Their family attorney stated, quote, we literally moved the mountain here, end quote.

Murder In America

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But the last missing piece to this horrible story is the fate of Cecily Aguilar. Like we mentioned before, she claimed that she had been taken to the Leon River that night without knowing what was going on. She said that Robinson placed a gun to her head and told her to get rid of the body. Following her arrest, Cecily pleaded not guilty. Now her trial finally came around in August of 2023.

Murder In America

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During one visit home, her mom noticed that she had dark bags under her eyes, like she hadn't been sleeping. The next time she came home, she could tell that Vanessa had lost a lot of weight and her hair was thinning. Her mom Gloria pulled her aside and asked if everything was okay, but Vanessa was quick to say she was fine.

Murder In America

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Interestingly, her estranged husband, Keon Aguilar, had actually been shot to death just a few months before her trial, yet another tragic and unsolved homicide in this story. But during Cecily's trial, there were many disturbing details that came to light. According to Cecily, after Aaron Robinson murdered Vanessa,

Murder In America

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he came up with the idea to dismember, burn, and pour concrete over the body, all from an episode of Criminal Minds. Cecily also admitted that it took them seven whole hours to dismember Vanessa that night. Some of the details that came out at trial were so difficult to hear, some people in the courtroom became sick.

Murder In America

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Now, like we mentioned, Cecily originally said that Robinson killed Vanessa because she saw that picture of her on his phone. But in jail, she actually told an inmate, quote, he had an image in his head. He saw himself kill Vanessa and he wanted to do it, end quote.

Murder In America

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Now, some people close to Robinson have since come forward saying he was an unstable individual who supposedly had a hit list, but because he took his own life, all of those answers died with him. Now, as for Cecily Aguilar, she had a lot of behavioral issues while in jail,

Murder In America

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she also showed no remorse for her actions but before her trial she did change her plea to guilty likely because it was in her best interest and in the end the judge would sentence her to the maximum 30 years in federal prison after her sentencing united states attorney jamie esparza said our hope is that today's sentence brings a sense of relief and justice to the yian family who have endured such pain throughout these past few years

Murder In America

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But Vanessa's story is one that we will never forget. It came at a time when the entire world was putting a spotlight on corruption and injustice. Vanessa was a woman who wanted to fight for our country ever since she was a little girl, and she put in the work to get there. But sadly, the system that she honored and respected so much did not show her that same respect.

Murder In America

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She said she had been working hard and spending a lot of time in the gym, but Gloria knew there was something deeper at play. Week after week, She wasn't telling her family exactly what was going on, but she did start dropping little hints. One weekend, she told her sister, I don't like it at Fort Hood, but she never elaborated on why. During another weekend, she came home.

Murder In America

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But her sacrifice made more of a difference than she could have ever known. It shed a light on the systemic problems of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault within the military. It exposed corruption. And because of her, servicemen and women are now protected in the ways that Vanessa wasn't. So today, we honor her life, her service to our country, her bravery, and her sacrifice.

Murder In America

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Vanessa ran into her room, closed the door, and just started sobbing on her bed. Now, Vanessa clearly wasn't ready to talk about what was going on in her life, so her sister didn't ask what was wrong. But the crying told her everything. Vanessa wasn't happy.

Murder In America

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During another instance, she texted her older sister, Myra, saying that she felt empty and that the stress of the military was causing her to lose sleep. And as you can imagine, her family was very concerned. This was a very different Vanessa than the one who was just thriving at boot camp. So finally, one weekend when she came to Houston, her mom sat her down at the kitchen table.

Murder In America

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Are you going to tell me what's going on? Gloria asked. Vanessa took a long pause. Finally, she looked up at her mom and said, yes, but I need you to be strong when I tell you this. Try not to get upset because it's hard for me to talk about. Gloria didn't know what to expect. but she was glad that Vanessa was finally opening up. Tears began running down her daughter's face.

Murder In America

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And after a few seconds, Vanessa finally told her, I'm being sexually harassed by a higher up on the base. Gloria couldn't find words. What do you mean you're being sexually harassed? What happened? Vanessa told her mom that her male superior had been making inappropriate comments towards her. And keep in mind, Vanessa is engaged.

Murder In America

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She made it clear that she was not interested in him, but he persisted. In one instance, he and another soldier even followed her into the shower and started making vulgar comments about wanting to have a threesome.

Murder In America

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now when gloria heard this she was shocked she told vanessa that she needed to report this immediately but vanessa didn't want to to report it she'd have to go up the chain of command and in the military that's a big problem usually when it is reported nothing ever happens

Murder In America

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During her time at Fort Hood, Vanessa had been sexually harassed by fellow soldiers. But then in 2020, Vanessa mysteriously disappeared while working a shift at the base. Her family immediately alerted the army of her disappearance, but for months, There was no sign of her. So with nowhere else to turn, her family started sharing her story with the media.

Murder In America

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Vanessa Guillen knew firsthand how Fort Hood handled these kinds of cases. After telling her mom about the sexual harassment she experienced, her mother urged her to report it. Gloria even said, give me the name and I'll report the bastard. But still, Vanessa refused. Her sister Lupe would later say, quote, she told my mom, I can't report it.

Murder In America

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I've seen other girls pass through the same situation and they ignore them. They say that they're lying.

Murder In America

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don't listen to them end quote and she was right vanessa knew that if she came forward life on the base would get even more difficult so she chose not to report it which is heartbreaking vanessa had dreamt of becoming a soldier since she was a little girl but the system that she loved and respected so much had left her feeling isolated and unsupported and it was clearly having an effect on her.

Murder in the Moonlight

In Cold Blood

148.172

I know what happened and no one will believe me.

Murder in the Moonlight

In Cold Blood

1480.929

I said, that's like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, she mentioned homicide. Because all I remember hearing in this house was bang, bang, bang, bang.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1079.678

That's one small step for man.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1082.159

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1098.188

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1103.41

And triumph over addiction.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1105.271

Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

1108.772

And become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission. Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through?

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

2310.009

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

2313.251

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

2335.106

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons. What do you say, Buzz? Another beer? And triumph over addiction.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

2342.219

Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Married to the Law

2345.701

And become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission. Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through?

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

0.089

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

1025.174

I mean, here's this woman. She looked very serene. Her face was very serene. And it all had a weird dreamlike quality about it.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

1346.252

And from the address, you knew perfectly well whether it was black or white. And if it was white, it was interesting, and you would pursue it. If it was black, unless there was some unusual circumstance about it, The phrase from the city desk was, cheap it out, cheap it out, which means give it three paragraphs on the inside. In other words, the black life in Washington was not covered.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

149.754

I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

167.649

Most of us don't know the legal process. And because they always tell you this word closure, I really wish people would stop using that word because there is no such thing as closure.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

1791.354

Well, I'll tell you what, it's a good thing I wasn't black, because they had a description of the killer, and the killer was a young black man. But anyway, the cops knew I was a reporter. I was standing there with a notebook in my hand and so on, so it was pretty clear who I was, and most of them had seen me around.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

1829.332

guys from the homicide squad whom I knew, guys wearing white raincoats and black raincoats, you know, the cops, and then a few uniformed police. The homicide squad guys standing over the body, or they were ignoring the body, but they were talking among themselves. It's a rather odd effect to have the body there and then these guys just standing around talking. It's an eerie, eerie effect.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

1947.49

Eventually, they came out of the woods leading a rather short 5'5", 5'6", black man, a young black man. He was just my age, which was 25 years old, and he was wet.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

195.325

You would sit there with a book or a newspaper and just half listen to the police radio, which is a constant chatter in your ear. You're listening, but you're not listening, but certain cues will alert you.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

2049.451

They never found a fishing pole. He didn't have a fishing pole. And it turned out later that his fishing pole was at his home out in Anacostia on the other side of the city from Georgetown.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

237.546

So I'm sitting there just about getting on toward noon, and I heard on the police radio, cruiser 25, cruiser 26, cruiser 27, proceed to, I believe it was the 3800 block of Canal Road.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

2374.31

Do I want my freedom or do I want my family? And found a way to escape. When she said, you know you can leave, right? It was a light bulb. And now helps other women get out too. I loved my girls.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

258.1

Well, the first thing I knew was that that was three homicide cruisers being called for some reason, and that's extremely unusual.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

271.629

I'd never run into that. The second thing I knew was it was in Georgetown.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

283.558

My parents knew Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon pretty well.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

2912.673

I'm Hannah Smith. And I'm Pasha Eaton. We host The Knife, a podcast from the Exactly Right Network that cuts to the heart of the story.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

2930.567

Most of us don't know the legal process. And because they always tell you this word closure, I really wish people would stop using that word because there is no such thing as closure.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

299.667

It was just below Georgetown University by the river. And as it turned out, it was on the canal. I jumped in a car. I got there in an amazingly short time.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

341.072

there was a guy shooting a woman across the canal from where they stood. They heard shots and ran across the road, looked across the canal, saw a guy struggling with a woman. I talked to these guys. They were still there. I said, what happened? And they told me that one of them pointed to something that looked like a laundry bag almost, or a bag of clothing. And he said, that's her, that's her.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

370.096

And I said, who is it? He said, that's the woman that was shot.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

592.83

Artists have things called paint books. The pages are quite, it's a high-quality paper, thicker, and most of the pages had swatches of paint on it and then slight descriptions of how that color was achieved.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

829.671

I mean, this was a very fast-moving situation.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

844.134

I knew that there was a tunnel underneath the canal, and I knew it was there, so I ran to that tunnel. It was about 50 yards from where I was standing. You had to part vines to go into it. But I ran through the tunnel and all the time I was fairly frightened because I thought the killer was still loose.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

866.425

So I ran through the tunnel, came up into the sunlight, through the vines that hung over the entrance on the other side, came up onto the towpath, and I ran to where the body was and I saw a woman lying crumpled up in the fetal position.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

903.555

I saw no blood.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

907.296

And so she looked like she was asleep. She was dressed in an Angora sweater and pedal pusher pants and what looked like ballet slippers to me, but there's something like that, slip-on things. She had an air of money about her in the sense that you could see that her hair was... She was a very good-looking woman. I could see her profile, although she was turned away from me, sort of.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Bad Luck, Mary

939.313

But I could see that her haircut was expensive, if that makes sense.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

The CIA Wife

203.578

More than half of American families owned one. But Mary didn't like TV, thought it would make her sons lazy.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

The CIA Wife

817.893

Everything in this room is cold and angular, she thought. The furniture all chromium and corners, the women chicly cadaverous, the conversation brittle and smart and insignificant.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

The CIA Wife

839.341

Riding down the elevator, Ruth looked at herself in the mirror, and she saw the floors slipping away behind her, one by one, as the elevator descended. And that, she thought, is a portrait of my life, year by year.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

The CIA Wife

887.029

Everything that I see and hear, people that I meet, every sensation will be new and exciting and different and interesting. Dr. Morrison promised me so.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Introducing Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

159.791

They didn't find the gun, which was troubling.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Introducing Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

31.695

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

Introducing Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien

46.692

She had everything at her disposal of the elite of the elite, and she rejected it to become an artist in a garage.

Murder: True Crime Stories

Presenting "Killer Minds": A Crime House Original

0.888

Murder True Crime Stories fans, I have got some exciting news. Crime House Studios is launching a new show called Killer Minds. Hosted by licensed forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels and Crime House's Vanessa Richardson, each episode of Killer Minds features a deep dive into the psychology of a notorious murderer.

Murder: True Crime Stories

Presenting "Killer Minds": A Crime House Original

24.084

From infamous serial killers to ruthless cult leaders, deadly exes, and spree killers. Along with Vanessa's immersive storytelling, full of high stakes with twists and turns, Dr. Engels will be providing expert analysis of the people involved. Not just how they killed, but why. Killer Minds is a Crime House Studios original. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday.

Murder: True Crime Stories

Presenting "Killer Minds": A Crime House Original

3228.789

Follow Killer Minds, a Crime House Studios original now. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Again, that's Killer Minds. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts. And for early ad-free access, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Murder: True Crime Stories

Presenting "Killer Minds": A Crime House Original

53.492

Follow wherever you get your podcasts. And now, here's a sneak peek of Killer Minds. This is Crime House.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

MFM Minisode 417

0.269

Coming to ABC and Hulu. Amanda Riley was a mother, wife, speaker at her church. And then she got diagnosed with cancer. A beloved young Christian woman fighting a battle undeserved. We thought she was God's gift, but she was a liar.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

MFM Minisode 417

1057.944

Good one.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

MFM Minisode 417

17.017

From the number one smash hit podcast. It was only a matter of time until Amanda's whole world came tumbling down. You're not going to believe this. Scamanda. New episodes Thursday nights on ABC and stream on Hulu.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1014.346

Is there a dead body back there, man? The guy said, something around that nature. The officer replied. And then talk turned to politics. The guy blamed the DA at the time for releasing people from jail.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1036.812

At another house down the street, the officer unlatched a white metal gate and walked up the driveway to the front door.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1090.919

It's difficult to hear, but she said, It's unclear what exactly the this is that she said was happening for years. Gang violence, maybe? The kind of violence that is sometimes seen as constant in this area. The kind of violence that fills the chyrons of local TV news shows.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1129.849

The crime scene that morning resulted in a headline of its own. Woman found stabbed and beaten to death in Compton. The article appeared in the L.A. Times. It said that deputies found the body of a, quote, Latina who had died from blunt trauma and stab wounds.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1145.149

The article said that authorities were still trying to figure out whether she'd been robbed or sexually assaulted prior to her death, and that they had no leads on a suspect. It included a short statement from an L.A. County Sheriff's Department spokesperson. He said, she's Jane Doe right now.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1421.721

When detectives arrived on the scene, the first person they wanted to speak with was the person who found the body. Jose Tejas, the building manager. He was the one who called 911 earlier that morning.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

1431.236

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1439.895

But like his tenants, Jose didn't know much. He didn't think he knew who the victim was, and he definitely didn't think they lived in the building. He told the detectives that there were sex workers who sometimes worked in the alley behind the apartments. And he suggested that maybe the victim could have been one of them.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1460.971

But Jose had another hunch, this feeling that compelled him to make a phone call, to do some investigative work of his own. Maybe it was an apartment manager's intuition, the kind of instinct you develop when it's your job to know everyone else's business. Whatever it was, he decided he needed to reach out to one of his tenants, Juan de la O, Daisy's grandfather.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

1484.339

Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1499.389

At this point, Juan already knew that something horrific had happened. He'd walked past the crime scene that morning while trying to leave for work. He couldn't get to his car because the police tape was blocking the parking lot. He shuddered. It looked to him like the body of a young person lying there on the ground.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1517.643

In his mind, it must have gone somewhere dark because he went back inside and asked a family member, Where's Daisy? Did she come home last night? Around the same time, Wendy Valdivia was in her car. She was on her way to take her two chihuahuas to the park. Wendy was in her early 30s with long, dark blonde hair.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1545.296

And as she drove past her mother's apartment complex, she noticed yellow tape surrounding it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

155.038

It was February 23rd, 2021, when a series of police SUVs pulled up in the alley behind an apartment complex in Compton. The sun had only just started to rise, casting this piercing neon glow over the buildings. An officer with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department stepped out from one of the Ford Expeditions and put on a white face mask.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1565.849

So Wendy kept driving. She figured that whatever was going on, it was nothing serious. But on her way home from the dog park, she decided to pull over and flag down a police officer. What's going on, she asked.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1589.386

This, as you might imagine, was not the most comforting answer.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1608.393

Wendy used to live in this building. She moved out just a year earlier. And she still knew a lot of the people who lived there. She pictured a former neighbor who fit the officer's description. And she immediately began imagining the worst.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1633.334

She went over to her mother's first floor apartment. That's where her 13-year-old son, Jeffrey, had spent the night. And the room where he slept was located directly next to the area where the body had been found.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1655.328

Now, it might seem odd that Jeffrey didn't pay much attention to the noises outside. But when I asked Wendy about this... She told me that the boulevard nearby was frequented by sex workers. And I think what she was getting at was that sometimes if you hear other people's business, you just have to tune it out. Close the window, shut your eyes.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1677.481

It wasn't something you got involved in or tried to listen to, especially if you were a kid. Before long, there was a knock on Wendy's mother's door. It was a police officer, and he had an update. He now believed that the person who had been murdered was a younger girl, not a woman in her 40s. Wendy immediately thought of her mom's upstairs neighbor, Daisy.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1713.822

Wendy had known Daisy ever since Daisy was little. Daisy and her brothers had grown up alongside Jeffrey and his sisters. They all used to play together at the apartment complex. Wendy asked Jeffrey if he'd seen Daisy the night before. It turned out he had. He'd been over at his cousin's apartment on the other side of the complex. They'd been playing video games.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1734.484

Call of Duty was Jeffrey's favorite. A little after 11.30 p.m., Jeffrey headed back to his grandmother's apartment. And that's when he spotted Daisy. She looked like she was lying down on her side, taking a nap in the grassy area between two apartment buildings. someone was standing over her, pacing back and forth around her body.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

175.406

He walked past the dumpsters and through this narrow, gated walkway. It led to the apartment complex. Sneakers dangled from a telephone wire overhead. There on the dead grass between two buildings was this blue and gray patterned rug. It was big, five feet wide by eight feet long. And from a few steps back, it was hard to tell that there was anything underneath it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1757.208

Now, this sounds really ominous, but in the moment, Jeffrey didn't think anything of it. Besides, it wasn't really his business. He understood that staying out of other people's business could mean staying out of trouble, especially in a neighborhood where trouble could sometimes feel inevitable. When the police heard about what Jeffrey had seen, They wanted him to answer some questions.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1782.43

They also wanted him to do something else. Something Wendy was unsettled by. They wanted him to go look at the body and see if he could identify it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1797.945

But the police were insistent. They wanted Jeffrey to do it. He was the one who had seen Daisy the night before. Wendy thought about it, and she reluctantly agreed. If Jeffrey could help solve the mystery of who this person was, if he could lend a name and an identity, some humanity to this Jane Doe, then it would be worth it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1823.492

Jeffrey walked out of his grandmother's apartment and ducked under the yellow police tape. He looked down at the body that had been lying there for hours. And in that moment, he gave the confirmation police were looking for. Afterward, he was quiet, stoic, like a boy changed by what he had seen.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1862.768

After hours of uncertainty, the police were finally able to identify the body. As Sanchez put it, it was all because of Jeffrey.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1892.588

Daisy De La O was not a Jane Doe. And this was not a, quote, potty dump. Daisy lived there. She had been with her family just the night before. And her family, they still didn't know anything was wrong. Susanna Salas was at work at a food manufacturing warehouse when she got a phone call. The voice on the other end said he was a detective with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1921.4

He wanted to know when was the last time Susie had seen her daughter. Susie thought of the previous night. The night she and her family spent watching television in the living room. The night Daisy had gotten that text message. The night she gave her mom and grandmother a hug. The night she said, I'll be right back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1942.699

Susie had assumed that Daisy met up with her ex-boyfriend and they'd spent the night together. But now, Susie was worried. She told me she remembered thinking, what did she do? Had Daisy and her ex gotten into some kind of trouble? Committed some kind of crime and made a run for it? Why was the detective calling her? But he wouldn't say. All he said, according to Susie, was, you need to come home.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1971.473

At some point, it dawned on her. Maybe Daisy hadn't done anything. Maybe something had been done to her. After Susie hung up the phone, she marched into her boss's office and broke down crying. A detective called me, she said, and I don't know what happened. I don't know. Susie knew she needed to get home, but she was shaking so badly that she couldn't drive. I was a wreck, she told me.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

198.608

As the officer got closer, he put on a pair of blue latex gloves. He lifted up a corner of the rug. And there beneath it was the body.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

1998.71

A co-worker offered to give her a ride, and as they drove through the late afternoon gridlock on the 710, along the concrete basin of the LA River, Susie just kept saying over and over, something happened. Something happened. Earlier that same day, she'd been talking to her coworkers about Daisy, telling them that Daisy was about to buy a car, and that that made Susie a little melancholy.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2028.85

Daisy was already so independent, and once she got a car, she'd only become more so. Some small part of Susie was already mourning the version of her daughter who still had to ask her for rides, who had to spend time with her in the car, had to show her where she was going and when and with whom.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2047.63

Now, as Susie and her co-worker exited the freeway and turned onto the boulevard where she lived, that worry seemed so distant. They pulled up to Susie's apartment building, and she saw the police tape wrapped all around it. She remembered thinking it looked like something out of a scary movie. She began cursing to herself. And then, suddenly, she was running.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2072.049

Running and running until she reached the yellow tape and the crowd of police. That's when she heard the words, she's the mom.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2088.36

A body bag. Wendy said that they were putting Daisy in a body bag when Susie got there.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2119.682

Susie told me that her legs gave out, that they felt like jello, like mush. She said it was like something she'd seen in movies, something she'd probably assumed was some kind of dramatic Hollywood cliche. It felt surreal. Susie remembered screaming, cursing, begging to know what had happened. But detectives had no answers for her, only more questions. Things like, did Daisy have any tattoos? Yes.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2149.704

They wanted to double-check that they'd ID'd the body correctly. That it was, in fact, Susie's daughter. Yeah, she told them. There was a bunny on her forearm because Daisy's niece loved bunnies. Dancing skeletons on each of her hips. Two angels on her neck. A spiderweb on her shoulder. Near the crescent moon and the stars. It was a matching tattoo she'd gotten years earlier with her best friend.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2176.181

They had showed them off in their side-by-side yearbook photos. There were stories behind the ink, memories. But now they'd become identifiers, numbered 1 through 10 on an autopsy. Daisy was so much more than the markings on her body, the descriptions on a stack of government paperwork. I wanted to know the things that body cameras and autopsies couldn't tell me.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

220.605

You're gonna have a 245, he said. Police code for assault with a deadly weapon. Officers started cordoning off the area with yellow tape. They wrapped it around palm trees and around the metal bars over apartment windows and around the basketball hoop on the concrete walkway. The apartment complex had become a crime scene.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2204.126

And for that, I knew I had to talk to the people who knew Daisy. The first place I went to find them was TikTok. Next time on My Friend Tacey.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2236.969

My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

2264.892

Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

2368.231

I don't know. Thank you.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

241.887

Tenants began to wake up and mill about that morning, and officers shooed them away.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

252.735

The Compton Fire Department showed up next. One of the firefighters wore a blue hoodie over his uniform and carried a defibrillator. Even he was spooked by what he saw when he approached the body. Oh, shit, he said. And then he wondered aloud what had happened. Did he get shot? Did he fall? A female officer in a khaki uniform stood next to him.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

2535.265

Thank you.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

276.922

She pointed out that there was a knife lying next to the body. It was a nine-inch Farberware steak knife, like the kind you might have in your kitchen drawer. The condition of the body made the firefighter think it had been out there for a while. He put his defibrillator down with a sense of resignation. He seemed to accept what had been painfully apparent all along.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

309.399

This was not a situation that called for resuscitation. It was one that required an investigation. I'm Jen Swan. From iHeartMedia, London Audio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 2. Jane Doe.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

45.414

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

551.099

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

595.242

Leopoldo Sanchez hadn't left for work yet when he got the call. It was early on a Tuesday morning and he immediately knew what it meant. There had been a homicide and he was about to be assigned to the case.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

604.184

Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

616.923

Sanchez is a detective with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. He's got a buzz cut and he's built like a football player. He actually used to be one in high school in a suburb just east of Los Angeles. His former coach is now his partner at the Homicide Bureau. Sanchez has been working for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for almost three decades. He didn't always think he'd end up a cop.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

640.47

He was thinking civil engineer. Then he took a criminal justice class in college, and everything changed.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

650.397

It wasn't the only thing that drew him to the field.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

667.939

It didn't take long for him to get hired. He logged hours working at the jails and on patrol, which is where he realized he wanted to do something else. He wanted to solve murders.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks

678.776

I would never see my daughter grow up.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

687.478

He eventually landed the job, and when he got this call about a homicide in Compton, he was still a rookie detective. It was February of 2021, and he'd only been working in the Bureau for eight months. He didn't know Compton well at all.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

719.994

Sanchez got in his car and typed the address of the crime scene into his GPS. As he sat in morning rush hour, he mulled over the scenario he'd been briefed on. A body had been possibly literally swept under a rug. There was no identifying information found nearby. No wallet, no ID, no cell phone.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

750.833

A body dump. It was the signature move of the so-called Grim Sleeper, the serial killer who for decades stalked South Los Angeles, a collection of neighborhoods, some of which border Compton. He preyed upon poor women of color. Sex workers, drug users, people whose absences almost surely wouldn't get the attention they deserved. And he left their bodies thrown in dumpsters and alleys.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

777.937

Before Sanchez and his partner arrived at the apartment complex, the sheriffs who were already there tried to find out as much as they could. I obtained body camera footage of the crime scene. One of the videos shows a female officer walking up to a group of residents gathered on the other side of the police tape

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

818.331

One of the residents was clearly confused by this new information. It's a woman, he said. Another officer tried a different line of questioning. The officer pivoted. He looked up at one of the boxy, oatmeal-colored apartment buildings and pointed to a surveillance camera mounted overhead.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

913.772

The officer continued knocking on doors. Okay. Each time he knocked, he got the same answer. Nobody had heard or seen anything.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

957.89

No one seemed to have any intel. The officer realized he needed to widen his search. So he drove to the residential street behind the apartment complex. He double parked in front of a one-story house painted green. Kids' toys sprinkled the driveway. A small black chihuahua barked incessantly from inside the house.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 2 - Jane Doe

990.091

The officer waited outside while the resident went to get his phone. He showed it to the officer, saying there's no view of the alley.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous

15.979

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous

39.711

Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous

855.109

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous

878.844

Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1089.944

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1105.319

And they had secrets of their own to share.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1114.835

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1122.882

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1133.25

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1142.998

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

1182.888

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

13.177

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

2.091

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

21.281

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

2136.138

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

2147.221

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

2155.324

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

2176.25

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?

42.185

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 9 - After All This Chaos

1140.262

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 9 - After All This Chaos

16.861

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 9 - After All This Chaos

2266.761

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

10.799

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

1081.805

So remember how this neighbor said he'd call his brother-in-law to get a hold of the security footage? Well, he did. And that guy ended up handing over the video to detectives. So what I'm going to do is I'll look at it through the cloud. On the big screen? Because on the phone, you really can't see anything. So I'm going to download the clips for you guys. Thank you.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

28.486

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

875.345

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

893.056

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

896.272

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

911.646

And they had secrets of their own to share.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

921.167

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

929.754

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

939.582

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

949.329

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

953.332

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton

955.794

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence

1246.272

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence

16.861

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Friend Daisy

Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence

2229.167

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My Dad has been cheating on my Mum for years..."

1138.949

I mean obviously don't listen to us but yeah it does feel like one of those episodes where on a legal basis we ought to say that none of this advice is expert it is all none of this if I was you if I was you what I would that's like me saying just to clarify I'm not actually a surgeon I think that goes without saying

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My Dad has been cheating on my Mum for years..."

1446.406

Not true though, is it? Legally speaking, not true. Just a fun joke.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My Dad has been cheating on my Mum for years..."

2.455

This is a Global Player original podcast.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My Dad has been cheating on my Mum for years..."

352.029

That's nicely descriptive.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My Dad has been cheating on my Mum for years..."

592.336

Are you trying to say nature? I'm not trying to say nature.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My husband went pale..."

2.455

This is a Global Player original podcast.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My husband went pale..."

646.854

Here she is. Yeah. This is the start of it. Yeah. Yeah. Look at her.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My husband went pale..."

694.614

Is that right?

My Therapist Ghosted Me

MTGM EXTRA! "My husband went pale..."

702.745

Equally.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...

2.455

This is a Global Player original podcast.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...

23.591

Thank you. You're welcome.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...

2645.222

Did you? No, you didn't.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...

43.531

Did I lose it? Are you sure?

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Adam Sandler on favorite SNL moments, Casting Travis in Happy Gilmore 2 and What ‘The Waterboy’ is Doing Now | EP 125

2607.096

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about.

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Adam Sandler on favorite SNL moments, Casting Travis in Happy Gilmore 2 and What ‘The Waterboy’ is Doing Now | EP 125

2622.136

Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War.

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Adam Sandler on favorite SNL moments, Casting Travis in Happy Gilmore 2 and What ‘The Waterboy’ is Doing Now | EP 125

2643.955

These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Redacted early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Ninjas Are Butterflies

127 - UFO Encounters, Mothman Conspiracies, & Giant Exploding Rockets

0.289

This podcast is brought to you and powered by Sunday Gold!

Ninjas Are Butterflies

127 - UFO Encounters, Mothman Conspiracies, & Giant Exploding Rockets

15.119

Boom! Boom! Boom! To Uniform! Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Ninjas Are Butterflies

127 - UFO Encounters, Mothman Conspiracies, & Giant Exploding Rockets

434.184

We don't like that, but we have to do it because we're ninjas or butterflies and that's what we do! That's what we do!

Ninjas Are Butterflies

127 - UFO Encounters, Mothman Conspiracies, & Giant Exploding Rockets

5660.889

Beautiful things. At Sunday Cool.

Ninjas Are Butterflies

127 - UFO Encounters, Mothman Conspiracies, & Giant Exploding Rockets

5668.756

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could keep going. Keep going. Big wings. Don't mind.

Ninjas Are Butterflies

139 - Mount Kailash Mystery, Katy Perry in Space, & Area 51 Secrets

2571.662

Ah, good question. Elon Musk's son, the one he had with Grimes, has a very unique name. Originally, it was X-A-E-A-12, but they had to modify it slightly to X-A-E-A-X-I-I, which is pronounced something like X-Ash-A-12. It's definitely...

Nobody Should Believe Me

Introducing: There and Gone

2494.929

All I know is I see you in my dreams Reach out in the dark For you've been lost to me I'll never give up No matter how long I open my eyes Each corner I turn There's another puzzle piece We follow the clues Looking for the key I'll never give up No matter how lost I open my eyes To find that you're gone

Nobody Should Believe Me

Introducing: There and Gone

335.766

All that I know Is I see you in my dreams Reach out in the dark For you've been lost to me I'll never give up No matter how long I open my eyes

Nobody Should Believe Me

Introducing: There and Gone

412.648

Imbo and Patron were last seen leaving a South Street bar in the late evening of February 19th, 2005.

Nobody Should Believe Me

Introducing: There and Gone

421.332

Investigators have turned up a few promising leads, but have not found the couple or the car.

Nobody Should Believe Me

Introducing: There and Gone

453.057

They had left a bar at 4th and South, headed to his pickup truck, and simply vanished, not a trace.

Nobody Should Believe Me

S05 Ep01: Sophie Saves Zambia

106.264

So family friends are banding together. They're trying to raise money. And this is something that is, you know, no little ask. We're talking about like $60,000 for a vehicle for them. So we just wanted to put their positive energy out there.

Nobody Should Believe Me

S05 Ep01: Sophie Saves Zambia

1302.938

For about 70 cents, you can buy a can of soda. nourishing meal since 1938 Christian Children's Fund has helped children of many faiths and their communities with food medical care clothing a chance to go to school or whatever is needed most today so many children around the world still need your help and through Christian Children's Fund you can reach out to one of them by sharing a

Nobody Should Believe Me

S05 Ep01: Sophie Saves Zambia

29.889

There is a family in Renton that I want to introduce you to. Mom, Sophie, went on an inspiring trip to Zambia in her college year. She's since adopted two girls. One of them has an incredibly rare disorder. Doctors say it's a one in a million chance.

Nobody Should Believe Me

S05 Ep01: Sophie Saves Zambia

402.068

This is not based off of one investigator. It's not based off of a quick investigation. This was months of investigation by police and several experts who weighed in.

Nobody Should Believe Me

Season 5 Trailer

14.361

There's a family in Renton that I want to introduce you to. Mom, Sophie, went on an inspiring trip to Zambia in her college years. She's since adopted two girls. One of them has an incredibly rare disorder. Doctors say it's a one in a million chance.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1000.834

Pero tienes ahí opción para poner en búsqueda en web, en DeepSeek.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1138.975

Yo no sé si es un... ¿Cómo se llama? Cuando es una sola vez. Un garbanzo de libra. Tal vez no por lo político, porque es China y por todo lo que le hizo perder a NVIDIA y a otras compañías en bolsa de valores. También no perdieron dinero de su bolsa, sino que era el valor de la acción. Mm-hmm.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

118.816

¿Mismo equipo? ¿Mismo grupo?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1187.865

seguramente está íntimamente atado a alguna parte del partido en el gobierno seguro y bueno eso siempre queda ahí no o sea aunque todos los demás lo hacen todos los autos chinos tienen todos tus datos de dónde vas que de todo pero aquí es como pues gratis lo puedes usar y está de moda ahorita a ver cuánto tiempo dura

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1230.844

Yo lo sé, pero Deep Seek tiene estrellita, porque le pregunté, ¿Quién hace el podcast? Nosotros los clones. Y contestó correctamente. Es conducido por tres periodistas especializados en tecnología con más de 20 años de experiencia. Aura, Javier y Pontón. Este video podcast se enfoca en temas relacionados con tecnología, innovación, inteligencia, etc. ¡Gracias!

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

127.603

No. Ubico la High and Dry. Creep. Creep. ¿Cuál es Creep?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1273.935

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

134.329

Y de lo que hay computer, seguro.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

137.291

Pero tres canciones, cuatro. O sea, no soy tan fan.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

145.518

Primero vamos a platicar... profundamente de Deep Seek. Después tenemos una trivia. ¿Otra? Una trivia donde te vas a poder ganar unos audífonos de HyperX, cortesía de Hewlett Packard. Recordando que HyperX es una compañía de Hewlett Packard.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1528.789

Pero está un poco lento, ¿no? Sí, está lento.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1650.952

Yo creo que llegó para quedarse, pero no para opacar a los que ya llevan mucho rato. Porque lo que dijo Sam Altman, sí está muy chido. Nosotros vamos a sacar cosas nuevas también. ¿Cuántas cosas no tendrán?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1707.664

Edote estaba haciendo una cuenta de... No la cuenta, sino estaba pensando que... Yo les voy a decir una palabra y me dicen el primer servicio que se les...

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1718.25

Sí, Netflix. Auto de aplicación. Uber. Coche de aplicación.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1729.937

Uber. Tableta. Tableta.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1735.78

Okay. Sistema de IA. Siri. Ah.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1761.375

O como Kleenex. O como Netflix. No, es Amazon Video. Ah, no. Ah, sí. Pues es un Netflix. O sea, es un genérico. Y ChatGPT ya se quedó con el genérico que está ya incrustado en el cerebro de millones de personas. Y todo es ChatGPT. Por nombre.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1776.74

Sistema operativo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1779.661

MS2. Bueno, Windows. Windows.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1781.942

Me equivoqué. Me fui atrás. Windows.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1836.577

We're changing to where there are thousands of options. And here we're talking. I started talking about the generics.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1882.573

Sony, sonos. No, pero es que no es lo mismo. Tú lo vas por la calle. Ah, son unos Bose. No, no, no. O sea, y si dices, lo vi en Netflix. Cuando, aunque no sea Netflix. Sí. O pedí un Uber, aunque no sea Uber. Sí. O usé chat GPT.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1898.082

O Starbucks. Claro. Otro, claro. Starbucks.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1936.358

Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America? Who is the Gulf of Mexico? Who is the Gulf of Mexico? I'm going to say the one from Mexico. The crazy ones from Miami. La locura de nuestro presidente de junto es que no quiere que se llame Golfo de México porque no tiene nada que hacer. Y le puso, según él, oficialmente Golfo de América. Nada más que eso es para ellos, para los norteamericanos.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

1987.018

Google Maps, como es una empresa gringa, que tiene que acatar órdenes gringas, pronto le va a cambiar el nombre de Golfo de México a Golfo de América para los gringos. Sí. Si tú consultas Google Maps en Estados Unidos o en una cuenta gringa, va a decir Golfo de América. Se me hace una... ¿Tú vivas? Alguien vibra.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2009.487

Ah, mira. Yo creo que eso va a ser una... Ah, mira. Va a ser raro. Aunque es un... No era yo, no era yo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2021.277

Porque es salvaje. Este... El golfo no es de nadie. ¡Es de todos!

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2033.491

¡Pues por eso es un golfo! ¡Claro! ¡Claro! ¡Claro! Entonces... O sea, va a ser un relajo. Sí. Si los norteamericanos no destacan por sus... Cultura. ...conocimientos geográficos. Ah, no. Sí, he visto videos. ¿De qué es esto? África. Sí. ¿De Estados Unidos? Sí, no tienen ni idea. Cuando les cambien y ahora diga Golfo de América. Y van a saber dónde está. No, no. Lo del Golfo sí, América no.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2084.655

Permítanme un segundo. Estoy conectado a Dallas. Dallas, Texas. Voy a abrir otro navegador para que no se me contamine. Maps.com.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2113.026

I'm in a connection to the United States.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2119.779

Sí, igual lo están cambiando ya, pero ya salió publicado lo del Golfo de América en su diario oficial o como se llame allá. Y pues sí, todavía sigue así.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2161.406

Básicamente usar Starlink para datos para tu celular. Exacto.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2192.944

Yes, because he also started with Claro.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2273.8

De ahí viene el nombre de celular. El radio de cada antena es una célula. El área que cubre una antena es una célula y junto está otra antena en otra célula. Entonces tú vas moviéndote y vas de célula en célula. Por eso es telefonía celular, por eso se llama así. No es porque son células volando en el espacio.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2305.122

Hay que ver la oferta comercial, cómo la ponen.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2344.088

Está súper interesante porque una cosa es que tu celular vea directamente a un satélite de Starlink y la otra es cómo se conecta con tu carrier.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2385.223

Sí. Tú estás en el Everest y le marcas a Aura. Entonces, Starlink va a tomar tu llamada. Starlink la va a bajar a su base terrestre. Oye, este usuario de Telcel le quiere hablar a Aura, que bueno, también es Telcel. Va a ser ahí la comunicación. Todo en menos de un segundo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2448.756

Es el poder de internet. Sí. Y los celulares.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2487.881

Amigos y amigas, ¿qué harían o qué hacen ustedes para usar su impresora? Ustedes tienen una impresora, posiblemente, y si no, aquí les recomendamos unas, en donde está conectada por Wi-Fi a su dispositivo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2573.653

You can also do that, of course.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2577.479

Sí. ¿Sabes qué me encanta de lo de escanear? Cuando son seis páginas. Ajá. O sea, escanea la primera. Sí. Y es muy intuitivo. Dices, no, siguiente. Añadir. Ajá. Entonces te pone... Eso parece una cosa muy simple, pero no.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

258.376

Ay, qué padre. Ahí está la foto. En avisos coloquiales ya tenemos a los ganadores de los primeros tres HyperX que hicimos la trivia, la primera de HP. OK. No los hemos contactado, pero ya están. Y hoy hay otra para que estén atentos. Perfecto.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2594.25

Las seis páginas. Y ahí lo puedes mandar inclusive por WhatsApp. Es correcto. O lo que tú quieras. Sí, sí. Muy padre está HP Smart, que está obviamente disponible para todos los dueños de una impresora HP. Ajá.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2604.196

Y no solamente disponible, o sea, yo creo que es como que no obligatorio, pero es muy importante que no imprimas en un celular porque puede encontrar la impresora ahí por el destino porque es compatible con AirPrint o no sé qué. Pero descarguen la HP Smart, que es una aplicación muy fácil de usar, como decía Pontón. Puedes, por ejemplo... Mandar un fax. Bueno, si alguien necesita.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2629.264

Pero está bueno que todavía exista.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2634.189

¿Sabes qué? Que también aquí tienes acceso a comprar la tinta. o tú sacó el tóner en este caso no está aquí está mira los productos y aquí bueno pues me pide que me registre pero la aplicación hp smart es fundamental hay para ios hay para android obviamente jala sin ningún problema si es que sabes lo que me decía juan jose bello de hp la entrevista que le hicimos hace unos días en las veras

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2663.403

That are using AI for this application, HP Smart, to print sheets of paper. Okay.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2676.198

So the HP engineers say, let's see, this guy is a... Nah, no sabe cómo hacer esta hoja de cálculo. Le voy a... Eso lo estoy inventando yo. Le voy a echar una manita de gato para que salgan todos sus números por ahí dispersos en una sola hoja.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2697.05

Lo están haciendo. Creo que no sé si está disponible.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2704.532

No, y aparte, además de imprimir en una hoja hay un número. 24. El resultado.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2714.478

Continuando con HP, tenemos una trivia. Hay más? Hay una trivia que el regalo son tres unidades de los audífonos HyperX. ¿Tienes ahí el modelo a la mano? Sí, ¿cómo no?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2729.99

Ok. Son tres unidades. Ya hicimos una trivia de esto hace... Dos semanas creo, tres semanas, no sé cuánto. Y ya están los ganadores, pero todavía no nos vamos a conocer. Gracias por sus correos. Ahí van las preguntas. Pónganse atentos. Pregunta 1. ¿Hasta cuántas páginas a color imprime la impresora de tanques HP Smart Tank 750? Búsquele, búsquele, apúntele.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

276.621

Sí, la próxima semana.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2776.175

Un tip, tienen que mandar un correo a trivias arroba nosotroslosclones.com Ahí ponen los resultados, ponen su nombre, etc. Y el tip es que para encontrar la respuesta a estas preguntas, métanse a hp.com Nosotros los clones. Nosotros los clones. Clones.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2881.443

Sí, gracias a MSI.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2883.325

MSI Gaming, que es la que nos... Patrocinó este regalo. Regalo de componentes MSI, de procesador y todo, y monitor.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

2979.296

Pueden funcionar en calles y lugares muy seleccionadas. O sea, muy poco porcentaje de una ciudad, de un país, obviamente. Todavía no están, digamos, muy aptos para manejos de larga distancia. Sí. Carretera y todo. Sí lo pueden hacer. Y creo que hay que dividir.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3004.015

Están los autónomos que no van a tener volante ni siquiera, que esos son unos tipos de coches autónomos que seguramente en los próximos años serán para trayectos cortos. Y los coches autónomos, como el que nos subimos, que es un automóvil normal adaptado con muchas cosas que maneja solita. Él maneja solo. Entonces creo que está limitado a un cierto... No hablo del sector de la población, no.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3027.259

¿Por qué se ríen? No, él.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3030.122

Estoy te esforzando.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3032.024

Por eso me río, porque estás no solo para decir que está muy padre. No, no, no. Es que la verdad, lo acabamos de vivir. Está muy padre, muy bonito, muy limitado.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3107.722

Yes, but I don't think it's going to be like that. ¿A qué se refiere? Que no va a haber manejo autónomo generalizado.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3124.86

Por las calles, los coches y las personas. Y las leyes de tránsito y las telecomunicaciones.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3141.508

Todos autónomos es una historia. Ah. Pero eso no existe. Entonces, mitad autónomos, mitad animales. Entonces, van a estar ahí peleándose. Porque incluso tú vas a decir, ah, es autónomo. Le vas a dar un... O sea, es un poco la raza humana. Así somos.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3174.656

No, porque no te va a dejar. Puede ser el seguro opuesto. No, yo creo que este debate está mal hecho. Ah, qué mal. No, espérame, porque una cosa es que tú tengas tu coche.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3200.914

Nivel 7, nivel Dios, pero tienes un volante. Creo que son dos cosas diferentes.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3215.744

Ese es como autónomo para mí, más como vehículo colectivo de transporte sin volante y sin conductor, obviamente.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3350.956

Y se fijan cuántos vimos ahí en San Francisco. Muchísimos, cada vez más. Muchos. Muchísimos. No era uno de vez en cuando.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3357.801

Eran constantemente. Ahora, yo creo que no hacen negocio todavía.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3370.851

No, y cuánta gente debe estar monitoreando, porque tampoco es tan automático todo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3386.914

No sé si vieron el video por ahí de hace ya unas semanas, donde había una congestión y no sabían qué hacer los guaymos. Ajá. Estaba...

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3400.801

Pero aquí era una calle tradicional. Había un coche, una camioneta de entregas en doble fila. Venía un güeymo por acá, otro por acá y todavía no supieron quién pasaba y quién no.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3415.653

son cosas que seguramente pasan todo el tiempo en estas conducciones, pero como ellos dicen, están en un periodo beta, o sea, están lanzándolo, ya te puedes subir, yo creo que sí va a ser para ciertas aplicaciones, como decimos aquí, pues el futuro, pero no va a ser generalizado y no va a llegar a México.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3447.899

Somos los mismos pero diferentes.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3629.976

Se veía bien. No, ahora veíamos una pantalla.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3640.332

Sí, sí, sí. Si alguien ha ido aquí a la Arena Ciudad de México, a ver, aquí viene la NBA, ¿no? Sí, también, cómo no. La Arena es más grande que Chase Center. Se ve bien, pero creo que a mí me encantó el estadio. It's kind of new, isn't it?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3662.1

I expected a lot of people.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3681.99

No, no, hombre. Bajé, bajé del... Bajé de las gradas y me paré un segundo a tomar la foto y llegó un tipo, no puede estar ahí parado. Toma una foto.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3741.938

Muchas gracias. Gracias.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

3763.988

Recuerda que somos nosotros.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

390.913

Okay, tenemos unos Gahak Assorted Indian Sweets.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

399.209

Permíteme tantito.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

428.942

Oye, estos son como galletas. Se ven arabescos.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

435.486

Son unas bolitas. A ver, vamos a ver. Estos son unos, pues como palanqueta, ¿no?

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

549.28

Yo hice eso de un prompt en español y sí funciona, pero creo que hay que esperar hasta que sea en español nativo.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

687.759

Ubican el Dr. Simi.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

691.482

Lo mismo, pero más barato. Tal cual.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

709.525

200 personas en esta startup. Que lo que hicieron fue lo siguiente. OpenAI y otras herramientas de AI utilizan, creo que, 32 decimales. Porque todos son números a fin de cuentas. Todos son operaciones. Por eso los procesadores tienen tantos millones de operaciones por segundo. Entonces, OpenAI y los demás utilizan, así, literal, muchos decimales. Así, literal, para sacar sus respuestas.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

739.362

Deep Seek said, no, we're going to put eight decimals. I don't think eight or three, I don't remember, but many fewer decimals. What happens is that it takes half the time and the results it throws are practically the same. It's like if you do a multiplication of two numbers with 25 decimals and you press enter, it gives you an answer.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

759.392

And if you put just three decimals, it's going to be almost the same. I don't want to get into mathematical purisms that it's not the same, but almost the same. Y este casi, y con menos decimales, hizo que pudieran usar chips de NVIDIA, pero los de gráficos más malos. Sí, los que hay en todas las compus. Entonces, de ahí es parte de la historia.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

781.769

La otra historia es que los chats de AI que tenemos ahora, si tú le pones un prompt que tiene, no sé, 20 palabras, Una por una la va leyendo y la va procesando y la va metiendo a la máquina, digamos. Lo que hace Deep Seek es que agarra las 20 palabras y las mete como procedimiento en paralelo. Por eso es más rápido y ocupa menos ciclos de procesador y menos muchas cosas más exóticas.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

812.152

Y de ahí que Deep Seek salió. Uh-huh. Conspiranoicos. No, no, no. Los que no les gusta nada.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

835.758

Los que cumbrosos. Los tecnoquejas.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

872.268

Correcto ambas cosas. Al no tener los procesadores últimos disponibles, vieron cómo le hacían y de ahí seguramente salieron los decimales. Y eso bajó drásticamente el requerimiento. Y código abierto. 100% código abierto, en donde cualquier persona puede utilizar o reutilizar parte del código para su propio proyecto. Pero también ellos usaron muchas de las bibliotecas que hay. Que ya existían.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

897.314

De esta que se llaman... Tienen un nombre, las bibliotecas de... para AIs, que también son de código abierto. Meta tiene una, un buen cacho de su biblioteca, la puedes usar si tú quieres. Entonces se combinó los dos códigos abiertos. Y lo del código abierto es un poquito más como un acto de fe. O sea, es un acto que no me están escondiendo nada.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

914.599

Yo puedo revisar si quiero todo el código que está corriendo y puedo saber a dónde mandan todos los datos, que obviamente van a guardar los datos de cada usuario en China. Obviamente, pues es una aplicación china. Exacto. Y pero ya empezaron por ahí los... Los quejas, tecnoquejas. No sirve. Le pregunté qué pasó en el 89 en la plaza de Tiananmen cuando fue este problema con el gobierno chino.

Nosotros Los Clones

DeepSeek: Lo mismo pero más barato - NLC 165

936.96

Y me contestó que no sabía. Es una basura. ¿Qué te va a contestar si es un producto, un servicio chino? No quieren recordar esas épocas, pues no lo ponen. Y sale su derecho. Si no te gusta, pues no lo uses.

Nosotros Los Clones

Lo más buscado en Google en 2024 - NLC 151

3683.665

Nosotros Los Clones.

Nosotros Los Clones

Lo más buscado en Google en 2024 - NLC 151

3737.638

Nosotros los Clones. Nos escuchamos en el siguiente episodio.

Nosotros Los Clones

Lo nuevo de Apple: iPads y iPhone 16e - NLC 175

26.906

ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business-Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der Sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern.

Nosotros Los Clones

Lo nuevo de Apple: iPads y iPhone 16e - NLC 175

48.621

All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow.

Nosotros Los Clones

¿Los matemáticos no tienen nada qué hacer? - NLC 118

165.786

Este episodio de nosotros, los clones, es presentado por DocuSign. Da vida a los acuerdos. Mercado Libre. Lo mejor está llegando. MSI. La marca que los gamers adoran. Bitcar. Estrenar es rentar.

Nosotros Los Clones

¿Los matemáticos no tienen nada qué hacer? - NLC 118

3838.017

Adiós. Este episodio de Nosotros los Clones fue presentado por DocuSign. Da vida a los acuerdos. Mercado Libre. Lo mejor está llegando. MSI. La marca que los gamers adoran. Bitcar. Estrenar es rentar. Nosotros los Clones. Nos escuchamos en el siguiente episodio.

Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce

Kylie on Marrying Into Fandom, Pop Culture Crash Course & Postpartum Lies with Amanda Hirsch | Ep. 7

1898.236

Interior, Duncan, 2018. Kylie's bachelorette party. Kylie McDevitt, soon to be Kelsey, stands in the middle of her old stomping grounds for one last hurrah. She and friends are cheersing with butter pecan iced coffees. The bridesmaids all chant speech, speech, speech.

Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce

Kylie on Marrying Into Fandom, Pop Culture Crash Course & Postpartum Lies with Amanda Hirsch | Ep. 7

1923.587

We wind out to see Dunkin' is decked out for the occasion. A butter pecan ice sculpture, a tower of munchkins, even a glazed donut fondue station.

Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce

Kylie on Marrying Into Fandom, Pop Culture Crash Course & Postpartum Lies with Amanda Hirsch | Ep. 7

1945.523

Kylie and the girls all cheers their butter pecans. Kylie's maid of honor, former teammate Beverly, suddenly gasps. She shows Kylie an email on her phone.

Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce

Kylie on Marrying Into Fandom, Pop Culture Crash Course & Postpartum Lies with Amanda Hirsch | Ep. 7

1967.247

Kylie drops her butter pecan on the ground in disbelief.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1016.286

Seeing people in this way

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1028.878

It reminded me that we were all our own main characters. And I found myself charmed by the faces I saw and the stories that might go with them. I was still thinking about the last town, the flash of their city square as we sped through. Their tree still lit, and the ice rink in front of it, swirling with skaters. as the sun began to sink lower and an orange glow fell on my face.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1086.915

We were a little more than a day into our journey, with a couple more yet to go before the last stop, and I was thoroughly enjoying train travel. I'd thought I might be bored, but bored was the last thing I was. I was relaxed, though.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1141.024

The scenery was always changing, though the pace was steady, and I spent a good deal of time just looking out of the window, either in the dining car or here in our compartment. We'd splurged a bit for this trip,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1187.777

We had a small stateroom with a wide bed, a neat little washroom, and a sofa where we'd sipped our coffee this morning.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1236.041

And for me, this was nostalgia for something I'd never actually had or known.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1273.63

The linens on the bed were ironed and crisp. The pastries that had come with our coffee this morning were delicate and filled with the best apricot preserves I'd ever tasted. There was a light sent in the carpeted halls that reminded me of a library. And when the train rushed through a tunnel and the light dimmed, to a faint golden glow.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1340.034

and eyeing a mysterious heiress who was traveling under a false name. Maybe, I thought, I should write a novel as we chugged through the countryside. My imagination was clearly running away with me. might as well put it to good use. So as we got ready to head to the dining car, I took a little notebook and pen from my luggage and tucked it into my pocket.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1417.877

A chess game was being played by two older men, one with thick glasses and the other with a salt-and-pepper beard. I stopped in the passage between cars and pulled out my notebook. What are you doing? Making notes.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1459.892

They're both suspects. We chuckled as I put my notebook away and passed through into the dining car. The sun was still an inch above the horizon, and the fields around us were layered with snow. Flakes were falling past the windows. and their motion plus our own added up to a feeling of being inside a snow globe. I imagined us sitting on a bookshelf in a library somewhere, freshly shaken,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1519.887

as the train circled and circled the same small bit of track. We were headed toward the mountains and would be climbing through the night. I hoped I'd wake tomorrow in time for what I guessed would be pretty spectacular sunrise. The tables were laid with white tablecloths edged in dark green that matched the upholstery on the banquets. We were led to a table at the far end of the car

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1579.121

where we could see all of our fellow passengers, perfect for my research. And when we sat, I tucked my notebook under the edge of my plate for easy reach. We ordered fancy drinks that bubbled in old-fashioned glasses. While we sipped, we made up stories about the other diners. There was a mother and daughter at a table across from us, and they seemed pensive as they spooned up their soup.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1634.189

Quiet, unassuming, nothing to see there.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1658.377

I wrote heist, jewels, safe in the note. The snow kept falling as we dined. Asparagus soup. Arancini with a tangy sauce. Roasted portobello and farro. And a thin slice of very rich chocolate tart. At times, we forgot to imagine storylines and just got lost, staring out at the mountains, a faint halo of moon behind the clouds, and our hands lazily touching across the table.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1721.907

The rocking of the train was making me drowsy, And finally we rose and thanked our waiter and strolled back to the sleeper car. Our bed had been turned down and the sconces dimmed. I stood by the window and watched the scenery race by.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1772.998

To turn out the lights and feel the sway of the train. To hear the bells tolling at the crossings in my sleep.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

1810.033

Sweet dreams.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

203.047

Good. the sleeper car. From the window, a broad, white landscape stretched out under the afternoon sun.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

251.772

Seeing people in this way, a single frame of their life, while my own blazed past

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

307.601

We were a little more than a day into our journey, with a couple more to go before the last stop, and I was thoroughly enjoying train travel.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

361.067

And I spent a good deal of time just looking out the window, either in the dining car or here in our compartment. We'd splurged a bit for this trip. And since the mode of travel meant more to us than our destination itself, it had proved worth it. We had a small stateroom with a wide bed, a neat little washroom, and a sofa where we'd sipped our coffee this morning.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

420.957

It was engineered for comfort and to fit well within the limited space and also with a bit of nostalgia in mind. And for me,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

459.7

And now that I was here, I found it lived up to every expectation. and then some. The linens on the bed were ironed and crisp.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

491.068

There was a light scent in the carpeted halls. that reminded me of a library. And when the train rushed through a tunnel and the lights dimmed to a faint golden glow, I felt like I had fallen through the pages of a book, that I might slide open the door of our compartment

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

539.961

Maybe, I thought, I should write a novel as we chugged through the countryside.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

556.058

Might as well put it to good use. So as we got ready to head to the dining car, I took a little notebook and pen from my luggage and tucked it into my pocket. The walk from the sleeper car down to the dining car passed through a few others.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

603.258

A chess game was being played by two older men, one with thick glasses and the other with a salt-and-pepper beard, I stopped in the passage between cars and pulled out my notebook. What are you doing? Making notes. I'm writing a mystery novel.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

639.044

They're both suspects. We chuckled as I put my notebook away. and passed through into the dining car.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

665.527

Flakes were falling past the windows and their motion, plus our own, added up to a feeling of being in a snow globe.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

701.564

We were headed toward the mountains and would be climbing through the night. I hoped I'd wake tomorrow in time for what I guessed would be a pretty spectacular sunrise.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

730.776

that matched the upholstery on the banquets.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

753.066

And when we sat, I tucked my notebook under the edge of my plate. for easy reach. We ordered fancy drinks that bubbled in old-fashioned glasses. While we sipped, we made up stories about the other diners. There was a mother and daughter at a table across from us. and they seemed pensive as they spooned up their soup. Quiet, unassuming. Nothing to see there, I asked over my glass.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

808.472

Probably planning a heist of the jewels in the train safe. I wrote heist, jewels, safe in my notebook. The snow kept falling as we dined. Asparagus soup. Arancini with a tangy sauce. Roasted portobello and farro. and a thin slice of very rich chocolate tart. At times we forgot to imagine storylines and just got lost staring out at the mountains.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

861.342

A faint halo of moon behind the clouds and our hands lazily touching across the table. The rocking of the train was making me drowsy. And finally we rose and thanked our waiter and strolled back to the sleeper car. Our bed had been turned down and the sconces dimmed. I stood by the window,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

901.755

and watched the scenery race by, thinking about how sweet it would be to pull on my pajamas and climb up into the big, soft bed, to turn out the lights and feel the sway of the train to hear the bells tolling at the crossings in my sleep.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Sleeper Car (Encore)

955.669

The Sleeper Car From the window, a broad white landscape stretched out under the afternoon sun. We'd just cut through a small city, and I could still make out a few tall buildings in the distance. I loved passing through towns, watching cars waiting at the crossings, catching a glimpse of people walking on the city streets with bags slung over their arms, caught up in their own routines.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

All Day, At Home (Encore)

236.988

good. All day, at home.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Hearts & Flowers (Encore)

112.113

and the moment that you decide to take a risk.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Hearts & Flowers (Encore)

225.019

Good. hearts and flowers.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Pillow Forts & Tree Houses (Encore)

118.083

We've got it linked in our show notes. Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Everyone.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Pillow Forts & Tree Houses (Encore)

368.223

Symbiotica. Symbiotica. Wellness made simple. Go to symbiotica.com slash nothingmuch for 20% off plus free shipping. That's symbiotica.com slash nothingmuch for 20% off plus free shipping. I care about your sleep.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Pillow Forts & Tree Houses (Encore)

512.818

Okay, it's time.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Pillow Forts & Tree Houses (Encore)

573.083

Good. Pillow forts and tree houses.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1029.807

They weren't a memory. I should enjoy them now. I think Bird understood how I felt. He stood very still, letting me take some deep breaths. When I stood up, I patted him on the back and led him out to the porch.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1136.704

Dog hair and specks of dust flew out and caught in the sun and drifted away on a breeze.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1178.888

tufts of orange fur showing through the weave of the screen. I heard the vacuum click on upstairs and smiled as I headed back in to finish my chores. Dogs and dust mops. we were doing a bit of spring cleaning. We had all the windows open with fresh air blowing through the house and the sound of lawnmowers and talking neighbors echoing from a few doors down

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

123.39

Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Everyone, in which nothing much happens. You feel good, and then you fall asleep. I'm Katherine Nicolai. I create everything you hear, and nothing much happens. Audio Engineering is by Bob Wittersheim.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1241.058

Marmalade, my regal orange cat, was wedged into one of the open windows. Her round body pressed against the screen, and her silky fur sticking through the mesh. Her green eyes were closed, and her head swayed a bit on her neck, not dozing, but catching sense on the wind. Her whiskers twitched when the breeze blew her way.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1298.579

And I knew if I lay a hand on her back, she would start to purr almost instantly.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1330.048

A few bike rides buckled into her cat trailer and a few impromptu walks to the mailbox tucked into my arms. It suited her. I'd found her out in the snow a few years back

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1366.252

And I'd wondered, when she first stepped into my house, if it would be difficult to keep her in, if she'd want out again.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1420.914

Still, in the spring, when we open everything up, she loves to get close.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1446.994

Her lazy, docile attitude suddenly switched.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1467.446

flapping his fluffy tail, and generally acting unbothered.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1490.042

Marmee began chattering and clicking at him, an empty threat for sure, but one she felt compelled to issue.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1602.716

I liked watching their backs, shoulder to shoulder.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1629.231

I wasn't sure how she would do with a little brother, but I shouldn't have worried.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1709.83

I chuckled, imagining what was happening.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1757.125

I was still laughing under my breath as I went through the hall to the foot of the stairs and called to him. Birdie, did Dad make you get up? Come on down here and you can sleep on the porch. It's sunny. pointed, blue-gray face emerged at the top step. Sweet Birdie's deep black eyes blinked at me. He shuffled down the stairs and pressed his body against my leg.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1819.431

Bird is probably the gentlest of all of us, humans included. He was calm and thoughtful. Stood back while Crumb tore his toys to bits or Marmee strutted through the kitchen. I leaned down and held him, his soft body wrapped in my arms.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1873.22

I love my family so much.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

1910.441

They weren't a memory. I should enjoy them now. I think Bird understood how I felt. He stood very still, letting me take some deep breaths. When I stood up tall, I patted him on the back and led him to the porch.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

2032.31

Dog hair and specks of dust flew out and caught in the sun and drifted away on a breeze. Bird's eyes were already shut as long legs stretched out in the new grass.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

2075.87

Marmalade was once again stretched out on her sill, tufts of her orange fur showing through the weave of the screen. I heard the vacuum click on upstairs, and I smiled as I headed back in to finish my chores. Sweet dreams.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

238.699

Now, I'm about to tell you a bedtime story. It's simple, and not much happens in it. And that is the idea. The story is a soft place to rest your mind.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

269.025

In a relaxed way, just follow along with the sound of my voice and the simple details of the story. And soon, very soon, you'll be deeply asleep. I'll tell the story twice, and I'll go a little slower the second time through. If you wake in the middle of the night, you could listen again,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

307.55

We're training your brain to settle and rest. And the more you do this, the better your sleep will get.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

346.317

and the way your heart swells when you wrap your arms around someone you love. So turn off your light, snuggle your body down into your sheets, and get as comfortable as you can. Take a moment to just feel how good it is to be in bed, to be about to sleep.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

408.618

dogs, and dust mops. We were doing a bit of spring cleaning.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

459.961

Her green eyes were closed, and her head swayed a bit on her neck. Not dozing, but catching scents on the wind. Their whiskers twitched when the breeze blew.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

520.337

It suited her.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

560.223

But those fears were quickly allayed.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

585.124

Still, in the spring, when we open everything up, she loves to get close. A squirrel dashed across the yard, and her eyes sprang open, sensing him.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

750

and began barking at the squirrel.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

779.127

I wasn't sure how she would do with a little brother, but I shouldn't have worried. While she occasionally feigned being too cool for dogs, the truth was that she adored him, not in the same way that he adored her. He came with wild love, The bull you overtype.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

896.551

I was still laughing under my breath as I went through the hall to the foot of the stairs and called out to him. Birdie, did Dad make you get up? Come on down here, and you can sleep on the porch. It's sunny. A pointed gray face emerged at the top step. Sweet Birdie's deep black eyes blinked at me. He shuffled down the stairs and pressed his body against my leg.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

949.569

Bird is probably the gentlest of all of us, humans included.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Dogs and Dust Mops

973.341

I leaned down and held him, his soft body wrapped in my arms. I could feel his heart beating and the light touch of his breath on my shoulder.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 3

1.167

If you're listening, you know self-care is vital for overall wellness, but it can be hard to prioritize yourself and ask for what you need. If you're a veteran going through a tough time, there are people who want to listen and help with no pressure or judgment. Dial 988, then press 1. Chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net or text 838255 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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It felt now, as I led the way, chef behind me and sycamore at the rear, like showing your childhood bedroom to your best friend for the first time.

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The stairway itself, curved as it climbed, not quite a spiral, but definitely hugging along the inner walls of the house in a way that disguised its existence.

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about the size of one of our guest rooms.

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Sycamore, who by now had spent plenty of time in this room, jumped up onto the ledge in front of the single window and looked out.

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Chef said with wonder in their voice. Well, it took me a while to understand, but I think the first innkeeper was a kind of archivist.

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very sweet coloring set with a mini NMH coloring book, colored pencils, and a download of a special exclusive coloring story. We have autographed books, a weighted pillow to help ease anxiety, a whole box of my favorite sleep-related products, and a lot more at nothingmuchappens.com.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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Um, some, but plenty are just the stories of people's lives. Like, look at this.

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How almost everyone celebrated that year. Their cake of choice.

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I opened one of the steamer trunks and squatted down to gather a handful of artifacts and pictures. This whole case is full of stories about people's pets.

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Sometimes stories about their favorite places to dig and play.

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We looked through a few sepia-toned shots, awkward as many photos from that time period seemed. but still the animals and their humans seemed happy and relaxed.

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I didn't have an exact answer. I think she just collected stories.

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to her, and she felt the need to document the lives of the people in her village, even if it was really small, simple stuff. Like someone might be an artist and just sketch a friend or a house in the neighborhood.

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And Chef asked the question that had been nagging at me since I'd found this room on Halloween night.

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I think that's what I'm meant to do, I said, my voice quiet but sure.

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I think we'll set up an exhibit. Some of it can be here, some at the library, the museum, other places in town, and we can share the stories of her villagers with ours.

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I laughed. That was just what I'd hoped they'd say.

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We would have a busy summer ahead of us. Of curating and cooking.

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Just by listening will rock your mind to sleep. This is a form of brain training, so if you're new here, welcome, and please have some patience. Regular use for a few weeks can transform your sleep cycles, so stick with me. I'll tell the story twice, and I'll go a little slower the second time through.

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Oh, sickie, I crooned. Was it hard to have so much fun? All those people telling you how handsome you are, wanting to pet you and give you treats.

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and I lifted one of his legs to free the stapler from underneath him. He would sleep all day.

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from the urn in the entryway.

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I didn't have a great time in high school. One of them confided in me. And I feel like I got a do-over last night.

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If you wake later in the night, don't hesitate to turn an episode right back on, and you'll fall right back to sleep. Our story tonight is called Valentine's at the Inn, Part 3, and it is the finale to the three-week series of the same name, and also the much-awaited sequel to the story called The Secret Stare.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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I'd loved the weekend, too, but it was a relief to know no one needed anything from me for a bit. I stopped back into the office to put away that last room key and scooped Sycamore into my arms like the baby he was.

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And if there was a better feeling than being trusted by a small animal who'd had a rough start in life, well, I hadn't yet found it.

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Duh, I said, and waited till they arrived, still in their apron with a plate of treats.

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I was well aware I was being a little dramatic and mysterious. but I was having fun.

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She pulled me in here. and told me the inn had a secret that it was ready for me to learn.

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For those of you who actually hear the stories, and don't get me wrong, you sleeping is what's most important here, so I never mind if you don't hear a word. But for those who do, I apologize for making you wait so long to find out what was up that secret stair at the end. And then I made it a three-parter and put it right at the end of the last part. Yep. Guilty. I think it wants to be a book.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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Not quite a spiral, but definitely hugging along the inner walls of the house in a way that disguised its existence.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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who still held half of a cookie in their hand, gulped as they looked around and stuck it into the front pocket of their apron. Sycamore, who by now had spent plenty of time in this room,

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Anyway, small disclaimer that some things actually happen in this episode, but I bet I'm still gonna knock you out if I haven't already. This story is also about the cross-hatched top of peanut butter cookies, the sound of a vacuum cleaner running in the distance. a desk and a straight-back chair by the window, and a plan for something new in the village of nothing much.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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Like, folk stories? Um, some, but plenty are just the stories of people's lives. Like, look at this. I picked up a book that was open on the desk and turned it around to show.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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I opened one of the steamer trunks and squatted down to gather a handful of artifacts and pictures. This whole case is full of stories about people's pets. Sometimes just a date of birth and a name. Sometimes stories about their favorite places to dig and play.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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sepia-toned shots, awkward as many photos from the time period seemed.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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Like someone who's an artist might sketch a friend or a house in their neighborhood.

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If we can make the things that are good for us more of a treat and less of a chore, it makes adopting healthy habits a lot easier. This, as you may have guessed, is a big part of our philosophy. We want to make solid sleep something you look forward to. And it's the same for Beam.

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We can share the stories of her villagers with ours.

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I laughed. That was just what I'd hoped they'd say. I reached up to pat their shoulder. My friend, there are even pickle recipes.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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Responders are ready to support you, no matter what you're going through.

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Their delicious Dream Powder, vanilla chai is my personal favorite, is tested for high-quality efficacy and formulated to ease your body into rest, supporting all four stages of the sleep cycle. to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Beam Dream Powder. Make sleep delicious. Smart thinking.

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If you want to try Beam's best-selling dream powder, get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com slash nothingmuch and use code nothingmuch at checkout. We've got this down in our show notes, if you forget. That's shopbeam.com slash nothingmuch and use code nothingmuch for up to 40% off.

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Take a slow, deep breath in through your nose and sigh. Nice. Do it again. Fill it up. And let it go.

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We'd served fantastic meals, poured many cups of coffee in the breakfast rooms.

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Now, as guests were checking out, I was behind the tall desk in the office, sliding room keys back into their cubbies and tidying up paperwork. I could hear our maids in the halls above,

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He lay in the inbox on the desk, his long black tail slung onto the keyboard. and his nose pressed against the blotter. I stopped to massage his little body. Oh, sick ye, I crooned. Was it hard to have so much fun? All those people telling you how handsome you are, wanting to pet you and give you treats. He purred thickly. and I lifted one of his legs to free the stapler from underneath him.

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I stepped into the hall and saw the last couple of guests coming down the stairs.

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This weekend had obviously done them good, and I took a bit of pride in whatever part we had played in that. As they stopped to hand over their room key and fill to-go cups from the urn in the entryway, they thanked me for the special event we'd hosted the night before.

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Audio engineering is by Bob Wittersheim. We give to a different charity each week. And this week we are giving to Wigs for Kids. Wigs for Kids is a nonprofit organization that helps children experiencing hair loss work together with a stylist to build the self-esteem and self-image they deserve. Learn more in our show notes.

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I didn't have a great time in high school. One of them confided in me. And I feel like I got a do-over last night. I nodded, smiling brightly. That's the nice thing about having some space from those moments, right? We can rewrite them when we're older and own the best version. He slung his arm around his partner and nodded.

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I'd loved the weekend, but it was a relief to know no one needed anything from me for a bit.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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He trusted me completely, and if there was a better feeling than being trusted by a small animal who'd had a rough start in life,

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I went through to the hall again, and stuck my head into the stairway down to the kitchen. Chef, I called. Are you busy?

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Duh, I said, and waited till they arrived, still in their apron with a plate of treats.

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I dropped Siki on the sofa and went back to the door. I looked up and down the hall. The vacuums were still going upstairs and probably would be for the foreseeable future.

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At the Halloween party, Something was revealed to me. I was well aware I was being a little dramatic and mysterious, but I was having fun. Chef nodded and extended the plate of cookies to me. I took one, cross-hatched on its dark brown top with tine marks. Chocolate peanut butter, Chef said, a little breathlessly. Well played, I replied. So my friend with the gray cat, you know her, right?

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Cinder's mom? Yes. She pulled me in here and told me the inn had a secret. It was ready for me to learn. She didn't know exactly what or how, but after a minute or two in this room, she asked me if there were some questions I'd been carrying around about the inn. Chef had taken a large bite of their cookie, but had forgotten to chew, so caught up in the excitement of the story.

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If just hearing me say the words, Bob Wittersheim, causes you to immediately relax, I get it, and we have a t-shirt for that. Yes, you can wear your heart on your sleeve, or your audio engineer on your chest. Other awesome things we've made for you? A tote bag with marmalade, crumb, and birdie on it.

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I took a deep breath and told them that sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of the first innkeeper.

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and fitted it into a hidden keyhole just under the bracket on the side of the mantle. Chef let out a satisfying gasp and jumped to their feet. Is this really happening? Yep, I said, as I grasped the key with both hands and turned it forcefully.

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Bike Bus

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They each had a brown paper lunch sack clenched in one hand and a book bag slung over a shoulder and joked with each other as they crossed the street beside me.

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We all liked watching the bike bus pass.

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There must have been 50 people in the bus this morning. I recognized teachers and parents and lots of the kids.

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We smiled at each other as they all flew by.

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Eventually, the last rider passed, and the music began to fade into the distance.

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and then settled down onto her belly, crossing one paw over the other and resting her chin across them. I could see a few more walkers coming. There would be another ten minutes or so of stragglers, and then my morning work would be done.

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Bike Bus

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I felt so glad for my life, the way that it was. And I'd get to do it all again this afternoon. bike bus. Stepping outside this morning, I felt spring all around me. The air was cool and clean smelling, like new grass and green leaves. I zipped my jacket up as I came down the front steps and smiled up at the colors in the sky. The tail end of sunrise was unfolding in pinks and oranges.

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Bike Bus

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The first flowers of the season were poking up through the soil in the beds around my house. And I guessed in a few days we'd see bluebells and anemones opening up. I'd planted some tulip bulbs last autumn. and had crocuses that came back every year.

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Bike Bus

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But I'd also been cultivating some wildflowers in the backyard, and was excited to see the trout lilies on the Dutchman's breeches that would bloom along the fence. I stopped at the garage, pushing my hip into the sticking side door and nudged it open. From a hook on the wall, I took down my yellow vest and crossing guard stop sign.

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Bike Bus

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I'd been volunteering a couple days a week since the school year started in September. And I found I looked forward to these mornings and afternoons more than I'd expected. Back down the driveway, and out onto the sidewalk. I slid the vest over my arms, passing the sign back and forth between my hands. The intersection I guarded was only two blocks away.

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Bike Bus

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And now that the winter weather had broken, I always walked. I could have managed it on the very cold days, but had found that it was better to keep my car near where the kids crossed, in better weather. I had a collection of extra hats and gloves in my trunk for anyone who had forgotten theirs.

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to dance to when my legs grew numb, to boost the young ones' spirits on their way to school. But now that the days were warming and sunnier, there were other ways to keep the kids moving and cheerful. one specific way that I loved to be a part of.

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Bike Bus

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Our P.E. teacher had started it a few years before after getting the idea from a colleague in another district and had come to school safety and the crossing guards to make a plan. The owner of the bike shop downtown had stepped in to help as well.

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Bike Bus

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When it came to the actual ride each day, there were a few rules. Everyone had to wear a helmet.

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and everyone kept to the planned route.

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And boy, did we have fun. The bus driver, the grown-up in front,

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Often, on days I wasn't stationed at my post, days I wasn't scheduled to volunteer at all, I'd found myself rolling down my driveway on my own bike and heading out to help ride along. I'd pick up the rear to watch for stragglers, or weave into the middle of the pack to help the kids keep pace and pay attention. The bike bus was a source of pure joy for me, and I knew I wasn't the only one.

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Neighbors came out onto their porches with coffee cups to watch as it passed or to stand on the curb and cheer the kids on. Because of it, I knew more people on our street by name. It seemed like we all spent more time outdoors now. And it even seemed to change the way cars drove on our street. More aware that folks were biking and walking.

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And that felt good. As I came up to my corner, I checked my watch. I'd be seeing the first walkers in the next few minutes. And there were still a few

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That was the nice thing about having these options.

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And as we got to the curb, she nodded a thank you. I wondered if she was thinking through a piece of music. Or vocabulary terms. Or dates for a history quiz. Next came a group of siblings, three kids, two of which might have been twins. They each had a brown paper lunch sack clutched in one hand and a book bag slung over a shoulder. and joked with each other as they crossed the street beside me.

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Bike Bus

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From down the street, the sound of music and bike bells came. And from the doggy door of the house on the corner, a spotted pooch shot out into the yard. She ran to the fence and sat down, her tail swishing back and forth behind her. We all liked watching the bike bus pass. I stepped into the intersection to block any cross traffic and waved to the bus driver. to show that all was clear.

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There must have been 50 people in the bus this morning. I recognize teachers and parents, lots of the kids. Some of the adults had trailers on their bikes with toddlers strapped in.

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Bike Bus

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At the tail end of the bus were some of the slower riders, some whose legs were just a lot shorter.

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Eventually, the last rider passed, and the music began to fade into the distance. the dog at the fence, now finding a bright patch of sunlight, scratched at the grass a moment, and then settled down onto her belly, crossing one paw over the other and resting her chin across them. I could see a few more walkers coming.

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Bike Bus

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There would be another ten minutes or so of stragglers, and then my morning work would be done. Starting my day this way, with fresh air and joy, a bit of service, and music, and others. I felt so glad for my life, the way that it was. And I'd get to do it all again this afternoon. Sweet dreams.

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Bike Bus

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Okay, it's time. Lights out. Devices down. Make getting incredibly comfortable your only priority. Feel the softness of the sheets. The heaviness of your limbs. How close you already are to deep, restful sleep. Your work is done for the day. Nothing is left but rest.

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Bike Bus

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Good. bike bus.

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Bike Bus

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The air was cool and clean-smelling, like new grass and green leaves. I zipped my jacket up as I came down the front steps and smiled up at the colors in the sky. The tail end of sunrise was unfolding in pinks and oranges.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

524.52

And I guessed in a few days we'd see bluebells and anemones opening up.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

600.396

Back down the driveway and out onto the sidewalk, I slid the vest over my arms.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

617.33

The intersection I guarded was only two blocks away, and now that the winter weather had broken, I always walked.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

684.259

One specific way that I loved to be a part of.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

752.398

When it came to the actual ride each day, there were a few rules.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

861.903

Neighbors came out onto their porches with coffee cups to watch as it passed, or to stand on the curb and cheer the kids on.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Bike Bus

905.866

And that felt good. As I came up to my corner, I checked my watch.

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Bike Bus

958.242

And the kids could choose each day. I saw a girl walking toward me and put up my sign to guide her through the intersection. She had a large black case with her, a saxophone, I guessed, by the shape. And as we got to the curb, she nodded a thank you. I wondered if she was thinking through a piece of music, or vocabulary terms, or dates for a history quiz. Next came a group of siblings, three kids,

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I care about your sleep. It is always my first thought and priority in making this show. And sometimes you need extra help. Sometimes, even when your sleep hygiene is top tier, sleep doesn't come. Some nights, you might struggle to fall asleep. or wake after a few hours and toss and turn. I get it.

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Try Sleep Breakthrough Drink risk-free with Bioptimizers 365-day money-back guarantee. And this is all in our show notes if you forget. Visit bioptimizers.com slash nothingmuch and use code nothingmuch for 10% off any order.

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Sycamore loves music and had heard the band play for our Halloween party.

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where they could relax and nosh on the snack plates Chef had prepared for them before they took the stage.

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Before I'd been an innkeeper, I'd never organized anything more complicated than a brunch reservation.

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Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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It was Valentine's weekend at the inn, and we had a nearly full house of lovebirds and sweethearts ready to clink glasses.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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But we'd highlighted the excellent cafes and bistros downtown, the shops and sites that were perfect for idling away a winter afternoon. And thankfully, most of them on it because I was a bit like a parent who needed the kids out from under my feet for a bit so that I could set up the ballroom.

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I'd been telling him about my own prom many years before, how it had mostly been a letdown. a night that had been overhyped for years and simply could not have lived up to all that I'd expected. That in the end, I'd wished I'd danced more, cared less about my hair and my dress,

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I smiled to myself as I climbed down from the ladder. Sycamore and I had been alone at the inn for a few months now. And I'd forgotten that we could, ahem, be overheard. Chef came through the door, their hands full of a large tray of desserts.

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We give to a different charity each week, and this week we are giving to Stray Dog Incorporated. Stray Dog provides every rescue, a healthy, happy life, until a forever home is found.

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They paused, smiling down at the treats. Oh, come on. I knew it. You had a blast, didn't you? You probably had a line of people waiting to dance with you. What can I say? I've always been popular.

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If our show brings you some comfort, some good sleep, some benefit, and you wonder how you can support us, a free way to do that is just to listen to our ads. We are grateful to the companies that sponsor our show And we want them to be successful. And since I talk so slowly, those ads are often just about the right amount of time to brush your teeth. Dentist approved.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

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I'd never organized anything more complicated than a brunch reservation.

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Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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Another way, of course, is to subscribe to our premium feed. You are keeping us alive, folks, and we thank you for it.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

238.387

Now, in order to keep your brain from wandering so that we can lull it to sleep, we need to give it a point of focus, and that's the story. Just listen. Let the sound of my voice ease you into a sleepy place. This is a form of basic conditioning, so know that results will improve with regular use.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

31.554

When perimenopause hit me like a wrecking ball, it threw my sleep cycles so far off course that I felt like a different person. And sleep breakthrough drink from Bioptimizers has really helped. I fall asleep when I want to, and I sleep through the night without that 3 a.m. panic wake-up that had been haunting me. When I wake in the morning, I feel good, not groggy. I'm rested. My days are better.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

315.734

It's also about cinnamon and cardamom, crepe paper streamers decorating the ballroom, and the excitement of a properly planned event about to start. In the village of Nothing Much, I'm sure they never have to worry about their tap water. Unfortunately, like all of you, I live in the real world, and I don't always trust what comes out of my tap. That's why I use AquaTrue purifiers.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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They use a four-stage reverse osmosis purification process. and their countertop purifiers work with no installation or plumbing. It removes 15 times more contaminants than ordinary pitcher filters, and are specifically designed to combat chemicals like PFAS in your water supply. The filters are affordable and long-lasting. I love this part.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

380.154

My old filter had to be changed every month, and I forgot all the time. But AquaTrue filters last from six months to two years. Just one set of filters from their classic purifier makes the equivalent of 4,500 bottles of water. That's less than three cents a bottle. Plus, you'll save the environment from tons of plastic waste. And the water tastes really good.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

407.088

I don't worry about PFAS or harmful contaminants anymore. Today, my listeners receive 20% off any AquaTrue purifier. Just go to AquaTrue.com. That's A-Q-U-A-T-R-U dot com and enter code NOTHINGMUCH at checkout. That's 20% off any AquaTrue water purifier. When you go to AquaTrue.com and use promo code N-O-T-H-I-N-G-M-U-C-H.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

447.277

Put away anything you are looking at or working on. You are safe and I will be here watching over you with my voice. Take a slow, deep breath in through your nose and sigh. Do that again. Fill it up and let it out.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

500.121

It was Valentine's weekend at the Inn, and we had a nearly full house of lovebirds and sweethearts. ready to clink glasses and wander into the lonely corners of our vast rooms. Today we'd served breakfast in the dining room and drawing room, with fires burning in the grates and flowers on each table.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

545.003

as well as cinnamon rolls and cardamom buns.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

601.414

we'd put out some soup and sandwiches in the dining room, self-service style, but we'd highlighted the excellent cafes and bistros downtown, the shops and sites that were perfect for idling away a winter afternoon.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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Because I was a bit like a parent who needed the kids out from under my feet for a bit so that I could set up the ballroom.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

659.079

A little cheesy, maybe, but I hoped it would prove to be both romantic and fun.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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Bioptimizers has flexible dosing, which I really like. My wife needs just a little bit, and I take a little more. And for folks looking for an option without melatonin, this is it. Ready to transform your sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. Visit bioptimizers.com slash nothingmuch and use code nothingmuch for 10% off any order. Don't settle for another restless night, my friends.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

693.95

I was up on a ladder in the far corner behind the piano, twisting the last of the crepe paper streamers into place while my cat Sycamore chased a red balloon under a table.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

748.359

that, in the end, I'd wished I'd danced more, cared less about my hair and dress, and just had fun.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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Sycamore and I had been alone at the inn for a few months now, and I'd forgotten that we could, ahem, be overheard. Chef came through the door. their hands full of a large tray of desserts. I went over to help them set out the tarts and cakes on the buffet by the window.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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They paused, smiling down at the sweets. Oh, come on. I knew it. You had a blast, didn't you? You probably had a line of people waiting to dance with you.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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I've always been popular, they laughed, as they tucked the empty tray under an arm. and headed back to the kitchens for more.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 2

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On the central table, at the bottom of the stairs, beside the giant fern I'd kept alive for three winters now, were urns of coffee and hot tea.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

1.121

I've got another sleep-inducing podcast to recommend to you. It's called I Can't Sleep, and it's hosted by Benjamin Boster. I'm supposed to tell you that his show is intentionally boring, but as someone who writes whole stories about label makers, I just can't. Bookbinding? Philodendrons? Egyptian hieroglyphs? Yes, please.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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Audio engineering is by Bob Wittersheim. We give to a different charity each week, and this week we are giving to a Home for Hooves Sanctuary. They offer a forever home for rescued farmed animals. You can learn more about them in our show notes. If you are looking for more ways to invite coziness into your life, we have some ideas for that.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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We just put together a coloring pack with a Nothing Much Happens mini coloring book, colored pencils, and a downloadable exclusive story. It's such a nice gift. We also have our signature Bob Wittersheim t-shirt, our weighted pillow and wind-down box, our premium subscriptions and autographed books.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

1639.955

And I wondered if they had stayed through the winter or just returned from a few months away. My brain, so used to jumping ahead or floundering in the past,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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The breeze tossed my hair over my eyes, and I smiled as I tucked the strands behind my ears.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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And I followed them, stretching out my stride to nearly leaps and places. They led away from the water, and eventually I was under the golden dome of blooming willow branches.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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That's how long they have been early to mark the spring and drape over water.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

1841.089

when broken off, can simply be stuck in the ground, and it will often produce a whole new tree.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

190.054

If you wake later in the night, don't hesitate to turn an episode back on, or just think through any parts of the story that you can remember, and you'll drop right back off.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

212.961

And it's a story about the first signs of spring on an open field beside a lake. It's also about stepping stones, a bench up high on a bluff, geese paddling at the shore, tall rubber boots, a breeze that blows the hat from your head, and the calm quiet that comes when you stop chasing some other moment.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

260.598

Slide down into your sheets and get the right pillow in the right spot and feel your whole body relax. Take a deep breath in through your nose. And sigh from your mouth. Nice. Again, inhale. And release it.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

307.153

It isn't just that the willow is the first tree each spring to sprout leaves, though that is certainly a glimmer I go looking for each year, to see the light yellow haze like a flaxen fog hovering in its branches. And it isn't just the way its long, draping limbs dip leaves into the lake, like a beaded, viridescent curtain that I can slide through on my kayak, as if passing into a magic world.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

37.751

I want to get all snuggled up and listen to these perfect topics as I drift off into a great night's sleep. Benjamin's voice is soothing, and I feel like I might just learn something as I sleep. All of us here know how vital it is to get good sleep. It affects every part of your health. So check out the I Can't Sleep podcast now and get ready to wind down and relax.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

394.608

To hide away and read or just be with something bigger than you.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

436.161

The snow had been gone for just a week or two, but the sun had been shining so brightly each day, that it felt like we were riding downhill toward summer.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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Of course, I am nature myself, and I can never really be unstitched from that fabric. But after months inside, after weeks with barely a glimpse of the sun, or more than a few moments in the open air, You can feel like old friends have gone far too long without a catch-up.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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the warmth of the sunlight, the cool breeze around my temples. Ah, what a gift the world was today.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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The land rose, then dipped down in sandy spots at the edge of the lake.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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Tiny trails ran through and around all of it.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

71.547

Find I Can't Sleep wherever you listen to podcasts.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

736.255

What if we are like the birds and the trees, without a why, just alive because we are?

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

822.638

The breeze tossed my hair over my eyes, and I smiled as I tucked the strands behind my ears.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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Sometimes they are called sallows or osiers.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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Fossils of them have been found dating to some 40 or 50 million years ago.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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A willow branch, when broken off, can simply be stuck in the ground, and it will often produce a whole new tree. What a survivor, I thought, as I got closer and reached out to place my palm on its trunk.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

The Willow Tree

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I noticed how it felt in my chest and belly, in my legs and fingers, and looked for any spots that felt stopped up.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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And of course, the open view down to the lake. Like I said, lovely. But in February, Breakfast on the porch just doesn't work out. The lake was frozen over and several inches of snow lay on the ground. Our summer cafe tables were neatly stacked against the wall.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Luckily, the inn is not short of rooms.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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These two spaces, when combined, would be perfect for our breakfast service. I'd spent a few days dusting

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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The place began to fill with good smells.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Today, I dressed in my neat corduroy trousers and comfortable shoes,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

124.368

Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Everyone, in which nothing much happens. You feel good, and then you fall asleep. I'm Catherine Nicolai. I write and read everything you hear on Nothing Much Happens.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Around noon, the first cars had made it down the long drive to the inn, and Sycamore had been overcome with excitement.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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For guests who had already had the pleasure of meeting Sycamore. There was a reunion of purrs, dare I say, an expectation of treats, and in any case, lots of ear scratches. We weren't quite full up.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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But only by a room or two. And we found that we definitely had our hands full.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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The fire was crackling and popping in the grate.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Besides the crudités and dips, the voulevants and fruit, crackers and baguettes,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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This morning, we were all up early.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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We smiled at each other as I filled a cup and passed it over. It was good to see them in their apron, a neat bandana tied over their hair, and a pocket full of Sharpies. I love my quiet time here, alone but for sycamore.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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The smell of fresh coffee mixed with the old wood and the not-quite-nameable scent of the inn itself. They gave me a wink and turned back to the hall, took a few steps toward the kitchen stairs and stopped.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Are you going to let me in on it? I stuck my head out into the hall, and we eyeballed each other for a moment. There was a secret I was carrying around. But besides Sycamore,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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I hadn't shared it with anyone and wasn't sure I wanted to yet. I bit my lip, tilted my head,

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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So think about it. Swapsies are available.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Could Chef know things about the inn that I didn't?

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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where the fire was already burning bright. As I laid out cups and bowls, the sun began to rise over the snowy landscape.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Sweet dreams.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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a black cat and a feather duster, and a little mystery that begins to unwind. Okay, time to turn off the lights.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

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Good. Valentine's. At the Inn. Part 1. During the summer, we serve breakfast on our back porch. It is such a lovely spot.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

396.368

And of course, the open view down to the lake. Like I said, lovely.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

461.191

These two spaces, when combined, would be perfect for our breakfast service.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

611.192

We weren't quite full up.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

701.796

This morning, we were all up early.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

820.814

Are you going to let me in on it?

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

854.025

and wasn't sure I wanted to yet. I bit my lip and tilted my head.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

891.863

So think about it. But swapsies are available.

Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep

Valentine's at the Inn, Part 1

975.842

During the summer, we serve breakfast on our back porch. It is such a lovely spot. The porch wraps around the whole back of the house with tables and chairs. And at the far end, a swing suspended from the ceiling. There are screens to keep the mosquitoes out.

Office Ladies

The Edge, Pt 2

531.315

The platform we used before Shopify needed regular updates, which sometimes led to the shop not working.

Office Ladies

The Edge, Pt 2

550.504

Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

2197.622

That would be great. But they didn't want you to know about it. Sorry, who's they? Some people are following me and I brought my tortoise.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

2205.324

From executive producers Mike Judge and Greg Daniels and co-creators Joe Bennett and Steve Healy comes an animated comedy thriller about what it takes to change the world. Common Side Effects. Series premieres with back-to-back episodes February 2nd at 11.30pm on Adult Swim. Next day on Max.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

2224.628

This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. Didn't file with TurboTax last year? That's in the past. Now, Taxes is getting the TurboTax app and filing your own taxes for free if you didn't file with them last year. File by February 18th. All tax forms, all 100% free. Now, this is Taxes. Intuit TurboTax.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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I've been working with a nurse dietitian for the last six months, and it's been life-changing. I've lost weight, healed my relationship with food, and have way more energy. Working with a dietitian online to create a personalized nutrition plan was so easy thanks to Nourish. The best part? I pay $0 out of pocket because Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Find your dietitian at usenourish.com. That's usenourish.com.

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An Interview with Dave Rogers

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You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy, just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash listen.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

680.646

Just go to Indeed.com slash listen right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash listen. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

694.608

When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof like Aloe, Allbirds, or Skims, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling and for shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

70.595

This cold and flu season, Instacart is here to help deliver all your sick day essentials. Whether you're in prevention mode and need vitamins, hand sanitizer, and that lemon tea your nana swears by, or you're in healing mode and need medicine, soup, and a lot more tissues. Simply download the Instacart app to get sick day supplies that reinvigorate or relieve delivered in as fast as 30 minutes.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet and the not-so-secret secret, with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going... All birds and skims. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Odyssey Podcast, all lowercase.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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Go to Shopify.com slash Odyssey Podcast to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash Odyssey Podcast.

Office Ladies

An Interview with Dave Rogers

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Plus, enjoy zero delivery fees on your first three orders. Excludes restaurant orders. Service fees and terms apply.

Office Ladies

Second Drink: Hot Girl

2491.971

Here's the thing, okay? You just keep talking to me.

Office Ladies

Second Drink: Hot Girl

2538.083

Putting his foot in it.

Office Ladies

Second Drink: Hot Girl

2886.843

Baking Hershey's Kisses peanut butter blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family. With their classic, rich, creamy milk chocolate taste, there's no better way to heart-warm the holidays than by baking with Kisses chocolates. Find Hershey's Kisses holiday chocolates at your favorite retailer.

Office Ladies

Second Drink: Performance Review with Larry Wilmore

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Will full coverage make me look cakey? Is my undertone neutral or is it cool? We get it. Finding the right foundation is hard. But with Il Makiage, it's easy to find your perfect match online. Customize for your unique skin tone and coverage needs. Plus, with Try Before You Buy, you can try your full size at home for 14 days.

Office Ladies

Second Drink: Performance Review with Larry Wilmore

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With over 600,000 five-star reviews, this best-selling foundation is going viral for a reason. Take the Power Match Quiz now at ilmakiage.com slash quiz. I-L-M-A-K-I-A-G-E dot com slash quiz. Thank you.

Ologies with Alie Ward

Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean

1366.84

Hello ladies.

Ologies with Alie Ward

Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean

1396.952

The young male catches the scent given off by a female. The aroma of her vaginal mucus mixed with urine tells him that she's in estrus. For his grand finale, the male anoints his intended in a shower of urine. Witnesses to this bizarre ritual claim that powerful bursts may travel over six feet.

Ologies with Alie Ward

Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean

4373.069

Hey, don't start with me, porcupine. Come here. Come here. Give me a hug.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute)

4942.193

Questlove, and every year we do special programming for Black History Month. So the team and I compiled some clips from the show that are worth revisiting. In part one of the celebration of Black History Month, we're listening back to moments with Chris Rock.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute)

4962.565

Listen to Questlove Supreme on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Questlove Supreme and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

1472.802

Amen. Jesus is our righteousness. And may we as Christians never forget this incredible gospel truth. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was R.C. Sproul preaching from Galatians chapter 2 as we begin a four-week sermon series on the gospel and the dangers of legalism. If you've not done a serious study of Galatians, I would commend it to you. And you can do that with R.C.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

1499.93

Sproul as your pastoral and theological guide when you request his line-by-line study of Galatians, when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. This hardcover commentary could be your aid in Bible study, but it would also make for wonderful devotional reading.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

1521.447

And know that every donation is helping take trusted teaching that proclaims and defends the doctrine of justification by faith alone to the nations. So give your gift while there's still time at renewingyourmind.org. Thank you. Next time, we move ahead to Galatians chapter 3, to a section that Dr. Sproul describes as perhaps the weightiest and most significant portion of the entire epistle.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

29.764

Justification by faith alone. It's central to the good news, and it's always under attack. That's why R.C. Sproul preached and taught this doctrine with such passion and clarity, and why Ligonier Ministries and Renewing Your Mind by God's Grace will never waver or shrink back from the clarity and precision of gospel truth.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

52.887

Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind where each week we feature the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul. This week we're starting a new series in Galatians, an important epistle that responds sharply to attacks against the gospel and one that we need to read, study and meditate upon as we continue to have our minds renewed according to Scripture.

One Minute Podcast Tips

How to Use Old Episodes to Power Your Podcast's Growth

77.159

This is a four-message study with Dr. Sproul, unpacking the gospel and the dangers of legalism. But if you'd like to study the entirety of Galatians until midnight tonight, you can request Dr. Sproul's hardcover commentary on Galatians when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Well, if you have your Bible with you, open it to Galatians chapter 2. Here's Dr. Sproul.

Otherworld

Episode 110: Never Ending Road

1.896

Jeder Läufer kennt diesen Moment, wenn es einfach klickt. Wenn deine Beine einfach mitgehen, der Schmerz nachlässt, die Zweifel weg sind und du nur noch das Runners High spürst. Das ist der Grund, warum du so früh aufstehst. Warum dich ein bisschen Regen nicht aufhält. Warum Laufen zum Ritual wird. Also laufe und fühle das Runners High.

Otherworld

Episode 110: Never Ending Road

101.929

Diese erste Geschichte kommt von einer Frau namens Samantha. And it happened back in 1992 when she was a young mother serving in the military and living in Augusta, Georgia. Long before anyone had cell phones or GPS in the car, which is fairly relevant to this story. And it happened on a very cloudy winter day when Samantha set out to do research. A long drive that she was very used to doing.

Otherworld

Episode 110: Never Ending Road

1018.292

We went over it over and over again because it's so confusing and there are so many variables of what could have happened. I ran so many ideas and explanations past her. I think for me... The most important detail of all of this is that her two kids were sleeping in the back seat the entire time.

Otherworld

Episode 110: Never Ending Road

1036.811

If she had been driving around in a fugue state aimlessly for nine hours, surely these kids would have woken up at some point and had something to say when they got to the dad's house. But they were asleep the entire time. They pulled into the house and woke up like nothing had happened. Kinder schlafen nicht für neun Stunden, besonders nicht in der Morgenzeit, nachdem sie aufwachen.

Otherworld

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Ich denke, das ist ein sehr, sehr seltsamer Detail und es macht es schwer, das weg zu erklären. Außerdem hat ihr Gas mit drei Stunden gedreht. Wenn sie für neun Stunden fuhr, würde sie aus dem Gas geraten. Und in Bezug auf das Füllen, hat Samantha mir gesagt, dass sie damals wirklich auf Geld festgestellt war. Also würde sie definitiv bemerkt haben,

Otherworld

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My father had a similar experience happen two or three years before this happened to me. And it really happened the same way.

Otherworld

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We'll be right back after this quick break.

Otherworld

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Hello? Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with it.

Otherworld

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Okay, also ich habe Samantha für eine Weile gesprochen, nachdem sie mir die erste Geschichte erzählt hat. Es scheint, dass Samantha seit diesem großen Verbrechen viele spukige Dinge zu ihr passiert sind. Ich habe keine Ahnung, ob sie sich mit der ersten Erfahrung verbunden hat, die sie uns gerade mitgebracht hat.

Otherworld

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A story about all the science up in the sky.

Otherworld

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Aber die Geschichte, die ihr jetzt hört, ist eine, die ich so sehr mag, dass ich dachte, dass ich sie in die Episode inkludieren musste.

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Thank you once again to Samantha for sharing her stories. This is really such a weird one with so many layers of confusing details. Every time I heard it and thought about it, I couldn't stop scratching my head, thinking of possible explanations, but... Her Kids being in the car sleeping the whole time makes it extra baffling to me.

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Additionally, the length of time, I mean, nine hours is a very long time. It's not exactly easy to zone out for that long and drive aimlessly, especially when you have two sleeping kids in the car. Auf der anderen Seite ist es extra bizarr, dass ihr Vater fast genau das selbe erlebt hat, als er jung war. Vielen Dank, Samantha, für diese Geschichte.

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Der nächste kommt von zwei Freunden, Nora und Marissa. Sie arbeiteten beide zusammen in einem Restaurant, als dies stattfand. And it sounds like a very rowdy restaurant that served a lot of people who were spilling out from the bars. Something happened to these two one night on their way home from work.

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I thought this story would be a good match for Samantha's because these two sort of experienced the opposite of what Samantha did. I'll let them explain.

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Wait, am I understanding this correct? You drop off your friend in the suburbs and then go to turn down a tiny little alley that you normally turn down to get back to the road. But then suddenly find yourself driving through the wilderness for 45 minutes, like, or like a black, dark void. But for 45 minutes, is that correct?

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And is there even like 45 minutes worth of space to be driving around there, like between the houses? Is there even that much space?

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Okay, thank you to Nora and Marissa for sharing that story. It took me so long to fully understand what happened to them. I spent a lot of time on Google Maps and on Zoom with them going over this. My first instinct when they explained it was... They must have accidentally drove into some kind of nearby forest or trail area.

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But the thing is, I've looked at the maps, I've seen videos of this place, I've seen pictures. As soon as you drive off the road where they were, it's basically like a straight drop into a very steep ravine. It's also super thick with trees. They would have immediately been in a horrible accident if they drove into the woods by mistake.

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Außerdem gibt es Warnräder, die fast jede Entfernung in die gewandte Gegend blockieren, die ich in der Nähe finden konnte. Ebenso beschrieben diese Mädchen die Fahrt für eine sehr lange Zeit tief in die Wälder, und dann plötzlich, wenn sie versuchen, es in den Umgang zu bringen, finden sie sich sofort wieder auf der Straße, wo sie angefangen haben.

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Das ist einfach so seltsam und würde sicherlich nicht passieren, wenn sie durch einen Wald oder eine Naturstraße für 45 Minuten fahren würden. Ich weiß gar nicht, was hier passiert ist, es ist einfach eine sehr, sehr seltsame Geschichte. Ich würde gerne eine logische Antwort dazu geben. Ich bin mir sicher, dass sie das auch machen würden, aber sie haben noch nie einen gefunden und ich auch nicht.

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Wie ihr am Ende gehört habt, sind sie sogar mal zusammen nach dem originalen Ort zurückgekommen und haben noch einmal nachgeschaut. Sie haben immer noch keine Ahnung, was passiert ist. Ich weiß nicht wirklich, was diese Erfahrungen sind.

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Ich denke, ich bin am meisten fasziniert von dem Fakt, dass diese Menschen sie erleben und dann müssen sie weitergehen und ihre Leben weiterleben, obwohl sie fast nie vergessen, was ihnen in dieser Situation passiert ist. Es ist sehr schwer, eine solche Geschichte zu erklären, jemandem, der sie nicht selbst erlebt hat.

Otherworld

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Und wie ich gesagt habe, oftmals, wenn du es versuchst, es zu erklären, könnte die Person, die es hört, dich anschauen, als ob du ein kompletter Lunatik bist, als du dein Bestes tust, es zu erklären. For that reason, I am extra grateful to Samantha, Nora and Marissa for sharing these stories. This has been Episode 110. The title is Never Ending Road. And you've been listening to Otherworld.

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Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans. This episode was edited by Hayley Pearson and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coldestack Studios. Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer. Production help by Hayley Pearson.

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Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a 5-star review and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash otherworld. Our social media is at otherworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, J.D.

Otherworld

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Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis and Hilary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Otherworld

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And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural or unexplained, you could send us your story at storiesatotherworldpod.com.

Otherworld

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Ich bin wirklich fasziniert von solchen Geschichten. Aber es ist auch etwas, das sehr schwer zu erklären sein kann. Ein Moment, alles ist auf einmal. Plötzlich ist es komplett anders. Und es ist leicht, wie eine verrückte Person zu klingen, wenn du versuchst, zu erklären, was passiert ist, und du bist der Einzige, der das, was dir passiert ist, erlebt hat.

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Okay, so I'm just going to jump in and go over this again because it's very confusing. In fact, the whole point of this story is that it's confusing. Samantha was driving from Charleston, South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia. Taking the interstates because of the snow and passing through Columbia, South Carolina on the way. This normally takes her about three hours and she does this all the time.

Otherworld

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On this day, she left her mom's house in Charleston around 8.30 a.m. with her kids in the car. She felt a little sleepy shortly into the drive and she pulled over at a very familiar rest stop to get a Dr. Pepper and smoke a cigarette. Sounds wonderful. This rest stop is only about 15 minutes away, so she's barely began her drive.

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She finishes the cigarette, drinks the Dr. Pepper, gets back on the highway and starts her drive. She says that she's only just gotten back on the road, starting to begin this big drive, had maybe driven about 20 minutes or so and then all of a sudden, Sie ist in Kolumbien, die zwei Stunden weg ist. Samantha ist offensichtlich sehr überrascht und überrascht.

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Sie checkt ihre Uhr und die Uhr sagt, dass es etwas nach 9 Uhr ist, was für sie Sinn macht. Sie fühlt sich, als hätte sie nur 30 oder 45 Minuten gefahren, aber plötzlich ist sie in Kolumbien, die zwei Stunden entfernt ist. Also, an diesem Punkt ist die Zeit für Samantha korrekt, aber der Raum ist nicht.

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Sie scheint sich vorbeiziehen zu haben und sich dann plötzlich viel weiter entfernt zu finden, als sie sein sollte, basierend auf der Menge Zeit. Es fühlt sich so aus, als hätte sie gefahren. Das being said, I think it's easy to probably brush it off and say, okay, maybe my clock is broken or something. I zoned out when you're by yourself and one little weird thing happens.

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It's easy to brush it off. So she continues on. She drives to Augusta. And when she arrives, her husband is freaking out, asking where she's been. And he says that she's been gone for nine hours. She looks at her clock and it says exactly what she thinks it should be, about 11.45 a.m., the time it should have been. The husband looks at the clock and says, it must be broken. They continue to fight.

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They go inside and they're still arguing about this. Samantha is baffled and confused. She's insisting. She's only been driving for three hours. Sie endet mit ihrer Mutter zu sprechen, die auch sagt, dass sie für neun Stunden verloren ist. Das ist wichtig, weil, wie ich schon gesagt habe, Samanthas Mutter sah sie am Morgen um 8.30 Uhr weg.

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Dann ist Samantha extrem verwirrt, geht zurück in ihr Auto, um die Klappe wieder zu beobachten. Und jetzt plötzlich, hat die Klappe vorgeschlagen und sagt jetzt 5 Uhr. Wieder einmal, ihr Mann und sie sahen die Klappe vorher weg. saying 11.45, now it's suddenly 5pm and 9 hours has gone by.

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So, what should have been a 3-hour drive felt roughly like an hour and 30 minutes for Samantha, but in reality, it took her 9 hours. At first, space was not lining up, but time was. Now, time and space are not lining up in a very major way. I talked to Samantha about all this for a very long time.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles

How to Win the Fight for Your Soul and Why It Matters | EP 567

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We are challenged throughout our lives, whether it's a deployment under hostile conditions on the world stage, a difficult home situation or problems at work.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles

How to Win the Fight for Your Soul and Why It Matters | EP 567

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life is constantly throwing curveballs at us sometimes it's not just that we don't hit the pitch sometimes we have the equivalent of nolan ryan throwing fastballs at our heads is the way it sometimes feels and he's hitting us too and we need to understand how to get better at bats when that happens and how to not get injured

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Support for PayVit comes from BetterHelp. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in-person therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp Online Therapy, you can save an average of up to 50% per session. You just pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and on time.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Support for Pivot comes from the podcast Tech Unheard. We live in complex times. Technology is evolving faster than ever before, and the people driving that evolution can seem distant. Tech Unheard is a new podcast that puts you right in the room with the people shaping the future of technology.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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It's hosted by Rene Haas, the CEO of Arm, one of those companies on the leading edge of tech innovation. For the show, they've partnered with national public media to bring you a series of in-depth conversations with tech industry luminaries.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Tech Unheard explores each leader's path and analyzes the most pressing trends in their space, all while sharing a few entertaining anecdotes of success and failure along the way. In the first episode, you can hear Rene talk with his old boss, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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They dive into Jensen's journey, the future of AI, and how NVIDIA's unique culture of relentless innovation continues to push the boundaries of technology. Tech Unheard lets you listen in on unscripted, one-on-one conversations between some of tech's biggest leaders. And these conversations have never been more important than they are today.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Tune in to Tech Unheard from ARM and NPM, wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Pivot comes from ZocDoc. When was the last time you needed to go to a doctor, but you pushed it off? Let's spin the wheel of excuses to see where you land. I'm too busy. It'll heal on its own. I don't need help. I don't know which doctor to go to.

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Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Look, booking a doctor's appointment can feel daunting, but thanks to ZocDoc, there's no reason to delay. They make it so easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high-quality in-network doctors and instantly book an appointment. Appointments made through the app can happen fast, typically within just 72 hours of booking.

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You can even book same-day appointments to take some of that stress out. Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings and choose a time slot that works for you. Plus, you can filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, might be a good fit for any medical need you may have, and are highly rated by verified patients.

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You can stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash pivot to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash pivot. ZocDoc.com slash pivot.

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Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. Your well-being is worth it, and now it's within reach. Visit betterhelp.com slash pivot to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash pivot.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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Scientists find weird kinds of life all the time. And normally, they can run experiments.

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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But what if the weird thing about the life they find is that it lives for millions of years?

Pivot

Elon Merges Companies, WHCA Cuts Comedian, and Guest Co-Host Jen Psaki

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This week on Unexplainable, intraterrestrials, aliens on Earth deep beneath the seafloor. Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.

Pivot

Elon's First Cabinet Meeting, Trump's Gold Card, and Bezos' WaPo Revamp

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It's official. The United States is breaking up with Ukraine. On Monday, the president suspended military aid to the country. That's about $1 billion in arms Ukraine isn't getting until it commits to negotiating peace with Russia. That move, of course, comes after a perfect meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office on Friday. They talked about playing cards.

Pivot

Elon's First Cabinet Meeting, Trump's Gold Card, and Bezos' WaPo Revamp

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You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. They talked about being thankful. Have you said thank you once? This entire time? They took questions from the crowd.

Pivot

Elon's First Cabinet Meeting, Trump's Gold Card, and Bezos' WaPo Revamp

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Today explains looking into why humiliating Zelensky appeals to the MAGA base and what Europe plans to do about it. Today explained every weekday afternoon wherever you listen.

Pivot

DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

1995.001

It's official. The United States is breaking up with Ukraine. On Monday, the president suspended military aid to the country. That's about $1 billion in arms Ukraine isn't getting until it commits to negotiating peace with Russia. That move, of course, comes after a perfect meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office on Friday. They talked about playing cards.

Pivot

DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

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But right now, you're playing cards. You're playing cards.

Pivot

DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

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This entire meeting? They took questions from the crowd.

Pivot

DOGE’s Chaos Strategy, X’s New Valuation, and Guest Co-Host Katie Drummond

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Today explains looking into why humiliating Zelensky appeals to the MAGA base and what Europe plans to do about it. Today explained every weekday afternoon, wherever you listen.

Pivot

Elon’s Harem, Trump v. Harvard, and Zuckerberg on the Stand

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Direwolves, not just a thing from Game of Thrones, not just Jon Snow's best friend. Direwolves walked the Americas for millennia, up until about 14,000 years ago when maybe their primary food source dried up or humans hunted them to extinction, no one was taking notes. But we know they were a bit bigger than gray wolves, they ate a lot of meat, and their bite could crush bones.

Pivot

Elon’s Harem, Trump v. Harvard, and Zuckerberg on the Stand

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And now we know that apparently direwolves are back A startup called Colossal says they've brought these pups back from extinction. They say they've got three of them, but are these direwolves they brought back actually direwolves? And whether they are or aren't, should we be trying to bring direwolves back? Like, why? Join us for answers over at Today Explained.

Pivot

Tariff Turmoil, Trump’s Tesla Ad, and Newsom’s Bannon Interview

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It's been reported that one in four people experience sensory sensitivities, making everyday experiences like a trip to the dentist especially difficult. In fact, 26% of sensory-sensitive individuals avoid dental visits entirely.

Pivot

Tariff Turmoil, Trump’s Tesla Ad, and Newsom’s Bannon Interview

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In Sensory Overload, a new documentary produced as part of Sensodyne's Sensory Inclusion Initiative, we follow individuals navigating a world not built for them, where bright lights, loud sounds, and unexpected touches can turn routine moments into overwhelming challenges. Burnett Grant, for example, has spent their life masking discomfort in workplaces that don't accommodate neurodivergence.

Pivot

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"'I've only had two full-time jobs where I felt safe,' they share. This is why they're advocating for change. Through deeply personal stories like Burnett's, Sensory Overload highlights the urgent need for spaces, dental offices and beyond that embrace sensory inclusion. Because true inclusion requires action with environments where everyone feels safe.

Pivot

Tariff Turmoil, Trump’s Tesla Ad, and Newsom’s Bannon Interview

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Start a business that sells and designs decorative plates. Find out you have to keep up with invoices and paying vendors. Realize that you're better at selling plates than keeping them spinning. With Intuit QuickBooks, you can make quick work of unpaid invoices and auto-track expenses all in one easy-to-use place. So you can keep spinning, uh, selling those plates.

Pivot

Tariff Turmoil, Trump’s Tesla Ad, and Newsom’s Bannon Interview

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Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks. Your way to money. Money Movement Services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc., licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Pivot

Tariff Turmoil, Trump’s Tesla Ad, and Newsom’s Bannon Interview

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Thank you. So I'll tell you like, I'll tell you a story. This week on Unexplainable, a story about researchers building AIs.

Pivot

Trump’s Putin Call, Inflation Rises, and Sam Altman Strikes Back at Elon Musk

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It's official. The United States is breaking up with Ukraine. On Monday, the president suspended military aid to the country. That's about $1 billion in arms Ukraine isn't getting until it commits to negotiating peace with Russia. That move, of course, comes after a perfect meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office on Friday. They talked about playing cards.

Pivot

Trump’s Putin Call, Inflation Rises, and Sam Altman Strikes Back at Elon Musk

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They talked about being thankful. Have you said thank you once? This entire time? They took questions from the crowd.

Pivot

Trump’s Putin Call, Inflation Rises, and Sam Altman Strikes Back at Elon Musk

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Today explains looking into why humiliating Zelensky appeals to the MAGA base and what Europe plans to do about it. Today explained every weekday afternoon wherever you listen.

Pivot

Trump's Big Speech, Trade War Roller Coaster, and Elon v. Jon Stewart

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Thank you. Twitch is still a big deal in live streaming, but so are lots of other places. So how is Twitch CEO Dan Clancy going to deal with that competition? And why exactly do I want to watch people talk live on the internet anyway? I asked Dan Clancy all about that and more on this week's channels from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Planet Money

Planet Money buys a mystery diamond

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Yeah, that doesn't seem like the likely scenario here.

Planet Money

Planet Money buys a mystery diamond

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My favorite things.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Here's a carton of Camel cigarettes.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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24 euros. You don't buy that. That could be a deal.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Same. And what was your verdict on duty-free? It depends. I know, that is not the answer you want to hear. I will tell you that tax-free cigarettes are criminally cheap, under $5 a pack, and they're almost three times that here in New York City. So if you want cigarettes, you should buy cigarettes and duty-free. But other deals are harder to find. So my daughter Elsie is an expert in makeup.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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You getting them at the duty-free shop. Hey, no shame here. I bought chocolates for my kids.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Natural, silky, lightweight fluid.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Wow, like 49 euros for this tiny little foundation?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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No, no, that's just the display one. This is the one you buy.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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But I checked here in New York and not the worst price for Giorgio Armani. So that's a buy. But when it comes to alcohol, there is no logic. The American whiskeys in Milan are two-thirds the price of what you would pay here in the United States.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

1095.045

And then you have to carry it all the way back? True. But Courvoisier from France next door to Italy was more expensive in the duty-free than it is here in New York. And Toblerone's, I hate to disappoint you, were almost double the U.S. price.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Well, here's my theory on this. It's that, you know, when Ireland first started duty free, it was this true bargain for the flyer. And Ireland got all these benefits from the extra tourist business. But then what happens is this sort of race to the bottom. Every other airport starts to offer the exact same tax breaks just to compete.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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That's my flight. I gotta go. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Robert Smith, here with international jet setter and former duty-free addict Karen Duffer. This is true. Back in my corporate days, I did spend a lot of time and money in duty-free shops.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Exactly. Everyone ends up with this sort of expensive shopping mall. And somewhere in all of this, the tax break concept just sort of gets lost. Prices start to sneak back up because who can really tell?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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And suddenly the people making the money are not the travelers, but the shops themselves and the airports, which you'll notice are now redesigning themselves to provide even more space for duty free.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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You want to bring one of your friends a nice salami?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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It seems like these days we're locked in this epic battle between those who want free trade across borders and those who want to put up barriers. An early skirmish in this economic war happened at an airport along the banks of the Shannon River in Ireland.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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And we'll answer the question I know that I have asked over and over again. Are we really saving any money at the duty-free shop? The story of duty-free starts with a bit of Irish luck.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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And so here was this former mudflat that all of a sudden became the grand gateway to Europe.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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So movie stars, presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, they all landed at Shannon.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Hey, I'm just leaving a voice memo for myself. I'm in the Shannon Airport in Shannon, Ireland, on my way back to the United States, to New York. There is this picture wall, giant pictures of all the famous people who have come through here. So, you know, they have, like, John F. Kennedy, and there's Fidel Castro and Boris Yeltsin. And there is one photo that was sort of amazing.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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Brian O'Connell was a businessman in the region, still lives there. And he says that everyone realized pretty quickly that they needed to upgrade the local amenities for all these movie stars. In those days, the airplane ride from the United States was long and uncomfortable and bumpy. Sometimes it was even in these flying boats, basically planes that would land on water.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

249.375

Don't let the doctor part fool you. It is an honorary degree. Brendan O'Regan had been a bartender, a hotel clerk, a caterer. And when the Shannon Airport realized that all the movie stars were coming, they needed someone quick. They hired Brendan O'Regan to feed them.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

280.399

O'Regan had this knack for promotion from the very beginning. Rather than continental cuisine, which is what they were serving at airports everywhere, he served Irish food. But he dolled it up with all these place names. Oh, look, this is Carrie Lamb and Dublin Prawns and Limerick Butter. And when he would serve whiskey in the coffee...

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

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He topped it off with this thick layer of local cream, and he named it the very first Irish coffee.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

313.029

There at the Shannon Airport. And he ran this little kiosk next to the restaurant, and it was nothing really. Little mini bottles of whiskey and trinkets and cheap stuff. But the important point here is that everything was always taxed back in those days.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

343.34

Which, I don't know, why would they do that? Just to keep the crews happy?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

358.152

And strangely, this loophole was still in effect in O'Regan's day. In 1950, he was on a trip to the United States, and he decides not to fly back to Shannon, but to take a cruise ship, the SS America. And O'Regan notices when he's on board that the alcohol in the ship is way less expensive than the stuff he's been serving at the airport.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

382.079

Because they were in international waters, this is like the law of the high seas.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

393.949

And this was the genius of Brendan O'Regan. He went to the Irish government and he said, essentially, what are airplanes but boats of the sky? That's kind of true. True. And what are airline passengers but modern day sailors of the clouds? Right. Do they not also deserve their tax-free rum and perfume and Haribo brand gummy bears? They're not Haribo. of Beaubrand gummy bears.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

418.08

His exact words are lost to history. But we do know that a lot of people in the Irish government said, wait, tax-free? Are you kidding me?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

42.831

There's a picture of the president of Ireland, and next to him is someone called Dr. Brendan O'Regan. And he's sort of out of focus. You can see he's wearing a natty suit. He's got a nice little pocket square. And it says that Dr. O'Regan was the person responsible for this airport, for basically developing the Shannon International Airport.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

455.754

Yeah. For example, I mean, just even taking today, if you buy a bottle of wine down the street here in the United States – There is a duty added to the cost of that wine if the wine comes from overseas. But even if the wine is made in the United States, there is a federal excise tax on alcohol added to the price. And then each and every state adds their own excise taxes to the wine.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

478.974

And this is all hidden in the price tag.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

487.86

Brendan O'Regan said to the Irish government, Yes, yes, you will lose some money in taxes.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

535.153

O'Regan opened the first duty-free shop in the Shannon Airport in 1951. Okay. It was only for passengers. And he did this trick that you will recognize from today. It was located between the lounge and the restaurant, so you had to walk through it to get to anything. I hate that. No, this is brilliant. And just like he'd promised the government, he featured local foods and crafts.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

557.322

I saw an early photo hanging in the airport. There's a picture of Gene Kelly, the old dancer from the old days, buying butter or cheese or something. And he's at the Duty Free, and they're selling what looks like ham, bacon, honey, cheese, jam, and eggs.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

581.328

I think the local stuff was kind of for show because honestly, from the beginning, this was all about cigarettes and alcohol. Whiskey and smokes were apparently one third the price you would pay outside the airport. It was so cheap that the Irish government was paranoid that Irish gangs would try to smuggle alcohol out of the airport. I mean, you could make a fortune, right? Yeah.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

59.925

And most importantly, he created the world's first airport duty-free shop. You know, the duty-free shop, the place where you get the perfume and the chocolates and all the liquor. First one was here. And before I get on the flight, I just wanted to rush quickly over and take a look at what was the world's first duty-free. A lot of scarves, a little jewelry. Where's the perfume? Hello, darling.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

604.486

They required O'Regan to take inventory three times a day. He had to account for every single bottle. If he accidentally dropped or misplaced a single bottle, he would have to pay all the taxes on it.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

636.518

And even relatively inexpensive products discovered that they could get some of that airport glamour by just getting placed between the Chanel No. 5 and the cuckoo clocks. At least that's what Mr. Tobler of Switzerland thought.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

659.612

Not just any chocolate bar, the Toblerone, a triangular prism of deliciousness. It was sold in that very first Shannon duty-free shop. Tom Armitage is an executive with Mondelez International, which owns Toblerone.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

690.927

Nougat? I don't think I've ever said it out loud.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

721.262

Exactly. It would take a few more years for Toblerone and the duty-free concept to spread worldwide. All these international delegations would visit O'Regan's shop, and they saw how much he was making, and they thought, wait a minute, anyone could do this. Amsterdam opened the second duty-free shop in the world in their airport in 1957. In 1962. Yes.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

748.693

Tom Armitage, the Toblerone guy, says that the numbers just took off from there. Duty-free stores will do $70 billion worth of business just this year. Wow. $5 billion of that is candy. And Tom will give you the chocolate stats all day long.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

782.816

So more people buy chocolate in duty-free than buy chocolate in India. By value.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

800.35

It's the one kind of store where you know which customers will show up when. So if the flight from Paris to New York JFK takes off at 1.28 p.m., then the duty-free store is filled with Americans right at noon. And you can test new products on them.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

827.86

What does the message say? I forgot to get you a gift in Paris, and here's a Toblerone I got at the airport?

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

838.905

The duty-free store concept, the idea behind it became so big, so powerful in marketing that people sort of forgot about that original duty-free shop in the Shannon Airport. And once long-range passenger jets were invented, not as many people needed to stop over in rural Ireland for an Irish coffee.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

866.921

But, you know, O'Regan remained a hero of Ireland. He helped set up tax-free manufacturing zones. He became obsessed with the way that trade could help world peace. process there.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

89.128

How's it going? This is Jessie Baker. I'm buying sheep. Oh, they're adorable. Cliche, but my children don't judge. I think duty-free shops are supported on people who forgot to get gifts for their children.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

913.821

When you put it that way, who would approve that now? Yeah.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

921.126

It was O'Regan's gift to all of us travelers. But exactly how generous a gift was it? We'll have the answer after the break. So that was the history of Duty Free, but now the psychology of Duty Free. Because when I walk through these places in airport, there is this strange feeling that comes over me. I feel like I'm part of this exclusive club.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

947.785

You know, I've just paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket. I've presented my passport. There's people with guns guarding it. And then I walk through, and it's so bright. And it's filled with all these vices of cigarettes and alcohol. So many scotches, so many scotches and whiskeys.

Planet Money

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

989.146

So it's almost impossible to figure out the bottom line. Every duty-free store has different prices, different exchange rates, and the tax break depends on how much tax you usually pay back at home. So I tried to get at least some anecdotal data. I was traveling with my family through the Milan airport in Italy, and my daughter Elsie and I spent an hour logging all the prices.

Planet Money

The last time we shrank the federal workforce

522.864

If you want to know why government doesn't work, Look behind you.

Planet Money

The last time we shrank the federal workforce

533.156

The answer is at least partly on those forklifts.

Planet Money

The last time we shrank the federal workforce

563.647

And I thought we would give it a try here. All right. I'll do it first.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1017.371

In the 1990s, the census starts issuing some demographic information by zip code. And researchers increasingly realize that they can use this strange little post office unit to look into all kinds of things like crime patterns and the spread of disease. My sense is that it's sort of just a snowball rolling down a hill. Like zip codes exist.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

104.716

economy. And as I have learned more about the world of the zip code, I've come to feel that it is less like a cold, clinical, ordered list of numbers and more like a kind of weird, overgrown number garden. full of all these odd, surprising things, like a skyscraper with its own zip code. A couple more. The zip codes do not start at 00000.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1041.302

They seem to divide the world into convenient little packages. And so people start to use them. even though that is not what they were designed for. After the break, two people who think that the humble zip code has now spread too far. All right. Let me introduce you to zip code skeptic number one. His name is Gary Greenberg.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1074.36

And for years, he served as the chief elected officer of a small town in Connecticut. The town is called Scotland. How many times a day do you think you think about zip codes?

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1102.223

Gary stepped down from his post last year, but not before becoming an accidental and reluctant zip code expert. Because here is the problem. Scotland, Connecticut contains about 1,600 people, about 600 houses. And Gary says it has the distinction of containing not one, not two, not three, but six different zip codes.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1137.671

Yeah, so the zip code boundaries do not line up with the town boundaries. One of those six zip codes is fully located within Scotland, but the others cover partly Scotland and partly neighboring towns like Wyndham or Hampton. And officially, when you address your letter, you write the name of those other towns next to the zip code.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1161.835

Living in one town but having a zip code that looks like it belongs to another town? That creates all sorts of problems for Scotland residents.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1189.898

It can also be hard to convince people that your house actually is where you say it is.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1208.453

As Gary has discovered, many different people are making maps and lists and decisions based on addresses that they get from the Postal Service. The USPS, in fact, charges for some of this information, and organizations buy that information. So if Gary's address seems to be in a different town, That little error can travel far and wide. This is a problem in a bunch of other towns, too.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1234.108

Some of them have banded together in a kind of consortium to trade tips about how to deal with it. There has even been legislation on this topic introduced in Congress. And Gary says this comes up not just in daily life. but also in the world of data.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1251.526

For example, during COVID, there was a period when local news was reporting zero cases in the town of Scotland because they were looking at zip codes. And there are just those 20 or so homes that have a Scotland-only zip code. None of them happen to have COVID. So it looked like no one in town did. That kind of thing made it harder for Gary to do his job.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1287.492

Yet, if you're using zip codes to try to understand or analyze Scotland, Connecticut, it's almost as if the town doesn't exist. And all this brings us to our second zip code skeptic. His name is Tony Grubicek, and he's here today standing in for a whole category of people. Tony first got interested in this a while back, like almost 20 years ago.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1313.481

He and his girlfriend, now wife, were thinking about moving in together. They were sitting on her front porch in Ohio, eating a Jersey Mike's sub, looking at houses, when she sees a listing for one across the street.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

132.29

The lowest is actually 00501, which directs mail only to the IRS in Holtzville, New York. The president apparently has his own secret zip code. I, of course, don't know what it is, and the White House declined to elaborate. Santa and Smokey Bear also have their own zip codes to deal with all the mail that they get from children.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1345.619

This is a moment where she's like, oh, dating a geographer.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1367.944

And for the postal service, that's completely fine. But if you start using zip codes to analyze the world, this kind of thing can introduce mistakes where you draw your map wrong and then you think someone lives in one zip code when they actually live in another.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1395.831

But the stakes can also be higher. Like Tony said, insurance companies sometimes use zip codes to help inform coverage decisions. And if you're denied a policy or charged a higher premium, that affects your bottom line.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1420.486

Tony told me about one time when zip codes came up in a really high-stakes situation, the Flint water crisis. Here's what happened. Residents of the city of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their drinking water. Mona Hanna, a Flint pediatrician and a professor at Michigan State University, she released data showing that this was a big, urgent problem.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1444.962

But the state pushed back at first, said basically, our data isn't showing this problem. Now, initially, Dr. Mona had looked at Flint zip codes, and she found elevated lead levels in Flint kids. But when the state pushed back, she was like, OK, maybe I can show this problem even more clearly. Because zip codes were a good unit of analysis here, but not a perfect one. Here's Tony.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1487.338

Yeah, the zip code map of Flint, Michigan is sort of similar to the map of Scotland, Connecticut. It's a patchwork of zip codes that overlap with the city of Flint, but cover a lot of area outside the city, too. So the analysis included people who were not drinking Flint water. Dr. Mona asked a geographer friend to look at the data in a different way.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1509.07

He geolocated the addresses of patients in this sample, kind of like dropping pins on a map. Then it was really undeniable. Patients with elevated blood lead levels clearly clustered in the city of Flint. The zip code based analysis had somewhat underestimated the problem. The state eventually reversed course and admitted that Dr. Mona had it right.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

153.299

And, and, there is a zip code in Michigan that is actually three boats?

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1532.557

Tony told me, look, there are lots of ways to divide up space. Like, you can use satellite data, TV broadcast areas. The census offers a bunch of different levels of analysis, blocks, block groups, etc. Zip codes are only one, but they're a really common one.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1562.093

Yeah, maybe it's okay to use zip codes in some situations, like deciding where to send your store coupons. But zip codes do not describe the location of city pipes. And they do not describe the boundaries of the town of Scotland, Connecticut. Gary Greenberg told me when he first got into office, he tried to get this situation fixed.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1599.076

The Postal Service does have an official process for zip code boundary review. Gary says he tried to get the problem fixed that way, and that at one point, the USPS did make a change where they tried to let some people write Scotland on their address line. But he said it seemed to almost make the problems worse. I reached out to the USPS about the situation in Scotland.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1621.591

A spokesperson told me that they're sympathetic to the concerns of towns like this, but they have to be guided by concerns for service and efficiency. Those are the same concerns that guided them back in 1963.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1635.618

And one of the things I've learned for sure is that when it comes to service and efficiency, the zip code was an amazing invention, an incredible way of organizing the world, or at least more precisely, an incredible way of organizing the mail. This episode was produced by Sam Yellowhorse-Kessler with an assist from Willow Rubin. It was edited by Meg Kramer and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

1670.991

It was engineered by Valentina Rodriguez-Sanchez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Special thanks to Lucretia Johnson, David Garcia, Tracy Danisich, Vince Ogier, and Ricky Wertham. I'm Sally Helm. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

177.265

The trade of delivering mail. That is Jim Hogan of the J.W. Westcott Company. They deliver mail via boat to commercial boats near the port of Detroit. Jim is the fourth generation in his family to do this. He told me back in the day, some of the letters they delivered were more than strictly business letters.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

22.997

Two, one, start. I got into an elevator with one of our producers, Willa, to start our journey from the bottom to the top of the Empire State Building. All right, we're passing through a hallway. Go, go, go. We had to run through a couple of hallways, take four separate elevators. And along the way, we passed by every single address ending in the numbers 10118.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

225.694

I got to say. It is amazing to me that packages are successfully being delivered to people aboard boats. Jim's mailboats, as I have mentioned, have their own zip code, 48222. He told me that zip code is crucial to his business, but he's never really thought about where it came from.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

258.745

Well, I got to tell you, Jim, I'm going to find out. So, you know, I'll report back.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

267.031

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sally Helm. Today, we turn our attention towards the humble zip code. Why was it born? How has it changed the male? How has it changed the broader world? And has it gone too far? The zip code has its origins in a moment of crisis, World War II. I heard about this from Lynn Heidelbaugh. She's a curator at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

325.049

When the war comes, all of those experienced employees disappear from the workforce at once. And this throws the post office into turmoil. The new recruits are slower, not as efficient. They don't have a deep knowledge of the landscape. And to be fair, the landscape has gotten more complicated. More and more people, more and more addresses. And sometimes people make a mistake.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

351.564

You know, they just write on their envelope, Margaret, Oak Street, Detroit. Like, what the heck do you do with that? So to help these novice mail sorters, the post office creates some one and two digit codes and assigns them to different zones in some big cities.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

392.327

But after the war, things escalate. By the 50s, the U.S. economy is booming. And in the years between 1940 and 1960, the volume of mail more than doubles. There are more and more mail order businesses. More and more political mail, catalogs, magazines.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

427.737

By the early 60s, the post office department is struggling to handle all this because a lot of the mail sorting is still happening by hand. Picture rows upon rows of people slotting mail into cubbyholes.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

455.034

Then in 1961, a new person takes over the post office. Postmaster General J. Edward Day. He's a newcomer to Washington. The New York Times calls him the least known cabinet member in John F. Kennedy's administration and then proves its own point by accidentally identifying him as Clarence Day. He'd served on a submarine in World War II. Then he was an exec at Prudential Insurance.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

481.239

And he sets off on a mission to streamline the post office.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

491.588

OK, so there's a big push like new, new, new machines, machines like that's the feeling.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

503.237

Soon after he arrives, J. Edward Day hears about an idea that's been knocking around the post office for years. Adding numbers to all addresses. There's one postal inspector in Philadelphia named Robert Moon who's been talking about a three-digit code. Other people are talking about this kind of thing, too. And J. Edward Day says, let's do it.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

51.503

Because this building, like other big buildings around the city and the country, it has its own zip code. Another elevator bank.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

526.167

Let's create a new nationwide five-digit code to help sort the mail. It would make delivery faster and more efficient. It would help people figure out, you know, is this for Springfield, Arkansas? Springfield, California? One of the five or so Springfields in Wisconsin? And it would set the post office up for the future, for automation, because numbers are easier for machines to read.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

552.714

And with that, the zip code is born. How does it come to get the name that it has, the zip code?

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

578.746

Zone makes some sense. They were going to be dividing the country into zones. Improvement, maybe two. But the last word?

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

599.131

But yeah, they go with Zone Improvement Plan, ZIP. Now, I did not know this, but each number in the new ZIP code has a specific meaning. They basically start with a big geographic area and get increasingly more targeted and local. So the first number in the zip code directs a letter to one large zone. There are 10 of them, numbered 0 through 9, 0 in the east, 9 in the west.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

624.987

So like, for example, the Empire State Building has the zip code 10118. That first one will direct a letter to a big area that includes New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Then the next two numbers, 01, help direct it to a particular processing center in that zone, In this case, the processing center is a couple blocks away in Manhattan, near Penn Station.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

647.118

And then the last two numbers mark out a particular post office or neighborhood. This idea is elegant, simple, and very powerful. It takes this tangle of addresses and organizes it beautifully. For the post office, this is a huge relief.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

65.597

Finally, we made it to the top, the 102nd floor. Gorgeous views of New York City all around us. Willa, how long did it take?

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

691.388

But it'll only work if you can get people to use it. As the story goes, Postmaster General J. Edward Day is on a flight from Chicago to D.C. when he realizes just how difficult that task will be. He happens to be sitting next to the head of AT&T, and he mentions that the post office will be introducing this new system.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

7.427

The other day, I went out into New York City with a mission. I wanted to travel the length of one entire zip code as fast as I could. Start the timer.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

715.1

The AT&T guy is like, oh man, we tried to do that with area codes, and people hated it. Sure enough, when the zip code rolls out in 1963, the public is not wild about it.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

742.136

Yeah, you know, institutions like the post office are trying to deal with this increasingly complex world by turning it into numbers. But ordinary citizens feel like they're being turned into numbers. One newspaper complains that this is a way to further subdue man with digits. But the post office had expected this. And they had a secret weapon, a little cartoon character named Mr. Zip.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

772.006

By the way, I found a post office document confirming that Mr. Zip has no first name. Nevertheless, he feels like this warm, friendly guy.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

79.918

I ended up on this little mission because I had gotten curious about the zip code. It pops up all over our daily lives. Like you type it into the machine at the gas station to verify your credit card. You might type it into a rental search website if you're looking for a new apartment. I actually found a report saying that back in 2013, the zip code contributed about $10 billion a year to the U.S.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

797.128

In the 60s, Mr. Zip is everywhere. On posters and stamps and cardboard cutouts and literally parade floats. So with Mr. Zip, a lot of people start to hear about the zip code. But that is not enough. Zip code.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

818.193

Zip code. Zip code.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

821.995

The post office also needs to explain the zip code, like what it is and how it works. And so they put out a series of advertisements and PSAs, some of which are in fact songs.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

849.157

There's choreography, props. In another ad, the singer Ethel Merman advertises the zip code to the tune of Zippity-Doo-Dah.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

865.99

It's all an effort to get zip codes to worm their way into people's minds so that they will think of this every time they write a letter. Like, they need to do some work here. Learn their own zip code, learn everyone else's zip code. Without that, this won't work.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

889.653

This whole campaign is trying to say this is about communication, even identity. Mine is 30949.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

923.974

The zip code goes from this little-known and sort of hated number to just a part of life, something almost everyone uses all the time. It was an enormous success, a huge mail revolution. It helps bring the post office into the modern era, helps them keep up with this crush of letters and packages and magazines, which was their whole goal. But they have also done something else.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

954.414

Something which was not explicitly their goal. They have created a simple, widely used, almost universally recognized system for dividing up the country into smaller chunks. And almost right away, other people start to realize, oh wait, that could be useful for us, too.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

975.311

In 1966, three years after the zip code is introduced, a postmaster in Utah notes a variety of novel ways that other people have begun to use the zip code. He says that a handful of IRS offices had rearranged agent territories to conform with zip codes and that the Council of California was targeting agricultural advice by zip code.

Planet Money

ZIP Codes!

997.698

And speaking of targeting, this also really appealed to advertisers.

Planet Money

After the fires

1.243

This is Planet Money from NPR. Have you been able to go back to your house?

Planet Money

After the fires

103.986

The son, Jahad, actually went toward the fire to watch it burn. He got close enough to feel the heat.

Planet Money

After the fires

1074.987

And then with all of this, adjusters will start to add up the value of everything that was in the house, element by element in this special estimating software. You put in the toilets, the countertops, the tiles in the shower, and then the software adds up all the materials, multiplies them by the average cost of those materials, adjusts it for the local labor market, and

Planet Money

After the fires

1095.636

comes up with an estimate for how much it will cost to replace the homeowner's house and possessions.

Planet Money

After the fires

1131.829

If you're sensing a little skepticism towards the insurance industry from Leland, here's why. Leland doesn't work for an insurance company anymore. He used to. But now he's what's called a public adjuster. He's essentially a hired gun.

Planet Money

After the fires

1146.346

If an adjuster from an insurance company comes back with an estimate that is way lower than what a homeowner thinks it should be, then they can hire someone like Leland to give a second opinion.

Planet Money

After the fires

1190.598

And if this seems like a weird way for people to get what they're owed from insurance companies, yes, something seems funky here.

Planet Money

After the fires

1286.784

Yeah, the next phase would be construction, but We're not even really going to get into the construction side of things because that is still months away. But just think about all the moving pieces there, right? Like getting a single house built can feel like an absolute miracle. Putting up 15,000 new homes and businesses, structures at the same time.

Planet Money

After the fires

1306.509

People are going to need contractors, building plans from architects. We're going to need engineers to sign off on everything. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters.

Planet Money

After the fires

1341.829

It could be years and years before these neighborhoods are really neighborhoods again. And there's no guarantee that what comes next will capture any of what made Altadena special in the first place. The craftsman-style homes, the 80-year-old hardware store, the diner, the diner with my three-year-old's favorite shrimp and grits.

Planet Money

After the fires

135.176

Aaron is remarkably calm about all of this. And he has this very calming presence in general. But in his eyes, you can see that he's sad. His son, Jahad... He looks more upset, but not sad. He's more, like, frustrated. He says most of the people they know in Altadena lost their homes. Now, Altadena, it has this, like, strong middle class.

Planet Money

After the fires

1372.619

It's been two weeks since the fire started. The last time Jahad was here, he watched his business burn to the ground. And today, he's going to go back to look at it. There's a new checkpoint now, further into the burn zone, and that's where we meet up.

Planet Money

After the fires

1399.226

You're going to drive in? Yeah, I'm going to drive in. Okay. He may try to see his childhood home, too, if his dad is up for it. I don't want to encroach on that moment for you or your dad, so I feel like I should just let you guys go here. Okay.

Planet Money

After the fires

1415.358

Yeah. Okay. Good luck, Jihad. Thank you. Yeah. He gets in his car and drives off through the checkpoint.

Planet Money

After the fires

1484.551

This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Keith Romer, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Neil Tavalt with help from Gilly Moon. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Planet Money

After the fires

1504.626

Thanks also to Andrea Diamond.

Planet Money

After the fires

1507.629

And I'm Sarah Gonzalez. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

Planet Money

After the fires

162.872

81% of the Black people living in Altadena own their homes, which is almost double the national average. And there are real concerns that the Black community here, the Latino community here, which together make up about half of the population... will lose generational wealth, that investors will take advantage of them by offering fast, undervalued cash for their property.

Planet Money

After the fires

19.172

The Wednesday after the big fires started in Los Angeles.

Planet Money

After the fires

247.12

Aaron didn't stay long, 10, 15 minutes at the most, just looking around, looking out on the block, looking at what used to be his house. There was nothing left.

Planet Money

After the fires

280.1

The pictures are also what Jihad wishes their family had.

Planet Money

After the fires

29.085

It's like fully burned down to... Burned down to the ground.

Planet Money

After the fires

296.167

Their family has deep roots here. And the dad, Aaron, he said he and his wife planned to stay here. He always thought he would live the rest of his life in Altadena, he said. So he plans to rebuild here. That is his plan.

Planet Money

After the fires

351.457

So I can cross the barricades. So if there's an address you want me to check on, I'm happy to check on it for you until they let you in.

Planet Money

After the fires

361.26

Yeah, yeah, I'll give you a card in a minute. Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

Planet Money

After the fires

366.52

And I'm Sarah Gonzalez. Residents are not allowed into the burndown areas, but reporters are. So we're going into the burn zone to see what's happening there. What happens after this kind of disaster?

Planet Money

After the fires

397.318

Today on the show, what we saw in Altadena. There have to be more than 100 streets that can lead you to the burned out areas of Altadena. And on the day we were there, they were all blocked off.

Planet Money

After the fires

433.993

Sarah. Sarah. Hi. I'm just curious. Why are none of you guys wearing masks?

Planet Money

After the fires

447.736

We get to a checkpoint. We're told to stop, roll down the window.

Planet Money

After the fires

471.245

It's wild to think that the people who have homes here, have businesses here, are not allowed in, but we are. So far it looks like nothing is burned yet, but you can just feel it coming, you know?

Planet Money

After the fires

495.074

We're driving up one of the main commercial streets past a gas station, a middle school, grocery stores. We're maybe a few blocks in. Oh, my gosh.

Planet Money

After the fires

526.758

Let me tell you a little bit about Altadena before the fires. It was this little green pocket of L.A. I live near Altadena. This is one of my neighborhoods. My husband and I and my kids, we'd drive around here just to look at the trees. Giant, mature trees. Some of the oldest, fullest, weirdest-looking trees in L.A.

Planet Money

After the fires

545.233

And the backdrop of Altadena is the San Gabriel Mountains, these beautiful mountains that always look blue. But today, there is no blue. There is no green.

Planet Money

After the fires

583.742

You want to walk around a little bit? We're sort of in the hills overlooking Altadena, and the only thing that makes you know you're on a residential street is the way the cars were parked on the street. That and the fact that when you look out in every direction, the only thing you see standing besides trees that survive sometimes is a brick fireplace, a brick fireplace, a brick fireplace.

Planet Money

After the fires

615.36

It makes you want to build a house made exclusively out of brick. Right? It's like all you see. Like, where's the refrigerator? Where's the refrigerator in this house? Where's the stove? You can't see, like, oh, the kitchen surely was here. For blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks, it's just leveled homes. And it's, like, eerily quiet. There's basically no activity here beyond the checkpoints.

Planet Money

After the fires

651.007

You thought people were going to be, like, getting to work.

Planet Money

After the fires

657.65

Yeah.

Planet Money

After the fires

679.504

Do you know what this building was?

Planet Money

After the fires

687.767

Both fires are still burning. They have not been fully contained yet. So the beginning of the beginning of the rebuilding hasn't even started yet. Residents aren't even allowed to see what we're seeing.

Planet Money

After the fires

732.884

Yeah, Aaron's building is standing. The front door is cracked open. It looks like maybe somebody kicked it in, but it generally looks untouched.

Planet Money

After the fires

780.089

Well, it's, yeah, leveled. It's just a pile of metal and ash and who knows what. It's hard to tell. And this is what thousands of people are going to come back to when they are allowed back in. And honestly, it is hard to imagine that people will want to live here anytime soon because the things that make a neighborhood a neighborhood aren't here.

Planet Money

After the fires

807.105

The bank, the post office, schools, parks, the vegan restaurant, the gas station, they do not exist.

Planet Money

After the fires

82.421

We met Jahad and Aaron when they were standing on one of the main commercial streets in Altadena, where the Eaton fire burned through about half of the town. Along with Aaron's home, the business that he runs with his two sons also caught fire.

Planet Money

After the fires

840.757

When a community burns to the ground, when all of the homes, all of the buildings, all of the infrastructure is completely destroyed, it's hard to know where to even begin.

Planet Money

After the fires

868.313

The cleanup alone is... an enormous undertaking. Hazmat teams from the US EPA, from FEMA, have to remove all the toxic stuff and the explosive stuff, like propane tanks, car batteries. They have to remove the car batteries out of cars that were left in the burn zone. This is the most complex part of the process. And then once that's done, then you start to remove the structural debris. Basically,

Planet Money

After the fires

891.673

Everything left from the thousands of structures and cars burned down. We are talking truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of debris being removed and trucked off in a city where there is always, always traffic. And then at some point, you test the soil. Make sure it's safe to even build on.

Planet Money

After the fires

917.987

Now, The larger, very complex issue here is whether the private market will even want to insure homes in California at all anymore because of the fire threats and whether the state is going to have to intervene even more in home insurance than it already does.

Planet Money

After the fires

957.53

Yeah, yeah. The big checks. The checks that say, okay, here, rebuild with this. They don't come until after the insurance company decides how much money it will take to replace your home and all your possessions.

Planet Money

After the fires

999.038

Leland has been an insurance adjuster for something like 20 years.

Planet Money

The "chilling effect" of deportations

541.624

As a law enforcement official, you've taken a noble and honorable oath to protect and serve.

Planet Money

The "chilling effect" of deportations

565.869

First of all, what is Secure Communities? Very simply, it is an initiative to help DHS identify removable aliens arrested for crimes. Under secure communities, your agency's fingerprint data is now shared with DHS.

Planet Money

The "chilling effect" of deportations

639.809

The most important message is that secure communities does not change who you question or arrest. You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. You also act as a guardian of civil rights and liberties. Thank you for taking the time to watch the video today.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1.141

This is Planet Money from NPR.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1004.124

The Vietnamese hacker helped Zeke crack into the fake crypto trading app that Vicky Ho had given him, although whoever was behind the app quickly shut down the whole operation when they realized that an intrusion was happening. But from that hacker, and from other people Zeke spoke to, he was able to get a sense of what a day in the life was like for someone in one of these scam compounds.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1053.487

So... Almost like the moment you write back, you get pushed up to someone who is more of like the closer.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1131.536

Zeke had learned that many of these scam messages originated in Cambodia. And more specifically, from a single city, actually a single neighborhood there. A place called Chinatown in a beach town called Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville is a string of high rises along the water. It looks a little bit like a less glitzy Miami.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1159.192

Hello everybody and welcome back. Today we're in Sunookville. There's actually a ton of video blogs in this strange genre. European tourists careening around Sihanoukville with a camera on, unaware of what it is they're really filming. We are in Sihanoukville. It seems like a very interesting place. We are in Sihanoukville.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1216.89

And sorry, this vacation blogger, what did they report seeing?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1247.081

Oh, so it's like a prison city almost.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1275.071

Zeke's implication here is that the ambulances kept coming to the compounds because the people inside were being beaten badly enough, often enough, that they frequently needed to be taken to the hospital. Zeke starts talking to local reporters in Cambodia who've been investigating these compounds. Danielle Keaton Olson and Mek Dura. They both worked for a paper there called Voice of Democracy.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

132.737

Zeke is an unusual person. He writes for Bloomberg Businessweek, but instead of doing what I would think he's supposed to do there, which is write about how a successful company has an IPO or something, Zeke is the guy at the fancy business publication who is only really happy when he's investigating scams.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1322.577

I talked to Daraa over the world's glitchiest internet connection. He was connecting from an internet cafe in Phnom Penh, the city where he began his career as a reporter.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1338.035

The way Daraa first started to crack the scam compound story was when a Chinese friend brought him a group of people who'd just gotten out of one of the compounds.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1357.99

As details emerged, he kept adjusting his picture of what life was like in there. More cruel, more brutal. He started hanging around outside the compounds, looking at how their exteriors were set up. He saw high security. Barbed wire, guards, people only allowed to enter or leave with a card. One of the questions I had about all this was just, why not just pay people to do this?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1383.861

Why hold them prisoner at all? What I learned is that these compounds seem to be an evolution. In the beginning, some people likely were coming in voluntarily for jobs where they'd be paid to scam Americans and Chinese people. Here's Zeke.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1408.259

And is it sort of like that similarly, like on the American side of it, the reason people fall for these scams is they're desperate and something has happened in their lives that has thrown a wrench into the gears. It sounds like for the people who end up being compelled to run these scams, it's similar.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1423.831

It's like their life hits a rough patch and they try something risky that they might not have tried.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1447.85

So Zeke says this may have started as a business without human trafficking. And some of these compounds may include willing workers. But the margins are thin here. It takes a lot of messages to find a sucker. And Daraa told me that he talked to a boss from one of the compounds who described the financial pressure he feels he's under.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1479.927

So the overbosses push the bosses under them, and the bosses push the people beneath. Which, in this environment, often means physical torture.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

150.845

And this particular text message he'd gotten from one Vicky Ho, he wanted to play along and experience the scam because he'd heard that these wrong number texts might be somehow connected to a cryptocurrency that he's obsessed with, a cryptocurrency called Tether.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1526.163

Zeke wanted to go to see these compounds in person for himself. He did not expect to get inside, but he wanted to see how close he could get. So he takes a bus from Vietnam to Cambodia. He meets up with the reporter Mektara, and they head to the neighborhood where all of these scam compounds are.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1599.52

This was the place that Zeke had heard so many rumors about, the place that the text message from Vicky Ho had drawn him to, a boomtown gone bust, half-built, that had turned into this, a string of nondescript buildings modified to become more like prisons.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

16.653

Around for dinner today? Are you still in Boston? If you answer and tell them it's the wrong number, they'll try to engage you in conversation. It feels like a scam, but the actual scam part never seems to materialize.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1641.424

So did you try to just walk in?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1657.325

Yeah. Zeke is a fantastic investigative reporter in print. He was not there in the field as an audio reporter, but he did record one 12-second clip inside the hotel, which he sent me.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1676.981

I like this music, Zeke observes. This is Chinese music, the staff member helpfully points out.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1747.765

So was your suspicion, like obviously it's hard to prove, but the hotel was almost just like the base of operations for the people profiting from the compound? Yeah.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1872.076

So for you, it's like you see all that misery. So many things have to happen to create that situation. But what you see undergirding it is Tether, like this cryptocurrency that you had originally been curious about. I mean, if it weren't Tether, it might be a different form of crypto. But that without digital, very difficult to trace money...

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1893.948

you don't have a scam that's able to get that broke and organized and stay up for that long. That in a world where, you know, you had the same authoritarian regime and you had people wanting to make money and human misery, that just the money trail of banking would mean that it was easier for even like other countries to prosecute this.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1924.83

A study from the University of Texas estimates that between 2020 and 2024, pig butchering scammers have likely stolen more than $75 billion internationally. Even though it is in many cases Americans falling for these scams, it's not entirely clear what the American government could do about them. Zeke believes that the problem, it may actually be solved in China.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1953.43

These days, Zeke is back in America, where he continues to chase down all manner of financial funny business. This week, it was a lender accused of making illegal loans to small businesses. Mek Dura, who covered the scam compounds in Cambodia, perhaps closer than anyone else, no longer has a newspaper job. His paper was shut down last year by the Cambodian regime.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

1976.0

Dura told us he now spends his time gardening vegetables and continuing to research criminal activity associated with the compounds. He said the one new trend in the scamming industry these days? AI. Some of these scam bosses have figured out that a chatbot can do this work just as well as a trafficked human. Honestly, one job AI could steal where I don't think anybody would complain.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

199.527

Yes. Okay. And also, wait, sorry, I should just ask you, you refer to these scams as pig butchering scams. Can you just explain that term?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

2029.065

Surge Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruthi Pinamaneni, and it's produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact-checking this week by Sean Merchant. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Leah Reese-Dennis.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

238.221

Okay. So you decide you're going to intentionally fall for the scam. So you start engaging with her. How does the conversation play out? How does the scam play out?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

294.086

Right, because if she says she's somewhere else, then she never has to meet you.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

301.95

Zeke finds himself getting increasingly more impatient.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

315.351

Like what was Vicky up to? Like what types of things was she doing?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

331.457

You're starting to feel like the tug of the fishing line.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

368.797

And is short-term, I'm not a financial journalist, is short-term node trading a thing in some other context? Or is it just a bunch of words that sound mathy and sciencey?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

436.586

As long as you like this Tesla, money is nothing.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

444.932

Vicky Ho told Zeke, her fattened pig, what he had to do. He needed to go home and download a very sketchy looking app for his iPhone. Zeke was delighted.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

466.357

And this is like an iPhone app? Kind of. Kind of.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

470.119

Okay. It's like not allowed in the Apple store, but it can be in a dodgy way put onto an iPhone.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

492.334

Did you have to jailbreak your phone?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

563.375

Which is true, actually. It's pegged to the dollar.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

609.736

You're going to be buying a Tesla. Okay, so just to recap, because I fear this may be getting a little bit confusing, Vicky told Zeke to spend 100 real dollars on $100 worth of the cryptocurrency Tether. And then she told him to transfer that crypto into a wallet, a crypto bank account on the internet. Vicky was saying to Zeke that this wallet belonged to a crypto trading app called ZBXS.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

61.507

Okay. August 2022, you get a text message from a woman named Vicky Ho. What did Vicky Ho want?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

635.938

More likely, the money was just going directly to the entity behind Vicky Ho. Zeke, meanwhile, was dutifully following all of these instructions so that he could learn as much about the entity as possible.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

723.666

In this moment, when the person claiming to be Vicky Ho was telling Zeke to send her more money so that he could buy his ailing daughter a gift, things had gone as far as were really useful for Zeke. He actually had what he needed from this scammer posing as Vicky Ho. Cryptocurrency is traceable.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

741.867

When crypto is sent from one person to another, it usually leaves a public trail, which meant Zeke could look at the wallet where he'd sent his hundred bucks and see all of its other transactions, the money in, the money out.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

754.195

And when he looked, he saw vast sums of money flowing from suckers like him in the West to this address where it would sit for a moment and then move on to Asian crypto exchanges, presumably to be cashed out by the scammers. Do you have a sense of how do people come to lose like millions of dollars in this?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

804.385

Yeah. There's weirdly something exciting about knowing that... This door that you're dancing in front of, some people have walked through to complete ruin. Like you're talking to someone who is trying to push you into a process where they will take all of your money and all the money you have access to. And that's like a dangerous thing.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

821.635

But they're also doing it in such a clumsy way that you can like have fun with it, I guess.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

902.082

I actually talked to Ice Toad. He told me that, like many people who end up in this world, he arrived because he got scammed himself. The trick he fell for, it used to be called a romance scam. At some point, those romance scams evolved into what we now know to be pig butchering scams.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

921.281

Ice Toad finds the Global Anti-Scam Organization, which was started by a woman from Singapore who had also been scammed. But while the organization began in an effort to protect people being scammed, its members had started to learn about the scammers themselves.

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

951.168

How did you begin to understand that?

Planet Money

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

966.133

When Zeke finally found Ice Toad, what he'd originally wanted was just help from a crypto tracing expert who might be able to follow the $100 he'd sent Vicky Ho further and more forensically than he could on his own.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

0.572

Heads up, in this episode, we are not able to consistently pronounce the word pecan. Sometimes it's pecan, sometimes it's pecan. Okay, you've been warned. This is Planet Money from NPR. So I guess, would you mind introducing yourself?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1066.4

As a Canadian, Alex totally supports the Buy Canadian movement. But as a Canadian business owner, it's a little more complicated. She's getting these emails, right, from people saying, you know, can you source your U.S. nuts from anywhere else? But of course, she's already bought a lot of the U.S. nuts.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1084.345

And she also thinks striking back against these small farmers and suppliers is not the right approach.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1102.436

So Alex thinks, I just need to tell the stories of my farmers and suppliers in the U.S. You know, many of them also hate what Trump's doing with tariffs. So she writes this really long, thoughtful newsletter. And she says, look, I totally get wanting to cut ties with the U.S., But let me show you who these people are.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1177.188

So I headed up to Vancouver. And when I got there, I started to see evidence of the trade war everywhere. Some stores had signs out front that read Canadian owned and operated. In the supermarket, there are these little labels under the cookies or cereal that say product of Canada.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1195.238

And when I went into a liquor store, all of the American liquor was covered up with black blankets because British Columbia had stopped the retail sale of American alcohol. Ouch.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1215.656

Now, when I got there, things seemed calm. I went in to meet Alex in person.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1225.303

Nut hut isn't a typical store. It's more like a little production facility. OK, so would you give me a tour?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1236.828

It was a short tour.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1238.831

Alex says they use this tiny space to process and pack the nuts. And this is where, so we have a packing table, we have a dehydration table. And the occasional customer walks in to pick up their order. Amy! Alex seems to know all of her customers by name, like Amy Robinson. Amy's here to pick up some almonds and cashews, not American nuts.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1261.27

And when I asked Amy how she's participating in the trade war, I learned that she is like the most buy local person ever. She runs a nonprofit called Loco BC, which tries to encourage people to buy stuff from this province, from British Columbia.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1307.165

inter-provincial trade barriers. Like, you can't go online and order Okanagan wine and have it shipped to your home in Toronto. There are a lot of these kinds of rules.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

134.599

Shirley says the pecans grow by the river on these enormous trees. Some of the trees are over 150 years old. The nuts are essentially wild.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1359.974

Another customer I talked to was Alvecio Del Bianco. He had come into the Nut Hut to pick up his family's order. They are also trying to buy Canadian, not just nuts, all the things.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1385.455

Okay, when you just did that, is that because people are parsing it in weird ways?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1432.526

I also talked to this other customer, a man named Sam Shea. Alex was putting some fairly large bags on the counter for him. It looks like you're feeding a dozen people. It's not that many people. He also said he's trying to buy Canadian. Are you changing your buying habits in general?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1465.839

Okay, and then, but like, how come that's okay? I point to the bag of Shirley's Arkansas pecans he's buying.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1486.12

And then are there other exceptions you'll make aside from American pecans?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1494.829

This was the sense I got from my time at Nut Hut. These trade-offs get so complicated that in the end, some people just buy the American nuts. Sam was not alone.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1526.547

And that's why for Alex at Nuthut... Her business hasn't actually taken that big a hit. I think yesterday I was looking at her numbers.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1558.663

For now, things seem to be balancing themselves out, although the trade war has really just begun. So Alex and her customs broker Ray, and surely with the pecans, they are all just starting to figure out their strategy. In a war they did not start. If you're new to Planet Money, welcome. We are very glad to have you here.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

1589.561

We have a lot more stories to help you make sense of this confusing economic moment in your feed twice a week.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

167.634

Sorry, Georgia. Please don't come at us. Shirley and I talked for hours about the history of pecans, the business of pecans, how to best get the pecan out of the shell. Shirley, is there anything else I should know about pecans?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

244.871

And now Alex and Shirley's years-long business relationship has become kind of a tale of a star-crossed love, with tariffs coming between them.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

25.95

How do you not giggle when you say Nut Hut?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

276.539

Right, because trade is this big global thing, but it is made up of individual farmers and business owners and truckers and manufacturers. And as the tariff chaos spreads, millions of people all over the world are going to have to reevaluate relationships that they have been building for years. So what is a small business person to do?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

332.026

Today on the show, we focus on one Canadian business – to hear all about the uncertainty and the difficult decisions that civilians have to make in a war they didn't ask for.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

384.059

If there was no global trade, Canadians would be eating a lot of salmon and maple syrup and lentils. But basically, no bananas, no avocados, and no pecans. Because pecans need warm weather and humidity. They can't easily grow outdoors in Canada.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

432.883

Obviously, that makes a lot of sense. It is right next door. So about 40% of what Alex sells actually comes from the U.S. She gets her pistachios and her walnuts from California. And of course, she gets her pecans from Shirley in Arkansas.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

472.838

By the way, in Canada, that agreement is called CUSMA.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

50.954

Anyhow, Alex has been running her small business in Vancouver for almost a decade.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

500.309

Raymond Mass is Alex's customs broker. He's got a company called Advanced Global Transportation Technologies.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

517.236

I have a few more puns noted down. That's amazing. It's very hard to do this story without a lot of puns and nut jokes, truthfully. I feel like we've been fairly restrained so far, don't you? You're welcome. I can't believe it.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

539.384

And when the guitars or bourbon or motorcycles or nuts get to the U.S. border on their way into Canada, I guess for a big party. Fun party. He helps to make sure that everything is properly accounted for.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

567.78

And then where does that money go?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

595.609

But Canada retaliates right away. On February 1st, they put out a list of U.S. products they might tariff. Ray pours over that list. He tries to figure out what this all means for his clients, for Alex. One thing he notices, there are some geopolitics at play. Canada's retaliatory tariffs seem to be targeted more at imports from red states than blue states.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

640.922

Now, Alex, she imports from both red states and blue states. She gets her pistachios and walnuts from blue California and her pecans from red Arkansas. Those are the three nuts she gets in the U.S. So she calls up Ray, her customs broker, and she says, are any of my nuts on that list?

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

687.473

So Alex started doing just that kind of panic purchasing from the U.S.? Yeah, I would call it panic purchasing or wise. It was wise. It was precautionary. Because the tariffs at that point were paused, but they were coming. So over the course of February, she tries to stockpile as many American nuts as she can. Each nut requires a slightly different plan.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

69.787

And that is not easy. Not everyone is reliable. She still hasn't found a pine nut that she really likes. So she doesn't sell pine nuts. So when she starts working with somebody good, she is very loyal.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

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We talked to her while she was in the middle of all of this.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

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Yeah. I didn't know that.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

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News you can use. Alex says if you take one thing away from the story, it should be this. Put your nuts in the fridge. So, extra pallets of walnuts purchased and put into cold storage.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

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lovingly pressuring her farmer, Brad, to get the pistachios on the road.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

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But the pecans... The pecans are already a marked man, a marked nut. Alex has to act fast. So she emails Shirley, her pecan supplier in Arkansas, and she's like, can you get your pecans on a truck before March 4th? That is the day when Canada's retaliatory tariffs are actually going into effect.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

917.181

She'd even been thinking about trying to expand her pecan empire to grocery stores in Canada. But now, with all of the chaos around Trump's tariffs, Shirley says that doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

952.189

Shirley's pecans arrive in Canada on March 3rd, the day before the tariffs go into effect. Alex has successfully stockpiled a year's supply of pecans just in time.

Planet Money

Trade war dispatch from Canada

989.018

Ooh, Canadians are pissed. And this huge nationwide campaign has been taking shape by Canadian and Canadians from British Columbia to Quebec to Newfoundland, people who do not always agree on much, they have unified behind this movement to buy Canadian and boycott the U.S. That is potentially really bad news for Nut Hut.

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In the words of 77 Nobel laureates in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics, RFK Jr., at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, would put the public's health in jeopardy and undermine America's global leadership in the health sciences.

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Introducing: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

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And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Saul Rubin, and Emma Illick-Frank. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherland is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Saul Rubin, and Emma Illick-Frank. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherland is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on How Democrats Can Build Their Way Back to Power

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Bill Maher on Hating Donald Trump, the Far Left and 69ing

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And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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Trump 2.0's Biggest Scandal Yet

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The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

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And while China's threatened to reduce their order book, I would bet the order book... that the Chinese, the CCP, and the people at Boeing who are very smart and hire former ambassadors have all said to each other, look, there's a non-zero probability, a most likely opportunity that the order book and the way we do business is going to stay exactly the same.

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I absolutely love that. It answers the fuck, marry, kill, right? We got the couch. We got his wife. Now we got the kill. I'm recycling everything. I'm a walking meme right now, Ed. I'm a walking meme. What's going on with you? It's time for banter. Let's see, what is going on with me?

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The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

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Well, to stick to the moral argument, it's bad for the economy. And that is when all of that prosperity is being crowded into the point where Oh, 1%. One, I don't think they have as much of a vested interest in public infrastructure and the well-being and prosperity of America. Do they have a vested interest in our healthcare system? No.

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The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

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Do they even have a vested interest in our national security? Because at the end of the day, they can peace out to New Zealand or Dubai or London. So you're essentially creating...

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The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

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a superclass of people that control so much economics and have so much power over our government, but don't exercise the power in a means that affects all of America because they've basically become sequestered from America and what's good or what's bad about it. They're literally behind gilded gates.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1266.193

And at some point, and I don't think they believe this, at some point people show up with pitchforks And lanterns, right? But if you think about third world nations that are never able to get out of the way and ultimately end up in revolution, they have what's the common feature across all of them? Crazy income inequality.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1287.24

So this is not only bad for the economy, it's bad, it's really damaging for our culture. And what you see here is that Young people are increasingly disillusioned with America. More than 4 in 10 young Americans today under 30 say they're barely getting by financially, while just 16%, 1 in 6, young people say they're doing well or very well.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1311.706

1 in 6 young Americans, the wealthiest country in the world, say they're doing well or very well. Now, some of that is probably a benchmarking problem where they think if they're not on a Gulf Stream or in St. Barts, they're failing. But still, some of that is real. They have less money. Fewer than half feel a sense of community, with only 17% reporting deep social connection. That is really sad.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1332.339

Now, is income inequality driving all of this? No. But I've said on this show for a long time that the majority of what ails America... can either be reverse engineered or partially correlated to massive income inequality.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

145.046

Yeah, he's actually – he has sort of this Long Island feel about him, but he's – not that Long Island people aren't well-read, but he's very – you get the sense he's kind of a blue-collar guy. He's actually very well-read and very intelligent. I like him a lot. I'm a huge fan of his. Let me guess, you're starting a podcast. The rest is Ed. Isn't this something?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1459.82

Yeah, it's gotten much worse.

Prof G Markets

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1462.162

Which says to me, we need a new framing. And that is, I think it's inspiring that AOC and Bernie are able to turn out these many people. There's definitely a groundswell of dissatisfaction. I think it was more inspired by some of the

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1476.647

Illegal seizure of constitutional power, the idea that people are being rounded up effectively, some of the corruption, people being fired in sort of a reckless and cruel manner. I don't know if this was directly about income inequality, but that's sort of Bernie's talk track. I would reframe it because sometimes I think he comes across—I think the class warrior rap hasn't really resonated.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1499.999

Per your comments, it continues to get worse. I think the framing should be something along the lines of the following, and that is— The greatest innovation in history was not the iPhone or the semiconductor. It was the American middle class. It's created more tax revenue. It's fought wars. It's funded everything from the iPhone to vaccines.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1520.409

The American middle class is the greatest innovation in history. Now, how did it happen? It happened because 7 million men returned from war and they demonstrated heroism, they were fit, and we put a bunch of money in their pockets. We had the National Highway Transportation Act, we had FHA loans, we had the GI Bill, and we made them very attractive to women. So they mated, had the baby boom,

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1543.576

And then we took a lot of that money and that prosperity from these households that were very productive. We taxed it at a fair rate, including corporations that were sometimes paying 40% and 50%, the super wealthy that were sometimes paying 70%, 80%, and 90%.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1555.626

And we not only reinvested continually in the middle class, but we said, we need to invite more people who have been sequestered from this prosperity into the fold. And we had legislation that advanced the rights of women and of non-whites, and we built the greatest society in history. And it all started from a really robust middle class. And it's like, well, okay, that's fine. You got me there.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1577.065

Most people would agree, Republicans and Democrats, where... Sometimes we differ in opinion is that Republicans or the super wealthy will try and convince you that the middle class is a self-healing organism that happens on its own, or that if you let the most productive people in the world, i.e.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1592.792

the super rich, do their thing unfettered, that the value they create will trickle down to the middle class. We have so much data showing that just doesn't work. And I think we need to come out of the closet and say, you have to redistribute income to From corporations and from the wealthy to the middle class in the form of education, child tax credit, a truly progressive tax system.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1616.445

Maybe young people under the age of 40 or anyone that makes less than $100,000 plays 10%. Anyone that makes over a million, an alternative minimum tax of 40%. Here's the thing about taxes. You could lower the tax rates if you enforce them. It's the tax code where everybody gets fucked.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1631.818

And until we acknowledge that the middle class is not a self-healing organism and there needs to be redistribution from corporations and the super wealthy to the middle class, it's just going to continue to go sideways and wither. And actually the middle class hasn't declined, if you will, but it's been static relative to the unbelievable prosperity that's been crammed into the top 1%.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1653.973

And then you lay on top of that social media, which is basically an orgy of the life. of the top 0.1%. So that's the new benchmark. And what you end up with is people who see prosperity everywhere, but aren't participating it unless they're in the top 0.1%, which leads to an obese, angry, depressed, anxious, younger generation.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1674.779

So all of this is on a downward spiral focused on not only prosperity being crammed into the 0.1%, but that prosperity being rubbed in everyone's face And if people under the age of 40 in the most prosperous nation in history don't feel confident enough that they can form a household and have a kid, then none of this matters.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

169.718

We're actually doing it. We're doing something, a limited series called The Lost Boys.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1718.3

Thank you. So you won't be surprised to learn the Fundrise flagship real estate fund is a complete snooze fest. The fund holds $1.1 billion worth of institutional caliber real estate managed by a team of pros focused on steadily growing your net worth for decades to come. See? Boring. And that's the point.

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1757.532

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Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

176.142

Look, every one I do, I make another 10 or 12 bucks in gross margin. So, you know, baby needs new shoes. And listen to how dreamy my voice is. Say, now look at me. Listen to my voice. Now look at me. Enough said. Podcasts. Podcasts. The moneymaker. You know it. By the way, how was your time with your father? It was great. I had a great time. And your parents live in the UK?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1778.809

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The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

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Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1828.23

Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column NA, and Evolved Bank & Trust, members FDIC. The I.O. card is issued by Patriot Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from MasterCard. Support for the show comes from Public.com. All right. And if you're serious about investing, you need to know about Public.com.

Prof G Markets

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1846.972

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Fund your account in five minutes or less at public.com slash PropG and get up to $10,000 when you transfer your old portfolio. That's public.com slash PropG. Paid for by Public Investing, all investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal, brokered services for U.S.

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listed registered securities, options, and bonds, and a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., Member FINRA and SIPC. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. I should also disclose I am an investor in public.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

198.374

Oh, no, they live here now. No, no, no. They're still in London. Yeah, he was just visiting. Not that I don't know anything about you, Ed. Yeah. What's your last name again? Wait, hold on.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

1984.761

The only two things you have to remember in a negotiation are one, not to make it personal. Don't make it win-lose. Don't create emotion on either side that's going to You know, if you act like an asshole, people don't want to do a deal with you. They want to hurt you in the negotiation. They're not inclined to cut you a break or want to get a deal done.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2001.055

And then the second thing is, oh, show a credible willingness to walk away. He imposed in what was the ultimate little dick energy move. They raise their, they keep matching and he keeps going and he went to 145. And then he says, those tariffs are too high and will clearly come down. okay, you raise them to this point and then a week later say they're clearly too high and they need to come down.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2029.744

You're the one that put this shit in. So my prediction all along is going to be that, or has been, that after all of this noise and damage to our brand is done, the global tariff system, other than world trade that will be inspired across strange bedfellows, because we've got them to start speaking and cooperating, but the U.S. tariff complex or structure across the world will look awful.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2057.831

strikingly similar to the way it looked before we started this bullshit nonsense. And all we have done is alienated people and massively reduced our goodwill and our brand equity. The weird thing is this guy is such a fucking toxic narcissist. I think he enjoys this shit. He doesn't care because he's going to make a billion plus dollars in his Trump meme coin.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2082.397

And he just wants to be the center of attention every day. It's like when my youngest used to act out and be a total asshole, and you realize, okay, they're acting out because they want attention. I mean, this guy is acting out every day. I think he would threaten nuclear war if he were out of the news cycle long enough and wanted desperately back in, regardless of the damage.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

21.389

Prof G. Paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokered services for U.S. listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. I should also disclose I am an investor in Public Investing.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

223.276

I can see that. I'm actually sort of, I wouldn't say either, but I'm curious about your dad. What did your dad do professionally? Finance. And you went to Princeton. Boy, it's been rough for Ed. It's just amazing you've overcome all this adversity. Really impressive.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2271.214

Well... I was thinking, listening to this show, we've been talking about that the long-term damage here is to the erosion in our brand equity, which decreases our margin in millions of different ways that we'll never know directly. I think our allies are just less likely to share information with us. I think...

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2288.992

As someone who is asked to deliver weapons to what might be a terrorist, I was less likely to call the American embassy and say, hey, I saw this. I think people are less likely to send their best and brightest to the U.S. when PhD students are being sent errant emails asking to self-deport. And those types of injuries, it's like having a high blood pressure.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2311.51

It's just at some point it creates an opportunity set or a corpus that is just more prone to bad things to happen to that person. And that's what's essentially he's giving us really high cholesterol or high blood pressure, making us more vulnerable to opportunistic situations. Can it be repaired? Sure. I mean, we've had really dark moments in our history.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2335.043

I think a Democratic or a different Republican in the White House, and maybe even some learning that comes out of this, and seeing Americans kind of rise up and realize that their rights are not foregone conclusions, and then leveraging the Democratic process to change direction... You know, I think our allies will forgive us. I think we have a longer history with them than that.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2355.24

And that's the real damage. The damage and the opportunity is that to tear up 80-year alliances and erode that goodwill is just stupid. And it's sort of been something we've taken for granted. The good news, the good news is I think a lot of that ill will has been ring-fenced to one man. This guy will go down as the stupid presidency.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2378.157

It used to be coarseness and cruelness, but he had a certain feel for the markets. People thought he was a good business person. The markets did do well during his first term. A lot of people from different cohorts did well. Now, granted, did we spend...

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2391.341

$7 trillion in additional deficits or $8 trillion, yeah, but it would be hard to punch too many holes in the economic record of his first administration. Now this one just seems like, okay, how do we go out is just really stupid. But I absolutely think we can repair this, and I think the upside is that a lot of the O.L. is not towards America, it's towards one individual.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

241.788

I'm here for a reason, my brother, and it's only getting started.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2502.049

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2517.497

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Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2743.752

First off, let me just go to how incredibly cynical it is for Elon Musk to show up to the government with a chainsaw. And then shut off $75 billion in USAID going to people struggling with malaria in Myanmar or soup kitchens in war-torn Ukraine. And his company would have been unprofitable had it not been for him reselling carbon credits.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2777.303

I mean, get this. It's automotive revenue decline 20% year on year. I can't name an automobile company. Maybe... At some point, Jeep or I think Jaguar had a rough couple of years that has declined 20% year on year. Staggering. So this company is declining faster than any automobile company in America. You know, I bet, I don't know, Ford was probably at 4 or 6%. I'm guessing single digits.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2799.43

These guys are down 20%. While reducing prices. Their talk track has always been, we're really... not a car company, we're a software company, we're an energy company, but even if you, okay, fine, if we're a car company, because we're all EVs, we have dramatically fewer parts. So we're able to have a much more robust supply chain, much more efficient production and assembly schedule.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2823.562

And we're the most American-made company. We're the most vertical. We own our dealerships. We don't have this weird thing with the local billionaire or the local, the guy who used to be a quarterback for Alabama or whatever, opening a bunch of dealerships. And its Teslas, to their credit, are actually the most American-made product.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2838.172

The majority of products or parts, which was dramatically fewer than going to a Tesla, are sourced in America. All of this adds up to operating margins that were remarkable for the industry of 20%. But the automobile industry is a business of scale. When you buy a Porsche... Cayman, is that the SUV? An Audi Q7 or a Volkswagen Touareg? You're buying the same car. They're off the same platform.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2864.29

These platforms are so expensive to build and maintain that you have to shove a ton of of throughput across these assembly lines.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2873.738

And then in the case of the TORG, the Q7, and the Cayenne, the last 10% of the assembly line, they take three different routes and they put in nicer finishes and nicer leather and nicer badging, and they charge different prices and they market them differently in different ad campaigns, different value propositions, right? But if you don't have the scale, it is an impossible industry.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2900.017

As evidenced by Rivian that makes a great car, they have to sell for $80,000, even though it's costing them $120,000 to produce these things. And until they produce 3x the number, they're never going to get to profitability. So when Tesla's automobile revenues declined 20%,

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2916.144

It's exponentially bad to descale in the automotive industry because those assembly lines are not registering a decrease in cost, even though you have less throughput. As a result, their operating margins have gone from 20% to 2.1%. So their operating margins have declined 90%, yet the stock was up 5%. And this is a company that is technically unprofitable.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2941.249

They've also lost their leadership position. Volkswagen overtook Tesla as the top EV seller in Europe. And registrations for VW EVs increased 150%, while Tesla registrations dropped 38%. And yet he is able to take the stock up 5% by saying, I am going to focus more on Tesla. We still have this idolatry of innovators.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2965.221

We're still under the belief that him spending more time at Fremont at Tesla is somehow going to turn this company around. So I just think it's a case study in meme stocks and how storytelling and our idolatry of innovators has resulted in an irrational market where the stock price begins to absolutely disassociate from the fundamentals, which I guess is the definition of a meme stock.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

2988.556

What are your thoughts, Ed?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

315.779

I think we have hit a new low where we're selling off access to the president and dinner based on his Swiss who puts the most money in a Swiss banking account. And the reality is. These are the amateurs or the people, the cultists who are fascinated by him.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3239.082

Yeah, I mean, this just calls on so many themes we've sort of beaten to death. Poor governance. No CEO would be allowed to do this. And just, I can't help but take the bait.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3248.085

If Doge was an attempt to audit a $7 trillion enterprise, I can't think of a single enterprise of $1 trillion that would be issued such a clean bill of health as Doge has accidentally, unintentionally, much to their disappointment, issued around the federal government. They first they said they were going to save two trillion dollars, then 150 billion.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3269.486

It looks like it's about 60 to 65, although that can't be verified. And they just and where has where's the fraud? You know, Pam Bondi is ready to take a call in for Elon Musk and go after some federal employee who's been stealing. They're all ginned up to do that and announce it. This is a clean bill of health or as clean a bill of health as you could hope for.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

329.8

The most important people in terms of the Trump meme coin would never show up because what they've done is they've bought a bunch of meme coins, probably with his permission or his encouragement in exchange for geopolitical advantage from America. It would never dare thinking of showing up. I got to give it to him for being this transparent.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3290.5

Now, some people would say that's incompetence on the part of the auditors. But his board, if he had a real board, they would have called him and said, look, if you want to go plan traffic as an advisor to the president— That's your business, but you can't be CEO of this company. And also, why are you doing this? You're really hurting us. So this is just sort of new territory here.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3314.473

The market seems to believe that he's going to be able to create some of that magic pixie dust. How does Tesla come back? A lot like America, I think the rumors of Tesla's brand death have been greatly exaggerated. I think if they came up with two or three amazing products in the next three to five years, it's like, we love you again.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3331.212

I think Americans still value product over, you know, great value products over anything else. Agreed. So it could absolutely come back. Whether they have those in the pipeline, I don't know.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

347.823

I think the Democrats have what I call low-grade co-corruption, where Speaker Ambrose Pelosi trades stocks for tens or hundreds of thousands or maybe millions. And he's like, if you're going to be corrupt, go big and create a vessel. And somebody pitched him on this, and he said yes, where you can make billions. And that's what he's done here.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3474.269

Waymo is, I think, going to be in 10 or 11 cities, including Tokyo by the time Tesla hits. Austin, so what is the competitive—okay, we'll believe you this time. You said in 2017 it was a year away. That didn't happen. We'll believe you this time. And 2010. What is your advantage when you have—Waymo is out there with cars, and they're launching in the biggest cities and then launching globally—

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3500.753

How are you going to compete? Is this just going to be a race to the bottom?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3516.184

Okay, but that's one of two things. That's either you have scale, software that's better. Once the fixed investment is made, it's all about, in software, it's about they're driving the same goddamn car. It's approximately the same dollar volume. How would it be cheaper? It would have to be scale, which means they would take a penetration strategy and lose a shit ton of money.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3539.6

And Alphabet has a much bigger balance sheet. I just don't. I don't see how they're going to sustain – I mean, Alphabet or Waymo will match their price, whatever Tesla claims they're saying. And given that Tesla does not have the most profitable toll booth in the world, i.e.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3558.791

Google, to subsidize that market share or penetration strategy, they're a squirt gun against a bazooka when they're talking about capital and scale. Exactly. Unless Alphabet says after all of this money and all this time and establishing market leadership, we're just going to give it up because Elon's decided to engage in a price war. They're going to say, fuck you, bring it on.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3580.002

And then these robots, God, I mean, everybody has to put something crazy out there, I think, to get people excited. Fine. The concept cars you see at auto shows, none of them are going to be in the showroom. And I'm personally really excited to get home from work and ask my Tesla robot if it took the meat out of the freezer. I just can't wait for that moment. But robots, I just don't.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3606.567

I mean, robots have huge commercial applications. It's called robotics and automation, but I don't, what is the use case for the robots? I just find the whole thing kind of comical.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3657.788

Essentially, Donald Trump is about to get Mark Carney elected as prime minister of Canada. This was a foregone conclusion that he was going to lose. I'm not sure I'm saying his name correct, but the conservative candidate, Polly Every, I believe, I'm terrible at this, he was going to win. Trudeau was so unpopular.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

367.634

And I hope this thing gets a lot of attention and a lot of people start focusing on what is – easily the greatest financial grift in the history of presidents. I can't think of, I mean, it just cracks me up that people were pissed off about Hunter Biden going on a board, which he shouldn't have been on.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3679.834

And entering into this trade war, and who Mark Carney, his current prime minister, has been very kind of forcefully dignified, this will be the greatest comeback in probably political history. 25 points down at the turn of the year, and it's all because of Trump. So anyways, my prediction, and I interviewed Prime Minister Carney on the Prop G pod, has almost a million views, I think, on Trump.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3703.376

YouTube. And he's very likable. He comes across as incredibly thoughtful, schooled in the US, went to work for Goldman Sachs, was the first non-Brit to head the Bank of England.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3719.285

Yeah. It's just hard to argue with his credentials. And he's tall, he's handsome. He's out of central casting and he's just handled this He's what you would want from us. You would want someone forceful and dignified and not having an emotional reaction, but, you know, saying this is not adequate for us. We look forward to reestablishing relations.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3741.675

But until that point, we're obviously going to stand our ground. Anyways, prediction is Trump is about to elect a guy who was 25 points down just four months ago. The next prime minister of Canada will be Mark Carney.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

3763.913

He grew up in Edmonton, so he's an Oilers fan. So we're going to have to go all the way out there. Maybe we'll go for the Calgary Stampede or something. But yeah, he and I are good, good friends now. We're very close. Very close. I'm going to be the secretary of something in Canada. Secretary of hockey. There you go. How's that? I like it. I'll take it.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

412.564

And yet we have a meme coin And he's inviting people to the White House for the dinner. I don't know. I find the whole thing. It's verging on comical if it wasn't so tragic.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

663.456

His team also collects fees on each trade. And they've earned roughly $100 million just in January alone. And of course, you know, I love in 2016, he was just irate at the conflicts of interest and that Secretary Clinton was getting a quarter of a million dollars for a speech. I mean, in this instance, he isn't even asking for donations. It's worse.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

684.518

He's asking for people to buy a volatile, unregulated coin that enriches him directly. And if I were Vladimir Putin, And if I get kicked out of Ukraine, it probably means at some point I get thrown out of a window. I mean, people who lose power in Russia, it usually doesn't end well for them. And I'm spending $60 to $100 billion a year on this failed war effort.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

709.612

I'm losing, I've lost almost a million young men, sending them into this meat grinder, which at some point has got to take a toll on the morale and the popularity of wouldn't he be just stupid to figure out a secure way, maybe using signal on a phone, to call the president and say, all right, price discovery is dictated at the margin, right?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

73.168

Today's number, 283. That's the percentage increase in viewership of the movie Conclave, the day after Pope Francis died. Ed, what does a priest's scrotum look like? Oh, boy. I don't know. I don't know. What does a priest's scrotum look like? Come on, man. Every child knows that. Welcome to Prop G Markets. Rest in peace, El Papa. Rest in peace. I just love that JD Vance killed the Pope.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

737.027

If the Trump coin has a $7 billion market cap, you might be able to take it to 10 or 15 billion with just 100 million, 500 million, a billion in purchases, right? What if you said to him, look, I can make this thing. I really love the Trump coin.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

752.166

And I'm going to make sure that for at least five years until you're well out of office, that this thing never, you know, or that at some point it's at least worth 50 billion. And your stake is 80%. So you're about to become the richest man in the world, President Trump, just because I love the coin. And in unrelated news, how do you feel about cutting support to Ukraine?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

775.148

I mean, wouldn't Putin, one, wouldn't Putin be stupid not to make that call and make that offer? And two, wouldn't it be logical? Wouldn't it be the next point in the data pattern in the line for Trump to act on that call? I mean, he started a meme coin. What do you think he did it for?

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

800.387

And the notion that he wouldn't be subject to this sort of influence, it just doesn't look at the corruption and the trail of bankrupt companies, the trail of unpaid subcontractors. And I'm incredibly disappointed the Democrats aren't putting up a better fight.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

820.301

I can't believe they're not all over the press today talking about all the different scenarios for the Trump coin and how this is nothing but pure grift.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

955.075

I mean, one of two things has happened. Either he called the Boeing CEO and said, don't worry. Don't worry, boss. Hey, do you want to come to my crypto meeting? Don't worry, right? We know you're a great company. Don't worry. And, you know, let me put out a press release saying you're hiring more people. Just don't be critical of your earnings call, obviously.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

974.697

Or the Boeing CEO just said, this guy's full of shit. Nothing's going to happen here. Could be that. We make great planes. Airbus. I mean, the thing about this is a duopoly controlled by two companies, Airbus and Boeing. And even if Airbus for a time being makes a better plane.

Prof G Markets

The Trump Fold & Tesla’s Brand Death

992.27

as the global economy grows and demographics grows, there's always a need for more commercial aircraft, and no one of them can produce enough. So it really is a duopoly. And they have incredible pricing power, and these are just incredible companies. And I think what he's decided is, okay, this is a fucking distraction. And his earnings seem to cement that.

Prof G Markets

Is Breaking Up Intel The Right Move? + The New Gold Rush

32.225

Buying a house has long been considered the best way to build wealth and move into true adulting.

Prof G Markets

Is Breaking Up Intel The Right Move? + The New Gold Rush

45.53

Okay, the handbag you can probably manage without. But what about a house? Surely that's actually good, right? We're going to find out this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday morning, wherever you get your podcasts.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

873. Andy & DJ CTI: Trump's Blue Suit At Pope's Funeral, Huge Power Outage Strikes Spain, Portugal And France & Virginia Giuffre Suicide

583.839

Because of their muscular body, scientific research has shown that a silverback gorilla is stronger than 20 adult humans combined. They are able to lift up 10 times their body weight, and it is estimated that a gorilla could bench press 4,000 pounds. Bro. Bro.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

823. Andy & DJ CTI: Mysterious Drones Spotted Over New Jersey, Daniel Penny Acquitted & Luigi Mangiones' Fatal Shooting Of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

2034

The former Marine enduring years of vicious left wing attacks who vilified him as a racist. But Penny has no regrets. And here's why.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

865. Andy & DJ CTI: Dow Jones Down, Thousands Of Protesters Gather For Rallies Across U.S. & Legacy Media Investigating Dem Scandals

630.743

And others. We have a couple of senators here. I just don't particularly like them, so I won't introduce. Over the course of this amazing season, the members of this team... I didn't think it was that big a deal, actually. Washington. Over the course of this amazing season, the members of this team gave us some of the most incredible... Yeah.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

868. Andy & DJ CTI: Florida State University Shooting, Blue Origin Returns Safely & Why Dems Lost Election

2538.21

Our passenger planes are slower than they used to be. Our trains crawl compared to those in other parts of the world. Our cars do not fly. Advances have not stopped, but something has gone wrong. Stagnation was a choice. We have weighed down our builders and innovators.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

868. Andy & DJ CTI: Florida State University Shooting, Blue Origin Returns Safely & Why Dems Lost Election

2558.935

The well-intentioned regulatory regime of the 1970s became an ever-tightening ratchet, first hampering America's ability to become a net energy exporter and then making it harder and harder to build. We seem to have lost focus and vision, to have lowered our sights and let systems and structures and bureaucracies muddle us along. But we are capable of so much more.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella

868. Andy & DJ CTI: Florida State University Shooting, Blue Origin Returns Safely & Why Dems Lost Election

2583.806

Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow and improve productivity.

Radio Atlantic

January 6 and the Case for Oblivion

273.627

We've lost the line.

Radio Atlantic

January 6 and the Case for Oblivion

275.069

We've lost the line.

Radio Atlantic

January 6 and the Case for Oblivion

371.139

Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)

25.216

New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)

3.041

Over the last 20 years, at-home DNA tests have helped millions of people connect with family members they didn't know they had. I want to see someone else whose face looks like mine. I want to see someone else whose eyes look like mine. So what happens to all the genetic data for all those Americans if the company goes away? That's this week on Explain It To Me.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)

816.149

Donald Trump's been back in office long enough to shock or surprise just about anyone who voted for him at this point, be it the signal scandal or the tariff turnarounds, the Jeanine Pirro of it all, the way he talks about Ozempic.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

Trump’s Trade War vs. Hollywood (feat. Sen. Chris Murphy)

842.608

On Today Explained, we're asking if any of his voters are experiencing voters remorse, especially those ones who are newer to his winning coalition. Younger voters, black voters, Latin voters. We're heading to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to ask them if regrets. Do they have a few? And just by way of spoiler to get this out of the way, the answer is yes, they do.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)

2805.649

The Trump administration is defying a federal judge who's demanding details about a flight to El Salvador. It carried almost 200 men who the administration says are gang members and who were flown from U.S. soil after the judge said, don't.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)

2820.16

President Trump and El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele posted video of the shackled men being pulled from the plane by guards in riot gear and transported in white buses to prison. The official White House Twitter account also reposted a remix of the video set to Semisonic's closing time. Semisonic responded, the song is about joy and possibilities and hope.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)

2847.475

And they have missed the point entirely. Lest we all, let's focus up. The administration acknowledges that many of these men don't have criminal records in the U.S., and some of their family members say they're not in gangs at all. You can get Today Explained every weekday afternoon.

Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

The Real Housewives of the Oval Office (Feat. Anthony Scaramucci & Gov. JB Pritzker)

3530.896

No question.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

120.396

He also starts teaching his own online courses where he teaches people how to get rich quick.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

126.52

For the first thousand people to sign up, they'll be mentored by me personally.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

131.683

Yeah, huge red flag. Now, investment companies are nothing new. But here's the problem with Jay's investment company. He doesn't really seem to be investing it or putting it towards stocks at all. Instead, he takes their money and just pockets it and puts it into his own personal bank account. And of course, he spends a lot of it on himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

151.867

Like he's got to make himself look rich and successful to flex to his followers on Instagram. Er verwendet es auch, um die viralen Gifte zu finanzieren, in denen er sich filmt, Geld an einzelne Anwesende zu geben. Und so werden viele dieser Leute, was im Grunde genommen Steuern von Geld, angeboten. Egal, diese Gifte werden wirklich populär.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

173.524

In der Tat, im Jahr 2020 sind sie so populär, dass etwa 50 Cent in einem seiner Videos erscheint. Und da sieht man Jay, dem Arbeiter Geld anbieten, durch den Fahrrad. Und hier sieht man 50 Cent rollen. He also gets the rapper Fabulous to appear in a video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

190.035

And that's all great for Jay, that his videos are doing well, but eventually some of those people who invested with his investment company, they come asking for their money. And Jay doesn't have it. So he starts taking money from new investors to pay off the old investors. And this is where he gets into a Ponzi scheme. And this Ponzi scheme actually works for a while.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

216.883

But pretty quickly Jay runs up his tab so high that it just isn't enough anymore. So he comes up with yet another even douchier plan to con more money from his followers. One day he gets on social media and he offers to buy out his followers Bitcoin from them in exchange for cash. And here you can see he's holding up a sign explaining exactly what he's trying to do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

242.46

And he claims he's going to buy it from them for more than what it's worth. So they would be making money by selling it to him. Und wenn du sagst, Ray, das macht keinen Sinn. Ich stimme zu, aber es ist ein Verbrechen und Verbrechen sind auf Lügen gebaut. Sie müssen keinen Sinn machen. Ansonsten geben viele Leute ihm ihre Bitcoins, erwartend Geld zurück.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

261.414

Aber wenn es an der Zeit kommt, ihnen das Geld zu bezahlen, wird Jay sagen, dass er die Geld transferiert hat und er schickt sogar Bildschirme von einer Verkündung, die er gemacht hat. Aber leider endet die Verkündung falsch. Ich glaube, er photoshoppt sie oder so. Egal wie, das funktioniert für Jay und es funktioniert wirklich gut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

27.643

Weißt du, die Influencer, die sich selbst Geld an random Strangers auf der Straße anbieten? Nun, du wirst überrascht werden, dass einige davon Skammer sind. Z.B. dieser hier. Sein Name ist Jay. Und Jay ist 23 Jahre alt, lebt in New Jersey und er ist einer der Influencer, die sich selbst Geld an Strangers anbieten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

282.167

Denn an diesem Punkt hat der Junge seine Follower und andere Mitglieder der muslimischen Gemeinschaft aus 8 Millionen Dollar gescammt. 8 Millionen Dollar! Aber das verrückte ist, dass die Leute so viel von ihm lieben, weil er ständig Videos von sich macht, die Geld an Außenstehende ausgeben, sodass die meisten Leute nicht erwarten, dass ein Typ wie Jay jemals so etwas schädlich machen würde.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

305.763

UNTIL Here's the thing. You can only not pay people back for so long before they start to get pissed off. And eventually rumors start to swirl online that Jay is just another internet fraudster who's out ripping people off. And around this time, people finally start reporting him to the FBI. And so, boom, the Feds and the IRS start investigating and looking into him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

333.983

Oh, but it gets so much worse. Because around 2021, an Instagram-Troll-Account appears out of nowhere, called JayMazziniScam. And this account posts and bashes Jay every single day, calls out a ton of his scams and makes him look really bad. And Jay, he thinks this guy started the account, Amjad. Und Umjud ist 29, er ist ein ehemaliger Partner von Jays.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

359.442

Und er hat nicht angefangen, diesen Account zu starten, aber Jay glaubt, dass er es gemacht hat. Und so trifft Jay ihn eine Nacht. Und er ist einfach so, Hey, möchtest du einen Kaffee trinken und über all das reden? Und Umjud ist so, Und so treffen sie sich, nahe Jays Wohnzimmer. Und sie sitzen in Jays Auto, reden und plötzlich BOOM! Zwei massiven Jungs kommen in die Rückseite.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

381.407

Und Jay fängt an zu fahren. Wie wenn sie Umjud über einen Instagram-Troll-Account kidnappen. So at some point, the car slows down enough to make a right turn. And Umjud's like, yeah, f*** all this. And bam, he jumps out of the car and he starts running. And Jay and the goons, they get out and they start chasing him. Then Umjud sees an alleyway and he runs down it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

402.86

But like, oh damn, it's a dead end. And so he sees a staircase up the side of a building. And so he runs straight up it. But again, he's at another dead end. Because he's now standing on a balcony. Aber die beiden Goons schließen sich immer noch an und er springt runter. Zwei Höhen. Und kaboom! Er schlägt auf den Boden. Und er schlägt seinen Ankel. Also kann er nicht mehr laufen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

426.473

Und natürlich schlagen sich die Goons an und schlagen ihm den Scheiß weg. Und sie fordern ihn in die Rückseite des Autos. Und sie steigen weg. Dann fahren sie ihn irgendwo hin und legen ihn in einen Basement und strecken alle seine Kleider weg, sodass er komplett nackt ist. Und einer der Goons hat eine Maschette. Und er bedroht Umjud damit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

446.842

Und sie sagen ihm, dass er die Instagram-Page anrufen und es verlassen. Und nackter Umjud ist so, dass er keine Zugriff auf das Account hat. Es ist nicht mein Account. Auf jeden Fall haben sie ihn etwas mehr verletzt und sie bekommen nichts mehr aus ihm. Also lassen sie ihn letztendlich weg. Und natürlich geht er direkt an die Polizei und berichtet, was passiert ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

464.671

Und zwei Tage später, bam, Polizei arrestiert Jay. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und jetzt ist er verhaftet mit der Verhandlung und dem Angriff. Aber während er im Gefängnis ist, gehen sie weiter und verhandeln ihn für all die anderen Verhandlungen, die er verhaftet hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

479.259

But then in a weird twist, Jays wife, because I guess Jay is married, she offers Amjad $200,000 to change his story and tell police that Jay didn't actually kidnap him. And the craziest part is Amjad, he says aye and he takes the bribe. And he agrees to change his story about the kidnapping. And so then, bam, police arrest Jays wife for offering a bribe and they arrest Amjad for taking the bribe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

48.325

And he has built himself up a nice following doing that, getting nearly a million followers on Instagram. But one day in 2019, he starts screwing it all up. Because bro gets greedy and he starts thinking, I'm gonna start conning my fans. Stealing from his fans is actually pretty easy for him. I mean, they trust him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

507.927

Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und hier ist Jays Weibes Mugshot. Und ich konnte nicht mehr Informationen finden, wie sie verurteilt wurden. Jedoch Jay wird tatsächlich verurteilt. Und er nimmt einen Befehl und er wird sieben Jahre im Gefängnis. Das ist verrückt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

71.962

Because not only does he come across as a guy who's already very wealthy and successful at business, but more importantly, on social media, he really presents himself as a very spiritual guy, a devout Muslim who would never rip anyone off. I mean, look at these videos he makes of himself looking all religious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

90.666

Apparently not.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Influencer Stole $8 Million Dollars - The Jay Mazini story

97.448

Because at some point Jay starts an investment company called Halal Capital LLC. And he calls it Halal because with this he's going to target mostly his Muslim American following. So he tells his followers to invest with him because he's doing it the Halal way. And that he's going to in turn invest their money into stocks, electronics, PPE equipment, stuff like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

0.089

So this guy, his name's Bui. And Bui is about to set someone on fire for stealing his iPhone. So Bui's 16, and he's not a very good kid. In fact, he's what you would call an unlicensed pharmacist. But one day he's out selling unlicensed pharmaceuticals and suddenly, bam, the deal goes bad and somebody robs him and the thief takes all his stuff. But most importantly, he takes his iPhone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

110.266

and Bowie, Gavin, and Dylan, they put on their masks and they put on their hoodies and then they head over to the thief's house. And then once they get there, they sneak around back. And the neighbor's camera, it actually gets some footage of them. I mean, you can actually see them here. But these guys, they're not worried. They're not going to get caught. They're in disguise.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

126.316

So they go around to the back door and then kaboom, they break in. And immediately they start douching the walls with gasoline. And then once they're done and the gas cans are empty, they set the house ablaze. And then as the fire starts to build up, the three boys, they make a run for it and they disappear into the night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

144.269

And it doesn't take long for this fire spreads and it engulfs the whole house. Now here's where the story gets crazy. I don't know how accurate the Find My Phone app is, but the house it led Bowie and his friends to is not the right house. The iPhone thief doesn't live there. Two Senegalese families live there, eight people, and they're all asleep during this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

165.396

So then bam, suddenly the family wakes up and the fire alarm is going off and there's smoke everywhere and there are babies crying. So one of the dads, he runs over to the bedroom door and he opens it and a massive wall of smoke comes in. So they can't leave that way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

179.664

So then he runs over to the window and he opens it and he just straight up jumps out and then his daughter jumps out and he catches her and then his wife jumps out. And as they're jumping out, they can hear the father from the other family inside trying to gather up his wife and kids so that he can get them out of the house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

194.693

So the dad who's outside, he runs around to the front door and he tries to punch in a key code and open the door for them so the other family can get out. But for some reason, this code isn't working. Meanwhile, a police officer, he happens to be patrolling in the area and he sees the fire from afar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

209.242

And so bam, he rushes over to help and he gets to the house and he runs up to the front door where he sees the dad trying to punch in the key code and the officer just says, it and pow, he kicks the door in. But sadly, all he sees is one of the family members lying there on the floor,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

224.572

unalived and the heat forces the officer back out of the house so then the fire department arrives and they're battling the fire but unfortunately it's too late the house as you can see is already ruined and the five family members that were trapped inside they don't make it So then police, they investigate all this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

243.325

And them and the surviving family members, they can't figure out who could have done something so violent. Like they don't have any enemies that they know of. Meanwhile, Bowie, Dylan, and Gavin, they're all back at their homes, lying low, trying not to get caught. And no one around them suspects anything. So it seems like they just went ahead and got away with murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

264.097

until months go by and police they have no leads on this but then during their investigation they get an idea they start thinking maybe this fire wasn't so random like maybe it was planned out and they're thinking the arsonists probably had to use google to google the home address and get directions to the place or to get the layout of the inside of the house

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

286.94

So then police go and they get a search warrant. That warrant requires Google to turn over any account information of anyone who Googled that home address in the days leading up to the fire. And that ultimately leads police to a couple of IP addresses based in the area. those IP addresses lead them to Bowie, Dylan, and Gavin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

30.729

And ultimately, Bowie is pissed off by this and his ego is hurt. I mean, how could someone do this to him? Well, Bowie, he isn't going to let this slide. He's determined to get revenge. But first, he needs to find the thief who did this. So he logs on to the Find My Phone app to see if he can trace the location of his iPhone that was taken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

306.77

And so police have their suspects, and boom, all three boys are arrested. So here's Bowie's mugshot, here's Gavin's mugshot, and I guess Dylan doesn't have a mugshot, because he's only 14. But Dylan ultimately gets three years in juvenile detention and seven years in a young inmates program. And Gavin gets 40 years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

325.799

And Bowie, the ringleader of the whole thing, he gets 60 years in prison. And as far as I know, they never figured out who actually stole his iPhone. Jesus, that's sad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

50.562

And instantly, kaboom, he traces his phone and he sees that it's in a neighborhood nearby. And he feels like he's located the house that it's in. Must be where the thief lives. Cool. Now he needs a crew. So he hits up two of his shadiest friends. This friend, Gavin, who's 16, and this other friend, Dylan, who's 14.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

70.39

And he tells them all about his revenge plot, and he asks them for their help in pulling it off. And so, they agree. So the three of them meet up, and they start putting this plan together. They're going to break into the thief's house, do shit with gasoline, set the whole place on fire, and then, I don't know, feel joy? I don't know what comes after that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Boy Kills Family Over Stolen iPhone - The Kevin Bui Story

89.614

Regardless, now their plan is in motion and they spend all their time getting prepared. They map it all out. They buy cans of gasoline. They go to a costume store and buy masks. They even look at pictures of the inside of the house online so that they can get familiar with the layout. And then a few weeks later, the big night of revenge finally rolls around. It's 2 a.m.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

0.169

So Brad Pitt is in love with this woman and unfortunately it's going to cost her $865,000. Now her name is Anne and she's 53 and she lives in France and unfortunately Anne has a problem. she's super lonely. I mean, she's married to a millionaire, but their marriage has already broken up, and they're in the process of getting a divorce.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And these pictures and selfies that fake Brad Pitt keeps sending her, they're all AI generated. Shocker, I know. And of course, Anne doesn't know this. I mean, she's not a tech savvy person. She doesn't know that deep fakes even exist or that AI can do the things that it can do. I mean, she's in love and she's in love with the Brad Pitt. Well, the fake Brad Pitt.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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But one day, fake Brad Pitt tells her he wants to send her a bunch of luxury gifts like designer purses and jewelry and stuff like that. And he sends her videos of the gifts he's going to buy. And he says that he's shipping them to her.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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But then some time passes and Anne gets an email from a customs agent saying that she needs to pay around $5,000 import tax in order to receive these gifts fake Brad Pitt is trying to send her. So she hits up fake Brad like, Brad, why can't you pay this import tax? And fake Brad tells her that his bank accounts are frozen due to his very public contentious divorce battle with Angelina Jolie.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And so Ann's like, all right, I'll pay the tax. And she pays the customs tax. But unfortunately, the gifts never show up because, as you could guess, there were no luxury gifts. And the custom agent is also just one of the Nigerian scammers. And so these guys allegedly just keep conning money out of her many different times with little tricks like this.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And yeah, I know you're like, but Ray, doesn't she get suspicious of all this? Yeah, she actually does. But anytime Anne starts to have doubts about whether or not she's talking to the real Brad Pitt or not, fake Brad Pitt will send her videos proving that it's really him. Like this totally real video message.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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I shared everything with you, hoping you would help keep my travel plans secret from these malicious people. I'm fully prepared today and informed you about the flight's departure time.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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Now, during all this, Anne and her former husband's divorce is finally finalized. And that is when she makes a huge mistake. For some reason, she's chatting with fake Brad Pitt and she tells him that she just received a very large divorce settlement. So of course, fake Brad Pitt, AKA these Nigerian scammers are thinking jackpot. And so suddenly fake Brad hits up Ann and he drops a bomb on her.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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But then one day, she gets a message on Instagram from this older woman, Jane. And Jane and Anne, they start chatting, and they hit it off, and over the next few months, they become friends. And eventually, Jane is like, you know, my son needs a woman just like you. Why don't I introduce you? Now, Jane's son just happens to be this guy. Brad Pitt. Yes, that Brad Pitt.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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He tells her that he has cancer. And because his bank accounts are still frozen from his divorce with Angelina Jolie, he has no way to pay for his treatment. And he's like sending her pictures of himself in the hospital which look totally real and not AI. And he asks her if there's any way she could loan him money so that he can pay for his treatments.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And fake Brad's fake doctor even emails Anne explaining the situation he's in and that his situation is very serious and that he might not survive so he really needs that money for the treatment. And the fake doctor sends a picture of his ID to prove that he's real and pictures of the medical bills, which are also fake. And so, of course, Anne sends them the money to pay these bills for him.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And fake Brad Pitt just keeps sending her photos. He even sends photos of himself in the hospital. Even pictures of himself undergoing the surgery. I guess that's supposed to be him right here. Looks totally real. And from here, the medical bills just keep coming and coming. $50,000 here, $100,000 there. And Anne, she doesn't want him to die, so she pays them. She feels like she's saving his life.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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Plus, he's being so romantic lately. He even sends her a picture of himself holding up a sign that says, Anne, I love you. But then one day, Ann gets the worst news imaginable. She goes online and she can't believe what she sees. Bam, a paparazzi video of Brad Pitt, the real Brad Pitt. And he's with another woman. Not only that, the media is reporting that this woman is his new girlfriend, Inez.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And poor Anne is just shocked and she's pissed off and hurt and how could he cheat on her like this? And so she texts him immediately and confronts him. Of course, fake Brad Pitt denies seeing anyone else and he scrambles to find excuses.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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I've had enough. I'm at the end of my rope. You're not honest at all. Recognize that Inez kisses you in this f***ing video, but take your responsibility for your actions and your decisions, okay?

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And so, to prove that he's not cheating on her and that the rumors that he's with this woman Inez are false, fake Brad Pitt sends Anne this totally real and not AI news report.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And so I guess this makes Anne feel a little better for a while. But as time goes on, she can't escape more and more media coverage of Brad Pitt and this other woman, Inez. And eventually, it does finally dawn on her. Maybe she isn't engaged to Brad Pitt at all. Maybe it's a fake. Maybe she's being conned. And of course, this reality just destroys her. It's so depressing.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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How could she not see it this whole time? I mean, this elaborate scheme went on for a year and a half. And in total, with all the import taxes and medical bills and all that, Anne had sent these scammers over 830,000 euros. or about 865,000 US dollars. Holy shit. But then something crazy happens. Out of nowhere, an FBI agent hits up Ann.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And this FBI agent tells Ann not to worry that these guys are a bunch of scammers, but that the scammers have recently been caught. And so luckily, she can have all her money back. But then the FBI agent wants her to pay 5,000 euros worth of Bitcoin so that they can release the funds to her. So yeah, of course, this FBI agent isn't an actual FBI agent at all.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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It's the Nigerian scammers again trying to get one last payment out of Anne. And so Anne is finally like, f*** this, and she contacts the police. And so this con is now being investigated. But as of this moment that I'm filming this video, the scammers have not been caught. In fact, allegedly, they're still out there running the same scam.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And so they start chatting and they hit it off and Anne thinks he is fine because of course she does. Brad Pitt. And he's like sending her selfies of himself and they keep talking and they're texting every day and soon enough it becomes romantic. And Anne is just totally excited to be in love again. And Brad Pitt, he's over here sending her poems that he wrote and declarations of love.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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Same group of scammers apparently got another woman, a different woman, to believe that she was dating Keanu Reeves. I'm not kidding. You can't make this stuff up.

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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And Anne is always asking to talk on the phone. But strangely, Brad Pitt is never available for an actual phone call, only texting. Well, that's okay. He's probably a busy guy. But eventually, the best thing happens to Anne. Brad Pitt proposes to her. He wants to get married, even though they've never met in person or even spoke on the phone. And of course, Anne is like...

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Brad Pitt Scams Woman Out of $865,000

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Okay, let me stop the story right here, because I got to say something. I know this is going to blow your mind. Are you ready for this? Hold your hand while I say this. It turns out Brad Pitt isn't really Brad Pitt. He is apparently a small group of scammers they believe are operating out of Nigeria. Sorry, Nigeria. This is all a romance scam.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So this guy is a cult leader, and he wants nothing more than to sacrifice a white guy. Now the story starts with Mark. In Mark's 21, he goes to college in Texas, and he eventually wants to go to med school. And one day in 1989, Mark and some of his college friends, they decide they're going to travel somewhere for spring break.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And so Mark does, and skrrt, they speed away. Sometime later, these cars arrive in the middle of nowhere at this remote ranch. Now this ranch is full of all these crazy people. And these aren't like the cartel you would assume would be out kidnapping drunk Americans. This is a cult. A crazy drug trafficking cult. And they apparently distribute a lot of Zaza out of this ranch.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And the leader of this cult is this guy, Adolfo. And Adolfo and his followers, they believe some crazy shit. They believe in magic, like the Harry Potter kind of magic where there's like curses and shit. And in order to keep their gang safe from police, they need to make some literal sacrifices. Sometimes these sacrifices include a small animal, but other times they sacrifice a human.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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Now usually when they sacrifice a human, they capture an unalive like a rival gang member or some other drug smugglers. But this time, for whatever reason, Adolfo tells them they need to sacrifice a white boy. And that is when his cult members go out and they happen to find Mark and they kidnap him and they bring him back to their ranch.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So now, Mark is at this creepy farm, and they're still holding him at gunpoint, and they handcuff him, and they leave him in the back of this car. And about 12 hours later, they come get him. And they tell him he's gonna be fine, and they give him a little food to eat. Then, they take him, and they put him in this little storage shack.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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Then, throughout the night, they unfortunately torture him in horrible ways. And after that, it's time for Adolfo to perform the sacrifice. And so then, Adolfo and the gang, they take Mark out to a nearby field, and Adolfo has this huge machete, and pow! He strikes Mark once in the back of his neck, and this unalives him.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And Mark, he ends up going from Austin down to South Padre Island, and then to a little border town called Brownsville. Now in Brownsville, there's a bridge where people can literally walk across the border into Mexico, where there's this town where spring breakers will go and they party.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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Then, they remove his brain and his spinal column to use in their weird ritual, and they cut him up, and they bury him. And I guess now Adolfo and his cult, they feel safe now that they've made this human sacrifice. Meanwhile, Mark's friends are super worried that their bro disappeared, like no one in their group saw him get kidnapped.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And so they searched all the bars and everywhere in town that he could be. And they kind of assumed that he like maybe met some girl and went off to smash at her place or something like that. But after hours of searching the town, they have no luck. And so they go and they report Mark missing to the police in Texas.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And interestingly enough, Mark's uncle is actually a special agent with the US Customs Service. So this dude has connections with law enforcement on both sides of the border. And so pretty quickly, police in US and Mexico are all looking for Mark or anyone who might be connected with his disappearance. And there's like this whole manhunt and volunteers come and they hand out over 20,000 flyers.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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Mark's parents offer a $15,000 reward. They bring out terrain vehicles and helicopters to search everywhere they can. And this story is all over the news. And then a few weeks later, they feature Mark's disappearance on an episode of America's Most Wanted. Regardless, there are still no leads and no one knows anything. And of course, no one suspects Adolfo or his cult are involved at all.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So I guess they got away with it. I guess their human sacrifice really did protect them from the police. Until... One day, about two and a half weeks after Mark's disappearance, police set up a roadblock, like a checkpoint. Not for Mark, this is actually routine as they're trying to catch drug smugglers in the area. And one of the members of Adolfo's cult, some goon, is driving through.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And I guess he just doesn't want to deal with police, and so boom, he runs right through this checkpoint, like a dumbass, and he speeds away. And of course, Mexican police, they're not gonna let this slide. However, instead of turning on their sirens, they play it cool. And they have some officers follow him slowly in an unmarked police car.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And this stupid goon drives all the way out to the cult ranch and he inadvertently leads the police there.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And so eventually police come out and they search this ranch and they find pounds and pounds of Zaza and a bunch of weapons and they find the shack where Mark was tortured and they find some graves and police force some of the cult members at gunpoint to dig up these graves and that is where they find 15 mutilated bodies and one of those bodies is Mark's. And so bam, they arrest four cult members.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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However, Adolfo and some other high ranking members of this cult, they're nowhere to be found because meanwhile, Adolfo's hiding out in a Holiday Inn back in Brownsville. He's trying to lay low and he eventually takes a flight from Texas all the way to Mexico City where he has an apartment.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So Mark and his friends, they cross this bridge and they go to this town and they get drunk and they have a great time. The second night they're there, they go out again and they bar hop a couple of places and they drink all night and Mark talks to some girls, you know, normal spring break sh**. Then around 2 a.m. Mark and the guys they leave the bar to go back to their hotel.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So now he's hiding out there while police are still investigating this and they're looking for him and they start hearing rumors that he's at this apartment in Mexico City. And so they trace him back to this apartment and they send a ton of officers out and they surround this complex. While Adolfo, he's inside and he happens to look out the window and he sees all these police.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And he goes and he gets a pew-pew and he just starts blasting. And this turns into this whole ass shootout and he's shooting at the cops and the cops are shooting back. But then after about 45 minutes, bro runs out of ammo. And he's like, , now what am I gonna do? And so he goes to one of his goons and he orders the goon to unalive him and his gay lover.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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Because I guess Adolfo is bisexual and his lover is there with him. I don't really understand the rules of this cult. But anyway, Adolfo orders this goon to unalive him and his lover. And the goon is like, nah bro. But then pow, Adolfo smacks the hell out of the goon and he tells him to do as he's told or he'll burn in hell. And so the goon points a machine gun at him and he pulls the trigger.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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And this unalives Adolfo and his lover. And ultimately a bunch of the guys affiliated with the cult, they end up going to prison. That is wild.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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So Mark and his friend they're walking along and it's pretty crowded and his friend stops to take a leak. So he goes down this alleyway while Mark is standing there waiting for him. And right then a red pickup truck pulls up. And the men inside they talk to Mark and they're like hey you want a ride? And Mark's like nah. But then boom some of the men grab him and they throw him into the truck.

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Kidnapped By a Drug Cult - The Mark Kilroy story

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But Mark, he ain't no punk. He ain't about to get kidnapped. And so they fight, and they struggle, and bam, he manages to break free, and he runs away, and he runs, and he runs, but then another car catches up to him, and they're with the guys in the red truck. And these guys, they aren't messing around, and they point a pew-pew right at him. And they're like, get in!

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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So there's a locally famous restaurant in Los Angeles called Zancou Chicken. You may have heard of it. Did you know that one of the founders unalived his own family? And it all starts with this guy, who we'll just call Dad, and his wife, who we'll just call Mom. And one day, it's 1962 in Lebanon, and Mom and Dad start up a restaurant called Zancou, where they serve chicken.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And so he goes to mom and dad and he's like, yeah, we should open more locations. And they're like... Nah. Cause see, mom and dad, they're happy with what they have, they're getting older, they don't want the headache of running a bunch of new restaurants. But Marderos keeps insisting that this is such a good opportunity for them.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And then finally, in 1991, mom and dad give in, and they agree to expand. However, they work out a deal, and this deal becomes very important later. Any new Zancou restaurants Marderos opens are 100% his. while the original restaurant in East Hollywood belongs to mom, dad, and their other daughters, Marderos sisters.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And it's the same kind of restaurant, same name, same menu, but they don't share profit. He owns his, and they own theirs. And so they agree, and then boom, Marderos gets to work, and he opens four new locations in the Los Angeles area, and they're all doing great, bringing in a ton of profit. But then, suddenly, everything changes again, because tragedy strikes. Dad, unfortunately, passes away.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And now, suddenly, Marderos, he's the patriarch, and he's sort of now the head of this small business empire. But whatever, he's doing great. He's running all his stores, him and his family are getting along good, everything is going smoothly. Until... One day, Marderos, he gets a little pain in his abdomen. No big deal, it'll probably go away. But it doesn't go away.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And he keeps working on his business and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And finally, he can't take it anymore. And he schedules an appointment and goes to the doctor. And of course, the doctor has some terrible news for him. He has bladder cancer. Not only that, he waited too long to get it looked at, and now it has spread.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And it really sucks because he's not gonna make it much longer, a few years maybe, at best. And so he has to go home and break the news to his family, and of course, everyone is upset. Everyone except for Mom. For some reason, she seems almost angry about this news. Angry at Marderos.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And this restaurant does really well. A lot of locals love it. But then, 20 years go by. And it's now the 80s and everything changes because Lebanon falls into a civil war. And mom, dad and the rest of the family, they're like, fuck all this. And they flee the country and they move from Beirut all the way over to Los Angeles. And so they're in L.A.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And maybe she's angry because she knows he's gonna die soon, or maybe she's angry because she knows that when he does die, all of his Zanku restaurants will be passed on to his sons. It isn't entirely clear, but she's really mad. And so she starts giving him the silent treatment, ignoring him. And they live together, like she lives in his house, but it doesn't matter to her.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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She doesn't ask, how are you? How's the treatment going? Nothing, not a word. And over time, his cancer progresses and it gets worse. He loses a bunch of weight, over 60 pounds, his hair starts falling out, but mom still doesn't seem to notice. She doesn't say anything to him. And he's a stubborn guy too. So he doesn't say anything to her. And so they're kind of in a standoff. And a year goes by.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And they're still living together. And they still haven't spoken. And this all really bothers Marderos. And then out of nowhere, boom, their house catches on fire. And it's not clear what causes the fire, but while the house is being refurbished, this becomes mom's excuse to finally move out and get away from her son that she's apparently so upset with.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And so then Mom moves in with her daughter, Marderos' sister, this woman, Zovig. And over the next year, allegedly, Marderos' bladder cancer spreads to his brain, which can affect your personality. And I'm not sure that detail matters, because at this point, he's barely holding it together. He gets massive headaches, he's almost too weak to even drive himself anywhere, he can barely stand up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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Plus, he's going crazy. He often goes into these somewhat paranoid rants about how his mother and his sisters are all plotting against him. But then, one day, in 2003, shit gets really insane. See, Marderos knows at this point that he isn't going to be around much longer. And he has decided that he's had enough of everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And so he wakes up one morning and he's in pain and he's suffering like normal. But on this day, he puts on a white silk suit, a formal suit, like one he hadn't worn in years. Then he calls his sister Zovig at work and he asks to meet her and his mom at Zovig's house because he has some Zanku chicken business to discuss with them. And they agree to meet. Then he grabs his pew pew.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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In fact, he grabs two of them. Then he gets in his car and he drives over to Zovig's house. And he gets there and he goes in and he has a nice chat with Zovig while they wait for mom to get home from work. About 30 minutes later, mom arrives. And now they're all in the dining room, the three of them sitting across from each other.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And they chat for about five minutes, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Medeiros pulls out one of those pew-pews, and he points it right at his sister, and blam, he unalives her. And Mom sees this, and she freaks out, and she tries to run away, but blam, Medeiros shoots her too, and she falls to the floor. Then Medeiros stands over her, and he shoots her seven more times, until she's unalived.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And when he's done, he walks into the living room and he doesn't shoot his nephew who's there. He doesn't shoot the housekeeper who's also there. He just walks over to the couch. He sits down and blam, he unalives himself. Oh, but the story doesn't end there. Because remember how I said the Zanku Chicken restaurant was split into two factions?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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Mom and Dad's side, which owns the original, and Marderos' side, which owns the expansions. So now that all of these parties are unalived, their ownership is now controlled by their wives, or their descendants, or what have you. And at this point, each side of the family wants the rights to the Zanku name.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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and they're trying to make the American dream work. And they open a couple of different family businesses like a dry cleaning business. And they all kind of fail. But one day, mom and dad's son, his name is Marderos, so Marderos starts noticing there's a lot of fast food places around Los Angeles, but there's not a lot of Middle Eastern options.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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So Marderos' side of the family actually files a lawsuit and sues mom and dad's side of the family as each side is trying to get control of the Zancou Chicken trademark. But unfortunately for all of them, in the end, both sides lose in court as the court rules that both parties own the Zancou Chicken name and they all have to share it.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And so each side of the family continues on with one side operating their stores and the other side operating their Zancou Chicken stores. Even to this day, Zancou Chicken has two different websites, zancouchicken.com and zancouchicken.la, one for each side of the family. It's the same name, same menu, same recipe, but each side doesn't list the other side's stores.

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Like this side of the family only lists their stores on their site, and the other side of the family only lists their stores on their site. That is wild. Their food's really good, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Zankou Chicken Murders

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And so he's like, let's get back into the restaurant business and open a Zancou here. And so that's what they do. In 1983, mom, dad, Marderos, and the family open a Zancou Chicken in East Hollywood. This is actually a picture of it right here. And within about a year, it catches on.

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The Zankou Chicken Murders

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Word of mouth starts to spread, it gets some good reviews from food critics, and suddenly this little hole in the wall is bringing in two million dollars a year, which is really good for this immigrant family. But Marderos, he sees this and he loves this success, but he thinks it can do better, and he starts thinking about expanding and opening more Zancou Chicken restaurants.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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So this prank influencer is looking at possibly 24 years in prison. Now his name is Vitaly and Vitaly really loves attention. Bro will do anything for it. And he's been making YouTube videos for a long time. And like early on he gets big doing prank videos. Like here's one where he pretends to be a zombie and like chases people around.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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and he's out and about walking around and I guess he decides he's gonna pull another dumbass prank on a random person and there's a woman out jogging and suddenly boom he jumps out in front of her and he goes to hug her while she's jogging and I guess she reacts and shoves him off of her and pow he ends up punching her again and again and he ends up beating the shit out of her and so of course bam he gets arrested again here's his mugshot

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Yeah, like I said, it looks like he's on multiple drugs. Anyway, you can clearly see a pattern here. Dude just wants attention so bad that he's become, like, allergic to being a decent citizen. But, lucky for all of us, after his arrest in Miami, he kinda stops all of his antics. I mean, getting arrested for beating the hell out of a random woman, I mean, that's pretty bad.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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And so, he stops everything. But then, a year or two later, he decides to try and make a comeback. And he's gonna film himself doing some more internet pranks, aka harassing people in public. Hello?

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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and yeah and so you can see here he's just harassing these women and making them feel uncomfortable but unfortunately for him those kind of internet pranks they're kind of played out and they aren't really resonating with audiences anymore and so he comes up with a new idea he's gonna switch it up and he decides to live stream himself catching and confronting suspected p3dos this guy's a

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Then in 2012 he does a prank where he pretends to have a bum in a suitcase. And of course, this freaks people out, and they run away, and so, bam, he gets arrested. Here's his mugshot. Two years later, in 2014, he pulls a stunt where he runs onto the field during the World Cup, and bam, he gets caught and arrested for that.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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However, there are also lots of accusations that most of these streams are fake or staged. Not only that, he starts getting accused of just luring random innocent people off of dating apps to meet up, and then he'll publicly accuse them of being a P3DO. In fact, he gets sued for it, not once,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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but twice and so that business venture eventually fails and now we're in 2025 and Vitaly is 33 years old and this is where he potentially screws his whole life up because bro decides to get back into doing his internet pranks but this time he's gonna do it specifically in the Philippines for some reason

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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And here he decides to copy the antics of Johnny Somali and basically just go to an eastern country and live stream himself harassing locals in public. Like what he does to this local woman.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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And then he goes and steals the hat off of this guy and like runs away with it. And he also runs into the back of a fast food restaurant and he starts harassing the workers there. And he also films himself harassing the security guard.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Then he jumps on the security guard's motorcycle and like steals it. And he just does a bunch of things that feel like, I don't know, maybe a 33-year-old man would have grown out of. Follow me, follow me.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Oh, but it keeps going. Cause then he spots another security guard and he decides to harass them too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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dispatch dispatch i'm a homosexual then he goes to a nearby mall and steals one of those light therapy facial masks then he goes and steals a whole ass pedestal fan that's my only fan left in the chat And these aren't the only things he's done, but you know, this is a lot of it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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And lots and lots of people watch him stream and they watch his clips online and they like donate to him and his stream. And it just looks like he's going to get away with all this and just continue being a turd. Until... You know who else was watching a lot of these clips? Apparently, the Filipino police. Because a few days after all this, they find him and bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Here's his mugshot. And this apparently just continues to be a joke to him because I mean, look at him. He's like smirking in his mugshot like he did something. Not only that, he's also making faces to the camera as they're reading him his Miranda rights. It also looks like he's applauding himself as he's being arraigned. So yeah, not taking it seriously at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Well, bro should take it seriously because the Philippines don't appear to be f***ing around. Because this story blows up over there and it's all over the news like the whole country's talking about it.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Then in 2016, he pulls a stunt where he tries to climb the Hollywood sign, and bam, he gets arrested for that. Two weeks later, at the NBA Finals game, he runs onto the court shirtless during a game, and bam, he gets arrested yet again. Then the next year in 2017, at the World Series, during the game, he runs out onto the field in his underwear, and they catch him, and bam, he's arrested again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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In fact, it gets so much attention that the president of the Philippines gets involved and he films himself watching Vitaly's pranks and he makes a whole ass reaction video to it and puts it on his YouTube channel. And here the president actually says foreigners who think they can humiliate Filipinos are done. This is an example that we are serious about our own country.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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So apparently there are no plans for the government to be lenient on him here. And while Vitaly hasn't been sentenced yet, he's looking at a possible 24 years in prison. And to make it worse, his trial for all this isn't even expected to start for another two to three years, which means he will likely be sitting in a Filipino jail for a few years before his trial even starts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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So I guess he finally got all the attention he wanted. Good luck with that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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Here's his mugshot. Oh, and it doesn't stop there, because three years later in 2020, Bro goes to Egypt, and he thinks it'll be a good idea to climb to the top of one of the pyramids of Giza and vlog himself doing so.

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Vitaly is in BIG trouble in The Philippines

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And of course, bam, he gets arrested there, and he spends five days in Egyptian jail. Oh, but he's still not done, because like I said, bro really, really loves all this attention. Three months later, he's in Miami, and he's high on, he says mushrooms, but I'm assuming multiple drugs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

0.129

So Justin Bieber somehow got pulled into this million dollar fraud scheme. And it all starts with this guy, Sean Kingston. And Sean is 17, living in Florida, and he has big dreams of becoming a rich and famous music artist. And one day in 2007, he makes that happen. He lands a record deal, and he releases his first ever single, Beautiful Girls. You know that song, it goes... Beautiful girls.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Audiences have moved on and his songs aren't really popping off and his shows just aren't selling like they used to. And that's fine, it's normal. But this is a problem for Sean. I mean, he isn't ready to give up the celebrity lifestyle. He doesn't want to give up the fancy cars or the special treatment or the jewelry. And most importantly, he doesn't want to give up all that money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

129.19

And so Sean comes up with a plan that will allow him to hang on to that baller lifestyle he's been living for so many years. He'll just stop paying for sh**. And in order to enact this plan, he gets help from this woman, his mom, who we'll call Mama Kingston. And Mama Kingston, she's gotten used to Sean's celebrity lifestyle too, so she doesn't want to give it up either.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And she just happens to have gone to prison before for committing a little something called bank fraud. And so she knows a little something something about not paying for sh**. And so one day, Sean goes to a local jewelry store and he finds a watch he really likes, a watch worth $285,000. And so he talks to the jeweler like, yeah, I'm a celebrity.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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You might know me from a song I did with Justin Bieber. And Sean starts dropping Bieber's name into this. telling the jeweler that he'll introduce him to Justin Bieber and that he'll have him at all his red carpets and his video shoots. And of course, Bieber, he doesn't talk to Sean anymore. He probably hasn't talked to him in years. And he has no idea his name is being used in this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Regardless, the jeweler is totally starstruck, like, Wow, you know the beeps. And so Sean offers to pay for this watch with a wire transfer. He then texts Mama Kingston and has her make a fake receipt from the bank, making it look like the wire transfer went through. And the mom sends that fake receipt to the jeweler and Sean gets the watch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Now, the jeweler thinks the payment will come through in a few days because wire transfers usually take a few days. But of course, the money never comes through. And as stupid as that is, this scam works. In fact, it works so well that Sean and Mama Kingston pull it again. And in 2017, Sean reaches out to another jeweler, this guy, who we'll call AP.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And so Sean has a driver pick AP up, and he brings him to Sean's mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Because, you know, Sean's going to buy some jewelry from him. And Sean and Mama Kingston are there, and AP's looking around at the place like, damn, your house is nice. And Sean's like, yeah, you know, I'm a celebrity. And he drops Bieber's name again.

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The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Like, you know, Justin Bieber's my best friend, and you know, I'll introduce you. And then AP shows Sean some watches and some chains that he has with him, and Sean wants $500,000 worth, and he takes the jewelry. And then he pays him half up front, and then he's like, Hey, I'm about to sell my Range Rover, why don't you take it and deduct it from my tab?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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You know that one. And suddenly, kaboom, it blows up and it's a massive hit. It goes double platinum and the music video gets over a billion views on YouTube. And that is when his whole life changes. I mean, he's still a teenager and he's being treated like a star and it feels good. And so in 2010, he releases another song. This one with Justin Bieber. And this one blows the f*** up too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And the Range Rover is actually in Mama Kingston's name, so she transfers the title over to AP. Then, Sean's like, I'll get you the rest of the money after I come back from performing in Jamaica. So just chill in my mansion until I get back. And so then Sean leaves and he goes to Jamaica. And AP is just like living there in his house, I guess for a few days.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And at some point AP, he's there and he's just like chilling on the couch and some random people just come inside the house. And it's a woman and she's showing people around. And AP's like, what the are you doing in Sean's house? And the lady's like, who the hell are you? I told Sean and his mom everybody was supposed to be out by today. And AP's like, what do you mean?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And she's like, Sean doesn't own this house. This is an Airbnb. And to make it worse, then AP finds out that the Range Rover Sean sold him still has money due on it. So it wasn't even Sean's car to sell. The entire transfer was a scam. And believe it or not, AP never sees or hears from Sean ever again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Oh, but Sean's not done scamming yet because it's now 2023 and he lives in a big new mansion in Florida. And one day he thinks, hmm, And you know what would go really well with all this jewelry? A big ass TV. And this is where he really screws up. Because Sean DMs a custom TV company on Instagram and he tells them he wants a 232 inch TV. Which is big enough to cover an entire wall in his house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And so this TV company crew comes over to his huge mansion, which Sean again pretends to own, even though he's actually renting it. But anyway, they got this humongous TV worth $150,000. This is actually a picture of it. And of course, Sean is talking to these guys and he drops Justin Bieber's name again. Like, oh, you know, you might know me from my song with Justin Bieber.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And he tells these guys to install this TV for only a small down payment and the rest he'll pay on credit. And if they do this, he says that his close friend, Justin Bieber, will come and do commercials for them. As if Justin Bieber is just gonna like stop touring or whatever he's doing and come do commercials for a local TV company in Florida.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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But whatever, I guess these guys believe him and they trust his word and they're like, But then, later, the company reaches out to Sean about making further payments on this TV, and he starts bullshitting them like, oh yeah, come over to my house and I'll give you a check for the rest. Then, when the guys arrive, Sean doesn't answer his door. And this nonsense goes on for several months.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And eventually, this TV company realizes that they've been scammed. And so, boom, they file a lawsuit against him. Oh, and they aren't the only ones. In fact, multiple jewelers sue him as well. Because he and his mom, at this point, have stolen so much from so many people. An $80,000 custom bed, $160,000 Escalade, apparently a million dollars in watches alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And because fraud is, you know, illegal, the police get involved. And in 2024, boom, a SWAT team raids his house. And they start taking all his stuff and like hauling his cars away. And then, bam, they arrest Mama Kingston. Here's her mugshot. Meanwhile, Sean is on the other side of the country performing. And right when he gets off stage at this show, bam, they arrest him too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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Here's his mugshot. And they both go to trial and they're found guilty. And as of the date of me filming this video, they have not been sentenced yet. But they both face up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud. So they could be in there for a really long time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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That same year, he gets a guest spot on a popular Disney Channel show. And so now he's hanging out with huge celebrities making millions of dollars. He even buys a diamond crayon necklace reportedly worth a half million dollars that he loves showing off. Not to mention all his designer bags. And of course, lots and lots of luxury cars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of Sean Kingston

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And so, as you can imagine, over time, Shawn gets very comfortable with this new luxurious lifestyle. And he really likes to spend his money, but, you know, that's fine. He's making millions, and he can buy whatever he wants, and no one can stop him. Until years go by and Sean keeps releasing music and he keeps trying to replicate his previous success, but he can't seem to do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

123.151

Und die Leute sehen das auf TV, und sie donieren. Und jetzt beginnt Bro wirklich zu bezahlen. Oh, aber das ist nicht der einzige Teil dieses Verbrechens. Der andere Teil ist, dass er während seines Sermons die Namen ungewöhnlicher Menschen im Publikum nennen wird. Menschen, die er noch nie kennengelernt hat. Und überraschend ist, dass Peter bereits viel über sie wissen wird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Er wird ihre erste und letzte Name kennen. Er wird ihre Heimatadresse kennen. Er wird wissen, aus welchen Krankheiten sie leiden. Und er sagt, dass er das tun kann, nicht weil er psychisch ist, sondern dass er das tun kann, weil sein Gott all diese Informationen zu ihm fügt. Also muss es ein Wunder sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und der Publikum sieht das und fragt sich, wie er all diese Informationen über diesen Fremden wusste. Und sie sind immer so beeindruckt. Und so wächst seine Popularität. Und es wächst. Und bald werden seine Heilungsserven über die USA und Kanada auf 51 TV-Outlets und über 40 verschiedenen Radio-Stationen veröffentlicht. Und an diesem Punkt macht Peter allgemein über 500.000 Dollar pro Monat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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500.000 Dollar pro Monat! In den 80ern! Nicht nur das, er und seine Gemeinschaft verkaufen alle Art von verrückten, gebeteten Produkten. Wie das Miracle-Manna-Bread, holy anointed oil Keychains, alle Art von Scheiße. Aber egal, Bro scheint es nicht zu interessieren, weil er jetzt wahnsinnig reich wird und es scheint, dass alle an ihn glauben und niemand wird ihn auf seine Scheiße nennen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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UNTIL... Hier ist die Sache. Nicht jeder, der Peter Sermons auf TV schaut, ist beeindruckt. Speziell dieser Kerl ist nicht beeindruckt. James. Und James ist ein Stage-Magiker und er ist auch ein sehr populärer Skeptiker. Und er ist öffentlich bekannt, um Skam zu debunkieren und andere Dinge, die er bogus findet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und so sieht James Peter's Shows auf TV und er ist so, ja, dieser Kerl ist ein Kon-Artist. Und so bekommt er eine Gruppe von Volunteuren zusammen. Und sie entscheiden alle, genau wie Peter diesen Scham entfernt. Und so gehen James und diese Gruppe zu einem der Sermonen von Peter. Und es ist in diesem großen Auditorium, wahrscheinlich 10.000 Leute da.

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The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und an einem Punkt fängt das ganze Gebäude an, weil sie Donatien sammeln. Und eines von James' Volunteuren benutzt das als Ausgabe, um nahe an die Bühne zu kommen, damit er einen guten Blick auf Peter bekommt. Und als er da ist, bemerkt er, dass Peter ein Hörgerät trägt. Und er denkt, das ist seltsam.

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The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Dieser Typ kann Leute mit seinen Händen heilen, aber er kann sich nicht heilen, weil er ein Hörgerät trägt. Also geht er zurück und sagt James. Und sie beurteilen, dass das kein Hörgerät ist. Es ist ein Hörgerät und jemand muss Peter-Informationen durch diesen Hörgerät vermitteln. Also gehen sie alle zu seinem nächsten Sermon, um weiter zu investigieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Diesmal bringen sie einen Radioscanner und einer von James' Volunteuren trägt sich als Sicherheitswirt an und er steht in der Rückseite. Und sobald Peter auf der Bühne kommt und beginnt zu sprechen, interceptiert sich der Radioscanner seine Radiotransmission und sie hören eine Stimme durch diesen Scanner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Now that voice is this woman, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is Peter's wife. And she is hidden in a different room and she's feeding Peter all this information through his earpiece.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Okay, so here's how they were pulling off this scam. So the church would have the congregation fill out prayer cards before the sermon and they would put them in a prayer box. And Peter's wife would sneak in and switch the boxes out. And then she would read people's information off the prayer cards to Peter through his earpiece.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Sie denken nur, dass er heilt, weil sie im Moment verbunden sind, weil sie so hoffnungsvoll und voller Adrenalin sind. Aber er heilt niemanden. So anyway, James takes all of these recordings and he goes on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, which is the biggest show on TV during this time. And they play these recordings on the show for all of America to hear.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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And poor Peter is finally exposed as a fraud. So then he has to lie and publicly deny it. And first he says, no, that wasn't my wife feeding me information through an earpiece. One of my haters hired an actor to try and set me up. In fact, he comes up with a bunch of excuses. But at the end of the day, the general public is like, fuck you, you're a con artist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

413.048

And from there, donations to Peter's church slow down dramatically. And within a year, his whole organization files for bankruptcy. Oh, aber das ist nicht das Ende von Peters Geschichte, weil Bro immer noch Geld liebt und er ist immer noch bereit, reich zu sein. Er wird bald zurückkommen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

431.361

Und so gehen etwa zehn Jahre durch und Peter entscheidet sich, ja, er wird dem ganzen schämen religiösen Menschen-Ding noch einen Schuss geben. Aber dieses Mal entscheidet er sich, spezifisch auf die dunkle Gemeinschaft zu schießen. Und so beginnt er, auf B.E.T. kommerzielle Zeitplätze zu kaufen. Und dort verkauft er seine Versöhnungen und er erfordert Donationen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und er hat dieses Ding, wo er versagt, Menschen durch das Mail zu heilen, wenn sie ihm Geld schicken. Ich bin mir nicht sicher, wie das funktioniert. Er preist auch das Gospelsprache, wo er Leuten sagt, dass wenn sie ihm ein bisschen Geld schicken, dass der Herr sie dann zurückgebeten hat, indem sie sie reich machen. Es ist verrückt und transparent korrupt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Egal, sicherlich beginnt Peter's Star wieder zu steigen und die Donationen starten sich an. Aber ich glaube, es ist noch nicht genug Geld für ihn, denn dann kommt er mit seinem besten, aber noch nicht absurdesten Ideen. Er verkauft, und ich mache das nicht auf, geblasene Heilwasser durch die Mail, genannt Miraclespringwasser.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und das ist offensichtlich Heilwasser, das nicht nur dich heilt, sondern dich auch reich macht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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Und es funktioniert gut. Und in den nächsten paar Jahren wird er und seine Kirche super verdammt reich. In der Tat, seit 2003 machen er und seine Organisation über 9 Millionen Dollar pro Jahr.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

534.306

And by 2005, allegedly, Peters company makes 24 million dollars just that year alone. Then, of course, the church buys him a 4 million dollar house to live in, tax free, because, you know, the church technically owns it. And later they buy him a Bentley. And if that isn't depressing enough, apparently to this day he's still out there preaching on TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

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And he's still running late night TV ads selling Miracle Spring Water.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

59.6

Dieser Precher liebt seine Religion. Er liebt auch Geld. Und dieser Schlamm wird ihn super reich machen. Sein Name ist Peter und Peter reist generell um die Vereinigten Staaten, um in verschiedenen Städten zu preisen. Er preist auch viel auf der Radio. Aber dann, 1982, verändert sich alles für ihn. Weil er auf der TV beginnt zu preisen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Faith Healer Who Got Exposed As a Fraud - The Peter Popoff story

82.351

Und dort sieht er sofort, dass er viel Geld davon machen wird. Und so kommt er mit diesem verrückten Verbrechen. Der erste Teil davon ist, dass er diese riesigen Kongregationen gründet, um zu beten. Dann beginnt er mit der Heilung der Glauben, als ob er die Menschen mit seinen Händen heilen kann. Er heilt die Blinden, er heilt den Kanzler, nur durch jemanden zu beheben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

0.129

So this guy really, really wants attention. And boy is he about to get a lot of it. So the guy's name is 6ix99, but we'll call him Six. So Six is 21 and he's a rapper living in New York. And one day in 2017, Six gets an idea. He thinks that if he makes a music video and puts a bunch of actual gang members in it, that that will give him street cred as a rapper and therefore lots of attention.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

102.994

He's helping them in their organized crime, things like selling drugs, shooting at rivals. I mean, you get the idea. So even though he's making all this money from his music and his celebrity status, he's out here committing petty crimes and like robbing people. Like one day in 2018, he plans a robbery against a man and a woman leaving a building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

124.773

And Six and his gang friends are watching them like, yo, let's go rob them. And so, boom, the gang jumps out of the car and they got pew-pews. And bam, they ambush the man and woman. And they're like, give me all your stuff. While Six, he sits back and watches and records the whole scene from the car, which doesn't really sound all that gangster to me, but you know, whatever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

145.393

After that, I guess Six just really wants attention from all this and stupidly, he uploads the video of the crime to social media. And so for this and a bunch of other crimes he commits, bam, he gets arrested. Along with other members of the gang, here's his mugshot. And this is where it gets really complicated for him. Because Bro is facing a ton of charges.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

169.846

Racketeering, armed robbery, conspiracy to murder. And if he gets convicted, he's looking at 47 years in prison. And so there Six is, lying in a jail cell, thinking about all of this. And after less than 24 hours in that cell, he finally gets an idea. He knows exactly how to get himself out of this mess and avoid prison. He'll just snitch. He'll cooperate with the feds and blame everything on

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

199.25

all the other gang members who were there committing the crimes with him. And that is exactly what Six does. He drops the gangster persona and he fully cooperates with the feds. He goes to court and he testifies against his fellow gang members, putting some of them in prison for over a decade.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

218.059

And because he cooperated and did all this snitching, Six himself only gets sentenced to two years in prison. However, due to the COVID pandemic, he actually gets released early. And of course, he goes right back to social media celebrating. Because remember, bro just loves all this attention. And not to mention, he goes back to making music and getting views and making tons of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

245.218

Until... Even though his career is back in a decent place, Six has lost a lot of street cred because he snitched and people love to call him a rat. And apparently Six hates it when people call him a rat. And one night in 2020, he's in Miami at a strip club and some random guy yells at him, rat! And this pisses Six off. And so he grabs a bottle of champagne and he throws it as hard as he can.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

274.386

but it flies right past the guy and instead, bam, it hits a dancer right in the head. And so, boom, she sues him and she wins $10 million. Oh, but his problems don't stop there. Remember the man and woman he and the gang robbed that day? Well, boom, they sue him too. And so in 2022, Six has to beg a judge and say that, oh, he can't pay this man and woman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

29.275

And so he records a music video with this gang, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. And he puts this video on YouTube and suddenly, kaboom, the video blows up. And now he's getting all that attention he wanted. Plus, he's making a lot of money, so that's nice. And so that worked. And he's like, I'm gonna do it again. And he drops another video with the Nine Trey Bloods. Then he does it yet again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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And so people are watching all this like, uh, weren't you just telling the judge that you're broke? I mean, even TMZ calls him out on this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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And so bro has to admit it was all fake and that he was just doing it for attention because of course he was. And so now, his career is suffering. He's getting sued left and right, he has a reputation as a rat, and he's just not making the money that he used to make when he was first popping off. And that is when he gets the help of this guy, Steve.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

371.829

Steve is Six's friend, and he's also a YouTuber and a livestreamer, and he really wants to help his friend Six make some cash. And so he works on getting him a deal with the platform Rumble, and he starts vouching for him with the people at Rumble. He's like, you can trust Six. Give him a deal. He'll pull through for you. And according to Steve, this works.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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And he gets Six a live streaming deal where all Six has to do is stream himself playing video games for an hour once a week. And in exchange for doing that, he'll get $2 million up front. That's $2 million for playing video games one hour a week. That is a damn good deal. And so Six agrees to this deal. But then he screws it all up because he just doesn't do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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He just like doesn't do the streams. Instead, he takes the $2 million and he just starts spending it on like stupid shit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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And this of course completely over Steve. It makes him look really bad. And now I guess Six owes all this money to Rumble? I'm not really sure how they sorted that out. But then gets even worse for Six because he's about to face off with some real ass gangsters. Some gangsters who never play around. The IRS.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

458.988

and so during this time that he's been doing music videos getting on camera and flexing all this cash and showing everyone how rich he is he's also just not paying taxes addressing the irs situation listen a lot of y'all don't understand how to work because you're not in on that tax bracket right what happened was that i didn't report my taxes for 2020 21 22 and 23. and so for four years

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

484.505

He was making millions upon millions of dollars and just not paying taxes on it. And the IRS, well, they don't really like that too much. And they also don't fuck around when it comes to this. And so, bam, they seize a bunch of his assets. They seize his cars. They take his jewelry, including his famous shark chain. And they auction off all his stuff to pay his massive tax debt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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Anyway, so this is just like a fraction of what this guy has done. Like he's had so many lawsuits and accusations and charges against him. Like I can't even fit it all into one story. He is very entertaining to watch though. I will give him that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

54.94

And so this is working pretty well for him. And now he has a formula. And if he puts on this gangster persona, his music videos will get tons of views. So that's what he does. And he makes sure to let everyone know just how gangster he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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Plus, he's always got to flex his money, because, you know, that's what gangsters do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of 6ix9ine

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Look at the diamonds in them teeth. And so things are going really well for him. However, 6IX99 has a problem. He can't just keep telling everyone he's in this gang. At some point, he actually has to join this gang. Otherwise, everyone will know that he's not really street. And so he starts working on joining this gang.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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So what really happened to actor Matthew Perry, and why is this doctor facing over a hundred years in prison? Well, it all starts with this kid, Matthew. And Matthew's a teenager during this time, living in Canada, and bro has a problem. He doesn't feel like he's good enough, like he's an outsider who will never be loved, and this is an overwhelming feeling for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

115.643

In fact, it gets so bad, he films entire seasons of Friends without even remembering filming them, And then one day his co-star Jennifer Aniston comes into his dressing room and she tells him straight up, Matthew, I can smell the alcohol on you. I think you need help. And there he learns that the whole cast is worried about him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

136.779

And so he starts going to rehab and he attends rehab several times throughout the filming of the series. But even with all that going on, somehow Bro is able to make it through all 10 seasons and the show is still a giant success when it ends in 2004. And nearly 20 years go by and it's 2023 and Matthew is 54 now and he's still battling with his addictions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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And at this point, Matthew's gone to rehab 15 times. He's done weekly therapy. He's attended over 6,000 AA meetings. He spent over $7 million trying to get clean. But somehow, it keeps coming back, along with that horrible feeling. That feeling that he's not good enough. But then, one day, he gets a little hope. Matthew goes to a doctor to get help with depression and anxiety.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

190.736

And the doctor treats him with a different kind of drug. Ketamine. And surprisingly, this actually works. Matthew starts to get a bit of relief from this awful feeling that he's been having for so long. But here's the thing about ketamine, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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It can be a dangerous drug, so when it's prescribed, you're supposed to only have a limited amount of it, and you're supposed to use it with a doctor in a clinic so that they can monitor your vitals and make sure that, you know, you don't die. And so Matthew, of course, he does it this way. but ketamine only lasts a couple of hours and he wants to feel it all the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

227.941

And so he's gotta up the dose and take more, every day, multiple times a day. And that is when he meets this guy, who we'll call Dr. P. Dr. P is a local physician and when he meets Matthew, the famous former Friends star, he immediately sees dollar signs. And Dr. P, he has no experience with ketamine therapy treatments, nor does he have any legitimate medical purpose to give ketamine to Matthew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

24.205

But one day, when he's a little older, he discovers something that makes that feeling go away. Alcohol. And so Matthew starts drinking regularly. And as time goes on, he starts to grow dependent on alcohol. But it's okay that he's drinking right now because he has a long-term plan. He's gonna become a famous actor one day and fame will make him stop feeling like he's not good enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

253.994

But he doesn't care. He wants to get paid, allegedly. And so he comes up with a plan to be Matthew's plug, his go-to doctor for ketamine. But Dr. P, he can't get the amount of ketamine he needs, so he enlists another physician to help him get it. This guy, Dr. Chavez. And so Dr. P allegedly goes to Dr. Chavez and he's like, hey, want to take advantage of a rich TV star's drug addiction?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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And Dr. Chavez hears this and he's like... All right. And so Dr. Chavez starts writing fraudulent prescriptions. And by doing this, he's able to get ketamine for Dr. P. And they start texting each other back and forth about how much they're going to charge Matthew. And Dr. P's exact words in his text, he says, I wonder how much this moron will pay. Let's find out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

303.683

And that is a direct quote from Matthew Perry's doctor talking about his own patient. Now for context, a vial of ketamine cost them around $12. Dr. P charges Matthew $2,000. That is a hell of a markup. And so you can see how pretty quickly Dr. P is allegedly making bank off of Matthew's addiction. And so he wants to keep going. Now, obviously, he's a practicing physician.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

331.94

He doesn't have the schedule to be hanging around Matthew all the time to monitor him while he's on these drugs. And so he teaches this guy to help, Kenny. And Kenny is Matthew's personal live-in assistant. And Dr. P shows Kenny how to inject Matthew so that he can get the high he wants Even though Kenny is just a personal assistant, he has absolutely no medical training.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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And so now Matthew is getting these injections at home every day without medical supervision. And one day, as you probably could have predicted, it all goes wrong. Because Matthew is at home. He's chilling in his hot tub. And his hot tub seems to be in his backyard, so it overlooks a nice view. And this is his favorite spot to chill. And this picture is a little dark, but you can see him here.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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And here he gets Kenny to inject him with a big shot of ketamine. Then Kenny leaves. He leaves to go run some errands. And Matthew is there all alone. And at some point, Matthew is so high that he unfortunately overdoses and he slowly slips into the water.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

403.752

So of course, this is big news, and it blows up, and people are understandably devastated. I mean, he was a huge star in the 90s, and to this day, Friends is still very popular on streaming. And Dr. P, he hears about this news, and he's probably like, oh, sh**. Because he realizes that he's Matthew's doctor, so they're definitely going to blame him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

423.952

And then, allegedly, he starts falsifying documents. Like he writes a fake treatment plan for Matthew, and he starts claiming that he gave him much lower doses of ketamine than he actually did. However, the feds, they aren't stupid. Pretty quickly, they figure out that these documents are bullshit, meant to influence their investigation. And so, bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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Here's what he looks like in real life. And also, bam, they arrest Dr. Chavez. And they end up arresting Kenny, too. And they also arrested two other drug dealers connected to his death. Meanwhile, Dr. P is currently out on bail, and he's awaiting his trial, and he's facing over a hundred years in prison for his role in this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

467.828

However, that hasn't stopped him from practicing medicine, because bro is apparently still a practicing physician, and according to health grades, he's currently accepting new patients. Oh, and by the way, they haven't actually been to trial yet, so all of this is alleged.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

49.767

And so he moves to Los Angeles and he starts going on auditions. And he, you know, he gets some stuff. But then in 1994, when he's 24 years old, he's cast as Chandler on the sitcom Friends. And Matthew nails this role. He improvises some of the best lines in the show. You have to stop the Q-tip when there's resistance.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

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And as you already know, this show is not only a hit, it becomes the biggest show on the planet. So, of course, Matthew blows up and all of a sudden he's a huge celebrity now and people all over the world love him. In fact, this show is so successful, the whole cast goes on to become some of the highest paid actors of all time. making over a million dollars a week.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

What REALLY Happened To Matthew Perry?

95.159

However, even though Matthew has finally achieved everything he wanted, all this fame and money doesn't do what he thought it would do, and he still feels like he isn't good enough. And so he keeps drinking every night, and he does painkillers, and sometimes he does harder drugs, and his addiction starts to get really bad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

0.109

So why did this super charming guy suddenly end up going crazy and murdering a bunch of people? Well, his name's Somkid, but we'll call him Kid. And Kid lives in Thailand. And his whole life he's been very charismatic and he's really good at getting people to trust him. But once he gets you to trust him, he'll swindle you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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There's like thousands of people with that same name. So they don't catch him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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and thus kid just keeps on traveling around thailand living his life and no one suspects he did anything wrong five months later one night he books a room at another nice hotel and he goes to a massage parlor and he hires a masseuse for her services and he brings her back to his hotel and for whatever reason they get into an argument and once again kid just loses it and he attacks her strangling her until she's unalived

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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Then he steals her phone and her jewelry and he leaves. And from there, he just keeps going. A week later, he goes to another massage parlor and he picks up another woman. And he takes her back to his hotel room and he's like, hey, I own a gemstone mine. And she's like, oh, cool. And there he strangles her, too, until she's unalived. And then, of course, he steals a bunch of her stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

162.091

Now, so far the locations of the three women he's murdered, they've all been in Thailand, but they're about a hundred miles apart from one another. So police aren't yet seeing a pattern. However, some of these hotels do have security cameras and one of them just happened to catch Kidd on video. And there he is checking into the hotel there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

183.28

And so now police have an idea of what he looks like and they start to piece all this together that he's doing this to different women in different hotels.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

191.684

which means he's now officially a serial killer and now they gotta get the Royal Thai police involved which is like the National Police Force so they get involved and they start looking over the case meanwhile kid just keeps going a week after his last murder He ends up in another hotel in a different province, and he picks up another masseuse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

20.414

So he's always conning and stealing and cheating people out of their money. This is basically how he makes a living. He's a con man. And he does this his entire life. But sometime around 2005, when he's around 40 years old, he decides that this con man life just isn't enough for him, and he suddenly gets into murder. So one day, he checks into a nice hotel. Then he goes out to a karaoke bar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

212.262

Then he takes her back to his hotel room, but this time he slips something into her drink that knocks her out. Once she's sedated, bam, he strangles her and he unalives her. Then, of course, he steals her stuff and he flees. But this time, Kid screws up because he leaves his fingerprints. I guess he wasn't so sloppy before, but he's been getting really sloppy lately.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

235.65

And so police investigate this death and they look through the room and they find his fingerprints. So now they know who he is. And so, boom, they start a nationwide manhunt looking for Kid. And soon, screenshots from the security footage and an old mugshot of his are posted up everywhere, all over the news. But by this point, Kid has already fled.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

255.743

He's hundreds of miles away from the place he last murdered. And as you could have predicted, in this new place, he picks up yet another masseuse. And he takes her back to a hotel, and there, he strangles her and unalives her. So this is number five. After that, he escapes again, and he goes to another town, and he crashes at a friend's house. Now, this friend, she's a widow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

279.914

So we'll just call her Widow. And kid, he's staying at her house, and she's like, it's so good to see you. She has no idea he just unalived five women, four of them in the last three weeks. And so he lays low with Widow, and she doesn't suspect a thing. And everything is going great for him. I mean, police have no idea where he's at. Until... Here's the thing, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

302.748

I mean, you remember Kid has stolen a bunch of stuff from his victims, including their cell phones. And at some point, he uses one of the victims' phones to make a couple of calls. And police have actually been tracking the SIM cards of those phones. And so the second he makes those calls, boom, they got his location. And so they send a squad out to that location, which is actually Widow's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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Meanwhile, Kid and Widow are there at the home watching TV and suddenly a picture of him shows up on the news. And Widow's like, hey, that guy kind of looks like you. And Kid's like, nah, that don't look like me. But then, boom, boom, boom, police are beating on the door and they come in and bam, they arrest Kid. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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But unfortunately, it's not over for him, because he's still got more murders to commit. And so anyway, he goes to trial, he pleads guilty, and he gets life in prison. But he eventually gets his sentence reduced. I guess he's a model prisoner, and after 14 years, he's granted royal clemency, and he's released on good behavior. And so now, after 14 years, Kid is out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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And it's 2019, and he's 55 years old at this point. But he's still a pretty charming guy. So pretty quickly, he gets himself a girlfriend. And of course, Kid doesn't tell her that he's a convicted serial killer. No, no. He tells her that he's a lawyer. And I guess she believes him. And so they get into a relationship and they move in together and they end up running a noodle shop together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

391.877

But during that time he's living with her, he gets on Facebook one day and he meets this other woman. Her name's Ratsumi. She's a hotel maid. And they hit it off and they start dating. And of course, he doesn't tell Ratsumi that he already has a girlfriend. Anyway, soon, they start getting pretty serious. And so, he's splitting his time living with each girlfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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And at some point, he talks Ratsumi into lending him money. Because I guess he's broke. Specifically, he talks her into putting a down payment on a car for him. And once he gets the car and he has it for a while, I guess he realizes he can't afford the payments on it. So instead of figuring out a way to pay Ratsumi back for the money she put down on the car, he decides to just break up with her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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And so then he goes to break up with her and this turns into a huge argument. And this argument gets heated, like really heated. And in that moment, Kid suddenly snaps and he reverts to his old ways. And boom, he grabs her by the neck and he strangles Ratsumi until she's unalived. Then he steals her motorcycle and he flees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

45.59

And there, bam, he sees this beautiful woman. And she's up there singing. And he thinks she is fine. And soon enough, he starts talking to her and they're chatting. And Kid, he can't tell her that he's a con man and that he's got nothing going on. So he tells her that he's a talent agent and that she really caught his eye. And Singer is all flattered.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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Here's the thing though, when police find Ratsumi's body, they know it was Kid who did it. I mean there's only been like two or three serial killers in Thailand's entire history and he's one of them. And so pretty quickly, pow, they plaster his photo everywhere. Then about four days later, he gets on a train and a young couple spots him and they're like, hey, I think that's the serial killer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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And they contact police, and once the train stops, bam, police arrest him. Here's another mugshot. And so, kid is busted again, and he pleads guilty, and this time, he's sentenced to death. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

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And so when Kid asks her to come back to his hotel, she's like, I... And so they go back to his hotel, and once they're there, she starts asking Kid about the whole talent agent thing, and suddenly he gets all defensive. Because, you know, he's a liar who just got caught in a lie. And so they're arguing about this, and this is where Kid just snaps.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Thailand Serial Killer - The Somkid Pumpuang story

85.774

And boom, he grabs her by the neck, and he strangles her. And then he ties her up, and he drowns her in the hotel bathtub. Then he steals some of her stuff and he leaves. The next morning, police show up and they find her body. And they have Kid's real name because he used his name to book the hotel room. But unfortunately, his name is apparently very common in that area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

0.109

So this woman is about to assassinate a famous pop star. So let's call her Yo. And Yo is around 30 years old. She's living in Texas. And one night in the early 90s, she's at a concert. And there's this local act on stage. And Yo is blown away by the singer. She's like, this woman is amazing. I love her. I am such a huge fan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

119.955

And as a side hustle, she opens two clothing boutiques. And Yo is doing such a good job assisting Selena. They promote her and they have her start managing these boutiques. And so here she is running all this stuff for Selena and she's around her all the time. And Yo knows soon enough she'll finally be her close friend. Until... At some point, Yo screws everything up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

146.663

She starts skimming money from the business. I mean, she's managing the finances for the clothing boutiques, and she's still managing the finances for the fan club, and she starts writing checks to herself and making up fake invoices. So over time, the clothing boutiques start losing money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

164.301

Plus, while she's scamming all this money, she's still hyper-focused on trying to get Selena to be close to her. Like, one time she collects $3,000 from employees of the company to buy Selena a gift, like a gift from all the employees. And they collectively decide to buy Selena a ring with diamonds. And the diamonds are in, like, an egg shape. Looks like this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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Because Selena is a big fan of Fabergé eggs. And so Yo takes this $3,000 from the employees and she pockets it. And then she goes out and buys the ring with Selena's company credit card. Not only that, she then gives the ring to Selena and pretends it's not a gift from all the employees, but that it's a gift only from her. And of course, Selena loves the ring and she's so grateful for it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

21.553

Not only that, Yo goes home and she starts thinking about her all the time. Like she wants to be best friends with this singer and be close to her. So she decides to start a fan club, like an official fan club. And she contacts the singer's manager, who's also the singer's dad. So we'll just call him dad. So Yo reaches out to Dad and she's like, do you mind if I start a fan club?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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Here's a photo of her actually wearing it and you can see it on her hand here. And she totally thinks Yo got it for her alone, and she's like, yo, we're gonna be best friends for life. And so Yo finally has what she wants. This woman she's been obsessing over for years is now her close friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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Meanwhile, Dad, who's still managing Selena and the whole business, he notices that there's all this money missing from the boutiques and from the fan club. And he starts looking at the books. And he's like, hey, these numbers aren't adding up. And so he investigates and he discovers all those checks Yo was writing to herself and a bunch of other evidence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

250.434

And he's like, this asshole is stealing from us. And so, bam, he relieves her of her duties with the company. And this is where everything starts to go wrong. Because this is when Yo goes out and buys a pew-pew. A few months later, tax season rolls around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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And Yo, who was Selena's assistant and managed the finances for two of her business entities for her, has some financial documents that Selena needs to get from her. And Yo keeps saying that she'll hand over these documents, but she doesn't. She's always making up excuses as to why she can't.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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Then right before taxes are due, Selena finally gets her on the phone and she's like, give me my tax documents. And Yo is like, okay, fine. I'm over at this motel. You can come here and pick them up. And so Selena goes to this motel and she goes up to the room and Yo gives her a stack of documents. The next morning, Selena is looking through all that paperwork.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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And she realizes that the specific tax papers she needs still aren't in this stack. Yo never actually gave them to her. So she gets on the phone with her again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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And instead of talking about tax papers, Yo starts making more excuses, talking about how she had been essayed recently on a trip to Mexico and that she can't give her the tax documents because she really needs to go to the hospital and get herself checked out because she's bleeding from all the essay. And so Selena, being the nice person that she is, she wants to help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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And she drives over to the motel to pick her up and take her to the hospital. And there, at the hospital, a doctor examines Yo and finds no indication that she was ever SA'd. Suggesting that she made it all up and that it's just another elaborate excuse to not hand over those tax documents.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

356.596

and selena learns about this and she is not happy so she drives yo back to the motel and she goes inside the room with her and she's like i need those financial papers now stop bullshitting and yo is just not gonna hand them over and so they start arguing and selena gets really mad like really mad and she's had enough and so she takes off that egg-shaped ring that yo had given her

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

382.543

The ring that symbolized them being friends for life. And this absolutely destroys Yo. I mean, how could she do this to her? This friendship was everything she had worked for. And so she pulls out that pew-pew that she had bought before, and she points it right at Selena. And Selena's like, oh, and she tries to run away. And then, blam, Yo shoots her right in the back shoulder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

408.072

But Selena just keeps running out of the motel room and outside, while Yo continues chasing her, screaming, bitch, like she's going to shoot her again. And so Selena runs into the lobby of the motel, and she tells him, I've been shot, and she falls to the floor. Minutes later, she's in an ambulance on her way to the hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

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Meanwhile, police, they show up to the motel, and they're now looking for Yo. So they search around, and they eventually find her in the parking lot sitting in her red pickup truck. And police are like, come out with your hands up or whatever. And Yo is like, nah, I'm just going to unalive myself. And so this turns into a whole standoff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

43.886

Dad's like, eh, I don't know. We don't really have the time or the budget to run a fan club. And Yo's like, no, no, I'll do it all for free. You don't have to pay me. And Dad is still like, nah. But Yo isn't going to give up. She keeps calling dad over and over again. She really wants to be close to the singer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

445.496

And then the SWAT team shows up and they're all trying to negotiate with her, trying to get her to not unalive herself. And as all this is going on, Selena, who's at the hospital in critical condition, she unfortunately passes away. She was only 23 years old.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

471.065

And nine hours go by and it's nighttime now. And Yo is still in her truck in the motel parking lot in a standoff surrounded by police because she's still got that pew pew and she's still threatening to unlive herself. Now eventually she does give up and police swoop in and bam they arrest her. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

491.978

And she ends up going to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to life in prison. It's a sad one.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

63.711

And so finally, after about 15 phone calls, dad finally agrees to let her start an official fan club. So Yo starts working

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

71.36

on this out of her home and she's running this fan club and she's going to concerts and she's signing people up and the fans pay a membership fee and yo will then send them posters and t-shirts and stuff like that and she legitimately does a good job running this club in fact she does such a good job that management eventually lets her meet this singer herself in person and that singer's name is Selena and so over time as the years pass

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By Her Own Fan - The Selena Quintanilla story

98.587

Yo starts to get in good with Selena. She's helping her out with things and she's starting to get close to her. And later they even make her an employee of the business and they start paying her. And pretty soon she's scheduling appointments for Selena and basically running her life. While Selena, her star is rising fast and she's getting more and more famous.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

0.149

So Steve Buscemi is about to get into a bar fight and that somehow sort of leads to Justin Long getting kidnapped. Let me explain. So this guy, his name's Steve Buscemi and he's a movie star and you know who he is, you've seen him in stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

101.057

Here's his mugshot. While Steve Buscemi is rushed to the hospital and he's in critical condition, but thankfully he survives and he's okay. But then, fast forward to around 2008, and Steve Buscemi is in Michigan filming a different movie. And this movie stars a bunch of people, including this actor, Justin Long. And you know who Justin Long is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

123.561

He's been in Accepted, he's been in Dodgeball, he's been in Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Squeakquel. And so one night during this shoot, Justin Long and Steve Buscemi, they're off work and they're out at a local bar drinking and chatting. And Steve tells Justin this crazy story about how he was filming a movie a few years back and he got stabbed in the face by a local.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

144.659

And he lets him know, yeah, you know, sometimes the locals, they don't like big movie stars coming into their town thinking that they're all that. And Justin Long hears this and he's like, oh, OK, don't piss off the locals. Got it. Good advice. And that thought stays with him. A few nights later, Justin Long comes back to that same bar, but without Steve Buscemi this time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

16.356

Well one day in 2001, he's in North Carolina filming a movie and after work, he and some of the crew, they go out for drinks at a local bar and they're with this other guy. fellow actor Vince Vaughn. And you know who Vince Vaughn is. And so anyway, it's 2 a.m. and they're all drinking and that is when a local woman starts talking to Vince Vaughn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

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And so he's there and he's sitting at the bar getting a drink and that is when two random guys slide up next to him. We'll call them the bros. And so the bros slide up and they start messing with him like, oh what you think you're better than us Mr. Big Shot Movie Star? And Justin is like, no no I'm normal just like you guys.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

185.869

And he, probably thinking about Steve Buscemi's advice, he starts buying these two bros drinks. like you know he doesn't want them to think he's arrogant or something and so they all start hanging out justin long these two bros and two other locals and eventually the bar closes and the two bros are like hey it's getting late you want to go to a casino and justin long's like All right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

209.064

Because, you know, he doesn't want to piss off the locals. And so Justin and this whole group, they get into the bro's car and they head toward this little local casino. And on the way, they make a quick stop at Justin's hotel room so that he can get some cash to gamble with. But then as they're driving to the casino, suddenly the bros are like, we need to make a pit stop real quick.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

230.634

And they pull up to their apartment and everyone gets out and they go inside and they're chilling for a sec. And that is when they offer Justin Long A little Zaza. And Justin Long's like, ah, no thanks. But these bros, they're insistent. They're like, oh, what? You're not going to smoke with us, bro? Mr. Big Shot Hollywood? And of course, Justin doesn't want to be seen as that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

252.373

Plus, remember what Steve Buscemi told him about pissing off the locals. And so Justin is like... Alright. And he hits this Zaza. But here's the thing about this Zaza. Once Justin Long hits it, he immediately knows this ain't Zaza. This is what he believes to be PCP. And he can feel it right away and it feels wrong. But then he notices the two bros aren't smoking with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

279.203

And he's like, hey, aren't you guys going to smoke too? And the bros are like, ah, no. And they just keep watching him all suspiciously like, oh, is it working? Then their roommate comes in and this roommate looks right at Justin and he starts whispering to one of the bros. And he says, you're right. That's the guy. Let me get my camera.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

301.269

And Justin Long's thinking, oh shit, they're about to start taking pictures of me while I'm all wasted on whatever that drug was that they gave me. And then, randomly, one of the bros starts just doing karate kicks right at Justin's face. Like, I guess just trying to freak him out or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

316.621

And so anyway, there Justin Long is high on something with a random guy that he just met doing karate kicks in his face. And if that isn't bad enough, then the bros are like, hey, you want to make a video for TMZ? You want to make a YouTube video, Mr. Hollywood? And at this point, Justin Long is in like total freakout mode. Like, who the hell are these people? What are they about to do to him?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

340.919

He doesn't feel safe anymore. So he's like, please just take me back to my hotel. And the bros are like, oh, what? You can't handle a little Zaza, bro? But regardless, they all get in the car to take him back to his hotel. And so, they're all driving along in the middle of nowhere. And poor Justin Long, like, he's still freaking out and all these thoughts are racing through his head.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

362.295

What do these guys want? Are they trying to get a video of me messed up on drugs to sell tabloids? Are they gonna hold me for ransom? Meanwhile, the bros are acting shady as f**k. They keep whispering to each other and texting someone. And Justin Long is so high at this point, he's like hit his limit and he's thinking he's being kidnapped. And so he wants to call for help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

37.586

And her boyfriend, who is also there, he doesn't like this. He didn't like his girlfriend talking to some movie star. And so the guy confronts Vince Vaughn and they get into it and they're arguing and yelling insults and finally Vince Vaughn is like, yo, let's take this outside, bro. And now the whole bar is like, oh, there's about to be a fight. and they all go outside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

383.273

However, unfortunately he can't because whatever he smoked is making the concept of dialing numbers on his phone out to be an impossible task. And so he just sits there freaking out, but then he gets a little bit of hope. Out the window, Justin can see that they're approaching his hotel. And so finally, they're getting somewhere. And maybe this nightmare is about to be over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

412.532

Until... The bros drive right past his hotel. These guys are taking him someplace else. And so this is the point when one of the bros asks Justin, so how much money did you take out for the casino? How much money do you got on you? And Justin is like, holy shit. And he just loses it. And he starts freaking out again. And he sees that their car is approaching a red light.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

438.857

And so he thinks, okay, when we stop at the red light, I'm just going to jump out of the car and I'm going to run for it. But then the bros don't stop the car at the red light. They just blow right past it and they keep on driving. And so Justin's like really flipping out now. He's like, oh my God, I'm gonna die. And that is when he decides to take action. And without the car slowing down at all,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

464.949

Boom, he opens the door and he jumps out and pow, he hits the ground and he rolls and bam, the car's back tire runs over his leg and it just crushes it. And as crazy as that is, ultimately Justin escapes. However, he unfortunately has permanent nerve damage in his leg. And because Justin was so messed up, he couldn't remember what the two bros looked like. So he didn't report it to police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

493.501

And ultimately, the bros got away. It's wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

58.417

And there, bam, Vince Vaughn and this guy, they start fighting. And pow, Vince Vaughn punches the guy. And boom, the guy punches back. But then, in the middle of all this chaos, some other crazy guy in the crowd suddenly pulls out a knife. And he's like, who wants to get sliced? I don't even know what this guy has to do with the fight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Steve Buscemi Got Stabbed and Justin Long Got Kidnapped

77.102

But Steve Buscemi sees the guy pull out the knife and kapow, he tries to kick it out of his hand. But it doesn't work. And this really pisses this crazy guy off. And so boom, he lunges at Steve Buscemi and he stabs him in the face and he stabs him in the neck again and again. And it's brutal. Sometime later, police arrive and they arrest all the people fighting, including Vince Vaughn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

0.109

So this wannabe TikToker is now going to prison for life. Now his name's Mohammed and Mohammed is 26 during this time and he works in London as a delivery driver for a kebab restaurant. And bro loves to make TikToks. Mostly just videos of him acting like a goofy ass and doing whatever the hell this is and whatever the hell this is. Yeah, it seems like he aspires to be an influencer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

119.594

And she goes and she tells her family and friends about the deal and her family and friends are like, No, this all sounds very shady. But unfortunately, I guess Louise isn't hearing them. For some reason, she trusts Al-Jundi. So Al-Jundi tells Louise that she first needs to transfer the properties to him and put them in his name and he'll take care of the rest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

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And if she does that, she will eventually get this big lump sum of cash. Then Al-Jundi goes to hire a lawyer to help him prepare this paperwork. And the lawyer looks at all this and he's like, nah, bro, you're obviously scamming this woman. In fact, several different lawyers turn him down because they can see this whole thing is sketchy. But eventually, he does get the paperwork done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

165.495

And before the deal is finalized, he talks Louise into giving him the keys to one of the properties. And immediately, Al-Jundi lets Mohammed move in there without Louise's knowledge. And this is great news for Mohammed, like he moves in and he starts living rent-free, he starts making videos in this place, like showing it off on TikTok like he owns it. But here's where things get dark.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

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These idiots think that if they murder Louise, that they can then permanently own her two houses. So a few weeks later, Al-Jundi sets up a meeting with Louise at one of her London properties to finalize their deal. He says there'll be a lawyer there and his rich girlfriend who wants to buy the properties will be there and they'll close this deal and be done. And so Louise shows up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

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And of course, there's no lawyer there. There's no rich girlfriend there. Only Mohammed, Al-Jundi, and this other girl they've been hanging out with. Her name's Maria. Maria is their friend and she appears in Mohammed's TikTok sometimes. And so anyway, Louise shows up and they all chat for a bit. And then Al-Jundi and Maria leave.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

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And Al-Jundi takes Maria to a local jewelry store and I guess he buys her some jewelry or something. And then, I guess, he drives her home. But what he's really trying to do is create himself an alibi for this murder that's about to happen. Meanwhile, Mohammed is still at the house with Louise, alone. And he waits until she isn't paying attention, and then he grabs a hairdryer, and suddenly, BAM!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

26.8

But one day in 2021, he's at the kebab restaurant and he meets this woman, Louise. And Louise is 71. She's a businesswoman. She eats at the restaurant a lot. And soon she becomes friendly with Mohammed and this other guy who works at the restaurant. Al-Jundi. And Al-Jundi is 23, and he's a cook at the kebab place. And bro is kind of a sketchy dude. Like, he's always trying to con people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

261.089

He starts strangling her with the cord, and she tries to fight him, and she struggles, but it's no use. unalives her. Then Al-Jundi arrives back at the property where Mohammed is. Then he and Mohammed leave and they go to the kebab shop where they work and they pick up some cleaning supplies. And this is actually security footage of them outside the restaurant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

286.5

Then they go back and clean up the crime scene. They wrap Louise's body in a duvet and they dump her into one of those wheeled garbage bins. Next, they cover the body in the can with leaves and lawn clippings.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

299.145

Then they get Louise's phone and they start pretending to be her and they send texts to Louise's family and friends, telling them that I'm totally fine and I've decided to go to China, but I'll be back soon. They're obviously trying to explain her sudden disappearance. Now, at this point, they have to get rid of Louise's car too, her black BMW, because it's evidence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

322.049

And so Mohammed puts it up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and he sells it way under market value. So it sells fast, within like two days. And then he takes that money and he goes and he buys a bunch of new clothes and sh**. And then he makes TikToks of himself showing off those clothes. Did bro really just unalive someone and then buy himself a Calvin Klein fanny pack?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

346.785

Anyway, not to mention, if you look at the background of this TikTok, this one in particular was shot at Louise's property after she was murdered. Now that will obviously come into play later. Meanwhile, Louise's family is freaking out like she's missing. No one has seen her for a few days, which is very unlike her. And the texts they're getting from her phone are kind of weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

369.464

Like she's saying she's going to China. Not only that, these texts don't sound like her at all. Louise is 71 years old. These messages feel like they were written by a teenager. So immediately, her family knows something is up. Now at some point, someone goes to the police and reports Louise missing. Probably her family. And so police start investigating.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

392.602

And of course, one of the first things they do is they go to the property she owns to see if she's there. And so they go to this property that Mohammed has low-key been living at this whole time. And so police see that he's living there and they're like, uh, I thought this place was supposed to be vacant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

411.074

And they end up searching the house and they find some pieces of evidence, including a sweatshirt with blood on it. And they take it and they get it tested for DNA. And guess whose DNA they find on it? Louise. Combine that with TikToks Mohammed posted of himself dancing outside of her house after she was murdered. And now Mohammed is a suspect.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

434.597

And police know that Mohammed and Al-Jundi are friends. So they go and they search Al-Jundi's house. And there they find the wheeled garbage bin where the guys had dumped Louise's body. Al-Jundi had moved it there from the crime scene thinking that no one would find it. Not only that, the day after the murder, Mohammed was giving Maria a ride, driving her home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

457.866

And his dumb ass confesses to her by joking about it. Like, oh, I can't believe we really unalived that lady. So when police question Maria, of course she's like, yeah, he was joking about murdering that woman when he was driving me home the other night. And so, bam, they arrest Mohammed. Here's his mugshot. And also, bam, they arrest Al-Jundi too. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

481.736

And they both go to trial, and they're both found guilty, and Mohammed gets sentenced to life in prison, and Al-Jundi also gets sentenced to life in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

50.954

And over time, Mohammed and Al-Jundi start to notice, Louise got money. Like, she's kind of rich. She owns a few super nice properties in London worth 4.6 million pounds, or about 6.1 million US dollars. And she really wants to sell these properties so that she can give the money to her adult children. And Al-Jundi and Mohammed learn this about her, and they're like, jackpot!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

74.265

And they decide they're gonna not only scam her, but murder her. And so, over the next few months, they spend time becoming friends with her, particularly Al-Jundi. And Al-Jundi convinces Louise that he is this weirdo. wealthy businessman, a high-ranking property developer, who is also a chef at a kebab restaurant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TikTok Killer - The Mohamed El-Addoud story

94.765

I don't know actually how that works, but over time, he convinces her that he works in real estate and that he wants to help her out. Specifically, he tells her that he has this super rich girlfriend who would love to buy her two London properties off of her for way above market value and that he wants to do it in such a way that she won't have to pay taxes on it. And Louise is like, sounds dope.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

0.109

So this woman, she's losing her eyesight and she'll do anything to get it back. So one day she hears about this famous spiritual faith healer in Brazil and she thinks maybe he can heal her eyes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

115.518

And while he's doing all this, he allegedly doesn't take any payment for all these healings. But he does, of course, accept donations. And he sells things to his followers, like special healing pills that are just placebo. And he also sells, and I'm not making this up, bottled holy water. And so by doing all this, John is starting to get really popular in Brazil.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

12.956

So she travels to Brazil with some friends and they get there and she meets this faith healer and she has a session with him and he has her sit down in a chair and he tilts her head back and then he pulls out a scalpel and he starts cutting right into her eye. Now the woman, let's call her mother-in-law because she's my actual mother-in-law. But we'll get to her in a second.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

137.025

In fact, he gets so popular that ABC notices and they do a one-hour special on him. And they treat him not as if he's a con man, which he is, but they treat him as if he's actually healing people. And specifically on this special, they interview a woman named Lisa Melman. And Lisa Melman, on this show, she gets on camera and she loudly declares that she has breast cancer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

159.364

but that she's going to quit all her chemo and all her traditional cancer treatment. And instead, she is only going to let John of God treat her. I don't know. I guess he's going to stick forceps up her nose and that's going to cure her breast cancer. Oh, but it gets worse. A few years later, after the ABC special, someone very influential learns about John of God. Oprah.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

179.805

And Oprah decides she's going to investigate and she's going to see herself if any of this is real. So she travels to Brazil and she spends a bunch of time with him and she dedicates several episodes of her very popular TV show to praising him and his work and all these people he's allegedly healed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

197.771

She even has Lisa Melman come on one of those episodes and miraculously Lisa claims that her breast cancer is now gone. She says her sessions with John of God cured her. And Oprah and her audience, they applaud this. But then two years later, sadly, Lisa Melman dies. It turns out her breast cancer hadn't actually been cured. She just thought it had because that's what John of God told her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

224.006

In fact, when she stopped her treatment, her cancer got progressively worse. And she was apparently in a lot of pain when she died. Of course, Oprah never gets on TV and mentions that part. Regardless, the damage has already been done. Oprah has endorsed John of God on her show twice and exposed him to an international audience. And from there, his business just explodes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

246.574

People are flying in from all over the world trying to get healed by him. At this point, at his spiritual healing center, he's healing over 10,000 people a month. And he's making bank. He's getting tons of donations. He's selling trinkets and bottled holy water and those placebo pills left and right. And he's making more money than he's ever made.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

267.249

Allegedly, he's making over $14 million a year just on those pills alone. But then, in a weird twist, at some point, John of God gets diagnosed with stomach cancer himself. And so does he use his magical spiritual healing powers to heal his stomach cancer? No, of course not. He goes to a regular ass doctor. And he gets normal treatment. And he gets surgery in a normal hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

293.096

And he does five months of chemo like anyone else who would have stomach cancer. And of course, he recovers in like a year. And then he initially denies to everyone that that happened. Because I guess him using traditional medicine is bad for his business. So anyway, my mother-in-law hears about this guy. And she wants to travel to Brazil to see him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

310.843

See, my mother-in-law, she has an eye disorder called macular degeneration. And unfortunately, every year she loses more and more of her vision. And she's lost most of it at this point. And she feels like, hey, maybe this John of God guy can help bring her eyesight back. And she's not dumb. She's not gullible. She's just desperate for a cure.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

329.099

So she comes to me and my wife and she tells us that she's going to Brazil. And me and my wife are like, oh, please don't. You know, we're worried about what could happen to you. And this guy is obviously a fraud and a turd for telling people he can heal them. But unfortunately, she doesn't listen to us. She'll do anything to fix her eyes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

33.568

First, let's talk about the faith healer. So the faith healer, his name's John of God. And this dude claims that his God or whoever will heal people through him if he like does his hocus pocus and touches them. Of course, he has no formal training in medicine. He's never been to med school. In fact, he dropped out of elementary school in the second grade.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

347.31

So she goes to Brazil and she meets him and she has a session with him and he sits her down in a chair and he tilts her head back or whatever. And he pulls out a scalpel and he does the thing where he scrapes the white of her eye with that scalpel. He then has her put a cover over that eye. And he tells her that in a few days, she can take that cover off and her vision will be healed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

366.48

Somehow, in both eyes. Meanwhile, me and my wife are there in the US and we're just waiting. Waiting to see that when that cover comes off, if her vision is actually healed. Now this is where the story goes off the rails. You aren't ready for this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

380.471

Around this same time, a Dutch woman named Sahira, she's struggling with some mental trauma and she sees this guy on Oprah's TV show, this guy named John of God, who claims he can heal people. So she's like, hey, maybe he can help heal my mental trauma. So she flies to Brazil and she shows up to the spiritual healing center and she waits in line and she sees him a couple of different times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

401.948

One of those times she sees him, something exciting happens. John of God offers her a private consultation and she's super excited. So she waits until everyone's gone and then he invites her into his office. And while she's there, he takes her into the bathroom and he makes her hand touch him inappropriately. And afterwards, she's like, that was weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

422.158

And like, I don't know, maybe that's just part of the healing process. So she goes back later for another private session with him. And this time when they're alone, he takes her into the bathroom again and he straight up essays her like with a hard R. And here's the thing, the mental trauma that Sahira went to see him for was specifically sexual trauma.

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This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

442.392

So she went to see him and told him about her sexual trauma and his response was to essay her. And so poor Zahira doesn't know what to do. I mean she feels violated and sick to her stomach and she wants to tell someone but at the same time she believes this man is actually healing so many people. So she decides to not tell anyone and she buries it deep down with all her other sexual trauma.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

467.792

Until four years later, the Me Too movement happens and Zahira finally finds out she's not alone. So she posts about her experience with John of God on Facebook. And then she gets invited onto a Brazilian TV show to talk about it. And there on that show, she meets a dozen other women, all who say that John of God essayed them too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

489.167

And this TV show airs and suddenly all of Brazil knows about these accusations and everyone's talking about it and bam, more women come forward. And so in response, the public prosecutor's office for the state, they're getting tons of accusations from a lot of different women.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

504.998

So they set up a hotline and an email address specifically to receive all of these accusations that they're getting about John of God. And in the first day that hotline goes live, nearly 200 women come forward saying John of God essayed them. And then in the weeks that follow, even more women come forward. And eventually, that number of women who claim that John of God essayed them is over 600.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

51.841

But regardless, he considers himself a healer. And one day, he just decides to travel around Brazil and tell people, hey, look, I can heal you. And people fall for it. In fact, they're really into it. And over time, he slowly builds a following. And his following becomes so big that he eventually builds a spiritual healing center in the middle of this small town to accommodate all of his visitors.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

531.233

And of course, John of God denies this. He claims that all 600 of these women are lying. But then his own daughter comes forward and she claims that he had essayed her too from when she was the age of 9 to 14. He would tell her that he was healing her, but instead he would essay her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

550.224

And she said that he finally stopped essaying her when she was 14 because that's when she got pregnant by another man. And when he found out that she was pregnant by another man, he beat her so hard that she... lost the baby. In fact, his daughter said, and I quote, my father is a monster. So anyway, all of this becomes public. And police are like, all right, it's time to get him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

574.018

And they issue an arrest warrant for him. But John of God, he ain't going out easy. He immediately withdraws $9 million from his various bank accounts. And he goes on the run and no one can find him. He's just hiding out somewhere like he is gone. But about a week later, I guess the pressure is just too much for him. Like he knows he's fucked and he turns himself in and they throw him in jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

594.394

Here's his mugshot. And eventually he goes to trial. He's found guilty and he's sentenced to a grand total of 489 years in prison. Good for him. And okay, so at this point, I know what you're thinking. You're like, Ray, did he do anything horrible like that with your mother-in-law while she was there? First of all, let me just say, none of that essay stuff was public when she went to visit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

616.752

So none of us knew what had been going on. And while she was there, lucky for her, she said she met him in a room full of people. There were no private sessions. So no, nothing inappropriate happened with her. But it's also worth noting that she eventually took her eye cover off. And so did John of God end up healing her eyesight? No, he did not. Shocker. Shout out to Brazil.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

74.915

And there, John of God becomes known for performing what he calls psychic surgeries. Which is exactly what it sounds like. He uses no anesthesia, no sterilization, and he does these medical techniques on people that just don't make any damn sense. Like he shoves surgical forceps up people's noses to heal them. Or he'll scrape the white of someone's eyeball with a scalpel in order to heal them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

99.369

It's weird. Like someone will come in with back pain and he'll be like, let's scrape your eye with a scalpel. That'll heal you. But anyway, he claims this works. He claims that he's cured people's cancer. He claims that he's healed multiple sclerosis. He claims that he's helped people walk who couldn't previously walk.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

0.109

So this old man is about to take a knife and unalive someone, but was it self-defense? So the guy's name is Nikolai and Nikolai is 54. He's living in Wisconsin. And one day it's summer 2022 and Nikolai and his friends, they decide to get some inner tubes and some alcohol and go float the local river. So they're like, sweet, let's go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

118.735

I don't know. Regardless, the teens get irritated. They don't know who he is or why the hell he's there, so they start telling him to leave.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

126.68

What? ! And from here, things really start to escalate. Suddenly, a woman from another totally different separate group comes over and she starts yelling at him to leave. Then, for some reason, they start loudly accusing him of being a P3DO.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

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But Nikolai, he still isn't leaving.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

157.13

In fact he isn't saying much at all. Then the group of teens, they all start surrounding him. And there's like 13 of them. And they start taunting him. And Nikolai, he's getting nervous at this point. I mean, there's a lot of people around him yelling at him. He's suddenly aware of how outnumbered he is. And so he does the only thing he can think of. He pulls a pocket knife out of his trunks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

188.439

And if you pause the footage and zoom in, you can see the knife in his hand right here. However, the teens, they don't see the knife, and they keep yelling at him, and they keep taunting him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

204.119

And here is where shit gets crazy and violent. Now, what sets this violence off is actually in dispute. The teens, they claim that Nikolai hits one of the girls in the group. I guess they say he punched her. But Nikolai says he didn't do that. And while someone is filming all this, unfortunately, the footage is too chaotic and you can't see it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

21.631

And they drive out there and they put their inner tubes in the water and they float a while and they're all drinking and having a good time. But then suddenly one of Nikolai's friends can't find his phone. It seems to be lost. And so they look around a bit, but no luck. They can't find it. And they realize, oh, bro. you must have dropped it along the way, like as we were floating.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

225.729

Regardless of whether he hits someone or not, what we can see is how the teens react. And I'll slow down the footage for you so that we can talk about it. So here you can see that they push Nikolai down and you can see him falling back into the water. And then one of the teens runs up and boom, slaps him. But I can't show you that part, it's too violent for this app, so we'll skip past it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

247.398

Then Nikolai tries to get up and you can see this guy push him back down again. And then the guy comes back to push him another time. Now, if I pause the video here, you can't see it because of the resolution, but Nikolai still has that knife in his hand. And I can't show you, but he goes ahead and he stabs the guy who pushed him right in the stomach.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

267.695

Now, at this point, most of the teens don't seem to realize that their friend was stabbed and they continue to surround Nikolai and touch him. And then, unfortunately, the camera pans away so we don't actually have footage of this next part. And I'll just explain it to you. So one of the teens, his name is Isaac and he's 17.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

287.822

And I guess Isaac tries to intervene and he touches Nikolai in some way, maybe aggressive, maybe not, I don't know. And Nikolai takes the knife and boom, he stabs Isaac right in the chest. And then he just keeps swinging that knife around, and pow, he cuts another kid, and bam, he slices another kid. And all this happens so fast that most of them don't realize that people are getting stabbed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

311.456

Until... Suddenly, the group starts to see all the blood floating in the water, and they start freaking out. What the f***? And so everyone's flipping out. And in the middle of this chaos, Nikolai quietly slips away and he ditches the knife. He throws it into the woods. And he goes back to his group all nonchalant. And his group is like, where were you? What happened? And Nikolai's like, nothing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

347.006

And the group's like, All right. And they just continue floating down the river. Meanwhile, Isaac, the kid who got stabbed in the chest, he dies. And the group of teens, they're obviously still freaking out. And they've already called 911. And so pretty quickly, police arrive. And the teens tell them what happened. And they get a description of the stabber.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

366.405

And so police, they're looking around for this stabber, and they happen to see Nikolai with his group. And he's wearing the same swim trunks that the teens described the stabber is wearing, and so police know that Nikolai is the one who stabbed Isaac. So right now, you're being placed under arrest, okay? You're being placed under arrest for homicide and attempted homicide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

384.617

And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

387.759

A man fighting with a group of teens, tubing on a river, pulls a knife, killing a 17-year-old. He claimed it was self-defense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

394.985

And so officers, they sit Nikolai down to question him about all this. And this is where he really screws up. He doesn't ask for a lawyer. Instead, he just sits down and he starts telling police what happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

413.621

And so, yeah, he's claiming self-defense, which there is an argument to be made that he was acting in self-defense. Although his lawyer should be making this argument, not him. And to make it worse, at this point, Nikolai doesn't realize that one of the teens recorded video of the whole fight and that police actually have that video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

437.476

So for whatever reason, he starts lying to them, claiming that the teens pulled knives on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

44.351

And so Nikolai's a decent guy and he wants to help his friend out. And so he's like, well, I'll go find it. I got my goggles and my snorkel and I'll go back and look for it in the river where we were just at. And so Nikolai goes back a ways and he jumps in the river and he's like searching around looking for this phone. And that's when he sees this group of teenagers across the river.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

475.822

And so eventually Nikolai goes to trial and the fact that he lied to police about the teens pulling knives on him comes up. In fact, everything he lied about comes up. And so the jury finds out he lied and they no longer find him credible and they don't believe him about anything. And they end up finding him guilty of first degree reckless homicide. And he's sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

500.554

The man who killed a teenager on the Apple River will now spend the next 20 years in prison. That is wild. Always get a lawyer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

64.588

And it looks like maybe they just found something. I think like maybe one of them just happened to be holding a phone up or something, and Nikolai's like, oh, that must be the phone. But whatever the reason, he goes over to them to check it out. Now, these teenagers, they're partying, they're drunk, they're having a good time, they're being rowdy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

82.334

And so when Nikolai, this awkward middle-aged man, comes over to them, they're understandably weirded out. They're like, what the , who is this? And one of them starts filming him. where does he are Now, I don't know why, but Nikolai doesn't really say much to them. Like, he doesn't stop and explain that he's there looking for his friend's phone. I don't know, maybe it's because he's drunk.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

0.149

So one day, this guy goes on a TV show, Divorce Court. He and his wife have been having problems lately because apparently he's been cheating on her. Were you cheating on her, Mr. Burns? Absolutely.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

109.684

Mrs. Burns. And of course, in this show, they make sure to portray themselves as the successful business owners they are.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

11.819

Yeah, I'm cheating on her. Now, his name is Ronnell, and he's obviously been cheating, but no one knows who he's been cheating on his wife with. However, it's speculated that it's this woman. And people speculate that because shortly after this episode of Divorce Court, Ron-El leaves his wife and he starts dating Kiana.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

119.609

And so these two seem to be doing really well. They're like the ultimate influencer power couple. Until... Here's the thing. Ronnell and Kiana project a lot of success online. But behind the scenes, things are different. They're actually struggling financially. In fact, almost all of their business ventures are failing. The only semi-successful ones they have are her hair salons.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

143.686

But apparently that's just not enough to keep them afloat. Mostly because they've been spending a lot of money on stupid shit in order to flex on social media. And soon enough, all this spending catches up to them. And they've racked up over half a million dollars in debt. Debt that they're just not able to pay back. So then, boom, they file for bankruptcy. And this really sucks for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

168.979

But of course, they don't post that part on social media. No, no, they keep flexing and projecting that image of the ultimate entrepreneur power couple. And they act like nothing is wrong. In fact, two years later, despite their financial troubles, they decide to move the whole family to a bigger city. One where they'll have even more business opportunity. Atlanta.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

191.017

And of course, while they're there, they keep flexing online and they just keep spending money. And they rent a huge 5,200 square foot house with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. And they allegedly tell their followers, not that they're renting it, but that they bought it. Now, despite them projecting all this success online, again, behind the scenes, things are different.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

215.822

The big move to Atlanta just doesn't seem to be going great for them. And it's been particularly hard on Kiana, who's been having some really bad days since she moved there. And to make it worse, at some point, life just drops a bomb on her. She finds out that Ron L has allegedly been cheating on her. Similar to what he had done to his previous wife, now he's doing it to her. No!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

241.858

And of course, this sends their marriage spiraling into a rough patch and they start talking about divorce.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

259.269

And then, allegedly, at some point, Kiana retaliates for his cheating and she ends up cheating on him. It's a whole mess. And then, sadly, after only living in Atlanta for five to six months, they end up filing for divorce. And according to the divorce papers, he's in the process of moving out. And all this bad news hits Kiana really hard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

281.547

She thought they were going to live happily ever after, and it just didn't work out. And so mentally, she's been struggling. And she just can't hide it anymore by projecting all this success online. And suddenly, the tone of her posts start to change.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

308.522

And so Kiana starts to get more real, more emotional. One day she even posts, God knows I would do anything to wake up from this nightmare. Then about two weeks after that post, Kiana and Ronnell are at the house one night. I guess he hadn't fully moved out yet. And as you can imagine, things are tense and they get into an argument. And it gets bad, like really bad. And things get physical.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

31.199

Now, between Ron-El and Kiana, they have eight kids, which is a lot and it's expensive. But that's fine because Ron-El and Kiana, they have all these side hustles to keep them afloat. She owns a couple of hair salons. She's also kind of an influencer. So she's always flexing online to all her followers while he is an entrepreneur and he has an online business where he coaches other entrepreneurs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

331.633

In fact, this fight gets so bad, one of the daughters ends up calling 911. And she reports domestic violence. But at some point, Kiana just can't take it anymore. And so she goes... and she gets a pew-pew, and she points it at Ronnell, and she pulls the trigger, unaliving him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

348.628

Then, she calls the police to report what she had done, and to say please send help, but before first responders can get there, Kiana turns the pew-pew on herself, and she unalives herself too. That's a sad one. Shout out to social media.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

53.574

So he's also always flexing on social media too, like trying to show off how successful he is. They're also both apparently super religious. In fact, one of his side hustles is that he owns his own ministry business.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

71.461

So anyway, Ronnell and Kiana are about to be real successful. So they get married and they go into business together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Social Media Ruined Her - The Keianna Burns story

87.714

And like Ronnell goes out and buys her a new Maserati and they're all posting about it on Instagram. But at one point, this is all not enough. And they want to raise their online profile even more. So they try and self-produce their own reality show called Meet the Burns. And they shoot a whole promo for it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Abuser - The Sarah Gonzales-McLinn story

0.329

ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business-Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der Sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Abuser - The Sarah Gonzales-McLinn story

22.024

All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

0.109

So this relatively unknown actor is rich now. He just took in over 690 million dollars and he did it basically by just using his charming personality. So how did he get so rich? Now the guy's name is Zack and Zack's an aspiring actor and he really wants to be famous. But unfortunately for him, he's not. But he will be. But for now, he's just a guy who runs a juice bar in Chicago.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

106.255

So several times a week, he'll leave his apartment for hours at a time. And he tells Mallory, oh, I'm off to work. I've got an important meeting. But he's really going over to this acting school to secretly take acting classes. And he's going on auditions, and he's putting himself on tape. But as it turns out, landing a role is hard for him, mostly because his acting sucks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

125.885

I am completely and utterly in love with you. Now, despite that, Zach does have a couple of things going for him. Like he's charming and he's driven. And at some point over dinner, he meets these two, Julio and Diego. And Julio and Diego are brothers and they're also indie filmmakers. Like they mostly make short films. And they really hit it off with Zach and they become friends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

147.356

And Zach, he eventually tells them the same lie he told Mallory. Hey, I got this connection to billionaire Howard Schultz and I can get him to invest in your movies. So the three of them start a production company and they end up buying the rights to low budget English language movies and distributing them in Latin American countries.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

163.962

And this is a legit business model, but they need capital to get it going. So Zach hits up an old college buddy of his who works in investing, a buddy we'll call Day Trader Jake. And so Zach convinces Day Trader Jake to invest $37,000 into his new movie distribution business. promising him, hey, Howard Schultz invested in my company and you'll make a quick return.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

184.568

He even shows him fake licensing agreements from Sony once he just typed up in Microsoft Word. So day trader Jake agrees to invest $37,000. And within a few months, Zach actually does pay him back with interest. So then day trader Jake tells his other investor friends, hey, invest in Zach's movie company. He'll pay you back quick with interest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

205.381

So then all of those friends start investing, partly based on the lie that Howard Schultz is involved and partly based on the fact that Zach forged even more fake licensing agreements from Netflix and HBO. Ones that he, again, just typed up on Microsoft Word. Now, in order to pay all these new investors back, Zach turns his business into a straight up Ponzi scheme.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

227.899

He starts taking money from the new investors and using it to pay back the old investors. But here's the thing, though. This works really well for him because for now, all of these investors are getting paid back with interest. And so then more people hear about what he's doing and they invest in the company. And then even more people hear about it and then they start investing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

247.971

And it starts with like tens of thousands of dollars. And soon people are investing millions of dollars at a time into his movie distribution company because they all appear to be making a return. Now, at this point in the story, Zack is barely distributing movies at all, because the real money is in the Ponzi scheme he's doing. And of course, he's paying himself during all of this, too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

26.343

But then one day, he writes a billionaire asking him to invest in his juice bar. That billionaire is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. So Zach writes Howard asking him to invest, thinking, I don't know, it's worth a shot. But then, surprisingly, Howard Schultz writes him back. And he says that he's really impressed with the business plan that Zach pitched him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

269.165

Millions of dollars. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Mallory has no idea he's scamming. She's thinking, wow, his movie business is doing really well. I'm so grateful for Howard Schultz. And so Mallory marries him, thinking he's this incredible businessman. And suddenly, they're both living this baller-ass lifestyle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

287.478

Driving a new Mercedes, driving a new Audi, constantly hitting up Las Vegas casinos and spending tens of thousands of dollars at a time. They go and buy a $5.7 million house. Like look at this, it's got a pool with a hot tub, a gym, a wine cellar, a theater, and look at this closet. Look at it!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

307.172

And not only that, with all this newfound money, Zach is finally able to finance movie projects that he can act in. Because remember, his goal is still to be an actor and to be famous. So then bam, he gets some acting roles in some small movies. One of them is actually this Joker fan film, which they produced and put on YouTube, where Zack actually plays the Joker.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

328.789

Sorry, I couldn't quite catch that. And yeah, he's still not that great of an actor, but at least his Ponzi scheme is going well. Until... At this point, Zach's been running this scam for over five years. And he's managing the money of over 250 investors. And he's taken over $690 million worth of investments. Some of it he's paid back. But here's where it all starts to fall apart.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

356.837

Every Ponzi scheme is destined to fail. Because at some point, you run out of new investors to pay back the old investors. And so suddenly, kaboom. One day, Zach isn't able to deliver on a round of payments. So his old investors are like, yo, Zach, where's my money at? And so then Zach does what he does best. He turns on his charm and he starts bull everyone, telling them all kinds of excuses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

379.617

oh, HBO is reorganizing or oh, Netflix is in the middle of an audit so the streaming services are late paying me. So to buy some time, he types up these fake emails that are supposed to be from execs at HBO and Netflix. And these emails have HBO and Netflix apologizing for the late payments and that they'll get the payments out soon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

400.393

And he shows these fake emails to the investors and they believe him and it satisfies everyone for a while. Then another year goes by and Zach's still hasn't paid his investors back. And at this point, all the investors are fed up and they're tired of the excuses. And some of them, they go and they file a lawsuit against Zach and his company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

418.428

So then the lawyers involved have to subpoena Netflix for their financial records because Zach told them that this was all Netflix's fault. And they're like, hey, Zach says you owe him money and therefore he can't pay us. And Netflix is like, uh, we have no record of ever doing business with this Zach guy or his company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

436.121

And so the lawyers write back and they're like, uh, what about all these licensing agreements you signed? And then they send Netflix the fake licensing agreements that Zach had given them that he typed up in Microsoft Word, along with all of the fake emails that Zach had fabricated. And Netflix looks at it and they're like, uh, these are fraudulent and this is a huge deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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And that is when everyone involved starts to piece all of this together and they come to the conclusion that Zack is running a Ponzi scheme. And of course, everyone is pissed off and they're disgusted and they want to take Zack down. But no one is more pissed off and disgusted than his old college buddy, day trader Jake. Because Jake was the very first investor.

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This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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but that he doesn't want to invest in the juice bar. However, he does want to invest in Zach. He wants him to come work for him at his venture capital firm in Los Angeles. So then Zach goes to his girlfriend, this woman, Mallory, and he shows her this email from Howard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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And he feels bad because he's the one who got all of those other investors involved. So he has to go and contact all of those other investors and shamefully tell them he may have accidentally involved all of them in a con. And by sheer coincidence, I'm sure it's right around that time that old Zach hits him up and he sends him an email and he asks him for even more money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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But at this point, day trader Jake has had enough and he contacts the FBI. And so then, boom, the FBI raids Zach's house and they arrest Zach. And I don't have a mugshot, but he's an actor, so I do have a headshot. So here's his headshot. And allegedly the same day he got arrested, his wife Mallory files for divorce. Good for her.

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This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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Meanwhile, Zach takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 20 years in prison for this Ponzi scheme. Plus he has to pay back $230 million in restitution to all the people he defrauded. But on the bright side, I guess he is sort of famous now.

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This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

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And they're all excited and just like that, boom, they move to Los Angeles so he can take this new job waiting for him at this venture capital firm. Here's the messed up thing though. There is no new job waiting for him at this venture capital firm. Zach never got a job offer from billionaire Howard Schultz because Howard Schultz never wrote him back. Zach made all of that up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Hollywood Actor Is In Prison Now - The Zach Horwitz story

85.16

He faked the email and everything. And he tells this big lie so that he can convince Mallory to drop everything and move to Los Angeles with him. Because remember, deep down, he's an aspiring actor who really wants to be famous. Why he doesn't just tell his girlfriend that, I don't know. So anyway, pow, they're now in LA. And Zach has got to keep this lie going.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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So this little kid, he might be one of the best con artists I've ever seen. Let me show you. Now his name is Juan Carlos, and he lives in Colombia. And so far, he's had a really hard life. But Juan Carlos is about to do whatever it takes to succeed. So one day, he sets out to make that happen. And he heads to the local airport to catch a flight to Miami.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And they've got all these nice things and so he tells himself that soon he's gonna have nice things too. And within a few weeks of living with Lozano's family, Juan Carlos starts stealing. And things around the house go missing. Plus, he's been disappearing for days at a time. And Lozano and his wife, they start thinking that something isn't adding up about this kid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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Then, one day, they get a call. And it's the Colombian consulate, who had just gotten some important information. Turns out Juan Carlos isn't actually named Guillermo. He's named Juan Carlos. And he isn't some innocent kid. He's actually got a criminal record. And he isn't 13. He's actually 17. And his parents aren't dead. They're actually alive and well back in Colombia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And he probably didn't ride in the wheel well of that plane. It's more likely that he rode inside the plane with the cargo. And he just lied about it all because it made a better story. So Juan Carlos is just a little con artist trying to con his way into the United States so that he can have a better life. And so, bam, they immediately detain him and they deport him back to Colombia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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Oh, but this isn't over for Juan Carlos. Because for a moment, he got a taste of a much better life. And he'll do anything to get that back. So over the years, Juan Carlos tries his best to scam his way out of Colombia and get back into the US and other countries using different aliases and fake IDs. But he ends up getting deported, like a bunch of different times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And while all this is going on, Juan Carlos, he's there developing the perfect con. Here's his perfect con. Juan Carlos dresses up real nice, pretending to be a rich man. And he goes into a five star hotel and he tries to make it look like he's a guest there. He hangs out in the lobby and at the hotel bar. He'll chat with the staff a little bit just to make sure that they notice him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And as he's doing this, he also takes note of other guests. He'll memorize their name. He'll memorize their room number. Then he'll go to reception, pretending to be that guest. And he'll say that he lost his room key. And reception, they'll recognize him like, oh, this guy, he's been hanging out in the lobby for a few days. Of course he's a guest here. So the hotel will let him in the room.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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But little Juan Carlos, he can't afford a plane ticket. So he sneaks onto the tarmac and he climbs onto a cargo plane and he hides out in the wheel well. And he allegedly holds on real tight while the plane takes off and flies three and a half hours from Cali, Columbia to Miami, Florida. Then the plane lands and allegedly Juan Carlos falls out of the wheel well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And while he's there, he'll steal money and credit cards and jewelry and whatever he can get out of the guest's luggage. Then to make it worse, he'll then call the hotel security desk and tell them he's locked out of his safe. And security, they'll come up to the room and they'll open the safe for him. And they don't question anything because he's already in the room.

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This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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So of course they think it's his room. So then Juan Carlos takes everything from the safe and he leaves the hotel a slightly richer man. And this con works. In fact, it works really well for him. So Juan Carlos does it repeatedly. Hotel after hotel after hotel. Just raking it in. Until one day in London, boom, he gets arrested for using a credit card he had stolen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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But Juan Carlos, he's ready for this. He's been thinking about it a while and he gives police a fake name and he skips bail and leaves town. And then a year later, he's back in London, pulling off his same con and then bam, he gets arrested again. for using another stolen credit card. This time he gives them a different fake name and a fake ID.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And he ends up getting off with a small fine because they don't realize he's the same guy they arrested the year before. So Juan Carlos continues with this pattern. He travels the world using fake names, fake IDs, and robbing hotels. But a few years later, he makes his way back to London again. And there he hits four more hotels and leaves with over $100,000 worth of cash and jewelry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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Now, at this point, a couple of London detectives have started to take notice. This detective, Swindells, and this other detective, Plowman. So Swindells and Plowman, they've started to piece a lot of this together. And they end up connecting a bunch of these robberies back to the thief, Juan Carlos. Meanwhile, old Juan Carlos, he's already fled. He's living the good life. He's got money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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He's got clothes. He finally has nice things like he's always wanted. But it's just not enough. So Juan Carlos keeps going. And within a couple of years, he ends up in Las Vegas, where he pulls off his infamous scam and he ends up stealing $350,000 worth of cash and jewelry. And one of the hotel rooms he robs is allegedly Celine Dion's room. So that's fun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And then about a year later, Juan Carlos is back in London again and he hits up even more hotels. But then one night Swindells, he's out and he's walking back from a bar he was just at. And he just happens to stop outside of a supermarket and he sees a man leaving that supermarket. A man wearing a long leather jacket. And Swindells recognizes him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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Because by sheer fucking coincidence, he just crossed paths with the Juan Carlos. Now, Swindells has never seen Juan Carlos in person, only in mugshots. But he's been working on this case a long time, and he knows it's him. So then, pow, Swindells arrests him. And he goes to trial, and he's sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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Oh, but this story isn't over because Juan Carlos really likes his nice things. So three months later, he's in prison and he happens to have a dentist appointment. And he ends up charming the prison guards to let him go out to his dentist appointment alone. I guess this is some kind of like open prison where they're not as strict. And so they just let him go to the dentist. Alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And, of course, he flees. And from there, somehow, he makes his way to Dublin, where he steals a credit card and pulls his infamous scam in yet another hotel. And that is where he screws up. Because that puts this Irish detective on the case. This guy. McGlynn. Now, McGlynn, he goes and he looks at CCTV footage from some of the stores that Juan Carlos had used that stolen credit card at.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And he just lays there on the tarmac, unconscious. And airport staff, they eventually find him. And he's shivering, and he's disoriented, and he's just a wreck. But he tells them, not that his name is Juan Carlos, but that his name is Guillermo, and that he's 13 and from Colombia, and that his parents had died, and that he doesn't have anyone else, so he fled to America.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And pretty quickly, he identifies the thief in the footage. He knows it's Juan Carlos, the same guy who had walked out of prison not too long before. So McGlynn investigates further, and he concludes that Juan Carlos must have just gotten to Dublin, so he's likely staying in a cheap hostel in the city where he can keep a low profile.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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So McGlynn spends two days searching all these hostels in Dublin, And then he finally finds Juan Carlos hiding out in a hostel with tons of items he had already stolen. And so kapow, he gets arrested again. Here's one of his mugshots. And he gets sentenced to two years in prison, but then an Irish judge rules that he can be extradited to France.

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This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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to face even more charges there because he robbed a bunch of hotels there too. But then while he's there in France, he's released temporarily. And then just like that, Juan Carlos disappears again. A few years later, he's busted by a customs agent at a gas station in Vermont after he had entered the US illegally. And he's sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And after that, he gets out and he's arrested again in a hotel in Hong Kong. Then he's arrested in France again for robbing another hotel of over $200,000 worth of cash and jewelry. And from there, he's sentenced to prison again for 15 months. This dude is allergic to freedom. But now he's out and his current whereabouts are actually unknown.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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But I'm just going to take a wild guess and say he's probably still out there robbing more hotel rooms. So shout out to Columbia, London, Miami, Dublin, Las Vegas, France, Hong Kong, and Vermont.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And his story just blows people away. Because they feel sorry for him. And so the local media, they start covering it. Then a police officer in the area, this guy, Lozano, he's driving home one day and he hears the story on the radio that they found this 13-year-old kid who had been hiding in the wheel well of a plane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Colombian Kid Stole Millions - The Juan Carlos Betancourt story

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And Lozano is so moved, he goes and he volunteers to be Juan Carlos' temporary guardian while the state figures out what to do with him. So Juan Carlos goes and he lives with Lozano and his family. And this changes his life. Suddenly he's not living in poverty anymore. And this middle class lifestyle feels like wealth to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

0.109

So this is a dog. And this dog is more famous than you. Or me. Because after he gets sold off by his owner, he actually gets saved by one of the greatest boxers in the world. So how did this dog get so famous? Well, the dog, well, we'll just call him Dog. One day, when Dog is a puppy, he gets adopted by this guy, Sylvester. And Dog loves Sylvester. They get along great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

109.992

So now, poor dog, he lost his best friend and he has to go live with this stranger. But we're going to pause this for a second. We'll get back to him. Because now we got to talk about this guy, Bleeder. And Bleeder, he's a working man. He's a liquor salesman in New Jersey. But most importantly, he's a boxer. He works during the day and he boxes at night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And he's not the best at boxing, but he's pretty good. And he's boxed his way all the way up to become state heavyweight champion of New Jersey. Which is pretty cool. But one day, Bleeder gets an opportunity that's gonna change everything. His manager gets a call from a well-known boxing promoter named Don King.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And Don King is looking for a fighter who's willing to get into the ring and fight the current heavyweight champion of the world. A man named Muhammad Ali. Because Muhammad Ali has two huge fights coming up. And he's basically looking for an easy match in between those fights. Some chump he can beat up real quick. And specifically, Don King and Muhammad Ali are looking for a white guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And this is because of the state of race relations in the United States at the time. Like a black boxer versus a white boxer, it would stir up a lot of emotions in people, and it would be quite a spectacle. And they would all make a bunch of money. This is like the original rage bait. But anyway, Bleeder gets this opportunity to fight the world champ, and he doesn't know what to do.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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I mean, he sees himself as a working man, and he's supposed to get into the ring with the best fighter in the world? But Don King offers him $100,000, which is more money than Bleeder's ever seen in his life. So of course, he says yes. And he knows he can't win.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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I mean, the betting odds against him are 40 to one, but it's important to Bleeder that he proves to everyone that he belongs there in the ring with the greatest fighter in the world. So then boom, Bleeder quits his job and he starts training full time. And he puts everything into this for months. And then fight night comes and everyone's there. 15 million people are watching live.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

21.522

And now Sylvester, he's an aspiring actor living in New York. And he's trying real hard to make it in the movie business. But unfortunately for Sylvester, there's a problem. He has a condition. He was actually injured during birth and as a result, part of his face is paralyzed and his eye kind of droops and he's got this speech impediment. So all that makes him really hard to cast.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And Bleeder and Ali, they're ready. And they get in the ring. And then, ding, the fight starts. And off they go. And they go a few rounds, with Bleeder throwing as many punches as he can. But unfortunately, Ali is just a different class of fighter. He's too fast, and he dances circles around Bleeder. And then more rounds go by. And Bleeder is trying his best, but he gets tired.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

252.24

But screw it, he fights even harder. But a lot of his punches just whiff by Ali. And the ones that do connect don't even faze the champ. Ali is just too good of a fighter. And no matter how many shots Bleeder throws, every punch is met with a counter punch. And eventually Ali starts really fighting and he starts wailing on Bleeder. But much to everyone's surprise, Bleeder eats all those punches.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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He doesn't go down no matter how many shots Ali throws at him. And then he starts to notice something. The crowd in that arena, they seem to be cheering not for Ali, but for him. They're cheering for him because he's the underdog. And he's actually doing much better than anyone predicted he would. And then right around that moment, something crazy happens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

297.681

Suddenly, Bleeder throws a couple of jabs and then a hard right. And then, boom. Oh! He knocks Muhammad Ali to the ground and the crowd goes insane. Now, supposedly, Ali only fell because Bleeder had stepped on his foot, which there is evidence of that being true. But that actually doesn't matter because no one in the crowd sees that. No one watching at home sees that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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All they see is arguably the greatest boxer on the planet getting knocked down by a nobody working man. They see an underdog who has just proven that he belongs in that ring. So then Bleeder and Ali fight it out for six more rounds, with Ali knocking him down in the 15th and winning by TKO. So ultimately, Bleeder loses. But that's not the most important part of the story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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The most important part of the story is how this all affected Sylvester. Because back in Los Angeles, around the time Sylvester had to sell his dog, he's just chilling at home one night. And he decides to go out to a local movie theater because at that theater, they would be live broadcasting the big championship fight between Ali and Bleeder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And so he sits down in the theater and he watches that fight and he sees not a chump who lost like everyone predicted he would, but he sees an underdog working man who got in the ring and gave it his best shot. And Sylvester is so inspired by this that when he sees Bleeder knock Ali down, he gets an idea for a screenplay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And so he immediately goes home and he starts banging out this screenplay, writing it by hand. And it's an underdog story about an average Joe who gets the opportunity of a lifetime to box the world champ. And while the average Joe doesn't win, he does knock the champ down. And Sylvester, of course, calls the movie Rocky.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And he's so excited, in about three and a half days, he's written a draft of the whole screenplay. And he's stoked about this screenplay. He shops it around town to some places, and he gets some feedback, but he can't get anyone to produce it. But then, one day, he goes on an audition for a movie. And he fails the audition and doesn't get the role, but he does talk to the producers afterwards.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

42.735

But despite all that, he still wants to make it big in Hollywood. So he goes on audition after audition with his droopy eye and his slurred speech and he gets rejected a lot. And he does some local theater and a couple of non-speaking roles in some small movies. But it's not enough to pay his bills. So as Dog grows up, Sylvester works odd jobs to keep both of them fed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And he's like, Hey, I wrote this screenplay. You should read it. And the producers are like, far out, groovy, or whatever the people said in the 70s. And so they read the screenplay, and they love it, and they agree to make the movie. But unfortunately, since Sylvester's kind of a nobody in Hollywood, he has to waive his writer's fee and accept a super low rate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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So he sold his movie idea, but he's still kind of broke. And to make things worse, he still really misses Dog. He hasn't seen him in six months since he sold him. So he tracks down the guy who bought him six months before. And according to Sylvester, he's like, hey, I'm making a movie. I got a little money and I want to buy my dog back. And the guy, he's like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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But he tries to charge him a large amount of money. Some sources say $15,000. Some sources say $3,000. And Sylvester's like, I don't have that kind of money. But then the guy's like, all right, I'll give your dog back if you put me in your movie. And so Sylvester's like, yeah, boom, you're in the movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And so finally, after all this time, Sylvester gets dog back, his best friend, and they're super happy. And of course, as you know, Sylvester goes on to make the Rocky movie. And he actually puts dog in that movie. Hey! He also, like he promised, puts the guy who gave Dog back to him in the movie. And the movie goes on to be a huge success. It's nominated for 10 Oscars.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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It gets an assload of sequels and becomes one of the most iconic franchises in Hollywood history. And Dog goes on to appear again in one of the sequels, Rocky II. Which means this dog is officially more famous than you or me.

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The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

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And they eventually grow to be best friends. And Dog doesn't care about Sylvester's speech impediment. He loves him. So when Sylvester moves to Los Angeles to seek out more acting roles in Hollywood... Dog, of course, goes with him. And there, Sylvester gets a few more acting roles, but nothing that can really pull him out of debt. He's still really broke. And by this time, Dog is grown.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Sylvester Stallone's Dog

85.145

He's 120 pounds, and he eats like a beast. And poor Sylvester. he doesn't quite have enough money to keep feeding him. So then one day, he meets a guy hanging out in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, and that guy offers to buy Dog. And Sylvester really needs the money, so he makes a tough decision. And he sells Dog, his best friend, for around $60, hoping that one day he can get him back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

0.089

So this girl is having such a hard time keeping her grades up in school. She literally unalives someone over it. Now her name is Sydney and Sydney's in high school. She's a really good student. She gets good grades. She's a high achiever. She mentors other younger students. She is absolutely killing it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

114.186

And that's when she gets an official notice from the school saying her enrollment has been suspended and she has lost her scholarship. And Sydney, she doesn't know what to do. She's never disappointed her parents before. So she goes home for the holidays and she still refuses to tell them anything. And she keeps pretending as if nothing is wrong, like school's going great.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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In fact, she doesn't tell anyone about her suspension. Not her parents, not her best friend, no one. And she keeps this lie going. And a month later, when school's back in session, she just goes back. Even though she's been suspended and is no longer enrolled, she returns to her dorm and acts as if she's still a student and just keeps on living there.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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And she attends sorority meetings and she attends classes sometimes as if nothing ever happened. And then eventually the school admins find out she's doing this. Like they just straight up kick her out of the dorms. Like they evict her and they deactivate her key card. And so poor Sydney, she doesn't know what to do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

172.058

I mean, she can't move back home because then her parents will know she failed college and they'll be disappointed in her. So instead of going home, she decides to keep the lie going. And she rents out a room at a nearby hotel and she just starts staying there. All the while, her parents have no idea any of this is going on.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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So it's no surprise when she graduates high school and gets an academic scholarship to a nearby university about an hour away from where her family's house is. But then in the fall, when school starts, she moves into the university dorms and starts going to classes. And pretty quickly, she discovers that university is much harder than high school.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

190.107

Until one day, Sidney's dad is at work and he's trying to log in to the university's online portal so that he can take care of Sidney's tuition. But oddly, he can't log in. So he reaches out to a school admin and they get on the phone and the school admin drops a He says, sir, you can't log in because Sydney is no longer enrolled. And dad is straight up shocked.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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Oh, how could our honor student be suspended from school? Now, their whole family uses one of those 360 location sharing apps. So he looks at it and he sees that Sydney is at his house, the family home. And dad decides to go home and confront her and figure out what's going on. So he does. He drives home and he confronts her and he tells her what the school told him.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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And Sydney, just thinking on her feet, she kind of half admits that she's having some trouble. But she continues to lie and say that everything is fine and that she's still taking some classes, which just isn't true. So they talk it out a bit and dad seems to be understanding, but he has to go back to work. So he leaves. Then Sydney's mom comes home and this is where things get crazy.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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Sidney's mom had also left work early to come home to talk to Sidney. And when she gets there, she immediately calls the school admins to talk to them about the details of her daughter's suspension. But they're not available and the school tells her they'll call her back. Then mom goes and confronts Sidney. She wants to know what the hell is going on. Why did she get suspended?

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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And they get into an argument and pretty quickly it gets heated and it escalates and soon they're yelling at each other. And in the middle of all that, suddenly the phone rings and it's the university returning mom's call. So mom gets on the phone with the admins and they start chatting and then out of nowhere, BAM!

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

291.985

Sydney hits her mom over the head with a cast iron skillet and mom screams and Sydney hits her again and again and again until mom goes down and this whole time the college admins are still on the phone and they can hear all this violence going on in the background and they start freaking out but then click The phone goes dead. And while mom is down on the floor, Sydney, she's not done.

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College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

318.83

She grabs a steak knife from the kitchen and she starts stabbing her mom. She stabs her over and over again, two dozen times. She eventually unalives her. And while this is happening, the school admins are still trying to call back and make sure everything's okay. And then finally, on the third try, someone picks up the phone. And it's Sydney. But she's pretending to be her mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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Like, yes, this is Sydney's mom. And the admins don't buy it. They're like, uh, no, this sounds like Sydney. And so Sydney quickly hangs up. And the admins are like, what the f*** was all that? And they call police and ask them to go over there and do a welfare check. So then police head over to Sydney's house. Meanwhile, Sydney, she's still at home, standing over her mom, who she just unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

363.692

And she has no idea what to do. So she starts to panic. She's got to cover this up. And she pretty quickly comes up with a plan. First, she breaks a nearby window in the house. Then she starts preparing a story to tell to the police about how some random burglar just broke in and unalived her mom. And within a few minutes, police arrive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

37.328

The workload is more, the expectations are higher, and poor Sydney is having trouble keeping up. And she's not used to this. Failure at school is not her thing. And sometimes she goes back to her family home to visit her parents, who will just call her mom, mom, and will call her dad, dad. She goes back to visit, and mom will ask her like, hey, how are you doing in school? And Sydney lies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

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And body cam footage shows them trying to usher her out of the house as she's trying to tell them this bullshit story. But unfortunately for her, pretty quickly, police see wounds on Sidney's hands, indicating that she broke the window in the house herself. So then, bam, they arrest Sidney, and here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

407.859

And she's charged with murder, she goes to trial, and she's found guilty, and she's sentenced to 15 years to life. All over some bad grades. Shout out to Ohio.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

58.319

She's like, I'm doing great, mom. And this goes on for months. She struggles, and then she lies to her parents about it. And by the end of her freshman year, things still haven't improved. In fact, at this point, she's doing so terrible, she's failing some of her classes, which puts her scholarship at risk.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

74.403

But still, she bottles it all in and goes home for the summer and doesn't tell her parents that anything is wrong. Then it gets worse. Fall semester starts. Sophomore year, Sydney goes back to college and goes back to living in the dorm. But at this point, the school has put her on academic probation. And soon enough, she's falling behind in her classes again and she can't keep up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Murders Her Own Mother - The Sydney Powell story

95.899

And of course, when her parents ask her how school's going, she continues to keep it from them. She's just too afraid to admit that she's struggling. She just doesn't want to disappoint them. And then, pretty quickly, the semester ends. And boom, Sydney has failed three out of the four classes she took that semester.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

0.129

So one night, this English backpacker goes hiking. He's in Australia in the outback. And it's nighttime, and he really wants to go climbing. So he starts climbing up the wall of this bluff. And so he climbs up and up. And when he's a ways up there, suddenly, boom. He loses his footing, and he starts to tumble down the bluff. And bam, he hits his head. And then bam, he hits his head again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

100.848

And soon, over 300 campers and other people are combing through the campgrounds looking for this baby and the dingo that took it. And they form a human chain to cover as much ground as possible, but still, they find nothing. So sadly, Alice and Michael return home without their baby, and they are absolutely devastated. I mean, they don't know what to do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

122.263

And then, about a week later, a random tourist just happens to be wandering around the area, and he stumbles across the baby's jumpsuit and diaper. but still there's no sign of the missing baby. And unfortunately at this point, it's clear that the baby is no longer alive. And so this story, it starts to blow up in the local media. Like a family's baby got eaten by a dingo? Like that's wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

145.732

And people are just captivated. And so Alice and Michael, they think it would be helpful to do some interviews because they wanna warn other parents out there about how dangerous dingoes are. And this is where they screw up because every time they get on camera, People feel like they don't come across as two parents who just lost a kid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

174.005

And so pretty quickly, the public starts to get suspicious. Like they think Alice and Michael don't appear sad enough. And so the news media, they just run with this story and they start to question Alice and Michael's version of events. Like this isn't typical dingo behavior. Why would a wild dog steal a baby? And so to make all this worse, police, they start to develop a new darker theory.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

196.36

That maybe this baby wasn't stolen by a dingo at all. That maybe this baby was unalived by her own mother. And as evidence for this, they start to point at the baby's jumpsuit that the tourist had found out by the campsite because they had run tests on that jumpsuit and there was no dingo saliva on it. So then how could the baby have been in a dingo's mouth?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

21.902

And then finally, he slams into the ground. And then, as if that isn't bad enough, A pack of wild hungry dogs approach him and they... Actually, I'm not ready to talk about this guy yet. We'll get back to him. I actually want to talk about this woman who we'll call Alice because that's her real name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

220.111

And Alice, she explains this by saying, well, actually the baby was wearing a white cardigan over that jumpsuit. So that white cardigan, which is now missing, probably would have had dingo saliva on it. But unfortunately for her, that explanation isn't good enough for police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

236.796

And prosecutors, they accuse her of lying about the white cardigan and then boom, police arrest her and they arrest Michael and they charge her with the murder of her own baby and they charge him with being an accessory to that murder. Now, police, they have no body, no murder weapon, and no witnesses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

253.426

But what they do have is circumstantial evidence, including what they feel is a large amount of blood in the family's car. They, of course, believe this is the baby's blood. So anyway, they all go to trial. And in the trial, the prosecution argues that Alice unalived her own baby, possibly with scissors, and then hid the body in the family car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

273.286

And that Michael later helped by trying to cover up the murder. And let me tell you, this trial blows the up in Australia. It becomes the biggest media circus anyone has ever seen. Like the tabloids are all over it. Every moment of it becomes newsworthy. And so sadly, after a month of hearing all the arguments, the jury deliberates and they find Alice and Michael both guilty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

297.78

And Michael, he gets a suspended sentence because he had already spent time in jail waiting on the trial. But poor Alice, she actually gets sentenced to life in prison. Now this is where our English backpacker comes in. Because three years later, after Alice gets sentenced to life in prison, the English backpacker, he takes a trip to Australia. And he goes out to this popular camping spot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

317.49

He goes for a climb at night. He loses his footing. He tumbles down the mountain. He dies. And some wild dogs approach him. And they start to eat him. Eight days later, another hiker passing by, he finds the backpacker's body at the base of the bluff. So police come and investigate, and this happens to be in an area surrounded by dingo dens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

336.422

And nearby, police find some of his clothing and his backpack. But then, a ranger finds a piece of clothing half buried. he pulls it out of the ground and it happens to be a baby's white cardigan. The same white cardigan that prosecutors had accused Alice of lying about. And this corroborates her whole story. And then only five days after finding this cardigan,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

362.963

The court orders Alice to be released from prison and suddenly the government launches a new investigation into the baby's death and ultimately they find that the baby's blood that they thought they found in the family car wasn't actually baby's blood. It was actually soundproofing spray that the car manufacturer sprays on when they built the car. and also potentially fruit juice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

37.718

And Alice is about to experience the worst night of her life because her baby is about to get eaten. So one night she's on a camping trip with her family, her husband and her three kids. And they're at a popular camping spot with a bunch of other families. And they got tents pitched and they're all hanging out and making dinner. And then Alice's youngest daughter, a baby, she gets tired.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

386.241

So the good news is, eventually, Alice and Michael are completely exonerated and here's what they look like in real life. And then Hollywood goes on and makes a movie about the whole thing, starring Meryl Streep and that guy from Jurassic Park. And of course, the movie's got the famous line, which has then unfortunately gone on to become a pop culture punchline.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

410.049

So basically, this woman's baby was eaten alive, and now pop culture just makes jokes about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

58.29

And so Alice has to put her in a little crib inside the tent. And then she just goes back to making dinner. And then a little time passes and suddenly they hear the baby cry. And Alice notices some movement in her tent. And then... A dingo runs out of it. So Alice rushes over to check on the baby. But the baby is not in her crib. So then Alice yells, my God, my God, a dingo has my baby.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Did a Dingo Really Steal Her Baby? - The Story of Lindy Chamberlain

80.297

She then runs out into the darkness, chasing after the dingo. But unfortunately, it's too late. The dingo is long gone. Now, Alice's husband is this guy, Michael. And Alice and Michael and the rest of the families, they start searching for the baby. And eventually, local police arrive. And this kicks off a huge manhunt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

0.089

So this woman hates this other woman. And she's about to try to ruin her life by planting illegal substances in her car. So the story actually starts with this woman, Kelly. And Kelly is a volunteer at the local elementary school. She's PTA president. And everyone likes her. But one day after school, she's at the school, she's volunteering, watching the kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

104.7

So she goes and prints flyers that warn people about what a horrible person Kelly is and that she should be fired. And then she stands out in front of the school and passes them out to parents. But still, the school doesn't fire Kelly. Then Jill Easter goes and complains to the superintendent, and Kelly still doesn't get fired.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

124.435

Then Jill Easter goes and complains to one of the state boards of California, and Kelly still doesn't get fired. And Jill Easter, she isn't gonna let this slide. She's had enough. she is going to get her revenge one way or another.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

137.908

So she goes and files a police report, including a restraining order, claiming that Kelly is harassing her son and stalking her, and that somehow Kelly tried to unalive her. And since Jill Easter has no proof of any of this, because she's making it all up, the restraining order is ultimately denied. Oh, but she's not done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

158.882

She then goes and gets her husband, this guy, Kent Easter, who is a high-powered attorney. She gets him to file a civil lawsuit against Kelly. And this lawsuit claims that because Kelly left her son locked outside for five minutes, he had been the victim of false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And of course that lawsuit, it goes nowhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

181.71

But understandably, all of this conflict is just stressing Kelly out and she doesn't know what she's gonna do. But then suddenly, bam, Jill Easter goes silent. No more drama, no more lawsuits, nothing. And months go by and Kelly has heard nothing more from the Easters. And it seems like all of this harassment has finally stopped.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

205.784

Until almost a year has passed since Luke got locked outside the school for five minutes. And then one night, a man makes a phone call to police and he tells them that he saw Kelly driving dangerously.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

22.762

And one of the kids, this kid, Luke, he's late when lining up with the other students. And he accidentally ends up getting locked out of the school. And Luke gets upset and he starts crying. And he's locked out for around five to eight minutes before eventually someone notices and they let him in. But then this woman shows up, Jill Easter. And Jill Easter is Luke's mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

226.57

And this man also tells them that he saw Kelly driving to the school while on drugs. So police, they go to the school to investigate because that's where she is. She's there volunteering. And they pull Kelly aside and they tell her about the report they got. And they ask her if they can search her car. And Kelly's like, sure, I have nothing to hide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

243.647

So police go and they open up her car and they search. And guess what they find? A whole lot of drugs. And this shocks everyone. And of course, the police, they start to grill Kelly. They get her to do a curbside sobriety test, you know, like where they make you walk the straight line and stuff. And by the way, all this isn't happening in private. No, no.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

262.697

This is all happening right in the school parking lot in front of all the students and parents and teachers who are all watching. And poor Kelly is horrified. It's like her job is on the line. Well, luckily, Kelly passes the sobriety test because she's sober. And police, they start to believe... Maybe Kelly isn't high. Maybe someone planted those drugs in her car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

285.488

So detectives, they get on it and they start investigating who made that call to police. And they track that call to this nearby hotel. And there they check surveillance footage and that's where they see Kent Easter. on the screen walking into the hotel. And this is just right before that phone call to police was made.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

303.507

So then detectives get ahold of their phone tracking records and they see that Kent Easter's phone was near Kelly's apartment complex the night before a bunch of drugs just randomly appeared in Kelly's car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

314.016

meaning he found out where she lives, snuck over to her apartment complex in the middle of the night, planted drugs in her car, and called the police on her the next day to make it so that she got busted in front of the whole school, hoping to get her fired. But here's where the story gets really crazy. After all this, detectives, they start surveilling the Easter's.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

334.27

And then one day they see a strange man leaving the Easter's home. This man, Gomez. So they pull Gomez over and they question him. And it turns out he's a firefighter who had been smashing with Jill Easter. They were having an affair behind Kent Easter's back. So detectives ask Gomez to wear a wire and then meet up with Jill. And surprisingly Gomez cooperates and he agrees to do this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

357.469

So then he meets up with her at a local park, and Gomez doesn't end up getting much information out of her, but he does end up telling her that they should stop seeing each other until the heat on her dies down. And Jill Easter doesn't like this idea one bit, and she

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

373.263

flips out and she starts yelling at him and screaming and she breaks up with him and then after that she randomly starts showing up to his home where his wife is and she starts confronting his wife telling her all about the affair that they've been having for the last two years She prints out photos that Gomez had sent to her and she leaves them in his mailbox for his wife to find.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

397.316

She also sends emails to his wife's work, trying to give the wife's coworkers all the details about her and Gomez's affair. And those emails sometimes include intimate photos that she and Gomez had taken. It's a whole mess. But Jill Easter wants as many people as possible to know that Gomez has been cheating on his wife and that he's a bad person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

421.989

She's basically doing everything she can to ruin his reputation. And I'm starting to see a pattern here. Anyway, eventually police arrest Jill Easter and Kent Easter for conspiring to plant drugs in Kelly's car and here's her mugshot and here's his. And Jill Easter pleads guilty and she's sentenced to 120 days in jail and she's disbarred from ever practicing law again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

43.92

And she is pissed that Luke accidentally got locked outside. So she goes up to Kelly and she lets her have it. She's screaming and she's yelling and calling her negligent. How could you leave my child locked outside for five whole minutes?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

444.312

Did I forget to mention she's a lawyer? Well, not anymore. She got disbarred. Well, Kent Easter gets sentenced to 180 days in jail and his legal license is suspended. And ultimately, the Easter's end up getting a divorce. Womp womp. Couldn't have happened to a nicer couple. Meanwhile, Kelly sues them in civil court and she's awarded $5.7 million as compensation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

468.602

I gotta say, $5.7 million for going through this hell, that sounds like it was worth it. Get that money, girl. Good for her. Shout out to Irvine, California.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

58.652

So Kelly apologizes to Jill Easter and she tells her that Luke was locked out because he didn't line up fast enough and that he was probably slow in getting to the door. And Jill Easter hears this and she thinks Kelly is calling her son mentally slow. So Jill Easter just loses it. She can't let Kelly get away with this. And that is when she starts plotting her revenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Tries To Destroy Rival By Planting Drugs In Her Car - The Story of Jill Easter

84.861

So the next day Jill Easter shows up to the school to talk to the principal and she explains what had happened the day before and she demands that they fire Kelly from her volunteer job. So the school admins investigate and they see that Kelly did nothing wrong so they don't fire her. And of course, this just pisses Jill Easter off even more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

114.442

Denn es ist eine Regierungsausgabe und man kann es nicht wirklich Geld verdienen. Es ist im Grunde eine Nahrungsvoucherung, die sie auf eine Studentenkarte stellt. Sie muss also einen Shop finden und einen schäden Back-Alley-Deal machen, um die Studentenkarte für Geld zu übergeben. Aber egal. Sie macht es. Sie findet es heraus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

132.01

Sie übergibt die Studentenkarte für Geld und sie beginnt, es auf sich selbst zu spenden. Sie kriegt sich einen neuen Peruvian Weave. Sie kauft sich teure Kleidung. Sie kauft sich das neueste iPhone, natürlich. Sie macht einen Luxus-Trip, um ein großes Horsenrad in Durban zu sehen. Oh, aber es bleibt nicht da. Denn sie geht und macht diese verrückten Partys für sich selbst und für ihre Freunde.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

153.602

Mit DJs und Top-Shelf-Alkohol. Und jeder zeigt sich auf. Sie macht eine teure Party für ihren Cousins Geburtstag. Und sie macht eine teure Baby-Schauer für ihren Freund in einer Champagne-Bar. So she's not just spending this money on herself, she's hooking her friends up too. And not just by throwing them parties. She buys her friends a bunch of new clothes and gets them the latest iPhones.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

175.399

And she and her crew are all walking around campus like they're straight up Beyonce. So the cash is flowing and McDuck has this big Cinderella glow up and she's finally living the baller lifestyle that she's always wanted. All because she somehow woke up with all this free financial aid in her bank account.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

193.713

And to make the situation even funnier, at the university, McDuck just happens to be studying accounting. Until two and a half months go by and McDuck is still living large. Mit all diesem Geld in ihrem Studentenbank-Account. Und sie versteckt es nicht. Im Übrigen spart sie ca. 600 Dollar pro Tag. Auf einfach dummes Scheiß. Aber dann schluckt sie es alles auf.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

220.512

Weil eines Tages geht sie auf den lokalen Grocery-Store kaufen. Sie kauft etwas mit ihrer Studentenkarte, wie sie es normalerweise machen würde. Sie geht in den Laden und ich glaube, sie vergesst, die Anzeige mit ihr zu nehmen. Diese Anzeige zeigt die Balance ihres Studenten-Financial-Aid-Akounts. Eine Balance, die jetzt 730.000 Dollar ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

240.265

Danach findet jemand in der Grocery-Store, wir wissen nicht wer, diese Person findet die Anzeige und sie schaut sich das an wie, verdammt, wie kann ein Student 730.000 Dollar in seinem Studentenbank-Akount haben? Weil sie wissen, dass es Geld ist, das sie für Essen und Bücher verwenden sollen. 730.000 Dollar, das ist viel Essen und Bücher. Und so nimmt diese Person ein Bild von dieser Anzeige.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

259.075

Und sie postet es auf Social Media und bald schlägt dieser Post auf. Und wenn das nicht schlecht genug ist, hat die Anzeige MacDucks Namen auf dem Bild. Also die Schüler an dieser Universität, die schauen sich diese viralen Bilder an und sie schauen sich MacDuck an, Sie gehen um die Kampus mit einem neuen iPhone und einem neuen Peruvian Weave. Und sie fangen an, zwei und zwei zusammenzumachen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

26.732

Mehr auf servicenow.de slash AI for people So this woman wakes up one day and she's suddenly rich. She just found $770,000 in her bank account that she didn't put there. So, what is she gonna do with it? Now the woman, we'll just call her McDuck. Und McDuck ist in der Schule, versucht einen Degree zu bekommen. Und sie ist glücklich genug, finanzielle Hilfe zu erhalten. Für Essen und Essentien.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

281.247

Und sie fragen sich, ob sie irgendeine Art Finanzhilfe-Schema holt. Und zumindest einer dieser Schüler berichtet all das an die Universität. Und die Universität investigiert es und sie berichten es an die Polizei. Und dann, bald genug, BAM! Die Polizei arrestiert McDuck. Und ich habe keine Schotten von ihr, aber hier ist, wie sie in der Realität aussieht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

298.235

Und sie beurteilen sie mit Verbrechen und Verbrechen, was ein bisschen hart aussieht. But she goes to court, she's found guilty, and she's sentenced to five years in prison. But luckily, she appeals the ruling. And the sentence is ultimately suspended. But she's also ordered to do community service and attend counseling. And for some reason, she doesn't have to pay back the $40,000 that she spent.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

319.977

So, hell yeah, free money. Shout out to South Africa.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

52.485

Und es ist nicht sehr viel, aber sie macht es funktionieren. Aber eines Tages verändert sich all das. Weil McDuck am Morgen aufwacht und ihre Studentenbankkarte betrachtet, um zu sehen, ob ihre finanzielle Hilfe die Karte erreicht hat. Und das ist, als BAM! Sie sieht, dass ihre Balance 14 Millionen Rand ist. Was ungefähr 770.000 US-Dollar ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

74.702

Sieh, McDuck bekommt eine monatliche Erlaubnis von der Schule. Und sie soll 1400 Rand bekommen, aber das ist nicht das, was sie bekommt. Sie bekommt 14 Millionen, was eine offensichtliche Ergänzung ist. Nun, die Währung ist in Rand, aber von diesem Punkt an werde ich einfach alles in US-Dollar verwenden, weil das einfach für mich einfacher ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The College Student Who Woke Up Rich - The Sibongile Mani story

91.408

So McDuck looks at the $770,000 in her account and she thinks, not that, oh, this must be a clerical mistake. I should probably contact someone at the financial aid office and get this all sorted out. No, no. Instead, she thinks, wow, this must be free money. Whatever am I going to buy first? And of course, that's when she starts spending it. Jetzt kommt es, wo es schwierig wird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was Also a Bank Robber - The Story of The Stander Gang

0.329

ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business-Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der Sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was Also a Bank Robber - The Story of The Stander Gang

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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At one point, this dress was the most famous dress in the entire world. It was a meme. And the creator of that meme just tried to unalive someone. Now, his name's Keir. And Keir's a normal dude. I think he works at a gas station. And he lives on a tiny little island in Scotland. And Keir is about to get married to this woman, Grace. So Keir and Grace, they're planning their wedding and whatnot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And this picture gets shared around and it gets retweeted something like 11 million times. The national news and talk shows are covering it. White and gold versus blue and black. This thing is really breaking social media records. Meanwhile, while all this is blowing up, Keira and Grace, they go and get married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And they're on their honeymoon and they're not really paying attention to the outside world. And they're somewhat unaware of how much traction this story is getting on social media. And then suddenly, bam, they get a call from a producer of The Ellen Show. And the producer's like, will you please leave your honeymoon and come on The Ellen Show and talk about this viral dress photo?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And Keira and Grace are like, sure. So they all go on Ellen and they tell their story to the whole world. And I was like, no, mom, that's white and gold. And if you think it's blue and black, you need to go to the doctors. Right. And Ellen gives them an all expenses paid trip to Granada and like $10,000. And it's just a really cool moment for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And then so Keira and Grace, they have their fun and they go back to their tiny Scottish isle and they live happily ever after. Until seven years later, this is where it all goes south. So Keir, he's been drinking a lot lately and he's been really hard on Grace. And so their relationship just isn't going that well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And he starts isolating her from her friends and family, as well as like monitoring her and trying to control all her money. And he's convinced himself that she's sleeping around on him. Like it's a whole mess. And so he starts getting abusive. He sometimes puts hands on her. They allegedly got into an argument at a bar one night and he put her in a headlock and he dragged her out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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Like this relationship is not going well. And so Grace, she's been looking for work and she's been applying for jobs in mainland Scotland. And one day she actually lands an interview for one of those jobs, which is big news for her. I mean, she might get a gig on the mainland. But of course, when she tells Keir, he doesn't like it. And he blows the f*** up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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Like, hell no, you're not going anywhere. I mean, this is a deal breaker for him and his whole life is on that island. And so Grace is like, fine. But she sneaks off to the interview anyway. And while she's gone, Keir's been drinking at the pub all day. And he's like guilt texting her the whole time saying, you don't do enough to support me. And he's just being an a**hole.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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So Grace gets back home and luckily Keir's asleep. But when he wakes up, he is pissed and they start fighting. And it gets heated and eventually Keir's like, fine, I'm leaving you. And he storms out of the house. And Grace, for some reason, she chases after him. She wants to convince him not to leave. And that is when things get physical.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And one day, Grace gets a text from her mom. And Grace's mom is at the store trying to pick out her dress for the wedding. And she texts Grace a few photos of some dresses, including this photo. And Grace, she mentions, oh, that white and gold dress. And Grace's mom is like, no, no, you mean the blue and black one. And so then they argue a bit about the color.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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Keir grabs her and he slams her down on the ground and he pins her down where she can't move and he starts strangling her with both hands and Grace is terrified and she screams and then a neighbor hears her scream and he comes running over and he pulls Keir off of her. Then Keir goes back inside the house and he reappears moments later holding a large knife and he threatens to finish her off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And so the arguing continues and he doesn't use the knife on her but he does grab her and he strangles her once again. And she fights him off and she gets away from him. And she runs into the house and she calls the police. And so police show up and then boom, they arrest Keir. Here's his mugshot. And he eventually goes to trial and he pleads guilty to endangering his wife's life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And he's ultimately sentenced to four and a half years in prison. And I don't know if they're still together. I can't find any information on that, but I'm just glad she's okay. Shout out to the dress.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And so Grace, she shows the picture to Keir. Like, honey, look at this dress. What color do you think it is? And Keir's like, blue and black, of course. So then they get into a disagreement about it. Then Keir takes the photo over to the house next door to where he lives because his parents just happened to live in that house next door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And his dad answers the door and Keir's like, dad, what color is this dress? And dad's like, that's white and gold, son. And so this whole family is disagreeing about the color of this dress. And so they show the photo to the people around them. And then soon everyone in the community is debating the color of this dress and none of them can agree on it. And this goes on for weeks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dark Truth Behind The Viral Dress - The Story of Keir Johnston and Grace Johnston

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And eventually one of Grace's friends, she takes the photo and she posts it on social media, hoping that maybe the internet can weigh in and help them settle this debate once and for all. And almost immediately after posting, kaboom, this post goes insanely viral. Everyone's talking about it and everyone's debating the color of this dress.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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So this guy, let's call him Eggplant, because that's what everyone calls him. And Eggplant is just a dude living in Tokyo, and he really wants to be a famous comedian. And one day, he tries out for a TV show, sort of a game show. But they're a little vague about what this show is going to be. Regardless, this is a big opportunity for Eggplant. This could launch his career.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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An eggplant in that apartment has no idea any of this is going on. Millions of people watch this show every week, and they watch eggplant just living in this apartment, alone, butt naked, and people freaking love it. They think eggplant is so funny and quirky. Meanwhile, in reality, Eggplant's actually having a really hard time. He's completely isolated from anyone. He doesn't have any clothes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And to make it worse, he's starving because magazine winnings take a while to come in because they have to come in through the mail. So producers, they end up giving him a small amount of crackers so that he doesn't literally die. And then about two weeks go by and bam, he wins something that feels life-changing to him. A bunch of packs of fiber jelly, which is like a sugary drink.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And so he lives off that for a while. Then a week after that, thank goodness, he wins an 11 pound bag of rice. Which hallelujah is his first real food. But sadly, he has no way to cook it. He would have to win pots and pans for that. So he has to eat the rice raw for a while. Then about two months in, he wins his first article of clothing. Used women's panties.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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Because I guess in Japan, you can just win used women's panties through magazine sweepstakes. Regardless, that all fails because he tries them on and the panties ultimately don't fit him. Then around the same time, he wins a stuffed animal, a seal. And he hasn't held a conversation with a single human being in months.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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So this stuffed seal becomes his best friend and he straight up hangs out with it and has conversations with it. Like it's Wilson the volleyball. Then three months in, he wins a toothbrush. So this poor guy finally gets to brush his teeth for the first time since he started this challenge. He's gone three months without brushing his teeth, but then his fricking rice runs out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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So he shows up to the casting office, and they select him. And the producer, let's call him Tosh. Tosh blindfolds him and takes him to a little studio apartment in Tokyo. And once they're there, Tosh finally explains to him the TV show they're about to be filming. They want Eggplant to strip down naked and live in a studio apartment with no food, no clothes, no contact with the outside world.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And so he's got nothing to eat until he wins a bunch of dog food. So not only does he have to start eating dog food, but that becomes his primary food source for months. So now we're six months into this. And at this point, Eggplant has submitted over 38,000 magazine sweepstakes. And he's won a bunch of random stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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A bicycle, a chair, a VHS player, a PlayStation game that he can't play because he doesn't have a PlayStation. But on the outside world, his segment in that variety show, it's still airing every week. And it has become massively popular over the last few months. And it's now getting around 15 million views an episode every week.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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In fact, the show has become so popular in Japan, fans have figured out where Eggplant's studio apartment is. And the fans and the media and the paparazzi, they're all constantly showing up outside the apartment. They're looking for him. And Eggplant has no idea any of this is going on because he can't see out. He doesn't have a window. He still doesn't even know the show is on the air.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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That's how in the dark he is. And Tosh and the other producers, they start to get worried. They're worried that Eggplant will see all this attention outside the apartment and that he'll figure out that he's being broadcast on TV every week. So they give him some bullshit excuse and they blindfold him and they relocate him to a new studio apartment about five hours away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And while they're at this new studio apartment, the producers decide that this show is so popular, they're gonna start live streaming the footage 24-7 so that anyone can tune in at any time of the day and see what Eggplant is doing. And so more months go by and the show becomes even more popular and millions more people are tuning in every Sunday to watch the weekly episode.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And Eggplant still has no idea any of this is going on. He's just constantly filling out sweepstakes all day, every day. And then one day, finally, after 335 days in captivity, kaboom, he wins a small bag of rice. And that bag of rice puts him over the 1 million yen mark. And Eggplant has officially won the challenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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Until... After winning, Eggplant is suddenly woken up surrounded by a camera crew, and they're congratulating him. And producers give him back his clothes, and they blindfold him, and they take him to a new surprise location. They actually take him out of Japan, where he's super famous, and they take him to South Korea, where no one would recognize him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And they let him visit an amusement park for the day. And they take him out for Korean barbecue, his favorite food. And Eggplant has a great time. And he still has no idea that he's now a celebrity in Japan. Then Tosh and the producers, they blindfold him and they take him to a new studio apartment. And there they coerce him to take off his clothes and do yet another challenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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Because this show is straight up a hit. Gintosh and the other producers, they want to keep it going. And poor Eggplant, he really wants to launch his career. So he reluctantly agrees. And this time he has to mail in magazine sweepstakes until he wins the value of a flight back to Japan. So Eggplant's like, fine, if this is my ticket into show business. But this time it's different.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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By now, he's so good at mail-in sweepstakes that he just aces this challenge. After a few months, he wins enough prizes to meet his goal easily. So then finally, after all this time, they clothe him, they blindfold him, and they take him back to Japan. But instead of taking him home, they take him to yet another studio apartment. And poor Eggplant, he's like, damn it, another challenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And he instinctively takes all his clothes off and gets naked. But then, suddenly, out of nowhere, boom, the walls of the apartment start to fall away. And strangely, he's standing in a TV studio in front of a full live studio audience. And they're all applauding for him. The producers had tricked him yet again. And poor Eggplant, he's like, what the f**k?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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Because again, he didn't even know this show had aired. He still thought that they weren't even going to use much of his footage. And on top of that, not only is he super famous in Japan now, his show broke numerous broadcast records. There were over 17 million people tuned in to watch his show every Sunday night. Now, as interesting as that is, all of this definitely traumatized him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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He's not allowed to leave. The only thing he's allowed to survive off of are the items he wins from mailing in magazine sweepstakes. And he has to do this challenge until he's won over a million yen worth of prizes from all the mail-in sweepstakes, which is around 8,000 US dollars. And once he does that, the game will be over. So Eggplant agrees to do it. And bam, he starts his challenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And there were plenty of negative psychological side effects. But this bit of fame does eventually help him break into the entertainment industry a little bit. He goes on to do some variety shows. He becomes a dramatic stage actor and performs all across Japan. He gets a role in a live-action anime-type drama. So after all that torture, he ended up with a pretty good career. So, shout out to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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And suddenly he's just there, butt naked, alone, filling out as many mail-in sweepstakes as he can, up to two to 300 a day. And like first, he's hoping he can win some food because they gave him nothing, only water. Now here's where the whole thing starts to get a little shady. Eggplant knows he's being filmed. He knows this is for a TV show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Japanese Man Who Got Trapped In a Game Show - The Story of Nasubi

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But Tosh tells him that little to none of this footage will ever make it to air. And that the show itself probably won't make it to air. But that is a lie. That footage immediately goes to air. It's part of a variety show. Once a week, producers take the footage and they cut it up, and every Sunday night they air a compilation of Eggplant's weirdest and craziest and funniest moments.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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So this woman, her name's Shantae. And Shantae has a problem. There's a dead guy in her garage, and she doesn't want police to find out. So she's got to do something with this body. So Shantae's 23, and this girl loves to party. And one night, it's a normal night, and she's at her friend's house. This woman. Fry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And he goes to cross a section of the highway, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, kaboom! Biggs is struck by a car. Shantae's car. And Shantae hits big so hard that he smashes through the windshield of her car and into her windshield, lodging his body halfway into the glass. Like his head and torso are inside the car and his legs are outside the car. So Shantae screams and she starts panicking.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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What the hell just happened? So she pulls over and she gets out of her car and she's like, oh , bro is stuck in my windshield. And she tries to physically remove him from the windshield, but once she touches his body, she's like, nope, can't do it. So she just hops back in her car and keeps driving with this dude lodged in her windshield.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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Now, from here, Shantae doesn't do the obvious thing and drive directly to the hospital. No, no. Instead, she drives about a mile back to her house, and she pulls into her garage. So there she is. She's parked in her garage, and she's crying because, you know, who wouldn't be? And that is when she hears a moan, and it's coming from Biggs. He's seriously injured, but he's still alive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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So Shantae and Fry, they're having a good time and they start drinking and they start hitting that Zaza and they're doing other activities. And then they both go out and they hit up the club. And while they're at the club, they meet up with some other people and they keep drinking and it's Thirsty Thursday and they got 69 cent drink specials so you know they're having a good time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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So she starts apologizing to him, like, I'm so sorry. It was an accident. And after apologizing to him like a thousand times, she then just leaves him there and goes inside the house. Later, as the night goes on, she comes back outside to check on him periodically. And each time she does, she doesn't like touch him or anything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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She just apologizes to him over and over again for hitting him with her car. Now here's the interesting thing. Shantae isn't your average Jane who runs the register at TJ Maxx. Shantae works as a CNA, a certified nursing assistant. So she knows what to do. She has the skills and training to render aid to this man. She just chooses not to. Instead, she calls Fry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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Crying, panicking, telling her to come over. So Fry comes over immediately and she's like, girl, what are you tripping about? And that's when Shantae tells her what happened. And she takes her to the garage and shows her the man stuck halfway into her windshield. And Fry just freaks the out and she just leaves.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And of course, Shantae leaves with her and they both sleep at Fry's house, leaving Biggs back in Shantae's garage. The next morning, Shantae borrows Fry's car and she meets up with another friend, this guy, Cleet. Because Cleet just got out of prison and Shantae thinks he might actually know how to help her. So Shantae takes Cleet to her house and she shows him the car in her garage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And by this point, sadly, Biggs is dead. He didn't get medical attention in time and unfortunately, he didn't make it. So Cleet is there, and he sees the body sticking out of the windshield, and he freaks the f*** out too. But luckily for Shantae, Cleet does know how to help, and he gets an idea. And he calls his cousin to come over and assist them, and we'll just call him cousin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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So then the three of them, Shantae, Cleet, and cousin, they come up with a plan to get rid of this body. So they get Biggs, and they wrap him up in a blanket, and they put him in Cleet's car. And then they wait for it to get dark out and they drive about five minutes away to a nearby park. And there they dump Biggs' body and they take their blanket back with them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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The very next day, two older men, they walk into a nearby fire station and they're like, hey, we were just at the park over here and we think we saw a dead body. So the fire department calls 911 and police show up to the park and that is where they find Biggs. So police immediately start investigating. And unfortunately, they have no leads. No one saw anything. No one knows anything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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Just a random homeless guy's body happens to show up in the park in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Shantae, she's trying to get back to her normal life. But unfortunately, she's having a little trouble. She's bummed out and she's all in her head and like, oh, is she going to get caught? But despite all that, it seems like she may have just gotten away with murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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Until about four months later, Shantae's with some friends at a party and she's finally starting to feel better. She's starting to move on. She's getting over it. And she's putting this whole tragic incident behind her. So she's at this party one night and she's had a few drinks. And she starts feeling a little chatty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And she starts to tell people this crazy story about the time she got wasted at the club and drove home and accidentally unalived a homeless dude. And a friend at the party who's listening to this story, she's horrified. So she goes home and she calls the police and reports her. The very next day, police show up to Shantae's house with a search warrant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And then about 2.30 a.m. rolls around and Shantae's like, all right, it's time to go. So she and Fry, they get in the car and they leave and she drops Fry off at Fry's house and then she gets on the highway and she heads home. And so she's cruising along on this highway and then suddenly, bang, something hits her car and she screams and she swerves around and glass flies everywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And there they find her car, apparently still bloodstained and dented from the accident. So then, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And they charge her with murder, and she goes to trial, and she's found guilty, and she's sentenced to 50 years in prison. While Cleet and Cousin, they also get found guilty, and they're also convicted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And they get sentenced to 10 years and 9 years, respectively. While Fry, she gets immunity in exchange for testifying against the other three. So, I guess that's nice. Shout out to Texas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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All right, let me stop you right there. Before we get to this part, we got to talk about this other guy, Biggs. Now Biggs is a regular working man, he's a bricklayer, and he's in a relationship with this woman, his girlfriend. And unfortunately, girlfriend is having some financial problems. So Biggs lends her whatever money he has on more than one occasion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And because of this, he starts to fall behind on his truck payments. So then his truck gets repossessed. Once his truck gets repossessed, he can't lay bricks anymore because his whole business revolves around him being able to use his truck. So he can't make any more money. And then he falls behind on all his bills and Biggs ends up getting kicked out of his house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hit a Man With Her Car And He Stuck in Her Windshield - The Chante Mallard story

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And soon enough, he finds himself homeless. So for the next two years, he's bouncing around from the streets to homeless shelters and back to the streets. And he does find some work along the way, but nothing that gets him totally back on his feet yet. And then one night, it's laid out, and he's walking around town. Not sure where he's going so late, but he's going somewhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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So this teenage kid, he commits so many crimes that he's about to run from police for years, steal a plane, and escape to another country. Now his name's Colton, and he's only 12, and his life sucks. He lives in a small trailer in the woods on a little island off the coast of Washington. And his mom is an addict, and so he mostly has to take care of himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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One day he's driving a Mercedes he had stolen and they spot him because he's driving like an asshole and they go to pull him over in a parking lot and he jumps out of the car while it's still moving and he takes off and runs into the woods. And so police search the car and they find a backpack he had stolen and a digital camera he had stolen and on that camera they find this selfie he took.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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Then Colton steals a boat and he drives it from his island to a different island. And on the new island, he breaks into all kinds of homes and businesses again, and he steals a bunch more . So this guy's been in and out of trouble for years at this point. He's like 16 or 17 years old at this time. And if you're like Ray, how could a teenager cause this much chaos?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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Like, wouldn't he want friends or like a girlfriend? What exactly is Colton getting out of all of this? Well, let me just say that this kid never had a chance at a normal life. Starting from when he was a little kid, his upbringing messed him up. And I'm not trying to invoke sympathy for him. I'm just saying that the home life he grew up in, the environment he grew up in, was an absolute disaster.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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When he was a toddler, his dad was a drug addict. So he was raised mostly by his mom, who was apparently a raging alcoholic and was extremely neglectful to him. His neighbors later said they called Child Protective Services more than once because they believed that he was being abused or neglected. Child Protective Services actually showed up to his place 12 different times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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One of those times, they actually even removed him from the home for a period of time. So yeah, all of this set his life up for an eventual disaster. That's why he was living in the woods and running around barefoot for so long as a kid. I mean, what else was he supposed to do? Anyway, so Colton is still out there and he's still on the run from police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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And by now, his story is starting to catch on in the media. I mean, this teenage burglar who police can't seem to catch and he's starting to get a little reputation. But Colton, he isn't too worried about that. He's way too preoccupied with his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot. And during this time, he decides he's going to make that happen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

21.355

So he spends most his days in the woods, alone, reading about airplanes, because one day he wants to be a pilot. Now eventually, he starts breaking into neighboring houses, stealing things, mostly food. But over time, he starts stealing other things, a laptop and credit cards. And interestingly, he often doesn't wear shoes for some reason. Like he does most of this barefoot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

229.668

So he goes and he breaks into a small airplane hangar and he steals a single propeller plane and he manages to get it running and he actually gets it in the air. Now, He has no formal flight training, only reading piloting manuals and watching instructional videos on his computer that he had stolen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

246.564

But he somehow managed to get this plane flying, and he keeps it in the air for three and a half hours before he finally crashes it on a Native American reservation in mainland Washington. About a year later, he steals another plane. But this one, he only flies it about 10 miles before he lands it correctly this time. No crashes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

267.159

Two weeks later, he breaks into another hangar and steals a third plane in Idaho. And he flies it 250 miles back to Washington. And this one, he crash lands in a field. Meanwhile, the legend of Colton and his crimes are growing. I mean, he's 17 now. And he's been on the run from police for like years. And he's stealing boats and planes and they just can't seem to catch him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

290.006

So he's starting to get fans online. And because he often doesn't wear shoes, they call him the Barefoot Bandit. Someone even starts a Facebook fan page for him. And that fan page gets over 100,000 followers. While one company starts making t-shirts with Colton's face on them. People are even writing songs about him and putting them on YouTube. Really? I have no shoes. I mean, dude is blowing up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

316.22

And of course, all this sudden attention, it starts to put a lot of heat on him. And by now the FBI is involved in this manhunt looking for him. But Colton, he's like, whatever. He's still out there robbing houses and stealing cars. And so another year passes and he decides, okay, There's too much heat on me. It's time to steal another plane and get the hell out of the country.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

338.278

But first, he has to find the right plane. So he jacks a boat and he drives it to mainland Oregon. And from there, he goes to a small airport and he doesn't find the plane he wants. So then he just steals a car. And from there, he goes to two more airports and he still doesn't find the right plane. Then he tries an airport in South Dakota and nope, still doesn't find the right plane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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Then he just keeps on stealing car after car, hopping from state to state, breaking into airport after airport, looking for the right one that has the plane he wants. And after driving over 2,000 miles through nine different states and almost a dozen stolen cars... Colton hits up a small airport in Indiana, and he finally finds the plane he's looking for, the Cessna 400.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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And bam, he's straight up Jackson. And he takes off, and he's in the air, and he flies 11 hours, over 1,200 miles, from Indiana to Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. And once he's there, he kind of crash lands in shallow waters near the shore. That crash landing triggers the plane's emergency locator beacon. Which is how the FBI ultimately learns that Colton is now in the Bahamas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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But Colton has no idea because within hours he's breaking into local houses and businesses again and stealing cash and food and all kinds of stuff. Then he steals another boat and he flees to the nearby island of Eritrea where he hopes to blend in with the constant crowd of tourists there. But unfortunately for Colton, he can't blend into the crowd. He's just too famous now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

431.81

And within a few days, locals start to recognize him as the Barefoot Bandit. And they tip off local police. So pretty quickly, Colton finds himself in yet another stolen boat, speeding away as Bahamian police chase him in like a Miami Vice type boat chase. And as he's hauling ass and getting away, kaboom, he high centers his boat on a sandbar. He is stuck.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

44.889

And so this barefoot kid is always in and out of trouble. And one day he doesn't show up for a mandatory court date and bam, the police start looking for him. And Colton learns they're looking for him and so he hides out in the woods for like six months. He finds vacation homes and he breaks into those and he sleeps there. Or he'll steal food and camping supplies and he'll sleep out in the forest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

456.658

And as he's trying to unstick his ride, of course, police roll right up on him. And they open fire on his boat, taking out his engine. And there is where Colton, the barefoot bandit, finally surrenders. So then bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And Colton gets charged with all kinds of stuff, and ultimately he gets sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Oh, but here's the best part.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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Apparently Colton's story is so interesting, he's able to sell the movie rights to his life to 20th Century Fox for a whopping $1.3 million. But unfortunately, as part of the punishment for all his crimes, the court ordered that he's not allowed to profit from his story. So he doesn't get to keep any of that money. All of it has to go to pay back his victims, the people he stole from.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

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And apparently he's out of prison now. He served his time and he just works a regular job. So good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

67.338

But then eventually, boom, police catch him and they convict him and he's sentenced to three years in juvenile detention. And of course, Colton hates being locked up. He can't ever be a pilot while he's in detention. So a little over a year later, he sneaks out an unlocked window and he escapes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Barefoot Bandit - The Story of Colton Harris Moore

84.772

So now he's on the run again and he goes back to the area where he used to live and he starts sleeping in the woods and breaking into vacation homes again. So he's constantly on the move and stealing things like food and supplies and cars. And this goes on for months before finally police close in on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

0.109

So one day, this woman steps outside, and there's a package on her front porch. And she looks at it, and, oh, it was sent by someone in her family. Cool. And she goes to pick it up, and kaboom, the package explodes in her face. Now, the woman, her name's Sandra. And Sandra works at this restaurant. She's a server, and it's a good job. It keeps her bills paid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

108.251

So he leaves and Sandra thinks, well, all right, maybe he'll finally stop coming in. But that's not what happens. The next day, he shows up again and he sits in her section like normal and he starts creeping, just staring at her the whole time while she works for hours. And it's really uncomfortable for her. And then the day after that, he comes in again and then again and again and again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

133.765

And each time he just sits there and watches her while she works. And of course, this really starts to creep her out. So one day she's decided she's had enough. So she tells her manager and then her manager goes up to Steven and he's like, all right, buddy, you got to sit in a different section. She can't serve you anymore. You're creeping her out. So Steven does. He sits in another section.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

155.22

But even in that new section, he just sits there and stares at Sandra the whole time from way across the room. And he takes any opportunity he can to interact with her while she tries her best to avoid him. Now at this point, deep down, Steven is pissed off. Like how dare she reject a nice guy like him and make him move sections. So then outside of work, he starts following her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

179.199

Or at least, Sandra's paranoid now and she thinks he's following her. She isn't totally sure. She doesn't have proof. But then one day she wakes up and she goes out to her car and she finds that someone has slashed her tires and she immediately knows it was Steven and she reports it to police. But unfortunately she has no evidence it was him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

198.594

A few days later, she's at home lying on the couch and she hears something outside and she looks out the window and sure enough, she sees someone in all black and a black hoodie slashing her tires. And she can't see the guy's face, but she knows it's Steven. She can tell by the way he walks. So in response to this, she sets up a surveillance camera outside her house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

20.899

But one day, that all changes when this guy comes in and he sits in her section. His name's Steven. So Sandra takes Steven's order and she's polite and she brings him his food and just normal stuff. But the next day, Steven comes back and he sits in her section again. And the day after that, he comes back again and then again and again and again. And every day from then on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

219.674

A few days after that, she's driving to work and suddenly her car starts sputtering. So she goes home and she checks the surveillance footage and she sees the same guy from before in all black, but this time he's messing with her gas tank. the next night around 2 a.m.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

235.389

she's at home and she happens to look out her window and she catches the same man outside messing with her gas tank again but this time she catches it early enough to call 911 while the crime is taking place so then Boom, police go and they arrest Steven and they charge him with destruction of property and he gets found guilty and he's sentenced to six months in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

257.741

Oh, but it's not over for Steven because while he's in prison, he starts plotting his revenge. I mean, he is pissed. Like how dare she reject him and get him locked up? He feels he needs to make her pay and he comes up with a plan. So he serves all his time and once he's out, he starts putting this plan into motion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

276.814

So first he researches and logs all of Sandra's friends and family and their contact information. Then he goes and he buys a manual on how to build a pipe bomb. And then he gathers up all the supplies he needs and he starts putting this pipe bomb together piece by piece. About two months later, he's confident he has a working explosive device.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

295.888

So he boxes it up in a little package like he's gonna mail it, and he makes the return address look like one of her relatives. Then, early one morning, when the moment is right, he shows up to her house, and he quietly places the neatly wrapped package on her front porch, and he sneaks away. Shortly after, Sandra steps outside, and she sees this package there at her feet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

317.723

And she's like, oh, cool, someone sent me something. And then she reaches down to pick it up, and the very moment she gets her hands on it, Kaboom, it completely explodes in her face. And sadly, it unalives her instantly. Now, because police already know that Steven had stalked Sandra in the past, he is immediately suspect number one.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

341.398

So then they get a warrant and they search his house and in his trash, they find the manual on how to build a pipe bomb. And they find his very detailed notes about Sandra's friends and family. So then bam, they arrest him again. Here's his mugshot. And here's another photo of him in court, just so you can see how creepy he is. Buh.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

361.036

So anyway, he goes to trial again, and he's found guilty of first-degree murder, and he's sentenced to life in prison without parole. Good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

43.885

And each time he comes in, he sits in Sandra's section. And she doesn't give him any special attention. She just takes his order like anyone else. But each time he comes in, afterwards, he goes home and he fantasizes about Sandra, about asking her out. While Sandra goes home and she doesn't think about Steven at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

61.957

Sure, she's a little weirded out by him coming in every day, sometimes twice a day, but he seems mostly harmless. Until this whole pattern goes on for about two years. Like he comes in and he sits in her section and he orders food. But then one day Steven gets a little courage and he looks at himself in the mirror and he thinks today is the day. Today I'm going to ask her out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Stalker Sent Her a Bomb - The Sandra Berfield story

86.337

So he shows up to the restaurant like normal and he sits in her section and eats like normal. But this time, instead of asking Sandra for the bill, he's like, hey, Want to go see a movie sometime? And Sandra, she doesn't know what to say. She's like, I'm flattered, but no, thank you. And from that moment on, it's all awkward. And poor Steven, his feelings are all hurt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

0.129

So this woman, her name's Hannah. And Hannah wants nothing more than to impress her dad. Now her dad is kind of a legend in his business. He's probably the most well-respected armorer in Hollywood. An armorer is the person who handles all the pew-pews on a movie set. So one day, Hannah's dad books a really cool gig, and he brings her along as his assistant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

119.849

See, this is a movie set, so what is supposed to be in the revolver is what's called a dummy round, which is a round that looks real but isn't. And at some point, somehow, live bullets make their way onto that set and into Hannah's arsenal of dummy rounds. And she unknowingly loads one of those bullets into that pew pew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

140.405

So anyway, she runs to get the revolver, which she keeps locked in a safe in the prop truck. So she gets it and she hands it to the assistant director, but she doesn't check it to make sure the rounds in it are actually dummy rounds. And the assistant director also doesn't check it. And he hands it to Alec Baldwin. And Alec Baldwin also doesn't check it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

158.102

And I don't actually know if he's supposed to. He's actually in the middle of a scene. But then Baldwin starts rehearsing with it. Now, the cinematographer, she's working the camera. And she starts walking Alec Baldwin through the scene. And her name's Helena. And Helena's like, okay, point that pew-pew right here, right below my armpit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

174.596

And as Helena's directing Alec Baldwin where to point the pew-pew, suddenly, bang, the revolver goes off and the whole room freezes. And Helena falls to the ground. She's been shot. And Alec Baldwin, he's confused. He's like, did she faint? Did she have a heart attack? What's going on? And that is when the rest of the crew sees Helena and the director of the movie, Joel, lying on the ground.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

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The single bullet had passed through the right side of Helena's chest and into Joel's shoulder. So they're both shot and they're both injured, but Helena is unresponsive. So someone calls 911 and quickly police show up. And a helicopter comes and they airlift Helena to a nearby hospital. And an ambulance comes and takes Joel away. And Joel ends up being fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

20.443

And there, she starts to learn how to handle pew-pews and how to be an armorer herself. So he trains her, and I guess she does pretty well. Because only a year later, she gets hired as head armorer on an indie movie, making her the only female lead armorerer in the industry. So she's immediately kicking ass at this and living up to her dad's expectations.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

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But then police, they bring Alec Baldwin in to question him. And that is where they break the bad news to him about Helena.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

235.066

Then, of course, police question Hannah because she's the armorer. And as you can imagine, Hannah is all torn up when she's talking to the cop.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

256.26

So this story is obviously tragic and sad, and it really captures the public's attention. And it blows up. It's all over the news. And Alec Baldwin, since he's the one who shot Helena, he's got to go and do damage control. And so he goes on ABC and does a big interview. And of course, he's all torn up about it too. But he swears he didn't pull the trigger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

283.171

But he does admit to pulling back the hammer, which is allegedly how the gun actually went off. But that whole part is still in dispute. Then a year later, after a long investigation, the local sheriff's department releases a 500 page report about the whole incident. And right after that, suddenly, bam, Hannah is charged with involuntary manslaughter. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

306.215

So Hannah goes to trial and because she screwed up so bad, they find her guilty of involuntary manslaughter and she's sentenced to 18 months in prison. While Alec Baldwin, he's also charged with involuntary manslaughter and he pleads not guilty and he's waiting on his trial. Okay, so I actually have an update on this. Baldwin's trial actually ended after I filmed this video. So listen to this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

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Apparently, some more actual live ammo rounds were eventually found on set, and the prosecuting attorney didn't file them into evidence properly, making it seem as if the prosecuting attorney was trying to withhold this evidence from the court. Now, the existence of these other live rounds, in theory, would have helped Baldwin's case and potentially affected the outcome of the trial.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

352.508

Once the judge found out that the prosecuting attorney was allegedly withholding evidence, she straight up dismissed the entire case against Alec Baldwin with prejudice, which means it can never be retried again. I guess judges do not fuck around when it comes to withholding evidence. And no one is more emotional about this than Alec Baldwin himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

380.529

And because he is now completely off the hook and because of this new evidence, Hannah's attorneys are trying to get her case dismissed too. And if that happens, then they'll have to let her out of prison. That is a wild turn of events.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

42.628

Then Hannah, when she's 24, she finally gets her big break. She gets hired as the head armorer on a Western movie, a movie produced by and starring Alec Baldwin. And this is huge for Hannah. And it is time she is gonna show everyone that she's just as good as her dad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

60.297

So then bam, Hannah takes this job and she's expected to supervise all the prop weapons at all times and to check each pew-pew before every time it's used. And she's having a great time doing this. She's making friends on set. She's going out and partying with the crew after work. Allegedly, they're sometimes low-key getting high on set.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

78.669

But then, at some point, Hannah starts to get a little sloppy with her work. She's leaving the armorer's cart unsupervised. She's leaving prop weapons just laying around on set. She's just a little too relaxed for how important this job is. But then one night, after work, Hannah goes out drinking with the crew again. And they're having a great time. She's smoking a little Zaza.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

That Time Alec Baldwin Killed a Woman - The Alec Baldwin "Rust" Case

99.488

She's doing a little Coca-Cola. But then the next day, she goes to work. And production is behind schedule. And they go into rehearsal. And the assistant director, he needs a revolver on set for a scene. So he starts yelling at Hannah. We need a revolver on the set for rehearsal. So then she runs to get it, and this is where everything goes wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

0.049

So this redneck dude is somehow able to pull off one of the biggest money heists in American history. And he becomes rich as . Now the guy, his name's David. And he works at Loomis Fargo as a vault supervisor. And he handles massive amounts of money all day. But despite that, he doesn't get paid very much. But that's about to change. Because one day, David meets this woman at work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

107.868

Then he goes straight to the vault and starts taking money out of it and loading it into a Loomis van. And over an hour and a half later, he's done. And he's loaded about $17 million in cash into that van. Now, David knows there are security cameras all around this building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

124.834

So before he leaves, he goes back to the manager's office and he steals two surveillance tapes that would have footage of him on them. Next, he drives the Loomis van full of 2,700 pounds of cash. He drives it over to a parking lot in another part of town where Chambers and Kelly are waiting in a different van. So then they transfer this money to the new van. And this new van is a rental van.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

146.169

But here's the thing about this rental van. It's a little small. So they're transferring all this money into the rental van, but not all of it will fit. So they end up leaving $3.3 million behind in the Loomis van because it all won't fit in the rental van.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

162.794

Oh, but that's not the only thing they leave in that Loomis van because David forgets those two surveillance videos that he had taken from the manager's office. And so from there, they all end up going their separate ways. Kelly ultimately ends up going back home. Chambers also ends up going back to his home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

179.525

And David hops on a flight to head over to Cozumel in Mexico so he can lay low for a while. But unfortunately for him, when traveling internationally, you're actually limited to how much money you can bring with you. So poor David is only allowed to bring $50,000 with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

196.68

Meanwhile, David's wife, because I guess he's married and didn't tell his wife about any of this, his wife reports him missing. And once police find the Loomis van with the leftover $3.3 million in cash in it, they also find the security tapes he accidentally left behind. So now they have their first suspect, David. And since this is such a huge heist, the FBI is now involved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

220.323

But even they have no clue where David is. And his face is broadcast all over the place as the FBI tries to find him. And while David is off in Mexico trying to lay low, Chambers, not so much. So Chambers and his wife, they take all this new money he just got and they start spending it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

237.94

And in less than a month, they move out of their trailer home and into a 7,000 square foot gated community mansion. which they paid for in cash. They also buy TVs, a diamond ring, a Rolex, new cars. Chambers' wife even gets a nose job and a brand new set of tits. And at one point, Chambers' wife even goes into a bank with 200 grand in a briefcase and she asks the bank teller,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

26.269

Her name's Kelly. And David thinks Kelly is foint! And they hit it off, and they start flirting, and soon enough, they start smashing. Now at some point during this period, David hears about an armored truck robbery that had happened a few months before, several states away. A Loomis Fargo employee had robbed Loomis for like millions of dollars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

264.673

Hey, what's the most I can deposit without you guys having to report me to the feds? And then she says, Don't worry, it's not drug money. So yeah, not surprising that people start noticing this behavior, and pretty quickly people report Chambers and his wife to the FBI. While Kelly, she's a bit more conservative with her spending.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

282.925

She buys herself a minivan, she buys her kids a bunch of toys, nothing too big. But once the FBI learns rumors that she had previously been smashing with David, suddenly she becomes a suspect. So the FBI, they get together and they decide the best way to bring these guys down is to wiretap Chambers' phone calls. Because of the three of them, he's obviously the loose cannon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

305.183

Meanwhile, during all this, David, he's still chilling in Mexico and he's keeping a low profile. But he realizes this 50 grand that he brought with him, it isn't going to last too long. So he ends up calling Chambers. And he's like, hey, can you send me some of my share of the money so that I don't run out? And Chambers is like, sure, buddy. But sending David money is not what Chambers does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

328.22

Instead of sending him money, he decides to hire a hitman. And he's going to send that hitman to Mexico to unalive David. That way, Chambers gets to keep David's share of the money. And if David is unalived, he can never snitch on them. So at this point, I know you're probably thinking, Ray, How the hell did David get himself into this mess?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

348.851

How did an otherwise nice guy with a clean record suddenly wake up one day and decide that he's gonna steal millions of dollars from his own employer? Like, what makes someone snap like that? Well, think about it this way. He goes to work every day at Loomis and he oversees the vault, which means he loads millions of dollars in and out of that vault. I mean, he is surrounded by money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

371.821

Like, it's just staring at him in the face. Yet, in his personal life, he can barely pay his bills. He's working sometimes 70, 80 hours a week for $8.15 an hour. Imagine that. Imagine you're broke, struggling to get by, and you have to stare at stacks and stacks of cash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

393.474

all day like how would you feel so after years of being in this situation he started to resent his life and he started to resent his marriage until he started working with kelly and he really started crushing on her like he's liked her forever like they used to go to school together and kelly she was really pushing him to do this heist with her so he does it thinking it'll impress her

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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So basically he did all this because he was broke and he was trying to clap cheeks. And because of that, there is now a hitman after him trying to unalive him. But luckily for him, when Chambers calls the hitman and tells him exactly where to find David, the FBI has his phones tapped and they're listening in. And now they know exactly where to find David.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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So the feds go straight to Mexico and they catch David and boom, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. Then the next day they go and arrest Chambers. Here's his mugshot. Then they arrest Chambers' wife. Here's her mugshot. And of course they arrest Kelly. Here's her mugshot. In fact, they arrest a bunch of people involved in this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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In total, about 20 people were arrested in connection with this heist. But David gets sentenced to a little over seven years in prison, and Chambers, he's sentenced to 11 years in prison, while his wife gets seven years in prison, and Kelly gets six years in prison. And they all have to pay back the money they stole. But allegedly, to this day, $2 million of that heist money is still missing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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And at this point in the story, that robber hadn't been caught yet. I actually talked about that heist in a different video I did. Anyway, so David and Kelly, they hear about this heist and they're like, well, that guy took millions of dollars and he didn't get caught. Maybe we could also rob Loomis Fargo and take millions of dollars and not get caught. What could possibly go wrong?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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Like, they never found it. So, I guess it's still out there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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Now Kelly, she knows just the guy who could help them pull off this heist. Her friend back from high school, who's a bit shady. This guy, Chambers. So the three of them put their heads together and they start planning this big Loomis Fargo heist. And there are other people on the sidelines involved in this heist too. But for now, let's just focus on these three main characters.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Loomis Fargo Heist - The Story of David Ghantt

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So a few months go by and they've got it all meticulously planned out. And then the big night finally rolls around. It's time to pull off the heist. And David, he's actually working that evening. And when his shift ends, he leaves with the other employees working. But he doesn't actually leave. Instead, he circles back and sneaks back into the building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

0.049

So this guy, his name's John. And John is about to die in the scariest way I can think of. Prepare to have nightmares. Now, John, he's 26. He's a smart dude. He's about to start med school. But one day, John and his younger brother, who we'll call little brother, John, little brother, and a bunch of their friends, they all decide to go spelunking or cave exploring.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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Like, that is nightmare fuel. So John is scared and he yells out for help. And little brother, he catches up to him and he sees John's feet kind of sticking out of the crevice. And he tries with all his force to pull him out. But unfortunately, he can't get any leverage because he's in a narrow tunnel too. So pretty quickly, little brother crawls back out of the cave and he calls 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And he's like, come quick. My brother is stuck upside down in a cave. And four hours later, the rescue team starts to arrive. And it took a while because it's late at night and this cave is way out there. Now, the first to arrive on the scene is this woman, Susie. And she's small, but she's an experienced spelunker. So she crawls into the cave and she gets to John pretty quickly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And she's like, we're going to get you out of here. So Susie ties a rope around John's ankles and she tries to pull him out. But she immediately realizes there is no way she can do this on her own. So they bring the rope outside to the entrance of the cave where there's room for multiple people to pull it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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So they all grab the rope and they pull and they pull, but the rope keeps getting caught on the rocks and it's just not working and they can't get him out. And even more time passes. And by this time, a whole ass rescue team has showed up. And they put their heads together, and they decide the only way to get John out is to set up a legit rope and pulley system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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Which means they're gonna have to drill into the walls of the tunnel. So, they start drilling into the walls of this tunnel. But this process is excruciatingly slow. Not to mention, it's humid as f*** in that cave. So after a couple of hours of them drilling, Susie, who is the closest to John, she can't do it anymore. She has to tap out. So then another rescuer steps in. This guy, Ryan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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So now Ryan's in the cave closest to John and he's basically just looking at John's feet. And he and John talk and have conversations for like hours as they wait for the team to set up this pulley system. Meanwhile, John's wife, this woman, Emily, she's back at her in-laws house. And they've been informed that all this is going on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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They want to explore this local cave that people explore all the time. So they all drive over to this cave and they find the entrance. And it's not like one of those big caves you'd see in a cartoon. It's a little guy. that you pretty much have to crawl into.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And she's just there waiting on this phone call of someone saying, John is okay and he's out of the cave. But unfortunately, that call doesn't come. So then the next morning, she and some other family members, they head over to the cave site and they get there. And by this time, there's over a hundred people there. all working to get John out and they still can't do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And the rescue workers, they like set up a two-way radio system so that Emily can talk to John. And they talk and they tell each other that they love each other and whatnot. And it's a nice moment. But then even more time passes. And at this point, John has been in there upside down for 19 hours and the pulley system is finally ready.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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So Ryan secures the rope around John and Susie and seven others on the ground outside, they count down and they start pulling and they pull and they pull and they pull as hard as they can. And suddenly John starts to slowly rise out of the dark and they pull again and again and And again. And by the fourth pull, John lifts out of the crevice. He's almost out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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Until... Suddenly, kaboom, a small arch in the cave crumbles. And one of those metal rings snaps forward and hits Ryan in the face so hard that it knocks him unconscious. And John immediately falls back down into the crevice. And shortly after, when Ryan regains consciousness, he's bleeding and his jaw is broken. So he has to leave the cave and go get medical attention.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And so Ryan's dad comes in and takes over that spot. And then Ryan's dad ends up getting stuck in part of the tunnel. But luckily, it's only for a while and he's eventually able to get himself out. And this whole time, while they're trying to get him out, the worst is happening to John. His breathing starts to get more and more shallow. And little by little, he gets less and less responsive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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Being upside down in that position for so long is putting strain on his heart. Okay, let me explain to you why this is so dangerous for John, because I know you're probably thinking, Ray, so what if he's upside down? Was it going to make him dizzy? Is it going to give him a headache? No, it is much worse than that. Your body is designed to function and pump blood right side up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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So soon, John and little brother and like nine of their friends, they descend into this little cave entrance and they make their way into the open area. And they're crawling around and they're exploring and they're having a good time. And then about an hour later, they're still at it.

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The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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That's what it's always done its whole life. It is accustomed to dealing with gravity in only one direction. So when you go upside down for a long period of time, gravity causes blood to rush toward your head, which will cause your heart to work harder to pump all that blood against gravity, which is going to greatly increase the stress on your cardiovascular system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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The human heart can actually deal with this kind of stress for a long period of time. I mean, hours, I'm sure. But eventually, it's going to give out. Not to mention all of those organs in your lower abdomen are now sitting above your lungs, meaning they can push down and put weight on your lungs, making it much harder for you to breathe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And if this sounds like torture to you, that's because it is literally. Many cultures in the past used to hang people upside down as a form of torture. It's called inverted hanging because a normal hanging generally unalives you instantly. But an inverted hanging is a long, painful way to die. Anyway, the rescue team keeps trying.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And they drill even more holes to re-rig the pulley system so they can give it another shot. But that's taken a long time and everyone's working their ass off to make this happen. But then, just before midnight, John has become completely unresponsive. And they have a paramedic crawl into the cave to check his vitals. And the paramedic determines that, sadly, John has passed away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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He had been trapped upside down for over 27 hours until he died of cardiac arrest. And here's what John looked like in real life. And the worst part is John is so deep in that cave that they can't retrieve his body. So they just have to leave him there permanently. And ultimately, they close that cave to the public forever, and they seal it shut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And eventually, they put a bronze plaque where the entrance of the cave used to be. A plaque that memorializes John, and is a reminder of probably the worst way to die.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And John and little brother and a couple of their friends, they decide to check out this area called the birth canal, which is a long narrow tunnel that you'd have to crawl through. And that tunnel eventually opens up into a bigger area. So they explore deeper into this cave and John crawls through the narrow tunnel part of the birth canal. And this passageway is really pretty tight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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And as he crawls deeper into it, it gets tighter and tighter. But no matter how narrow this tunnel gets, John, he keeps pushing forward because he knows the larger area of the birth canal is coming up. But then, like out of nowhere, suddenly the tunnel takes a sharp downturn and bam, he slides down into an even smaller tunnel and then kaboom, he's stuck because John was never in the birth canal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Nutty Putty Cave Incident

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He actually took a wrong turn and ended up in a dead end tunnel, and now he can't get out. So John immediately tries not to panic, but his arms are pinned in such a way that he can't use them. And to make it worse, he's upside down. So all the blood is quickly rushing to his head. Here, let me show you a diagram I found of how he was stuck. Like, look at that. Imagine being stuck like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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So this guy is about to meet a dog in the desert and this dog is going to change his life. Now the guy, his name is Dion. He's a marathon runner. He lives in Scotland, but one day Dion decides he's going to compete in the Gobi March, which is 155 mile ultra marathon going through the Gobi desert in Asia. So he travels to China to run this marathon. And then, bam, the race starts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And spectators and the people around all watching, they're all looking at this and they're cheering them both on. Yay, little dog! So then later, Dion gets some food from his supplies. And that freaking little dog is still following him around. And at this point, he realizes this little dog probably hasn't eaten all day.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And I guess he feels bad because he gives the dog like half the meat he's eating. And the dog loves it. Om nom nom nom nom nom. And you know, from this point on, he's f***ed. Because like, once you feed a stray dog, it is not going to leave. So that night, the little dog curls up next to him and falls asleep. And so Dion decides, okay, fine, she's not gonna get, so I'll just name her.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And he names her Gobi after the desert they're running through. Then the next morning, sure enough, Gobi is there with him at the starting line and she continues running right alongside him. Later that day, Dion is still running and he comes up to a place where he has to cross a really wide river. So he wades into it and he's walking through it and he crosses like the worst part of it.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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But then he hears Gobi back behind him like whining and crying. And he looks back and he sees her and she's still way back there. She's not jumping in this river. And Dion keeps moving forward, but Gobi just keeps whining and crying out. And so Dion, he decides to do something he's never done before. He turns around and he goes back.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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He wades through the river and he grabs Gobi and he carries her the rest of the way over. And later, Dion is on to the fourth and fifth stages of this race. Now with these two parts of the race, the heat can easily get up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever the f*** Celsius. And Dion's worried that little Gobi will follow him into that heat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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So he gives her to the race organizers and he asks them to hang on to her and transport her to the last stage of this race. And then on the final day of that ultra marathon, Dion, he's about to finish this race. So he's running and he rounds the corner and he heads toward the finish line. And Gobi, she sees him and she runs over to be with him and they finish the race together.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And it's pretty cool because Dion actually gets second place. And in total, he and Gobi ran 78 miles together. And their story is all heartwarming and the news picks it up and they write about it a bit. So Gobi and Dion end up having like fans now. And so Dion decides like, all right, fine. I guess I'll keep this stupid dog.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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But getting Gobi out of China and back to Scotland isn't going to be easy. Because you can't just transport an animal from one country to another. There's like paperwork and fees and regulations. So Dion, he has to fly back to Scotland to start the paperwork to get Gobi out of China. Meanwhile, he leaves the dog in the care of one of the race organizers.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And she's going to look after him and everything's going to be fine. Until one day, Gobi gets out and she runs away. And poor Dion, he hears about this and he is devastated. And no one can find Gobi. And 10 days go by and there's still no sign of the dog. So Dion, he decides to take action. He posts all about it on social media.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And Dion and the other runners, they set off through the first part of it. And that night, the runners, they're all resting and they're sitting around a campfire, probably talking about how hard the day was. And that's when Dion, he sees this little stray dog running around the camp. And this dog, she's approaching all the runners, and she's trying to get them to give her a bite of their food.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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He contacts a dog charity in China and they start printing missing flyers and posting them all over town. Dion even offers a reward of a thousand pounds or about 1300 US dollars to anyone who can give them information on where Gobi might be. But still, they get no lead. So then the fans of Gobi and Dion, and apparently there are hundreds of them, they start to look around town for Gobi.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And Dion, he flies back to China to join them in the search. And so he gets there and he scours the city. And he and the fans, they put up over 30,000 flyers. And a week goes by, but still, there's no sign of his little friend. And Dion, he starts to get really worried. Because like, what if Gobi were stolen? What if Gobi was taken and is now somehow part of the dog meat trade?

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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Which apparently is a real thing in China. So Dion is super worried. But then he gets a text and he checks his phone and it's from some anonymous person. And it's saying, hey, we think we found your dog. And Dion, he's a little suspicious, but this is the biggest lead they've got so far. So he drives across the city and he goes to this like small apartment. And there he meets this family.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And this family's like, uh, we think this dog might be the one you're looking for. And sure enough, when that dog sees Dion, she goes ape sh** because it's Gobi. And Gobi is just all over him. And finally, after all that, they are reunited. And eventually Dion is able to bring her back to Scotland to live with him. And here they are in real life. The good ending.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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Which is tough, because the runners have to carry all their own food with them for the week. So they have very limited supply of it. So Dion, he sees this dog, and he's like, hell no, dog! Go on! Get! Then, the next day, Dion and the other runners, they make their way to the starting line. And then he looks down, and there's that dumb little dog again, chewing at his shoes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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And he's like, damn it, dog, go on! Get! And then the race starts, and the dog is like chewing at his feet for a whole quarter mile. And Dion's like getting annoyed, like, go on, get! And lucky for him, the dog finally disappears. And Dion is kind of relieved because it's hard enough running through a desert without a stray animal trying to trip you up.

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The Unbelievable Story of Dion and Gobi

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But then eight hours later, after running through a thick forest area, Dion looks down and there's that stupid little dog again running alongside him. And he's like, I said, go on. But the dog continues to follow him, running alongside him when he crosses the finish line to end the second day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

0.169

One night, this woman, her name's Ellie, she goes out with some friends. And while she's out, she meets this guy, Jordan. And they're all drinking and they're having a good time. And by the end of the night, Jordan ends up taking Ellie home. Except that Jordan doesn't actually take her home. He takes her somewhere else, somewhere she doesn't recognize. And there is where he essays her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

101.053

She says Moe has done this to tons of other girls, at least 60 other girls in fact. And he's involved in some kind of larger trafficking ring. And so Moe trafficking Ellie, this goes on for years. From the time she's 12 and to when she's well into her teens. And of course, Ellie has Snapchat messages to prove all of this too. So she shows all these messages to police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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So police see this and they fear for Ellie's safety. So they put her in a hotel. So that none of the traffickers she just outed can find her. Well, unfortunately for her, some of the traffickers she outed eventually do end up finding her. And they order her to get on a train and go to Blackpool immediately. So she does. And in Blackpool, she meets up with Moe, the original trafficker.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And Moe ends up taking her to four different hotels where she is essayed multiple times by a bunch of different men. Now police, they eventually notice Ellie's missing and they go to Blackpool and they find her and they bring her back to the original hotel. They also eventually arrest Mo and they throw him in jail.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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Two weeks later, police take Ellie back to Blackpool and they're like, okay, show us where the traffickers took you. Let's retrace all your steps so we can finally bust this trafficking ring. And Ellie's like, all right.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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So they spend two days driving her around town and Ellie points out a few places to them, but the location she's pointing to and the details she's giving them are suddenly really vague. Was it on that route that you took us on or was it somewhere else? And by the end of this trip, police have no more information than when they started.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

195.311

And it's at this point that they look at Ellie and they start to get suspicious. So they go and they search Ellie's phone and they find that, yeah, she actually had been at a hotel in Blackpool, but it's a hotel that she herself booked. which doesn't line up with her trafficking story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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They also find CCTV footage of her shopping at various local stores in Blackpool, which also doesn't line up with her trafficking story. And this is when police realized that Ellie hadn't been trafficked at all. She hadn't been SA'd at all. She made it all up. All of it. All the way back to Jordan, the guy who she accused of essaying her three different times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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But unfortunately, she doesn't report it to police. She says she's too afraid. Two months later, Jordan shows up one night to her apartment. And for some reason, she lets him in. And there is where he pulls a knife on her and he beats her up and he essays her again. But this time, after he leaves, she does go and report it to police. And luckily, she has proof.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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Even the Snapchat messages that she would show police as proof, they were all fake. She just made them up herself. She would even go as far as to beat herself up and put marks on herself to show police as proof. And it is all complete bull****. And so police are like, alright, this woman is crazy. Let's go arrest her. So they go to arrest her, but suddenly, Ellie is missing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

259.794

No one knows where she's at. No one can find her. Meanwhile, Ellie has taken a train to Preston. And there, in the town center, she befriends a random, really drunk dude. His name's Oliver. So Ellie and Oliver, they immediately hit it off. And they start flirting, and they kiss a little, and they kind of hook up, and then they exchange numbers, and they part ways.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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Then Ellie gets on a train and she goes back home and police, they show up there because they've been looking for her. And she tells police that Oliver, the guy she just hooked up with, she tells them that he trafficked her.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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She claims that some traffickers forced her to go to Preston and meet up with Oliver and that Oliver took her somewhere where they met up with some other men and those other men essayed her. And that then some of those men beat her up. And of course she has marks all over her, marks that she made herself.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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So police, they have to go track down Oliver and investigate him just in case any of these crazy accusations turn out to be true. Regardless, boom, they arrest Ellie and they charge her with perverting the course of justice. But pretty quickly, Ellie gets out on bail. And once she's out, she's right back to her old tricks. Because one night she goes to a local store and she buys a hammer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

329.064

And a few days after that, she takes that hammer and bam, she smacks herself with it right across the face. And then she does it again and again and again until her eyes all red and swollen. Then she takes that hammer and smashes her own finger until it's partially severed. And then she goes out to some random field and waits until police, they eventually find her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And of course she lies and tells them this whole story about how she was trafficked again and then taken to a house and then essayed by a bunch of random men and then they beat her up. So of course police, they take her to the hospital because she's all beat up. But once she's discharged from the hospital, she goes home and she takes pictures of herself all beat up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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Then she gets on Facebook and posts those pictures. And she writes a long, detailed post basically claiming not that she hit herself with a hammer for attention, but that the night before, some gang of Pakistani groomers trafficked her and beat her up. And so then, people on the internet see this crazy...

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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crazy long post and these horrible pictures and they have no idea that police had already determined that Ellie just makes all this stuff up. So her friends on Facebook, they see this post and they believe her and they start sharing it and her post starts to blow up. People are sharing it over and over again, and it goes viral. And someone starts a Facebook group called Justice for Ellie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And that Facebook group gets 100,000 followers. And they're quickly selling merchandise to help her out with a purple elephant logo that says Justice for Ellie. And there are stickers on cars and on windows and on notebooks. And like everyone around town has one.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And people get together and they crowdfund 22,000 pounds or about 28,000 US dollars to help pay for the prosecution of this fictitious Pakistani grooming gang that she just made up. The internet is just going wild over this. But here's what's crazy though. Pretty quickly after making that Facebook post, Ellie gets arrested again. This time for breaking her bail. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

44.883

Crazy enough, she has screenshots from Jordan's Snapchat messages where he openly admits that he SA'd her. So police, they eventually go and arrest Jordan. But then he gets out on bail. And one night while he's out on bail, he breaks into Ellie's house and he SA's her again. So she tells police and police go and they arrest him again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And so she's arrested and this crazy internet mob starts accusing the police of trying to cover up this whole fictitious trafficking ring. And that they're trying to silence her. And they're like protesting outside the police station, chanting justice for Ellie. Like, it is nuts. all over some that she provably made up. Oh, but that's not even the worst part.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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All the men she accused of SA before they were fully exonerated, Ellie's false accusations destroyed their lives. Jordan went to jail for a while, of course. People found Moe and they destroyed his property and his business was ruined. And he eventually tried to unalive himself. Thank goodness he didn't. While Oliver, he's so devastated, he tries to unalive himself too.

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She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

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And he eventually gets put in a mental hospital. So these dudes have their lives just torn apart. The good news is eventually Ellie does get caught and this all goes to trial. And she's found guilty and she's sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. It's a crazy one. Shout out to England.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

64.15

And they throw him in jail and he's there for about 10 weeks before they ultimately let him go due to lack of evidence. Now, since Ellie has the police's ear, she feels it's the right time to confess something else to them. She goes and tells them about another separate incident that happened to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Ruined Lives With Her False Accusations - The Eleanor Williams story

80.837

Years before, back when Ellie was 12, she had met this much older guy at sort of a family gathering, and his name is Moe. So she and Moe, they become friends. And Moe eventually starts trafficking her, taking her from place to place and forcing her to do horrible things that I won't get into. And Ellie wasn't the only one.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

0.189

One day, this kid, he's 12, he's hanging out with his older cousin. And older cousin is like, hey, come here, let me tell you about my time in the war. And so older cousin starts to tell these gruesome stories about some of the things he did back in the Vietnam War. About people he had unalived and women he had done horrible things to.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

102.061

About five years later, Ricardo is 22, and he moves from Texas to San Francisco to get a fresh start. But instead of getting a job, he spends most of his time just doing drugs. And he basically just gives up on hygiene, like the only thing he eats are junk food and soda. And he like never brushes his teeth, so they inevitably start to rot. So he's just a stank ass at this point.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

124.161

And after about two years of living this stank-ass lifestyle, Ricardo suddenly decides, you know what? I'm going to start murdering people. Sounds like fun. And then one day, while he's out in the neighborhood, Ricardo spots a girl. And she's nine. And the girl has lost a dollar bill. And she's out looking for it. And so Ricardo approaches her. And he's like, hey, I know where your dollar bill is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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I can show you. Follow me. And so she follows him into the basement of the hotel where he's living. And there, he does horrible things to her. And he eventually unalives her. Oh, but he doesn't stop there. Three months later, he moves to Los Angeles. And there, he gets a room in a hotel on Skid Row, and he starts doing a lot more drugs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

161.957

And one night, he starts stalking this 79-year-old woman who lives in the suburbs. And he breaks into her house, and then he essays her, and he unalives her with a knife. Then he just steals all her money and her expensive jewelry. Nine months later, he strikes again. One night he hides in this woman's garage and he waits for her to get home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

17.465

Like unspeakable things that I can't even describe on this app, otherwise my video will get removed. But then, to prove it, he busts out some Polaroid photos to show younger cousin. And most of these photos are of women. And they are absolutely brutal. And strangely, little cousin, he isn't grossed out. Actually, he's fascinated. And about a year later, the cousins are together again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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And when she finally does, he suddenly steps out and he pulls out a pew-pew and bang, he unalives her. Then he goes into her house and he sees the woman's roommate and bang, he unalives her too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

190.553

Then about an hour later, he's at a local park and he spots a random woman sitting in her car and he suddenly grabs her and he drags her out of it and then he pulls out his pew-pew and he unalives her as well. And yeah, it just keeps getting worse. Because 10 days later, Ricardo breaks into a house at night, and he shoots a man while he's sleeping.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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And then the man's wife wakes up, and she tries to fight back. And so Ricardo shoots her too, and then he unalives her with a knife. Then he steals her eyes, and he puts them in a jewelry box to take with him as a souvenir. And so Ricardo just continues on this streak of murder and SA. And he unalives at least five more women and five more couples.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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Usually he'll break into their home at night, execute them, and then he'll draw religious symbols at the scene of the crime. Now at this point, police are looking at this string of attacks and they're starting to think, you know, there might be a serial killer on the loose here. So they start investigating. But as of now, they don't have much.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

248.888

They have some descriptions of him, they have some sort of fingerprints, and they have some shoe prints they found at some of the crime scenes. But interestingly enough, Ricardo's shoe print is unique. There had only been one pair of that brand of sneakers sold in Los Angeles in his size. So maybe they're onto something. Meanwhile, the news media is reporting on all of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

269.282

And so stories about his string of murders are blowing up all over the news. And the media starts referring to him as the Night Stalker, which to be fair is a much cooler name than his stank ass deserves. But with all this news coverage, Ricardo is starting to feel the heat and he doesn't want to get caught. So he leaves Los Angeles and he moves all the way back to San Francisco.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

289.732

And there in San Francisco, like the first thing he does, he breaks into a couple's home and he unalives them and he draws another religious symbol on the wall. And so police, they investigate this and they're like, oh, is the Night Stalker now in San Francisco?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

303.399

Now the mayor of San Francisco, Mayor Dianne Feinstein, she gets on TV and she holds a press conference and she reveals that the police have identified the Night Stalker's shoes from all those shoe prints he left behind. And then she holds up a police sketch showing the world roughly what Ricardo looks like. And Ricardo, he sees this press conference on TV and he's like, oh snap, they're onto me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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And he heads right over to the Golden Gate Bridge and he throws his shoes over into the water. So he'll never leave those shoe prints again and they'll never catch him that way. And then a few days later, he moves back to the Los Angeles area. And then one night, Ricardo drives a little bit south of that area and he tries to break into another family's home, but that fails.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

343.827

And then later he breaks into a different couple's home. And then he shoots the husband and essays the wife before he arrogantly identifies himself to her. He says, tell them the Night Stalker was here. So then later, when that woman talks to police, she's able to give them a description of Ricardo. And police had also found a car he had stolen with one of his whole ass fingerprints in it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

365.426

And from that fingerprint, police are finally able to use new technology to identify it and start piecing all this together. And because Ricardo had been arrested in the past for auto theft, his fingerprints are already in the system. So now... Boom, police know the Night Stalker is Ricardo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

383.982

And they now have not just a crude police sketch of the Night Stalker, but an actual old mugshot of Ricardo. So police hold a press conference and they release the mugshot to the media. And suddenly Ricardo's picture is all over the news. And everyone is on the lookout for this serial killer. Two days later, Ricardo's in Los Angeles and he's at a convenience store.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

39.635

And the younger cousin, his name's Ricardo, and the older cousin, his name's Mike. And so Ricardo and Mike, they're hanging out at Mike's place and Mike, he suddenly gets into an argument with his wife and he gets so mad that he pulls out a pew-pew and he ends up unaliving her right there in front of little Ricardo. And again, Ricardo isn't grossed out. He's fascinated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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Probably buying junk food or whatever because his rotten ass teeth. But anyway, that's when people start to recognize him. Hey, isn't that that guy, the Night Stalker? So Ricardo panics and he runs out of the store and he sees a car and he immediately tries to steal it. And during all this commotion, more people recognize him. Yeah, I think that is the Night Stalker.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

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And some of the bystanders grab him and they pull him out of the car. Then he runs across the street and he tries to steal another woman's car keys. And that woman's husband retaliates and hits Ricardo over the head with a whole ass fence post. Where he got a fence post, I don't know. So now Ricardo's wounded and he's running away. And 10 citizens are chasing him down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

442.783

And they finally catch him and they hold him down. And they beat the living sh**. out of him. I'm sure it was glorious. But then eventually police show up and then bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And they charge his stank ass with 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 essays and 14 burglaries. And he's found guilty of everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

465.06

And he's sentenced to death by gas chamber. Oh, but here's the craziest part. While he's on death row, he gets fucked. fans and those fans start writing him and like visiting him in prison and one of those fans he falls in love with and they get married so this stank ass serial killer on death row somehow finds love and gets married why are you still single anyway he later died of cancer

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

61.934

Now, you can decide whether all that actually messed him up or not. Because shortly after that, Ricardo starts getting into drugs, particularly the kind that make you hallucinate. And he starts committing petty crimes and shoplifting all the time. And he gets really, really into his religion. And eventually he just says f*** it and he drops out of high school.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Night Stalker - The Richard Ramirez story

81.342

A few years later, Ricardo's 17 and he gets a job at a local holiday inn. And while he's working his shift, he starts sneaking into the guests' rooms while they're asleep and he'll steal their valuables. But then he goes even further and he starts trying to essay some of the guests. And he eventually gets caught and bam, they fire him. Oh, but it gets much worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

0.109

So this guy is about to go to prison for starting a website? Now the guy, let's call him Pirate. And Pirate is 27 and he hates the US government. He hates how they regulate and intervene and everything. And one day in 2011, he comes up with an idea. An idea to get around all that government regulation. He's going to build a website.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

117.791

And so the feds start investigating and that is when this DEA agent gets involved, Carl Force. And Carl Force, he goes undercover and he becomes an active user on Silk Road. And he gets involved in the community and he eventually becomes online friends with Pirate. And at some point, Carl Force and other agents discover the identity of one of the people working for Pirate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

142.787

The worker's name is Chronic Pain because they all go by their usernames. So Carl Force and the feds set up a sting operation to bust Chronic Pain, and bam, they go in and they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. Now, once Pirate finds out that Chronic Pain has been arrested, he gets worried, as he should be, because it's only a matter of time before the feds figure out who he really is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

166.425

And if Chronic Pain snitches on him, this could bring down Silk Road and his entire operation. Plus, Pirate has gotten word that Chronic Pain was stealing Bitcoin from the site or the company. So he's thinking, f*** that guy. So in 2013, Pirate does the only thing he can think of.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

186.393

He allegedly decides to hire a hitman to find Chronic Pain and get rid of him for good so that he won't snitch and so that he'll stop stealing money from the site. And by the way, Chronic Pain was never stealing money from the site, just so you know. But anyway, so Pirate gets to work and he contacts a buddy who he believes might be able to hire a hitman and unalive his former employee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

209.544

That buddy ends up being Carl Force, the undercover DEA agent. And so Pirate hits up Carl and he's like, hey, I'll pay you $80,000 if you unalive someone for me. And Carl Force is like, what the hell? I mean...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

225.8

aight now we know carl force is a dea agent so he's not just gonna go and assassinate someone so he collaborates with chronic pain and they stage some photos together and they make it look like some hitmen captured chronic pain and that they are waterboarding him in a bathtub then they make him lay down on the floor and they like pour soup on him and they make him look unalived

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

25.246

And on that site, you would be able to buy or sell anything you want anonymously, like fake passports, drugs, illegal pew-pews, things like that. And it would be like an Amazon for buying illegal stuff. And so he gets to work and he hires someone to help him build this. And eventually he launches it on the dark web. Now the site, it's called the Silk Road and it's pretty successful right away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

250.282

And they take a bunch of pictures and Carl Force sends those pictures to Pirate. And now Pirate believes chronic pain has been unalived. Oh, and by the way, Pirate also allegedly orders five more hits on other people at different times. Like bro is just crashing out. Allegedly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

269.524

Now, at this point in 2013, various factions of the US government are investigating Silk Road, because it's getting pretty popular. And they're still trying to figure out who is running the operation, because the whole Silk Road site is run anonymously. Like, even the guys who work for Pirate don't know who he is or his real identity, because they all go by their usernames.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

292.873

And so the feds want to know who is Pirate. Now, eventually they finally discover the IP address of the Silk Road site and they trace it to a couple of different places. One of those places being a little internet cafe in San Francisco. And Pirate, the real guy, happens to live near there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

313.351

And so the feds start putting clues together and ultimately they conclude that Pirate is the guy running this Silk Road and that this is where he lives. So cool, now they can go get him, right? No, there's a problem.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

328.954

the feds can't just rush in and bust him because pirate is a smart guy his electronic devices are very likely locked and password protected and if they can't get into his laptop they won't have enough evidence to convict him and so what do they do they set up a little sting operation to get his laptop away from him while it's still open while he's logged in so that they can break into it and so first they find pirate and they surveil him for a while

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

357.071

Then, once they know his routine, they follow him to the San Francisco Public Library, where he chills sometimes and works off their Wi-Fi. After that, some undercover agents go to this library. Then, two of the agents pretend to be a romantic couple arguing, and one of the people in this fake couple starts cussing the other one out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

377.734

now this causes pirate to stop what he's doing and turn around and look at this fake couple then one undercover agent posing as the wife in this couple punches the other undercover agent which creates a huge distraction and now that pirate has all his attention focused on this fight and he's nice and distracted boom another agent swoops in and grabs his laptop

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

400.583

while it's still open, while he's still logged in. And pow, another undercover agent grabs Pirate before Pirate can react. And bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And listen to this. Allegedly, Silk Road had made $1.2 billion worth of sales in just these few years that the site was live. While Pirate himself made, from what I saw, about $184 million. Oh my God.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

430.529

But here's the crazy thing though, Silk Road sold a lot of drugs as it was designed to do. And at least six people that we know of at some point died from overdosing on drugs that they had bought off that site. So when this whole case goes to trial, family members of people who had overdosed show up and they like cry in court and they give personal statements against Pirate and the Silk Road.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

456.655

And this has a huge impact on the case. Plus, the prosecution brings up the fact that Pirate allegedly tried to hire hitmen to unalive some people, although they never formally charge him with that. I guess they have enough against him with illegally running the Silk Road, or maybe he never tried to unalive those people. I don't know, but they never charge him with it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

476.462

And because of all that, at the end of it all, Pirate is found guilty, and he gets life in prison without the possibility of parole. which a lot of people feel is really harsh. Life without parole for running a website? Oh, but that's not even the craziest part.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

495.97

The craziest part is that Carl Force, the DEA agent who was working on the case, he was secretly extorting Pirate the whole time into giving him some of that money that the site was making. Pirate ended up giving him like $750,000 in Bitcoin. And so Carl Force, the DEA agent, also gets convicted in this scheme and he gets six years in prison. Here's a picture of the guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

50.007

Like people flock to it and they buy all kinds of crazy stuff. And they pay for it all in Bitcoin, making things harder to trace. And just like Amazon, the site even allows you to rate and review sellers. Like, this Zaza was pretty dank. Five stars. Anyway, about a year goes by, and it's now 2012, and business is booming. And at this point, Pirate's got like 10 employees working for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

523.588

Not only that, but also another agent gets busted for stealing Bitcoin from the site while they were working on this very case. And he gets like five years in prison total. Here's his picture. But then it all changes one last time. Because in 2025, in a crazy twist, after Pirate had been in prison for around 10 years or so, the government officially steps in and pardons him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

551.411

So he's actually out now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

74.758

The site is making half a million dollars in sales a week. It has a bunch of active users. People are buying and selling all kinds of illegal stuff from one another. But you know, mostly drugs. And Pirate himself makes commission off of each sale. So he is raking in the money. He's now apparently worth tens of millions of dollars. Dude is rich. And he barely spends it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Downfall of the Silk Road - The Ross Ulbricht story

96.225

He's like too busy running the site, I guess. And this success is great and all. However, here's the problem with Silk Road being so successful so quickly. Because so many people know about it and so many people are talking about it, guess who now has their eyes on it? The one thing Pirate hates, the US government.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

0.089

Remember when this Hollywood actor almost started an international conflict? Now his name is Seth Rogen, and you know who Seth Rogen is. He's been acting and producing for a long time. Well, one day in the late 2000s, he and his buddy are chilling, goofing around, probably smoking some of that Zaza, and they're talking about how TV journalists always interview dictators.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

114.724

He claims that he doesn't have an anus because he doesn't need one because he doesn't even have to go to the bathroom at all because his body is a perfect machine that doesn't create waste. It's... all absurd. And so anyway, some of these myths they reference in the movie, which just ends up making Kim Jong look like a huge dork.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

138.135

And of course, in the end of the movie, he ends up getting blown up and dying. Spoiler alert. Anyway, so they shoot this comedy movie, and Seth and Evan direct it, and they're all prepared to release it. And in 2014, they drop the trailer for the world to see, and they start getting a little buzz around their movie. However, not everyone is thrilled with the idea of the interview.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

165.425

Apparently, the North Korean government sees this trailer, which means Kim Jong-un himself would have seen this trailer. Now, here's the thing about dictators. They always present themselves as like strong men who are so powerful and confident. However, when you start making jokes about them, they tend to flip out and turn into like a weak little crybaby.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

190.1

I mean, these clowns will execute people over like a punchline. So I imagine Kim Jong-un saw this trailer and he got his feelings all hurt and like he's upset. I mean, how could someone make a comedy movie making fun of him, the supreme leader, the man with the perfect body and no anus?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

207.105

Okay, but then two weeks after the trailer drops, a representative of North Korea sends a letter to the UN calling out this American comedy movie that insulted their supreme leader. And that rep says that to allow such a film to be made is, and I'm not making this up, an act of war. And that they want the U.S. to ban the production and distribution of the movie. Otherwise, the U.S. is basically...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And one of them makes a joke about how it would be funny if during the middle of an interview, a journalist just, blam, assassinated the dictator right there. Now, Seth's friend isn't just a regular friend. He's actually his writing producing partner, Evan Goldberg. So Seth and Evan are talking about this and they're like, oh, let's make a comedy movie about that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

234.19

sponsoring terrorism. Not only that, a few days after that, North Korean state TV releases a statement from their government threatening that there will be stern and merciless retaliation against the United States if that movie is released. And so yeah, Kim Jong-un and North Korea are pissed and the movie isn't even out yet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And so then Seth and Evan are summoned to meet up with the heads of Sony in their offices. And they acknowledge that North Korea is pissed. And they're like, look, in the movie, you exploded Kim Jong-un's head in a really graphic way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And so over the next couple of months, the studio asks them to make changes to that death scene to tone it down a little and maybe make it a bit less graphic, thinking, yeah, you know, maybe these changes will ease the tensions with North Korea. But unfortunately, they don't ease shit. They don't ease tensions at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And so then Sony execs get nervous and they decide to delay the release of the movie for about two months, thinking, yeah, you know, maybe things will cool down. Until... Oh, but things don't cool down. Not long after that announcement, one day, Sony Entertainment, their employees go to work, just like any other normal day, and they go to log in to their work computers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And instead of their normal desktop, boom, there's a creepy red skeleton appearing on the screen, along with the words, hacked by GOP. Sony has been hacked. A group of anonymous hackers who call themselves the Guardians of Peace have hacked into the computer networks of Sony. And these guys got access to everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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Internal emails, internal data, employee records, employee phone numbers, addresses, and social security numbers. They get access to several Sony movies that hadn't even been released yet. And then, kaboom, these hackers release all of it to the internet for anyone to see.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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They got all their employees' private information, all their internal communications, some unreleased movies that are just now out there for free for anyone to watch. which causes Sony to lose millions in revenue. Allegedly, they lost around $200 million over this hack.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

377.111

And funny enough, these hackers specifically want Sony to stop the release of Seth's movie, The Interview, and they want any mention of it removed from the internet somehow, as if Sony controls the entire internet. Now, the North Korean government claims that they have nothing to do with Guardians of Peace or these Sony hacks, However, the broad consensus is that, yeah, they're lying.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

401.26

They're behind the whole thing. Anyway, about two weeks later, the Guardians of Peace hacked Sony again. This time, they claim that they'll stop if Sony agrees not to release the movie making Kim Jong-un look bad. Oh, but it gets worse because a week after that, they threaten a terrorist attack on the movie theater in New York where the movie is premiering.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

422.195

Plus, they say that they'll attack any theater that shows the movie. So yeah, now it's getting serious. And so, bam, Seth and James Franco cancel all their publicity appearances and Sony hires personal security to like follow them around because now they're under a serious threat. While Sony, they pull all television advertising for the movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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Shortly after that, several major theater chains announced that they will no longer screen the film as they are now worried about a terror threat. And so Sony has no other choice. They have to cancel the wide theatrical release of the movie altogether. And so the fate of this comedy movie that Seth and Evan worked so hard on is left hanging in the balance.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

45.995

And so, boom, they and another writer write a script about this concept and they submit it to executives at Sony and Sony execs give them a green light along with one major note. They say, yeah, this idea is funny and all, but your story is about a fictional dictator. Why not make it about a real dictator?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And if that isn't crazy enough, the f***ing president of the United States gives a press conference and he has to make a statement on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And so basically he says that he understands why Sony canceled the theatrical release because, you know, their employees were threatened. But he also says that he thinks Sony made a mistake.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

510.35

So then after the president's speech, execs at Sony decide to change their mind and they reverse course again and that they are going to figure out a way to release the movie in theaters. And at the last minute, they get the movie a limited time release in about 300 independent theaters in the U.S. and they get it wide theatrical release in the U.K.,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And so Seth and Evan's movie is saved, and the hackers, they go away, they don't do anything else. No one was hurt, no one died, and Kim Jong-un went back to his normal life of being a dictator with apparently no anus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

68.193

And so Seth and Evan changed the script, and it eventually becomes a story about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. And so in 2013, they make this Kim Jong-un comedy movie. It's called The Interview. And Seth is in it. James Franco's in it. Randall Park plays Kim Jong-un. And of course, the premise is a bumbling talk show host is assigned by the CIA to get an interview with Kim Jong-un.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Seth Rogen VS. North Korea

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And during the interview, he has to assassinate him. And of course, the movie makes Kim Jong look really goofy while also highlighting some of the ridiculous myths that he claims about himself. Like he claims that he always plays a perfect round of golf. He claims that he invented the hamburger. He claims that he can talk to dolphins.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

0.149

So this guy, he's a creep. Like I don't know how else to describe him. Now his name's John and John's 31 and he's kind of a turd. I mean he's been lying and cheating and scamming women his whole life. But he gets away with it because he's kind of a charming dude. One day his life starts to change a little because in 1990 he meets this woman. Tanya.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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So he eventually gets back in the dating game and he starts pulling this whole scheme where he'll match with women on dating sites and then he'll meet up with them and then he'll steal from them. And over time, he gets a bunch of complaints and criminal charges over this. He also gets charged with stalking one woman. Bro is just an absolute turd.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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But one day, everything changes again for John, because he joins a dating site for people over 50. And there, he meets this woman, Debra. Debra's 59, she's an interior designer, and Debra's successful, like she's got a little money. And so they chat and they hit it off and they end up going out on a date. Now, while on this date, he's trying to riz her up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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He tells her he's an anesthesiologist, which he's not. He also tells her he just got back from Doctors Without Borders in Iraq, which he didn't. But Debra doesn't know any better, so she believes him. I mean, she's impressed. And they end up going back to her place to hang out a bit longer. And there, I guess at some point, John lays in her bed and he won't leave.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And Debra's like, all right, it's time to go. And I guess he's just like, nah. And so they get into some kind of argument about it. But eventually, he does leave. The next day, he calls her and apologizes, and he begs her for a second chance. And so, they end up going out on more dates, and over time, he does win her over. And Debra kind of falls in love with his weird ass.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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Here's the thing about that, though. Despite how much Debra is into him, people around her really aren't. I mean, they know a creep when they see one. Particularly, her adult daughter, Jacqueline. And Jacqueline thinks he's weird and he's a loser, and not only that, she's pretty vocal about it. Now Deborah's other adult daughter, Tara, she also thinks something's off about John.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And Tanya's 25, she's a nurse, and they date for a couple of years and they end up getting married. And John eventually starts nursing school and he becomes a nurse, just like his wife. But then he screws it all up because he ends up cheating on her. And he gets the other woman pregnant. And of course, Tanya is pissed off and she's hurt. Like, how could he lie to me with so much ease?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And they think this because there is something off about John. Like remember he said he's an anesthesiologist, yet he doesn't even have his own car. Like, what kind of anesthesiologist can't afford his own car? He also chills and plays video games all the time, despite having an important medical career. He also only ever wears scrubs. Like, everywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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Like, even to formal events, he'll show up in some dirty-ass scrubs. I guess he really wants everyone to believe he's a doctor. But the thing that bothers Jacqueline the most is that he constantly has dirty, disgusting fingernails. Which doctors are usually known for keeping their hands clean. Oh, but not this guy.

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The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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Not only that, they don't know it yet, but being an anesthesiologist is not the only thing he lies about. He lies about having a job, like, altogether. Bro is just unemployed. Like, he leaves the house for work every day as if he's going to his job, but he doesn't actually have a job, so where the f*** does he go? Regardless, Deborah and John end up moving in together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And shortly after that, they get married in Vegas. Now, by this point, Jacqueline and Tara are like, nah, something's up with this guy. And they go and they hire a private investigator to look into him. And this private investigator finds out a bunch of stuff about John.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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That not only is he not an anesthesiologist or any kind of doctor, but that the period when he was supposed to be working with Doctors Without Borders in Iraq, he was actually in prison. And so Jacqueline and Tara, they try to tell Deborah all of this, but I guess Deborah just isn't ready to hear it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

318.7

Now, eventually Deborah does start investigating and she looks into John herself and she discovers that, yeah, everyone was telling the truth about him. He's not a doctor at all. In fact, he's a criminal with a history of victimizing women. And so one day, while John is in the hospital getting back surgery, she low-key moves out of their house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And while he's still recovering at the hospital, she lets him know, I've moved out. And he, of course, gets super pissed. And over the next few months, he like calls her and he sends her messages, just like bullshitting and trying to explain away all the stuff she found out about him that he was lying about.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And he of course tells her that she's the love of his life and just all these things and eventually, unfortunately, it works and she decides to give him another chance. And they move in to a new apartment together and they try and make it work out again. Until... Here's the thing about John. John is very controlling. And he doesn't want Debra to really contact her daughters anymore.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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Because, you know, they don't like him. And one day in 2016, he catches her sneaking out to meet up with her daughter Jacqueline. And he gets mad and blows the up at her. And he threatens to throw Jacqueline into the ocean if Debra tries to meet with her again. And so finally, Debra's like, nah, this is not going to work out for me. And she leaves him for good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And of course, John, well, he doesn't respond well to this at all. And over the next few months, he starts going crazy. Crazier than he's ever gone. He starts sending her threatening messages. He files for divorce and demands half her income and ownership of her business. He starts straining. stalking her. He steals her Jaguar and sets it on fire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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He gets spicy photos of her and emails them to her family. Just like all kinds of insane stuff. And at this point, Deborah's getting really scared. He'll try and hurt her. So she goes and she files a restraining order against him. But because he now lives in a different state and hasn't actually tried to harm her before, the restraining order gets denied.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And that is very unfortunate because this is when he really gets out of control. Because one day, Debra's daughter Tara is driving home from work, and she gets to her building, and she pulls into her parking spot, and as soon as she gets out of the car, boom, John is suddenly standing behind her. And pow, he attacks her with a knife.

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The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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And they struggle, and he tries to push her into the car like he's kidnapping her, and bam, she bites the shit out of his hand, and they both fall to the ground. And there, they wrestle, and they continue the struggle, and pow, she kicks the knife right out of his hand. And then she grabs it herself, and boom, she starts stabbing him.

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The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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So she starts digging into his background to see if there's anything else he lied about. And yes, there definitely is. He had apparently lied to her about a bunch of stuff, including his age. Who lies to their own wife about their age? So Tanya's fed up and she starts searching their house and she finds a bunch of meds. Meds that she knows should never leave the hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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over and over again until he's in critical condition and four days later in the hospital he dies and tanya's case is ultimately determined by police to be self-defense which yeah it was

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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So clearly he's been stealing drugs from the hospital he works at and abusing them. So she calls the police and reports him. And so John not only gets his nursing license suspended, but he gets hit with a charge of felony drug theft. And John knows it was Tanya who turned him in, so he starts calling her and threatening her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Creepy Fake Doctor - The John Meehan story

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But whatever, eventually, bam, police arrest John. Here's his mugshot. And he's sentenced to six years in prison, but this isn't even close to being over because John gets out after only 17 months and he's going to go terrorize some more women.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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So this guy, his name's Brian, and Brian has a problem. He's in love with his best friend's wife, and he'll do anything to be with her, including murder his best friend. Now, Brian's best friend is this guy, Mike. And Mike is married to this woman, Denise. And they all live in Florida, because of course they do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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However, Mike is resilient and he quickly rips off the big jacket and he pulls himself out of the waders and he manages to grab on to a nearby tree stump sticking out of the water. And so Brian sees this and he's like, oh, it didn't work. He didn't drown. So he grabs his shotgun out of the boat, aims it down at Mike, and pulls the trigger. Blam! And this, unfortunately, unalives him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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Then, Brian puts Mike's body in the back of his truck, and later, he drives it to a different lake, and he buries him in the mud there. And now, it's Denise's turn to play her part in this. So she starts calling around to people, pretending to be worried that Mike hasn't returned from his duck hunting trip. Like, have you seen Mike? Mike is missing!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And pretty quickly, police get involved and a huge search gets underway. And they comb through the lake looking for any sign of Mike. But of course, they don't find a body or anything other than his boat floating out on the water. And 44 days go by and police are still looking. And ultimately, they got nothing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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So they call the search off, and everyone assumes Mike must have passed away in an unfortunate boating accident where he fell into the water with his waders on and never came back up, and that his body was probably eaten by alligators. But then, six months later, something unexpected happens.

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He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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A local fisherman is out on the lake and he finds Mike's waders in the water, which opens the search back up for a while. So police send divers out and they find Mike's fishing jacket and his hunting license. But here's the first thing they notice about all these items. None of them are damaged. Like they don't have alligator teeth marks on them. So Mike couldn't have been eaten by gators.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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So one day in 1997, Brian is looking at his best friend's wife, Denise, like, damn, she kinda foine. And Denise is looking at him like, yo, he kinda foine. And soon enough, the two start secretly smashing on the side behind Mike's back. And this cheating goes on for a few years. And eventually, Brian and Denise decide that this side smashing is great for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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I mean, this must have been foul play. Meanwhile, Denise is elsewhere happy. Not because they found Mike's stuff, but because she's about to collect life insurance on his death. Like a lot of life insurance. $1.7 million, in fact. And to make it even more sinister, Brian is a life insurance salesman, and he is the one who sold Mike the policy just before he died. How f***ing evil is that?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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But whatever, Brian doesn't care. He got what he wanted. He's now with his friend's wife, and she is now a millionaire, and they continue on with their relationship. And five years later, in 2005, Brian and Denise get married. And disgustingly, they decide to live in the same house where she had lived with Mike. And it seems like their plan worked, and these guys are never gonna get caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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Until... Now we gotta talk about this woman. Her name's Cheryl. Cheryl is actually Mike's mom, and she has always thought there was something weird going on with Mike's death, and she's never accepted the theory that he was eaten by alligators.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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I mean, hell, police found Mike's waders and fishing jacket with no damage, so even they know this case is strange, and that it was probably foul play, they just don't have enough evidence to convict anyone. And so anyway, Cheryl starts investigating on her own. And she's doing a lot. She runs advertisements in the local newspapers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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She runs billboards asking if anyone has any information about Mike's disappearance. She bugs law enforcement to reopen it and look into it further. In fact, here's actually a picture of her walking around holding up signs asking people to help solve Mike's case. Here's actually another picture of her doing it too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And now eventually, because of her insistence, police do reopen the case and they look into everything again. But unfortunately, over time, they don't find any new evidence and they close it again. And poor Cheryl doesn't get the closure on her son's death that she so desperately needs. And many years pass, and it's now 2012. And poor Denise and Brian, their relationship is no longer working out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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Apparently, he has some kind of sex addiction or something. I don't know. But regardless, it's no longer working out, and they separate. Three years later, in 2015, Denise finally files for divorce. And Brian, he apparently doesn't want to get divorced, and he's super pissed off about the whole thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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I mean, after all he went through, he murdered this woman's husband for her and she's about to divorce him? No way. He is not about to let this slide. And so late one morning, around 2.30 a.m., Brian sneaks over to her house and he hides in the back of her SUV and he waits. A few hours later, it's daylight out now, and she gets in and she starts driving to work. And suddenly, pow!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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Brian jumps over into the backseat and he pulls out a pew-pew and he points it right at her. And he starts yelling directions at her like he wants her to drive to a specific place. But unfortunately for him, Denise is stubborn. She doesn't listen and she immediately pulls over to a nearby CVS parking lot. But Brian isn't gonna stop. He orders her to call off the divorce.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And she's like, yeah, sure, we can work this out. I mean, she's just saying that because she didn't want to get shot. And so once she agrees to call off the divorce, Brian calms down and she drives him to a nearby park where he had parked his truck and she drops him off.

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He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And Brian apologizes for holding her at gunpoint while Denise agrees to get back together with him and not tell the police about this. Once he leaves, she heads right to the police station to tell the police about this. And so bam, police go and arrest Brian. Here's his mugshot. So then Brian is pissed off that Denise snitched on him after she said that she wouldn't, so he starts snitching on her.

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He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And they want to be together permanently. Now, at this point, Denise could come clean and divorce Mike and go run away with Brian and live happily ever after, but that's not what they decide to do. Apparently, Denise is very Christian and way too religious to get a divorce. So instead, they decide they're going to murder Mike.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And boom, he suddenly admits to unaliving Mike all those years ago out on the lake. But he informs them that Denise was also involved in the plot too, and that they should go arrest her. So then, bam, police go and arrest Denise. Here's her mugshot.

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He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And so Brian takes a plea deal and he gets 20 years in prison while Denise gets life. But then she's later resentenced to 30 years in prison. And most importantly, Cheryl finally gets closure on her son's death. Good for her.

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He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And they come up with this insane plan to take him out to a lake and drown him. So one day in 2000, Brian invites Mike to go on a duck hunting trip. These guys often go on these duck hunting trips. So they go and the two guys are out on this swampy lake in Mike's boat shooting at ducks or whatever. And so they're out there and Mike is wearing a big jacket because it's cold and waders.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Best Friend To Steal His Wife - The Mike Williams and Denise Williams story

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And waders are rather heavy waterproof pants. They look like this. And at one point, Brian gets Mike to stand up in the boat and suddenly, boom, he pushes him as hard as he can over the side of the boat and into the water. Because he's hoping that the waders fill up with water and Mike won't be able to get them off and he'll drown in the lake and the whole thing will look like one big accident.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

0.129

So this insane woman becomes a multi-millionaire by shoplifting makeup. Now her name is Mac and Mac is around 41 years old. She's a mom living in Arizona and she runs a bunch of online stores like buying cheap items and then reselling them on Amazon. That kind of stuff.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

105.4

In fact, she's making so much money that in 2018, she and her family move from Arizona all the way to California. And there, she buys a $1.3 million house. So her Amazon store must be doing pretty well. But even still, Mac is like, nah, not good enough. And she wants to make more. So in California, she decides to level up her game. And at this point, her husband is involved in all this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And his name is Kenneth. So Mac and Kenneth, they decide to expand this operation. And I don't know how they find them, but they somehow find a bunch more shady young women, all in their 20s, all with long-ass criminal records, to be a part of this scheme. And Mac starts calling them the California Girls. So that's what we'll call them.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And so Mac makes sure the California girls are skilled enough for the job and she'll message them on Facebook or WhatsApp or another app where they can text and she'll send them all the instructions to steal from these stores and she'll also send them like long shopping lists of merchandise to get.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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so then the california girls will separately go to ulta or sephora or wherever mac tells them to go and of course they're not a normal customer they're low-key stuffing their purses with makeup and brushes and all kinds of stuff and the whole time mac is like texting them asking them for updates making sure they get every single item from her list and she actually ends up being kind of a hard ass of a boss

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And then one day in 2012, she starts an Amazon storefront that resells high-end makeup brands like Lancome and NARS and Tarte or however the you say it. And she like stores the inventory at her house and she packs it up and she ships it out and she does the whole thing. But at some point, Mac gets an idea.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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But it must be a pretty tight operation because these girls don't get caught. So Mac keeps sending them out again and again and again. And business is looking pretty good. In fact, it's looking so good that Mac asked the girls to start recruiting their criminal friends to help them like it's a freaking MLM. And they do.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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So eventually there are like a dozen California girls all stealing for Mac's operation. But even still, Mac is like, and she wants more. And so she instructs the girls to steal more than makeup. And she starts sending them to lens crafters and other stores to steal like sunglasses. And she makes them start stealing purses. And she resells all of that on Amazon too. And that does really well.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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However, it's still not as well as Mac would like because she's still like, and she decides to expand outside of the state of California and go national. And so she starts sending the California girls to retail stores in different states across the country.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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that way they're not hitting up the same stores over and over again and she'll send them money for flights to the east coast and she'll pay for their rental car she'll pay for their hotel and each of the girls will fly to a new city head to a store and steal some makeup and more and then they'll give it to mac and she'll sell it on amazon for a profit and this is actually a picture of a bunch of the stolen makeup that mac has stored at her house i guess she keeps all of the inventory there

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And if you're like, Ray, why would these young women risk getting caught and being thrown in jail over this? Because they're actually making a shitload of money. To max credit, she actually pays her employees pretty well. At least one girl is making around $57,000 a month. A freaking month. While Mac is, of course, killing it too. Like in one year alone, she and Kenneth make $1.8 million.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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$1.8 million from stealing makeup. In fact, Mac and Kenneth are making so much money that they decide that their current house is not... So they move. Not too far away, but in 2021, they move to a much bigger house because they're like

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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balling now and i actually like looking at criminals houses so let me be a real estate agent really quick and show you this big ass house they got this is a 4500 square feet luxury home it's got a pool and a hot tub it's got a winery it's got a really nice staircase it's got a breakfast nook you can hold weddings here which mac actually does at one point It's got a whole ass orchard.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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There's even a little separate building where they have a chapel. So it's got a little church on this property, which is the perfect place to worship after you've committed a bunch of retail theft. So anyway, Mac's operation keeps going for more than 10 years, while Mac herself has managed to make almost $8 million flipping all of this stolen product on Amazon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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She can make way more money if she steals the makeup from the store and then resells it online. So allegedly, that's what she does. She goes to the store, steals the makeup, and then puts it in her Amazon store to sell. And as you could guess, her online makeup business becomes her most successful business venture in her life. Because, you know, it's 100% profit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And so the empire she's built, I mean, it looks like it's untouchable. Until... Okay, so here's the thing about these makeup and retail stores. These stores often know when things come up missing, like they're not idiots. And while they may not catch the person during the act, they will sometimes still report the theft to police. And they'll sometimes hand over any surveillance footage they have.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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So at some point, the California Highway Patrol and Homeland Security, they get word of some of these thefts. And they start investigating and looking at some of this surveillance footage. And of course, on some of this footage, they can see the California girls doing their thing. And eventually, they're successfully able to identify two of them.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And then one day in 2023, the two California girls hit up an Ulta to steal a bunch of stuff and they're walking out of the store with their purses all full of makeup that they didn't pay for. And that is when police swoop in and bam, they arrest them. Then, the police get a warrant to search one of the girls' phones.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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And in that phone, they find all those messages that Mac sent this California girl. You know, the ones with the very detailed instructions on how to steal and the lists of items to steal. And so, bam, they arrest Mac. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of her getting arrested in real life. Also, bam, they arrest her husband, Kenneth.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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Here's a picture of him getting arrested in real life. And both Mac and Kenneth, they take a plea deal and he gets sentenced to five years in prison while she also gets sentenced to five years in prison. And they're both ordered to sell their big ass new house to pay restitution to Sephora and Ulta. And the California girls, I don't know what happened to them.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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I couldn't find anything on them, but I assume they flipped and got off light.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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However, I guess this little bit of money isn't satisfying for Mac. And she's like, nah, not good enough. And she wants to make more. So at some point, she comes up with a plan to get even more stolen makeup at a quicker rate. She's going to have teams of people go out and steal it. And that's exactly what she does.

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The Multi Million Dollar Stolen Makeup Operation - The Michelle Mack story

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She somehow gets these shady young women all in their 20s to each go out to different makeup stores and they steal a bunch of shit. They give it to Mac. Mac pays them for their services. And then she resells it on Amazon. And let me tell you, it is absurd how well this scheme works. She's suddenly pulling in a lot of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

117.486

And she says, yeah, you're taking the right stuff. Stuff that everyone takes. And so he's like, alright. And he keeps taking them and things continue to get worse. And pretty quickly he's all messed up. Like his back burns all day and night. It feels like his kidneys are damaged. His joints are in pain and suddenly he has tinnitus. Something definitely isn't right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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But he keeps taking these pills hoping to get better. And he keeps fighting these intense painful symptoms. And it's some of the worst pain he's ever felt in his entire life. Und nach einem Zeitraum ist er fertig mit den Antibiotika. Er ist fertig. Und seine Urinär-Track-Infektion scheint weg zu sein. Also das ist schön.

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The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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Aber es ist um diese Zeit, dass er realisiert, dass er nicht mehr schlafen kann. Nicht so wie, oh, ich habe gestern Nacht kaum schlafen können. Aber literally überhaupt kein Schlafen. Er liegt einfach da, die ganze Nacht, mit wirklich schlechten Insomnien. Und dieses Verlangen des Schlafs macht ihn sich wie Scheiße den ganzen Tag.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

173.51

Und wenn das nicht genug schlecht ist, dann wird seine Mutter plötzlich in Indonesien krank, wo er ursprünglich herkommt. Und so muss er seinen kranken Arsch nehmen und dort reisen. Und er fliegt von Philadelphia über die ganze Welt nach Indonesien, um seine Mutter zu sehen, um mit ihr Zeit zu verbringen, bevor sie vorbeikommt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

191.088

Und während er dort ist, kann er endlich einen Arzt sehen, um herauszufinden, was mit ihm falsch ist. And so this doctor checks him over and basically says, yeah, you have insomnia. You need some sleep. And once you sleep, all this other stuff that's wrong with you will start to feel better. And then the doctor prescribes him some sedatives to help knock him out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

211.343

So then Richard starts taking sedatives. But unfortunately, they don't really work. No matter how many he takes, he's still not sleeping. I mean, if he's lucky, on a good night, he'll get maybe two hours if he takes a bunch of them. And if you're like, Ray, why are you telling us this story about a guy who has trouble sleeping? Because here's the thing about not being able to sleep.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

233.702

Long-term sleep deprivation can actually cause you to get sick as your immune system starts failing and your organs slowly shut down. Once your organs start shutting down, you could... So yeah, I mean, it's not very likely, but in theory, not sleeping for long periods of time can actually unalive you. And that is what Ricard seems to be worried about.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

256.73

So anyway, a couple of months pass, and it's now 2016. So Ricards problem has been going on for a long time. Ich meine, er ist immer noch in Indonesien und an diesem Punkt ist er so krank von Lack des Schlafens, dass er im Grunde betrunken ist und deshalb enttäuscht ist er dort, in Indonesien. Also, was macht er? Er beginnt YouTube-Videos wieder zu machen, aus seinem Bett.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

28.215

So what happens if you don't sleep for an entire year? Well, this YouTuber is about to find out. Now his name is Ricard and Ricard is in his 40s and he's a tattoo artist living in Philadelphia. And he has a couple of YouTube channels where he posts a lot of videos. Mostly of him tattooing people. But one day in 2015 his life changes and it starts when he gets a really bad urinary tract infection.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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And he decides to document everything that's going on with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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And by now, the sedatives that the doctor gave him have completely stopped working, no matter how many he takes. And so, Ricard starts begging the internet to help him figure out what's wrong with him. He even offers to allow doctors to experiment on him to see what's wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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Und so bleibt er nicht schlafen, lebt in Schmerzen und postet Videos, um alles zu dokumentieren, was mit ihm falsch ist. Und er filmt sich, als er versucht, schlafen zu lassen. Und sobald er fast raus ist, wird sein Körper reagieren und sich aufwachen. Selbst die Haut auf seinem Gesicht beginnt zu sterben und zu flaken, so er. Und ihr könnt die Flaken auf seinen Videos hier sehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

341.133

Und so Rikard fühlt sich immer noch schmerzhaft. Ich meine, diese chronische Insomnie ist ihn zu töten. Und sein einziger Ziel an diesem Punkt ist es, einen richtigen Rest zu bekommen. Und er hat alles versucht. Er würde seine eigenen Beine aufgeben, nur um einen unverzweifelten Schlaf zu haben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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And more months go by. And at this point he's been bedridden in Indonesia for a whole year. And he's still documenting everything and he's still begging the internet for help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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But no matter what he does, there's still no hope. He's starting to give up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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Und deep down he knows his body is giving up on him. So he just lies there, in bed, in pain, while his body twitches 50 or so times a day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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But then it gets worse. Because with insomnia like this, of course your body is affected, but eventually so is your mind. And poor Ricard, he starts going crazy. Seine Insomnie hat so lange gedauert, dass es ihm die Dementia gegeben hat. Und es beginnt zu zeigen. In seinen Videos spricht er plötzlich über Dinge, die einfach nicht Sinn haben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

451.841

Then, at the end of 2016, he posts a YouTube video. And it's really dark, so it's hard to see, but this video is unfortunately his last one. Because his body finally gives out and he passes away in his bed. Er hatte wahrscheinlich das sogenannte Fatal Insomnia, das ist eine extrem seltene neurologische Krankheit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

478.357

Ich habe gelesen, dass er eine wirklich schlechte Reaktion zu diesen Antibiotika erhielt, was auch sehr selten ist, aber was ihm die Peripherale Neuropathie verursacht hat, was ihn dann dazu führte, so viel Schmerz zu haben, dass er nicht schlafen konnte. Und sein YouTube-Channel ist noch auf, übrigens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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Like it's so bad he can barely work. Aber leider hat er keine Gesundheitsversicherung. Also kann er nicht zum Arzt gehen, um es nachzusehen, weil er es nicht verfügbar hat. Willkommen in Amerika. Also geht er zu seinem Boss, bei seinem zweiten Job. Ich glaube, er hat ein paar Jobs. Und er fragt seinen Boss um Hilfe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

71.451

Und sein Boss hatte vor kurzem eine UTI und er hat einige geblasene Antibiotika, die er nie benutzt hatte. Und so gibt er diese zu Ricard. Und so, einen Tag später... Bam! Er beginnt sich besser zu fühlen. Und so nimmt er sie weiter. Aber dann, an der dritten Nacht, wacht er auf und etwas Verrücktes passiert. Alles scheint zu schälen, als ob es einen Ursprung gibt. Aber es ist kein Ursprung.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Way To Die - The Ricard Siagian story

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Es ist sein Kopf. Und seine Spine. Und seine Beine. Something is very off. But still, he summons the strength to go to work the next day. And he notices he's getting dizzy and his head feels foggy. Plus his body is getting weaker and weaker. And so after work he calls up his sister, who is some kind of nurse. And he tells her about the antibiotics that he's taking.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

0.109

So this South African cop ends up going crazy and eventually becomes a serial killer. The story's wild. Now her name's Rosemary and Rosemary is in her 30s. She's a police sergeant in South Africa. But Rosemary has a problem, a gambling problem. She's an addict. Not only that, she has an issue with loan sharks because she owes them a lot of money. And now they're after her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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You go buy some bread and I'll stay here and make the tea. So sister leaves to go buy the bread while Rosemary starts making the tea. But she spikes it with some kind of poison. And when her sister gets home, she unknowingly drinks it. And I don't know if the poison didn't work well enough or what, but after that, boom, Rosemary ends up strangling her sister until she unalives her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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Then later she collects the insurance policy for her sister's death and she gets 717,000 rand or about 39,000 US dollars. Now at this point, Rosemary decides to lay low. Like maybe she's chilling, maybe she's spending her money, I don't know. But a couple of years go by and it's now 2015.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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And I don't know if she's out of money at this point or what, but here she decides to strike again and go after her own boyfriend. And so she goes and opens 16 life and funeral insurance policies in his name. But this time she hires a hitman to help her do the unaliving. And one night, boyfriend is leaving the house and suddenly, boom, a hitman is standing out in his yard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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And the hitman points a pew-pew right at him and he pulls the trigger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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click lucky for boyfriend it jams and then the hitman runs away so boyfriend is safe but then one day he's asleep in his bed taking a nap and suddenly pow his house catches on fire and he wakes up in a panic and he runs outside and so he makes it out alive but later when they investigate they find that someone likely rosemary put four bottles filled with fuel underneath his bed hoping he would burn up with the house

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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Now, after all this chaos, this is just way too much for Boyfriend to handle. Like, two close calls with death? And so, he breaks up with Rosemary, and he moves out. He's like, f*** all this. But, unfortunately, a few weeks later, he's out somewhere, I'm not sure where, and someone confronts him, and they have a knife, and pow, they stab him again and again, until he's unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

24.257

And these guys are scary. So one day in 2012, she comes up with an absolutely insane plan to not only pay off these loan sharks, but to make herself a little bit of money as well. And she comes up with a scheme to murder her own cousin and collect insurance money off of it. So first she takes out a life insurance policy on this cousin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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He was stabbed 76 times. And it's assumed that Rosemary was behind this too, because later she collects the insurance policy for boyfriend's death, and she gets 131,000 rand, or about 7,000 US dollars. And oh, she just keeps going, because you know, why stop there?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

261.054

The following year, in 2016, she unalives her own niece, beats her to death, and she collects some insurance money after that, like the equivalent of 6,500 US dollars. Soon after that, Rosemary's own daughter, a toddler, dies. And no one knows if Rosemary's responsible for this one, but it's just a tragically weird coincidence. After that, she unalives her own nephew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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Apparently he was beaten to death as well. After that, she takes out a couple of funeral policies on her other nephew. And this nephew is actually the son of the sister that she had poisoned a few years before. So she takes out these policies on him, and then she unalives him too. He was apparently hacked to death.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

302.031

Now, just to be clear, I'm showing images of Rosemary committing these murders, but it's actually unclear if she physically committed most of these herself or if she like hired someone else to help her do it, like, you know, maybe a hitman or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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But regardless, so far, she's unalived six of her own family members, possibly seven, and she's collected over 1.4 million rand from this, or about 76,000 US dollars. And I don't even know what she's doing it for at this point. Like, surely her loan sharks are paid off by now. I mean, she has a steady job. She's a police sergeant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

335.04

So I assume she's collecting this insurance money and just gambling it away. But whatever, despite that, as of now, she hasn't been caught. And it doesn't seem like she's ever gonna get caught. Until... Here's the thing. What Rosemary doesn't realize is that there's already some suspicion growing around her. Specifically, a local police sergeant gets suspicious about all of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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And he decides to contact some insurance companies and ask for the details of the payouts made from these debts. And the more he digs into this, the more he's starting to see a pattern. The pattern obviously being that Rosemary has received a lump sum of money every time one of these family members of hers has died.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

377.118

However, unfortunately, as shady as that is, that's not exactly enough evidence to convict or even accuse her of any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Rosemary is still going, and she decides her next victims are gonna be her own mother, her sister, and her sister's five kids. And that is a lot of people. So Rosemary decides she's gonna need some help with this and she's gonna hire a hitman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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And so she meets up with this hitman and she tells him the plan. And I guess he ends up having a conscience because Bro goes right to the police and he reports her. So then the police get involved and they investigate and they set up a whole sting operation. And this hitman meets up with Rosemary again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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But this time, not only is he wearing recording devices, but he's taken an undercover cop with him, posing as a second hitman. And so of course, during the meetup, they record her talking about the crime. And this is all the evidence they need. And so, bam, they arrest her. And I don't have a mugshot, but this is actually a picture of her in real life. Oh, but it gets worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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Not only did she unalive all of these people in her own family, but a long time ago, before any of this started, she used to have a husband. who one day died of mysterious circumstances. And people now suspect that she may have been responsible for that. Not only that, a few years after that, her baby son died. And I believe he was poisoned.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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So now, people also suspect that she may have been responsible for that. Basically, anyone who died around her at any point in her life, people now think she had something to do with it. Anyway, she gets life in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

47.292

And I guess in South Africa, there's not as much due diligence on life insurance policies because they're just like, okay, approved. Next, Rosemary lures this cousin out to a remote field, and that is when she grabs a big-ass rock, and suddenly, pow, she hits him with it. And then she hits him again, and again, and again, until she unalives him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

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Then later, Rosemary collects the insurance payout for his death, and she gets over 131,000 rand, or about 7,000 US dollars. And I guess no one suspects it was her. Now the bad thing is, not only did she just commit murder, but her plan worked perfectly, and now she knows how to make money from unaliving people. And so she decides to keep going. 15 months later, she strikes again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

95.648

One day, she sets up life and funeral insurance policies for her sister. She pretends to be her own sister, and she contacts the insurance company, and she sets up a policy. And of course, Rosemary makes the beneficiary of this policy Rosemary herself. Then once that's set up, Rosemary goes over to her sister's house and she's like, let's have some tea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

0.129

So this rapper is in big trouble. He's going to prison for his song lyrics. Let me explain. Now his name is Nuke Bizzle, and he's 31, and he's a rapper living in Tennessee, and bro is just trying to make money. But like, without getting an actual legit job, because you know, who wants that? And so instead, he gets a gig getting paid on the side as, uh, we'll just call it an unlicensed pharmacist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And he ends up applying for benefits 92 different times. Now this money usually doesn't come in the form of cash. It usually comes in these like little debit cards. So now bro has stacks and stacks of these government benefits debit cards. And so the money just keeps rolling in by the tens of thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

139.178

And soon enough, he scammed over $1.2 million in unemployment. Then he apparently takes the cards and uses them to withdraw cash. So out of this 1.2 million, he withdraws $700,000 in cash. And so now he's got 700 grand. And of course, he's got to spend this money. And not only does he have to spend it, but he's got to get on his Instagram and flex. Like here he is buying some new shoes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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Here he is in some new clothes with a Gucci belt. Here he is showing off his new teeth. And here he is just showing off stacks of money. And here he is showing off more money. And here he is with money literally falling out of his pockets. And if showing off your stolen government benefits wealth isn't bad enough, then Nuke Bizzle gets an even better idea. Why not write a rap song about it?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And in this song, he could explain how exactly he pulled off this crime. Because remember... He's an actual rapper. Like he puts out songs. He's got a page on Spotify with a little catalog. He's even got quite a few music videos out. Like he's really going for it with this whole rap thing. And so he finds a beat and he raps a bunch of bars about this scam he's pulling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And he teams up with another rapper whose name is, and I'm not making this up... Fat Wissa. And so Nuke Bizzle and Fat Wissa collaborate on this song called EDD. And EDD stands for Employment Development Department because that's literally the name of the government agency that he's ripping off. Oh, but that's not all. These guys make a music video too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And that video, combined with the lyrics, is basically just Nuke Bizzle laying out his whole crime. Now to spare you the whole song, because I assume you don't want to hear it, I'll just read you some of the lyrics. It's time to ball like the NBA, 10 cards, I'm swiping 10k a day. You gotta sell cocaine, I just gotta file a claim.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And one of the craziest parts about this whole thing is that in the music video, he even uses the real EDD envelopes that he used to scam, and he makes it all obvious and he holds them up to the camera several times. Bro just has no shame. So anyway, he posts this video on YouTube hoping that it blows up and, you know, makes him famous and his fans watch it and they all seem to like it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

27.529

And this makes him a little cash, but unfortunately for him, this kind of business comes with risks. And bam, he gets arrested for it. And then he gets arrested again, and then he gets arrested again. And so pretty quickly, he's starting to think this hustle isn't working out for him and that he needs to find something different. But one day, something crazy happens that changes everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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But you know who else ends up watching it and doesn't like it all that much? A special agent of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General. And so they see the video and they're like, did this guy just make a whole rap song admitting to scamming EDD benefits? And they immediately forward it to another department.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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I assume this department is the feds because this department looks into it and they see this music video where the lyrics are literally, I done got rich off of EDD.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And so they see this and they start thinking, did this guy just get rich off of EDD? And they decide to track Nuke Bizzle down, which isn't all that hard because all his social media handles are linked right on his YouTube. So anyway, these guys start investigating and analyzing his lyrics and really looking into this music video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

336.706

And they're able to pause the video on the part that shows the envelopes and apparently link one of the names and addresses on one of the envelopes to a real person, an actual victim of identity theft. AKA one of the people whose identity Nuke Bizzle stole in order to pull off this scam. Meanwhile, Nuke Bizzle has no idea he's being investigated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

357.614

And so he just keeps living his new rich guy lifestyle. And he decides to go to Las Vegas and party with a friend. And so they go to Vegas and they're having a great time. They're hanging around in casinos, cruising around the strip. I mean, Nuke pulled off the perfect crime. I don't think he's ever gonna get caught. Until.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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So they're cruising around and suddenly, boom, they see blue and red lights behind them. They're getting pulled over for speeding. And so the police ask them if they can search their car. And for whatever reason, he says yes. And so they search this Escalade he's in and they find almost $50,000 in cash stashed under the seats. Who the hell needs that much cash to carry around?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

401.115

That's what banks are for. Regardless, and more importantly, also in the car, police find EDD debit cards in seven different names. And the police are like, uh, you're not supposed to have all these. They're not even in your name. And so, bam, Newt Bizzle gets arrested. Here's a mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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Now, he later gets out on bail, but not long after, those feds, the ones who were looking into Nuke's music video, they file a criminal complaint against him. To them, him getting arrested in Vegas with the EDD cards is all the evidence they need. And so, bam, they arrest Nuke Bizzle again. Here's another mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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Baines rapped about getting rich by quote, going to the bank with a stack of these while holding up several envelopes from EDD.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And by the way, I don't think Fat Wizza got arrested for anything. So I don't actually think he was in on the government benefits scam. He was just rapping on the song. I guess he's just a poser. I don't know. But anyway, so they charge Nuke Bizzle with multiple felonies. He takes a plea deal and he's ordered to pay all the government benefits money back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

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And he's sentenced to about six and a half years. in prison damn talk about self snitching look this whole story straight up feels like a key and peel sketch

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

51.24

It's 2020, and suddenly, boom, the pandemic hits all of us. And people are getting sick, hospitals are filling up, businesses are shutting down. People are staying indoors a lot more. Now, because so many people are out of work, the government expands unemployment benefits temporarily so that people who can't work can still afford to eat and pay rent while this pandemic plays out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

74.184

Now while most people see this as a necessary service, Nuke Bizzle sees this as an opportunity to try and get rich. And he comes up with a plan to straight up scam the government. And so he starts getting together some stolen identities. And he gives each of them their own address and their own work history so that it all looks legit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rapper Who Scammed The US Government - The Nuke Bizzle story

95.313

Then he goes online and he applies for all these government benefits for each of these stolen identities. And suddenly, pow, he actually gets approved. And pretty quickly, the government starts paying him money. And he's like, holy, that worked. And so he does it again. And then he does it again and again and again. So he makes more and more money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Stole His Dead Body - The Gram Parsons story

27.925

Verwandle deine Leidenschaft mit Shopify in ein Business. Und knack Umsatzrekorde mit dem Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Du hast richtig gehört. Der Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Der legendäre Checkout von Shopify vereinfacht das Shoppen auf deiner Website bis hin zu Social Media und überall dazwischen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Stole His Dead Body - The Gram Parsons story

46.749

So this guy stole a dead body and Gene Hackman watched him get arrested for it. The story is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

0.877

True Crime ist ja schön und gut, aber weißt du, was das wirklich wahre Verbrechen ist? Dass du noch nicht bei der Deutschen Flugsicherung bist. Mit deinem dualen Studium oder deiner Ausbildung zur Fluglotsin oder zum Fluglotsen. Hier übernimmst du Verantwortung und erhältst ab Tag 1 ein tolles Gehalt. Du sprichst super Englisch, bist jung, aufmerksam und hast Abitur?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

115.228

And over time, Rick and his college counseling business become the go-to place for this scam. And like wealthy parents will come to him and they'll be like, can you help my kid cheat his way into a top university? And Rick will be like... Hi, that'll be 500 grand. Oh, and he doesn't just help the kids cheat on their SAT exams. Sometimes he straight up bribes people at the school.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

138.422

Like he's bribing school admins, he's bribing coaches, he's bribing anyone who can get his client's kid into that university. And let me tell you, business is booming for Rick. He is slowly becoming rich, just like he wanted. And after a few years of doing this, he builds up a clientele of super wealthy people. Und an einem Punkt beginnt er mit dieser Frau zu arbeiten. Lori Loughlin, a.k.a.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Aunt Becky. Und sie ist offensichtlich die Schauspielerin, die Aunt Becky auf Full House in den 80ern und 90ern spielt. Und dann wieder in der kürzesten Reboot. Und Rick beginnt auch mit ihrem Mann zu arbeiten. Dieser Typ. Mossimo. Und Mossimo ist ein berühmter Fashion-Designer. Ihr habt wahrscheinlich seine Kleidung in Target gesehen. So all that is to say, Aunt Becky and Mossimo are super rich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

186.188

And they have two teenage daughters and they want these girls to go to a top university real bad. Specifically, they want to get them into USC. And at some point, they hit up Rick and they request his cheating college admission services. And Rick is like, sure, I can get your daughters into USC. And he charges them a half a million dollars for this service.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

208.701

Und Rick ist wirklich gut bei diesem Service. Er fündelt das Geld durch eine falsche Charite, die er aufbaut, und alles. Und er macht alles wirklich legit aus. Aber trotzdem, Aunt Becky und Mossimo holen Rick für seine Services. Aber hier ist das interessante. Eine ihrer jüngeren Töchter ist tatsächlich ein Influencer. Ihr Name ist Olivia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Olivia ist sehr populär online, sie hat fast 2 Millionen Follower auf YouTube, 1,3 Millionen Follower auf Instagram, 700.000 Follower auf TikTok. Sie macht normalerweise auch viel Beauty und Fashion und Vlogs. Sie hat auch ihre eigene Farbpalette mit Sephora, der Make-Up-Brand. Sie tut also wirklich gut für sich selbst als Influencer, besonders wenn sie 18 Jahre alt ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

252.39

Und von dem, was ich sehe, interessiert Olivia nicht wirklich alle so sehr, wenn sie nach der Schule geht. Und sie spricht darüber ziemlich offensichtlich in ihren Vlogs. Aber ich möchte die Erfahrung von Spieltagen, Partys.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Und ja, es macht Sinn, dass sie nicht interessiert. Ich meine, sie ist bereits erfolgreich. Warum würde sie mit dem interferieren wollen? Aber trotz dessen, laut Olivia, wollen ihre Eltern sie immer noch wirklich gehen. Um sie in die USA zu bringen, muss Rick die Universität überzeugen, dass sie ein Athlet ist, der mit der Crew reist. Wie in dem kleinen Boot auf dem Wasser, Stroke, Stroke.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

27.503

Erinnerst du dich an Ant-Becky von Full House, der ins Gefängnis ging? Es beginnt mit diesem Jungen, Rick. Rick ist 51 Jahre alt, lebt in Los Angeles und sein Bruder ist ziemlich erfolgreich. Er betreibt ein College Counseling Business, wo er High School Studenten mit ihren College-Applikationen hilft und versucht, sie in eine gute Universität zu bringen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

290.859

Weil ich glaube, dass einige Schulen Athleten präferieren. Nun, natürlich hat Olivia nie Crew gewählt. Sie interessiert sich nicht um Crew, sie interessiert sich kaum um die Schule. In Wahrheit haben auch keine der Töchter von Aunt Becky Crew gewählt. Aber das ist egal. Sie müssen nur preten, dass sie das tun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Und so haben Aunt Becky und Massimo Fotos von ihren Töchtern im Crew gewählt, die man hier auf den Maschinen sehen kann. Und ich meine, es sieht einfach verrückt aus. Und dann, glaube ich, stecken sie diese Fotos zu ihrer College-Applikation, so wie, ah, schaut euch an, wir sind Rowan Crew. Aber egal, denn das funktioniert. Olivia und ihre Schwester gehen in die USA.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

328.908

Nun, Ant-Becky ist nicht der einzige Schauspieler, mit dem Rick arbeitet. Felicity Huffman von Desperate Housewives verwendet auch seine Hilfen, um ihr Kind in die Schule zu bringen. Und sie zahlt ihm etwa 15.000 und er setzt es auf, damit Felicitys Tochter auf ihrem SAT-Examen cheaten kann. Und das funktioniert auch. Also fängt Felicity an, das gleiche Geld für ihr zweites Kind aufzubauen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

352.723

All das funktioniert wirklich gut für Rick. Ich meine, das Geschäft ist gut und er macht eine Menge Geld. In Wahrheit bekommt er so viel Geschäft, dass er einen Jungen in Texas hirst, um Studenten auf ihren SAT-Exams dort zu helfen. Wie er sich ausfranchisiert, wie er weltweit geht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

370.075

Und so haben bei 2018 750 reiche Familien Rick rund 25 Millionen Dollar in Ausgaben gegeben, um ihre dummen Kinder in eine Top-Universität zu bringen. Und Rick selbst hat etwa 15 Millionen Dollar von all dem gemacht. Sag, was du willst über Rick, aber der Junge ist für das Leben gesetzt. Bis... Bis es alles falsch geht. Es ist jetzt 2018 und die FBI investigiert einen schäden Exekutiven.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

406.912

Es ist in einem völlig unabhängigen Sicherheitsfraud-Fall. Und so beginnt die FBI, diesen schäden Exekutiven zu interrogieren. Und er sagt, dass ein Fußballspieler in Yale seiner Tochter einen Platz auf dem Fußballspieler-Team gefordert hat, um eine Verleihung von 450.000 Dollar. Und die FBI hört das und sagt, ja, das ist illegal. Und dann geht die FBI und büßt diesen Jail-Soccer-Coach.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Und der Coach erzählt den FEDs über seine Verbindung zu Rick und diesen College-Admission-Schema, den er hat. Und so werden die FEDs diesen Jail-Soccer-Coach anwenden, um mit Rick zu treffen und ihn zu recordieren, über diesen Schema zu sprechen. Und once the FBI has Rick admitting to fraud on tape, bam, they bust him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

449.791

But they're like, you're gonna help us take down Aunt Becky, Massimo, Felicity Huffman and all your other rich friends who are bribing people to get their stupid ass kids into college. And so Rick, with the help of the FBI, he starts calling up his clients one by one and getting them to talk about their role in this scheme while the feds record him. And so now they have all the evidence they need.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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And so, bam, they arrest Aunt Becky. Eigentlich glaube ich nicht, dass sie sie so verabschiedet haben. Ich glaube, sie haben Ant-Becky kontaktiert und sie hat sich in die Höhle gesetzt. Weil, weißt du, super reichere Leute, die spielen einfach ein anderes Set von Regeln. Aber trotzdem, Rick schlug auf 53 verschiedene Leute. Er schlug auf über 30 Eltern und ein paar Trainer und Schul-Admin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Aber anscheinend ist der Jungs Erfolg einfach nicht genug, weil er rich sein will. And one day in 2011, one of his best students keeps failing his practice SAT tests, no matter how much he studies. And so that is when Rick gets an idea that's gonna change his life forever. Why not just help the student cheat his way into college? Was könnte möglicherweise falsch gehen?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Bro ist wie der 6ix9ine der College-Admissions-Welt. Und ja, alle kommen in Schwierigkeiten. Aunt Becky wird zwei Monate im Gefängnis und sie wird von einem Hallmark-Channel-Projekt ausgewählt, auf dem sie gearbeitet hat, und sie wird von der letzten Saison des Full House Reboots ausgewählt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Während Massimo fünf Monate im Gefängnis ist, wird Felicity Huffman 14 Tage im Gefängnis, während Rick, der Mastermind der ganzen Sache, der Kerl, der alle gewechselt hat, drei und eine halbe Jahre im Gefängnis hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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While Aunt Becky's daughters, they didn't get charged with anything or sentenced because, you know, they're teenagers and it could be argued that their parents pushed them into all this. But they both left USC shortly after this scandal broke and Olivia lost some sponsorships and some brand deals, including the one with Sephora.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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Und so geht Rick und er zahlt einem der Leute, der den Test schaperoniert. Und dieser Schaperon korrigiert geheim die Antworten der Studenten. Und so endet dieser dumme Student mit einem perfekten Rekord. Und letztendlich kommen sie in die Schule, die sie wollen. And so now Rick knows he's hit the jackpot. His idea worked. He is on to something big.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest College Admissions Scandal In History - The Rick Singer / Aunt Becky story

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And so he decides to do it again for another student. And then again. And then again. And he just keeps helping high school students out using the same idea. Cheating in various ways to help them get into the university they want. And he charges a lot of money for this service, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

109.642

He steals the identity of over 50 different people. Und er nimmt mehr als 2 Millionen Dollar in Lohnen. Und natürlich fangen die Leute dann auf und sie berichten ihn und bam, er wird verhaftet. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und so spart er fünf Jahre in der Gefängnis und er macht nie wieder etwas schlechtes in seinem Leben. UNTIL... So while he's in prison, one day Lemore gets an idea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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I'm guessing he gets this idea in prison, I actually don't know where he got it. But at some point, Lemore realizes that he can really profit off of religion. So in 2013 he gets out. And within a few weeks of getting out, he sets up his own church. And he becomes the bishop of that church.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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And he starts it out of his home with a small group of people and he eventually moves it to a more legitimate building space. Und natürlich, mit einem Mann wie L'Amour, was er betet, ist das Prosperitätsgospel, das suggeriert, dass reich sein, dich tatsächlich näher zu Himmel bringen wird. Gott hat mich entschieden, ein Precher zu sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Oh, er bekommt definitiv von Prechern bezahlt. Nicht nur das, er macht sicher, dass er seine Rechte vor seiner Congregation zeigen kann. Er spricht zu ihnen, mit tailor-made Designersuits, wie dieser oder dieser. Er trägt auch schöne Ringe und schaut, während er spricht. Selbst wenn er nicht in der Kirche ist, ist er immer in super teuren Designersuits.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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So, where is he getting the money to pay for all this stuff? His congregation, of course. And he's not just allegedly skimming from the donations. No, no, no. It's way more direct than that. Like one day he calls up one elderly woman in his congregation and he cons her into handing over her retirement fund.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Like he tells her that he can improve her credit score and help her purchase and renovate a new home if she just invests with him. And she believes him and she hands over $90,000. And of course, instead of helping her improve her credit score or buy a house, L'Amour takes the money and he heads straight to Louis Vuitton. wo er sich einen neuen Drip bekommt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Er setzt auch das Geld an, um auf einem BMW zu bezahlen. Und wie man sich vorstellen kann, nachdem er seine Kirche begonnen hat, wird L'amour der reichste Bischöfe auf der Straße. Wie wenn er in einem Rolls-Royce fährt. Er hat auch noch einen Rolls-Royce. Dieser hier kostet eigentlich 350.000 Dollar, übrigens. Er lebt auch in einem 9000 Quadratmeter-Maschinen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Not only that, he's getting kind of a JV-Celebrity status from all this. And people start calling him the Bling Bishop. And from there, his Instagram blows up to 1.3 million followers. And known people start affiliating with him. Like, here's footage of 50 Cent speaking at his church. Here he is apparently hanging out with Fat Dick. Okay, but then something kind of crazy happens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Something that starts to change everything. Eines Tages, im Jahr 2022, ist er vor seiner Kirche, betet oder was auch immer. Und das ist dann, als plötzlich, boom, drei Männer in Masken in das Gebäude fliegen und sie haben Piu-Pius. Und L'Amour streamt dieses Sermon live, damit man tatsächlich sehen kann, wie er merkt, dass diese Männer da sind, um ihn zu robben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Was ist, wenn die Lösung für unsere Probleme dort lauert, wo Menschen normalerweise gar nicht hinkommen? Ein Schatz aus der Tiefsee, Millionen Jahre alt, den es aber wirklich gibt und den manche jetzt heben wollen. Der Kampf um die Tiefsee, der hat längst begonnen. Das ist Enten, Land unter, von Andan und dem Futurium. Ab sofort auf Spotify.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Yo, yo, alright, alright, alright. And you can see him here laying down on the floor and then you can see these men come up and rob him. And they apparently steal a million dollars worth of jewelry from the people there, including L'Amours watch and chain. His watch is a Rolex valued at $75,000. His chain is valued at $400,000. And he livestreams afterwards and talks about all this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

370.979

And so like the story breaks and reporters are hitting him up and they're asking him if he's gonna wear less jewelry in church so that he's less likely to get robbed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Now police eventually end up catching the guys who did it. But this livestream footage of the robbery blows up. Because it's a crazy moment. A bishop getting robbed in the middle of a sermon on a livestream? Like what are the odds? And so this story ends up all over the news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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And people hear about it and they're like, wait a minute, why was this preacher wearing a Rolex in a $400,000 chain? Where's bro getting all this money? Und so, allgemein, ist das, wann die Berichter wirklich auf ihn schauen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Und eines Tages, auch allgemein, kommen einige von ihnen zu seinem Haus, um zu sehen, ob sie ein Statement von ihm bekommen können über die schlechte Presse, die er bekommen hat. Weißt du, das große Haus, das er kauft? Aber wenn sie dort kommen, werden sie wohl bemerkt, dass es einen Vorabschluss auf seine Tür gibt. Und sie sehen das und denken sich, was ist denn da los?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Ist der Blingbischof tatsächlich gebrochen? Wahrscheinlich? Ja, er hat all diese Geld auf seinen Lebensstil gespart. Und an einem Punkt beginnt er mit Geldproblemen zu laufen. Wie er versucht, Geld auf die Luxus-Karten zu machen. Er wird ein paar Mal über das Verlangen auf Lohn-Repaute verurteilt. Und es scheint also, dass L'Amour Geld wirklich schlecht braucht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Und er beginnt, sich darum zu bewegen, es zu bekommen. Und eines Tages versucht er, diesen Kerl zu targetieren. Brandon. Und Brandon hat einen lokalen Auto-Body-Repair-Shop. Und ich habe keine Ahnung, wie diese beiden Leute sich kennen, aber an einem Punkt versucht L'amour, 5.000 Dollar von ihm zu bekommen. Und er bedroht sich, wenn er es nicht bekommt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Also glaube ich, er ist so wie, ich kicke deinen Arsch, wenn du mir nicht 5.000 Euro gibst. Und wenn das nicht genug schlecht ist, dann versucht er Brandon, ihm 500.000 Dollar zu zahlen. Und in Angelegenheit versagt er, ihm den Zugang zu New York City Mayor Eric Adams zu geben. Ich habe dir gesagt, dieser Typ war schädlich. Aber Brandon ist so, f*** all das.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Und er schlägt auf ihn und er beginnt mit der FBI zu kooperieren. Und die FBI setzt eine ganze Sting-Operation auf und sie bekommen Brandon, um ein Zeug zu tragen und mit Lemore zu treffen. Und so treffen sie sich mit Lemore. Und L'Amour schweigt ihm, dass er Verbindungen mit Mayor Eric Adams hat und dass jeder Geschäftsscham, den er in seine Hand nimmt, sie Millionärs machen wird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Und diese ganze Konversation wird für die FEDs aufhören. Und schließlich, nach einer langen Investition, finden die FEDs ihn und bam, arrestieren sie ihn. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und er geht ins Gefängnis und wird für Wirefraud und ein paar andere Sachen verurteilt. Und er wird neun Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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So this preacher, you are gonna hate this preacher.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

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Now his name is L'amour and L'amour works as a mortgage broker. And one day in 2004, he decides he wants to be rich. So, how's he gonna get rich? Well, see, L'amour is dating a woman who works at a car dealership, and she has access to all the customers' credit reports and personal information.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Bishop - The Lamor Whitehead story

85.189

And so L'amour steals her work login info, and I guess, on his own computer, he uses it to access all the customers' information. And then he takes out loans and lines of credit in these customers' names. He then takes that money and he uses it to buy himself nice cars, nice clothes, jewelry. He buys himself a motorcycle. Oh, and he doesn't just steal the identity of one or two people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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So this kid, he's in big trouble. Now his name's Travis and he's only 15, he lives in Arkansas, and he's kind of a turd. He's always stealing things and getting suspended from school. Here's a yearbook photo of him if you care what he looks like in real life. But one day in 1996, he decides to go for a really big score. He's gonna rob one of the houses in the neighborhood.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And they drive about a mile away, and suddenly, kaboom! They crash the Toyota Camry, and they flip it on its side. Then they climb out of it, and they run away on foot. Meanwhile, a local resident is driving down the road, and he sees the wrecked Toyota Camry flipped on its side, and he's like, what the f***?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And so he eventually goes to the mansion to check on the owner of the car and he sees that the place is on fire. And this leads to the police and fire department showing up and that is when they find the two bodies inside. And so police investigate all this and they put out a reward for $10,000 for anyone who can give them information that would lead to an arrest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And about a month later, they finally get some information that Travis was involved. And so they go to his house and they question him. But Travis, he isn't talking. He isn't admitting to anything. And so they end up forcing him to take a polygraph test. And he passes. Mostly because polygraphs are pseudoscience, I keep telling you guys.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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But anyway, so they make him take another one and he passes again. And they make him take a third one and he passes again. But police are sure that Travis was involved in this crime. So somehow they get him to take a fourth polygraph test. This time, he fails. And finally, police are able to use this as leverage to get him to confess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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Now, Travis only ends up confessing to breaking into the houses and stealing stuff. But he says he didn't shoot anyone. He says it was Andre who was the one who shot and unalive the two people in the mansion, not him. However, because he just did confess to breaking into houses and stealing stuff, bam, they arrest him for that. And here's an actual image of him being arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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So Travis's fingerprints, they end up being a match to fingerprints found in the wrecked Toyota Camry, while they don't find any fingerprints of Andre. or any evidence that Andre did anything. And therefore, police pin the whole crime on little teenage Travis, including the murders. And so Travis has no choice. He has to take a plea deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And he's gonna do it with this other kid, this friend of his, Andre. And so Travis and Andre, they bike over to this house, but they decide, nah, instead of robbing a house, let's rob two houses. Like you rob that one and I'll rob that mansion over there. And boom, it's decided. And so Travis breaks into this house and he's combing through things to steal. And then suddenly out of nowhere, scream.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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So he pleads guilty and he gets sentenced to 28 years in prison. But here's where the story gets really crazy. One of those two people shot in that mansion that day, her name is Sally. And Sally has an adult daughter, this woman, Martha. And after Sally is murdered, Martha inherits the mansion from her. So she moves into it, she renovates it, and she turns it into a bed and breakfast.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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Now, despite all the horrible things that Martha has just gone through, you know, with her mother passing and all, by all accounts, Martha is the nicest woman ever. She's also a Buddhist, and so she likes to practice forgiveness. And so, she starts writing to Travis while he's in prison. And they're writing letters back and forth, and over time, they strike up sort of a close friendship.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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Now, despite pleading guilty, Travis has always maintained that he didn't murder those people. It was Andre. But people don't really believe him. They're like, yeah, sure, buddy. Yeah, sure, you're innocent. But strangely enough, Martha does believe him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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I mean, yeah, she knows that he did break into the houses and that he did steal stuff, but that it actually wasn't him who unalived her mom that day, that it

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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the other kid and because of this she wants to help travis out in whatever way she can she feels bad for him so she asks the police to reopen the case and investigate the whole thing again she gives travis's mother work and hires her as a housekeeper and she essentially becomes an advocate for travis And then 20 years go by and it's now 2018. And Travis, he's around 37 years old.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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Here's his adult mugshot by the way. And it's at this time that finally Travis serves his sentence and he gets out of prison. Partly because Martha had helped him out and given statements to the parole board on his behalf. So she ends up offering him a job at the mansion as a groundskeeper. And this is a really good deal for him and so he takes the job.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And crazy enough, it seems like this friendship has really worked out for him and that he's starting to finally turn his life around. Until... About a year goes by and Travis is still working there at the mansion. And one day, it all goes bad. On that day, Martha ends up selling one of the chandeliers in the house to someone for $10,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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And that person pays her cash and she stashes the cash in one of the rooms in the mansion until she has time to run to the bank. And old Travis, he just happens to be working that day. And he also happens to learn that this transaction went down. And so, he waits. He waits until no one's around. And he sneaks into the room where the $10,000 is stashed, and he swipes it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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The next day, Martha notices her money's gone. And unfortunately, there's only one person around at the time who could have taken it. the groundskeeper, Travis. And this just absolutely destroys Martha. Like how could he steal from her after everything she's done for him all these years? And so sadly, she unfortunately has to go to him and she fires him. And of course, Travis is pissed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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Like, how can she fire him? This isn't fair. And he isn't gonna let this slide. And about a month later, he decides to go and get his revenge. And early one morning, it's dark out. And Travis, he sneaks back over to Martha's house. And he creeps in through the back door, because he's gonna rob her and take more of her sh**.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

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But Martha, she's actually home and she hears someone in the house messing around. So pow, she hits her alarm and this alerts the police back at the station. And then at some point, boom, Travis sees Martha and there's a confrontation. And that is when he pulls out a knife and pow, he stabs her and pow, he stabs her again and again and again until she's unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

469.568

Then Travis wraps her in a pile of blankets and clothes and he pours a flammable liquid all over her. It seems like he's gonna try and burn the evidence again. But just then, police show up because Martha had hit the alarm. And so officers, they go into the house and they hear Travis upstairs hiding in the bathroom. And so they go up and they're like,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

489.522

come out with your hands up and Travis is like you and he jumps out the bathroom window and falls down to the ground and he runs over to the car he arrived in and he hops in it and he flees driving across Martha's massive lawn and of course police are right behind him chasing him but then boom his car gets stuck and so he gets out and he runs back across the massive lawn and he jumps into the nearby lake I guess he's gonna try and swim his way out of this

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

49.228

A Toyota Camry pulls up outside and Andre's driving it. Where the hell did he suddenly get a car? And so Travis goes to figure out what's going on. And Andre's panicking and he tells him, I went to rob that mansion and I thought people weren't home, but they actually were home. So I pulled out my pew pew and blam, blam. I executed both of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

516.056

But unfortunately for him, it doesn't seem that he can swim, and Travis ends up drowning in that lake. Wow, that is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

68.661

He then stole their Toyota Camry and drove it to pick up Travis. And now he's like, will you go back to the mansion with me to help me dispose of the bodies? And Travis, he hears all this and he's like, Aye.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered The Only Person Who Believed Him - The Travis Lewis story

80.209

And so the two of them they head over to this mansion to dispose of these two bodies and the two bodies are still there and they try to move them but unfortunately for them these corpses are way too heavy for these teenage boys to move. So what do they do? They light the whole place on fire to burn up all the evidence. Then they get into the stolen Toyota Camry, and they flee the scene.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

0.149

So this guy just got his wallet stolen and it's about to destroy his life. Now his name is William Woods and he lives in Albuquerque and he works in a hot dog stand. And one day, this guy, who we'll call Pretender, Pretender takes his wallet. But luckily, William Woods catches him and he gets all up in Pretender's grill. And Pretender, he gets scared and he gives the wallet back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

103.546

Then about a year later, he uses this identity to get a well-paying job working remotely for an Iowa hospital as an administrator. And over the next 10 years, he gets promotions and raises and he keeps climbing the corporate ladder. And soon enough, they got him on salary and he's making over a hundred grand a year. He's taken out car loans and personal loans.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

125.639

He's even paying taxes using this fake identity. So at this point, Pretender's been living as William Woods for over 30 years. Meanwhile, there's the real William Woods. And for him, life isn't going as well. He's fallen on hard times. He's living on and off of the streets of Los Angeles. And one day, he discovers that he's in a lot of debt, debt that he didn't rack up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

149.56

And he finally learns that someone's been using his credit to take out loans. So he goes to the local branch of this bank and he's like, hey, I didn't take out all these loans. So there's no way I'm paying all this money back. And he tells them someone must have stolen his identity. And he asks them to close any accounts under his name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

166.407

And then he shows them all of his IDs and all the info matches. So the bank tries to verify by asking him some security questions like, when was this account open? Stuff like that. And of course, William Woods doesn't know the answer to these security questions because he wasn't the one who opened the account.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

180.274

So the bank manager calls the phone number tied to that account, which is Pretender's number. And Pretender can answer these security questions. So bank manager's like, hey, someone here in California is trying to access your account. And Pretender's like, no one in California should be accessing my account. So the bank connects Pretender to the LAPD.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

197.886

And the LAPD asks him for proof that he's the real William Woods. And of course, Pretender faxes them over the birth certificate he fraudulently obtained. So now police are like, okay, I guess this guy at the bank must be a fraud. So they arrest the real William Woods and they charge him with identity theft and false impersonation. So now he's in jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

20.248

And all of William Woods' documents are still in there. His social security card, his birth certificate. So William thinks nothing more of it. But while Pretender didn't take anything, he was able to get all of William Woods' personal information. And Pretender, he flees to Colorado. Because he's got a plan. While in Colorado, he uses William Woods' information to get a state ID card.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

216.72

And even as he's locked up, William Woods keeps insisting that he's the victim of identity theft and no one believes him. And so he sits in jail for 450 days waiting on his trial. But he never changes his story. He never backs down. And over time, police and prosecutors, they start thinking he's legitimately crazy. So a judge ends up declaring him incompetent to stand trial.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

240.577

And they sentence him to a psychiatric hospital. And worse, they start medicating him to control what they feel is a mental condition. So the real William Woods sits in that psychiatric hospital for 147 days until his sentence is over. And they finally release him and he has to pay a small fine and they order him to stop using the name William Woods. But William, he's not going to stop.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

264.354

He's determined to get his life back. So he does some research and he's eventually able to deduce that the identity thief pretender works for an Iowa hospital. So he calls that hospital and they aren't really listening, but they refer him to the police. So he hits up the police and there he finally gets someone to agree that this is all very strange and that they should look into Pretender.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

283.792

So police bring Pretender in and they question him and he still insists that he's the real William Woods and that the other guy is some crazy identity thief who needs to be locked up. But police still think it's weird because they both have a legitimate birth certificate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

296.626

So they end up looking at the name of the father on the birth certificate and they track him down, William Woods' biological dad. So they have him do a DNA test and of course his DNA matches with the real William Woods. So finally, after over 30 years, boom, police arrest pretender. Here's his mugshot. And he ends up pleading guilty to aggravated identity theft and some other stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

317.685

And he's currently still awaiting his sentencing. While the real William Woods, he's currently living in a friend's van now, but he is in the process of getting his life back together. And his original jail conviction has been vacated. Good for him. Shout out to California, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Mexico.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

41.123

Then he uses that state ID card to buy a car in William Woods' name and he buys it using checks and all the checks end up bouncing. But by the time they bounce, he's already fled to another state where he just abandons the car. So police, they issue an arrest warrant for him, but not in Pretender's name, in William Woods' name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

59.893

Then about three years later, Pretender ends up meeting a nice woman and they fall in love and they eventually get married. But even to her, he's still pretending to be William Woods. So she takes his last name. Well, William's last name. And they even have a baby together who also has the last name Woods. So Pretender lives life under the name William Woods over the next decade.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Steals Another Man's Identity for 30 Years - The William Woods story

82.29

And he eventually goes on one of those genealogy websites and he looks up the real William Woods' family tree history. And then he uses this information to apply for a birth certificate. And he gets it. So now he has a William Woods birth certificate and he uses that to get a William Woods driver's license and a William Woods social security card. So now legally Pretender is William Woods.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

0.669

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. Mit dem Galaxy S25 Ultra kannst du einen Schritt voraus sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

103.693

Sein Plan funktioniert also nicht gut. Jerome ist natürlich so, dope, ich werde es wieder machen. Und er beginnt, mehr dieser gewinnenden Spielstücke zu stehlen. Und er beginnt, sie zu verkaufen, zu den Leuten, die er kennt. Und er macht ein bisschen Geld an die Seite, um das zu tun. Und dieser Verkauf dauert mehrere Jahre. Aber dann, eines Tages, passiert etwas verrücktes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

120.362

Jerome ist zuhause und ein Paket wird geliefert. Er öffnet es und sieht einen Rollen von Tape. Der selben Tamper-Safe-Tape, den sie mit den gewinnenden Spielstücken verwendet haben. Ich glaube, der Verleger hat die Tape zu Jerome's Haus ausgeliefert, anstatt der McDonald's-Faktorie. Jerome sieht das und er sieht sofort die Möglichkeit, noch mehr Geld zu machen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

141.588

So then boom, sometime later he's at the airport. And he's transporting the case with the winning pieces in it. And the auditor, she's there with him. And so Jerome tells her he needs to use the restroom. And then he takes the case in there with him. And then he gets one of the envelopes. He breaks the seal. He pockets the winning game pieces and replaces them with losing game pieces.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

158.355

Then he seals the envelope back up with the tape he got. He then later sells those winning pieces to more people he knows. And they all cash in. So much so that after a while, Jerome starts telling those people to resell those pieces to people in other states. To make it all harder to track back to Jerome. And with this strategy, Jerome starts stealing more and more pieces.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

178.29

And he distributes them out to more and more people in his network to sell. Und an einem Punkt bringt er sogar ein paar Rekruten an. Und sie helfen ihm, seine Wettbewerbe an die Menschen in der Stadt zu bringen. Und sein Netzwerk wird immer größer und größer. Er schlägt sogar einige der Millionen-Dollar-Preispieße. Einer davon, die Jerome anonym zu St. Jude's Children's Hospital donatiert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

199.126

Weil ich glaube, er fühlt sich schlecht über all das Stehlen, das er macht. Ich weiß nicht, aber Jerome's Schema funktioniert. Und er und seine Freunde werden bezahlt. Musik UNTIL... Endlich beginnt McDonald's sich zu überraschen. Denn viele dieser Präsentierer sind seltsam in der Georgia-Florida-Bereich, wo Menschen in der ganzen Welt gewinnen sollten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

220.895

Und hier ist das größte Problem mit diesem Scham. Mit einem System wie diesem, je mehr Leute du involvierst, desto mehr Leute wissen über den Schema. Und eines Tages, einer dieser Leute, nicht sicher wer, schießt die FBI auf. Und sie sagen, ich habe von einem Mann gehört, der einen McDonalds-Monopoly-Schemen runnt. Und das hilft der FBI, die Punkte zurück zu Jerome zu verbinden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

240.564

Also finden McDonalds-Exekute darüber nach und wollen das Spiel aufhören. Aber die FBI überzeugt sie, die Promotion eine letzte Zeit zu runten. Und diese Zeit tapern sie Jerome und die anderen Suspekten Telefone. Dann, wenn die Anwesenden alle in ihre verlassenen Spielstücke kassieren gehen, sagt McDonald's ihnen, dass es einen Verlust gab und sie den Preisgeld senden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

259.396

Dieser Verlust fordert alle Anwesenden, auf den Preis zu warten. Und während sie warten, werden sie paranoid und paniken. Und sie beginnen, sich auf den Telefon zu kontaktieren und sie klagen darüber, wie sie ihre Preisgeld von McDonald's nie erhalten haben und wie die verlassenen Spielstücke nicht funktionieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

26.767

So this guy, his name's Jerome. And Jerome is about to steal 24 million dollars. From McDonald's? So Jerome, he used to be a cop. But now, he's a director of security at a marketing firm. And one day, the marketing firm he works for comes up with a promotion for one of its biggest clients. McDonald's.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

274.339

Und seit ihre Telefone getappt werden, sind all diese Gespräche verwendet, um sie zu inkriminieren. So the FBI arrests Jerome, hears his mugshot, and they uncover his whole fraud scheme, and when all is said and done, over 50 people are convicted for scamming McDonald's out of 24 million dollars worth of winning game pieces.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

294.085

Now Jerome, he actually ends up snitching on his employer, the marketing firm he worked for. Because separately from all this, the firm was rigging the Monopoly game too in a different way. And that's a whole other story. But because he snitched, Jerome only got 37 months in prison. And of course, they seized all his assets. So, shout out to the Hamburglar, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

46.579

Und in dieser Präsentation kombinierten sie McDonald's und Monopoly in ein Spiel, in dem die Kunden freie French Fries, freie Trinken oder den großen Preis, 1 Millionen Dollar, gewinnen. Und dieses Spiel bricht auf, es ist massiv populär. Und Jerome, als Direktor der Sicherheit, ist in der Lage, diese gewinnenden Spielstücke von der Firma nach der Fabrik zu transportieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

67.305

Und das ist ein sehr sicherer Prozess. Die Teile sind in einem Kasten geschlossen, in Envelopen mit verkleinertem Tape auf ihnen. Und sie haben einen Auditor, der Jerome ständig herumschattet, wenn er den Kasten hat. Und der Auditor schaut immer auf seine Schulter. Wie wenn er mit dem Kasten reist, der Auditor muss neben ihm sitzen, auf dem Flugzeug. McDonalds ist hardcore.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The $24,000,000 McDonald's Monopoly Scam

84.82

Aber dann, eines Tages, findet Jerome heraus, wie man eine der gewinnenden Spielteile steuern kann, die 25.000 Dollar wert sind. Jerome kann diese Karte nicht selbst einladen, weil er für McDonalds arbeitet. Es würde sich nicht ansehen. Er gibt es also seinem Bruder einladen, um zu sehen, ob jemand im Verkaufsbereich die Karte verpasst hat. Und überraschend, überraschend, niemand macht das.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

0.129

So this guy is about to try and overthrow the U.S. government. Now the guy's name is Huddle. Huddle's 41 years old, living in Indiana, and he's kind of a turd. He's been in and out of jail a ton of times. He's got seven DUIs. He went to prison once for a couple of years for leaving bruises on his own kid. Bro is just a nightmare.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

108.603

We're going to walk down. And so Huddle and Uncle Dale hear this and they're like, oh, the president's going down to the Capitol building? Well, hell yeah, let's go with him. And so they and a huge crowd of the president's supporters all start marching and they walk about two miles until they reach the Capitol building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

125.37

And of course, the president doesn't go there with them, like he's full of sh**. He probably just went back to the White House to watch TV or something. Like he just wanted his supporters to go down there and be disruptive, which they do. And by the time the crowd gets there, Huddle and Uncle Dale are there. And there's Uncle Dale on the left and Huddle right there on the right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

144.716

And they start talking about wanting to get inside the building and arrest members of Congress. In fact, Uncle Dale's exact words are, I think we ought to bum rush the Capitol building. Arrest them all. We've got enough people to do that. But here's where sh** gets crazy. This big-ass crowd surrounds the Capitol. And they really surround this place. Like, they take it over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

167.378

And things escalate real quick. And suddenly, boom, the crowd overruns the police there. And you can see them pulling a protective barrier away from police here and again right here. And soon people start climbing up the side of the building and they're climbing up the walls, which is weird because they could just take the stairs, but I don't know, I guess they really want to climb.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

186.556

But anyway, the whole place erupts into a riot, and it's absolute chaos. And Huddle and Uncle Dale, they join in, particularly Uncle Dale's 73-year-old ass. He starts getting into it with police, getting in their faces, yelling at them, calling them things like traitors. He grabs one cop's baton and tries to wrestle it away from him. Luckily, he fails.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

207.63

He also grabs a flagpole that he's got, and he starts jabbing at one of those police officers. There he is right there, and one of those police officers ends up getting hurt. But then the chaos continues, and kaboom, the crowd starts forcing their way into the Capitol building, and they storm the place, and they're all chanting like, USA! USA! Like it's the f***ing Olympics.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

21.778

But one day in 2021, his whole life changes because his uncle comes to him and he's like, hey, want to overthrow the government? Now, his uncle is this guy, Uncle Dale and Uncle Dale, 73 years old. And he wants to travel over to Washington, D.C., where the president is going to give a public speech to a bunch of his supporters.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

227.906

And of course, Huddle and Dale follow the crowd in, and this crowd is looking for members of Congress, potentially to harm them. And they're like entering offices and private conference rooms, shouting about how this is some kind of revolution. Here's the thing about Huddle, though. I don't know exactly why, but he's been filming this whole time, filming all of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

249.203

And so at this point, he turns the camera around and points it at himself. and says, this is me, which is definitely going to incriminate him later. Anyway, a few minutes after, a bunch of police officers show up to where they are, and to get away from them, Huddle leaves the building by climbing out a window. Now, after all this chaos, nothing happens to Huddle or Uncle Dale that day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

272.21

They eventually go back to Indiana. While the certification of the votes, ultimately it does resume and the president officially loses that election and he has to give up power. Womp womp. And so his disruption plan failed and the mob rioting the Capitol ultimately did not get what they wanted. And also 174 police officers were injured that day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

295.063

And a few died later of causes that are said to be related to this day, but that's a whole different story. Regardless, Huddle and Uncle Dale move on and they go back to living their lives with no consequences. Until... Here's the thing. Mobbing the Capitol to interfere with an election is not only against the law, but it's a pretty big deal. And the feds are not going to let this slide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

319.551

And so, boom, they start investigating. And they have tons of evidence to work with. Witnesses, cell phone data, the Capitol building has security cameras. Not to mention, a lot of people there that day were just filming the whole thing. So, that's evidence too. And ultimately, over 1,600 people are charged for their role in what happened that day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

344.106

And over a year later, the feds finally catch up to Huddle and Uncle Dale. And of course, they've got all of Huddle's footage he took to use as evidence. And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's Huddle's mugshot. And I couldn't find a mugshot of Uncle Dale, but here's a picture of him as well. Now, Huddle gets sentenced to six months in prison, while Dale gets two and a half years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

367.617

But wait, it's not over. It gets even more insane, because in 2024, Huddle finally gets out. He served his time, and he goes right back to living his life. The following year, the former president gets back into office again, and he decides to pardon all 1,600 of the people charged or convicted for mobbing the Capitol that day. Because they helped him out by trying to disrupt the vote counting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

394.266

And so now he's helping them out. And so Uncle Dale, I guess he gets out of prison. He's pardoned. I couldn't really find much more on him. While Huddle is already out of prison. But his crime from that day is wiped from his record. So, you know, I'm sure he's happy about that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

409.634

But then about a week after he's pardoned, really goes south because Huddle is in Indiana and he's driving along one day and he's speeding going 70 in a 55 and he flies right by a cop. And so the officer puts his lights on and he pulls him over and Huddle gets out of his van and they start talking. Now, all Huddle was doing is speeding, which normally isn't that big of a deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

433.356

However, he's had a ton of traffic violations, and now he's driving with a suspended license. And now it's like a felony status at this point. And the officer explains this to him, and he explains that he has to place him under arrest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

44.071

And Huddle, he just got out of jail for like a DUI not too long before this, so he doesn't have anything better going on. And so he's just like, overthrow the government. All right. And so they drive 10 hours from Indiana all the way over to Washington, D.C. So they get there and they go to the Ellipse, which is a park right near the White House, to hear the president speak to his supporters.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

456.417

But then the officer goes to arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

470.076

Now, I got to pause the video here. I can't show you what really happened because, you know, it's too violent, but I can explain it to you. So Huddle jumps back in his van and he reaches somewhere and he grabs a pew-pew that he has. And the second he grabs it and holds it up, the officer grabs his and blam, blam, blam, blam. He unalives him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

491.337

And now Huddle apparently did that because he was going to unalive himself so that he wouldn't have to go back to jail. And obviously when you suddenly pull out a firearm like that in front of police, they might shoot you, thinking that, you know, you were gonna shoot them. Which is exactly what the officer did. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

68.787

Here's the thing about the president, though. Two months before this, he had run for reelection and lost. And he's apparently still all salty about it, claiming it was rigged and it's unfair and it was stolen from me. And now he wants to interrupt the certification of the votes, which would create chaos and allow him to remain president for a period longer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Tried To Overthrow the Government - The Matthew Huttle story

92.359

And so on this day at the Ellipse, during his speech to a bunch of his supporters, he basically instructs all of them to march down to the Capitol building and protest and disrupt the certification of the votes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Snoop Dogg / Peanut Butter Jelly Time Hostage Situation

0.877

True Crime ist ja schön und gut, aber weißt du, was das wirklich wahre Verbrechen ist? Dass du noch nicht bei der Deutschen Flugsicherung bist. Mit deinem dualen Studium oder deiner Ausbildung zur Fluglotsin oder zum Fluglotsen. Hier übernimmst du Verantwortung und erhältst ab Tag 1 ein tolles Gehalt. Du sprichst super Englisch, bist jung, aufmerksam und hast Abitur?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

101.161

Und bald genug wird Bro verhaftet und das Krankenhaus ruft die Polizei auf ihn und bam, er wird verhaftet. Hier ist ein Mugshot. Aber Glück für Grant, seine Mutter und Vater suchen ihn aus, den wir einfach Mutter und Vater nennen. Also kommen Mutter und Vater zur Rettung, sie zahlen für einen Arbeiter und boom, die Anzeichen werden gedroht. Und so ist er aus Problemen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

121.63

Aber jetzt hat er ein anderes Problem. He ain't got no job. So he comes up with one hell of a plan. He'll just become an internet star. He'll get some equipment and he'll livestream himself playing video games on Twitch. And people will donate to him because he's such a likable guy and he'll make so much money from doing this. So, Grant kriegt diese Idee los.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

142.568

Er setzt alles zusammen und er beginnt, sich live zu streamen. Aber leider ist Live-Streaming einfach, aber Geld aus Live-Streaming zu verdienen, ist es nicht. Und die Donationen kommen einfach nicht für ihn ein. Ich meine, Dinge im Allgemeinen gehen einfach nicht gut für Grant. Aber dann verändert sich alles. Denn eines Tages ist er online und er kommt zu einem Ad zu einem Camgirl Website.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

166.71

Und Grant ist so, ich will Camgirls sehen. Und er klickt auf die Website und das ist, als er etwas Unglaubliches sieht. Er sieht diese Frau. Sie geht bei Sylvie. Sylvie ist eine Camgirl aus Bulgarien. Und Grant denkt, Sylvie ist gut. Wie wirklich, wirklich gut. And so he starts donating money to her to watch her webcam shows.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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And then Grant starts to chat and interact with Sylvie, assuming it's really her. Because sometimes these cam girls will hire other people to pretend to be them so that they can chat with customers online. So I'm told. But anyway, Grant thinks he's chatting with Sylvie. Problem is, he doesn't really have a lot going on. So he starts lying to her.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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He tells her that he's rich, that he's a successful Twitch-Streamer and that he has all this money to just throw around. And Bro is like watching her and chatting with her like every night. And over time, he starts to think they have a real relationship and he starts to believe that she is his girlfriend. And Bro becomes obsessed with her.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und ziemlich schnell wird sein Geld niedrig, um mit ihr zu sprechen. Also beginnt er zu fragen, ob sie ihm Videos gratis schickt.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und ich vermute, Sylvie sagt, nein, weil er sie immer noch bezahlt. Nun, ich bin sicher, dass Sie sofort sehen können, was Grant mit dem Problem zu tun hat. Er hat keinen Job, aber er spart all diese Geld. Ich meine, ihre Shows kosten mehr als 10 Dollar pro Minute und er schaut sie obsessiv für Stunden und Stunden jeden Tag. Manchmal spart er über 2.000 Dollar pro Nacht. Das ist verrückt.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Also, wie löst er dieses Geldproblem? Er beginnt, seine Eltern und Bruder Kreditkarten zu stehlen. Und er macht sie aus, um Sylvie bezahlen zu können. Und schlussendlich entdeckt sein Vater die Rechnungen auf seiner Karte. Und er ist so, was zur F***? Und Grant sagt ihm, oh, das sind Bezahlungen, um meinen Twitch-Kanal zu promoten. Weil ich jetzt Streamer bin.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und natürlich kauft der Vater die Geschichte nicht. Aber Grant weiß, dass sein Vater seine eigenen Kinder nicht anrechnen wird. Also macht er das immer noch. Er fängt nicht an. Er fängt sogar an, Sylvie Gifte zu schicken, wie Lingerie und Sex-Tüten. Und er will wirklich, dass man seine Name im Chatraum sieht, also tippt er sie groß. Und bis jetzt, wenn man es schon weiß, ist er enttäuscht.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Er spendet zwischen 2.000 und 12.000 Dollar pro Tag auf sie. Und um seine Bedrohung zu halten, stehlt er einfach mehr. Er beginnt, von seinem Bruder zu stehlen. Diesen Jungen, Cody. Er stehlt etwa 60.000 Dollar von ihm. Meistens Piu-Pius. Ich glaube, damit er sie befreien kann. Er beginnt auch, Kreditkarten in seinen Elternnamen zu öffnen. Er nimmt einen Lohn aus seinen Elternnamen.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Er fragt sogar seinen Bruder, um ihm 50.000 Dollar zu zahlen, damit er in Bulgarien gehen kann und Silvie sehen kann.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Aber ich vermute, Cody sagt nein, weil Grant nicht in Bulgarien gehen wird. Leider haben Mutter, Vater und Cody nie mit dem Polizisten gesprochen. Ich glaube, sie wollen ihn nicht in Gefahr bringen. Sie kümmern sich sehr um ihn und wollen nur, dass er Hilfe bekommt. Aber weil das so ist, wird Grant nicht aufhören. Und dann endet Grant am Haus seiner Tochter mit seiner Tochter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und dann beginnt er, Kreditkarten von ihr zu stehlen. Und dann wird sie alle verdammt und Cody bittet an, an die Frau anzupassen für alles, was Grant von ihr verdient hat, wenn sie nicht die Anzeichen drückt. Wieder einmal, sie wollen einfach nicht, dass er in Probleme kommt, sie wollen, dass er Hilfe bekommt. Aber an diesem Punkt hat Grant über 200.000 Dollar von seiner Familie verdient.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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200.000 Dollar. Und so gehen sie zu ihm und haben eine Intervention und sagen ihm, das ist es, wir nehmen dich zum Rehaben für ein 60-Tage-Programm für diese Addiktion. Und wenn Grant das hört, freut er sich aus, weil er weiß, dass er Sylvie für 60 Tage nicht sehen kann. Whatever, they put him in the car and they drive him to the clinic with Grant all pissed off and screaming in the backseat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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So now maybe, just maybe, this point, this can finally break his addiction and he'll finally become a responsible adult and he can finally get his life back on track. Two weeks later, Grant decides, eh, I'm done with rehab. And he leaves treatment and he goes home early. And at this point, Dad is like, alright, fine. You can come live at home, but you have to follow these three rules.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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One, get a job. Two... Und er sagt ihm spezifisch, dass wenn er Rule 3 bremst, er ihn aus dem Haus auslösen wird. Und das, natürlich, f*****t Grant ab. Ich meine, er glaubt, Sylvie sei sein Freund, also kann er nicht einfach stoppen, mit ihr zu sprechen. Und so stoppt er nicht, mit ihr zu sprechen. Er versucht es nicht, auch wenn sie seine Geräte wegnehmen.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Instead, he sneaks around and he low-key starts stealing his mom's phone. And he starts logging on to see Sylvie again. And when dad finds out, kaboom, an argument explodes. And he tells Grant that he has had enough. Get your shit and get out. And this is when Grant finally just snaps. He is tired of people getting in the way of his love for Sylvie. And so he goes and he grabs a pew-pew.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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And his mom is working on her computer, not paying attention to him, and he walks up behind her, and blam, he shoots her in the head. Then he goes to the kitchen, and when his dad walks in, blam, he shoots him. Then he gets his dad's phone, and he texts his brother Cody, telling him to come home. When Cody comes home, blam, he shoots him too.

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This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und jetzt, dass die ganze Familie unerwachsen ist, stagiert er die Szene, um es so zu machen, als ob sein Bruder Cody diejenigen ist, die seine Eltern unerwachsen sind und dann selbst unerwachsen sind. Dann kommt er in sein Auto und fährt zu einem nahen Parkplatz und logt an Silvies Campsite und startet sofort mehr von seinen Eltern Geld auf sie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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Und endlich finden die Polizei ihn und bam, er wird verhaftet. Hier ist sein Mugshot. And ultimately he's charged with three counts of first degree murder and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to life in prison. That is insane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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So this guy is about to ruin his whole life because he falls in love with this cam girl. Now the guy's name is Grant. He's 29, he's from Florida, and Grant has a decent life. He works as a nurse, he lives at home with his parents, so he doesn't really have to pay any bills. He's got it good. But one day he starts screwing up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Destroys His Life For a Webcam Girl - The Grant Amato story

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See, even though he's a nurse, he doesn't really like it when patients ask him to do things. It's annoying. So he starts stealing sedatives from work and he low-key starts giving them to the patients to make them go to sleep. So now they sleep instead of bugging him to do his job. Und nicht nur ist das super gefährlich, es ist auch sehr illegal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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So this guy, his name's James. And James is like the coolest old guy you've ever heard of. I mean, he's 63, he's a doctor, he's also an ex-Green Beret who fought in Vietnam and saved a bunch of people. So he's like a war hero. And if that isn't cool enough, he's also really into motorcycles. Yeah, he's one of those guys. But one day in 2011, it all changes. Because he meets this guy, Ferdinand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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Not only that, she's also a popular on-air host at the local radio station. And she's known to be very outspoken. I love being here to bring you the truth. As unvarnished, as unpretty, unbuttered on the biscuit it is. Now, we don't exactly know how, but at some point, April starts getting suspicious of some of the things James is up to.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And she discovers that he is a big part of this motorcycle gang, Oxy Drug Ring. And if that isn't bad enough, she also discovers that he's a big liar. And that he's made up a bunch of stuff about his past. Like he was never a Green Beret. He never fought in Vietnam. He never rescued a bunch of people. He lied about his service and all his military tattoos and medals and his Green Beret stories.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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They were all made up to make him sound like a cool guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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and so april finds all this out and she's devastated like how could he lie to me about all those things and she has had enough and she's like i'm done i want out of this relationship he is no longer foreign but james he isn't ready to get divorced and so they fight about it and i guess he isn't gonna grant her the divorce which is just gonna make the whole process way more difficult than it

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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needs to be and april's like if you don't grant me this divorce i'm going to tell everyone that you lied about being a green beret in vietnam and that you're involved in a drug ring with the pagan motorcycle gang but here's the thing her threatening to tell everyone is a big deal because she's a popular on-air radio host in that area she's also very well known for having a lot of opinions and at any time she could jump on the mic and ruin james's whole reputation

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And obviously James can't have that. And he's like, if you tell anybody, I'll go nuclear on this family. But April's like, whatever, you're all talk. And while James acts all hardcore, deep down, he's super worried about her telling on him. And so he comes up with a plan to make sure she doesn't do that. He's gonna hire a hitman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And so he goes to Ferdinand and he's like, can you help me find someone to unalive my wife? And Ferdinand's like... Hi. And they end up hiring a hitman. And the hitman they hire is this guy, who we'll just call Hitman. Now, Hitman is also a member of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, and he agrees to do this hit for $20,000. And so the plan is all set.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And on the day it's supposed to go down, James leaves his house for work like he normally does. But this time, he makes sure to leave one of the doors unlocked. While April, she's still at home, and she has no idea what's coming.

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Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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Meanwhile, Hitman is on his way to the house and he gets there and he gets out of his car and he sneaks in through the unlocked door and there he finds April and blam, he shoots her and blam, he shoots her again and then he leaves. And later, a handyman shows up to the house to work and he finds her body and he reports it to the police. And so police investigate, and they don't find anything.

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Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And Ferdinand happens to be the head of a local chapter of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, which is like a well-known outlaw motorcycle gang. And they're supposedly bad news. But despite that, James and Ferdinand bond over their love of motorcycles and stuff. And at one point, one of them comes up with this crazy idea. They want to go into business together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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No fingerprints, no shell casings, no sign of forced entry, nothing stolen. So they got nothing to work with. Even James has a solid alibi. He was at work. And I guess police never really get any more leads after that because the case goes cold. Not only that, strangely, 18 months later, Hitman is messing around one day, doing a bunch of drugs, and he accidentally overdoses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And so he's gone, which sucks for him. But that's actually good news for James because that's one less person who can connect him back to April's murder. And so now it really looks like James pulled off the perfect hit and he's going to get away with everything.

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Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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Until five years go by and the governor of New Jersey at this time, this turd, Chris Christie, Chris Christie appoints a new county prosecutor. And this new county prosecutor steps into his role and he's immediately like, damn, why does this county have so many unsolved murders? And so he wants to try and get those numbers down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And he and his team pull some cold cases from the files that they think they can solve. One of those cases happens to be April's case. And so they dig into April's case and they start looking at James. Because, you know, when investigating these things, it's always a safe start to look into the husband or the boyfriend as a suspect. Because generally they're guilty. And so they investigate James.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And right now they don't really have much to go on because remember, he had a solid alibi. But then they find out separately from all this, separately from everything I've talked about so far, James is being investigated for some other kinds of medical fraud. I guess he was like selling compound cream medications for kickbacks and apparently a couple of other schemes.

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Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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Regardless, it doesn't matter because it was illegal. And this alleged medical fraud is enough for police to get a search warrant. And boom, the police and FBI show up to James's office. And James is there and he sees them coming outside and he goes and he does the last thing anyone would expect. He pulls out a pew-pew and he's like, stay back or I'm gonna unalive myself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And sh** gets real for a minute. But eventually, police do talk him down and bam, they arrest him. But not for being involved in April's murder because it hasn't been proven yet. They arrest him for a weapons violation. And by the way, here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Now. Because of all this, police are able to get James' phone and they get into it and they see that he's connected to a guy named Ferdinand and therefore the Pagan Motorcycle Club. And so then James caves and he tries to save his ass by blaming everything on the Pagan Motorcycle Gang.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And so police, they go to the Pagan Motorcycle Gang and they're like, this guy's trying to blame this murder on you guys. And then some members of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang come forward and they're like, nah, James was giving us Oxycontin as part of a drug ring and then he came to us wanting his wife unalived.

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Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And so with this new information, kaboom, they charge James with first degree murder and some other stuff. And also, bam, they go and arrest Ferdinand for his involvement in all this. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And so now James, he's in jail and he's waiting on his trial. And unfortunately, or fortunately, while he's there, he unalives himself with a bed sheet and he never faces trial. Ferdinand, on the other hand, he stays alive, and he gets convicted, and he's sentenced to life in prison. That's wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Doctor Hires a Biker Gang To Murder His Wife - The James Kauffman story

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And since James is a doctor, they decide they're going to set up a drug ring to sell painkillers, Oxycontin. Specifically, their plan is for Ferdinand to send drug users to James' office pretending to be his patients. And these fake patients will then pay James some money for the visit or their insurance will cover it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Then James will write them a large prescription for Oxycontin and the fake patients will then go back to Ferdinand and give him his cut. And so they do this little scheme and it works and it works really well.

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And suddenly they're both making a ton of extra money and no one suspects a thing because James is like this cool old guy and he's a respected physician and no one's going to assume he's doing this. Except... for one person. One person gets really suspicious of James. And that person is this nice woman, April. April's 47 and she's James's wife.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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So the apocalypse is coming and the world is going to end, right? And this woman believes she can save us all by unaliving all the zombies? Now, her name is Lori and Lori's a normal housewife living in Arizona. And one day she discovers a series of novels. And these novels are all about the coming apocalypse and how to survive the end of the world.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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That she's been reincarnated many, many times. That she is one of only 144,000 people who will actually be saved when the world ends. But most importantly, she starts talking about zombies. And not your walking dead, eat your brains type zombies. She and Chad Daybell believe that zombies are a normal person whose soul has been possessed by an evil demon. That's what they refer to as a zombie.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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And they think there are zombies all around them, hidden in plain sight. Now, Lori actually has a husband, who we'll just call husband. And at this point in her life, husband is seeing all these changes in her, and he's he's starting to get worried because she's been referring to herself as a goddess and talking about zombies and all kinds of crazy .

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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But then one day everything changes for husband because Lori comes to him and she tells him that she no longer cares about him. And then after that, she just disappears. She steals his truck and she withdraws $35,000 from their joint bank account and she just bounces. And then two months go by and she's still gone and no one knows where she is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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But as you could have guessed, everyone suspects that she went to Idaho where Chad Daybell lives to be with him. So after two months of being gone, one day she suddenly returns. And of course, she and husband immediately start getting into arguments about all this. And she starts insisting that he is possessed by an evil demon. An evil demon named Ned Schneider.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Which, I gotta say, that's not a very demonic sounding name for an evil demon, Ned Schneider, but okay. And then she tells Husband that her God has put her on some kind of holy mission. And that if Husband gets in the way of her holy mission, she will have to unalive him. And Husband is like, okay, what the ? And he goes and he files for divorce. And then Laurie's like, okay, fine.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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And Lori is very religious and she's reading these books and she really connects with them. And as she becomes more and more obsessed with the books, she starts spending less and less time with her kids. And eventually she decides to travel from Arizona to Utah to a convention where the author of these novels is going to speak because she wants to meet him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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And she takes their two kids and she goes to live with her brother. Her brother is this guy, Alex. And Alex is a total religious nut job too. So Lori tells Alex that Husband is actually a zombie and that he's possessed by an evil demon named Ned Schneider. And Alex is like, say no more, I'll take care of him.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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About five months later, Husband comes over to the house that Lori's renting to pick up their son. And while he's there, he and Lori, they start fighting. And Lori's brother, Alex, is there. And so Alex gets involved in this fight. And at one point, Alex gets so mad, he goes into his bedroom and he gets his pew-pew. And he comes out and he starts threatening Husband with it.

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And then suddenly, out of nowhere, blam! Alex shoots Husband twice in the chest. And unfortunately, Husband, he doesn't make it. And Alex ends up telling police that it was self-defense and there are no charges brought against him. Then, about a month after that, Lori takes her two kids and her brother Alex, and they all move from Arizona all the way to Idaho.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Because, of course, that's where Chad Daybell lives. And now that husband is gone, she can be closer to him. About a week later, after moving to Idaho, Lori and Alex take her two kids on a little trip to Yellowstone National Park. Now, there's not a lot known about what actually happened there that day. But that day is the last day that Lori's daughter is seen alive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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Because Lori and Alex, they come back from Yellowstone without her. And no one knows what happened to her. Then, two weeks later, Lori's son goes missing. And again, we don't know much about why. Because one day, he's just gone. And no one knows what happened to him. Now, suspiciously, neither Lori nor her brother Alex report this to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And when other relatives and family members call to talk to the kids, Lori just makes up excuses like, oh, they're out with their friends. Or, oh, he's taking a nap right now. And everyone believes her. I mean, at this point, they have no reason to suspect that Lori might have done something to unalive her own kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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Until about a month later, Chad Daybell, his wife, because yes, he's also married to someone, Chad Daybell's wife suddenly dies. She dies out of nowhere from cardiac arrest. But the whole thing is sudden and therefore very suspicious. And what's even more suspicious is that Chad Daybell doesn't allow them to perform an autopsy on her. Now, stay with me here, because it gets a little complicated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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The youngest son, the one who went missing, his name is JJ. And JJ is actually adopted. Now, his biological grandmother, she talks to him like on the phone often enough. And at this point, it's been about six weeks since she could get him on the phone last. And every time she calls, Lori keeps making excuses. Like, oh, JJ can't talk right now. He's out playing with the other kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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So at this point, grandmother's getting worried, and she thinks something weird is going on. So she calls police, and she asks them to go do a welfare check. So police, they go over to Lori and Chad Daybell's apartment, and of course, JJ isn't there. And that is when police discover that not only is JJ not there, But both kids are missing. And Lori's brother Alex happens to be there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And Alex, he tells police, JJ's not here. He's staying with his grandmother right now. But remember, it was grandmother who reported JJ missing. So police are like, yeah, that's bulls**t. And this is definitely suspicious. And they start really investigating Lori and Chad. And about a week later, Lori and Chad move from Idaho to Hawaii. And once they're in Hawaii, they get married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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So the author is this guy, Chad Daybell. And Laurie gets to meet Chad Daybell, and she's all excited, and she tells him how much his books have changed her life. And these two really hit it off. And they start flirting a little, and Chad Daybell tells her they've been married in previous lifetimes. Which, I gotta say, that is one hell of a pickup line.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And it's only been like two weeks since Chad's wife died of alleged cardiac arrest, and he's already getting remarried. And so all this is coming across as super weird. And this whole time, Lori's family is hitting her up like, hey, where are your kids? We haven't spoken to them in forever. And Lori's still making excuses like, oh, they're fine. They're off playing something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And of course, police are also harassing them too. Like, Ma'am, where the hell are your kids? And Lori's like, oh no, they're staying with my friend. And the friend is like, uh, her kids aren't with me. So then, boom, police officially declare Lori and Chad as persons of interest. And they launch a nationwide search for these missing kids. And of course, no one can find them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Meanwhile, police are like, you know, maybe these missing kids are somehow related to Chad's former wife's sudden death from cardiac arrest. So they go and they dig up Chad's former wife's body to see if she actually died from cardiac arrest. And they autopsy her and guess what they find? No, she didn't die from cardiac arrest. She was actually asphyxiated, meaning someone suffocated her.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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So police, they contact Lori and they're like, all right, lady, we're tired of your excuses. You have five days to physically produce your missing kids or you're under arrest. And of course, Lori doesn't produce them. She can't. And three weeks later, bam, they arrest Lori and they charge her with abandonment. Here's her mugshot.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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And while Lori's in jail, police get a warrant and they search Chad Daybell's backyard at his previous house back in Idaho. And they start digging around in that yard and there, buried, they find the remains of both of Lori's kids. And sadly, it is theorized that Lori and Chad beat and strangled them to death.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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Apparently, Lori and Chad thought her two kids had become zombies, and that the only way to save their souls was to get rid of them before the apocalypse happens. So then, of course, kapow! Police arrest Chad. Here's his mugshot. And they charge him and Lori both with first-degree murder for unaliving the kids.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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They also charge Chad with unaliving his wife, and they charge Lori with conspiring to unalive her former husband. Then they go to trial and she's found guilty for everything. And he is also found guilty for everything. And Laurie is sentenced to life in prison while Chad is sentenced to death.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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While Laurie's brother Alex, who was also involved in all this, he didn't get charged with anything because he died from blood clots before any of them got arrested, which is very suspicious timing. Oh, and also the apocalypse never happened.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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So eventually, the convention ends, and they go their separate ways. But Lori and Chad decide to stay in touch, and they chat often. And he has her as a guest on his podcast, Long Distance. And they, of course, often talk about how to prepare your soul for the upcoming apocalypse. Now, because of the popularity of his beliefs, Chad Daybell does have a bit of a religious following.

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She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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His beliefs are sort of an extreme denomination of Mormonism, which some people describe as a doomsday cult. And the more Lori interacts with Chad Daybell and the more she buys into his doomsday teachings, the more her personality starts to change. And she starts saying crazy things to her friends and family. Like that she's a divine goddess. That she has supernatural powers.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Have you heard of that clothing company Salt Life? Well the founder of that company just unalived someone and had a mental breakdown. Now the founder, his name's Michael and he and some other guys co-founded the clothing company Salt Life and they make clothes for like surfers and stuff. You've probably seen their stickers on cars at some point and mistakenly thought it said Salt Life.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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And Grace's parents, they don't hear from her for like a whole day. And they start to get paranoid. So they report her missing. And a local police officer, he comes over to their house to follow up with them. And while the officer's there, Grace actually calls her parents. And she lets them know she's fine.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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But oddly, Grace sounds really strange on the phone, almost like she's been drugged or something. And her parents are like, all right, this is all very weird. And they ask police to do a welfare check on her. So police, they start looking for her. A day or so later, Grace calls her parents again.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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And she says she's fine and that they're now going from Daytona to go visit some friends in the Florida Keys. Now, on their way to the Florida Keys, Grace and Michael decide to stop at Singer Island and have, you know, a day at the beach. After their day at the beach, they head back to their hotel room. And this is where things start to get weird.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Because allegedly, here is where Grace and Michael start partying. Little drugs, little alcohol. Allegedly. And at some point, they start playing this little game with their hands, like finger guns, like you would do as a kid. And I guess they're pretending to, like, shoot each other, and they're sort of doing it back and forth, and I guess they find it hilarious. I don't know.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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But then, for some reason, Michael's like, hey, what if I pulled out my actual pew-pew and pointed at her? Wouldn't that be quirky and hilarious? So, he takes his pew-pew out, and he points it at Grace, just playing around. And suddenly, bam! It goes off, and a bullet flies and hits Grace right in the stomach, and she falls to the floor. And Michael, he's like, oh , and he panics.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Anywho, so Michael co-found Salt Life and later ends up selling the company for $40 million. So the dude is rich now. He is rolling in the money. But one day, all that changes. Because Michael, he's out riding an ATV. And then kaboom, he crashes it. So he decides to start going to the gym for physical therapy. And there at the gym is where he meets this woman, the woman of his dreams, Grace.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Now, I don't know what is going on in his head at this point, but he doesn't call police, and he doesn't call paramedics. Instead, Michael decides to flee, and he puts the pew-pew in his backpack, and he runs out to his car, and he jumps in, and he drives four hours, around 280 miles, until his car straight up runs out of gas.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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And he pulls over at a gas station and he parks and he starts having a mental breakdown. He's twitching and he's crying and he's talking to himself. Now the gas station attendant inside, he looks out and he sees that Michael is parked illegally. And he can see him twitching and crying and talking to himself. And he's like, man, this guy's nuts. So he calls the police.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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So the police come and they're like, I don't know what the is wrong with this guy. So they take him to the hospital for evaluation. The next day, Grace's dad, he still hasn't heard from Grace. She hasn't responded to any of his texts or any of his calls and it's been a few days. And he starts getting worried. So he uses an app on his phone to track her phone to the Hilton Hotel on Singer Island.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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So he calls police and he asks them to go to Singer Island to see if she's at that Hilton. And police go there and they knock on the hotel room door and no one answers, but they can smell something foul coming from the room. So management lets them in. And that is where they find Grace's body lying on the floor. The gunshot to her stomach had unalived her.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Now, when Michael fled the hotel that night, he actually left so fast that he forgot his wallet and his ID. Plus the hotel room is rented in his name. So pretty quickly, police know he's responsible for this. And they track him down at the hospital he's at and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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And Michael gets charged with manslaughter and he takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 12 years in prison. So now when you see a car driving around with one of those Salt Life stickers on it, you can think of this story.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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Grace works at the gym and Michael thinks she is foint, but there's a problem. Michael, not only is he already married, he's also 54 years old, while Grace is 18. But Michael, he's like, whatever, if Leonardo DiCaprio can get away with it, why can't I? So he starts trying to riz her up, and surprisingly, Grace is into it. She thinks Michael's old ass is foint.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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So they start flirting at the gym and then they start going out on dates and pretty soon they start smashing on the regular. And he's calling her his girlfriend. And they even start working on some business together. Now, Grace's parents, they definitely have strong opinions about their daughter dating a man literally three times her age.

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Salt Life Clothing Founder Shoots His Girlfriend - The Michael Hutto story

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And one day, she calls them and she's like, hey, I'm going out of town with my old ass boyfriend this weekend. We're going on a business trip to Daytona. And her parents certainly aren't happy with this. But she's technically an adult, so there's nothing they can do. So Michael and Grace, they leave Lake City and they go on their trip to Daytona.

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The Man Who Had 2 Atomic Bombs Dropped On Him - The Tsutomu Yamaguchi story

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Imagine you're walking to work one day, and suddenly, kaboom! Someone drops an atomic bomb on you. Now, imagine if that happened to you twice. So this guy's name is Satomu. He's 29, he lives in Japan, he's a naval engineer, he designs oil tanker ships. He's a really smart guy. And Satomu's been working out of town for about three months. Because he's been designing this new oil tanker.

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And he immediately thinks, oh, sh**. I'm dead. And it takes him a moment to realize he's not. He's alive and he's lying in a potato patch. And he stands up and he can barely see through all the thick falling ash around him. But off in the distance, he sees there's a huge mushroom cloud of fire rising into the sky.

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Because Satomu is in Hiroshima when it was hit by the world's first atomic bomb attack. And so he looks at himself and his face and his arms are all badly burned and his eardrums are ruptured and everything just hurts. So he stumbles through the falling ash with very little visibility and he makes his way to what is left of the shipyard where he works. And there, he finds two of his coworkers.

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And they're both also covered in ash and they're both also badly burned. So the three of them look at each other and they're like, what do we do now? Now here's the thing. Japan is in the middle of World War II right now. And local governments and citizens, they had been constructing air raid shelters all around the country to protect people in the event of bombs being dropped.

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So the whole country has been prepared for war. So the three men, they look all around and they find one of these air raid shelters. And they go there. And they're inside the shelter and they're all huddled up with some other survivors. And it's there that they hear their first bit of promising news. Somehow, one of the local train stations is still operating. And the trains are still running.

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So the three guys crash in that shelter for the night. And the next morning, Satomu is like, hey, I need to get back home to my wife and kid. Now, unfortunately, his wife and kid are in another city, many hours away by train. So Satomu and his co-workers, they all three set out on foot, determined to make it to this train station.

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And they walk all through the city, or what's left of it, and it is an apocalyptic hellscape. Everything is either covered in ash or just straight up on fire. And most of the buildings are just completely decimated. But the absolute worst part is that the streets are littered with charred and melted corpses. So eventually, the three men, they get to a bridge.

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And they need to cross this bridge to get to the train station. But of course, this bridge is no longer standing. I mean, at this point, it's just a pile of wreckage. But Satomu and the other two, they can't stop now. I mean, they've already gone this far. So they decide they have to wade into the river and swim across. But this river is filled with a layer of floating dead people.

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And it's his last day working away from home and he is ready to leave that city. He just wants to get home so he can be with his wife and son. So anyway, he's walking to work on this final day. And he's already daydreaming about the day being over. And just as he's reaching the shipyard, suddenly he hears the sound of an airplane buzzing overhead.

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So they swim through it. And then finally they reach the train station. And Satomu, he gets on a train to go back home. And this train is packed with other people badly burned who had also survived the bomb. And this is an overnight trip. So the next morning, the train arrives at his stop. And Satomu, he gets off and he goes straight to the hospital.

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And the blackened burns on his face and his hands are so severe that his doctor doesn't even recognize him. But he gets treatment, they bandage him all up, and he heads home to see his wife and son. And when he gets home, he's all burnt up and bandaged up and his family doesn't recognize him either. Regardless, he's with his family and he's alive and he's safe.

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Until... The next morning, Satomu wakes up. And he's a man who is dedicated to his job. Because even though he's severely injured and mentally traumatized, he gets ready and he heads off to work at the home office in his city. And as soon as he gets to work and his boss sees him all bandaged up, his boss is like, What the hell happened to you?

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The Man Who Had 2 Atomic Bombs Dropped On Him - The Tsutomu Yamaguchi story

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I mean, boss had kind of heard there was an attack on Hiroshima, but... He doesn't believe Satomu would have survived that. So Boss pulls him aside into a conference room. And he's like, all right, buddy, tell me what the hell really happened. And Satomu, he starts telling the story. Like, yeah, they dropped a bomb on me back in Hiroshima. It was crazy. And of course, Boss is like, what?

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There is no way one bomb could destroy an entire city. And famous last words, because at that very moment, Pow! A crazy bright flash fills the sky. The exact same flash Satomu saw before. And it blinds him for a moment. But he's been through this, and he knows what's coming this time. And he immediately dives directly to the floor. And then a massive kaboom!

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And all the windows in the office shatter and there's debris and glass everywhere. And everything in the office is destroyed and blown over. And when Satomu comes to, all of his bandages have been blown off. And everything around him is complete chaos. A second atomic bomb had just been dropped. And people are panicking and screaming and the whole city had just been destroyed.

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And even the building he's in is now mostly a skeleton. And so Satomu, he checks himself. And strangely, he's not any more injured than he already was. And he's relieved because he just survived two atomic bomb blasts. One in Hiroshima and another one three days later in Nagasaki. What are the f***ing odds? But then he remembers his wife and son back home. Like, oh s***, did the bomb get them?

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Are they hurt? So Satomu, he runs out of the building, or what's left of it. And he runs as fast as he can through the falling ash. And he's dodging fires left and right, trying to get home. And soon enough, he arrives there at his house. But unfortunately, his home... It's no longer home because the whole thing has been reduced to just a pile of rubble. And he is devastated. How could this be?

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Which isn't that uncommon, but this plane sounds different. So he looks up and he sees this is not a commercial plane. It's a military plane flying over the city. And as he's staring at it, something drops out of the bottom of it. And as this object falls to the ground, Satomu is watching it, trying to figure out what it is. And that is when suddenly, POW!

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What the hell happened to his wife and kid? All right. So here's what happened. Shortly just before the bomb dropped, wife decides, you know, Satomu is burned up really bad. I'm going to go to the store and get some ointment for when he gets home from work. So she takes the son and she goes to the store. And that is when kaboom, the bomb drops.

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But luckily, the store is much further away from the blast than the house was. So wife and son end up only having minor injuries. But if you think about it, if Satomu hadn't been injured in that first bomb, then his family may have never gone to the store. And they probably would have died in that second bomb. That's crazy.

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But anyway, so Satomu does, of course, have radiation poisoning, but he does survive and he eventually goes on to become a public speaker, speaking out against the use of atomic weapons. And he actually lived a long life after that. He lived to be 93. And then, sadly, he died of cancer, likely related to being in two atomic bomb blasts.

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A crazy bright flash fills the sky, and it blinds him for a moment. And in this split second, Satomu, he's disoriented. But he knows this bright flash is an explosion from a bomb. And light travels faster than sound, so he knows what's coming next. And he immediately dives to the ground for cover.

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And he rolls over into a ditch, covering his face with his hands and plugging his ears, just in time to hear a massive kaboom! And the force of this blast is so strong, it lifts him off the ground and flips him into the air, spinning him like a tornado. And then, bam, he slams to the ground. And he is out. And when he regains consciousness, everything is dark. And his ears are ringing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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So this guy, his name's Jose, and Jose's got a big problem. He's dead. Super duper dead. Now, how did he get so dead? Well, see, Jose's a millionaire. He owns a chain of discount furniture stores called Circle K Furniture, and he puts himself in all the commercials, so he's kind of a local celebrity. Stand with us at Circle K. Buy American.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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So this freaking bullsh**ter tells his wife and kids and everyone that he got mad cow while on a special ops mission in the jungle and that part of his mission was that he had to interact with the locals in the area and that one of the things the locals did in that jungle was eat raw monkey brains. So he says he ate raw monkey brains in the jungle and that this gave him mad cow disease.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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It's just so stupid. The variant of mad cow that humans get is very rare and it'll kill you within like a year. So if Jose really had it, he would have died within like 12 months of contracting it. not 30 whatever years later after he left the military, got married, and started a chain of discount furniture stores. So anyway, he goes and tells Daphne he only has six months to a year to live.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And of course, Daphne believes him and she is devastated. I mean, she can't lose her husband. I mean, they just got married not too long ago. But he tells her that there may be hope because his only chance of survival is that if he leaves the U.S. and goes to Colombia and gets some kind of experimental medical treatment. And of course, Daphne believes him.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And they like go as far as to break this devastating news to their family and their friends. It's crazy. Now, in reality, he's not going to Columbia to get some experimental medical treatment. Jose's plan is to go to Columbia without Daphne. And while he's there, he's going to pretend as if he died during surgery, getting this experimental medical treatment.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And there, he can get a fake death certificate and everything. And then everyone back home will believe he's dead. And bam, he'll be out of debt. Now, unfortunately for him, all of that is not what happens. See, Jose knows a doctor in Colombia who is going to help him with this scam. But that doctor suddenly gets nervous and backs out at the last minute. So this terrible plan falls through.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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But then, one day, it all changes, because Jose meets this woman. Daphne. And Daphne thinks his old ass is thoin, so they fall in love and they get married and they seem happy. Here's the thing about Jose, though. Jose's a furniture salesman, so he's kind of a bullshitter.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And now Jose's like, ah, s***. Now I got to come up with a new plan to fake my death. And he does. He comes up with plan B. But in this plan, he's actually going to involve Daphne. So he goes to Daphne and he sits her down and he says...

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He tells her that back while he was in the military on his super secret special ops missions helping the CIA, that while he was there, he actually unalived a dangerous cartel leader on one of his missions in South America a long time ago, and that now the cartel is suddenly seeking revenge on him. Which of course means now he and his family are in danger.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And he tells Daphne that he needs to fake his death in order to protect her and him and the rest of the family. And again, of course, Daphne believes him. She's actually like, what can I do to help? So now together they come up with a new plan to fake his death. So first he takes out seven life insurance policies on himself.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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Allegedly, they take out $9 million in life insurance policies on Jose, hoping to collect it after he dies. So they plan to not only try to erase all of his past debt by faking his death, but they're going to try to get rich in the process. So anyway, he takes all these life insurance policies out on himself. Then he flies to Venezuela because I guess he has contacts there now.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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He flies there and he buys a fake death certificate and a fake certificate of cremation. A few weeks later, Daphne meets him there and she applies for a certificate of death abroad using the fake paperwork that Jose just got. Then she flies back to Florida where they're from and she tells everyone that Jose died.

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while in Venezuela on the operating table, getting this experimental medical treatment for his mad cow disease. And everyone back home is devastated. They have like a memorial for him and everything. And then around that time, the life insurance money starts coming in and Daphne collects about $870,000. Meanwhile, Jose travels from Venezuela all the way to the Bahamas.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And there he pays a local fisherman $5,000 to smuggle him from the Bahamas to Florida in a fishing boat. Then he meets up with Daphne and they drive from Florida all the way up to a cabin in the mountains in North Carolina. A cabin they had bought years before. And in that cabin, they hide out for two whole years.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And Jose changes his name, he changes his whole look, he dyes his facial hair, and he starts wearing a toupee. He even applies for a North Carolina driver's license using the stolen ID of a man named Ernest Wills. And it works! Like, Jose gets one. Then, a few months later, he applies for a passport. using that Ernest Wills driver's license he just got.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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He loves to tell stories about how he was in the military and how he's a super secret special ops officer and how he worked with the CIA on top secret missions. Yeah, sure you did, Jose. Regardless, Daphne loves him and she believes his stories. And everything seems to be going well for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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But when the State Department gets his application for the passport, an employee notices something weird on it. Ernest Wills, the real Ernest Wills, already had his information in the federal database. Like the government already had a file on him, including his photo. And wouldn't you know it, the real Ernest Wills looks nothing like Jose. Because the real Ernest Wills is a black guy.

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And he's actually eight inches taller than Jose. So the State Department flags this application as being suspicious. And of course, the application has Daphne listed as an emergency contact and has her real contact information on it. So the FBI starts investigating her and they piece everything together little by little and six months later, boom, they arrest Jose. Here's his mugshot.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And they also arrest Daphne. Here's her mugshot. And they both get charged with insurance fraud and a bunch of other stuff and they're both thrown in jail. Here's the crazy thing, though. While in jail, Daphne still thinks Jose is ex-military super secret special ops who works with the CIA.

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And she legitimately thinks that any minute now, the US government is going to step in and bail them both out. And her attorney and everyone else around her are like, no, Daphne, Jose isn't super secret special ops. He's just a liar. But whatever, she's in jail continuing to believe him. So she sits there in jail for 16 months before they finally convince her that her husband's story is bull .

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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So Daphne finally takes a plea deal and she basically gets five years probation while Jose pleads guilty and he gets 14 years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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Until... While Jose projects the image of being a millionaire and owning this successful furniture business, in reality, he's kind of broke. His stores haven't been profitable in a while. In fact, while he claims to be a rich man, he's actually more than $11 million in debt.

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Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

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And I guess rather than admit to Daphne that he's not really a millionaire and that his businesses are failing, one day he comes up with a different kind of plan to get himself out of debt. He plans to die. Well, not exactly die. He plans to fake his own death. So he sits his wife Daphne down and he tells her he's dying. And he says he's dying from mad cow disease, which is a brain disease.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story

99.938

Now, how did he get mad cow disease? Well, Jose tells Daphne that he got it while he was in the military on his super secret special ops missions where he got to work with the CIA. All right, I gotta pick you up for this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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So this guy is one of the top comedic talents in the world, working on one of the biggest comedy shows in the world. And then, one day, suddenly, bang! Someone unalives him. Why? Now the guy, his name's Phil, and Phil wants nothing more than to be a famous comedian one day. He's taking improv classes, he's doing stand-up comedy, he's working as much as he can to make it big.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And everyone especially loves his impression of Bill Clinton.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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Then he starts doing a lot of voiceover work, namely on the biggest animated sitcom ever, The Simpsons, where he plays several characters, including Troy McClure.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

126.517

So he's getting cast in all kinds of movies and TV shows now. Phil's career is going great, but you want to know whose career isn't going great? Brynn. Now eventually, Phil and Brynn get married. And she, she wants to make it big in Hollywood too. She's an aspiring actress. And while Phil's off doing SNL and The Simpsons and all that stuff, Brynn is stuck at home raising their two kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And it sucks for her. So his career is blowing up and it's doing absolutely nothing for hers. I mean, she's done some work as a background extra and she had one line in a Rob Reiner movie. One Coca-Cola right here. And one sex on the beach. But that's kind of it. So she's trying everything she can to make it big like Phil. She's going on auditions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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She apparently shows up on the SNL set a lot to visit Phil because allegedly she's hoping she'd get noticed and they would cast her in it. And according to some of the SNL staff, she always wears bright colors and openly flirts with the other cast members. I mean, she is dying to get picked.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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In fact, she's on the SNL set so much, she actually gets screen time once when they're shooting the opening credit sequence. Now, in that sequence, they introduce Phil, and you can see Brynn in the shot sitting at the table across from him. Now, as the story goes, she allegedly keeps trying to turn her head to get her face in the shot because she wants the attention.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And allegedly, the director, he keeps telling her, no. Turn your ass back around. We only need to see the back of your head. Phil is the star. So Brynn wants this really bad. I mean, she wants everything her husband has, but she just can't get it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And on top of that, Phil isn't around as much as she would like because he's busy being successful, which is just a constant reminder to Brynn that he made it big and she didn't. So then of course, deep down, Brynn starts to resent him. He's the talent. He's the star. He's getting all the breaks while she's getting nothing. And this begins to put a strain on their marriage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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Now, here's where it all starts to take a dark turn. Now Brynn, she's had some mental health problems. She's battling depression, she's working on her anger issues, and she often tries to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. particularly one drug, which I'll refer to as Coca-Cola. So naturally, she ends up developing a bit of a habit. Meanwhile, Phil's career is still on fire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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But then, one day, he gets a little success. He and his friend, they create a fictional character named Pee-Wee Herman. And that character ends up having his own show called Pee-Wee's Playhouse. And Phil, sometimes on that show, he plays a side character named Captain Carl. So Phil's career, it starts to move along.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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He leaves SNL after eight successful seasons, and he's getting roles in all kinds of movies, and he gets cast in one of the leads in a new NBC show called News Radio. And it's a sitcom starring him, Steven Root, a young Joe Rogan with hair, and a creepy, pervy actor named Andy Dick. And this is a great opportunity for Phil, but this new opportunity puts even more strain on his marriage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

296.862

And this whole time, Phil is putting pressure on Brynn to get her addiction in check. So she goes and she checks into rehab several times, and she starts taking antidepressants to get just everything under control. And eventually, after a bit of work, she finally gets clean and sober. Until... One night, the cast and crew of News Radio, they throw a Christmas party.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And Phil and Brynn, they show up. Now Brynn, she's been clean for a while at this point. A few years, allegedly. But while they're at this party, Phil's co-star, Andy Dick, he offers Brynn some of that Coca-Cola she loves so much. And even though she's been sober for a while, I guess the temptation is just too much. And she accepts the Coca-Cola from Andy Dick, and she gets high.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And this ends up triggering her relapse. And from this point on, her addiction spirals completely out of control again. And this leads to her and Phil constantly fighting, as he insists she just stop using. And she ends up checking into rehab again a couple of times, but she doesn't really stick with it. And then, one night, it all comes crashing down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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Because Brynn, she's out at a restaurant with a friend, and they're getting drinks. And she's also allegedly high on a little Coca-Cola and all of that is mixed with the antidepressants she's taking. Now, eventually Brynn leaves the restaurant and she goes to visit her other friend and former boyfriend, this guy, who they call Ronald McDonald.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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So she and Ronald McDonald, they have a few beers at his house and they likely do a little Coca-Cola as that's what they often used to do together. And Brynn, of course, she complains to him about Phil because she just isn't happy in her marriage. Then, hours later, around 1am, she finally heads home. And when she gets home, she and Phil, they get into a huge fight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

405.74

Probably one of the biggest fights they've ever gotten into. So why are they fighting? Well, we don't exactly know. But it probably has something to do with her being drunk and high again, even after Phil insisted she get sober. Now eventually, Phil, wanting to avoid the fight, he goes into the bedroom and he just goes to sleep. You're like, fuck you, I'm going to sleep.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And that is when Brynn, she walks over to a closet and she gets out a pew-pew. And she points it at Phil while he's still sleeping and she pulls the trigger, shooting him three times. And then she panics. Holy shit, what did I just do? And she gets in her car and she drives away and she drives all the way back to Ronald McDonald's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And she goes and she bangs on his door and Ronald opens it and she's like, I shot Phil and I don't know why. And Ronald... He doesn't believe her. In fact, he yells at her. He's like, go home, Bren, you're drunk. But then her pew-pew falls out of her purse and Ronald sees it. And that is when he starts to believe her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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So Ronald takes the pew-pew away from her and he decides to follow her back to her house to see what the hell is she talking about. And they get there, and they go inside, and that's when she shows him Phil, still lying there on the bed, and he's, of course, unalived. He was only 49. And Ronald, he sees the body, and he's like, holy shit, and he steps out of the bedroom, and he calls 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And he gets even more success when he co-writes the script for the Pee-Wee Herman movie. And then he gets to cameo in that movie. Look, there he is right there. So then that movie blows up and Phil, he's getting some cameos and some movies and some TV shows and he's even getting some voice acting roles. So his life is going really well. But then he meets this woman, Brynn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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Meanwhile, Brynn, she's still in the bedroom, and she starts having a nervous breakdown, and she shuts the door, and she locks herself in there. And Ronald tries to get in, but he can't. Now eventually police arrive and Ronald tells them everything that happened and police, they can't get into the bedroom either.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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Bang!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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So police break into the bedroom through a window and there they find Brynn lying next to Phil unalived. She had taken the pew-pew and unalived herself too. It's a sad story and here they are in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And Brynn's a former swimsuit model and she's an aspiring actress and Phil thinks she is foint and they start dating. And around the time he starts dating Brynn, Phil finally gets a career opportunity that's going to change his life. he gets the chance to audition for Saturday Night Live. And he goes in there and he freaking nails this audition. And so they cast him on the show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Tragic Story of Phil Hartman

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And this is his dream job. And the other cast members, they love him. And the SNL audience, they love him. They love his impressions of Ronald Reagan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story Behind Baby Reindeer

0.329

ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business-Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der Sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. So this woman, she allegedly starts stalking a guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story Behind Baby Reindeer

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And because of that, she might end up a multi-millionaire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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So this guy, his name's Kevin, and Kevin swears he's going to be rich one day. And somehow he ends up conning his way into $39 million. So one day, back in the day, Kevin decides the way to get rich is to travel around the country giving seminars on how to improve your memory and selling memory courses. But I guess this doesn't end up making him big money fast enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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But this time, this scam actually works and the money starts pouring in. And not only does he sell these memory courses, he starts selling all kinds of useless bullshit through late night infomercials. Hair loss remedies, a cure for addictions, a speed reading course, as well as all kinds of health and wellness nonsense. And allegedly, he markets more than 50 different products on TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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And he makes some very bold claims about how well these products actually work. Like he claims his speed reading course taught a girl with brain damage to read at the speed of 600 words a minute. And he claims that with his addiction course, you can learn to curb your addictions by tapping on your chest in a certain pattern. It's absolute bulls**t.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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But whatever, Kevin doesn't care because he sells a lot and he is finally making decent money. Until suddenly one day, boom, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, catches Kevin and they fine him and his company a half a million dollars for making false or misleading claims about the products he's selling in his infomercials. And he's ordered to no longer make those misleading claims.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Oh, but that doesn't stop Kevin, because five years later, he is back in court again for making more misleading claims. And poor Kevin, he gets fined $2 million for this, and he's banned from selling products through infomercials for life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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And crazy enough, at this time, he is the only person ever to get banned by the FTC from selling products on TV, which I gotta say, that is quite an accomplishment. But this still... isn't gonna stop Kevin. He is gonna get rich one way or another.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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So less than a year later he writes a book called Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About and he goes right back on TV making infomercials trying to sell it. Now how does his shady ass get away with selling products on TV again after he had just got banned? Well, lucky for Kevin, books are not technically considered a product.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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They're technically considered free speech, which means they're protected by the First Amendment. So Kevin found a loophole, and he can sell books on TV. Although the court orders that he's not allowed to misrepresent the content of those books, and that is gonna be important later.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Now, of course, in his Natural Cures book, Kevin claims a bunch of wild sh**, like, the sun does not cause cancer, it's actually sunblock that causes cancer. Which, it doesn't. In fact, he claims that the home remedies in his book can cure all kinds of things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

26.616

So he starts posing as a doctor and passing fraudulent checks. $80,000 worth of fraudulent checks. And he gets busted and gets 21 days in jail. That same year, Kevin is caught stealing the names and social security numbers of his customers who had bought his memory courses. And he had charged over $122,000 on their credit cards.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Buy the book. It's unconditionally guaranteed. If you have cancer, heart disease, acid reflux, asthma, arthritis, depression, attention deficit disorder, you name the disease, it's covered in here.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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All right, I got to pick you up for this. So not only that, Kevin claims that there are natural cures out there for nearly like every illness. But he says that the U.S. government is deliberately hiding and suppressing this information and keeping it from you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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and that only he knows the real truth and that he wants to get this information to you, but of course you have to buy it from him in the form of his book. Oh, but it gets worse. Once you buy the book, the book talks about these alleged natural cures in a broad sense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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But if you want the real specific information, like the specific names of the natural products he recommends, the real cures, the book tells you that you have to subscribe to Kevin's website, which of course costs a monthly fee. It's a subscription service.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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So to sum up the scam, government bad, therefore you should pay money for Kevin's book, which will then tell you to pay money every month for Kevin's website. It's just so scammy. And of course, because life isn't fair, Kevin's book is a hit and big money starts flowing directly into Kevin's pockets. And his Natural Cures book spends 25 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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So dude is just raking it in. And so he's like, hey, cool, that worked. And he quickly writes a bunch of other books to sell. Free money that they don't want you to know about. The weight loss cure that they don't want you to know about. Debt cures that they don't want you to know about. And debt cures too that they really don't want you to know about.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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the hell is they anyway you get the idea but despite that it's his book the weight loss cures they don't want you to know about that really ends up screwing him over because in that book he claims all kinds of crazy stuff about this weird diet plan he's pushing it's a 500 calorie a day diet with regular colon and liver cleanses and he wants you to avoid air conditioning and avoid fluorescent lights for some reason what the hell do fluorescent lights have to do with weight loss

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Regardless, Kevin gets on TV and he does his infomercials and he tells people about this super easy weight loss solution.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Hundreds of thousands of people have lost more weight faster than anything else on the planet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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fair, he is legitimately a good salesman. So this book totally blows the up and it sells more than 850,000 copies and makes Kevin an estimated $39 million. And so Kevin is finally the rich man he's always wanted to be. Until again. So a lot of people have been watching Kevin's late night infomercials, watching him make these misleading diet claims.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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But you want to know who else has been watching his late night infomercials? The Federal Trade Commission. And while Kevin is allowed to sell his books on TV, because it's protected free speech, he's not allowed to misrepresent the content of those books, which he is absolutely doing. So then eventually, bam, they arrest Kevin. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a photo of him in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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And he ends up going to trial. He's found guilty. And he gets 10 years in prison. And he's ordered to pay back $37.6 million. And then he spends eight years in prison and he's out now. And since he's been out, he's kept going and he started a podcast.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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And it seems like even today, old Kevin, he's right back to grifting, making episodes with titles such as Energy Creates Wealth, Become a Crypto King, Marketing Secrets That Will Make You Millions. Jeez, gotta keep the grift going, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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I guess he didn't have a good enough memory to remember that that is very illegal. So then bam, he gets thrown into prison for two years. Once he gets out, he partners with a company called Nutrition for Life that sells vitamins, homeopathic remedies, whatever. It's an illegal pyramid scheme. And again, Kevin gets busted. But this time he gets hit with $185,000 fine. So that business fails too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Oh, but Kevin's not going to give up yet. He is determined to be rich. So he decides to go back to selling courses on how to improve your memory. But this time, instead of traveling around the country giving seminars, he decides to sell those courses on TV via late night infomercials. And so he gets on TV and he promises everyone, if you buy his course, you too can have a photographic memory.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

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Knowledge is power, but only if you can remember it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So this girl, her name's Kara. And Kara is about to get kidnapped by a mother serial killer. So one day, Kara had just stayed the night at her friend's house. And she's helping her friend with her chores, and she volunteers to go outside and water the plants. So Kara heads out to the front yard, she grabs the hose, and she starts watering all the flowers and bushes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And once he's done with this weird-ass interview, he straight up threatens her. He's like, do everything I say or there will be consequences. And then he reminds her that he has a pew-pew. And then, shortly after that, he unfortunately essays her multiple times. And now eventually he tries to get Kara to eat something, but as you can imagine, she isn't very hungry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So she's like, no thanks, but is there anything I can do for you to like help you? And the kidnapper's like, sure, you can sweep the kitchen floor. So Kara gets a broom and she goes to sweep the kidnapper's kitchen floor. Now, She doesn't really want to sweep this turd's kitchen floor. She wants to appease him so that he doesn't flip out and like suddenly unalive her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And she also wants to learn as much information about him as she can. Because Kara plans on getting out of this one way or another. And she wants information to identify him. So she starts memorizing facts about the kidnapper. And while she's in his kitchen sweeping, she uses this opportunity to get close to the refrigerator. And pinned on that fridge are magnets for his doctor and his dentist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So she memorizes the names of his doctor and his dentist. And she just keeps on collecting more and more info on him. Like she strikes up a conversation with him and she learns that he was in the military. Specifically, he was discharged from the Navy. And at one point, she's in the bathroom and she finds a hairbrush with long red hair in it. She also finds feminine hygiene products.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So she knows a woman with red hair probably also lives there with him. And she also sees that he has a pet Guinea pig and a pet lizard. And she memorizes all of this information too. And then finally hours later, it's around two or three in the morning and the kidnapper, he makes her take a Valium and then he takes her and he handcuffs her to his bed and he restrains her right leg.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And that is when she notices a car driving by. And it's no big deal. But then the same car drives by again and it pulls into the driveway and it parks. And then a guy gets out and he has a binder and he's like, hello, are your parents around? And Kara's like, oh, this is my friend's house. And he's like, well, are your friend's parents home? And Kara's like, they're not home right now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And then he lays down next to her and he falls asleep. And that is when Kara is like, all right, this is my chance to escape. But then the volume starts kicking in and she's out. Hours later, Kara wakes up and it's just starting to get light outside. And she's still handcuffed and she's still tied up. And she looks over and the kidnapper, he's still asleep.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So she tries to slide her hands out of the handcuffs, but it's not working. They're on too tight. But then she notices the handcuffs are attached to a rope with a quick link. Which is like one of those little link things. So as quietly as she can, she bites down on it. She clamps her teeth around the screw. And somehow, she loosens it enough to slide the handcuffs out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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Then she uses her free hands to disconnect her leg restraint. And silently, she slides out of bed. And luckily, the kidnapper, he's still asleep. So she tiptoes through the apartment. And then, bam, she runs out the front door and into the complex parking lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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and outside there's a car driving by and she runs straight toward it and she waves her arms to flag it down and the car stops and the guys inside are like, what the is this? And she's like, I was just kidnapped and I escaped. Take me to the police, please.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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So these guys, they drive her to the sheriff's department and there she's like telling the officers the whole story and the deputy, he's like, okay, can you help us find this guy's apartment? And Kara's like, hell yes I can. So they drive her back over to the apartment complex to try and find this apartment. Here's the problem with that. It's an apartment complex, so all the units look the same.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And Kara, she doesn't know the exact unit, so they flag down the property manager of the complex. And the deputy asks Kara if there's anything she can remember about the guy that they can use to identify him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And Kara's like, yeah, and she tells them he lives in a bottom left unit, and she describes the guy, and she describes his car, and she says he's got a pet guinea pig and a pet lizard, and maybe he lives with a woman with long red hair. Everything she remembers. And the property manager's like, you know, I think I know who this guy is. So then they take Kara to the hospital to get her checked out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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Meanwhile, the police, they use all the information she has given them, like his doctor's name and his dentist's info and all of that stuff to find out exactly who this guy is. And this kidnapper ends up being this creep, Richard.

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She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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ex-military total weirdo lives in that apartment with his wife who just happens to have long red hair no idea where the wife is during all this now of course by the time police go to richard's apartment he's no longer there he fled but They search the place and they find a footlocker. And this footlocker has some newspaper clippings in it about three unalivings that happened in another state.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And police, they put two and two together and they realize Richard was responsible for these other unalivings, making him a serial killer. Meaning Kara legit just escaped from a f***ing serial killer. Two days later, police actually track Richard down. He's been staying in a hotel in Florida, but by the time they get there, he's gone. He fled again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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But shortly after that, police actually spot him driving and they try to pull him over and he's like, you, you'll never get me. And he speeds away. And then this whole thing turns into like this massive high speed chase. So Richard's driving and he's trying to get away. And police, they go and they throw down one of those spike strip things to puncture his tires.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And he runs over the spike strip thing and then pow, his tires pop. And then kaboom, he crashes his car. And police, they got him surrounded. And they're like, we're sending in a canine unit. And so they send in a canine dog to attack him. And the dog rushes in and it bites Richard because he's a good dog. And then Richard, he suddenly pulls out a pew pew and he unalives himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And he's like, well, I'm giving out magazines. Would you mind giving these magazines to them? And then he steps forward to hand her the magazines. And that is when, bam, he pulls out a pew-pew and he points it at her. And he's like, you're coming with me. And he grabs her and he opens the door to his car. And there's a big plastic container in the back seat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And interestingly enough, Kara, she eventually ends up getting her life together and healing. And she actually goes on to work in law enforcement, specifically for the sheriff's department that was working on her case. And she got to work on cases of SA and abuse, and she gets to help other survivors like her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And today, she's still thriving, she has a true crime podcast, and she's got a pretty popular TikTok account, so good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

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And he points the pew-pew at her and he's like, get in the container. And so she does. And he closes the lid, sealing her in. And then he gets in the car and he speeds away. And poor Kara, she's in this container and she's just panicking. About 10 minutes later, the car pulls over and the guy opens the container and he ties Kara up and he makes her get back in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

80.657

Then they drive a few more minutes before the car stops again. And it stops in the parking lot of an apartment complex. And the kidnapper, he gets out of the car and he picks up the container with Kara inside and he drags it into his apartment. A few minutes later, he opens it up and Kara, she's still inside and she's still tied up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Escaped a Serial Killer - The Kara Robinson story

98.737

So he lets her out and then he sits down with her and he starts asking her lots of questions and writing down the answers on a legal pad like he's interviewing her. And he wants to know her full name, her address, the names and addresses of her friends. He wants to know about her boyfriend, her sexual history. It's weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Her Famous Cadaver Dog Was Fake - The Sandra Anderson story

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His name is Eagle. He is a Doberman Pinscher and one of a rare breed of specialists known as cadaver dogs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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So this woman, let's call her White Girl, because that's literally what everyone calls her. So somehow, White Girl, this young woman from an upper-class suburb, nearly becomes a Philadelphia drug kingpin. So White Girl is a club promoter, she's cool, she's popular, and she's really good at her job working in the nightlife scene.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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He's like, hey, I know a dude in Texas with a ton of Mexican Coca-Cola, and he wants us to help him expand into the Philadelphia market. And white girl's like, sweet, bro. Let's do it. And soon enough, a delivery truck is headed from Texas to white girl's apartment in Philadelphia, carrying around 12 kilos of pure Mexican Coca-Cola. But here's where it all goes wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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Soon enough, a rival group of Coca-Cola dealers, they get word that white girl is about to have 12 fat kilos in her apartment. And they're like, oh, hell no, not on my turf. Particularly, this guy is mad about it. Everyone calls him Pooh. So Pooh decides, no, we are going to roll up to White Girl's apartment and we are going to straight up rob her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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So then, soon enough, the night the shipment arrives, Pooh and another goon, they go to White Girl's building. And they go up to her apartment on one of the upper floors and they break in. And pretty quickly, they discover, oops, my bad, we're in the wrong apartment. Ugh. So they leave. But Pooh, he doesn't want to give up. He really wants to get his hands on that Mexican Coca-Cola.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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So he hits up a few more goons to come and help him out. And then later that same day, they all go back to White Girl's building to try to break in again. And poo, he waits outside in the getaway van while the other three goons, they go up to the seventh floor. And there, they wait outside the elevator for white girl to get home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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A couple of hours later, white girl gets home and she gets back to her building and she's with this other guy. His name's Timothy. And she and Timothy, they ride the elevator up and they step off walking toward her apartment. And then suddenly, bam, they're surrounded by three goons and they're all pointing pew-pews at them. And they're like, give us all that Coca-Cola.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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So she's always at a lot of parties and occasionally while at these parties, she participates in doing a drug that we'll just call Coca-Cola. And one day, white girl is at a party and an acquaintance of hers asks her if she wants to make a little extra money on the side while she's out working the nightlife scene. Basically, they want to know if she wants to sell Coca-Cola.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And White Girl, she's not prepared for any of this. And she's like, ah, take whatever you want. But Timothy, he's got other plans. And he's like, hell no. And he lunges toward one of the goons. And he tries to grab his pew-pew. And then there's a struggle back and forth. And then bang, bang, bang, bang. And the goon shoots Timothy four times in the back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And then one of the other goons, I guess he panics. And he points his pew-pew at White Girl. And blam, he shoots her right in the head. and she falls to the floor, and she's unalived instantly. Then that same goon looks at Timothy, who's down on the floor, and he points his pew-pew at him, and he fires. Bam! Finishing him off too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And now, with two unalived people on the floor in front of them, there's nothing the goons can do but run. So they all three run downstairs and out of the building, and they jump into the getaway van with Pooh, and they leave the scene completely empty-handed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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So pretty quickly with all the gunfire and whatnot, police are on the scene and they go and they search white girl's apartment and they find about $400,000 worth of Coca-Cola and more than $100,000 in cash. So they immediately know, yeah, this was all drug related.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And they question some of the people in the building, including this one woman who was friends with the goons and who had let them into the building so that they could pull off this robbery. And they get a search warrant and they search this woman's phone records and those phone records lead them directly to Pooh and the other goons.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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Plus, not to mention, the entire crime was recorded on the many security cameras around the building. So, they were pretty much always fucked. And so, bam, they arrest Pooh. Here's his mugshot. And they also arrest every other goon who helped with the robbery. Here are their mugshots. And they arrest the woman who let them into the building. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And eventually they all go to court and they're all found guilty and Pooh is sentenced to life in prison. And the three goons, they're also sentenced to life in prison. And one of the other goons gets a minimum of six years. And one of the other goons and the woman who let them into the building, they get off with time served and probation. So shout out to Pepsi, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And white girl's like, all right. And so, bam, she starts slanging that Coca-Cola to anyone who will buy it. And to white girl's surprise, she's actually pretty good at it. I mean, she's already a club promoter throwing parties for everyone. So I guess at these parties, she's just like, hey, want to buy a little something, something?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

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And so the money starts rolling in and white girl keeps going and she keeps getting more and more involved with her growing connections in the nightlife scene. And that is where everyone starts calling her the white girl. Because if you're out at a club on Saturday night in Philadelphia and you want some Coca-Cola, you hit up the white girl.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Blonde Girl Becomes a Drug Kingpin - The Rian Thal story

84.929

And so this hustle goes on for years and it works really well for her. And white girl is making bank. and she's living the good life. And as she continues to sell more and more, she works her way up to near kingpin status. It's actually pretty impressive. Until it all falls apart. Because one day, her business partner in all this, he sets up a very interesting opportunity for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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So this guy, let's call him Principal, because he's a middle school principal. And Principal loves to smash. He smashes with his wife. He smashes with his multiple girlfriends on the side. He's a busy guy. But one day, one of his side chicks delivers some devastating news to him. She pulls him aside, and she tells him she's pregnant. And Principal, he pretends he's all happy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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See, the dance team at his middle school just held a fundraiser and raised a bunch of money for a spring break trip they're gonna take. And he's the principal, so he knows where they keep this money. So Principal, he just goes and he steals about $2,700 from the middle school dance team's fundraiser. And then he packs all that money in a box and he takes it to a UPS store to mail it to Hitman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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Because Hitman lives a few states away in Oklahoma. And UPS is like, hey, you need to put a return address on that. And so principal, he doesn't want to put his own address on it. So he puts the school's address on it. And that'll be important later. Meanwhile, Jocelyn, she's at home and she's pregnant. She has no idea any of this is going on. In fact, she's getting ultrasounds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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She started a baby registry for them. She thinks she and Principal are about to have this baby and live happily ever after. Now, a few weeks later, Hitman takes a Greyhound bus from Oklahoma, where he lives, to St. Louis, where Principal lives. And they go over the plan. And Principal gives Hitman the keys to his car and... the key to Jocelyn's apartment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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Then the next morning, Principal takes an Amtrak train from St. Louis to Chicago so that he has an alibi during all this. And about a day later, it's 3 a.m. and Hitman takes Principal's car and he drives it to Jocelyn's apartment. And there he lets himself in and he sneaks through the apartment and he finds Jocelyn in her bedroom, asleep on her bed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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So he pulls out a pew-pew, points it at her head, and then bam! He unalives her. Then he leaves and he calls Principal in Chicago and he's like, okay, buddy, it's done. And Principal, he takes a train back to St. Louis and he goes directly to Jocelyn's house. And there he finds her unalived in her bed. So he calls police to report it, and he pretends he's surprised.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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So police, they come to Jocelyn's house to investigate. And they take Principal back to the station to question him. Now during that interview, Principal asks them if they can leave the room so that he can make a phone call. And police are like, sure. So they leave the room and Principal calls his wife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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And he's like, honey, I need you to meet my buddy Hitman at this gas station and bring him my extra set of car keys. Because Principal's car is still parked at Jocelyn's apartment at the crime scene and he wants Hitman to go and move it. So Hitman gets the keys and he goes to Jocelyn's apartment to move the car. But police are still there at the crime scene investigating.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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He's like, yay, you're pregnant. But deep down, he is devastated. He can't have a kid with his side chick. His wife and his other girlfriends are going to be so upset. Now the side chick, her name is Jocelyn. And she's a really nice woman. She's a third grade teacher at a nearby elementary school. And I'm not sure if she actually knows that Principal is married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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And a random guy suddenly coming to move a car from a crime scene? That seems pretty sketchy. So then pow, they detain Hitman and they bring him in. Now police, they question the hell out of both of them. And both of them are like, I didn't unalive anyone. What are you talking about?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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But then police check CCTV footage in the area and they find footage showing that principal's car was parked just down the street from Jocelyn's place during the time she was unalived. And they also get a warrant and they search the guy's phones. And of course they find a bunch of incriminating texts on those phones talking about their plan to unalive Jocelyn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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And most importantly, the return address on the money mailed to Hitman was the address of the middle school. So police know Principal was the one who mailed it. So then bam, they arrest Principal. Here's his mugshot. And they arrest Hitman. Here's his mugshot. And they're both charged with first degree murder. They plead guilty and Principal gets life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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And Hitman also gets life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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But she is happy about being pregnant with his kid because she really wants to be a mom. So as Jocelyn is all dealing with the pregnancy, Principal is quietly losing his mind. He's like, man, if my wife and my other girlfriends find out, they might leave me. Also, it wouldn't look good for a middle school principal to impregnate a teacher slash side chick. He could probably lose his job over that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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So Principal rubs his two brain cells together and he comes up with a plan. A plan to have Jocelyn unalived. So he calls up his shadiest friend, this guy, who we'll call Hitman. And Principal tells Hitman what's going on. And Hitman's like, oh, that sucks, bro. How can I help? And Principal's like, I need you to unalive my pregnant girlfriend. And Hitman's like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

School Principal Hires a Hitman - The Cornelius Green story

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And then he says he needs $2,500 in cash up front. And Principal's like, deal. Now here's the thing about the $2,500. Principal, he works for the public school system. He doesn't have $2,500 to just be thrown around to give to a hitman. But Principal does know where to get it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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So this guy, let's call him Mayor. And Mayor has a great life. He's the mayor of Agde, this town in France. And this town is actually the swinger capital of the world. So I guess everyone there would just be smashing. Sounds like fun. But, as fun as that sounds, not everything is going so great for Mayer. Because his dad passed away a few years back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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Like that has got to be the laziest ghost I've ever heard of. Like, sorry, son, I can't float over to where you are. I have to call you from the afterlife. That's ridiculous. But anyway, Mayer is just relieved to be communicating with his father. And over time, he grows really grateful to Sophia for helping him do this. Here's the thing about Sophia. She's twice divorced and has six kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And that's fine. But that is a lot of mouths to feed on a single income. And so Sophia, she comes up with a plan to leverage Mayor's gullibility to make sure she and her family are taken care of financially. And so then one day, Mayor gets a phone call, and it's from an unknown number. And he picks it up, and the voice on the other end is like, Hello Mayor, it's Archangel Michael.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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Now, if you don't know who the Archangel Michael is, it's this mythological creature from religious lore. And since Mayor has been talking to his dead father pretty regularly on the phone, when he gets a call from Archangel Michael, he doesn't really question it. And so Archangel Michael is like, Mayor, I need you to protect and take care of Sophia and her family. And Mayor is like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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Now, obviously this isn't really some mythological creature calling him on the phone. It's just Sophia, using her voice acting skills to put on a fake voice and trick him. Regardless, poor Mayer falls for it again, and he starts helping Sophia and her family financially in all kinds of ways.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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So on top of paying her regularly for her psychic services, he starts having his chauffeur drive her kids to school. He starts paying their kids tuition. He pays to have her kitchen renovated. He pays to get her a new porch. He treats her and her kids to luxury vacations to Thailand and the Polynesian Islands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And when Sophia gets engaged to a man, Mayer goes ahead and pays for her whole ass wedding, which cost 80,000 euros, or about 90,000 US dollars. Now, here's the thing about all this money Mayer's been spending on this fake psychic.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And Mayer wants nothing more than to communicate with his dad one last time. And one day, he gets to do just that. He reaches out to a psychic medium for help. Her name's Sophia. And of course, Sophia is like, yeah, I can communicate with the dead. I can totally help you talk to your dad. And awesomely.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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mayor isn't really a super rich guy so he has to get this money in some other way and he starts leveraging his local business connections to get people to do the work for free and these local businesses they're afraid they don't want to lose their contracts with the mayor's office so they all agree to do all this work for sophia for free and when mayor actually needs to pay for some of these gifts to sophia

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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he has his mayoral staff create fake invoices for the cost, meaning the taxpayers are actually the ones paying for all of Sophia's . And this crazy symbiotic relationship goes on for four years. And during that time, Mayer gets thousands of phone calls from spirits beyond the grave, AKA Sophia putting on a fake voice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And these spirits convince Mayer to hire Sophia's family members to work for the city. And they get Mayer to hire her husband and five other members of her family, and some of her friends get hired to work on his council. And I know it sounds crazy, but Sophia's psychic medium ventriloquism scam seems to be working really well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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Until one day, Mayor's estranged wife, she somehow discovers that Mayor has been embezzling all these city funds to pay for all of Sophia's needs. So estranged wife immediately goes to the police to report him. And police are like, sacre bleu, or whatever the hell French police say.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And the French police, they look into it, and they end up wiretapping Mayer's phone, and they start listening in to all his calls. And pretty quickly, they start hearing all these phone calls he's allegedly getting from mythological creatures and spirits beyond the grave. And they're like, what the f***? And of course, they trace those calls and all those calls aren't coming from the afterlife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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They're coming from Sophia's phone. So they bring Mayer in and Sophia in for questioning and they press Sophia and it's not long before she cracks and she admits that it's all a scam. So they arrest Mayer and they arrest Sophia and I couldn't find mug shots of them so here's Mayer in real life and here's Sophia in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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And they're both charged with all kinds of things and they're both in jail waiting on their trials but Sophia actually had to be moved to solitary confinement because apparently the other prisoners were accusing her of witchcraft and they were beating the out of her. So that's nice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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So they get together and they hold some kind of like seance, probably with candles and all that shit. And Sophia starts to channel the spirit of Mayer's father. And Mayer can hear his father's actual voice for the first time in years. And this is life changing for him. Except Sophia is full of shit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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She isn't actually talking to the dead, she's actually using her rather impressive ventriloquism skills to make her voice sound like the mayor's deceased father. And poor mayor, he wants to believe so bad that he falls for this scam, and he believes that he's talking to the spirit of his dad. And so he keeps these sessions with Sophia going regularly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Fake Psychic Medium Scams The Mayor - The Sophia Martinez story

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He meets up with her and she does her fake psychic mumbo jumbo and he gets to talk to his dad. And he's happy. And Sophia even starts doing these psychic sessions over the phone. Like I guess one day Mayor will just be chilling at home and he'll suddenly get a phone call from his dead dad like, hey, how you doing, son? Which that doesn't even make sense to me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

0.069

Did you know that one of America's biggest mass murders was done by accident? Well, sort of. So there's this guy, Julio, and Julio's 36. He's a Cuban immigrant living in New York City. And one day in 1990, his life starts falling apart because he's at his job at the local lamp factory where he packs boxes and suddenly, bam, he gets fired.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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Lydia is done. Like, she doesn't exactly want to see him. But whatever, Julio doesn't care. He gets all drunk one night, and he decides that it'll be a great idea to surprise her by showing up to her work, because then she'll have to talk to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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so then julio shows up to lydia's place of work ready to spit some serious game here's the thing about where lydia works though she works at a local nightclub called the happy land social club and this place is really small but it's also very popular and it's also super busy all the time But tonight is a little different. Tonight it's extra packed with people due to it being carnival.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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So there's about a hundred people in this really small club. And Lydia is there working the coat check. And so around 2 a.m. Julio shows up and he's all sauced up, probably stumbling all over the place. And he goes to the coat check and he starts trying to talk to Lydia. Like, hey, how have you been? But unfortunately for him, she's not really feeling him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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So she rejects him like, I don't need you. You should go. So he leaves. He leaves the coat check area and he mingles around the club talking to people he knows. About 40 minutes later, he comes back to the coat check area and he starts trying to riz her up again. And he's like, I know you have a boyfriend now, but it doesn't matter. You and I till death.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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Which is just a creepy ass thing to say to your ex. Regardless, Lydia is still not feeling him, and they start arguing again. And he's just not leaving her alone so she can get back to work. But then a bouncer notices, and boom, he finally steps in. And he's like, okay, bro, let's move it along. And Julio doesn't like this, so he starts arguing with the bouncer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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But whatever, the bouncer escorts his drunk ass outside and tells him to leave. But as Julio's leaving, he turns back to everyone, and he yells... I'll be back. I'll shut this whole place down. Which is exactly what he's about to do. However, I guess no one takes him seriously. They're like, okay, Julio, you're going to shut the place down. Sure, bud.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And if that's not bad enough, he's also having problems with his girlfriend, this woman. Lydia. And he and Lydia have been on and off for about seven years. And it's just not working anymore. Because like Julio's all controlling and he's always demanding that she quit her job for some reason. He's just kind of an asshole. And one day, Lydia has had enough of his nonsense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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So Julio leaves and he drunkenly wanders around the neighborhood for about 30 minutes trying to figure out what to do. Now at this point, he's still super angry. He's got no job, no money, and now his ex-girlfriend won't even talk to him. He has nothing. Plus that bouncer really pissed him off. And this is where he decides he is not gonna let this slide. How dare they treat him this way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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He is gonna burn that whole club down so that they don't have a place to work. So he walks to a nearby gas station and he gets a plastic container like a jug and he fills it up with $1 worth of gas. Then he walks about three blocks back to the club and he low-key pours the gasoline all over the floor right at the threshold of the front door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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Then he lights a couple of matches, tosses them into the puddle of gas, and bam, a small fire has started. And then Julio quickly leaves as this doorway starts to catch fire. Okay, but here's the thing about Happyland Club. The club is mostly upstairs on the second floor. So when you open the door to enter the building, you immediately see a rickety old flight of stairs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And so really quickly, this fire spreads from the doorway to those stairs. And it grows and it grows. And soon, it's blocking off the entrance to the place. And there's no way to get out. Now there is actually another exit to the club. However, the owner has padlocked it because I guess he was tired of people sneaking into the place to avoid the $5 cover charge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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Anyway, so boom, this fire is now blocking the only exit and it spreads through the building quickly and the place fills up with smoke and there are no windows. So people in there, they start coughing and suffocating. And some people realize what's happening, and they're like, oh shit, and they start to run for the exit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And the DJ spots what's going on, and he stops playing the music, and he yells for the crowd to escape. And pow, everyone panics, and this creates a huge chaotic rush as the whole club tries to stampede down the stairs through the fire to get out. Some people fall to the ground and they immediately get trampled.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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While Lydia, she's working the coat check, which is near the entrance, so she is able to rush outside without getting hurt. However, most of the rest of the club is still inside and they all burn as they can't get out fast enough. And eventually, the fire department shows up, and by this time, the whole inside of the building is gone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And only five people, other than Lydia, make it out of the club alive. While 87 other people die in this fire. Meanwhile, Julio goes back home to his little room, and he lays down in the bed, and he passes out, still stinking like gasoline. And no one knows that he just unalived 87 people, which at this time in 1990 is the record for the biggest mass murder in the country.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

418.559

Until... Only six people survived this disaster. So naturally, the next morning, police start questioning them one by one to see if they know anything about how this fire started. And Lydia's like, yeah, I know something. My crazy ex-boyfriend showed up trying to talk to me and he caused a scene. And as the bouncer threw him out, he was like, I'll be back. I'll shut this whole place down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And the police are like, oh, yeah, that feels like that might be something. And so police show up to Julio's little room, and the whole place still smells like gasoline. And so, bam, they arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot of him, but here's a picture of him in custody, surrounded by reporters.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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he confesses and he's found guilty on 87 counts of arson and 87 counts of mass murder and he gets sentenced to life in prison and so yeah apparently he wanted to burn the club down but he wasn't necessarily expecting to murder all of those people that is wild

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And pow, she breaks up with him. Now this is a big problem for Julio, not just because she broke up with him, but because the apartment they're in seems to be hers. So she gets to keep it while he has to move out and find a new place to live. So he goes and he finds a new place and it's a real dump. It's a room in a boarding house and it's really small, like literally 10 square feet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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So now he's living in this little ass room with nothing. Like the room costs $70 a week, which he doesn't have because he got fired from the lamp factory. So he's not able to pay rent on his room and quickly he gets behind on the payments. Bro's whole life is just falling apart, but he doesn't go and commit mass murder just yet. That comes later.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

One of The Biggest Mass Murders in US History - The Happy Land Fire

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And about six weeks go by, and he still isn't feeling any better. I mean, he's broke, he misses his ex-girlfriend, but then he gets an idea. What if Lydia were to agree to get back together with him? I mean, that would certainly make him feel at least a little better. I mean, maybe if she got back with him, then he could start to turn his life around. Here's the problem with that, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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So this woman unalived her parents in her house and left the bodies there. And guess how long she lived in that house with their bodies. Guess. Now her name's Virginia and she's 32. She lives in Essex, England with her parents and they all get along really well. But one day Virginia starts taking advantage of them and she starts stealing their money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Then she goes to check on her mom, who's sleeping in a different room, and mom is asleep because of the drugs, but she's still alive. And Virginia's like, oh, bollocks, it didn't work. And she immediately comes up with a plan B. And she grabs a hammer, and she goes to her mom, and bam, she hits her over the head. And bam, she hits her again and again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Now this hammer is hurting her mom, but it's not unaliving her as fast as Virginia would like. So she goes and grabs a kitchen knife and as her mom comes to, Virginia stabs her in the chest and then she stabs her again and again, seven or eight times. Then she wraps both of her parents' bodies in sleeping bags and she puts them to rest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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For her dad, she builds like a makeshift mausoleum, covering it with a sheet and family photos. It seems like it's like kind of a weird shrine. But her mom, she just stuffs her body in the back of a wardrobe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Then, Virginia takes her mom's phone and she uses it to text her sisters, pretending to be her parents, like, your dad and I are at the seaside in Walton this week, so that the sisters think that they're on vacation instead of, you know, dead. And this seemed to work, and now that her parents are no longer alive, Virginia can do whatever she wants.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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So the next day, she opens a new credit card in her mom's name, and she goes on a little shopping spree. She buys herself some stuff that she previously couldn't afford. And the worst part is that Virginia keeps living in this house with her parents decomposing bodies, just chilling in the next room.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And a whole year passes, and Virginia is still there, living rent-free, spending her parents' money. And to be honest, I don't think they had a lot of money. I don't think they were rich. I think Virginia just wanted to live off of what little they had. In fact, at this point, they're still receiving their pensions every month, and Virginia is just cashing them in and living off of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And the whole time she's doing this, she's texting family members from her parents' phones, pretending to be them and claiming that they're like out of town or that they're too sick to come visit. So no one in the family has seen the parents in a long time. Then. Boom, COVID hits and much of the world slows down and everywhere is on lockdown. And this actually makes Virginia's life a lot easier.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Like she'll take her dad's credit card and use it without his consent. Then she starts applying for loans in her parents name. And here's the other thing about Virginia though. She's addicted to gambling. I guess she does a lot of those online betting sites to the point where she's currently in around 21,000 pounds in debt or about 26,000 US dollars. And that's a lot of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Like parents can't visit anyone now, they're stuck inside in quarantine. And eventually she ends up telling everyone that her parents moved, like they moved out to seaside to retire. She even goes as far as to drive out to the seaside and mail postcards from there to her parents, friends, and family members like, Wish you were here, XOXO, mom and dad. And so Virginia keeps this up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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She keeps up this facade for almost four years. And remember, she never removed her parents' corpses from her house. So for four whole ass years, she's been living there with them as they decompose. And as disgusting as that is, her plan seems to be working because so far she hasn't been caught. Until. So I guess mom and dad have a regular doctor who they've been seeing for years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And one day, this doctor notices, man, I haven't seen them in a really long time. So he calls the county council, and he's like, this old man hasn't picked up his medication in forever. So the county council contacts the local police and local police contact Virginia like, hey, have you seen your parents?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And she tells them this whole detailed bullshit story about how her parents are traveling and the police are like, well, okay then. But that's what she's been telling people for years. So now police are suspicious. And a few days later, bam, they show up to the house and they got a warrant to search the place and they knock on the door, but no one's answering.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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So police are like, all right, we're just going to bust the door down then. And so they just straight up bust the door in to the place with one of those little battering rams, and they go inside. Now, I can only imagine the house smells like dead bodies. So pretty quickly, they see Virginia, and she's just standing there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And so, bam, they arrest her weird ass. Here's her mugshot. Now, here's what's really interesting. She worked hard to keep this a secret from everyone for four years. She's texting people from her parents' phones. She's mailing people fake postcards. All kinds of stuff. But as soon as the police put her in handcuffs, she drops the entire facade immediately. And she admits everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And she just shows them where the bodies are.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Right, okay. Where about your mum?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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She even casually goes into detail about how she did it. Slipped a pile of bows into his drink.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And yeah, it's weird to see someone fess up like that, but then again, what else is she gonna do? Like, she knows she's been caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And so, bam, they throw her in jail, and she's still confessing when she's in there, and she tells them where to find the hammer she used to unalive her mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Wow. So anyway, Virginia's charged with unaliving both of her parents and she pleads guilty and she's sentenced to a minimum of 36 years in prison. And thank you to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you want to make badass art for your videos like this or like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai. Or follow the link pinned in the comments.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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And despite the fact that she gets along with her parents really well, she knows that if they find out she's in all this debt from gambling and stealing money, they're going to be devastated and probably pretty mad. And so Virginia, she's about to be in a lot of trouble. Her gambling debt keeps growing and the clock is ticking. And it's just a matter of time before her parents catch on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Assuming this platform allows me to pin comments.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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Now, Virginia could go to them like an adult and confess that she has a problem and that she screwed up really big and that it'll never happen again, but that's not what she does. Instead, she comes up with this insane plan to make sure her parents never find out. And a few months later, she puts this plan into motion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She has a very DISTURBING secret - The Virginia McCullough story

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First, she gets a bunch of prescription meds, and she mixes them into her parents' drinks because she's trying to poison them. Then, she serves them those drinks, and I guess later, they go to bed. The next morning, Virginia goes into her dad's room, and she finds him there in his bed, and he's unfortunately unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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So this guy has two wives. And I know you might think, like, oh, that sounds kind of fun. But this is about to be a disaster for him. Now, the guy's name is Mick, and Mick has an interesting lifestyle. He's living in Derby, England with his wife, this woman, Mairead. But then at some point, he also moves his mistress into his home, this woman, Lisa.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

120.767

And he ends up going on this Jerry Springer type talk show called the Jeremy Kyle Show. Wife number one comes to spend the night in the caravan. And then the next night, wife number two comes. Oh, yes. Great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

132.896

And then he ends up being in this documentary and that gets pretty contentious. So Bro is just a mess. But whatever, he's getting a little bit of pseudo-fame and he seems to really be enjoying it. So he just keeps living his life, not working, taking care of his kids and smashing with Mairead and Lisa in a trailer he keeps parked in their driveway.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

156.505

I guess there's always a bunch of kids in the house, so they have to go out to the trailer in order to smash. What kind of hillbilly shit is this? But anyway, to make it even more complicated, I guess Mick and Maraid are also swingers? Question mark? Because at some point, Mick sets Maraid up with his buddy, this guy, Paul.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

176.637

Because I guess Mick likes to watch, so Paul and Maraid smash while he sits in the corner and watches. Mmm, yeah. So yeah, this family dynamic is all sorts of unorthodox, but this is where the story gets dark. At some point in time, Lisa becomes very frustrated with this whole situation because for a long time, Mick has been lying to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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He's been promising her that he's gonna divorce Maraid and be with her and only her permanently. Yeah, good luck with that. Now, obviously, despite the fact that Mick has been saying this for years, he still hasn't done it. And at this point, she is tired of waiting. She's tired of this lifestyle. She's tired of smashing in a trailer parked in the driveway. She has had enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

21.676

And so they all live together there like one big happy family, so you know, good for them. But as the years go by, Mick keeps getting Maraid and Lisa pregnant. So they keep having Mick's babies, and eventually they have a bunch of kids. Here's the thing about Mick though. Mick doesn't work. Like, he doesn't have a job. He lives off the government.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

223.284

And one day, out of nowhere, boom, Lisa straight up leaves. And she takes her five kids that she has with Mick with her. Good for her. And so, as you can imagine, Mick is pissed. I mean, he doesn't want Lisa to leave him. He can't have that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

237.776

But more than that, he definitely doesn't want to lose custody of the kids because that will affect those sweet benefits payments he's getting from the government. And so Mick comes up with this wild plan to be able to keep the kids and all the government benefits. First, he'll start a fire in the house while everyone's home. Then he'll swoop in and heroically rescue his and Mairead's kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

261.874

Then he'll frame Lisa for the arson. He'll say she started the fire and tried to burn the house down. That way she'll get in trouble, she'll go to prison, and he'll get to keep all 15 of the kids and he'll keep getting those welfare checks. It's the perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? Now, Mick knows he can't pull this off alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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So he asks Maraid if she wants to help him set their own house on fire and frame Lisa. And Maraid's like... Hi. Then he asks Paul and Paul agrees to help too. So a few months later, after Lisa has moved out, he sets his plan into motion. Now on this particular day, there are only six kids in the house, Maraid's kids. The rest either moved out with Lisa or they're staying elsewhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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And so it's really early in the morning and Mick, Maraid, Maraid's kids are all inside and the kids are all still asleep in their beds. And so Paul, he comes over to Mick's house and he has a can of gasoline. And he goes inside and he pours it at the foot of the stairs. And kaboom, he lights the place on fire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

329.194

And as soon as everything's ignited, Mick and Moray, they run outside and they watch as the flames engulf the house. So everything is going as planned. So Mick, he calls 999, which is the UK's 911. And while the fire service is on their way, now it's time to swoop in and rescue the kids and look like a total hero. So Mick and Paul, they try to run in the house and immediately...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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Wow, they're hit with a thick wall of smoke and heat. The fire has already gotten too big, too fast. And they try again and again, but there's just no way they can safely get inside. And as much as the fire and smoke are keeping Mick out, it's also keeping the kids in. They're trapped. They're trapped and there's no way for them to escape.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

376.912

Now remember, Paul poured the gasoline at the foot of the stairs, which is their only path to the front door. And so the flames are just too big for them to get around. So one by one, they all succumb to smoke inhalation. And one by one, they all end up unalived. Five of them die in the house that day, and one of them dies two days later in the hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

399.983

Now, this was not the way the plan was supposed to go, and Mick and Maraid, they don't know what to do. So they keep the lie going. They tell everyone that they're devastated, and they hold a press conference, and they put on this whole show for the cameras.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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And so, because their home is now burnt down, Mick and Maraid are put up in a hotel. And now remember, the fire initially started near the bottom of the stairs, inside the house. And police, during their investigation, they learn the fire started inside the house and they get suspicious. suspicious of this whole incident.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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In fact, all of his income comes from welfare benefits. And with every new kid he has, he gets a little bit more money from the government. Not to mention, the house he lives in is also public housing, so that's paid for by the government too. So bro is just moochin'. Now eventually, over time, Mick, Maraid, and Lisa, they end up having a total of 15 kids. 15 kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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And detectives end up bugging the hotel room that Mick and Maraid are staying in. And during their surveillance, they overhear Mick, Maraid, and Paul in the hotel room. They actually overhear them smashing. I mean, they literally hear them smashing. But more importantly, they hear them talking, trying to get their story straight. And so, boom, they arrest all three of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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And I don't have mug shots, but here's Mick in real life. And they end up going to trial, and they're all found guilty, and Mairead is sentenced to 17 years in prison. Paul is also sentenced to 17 years in prison, while Mick gets life. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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Which means there are 18 people living in this house. Mick, Maraid, Lisa, and 15 children. And they're all living in this three bedroom home. But then, to make it even worse, Maraid and Lisa both get pregnant again. So what does Mick do? Well, he officially puts in a request for the government to move his family to a bigger house to accommodate for his comically large family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed His Own Children - The Mick Philpott Story

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Now, this is such a wild request that it actually makes the local news and people hear about it and they're really pissed off at Mick. They think he's taking advantage of public services, which, yeah, he is. And so Mick starts getting a lot of hate publicly and a lot of local media coverage. But he ends up kind of liking the attention. Like, it feels good to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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So this TikToker claims to be the world's youngest billionaire, and he's about to get busted in the biggest NFT scam of all time. Allegedly. Now, the TikToker's name is Mayo. He's 23, and Mayo is apparently very, very rich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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But whatever, Mayo and Gabe got paid, apparently around a million dollars to split. And so they move on and allegedly they decide to do the same thing again. They launch a new NFT based project and they hype it all up and they get people excited to invest and they make a website for it. And if you're curious as to what these NFTs look like, here are a few of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And remember, people paid actual real money to invest in these. But anyway, so Mayo and Gabe's new NFT project launches and this one raises more than $420,000. And boom, Mayo and Gabe allegedly sell it off and abandon the project again. And then they allegedly move on and do a similar thing on a new project and they do it again and again and again. And they are just raking in the money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Now at this point, you might be thinking, Ray, why are people investing in their NFT projects if they keep getting scammed? Wouldn't they have a bad reputation by now? Well, that is apparently the secret. Most of these projects, they launch anonymously without their face or name attached to them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Sometimes they'll just make up a fake persona and pretend that that person is the brains behind the project, or they'll hire someone to pretend to be the face of the project. Like this guy was apparently just paid money to pretend to be the face of one of their NFT projects. Now, as Mayo and Gabe's little scheme is growing, at some point they need to hire a team to help them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And they end up hiring a project manager to organize some stuff. This guy. And I don't know his real name, so we'll just call him Project. And one day, Project is moderating the Discord chat for some of these investors on one of these projects. And this is shortly after they had been scammed by Mayo and Gabe. And people in the chat are talking back and forth like, yo, this feels like a rug pull.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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In fact, bro claims he has so much money that he'll just roll up and buy a whole ass village. A lot of you in your apartments, you have hot tubs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Now, a rug pull is a type of NFT or crypto scam. It's basically what they were accusing the Hawk Tua girl of being involved in. So some of these people are pissed and they're like, yo, this feels like a rug pull. Yeah, it does feel like a rug pull. I think we all got conned. And so Project is moderating this discord. And I don't know if he feels guilty or maybe he just values honesty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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I don't know. But suddenly, kaboom, he reveals to everyone in the discord that Mayo and Gabe are behind the various NFT projects. And Mayo and Gabe see this and they are pissed. I mean, they don't want their name dragged through the mud. I mean, they aren't gonna let this slide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And so allegedly, they write an email to Project's parents for some reason, which makes me think Project is actually a young guy still living at home. Regardless, they email his parents and they pretend they're attorneys from a law firm like, if Project doesn't stop, he's gonna pay. And in this email, they include Project's parents' home address and their ages.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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which is kind of like a veiled threat, like, yeah, we know who you are and where you live. Then, Mayo and Gabe allegedly pretend to be an angry investor, and they text Project from an unknown number, threatening to sue him if he doesn't scrub the chat of Mayo and Gabe's names in the next hour. And this message allegedly includes his parents' names and contact info.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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A week later, he gets another email from the fake law firm again. And this time, they directly threaten his family. Specifically, they threaten to publicly expose his parents as P3DOs. Now, as far as we know, right now, Project doesn't reply and nothing bad happens to his parents. But a couple of years go by.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And by this point, Mayo and Gabe have participated in many NFT and crypto schemes, allegedly. By one estimate, they've conned over $22 million from investors. 22 million fucking dollars for JPEGs, pictures that look like this. What the hell is wrong with people? But whatever, now that Mayo is making stupid money, he's living a baller ass lifestyle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Now, where did Mayo get all this money? Well, that's where it gets interesting. Because Mayo, he has a TikTok channel with about 250,000 followers. Not bad. And there, he likes to teach people about crypto and investing. And people follow him and they listen to his advice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And of course, he's got to let everyone know about it by flexing on the gram. Here he is buying a Lambo. Here he is with what looks like a tiger cub and a lion cub. Here he is on a private plane. And not only is he flexing, but it seems like all this money has turned him into a parody of a rich person. Like look at the way he captions his tweets. I spent $7,000 on a lighter today.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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We are not the same. I spent $500,000 on a baby tiger today. We are not the same. I purchased a $30,000 plane ticket. Everything is free when you can print money. Oh, and it's not just when he's talking about money. Like all of his tweets make him look like such an asshole. You need to cheat on your girlfriend to really see if she loves you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Good morning to everyone except people who believe that dinosaurs actually existed. Which college major produces the most hoes? Definitely nursing. But listen, Mayo is also online giving dietary advice. Like here when he encourages his followers to eat raw chicken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Yeah, don't do that. Now, it is during this stint of flexing on social media that he's going on podcasts claiming that he's a billionaire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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Well, he may not actually be a billionaire, but he's definitely made millions off of all his shady NFT projects. until suddenly one day bam mayo gets arrested and then bam gabe gets arrested two local men are charged with defrauding investors out of more than 22 million dollars in cryptocurrency apparently at some

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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point someone we don't know who they reported mayo and gabe to the feds could have been one of the many people who felt scammed by his nft projects i don't know but my guess is after reading this 17 page indictment is that it was project who turned him in i mean what do you expect after you've threatened his parents so many times

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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But anyway, they're charged with wire fraud, conspiracy and stalking of all things. And according to the feds, they're accused of defrauding investors out of $22 million, which will be the largest NFT fraud case ever prosecuted in history. But just a reminder that all of this is alleged. They haven't actually been to trial yet. So we'll see how this one goes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And so he makes a bit of money in the stock market and soon he gets really into buying and selling NFTs. Now, eventually he moves to Los Angeles and there is where things really take off for him because that's where he comes up with a plan to multiply his money. And so Mayo teams up with a friend of his, this guy, Gabe. And together, Mayo and Gabe plan to create their own NFTs, completely theirs.

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This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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And they use Mayo's online popularity to promote them. So they make a Twitter and a website for this NFT project. And Mayo, he starts hyping the project up on social media. And they release this promo video. And people are pumped about it. And by the way, these are the actual NFTs they're selling if you wanted to see them. I don't know why anyone would pay money for these, but here they are.

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This TikTok Star Scammed $22,000,000 - The Gavin Mayo story

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But anyway, bam, they launch it and Mayo and Gabe watch the investments pour in. And after they've collected over like a million dollars, kaboom, they allegedly sell off and abandon the project. And of course, this crashes the value of all the NFTs and the people who invested in it are super pissed. because they lost all their money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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So how did this rich teenage girl become the most wanted woman in America? Now her name's Patricia and she's 19 and she goes to college in California and one night in 1974 there's a knock at her door and she answers it and boom three people wearing masks bust into her apartment and they're armed.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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But also, the SLA is on tape making demands.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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Before any form of negotiation for the release of the subject prisoner be initiated, that an action of good faith be shown on the part of the Hearst family. This gesture is to be in the form of food to the needy and the unemployed.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And so the SLA demands that Patricia's dad distribute $70 worth of food to every needy, hungry person in the state of California, which would be around $500 a person today. But donating that much food would cost Patricia's dad an estimated 400 million dollars. So Patricia's dad is like, 400 million dollars? Best I can do is 2 million.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And they're only going to distribute the food to needy people around the Bay Area specifically. And so they do this. They distribute $2 million worth of food and it kind of causes a riot, but they get it done. Despite that fact, the SLA doesn't release Patricia like they said they would. Meanwhile, Patricia's captors have started letting her out of the closet little by little.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And she's been talking to them and listening to some of the things they're preaching and they're making her read their like manifestos and stuff. And over the course of a few weeks, she's like, damn, some of the SLA's ideas kind of make sense. I mean, they're pro-women, they're anti-racism, they want the rich to help the needy. Some of these ideas are a little ahead of their time.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And this is very appealing to a 19-year-old college student like Patricia. And so about a month later, the SLA finally gives her the option to go home. I mean, they can't hold her forever and they don't really have much use for her anymore. But Patricia decides, nah, I want to join you. I want to be a part of the SLA. Plus, she starts getting mad at her dad.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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She thinks he didn't do enough to help feed those needy people he agreed to feed. So she makes a new audio announcement and sends it.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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Then they grab her and they tie her up and they blindfold her and they throw her in the trunk of their car and they speed away. And they bring her to a safe house and they throw her in a closet. And this is actually a real life photo of that tiny little closet. So who are these kidnappers? Well, they're actually members of a Marxist group called the SLA.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And it's very clear from this recording that she has been fully radicalized.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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Then, about two weeks later, the SLA goes to rob a bank. And Patricia, as one of their members, goes with them. And so they roll up into this bank and they've all got pew-pews. and they start screaming, put the money in the bag, or whatever. But you can see Patricia on security footage here, and she doesn't look like she's being held prisoner. She looks like a full participant in this robbery.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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In fact, at one point, she even yells to the bank customers, up against the wall, motherfuckers. So yeah, she seems fully committed to this. So anyway, Patricia and the others, they rob the bank for over 10K and they flee and they get away.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And once that security footage of the robbery is released, it makes the news and people see it and they're freaking out like, yo, is that the Hearst daughter robbing a bank? And there's also this photo of her posing in front of an SLA flag looking like a total badass. But anyway, all of this is pissing the FBI off because they've been looking for the SLA hideout and they can't seem to find them.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And so they put them all on the FBI's most wanted list, including Patricia, who you can see right here. So now that their pictures are everywhere, the SLA knows it's only a matter of time before they're caught. So the whole group moves from the Bay Area all the way down to Los Angeles. And there is where starts to get real.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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One day, some SLA members go into a sporting goods store because they're going to do a little shoplifting. While they're inside, Patricia waits for them outside in the van. And so they're inside and they're shoplifting and some employees catch them and they confront them. And so the SLA members run outside and the employees chase them.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And Patricia, she sees what's going on and she grabs a pew-pew and she leans out the window and she sprays shots all over the building. And so the employees, they back off. And Patricia and the SLA, they all get away. But this whole shoplifting gone wrong thing makes such a scene that the FBI and police now know that the SLA is in Los Angeles.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And they're able to track down the van they got away in. And tracking down this van leads them right to the SLA safe house. And the next day, boom, police have the safe house surrounded like, come out with your hands up. But the SLA refuses to surrender, not without a fight. And so, pow, the whole scene turns into this massive shootout.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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The SLA shooting on one side and the cops shooting on the other. And this thing goes on for like an hour. And the news crews are there. So this chaotic scene is happening live on TV. And eventually police are like, all right, then. And they throw some tear gas into one of the windows of the safe house. And you could see the place all fogging up.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And then suddenly, kaboom, the SLA house catches on fire and the whole place goes up in flames. And the SLA members inside, they all end up unalive. Some from gunshots, some from the fire. But Patricia is nowhere to be found. And that's because she wasn't actually in the safe house. She's lying low with some other SLA members about 30 minutes away in a hotel.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And they think of themselves like Robin Hood types, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And even though she's only 19 years old, Patricia is wealthy. Well, her family's wealthy. Her dad is actually Randy Hurst, the head of a newspaper empire. So not only is her family super wealthy, but they're sort of known for controlling the media.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And so they're in that hotel and they hear the news of all the other members dying in the shootout. And they're like, oh shit. And so they go on the run. 16 months later, FBI tracks some SLA members to an apartment in San Francisco. And they swoop in and bam, they finally arrest them and Patricia. Here's her mugshot.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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Now, when Patricia is arrested, she appears to stand by her choice to join the SLA. I mean, you can see her here smiling, throwing up the revolutionary salute. And when she's booked, they ask her her occupation and she tells them urban gorilla. So like she's all in. But later during her trial, she completely flips. She's like, actually, I was brainwashed.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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I was coerced into committing all those crimes. And, you know, maybe she was. I don't know. You decide. I'm just a storyteller. But anyway, I guess the jury doesn't buy it because Patricia is found guilty of bank robbery and some other stuff. And she's sentenced to seven years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And about two years later, I guess President Jimmy Carter feels differently than the jury because he commutes her sentence. So in total, she only spent like 22 months in prison before she's let out. And here she is holding up her order of clemency. Wow.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And because of this, the SLA sees kidnapping this rich man's daughter as the perfect symbol for what they stand for. And so this kidnapping story blows up and it becomes huge news all over the country. A few days later, the SLA sends a letter to a local radio station for them to read on the air. And the letter is a message to Patricia's dad, like, we kidnapped your daughter, bro.

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This Teen Girl Became a Terrorist - The Patty Hearst story

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And once people are paying attention, the SLA sends an audio recording of Patricia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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So this TikTok mommy vlogger might just be looking at a felony. Now her name's Marlena. She's 22. She's a mom who posts a lot of lifestyle stuff on her TikTok and Instagram, like get ready with me's where she gets ready, I guess. And a lot of day in the life kind of stuff. She does sort of family vlogs. She has her kids in her videos sometimes.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But about three weeks later, she goes back to the same target. But this time, she's not alone. She's with her boyfriend and their two kids. And so they go in and they do a bunch of shopping, and when they're done, they head over to the self-checkout. And you can see her here, and there's her boyfriend, and there's their two kids hanging onto the cart.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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And here, it seems like Marlena is gonna pull her little barcode switcheroo again. And she allegedly scans her cheaper barcodes to make it look like she's paying for these items, but she puts much more expensive items in her bags, thus giving her a huge discount. Now, if you zoom in and slow down the footage, you can actually see something white in her hand there.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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Now, I assume that is the barcode for the much cheaper item she's scanning over and over again. And to be fair, she's like really good at this. Like I barely noticed. She got to teach me how to do that. And of course, if you scroll a little to the left of the shoplifting, this appears to be her young kid standing like one foot away. And so allegedly this time she steals around $225 worth of stuff.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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Not as much as last time, but still illegal. But anyway, then the whole family leaves the store. They go back home and they probably think nothing of it because she got away with it again. And I assume she goes right back to her regular life, making her normal TikTok videos for her audience. Until... Here's the thing about Target. Target ain't no punk.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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They know people steal from them all the time. This ain't their first rodeo. In fact, they apparently have security cameras looking down on every self-checkout station, which is how we got this footage. And Target also has loss prevention officers who review a lot of this footage. Sometimes it takes them a while to look at it, like sometimes weeks, but I guess they really do actually look at it.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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And she's like always out buying clothes, trying them on, seeing what looks good, showing them off in her videos. I mean, you get the point. She makes content. And over time, she has built herself a nice little following, 450,000 people on TikTok. Not bad. And to her credit, girl is working hard, posting videos almost every day.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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And Marlena doing something like scanning cheaper barcodes is something that they'll definitely notice. So when those loss prevention officers review the footage from the first time we see her allegedly steal, they clearly see her scam $500 worth of discounts using that little cheap barcode trick. And so loss prevention calls the police, but police, they don't know who Marlena is.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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To them, she's just a random shopper. So what do they do? They go and post a screenshot of her from the surveillance footage that day on their Facebook and Instagram, and they ask the public for help identifying this thief. And pretty quickly, someone sees the post and they recognize her. And they hit up police like, hey, I think I know who that is. And they give them her Instagram handle.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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So police are like, sweet. And they go to her Instagram. And from there, they find her TikTok account. And they start scrolling. And boom, they see the video she made of herself shopping that day and getting ready and putting on perfume and going to Target, picking out items and loading them all into her car. And she just happens to be wearing the same outfit and same glasses.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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So they know this is the woman from the screenshot of the surveillance footage. The next day, they track her down and bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And she's charged with petty theft. No big deal. But then it gets worse. So Marlena is released on bail. She goes home. But her arrest makes the news. Which is pretty embarrassing, so I guess she feels like she needs to respond.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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And she makes a TikTok about it.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But she says that, but then she doesn't really address any of it. Probably because it's an ongoing case and she doesn't want to incriminate herself, which is actually smart. But if you zoom in to the background of her video, you can see that she put up her own mugshot. So I guess that's the whole joke she's trying to make of addressing the drama without actually addressing the drama.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But then several days later, Target loss prevention officers are reviewing some previous footage again. And boom, what do they see? They see that surveillance footage of Marlena at Target the second time, scanning the cheap barcodes at the self-checkout when she was with her boyfriend and kids. So loss prevention calls police again. And Marlene is a repeat offender.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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So police know who she is and they know where she lives. They ain't got to look at her TikTok this time. And so they go to her house and they arrest her again.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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And here's a little more body cam footage of them putting her in the squad car. And also, bam, here's her mugshot.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But one day, it all goes wrong when she decides she's going to film a video of herself shopping at Target. And so she starts by filming herself getting ready, putting on perfume, then she heads over to Target. And there she films herself going in and picking out a bunch of items to buy.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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I generally talk about murders and scams and kidnappings and really big crimes. I don't talk about shoplifting. So I don't really care that someone lifted a bunch of stuff from Target, especially in this economy. I just think it's funny that she made a TikTok presenting herself as shopping, as doing a Target haul when she was actually allegedly stealing and her own TikTok got her busted.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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Come on, you got to admit that that's at least a little bit funny. Okay, here's what's crazy though. She apparently isn't new to the shoplifting game. She also has a prior arrest in 2023 from stealing from Walmart and also in 2019 for stealing her friend's car. So there seems to be a little pattern here. But at this point, girl, why not just embrace it?

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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Why not just like work the shoplifting into your vlogs? Get ready with me while I steal some from TJ Maxx. I mean, hell, I'd watch that. Anyway, while the petty theft may be a misdemeanor, this all happened in Florida. And in Florida, three misdemeanors equals a felony. So, homegirl might get hit with a felony. Regardless, this is all alleged as she hasn't been to trial yet.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But, you know, at the end of the day, she's probably gonna be fine. Like, it's Target. And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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But then she goes to the self-checkout and instead of scanning the items she actually has in her cart, she allegedly scans the barcode for a much cheaper item and then pays that lower price. Which isn't a war crime, but it is shoplifting. So using this method, she ends up finessing about $500 worth of . Allegedly.

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This TikTok Star is going to jail - The Marlena Velez story

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Then she films herself loading it all into the car and she leaves and goes home, edits all the footage, and she posts it. Now she obviously doesn't post footage of her stealing or doing the barcode scam or whatever you want to call it. What she posts makes it look like a normal trip to Target. But whatever, she gets away with it. No one at the store seemed to notice or say anything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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You know this character Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars? Well, at one point he tried to unalive himself. And this is a true story. And it starts with this guy, Ahmed. And Ahmed's 24, he's an actor, and he works really hard. And one day in 1996, he's performing in this live show, Stomp. And he's doing his thing, and he's on stage, and he's killing it.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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How cool is that? And so anyway, they shoot this movie and Ahmed does a great job playing the character. And before the movie comes out, his star is just rising. He's doing press with his co-stars and they're all on the covers of magazines. Well, technically it's Jar Jar on the cover, but still. And Ahmed can't wait for this movie to come out.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And so the world can see it and they'll see how great of a job he did. And he's like, man, this is going to change my life forever. Until... One night, right before the movie's release, Ahmed is watching a late night talk show, Conan O'Brien, and they're talking about the Phantom Menace movie.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And they're all joking, saying that this character Jar Jar Binks is gonna ruin the whole film because they had seen the character in the trailers and promos. Now, to be clear, Conan is only talking about Jar Jar, the fictional character, but it doesn't really matter because for Ahmed, it's hard not to take this personally. I mean, he worked hard on this character.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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He invented the walk and the mannerisms and the movement. This is very much his character. But regardless, finally the big day comes. Star Wars Phantom Menace comes out in theaters. And Star Wars fans line up for hours to see this. And they get to the theater and they watch this movie and they see Jar Jar for the first time. And they are not happy. They're all coming out of the theater like, No!

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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What the f*** was George Lucas thinking? I'm a grown man yelling about a kid's movie! Oh, and these people aren't just ranting to their friends. They hate this character so much, they go to the internet. And at this point, it's 1999. So TikTok and social media don't exist yet. So these people are literally building whole-ass websites to trash Ahmed, like JarJarSucks.com and JarJarBinksMustDie.com.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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It's crazy. And they're also posting graphic fan art pictures that I can't really show you because they're so graphic, like pictures of Jar Jar's severed head next to Ahmed's severed head, stuff like that. And poor Ahmed, he's watching all this play out like, why is everyone so mad? I mean, Jar Jar was supposed to be a character created for the little kids who watch the movie.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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But what he doesn't know is that there's a casting director in the audience, and she notices what a good performer he is, and she also happens to be casting for the new Star Wars prequel that they're about to film.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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Oh, and it gets worse because someone eventually gets his phone number and leaks it on the internet. And so people are calling him and some are making death threats. So Ahmed is like getting nervous about even leaving his apartment. And not only that, people in the traditional media are making think pieces about how Jar Jar Binks is a racist stereotype.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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I guess because his accent sounds vaguely Jamaican? And these accusations completely break Ahmed. I mean, he wasn't trying to make an offensive character. And so he gets really down on himself and he falls into a depression. And he doesn't know what to make of all this. I mean, what is this going to do to his career? Is his career over? I mean, he's becoming a joke on the internet.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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Who's going to cast him in anything now? And remember, this is all happening around 1999. So this is all happening before the world knew how to deal with internet trolls, before cancel culture. If the internet got mad at you at this time, it felt like the whole world hated you. In fact, Ahmed may have been one of the first, if not the first person to get collectively cancelled on the internet.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And he has no idea how to handle all this backlash. And so one night, he's really bummed out, and he's walking around New York, where he lives, and he starts walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. And here, he's hoping this walk will make him feel better, but this time, he feels different, like there's nothing left to live for.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And so he goes across the steel girder between the walkway and the bridge, and he stands at the edge of the bridge, and he looks out, and he's like, well, it's been a good life, and he decides to let go and end it all.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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But then, suddenly, pow, a gust of wind knocks him off balance, and instead of letting it take him, Ahmed instinctively grabs onto something, and he catches himself, and he realizes, nah, I can't do it, and he realizes he wants to stay alive. So he walks back home and 18 years go by and Ahmed still thinks about all of that.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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Jar Jar and the movie and all the things that led him to stand on the edge of that bridge that day and contemplate on aliving himself. And then one day, he brings his son to New York City to spend some time where he grew up. And they're walking around town, I guess, and they start walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. And bam, they reach the spot. That same spot where he almost ended his life.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And so later, she gets in touch with him, and they're on the phone, and she's like, hey, we're shooting this Star Wars prequel called Phantom Menace, and I would like you to audition for this alien character. And Ahmed's like... And so, boom, he goes out to Skywalker Ranch for the Star Wars audition, and he gets to meet George Lucas, and it's this whole crazy experience.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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Now Ahmed hasn't been back to this spot since that night 18 years ago, but he's grateful he didn't end his life. So he grabs his son and he takes a photo and later he posts that photo on Twitter and he writes a very honest and very vulnerable caption. 20 years ago, I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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This was the place I almost ended my life, and it's still hard to talk about. And so he posts that, probably not thinking much of it, and that tweet blows the up, and tons of people respond, and suddenly Ahmed is getting all this love and support, something he didn't get for years.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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I mean, people who made the Jar Jar hate websites are coming forward and they're apologizing to him for being so cruel. And suddenly, just like that, his career gets a little nudge. Like he's getting interviewed. He's doing podcasts and photo shoots. He gets a little job hosting a Star Wars game show for kids. I mean, this is a really good gig for him. But then something crazy happens.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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One day, he gets an email from two executive producers. Oh, but not just any executive producers. Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau. And so, Ahmadi's all excited and he goes to their office to meet with them. And he doesn't know what this meeting's about. And then suddenly, boom, they spring it on him. They want him to play a part in their insanely popular Star Wars series, The Mandalorian.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And Ahmed's thinking like, I don't know, do I really want to be Jar Jar again? But that's the thing. They don't want him to play Jar Jar Binks. They want him to play a totally different character, a Jedi master, Kelerun Beck. And so he does.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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Ahmed ends up playing this Jedi master in the Mandalorian, and he comes in and he saves Baby Yoda, and I'm not calling him Grogu, because that's a stupid name, I'm calling him Baby Yoda. But anyway, he comes in, he saves Baby Yoda, and they make Ahmed look like a total badass in this. And so, after all that, Ahmed finally got his redemption arc, and good for him.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And here's what he looks like in real life.

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Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

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And George ends up loving Ahmed. He loved his audition, and so, bam, he gets the part. And suddenly, his life completely changes. He's going to suit fittings for the alien costume, and he's doing screen tests for this alien character no one's ever heard of called Jar Jar Binks. And Ahmed works really hard on this. He comes up with the movements. He comes up with the walk.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Star Wars Destroyed Him - The Ahmed Best story

78.982

He comes up with the voice of the character himself. And so he ends up being both in the suit and doing the voice. And of course, he's super excited. I mean, he's loved Star Wars since he was a kid. And everyone's telling him his acting career is about to blow up. Plus, he's never been in a movie before. He's only done theater. So this is his first movie. And it's a f***ing Star Wars movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

0.109

So this TikToker may be going to prison for murder. Now he calls himself Mr. Prada. And Mr. Prada is 20 years old and he makes a lot of content on TikTok. He's really popular with over 4 million followers. Damn. But one day, Mr. Prada gets on camera and he does something a little strange. He shaves his head. I guess he shaves his eyebrows too. And then he posts this video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

109.807

But we'll get back to him, because real quick, I want to introduce this guy. He calls himself Dr. Nick. And Dr. Nick is 69 years old, and he used to be a Catholic priest, but now he's a therapist. He works a lot with LGBTQ youths, and apparently people love him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

130.342

And one day, somehow, I don't know how, Dr. Nick and Mr. Prada meet. And no one knows what their relationship is, maybe they're friends, maybe he's counseling him, maybe something else romantic is going on as they're both openly gay. We don't actually have that information right now. But at one point, Dr. Nick goes over to Mr. Prada's apartment to meet up with him for something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

153.462

And no one knows exactly what happens when they meet. Maybe they're talking, maybe they're smashing, but allegedly something happens that makes Mr. Prada snap. And suddenly, pow, he hits Dr. Nick over the head with some blunt object. And pow, he keeps hitting him over and over again and again as hard as he can until Dr. Nick stops moving because he's unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

178.852

And as if that isn't messed up enough, around that same time, Mr. Prada posts this video on TikTok of himself dancing. And right now, no one is sure if he posted it before or after Dr. Nick's murder. But anyway, then Mr. Prada rolls Dr. Nick up in a tarp and he drags the body out of his apartment building and he loads him into not his own car, but into Dr. Nick's car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

203.769

And he steals the car and he drives along the highway and he dumps the body on the side of the road near a ditch, allegedly. Then he drives back home to his apartment to clean up the mess he made. The next day, someone is driving by and they spot the tarp on the side of the road and they're like, hey, that looks suspicious. So they call police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

223.705

So police come out and they investigate and they find Dr. Nick's body in the tarp. And when they see the state his body is in, they know this was a murder. And they know this is Dr. Nick, so they start looking for Dr. Nick's car, because his car is missing. The next day, they spot it in some surveillance footage, and it's parked in a local shopping center.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

245.679

And they're able to get some footage of the person driving the car, aka Mr. Prada. But at this point, police don't know who Mr. Prada is. To them, he's just some random guy. So they release some screenshots of this footage to the public on social media, Like, hey, does anyone know who this guy is? And almost immediately people respond like, yeah, that's Mr. Prada.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

268.437

The day after that, police spot Dr. Nick's car again. This time it's out driving around. And so, bam, they try and pull it over. Now, Mr. Prada is, of course, in this car, driving, and he sees the red and blue lights in his rear view, and he's like, oh sh**, and I guess he doesn't want to go to prison, so instead of stopping, he suddenly throws it in reverse, and pow, he hits the police car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

29.744

And his followers are looking at this like, what is this guy doing? And the next day, Mr. Prada posts a carousel of photos with his shaved head. And his audience is like, yo, is this guy OK? And they start thinking maybe he's going through something, like maybe he's having some mental health issues. And then he gets on camera and he starts talking about changing his name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

291.922

Although I'm not sure he hit the car very hard. But then, skrrt, he speeds away, and kaboom, he crashes the car. And then he jumps out, and he ditches the car, and he runs away. And someone actually got a little footage of him running away. You can see it here. And here is a picture of Dr. Nick's car, and you can see it. It's all banged up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

309.904

Now, Mr. Prada gets away, but police, they've now identified him. So they know who he is. So they go and get a warrant and they search his apartment. And I guess he did a horrible job cleaning up after himself because they find a ton of blood and some possible murder weapons. And of course, the DNA there is a match for Dr. Nick's DNA.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

329.057

Then they check local security footage from a few days before and they see Dr. Nick walking up to Mr. Prada's apartment door wearing the same clothes he was found in. So now police know Mr. Prada has some explaining to do. Meanwhile, Mr. Prada, he's still on the run and he reportedly gets on a bus and he heads from Louisiana six hours away over to Dallas, Texas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

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But by this point, word has gotten out and Mr. Prada's face is all over the news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

366.297

And so he only makes it another day before bam, police finally find him and they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

378.479

So at this point, you might be asking, why did he do it? Why did Mr. Prada allegedly suddenly go crazy and unalive Dr. Nick, this therapist who everyone apparently loves so much? Were they really lovers? Did Mr. Prada just suddenly go crazy? It's also interesting to note that five months before this, before he suddenly went off and shaved his head, he posted this TikTok.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

400.811

Practicing for my mugshot, because this might be the year someone gonna meet God if they piss me off too much. So is this just a coincidence? Did he know he was going to snap on someone? Did he know that someone would be Dr. Nick? There's just so many questions that are unanswered about this whole thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

419.356

Well, this looks like a job for the internet because the internet starts digging into this story. And some people find that all the way back in 2015, Dr. Nick was accused of inappropriately touching a young boy, one of his patients. And it made the news. And he was actually arrested for it. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

438.662

Now, the charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence, so nothing ever came of it. But the internet is speculating that perhaps Dr. Nick tried to touch Mr. Prada inappropriately, and that is what has led to the murder. I'm not saying that's true at all. I'm saying that's one of the leading theories people online have come up with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

458.296

Regardless, that's all speculation and all of this is alleged as Mr. Prada hasn't actually been to trial yet and we won't know what really happened until that trial happens. And thank you to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you want to make badass art for your videos like this or like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

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And he starts talking about rebranding himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

63.459

Emo psycho twink. We're just going to go ahead and keep calling him Mr. Prada. So anyway, Mr. Prada keeps making these posts every day, and every day he's acting more and more strange. Here's the thing, though. He's been pretty open about being diagnosed as bipolar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge TikTok Star is Going to Prison - The Mr. Prada story

86.095

But it seems like now he's definitely letting people see him without a filter and his fans are starting to worry. But then at some point around this time, the worst thing happens to him. He goes through a really bad breakup and he seems pretty devastated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

0.089

So this YouTuber really wants to get out of the United States. And unfortunately, he ends up somewhere really dangerous. Now his name's Eastman and Eastman's 26, he's American, but he's not really doing much here. Like he's an Uber driver sometimes. Bro really wants to get out. He wants an adventure. So one day he says, And he leaves and he flies from the US 8,000 miles away to the Philippines.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

122.19

And so he's renting this little apartment for like $52 a month. And eventually he decides to open a little grocery store right on the beach. And so Eastman, he starts building the store himself with his own two hands and he stocks it and he gets his wifi set up. And soon enough, his business is up and running.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

146.892

But despite how much he likes it there, according to him, the area he's in actually isn't very safe for foreigners. I've never seen any other foreigner here. This is dangerous. It's a dangerous area. And sometimes when he and his wife are out and around, he has to hide from strangers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

175.273

Regardless, he keeps living his life and doing his live streams. Now, if this were me as an American living in this apparently dangerous place, I would stop live streaming. Like I would stop drawing any attention to myself. The fewer people that know I exist, the better. Oh, but not Eastman. He seems to love to stream. I mean, he just keeps going. He keeps streaming multiple times every day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

198.926

Not only that, on more than one occasion, he gets on live and he talks about money. Like he's live and he mentions loaning out pesos to some locals.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

210.715

Yeah, that's not something I would do. But whatever. So far, he seems to be getting the adventure that he was craving in his life so badly. Until one day things start to go bad for him. And it starts when his little store gets robbed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

241.318

yeah that really sucks for him and i don't know if it's his store getting robbed or if it's the constant hiding but at some point eastman starts to get bummed out and it's like the tone of his live streams takes a turn i feel like i've been staying in this area for so long to the point where people i don't even know

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

27.711

And there he travels over to the mountains in Zamboanga del Norte. Here's the thing about that area though. It's really nice looking, but some parts of it aren't exactly safe. Some even refer to it as the red zone. Even the State Department warns American tourists to exercise increased caution when considering traveling there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

288.192

And he even starts suggesting to his wife that maybe moving here wasn't such a good idea. I don't even think I'd want to come back here. And so, yeah, I mean, from his videos, it seems like he's ready to get the hell out of there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

319.103

But then one night, everything changes. Eastman, he's chilling at home and he's live streaming like he always does. And one of his viewers asks if he's enjoying the Philippines.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

332.876

Then, about two hours later, after that stream ends, Eastman, he's still there with his wife and I believe some of his wife's family, and suddenly gets real. And kaboom, four police officers bust through the door and they got pew-pews, big ones, and they grab Eastman and they force him outside. Here's the thing though, these police officers, they're not police officers at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

354.674

They're actually kidnappers dressed as police officers. And it seems like Eastman knows this. Like he knows something's not right. And he's not going out without a fight. And so they struggle and he fights back. And then boom, he breaks out. He tries to run away. But the kidnappers, they're not going to let him go. And blam, one of them shoots him in the thigh.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

374.409

And then blam, he gets shot in the stomach. And then they grab him and they drag him over to the shore where their speedboat is parked. And his poor wife, she's watching all this go down and she's like screaming her head off. Then the kidnappers throw him in the boat and then they all get in and they speed away as Eastman lays there injured and bleeding out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

392.02

And so immediately word gets out about this and the local police come and they launch a manhunt looking for the kidnappers and they're going from house to house. They send a spy. speedboat out to pursue the captors, but unfortunately, it's too late. The kidnappers are long gone, and there's no sign of Eastman anywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

410.43

Meanwhile, on the boat, allegedly, Eastman tries to hold on, but eventually, he succumbs to his wounds, and he ends up unalived. And so the men, they pick up his body, and they throw it to the ocean.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

425.109

American vlogger Elliot Eastman, who was kidnapped in Zamboanga del Norte, is now feared dead.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

430.794

Now, the good thing is, is that local police do eventually find and arrest three of the alleged kidnappers. But so far, they haven't caught everyone who was involved. And as of now, they still haven't recovered Eastman's body. So why did these armed men dressed like police officers suddenly bust into Eastman's house and kidnap him only to accidentally unalive him in the process?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

453.75

Well, as of right now, we unfortunately don't know. I mean, we know the three suspects are part of a criminal group. And one of the leading theories right now is that they targeted him because he's American and they see him as a foreigner with money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

47.579

But whatever, Eastman wanted a little adventure and he seems to like it there. So there he meets a local woman and she speaks decent English and so they start talking and they hit it off and Eastman thinks she is foine and eventually she becomes his girlfriend. So we'll just call her girlfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

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Either way, that's a sad one. So stay safe out there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

63.587

And so girlfriend takes him to her village to meet her family, and everything seems to be going well, and they end up getting engaged. And eventually, they even get married. And this is actual footage of their Muslim wedding. I guess he converted to Islam for her. Now, Eastman has a YouTube channel, and there he starts documenting living in this new place that few foreigners will ever go to.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber is Missing - The Elliot Eastman Story

92.199

Now on this channel, he mostly just does live streams and just talks to his audience. And he also has a TikTok account. And you can see one of his TikToks here is just him and his wife, and they're just like goofing around. Now, Eastman isn't necessarily rich by American standards, but in the Philippines, in that specific area, US dollars go really far. So in pesos, he has a small fortune.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

0.089

So this guy is rich. I mean like $230 million rich. Because he stole it. And then he went wild. Now the guy's name is Malone. He's 20 years old and he's really into crypto. And one day in 2024, he and his buddies are all in a chat. And one of them is like, Hey bro, let's find someone who has millions of dollars in Bitcoin and scam them out of it. And Malone hears this idea and he's like, Hi.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

119.068

Now, this recording of them celebrating is gonna be very important later. But whatever, right now, these guys are suddenly richer than they've ever imagined. Not only that, they're smart enough to know they gotta cover their tracks. Since every transaction on the blockchain is publicly viewable, they make all this really hard to track by splitting the coin into different accounts and

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

139.039

And yeah, blah, blah, blah, boring crypto stuff. They move the money around to make it untraceable. That's all you need to know. And so Malone and his bros suddenly have this insane amount of money which they've never had before. So now it's time to start spending it. Now Malone's friends, they don't really do all that much with it, not right away. Oh, but Malone does. Malone goes wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

160.188

He becomes like a cartoon parody of a rich person. Like he gets some fancy new drip, including diamonds embedded in his glasses. He and his friends are flying around on private jets. And he starts renting this huge waterfront mansion in Miami that costs, wait for it, $68,000 a month. $68,000 a month for rent. And of course, he buys all the cars he's ever wanted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

187.356

No, really, like, bro buys like 30 exotic cars. Like, damn, how much is he driving? He even got a Lamborghini with his name painted on the side. He also goes out to clubs and gets bottle service everywhere just because he can. Oh, and he doesn't buy the cheap bullshit bottle service. No, let me tell you how much this guy spends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

205.209

Dude regularly goes out to the club and drops anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 a night. A night. He buys the most expensive champagne. He tips everyone. The staff's putting his name up in lights. I mean, they love him because when the dude's there, he buys drinks all night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

223.897

Why did a table come in tonight and spend $300,000 on bottles like it was nothing?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

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And he always tips the staff well with money and alcohol.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

241.926

And of course, Malone doesn't forget about the ladies. I mean, he's got to try and buy their love too. He'll buy a $50,000 Birkin, which is like a purse. He'll buy $50,000 purses and go to the club and just hand them out to pretty women like, hey, this is for you. I guess he's hoping they'll smash with him. I mean, some of the women later made TikToks about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

260.709

He comes towards me and he's like, I got this for you. Guys, I can't even make this up when I say that I just woke up to a Birkin in my bedroom because a man gave it to me in the club last night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

27.91

And so they search around and they finally decide on a target, this seemingly random yet wealthy investor living in D.C. who we'll just call Investor. And so the guys deep dive and they get Investor's information and they get his phone number and they call him from a spoofed number pretending to be Google tech support like, Hello, sir.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

271.391

But I guess poor Malone ends up learning the hard way that not everyone can be bought. Because at one point, he tries to buy a pink Lamborghini Urus for some woman supposedly they had dated before. And so he buys it and he texts her a picture of it at 2 a.m.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

291.606

Uh, I'm taken. Once again. I don't care. I'm not gonna lie, for some reason, I love that she rejected him so hard. Like, something very satisfying about it. Anyway, despite that one L he took, he is still absurdly wealthy now. I mean, he has the house and the cars he wants, and everyone at the club loves him. Bro is just living the dream.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

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Until... Okay, real quick.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

314.689

There's one person in the story I forgot to introduce, so let's rewind. So Malone and his bros have just stolen $230 million worth of Bitcoin. And they make it really hard to track by splitting it into different accounts and blah, blah, blah, boring crypto stuff. And at some point during all this, a guy gets a notification on his phone. This guy, ZachXBT.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

340.578

So ZachXBT gets an alert on his phone because I guess he gets an alert every time there's a larger than average crypto transaction on the blockchain. Now, who is ZachXBT? Well, Zach is a bit of a crypto enthusiast himself, and he's kind of a big deal on Twitter. 740,000 followers. Not bad. And at one point in the past, Zach unfortunately got scammed out of $15,000 worth of crypto.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

364.81

And ever since then, he's decided to devote himself to catching crypto thieves and exposing shady NFT projects and stuff like that. And so Zach has caught on to the accounts run by Malone and his bros. And since every transaction on the blockchain is publicly viewable, he starts tracking the path of each transfer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

382.237

So by the time Malone has spent all this money in the club and bought a $250,000 car for a girl that doesn't want him, Zach has been mapping out the path of all the stolen money. And at this point, he's pretty sure he knows who's behind it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

396.243

And when he checks social media one day and sees this guy Malone flexing his wealth all over Instagram, he's like, boom, this is one of the guys who stole the crypto. Now, remember that screen recording of the chat I said would be important later? Well, one of the guys in Malone's friend group, and I don't know if he was snitching or what, but he actually sends that recording to Zach.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

419.853

And of course, it's audio of them celebrating stealing all that money. Not only that, the screen has information on it that identifies Malone and his bros. So this becomes very important evidence. And anyway, Zach XBT gets sent this information and I imagine he's like, sweet. And so he collects all of it and he sends it over to the FBI. And the FBI, they start investigating.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

446.185

And only a month after the heist first took place, boom, federal agents swoop in and they raid Malone's home. And bam, they arrest him. And this is actual footage of him being arrested. And also, here's his mugshot. And they also arrest one of Malone's friends who was involved, but I couldn't find his mugshot anywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

467.26

And one of Malone's other friends who was involved hasn't been charged as of yet, so maybe he flipped on the others? I don't know. Regardless, Malone is charged with conspiracy to steal and launder over $230 million in crypto, and he faces up to 20 years in prison. However, he hasn't been found guilty as he hasn't been to trial yet. So all of this is alleged. I'll keep you updated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

50.404

Then afterwards, they call Investor from a different number and they say they're from his cryptocurrency exchange.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

59.062

And once investor believes he's been hacked, it's easy to convince him to reset his security information. Then the boys get him to share his screen, which exposes the private keys to his Bitcoin wallet. Once they get investors private keys, they use them to access his Bitcoin wallet and boom, Malone and his bros secretly transfer over 4,100 Bitcoin out of the account and over to themselves.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Stole $230,000,000 - The Malone Lam story

84.304

And at this time, 4,100 Bitcoin is worth around $230 million. $230 million. Oh, I gotta leave. And of course, Malone and his friends are like, holy shit. They can't believe this actually worked. And so they're freaking out and they're celebrating in the chat. And for some reason, one of their friends is recording the whole chat. We did it!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

0.149

So this woman wants to unalive her somewhat famous husband so that she can be with someone much worse. Now the woman's name is Victoria and she's around 30 years old. She's living in Nevada and one day she meets someone kind of famous. This guy, Aaron.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

120.805

In fact, little by little, he steals over $200,000 from his family and he just donates it all to Sylvie. And his family becomes desperate to get him to stop talking to her. So they end up taking his phone away. And in retaliation for taking his phone away, he gets a pew-pew and he unalives his mom, his dad, and his brother. So for that, he gets convicted and he gets life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

146.184

which he is currently serving. Here's the crazy thing, though. Prison hasn't actually stopped Grant from being obsessed with women. I mean, he's kind of well known now. His story is famous. He had a whole ass docuseries made on him. And because of that, I guess women around the country have been writing to him while he's in prison. Like, oh my God, you're so fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

16.982

And Aaron's around 45 and he's one of the hosts of this TV show, Ghost Adventures, where they go around to different haunted places looking for paranormal activity. And so Victoria meets Aaron and she thinks he's kind of fine. And soon enough they start dating and they fall in love and eventually they get married. And they have their wedding at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland because you know,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

167.43

As if he didn't just get convicted of murdering his whole family because he couldn't have this cam girl. No, no, these women want him. Like, sometimes he'll have phone contact with them and he'll respond all creepy like, Hi, my precious little kitty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

189.441

Buh. So yeah, I guess in prison, he got game? Anyway, so back to Victoria. So in 2024, she watches this whole documentary about how Grant went crazy over a cam girl and unalived his whole family. And for reasons I'll never understand, she's like, oh, he seems like a nice guy. I really want to get to know him. And that is when apparently Victoria writes to Grant. And I assume he writes back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

215.233

And soon, they hit it off. And they're communicating back and forth. And at some point while in prison, Grant Lowkey gets a contraband phone, which is a cell phone that he would keep hidden because prisoners are not supposed to have cell phones. So he gets this phone and he and Victoria start texting one another. And I guess over time, they really start liking each other and they fall in love.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

237.952

Now keep in mind, she's still married to Aaron. So now she's having like a full blown emotional affair. And she starts texting Grant about how she wants out of her marriage and how she'd rather have a life with him. While poor Aaron, who from the reporting I've read is universally described as a nice guy and a big teddy bear. This guy has no idea any of this is going on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

261.271

He apparently believes nothing is wrong with his marriage to Victoria and that everything is going great because while Victoria is around Aaron, she's pretending that it is. Now, this is where things get really messed up. So Victoria and Grant are texting back and forth all the time and they allegedly come up with a plan to get rid of Aaron for good. They decide to hire a hitman to take Aaron out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

287.877

And so Grant is apparently all excited and he gets right to work on this plan. And he uses his contraband phone to contact someone he knows on the outside. I guess he just like texts this guy and he's like, hey, want to murder someone? And this person is like, all right. And through text, Victoria agrees to pay this hitman $11,515, which is a very specific amount.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

311.88

But anyway, boom, they have officially set this plan in motion. Meanwhile, in front of Aaron, Victoria is still pretending everything is fine and that she's happy in this marriage. Like on Instagram, she posts pictures of them together on a plane. While he, he's still oblivious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

330.071

Like on their wedding anniversary, he posts a picture of their wedding saying, Two years ago today, I got to marry my best friend. I'm so lucky to have you in my life. While at the same time, she's texting Grant, talking about the hit that they're about to pull off and saying things like, I'm so anxious, Lolo. I just can't believe it's happening. And then she asks, am I a bad person?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

352.994

While Grant's like, of course not, baby. Why would you think that? And she's like, because I chose to end his existence, not divorce. And by the way, I didn't make these texts up. These are word for word what they texted each other. Anyway, so the date of the hit approaches. And Victoria and Grant and this hit man all make their preparations.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

372.719

And they allegedly tell the Hitman they want Aaron to be unalived while he's out of state, while he's on location filming Ghost Adventures in California. Then Victoria texts Grant Aaron's schedule and his shooting locations, the make of his car, a picture of him. She's also able to give away his exact location with the Find My app. And so Grant sends all this information to the Hitman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

395.932

So now the Hitman has everything he needs to get the job done. Then Grant allegedly texts that Aaron's asleep right now in the hotel room, signaling the Hitman that he should move forward. Then Grant waits, and he waits, and he waits. And he's not sure if Hitman did the job or not. So he texts him, can I get an update? Was it done? And that is when everything falls apart.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

40.228

Ghosts. But anyway, things are going great for them. They're in love, Aaron is on a successful TV show, and it doesn't seem like anything could screw this up. Until... A few years go by, and for some reason, though they haven't been married that long, Victoria starts feeling lonely.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

421.828

Because suddenly, boom, correctional officers at the prison bust Grant for having a phone that he's not supposed to have, and they take it away from him. And as of now, we don't know what happened to Hitman. Like, we just don't have that information yet. But Aaron is still alive, thank goodness. So the hit didn't work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

440.176

But now Victoria can't communicate with Grant because he doesn't have his phone. So she doesn't know what the hell happened or what's going on. So she just goes on about her life and keeps pretending like her marriage is fine. For months. She's posting on her Instagram, like her and Aaron on Valentine's Day. Mini golf with my Valentine. She's posting about the Lego set she built for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

462.652

She posts this picture with their cat. Cuddle puddle with my boys. See, that's Aaron's leg, that's her leg, and that's his hand on her leg. So to the outside world, everything seems to be going fine for them. So this goes on for several months. And this whole time, prison admin has Grant's contraband phone. And eventually, they start going through it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

484.771

And that is when they see all these texts between him and Victoria talking about hiring a hitman to unalive her husband. And so bam, police go and they arrest her. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of her in real life. Also, just reminding you that she hasn't been convicted of any of this, so all of this is technically alleged.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

507.604

Meanwhile, we're all glad that Aaron is okay, and I've read that since then, he has filed for divorce. So, good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

58.783

Maybe it's because Aaron's off filming his show all the time, or maybe it's because she's jealous of the attention he gets and she doesn't. I mean, I'm speculating here. We don't actually don't really know why she's lonely. But Victoria starts becoming unhappy. The thing is, it seems like Aaron doesn't really know that she's feeling this way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

76.293

I mean, maybe she's just not communicating this with him. But one day in 2024, everything changes because she's watching this true crime docuseries, a docuseries about this guy. Grant. Grant is 35 and he's actually in prison right now. Why is Grant in prison? Well, if you remember about a month back, we actually covered Grant's story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Aaron Goodwin Was Almost Murdered - The Victoria Goodwin story

98.777

And if you don't remember him, let me remind you of what he did. One day in 2019, he comes across a cam girl site and he starts watching this cam girl. Her name's Sylvie. And Grant thinks Sylvie is fine and he starts donating money to her. And over time, he becomes obsessed with her and he starts stealing money from his family members to donate to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

0.069

Do you remember that show, That 70s Show? Well, you probably know that one of the lead actors is in big trouble. Now, the story starts with a woman named Chrissy. And Chrissy's 18. She just moved away from home to pursue a career in Hollywood. And so far, it's going pretty well. She's getting a bit of work. But one night, everything changes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

104.039

Because it's 1998, and Danny, because he's an actor, he auditions for a show called Teenage Wasteland. And bam, he gets the part. And eventually, they rename the show and call it That 70s Show, and That 70s Show blows the f*** up, and it becomes a huge hit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

121.085

And so very quickly, Danny becomes super famous with like super famous friends, and he becomes one of the highest ranking members of this multi-billion dollar religion. And maybe, maybe, all of this starts to go to his head. Because as time goes on, he becomes more and more controlling. Specifically of Chrissy. He also becomes more and more sexually aggressive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

146.725

And while Chrissy, she doesn't like any of this... But she does the thing where she makes excuses for his bad behavior because, you know, she's in love with him and she trusts him. And remember, she's still isolated from her family and friends. So she has no one. But then in 2001, Chrissy's 23 now, starts to get really dark.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

168.883

Because according to her, one night, she and Danny are chilling at home, having a glass of wine, and then strangely, she starts feeling the effects of alcohol coming on super strong, even though she hasn't had enough of it for it to make her feel that way. And then suddenly, boom, she blacks out. The next morning, she wakes up feeling like she was poisoned or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

191.269

And not only does her whole body hurt, but she's also bleeding and injured in her anus. And she doesn't understand what happened to her, and so she goes downstairs to Danny, and she asks, what happened last night? And Danny laughs at her, and he says, oh, I had intercourse with you last night. And Chrissy says, was I unconscious? And he laughs and says... Yeah.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

215.167

And obviously Chrissy is not okay with this. In fact, she's devastated. I mean, Danny is her whole life the guy who she's put all her trust in and he's violated her in a disgusting way. And so she gets mad and she's like, I am going to report this mother . And she does. She goes to the ethics department of the Church of Scientology, which is like the church's justice department.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

22.109

Because she's out at a party, and that is when she meets this guy, Danny. And Danny's a few years older than her, and he's already been acting in Hollywood a long time, since he was young. And so Chrissy, she thinks Danny's kind of fine. And they start dating. Here's actually a picture of them together. And from here, things move pretty quickly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

236.383

And she tells the ethics officer what Danny did to her. But unfortunately, the officer allegedly tells her that, well, it can't be S.A. because Danny's your boyfriend. And the officer also tells her, if this happened to you, then it's your fault. I mean, you must have done something to deserve it. And if that isn't bad enough, then this ethics officer allegedly threatens her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

259.159

Like, if you go to the police about this, then you'll become an enemy of the church and you'll be punished by any means necessary. And as you probably already know, the Church of Scientology, they are known to not f*** around when it comes to getting revenge on people. And so Chrissy is terrified. I mean, if she goes to the police, the church might come after her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

280.036

Not to mention that the church also happens to be a major donor to the Hollywood Police Department. I mean, this is actually a real photo of them donating. So now she's worried they could all turn against her. And so, poor Chrissy, she decides not to report it further. Instead, she bottles it all inside. Thankfully, though, she does eventually leave Danny.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

303.573

Then, more years go by, and it's now 2009. And Chrissy, she actually meets a new guy, a much nicer guy. This guy, Cedric. And Cedric is actually the lead singer of two bands, the Mars Volta and At The Drive-In. Great bands, by the way. And Chrissy and Cedric, they fall in love and they eventually get married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

324.025

And one day, Chrissy and Cedric are chilling and she's explaining to him why she has such bad anxiety. And she ends up telling him about what happened all those years ago with Danny. And, you know, she starts blaming herself and she says, I know what happened is my fault. And Cedric, he has a big reaction to this. He's like, no, the hell it's not. That's called S.A.,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

344.855

And he assures her that what happened to her was both wrong and illegal. And so finally, for the first time ever, Chrissy is sitting in front of someone who not only believes her, but who supports her. And this influences her to finally go to the police and report Danny. And she also starts speaking out about it on social media, calling out both Danny and Scientology.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

370.311

And by the way, she's left the church at this point. But then it gets even crazier because after Chrissy comes out publicly, boom, two more women come forward. And they say that Danny had done similar things to them, like putting things in their drinks and making them pass out and then essaying them. And by the way, the details of what Danny did to these women is awful.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

390.822

Like I can't even repeat it in my video without it getting taken down. But just know that what he actually did to them is way worse than what I could have described in this video. But anyway, so now police investigate Danny and he has three credible allegations of SA against him. And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And by the way, later, a fourth woman comes forward.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

40.545

Because two weeks later, Danny invites Chrissy to come live with him. And this is great news for her, because, you know, she's new to the city. She doesn't know anyone. And soon after, she really starts to rely on Danny. For, like, everything. But then he kind of drops a bomb on her. He tells her that in order for them to be in a relationship, she has to join his religion, Scientology.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

415.02

Regardless, now, after more than 15 years, if they convict him, it looks like Chrissy is finally going to see justice. Until... Here's the thing about Scientology. They don't really like their members being snitched on. And because Chrissy had reported Danny to the police, she's now considered an enemy of the church. And according to her, this is when they make her life a living hell.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

442.363

because over the next few years, all kinds of crazy stuff starts happening. People from the church allegedly start loitering outside her home, looking in her windows. Cars start following Chrissy around wherever she goes. One even tries to run her off the road. She and Cedric get threatening messages on social media with people saying they're gonna come and take their children away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

463.382

Vans full of electronics park outside their home for hours so they feel like they're being spied on. People affiliated with the church allegedly call their friends and family asking for information about them. People even start following their kids around. And so yeah, eventually Chrissy and Cedric are like, all this and they move from California over to Texas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

486.528

But unfortunately, the thing is, there in Texas, similar things start happening. Like one day, Chrissy sees two men looking over her fence in her backyard. And one of them says, nice dogs. And soon after, she finds one of her dogs has been poisoned. Someone apparently took raw meat stuffed with rat poison and they fed it to the dog. This is actually a picture of what they found that day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

512.762

And by the way, their other dog also dies unexpectedly by unexplained trauma to its throat. So it's possible Scientology took out both their dogs. Now, despite all of that crazy alleged Scientology stalking, eventually Danny goes to trial for his crimes. Twice, actually. And ultimately, he's found guilty of two of the three charges, and he's sentenced to 30 years to life. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

64.905

So she starts going to the church to meet up with them and she signs their paperwork, because I guess they make you sign legal documents when you join. And she starts taking their Scientology courses and she like officially joins them. Once she's in the church, they really take over her life. And suddenly Scientology and Danny become her whole world.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Danny Masterson story

85.441

And they tell her how to live and how to act and they tell her that she has to cut off contact with her friends and family because they aren't members. And of course Chrissy does because you know when your religion tells you to do something, you do it. I mean this is classic cult behavior. But then something kind of crazy happens to Danny.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

0.089

So this TikToker really wants to be famous and known for something and oh is he about to get what he wants. Now his name's Ali and he's 29 living in San Diego and one day he starts posting videos on TikTok where he's doing like impressions of Skyrim characters and he's always doing impressions of Tony Montana from Scarface. And these videos blow up. And so he keeps making more and more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

120.829

But that doesn't seem to faze him or get him to stop. In fact, all the attention he's getting online has made him feel like he's untouchable.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

132.059

And so at this point, you're probably like, Ray, if he's such a psychopath, why doesn't she just leave? Well, here's the thing about Anna. She's actually a Filipino citizen, and she got her visa to the US through her marriage to Ali. So when Anna brings up separating, he threatens to have her deported, which means she won't be able to be with her daughter who would stay with Ali in the US.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

165.748

So she's essentially trapped. Not only that, he also does this thing to her when he doesn't get his way that he'll threaten to unalive himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

185.104

And if that isn't bad enough, he thinks that because they're married, he's entitled to smash whenever he wants. Of course, Anna doesn't want to because he's abusive to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

201.435

And so because she's not smashing with him, he starts getting paranoid that she's out there cheating on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

216.324

Here's the crazy thing, though. Despite how often he gets jealous and accuses her, it's actually him who's been sleeping around on her. Because one day, Anna hears a knock on the door, and she opens it, and it's some woman who lives in the building. And this woman tells Anna, me and Ali have been sleeping together in your apartment. I guess she's trying to warn her or let her know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

237.271

I actually don't know why this woman confesses. But this is when Anna has finally had enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

249.874

That just means I don't need your visa.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

253.479

And that's when Anna decides she can't take it anymore. And she's going to separate and go stay with a friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

268.25

You're disrespecting me. You ain't trying. So now Anna and her daughter are staying with a friend, which is not ideal, but at least she's safe. But then one day, Ali calls her and says, you know what? You can have the apartment. Just take the apartment and I'll go stay in a hotel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

28.955

And pretty soon Ali has nearly a million followers. And so he might actually be on his way to being famous. Now, Ali is married to this nice woman, Anna, and they have a daughter together. And soon she starts appearing in some of his TikToks every now and then, including one very memorable TikTok of them dancing with a caption talking about how their relationship is drama free.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

285.979

And this is great news to Anna, like she'll have her old place back with her daughter, and most importantly, without Ali. And so, she moves back in. But here's what Anna doesn't know, though. Sneaky-ass Ali has made a copy of the electronic key to her place so that he can enter it anytime he wants. And it's only a matter of time before he goes crazy again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

309.295

And one day, out of nowhere, Anna gets sent a bunch of roses, and they're from Ali. Now, she's done with him, and so she doesn't reach out and say thank you, or that she even got them, nor should she. And this pisses Ali off. And he's apparently been up all night doing Coca-Cola, so he's way out of his mind, and he is just gonna lay into her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

332.017

And so he goes over to the apartment, and he lets himself in. But luckily for her, she's not there. And he's like, f*** this, and he just starts trashing the place. Knocking things over, throwing her stuff around, smashing the roses he got her. But then, to make it worse, he takes an iPad that he has. Now this iPad has Discord downloaded on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

353.214

And so he takes this iPad and he hides it in between the wall and the bed and he leaves it on so that it will record audio of anything that goes on in the apartment. He thinks he's going to try and catch her cheating, which it really isn't cheating because they're no longer together. But despite that, then Ali leaves and he goes back to his hotel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

372.771

Then, Anna comes home, and she sees that the apartment's been trashed, and she knows it was Ali. And she's shocked, and she's hurt. Like, how could he do this to the place that his own daughter lives in? Now, her daughter will be home from school soon, and Anna doesn't want her to see all this destruction that her dad caused. So she calls a mutual friend of her and Ali's. This guy, Rayburn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

396.137

And Rayburn comes over to help her clean up this mess. Meanwhile, at Ali's hotel, he wakes up from his drug nap and he hears Anna through the iPad and he can hear her in her apartment talking with another man. And he just snaps. Another man in the apartment with his wife? He is not going to let this slide. And so he gets his pew-pew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

419.972

And then he drives from his hotel to her building as fast as he can. And then, boom, he busts into her apartment. And he immediately sees Anna and Rayburn sitting on the couch. And instantly, blam, blam, blam, he shoots Rayburn. And then, blam, he shoots Anna, too. And, unfortunately, they're both instantly killed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

440.504

Unalived and pretty quickly after that police show up and boom Ali is arrested now I don't actually have a mugshot of him But here's a picture of him in jail behind glass now remember Ali wanted to be famous and known for something so he's really upset about how this is gonna affect his acting career and No you weren't. Anyway, he goes to trial and he gets sentenced to life in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

53.612

But whatever, from their videos, it appears as if their relationship is good and his career seems to be on the up and up. And I can't imagine anything would ever go wrong. Until. Here's the thing about Ali. He's not the most stable person in the world. And over time, he picks up the habit of doing a lot of nose drugs that we'll just call Coca-Cola.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

76.948

In fact, he's known to whip out a huge bag of Coca-Cola on his live streams and he'll get high in front of his audience. Now, obviously, I can't show you the part where he does the drugs, but regardless, this dude is obsessed with doing everything on camera. Like when he and Anna get into fights, he'll live stream it for some reason.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Murders His Wife - The Ali Abulaban story

99.693

Yeah, it's crazy. But what he doesn't ever put on camera and show his TikTok audience is the parts where he gets violent with her, which he does sometimes when they argue. He's like shoving her and punching her and stuff like that. In fact, his violent outbursts get so bad that over the course of a few months, she calls police on him nine different times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

0.189

So this guy, you know what? You're going to think I made this story up because it is wild. Now the story is about this guy, James. And James is 35 living in a small town in West Virginia. And he's kind of an awful guy. Like he drinks a lot. He abuses his wife. But one night in 1983, James gets what's coming to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

119.855

So now James is lying there unalived and Cleo is like, well, now what are we going to do? I guess they don't want grandma to go to prison for murder. And so they decide to bury the body in the backyard. And for some reason they make 17 and his younger brother do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

138.556

And so 17 and his younger brother are in the backyard digging this big ass hole and eventually the hole is big enough and they put James in there and they bury him. But now they have another problem. James's truck is there and they need to get rid of it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

155.077

And so they put their heads together and they come up with a plan to drive the truck down to the local river and push it into the water and make it look like James got into a car accident. Now, I don't know how they're going to stage a car accident while James's body is buried in the backyard, but this is their plan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

172.546

And so Cleo and Grandma and 17, they head over to the river and they take James's truck and they take their car to drive back home in. And so the two vehicles drive about 30 miles to the river and they park James's truck on a hill and 17 gets out and he starts pushing it toward the water until it starts rolling forward.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

193.522

And it rolls and it rolls and it gets close to the shore, but then bam, it stops because it gets stuck in the mud. So then Cleo and Grandma get out of the car. And I guess they're like standing there and they don't wanna go up and physically push the truck anymore because it's now in the mud and I guess they don't want their footprints all in that mud, which is smart.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

21.408

because it's late, and he comes home from the bar drunk, and he decides his wife needs to make him a snack. His wife is this woman, Cleo, and Cleo's 35. And so he yanks Cleo out of the bed, because it's the middle of the night and she's asleep, and he's yelling at her, make me some food.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

216.354

And so they're like, all right, I guess we'll just leave. But here's the thing, they locked their keys in their car. Now, why they lock their car door in the first place when they're alone out in the middle of nowhere, I have no idea. But now, they're locked out. And it's 1983, so no cell phones. However, luckily, someone passes by, and it's a small town, and they all know each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

238.572

And so this person gives them a ride back to their house so they can get a spare key and retrieve their car and go home. Then the next day, Cleo calls police and files a missing persons report for James so that she doesn't look suspicious. And immediately the police start looking and they find his truck and they start dragging the river looking for James's body.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

259.52

But of course they don't find anything and no one suspects Cleo or Grandma. So all they have to do is lay low and keep quiet and they'll never get caught. Until... A few days have passed since James's death and no one suspects a thing but Cleo is sitting at home suffering. She just can't get this whole situation out of her head. She keeps thinking about it.

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The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

284.853

James might have been an abusive asshole but she's feeling bad for his family and she's thinking that if his body is never found then he won't get a proper burial and that just doesn't feel right to her. And so she comes up with a new new plan. First, she waits until nighttime. Then she makes 17 and his brother dig James's body back up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

309.426

And so her new plan is to take James's body to the local river and throw him over the bridge near the area where they dumped his truck. And then police will find the body and they'll put two and two together and they'll assume it was a car accident and then he'll get a proper burial. Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

328.632

Well, once they finally get James out of the hole in the backyard, snap! Grandma starts freaking out because she realizes the .22 that she unalived him with is actually registered to her. She owns it. So if police find the bullet inside of James, they could trace it back to her. And so she gets yet another idea. She'll just... remove the bullet from his body.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

354.863

And so they get James's decomposing body and they put it on the kitchen table and grandma gets a big kitchen knife and she cuts it open and she starts looking around in there for a bullet, but she can't find it. So then she takes out his heart and lungs, I guess to get a better look in there, but she still can't find this bullet. So then she just gives up and she throws the heart and lungs away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

378.391

Like, okay, I guess I'm done. And so anyway, Cleo, Grandma, and 17, they load James into the car and they drive him to the river onto that bridge. And then these two women and a teenager pull his body out of the car and they yeet him over the side of the bridge. And boom, James's foot gets caught on the structure of the bridge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

38.962

And so she makes him some soup, but then he gets mad that the soup is too cold, and grrr, he slings the bowl across the kitchen, and bam, it smashes against the wall. Then he notices their wood stove had gone out. So he's all pissed off about that too. And this causes a whole big fight and he's like roughing up Cleo and he's chasing her around and he's dragging her. It is awful.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

399.467

And now the body is hanging upside down, dangling off the underside of this bridge. And they're all like, fuck, how are we going to get him down? And so Cleo and grandma, they send poor 17 to climb up under the bridge onto the under structure to try and knock James's body loose. But then in the middle of all this, out of nowhere, pow, headlights appear. It's the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

425.707

And Cleo and grandma, they panic like, oh shit. And they jump in their car and they speed away. But They leave 17 there underneath the bridge. And so then 17 freaks out and he runs off too into the woods. And police, they see James's body hanging there from the bridge. And they're like, what the fuck? What kind of hillbilly West Virginia bullshit is this?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

448.549

But anyway, police eventually find 17 in the woods and bam, they arrest him. Also, bam, they arrest Cleo, while Grandma ends up turning herself in. And so ultimately, Cleo is found guilty of disinterment of a body, and she ends up serving about two years in prison. While 17 does a little time in juvenile detention, but not very much.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

470.944

While Grandma takes a plea deal, but I guess the judge feels sorry for her because, you know, the whole self-defense of it all. And she only ends up spending 55 days in jail. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

60.859

Now, by this point, all this wakes up Cleo's son. We'll call him 17 because he's 17 and 17 is James's stepson. And I guess 17 tries to intervene and this turns into an even bigger fight. And so James ends up roughing him up too. And pretty quickly, James has Cleo and her three sons sitting at the kitchen table and he's berating them, all while holding a huge kitchen knife and shaking it at them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

87.341

Then he grabs a .22 and he starts waving it around, screaming at them. Now all this screaming wakes up this woman, Cleo's mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story

95.851

will call grandma and grandma is 55 and she lives next door and so she wakes up and she runs over and she sees james waving the 22 around and she eventually tries to grab it from him and a struggle ensues but grandma she ain't playing around and she wrestles the 22 away from his drunk ass and he lunges at her to get it back and then blam she shoots him right in the chest

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

0.109

So this girl, her name's Samantha. And Samantha really wants a relationship with her father. See, she grew up without a dad. He had abandoned her and her mom when she was born. But then she grows up, and she eventually turns 17. And she finally talks her mom into introducing her to her biological dad. This guy, Travis. So Samantha and Travis meet, and they really hit it off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

106.034

I guess it's because Travis and Samantha were posting a lot of photos together on Facebook, like, look at how cute we are, or whatever. But pretty quickly, everyone around them suspects the worst. And they're all like, ugh, this is fucked up. And then word gets back to Samantha's mom. And Samantha's mom just reports both of them to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

122.508

Because in most states, these kinds of relationships are illegal. So then police, they start investigating. So then someone, I don't know who, tips Travis and Samantha off. And they let them know that police are low-key investigating them. So then Travis and Samantha do the only thing they can think of to get themselves out of trouble. They quickly go and get married. Gross.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

143.902

Maybe they thought it would make their relationship seem more legit in the eyes of the law. I don't know, but that's not the way the law works. So them getting married definitely doesn't stop the police. In fact, police bring them in and question them about their relationship. They're like, you know, the two of you smashing is illegal, right?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

159.796

And Travis is like, nah, we're not actually biologically related. So then the police do a DNA test on them and the results come back and they show that Travis is full of shit. He is, in fact, Samantha's biological father. So they arrest Travis and Samantha and they're charged with interest. Here's his mugshot. Here's hers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

178.745

And Travis is sentenced to two years in prison while Samantha is sentenced to nine months probation. And both of them are legally banned from contacting one another. And this all happened in Nebraska, so shout out to Nebraska for being gross.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

22.544

And not only that, it turns out Travis has another daughter who's around Samantha's age. So now Samantha has this really cool half-sister. who we'll just call half sister. So Samantha is super happy and she starts spending a lot of time with them and she and her dad grow really close. In fact, I don't think a father and daughter could be any closer than these two are.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

42.994

Until about three years go by and Samantha's around 21 now. And I guess at some point half sister starts getting upset, maybe even a little jealous. See, she isn't used to having to share her dad with anyone. And as time goes by, she doesn't like all the time dad is spending with Samantha. And so half-sister and Samantha, they start bickering about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

63.703

And they decide they wanna know which one of them their dad likes more. Now I'm not sure exactly who comes up with the specific idea, but they end up in a competition to see which one of them can seduce their father first. So then boom, the competition starts and we are off to the races. And I guess Samantha cozies up to Travis and as they grow closer and closer, they start flirting a little.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Married Her Own Dad

89.423

And soon, disgustingly, Samantha wins the bet because they smash. Congratulations. So yes, Samantha and Travis smash and I guess half sister is disappointed because she didn't win. I don't know. But regardless, it's not over. Because once this happens, rumors start getting around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

0.109

So this guy, his name's Liao. And poor Liao, he just lost everything. So Liao's 23, he goes to college in Taiwan, and he's broke. So he tries making some money trading crypto. But the poor guy just fails. Big time. And Liao's like, damn, what am I gonna do now? And that is when he comes up with an extremely terrible idea to get rich. So he reaches out to his friend, this guy,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

115.845

So anyway, Zhang is sitting there with his feet in this dry ice and 10 hours go by and he's still sitting there. And when Liao finally lets him out of the chair, Zhang is hurting. I mean, he's got frostbite. Like he can't feel his legs and he needs medical attention. So they go to the hospital and the doctors look at Zhang's frostbitten legs and they're immediately like, what the f**k?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

136.016

How did this happen? And Zhang tells them that he and Liao were just out riding scooters the night before and that it was so cold out that his legs got frostbitten. And Liao's like, yep, that's exactly what happened. Here's the thing about doctors, though. They tend to know things about certain injuries and ailments. So they look at Zhang's legs and right away they know he's bullshitting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

156.653

I mean, for one, his frostbite is neat and symmetrical across both legs, which is just unlikely to happen. Plus, there are no marks from his socks or shoes, which shows he wasn't wearing any. And who the hell would ride a scooter barefoot? I mean, clearly this story isn't adding up. Anyway, so the doctors do what they can to treat Zhang, but Zhang's frostbite ends up being really bad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

176.93

Like, really bad. Like, it's not gonna heal. ever. And ultimately the doctors have to amputate both of his legs below the knee. Meanwhile, all the insurance companies that Zhang signed up for, they start receiving claims from the hospital for Zhang's frostbite injury. And one of those companies sends a compensation check to Zhang for $7,200.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

198.336

But the others, they look at this claim and they think it's awfully suspicious. I mean, this guy bought these policies literally days before he got frostbite. Come on, that seems shady. So they just don't pay him and instead they alert the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

213.007

So police, they start investigating and pretty quickly they discover that on the night that Zhang allegedly got frostbite riding his scooter, the lowest recorded temperature that night was 42 degrees Fahrenheit. which is a little chilly, but not even close to being cold enough to naturally cause frostbite.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

229.019

So eventually the police investigate Zhang and then they connect him to Liao and they get a warrant to search Liao's house. And there they find the container he used as well as the photos of Zhang on his phone. So they arrest Zhang and Liao and they charge them with fraud, among other things. And this all happened a few months ago and I couldn't find any updates on them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

24.292

Zhang to help him with this plan. And Liao and Zhang, they went to high school together and now they go to the same university. So they know each other pretty well. So Liao goes to Zhang and he lies to him like, dude, I need your help. There are dangerous gang members after me. And Zhang is like, aight. So then Liao explains this extremely terrible plan to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

246.272

So I assume they're still waiting on their trial. So shout out to Taiwan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

43.166

He wants Jong to take out a bunch of insurance policies on himself. Then he wants him to accidentally get frostbite and cash in those claims. And then Jong can give him some of that money and he can pay off these dangerous gang members that don't actually exist. And if there's any money left over, they can split it. And Jong hears this plan and he's like, aight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

61.251

So they set this scheme into motion. And over the next few days, Jong signs up for eight different insurance policies. In total, they're worth about 1.3 million US dollars. Then Liao asks Zhang to agree to sign a legal note that says when Zhang gets paid from the insurance, he agrees to pay Liao 800,000 US dollars of it. And of course, Zhang's like, aight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

81.916

And then one night in January, when the weather's finally right, the two of them ride around town on their scooters. They drive around for a while and then they stop at a local store and buy a bunch of dry ice. And then they go back to Liao's place and he gets out a chair. And he has Zhang sit in it. And then he gets a big container and he makes Zhang put his feet inside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Lost His Legs in an Insurance Scam

99.751

And then he fills the container up with dried ice. And Liao's like, this is probably going to hurt a lot, so I have to tie you up so you don't move. And Zhang's like... And so Liao zip ties him to the chair. And as they wait for the frostbite to set in, Liao snaps a bunch of photos of Zhang for some reason.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

0.089

So the apocalypse is coming and the world is about to end. According to this influencer. Her name's Danielle. So Danielle's an astrology influencer. She's got about a hundred thousand followers and she believes herself to be clairvoyant. And one day Danielle's like reading the stars or whatever and she sees something that freaks her out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

104.918

And it's speculated that she's trying to get rid of the body. But as she's standing there waiting for the elevator to arrive, she starts having second thoughts. So she drags him back down the hallway and back into her apartment and she leaves him in the kitchen. Then she takes her two daughters and she loads them in her car and she speeds away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

121.229

And she's in such a hurry when she leaves, she actually left the front door open. And on her way out, she rams into the gate in her building. But she speeds away and eventually she pulls onto the freeway. Now while driving on the freeway, she suddenly does something inexplicable. She slows the car down and she reaches over and she opens the door and she tells her daughters to get out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

141.863

Now her nine-year-old is in the front seat holding the eight-month-old and the nine-year-old refuses to get out. She's probably scared. So then Danielle does the worst thing anyone could possibly do. She forcibly pushes both of her daughters out of the moving car and onto the freeway. And once the kids have been pushed out, Danielle just floors it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

160.474

And she keeps going, and she eventually reaches over 100 miles an hour. Then, for whatever reason, she steers the car off the road, and she slams head first into a tree. Meanwhile, police, they're getting calls from people telling them that they spotted a little girl on the side of the freeway. So they race there, and that is where they find the nine-year-old daughter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

179.668

She's injured, but she somehow survived and made it to the side of the road without getting hit by oncoming traffic. But unfortunately, the eight-month-old doesn't make it. And around the same time, first responders, they find Danielle's car all wrapped around a tree. And of course, Danielle didn't make it either, and police have no idea that these two crimes are related.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

18.982

There's a solar eclipse coming in the next few months and she starts to believe that this is a sign of the coming apocalypse. So she gets on Twitter and she starts posting warnings to her 100,000 followers, saying the apocalypse is almost here, saying the solar eclipse is spiritual warfare. She also apparently casts magic spells via tweet, which I didn't even know magic worked that way, but okay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

198.278

But then, a neighbor in Danielle's building is out in the hallway, and they see a bloody trail. That trail leads directly to Danielle's apartment, where Danielle had left the door open. And there, neighbor can see inside, and they can see Jalen's legs. So they immediately call police and police come and they put two and two together and they realized Danielle had unalived them all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

219.469

That's a sad one. Shout out to mental health.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

40.334

Now Danielle lives with her boyfriend, this guy, Jalen, and with her two daughters who are nine and eight months old. And Danielle and Jalen have lived together for about three years and things have always been pretty good. But as the solar eclipse gets closer and closer, their relationship seems to deteriorate. I'm guessing because she's all stressed out about the coming apocalypse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

59.841

So the night before the eclipse, Danielle is totally on edge. She sets out candles and black feathers and tarot cards, but none of that helps. Things are getting really tense for her. And at some point during the night, she and Jalen start fighting and it gets bad, like really bad. And they start going at it and screaming at each other. And they get so loud, even the neighbors can hear them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Psychic Influencer Quickly Goes Insane - The Danielle Ayoka story

81.26

And things just keep escalating to the point where it gets physical. And then at some point, Danielle grabs a knife and she stabs Jalen right in the chest. And it's brutal. And it unalives him. And to make it even worse, her daughter is right there watching everything. Then Danielle drags Jalen out the front door and down the hallway of her apartment building. All the way to the elevator.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

0.209

One night, this guy Ryan, he's out walking three dogs. Now he's a dog walker, so he's walking them for a climb. And then suddenly, boom, a car pulls up and two men jump out. And one of them punches Ryan in the face and another tries to choke him, because they're trying to steal the dogs. But Ryan, he doesn't want to let the dogs go, so he fights back. And then one of the men pulls out a pew-pew

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

119.467

Moments later, McBride just happens to be nearby and finds the dogs. Oh, what a coinkydink. She then gets the dogs and takes them to the police station and starts asking about that Lady Gaga reward money. And now police, they immediately get suspicious and they check the surveillance footage of the area where McBride said she found the dogs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

137.658

And on the footage, they see a car pull up and someone gets out and ties the dogs to a pole. So police, they run the plate on this car and they find that the car is connected to a man named Harold White, AKA Lil Porky. So police, they look up Lil Porky's Instagram and his Facebook page and they see that he's in a relationship with McBride, the very woman who found the dogs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

158.905

Now police already have a few suspects who they feel might have been involved in the dog napping. One of those suspects being Jalen. And of course they investigate and see Lil Porky is Jalen's father. So they arrest all of them. McBride, Lil Porky, Jalen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

174.52

The other two men involved, now they all get in trouble, but McBride, she actually ends up taking a plea deal and she only gets two years probation for this scheme. Oh, but she's not done. Then McBride gets an attorney and she sues Lady Gaga for that half a million dollar reward money. Arguing that Lady Gaga's post promised anyone reward money who returned the dogs, no questions asked.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

199.153

And she returned the dogs, so she feels like she's entitled to that money. And on top of that, McBride sues her for another $1.5 million, claiming pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life as a result of not being paid the initial reward money. Luckily, the judge is sane, and pretty quickly, she's like, this lawsuit's bullshit, and she throws it out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

22.139

And then bang, he shoots Ryan in the chest. And Ryan falls to the ground while the men grab two of the dogs. And they jump in their car where a third man is driving. And the three of them speed away. And they leave Ryan for dead, bleeding out on the sidewalk. And he's still clutching the third dog while he gasps for life. Now one of the robbers is this guy, Jalen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

221.058

So anyway, Jalen ended up getting four years in prison. Other dog napper got six years in prison. I actually couldn't find Lil Porky's sentence, so I don't know. But the guy who actually pulled the trigger and shot Ryan, he got 21 years in prison. While Ryan, the hero of the story, he got rushed to the hospital. And he ended up having a collapsed lung and a bunch of complications.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

239.482

But he did survive, he did get through it, and he appears to still be working with dogs. Good for him. Shout out to bad romance.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

42.603

And Jalen and his friends had got this plan to drive around Los Angeles looking for French bulldogs to steal so that they can sell them for thousands of dollars. This is why they attacked Ryan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

52.709

But the next day after they had stolen the dogs, Jalen comes across a social media post and it shows a picture of the two Frenchies he took and it says they're missing and that there's a reward to anyone who finds them and returns them. But here's what else the post says. The dogs Jalen took actually belong to Lady Gaga. Not only that, the reward she's offering, half a million dollars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

76.98

So Jalen's like, holy jackpot. I got to get this reward money. Now, he can't return the dogs himself and collect the money. No, that would be too suspicious. So he goes and gets his dad involved. Now, his dad is also kind of a turd, and his name, and I'm not making this up, Lil Porky. Now, unfortunately, Lil Porky has a previous criminal record, so he can't return the dogs either.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Heist of Lady Gaga's Dogs - The Ryan Fischer story

98.872

So they go and get someone who won't look suspicious. Lil Porky's girlfriend, this woman, McBride. So McBride plans to pretend that she found these dogs abandoned on the side of the road, and she's going to return them and collect all that reward money. So then two days later, after the dog napping, one of them drops the dogs off at a random location and they tie them to a street pole.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

0.109

So this is Judith, and Judith is only five. But she's on her way to being a Hollywood star. However, there's a problem. Her parents don't have a lot of money. Now, her mom is Maria, and her dad is this guy, Yosef. They're on welfare, and Yosef is just a local plumber, and it doesn't help that he's constantly drinking. But one day all that changes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

102.418

And over time, his drinking starts getting worse and worse, and a mountain of resentment starts building up in him. And of course, he takes this out on his wife and daughter. And he and Maria argue and they fight a lot. And at one point, Jozef threatens to unalive Maria. Like, it gets bad. But Judith, who's around nine at this point, she doesn't let her chaotic family life stop her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

123.157

She nails audition after audition. And eventually, she's cast in a little movie you may have heard of called Jaws. Well, not Jaws, but one of the sequels, Jaws Revenge. But whatever, this is huge for her. And it's filming in the Bahamas, which means they'll get to spend a few months there. And predictably, Yosef's drunk ass isn't happy about this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

142.946

He gets insecure and worried that Maria and Judith might run off and abandon him. So the night before they leave, he corners Judith. And he pulls out a knife. And he threatens her. If you don't come back to me, I'll unalive you. And the next day, Judith and Maria leave to film Jaws. But Judith is never the same. And over the next few months, her mental health starts to decline.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

164.172

And it's beginning to show. Like she starts pulling her eyebrows out and her cat's whiskers. But this whole time, she's still acting. She's still landing roles. And she gets cast as one of the lead voices in All Dogs Go to Heaven. Goodbye, Charlie. I love you. And she's cast in what ends up being her favorite role ever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

181.84

She's the voice of Ducky in The Land Before Time, and she ends up delivering one of the most iconic catchphrases from that movie. Yep, yep, yep. But even as she continues to be successful, her home life is still chaos, and Yosef is still abusive. And one day, while at an audition, Judith just loses it. She starts crying uncontrollably and no one can get her to calm down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

206.822

While Maria, she knows all of this going on with Josef is bad for them and she's had enough. So she takes some of Judith's earnings and she secretly rents them an apartment across town to use as sort of a safe house so that she and Judith can low-key stay there during the day to avoid being around Josef as much as possible.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

22.396

See, Maria is determined to get Judith into show business. So she spends a lot of time teaching her to be poised and well-spoken. And then one day she takes Judith ice skating at an ice rink in Hollywood. Now this rink is often used as a location to film TV shows and movies. And on that day, there just happens to be a commercial crew there filming.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

225.477

And allegedly Maria's plan is to eventually take Judith and permanently move to that apartment. leaving Joseph for good. Until one day, out of nowhere, Judith doesn't show up to an important meeting. Instead, she's at home with her mom and dad. Now, this next part is actually some speculation because we don't actually know exactly how this happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

246.638

But it's speculated that on that day, Josef finds out about Maria's secret apartment and about her plans to eventually take Judith and leave him. And when he finds this out, he just loses it. And so he goes and he gets his pew-pew and he aims it at Maria and he pulls the trigger. Then he walks into Judith's bedroom and while she's sitting there on the bed, he unalives her too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

271.427

She was only 10 years old. Then, at some point after, he dumps gasoline on them, and he sets them ablaze. And then he goes into the garage with his pew-pew, and he unalives himself. I guess they didn't have a lot of outside family because sadly, Judith and Maria were buried in a local cemetery in unmarked graves. But then, 16 years later, fans of Judith raised money and got them headstones.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

297.656

And on Judith's headstone, they made sure to put a quote from her favorite acting role. Yep, yep, yep.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

42.092

And allegedly there's a director there and he sees little Judith ice skating and he ends up casting her in a different shoot he's doing. And from there, boom, Judith's career takes off. She gets an agent and she lands her first commercial role for Donald Duck Orange Juice. And after that, she starts working more and more and gets placed in other commercials.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

60.381

Then she gets her first role in a TV series called Fatal Vision, where she plays a little girl who's unalived by her father. Then she gets cast in Twilight Zone, Punky Brewster, Growing Pains, Cheers. And within a few short years, Judith is pulling in over $100,000 a year from her acting. And Yosef and Maria start to see their bank account slowly climb out of the red.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Was Murdered - The Judith Barsi story

82.22

And eventually they have enough saved to buy their own three bedroom house in a decent neighborhood. This is a dream for them. And everyone is happy for Judith. Except for Yosef. Yosef isn't a TV star, he's just a working man. And his young daughter is making significantly more money than him, making him no longer the breadwinner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

0.069

Do you remember that show Smallville? Well this Smallville actress got involved in a cult and she apparently tried to pull Emma Watson into it as well. Now the woman's name is Allison. She's 18 during this time. She's an actress and she's been on the Hollywood grind for over a decade. She was in Camp Nowhere. She was in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. She was in Seventh Heaven.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

102.258

And so they tell her they can help her out and that joining them will solve all her problems and will advance her acting career and all this nonsense. One of them even flies Allison on a private jet to go and meet the founder of this self-help group. The founder is this guy, Keith. And Keith, he's a weird dude. But he's extremely smart. Or at least he claims he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

125.55

He claims he's some kind of genius. And he takes himself very seriously. He and the other members call him Vanguard and sh- But we're not gonna call him that because that's actually stupid. Anyway, so Allison's like, alright, maybe this guy can help me. And so she decides to join Keith and NXIVM. And from here, she gets sucked into the world of this cult.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

147.919

And they give her a sense of community, and they promise to fix whatever's bothering her and help her acting career. And honestly, she feels pretty good about these people and about this place. And over the next few years, she gets more and more dedicated to NXIVM and to Keith. And Keith, he starts making extreme demands from her and the other members.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

169.154

Like he'll tell them to lick up a puddle of mud or run headfirst into a tree. And I guess the members will just like do it like, okay, here we go. He also teaches them bullshit like how women should be monogamous, but men are supposed to be polygamous, which just ends up being a sleazy way for him to get laid with multiple partners.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

188.209

Regardless, all of this conditioning works on Allison and she gets more and more isolated from the outside world and she starts losing friends outside the cult. And pretty quickly, her whole world revolves around Keith. In fact, it's rumored that she and Keith start smashing. And while that seems very likely, in my opinion, that isn't actually confirmed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

212.893

Now, by this point, it's 2011 and Smallville has wrapped, like the show's done. And Allison isn't really acting much anymore. All her time is completely invested in this cult. Like she's out here making recruitment videos for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

234.437

And eventually, around 2015 or so, Keith lets Allison in on this big secret project he's doing called DOS, aka The Vow. And this is where the group members will have, and I'm not making this up, master-slave relationships.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

24.072

But one day in 2001, her whole life changes because she gets cast in this new show called Smallville about a young Superman, and Allison plays his sidekick. And this role is great for her, and she's really good in it. But despite this success, she can't help but feel like there's something missing in her life. And that feeling is about to get her in a lot of trouble.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

252.366

Specifically, I think they mostly mean sex slave, which is pretty much just a scheme that Keith comes up with so that he can surround himself with submissive women to smash with. So anyway, in this master-slave scenario, Keith himself is a master. But he also puts Allison in a master role so that she can go out and recruit slaves.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

274.703

And Allison, she really wants to please Keith, so she puts a lot of effort into her role. And she recruits as many women into this cult slave program as she can. And she'll generally lure the women in by telling them that they're joining a female mentorship program or like a women's movement.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

292.959

And once the women are in and they become full-fledged members and they're all brainwashed, that is when they get blackmailed. Like the cult will make them hand over what they call collateral, which is basically embarrassing or incriminating stuff about them like nudes. And they threaten to release this collateral everywhere if these members disobey or reveal anything to the public about the cult.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

316.937

And once they get the collateral, Allison and the cult will force them to basically become sex slaves, where they have to smash with their master. And a master is a cult member with many slaves. Most masters have like five or six slaves. One master claimed that they have... 22 slaves that they're smashing with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

337.448

And if that isn't bad enough, they then force the slaves to get a symbol branded on their pelvises. The symbol is actually a mashup of Keith's and Allison's initials. And so who sits at the top of this weird master-slave pyramid? Of course, the self-proclaimed genius himself, Keith.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

357.604

Keith has declared that he is allowed to smash with any of the slaves, and apparently if they refuse, then their collateral will be made public. And allegedly Keith himself has more than 50 slaves in this pyramid. And not only that, it seems like Allison even tries to recruit Emma Watson, Hermione herself, into this cult by tweeting at her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

382.871

I'm a fellow actress like yourself and involved in an amazing women's movement. I think you'd dig. I'd love to chat. And a month later, she tries again. I participate in a unique women's movement I'd love to tell you about. And then three weeks later, she tries a third time. I don't think Emma Watson ever wrote her back. Hermione ain't trying to be a no-sex cult.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

404.746

But anyway, with all of the power Keith and the Masters hold over each of these slave members, it seems like he and Allison and the others can keep this weird-ass sex pyramid scheme going, like, forever. Until. Okay, at some point, some of the members and former members, I guess they have a moment where they're all like, you know, this is kind of weird, right?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

430.279

And so one of them or all of them get in contact with the New York Times and they expose everything. The abuse, the branding, the master-slave relationships, all of it. And then in 2017, kaboom, the New York Times publishes the story and it goes public. And people read it and they're like, oh, snap, the girl from Smallville is in a sex cult. And that gets the attention of the FBI.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

457.394

And so the FBI starts investigating. And Keith, I guess he gets word that the FBI is looking into him. And he leaves town and he moves from New York all the way down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. But unfortunately for him, the feds are pretty good at what they do, and they're also pretty good at finding people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

478.501

So in 2018, they find him in Mexico, and with the help of the Mexican feds, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

49.467

Now, Allison has a friend, this woman, Kristen. And Kristen is also an actor on Smallville. And Kristen apparently understands that Allison is feeling lost and she wants to help her out. So one day in 2006, she invites her to a meeting with a self-help group. which is part of a larger organization called Nexium. And so Allison is like, self-help. All right. And she decides to give it a shot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

495.514

And shortly after that, in New York, bam, they arrest Allison too. Here's her mugshot. They also arrest some of the other cult members, the ones who rank high. And Allison takes a plea deal, and she gets sentenced to three years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

510.248

While Keith, he gets charged with a bunch of stuff, including sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of a minor, because I guess one of the girls in the cult was underage, and he gets sentenced to 120 years in prison. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Hollywood Sex Cult

76.726

And so Allison goes to this group and this group ends up being straight up a cult. But Allison, she's naive. She doesn't know that. And so she meets a bunch of people there, including a few women who low-key want to recruit her into this cult real bad. And they want to recruit her because she's on TV. She's moderately famous. And having famous members always makes cults look more legit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

0.089

So this absolute psychopath mom will do anything to make sure her daughter succeeds. Anything. Now her name is Nancy. She's 56, living in Texas, and one day in 2015, Nancy gets some crazy news. Her daughter didn't make the high school dance team. So Nancy hears this news and she is Devastated, how could her daughter not make the team? This is the end of the world.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

120.337

And so now, since the team sucks, Kylie or her mom doesn't want her to be on it anymore. So then Nancy transfers Kylie to a different school where Kylie doesn't even try out for the dance team. After all that. I guess she gave up. I don't know. I don't think Kylie ever cared as much about dance as her mom did.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

141.306

But anyway, now I assume Nancy's all mad because her precious daughter will never go on to be a rangerette. Now, you would think at this point, all this drama would be over. Oh, no, no. It's just getting started. Because about a year later in 2016, Nancy is driving home from shopping and she passes by a car and she spots one of Kylie's ex-boyfriends driving it. And he is with some girl.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

170.508

And I guess Nancy's like, I need to see who this new girl is that ex-boyfriend appears to be dating. And she decides to turn around and follow him. She even puts on a wig so that he won't recognize her following him because I guess she just happens to have a spare wig in her car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

187.354

So she starts following him for a while and eventually she stops and she pulls over and she starts looking him and the girl he's with up on Facebook. I guess she's trying to figure out what's the deal with this new girl. Okay, now, there's this whole gossipy section of this story that I'm going to skip over because it's boring and stupid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

207.009

All you need to know about Nancy's impromptu Facebook stalking is that she ends up on the page of this girl, Alexa. Now, Alexa, she used to go to high school with Kylie. She was on the dance team with her, and she actually has since gone on to make the Rangerettes. So she's now a Rangerette. Also, there's Alexa's mom, who we'll just call Alexa's mom. And mom is the director of the Rangerettes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

234.145

So maybe, maybe Nancy's looking at their Facebook profiles feeling a little jealousy and resentment. But regardless, Nancy knows that Alexa is possibly friends with ex-boyfriend's new girl. And Nancy's like, I want information on this new bitch. I'm going to go get it out of Alexa. And then for whatever weird ass reason, in that moment, Nancy just snaps.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

259.591

She is going to get this information from Alexa. And so she drives right over to Alexa's house because they live in the area. And from here, she makes sure she has her wig on so no one will recognize her. Then she grabs a pew pew and a roll of duct tape because I guess she keeps those things in her car as well. Then, out of her trunk, she grabs a very large, novelty-sized snowman Christmas card.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

28.349

Now, her daughter is this girl, Kylie. And why is it so important that Kylie makes this team? Because if Kylie doesn't make the high school dance team, then she won't be able to later make the local college precision dance team, the rangerettes. And in this area of Texas, being a rangerette is a huge deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

283.563

And she keeps a lot of weird in her car. Then, she goes and she knocks on Alexa's door. Now, really quick, just to remind you, Nancy is doing all this because she's trying to get information about a random girl who her daughter's ex-boyfriend is dating. It's not even her boyfriend. It's her 18 or 19 year old daughter's ex-boyfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

306.303

Anyway, so Alexa's mom answers the door and Nancy has the snowman greeting card covering the lower half of her face. And she's like, hi, can I speak with Alexa? And Alexa's mom doesn't want to be rude, so she invites her in. And the second Nancy sees Alexa, boom, she pulls out her pew-pew. And they're like, oh, shit!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

324.418

Then Nancy takes their phones from them, and she starts scrolling through Alexa's contacts, looking for this girl's phone number. Then, when she doesn't find it, she makes sure Alexa and her mom's wrists are bound with the duct tape she brought. Then she lets them know that she's about to kidnap Alexa. Like, we're gonna take a drive! But see, Alexa's smart. She's gonna try and get out of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

345.773

And she's like, oh, can I grab my shoes first? And Nancy's like... All right. And so Nancy follows Alexa into the other room to get her shoes. And that is when, pow, Alexa's mom rips off the duct tape and she runs out the door and down the street and she's screaming, home invasion, home invasion. Meanwhile, Nancy forces Alexa into her car and skrrt, they speed away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

368.575

Now in the car, Nancy continues to be a total nutcase. She's asking Alexa things like, do you think you're perfect because you're a rangerette? And how are you so calm? Is that because of your rangerette training? This woman is insane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

382.622

Now eventually they pull up to a storage facility that Nancy had previously rented and she gets out and she forces Alexa inside and then she has her lay down and she wraps her up with duct tape because now it's time to unalive her. So then suddenly, boom, Nancy puts both her hands on Alexa's neck and she starts choking her harder and harder until Alexa passes out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

407.081

Sometime later, she wakes up and Nancy is still there in the storage unit with her. And she's like, damn, you're still alive? I guess Nancy's disappointed that Alexa didn't die? Anyway, lucky for Alexa, Nancy is apparently late for dinner. I guess she really wants dinner. So she just straight up leaves. And she leaves Alexa tied up in the storage unit to just die.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

430.68

However, Alexa, she ain't no punk. She isn't about to die in this dusty ass storage unit. Now her legs are apparently really strong from all those years of dance and all that rangerette kicking she's been doing. And so she uses all her strength and she kicks and she kicks and pow! She breaks the tape from around her ankles. Then she frees her wrists.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

452.05

Then she gets up and she runs the out of that storage unit, which I guess wasn't locked for some reason? Then she scales two fences and then finally she runs to a random person's house and she asks them to call 911. Meanwhile, Nancy at this point, she's at home. She's chilling. She's eating dinner like she wanted, like nothing happened. Like she didn't just kidnap someone at gunpoint.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

474.795

And of course, eventually police show up and they're all banging on her door and they question her and Nancy completely denies everything. She's like, what? I didn't kidnap anyone. I don't even know those people. And police, they know she's full of shit. And so, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

49.099

And so anyway, Nancy is pissed off and she is not gonna give up on getting her daughter on the high school team. She is gonna make sure she eventually becomes a rangerette. So for months, Nancy goes to the school board and she complains and she demands that they reinstate Kylie like, my daughter was treated unfairly. And she claims that her daughter was discriminated against because she's tall.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

492.302

And she's ultimately charged with kidnapping, and she takes a plea deal, and she's sentenced to five years in prison. Also, Alexa and her mom sue Nancy, and she's forced to pay them $575,000. Good for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

71.449

I guess Kylie is slightly taller than the other girls, so Nancy is playing the discrimination card. Here's the thing though. It actually works. The school board ultimately gives up and sides with her and rules that the coach has to let Kylie onto the high school dance team. So then now coach is pissed. She doesn't like being second guessed by the school board. And here's the best part.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dance Mom Goes Crazy - The Nancy Motes story

95.844

I guess coach is just a petty person because she says this and she resigns over this. But right before she does, she lets everyone on the dance team. Like any student who tried out, she lets them on the team. So it actually floods the team with all kinds of amateur dancers, and now suddenly the team sucks. I aspire to be that petty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

0.349

Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zähnen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen, Alturs buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Alturs, alles aber günstig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

107.989

Sie sprechen mit den Berichten und sie kommen auf die Kamera, beggen, dass Jennifer sicher zurückkommt. Jennifer's family even offers a $100,000 reward for any information that helps them find her. But still, they got nothing. No significant evidence, no meaningful leads. Jennifer is just gone. Until it's 1.30 a.m. Auf dem Tag ihres und John Masons geplante Gebets.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

132.939

Und John Mason bekommt eine Telefonnummer. Und um Gottes Willen, zu seiner Überraschung, ist es Jennifer. Sie weint und sie ist frantisch, aber sie ist lebendig. Und seltsam ist, dass sie von einem Payphone an einem 7-Eleven an der anderen Seite des Landes ruft. Wie in der Hölle ist sie da gekommen? Nun, hier ist, was sie sagt, ist passiert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

151.633

Also, drei Nächte zuvor ist Jennifer im Joggen, so wie sie es normalerweise macht, als plötzlich, boom, ein blauer Van rutscht auf und zwei Leute springen raus. Ein hispanischer Mann und eine schwere weiße Frau. Und sie holen Jennifer, und sie holen sie in den Van, und sie steigen weg. Und während sie im Hintergrund ihres Vans ist, öffnen sie sie mit einem Rad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

168.258

Und dann drehen sie sich um, und sie testen sie. Und dann fahren sie von Georgia bis in Albuquerque, New Mexico. bevor sie sie in einem 7-Eleven Parkplatz verlassen. Und dann ruft sie ihre Freundin aus einem Payphone an und sagt, dass sie sich verletzt hat, aber dass sie nicht verletzt war. Das ist also, was sie sagt, passiert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

186.066

Die Albuquerque Polizei geht und holt sie aus diesem 7-Eleven Parkplatz. Währenddessen sind ihre Freunde und Familie und John Mason zu Hause. Sie sind alle überrascht. Ich meine, sie wurde gefunden und sie ist lebendig und sie ist nicht wirklich physisch verletzt. Aber in Albuquerque haben die FBI einige Fragen. So they go to the police station to talk to Jennifer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

204.996

Because they need more information on this Hispanic man and this heavyset white woman who are apparently just running around kidnapping people. So they sit Jennifer down and they start asking her questions. And she describes the essay and everything that happened in detail. Aber ziemlich schnell merkt die FBI, dass etwas in dieser Geschichte nicht mehr dazugehört.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

225.189

Die Details verändern sich immer und sie fummelt. Und sie kann nicht daran erinnern, was Menschen normalerweise erinnern würden. Also werden sie bescheuert. Und in dieser Interview beginnen sie, einige ihrer Befragungen zu challenge. Und ihre Fragen werden immer schwieriger und schwieriger. Und diese sind Fragen, die Jennifer einfach nicht bereit ist. Aber sie steckt zu ihrer Geschichte.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

244.783

Und dann gehen die Stunden vorbei und sie pressen sie immer noch hart. Und dann endlich, nach all dem, nach Stunden da zu sein, gibt sie in. Und sie droppt eine Bombe auf sie. Sie verurteilt ihnen, dass sie nie verabschiedet wurde. Es gab nie einen blauen Van oder einen hispanischen Mann oder eine hevige weiße Frau. Sie hat es alles aufgemacht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

267.207

Sie war nur nervös über ihr 600-Menschen-Bereich und sie wollte es wegwerfen. Aber ich glaube, sie hatte nicht die Macht, es einfach wegzumachen. So, she left town, hopped on a bus to Las Vegas for a couple of days, and then later she went to Albuquerque. A trip just long enough to miss her wedding.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

27.217

Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf alturs.de.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

284.706

And there is where she called her fiancé John Mason from a payphone and made up this whole fake kidnapping story. So, then what happened to Jennifer? Well, she was not arrested, but she was eventually charged with making false statements to the police and falsely reporting a crime. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

30.058

One night a man calls police and he's panicking and he tells them his fiance has gone missing. She went for a jog one night like she normally does and then she just vanished and never came home. And he is convinced that something really bad has happened to her. So police, they hear this and they spring into action.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

300.786

And she took a plea deal and got two years probation and had to pay $13,000 restitution to the city. And I know this is gonna shock you, but she and her fiancé did not end up getting married. Good for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

50.333

Das eröffnet sofort einen Mannhunt und die Leute in der Gemeinschaft organisieren sich schnell. Sie machen Telefonnachrichten und stellen Flyer. Und am nächsten Tag suchen 250 Volonteure aktiv für diese missgenossene Frau. Und sie kümmern die Gegend für jede Bezeichnung von ihr. Aber so weit nichts. Nun, die Frau, die verloren ist, ist Jennifer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

71.934

Und Jennifer wird mit dem Mann, der die Polizei angerufen hat, verheiratet. Diesen Mann, John Mason. Und es war eine große Geburtstagssache. 600 Leute wurden eingeladen. Sie hatte 14 Brüder. Aber leider, vier Tage vor der Geburtstagssache, war es dann, als sie joggen lief, und dann war es dann, als sie verschwunden ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of The Runaway Bride - The Jennifer Wilbanks story

88.237

Und so alle in der Gemeinschaft, sie reisen zusammen und sie beginnen, für sie zu suchen. Aber trotzdem haben die Polizei bis jetzt keine Führung. Also muss die FBI involviert werden. Und diese Geschichte macht nationales News, wie jeder darüber spricht. Und Jennifers Familie, wie ihre Eltern und ihre Freundin, sind alle traurig. Sie halten nachtliche Vigilen für sie. Billboards werden aufgemacht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

0.129

So this guy, his name's Phil and Phil hates his job. He hates how he's treated. He hates how little they pay him. He hates the way his bosses talk to him. So one day he's like, screw this. I'm going to rob this place. Now the place Phil works at, it isn't going to be easy to rob because old Phil, he doesn't like work at Chipotle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

114.319

Now in this moment, Phil has made off with just around $19 million in cash, which at the time of this happening is the largest heist in US history. Now, with all of the places Phil could go with this money, he first decides to drive home to his house. And there he forces James Brown out of the van and into the house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

136.017

And then he shoves him into a closet and he handcuffs him to a pipe and he just leaves him there. Then he drives away. Poor Dan, he's still handcuffed in the back. But Phil drives as far away as he can, all through the night, about 450 miles away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

150.626

The next morning, he pulls up to a wooded area in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and he forces Dan to get out of the van, and he marches him down the side of a hill. And there, he just handcuffs him to a tree. And then he drives away, and he heads to a storage facility about an hour away. And there, he had rented a storage unit using a fake ID about four years ago.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

169.853

I told you he had been planning to do this for a long time. But once he's at the storage unit, he starts unloading all the money he stole into it. The next morning, Phil is long gone. And he's taken a little bit of that money with him. And he's on a bus headed to Mexico where he plans to start his new life. While poor Dan is stuck out in the woods, handcuffed to a tree.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

190.168

But after some maneuvering with a Swiss army knife, he's able to escape and he finds a park ranger. And then they call police who are able to rescue James Brown, who is still handcuffed in the closet in Phil's house. Now, almost $19 million, that's a lot of money. In fact, it's so much money, that means the FBI has to come and take over the case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

20.633

He works at Loomis Fargo, the company that drives the armored trucks to go pick up money from banks and other businesses. So Phil's been working at Loomis for over 10 years. And for five of those years, he's been planning this big heist where he's gonna teach his bosses a lesson by stealing millions of dollars from their vault. And so the day comes and the timing is perfect.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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And so they put out information to law enforcement all over the country that they're looking for this guy, Phil. Meanwhile, Phil, he's just chilling in a suburb of Mexico City, trying to lay low.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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And there, he opens several bank accounts under fake names, and then he's able to make a bunch of trips back and forth from Mexico City to North Carolina to retrieve his stolen money from his storage unit little by little. And it sounds crazy, but it seems like Phil's plan is actually working. Until five months go by. And Phil, he's at the US-Mexico border.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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He's trying to cross because he's on a trip to pick up some of his stolen money from that storage unit. And while he's at the border, a customs agent starts asking him standard questions. Like, where are you traveling from? How long are you staying? Stuff like that. And Phil, for some reason, he starts to get a little attitude with her. Like, mind your own business, lady. Damn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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So this customs agent, she pulls him aside and runs his ID. And what do you know? Boom. The name he's using comes back as having been flagged as an alias for the man wanted for stealing almost $19 million from his former employer. And so, kapow, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. I guess he refused to look at the camera, so they had to hold his head up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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Anyway, so then the feds find his storage unit with all the money in it. And in that unit, they also find the tapes with all the security footage on it showing him committing the crime. Womp womp. So then Phil goes to trial. He's found guilty and he's sentenced to 25 years in prison. And he actually served 22 of them and he got out a few years ago. So shout out to Jacksonville.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

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And Phil is ready to execute his plan. So there he is on his shift, driving the armored truck around, picking up deliveries. And when he's done, he drives back to the company warehouse. And by this point in the day, Phil has collected millions of dollars in money drops. Not to mention there's even more money in the vault.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

59.91

So Phil starts unloading all of this collected money into the vault with two of his coworkers, this guy, Dan, and this other guy, James Brown. So they're all there unloading this money. And when his coworkers backs are turned, boom, Phil pulls out his pew pew and he points it at them and he forces them on the ground. And they're all like, man, what the f***, Phil?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

79.753

But whatever, Phil handcuffs them and puts shackles on them. And then he starts to take the cash out of the vault and he loads it into an unmarked company van. Two hours later, he's loaded all the money he can, about a half ton worth of cash. And once the van is full of money, Phil forces Dan and James Brown into the back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Largest Heist in US History - The Philip Johnson story

98.188

Then he goes to the surveillance room and he finds all the security footage from that day. Footage of him committing this crime and he steals all the tapes so there's no evidence of him doing it. Then he hops into the van with Dan and James Brown still handcuffed in the back and he speeds away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

0.109

So this guy, his name's Kai. And Kai has a problem. He just unalived a guy with his bare hands. And now he's on the run. Now, Kai, he's a hippie. He's a free spirit. He's kind of homeless and kind of traveling around America. But one day, he's out hitchhiking in California, and someone pulls over to give him a ride. This man, Jet. And Jet's like, hop in, buddy. And off they go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

112.114

And then finally he swings with the bladed side. Boom! And this stops Jet dead in his tracks. Jet falls to the ground, injured, no longer a threat. And just like that, Kai is a hero. I mean, he saved that woman's life. And then fast forward to a few hours later, police and paramedics and local news, they've all shown up to the scene. And a reporter goes to interview Kai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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And so Kai gets on camera and he explains what happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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And that. becomes the moment a viral video is born. This video blows up on YouTube, and it starts trending. And people are sharing it around, and they're making remixes, and they're making t-shirts with Smash, Smash, Smash on them. And this story is everywhere, and Kai is getting really popular. He's doing interviews on TV. He gets invited to go on Jimmy Kimmel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

174.61

And there's allegedly talk of him getting his own reality show. And Kai, he's having a great time with all this. I mean, it seems like his life is really starting to turn around. Second on two. About three months later, after the viral moment, Kai takes a trip to New York. And while he's there, in Times Square, he meets this man, Joseph. Joseph is 73. He's a lawyer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

196.36

And Kai and Joseph, they really hit it off. Joseph offers him a ride. And then he invites him over to his house in New Jersey. And then they have dinner. And Kai crashes there. And Kai stays with Joseph for two nights. And then on the second night, something crazy happens. Kai ends up unaliving Joseph. And I'll get to why. But fast forward to Monday morning and Joseph, he doesn't show up to work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

219.375

So his friends call police to do a welfare check. And so police show up to his house and they check through the whole place. And there in the bedroom, they find Joseph in his underwear, unalived. He had been beaten to death. Now in the living room, they find a piece of paper near Joseph's laptop with a name and phone number on it. Kai's name and phone number.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

240.25

So Kai immediately becomes the number one suspect. But by the time police find Joseph's body, Kai has already left town. He flees to Philadelphia where he's trying to lay low. But unfortunately for Kai, disappearing is way harder than it used to be, now that he's got all this internet fame. So yeah, someone spots him pretty quickly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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So they're driving along, and they get to talking, and they get to token a little Zaza. And for some reason, Jet suddenly just snaps and has a complete psychotic break. He starts telling Kai that he's actually Jesus. He's swerving all over the road. He goes on about how he hasn't slept properly in weeks and about how he essayed a girl. He's shouting racist things. I mean, all kinds of stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

258.76

And three days later, police find him at a Starbucks and they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And so they charge him with Joseph's murder. Here's the thing though. Kai absolutely unalived Joseph that night. That much he admits to. But what's called into question is why he did it. So here's what Kai says happened on that night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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On the second night he was staying at Joseph's, Kai and Joseph are just chilling. And Joseph makes Kai some burgers and he serves him a few beers. But then, according to Kai, Joseph slips something into his beer. Because pretty quickly, Kai passes out. Hours later, he suddenly wakes up, with Joseph standing over him in his underwear. Allegedly he was attempting to SA him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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So Kai just flips out and loses it and he punches him and he elbows him and he knees him in the head and pretty quickly Joseph goes down and Kai just kicks him over and over again until he's no longer alive. And the beating is pretty brutal. Now to be clear, the essay of it all hasn't been substantiated, that's just what Kai says happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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While police and prosecuting attorneys on the other hand, they say that Kai's story is bullshit. They say he's a mentally ill guy who just happens to have a very violent streak. Regardless, Kai's still unalived a guy, so he goes to trial, he's found guilty of first degree murder, and he's sentenced to 57 years in prison. And by the way, Kai still has a YouTube channel and sometimes he posts videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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from prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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And Kai, he tries his best to act chill. But then Jet sees a group of gas and electric workers on the side of the road. And suddenly, skrrt, he swerves right into them and pow! He hits one of them, a black man, pinning him between his car and another truck. And then Jet hops out of the car and he yells, I am Jesus Christ. And he starts shouting racial slurs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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And then he makes his way over to the worker who's still stuck. And he starts trying to tug him out, which is actually doing more harm than good. But then this former nurse, she happens to be walking by and she sees all this. So she immediately runs over to help. But Jet, who's 6'4", 300 pounds, he just picks her up. And he starts hitting her and she starts trying to fight him off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Kai The Hitchhiker

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But Jet, he's just too strong. And it looks like he's really about to hurt her. Until... Kai, he notices all this is going on. And he knows he has to do something. So he reaches into his backpack and he grabs a hatchet and he leaps into action. He runs over to Jet and he swings the blunt side of the hatchet hard. Boom! Striking Jet on the head. And then he swings again. Boom!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

0.089

So this man, he loves this woman so much that he gets mad, and he ends up blinding her. Now his name's Bert, and Bert's a lawyer. He's also kind of a weird guy. But one day, Bert meets this woman, Linda. And Bert thinks Linda is foine, and he wants to be with her real bad. So he tries everything he can to win her over. He takes her out on expensive dates. He buys her gifts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

114.56

He starts throwing rocks at her window all the time, trying to intimidate her, telling her he'll have people come and unalive her. And as you can imagine, none of that works in terms of winning Linda back. She's still not with Bert. She's not gonna get with Bert. She's still engaged to Larry. And so finally, after all that, Bert just loses it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

133.408

He's gonna make sure that if he can't have Linda, no one else is going to want her. So he goes and he hires three goons to disfigure her. And so one morning, it's a normal day and she's at her house. And the doorbell rings, so she goes to answer it. And there's three men standing there, and they act like they have a delivery for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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But one of them has a jar in his hand, and then boom, he throws a liquid in her face, and she screams, because this liquid, it immediately starts to burn. So what is in that liquid? A bunch of lye. You remember that chemical burn scene from Fight Club that burned Edward Norton's hand? That's lye. And that's what they threw in her face. So it's immediately burning her up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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And an ambulance comes and rushes her to the hospital. And there, Linda spends about three months undergoing multiple surgeries, trying to recover. But unfortunately, this attack ultimately leaves her permanently blind in one of her eyes and partially blind in her other eye. And to make things even worse, shortly after she's discharged from the hospital, she has a long talk with Larry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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And they decide to call off the engagement. They think Burt is too dangerous of a person and that he's probably going to try and hurt Larry next. So, no more engagement. Four months later, police finally track down the goons who Burt hired to attack Linda. And they give in and they confess to doing it, but they say it was all Burt's idea. So then, pow! Wow, Bert gets arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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Now, I don't have his mugshot, but I do have a picture of him getting arrested. So he gets sentenced to a minimum 15 years in prison, but he still has a huge problem, because he's very much still in love with Linda, and he's not just gonna let her go. So while he's in prison, he starts to write letters to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

234.54

He tells her he misses her, he tells her he's still crazy about her, and poor Linda, her attacker's now in prison, but even still, her life just isn't going so well. She's nearly blind now. She's struggling financially. She's living all by herself in Manhattan. So she gets lonely, and she starts to write him back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

25.577

He parks outside her house every morning so he can give her a ride to work. And lucky for him, it kind of works. She eventually gives in and she agrees to date him and they end up in a relationship. But that's when things go horribly wrong because they date for about a year. And then one night during one of their dates, he drops a bomb on her. Burt is actually already married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

251.571

And Bert, when he learns about her financial situation, he starts to send her a little money. I guess he had been doing paralegal work on the side in prison. And whatever little money he makes, he sends to her. And she needs that money, so they stay in regular contact. And 14 years go by, and they're still in contact. And finally, one day, Bert's sentence is over. He gets released from prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

271.986

And once he's out, he and Linda start meeting up again. And old Bert, he's actually getting a bit of media attention since his release because he's the guy who made the news years ago because he hired a couple of men to blind his ex-girlfriend by throwing lye in her face. So he's kind of locally infamous and he gets invited to do an interview on TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

290.757

So he goes on this live TV show and while he's there, during the interview, he turns to the camera and he proposes to Linda in front of the whole world. And of course, because, you know, life isn't fair and we live on a f***ed up planet, Linda says yes. And only eight months after he's released from prison, Linda married the man who blinded her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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And they live happily ever after, and here's what they look like in real life. Until over 20 years go by. And by this time, Bert has cheated on Linda with multiple women. Because of course he has. But one of his mistresses comes forward one day, and she says she and Bert have had a fling for the past five years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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but that recently he had been harassing her and threatening her with violence, the same thing he used to do to Linda. So this mistress, she goes and she files charges against him, and the case eventually goes to court, and Linda actually appears in court as a character witness for Bert. She's like, oh no, he would never hurt anyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

353.919

And ultimately, Bert beats most of the charges, but he does get convicted of second degree harassment. So the couple continues on with their marriage. And then about 15 years after that trial, unfortunately, Linda passes away. And then in a weird twist, years later, when Bert is 93, his much younger caretaker allegedly swindles him out of his $15 million fortune, like right before he dies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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But that's a whole other story that's currently playing out in the courts right now. So shout out to New York.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

48.306

He's already got a wife and kid and this news devastates Linda like she's real pissed off, but he tells her no look.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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It's fine I'm actually in the process of getting a divorce, but still Linda doesn't like this at all So then Burt tries everything he can to win her back He even shows up one day and shows her divorce papers But when she investigates those divorce papers turn out to be fake so Linda she says all this. And she drops Bert for good. She is done with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

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And shortly after that, she composes herself and she moves on with her life. And she meets this guy, Larry. And she and Larry, they start dating and Larry's a nice guy. And then after a few months, they get engaged. And then Bert, he hears about this engagement and he is not taking it well. He's angry and he starts flipping out and he decides he is not going to give up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Marries Man After He Blinded Her - The Burt Pugach and Linda Pugach story

95.29

And he becomes obsessed with getting Linda back. He's calling her all the time and sending her letters and flowers and gifts. He even starts contacting her friends, asking them to deliver messages to her. But unfortunately for him, none of that works. So he tries the only other thing he can think of. He starts threatening her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

0.149

So one night this guy comes home and his entire house has been trashed like someone broke in and then all of a sudden BAM an intruder grabs him from behind and then another intruder pulls out a knife and they force him to his knees and that is when one of them pulls out a pew-pew and he points it at the man's head and he pulls the trigger So the guy who pulled the trigger, his name's Billy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

101.388

And with this plan, she goes to Billy and she starts telling him that Greg has been abusive and that she can't divorce him because then he'll get mad and retaliate. And most importantly, she says that she just wishes there was someone who could unalive him. And of course, Billy, who's very much in love, he hears this and he agrees to be that someone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

121.043

Now, Billy, he isn't really a killer and he has a lot of trouble bringing himself to do this. So he asks his friend Patrick to come along and help him. And then Patrick agrees and Pamela lays down a plan. And she sets an actual date for the unaliving to happen, May 1st. So then boom, May 1st comes along. And as planned, Billy and Patrick, they break into Greg and Pamela's condo,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

142.583

And then they trash the whole place to make it look like a robbery. And then they both wait there in the dark for Greg to come home. And then sometime later, he does. Greg finally arrives. He parks his car. He walks in the front door. And then all of a sudden, bam, Billy grabs him from behind. And Patrick, he pulls out a knife. And they quickly get Greg to his knees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

161.038

And that is when Billy points the pew-pew at Greg's head and he pulls the trigger. And later that night, Pamela gets home and she finds Greg there on the floor, unalived. And she pretends to be surprised and she calls police and the police, they start investigating. And so then weeks go by and police so far haven't made any arrests.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

181.996

Now, Billy and Patrick and their friends, they aren't very good at keeping secrets. So they start gossiping about it and word gets around school and soon enough, one of their classmates hits up police and tells them everything. So police bring in Billy and Patrick and they question them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

197.93

And these poor guys, they immediately crack under pressure and they tell police the whole thing, including that Pamela was actually the mastermind behind the murder. So now police know that Pamela's involved, but they have to prove it. Otherwise, it's just Billy and Patrick's word against hers. Now that classmate that had hit up police and snitched also mentioned the name of this girl, Cecilia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

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Cecilia is also 16, she goes to their school, and she's also Pamela's student intern, so she works with her. She also also just happens to be Pamela's friend. Because I guess 22-year-old Pamela just likes hanging out with high school students. But anyway, police find this out and they approach Cecilia and they scare her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

22.258

And he's only 15, about to be 16. And one day, he's at school. And his school makes all the students do these dumb drug awareness rallies. So he's got to go there with his whole class. And it's so lame. But then, while he's there, he notices the media director, this woman, Pamela. And Pamela is 22. And Billy thinks she is fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

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And she breaks down and she admits that she low-key knew about this murder plot the whole time. And in exchange for immunity, she agrees to wear a wire to get a confession from Pamela. So Cecilia meets up with Pamela. And of course, Pamela incriminates herself on tape. And so, boom, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And also, while we're at it, here's Billy's mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

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And of course, here's Patrick's mugshot. So Pamela ends up going to trial, she's found guilty, and she gets sentenced to life. While Billy, he cooperated and he gets sentenced to 40 years. And he only did 25 and he's out now. While Patrick also cooperated and he also got 40 years. And he also only did 25 and he's out now. So, shout out to New Hampshire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

42.012

So they meet and they get to talking and they hit it off and they're both really into 80s hair metal. So that's cool. And Billy and Pamela become friends and he starts crushing on her hard. But as much as Billy's in love with her, she's actually married to this guy, Greg. And Pamela and Greg have only been married about a year, and unfortunately, it's not going too well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

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Because one day, Pamela finds out that Greg has been cheating on her. And she is devastated. She doesn't know what to do. And she doesn't want to get a divorce. She's worried she'll lose her condo and her dog. She's worried she'll lose everything. But shortly after she discovers that affair, that's when Pamela meets Billy and they become friends and they start hanging out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teacher Slept With Her Student - The Pamela Smart story

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And eventually Pamela, maybe to get back at Greg, she starts smashing with Billy. And then weeks later, this affair is still going on. And as they continue smashing, Pamela starts to get worried that Greg is gonna find out and that then he'll divorce her and she'll lose everything. So then Pamela comes up with a plan to get rid of Greg for good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

0.129

So this man, his name's Antoine. And one night, Antoine is rushed into the emergency room. He's in pain and he's bleeding. He has huge bite marks on him, mostly his arm and leg. And he tells them that he got attacked by a pit bull. But the doctors, they start examining his wounds and they get suspicious. Because these bite marks are awfully big to be coming from a pit bull.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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In fact, Antoine raises him there in that apartment and he names him Ming. And he gives Ming his own room and he builds him a sandbox to play in. He bottle feeds him until he can graduate to solid food. And they become best friends. And then three years go by and Ming is no longer a cub. He's now a 400 pound fully grown Siberian tiger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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And he's still living in this public housing Harlem apartment with Antoine and Al. And he's so big Antoine is allegedly feeding him 20 pounds of chicken a day. Cause yeah, tigers eat a lot. Now you would think this would go horribly wrong. Like a man and a huge tiger secretly living in an apartment together. But no, so far it all seems to be going fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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Until one day, Antoine finds an abandoned house cat outside his door. So being the animal lover that he is, he brings it in and he adopts him. And he names him Shadow. And he gives Shadow his own room away from Ming. And then about a week later, Antoine and Ming, they're wrestling. Because I guess that's how they normally play together. And Shadow just happens to get out of his room.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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And Ming catches one glimpse of him. And he just snaps. right into wild animal mode. And he just leaps into action and he starts chasing Shadow around the place trying to catch him and destroy him. And Antoine, he thinks fast and he throws himself in front of Ming and between him and Shadow. And then Ming ends up tackling Antoine. And Antoine clings to him to keep him from chasing Shadow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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And that is when Ming grabs a hold of Antoine's neck and bites down. And then he bites his arm and then he locks onto his knee. And there he doesn't let go. So there he is, Antoine, with his knee in this Siberian tiger's mouth. And it stays there for about three minutes before Ming finally lets him go. And then Ming goes and he hides in the bathroom because he knows he's in trouble.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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So then what the hell attacked him? Now around this time, police, they get an anonymous tip telling them that a wild animal must be on the loose in the city because they believe it had bit someone. And then they give the police the address to this apartment in Harlem. So police, they go to this apartment to investigate and they can't get in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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He's a bad kitty. But Antoine, he's hurt really bad. So he calls paramedics and they rush him to the hospital. And that is where he lies and tells them he was attacked by a pit bull. Because he's worried they're going to find out about Ming and then they're going to come and take his tiger away. So anyway, back to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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Police are in the neighbor's apartment and they look through the hole that they had drilled in the neighbor's wall. And they see a fully grown tiger just chilling there. So officers are like, holy sh**. And they have to get together and come up with a plan to get this 400 pound beast out. out of this apartment without getting eaten. So here's what they come up with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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Police has one of the officers rappel down the side of the building with a tranquilizer pew-pew, and he rappels down until he gets to the apartment. And there, at the window, he looks in and he spots Ming. So he aims his tranquilizer pew-pew through the bars of the window, and then boom, he shoots Ming with a dart right in the butt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

280.682

And as you could probably guess, Ming, he doesn't like that so much. So he gets pissed off and he gets up and he charges at the window and he slams up against it. And at that very moment, someone snaps a photo. And you can see the officer dangling there. And Ming, Ming is coming for his ass. But eventually, luckily, Ming does pass out from the tranquilizer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

301.098

And police, they go into Antoine's apartment and they remove him and Al and they relocate both of them. And then of course, bam, they arrest Antoine. And I don't have his mug shot, but here's a picture of him in real life. And he gets charged with reckless endangerment and possession of a wild animal. And he goes to court and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to five months in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

320.57

So then what happened to all his animals? Well, luckily, Shadow survived. He actually did not get eaten. Here's a picture of Antoine holding him. And Al, the caiman, he was actually rehoused to a proper animal sanctuary over in Indiana. And Ming? Well, Ming was also relocated to an animal sanctuary. One in Ohio that houses a lot of other big cats.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

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And there, he had lots of room to run around and play. He had a place to swim, and he had lots of tiger friends. And Ming actually lived there until he was 19, which is old in tiger years. And then, unfortunately, he passed away from natural causes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

42.699

But oddly, they can hear something inside growling through the front door. And they're like, what the is in here? So they go to the neighbor's place and they get a drill and they drill tiny holes in the wall so that they can see into this apartment. And then they stick a camera through that hole and that's when they see a 400 pound Siberian tiger just chilling in this New York apartment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

67.151

So, how did this tiger get there? Well, let's go back to Antoine. Antoine is 31, he's a part-time taxi driver, and he really loves animals. In fact, he loves animals so much that one day he illegally buys a lion cub and a tiger cub from an exotic animal trainer in Minnesota. And then he brings them back to New York to live with him in his public housing apartment in Harlem.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Owned a Tiger in Harlem - The Antoine Yates story

92.904

Now, in this apartment, Antoine already has a five foot long caiman living there with him named Al. And so I guess he also now has a lion and a tiger. What could possibly go wrong? Now, the lion was apparently sick when Antoine bought him. So he doesn't live very long in the apartment before he, unfortunately, passes away. But the tiger cub, he doesn't die.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

0.169

So one day this woman's chilling at home and she hears a knock at the door so she walks over to answer it and she opens it up and there on her porch is a circus clown wearing like the full outfit and the clown is carrying balloons and flowers and then the clown hands the woman the balloons and flowers and then they pull out a pew pew and they point it at the woman's face and they pull the trigger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

117.526

like in the full outfit and the clown is carrying balloons and flowers, but then the clown hands the balloons and flowers to Marlene and then they pull out a pew-pew and they point it at Marlene's face and they pull the trigger. Then the clown calmly walks back to their car and they drive away. So immediately, Marlene's son calls 911. And paramedics come and they rush her to the hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

140.457

And there, doctors put her on life support. But unfortunately, it's not enough. Two days later, they take Marlene off the life support and she passes away. And pretty quickly, police start to investigate this. They're looking at possible suspects and who could be involved. And all they know is that the suspect is a six foot clown.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

160.367

So they're thinking maybe the murdering clown is Marlene's husband, Mike. But as it turns out, Mike has a solid alibi. He was with a bunch of friends on their way to the racetrack. But as police are asking around about this, they learn that Mike had been having an affair with Sheila from work. So police change tactics. And they start looking around for costume shops in the area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

181.638

And they end up finding one that had recently sold a clown costume. So they interview the employee who was working that day. And the employee describes the customer as a woman who just happens to fit the description of Sheila. Then they find the clown's getaway car, abandoned in a parking lot. And in that car, they find orange hair fibers from a clown wig, as well as some brown human hairs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

204.446

So they get a search warrant and they go search Sheila's apartment. And there, guess what they find? Orange hairs from a clown wig and brown human hairs. But unfortunately, the hairs alone aren't enough to make a connection. So they can't arrest Sheila and they can't charge her with anything involving the murder. Here's what's crazy though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

223.009

During this investigation, police look into Mike because of course he's the husband. And while they don't find any evidence that he's involved in Marlene's death, they do find evidence that he's been committing serious fraud at his used car dealership. Rolling back odometers, manipulating the titles of vehicles, stuff like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

239.881

So Mike is arrested for this and he's convicted and he goes to prison. While Sheila, the person who actually committed the murder, doesn't. She's free. Three years later, Mike gets out. He served his time. And he and Sheila, they end up getting married. And they finally live happily ever after like they always wanted. Until 15 years go by and Marlene's death is still unresolved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

24.781

So, why was this woman just unalived by a clown? Well, the story doesn't actually start there. The story starts with this other woman, Sheila. And Sheila's 27, she works at a used car dealership, and she's the one who repossesses the cars. Because she's apparently a tough lady, and she's good at her job. In fact, she's so good at her job, at some point, she catches the eye of the owner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

265.029

But one day, the local sheriff's office gets some grant money to open unsolved cases from the past. So they open some cases and one of those cases is this clown murder case. So they form a task force and they re-interview witnesses and they look at all the old evidence. And most importantly, they submit those brown human hairs that they found in the clown's getaway car for DNA testing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

287.02

which DNA testing wasn't as widely available decades before when this case first started, but it is available now, so they submit it. And of course, boom, they get a match. It's Sheila. So finally, 27 years after Marlene's murder, they arrest Sheila. Here's her mugshot. And she goes to trial. She ends up taking a plea deal. And she's sentenced to 12 years in prison. Now, one more thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

312.747

There is speculation that Sheila didn't act alone in all this. That Mike was also involved in the planning of his wife's unaliving. But in their investigation, police were not able to find any hard evidence of that. So he was never charged nor convicted. Shout out to Florida.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

47.044

This guy, Mike. And Mike and Sheila, they hit it off, and they start flirting at work, and eventually they start smashing. Like, a lot. And Mike and Sheila, they are crazy about each other. Mike even starts paying rent on Sheila's apartment for her. That's how much he likes her. And these two want nothing more than to keep this relationship going so that they can live happily ever after.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

70.839

Except there's one thing standing in their way. Mike is actually married. And of course, he doesn't want to just get a divorce like a normal human being, because apparently half his assets are in his wife's name, which means if they split up, she's gonna get a big check. So he doesn't want to get a divorce. So then Sheila comes up with a plan to get rid of Mike's wife for good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Killed By a Clown - The Marlene Warren story

94.591

One night, Sheila goes to a costume store. And there, she buys a clown costume. Orange wig, makeup, red nose, the whole thing. Two days later, Mike's wife, her name's Marlene. Marlene is chilling at home with her adult son. And suddenly, they hear a knock at the door. So Marlene walks over to answer it. And sure enough, there's a whole ass circus clown standing on her porch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

0.149

It's Christmas Day, and this guy is chilling at his house with his girlfriend. But then, they hear a knock at the door, and when the guy goes to open it, boom! Standing there is two goons, and they got pew-pews. So the guy immediately slams the door closed, but he can't shut it fast enough, and the goons force the door open.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

100.618

So they call police to come and do a welfare check. And then four hours later, police show up. And they're knocking and they're looking through the windows and they're trying to get into the house through the back door. And then suddenly, bam, the back door opens. And it's Ryan just standing there with a busted up black eye. And he looks all confused, like he has no idea what's going on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

121.576

So police, they go inside and there on the couch, they see Heather's lifeless body. Now, as we saw Ryan, he was shot in the head twice. One bullet grazed the side of his skull and the other went through his nose and the fragments went into his eye region. So his most visible injury looks like a massive black eye.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

143.482

So police, they take a look at him and they think not that he needs immediate medical attention for his brain injury, but that he's the one who unalived Heather. So bam, they arrest him and they stick him in the back of a patrol car where he waits for four hours before finally they take him to the station and there they start grilling him. Like what happened at your house?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

165.814

Why did you unalive your girlfriend? And poor Ryan, he can't really tell them what happened because you know, brain damage. And like when they ask him the very basic question, where do you know Heather from? He answers and says that just doesn't make sense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

18.419

And one of them manages to stick his arm through, and he shoots the guy right in the head. And he falls back, and then the goon aims his pew-pew, and he shoots him in the head a second time. Then, the goon goes over to the living room, and he sees the girlfriend on the couch, and he points his pew-pew at her, and he fires, and he un-alives her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

182.639

So then they ask him, like, what happened to his face? And he's like, I don't know. And then he starts saying he thinks it was Heather who hurt him. But, like, he can't even remember her name. Like, he really is all over the place. But then he starts trying his best to explain that it was actually some goons who broke into his house. But he's still just not making sense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

235.217

Not to mention, they don't seem even slightly concerned about Ryan's injury or about getting him to a hospital. They are still convinced that he's lying and that he's the one who unalived Heather. And they are going to try their best to pressure him until he admits it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

258.287

And then finally, after almost an hour of Ryan trying his best to explain it to the detective, the detective takes a closer look at the wounds on his face and he realizes how badly hurt he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

280.574

So after being in police custody for six hours, they finally come to their senses and they rush Ryan to the hospital. And immediately, doctors see his wounds and they see that he's been shot in the face. And most importantly, they see that his wounds have an infection. An infection that actually could have been avoided if he had gotten care sooner. So they perform brain surgery on Ryan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

302.069

And he stays in the hospital for 35 days recovering. But unfortunately, it turns out he has life-changing injuries and he loses his left eye permanently and part of his brain has to be removed and he regularly starts having seizures. So Ryan's parents, they get a lawyer and they sue the Phoenix Police Department for failing to get their son medical treatment in time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

325.177

But unfortunately for them, the case is eventually thrown out due to lack of evidence. Which is weird because, like, we have the video. Anyway, the good news is that the goons who shot Ryan and Heather are both eventually caught. And bam, they get arrested, here's one of their mug shots, and here's the other. And they're both eventually sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

347.192

Then, about ten years after all this happened, Ryan unfortunately has his last seizure and he passes away. That's a sad one Shout out to Phoenix, Arizona

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

36.632

Then, they rob the place, taking whatever they want, and they leave. Now, the guy, his name's Ryan, and the girlfriend, her name's Heather. And while Heather, unfortunately, doesn't survive being shot in the head, somehow, Ryan does. And he's lying there, and he's in pain, and there are bullet fragments in his head. And he doesn't know it yet, but he has a severe brain injury.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

58.691

In fact, his injury is so severe, he kind of doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know how to call for help. It seems like he doesn't even understand that he needs help. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, these two, Ryan's mom and Ryan's dad, they're chillin' at home wondering when Ryan and Heather are gonna show up. Because it's Christmas Day and they're late for dinner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Ruined His Life - The Ryan Waller story

80.425

And of course, they're nowhere to be found. So Ryan's dad calls him, but no answer. And then they call several more times throughout the day, but still, no answer. And once they realize that Ryan and Heather have completely ghosted them over the dinner, Ryan's parents get worried. So they go over to his house and they knock on the door, but no one answers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

0.129

So this guy, he's gonna get wrongly convicted, become a millionaire, and then get into a fight with a pro wrestler. Now the guy, his name's Chris, and Chris is 20 years old, and he just wants to live his life to the fullest. So he goes to a party one night out by the river with a bunch of his friends, including this girl, Angie. Now unfortunately, the next morning after that party,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

104.188

So Chris goes to trial and the only real evidence they have against him is the confession he was tricked into giving. So kaboom, he gets convicted and he's sentenced to life in prison. And yeah, this sucks for Chris because

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

117.102

prison is hard for him and so he files appeal after appeal but his appeals just keep getting rejected one after another and more than 10 years go by and he's still there in prison miserable suffering in a cell and he wants nothing more than to get out so that he can finally live his life to the fullest but then one day something crazy happens

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

138.917

A nonprofit learns about his case and they get involved. They're called the Innocence Project and they help people who they feel were wrongly convicted. So they get involved and they push for further DNA testing because DNA analysis had improved so much over those 10 years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

153.685

And around the same time, Angie's own mother, this woman, Carol, she also starts to believe that Chris had nothing to do with Angie's murder. And she starts to advocate for him. And then eventually, after years of working on this, they convince the district attorney to reduce Chris's sentence to time served.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

172.315

Meaning finally, after spending 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Chris is a free man. And then two years later, they use DNA technology to identify the actual killer and they arrest him and he confesses and Chris is totally exonerated. Oh, but it's not over yet, because Chris is about to get paid. Because he goes and sues the state for wrongful imprisonment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

197.32

And the state ends up settling with him, and they agree to pay him $11.7 million. Meanwhile, Chris, he gets involved with the Innocence Project. And he's traveling around the country, giving lectures and speeches at universities, trying to help others who were also wrongly convicted. I mean, it looks like Chris's life is really starting to turn around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

220.525

Until about three years pass after he wins his lawsuit and it's Halloween and Chris and some of his buddies, they decide to take a trip to Las Vegas. I mean, he has millions of dollars to spend, so why not? So they're all in Las Vegas in a group having a Halloween party in this hotel room. and allegedly Chris offers to share some of his drugs with this young woman there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

23.843

Angie is found unalived in her apartment. And then six months later, bam, police bring in Chris for questioning since he was at the same party with her the night before. So they questioned Chris and they asked him if he was involved in the murder. And Chris is like, no, but police don't believe him. And they take a DNA sample from him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

241.285

Apparently she was already doing drugs, he just offered her some more. That young woman happens to be the stepdaughter of another man at the party, this guy, Rodimer. So Rodimer finds out that Chris offered his stepdaughter drugs and he gets pissed and he is not about to let this slide. Here's the thing about Rodheimer. He's an interesting guy. He actually used to be a pro wrestler.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

262.661

He's also an aspiring politician. He ran for Nevada State Congress and lost twice. Then he ran for the House of Representatives in Texas. And he actually got endorsed by a very well-known Bible salesman. Rodimer. But regardless, Rodimer still lost his election. Anyway, at the party, Rodimer finds out that Chris offered his stepdaughter drugs, and he gets really pissed off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

284.791

Now, some of this next part is alleged, and I'll explain why in a second. Now, allegedly, Rodimer hears what Chris did, and he rushes over to him, and he confronts him, and he gets all up in his grill, and he says, if you give my daughter any of that, I'll f***ing kill you, allegedly. Then, of course, they get into it. And Rhodeimer, he tackles Chris.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

303.057

And Chris falls and hits his head on an end table. Then when Chris is down, Rhodeimer starts punching him over and over again. And finally, he starts choking him. And that is when Chris stops moving. And at some point, someone calls 911, and Chris is rushed to the hospital. And there, he fights for his life. But ultimately, after a few days, he passes away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

325.683

He had only been out of prison for about six years. So police investigate and they put out a warrant for Rodimer's arrest. And the next day he turns himself in. Here's his mugshot. And the trial over this is still ongoing, which is why I said allegedly when I was talking about the fight. Either way, that's a sad one.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

43.93

Then after a few more interviews, police still believe that Chris had something to do with Angie's murder. So they get a warrant, and they arrest him, and they bring him in, and they grill him for hours. And they're threatening him with prison time, and they're telling him that they have evidence against him, even though they don't. Because, by now, the DNA results have come back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

63.421

And the DNA of the killer is not a match with Chris's DNA. Oh, but that doesn't seem to matter, because police are still convinced that he is guilty. And poor Chris, at this point, he doesn't know what to do. He knows he didn't unalive anyone, but police won't let it go. And they interrogate him for a total of 28 hours over multiple sessions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murdered By a Pro Wrestler - The Chris Tapp story

83.112

And ultimately, they offer him immunity if he confesses to being involved in the murder. So Chris, with no other option, he confesses, thinking he'll get immunity and that police will finally leave him alone. Well, guess what? Police don't leave him alone. In fact, they straight up void his immunity agreement and they charge him with first degree murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

0.129

So this adult man pretends to be a teenager and he like goes to high school and somehow no one notices. So this story all starts with this kid, Nicholas. And Nicholas is 13, living in Texas. And one day in 1994, he's out in the neighborhood playing basketball. And suddenly Nicholas just disappears. Like he's just gone. What happened to him? Well, we'll get to that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

112.014

A teenage boy who was out playing basketball three years before and suddenly just disappeared. And so Fred convinces them that he's Nicholas and the National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children sends a member of Nicholas's family all the way to Spain to pick Fred up. So now Fred is going to pretend to be this missing American teenager in order to get out of going to prison in Spain.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

139.381

Here's the thing about this missing teenager, Nicholas, though. Nicholas was only 13 when he went missing three years ago, which would make him 16 now. So Fred, who's 23 and French and brunette, is going to pretend to be a 16-year-old American blonde. So he bleaches his hair. And by the way, this is a picture of Fred, and he does not look 16. Like, not even close.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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Like, look at his geriatric-looking ass. But whatever, a few days later, Nicholas's sister, the missing kid's sister, shows up to Spain to pick up Nicholas. And Fred is there waiting, and he's like, And I guess the sister believes him, because from there, they fly from Spain all the way back to Texas so that he can be reunited with his family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

190.652

And so they get there, and he meets his whole family, and I guess they believe that this 23-year-old man is their missing teenage son, and they're all happy to see him. And they have all kinds of questions for him, like, what happened to you? Where were you those three years that you were missing?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

206.943

And of course, Fred tells them some bullshit, that the day he went missing, he was actually abducted, and his kidnappers shipped him off to Spain, where he was human-trafficked, but that after three years, he eventually managed to escape. However, the thing the family really doesn't press him on are the other things. Like, why do you look so old now? Like, you could grow a full beard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

229.923

And how come your eyes are brown? Weren't they blue before? And like, you were born in Texas. How come you speak with a French accent? Like, you know, things that should have been addressed right away. So anyway, he starts living there in their trailer home with his sister and he tries to live a normal American teenage life. Like he starts going to high school apparently.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

251.842

Like this old ass man gets on the yellow school bus every morning and he sits in high school classrooms like he's f***ing Billy Madison. However, meanwhile, news of Nicholas's reappearance gets around and his story blows the hell up and it's all over the local news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

27.091

Meanwhile, all the way over in Europe is this French guy, Fred. And Fred is 23 and he's a con man. He's kind of a turd. He's always in trouble. And he's in trouble because he often does this thing where he'll pretend to be a teenager so that he can stay for free in youth shelters. And in these youth shelters, he'll like hide out there from the police because the police are always looking for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

274.177

And so all these journalists and news outlets want to interview Fred, and it starts getting national attention. And Fred's dumbass starts doing news interviews with journalists. pretending that he was this kid who was kidnapped. So clearly, this is all about to fall apart. And that is when this guy steps in. His name's Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker is a local private investigator.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

299.129

And one day, Charlie Parker gets a phone call from a producer for the TV show Hard Copy. And they want to get an interview with Nicholas, aka Fred. And they want to hire Charlie Parker to track Fred down so that they can get this interview. And so he starts looking into this story and right away he can tell something's not right. First of all, this mother is supposed to be 16. He looks 40.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

324.4

Second of all, he's got the wrong color eyes and he sounds French. But then Charlie Parker starts comparing pictures of Fred's ears with pictures of the real Nicholas's ears. And he notices they have different shaped ears. And so Charlie Parker knows this guy is a fraud. And so eventually he gets the phone number of Nicholas's mom and he calls her up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

348.88

And he's like, you know that person who you think is your son? Uh, that's not Nicholas. And he mentions the change in eye color and the patterns on the ears. But I guess mom just isn't trying to hear it. She believes that Fred is her son. And so Charlie Parker hits up the FBI and he lets them know about all of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

369.518

Now the FBI was already investigating this whole case because it's tied to an apparent kidnapping and possible human trafficking. But whatever, in the meantime, Fred is continuing to get away with all this. And it doesn't look like anyone is going to catch him. Until. Unfortunately for Fred, he's still kind of a turd. Like when we started this story, the police were always after him for a reason.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

396.554

Because bro is always screwing up. Like he didn't suddenly clean up his act because he moved to the United States. No, no, no. So after a few months of living in Texas, he starts screwing up again. Like he stops showing up to school and he just stops going and he gets suspended.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

412.31

Then he steals his sister's car and he drives it like 500 miles up to Oklahoma and he gets pulled over for speeding and bam, he gets arrested. And at one point he gets a razor and he starts... And so they take him and put him in a psych ward for a few days. Like, this guy's doing all kinds of stuff. Now at this point, Fred is five months into this con.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

436.738

And with all this erratic behavior and acting out, I guess mom just can't stand it anymore. Or maybe she's finally figured it out. But at this point she calls up Charlie Parker and she says, you know what? I think you're right. I don't think this guy is my son. The next morning, Charlie Parker shows up to mom's apartment and he invites Fred to go eat at a diner with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

461.909

And so they go to this diner and they're sitting there and they're eating and that is when Fred finally gives in and he admits to Charlie Parker that he isn't this 16 year old boy from Texas, that he's actually a 23 year old man from France. And so eventually, bam, the feds arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's what his goofy ass looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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Anyway, he ultimately takes a plea deal and he gets six years in prison. And unfortunately, we never do find out what happened to the real Nicholas or why he disappeared that day. I mean, there are various theories on what happened, but nothing really concrete. So anyway, that was back in 1998. And today, Fred, he like lives a normal life, like in France, I think. And he's actually on TikTok.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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But then one day in 1997, he's living in this youth shelter in Spain and the director of this youth shelter starts getting suspicious of him. And he's like, I don't think you're really a teenager. And Fred's like, uh-huh-huh, wee-wee, yeah, I am. And so eventually, Fred gets ordered by a judge to prove that he's really a teenager, or the shelter is going to kick him out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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Like he makes videos where he talks about a lot of the stuff he used to do. So, you know, good for him for cleaning up his act.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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Which means the police will probably then find him, because police are always looking for him, and he'll go to prison. And that is when Fred comes up with this crazy idea. He'll just convince the judge that he's an American. But not only that, that he's an American kid who went missing. Then they'll have to let him go. And so Fred gets to work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Pretended To Be a Teenager - The Frederic Bourdin story

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He calls the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. And he convinces them that he's this missing kid. And he like describes himself to them and they're like, yeah, we know of a missing kid that fits that description. And they fax over a photo. This photo of a missing teenage boy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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So Nicki Minaj being a diva sort of leads to this guy getting kidnapped. Let me explain. So it all starts with this guy 6ix9ine and he's a rapper and we've talked about him before but this is a different story. So one day in 2017 he films a music video and puts a bunch of local gang members in it because he thinks it'll give him street cred and during the shoot he meets this guy Harv

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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I mean, he's becoming a celebrity and it seems like maybe Harv and Shadi are jealous of all this money he's making off the street cred that they gave him. Not only that, these two are jealous of each other. And over time, they start arguing and fighting over who's going to control Six's career and get the most money from it. So eventually, bam, Harv and Shoddy split.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And poor SixIXI9 has to choose who to side with. So naturally, he sides with his old friend, Shoddy. But then, one day, in 2018, Sh... It gets really crazy, because Six collaborates with another rapper, Nicki Minaj, and they film a music video together. And on the day the music video is about to premiere, it's 4 a.m., and Six is at a local strip club. Because, of course he is.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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Now Nikki, she's kind of a diva. Well, maybe she's not a diva in this case, but she's a perfectionist and she wants this music video of her to be perfect. And so she's watching a cut of it and she just doesn't really like what she sees. So she texts Six and she's like, I don't like some of the things in our video. I need you to re-edit it before it comes out.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And so Six leaves the strip club early and he gets in his car because he's got to go fix this video. And soon enough, his driver is driving him over to his editor's house. And suddenly, pow! A car slams into them from the back. And two guys in hoodies get out of that car. And one has a big-ass pew-pew. And they run up to Six's door, and they open it, and they say, "'Give me everything!'

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And Six, he recognizes one of the guys robbing him. It's Harv. And Harv tells him, get in my car or I'll shoot you. And Six, he doesn't want to get shot, so he gets in the car, in the backseat. And there's another goon in there holding a pew-pew up to him. And then Harv gets in and the car speeds away. Minutes later, they stop at an empty street.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And Harv grabs Six and he drags him out of the car by his rainbow-colored hair. And he starts recording him saying, Say you're not a gangster! Say you're not a gangster! And then, pow, he punches Six in the face over and over again. And then, boom, he pistol whips him. And Six knows these guys are about to unalive him. So he starts begging. I'll give you whatever you want. I got jewelry at home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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I'll give you jewelry if you just let me go. And Harv hears this and he's like... All right. So they all get back in the car and they start driving to Six's place to get the jewelry. And strangely, Harv knows where Six lives, even though Six never gave him his address. But anyway, Six calls his baby mama at home, who we'll just call baby mama.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And this other guy, Shotty. So Harv and Shotty are both high-ranking members of this gang, Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. And these guys recruit 6IXI9 into their gang for real. And they do a lot for him. They give him protection, they beat up rivals for him, but most importantly, they give him the street cred that he needs. And partly because of this street cred, 6IXI9's career blows the f*** up.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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So Six calls her and he says, I need you to wrap up all my jewelry and come downstairs. And she's like, why? What's going on? And he's like, just do it. And so they pull up to the house, and baby mama comes downstairs with a bag full of jewelry. It's got a Rolex and a bunch of rings and chains in it, and specifically, it has Six's My Little Pony chain, which is worth around $365,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And Harv, he grabs the bag from her and he gets back in the car. Now at this point, Six is thinking, okay, he got the jewelry, now he's gonna let me go. I'm gonna be okay, everything is gonna be fine. Until... Everything is not going to be fine because Harv doesn't let him go. Instead, bam, he slams on the gas and skrrt, the car speeds away. And Six is thinking, oh, I am f***ed.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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These guys are definitely going to unalive me. Minutes later, they park on a back street. And Harv, the goon, and Six, they all get out. And Harv, he's still got that pew-pew. And he says, come here, Six, let me tell you something. And Six knows what that means.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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it means he's about to die so he does the only thing he can do bam he breaks out and he runs as fast as he can and he makes a sharp turn and then he sprints toward a different street then he sees a random car stopped with somebody in it and so boom he jumps inside and the owner of that car is just some random guy and he starts screaming at him like hey get out of my car and six is like shut up or i'm gonna die please just drive away

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And eventually, I guess the guy starts to believe him and he drives away. So Six finally manages to escape Harv. And later, he's lying there in the hospital, recovering from all the beatings Harv gave him, and he's wondering, how did Harv know where I live? It's a brand new address. And only two people had this new address. Baby Mama and Six's old friend Shoddy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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So Six starts to wonder, is Shoddy out to get me too? So fast forward a few months later. And Six is chilling somewhere and he opens up Instagram and suddenly he sees all these comments on his page telling him that Shottie is smashing with his baby mama. So of course Six is pissed. So he goes and he confronts baby mama like, what's up with all these Instagram comments?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And she denies anything romantic is going on between her and Shottie, but I guess Six doesn't believe her and he flips out and he beats the shit out of her. So now, Six has been betrayed by Baby Mama, Harv, and his best friend Shoddy. Like, you'd almost feel bad for him if he weren't such an asshole all the time.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And to make it worse, because of all his past gang activity and all the crimes he's been involved in, the feds have been watching him for a long time. And eventually, they build up a strong enough case against him, and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And they also arrest Harv. Here's his mugshot. And they arrest Shottie. Here's his.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And they also arrest a bunch of the other members of their gang too. And so for all sixes past gang activity crimes, he's facing 47 years in prison. However, when the feds come to him, he decides to make a deal and snitch on Harv and Shottie.

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The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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Sure, they were all in the gang together, they committed all of those crimes in the past together, but at the end of it all, Harv robbed him and Shottie allegedly smashed with his baby mama. And so, boom, six snitches and he testifies against them in court.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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And he testifies against a bunch of the gang members and this puts his ex-friend Shottie in prison for 15 years and his kidnapper Harv in prison for 24 years. However, unfortunately for him, it destroys his street cred as now he is widely criticized for being a snitch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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So I guess the moral of the story is if Nicki Minaj ever texts you to leave a strip club early, don't do it because you might get kidnapped.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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Now, in exchange for all the work they're doing for him, 6ix9ine pays them and the gang with the money he's bringing in from his music videos. So over time, Six and Shoddy become best friends. They're like hanging out and they're working together all the time. However, it isn't the same with Harv. Harv is a little suspicious of Six. He thinks he's not a real gangster.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kidnapping of 6ix9ine

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Partly because when they go commit gang crimes together, like various robberies and assaults and shootings, 6ix9ine just mostly stays in the car and films the others. But whatever. moves on and Six continues to blow up and become more and more famous. And suddenly, a bit of tension starts to build between Six and the others.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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Remember this TikToker? Her drama had TikTok in a chokehold. Let me tell you what happened to her. Now her name is Digital Princess and she's 26 and she's a TikToker living in Florida.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And so police start walking around the neighborhood talking to neighbors trying to figure out where this kid lives. And finally they find his house. Because it's the only house with the front door left wide open. And so they get the homeowner's number. Digital Princess. And they call her, and they're like, you know, your kid is wandering around out in the street looking for you.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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It is, um... And she has built herself an audience of over 2 million followers. Not bad. But one night in 2021, she screws it all up because digital princess is chilling at home and she runs into a problem. She really needs to leave the house and go meet up with some friends. Problem is she has this four year old son. This kid, who we'll just call Little Guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And so she immediately starts driving home. Minutes later, she shows up to her house, and there's police officers everywhere. An old digital princess is wearing a little black, like, cocktail dress. Whistle. She's dressed like she just went out to the club. So to everyone there, it looks like she abandoned her kid to go out to some nightclub.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And I don't think that's actually true, but whatever, this looks really bad for her. And so she immediately goes inside and changes into pajamas, which was smart. And so police, they start asking her questions like, where the hell were you? Why'd you leave your kid home alone? And Digital Princess is like, oh, I was just out buying laundry detergent at the 7-Eleven. I wasn't gone long.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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She was allegedly gone two hours. And they're like, uh, do you have a receipt for that laundry detergent you say you bought? And she's like... Nah. And she ends up showing them a bottle of laundry detergent. But here's the thing. The bottle she shows them is half empty. So she couldn't have just bought it. And so police know that this is bullshit. But then Digital Princess's mom rolls up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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Lil' Guy's grandma. Because police had called her as well. And grandma is shook that Lil' Guy was left alone. Because, you know, grandmas be protective like that. But also, Grandma happens to live nearby. So Digital Princess could have called her to watch little guy while she was gone, and she didn't for some reason. But then, Grandma drops a bomb.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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Does she usually have a nanny?

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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So apparently Homegirl also has a full-time nanny that she probably could have asked to watch Lil' Guy. And so all this is looking really bad for her. And so eventually, bam, police arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And they charge her with child neglect while they temporarily hand Lil' Guy over to his grandmother. But then, 12 hours later, Digital Princess gets out on bail. So now she's free to go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And it's fine, none of her fans will ever know what she did, and there's not gonna be, like, any kind of public backlash from any of this. Until... Here's the thing about the internet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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The internet likes to talk and news of Digital Princess's arrest blows the up and it starts trending and people hear about it and they're freaking out and her fans are all mad at her and they're turning on her like, how could you do this to your own child? And they're making memes about it like, dude, where's my kid? And this drama is everywhere on TikTok.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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Like in 2021, this was the OJ trial of TikTok. And so now, Digital Princess has to respond, and she has to get on camera, and make a statement, and so she does.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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But the thing is, people take this as her saying a lot of untrue things are being said about what happened that night. Like people are lying about the situation. However, people on the internet are like, wait bro, what untrue things are being said? We read the police report. But so then, Digital Princess seems to get like a little attitude about it, and she doubles down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And this, of course, makes the internet even more mad at her. Now, around this time, the district attorney's office who's prosecuting this case drops a huge bomb on everyone. They've decided to drop all the charges against her. Now, it isn't clear if they didn't have enough evidence to prove child neglect or if this was part of some plea arrangement. We actually don't have that information.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And Little Guy is asleep on his bed, and she either can't or doesn't want to take him with her. And so, Digital Princess just leaves. Like, she leaves him there. And she drives 11 miles away, I guess, to see her friends. Now at some point, little guy wakes up and he's probably confused, maybe a little scared, probably calling out for his mom and she doesn't answer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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But now Digital Princess feels vindicated. Like she didn't get prosecuted and she has her kid back. She's probably thinking, hell yeah, I beat the whole internet. So then she decides to make a video to explain to her fans and all the internet her side of the story regarding what really happened that night. Here's the thing about that though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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Digital Princess also makes spicy content over on the OF. And she decides to tweet out that she'll only be releasing her explanation video on her OF. And that if you want to see it, you have to subscribe to her account. And this, of course, makes people even more pissed off. They're like, you're using your child neglect situation to get people to subscribe to your spicy account?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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What is wrong with you? And yeah, it does feel pretty sleazy. And so I presume, due to all the backlash, she never releases a video explaining what really happened that night from her perspective on her OF. Although she did make other statements elsewhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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But then, two years later, in 2023, a YouTube channel called Explore With Us gets a hold of the police body cam footage of her arrest that night and they release it to the public. And so the world sees that basically everything the police report had said happened that night actually did happen. Like, no one was making anything up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And so now today in 2025, you can go to her TikTok page and pinned to the top is a sort of apology in text, sort of an apology. Basically, she admits that she made some bad decisions that night and that she's learned a lot and grown a lot since then. She seems to be in therapy over it. And, you know, it's not a perfect statement, but it's something.

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And since then, you know, the drama has died down and she seems to have won some of her fans back. So, you know, good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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And once he realizes she's not there, he's like, guess I'll just go outside and look for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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this four-year-old kid leaves the house and starts wandering the neighborhood late at night looking for his mom and an hour goes by and little guy is still out there but by this point he's distraught and he's crying probably feeling super scared but then around 10 o'clock a local woman is out on a neighborhood walk and she sees him and she's like what the

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TikTok Star Gets Arrested - The DigitalPrincxss story

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is a little kid doing out in the road all by himself and so she takes little guy to a nearby neighbor's house and she knocks on the door and she asks this neighbor if he can help figure out who this kid belongs to and immediately the neighbor calls the police minutes later police roll up and they talk to little guy and they ask him where his mom is and of course he doesn't know because he's four

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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Do you remember that time Eminem got beat up and then sued for a million dollars? Well, it all starts with this kid, Marshall. And Marshall's nine years old, living in Michigan, and bro has a problem. The poor kid gets bullied a lot in school. I mean, he's only in the fourth grade, but he's getting kicked around like every day. Specifically, there's one kid who messes with him a lot.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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She's so upset by the damage this has done to him, she goes and files a lawsuit against the school district, claiming that they neglected to protect her son from harm while he was in their care. But unfortunately for her, the lawsuit is eventually thrown out on the grounds that the school district has, like, government immunity or something, and they can't be sued in this case.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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But whatever, they all eventually move on. So fast forward many years, and it's now the late 80s. And Marshall's a teenager, and he gets really into hip hop and rapping. And he decides, I wanna be a rapper. And over the next decade, he starts freestyling and writing songs and competing in rap battles. And he does this for years. He even puts out an album.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And then one night in 1997, his whole life changes because he's 25 years old now and he competes in a rap battle competition called the Rap Olympics. And he actually does really well. In fact, he does so well, he gets second place. Here's the thing, though. In the audience that night is an intern for Interscope Records. And this intern really likes what he hears.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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So after the show, he goes up to Marshall and he's like, hey, you're great. Do you have like a demo or something you can give me? And Marshall, he's still all salty because he came in second place and not first, and he's like, yeah, sure, here, whatever. And he gives him an EP, a literal cassette tape of some of his songs, called the Slim Shady EP. Not the Slim Shady LP, the Slim Shady EP.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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It only has a few songs on it. And that intern eventually passes that tape on to his boss at Interscope. The boss at Interscope loves it, and he passes it on to famous rapper-producer Dr. Dre. And this leads to Marshall getting signed to Interscope Records as Eminem. Then, about a year after that, in 1999, his next album, the Slim Shady LP, drops. And it immediately blows the f*** up.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And so does he. And very quickly, he becomes one of the biggest, if not the biggest, rapper in the world. Now, one of his songs on the Slim Shady LP is called Brain Damage, and that song is about the times when he was nine years old and he would get jumped by D'Angelo and his boys. And in the lyrics, he describes some of it, and he specifically calls out D'Angelo by name.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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This kid, D'Angelo. And D'Angelo is a little older. He's 11. He's in the sixth grade, but he is much bigger than Marshall. And Marshall, admittedly, has a big mouth. So D'Angelo and his boys, they whoop up on him all the time. And this goes on for months. But one day in 1982, they give it to him real bad. Because it's winter and it's snowy out and they're all outside.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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Now, I can't play it for you because of copyright, but I could rap it for you. Way before my baby daughter Haley. I was harassed daily by this fat kid named D'Angelo Bailey. He banged my head against the urinal till he broke my nose, soaked my clothes in blood, and he grabbed me and choked my throat. Made it home later that same day, started reading a comic, and everything became gray.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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I couldn't even see what I was trying to read. I went deaf and my left ear started to bleed. Anyway, that's not all of it, but that's some of it. Here's the thing, though. Marshall is so popular now that he's doing all kinds of press and interviews and he ends up doing an interview with Rolling Stone. And they ask him about his song Brain Damage and if it's true.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And he says, of course, yeah, most of it is. Then the Rolling Stone also finds D'Angelo and they reach out to him to get his side of the story. And so D'Angelo, now he's older, he's married with kids, he's working as like a janitor, and he apparently also wants to start a rap career. And so Rolling Stone asks him about the song Brain Damage, and he admits that, yeah, it's true.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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yeah we flipped him right on his head at recess when we didn't see him moving we took off running we lied and said he slipped on the ice hey do you have his phone number those are his exact words anyways two years later it's now 2001 and for some reason i guess d'angelo sees all this success marshall's been having and he starts getting dollar signs in his eyes He wants some of that Eminem money.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And so he goes and he gets a lawyer and he files a lawsuit and he sues him over the song Brain Damage. He accuses Marshall of slander and invasion of privacy for calling him out by name in the song. And in the complaint, he specifically cites the song lyrics. And so he claims that the song is not only hurting his reputation, but it's preventing him from starting his own rap career.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And because of this, he's suing for $1 million. Here's the thing, though. Not only are the song lyrics protected by free speech, D'Angelo had already confirmed that what happened in the song was true two years before when he did the Rolling Stone interview. So of course, the judge, she ain't buying it. She knows this case is bullshit. So she rules on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And she literally writes her opinion into the form of a rap. And I'm not making this up. In her order, this is what she wrote. Mr. Bailey complains that his rep is trash, so he's seeking compensation in the form of cash. Bailey thinks he's entitled to some monetary gain because Eminem used his name in vain. The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact through an exaggeration of a childish act.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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It is therefore this court's ultimate position that Eminem is entitled to summary disposition. But that's not even the whole thing. That's just some of it. The whole order is actually pretty long. So I'm not gonna do the whole thing. However, I think it's pretty safe to say judge got bars.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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So anyway, the judge dismisses the case, partly on the grounds that D'Angelo admitted in the Rolling Stone interview that he used to bully Marshall and partly because the case is just stupid. And so Marshall won that battle. And as you already know, he ultimately goes on to have an incredibly successful rap career. We'll be right back.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And the bullies, they see Marshall across the yard. And D'Angelo, I guess he puts like a rock or something hard into a snowball and he aims it at Marshall and he throws it as hard as he can. And pow, it hits him and it knocks him to the ground. Then the bullies all jump him and they beat him over and over and over again. And eventually, Marshall stops moving. He's blacked out.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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And D'Angelo and his boys, they're like, oh shit! And they don't want to get in trouble, so they all run away. Later, Marshall gets sent home because, you know, he's hurt. And there, he isn't feeling so well. He's losing his vision and one eye, and his ear starts bleeding. So his mom, or someone, takes him to the hospital.

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Eminem Got Beat Up - The Eminem / Deangelo Bailey story

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and at the hospital they determined that he has a cerebral concussion and for the next five days he apparently goes in and out of consciousness. Well, lucky for Marshall, he eventually recovers, but he's never the same. According to his mom, as a result of all this bullying, not only was he physically injured, but he started exhibiting antisocial behavior and acting out. In fact,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

0.109

So this is wild. This woman's own therapist may have manipulated her to fall in love with her. Now the woman's name is Vanessa and she's from New South Wales in Australia. And Vanessa has some problems in her life. And so she decides maybe it's time to get professional help. And one day in 1997, Vanessa starts seeing this psychologist, this woman who we'll just call therapist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

113.323

So she tells her husband and daughters that she needs to go to her therapist's house to take care of her. Then she goes over to her therapist's place and she's spending time with her, making sure she's okay and stuff. But then therapist drops another bomb on her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

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Not only did her husband and kids just pass in a horrible car accident, but her ex-husband, the father of her children, was so devastated when he heard the news that he had started doing drugs and now he's fallen off the face of the earth like no one can find him. So now this poor woman just lost everyone and she has absolutely no one in her life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

148.854

So of course, Vanessa feels almost obligated to help her out. And so she starts going over to her place, visiting a couple of times a week to make sure that she's okay and that she doesn't try to hurt herself. Meanwhile, back home, Vanessa's husband and daughters, they're watching all this go down and they're really supportive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

165.561

They know that this is just the kind of nice person Vanessa is, always helping out someone in need. But then, that's when things start to take a turn. Because over time, Vanessa starts to notice, therapist, she's kind of fine. And therapist thinks she's fine. And their relationship starts to get a little spicy. And soon enough, they get romantic and then they start smashing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

190.041

And yeah, this is a bad idea for all kinds of reasons. But despite that, this goes on for a while. And yes, Vanessa is still married. And so eventually she has to finally come clean to her husband and tell him that not only are she and therapist smashing, but that she has fallen in love with her and that she's gonna leave her husband for her. And that's what she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

213.758

She divorces her husband and moves in with therapist. And for what it's worth, she seems really happy there. She seems to believe that Therapist is her soulmate, and she devotes her life to loving and supporting her. And 16 years go by, and it's now 2018, and they're still together. And at this point, they've decided to get married.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

235.325

And so they start planning their wedding and around the time they're planning their wedding, suddenly therapist gets a new friend and she starts hanging out with this new friend. And by some strange coincidence, this new friend also happens to be a former client of hers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

24.705

So Vanessa sees her and she likes her. So she keeps going back and seeing her all the time. And over time, therapist learns a lot about Vanessa and Vanessa learns a lot about therapist. And at one point therapist is like, oh, we have so much in common. And they do. They both have two daughters. They're both married to their second husband. They both used to model when they were younger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

252.572

And of course, Vanessa is immediately jealous, but she's supportive, you know, she's a good person, and as far as she knows, nothing inappropriate is going on. And so she and Therapist, they get married. Here's actually a photo of them getting married, if you want to see. However, not long after they're married, Therapist starts staying out late with her new friend, drinking and whatnot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

272.142

Not only that, when she's not out, therapist is up in the middle of the night, like drinking and cooking and listening to loud music for some reason. So Vanessa can really start to feel this distance growing between them. And eventually it gets to her and she starts feeling depressed, like really depressed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

291.542

And around this time, Therapist starts posting things on Facebook, like things about her past, like how she used to be a model and stuff. And that is when this woman notices. Her name's Imogen, and Imogen is Vanessa's daughter. Now specifically, Imogen notices this Facebook post of Therapist back when she used to be a model.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

312.358

So Imogen's looking at this photo, and she's like, yeah, that's kind of weird. And she sends it to a friend. And that friend looks at it, and she's like, that's definitely not Therapist. That's a different model.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

322.824

So Imogen puts this picture into a reverse image search, and it turns out that this modeling photo Therapist claims is an old picture of her is actually an old picture of famous supermodel Elle MacPherson. So Imogen is like, is this woman really lying about being a model back in the day? I wonder what else she's lying about. So she starts screenshotting all these therapist posts and saving them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

346.241

Meanwhile, around this time, Vanessa finally starts to acknowledge that her marriage is ending and her mental health keeps deteriorating little by little. And eventually, the depression becomes too much for her. And she, unfortunately, unalives herself. And of course everyone is devastated and pretty quickly Imogen wants to look into Therapist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

370.102

Like why does she seem to be lying in Facebook posts about being a former model? And so she reaches out to one of her mother Vanessa's friends. And friend hires a private investigator to look into all this. And private investigator starts looking into it and they find that Therapist is a big f***ing liar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

389.073

Like remember how she said her husband and kids were just in a car accident and they all died? Total lie. She never had a husband or kids ever. They don't exist at all. Or how she said her ex, the father of her kids, was so devastated by the news that he had started doing drugs and now he's fallen off the face of the earth? Also a lie. No one can find him because he also doesn't exist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

411.772

So from the beginning, when Therapist was like, we have so much in common, then they both have two daughters, they're both married to their second husband, they both used to model, all of it was bullshit. Therapist has never been married, never had any children, never a model. She made it all up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

428.457

And it seems like she made up the part about her husband and kids dying in a car crash so that Vanessa would come over and start taking care of her. Regardless, after learning all this, poor Imogen is horrified. And she's like, f*** this, and she goes and she files a formal complaint against therapists with the Healthcare Complaints Commission.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

44.718

Pretty cool. And so Vanessa continues seeing therapists for about two years. And over this period, she slowly starts to feel better. And eventually, she and therapist agree. She's all good now. And therapy is no longer necessary. And then they decide to part ways. But therapists suggest that they continue to be friends. And Vanessa's like...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

447.341

while at the same time, therapist has already moved on with her life. In fact, a month after Vanessa passed, therapist had already moved in with her new friend, the one Vanessa was jealous about.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

460.247

Anyway, so the Healthcare Complaints Commission investigates and they find that therapist violated a lot of rules and was likely taking advantage of Vanessa and grooming her during their therapy sessions with the ultimate intention of seducing her. And of course, therapist denies she did anything wrong. She won't even admit that she lied about having a husband and kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

480.777

But whatever, at the end of it all, her registration to practice gets canceled and she's no longer allowed to provide therapy to anyone. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

67.248

I. But despite that, Vanessa moves on with her life and she doesn't hear a ton from therapists, which is fine. People say they're going to be friends all the time and then they aren't. But whatever, Vanessa got the counseling she needed and now she's happy. Until one day out of nowhere, Vanessa gets a call from therapists. and therapist is all upset and Vanessa's like, what's wrong?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Therapist Love Scam

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Then therapist drops a bomb on her. She tells her that her husband and kids were just in a car accident and they all died, which is horrible news and Vanessa feels so bad for her. Then she asked Vanessa to come over and stay with her because she says if she doesn't have someone there watching over her, she's worried she might unalive herself. And Vanessa doesn't want that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

112.246

Then, at the last second, he's gonna swap out the slow horse for the much faster horse. Then the fast horse will win the race and he'll make a ton of money by betting on himself. Not a bad plan. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot can go wrong. So he and some goons of his, they enter this slow horse, fine cotton, in a big upcoming race. And John, well, he's not the smartest guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

138.8

A smart guy would enact this plan and not tell anyone about it for fear of getting caught. But that's not the kind of guy John is. John is out here blabbing and telling all kinds of people he's got this scheme going on, including some very powerful people and allegedly some mafia types.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

157.832

So all of these people, including the mafia types, they know he's pulling this scam and they're all about to bet on this horse and make themselves some money. Ein paar Tage bevor das große Rennen, kommen sie zu einem Problem. Das Fast Horse, der Horsen, der den Rennen gewinnen soll, ist einfach draußen in seiner Karalle, macht Horsen-Tipps, was auch immer Horsen tun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

181.208

Und plötzlich, boom, erscheinen wilde Kangaroos aus dem Nichts. Und das Dashing Solitaire ist so, oh Scheiße! Und er wird überrascht und fliegt weg. Und kapow, er wird in ein paar Barbed Wire getangelt. So jetzt ist er verletzt und er kann in der großen Runde nicht mehr kämpfen, also ist das Dashing Solitaire raus. Und John ist so, verdammt, was soll ich jetzt tun?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

203.234

Die Rennstrecke ist in ein paar Tagen und ich brauche einen schnellen Horsen. Und alle diese kraftvollen Leute sind jetzt involviert, insbesondere der Mob. Und sie erwarten, dass sie auf das betten. Also kann er jetzt nicht wieder raus. Also mit nur ein paar Tagen zu gehen, ist die Uhr klingelnd und er muss einen neuen Ringer finden. Also schaut er herum für jemanden, der Horsen verkauft.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

222.431

Und boom, er findet einen. Diesen Horsen, namens Bold Personality. John kauft Bold Personality, weil das fast alles ist, was auf so einer kurzen Anwendung vorhanden ist. Aber hier ist das Problem mit Bold Personality. Diese beiden Pferde sollen miteinander aussehen, damit er sie im letzten Moment auswählen kann. Aber Bold Personality sieht nichts aus wie Fine Cotton.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

246.748

Fine Cotton ist ein schwarzer, fast schwarzer Schokoladenbrunnen, während Bold Personality ein viel leichteres Braun ist. Auch hat Fine Cotton weiße Haare um seine Beine, so wie eine Katze Haare hat. Aber Bold Personality hat keine Haare. Und John, der ist nicht überrascht, er ist einfach so, äh, kein Problem, wir werden einfach den Hosen töten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

268.804

Also dann, eine Nacht, er und zwei seiner Jungs kaufen eine Menge von Clairol-Womenshaardie, und sie rütteln es über Bold Personality, hoffentlich um die Farbe seines Haares zu verändern, um die gleiche Farbe von Fine Cottons Haar zu sein. The thing is, horse hair is not the same as human hair and the dye reacts to it differently.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

290.305

So the next morning they wash out all the dye and they see that bold personality is now bright orangish red. Und so denken sie sich, oh Scheiße, was machen wir jetzt? Unsere Pferde sind orange. Und so bekommen sie eine Menge Shampoo und sparen Stunden, um den Dye so gut sie können, wie sie können. Und sie bekommen Bold Persönlichkeit, meistens zurück zu seiner originalen Farbe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

313.285

Und nach einiger Debatte, ich glaube, dass sie entscheiden, dass niemand feststellen wird, dass Bold Persönlichkeit eine andere Farbe von Braun als Fine Cotton ist. Lass uns einfach die weißen Socken haben. Und so, wie werden sie ihrem Pferd weiße Haare um seine Beine geben? Spray-Paint. Und so bekommen sie weißes Spray-Paint und schmücken das Gebiet rund um seine Beine weiß.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

334.297

Und es sieht schmutzig aus und es riecht auf den Hüften und sie versuchen es zu waschen, aber es funktioniert nicht. Und so sind sie einfach so, ah, f*** es. Und sie enden, seine Hüfte in Bandagen zu packen, um den schlechten Schmutzjob, den sie gerade gemacht haben, bis sie in den Rennen kommen können. Und dann kommt endlich der große Tag. Der Tag der Rennstrecke.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

354.69

John und seine Jungs fahren auf die Rennstrecke nach Brisbane. Mit ihrem rot-geladenen Pferd und einer schwarzen Persönlichkeit. Und so kommen sie da hin und checken mit rot-geladenen, schwarzen Persönlichkeit. Und sie sind alle so... This is my horse, Fine Cotton! And bold personality, aka fake Fine Cotton, actually passes the pre-check, where they inspect the horses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

375.964

I guess they don't notice any of the spray paint. But whatever, John and the guys are now home free. And Fine Cotton, the real Fine Cotton, he has such a bad racing record that the betting house calculates his odds of winning at 33 to 1. Which is great, because for every dollar that John bets, he'll get 33 back. Und so betten sie alle auf ihr Pferd.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

398.713

Und jetzt brauchen sie nur Fake Fine Cotton, um das Rennen zu gewinnen. Hier ist das Wichtigste an diesem Rennen. Dieses Rennen ist tatsächlich ein spezielles Rennen, das für einige der älteren, langsameren Pferde in einer anderen Kategorie gemacht wurde. Jene, die einen Rekord des Niemals-Winners haben. Also muss Fake Fine Cotton, der ein sehr schnelles Pferd ist, das mit keinem Problem gewinnen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

420.709

Und so, boom, startet die Rennstrecke und alle Pferde gehen los. Und Fake Fine Cotton fährt sofort nach vorne. Kein Problem. Und er ist mit einem anderen Pferd nach vorne. Aber er kann nicht ganz voran. Einer der anderen Pferde endet eigentlich ziemlich schnell. Und John und die anderen Jungs, die schauen alle von der Seite hin, wie sie gehen, gehen, gewinnen. I don't want the mob to unalive me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

445.253

And this race, it stays tight, like really tight. And the two horses near the finish line. And Fake Fine Cotton still can't pull ahead. And they end up right next to each other, neck and neck. And then, boom, they cross the finish line. And it's so close that it's actually a photo finish. Bold Personality, aka Fake Fine Cotton, is the one right here. And he ends up winning.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

469.691

And so now John, his crew, and everyone who he told about this scam is about to be rich. UNTIL... Fake Fine Cotton, aka Bold Personality, er hat den Rennen gewonnen, aber es war immer noch ein ziemlich schwieriger Rennen. Und Bro weint jetzt wie verrückt, wie jemand, der gerade einen Rennen gewonnen hat, das meistens tut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

47.586

So this guy is about to pull off one of the biggest scandals in horse racing history. Now the guy's name is John and John is Australian and bro is just kind of a turd. He's always trying to con people, he's been convicted a ton of times for it and now he's in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

492.708

Und so weint er und die Zuschauer im Publikum bemerken, dass ihm etwas falsch ist. Es scheint so zu sein... Es gibt weiße Farbe, die an seinen Hüften fliegt. Ist das nicht seltsam? Und sobald das Wort über die Strecke fliegt, dass Fine Cotton... Na, er ist kein Fine Cotton überhaupt. Er ist eigentlich ein Ringler, oder ein Ring-In, wie sie es nennen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

514.724

Weil Johns dumme Arsch so viele Leute erzählt hat. Und so werden die Leute verrückt und beginnen zu schreien. Ring! Und alle rufen die Steuern an, um Fake Fine Cotton zu inspektieren. Und die Steuern bemerken all diese Farbe auf seinen Hüften. Und sie lassen das nicht fliegen. Und so sagen sie, stoppt die Ausgaben!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

535.182

Und die Strecke stoppt die gewonnenen Betten auszuhalten, bis sie all das abgeschlossen haben. Und so geben die Steuern eine volle Inspektion von Fake Fine Cotton und sie fragen John für Fine Cottons Papier. Und natürlich hat John sie nicht und Fake Fine Cotton verfehlt die Inspektion, weil es ein anderer Hors ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

552.308

Und boom, er ist offiziell nicht qualifiziert und der Hors, der im zweiten Platz kam, ist tatsächlich der Gewinner. Während John, seine Goons und alle anderen, die er erzählt hat, keinen Geld gewonnen. Und so, endlich, bam, arrestieren die Polizei John. Hier ist ein Bild von ihm in der Realität.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

569.732

Und er bekommt vier Jahre in der Gefängnis und eine Lifetime-Ban von Australian Horse Racing, während einer der anderen Jungs sechs Monate, und ein anderer Jungs sechs Monate, und ein anderer Jungs acht Monate. Das ist wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

64.932

But one day in 1984 he's chilling in his cell or whatever and he comes up with a crazy idea to con a ton of people and make more money than he's ever made in his life. He's going to finesse a horse race. So as soon as he gets out of prison he buys a really fast racing horse. A horse named Dashing Solitaire. Then he buys a slow ass racing horse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Scandal in Horse Racing History

90.518

A horse who's terrible with a bad racing record and who's never won anything. This horse named Fine Cotton. So now he's got a fast horse and a slow horse. The important thing is that they both look alike. And his plan is to enter the slow horse, the one with a bad racing record, into a big horse race. So that the odds stack up against it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

0.877

True Crime ist ja schön und gut, aber weißt du, was das wirklich wahre Verbrechen ist? Dass du noch nicht bei der Deutschen Flugsicherung bist. Mit deinem dualen Studium oder deiner Ausbildung zur Fluglotsin oder zum Fluglotsen. Hier übernimmst du Verantwortung und erhältst ab Tag 1 ein tolles Gehalt. Du sprichst super Englisch, bist jung, aufmerksam und hast Abitur?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

100.736

Und diese Ausgabe des Erhaltes ist für Fake Barbie stressig. Ich meine, niemand will das fühlen. Fake Barbie hat einen langfristigen Freund. Diesen Mann, Brad. Brad ist 22 Jahre alt. Er und Fake Barbie sind seit etwa 7 Jahren zusammen. Sie haben drei Kinder zusammen. Brad ist nicht nur unterstützend für ihre Spicey-Account, sondern er hilft ihr, den Content zu machen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

122.742

Er ist so wie, yo, lass uns die Tasche holen, Mädchen. Hier ist die Sache, so stabil wie das alles klingt, haben Fake Barbie und Brad nicht immer die heiligste Beziehung. Ich meine, sie kämpfen immer. Sie verbrechen sich oft und dann kommen sie oft wieder zusammen. Und oft fühlt Fake Barbie sich an, als wäre Brad sehr kontrollierend, besonders mit dem Geld, das sie auf der O.F. gemacht hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

146.378

Und sie scheiden alle andere alle Zeit. So, you know, that's never good. Not only that, but she has a TikTok account. And on that TikTok account, she mostly posts videos of her and her kids. But sometimes she like makes videos clowning Brad publicly. Me with his homeboy when I find out he cheats. Played the Tinder notification and he passed, obviously. And she puts the knife emoji.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

171.079

So yeah, Fake Barbie is not only a little nutty, but she has serious anger issues. And it's not like she's hiding these issues that well. Listen to this voicemail she left on a friend's phone talking about Brad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

183.767

Now,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

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Ich weiß, dass dich das nicht schockieren wird, aber ihre Kämpfe werden manchmal zu Gewalt ausgelöst. Manchmal wird sie verrückt und schlägt Brad auf, wenn er sie erschreckt oder wenn sie fühlt, als ob er zu ihr lügen würde. In Wahrheit, an mehr als einem Punkt wird Fake Barbie an Brad erschreckt und sie schlägt ihn. Einmal in den Arm und zweimal in den Bein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

222.25

So yeah, these two are not good together. And she's just like a time bomb waiting to explode.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

228.079

But I don't believe a f***ing word that comes out of that boy's mouth. I have to beat the f***ing living daylights out of him for him to tell me the truth and he still doesn't tell me the truth. He only tells me the truth when he thinks I'm gonna f***ing kill him. She seems nice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

242.973

And so anyway, at this point, it's 2022. And they've been in this terrible relationship for years. And they got three kids. So they're trying to make it work, maybe for the kids. But it's obvious that this just isn't a healthy relationship. Und endlich hat Brad genug. Einen Tag erinnert er Fake Barbie an einen lokalen Park. Und nachdem sie da sind, macht er es endlich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

266.048

Er sagt ihr, ich will nicht mehr mit dir sein. Und ich bin sicher, dass das für sie schmerzt. No one likes to be broken up with. But this is gonna be the best thing for him. Here's the weird thing though. When Fake Barbie hears this, she doesn't really react. Like she doesn't get mad and freak out and attack him like she normally would. She just says something like,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

28.726

Können wir.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

287.022

Which is really strange for her, because generally she's such an angry, violent person. But maybe this isn't that big a deal to her. Maybe she's gonna just be chill and this breakup will be amicable and everyone will move on and be happy. Bis... Die gleiche Nacht machen sie Pläne, zusammen draußen zu gehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

308.794

Ich meine, sie leben irgendwie immer noch zusammen und ich vermute, sie haben immer noch die gleiche Gruppe von Freunden, also verabschieden sie sich mit diesen Freunden in einer lokalen Bar. Und Fake Barbie, sie kommt zu der Bar zuerst. Und für jede Art und Weise hat sie ihre drei Kinder mitgebracht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

324.91

Und so ist sie da, in dieser Bar, voller Menschen, mit ihren Kindern und mit einigen von ihren und Brads Freunden. Und Fake Barbie fängt an zu trinken. Wie, viel. Wie eine ganze Bottle Wein und ein paar andere Trinken. Und an einem Punkt in der Nacht geht sie sogar in den Restraum und macht ein bisschen Coca-Cola. Und so ist sie super verpasst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

344.946

Und etwa zwei Stunden später kommt Brad endlich auf die Bar. Und er ist zu spät. Und Fake Barbie wird sofort mit ihm verabschiedet. Und sie beginnt, wie ein Arschloch zu actieren. Und sie schreit an ihm und kussiert an ihm. Und sie verurteilt ihn, dass er zu spät ist, weil er mit anderen Frauen schläft, als ob sie sich nicht einfach verabschiedet hätten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

362.838

Und sie schlägt ihm einen Kaffee in den Gesicht und schlägt ihn ständig vor der ganzen Bar und vor ihren drei Kindern. Und so dann versucht einer ihrer Freunde zu intervenieren und sie endet in seinem Gesicht zu stöhnen. Dann versucht ein random Patron zu intervenieren und sie endet ihn zu schlagen und ihn auch zu stöhnen. Und der random Patron endet sie zu schlagen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

382.481

Es ist einfach ein ganzer Mess. Jetzt, an diesem Punkt, I don't know if she like gets kicked out or they all just decide to leave because she's being such a nightmare. But whatever, they all leave the bar. And a friend drives fake Barbie and Brad and their three kids home. And Brad, he must know something is gonna go down. Because he tells his buddy who's driving, I'm dead when I get home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

403.923

Und so kommen sie zurück in ihr Wohnzimmer. Und Brad endet leider richtig. Weil direkt nachdem sie in den Wohnzimmer gehen und ihre Kinder schlafen, beginnt sie zu weinen. Sie schreit an ihn und berät ihn. Ich glaube, sie erwartete, dass er den randomen Bar-Patrioten, der sie geschlagen hat, Fist kämpft. Als ob sie nicht das ganze Verhalten begonnen hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

423.496

Regardless, they start arguing and it's getting heated, like really heated. And she starts pushing him and I think he pushes her back. Then she storms off and she goes into the kitchen and on the counter is a large kitchen knife. So she grabs it and she walks back over to Brad. And she's wielding it and she's trying to scare him with it and she's threatening to use it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

445.05

And remember, she's really drunk and she's really pissed off. And then suddenly, bam, she stabs Brad right in his chest. Und sofort merkt sie, was sie getan hat. Und sie weiß, dass es schlecht ist. Und sie fängt an zu paniken. Und um es schlimmer zu machen, sieht sie, als sie sich aufschaut, und sie sieht ihren dreijährigen Sohn, der auf dem Boden der Stiefel steht. Er hat das ganze Ding gesehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

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And now eventually a neighbor hears all the screaming coming from fake Barbies apartment and she calls 999. And so paramedics show up and police show up and it's a whole scene. And they rush Brad to the hospital and unfortunately he doesn't make it. Er stirbt im Krankenhaus von seiner Wunde. Und Fake Barbie will, dass sie sich aus Problemen verletzt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

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Sie kommt mit dieser ganzen Geschichte, die sagt, ich habe ihn nicht gestabbt, er hat sich selbst gestabbt. Und ein paar andere verdammte Entschuldigungen. Und sie ändert ihre Geschichte tatsächlich viel. Nun, glücklicherweise kaufen die Polizei es nicht. Besonders nachdem sie zu Fake Barbies dreijährigem Sohn sprechen, der ihnen direkt sagt, Mama hat meinen Vater gestabbt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

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And so immediately, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And ultimately she goes to trial and she's found guilty of murder and she gets sentenced to life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

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Entdecke über 130 Ausbildungsberufe auf handwerk.de So this TikToker is now in prison for life. So let's call her Fake Barbie, because that's what she calls herself. And Fake Barbie is 24 and she's a mom living in Bristol in England. And one day she decides she's gonna start an OF account and start working from home selling spicy pictures and videos of herself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The OnlyFans Murder - The Story of Fake Barbie

75.942

And she does it under the name Fake Barbie. And about a year goes by and Fake Barbie macht alles gut in ihrem ersten Jahr. Sie macht etwa 50.000 Pound oder etwa 65.000 US-Dollars. Aber mit der Zeit wird das O.F.-Bereich immer mehr saturiert und Fake Barbies O.F.-Erhalt reduziert sich immer mehr. Und jetzt bringt sie einfach nicht mehr das Geld, das sie gewohnt hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

0.109

So this kid ends up conning millions of dollars out of people by pretending to be a Saudi royal prince. Now his name's Anthony and Anthony's around 18 years old and he's kind of a turd. He's always in trouble. And one day in 1988, he starts stealing credit cards. And of course he'll run up like thousands of dollars on them buying stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And so he calls the police to report it. And then police show up and even to the police he lies and says, I'm a Saudi prince. And so I guess the police reach out to the Saudi embassy and the Saudi embassy's like, prince who? That guy's full of . And so eventually, bam, Anthony is arrested and he goes to jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And he's actually there for quite a while because it's not until about a year later that he gets out on bail. Then he goes right back to scamming. He goes to an American Express office and he tells them he's a Saudi prince and that not only was his credit card stolen, but that that card had a $200 million credit limit. And then he like screams at the agent to get his way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And by some miracle, I guess this works. And they give him a new American Express card with a $200 million spending limit. But unfortunately for him, it's not long before bam, he's caught again. And he actually gets caught a bunch of times. Here's his mugshot. And also here's another mugshot from a different time he got caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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But anyway, Bro goes to prison a couple of times because he just won't stop telling people that he's a Saudi prince and conning them. And around 15 years go by. And at this point, you would think that Anthony would give up, but no. Not only has he not given up, he keeps trying to perfect this scheme and make himself more and more believable as this fake prince.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And one day in 2015, he decides he wants to level up. And that is when he meets this guy, Carl. Carl's a British businessman, he's an asset manager, and he really likes Anthony. And so they come up with a plan to con people together. First, Anthony needs to get people to unquestionably believe that he's a Saudi prince. So he goes all in. He starts dressing up, wearing the conventional clothing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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But specifically, he likes to rent limousines and he'll ride around in them. And when people are like, damn, who's this rich teenager? He'll tell them that he's a royal Saudi Arabian prince. And just to be clear, he's not a prince at all. He's not royal. He's not even Saudi Arabian. He's actually Colombian-born, but raised in the US.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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He buys fake diplomatic license plates off eBay to put on his car. He even hires personal security to follow him around like he's so important. Then he starts involving his social media. Like he's living this life of luxury with nice cars and he's going out on yachts and even his dog wears a diamond body harness.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And so he's posting about all this stuff on his Instagram account because, you know, he's trying to make all of this as believable as possible. And by the way, my favorite post of his is it's just a picture of two random Saudi guys that he like got off the internet. And the caption says, Family. Man, that is not his family. This mother is from Columbia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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So anyway, Anthony and Carl set up a fake investment company for Anthony, the fake prince, and they start recruiting people with money to invest in it. And to their credit, this actually works because pretty quickly they've conned 26 investors into giving them over $8 million. And then Anthony starts selling shares in a legitimate Saudi royal family oil company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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Like it's a legitimate company, but Anthony has nothing to do with it. He's just selling fake shares in it. And so all of this is working really well for them. And bro now has tons of money. And he's like showing it off because he wants everyone to know how rich he is. He's always tipping waitstaff with $100 bills.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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Every building he passes, he points to it and claims that his royal family somehow owns it. He rents a penthouse condo on a tiny private island. But see, the prince, like he's royalty. Nah. He would never rent. So Anthony tells people that he owns the whole building. And no one in the community really questions him. They all believe him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

315.251

In fact, some of them even start referring to him as Sultan or Your Highness. It's absurd. Bro is a menace. And it seems like with this many people believing him, he's never gonna get caught. Until one day in 2017, Anthony finally screws up because he meets an actual billionaire, this guy, Jeffrey.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And now Jeffrey, he owns a nice hotel in Miami Beach and he's looking for someone to buy a 30% stake in it. And so Anthony hears about this and he's like, I'm a prince. I'll invest $140 million into this deal. Even though he doesn't have that kind of money, I guess he just wants to pretend to be rich. And so Jeffrey is like, sweet, I found a buyer. And the two of them start hanging out a bit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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Like they kind of become friends. But then Anthony starts telling Jeffrey that Jeffrey needs to shower him with gifts because that's what's customary back in his home country of Saudi Arabia. And it's a sign of respect. And so Jeffrey does because he doesn't want to be rude. And so he starts buying him jewelry and expensive art and he takes him on flights in his private jet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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Jeffrey is really trying to win this prince over. But then, of course, this whole plan starts falling apart. Because one day, Jeffrey flies himself, Anthony, Carl, and some others on his private jet from Miami out to Aspen for a nice little luxury trip. And while they're there, they all go out to dinner. And that is when Anthony really screws up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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Because when he orders his dinner, he orders prosciutto, a type of ham. And Jeffrey notices this, and he's like, wait a minute. Isn't the Saudi royal family Muslim? Isn't pork forbidden for Muslims? So now he's suspicious. And so he has his team low-key start investigating Anthony, calling around, asking people about him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

41.996

But anyway, he eventually leaves Michigan, where he lives, and he moves over to California. And there, he starts pulling this con all over again. And he'll steal credit cards and pretend he's a royal Saudi prince, and he pulls this scam for a few years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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So then later, someone calls Anthony and tips him off like, hey, some of Jeffrey's people are calling around asking about you. And Anthony knows he's about to get exposed, and so to try and get out of this, he doubles down. In front of everyone, he makes a scene, and he has a huge meltdown, screaming at everyone, how dare you doubt me, I'll sue you, I've never been so disrespected in my life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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I mean, it gets really intense, and Everyone goes back to their hotel room mad. The next day at breakfast, the prince's team tells Jeffrey, hey, to keep the prince interested in purchasing your hotel, you need to buy him a nice gift, like something worth at least $50,000. And of course, this makes Jeffrey even more suspicious. But he plays along. He's like...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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But eventually he gets the FBI involved and they investigate. And as soon as the FBI sees photos of Anthony and they see his messed up teeth, they're now certain that he's a fraud. Because apparently Saudi royals are known for taking care of their teeth and Anthony's teeth, they're not in the best shape. Anyway, so eventually, bam, they go and arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And since this is actually the 11th time he's been arrested for this con, he gets sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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However, you can only steal credit cards and commit fraud so many times before you finally get caught and they throw your ass in prison for a while, which is exactly what happens to him. But a few years later, he gets out and now it's 1993 and Anthony is living in Miami.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

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And there he commits identity theft and he steals someone's identity and he moves into a luxury hotel and he keeps this lie going. He tells everyone he's an important Saudi prince and everyone believes him and they want to be his friend. And so he throws these big ass parties in his hotel room for all his new friends. But unfortunately, one night in his hotel room, boom, two of his guests rob him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und 600.000 Dollar ist viel Geld für jeden, viel weniger für ein College-Student wie Jimmy. Und jetzt, für das erste Mal in seinem Leben, hat er ein bisschen Geld. Und er wird versuchen, es zu nutzen, um Freunde zu machen. Und so fängt er an, in lokalen Bars zu gehen, um Schüsse für alle zu kaufen. Er rentiert schöne Hotelräume, kauft bei Gucci. Er fährt plötzlich einen Tesla.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Dann geht er und kauft ein neues Haus auf dem Meer. Und hier sind einige echte Bilder seines Hauses. Und dieses Haus hat eine Bar in es. Und es ist mit Alkohol verpackt. Und es hat sogar einen Stripper-Pull. A stripper pole! And suddenly, wouldn't you know it, everyone wants to hang out with Jimmy. Now he's a popular guy. And so he starts throwing these crazy parties for everyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Here he is partying with two women. Here he is partying with two other women. And so after all this time, old Jimmy finally has some friends. Und dieser neue Lebensstil von ihm wird jahrelang weitergehen. Und man würde denken, dass er aus Geld ausgehen würde, um es so zu sparen, aber nein. Weil, je länger die Jahre gehen, steigt die Wertung des Kryptos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und so geht die Wertung seines Coins immer höher und höher. Und bis 2018 ist sein Stash um eine bestimmte 200 Millionen Dollar wert. 200 Millionen verdammte Dollar! Und Jimmy will seine Freunde hierher halten, damit er keine Angst hat, die Geld mit ihnen zu teilen. Zum Beispiel nimmt er sie alle auf einem privaten Flugzeug mit, um ein Fußballspiel zu sehen. Und er zahlt für alles.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und hier ist ein Bild von ihm und seinen Freunden beim Spiel. Er gibt jedem Freund sogar 10.000 Dollar, um auf einem Shopping-Spray in Beverly Hills zu gehen. 10.000 Dollar für einen Freund! Und es scheint, dass er Leute so schlecht beeindrucken möchte, dass er einen Kaffee-Suitcase in seinem Zimmer hält.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und er zeigt es den Frauen, mit denen er feiert, hofft, dass sie ihn lieben und sein Freund werden. Und natürlich, machen sie es nicht. Nun, offensichtlich wissen seine Freunde, dass er Geld hat, und sie fragen ihn definitiv darüber. Aber er sagt ihnen nicht, dass er es verkauft hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Nein, nein, er sagt ihnen, dass er ein erfolgreicher Krypto-Investor ist, und deshalb ist das einfach, was sie glauben. Aber egal, er hat Geld, er ist verbrannt von Leuten, die ihn lieben, und keiner von ihnen würde ihn jemals überstehen. UNTIL One day, Jimmy leaves on a trip. And while he's gone, someone, it's presumed to be one of his friends, someone breaks into his house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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And this is actually surveillance footage of that break-in. Then, sometime later, Jimmy gets home. And he discovers that he'd been robbed. And this burglar took $400,000 cash and 150 Bitcoin. Because I guess he had physical versions of his Bitcoin and they knew it was there and they stole it. And so he calls the police to come investigate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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But it's a burglary, so police don't really do anything and the case ends up going cold. But old Jimmy, he isn't gonna let this go. And so he hires a local private investigator to look into it. And so she starts investigating and she immediately gets suspicious of Jimmy's friends. And she starts low-key following them around, stalking their socials and conducting background checks on them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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So this guy, his name's Jimmy. And Jimmy has a problem. He's super lonely. But all that's about to change because he's about to be worth three billion dollars. Now Jimmy, he's 22 years old. He's a college student in Georgia studying computer science. Er ist auch einfach nur ein komischer Kerl. Er ist noch nie wirklich ein populärer Kerl und er will wirklich Freunde.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Until she finally feels like she's figured out which one of them broke into his house and ripped him off. Aber anscheinend, wenn sie Jimmy erzählt, glaubt Jimmy nicht an sie. Er vertraut seinen Freunden zu viel, aber er will sie nicht aufgeben. Und so, er und der Privatbewerber, entscheiden sich, ihre eigenen Wege zu gehen, und sein Verbrechungsverfahren bleibt offen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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In der Zwischenzeit, die IRS, die Kriminalbewerber-Unit, hat einen Hack beobachtet. auf der Silken Straße. Nicht Jimmy's Glitch-Bitcoin-Heist von all diesen Jahren her, sondern ein völlig anderer Hack. Und während dieser Investition haben sie auch bemerkt, dass im Jahr 2012 50.000 Bitcoins von jemandem, einer unbekannten Person, genommen wurden. Sie wissen nicht, wer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Also beginnen sie, dies zu investigieren und diesen Weg zu folgen. Und sie können Transaktionen sehen, die zurück zu einem Verkauf führen, aber sie wissen nicht, welcher Account es ist. Aber dann übernimmt Jimmy rund 800 Dollar für den Bitcoin zu diesem Verkauf und er braucht ihn, um seinen Namen und Anruf zu bewerben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Nun weiß die IRS-Kriminalinvestigations-Unit, dass der 2012-Bitcoin-Krieg Jimmy ist. Und jetzt werden sie nach ihm gehen. Und so, boom, machen sie eine kleine Sting-Operation zusammen. Und eines Tages kommen diese Agenten plötzlich zu Jimmys Haus. Ich würde euch alle für ein Bier oder was auch immer anbieten. Und so ist er total mit diesen Agenten zufrieden, als ob sie seine Jungs seien.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und die Agenten, sie halten ihn einfach immer, als ob er sein Freund wäre. Und er bringt sie in seinen Wohnzimmer, er zeigt ihnen seinen Bar und seinen Stripper-Pol. Ist das dein Werk? Diese Agenten müssen einen Sinn haben, dass Jimmy ein leiblicher Typ ist. Denn sie sprechen immer mit ihm und scharmen ihn immer. Und endlich bekommen sie ihn zum Thema Bitcoin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und sie fragen ihn, es zu erklären und wie lange er daran beteiligt ist. Und er öffnet seinen Laptop und zeigt ihnen einen von seinen Kryptowaluten, der voll von Bitcoin ist. Etwa 60 oder 70 Millionen Dollar wert. Und visualisierend diese Wallet mit ihren eigenen Augen, sind alle die Beweise, die diese Agenten brauchen. Und so gehen sie weg. Und später kommen sie zurück mit einer Suchwahrnehmung.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und boom, sie stürzen in und zerstören sein Haus. Und endlich, bam, arrestieren sie ihn. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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It was one of the biggest mysteries in crypto. Who stole 50,000 Bitcoins, which would ultimately be worth more than 3 billion dollars?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Yeah, at the time of Jimmy's arrest, his Bitcoin was worth 3.4 billion dollars. Oh my god. But at the end of it all, he cooperates with police, he forfeits all of his Bitcoin, he takes a plea deal, and ultimately he's sentenced to about one year in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Now, this is just a guess, but I'm willing to bet that none of those friends he was partying with, the ones he gave $10,000 to go shopping, I'm willing to bet that none of them went to visit him in prison. And that none of them are around now, now that he's not worth $3 billion or whatever. That's just a guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und eines Tages beginnen sich Dinge für ihn zu ändern. Weil er frühzeitig in der Entwicklung von Bitcoin involviert wird. Und an einem Punkt erhält er einige davon und stört sie auf diesem neuen Dark Web Marktplatz, der Silk Road heißt. Ein paar Jahre später, im Jahr 2012, geht er zum Silk Road-Site, um alle seine Bitcoins abzuwenden. Und dann passiert etwas verrücktes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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klickt er plötzlich den Wettbewerbsknopf. Und plötzlich, bam, kriegt er zweimal die Anzahl zurück, die er versucht hat, zurückzuholen. Es scheint eine Art Glitch zu sein, der ihm das Geld zurückzutragen. Also schaut Jimmy an, als wäre es ein f***ing Jackpot, und er entscheidet, diese Glitch hart zu verwendet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

College Student Steals $3 Billion in Bitcoin - The Jimmy Zhong story

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Und in den nächsten paar Tagen kreiert er mehrere Accounts und depositiert mehr Bitcoin-Token und übernimmt sie schnell mit diesem Doppelklick-Method. Also ist er basically just doubling his money over and over again. Und ziemlich schnell steuert er mehr als 50.000 Bitcoins, die in diesem Jahr in 2012 um 600.000 Dollar wert sind.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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So this woman pulls a YouTube prank that's so horrific it ends up unaliving a man and nearly starts an international conflict. Now her name is Siti. She's 25, she's from Indonesia, but she's working in Malaysia as an escort. And she does that so she can send money back to her parents in Indonesia. But then one day she meets a producer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And of course, this smears the oil all over him. And then about three seconds later, Doan approaches the man. And she smears her hand on his face as well. And then CT and Doan, like, giggle or whatever. And then they run away to the nearest bathroom to wash the oil off their hands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Meanwhile, the poor man, he's confused and a little freaked out and he goes over to the airport security guards and he tells them that some random women just like smeared something on his face and that now he doesn't feel well. So security escorts the man to the airport medical center and his condition quickly gets worse. Like it is very apparent something is seriously wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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So they rush him to the hospital and on the way, he suddenly just dies. So who was this man? Well, let's call him Nam. Now Nam is an interesting guy, because growing up, his dad was a dictator. The supreme leader of a little country you might have heard of called North Korea. Now Nam, being the oldest son, he was always first in line to be the next supreme leader.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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But as he grew up and became an adult, Nam grew to be a little more progressive, a little more open-minded to reforming things for the better. Something his conservative dictator dad really didn't like. But one day, Nam is traveling abroad, and he's in Japan, in the airport. And suddenly, boom, he gets arrested. Why? Because he's traveling with a fake passport trying to conceal his identity.

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Turns out, Nam was in Japan because he's low-key trying to take his son to visit Tokyo Disney, which in his country is a huge no-no. And once the news of Nam's arrest gets back to dictator, dictator is pissed. I mean, the heir to the throne can't be seen going to Disneyland in Tokyo? Disneyland represents capitalism, and worst of all, it represents America.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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The producer tells her he works for a production company of a huge YouTube channel. And they make like YouTube pranks and stuff. And he says he can get her an acting gig on his YouTube prank show. And the best part is that it pays pretty well. She can quit escort work. She can also make all this money and send it back to her parents in Indonesia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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And it's just everything North Korea stands against. So this arrest is a huge source of embarrassment for Dictator. And this Disneyland fiasco eventually leads to Nam being passed over for the position of Supreme Leader. And when Dictator eventually dies, his other son, Nam's half-brother, Kim Jong-un, he becomes the new dictator. And Kim Jong-un hates Nam.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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And Nam's been living internationally for a while in China. But regardless, Kim Jong-un has been trying to have him assassinated for years. And eventually, he and his regime come up with this elaborate plan. They're going to trick two random women into unknowingly killing Nam. And the women end up being CT and Doan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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And when CT and Doan are at the airport that day, the producers have both of them touch Nam's face with baby oil as a prank. But what CT and Doan don't know is that's not baby oil on their hands.

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The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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No, no, on CT's hands, they put, we'll just call it chemical A. And on Doan's hands, they put what we'll call chemical B. And when you combine these two compounds, it creates a nerve agent called VX or venomous agent X. a nerve agent that has been banned around the world because it's considered a weapon of mass destruction and will kill you instantly, especially if someone smears it on your face.

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So Nam dies that day, right after they touch him. And Mr. Chang and all the other producers who set this up, they're all actually North Korean spies and they all just flee and they eventually get away. Of course, North Korea denies being involved in any of this. And this creates tensions between Malaysia and Indonesia.

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But since those producers all fled, that leaves the only two people connected to the crime, CT and Doan. So CT and Doan are in the airport bathroom washing their hands. And they walk out and they look around and all the producers are nowhere to be found. So CT and Doan are just like, alright. And separately, the two women each go home. And they have no idea that anyone died.

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The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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About a day later, they each get arrested. And CT is so clueless as to what's going on, she literally thinks her arrest is part of the prank show. Like, haha, yeah right guys, sure I'm being arrested, okay. But Malaysian police arrest them and they charge them with murdering Nam. Eight months later, their trial starts.

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And if CT and Doan get convicted of murder, by law, they'll get the death penalty by hanging. So the stakes in this are really high. So this trial goes on for two years and the Indonesian government has to get involved because Siti is technically their citizen. And these women are in jail this whole time. And then one day, suddenly, like out of nowhere, the charges against Siti are just dropped.

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And cool, Siti goes free. Apparently, the Indonesian government was eventually able to intervene and they negotiated her release. While Doan does not get out. But she does plead guilty to a lesser charge and eventually they do let her go. Here's what Doan looks like in real life. And here's what CT looks like in real life. Wow, crazy story. Shout out to North Korea.

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The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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Plus they're going to pay her the equivalent of 96 US dollars per prank, which is a lot of money to CT. So of course she says yes. And pretty quickly she's introduced to the head of the YouTube channel, this guy, Mr. Chang. And Mr. Chang and the other producers, they start getting her to pull these pranks on people in public.

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The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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They'll like go to a public place and she'll like walk up to a total stranger and just randomly start holding their hand. Or they'll do a prank where they put like baby oil on her hands and she'll like run up behind a stranger and be like, guess who? Which smears the oil all over their face. It's pranks like that. And so she does a bunch of these pranks over the course of like a month.

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The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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Meanwhile, the Prank Channel has also recruited this other woman to do pranks. Now her name is Doan. And we'll get to her. But one day, the producers call CT in to meet them at the airport. Because they're going to do this big prank there. So she's there, and she's with Mr. Chang. But Chang tells CT there's actually another actress involved this time. And that actress will be doing the same thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Youtube Prank That Killed a World Leader - The Assassination of Kim Jong Nam

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And it's Doan. So the victim of this prank is actually going to get double pranked. First by CT, then by Doan. But anyway, Mr. Chang pours a bunch of baby oil on CT's hands. And then he points to a man out in the airport that he wants her to prank. This man. So minutes later, CT sneaks up behind the man. And then from behind, she puts her hands over his eyes, like, guess who, or whatever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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So this guy, he hates everything. Now his name's Justin. He hates his job. He hates that he's 32 and lives at home with his parents. But most of all, Justin hates the US government. In fact, he hates the government so much, he sues them several times over his student loan debt. And the lawsuits end up getting tossed out. And this makes Justin upset and bitter.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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He's like, dad, you're a traitor. You're part of the evil machine. Dad's like, I respectfully disagree and I still love you and support you. But then one day, Justin has finally had enough. He knows things need to change and that some kind of revolution needs to happen. So Justin comes up with a plan. First, he writes a whole ass manifesto

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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Then he goes to a local pew-pew store and he buys himself a pew-pew. And the next morning he waits for his mom to leave the house so that his dad will be alone. And then he goes over to his dad and he pulls out the pew-pew and he shoots his dad in the head, unaliving him. And if that isn't bad enough, he then gets a machete and he decapitates him.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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And he goes into his bedroom and he sits down at his desk and he hits record on his camera and he starts reading from his manifesto.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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And in that video, he holds up his dad's head to the camera to show everyone. And I promise you, whatever you're imagining this scene is, it's worse. I've seen the video and it's f***ing gruesome. Then he basically tells his viewers to go out and unalive any federal employee that they come across.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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And he asks them to unalive the head of the FBI, federal judges, the attorney general, like it's crazy. Then he stops recording and he uploads that video to YouTube. And then he swipes the keys to his dad's car and he gets in and he drives away. Sometime later, his mom gets home. And there, in the bathroom, she finds her husband, unalived, with no head.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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And she immediately calls the police and they start investigating. Now this gruesome YouTube video he made, it's been up for a few hours at this point. And it starts circulating around and it's up to about 5,000 views by the time YouTube finally catches it and they take it down. But by that time, police have already been notified about the video.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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and they immediately get a warrant to track Justin's phone to find out where he is. Meanwhile, Justin has already driven like a hundred miles away at a National Guard training base. And there, he manages to climb the barbed wire fence surrounding the area, and he's able to sneak onto the base.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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and he starts thinking about starting some kind of revolution. But then, Justin gets a job in customer service at an insurance company, Progressive. And surprise, surprise, he hates that too. Specifically, he feels like they're not promoting him because he's a white man.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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Now, I have no idea what he's planning on doing here, but he does still have his pew-pew on him, so I can guess. But luckily, the cops are able to track his phone. So while he's at the base, police locate him and they arrest him right there on the spot. Here's his mugshot.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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And on him, they find his pew-pew, they find a flash drive filled with pictures of government buildings, along with instructions on how to make explosive devices. Yikes. So they charge him with first-degree murder and some other terrorism charges, and he's in jail right now, waiting on his trial. That dude's just awful. Shout out to Pennsylvania.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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So there he is, he's all fired up and full of anger, and he rants about society and the government and revolutions all the time on social media. He even writes a book about his grievances called A Revolution Leader's Survival Guide. He's just an all-around angry dude. But to his credit, despite being angry at everything, he still has control of himself. Until one day, Justin loses his job.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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He's at work and he aggressively kicks a door open for some reason. And Progressive fires him for this. So then he turns around and sues Progressive for wrongful termination. He claims that they're discriminating against him on the basis of sex because he's a man. And of course, the lawsuit is bull , so the court throws it out. And Justin is pissed.

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Man Decapitates His Own Dad, Then Uploads It To YouTube - The Justin Mohn story

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I mean, to him, this is just another instance of the government he hates on the good, hardworking American people. Oh, but it gets even worse for Justin. Even though he really hates the government, his dad is actually a federal employee. His dad's worked for the government for like 20 years. He's some kind of engineer. And Justin despises this. Like he and his dad fight about it all the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Können wir.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Was an diesem Punkt ein Erfolg ist. Aber dann fährt er raus und verliert die Kontrolle seines Autos wieder und kaboom! Er fährt sein Auto wieder und pow! Er schießt seinen Kopf. Diesmal schießt er es so hart, dass es ihn unbewusst schießt. Und er ist in den Krankenhaus gerutscht und spart drei Tage dort, sich mit einer kerebralen Koncussion zu retten.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Und wenn das nicht genug schlecht ist, hat er ein paar Wochen später noch seinen schlechtesten Tag. Und dieser Tag verändert sein ganzes Leben. Es scheint also ein normaler Tag zu sein, und er baut seinen Freund einen Stationwagen. Wahrscheinlich, weil er seine andere Fahrt zweimal gestorben hat. But he borrows the station wagon because he's got to drive and pick someone up from the airport.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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So he takes it out and while he's driving, his wallet falls out of his pocket and into the floorboard. A few hours later, he returns the car to his friend, not realizing his wallet had fallen out. And his friend offers him a ride home and Jim's like, nah bro, I'll walk. weil es nur 15 Minuten entfernt ist. Dann, auf dem Weg nach Hause, beginnt er mit einem schrecklichen Schmerz.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Und das ist wirklich schlecht. Schlechter als er je hatte. Es ist so schlecht, dass er nicht sicher ist, ob er es nach Hause machen kann oder nicht. Now, let's pause this story for a second. We'll get back to Jim. But first, we gotta talk about this woman, Anne. Anne is Jim's wife. Anne is also waiting on Jim to get home from borrowing that friend's station wagon.

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Na klar, können wir. Was du aus deiner Zukunft auch machst. Wir können alles, was kommt. Das Handwerk.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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And so, she's sitting there in her house, chilling, and she waits... Und sie wartet, und sie wartet, aber es gibt kein Zeichen von Jim. Und um 2 Uhr ist sie immer noch da, wartet. Und er ist immer noch nicht zu Hause. Und erinnere dich, dieser Weg sollte 15 Minuten am meisten dauern. Und so ruft Anne die Polizei an und sie berichtet offiziell, dass er vermisst ist.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Within the next day, everyone is looking for Jim. The police put out an APB looking for him. They start reaching out to his friends and relatives to see if anyone's seen him. They're checking bodies in the local morgue to see if he's one of them. But so far, they don't find anything. Und poor Anne, she doesn't know what to do.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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I mean, her long time husband just suddenly vanished one night walking home. I mean, was he kidnapped? Was he unalived? No one knows. And so several years pass and still no one has heard anything and there are no leads. And poor Anne now spends her time just living alone, hoping her husband will come home one day. Und sie macht seltsame Arbeiten in der Stadt, um die Karten zu bezahlen.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Und sie arbeitet nachts und Wochenende, nur um sich zu beschäftigen, damit sie nicht daran denken muss, Jim. Und sie bewegt sich nicht zu einem neuen Ort oder so. Sie hält ihr Telefonnummer unter seinem Namen, nur damit jemand ihn findet und sich anruft. Und schließlich, traurig, hat sie Jim offiziell totgesagt, da es keine andere Erklärung gibt, wo er sein könnte.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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So this guy got amnesia and forgot who he was for 14 years. Now the guy's name is Jim and Jim is 50 years old. He's a mailman living in New York State. But see, Jim has a problem. He's kind of clumsy. I mean, he's always falling and busting his ass. Like, bro really needs instructions on walking. And one day in 1971, it all starts to catch up to him.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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UNTIL... Hier ist das Wichtigste an Jim. Wir wissen, dass Jim ein Klutz ist. Wir haben ihn schon mehrere Male in der gleichen Woche auf den Kopf geschmissen. Hier ist also das, was ihm wirklich passiert ist, als er am Abend nach Hause ging. Jim ist also auf dem Weg nach Hause. Er fühlt sich nicht gut und hat einen riesigen Schmerz. Und plötzlich... Boom! Er schlägt sich komplett aus.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Es gibt keinen Rekord, was in der nächsten Partie passiert, aber die Spekulation ist das folgende. Nach dem Blacken fährt er und fährt einen lokalen Train aus seiner Stadt in den Grand Central Station in New York City. Und von dort fährt er potenziell noch einen Train oder Bus und endet in Pennsylvania. Speziell in Philadelphia. Und währenddessen ist er komplett geblasen.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Er erinnert sich einfach nicht mehr. Und der nächste Erinnerung, den Jim hat, ist, dass er plötzlich in Downtown Philadelphia steht. Eine Stadt, die er noch nie gehört hat. Und er erinnert sich nicht an seinen vollen Namen, er erinnert sich nicht an, wo er herkommt, oder wie er dort hergekommen ist, oder an etwas über seine Vergangenheit.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Das Einzige, was er erinnern kann, ist, dass sein erster Name Jim ist. Und um es schlimmer zu machen, hat er seine Wallet nicht auf ihm, weil es in seinem Freundes-Station-Wagen ausgelaufen ist. Also kann er nicht nur seinen Bezirk ansehen und sich identifizieren. Und ich glaube, er denkt nicht, dass er in die Polizei oder in die

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Und er ist einfach so, oh, ich glaube, ich werde einfach ein neues Leben starten. Und er geht in die lokalen Offiziere der Sozialschutzadministration und er bekommt eine Sozialschutzkarte mit einem falschen Namen, den er sich einfach gegeben hat. Und normalerweise braucht man einen Kindeszertifikat, um eine Sozialschutzkarte zu bekommen, aber du weißt.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Es ist die 70er Jahre, ich glaube, alle denken, f*** es. Er bekommt eine Karte und verwendet sie als ID. Er bekommt einen Job in einem lokalen Café. Und von hier an fängt er an, sein Leben zu verbinden. Er bekommt mehrere weitere Arbeiten danach. Er endet als Koch in einem Diner. Er beinhaltet eine nahegeborene Kirche. Er macht einen neuen Kreis von Freunden.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Jede Winter-Saison wächst er eine große weiße Haare aus. Er wird als Santa Claus an einigen lokalen Orphanages volunteeriert. Bro is just trying to live a normal life, I guess. And 14 years go by since Jim went first missing. And he's 64 years old now. And he's still living this second life over in Philadelphia. And one night, it's Thanksgiving. And everything changes for him again.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Because he's over at his friend's house visiting. And they're all watching TV. And they're like watching some movie. Und plötzlich erscheint ein Mann auf dem TV-Screen. Und plötzlich, boom, schießt es Jim wie ein Brick. Er ist so, hey, ich denke, ich war früher ein Mann. Nicht nur das, einige fuzzige Erinnerungen kommen zu ihm zurück, wie Erinnerungen an ihn und seine Eltern.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Es ist seltsam, aber er ist noch nicht wirklich sicher, was da passiert ist. Nun, trotz der Tatsache, dass Jim dieses ganze neue Leben hat, denke ich, dass sich einige Dinge einfach nie verändern. Denn an seinem ganzen Kern ist er immer noch so schmutzig wie F***. Und etwa einen Monat später hat Jim noch einen Fall und pow, er schießt seinen Kopf.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Dann, einen Tag später, ist Jim am Arbeiten und er fällt und BAM, er schießt seinen Kopf noch einmal. Hier ist das Ding. Er, der seinen Knoblauch gekratzt hat, muss endlich etwas direkt geschlagen haben. Denn am Tag danach wacht er auf und kaboom, es schießt ihn alle auf einmal. All his memories start flooding back to him. His real name is Jim McDonald. He lives in upstate New York.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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And most importantly, he has a wife named Anne. A wife who hasn't seen him in 14 years. Und so fährt er sofort von Philadelphia nach New York. Und er geht in sein altes Haus, wo er jahrelang gelebt hatte, und denkt, hoffentlich lebt Anne noch dort. Und ding-dong, er klingelt die Tür. Und natürlich, boom, Anne antwortet, weil sie noch dort lebt, weil sie all diese Jahre für ihn gewartet hat.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Und so endlich, nach 14 Jahren, sieht sie, dass er noch lebendig ist. Und ich bin sicher, sie ist überrascht und erfreut gleichzeitig. Und egal, nach all dem, kommen sie endlich wieder zusammen. And from there they smash? I actually don't know what they do from there. I assume they smash. What do older people do? I don't know. It's a happy ending. That's all you need to know.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Because he's at home and it's a normal day and he goes to take the garbage out and he slips down the icy steps and boom, he hits his head on the pavement. A few days later, he's driving to work and ah-schoo, he suddenly starts sneezing like crazy and he somehow loses control of his car and bam, he Er fährt in einen Telefon-Pol und er schießt seinen Kopf wieder. Am nächsten Tag geht er zur Arbeit.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you make videos and you want to make really badass art for those videos, like this or like this, look at how cool that is. Sign up for Leonardo.ai.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Können wir.

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The Man Who Got Amnesia For 14 Years - The Jim McDonnell story

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Und er versucht sich zu entschleunigen und zu sagen, okay, ich brauche nur nicht auf irgendetwas zu schießen. Aber dann, ich glaube, weil er seinen Kopf in den vergangenen Tagen schießt, wird er plötzlich ganz müde und, wow, er fällt auf eine Flotte von Stühlen und bam, er schießt seinen Kopf wieder. Und glücklich für die nächsten zehn Tage, kann Jim nicht in irgendwelche Verletzungen kommen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Remember when this famous athlete destroyed his career by lying about a robbery? His name is Ryan and Ryan is 32 during this time and he's a very well-known Olympic swimmer. Like the dude has five gold medals. He's like a hero to little kids and shit. But one night in 2016, he screws it all up because the Summer Olympics are happening in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Then these armed security guards show up and they're like, you have to pay for the damage you did now or else we're calling the police. Here's the thing, though. The security guards are speaking Portuguese and Ryan and his friends, they don't speak Portuguese, so they have no idea what's going on. And so a local bystander who just happens to also speak English, he starts translating for them.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And it turns out one of the security guards tells them to sit down until all this is figured out. Now, Ryan and his swim bros, they're still pretty drunk and they're also all scared. And so three of them are like, sure, whatever, here's some money. And they hand over $20 to pay for the damage. And another one of them hands over a hundred rials, which is like the equivalent of 30 US dollars.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And Ryan, he doesn't hand them anything. Like he's not about to be extorted. And so he stands back up and he starts yelling at the guards like he didn't do anything wrong. And all this commotion starts to cause a scene. Now allegedly, and this part is in dispute, but allegedly then the security guard pulls out his pew pew. And he tells Ryan to chill the out. And so Ryan chills out.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And ultimately, the swimmers are allowed to get in the taxi and leave. Then they go back to their Olympic village where they're staying. And they go to bed thinking, well, that sucked. We were just goofing around and we got confronted by gas station security guards. But whatever, not a big deal. It's not like anyone's ever going to know. Until... Until Ryan talks to this woman, his mom.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Now Ryan's mom is also in Rio de Janeiro, probably to see her son compete in the Olympics. But at some point, somehow, while she's there, she breaks her foot. And so anyway, at some point that day, Ryan is talking to his mom and he tells her what happened the night before, but he exaggerates the story. And he tells his mom that he was robbed at gunpoint.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Later his mom is out and she gets on a local shuttle bus and she sits down and a guy sitting next to her notices she's got a hurt foot and he asks her if she's okay and they start chatting and she tells the guy that her trip to Brazil sucks because she broke her foot. And also because last night her son Ryan got robbed at gunpoint because that's what he had told her.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And boom, Ryan wins yet another gold medal because of course he did. And afterwards, he decides to go out with some of his teammates and celebrate. And so they head over to a party where they drink a ton with a bunch of other athletes. And hours go by and it's now 5 in the morning. And these guys are still out partying because I guess it's just that kind of night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Now that guy she's talking to just happens to be an Australian reporter. And so this Australian reporter is like, oh, an Olympic athlete got robbed at gunpoint. Crikey. And so he goes and he tweets breaking news. Gold medalist Ryan Lochte has been held up at gunpoint at a party in Brazil. And then, of course, the rest of the media starts printing the story and they run with it.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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But then it gets worse. Because around the same time, Ryan happens to run into this guy, Billy Bush. And Billy Bush is the TV host, and he's also the same Billy Bush who was on those Access Hollywood grab him by the pussy tapes years ago with the president. Same guy.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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But anyway, Billy Bush is also in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics and he coincidentally runs into Ryan and he wants to get an interview. And in this interview, Billy asks him about this news he had heard about him getting robbed. And Ryan starts to exaggerate the story again. He says he got robbed by some cops.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Now, of course, this is a huge international story. And so Brazilian police start investigating. And they start asking the swim bros questions about what happened. Like, why didn't you report the crime right away? And funny enough, none of them could remember the details. Like, what color the taxi was they were in.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Now at this point, Brazilian police are looking at security footage of Ryan and the guys from that morning when they had just returned to the Olympic Village. And they're thinking, these guys don't look like they were just robbed. And so eventually they get suspicious.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And they order Ryan and the other three bros' passports to be taken until they can get to the bottom of the robbery that they believe might be made up. However, lucky for Ryan, he had already left Brazil and flown back to the U.S. But two of the other guys hadn't left Brazil yet, and so they're questioned and immediately they admit that Ryan had greatly exaggerated this robbery story.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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They weren't robbed by guys pretending to be the Brazilian police. They were confronted by gas station security guards after they roughed up a bathroom. Then a few days later, Brazilian police find the gas station this took place at, and they get surveillance footage from the security cameras, which confirms that, yeah, the robbery story was made up.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And so they hold a press conference telling the world Ryan's story was bullshit. And of course, this scandal blows the up. I mean, it is everywhere. It's all over the news. It's all over the internet. This is easily one of the biggest stories of 2016.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And so then Ryan, he's gotta do the embarrassing thing and like apologize and he makes an Instagram post and he apologizes there and then he goes on the Today Show and does it there.

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This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And as a result of his actions, the Olympic Committee suspends him from swimming in competitions for 10 months, and he loses a ton of money because he loses like four major sponsorships. And in Brazil, Ryan is actually charged with false reporting a crime, but ultimately those charges get dropped. And unfortunately for him, at the end of all of this, this like really screwed up his whole career.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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But eventually, Ryan and three of his fellow swim buddies are done. They've had their fun. And so they call a taxi to take them back to the Olympic Village where they're staying. And these four guys, now they're in this taxi heading back and the taxi stops at a gas station on the way. And the four guys get out and they go to the restroom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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It was insane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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Now for some reason, that reason is probably alcohol, Ryan and the other guys, they start acting like dicks. They break the restroom door, they apparently break the soap dispenser off the wall, they damage a mirror, and they tear down a please do not enter sign off the wall. And here's actually some security footage of the guys exiting the restroom afterwards.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This HUGE Olympics Scandal - The Ryan Lochte story

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And to top it all off, Ryan ends up peeing outside in public. But whatever, when they're done, they get back into their taxi like nothing ever happened. But then I guess the gas station workers discover the damage and they're like, what the fuck? And so they go over to Ryan's taxi and order Ryan and the three bros to get out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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You know that show Jeopardy? So this two-time Jeopardy champion ends up murdering his own wife. So the guy's name is Curry, and Curry's 32, he's a nuclear engineer, and he's super smart, like a genius. He's apparently a member of Mensa, and he's also the kind of guy who makes sure to let everyone know how smart he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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One day, Linda's at home and the phone rings and she picks it up and there's a woman on the other end who's looking for Curry. And this woman is wondering why he hasn't paid his child support. And Linda's like... Curry has a kid? She had no idea he had a kid from a previous marriage that he's supposed to be paying for and isn't.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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Not only that, he had been married twice before and he never told her. So this marriage is off to a good start. Regardless, none of these lies really matter to Linda because she's still way into him for some weird reason. And so at some point around 1993, Curry's weird ass decides, okay, I'm tired of this marriage. I got the life insurance policy all set up and now it's time to unalive her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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Why don't these people ever just get a divorce? Anyway, and so he gets right to work on this plan. And he starts making all these fancy homemade salad dressings because I guess Linda really loves salad. So he makes these salad dressings for her and he'll put small amounts of nicotine in them, which over time the nicotine builds up in her system and starts making her sick.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And eventually Linda starts getting gastrointestinal problems from this and she gets really sick and she checks herself into a hospital she's so sick. But the doctors don't really know what's going on or what's wrong with her. Then, while she's in the hospital one night, while she's asleep, someone sneaks in and tampers with her IV bag.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

19.62

And one time he and his big brain, they go on jeopardy and he wins a bunch of money. He actually wins the show twice and he gets like $60,000, which is great money, especially in the 80s. But then one day in 1989, Curry's whole life changes because he meets this woman. Her name's Linda. Linda's 45. She's a little older than Curry and she works with him and she thinks he is foink.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And when a nurse comes in to check on her, she sees that there's a puncture in the tubing for the bag, and the hospital calls the police. And so police come out, and they investigate, and they talk to Linda, and they ask her if she knows if someone has been trying to poison her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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is curry her husband but unfortunately before police can launch a proper investigation into all this linda is released from the hospital and she goes right back home to live with him again because again she still loves him so much shortly after that sure enough linda starts getting sick again she's dehydrated she's vomiting she can't eat And so, Curry, he takes her to the hospital again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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It's a different hospital this time. I guess he doesn't want to raise suspicion. Then, while she's in this hospital, it happens again. One night, while she's asleep, someone sneaks in and tampers with her IV bag. Luckily, the hospital staff catches it this time, and they bar anyone else from entering the room unaccompanied.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And so eventually Linda recovers and she goes back home to live with Curry. She still has no idea he's behind all this. Now at this point, Curry realizes his plan isn't working. Adding small amounts of nicotine to Linda's salad dressings, it's not doing enough. It isn't unaliving her fast enough. And so he and his big brain, they come up with a new plan to unalive Linda.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And this time it'll be as quickly as possible. First, he slips her a bunch of sleeping pills to knock her out. Then after she's passed out, he takes a syringe and he fills it full of nicotine and bam, he injects her with it. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but pure nicotine is apparently fatal, and it doesn't take that much to unalive someone. A syringeful will definitely do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And so this injection of nicotine that Curry gives her, unfortunately, it ends her life. And so then obviously police get involved and they investigate the death and they have a toxicology report done. And the toxicology report shows that there's a lot of nicotine in her system. But I guess they don't investigate further because they don't have any evidence against anyone specifically.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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I actually don't really know why they don't investigate further. I just know they don't. Regardless, they eventually stop and the case goes cold. Meanwhile, Curry, he gets a fat paycheck. Remember how he took out that million dollar life insurance policy on Linda? Well, he ends up having to split it with Linda's sister, but still he takes home over $400,000. So he's living good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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Then he eventually moves from California all the way over to Kansas and he starts a new life and he gets a job as a building code inspector and he gets married all over again. And he basically just continues on like he's never gonna get caught and maybe he never will. Maybe he really is that smart.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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Until years go by and one day in 2002, this sergeant from the local sheriff's office, she starts looking into cold cases and she stumbles upon the case of Linda's death. And she's like, all right, I'll take a look at this. And she starts reexamining all the evidence and she immediately zeroes in on the victim's husband at the time. curry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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I mean he was with her in the hospital when the IV bags were tampered with, and Linda had previously told police that he was the only one who could have poisoned her, so bro is looking really suspicious right now. And so this sergeant spends a really long time looking into this, going over old files, re-interviewing old witnesses, everything she can do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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Then, four years later, she finally has enough evidence to take all this to the district attorney. Then the district attorney gets the toxicology report that was initially done on Linda further analyzed, a more modern analysis. Because like 15 years have gone by since Linda was murdered, and toxicology analysis has greatly improved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And this new analysis shows that Linda had 50 to 100 times more nicotine in her blood than a regular smoker would have. 50 to 100 times and Linda didn't even smoke. And so it's now confirmed that Linda died from nicotine poisoning, AKA she was murdered.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And so they hit it off and they start dating and eventually they start smashing. A few years later, in 1992, they end up getting married. And Linda has never been happier. She's super in love with Curry and his big brain. Here's the thing though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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So with all this new evidence backing her up, the sergeant who was originally working on the cold case, she travels over to Kansas and she brings Curry in for questioning and she grills him and she gets him to confirm that he was home alone with Linda the night of her death. meaning he's the only one who could have injected her with nicotine. And so, bam, Curry's arrested. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And so then, Curry goes to trial, and finally, 20 years after Linda's death, he's found guilty, and he's sentenced to life in prison. Maybe he wasn't as smart as he thought.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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I guess Curry doesn't feel the same way about her because for some reason, about a month into their marriage, his behavior starts to get a little suspicious. Like he starts demanding that everything be put in his name, the mortgage, life insurance, 401k. Not only that, he starts insisting that he take out a $1 million life insurance policy on Linda.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Jeopardy Champion Murders His Wife - The Paul Curry story

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And when Linda is like, okay, but are we going to take a million dollar life insurance policy out on you as well? Curry's like... Nah. But anyway, so Linda agrees to this because remember, she's super in love with Curry and she'll do anything to make him happy. But then things get even weirder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

0.109

So this influencer, he goes by the name Dammit Boy. And Dammit Boy is about to make the last YouTube video he'll ever make. See, Dammit Boy has this YouTube channel with his pregnant girlfriend, this woman, Mona Lisa. And on that channel, they make family vlogs with their three-year-old, they pull pranks on each other, stuff like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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So the crowd goes silent as Mona Lisa brings out the pew-pew. And Dammit Boy, he gets the book ready, the thickest book he could find, a hardcover encyclopedia. And Dammit Boy actually marked on it exactly where she's supposed to hit. This is a real photo of the book. So Mona Lisa takes the loaded pew-pew and she aims it right at Dammit Boy's chest where the encyclopedia is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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But here's the thing though, that pew-pew she's holding, that ain't no regular pew-pew. It's a 50 caliber Desert Eagle, a rather powerful firearm. And the full plan is to fire it from about one foot away. So anyway, Mona Lisa takes the Desert Eagle and she lifts it up and she aims it right at Dammit Boy's chest and she pulls the trigger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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And that bullet hits exactly where it's supposed to, right in the chest. And there's a long pause from the crowd watching. Something's definitely wrong. Dammit Boy looks down and he's like, oh shit. And he sees that the bullet has gone through the book and into his chest. And Mona Lisa knows this is bad. I mean, he's hurt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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So she runs into the house and she calls 911 and she's like, I accidentally shot my boyfriend. And paramedics, they rush to the scene. But unfortunately, it's too late. The .50 caliber bullet was too much. And damn it, boy, doesn't make it. So they arrest Mona Lisa. Here's her mugshot. They charge her with second degree manslaughter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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She takes a plea deal and she's sentenced to six months in jail and about three months of that is spent on house arrest. But here's the fascinating thing though. This all happened many years ago when Mona Lisa was only 19 and now she served her time and she's out and a lot of years have passed and she's an adult now and she's back to making videos again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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And it seems like she's really bounced back. Like she's healed from a lot of her trauma. I mean, at least it appears that way. And good for her. I mean, this had to have been a horrible situation. I mean, we love a redemption queen. So shout out to growing up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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And Papi. But one day, Dammit Boy gets an idea. He wants to branch out and start a second YouTube channel. But this channel, it's going to be for the bros. It's going to be about all the crazy stunts he wants to pull.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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So for his first video on this channel, he comes up with this crazy scheme. He's gonna pull a stunt where he holds a huge thick book in front of himself. Then he's gonna have Mona Lisa aim a pew-pew at him and pull the trigger. Boy, what could possibly go wrong? So Dammit Boy comes to Mona Lisa and he's like, Sweetie Pie, Honey Boo, Baby Bear, I've got an idea for a video you're gonna love.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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I'm gonna stand here and all I need you to do is shoot this pew-pew at me. And Mona Lisa's like, uh, no. But Dammit Boy doesn't want to give up. He begs and he begs, but she is just not feeling it. So he goes out and he tests this stunt on another book. And then he shows the book to her and he's like, look, the bullet didn't go all the way through. I'll be fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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And this begging goes on for about two months. And finally, Mona Lisa gives in. And she agrees to do it, but she's really not happy about it. She even tweets, me and Dammit Boy are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. His idea, not mine. So then, one summer day, when the time is right, the couple gets ready to film the stunt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Killed By a Youtube Stunt - The Monalisa Perez story

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And they set up two cameras to capture all the action. And allegedly like 30 people show up to watch the whole thing go down. Even their three-year-old daughter is there watching. So Dammit Boy's like, okay, let's do this. And he knows this is risky. I mean, that's the whole point.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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So one day, this woman is at the mall in the parking lot, and she's buckling her son into his car seat. And when she turns around, suddenly, bam, there's a mustache man standing in front of her, and he's holding a pew-pew. And he blocks her from getting back into her car. And she looks into this man's eyes, and she realizes she's seen them before. She knows who this person is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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But most importantly, this trucker said the shady person was driving a white Ford F-150. So police investigate, looking for any person in Heather's life who happens to drive a white Ford F-150. And what do you know? They find someone. But it's the grandma, Stephen's mother, Joanna. But we'll just call her Grandma. But what could Grandma have to do with the man who shot Heather?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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Well, police take Trucker over to Grandma's house where the F-150 is parked outside, and they show it to him. And he's immediately like, yep, that's the truck I saw. So of course, then police ask Grandma to come in for questioning. But Grandma's just like, nah, and she just doesn't go. But eventually they do end up talking to her a little bit and she denies any involvement in any mall shooting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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But she does say something interesting. In her conversation, she makes sure to tell police exactly what she's always thought about Heather. She basically says that she thinks Heather was a terrible mother and that she's glad she's gone. So now police really think Grandma's somehow involved in Heather's death.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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But she won't really talk to them and there's not enough evidence to arrest her for anything. Until, at some point, police get an idea. They call her son Steven in again, and they show him that CCTV footage they got of the shooter leaving the parking lot. And they're like, Steven, could this person be your mom? And Steven watches the footage, and he's like, oh, it is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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And that is when he raises his pew-pew, and he fires. Now, the woman, her name's Heather. And unfortunately, Heather just happens to be in the middle of a divorce with her husband, this guy, Steven. And embedded into the middle of this divorce is a custody battle over their one-year-old son. And this custody battle is ugly. It's real ugly. You can imagine they kind of hate each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

208.195

Turns out that the mustache man who shot Heather wasn't a man at all. It was grandma. While Steven was in the middle of his custody battle, Grandma allegedly wanted him to get custody of his son so bad that she put on a wig and a fake mustache and she dressed like a man. And then she went to the mall parking lot and she shot her former daughter-in-law.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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So now Steven is convinced that his own mom shot his former wife. And so police, they get him to agree to call her and confront her while they record it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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So anyway, police go and they search grandma's truck and they find fiber from a wig and they find gunshot residue on her steering wheel and they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And she ends up going to trial and she's ultimately found guilty of unaliving Heather and she's sentenced to life. And all this happened in Snellville, Georgia. So shout out to Snellville.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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But one day, Heather and Steven agree to meet in the parking lot of a local mall so that he can hand over their son for the week. So she gets there, and she takes her son from Steven. And he gets back in his car, and he drives away. After he's gone, that's when she turns around and the mustache man is there in front of her with a pew-pew and he un-alives her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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Now, when this shooting happens, it's about 6 p.m. on a Sunday. So this parking lot is full of people and plenty of them witnessed the shooting. So police, they get to the scene and all the witnesses are like, This mustache man just went right up to her and shot her. It was crazy. There's even a little CCTV footage of the mustache man leaving the parking lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

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So police, they aren't sure what to make of all this. Who was this dude with the mustache? So naturally, they bring in Steven for questioning because he was the last one to talk to her. But Steven couldn't have been the shooter. He had just driven away moments before. So they interview all the witnesses from the scene and they end up sort of Frankensteining together a police sketch of the suspect.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The SHOCKING Murder of a Georgia Mother - Joanna Hayes

99.067

But the suspect doesn't seem to fit the description of anyone they know. But that is when, bam, suddenly police get a tip. A trucker who was staying at a hotel near the mall, he says he saw someone scoping out the mall parking lot the day before the shootings. and that this person was using binoculars and that they were taking pictures. It was shady as .

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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So one day, this girl and her sister, they start noticing weird things going on in their home. Like whenever they leave the room, the TV channel randomly changes, or sometimes an item will randomly move and it's not in the same place they left it. It's like their house is haunted. So the sisters, one's name is Tina and the other we'll just call sister.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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And then they see another family picture with a knife sticking out of it. And on that one is written, I'm going to unalive you. So then police get right to work and they search the whole house and they can't find anyone. But then one of them notices there's a kind of fake wall in the bathroom. Like it's a real wall but it was just put there to hide some pipes so it's not solid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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And behind that fake wall there's a crawl space. So the officer looks through the space and he sees a large pile of clothes back there and he's like, I bet Slasher is hiding in those clothes. So he says, I know you're back there. Come out or I'll shoot. And of course, Slasher gives up and steps out. And when he does, they notice he's not a scary Jason Voorhees type character.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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He's actually a tall 17-year-old teenager named Danny. And Danny had actually briefly went on a date with Tina back in the day. But that's the extent of their relationship.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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And I guess at some point he had broken into the family's house one day and he had been hiding living in the walls for a couple of months and he had been moving stuff around and changing their TV channels randomly and he had just been watching them the whole time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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Anyway, so they arrest Danny and they throw him in a youth detention center and 10 months later, his mom bails him out thinking maybe he had learned his lesson. Spoiler alert, he didn't. Because once Danny's out, he immediately starts breaking into neighbors' houses again and stealing things. And one day he goes to rob a house and it's his second time robbing it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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So Tina and sister, they start to notice all this and they go to their dad and they tell him, hey dad, some weird stuff is going on in this house. And dad's like, whatever kids, you're probably pranking each other or something. But then dad starts to notice weird stuff happening too. Like one day he comes home and he can see that even though no one had been home all day,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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But this time he actually brings a pew-pew that he had stolen. And once he's inside, he starts pocketing things here and there. But then he hears some keys trying to open the front door. So he freezes. Now, usually he would take this as his cue to leave, but this time he hears a woman's voice and it's a pregnant mom and her five-year-old son coming home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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And so suddenly, boom, Danny rushes out at them with his pew-pew and he takes them both and he forces them into the bedroom and he locks the kid in the closet and then he ties the mom to the bed and he essays her and then he unalives her. Then he unlocks the closet and he takes the five-year-old out and he unalives him in the bathtub.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

239.467

And as Danny's leaving the house, in walks a seven-year-old daughter. And then he takes her and he unalives her in a bathtub too. And then later when the husband gets home, he finds them and he calls police. And of course, at this point, Danny has taken off. He's long been on the run. But that same night, after a manhunt, police finally find him hiding out in a local dumpster like the trash he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

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So they arrest him. Here's a picture of him being arrested. And here's his mugshot. And here he is in court because he eventually goes to trial and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

39.571

Someone had used the bathroom and didn't flush. So dad knows something's up, and he starts searching the house for an intruder. And he looks around in this room and another room, but he doesn't really find anything. Then he opens a closet door. And suddenly, bam! A strange man is towering over him with his face painted. And the man has a hatchet in one hand and a wrench in the other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

61.281

And he orders everyone to get into the bedroom. Now Tina, she thinks fast and she bounces out a nearby window. And she runs and she goes as fast as she can over to a neighbor's house. And there she calls police. And so minutes later, police arrive. But by the time they get there, the weird man has already fled. Luckily, he didn't hurt the family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

79.432

But at this point, it doesn't really matter because dad and his daughters are totally freaked out. They don't want to go back to the house until that man, who we'll just call Slasher, they don't want to go back home until Slasher is captured. So they go and stay in a hotel. But then a few days later, dad has to go back to the house to pick up a few of their things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Was Hiding In The Walls - The Daniel LaPlante story

96.151

And as he pulls into the driveway, boom, he sees Slasher. standing there staring at him through the window. And so he immediately calls police. And so police get there again, and they go inside again, and there they find on the wall is a knife sticking through a picture of the family. And written on it in magic marker, it says, I'm still here, come and find me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

0.129

So these four kids and their mom, they're all passengers on a small airplane and it's passing over the jungle when suddenly something goes wrong with the engine and the pilot, he tries to radio out, but it's too late. The plane engine fails and it has started to plummet down into the jungle. And it falls faster and faster until kaboom, it crashes into the trees below, nose first.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

115.091

So they hear this message and they start a search effort right away. But because the plane crashed in the thickest part of the jungle, this search for the wreckage is not going to be easy. So the Colombian military ends up getting involved and they dedicate a ton of resources to this. They're sending reconnaissance flights.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

130.818

They're using infrared sensors and satellite imagery to try and find the plane under all the trees. They even send 110 special forces on the ground to try and look for this plane. And they still can't find it. And interestingly enough, the jungle is almost too dangerous for these special forces.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

148.055

It's always raining, so their clothes are soaked, and they keep running out of food, and they're constantly dodging wild animals and venomous snakes. But then local indigenous people get involved, and they start searching for the kids since they're more familiar with the area. And they have a more spiritual approach to the search, taking ayahuasca, hoping it will point them in the right direction.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

168.14

Now, I don't know if that actually helped much, but I'm sure they had a really good time. But at this point, two weeks have gone by and these kids are still out there. And finally, some indigenous people find the crash site. And when the military investigates, the only thing they find are the bodies of the adults. So they're like, where the hell are the kids?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

187.492

Now, while this is going on, the kids themselves make this search really difficult because not only are they out in the middle of nowhere, but they're also intentionally hiding because they're scared. And also because Leslie knows that parts of the jungle are populated with rebel militia groups who aren't very friendly to outsiders. So when they hear anyone coming, they hide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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Plus these kids aren't your regular iPad kids. They're actually indigenous Watoto people, and they learn hunting and fishing and jungle survival at an early age. They were basically raised in areas of the jungle, so they're very good at hiding and very good at staying on their feet. So the military is having a really tough time finding these kids, so they go and get creative.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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They have helicopters go up and drop 10,000 leaflets with survival tips written on them for the kids and telling them to stay put. They also record the kid's grandmother telling them to stay in one place so they can be rescued. And then they blare that message through loudspeakers, but none of that works and no one can find these kids.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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And now the front of the plane is a complete wreck, and the pilot and one other passenger, they die on impact. But the mom, she survives, although she's badly injured. And the four kids who were sitting at the rear of the plane, for the most part, they're unscathed. Now, these kids are young. They're 13, 9, 4, and 11 months old. And the 13-year-old, her name's Leslie.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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And at this point, they've all been out there for over five weeks and people are starting to wonder if they'll ever find them. Until... At one point, the kids are all hiding and they're suddenly approached by an animal. Not a wild, dangerous animal. It's actually a Belgian Shepherd. A dog. A dog named Wilson. A military rescue dog. And he's apparently very friendly.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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Now upon seeing this dog, the kids, they know someone's close. And they know this is good news because a rebel militia group wouldn't have a dog as good as Wilson. So for the first time, they don't run and hide. Instead, they mostly stay put knowing a rescue team is close. And Wilson is with them for like two or three days.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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Meanwhile, rescuers on the other side of the jungle, they follow his paw prints until they ultimately reach the kids. And so finally, on their 40th day in the jungle, Soldiers find Leslie and her siblings, and they're tired, and they're starving, and at this point they're basically wearing rags, but they're safe. However, there is some bad news.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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Unfortunately, before the kids were rescued, they got separated from Wilson, and the poor dog, he got lost in the jungle, and he was never found again. RIP Wilson.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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And Leslie has no idea if anyone's looking for them or if even anyone knows their plane has crashed. Oh, but that's not going to stop Leslie. Her mom is seriously injured, so she has to take charge. And the first thing she and the other kids do is they create a makeshift shelter from branches. And it's held together by using her hair ties.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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And they all just chill there by the wreckage, trying to survive. Four days later, unfortunately, mom passes away due to her injuries. So now it's just the four kids out there all by themselves. And Leslie knows they need to leave soon and get away from the dead bodies because the scent will likely attract dangerous animals.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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So the four kids leave and they walk and they walk and they hide when they think danger is near. And Leslie finds fruit along the way so they can eat. And they had taken a bag of yucca flower from the plane wreckage that they had been dissolving in water so they can feed it to the youngest, the 11-month-old. And they're constantly just walking and taking turns carrying the baby.

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This Insane Story of 4 Kids Who Survived a Plane Crash

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And it's the jungle, so of course it rains and their clothes are always wet. And at night, the temperature drops dramatically, so they're all cold as f***. Meanwhile, back in civilization, people are worried about the passengers on that plane. Luckily, the pilot's message was heard as the plane was going down and before it fell off the radar.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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So this woman, her name's Susan. And Susan will do anything to get a man to pay attention to her. So one day, she gets married to this guy, David. And they have two kids together. But that's not enough for Susan. So she starts smashing with a lot of people. She smashes with her husband, which makes sense. But she also smashes with her coworker, his name's Tom Finley.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And Tom, he obviously had no idea any of this was going on. So he finally, once and for all, just ends it with Susan. It is over. Here's the thing though. Tom said it's over. But what Susan hears is maybe we have a chance. So that night, Susan comes up with a wild plan to try and win Tom Finley back. Now in that letter he had sent her, Tom mentions that he doesn't want kids.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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So now it's Susan's goal to get rid of her own children. So she goes home and she has pizza with her three-year-old and her one-year-old sons. Then she straps them both into the car and she takes them for a drive. And when they get to a big lake in the area, Susan pulls over and she gets out of the car. And the kids are still strapped inside.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And that is when Susan takes the car and she puts it in neutral and she lets it roll into the water. And it takes about six minutes, but eventually the car fully submerges. And of course, both the three-year-old and the one-year-old, they drown.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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Then Susan runs to a random stranger's home nearby and she's panicked and she asks to use their phone and she calls the police and she's like, help, my car was stolen with my kids inside. So police, they rush to the house and Susan tells them this whole story.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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She tells them she was stopped at a red light at a deserted intersection and some black guy came along and he forced her out of the car at gunpoint. And then he stole her car with her kids in it and he drove off. Now police, to their credit, they jump into action right away. They take Susan's description of the carjacker and they create this whole police sketch.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And then search parties are sent into the nearby forest and police follow leads to other counties and out of state. And this story makes national news. And suddenly everyone is looking for this fictional black man. And Susan, she's all over TV asking for the kids to be brought home safely, pretending that she's a concerned mother. I want to say to my baby, And not doing a very good job at it.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And she allegedly smashes with Tom Finley's dad. And not only that, she even smashes with her own former stepdad. Ew. But one day, it all comes tumbling down when her husband David catches her having a flirty phone call with her co-worker Tom Finley. And David gets mad and he's like, you better stay away from my wife, Tom. So then Tom Finley and Susan, they stop smashing and they end the affair.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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Regardless, the whole country is watching and everyone feels bad for this traumatized mother who had just lost her kids. Until police, they start to notice they and Susan's story aren't adding up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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Like how she said the carjacking took place at a red light, but that particular light wouldn't have been red at that time because that light wouldn't have turned red unless there was a car on the intersecting road. And Susan told police she didn't see any other cars on the road. But anyway, police are suspicious and they think she knows way more than she's telling them.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And they get her to take two different lie detector tests, which is pseudoscience, but the results further lead them to believe she's bullshitting. So they question her, they search her house, they search nearby lakes for the bodies. But Susan, she keeps the lie going. She even goes on TV and questions how could people ever suspect her having something to do with her own kids missing.

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She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And at this point, nine days have gone by and police question her again and they really put the pressure on her. And I guess she finally realizes that the tides have turned against her and she crumbles and she confesses everything. that she drove her own two sons into the lake and blamed it on some fictional black man. So they arrest Susan. Here's her mugshot. She goes to trial.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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She's found guilty. She's sentenced to life in prison. From there, she gets disciplined two different times for smashing with two different prison guards. And apparently she gets a girlfriend in lockup and she's romantically linked with six different guys on the outside. Shout out to South Carolina.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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But unfortunately it's too late for Susan and David's marriage because shortly after they file for divorce. And once they do, Susan hits up old Tom Finley again and they start smashing again. But then one night, Tom invites Susan over to a hot tub party. And while she's there, for some reason, Tom Finley starts making out with another woman. So Susan gets jealous, and she wants revenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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And she finds a different dude at the party, and she starts making out with him. And I guess Tom Finley, he doesn't like this too much. Because two days later, he sends Susan a letter. And in it, he basically says, yeah, you're great and all, but your actions at the party weren't very ladylike. And, most importantly, he says, I like you, but you've got kids. And Tom Finley doesn't want kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Kids - The Susan Smith story

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Now, Susan, at this point, she's really upset, because she's super in love with Tom. And she doesn't take this letter well, and she is determined to win him back. So, one day, she shows up to visit him at work, and she's a total wreck. And she's crying, and for some reason, she confesses to him that she hooked up with her former stepdad. Ew. And she tells him that she hooked up with his own dad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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Remember that basketball player Dennis Rodman? Remember when that woman stole millions of dollars from him? So the story starts with this woman, Peggy. And Peggy is from New Orleans and she really wants to be rich. Like she'll do anything to get that money. And one day in the 90s, an opportunity arrives for her to do just that. Because her friend gets drafted into the NBA. This guy, Travis.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And Ricky, he's like, Aye. And so pow, they're off to the races and she's helped managing Ricky's finances and she's like opening bank accounts for him. She's managing his investments, helping his bills get paid on time. She's like, don't worry, I'll take care of everything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And of course, by take care of everything, she really means she's going to low key funnel his money into her own bank account. And so over time, she becomes really close to Ricky, like family.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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She helps him and his girlfriend plan their wedding, she drives the girlfriend home from the hospital after they give birth to their kid, and like when Ricky gets traded to a different football team and has to move, Peggy moves to the new city with them to stay close to them. So Ricky, not knowing he's being robbed by his own friend, he thinks Peggy is doing a really good job.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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In fact, he thinks she's doing such a good job that eventually word spreads around and suddenly her management services are in high demand and she and her company start managing a bunch of other pro athletes. And that is when she meets this guy, Dennis Rodman. Now, Rodman was a really famous basketball player, but at this time, around the mid-2000s, he's actually retired.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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But he's still got a ton of money to manage. And so, Peggy meets Rodman, and she's like, I went to Harvard Law, and I worked on Wall Street. And Rodman's like, Hi. Regardless, he needs Peggy's help. He's in a bad place financially and emotionally. Apparently he's been drinking a lot lately. And so Peggy steps in and she starts managing his finances.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And just like with Ricky, she becomes close friends with Rodman. And so she also starts mothering him, like reminding him when his drinking is getting out of control.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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like that and she legitimately does some good for him and over the next few years rodman he kind of starts getting his life back together a bit like things are looking better for him and when he gets inducted into the basketball hall of fame he of course on stage thanks peggy peggy king elkin king the family that these guys are taking care of me these days thank you peggy

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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Now, as you've already predicted, while she's helping Rodman manage his life and his finances, she's also funneling his money directly into her own pocket. And at this point, she's already stolen over a million dollars from him. And this poor guy has no idea. Meanwhile, Peggy's just out here living the good life. Like she's got all this money now and she's spending it on herself.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And so Travis gets drafted and he gets a contract worth several million dollars. And Peggy finds out about this and she's like, oh, I'm gonna get that money. And so she decides to start lying to everyone and saying she got a degree from Harvard Law and that she used to work on Wall Street. And so then she goes to Travis and she asks him, hey, let me manage your finances for you.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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She's like always wearing Gucci, like Gucci dress, Gucci bag, Gucci shoes. She lives in a big ass mansion. She's got a whole fleet of expensive cars, a Bentley, a Maserati. I mean, she could at least attempt to hide her fraud a little better.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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But not only that, as if the situation couldn't get any more ridiculous, Peggy has such a good reputation and she's so popular with people that she pairs up with some producers and she gets a deal to shoot and star in her own reality TV show on BET called The Peggy Show. And it's about this woman who manages the finances of all these pro athletes. And they actually film a pilot for it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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However, the show doesn't end up going to air. Regardless, everything is working for her. I mean, at this point, she seems more successful than most of the people she's managing. And for some reason, no one questions anything. Until... One day, everything changes because Rodman is chilling in his condo and suddenly, boom, his power goes off. And Rodman's like, oh, that's kind of weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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So he has an assistant look into it. And it turns out the power bill for that condo hadn't been paid in months. In fact, a lot of his bills hadn't been paid in months. Now, who was supposed to make sure all of Rodman's bills are paid on time? The woman managing his finances. Peggy. Not only that, around this same time, around 2013, the IRS hits Ricky and his girlfriend, who is now his wife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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They get hit with a fat-ass tax bill, telling him he now owes them $450,000. Plus, Ricky's Range Rover suddenly gets repossessed one day. And Ricky's like, what the f***? And of course, guess who was supposed to make sure all of Ricky's taxes and car payments are made on time? Peggy. Then they get a call from the wife of another different NFL player.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And their car had also gotten repossessed and their debit card got declined at the grocery store or something like that. And guess who was in charge of making those payments? And so all of these people are like, what the hell is happening? Where's Peggy? Meanwhile, Peggy is like, oh, and she ghosts everyone. Like she's not answering emails. She's not answering texts.

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She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And so they start putting two and two together. And they realize that Peggy hasn't been paying anyone's bills on time because she's been stealing from all of them for years. And so Ricky's wife starts investigating and looking into it. And she discovers what you already know. Peggy never went to Harvard Law. She never worked on Wall Street. It was all a lie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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So then, pow, Ricky and his wife file a lawsuit against her, claiming that she defrauded him out of millions of dollars. Then in 2015, kaboom, this story hits the news. And now it's a national headline. And around this time, an FBI agent is on his lunch break reading the sports section of the news. And he sees that Ricky, this NFL player, is suing his own financial manager, Peggy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And he's like, oh, well, I'm going to look into this because this sounds like it could be a criminal case. And so he starts looking into it, and looking into it, he discovers that old Peggy is overseeing more than 85 secret bank accounts, with money bouncing around between all of them, making it all extremely hard to trace.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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I went to Harvard Law and I worked on Wall Street. And Travis, he's a busy guy. He ain't got time to be managing finances. So he's like, aye. And so she gets to work managing his money. And by managing his money, I mean she's funneling it into her own secret bank account. And she's spending it on herself. And she's like out shopping and buying herself like designer drip and stuff like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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So this turned out to be a way more complicated scheme than anyone had imagined. But anyway, so now the FBI is involved, and they're investigating. And at this point, Peggy's life has already started to fall apart. I mean, her own famous clients are all suing her. So most people are afraid to work with her now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And so she has to file bankruptcy and she has to sell all of her cars and Dennis Rodman is obviously no longer talking to her. And then so eventually the FBI goes to Peggy's house and there they question her and they ask her all about these things she's being accused of. And of course, Peggy is stubborn and she denies all of it and she says she didn't do anything wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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However, the FBI knows she's full of sh**. And so, bam, Peggy gets arrested. Here's her mugshot. And she ends up taking a plea deal, and she's sentenced to 10 years in prison. And she has to pay everyone back, which in total is $5.7 million. She took $5.7 million from these guys. Damn, girl.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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But five years later, Travis finally somehow realizes that Peggy has taken nearly two million dollars from him and spent it on herself. And so, boom, he fires her. However, other than that, he doesn't want to make a big deal out of it, and so Peggy doesn't get into any real trouble. And this is a mistake, because it allows her to move on and keep the con going with other people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Scammed Professional Athletes For Millions - The Peggy Fulford story

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And then one day, around 2001, Peggy gets another opportunity. She finds out her interior designer friend is doing a job for this NFL player, a rookie named Ricky. And so Peggy tags along and that is when she meets Ricky and she charms him up and she's like, I have a law degree and I worked on Wall Street. And soon enough, they become friends and she eventually offers to help manage his finances.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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So how is Pitbull of all people connected to this billion dollar fraud scheme? Well, it all starts with this guy. His name's Jeff and Jeff is 36 during this time living in California. And the dude just fails at a lot of things. Like he's had multiple businesses fail. He's behind on his mortgage. Creditors are suing. He's even tried being a drug dealer, but that fails too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And big corporations, they're greedy as hell. Like they don't care that his janky ass generators barely function. They just want to purchase or lease them so that the government will give them a tax credit. What that means is Jeff can continue to make a subpar product that barely works and make a ton of money off of it. And that's exactly what he does. And he gets a bunch of contracts going.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And by 2011, he gets a life changing deal. Sherman Williams, the huge paint company, leases $29 million worth of generators from him. And again, they don't even want the generators. They just want the tax credit. So Jeff, he doesn't have to do shit. And he just made $29 million.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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Now at this point, he could use some of this new money to go out and hire like a bunch of engineers to make his generators actually function. But of course, he's not going to do that. Instead, he goes and spends the money on some dumb shit. But we'll get to that. Now, as part of his deal with Sherman Williams, they get to inspect the generators for quality.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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Which, Jeff's generators, they're not going to pass inspection. Come on, they suck. So he pulls this whole scheme where he tells his team to put the working generators at the front of the line, and they put the busted ass ones that don't work at the back of the line. So that when Sherman Williams inspects them, it looks like they all work great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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But whatever, all these companies want is the tax credit anyway. So no one suspects Jeff is doing anything shady and he's going to coast on this success for a while. But here's the thing, though. All this money he's making, it ends up not being enough. His shady ass business is going to crash unless he gets more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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So he turns his solar panel trailer business model into a big Ponzi scheme where he uses the new investors money to pay off the old investors leases. And this works for him too. In fact, it works really well. And over the next three years, he sells 1200 of his generators for $150,000 a piece. making him $174 million, a lot of which feeds back into his Ponzi scheme.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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But then one day in 2008, he's talking to his neighbor about solar panels. And through that conversation, he gets a legitimately good idea. What if he could bolt the solar panels to a trailer so you'd have like a mobile power source? It would look like this, just a trailer with solar panels on it. And so he builds it using information he found on Google.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And by 2014, a regional bank wants to buy millions of dollars worth of generators from him. But in order to do that, he needs to fake a contract with T-Mobile. So he ends up faking a contract with T-Mobile. It's all fraud. But again, this works, and he keeps getting more and more contracts. He gets a contract with International Speedway Corporation for 150 million.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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He gets a contract with GEICO for 1.2 billion dollars. Point two billion dollars. So now Jeff's company, DC Solar, is a billion dollar company propped up by a Ponzi scheme based on a product that doesn't even really work. And it's all because these corporations aren't looking into his product because they just want those sweet, sweet tax credits.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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So what does Jeff do now that he has a billion-dollar company? Well, of course, he buys himself a bunch of . Of course. Like he buys a bunch of houses, like this house for $1.4 million, this house for $2.5 million, these two condos for almost $4 million, this whole

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The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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whole ass apartment building for three and a half million dollars dude buys 32 properties and not only that he buys 150 classic and luxury cars 150 what do you even do with that many cars He also buys a whole ass semi-pro baseball team. He also sponsors a car in NASCAR. Like, that's his company right there, DC Solar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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He also throws these crazy expensive company Christmas parties for his employees, paying top dollar for live performances. He even gets rapper-singer Pitbull to headline one of these parties. Like, here's a picture of Mr. Worldwide himself performing at one of these parties. But here's the craziest part of Jeff's scams. Even the U.S. government falls for it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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In 2016, the Transportation Secretary chooses Jeff's company for some government contract that they're working on. And I don't know how Jeff plans on pulling this scheme off, considering his generators don't really work, but I don't know, I guess he's gonna try. Regardless, Bro has everyone fooled. And if that isn't bad enough, Jeff makes it even worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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he decides to start lying and faking the amount of generators he has. Because remember, when these companies buy them, they aren't checking to see if the generators work or if they even exist. They just want the tax credits. So these busted-ass generators are just sitting in Jeff's warehouse, I guess. And in 2017, he only has 6,000 generators available. But he sells 17,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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So now he's selling inventory that like doesn't even exist. But I guess it doesn't really matter because dude has a billion dollar company and more cars than he could ever drive. And he even has the government fooled. Until. Okay, here's the thing about Jeff and his company. Jeff obviously doesn't work alone. His company's fully staffed, like he has employees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And his employees can see that the company is selling generators. Yet it has stopped building generators. So how are they selling something that doesn't exist? And at some point, one of their employees quits and they go straight to the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission, and they report Jeff and the company. So of course, the SEC starts investigating and eventually the FBI gets involved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And in 2018, boom, a ton of federal agents swarm his company headquarters while a SWAT team busts into his home and bam, they arrest him. Here's a picture of him in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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And he creates a generator that's just a trailer with solar panels attached and he applies for a patent. Like this could be a billion dollar idea. Here's the problem with this billion dollar idea though. Jeff, the ex-meth addict, doesn't really know what he's doing. He builds this mobile generator thing and, you know, it looks good, but it only kinda works sometimes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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So over eight years and 34 deals, he scammed customers out of almost a billion dollars. And for that, he takes a plea deal and he's sentenced to 30 years in prison. And his wife is actually involved too and she gets sentenced to 11 years in prison. And what's crazy is one of Jeff's very last tweets is him celebrating Pitbull, of all people, playing at one of his parties.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Like, they break down all the time, if you can even get them working at all. But whatever, that isn't going to stop him. He starts a company called DC Solar. He is going to sell these things. And so he gets a business loan and he hires a company to market his invention. And all this works and he starts to get a bit of traction. A couple of years later in 2010, Jeff finally hits the jackpot.

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The Billion Dollar Solar Panel Scam - The Jeff Carpoff story

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He discovers something that's going to change his entire business. A few years before this, the Bush administration had enacted a program that gives big tax credits to big corporations who invest in green energy, aka solar power and stuff. So Jeff creates a business model that allows these companies to invest in the generators he built so that they can get a tax break.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

0.109

So this millionaire reality TV star is about to freak out and unalive this Playboy model. Now the guy's name is Ryan. He's 32, he's a real estate developer living in Las Vegas, and Ryan has a problem. He wants to be famous. And you know, finding love would be cool too. And one day in 2009, Ryan's luck starts to change. Because there's a dating show filming for TV called Megan Wants a Millionaire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

116.414

And so he's all bummed out that he got booted off the show. And so to make himself feel better, he goes out to a club in Las Vegas. And that is when he meets this woman, Jasmine. And Jasmine's 28 and she's nice. She's a playboy model and she's got a lot going on. And Ryan thinks she is fine. And all of a sudden he's forgotten all about how much he liked Megan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

139.681

And literally two days later, Ryan and Jasmine get married after two days of knowing each other. Yikes. And I guess to rub it in, he has to make sure and hit up Megan and let her know like, hey, I met someone, you missed out. Anyway, whatever, Ryan is finally in love, he met someone nice, and their relationship seems to be going great. Until... Here's the thing about Ryan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

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Ryan is apparently not really a millionaire. He is a real estate developer, but the real estate development money he claims he has is actually his dad's money and he has no part in it. And he's not really making a lot of income. And so Jasmine becomes the one supporting them both from her modeling and her other gigs. And this puts a lot of strain on their relationship.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

191.972

Now here's the other thing about Ryan. Bro is just a jealous ass dude. He's always like, babe, who are you talking to? Let me see your phone. He's that guy. He's also kind of an abusive dude. And so he and Jasmine fight a lot and their relationship ends up on the rocks and then they separate and then they get back together. It's all very shaky.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

211.88

But then out of nowhere, the same production company that produced Megan Wants a Millionaire, they decide to produce another reality show called I Love Money. And since they worked with Ryan before, they want him to come down to Mexico where they're filming and be a contestant on the new season. And this is a competition reality show. So the winner of the season gets a grand prize of $250,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

233.931

Nice. And Ryan, he really needs this money. He needs this money so that he can finally prove to his wife that he's capable of supporting them both. And so he tells the producers, hell yeah, I'll do it. And he goes from Las Vegas down to Mexico to film. And the whole time he's down there filming the show, Jasmine had stayed back in Las Vegas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

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So the whole time he's like texting her and he's blowing up her phone with a bunch of jealous shit. Where you been? Who you hanging out with? Are you cheating on me? Now, it's unclear if she was actually cheating on him. It's rumored that she was, but regardless, the whole thing is very dysfunctional.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

27.168

And casting producers from the show are trying to find some eligible bachelors to be on it. The only catch is the bachelors have to have a net worth of at least a million dollars. And Ryan's like, hey, I'm a millionaire, or at least my dad is. I could be on that show. And so he goes and he auditions and the producers love him. He's the perfect kind of train wreck that they want for reality TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

272.348

Anyway, a month or so later, the show I Love Money ends, and Ryan actually ends up winning the $250,000. So now he's got this money, and his wife is going to be so impressed. So he goes back to the US and he tries to work things out with Jasmine because they had been fighting a lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

289.575

And from there, the two decide to take a trip over to San Diego because they're going to attend some charity poker tournament. And so they travel to San Diego and they get there and they're in their hotel and this is where sh** gets dark. Because allegedly, Jasmine had been planning on leaving Ryan. I mean, it's clearly a chaotic marriage, and she's essentially done trying.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

311.543

And allegedly, she had been texting with an ex. And so Ryan finds all this out, and so they've been fighting this whole trip. Now, we don't exactly know what happens here, because there are no other witnesses, but at one point, they're parked in Jasmine's car, and they get into a huge argument, and Ryan finally just loses it. And bam, he hits her. And then he hits her again and again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

335.56

And then he reaches out and he grabs her neck and he strangles her. And Jasmine, she tries to fight back, but it's no use. He's too strong and unfortunately, she ends up unalived. Then Ryan picks her up and he brings her back to the hotel room where they're staying. And then he bundles Jasmine's body up into a suitcase and he brings that suitcase out to the car. He loads it in and he leaves.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

359.782

And from there, he drives from San Diego up near Los Angeles. Now the worst part is that at some point during all this, Ryan takes Jasmine's body and he cuts off the tips of all her fingers so that she has no fingerprints. Then he takes the time to remove all of her teeth so that they can't identify her by dental records.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

379.864

But anyway, eventually he drives over to some random dumpster and he dumps the suitcase with her body in it. The next morning, a random bystander is out collecting cans, looking through the trash bins, and they notice this suitcase with hair sticking out of it. like, oh, I bet there's a body in there. And so they call the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

399.102

Later that night, Ryan is back in his apartment and he calls police and he's like, my wife is missing. And he files a missing persons report for Jasmine to make himself not look like the murderer. Then he flees and he drives north because he's about to escape to Canada. While police still can't identify Jasmine's body that they found in the suitcase.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

420.686

So it looks like Ryan might just get away with all this. Double until. While that body may not have fingertips or teeth, lucky for police, it does have something they can use to identify Jasmine, breast implants. Apparently, breast implants all have a unique serial number imprinted on them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

440.16

And so the coroner's checked the serial number on the breast implants and that's how they identified Jasmine. And so now the prime suspect in her murder is the last person seen with her, her husband, Ryan. And so an international manhunt ensues. This former dating show contestant is considered armed and dangerous.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

462.028

However, by this time, Ryan's already reached Canada, British Columbia, where he's staying in a hotel. And there, I guess he finally feels guilty or he finally decides that what he did was really messed up and there's no way out of it. Either way, he takes a belt and he unalives himself. That is crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

49.396

So here's what he has to do. So the network is going to put this woman, Megan, in a mansion with 17 millionaires. And they're all going to sort of compete for her attention. And at the end of the season, she's going to pick the guy she wants to be with. And so all Ryan has to do is be his charming self and maybe he can win Megan over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

70.343

Now, Megan, she thinks all these bachelors fighting over her, they're all right. But there's something about Ryan that she really likes. I mean, she thinks he's kind of fun. And so as the show goes on, she eliminates these bachelors one by one. And Ryan ends up making it all the way to the finals. And Megan even wants to choose him as the guy she walks away with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Reality TV Star Murders a Playboy Model - The Ryan Jenkins / Jasmine Fiore story

93.558

But unfortunately for them, reality TV is mostly scripted. And producers aren't really feeling this idea. And they're like, look, Megan, this guy is not testing well with audiences. Maybe consider picking one of the other guys. And so in the second to last episode, Megan picks some of the other guys and she sends Ryan home. And that sucks for him because he really wanted to win.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

0.069

You know this famous singer Marvin Gaye? Well, one day Marvin gets into an argument with his dad and this argument gets heated, like really heated. And they're yelling at each other and they're screaming and then bam, it turns violent. And then suddenly his dad pulls out a pew-pew and he aims it and blam, he shoots Marvin in the chest, which is exactly what Marvin had planned. Let me explain.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

105.385

Time passes and little Marvin grows up and he actually becomes a professional singer-songwriter. And bro has a hell of a voice. And so he works hard and he tours and he writes a bunch of songs and soon enough his career blows up and everyone knows who he is. And he's out here selling albums and he's selling out tours and he's got songs on the radio. He actually has 41 songs make the top 40 charts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

131.343

41, including his most famous song, Let's Get It On, which is a song that I like to dedicate to your mother. My point is, despite being discouraged by his dad when he was young, Marvin ends up becoming the biggest soul singer in the world, and he ends up having an incredible career in music. Until... Fast forward a couple of decades to the early 80s, and Marvin is 44 years old now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

158.897

In his career, it's still doing well, like he's still out there playing and making hits. In fact, he's just released one of his biggest songs ever, Sexual Healing, and it just hit number one. So all that's doing really well. But unfortunately, the poor guy still has a problem. He's super depressed, like clinically depressed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

179.965

And he's been battling this depression for years, and it just doesn't seem to get any better. Not only that, he's suffering from a drug habit. Mostly what I like to call Coca-Cola. And this habit only adds to his depression problem. Not to mention the drug habit is also making him really paranoid, like really paranoid. He always believes he's being pursued by people who want to unalive him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

204.076

In fact, his paranoia has gotten so bad that when he tours, he always wears a bulletproof vest right up until it's time to get on stage and then he takes it off and he performs. And if all that isn't bad enough, he's having money problems. And I know that sounds crazy because he's the biggest soul singer in the world, but he's actually like $9 million in debt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

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And he owes the IRS $4.5 million in back taxes. And they've already come after him and seized a bunch of his assets. So things are not looking good for Marvin. And so yeah, understandably, he's bummed out and he's trying to pull his life back together and he ends up moving into the house that he bought his parents years before. They still live there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

248.325

So now at 44 years old, he's living with his parents again. And unfortunately, in this household, things aren't going well. Tensions are really high. Like Marvin's dad, he's still a heavy drinker and he's still allegedly mistreating Marvin's mom. And as much as Marvin has tried to get clean, he's still using that Coca-Cola he likes so much.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

25.052

Now, in order for this to all make sense, let's rewind back to when Marvin is eight years old. And now, he's just a kid here, but he actually has quite a terrible life. Now, his dad, who we'll just call dad, dad is a minister, and he drinks a lot, and he's also really violent and extremely strict.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

269.965

And he's still resentful towards his dad for the way he treated him and his mom during his childhood. And to make it even worse, there are firearms all over the house. Remember, Marvin's a paranoid guy, so he buys a lot of pew-pews for protection. He even buys one for his dad for protection. Dun, dun, dun. Regardless, at some point while living there, life starts getting to be too much for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

296.021

The addiction, the depression, the paranoia, the money problems. He's kind of losing his mind and he seems to be self-aware of it. And despite being an incredibly successful and talented superstar, he just doesn't want to exist anymore. And this is where he allegedly comes up with a plan. A plan to get rid of his dad while saving his mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

318.686

And according to testimony from his siblings, Marvin's plan was this. First, he'll get his own dad to unalive him. Then police will come and his dad will get thrown in prison, which will then finally save his mom by getting his father out of her life. And I know that sounds wild, but that is what his siblings believe his plan was.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

339.036

And so finally the right day comes and it's otherwise a pretty normal day and they're all at home and dad is looking for some insurance document and he can't find it and he insists it's all his wife's fault and he's screaming at her like this is all your fault. But mom is upstairs and dad is yelling up at her from downstairs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

360.176

And so Marvin hears all this and he gets mad and he starts screaming back, defending his mom like, shut the hell up, old man, or whatever. And this pisses dad off and he is not going to let this slide. And he just sucks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

373.18

naps and he runs upstairs and then boom he busts into the bedroom and he screams at Marvin's mom and Marvin's like oh hell no and he steps up and he pushes dad out of the room and suddenly this turns into an all-out fist fight and then pow Marvin punches his dad and bam he kicks him and then dad falls to the floor and mom is screaming at them to stop and so Marvin does but then dad gets up and he walks over to his bedroom and he grabs his pew pew

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

398.254

The same one that Marvin had bought him for protection. And he walks over to Marvin, and he points it at his chest, and blam! He fires. And Marvin falls to the floor. And as he's lying on the ground, blam! Dad shoots him again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

414.125

Meanwhile, Marvin's brother, who lives out back in the guest house, he hears the gunshots and he comes running and he comes inside the home and he sees his brother there on the floor dying and he's like, oh, and he runs over to him and he holds him. And according to him, Marvin's last words are, I got what I wanted. I couldn't do it myself. So I had him do it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

43.567

Like, he'll often discipline little Marvin for things like wetting his bed, being a minute late home from school, or reciting Bible passages wrong. And when I say discipline, I mean... Yeah, dad's a real jerk. And little Marvin's not the only one dad is abusive to. He apparently gets violent with Marvin's mom too, who we'll just call mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

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And then he unfortunately passes away, just like he had allegedly planned. So step one of his plan is complete. And so then, of course, police show up and bam, they arrest dad. And I don't have a mugshot of him, but I do have this picture of him getting arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

462.492

So now that dad is arrested, step two of Marvin's plan is complete. And of course, this is big news, and this whole story blows the f*** up. I mean, this is one of the biggest singers in the world, and he's just been murdered by his own father. Like, this is crazy. Now, Marvin's dad is charged with first-degree murder, but later in court, he and his lawyers argue self-defense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

484.167

And ultimately, he takes a plea deal and he gets charged with voluntary manslaughter. And despite unaliving his own son, he only gets probation. Which means that step two of Marvin's plan is actually not complete. Regardless, the good news is, after Marvin's death, Marvin's mom eventually does file for divorce from dad. Good for her. So step three of Marvin's plan is in fact complete.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

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And ultimately, he got what he wanted. It's wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

64.07

And like dad will get physical with her and he also verbally abuses her and also sleeps around on her a lot. He sounds like a real winner. And throughout all this, apparently mom wants to leave him But unfortunately, she won't because she's religious and I guess divorces against their religion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Planned His Own Death - The Marvin Gaye story

81.165

So anyway, mom and dad and Marvin and his siblings, they all just keep living in this extremely chaotic household. And to make it worse, little Marvin loves secular music, but dad discourages him from pursuing it, calling it the devil's music. But luckily, little Marvin just keeps on singing and playing as his mom is always there to encourage him. But then everything changes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

0.069

So this guy, his name's Gary. And Gary just got away with murder. And I bet you're gonna be glad he did. So the story actually starts with Gary's son, this kid. His name's Jody. He's 10. And Jody's an active kid. He really likes sports. And one day, he gets involved in karate. And he really likes karate. And he's actually pretty good at it. And he also really likes his karate instructor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

119.842

And the whole time, Doucette is pretending to be Jody's friend. He's always taking Jody to the local movie theater and on trips to karate tournaments and stuff. And Jody, with his 10-year-old brain, he doesn't know what to make of all this. I mean, he doesn't like the touching stuff. He thinks it's weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

135.954

But he likes hanging out with Doucette because he's older than him, but he's not nearly as old as his parents. But he is still an older guy, so he's still got that, like, cool factor going on. So young Jody doesn't know any better, and he doesn't tell anyone about the essay or about any of the inappropriate stuff going on. And all this goes on for about a year. But then, it really goes wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

162.067

Because one morning, Doucette, he comes over to Jody's house. And Jody's mom is there. We'll just call her mom. And Doucette asks mom if he can borrow their car, because he needs to run an errand. And mom's like, sure, Doucette, you can use the car. And then he asks if Jodi can ride along with him. And mom's like, sure, have fun. So they leave and several hours pass.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

183.099

And mom notices Doucette hasn't come back yet. And she starts panicking. Where the hell are they? Did something happen to them? And so she calls police. Meanwhile, Doucette has got Jody in the car and they're driving west because Doucette is officially kidnapping him. And they make a few stops, but then they end up at Doucette's uncle's house where they ditch the car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

204.058

And then he and Jody, they get on a bus and they go from Louisiana all the way to Los Angeles. Now, Jody's 11 at this point, so naturally he doesn't fully comprehend the gravity of everything that's going on. I mean, he still thinks Doucette is his cool older friend and that they're somehow out on some kind of adventure.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

224.876

And so while they're in Los Angeles, Doucette walks them around downtown and they see a TV show being filmed and he gets to see the Hollywood sign. And then that same day, they get on another bus and they travel from Los Angeles down over to Anaheim. and they stay in a motel. And then the next day, Doucette takes Jody to Disneyland. And he's 11, so I'm sure he has a good time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

248.213

Now, at this point, Jody has been missing for nine whole days. And Gary and Mom, they're back home, and they're going insane. And there's a nationwide manhunt looking for these two, and the FBI is now involved, and no one really knows if they're ever going to see Jody again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

26.896

This guy, Doucette. He's 24. Now, Doucette is a friendly guy, but teaching karate is his only source of income. So, he's kind of broke. In fact, he's so broke, he lives at the karate studio. Now, Gary feels bad for Doucette because he's such a nice guy and he seems to be good with the kids. So Gary decides to let Doucette eat dinner with the family sometimes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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Until, until Doucette makes a big mistake because that night at the motel, he decides to allow Jody to make a call back home to his mom. And so Jody calls his mom and they have a quick talk. But what Doucette doesn't know and what mom doesn't even know at this point is that the FBI had tapped her phone because they were hoping that at some point Doucette would call and they were right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

292.873

So they trace the call and pretty quickly, boom, police bust through the motel door and bam, they arrest Doucette. Here's his mugshot. And Jody ultimately gets sent back home to Baton Rouge to be with his parents. But here's where the story gets really crazy. They put Doucette in jail and two weeks later, they extradite him from California all the way back to Baton Rouge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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That same day, Gary goes to a local restaurant to get lunch. And even though he just got his son back, he's still upset. I mean, police told him all the terrible things Doucette did to Jody. So Gary is just sickened by all this, and he can't get over it. It's eating him alive. which I assume would be normal for any parent. I mean, your son gets kidnapped and violated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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I imagine you'd be losing your mind too, thinking of all the crazy just wanting to punch holes in the wall. I mean, you'd be mad, I would. So anyway, Gary's at this restaurant and a local news reporter recognizes him. And he's like, hey Gary, do you know what time Doucette's extradition is? And of course, Gary doesn't know. Police never told him. But then, that reporter finds out the information.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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And for some reason, he goes back to Gary and tells him, Hey, turns out they're going to be bringing Doucette through Baton Rouge Airport around 9 o'clock tonight. And that moment is when Gary just snaps and he decides he's going to get revenge on Doucette. And he goes and he gets his pew pew and he heads to the airport because he is not going to let this slide. It's about to get real.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

383.01

And so he's there at the airport and he's wearing a disguise, a baseball hat and sunglasses. And there are news camera crews and police all over the place. And everyone is there waiting for officers to arrive and perp walk Doucette through the area. And Gary, he gets on a payphone and he's got his back to everyone so that no one will see him and recognize him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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And that is when the police escort enters and they're walking through with Doucette. And he's right here. And right as they walk past Gary, and Gary's here, he quickly grabs his pew-pew, and he points it at Doucette's head, and blam! Now, obviously, I can't show you the full video. It's way too gruesome, and I don't want my video removed. But the local news camera crews captured the whole thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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And so, bam! Gary is immediately arrested, and Doucette is rushed to the hospital, and there, he actually dies the next day. But here's the complicated part. Jody is actually mad at Gary over all this. Because in his 11-year-old mind, he saw Doucette as his good friend. The guy who showed him around LA and took him to Disneyland.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

451.653

And from his perspective, his dad just suddenly unalived his good friend. And Jody stays mad at him for a long time. But eventually, they do mend their relationship and they make up. But anyway, Gary ends up taking a plea deal where the charges against him are dropped down to manslaughter. So at the end of it all, he only gets community service and five years probation for unaliving this predator.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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And ultimately, he spends zero time in prison for this. And here is what he looked like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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He lets him borrow their shower when he needs it. And so Doucette, who's over there all the time, he ends up becoming a family friend. So now he's always teaching Jody karate, he's driving him home from practice, he's taking him out to see movies, and they have a lot of fun together. And this relationship goes on for a while. But... Here's where the story gets dark.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

72.963

Turns out, Doucette is low-key a creep. And once the family starts trusting him, he starts testing boundaries with Jodie. Touching him when they're alone, seeing how far he can get. And this is a common thing that P3DOs do. They'll often test boundaries little by little to see how far they can get, to see if anyone calls them out on it. And they'll test boundaries with the parents too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Pedo - The Gary Plauche story

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They'll take the kid out for a few hours to see how long it takes for the parents to get worried, stuff like that. And this is exactly what Doucette does. And after a few months of testing these boundaries with Jody and his parents, he straight up starts essaying Jody. And he's always hanging around the family, so he gets to do it frequently, nearly every day, anytime he can get Jody alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

0.089

So this guy, he really wants to be a celebrity. He likes the idea of fame and he just really wants to be around celebrities. Now his name is Dr. Landy and Dr. Landy is not a celebrity. He's a psychologist. And one day he gets an idea for a crazy and controversial new type of therapy treatment. But we'll get to that. First, we got to talk about the Beach Boys.

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The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

114.74

And for this experimental therapy program, he charges $10,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is about $58,000 a month. But after doing this treatment, Brian does slowly start to show signs of improvement. He gets more productive, his mood gets better, he starts socializing again.

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The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

136.297

But then, after about a year in this program, Dr. Landy decides to raise his rates from $10,000 monthly to $20,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is nearly $110,000 a month for therapy. And so the Beach Boys manager, he sees this and he's like, oh, well, this is bullshit. And he fires Dr. Landy, like done. And everyone just moves on. A few years later, Brian, he isn't doing so well again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

166.812

He's back to abusing drugs and alcohol. His weight gets up to over 300 pounds. His mental health just spirals out of control. And he and his wife, they end up getting divorced. And at one point he attacks a therapist and he gets committed to a mental health facility for a few months. Like it's going really bad for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

184.624

And eventually Brian overdoses and his family and his management team, they don't know what to do. So they agreed to do the only thing that kind of worked for him in the past. They allow him to see Dr. Landy again. So they hit up Landy and they ask him to help. And Landy agrees to take Brian as a patient again in his 24-hour treatment program. But this time he wants two things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

208.945

One, he wants total control of Brian's affairs without interference from anyone. And two, he wants to charge a new even higher fee, $35,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is about $114,000 a month. Damn. So the family reluctantly agrees and Landy takes over and he controls everything in Brian's life. All decisions Brian makes have to go through him. He's his legal guardian now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

23.504

The band who's touring the world and topping the charts. Specifically, we gotta talk about the lead singer. This guy, Brian. Brian, he's kind of a musical genius. But unfortunately, he's got a lot of undiagnosed mental health issues. And at this time, he's touring around, he's soaking in the fame, and he's dealing with that rock and roll lifestyle. And it's a lot for the guy to handle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

239.346

And he puts Brian on a strict exercise plan. He throws cold water on Brian in the mornings to wake him up. He padlocks the fridge so Brian can't get into it unless he lets him. But most importantly, he controls who Brian interacts with. and he isn't allowed to contact his friends or his ex-wife or even his kids. And not only that, he keeps Brian pretty drugged up too on anti-psychotic meds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

263.49

So Brian's kind of a zombie at this point. And again, Dr. Landy has a team of assistants watching over him 24 seven to make sure he's complying with all these new rules. But to be kind of fair, the treatment does seem to be working, I guess. I mean, Brian is technically sober now and he's losing weight and he's way overmedicated. So I guess he's not hearing voices as much as he was before.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

286.748

But here's where things get really messed up. Dr. Landy now controls all aspects of Brian's life. So not only is he charging Brian a million dollars a year in monthly fees, but he is able to anoint himself as Brian's creative and financial partner. And he's able to negotiate himself a quarter of Brian's publishing royalties on some of the Beach Boys songs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

310.258

So songs that Brian writes on, Landy is now earning royalties off of them. And he's able to name himself co-writer on a bunch of the songs that Brian writes. I mean, at one point, Landy even says, and I quote, I influence all of Brian's thinking. I'm practically a member of the band. And then when Brian starts working on solo material, Landy names himself executive producer on the solo albums.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

337.087

And he gets himself credited as a co-songwriter on a bunch of the songs. This dude is shady as f**k. But around this time, Brian is at a car dealership buying a car one day and he meets this woman, Melinda. And they hit it off and they start dating and Melinda really likes Brian.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

354.934

However, once she gets close to him, she starts to see this crazy control that Landy has over his entire life and she doesn't like it. She thinks it's unethical, which it is. So she starts raising hell, bringing it to everyone's attention. She even reports Landy to the state attorney general. And of course, Landy doesn't like her back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

376.927

I mean, he doesn't like anyone getting in between him and Brian. So eventually, after she and Brian had been dating for about three years, Landy gets so mad at her that he forbids Brian from seeing her. I guess he's just like, you're not allowed to see her anymore. And he's Brian's legal guardian. So Brian just stops seeing Melinda.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

395.942

And eventually, after all this hell has been raised, Brian's family gets involved in all this. And they don't like what's going on. And at some point, they get a hold of a copy of a will that Brian had allegedly made out. And in this will, he states that if he dies, he's going to give Dr. Landy 70% of all his assets. 70%. And this is the last straw for everyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

423.783

They're not gonna let Brian give 70% of everything he's earned to his shady therapist. So the family ends up suing Dr. Landy and they file a restraining order against him. And this story blows up and Dr. Landy has to like go on TV and try and defend himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

450.604

It's... Now eventually, Brian's family wins and the court bars Landy from ever contacting Brian again. Good. That same year, with Landy out of his life, Brian reconnects with Melinda and they fall back in love and they get married a few years after that. And eventually she gets him reevaluated and gets his mental condition properly diagnosed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

473.897

And doctors discover that he has not paranoid schizophrenia, but a schizoaffective disorder with a mild bipolar disorder, which is a different thing and is treated differently. And once they treat Brian properly and get him the right meds, he ends up doing a lot better. Good for him. And here's what he looks like now in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

48.188

So he does what a lot of rock stars do. He starts using drugs, heavily. And he gains a bunch of weight, and sometimes he has nervous breakdowns, and he's been hearing voices. And because of all this, he stops touring, and he stops recording with his band. Bro is just a mess. So one day, Brian's wife, who we'll just call wife, she gets worried about him, and she seeks out a psychologist to help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

73.842

The psychologist ends up being Dr. Landy. And Dr. Landy, the guy who wants nothing more than to be around celebrities, he agrees to help. So he starts to work with Brian and immediately he diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic. And this diagnosis is important because it's the wrong diagnosis. But we'll get to that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story

95.201

Regardless, Landy starts helping Brian and he puts him on this controversial new type of therapy treatment he came up with. It's an intensive 24-hour therapy program. where he hires assistants to watch over Brian constantly, and he has him start a fitness routine, and he gets him to start eating better, and he gets him on medication.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

0.109

So this French guy, his name's Michel. And Michel has successfully broken out of prison five different times. Until... Well, you'll see. So Michel's pretty good at busting himself out of prison. Like once he snuck out by hiding in a delivery truck. Another time he scaled the wall with one of those ropes made of bed sheets. Bro is a pro at this. He's like the MacGyver of prison breaks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

117.653

Oh, but it's not over because then Michelle and Nadine, they run off and they hide out in the countryside for about two years. And unfortunately, that's when they run into another big problem. Nadine is pregnant. And if you know anything about babies, babies aren't cheap. So again, they need money to live and to raise this kid. And Michelle is like, well, guess I gotta go rob some more places.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

142.191

Because as clever of a guy as he is, I guess he just doesn't know how to do anything else. So he's gotta steal shit. And of all the places he could rob, he chooses... a bank, a heavily guarded bank. So he goes to rob this bank and during this robbery, it's all chaos and it all goes wrong and police show up and he ends up shooting a police officer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

167.389

And so he gets caught and he's sent back to prison again, this time with an even longer sentence. Oh, but you know, Michelle, he's not going to stay in prison for long before he tries to escape again. And it takes a few years, but eventually he and Nadine, they come up with a plan to bust him out. And this plan is wild. In fact, it's probably the craziest prison break story I've ever heard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

190.845

So first, Nadine goes, and she gets helicopter flying lessons from an instructor. And she takes these lessons, and after a few months of dedication, she passes the exam, and she legitimately gets her helicopter pilot's license. And this is an actual photo of her sitting in a helicopter during a lesson. And apparently she's a decent student. She actually ends up being pretty good at flying.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

213.825

So then one day she goes to visit Michelle in prison and she low-key slips him a note. This note tells him to meet her on the roof of the prison on the morning of May 26th, 10 a.m. And Michelle's like, all right. Now, to get on the roof of the prison, Michel is gonna need to create a distraction.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

234.276

So he and his prison buddy, this guy, Pierre, they steal a bunch of nectarines from the prison cafeteria, and they paint them to look like grenades. Like I said, bro is the MacGyver of prison breaks. But anyway, then the big day finally comes. May 26th, 10 a.m. And just before this, Nadine, with her new pilot's license, she goes and she rents a helicopter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

24.395

But then one day, it all changes. Because while he's a fugitive on the run, he meets this woman, Nadine. And Nadine, she's a bit of a turd herself. She's got a criminal record too. And she thinks Michelle is foint. And they hook up and they fall in love and they live a life where they have to move around the countryside a lot so that Michelle doesn't get caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

259.891

And she and an accomplice fly about 19 miles to Paris proper, and they hover the helicopter over the prison. Meanwhile, inside, Michel, he hears the approaching helicopter outside. So he and Pierre, they pull out their fake nectarine hand grenades. And they're like, we're going to blow this whole place up if you guards don't back off. And to the guards, these look like real grenades.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

283.14

So they listen and they back away. And Michelle and Pierre, they make their way up to the roof. And then they bust out. And they see Nadine's helicopter is hovering there above them. And she throws a rope down. And Michelle, he starts to climb up it. And Nadine's accomplice, he pulls out a pew-pew to cover Michelle while he climbs up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

301.087

And believe it or not, there are actual photos of all of this going down. And like you can see Michelle there hanging from the helicopter and all the prisoners down below are cheering him on like, yay, go Michelle. I mean, this is all just entertainment to them. Like one of their fellow inmates is busting out. How could they not cheer them on?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

320.098

Anyway, so Michelle gets into the helicopter and the guards are closing in. And Nadine, she panics and she pulls away and she flees. And poor Pierre is still standing there. And he's like, oh, sacre bleu, as the guards tackle him. They left Pierre behind so that they could get away. Imagine being Pierre and doing all that work to orchestrate a prison break.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

345.837

And then that prison break is successful, but your partners in crime panic and they accidentally leave you behind, that poor guy. So anyway, further away, Nadine lands the helicopter in a soccer field nearby and the three fugitives, they abandon it and they flee. And so they're out now, which means that once again, Michelle has successfully escaped from lockup.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

369.963

But then about four months go by and French police, they're able to track Nadine down and bam, they arrest her. And she gets 10 months in prison, which to me, 10 months seems a little light for the crazy stunt they just pulled, but whatever, they caught her. Meanwhile, Michelle doesn't get caught. He's still hidden and he goes and he tries to rob yet another bank.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

392.649

And during the robbery, police show up and there's this whole big shootout. And then kaboom, an officer shoots Michelle right in the head. Now, lucky for him, he actually survives. And he's in a coma for a while and he's paralyzed on one side of his body, but eventually he recovers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

412.979

And that's when they send him to a maximum security prison, which is probably where they should have sent him four prison breaks ago. But regardless, over time, he and Nadine end up getting a divorce. And while he's in this prison, this woman on the outside, her name's Jamila, Jamila, she starts writing him and they become pen pals and eventually they fall in love.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

434.085

Now, the crazy thing is she also ends up trying to break him out. And not only does she try to break him out, but she tries to break him out roughly the same way that Nadine did all those years before with a helicopter. So Jamila hijacks a helicopter by sticking up the pilot and she has him fly them to Michelle's new prison, but they don't even get close to the prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

460.638

The plan fails and Jamila's arrested and she gets seven years. Meanwhile, Michelle, he serves his sentence, he spends 17 years locked up, he never successfully escapes from prison again, and he actually got out legally in 2003. So he's out now, and here's what he looked like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

49.304

But eventually they run into a big problem. They're out of money. And Michelle can't just go get a regular job. He's a fugitive on the run. So he's like, guess I'll just start robbing places. And so he starts robbing places and people. And soon enough, police catch up to him and they bust him. So he goes to prison for like the fourth time in his life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

73.2

And he and Nadine actually get married while he's in prison. And I'm sure it was a beautiful ceremony. But he's not there long before he gets a crazy idea to bust himself out again. And one day he gets a bar of soap and he carves it to look like a pew pew. And he paints it black with shoe polish. I gotta say, carving a believable firearm out of soap, that's actually pretty impressive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Escaped From Prison 5 Times - The Michel Vaujour story

99.384

But anyway, then he has to go to court for a hearing. And while he's there, he pulls out his fake soap pew-pew, and he threatens to shoot everyone in the room. And by doing this, he's able to escape prison yet again. And honestly, at this point, I'm like kind of cheering for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

0.109

So this 19 year old girl, she ends up robbing a bunch of celebrities. Now the girl, her name's Rachel. And Rachel lives a nice, comfortable, upper middle class life. But for some reason, this life is not enough for her. She wants more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

106.506

And I typically earn anywhere from 5% to 15% cash back at the restaurants, grocery stores, and convenience stores. And I earn up to 25 cents per gallon cash back at gas stations, which you just saw me do. And top earners on Upside are getting as much as $300 cash back every month. And yes, it's real cash back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

125.935

No confusing rewards or points or credits, actual real money you can transfer straight into your bank account. In fact, people can earn three times more cash back with Upside than any other product, including loyalty programs and credit card rewards.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

141.687

a million dollars cash back is being earned by users every week now to find out how much cash back you could earn click the link in the description to download upside and use my promo code rwj and get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas or just scan the qr code here to claim this offer it's a good deal

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

16.443

And so one day, Rachel and her best friend, this guy, Nick, Nick's 18, Rachel and Nick, they decide, hey, let's cruise through some rich neighborhoods and break into some cars. So they do this, and they get some decent stuff from it. But that's still not enough for Rachel. She still wants more. Now, they live in the Los Angeles area, in Calabasas. So they get this idea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

165.542

And one night, Rachel and Nick, they make their way over to Paris Hilton's house. And they're kind of nervous because they have no idea what they're actually doing. And luckily, Paris isn't home. And when Rachel and Nick get to the door, they discover that breaking in is going to be really easy because Paris actually left a key underneath the doormat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

185.888

But even so, they don't even really need that key because Paris also left the door unlocked. Anyway, so they enter into the house and they walk around and they go into her bedrooms and they go through all her things and they steal some designer bras and some bottles of Grey Goose and some cash from her safe, which Paris also left unlocked. And after that, they just leave and they get away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

208.657

And the best part for Rachel and Nick is they don't get caught. because either Paris didn't report that she was robbed or she just didn't notice. Either way, Rachel and Nick are like, hey, that was dope. We just got away with robbery. And Rachel even puts like Paris's spare key that they found on her own key ring.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

228.077

And later they actually used this key to rob Paris's house four more times over the next few months. Now of course, because Rachel and Nick are 18 and 19 years old, they can't keep this a secret from their friends. They gotta flex. So they go around and they start yapping to some of their homies and now some of them want in on this action.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

248.026

And so some of their friends start joining in here and there. And by now, Rachel and Nick, they're doing these robberies as often as they can. Apparently stealing lots of like luxury items and designer clothes that they wear when they're like out with their friends. But here's the thing, these guys aren't career cat burglars, so it doesn't take long before they start to get sloppy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

270.434

And one night, they rob Paris Hilton's house again for the fourth time. And one of the friends in Rachel's group, he steals almost $2 million worth of jewelry from her. And of course, this time Paris eventually notices and she reports it to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

286.423

And on another night, the group, they actually break into this reality TV star's place, Audrina Partridge, and they take $43,000 worth of stuff, a laptop and some jewelry and stuff like that. But Audrina Partridge catches them on security camera and she posts that footage on her website so that people will see the burglars and hopefully be able to identify them and turn them in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

308.727

Once she posts this footage to her website, TMZ and the local news stations, they pick up this story and they run the video for everyone to see. But lucky for Rachel, no one recognizes them and no one comes forward to turn her in. So the crew keeps going. And they rob Rachel Bilson's house like six different times over two months and they take over $130,000 in things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

333.789

They rob Orlando Bloom's house and they end up taking a half million dollars worth of art and Rolexes. So these guys are going strong and it seems like they might never get caught. Until, until the gang decides they're gonna hit Lindsay Lohan's house. And this is where they screw up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

353.945

Because while they're there at Lindsay Lohan's house, stealing a ton of whatever Lindsay Lohan has in her house, security cameras catch them again. And I guess later, Lindsay Lohan notices all her is missing and she takes the security footage and she gives it to police. And police, they release that footage to the public.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

372.498

So now there are two videos of Rachel and her friends circulating around for everyone to see. And of course, this story makes the news again, and at some point, the media starts referring to Rachel, Nick, and her friends as The Bling Ring, which is kind of a cool name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

387.523

One of the crazy things about this story is when it hits the news and the public starts hearing about The Bling Ring, people are actually cheering them on. Like they're all rooting for them, the thieves, to succeed. Because during this time, celebrity hate feels like it's at an all-time high.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

406.69

Like people see Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan on TV, and they just see them as like spoiled little train wrecks. Not as human beings who are having their privacy and their personal property violated. So it feels like the general public just has no sympathy for these people getting robbed. Anyway, once this second security video goes public, that's when people start recognizing them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

41.381

They're like, hey, celebrities live around here. Why don't we rob some of their houses? They probably got some good stuff and we can look up where they live online. This is their plan. And so they go and they choose their first victim, Paris Hilton. All right, real quick. You know what everyone could use a little more of? Cash back. That's why I like using Upside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

432.278

And Rachel and Nick, they've bragged about these robberies at parties and in social settings so much that people start putting two and two together and the police, they start getting tons of tips from people. And police already had suspicions about Rachel and Nick just because of all the rumors that had been flying around. because they just couldn't keep their mouth shut about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

452.627

So anyway, bam, police go and they arrest Nick. Here's his mugshot. And he denies everything, but eventually he gives in and he snitches on everyone else in their crew. And bam, one by one, they all get arrested. Here's Rachel's mugshot. And here are other mugshots from other members of the Bling Ring.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

471.6

And poor Rachel, she's sentenced to four years in prison and Nick is sentenced to two years in prison and another guy gets three years and another woman gets 180 days in jail and three others get sentenced to probation. So, shout out to keeping your door locked, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

65.895

Upside is an app that lets you make cash back on things you were already going to buy anyway, like going out to eat and grocery shopping and filling up your tank with gas. It's easy. Let me show you. Open the upside app and you tap search this area and bam, look at that. All these places offer cash back when you make a purchase there. And I'm going to select a gas station and then select claim.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Bling Ring - The Rachel Lee story

88.394

And then I'm going to go to that gas station and fill up the tank. And look at this. According to this, I'll get 72 cents back on every gallon. And then you take a picture of your receipt and you upload it to the app. And then you wait about a day and then pow, the money I saved appears in my account.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

0.089

So one day, this 55-year-old man is in a grocery store parking lot when suddenly, bang, he gets shot. He's unalived. The next day, bang, a guy is shot while he's mowing the lawn. Then, bang, a cab driver is shot while pumping gas. Then, bang, a woman at a post office is shot. Then, bang, another woman at a gas station.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

108.576

And over the next few days, three more people are shot. Bang, bang, bang. And only one of them survives. However, this time, police are able to recover the bullet from inside that survivor's chest, which confirms all the shootings are connected to the same firearm, meaning they were done by the same person. They also find a ransom note in the woods near one of the shootings.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

133.475

And in this note, this mysterious shooter is referring to himself as some kind of god. once again, and he's now demanding $10 million, or he'll keep unaliving people. Then a few days later, bang, the shooter unalives a bus driver about to start his shift. So the shootings haven't stopped, and it doesn't look like this guy is ever gonna get caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

157.673

until moose he's still working hard on this case and in that ransom note they found the killer mentions that he had once tried to contact police via the tip line they set up and moose is like wait he called the tip line so police look into this and yeah it's true someone did call the tip line but this caller claimed to be involved with an earlier liquor store robbery and shooting

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

182.089

all the way over in Alabama. I guess police had assumed it was an unrelated crime because Alabama is so many states away from where they are in the DC area. So they look into this robbery that happened in Alabama and it turns out the robber had accidentally left a fingerprint at the scene. So then who is this mysterious shooter? Well, it all starts with this guy, John Muhammad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

21.965

And then later that night, bang, an older man who's just walking along on the sidewalk. Now, after all these random shootings, the police chief of Montgomery County, Maryland, this guy, Moose, Moose is like, well, these shootings, they gotta be connected. But unfortunately, police, they have no real leads. And then the next day, bang, another woman is shot while she's loading bags into her car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

210.538

And one day, John Muhammad is traveling and he's in Antigua and he meets this kid, Malvo. Malvo's 14. And John Muhammad becomes like a father to Malvo and they continue this relationship for years. So three years later, they end up in the US, in Washington State. And John Muhammad is 41 now, and Malvo is 17. And John Muhammad, he's kind of an angry dude. Like he's just mad about a lot of .

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

235.999

Particularly, he's mad about his ex-wife. And he also knows how to use a pew pew. So he starts telling Malvo about this secret mission he wants him to be a part of. And he starts training him and like teaching him how to use weapons and how to withstand an interrogation if he ever gets caught and stuff like that. And eventually, John Muhammad gives Malvo his first task.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

259.886

He's like, first, you need to unalive my ex-wife's friend's niece. So then Malvo goes and he knocks on the niece's door and when she answers, bang, he shoots her right in the face.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

273.095

then a few weeks later john muhammad and malvo they take off on a road trip across the u.s and they make their way south and then east and john muhammad keeps giving malvo new targets as they zigzag across state lines and these targets are just random people and malvo shoots them all Then they eventually end up in the DC, Maryland area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

294.076

And while they're there, they buy a car, a blue Chevy Caprice. And this Caprice has a hole cut in it just above the trunk, like this right here. Now this hole allows them to hide in the trunk and shoot people through that hole without anyone seeing them. So then in this DC, Maryland area, they go on this shooting spree.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

315.626

and they unalive a bunch of people and no one knows who they are until the FBI gets a hold of that one fingerprint from the liquor store robbery in Alabama. And then they run that print through their system and boom, there's a match. That fingerprint is Malvo's, who they pretty quickly linked to John Muhammad. So finally, they know who they're looking for.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

339.546

Not a lone shooter, but a duo of shooters. So then they link John Muhammad to his car, the blue Chevy Caprice, and they put out this info all over the media that they're looking for this particular car. Then a few days later, in the late hours of the AM, they get a tip about the car and they find the Caprice parked at a rest stop with John Muhammad and Malvo asleep inside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

363.348

So after almost a month of terror, bam, police arrest John Muhammad. Here's his mugshot. And then bam, they arrest Malvo. Here's his mugshot. And Malvo gets life in prison and John Muhammad gets the death penalty. And eventually he's executed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

45.664

Luckily, this woman survives. And Moose and the rest of the police are like, what the f**k? because none of the victims fit the same profile. It's like none of the victims are connected. Then, a few days later, a 13-year-old kid is getting out of his aunt's car to go to school, and bang, he gets shot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

64.638

And when police investigate the scene where the kid got shot, they find a tarot card with a message written on it. Call me God. And while police are investigating that, bang, another person gets unalived while they're pumping gas. And at this point, Moose, he's stressed out over this. It seems like no one in the area is safe, and police are doing everything they can.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The DC Sniper

86.97

They're working with the FBI, they've set up a tip line to see if anyone has any information, but nothing seems to help. And by this point, the word of these shootings has hit national news, and the information has spread, and the people in the DC area are all freaked out, and people are staying indoors, and the schools in the area are on lockdown, like they won't even let kids go out for recess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

0.109

So this guy is a pool boy, and he's about to smash with a married woman, and that is going to get this man elected president. Let me explain. Now the pool boy, let's just call him pool boy. And pool boy, he's a 20-year-old college student working as a pool attendant at a fancy hotel in Miami.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

113.841

He's the son of this religious leader and total nut job, Jerry Falwell Sr. Jerry's also the president of the biggest Christian university in the United States. Liberty University. A university that his dad founded. A university that makes its students follow very strict moral rules.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

133.557

Like they're not allowed to drink alcohol or attend dances and they can't be alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex. So this is a university that would very much frown upon Jerry sitting in the corner watching his wife smash with another man.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

150.788

So anyway, about a month or so later, Pool Boy meets up with Jerry and Becky with an eye again. And they're at dinner and Jerry offers him a business deal. He says he's interested in buying real estate property in Miami, Florida, where Pool Boy lives. And that if Pool Boy agrees to manage that property, they'll give him equity in it. And so Pool Boy's like, all right, sounds like a good deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

174.432

So he goes and he talks to his friend, this guy, Jesus. Because Jesus, his dad works in real estate in Miami. His dad is also named Jesus. And so Pool Boy wants the Jesuses to help him find a real estate property that he can manage. And eventually the Jesuses do find a property. A hostel. And Jerry and Becky with an I, they come to Miami and they scout out this hostel property and they love it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

19.053

And one day, he's at work attending to the pool when he notices this woman, Becky with an I. And Becky with an I is not only staring at him, but she's low-key taking pictures of him. And so Pool Boy goes over and they start chatting and they're checking each other out. And even though Becky with an I is more than twice his age, Pool Boy thinks she is foint.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

199.719

And while they're down there in Miami, Becky with an I and Pool Boy, they drink and they go dancing and they smash while Jerry sits in the corner watching and I guess it's a great time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

209.903

So anyway, they buy this hostel for $4.6 million, and Jerry asked Pool Boy to manage it, and he offers him 24% equity in the company. It's a pretty good deal for him. And so soon enough, Pool Boy starts running this hostel, and he's doing a pretty good job.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

225.411

And he and Becky with an eye, they're still texting and whatnot, and everyone involved in this relationship seems to be getting exactly what they want.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

235.876

Until about a year or so after the hostel deal closes, the Jesuses reach out to Pool Boy and they're mad and they're threatening to sue because they suddenly want 50% of Pool Boy's equity stake in the hostel. Or they say they're going to tell the world about his weird relationship with this powerful Christian couple and basically ruin all of their reputations.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

259.97

The Jesuses are essentially trying to blackmail them. And so they all go back and forth and things get ugly. And the Jesus's claim that they somehow got a hold of compromising adult photos of pool boy and Becky with an eye smashing. And they say that they're gonna release them if they don't pay up. And of course, Jerry and Becky with an eye, they're terrified.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

279.667

I mean, if this secret gets out, this could ruin their lives. I mean, they don't know what they're gonna do. So they call a lawyer they know, a very well connected lawyer, this guy, Michael. And they ask him to work his magic and do his lawyer thing and make the Jesus's go away and make sure those compromising photos never go public. And Michael, he's like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

303.702

And so Michael intervenes and he does his job and he does his job well, I guess, because the photos never come out and the lawsuit goes away. The Jesus's eventually settle. Now, allegedly, because Michael did this favor for Jerry and Becky with an I, he now wants them to do a favor for him. Because Michael has a client who's planning on running for president of the United States.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

328.598

And he wants Jerry, the religious leader, the president of the largest Christian university in the country, to endorse his presidential candidate and give him a little boost in the polls. Because he wants the evangelical vote. Now, that candidate is this guy. Donald. And so Jerry agrees to this deal and months later in 2016, he publicly endorses Donald for president.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

352.835

Please welcome back to Liberty University, Mr. Donald Trump. And so this election happens and Donald doesn't get more votes than his opponent but because of the way the electoral system is set up in the United States he does win enough states and he eventually goes on to become president. And 81% of evangelicals who voted in that 2016 election voted for Donald.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

378.542

So Jerry's endorsement very likely helped that. Here's where it all gets crazy. Remember that hostel that pool boy is running in Miami? Well, that hostel is actually LGBTQ friendly. And one day a reporter gets an anonymous tip to look into it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

397.411

So this reporter starts investigating this hostel and they start wondering why would Jerry, this Christian evangelical leader, own a hostel in Miami that's LGBTQ friendly? And also, Who is this pool boy they've been known to hang around and do business with? Yeah, who indeed? So then the next year, bam, Buzzfeed of all places publishes a story about Jerry and it also names Pool Boy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

40.286

And later that day, Becky with an I invites Pool Boy back to her hotel room for a little something something. And Pool Boy's like, all right. But that's not the only thing she says to him. She also says, and by the way, my husband's gonna be there and he likes to watch. is about to get freaky. So they go back to her hotel room and Becky with an I's husband is there. This guy, Jerry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

426.359

And the public reads this and they start to suspect that there's a sexual component to this relationship. And then pow, the rumors start flying on the internet and there are lots of memes and some of them are just great. And from that point on, over the next two years,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

444.403

bad article after bad article comes out about Jerry suggesting that maybe he's not the pious Christian leader everyone thinks he is. And that maybe he's leading a double life, including this picture that leaked of a nightclub in Miami where you can see Jerry and Becky with an eye hanging out. But then, to make it worse, one day, kaboom, Jerry posts this photo on his Instagram.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

473.103

Now, this photo is of him and his wife's assistant, and they've both got their pants undone, and it looks like he has alcohol in his hand. Now, he posted this photo himself, and he says it's part of a Trailer Park Boys Halloween costume. But whatever, it's enough to make people go, bro, what the fuck are you doing? Aren't you the head of the biggest Christian university in the United States?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

499.853

What are you doing with this woman with your pants undone? And is that pool boy story even true? Like, is your wife smashing with this pool boy while you watch? And now at this point, the board at Liberty University, they are pissed and they are tired of all this nonsense. And they put Jerry on indefinite leave.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

518.666

Then shortly after that, Jerry has to come out to the media and he admits that yeah, something freaky had been going on with the pool boy. But he blames 100% of it on his wife, Becky with an I. According to him, he says that not that he was hanging out in the corner watching his wife smash with another man, but that his wife was cheating on him with the pool boy behind his back. Sure, Jerry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

548.307

Anyway, regardless, eventually Jerry gives up and he resigns as president of Liberty University. and all the while continuing to publicly blame it all on his wife. And they're still together, by the way, to this day. And here's what they look like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

67.232

And pool boy and Becky with an I, they hook up while Jerry sits in the corner watching.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

72.736

Hmm, yeah.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

73.877

And they finish or whatever and Jerry and Becky with an I, they head back home because they live in a different state. But Becky with an I stays in touch with Pool Boy. And they text each other and they flirt and she sends him like adult photos of herself. And she and Pool Boy seem to really like each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Sex Scandal Changed The World - The Jerry Falwell Jr. story

91.444

And they meet up a few more times and they all become friends and they hang out and they smash or whatever. And Jerry's there while they're smashing and he's like watching. Hmm. Yeah. Okay. But here's the thing about Jerry and Becky with an eye. Turns out Jerry is a big deal in the Christian world. He's basically evangelical royalty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

113.764

Und ich muss sagen, sie sehen wirklich glücklich zusammen aus. Ich meine, sie gehen sogar jede Woche zur Kirche zusammen und Benjamin wird ein Kirchenbürger. In Wahrheit, Peter ist so ernsthaft an dieser Beziehung, dass er seine Wille ändert, Benjamin darin einzuführen. However, here's where the story gets dark. Remember how I said Benjamin is a psychopath?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

135.967

Well, he isn't really in love with Peter. Benjamin sees Peter as an easy target, a lonely, gullible old man who's in love with him. A man who would believe whatever Benjamin tells him because he's so desperate for companionship. And now that Benjamin's got Peter to put him in his will, he comes up with a plan to get rid of Peter for good. And first, he makes Peter think he's going crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

160.024

He goes and he takes everyday items from around the house and he hides them. He also moves photographs around to different places and low-key deletes contacts from Peter's phone. So Peter starts to think his memory is f***ed up. Und Peter ist so, was ist da los? Bin ich verrückt? Dann kommt Benjamin online und er bestellt ein paar Halluzinagen und Sedative.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

181.098

Und er bekommt Präzisionen von ein paar verschiedenen Orten. Und er beginnt, sie in Peters Essen zu legen. Er druckt ihn jeden Tag. Und armer Peter. Er weiß nicht, dass das alles passiert ist. Er weiß nur, dass er sich nicht wirklich selbst fühlt. Und er beginnt mit den Drogen zu reagieren. Und er wird verwirrt und stört seine Worte ständig. Und er verursacht. Also ist er absolut nicht selbst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

203.772

Und wenn er um seine Freunde geht, sind seine Freunde so wie, warum bist du so seltsam, Bruder? Und seine Freunde und alle Leute um ihn herum denken, dass er seine Meinung verliert. Und es ist für ihn schmerzhaft. While Benjamin, he's just loving that his plan is working. And he's such a weird guy that he'll like record videos of Peter all drugged up and rambling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

240.211

Und all this goes on for months. Peter acting strange and people think he's slowly going insane and no one suspects Benjamin is behind the whole thing. Until... One morning, Peter's housekeeper comes over, like normal. And she enters the house and bam, there, on the couch, she spots him. Peter, sitting there, unalived. And there's a half-empty bottle of whiskey beside him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

269.104

Benjamin hatte ihn wohl verabschiedet, bis er nicht mehr funktionieren konnte. Und dann hat er ihn mit Alkohol gefüllt und er hat ihn mit einem Kissen verabschiedet. Die Sache, dass er ihn mit einem Kissen verabschiedet hat, ist nicht 100% sicher. Das ist nur Spekulation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

283.811

Egal, der Arzt überprüft Peters Körper und ich glaube, sie haben es nicht richtig gemacht, weil sein Tod mit Alkohol-Intoxikation falsch verurteilt wurde. Wie wenn er von zu viel Trinken gestorben wäre. Benjamin kriegt sein Geld aus Peters Gebäude. Er wird bezahlt und nutzt diese neue Tasche, um ein kleines Wohnzimmer für sich zu kaufen. Und er ist glücklich. Sein Plan hat funktioniert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

29.935

So this guy, he's just evil. Like he's a psychopath. Let me show you. Now the psycho's name is Benjamin. He's 22, he's a college student, he lives in England. And one day, this older writer comes to his university to give a guest lecture. His name's Peter. Peter's 67. Hier ist das Wichtigste an Peter. Peter ist gay. Er ist auch tieflich religiös. Und er ist einzigartig und extrem traurig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

306.422

Aber er ist noch nicht fertig. Es gibt immer noch ältere Menschen, die schwindeln. Und er hat bereits seine nächste Gefängnis gewählt. Diese Frau. Anne. Und Anne lebt nur ein paar Häuser runter, von wo Peter gelebt hat. Und Anne ist 81 und sie ist sehr religiös, sie ist nicht verheiratet, keine Kinder und vor allem, genau wie Peter, ist Anne leise.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

327.832

Und sie will wirklich irgendeine Art von romantischer Begegnung. Benjamin trifft Anne und sie werden Freunde und er ist jetzt 24, also gibt es eine große Zwischenzeit zwischen ihnen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

338.075

Egal, er erzählt ihr alles, was sie hören möchte, er schlägt sie auf und sie starten zu verheiratet und er schreibt ihr Lieblingsnoten und Poesien und Scheiße und er ist alles schmerzhaft und letztendlich fangen sie an zu schlagen. Und ziemlich schnell, nachdem Benjamin in einer Beziehung mit ihr ist und sie ihn vertraut, beginnt er, Geld zu bezahlen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

358.699

Er gibt ihr 4.400 Pfund, weil ich glaube, er wird sich ein Auto kaufen. Er gibt ihr dann 27.000 Pfund, oder etwa 36.000 US-Dollar, weil er ihr sagt, dass ihr Bruder krank ist und er wirklich eine Klinik-Dialysis-Maschine kaufen muss. Spoiler Alert, er verwendet nicht das Geld, um eine Dialysis-Maschine für seinen Bruder zu kaufen. Er verwendet es selbst, weil er es natürlich macht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

383.667

Nun, weil Anne sehr religiös ist, beginnt Benjamin, sich davon auszuwählen. Und er beginnt, schriftlich Botschaften auf ihrem Kühlschrank zu schreiben, um sie zu finden. Hier ist eine echte Foto, die er von dem Schatten erhielt, nachdem er einen dieser Botschaften geschrieben hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

399.582

Und er sagt Anne, nicht, dass er sie geschrieben hat, er sagt ihr, dass diese Schattenmessungen von ihrem Gott sein müssen. Und sie glaubt ihm. Und diese Botschaften, die er geschrieben hat, Die Geheimdienste sagen viele verschiedene Dinge, aber am wichtigsten ist, dass einige von ihnen Anne zu Benjamin in ihrer Wille zu ihrem Haus verlassen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

418.775

Und ich glaube, dass das funktioniert, weil Anne die Wille verändert, ihn zu sein. Und wenn das nicht verrückt genug ist, dann, eines Tages, aus dem Nichts, BÄM! Anne hat einen Schmerz. Und sie ist in den Krankenhaus gerutscht. Und während sie dort ist, kommt Annes Schwester zu ihr.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

434.998

Und während sie dort liegt, im Krankenhausbett, wahrscheinlich alle medizinisch mediziniert, erzählt sie ihrer Niesse alles über ihren neuen Liebsten. Diesen 24-jährigen Stud namens Benjamin. Und er ist so lustig. Und sie erzählt ihr auch, wie ihr Gott irgendwie Botschaften auf ihrem Kühlschrank schreibt. Und natürlich ist ihre Niesse so, äh, was zur F***?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

456.876

So Niece goes and reports all this to the police and pretty quickly they start investigating Benjamin. And during this investigation, police learn about Peter's death and that Benjamin used to date Peter and that he ended up in his will. And police get suspicious. Und sie fragen sich, ob Benjamin vielleicht eine Rolle gespielt hat, Peter unerwachsen zu machen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

480.145

Also, 19 Monate nachdem er überlebt, besitzen sie Peters Körper. Und sie machen einen zweiten, genaueren Autopsie auf ihn. Und dieses Mal finden sie, dass Peter in seinem System Sedative hatte, während er nicht so viel Alkohol in seinem System hatte. Und, dass er mit einem Schlauch verblüfft wurde. So then, pow, police arrest Benjamin. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

502.253

And the court ends up finding him guilty of murdering Peter and he gets sentenced to a minimum 36 years in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

55.183

Und Peter ist in dieser Zeit, in der er Angst vor dem Tod von alleine hat, und er will Beziehung. Er will jemanden, mit dem er sein Leben teilen kann. So Benjamin, he sees Peter's lecture and he befriends him and they hang out and Benjamin starts visiting him at his home every day and they're really hitting it off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

72.944

And even though he's significantly younger than him, Peter thinks Benjamin is foine and these two start dating and pretty quickly Benjamin moves into Peter's place with him. Und dann geht es gut und Benjamin verabschiedet sich mit Peter und sie haben eine Betrugereinigung. Ich glaube, das ist wie eine Verabschiedung. Ich glaube, es ist wie eine religiöse Sache.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murders Old People - The Ben Field story

95.305

Aber eine Betrugereinigung zeigt, dass Peter wirklich zu dieser Beziehung verabschiedet ist. Und warum würde er nicht? Er hat endlich jemanden gefunden, der sich um ihn kümmert. Ich meine, er war vorher super traurig und jetzt hat er jemanden, mit dem er sein Leben verbringen kann. Hier ist ein echtes Foto von den beiden zusammen. Und hier ist ein anderes Foto.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Dirty Cop Finally Gets Exposed - The Joe Gliniewicz story

461.937

This extensive investigation has concluded with an overwhelming amount of evidence that Glenowitz's death was a carefully staged suicide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

0.089

So aliens are slowly taking over the world, and this man is the only one who can save us. Let me explain. Now, the man's name is Vince Lee. He's Canadian. He works odd jobs here and there to pay his bills. He's a normal guy. And then one day, Vince starts hearing a voice. And it's the voice of his God. And I don't know what his God looks like, but I assume he looks like this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

113.394

So inevitably, this leads to problems in their marriage, and they're fighting all the time, and she eventually has had enough. And she's like, I am out. And she leaves him, they divorce. And they try and reconcile and work it out, but ultimately, it just doesn't work. And this is, I'm sure, devastating for Vince Lee. But he's still focused on his mission. Stop the alien invasion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

139.295

So then at some point, Vince Lee goes to the store and he buys himself a buck knife in case he needs to protect himself from the extraterrestrials. Then I guess his God comes to him and tells him, Vince Lee, it's time to start your mission. And Vince Lee's like... Alright. And so he does what his god says and he heads to the bus terminal and he boards a Greyhound bus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

162.239

And he chills there quietly as the bus travels from Edmonton over to Erickson. And there in Erickson his god comes to him again and he tells him to get off the bus. So he gets off the bus and he spends the night sleeping on a bench. And in the morning he gets on another Greyhound bus that passes through. And he eventually ends up sitting at the back of the bus next to this guy. His name's Tim.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

185.657

And Tim, he's just tired. He's sitting there with his headphones on. He's been traveling 18 hours. So pretty quickly, Tim's asleep. And Vince Lee, he just sits there, enjoying the ride, waiting, wondering if his God is gonna come to him and tell him what to do. Until... Now at some point on this trip, Vince Lee's God starts talking to him once again. And he tells him what he wants him to do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

210.767

He tells him that the guy sitting next to him, Tim, is one of those aliens. And that Vince Lee needs to unalive him. And he needs to do it quickly before Tim wakes up and unalives him. And so Vince Lee listens to his God and he reaches into his bag and he pulls out that buck knife. And he turns to Tim, and then BAM! He stabs him. And then he stabs him again. And then again, and again, and again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

237.218

It is brutal. And the people on the bus, they notice this chaos, and they start freaking out and screaming like, Stop the bus! Someone's getting stabbed! And the bus driver hears the screaming, and so they pull over, they open the doors, and all the passengers run off the bus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

25.162

So his God tells him, Vince Lee, you've been chosen for a special mission. And he basically tells him that he's the new Jesus, and that aliens, extraterrestrials, are invading Earth. And that it's now his job to protect all of humanity from this invasion. But most importantly, these aliens are aren't little green men like you'd see in the movies. These aliens look like real people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

251.646

Meanwhile, poor Tim, he's trying to fight off Vince Lee, and he manages to break away and get into the aisle, but Vince Lee tackles him to the aisle floor, and he just keeps stabbing him again and again. And he eventually stabs him over 50 times, until he's unalived. Then Vince Lee's God comes to him again and he tells him that he needs to decapitate Tim, cut his head off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

276.531

And so that's what Vince Lee does. Not only that, he holds the head up to the bus window so that all the passengers outside can see. And now eventually Canadian police show up and they can see from outside on the inside of the bus, Vince is pacing back and forth carrying Tim's head. And then it gets worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

296.205

Allegedly, Vince Lee's God comes to him one more time and he tells him, you need to eat Tim because he says if he doesn't eat Tim, then Tim will come back to life and attack him. So then Vince Lee, he uses his buck knife and he starts removing Tim's body parts and consuming them one by one. His eyes, his nose, and I won't get into it. It's gross.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

321.545

And if that isn't crazy enough, during all that, police are still waiting outside the bus and they've got the whole bus surrounded. And by this time, they've called in negotiators and a special tactical unit. They got this area on lockdown. But for some reason, I don't know why, they don't shoot Vince Lee. Like, they don't even shoot at him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

342.183

They don't bust into the bus and take him down with force. I mean, maybe they're just being polite because they're Canadian. I don't know. But if I can think of any instance where it would be justified for police to use force, it would be this instance. But they don't. They try and negotiate with him to come out. But of course, Vince Lee is like, fuck you. He doesn't listen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

361.8

I mean, he's busy trying to stop the alien invasion. And again, I'm not necessarily in favor of police just shooting people, no questions asked. So I'm not saying that they should do that. But in this particular instance, they could. At any time, all rush in and overpower him. They could tear gas him or tase him. I mean, the guy decapitated someone and is ingesting him little by little.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

387.317

Maybe it's time to rush in and take control of the situation. And so this standoff goes on for nearly four hours. And finally, Vince Lee... he gets an idea. He's gonna jump out a window in the back of the bus and he's gonna escape. So then pow, he breaks out a window and he jumps out of the bus. And then of course, the second he jumps out that window, bam, police immediately arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

410.578

And I don't have a mugshot of him, but here's what he looks like in real life. And here's some footage of him being escorted by police to the hospital. And by the way, police found Tim's nose, tongue, and ear in Vince Lee's pocket. Anyway, here's the worst part about this whole thing. The court ends up making Vince Lee get a psych evaluation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

431.531

And of course, the guy has obvious mental health issues. I mean, he's talking to his God, he's chasing aliens, and he's ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And because of that, when he goes on trial, he's found not criminally responsible on account of his mental disorder. And he gets sentenced to a psychiatric hospital and they get him treatment and they put him on meds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

455.323

And over time, he allegedly does start to get better and he stops hearing voices and stuff. And then after seven years in this psych facility, Vince Lee's doctors believe that he's no longer a danger to society. So they let him out. So after all that, Vince Lee is now a free man. Hope he keeps taking his meds. Shout out to Canada.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

50.883

Now, after Vince Lee talks to his God, he doesn't go and get evaluated by a mental health professional. No, no. Instead, he starts doing what it tells him to do. His God tells him to travel across the country looking for these aliens. And I guess when your god tells you to travel across the country looking for extraterrestrials, you travel across the country looking for extraterrestrials.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

73.703

What else are you gonna do? And so, that's what he does. He travels across the country looking for these aliens. Sometimes by bus, sometimes on foot, but he'll disappear for like days at a time while he goes on these missions. Now, I don't know if he actually finds any aliens while he's out on these missions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Decapitated a Man On The Bus - The Vince Li story

91.03

I just know that he's gone for long periods of time and people around him think it's strange. Here's the thing, though. Vince Lee has a wife and his wife, she's very concerned about him. I mean, he claims his God is talking to him and his wife is also frustrated with him, mostly because he keeps disappearing for days at a time and she isn't entirely sure as to why.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

0.669

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. Mit dem Galaxy S25 Ultra kannst du einen Schritt voraus sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

122.125

Dann endet der erste Tag im Filmen. Die Produzenten denken, dass Charles keine Chance hat. Er ist dumm. Er kämpft mit einfachen Fragen. Aber anyway, Charles and Diana go home and this is where they enact their plan to cheat. The plan is, Diana wants to feed Charles answers while she's sitting in the audience.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

143.458

And they know they can't use like an earpiece to communicate or anything like that, because the show would check for that and they'd get caught. So instead, they decide to go even simpler. All the show questions are multiple choice. So, they're just gonna have Diana sit in the audience and when Charles is about to answer a question, when he says the correct answer out loud, she'll cough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

166.444

And in order to make the plan foolproof, they call this guy, Wittek. And Wittek... Er ist ein gut genuger Kerl, er ist ein College-Lektor und er war auch schon drei Mal auf dem Show. Und er wird den nächsten Tag versuchen. Sie fragen Wittek, ob er ihnen mit ihrem Scam helfen kann. Und Wittek sagt, ja, guter Show, oder was auch immer. Und so wird er auch auf den Seitenlinien kacken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

192.562

Dann, die nächste Nacht, gehen sie alle zurück in den Studio, um zu beenden. Und Charles ist im Hotseat. Und Diana sitzt im Publikum. Und Wittek sitzt auf den Seitenlinien. Und Charles, er wird gefragt, wer der zweite Mann von Jackie Kennedy ist. Und wenn er eine Antwort lest, und wenn er die richtige lest, kackt entweder Diana oder Wittek oder jemand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

211.975

Und du kannst den Kack hören, wenn du die Fotos siehst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

217.619

But whatever, he gets the question right and his winnings are now up to 8,000 pounds. Then they move on to the next question and the next. And at some point the camera is on Diana in the audience and you can see her coughing to signal him. Jetzt, an diesem Punkt im Show, werden die Produzenten ein wenig bescheuert. Als wäre hier etwas seltsam.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

241.144

Denn Charles ist so unsicher über all die Antworten, die er gibt, dass all die Antworten, die er gibt, korrekt werden. Aber sie haben keine echten Beweise, dass er etwas falsch macht, also lassen sie den Show weitergehen. Egal, sein Plan funktioniert und Charles bekommt Frage nach Frage recht. Mit Diana kacken oder Wittek kacken. And his winnings keep climbing up. 32,000 pounds. 64,000 pounds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

26.818

So this guy is about to cheat at a game show and it's gonna make him rich. Now his name is Charles and Charles is a Major in the British Army and he's also broke as f***. And one day he's with his wife, this woman, Diana, and he and Diana are looking at their finances and they're like, oh bugger. How are we going to pay all this debt? Here's the thing though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

264.012

125,000 pounds. 250,000 pounds. A half a million pounds. And soon enough, Charles is on the final question of the show. Worth one million pounds. Oder etwa 1,3 Millionen US-Dollar. Und die Produzenten des Shows, die schweigen, weil sie wissen, dass er irgendwie verheiratet ist. Also dann schreibt der Host die letzte 1-Millionen-Pound-Frage. Und es ist eigentlich eine ziemlich einfache Frage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

303.237

Und natürlich weiß Charles die Antwort nicht. Wie gesagt, er ist nicht gut bei diesem Thema. Und das ist der Grund, warum er lüftet. Aber glücklich für ihn ist sein Kopf-Squad da, um ihn zu retten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

315.86

Also gibt Charles die Antwort. Eine Google. Und natürlich... Du hast es gewonnen. 1 Million!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

328.897

So Charles and Diana have officially won. Their plan worked. And they are now rich. Until... So Charles and Diana go back to their dressing room. But instead of celebrating, they start yelling at each other. They're in a fight for some reason. And security guards can hear them. And producers can also hear them. Now, allegedly, Charles wasn't supposed to go all the way to one million pounds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

357.757

He was supposed to stop before that. Because if he had only won like 100,000 pounds and stopped, no one would have suspected that he was cheating. But I guess at the last minute he got greedy and he decided to go all the way to 1 million. And now Diana is mad at him because she thinks his greed is going to get them caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

378.101

Jetzt, dieser Kampf, den die Produzenten hier haben, macht sie noch zusätzlicher. Und sobald Charles und Diana weggehen, fangen die Produzenten sofort an, die Fotos des Episodes durchzuschneiden, um irgendwelche Beweise dafür zu suchen, dass sie verletzt haben. Und natürlich bemerken sie das Kichern. Und sie sind so wie, ich wusste es! Dieser Arschloch verletzt!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

395.246

Also muss ein Produzent literal Charles anrufen und ihm sagen, dass sie den 1-Millionen-Dollar-Scheck nicht ermöglichen werden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

415.697

Und sie gehen alle ins Gefängnis und sie werden alle verurteilt und Charles und Diana werden 18 Monate verurteilt und Wittek 12 Monate verurteilt. But their sentences are suspended, so none of them actually see any prison time. Anyway, here's how Charles and Diana look in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

49.56

Not too long before this, Diana and her brother had both competed on a game show. Who wants to be a millionaire? And by doing that, they won a little bit of money. So Diana and Charles think, what if Charles goes on the show? Maybe he could win a bunch of money and that would more than get them out of debt. And that's a great plan. But there's a problem. Charles is kind of a dumbass.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

72.067

I mean, he's not dumb. He's just not the kind of person who knows the answers to a bunch of random trivia questions. And who wants to be a millionaire is not something he would naturally be good at. So he and Diana come up with a plan. A plan to cheat. And we'll get to that plan. Anyway, they sign Charles up to compete on the show. They wait and finally the big moment comes. Game day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Scam - The Charles Ingram story

95.735

They go to the studio and he starts the first round of the show called Fastest Finger First. Who was fastest? Charles Ingram in three. He makes it through that round and now he's on to the quiz part. In der Quiz-Szene kämpft er mit den ersten Fragen. Wenn er die 4.000-Pound-Szene bekommt, hat er bereits zwei von seinen Lifelines verwendet. Er ist also nicht gut im Spiel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

0.329

Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zehen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen. Altours buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Altours. Alles, aber günstig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

115.989

Sie will, dass er in die Medizin geht. Egal, Donnish geht auf die Bewerbung zur Polizei und er bekommt ein Interview. Aber jetzt gibt es ein Problem. Er ist 17 Jahre alt, also braucht er seine Mutter, um das Papier zu signen, das ihm ermöglicht. Also bringt er ihr das Papier und natürlich beginnen sie darüber zu kämpfen. Und es ist eine wirklich große Argumentation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

135.299

Jetzt, an einem Punkt hat Donnish genug. Und er knallt einfach ab. Und er entscheidet sich darum, seine kontrollierende Mutter für gut zu entfernen. Und wie wird er das machen? Nun, er wird einen Hitschmann holen. Hier ist das Problem dabei. Er ist in der Hochschule. Er kennt keine Hitmen. Aber er kennt diesen einen Mann aus der Schule, der in seiner Spanischen Klasse ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

159.563

Und dieser Mann heißt Noor. Und Noor handelt mit Drogen und er ist in einer Gang und er ist ein bisschen schädlich. Und Donnish denkt, vielleicht wird Noor es. Also kommt Donnish zu Noor in der Spanischen Klasse und er sagt, hey, möchtest du meine Mutter für mich unerwachsen machen? Und Noor sagt, Nein, Bro. Aber Dhanush drückt ihn immer wieder auf.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

177.552

Er sagt ihm, dass seine Mutter verbreitet ist und dass sie nicht mal seine echte Mutter ist und dass sie seine echten Eltern verabschiedet hat. Keiner von denen ist wahr. Aber am wichtigsten ist, dass Dhanush Noor 5.000 Dollar bietet. Also, als er das hört, ist Noor so... Okay. So then, fast forward to the day of the crime. It's morning. Danish and Noor, they're in school, but they leave early.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

201.601

And Danish drives them to his apartment. And he opens the trunk and he gives Noor a pair of blue latex gloves and a knife. And shortly after, Noor is sneaking inside the apartment. And Mom is there. And I guess she doesn't see him because kaboom, he grabs her from behind. And he takes the knife and he starts stabbing her over and over again. And there's a struggle. And mom fights back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

225.757

But Noor is stronger than her. And he ends up stabbing her 48 times. Until she's unalived. Und während all dieser Chaos hat der Knife Nors Finger ziemlich schlecht geschliffen und geschnitten. Nun, dieser Schnitt wird später wichtig werden. Dann holt Donnish Nors Finger und fährt ihn zu ihrem anderen Freundeshause.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

246.391

Und dort ruft Donnish 9-1-1 an und er sagt ihm, dass sein Freund Nors sich selbst geschnitten hat, während er einen Teig gegräbt hat. Weil es ist die Weihnachtszeit und niemand wird Fragen über ihn fragen, ob er einen Teig gegräbt hat. So, dann geht Noor ins Krankenhaus und er bekommt Stücke auf der Hand, während Dhanush verlässt und er geht und nimmt irgendeine Frau auf ein erstes Date.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

267.007

Wie Bros Mutter ist gestorben und er ist hier draußen, um zu schlagen. Aber egal, er nimmt dieses Date zu den Filmen und dann über in eine andere Stadt und Dhanush endet diese ganze Nacht auf diesem Date, glaube ich. Und dann, am frühen Morgen, geht er endlich nach Hause, wo sein Moms Körper noch da ist. Und das ist, wo er versucht, sie dort zu entdecken. Und er versucht, schockiert zu werden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

27.217

Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf altours.de

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

291.674

Und er versucht, zu weinen. Und er ruft 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

298.882

So pretty quickly police arrive and they investigate and they notice a few things. One, there's no sign of forced entry. Two, there's someone's bloody handprint on the doorknob. And three, Danish doesn't have any of his mom's blood on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

316.274

Now this is apparently unusual because generally when people find the body of a loved one, they immediately panic and they like try to touch them or shake them or hug them to see if they're still alive and that tends to get blood on them. Du weißt nicht, was passiert ist? Nein, nein, ich habe es nur von Galveston bekommen. Anscheinend ist das eine sehr übliche Sache, die schuldige Menschen tun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

360.186

Wenn ein Mörder 9-1-1 ruft, werden sie oft einfach ihre Alibis auszulösen, ohne gefragt zu werden. Wie, das war nicht ich, ich habe die ganze Zeit am Chuck E. Cheese gehalten. Das ist im Grunde genommen, was er gemacht hat. Also schauen die Polizei an diesen Jungen, wie, ja, du hattest definitiv etwas damit zu tun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

37.063

Jetzt, sein Name ist Danish, er ist 17 Jahre alt, er ist ein Senior in der Hochschule und er ist ein perfekter Student. Er ist auf dem Honoraroll, er ist Klassenpräsident, er ist der Hauptstudent-Helper, er ist klug, er ist populär, all das. Aber Danish hat ein Problem. Seine Mutter, die wir einfach Mutter nennen. Die Mutter ist sehr religiös und deshalb sehr strikt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

373.953

Egal was, die Polizei testet den blöden Handtuch auf der Tür und es ist kein Spiel für Donnish. Also sind sie immer noch sehr bescheuert von ihm. Aber ohne Beweise müssen sie ihn verlassen. Und er geht eigentlich weg, weil seine eigene Mutter unerwachsen ist. Bis... Eines Tages kommen Polizei-Offiziere zur Hochschule und finden Noor. Und sie holen ihn plötzlich aus der Klasse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

398.638

Und bam, sie arrestieren ihn. Aber sie arrestieren ihn auf einer Drogen-Anzeige. Und die Drogen-Anzeige ist komplett unabhängig vom Mord. Die Polizei weiß nicht, dass Noor in einem Mord involviert ist. Sie arrestieren ihn für Drogen. Und er ist panisch. He's sitting there thinking, oh shit, the police are here. They know what I did. They know that I'm the one who unalived Donnish's mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

421.595

What am I gonna do? I'm probably gonna go to jail. Is there anyone who can help me out of this? But then he thinks back to his partner in crime, Donnish. Maybe Donnish can help him. So as the officers are escorting Noor out of the school, he yells back to his friends, tell Danish, tell Danish to give me a call, tell Danish I'm going to jail, because Noor thinks this is about the murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

448.765

So now police know he's somehow connected to Danish. So police bring him in and they notice that for some weird reason he's wearing one glove. So they ask him to take the glove off, and he does, and he's still got stitches on his hand from where he cut himself during the crime. And they ask him what happened, and Nur's like, I cut my thumb carving turkey. And police are like, sure you did, Nur.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

472.36

And from there, they connect the dots back to Mom's murder case. Und dann testen sie Nures DNA und natürlich ist sein DNA ein Match für das Blut, das sie auf dem Knochen gefunden haben. Und von dort an, stellt Nure nicht mal einen Kampf ein. Er versucht nicht mal zu blöden, er beginnt sofort zu verurteilen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

489.555

Und er erzählt den Polizisten alles, dass Donnish ihn als Hitman verabschiedet hat, um seine Mutter nicht lebendig zu machen und dass er versagt hat, ihm 5.000 Dollar zu bezahlen. Und so, bam, wird Donnish verabschiedet. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Also, hier ist Nor's Mugshot. Und Nor wird 40 Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt, während Danish 50 Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

510.083

Also, Shoutout zu Houston, Texas, glaube ich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

59.036

Und während sie hart arbeitet, um sicherzustellen, dass er schöne Kleidung hat, sein eigenes Auto, seine eigene Kreditkarte und fast alles, was er will, erwartet sie auch, dass er auf ihre Regeln folgt. Und sie ist ein Immigranten-Vater, also weißt du, dass sie ihn hart schafft, um zu erfolgreich zu sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

74.003

Er hat einen 8 Uhr-Kurz, er ist unabhängig davon, wie oft er seine Freunde außerhalb der Schule sehen kann, und so weiter. And while this may sound like somewhat normal parenting rules to us, to Danish, this is a dictatorship. And he can't live under this fascism. And so this really pisses him off. I mean, he's just trying to live his 17-year-old life and hang out with his friends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Own Mother - The Danish Minhas story

94.355

And so he starts to get bitter. He is sick of her trying to control him. And so one day, it all starts to go downhill. Because he goes and he tells his mom that he wants to apply to this internship to the Houston Police Department. Weil ich glaube, dass er eine Karriere in der Geheimdienstleistung hat. Und natürlich ist die Mutter nicht glücklich mit dieser Idee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

0.069

This is Biggs and Biggs is about to become famous for a really weird reason. Now Biggs lives in England and he's kind of a turd. He's been to prison a few times for like break-ins and stealing cars and stuff like that. But one day he's out of prison and he's living a clean life and Biggs wants to buy a house for his wife and his three sons. Problem is, Biggs ain't got no money. He's broke.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

113.867

And that's when bam, all 15 men jump out from their hiding spot and they swarm the train and they get on board and then pow, one of them hits the conductor with the bar, nearly knocking him out. And then some of the other men board the car with all the cash in it and they force the train workers to lie down on the ground.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

129.373

And then eventually when the train comes to a full stop, the 15 men, they start loading the bags of money into two Land Rovers they have parked nearby. Now these guys steal 125 bags of cash. 2.6 million pounds. Which today in US dollars would be worth about 35 million dollars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

152.106

So then they drive the Land Rovers over to this farmhouse in the country that some of them own so that they can hide out there and divide up the money. And over the next few days they all take their cut of the money and they split and go their separate ways. Now, they have hired some people to come burn down the farmhouse after they leave to hide any evidence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

170.859

But the people who they hired who were supposed to burn it down, they don't follow through with the plan for whatever reason. And then police end up finding the farmhouse and they get a bunch of the guy's fingerprints and eventually, bam, Biggs gets arrested. Here's his mugshot. And also Bruce and 12 of the other guys get arrested too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

189.071

So Biggs gets sentenced to 30 years in prison for this, but his story's not over. Because while he's in prison, he decides, eh, this place isn't for me. And so he makes a rope ladder, and one day he uses it to climb over the prison wall, and he escapes. So now he's on the run and he flees from England all the way to Paris. And in Paris, he gets some plastic surgery and he assumes a new identity.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

216.575

Then he moves his wife and family from Paris all the way to Australia. And from there, he and his family stay on the run and they move like three different times and Biggs changes his identity every time. But unfortunately, it's not enough. Because one night, Biggs sees on the local evening news that law enforcement believes he's living and hiding out in the area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

239.622

And so then Biggs just like straight up ditches his wife and sons. And he gets on a passenger liner and he takes it from Melbourne all the way to Panama. And then from there, he flies to Brazil. And there for about a year, he lives under the radar, working as a carpenter. Here's the thing about Brazil though. At this time, Brazil has no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

25.857

So he calls up an old friend of his, a guy who he met back in prison. This guy, Bruce. And he asks Bruce if he could maybe loan him some money. And Bruce is like, nah, bro. But I'm actually in the middle of organizing a train heist. And he offers to cut him in. And Biggs is like, I... And so the plan is they're going to rob a Royal Mail Train, which is a train that picks up and delivers mail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

266.249

So Biggs can't get in trouble for his England crimes while he's living there. Lucky bastard. And at this point, he's been on the run for about five years. But he's having a great time in Brazil. He's partying every night, drinking at the clubs. And one night he meets an adult dancer at the club. And we'll just call her second wife because she eventually becomes his second wife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

290.115

And these two get married and he gets her pregnant. Now, around this time, Scotland Yard shows up to Brazil looking for Biggs and they actually find him and bam, they detain him. Here's his mugshot again. And so Scotland Yard tries to work with Brazilian police to deport Biggs back to England, but Brazilian police are like, nah, bro.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

314.544

A because they don't have an extradition treaty with United Kingdom and B because second wife is pregnant. And there's this whole other Brazilian law that says that you can't be extradited if you are a parent to a Brazilian child. So Biggs is free to go. However, his status as a known criminal means he's not allowed to work. So he's broke all over again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

338.098

And everyone now knows he's an ex-con because his story has been all over the news. So then what does he do? He becomes a sort of local celebrity and he starts charging local newspapers to do stories and interviews with him and he becomes like sort of a tourist attraction. Like he's the convict who successfully robbed a train and escaped from prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

361.19

And so naturally people want to meet him and have him like sign autographs and apparently he's selling mugs and t-shirts. So he starts making money this way. He even stars in a commercial for a Brazilian coffee company. Now, I couldn't find a copy of the commercial, but here's what he actually said in it. When you are on the run all the time, like me, you really appreciate a good cup of coffee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

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I'm not kidding. Those are his exact words. In fact, the dude is getting so famous that any celebrity that visits Rio de Janeiro during this time always has to stop and meet bigs. Apparently Rod Stewart stops by to meet him and Sting stops by to meet him. The freaking Sex Pistols stop by and write a song with him and they perform it and release it and it becomes kind of a hit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

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But then sh** gets crazy again. Because one day he goes to a restaurant to meet a reporter for another interview. And while he's there, kapow, a couple of goons jump him and they put him in a sack and they put him on a boat and they take him to Barbados. The kidnappers are of course hoping to get a reward from British police for capturing Biggs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

429.525

But unfortunately for them, when their boat arrives in Barbados, Barbados is also like, sorry bro, we also don't have an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. And so they send Biggs back to Brazil where he once again is a free man. And so Biggs, he lives his life as an escaped criminal for about two more decades. before ultimately his health starts to deteriorate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

456.686

So then finally he gives up and he surrenders and he flies back to England to get the good healthcare he needs. And as soon as his plane lands in England, bam, he's sent back to prison to finish his sentence. But at least he gets good healthcare. And then about eight years later, they let him out. And a few years after that, he passes away. Dude lived a crazy life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

50.268

Now, one of the cars on that train carries high value cargo, which is just lots and lots of bags of cash. Now, Bruce has a guy on the inside feeding him information about the train schedule and cargo. So he knows exactly when and where to stop this Royal Mail Train carrying all this cash. And along with Bruce and Biggs, there are 13 other guys involved in this heist. So 15 total.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

76.493

But we're just going to focus on Bruce and Biggs. So Bruce and Biggs and 13 other guys, they put on ski masks and gloves and they are ready to go. And they don't have pew-pews because this is England. Instead, they just have some metal bars to beat people with. And so then the big day comes and it's 3 a.m. And all the men go out to the train tracks and they hide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Celebrity Who Robbed a Train - The Ronnie Biggs story

97.523

And when they hear the train approaching, a couple of them go to one of those track signals. It's kind of like a stoplight for trains. And they turn off a green track signal and they use batteries to turn on a red signal. And once the train approaches and it sees the red light, it starts to slow way down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

0.109

So this famous professional boxer is minding his own business and he suddenly gets arrested and goes to prison for life. And he didn't even do anything wrong. Let me explain. Now the guy, let's call him Hurricane. He's a middleweight boxer and he regularly fights at Madison Square Garden. And bro's got a decent record and he eventually becomes known as The Hurricane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

115.298

So they pull over that white Dodge and in that Dodge happens to be Hurricane and John Artis. Now, Hurricane isn't thin and he's not 5'11", so he and John Artis don't match the description of the men who shot up the bar. Regardless, police make them go into the bar and the witnesses there are like, nah, it ain't them. But police aren't done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

137.662

They then drag Hurricane and John Artis to the local hospital, and one of the bar customers is there, the one who got shot, the one who got injured, and he's in critical condition. And police ask him if Hurricane and John Artis are the men who shot up the bar, and even he is like, nah, bro, those aren't the guys who shot me. So police have no other choice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

157.677

They have to let Hurricane and John Artis go, and they all just move on with their lives.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

164.069

until several months later police are still working on the case and they turn to Alfred and Arthur to help them out now allegedly they offer them some things like they offer them early parole from their previous sentences they offer to overlook the fact that they took money out of the register that night and most importantly they offer them a

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Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

187.02

$12,000 reward if they will identify Hurricane and John Artis as the gunmen. And boy, that money seems to jog their memory. Like all of a sudden, Arthur and Alfred are 100% certain that Hurricane and John Artis were the gunmen and they identify them. It's funny how $12,000 can improve your memory like that. Anyway, that positive ID is all the police need. And bam, they arrest Hurricane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

212.705

And then bam, they arrest John Artis. And eventually, the two men go to trial. Now, if you're wondering why the police are so convinced that Hurricane and John Artis did it, and why they're so gung-ho to convict them, there's this whole racial component to this story that I'm not really qualified to talk about in depth.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

22.72

And one night, Hurricane, he's out on the town and he sees his friend and sparring partner, this guy, John Artis. And they go to a nearby bar called The Night Spot. And they have some drinks and they have a good time or whatever. And they leave and they're driving home. Meanwhile, about a half a mile away, two other men go into a different bar called the Lafayette Bar and Grill.

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Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

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But just keep in mind that all of this is happening in the 1960s during the civil rights era. And things were, let's just say, a lot more racist back then. So these two guys don't stand a chance. Like white cops, white jury, white witnesses. I mean, what do you think is going to happen? Anyway, in court, Arthur and Alfred, they get on the stand and they testify against them.

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Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

253.311

And of course, Hurricane and John Artis are both found guilty as f**k. And John Artis gets sentenced to 15 years to life, while Hurricane, he gets sentenced to 30 years to life. But this story isn't over because once Hurricane's in prison, he starts to use all his spare time wisely.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

273.25

He starts reading law books and typing up legal briefs and doing everything he can because Bro wants a retrial real bad. He wants to get out and he is not giving up until he does. So about seven years go by and he's still in prison. And then, finally, things start to look up a little.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

292.163

The New Jersey Public Defender's Office and the New York Times both discover and report that Alfred and Arthur had been pressured by police and bribed into giving false testimony on the stand. Also, while he's in prison, Hurricane takes the time to write his autobiography and it gets published. So now people are reading his story and they start to side with him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

317.627

And this renews interest in the case and it brings a bunch of attention to what happened to him. And suddenly celebrities and civil rights activists, they start paying attention. And apparently Bob Dylan reads the book and he's so moved by it that he writes a song about it called Hurricane and it becomes a top 40 hit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

336.446

Even Muhammad Ali gets involved and he ends up leading a protest march on Hurricane's behalf. So dude is really getting a lot of support out here. And then, finally, his appeal reaches the New Jersey Supreme Court. And they look at the case, and they overturn the guilty conviction and grant them a retry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

359.784

And Hurricane and John Artis are let out of prison on bail while they wait for this new trial. Nine months later, the new trial happens. And Alfred's shady ass gets back on the stand and he testifies again against Hurricane and John Artis. And he again identifies them as the gunmen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

381.32

And not only that, because of the time period and because racial tensions are so high, the prosecuting attorneys argue that Hurricane and John Artis had unalive those people in the bar because those people were white. And that this murder plot was all some sort of black power revenge killing on white people. It's absurd. But as ridiculous as that sounds, the jury believes it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

410.066

Like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. It's like a reverse racism thing. So then, sadly, Hurricane and John Artis are found guilty as fuck once again. And after nine months of being out on bail, the two go back to prison again for life. And so it looks like Hurricane is just gonna have to sit in prison and continue serving his life sentence. Until again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

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Nine years later, the case finally gets in front of federal court. Hurricane's attorneys had filed an appeal. And the court, they look at this case and they look at the prosecution's argument that this was all some kind of black power revenge murder against white people. And they're like, oh, well, this is bullshit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

45.554

And at that bar, these two men suddenly pull out pew-pews. And they just start blasting. Blam! Blam! And the customers inside, they all scream and they freak out. And blam! A bullet hits a customer. And then blam! Another one. And then blam! Another one. And then blam! The bartender gets shot. And then the two gunmen, they run. And they hop into their white Chevrolet and they flee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

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And they find that the prosecution had actually interfered with the case by coming up with this absurd theory with no evidence behind it. So then 19 years after Hurricane's original conviction, the man is finally released from prison. And John Artis had actually gotten out a little bit before this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

473.843

Now the cool thing is, Hurricane, he actually goes on to become an advocate for people who've been wrongly convicted, like he was. He even sets up an organization called Innocence International to help people, which John Artis joins as well. So, good for them. And by the way, here's what Hurricane looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

67.129

And unfortunately, two of those customers and the bartender end up unalived. And another customer ends up in the hospital. Now, during all this chaos, there are two shady ass dudes hanging around the bar. These two guys, Alfred and Arthur. And Alfred and Arthur, they see everyone panicking and not paying attention, so they go over to the register in the bar and they steal a bunch of cash from it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Falsely Accused of Murder - The Hurricane Carter story

92.381

Like I said, they're shady ass dudes. So then police show up and they talk to all the witnesses, including Alfred and Arthur, and they get descriptions of what the two shooters look like. Thin black men around 5'11 driving a white Chevrolet. So police search the area and they can't find a white Chevrolet, but they do find a white Dodge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

0.109

So this guy walks into a Chuck E. Cheese one night, and he just starts blasting. Blam! Blam! Unaliving some of the workers. And some people think this massacre inspired a whole-ass video game franchise. Let me explain. Now the guy's name is Nathan. He's 19. And Nathan, he's kind of a turd.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

101.197

Now, I don't know if he's in a bad mood or just having a terrible day, but one afternoon, Nathan is playing basketball with his friends, and he decides that this is it. Today is the day, and he says it out loud to his friends. Today is the day I'm going to get revenge on that manager, and I'm gonna rob that Chuck E. Cheese.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

121.947

So later that night, around 9 p.m., he gets a pew-pew that he had stolen from a friend's grandmother's house long before this, and he gets that pew-pew and he hides it in his pocket. Then he borrows his girlfriend's car and he drives it to the Chuck E. Cheese. And he goes inside, he sits at a table, he orders a ham and cheese sandwich, and he's acting pretty chill.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

141.777

And then he goes and he plays an arcade game. The game he plays is actually Hogan's Alley, which Hogan's Alley is ironically a shooting game where you shoot targets with one of those big red arcade pew-pews. Anyway, after playing Hogan's Alley, Nathan goes and he chats with an employee, a former co-worker of his. And he asks him if that old manager who fired him is working that night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

164.492

And the former co-worker is like, nah, he's not working tonight. And so the guy who Nathan wants to get revenge on isn't even there. And all this resentment building up in him just leads to nothing. So now what's he going to do? Is he going to leave? Is he still going to rob the place?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

178.823

Well, when he sees the last few customers at the checkout counter collecting their prizes that they had won, that's the signal that the restaurant is about to close. So Nathan heads into the men's restroom to hide and figure out what to do. And while he's in there, the customers leave and the Chuck E. Cheese workers, they start closing down the store.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

197.709

So Nathan, he's in the bathroom and he's looking at himself in the mirror and he looks at his reflection for maybe 10 minutes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

204.431

trying to decide if he's going to actually go through with this crime he's been planning and that is when he says it he's gonna do it and he walks out of the restroom and he pulls out his pew pew and he first sees an employee and she's cleaning the salad bar and she doesn't even see him and so he walks over to her and he puts his pew pew up to her head and bang she's unalived

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

21.161

He's been in and out of trouble his whole life, committing several armed robberies and spending time in a juvenile detention center. But now he has an actual job, working at the pizza place slash arcade, Chuck E. Cheese. where he works as a dough master. I guess that means he makes the pizza dough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

228.542

Then he quickly steps toward another employee. That employee is vacuuming and Nathan holds up his pew-pew and bang right in the face, unalived. Then he sees another employee and she actually sees him shoot the others and she sees him coming and she immediately gets on her knees and she begs him not to unalive her. Don't shoot, I won't tell.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

249.718

But because she already saw him unalive two people, he replies, I have to. And he points his pew-pew at her head, and bang! Unalived. Then Nathan runs into the kitchen, and this guy is there. His name's Bobby. Bobby's cleaning up, and he had heard the shots coming from the dining room, but he thought it was the other workers, like, popping balloons. So it didn't alarm him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

273.773

But now he sees Nathan coming toward him, and before he can react, bang! Nathan shoots him right in the jaw, and he falls to the ground. Then Nathan heads to the manager's office where the night manager is. And she's in there and she's logging receipts. And by the time she looks up and sees Nathan, he's already there pointing his pew-pew at her. And he's like, unlock the safe. So she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

297.927

And immediately after that, bang, Nathan shoots her. Then he takes her purse and he fills it with $1,500 cash from the safe, Chuck E. Cheese keychains, and for some weird reason, a bunch of game tokens. Like he's going to come back one day and try to win some prizes or something. But anyway, after that, he gets in the car and he drives away, fleeing the scene. And he does all that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

321.583

Unaliving innocent people, some of them he knew and worked with and he was cool with them. And he does all of this in a children's restaurant, all for $1,500 and some game tokens. Here's what's really crazy, though. We're actually kind of fortunate that he waited and did it when the restaurant was closing and not when it was open.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

344.839

Because if it had been open, if the place had been open, if he had walked into Chuck E. Cheese and started lighting the restaurant up on a Saturday during lunchtime, the place would have been full of kids. And there would have been a lot more casualties.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

358.727

Anyway, another side note, allegedly this whole tragic event is what inspired the video game, which later became a whole franchise, Five Nights at Freddy's. Because both Five Nights at Freddy's and this story, they involve murders at a kid-friendly pizza restaurant with animatronics, and both stories involve five victims.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

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So yes, there are similarities, but unfortunately, from what I can tell, that's just internet lore. The creator of the game has never claimed Five Nights at Freddy's was inspired by this event, so it just seems to be a weird coincidence that the internet is buzzing about. Anyway, this story's not over because not everyone involved in the shooting actually died.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

38.894

But then one night he's working a shift and he goes to talk to his manager because he wants to ask for more hours. So he asked the manager to give him more hours and manager's like, nah, bro. And this makes Nathan mad and they start arguing and it gets heated and pretty quickly, bam, the manager straight up fires Nathan. And Nathan, he doesn't take this firing well. He's pissed off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

398.9

Crazy enough, Bobby, the guy from the kitchen, after Nathan shot him, he fell to the floor and immediately he starts playing dead until Nathan walked past him to go to the manager's office to claim his next victim. So Bobby's not dead. So he gets up and he's all wounded, but he escapes. He runs out the back door of the restaurant and he runs to a nearby apartment complex.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

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And he finds a resident and he's like, help, there's been a shooting at the Chuck E. Cheese. So that resident calls 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

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So then police show up and they find the four workers unalived and they talk to Bobby and he's able to tell them who did it. He's like, yeah, it was this guy who used to work here, Nathan. So then police go to Nathan's mom's house where he lives, but he's not at his mom's house. He's at his girlfriend's house and he's smashing with her. Not exactly the most romantic time to do that, but okay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

457.398

So his mom pages him and she tells him the police want to talk to him. So he stops smashing and he goes home to talk to the police. And eventually, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And ultimately he goes to trial and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to death. But later his sentence is changed to life in prison. So shout out to Colorado.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

63.351

He feels like he was wronged and he vows that one day he's going to get revenge. And so a bit of time passes and Nathan is still salty thinking about this. He hates that manager. He tells all his friends how he hates that manager. Sometimes he even visits the Chuck E. Cheese to eat and vent to his old Chuck E. Cheese co-workers like this place sucks. That manager sucks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Chuck E Cheese Massacre - The Nathan Dunlap story

87.751

And I guess his old co-workers humor him, but they don't really take him seriously. And five months go by, and this resentment has been building up in him this whole time. How dare they fire him when all he did was ask for more hours.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

0.669

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. Mit dem Galaxy S25 Ultra kannst du einen Schritt voraus sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

111.194

And so then, Tina, Conspiracy Turd, and the deputy clerk, this woman, Belinda, they all three go to the election offices and Conspiracy Turd uses the security badge that they took from IT Guy and he pretends to be there on official government business. And they use that badge to access the passwords. And suddenly they have access to the election systems hard drive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

134.122

So they get some screenshots of the data and they copy everything onto an external drive. And by the way, all of this is very illegal because it's election tampering. But then allegedly conspiracy turd takes all this voting system data and he gives it to a bunch of other conspiracy turds. Und dann, ein paar Monate später, erscheinen einige dieser Voting-Systemdaten auf der Internetseite.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

157.342

Passwörter, Videos, Bilder, um die ganze Welt zu sehen. Nun, offensichtlich sind Voting-Maschinen-Daten Informationen, die nicht öffentlich sein sollten. Ein großer Grund dafür ist, dass die Leute diese Informationen nutzen können, um dann die Voting-Maschinen zu hacken. So this is a very big deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

173.523

And this sensitive information is now on the internet and pretty quickly someone alerts the Secretary of State of Colorado. So then the next day, boom, the district attorney's team goes to Tina's office to investigate and they of course find signs of a security breach. And then, bam, the Secretary of State suspends Tina's position as County Clerk.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

194.347

Meanwhile, the Deputy Clerk, Belinda, she's also suspended and barred from going into the office. But Belinda sneaks back in to, like, print some documents or something, and boom, she gets caught and arrested. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

208.038

So now, Tina and Belinda are officially barred from supervising any elections because they knowingly took voting machine data and gave it to a bunch of conspiracy theorists. But here's where the story gets out of control. A few months later, Belinda goes to trial and Tina shows up to support her. And while Tina's sitting in court, she pulls out her iPad and she starts recording.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

234.313

You can see her with the iPad here, there she is, and there's the iPad. Now, you're not allowed to video record a court proceeding, especially when they specifically tell you not to. So, some people spot her recording and she gets caught and charged with contempt. And the judge issues a search warrant for that iPad. Dann, am nächsten Tag, geht Tina zu einem lokalen Bagelshop.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

258.143

Und die Polizei zeigt sich mit einer Suchwahrnehmung für das iPad. Und Tina, sie wird einfach nicht kooperieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

26.969

Diese Frau ist eine Verschwörungstheoristin. Und ich weiß nicht, ob sie glaubt, dass die Erde flach ist oder was auch immer. Aber es gibt eine Verschwörung, die sie für eine lange Zeit in Gefängnis bringen wird. Lass mich das erklären. Seine Name ist Tina und sie ist ein Städtebürgermeister und die Person, die sicher macht, dass jede Wahl in ihrem Städte betroffen ist während einer Wahl.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

275.436

Sie versucht sogar, die Offiziere zu kicken, als sie sie kippen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

279.719

Und wir sehen das wieder in Slow Motion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

283.462

Aber letztendlich bekommen sie das iPad von ihr und bringen sie draußen und sie kämpfen sie die ganze Zeit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

292.664

Du hast mich verletzt!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

299.106

Lass mich los! Du verstehst das. Lass mich los jetzt! Aber Tina wird immer noch nicht kooperieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

311.51

And anyway, she eventually does get arrested. Here's her mugshot. Now, after she's arrested and this video goes viral, other conspiracy theorists, who also think the presidential election was stolen, they hear about this and they get so mad, they call 911 in Tienes County to express their outrage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

359.287

And it appears like she does everything in her power to control the narrative and delay her trial for the election tampering. Like she fires her lawyers a bunch of times. She tries to run for Secretary of State, thinking maybe getting elected into public office will help her get out of all this. But she doesn't win.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

375.72

And this whole time she's still speaking publicly and insisting that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that it's all part of some deep state conspiracy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

392.109

Und sie, die weiterhin diese Falschinformationen verbreiten, ist eine Verletzung ihrer Beziehung. Und dann, bam, wird sie wieder verhaftet. Hier ist ein weiterer Mugshot. Und sie kommt auf den Befehl, also ist sie wieder frei. Aber diese Frau ist ein absoluter Menace. Er wusste, was mit seinem Badge passieren würde. Ja.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

423.303

So then police, they go and raid IT guy's family's house and they confiscate all of his family's phones and a bunch of their electronics and they end up getting a bunch of hate mail from random people and then months later the FBI raids his house a second time and they take the rest of their electronics. Tina is just out of control for blaming that guy. Is anyone gonna stop her?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

444.719

UNTIL... An irgendeinem Punkt, während all' des, wird die Staatsanwältin Belinda wütend. Sie entscheidet sich für eine Begründung für den Wahlkampf. Und ihre Begründung betrifft, sich gegen Tina zu bestätigen. Aber Tina, sie ist überhaupt nicht überrascht. Ich meine, sie ist immer noch draußen und spricht öffentlich über den Fall.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

45.904

Und eines Tages passiert die 2020-Präsidentie-Wahl. Und leider für Tina ist ihr Lieblingskandidat nicht gewonnen. Also, weil sie ein Konspiratestheorist ist, beginnt sie zu denken, dass die Wahl übernommen wurde. Und sie ist überzeugt, dass es eine Art Deep-State-Konspiratie ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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Was denkst du, die Chancen sind, dass du ein Jahr oder zwei nach jetzt im Gefängnis bist?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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So then, after three years of court delays, the election tampering case finally goes to trial. And of course, Tina can't help herself. She's got to speak up in court. And she argues that she shouldn't be sent to prison for election tampering because one of the reasons she gives is that she thinks she shouldn't be sent to prison because the prison beds aren't up to her standard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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But the judge, he is just not having it. And he lets her know that she is full of shit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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You are no hero. You abused your position. And you're a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that's been proven to be junk time and time again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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So then Tina's found guilty and she's ultimately sentenced to nine years in prison for election tampering. And after all that, I'm sure she still thinks she didn't do anything wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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Also, anstatt ihre Widersprüche an die Stadtanwältin zu informieren, kommt Tina mit einem schadigen Plan dazu, die Votermaschinen in ihrer Stadt zu brechen, um ihre Konspiration zu beurteilen. Aber sie kann nicht einfach in diese Maschinen reinkommen. Es gibt alle Art von Eingriffen und Bedingungen und jemand mit den Passwörtern muss dort in Person sein, um es zu funktionieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Conspiracy Theory Destroyed Her - The Tina Peters story

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Nun, es gibt einen IT-Konsultanten, der in dieses Schema gedrängt wurde und wir nennen ihn IT-Guy. Und er hat Zugang zu den Maschinen, aber wir kommen zurück zu IT-Guy. So anyway, Tina really wants to get into these voting machines. And one day, she gets a hold of IT Guy's security badge. And she gives that badge to another dude. A dude we'll call Conspiracy Turd.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So this journalist takes a ride in a submarine, because she's doing a story for a magazine. But then, all of a sudden, boom! She disappears. And she's never seen alive again. Where did she go? Now the guy who built the submarine she was in, his name's Peter. And Peter's an inventor, he lives in Denmark, and he's kind of a semi-celebrity there. He's like a Diet Tony Stark.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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And they're cruising around in the water and there's a photo of it. You can zoom in and you can see the two of them riding along, having a good time. And she texts Olay a few times, a few pics, and then Peter wants to take the sub underwater to show her that it goes underwater. So they take the submarine underwater and she's about to get her interview and she really seems to be having a good time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Until... Several hours pass, and Kim Wall and Peter haven't come back yet. And Olay, he's starting to get worried. He hasn't heard anything from her. And he tries to go to bed, but he can't sleep. So he grabs his bike and he rides around the area, looking for Kim Wall or for the submarine being docked. But there's still no sign of her. And at this point, it's late. It's 1.45 a.m.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So he calls the police and the Navy to report her missing. And within a few hours, boats and helicopters are all over the area looking for any trace of this missing submarine. But they got nothing. But then, a few hours after that, they finally spot something. It's the submarine, but it looks like it's sinking. And Peter is there, and he's swimming away from it. He's trying to swim to safety.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So they rescue him. And they question him, and Peter tells them that a mechanical defect caused his submarine to sink. And that's why he was swimming away to safety. But then, of course, police are like, uh, where's Kim Wall? And Peter tells them that hours before the interview, he had dropped her off along the shore, before the submarine started to sink.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Now, I don't know what's up with police in Denmark, but pretty quickly they're like, that story's bullshit, and bam, they arrest him. And they charge him with involuntary manslaughter for unaliving Kim Wall. The next day, he appears in court. And in court, he changes his story. He tells the court that he didn't actually drop Kim Wall off along the shore.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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He's always building things with his own hands, submarines and rockets.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Instead, he says she actually died inside the submarine. but that her death was a total accident. He claims that she was climbing up the hatch and that he accidentally dropped that hatch on her and it struck her in the head and from that she died.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Then he says he then panicked and that he didn't call the police because he didn't want to get in trouble but instead he dragged her out of the submarine and he tossed her body in the ocean. So basically he says the whole thing was an accident and he was just worried about getting in trouble.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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But then, 10 days later, a man is riding a bike around on a small island out near where the submarine sank. When suddenly, boom, he spots something. Something washed up on the shore. And when he goes to check it out, it's... A human torso. Kim Wall's torso. And this torso had been stabbed 15 times, including stab wounds around the vagina area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So much for that story about the hatch accidentally hitting her in the head. Yeah, but anyway, not only did they find her torso, about a month later, divers are searching around the area and they find more of her body parts. Her head, her legs, some of her clothes, a saw, a knife. So Peter's story is not looking good. It's looking like he brutally unalived her. But then it gets worse for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Because police also search all of Peter's things, including his computer. on that computer, they find some pretty extreme videos. Like violent videos, videos of women being unalived, women being tortured and decapitated, really gruesome stuff. Not videos that he himself made, like videos that you'd find on a gore website on the internet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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In fact, he ends up building what is during this time period the largest privately built submarine in the world called the UC-3 Nautilus. It's pretty impressive. But as gifted as Peter is, he also has a dark side.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Now, that being said, someone having interest in violent content doesn't necessarily make them a murderer. But in this case, it does feed into the narrative that he brutally unalived Kim Wall. Okay, so then Peter changes his story again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Now he says she actually died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and that he panicked and tried to get rid of the body, but that he didn't actually unalive her himself. And of course, this is like the third story he's given, so no one is buying it. Bro is full of sh**. So then that leaves the question, what really happened to Kim Wall?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Well, using all the forensic evidence and piecing it all together, prosecution are able to give an account of what they believe happened to her. So,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Peter and Kim Wall they meet up that day and they go out on the submarine and they have a good time then Peter decides to take the submarine under and once they're submerged and there's no way for her to escape and no one can hear her scream suddenly BAM he attacks her and he overpowers her and then he ties her up where she can't move and then he

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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tortures her and he essays her then he gets his knife and he stabs her and then he either strangles her or he cuts her throat and unalives her then he cuts her into pieces with a saw he had brought aboard and he dumps those pieces in the ocean and then he intentionally sabotages his own submarine and tries to sink it to hide any sign that a murder took place on it that's why his submarine was sinking when they found him

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So then you have to ask, why did he do it? Why did he suddenly unalive this journalist he had just met a few hours before? Well, prosecutors argue that based on the collection of gruesome videos they found on his computer, he did it to fulfill some kind of weird sexual fantasy. Other than that, we don't really know. Maybe he's just a plain old psychopath.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So anyway, Peter's manslaughter charge is changed to a murder charge and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to life in prison. And here's what he looks like in real life. And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you make videos and you want to make really badass art for those videos, like this or like this, like look at how cool that is. Sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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So one day, this Swedish freelance journalist, her name's Kim Wall. Kim Wall hears about all the interesting stuff Peter is doing, and she thinks it'd be really cool to interview him and write up an article for Wired Magazine. So Kim reaches out to Peter a couple of times, but he never gets back to her. And she really wants this story, but it looks like it's just never going to happen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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But then Peter finally responds. He sends her a text and he says, yes, he can do an interview later that same day. And Kim Wall's like, nope. So then they meet up at his workshop for tea. And during that meeting, Peter offers to take her out in his submarine that he built, the UC3 Nautilus. And she's like, yeah, I want to ride in your submarine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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I mean, this is like a once in a lifetime chance to ride in a submarine. How are you going to say no? So then she goes to her partner, this guy, Ole. And she tells Olay that Peter agreed to do the interview with her and he wants to do it in his submarine. So she's going to go with him and she'll be back in a few hours. And soon enough, she's boarding the homemade submarine with Peter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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So this woman is trapped in a box and she can barely breathe and she starts banging on the walls of this box but no one hears her because this box is in a shallow grave underneath the ground. She was just buried alive. Now the guy who buried her, his name is Marcin. He's 19 and he lives in a small town in Poland. And one day he goes to the store and he sees this woman. Her name is Michalina.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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He no longer thinks she is so fine. So naturally, pretty quickly, their relationship breaks down. And they start fighting all the time. And soon enough, they're barely even speaking to each other. And Marcin, at this point, he is done. And I guess Mikalina is too. I mean, she can't put up with this anymore. So she tells Marcin she wants to take their son and move back to Poland.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Their son is like three years old at this point. And Marcin, he absolutely wants this relationship to end. But there's a problem. He's worried she'll get full custody of their son. And she'll be living all the way in Poland while he is stuck in England living with his parents. And he'll never get to see his kid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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So then Marcin comes up with a plan to get rid of Michalina and keep custody of their son. And one day he puts that plan into motion. He invites Michalina to go shopping with them and Michalina's like, hell yeah. And she's probably excited because this is the first time Marcin's given her positive attention in a long time. And he's suddenly asking her to hang out. I mean, this is great news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Maybe they don't have to break up now. Maybe they can stay together. Maybe she doesn't have to move all the way back to Poland and she can stay in England and keep the family unit together for the sake of their son. Maybe he's changed his ways and he'll stop using roids and having violent outbursts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Maybe he has stopped looking at other women in the gym and he's going to start looking at her again like he used to. Maybe. So she starts getting ready and she's like all in the bathroom doing her makeup and whatnot. Like this is going to be fun. He's being so nice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Maybe their relationship is improving and she still wears her engagement ring because deep down she's still hoping that maybe it'll work out between them. So anyway, she does her makeup and she comes out of the bathroom and Marcin is standing there in the hallway and suddenly he's not alone. He's got a friend with him. This guy, Patrick. And he's like, hey, Patrick's gonna tag along with us, cool?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And of course it's not cool. Mikalina is disappointed because what the hell? You're bringing a friend shopping with us? Now, here's where the story gets dark. All of a sudden, Marcin pulls something out from behind his back. A stun gun. And he says he's going to show Mikalina how it works. And then suddenly, bam, he zaps her on the neck with 300,000 volts. And boom, she falls to the floor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And while she's down, Marcin just keeps zapping her over and over again to make sure she doesn't get up. Then Marcin and Patrick, they tape her legs and her wrists so she can't move. And they tape her mouth shut with packing tape. Then they zap her one last time just as like a final f*** you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And then they put her in a big cardboard box and they seal up that box and they load it into the trunk of Patrick's car. And they drive way out, deep out into the woods where no one can see them. And they get the box out of the car and they carry it up a hill.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And Marcin thinks Michalina is so fine. So he finds some way to talk to her. He whizzes her up and they totally hit it off. So they start dating and they fall in love and pretty soon they pack up and they move from Poland all the way to England to start their new life together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And then they throw it into a hole in the ground, a shallow grave that they had previously dug because they had been planning this for a while. Then they start to bury that box with shovels they brought. Now inside this box, Michalina, she is freaking out. She can hear the sound of dirt outside hitting the cardboard. And so she's suddenly aware that she's being buried alive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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How in the hell is she going to get out of this? And so Martin and Patrick, they finished burying the box and then they drag an 88 pound tree branch and they set it over the top of the grave so that there's no way she can get out. She is stuck. Then they walk away and they get in the car and they leave. Leaving Mikalina there in the box underground to be slowly and painfully unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Here's the thing though. Mikalina is scared as f*** but she is not trying to die today. She is going to try everything she can to get out of this. So she waits there in the box quietly until she's sure Marchant and Patrick are gone. Once she's sure, she starts looking for any way to escape. And that is when she remembers she's still wearing that diamond engagement ring he gave her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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So she takes it off and she uses the sharp edges of the diamond side of it and she creates friction on the tape around her wrists. And bam, she ends up cutting the tape. And then she does the same thing and cuts the tape from around her legs. Then she starts slashing and cutting at the cardboard ceiling above her until she slashes a small hole in it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Then Mikalina just starts punching it and punching it until she punches through it. And she continues just punching and punching and eventually she punches a hole big enough to get her head through. And she pushes herself up through the dirt as hard as she can until eventually her head comes out of the ground like she's a freaking zombie rising from the dead.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And she wiggles herself out of the box and she screams. squeezes out from underneath the tree branch lying on top of the dirt mound and she is out. She had been buried alive for nearly an hour and she's covered in dirt and she's all worn out but she's alive. But now time has passed and it's dark and she's deep in the woods. She has no idea where in the hell she is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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But then she hears music off in the distance and it's not very loud, but she can definitely hear it. So she starts walking toward the sound and it turns out it's coming from a nearby pub. Now eventually before she can get to the pub, she reaches a road and she flags down a car that's passing by and she tells them what happened. So they end up calling the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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So police, they investigate, and they track down Patrick's house, and they go there, and Marchin and Patrick are there, and bam, they arrest Marchin. And bam, they arrest Patrick too. Now, I don't have mug shots, but here's what Marchin looks like in real life, and here's what Patrick looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Marcin even proposes to Michalina with a diamond engagement ring and that diamond engagement ring will become important later. So anyway, they end up moving in with Marcin's parents and they get steady jobs. A few years later, Michalina gets pregnant and they have a kid. And everything seems to be going well. And it looks like they're building a really good life together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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And so they're both convicted of kidnapping, and Marchin is also found guilty of attempted murder. So Patrick is sentenced to four years in prison, while Marchin is sentenced to 20 years in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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Until... At some point, Marcin starts suddenly acting different. Like his personality changes. Like first he gets really into going to the gym and working out and working on his body. No big deal. Michelina doesn't think anything about it. Bro's just getting in shape. But then he starts going to the gym five times a week and he starts using roids and slowly his temperament starts to change.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Was Buried Alive - The Michelina Lewandowska story

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He becomes kind of an asshole and he and Michelina start arguing a lot. And when they argue, Marcin starts having these crazy violent outbursts. Meanwhile, while he's at the gym working out, Marcin starts meeting other women and he starts flirting with them. And in turn, he's looking at poor Mikalina like she's suddenly boring. And he's simply not attracted to her anymore.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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So this kid is about to get stranded on a desert island with no way home. Now his name's Mano and he's around 16 years old and he goes to a strict Catholic boarding school on an island in Tonga called Tongatapu. And this boarding school just sucks. And one day, he and five of his friends, they decide they're just gonna leave. I mean, they're all bored as hell.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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And luckily for the boys, the current of the ocean eventually pushes their boat close enough that they can jump in the water and swim the rest of the way. So they all end up swimming to the shore. And that is when they discover they just landed on an island that is completely uninhabited. Their boat had drifted from the Tongatapu area about a hundred miles over to the island of Ata.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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And now Ata is about a half mile big and it doesn't really have much on it. But at this point, Mano and the boys, they're all starving and they're dehydrated. And so they'll make do. And so they catch some seabirds and they drink their blood. And they eat some seabird eggs and they try to start a fire, but they can't start a fire.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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I mean, they don't have the tools and the wood on the island isn't really dry. So they keep up this life for a while, eating whatever they can find, doing whatever they can to survive. Now, luckily there's enough rainfall on the island to keep them hydrated. But then, about a month in, they get an idea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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They put their heads together and they build a raft from vines and bits of wood that they're able to gather together. And they put that raft in the water because they're going to test it out and they're going to get the hell off this island. But then, boom! Sadly, the raft is too flimsy and it just falls apart in the ocean. And at this point, poor Mono, he's losing hope.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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He's like, damn, are we ever gonna get home? But then, around this time, one day, they're out walking around, exploring the island. And they suddenly find the remnants of a small settlement. Because apparently, a micro-society of people had lived there a hundred years before. And sadly, at some point, they were all abducted by slave ships. But that's a whole other story.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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Regardless, the boys find the remains of one of their settlements, and they discover some loot, including some very old knives. Now these knives are a huge discovery for them, because after months of having nothing, they can finally cut open coconuts. These knives allow them to build shelter and essentially continue to survive. Then about three months in, they have another big breakthrough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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Their boarding school sucks, the cafeteria food is terrible, and they're just dying to get out and go on an adventure. So they get an idea. They wanna check out Fiji, which is about 500 miles away from Tonga Tapu, and there's no way they could possibly make it there. but they're gonna give it a shot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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They finally find a log dry enough and they're able to create enough friction and get a fire going. And making fire is huge for them. I mean, come on, a fire? They haven't felt heat at night in months. They've been eating every animal they catch raw. So the first thing they do after they build the fire is they throw a big ass feast.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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They cook up a bunch of fish and birds and wild beans, and it's like the best meal they ever had. It's Thanksgiving up in there. Things are looking up. But even so, all the while, poor Mano, he's still wondering, are they ever going to get home? About six months in, Mano and his friends, they're all locked into a survival routine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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They fish, they catch wild chickens, they built a functional hut, they spend their free time sculpting wood statues and writing songs and exercising in their homemade gym they built. One of the boys even makes a ukulele out of driftwood, coconuts, and wire. It's incredible. Meanwhile, back on Tongatapu, the boys' families are all distraught. I mean, they've been missing for a really long time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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So the families, they think they all died. And they're allegedly in mourning and they're like having funerals and they're just trying their best to grieve and move on. And about a year in, the boys, they're still there. They're trying their best to survive. And poor Mano, he keeps thinking they'll probably be stuck on this island forever. Until one day this guy goes fishing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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His name is Peter Warner. Peter Warner, he's an Australian and he's the captain of a fishing boat. And he and his small fishing crew, they're out one day cruising around the Tongatapu area looking for good spots to fish. And on their way home, they just happened to pass by the little island of Atta. So Peter is looking at this island through his binoculars and he notices something weird.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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There are burn patches on the cliffs in areas that would normally be green. And Peter, he knows of Atta and he knows this island is uninhabited. So what would cause a fire? And so he keeps looking and he looks closer and then he sees one of the boys. And the boy, he also sees Peter's boat.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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And then he gets all excited and he jumps off the cliff into the water and he starts swimming straight toward that boat. And then Peter sees the other four boys on the shore and they're all screaming their ass off trying to get his attention. And Peter's like, what the fuck is all this? I mean, he thinks these kids are all somehow native to this island or something.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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But then the first boy reaches his boat and he starts speaking to him in English. And he tells him that they've been stranded on that island for over a year. And so Peter invites all the boys on board to his boat and he redirects it to shuttle them all back home to Tonga Tapu. And finally, after being stranded on a deserted island for 15 months, they're all home. But it's not over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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Remember when they first left Tongatapu and they stole a boat from a fisherman they didn't like? Well, this fisherman, he is not happy to see them. I mean, they took his boat and after all this time, he's still salty about it. So he goes and he presses charges and bam, all six boys are arrested and thrown in jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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So they gather up some basic supplies and they go out and they steal a boat from a local fisherman. Now this local fisherman they steal from, the boys, they think he's kind of an asshole, but we'll get back to him. So anyway, Mano and his five friends, they push out to sea on this stolen boat and they coast away and they're having a good time and come nighttime, they're all asleep.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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However, Peter Warner, he's a crafty guy and he knows these boys' story of survival is an incredible story. So he hits up the manager of a television network in Sydney called Channel 7 and he negotiates with Channel 7 and he sells part of the film rights to the boys' story to them so that they can make a documentary about it.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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Then he uses that money to pay off that grumpy ass fisherman to compensate him for his stolen boat in exchange for the fisherman dropping the charges. Once the charges are dropped, Mano and the boys are finally let out of jail.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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A few days later, the boys helped film a documentary for Channel 7 that Peter Warner had agreed to where they all go back to the island and recreate some of the events that happened. And that's where I got all these pictures that I use in this video. The boys went back to the island and they recreated them for the documentary. And to this day, Mano and Peter are still friends. So that's nice.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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And here's a picture of Peter and all the boys together.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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Hours later, in the middle of the night, kaboom, a huge storm hits.

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Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

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it wakes them all up so they get up and they raise the sail but the wind is so strong that bam the sail is whipped apart and then pow the ship's rudder breaks and then hours later the storm finally passes and they're all alive but they're completely lost and the worst part they don't have any food i mean they're able to collect a little rain water to drink but otherwise they got nothing

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Five Boys Trapped on A Deserted Island

96.354

So these six boys, they just drift out at sea with basically nothing to live on for seven days. But then on the eighth day, something crazy happens. They spot a little bitty island off in the distance. And it's not much, but it's something. I mean, maybe there are people on it who can help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

0.089

So this kid, he really wants to eat people, literally. Now his name is Isai and he's from Japan and he comes from a really wealthy family. And one day he's in class in the first grade and he starts noticing his classmates legs. And Isai is like, damn, that leg looks kind of tasty. And in fact, it looks so tasty to him that he kinda has the urge to bite into it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

120.393

And they have no idea that he was trying to eat this woman, so they just end up charging him with SA. But remember how I said that he comes from a wealthy family? Well lucky for him, his dad steps in and pays a large settlement to that German woman in exchange for her dropping the SA charges against Isai. So after all that, Isai walks away from this with a clean record.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

144.497

Four years later, he moves from Tokyo all the way over to Paris. I mean, he's 28 years old at this point and he wants to study language and get his PhD from the university there. However, his desire to eat people still hasn't gone away. So while he's there in Paris trying to get his PhD, nearly every night he hires a prostitute and he brings them home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

168.854

And there he waits for a moment when they turn their back to him. And when they do, he low-key gets his rifle, because I guess he has a rifle. And he points it at them because he's going to unalive them. But lucky for the prostitutes, Isai can't ever bring himself to pull the trigger. He just doesn't have the nerve. He's scared about what will happen to him if he finally does it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

190.99

And so he goes through this routine night after night. He brings a hooker back to his place, points his rifle at them when they aren't looking, and every time he fails to follow through. And this goes on for a few years. But then one day, everything changes for Isai. Because he meets this woman, Renee. And Renee is a sweet, friendly student. And she's in one of his literature classes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

215.33

And she also happens to be a tall white woman. So Isai befriends her and at some point he invites her over to his place so that they can work on an assignment together. Once she's there and they're studying or whatever, she's sitting down at a table writing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

231.566

She's not paying attention to him and that is when Isai gets his rifle and he sneaks up behind her and he points it right at her head and he pulls the trigger. Click. The gun misfires. And Renee, she doesn't notice or even hear what's happening behind her because she's concentrating so hard on her studies. Then, two days later, Isai invites her back over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

25.89

And his classmate is a boy and he doesn't even like boys. And that's when Isai realizes that he kind of wants to eat people. And from that point on, he regularly fantasizes about gnawing on people constantly. And as the years pass, this fantasy of his just gets stronger and stronger. And specifically, he has a thing for Western women who are tall because, you know, he's a short king.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

257.306

And again, she's sitting down at a table, writing, and Isai does the same thing. He sneaks out of the room to get his rifle again, and he creeps up behind her, and he points it at her head, and he pulls the trigger. Blam. But this time, no misfire. She's unalived. And then, oddly, Isaias is shocked. Like he can't believe that he actually went through with it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

280.762

So he faints and he falls on the floor. Moments later, he wakes up and regains consciousness. And he's like, okay, I guess I have to eat her now. And because he's a disgusting person, he essays her body and then he proceeds to try and eat her. But he realizes his teeth aren't sharp enough, so then he has to leave the apartment and go out and buy a butcher knife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

304.662

But yeah, then he eats as much of her as he can. Then a few days later, the body, it's decomposing at this point. And he's like, I got to get her out of the apartment. So he stuffs what's left of her into two suitcases. Then he brings those suitcases to a nearby park to dispose of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

322.342

But while he's at the park, some bystanders notice that there's a lot of blood dripping from this guy's suitcases. And it doesn't take long for people to call the police. And so, bam, they arrest Isai again. And here's a photo of him being escorted by French police. And here is another one. And Isai admits to unaliving Rene, and they throw him in jail, but it's not over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

345.969

Because Isai is about to get kind of famous from all this. So he sits in jail for about two years, waiting on his trial. Meanwhile, his rich dad pays for good legal defense, like the most expensive lawyer they could find. And ultimately, the judge finds Isai legally insane and unfit to stand trial. So they end up dropping the charges and they send him to a psychiatric facility.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

372.054

And eventually he's deported and transferred to another psych facility in Tokyo, Japan. But since he had been declared legally insane and the charges had been technically dropped in France, his court documents had been officially sealed, which means the Japanese government can't charge him with a crime because there are no legal documents to back it up. So unfortunately, they have to let him go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

399.304

Only five years after he murdered Renee, he checks out of the psych facility in Tokyo. And now he's free. But he has trouble getting work because, you know, businesses tend to not hire people who eat other people. But then one day a magazine approaches him and they ask him to write an article for them and they pay him a load of yen for it. So he does. And that gives Isai an idea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

427.124

And he's like, oh, snap. Why don't I make some money writing books? I mean, he did study literature. He can write. So he starts writing books like novels about his crime, about his obsession with eating people and about what he did to Renee. And he does interviews and stuff and he becomes kind of a minor celebrity in Japan. Bro even writes a manga and he illustrates it and has it published.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

454.704

And it's all about his experience unaliving and eating Renee. And it's like translated into English and everything. It's on Amazon like anyone can go and buy it right now. And it's real messed up. Here, let me show you. I put the two suitcases in front of the door. It took me two nights to cut Renee. In one suitcase, there was the head, arms, and legs. In the other, the torso. Why does this exist?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

481.984

What the fuck, Japan? Anyway, after this, Isai doesn't eat anyone else, as far as we know. And he eventually dies from pneumonia at 73 years old. And here's a picture of him in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

51.465

So he wants to eat a tall white woman. And eventually Isai grows up and he's 24 years old. And by this point, he's going out of his mind with these cannibalism fantasies. And that's when he finally gets an opportunity. Because one day, around this time, he notices a young German woman. And she's tall and white. So Isai, he low-key starts to follow her around, even following her to her home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

78.137

And in doing that, he notices that when the weather is warm, she leaves her bedroom window open at night. So then one night, he decides he's gonna go for it. He's gonna sneak into her apartment, cut off a piece of her, and he's gonna eat it. So he goes to her apartment and he climbs in and he creeps through her window while she's there in her bed sleeping.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story

97.927

So now he's in her apartment and unfortunately for him, she hears him and suddenly, bam, she wakes up and she starts screaming and she freaks out and she pushes him down to the ground because, you know, he's not very big, so she overpowers him. And Isai panics and he's like, oh shit, and he runs away. But unfortunately for him, she calls police and police catch up to him and bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

0.129

So this guy, his name's Bill, and Bill has a problem. He's kind of a pervert. He's a weird guy. And one day, Bill goes online, and he starts trolling in chat rooms. And Bill is 56, and he ends up chatting with someone much younger than him, this kid, who we'll call 13, because he's 13. Now, Bill doesn't tell 13 that he's a 56-year-old man. He pretends he's much younger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

114.306

So they hire an actor to pretend to be 13 to talk to Bill on the phone. So then Bill and fake 13, they talk on the phone and they agree to meet up and to catch a predator is recording this whole call. Are you going to come over? Is it okay? Yeah. Are you sure? Totally. And of course they talk about the things they're going to do once they meet up. And what do you want to do?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

139.724

Um, whatever you'd like to do. Gross. And so Bill agrees to come over and meet. But strangely, when the time comes, Bill never shows up. And so the undercover crew, they keep trying to get him to meet. But from there, Bill just kind of disappears. Like he suddenly stops answering his phone and responding to messages and they can't figure out why. Now, here's the thing about Bill.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

167.867

Bill isn't just some regular old pervert. Bill is actually the assistant district attorney for the county. So he's a prosecutor. In fact, he's been a prosecutor for more than 20 years. suggesting that he's probably prosecuted a few predators in court himself. So being an assistant district attorney, he's kind of a high profile guy locally, which makes this ambush a big deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

194.509

And when Chris Hansen and the undercover crew discover that he's an assistant district attorney, they know this is going to be really good TV and that this episode is going to be huge. And they busted other predators in the area, but nothing like this. However, Bill still isn't showing up and he's still not answering his phone. And this throws a monkey wrench into their whole operation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

217.171

Because if he doesn't agree to meet up, then Chris and the crew, they can't run out and ambush him with the camera like they planned. So they decide they can't just let this opportunity go. They have to take a different approach. And so then Chris, he hits up the local police and he tells them what's going on. And he asks them to get search and arrest warrants for Bill.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

237.37

Because the plan is when police go to Bill's house to arrest him, Chris and the To Catch a Predator crew will be there with the cameras to capture the whole thing. Anyway, so the police agree to help and they work through the night to get everything in order and by morning time they have what they need. So they all head over to Bill's house because they're about to arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

257.626

And by the way, Bill has no idea any of this is going on. Now, at Bill's house, Chris Hansen and the rest of the TV crew, they're already over there. They're waiting outside, and they're kind of being low-key, like hiding behind trees and stuff. Like, they don't want to alert Bill, but I don't think they're doing a very good job of being low-key.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

26.751

He's essentially catfishing this kid. Regardless, Bill and Thirteen, they chat for a while and they hit it off and Bill starts flirting with him and eventually Bill sends him photos. Inappropriate photos. And their conversations get pretty dirty. It's gross. But! Here's the important thing about 13. He's not really 13. 13 isn't a kid at all, actually.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

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Regardless, police get there, and an officer goes to the door, and he knocks... But no answer. However, one of the officers can see inside through a window and he can see that a TV and a computer are on. So clearly Bill is home. He's just not answering his door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

293.632

So then police decide they're going to have to force their way in and the SWAT team shows up and they all head around back to a sliding glass door and they break the lock. Then the whole SWAT team files inside and they start sweeping the house and they finally spot Bill. standing there. And Bill, he's got a pew-pew in his hand. And he apparently knows exactly why they're there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

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Because as soon as he sees them, he steps back inside another room and he yells, I'm not gonna hurt anyone! But then, he puts the pew-pew up to his temple and he pulls the trigger, unaliving himself. And from there, the story blows up and it hits the news and it gets national attention.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

336.872

Everyone's talking about this and people start heavily criticizing the show, accusing them of being too focused on TV ratings when instead they should be focused on justice. But despite all that attention, the episode about Bill still airs and it seems like the show is just going to go on as normal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

356.023

Until nine months later the district attorney's office announces it will not be prosecuting any of the predators that Chris Hansen outed in that local Texas area. Because some of them there were some jurisdiction issues and in other cases the evidence collected really isn't usable.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

375.274

So of the 24 men that they had arrested in this area of Texas using the to catch a predator sting operations, none of them went to prison. in other areas they did because they shot the show like all around the country, but in Texas none of them were prosecuted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

392.123

But then it gets even crazier because Bill's sister, this woman, Patricia, Patricia learns about her brother's case and what happened to him and she is really not happy. She doesn't like how this whole thing was handled. She thinks police illegally raided Bill's home for the sake of TV ratings and that they failed to protect her brother's safety and that all of this led him to unalive himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

429.513

So then, bam, Patricia files a lawsuit against NBC Universal, the network who owns To Catch Predator. And she actually sues them for $105 million. It's a wrongful death lawsuit. And ultimately, NBC negotiates with her and they end up settling out of court for an undisclosed amount. So it seems like Patricia ended up getting paid quite a bag of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

455.951

But then around this time, sadly, after four years on the air, NBC cancels the show to catch a predator. And it is speculated that Patricia's lawsuit is what led to the cancellation of the show. However, that is just speculation because to my understanding, NBC never put out an official statement as to why they actually canceled the show. They just kind of suddenly canceled it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

481.368

That's what they normally do. RIP. It was a good show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

51.543

He's actually a group of adult vigilantes who pose as teenagers because they're trying to catch P3DOs. So Bill isn't chatting with 13. He's actually chatting with an adult. And these vigilantes are working with To Catch a Predator. And To Catch a Predator is a famous TV show hosted by this guy, Chris Hansen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

71.682

And the whole idea of To Catch a Predator is to catch predators and expose them on television for the world to see. And sometimes police are with them and arrests are made. It's actually a really good show. And it's really popular. I guess because people just like seeing them ambush predators. And that is what the show is planning on doing to Bill.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Pervert Finally Got Caught - The Bill Conradt story

92.658

So this covert operation goes on for about two weeks. Bill chats with this fake teenage boy. And by that point, the vigilantes feel like they have a lot of evidence with these adult conversations that they've been having online. So they decide it's time to trick Bill into meeting up with 13 so they can run in and ambush him with the cameras and bust him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

0.149

So this journalist is about to unalive some people so that he can write news articles about the murders. Let me explain. Now the journalist, his name is Vlado, and he lives in a small town in Macedonia, and he's a bit messed up in the head. Apparently, he had always had a super contentious relationship with his late mother. And bro's allegedly got some mommy issues.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

120.888

And he goes and he interviews some of her friends and family members about the crime. He even reports on the trial of the two random guys who were wrongly accused of unaliving Mitra. Which, by the way, those two guys who were falsely accused, they ultimately both get sentenced to life in prison. But don't feel bad for these two guys.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

140.519

Part of why they're murder suspects in the first place is because they actually unalived someone else, a totally different, unrelated guy, which they admitted to. So they get life in prison. Anyway, three years pass, and Vlado still hasn't been caught. And he's feeling pretty confident. He's ready to do it all over again. And that is when he sets his sight on this woman. Her name is Labicha.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

165.031

And Labicha's 56, and like Mitra, she also works as a cleaner, and she's also familiar with Vlado's mom. So she is just his type. And all these people live in the same small neighborhood, so Vlado and all his victims, they all know each other. But one day, just like Mitra, Lubica leaves her place to go buy groceries. That is when Vlado shows up. But suddenly, boom, Vlado just kidnaps her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

189.984

And then he takes her somewhere, to some secret location. And he ties her up, and he beats her, and he essays her, and he keeps her alive there for about three months. And then he finally strangles her with a telephone cord until she's... unalived. And three months after she had been abducted, police find her body in a nylon bag she had been dumped in a ravine near the edge of town.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

213.222

And of course, this is a small town in Macedonia, so this murder is huge news. And guess which freelance journalist is right there to cover the story? Flotto. And he's out here, he's like interviewing her friends and her family. And three days after Labiche's body is found, he publishes an article about her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

23.864

Because one day, I guess Vlado finds a way to take out all these frustrations on some women that live in his neighborhood. And so he targets his first victim, this woman, Mitra. Mitra's 64 and she knew Vlado's mom and Mitra even works as a cleaner just like Vlado's mom worked as a cleaner. But one day Mitra leaves her place to go to the grocery store and that is when Vlado shows up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

231.722

And in this article, he actually theorizes that this murder and the Mitra murder might be linked. Like he's telling on himself. Oh, but Vlado's not done, because a few months later, he chooses his next victim, this woman, Zivana. And Zivana's 65, and just like the other victims, she's a cleaner. She also knew Vlado's mom, because they all live in the same neighborhood.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

255.107

And one day, she's sitting at home, and she gets a phone call, and it's her friend. And her friend is like, hey, have you heard the news? There's been a horrible car crash and they're saying your son is involved. So Zivana, she goes and she turns on the news on the radio. And yeah, there's a report that there's been a horrible car crash involving her son.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

274.42

So Zivana immediately drops everything and she leaves her place. And as she's leaving, her neighbor sees her and he's like, hey, what's going on? And she's like, I think my son was in a horrible car crash. I'm going to the hospital to see if he's there. And then she heads straight for the hospital. And that is the last time anyone sees her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

292.888

And again, it is speculated that while she's on her way to the hospital, Vlado crosses paths with her and he likely offers her a ride. And somehow he gets her alone and he kidnaps her. And then he takes her to some unknown location and he beats her up and he essays her and he strangles her with a telephone cord.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

309.955

Then he puts the body in a nylon bag and he ties it up with the same telephone cord he used to unalive her. But after she had left the house that day, that same afternoon, that neighbor that she saw, he gets a knock on the door and it's Zivana's son. And son asked the neighbor, hey, have you seen my mom? I can't find her anywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

328.44

And neighbor's like, dude, she went to the hospital because she heard you got in a car accident. Now, of course, Sun had not, in fact, been in a car accident. So he's like, what the f*** are you talking about? And he hadn't been in a horrible car accident because there had been no horrible car accident. It was all a hoax.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

345.469

Now, it is speculated that Vlado, who is a journalist, that he called the local radio news station and reported to them that there had been a car crash and that Zivana's son had been involved. so that that radio station would report on it and Zivana would hear it and go out looking for him. And I guess it worked because she did.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

364.619

Regardless, nine days later, some people find Zivana's body unalived in a pile of trash that had been dumped next to the local soccer field. And three days after that, Vlado publishes a news article about the murder in one of the biggest national newspapers in Macedonia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

382.27

And in this article, he links the murders of all three women, and he's the first person to suggest that there might be a serial killer on the loose. Like I said, bro's telling on himself. I mean, this man is diabolical, and it looks like he's getting away with it. Until... Here's the thing. When Vlado wrote his news article about Zivana's murder, he took things a little too far.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

407.889

For example, in this article, he goes into detail about what type of cord the killer had used, a telephone cord. and how the killer had used the same cord to unalive the victims as he used to tie them up. And none of these details were public information at the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

425.444

He even writes about how Zivana had possibly been abducted by two men in a car and how they made up a story about her son getting in a horrible accident to get her in that car. And so local police, they start to notice, man, this guy's got a lot of insight into these murders. They're like, we've never mentioned that the killer used a telephone cord. And so police naturally get suspicious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

449.675

And finally, Vlado becomes a suspect. So then police, they go and they test his DNA, and they match it with some DNA found on the murder victims, and surprise, surprise, it's a match. So, bam, they arrest Vlado. And I couldn't find a mugshot, so here's an actual photo of him in police custody.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

469.308

But then, three days after his arrest, while he's in jail, he's in his cell, and he goes and he dunks his head in a bucket of water, and he drowns. He unalived himself. So... Shout out to the bucket, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

50.215

Now it isn't clear exactly how he goes about this because there are no witnesses Not sure if he offered her a ride in his car or what, but suddenly bam, Vlado straight up kidnaps her and he takes her somewhere and he starts beating her and then he essays her. And after that, he keeps her alive for several months, which means he would have had to feed her and like take care of her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

74.938

But ultimately he finally strangles her with a telephone cord until she's unalived. Then he stuffs her body into a nylon bag and he ties it up with the telephone cord and he dumps it at an abandoned construction site on the outskirts of town. And two months after she first disappeared, police finally find Mitra's body in the construction site.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Killed People And Then Wrote a Novel About It - The Vlado Taneski story

97.173

So they investigate and they start accusing these two other random guys of the murder. And eventually they go and arrest those two guys. Meanwhile, Vlado isn't even a suspect. So he like totally gets away with it. Now, remember how I said Vlado is a journalist? Well, pretty quickly, he starts reporting on the case and he publishes a news article about Mitra going missing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

0.089

So this guy, let's call him Frenchy because he's super French. And Frenchy is about to con people out of $40 million. Now Frenchy, he's kind of a turd. He's been in and out of jail for petty theft, forgery, counterfeiting, but

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

102.461

And soon enough, he finds himself becoming friends with actual famous people like Mickey Rourke and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he's trying to do a business deal with Michael Jackson's brother, Jermaine Jackson. Now, as cool as that is, Frenchie is a con man at heart. So he has to start really scamming people to pay his bills and keep up this big lifestyle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

123.002

And he makes a lot of money from this scam. His scam works like this. He takes some unsuspecting sucker out for dinner and champagne at expensive restaurants and he picks up the tab, which gives that person the impression that Frenchie is already rich And that he would never scam you. Then he'll offer this person an investment opportunity.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

142.377

Like, you should invest in the clothing store I'm about to open. And of course, the people invest because they trust him. Because they already think he's the rich nephew of someone famous. And so Frenchie cons a lot of people this way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

15.899

Frenchy's also one charming mother like he can talk anyone into anything and one day he decides that instead of petty theft he's gonna go for a really big score and now his girlfriend has a rich father who owns a high-end townhouse in Paris and so Frenchy he creates a fake property deed for this building in Paris that he doesn't own and he tries to sell it for 1.4 million dollars oh but he doesn't stop there

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

155.426

And by the way, I'm skipping over a lot in this story because he committed so many crimes and ripped off so many people, I couldn't possibly fit it all in one video. Anyway, eventually he gets reported for some of these crimes and police catch on and boom, he gets arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

170.285

But his arrest doesn't last long because he gets out on bail and the day before he's supposed to go on trial, he flees town and he heads from Los Angeles all the way over to the Hamptons in New York. And there he starts making lots of friends again in the social scene because like I said, he's a charming mother . And so he invents another backstory to tell these people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

192.861

He tells them that he's a Rockefeller,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

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one of the richest families in US history so he makes all these new friends and now he has access to all the best parties with rich people in the Hamptons and so he starts conning people all over again and he takes these people out for these big impressive dinners in these fancy places and he starts talking about investments and everybody wants to hear investment tips from a Rockefeller and so again this con works like magic

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

220.126

He gets one woman to invest $14,000, another couple to invest $50,000 with him, another woman to invest $25,000, and he cons a real estate agent out of $100,000. And all these poor suckers, they think they're gonna make a ton of money after Frenchy invests for them. But, spoiler alert, he just ends up keeping their money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

242.085

And of course, he uses it to continue living this insane, lavish lifestyle he lives. And it seems like bro is never gonna get caught. Until. So here's the thing about Frenchy. He likes to flex, like he likes to feel rich. And so he tells all his Hamptons friends that he lives in this big mansion on the fanciest street in town. But in reality, he doesn't.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

265.276

He's living out of a local bed and breakfast. Now at this bed and breakfast, he hasn't been paying his bill. And eventually the bill builds up to around $19,000. $19,000, what kind of bed and breakfast is this? And so the owners of this bed and breakfast, they get tired of Frenchy's excuses and one day they report him to the police. And so bam, police arrest him again. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

289.829

And so Frenchy gives police a fake name and a fake ID and he's able to post bail the next day. And at this point in the story, police have no idea he's a wanted criminal. They just think he's a guy who didn't pay his hotel bill. So Frenchy takes advantage of this and he immediately flees the Hamptons and goes north all the way to Canada.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

309.801

Meanwhile, in Canada, Frenchy starts conning people there too. He tells people he's a famous Formula One driver for Ferrari and people believe him. But then he screws up big and he messes with the wrong ones. Because after eight months of living in Canada, he befriends this older businessman and his wife. And he bullshits them and he tells them he's this famous race car driver for Ferrari.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

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And they're all impressed. They're like, oh, cool. And Frenchy convinces them to invest $150,000 into some fake business venture he invented. But they eventually realize it's a con and they report him to Canadian police. And so, boom, once again, he gets arrested. And Frenchy spends a year in Canadian prison before he has to return back to the U.S.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

358.531

where he pleads guilty to his crimes and he's sentenced to three years, 10 months in U.S. prison. But story's still going, because while he's in prison, Frenchy writes an autobiography where he talks about his crimes, which becomes a bestseller back in France.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

374.842

And by the way, in this book, he like actually makes fun of his victims, like he basically mocks them and calls them stupid for believing him. It's very French of him. Anyway, when he gets out of prison, he goes back to France and he's kind of a celebrity there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

389.933

Like he signs a book deal to write a second book and he sells his name for use in a clothing line, Roquencourt Jeans, Roquencourt is his last name. And eventually he befriends this French film director, this woman, Catherine. And Catherine is fascinated by Frenchie's story. And she finds him charming as f***. And so she wants to give him a second chance at life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

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And she casts him as the lead in a feature film she's making. A feature film starring Naomi Campbell. And here's a picture of Frenchie and Naomi Campbell on the red carpet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

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and so catherine and frenchie they start spending lots of time together and they become friends and eventually he starts asking her to borrow money and then he asked her for a little more and then a little more and unfortunately for catherine pretty quickly frenchie ends up conning her out of 700 000 euros or about 760 000 us dollars

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

44.921

He continues this string of crimes, and sometime later, he successfully robs a jewelry store. And lucky for him, he doesn't actually get caught for this robbery. But now he's a wanted man. So he decides to flee France, and he goes to the place where he can make some serious money, the United States.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

446.844

And because he cons her, the movie project is suddenly canceled. But then Catherine ends up writing another film. She ends up making a semi-autobiographical movie about that, about getting conned by Frenchie. And that movie about getting conned by Frenchie apparently does well and gets really good reviews. So good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

465.47

But anyway, Frenchie eventually gets convicted for conning her, and he gets sentenced to 16 months in prison. And it's estimated that in total, over the years, he conned people out of $40 million. Wow. Here's what he looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

64.825

And once he's there, he goes to Los Angeles, where he starts making lots of friends in the nightlife scene. Because like I said, he's a charming guy. Now, he doesn't tell anyone he meets that he's just a regular turd who's wanting for robbing a jewelry store in Europe. Instead, he always lies to them and says he's related to someone successful and famous.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous French Con Artist - The Christophe Rocancourt story

85.293

Like he tells people he's Dino De Laurentiis' nephew. He's a famous movie producer. Or he'll tell them he's Oscar De Laurentiis' nephew. Oscar De Laurentiis is a famous fashion designer. And as absurd as that is, this works and people believe him and they love Frenchie. They find him so interesting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

0.109

So this psychopath unalives a news reporter live on the air. Now his name is Vester and he's a TV reporter himself. He's also just kind of an angry dude. Like he's just mad about a lot of stuff. And at his TV reporter job, bro does not get along with his coworkers. And I guess one day, one of his coworkers says something kind of homophobic to him, because Vester is gay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

114.431

And then, on a different day, Vester's working around another co-worker. This woman. Allison, and allegedly she makes some comment around him that is racist or that comes across as racist. Now, I don't know if she actually made a comment, but this has been investigated extensively and there's no evidence Allison actually said anything overtly racist to him. Ever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

136.2

Regardless, whatever happened also pisses Vester off. And soon enough of his co-workers report him to HR for hostile behavior and the news station eventually tells him he's fired. And then he gets all aggressive and he flips out and he says, I'm not leaving, you're gonna have to call the f***ing police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

153.775

And so the news station calls the police and the police come and they have to escort his crazy ass out. But as angry as Vester is, he moves on again. And he's going to get a job as a reporter somewhere else. And he ends up landing an interview at a TV station in Pennsylvania. And he interviews there, and this TV station likes him, but they call his references.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

175.471

And I guess all his references say he's difficult to work with. Like, he's a lot of drama. So ultimately, Vester doesn't get the job in Pennsylvania. And this pisses him off even more. And all this anger, it just keeps building and building for about a year. And then one day, boom, he files a lawsuit against WDBJ News Station for racial discrimination and sexual discrimination.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

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He essentially claims they were racist and homophobic towards him. But for whatever reasons, months later, this lawsuit is dismissed. And this, of course, pisses Vester off even more. And at this point, he's almost reached his limit. But then, the next year, something absolutely crazy happens. Something unrelated to Vester.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

224.04

In South Carolina, a random racist white guy walks into a black church one day. And he's got a pew-pew. And he just starts blasting. Blam! Blam! And he unalives nine people. And it's a horrible tragedy. And of course, this is a huge news story across the whole country. And Vester, he hears about this tragedy. And this finally sends him over the edge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

249.181

A white man unaliving a bunch of innocent black people? They're not going to get away with this. And so he decides to get revenge. But not on the racist shooter in South Carolina. He decides to get revenge on the old coworkers at WDPJ, the ones who reported him and got him fired. So then two days after the South Carolina church massacre, Vester goes and he buys a pew pew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

25.644

And that really sets him off. And later, he gets into it with some other coworkers, and he starts verbally abusing them. And everyone there basically thinks he's a diva, and there are a lot of problems and drama always surrounding Vester. So, bam, he eventually gets fired. And bro is pissed, because he feels like he's the victim here.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

274.563

And he also starts typing up a whole ass manifesto. And as his plan comes together, he calls ABC news station and he's like, I'm going to have a big story for you. But he's being kind of vague, so no one at ABC takes him seriously. Then one morning, Bester gets up before dawn and he tracks his old coworkers to their morning assignment, Allison the reporter and Adam the cameraman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

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And they're with a whole news crew and they're out in the field, they're about to do an interview. And so the news crew is there setting up for this interview with this woman named Vicky. And suddenly, Vester shows up to this location, but they don't see him. And he creeps around and he watches them all from a distance. And once they start filming this interview, Vester decides it's go time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

323.184

So he moves toward them, and he pulls out his phone, and he starts filming them himself. And you can see the footage here. And if you pause it, you can see Allison right here, and you can see Adam the cameraman here, and this woman being interviewed is Vicky. And Allison and Adam, they're focusing on the interview, so they have no idea Vester is there. I don't think they really see him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

344.619

But then, while Vester is recording them, he pulls out his pew-pew, and he points it at them, point-blank. And he pulls the trigger. Blam! Blam! He shoots Allison. Blam! He shoots Adam. And blam! Vicky, the woman who's getting interviewed, she gets shot too. And as Adam falls to the ground, his camera catches a shot of Vester pointing his pew-pew for just a few frames.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

368.333

And so you can see he's standing here and there's his head right there. Here's the thing though. All of this chaos is live. The news crew was filming a live segment and they caught the shooting live. Now, I obviously can't show you the footage of the people getting shot, but afterwards, the feed goes to black, and it cuts to the reporter back in the studio.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

394.107

So anyway, Allison and Adam are unfortunately unalived on live TV. But Vicki, the woman being interviewed, luckily, she survives. And Vester, he immediately flees the scene. And he goes, I don't know, somewhere, and he faxes that manifesto he wrote over to ABC News. Now, his manifesto, it's like 23 pages long, and it's like a rambling, incoherent mess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

418.003

I guess every psychopath has to type up a manifesto for some reason. But he also calls ABC News Station too, like, hey, it's me again. I just shot two people. I guess he really wants them to know it's him. And when the people at ABC News see the manifesto, they finally take him seriously, and they call the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

435.193

Meanwhile, Vester takes the graphic footage he himself filmed of the shooting, and he posts it to Facebook and Twitter for the world to see. And the whole time he's like tweeting about it. He's like, Allison made racist comments. Adam went to HR on me after working with me one time. I filmed the shooting. See Facebook. And people online, they see this graphic video and they're like, what the f**k?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

456.785

And they report it. And of course, Facebook and Twitter, they take the video down, but not before it starts trending on like other gore websites and some news stations show it on the air too. Meanwhile, Vester knows police are going to be after him soon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

46.059

So then, boom, he sues the TV station, for racial discrimination for some reason. And eventually, the news station settles with him out of court, and the details of that settlement have never been disclosed. But whatever, Fester moves on. He's gonna go be angry at someone else. And he goes and he gets another job in another state, but the pattern of problems and drama continue.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

470.333

so he gets in a car and he takes off and it doesn't take long for the police to track him down and suddenly they're after him but vester he refuses to pull over and he just keeps speeding away but he knows that even though everything actually went according to his plan this is the end for him so as he drives running from the police he holds his pew pew up to his own head and he pulls the trigger

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

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And he unalives himself, allegedly while the car was still in motion. And the car runs off the road and it crashes. Wow. And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

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He'll get hired because he's good on the air, but ultimately something goes down with his coworkers, and he responds a bit too aggressively, and bam, he gets fired again. But whatever, eventually he gets a job at this news station, WDBJ. And he becomes a reporter there, reporting on local stuff. And this actually seems to be a pretty good gig for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Woman on Live TV - The Vester Flanagan story

91.125

Until... One day, Vester's working on a story with this camera guy, Adam. And Adam allegedly says something that really sets Vester off. And he gets pissed. Now, I don't know if Adam actually said something bad to him or if this is just Vester being an angry guy again. Regardless, Vester just loses it on Adam. And Adam gets freaked out and he goes and he reports Vester to HR.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

0.049

So this guy's about to try and scam the lottery out of $24 million. Now, his name is Eddie. He lives in Iowa, and he's a computer programmer, and he also works for the Multi-State Lottery Association. And he's going to use this position there to enact this wild scam.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

106.549

He's an employee of the Multi-State Lottery Association. It's against company policy for lottery employees to play the lottery. Plus, that would be very suspicious if a lottery employee won the jackpot. So then Eddie has to find someone to play it for him. And what does he do? Eddie recruits his brother, this guy, Tommy. And Tommy is a sheriff's deputy of all things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

130.017

But Tommy also just happens to be taking a trip to Colorado soon because he's gonna look for, and I'm not making this up, Bigfoot. Yes, Tommy is going several states away to hunt for the legendary mythical creature. I guess he's just into that kind of stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

147.421

So anyway, Eddie hits Tommy up and he's like, hey, while you're out there in Colorado looking for Bigfoot, could you play a bunch of these lottery numbers I got? Because one of them is gonna win. And Tommy, he's like, Aight. Now, while Tommy's out there in Colorado, he doesn't actually find Bigfoot. Womp womp.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

164.889

But he does buy up a bunch of lotto tickets, and sure enough, when the time comes and they draw the winning lottery numbers, boom, one of Tommy's tickets wins. However, he doesn't actually win $4.8 million, because some other people win too, so the winnings are split between him and some other random winners. Regardless, Tommy ends up getting a cash payout of nearly $570,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

187.076

And he goes and he splits it with Eddie. Not a bad payday. Oh, but Eddie's scam is not over yet. That was way too easy. So for the next 10 years, Eddie uses his magic software and he gets the winning numbers and he has another person, Tommy or whoever else he's scamming with at the time, he has that person go to other states and play their lottery and collect the winnings. And they win big.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

19.142

See, Eddie is actually the director of security at the Multi-State Lottery Association, and part of his job involves designing the software that randomly picks the winning numbers for these lotteries. And so Eddie's been working in this job for like two years and then one day everything changes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

214.935

$22,000 in Kansas. $780,000 in Wisconsin. $900,000 in Oklahoma. Bro is raking it in. Until... One day, Eddie makes a big mistake. Because he walks into a convenience store and he buys one of the winning tickets himself. And you can see him here. He's right there in the black hoodie. Looking all kinds of shady. Hello.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

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And also this particular lottery he's playing, this ain't no regular lottery. This is the hot lotto, which has a massive jackpot of 16 and a half million dollars. So of course he buys the tickets and he picks the numbers and the ones he picked end up being the winner and bam, he wins the jackpot. But again, there's a problem. He still can't collect it himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

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He's got to go find someone else who can. Meanwhile, the lottery commission, they know someone won. They know someone bought the winning ticket. They just don't know who. So they're just waiting on whoever to come forward and claim this prize money. And they're like going on TV and they're like making announcements.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

298.27

So Eddie, he's got to collect this money. So he hits up his friend in Texas, this guy. Robert. And Robert, he's been already helping him with this lotto scam. And Eddie asked Robert to help him figure out how to collect this $16.5 million jackpot he just won. So Robert hits up a guy in Canada that he knows, and he asks him to call into Iowa and claim the prize.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

322.232

So then 10 months after the winning numbers were announced, This random guy from Canada calls into Iowa claiming he's got the winning lottery ticket. But he says that he's too sick to go there in person and that they'll just have to give him the winnings. And the lottery commission, they're like, yeah, sure, buddy. And they start asking him questions about the day he bought the ticket.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

347.27

Like, what clothing were you wearing that day? because they're skeptical and they're trying to pick his story apart. And of course, guy from Canada describes some clothing, but that description doesn't match the surveillance footage the lottery commission has of the man buying the ticket. So the commission is like, nah, bro, you're not the winner. Stay in Canada.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

36.154

Because he's at work and he's chatting with a co-worker and co-worker is joking around and he asks Eddie if he's put his own secret winning numbers into the software. And Eddie is like, say what now? And co-worker's like, bro, you wrote the software so you can set the winning numbers. And Eddie's like, oh, snap, that's right. I'm the one writing the software.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

365.479

So then Robert has to try something different. And he has a couple of lawyers come forward to claim the prize. And when these lawyers go to the lottery commission, they're like, we're here on behalf of our client and our client wants to remain anonymous. Meh, meh, meh.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

385.97

And again, the Lottery Commission gets very suspicious, especially because in Iowa, the identity of any given lottery winner is always made public. So the Lottery Commission is like, nah, and they don't pay out the winnings.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

405.046

I mean, they know something shady is going on. So instead, they start looking into this anonymous winner who allegedly sent his lawyers. And eventually, they ask the police to get involved. So then police get involved. And even they are having a hard time figuring this out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

420.494

But they go and they check out the surveillance footage from the convenience store where the winning lottery ticket was bought. Now, obviously from this footage, you can see a man in a black hoodie, but you can't identify who that is. Like the quality is just trash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

434.044

So police, they go and they release this footage to the public and they ask the public to help them identify the guy who bought the winning lottery ticket. So then finally, after investigating this for nearly four years, kaboom, police get a tip. And it's someone telling them that the person in the video is a guy they know named Eddie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

457.544

And it's presumed that whoever tipped the police off were some of Eddie's coworkers. And you can't really see him in the surveillance footage, but they could tell it was him by his voice. So then eventually, bam, police arrest Eddie. Here's his mugshot. And then bam, they arrest his Bigfoot hunting ass brother Tommy too. Here's his mugshot. And also bam, they arrest Robert. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

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And it's estimated that over 10 years, Eddie and these other guys tried to scam $24 million in lottery winnings. making this the biggest lottery scam in US history. So anyway, Tommy gets 75 days in prison, Robert gets six months of home confinement, because he testified against the others, while Eddie, the mastermind, he gets 25 years in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

507.624

Although ultimately, Eddie only ended up serving five years, and now he's out on parole. sounds like it was worth it and a huge shout out to leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video if you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this then sign up for leonardo.ai

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

58.792

I actually could rig this whole thing and win the lottery and make myself rich. And that is exactly what he's going to do. So Eddie gets right to work, and he starts writing code on the Multistate Lottery Association computer. And this code will basically help predict the winning numbers. Then one night, he's working late in the office, and there's no one else around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Scammed The Lottery Out Of Millions - The Eddie Tipton story

80.566

So he gets some of those yellow sticky notes and he starts writing down the different sets of possible winning numbers for this lottery that's about to happen all the way over in Colorado. Now the jackpot for this lottery in Colorado is a big fat $4.8 million. So there's a lot on the line here. However, Eddie has a problem. He can't just roll over to Colorado and play the lottery himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

0.129

So this girl is about to unalive her own mom because mom found her vape pen. Let me explain. Now the girl, her name's Carly and she's from Mississippi and she's a good kid. She does well in school. She was apparently student of the year. She's so smart she skipped a grade. But Carly has a problem.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

110.983

But still, none of these prescriptions seem to be helping, and the voices in her head continue. Now... Here's where things get crazy. One day she wakes up and she has to go to school. Her mom, who we'll just call mom, mom drives them both to the school because mom's a math teacher at that same school. And so Carly gets to school and while she's there, she meets up with her friends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

135.077

And one of her friends is really concerned about all the Zaza Carly's been smoking lately and about all those burner phones she has. Because apparently Carly has a bunch of burner phones linked to secret social media accounts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

148.084

I guess she doesn't want her parents knowing she has social media accounts, so she creates them with burner phones and she'll like use them to message boys and stuff she knows her parents don't approve of. Stuff like that. Anyway, so this friend confronts Carly, because I guess he's worried about her. He's like, you're smoking too much Zaza, Carly. And Carly, she gets mad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

165.599

Like, he's all up in her business. And they get into a big argument. And it escalates. And Carly ends up cussing the kid out. So that friend, in turn, he gets mad. And he goes and sends an email to Carly's mom. And bro tells her everything. About the stuff Carly's been smoking, about the vape pens, about the burner phones she's got. And mom reads this email and she's like, oh hell no.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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She's been dealing with some mental issues, and she's been hearing voices in her head since she was six. And now that she's 11, the voices have only gotten worse. So how does she deal with all this? Well, allegedly, she's been... herself and her mom finds out that she's been doing that to herself and of course mom freaks out because who wouldn't.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Vape pens and burner phones? She is not gonna let this slide. So at the end of the school day, boom, mom confronts Carly about the email and about all the things Carly's friend told her. And mom is of course super mad. Like no one knows what was really said between them, but it's safe to assume mom goes off on her. And on the drive home, she's all mad and Carly's mad too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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But she's also panicking because she knows mom is probably about to search her room and find her shit. So they get home and mom goes straight to Carly's bedroom and she starts investigating, tossing the room, going through her stuff, looking for these alleged vape pens and burner phones. And this is where Carly flips and she gets a terrible idea that's going to affect her life forever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Carly low-key sneaks into her mom's room, and she lifts up the mattress on the bed, and she grabs her parents' pew-pew. And then she creeps back toward her bedroom. And you can see her walking by on their home surveillance system. And you can see here that she's got the pew-pew behind her back. So then Carly goes into her bedroom where Mom is. And Mom actually just found four of her vape pens.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Blam!

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Blam! And Mom falls to the floor and Carly fires one more time. Blam! And this unalives Mom. But then it's almost as if she had this planned because she goes back into the kitchen and she grabs her mom's phone off the counter. And you can see the phone in her hand here. And so she texts her stepdad, who we'll just call stepdad. So she texts stepdad and she pretends as if she's her mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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And she asks him, when are you coming home, honey? And stepdad replies like, just finishing some things up at work. Now Carly wants to know when he's coming home because when he gets there, she's about to unalive him too. and strangely after she texts her stepdad carly starts singing to her dogs as if she didn't just murder someone Weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Now, I'm not a doctor, but when you look at all this, the hearing voices, the cutting, the sudden murder of her own mom, and then randomly singing to her dogs during all this chaos, I'm thinking Carly was misdiagnosed early on. I think the mental issues she's dealing with extend beyond major depressive disorder and adjustment disorder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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And I definitely think that smoking all that Zaza all the time greatly exacerbated whatever mental issue she's dealing with. But that's just my opinion. Tell me if I'm wrong. But anyway, then while she's there waiting on stepdad to get home, she suddenly decides to text a friend of hers and she's like, come over, it's an emergency.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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And so sometime later, this friend comes over and we'll just call her friend. So friend comes over and Carly's like, you want to see a dead body? And friend's like, All right. Then Carly leads her friend to the bedroom and she shows her her unalive mother lying on the floor. And I don't know if the friend freaked out or if the friend is cool with seeing a dead body, but friend doesn't leave.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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So I guess she's okay with all this. Instead, Carly tells friend to wait outside because when her stepdad gets home, she's going to unalive him too. So friend goes outside and chills while Carly sits inside waiting for her stepdad to arrive. And soon enough, stepdad pulls into the driveway and he has no idea anything bad has happened in this house.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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And so he walks in the front door and right as he walks in, Carly is waiting there and she's got that pew-pew and she points it right at his head and she pulls the trigger. Luckily, somehow, Stepdad moves out of the way at the last second, and Carly misses his head, and the bullet just grazes his shoulder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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So they put Carly in therapy and they get her formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder and adjustment disorder and they get Carly on some meds. So Carly starts taking these meds But unfortunately, the meds don't seem to be helping. She's still having mental issues. So now what's she gonna do? Well, at some point, Carly gets introduced by some of her friends to a little Zaza.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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So then, boom, Stepdad lunges toward her, and he grabs the pew-pew, and blam, blam, it goes off a few more times, but luckily no one is hit. And so Stepdad overpowers Carly, and he wrestles the pew-pew out of her hands, and she freaks out, and she exits the house, and she flees, and you can see her here on security footage running away quickly, and you can see her friend following her here.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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And so stepdad is injured and he's totally flipping out and he calls 911. And then police get there and he tells them everything that happened and pretty quickly there's a whole ass manhunt looking for Carly with a police helicopter and everything. But it doesn't last long because soon enough they find her not too far away hiding in one of those big drainage pipes. And so bam, they arrest her.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Here's her mugshot. Also here is some footage of her detained in the back of the police car. Anyway, Carly goes to trial and she pleads not guilty due to insanity, but the jury doesn't buy it and they find her guilty and she's sentenced to life in prison.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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So she starts hitting that Zaza, and it turns out that she really likes how it makes her feel. She's like, damn, this is kind of nice. However, she's still really struggling with the mental illness stuff. And this is the only thing that seems to help. So she starts doing Zaza a lot. I guess she's really into those vape pens. And this goes on for a while. I guess Carly's hitting that Zaza daily.

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She Murdered Her Own Mom - The Carly Gregg story

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Here's the thing though. She does this so much that her friends start to notice that she's high all the time. And some of them start to get worried because this isn't like her. So fast forward to around the time Carly is 14 years old. She's still having mental issues, and these problems seem to be getting worse. So they take her off her old meds, and they put her on some new different meds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So this YouTuber is about to unalive his gay lover. Let me explain. Now, his name is Daniel. He's 29, he's from Spain, and he's got a small cooking channel on YouTube. Meanwhile, all the way over in Colombia, there's this other guy, Edwin. Edwin's 44 and he's a successful plastic surgeon. He has multiple medical practices in different countries and bro is making really good money.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So he tries to break things off with him. And poor Edwin's like, no, mi amor. And this becomes a point of contention for them for a while. And at some point, Edwin gets mad. And he doesn't want to lose Daniel. So he allegedly threatens him. Like, if you break up with me, I'll release those adult photos I have of you. And Daniel, he hears this and he's like, oh, mierda.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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Because here's the thing about Daniel. Daniel isn't some regular chef with a cooking channel on YouTube. Daniel is actually the son of a famous Spanish TV and film actor, Rodolfo Sancho. And his mom is a well-known actor too, Silvia Broncarlo.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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Now, this is speculation on my part, but I assume that him having famous parents makes it really important to him to keep those adult photos of him from getting leaked. But whatever the reason, Daniel really doesn't want this information getting out, and he feels trapped. So he comes up with a plan to make sure those photos never go public. And one day, Daniel invites Edwin to meet up with him.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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Not in Spain, though, but all the way over in Thailand on a little island, Koh Phangan. Because he says he wants to go to this famous full moon party, which is like a huge festival they have every month in Thailand on that island. And a lot of people go to it. And Edwin's like, full moon party, sweet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So then fast forward to the day of the party and Daniel travels from Spain over to the island and he gets there first before Edwin and he checks into a bungalow. Then he goes to a store and he picks up some supplies, plastic bags, rubber gloves, scrubbing pads, bleach, and a knife. And then later that day, Edwin arrives and Daniel goes, he picks him up on a little scooter that he had rented.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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And they cruise around for a while and they hang out and they're going to have dinner. And it seems like it's going to be a fun night. Until later, Daniel and Edwin get back to their bungalow. And apparently Edwin wants to smash. But Daniel, he's not feeling it. He's like, nah, bro, I don't want to. But then, allegedly, Edwin gets a little pushy, and Daniel is still like, nah, bro.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So they start to argue, and their argument gets heated, like really heated, and it gets bad. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, bam, Daniel pushes Edwin hard, and Edwin falls back, and then pow, he hits his head on the bathtub, and he falls unconscious. He is out. Now, at this point, Daniel could call 911 and get medical attention for Edwin, but that's not what he does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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First, he pours water over his head for some reason. I guess he's hoping it'll wake him up. But, of course, Edwin doesn't wake up, and water isn't gonna help. And this is when sh** gets a little dark. Because Daniel, he then takes that knife he bought and bam, bam, he stabs Edwin twice. Then he uses it to cut Edwin's throat. And of course, this unalives him.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So one day, Edwin and Daniel, they discover each other on Instagram. And one of them slides into the other's DMs. And Edwin is much older than Daniel, but who cares? He thinks Daniel is foint. And I guess Daniel feels the same way about him. Because pretty soon, these two guys are chatting regularly. And they're flirting. And they're allegedly sending adult photos to one another.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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Then Daniel takes that knife and he cuts Edwin into 14 pieces. And then he puts those pieces into those plastic bags that he had bought earlier. Then he uses the cleaning supplies he bought and he cleans the hell out of that crime scene. And after that, he takes those plastic bags with Edwin's parts in them and he drives around the island and he dumps them in a bunch of different places.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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In trash bins, in a landfill, in the jungle. So Edwin's body is now scattered all over the island. Daniel even goes and buys a kayak and paddles out into the ocean and he dumps some of Edwin's parts there. And when he's done with all this, Daniel doesn't sit around and mourn and grieve the friend he just lost. No, no.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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He allegedly heads over to the full moon party and he parties all night with a couple of girls he met and he has a great time. The next morning, beep. He gets a DM and it's from Edwin's sister. I guess Edwin's sister knows that they were traveling together and she hasn't heard from Edwin. And Edwin is the kind of guy who talks to his family like every day.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So now that he's gone silent, she knows something's wrong. So she asked Daniel, where's Edwin? And Daniel's like, oh, I haven't heard from him since he left last night. And then I guess so as not to seem suspicious, Daniel goes to the police and he files a missing person report like, Hey, my friend suddenly went missing. Here's the thing though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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By this point, a sanitation worker was at the local landfill and he was going about his day and he found some of the bags with Edwin's remains in them. And he had immediately reported it to police. So police now have these random body parts and they know someone was murdered. They just don't know who.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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So then Daniel comes in and he reports his friend missing and he apparently has cuts and scratches on him and all of this makes police very suspicious. So they question him and they press him and pretty quickly Daniel's like alright I did it and he confesses to unaliving Edwin and dismembering him. However, he claims it was self-defense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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He claims that back in the bungalow, Edwin was trying to SA him and that he had to unalive him in order to defend himself. Regardless of whether that's true or not, bam, police arrest him. And Daniel cooperates and he takes the police to all the places around the island to show them where he had dumped Edwin's remains.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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And he also tells police that he was never actually romantically involved with Edwin. He claims that they were potential business partners, but that they're not lovers, they never smashed, and that he's not even gay. Sure, Daniel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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However, when Thai police investigate all this and they look into Daniel's self-defense story, they end up finding surveillance footage of Daniel buying the murder knife and the cleaning supplies at the grocery store before Edwin even arrived on the island, suggesting that this whole crime was planned out beforehand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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And then, of course, this story hits the news that the son of famous Spanish actors unalived his secret gay lover in Thailand. And the story blows up and the news is everywhere. And ultimately, Daniel is found guilty of unaliving Edwin and he's sentenced to life in prison. And here's what he looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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And most importantly, they're talking about meeting up in person. So they keep this relationship up for a while, and eventually they do meet up. Edwin flies to Madrid to have dinner with Daniel, and they have a good time. A month later, they meet up in La Granja. A few months after that, they meet up and party with a bunch of friends in Ibiza.

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This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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And allegedly they're smashing and they're hooking up during all this. And as they travel around and meet up in cool places and hang out and smash, I guess Edwin really starts liking Daniel. And he starts to imagine them being together as like boyfriend-boyfriend. And that is where things start to go wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Murdered His Gay Lover - The Daniel Sancho Bronchalo story

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Because apparently at some point, Edwin confesses to Daniel and he tells him how he really feels about him, that he's really into him and that he's planning to move to Spain and open a couple of medical practices there so that they can be closer to one another. Now, unfortunately, Daniel likes Edwin too, but he's not on the same page. Like, he doesn't want to be his boyfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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So this girl... You know what? You're not gonna believe this story because I'm not sure if I believe this story. It is wild. So this is Gemma. She's from England, she's in the 12th grade, and she has a best friend. This girl, Jess. And she has another best friend. This girl, who we'll call Beatrice. So Jess and Beatrice are a few years younger than Gemma,

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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She dresses up and disguises herself as a boy and pretends to be fake Erin. She gets some baggy clothes and a beanie and she puts men's cologne all over herself and she adjusts the way she talks and the way she walks and everything. And now that she looks like a boy, she goes to meet Beatrice in person. So they meet up and somehow Beatrice has no idea this is her old friend Gemma catfishing her.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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So then Beatrice and fake Aaron, they meet up more and more. And she really starts to like him. And of course, Beatrice is telling her best friend Jess all about this new guy Aaron she's been hanging out with. And so now, Jess wants to meet him. And so Gemma, dressed as fake Aaron, is like, alright, let's meet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And so the three of them, Beatrice, Jess, and Gemma dressed as fake Aaron, they start hanging out a lot. And neither Beatrice nor Jess realize they're being catfished by their own

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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but then at some point fake aaron asks beatrice to be his official girlfriend and boom they become official official the day after they become official jemma takes it even further she dresses up as fake aaron and she tells jess that he's got this cool friend that she might like his name's luke And fake Aaron wants to hook Jess and Luke up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And so soon enough, Jess starts messaging with this guy, Luke. And she immediately thinks Luke is fine. But here's the thing about Luke. You know how fake Aaron is really just Gemma dressed as a boy? Luke is also just Gemma dressed as a boy. So the fake Luke is chatting back and forth with Jess and pretty soon they agree to meet up.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And they're hanging out and Jess also has no idea she too is being catfished by Gemma again. And if that isn't bad enough, one day Jess and fake Luke are hanging out and they're making out because I guess they make out? But then fake Luke gets pushy and he doesn't stop when Jess asks him to and I guess this happens a few times so eventually they break up. Good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And they hang out all the time and they drive around talking about boys or whatever. But one day, Gemma starts going to college and she starts to really miss hanging out with her two friends who are still back in secondary school. So then Gemma comes up with one of the wildest plans I've ever come across to be closer to her friends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Oh, but this breakup is not gonna stop Gemma. She just goes and creates another alter ego to date Jess and she dresses up like a slightly different type of boy and she calls herself Connor. So now Gemma is pretending to be this fake Connor and she makes a fake Facebook page for him and she messages Jess like,

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Luke told me what he did, and I just want to say, it's really not cool, and you didn't deserve that. And Jess is like, oh, he's such a nice bloke, isn't it? So then, Jess and fake Connor start chatting back and forth all the time, texting all the time, and they start hanging out in person. And of course, Jess has no idea fake Connor is Gemma, and she starts to really fall hard for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Oh, but it gets worse. Meanwhile, Beatrice is still hanging out with Fake Aaron. And one night, I guess they decide they're gonna smash for the first time? And of course, beforehand, Fake Aaron insists on keeping the lights off while keeping all of his clothes on the whole time, including his hat. He didn't want to take that off. But yeah, regardless, I guess they smash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And I don't want to know how. But here's where Gemma's insane catfishing scheme starts to fall apart. At some point fake Connor goes over to Jess's house and I guess they start hooking up and fake Connor tries to go further and Jess says no. But fake Connor is being very aggressive and I guess he ends up SAing her. But But then he's on her bed and eventually he falls asleep.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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I guess he didn't mean to. And while he's sleeping, his hat is kind of falling off. And so Jess finally sees him without the hat. And she realizes that this person in her bed who just SA'd her isn't fake Connor. However, and try and stay with me now, she doesn't realize it's Gemma dressed as a boy. She thinks fake Connor is fake Aaron.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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She thinks fake Aaron is at her house pretending to be fake Connor. And she's like, oh bullocks, why is Aaron in my bed wearing a hat and pretending to be someone else? Now remember, Aaron is supposed to be her best friend Beatrice's boyfriend. So she thinks her best friend's boyfriend just SA'd her. So she kicks him out and she tries to decide what to do.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Now eventually Jess decides to come clean. And she goes to Beatrice and she's like, hey, I think your boyfriend Aaron was catfishing me, pretending to be Connor. And then he essayed me. And so Jess goes and reports fake Aaron to the police. So now police are looking for fake Aaron and they end up finding him at Beatrice's house. And they question him. And of course, he denies everything.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Now, in theory, this would be a great moment for Gemma to come clean and say, haha, I was catfishing everyone. I was, I was Aaron and Connor the whole time. But that's not what she does. Instead, later Gemma calls the police and she pretends to be fake Aaron and she's like, Gemma can back up my story. So then Gemma posts on Facebook and she pretends to be fake Luke.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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and she has fake Luke confess on Facebook to being the one who actually essayed just that night at her house. She's like, everyone's blaming Aaron, but it was actually me. And if that isn't crazy enough, Gemma then somehow breaks her own jaw and she contacts police and she tells them that fake Luke attacked her. What the is going on?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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See, Gemma knows her friend Beatrice really wants a boyfriend, and she knows exactly the kind of boys Beatrice is into. So Gemma decides to catfish her and put on a disguise and low-key become the perfect boy for Beatrice. So first, she creates a Facebook profile for this fake guy and she names him Aaron.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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Anyway, I'm not sure if police buy this story because they're still looking at fake Aaron as a suspect. So police have Beatrice tell fake Aaron to come over to her house and when fake Aaron shows up, bam, they arrest him. But since fake Aaron isn't a real person, this means police have actually arrested Gemma in disguise. So at the police station, Gemma is freaking out.

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How the hell is she going to get out of this? But then police decide to do a strip search on her and Gemma refuses to remove her beanie. And police are like, oh, piss off. And they try and pull the beanie off of her. And when they do, Gemma's hair falls down around her face and the officers look at her like, oh, bloody hell, you're a girl.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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So the truth finally comes out and everyone is like, how the hell did you pull this off? So ultimately, they charge Gemma with essay and fraud and she's sentenced to 30 months in prison for catfishing her two friends. And I don't have a mugshot of Gemma, but here's a picture of her in real life.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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And she adds a profile picture of fake Aaron and she adds a bunch of friends and makes the page look legit. Then, posing as fake Aaron, Gemma adds Beatrice on Facebook and sends her a message. Sometime later, Beatrice messages back like, oh, hi, who are you? And they start chatting. And soon enough, they're chatting every day and they're really hitting it off.

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The Most Insane Catfish I've Ever Heard Of - The Gemma Barker story

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But after a couple of months of this, Beatrice really wants to meet Aaron in person for the first time. So now Gemma is in a predicament. She knows if Beatrice doesn't get to meet fake Aaron in person at some point, then she's going to eventually realize he isn't a real person and she's going to stop talking to him. So what does Gemma do?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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So this YouTuber is in big trouble. He allegedly tried to unalive a cop. Now the guy's name is Eric and Eric's an influencer living in New York. And he's very popular on YouTube, almost 3 million followers. And he does videos where he like tours luxury homes. He does walkthroughs and these aren't just like pretty nice houses. Some of these are like $500 million mansions.

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This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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I guess he's upset about it. He claims that police put the cuffs on him too tight. And you can actually see in this picture here he posted, he's got a bruise on his wrist there. And he says he's suing the police for violating his constitutional rights. Okay, bro. But then, a few days later, he screws up again. And this time, it's much worse.

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This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Because he's driving around New Hampshire for some reason, and he's speeding. He's doing around 60 miles an hour in a 35. And suddenly, boom, he flies right by a police officer. And the cops like, oh, hell no. And he pulls out behind Eric and he turns on his lights. And a bystander actually got this footage of the cop following him. So this is this is actual footage.

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This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Now, most people in this situation would immediately pull over like, oh, man, I got caught speeding. And then, you know, you pay your ticket and you move on with your life. But that's not what Eric does. Instead, Eric's like the police and he just keeps on driving. So this cop is like following him for a while and finally Eric's like, all right, and he pulls over.

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This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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So then the police officer pulls up and he orders Eric to get out of the vehicle. Then I guess Eric changes his mind and he's like the police again and he drives away again. So now the officer's got to get back in his car and chase him, hoping he'll finally give up and pull over. About eight miles later, Eric finally does pull over again, but he pulls over to the oncoming lane for some reason.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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So the officer pulls up behind him and he gets out of his car to approach Eric's Jeep. Then allegedly for some reason, we still don't know why, but Eric throws the Jeep in reverse and skirt floors it and pow hits the cop with his vehicle. And the officer flies like 20 to 40 feet before boom, he lands on the ground. And skrrt, Eric speeds away. And pretty quickly, the officer calls for backup.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And now, there are multiple cops chasing Eric, trying to catch him. And this chase goes on for 28 miles. And eventually, police throw down some of those spike strips, and Eric runs over them, and pow, his tires blow out. And just like that, the chase is over, because his Jeep is f***ed. And you can actually see a picture of it here, with all the tires flat. And so bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And so this is a really good gig for him because over time his channel has been growing and he's been getting really successful. Here he is with his YouTube play button after hitting a million subscribers. In fact, he's been getting so popular that on his channel, he does a workout video with Chris Hemsworth. Pretty cool.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Oh, but the story gets even crazier because Eric gets charged with, among other things, attempted murder of a police officer, which is a huge deal. And the police officer survived, by the way. I think one of his legs ended up being injured. But other than that, he's alive. Anyway, three days later, Eric has an arraignment hearing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And at this hearing, he's talking to the judge and he allegedly starts telling the judge all kinds of crazy . He tells him that he's a popular YouTuber, that he's a public figure. He encourages the judge to look him up and look at his online following because he has millions of followers. Like, I'm not sure that's gonna help his case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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He apparently also tells the judge that this is all one big misunderstanding, that he's Eric, but that the guy they're looking for is apparently a different guy named Eric. While he's a popular YouTuber, the other Eric isn't, I guess. And he lives in New York, while the real Eric they're looking for lives in another state. I don't know, like his excuses are weird and confusing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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So forgive me if I'm getting any of them wrong. But at one point he holds up documents and claims that they've been falsified.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Then he starts insinuating that the police are all out to get him and that this is all part of some sort of police sting operation. Then he brings up his sobriety.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Then his parents show up to the hearing and he starts to break down a little. I mean, clearly the whole thing is just a circus. Now at this point, someone, I'm not sure if it was a judge or an attorney, they bring up his mental competency. Because nothing he's saying is making any sense and his behavior has been erratic and he's acting a bit odd.

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This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And for some reason, bringing up his mental competency sets him off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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I will eviscerate every single person with my intelligence. Look at f***ing Rick Sanchez over here. Now, why is Eric crashing out so hard? Like, why is he acting this way? Well, all we have right now are theories. And on the internet, among his fandom, this is the leading theory. A while back, on his Instagram, he was posting some things like this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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So you can see in this picture, he's got a pill in his mouth and a prescription bottle in his hand with the caption, Yeah, the pharmaceutical industry tried to gaslight me that I need medication too, when all you need is some discipline of your emotional state. So what is that bottle of meds in his hand? Well, the internet is saying that it's olanzapine. Now, I can't confirm that it's olanzapine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

41.866

Not to mention he's huge on TikTok, 1.3 million followers and Instagram with almost a million followers. So clearly Bro found a decent niche for himself and he's doing really well. Until one day, Eric screws it all up. Earlier this year, he puts out a video on YouTube, and in it, he announces that he's been sober from alcohol for several years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Like, I've zoomed in on the label and you can compare it to an actual image of a bottle of olanzapine. Like, it looks similar to me, but I don't know. That's just what everyone on the internet is saying. Now why that matters is olanzapine is an antipsychotic used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And so the leading theory among his fandom is that he had been prescribed antipsychotics for symptoms of schizophrenia and that he's recently decided that he's gonna stop taking them and go all natural because I guess he doesn't trust the big pharmaceutical companies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And that him quitting his meds caused him to fall off the wagon and act out in all kinds of ways, like running over a cop for instance. But again, this is just a theory. Regardless, he hasn't been to trial yet, so all of these accusations are alleged. However, these are some very serious charges, so I think his days of being a YouTube star, they might be over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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And you know, good for him for getting his life together. But then just a few months later, he apparently falls off the wagon because he's driving his Jeep around town one day and police pull him over and they find that old Eric is anything but sober. And one news source says he was drunk driving. Another news source says he was driving while high on Zaza. So it's likely one of those two things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtuber Might Be Going To Prison - The Erik Conover story

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Regardless, he was allegedly operating a vehicle while intoxicated on something. And so bam, they arrest him. Now, this has nothing to do with him attacking a cop. This is just him falling off the wagon. We'll get to the thing about him attacking a cop. Anyway, so soon after this, he gets out of jail on bond. And he posts about his arrest like a thousand times on his Twitter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

0.089

Has anyone ever died because of a video game? Actually, yes. This kid unalives someone because of Halo 3. Here's what happened. Now the kid's name is Daniel, and Daniel's 15, living in Ohio, and he's a normal high school kid, and he loves playing football. It's a big part of his life. But one day in 2006, his whole world changes because he goes on a snowboarding trip with his friends.

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He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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Sometimes he'll play it up to 18 hours in a day, only stopping to like eat some cereal or go to the bathroom. Now, at this part of the story, it isn't actually clear if he's still playing it at his friend's house or if he's now playing it at home or both. But it is clear that now Bro has a gaming problem. It is all he thinks about. He is addicted.

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He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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Now at some point, I guess, he brings the game up to his parents. And his parents, oh, they are not happy. See, Daniel's mom and dad, who we'll just call mom and dad, mom and dad are super religious. In fact, dad is the pastor at a local church. So they don't want their kid playing violent video games. Jesus would never. And so they tell him no. No violent shooting games are allowed in this house.

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He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And this pisses Daniel off. I mean, they just don't understand how much he likes this game. He doesn't have to play it at his friends' houses. Now what's he gonna do? And so at this point, it's 2007, and he is 16 years old now. And around this time, kaboom, Halo 3 comes out. And Daniel, of course, he wants to play it so bad, but he doesn't want to disobey his parents.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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So finally, one night, he's all like, all this, and he goes and he gets $70 and he sneaks out his bedroom window and he heads over to the store and he buys this game. I guess he plans on playing it at home when his parents aren't paying attention. I don't know. Well, that same night, he gets back home and he sneaks back into his room through the window. And suddenly, bam, his mom catches him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And she sees that he's got a new game in his hand and that it's Halo 3, a violent game he's not supposed to have. And she's mad at him. And I guess she goes and tells dad. And now dad gets involved and he's all pissed off too. And they snatch that game away from him. And dad takes it and he hides it in a lockbox in the closet, which is like, I guess, a little safe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And he locks it up and he puts the key on his personal key ring with his car keys. Now at this point, Daniel could let all this slide. Maybe forget about the game or whatever, but that's not what he does. He's addicted and he is not going to let this go. So for the next few weeks, tension in the house is building and building. And one night, Daniel has finally had enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And so he's out, and he's up on the mountains, snowboarding, goofing around, and suddenly, boom, he crashes hard, and he injures his spine pretty bad. In fact, it's so severe, any further damage could potentially paralyze him. So he can't run, he can't play sports anymore, including football, which is a huge deal to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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He really wants to play that game. And Dad is still like, nah. And things get heated, and they get into an argument. And finally, Dad gives him an ultimatum. You can either give up the violent video games, or you can get the hell out. And Daniel's like, fine, I'll leave. And he does. He leaves and he goes to stay over at his friend's house. And that weekend is everything Daniel could ever want.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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I guess his friend's parents don't really care what the boys do and they end up playing Halo 16 to 18 hours a day all weekend long and nothing is stopping them. This is great. So it seems like maybe this will be Daniel's life from here on out and he's gonna be happy. Until... Apparently Daniel is still upset that his parents took his copy of Halo 3 and he just can't seem to let it go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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So he comes up with an insane plan to get his game back and punish his parents for taking it. First, he goes back home. And I don't know if he made up with his parents or if they worked it out, but whatever. He's back in his house. Then he waits for his dad to leave his keys on the counter, just like he does every night after work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And he low-key snatches those keys and he gets the key to the lockbox. Then he goes to the closet, opens the box, and grabs his game. But that's not the only thing he grabs. Dad also keeps a nine millimeter locked in that box. So Daniel grabs it too. Meanwhile, mom and dad are in the living room. They're sitting on the couch because they're about to watch a baseball game.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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So Daniel enters the room and he asks them to close their eyes because he has a surprise for them. And they're like, oh, cool, a surprise? This will be fun. And as soon as they close their eyes, Daniel pulls out that 9mm, and he points it at his dad. And suddenly, blam, he shoots his dad in the face. And as mom notices and opens her eyes, blam, blam, blam, he shoots her too. And she's unalived.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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Then, while dad is on the floor, Daniel starts trying to put the pew-pew in his hand. Because I guess he's gonna try to make it look like dad shot mom. But then, suddenly, ding-dong, someone rings the doorbell. So Daniel stops what he's doing and he answers it. And it's his sister and her husband. And they're there because they're supposed to watch the baseball game with mom and dad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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So Daniel, he starts freaking out. freaking out at them and he's like, no, don't come in. And he starts telling them that mom and dad are in some kind of big argument and that they don't really need to come in because it's just chaos. Here's the thing though. Dad was shot in the face, but somehow he actually survives.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And so he's still alive and he's on the floor and he can hear sister and her husband at the door. And he can't really talk because he's injured, but he starts moaning out as best as he can. So sister and her husband, they hear the moans and boom, they push past Daniel and they walk over to the living room and they see the horrible scene there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And so sister, she calls the police while husband snatches that pew pew from Daniel's hands so he can't use it again. And then Daniel, I guess he doesn't know what to do. So then boom, he grabs his copy of Halo 3 and he gets into the family van and he starts driving to his friend's house. He is determined to play that game. But eventually, police catch up to him and bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of him in court. Anyway, after all that, he gets sentenced to life in prison. While luckily, dad survives and he recovers. But unfortunately, mom does not. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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I mean, he's been playing football since he was younger and suddenly he has to stop? Now what's he gonna do? But then it gets even worse because Daniel contracts a staph infection. So for a while, he's super sick and he can't really move much at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And so he's bedridden, and he has to be home most of the time, and he can't go to high school anymore until he fully recovers, so I guess he starts getting homeschooled, and this goes on for around a year. And during this year, he has to find a way to pass the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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And after a while, I guess his parents start letting him leave the house to go hang out at his friend's house, and it's there that he experiences something he's never experienced before. A video game called Halo. Now, Daniel has played games before, mostly with his dad. They would play a lot of, like, Madden, because, you know, he loves football.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story

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But he's never played anything like Halo before, which, if you've never played, it's a first-person shooter where you, like, run around blowing up aliens. And sure, it's a bit violent, but whatever. It's fun. And instantly, Daniel loves this game, and he wants to play it all the time. In fact, over time, he starts getting obsessed with it. He plays it for hours at a time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und Susan ist 37 Jahre alt und sie und Brad sind sehr nahe. Aber, leider, Susan ist in einer schrecklichen Beziehung. Und ihr Mann ist ein absoluter Scheiß. Ich meine, er ist schrecklich zu ihr, er ist abusiv und sie versucht, sich aus dieser Beziehung zu entfernen. So, von dem was ich gelesen habe, sind Susan und ihr Mann separat, oder zumindest leben sie in verschiedenen Orten an diesem Punkt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Aber eines Tages kommt ihr Mann in ihr Haus, wahrscheinlich um etwas zu starten. Und die beiden gehen in irgendeinen Art von Kampf. Und dieser Kampf wird wirklich schlecht. Und an einem Punkt wird er so wütend, dass er seine Piu-Piu rausnimmt. Und er schießt Susan. Und dann schießt er sie wieder und wieder. Und dann benutzt er sie selbst. Und beide sind tragisch nicht lebendig.

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How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und wie man sich vorstellen kann, ist das für Susans ganze Familie schrecklich. Und wenn Brad die Nachrichten hört, schlägt es ihn hart. Ich meine, er ist überdurchschnittlich depressiv. Er kann nicht funktionieren, er stoppt zu arbeiten, er schließt sich ab und geht in einen Schmerz. Er hat niemals so eine Verletzung gemacht. Das ist das Schlimmste. Und einige Jahre passen und es ist jetzt ca.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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1996 und er leidet immer noch von dieser Verletzung. Aber eines Tages verändert sich etwas. Siehst du, Brad hat jahrelang hart gearbeitet und jetzt hat er einen Vertrag bei Warner Bros. um einen animierten Film zu drehen. Und die Anwesenden da sagen ihm, dass sie viele Projekte in Entwicklung haben. Würdest du einen von diesen drehen möchten?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und einer dieser Projekte basiert auf einem Novel, das in den 60ern geschrieben wurde, namens The Iron Man. Und es ist eine Geschichte über einen großen Metallroboter, der mit einem kleinen Junge zusammenkommt. Und Brad ist so, okay, lass mich diesen Iron Man Novel lesen, um zu sehen, ob ich in diesem Filmprojekt interessiert bin. Und so lest er es und er verbindet sofort mit der Geschichte.

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How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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weil er einige der Themes in dem Buch an die Vergangenheit seiner Schwester bezieht. Und er fängt an zu denken über die echte Waffe, die zu Unalive Susan benutzt wurde. Und er denkt, was, wenn etwas, das zu töten war, nicht töten wollte? Wie, was, wenn eine Waffe eine Seele hatte? Und so nimmt Brad diese quirkige Idee zu Warner Brothers und er pitcht sie. What if a gun had a soul?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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And in this case, the gun being the big metal robot from the story. A story that's going to eventually become the Iron Giant. And amazingly, the suits at Warner Brothers say yes. And so for the first time, Brad gets the chance to write and direct his first ever feature film. And so, boom, Brad gets to work right away, banging out the screenplay for this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Er will, dass dieses Iron Giant-Film nicht nur ein Animationsklassiker wird, sondern er will es spezifisch, um Menschen mit Tod und Verlust zu helfen, in der gleichen Weise, wie er mit dem Verlust von jemandem, den er liebt, umgehen musste. Und so, er und sein Team, beginnen, diesen Film zu produzieren. Und sie arbeiten seit Jahren daran. Ich meine, dieser Film bedeutet alles für Brad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und so arbeitet er die Themen des Todes in diese Kindergeschichte. Und so lernt der Giant, wie man mit Verletzungen umgeht. Und wenn du den Film schon gesehen hast, dann weißt du schon, dass es einen Anti-Gun-Message hat, welchen du natürlich zurückziehen kannst zu Brads Situation mit seiner Verletzung seiner Schwester zu Gun-Violenz.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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But anyway, years pass and it's now 1999. And Brad, he's in his 40s now. But he's still determined to get this movie out to people. To help them. To honor his sister. And Warner Brothers, they haven't released the movie yet. But everyone he's screened it to absolutely loves it. The animators love it, the early critics love it. Brad has made several grown men cry by showing them this movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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This could be it. This could become the animated classic that he has always wanted to make. Until... The movie premieres and it bombs. And it bombs badly, like really, really badly. Like it cost 50 million dollars to make, but it only made 31 million back. And of course, poor Brad is devastated. I mean, he put years of his life into this movie and the message was such a personal one to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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And so he starts to wonder, is this it for me? Will I ever direct again? I mean, all these things are going through his head. But then, a few months later, out of nowhere, Brad gets a phone call. And it's from a guy who used to go to school with him back at CalArts. This guy, John Lasseter. And John is like, hey bro, loved your work on the Iron Giant.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Wanna come work at the animation studio that I work at? And Brad's like... Alright. Now John just happens to work at a studio that's getting quite a bit of buzz during this time. A studio called Pixar. And so in the year 2000 Brad comes to work at Pixar and he reunites with John, his buddy from college.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und er beginnt zu denken über all die Jahre Arbeit, die er mit dem Iron Giant verbracht hat und wie viel Zeit er von seiner Frau und den Kindern verbracht hat, die Arbeit, die er liebte. Und so endet er, inspiriert zu werden, eine Geschichte zu schreiben über einen Vater, der Karriereambitionen hat, Menschen zu helfen, aber diese Ambitionen schaffen ein großes Problem für seine Familie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und diese Geschichte wird in einem kleinen Film genannt, der The Incredibles. Und wiederum, Brad setzt sein Herz und Sein in diesen Film. Wie der Vater, Mr. Unglaublich, ist er irgendwie ausgestattet, um sich selbst zu sehen. Brad spricht sogar von einem der Charaktere selbst, Edna Mode. Wenn du wieder drückst, dann drückst du wieder, mein Liebling. Um zu beeindrucken, musst du ausdrücken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und so, bis 2004, ist der Film endlich fertig. Aber Pixar hat ihn noch nicht veröffentlicht. Aber wiederum, jeder, den Brad es gescreenet hat, liebt es. Die Animatoren lieben es, die frühen Kritiker lieben es. Dann, es premieriert. Endlich. Und anders als der Iron Giant, schlägt dieser Film die F*** auf. Direkt weg. Und es macht eine Menge Geld für Pixar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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In Wahrheit, es ist einer der höchsten grossen Filme des Jahres, verdient 600 Millionen Dollar. Nicht nur das, es bekommt vier. Oscar-Nominierungen und es gewinnt einen für Best Animated Feature. Der Oscar geht an The Incredibles. Und so hat Brad endlich seinen Traum erreicht, einen Animated-Movie-Klassiker zu erschaffen.

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How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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Und es bekommt sogar eine Sequenz und Videospiel-Spinoffs und es wird ein dritter Film gemacht. Außerdem, über die Zeit, beginnt der Iron Giant endlich zu erkennen, dass es allmählich gewonnen hat. And it is now considered an animated classic in its own right.

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How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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And if you pay attention at the end of Iron Giant, if you watch the credits, you can actually see that Brad has dedicated the movie to his sister Susan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

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So how does this horrible murder eventually lead to the Incredibles getting made? Well, it all starts with this guy, Brad. And Brad's around 20 years old during this time and he's got big dreams. He wants to create an animated movie that ends up being a classic. You know, like Snow White or Jungle Book. And so, in the late 70s, he starts going to college at Cal Arts, studying animation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

How Did This Murder Lead To The Incredibles? - The Brad Bird story

79.841

A few years later, he finally graduates. And boom, he starts working as a screenwriter. But, over the years, most of the movies he writes don't get made. But whatever, Brad's not gonna give up. And he works for years. Und dann, 1989, Brad ist jetzt 32 Jahre alt, passiert etwas Schreckliches, das seine Leben für immer verändert. Sieh, Brad hat eine Schwester, diese Frau, Susan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

0.109

So this McDonald's worker starts a cult and becomes sort of a god. This story is wild. Now her name's Amy and Amy is kind of a new age hippie. She's the manager of a local Mickey D's in Texas. And one day in 2006, she starts having visions and she isn't sure what they mean or why they're happening. But then one day she meets this guy online. His name's White Eagles.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

101.232

And so now, Miguel is the new Father God. And together, Amy and Miguel officially start a new religion called Love Has Won. And it's like a mix of New Age and Christianity and conspiracy theories. Now, Here's the thing about Miguel. Miguel's actually super organized and good with finances. So he and some other followers set up a website and social media for this new religion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

127.817

And this helps them reach more people and get more people to follow them. And then some people even start joining this religion in person, like not online. And since Amy believes she is a god herself, she's preaching all kinds of goofy to these people. Like she claims that she's been around for 19 billion years and has been reincarnated 534 times. She claims that she's Cleopatra reincarnated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

154.149

She claims that she's Harriet Tubman reincarnated. She claims that she's Marilyn Monroe reincarnated. She also claims that she's Elvis Presley's mom somehow. And she claims that she can communicate with the spirits of dead celebrities, including Patrick Swayze, John Lennon, Whitney Houston, Prince, Tupac, Robin Williams, all kinds of crazy stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

175.219

But most importantly, she believes that she can heal people just by touching them. She claims that she's cured cancer in people and Lyme disease and autism. And the worst part is that people believe her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

193.263

And so Amy starts charging money to heal people and perform these psychic surgeries on them. And people pay sometimes thousands of dollars for a session. Not only that, she rejects all modern medicine and she gives her followers crazy medical advice. Like she tells her followers to take colloidal silver every day, which is like a mineral.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And she herself takes this mineral every day thinking it's some kind of cure-all, which it's not.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And at the same time she's preaching all this crazy health and wellness nonsense, she gets drunk and high every day, like falling down off her ass drunk every single day. But anyway, then in 2014, the group moves from Colorado out to California. And here they bring even more people into the cult. And suddenly they have like 20 live-in members, like people actually living in the place with them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And who knows how many online members, hundreds, maybe thousands. And they're like selling alleged health products online like colloidal silver, body lotions, crystals, essential oils, merchandise. And they also do virtual healing. So Mother God can heal you through like FaceTime calls, I guess. So anyway, a few years pass and it's now 2018. And here is when everything changes for Amy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And Amy and White Eagle really hit it off. And he really likes her, so he starts gassing her up. Telling her that she's been having visions because not only is she low-key a god, but she's like THE god. And Amy's like, oh snap! I'm a god! And she starts to believe that she has some divine mission. A mission to leave her whole life behind and save the world. And eventually, she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Because even though she's supposedly some kind of spiritual healer, her own health starts to visibly decline. Like she starts looking all sick and frail. She's got lesions all over her skin and she's in pain all the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And maybe she's doing so bad because she's drinking alcohol all day. Maybe it's because she refuses to go to a doctor or take any kind of modern medication. But her body really starts shutting down. And eventually, she no longer has feeling in her legs and feet. And she ends up paralyzed from the waist down. So she can't walk. And this guy has to carry her around everywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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The guy, his name's Jason. And Jason is like the new Father God. We're like five or six Father Gods in at this point, and he is the newest one. And so anyway, this goes on for a few years, and Amy's health just keeps getting worse and worse. She's weak, she's lost a ton of weight, like she only weighs like 75 pounds at this point.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Not only that, but because she keeps taking all this colloidal silver every day, her skin legitimately turns a silverish blue color. And you can see it in photos of her, like here, and here, and here, and like look, Here she is sitting with Jason and look at his skin compared to hers. Okay, but here's what's really crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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As her health visibly deteriorates, Amy, I guess she starts to realize that she's dying. And she starts asking her followers to take her to the hospital. And her followers are like... Nah, bro. They refuse because of everything Amy has taught them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Her core teachings are now ingrained in them, and they are against modern medicine and doctors, and they think taking colloidal silver is going to save her. Not only that, Amy will even have moments where she'll admit to her followers that she's not a god and she has no special powers, and at this point, her followers just don't believe her. Like, listen to them talk about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Then in 2021, eventually they take Amy up to a place they have in Oregon. And at this point, her skin is more silverish blue than it's ever been. And she looks like the worst she's ever looked health-wise. And sometime after that, no one knows exactly when, but Amy dies! Like, right there in their cult house, or wherever they're living.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Now, since Amy is no longer living, her followers believe that she's going to ascend into another dimension, like, with her whole body, through some kind of spaceship that's supposed to appear in the sky? I don't know, it's weird. But anyway, so the cult members don't report her death, nor do they get rid of the body, because if they get rid of the body, then it won't be able to ascend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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Instead, they wrap her up in a sleeping bag with Christmas lights coiled up around her, and they put her in a car, and they drive her from Oregon across the country back to Colorado. And there, they end up staying in a house that I guess they used to stay at that's owned by Miguel. And apparently Miguel has been staying there in Colorado and he hadn't seen Amy in a long time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And he shows up to the house to see everyone and that is when he sees unalived Amy for the first time wrapped up in a sleeping bag and Christmas lights. And Miguel is like, nah, this is too much. And he goes and he reports it to the police. And so police show up to the house and bam, they arrest seven of the cult members. Here are a bunch of mug shots.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

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And they're charged with abuse of a corpse and some other stuff. But at the end of it all, all charges against the cult members end up getting dropped. I guess they didn't have sufficient evidence to convict any of them, so...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

52.583

She leaves her kids and her family behind to pursue this divine mission. So she travels from Texas up to Colorado to be with White Eagle, where he lives. And she starts calling herself Mother God. And White Eagle is her father god. And they start posting videos of themselves online.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Started a Cult - The Amy Carlson / Love Has Won story

76.894

And over time, they start building a following online, like a little cult of people wanting to hear them preach their specific brand of spirituality. And over the next few years, this cult following grows bigger. And unfortunately, it doesn't work out between Amy and White Eagle, so she leaves him and she ends up smashing with this new guy, one of her followers. His name's Miguel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

0.069

Did you forget about this woman in the 90s who got so mad at her husband she waited till he was asleep and then she cut off his wiener. Now her name's Lorena, she's 20 years old, she's going to college in Virginia and one day in 1988 she meets this dude. John Wayne. And John Wayne's 22 and he's a Marine and they hit it off and they fall in love and everything is going great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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And that is when shit gets really crazy. Because one night, it's 1993. And John Wayne, he's been out all night drinking at the bar. And bro is absolutely wasted. While Lorena, she's at home in the bedroom asleep. And so John Wayne comes home from the bar. And suddenly, boom, he busts into the room. And this scares Lorena. But he doesn't care. Because that is when he pins her down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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And he allegedly...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

133.559

essays her and then afterwards when he's done he passes out in the bed while poor lorena she's just disgusted and she's sick to her stomach and so she leaves the room and she goes downstairs i mean she doesn't want to be around him and she goes into the kitchen to get some water and that is when she sees it a large kitchen knife so she starts thinking this guy she is not going to be a victim anymore she's about to get her revenge

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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So she grabs the knife and she heads back upstairs to the bedroom. And John Wayne, he's still asleep, passed out, drunk as hell, no idea what's about to happen. And that is when she pulls back the covers and she pulls his willy up and she takes the knife and she cuts it right off. And so she's standing there, holding it. And John Wayne wakes up like, what the f***?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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But like, he's still so drunk that he doesn't even realize what happened and that his junk is missing. So he just lays there, all confused, like, what? What's going on? While Lorena, she's like, oh, s***. And boom, she runs away with the schlong still in her hand. And she runs out of the apartment and she jumps in her car and skrrt, she flees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Minutes later, she's speeding along the road, trying to calm down. Because she still has John Wayne's stupid wiener in her hand. So she rolls down the window and she throws it out of the car as hard as she can. And it flies through the air and it lands in a nearby field. Minutes after that, she arrives at her boss's house. Her boss is like also her friend. So Lorena gets there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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She goes inside and she's upset. She's freaking out. And boss is like, what did John Wayne do to you this time? And Lorena's like, no, I cut off his pee-pee. And boss is like... Ooh, we should probably call the police. And so boss calls the police and she tells them what happened. And police are like, okay, well just tell us where we can find it and we'll go look for it. And so around 4 a.m.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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And about a year later, they get married. And this is actually a picture of them on their wedding day. And look at them. I mean, they seem to be really happy. Until... Here's the thing about his marriage, though. It actually ends up not going too well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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in the morning, there's a gang of police officers out in this field, combing through the grass, looking around for a rogue wiener. And then around 4.30, finally, they find it lying on the ground. Apparently one of the officers accidentally stepped on it. Like, oops, oh, hey, there it is. Here's the thing, though. They don't know what to put it in. Like, what kind of container?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Like, they've never done this before. So they go to a nearby 7-Eleven and they end up putting it in, and I'm not making this up, a hot dog box. One that looks like this. Meanwhile, John Wayne, he had a friend drive him to the hospital. And there he waits for the police to show up with his wiener so that doctors can reattach it. Which he ends up going into surgery and they do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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They reattach it and apparently it works fine. Regardless, bam, they arrest Lorena. And I don't have a mugshot of her, but here she is in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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And so all of this is happening in the 90s and this story blows the f**k up because it's a crazy story and it's in like every newspaper headline, late night talk show hosts are all making jokes about it in their monologues, Saturday Night Live is making fun of it, But here's where the story gets interesting. There are actually two crimes in this scenario.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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One is John Wayne essaying Lorena, and two is Lorena cutting off his glizzy with a kitchen knife. And each of these crimes has a separate trial. And John Wayne's trial goes first, and he's being charged with essay. And his trial is wild, because they're like holding up pictures of his wiener for the jury and everyone to see. It's absolutely insane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Now, keep in mind that all of this is happening during a time when the common sentiment was that if a husband essays his wife, it doesn't really count as essay because she's his wife. Yeah, I know it's terrible. And at the end of it all, it seems like the jury agrees with at least some of that because he gets found not guilty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Then Lorena goes to her trial and she's being accused of malicious wounding. And she gets on the stand and she describes the abuse she had gone through. And lucky for her, she's also found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. So neither of them see any real prison time for this. But then after the trials, John Wayne apparently decides that he kind of likes the spotlight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

39.804

John Wayne gets discharged from the Marines, and then he has trouble finding steady work, so Lorena has to become the provider, and this stresses them out. And they end up fighting all the time. Plus, John Wayne likes to drink. Like, a lot. And that's not really a good combination. And about a month into their marriage, boom, he starts being abusive. Physically.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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So he just keeps going, taking every opportunity he can. He allegedly starts a band called Severed Parts. That apparently doesn't go anywhere because I couldn't find much about it. Then he goes on to star in an adult film called John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut. And yes, you're looking at an actual scene from that movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Then he goes on the Howard Stern show where they apparently raise money for him to get penis enlargement surgery. And they actually do it. They raise the money and he legitimately ends up getting the enlargement surgery. Then he and his new wiener stars in another adult film, and it's called, and I wish I were making this up, Frankenpenis.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Then, around this time, he gets convicted of battery for hitting his new fiance, and he spends a few weeks in jail. A few years after that, he appears on WWE Monday Night Raw for some reason. And then a year later, bam, he gets arrested again, this time for battery charges against his new new wife. And sometime after that, he has to get his penis enlargement surgery reversed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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I guess there were some complications or it looked weird or something. And so he has surgery to get it back to his normal size. Bro did a lot. While Lorena, on the other hand, she kept more of a low profile. And later on, she actually goes on to found her own organization to help victims of domestic violence. And this is her talking about it on TV. She's blonde now. So yeah, good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

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Like he shoves her and he punches her sometimes. It's awful. And so their fights start to get really bad. To the point where they call police on each other. Then to make it worse, she ends up getting pregnant. And he doesn't think she would make a good mother, so he allegedly pressures her to get an abortion. And she does and then she resents him over it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Cut Off Her Husband's Penis - The Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt story

83.089

So basically he's really abusive and their relationship is toxic as hell. And all this goes on for several years until she's around 24 and he's around 26. And it's at this point that they've both hit their limit and they've had enough of each other. And she's trying to get a protective order against him while he is asking her for a divorce. So this marriage is basically over. It's on its way out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

101.144

Nun, hier ist das Wichtigste bei der Adoption eines Kindes aus China. Die chinesische Regierung hat diese Regel, dass wenn du ein Amerikaner bist, ein Kind von dort zu adoptieren, muss das Kind besondere Bedürfnisse haben. Was für eine große Vermutung für jeden Vater ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

115.291

Aber egal, bald sprechen Micah und James zu dieser Adoptionsagentur, die ihnen ein paar Bilder von diesem chinesisch geborenen Kind zeigt und sie sagen, okay, er ist der eine. Nun, dieser Junge hat offensichtlich einen Gehirntumor und hat Gehirnverletzungen. Aber Micah und James, sie interessieren sich nicht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

144.564

Und so fangen sie an, eine Menge Vlog-Inhalte zu filmen. Wie 27 verschiedene Videos, die ihren Followern alle Details erzählen, wie hart internationales Adoption ist und wie teuer es ist, ein Kind mit besonderen Bedürfnissen zu adoptieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

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And their whole audience is on board with this adoption journey. And Micah and James, they apparently start a GoFundMe to help pay for this adoption.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

170.7

But anyway, Micah and James fly to China and they pick up their new two and a half year old son and they bring him back to Ohio. Und sie nennen ihn Huxley. Und sie beginnen natürlich sofort, ihn zu filmen, ihn in ihre Familienvlogs zu stellen, ihn auf Social Media zu stellen. Und für den Rekord, ich blurte seinen Gesicht aus für mein Video, weil, du weißt, er ist ein Kind.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

191.504

Aber in den Originals war er nicht blurt. Jetzt, nur ein Erinnerung, dass diese Jungs Familienvlogger sind, also sind alle ihre Videos monetisiert. Einige von ihnen sind sogar von großen Branden gesponsert. Aber trotzdem, sie holen Huxley nach Hause und fangen an, ihn zu erwerben. Und es scheint, dass seine besonderen Bedürfnisse kein Witz sind.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

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Und sie sind viel schwieriger, als Micah und James erwarteten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

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And like he's apparently biting and he's pinching and he's banging his head against the wall and you know other behaviors that aren't exactly explained by a brain tumor. Und so werden sie ihn dann wieder überprüft. Und sie finden heraus, dass Huxley ein anderes medizinisches Problem hat, als sie sich zuerst erzählt haben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

241.746

Er hat nicht einen Gehirntumor, sondern Level 3 Autismus, welches die stärkste Form von Autismus ist. Und er wird für den Rest seines Lebens Hilfe brauchen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

256.394

Now, back when Micah and James first adopted Huxley, they were warned by their doctor that adopting a child with his condition is going to be extremely difficult. Probably one of the most difficult things they'll ever face.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

279.549

But then she says something in a vlog that the internet is eventually going to destroy her over. So yeah, her kid, Huxley, is not returnable. Until... Fast forward a few years to 2019. And Micah and James and their kids, they're still vlogging on YouTube. And they're still one big happy family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

307.924

But then, their audience, the one who has stuck with them for years through this whole adoption journey, they notice something weird. Huxley verschwindet langsam von ihrem Content. Er ist nicht mehr in ihren Vlogs, Mike und James posten nicht mehr so viel über ihn auf ihren sozialen Medien. Er war früher das Zentrum ihres gesamten Brandes und jetzt ist er nirgendwo zu finden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

331.435

Und um diese Zeit haben sie noch ein Baby. Und während all diese Vlog-Ansicht auf ihr neues Baby besteht, ist Huxley immer weniger auf der Kamera. Dann, eines Tages, stoppt er komplett. Er ist überhaupt nicht mehr in ihrem Content. Und natürlich sind die Fans so, wo ist Huxley? Und ja, sie haben recht zu fragen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

353.523

Ich meine, Micah und James haben Jahre gedauert, ihn in ihren Videos zu stecken, Geld zu verdienen, seine Verabschiedung zu vloggen. Und plötzlich ist er einfach weg, ohne Erklärung. Und so gehen Monate. Und jetzt ist es 2020. Und immer noch gibt es kein Zeichen von Huxley. Aber Dann, aus dem Nichts, machen Micah und James ein Video und sie droppen eine Bombe auf alle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

381.874

Also brechen sie endlich ihre Stille und sagen ihrem Publikum, dass sie nach zwei Jahren mit Huxley aufgewachsen sind, dass sie es einfach nicht mehr tun können. Es ist einfach zu hart, einen besonderen Sohn aufzubauen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

398.764

And to be fair, raising a kid with level 3 autism, I'm sure that's extremely difficult. So they're not wrong about that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

414.672

But anyway, so they say that they've decided to rehome Huxley and they returned him to the adoption agency. Not returnable. Und sie behaupten, dass sie es in erster Linie von ihrem Publikum für so viele Monate gehalten haben, um seine Privatsphäre zu schützen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

432.565

Welche sie schon jahrelang mit einer Kamera in dieses Kindes Gesicht gefordert haben, wie vloggen jeden Moment seines Lebens, und jetzt wollen sie plötzlich seine Privatsphäre schützen? Und ja, ihr Publikum ist schnell, um das herauszufinden. Und, Junge, sind sie verpisscht. Und natürlich schlägt sich diese Geschichte um.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

448.819

YouTube-Kommentatorinnen reden darüber, News-Outlets informieren darüber, es erzeugt zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit und Branchen, die mit ihm gearbeitet haben, fangen plötzlich an, sich mit ihm zu verbinden. Denn das ist ein wirklich schlechtes Aussehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

461.404

Siehst du, im Außenbereich sieht es so aus, als ob Micah und James diesen spezialistischen chinesischen Jungen adoptiert haben, damit sie ihn auf ihrem Familienvlog-Channel aufbauen können und von ihm Geld verdienen. Aber als die Realität von seinem Erwachsenen zu hart wurde, haben sie dann entschieden, ihn zu verlassen und ihn zurück zu senden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

47.405

Erinnerst du dich, als dieser YouTube-Mommy-Vlogger von der ganzen Internetseite gecancelt wurde? Weil ich das tue. Die Frau heißt Micah. Micah ist 20 Jahre alt und wohnt in Ohio. Sie ist ein Familienvlogger. Sie vloggt ihre Kinder und so weiter. Sie und ihr Mann, James, sind auf YouTube groß. Sie haben hunderts von tausenden von Followern auf ihrem Hauptkanal. Also machen sie ziemlich gut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

478.592

Ich sage nicht, dass das definitiv wahr ist, ich sage nur, dass das die generelle öffentliche Vorstellung ist, was da los ist. In der Tat, die Leute sind so wütend an ihnen, dass sie die Polizei anrufen, um sie auf ihre restlichen biologischen Kinder zu beurteilen. Und glücklicherweise finden sich die Polizisten nichts Besonderes oder etwas falsch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

498.301

Und deshalb muss es sich an Micah und James fühlen, weil ein Monat später, nach all diesem Aufprall, Micah diesen langen, geschriebenen Entschuldigung auf ihrem Instagram veröffentlicht. Und das ist fast ihr allerletzter Post auf der Internetseite. Wie jemals. They take down all their vlogs and all their videos, they delete their YouTube channel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

519.234

Her Instagram is still up, but from what I can see, all the pictures with Huxley in them have been deleted. And that is the last anyone has heard from Micah or James. Like, they have completely disappeared from what I can see. Now, Huxley, on the other hand, he is reportedly being raised by a new loving family, and he is apparently doing very well in his life. So, good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Youtube Family Vlog Channel Abandoned Their Kid - The Stauffer Family story

70.3

Einen Tag, um 2017, schlagen Micah und James großartig ab. Weil sie entscheiden wollen, ein Kind zu erwerben. Jetzt James, er ist wirklich nicht in diese Idee. Wahrscheinlich, weil sie bereits drei Kinder haben. Jedoch wird er schlussendlich an Bord, nachdem er ein paar Recherchen online gemacht hat. Und sie entscheiden, dass sie einen Kind aus China adoptieren werden, spezifisch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

0.129

So this guy did not get into art school. And that eventually caused actor Steve Martin to get conned out of $750,000. Let me explain. Now the guy, let's call him Lil Mustache Man. And Lil Mustache Man really wants to go to art school. And he applies twice. But unfortunately for him, the school is like, nah bro, and he doesn't get in because he's not very good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

119.102

And pretty quickly, he starts to make good money from this, like hundreds of thousands of euros. Then in 1993, everything changes for him because he meets this woman, Helene. And he and Helene, they fall in love and eventually they get married. And not only is Helene okay with her new husband being a con artist art forger, but she's like, let me help you out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

144.139

And she becomes his partner in this scam. And together, Wolfgang and Helene and some other acquaintances of theirs, they really start to perfect this whole thing. Like they make sure the canvases they're painting on are from the right period, that the paint is from the right period. He even builds an oven and like cooks his paintings to make them seem cracked and old.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

165.849

And then they like approach art dealers and auction houses and they sell them. And when the art dealers are like, hang on a second, where the hell did you get all these priceless long lost paintings from? Wolfgang tells them some complicated story about how they had inherited all these works from their art collector grandparents.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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and that they had originally been looted by Little Mustache Man's military back in World War II, and that they were just recently recovered. And since Little Mustache Man really did steal that many collections of art back in the day, these art dealers start to believe that, yeah, it's actually plausible that Wolfgang and Helene's story is true. He inherited a bunch of long-lost art.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And so anyway, they start selling all these fake long-lost paintings, allegedly by famous artists, for hundreds of thousands of euros per painting, even millions sometimes. They make two million euros off one painting alone, or about two million US dollars. And so suddenly, they're rich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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And now that they're rich, they gotta go and buy a bunch of sh** for themselves, because that's what you gotta do. And they buy like a big mansion in Germany and a villa in South France. They're traveling around to all kinds of places, chilling on yachts. They apparently dress all high class now, and Wolfgang's driving a pimp-ass Jaguar. And so this scam goes on for years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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But 25 years later, he's chancellor of Germany. Yet he still considers himself a connoisseur of the arts and he's still allegedly a bit salty about getting rejected from art school all those years ago. And as he directs his military to invade other countries around Europe in World War II, He also has them loot museums and raid art collections and steal all the art pieces.

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Wolfgang will make a fake long-lost painting in the style of a well-known dead artist, and they'll claim it's authentic and sell it for a ton of money. And yes, yes, there are actually skeptics. There are authenticators and people in the art world who start to doubt them. Like, no way you have all these old originals. And they really start to push them on the authenticity of these.

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And of course, Wolfgang's like, nah, these paintings have been in Helene's family for years. We have really old photographs of Helene's grandmother standing next to them. And so to squash these accusations, Wolfgang and Helene will dress Helene up in vintage clothes and take a photograph of her with some of these paintings in the background. But they'll make the photograph look vintage too.

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And they'll show it to the authenticators like, look, here's a really old picture of Helene's grandma in front of the paintings. Like this, what you're looking at is actually a photograph that they faked. This shit is wild. And so they get not just people to believe them but like art authenticators to believe them and experts believe them. They have everyone fooled.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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Let me needless to say this plan is working and at this time in the early 2000s it's estimated that Wolfgang and Helene and their accomplices have profited over a hundred million dollars from this scam. A hundred million dollars from fake paintings! And to make it worse, it seems like no one is going to catch them. Until... Until Wolfgang screws everything up by using the wrong color.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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Because one day in 2006, he's painting one of his fake-ass paintings and he runs out of the color white. No big deal, he'll just make some more because he usually mixes a lot of his own colors.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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But on this particular day, this one time, I don't know if he's running late or if he's just feeling lazy on this day, but instead of mixing his own white, he goes to the store and buys a tube of white that has titanium in it or titanium white. And he uses that to finish his painting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Then after he finishes, he and his crew sell it to a trading company and they tell him that it's by this famous dead painter. It was painted back in 1914 and that it's all legit. And they sell this fake 1914 painting for 2.8 million euros or about 3 million US dollars. And that's all fine and good until the buyer notices something off about this work of art.

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The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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So they demand to see a certificate of authenticity for the work. Which obviously a certificate of authenticity doesn't exist because this work is a fake. And so this buyer sends this fake 1914 painting off to an art expert in London. And that expert puts it under a microscope and BAM! That's when he sees it. The paint Wolfgang used in this supposed 1914 painting was titanium white.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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But titanium white wasn't really available until 1916. And so this buyer gets pissed because he just got ripped off and he goes and he files a complaint with a district court in Germany. Then the Berlin State Police gets involved and they start investigating and they discover what you already know, that this painting is fake as f**k.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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Not painted by some master in his workshop, but painted by Wolfgang, probably in his garage. And from here, pretty quickly, word starts to spread around the art world, and boom, there are lawsuits galore, as Wolfgang and Helene start getting sued by a bunch of the people they ripped off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Then, one morning in 2010, when ol' Wolfie and his wife are about to drive away from their big-ass mansion, POW! A bunch of police cars suddenly surround them, and BAM! They get arrested. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's what he looks like in real life. So, then what does all this have to do with the actor Steve Martin? Well, apparently, Steve Martin is an avid art collector.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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And in 2004, he actually bought a painting from a gallery for about $750,000. And I assume he thought this painting was badass. Well, unfortunately, it was a painting that Wolfgang had done, a.k.a. a forgery. Obviously, Steve didn't know it was fake, but nonetheless, bro got ripped off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Anyway, allegedly, Wolfgang had faked over 100 paintings over the course of two decades, and that's why, at the end of it all, he gets sentenced to six years in prison. While Helene gets sentenced to four years in prison, and Lil Mustache Man, well... he unalived himself a long time ago. So, good for them.

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The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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And they become notorious for this. It's estimated his goons took over 600,000 pieces of art during this time. By some estimates, they took nearly 20% of all the art in Europe. And some of it they keep and some of it they destroy. But to this day, a lot of that art has never been recovered. Now, let's fast forward several decades to the 1980s, because I want to talk about this guy, Wolfgang.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The World's Greatest Art Fraud - The Wolfgang Beltracchi story

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And Wolfgang, he's in his 30s, he's kind of a hippie, and unlike Lil Mustache Man, he's actually a very talented artist. He's a painter. And one day, Wolfgang's like, f*** all this workin', I want to make quick money. And he gets a crazy idea. He's gonna forge some art.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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He's gonna paint some new paintings in the style of old famous artists who died a long time ago, and he's gonna pass these fake paintings off as originals. Cool plan, bro. And so he does this. He makes these fake paintings and passes them off as old masterpieces. And surprisingly, it works. And he like sells them to people. He sells them to art galleries.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Also müssen die Polizei die Eltern anrufen, Nettys echten Eltern. Und natürlich sind die Eltern auch überrascht. Aber leider ist es zu spät. Anne ist lange weg, sie hat bereits das Baby, das sie will, weil sie sie als ihre eigene aufbauen wird. And many years pass, and Nettie grows up in Anne's household. And she lives a fairly normal life, believing this whole time that Anne is her real mother.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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And yeah, sometimes she'll ask her about her real dad, and Anne tells her that her real father is a drug dealer she used to date, who's now in prison. So that excuse covers that. Letztendlich wächst Nettie ein bisschen mehr auf und sie wird ein Teenager und ist in der Hochschule. Und während dieser Zeit beginnt sie zu bemerken, dass sie nichts wie Anne oder ihre anderen Familienmitglieder sieht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Aber egal, ich glaube, das passiert manchmal. Aber je älter sie wird, desto mehr kümmert sich das um sie. Und letztendlich beginnt sie ein bisschen bescheiden zu werden. Dann, eines Tages, sie ist 16, sie ist noch in der Hochschule, und BOOM! Nettie bekommt etwas überraschendes. Sie ist verheiratet. Ich glaube, sie hatte einen kleinen Freund, und er hat sie verheiratet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Jetzt, Verheiratung und Kinder sind wirklich teuer. Aber Nettie findet heraus, dass sie sich für freie Pränatalkarriere von ihrem Staat anbieten kann. All she needs to do is to apply and provide some official documents, including her birth certificate. So she goes to her mom and she's like, Mom, I need my birth certificate. And Anne's like, yeah, I'll handle it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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But then, as the days go by, Anne doesn't handle it. And so Nettie reminds her again and again. I mean, this is very important to her. But her mom keeps brushing her off. And eventually Nettie just gets tired of waiting. And she's like, fuck this. And she low-key starts going through Anne's stuff. And she ends up finding a document with her name and date of birth on it. Und ja, gut genug.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Also nimmt sie es in die Kommune, um es zu versuchen, um eine Kopie ihres Geburtstags zu bekommen. Und so ist sie da, und sie gibt dieses Dokument dem Bürgermeister, und der Bürgermeister checkt ihr System und ist so, äh, Frau, wir können keinen Rekord von Ihnen finden. Und Nettie ist so, was machen wir jetzt? Und der Bürgermeister ist so, es gibt keinen Rekord von Ihnen.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Und Nettie wird verpisscht. Was meinst du damit, dass sie kein Rekord von ihr finden können? Und so muss ein Supervisor kommen und intervenieren. Und der Supervisor ist so wie, äh, nicht nur gibt es kein Rekord von dir, dieses Dokument, das du uns gegeben hast, ist Fake. Und er verurteilt straight up Nettie, dass er versucht hat, ihre Identität zu faken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Und so natürlich wird Nettie verrückt und sie geht weg und sie geht nach Hause. Ein paar Tage später sagt Anne endlich zu Nettie, was zur Hölle los ist. Warum sie keinen echten Geburtstag hat und warum es ein Fake-Dokument mit ihrem Namen ist. So, diese Nacht kommt sie in Netties Zimmer und beginnt einfach zu weinen. Und dann sagt sie, dass sie nicht ihre biologische Mutter ist.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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So this woman, her name's Anne. And Anne has a problem. She really wants a baby. But unfortunately she can't seem to have one. She tries and she keeps having miscarriages. So eventually Anne gets an insane idea. Why not just steal one? So one day in 1987 she does just that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Aber sie sagt, dass deine echte Mutter dich verlassen hat und nie zurückgekommen ist. Und um es schlechter zu machen, erzählt sie ihr nichts anderes. Sie sagt, ihre echte Mutter war ein Drogenabhängiger, der sie verabschiedet hat. Und dann endet sie einfach auf einem Kliefhanger. Und Nettie ist so, was zur Hölle?

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Und so für Monate beugt Nettie ihre Mutter für mehr Informationen, aber Anne gibt es nicht wirklich. Sie ist einfach so, äh, ich erinnere mich nicht mehr. Und ein ganzes Jahr dauert. Und schlussendlich ist Nettie so, egal, ich werde die Wahrheit selbst herausfinden. Und sie beginnt zu investigieren.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Sie fragt ihre anderen Brüder, was vor all diesen Jahren passiert ist, und die anderen Brüder sind so, äh, ja, ich glaube, ich erinnere mich an Anne, die krank ist, ich weiß nicht. Sie geht in die Departement der Kinder und Familien und fragt sie, ob sie ihr DNA ausruhen können, um zu sehen, ob es jemandem passt. Und sie sind so, nein, wir machen das nicht wirklich. Und so kommt Nettie nirgendwo.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Seine Mutter ist nicht hilfreich, ihre Brüder sind nicht hilfreich, und das Staat ist nicht hilfreich. Also sieht es aus, als würde sie einfach nie die Wahrheit wissen. UNTIL. Sieben Jahre gehen und sie ist 23. Und an diesem Punkt hat Nettie schon lange ihr Baby, sie ist in eine andere Stadt geflogen und sie hat ihr adultes Leben begonnen.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Aber natürlich fragt sie sich immer noch, worüber Anne sprach. Wer war ihre echte Mutter, die suposiert eine Drogenanwältin war, die sie verabschiedet hat, als sie geboren wurde? Dann, eine Nacht später, bekommt sie endlich eine Führung.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Sie dreht sich auf der Internetseite rum, sucht Antworten, und sie geht auf die Website des Nationalen Zentrums für Missing und Exploited Children, wo sie ein Database von Kindern haben, die von überall über das Land verloren sind. Und dieses Database geht schon seit Jahrhunderten zurück. And so she's combing through this database and that is when, boom, she sees it.

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A picture of a little baby girl. A girl who was around her age and who went missing back in 1987. Right around the period when she was born. Nicht nur das, dieses Baby sieht ähnlich aus wie ihr eigenes Baby. Nettie weiß also, dass sie sich ein Bild von sich selbst anschaut. Und somit ruft sie sie an.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Sie ruft das National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Hotline und sie fragt sie, um all das herauszufinden. Und sie akzeptieren die Hilfe. Und ziemlich schnell erreichen sie Netties echte, echte, biologische Mutter. Ihr Name ist Joy. Und dann kommen sie zu Joy und sagen, ich glaube, wir haben deine vermisste Tochter von 23 Jahren gefunden. Und Joy ist so, no f***ing way.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Und dann fangen Nettie und Joy an zu kommunizieren und zu e-mailen und dann sprechen sie auf dem Telefon immer wieder. Und dann fliegt Nettie aus Atlanta nach New York, um ihre echte Mutter in Person zu treffen. Und sie bekommt auch ihren echten Vater zu treffen. Er heißt Karl. Und hier ist ein echtes Bild von Nettie, Joy und Karl zusammen.

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Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Und später kommen die DNA-Resultate zurück, die bestätigen, dass sie ihre echten biologischen Eltern sind. Also... Das ist cool. Dann, natürlich, kommt diese Geschichte raus. Und es macht den Scheiß auf. Weil es eine unglaubliche Geschichte ist. Aber jetzt, mit all dieser Aufmerksamkeit, kommt die FBI involviert. Weil, du weißt, das hat 23 Jahre ago mit einer Verabschiedung angefangen.

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Also jetzt sucht jeder für Anne. Und nach einer Weile im Geheimnis, schließt sie sich dann in die FBI. Hier ist ihr Mugshot.

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And Anne ends up pleading guilty to kidnapping and she's sentenced to 12 years in prison. Meanwhile, Nettie and her real biological parents sort of have like a public falling out, but then they make up. So I think they're fine now, so good for them. And by the way, here's what Nettie looks like today in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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Sie trägt sich als Ärztin an und geht in den lokalen Krankenhaus und beginnt sich zu verhalten und versucht sich als Krankenhäuser auszupassen. Und nach etwa drei Wochen, wo sie das gemacht hat, findet sie endlich ein Baby, das sie swipen kann. Und das Name des Babys ist Nettie. Und Nettie ist 19 Tage alt und sie ist im Krankenhaus, um zu behandeln. Sie hatte eine Art Infektion oder so.

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Und jetzt will Anne Nettie. Und so wartet sie. Sie wartet auf den richtigen Moment. Und um 3 Uhr, als die Krankenhäuser ihre Schiffe verändern, boom, knabbert sie Nettie aus ihrer Unit und sie geht mit ihr aus dem Gebäude und niemand glaubt etwas. Dann bringt sie sie aus New York City, wo das Krankenhaus ist, nach Connecticut, wo sie lebt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Woman Solves Her Own Kidnapping 23 Years Later - The Carlina White story

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In der Zwischenzeit, zurück im Krankenhaus, entdeckt die Krankenhäuser ziemlich schnell, dass ein verdammtes Baby verloren ist. Und sie sind überrascht, sie sind so wie, yo, jemand hat ein Baby gestohlen. Und sie gehen und bekommen eine Beschreibung von Anne von einigen Wissens. Aber außer dem haben sie nichts. Das war der perfekte Baby-Heist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Was ist, wenn die Lösung für unsere Probleme dort lauert, wo Menschen normalerweise gar nicht hinkommen? Ein Schatz aus der Tiefsee, Millionen Jahre alt, den es aber wirklich gibt und den manche jetzt heben wollen. Der Kampf um die Tiefsee, der hat längst begonnen. Das ist Enten, Land unter, von Andan und dem Futurium. Ab sofort auf Spotify.

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Und von dort fliegt er schließlich nach Europa. Und dort ist er wieder zurück, um Autos zu stehlen und Fake-Checks in Frankreich und Schweden zu kassieren. Und dann wird er in Frankreich verhaftet und zurück in die USA verhaftet. Er ist 22 Jahre alt.

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Und jetzt, dass er wieder in die USA ist, surprise, surprise, geht er wieder zurück, um sich als Pilot zu kassieren und mehr Forged-Checks zu kassieren. Vier Monate später ist er wieder gefangen und verhaftet. Und während er im Gefängnis ist, fliegt er weg. Aber in ein paar Tagen fangen sie ihn wieder an, um noch einen geforchten Konto zu zahlen.

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Und dieses Mal ist er 12 Jahre im Gefängnis verhaftet. Aber ein paar Jahre später kommt er auf Parole. Dann wird er wieder verhaftet, dieses Mal, um Kunststoffe und Kameras aus einem Kinder-Sommer-Kampfen zu stehlen. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und an diesem Punkt ist Francis um 26 Jahre alt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

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Und um dieses Zeitpunkt bewegt er sich in seinen Parole-Officer-Garage, damit sein Parole-Officer ihn aufmerksam halten kann. Und es ist hier, dass es endlich scheint, als würde er seine Lektion lernen. UNTIL... Francis ist jetzt ungefähr 27 Jahre alt. Und er will seine eigene Anti-Fraud-Konsultation starten. Und er beginnt diese Crime-Prevention-Seminare zu halten, in denen er Reden gibt.

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Er gibt diese Reden und er erzählt allen, dass er ein reformierter Kriminal ist. Aber er erzählt nicht nur Leuten über den Check-Fraud und das Stehlen von Leuten und das Dressieren als Pilot, um freie Flugzeuge zu bekommen.

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Nein, nein, stattdessen beginnt er diese fantastischen Geschichten zu machen, wie er von 16 bis 20 Jahre alt war, sich in ein Krankenhaus eingelassen hat und sich als Pädiatrist für ein ganzes Jahr verliebt hat. Und wie er sich als Lehrer für ein ganzes Jahr verliebt hat. Und wie er sich als Soziologie-Professor bei BYU für ein paar Semester verliebt hat.

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The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Und dass er 2,5 Millionen Dollar von den Flugzeugen verdient hat. Und dass die FBI seit Jahren nach ihm geholfen hat und er durch ein Flugzeug-Toilette gefahren ist. Und all diese Geschichten sind Bullshit. Ich meine, das sind nicht nur kleine Verbrechungen. Das sind Dinge, die er komplett aufbauen kann.

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Und wir wissen das, weil er während der Zeit, als er all diese Sachen gemacht hat, in der Gefängnis geschlossen wurde. All das ist ein öffentliches Rekord. Das einzige, was er wirklich gemacht hat, war ein paar schlechte Karten zu schreiben, Ich habe ein Jahr lang als Hauptvorsitzender eines Krankenhauses gearbeitet. And people watching just eat it up. They love him.

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After that, he gets invited onto the Today Show. Then he gets invited onto the Johnny Carson Show several times, where, again, he repeats these lies.

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Und diese Appearances auf Johnny Carson schlagen ihn wirklich auf. Plötzlich bekommt er allmähliche Medienaufmerksamkeit, Leute wollen mehr über ihn wissen, also teamt er mit einem Autor zusammen und schreibt eine Autobiografie. Aber nicht über seine echte Leben, sondern über diese falschen Geschichten, die er gemacht hat.

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Und dann, zwei Jahre später, wird sein Buch von gemachten Geschichten über seine Leben publiziert. Und ihr habt es gehört, es heißt Catch Me If You Can. Und es wird schnell ein New York Times Bestseller. Und dann verkauft Francis die Filmrechte. Und 17 Jahre später enden die Rechte bei DreamWorks.

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The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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So this guy, he's a liar. But his lies are about to make him rich. Let's call him Francis. And Francis is 16, he's from New York, and he can't stay out of trouble. He's always lying and stealing from his parents and stealing from local businesses. But then one day he commits forgery. Und er wird verhaftet. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

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Und sie machen einen Film, der von Steven Spielberg gedreht wird und von Tom Hanks und Leonardo the Cradle Robber gedreht wird. Und der Film wird ein großer Hit. Und Jahre nachdem, werden sie es in ein Broadway-Musikal adaptieren. Und dieses ganze Zeit, auch nach dem Erfolg des Buches und des Films, ist Francis draußen, bei Gästeausstellungen und öffentlichen Reden.

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The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Er erzählt diese selben gemachten Geschichten über sein Leben zu großen Gruppen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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And it wasn't until more recently in the age of the Internet that journalists really start to dig in and fact check him in a real way. And they track his whole life through interviews and public records. And they realize Francis isn't some brilliant impersonator. He's just a pathological liar. And to this day, he's still running his anti-fraud company and he's still out there giving speeches.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Shoutout to Hollywood.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Und nachdem er verhaftet ist, geht Francis auf einen anderen Krimispray und er stehlt schlussendlich ein Auto und fliegt nach Kalifornien. Und dann, ein paar Wochen später, wird er dort verhaftet. Und sie senden ihn zurück nach New York, wo er eine Menge von ausreichenden Warnungen hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Und dann, zurück in New York, benutzt Francis eine Menge geformtes Geld, um ein Flugzeug-Piloten-Uniform zu kaufen. Weil er denkt, wenn er sich wie ein Piloten trägt, was ein gut respektierter Job ist, werden die Unternehmen mehr wahrscheinlich, ihm zu vertrauen und seine falschen Warnungen zu kassieren. Aber dieser Plan funktioniert nicht wirklich.

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Denn er wird verhaftet, weil er versucht hat, geschlossene Karten zu verwenden. Und er spart die nächsten zwei Jahre im Gefängnis. Und sobald er rauskommt, ist er 19 Jahre alt. Und ein Monat später wird er wieder in Boston verhaftet, weil er versucht hat, ein Auto zu stehlen und mehr schlechte Karten zu schreiben. Also senden sie ihn zurück ins Gefängnis für ein weiteres Jahr.

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The Real Story of Frank Abagnale and Catch Me If You Can

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Er ist jetzt 20 Jahre alt. So kommt er endlich raus und bleibt ein Turd. Er bekommt das alte Pilots-Uniform, das er gekauft hat, und verwendet es, um ein paar kostenlose Flugzeuge von den Flugzeugen zu verkaufen. Weil ich glaube, off-duty Piloten bekommen kostenlose Flugzeuge. Aber dann wird er in Baton Rouge verhaftet, weil er von einer Familie aussteht, die versucht hat, ihm zu helfen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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Und dann macht er sie in sein Auto. Und in dem Auto sitzt sie zwischen zwei anderen Jungs und sie haben beide Piu-Pius. Und dann blindfolden sie sie und sie fahren weg. Etwa 30 Minuten später stoppt das Auto und die Verbrecher gehen raus. Und sie nehmen Noella in irgendeine Art von Gebäude und ziehen sie in eine Schuhe. Und da kommt dieser andere Junge raus. Wir nennen ihn Leader.

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The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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So Leader comes right up to Noella and he's like, what did you do to this man to make him wanna unalive you? And Noella's like, what man? And Leader's like, your husband, dummy. Your husband paid us to unalive you. And Noella's like, my husband? B would never do that. And so Leader puts his phone on speaker and he dials B's number. And Leader's like, hey B, we have your wife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

145.072

And then suddenly Noella hears B's voice on the line. And B's like, kill her. Und dieser Moment macht Noellas ganze Welt heruntergelaufen. Und es ist alles einfach zu viel. Und sie wird schlussendlich überwältigt und sie überlebt. Einige Zeit später wacht sie auf und sie ist noch da, verbunden zu einer Schuhe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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Und später kommt er zu ihr und sagt, okay, wir haben uns entschieden, wir werden dich nicht verurteilen. Wir verurteilen nicht wirklich Frauen und Kinder. Und er sagt auch, dass er, obwohl er sie nicht verurteilen wird, er immer noch planen wird, Bees Geld zu behalten. Er ruft dann Bees zurück und fragt ihn um mehr Geld, um den Job zu beenden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

178.553

Er fragt für ein extra, das Äquivalent von 2200 US-Dollar. Und B ist so, okay, ich bezahle mehr, mach es einfach. Und später sagt Leader, okay, wir haben es geschafft, deine Frau ist tot. Und B bezahlt ihn. Er geht zur Westen Union und er schickt ihm das Geld. Und an diesem Punkt, zwei Tage sind vorbei und Noella ist noch immer gehalten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

194.901

Aber endlich kommt Leader zu ihr und er sagt, okay, ich lasse dich gehen. Und er gibt ihr ein Envelope. Und in diesem Envelope gibt es Beweise. eine Telefon-Memorycard und einen Western-Union-Rechte für all die Geld, die er erhielt. Und er will, dass Noella diese Beweise gegen Bee benutzt. Dann legen sie Noella in ein Auto und fahren in die Mitte von irgendwo.

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The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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Und sie lassen sie auf der Seite der Straße. Und der Leiter sagt zu ihr, geh' anderen dummen Frauen wie dir erzählen, was hier passiert ist. Und dann fahren sie einfach weg. Noella ist einfach glücklich, alive zu sein. But this definitely isn't over for her. Because she needs to get B back for what he's done. So she flies from Burundi to Melbourne. Meanwhile, B is still in Melbourne.

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The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

231.668

And he's already told everyone that Noella died in some tragic accident back in Burundi. And he holds a funeral service for her. At their house. And then all these people that know Noella show up to this memorial service. And while they're there, a car pulls up outside. And Noella is in it. And there, she spots Bea. And she gets out of the car. And she walks right up to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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And she's like, surprise, bitch, I'm still alive. And he is shocked. Like, I'm sure everyone there was shocked. She showed up to her own damn funeral. And Bea is f***ed. Anyway, Noella eventually gives the memory card and the Western Union receipts and all the evidence against B to the police. And then police arrest B and I can't find a mugshot of him, but here's what he looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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And he goes to court, he pleads guilty to incitement of murder and he gets nine years in prison. So shout out to Africa and Australia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

29.415

So this dead woman surprises everyone when she shows up to her own funeral. Alive. Now her name's Noella and her husband is this guy, who we'll call B. And they've been together for about 10 years. But one day, B gets suspicious. Er denkt, Noella könnte ihn verletzen und dass sie ihn für einen anderen Mann verlassen könnte. Und egal, was B tut, kann er dieses Gefühl einfach nicht lösen.

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The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

52.485

Also hat er an diesem Punkt ein paar Möglichkeiten. Er kann A. sie konfrontieren, B. sie verheiraten, oder C. er hiren einige Hitmen, um sie nicht lebendig zu machen. Und ja, er wird mit Option C gehen. Now, Noella and Bea live in Melbourne, Australia. But sometimes she travels back home to her hometown in Burundi, Africa to visit. And Bea, he decides to have her executed there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

72.819

So, he calls up some goons he knows in Burundi. And he pays them the equivalent of 4,500 US dollars. And he tells them the next time Noella comes into town, unalive her. And the goons are like, okay, cool. And then months go by and everything seems normal. But then one day, boom, Noellas Stepmom passes away back in Burundi. And she has to fly back there to attend the funeral.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Crashed Her Own Funeral - The Noela Rokundo story

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So she flies there, goes to the funeral, and then after the funeral, she's at her hotel. And she's feeling kind of down because it was just a funeral, and she goes outside to get some fresh air. And that is when suddenly, out of nowhere, a man appears and he comes straight at her. And he pulls out a pew-pew and he... Er zeigt sie an und sagt, wenn du schreust, werde ich dich schießen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

0.089

So this girl, her name's Denali, and all Denali wants to do is impress her boyfriend. So Denali's 18, she lives in Alaska, and she spends a lot of time chatting with her online boyfriend, this guy, Tyler. Tyler's 21, he's from Kansas, but most importantly, Tyler is a multi-millionaire. And Denali thinks he is fine, but since he lives so many states away, their relationship is long-distance.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

107.516

Now there are some other friends involved in this scheme too, but I don't want to make this story too complicated, so let's just focus on Denali and Caden. So Denali and Caden get their plan already. So they invite Cece to this popular hiking spot around Thunderbird Falls. So they pick her up, and they drive to the trailhead, and they start making their way through the trees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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And at one point, they veer off the path and head into the woods. And I guess they tell Cece that they're going to play some kind of game where they take photos of each other tied up. And of course, Cece's got to go first. So they duct tape and tie her up. And this whole time, Denali's been recording on her phone and sending the Snapchats to Tyler.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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Then when the moment is right, Denali pulls out a pew pew. And Caden takes it from her. And then he aims it at Cece's head, and he pulls the trigger. And then they take Cece's body and they push it into a nearby creek. And then they hike back to their car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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And then they drive to another nearby park and they burn Cece's purse and her ID and the pew pew because they're trying to get rid of all the evidence. But then that same day, I guess Denali starts to feel bad, maybe even a little guilty because she posts a couple of videos on Snapchat. And in those videos, she's cryptically confessing. saying like, I know I up and I'm really sorry.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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And then two days later, the police find Cece's body in the creek and someone alerts them to the existence of Cece's Snapchat confession. So police get a warrant to look at Denali's phone and there they find all of her messages to Tyler, including the P3DO videos she made for him. So then they get the FBI to track Tyler's number.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

194.762

And that number leads them to a guy, not in Kansas where Tyler's from, but to a guy in Indiana. So then police have to sit Denali down and tell her what they found. Tyler isn't Tyler. He's not from Kansas. He doesn't look like this. His name's Darren. And he actually looks like this. So he's not even fine. And worst of all, he's not even a millionaire. Not even close.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

221.067

In real life, he actually lives in his grandmother's basement. And I'm not making that up. Her online millionaire boyfriend is just some loser who catfished her. She was never going to get $9 million. So when Denali finds this out, she gets mad and throws him under the bus and confesses everything. about the whole murder plot, about how he talked her into making the P3DO videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

243.639

So then, boom, they arrest Denali. And Alaska doesn't release mug shots, so I don't have a mug shot, but here's how she looks in real life. And they also arrest Caden. Here's how he looks in real life. And of course, they also arrest Tyler slash Darren. Here's what he looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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So they'll often send adult selfies and Snapchats to each other. But then one day, Tyler's like, you know what would be fun? If you could film yourself doing some adult stuff with someone else. Someone younger. Now, I won't go into detail about what they did, but Denali ends up making a P3dio tape of herself and someone else, and she sends it to Tyler.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

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And both Denali and Tyler get convicted, and they each get 99 years in prison, while Caden is still waiting on his sentence. Shout out to Alaska.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

47.35

And I guess he's happy with the result because these disgusting exchanges go on for a while. But then Tyler makes Denali a crazy offer in exchange for a new kind of video. He's basically like, I'll give you $9 million if you essay an unalive someone and then you film it and send me the footage. And Denali's like, holy, that's a lot of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

67.341

So then they work through the details of this plan for about three weeks. But by the end of it, Denali has chosen who her victim is gonna be. The victim is gonna be Denali's friend. This girl, Cece. Cece's 19, she's also developmentally disabled, and apparently she's the mental age of about 12 years old. But Denali has always been nice to her and included her in things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She killed her friend for $9,000,000 - The Denali Brehmer story

88.567

So from Cece's perspective, Denali is her best friend. Now Denali knows she can't pull this off alone, so she recruits one of her other friends to help her. This guy, Caden. And Caden is 16. And she tells Caden that she'll give him a 10% cut of the $9 million if he helps her unalive Cece. That's 900 grand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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So this horse lady, she has a problem. She really wants to be rich. But unfortunately, she has no way to make that kind of money. She's just a regular woman from a small town. And one day in 1990, she figures out exactly how she's gonna do it. She's gonna rob the city.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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And a year or so after that, she spends $125,000 on yet another horse. Then she spends a half a million dollars remodeling her home, and she adds a pool and a sauna. Rita is out of control with this spending. Here's the thing, though. At this point, she's been pulling this scam for over a decade. And still, no one working at City Hall has caught on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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Which is weird because her salary, the salary that the city pays her, is only $80,000 a year. So you'd think at least some people would be like, where the hell is Rita getting all this money for like new horses and sh**? Because a big chunk of what Rita buys herself are new horses. I mean, this woman loves horses, and so she starts buying herself tons of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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And she's always traveling around the country in her $100,000 motorhome to compete in like horse shows because I guess that's her thing. And she actually wins a lot of these horse shows. Here she is winning one of them. Here she is winning another. And here's another. And just for fun, here she is drunk holding up a sign that says, it's good to be queen.

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Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

19.693

Now, her name is Rita, and Rita's 37, and she's living in the small town of Dixon, Illinois, and she works in City Hall as the treasurer and comptroller, which basically means she controls this little city's finances. And because she controls the finances, she decides to divert some of that money to herself. So she goes and she opens a secret bank account in the city's name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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Meanwhile, this whole time, the city, the city that she works for is running out of money. They're in tons of debt and they don't have sufficient funds for things like, like they can't afford to replace broken traffic lights. They can't afford wheelchair ramps. They have to make cuts to the fire department and the police department, and they cut some of the funding for ambulances.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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You know, shit that people need. And Rita oversees the budget, so she knows the city's broke and that all these cuts are happening, but she doesn't give a damn. In fact, when the city's lack of funds ever comes up, she'll always suggest that they just make more budget cuts. And the whole time she keeps on spending so that she can travel around and win more horse shows.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

237.409

She buys herself more cars and more horses. She buys herself a whole ass ranch to keep all these new horses in. She upgrades to a new motor home. This one costs $2 million. And still no one in city hall and no one in this town is like, how in the hell is this city worker driving around in a $2 million motor home? And to make it worse, Rita's wealth? It kind of shows.

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Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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It's not like she's hiding it well. I mean, look at this picture. She's got on the rhinestone cowboy jacket and what looks like several diamond necklaces. Even the names of her horses are all suspect as hell. They got names like I'm Money Too, Have Faith in Money, Money's Moxie, Money is Hot, Jewels by Tiffany, Packin' Jewels. And by the way, those are the real names of her horses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

287.733

I didn't make any of those up. And so by 2006, Rita has been funneling money from the city's budget into her own secret bank account for 15 years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

298.22

and at this point she's stolen almost 26 million dollars and she is not gonna stop she keeps stealing more and more and spending it on herself she spends 5.6 million dollars and buys a house in florida and she adds an elevator she buys a new horse trailer she buys two new cars so now she has over a dozen cars and yes she buys even more horses

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

323.709

Which means at this point in time, Rita has bought herself over 300 horses. So while the city is crumbling, she's just like, well, guess I'll just buy myself another horse. So by 2009, she's stolen more than $40 million from the city's budget. $40 million. Just one bank transfer at a time. The thing is, because she controls the city's funds, she's gotten really good at covering her tracks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

352.399

Like she makes all kinds of fake invoices so that every expense looks legit. Even the secret bank account that she funnels all the money into, she names it the Reserve Sewer Capital Development Account. Which not only sounds official and boring, it sounds like it's connected to the city's sewer system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

370.622

And no one's going to second guess a bank account that holds the money to pay for the city's sewer. Until. Until it all starts to fall apart. Because Rita is around 58 years old at this point and she's still embezzling city money and she ain't slowing down anytime soon. Like here she is at a party in a white fur coat just looking rich as f**k.

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Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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So one day in 2011, Rita decides to take a little trip. She's going to be gone for a few months because she has to go compete in a bunch of these horse shows. While she's gone from work, this woman has to step in and her nickname is Swan. So that's what we'll call her. And so Rita's gone and Swan is there filling in and she's done this a million times for Rita.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

414.677

Every time Rita goes to horse shows, Swan will fill in. Now, normally when Swan needs bank records for something, she calls the bank and she tells them the account and the bank faxes over the records. But on this particular day, I guess she's too busy to be specific or something. So she calls the bank and asks for the records. And the bank's like, which account?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

43.042

And no one knows this account exists. And she starts funneling the city's money into that account. Tens of thousands of dollars at a time. And within the first year, she has stolen $181,000. Not bad. And of course, Rita's gotta take this money and spend it on some bullshit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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And Swan's like, just send all the records. Just send them all. Now the bank is supposed to send over the records for the six bank accounts the city has with them. But in fact, the bank sends over the records for seven bank accounts. So Swan is like, seven bank accounts? I thought we only had six. And she notices one of them is an account for the city's sewer system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

460.277

And she knows the city ain't got no bank account for the funds for the sewer. So she immediately knows some fraud is going on. And so she takes this info to the city's mayor. And the mayor is like, yep, looks like fraud. And so he alerts the FBI. And six months later, the feds swoop into city hall and bam, they arrest Rita. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

482.131

And so after more than 20 years, Rita had stolen over $53 million. She goes to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to 20 years in prison. But after eight years, the president commutes her sentence and she's out now. So it's crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

62.612

Like she treats herself to a shopping spree, she buys some $3,000 diamond earrings, she buys a $19,000 pontoon boat with a barbecue grill and a whole-ass bar on it. Oh, and she doesn't stop there. Over the next two years, she funnels even more of the city's money into the account. So now she's up to over $300,000 that she's taken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

84.58

And still, no one notices because she's the treasurer and comptroller. So she just keeps going. Over the next decade, she takes more and more of that money and she spends it on herself. and she buys all kinds of stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Greedy Woman Steals $53,000,000 From Her City - The Rita Crundwell story

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She buys Versace glasses, $3,000 worth of jewelry, an entire furniture set for her living room, and then two years later, she steals more and she buys herself a golf cart and a quarter horse and a $7,000 custom saddle for that horse. And a year after that, she buys a new truck and a second boat, because you know, you gotta have two boats, plus a $100,000 motor home to travel around in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

0.109

So this teenager got rich by paying homeless people to fight each other. Now, the teenager's name is Ryan, with an E. And Ryan's 13, and he's going to school in San Diego, and he has a camcorder, and he likes to film things. So one day in the 90s, he starts filming his friends skateboarding, like doing kickflips and stuff. And over time, he meets a couple of homeless guys in the area.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And they sometimes just pay these guys to beat the shit out of each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And this is where they have an actor dressed like Steve Irwin and he goes out and they will capture homeless guys and like duct tape them up. And yeah, it's some of the most disgusting behavior you could see, like filming addicts and people who are mentally unwell. I am mentally disturbed. Oh, and I'm only describing a fraction of it. There's way worse stuff than that that they filmed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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But anyway, in 2001, I think Ryan is 18 at this point, he and three of his friends, they form a production company. And they combine the footage of the homeless guy's stunts with footage they got of high school kids fighting. I guess they filmed a bunch of schoolyard fights when they were in high school. And they cut all of this footage together into a movie called Bumfights Volume 1.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And in 2002, they put it on a DVD and they start selling it online. And they're like doing the shipping and everything. And this movie blows the f*** up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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up like there are clips of it all over the internet and the controversy around it is making it go viral and soon the news is talking about it Howard Stern shouts it out on his radio show and of course all this hype is helping the DVDs sell even more it's helping sales so much that they actually sell 300,000 copies that first year at $22 a piece so do the math and that's 6.6 million dollars

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

203.228

So these teenagers profited millions off of this. Then that same year in 2002, Ryan and the three guys sell the bum fight's name and the business for $1.5 million. And they sell it to this guy, Ty. But we'll come back to Ty. Meanwhile, the district attorney's office in San Diego, they catch on to all this hype about this amateur movie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And they're watching it and they're like, oh, we can't let these guys treat homeless people this way. This is disgusting. And so they look for something to charge Ryan and his friends with. And it turns out it's actually illegal in the state of California to pay people to fight. Like you can't arrange a monetized boxing match, not without a permit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And so the DA charges Ryan and his friends with conspiracy to stage an illegal fight. And so, bam, police arrest Ryan and the others. Here's a picture of Ryan in real life. And they plead guilty and they get sentenced to three years probation and they're banned from working together for three years and they're no longer allowed to work with unhoused persons for three years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

25.064

And these two unhoused guys, they're addicts, and they're intoxicated all the time, And they're sort of known locally for their antics. And at some point, Ryan and his friends start paying these two guys to do stunts and to sometimes fight each other. And they'll film it. And they offer them a little money or sometimes they offer them just free beer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And that is when, of course, they sell the company for $1.5 million to the guy Ty and a business partner of Ty's. Now, the difference between the original owners and Ty is that Ty is kind of a wild dude. It is illegal. It's probably wrong in a lot of people's eyes. And the way I look at it is just don't get caught. Like bro doesn't give a f**k. He's loud. He's obnoxious. He's kind of a troll.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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He leans right into this controversy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And Bro seems to really love doing media and promoting bumfights. Are you abusing the homeless with this film?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And so under his ownership, he creates three more Bumfights movies. Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4. And I assume they sell moderately well. I actually couldn't find any sales data on them. But anyway, then in 2006, because these movies are still very controversial, Ty gets invited onto the Dr. Phil show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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Because I guess Dr. Phil plans on scolding him about the series of bumfights movies and how unethical they are. Which... Yeah, they actually are very unethical. However, like I said, Ty, he's kind of a troll. And when he comes on the show, he comes out dressed as Dr. Phil. And like he shaved his head to look like he's balding just like Dr. Phil.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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And then Dr. Phil watches a promo of Bumfights with his audience before they get to Ty's segment. And Dr. Phil immediately kicks Ty off the show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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Now, it goes without saying, Dr. Phil, he's kind of a turd himself. Like, he didn't just watch that footage for the first time in front of his audience. All that stuff is planned by him and his producers beforehand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

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So that means Dr. Phil and his writers watched the Bumfights footage before this taping and were like, wouldn't it be cool if we, like, brought Ty on stage and then kicked him off the show right in front of the audience? And so that's what Dr. Phil does. He kicks him off, making it look improvised, but it's definitely not. They planned it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

415.314

However, before Ty leaves the set, he drops the best truth bomb on Dr. Phil anyone has ever dropped on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

432.624

I mean, yeah, Ty is a terrible guy, but he's not wrong here. That's exactly what Dr. Phil's show does. Anyway, so then they escort Ty off the show, just like I'm sure they planned. And after that, you don't really hear much about Ty or bumfights. I guess the phenomenon kind of fizzles out over the years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

451.596

But Ryan, on the other hand, he and his three friends, they actually get sued over bump fights for $6 million. And they get sued by those two original homeless guys they used to film and one other homeless guy who was also in the movies. And they sue him and three other producers and they end up settling out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

473.506

And Ryan and the producers end up paying the three homeless guys allegedly a really large amount of money. So... Good for them, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

50.142

Um, there's some crates back there you can walk into. Yeah! And so over the next few years, Ryan and his friends collect all this crazy footage of themselves messing with these homeless guys or just paying them a few bucks to do crazy shit on camera. Now, this footage will eventually go on to be the movie Bumfights. And the stuff they film is absolutely atrocious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Story of Bumfights

76.447

Like they light one of the homeless guys on fire. They pay one homeless guy to spray paint another homeless guy while he's asleep. What do you get away from me, motherfuckers? They pay one of the guys to get the word bum fight tattooed across his knuckles. They pay another one of the guys to get the word bum fights tattooed in big letters across his forehead.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

0.069

So this guy pretends to be the son of a famous celebrity, and that somehow made Will Smith gay. Wait, let me explain. So there's this dude, his name's David, and David is 19, he's living in New York City, and one night in 1983, he and his friend are out, and they're trying to get into a club, Studio 54.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

101.109

He walks into a nice bistro and he tells the doorman that he wants a table for two because his dad, Sidney Poitier, is going to be joining him later. And kaboom, they immediately give him a table and the restaurant staff is all nice to him and they're giving him immaculate service. He's ordering all this food and they send over free drinks to the table.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

118.895

Now, obviously Sidney Poitier never shows up and the staff is like, ah, your dad's probably busy. Whatever, your meal is on the house. And so it worked again, flawlessly. And that is when David decides he's going to keep going as long as possible. Hell, he might even try and get rich off this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

136.061

But then bro has a crazy stroke of luck, because one day he's visiting a friend up at Connecticut College. And there he steals another student's address book out of his dorm room. And that student just happens to be kind of rich and has well-connected parents. So now David has the addresses and phone numbers of all these rich people. Some of them happen to live back in New York City.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

158.897

And this is when he really starts making a name for himself. He starts calling all these well-connected people and basically telling them a bullshit story about how he's Sidney Poitier's kid. And they believe him and they let him hang out. And so he gets to hang out with like Calvin Klein and Melanie Griffith and Gary Sinise. He's the guy who later played Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

179.112

Gary Sinise let him stay the night in the apartment he was living in. And sometimes David will get them to lend him money. So he's like making money off of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

189.099

and it just continues to work like he'll hit up another rich person and then another one and then another one and soon he's hit up a dozen houses out of this address book that he stole and every time they'll let him hang out or stay the night or they'll give him cash and as stupid as that sound bro is pulling it off no one really questions him and no one seems to suspect a thing

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

20.447

So they wait in line for like an hour, and when they finally get to the door, the bouncer tells them, eh, it's gonna be $50 each. And David's like, well, we ain't got $50. Because, you know, they're teenagers, they're broke, they can't pay that entry fee. And so they leave. But then, as they're leaving, David gets an idea. He's like, why don't we pretend to be celebrities, kids?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

212.645

Until... One day, all that changes. Because David is flipping through that address book when he comes across the name of this couple, Mr. and Mrs. Eisland. And Mr. Eisland is the president of a television station, so they got money. They're kind of important people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

227.771

So David cold calls them, and he tells them he's David Poitier, and that he's a friend of their daughters, and that he was just mugged, and that he really needs a place to stay the night while he waits for his famous dad to get home. And Mr. and Mrs. Islin are like, oh, you're Sidney Poitier's son? Sure, you can come stay with us.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

244.939

And so David goes over to their place and he has a nice dinner with them. He stays the night. And of course, when he's leaving the next day, he asks them to loan him some cash because, you know, he just got mugged. And they're like, sure, here's some money. Then the next day, David hits up another wealthy couple from the address book, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

264.59

And he tells them the same bullshit story that he got mugged and that he's Sidney Poitier's son and that he just needs somewhere to crash for the night while he waits for his famous father to get home. And the Elliot's are like, sure, come over. And so then David is at the Elliot's place and he eats dinner with them and they're super nice to him and they give him a guest room to sleep in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

283.981

But this is where he screws up. He asks the Elliot's to wake him up early the next morning so that he can go for a jog. But here's the thing. At some point during the night, I guess David feels like smashing. So he low-key invites a friend over, like a booty call, and sneaks that friend into the Elliot's guest bedroom to smash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

306.1

And he's openly gay, by the way, which in the 80s is a lot more taboo than it is now. Now it's really not. But regardless, the next morning, Mrs. Elliot heads over to the bedroom to wake him up. And kaboom, she catches him all snuggled up in bed with some scruffy looking dude and she's like, oh my heavens. And so the Elliotts are pissed and they're like, you're not Sidney Poitier's son.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

329.597

Who are you? Get the f**k out of our house. And so David leaves. Here's the thing, though. David doesn't realize that the Elliotts just happen to be close friends with the Islands. And Mrs. Elliot is super upset, and she wants to vent.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

344.365

So she calls her good friend, Mrs. Islin, and she tells her about how they got conned by this teenager claiming to be Sidney Poitier's son, and Mrs. Islin is like, holy sh**, we got conned by that same kid just the night before! But whatever, they shrug it off, thinking, yeah, we'll never hear from that kid ever again, probably. But then, the Elliot's phone rings. And it's David.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

365.124

And he's like all apologizing to them for lying, saying that he feels bad. And then he asks Mr. Elliot if he would meet him in Greenwich Village. I guess so he can apologize in person. Although he's probably just trying to finesse them out of money again. Anyway, so Mr. Elliot's like, sure buddy, let's meet. But after he hangs up the phone, he calls the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

386.04

Later, David shows up to Greenwich Village to meet Mr. Elliot. And police are already there, and bam, they arrest him. Here's a mugshot of him. And so he takes a plea deal, and he's ordered to pay any money back to the victims that he had conned. But lucky for him, he does avoid prison time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

403.228

But then he fails to pay his victims back and they catch him conning again, still telling people that he's Sidney Poitier's son. And so, bam, they throw his ass in prison for about two years. Here's the crazy part, though. The Elliotts actually end up being friends with this playwright. And the playwright loves this story and he offers to turn it into a play. And so he does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

42.659

Then they'll have to let us in. And then he's like, you pretend to be Gregory Peck's son and I'll pretend to be Sidney Poitier's son. And his friend hears this crazy idea and he's like... All right. Now, if you don't know, Sidney Poitier is an actor, and this is 1983, so he's super famous at this time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

425.641

And the play actually becomes a big hit. Who knows Sidney Poitier? So we can just call him up and ask him. Then, in 1990, they turned that play into a movie called Six Degrees of Separation, starring Will Smith. And Will Smith plays a character based on David, who is openly gay, just like David. Hey, Paul, come on, stop that. I was wondering if I could f*** you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

450.106

And so there's like this whole kissing scene that Will Smith has to participate in. And you know, here it is, it's whatever. Now, this was apparently Will Smith's first breakthrough movie role. And allegedly this role started this rumor that Will is secretly gay or bisexual. And search it up. That rumor still persists to this day, 35 years later.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

472.273

People are still like, oh, I heard Will Smith is secretly gay. Which, by the way, there's not any credible evidence to suggest that he is, nor do I really care. It's just, you know, an interesting story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

60.995

He's the first black actor to win the Oscar for best actor, so his name carries a lot of weight during this period. And so David and his friend, they get back in line, and it takes like an hour and a half for them to get to the door again, and somehow the bouncer doesn't recognize them. And David tells them that they're the sons of these famous actors.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made Will Smith Gay? - The David Hampton story

79.22

And just like that, boom, the bouncer ushers them into the club. And let me tell you, this club is popping. So everyone is looking good and there are celebrities and famous people everywhere. This is the kind of life David has always wanted. And immediately he's like, well, I got to keep doing this. And that's what he does. Because three days later, he tries again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

0.169

So this King of Tigers is about to be eaten by his own cat. No, not this King of Tigers. This King of Tigers. His name's Roy. And Roy's story starts a long time ago when he's 12. And the poor little guy, he's growing up in a really chaotic household with an alcoholic father. And unfortunately, he's neglected and he never feels a sense of family with his parents.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

113.419

Anyway, so the two of them, they put this act together for the passengers on the cruise ship doing magic shows that now involve this cheetah. And this act is blowing everyone away. They're so impressed with this magic exotic cat. And thus, the famous duo, Siegfried and Roy, is born. And now eventually, they decide to take this show on the road.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

135.103

And they do some shows locally, and then they tour places in Europe, and they start to find some success. And over time, their act keeps growing, and they keep adding more and more big cats as the show gets more and more popular. And 20 years go by, and it's now 1989. And by this point, Siegfried and Roy have started doing shows at venues in Las Vegas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

157.59

And these Vegas shows have gotten so popular, the owner of a bunch of local hotel casinos offers them a $57 million contract to perform at his brand new hotel, The Mirage. And so they get a huge budget and they're finally putting on this big budget production and boom, it's a massive hit. And Siegfried and Roy become icons. Everyone around this time has heard of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

182.165

Even people who've never been to Vegas had heard of them. And suddenly, during this time, they're the highest paid entertainers in Las Vegas history. So what do they do with this crazy amount of money they now have? Well, first, they build a big-ass dream home where they live with over 50 of their exotic animals. Lions, jaguars, panthers, a freaking elephant, and over 30 tigers. 30 tigers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

209.246

And of course, at this point, Chico unfortunately is no longer with them because, you know, cheetahs don't live nearly as long as we do. But clearly, Roy is still into big cats. And here is some footage of him riding a tiger in his backyard. And he swims with them in his lake-sized swimming pool. And he gives them their own air-conditioned rooms to live in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

229.331

Roy even sleeps with a big cat in his bed every night. Bro is living the dream. Like here he is with millions of dollars hanging around with huge exotic cats who would never in a million years want to hurt him. Until... Here's the thing about tigers specifically.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

24.443

But one day all that changes when Roy goes to the local zoo and there he meets this cheetah named Chico and Roy loves Chico. He's never seen a cat like that before and he feels like they have a special connection. And eventually he even gets a side job at that zoo so that he can help care for Chico. Then at some point he ends up becoming Chico's owner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

255.063

However, at the end of the day, they're still 500-pound apex predators. And on a normal day, they typically attack and kill their prey with a single bite of the neck, which severs the prey's arteries, and then the tiger carries them off to eat them for dinner. So like, we're easy prey for them. Just keep that in mind. So anyway, one night, gets real for Roy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

278.244

Cause it's 2003 and he's 59 years old at this point. And he and Siegfried are still selling out shows in Vegas, still making millions of dollars a year. But on this night, they're performing with this guy, Montecore. And Montecore, he's a white tiger. He's one of the many big cats who lives in Roy's house with him. He's also seven feet tall and 400 pounds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

299.339

And so they start this show that night, and just like every night, 1,500 people in the audience are watching. And Roy, he walks out on stage, and he's with Montecore. This is Montecore, and tonight is his first appearance in front of the audience. He says it's Montecore's first time on stage, but it's not. That's just something they always tell the audience. It's like part of the show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

319.526

Anyway, then Roy puts a microphone up to Montecore's mouth so the audience can hear him growl. Now, for some reason, tonight, Montecore is a bit irritable. And about a beat later, when Roy reaches down again, Montecore snaps and he nips at Roy's hand. And Roy says, no, no, no. And he taps him on the head with the soft tip of the microphone. But then Roy backs away a little. But then, pow!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

348.466

Montecourt leaps at him, knocking him to the floor, and snap, he sinks his huge teeth into Roy's neck, slicing his vertebrae and severing an artery that cuts off blood to his brain, and Roy suffers a massive stroke on stage. And keep in mind, there's 1,500 people in the audience watching this like, uh, is this part of the show?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

367.645

But then, just like tigers do to their prey in the wild, Montecore drags Roy off stage by the neck. And so all the people there are horrified and the stage is covered in blood. And one of the stage hands yells, cat loose! And all the cast members start to panic and the cat handlers leap into action and they run to save Roy's life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

385.45

And it takes four grown men to get Montecore to finally let go of him. Then, minutes later, Roy's in the back of an ambulance being rushed to the hospital. And at this point, he's barely conscious. But he loves big cats, and he still loves Montecore, and he knows they'll want to put him down for this attack.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

405.296

So he decides to use whatever strength he has left to try and save him, the same way Chico had saved him all those years ago by being his only family. And so Roy looks at everyone and he says, Montecore's a great cat. Make sure no harm comes to Montecore. Then he passes out. Now, miraculously, Roy survives. However, he suffered three strokes, and he ends up with half his body paralyzed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

433.389

And from there, his entire life's work is over. And the Siegfried and Roy show closes for good. And the duo never does their full Las Vegas show again. Until about six years later, in 2009. It's at this point that after many years of rehabilitation and physical therapy, Roy musters up the strength for a charity benefit, and he and Siegfried do one final show together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

461.092

And Montecore is there to perform as well, as Roy never allowed him to be put down. He saved him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

48.358

He allegedly straight up stole him from the zoo, I guess. Regardless, he now owns Chico. And because Roy has always been neglected by his parents, Chico becomes the family he's never had. So I guess you could say that Chico saved Roy by just being there for him. And this is an actual picture of the two of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

68.331

now not too long after this roy is around 13 years old he runs away from home and he gets a job as a bellhop on a cruise ship and that is when he meets this guy sigfried and sigfried's around 18 years old and he works on the ship as an entertainer as a magician and so he and roy they're both teenagers and they become friends

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Was Eaten By His Own Pet Tiger On Stage - The Siegfried & Roy story

89.133

However, Roy isn't really all that impressed with Siegfried's magic tricks. He's like, cool, you can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but why not a cheetah? And Siegfried's like, where the am I going to get a cheetah? And Roy's like, say less. And so Roy takes him to his cabin, and there, inside, he's been low-key hiding a whole ass cheetah the whole time. Roy had apparently snuck him on board.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

0.169

One day, the city's mayor gets a message from a whistleblower alerting him to a problem that needs to be dealt with. And this whistleblower tells him that in the city's police department, a female officer is hooking up with all of the other cops, sometimes while on duty. So this story starts with this woman. Megan. Now Megan wants to be a police officer real bad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

102.462

But Megan doesn't smash with him. Instead, she starts hooking up with a bunch of other officers on the force. Now, I'm not entirely sure about this timeline because as far as I know, this timeline has never been publicly released.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

114.408

But at some point, she goes with her fellow officers to like one of those putt-putt go-kart places and they all get wasted and Megan goes back to the hotel with an officer, this guy Juan Lugo Perez, and they smash. Then she goes and hooks up with this guy, Sergeant Shields, in the police gym. Then she starts sexting with this other officer, Officer Showborough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

133.216

Then she goes and smashes with this canine officer, Officer Larry. And who knows? She probably smashes with the dog too. I don't know. But the whole time, I'm sure Sergeant Ty still probably like, yo, Megan, if you ever want to smash again, I'm still down. But she still doesn't go back to Sergeant Ty because clearly she's getting D elsewhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

151.64

But then one night, some officers throw a hot tub party and Megan goes there and she gets wasted and she dances around topless while other officers pour shots into her mouth. And afterwards, she smashes with her coworker, this guy, Maglio Co, in the bathroom. So to sum it all up, she's basically been doing a lot of this and apparently also a lot of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

171.624

Oh, and did I forget to mention she's married? Regardless, at this point, Megan is now romantically hooked up with seven officers in her police station. Until... Sergeant Ty, who had allegedly been wanting to smash with Megan again, but only got to hit it twice, it seems like he starts getting jealous. Jealous that she's hooking up with the entirety of the police force, but not him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

197.346

What does he do? He allegedly crowns himself whistleblower and he goes to the mayor and he reports all of this. He tells him that in the city police department, a female officer is hooking up with all the other cops, sometimes on duty. But what Sergeant Ty doesn't tell him is that he had been smashing with Megan too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

21.88

So she goes through the academy and through all the training. And then one day before she officially becomes a cop, she decides to start smashing with one of her superiors. This guy, Sergeant Ty. So Sergeant Ty and Megan, they hit it off and they smash at least two different times. And allegedly, Sergeant Ty, he ends up liking Megan a lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

217.156

So of course, immediately the city starts an investigation and they interview everyone at the department and they look into it and they discover it's all true. And then bam, they fire Megan. And then bam, they fire or suspend most of the officers who smashed with her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

232.139

And then bam, they also fire the police chief because he knew about all the smashing and never took action against it and never reported it to HR. Furthermore, once they figure out that he was smashing with Megan too, bam, they also fire Sergeant Ty. So in total, five officers are fired and three are suspended without pay. Oh, but it's not over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

255.45

Cause then this story hits the news and it goes crazy viral and it's all over the internet and people are talking about it and the memes that come out of it are just ridiculous. Like when you hear the song the police and you take it literally, And so overnight, the entire internet is just clowning Megan for getting passed around the whole police department. And Megan, she's very upset.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

278.482

I mean, she doesn't know what to do. So she gets her together and she decides to fight back. So she goes and she gets an attorney and she files a lawsuit against not only her three superior officers, but against the city. Now, it's really easy for us to sit here and be like, oh, she mad because she got ran through.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

297.028

But remember, from a legal standpoint, her supervisor told her that if she slept with him, he would help her career. He also allegedly filmed her intimate activity without her consent and passed that footage and photos on to other officers on the force. including the chief of police, without her consent. So Megan sues them and she's got a strong case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

319.162

And then after about a year, the city board, they've heard all the arguments and they've seen all the evidence and they take a vote and they vote almost unanimously to settle the lawsuit with Megan. And they end up paying her half a million dollars to drop the suit. So we all laughed at her and made jokes. But at the end of the day, she won.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

340.433

She got all the money she wanted and apparently all the D she wanted. And last I read, Megan and her husband, they're still married and they're still trying to work through everything. Good luck with all that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

41.027

And so he lets her know, like, hey, if you ever want to smash again, I'm down. But Megan, she has already moved on from Sergeant Ty because she officially graduates. She becomes a police officer. And then she catches the eye of this guy who we'll just call Supervisor because he's her supervisor. Now, Supervisor, he lets her know if she starts smashing with him, he can really help her career.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

62.113

So then of course, Megan starts smashing with him. And then allegedly supervisor ends up liking Megan a lot. And their situationship goes on for months. And eventually they start smashing, not just on their free time, but while they're at work on duty. And they're trading dirty messages and spicy photos. And a couple of times when they hook up, he records her without telling her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Slept With The Whole Police Department- The Maegan Hall story

81.887

And she catches him and she's like, hey, delete that footage. And Supervisor's like, all right, fine. But he doesn't delete the footage. Instead, he passes those intimate photos and videos over to his other officer friends, including Sergeant Ty and the police chief himself. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ty's still over here like, yo, Megan, if you ever want to smash again, I'm down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

0.109

So one day this guy's at work and we'll just call him Digit. And Digit is operating a mechanical truck lift when suddenly his glove gets caught in the lift and he pulls and he struggles to pull it out. And that is when the machine comes down and slices his finger clean off. All right, but we'll get back to him. This story doesn't actually start with Digit. It starts with this woman, Ayala.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

117.964

Meanwhile, Wendy's is still trying to get to the bottom of this. They hire a forensics expert to test whether or not the finger was cooked with the chili or if it was added after the fact. And they determine it was added after the fact. They also find that there's actually no trace of Ayala's saliva on the finger, meaning she never bit into it. She lied.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

137.154

So Wendy's has all this information and they're like, this has gotta be a hoax. So they contact the police with this new evidence. And then finally police get involved and they start investigating. And to assist this investigation, Wendy's sets up a free hotline and offers a $50,000 reward for any information leading to the actual owner of the finger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

156.004

And sure enough, people start calling in, giving them information. And within a week, they get over 300 calls with people making all kinds of wild claims. But one of those callers claims that they had done business with Ayala before and that she was involved in some kind of real estate fraud years ago. So police hear this and they really start digging into Ayala's past.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

176.678

Now, during all this, Ayala is still out there doing the media interviews, just enjoying the publicity, soaking up the attention. But slowly, after a honeymoon period in the spotlight, rumors about her start to surface, like that all the evidence isn't really lining up with her story and that she has a history of filing lawsuits against big companies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

197.326

In fact, it comes out that she had filed 13 different lawsuits in the past. against Goodyear Tires and El Pollo Loco and against General Motors. And then little by little, the media starts to turn on her, questioning her story. And this gets stressful for Ayala because almost two weeks later, bam, she suddenly drops her lawsuit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

216.576

saying the pressure of being in the public spotlight is just too much for her. And she immediately stops doing all these interviews. But by this time, Wendy's has had so much bad press from this and sales are starting to slip and they're losing revenue because people think there's going to be fingers in their food.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

22.463

And one night Ayala is eating at Wendy's and she's eating chili and she takes a bite and she suddenly bites down onto something crunchy and she spits it out and she looks at it and it appears to be a human finger. And Ayala freaks the hell out. She starts yelling and telling everyone in the restaurant to stop eating because the food is contaminated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

233.766

In fact, at this point, Wendy claims they're losing over a million dollars a day from this scandal. So Wendy's is like, no, we're getting to the bottom of this. We need to clear our name. Then, around that time, out of nowhere, boom, police arrest Ayala. But not for the finger chili hoax. It's for the real estate fraud that police were tipped off about on the Wendy's hotline.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

257.297

And police also arrest Ayala's husband, this guy, Jamie. Because during that same investigation, they discovered that Jamie owed over $400,000 in back child support. Damn. And of course, Wendy's is super happy about this. But they still need to figure out whose finger was in the chili so that they can clear their name and so that people will start eating at Wendy's again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

281.171

So they go and they increase that $50,000 reward to $100,000. And that is where someone finally calls in with a lead. This guy, Mike. Now Mike owns an asphalt business and one day he calls into the hotline and tells them a story about how a while back one of his employees had lost a finger. It had gotten caught in a truck lift and it was severed off. That employee is Digit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

306.869

And about a month after he lost his finger, Digit brought that severed finger to work. to show it off to the other employees. Like, hey, look at my finger. And one of the other employees who worked there at the time was Jamie, Ayala's husband. So Jamie offers to buy Digit's severed finger from him for like $100. I'm not making that up. And Digit agrees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

328.699

And then Jamie and Ayala, of course, then use this finger to pull off the Wendy's finger chili scam. So police don't have to arrest Jamie and Ayala because they'd already been arrested, but here's her mugshot and here's his.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

340.605

And they charge them with felony attempted grand larceny and she ends up pleading guilty and she gets sentenced to nine years in prison while Jamie must have been the mastermind because he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. And they're both ordered to pay $21.2 million in restitution to Wendy's. And the harshest punishment they got? Both of them are banned from Wendy's for life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

362.824

Wendy doesn't f*** around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

42.494

And she's screaming at the staff and accusing them of tampering with the food. And the store, it immediately shuts down. And they discard the chili, but they save the finger. They actually put it in the freezer. And then they call the police, and the police come investigate. But they're like, this is more of a health code violation. This isn't really police jurisdiction.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

59.062

But then three hours later, the story has already hit the local news. And then the news starts to spread. And then the next day, corporate representatives show up to the restaurant. Now, I don't know what Wendy's corporate representatives look like, so I'm just going to represent them like this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

74.918

So Wendy's corporate, they show up to the restaurant investigating because this is a PR nightmare for them. And they're immediately trying to figure out if what Ayala bit into is an actual human finger. It is. And they're trying to figure out whose finger it is. So they interview all the employees at the store. They contact suppliers at the factories. But none of them are missing a finger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Wendy's Finger Chili Scandal - The Anna Ayala story

95.147

And within a week of this happening, Wendy's worst nightmare occurs. This story starts to blow up. It's all over the news. Late night talk show hosts are making jokes about it. Ayala gets invited onto Good Morning America to talk about what happened. And she eventually goes and she gets a lawyer and she files a lawsuit against Wendy's because she's about to catch a big paycheck from this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

0.129

So this politician ruins his career by smashing with a hooker, but then he makes the most insane comeback I've ever seen. Now his name is Gerald and Gerald wants nothing more than to make an impact on this world. So he gets into politics and at 26 years old, he runs for Congress. But unfortunately, he loses that election. Oh, but Gerald's not going to give up yet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

109.764

Now, lucky for him, he doesn't face any charges, but it does seem like that's the end of his political career and he's never going to make an impact on this world. Until Gerald is not ready to give up yet. He set out to make an impact on this world, and damn it, that's what he's gonna do. So a few years later, despite his scandal, he says, fuck it, I wanna get back into politics.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

132.603

And he runs for city council again. And to everyone's surprise, boom, he gets elected again. Not only that, he wins by a landslide. And shortly after that, he gets chosen by the city council to be the mayor of Cincinnati. Oh, but he's not done yet. Four years later, he runs for governor of Ohio.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

152.234

And he still has these skeletons in his closet from the whole prostitution scandal, but he still runs a pretty good campaign where he owns up to his past mistakes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

166.621

But when all is said and done, unfortunately, Ohio doesn't seem to be ready for a guy like Gerald, because he loses that election. So now he doesn't know what he's going to do. He's bummed out. His political career is pretty much over. How in the hell is he gonna make an impact on the world now?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

183.349

So while he's trying to figure things out, Gerald gets a job as a local news anchor and political commentator. And it turns out, he's actually pretty good at that. He's good on TV. In fact, he's so good on TV, the network ends up giving him his own TV show called The Jerry Springer Show. Now the show is actually kind of a hard-hitting news show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

203.103

It's a place for Jerry to discuss important issues like homelessness and the AIDS crisis, Stuff like that. But then, as time goes on, the news angle starts to fade away in favor of drama from the guests. And that is when the episodes start getting crazier.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

225.786

And crazier. My sister is dating my father. And crazier. I did this for you. I feel really stupid. And I still love that you do that for me. I'm an alligator. And the network is like freaking out. They're like, yes, we want more of that crazy, please. So the Jerry Springer show evolves into this massive hit and it becomes what hundreds of millions of people know it and love it to be.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

25.89

He's determined to be a political success. So a year later, he tries again, and he runs for city council. And this time, he wins. He finally gets his foot in the door. And once he's elected, everyone just loves Gerald because he works really hard to be a man of the people. Like he goes out and he works a day with a garbage collection crew and he spends a night with prisoners in jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

250.786

And it runs for 27 successful seasons and Gerald becomes an icon of TV talk shows. So I guess you could say he made an impact on the world.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

48.406

He's trying to get everyone's perspective to take back with him to city council. He's that kind of guy. So he's really popular. But then Gerald screws it all up when one day he decides to visit a health club. Here's the thing about this particular health club. This health club is actually known as a place where guys go to meet hookers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

71.07

So while Gerald's there visiting this place, he pays for intercourse. Twice. And when he does, for some dumb reason, both times he pays with a personal check. And of course, on those checks, he had signed his actual name. And eventually, predictably, the health club gets busted by police for running a prostitution ring.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Comeback of Jerry Springer

91.371

And during that investigation, of course, they find the checks with Gerald's name right on them. And poor Gerald, he's embarrassed and he's ashamed. And then, boom, he's forced to step down from the city council position he worked so hard for. I believe it in the best interest of this community that I resign.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

0.109

So this couple, they live in the jungle right near the beach. And one day, they see a strange man crawling through the sand. And he's naked, and he can barely stand, and he's clutching a knife, and he's shouting something incoherently in a language they don't understand. So the guy's name is Salvador, and he works as a deep sea fisherman, catching tuna and sharks and stuff off the coast of Mexico.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

113.176

And then the two-way radio dies. And by this point, Salvador and Pinata have been bailing water out of the boat for hours. And the engine still won't start. And Salvador gets frustrated and he's pissed off and he just loses it. He picks up the fish killing club and he just smashes the boat's engine. And he grabs the dead GPS and the dead two-way radio and he just chucks them into the water.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

137.015

Then, as night comes and the temperature drops, The two men, they have to huddle under an upside down cooler for warmth and shelter. Meanwhile, back on land, a search party is formed to go out and look for the two. But unfortunately, the storm is still very active and visibility is still very low. And after about two days of no results, the search is called off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

159.632

And five more days go by before the storm finally stops. And when it does, Salvador and Pinata, they finally get their bearings and they look around and they realize they have no idea where they are. And to make it worse, they're starving and there's nothing to eat on board and there's nothing to drink on board. So with Salvador's equipment gone, he's gotta get creative.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

180.383

So he spends a bit of time and he figures out how to catch things in the ocean using only his bare hands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

186.246

fish and turtles and jellyfish and they start eating that raw because that's all they have and to drink turtle blood and their own urine because again that's all they have and then one day they get lucky and a seabird lands on the boat so salvador he quickly grabs it and he unalives it and then they get to survive eating that for a few weeks and then it finally rains so they get to collect rain water and they start drinking that

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

21.986

It's a dangerous job, but he's into it. And one day, he decides to go on a two-day fishing trip. And his normal fishing partner can't make it, and he needs someone to go with. So this young, inexperienced guy volunteers. This guy, Pinata. So Salvador and Pinata, they get in the boat, and they head out to the Pacific. And for about two days, they fish.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

211.471

And so for two months, they live like this, eating raw animals and catching rainwater when they can. But as time stretches on, something comes over Pinata. He's not acting the same anymore, and he starts to get depressed. And as he's losing all hope, he slowly starts to refuse any food. He just simply can't bring himself to eat any more raw animals.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

235.6

And eventually he just stops eating entirely and he grows really sick. And Salvador and Pinata, they start to feel like he isn't gonna make it. So they make a pact. If Salvador makes it out alive, he'll contact Pinata's mother and deliver her a message, a message that's only meant for her. I don't know exactly what that message is because again, it's only meant for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

256.868

So Salvador, he agrees to this. And then, one rainy morning, after they've been lost at sea for over four months, Pinata, he finally passes away from starvation. And Salvador, he is devastated. That was the only person around. I mean, they had grown really close during this whole traumatic experience.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

275.774

And Salvador, he's immediately so lonely that he keeps holding conversations with Pinata's body, even after he's dead. And after six days of this, he realizes it's not mentally healthy to keep talking to a corpse, pretending it's alive. So he pushes Pinata's body back into the ocean, and he goes on living his life on that boat, lost at sea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

298.564

And ten more months go by, and Salvador is still out there, living day to day, catching fish with his bare hands, and drinking rainwater, and having conversations with birds. But then, one day, Salvador starts to see a different kind of bird. Not the sea birds he's used to seeing. No, these are land birds. And through the distance, he can suddenly see kind of a mountaintop.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

322.238

And that mountaintop ends up being attached to an island. Maybe there is hope. Maybe he can deliver that message to Pinata's mother like he asked him to. Now, this island is about an hour away, and Salvador directs his boat toward it. And when he's close enough, he dives into the ocean, and he swims for the shore. And then he gets there, and he's too weak to walk, and he's naked.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

341.483

And he had brought a knife with him just in case. And he slowly crawls up the beach into the jungle, and that's where he spots a house. And the owners of that house, a couple, they see him crawling around naked with a knife, shouting in Spanish. And they're like, who the is this guy? But that couple does end up helping him get to the hospital. So what is this island Salvador finally landed on?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

363.51

Well, after being lost at sea for 438 days, Salvador had drifted over 6,000 miles, all the way from Costa Azul, Mexico to Iban in the Marshall Islands. About a month later, after he's rescued, he finally gets a chance to travel to L-14 in Mexico. There, he visits Pinata's mother and he's able to deliver Pinata's final message to her. Then he gets a book deal because his story is just incredible.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

392.725

And afterwards, Pinata's family sues him for a million dollars, wanting half the proceeds from any of his book sales. So that's fun. I don't know if the lawsuit actually went through, but that's the last reporting anyone did on any of them. So good luck with all that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

40.916

And they catch about 1,100 pounds, enough fish to sell back home for about a week's worth of money. And so everything is going great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

48.764

until they're finally done fishing and they turn their boat around to go back home and then out of nowhere kabam a massive storm hits and the boat starts to fill up with water and pinata panics and he's using a bucket to get the water out of the boat as salvador tries to steer through the massive waves And finally, luckily, after a while, the storm starts to die down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

70.59

And Salvador, he can see land. They're about two hours away from the shore. And that is when, boom, the boat's engine starts sputtering and it dies. So Salvador pulls out his two-way radio and he calls his boss and he's like, help, my engine is dead. And the boss asks for his location, but their GPS has stopped working. And then, to make it worse, the storm starts building up again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Lost At Sea For 438 Days - The Salvador Alvarenga story

92.771

And it's getting stronger and stronger and it's tossing the boat around. Sometimes the waves are raising them up three stories high before the boat drops. And Salvador realizes that the 1,100 pounds of fish they caught is making the boat unstable. So they just dump it all out. And they just keep throwing anything not useful overboard to lighten the load. Like extra ice and extra fuel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

0.229

One day, this guy gets a phone call, and it's a producer from a daytime talk show. And the producer says, hey, we're doing a show about secret crushes, and someone in your social circle has a secret crush on you. And we want you to come onto our TV show, and we'll reveal to you who it is. Now the guy, his name's Jonathan, and Jonathan can't figure out who this crush might be.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

100.724

Potentially, at some point during that night, Jonathan and Scott, they've had a lot of drinks, and they allegedly start flirting. And this flirting evolves into a slow dance and eventually a kiss. Allegedly. And I'll talk more about this later. But three days after that night, Jonathan arrives home one morning from a different friend's house. And he finds a note on his front door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

125.305

A sexually suggestive note. It says, John, if you want it off, you'll have to ask me. It's basically suggesting they smash. And it's obviously from Scott. And for some reason, this is the moment where Jonathan just snaps. He fills up with rage. How could his friend embarrass him at the taping like that? In front of that whole TV studio audience.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

147.422

Now they're all going to think he's gay and what are his parents going to think? He can't have that. He's not going to let that slide. So he drives to a local bank and he withdraws some money from his savings. And then he goes to a store and he buys a pew-pew. Then he drives to Scott's trailer and he gets there and he confronts him about the note. And Scott, he doesn't think much of it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

167.035

He apparently just smiles back at him. I mean, they're friends. He doesn't feel threatened. So then Jonathan leaves the trailer and he goes back to his car and he gets his pew-pew. And he goes back inside and he confronts Scott again, but this time with the weapon. And he points it at him and Scott screams and Jonathan pulls the trigger twice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

186.845

And then he leaves and he goes to a nearby gas station and he calls 911 on himself. And he confesses that he just unalived his friend. So police arrest Jonathan, here's his mugshot, they charge him with murder, and they throw him in jail until his trial starts. Meanwhile, this story makes the news, and it blows up, making national headlines.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

206.515

And people start to look at this situation and go, okay, Jonathan is definitely responsible for this murder, but maybe The Jenny Jones Show might be partly responsible for this too. since they're the ones who ambushed Jonathan at the taping with this information that his gay friend has a crush on him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

22.413

I mean, he had just broken up with his longtime fiance six months ago. So he's thinking maybe it's her, and maybe she wants to get back together. And so he decides, yeah, if it is her, I'll get back with her. I'm going to marry her. So boom, they fly him out to Chicago. They put him in a hotel. And the next day he goes to the studio to appear on the show. It's the Jenny Jones show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

224.864

And this sparks this whole national debate about whether or not it's okay for talk shows to humiliate people like that, even though Jonathan didn't seem all that humiliated when he was on camera. Regardless, five months later, bam, Scott's family files a lawsuit against The Jenny Jones Show. for $75 million, claiming that the show is responsible for Scott's death.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

250.675

Now, it's actually at this trial that witnesses allege that Jonathan and Scott had gotten romantic that night after they had flown back home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

264.787

But that part of the story has never actually been confirmed. I guess only Jonathan and Scott know the truth about that. Now, despite what caused him to do it, Jonathan eventually goes to trial, twice. And he's ultimately found guilty of second-degree murder, and he's sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison. And he does 22 of those years, and he's out now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

283.538

While The Jenny Jones Show is found liable for Scott's death, and a judge instructs the show to pay Scott's family $29 million. But then later, the Jenny Jones Show appeals, and the original decision is overturned, and they're found not liable. So ultimately, they don't have to pay anything. Shout out to Michigan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

42.67

And so they're taping and he's there backstage waiting. And then kapow, they call him out. And he walks out on stage and he sees not his ex-fiancee, but rather two of his close friends sitting there, Scott and Donna. And that is the moment where Jenny Jones drops an absolute bomb on Jonathan. Well, guess what? It's Scott that has the crush on you. You lied to me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

68.14

It's actually his friend Scott who has the crush on him. And Jonathan seems to take it pretty well. You know, he's laughing it off. Well, you know, it's flattering, but... It's flattering, but you're not interested. There's no way. So the taping ends, and Jonathan and his two friends, they fly back home together. And it's all good. They party a little on the plane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

A TV Show Made Him Kill His Gay Friend - The Scott Amedure story

85.031

He gives them a ride home from the airport. And later that night, they all go out for drinks at a local bar. They drink, they chat, they have a good time. And then at 2 a.m., they go back to Jonathan and Donna's respective apartments, which are in the same building. Now, here's where the story gets dicey.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

0.129

So this Instagram model is in big trouble because she's about to start a cult. Now her name is Cat and Cat is from Brazil and she's a model and she's doing pretty well for herself. She models in several different countries, she's in some magazines, I mean things are taking off for her. So, after a few years of this, she moves somewhere she can really make it big, the United States.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

115.993

Like she charges some kind of subscription service where she promises to show you how to gain wealth, how to attract the man of your dreams, and other spiritual life coach shit like that. And like we laugh at this stuff because it's an obvious grift, but a lot of her followers are really into this and some of them start to believe she has like some sort of magical powers or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

137.67

Then in 2019, things start to shift and get really crazy because one of her followers, this woman, Anna, anna starts reading cat's autobiography and she gets really into cat and her teachings and she's like i want to be closer to this woman and eventually she moves from massachusetts to new york city to live with cat in her apartment and work as her live-in assistant

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

162.381

However, when Anna gets there to the apartment, she is shocked. I mean this place isn't anything how Kat made it look on Instagram. Like the whole place smells and it's extremely dirty. Like Kat's a hoarder or something and like this place hadn't been cleaned in months. Like she's living in filth. Not only that, Kat is extremely controlling and treats her like trash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

183.163

Like, Anna has to be available to work 24-7, and Kat only allows her to sleep a few hours a night? And when she is allowed to sleep, she has to sleep on this couch that's apparently covered in house cat urine? Not to mention, Kat tells Anna that she'll pay her for her work, but then she doesn't. And this goes on for about three months.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

203.215

And finally, Anna's like, screw this, and she leaves, and she moves in with, like, a new boyfriend. And that sucks for Kat. However, it is at this point Kat realizes that she has a lot of power over her followers. So she's going to get more of them to live with her and she's going to treat them even worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

223.625

And in 2022, she moves from New York down to Austin, Texas, where she ends up living in a decent sized place. I think it's like five bedrooms. And there she starts trying to recruit women from her online following. Like she tries to recruit them as helpers who would come live with her in this house. So she reaches out to some of them and she asks them to move in with her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

23.878

And she eventually ends up in New York City. And here, she decides she's gonna become an influencer. The crazy thing is, works because soon enough she has over a million followers mostly because of her modeling stuff because you know people on instagram like to follow models but then she parlays that into giving advice like spiritual advice and like life coaching

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

245.1

And she promises that she's going to like be their spiritual guide and help them achieve their dreams or whatever. And most of her followers are like, live with you. Nah, I'm good. That's weird. But surprisingly... three women eventually say yes. I mean, one of them's not actually a woman because she's a teenager, but three of them say yes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

264.117

And so two of them upend their lives and they move from Brazil all the way up to Austin, Texas to live with and work for Kat. And then another one moves from Germany to Texas to live with and work for Kat. And this is where it starts to turn into like a weird little cult. Because Kat starts putting these women to work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

283.794

Like one of them, she brings her into her room with some tarot cards and some crystals and she performs her witchcraft or whatever. And she tells the follower, you must become an adult dancer. Like that's what the spirits are telling me. That you need to be a stripper.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

299.745

And so this follower listens to her and she goes and gets a job at the local strip club like dancing every night, putting in some serious hours. And Kat starts collecting and holding on to the money that this follower is making because she says the follower owes her for room and board and her flight to the U.S. And to make it worse, Kat starts placing very strict rules on these three followers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

322.986

Like she forbids them from communicating with one another. They're not allowed to leave their rooms without asking permission first. Even to go to the bathroom, they have to ask permission. And if they don't follow these rules, Kat threatens to kick them out in a country where they don't know anyone. However, I think pretty early on, one of the followers is like, all this, I'm out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

346.226

And she escapes and she leaves the house. But the other two either can't or don't want to escape and things get much worse for them because Kat starts controlling everything they do. Like she makes them block all of their old contacts in their phones so that there's no outside people trying to contact them. At one point, she decides that working as adult dancers isn't enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

369.408

And soon she starts pressuring these two followers into becoming escorts. And like Kat sets up profiles for them on escort sites and sugar baby websites. And these women start escorting. She even gives them like an earning quota. Like they have to earn a certain amount of money a day or they're not allowed back in the house and they have to sleep on the street.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

391.315

And of course Kat collects all the money that they earn because she's like their pimp I guess. And so this becomes the weirdest little cult I've ever seen and I don't quite understand it but it seems like these women are somehow trapped in all this. Until. Here's the thing about these two followers. They still have family and friends back in Brazil.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

415.481

Family and friends who are worried and wondering where the hell they're at and what they've been doing all these years they've been gone. And so eventually in 2022, they go and they report these two women as officially missing. And they like launch social media campaigns to try and find them. And the story of these two missing women blows up in Brazil and it makes the news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

437.671

Meanwhile, in the United States, Anna, Kat's old live-in assistant, she starts reading these news stories online. And she knows these women are devoted followers of Kat because it's like a small community, I guess. And so she contacts the FBI. So then the FBI starts investigating and they find the two women's profiles on the Escort and Sugar Baby websites.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

463.272

And so now they're starting to think that there's like this whole human trafficking situation going on. And so the feds tip off local police and local police talk Kat and the other two women into coming into the police station and answering a few questions. And while they're there, bam, they arrest Kat. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

48.007

And she starts making all this spiritual life coaching content and making all kinds of wild claims. Like she says she's spiritually gifted and that she's some kind of witch who can like put curses on people. And that she has spiritual powers that can allow her to predict the future. That she's guided by divine voices that only she can hear. She writes an autobiography about her life at

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

482.587

And they deport her back to Brazil and they charge her with human trafficking and slavery. I didn't even know you could be charged with that. But anyway, she goes to trial and she's found guilty and she's sentenced to eight years in prison. Wow, that's crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

72.992

25 years old? Like she's all important? But whatever, there must be a demand for it because she publishes it and I guess her followers buy it. And like here she is on a Brazilian TV show promoting it. Not only that, she's getting so popular she allegedly starts dating Leonardo DiCaprio. Here's a picture of them together, there's Kat, and I guess that's Leonardo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Instagram Model Starts a Cult - The Kat Torres story

94.198

Now I don't know if they actually dated, that's just what the tabloid said. And that's great and all. However, because she's having all this very public success and she talks all this shit about herself being spiritually gifted, a lot of her followers listen to everything she says. And so she starts a website and she starts charging people to help coach them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

0.089

Have I ever told a joke about someone and later felt bad about it? Well, yeah, all the time actually. So this is Manti, and Manti is 20 years old during this time, living in Indiana, and he's a college football star who everyone knows is going to eventually be in the NFL. But one day in 2011, Manti does something that's going to change his life forever. He responds to a friend's post on Facebook.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

121.431

And poor Manti, he doesn't know what to do. I mean, he has a big football game that night. Plus, his grandmother just passed away too, so that is also weighing on him. And right before the game, he breaks down in the locker room. I mean, this girl was really important to him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

138.311

And then Lene's sister tells Manti that before she died, Lene had preemptively written him a letter for every football game for the rest of the season. And in one of the letters, she says, babe, if anything happens to me, you promise that you'll stay there and you'll play and you'll honor me through the way you play.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

156.201

And so Manti thinks about this and he decides to give this game his all in honor of Lene. And so bam, he goes out on the field and he plays an amazing game. 12 tackles, two interceptions. Bro is kicking ass out there. And after the game, he gets interviewed and he tells the press the awful news that both his grandmother and his girlfriend died on the same day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

184.979

And everyone feels so bad for him. And of course, this story blows up. People are talking about it. It's getting all sorts of coverage. KO's girlfriend, Lene Kekua, who was battling leukemia, had died. But then, things start to get really crazy. Because one day, randomly, Lene's sister calls up Manti.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

206.195

And in the middle of the conversation, out of f***ing nowhere, Lene gets on the phone like, hey, I'm still alive. And Manti is like, what the hell? And so they eventually convince him that Lene had to pretend to be dead because she got into some trouble or something. I don't know, it's stupid. And so I guess he goes and tells his family, hey, my girlfriend's still alive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

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And his family is like, uh, no, bro. Something weird is going on. And that is when they tell him something he definitely doesn't want to hear. They think Lene isn't real and that somehow Manti is being catfished. But here's the crazy thing, though. They're right. He is being catfished. Lene doesn't exist. Lene is actually this person. Naya.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

259.924

And Naya is just a random individual who friended Manti on Facebook one day and eventually developed a crush on him and wanted to catfish him. So in real life, Naya doesn't look like this. Naya looks like this. And so Nya had used another woman's photo and started catfishing Manti and he kept it going for a long time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

26.863

The friend is this girl, Linnae. And Linnae is also a college student, but she goes to a different school. Now, Manti doesn't really know her. She just randomly added him on Facebook one day a few years before. But one day, he responds to something she posts on Facebook. And from there, they start chatting, and they hit it off, and they start tweeting each other. They exchange numbers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

282.416

Like they would chat and text and when they would talk on the phone Nya would put on a feminine voice to fool him. And to be fair, bro's got a pretty good feminine voice. Hey babe, I'm just calling to say goodnight. I love you. I know that you're probably doing homework or you're with the boys. And yeah, turns out Nya is actually really good at doing voices.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

302.853

In fact, he's so good, he did the voices for not only Linnae, but for all of Linnae's family members who called Manti as well. All of them were fake. So anytime one of Linnae's family members would call Manti, it was really just Nya calling from a different phone number, putting on a voice. That's insane, I know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

323.068

But anyway, meanwhile, some reporters over on a sports blog, they get an anonymous tip and they start investigating and they figure out that Linnaeus is, in fact, a catfish. And that is when they drop a bomb and they tell the whole world. that Manti, this well-known college football star, his dead girlfriend is really a guy. And so of course, this story blows the up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

350.358

I mean, it is everywhere because people think Manti either made it up for attention or that he's secretly gay. And of course, Manti's all embarrassed because like who wouldn't be? I mean, he got tricked and the media is all over this story and they start questioning him directly about his sexuality. Are you gay?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

373.523

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Because unfortunately for him, that's when the entire internet starts clowning him. Twitter is lit up with jokes and so many memes. And they're making skits about him online. Frickin' SNL does a whole bit about it. Linnae was the hoax. She's not a real person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

400.49

And yes, even I made fun of it. I posted about it to my millions of followers saying, yeah, here I am choking Manti Taylor's girlfriend. And yeah, I know it's a dumb joke, but I was one of those people who thought Manti was gay and that he didn't want to publicly admit it because, you know, he's very religious. I guess he's very Mormon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

420.363

And that the media caught him with his long distance boyfriend. So they exposed him. And then he decided to lie to everyone and say, hey, I'm not gay. I was actually catfished. And yeah, a lot of people believe that and I guess I did too. Regardless, the story eventually fell out of the news cycle and everyone moved on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

440.415

Then 12 years later in 2025, someone on my team pitches this Manti Teo story to me to make into one of these crime videos. So I look into it and do research and find that, hey, the dude actually wasn't secretly gay and lying about it after all. he actually was catfished. Like, he was the victim.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

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Like, sure, maybe he should have known better, or maybe he should have done more research, but whatever, he was definitely the victim of this other person's scam. So, technically, I'm the asshole for dogpiling on him to my millions of followers when he didn't necessarily deserve it, and, you know, that's my bad. So yeah, sometimes I do say shit and then feel bad about it later.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

48.416

They become friends. And the more they talk, the more Manti is like, damn, this girl kind of foinked. And so by 2012, they're talking every night online and over the phone. And eventually, he decides to make Lene his girlfriend. But unfortunately, they can't meet up because he goes to Notre Dame while she goes to Stanford, which is on the other side of the country.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

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I guess that answers that. But anyway, regardless of this scandal, afterwards, Manti goes on to play in the NFL where he plays for about eight years. And he does a lot of football commentary now and he seems to be really good at it. So good for him. While Naya, on the other hand, the person who catfished, has since come out as trans and appears to have fully transitioned. So good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

71.312

Regardless, every night they talk and they fall asleep on the phone together. It's, you know, adorable. But then, one day, out of nowhere, something terrible happens. Lene gets into an awful car accident, and she's in critical condition. And to make it worse, when she's in the hospital, her doctors find that she has leukemia, so she needs a bone marrow transplant now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Biggest Catfish Scam in History - The Manti Te'o story

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And so members of Lene's family are calling and texting Manti and letting him know her condition and that she's in the hospital. And of course, this is devastating to Manti. He doesn't want to lose his girlfriend. However, over the next few weeks, her condition gets worse and worse. And eventually, Manti's fears come true. Lene's family contacts him and tells him that she has passed away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

0.129

So this woman has a big problem. She'll do anything to gamble online, even murder her own friends. Now the woman goes by the name Am and she's around 26 years old and she lives in Thailand and Am loves to gamble. She gambles a lot on her phone through those online casinos, and I guess she eventually becomes addicted to it. And she wins a bit, but then she starts losing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

118.456

And Weetoon is a local police officer and Am thinks he is fine. And so she and Weetoon start hanging out and they eventually start dating and over time they end up getting married. So not only did Am get away with murdering her friend, she appears to be living a great life now. She's out of debt and there's no need for her to murder anyone else. Until... At some point, Am starts gambling again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

144.577

And of course, she ends up losing all her money again. So in 2020, once she's broke, she goes to some of her other friends and she asks them if she can borrow some money. And her friends are like, sure. And just like before, over time, these friends eventually start asking Am, when is she gonna pay them back? And so Am gets on the internet and starts ordering more cyanide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

167.223

And one by one, she goes after each of these friends. And boom, she gets her friend at her house. Four months later, boom, she gets another friend by giving her a cyanide laced diet pill. Right after that, she invites another friend to stay with her in a villa and boom, she poisons her there. Then a few months after that, she visits a friend's place and boom, she gets him too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

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And each time she unalives one of these friends, she steals their cash and any like jewelry or handbags, anything she can resell. And then she takes that money and gambles it all away in online casinos. And by this point, she's gambling away sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a day. But it seems to be working for her. So she keeps going.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

210.856

And in 2022, she convinces some more people to lend her money. And then she secretly goes and gambles it away. And when they inevitably ask when she's going to pay them back, she goes and gets more cyanide and goes after them all one by one. Boom, she poisons a police captain she met through her husband. The very next day, boom, she poisons a friend while shopping for vegetables.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

231.847

Then boom, she poisons another friend at her house. Then boom, she poisons another friend at the market. Two days after that, boom, she poisons another friend while out for coffee. Now at this point, Am is getting really confident. She's unalive 10 of her friends and still no one suspects anything. So this is probably starting to feel like a thrill for her. And then so she strikes again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

25.695

And suddenly, like all gambling addicts, she ends up broke. So then one day in 2015, she asks her friend if she can loan her money. And the friend is nice, and she's like, sure, just pay me back whenever you can. And she gives Am $3,000. And of course, immediately, Am goes and gambles it all away. Now, eventually, Friend starts asking, hey, when are you going to pay me back that money?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

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One day her friend lends her $7,500 and she eventually meets up with Am at a restaurant to get paid back. but while she's there friend isn't feeling well so am offers her some cough medicine and that cough medicine ends up being laced with cyanide and so boom friend collapses right there in the restaurant and so then am low-key steals her purse and leaves while friend is rushed to the hospital

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

281.992

Here's the thing though, friend ends up surviving, but unfortunately she isn't able to connect the dots and figure out that it was Am who poisoned her. She probably just thinks that she collapsed because she wasn't feeling well and that her purse was stolen by some random bystander. Regardless, a few months later, boom, Am strikes again and poisons yet another friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

302.472

Now, around this time, Am's husband, the police officer, Weetoon, somehow he actually discovers that she's been poisoning all these friends of hers with cyanide. And he's like, holy shit! Now, being a police officer, he could easily go and turn her in. But that's not what he does. See, Am is kinda making some decent money off this, and no one is suspicious of her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

326.083

So instead of turning her in, WeToon decides he's gonna help her out. So a few months later, in 2023, Am's ex-boyfriend asks her to pay him the money back that he had lent to her a long time ago. And Am's like, sure, I'll come over to your place and I'll pay you back. And so she goes over to his house and boom, she poisons him with cyanide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

346.817

Then she steals a bunch of his cash and jewelry and Weetoon picks her up afterwards and drives her back home. So like now he's her getaway driver. And it just keeps going because a month after that, boom, Am poisons another police officer. No idea why. I mean, she's probably just doing it for fun at this point. However, then... Finally, it all starts to go wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

371.535

Because one day, Am invites her relatively new friend Koi on a trip to take part in a Buddhist protection ritual. It's supposed to bring good karma or something, I'm not very familiar with the ritual, but Am invites her to come along and Koi's like, alright. And so Am and Koi travel to this nearby province and they buy a bag of live fish to release into the river. That's all part of this ritual.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

393.951

It's supposed to bring good luck. And so they buy the fish, and they walk over to the pier, and as soon as they get there, Am gives Koi something laced with cyanide, and Koi consumes it, and pretty quickly, boom, Koi is out, lying on the ground, unconscious, dying. Then, of course, Am steals her purse, and she flees.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

413.371

Here's the thing though, Coy's mother finds out that her daughter suddenly died on the pier. And she's like, there is no way my daughter had random heart failure. That's suspicious as . And so she pushes the police to keep investigating and to dig deeper. And so police, they have an autopsy done. And when the results come back, they finally see that there are traces of cyanide in Coy's system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

438.26

And so police are like, how the hell did she get cyanide in her system? And so because Am is one of Koi's friends, police bring her in and they question her and naturally she denies everything. She denies even being at the pier with Koi. But what her dumb ass doesn't know is that they already have security footage from that day of her and Koi walking by the river.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

461.317

There's Am right there and there's Koi right there with the bag of live fish. And so once police catch Anne lying, they know something is up. And so, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

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And so in total, she had on alive 14 of her own friends over the course of about 10 years. So anyway, she goes to trial and she's found guilty and she's sentenced to death. I guess Thailand doesn't mess around. While her husband, Weetoon, he gets sentenced to one year, four months in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

49.547

Now, at this point, Am could admit that she screwed up and she gambled away all the money she lent her, but that's not what Am does. Instead, she comes up with an insane plan to murder her friend so that she doesn't have to pay her back. First, she gets online and she figures out how to buy cyanide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

69.425

Then, she goes to her friend's apartment and she low-key puts some of it in her food or drink, we actually don't know which. Then, friend unknowingly consumes it and suddenly, boom, she's almost immediately on the floor and within minutes, she's unalived. Then, to be even more awful, Am steals a bunch of her stuff and she flees the scene. Here's the worst part about all of it, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Thailand's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn story

93.585

Cyanide is hard to detect in a person's system, and when someone dies, they don't normally do a full autopsy unless they have a reason to, like if they suspect someone was murdered. So in this case, everyone just assumes that friend died tragically of heart failure. Which means Am gets away with it and she keeps on living her life. And then she moves on and later she meets this guy, Weetoon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

0.109

So one day, boom, this guy gets hit with dementia. His name is Mr. Bennett. And Mr. Bennett lives in Melbourne with his wife, this woman, Mrs. Bennett. So Mr. Bennett gets hit with dementia. And Mrs. Bennett doesn't really have the skill set to take care of him anymore. So unfortunately, she decides she's going to have to put him in a nursing home. And in doing so, she needs to sell their house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

110.598

Like suddenly Haley's wearing cashmere coats all the time and her hair is all professionally done. But then Haley thinks, you know what? A new car would be kind of nice too. So she uses the Bennett's money to make payments on a Mercedes Benz. And one time Haley even picks Mrs. Bennett up in this new Benz and she's like, hey, what do you think of my new ride?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

130.332

And Mrs. Bennett's like, eh, it's too flashy. And of course she doesn't realize it's her money that paid for that car. So anyway, this goes on for a while, and Hailey just keeps spending.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

139.899

She gets beauty treatments and a new iPhone and a new MacBook, and the Bennetts don't fully catch on because Hailey has gone into their banking info and changed the address so that all the Bennetts' bank statements are redirected to her own home address. So the Bennetts never see any bank statements and they have no idea the little bit of savings they have is slowly disappearing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

161.172

But then it gets worse. One day, Haley goes to Mrs. Bennet and she makes up a story and she's like, oh no, you're being investigated by the government. And she tells them that this fake investigation is going to cause them to lose their pension.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

176.144

But then she tells Mrs. Bennett that she needs to pay her $40,000 Australian dollars so that she can pay the government off or something to save them from losing their pensions. And of course, Mrs. Bennett is scared. Like, she doesn't want to lose her pension. So she's like, sure, whatever you need to do to help us get out of this. Here's $40,000. And so this scam keeps going on for over a year.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

197.092

Hailey takes money from the Bennett's bank account and she just buys herself whatever she wants. Real estate agents be shady like that sometimes. Until one day, Mrs. Bennett, she's probably chilling at home or something, And she suddenly realizes, damn, bro, I haven't seen a bank statement in a long ass time. That's really sus, no cap. And so she's like, I better go check this out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

217.831

So she asks her caregiver, because I guess she has a caregiver, to give her a ride to the local bank. So she gets to the bank and she's talking to the bank staff and she's like, yo, chat, where my bank statement's at? And the bank is like, hey, we've been sending them to you. And that is when the bank staff shows her copies of her past bank statements.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

236.144

And that's when Mrs. Bennett sees all this crazy that Haley's been buying and she realizes she's been getting scammed. Over the last 15 months, Haley had made over 98 different transactions from the Bennett's accounts and spent nearly a hundred thousand Australian dollars of their money. And Mrs. Bennett sees this and she is pissed. So then bam, she reports Haley to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

24.697

So she goes to a real estate agent to help her with this, this woman, Haley. So she asks Haley to help sell their home and Haley's like, yeah, I'll help. And she gets right to work. She sets it all up. She lists their house on the market. But then over time, Haley, she starts helping them with things outside of selling their home. Like they're trying to pick out a nursing home for Mr. Bennett.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

262.037

And so police, they eventually bring her in and they question her and Haley's like, I didn't steal anything from anyone. And she tells them that Mrs. Bennett had actually given her permission to take $100,000 from her bank account and spend it however she wants. And Mrs. Bennett hears about this and she's like, that lying ass bop got that brain right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

281.251

But then Haley also claims that yes, she took the money, but that she had planned on paying Mrs. Bennett back. Sure, Haley. Anyway, Haley gets charged and she takes a plea deal. And surprisingly, she only gets three months in jail and she's ordered to repay the money she stole. Now, she hasn't gone to jail yet because the case is currently in appeal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

302.786

And on top of all that, even though Haley left her original real estate agency, she's allegedly still out there. She's still working as a real estate agent and she's still selling houses to people. Anyway, here's what she looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

47.032

So she's like driving them around to different nursing homes to help them make a decision. And this is a huge benefit to the Bennetts because they don't have any other family around. So they really appreciate what Haley's doing for them. But then Haley starts to get a little greedy. Whatever money she was going to make helping them sell their house, I guess it isn't enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

67.865

Because one day Haley goes to them and she offers to help them with something beyond real estate. She wants to help them manage their day-to-day finances. And the Bennetts, they can't keep up with all this accounting and paying bills, so they're like, alright. And that is when, unfortunately, Mrs. Bennet hands power of attorney over their finances over to Haley. So, what does Haley do?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's Gonna Scam You - The Hayley Philpot story

91.124

Well, she accesses the couple's internet banking, and she adds their debit card to her phone wallet. And then she starts spending. So she's over here hitting up clothing stores and restaurants. She's buying the expensive kind of makeup. She's living a pretty good life off of their money. And eventually even Mrs. Bennett starts to notice a little.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

120.344

Wie, ich werde Coke Geheimnisse verkaufen und an Pepsi verkaufen. Und Edmund, er ist ein Ex-Konvikt. Er ist letztens aus dem Gefängnis gekommen. So when he hears Joya's idea, he's like, aye. Then later, while she's at work, Joya collects copies of some highly confidential materials. And she starts taking these documents home with her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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She also copies some documents onto some jump drives and she sneaks those home as well. Then a few weeks later, Edmund goes to her house and she shows him the goods. Sie sagt, schau, was ich habe. Also denkt Edmund darüber nach und am Ende ist er auf der Bühne. Er sagt, ich glaube, ich kenne jemanden, der uns helfen könnte.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

155.893

Und das ist, als er seinen Freund in New York City anruft, um ihm zu helfen. Dieser Typ, Ibrahim. Und Ibrahim ist ein Typ, der mit Edmund in die Gefängnis ging. Also hat er kein Problem, sich in das zu involvieren. So Edmund ruft ihn an und er füllt ihn in und ein paar Monate später fliegt Ibrahim von New York City all the way down to Atlanta to check out the materials Joya stole in person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

176.596

And Ibrahim sees the stolen materials and he's like, well these look legit. And so they move forward with their plan to sell these Coca-Cola secrets. Und zuerst schreibt Ibrahim eine Botschaft zu Pepsi, die bezeichnet, dass er ein hochwertiger Mitarbeiter bei Coca-Cola ist. Und in dieser Botschaft bietet er Pepsi die Möglichkeit, Coke's Konfidential Trade Secrets von ihm zu kaufen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Dann geben sie es in einen offiziellen Coca-Cola-Envelope, den Gioia verloren hat. Und sie mailen es an den Senior Vice President of Insights and Innovation bei Pepsi. Ein paar Tage später, Senior Vice President, er bekommt die Botschaft und er leset sie und er ist so, was? What the fuck is this?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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And even though Pepsi could really benefit from these stolen Coca-Cola secrets, this exec decides that this is all very wrong and he wants no part of it. So what does he do? He faxes this information right over to the execs at Coca-Cola. und schnittet auf diese Leute. Und die Chefs von Coca-Cola sind so wie, was zur Hölle? Und sie berichten das sofort an die FBI.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Also sind jetzt die FBI involviert. Und sie setzen diese ganze Sting-Operation ein. Und sie bekommen einen besonderen Agenten, um als Pepsi-Exekutiv zu sein und unter die Oberfläche zu gehen. And we'll just call this fake Pepsi executive undercover agent. So undercover agent calls the number on the letter. And Ibrahim picks up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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And undercover agent tells him, yeah, we here at Pepsi are interested in the Coca-Cola secrets you got. So Ibrahim, Edmund and Joya are like, hell yeah, we did it. We're gonna be rich. Und am nächsten Tag faxiert Ibrahim dem Unterkopfagent ein 14-Page-Sammel der hochklassifizierten Coca-Cola-Geheimnisse. Und er ist so, da ist viel mehr, wo das herkommt, Kumpel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

26.71

So this woman is about to try and steal Coca-Cola secrets and sell them to Pepsi for 1.5 million dollars. Now her name is Joya and Joya's got a great job. She works at Coca-Cola as the secretary to the global brand director. But Joya's got a problem. She feels like she works hard for Coke, but she also feels like she never gets the appreciation she deserves.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Aber Ibrahim ist nicht genau sicher, ob der Unterkopfagent wirklich ernsthaft über diesen Deal ist. Und er will, dass er es prüft, dass er es ist. Also fragt er den Unterkopfagent, ihm 10.000 Dollar zu schicken. Aber der Unterkopfagent ist schmutzig. Er schickt ihm nichts. Er schwingt ihn einfach für Wochen lang.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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A few weeks into the negotiations, Ibrahim is really trying to make this deal go through. So he offers to get Pepsi, aka Undercover Agent, a product sample, like a flavor of soda that hasn't been released yet. Nun, bis jetzt haben der Unterkriegsagent und die restlichen von der FBI hart gearbeitet, um diesen Fall zu zerstören.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und sie haben nach Koch-Anbietern geschaut, die potenziell involviert sein könnten. Einer der Anbieter, die sie nach unten geschaut haben, ist Joya. Denn sie ist einer der wenigen Menschen, die Zugang zu all diesem kompetenten Material haben. Also, in der Coca-Cola-Bildung haben sie versteckte Kameras neben ihrem Tisch gesetzt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und später, diese Kameras entdecken Fotos von ihr, die Dokumente stehlen und sie in ihre Tasche legen. Und sie fangen auch an, ein Produkt-Sammel zu stehlen. In diesem Fall ist die Produktsammlung, die sie steuert, Coca-Cola Black genannt. Das ist Coke mit Kaffee. Und diese Zeit wurde Coca-Cola Black noch nicht öffentlich geliefert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Aber dann kommt der Unterkopf-Agent zu Ibrahim und fragt ihn, wann sie sich treffen können. Ibrahim, Edwin und Joya haben keine Ahnung, dass die FBI mit ihnen ist. Und sie haben keine Ahnung, dass dieser Pepsi-Exekt, den sie sprechen, ein Undercover-FBI-Agent ist. Also, wenn er zu ihnen rauskommt, um ein Zeitpunkt zu treffen, sind sie überrascht. Sie sind wie, hell ja!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Dann kommt der Tag der Treffen. Und Ibrahim fährt nach dem Flughafen, weil das ist, wo sie treffen sollen. Ein Undercover-Agent ist da. Und Ibrahim gibt ihm eine Packung von Confidential-Dokumenten und eine Glas-Bottel mit dem Produkt-Sammel in sie. Und im Rückzug handelt der Undercover-Agent ihm eine gelbe Box von Girl Scout-Cookies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

398.072

Jetzt, anstatt von Kuchen in dieser Box, hat es tatsächlich 30.000 Dollar verpackt. Ich weiß nicht, warum sie eine Girl Scout-Kuchen-Box benutzt haben, aber egal. Und dann sagt er ihm, du wirst 45.000 Dollar mehr bekommen, nachdem wir die Produktsammlung analysieren. Und dann holt Edmund Abraham aus dem Flughafen und Abraham ist so, Bro, es hat funktioniert!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und er handelt Edmund seinen Geldschlag. Und er gibt ihm auch Joyas Geldschlag. Und Edmund holt allerdings ein paar Gründe von Joyas Geldschlag vor, bevor er es ihr gibt. Also, ich glaube, nie einen Thief zu vertrauen. Also, dann beginnt die FBI, Ibrahims Telefon zu werfen. Und sie rekordieren alle Anrufe und Botschaften zwischen Ibrahim und Joya und Edmund.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und sie bekommen mehr und mehr Fotos von Joya, die Dokumente in ihre Tasche steckt. Also ist ihr Fall in Ordnung. Und dann macht das Trio einen anderen Schritt. Ibrahim e-mailt den Unterkopfagenten und er sagt ihm, dass er 20 mehr hochkonfidentielle Materialien in seiner Besitzung hat. Und der Unterkopfagent sagt, cool, wir wollen sie. Und sie beginnen, den Preis zu negotieren.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

461.797

Ein Unterkopfagent, der sich als dieser Pepsi-Exekutiv befindet, sagt Ibrahim, er wird ihm 1,5 Millionen Dollar für diese neuen Coca-Cola-Sieger-Dokumente bezahlen. Und Ibrahim ist so, fuck yeah! Und so haben sie eine Zeit gesetzt, um sich zu treffen und diesen Austausch zu machen. Ein paar Wochen später ist der Zeitpunkt gekommen, um endlich zu treffen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und Edmund fährt Ibrahim zum Treffenplatz in einem Restaurant im lokalen Marriott Hotel. Und Ibrahim geht rein, während Edmund im Auto wartet. Und innerhalb des Restaurants sitzt Ibrahim an der Table mit dem Unterkopf-Agenten. Und sie reden ein wenig und sie akzeptieren die Anzahl noch einmal. 1,5 Millionen Dollar. Dann schlagen sie die Hände und Abraham geht weg und er geht nach Edmunds Auto.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Und dann, kabumm, werden sie plötzlich von FBI-Agenten umgebracht. Und bam, Abraham wird verhaftet. Und dann bam, Edmund wird auch verhaftet. Und dann bam, die FBI geht und verhaftet Joya auch. Hier ist Joyas Mugshot. Und hier ist Ibrahims Mugshot. Und ich konnte nicht wirklich einen Mugshot für Edmund finden, oder irgendeine Bilder von ihm online, um es so zu sagen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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She feels like everyone there treats her like she's stupid. And one day Joya's had enough. She is done with Coca-Cola, but she's not going to quit. Instead, she comes up with a plan to screw them over and make herself a little bit of money. Sie wird Coca-Colas wertvolle Handelsgeheimnisse stehlen, wie ihre Geheimformulare und so weiter. Und sie wird sie zu Pepsi verkaufen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Aber anyway, sie sind alle verhaftet mit einer Verbrechung, um Verbrechen von Handelsgeheimnissen zu verurteilen. Und Joya wird 8 Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt. Ibrahim wird 5 Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt. Und Edmund bekommt keine Gefängniszeit, weil er gegen die anderen zwei verurteilt hat. Also, Glückwunsch an Coke und Pepsi, glaube ich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

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Nun, natürlich ist Pepsi Coca-Colas größter Wettbewerber und sie könnten wirklich davon profitieren, ihre Hände auf einige dieser Handelsgeheimnisse. Und je mehr Joya darüber denkt, desto mehr verabschiedet sie sich dieser Idee. Und ihre Position bei der Firma gibt ihr Zugang zu allen Art von kompetenten Materialien. Top Secret Marketingpläne und neue Produktanlagen und so weiter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Stole Coca-Cola Secrets Worth $1.5 Million Dollars - The Joya Williams story

97.574

Aber es gibt ein Problem. Joya kann die Geheimnisse nicht selbst an Pepsi verkaufen, weil sie für Coke arbeitet und sie können das Verbrechen zurückbekommen. Also entscheidet sie, dass sie einen Mittleren braucht. Und eines Tages ist sie an einem Weihnachtsabend mit einigen Leuten. Und einer ihrer Freunde ist dort. Dieser Typ. Edmund. Also zieht sie Edmund weg und fliegt die Idee zu ihm.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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If you remember the movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you probably remember this tree scene. Well, the child actor playing this bush here actually ends up murdering someone. It's crazy. Now, his name is Ryan. He's nine. He's from Squamish, British Columbia. And Ryan is young, but he already knows he wants to be an actor. So one day, he auditions for a commercial. And boom, he gets the part.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And so they, like Ryan, when they don't make it big time like Timothee Chalamet or whoever, they'll start to see themselves as a failure. Instead of seeing themselves as someone who is working a job doing something they really love, which a lot of people don't have the privilege of getting to do. Like, I personally think it's cool he was in Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Falling Skies and Riverdale.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Like, that's a cool little resume to me, especially at 21 years old. Like, that sounds like success to me, but I guess it doesn't to Ryan. So for whatever reason, Ryan doesn't tell anyone. He keeps it to himself and acts as if everything is okay. And around this time, he's going to college. And in college, he's having a really hard time there too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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He's bummed out and he's isolating himself and he starts having a lot of really dark thoughts. And apparently to combat all this, he gets really into alcohol and Zaza. Until, as things keep getting worse for Ryan, he starts spending more and more time online, specifically on the dark web, which can be a really messed up place.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

189.616

And I guess he gets really into watching these like really violent videos. A lot of these videos are apparently of people being executed, like that's what he's consuming all day. And eventually Ryan gets into such a bad mental state, he just stops going to class. And all of this is putting him in a headspace where he wants to unalive himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And then he starts thinking about what it might feel like to unalive someone else. Like I said, he's having a lot of really dark thoughts. And at some point in all this, he starts to come up with this plan, a plan to unalive someone. But the person he wants to take out isn't some rival classmate who works at Burger King or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Ryan wants to unalive the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Specifically, he plans to drive to where the Prime Minister lives, open fire on the place, and set it ablaze. Why he specifically chooses Trudeau as a target is actually unclear. Ryan doesn't seem like a very political guy, but apparently, for some reason, he just really hates Trudeau.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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So he keeps going. And eventually, he gets a small role in a TV movie. And soon, he's in other movies and TV shows, and people are like, you're going places, kid. And a few years later, when he's around 12 years old, he lands a small role in the movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He's the kid who plays the bush in the school play. And it's a small role in a big movie, but this is a huge deal for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Anyway, so he thinks through this plan, and yeah, he's gonna do it. And then he goes to the store and he buys himself a new rifle. Here's the thing though, when it comes to this plan, Ryan can't stop thinking about his mom, who we'll just call mom. And mom is a sweet woman who he still lives with and she has always supported his acting dreams.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And Ryan, he keeps thinking that if he were to unalive the prime minister, then his name would be all over the news and his mom would know that her son is a killer and it would destroy her. And Ryan doesn't want to destroy her. He doesn't want her to have to face that shame. So he decides that the merciful thing to do would be to unalive her first so that she never finds out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Now, Mom, she frequently plays plays the piano and when she does she's totally absorbed in the music and the playing and Ryan has this thing where he'll like rehearse the hit, he'll sneak up behind her while she's playing and he'll point his pew-pew at the back of her head and he'll mimic the shooting and she's completely oblivious to what's going on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

315.049

But anyway, then the big day finally comes and it's go time. And so mom is at the piano and she's playing away and that's when Ryan grabs his rifle and he sneaks up behind her and he points it at her head and he pulls the trigger. Blam. And mom falls to the floor and she's unalived. Then, for whatever reason, Ryan gets his GoPro and he turns it on and he records himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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He's like, hey, I just murdered my mom. And then he turns the camera to show the body. And as crazy as all this is, this is a lot for Ryan to process and he needs to chill. So he goes out and he buys some beer and some Zaza and then he comes back home and he hangs out and he watches Netflix for a couple of hours while mom's body is still there lying on the floor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And before he goes to sleep, he throws a sheet over his mom to cover her up. Now, in the morning, he's ready to carry out the second part of his plan, take out Justin Trudeau. So he packs up his car with three pew-pews, a ton of ammunition, a bunch of Molotov cocktails he made, camping supplies, and a printed Google map with directions to Trudeau's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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then he takes off and he drives for a few hours for about 150 miles and on this drive he starts really thinking hard about what he's about to do like is he really gonna drive all the way across canada to unalive the prime minister because i look at that map that's a really long drive it's about 45 hours So Ryan, he starts to change his mind and he starts thinking of other options he could do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Like maybe I'll just go back to my college and unalive a bunch of people there. Or maybe I'll go to the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver and unalive a bunch of people there. And so for whatever reason, he suddenly decides to turn his car around and he starts driving back. Now, here's where things get even more weird. Because on this drive, I guess he thinks about it more and more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Does he really want to unalive people at his school or at the bridge in Vancouver? And I guess the answer is no. Because instead of doing that, he drives to Vancouver, right to the police station, and he walks up to an officer who's sitting in a parked car, and he's like, Hi, I unalived my mom. Now, it isn't clear exactly why Ryan changed his mind suddenly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Like, he seems to be mentally just all over the place. Like, he wants to unalive himself, then he suddenly has this plan to unalive Trudeau, but then he has to unalive his mom first, and then he changes his mind, decides to hit up his school and the bridge. If this plan feels scattered to you, it's because it is. Regardless, eventually, bam, police arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

47.611

And so he just keeps acting, small roles here and there, and eventually, a couple years later, he gets a lead role in a movie. Hi, I'm Ryan Grantham, and I'm playing the role of Redwood. And so it feels like his acting career is finally getting traction. He gets a small role on a show called Falling Skies, and on another show called iZombie. Then he gets cast in two episodes of Supernatural.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And I don't have a mugshot, but he's an actor, so here's his headshot. And he ultimately pleads guilty to second-degree murder, and he's sentenced to life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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Four years after that, he's cast in an episode of Riverdale. He told the police he did it to protect me, but it wasn't him. And that's all great for Ryan, but here's the thing about all this acting he's doing. He's working, he's getting roles here and there, some promising stuff, but he's not landing A-list parts like he wants. Like nothing is making him this famous movie star.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Child Actor Is In Prison Now - The Ryan Grantham story

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And this really starts to weigh on Ryan. And soon enough, he's really down about it. Like really down. Like he's battling with depression and it just sucks for him. And by the way, this is a really common thing with actors. They see making it as a big Hollywood star as the very definition of success, as opposed to just being a working actor who gets a lot of smaller roles here and there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

0.089

You remember the Austin Powers movies? Well, one of the actors is now in prison for life. And it all starts with this 19-year-old woman. And we don't know her name, so we'll just call her Shelly. And one night, it's Christmas Eve, 1990, and Shelly is driving home from a night out. And once she arrives, she gets out of her car, and then a strange man approaches her, and he asks her for directions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And he's like very theatrical about it. Like he walks out to the ring carrying a big ass cross on his back. Like it's very over the top. Anyway, I actually have some footage of a professional fight that he competed in and you can see him right here. He's obviously the guy in red getting tossed around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And after about two minutes and 45 seconds, the other guy gets him down, chokes him out, and you can see him right here tapping out. But I guess Jesus isn't with him that night because he loses that fight. But anyway, around this time, I guess he decides that he really likes the spotlight because that is when he gets into acting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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Like he goes out and he works hard and he auditions and he eventually lands a small role in an episode of a TV show called Reasonable Doubts. Pretty cool. And right after that, he lands a role in a B-movie starring Dolph Lundgren. He's a driver, not a killer. I'm different. Then he lands a role in another movie called Shoot Fighter starring William Zabka. Then he gets a role in Blood Fist Part 5.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And I have no idea what these movies are, but like he's in them. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it's just a coincidence, but in every single movie he's cast in, he's the villain. Maybe it's just like the way he looks. Maybe it's because he's a bad guy in real life. I don't know. But whatever, the acting thing seems to be working out for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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Because after that, he gets another role, and then another role, and then another one. But then, one day, he gets a really big break. He auditions for a new big-budget comedy, a movie starring Mike Myers called Austin Powers. And he plays the part of Dr. Evil's henchman, Random Task. And it's not a lead role, but this is a huge deal for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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But all that spotlight and exposure for an actor, you would think that things would take off for him, but for some reason, they really don't. Like maybe he quit, maybe he just didn't get cast in anything else, I don't know. But he actually has no more film or TV credits after that. Regardless, he's still not ready to give up the spotlight. Because a few years later, he returns to MMA fighting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And he gets back in the ring, and he loses. And then he loses again, and then he loses again. And ultimately, he ends his professional MMA career with a record of 0-4. Womp womp.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And before Shelly can really answer, boom, the man pulls out a pew-pew. And then another man comes out of the shadows, and pow, they grab her, and both of them start beating her up. And then bam, they knock her unconscious. And then they pick her up, and they throw her into the back of a van they're driving that's parked nearby, and the van speeds away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And then about six years go by and apparently Joe still has some of that fighter left in him because one night and we don't know what the details are but he gets into it with his roommate because I guess he has a roommate and Joe's son ends up getting so mad at the roommate that he walks up to the roommate's car and then boom boom he straight up kicks the car door in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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Of course, can't be doing that. That's frowned upon. And he gets reported to the police. And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's the thing, though. Joseon ends up taking a plea deal and he spends a few months in jail for felony vandalism. But whatever. He'll serve his time and he'll get out and he'll go back to his normal life. Like, you know, no big deal. Until... So Joseon took a plea deal, right?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And as part of his plea deal, the state requires him to submit a DNA sample, which Joseon has never done before. And so police, they take his DNA sample and it's routine that they run the sample through their database. So they run their sample through the database and holy it comes back as a match to a really old cold case from Christmas Eve, 1990.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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See all those years ago, Joe Son and the other guy kidnapped Shelly and they did horrible things to her in the back of that van, but they didn't unalive her. They let her go. And so of course Shelly reported it to the police and they came up with some composite sketches, but they're also able to collect some DNA samples. which was a fairly new technology at that time.

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This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And police added those DNA samples to their database, but at the time they had no one to match the DNA to. And so those samples sat in their database for almost 20 years until there's suddenly a match for Joe's son. And so bam, police arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And so police question him and Joe's son, he denies doing anything wrong, but he's certainly happy to tell them all about his acting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And he actually legitimately does have a Wikipedia page, by the way. Anyway, so police have Joseon, but he isn't admitting to anything. He doesn't care what DNA evidence they have. He ain't talking. And so police are like, all right, we'll just find your accomplice. Because remember, there were two men that attacked Shelly that night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And so now that they have Josan in custody, they start looking at his social circle, his old friends, his friends of friends. And they end up finding a guy who looks somewhat like an older version of the composite drawing they got from back in the day. And that guy is this guy, Santiago. And so they bring Santiago in and they question him and he doesn't admit to anything either.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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But then they get a DNA sample from him too. And of course, his DNA matches the DNA they collected from the crime scene back in 1990. And so, boom, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And Santiago eventually caves and he ends up confessing to the crime, which then really screws Joe's son over because it implicates him as well. Regardless, Joseon is found guilty and he's sentenced to prison time.

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This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And for the next few hours, the men do horrible things to Shelly in the back of that van. And I won't get into details, but it's a lot of essay and torture. And when they're done, they kick her out of the van and they flee, disappearing into the night. And Shelly reports them to the police and they get some composite sketches of the men, but that's all they can do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And while he's in prison, he ends up unaliving his cellmate. And so they sentence him to more time. So now he's serving 34 years to life while Santiago gets 17 years in prison. And after having waited almost 20 years to find these guys, Shelly finally gets the justice she deserves. Good for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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I mean, the men got away and poor Shelly is left feeling absolutely hopeless. And four years go by and the men still haven't been identified or caught. Now, one of those guys, his name is Joe Son. And Joe Son's 20 years old and he's clearly a violent guy. So around this time, he starts a career in MMA. Like he works out and he trains and he goes to tournaments and he actually competes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Austin Powers Actor Is In Prison Now - The Joe Son story

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And interestingly enough, his whole gimmick is that he's this big Christian martial artist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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So one day, suddenly, boom, there's a massive earthquake underwater. And that earthquake sets off a series of tsunamis. And one of those tsunamis is headed right for this town in Indonesia. Now in this town, there's a girl who lives there. We'll call her Four because she's four. So Four lives in this town in Indonesia called Meulabo and she lives there with her mom, her dad, and her sibling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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Meulabo is one of the worst places hit by the tsunami, and there's no way for anyone to send help because all the bridges to get to the capital have been washed away. A quarter of the town's population is without food or water, and most people have to pick through the debris to look for any food scraps. And sadly, Four's mom...

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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who we'll just call mom, she has to go to the hospital where I guess they bring all the bodies of people who didn't make it. And each time they bring in a new body, she checks it to see if it's for Arif. And weeks go by and mom is still out there looking for them. But now she's looking through refugee camps too. But unfortunately, it's not really looking good.

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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I mean, this tsunami was massive and super deadly. I mean, it killed like an estimated 230,000 people across 14 countries. And by the way, this is considered one of the deadliest disasters in modern history. Supposedly, the highest recorded waves from the tsunami were over 100 feet high and traveled across the ocean at the speed of 500 miles an hour.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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That's roughly the speed of a commercial airliner. So imagine 100-foot waves coming at you at the speed of an airplane. That's how insane this natural disaster was. In fact, the earthquake under the ocean that caused the tsunami was so powerful, it literally altered the Earth's rotation slightly, which is just wild to think about. Okay, so anyway, back to four in Arif.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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At this point, they have drifted away on this piece of wood way out into the ocean. And they've been floating for a long time. And they drift 155 miles from Mehulabo, where they're from, all the way to the Banyak Islands. And eventually, four in a reef, they wash up onto shore. And they have no idea where they are. I mean, remember, they're little kids. But then, a local fisherman spots them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And we'll just call him Fisherman. And Fisherman spots them and I guess he's just like, hey, free kids. So the Fisherman snatches them up and he brings them back to his home with him. Now Fisherman, he has a wife who we'll just call wife. So Fisherman and wife, they decide to raise four in Arif as their own.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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So anyway, this huge wave of water is coming towards the town and everyone is alerted and they're freaking out and they're all trying to evacuate. And Four's family, they all jump on a motorbike to try and drive away. But unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea. So the streets are packed with traffic. And soon enough, pow, one of the tsunamis hits.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And that sounds sweet and all, like, oh, cool, some nice couple took them in and they decided to take care of them. But here's the sad reality. Wife actually ends up being pretty abusive. Like, sometimes she beats them, and one day I guess she gets super mad at Arif because she ends up throwing boiling water in his face, leaving him with this huge scar. Like, it's really terrible for them there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And after that, after the altercation where she scars him, Arif is officially taken away from them. So now it's just Four living there by herself with this couple. And two years later, for whatever reason, Fisherman and Wife suddenly feel like, eh, they don't want to raise Four anymore. They're just like, yeah, we're done. So they send her to live with Fisherman's sister.

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And the poor girl lives there for a couple of years, and I couldn't find any information on what that was like, but I'm sure it wasn't fun. And then several years after that, Four is probably ten years old at this point. For some reason, Fisherman's sister decides she no longer wants to raise them. So she sends Four to live with Fisherman's mother. So now Four lives with Fisherman's mother.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And of course, life isn't all that great there either. Four doesn't really get to go to school much because they're really poor and they don't have enough money for food. So Four spends a lot of her time collecting used water bottles so they can resell them and use the money to eat. And life just sucks for Four now. Not to mention, through all this, she really just misses her real family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And she's constantly wondering if she'll ever even see them again. Until one day, Four is walking home from school. She's minding her own business and she's like 14 years old now. But she's walking home from school and suddenly, bam, this strange guy, he's just like staring at her. He's looking at her like he knows her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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Now the guy, we'll just call him Uncle because he's actually Four's biological uncle. An uncle just happens to be visiting the Banyak Islands and he just happened to cross paths with four. So uncle, he's like looking at her and he's like, yo, I know her from somewhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And he becomes convinced that this teenage girl right in front of him is the same little four-year-old girl who got washed away in the tsunami all those years ago. So Uncle takes a photo that he has of Four from when she was younger, and he shows it to all the people in the town. He's like, do you think this is the same girl? And everyone in town agrees.

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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They're like, yeah, that's totally the same kid. So then he takes a photo of Four now as a 14-year-old, and he sends it over to his sister, Four's mom, in Meulabo. And Four's mom sees it and she's like, holy sh**, this is my kid. So mom travels from Meulabo over to the Banyak Islands, and after 10 long years, Four is finally reunited with her mother.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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Oh, oh, wait, wait, wait, but, but, the story's not over yet. I mean, it's great that they found Four, but remember, Arif is still missing. And so this story about them finding Four after she had been missing for 10 years, it's so incredible that it makes news all over Malabo, all over Indonesia, I mean all over the world. This story blew up.

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And then, this random woman in the Banyak Islands who owns an internet cafe, she sees one of these news reports about Four being reunited with her family. And in the news report, they show an old photo of Four's whole family, including... Arif. And this woman, she's looking at this picture of Arif on the screen and she's like, hey, I think I know him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And the water comes crashing through the town and the buildings are being knocked over and people are being swept away. It is complete chaos. And people are panicking and everyone is grabbing onto whatever they can to stay afloat and not get swept away. And as the water rushes in, Four's dad realizes his two little kids are gonna drown if he doesn't do something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And of course, Arif, he's no longer a little kid. He's like 17 years old now. And he's homeless. In fact, sometimes he happens to sleep outside this woman's internet cafe. That's how she recognizes him. So I guess she finds a way to get in touch with Arif's family. And sure enough, when they investigate further, they find out that the boy is in fact Arif.

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The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And so finally, after 10 years, Arif is reunited with his family. And here's a photo of all of them together. Four is right here. And it looks like Arif is down here in the corner. Good for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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So he spots a big floating piece of wood in the water and he picks up Four and her brother, this kid, Arif. Arif is seven. So dad picks them both up and he puts them on top of this floating piece of wood to keep them safe. But then, bam, more waves hit and it knocks them all apart. And pretty soon the current catches them and it carries the wood away and the kids are still on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

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And Four's parents are screaming. They're like, no, come back. And so the wave carries them out to the ocean. And to make it worse, Four and Arif, they're so young, neither of them know how to swim. So if they fall off this wood or if something knocks them off, they're definitely gonna drown. But we'll come back to them. Meanwhile, back in town, things are not looking so great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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So this turd, his name is Johnny Somali. Well, that's not his actual name. His real name is Ramsey, but he hates being called that. So we're going to call him that. Now, Ramsey, he's an IRL streamer and just kind of an all around menace. So let me walk you through a bunch of the shitty things he has live streamed himself doing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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But of course, this doesn't stop Ramsay, because two months later, he enters a construction site wearing a mask, hoping to harass the workers. And of course, the workers don't think this is funny, so they grab him and throw his ass out for trespassing. Now at some point, these streams start to get the attention of Japanese police. So now they're on the lookout for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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But old Ramsey doesn't care, because one night he's out with one of his other turd friends, this guy, Gino, and he and Gino film themselves harassing people on the street. But eventually, one of these people being harassed has had enough, and they go and they knock the sh** out of Gino. All you have to say is stop. Don't grab nothing.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Which I can't show you because this platform doesn't allow violence, but trust me, it's awesome. Especially when that same guy then turns around and knocks the out of Ramsay. Which I also can't show you, but trust me, you'll love it. But then he also has another incident where he harasses people in a local restaurant. And I won't get into the details of that, but you get the idea.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And it looks like the manager of the place ends up calling the police. And so police, ultimately, they find Ramsay and bam, they arrest him. And he's charged with trespassing for the construction site stuff. And for about three weeks, he's detained while Japanese police interrogate him. Now, eventually, the trespassing charge is dropped and they let him go.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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But right after they take the cuffs off of him and they let him out of the jail, they immediately arrest him again, this time for the restaurant incident. So it's kind of like Japanese police are just messing with him the same way he messed with the Japanese people. Well, that's how you around and find out, buddy.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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So anyway, they detain him for another three weeks and he ends up going to court and he's found guilty and fined 200,000 yen or about 1400 US dollars. He also ultimately gets banned from streaming on Twitch. Good. Oh, but Ramsey isn't done. Z has other countries to terrorize. A few months later, he shows up in Israel.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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So he was living in Japan for a while and one night he gets drunk and he livestreams himself putting on a fake Asian accent and he starts saying racist things on the subway.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And while he's there, he's streaming one night and he gets himself involved in some drama and he gets into a fight.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Y'all started shitting me, go to jail, y'all. Then on another night, he's at a protest or a demonstration or something, and he decides to harass a female police officer.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Oh, but it gets worse than that because he goes to Jerusalem to visit the Western Wall, which is like some kind of sacred place. And of course, Ramsey doesn't care about all that. He just goes there to troll people.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And so I guess an Israeli officer notices him and he's like, what the f*** is this guy doing? And so they escort Ramsey away from the wall and he ultimately gets banned from Jerusalem for 50 days. And he also gets suspended from yet another streaming platform. kick. And so I guess he just ends up not streaming for a couple of months. But eventually he shows up again, this time in South Korea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And here he finds an audience on another really trashy streaming platform called Rumble. But this time he streams himself with the Comfort Woman statue, which is a bronze statue of a woman. It's on public display. So he's streaming and he sits down next to it and he like kisses this statue.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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which may not seem like that big a deal. But here's the thing about the comfort woman statue. This statue specifically represents the Korean women who were forced by Japanese soldiers during World War II to be sex slaves. So kissing it is just weird and in bad taste. And of course, Ramsay is a human turd. So he's got to take this even further.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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So he goes and he prints out a screenshot of him kissing the statue.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Thank you. oh my god and he walks around taunting people with it hi guys you want to look at this photo is this a good photo you like this photo And then the next time he sees one of these comfort woman statues, because there are more than one, he takes it even further than that. He puts baby oil on himself and he gropes it while playing a f***ing Diddy song.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And he does this so much, eventually this American guy on the train decides he's had enough and he confronts him. You're from America?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And understandably, all of this really starts to piss Korean people off. And he starts getting threats from the Koreans, just like he did with the Japanese. But whatever, he doesn't care. He continues on with his antics because this guy will do anything for views. Like one night he gets really drunk and he livestreams himself at a convenience store where he just like makes a scene.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Bro is just terrible. Now at this point, the livestreams of him harassing the comfort woman, they've all blown up around Korea and they've made even more Koreans mad at him. To the point where Korean citizens are just like jumping him on the street. Like he'll be out on a public street streaming and someone will run up to him and just sucker punch him right in the face.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And by the way, something interesting to notice about this footage is that if you pause it, you can see that he already has bandages on his face where someone else sucker punched him at a different time. And also, just for fun, here's footage of a different Korean guy trying to jump him. And here's footage of Ramsey being chased away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Now, I don't champion violence or anything, but I gotta say, this is pretty glorious. Now, eventually, so many people are after him that Korean police have to take Ramsey into custody for his own safety. And then, suddenly, bam, they ban him from leaving South Korea while they investigate the accusations against him for the stuff he did in the convenience store.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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So am I. You're from America? Yeah, you're being obnoxious. So that incident blows up and it ends up going super viral and not because people think it's so funny. No, no, they are pissed. Because from that point on, people in Japan start to come up to him on the street to tell him he sucks. It's me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And I guess there was like a drug charge that someone called in as well. So they're investigating all of that. And now he is stuck in that country for an indefinite amount of time. And it looks like he's facing up to 10 years in prison for all these charges. Meanwhile, they force him to give an apology for harassing the comfort woman statue.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And by the way, if you're wondering, Ray, why would someone go to other countries and harass people and act like such human garbage? Well, to be fair, he's pretty straightforward about why.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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Here's to hoping he gets sentenced to prison for a long time.

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I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And so Ramsey continues this awful behavior and trolling the people of Japan for several months. And people continue to get upset and they start finding Ramsey on the street and confronting him. So what you did is something that is disrespectful for the whole Japanese community. That is why Japan is really, really mad. The Japanese don't think you are good. Apologize to the Japanese. Come on.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

I’m Glad He Got Banned - The Johnny Somali story

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And this forces Ramsay to apologize. Well, enough for them to leave him alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

0.009

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. So this may be the worst, most evil Pastor I've ever seen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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And he moves straight from Minnesota down to Alabama to be closer to Janet and his daughters. Und irgendwie überzeugt er Janet, dass er ein veränderter Mann ist. Und leider nimmt Janet ihn zurück. Und da, in Alabama, bekommt Tim einen Job an einer lokalen pentecostalen Kirche. Als Pastor.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Nun, er sagt ihnen offensichtlich nicht, dass er von einigen anderen Kirchen verabschiedet worden ist, oder dass er einfach aus der Gefängnis kam, um eine Prostituierte zu verabschieden. Weil dann würden sie ihn niemals hirten. Nein, nein. Anstattdessen lügt er auf seinem Resümee, wie die anderen von uns. Und Pastor Tim bekommt diesen Job. Und er beginnt, an dieser Kirche jede Woche zu beten.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und die Leute an der Kirche lieben ihn. Sie denken, oh, er ist so christlich. Aber leider ist Pastor Tim nicht in Wahrheit christlich. Denn an irgendeinem Zeitpunkt beginnt er mit dieser Frau online zu sprechen. Sie heißt Molly. Und obwohl sie sich noch nicht persönlich getroffen haben, denkt Molly, Pastor Tim sei in Ordnung. Und so fortsetzen sie zu sprechen, und sie fangen es an, und flirten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und über die Zeit entwickeln sie eine ziemlich ernsthafte Beziehung. Aber natürlich sagt Pastor Tim ihr nicht, wer er wirklich ist. Er gibt ihr einen falschen Namen und er sagt ihr nicht, dass er verheiratet ist. Er sagt ihr, dass er ein Navy-Seal ist oder so ein Scheiß. Und für den Rekord, er ist in Wahrheit kein Navy-Seal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Aber trotzdem, an irgendeinem Punkt beginnt Pastor Tim seiner Frau Janet zu sagen, dass er aus der Stadt gehen muss auf offiziellen Kirche-Business. Aber natürlich ist es keine offizielle Kirche-Business. Er benutzt das nur als Ausgabe, um wegzukommen und mit Molly zu treffen. Und dann fliegt er aus Alabama nach Washington State und er beginnt, mit Molly auf der Seite zu schlagen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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So this affair with Molly continues and over time things get more and more serious between the two. And Pastor Tim, he ends up leading this double life. He's spending part time in Alabama with his wife Janet and part time in Washington smashing with Molly. And this seems to be working pretty well for him, I guess.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Bis... Endlich hat Pastor Tim seine Frau Janet mit Molly verheiratet, seit über einer Dekade. Und dann entscheidet er sich für Molly, obwohl er noch mit Janet verheiratet ist. Und natürlich hat er keine Ahnung, dass er die ganze Zeit diese Frau sehen muss. So, nach dem Vorschlag fährt Tim zurück nach Alabama und er versucht immer noch, einen guten Mann zu sein und einen guten Pastor zu sein.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Aber leider kann Pastor Tim diese Lüge nicht aufhalten. Also kommt er mit der Idee, seine Frau Janet für gut zu entfernen. Und so, bei der Pentecostalen Kirche, an der Pastor Tim betet, gibt es manchmal ein Charity-Event. Und bei diesem Charity-Event schießen sie alle Piu-Pius für irgendeinen Grund. Willkommen in Amerika.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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So let's just call him Pastor Tim. And Pastor Tim has a problem. He keeps getting fired. He keeps losing his job at church after church because he's constantly involved in some scandal. Like he gets fired from one church because they catch him leaving a strip club one night. Like, hey, isn't that our preacher?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und einer der Zeiten, an denen die Kirche eines dieser Events hält, ist, als das Event vorbei ist, nimmt Pastor Tim drei der Waffen, die sie mit ihm verwenden, mit nach Hause. Und als er und Janet nach Hause kommen, fragt Pastor Tim, sie zu helfen, die Waffen in ihr Haus zu bringen. und er schiebt ihr eine und dann nimmt er die anderen zwei und folgt ihr durch die vordere Tür und ins Bett.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und als Tim durch die Tür geht, öffnet er einen der Pfeile und schießt ihn an Janettens Rücken und er drückt den Trigger. Blam! Und sie fällt auf den Boden. Und ihre Töchter sind zu Hause, also kommen die Töchter rein und sie schreien alle. Und es ist dieses ganze schreckliche Szenario. Und leider überlebt Janet nicht den Schuss.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und später kommen die Polizei da und fragen Pastor Tim, was passiert ist. Und ich glaube, er sagt ihnen, es war alles ein Unfall. Der Piu-Piu hat einen Unfall gemacht und es ist plötzlich weggegangen. Und ich glaube, die Polizei glaubt ihm und regiert das ganze Ding mit einem Unfall. Und so ist das eine schreckliche Situation und jeder ist enttäuscht.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und sie versuchen genau herauszufinden, was passiert ist. Wie hat dieser Pfeil ungeheuer ausgelöst? Und eine Frau, die wirklich die Wahrheit wissen möchte, ist diese Frau, Janits Schwester. Und Janits Schwester hört, dass Pastor Tim ungeheuer Janit erschossen hat und sie wird schuldig. Sie hat immer gedacht, dass Pastor Tim ein schädlicher Kerl war.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Janet's Sister sendet ein E-Mail an den lokalen Bürgermeister und BOOM, der Bürgermeister bekommt einen Detektiv auf den Fall. Der Detektiv beginnt zu investigieren und er findet fast sofort heraus, dass Pastor Tim für irgendeinen Grund zwei Fahrerrechte hat. Einer mit seinem echten Namen und einer mit einem völlig anderen letzten Namen. Er hat zwei Identitäten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und so geht der Detektiv weiter, und er checkt Pastor Tims Telefonnummern, und er sieht all diese späten Nacht Telefonnummern zu einem Telefonnummern in Washington. Also trägt er das Telefonnummer zurück zu einer Frau, einer Frau namens Molly. Und um die gleiche Zeit versucht Janet's Schwester, auch diesen Fall zu herauszufinden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und sie schlägt den Detektiv auf, und sie erzählt ihm über dieses Gerücht, das sie gehört hat, dass Pastor Tim eine Freundin auf der Seite hatte. eine Freundin namens Molly. Und so, kapow, beginnt alles für den Detektiv zu klicken. Er fühlt sich, als ob er die Wahrheit kennt, dass Pastor Tim Janet nicht lebendig war, damit er mit seiner Seite Freundin Molly sein könnte.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Aber leider gibt es nicht genug Beweise, um Pastor Tim mit einem Mord zu beurteilen. Bis zum nächsten Mal! Und so kann der Detektiv diese Informationen benutzen, um Pastor Tim zu bringen und ihn über diesen mysteriösen Lohn zu fragen. Und während er ihn über diese Verbrechen interviewt, beginnt er, ihn über den Mord zu fragen. Und er drückt ihn auf und drückt ihn auf.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und Pastor Tim ist nervös und er ist wütend und er ändert seine Geschichte genau darüber, wie es geschehen ist und wie der Piu-Piu ausging. Und um diese gleiche Zeit arbeiten einige andere Offiziere auf dem Fall. Sie fangen Molly an. And they tell her who Pastor Tim really is. That he's not, in fact, a Navy SEAL. He's a pastor living in Alabama, who they suspect unalived his own wife.

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This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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And they tell her he's been using a fake name and a fake ID to fool her about who he is. That's why he has two driver's licenses. Und Molly ist so, oh Gott! Und sie wird verpisscht und flippt auf ihn ganz schnell. Sie beginnt, E-Mails und Korrespondenzen mit ihm zu geben. Sie ist so, ich gebe dir jede Information, die du brauchst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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He gets fired from another church because they catch him having an affair with one of the members of his congregation. Bro is just a menace. But eventually he can't be a pastor anymore. Er muss also einen normalen Job in einem Städtegeheimhaus in Minnesota machen. Und natürlich geht das auch schrecklich falsch. Denn eines Tages ist eine Prostituierte im Gefängnis.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Auf jeden Fall, werden die Polizisten endlich genug Beweise gegen ihn sammeln. Und so, bam, arrestieren sie ihn. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und letztendlich geht Pastor Tim zu Trial. Zwei Mal. Und er ist verurteilt, dass seine Frau nicht lebendig ist. Und er ist verurteilt, dass er in der Gefängnis ist. Gut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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Und Pastor Tim fängt an, auf sie zu kreieren. Und er bietet ihr eine Reise nach Hause. Und auf dieser Reise fängt er dann an, sie zu verabschieden. Und später drückt sie sich gegen ihn vor. Und so, bam! Die Polizei arrestiert Pastor Tim. Und sie beurteilen ihn zu sechs Monaten im Gefängnis. Wow, das ist eine wirklich leichte Satzung. Okay, but here's the other thing about Pastor Tim though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Evil Pastor Murdered His Wife - The Timothy Tillman story

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He actually has a wife and daughters. So his wife, her name's Janet. And Janet learns about what her husband did to the prostitute. And she's like, fuck all this. And she leaves him and she takes her daughters and she moves from Minnesota all the way to Alabama. And months later, Pastor Tim actually gets out of jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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So this guy is about to become sort of famous for leading police on one of the most watched car chases in history. Now the guy's name is Ryan and Ryan is very much a turd. He's been in and out of prison for the last decade, mostly for stuff like drug charges and car theft. But one morning, he walks into a gas station where he's about to start some trouble.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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But then, suddenly, kapow! Ryan's stolen SUV gets a flat tire. So now, Ryan has to ditch Martha's car. And you can see him here where he cuts off this other minivan and he forces it to pull over. Then he gets out and he terrorizes the poor woman inside. And there you can see her getting out and running for her life. While, of course, Ryan speeds away in his brand new ride.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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So now he's off again in this second car. And I guess he's hoping to throw police off course because he goes in the opposite direction in the oncoming lane. So now he's going full speed driving the wrong way. And at this point, officers, I mean, they realize they got to do something because bro is not going to stop.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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So they try to lay down those spike strips, the kind that'll like blow your tires out. But unfortunately, Ryan, he sees them coming and he easily swerves out of the way and he misses them entirely. Like, they don't even get close to him. So there's no stopping this guy. And if all this chaos isn't bad enough, Ryan is about to make it all much worse.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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Because just down the road, waiting for him to drive by, is this guy.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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trooper he and he is there and he's laying down some spike strips in the road knowing that ryan is about to roll through them but ryan of course he sees trooper he and he's like oh hell no and he aims the stolen minivan right at him and he floors it going 90 miles an hour and bam he hits trooper he and if you slow down the footage you can see trooper he here and you can see the minivan coming toward him

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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Now, obviously, I can't show him being hit by a car. It's way too shocking. But Ryan does run him over. Oh, but the story's not over yet, because Ryan just keeps going and going and going and going until, boom, he crashes the minivan into another car. And he gets out, and he's kind of running around, and he's like, Looks like he's panicking.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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Because at this same time, pulling up to this gas station is this woman. Her name's Martha. And Martha just stopped at the gas station for a cup of coffee, and she's going to be in and out real quick. So she leaves her keys in the car with the engine running. big mistake. Now Ryan, he's still inside. And at this moment, bro is really, really high.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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I guess he's still high off all that Walter White he did. But after scrambling around and thinking about it, he then just gets back into the same minivan he just crashed, and he keeps on driving. Then a few minutes later, Ryan spots another car to steal. And boom, he slams into it.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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Now, the woman driving, she thinks this is just a regular car accident, so she does the right thing and she pulls over. While Ryan, he gets out of the minivan and he pretends to be upset over this car wreck.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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And you can see him here, he's pointing to the damage on the car, and he does this so he can get close to the driver, and once he's close enough to her, he opens the door and he throws the woman out. Which I can't really show you, it's a little too violent so I'll just blur it out. But you can see the poor woman trying to get her car back as Ryan drives off in it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

290.09

So now Bro has stolen his third car and he's still on the run. It seems like police are just never gonna catch this guy. Until... Now this is where Ryan's luck finally starts to run out. Because he's speeding along in this third stolen car, and he's dodging traffic left and right. And then he drives into an intersection. And suddenly, boom, he collides with another car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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Which I can't show you because of rules against showing car accidents, but you get the point. And you can see the aftermath here. You can see that he gets out, and he runs away, and he just keeps running, and he keeps running. And he rounds the corner, and then, oh, oops, he slips on the ice here, and he drops his jacket, and that slows him down a bit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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And just for fun, let's see that slip again in slow motion.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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he's coming around the corner and boom anyway then he immediately gets up and he keeps going now i guess this is where all that walter white he did starts wearing off because ryan is suddenly out of energy like look he's like struggling to jump this fence here and so he fails to jump the fence and he just keeps going and going and finally i guess he's like ah i give up

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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and he just lays down in the snow. And this allows police to get to him and bam, they finally arrest him. Here's his mugshot. So now Ryan is facing some serious charges from all this. Attempted manslaughter, first degree assault, kidnapping, vehicle theft. But here's what's crazy. This entire chase is captured on footage by a news helicopter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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And the footage is so compelling, this story blows the up. And like everyone is talking about it and they're watching the footage, which is nearly an hour long, by the way. This whole chase lasted around an hour and a half. And so because of that, This car chase becomes one of the most famous car chases in history with the raw footage getting over 25 million views on YouTube alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

411.52

And so Ryan, as he sits in jail waiting on his trial, he hears about all these YouTube views he's getting and he thinks all these views means he is about to be rich and famous. And so he's in jail talking to someone on the phone and he's talking about all this.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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And so, yeah, you can see him laughing about everything he did and showing excitement for all the money from the ad revenue he thinks he's going to make instead of, you know, showing remorse. Now, here's the thing about those phone calls that people make from jail. They're recorded. And yes, they can be used against you in a court of law.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

45.711

Like he's all hopped up on a drug that I'll just refer to as Walter White. So Ryan is high on Walter White and he walks out of the gas station and he sees Martha's car running without her in it. And he's just like, let's go. And he jumps in it and he takes it. Here's the thing though, Martha's four-year-old son is still buckled in the backseat. So Ryan just accidentally became a kidnapper.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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So eventually, Ryan goes to trial and they use those recordings of that phone call against him. And of course, Martha shows up and she testifies against him. Thankfully, she got her four-year-old son back safely. And Trooper He shows up and he testifies against him. Luckily, he survived nearly being hit by Ryan on the freeway.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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I mean, he had to undergo seven surgeries, but fortunately, he did make it. And ultimately, Ryan is found guilty and he's sentenced to 160 years in prison. And on top of all that, from what I read, he made no money from all the YouTube views. So good for him. And thank you to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video.

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He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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If you want to make badass art for your videos like this or like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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And of course, Martha steps outside and her car is now gone and she panics because her kid's in the backseat. So she runs back inside and the gas station clerk calls police. Minutes later, the cops are after this guy and they're chasing him down the freeway and he is not going to stop. And you can see him here like he's driving on the wrong side of the road. He's trying to avoid other cars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went GTA In Real Life - The Ryan Stone story

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He's running through red lights at full speed. And other drivers see him, and they're like all swerving, trying to get out of the way, trying to not get hurt, all while Martha's four-year-old kid is crying and screaming in the backseat. So then, bam, 20 minutes later, this full-blown high-speed chase is still going. And it looks like Ryan's gonna see this through to the end.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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So this guy, his name's Mario. And Mario has a problem. He's dating a woman who can do way better than him. Now the woman he's dating, her name's Cecilia. And one day, Cecilia reconnects with one of her old college flings, Mario. And she hasn't seen Mario in a while. And they're both originally from Brazil. But now, they both live in Sydney, Australia. So they think, why not try dating?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And finally, after a period of doing all this, she's had enough of his weird stalkery behavior. And she gives him an ultimatum. Get all your shit and get the hell out of my apartment or else. And Mario, he doesn't take this well. Like, he's not happy. But he's like, ugh, fine. And so he moves out and everything seems to be finally resolved. No it's not.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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At one point Cecilia flies from Sydney to where her friend lives all the way over in Perth. So she's visiting some friends and when they see how worked up and anxious she is over the whole Mario situation, they're like, why didn't you report this weirdo to the police? And of course Cecilia didn't report him to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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Now, she definitely wants Mario out of her life, but she's also a really nice person. She's not vindictive enough to want to get him in trouble or get him deported back to Brazil. So she never reported him. But then she somehow learns that Mario just booked a flight back to Rio de Janeiro. So she thinks, sweet, he's finally moving away. He's going back to Rio. He'll be out of the country.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And she finally, after a long while, feels safe enough to go back to her apartment. Here's the thing though, Mario has no intention of getting out of her life. In fact, he secretly went and had a spare key made to her place so that he can come back anytime he wants with or without her permission. Now, here's where the story gets dark.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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At some point, Mario hits up Cecilia out of the blue, and he tells her that he's leaving the country for good. He's going back to Brazil. And he asks her if she'll give him a ride to the airport. And Cecilia's thinking, psh, no. But then she thinks about it a little more. And she really, really wants to see him walk away from her forever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And what better way to feel like he's actually out of her life for good than watching him get on a plane and fly away. So she reluctantly agrees to do it. She'll give him a ride to the airport. But then the day before Mario's flight, suddenly, bam, he just shows up to the front door of her apartment. And he's like, I left my passport. Can you let me in?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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So they start dating for a while, and I guess things are going okay. Because eventually, Mario moves into her apartment with her. Here's the thing about Mario, though. He's unemployed. And since he doesn't have a job, he's always hanging around doing nothing. And so Cecilia starts to feel suffocated by him. And over time, she starts to pull away from him. Now here's the other thing about Mario.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And Cecilia's like, nah, I'm not letting you in. And this really pisses him off. And he's like, come on. And she's like, nah. And so he just waits. He waits around her apartment complex for several hours. And I don't know if he's waiting on her to come out or if he's waiting on her to change her mind, but she doesn't change her mind.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And eventually he comes back to her front door and he uses that key he made to enter. And as soon as he walks through the door, Cecilia panics and she starts yelling at him like, get the hell out. And he's like, well, I just want to talk to you or whatever he says. But she just keeps yelling at him.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And that is when Mario snaps and pow, he grabs her by the neck with both hands and he squeezes as hard as he can. And they struggle back and forth and he strangles her until she's no longer yelling or moving at all because she's unalived. And Mario's like, oh shit, I murdered her. Now what am I gonna do? And so he grabs her phone and he uses her finger to unlock it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And from her phone, he texts her mom and her friends pretending to be her. And he says, I'm going on a trip to the Blue Mountains. Probably so that they'll think Cecilia went hiking and like got lost or something. But anyway, then he loads her body into her car and she drives a red Fiat. Here's actually a picture of it in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And so he drives her Fiat to a local river and he dumps her body there. The next morning, Mario orders an Uber to drive him to the airport. So he's in this Uber, and as that Uber is going over a bridge, he rolls down the window, leans out, and he throws the car keys to her Fiat over the railing and down into the water, never to be seen again.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And the Uber driver's like, what the fuck is this guy doing? But whatever. Soon enough, Mario is on a flight and he flies from Sydney back to Brazil, home free from the murder he just committed. But then back at the local river, a couple of kayakers just got into the water and they're kayaking and they see something suspicious floating around like it could be a body.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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So they call police and police come and they check it out and they're like, yep, That's a body. And so the body is identified as Cecilia and police, they start investigating this whole thing. And pretty quickly, they identify Mario as the prime suspect because the ex-boyfriend is always the prime suspect.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And so they start collecting all this evidence and they track his cell phone location from the time around the murder. And they're able to match it up with some CCTV footage. And they actually find footage of him driving Cecilia's red Fiat the night after she was murdered. They also get footage from CCTV cameras at Mario's own house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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They find footage of him after the murder walking back in wet socks. Actually, if you slow the footage down and zoom in, you can see the little footprints he left. Now, obviously his clothes were wet because he had just dumped a body in the river.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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In fact, the footage also shows him right when he gets home, like stripping off all his clothes and washing them immediately because clearly Bro is trying to clean up all the evidence. But anyway, then finally police interview the Uber driver who drove him to the airport that day.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And that Uber driver is like, yeah, we were driving over the bridge and dude rolled the window down and he threw a set of car keys into the water. It was weird. And so police, they send some divers out and it takes about three weeks, but eventually they find the keys to Cecilia's red Fiat. And so at this point, Australian police, they know Mario is definitely the killer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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But remember, he's no longer in Australia. He left, he's in Brazil now. So police, they compile all the evidence and they deliver it to prosecutors in Brazil. And three months after the murder, bam, Mario is finally arrested in Brazil. Here's his mugshot. And he ultimately goes to trial and he confesses to everything, to unaliving Cecilia, to dumping the body, everything.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And here's footage of him crying in court, if you care to see him cry in court. And ultimately, he's sentenced to 27 years in prison. Good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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He's a pretty controlling guy. And as she pulls away from him, of course, he tries harder to control her. Like he's always checking to see who she's talking to. Like, who are you talking to? Sometimes he even takes her phone or her computer to like snoop on her. And Cecilia's friends, they start to notice that she's not happy around him. And they're like, girl, you need to ditch this guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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And eventually she's like, you know what? You're right. And so she goes and she breaks the news to Mario that the relationship is just not working for her. And after about a year of dating, boom, she officially breaks up with him. And of course, Mario is devastated. I mean, he feels like he can't lose her. I mean, he could never do better than her.

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He Murdered His Ex - The Mario Marcelo Santoro story

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So he just refuses to accept her decision and he refuses to move out of her place. And he just keeps on living there. And then he kind of starts stalking her. And this is really scary for Cecilia. So she's like, fuck all this. And she leaves her own apartment. And she starts staying over at her friend's houses or crashing in hotels just to be away from him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

0.129

So this surfer somehow becomes one of the most notorious jewel thieves of all time. Now the guy, people call him Murph. And Murph loves to surf. And one day in Miami, Murph reconnects with some old surfing buddies of his. And these buddies, they're suddenly dressing kind of sharp. Like they used to be bums and now they got that drip. And Murph's like, when did you turds get money all of a sudden?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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And the American Museum of Natural History, it has one exhibit that's called the Hall of Gems, which houses some of the rarest and most expensive gems in the world. And so this tour, it leads these jewel thieves through the Hall of Gems and they're looking at all these gems on display and they're like, oh yeah, we need to rob this place.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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So they put their heads together and they start coming up with a plan to break into the History Museum and take their collection of historical gems. And these guys, they're like professionals at this. So they take the time to map out this whole heist. Like they visit the museum and they observe the guards while they're doing their nightly rounds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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They low-key check the windows in the museum for any vulnerabilities. And lucky for them, they actually see one of those windows is cracked open. And while they're planning out this whole robbery, they're staying in a nearby hotel. And since they have a surplus of money from all their Miami robberies, They're like in this hotel throwing these big ass loud parties in the room with lots of people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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I mean, they're just having a great time. So the big night finally rolls around and Roger drives them to the history museum. And Murph and Alan, they jump the fence and they run across the courtyard. And then Alan climbs up the side of the building, mostly using the fire escape. And then he makes it to the cracked window. And then he lowers a rope down for Murph.

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This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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And then Murph climbs up and they open the window and they get inside and they head over to the Hall of Gems. And once they're there, they use a glass cutter and they cut holes in the display cases. And lucky for them, the alarms were old and outdated and no longer working.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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And these guys, these surfers, end up stealing around 24 stones, including three very important gems, the DeLong Star Ruby, the Eagle Diamond, and the Star of India Sapphire, which were worth around $400,000, which in today's money would be around $4 million. Not to mention, these are historical gems. So they are literally impossible to replace.

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This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

228.006

So anyway, these guys take these gems and they take whatever else they can. And then they climb back down out of the building and they flee back to their hotel. The next morning, Murph and Alan, they fly to Miami, taking the jewels with them. Meanwhile, Roger flees to Connecticut to be with his family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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But when the news breaks that the Museum of Natural History had a bunch of priceless jewels stolen, the story blows up and it's all over the news. Here's the thing though, because these dudes threw so many parties back at their hotel, a hotel clerk ends up tipping off the police like, yo, these three guys, they seem really suspicious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

25.544

And that is when one of his buddies explains it. This guy, Alan. Alan explains to him that they all got this new side hustle. Breaking into places and robbing them. Houses, hotel rooms, jewelry stores. Mostly they're looking for jewels. So, they're jewel thieves. And one night, they're about to go on a heist. And they invite Murph along. And Murph's like, sweet, let's get paid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

264.98

And so the police goes and checks their hotel room, and they find photos of the museum, a pew-pew, and burgling tools. So they know these guys are guilty. Two days later, the FBI shows up in Miami. And boom, they arrest Murph. And also, boom, they arrest Alan. And eventually, they go and arrest Roger, too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

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now ultimately over time the feds do recover most of the stolen jewels there were 24 of them in total but they never actually recover one of the big ones the eagle diamond like literally they just never found it now because this is such a big news story these guys become kind of criminal celebrities like people end up rooting for them i mean they're surfers they're in shape they're kind of handsome they become like sort of local heroes

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

312.999

So it looks like these guys have really benefited from all this. Until all three of them are found guilty and they're sentenced to three years in prison. So they do their time and they get out and Roger, he goes on to lead a normal life. But Murph and Alan, they do not. They go right back into crime and they go back into their robbing houses and jewelry stores.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

338.999

But then one day Murph meets these two young women in Florida. And they ask him for help because they apparently just stole $488,000 worth of stocks and bonds from a financial services office that they used to work for. And now, they don't know what to do next. And so I guess Murph, being a criminal, he offers to help them sell these stocks and bonds without getting caught.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

361.552

And so within a few days of befriending them, these two women are suddenly crashing at his apartment. Which sounds kind of fun, but pretty quickly, I guess Murph finds them to be really annoying. Like they're all impatient and they're just driving him crazy. And so Murph and some other guy, they offer to take them out on the guy's boat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

381.46

And once they're out on the water, they beat these women and they stab them and they unalive them. And then they dump them in the water. A month later, their bodies wash up on the shore of the canal. And Murph and the other guy, they were last seen with them. So they are very much suspects in this crime. And so, bam, they both get arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

403.076

But unfortunately, at this point, there isn't any hard evidence. So they're released on bail. And while he's out on bail, Murph decides, yeah, it's time to rob another house. And so he breaks into this rich woman's house while she's home and he robs her at gunpoint. And he's like, give me all your jewelry or I'm gonna throw this boiling water on your niece's face. Jesus Murph.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

424.892

But lucky for the woman and her niece, she actually has a panic button installed in her house. So she hits the panic button and pretty quickly police arrive. And Murph is still there and there's like a whole shootout between him and police. And eventually, bam, they arrest him again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

441.579

And he goes to trial and he's found guilty of both trying to rob that rich woman's house and unaliving those girls on that boat. And he gets back-to-back life sentences. Oh, but it's not over yet, because in prison, Murph is going to continue to be a turd. In prison, he actually becomes some sort of a drug kingpin, like making sure other prisoners get their supply, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

465.609

But then, one day, Murph gets a tip. Someone informs him that if he ever wants to get out on parole, the only way he can do that is if he presents himself as a changed man and say that he, like, found Jesus or something. And a lot of people think that this is absolute bullshit, but suddenly he starts proclaiming that he found Jesus and he starts preaching to other prisoners in the prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

49.169

And so he goes along on this heist and it's successful. They steal some jewels and they sell them and his cut ends up being around 15 grand. And Murph is looking at all this and he's like, well, that was the easiest money I ever made. Let's do it again. And so they keep this hustle going.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

490.542

And I guess it works because then after 17 years in prison, after two life sentences, the parole board believes that he's a changed man and they ultimately let him out. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

66.221

Murph and Alan, they surf by day and they cat burgle by night, climbing onto rooftops and jumping between balconies to steal jewelry from old rich ladies and tourists. And they're making a lot of money from this. And soon enough, they get another friend involved. This guy, Roger. And Roger ends up being their lookout and their getaway driver. And this is all working great for them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Surfer Stole Millions - The Murf The Surf story

89.989

But pretty quickly, I guess they get a little bored with Miami. I guess they robbed all the good places already. So Murph, Alan, and Roger, they take a road trip from Miami all the way up to New York City. Because they're trying to see if there are some places up there to rob. And while they're in New York, they take a tour of the famous American Museum of Natural History.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

0.129

So this guy, his name's Ivan, and Ivan is an absolute psychopath. Let me explain. Now, Ivan is from Australia and he's not a good dude. He's got a criminal record. He's kind of always been in and out of trouble. And I guess at some point in his adult life, he decides, hey, I'm going to unalive some people. Sounds like fun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

106.782

Then he stabs the girlfriend and then he beats her until she's unalived. Then three weeks later, he's driving along and he spots another backpacker. This guy, his name's Onions. So Ivan pulls over and he offers him a ride and Onions is like, that would be brilliant, bruv. Cause you know, he's English.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

126.055

So he gets in and as they're driving through Belanglo State Forest, they're chatting and Onions starts getting a really bad feeling about Ivan. Cause Ivan's asking him way too many questions. And that is when boom, Ivan pulls the car over and he pulls out a pew pew. And Onions is like, oh bloody hell, and he jumps out of the car and he runs away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

146.469

So Ivan, he gets out of the car and he runs after him and blam, blam, he fires his pew-pew, but he keeps missing, lucky for Onions. And ultimately, Onions is able to run far enough away and he flags down a passing car and he is able to escape. And later, Onions is at the police station and he reports Ivan. But for whatever reason, police don't do anything.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

169.058

I don't know if they don't have enough information to investigate or what, but nothing happens to Ivan. So this psychopath just keeps going. And about a year later, he strikes again. He's driving along the road and he picks up yet another hitchhiker, a German woman. And he drives her to Belanglo State Forest and he ends up unaliving her with a knife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

192.017

Eleven months after that, he picks up a German couple who are hitchhiking across Australia. And he drives them to the forest and there he shoots the guy six times and he decapitates the woman. Four months later, he picks up a pair of English women, hitchhikers. And again, he drives them to the forest and he stabs one of them a bunch of times and he shoots the other one.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

20.965

So one day when he's 26 years old, he's driving along outside of town and he picks up these two hitchhikers, two women, and he's trying to chat them up. And I guess these women are polite, but they don't really find him all that charming. And this pisses Ivan off. So he pulls the car over and he pulls out a knife and he threatens them with it. And then he essays at least one of them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

216.195

Now, of course, over the years, all these missing hitchhikers and backpackers, they've been reported missing by their families. But so far, none of their bodies have been found. Like, where do you even begin to look for the body of a missing hitchhiker? They're traveling across the country. Like, they could be anywhere. Well, in this case, they actually do find them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

237.129

Because a few months later, after Ivan had unalived the two English women, two runners are in the Belangelo State Forest. And they're participating in some orienteering event. It's like an event where they're supposed to navigate through the forest. And while they're there, suddenly, boom, they come across some human remains. Remains belonging to one of the English women.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

258.524

And so they contact police and the next day police go out and they search that area and they find the remains of the other English woman who was with her. Then a year later a local man is out in the forest and he's collecting firewood and he stumbles across the remains of the boyfriend from that 19 year old couple Ivan had unalived years before.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

279.359

So police start combing through the area again and they find the remains of the girlfriend from that couple. A month after that, police are still looking and they find the remains of three more people, the German hitchhiker and the German couple that Ivan had unalived. And that is when police start thinking they might have a serial killer on their hands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

304.099

And so police, they start looking at people who live in or around the area where the victims were found. And there is one local guy who they know of, who not only has a criminal record, but also has a history of violence. A guy who had been credibly accused of attacking and essaying two hitchhiking women all those years ago and went to court for it. That guy is in fact, Ivan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

330.038

So police start investigating and looking into Ivan. But unfortunately, he's just a suspicious guy with a criminal record. There's nothing tying him directly to these murders. Until... Okay, here's the thing about what Ivan is doing. The way he's murdering people does in fact make him a serial killer. And a potential serial killer is big news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

354.878

So all the news stations are definitely going to report on it. And sometimes news like this, it's so big that it ends up getting international coverage. And this particular story is definitely getting international coverage. And so all the way over in jolly old England, a man is watching TV and he's watching the news. That man is onions.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

379.091

And so Onions, he sees this news report about a bunch of bodies being found in Australia in the Belanglo State Forest. And Onions, he's like, Roy, that was the bloke that was shooting at me. And so he calls the Australian feds and he tells them about what happened to him all those years ago when he was in Australia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

396.818

That he was hitchhiking and a man offered him a ride and then he pulled out a pew-pew and he was chasing him around with it trying to shoot him. And so the feds fly him out. from England all the way to Australia so that he can be a key witness and help them solve this case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

412.047

And they end up showing him a picture of Ivan and Onions looks right at that picture and he's like, right, that's the bastard. So then bam! 50 police officers go and raid Ivan's family compound. And here's actually some like news footage of it. And if you pause, you can see all of the officers gathered there during the raid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

432.239

And during this raid, they find pew-pews that match the type of pew-pews that were used in the murders. And they find backpacks and other personal items that belong to the missing hitchhikers. So bro is definitely guilty. And so kaboom, they end up arresting Ivan and they charge him with murdering seven people and a bunch of other stuff. Now, here's what's crazy though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

452.228

They only charge him with the murders that they could actually prove that he did, but they suspect that he was responsible for almost 20 murders in the area, maybe even more. They just couldn't prove it, because apparently hitchhikers used to go missing in that area all the time. But whatever, the seven murders that they could prove were enough to put him away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

46.403

And then he pulls over at a gas station and somehow these two women get away from him and they go and they report him to the police. So then, bam, police, they go and arrest him. But unfortunately, he somehow ends up getting acquitted of this crime. And so 17 years pass, and he's 45 now, and Ivan decides to strike again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

471.829

And so he goes to trial and he's found guilty and he's given seven life sentences, one for each murder. And he spends the next 23 years in prison and then he dies in prison of cancer. So good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

69.258

And one day, he's driving along, and he sees a young couple walking along the road. They're both 19, and they're hitchhiking to some kind of hippie festival. So Ivan pulls up, and he's like, good night, mate, or whatever Australians say, and he offers them a ride. So they get in and they're all chatting, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

87.312

And as they chat, he drives them through Belangelo State Forest, which is a forest in this area. But then he decides to pull over and he forces the couple to walk through the trees. Now, we don't know how he forced them, probably by knife point, because once they're deep in the forest, boom, he stabs the boyfriend a bunch of times.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

0.089

So one night, this guy, he's out and he's driving. And he's driving a bit recklessly. And police, they pull him over. And they see that not only was he driving like a turd, but he's also driving with a suspended license. So then, bam, they arrest him and they throw him in jail. Now the guy, his name's Tanner. And I don't have a mugshot of Tanner, but here he is in real life, in jail.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

109.218

So now these two turds are on the run and pow, they make it out into the hallway and oh, Cody falls and he leaves his prison croc behind, but he is able to get up and they are out. Now I mentioned Judge Buzzard is overseeing both their cases. Here's the thing about Judge Buzzard though. I guess Buzzard, he ain't no punk and he is not about to let these two clowns get away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

134.128

So as Tanner and Cody are running out, Buzzard literally stands up and rips off his judge's robe like he's f***ing Superman and kaboom, he runs after them. And if you look at the footage, the two attorneys here, they're like shocked. They're like, so should we call a recess or...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

151.4

But anyway, the chase is on, and Tanner and Cody, they actually make it to the stairwell, and they sprint down the flight of stairs. Now, Judge Buzzard, he's still determined to get them, and he is right behind them. And boom, he busts through the door, and now he's in the stairwell with them. But the two guys, they've now made it down to the second floor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

169.872

But they aren't fast enough because Buzzard is closing in. But then, finally, they make it to the bottom floor. And Tanner actually makes it first. And he gets out the door and he keeps running. But then Cody makes it to the bottom floor. But not before Judge Buzzard grabs his ass as he's trying to run out the door. And pow, he tackles him just outside the building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

192.518

Moments later, a couple of deputies catch up. Like, oh, hey, did you need our help? And so, bam, they ar- Well, I guess they can't really arrest him because he's already under arrest. So they just escort Cody back to his cell, where I'm sure he sits there all ashamed that his escape plan didn't work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

210.507

But there's still Tanner, who's still running, still in handcuffs, and he's now about four blocks away. But then suddenly Tanner does something he should have done a long time ago. His brain starts firing on all cylinders and he actually starts thinking about the consequences of what he's doing. Like, does he really want to break out of jail like this?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

23.004

Now he's not locked up for very long before he has a quick hearing to go to. So he's in the courtroom, in handcuffs, sitting next to a bunch of other alleged criminals, waiting in line for the judge to hear their case. And there he is here on the left. Now here's where it gets good though. Tanner happens to be sitting next to this guy. His name's Cody.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

234.219

Does he really want to go on the run and be an outlaw? So with all these thoughts going on in that moment, he thinks hard about these things and he's suddenly like, nah. this isn't worth it, and he just stops. And pretty quickly, police catch up to him, and I like to imagine they tackled him and roughed him up a little bit, but I honestly don't know if that happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

257.248

Regardless, bam, they grab him and they take him back to his cell. Here's the thing, though. To police and to Judge Buzzard, it doesn't really matter that Tanner stopped on his own. All that matters is that he was in the middle of a court proceeding and he decided to make a run for it like an absolute turd.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

275.281

So for the both of them, they went from basically misdemeanor charges, driving without a license or whatever, to being charged with second degree escape, which is a felony. So now they're both felons. Now, you might be asking, why did they suddenly run when they're likely just about to be released anyway?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

302.287

So he doesn't even know why he did it. While Cody actually has a better explanation. I didn't try to escape to get out. I tried to escape to get well, and I tried to do what I could do to get my drug addiction. So anyway, eventually they go back to court, and Tanner is sentenced to a full year, while Cody is actually sentenced to three years. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

321.891

Short video today, but, I don't know, it's a fun story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

45.693

And Cody, he's in court for theft charges because I guess he stole some woman's purse or something and he got busted. Regardless, neither of them have really major charges against them. It's not like they went out and committed murder or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

59.167

But while the two guys sit there, the judge, this guy, Judge Buzzard, no, Judge Buzzard is sitting here and he's setting the conditions of their release, meaning they're likely just about to be released. But Cody, I guess this whole process just isn't fast enough for him. Like he wants out of all this right now. And Bro comes up with a brilliant plan to basically just make all this worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

2 Men Escaped From Jail And The Judge Chases Them Down

86.361

He turns to Tanner. And I don't think they really know each other. But he turns to Tanner and he says, I'm gonna run. And so Cody looks around and he sees his chance and boom, he sprints for the exit. And as you can see, for some strange reason, Tanner is also like, that's a great idea. And you can see in the courtroom footage, he runs too.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

0.109

So this kid, his name's Colin. And Colin is a teenager, and he's also gay. Now, there's obviously nothing wrong with that, but the problem is he feels like he has to tell his dad, who we'll just call Dad. And they live in Oklahoma, and Dad has some really backwards views on things. So Colin knows he's not going to take this news well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

117.566

So then Colin moves from Oklahoma all the way to Florida. And there he moves in with his mom, who we'll just call mom. And things seem to be going okay with him and mom. Like here's a photo of them together and they look all happy and stuff. But after so many years with his dad of isolation and abuse, plus the fact that he unalived his own dad, Colin's mental health is a bit unstable.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

142.682

So mom, she's worried about this and she brings him in to get a psych evaluation and they keep him in the psych hospital for like eight days and they end up diagnosing him with PTSD and a personality disorder. And just as Colin is getting released, for some reason, he ends up telling the staff, if I'm released, I'll unalive myself or maybe I'll unalive my mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

163.081

And the staff is like, okay, bud, we got to keep you here for longer now. And so they keep him there for several more months. And then finally they let him out and he goes to live with his mom. And mom, you know, to her credit, she tries her best. Like she tries taking him on all these trips and she's posting photos of them together on Facebook.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

181.573

Like here's a picture of them and they're taking a selfie together. And here they are on a trip. I guess she took him to Washington, D.C. So like she's really attempting to make this work. But unfortunately, it's not working. Like, Colin just isn't adjusting well. He isn't doing well in school, he's failing his classes, he's playing way more video games than his mom is comfortable with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

201.351

And one day, Colin is playing games instead of doing his homework, and mom threatens to take his console away. And this really pisses Colin off. So he goes and he just beats the shit out of her. And so then the police come and bam, they arrest Colin for domestic violence. And ultimately, he's put on probation. But while on probation, he continues to live at his mom's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

22.631

Regardless, Colin comes out to his dad and dad, of course, does not take it well. He just can't handle having a gay son. So he decides to punish Colin and he stops letting him go to school because I guess Colin really likes school. And so he's not allowed to go to school and he becomes a prisoner in his own home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

224.867

And Colin is like 17 at this point. And mom, to her credit again, she keeps trying her best to make this work. She keeps posting pictures of them on Facebook together. And they look happy in these photos next to each other. And when Colin graduates high school, mom buys him a $26,000 car. Like, look at that car. But it seems to not matter. Because no matter what she does, Colin just isn't happy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

252.475

you already know what's coming. One day, Colin and his mom, they get into an argument. And they're arguing about chores or something, nothing too major. But Colin has had it with his mom. So he goes, he just runs away. And he drives over to his grandma's house. And he hangs out there to cool off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

271.323

but soon enough mom shows up and Colin he really doesn't want to see her so as soon as she gets there they start arguing again and this argument is much worse than the first time and so they're outside and they're yelling at each other and they're making a whole scene and things keep escalating and suddenly bam Colin grabs his mom by her hair and he drags her by the hair into the house

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

293.996

And they're still screaming at each other. And that is when Colin grabs a big chef's knife from the kitchen and he holds his mom down and he stabs her. And this unalives her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

306.162

And then he calls 911 and police get there and they question him and he tells them that he and his mom were arguing and that she came at him with a knife and that then she fell on her own knife and unalived herself by accident. And pretty quickly police are like, yeah, that's bull . And so bam, they arrest Colin. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

328.355

And ultimately he's charged with first degree murder and kidnapping, I guess, because he dragged her into the house by her hair and held her there. So I guess that's kidnapping. And at this point in time, because of this second murder, they're actually looking into reopening his dad's case as well. Like maybe his dad wasn't chasing him around the house with a knife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

345.848

Like maybe it wasn't self-defense. Regardless, this case hasn't gone to trial yet, so we'll see. Probably next year.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

43.325

Dad doesn't let him leave the house or have friends and his parents are divorced and he's barely allowed to talk to his mom on the phone. And so this awful punishment goes on for several years. And as you can imagine, Colin's anger builds up and he starts to really hate his dad. But then, one day, Colin's 15 at this point, and he and dad, they get into a really bad argument.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

67.219

And it gets heated, like really heated. And it turns physical and violent. And then, allegedly, dad grabs a knife and he starts chasing Colin through the house with it. So then Colin, he runs into another room and he grabs a rifle. And when his dad lunges at him with the knife, Colin pulls the trigger. And he unalives his own dad. And then he calls 911. And when police arrive, they question him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He’s a Dangerous Kid - The Collin Griffith story

96.472

And he says he shot his dad in self-defense. But regardless, they arrest him anyway. And they charge him with first-degree murder. However, when all is said and done, they can't find enough evidence to prove that it was first-degree murder and not self-defense. So ultimately, all of the charges against Colin are dropped. And he is a free man.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This YouTuber Was Murdered By Her Biggest Fan - The Christina Grimmie story

140.471

And big, big, big thank you to everyone that has been coming out on tour to come see me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This YouTuber Was Murdered By Her Biggest Fan - The Christina Grimmie story

96.348

And there's Selena Gomez right there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

0.109

So one day, this guy's lurking around on the internet, and he's looking for an astrologer to give him a reading, because I guess he's into that kind of stuff. And finally, he runs across one, and he sees her, and he's like, damn, she's kind of fine. I'd like to get a reading from her. So he reaches out to her, and he tries to book a session.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

121.107

Like he's super jealous, he makes her quit her astrology fortune teller job she loves, and he forbids her from working any other jobs. He starts isolating her from her friends and family. And to make it worse, Bish also starts getting physically abusive with her. Like he gets violent, often and a lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

140.476

And her family knows, and her friends know, and Sultanat sometimes even sends her brother photos of all the bruises Bish puts on her, and she tells him that Bish is responsible. And if you're wondering, okay, so everyone knows he's beating her up, why doesn't anyone report him to the police?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

157.384

Well, just keep in mind that domestic violence in Kazakhstan at this time is not only viewed very differently than other places in the world, but minor domestic violence is decriminalized here. So, smacking your wife around? Not a crime. Not to mention, Bish is a well-connected guy. And in theory, if she tries to get him in trouble, he could make things difficult for her and her family.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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But unfortunately for him, this astrologer only books sessions with women, because I guess when she books sessions with men, they always try and creep on her. But this guy, he's not going to give up. He really wants this woman's attention. So he gets a female friend of his to book a session with her.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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So unfortunately, she's kind of stuck. And at this point, they've been married less than a year and things just keep getting worse. And one night, it all goes downhill. So they're out at this restaurant that his family owns and no one else is there. It's just them and I think some of the staff because the place I think is closed at this time. And so Bish and Saltanat, they start to fight.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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Like he's been fighting with her all day, allegedly. And you can see them here on security footage. And so I guess he's mad because he's convinced that she slept with this other guy who she actually didn't sleep with. But if she had, it would have been before she and Bish had even met. So like, I don't know. It was some insecure husband he's mad about. The dude is a psychopath.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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Now, at some point during all this fighting, suddenly, pow, he starts hitting her and punching her in the face and grabbing her by the hair. And she eventually escapes, and she tries to hide in a restroom stall, but then, boom, Bish breaks down the stall door, and he drags her back out, and he just keeps punching her and kicking her. And eventually, Bish drags Sultanat by the hair into a VIP room.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And that VIP room is private, so there are no security cameras in there. Now, there are security cameras in other parts of this restaurant. So this whole beating before the VIP room is caught on camera, which I obviously can't show you the full footage. And trust me, you don't want to see it. It's really brutal. So anyway, then he grabs her and he drags her into the VIP room.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And while they're in that room, he continues beating her. And he eventually hits her in the head with some blunt object. We still don't know what. Oh, and it gets even more sinister than that. He's been beating her for hours at this point. And this whole time, he's using his phone and recording little videos of her. I guess he's trying to humiliate her.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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He actually records 12 of these videos of himself beating her. And so Sultanat is lying there and she's wounded and she's not really responding and Bish, he just leaves her there in that VIP room for hours. And during this time, like so much time has passed, it's morning now and the restaurant opens back up, I guess. And Bish, he's still there. He still hasn't called an ambulance or anything.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And that female friend books a session, meets up with the astrologer, and she's like, look, I'll be honest, I'm really only here because my friend asked me to come. He's a really good guy. He really wants to get to know you. And so the astrologer's like, ugh, fine, okay, I'll meet your friend. And so finally, they meet up in person.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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In fact, he's seen having lunch with another woman, like a vegan influencer that he knows. Like it's no big deal. Like his wife isn't secretly in the next room dying. Also, while Satanat is in the next room dying, Bish calls a psychic he knows. Because like I said, he's into that kind of stuff. And I guess he's like, hey, my wife's hurt real bad. Is she going to be okay?

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And the psychic is like, yeah, bro, don't sweat it. She'll be fine. Spoiler alert, she won't be fine. In fact, Sultanat doesn't get any medical attention and she dies right there in the VIP room of the restaurant where he left her. Now, at this point, Bish doesn't know that she's unalived. He just knows that she's seriously injured and that this whole scene looks pretty bad for him.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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So what does he do? He gets a relative who works at the food court where the restaurant is, and together they send all the staff home so that there are no witnesses sniffing around, and they try to destroy all the security footage of Bish beating her up. And then, finally, 12 hours after he first attacked her, Bish calls an ambulance.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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But, unfortunately, by the time paramedics get there, Sultanat has long been unalived. In fact, at that point, they say she had already been dead anywhere from six to eight hours. And so, bam, police arrest Bish and they charge him with torturing and murdering his wife. Four months later, his trial starts and it's live streamed for the whole world to see.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And this is the first time in Kazakhstan's history that they've publicly live streamed a trial. And so everyone in the country is watching it. This is like the OJ trial for Kazakhstan. Apparently 19 million people live stream it. People in the country, people outside the country. It's wild.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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Now at the trial, he and his defense team, they try to argue that Saltanat was crazy, that she was a drunk, that she was violent, that she was a gold digger, that she was cheating on him and that she provoked him. And he also says, yeah, that he did beat her up, but that they're married and beating up your wife isn't a criminal offense in Kazakhstan. So therefore he doesn't deserve prison.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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Bish, please. However, the prosecution is able to show the jury and everyone watching at home the security footage from the restaurant that was supposed to have been destroyed. And like I said, that footage is brutal. Allegedly watching the footage made the jury cry. Not to mention, the jury has shown all 12 of those videos that Bish himself recorded on his phone while he was beating her.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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And so because of that, ultimately he's found guilty as f**k and he's sentenced to 24 years in prison. While Bish's relative that helped him out, he gets four years in prison for trying to conceal the crime. And the good news is because of this case, Kazakhstan actually changed their laws and domestic violence is now a crime there. And by the way, here's what Sultanat looks like in real life.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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Now the guy, his name is Bishumbive, but we're just going to call him Bish. And the astrologer, her name's Saltanat. And so Bish and Saltanat meet, and they actually hit it off. And she ends up kind of liking him, and eventually they start dating. And within months of meeting, the two decide to get married. And so far, everything seems to be going great.

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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until here's the thing all of this is taking place in kazakhstan and in kazakhstan bish ain't no regular dude he's actually kind of a big deal there he's worked in several high-level government positions he was the minister of national economy so basically he was in charge of kazakhstan's economy but then he got convicted for taking bribes and sentenced to 10 years in prison

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This Politician Killed His Wife - The Kuandyk Bishimbayev story

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But I guess he was friends with the president of Kazakhstan at the time, so after two and a half years in prison, the president pardons him and he gets out. My point is, Bish is a very well-connected guy. He's also a very controlling guy. And so anyway, Bish and Sultanat get married, and almost immediately his controlling side starts to come out.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

0.149

So this guy, he has a big problem. His wife pooped on him. Let me explain. Now the guy, his name's Richard, and he lives in London, he works in IT, and he's a really nice guy. And one night, he's out at a nightclub, probably drinking, dancing, having a good time, and that is when he meets this woman, Cherie. And Richard thinks Cherie is foing, and she thinks he is foing.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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So to keep track of their kid in the house, Richard ends up installing nanny cams in the bedroom and in the kid's playroom. And these nanny cams are going to end up being important. So more years pass and the abuse continues to get worse. And Richard and Cherie, they have two more kids, so three daughters total. And over time, Cherie's drinking unfortunately gets more and more out of control.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Sometimes she's consuming like three bottles of wine a day. And the more she drinks, the meaner she gets. Like she's constantly calling Richard names and sometimes she'll hit him or she'll bite him or she'll stab him with a fork or she'll smash eggs on him. And like one time she gets so mad that she smashes an empty wine bottle over his head.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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And he's lying on the floor in pain and she just like kicks him in the ear. Like it is really bad. And poor Richard, he still doesn't want to tell anyone that his wife is abusive. I guess he's still ashamed that she beats him up, or maybe he just doesn't want to get her in trouble. Not only that, she very openly threatens to tell everyone that he is the abuser.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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And in these domestic abuse situations, men usually are the abuser, so people are more likely to believe her story over his. Sometimes she even threatens to go to the police and tell them he's the abuser. Sometimes she tries to get his daughters to tell people that he's abusive to them and her. It is wild. So not only does Richard not tell anyone, he goes to great lengths to cover it up.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Like sometimes she'll hit him and he'll get bruises or injuries on his face and he'll just cover up those marks with makeup so that people don't notice and start asking a bunch of questions. And so anyway, the abuse continues and he just lets her punish him verbally, physically, emotionally. Now at some point during all this, Richard gets smart and he starts documenting his injuries.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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He's taking photos of the marks she leaves on him. Here's an example of a photo he took, but I actually have to blur out the bruises because this platform won't let me show injuries from domestic abuse, which is understandable. But the picture shows his arm is all messed up and there are a bunch of photos like this.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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So anyway, he gets smart and he starts documenting the abuse, taking photographs, making audio recordings, saving the nanny cam footage that catches them fighting. And one time Cherie gets so drunk and out of control, they start fighting and she goes to the kitchen and gets a kitchen knife and she threatens him with it. And the nanny cam, it catches all of this on video.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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So they hit it off and pretty soon they start dating. And they get into a relationship. And things are going great. They seem really happy. Until... Here's the thing about Cherie. Cherie likes to drink. A lot. And when she drinks she gets aggressive. Especially with Richard. And so they fight. And sometimes when they fight she gets out of control and she ends up getting physical with him.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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It is a little violent, but I can actually show you a screenshot of it. Richard appears to be huddled on the arm of the couch here. And you can see that she is holding the knife. But anyway, this is caught on nanny cam. So Richard downloads it and he adds it to his collection of photos and audio clips. Now, here's where things get really out of control.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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One time, they get in a fight and she doesn't want him sitting on the bed because I guess it's her bed. I guess she paid for it with her credit card or something. I don't know. But she doesn't want him sitting on it. So he's like, all right. And he goes and sits on the floor. And while he's sitting on the floor, Cherie comes over and she poops on him. Like she literally poops on him.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Now, I don't know the specifics or why he wasn't able to move out of the way. It seems like that would be a very slow thing to happen. I don't know. But she poops on him. And then she expects him to clean it up. And I guess at that time, Richard is recording this fight. So he gets some audio of it. All right, so you get the point. She's super abusive to the point where she's pooping on him.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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And at this time, they're 20 years into this relationship. He's 47 now. She's 46. Imagine a 46-year-old adult pooping. In fact, I can't get over this. How did that even happen? Could he not move out of the way? Was she holding him down and then she pooped on him? Did he fall asleep and then she snuck up on him and dropped a deuce? Did she poop in her hand and then throw it at him?

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Did she then use his t-shirt to wipe herself? I need to know how this went down or I won't be able to sleep tonight. Anyway, after 20 years of this chaos, Richard is just broken. He wants it to stop. And that is when Cherie finally makes a huge mistake. She gets a friend involved. So one day they're arguing and I guess she's drunk because she's always drunk.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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And in the middle of the fight, she picks up her phone and she calls Richard's friend and she starts playing the victim. She's like, I'm scared. Richard is going to hurt me. And so the friend comes over to help mediate the fight or whatever. But as soon as friend gets Richard alone with him, Richard finally breaks down and tells him everything. Everything he's been through for the past 20 years.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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That he is not the abuser. That his wife has been an abusive psychopath this whole time. That she pooped on him. And that he's even been trying to document some of this behavior. And then he shows his friend some of that nanny cam footage he had saved. And Friend sees the footage and he's like, oh snap, you ain't lying.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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So when Friend leaves, he immediately goes to police and he reports Cherie as a domestic abuser. And pretty quickly, boom, police show up to their house to do a welfare check. And they get there and Cherie's all drunk. And so, bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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And Richard, he cooperates with police, and he hands over 43 photos of his injuries that he had taken over the years, along with audio clips he got, and most importantly, all that nanny cam footage of Cherie abusing him. And when police question Cherie about all this, she of course tries to blame it all on him, like, but I'm the victim here.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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But they already have plenty of evidence that says otherwise. So ultimately she pleads guilty to all this and she gets sentenced to four years in prison. And Richard eventually leaves her and now he's settled down again with a new partner. So good for him. But like, ah, she really went and pooped on him? Ah.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Like she'll push him or slap him. And he's allegedly not the kind of guy who fights back. So he just takes it. And to make it worse, he's not about to admit to anyone that his girlfriend beats him up. Like that's embarrassing. So Cherie's occasional drunken abuse continues. And nine years pass and Richard and Cherie, they end up getting married. But marriage doesn't stop the abuse.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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In fact, over the years, it actually gets worse and more frequent. Oh, and the abuse is not just physical. She verbally abuses him too. Like he'll forget to do something like put the chicken in the oven for dinner and she'll just lay into him, berating him, calling him all kinds of awful names. She'll also make offhand comments about his mother who passed away, which is just terrible.

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She abused HIM - The Richard Spencer story

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Not only that, when they start trying to have a kid, I guess they have to do it through IVF. And Cherie doesn't like that they have to do it through IVF. So she starts accusing Richard of being defective, of not being a real man, and that he's a failure because he's unable to get her pregnant. Just all kinds of awful stuff. Now eventually, Richard does get her pregnant and they do have a kid.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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So this girl, her name's Ellie, and she's 18, and Ellie is about to be in big trouble. Because one day, she's hanging out with her boyfriend, and they're chilling, watching movies, playing video games, or whatever, and they're also allegedly drinking and smoking a little Zaza.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And so Ellie is in trouble. And the officer's like, stand over there while we search your vehicle. And Ellie's thinking, oh, if they search my car, then they'll find the vodka and maybe some of that Zaza and I'm going to be . So what does she do? She blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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But see, Ellie's not going to give up. She really, really doesn't want them searching her car. So she starts to get a little aggressive.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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But then boyfriend leaves for work and Ellie, even though she's a bit tipsy, she decides it's the perfect time to go to Target and I guess do some Christmas shopping. So she grabs a bottle of vodka and a little Zaza and she gets into her SUV and she heads over to Target.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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Oh, but Ellie does not stop. Even when one of the other officers is like, we can see the Zaza right through the window. Doesn't matter. Ellie's convinced she's right and she is ready to die on this hill. And to the officer's credit, they're actually really patient with her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And so, boom, they handcuff her. And Ellie, she doesn't like this at all.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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We already spoke about this.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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So then they get her into the back of the police car, and here she's really starting to lose control.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And it takes a bit of work, but yeah, it seems like she's finally about to calm down. But then she starts crying, and like, you almost feel sorry for her.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And then when that doesn't work, she starts trying to negotiate.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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But like, yeah, here you can see her trying to use her leg to try and keep them from buckling her in. And so, yeah, as you can see, she really doesn't calm down. Like she gets even more out of control pretty quickly. And during all this, I guess her vape falls out of her pocket and the officer needs to confiscate it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And this whole vape situation really sets her off.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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So they're forced to put her in what's called the wrap, which is a full body restraint. It's like handcuffs for your whole body. Here's a picture of someone they put in a wrap. And as you can see, there is no way anyone is getting out of that. So they're trying to put her in this wrap and she's like kicking them and fighting the whole way.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And as she gets there, she's listening to music, having a good time, and she swerves into the parking lot and skirt, she skids into a parking spot. And then she gets out and she stumbles into Target. Here's the thing, though. When she pulled into the parking lot, people saw her swerving around and acting a bit drunk. So a couple of them contacted police and reported her.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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But then finally they get her in the wrap.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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So now she's in the wrap and they throw her in the back of the cop car again. But Ellie has only got one thing on her mind.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And from this point on, like without her vape, she just completely loses it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And so they end up taking her back to the police station, and at this point, they've wrapped her entire head. Like, they must be really tired of listening to her. But they throw her in a holding cell, and then she finds out she's gonna have to stay there overnight.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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At some point, you almost have to stop and think, like, why doesn't she understand that this isn't going to go her way?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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So anyway, Ellie's charged with a DUI and battery of an officer and a bunch of other stuff and she spends six days in jail and ultimately she takes a plea deal and she gets two years probation and a small fine. And by the way, here's her mugshot. And poor Ellie, we still, to this day, don't know if she ever got her vape back.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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Then about an hour later, police show up to Target. And there they find Ellie in the parking lot sitting in her car.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And so she gets out and they're like, we heard you were swerving. And she's like, oh, I was just messing with my music. But the officers are thinking, eh, that's bullshit. And they ask for her ID. So she goes back into the car to get her ID. And one officer follows her to the front seat. And she shines her flashlight on what Ellie's doing.

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This Entitled Teen Is In Jail Now

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And that officer spots a bottle of vodka halfway under the front seat. But she doesn't say anything yet. Instead, she brings Ellie back and they question her a bit and Ellie gives them normal answers like, oh, I'm just Christmas shopping. But then the officer calls her out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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So this woman is about to pull off this crazy catfishing scheme by pretending to be a famous soap opera actor. Now her name's Lydia and she's around 21 years old. She lives in Melbourne, Australia and she apparently lives with her parents and doesn't have a lot going on. So one day, I guess she gets bored and decides, eh, I'm going to go catfish some people. Might be fun.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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So they make plans to meet up, but every time they're about to meet, fake Lincoln cancels at the last minute. And it keeps happening again and again and again. And after it happens enough times, Betty starts getting suspicious. Like, is my boyfriend really Lincoln Lewis? Now remember, Betty and Lincoln grew up in the same area as kids and they used to know each other.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And in fact, they actually still have a mutual friend in common. So Betty reaches out to their mutual friend and gets the real Lincoln Lewis's phone number and she calls him. And the real Lincoln Lewis picks up and Betty's like, hey, have we been dating each other for the last few months? And the real Lincoln is like, no.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And so Betty explains to him what's been going on, that someone friended her on Facebook, pretending to be him, and that now they are in a relationship. And real Lincoln is like, what the ? and he gets so mad that he goes and tweets about it. It has come to my attention that weird people have made Facebook profiles impersonating me and causing a lot of drama. Just deleted Facebook.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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Hope this stops. And Betty is also mad and she goes and reports fake Lincoln, aka Lydia, to the police. But unfortunately, police, they don't really do anything. They're like, eh, you got catfished. What do you want us to do? Meanwhile, Lydia knows Betty no longer believes her. But she isn't going to give up. She seems to enjoy catfishing, and she doesn't plan on stopping.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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So she contacts Betty and tells her another big lie. She's like, okay, I'm not really Lincoln Lewis. My name is actually Michael. So now Lydia is pretending to be fake Michael. And fake Michael starts Betty and he tells her that he made the fake Lincoln Lewis profile Only as a joke, like he was just goofing around. And the worst part about this is that Betty believes him.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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So she makes a new Facebook profile. Of course, she doesn't use her own name. Instead, she uses the name of this famous Australian soap opera actor, this guy, Lincoln Lewis. And she makes this page look really authentic, and she starts pretending to be fake Lincoln Lewis. Now at some point, Lydia, as fake Lincoln, sends a friend request to this random woman.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And she's still mad at him, but she continues to talk to him. Like, she must be really lonely. Because soon enough, they're talking all the time again, like every day. And eventually, Betty falls in love with fake Michael. And they end up in a full-blown romantic relationship. Now, here's where it gets really weird. As if it's not already weird.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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For some reason, now, not only is Lydia pretending to be fake Michael, aka Betty's boyfriend, but she will also pretend to be other anonymous people. And when she pretends to be other anonymous people, she'll send threatening DMs to Betty and threatening text messages. Like, lots of messages. Sometimes up to 80 a day. Like, I'm gonna unalive you, or whatever. Like, what the hell is she doing?

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And one time Lydia, pretending to be fake Michael, goes as far as to stage a kidnapping. Like one day fake Michael starts sending Betty texts claiming that he's being hurt. And then an unknown number sends her messages threatening her, demanding Michael's contact info. And then bam, Betty gets another text from a supposed federal agent.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And this fake federal agent sends her a photo of fake Michael bound and gagged like he's been kidnapped. I don't know how Lydia faked all of this, but it is insane. So anyway, Betty's freaking out because she thinks her boyfriend's been kidnapped and it's this whole chaotic scene. Now let me pause this story here because this is about to get worse. Now let's talk about this woman, Jess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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Now like Betty, Jess is also Australian. She's also a flight attendant. And a few years earlier, Jess was on a flight working and by sheer coincidence, the real Lincoln Lewis was also on that flight. And so Jess is a big fan and she stops him and she gives him a hug and she asks him for a picture and they take this picture right here.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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Sometime later, Jess goes and friends Lincoln Lewis on Facebook. Here's the thing though, the account that she friends isn't really his account. It's actually the fake account that Lydia had made to catfish Betty. So Lydia is the one who is now Facebook friends with Jess. So Jess now thinks she's Facebook friends with the real Lincoln Lewis.

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This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And of course, Lydia takes full advantage of this and she starts her catfishing scheme all over again. And so now Jess and fake Lincoln start talking and they hit it off and they're chatting every day and soon they're texting all the time. And sometimes they'll talk on the phone. And I'm not sure how that works exactly. Like was Lydia putting on a fake voice? I don't know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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But they apparently talk on the phone a lot and eventually they get into a long distance romantic relationship. Which is crazy. And it seems like Lydia is just really good at this catfishing stuff. Like she's never going to get caught. Until one day, Jess gets a message from a coworker who works at the airlines and coworkers like, Hey, I just saw Lincoln Lewis on my flight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And Jess is like, well, that can't be. I was just talking to him. And so Jess goes and hits up fake Lincoln. And she confronts him like, how can you be in two places at once? And fake Lincoln, AKA Lydia, makes up, I don't know, some bullshit excuse. But see, Jess is smarter than that. And she's not about to get played. And so she decides she is done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And she tries to cut things off with fake Lincoln. But fake Lincoln is like, no, he's not about to let her get away. So he starts sending her threatening messages and calling her all the time and harassing her and apparently contacting her family. And so Jess is fed up. She's like this. I'm going to take whoever this is down. And she starts recording their phone conversations.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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Now we don't know her real name, but we'll just call her Betty. And Betty, she's a nice woman. She's a flight attendant. And by some crazy coincidence, she actually knew the real Lincoln Lewis. Like they grew up in the same area as kids or something. Now, they don't really talk now, now that he's famous, but they used to know each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And she brings all this information to the police. So now, finally, police get involved. And they set up this small sting operation where Jess asks fake Lincoln to wire her some money, just like a couple hundred dollars, because her phone is broken and she needs to get it fixed. So fake Lincoln, aka Lydia, falls for it. She's like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And he, she goes to the bank to wire a couple of hundred dollars to Jess and boom, they finally get Lydia on camera. The woman who had been pretending to be Lincoln Lewis the whole time. And eventually, bam, police arrest her. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of her in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And both Betty and Jess finally discover that it's a woman who's been catfishing them the whole time, not a man. And they are shocked. Like they had no idea. I have no idea how Lydia pulled that off. But here's the sad part. Betty, apparently she can't handle the humiliation of any of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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And she eventually goes and she unalives herself over this whole catfishing thing, which is unfortunate and just really sad. And ultimately, Lydia goes to trial, and she's found guilty of stalking, and she's sentenced to two years, eight months, and then she gets another four years on top of that for some reason. Good. Weirdo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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So, of course, Betty accepts the request from this famous guy she knew as a kid. And they start messaging back and forth, sending photos, and Betty has no idea that the person she's talking to is just Lydia catfishing her. And over time, their conversations get more flirty and they're sending adult photos of themselves to each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Famous Actor Scam - The Lydia Abdelmalek story

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Now, I don't know how Lydia faked nude photos of Lincoln Lewis out of Photoshop, I don't know, but somehow she did. And soon enough, Betty is in a full-blown romantic relationship with fake Lincoln Lewis. And so naturally, of course, at some point, Betty wants to meet up with Lincoln. Like, hey, when can we meet IRL?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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So this girl is about to murder her best friend and get busted for it because of a selfie. Now the girl, her name's Cheyenne, and she's 21, she lives in Saskatoon in Canada, and she has this friend, Brittany. And Brittany's 18, and they met at school, and they hang out, and they party together, and pretty soon, they become best friends. Now, Britney, she's a pretty good kid.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And they're in the parking lot. And I guess maybe Cheyenne is trying to call someone she shouldn't. Like, I don't know. We don't really have the details of this part. But for some reason, Brittany decides to take Cheyenne's phone away from her. Maybe she was just being playful. Maybe it was just a joke. Maybe she was being mean. Again, we don't know the details.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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But we do know that she swipes her phone from her. And Cheyenne doesn't like this one bit. And she is pissed. pissed how's she gonna take my phone from me so they start getting into it and arguing and this argument gets heated in fact it gets so heated that eventually cheyenne just snaps and pow she hits britney and then pow she hits her again and again and again and she just overpowers her

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And then, allegedly, while Britney's down, Cheyenne takes off this braided black belt that she's wearing and she wraps it around Britney's neck. And she starts strangling her and strangling her. And no matter how hard Britney fights, Cheyenne just won't let go of that belt. And when she finally stops, Britney is no longer moving and she won't wake up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And Cheyenne, she panics because like her friend might be dead. And I guess at that point she puts lifeless Britney in the car and then she gets in and she hauls ass out of there. Now, at this point, she could drive her friend to the hospital to get her medical attention, but that's not what she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Instead, she drives over to her aunt's house, and I guess she goes over to her aunt, and she's still totally wasted, by the way. She goes to her aunt, and she's like, I beat up my friend, and I choked her out, and now she's not waking up for some reason. And Aunt, she looks in the car and she can see Brittany looking all beat up and slumped over against the window. And Aunt wants no part of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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She's like, nah, you need to leave. Which, I don't blame her. Like, yeah, you bring an unconscious body to my house? Like, nah, you need to get the f*** out. But anyway, so Cheyenne leaves. Now, here is another point where Cheyenne could drive her friend to the hospital and get her medical attention. But again, that's not what she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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She's in high school, but she works hard. She works two jobs. She got big dreams. She wants to go to college and work in the hospitality business one day. While Cheyenne, on the other hand, she's kind of a turd. She apparently already has over 50 convictions for things like shoplifting, stuff like that. And she's allegedly also a big fan of some of the harder drugs that people like to do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Instead, she drives out near a landfill on the edge of town and she dumps Brittany by the side of the road and she just leaves her there. And then I guess she goes home and just passes out. The next day, Cheyenne wakes up and she claims she doesn't remember what happened the night before and that it's a total blackout. Sure Cheyenne.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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But she definitely notices that she doesn't have a phone because she gets on Facebook and she goes to Britney's page and she posts on her wall like, hope you got home safely. I need my phone. Now, obviously Britney didn't get home safely because Cheyenne dumped her on the side of the road. In fact, while Cheyenne was passed out at home, someone came along and found Britney's body lying in a ditch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And by this point, she's completely unresponsive, and as you can guess, she ultimately doesn't make it. And so now, police gotta get involved, because there's a random body in a ditch, and boom, they immediately start investigating. And they're looking at the crime scene where Britney's body was found, and they don't find much, but they do find the black braided belt that she was strangled with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And once the body is identified as Brittany, they start looking at her social media. And they notice the last thing she posted on Facebook the night she was unalived is that selfie she took with Cheyenne. So now, pow, Cheyenne is a person of interest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And so police go and they question her, which is apparently easy to do because she was apparently already in custody for a completely different crime she had committed. Told you she was a turd. But police question Cheyenne, and Cheyenne decides to lie to them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And she tells them that, yeah, she did go out that night, and she went to this house party, and that afterwards, she and Brittany went to this place called the Colonial Pub and Grill. And she says they met a guy there, and then that guy and Brittany dropped her off at her uncle's place. I don't know. It's some bullshit excuse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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So then police go and investigate Colonial Pub and Grill and they look at surveillance footage from that night and there is no sign of Cheyenne or Brittany ever being there. Also, police discover that Cheyenne never visited her uncle that night. So now they've caught her in a couple of lies and to them, she's starting to look suspicious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Meanwhile, this whole time, Cheyenne is posting things to Britney's Facebook wall. I guess she's trying to make herself look not guilty. She's posting things like, I miss you. You were in my dreams last night. Or this one. I miss you so much. I wish heaven had visiting hours so I could come see you. Now, unfortunately for her, this isn't gonna work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Because rumors have already started to circulate. Because remember, Cheyenne's aunt saw them that night. She saw Cheyenne with Britney's body in the car. And so rumors start to spread and word gets back to Britney's family that Cheyenne's aunt had saw them that night of the murder. And that Cheyenne showed up in the middle of the night panicking, claiming that she hurt her friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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So of course, Brittany's family goes and reports all this to the police. So now police are even more suspicious of Cheyenne. But unfortunately, they can't arrest her because they simply don't have enough evidence. Until two years go by and detectives are working on this case and they still can't figure it out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Now, they're pretty sure Cheyenne's involved, but they can't tie her directly to the crime, not in a way that's good enough to prosecute her. But then, one of the detectives is looking through all the evidence again, and they come across that selfie that the girls took that night. And they look at it one last time, and that is when they finally see it. Boom, it's right there in the photo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And most people in Britney's life think that Cheyenne is bad news. Regardless, Britney defends her friend. She sticks up for her. She's like, no, she's a good person. You don't know her. But one night, their friendship, it goes completely wrong. Because Brittany and Cheyenne, they make plans to go out and do a little drinking, which they do often enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Cheyenne is wearing a black braided belt. the same belt that they found at the crime scene. So she's wearing the murder weapon hours before the murder. And so bam, police arrest Cheyenne. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's what she looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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And they charge her with second degree murder, but she takes a plea deal and she pleads down to manslaughter and she only gets seven years in prison. So shout out to Saskatoon.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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So they get ready, their hair and their makeup or whatever, and once they're good to go, they take a selfie together. This selfie. There's Brittany here and Cheyenne is right here. And like immediately, Britney posts it on her Facebook page. And then they leave and they end up at a bar and they do some drinking there and they have a good time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Selfie Destroyed Her Life - The Cheyenne Antione story

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Then they end up at a house party and they do some drinking there and they also do some drugs because I guess they're going a little hard tonight, but whatever. They're having a good time. Then around 4.30 in the morning, they've been out all night at this point getting wasted. And they end up at McDonald's. And they're both messed up and a little belligerent, stumbling around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

0.149

So one morning, this woman is in the driveway and she's beating up her boyfriend. Now the woman, her name's Alicia. She's 34, she's from Wisconsin, and she used to be a military police officer. Now Alicia has a boyfriend, who we'll just call Boyfriend. And that morning, I guess they get into a fight and Alicia starts to get violent.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And finally, police are just fed up with her stalling, so they're just going to take the kids. So the officers board the boat, and they round up all the kids, and Alicia starts turning into a psychopath about the officer getting a name wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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Sorry I misspoke, Alicia. She seems nice. So anyway, police take the kids away. Then, officers go to Boyfriend's home with Alicia to collect some of the kids' belongings, their clothes and stuff. So they start collecting the kids' stuff. And while they're there, they low-key pull Boyfriend aside and they talk to him, away from Alicia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And this is when he really starts opening up about how he feels about all this. You're trying to get out of here, man. Yes, he's got to go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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So then, Boyfriend suggests to her that she should leave. And, to be fair, he seems polite about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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While she is in the bathroom at this point, and I guess she tries to kick his dog? Don't kick my dog!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And he's in the driveway and she picks up some rocks and she sticks them between her fingers like they're brass knuckles and she starts trying to punch him. And I guess she also starts threatening to unalive his whole family. And this is allegedly not the first time she's threatened to do this. But here's the thing about Alicia. She's a mom of three little kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And at this point, the officer is just done with her sh**. He's like, you need to get whatever stuff of yours you can gather, and you need to get the hell out of boyfriend's house now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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So then Alicia starts gathering her stuff to leave for the night. But now she's mad at boyfriend, I guess for kicking her out. So she decides she's going to try and take him down with her and get him in trouble too. So she starts asking boyfriend about some Zaza.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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So she's trying to get boyfriend in trouble by talking about his Zaza in front of police because Zaza possession is not legal in Wisconsin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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I'm not worried about it. Get your stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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Now, luckily for Boyfriend, the officers are cool. They don't care about Azaza. They just want to get her out of the house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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So eventually she goes back into the bedroom to pack up some more of her stuff. And this is when Alicia starts to lose it and fight with boyfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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But Alicia just doesn't listen. And she's stalling. She's dragging her feet. And officers just had enough.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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It's also the part that I can't really show you because it's a little violent. But boom, officers try and detain Alicia, but she puts up one hell of a fight. Like I can't show you the video, but here's a screenshot of it. And you can see she's on the ground hitting and kicking them. And here's another screenshot. And here's another.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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But then in the most satisfying moment of this whole thing, pow, the officer tases the out of her. Here's a screenshot of her getting tased. Yeah, go ahead and laugh at her, it's okay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And she and the three little kids are all living at Boyfriend's house right now. But she's been acting nutty for so long, at this point, Boyfriend, he's scared of her. So I guess after the fight, he low-key calls Alicia's kids fathers. Both of them, because there's more than one. And he tells them that she's crazy and that he's worried about those kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And like, yeah, I know, I clowned on her a lot in this video, which I try not to do too much of, because look, one, it's a little mean, and two, people commit crimes for all kinds of reasons that I'll never understand, and I won't pretend to understand what motivates people to do some of the things they do. But I just want to point this out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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She must have messed up really bad when both of her baby's daddies and her current boyfriend all got together and secretly called the police on her. They were like, hey, let's put our differences aside and come together like the fucking Justice League and get Alicia away from these kids. But anyway, after all that, bam, they finally arrest her.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a picture of her in real life. I guess this is from her time in the military. And she's charged with battery on an officer, disorderly conduct, and domestic abuse. And unfortunately, I couldn't find any updates on her after that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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Oh, yum. Alright, cool. So, that's nice. I hope they're okay.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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So each of the kids' fathers, separately, they call the police. And they're like, Alicia's crazy. Go over there and take my kids away from her. Meanwhile, I guess, Alicia, boyfriend, and the kids, they all had plans to take the boat out on the lake for the day. So they all go out to the lake. And eventually, police show up. And they're looking to take Alicia's kids. Sit down and talk.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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I'm telling you to sit down and talk right now.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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And so Alicia calls her lawyer.

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Crazy Woman Finally Gets Arrested

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That's fine. But we're going to take the kids now. No, you're not. Yes, we are.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

0.129

So this is Haley, aka Hawk Tua. And as of now, a lot of people want Haley to be thrown in jail. Here's what happened. So Haley's 21, living in small town Tennessee, and she works in a factory that makes springs that they use in vending machines. But one night, Haley and a friend, they're out on the town in Nashville. And they're pretty tipsy.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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She's very likable and a lot of people love her. until pretty quickly she gets involved in a different type of venture and this is what gets her in trouble now at some point during all this she partners with some crypto bros and she and the crypto bros they're gonna launch her very own meme coin called hawk

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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So leading up to the launch, she allegedly gives some free Hawk tokens to some fans and she rallies them to get in on this exciting opportunity. And everyone's going to be so rich. What could possibly go wrong from pushing a meme coin? Here's the thing about meme coins, though. Meme coins or crypto based off of memes, they have a history of being pump and dump scams.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And influencers and sometimes celebrities, they will sometimes push these meme coins onto their fans and, you know, it all turns out to be a scam and the fans end up getting screwed. And Hailey must be aware of this reputation meme coins have because in this interview with Fortune magazine, she reassures people that her meme coin is definitely not going to be a cash grab.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And so some of her fans get on board and they invest and they buy into it because they're going to be so rich off this. And then finally the big day comes and boom.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And so the coin launches and it hits a $490 million market cap, allegedly. But then the worst thing that could happen happens. Less than 20 minutes after the launch, pow, over 90% of the shares are suddenly sold off and the coin crashes.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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losing 95 percent of its value 95 that means that if you invested one dollar into this coin you would now be left with five cents so a lot of people lose a lot of money over this Here's the thing though, Haley apparently doesn't lose any money over this. And the crypto bro she's partnered with, apparently they don't lose any money either. But the fans and the investors, they all do.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And they see a couple of guys doing street interviews for a YouTube series. And these guys end up approaching Haley and doing a street interview with her. What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Yeah, you've seen the video. I don't have to show you.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And as you can imagine, they are pissed. They feel something isn't right about this. And that is where this guy comes in, Coffeezilla. Now Coffeezilla, he's a YouTuber and he's made a name for himself in the online space by calling out seemingly shady crypto behavior. And so Coffeezilla, he's been watching this whole meme coin launch thing play out. And he finds it all very suspicious.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And he's convinced it's some kind of scam. And he's like, not on my watch. So then Haley and some of the crypto bros, they start a Twitter space because I guess they want to explain to the investors that this whole meme coin thing, it wasn't really a scam. It wasn't a rug pull. And maybe they're like trying to calm them down. Except the main crypto bro, this guy, Doc Hollywood.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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Doc Hollywood's speech to the investors doesn't exactly take accountability. In fact, it actually feels like it's blaming them a little.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And CoffeeZilla is there in the space and Bro is just waiting for his turn to speak. And when it's his turn, he lets them know what's up.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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So then Doc Hollywood appears to get pretty riled up about Coffeezilla's accusation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And you probably also already know that after the drunken interview, the guys go home and they upload the clips of Haley to social media. and the clip on TikTok blows the up almost immediately. It goes viral and people are reposting it and pretty quickly it gets memed like millions of times and people start calling Hailey the Hak Tua girl.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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Now, the funniest part of all of this is in the middle of all of this chaos, Haley, I guess she just suddenly gets tired and she's like, I'm going to head out as if she's not in the middle of being accused of fraud.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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Okay. Amazing. Now, to be clear and to be fair to everyone involved in this, I don't know if this was a scam or a rug pull, as they call it. I don't know enough about the crypto space to make that call. But the people who do know the space really well are all saying, yeah, it was a rug pull and she got involved with some sketchy people. Now, I do know this.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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At the end of the day, the fans, the investors, they lost a lot of money. While Haley and the crypto bros, apparently they made a ton of money. So the optics of this aren't looking good for them. And the people who do feel like they got conned, they're really, really upset.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And some of them are calling for her to be thrown in jail, which I promise you, Hawk to a Girl is not going to be thrown in jail. That's just not going to happen. However, some of the investors did file official complaints with the SEC and there could possibly be lawsuits, but who knows.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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Now, after all of this happened, as of right now, as of me filming this video right now, Haley has gone pretty silent on her social media, but I'm sure she'll reappear at some point. And I'll keep you updated if anything happens beyond this, but my guess is that it won't. I mean, people rarely get in any real trouble for this crypto rug pull stuff. Welcome to America.

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Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And from here, Hailey actually does the smartest thing she could do in this situation. She's like, I'm about to capitalize on this. And before you know it, her social media starts getting a bunch of traction and she gets tons of followers and tons of fans. She signs with a management company. She starts getting invited onto podcasts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hawk Tuah Is In Big Trouble Now - The Haliey Welch story

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And suddenly she's invited to be on stage at a Zach Bryan concert. She's throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Mets game. All because she got drunk and made a joke about a wiener. Now, eventually she teams up with Jake Paul's media company and she wants to take advantage of her popularity by starting her own podcast, Talk Tua. And it seems like she's making the most of her viral moment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they're a good person or even a sane person. Here's an example. So this guy, his name is List and List has a lot going for him. He has a good marriage. He has three kids. He lives in this huge 19 room mansion. I mean, look at that place. Plus, he's got a sweet job as vice president for a bank. So bro is doing well.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Like, what's he going to do? Are he and his family going to go bankrupt? Is he going to have to go on welfare? And remember, he's still very religious. So List starts worrying that he's gonna lose everything and that his family is gonna get so poor that they're gonna turn their backs on his religion and then his wife nor any of his kids will get into heaven.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And so this is a big deal for List, like he can't have his family not getting into heaven. So he comes up with this insane plan to make sure his fam doesn't get so poor that they turn their back on his religion. Here's the plan. First, he tells everyone they're going on a big family trip, like a vacation, and he stops all the milk deliveries and newspaper deliveries to their home.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Then, one afternoon, List is at home, and he gets a couple of pew-pews that he owns out of the garage, and he goes back in the house and up to his wife, and he points one of them at her, and blam, he unalives her. Then he goes upstairs where his mom is living, because I guess his mom lives in the mansion with him too, and blam, he unalives her as well.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Then he goes downstairs to the kitchen and he waits for his kids to come home from school. Once they get home, he takes the pew-pews and blam, blam, he unalives them too. Then he sits down and he writes a five-page handwritten letter to his pastor. And in the letter, he explains in detail that he had to unalive his whole family in order to save their souls and make sure they get into heaven.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Also, in this letter he acknowledges that yeah, he lost his job and he could go on welfare, but then he says he'd have to move out of that 19 room mansion that he loves so much and live somewhere that he refers to as undesirable. So this is not just about saving his family's souls, it's also that he doesn't want to live in a smaller house.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Anyway, then Lis goes to every family photo in the house and he rips his face out from them so that police won't be able to identify him from his photos. Then he leaves all the lights on in the mansion to make it look like people are still living there. And he packs up some of his stuff and he flees.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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But most importantly, he's very religious. Like he and his family go to church every week. So you know he's a good person. But one day, everything changes because boom, List suddenly gets laid off from his vice president job at the bank. And List, he doesn't know what to do. He can't tell anyone that he lost his good paying job. That would be humiliating. So he decides to not tell anyone.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And he travels by train from New Jersey over to Michigan and then all the way down to Colorado, and he starts living there. And weeks go by, and back in New Jersey, no one thinks much about List's family being gone. I mean, they were supposed to go on a family trip, so they would be gone. But then about a month goes by and in the house, light bulbs start burning out and turning off one by one.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And the neighbors notice like, I don't think anyone lives there anymore. And so the neighbors end up calling the police and police come over and they enter the mansion and they find List's family's bodies and the five page letter he wrote. So they know who did this. Except, there's no trace of him. They don't know where he went. They have no photos to go by, so they basically have no leads.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Meanwhile, List has been in Colorado, living a brand new life. He changed his identity, he changed his name, he calls himself Bob now. And Bob works different jobs, mostly in restaurant kitchens, keeping quiet, keeping a low profile. And eventually he ends up living in Denver and he settles down there and he finds work and he joins a local church because, you know, he's still very religious.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And after about five years, Bob goes back to working in finance again. I guess he does bookkeeping for a carpet business or something. But that same year, he meets a nice woman at a church gathering. And he thinks she is fine. And they hit it off and they start dating and eventually they get married.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Now, Bob obviously doesn't tell her or anyone else his real identity or that he murdered his last family. He keeps that a secret. But eventually, Bob and his wife, they move from Denver all the way over to Virginia. And there, they settle down and they make a nice life for themselves. And at this point, it's been around 18 years since he unalived his other family.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And it seems like the world has completely forgotten about the List murders. And dude is never gonna get caught. Until. All right, now some of you aren't from the US. Well, in the US, there's a long running TV show called America's Most Wanted. And on the show, they talk about criminals and people who are wanted by the feds for various crimes. Well, at this time,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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America's Most Wanted is brand new. It's in its first year. So everyone is watching it. And one night, boom, the show airs and they do a segment talking about these unsolved murders of this family that happened back in New Jersey 18 years before. And by this point, they figured out that the killer is List. They just don't know where he is.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Now, despite him tearing himself out of all those family photos all those years ago, they actually did find some images of him. So they know what he used to look like. And on the TV show, they use those images and they get a forensic artist to make a bust of what List would look like now, now that he's aged almost 20 years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And this freaking bust they made, if you compare it to List, it looks almost exactly like him. Like, look at that. Like, that forensic artist nailed it. And so that night, there's this woman watching the show, and she actually used to be List's neighbor. So she sees this America's Most Wanted segment, and she's like, holy sh**, that's Bob, that's my old neighbor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And so I guess she calls the police or America's Most Wanted hotline or whatever, and she reports that Bob might actually be this killer, List. And about two weeks later, the FBI shows up to the accounting firm where Bob works, and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And of course, he continues to insist that, no, I didn't murder anyone, my name's Bob.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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And the feds are like, yeah, sure, List, that's bullshit. But eventually, he confesses, and he's convicted of five counts of first-degree murder, and he's sentenced to life in prison. And later, at 82 years old, List is in prison, and he finally passes away from pneumonia. So... Also, before he finally died, he said that he hopes to be reunited with his family in heaven. Good luck with that.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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He doesn't tell his family, he doesn't tell his friends. Instead, he just keeps going. He wakes up every day, he gets dressed like he always does, and he tells his family that he's going to work. But instead, he drives to the train station and he just sits in his car and reads the newspaper until it's time to head home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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So that his family thinks he's going to work and they don't ask him any questions. And Lis does this for a few months. He just fakes going to work. I guess he's hoping that during this period, he'll find another gig to keep him afloat. I don't know. It doesn't seem like a very good plan.

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Religious people aren't all good - The John List story

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Also, because he's not working, he obviously has no income coming in and his bills start stacking up, particularly his mortgage for that 19-room mansion he and his family are living in. So after months of not working, he owes $11,000 on his mortgage. And this was 1971. So today's dollars, he owes about 87 grand. That's a lot of money. So naturally, List starts freaking out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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So this nun has a gambling problem and she'll do anything to break her vow of poverty and hit up the casinos. Anything. Now her name's Sister Mary and she's in her 60s or 70s and she's the principal at a Catholic elementary school in Los Angeles. And even though she's a nun, Sister Mary has a problem. She really likes to gamble.

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These Nuns Are Shady

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Anyway, when they're not gambling, they're racking up tons of credit card charges, which of course, they pay off with the money they're stealing from the school. Now eventually, the two sisters even move out of Catholic church housing, and they start living together in a nice gated neighborhood. roommates. Not to mention, each of them drives a brand new Volvo. Because of course they do.

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These Nuns Are Shady

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And yes, over time, some parents start to notice some kind of odd things going on with the sisters. You know, like that they're traveling a lot and going to Las Vegas and taking trips to Lake Tahoe. Or that when the school has a fundraiser and they all play poker for that fundraiser, Sister Mary ends up kicking everyone's ass at the game.

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These Nuns Are Shady

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Like, people notice this stuff, but no one really suspects anything because Sister Chang is just like, oh, I have a rich uncle and he provides for us. That's how we have these Volvos. And I guess people just believe it.

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These Nuns Are Shady

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And to make it worse, Sister Mary is kind of in charge of everything at the school, like the money, the choosing of the staff, so there's not really anyone there breathing down her neck, making sure that all the funds are accounted for. And plus, They all trust her. I mean, she's an elderly nun. Why wouldn't they? And so Sister Mary and Sister Chang's scam goes on for years. More than a decade.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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Maybe close to two decades. And no one suspects a thing. And by the way, it's not like the school is super wealthy or anything like that. This school is actually broke as f***. Like sometimes the student's parents will ask like, hey, can the kids get new textbooks or sports uniforms? Or can we get an awning so that the kids don't have to eat outside in the direct sunlight?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And Sister Mary will be like, how do you expect us to pay for it? Acting as if she isn't stealing all the money. Not only that, but she also pressures the parents into donating extra money all the time on top of the student's tuition to fund, you know, the school and also her gambling trips. And so these nuns just keep the scam going. Gambling, credit card spending, trips to Vegas.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And one day, it's not entirely clear when, she comes up with a plan to steal some money so she can gamble as much as she wants. So first, she low-key goes and opens up several bank accounts. Then she starts stealing from the elementary school that she teaches at. I mean, she's straight up taking money from the school's bank account. She's embezzling the students' tuition checks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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They're living the good life. Until... In 2018, it all changes. Because suddenly, the theft just stops. But not necessarily because Sister Mary and Sister Chang have a change of heart. No, no. It's because they announced that they've both decided to retire from the school and from teaching. You know, they're retiring together because they're roommates.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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So together they put down a $7,000 deposit on a three-bedroom townhouse apartment in the neighborhood, you know, a nice place, because soon enough they'll be retired and they're going to move there together. But here's the thing about retiring.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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When you run all of a business's finances like Sister Mary does, and it's time to hand over the keys to the new person filling that position, it's common practice to have a financial review done so that, you know, everything transitions smoothly. And this is where it all goes wrong. Because Sister Mary has a boss. His name is Monsignor Michael Myers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And yes, that is literally his name, his real name. And in real life, he looks like this. But just for fun, we're going to make him look like this. So Monsignor Michael Myers orders a review of the school's finances because Sister Mary's leaving.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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Then around the same time, a parent of one of the school's students, for whatever reason, they go to the school's admin and they ask for a copy of an old tuition check. So the school has to go and dig that up. And when the school looks at the check, they notice this check, it wasn't deposited into the school's primary bank account. It was deposited into some other bank account. That's weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And with Monsignor Michael Myers' financial review taking place around the same time, Sister Mary knows she's . She knows this is about to make her look real bad. So she low-key goes into the school's financial records and she starts messing with the books a little bit. She's asking other employees to change some files. She's asking for some files to be deleted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And this, of course, really sends a huge red flag to Michael Myers and the rest of the school admin. And so they have a forensic auditor come in and do a deep dive into the school's finances. And this forensic auditor goes back as far as she can, which actually isn't very far, because I guess they don't keep bank records for much longer than a decade? Or at least this school's bank doesn't.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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But whatever, the forensic auditor comes back and says this. At minimum, A half a million dollars has been embezzled from the school. But here's the crazy part though. The school, which is the church, the church decides they don't want to file a criminal complaint against these nuns. Like they don't want to press charges. They want to handle it internally.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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So these two nuns aren't going to get in trouble for essentially stealing from these elementary school kids. This is like the worst thing the Catholic Church has ever done to some kids. However, here's the problem with not reporting Marion Chang to the police. Not everyone is on board with this idea, specifically the parents.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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See, the church at some point has to sit the parents down and tell them that their tuition money was being stolen for all those years. But also that they've decided that they're not going to press charges against thieves because they want to protect the sisters and the reputation of the church or whatever. And the parents are like, the f*** you're not. And they are pissed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And they pressure the school to finally cooperate with the police department. And over the next few years, the police gets involved. The FBI gets involved. Even the IRS investigates all this. And eventually, bam, both nuns get arrested. And I don't have mug shots of them, but here's a picture of Whoopi Goldberg in the cast of Sister Act.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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We're talking tens of thousands of dollars here. Like, she's making bank off this scheme. However, stealing money ain't all that much fun unless you have someone to share it with. So at some point, Sister Mary gets this woman involved, Sister Chang. And Sister Chang works at the school as well. She's a teacher. And she's also Mary's best friend, and they live together. They're roommates.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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And so when all is said and done, Sister Mary and Sister Chang stole over $835,000 from this elementary school. And Sister Mary ends up taking a plea deal, and she gets one year in prison, and for some reason, the charges are dropped against Sister Chang. So, I guess nothing happens to her. Sister Mary probably didn't want to snitch on her. You know, because they're... roommates.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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So anyway, these two nuns start spending all the school's money. And now before we get into what they do with it, I want to show you what these two criminal masterminds look like. This is Sister Mary, and this is a picture of Sister Chang. So anyway, Mary and Chang steal this money, and they're doing all kinds of stuff with it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

These Nuns Are Shady

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They're going to Vegas, they're taking trips to Lake Tahoe, and not just to see the sights and go on vacation, but also to hit up the casinos. Because like I said, homegirl loves to gamble. And apparently she's really good at poker? Like that's her thing? Which is just hilarious to imagine a nun sitting at a poker table whooping everyone's ass.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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So this guy, his name's Pence. And Pence really wants kids. No, no, no, like bro really wants kids. Like a lot of kids. Like a lot, a lot of kids. Which means he's gonna have to do a ton of smashing. Luckily for him, he has a wife. This woman, Michelle. And Michelle also wants a bunch of kids, and so they smash, or however kids are made these days, and nine months later, they have a kid.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And so Michelle connects with Mr. and Mrs. Cordero and they agree to meet up. So the Pence family drives their RV all the way up to Massachusetts to meet up with these people. Now, the Corderos have six kids, so the Pences agree to take five of these six kids.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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The one kid, the oldest son they don't take, is special needs, so I guess they just leave that kid behind with his parents, which seems kind of messed up. But anyway, the Pences take five kids, and they put them in their RV with their other ten kids, so now they have 15 kids total, and they all drive back to Washington. Now back at home, the Pences are somewhat strict.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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They homeschool all these kids, they make them study the Bible, their house is always spotless because I guess they're making the kids clean up the place all the time. But whatever, the five Cordero kids seem happy there. Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, the Corderos gave up five of their kids, I guess because they couldn't take care of them. However, they still want contact with them.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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So the Pences agree to let the Corderos have some contact with their five kids, and they're even allowed to come visit them a couple of times a year. And about a year goes by, and I guess this arrangement is still going. Which, by the way, the house they live in is only 1,900 square feet.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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Which, typically, a 1,900 square feet house is maybe three or four bedrooms, which is great, but they got five. 15 kids. So you've got 15 kids and two adults living in, at most, four bedrooms. And so therefore, at some point, they decide, eh, we could really use a bigger place. And so they finally find one. And the Pence family moves from Washington all the way down to their new place in Texas.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And it's around this time that they decide to formally adopt the five Cordero kids. And here's a picture of all of them in family court. Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, the Corderos actually have another baby. Like what? Bro, you just gave away five of your other kids and you're having another one? But then it gets even weirder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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I guess the Corderos miss their five kids in Texas because they suddenly relocate and move closer to them in Texas. Apparently to make it easier and cheaper to visit their five kids. After that, the Corderos get pregnant again. So they gave away their five kids, and then they had two more of their own. Make it make sense. Now at some point during all this, sh** starts to get a little crazy.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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Because a rift starts to grow between the Pence family and the Cordero family. And the Pences don't really like the way the Corderos gave their kids away and then had two more. And so the Pences are like, f*** these people. And they take their 15 kids and they move again. This time from Texas all the way up to Utah. And they make sure to not tell the Corderos where they're moving to.

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He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And then they have another one, and then another one, and then another one. And so by the year 2000, they have four kids. Four kids is a lot, but see, that isn't quite enough for Pence and Michelle. And so they smash and have another kid. A few years later, they have another one. Then years later, another one, and then another one, and then another one, and finally one more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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But then in 2020, I guess the Pence's been smashing because they get pregnant again. And this will be their 16th kid. And so to break this down for you, there's 16 kids, two adults, plus Pence's parents live with them. So that's 20 people living in this house. And the new house is like seven bedrooms. So there's 20 people in seven bedrooms.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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and their rivalry is still going because the Corderos are like calling in welfare checks on the Pence's trying to get them in trouble it's a whole mess and so the Pence's and the Corderos are like in this weird feud and it's pretty bad but it doesn't seem to be like out of control or anything until one day in 2021 Pence

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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finally just snaps and he starts thinking that the five cordero kids they adopted would be better off if they never see their biological parents again and he decides to make that happen and so he goes and he gets on the dark web and he starts looking for ways to hire a hitman and eventually he lands on a website that's offering just that

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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A few weeks later, after doing a bunch of due diligence, he finally makes his request. He's like, I need someone to unalive Mr. and Mrs. Cordero and make it look like a burglary gone wrong, if you could. And then he gives them their address and he attaches their photos and a $16,000 Bitcoin payment and he hits submit. But then he's like, holy sh**, and he immediately panics and cancels it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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The next day, I guess he changes his mind yet again and he resubmits his order. Also apparently he has the audacity to ask the hitman website if he can get a discount on these murders since both the victims live in the same house. Bro is really trying to get a buy one murder get one free. But anyway after submitting Pence waits and he waits and he waits but yet nothing happens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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Why does nothing happen? Well, that's probably because this Hitman website isn't being run by Hitman at all. It's actually a scam website being run by some guys in Romania. And so these scam artists just take the $16,000 in Bitcoin Pence paid them and they bounce. And they're never heard from again. Bro got scammed. Oh, but it gets much worse for Pence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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Because all the way over in the UK, there's a British hacker who's secretly been hacking this Hitman website and he's feeding the hacked information to a bunch of TV producers who are making some kind of murder-for-hire TV show. And all that...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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information is also being forwarded to the FBI and so the FBI looks into this and now they know that this guy Pence tried to put a hit out on these other guys Mr. and Mrs. Cordero and so BAM they arrest him here's his mugshot And so Pence ends up taking a plea deal and he gets sentenced to seven years in prison. Meanwhile, his wife, Michelle, is left to take care of their 16 kids all alone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And she apparently has to rely on charity to survive. Yikes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And so by 2017, they have 10 kids total. And then, unfortunately, one of them dies of sudden infant death syndrome. And so they're back down to nine. But then they smash and have another kid, so now they have 10 again. And so Pence, Michelle, and their 10 kids are one big happy evangelical Christian family because they're super religious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And 10 kids is a ton, but this still isn't enough for Pence and Michelle. They still want more. And one day, they finally get what they want. Cause they're out in their RV on a family road trip and Michelle gets on the internet and she checks a message board for parents who homeschool their kids and she sees a post.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hired a Hitman To Kill His Rival - The Christopher Pence story

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And the post says that this other woman and her husband are working on some marital issues and they're looking for someone to temporarily take care of their six kids. And Michelle is like, I want to take care of their six kids. We already got 10, but let's add six more. And so Michelle writes this couple back and this couple is Mr. and Mrs. Cordero.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

0.069

So this YouTuber is about to spend the next few years in prison for pulling a dumbass prank. Now he goes by the name Goodnight Chicken, and he's 31, he lives in Taiwan, and his whole thing is he likes to go to abandoned haunted places and hunt ghosts. And he'll like live stream the whole thing. And one night in 2020, he's out exploring an old sketchy abandoned hospital.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Because Goodnight Chicken isn't quite content with how big his audience is. He wants more. And in 2024, he gets an idea. What if he went to one of these abandoned places and he got kidnapped during a live stream? I mean, people would freak out and they would start looking for him. Everyone would be talking about it. His name would be all over the news again. He would get so many new followers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Now, of course, the odds of him actually getting kidnapped aren't very high. So he decides that he's going to have to fake it. Now, this is actually a pretty big scam, and he can't fake a kidnapping alone. So he hits up this other influencer, this guy, Lou. And I imagine Chicken is like, hey bro, you want to help me fake my own kidnapping? And Lou is like... Alright.

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Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And then they decide that the perfect place to do all this is in Cambodia. So Goodnight Chicken gets on his livestream and he tells his audience that he's about to go to Cambodia to explore a dangerous place where foreigners are known to get kidnapped. He's setting up their expectations. Then he and Lou fly from Taiwan down over to Cambodia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And they buy a bunch of props to pull this thing off, like military uniforms, fake pew-pews, fake blood. I mean, they're going all out. Then later that night, the guys are ready to set this plan in motion. And so Chicken and Lou, they go to this shady place. And there he goes live and he tells his audience that he broke into the place, which I suppose he actually did.

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Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And so he's sneaking around in there or he's pretending to sneak around. Then he sees someone with a flashlight, someone in a military uniform. And the footage of it kind of sucks, but I do have some screenshots. You can kind of see like a person holding a flashlight back there. Now, this person in military uniform is actually his friend Lou. But Chicken pretends it's a kidnapper and he runs.

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Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And then he pretends to struggle as if he was just caught by the kidnappers. And you can hear him making noises as if he's getting beat up in real time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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and then it looks like one of the kidnappers picks up the camera and points it back down at him and he's just like lying there like he just got knocked out and you can see his legs there and then the live stream suddenly just ends like it's so dramatic and ridiculous and obviously fake but remember this is live and he's really popular so

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And this is actually a picture of it. Now, this hospital is just another dark, creepy place that he's trying to make a video about. And so he's there and he's walking around live streaming. And that is when Chicken starts to smell something pretty awful. And he just keeps going. And eventually, boom, he sees it. A body hanging there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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So there are 10,000 people watching and they all think he literally just got caught by some goons and beat up and potentially kidnapped. And so all these people are watching and they're like, what the f**k? Is Goodnight Chicken okay? Did he just like die on livestream? The next day, back in Taiwan, Chicken's wife and some friends post a video on Facebook.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And they're all upset and they're saying that Goodnight Chicken is missing and he needs help. There's his wife there in the middle. And it is unclear to me if she's actually in on this scam too, but I assume she is. One, because they're married and that would be really messed up to trick your own wife into thinking you're kidnapped.

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Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And two, because if you look at the footage of her, she doesn't really look all that upset. She actually kind of looks a little bored. But anyway, then later that same day, Chicken suddenly appears on live again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And this time, he's filming himself running, as if he's running away, as if he's running away from his kidnappers, and was like, oh snap, I better livestream this, and then pulled out his phone and started filming himself. But whatever, he's committed to the bit, I'll give him that. But then he stops and he starts telling his audience that he just escaped.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And he says that the kidnappers robbed him and they shaved half his head and then they tased him. And of course his fans believe it and they're like, oh my God, I hope you're okay. And then his stream just ends again, leaving everyone on a cliffhanger, leaving everyone wondering again. And if you're like, Ray, influencers do fake pranks all the time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Did people really believe that he got kidnapped? Yes. Goodnight Chicken is a popular high-profile influencer back in Taiwan. People know who he is. Apparently, the governor of the Cambodian province he was allegedly kidnapped in posts all these photos on Facebook asking for help in locating Goodnight Chicken's whereabouts. So, like, the government is now involved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Regardless, his scam worked, and he seems to have everyone fooled, and he's definitely now getting the attention he wanted. Until... Okay, so not everyone believes Chicken's story. Some people are actually skeptical. Specifically, this guy. His name is Lu Yu, but his Twitter handle is, and I'm not making this up, xxxxgay1069. So we'll just call him Gay1069.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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So Gay1069 sees this livestream footage that's now floating around of Chicken allegedly running from his kidnappers, and he analyzes the hell out of it. He's checking Google Maps, he's looking for landmarks in the background, he's trying to figure out Chicken's location. And that is when he finally solves it. Chicken isn't running around in this shady area of Cambodia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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He's actually in a fairly nice area of Cambodia, next to a beach, an area where he could stop and ask anyone for help at any moment if he wanted to. Not only that, by looking at the background, he notices Chicken isn't running far away. He's actually running in circles. Like he's just kind of running around the same block over and over again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And Chicken is of course freaked out, and so he calls the police. And pretty quickly they come and they check it out. And it turns out that this body he found is the body of a local guy who had been missing for over a year. Like his family had been looking for him and stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And that is when Gay 1069 publicly declares that this guy is full of sh**. He hasn't been kidnapped at all. Now at this point, local police are also investigating this. Because this is somewhat of a high profile incident and it makes Cambodia look really bad.

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Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Like it makes it look like it would be a dangerous place for tourists to visit and the Cambodian government apparently doesn't want anything scaring tourists away because it's actually a big part of their economy. And so police are investigating this and they show up to Chicken and Lou's hotel room and boom. There they find all this evidence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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This is actually a picture of a bunch of the props they were using and there's masks and military uniforms and all kinds of sh**. And so then they somehow find Chicken and Lou and bam, they arrest them. Here's Chicken's mugshot with the face blurred out because I guess they do that in Cambodia. And here's Lu's mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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Okay, but here's the thing about Cambodia. Apparently, Cambodia doesn't f**k around. And within three days, Chicken and Lu had already been through a whole ass trial and found guilty, and they're both sentenced to two years in prison. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And so Goodnight Chicken's attempt to make a video in this location actually ends up bringing much needed closure to the guy's family. And soon enough, this story makes the news. And suddenly everyone there in the area is talking about it. And Chicken and his social media starts getting all kinds of attention. And he starts blowing up. And from there, Chicken keeps making these videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Youtuber Is Now In Prison For a Prank - The Goodnight Chicken story

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And people keep watching them and his audience grows bigger and bigger. Over 100,000 followers on YouTube. Almost 300,000 followers on Facebook. And so naturally, he's like, oh snap, I gotta keep doing this. And over the next few years, he's going to all kinds of creepy abandoned buildings and all kinds of places to film. And his audience loves it, and they love him. But then, it all goes wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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So talking trash while playing Call of Duty sort of leads to this 15-year-old kid becoming a multimillionaire. Let me explain.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And through this hacker group, he learns a way to make millions called SIM swapping. And it works like this. Basically, you get someone working at a phone store like an AT&T store and you call them and you get them to link someone else's SIM card to your phone number. Once you do that, you have access to everything their phone is connected to. their email, sometimes their bank account.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And so Ellis, he starts combing through social media, looking for anyone who posts about working at a cell phone carrier store. Once he finds that person, he reaches out to them and he offers to pay them to connect someone else's SIM card to his phone number. And surprisingly, a ton of these cell phone carrier workers say, All right. And he does this scam for a while.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Then one day in 2018, Ellis is now 15 years old and someone from his hacker group reaches out to him and asks him specifically to hack this dude. His name's Turpin. And Turpin is an older rich guy and he's apparently nearly a billionaire. He has some kind of connection to Match.com or something.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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So Ellis agrees to hack Turpin, and the next day he hits up one of his contacts who works at an AT&T phone store in Connecticut, and that contact ports Turpin's SIM card to a phone Ellis can access, and boom, he's in. So he and the other hacker, they start searching through all Turpin's stuff, and that is when they find an email account with a file that holds the keys to a bunch of crypto wallets.

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This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Then Ellis and the other hacker, they start opening up these wallets and they unlock one that has roughly $24 million worth of crypto in it. $24 million, jackpot. And so boom, they steal all this crypto. Then they quickly recruit a bunch of their other hacker friends to start selling it off and exchanging it in order to launder it. One of those guys they recruit to help them is this guy, Nick.

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This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And Nick's around 21 years old, and he's a party guy. You know, he's kind of a turd himself. But he does help launder the money, and he makes sure to keep around a million dollars of that money for himself. Because, you know, he's just that kind of guy. Regardless, the heist is officially complete.

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This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Ellis and the other hacker, they split the bulk of the loot, and Ellis ends up with close to $10 million worth of crypto. Meanwhile, Turpin... Turpin, he ain't no dummy. Pretty quickly, he realizes that $24 million in crypto is missing from his wallets and Bro is pissed and he vows to figure out who did this to him and take them down.

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This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Now, being that Ellis is only 15 years old, he's not gonna invest all this new wealth he just got. He's not gonna like get a 401k or like diversify his bonds. No, no, he's gonna go spend it on some stupid shit. Like he buys a $50,000 watch. He takes out $100,000 in cash for some reason and he keeps it under his bed. He allegedly starts wearing Louis Vuitton and Supreme brand clothing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Now his name is Ellis and this starts when Ellis is 13 living in Irvington, New York and Ellis is a normal teenager. But one day around 2016 he's playing Call of Duty Ghosts online and he's trash talking the other kids like, I'm doing your mom or whatever they say. And one of the guys he's talking trash to comes back and says, yo, how's the weather in Irvington? Which is where Ellis lives.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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He allegedly starts driving an Audi R8 and renting a private jet to fly to different places. Here's actually a picture of him popping bottles at the club in a club that I guess lets 15 year olds in. I'm not really sure how he got in, but he's in. Regardless, he's having fun and $10 million is a lot of money. And even though he stole it, to his credit, he's pretty sure that this was his last score.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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After this, no more hacking, no more SIM swapping. After this, he is done. Meanwhile, Nick, he took his part of the money and he's been living it up too. Here he is popping bottles at the club. Here he is on a private jet. Here he is on a different private jet. Here he is tweeting about his new diamond watch. Here he is just standing there, just looking rich as .

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This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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So as you can see, these guys are living it up. And it seems like they're gonna get away with all this. Until... Until Nick screws it all up. See, bro isn't the most covert person in the world when it comes to keeping his crimes a secret. Like here he is tweeting, just a reminder that I sim swapped my own dad. And here he tweets, stole 24 million, but can't keep a friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And here, stole 24 million, but can't stay away from drugs. Stole 24 million, still a failure in the eyes of the world. Stole 24 million, Still can't stop stealing. Yeah, bro really needs to stop tweeting. Not to mention, Nick has no real job, yet he appears to the outside world to live this lavish lifestyle.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And people around him definitely start to notice this, like, damn, how's he getting all this money? And so eventually he gets on the radar of a federal task force whose job it is to investigate these kinds of crimes. And so they start investigating him for a different million dollar SIM swapping heist. And bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And because they're investigating him for this, they search his iCloud backup file. And through this, they connect him to the $24 million in crypto that he and Ellis stole from Turpin. Now, from here, I don't know if Nick flips on Ellis. I mean, he probably does. I actually don't think they were very close friends in real life. I think they're just two hackers who happen to know each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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But what I do know is that somehow Turpin, the older rich guy, he learns that Ellis was one of the ones who stole all this money from him, and he definitely isn't gonna let that slide. So a few months later, Ellis's mom randomly gets an email, and it's from Turpin's lawyer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And it's all about the crypto heist and it accuses her son Ellis of being the mastermind behind it and he's threatening to sue. And so Ellis' mom, she goes to Ellis and they get a lawyer and they come up with a plan for Ellis to cooperate. So Ellis, he ends up cooperating with the feds and he pleads guilty to embezzlement to try and get a lesser charge. He also tries to settle things with Turpin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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He like gives back everything he got from the heist, 562 Bitcoin, the $50,000 watch, the $100,000 in cash that he kept under his bed. But you know, Turpin sues him anyway. I mean, yeah, I would too. But regardless, at the end of it all, Nick gets sentenced to 18 months in prison while Ellis...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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he actually gets no prison time because he cooperated with the feds and also because he was only 15 at the time of the crime. So bro stole $24 million and he gets no prison time. Lucky bastard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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And Ellis is like, oh shit, how does this guy suddenly know where I live? Turns out this troll just used a free program to figure out Ellis's IP address. It's not really all that complex. But from here on, Ellis becomes fascinated with this ability to track down people's information online.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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So for the next few months, he studies this extensively and he starts learning hacking skills and he eventually joins an online hacking group. And over time, he learns a skill that's going to make him a bit of money. How to steal people's username handles on Twitter and Instagram, which probably sounds stupid, but there's actually money in this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This 15-Year-Old Teen Stole $24 Million - The Ellis Pinsky story

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Because if you own the Instagram handle like at John, then every person named John is going to want to buy it from you. So he learns how to hack people's accounts and steal their handles and he sells them and he starts making a little money on the side. However, a few thousand dollars at a time is just not enough for Ellis. He wants more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und er ist ein Celebrity in der Pro-Athleten-Welt. Trotzdem, trotz all seiner Erfolge, ist es einfach nicht genug für Aaron. Denn er ist auch ein bisschen wie ein Turd. Er verpasst oft wichtige Sachen, wie Workouts oder Sessionen mit dem Trainer. Er befindet sich mit einigen Kriminellen und Leuten, die immer in Probleme kommen. Er partiert auch oft und macht viele Drogen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Meistens trinkt er viel Zaza und nimmt Schmerzmittel. Aber das ist nicht sein größtes Problem. Sein größtes Problem ist, dass er sich über die Zeit wirklich verärgert fühlt. Wie er sich immer mehr überrascht, dass gefährliche Leute aus den schweren Kreisen, in denen er läuft, nach ihm kommen. Und so fängt er an, überall mit ihm eine Piu-Piu zu tragen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Dann, eine Nacht im Jahr 2012, geht es wirklich verrückt, weil Aaron mit diesem Mann, Alexander, Clubbing geht. Und Alexander ist Aarons Freund, und so sind sie in diesem Club, trinken und haben einen guten Zeitraum. Und an einem Punkt, ein randomer Kerl, boom, fängt Aarons Clubbing an und macht ihm seinen Trinken auf sich selbst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und anstatt dieses als einen Unfall abzuschneiden, sieht Aaron das als einen riesigen Diss. Und er wird an diesem randomen Mann verpisscht und er wird das nicht lassen. Und so nimmt Alexander ihn draußen, um ihn zu entschärfen und ich glaube, er entschärft ihn ein wenig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Aber als sie zurück in den Parkgarage gehen, sieht Aaron den Mann, der sich in ihn eingepumpt hat, und seinen Freund, der aus dem Club geflogen ist. Und Aaron schnappt wieder. Und er ist so, f*** die Jungs. Lasst uns sie folgen und ihnen eine Lektion erlernen. Und Alexander ist so, okay. Und so gehen sie in ihr Auto und folgen ihnen. Und sie holen sich am Ende neben sie.

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The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und das ist, als Aaron allmählich das Piu-Piu, das er immer mit ihm trägt, rausnimmt. Und er schießt es an das Auto des Jungs. Und bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Er schießt fünf Schüsse an die Jungs. Und dann, skrrt, steigen sie weg. Und leider überleben die beiden nicht den Schuss. Aber anscheinend hat niemand Aaron selbst gesehen. Und niemand glaubt, dass es er war. Er ist ein Profifootballspieler.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Warum würden sie ihn für einen Fahrradschuss befürchten? Und so geht er mit Mord weg. Allerdings. Du würdest denken, dass nach etwas so intensiven, dass Bro vielleicht ein bisschen aufhören würde. Aber... Nein, denn über die Zeit wird Aarons Verhalten tatsächlich schlechter und er wird immer mehr paranoid und er wird immer mehr erraten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und so, das nächste Jahr, 2013, ist er in Florida, in einem Stripclub, wieder mit Alexander verabredet. Und nachdem sie das Klub verlassen, fahren sie nach Hause und Alexander merkt, dass er sein Telefon im Hintergrund verloren hat. Und für irgendeinen Grund, refuses Aaron zurück zu gehen, um Alexander's Telefon zu bekommen. Ich glaube, er ist nur ein Arschloch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und so kommen sie in einen Argument. Während dieses Argumentes bringt Alexander Aaron auf, die beiden Jungs am Abend nach dem Club aufzulösen. Und so, boom, beginnt Aaron, den Scheiß rauszuflippen. Aber anstatt etwas zu tun, wartet er dann. Und schließlich schläft Alexander im Auto. Und das ist, als Aaron sich in einen Parkplatz drückt und seinen Piu-Piu rausnimmt. Und blam!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Er schießt Alexander direkt in den Gesicht. Dann drückt er ihn aus dem Auto und schießt ihn in den Parkplatz. Now, somehow Alexander actually survives, but he loses his eye and ultimately he doesn't report who shot him to the police because I guess he's like a real gangster and he doesn't want to be considered a snitch. I don't know. These people are weird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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And if that isn't bad enough, Aaron isn't done. Because he continues to act more and more erratic. It's like he's determined to get caught. Und so eine Nacht, das selbe Jahr, Aaron und ein Freund und ein paar Frauen, die mit ihm sind, partieren in Aarons Wohnzimmer. Und Aarons Freund ist dieser Typ, Odin. Und so sind sie im Wohnzimmer und Odin sieht, dass Aaron ein paar Piu-Pius und Ammos da hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und ich glaube, er fragt sie über sie. Keiner weiß wirklich, was in dieser Gespräche gesagt wurde. Aber egal was es ist, es setzt wirklich Aaron's Paranoia aus. Und es scheint, dass Oden weiß, dass Aaron diese beiden Jungs im Jahr 2012 nicht lebendig ist. Aaron wird also wirklich nervös, dass Oden zu viel über ihn weiß und dass er das nicht verlassen wird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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In den nächsten paar Tagen obsesiert Aaron sich darüber. Und er wird verrückt darüber beschäftigt. Und endlich entscheidet er, dass er etwas darüber machen wird. Und er kommt mit einem Plan, um Odin unbewusst zu machen. Und so eine Nacht, glaube ich, machen sie alle Pläne, um auszuhören. Und Aaron verbindet sich mit zwei Freunden. Und sie fahren alle, um Odin zu holen. Und so holen sie ihn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und Aaron fährt sie, die vier von ihnen, etwa eine Weile nach einem Industriepark. Und da, glaube ich, entscheiden sie, ein bisschen Zaza zu trinken. Und so sind sie, wie, in dieses Blunt. Und das ist dann, als Aaron plötzlich seinen Piu-Piu rausnimmt und ihn an Oden schießt und blam, blam, er schießt ihn mehrere Male. Und Oden stirbt sofort.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Dann fliegen sie seinen Körper nahe einer Konstruktionspile und fliehen auf die Szene und Aaron und seine Freunde fahren zurück nach seinem Haus. Und niemand sah nichts. Keine Außenwissenschaften oder so. Also scheint es so zu sein, dass Aaron wieder mit Mord wegkommt. UNTIL...

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The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Ahrens dna und so police get a warrant and they search ahrens house where they find a bunch more evidence and so bam they arrest him here's some actual footage of the arrest and also here's his mugshot now while police Die Polizisten untersuchen den Mord von Oden. Sie finden auch ein Auto an Aaron's Cousins Haus, das mit dem Schuss von diesen beiden Jungs im Jahr 2012 verbunden ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und so wird er auch mit diesen Mördern verantwortlich. Und letztendlich, beide der Jungs, mit denen er Oden verurteilt hat, werden verurteilt und sie sind vier bis sieben Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt. Während Aaron letztendlich für die Mörder im Jahr 2012 verurteilt wird. Obwohl, es ist bemerkenswert, dass er tatsächlich diese Jungs ermordet hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Ansonsten, bezüglich des anderen Mörders, den er tatsächlich verurteilt hat, Odins Mörder, ist er tatsächlich davon verurteilt und dafür ist er im Gefängnis verurteilt. Und zwei Jahre später verlebt er sich in seiner Gefängniszelle mit einem Bettstuhl.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Und danach hat seine Familie sein Gehirn in die Wissenschaft bezahlt, wo Wissenschaftler von Boston University herausgefunden haben, dass er einen schweren Fall von CTE hatte. Das ist natürlich die Gehirnkrankheit, die viele Fußballspieler so oft bekommen, weil sie so oft in den Kopf geschlagen werden. Was viele von seinem Paranoia und erraten Verhalten erklärt.

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The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Außerdem war er offensichtlich... geheimlich gay? Wenn du dir diesen Aspekt deines Lebens interessierst... Ich weiß nicht, viele Leute tun das.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

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Warum hat der secretely gay Profootballspieler ein paar Leute getötet? Sein Name ist Aaron und Aaron ist 20 Jahre alt in dieser Zeit und spielt Fußball in der Schule und der Junge ist wirklich gut. Ich meine, er dominiert das. Und eines Tages, im Jahr 2010, verändert sich sein ganzes Leben, weil er in die NFL eingeladen wird, um für die Patriots zu spielen. Und das ist ein riesiges Deal für ihn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Crime in NFL History - The Aaron Hernandez story

79.614

Und in den nächsten ein paar Jahren, kickt Aaron total den Arsch, ist ein tiefer Ende für dieses Team. Und 2012 machen sie es sogar bis zur Superbowl. Und jetzt ist Bro auf dem Ball. Er schreibt im Endeffekt einen fünfjährigen, 40-Millionen-Dollar-Kontrakt mit den Patriots. Und er bekommt einen 12,5-Millionen-Dollar-Signalbonus. Also ist er plötzlich reich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

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So this journalist was kaboom, unalived with a car bomb because she exposed some government corruption. The story is wild. And crazy enough, it starts in 1903 with this guy, Teddy. Teddy is president of the United States, and he really wants to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans by building a canal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

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But we'll get back to that. First, we got to talk about this woman. Her name's Daphne. And Daphne, she's a journalist at a local newspaper living on the small island of Malta. And as a journalist, Daphne is actually pretty gangster as f**k. She's exposing all kinds of corruption in Malta. She's writing about criminals and drug traffickers, any kind of corruption in politics.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

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Daphne is there covering it in her column.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

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here's the problem with that though malta is a pretty small country about 500 000 people so it doesn't take long for her articles to start attracting the wrong kind of attention and the people she's exposing and their affiliates they start confronting her in the street and they're sending her threatening letters sometimes they even show up to her house and they also go after her legally suing her for libel essentially trying to bury her in lawsuits

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

170.994

One time when she's not home, I guess some of them capture her dog and unalive it? And multiple times people try and set her house on fire. But despite all this, Daphne doesn't quit. Even though she knows she has a target on her back, she is determined to keep telling the truth. In fact, over time, she seems to get even more bold because in 2008, she decides to start her own blog.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

195.807

And unlike working at the newspaper, this blog will give her editorial control and all kinds of freedom to write whatever she wants. And here is where everything changes because she starts going after really powerful people in Malta. Like she starts writing about all the dirty money coming into the country and about all the politicians who let all this shady stuff happen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

217.561

And of course her blog blows the up like everyone's reading it. And I mean like everyone in Malta. I mean she's averaging half a million hits a day in a country with a population of a half a million people. But then things get even crazier because it's 2016 and an anonymous whistleblower gets a hold of a bunch of documents affiliated with a shady law firm in Panama, a.k.a. the Panama Papers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

22.235

And so he bullies the country of Colombia into handing over some of their territory, and he has a canal built. Now this territory eventually becomes the country we now know as Panama. And that's great and all, but now Panama has a problem. It needs revenue. And in order to generate revenue, it creates tax laws that help foreign businesses dodge taxes in their home countries.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

245.718

And as I said, these documents expose the shady business dealings of a bunch of very well-connected businessmen and politicians. And some of these powerful people exposed just happen to work in the Maltese government. And since Daphne is known for calling these turds out on their corruption, it is assumed that the anonymous whistleblower sends her the Panama Papers because now she has them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

267.953

And using the information she gets from them, she exposes a huge scandal in Malta. that a member of parliament had been doing some shady business in offshore companies. Then she exposes that Malta's own prime minister, the guy at the very top of the government, that he and his wife were also doing some shady business out of an offshore company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

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She also exposes another huge scandal where the government had been selling Maltese passports in exchange for a million dollars. Like is out of control. But of course, now that she's blogging about all this, the backlash against her gets a whole lot worse. Suddenly her friends stop inviting her to places because they're afraid they'll get caught up in the consequences.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

334.478

But even so, nothing is more important to her than exposing the truth. So she just keeps on blogging. Until one day in 2017, Daphne's at home writing her blog. Then she finishes her post and she leaves the house and she gets in her car because she's got an appointment to go to. But she doesn't drive very far when suddenly kaboom, there's a huge explosion and her car goes up in flames.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

362.174

And then boom, there's a second explosion. And of course, all of this unalives Daphne. because someone had placed a bomb under her seat. And here is actually an image of her car afterwards. And I mean, as you can see, it's really messed up. There's like nothing left of it. Now, if you're thinking about how blatantly corrupt this all looks, I agree with you. But you know who else agrees with you?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

386.425

The people of Malta. Because everyone is shocked. And pretty quickly, there are huge protests in the streets and people are pissed off and they're holding up signs with Daphne's face on them. They want to know who ordered her assassination.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

399.354

In fact, it's such a big deal that they start calling on the prime minister to resign because of how he's handling this whole thing and what they see as his possible involvement. And in 2020, the prime minister of Malta, the leader of the country, actually resigns over this. That's how crazy it's gotten. Also, after some investigating, bam, three goons are arrested for Daphne's murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

424.009

Here's one of the guy's mugshot, and here's another guy's mugshot. And I don't have a mugshot for the third guy, but here's a picture of him. Now, according to these goons, their beef with Daphne wasn't necessarily personal. They were actually paid 150,000 euros to plant this car bomb and carry out her assassination. So then you have to ask, so then who paid them? Who ordered Daphne's murder?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

447.942

Well, so far, all leads trace back to a wealthy Maltese businessman, a businessman who had once been exposed by Daphne in her blog when she got the Panama Papers. Allegedly, he ordered the hit. And then so police go to his yacht where he's chilling and bam, they arrest him. And I don't have his mugshot, but here's a picture of him where he totally looks like a Bond villain.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

47.086

Now, what does all of this have to do with a car bomb? We'll get there. But first, we gotta fast forward several decades to 1977, where this German lawyer creates this law firm there in Panama. And because of the tax laws there that I just explained, this law firm actually operates legally, but they're still kinda shady, because their main thing is they basically help rich people hide their money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

471.71

In fact, he looks like a Bond villain in every picture I could find of him. Anyway, the three goons plead guilty and one of them gets 40 years in prison, another gets 40 years in prison, and the third gets 15 years in prison. While the Bond villain looking guy, he did go to jail for a while, but he's out now on bail waiting for his trial. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

73.836

Now let's fast forward again to 2016, where something crazy happens. An anonymous whistleblower gets a hold of this shady ass law firm's internal documents and they leak them to the public. These documents are known as the Panama Papers. And these Panama Papers expose all kinds of shady this law firm's clients are doing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

95.865

And these clients are very well connected people like businessmen and politicians, world leaders, all kinds of powerful people. In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to just the people exposed by these documents. And of course, these powerful people are now really pissed off. In fact, they're so pissed off that they're allegedly willing to murder people over this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

0.089

So listen to this. This kid gets kidnapped, and they don't find him for 73 years. This is wild. So one day, two brothers are playing in a local park, and they're minding their own business, having a good time. Then, out of nowhere, a woman wearing a green bandana approaches them, and she offers the younger brother some candy. And younger brother's like, sure, I want some candy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

103.247

And this is a whole hurdle to get them involved because she doesn't speak English, like she and the boys just recently immigrated to California from Puerto Rico. But after they cross the language barrier, police get involved and this huge nine block search gets underway. Soldiers from a local army base help out and they start looking and the Coast Guard helps by searching the Bay Area nearby.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

122.923

And this story makes the news locally and that gets it a little attention there. But still, there's no sign of little Luis. And of course, mom is destroyed by all this. but there's not much else she can do. And this is during a time where there are no Amber Alerts, no surveillance cameras, no missing children computer database.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

141.86

All they have is a 10-year-old's description of what happened that day. And so every day, Mom goes to the police station to see if there are any updates, hoping that they'll have something. And every day, she gets the same answer. No news, no leads, no Luis. And years pass, and mom stops coming every day, and she just comes once a week, and eventually that turns into her coming once a month.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

167.162

And as more time passes, she starts to only come to the police station once a year. And at this point, officers know her so well that she'll just walk into the station without saying a word, and they'll look at her, and they'll just shake their head, and she'll know that that means they have no updates for her. But, despite that, Mom never stops believing that her son is still alive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

188.351

And she never gives up hope. Ever. So, then I guess you have to ask, what happened to Luis? Well, obviously he was kidnapped, and we don't know a ton of the details of this part. Like, we know he was taken from the park, we know he and the woman got on a plane, and that they flew from California to somewhere on the East Coast, and we don't exactly know where.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

208.345

And we know that then, somehow, Luis ends up getting adopted by a couple. And that couple raises him as their own. And Luis knows he was adopted, but he doesn't know he was originally stolen. But anyway, from there, he lives a fairly normal life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

21.687

Who doesn't love candy? And the woman is like, well, come with me and I'll take you to the store to get some. And so the younger brother leaves with her to go to the store and get some candy. And that is the last time anyone ever saw him. Now, the boy, his name's Luis, and he's six. And the other boy with him in the park is his older brother, Roger. Roger's 10.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

223.077

Like, he grows up, he later joins the Marines, he goes and fights in the Vietnam War, he comes back, and then he goes and fights in the Vietnam War a second time... And then eventually he comes back for good and he becomes a firefighter. He gets married. He has kids of his own. Meanwhile, mom on the opposite side of the country, she still hasn't given up hope.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

241.571

Like she still goes to the police station about once a year to see if there are any updates and there aren't. Even so, she continues to keep baby Luis's photo in the house and she keeps a newspaper clipping about his abduction in her wallet at all times. And so decades pass and 54 years after Luis first went missing. And it's 2005. And at this point, mom is 92 years old.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

267.668

And sadly, she passes away, never having found her son. So any hope of Luis ever being located or reunited with his original family are just gone. Until more time passes and it's now 2020. And that is when we meet this woman. Her name's Alita. Alita's 63. And one day, just for fun, she decides to take one of those ancestry DNA tests through the mail. So she takes it and she gets the results back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

297.853

And whoa, that's weird. She's a match with some man she doesn't recognize. Not only that, the results say that she shares 22% DNA with this guy. And so she's thinking, oh, this must be like a cousin or an uncle or something. And so she sends this mystery guy a little message because you can like message each other through the site. And then she waits and she waits and she waits.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

321.115

And the mystery guy never replies. And so she's like, all right, whatever. And she moves on. And four years go by. And one night, she's watching some documentary on TV. And this reminds her somehow of that random unknown man that she shares DNA with. And so she decides to give it another shot and dig a little deeper and figure out just who this guy is. And so she starts looking up his name online.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

347.107

And she comes across some pictures of him. And the guy is, of course, Luis. Now, Alita had heard all her life about an uncle she has who went missing when he was six years old. I mean, the family has always talked about him. And so she's looking at these pictures of adult Luis on the internet going, could this be him? That uncle?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

366.641

And she starts comparing them to childhood photos she has of her uncle. And she's like, yeah, I think that's him. And so eventually she goes to the police and she's like, oh, you have to look into this. I think this guy was my uncle who was kidnapped. literally back in 1951. And police can't believe it. And they actually do agree to help as the case was never solved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

387.577

And so they open it back up and then they get the FBI involved and the California Department of Justice joins in. And after a bit of investigating, the FBI goes and they track Luis down and he lives somewhere on the East Coast. And so I guess the FBI goes to him and they're like, uh, we think you might be this kid who was kidnapped back in 1951. And Luis is like, I was kidnapped?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

408.833

See, because he still didn't even know. Like, he thought he had been legitimately adopted. So they convince him to take a DNA test just to be sure. And of course, it turns out that his DNA is a match with Alita and the remaining members of his family. And so now, after 73 years... 73 years. He finally flies from the East Coast back to Oakland, California to meet his biological family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

41.812

And when the woman starts to leave with Luis, Roger's like, well, I want to go too. I want some candy. And he starts to follow them. And so he walks along following them. But then after a while, he starts thinking, where are we going? Something about this ain't right. Now, keep in mind, this is happening in 1951.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

446.733

Now keep in mind, most of these family members, he's either never met or he just doesn't remember. But one person he does remember. His brother, Roger, who he reunites with and this is a picture of the two of them. That's Luis on the right and Roger on the left. So then, after all that, who was responsible for this kidnapping?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

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Well, unfortunately, that's a tough one, because 70 years have gone by. We don't know who the woman in the green bandana was, and Luis was six years old, so he doesn't remember too many details of it. And his adopted parents aren't even alive anymore. So, honestly, I don't know if we'll ever know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

59.539

So this is way before stranger danger, way before there were nationwide campaigns notifying kids not to get into cars with adults they don't know. And so anyway, Roger feels like something isn't right. And he decides, this is weird. I'm telling my mom. And so he stops following them and he runs home. Minutes later, he's home and he tells his mom. Now his mom is this woman, who we'll just call mom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Kidnapped Boy Found After 73 Years - The Luis Albino story

82.333

And he tells her what happened, that his little brother just left with some woman in a green bandana offering candy. And of course, mom freaks the f*** out. And boom, she runs back to the park to see if she can find Louise. But unfortunately, there's no trace of him or the strange woman anywhere. They are gone. And pretty quickly, mom goes to the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Killer Politician - The Robert Telles story

538.166

Ein Gründer hat den ehemaligen Klark-König-Publik-Administrator Robert Telles für Mörder verurteilt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

0.089

So this famous doctor is a fraud. Let me explain. Now the story starts with this woman, Benita. And Benita is a TV producer living in New York City. And one day in 2013, she's assigned to work on a documentary story about this amazing rock star of a surgeon, this guy, Dr. Paolo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

117.879

Not only that, John Legend is going to be playing the ceremony. And if that isn't crazy enough, bro is also friends with... the Pope. And so Dr. Paolo tells Benita that the Pope has offered to marry them himself in his papal palace in Italy. And Dr. Paolo even secures a castle for all their guests to stay in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

147.341

And so this is gonna be like an amazing wedding. And so fast forward a little bit to 2014 and they haven't had their wedding yet, but they're a few months away from it and things are still going well. But then it all starts crashing down because one day she's reading the New York Times and boom, she sees a story about Dr. Paolo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

168.55

Apparently, some of his colleagues in the medical community are accusing him of scientific misconduct, saying that he's exaggerating the success of these life-saving windpipe surgeries he's so well known for. And so she goes to him and she's like, what's all this about? And he tries to play it off like, oh, none of that is true. They're just haters or whatever he says.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

189.383

So anyway, some more time passes and their wedding date is getting closer. Now, after this wedding, Benita is supposed to move to Barcelona, where Dr. Paolo has a house. And she's going to live there with him, and it's going to be wonderful. And so she gets her passport all ready. She quits her job for this move. She is now ready for this new life with her dream man in Spain.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

19.352

And Dr. Paolo is a guy who's so brilliant, he invented a life-saving surgery that gives people with broken windpipes the chance to breathe again. And so he's like famous in the medical world now. So Benita meets this guy to do this story on him and interview him and she's like, oh snap, he kinda fine. And then boom, they start dating. And this is going really well for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

214.296

Until... So one day she's chilling at a spa looking at her phone and she gets an email from someone she knows. And this person sent her a link to an article that shows that the Pope is not going to be in Italy around the time of her wedding. He's scheduled to be in South America, so he can't possibly marry them. And so she calls Dr. Paolo and she's like yelling at him like, what the is going on?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

239.507

You lying to me? And Dr. Paolo makes up some bullshit excuses and he says, I'll fly to Rome and I'll fix this myself. But Benita, she's not stupid. She knows something weird is going on. And so she uses her TV documentary producer skills and she starts investigating. She calls the castle that Dr. Paolo said the wedding guests are supposed to stay at.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

262.031

And the people at the castle say they've never heard of him. Not only that, other places he claimed he booked for the wedding also never heard of him. So immediately Benita does the smart thing and she postpones the wedding until she can figure out what the hell is going on. And so like 300 guests who all bought plane tickets to Italy now have to ask for a refund. Wow, that sucks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

286.081

But anyway, she looks into all of this and she gets someone who's affiliated with the Clintons to confirm that they've never heard of Dr. Paolo either. Then she somehow gets the Vatican to verify that the Pope also doesn't know Dr. Paolo. So this dude was just like lying, saying he knows all these people and has all these famous friends when like, no, he doesn't at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

309.645

And so Benita is like, oh, hell no. And she travels to Barcelona to his house to surprise confront him. And she gets there and she learns that he's living there in Barcelona with another woman. Not his wife that he was supposed to be getting a divorce from, but a third woman that he apparently has a serious relationship with. Okay, so we know that he's a liar, but who really is this Dr. Paolo guy?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

338.165

Well, he really is a world-renowned surgeon, and he really did invent a breakthrough windpipe surgery. And for him, this is like a really big deal because it makes him very well known in the medical community, and then he gets recruited for a job at a respected medical research university in Sweden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

355.257

And because the science behind the surgery is brand new, Dr. Paolo is supposed to do a lot of preparation and tests to make sure it's not too risky. However, he doesn't do all that. No, no, no. He dives right into operating on people. And these surgeries, they seem to be successful and the patients go through it and they feel better and they recover.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

377.77

However, then a little later, some of them start dying from complications from his surgeries. And some of them who don't die, they have strokes and they start going blind. And one person needed almost 200 additional surgeries to try and fix the damage from his work. Like all kinds of horrible stuff. Because his breakthrough windpipe surgery wasn't breakthrough at all. It was total bulls**t.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

405.251

And so it's during this time that he meets Benita, who's trying to interview him for a TV documentary she's producing, and he's successful and he's moderately famous in his community, but for whatever sociopathic reason, he starts lying to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

41.343

Dr. Paolo's nice, he treats her good, he's successful, and he's respected in the medical community. And together they seem really happy. But Dr. Paolo is gone all the time for work. He apparently has to fly all over the world to do these breakthrough surgeries. But you know, that's okay. He's always sending Benita little love messages and stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

419.24

Not only about being single, but he starts saying he's friends with the Obamas and with Elton John and that he personally knows the Pope and all this other nonsense. Now, eventually, over time, as Dr. Paolo gets more and more well-known, other doctors and surgeons and medical professors, they look into his work and they start declaring it to be junk science and dangerous.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

441.936

And they start calling him out, calling him a fraud, and calling out the medical research university in Sweden that employs him. Even Benita, after she discovers he's a liar, she eventually starts writing to the Medical Research University in Sweden, telling them that Dr. Paolo is in fact a fraud. And so the Medical Research University in Sweden has to do an investigation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

464.731

And they look into him several times, actually. And they eventually discover that, yeah, he's a bulls***. He had lied on his resume. And he had said that his surgeries were way more successful than they actually were. And a lot of people he operated on got hurt because of it. And so eventually the medical research university in Sweden fires him for scientific misconduct.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

486.224

And in 2016, Swedish police open a criminal investigation into him. And ultimately in 2023, he's found guilty of gross assault against his patients. Imagine your surgery is so bad that you're charged with committing assault. Anyway, this lion ass dude, he gets sentenced to two years, six months in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

67.789

And after several months of dating, pow, he proposes. So now these two are officially getting married. But there's a small problem. Dr. Paolo is already married to another woman. I mean, they're not together anymore, but his divorce isn't quite finalized yet. But whatever, they'll figure it out. So anyway, they start planning this wedding, and it's going to be a big destination wedding in Italy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

95.504

Not only that, but Dr. Paolo is like famous in the medical world, so he knows a lot of people. He says he's friends with the Clintons, so he's going to invite them to the wedding. He's friends with the Obamas, so they're invited. He knows Vladimir Putin, so he's invited. French leader Nicolas Sarkozy is also going to be there. The Beckhams, Elton John, Russell Crowe, they're all going to be there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

0.129

So this podcaster apparently conned people out of millions of dollars. So the guy's name is Steve, and he's in his 20s, he's from Beverly Hills, and Steve has been trying to make it work as an actor for years. But unfortunately, he just can't catch his big break. So one day in the 80s, he decides to make money in a different way. He's going to scam some people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

114.234

So, he keeps the cons going, and he gets involved in some investment scams, and he gets people to invest in oil wells that don't actually exist, and bam, he gets caught and arrested again. Here's another mugshot. And so he gets sent to prison, and now suddenly ol' Steve has a lot of free time on his hands, sittin' in a cell all day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

136.006

And so he decides to write a book called America's Guide to Fraud Prevention, and he writes it under the name Brett Champion for some reason. And this book actually gets published. And this is where he starts to sell himself as this reformed con man who is now trying to help others not get scammed. A few years later, in 1997, he's out of prison at this point. Like, he's done his time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

159.71

And suddenly, things are starting to look up for Steve. Like he starts going by his new name, Brett Champion, which definitely sounds like a made up name. But as Brett Champion, he somehow convinces people that he's a fraud expert. And he starts appearing on TV shows as a fraud prevention specialist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

177.861

And like here he is on The View, here he is on Dateline, here he is on CBS, here he is on some other talk show, here he is on The View again. And so the talk show circuit is really buying into his story. And so it seems like he's turned his life around and he's changed his con man ways. He's got a new name. He's got a new career. And now he's out here helping people not get conned.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

200.893

What a great guy. Until... A few years later in 1999, I guess he gets tired of being a fraud prevention specialist. And he's like, I think I'll go commit some more fraud myself. And he comes up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

215.262

with a whole new scam he starts cold calling people and claiming he's producing a TV show like a quiz game show and that he's looking for investors and he asks these people to invest in the show and he says that former pro football player Joe Namath is going to be involved And that this is going to get such good ratings and it'll be such a huge hit and they're all going to be so rich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

23.793

And so he starts out by just picking up the phone and cold calling people. And he gets into telemarketing fraud. And unfortunately for him, it doesn't go great. And bam, he gets caught and arrested. Here's a mugshot. Cool hair, bro. Then around the 1990s, Steve decides to get a little more creative with his schemes. He comes up with something that's so stupid it's genius.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

238.748

But unfortunately for these investors, there is no quiz game show. And former pro football player Joe Namath, not involved. And any money these people give Steve doesn't go to produce anything for TV. It goes right into his pocket. And eventually he gets reported for this scam and bam, he gets arrested again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

260.382

And this time he gets convicted and he's no longer legally allowed to use the name Brett Champion. He's also no longer legally allowed to call himself a consumer fraud expert. and he also spends a few more years in prison. Then, soon enough, he's out again on probation, and does he stop his scamming ways and live a good, clean, wholesome life? Absolutely not.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

284.259

He's apparently having way too much fun. And if you can't believe it, Bro gets right back on the phone cold calling people trying to scam them again. Trying to get them to invest in another TV show that doesn't exist. And that is when he meets this old guy over the phone, Arthur. Arthur's 84, he's retired, and he's lonely, making him the perfect target for Steve to con.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

309.736

And so Steve tells Arthur that he's this big time executive producer for television and that he's producing this new hot TV show called Trends of the 21st Century, which is a terrible name by the way, but that he's producing this series and it's going to be a huge hit and that Arthur should invest. And unfortunately, Arthur believes him and he does invest. he gives Steve a little money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

333.009

And over the course of a few months, he gives him more and more money. And eventually, poor Arthur has given him pretty much his life savings, over half a million dollars. And now Steve is like, I'm rich, biatch! And he's living a pretty good life on this money. He buys himself a new Corvette. I think this is actually a picture of it here.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

354.532

And then he uses some of this money to pay court-ordered restitution to his previous victims that he conned. So he's using new stolen money to pay off the old stolen money. Bro is a menace. Now, at some point, Arthur or someone around him gets suspicious of all this and they get the FBI involved and the FBI starts wiretapping Steve and eventually, bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

379.072

And so now it's 2003 and Steve is around 42 years old and he's back in prison once again. And now is this the point where he stops scamming people? Of course not. Steve's not gonna let a little thing like prison stop him from being a con man. In fact, Bro has a new idea. He hears about this woman on the outside who has a brother who was convicted of murder and who is serving a life sentence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

406.265

And Steve decides to send a letter to her and extort her. So he writes her this letter saying, hey, I have information that could exonerate your brother. And he tells her that his ex cellmate actually confessed to that murder. And he graciously offers to testify on her brother's behalf if she'll pay him $100,000. Now, what the hell does he think he's going to do with $100,000 while he's in prison?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

432.608

I don't know, but this is what he's going for. And so this sister is like, nah, I ain't paying you. And that pisses Steve off. And he starts sending her all kinds of threatening letters telling her that she better send the money. And of course, this woman's not playing his game. And he gets even more mad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

451.018

Then, through some prison connections, he sends a couple of goons to this woman's house to threaten her. And they do. These goons show up to her house, and they threaten her and her husband, pay up or else. Now, I have no idea how Steve thinks this won't all be traced back to him, because of course, the feds end up getting involved, and they investigate all this, and so BAM!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

474.673

Steve gets arre- Well, he doesn't get arrested because he's already in prison, but he does get in trouble. He actually ends up getting more prison time. I think he gets 20 years combined for all the he's done. Then in 2018, he gets out and I don't know if he's still conning people, but he has a podcast where he talks about a lot of this stuff. So good for him. I don't, I don't know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

49.181

He puts ads in magazines saying that he's selling a revolutionary solar-powered clothes dryer. And he's selling it at the incredibly low price of $49.95. Here's the thing about this solar powered clothes dryer. When the customers receive their order, they open the package and they're shocked to find all he sent them is a simple clothesline.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

73.79

Like one your grandma would hang in the backyard and dry clothes on it. Which, to be fair, I guess that is technically a solar-powered clothes dryer, but you know, not worth spending 50 bucks on. And so the customers are understandably upset. And when people start to complain to Steve, he responds that they had received exactly what he advertised. And technically, he's not wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Funniest Con Man - The Steve Comisar story

96.367

Anyway, he claims that he made over a million dollars from this scam. before his business is finally shut down. Now, I have my doubts about whether or not he actually made a million dollars, but that's what he says. Anyway, after this, Steve definitely isn't gonna stop. I mean, that was too easy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

0.109

So this guy is going to launch himself into space in a homemade rocket to prove to everyone that the Earth is flat. Now his name is Mad Mike, and Mad Mike has always been a risk taker. He used to race motorbikes as a young teen, and he eventually became a pro motorcycle racer for a while. But all that thrill seeking, that's just not enough for Mad Mike. He wants more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

109.697

Here's the problem with this idea though, other than the fact that it's really f***ing dangerous. The problem with this idea is that he doesn't exactly know how to build a homemade rocket. And he's never built something like this before. So he eventually teams up with another guy who does build amateur rockets. This guy, Waldo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

126.795

And together, Mike and Waldo, they're gonna build this thing and they're gonna do it on a budget. Cause, you know, they're kinda broke. And so they design a cheap version of a rocket, one that runs on water. More specifically, it runs on steam, because steam is cheap to make, while actual rocket fuel is not. And so they work on this rocket, and they build it out of a bunch of scrap parts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

146.512

And eventually, in 2014, boom, they finish it. And Mad Mike calls it the X-2 Sky Limo. And it's just a little guy. I mean, here's a picture of Mike standing next to it. And here it is on its ramp. And so now it's finally time to launch it. And one day on some land out in Arizona, they actually do. Mad Mike, he gets all ready and he gets in it and they countdown and boom, it takes off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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And this homemade rocket flies around 1,370 feet before Mike pulls his parachutes to end the flight. And then, one of the parachutes doesn't end up opening, and then pow! The rocket falls and lands pretty hard, and Mad Mike ends up getting injured. And for the next two weeks, he has to move around with a walker. But, you know, he eventually recovers. Regardless, he got what he wanted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

197.344

He successfully launched himself in a homemade rocket, and he's content now. Actually, no he's not. Quite the opposite. At this point, Mad Mike's desire to be the world's greatest daredevil gets even worse. Which means not only does he want to go up again, but he wants to go higher. Which means he and Waldo will have to build a new rocket. Here's the problem with that, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

222.013

They're out of funds now. I mean, even though they're making rockets out of spare parts, I mean, these things still cost money to build. And so Mike gets yet another idea. Why not launch a fundraiser? And so he does. He makes a Kickstarter to raise money. Like, I'm going to launch myself over 2,000 feet in the air in a homemade rocket. Please donate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

23.793

He wants to become the world's greatest daredevil. But unfortunately, right now, he can't because he's just a working man. In fact, he's a limo driver in Las Vegas. But then one day in 2002, he gets an idea. Why not break a world record?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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But unfortunately of the $150,000 he was hoping to raise, he only raises a whopping $310. So that failed. But old Mike, he's never out of ideas and he certainly isn't gonna give up now. So then he decides to do something kind of brilliant. He starts pandering to flat earthers, saying that he's one of them. And he like really plays into this bit. Like he starts talking about it publicly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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I believe the world is a different shape than what we were taught in those programming centers, which is called public school system.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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And so he starts telling the flat earth community all this stuff that he wants to launch a homemade rocket into space or nearly into space so that once he's up there, he can observe and take pictures and see that the earth is not a sphere, but that it's actually flat. And this will prove that the flat earthers have been right about the shape of the world this whole time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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And because he's going to do that, that they should help him raise money for this project to first do a smaller launch and that eventually at some point he'll do a much bigger launch all the way into space. I mean, he's totally bullshitting them, but it doesn't matter. Flat earthers believe him. Who would have thought flat earthers would be so gullible?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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Anyway, so the flat earthers believe him and they set up a GoFundMe for him and through that he raises about $8,500. Which isn't a ton, but it is enough to help him build his next rocket. And so he and Waldo, they build a new rocket. And here's a picture of it. And you can see that it says Flat Earth on the side. Then in 2018, they go launch again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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Mike gets in it and they go ahead and boom, it takes off. And this launch is also successful. And you can see it reaches 1,875 feet. And you can see the little parachutes coming out. And he eventually gets to the ground safely. Now, just to be clear, this launch wasn't supposed to reach space. This was supposed to be a smaller launch first to raise awareness for a much bigger space launch later.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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But whatever, Mike fleeced the flat earth community and he beat his previous launch height by 500 feet. And that's pretty damn good. Oh, but it's not good for Mike. Not good enough. He still wants to be the world's greatest daredevil. And so he has to go again. And now at this point, there have got to be people around him saying like, Mike, you don't have to do this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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I mean, you've launched yourself more than once. Bro, you have proven yourself. You're a daredevil. Everyone knows it. But Mike, he's still determined. Not only that, after this last launch, He's suddenly getting all kinds of media attention from this. Like, he's doing interviews on TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

40.704

And he decides to take his limousine that he uses for work and drive it up a ramp and jump it as far as it will go and basically create a world record for how far he can jump a limo. And he does. At the local speedway, he sets it all up and he jumps his limousine a whole ass 103 feet and he sets a Guinness World Record.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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A film crew from the Science Channel has started following him around, documenting his work for a TV series called Homemade Astronauts. He even gets featured on an episode of Tosh.0. And Tosh, the host comedian, doesn't actually believe that Mike thinks the Earth is flat, and he kind of calls him out on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

425.507

Anyway, so Mike and Waldo put another rocket together, and this is actually their best-looking one yet. And if you zoom into the photo, it looks like he actually got some sponsors to pay for this one, so that's cool. Well, however he did it, finally the big day comes, and this is gonna be his greatest launch yet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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And the Science Channel crew is there filming for the TV show, and about 50 other people show up to watch and document the whole thing. So Mad Mike, he gets prepared and you can see him here climbing into the rocket and he straps in and they ready the launch, the countdown and boom, Mike and the rocket blasts off into the air. However, something goes horribly wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

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If you slow down the footage, you can see that during the blast off, the rocket slightly hits the ladder that Mike had used to climb into it, which then snags one of the parachutes. And this snag rips off this parachute and knocks the rocket off course. And we don't have proof of what happened inside the rocket, but it's theorized that this sudden jerk to the side knocks Mike unconscious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

494.599

Which means that inside, he's unable to pull any of the other reserve parachutes, and because of that, Mad Mike and his rocket fall, crashing to the ground. And of course, he doesn't make it. 64-year-old Mad Mike Hughes was known as a homemade astronaut on a self-financed mission to space. But as Mola Lenge reports, he died living out his dream.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

62.457

And about a year later, he tries again to break his own world record by jumping a new limo 125 feet. This time, though, unfortunately, the limo crashes to the ground early and poor Mad Mike gets no world record this time. But that doesn't matter to him. He still holds his original record. So basically he got what he wanted and people now know him as a daredevil and he's happy with that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

88.417

Until... Here's the thing about Mad Mike. Jumping limos is great, but it's still not enough of a thrill for him. And if he's gonna be the world's greatest daredevil, he needs to go bigger. And that is when he gets another idea. He wants to build a homemade rocket and fly higher than anyone has ever flown before in a homemade rocket.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

0.089

So this guy, his name's Dave, and Dave's girlfriend just unalived his other girlfriend. So Dave has been casually dating this woman for about six months. Her name's Liz. And they're dating, but it's nothing serious. But then one day, he meets another woman on a dating site, a woman he had seen before in the auto shop he works at. Let's call her Crazy. And Dave thinks Crazy is fine.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

114.389

So all this harassment goes on for about two and a half years with them getting over 15,000 emails and 50,000 texts. And eventually they get detectives to start looking at this so that they can piece it all together. So detectives look at it and here's the strangest thing they find.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

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Krazy's been texting people from her phone and stuff this whole time, but no one has seen her in two and a half years. Not her friends, not her family. No one's seen her since she was dating Dave for those two weeks. She hasn't answered any calls. She didn't show up to a wedding she was supposed to go to.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

145.412

And most concerning, in the past two and a half years, there's been zero activity on her bank account. So detectives start thinking, maybe Crazy's dead. And if she is dead, then who's sending all these emails and texts? And then soon after that, one day, detectives get a call from Dave. And he is freaking out because someone stole that pew-pew he got.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

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Now Liz thinks it might have been Dave's ex who stole it. This woman, Amy. So Liz stops pointing fingers at Crazy and starts pointing fingers at Amy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

174.589

saying Amy must have been the one who took the pew-pew and then Liz goes and she files a complaint against her saying she's really the one who's been harassing them all these years but detectives have already started to get suspicious and not of Amy and not of crazy who they suspect is already dead but they're getting suspicious of Liz they start thinking maybe two and a half years ago after Liz found out that Dave was also dating crazy and

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

200.117

Liz then went and unalived crazy and stole her phone. And then maybe for two and a half years, Liz has been texting people pretending to be crazy. Sending harassing messages and emails to Dave and blaming it on crazy. And then sending harassing messages to herself and blaming it on crazy. Maybe Liz graffitied her own garage and even burned her whole house down and blamed it on Crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

223.353

Maybe Crazy wasn't crazy at all. She was a normal woman who was dating Dave for about two weeks and then was unalived by a jealous Liz. So that's the theory detectives have. But then the next night, Liz calls 911 and she's at a local park and she says she's been shot in the leg.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

24.585

So Dave and Crazy meet up and they go out and they have a really good date. And they immediately end up hanging out back at Dave's apartment. And then later, as Crazy is leaving, Liz shows up. She had stopped by unannounced to pick up something she had left at Dave's apartment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

241.543

So an ambulance comes and takes her to the hospital and she tells police it was Amy who came to the park and confronted her with a pew-pew and shot her. But police investigate and Amy has a solid alibi. So detectives are like, wait a minute, Did Liz shoot herself and then blame Amy?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

258.312

So they go and they come up with a plan to trick Liz into giving them information about all these crimes she's committing. So they go to Liz and they're like, hey, we believe you about Amy, but we need your help in getting her to incriminate herself. Can you give us any info? So Liz goes home and she types up fake email confessions from Amy and she sends them to herself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

278.507

And in these fake emails, she makes Amy admit to shooting Liz in the leg and she makes Amy admit to stabbing crazy three or four times and then putting her body in a trash bag. So Liz types up these fake emails and then she gives them to the detectives. And detectives are like, wow, this is great. Can you get us more info?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

295.56

So then Liz goes and she makes more fake email confessions, pretending to be from Amy. And in these fake emails, she details exactly how she unalived Krazy in the passenger seat of Krazy's car. So detectives immediately go and search Krazy's car. And in the passenger seat, underneath the seat cover, sure enough, they find traces of Krazy's blood.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

315.07

Liz had indeed unalived Krazy years ago and is now trying to pin the murder on Amy by writing fake email confessions. So police arrest Liz. They charge her with first degree murder. Here's her mugshot. She goes to trial and she gets sentenced to life. Shout out to Iowa and Nebraska.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

37.975

And neither woman appears to really care that the other one's there, nor do they say anything, because none of them are dating Dave exclusively, so it's no big deal. But then, over the next two weeks, Dave and Crazy start spending a lot of time together, and she starts crashing at his place at night. But then one day while Dave's at work, Krazy texts him something that's way out of character.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

58.57

He gets a text from her saying she thinks they should move in together. And Dave's immediately like, nah. And that's when Krazy just snaps. She's like, fine, I hate you. I'm dating someone else. I don't want to see you anymore. Go away. And Dave's like, whatever. But then a couple of days after that, he starts getting more texts and emails from Krazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

76.956

And she's cursing him out and just saying really awful things. So Dave, he just tries to move on and he continues to date Liz. But then Liz starts getting harassing messages from Krazy too. And they're insulting and they're threatening her. And one day she comes home to find from Dave spray painted in her garage. So Krazy's just going all out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

His Girlfriend Murdered His Other Girlfriend

95.222

But then Liz comes home one day to find her house burned down. And not only that, the fire unalived all her pets, two dogs, a cat and a snake. And immediately Liz lets the fireman know this fire was set by crazy. So at this point, Dave is shook. I mean, this is getting out of control. And so he eventually gets himself a pew pew just in case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

0.129

So one night, this woman is in her bed when suddenly, kaboom, part of her house explodes and the whole thing goes up in flames. But despite how loud the explosion was, she's still asleep as the fire creeps closer and closer to her. Now, her name's Lula. And unfortunately, things haven't been going very well for Lula. Because one day, bam, she finds out she has breast cancer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

108.265

She's not actually gonna die from this. And everyone is happy. Except for Snake. Because now the life insurance policies she took out are kind of pointless. So Snake comes up with a new plan. She's like, fine, I'll unalive her myself. And she just happens to know a guy who can help her out. A family friend. This guy. Wayne.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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So Snake goes to Wayne and she's like, I'll pay you $5,000 if you burn down Lula's house with her inside and you make it look like an accident. And Wayne's like, all right, sweet. So Wayne goes and he gets a propane tank and he goes to Lula's house and he tells her, hey, Snake wants you to hang on to this propane tank for a while.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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It's a gift for one of her daughters, we're just gonna store it here if that's cool. Then, Wayne gives her some sleeping medication, and when he's sure she's asleep, he opens the propane tank's valve, and he puts a space heater next to it, and he puts some newspaper down next to it, so that it'll catch fire. And then later that night, kaboom!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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Part of Lula's house explodes, and the whole thing goes up in flames. And so the fire department rushes to the scene and there they find Lula unconscious. But unfortunately, it's too late. She doesn't make it. She dies of smoke inhalation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

175.82

But when firefighters investigate and they find that a propane tank and a space heater are clustered together in the same room, they immediately know something's up. However, there's no hard evidence of any foul play. So the whole thing is ruled an accident and ol' Snake starts cashing in on that insurance money. Until again, the insurance agent who sold Snake one of those insurance policies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

197.663

She hears about Lula's death in the fire and she's like, oh, that's a bummer. But then she goes to Walmart one day and she suddenly sees Snake, but she thinks it's Lula. Because remember when Snake came in and bought the insurance policies, she was pretending to be Lula. So the insurance agent is like, I thought this woman just died in a fire. And she knows something's up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

218.0

So she goes and she reports it to the police. So the police, they know it's all a scam, so they go and arrest Snake for wire fraud. But unfortunately, they can't seem to prove that she had anything to do with the fire set to Lula's house. But then, two years later, this man, David Vincent, he's sitting in jail. And David Vincent, he doesn't like it there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

23.281

But luckily, Lula has a best friend, this woman, who we'll call Snake. And Lula and Snake have been friends for over 20 years. So naturally, Snake is like, don't worry, bestie. We're going to beat this cancer together. And Snake is also Lula's neighbor, so she starts helping her a lot. She drives her to her chemo appointments and buys groceries for her and helps her around the house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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So he decides he wants to lighten his sentence by snitching on someone. And by sheer coincidence, David Vincent used to work with Wayne doing landscaping. And one time, Wayne had confessed to him that he once burned down an old woman's house in exchange for $5,000. So David Vincent takes this information to the police, hoping that they'll lighten his sentence, which I believe they do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

258.44

And the police, they eventually arrest Wayne. And Wayne not only confesses to starting the fire that unalive Lula, but he reveals this isn't the first fire Snake asked him to start. He had also helped her burn down her own daughter's house, hoping to collect insurance money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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So police arrest Snake again and they search her house and they find evidence showing she's also in the middle of committing another insurance fraud scheme, trying to have another guy who's totally separate from anything else in this story, trying to have him unalive too, so that she can collect his insurance policy money. So anyway, here's her mugshot. And so she eventually goes to trial.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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She's found guilty and she's sentenced to life in prison. And Wayne also gets convicted. He pleads guilty and he's also sentenced to life. So shout out to Mississippi.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

43.495

But still, things aren't looking good for Lula because doctors find more cancer than they initially thought. And she, unfortunately, has to get a mastectomy. But Snake, she's still there for her friend the whole time. She's cooking. She's cleaning. She's caring for her. And this goes on for years. But at some point, I guess Snake is like, well, Lula isn't gonna be alive long anyway.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

65.105

Might as well make some money from all this. So Snake goes and she starts taking life insurance policies out in Lula's name, but she makes herself the beneficiary. Life insurance policies worth over $700,000. And because they're worth such a large amount, they require Lula to go and get a physical to make sure she's in good health. But obviously Lula isn't in good health.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story

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So Snake poses as Lula and she gets a physical done. And poor Lula has no idea Snake is doing any of this. And it seems like it's just a matter of time before she passes away and Snake is able to finally cash in. Until... At this point, Snake's been taking care of Lula for about six years. And one day, suddenly, Lula gets great news. Her cancer's going into remission.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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One day, this woman is chilling in her duplex watching TV when suddenly, boom, two men bust in and they grab her and she screams and one of them has a pew-pew. Then they tie her up with Christmas lights and one of the men who has the pew-pew, he points it at the back of her head and he pulls the trigger.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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And Lindsay really likes Dwayne. She thinks he is fine. So she's like, all right, I want to help solve this case. So she immediately gets to work on this. She creates a Facebook group to collect tips and information about Egypt's death and people start sending in information and she just like pieces it all together. Then she goes and interviews people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

123.64

She takes Dwayne and they drive around town and talk to anyone who knew anything about Egypt. She asks them difficult questions and she starts connecting the dots. In fact, she looks at this case for so long that she starts to realize that all the evidence that points to Kenny is circumstantial and flimsy at best. And that maybe police are pointing fingers at the wrong guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

145.414

So Lindsay and Dwayne, they've been giving all this evidence they've collected over to local police. But local police, they don't appear to be doing anything with it, at least not in a timely manner. So Lindsay and Dwayne, they decide that they want state police to take over the case because state police has a lot more resources. So they go and they file a plea for the state police to take over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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And then they wait and they wait. They even hold a protest march to pressure police to hand the case over to the state. And like thousands of people attend this protest. And then finally, one day, boom, it works. The local police end up handing the case over to the state. So then state police reviews the case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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They then take her phone and another man is waiting outside in a getaway car and they all speed away. Now the woman, her name is Egypt. She's very well known around town. She's a talented singer and Anyone who knows her loves her. So it shocks everyone when they hear that someone unalived her. And no one knows who did it because she basically has no enemies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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Now, as I told you, when Egypt was unalive that day, the attackers took her cell phone before they later discarded it. And state police have enough resources to get a warrant to get tracking data and track her cell phone and any other phones that are near it, which they do. And the other phones near it, of course, belong to the attackers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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And then three months later, kabam, state police arrest three guys involved in the crime. Here's one guy's mugshot. Here's a second guy's mugshot. And here's the third guy's mugshot. So here's what the three guys say really happened that day. So as I said, Egypt lived in a duplex. And on the other side of that duplex is a legal Marajahwana business that the owners run from their home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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The three attackers claimed that they were trying to break into that side of the duplex to steal a little Marajahwana. So two of them went in and one of them was the getaway driver. But unfortunately, the two went into the wrong door and into Egypt's side. And that is where they encounter Egypt just chilling, watching TV.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

240.009

And they weren't expecting anyone to be home, so they freaked out and wrapped her up with Christmas lights and they unalived her. Anyway, all three men take plea deals. They each got different sentences, but this guy got a minimum of 17 years, this guy got a minimum of 20 years, and this guy got a minimum of 15 years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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While Lindsay and Dwayne, they kept dating, they got engaged, and now they're married. So, that's cool. Shout out to Michigan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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So police, they start investigating and digging around. And they eventually land on a person of interest. Egypt's ex-boyfriend. This guy, Kenny. So they start looking into him. But then months go by, but police still haven't made an arrest because they simply don't have enough hard evidence against Kenny. And unfortunately, after a period of no activity, the case ends up going cold.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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Until... So Egypt, she has a brother, this guy. And Dwayne has long been devastated about his sister's passing. But one day, he meets this woman, Lindsay. And they really hit it off, and they start dating. And Lindsay and Dwayne, they are all into each other. So at some point, Lindsay notices Dwayne has a lock screen on his phone. And on that lock screen is a picture of another woman.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Unbelievable Story of Egypt Covington

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So she sees this and she's like, who is that woman on your phone? And Dwayne is like, oh, that's my sister Egypt. And he tells her about the murder and that the case is still unsolved. And he tells her police have been investigating it for years at this point and that they suspect it might be her ex, Kenny. But they don't have any evidence against him and it's been really hard on Dwayne's family.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

0.109

So one day, a pizza delivery man is out delivering pizzas. But when he shows up to the delivery address, there appears to be no one there. It's just an empty field with a TV tower in it. So he gets out of his car, and then suddenly, three people appear. And they've got pew-pews pointed at him. And they grab him, and they lock a collar around his neck. A collar that contains a bomb.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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And Brian, he gets more and more anxious. And a bit of time passes and the bomb squad hasn't shown up yet. And everyone's just kind of standing around waiting for them. And he feels like no one is listening to him. And then suddenly, kaboom! The bomb explodes and Brian is unalived. Now, because this is such an unusual case, the FBI gets involved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

137.081

And pretty quickly, they get contacted by this guy, William. And William tells them, hey, look, I had nothing to do with any collar bomb, but I know who did. And he tells them that the mastermind behind this whole bank robbery is this other woman who lives in that town, this woman, Marjorie. And then William also tells them that Marjorie had unalived her own boyfriend without

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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poison and then paid William $2,000 to hide the boyfriend's body in his freezer. Well, now we're getting somewhere. So then the FBI finds the boyfriend's body in William's freezer and they go and they arrest Marjorie. Now Marjorie, she claims she's innocent in this whole collar bomb thing, but she ends up taking a plea deal for unaliving her boyfriend and they throw her in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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So how did William know that Marjorie was allegedly the mastermind behind the bank heist? Well, unfortunately for the FBI, William can't answer too many questions. because within about a year, he dies from cancer. So they get no more information out of him, which is a bummer for the investigation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

196.008

But then, about six months after getting sent to prison, Marjorie suddenly decides she wants to cooperate with the FBI, thinking maybe they'll lighten her sentence or transfer her to a minimum security prison. So she sits down with the FBI and she admits to them that she was actually involved in the collar bomb plot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

21.378

And then they hand him a nine page long handwritten note that tells him they need him to rob a bank for them. And if he doesn't follow these very specific instructions, the bomb will go off and he'll die. So the pizza man, his name's Brian. And poor Brian, he doesn't know what to do. And they suddenly hand him a shotgun that's modified to look like a walking cane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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and that her former boyfriend, the one she unalived, knew about the collar bomb and he threatened to snitch on her. That's why she says she unalived him and had William put him in the freezer. But then, to make this even more confusing, the FBI suddenly gets a random tip about another guy involved in the bomb plot. This guy, Barnes. Now Barnes, he's already in prison for an unrelated drug charge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

237.439

So the FBI goes to the prison and they interview him. And he admits that yes, he actually was involved in the collar bomb plot, but he says that William, the guy who died of cancer, was actually the mastermind behind the whole thing, not Marjorie. He says William was really the one who sat down and constructed the whole collar bomb and he built the shotgun cane thing himself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

257.882

He was handy like that. So Barnes, he pleads guilty to his involvement in the plot and he gets 45 years in prison. But then, a couple of years into his sentence, Barnes changes his story and he tells the FBI that while William did build the collar bomb device, he wasn't actually the mastermind. Instead, it was Marjorie the whole time. She was the mastermind.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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He says Marjorie came up with this whole collar bomb plan to rob the bank for $250,000. And that she wanted that $250,000 so that she could use it to hire a hitman. And that she wanted a hitman so that she could have him unalive her biological father. And she wanted him unalived so that she could get her family inheritance. Then Barnes drops another bomb on them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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He tells the FBI that not only was Marjorie in on it and that not only was William in on it, but that Brian, the man with the collar bomb around his neck who died, he says that he was in on the collar bomb plot too. And that Brian agreed to rob the bank with this bomb around his neck in exchange for a cut of the $250,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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However, he says that Brian didn't actually know that the bomb around his neck was a real bomb. Brian thought the whole time the bomb would be fake. I guess they were supposed to give him a fake one. So he thought that was fake until it exploded. So anyway, Marjorie finally goes to trial for this and she's sentenced to life. And here's what she looks like for real.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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I hope that story wasn't too confusing. Shout out to Pennsylvania.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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This is an actual picture of the walking cane shotgun. I guess to help him protect himself while he robs this bank for them. And then they're like, okay, Brian, the clock is ticking. We'll be watching. Minutes later, Brian pulls up to the bank, and with the collar bomb still on him, he walks inside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

58.393

And he goes up to the counter, and he slips the bank teller a note that says to put $250,000 in a bag. Now the teller, I guess she can't get $250,000, so she puts around $8,700 into a bag. And she gives it to Brian and Brian leaves. And he gets in his car and the instructions tell him to go to a nearby McDonald's.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

77.671

So he speeds to the McDonald's to get the next clue, which ends up being a note hidden under a rock there. So Brian gets the note and then he drives away toward the next location to find whatever clue is after that. But that is when police finally catch up to him for the bank robbery. And they get him out of his car and then they handcuff him. And poor Brian's like, wait, but I'm a hostage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story

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And then he tells them about the three people who put the bomb around his neck and made him do all this. So police, they see the bomb and they immediately call the bomb squad. And Brian, he tries to tell them, like, you don't understand. I don't have time. I need to finish this scavenger hunt or this bomb will go off. And as the bomb ticks away, it gets louder and louder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

0.149

So one day, this woman goes for a jog around her neighborhood. When suddenly, bam, an SUV pulls up out of nowhere and two women get out. And they both have pew-pews. And they grab her and they force her into the SUV. And the SUV speeds away. Now the woman who was kidnapped, she's a normal suburban mom. Her name's Sherry. And on that day, Sherry doesn't show up to pick up her kids after school.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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Now from this story, police get enough of a description of the kidnappers to draw these two sketches. But unfortunately, their faces are covered so the drawings aren't much help. But police hear this story and they keep wondering, why the hell did the kidnappers burn a Bible verse into her skin? And so Sherry tells them something, but she keeps changing the details of the story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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And it's especially weird because this Bible verse basically says anyone who kidnaps someone else should be put to death, which seems like a weird thing for actual kidnappers to burn into someone's back. So of course, by this point, police are suspicious of this whole thing. So they do DNA testing on Sherry's clothes from when she was taken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

146.661

And the tests show that there's male DNA on the underwear she was wearing. But it sucks because that DNA doesn't match with anyone in their criminal database. Double until. At this point, about four years have passed since she was abducted. But then out of nowhere, pow, their DNA finally links with someone in their database.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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And basically the results show that while they can't find a match for this DNA, they did find that it's close to someone else's DNA in the database. meaning that it's probably their relative. So they investigate and they find that this relative is related to this guy, James. And James just happens to be Sherry's ex-boyfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

186.865

So police find James and they confront him and he quickly crumbles and he tells police that basically Sherry must have kidnapped herself. So here's what really happened. Sherry goes to the jogging track that day, and she randomly calls James to come pick her up. And when he does, she leaves her phone and her earpods there where she was jogging, so it will look like someone abducted her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

207.951

James then drives Sherry nine hours away to his place to live with him. There, she starves herself to lose a bunch of weight, she cuts off all her hair, she beats herself up, and she has James brand a Bible verse on her shoulder blade for some reason. Allegedly, Sherry was just tired of her suburban life, or maybe she just wanted attention.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

21.846

And her husband, this guy, Keith, Keith gets worried, and he starts freaking out. And he calls the police, and then boom, a search gets underway. And suddenly everyone's looking for Sherry, and this story is all over the media. And they announce a reward for any information about her disappearance. Someone sets up a GoFundMe to help with the search and it raises over $50,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

228.38

It isn't actually entirely clear why she faked her own kidnapping. But after 22 days of living there with James, she decides she's done with this whole plot and that kidnapping herself was a terrible idea. So she suddenly asks James to drive her roughly nine hours back near her home in Northern California and drop her off on the side of the highway. And that is where the police found her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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But here's the craziest part. According to James, he wasn't even in on the whole scam. He had no idea she was faking her own kidnapping. Allegedly, when she called him to come pick her up that day, he thought she wanted to be with him. and that she was just running away from her family and her abusive husband. Which, by the way, it turns out her husband Keith was never abusive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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She made that up too. So anyway, police arrest Sherry. I don't have a mugshot, but here's what she looks like in real life. And also, here's what James looks like in real life. Buh. And so Sherry goes to court. She pleads guilty to all this. And she's sentenced to 18 months in prison, and she's ordered to pay back all the money her hoax cost the state, which is around $300,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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while James wasn't charged with any crime at all. Also, two days after she pled guilty, her husband Keith filed for divorce. Good for him. Shout out to California.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

41.311

But unfortunately, weeks pass and no one has heard anything. And there's no sign of what might have happened to her. Until 22 days go by and it's 4 a.m. And a woman driving along the highway, she spots a disheveled person on the side of the road. So she calls police. So police come and they find it's Sherry there on the side of the highway. And she looks terrible. She's seriously beaten up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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She's starved down to 87 pounds. All her hair is chopped off. And strangely, she has a Bible verse branded on her shoulder blade. And of course, police know exactly who she is. They know she's been missing. It's been all over the news. So they bring her in and they question her a few times, trying to figure out exactly what the hell happened to her during those 22 days.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Faked a Whole Kidnapping - The Sherri Papini story

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But Sherry, she's being really odd about the whole thing. She's not telling them a lot. But after a few sessions with her, she eventually gives them this story. She says that that day she was out jogging, two Latina ladies pulled up in an SUV and they held her at gunpoint and they put her in the SUV and they drove her to some shady location and there they chained her up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

0.129

So this woman, she really, really wants her husband dead. Now, her name's Dahlia, and she's been married to this guy, Mike, for about six months. But for some reason, one day, she decides she doesn't really love Mike anymore. But she still really loves his money. Now Mike's not the richest guy in the world, but he does have a little bit saved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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So they put their heads together and they come up with a whole sting operation and they get Mohammed to agree to help them. So then police go and they put hidden cameras in the backseat of Mohammed's car and they mic him all up. And then he hits up Dalia and he asks her to meet him in the parking lot of a local gas station.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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So they meet up and he's like, so it turns out I actually do know a hitman who can help you. So then Dahlia gives him a down payment of $1,200 and a picture of Mike to give to the hitman so that the hitman can get started. Then two days later, a cop goes undercover and he pretends to be the hitman. And he meets up with Dahlia in another parking lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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And of course, she has no idea that police are watching this and that she's just incriminated herself on camera. But here's her plan. One morning, she'll leave the condo where she and Mike live and she'll go to the gym. That way, she'll have an alibi. During that time, the hitman, he'll show up to the condo and he'll assassinate Mike. That's the plan. But that's not what happens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

169.843

Instead, on the morning that Mike is supposed to be assassinated, Dahlia leaves and she goes to the gym. As soon as she leaves, police show up to Mike's condo and they fill him in on what's going on. Like, hey, FYI, your wife is trying to assassinate you. So they get Mike to leave. And in the condo, they set up a whole fake crime scene with fake blood and yellow tape, like the whole thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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Then when Dahlia comes home, police tell her Mike is dead.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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So then they bring Dahlia in for questioning to see if she knows if Mike had any enemies or knows of anyone who might want to harm him. And of course she starts bullshitting and telling them about all these enemies Mike supposedly had and who she thinks may have done this. But once she starts lying, they're like, that's nonsense.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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And they confront her about the hidden camera footage of her in the car trying to hire the hitman. Basically, police are trying to trap her in a lie and then confront her with the video so that she has no other option but to confess to what she's done. Well, in fact, Dahlia doesn't confess. Even though she's literally on video committing the crime, she still denies she's done anything wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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So Dahlia comes up with a plan to get Mike out of her life, but still keep his money. And this is when she starts working on plan A, get Mike thrown in prison. So then Dahlia starts calling police, giving them anonymous tips and telling them to look into Mike because she says he's selling drugs. She even goes as far as to plant drugs in his car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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And they bring the fake hitman into the room and she denies she's ever met him. They even bring Mike into the room, like, look, he's not really dead. And Dahlia still denies everything. So police give up and they arrest her anyway. And they charge her with solicitation to commit first degree murder. Here's her mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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So she ends up going through several different trials, but ultimately she's found guilty and she's sentenced to 16 years in prison. So shout out to Florida.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

43.032

Now Mike, see, he has a bit of a record from his past. He used to have problems with drugs and alcohol, plus he got busted committing fraud, and now he's on probation, but allegedly he lives a clean life now. So Dahlia keeps tipping police off, and police eventually look into him. They even pull Mike over one night and search through all his stuff, but none of this works.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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And Dahlia's like, damn it, and that's when she switches to plan B, hire a hitman to unalive Mike. So Dahlia goes and she meets up with an old hookup of hers. This guy, Mohammed. So she goes to him and she lies to him. She's like, my husband Mike is abusive. Do you know anyone who could unalive him? And Mohammed's like, uh, no, I don't.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Hired a Hitman To Murder Her Husband - The Dalia Dippolito story

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But he also gets freaked out because he realizes she's serious. She's legitimately looking to hire a hitman. And if Mike ultimately does get assassinated, Mohammed knows he'll be in trouble for not reporting it. So he secretly goes and reports Dalia to the police. Now police, they believe Mohammed and they want to bust Dalia, but they need more proof than just Mohammed's word.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

0.149

So this guy is about to make millions of dollars by hyping up a product that doesn't exist. Now, like me, the guy's name is Ray. And Ray is 24, living in Miami. And bro really wants to be rich. And he's always cooking up some kind of new scheme to make that happen. Like he's stealing prescription drugs and selling them for a while.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

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They make a company website and they make themselves the employees. Here's actually a picture of the three of them all dressed up like they know what they're doing. Then, to make themselves appear more credible, they create fake LinkedIn profiles for themselves, claiming that they're all Harvard graduates. They even make up a fake CEO of this fake company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

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Like they literally Google the words old white guy and they find a random picture and they post that picture of that guy as the CEO. And so all of this looks legit. And now all they got to do is promote it. So they all go into crypto message boards and chat rooms and they start hyping up their fake company hoping to get people to invest. Here's the thing, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

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Some people do actually invest in this company. Not a ton, but, you know, it's something. But about a month or so in, suddenly, pow, their company gets a random endorsement from a somewhat known crypto guru. And overnight, kaboom, their company blows the f*** up. And suddenly, all kinds of people are investing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

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And they now have millions of dollars invested in their fake company based on a technology that they don't have.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

180.387

but now there's a real buzz around what they're claiming centra tech is going to do so they just run with it they get a legit office space so they don't have to work out of their bedrooms anymore they hire like 50 other employees to come work for them they get these fake centra cards made to use as like promotional materials like a proof of concept they even hire celebrities to endorse this card

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

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Like here's Floyd Mayweather endorsing it. They get DJ Khaled to promote it. And so this builds even more hype for their company and makes them look even more legit. Now, what are they gonna do with all this hype for their company considering their product is fake? They're going to try and raise even more investment money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

21.417

Then he and his friends borrow some money and they start a luxury car rental business. And that business does pretty well, but they're young and kind of dumb and pretty quickly they blow through all their profits and their business fails. And that is when Ray is back to square one and now he needs a new hustle to make money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

224.936

And this is where they start selling CentraCoin, their coin, to the public. And so, bam, their coin goes live. And it's selling fast because they've been generating a lot of hype. And soon, Ray and his friends have raised tens of millions of dollars. And now with all this new money, they gotta start spending it. And so Ray is out here buying new tailored suits. He's at the mall shopping every day.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

249.952

He gets a new luxury car. He's always like carrying around tons of cash on himself for some reason. I guess just to like show it off. Meanwhile, the guys, they're all promising their investors like, yeah, don't worry, we're going to get these crypto debit cards out by Christmas. But again, they don't have crypto debit cards because these guys don't have the technology.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

271.468

But they still don't seem to care. They keep spending money because I guess they don't think they're ever going to get caught. Until... After all this hype these guys have been getting, a reporter for the New York Times starts paying attention to them. And so he's doing his research and he finds some of their Instagram accounts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

294.144

And I don't know what they were doing in all their Instagram photos, probably like partying or stunting in their new whip. But whatever it was, this causes this reporter to say, yeah, these guys definitely didn't go to Harvard. And he starts thinking maybe their company isn't legit. And so he wants to hear from the CEO of this company.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

316.579

But remember, the picture of the CEO on the website is just a random photo Ray and the guys found when they googled old white guy. And so anyway, the reporter reaches out to Ray and the guys and he's asking them all kinds of questions. And they're like bullshitting him and he wants to speak to the CEO. And they're making up excuses and they're like, oh, he's busy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

339.517

But with all this sudden pushback, Ray and the guys know that eventually people are going to realize their CEO is made up. And then everyone will know their whole company is a fraud. And so they decide to kill off their fake CEO and pretend that he just like died in a car crash. Like they put together a whole press release saying that Michael Edwards, our talented CEO, died in a car accident.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

366.398

And I guess that keeps the critics at bay for a while. But now the guys have a new problem. They gotta find a new fake CEO. And so they take a picture of Ray's grandpa and they put it up on the website and they're like, yeah, this guy is now our CEO. But like immediately, some people start looking into it and they look at Ray's Facebook page and they find pictures of Ray and his grandpa together.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

394.175

And they're like, the CEO of that company isn't a real CEO. They just used a picture of Ray's grandpa. But whatever. I mean, Ray and the guys still don't seem phased because they just keep hustling. They get a bunch of their employees to start building a fake app that they can use in presentations. Like, hey, look, our product really works.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

40.996

And one day in 2017, one of Bray's friends, this guy who we'll call Sorbet, Sorbet gets a crazy idea. They wanna create a debit card that lets you access your cryptocurrency. That way you can instantly buy stuff with your Bitcoin when you're like out at the store or something. And a debit card for crypto, honestly, it's not a terrible idea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

413.541

And through that, they get even more people to invest in their company. I think they actually get like 15 million more. But then... Finally, it all starts to go south because that New York Times reporter, his article comes out about the company and kaboom, it blows the up. And it like brings up their old arrest records and run-ins with the law and it just makes them look, you know, not so good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

440.777

And around this time is when the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission, notifies the guys that their company, Centratech, is now officially under federal investigation. And I guess from here, the guys panic because within a month, most of the company's employees are laid off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

458.587

Also, the guys are like fighting amongst one another and they start draining all the money out of the company's bank accounts. But eventually, the law does catch up to them and bam, Ray gets arrested. Here's his mugshot. And of course, the other guys, they get arrested too. And now Ray, he ends up pleading guilty. And he takes a plea deal and he flips on the other two.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

480.74

And so Sorbet, he gets sentenced to eight years in prison. And Farkas, he gets sentenced to one year in prison. While Ray, because he flipped on the others, he gets no prison time. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

64.51

And so they're gonna create a whole fake company and attach it to a cryptocurrency, like a coin. However, Ray, Sorbet, and their other friend, this guy, Farkas, they have several problems with this plan. One, they know nothing about crypto, nothing about Bitcoin or anything about that space.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Million Dollar Fake Company - The Ray Trapani / Centra Tech story

84.648

And two, the very specific technology for a crypto debit card, it either doesn't exist or these guys just don't have access to it. not in 2017 but whatever these guys just want to be rich and they're gonna do whatever it takes to make that happen and so they come up with this whole ass scam First, they set up a company called Centratech, completely fake and made up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

0.67

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

125.092

Because one day, when he's 32 years old, he applies to the FBI, and he actually gets hired. And they only have him working on financial crimes and accounting stuff, but whatever, his foot is in the door. Three years later, he gets relocated to New York City, where he works in the Soviet Counterintelligence Unit. Und hier ist er so, das ist es. Das ist mein großer Schuss. Ich werde wie 007 sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

146.124

Aber leider stecken sie ihm an, administrativen Arbeit zu machen, klassifizierte Daten und solche Sachen zu handeln. Und das ist ein bisschen schrecklich. Ich meine, er ist in dieses Geschäft gekommen, um Spionage zu machen. Wie darf man ihn untervaluieren? Also ist er so, f*** das. Ich werde ein Spion werden, egal was.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

165.479

So one day Bob goes over to a local Russian trading company in Manhattan and he just walks into their offices and he talks to them and he's like, I want to be a spy, so let's make a deal. I'll give you some FBI secrets and in return you pay me money. Now keep in mind, this is all happening during the Cold War. So tensions between the Soviet Union and America are really high.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

187.045

And this local Russian trading company isn't actually a local Russian trading company. It's actually a front for the GRU. The GRU is like the Soviet equivalent of the CIA. And so these Russians are sitting there listening to Bob's crazy idea and they're like... Und so, boom, they have this arrangement. And finally, Bob is officially a spy. Just, you know, for the opposing team.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

212.336

And soon he's communicating with the Soviets over encrypted radio transmissions. And they dead drop him cash. And he's telling them about some Soviet places that the FBI has bugged. He's telling them the names of suspected Soviet informants for the FBI. And some of these informants he's naming end up getting arrested in the Soviet Union or executed over this. But Bob... Don't really care.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

231.628

He got what he's always wanted plus he's getting paid. So he keeps feeding them more information and more information for about a year. But then in 1980 he gets caught. But not by the FBI. They still have no clue he's doing any of this. Bob gets caught by someone else. Because one day Bonnie, his wife, is at home and she walks into the basement and Bob is there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

256.288

Und er ist so, oh, komm nicht rein, ich habe Präsente. Aber tatsächlich schaut er sich ein paar Kommunikationen mit den Sowjeten an. Und sie fängt ihn tatsächlich in dem Akt mit diesen Lettern an, die er ihnen geschrieben hat. Jetzt, an diesem Punkt könnte Bonnie ihn in die FBI schicken, aber sie wird das nicht tun. Sie liebt Bob. Und sie ist auch super religiös.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

26.926

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

277.526

Also anstatt all dessen, nimmt sie ihn zu ihrer Kirche, zu ihrem Priester, um zu vertrauen. Und so geht Bob und er vertraut all diesem Spionage, das er zu diesem Priester gemacht hat. Und der Priester hört all das und er ist so, holy shit! Und jetzt will der Priester Bob in die FBI einstellen. Aber er macht ihm einen Deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

296.905

Er sagt ihm, dass er ihn nicht einstellen wird, wenn er sich auf eine Charität mit all dem Geld, das er von den Sowjeten gemacht hat, anbietet. Was er bis jetzt mit rund 30.000 Dollar gemacht hat. Außerdem muss er sich versichern, dass er nie wieder ein Spion wird. Und Bob will nicht, dass er sich einstellen will, also hat er sich auf diesen Deal eingestellt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

313.415

Und er geht zurück in sein normales, furchtbares Leben. Er verabschiedet sich von den Sowjeten, und er bezahlt das Geld, das er zu einer Charität gemacht hat. Und in den nächsten ein paar Jahren, innerhalb der FBI, wird er immer wieder getransferiert und er wird immer wieder promotiert. Und das schafft es, ihm noch mehr sensitive Informationen zu geben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

332.409

Und dann, 1985, bekommt er Infos über ehemalige KGB-Agenten, die jetzt in den USA leben. Und er weiß, wie wertvoll diese Infos sind. Und er ist so, ich verkaufe diese Scheiße. Ich will wieder ein Spion werden. So he goes and he writes an anonymous letter to a senior operator in the KGB offering his services.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

351.024

In this letter he basically says, I'll give you the names of KGB agents who are secretly working for the FBI if you give me $100,000. And crazy enough, the KGB agents do. And so boom, suddenly Bob is back in the spy business and he just made $100,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

368.636

So for the next six years, Bob hands these KGB agents US secrets, sensitive US information, blowing people's covers, snitching on people, and the KGB pays him tons of money in return via dead drops. But then, if you know your history, something really crazy happens. In 1991, the Soviet Union suddenly collapses.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

391.105

So now you've got all these former KGB agents who are approaching US intelligence agencies and feeding them information and exposing their US informants. And so Bob, he starts to get worried. What if they snitch on him? And so he's like, alright, this is too risky, time to quit. Und er schlägt seine Spionage zu einem Krall. Für Jahre. Dann, um 1999, ist er so, okay, lasst uns wieder losgehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

416.027

Und er beginnt, russische, sensiblen FBI-Intelligenz-Informationen zu füllen. Und sie bezahlen ihn. Sie bezahlen ihn wirklich gut. Also, an dieser Zeit, hat Bob diesen Scham für fast 20 Jahre gemacht. Und er hat viel Geld davon gemacht. Und es scheint, dass Bro niemals getroffen werden wird. UNTIL So the FBI, they're not stupid. This isn't their first rodeo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

439.183

They know there's a mole in their organization, they just don't know who. So they find former KGB agents and they start offering them money to give them information on any FBI moles past or present who may have sold them secrets. And then finally one former KGB agent agrees to hand over a file about FBI moles that the Soviets had worked with.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

461.201

Von diesen Filen kann die FBI herausfinden, dass der Möwe ihren eigenen langfristigen Agenten, Bob, ist. Aber die FBI schlägt nicht direkt rein und arrestiert ihn. Nein, nein, nein. Stattdessen sagen sie ihm nichts. Sie promotieren ihn einfach. Sie bezahlen ihn mehr, aber sie bewegen ihn zur FBI-Headquarters, wo sie ihm einen Scheiß-Deskjob geben, damit sie ihn nahe aufschauen können.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

48.616

All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

484.308

Weil sie ihn in der Mitte des Todes zu den Russen fangen wollen. Sie geben ihm sogar einen neuen Assistenten an, um ihm bei diesem neuen Job zu helfen. Dieser Assistent ist natürlich wirklich eingestellt, um auf Bob zu spionieren, weil sie auf diesem Punkt nur auf Erkenntnis von ihm versuchen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

498.637

Aber im Endeffekt geht Bob zu einem lokalen Park, um einen anderen Todesfall zu machen, um Informationen an die Russen zu geben. Und endlich, bam, schwebt die FBI rein und sie arrestieren ihn. Das ist aktuelle Fotos der FBI, die ihn arrestieren. Auch hier ist sein Mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

514.35

Und so, am Ende von allem, hat Bob für die Sowjeten in Russland für über 20 Jahre gespioniert und hat etwa 1,4 Millionen Dollar davon gemacht. Und so, Bob, er nimmt eine Begrüßung und anstatt des Todes bekommt er das Leben im Gefängnis. Hier ist eigentlich ein Bild von ihm im Gefängnis.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

53.339

Mehr auf servicenow.de slash AI for people So this FBI agent wants to be a spy so bad that he ends up spying on his own government and getting people killed. Now the guy's name is Bob and Bob really wants to be like 007. He used to read those James Bond books as a kid and now that's the life he wants. Aber leider für Bob ist er nichts wie James Bond. Er ist nicht sauber oder athletisch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

79.494

In Wahrheit ist er nur ein nerdiger Accountant. Also sagt er, f*** das, ich werde auf jemanden spyingern. Also beginnt er mit seiner eigenen Frau zu spyingern. Diese Frau, Bonnie. Und so nimmt Bob riskante Fotos von Bonnie, mit ihrem Vertrauen. Aber dann, ohne ihr Vertrauen, zeigt er diese Fotos seinen Freunden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

America's Most Notorious Spy - The Robert Hanssen story

99.302

Nicht nur das, er setzt eine CCTV-Kamera in seinem Bett ein, die hinter einer Fotografie versteckt ist, und Bonnie weiß nichts über diese Kamera. Und so filmt Bob sie, knallt sie, und zeigt das später seinen Freunden. Und seine arme Frau hat keine Ahnung, dass er das macht. Der Junge ist nur Trash. But anyway, in 1976, his dream finally comes true. He gets an opportunity to be an actual spy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

0.349

Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zähnen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen, Alturs buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Alturs, alles aber günstig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

118.994

Sie ist da, um zu besuchen. Und der beste Freund, sie kennt die ganze Familie. Also lässt sie sich in. Und Tyler, er chillt da in der Küche. Und best friend is like, what the f***? And so she runs to moms bedroom to check on her. Und dort sieht sie ihre Mutter, die auf dem Bett liegt, und sie bewegt sich nicht. Und so ruft sie 911, und die Polizei kommt, und sie schauen die ganze Szene.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

155.346

Und dort finden sie Tyler, der nur in seiner Wohnung chillt, und er ist immer noch nackt. Und es scheint, laut der Polizei, hatte er eine Erektion für irgendeinen Grund. Egal, alles in dieser Szene bezieht sich auf ihn als den Mörder. Und so, boom, lassen sie ihn in eine Strahljacke und arrestieren ihn. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Währenddessen gibt es diese Frau, Tylers jüngere Schwester, Kylie.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

179.283

Und Kylie, sie ist am Arbeiten. Und plötzlich ringt ihr Telefon und es ist ihre Großmutter. Und die Großmutter ist so wie, jemand hat gesagt, es gibt eine Ambulanz und Polizei in deiner Moms Haus. Und so Kylie, sie geht in ihre Moms Haus und dort spricht sie mit der Polizei. Und ich bin sicher, sie ist überrascht und überrascht von all dem, wie ich mir vorstellen kann, dass es jemand wäre.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

197.182

Now, at some point that night, Kylie goes home and she starts making TikToks and talking openly about what happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

211.647

And this isn't something I would do, but this seems like it's some form of therapy for her because she starts posting about this situation a lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

229.666

And by this point in the story, Tyler's in jail and he's been charged with first degree murder and he's waiting on his trial. While Kylie is still making TikToks about her experience. And she's not like defending him, but she seems to be trying to add context to the whole situation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

267.662

Und ja, Tyler ist klar nicht gut. Und er wird zum Trial gehen. Wie wird er davon ausgehen? Thylers Verteidigungs-Team will, dass er nicht schuld ist wegen Insanität. Eine Insanitäts-Verteidigung scheint hier eine starke strategische Bewegung zu sein. Aber um das zu tun, müssen sie Tyler überprüfen, ob er kompetent ist, um zum Trial zu stehen. Und Kylie macht TikToks über all das.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

27.223

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

29.924

So this guy, his name's Tyler. And Tyler has a big problem. His mom's a witch. Like an evil witch. Like the kind that practices witchcraft and can cast spells on you. And poor Tyler, he doesn't know what to do. I mean, he's 28 years old and he lives with his mom. And one day... Es wird wahr, weil Tyler, er ist zuhause und seine Mutter ist auch da.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

296.653

Und sie sagt, ja, er ist zu weit weg, um auf Trial zu stehen. Egal, sie machen den Kompetenz-Test auf Tyler und überraschend, er passt. Und Kylie hört das und sie ist so, was zur F***?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

315.626

But then I guess Tyler fires his lawyers because he suddenly decides he doesn't want to plead insanity. So they have to re-evaluate him again and this time they find him not competent to stand trial. At a hearing today, Tyler Daisy was found not competent to stand trial. But then, about a month before the trial, Tyler is re-evaluated a third time and found competent again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

345.117

Ich weiß nicht, wie das funktioniert oder warum er drei Mal den Test genommen hat, aber egal. Einen Monat später beginnt das Trial. Und Tyler zeigt sich nicht am ersten Tag auf, wegen religiösen Gründen. Okay. Aber sein Verteidigungs-Team zeigt sich auf und macht einen Argument, den niemand erwartet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

364.091

Sie behaupten, dass Tyler nicht schuld ist, dass seine Mutter nicht lebendig war, weil Kylie die eine war, die ihre Mutter nicht lebendig war. Which is bullshit and absurd, because she wasn't even at the house at that time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

383.182

But anyway, as the trial goes on, Kylie continues to post videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

403.897

During this trial, the defense is still trying to pin it on her. And as evidence, they're playing clips of her while she was at the police station that day and she's like laughing? So the defense points to this laughing and they're like, her mama just died. Why is she laughing so much? Doesn't she seem guilty? And the whole argument is just ridiculous.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

430.979

And I guess at the end of the day, the jury agrees. Because Tyler is found guilty as f***.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

438.148

It took the jury less than two hours to find Tyler Daisy guilty of murder and animal abuse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

444.832

So yeah, Tyler's convicted and before they send him away for good, they let some of the victim's family members get on the stand to speak. And of course, Kylie gets up there because she has some things she wants to say about all this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

472.67

But then, during all this, kind of out of nowhere, Tyler busts out and responds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

488.883

You and Christy and Katie, conspiracy to commit murder. Okay. Mr. Daisy, let her speak. Let her finish.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

498.095

I can live forever. I have God. Where is your God? Jesus? Let's see Jesus save you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

503.983

Oof. Clearly he's not okay. Anyway, ultimately, Tyler's sentence to life in prison. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

52.132

Und sie sind in der Wohnung und Tyler, er schaut sich an und er sieht sie versuchen, ihm einen Schmerz anzunehmen. Und Tyler ist so, oh, verdammt nicht. Und er beginnt zu schreien. Er will ihn nicht schreien. Was zur Hölle? Okay, hier ist das Wichtigste an all dem. Obwohl Tyler das denkt, ist Mama nicht wirklich eine furchtbare Schwester, die Witzkräfte übt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

74.267

Sie ist eigentlich eine gute, normale Frau. Tyler denkt einfach nur, dass sie eine Schwester ist, weil er mit einer schweren mentalen Krankheit handelt. Nichtsdestotrotz glaubt er das sehr stark. Nicht nur das, er denkt, es ist ihm egal, um dieses Problem zu behandeln. Und so geht er und holt eine Hatschette aus der anderen Wohnung. Und er geht in die Wohnung, wo Mama ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Went Insane And Attacked His Mom - The Tyler Dazey story

95.099

Und plötzlich, boom, attackiert er sie. Wieder und wieder. Bis er sie unerleuchtet. Dann, für irgendeinen Grund, holt er die Mutter eines kleinen Hühners und verleuchtet ihn auch. Danach geht er in den Schlafzimmer, weil ich glaube, er fühlt sich schmutzig. Ich weiß es nicht. Und irgendwann später gibt es einen Knall an der vorderen Tür. Und es ist die Mutter des besten Freundes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

115.372

Nun, ihr ganzer Plan ist es, dass er sich dort versteckt, während sie versuchen, wegzumachen, während sie warten, bis die Sicherheitsbeteiligungen starten. Sicherlich wird das gut enden. Aber an der gleichen Nacht, Darwin, er kommt nicht zur Arbeit. Und sein Boss ruft Anne an und sie lügt. Sie ist so, ich habe ihn noch nie gesehen, seit er im Kanoe ging. So, sie alertieren die Polizei.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

136.104

Und ziemlich schnell, bam, ist der Coast Guard überall drüben. Und sie suchen ihn mit einer Fliege von Rettungsbooten und einem Flugzeug. Aber das einzige Zeichen von Darwin, das sie finden, ist sein Paddel, das im Ozean fliegt. Und Wochen später, wascht darwins Kanu aufs Meer. Und es ist alles zerstört und zerbrochen. Und es gibt noch kein Zeichen von ihm. Also, alle glauben nur, dass er tot ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

158.9

Was bedeutet, dass sein Plan funktioniert. Nun, weil die Polizei kein Körper oder irgendein Zeichen finden kann, dauert es dem Staat ein ganzes Jahr, um Darwin offiziell tot zu erklären. Also hat er die ganze Zeit in diesem kleinen Apartment neben der Tür geblieben. Während Anne weiterholt, dass er dieses ganze Jahr verloren hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

180.187

Sie geht sogar so weit, dass sie ihren älteren Söhnen erzählt, dass ihr Vater verloren ist und wahrscheinlich tot ist. Wie, oh nein, dein Vater ist verloren. Endlich wird der Staat ihn offiziell totgegeben. Und Anne geht und kassiert das süßes Lebensteuern. Die Karten starten also an. Und nun können Darwin und Anne in die nächste Phase ihrer Planung gehen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

203.813

Sie fliehen ins Land, um in Panama zu leben. Darwin und Anne fliegen von England nach Panama. Dort treffen sie einen Real-Estate-Agenten. Und sie kaufen ein Wohnzimmer. Und der Real-Estate-Agent nimmt ein Foto mit ihnen. Hey, kann ich ein Foto bekommen? Und er postet diese Foto auf seinem Website. Und ja, diese Foto wird später wichtig werden.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Also leben Darwin und Anne dort in Panama für eine Weile. Und mehrere Monate später kommt Darwin wieder aufs Flugzeug und fliegt zurück nach England. Nun, hier ist es, wo die Geschichte etwas seltsam wird, weil du mit Verbrechern handelst und es wirklich schwer ist, sie an ihre Worte zu nehmen. Aber Darwin hat seit über fünf Jahren fake dead gewesen.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Und es ist in dieser Zeit, für irgendeinen Grund, wir wissen nicht genau warum, glaube ich, dass Darwin einfach entscheidet, ich will nicht mehr tot werden. Vielleicht denkt er, es ist nicht wert der Risiko, vielleicht verpasst er seine Söhne besuchen, wir wissen es nicht. Aber er entscheidet plötzlich, dass er diesen Konflikt beenden muss.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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So flies he back to England and Anne doesn't go with him for some reason. She stays in Panama. But he's in England and one day he just shows up at a police station like, Hey, I think I'm a missing person. And basically he tells police that he got amnesia and hasn't remembered who he is for the past five years. And this story is so wild that a man got amnesia and went missing for five years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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So journalists, they get interested in it. Und es ist überall über die News. Und die Reporter sind überall. Sie versuchen, Darwin zu interviewen. Aber mittlerweile arbeitet ein Detektiv auf dem Fall. Dieser Kerl, Tony. Und Tony, er glaubt wirklich nicht, dass ein Kerl seit fünf Jahren Amnesia hatte. So he starts asking the public if anyone at any point ever knew Darwin by a different name.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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So this guy is about to die. But don't worry, it's exactly what he wants. So the guy's name is Darwin and he's a landlord. And he and his wife, they own a bunch of rental properties in England. And they're trying to make some money. But unfortunately things aren't going so well for them. Because Darwin and his wife, this woman, Anne, Darwin and Anne end up in a crippling amount of debt.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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And pretty quickly, bam, Tony gets a crazy tip. A tabloid journalist had found the photo of Darwin and Anne that the real estate agent had taken and posted on his website back in Panama. Und am meisten wichtig, die Zeitung auf dieser Foto zeigt, dass sie während des Zeitraums genommen wurde, als Darwin amnesisch war. Und so, kapow, die Polizei arrestiert Darwin. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Und wenn Anne zurückkehrt nach den USA, um sich mit ihrem Mann zu verabschieden, kapow, sie arrestieren sie auch. Hier ist ihr Mugshot. Und sie confessieren beide alles und Darwin wird sechs Jahre, drei Monate im Gefängnis verurteilt, während Anne sechs und einem halben Jahre im Gefängnis verurteilt. Why do people always fake their death for insurance money? It's wild.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Now, at this point Darwin could admit that his landlord business has failed and he could file for bankruptcy, but that would be way too easy. Instead, he puts his two brain cells together and he comes up with a brilliant idea. He is going to fake his own death so that he and his wife can cash out on the life insurance money. Was könnte möglicherweise falsch gehen?

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Also geht Darwin und bittet die Idee an Anne. Und Anne stimmt. Also machen sie ihren Plan in Bewegung. Und eines Tages zieht John seine rote Kanu zu einer nahen Beach und paddelt sie in den Ozean, um sicherzustellen, dass jeder, der sie beobachtet, sieht, was er tut. Dann fliegt er ein paar Meilen nach Süden und geht zurück auf die Fläche.

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He Faked His Own Death - The John Darwin story

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Und er drückt seine Kanu und sein Paddel zurück in die Wasser. Sie macht es so aus, als ob er eine Nacht lang aus seinem Kaninchen gelaufen ist und er verpasst wurde. Währenddessen wartet Anne auf ihn zurück in ihrem Auto, damit sie ihn holen kann und ihn zurück nach Hause fährt. Und von dort an bewegt sich Darwin in das leere Wohnzimmer, direkt neben dem ihres. welches sie auch haben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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So in the early 2000s, there was this Martin Lawrence comedy called Rebound. You might have seen it. And in that movie, you may have noticed this girl. Well, unfortunately, she's been unalived in a really brutal way. Now the girl, her name's Tara. She's 14, and she's a normal kid, and her family's kind of poor. But Tara's mom works at a casting office in Los Angeles.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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I guess he's a blood or something. But regardless, pretty quickly they start dating and soon Tara is spending all her free time with Christopher and his gang affiliated friends. But when she starts bringing Christopher around her mom, mom takes one look at his gang colors and she's like, absolutely not. And she tells Tara, Christopher is not allowed in her house.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And she and Tara, they start fighting about this all the time. And the mom starts calling the police on the regular, hoping to get Christopher arrested and out of Tara's life for good. But unfortunately, it doesn't work because they can't prove he's committed any actual crimes. So there's nothing they can do. And eventually Tara and Christopher move in together and they get their own apartment.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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Meanwhile, at work on the set of Judging Amy, Tara suddenly isn't taking her job seriously anymore. She keeps showing up to set late or just not showing up at all. So her agency gets worried and they start babysitting her, picking her up and dropping her off at set every day to make sure that she shows up on time and finishes shooting the season.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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But then one day Tara shows up to set looking all tired, like maybe she's hung over and she's got some fresh bruises on her face and a new tattoo on her chest. And clearly she's been wrapped up with her boyfriend in that gang life. And the director, she sees what's going on and she's like, you know, Tara, we've written more episodes for you. And Tara's just like, I don't want to do them.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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So the producers are just like, damn, all right. So they write her out of the show and they kill off her character. And then after she finishes filming her last bit of Judging Amy, bam, suddenly her agency drops her. So her acting career is ruined. And for some reason, this seems to be a wake up call for Tara.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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I guess she really didn't think her acting career would fall apart after she quit a really good gig on an award-winning series, but it did. So Tara thinks long and hard about it and she decides she's gonna get her life back on track.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And one day in that office, they're having trouble finding a teen actress to fill this role. And Tara's mom is like, hey, maybe Tara could do it. And so she comes to Tara and she's like, hey, you want to audition for a movie? And Tara's like, all right. So Tara goes in to audition and she's never professionally acted before, but whatever, she gives it a shot. And bam, they're like, she's perfect.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And she pulls herself together and she starts going to church every Sunday and she goes back to her agent and she explains that, no, I'm really serious about acting and I'll do better from here on out. And luckily her agency, they agree to take her back. But then I guess Tara just can't divorce herself from her whack ass boyfriend and that gang life he's brought her into.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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Because she goes ahead and she misses an important audition. And that is when her agency is like, okay, we're done with you. And they drop her again. And if that isn't bad enough, it gets worse. Because one evening, she's hanging out with Christopher and some other turds in his gang and they're just chilling outside of an apartment complex doing whatever it is that turds do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And that is when a suspicious car pulls up and a man gets out. And he's from a rival gang, the Crips. And this guy, he walks up to them and he's got a pew-pew, a semi-automatic pew-pew. And he points it at them and he starts blasting. And suddenly a spray of bullets just rains all over them as the whole crew tries to run away. And bam, one guy is hit. And then bam, another guy is hit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And then bam, Tara is hit five times. And she falls to the ground. And the gunman, he gets back in the car and they speed away. So then police come and Tara and the two other guys are rushed to the hospital. And the two guys, they survive. And Christopher, he didn't actually get hit at all. But Tara, unfortunately, she doesn't make it.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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So then police, they investigate and they do actually find the shooter. And kapow, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And he goes to trial and he's found guilty and they sentence him to life in prison. Yeah, that's a sad one. She could have been a star.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And suddenly Tara is cast in the movie Rebound with Martin Lawrence. Not bad for a first gig. And Tara ends up doing a good job and she enjoys it a lot. She loves being on set and learning everything she can about the process. So then Tara gets an agent and her career starts to take off.

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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And as soon as she's finished filming Rebound, she gets cast in her next role in the Emmy award-winning TV drama, Judging Amy. This time she plays a teen gang member. And Tara does such a good job in judging Amy, the producers, they decide to give her character an extended arc that spans many episodes. It means there's hope. Can you just give me my peanut butter cups?

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This Teen Actor Got Murdered - The Tara Correa-McMullen story

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She then also gets cast in an episode of Zoey 101. So she's out there killing it. She is about to be a star. Until around this time, Tara turns 16. And that is when she meets this guy, Christopher. And she thinks Christopher is fine. Here's the thing about Christopher though. He's quite literally 10 years older than her. And most importantly, he's gang affiliated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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So this guy unalived a woman and apparently he fed her to his friends. The story is wild. Now his name is Chicken Man and he's a small time Zaza dealer in New York and he's pretty much homeless. But one day he meets this couple, Sylvia and Sean. And Sylvia and Sean agree to let Chicken Man live with them in their nearby two bedroom apartment. If he agrees to pay half the rent.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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A few days later, she starts bringing random guys home with her to smash. And as you can imagine, this pisses Chicken Man off. I mean, he really likes Monica, but she only sees him as a friend slash roommate. And so they start fighting about this. And after all this chaos goes on for a while, boom, Monica suddenly asked Chicken Man to move out and find a new place to live.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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And Chicken Man is like, what? I brought you here. I don't even have anywhere else to go. And that is the moment when low key, Chicken Man starts hating Monica. And he starts going around and telling all his friends around the park that he's gonna unalive her. But nobody believes him because he always just rambles and says crazy all the time.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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So at some point Monica's finally had enough of Chicken Man's crazy antics and she confronts him and she tells him he needs to move out right now and they get into this huge fight and during this fight is when Chicken Man finally just loses it and suddenly pow he

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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punches Monica in the head and then he grabs an extension cord and he starts to strangle her with it and then he continues to beat her up and he grabs a knife and he stabs her over and over again 30 times until she's unalived then he puts her in a bathtub and he dismembers her a few days later Sylvia she goes to the apartment and she lets herself in and there on the stove she sees a big soup pot boiling and she's like oh what's that

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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And she looks in it and she sees Monica's head. And she's like, oh my God, what the fuck? And then she goes to the bathroom and there she finds parts of Monica's body in the bathtub. And so she immediately pages Chicken Man's pager, because I guess he has a pager. And they meet up and Chicken Man, he's honest about the whole thing. Like he tells her everything that happened.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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Like, yeah, I unalived her. And so Monica's like, you get that body out of the fucking apartment. And so Chicken Man, he goes home, and he cleans everything up, and some of Monica he packs away in the freezer, and some of it he puts in a duffel bag, and he stashes it at the local bus station, and some of her he boils down in the soup pot.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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Here's the thing though, this whole time, Chicken Man's still been feeding all the homeless folks in the park. And wouldn't you know it, he's been feeding them soup, while also admitting to them that he unalived Monica. Which none of them believe him because he says crazy all the time. So the homeless folks, they start joking around that Chicken Man had been feeding them soup made of Monica.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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So Chicken Man agrees and he moves in. But here's the thing about Chicken Man. He's a weird dude. He's kind of crazy. He often rambles on about how he's gonna be a cult leader or how he's gonna be president one day. And he also carries this pet rooster around with him all the time on his shoulder. which is why people started calling him Chicken Man.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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Which honestly, that may have actually been true. But that's just a rumor. There really is no way to officially confirm that. Now, eventually someone tells police about Chicken Man and they tell them that Monica is also missing. So police, they go and investigate. And they question Sylvia and she goes and she tells them about finding Monica's body parts in the soup and in the tub.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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The horribleness, which is what I did to her. I doxed So then, bam, they arrest him. And I couldn't find a mugshot, but here he is in real life. So Chicken Man is charged with murder. He goes to trial and he's found not guilty by reason of insanity. He had apparently been diagnosed with severe schizophrenia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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So they send him to a maximum security psychiatric facility where he apparently still lives to this day. So shout out to New York, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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But anyway, now that Chicken Man is in a better situation himself, a few times a week, he likes to cook up about 30 to 40 pounds of soup or pancakes or whatever, and he brings it to the park to make sure all his homeless friends get a hot meal. So that's nice of him.

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He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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But soon after Chicken Man moves in with Sylvia and Sean, Sylvia and Sean unfortunately break up and they decide to move out of the apartment. And Chicken Man is like, oh, I can't afford this apartment alone. And he doesn't want to be homeless again. So he decides to look for a new roommate. And that is when he meets this woman, Monica.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Cut Off Her Head - The Chicken Man story

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And Monica's a dancer, she's from Switzerland, and Chicken Man thinks she is fine. And Monica also happens to be looking for a place to live. So Chicken Man, he brings her back to his place and they end up smashing. And he's like, hey, wanna be my roommate? And she's like, sure. And so Monica eventually moves in and her name's on the lease.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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So one day this woman buys a chimp and she decides to raise it as if it were a human. Now her name's Sandra and she and her husband, this guy, Jerry, they buy this chimp for $50,000. And they raise him and they bottle feed him, they dress him in clothing, he sleeps in a crib in their bedroom, they teach him to use the toilet and eat at the table with them.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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But after this happened, Sandra gets a phone call one day and it's the town's animal control officer. And she's like, look, Travis is an adult now and his behavior could get worse. He now has the strength of at least five men. And he has an adult sex drive that is not being fulfilled. And this could potentially make him violent. And Sandra, she hears this advice, and of course, she ignores it.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And then, one day, the unthinkable happens. Jerry, unfortunately, he passes away. And Sandra is devastated and Travis is noticeably devastated too. And as they're recovering from this tragedy, they reconnect with this woman, Charla Nash. And Sandra's known Charla Nash for years. And soon enough, Charla starts working for Sandra's business.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And she does some odd jobs for Sandra too, like she's mowing her lawn and she's babysitting Travis. So even though her husband passed, Sandra's life is finally getting back on track. Until four years go by. And at this point, Travis is 14. He's five feet tall, 240 pounds and morbidly obese because all he eats is junk food. And Charla Nash is still very involved in Sandra's life.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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But one day it all goes wrong. Cassandra and Travis, they're at their home and Travis takes Sandra's car keys and he walks out the front door because he wants to go for a car ride, but he's not allowed because of what happened last time. So he gets mad and he starts running around the cars acting a fool. And Sandra tells him, hey, come back inside. But he just won't listen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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So she calls Charla Nash to come over and help her. Sometime later, Charla pulls up, and she gets out of the car. And she's holding up this Tickle Me Elmo doll for Travis to see, because that's his favorite toy. And maybe it'll help calm him down. But calm him down is not what this does. Instead, Travis sees Chandra Nash. And he sees the doll. And he just snaps. And he charges full speed at her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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He even goes out to eat at restaurants with them. Now the chimp, his name's Travis. And Travis clearly has a great life. Everyone around town loves him. He's basically a local celebrity. But as the years go by, Travis gets a little older and he goes through puberty, which starts to have an effect on his behavior.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And bam, he tackles her to the ground. And he violently starts mauling her face over and over again and just whipping her apart. It's brutal. And Sandra sees this. And she freaks out. She's like, oh, . And she grabs a shovel. And then pow, she beats Travis over the head with it. But this just doesn't faze him. He's too strong. And he keeps on attacking. So then she runs and grabs a butcher knife.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And she goes and stabs Travis in the back three times. But that still doesn't stop him. And Sandra, she's terrified. And she thinks, oh my god, what if he turns on me now? So then she gets in the car and she locks herself in. And she calls 911. And about 12 minutes later, police finally arrive, and they find Travis roaming the property.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And one of the officers looks at him, and Travis shows him his blood-soaked teeth. And just before Travis can attack him, blam, the officer shoots him four times. And these wounds eventually put him down. Now, Charla Nash, somehow she survives the attack. But unfortunately, Travis really messed her up. He ripped off her face, her eyelids, her nose, her jaw, her lips.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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He fully removed one of her hands and nearly all of the other hand. And she's had to have a ton of surgeries. And she's better now, but she's still missing both of her hands and she's permanently blind. While Sandra, she passes away about a year after the attack from heart complications. And Charla Nash, ultimately, she gets a settlement of $4 million from Sandra's estate.

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When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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And here she is in real life after all her reconstructive surgeries.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

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Like one night, Sandra, Jerry, and Travis, they're all out for a ride in the car, and they're stopped at an intersection downtown. And randomly, a stranger walking past, I guess he just stops and throws his empty soda bottle in through the car window. And Travis sees this, and he flips the f*** out. He unbuckles his seatbelt and he gets out of the car. And he just starts going crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

66.873

He runs across the street. He lunges at someone walking by. Then he just starts rolling around on his back. And he starts climbing on nearby cars. And no one really knows what to do. And eventually, the police show up. But Travis, he knows almost all the cops in this town. Because, like I said, he's kind of a local celebrity. So when he sees them, he starts chasing them down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

When a Chimp Attacks - The Travis The Chimp story

88.243

And when he gets close enough, he just, like, smacks them on the butt. Because it's all a game to him. And after about two hours of this chaos, he finally gets tired. So he just goes and gets back into the family car and no one presses any charges because I guess they think the whole thing was just kind of funny. And everyone knows Travis is basically harmless.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zehen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen. Altours buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Altours. Alles, aber günstig.

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She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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Denn Klaus lässt Anna nicht weg. Er hält sie dort den ganzen Tag. Und während dieser Zeit macht er schreckliche Dinge zu ihr, über die ich nicht in Detail sprechen werde. Und letztendlich, traurig, endet er in ihr unbewusst. Dann legt er sie in eine Kartoffelbox und legt die Box auf die Bank eines nahen Kanals. Und später in der Nacht bekommt die Polizei einen Telefonruf.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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Und es ist diese Frau, die Klaus' Freundin bezeichnet. Und die Freundin ist so, äh, ich glaube, mein künftiger Mann hat heute eine kleine Frau nicht lebendig, und ich will es berichten. Also hat Klaus offensichtlich seiner Freundin verurteilt, dass er Anna zuvor nicht lebendig war. Und so ruft er sofort die Polizei an. Gut für sie. Aber dann, am nächsten Tag, bam! Die Polizei arrestiert Klaus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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Aber seine Geschichte ist noch nicht vorbei. Denn ein Jahr später geht er ins Gefängnis. Nun, verständlich gesagt, ist Marianne an diesem Punkt ein absoluter Verrückter. Ich meine, sie hat ihre Tochter verloren und jetzt muss sie das Gefängnis anwenden und dieses ganze Ding wiederleben? Es ist einfach super traumatisch. Und wie Sie sich vorstellen können, hasst sie Klaus absolut.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

188.294

Jetzt, bei der Begründung, verurteilt Klaus Anna, aber er sagt, dass es nicht seine Schuld war. Er sagt, dass tatsächlich sie die eine war, die versucht hat, ihn zu seduzieren. Und dass er sie tatsächlich heruntergelassen hat, weil er sagt, dass er so ein guter Kerl ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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Und dass sie, diese siebenjährige Mädchen, verrückt wurde, dass er sie heruntergelassen hat und dass sie versucht hat, ihn zu verurteilen. Sie sagt, wenn du mir nicht Geld gibst, werde ich meiner Mutter sagen, dass du mich verabschiedet hast. Nun, niemand in diesem Fall glaubt wirklich, dass Anna ihn verurteilt hat, aber der Fakt, dass er diese schrecklichen Dinge sagt, verirrt Marianne wirklich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

227.348

Ich meine, dieser Schwachsinn hat den Nerv, nicht nur ihre Tochter nicht lebendig, sondern dann auf den Stand zu kommen und schreckliche Lügen über sie zu erzählen, um ihre Reputation zu zerstören? F***! And so Marianne goes home and she can't stop thinking about this. It is consuming her. How could he do that? And so she goes and she gets her pew-pew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

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And on the third day of the trial, it's a normal day. Und Marianne, sie kommt auf die Strecke, wie alle anderen, und die Strecke ist voll von Leuten. Und sie kommt rein, und sie sieht Klaus da sitzen, mit seinem Hintern zu ihr. Und das ist, als sie in ihre Tasche reinkommt, und sie herstellt ihr Piu-Piu. Und sie pointet es an ihn, und sie fängt an zu blasen. Blam, blam, blam.

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She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

27.194

Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf altours.de So one day, this girl, she's chilling with her mom. And they start bickering. And they get into a big argument. And the girl, she ends up getting mad. Like, really mad. She's mad all through the night. And the next day, she's still mad. Die Frau heißt Anna und sie ist sieben Jahre alt. Die Mutter heißt Marianne und sie ist eine single Mutter.

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She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

272.058

Sie schießt achtmal und schießt siebenmal. Und Klaus, er fällt auf den Boden. Er ist instantan unerwachsen. Und alle sind überrascht. Und Marianne, sie drückt ihr Piu-Piu und sie sagt allen, und ich quote, er hat meine Tochter getötet. Ich wollte ihm in den Gesicht schießen, aber ich habe ihn in den Hintergrund geschossen. Ich hoffe, er ist tot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

293.867

Also natürlich, dann bam, die Polizei arrestiert sie auf dem Spot. Und schließlich geht sie zur Trial, und sie ist verurteilt, dass sie Prämeditated manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. And she's sentenced to six years in prison. But they let her out after only serving three. So, good for her. Maybe it was worth it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

52.986

Weil Marianne spätnachts am Bar arbeitet, ist Anna erwartet, sich auf die Schule zu bringen, jeden Tag. Aber sieh, Anna ist immer noch verrückt über den Kampf, den sie die Nacht vorher hatte. Also entscheidet sie sich, dass sie heute nicht zur Schule gehen wird. Sie wird einfach weggehen und zu ihrem Freundeshaus gehen. So she leaves home and she starts walking to her friend's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

73.547

And she gets there and friend isn't home, she had already left for school. So Anna's like, ah, what do I do now? And she just starts wandering the streets, I guess, trying to decide about what to do on her day off. Auf einer Art und Weise wird sie von diesem Mann, Klaus, angekommen. Und Klaus lebt in der Gegend, er ist im Grunde der lokale Verrückter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Murdered Her Daughter's Killer - The Marianne Bachmeier story

94.132

Nun, es ist unklar, wie genau das passiert ist, aber es ist vermutet, dass Klaus Anna ansieht und ihm erfordert, dass er mit seinen Katzen spielen lässt. Weil ich glaube, er hat einige Katzen. Aber die Katzen sind tatsächlich zurück in seinem Haus. Also muss Anna ihn zurück in sein Haus folgen. Wahrscheinlich. Aber nachdem sie in Klaus' Haus ist, beginnt die Geschichte wirklich dunkel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

0.109

So this guy won a bunch of Olympic medals, got famous, and then he unalived someone. Now, his name is Oscar, but we'll call him Blade Runner because that's what everyone calls him. Now, Blade Runner is a Paralympic runner who's really good at what he does. He won a bronze medal. He's won a couple of gold medals. He's won a bunch. He set a new Paralympic record, and that's all great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

122.686

Like, allegedly, he can talk about other women he's dated in the past, but if Riva even slightly mentions an ex, Blade Runner flies off the handle. He's that kind of boyfriend. But then, one night, about three months into their relationship, it all falls apart. Because allegedly, they're at Blade's house that night, and they get into an argument. And it gets heated, like really heated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

146.824

And they're shouting, and they're screaming at each other, and the fight is so loud that it wakes the neighbors up. And at some point, Riva, she gets scared of him. She gets so scared of him that she runs into the bathroom, and she slams the door, locking herself in there. And Blade, he's pissed. She can't just run away from him like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

165.654

So he goes and he gets his pew-pew and he takes it and he points it at the bathroom door and he pulls the trigger. Blam, blam, blam, blam. He shoots through the door four times and bullets fly through the wood and they hit Reva in her hip and in her arm and in her head. And Riva falls to the floor.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

185.36

And Blade, he freaks out and he quickly puts on his prosthetic legs and he grabs a cricket bat and he starts beating the bathroom door to break it down. And there, he sees his girlfriend on the floor and she's barely breathing. And ultimately, sadly, poor Riva, she passes away before the ambulance gets there to help her. And so, bam, police arrest Blade Runner and they charge him with murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

210.001

Two weeks later, his case goes to trial. And Blade's attorneys argue, not that he got mad at Reva and unalived her, but that he was woken up in the middle of the night and he thought there was a burglar hiding out in his bathroom. And that's why he rolled up and started blasting. Because yeah, I guess a burglar would just break into your house and then lock themselves in your bathroom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

23.259

But one day, Blade decides that's not enough for him. He doesn't just want to compete in the Paralympics. He wants to compete in the Olympic Olympics and race against athletes who don't have disabilities. So he trains really hard. And after about five years of waiting for approval from the Athletics Foundation, he's finally officially allowed to compete against non-disabled athletes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

232.054

Anyway, so this trial goes on for seven months with all this evidence being thrown around. And eventually, the judge actually accepts Blade's story that he thought there was a burglar in the bathroom. And the court ultimately finds him guilty, but not of murder, of culpable homicide, which I guess is like manslaughter. but it's a way lesser charge than murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

254.824

But then later the case is appealed and the Supreme Court finds that Blade actually is guilty of actual murder. Either way, Blade Runner is ultimately sentenced to a total of 13 years, five months in prison. Here's what he looks like in real life. And earlier this year, after serving nine years of that sentence, he was released and he's out now. So shout out to South Africa, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

47.108

So he goes and he competes in the London Olympics. Now, he doesn't win any medals that year, but it's still a huge deal because he's the first ever double amputee to compete in the traditional Olympics. And besides, he's still kicking ass. because he goes on to race in the Paralympics that year, and he wins two gold medals and a silver. And so the world loves Blade Runner.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

71.594

He's a great athlete with a cool story, and at this point, he's got fans, and they're giving him all sorts of catchy nicknames. They call him, like, Blade Runner. They call him the fastest man with no legs. And he even starts getting brand deals with major companies like Nike. Heard of them? So Bro's career is going great. And then it gets better, because Blade meets this woman, Reva.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Blade Runner Murder - The Oscar Pistorius story

95.445

And Reva is a model, and she's an aspiring attorney. And Blade thinks Reva is foine, and Reva thinks Blade is foine. And eventually, they start dating. And they're a cute couple, and they seem to be really happy together. Until they aren't. Because, as it turns out, Blade's got quite an anger problem. And he's kind of a jerk to Riva sometimes. Like, he often gets mad at her over little things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

109.036

Die Polizei versucht nur, ihn zu verurteilen. Aber er wird nicht verurteilt. Er bleibt an seiner Geschichte. Die Polizei schützt ihn mit der Unerwachsenheit der Frau, Martha, und sie werfen ihn in den Gefängnis. Und so ist er da, im Gefängnis, auf der Wartezeit, bis sein Trial anfängt. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

125.029

Während dieser Zeit weiß Juan's Arbeiter, dieser Typ, Todd, dass Juan nichts mit Marthas Mord zu tun hatte. Aber das wird eine wirklich schwierige Sache sein, um zu beweisen. Und um es schlimmer zu machen, gehen sie gegen diesen wirklich harten Arsch eines Verwaltungsanwaltes, der offensichtlich nie einen Fall verloren hat und immer für den Todspenal schlägt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

146.062

Also wenn Juan das verliert, ist er verdammt. Jetzt, Major League Baseball Spiele sind normalerweise auf Telefon. Also beginnt Todd, so viel TV-Fotografie des Dodgers-Spiels von dieser Nacht zu bekommen, wie er es kann. Und er beginnt, es durchzuschneiden, versucht, die Gesichter im Publikum auszuschauen, um jeden Eindruck von Juan zu finden. Aber Juan ist einfach nirgendwo zu finden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

167.417

Und so geht Todd zurück zu Juan und drückt ihn, um etwas zu erinnern, etwas anderes von dieser Nacht. Anything that can help prove he was there at the game. And then Juan finally remembers something. He remembers seeing this comedian at the game. Bob Einstein. A.K.A. Super Dave. A.K.A. Marty Funkhauser from the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Er ist dort.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

192.525

In Wahrheit erinnert Juan nicht nur an Bob Einstein, sondern er war tatsächlich in der gleichen Sektion wie er. Und Juan ist ziemlich sicher, dass es Kameramann waren, die ihn folgten. Und so ist Todd so, hey, das könnte etwas sein. Und so geht er und er ruft um und er bekommt die Kontaktinfo für die Kamerakamera, die dort war, die Bob Einstein filmte, an dem Tag. Und diese Kamerakamera ist HBO.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

215.99

Und sie waren dort an dem Tag, um ein Video von Curb Your Enthusiasm zu filmen. Mit diesem Mann, Larry David. Larry David und seine Produzenten verabschiedeten sich, dass Todd herunterkommt und alle uneröffneten B-Roll-Fotos anschaut, die sie an dem Tag gefilmt haben, um seinen Kunden zu helfen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

233.421

Und so, ein paar Tage später, bam, ist Todd da, an der HBO-Headquarters, neben Larry David, die uneröffneten Fotos von Curb Your Enthusiasm zu scrubben. und sucht nach jedem Zeichen, dass Juan im Spiel war. Und so sind sie da, durch diese Fotos, und plötzlich... Boom! Todd sieht etwas auf dem Bildschirm. Und es ist Juan. Nur da sitzen. In den Ständen. Hängend im Spiel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

258.081

Und Todd weiß, dass diese Nachricht ziemlich... ziemlich... ziemlich... ziemlich gut ist. Und er bekommt sofort die Fotos und schickt sie direkt zum DA. Und es gibt auch ein paar Telefonnachrichten, die seinen Fall auch helfen. Aber nach fünf Monaten im Gefängnis für ein Verbrechen, das er nicht verurteilt hat... KAPAU! Juan ist endlich aus dem Gefängnis geliefert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

26.736

Mehr auf servicenow.de slash AI for people So one night, this girl is sitting on the curb outside her house and she's chatting with a friend. And suddenly, this guy walks up behind her and he's like, are you Martha? And she's like, yeah. And then the guy, he reaches into his hoodie pocket and he Er zieht ein Piu-Piu raus und BÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

283.092

Und alle Anzeichen gegen ihn werden letztendlich gedroppt. Hier ist er mit Todd, die Fotos aus dem Gefängnis zu halten. Und die gute Nachricht ist, dass die beiden Jungs, die letztendlich verantwortlich waren für die Unerwachsenheit von Martha, Well, they were eventually caught and they got life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

298.116

While Juan, he ends up filing a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles for wrongful arrest and wrongful imprisonment. And ultimately, he's awarded a settlement of $320,000. So, at the end of it all, I bet police were like...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

64.751

So police think Juan unaliveder and the SWAT team, they go to his house and bam, they arrest him. And when police sit Juan down and tell him he's charged with murder, Juan's like, what the fuck? That's impossible. I didn't murder anyone. I was at a Dodgers game that night. And police are like, psst. Prove it. So Juan, he shows them his ticket stubs from the game.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Larry David Saved Him - The Story of Juan Catalan

85.559

But the thing about ticket stubs is, I guess, anyone can just buy tickets. It doesn't mean he went to the game. So police, they don't believe him. And they tell Juan that eyewitnesses had seen him shoot Martha that night. And that those witnesses identified him as the shooter through his mugshot. But of course, that's a lie. Es gab keine Beobachter, die ihn durch sein Mugshot identifizierten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

0.109

So this guy, his name is DJ Awesome. And DJ Awesome, he's a DJ at a gentleman's club in Atlanta. But DJ Awesome has a problem. Unfortunately, his marriage isn't going too well. And he and his wife, this woman, Tiffany, he and his wife, they fight all the time. And it turns out he's been smashing with other people, and apparently she has been too. It's a whole mess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

109.167

And Harley is his friend from way back, and he works at the strip club with DJ Awesome sometimes too, and they're tight. So DJ Awesome lays out his whole plan for Harley. Step one, break into his house so it looks like a robbery. Step two, unalive his wife. And step three is, I don't know, keep DJing? I don't know what happens after that. So Harley hears this plan and he's just like, all right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

132.332

And a few weeks later, they put this plan into motion. DJ Awesome, he leaves for work one night to DJ overnight at the strip club. And while he's at work, Harley comes over to Awesome's house and he quietly breaks in and he creeps down the hallway into the bedroom where Tiffany is asleep. And there is where he pulls out his pew-pew and he points it at her and bang, bang! He shoots her twice.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

158.236

Then he flees. But the gunfire, it wakes their kids up. Because, of course, they have kids. And around 5 a.m., DJ Awesome, he's done at work and everything. And he heads home. And he pulls into the driveway and he sees the garage door open. So he calls 911. And he pretends to be surprised that someone broke into his house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

176.756

Minutes later, police arrive and Awesome is outside and he's freaking out like, my kids are in there. I went inside and saw my wife's body. I think she's dead. And so police, they go inside and into the bedroom and there they find Tiffany unalived. And so police, they search the rest of the house and they find a cut window screen, but no fingerprints or any other evidence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

198.137

And the kids weren't hurt and nothing from the house was stolen. So the police, they start thinking that this doesn't seem like just a robbery. It seems that maybe Tiffany was targeted. So they investigate and they get security footage from a neighbor's camera and on it they see a black car that's parked near the house during the time of the murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

219.848

And they can't make out the license plate on this car, but they notice that it has a broken parking light on the driver's side. So police, they start asking around about this and they ask Tiffany's friends and coworkers if she had any enemies, anyone who would want to hurt her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

235.817

And there they find out that she and DJ Awesome were having marital problems and that she was planning on divorcing him soon. So they bring DJ Awesome in to question him about this and they start to notice some things in his story aren't adding up. Like when he told police, I went inside and saw my wife's body. I think she's dead.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

25.057

So one day, Tiffany's had enough of DJ Awesome's nonsense. And she's like, I want a divorce. And this devastates him. Not because he's in love with his wife, but because he's a DJ. Which suggests he doesn't make a lot of money. He's actually broke. But Tiffany is actually the one in the family who makes a decent income. Plus, the house they live in is in her name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

255.892

But the neighbor's security footage shows that when he came home and saw the garage door open, he never went into the house. So how did he know that she was dead? So police, they get a warrant and they search his cell phones and cell tower records. And they find that DJ Awesome had made a lot of phone calls to someone's phone leading up to the time of the murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

278.043

And the cell tower data show that that phone was at the house during the crime, meaning it's the killer's phone, meaning it's Harley's phone. So then police bring Harley in and they question him and they go search his car and boom, they discover his car is a black car with a broken parking light on the driver's side.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

299.776

A few weeks later, once police have gathered all the evidence they need, they go to the strip club and kaboom, they arrest DJ Awesome. Here's his mugshot. And Harley's there at the club with him, so then kaboom, they arrest him too. Here's his mugshot. And DJ Awesome, he goes to trial, and he's found guilty, and he's sentenced to life in prison.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

319.976

And Harley is also found guilty, and he's also sentenced to life in prison. So, shout out to Atlanta, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

49.593

So he's worried that if she leaves him, he'll lose the house. And then he won't have anything. So secretly he calls the bank and he tries to get his name put on the mortgage so he doesn't lose the house. But unfortunately he has terrible credit and the bank denies him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

66.584

Meanwhile Tiffany she's over here making her own moves and she starts talking to a divorce attorney because she's about to hit him with those divorce papers. So as you can see things are not looking too awesome for DJ Awesome. Until one day he gets a crazy idea. What if someone were to unalive Tiffany?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This DJ Killed His Wife - The DJ Awesome story

88.835

Then he'd get to keep the house, he'd cash in on some benefits money, he'd get sympathy, and he'd get to keep smashing with whoever he wants. And he thinks this is a great idea. But he can't unalive her himself, that would be too obvious, and he'd get caught. So he hits up his boy, this guy, Harley.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

0.329

ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business-Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der Sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. So this guy, his name's Frank. And Frank is about to make 250 million dollars.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

118.807

Frank setzt einen Printshop auf der Außenseite der Stadt. Er hat all das spezielle Printsystem und Software. Und wenn das Papier endlich kommt, arbeitet Frank hart, um die falschen Karten so schnell wie möglich zu impfen. Denn er ist ein cleverer Typ und er will keine Beobachtung haben. Und fünf Monate später ist er endlich fertig mit dem Impfen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

138.878

Und Frank hat alle 250 Millionen Dollar in counterfeit 20-Dollar-Karten geprüft. Jetzt muss er nur noch einige Verkäufer finden. So Franky lines up four potential buyers outside the US and they start putting orders in. And soon he's really moving this money, a million dollars at a time. Dude is just slanging these fake bills. And so a few years pass and Frank is still selling fake money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

164.448

And at this point, of his 250 million dollars, he's allegedly sold about 50 million dollars worth. Which leaves about 200 million he still needs to sell. Und so entscheidet er, dass es Zeit ist, seine Klientel zu erweitern und zu einem neuen Grupp von Verkäufern zu starten. Hier ist das Wichtigste an diesem neuen Grupp von Verkäufern.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

184.534

Dieser neue Grupp wurde tatsächlich von einem Unterkopf-Agenten infiltriert. Und so wird Frank eines Tages draußen fahren und er wird einen Mittelmann treffen, der 100.000 Dollar in Counterfeit Cash erhält. Aber was Frank nicht erkennt, ist, dass ein Polizeihelikopter weit in den Himmel fliegt, ihn folgt, ihn überprüft, hofft er zu sehen, wem er dieses Geld auslöst.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

207.484

Und bald danach, Frank, er bleibt an seiner Freundin zu Hause eine Nacht und ist schlau. Und dann, um 5 Uhr, hören sie ein Bängeln auf der vorderen Tür. Und er antwortet, und es ist die Royal Canadian Mounted Police und ein paar US-Sechret-Service-Offiziere. Und BAM! Sie arrestieren Frank. Sie suchen das Haus und sein Auto. Sie finden eine Prüfungspresse und 949.000 Dollar des falschen Geldes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

232.175

Sie schlagen Frank in den Gefängnis und er wartet dort für sein Trial. Frank ist in Kanada. So he's sitting there in jail thinking, ah, they're gonna be chill about this. Canadian laws are no big deal. I'm not gonna be in jail for very long. But the U.S. Secret Service makes sure to let him know that in the U.S. this actually is a big deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

253.724

And that they wanna extradite him there, where he'll be facing up to 60 years in prison. And Frank is like, oh sh**. Frank hat tatsächlich einen Lehrer. Einen wirklich guten Lehrer. Und dieser Lehrer argumentiert dem Gericht, dass, als der Polizeihelikopter ihn zu den Buyer's Houses folgte, und sie ihn beobachteten, sie Frank nicht wirklich auf Kamera bekamen,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

277.065

carrying the counterfeit money and handing it to the buyer. Which, he's right. They didn't get him on camera doing that. And therefore, because they didn't get Frank on camera committing the crime, the search warrant they used to search his girlfriend's house was unlawful. That's what the lawyer is arguing. And the court ...actually agrees. And then they suspend Frank's extradition to the US.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

300.803

And about six weeks later, they let him out of jail, while Canadian police try and gather more evidence against him. Once they inevitably get that evidence, Frank is going to be going to prison for a long time. UNTIL Franks Court Date eventually comes. And while he's walking into court, he's like nervous as shit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

321.126

And he didn't get extradited to the US, but Canadian prosecutors are still gonna try and put him in prison. And so he turns to his lawyer and he's like, you know, there's still 200 million fake dollars out there that I still have hidden that police never found. And they decide, hey, let's use that as leverage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

340.933

Und dann wird Frank ihnen zeigen, wo das Geld ist, wenn sie ihm eine leichtere Satzung geben. Weil die Regierung will nur darauf achten, dass dieses Fake-Money nie auf die Straßen kommt. Das ist sehr wichtig für sie. Sie können 200 Millionen Dollar in Fake-Money haben, die in Theorie den Wert des echten Geldes bringen können. Allerlei Sachen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

360.974

So after some negotiating, Frank and his lawyer finally reach an agreement with prosecution. In exchange for him telling them where the 200 million in counterfeit money is, they will let him go free. And so Frank leads the police directly to where he had been secretly keeping that fake 200 million, which was in, and I'm not making this up, the back of a box truck parked in a hotel parking lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

38.583

Frank lebt in Québec, wo er eine kleine Fabrik besitzt, die Brakepads herstellt. Und der Junge ist einfach müde vom Arbeiten. Eines Tages verkauft er sein Brakepad-Business und sagt, f*** das, es muss ein einfacherer Weg sein, Geld zu verdienen. Und dann entscheidet er, Why don't I just make money myself? Like literally, just make the money and print it myself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

385.242

And so police, they seize the money and they release Frank and he goes free. So, after all that, after printing 250 million dollars in counterfeit bills, he only spent a total of six weeks in jail. Shout out to Quebec.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

60.611

And so Frank, he starts reading up on how to print money. And he chooses the US dollar because it's a good exchange rate and it's used in a lot of countries. And he spends the next year and a half studying and learning everything he can about the dollar. Und er geht auf Regierungswebsiten, um herauszufinden, welches Papier er veröffentlicht hat und was die spezifischen Sicherheitsmessungen sind.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

81.259

Und dann, mit einer falschen E-Mail-Adresse, kommt er zu ein paar Papier-Millen in Europa. Weil du einen bestimmten Papier benötigst, um Geld zu veröffentlichen. Und dann findet er endlich eine Papier-Mille in Deutschland, die es hat. Und er gibt ihnen eine verdammte Geschichte und sie akzeptieren, ihm das Papier zu bieten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Made $250M in Counterfeit Money and Got Away with It - The Frank Bourassa story

97.505

Und sobald diese Befehle endlich veröffentlicht werden, wird es das Äquivalent von 250 Millionen Dollar sein. Aber Frank, er planiert nicht, dieses Fake-Money zu spenden. Nein, nein, das wäre zu riskant. Stattdessen wird er die Karten an andere Leute verkaufen, bei 30% ihrer Face-Value. Was bedeutet, wenn alles fertig ist, wird er 80 Millionen Dollar von diesem Verbrechen verdienen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

0.089

So one day, this woman, her name's Allie, she's 19. Allie is at work. She's working her summer job. She works at the neighborhood public pool. And she's in the back finishing up her shift when this guy shows up, Benjamin. He's a local creep. And Benjamin, he works in pool maintenance and he's looking for a gig to make some extra money. But when he sees Allie, he decides he's gonna shoot his shot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

116.388

And that woman is able to give police a description of him, which helps them create a police sketch of the guy. But even as police show this sketch to people and send it out to people in the area via email, they still aren't reaching anyone who can identify who this creep really is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

133.315

And then about a year goes by and dad, he's starting to lose his patience and he decides he needs to do more to solve this case because he believes if he can just get the word out there and people can see this police sketch that then maybe they'll be able to find whoever it is that unalived Allie. So he starts working every day to find this killer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

155.143

He contacts the producers for the TV show America's Most Wanted, who had already run a segment on Ali's murder, and he asks them to run it again. Because, you know, maybe it'll reach more people. And they do run it again. He offers a reward for anyone who can help find the killer for $25,000, which prompts the city to match that reward, getting it up to $50,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

176.502

But even after all this, dad knows this still isn't enough. Then one day he's driving along the highway and he looks up and he sees an empty billboard. And that is when he gets an idea. What if he puts the police sketch of the killer on a billboard? Because usually in these cases they would put the victim's picture on it. But dad wants as many people as possible to see the killer's face.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

201.701

So he gets on the phone and he starts asking around to billboard leasing companies for their prices. And he hits up this one company, Lamar. You've probably seen their billboards. And the people at Lamar, they hear this story and they hear what he's trying to do. And while they're not sure if it'll work, they admire dad's passion and they donate space on three billboards for free of charge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

222.815

So that's nice. And they strategically placed this ad of the police sketch and information about the killer's truck along busy sections of the highway so that every day about 150,000 people drive past it. And immediately after they put these up, the tips start pouring in. And then another year goes by and there's still no real leads.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

23.503

So Benjamin goes over and he tries his best. But Ally is just not interested. But Benjamin, he won't let it go. And so he reaches out his hand to touch her. But Ally, she pulls away. And this pisses Benjamin off. And suddenly, pow, he punches her. And he starts hitting her. And then he strangles her until she ultimately passes out. And when she's passed out, he tries to SA her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

244.779

But then one day, suddenly, bam, someone calls the hotline and they're like, hey, I think I know that guy in the sketch. His name's Ted Hoover. And so police investigate and they find that this Ted Hoover, he lives many states away in Connecticut and that Ted Hoover isn't actually the guy's real name. His real name is Benjamin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

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And so police, they bring Benjamin in and they question him, but they don't really have any legitimate evidence against him other than he happens to look like the guy in the sketch. So they lie to him and they tell him that they actually have a ton of evidence against him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

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And they bring him into a room where they have photos of Allie all over the wall and like stacks of thick binders to make it look like they have all this dirt linking him to the crime. And this works because Benjamin panics and he confesses everything that he wanted to be with Allie and that she wouldn't. So he beat her up and he unalived her. And so, pow, police arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

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And he goes to trial, and he's found guilty of first-degree murder, and he's sentenced to life. While dad, because of his work on helping solve this case, he's awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by Barack Obama in 2011. And when he passed away in 2022 at 77 years old, Lamar, the billboard company, they put up a billboard to honor him. So, shout out to dad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

48.92

Then he throws a tarp over her to hide her passed out body and he flees. And while he's walking out, a woman notices him leaving. So he pretends like nothing is wrong and he waves at her as he makes his exit. Sometime later, this guy shows up to the pool, Ali's brother, and he's supposed to meet up with her after work. But as you can imagine, he can't find her anywhere.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

71.384

And he thinks that's weird. And he has a bad feeling. So he calls their dad, who we'll just call dad. And he asks him to come help. And so dad shows up to the pool and there he finds Allie in the maintenance room underneath the tarp. And she's beat up real bad, but she's alive. And they rush her to the hospital where she unfortunately doesn't make it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Used Billboards to Solve His Daughter's Murder - The Story of Roger Kemp

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And dad and the rest of the family, they are understandably devastated. And so police, they start investigating. And they're trying to figure out who would do such a thing to Ally. She doesn't have any enemies. And so far, they have no leads. It looks like the killer was just some random total stranger. In fact, the only lead they have is when Benjamin waved to that woman on his way out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

0.897

True Crime ist ja schön und gut, aber weißt du, was das wirklich wahre Verbrechen ist? Dass du noch nicht bei der Deutschen Flugsicherung bist. Mit deinem dualen Studium oder deiner Ausbildung zur Fluglotsin oder zum Fluglotsen. Hier übernimmst du Verantwortung und erhältst ab Tag 1 ein tolles Gehalt. Du sprichst super Englisch, bist jung, aufmerksam und hast Abitur?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

116.305

Aber weil er seit einiger Zeit bei der Polizei war, hat er es nicht bekommen. Also beugt er sie, ihm einige Medikamente zu geben. Aber... Sie ignorieren seine Anforderungen. Dann beginnt ein Officer zu suggerieren, dass es vielleicht die Medikation war, die Thomas verursachte, um seinen Vater zu verletzen. Und sie drücken ihn immer weiter, um ihnen zu zeigen, wo sein Körper ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

142.066

Und an einem Punkt bringen sie ihn sogar in ein Patrouillenwagen und fahren ihn um, um ihm zu zeigen, wo sein Vater sein Körper ist. And this whole time, while they're driving him around, Thomas keeps telling them he didn't unalive anyone and he's pleading with them to take him to the hospital because he feels sick and he needs his meds.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

160.249

But still, police just ignore his pleas and they take him back to the station. And poor Thomas, he's confused and his medication withdrawal is hitting and he's starting to have a very obvious mental breakdown. But even still, officers just don't believe him. And that is when they decide to bring his dog in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

181.408

Und sie sagen ihm, schau dir dein Hund an, siehst du, wie traumatisiert sie ist, weil sie dich unbewusst dein eigener Vater gesehen hat? Und sie sagen ihm, dass der Hund so mental verdammt ist von dem, was er getan hat, dass sie ihn euthanieren müssen. Und das macht Thomas noch schlimmer. Aber trotzdem, er behält, dass er nichts damit zu tun hatte, dass sein Vater weggegangen ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

204.358

Und nach 17 Stunden Interrogation, kann die Polizei ihm nur eine Verschuldung geben. Aber sie geben nicht auf. Sie entscheiden sich um Taktiken zu ändern und lügen. Und sie erzählen Thomas, dass sie gerade seinen Vaters Körper gefunden haben und dass es alles in Stabschmerzen versteckt ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

220.35

Und sie erzählen ihm, dass er einfach nicht erinnert ist, dass sein Vater nicht lebendig war, weil die Medikamente, die er nimmt, ihn vergessen haben, dass er es gemacht hat. Und an diesem Punkt ist Thomas so mental verdorben und er ist einfach entspannt. Und endlich schaut er nach ihnen und sagt Ja. Und er verurteilt seinen Vater.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

241.829

Und die Offiziere sind so süß, weil sie gerade ihren Mann bekommen haben. Und sie gehen aus dem Raum. Sie sind fertig. Aber Thomas ist nicht fertig. Er ist da und er nimmt seine Schuhhose aus seiner Schuhe. Und er zieht sie in einen Schlitzknoten. Und er verbindet sie mit dem Tisch. Und er setzt seinen Kopf in den Loop. Und er versucht, sich zu verletzen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

261.464

Aber glücklich für ihn ist, dass die Schuhhose bricht, bevor ihm etwas Schlimmes passiert. Aber die Polizei hört die Verbrechung. Und sie rutschen rein. Und sie sehen, was passiert. Und endlich sagen sie, okay, wir werden dich einfach in den Psychiatriehospital senden. Und dort, im Hospital, locken sie Thomas in eine Psych-Ware.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

27.783

So one night, this guy, his name's Thomas. And Thomas is chilling at home with his dad. And dad, he decides to take the dog out for a walk and go get their mail. Like, I'll be back soon, son. A few minutes later, Thomas notices, the dog is back in the house. But dad isn't with him. Thomas fragt sich dann, wie er da hingegangen ist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

279.319

Ich meine, Gott, das ist wirklich der schlimmste Tag seines Lebens gewesen. UNTIL... An diesem Punkt sind es 30 Stunden hervorgegangen, seit Thomas originalerweise anruft, um seinen Vater verletzt zu haben. Und dann kommt plötzlich BAM! Die Polizei bekommt einen Telefonanruf. Und es ist Thomas' Schwester. Und sie sagt, äh, wir haben den Vater tatsächlich lebendig gefunden.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

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Es scheint, er war nie verletzt. Und das ist alles nur eine große Misskommunikation. Also, hier ist, was wirklich mit dem Vater passiert ist. Als Dad die Nacht nach Hause ging, um den Hund zu besuchen und den Mail zu bekommen, ging er auch nach Hause, um seine Freundin zu besuchen. Und er hatte sein Telefon nicht mit ihm.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

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Danach fuhr er später zum Flughafen nach Nordkalifornien, um seine Tochter zu besuchen. Ich glaube, er hat einfach niemandem gesagt. Also war er das ganze Zeit wach. Er hat einfach sein Telefon vergessen. Und ich habe keine Ahnung, was die sogenannte Blutstange auf den Stiefeln war. Aber der Punkt ist, Thomas hat seinen Vater nicht verletzt. Hier ist das verdammte Ding.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

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Nachdem die Polizei Thomas' Schwester anruft, gehen sie nicht sofort Thomas aus der Psych-Ware. Sie lassen ihn dort drei Tage mehr. Und während dieser drei Tage ist der arme Kerl immer noch überzeugt, dass sein Vater und sein Hund tot sind. Anyway, eventually they let him out and he finds out his dad is okay and he gets his dog out of the pound and he sues the f*** out of the police department.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

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And ultimately he gets a settlement of around $900,000. Good for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

48.954

Dann ist ein Tag vorbei und der Vater ist noch nicht zurückgekommen. Thomas hat nicht von ihm gehört. Er wird also überrascht. Er ruft die Polizei an und er lässt sie wissen, dass sein Vater weg ist. Dann fahren die Arbeiter nach Thomas' Haus und sprechen ein wenig mit ihm darüber. Und dann beginnen sie, sich zu überraschen. ... von Thomas. Also bringen sie ihn rein und fragen ihn.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

72.399

Und während er da ist, werden die Polizisten nach seinem Haus gesucht. Und dort, in seinem Haus, finden die Polizisten einen möglichen Blutstrahl auf den Stühlen. Außerdem signaliert der Polizist, dass es vielleicht menschliche Bleibende irgendwo in seinem Haus gibt. Währenddessen erzählen sie Thomas über die Beweise, die sie in seinem Haus gefunden haben.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Police Tried To Destroy Him - The Thomas Perez Jr. story

93.618

Und sie fangen an, ihn zu verurteilen und zu sagen, dass er seinen Vater verletzt hat. Und Thomas ist so, aber ich habe niemanden verletzt. Aber die Polizei glaubt ihm nicht. Und sie fortsetzen, ihn die ganze Nacht zu interrogieren. Hier ist das Wichtigste an Thomas. Er hat einiges mentales. Und er nimmt normalerweise Medikamente für Angst und Depressionen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

0.897

True Crime ist ja schön und gut, aber weißt du, was das wirklich wahre Verbrechen ist? Dass du noch nicht bei der Deutschen Flugsicherung bist. Mit deinem dualen Studium oder deiner Ausbildung zur Fluglotsin oder zum Fluglotsen. Hier übernimmst du Verantwortung und erhältst ab Tag 1 ein tolles Gehalt. Du sprichst super Englisch, bist jung, aufmerksam und hast Abitur?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

104.697

Now, at this point, Ted could just confess to his wife or change his view on homosexuality. But that's not what Ted's gonna do. Because he really wants to smash with men. So instead he starts secretly hiring Mike Jones once a month for his escort services. While Mike Jones has no idea that Ted's the leader of a well-known anti-gay megachurch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

128.961

And three years go by and Ted and Mike Jones are still meeting up at Mike's house once a month and secretly hooking up. But then, one morning, Mike's just lying around, he's watching the History Channel, and there's a show on where they're interviewing people about the Antichrist. And Ted appears on screen for a minute as a religious expert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

150.527

And Mike sees him and he's like, oh hey, that's the guy I smash with every month. Und dann, am nächsten Morgen, geht Mike Jones zum Gym. Und er arbeitet. Und ich glaube, eine der TVs da ist auf einem christlichen TV-Kanal gesetzt. Und da, auf dem Bildschirm, sieht er Ted wieder. Er spricht zu einer ganzen Megachurch. Und Mike sieht es und er ist so, wer ist dieser Kerl?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

172.325

So he gets curious and he goes home and he starts looking Ted up. And he sees not only how powerful and influential of a man Ted is, but he also starts reading about some of Ted's anti-LGBTQ stances on things. And he sees how openly opposed to same-sex marriage Ted is. And this pisses Mike Jones right off. Because, you know, those are his people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

196.028

So he comes up with a plan to do something about it. And for the next few months, Mike just waits. And he starts collecting evidence against Ted. Like voicemails and proof of payments that Ted had sent him. Stuff like that. Und dann, ein Tag, wenn die Zeit richtig ist, geht er auf ein lokales Radio-Show und bam, er verurteilt alles. Und er expositiert den Scheiß aus Ted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

220.613

Er spricht über die Meetups und den Intercourse. Er spricht über die Methode, die Ted machen würde. Weil Ted appelliert, dass Ted Methode machen würde, als er mit Mike verbunden war. Und diese Geschichte ist so skandalös, dass es die News schießt und es wie Wildfire fängt. Jeder spricht darüber. Und armer Ted, die Karriere, die er für sich gebaut hat, fängt an zu schmerzen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

241.287

Also macht er das Einzige, was er weiß, wie er es tut. Er negiert es. Und er gibt ein paar Statements an die Presse, wie, Gay what? Mike who? Und die lokalen Kirchenleute und seine Follower, sie glauben ihm alle und sie unterstützen ihn immer noch. Aber ziemlich schnell geht Mike Jones zurück auf die Radio. Und er beginnt, all das Beweis, das er gegen Ted gekauft hat, zu drücken.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

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Insbesondere die Texte, die Ted ihm verlassen hat. So then Ted has no choice but to publicly admit that yeah, I did buy some meth. But he says he didn't do any of the gay stuff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

27.763

So one day, this guy, his name's Ted, Ted decides he really wants to smash. With men. So Ted gets on the internet and he comes across a website where you can rent the services of a male escort. And he sees an ad for this beefcake. His name is Mike Jones. So Ted, he goes to a payphone, he hits up Mike Jones and they agree to meet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

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So he says he bought meth.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

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But he says that he didn't use it. Sure, Ted. But anyway, soon enough, he's under a lot of pressure. And Ted ends up stepping down as the preacher of the church he founded. And he resigns from the National Evangelicals Association. And he ultimately concedes and he admits that he has gay urges. I'm not kidding. But Ted's wife and his family, they still stand behind him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

308.083

Und nach viel Druck werden sie alle von Colorado nach Phoenix geflüchtet. Und dort wird Ted in ein Rettungsprogramm involviert, das ihn von seiner Gayheit heilen soll. Okay. Und dann, vier Jahre nach dem ersten Scheitern, findet Ted eine neue Kirche, die St. James heißt. Und er sagt im Grunde, er ist jetzt recht. aber dass seine Kirche jetzt gay und bisexuelle Menschen ermöglicht.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

336.483

Also, das ist schön. Und es scheint, dass er jetzt seine Lektion gelernt hat und dass er ein verändertes Mann ist. UNTIL... Eines Tages, plötzlich, BAM, kommen neue Angelegenheiten über Ted heraus. Einige junge Männer aus seiner St. James-Kirche kommen voran und beurteilen ihn, junge männliche Mitglieder unabhängig zu beurteilen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

357.674

Und sie sagen, dass er sogar eines der Jugendlichen fragt, um ihm etwas Meth zu geben. Und als mehr junge Männer mit Angelegenheiten voran kommen, fangen die Leute an, St. James Kirche zu verlassen. Und so endet Ted das Gebäude zu verkaufen und er schützt die Kirche. Und ich wünschte, ich könnte sagen, dass das der Ende für Ted war.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

378.038

Aber seitdem hat er eine neue Kirche gegründet, die er in seinem eigenen Haus literally gestartet hat. Und er hat bereits einige Follower und er hat diese Kirche geöffnet, um eine Raum für Kinder- und Jugendministerie zu inkludieren. Yikes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

50.813

And soon enough, Ted is on his way to Mike's place and they end up smashing. And when it's over, he pays Mike $200. Sounds like a good deal. Here's the problem with all that. Ted isn't just some regular guy. Ted is actually married. To a woman. A woman who doesn't know he's out hooking up with male escorts. Ted is also a well-known Christian pastor of a megachurch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Secret Gay Preacher - The Ted Haggard story

78.734

He's also president of the National Evangelicals Association and Time Magazine profiled him as one of the most influential religious leaders in America. He even talks regularly with President George W. Bush. So he's a very influential guy. Not to mention, Ted is also known to preach plenty of anti-gay rhetoric.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

0.129

So one night in a small town in Minnesota, three boys are out riding their bikes. They're riding home from the video store. And they're almost home when suddenly, bam, a masked man steps out into the road in front of them. And he's got a pew-pew pointed right at them. And he orders them to throw their bikes down and lay down in this ditch. And the boys, they're scared. So they do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

111.228

So they bring in a sketch artist and 12 tells her everything he can remember about that night and they come up with this police sketch of the perpetrator. And they're thinking maybe this perpetrator and the masked man are the same guy. So they sort of have a lead on this, but they're still not really any closer to solving this murder. And unfortunately, over time, the case just goes cold.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

136.127

Until 21 years later, this story has caught the interest of this woman, who we'll call Curious Joy. And Curious Joy is a blogger, and she's sort of an amateur investigative journalist, and she decides to dig deeper into this story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

152.038

And she researches everything she can about it, and she drives by the exact spot where Eleven was kidnapped, and she retraces his steps, she starts blogging about all of it, she personally interviews two persons of interest, but then... Joy discovers an article from 1987, which was two years before Eleven was kidnapped.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

172.493

And this article talks about a string of essays and attempted essays in a nearby town, all involving young boys. So she brings this information to Twelve, who is an adult now. And Curious Joy's like, do you think that this is the same guy that was involved in your assault? And Twelve's like, probably yeah. So they then take this info to Eleven's parents,

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

196.286

Now Eleven's parents, even after all these years, they still want answers. Like what happened to Eleven? So they go to police and they start demanding that they reopen the case and they are relentless about it. Meanwhile, Twelve and Curious Joy, they're tracking down leads left and right and they're trying to learn more about how all these essays might be connected.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

21.233

Now, one of the boys, we'll call him 11 because he's 11. And so the masked man, he grabs Eleven and then he sends the other two boys running into the woods and he tells them, if you look back, I'll shoot you. Then this masked man, he handcuffs Eleven and he puts him in the front seat of his car and he drives him about 23 miles away near a gravel pit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

218.408

And they start calling the police three times a week, sometimes three times a day, trying to get them to re-examine Eleven's case. But allegedly, police are telling them that they're wrong, that none of these essays are connected at all. But Joy and Twelve, they know they're right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

236.027

And eventually, Curious Joy and 12, they get featured on an episode of this unsolved crime show on CNN called The Hunt. And when it finally airs and the FBI sees the episode and all the attention it's getting, they're like, okay, we gotta do something about this. So they request a cold case review of 11's case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

255.946

And they notice there are a handful of suspects from back in the day that were never fully cleared. Particularly, there's this one suspect, Danny. And Danny, he's actually not only a suspect in 11's case, but in 12's case and in the string of essays in the nearby town. But back in the day, there just wasn't enough evidence to indict him. So he was let go.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

280.327

But now we have better technology, specifically DNA technology. So the FBI, they go and they analyze all the old evidence and they put it up against DNA collected from the uncleared suspects. And of course they find a match, Danny. So then kapow, they get a search warrant and they raid Danny's house and they find a bunch of CP. And then bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

305.791

And he spends about a year in custody and after that he takes a plea deal and he admits to the crimes against both 11 and 12 and he tells police exactly where to find 11's buried body. And he ultimately gets sentenced to 20 years in prison. Good. Shout out to Minnesota.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

41.799

And then he does horrible things to him, things that I won't go into detail about. And then he gets his pew-pew and he shoots Eleven. unaliving him. Then he goes and he randomly finds a skid steer loader, a bobcat, at a nearby construction site and he digs a hole and he buries Eleven there. Meanwhile, the other two boys, they've run all the way back to the house and they get someone to call 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

67.137

Six minutes later, the sheriff's department is on the scene and they're looking for Eleven But fortunately, there's no sign of him anywhere. So then bam, the FBI gets involved and there's this huge manhunt with a police helicopter and it's a big deal in this small town. And while all of this is going on, Eleven's family hears about this other unsolved case from nine months before.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

They Caught His Kidnapper - The Jacob Wetterling story

90.493

In a nearby town, this other kid, he's 12, so we'll call him 12, he was also abducted and essayed by some weird guy. But then he was actually let go and 12 told the police that the man had instructed him to run into the woods and he said, if you look back, I'll shoot you. Sounds familiar.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zähnen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen, Alturs buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Alturs, alles aber günstig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Und da sind ein paar andere Leute da. Und bis zu diesem Punkt fühlt sich Nick nicht wirklich verabschiedet. In Wahrheit, er hat einen tollen Zeitraum. Er trinkt, er trifft Leute, er hangt mit älteren, cooleren Kindern. Er macht sogar Freunde mit dieser Mädchen, die immer herumhängt. Und er bekommt, weißt du, ein bisschen Freude auf sie.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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So for Nick, this kidnapping thing turned into something kind of fun. Until... At some point during all this, Hollywood finally comes to a realization. Oh shit, he actually kidnapped someone. That is a huge deal. What happens if he gets caught? So he panics. Und er geht und trifft einen Familienfreund, der auch ein Gericht ist. Und er wird etwas legales Hinweis bekommen.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Und dieser Gericht sagt ihm direkt, Bruder, du bist verdammt. Wenn du getroffen wirst, wird jeder, der Nick verabschiedet hat, wahrscheinlich Leben im Gefängnis bekommen. Also sagt Hollywood einfach, sag weniger, ich werde das betrachten. Und so trifft er diesen anderen Jungen, Ryan Hoyt. Und Ryan Hoyt, er verdient Hollywood auch ein bisschen Geld.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Und Hollywood ist so, guck, wenn du diesen Nick-Kid für mich unerwachsen machst, dann ist deine Schuld klar. Und Ryan Hoyt ist so, okay. Und dann handelt Hollywood ihm einen Duffel-Bag mit einem automatischen Piu-Piu in es. In der Zwischenzeit ist Nick immer noch mit der Gang zurück. Partying. Denken. Oh, sie behandeln mich gut. Sie werden mich wahrscheinlich bald lösen.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Aber natürlich, das ist nicht, was sie tun. Stattdessen nehmen sie ihn in die Santa-Barbara-Mountain, weil sie ihn unerwachsen machen werden. Also bringen sie ihn da hoch und fressen ihn mit Ducktape, damit er resistieren kann. Und es gibt eine scharfe Grave da, die einige der Jungs für ihn gelegt haben. Und als Nick dort steht, erschrocken aus seinem Geist, plötzlich...

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Ryan Hoyt schießt ihn über die Rückseite mit einer Schaufel. Und während Nick runter ist, schießt Ryan seinen Piu-Piu raus. Und mit einem Schlag des Triggers gehen neun Schüsse weg. Und dann fällt Nick in den Graben, unerwachsen. Und dann berühren die Jungs ihn und fliehen auf die Szene. Hier ist das Wichtigste an diesem Graben. Es ist schlau. Zu schlau. Und es verkleidet den Körper nicht so gut.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Und dieser Spot in den Bergen, den sie entschieden haben, ist nahe einer populären Hikingstraße. Also, in ein paar Tagen sind random Pedestrieren einfach vorbeigekommen und sie spotten Nicks Körper und sie berichten es. Ein paar Tage später, wird die Geschichte von Nicks Körper auf dem Santa-Barbara-Newspaper gefunden. Und von dort an, fangen die Leads einfach an zu rütteln.

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The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Denn viele Leute hatten Nick gesehen, der an diesen Partys hingegangen war, die die Gang mit ihm besucht hat. Nicht zu erwähnen, die Frau, die er befreundet hatte, auf der er verabschiedet war. Sie hört darüber nach, und sie geht direkt zur Polizei, und sie erzählt ihnen alles, was sie weiß. Und dann, ein paar Stunden später, BAM! Die Polizei arrestiert Ryan Hoyt. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf alturs.de.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Sie verabschieden auch die anderen Jungs. Hier sind ein paar ihrer Mugshots. Aber leider ist Hollywood bis jetzt nirgendwo zu finden. Er ist bereits ins Land gefahren. Zuerst nach Kanada, dann bis in Brasilien. Also wird die FBI involviert und sie suchen ihn seit Jahren. Vier Jahre eigentlich. Und schließlich finden sie ihn in einem komplett neuen Leben in Brasilien. Und BAM!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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So there's this guy, everyone calls him Hollywood. He's 19. And Hollywood is about to go to prison for life. So Hollywood, he's kind of a big deal in his neighborhood. In fact, he's the local Zaza dealer. But one day, he needs to collect some money from someone in his crew. This guy, Ben. Ben kostet Hollywood ca. 1.200 Dollar. Und Hollywood denkt sich, oh, ich kriege das Geld.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Sie arrestieren ihn dort. Hier ist sein Mugshot. Und letztendlich bekommt Hollywood das Leben in der Gefängnis ohne Parole. Ryan Hoyt bekommt den Todspenal, obwohl er später zu dem Leben in der Gefängnis zurückgekehrt wurde. Und ein anderer Typ bekommt auch das Leben in der Gefängnis und zwei andere Mitglieder der Gang bekommen leichtere Szenen. Sie sind eigentlich beide jetzt raus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Also Shoutout zu Alpha Dog, glaube ich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Also fahren Hollywood und seine Crew nach Bens Haus. Aber Ben, er ist nicht zu Hause. Stattdessen sehen sie Bens jüngeren Halbbruder, diesen Jungen, Nick. Nick ist 15. Und Nick, er ist ein guter Junge, er ist nicht in dieser Gang-Welt oder seinem Bruders Geld involviert. Nichtsdestotrotz will Hollywood Ben wirklich eine Lektion lehren. Also sehen sie Nick, der aufsteht, und BAM!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Sie springen aus ihrem Van und schlagen ihn ein wenig auf. Und dann schlagen sie ihn in den Hintergrund des Vans und fahren weg. Eigentlich haben sie ihn verabschiedet. Ein paar Stunden später merken Nicks Eltern, dass er weg ist. Und sie schreien und rufen die Polizei. Aber bei diesem Zeitpunkt haben Hollywood und seine Gang ihn bereits 70 Meilen entfernt. Von Los Angeles bis in Santa Barbara.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Real Alpha Dog - The Story of Jesse James Hollywood

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Die Gang hat Nick und er ist alle verbunden und sie wissen nicht wirklich, was mit ihm zu tun ist. Also geben sie ihm Alkohol und andere Substanzen, um ihn zu entspannen. Und über die nächsten paar Tage in Santa Barbara, nimmt die Gang Nick und sie springen von Get Together zu Get Together. Und letztendlich enden sie an einer Pool-Party, die an ein Motel gestellt wird.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Hongkong, Bangkok, Russland, Deutschland, England, Schottland, Wels, Ägypten, es ist verrückt. Jetzt, Bernie, er ist noch bekannt, der schönste Typ in der Stadt zu sein. Aber jetzt hat er Zugang zu Marjorie's Checkbook. So one day he decides, hey, I kind of want to share this wealth. Her wealth, of course. So he starts giving gifts to the local people in the town.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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He buys at least 10 cars for people who couldn't afford one. He buys a house for a local couple. He even gives away some scholarships to some students. All using Marjorie's money. Und die arme Marjorie hat keine Ahnung, dass er all das hinter ihr zurück tut. Und sie liebt ihn immer noch. Viel. Sie hat sein Foto überall auf der Stelle.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Sie modifiziert sein Willen, um ihn als einzigartiger Anbieter zu machen. Ich meine, soweit sie sich interessiert, würde Bernie niemals falsch tun. Er würde sie niemals schaden. UNTIL... Als die Jahre übergehen, wird Marjorie immer mehr ein Arschloch. Und sie beginnt, Bernie ein Arschloch zu sein.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Sie wird wirklich kontrollierend, und sie ist anstrengend, und sie macht ihn immer mit ihr aufmerksam, und sie wird wirklich wütend, wenn er zu spät ist, oder wenn Dinge hinter dem Schedule fallen. Und das geht für eine lange Zeit. Und schließlich hat Bernie genug. Und eines Tages, schnappt er einfach. It's in the morning and he goes over to Marjorie's mansion like he normally does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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I guess he's there to drive her to the cleaners. And as they're leaving, she's walking ahead of him in the garage. And he quickly goes into a bathroom and he gets a rifle that he had placed in there earlier that day. And he goes back into the garage and he points that rifle at Marjorie's back while she's not looking.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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And suddenly, blam, he shoots her in the back and she falls to the floor, but she's still breathing. So then, blam, blam, blam, Bernie shoots her three more times, unaliving her. And then he drags her body to another room and he wraps her in a sheet and he puts her in a deep freezer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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And then, strangely, Bernie just continues on with his life, as if everything is completely normal, as if she's not dead, as if he didn't just murder her. Er ist immer noch in der Stadt, spendet alle ihre Geld auf sich selbst und andere Menschen. In der Tat, ich denke, er spendet fast 2 Millionen Dollar ihrer Geld.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und die ganze Zeit, wenn jemand über Marjorie fragt, macht er einfach verrückte Ausgaben darüber, warum sie nicht da ist. Oh, äh... Sie ist beschäftigt. Sie wascht ihr Haar. Und poor Marjorie, sie hat wirklich keine Freunde. Erinnert ihr euch? Sie ist ein Arschloch. Also bemerkt niemand, oder ich glaube, kümmert sich nicht darum, dass sie nicht da ist. Also bemerkt niemand, dass sie nicht da ist.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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So this guy, he's rich. In fact, he's one of the richest men in this small town in Texas. But one day, he unfortunately dies. And his wife, she goes to the funeral, and her name's Marjorie. And there, at the funeral, Marjorie meets the assistant director of the funeral. This guy, Bernie. And Bernie is known to be the nicest guy in this small town.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und das geht für neun Monate weiter. Bernie fängt einfach mit seinem Leben an, als ob er nicht nur jemanden mördern würde. But then Marjorie's estranged son and granddaughter notice that she's missing and they show up to her mansion looking for her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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And they're there and they're with some sheriff's deputies and they're combing through the place and eventually they find her there, stuffed in the freezer where Bernie put her. Die Polizei nimmt Bernie in, um ihn zu beantworten, und er sagt einfach alles. Er sagt, ja, ich habe sie geschossen. Und pow, sie arrestieren ihn. Hier ist sein Mugshot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und er geht ins Gefängnis, er wird verurteilt und er bekommt das Leben im Gefängnis. Aber seine Geschichte ist nicht vorbei. Weil dann, seltsam, dieser berühmte Filmdirektor Richard Linkletter... Er hört über Bernies Verbrechen und er ist fasziniert davon. Und er entscheidet sich, hey, ich möchte einen Film darüber machen. Und er macht einen, in dem Jack Black Bernie spielt.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und wenn dieses Film rauskommt, sieht sie einen Anwalt, der es sieht. Und sie mag nicht das Ergebnis von Bernies Verbrechen. Sie denkt, Bernie verdient nicht Leben im Gefängnis. Und mehr genau, sie glaubt das. dass Bernie eine verletzte Kindheit hatte und dass Marjorie auch verletzt war. Und das hat ihn in einen Dissoziationen-Episode getriggert.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und wegen diesem Dissoziationen-Episode hat er geflogen und ihn erschossen. Also kommt sie mit dieser Theorie zusammen und bringt all ihre Beweise an die gleiche Landtagsanwältin, die Bernie verletzt hat. Und sie überzeugt ihn, dass sie richtig ist. Und er hilft tatsächlich, Bernies Lebenssitzung rauszuholen. Und Bernie wird verletzt.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und für die nächsten zwei Jahre lebt Bernie bei Richard Linkletters Haus, wo er auf die neue Trial wartet. Aber wenn die neue Trial tatsächlich endlich stattfindet, findet die Jury Bernie nochmals verurteilt. Und er wird verurteilt, nicht nach Leben im Gefängnis, sondern nach 99 Jahren im Gefängnis. Das ist fast das gleiche.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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While Marjorie, on the other hand, she's known to be kind of a jerk. In fact, Marjorie's such a jerk, she doesn't really have any friends. And Bernie, he kind of feels bad for her. So, he becomes friends with her. And he starts inviting her out to things. And suddenly, they're hanging out a ton. And soon enough, they become really close.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Like, they're going out for nice dinners and seeing plays at the local theater. And Marjorie's got her husband's money, so she's the one paying for all this stuff. Und so geht diese Beziehung für etwa drei Jahre weiter. Und schlussendlich fragt Marjorie Bernie, seinen 24.000 Dollar pro Jahr Job bei der Geburtstagshalle zu verabschieden und zu ihrem Geschäftsführer zu kommen.

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Nice Guy Murders His Best Friend - The Bernie Tiede story

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Und sie beginnt, ihm einen ziemlich guten Betrag zu bezahlen, damit er mit ihr noch mehr Zeit verbringen kann. Aber Marjorie stoppt dort nicht. Sie kauft Bernie fast alles, was er will. Kleidung, Autos, eine Rolex. Viele kleine Flugzeuge, Flugerlehrer für diese Flugzeuge, plus sie gehen auf tolle Reisen zusammen.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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So this guy, he's a little crazy. In fact, he's so crazy that he unalives someone and then he ends up on Rick and Morty? All right, let me explain. So the guy's name is Denver and one day Denver decides to rob a bunch of houses in the same neighborhood and he gets caught and they throw him in jail. And unfortunately, being in jail really isn't good for his already failing mental health.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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Now, at this point, Denver is still pissed off at Saul for recommending he get sent to that psych facility. And he just doesn't trust him. So there, in court, he tells Judge Durham that he wants to ditch Saul and represent himself. And Judge Durham's like, uh, you probably don't want to do that. But Denver insists. He's like, no, I want to.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And he tells the judge he can't work with Saul anymore because he says Saul tried to proposition him for oral sex. Now, Judge Durham knows that Denver is full of shit and that he's got mental stuff going on. So again, he tries to convince him that representing himself would be a bad idea and they start to argue and go back and forth a little bit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And this really starts to piss Denver off and he gets all worked up. And pretty quickly, he's yelling at the judge, saying really obscene things to him. And eventually, he just starts threatening to unalive the judge and his family. Now, during all this, Judge Durham is supposed to stay professional, but that's not what he does. Because Denver is just like the rudest person he's ever met.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And judge just can't take it anymore. And he starts yelling back and like calling Denver stupid. And then Denver starts proclaiming that the judge wants to perform oral sex on him as well. And like the judge gets all mad and he calls him a queer, which is extremely unprofessional and homophobic. But both the judge and Denver are just angry and they're arguing and neither of them will back down.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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Now, eventually, this hilarious argument ends, and Denver leaves the courtroom, and everyone there is just like, what the f***? Did that crazy exchange really just happen? But then, at some point, the full transcript from this hearing is released to the public. And people read it, and they find this argument between Denver and the judge...

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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So damn hilarious and ridiculous that people start doing their own reenactments of it online. And that is when these two guys hear about it. This guy, Justin, and this other guy, Dan. And Justin and Dan are the co-creators of a little show you might have heard of called Rick and Morty. So they read the transcript of this court exchange and they're like, this is insane.

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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This needs to be a Rick and Morty episode because it feels like it already is. So they go and they create an 11-minute animatic short with Morty playing the judge and Rick playing Denver. And they're using the dialogue from Denver's transcript word for word. And they end up premiering this short at Comic-Con.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And he starts having delusions and threatening deputies and things aren't going well for him. But then he gets transferred to the county jail. And five days after moving to that jail, he decides to attack his cellmate

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The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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You have a constitutional right to be a dumbass. So this short debuts at Comic-Con and Rick and Morty fans absolutely love it. And so Adult Swim, they release it on their YouTube channel and it blows up getting 12 million views. Now, this video doesn't exactly make Judge Durham look all that great.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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I mean, people know Denver's crazy, but the judge is supposed to be a bit more professional in these situations and not argue with the defendant, and especially not calling him stupid or calling him homophobic slurs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And normally he would get in trouble, but before the state commission can start an investigation into him, the judge already knows he's screwed up and he himself reports what he did to the commission and he recuses himself from Denver's case. And the state commission doesn't end up punishing him all that hard. They make him attend like sensitivity training and some counseling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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And by the way, here's what he looks like in real life. Anyway, about a year later, Denver goes back to court and he's got a new judge for his case and he pleads guilty to unaliving his cellmate and he gets sentenced to life in prison. Here's his mugshot, by the way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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some reason and he waits for him to fall asleep and then he sneaks over to his bed and bam he smashes his cellmate's head in and he unalives him and apparently afterwards he's like bragging to the other inmates about what he did he's like that's right i crushed that bastard And the other inmates are just like, OK, yikes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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So Denver is charged with murder, and they assign him a public defender, this guy, who we'll just call Saul. And Saul tries to work with him a bit. And pretty quickly, he's like, this guy is not mentally fit to stand trial. So the state sends Denver to a psychiatric facility for a psych evaluation to make sure he fully understands what's happening to him while he's on trial.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Rick And Morty Killer - The Denver Allen story

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But sending him to this psych facility really pisses Denver off. Mostly he's mad at Saul for recommending he be sent there. Regardless, Denver spends a bit of time in this hospital and there they diagnose him with schizophrenia. But they also feel that he is mentally fit to stand trial. So months later, Denver shows up to his hearing and he stands in front of the judge. This guy, Judge Durham.

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This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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So this kid, his name's Graham. And Graham is just weird. All right, so Graham is 14 and he's obsessed with, of all things, poison. He reads a lot about poisons at home. He's always looking at chemistry and toxicology books at school and at the local library. Kid's just a weird ass. But one day, Graham decides that just reading about poison isn't enough. He needs to get his hands on some.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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He's a weird-ass kid obsessed with poison. But dad and sister think that Graham probably just poisoned her by accident, like he was just goofing around. Now, I don't know how someone would accidentally poison someone, but okay. Anyway, then a few months later, Graham's stepmom gets really sick, because he's been poisoning her with antimony and eventually thallium.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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So they rush her to the hospital, and later that night, stepmom dies. This weird-ass kid just unalived his own stepmom. And because her death is kind of sudden and mysterious, doctors have no idea that she was poisoned. They assume she died from a prolapsed cervical disc from a bus accident she got into a while back.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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I mean, this all went down in the 60s, so I guess the practice of medicine just wasn't where it is now. Anyway, meanwhile, Graham has been poisoning his dad this whole time too. And so then dad, he gets extremely sick, and then he gets put in the hospital. Now at this point, some people are getting suspicious about Graham, particularly his science teacher at school.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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So science teacher goes and he searches Graham's school desk one day and bam, he finds bottles of poison and notes about other infamous poisoners. And so he reports this to the headmaster of the school, and they get in touch with the family doctor, and they all agree that they gotta go call the police, because Graham is obviously up to some shady .

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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And so police, they go arrest him, and he admits to poisoning his father, his sister, and his classmate. And so at 14 years old, he gets admitted to Broadmoor, a psychiatric hospital, and he's one of the youngest patients to ever be admitted there. So, congratulations? But even while he's locked up there in Broadmoor, he's still low-key poisoning people.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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Like some of the staff and the patients sometimes find that their drinks have been tampered with. One of the fellow inmates ends up dying with cyanide in his system. Like some shady stuff. Regardless, years go by and Graham, he wants out of this place. And over time, he gets really good at lying and hiding his obsession with poisoning people. And this unfortunately works.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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After eight years in the psychiatric hospital, when he's 23 years old, he finally gets released. And he immediately goes right back to poisoning people. He starts staying in a hostel where he poisons people there. Then he gets a job in a photography supply business and he starts spiking his coworkers tea and coffee and they all get sick.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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Then he poisons his manager at work and manager gets really sick and dies. Then another coworker of his gets sick and this coworker is admitted to the hospital and within about two weeks, boom, he dies. But this time, the doctors are pretty sure he ingested something toxic. Meanwhile, the management at the photography supply business, they're all getting suspicious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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And so he goes to the local chemist and he convinces the chemist that he's actually older, 17, and that he needs some chemicals for study purposes, for school. And so the chemist gives him access to some anemones, some digitalis, some arsenic, and some thallium. Hope I said all that right. And now Graham has everything he needs to start poisoning people, which he does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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Like, why are we all getting sick all of a sudden? And they start an internal investigation. So the company's medical officer comes to the store to talk with the staff. And he tells the staff, you know, I don't think you guys were actually poisoned. And Graham is there, and he starts arguing with the medical officer. Like, of course they were poisoned. I mean, look at all their symptoms.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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Like he was there defending his work or something. And so the medical officer realizes that Graham has a suspiciously deep knowledge of poisons. And he tells management, and management contacts police. So eventually police search Graham's house and there they find poisons and diaries detailing all of his crimes. And then kapow, he gets arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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And I don't have a mugshot, but here's how he looked in real life. And so eventually Graham goes to trial and he's ultimately sentenced to life in prison. Weird ass.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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He poisons one of his classmates at school by sprinkling some lead acetate on his cookies and cakes, and the kid ends up barfing all over the place. He also starts poisoning his family at home, sneaking chemicals into their dinners and their drinks, and his family starts getting these weird bouts of sickness off and on, like random stomach pain and diarrhea.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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He even poisons himself a couple of times. Probably sometimes by accident, but also probably sometimes to avoid suspicion. Like he doesn't want to be the only one in his family not getting sick. Like that looks suspect. Now, Graham's sister, who we'll just call sister, she gets lucky. She manages to mostly escape getting poisoned because she usually eats at her boyfriend's house. Not at home.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Kid Is a Serial Killer - The Graham Young story

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But one day, Graham manages to poison her, too. He sneaks a belladonna, a toxic plant, into her tea. And so she gets sick, really sick. And they rush her to the hospital, and the doctors are like, yeah, girl, you were poisoned. Now, at this point, both Graham's dad and sister, they believe that Graham had something to do with sister getting poisoned. I mean, how could they not?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Du liegst in der Badewanne und hörst deinen Podcast. Doch hui, das Plätschern des Wassers wird zum Meeresrauschen und plötzlich fliegst du in den Süden. Ägypten, Kanaren, Griechenland, Türkei, Karibik. Der warme Sand zwischen den Zähnen, ein kühles Getränk in der Hand und die Sonne auf der Haut. Nicht träumen, Alturs buchen. Alles drin, alles gut, alles für dich. Alturs, alles aber günstig.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und ich glaube, es ist eine gute Zeit für alle, weil eine Woche später schlagen sie wieder. Und dann schlagen sie auch eine dritte Zeit. Und weil ich glaube, Heather ist ein guter Freund, wenn sie fertig schlagen, fühlt Terry sich in Ordnung, sich über seine persönlichen Probleme zu öffnen, über seine Kinder und so weiter.

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Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Also glaube ich, Terry fühlt sich einfach glücklich, gute Freunde wie Bubba und Heather zu haben. UNTIL... Fünf Jahre später, plötzlich BAM! Ein Website namens The Dirty postet ein paar Bilder online von Terry und Heather, die sie zerstören. Diese Bilder sind tatsächlich Bildschirme von einem Video von Terry und Heather, das sie zerstören. Und Terry findet das heraus und er ist so, ein Video?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Wir haben es zerstört, aber wir haben es nicht gefilmt. Wie war da ein Video? Oh, aber es gab ein Video. Es gab mehrere Videos. Denn vor fünf Jahren hatte Bubba eine Kamera im Schlafzimmer gebildet, um Terry und Heather zu schlagen. Ohne Terrys Zufriedenheit. Und Bubba hat das Bild auf einem DVD gelegt. Also gibt es jetzt ein DVD von ihnen, das sie schlagen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Dann hat jemand, sie glauben es war ein Ex-Mitarbeiter von Bubbas, jemand hat dieses DVD von Bubba gekauft und versucht es auf Internet-Gossips-Websiten zu verkaufen. Das ist, wie The Dirty die Screenshots bekommen hat. Na ja, schlussendlich bekommt dieses Gossipy-Website, es heißt Gawker, das DVD.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und sie schreiben ein Artikel darüber und veröffentlichen etwa zwei Minuten von diesem 30-Minuten-Sex-Tape auf ihrem Website. Und dieses Gawker-Artikel schlägt hoch, erhält über fünf Millionen Page-Views. Und jetzt hat der ganze Welt Zugang zu einem Stück von Terrys unkonsensualen Sex-Tape. Imagine what a nightmare that would be.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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You just wake up one day and the whole world has access to your private smash tape. Your family, your friends, your boss, anyone at any time could tune in and see that intimate side of you. Und natürlich ist Terry schockiert und schmerzt und er hatte keine Ahnung, dass seine Freunde ihn gefilmt haben. Und natürlich fühlt er sich verletzt. Er hat alle Rechte, sich so zu fühlen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Also geht er und bekommt einen Arbeiter. Und dieser Arbeiter geht zu Gawker und fragt ihn, um das Video herzustellen. Und Gawker sagt ihm, nein, Bruder. Und das ist ein großer Fehler. Keep in mind, throughout this whole story, Gawker could have just taken it down and this dispute may have gone away. But that's not what they do.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Jetzt im Reisebüro oder auf alturs.de.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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They leave the video up and they argue that Hulk Hogan's a public figure and that his sex tape is actually newsworthy and therefore publishing the tape on their website is protected by the First Amendment. While Terry, on the other hand, he argues that's bullshit and that this violates his privacy. Terry hat also keine andere Wahl und schickt eine Entschuldigung gegen Bubba und seine Frau.

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Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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So, das ist Hulk Hogan, der ehemalige WWE-Wrestler. Aber wir werden ihn Terry nennen, weil das ist sein echter Name. Aber eines Tages verurteilt Terry seine Frau, mit einer seiner Schwestern. Ich meine, sie sind alle Ältere, aber trotzdem. Schrecklich. Und schließlich, wenn Terrys Frau über seine Verletzungen lernt, wird sie verpisscht. Sie geht und schreibt einen Entschuldigungsantrag.

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Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und er schickt auch noch eine Entschuldigung gegen Gawker. Und er schickt Gawker für 100 Millionen Dollar in Schaden. Hier ist das Wichtigste an Entschuldigungen. Sie sind teuer. Echt teuer. Selbst für Leute wie Terry. Besonders, weil Terrys Ex-Wife 70% ihrer gemeinsamen Währung in ihrem Divorz genommen hat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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So the last thing Terry wants to do is spend millions of dollars in legal fees trying to take a company like Gawker down. And that is when this guy steps in. Peter Thiel. And Peter Thiel, he's a gay conservative billionaire. And Peter Thiel was also in the closet for a long time. Weil, weißt du, wenn du ein Konservatist bist, geht es nicht immer gut mit deinen anderen Konservatisten.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Also hat er in der Klappe geblieben. Und Jahre bevor Gawker Terrys Smashtape veröffentlicht hat, hat Gawker einige Artikel über Peter Thiel veröffentlicht und sie haben ihn als gay öffentlich verurteilt. Und sie haben auch andere Artikel veröffentlicht, die von Peter Thiel lustig machen und so weiter. Und das, natürlich, ist Peter Thiel wirklich leidenschaftlich.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Aber ja, man sollte ja nicht einfach Leute auslösen, bevor sie bereit sind. Das ist falsch. Also hat er alle Rechte, verrückt zu sein. Und leider, für Peter Thiel, damals, gab es nichts, was er machen konnte. Weil, weißt du, freie Sprache und so. Peter Thiel hat ever since then hated Gawker. And taking the site down has become a personal goal of his.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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And this billionaire is willing to spend a lot of money to make that happen. Bro is just petty like that. So he learns about Terry's lawsuit. And he has his lawyers reach out to Terry's. And this billionaire starts secretly paying Terry's legal bills and bankrolling this Gawker smash tape lawsuit. But then... An einem Punkt, kaboom, kommt noch eine Bombe.

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Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und ein paar weitere Teile der Secret Smash-Tapes machen ihre Weg auf die Internetseite. Und diese sind arguably viel schlimmer für Terry. Weil sie nicht nur von ihm smashen. Zumindest einer von ihnen ist von Terry, der zu Heather nach dem Schreien von Heather sprach. Und Terry ist dort, auf Video, über seine Tochter, die schwarz ist, zu schreien. Und old Terry, er drückt das N-Wort.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Mit dem hartes R. Mehrfach. Und nicht nur das, er geht auf eine ganze Dramatik über Schwarze. Und das ist wirklich schlecht. Wie, schockierend schlecht. Also hört WWE darüber nach und sie verlassen seinen Vertrag, um ihn auszuwählen. Und sie entfernen alles über ihn von ihrem WWE-Website und er wird letztendlich von der Wrestling Hall of Fame gebootet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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And Terry has to like go out and do an interview and like publicly apologize and it's all embarrassing for him. Are you a racist?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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But anyway, aside from that, after three years in court, the trial of Terry versus Gawker finally concludes. Und letztendlich stimmt der Jurist mit Terry. Und sie gewinnen ihm 140 Millionen Dollar in Schaden. Was mehr ist, als er ursprünglich verurteilt hat. Und ein paar Monate später, wegen dieser Verurteilung, verabschiedet Gawker offiziell für Bankruptie und sie schalten sich ab.

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Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und nach dem Verabschieden, glaube ich, endeten sie in Settlung und bezahlten Terry 31 Millionen Dollar von dem Geld, das sie ihm gewohnt haben. So, in the end, they leaked his sex tape and his racism and he got 31 million dollars for it. So, shout out to Florida, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und der arme Terry ist einfach enttäuscht. Er geht in ein Hotel, damit seine Ex-Wife und ihre Kinder in ihrem Haus bleiben können. Und sobald er alleine ist, schlägt sich die ganze Situation auf ihn. Und er ist ein absoluter Verrückter. Terry beginnt also viel mehr mit seinem besten Freund zu verhalten. Diesen Jungen. Bubba. a.k.a. der Radio-Host Bubba the Love Sponge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Und er hangt auch mit Bubbas Frau, dieser Frau, Heather. Und Heather und Bubba, sie sind wie ein wirklich lustiges Paar. Aber hier ist das Wichtigste über Bubba und Heather. Sie haben, was man ein offenes Verhältnis nennen würde, Besonders Bubba liebt es, seine Frau mit anderen Männern zu schlagen. Aber egal, das ist ihre Sache.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker For Leaking His Sex Tape

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Aber es passiert so, dass Heather denkt, dass Terry feucht ist und ich glaube, dass er denkt, dass sie auch okay ist. Weil eines Tages geht Bubba zu Terry und er sagt, hey, willst du mit meiner Frau schlagen, während ich schaue? Und Terry, er sagt, cool. Und bald geht Terry zu ihrem Haus und er und Heather schlagen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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So this woman is probably the worst hitman I've ever seen and she is about to botch this hit. But this story starts in Birmingham, England with this guy who we'll call father and this other guy who we'll call son because they're father and son. But one day, father and son, they're out at this small clothing store and they get into an argument with these guys, the shop owners.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And she's all excited about this gig. And she posts about it on her Instagram. To Manchester we go. Can't wait to see my BFF partner in crime. LOL. So then father and son, they meet Amy at her hotel and together they all finalize the plan. Then Amy gets one of the shop owners number and she calls him and she pretends to be interested in buying a Volkswagen he's selling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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She's like, I'm interested in buying a Volkswagen you're selling. And then they make plans to meet up and this meetup is where she plans to assassinate them. And of course, before she goes on this hit, she posts a picture of herself on Instagram with the devil horns.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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Anyway, the next night, Amy puts on a hijab as a disguise, and then she drives her rental car over to meet one of the shop owners near his home. And so then she gets there, and the shop owner pulls up, and as he's getting out of his car, Amy gets out of her car, leaving the door open. And she's got a pew-pew, and she walks toward him, and she raises her arm, pointing the pew-pew right at his head.

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She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And shop owner, he sees that she's about to shoot him, and he's like, oh , and right then, she pulls the trigger. Click, click. The pew-pew jams. And so the shop owner, he jumps back into his car and skrrt, he speeds away. But he crashes into Amy's open car door on his way out. And Amy's like, damn it, because now the door on this rental car is all messed up and it won't close.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And so she just abandons this car. Three hours later, she takes a taxi back to his house to try and assassinate him again. And during this time, she's sending him threatening text messages, trying to lure him out of his house. She's like, where are you hiding? Stop playing hide and seek. You're lucky the pew-pew jammed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And eventually, she just gets the pew-pew out and she just randomly shoots three times into the house. And luckily, no one was hit. Like I said, worst hit man ever. But two days later, Amy flies back to Wisconsin. And while on the flight, she posts on her Instagram again. I couldn't get a window seat. I think this is the first time ever I don't get to sit by a window. Crying emoji.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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Now, I don't know how this argument starts or what it's about, but it escalates and pretty quickly it gets physical and they all start to fight and it is chaos and things are getting broken and the shop gets all trashed and father and son end up leaving injured. But they aren't gonna let this slide. They vow to get revenge.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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I don't actually know if Amy and Son are romantically involved, but a few days after she flies back to the US, Son flies there too. And while he's in the US, police back in England, they find CCTV footage of him and his dad driving around that area at the time of the hit. And they are able to connect them to the shop owner's assassination attempt. But Sun doesn't know this yet.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And then a month later, Sun flies back to England and bam, police arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And they eventually arrest father too. Here's his mugshot. And then when Amy hears that Sun got arrested, she knows they're coming after her next and she knows she has to disappear. So she tells her family that she got a job as a radio DJ in Armenia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And she flees the country to go live somewhere in Armenia. And she's living there quietly and she's hiding out, but she's still posting on Instagram for some reason. Until five years go by and she still hasn't been caught. And son and father, they go to trial and they're found guilty of conspiracy to murder. But suddenly there's all this interest in the case.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And so now there's an international manhunt, people looking for Amy. And old Amy, she's still in Armenia. And she learns about this and she's like, oh, not again. And she immediately deletes all her social media accounts. But not before reporters from the Daily Mail of all places, they find her accounts and they sift through all her posts.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And doing that, they find exactly which direction the windows in her apartment are facing. And they find the pool she frequently swims in. And through that, they actually find her apartment and they're able to get CCTV footage of her running errands, proving that she still lives there. So they tell police and eventually, bam, Armenian police, they go and arrest her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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And she's extradited back to England. And as of now, she hasn't been to trial yet. The case is actually still ongoing. So we'll see what happens.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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So fast forward to the next year and father and son are still upset about the fight in the clothing store and they decide the only way to truly get revenge on the shop owners is to unalive them. But they don't want to do it themselves. It's too risky. So they hire a hitman. Here's the thing about this hitman though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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Her name's Amy and she's 40 years old and she lives thousands of miles away from them in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she works a normal regular day job selling tickets for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. And there is no indication that she's an actual real hitman or that she's ever assassinated anyone before. The only thing we know about her is that she posts on her Instagram a lot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She's The Worst Hitman Ever - The Aimee Betro story

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So we don't know why father and son chose her as their hit man or how they linked up with her. But regardless, son hires Amy, this regular ass woman from the suburbs, as a contract killer. And Amy agrees to fly to England to do the job. And she buys some pew-pews to ship them over to England because I guess pew-pews are hard to get there. And then she flies over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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So this guy, let's call him murder-ry. And murder-ry, he likes to murder people, I guess. But he doesn't start out that way. He starts out just robbing people. He steals things, he breaks into cars, stuff like that. And one day, he flies over from France to Thailand with his girlfriend. And once he's there, he's got this whole scheme to scam mostly Western tourists.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And from there, he flees by road all the way to India. And once he's in India, Murdery continues his string of crimes. He unalives yet another guy and then he uses the guy's passport to travel to Singapore and then back to India and then Thailand again. And I mean like nobody is safe when it comes to murdery.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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Like one time he's just trying to rob someone and he accidentally gives them too much poison so they die. And another time his close friend who had helped him commit some of these murders, I guess they have some kind of falling out and so murdery just gets rid of him and the friend is like never seen again. Ever! Like, I can't even name all the crimes this guy did.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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But anyway, one day, Murdery is back in India, and he gets this crazy idea. He's gonna try to rob 60 people at once. A bunch of French engineering students that he had just met in New Delhi. And so he puts drugs in 60 water bottles and he starts handing them out to these students. He's trying to drug them. And a bunch of the students drink it, but the drugs start working too fast.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And by the time Murdery is finishing handing out these water bottles, the first students who drank, they're starting to pass out and fall unconscious. So then some of the other students realize what's happening. And I guess they're able to overpower murdery and they call the police. And the police come and then bam, they arrest him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And he gets 12 years in prison for poisoning and robbing the engineering students. And they try to convict him for some of the murders he did in the past, but the conviction is ultimately overturned due to lack of evidence. Now, while in prison, Murdery still has a big problem. He's now wanted back in Thailand on suspicion of several of those murders he committed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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So Thailand wants to extradite him as soon as he's out of prison in India. And while he'd be there in Thailand, he would probably get the death penalty. And murdery, he doesn't want the death penalty. So he comes up with a plan to stay in Indian prison much longer. And he goes and he gives prison guards some candy laced with sedatives. And those guards eat it and they pass out.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And like, he befriends them, and then he spikes their food and drinks with sleeping pills or some other pill to make them sick, and then he robs them of their passports and money. So, while he's there in Thailand, Murdery befriends this American woman, a backpacker.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And while they're passed out, he just straight up walks out of the prison. Like that's how he escapes. But then he allows himself to be caught. And because of that, because of this little escape, they sentence him to another 10 years in that Indian prison, which is perfect for him because by the time he'll be released, the 20 year statute of limitations will be up for all his crimes in Thailand.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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So he won't be extradited there and he won't get the death penalty. It's pretty slick. So anyway, many years pass and Murdery serves his full term and eventually they let him out. And now he's in his 50s and it seems like he's never going to be convicted for any of those murders he did in the past. Until six years go by and he's out of prison now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And one day, for some reason, Murdery decides to take a little vacation over to Nepal. Here's the thing about Nepal. Murdery is also wanted there too for unaliving that Canadian guy and that American woman 30 years before, those two that I had mentioned. And Nepal has no statute of limitations on murder.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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So while he's there vacationing, bam, Murdery gets arrested and he goes to trial and he gets sentenced to 20 years in prison and 19 years later, he gets out. So the dude is out now. And at some point, he sells the film and book rights to his life story for $15 million. So this guy is a serial killer, and he's now out of prison, and he has $15 million. F**k my life.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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And he befriends her, and he drugs her, and he goes to rob her, but I guess he decides that robbing her isn't enough, and he ends up throwing her in the ocean to drown. Oh, but he doesn't stop there. Because soon after, he unalives another tourist, but this time he burns the body and leaves it on the side of the road.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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But that tourist's girlfriend, she notices he's missing and she goes to Murdery and she's asking him, I guess, too many questions. And then Murdery drugs her and he drowns her too. Now, at this point, Murdery is living a pretty good life off the money he steals from these unsuspecting backpackers.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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But he knows he's got to keep moving before people get suspicious that all these backpackers around him are dying. So Murdery invites this Dutch couple he met in Hong Kong to come visit him in Thailand. And of course, when the couple gets there, murdery drugs them and he strangles them and burns them alive.

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French Serial Killer - The Charles Sobhraj story

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Once they're unalived, he takes their passports and he and his girlfriend use them to flee Thailand and head all the way over to Nepal. While in Nepal, Murdery befriends a Canadian guy and an American woman, and he stabs them and he burns them. Now, these two murders in Nepal, they'll become important later. Anyway, once he gets their passports, he and his girlfriend go back to Thailand.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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So this super Christian guy is about to unalive his own wife. And unfortunately, he's gonna get away with it. Now the guy, his name's Colin. And Colin is a very religious dude, he's also a dentist. But one day, at a church activity, he meets this woman. Her name's Hazel. And Colin thinks Hazel is foink, so they hit it off and pretty soon, Colin and Hazel low-key start smashing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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I mean, it's frowned upon by the church. Instead, they go a different route. And Colin and Hazel come up with a plan. They're gonna unalive each other's spouses so that they can be together and that they can live happily ever after. So they're too religious for divorce, but not too religious for murder. Got it. So anyway, one night, Colin's wife is asleep in the living room, on the couch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And this is not surprising since they're having so many problems in their marriage. But Colin, he sneaks into the garage and he's got some kind of hose and he attaches that hose to the exhaust pipe of their car while the car is running. Then he takes the other end of that hose and he sneaks into the living room and he holds it near his wife's face.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Now obviously he's trying to poison her with carbon monoxide by trying to get her to inhale the fumes from the running car. And she does breathe in these fumes but she doesn't immediately die. Instead, she wakes up and her eyes open and she starts to struggle because she realizes she can't really breathe.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And Colin, he holds her down and he covers her face with a quilt and he sticks the hose under there and she struggles and she takes her last few breaths until she's unalived. Then, Colin carries her body and he puts it in the trunk of his car and he drives toward Hazel's house. Meanwhile, over at Hazel's house, she is completing her part of the plan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And her husband is there at the house with her, this guy, and she low-key slips him some sedatives, and he passes out. He's asleep. Then, Colin arrives, and he does the same thing he did to his wife. He attaches the hose to the exhaust of his car again, and he creeps into the bedroom with that hose, and he puts it near the husband's face so that he'll breathe in the fumes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And then husband wakes up and there's a struggle and a fight but husband is just too sedated and he loses the fight and Colin holds him down and puts the hose up to his face and he breathes in too much of the fumes and husband ultimately dies.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Then Colin moves the body to the car where his wife's body is and he drives the bodies over to another family member's house and he parks the car in the garage and he arranges the husband in the front seat and he puts his wife in the back seat. Then he hooks up a hose to the exhaust pipe and he runs it up to the window.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Here's the problem with that though. Colin is actually already married and he has a bunch of kids. And here's the other problem with that. Hazel is also married with kids. Regardless, they secretly keep their affair going and they just keep smashing away. And this goes on for a few months, but then they get busted.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And he makes it look like they were trying to carbon monoxide poison themselves, like it was a double suicide. And he reports it to the police and police eventually find the bodies and they believe the story that it was a double suicide. And I don't really think police do a very good job of investigating this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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They're just like, yep, two people who didn't really know each other decided to unalive themselves together. That makes sense. Case closed. Anyway, then to make it worse, the medical examiner examines the bodies and they agree and they rule it a double suicide. So Colin and Hazel straight up get away with this crime. And what's even better for them, Colin makes some bank from his wife's death.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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He allegedly receives over 300,000 pounds from her will or about 400,000 US dollars. He also makes money from life insurance policy and some money from his late father-in-law's estate. Dude has got some cash now. So he and Hazel are able to take all this money and live happily ever after as the good Christian family they are.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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But five years later, unfortunately for them, their relationship fizzles out and they end up splitting up. And eventually Colin moves on and he remarries and so does Hazel. And it seems like since they moved on, no one will ever speak of those murders again. Until about 16 years later, Colin's life starts falling apart. First, his 22 year old son suddenly dies in some accident in Russia.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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He like fell down a stairwell, horrible tragedy. And this devastates Colin as you can imagine. Then he falls for some get rich quick scam. Some guy in the Philippines cons him out of his life savings about 350,000 pounds or around 467,000 US dollars. So all that money he made from his wife's death, from the will and the life insurance, he loses it all and he falls deep into debt. Womp womp.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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So now he's broke and one of his kids is dead and he doesn't know what to do. Like he's never felt this low in his life. And keep in mind, he's still a very religious guy. So he sees all this bad luck as some kind of sign that his God is punishing him. Punishing him for all the bad things he's done in his life, specifically.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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specifically punishing him for unaliving his wife and for unaliving Hazel's husband all those years ago. So he starts thinking that it'll help if he... confesses. So he goes and he calls some of the elders of his church to gather at his house and he sits them down and he starts confessing. I guess he thinks this is gonna completely absolve him of his crimes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Like the church is just gonna be like, oh it's fine that you've committed murder, we're all good with that, just as long as you tell the truth. No! I mean, they're church elders, but they're also, you know, human beings like anyone else.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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You go around most people talking about how you committed murder over a decade ago, most people are going to be like, uh, I don't want to be involved in this conversation. Whatever you did, bro, just leave me out of it. Anyway, during this gathering, Colin confesses a lot of things to these church elders. He confesses to his new wife that he had multiple affairs during their marriage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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He confesses that he has a major addiction to pornography. He confesses that he sometimes likes to SA his dental patients while they're passed out in his dental chair, sedated. Wow. And finally, he confesses to unaliving his wife and Hazel's husband over a decade and a half ago. Bro is self snitching like crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Someone from the church they go to is at a local park and he catches them in the act. And he tells the pastor at their church and pastor tells Colin's wife and this blows their whole affair wide open. And so Colin and Hazel each have to go to their respective spouses and confess that they're having an affair.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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And the church elders, they hear this and they're like, holy , prayers are not gonna fix this one. And they call the police. And so the police come over and Colin confesses and bam, they arrest him. And he ends up snitching on Hazel. So bam, they arrest her too. And she gets sentenced to 18 years in prison while Colin gets a total of 26 years in prison. And here's what he looks like in real life.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Now, Colin's wife, who we'll just call Colin's wife, she's absolutely devastated by this news, and she can't handle it. And eventually, she tries to unalive herself with sleeping pills. But lucky for her, she's not successful. She survives. However, allegedly, Colin finds her suicide note. And this suicide note gives him an idea of how to solve his problem.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Evil Dentist Murders His Wife - The Colin Howell story

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Because despite all the trauma he's caused his wife, he still really wants to keep smashing with Hazel. Now, he could go and just get a divorce, and Hazel could get a divorce, and then they could just be together like normal people. But they decide they can't do that. Because remember, he is a super religious Christian, and so is she. And because of that, they decide divorce is just not an option.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So this guy is a mega church preacher. And he gets a little pervy. And now he's on the run from the FBI. Now the guy's name is Apollo. He's 24, he's from the Philippines, and he's a small-time preacher there. And one day he's preaching in a little chapel when suddenly angels appear to him. And they come and they tell him that he's actually the son of his God.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So now he's got followers around the world in many different countries, including the United States. And this is where Apollo really levels up. And with the help of his innermost circle, he traffics his most obedient followers into the US, where they start working and soliciting donations from people full time. So he's making even more money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Oh, and I haven't even gotten to some of the crazy stuff this guy claims. Aside from saying he's the son of some god, he once claimed that he yelled at an earthquake and made it stop. Like, there was an earthquake happening, and he's just like, and it just stopped. And he also says that the public should thank him for stopping that earthquake. Thanks, Apollo.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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He also claims that he talks to his God directly, not metaphorically, but like conversations directly. He also says that he has visions of his God. He claims that he has been physically taken up into heaven on multiple occasions. I mean, this guy has said and done way too much for me to cover in one video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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But anyway, and if that's not crazy enough, here's the part of the story where things start to get creepy. Among his church workers, the ones who are young, attractive women and who excel at getting donations, they get to move up and become what's called pastoral assistants.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And of course, the prettiest and most obedient pastoral assistants, they get into Apollo's inner inner circle and they become what are called spiritual wives. And spiritual wives, they get a special privilege. They get the privilege of smashing with Apollo. Yeah, they literally call it night duty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And these pastoral assistants and spiritual wives are anywhere between 25 years old all the way down to 12 years old. While at this point in the story, Apollo is old as sh**. He's 74. And if any of these girls or young women protest their night duty, they're then threatened with eternal damnation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So basically, if they don't smash with him, they're verbally threatened, physically threatened, or he tells them they're going to hell. And to make it worse, these young women depend on the church for their basic needs. Like, they live and work at the church, their entire social life is there, so they're kind of trapped in this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So he starts telling everyone that he is the appointed son of God. Well, I'm sure this will end well for him. So anyway, because of this, he decides to start his own church. And a few years later, after the church is founded, this guy shows up. Rodrigo. And Rodrigo's running for mayor, and he comes to speak to the congregation at the church.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So he's basically trafficking these girls, like this is sex trafficking. And this nonsense goes on for years, not just in the Philippines, but in their US locations too. And at this point, Apollo is a powerful man, like his following has grown to over 6 million members worldwide. He claims he has followers in all 200 countries.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Plus, with all those donations, he's now wealthier than he's ever been. Dude now owns a private jet and a personal helicopter. He has a church compound that's so massive, it has an indoor arena that seats 75,000 people. To put that in perspective, that's literally the biggest indoor arena in the entire world. And this dude owns it. That's how rich he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Okay, but then rumors of him essaying young women, they start to spread. And of course, his followers don't believe he's guilty of anything. They stand by him. And religious culty type leaders always have followers who do this. So this is not surprising. But his longtime friend, Mayor Rodrigo, he ends up running for president and he wins.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And with the president of the Philippines on his side, every accusation against Apollo is basically buried. So Apollo seems untouchable by this point. He's been running this trafficking business for like 16 years and it doesn't seem like there are ever going to be any consequences for it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Until... I guess at some point, some of his former church members in the US, they go and report him to the FBI. And the FBI starts looking into him and this investigation makes the news and Apollo hears about it and he's like, oh sh**. And he allegedly flees the US and he goes all the way back to the Philippines to his church compound there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And there, he'll be protected by his longtime friend, President Rodrigo. But unfortunately, his friend Rodrigo finishes his term as president, leaves office, and now there's a new president. And new president is not Apollo's friend. So all the accusations against him in the Philippines are no longer buried.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So then back in the US, bam, the FBI arrests some of his innermost circle and they're officially looking for Apollo too. And he's being accused of fraud, human trafficking and sex trafficking. And now he's on the FBI's most wanted list. And so Apollo, he gets all mad and he's frustrated that they're after him and he starts lashing out publicly saying it's a conspiracy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And this is happening during the COVID pandemic. So he gives a sermon telling the world that if we want the pandemic to stop, the FBI should stop investigating him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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But then even more women in the Philippines come forward with accusations against him. And of course, Apollo denies everything, and he insists that the people accusing him are just evil, and he changes the homepage of his website to this. Why are evil people after Pastor Apollo? I'm guessing they're after him because of all the sex trafficking, but that's just a guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Anyway, eventually the Filipino Senate issues a warrant for his arrest and they raid some of his properties but the dude is nowhere to be found.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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And they welcome him, and soon enough, he and Apollo become good friends. And later, Rodrigo actually gets elected mayor, and he appoints Apollo to be his spiritual advisor. And so then more people find out about Apollo and his teachings, and his church starts to grow, and soon the donations start rolling in. Because, of course they do. But these donations aren't enough for Apollo. He wants more.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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He's fled and he's hiding out from the law and there's like this whole manhunt looking for him and there ends up being a huge standoff at one of his compounds between police and a bunch of his supporters and his supporters still insist that he didn't do anything wrong and I don't even have time to get into that part of the story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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But two weeks later Apollo finally gives up and he turns himself in and BAM they arrest him Here's his mugshot and as of right now, he hasn't actually been to trial yet. So we'll see how this plays out

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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So he gets the full-time working members of the church to go out at 6 a.m. every morning and solicit money from strangers for the church. The only catch is they can't come home until they reach their daily quota of money collected. So, to avoid sleeping on the street, the members of the church start playing on people's sympathy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Filipino Cult Leader - The Apollo Quiboloy story

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Like they pretend to be poor college students, or they pretend to be disabled, but whatever. It works, and the church makes a ton of money. And so pretty quickly, Pastor Apollo becomes a very wealthy man. He's so wealthy, in fact, that he's able to start his own broadcasting network, and this helps spread his teachings beyond the Philippines.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

0.109

So this guy tries to get rich by scamming a popular game show. And he kind of succeeds. Now the guy's name is Michael and he's an ice cream man. But Michael doesn't want to be an ice cream man. He wants to get rich quick. So he comes up with this wild plan to do just that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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How are you, Michael? And so eventually it's Michael's turn to play. And when he finally gets his first spin on the board, it doesn't go so well. Come on, big bucks, big bucks. I'm going. He got away. And by the time the first round ends, poor Michael, he's in last place. But it's not over yet. This is what he's been training for. He is determined to win this money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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So when his turn comes up again, he is ready this time. He gets a spin on the board and bam, he stops the light and he wins a nice little cash prize and an extra spin. And so he goes again and bam, he wins again. And he continues and he spins again and again and he wins more and more. And soon his winnings are over $30,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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Now at this point, the producers of the show, they start to get suspicious that Michael might be doing something shady. But the woman in the tech booth who's supposed to be watching to make sure people aren't cheating, she can't find anything wrong with how he's playing. It seems to be pure skill. So Michael just keeps going.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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And as his winnings grow to $60,000, the producers are like, yo, shut it down. He's winning too much. But they can't because he's not technically cheating. And like even the host is freaking out because not only is Michael winning, he's like breaking all kinds of records. 133 spins, $4,000. I don't believe it. $4,000. You're up to $83,000.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

19.703

And he gets a bunch of TVs and he stacks them all on top of each other and he watches game shows constantly trying to find one that he could potentially win money from. And one day, he does find one. There's a new game show called Press Your Luck and the contestants are winning pretty good money and Michael looks at these mediocre people playing and he thinks, Hey, I could do that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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And eventually, Michael cracks $100,000, which was his goal the whole time. And ultimately, he wins the whole game, winning $110,000 and a trip to the Bahamas. Not bad. Which, at the time, in 1984, he had won more money than anyone had in a single episode of any American game show ever. And the suits at CBS are not happy about this. Because they still suspect he cheated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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But they can't prove anything, so they write him a big fat check and they send him on his way. Which means his plan has officially succeeded. However, Michael isn't done. He's still determined to get rich. Like he's made getting rich his whole personality. And one day, he's listening to the radio and he hears about this contest. And in this contest, they're reading out serial numbers on $1 bills.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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And if you have a dollar bill that matches the number they read, you win $30,000. So Michael goes to the bank and he withdraws $50,000 of his game show winnings in $1 bills. And then he and his wife, they sit at their house and they look through each $1 bill for any one that matches the winning serial number. And they do this for weeks. But unfortunately, no luck.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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So Michael takes half the money and he puts it back in the bank and the other half he just hides in random places around his house. But then sometime later, one night someone breaks into his place and they steal all the dollar bills he had hidden around his house. And Michael, he gets mad and he straight up blames his own wife for being involved in the burglary.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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And then she gets mad at him and then she takes her kids and she just straight up leaves him. And then later he gets a new girlfriend and they start some pyramid scheme together where they get people to invest in a fake lottery and they end up scamming a bunch of people out of three million dollars. So I guess he met his goal and he's finally rich now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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But eventually the SEC, the FBI, and the IRS catch on to his scam and they go after him. But he goes on the run from the law and he stays on the run for a long time. In fact, they never catch him. And eventually he dies and they only find him after he died. And he died from cancer, which is unrelated to any of this. But he technically got away. So shout out to Michael, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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So he gets a VCR and he records a bunch of episodes of the show and he starts watching the tapes over and over again and studying them. And after several months, he finally figures it out. In the game, you win money by spinning the board and having it stop on a cash prize or a vacation. And the board, it seems to light up in random places. But Michael's been watching these episodes and

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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pausing and replaying the tapes, looking for patterns. And after six months, he discovers that the board lights up in five distinct looping patterns. And Michael thinks if he can just memorize these patterns, he can get on the show and he can win a bunch of money. So Michael memorizes these patterns and he practices the timing at home, pausing and playing his VCR until he's a master at this game.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Hacked a Game Show And Won Big! - The Michael Larson story

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Then he scrapes together all the money he can and he buys a bus ticket to Los Angeles and he shows up to the casting office of Press Your Luck. And he auditions and he meets with the producers and sure enough, bam, they cast him. So fast forward to the day of the taping and Michael is there on the show and he's nervous but he's ready to win this. Let's meet our second player, Michael Larson.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

0.129

Imagine you're on a flight and it's in the air and a pilot in the cockpit suddenly decides, I'm going to crash this plane and this would unalive you and everyone else on it. Now the pilot, his name's Joe and Joe, he's a commercial airline pilot. He's been doing it a while and he likes this job. But one day, boom, Joe gets hit with some terrible news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And the group decides they're gonna do what we'll call medicinal mushrooms. Joe's never done this before, but he's like, all right. And so he takes these mushrooms and he starts feeling pretty, pretty good. And he stays up all night and he's having a lot of fun. And a few days later, it's time for him to leave Washington and go back home. And allegedly he's been going hard.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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Like he hasn't slept in like 40 hours or something like that. And he goes to the airport and he gets on a plane and he's ready to fly out of there. But he's still allegedly kind of tripping from the mushrooms from a few days before. Like they're still in his system or something. Now, he's not on duty, but because he's a pilot, he's gonna ride for free in the cockpit jump seat.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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That's where off-duty pilots sit when they take a flight and they're not piloting. And as the plane takes off and it's in the air, Joe starts to get a really bad feeling. a feeling like he's trapped in this airplane and he'll never be able to get out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And suddenly, bam, a bad trip hits him like a freight train, and Joe feels like he's stuck in a nightmare, like none of what he's experiencing is reality, like the pilots flying the plane aren't really pilots. And he doesn't know what to do. And he believes the only way out of this is to make himself wake up. And that is when he looks up to the ceiling of the plane and he sees two red handles.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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Those red handles are fire extinguisher handles. They're also designed to shut down the engines of the plane in an emergency. And Joe decides that in order to wake himself up, he needs to pull the levers and crash the aircraft. So he stands up and he reaches out and he pulls both of those handles. And the two pilots in the cockpit, they see this and they're like, what the f***?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And they immediately jump up and grab Joe and they pull him away. And one of them quickly pushes the handles back in again. And this restores the fuel flow to the engines. And so the engines are working properly again. Close call. And I guess the human touch brings Joe back into his body.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And so he stands up and he leaves the cockpit and he walks to the back of the plane and he sits in a flight attendant's jump seat. And he tells the flight attendant to handcuff him because this is gonna get really bad. And so the flight attendants restrain his hands with flex cuff, which is like zip ties.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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his best friend Scott just suddenly passed away from a heart problem. And Joe is devastated like this is his best friend and he's never lost somebody close to him. And he takes this really hard and pretty quickly he starts getting depressed and he starts drinking heavily to deal with it. And as the years go by his depression only gets worse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And he's sitting there in the jump seat and I guess he's still like, I gotta wake up from this bad dream. And he grabs a whole ass pot of coffee near him and he starts drinking straight out of it. And the poor flight attendants, they're trying to calm him down and they have no idea he was just in the cockpit trying to crash the plane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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But then he reaches over toward the emergency exit and he wants to get it open so that he can jump out because he's like, jumping out will certainly wake me up. Luckily, the crew stops him by gently removing his hands from the door and distracting him with a bit of conversation.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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Now, at this point, the pilots have diverted the flight to Portland because they're like, we got to get this guy the hell off this plane. And they land and police officers come on board and they escort Joe off the plane. This is actually some footage of that and there he is there. And so bam, Joe is arrested. And I don't have a mugshot but here is a photo of him detained.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And he's charged with 83 counts of attempted murder and reckless endangerment and his pilot's license is suspended. And he gets out on bail, and he's apparently clean now, so no more mushrooms before traveling. And he and his wife have since started a non-profit to advocate and help pilots get treated for depression.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And ultimately, lucky for him, the federal court drops his attempted murder charges, but his trial for some of the other charges is still pending as of the date of me making this video. So, good luck to them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

45.382

especially around the yearly anniversary of Scott's passing. And eventually Joe's wife is like, you're not doing well. I think you should talk to a professional. So he does. He goes to see a therapist and therapist tells him to consider seeing a psychiatrist and getting on antidepressants.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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Here's the thing though, apparently if a commercial pilot goes on antidepressants, the airline will no longer allow them to fly and he would have to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to keep his job. I guess it's their policy. So Joe's like, nah bro, and he doesn't take any meds. He doesn't want to lose his job. Instead, he just keeps working all the time and self-medicating with alcohol.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Pilot Took Mushrooms Before His Flight - The Joe Emerson story

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And almost six years have passed since Joe lost his best friend, and he's still feeling it. And at one point he flies to Washington State to be with his other friends. I guess they're gonna have a memorial for Scott. And during this memorial, in remembrance of Scott, Joe and his friends, they do a lot of partying. Like, a lot of partying.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

0.129

So this guy, his name's Stephen. And Stephen has a big problem. He's about to be rich. So why is that a big problem? Well, Stephen, he's 51. He lives in North Dakota. And one day, he gets this crazy email. And the email is from a lawyer in London.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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That once Steven gets his money, he's out of this relationship. And Ina is pissed. I mean, she can't let that happen. I mean, she's put up with Steven for 10 whole years. She feels like she's entitled to some of that inheritance money too. Now, some states in the US have what's called common law marriage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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Where if you've been living together for a long period of time, you are considered legally married. And she and Steven have been living together for a long period of time. So she feels like she is his common law wife. And so Ina starts thinking, you know, if Steven happens to accidentally pass away, all that money will go to his common law wife, me.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And so Ina comes up with a plan to unalive Steven and take all his inheritance money. Now, in order for Stephen to get this $30 million, he needs to sign a bunch of paperwork. And they have arranged for the London lawyer to fly into town and for Stephen to go meet him at the airport.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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I guess once they meet, Stephen can sign the documents and that will complete the transaction and he can get his $30 million. And so Ina's thinking, what if he gets sick? What if he makes it to the airport, signs the paperwork to transfer the money, and then he gets really sick and passes away?

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And I guess Ina thinks this is a hell of an idea because on the day, the day he's supposed to go to the airport, Ina pours a little antifreeze into Steven's sweet tea that he always drinks. And if you don't know, antifreeze has a little sweet taste to it, otherwise you can't really taste it. It's also poison. And so she poisons his sweet tea and he unknowingly drinks it.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And this London lawyer lets Stephen know that one of his relatives in Ireland passed away and that he's in line for a huge inheritance check, around $30 million. Now, I've talked about Steven before. I told his story back in 2023, but there have been some updates to this. So before I give you the update, let me get you up to speed.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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A few hours later, Ina, Steven, and a few of Steven's friends, they all take a trip over to the airport. So they get there, and the whole group is there, chilling in the waiting area, waiting for this lawyer's flight to land. And after a bit of time passes, suddenly, Steven starts to feel terrible. He gets stomach pains, like really bad ones.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And with each passing minute, the pain gets worse and worse. And his friends are like, yo, should we take him and leave? And Steven's like, no, because, you know, there's $30 million at stake here. He wants to wait a bit longer. He feels like he can make it. And so they wait. And they wait, and they wait. And poor Steven gets sicker, and sicker, and sicker.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And after a few hours, they start to feel like, this London lawyer isn't going to show up. I don't know, maybe his flight got delayed or something. But by this time, Steven is in really bad shape. Like he can't walk on his own, and he barely seems conscious. And Steven's friends are like, yo, Eda, Steven's looking really bad. I think you need to call an ambulance. And Ina's like, no, he's fine.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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It's probably just heat stroke. And she insists on not taking him to the hospital. And so Stephen's friends take him home instead and they put him in bed to rest while Ina waits back at the airport because she's waiting for the London lawyer to arrive. And unfortunately, the London lawyer never does. And about a day goes by and Stephen is still at home and he still isn't doing well.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And at this point, he's completely unresponsive. And Ina's there and she's like, ah, I guess I got to call 911. And so she calls and an ambulance comes and takes Steven to the hospital. And unfortunately there, he passes away. And when Ina gets the news of Steven's passing, she gives an Oscar worthy performance. I guess the sun is on his way here. Okay. Now Stephen's friends, they aren't stupid.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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They know something's up and they are immediately suspicious of Ina. In fact, one of them tells police right away.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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I'm almost sure she poisoned him. And then they interview some of Stephen's other friends and some of them suggest that Ina used to make offhand comments that if she ever had to murder him, she would do it with antifreeze. And police, they give all this information to the coroner, who then tests Stephen's blood, and I'm sure you can guess what they find.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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But when police questioned Ina, she tried to put the blame on Stephen's friends.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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And then she also tells police about some other concerns she has.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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So back in 2023, Steven learns about this inheritance he's about to get, and he is pumped because who wouldn't be? I mean, that's $30 million. And so he's planning it all out in his head, how he's going to spend it. He's going to get a few acres of land. He's going to give a little money to his adult sons, maybe even start his own auto shop.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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She's thinking the inheritance will go to her as she is Stephen's common law wife, but they live in North Dakota and North Dakota doesn't actually recognize common law marriage. So she ain't getting shit. So anyway, police aren't buying her nonsense. So they get a warrant and they search the couple's home and they find a lot of antifreeze in places that it shouldn't have been.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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In a beer bottle, in a coffee mug, in a Windex bottle. I guess she was just putting it all kinds of places. Super weird. And so they go to her house and bam, they arrest her.

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She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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She pleads guilty and she's sentenced to 25 years in prison. Oh, and if you don't remember from last time we talked about this, it turns out that that email that Stephen got from the London lawyer, it was all just a scam. Like there was no relative in Ireland who passed away. There was no $30 million. There was no London lawyer going to meet them at the airport.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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It was all an email scam that Stephen and Ina fell for. And unfortunately, she was dumb enough to unalive him over it. Actually kind of sad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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Now, Steven has a longtime girlfriend, this woman, Ina, and they live together. They've been living together for 10 years. And Ina is also pumped about this $30 million. I mean, she's already talking about it openly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Poisoned Her Boyfriend For $30 Million Dollars - The Steven Riley and Ina Kenoyer Story

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Here's the thing about Ina, though. She's been Steven's girlfriend for a really long time. But the thing is, Steven isn't really feeling her anymore. In fact, once he gets his inheritance money, he plans on leaving her. And he's told some of his close friends about this plan. And so I guess word gets around and one day someone close to Ina comes up to her and tips her off about this.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So this guy, his name's Luigi. And Luigi just unalived a man. And people love him for it. So Luigi's got a lot going for him. He was a valedictorian in his high school, he went to an Ivy League university, and he's generally a charming and friendly dude. And one day, he decides to move to Hawaii. I mean, he's in his 20s, he has a remote job, so why not? And there, Luigi learns to surf.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So he schedules the surgery, and he gets it, and it's a spinal fusion surgery where doctors fuse part of the spine together. And so they do the surgery and after about a week, he's already starting to feel better. And little by little, he becomes active again. And he goes backpacking through Asia and he ends up in Japan. And this is just what he really needed.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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But again, this is speculation based on how American health insurance works. But it is speculated that during this, he continues to fight with his health insurance provider to get them to cover his back surgery. And they just keep giving him the runaround like they are known to do. And by the time he gets back to the US, Bro has had enough. He's done with these insurance companies.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And he's done with the US healthcare system. And so he decides to do something about it. And he comes up with this insane plan to assassinate a CEO. So first, he distances himself from his friends and family and he stops posting online. He basically ghosts everyone for months. Then he gets a bunch of fake IDs and he 3D prints a pew-pew and a silencer.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Then he takes three bullets and on the casings, he etches the words deny, defend, depose on them, which deny, defend, depose is a reference to delay, deny, defend, which is a reference to the shady tactics that American health insurance companies use to deny coverage to people in need.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And so after doing that, Luigi gets on a Greyhound bus, and they believe it originated in Atlanta, and he takes that bus all the way up to New York City. And there, he checks into a hostel, and he waits. Ten days later, it's early in the morning, and Luigi leaves the hostel and he heads over to the Hilton Hotel. And there, outside the hotel, he waits for about an hour for his target to show up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Then, his target does. This guy. Brian. Now Brian is the CEO of United Healthcare, aka the largest health insurance company in the United States. Now allegedly, United Healthcare denies more claims every year than any other health insurer. So a lot of Americans really hate this company, including me. them.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Here's the thing, though. Luigi has had bad back pain since he was a little kid. He actually has a condition called spondylolisthesis. And I guess all the surfing aggravates his spondylolisthesis and his back starts hurting like crazy. In fact, it's so bad that he's in bed for a week and even after he recovers enough to get out of bed, the pain doesn't really go away.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So Brian is just arriving to the hotel for an investors conference, probably to talk about his record profit margins or whatever. But then Luigi sees him walking up and he walks right up behind him and he aims his pew pew at him and he shoots him in the back and Brian stumbles and he falls to the ground and the whole thing is caught on security footage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Which I can't show you the murder but you can see Brian here and obviously Luigi is here. So anyway, Luigi shoots him. Mission accomplished. And he knows he needs to get the hell out of there before police show up. So he jumps on one of those bike share e-bikes and he flees. And you can actually see him on surveillance footage here passing by.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And so he rides over to Central Park and he ditches the bike and his backpack and his jacket and he hails a cab. And eventually he ends up at Penn Station. From there, allegedly, he gets on a train and he flees to Philadelphia. And so Luigi's long gone. His plan worked. He made his escape. And Brian, as you already know, he doesn't make it. But then the news breaks.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And as crazy as the story is, it doesn't really catch fire with the general public until the public learns about the bullet casings. The ones that had the words deny, defend, oppose etched on them. Because this suddenly lets everyone know that the shooter's motive was likely tied to being denied health insurance coverage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Something that nearly every American adult has experienced or will experience in their lifetime. And so, real quick, you people who aren't from the United States, I don't think you quite understand. In America, the health insurance business is all run by private corporations. There is no public option.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So even if you have insurance and you get sick or injured, the insurance companies will very often figure out ways to not have to cover you. Even though you're paying them every month, doesn't matter. They will find a way to not cover you. It's a really f***ed up system that the general public is absolutely fed up with.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And so people learn that Luigi unalived this healthcare CEO and they start going apeshit. Like people online are defending him saying the shooting was justified. People start putting up wanted posters of other healthcare CEOs. Luigi gets a ton of fans.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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His social media accounts quickly blow up with hundreds of thousands of new followers before social media platforms take them all down a few hours later. And people are like reposting shirtless pictures of him, thirst trapping over him. Like, oh my God, he's so fine. I mean, people on TikTok are talking about how attractive he is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And so people from all sides of the political spectrum are cheering him on because he's suddenly become a representative of every American's frustration with the US healthcare system. Meanwhile, the NYPD is on a manhunt for Luigi. And they release a few photos of their person of interest, but they don't really know who he is. And he covered his tracks well enough that they can't find him.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So the NYPD offers a $10,000 reward for any tips leading to his arrest. Then the FBI offers a $50,000 reward. But so far, no one is snitching. Because a lot of people think he's a hero. So then five days go by since the shooting. And Luigi, he's been hiding out this whole time. And he ends up in Altoona, Pennsylvania. And at one point, I guess he gets hungry like we all do.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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And he decides to go eat at a local McDonald's. And while he's there, another customer feels like they recognize him. And they tell an employee. And that employee calls 911. Minutes later, police show up and bam, they finally arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And here's some more footage of him. He's in police custody.

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Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So most days, Luigi's just in pain and it sucks. So he does his research and he starts reading books about chronic back pain and he does everything he can to help himself. But nothing seems to work and this back problem is really starting to consume his life. Like he's not sleeping right and he can't surf, he can't have sex, he can't live the active life he wants in Hawaii.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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Anyway, so he's in jail now waiting on his trial, which will probably happen sometime in 2025. And it's going to be an absolute circus. But I'm sure we'll cover it and I'll keep you updated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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So eventually he leaves. And I don't know exactly where he goes after this, but things continue to get worse. Like the pain is just unbearable. Sometimes his legs feel numb and he just never feels rested. And this is just a bit of speculation on my part because we don't have all the info right now, but it is speculated that this whole time he's battling with his health insurance provider.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Luigi Mangione is in big trouble now

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trying to get them to cover his treatment. And that, unfortunately, isn't going too well, as these things generally don't. And eventually, something happens to him that gets him sent to the ER. And from there, he has to schedule a surgery for his back, no matter what it costs. I mean, there's no other way around it. This is ruining his life.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und sobald er in den Mojave-Desert kommt, schießt er die Ballons mit seinem Pellet-Gun und das wird seine Schuhe langsam nach unten bringen, bis er in den Desert sicher landen kann. Und nachdem er das alles macht, wird er nicht nur seinen Traum erreicht haben, sondern er wird auch für seine Ingenieurität genannt. Er wird die erste Person sein, die mit Ballons an einem Laufzimmer verbunden ist.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und alle werden ihn als Helden feiern und er wird so berühmt sein! Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? And so Larry gets in his chair and he's ready for liftoff. Now Larry doesn't strap himself in. Oh no, I guess he doesn't believe he could possibly fall. But anyway, suddenly, pow, a strong gust of wind blows in and it hits him. And the tether attached to his chair snaps like a gunshot.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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And Larry flies straight up into the air and his chair keeps rising higher and higher and higher. Way faster than any of them had anticipated. Rising around a thousand feet 1.000 Meter pro Minute. 1.000 Meter pro Minute. Nun, um das in Perspektive zu bringen, ist der Hauptflur des Empire State Building ungefähr 1.250 Meter groß.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Also steigt sein Schrank fast die ganze Empire State Building pro Minute. In der Zwischenzeit, auf dem Boden, sind Carol und Ron in Panikmode. Keiner von ihnen erwartete, dass sein Schrank so hoch ist, so schnell. Not to mention, Larry didn't notify the local airports. His chair took off before he got the opportunity to. So he's very much in danger of getting hit by a plane.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Regardless, he isn't ready to give up. He's determined to achieve his dream. And that is when two commercial airliners fly near. And the pilots can't believe what they see. And at least one of them radios to air traffic control and they're like, Es ist ein Helikopter, der umgekehrt ist, um zu investigieren. While Carol is still down on the ground and she's freaking out.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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She's talking to Larry through his two-way radio and she's like, that's enough, it's time to come down. But no, Larry keeps rising higher and higher. And now he's up around 16,000 feet high, which is roughly half as high as your commercial airliner would fly. So he's way up there. It's also really f***ing cold at that altitude, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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So his feet start to become numb from the cold and he's struggling to breathe because the air is so thin. And if Larry goes any higher, he'll probably run out of oxygen and die. Here's the thing though. As I said, he was never supposed to go this high. And if he pops any balloons at this height, it could throw his chair off balance and he could fall overboard. But he's got no other options.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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He has to take the risk before he passes out from lack of oxygen. So he grabs his pellet gun and he aims it and pop, pop, he starts shooting the balloons one by one. When suddenly, oops, his chair tips and the pellet gun slips out of his hand and it falls overboard down to the ground. Was wird er tun? Glücklicherweise hat er genug Ballons geschossen, dass die Schachtel langsam sinkt.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Habt ihr jemals den Film Upp gesehen und gefragt, ob jemand wirklich mit so vielen Ballons fliegen könnte? Nun, dieser Kerl wird es herausfinden. Sein Name ist Larry und Larry ist 33 und er ist ein bisschen blöd. Aber er hat einen großen Traum. Er will wirklich fliegen. Und eines Tages bekommt er eine Idee, wie er das macht. Er wird ein paar Ballons zu einem Laufzimmer verbinden und fliegt so.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und seine Höhe wird immer niedriger und niedriger und niedriger. Und wenn seine Schachtel genug niedriger sinkt, schaut er hoch und merkt, dass er jetzt direkt vor ein paar Powerlinien geht. Man, dieser Kerl kann keinen Ausbruch haben. Und dann, pow! Er und seine Schachtel schlagen sich in die Powerlinien, brechen sie. Und das schafft einen ganzen Scheiß für das Gebäude unten.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Aber glücklicherweise wird er nicht elektriktiert, er überlebt tatsächlich und er fällt endlich auf den Boden. Und insgesamt ist er nur ca. 10 Meilen von dort, wo er angefangen hat. Und dort, auf dem Boden, ist er nicht genannt für seine Ereignisse oder als ein Helfer gefeiert, sondern er wird als ein Typ behandelt, der nur ein paar Luftraumverletzungen verursacht. Und so, bam!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Die Polizei arrestiert ihn. Und sie verabschieden sich letztendlich gegen ihn. Aber es ist nicht vorbei. Denn Larrys Geschichte ist so absurd, dass es sich öffnet. Und alle reden darüber. Es ist alles über die Nachrichten. Die Leute nennen ihn Laufzimmer-Larry. Und er wird sogar auf dem David Letterman Show eingeladen. Bitte willkommen, Larry Walters.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und Larrys Flug später inspiriert einen ganzen Scheiß Film, namens Danny Deckchair. Aber letztendlich macht Larry auch Geschichte, weil sein Laufzimmer an das Smithsonian Museum gekauft wird, wo es bis heute noch vorhanden ist. Und um ehrlich zu sein, obwohl er fast tot ist, hat er seinen Traum erreicht. Wie fühlt sich das an, dass du erfolgreich bist, was du immer getan hast?

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Ich erhalte inneren Frieden. Ich erhalte inneren Frieden für mich selbst. Ich bin heute ein glücklicher Mensch. Und zehn Jahre später hat Larry sich leider erschossen und... er ist gestorben. Und ein großer Shoutout an leonardo.ai für das Sponsorieren dieses Videos.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Wenn du wirklich coole Kunst für deine Videos oder einfach für deine Leben machen willst, wie dieses hier oder dieses hier, dann abonniere für leonardo.ai.

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The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und er wird mit dieser Idee besessen. Und er ist bereit, alles zu tun, um seinen Traum wahrzunehmen. So bekommt er Hilfe von seiner Freundin, dieser Frau, Carol. Und Carol kauft 45 8-Foot-Wetterballons, Helium-Tanks und andere Dinge, die er braucht, um sein Laufzimmer in ein Flugzeug zu machen. Und sie lässt Larry ihre Heimat für den Launch nutzen. Also ist sie alles drin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Und so geht Larry, und er verbindet die Ballons zu seinem Laufzimmer, und packt ein paar Dinge, die er benötigt, wie eine Pellet-Gun, eine Bottle von Soda, ein 2-Way-Radio und ein paar Milch-Jugs voller Wasser. Und seine Freundin Carol schaut, und Larrys Freund Ron planiert, das Ganze zu filmen. So, here's Larry's full plan. First, he's gonna tether his chair to the bumper of a car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

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Then, before he takes off, he'll notify the FAA and local airports so that he doesn't get hit by an airplane. And once his chair rises to 100 feet, his friends will then untether him and the winds will, in theory, carry him about 250 miles. fliegt von der San-Pedro-Neighborhood bis in den Mojave-Desert.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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So this influencer is super rich. He's also in really big trouble. Allegedly. Now his name is RD and RD is really into cars. He's a partner at a dealership for exotic cars where he sources super expensive rides for his clients. and everyone there loves him. And RD also really likes being in the spotlight. And he often posts pics of his cars on Instagram, you know, trying to flex a little.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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Bro is suddenly rubbing elbows with a ton of famous people. And during all this, R.D. opens a car showroom in Beverly Hills called Wires Only. And things are going really well for him. In fact, they're going so well, he eventually gets his own reality show called Million Dollar Wheels, hosted by him. And it's on HBO Max, you can watch it.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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But on the show, he sells exotic cars to celebrities like Kim Kardashian.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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oh my god i know it's been a while i love it so good to see you oh my god what do you think oh my god oh my god and when rd's not shooting the show he's still insanely busy sourcing super rare cars and boats and private jets for his clients and his instagram blows up to over a million followers and apparently bro is getting super rich off all this

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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Damn. 70 to 150 million dollars a year? Dude is making millions of dollars to drive nice cars and hang out with celebrities. Call me crazy, but I feel like he's got the perfect life. UNTIL. Now you know how they say things on social media aren't always as they seem because you know people on Instagram just be lying.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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Well allegedly things aren't going as well for RD as he would want the world to believe. Because apparently bro starts missing payments on some of the cars he's leasing suggesting that he's having money problems.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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And like instead of buying exotic cars and then leasing them to his clients, he allegedly leases a lot of the cars and then subleases them to his clients, which you're not supposed to do without proper consent. And people will sue you for that. He also allegedly sells exotic cars that he doesn't have permission to sell. So that's not good.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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Also, his dealership is operating in Beverly Hills without a proper license or proper permits. And when he finally does petition the city for the proper permits, the city is like, nah, bro, probably because he had been operating illegally for years. So Beverly Hills denies his permit request and boom, poor R.D. has to close down his exotic car dealership.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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And he doesn't flex about that on his Instagram because that's embarrassing. And of course, from here, his checks start bouncing and people definitely start to notice and they're pissed.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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And one day he posts a video of this rare six wheeled Mercedes Benz. And yeah, look at it, it's pretty cool. And suddenly he gets a DM from a rapper. And rapper's like, hey, is that Benz you posted for sale? And RD's like, yeah. So the rapper's like, I'll take it. And R.D. 's like, all right. And he ends up selling him the car. So R.D.

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This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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And a lot of his clients and his business associates, they start filing lawsuits against him for all sorts of things like breach of contract, civil theft, fraud, deceit, negligent misrepresentation, violation of vehicle code. And before RD knows it, there are a dozen lawsuits against him, probably more at this point.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

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And they range from people suing him for tens of thousands of dollars all the way to people suing him for millions of dollars. Not only that, one of those bad checks he wrote was allegedly a $13,000 check to MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas. And casinos in Vegas, they don't around with their money. So they report him to police and the state of Nevada issues a warrant for his arrest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

299.423

And eventually police find him in Beverly Hills and bam, they arrest him. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's what he looks like in real life. And he does pay the casino back and those charges are dropped, but he still has a bunch of lawsuits against him. And to make it worse, around this same time, his wife, Samantha, she's sort of an Instagram influencer herself. Here's her page.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

321.576

Well, they separate and they start the process of divorce. And about a month after that, she files a domestic abuse restraining order against him. claiming that he had been assaulting her as well as stalking her. And this investigation and all the lawsuits against him are still ongoing, so I'll keep you updated.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

48.799

's looking at his Instagram account and I guess it suddenly hits him like, oh, snap, I can make sales from Instagram? And soon enough, Instagram becomes a big part of his business. Like people will go to his page and they'll see something they like and they'll reach out to him and boom, he'll deliver a brand new exotic car to their door. and he'll collect his money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

69.332

And from there, everything takes off. He's hustling, he's making sales, he's on call 24 seven. He ends up hooking Jamie Foxx up with a new ride and soon they become friends and they're like hanging out all the time. Then RD gets a call from a producer who's working on a music video for Taylor Swift. And they're like, We need a Bugatti for a music video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Rich Influencer is Broke Now? - The RD Whittington story

89.832

And so they rent a Bugatti from him and it appears in the video. There it is right there. And this starts to solidify RD as the car dealer to the stars. And just from his Instagram, you can see him with a ton of celebrities. Ryan Seacrest, Floyd Mayweather, Migos, Jimmy Kimmel, Travis Barker, Bad Bunny, Quentin Tarantino, Aesop Rocky, Aaron Paul, Michael Bay. You get the point.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

0.109

So this woman, let's call her Diamond, because she's a real gem. And one day, Diamond is at the dentist's office. I think it's for a consultation kind of thing. I'm not really sure. But she's about to start some major sh**. Because allegedly, while she's there, she learns she needs to get some work done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

155.277

So finally, Dennis agrees to stop everything and compile the documentation and print it out and give it to her right there so that she'll be done with this unnecessary conflict. Then this drama will be over. But Diamond keeps arguing with the officer about whether or not she's going to leave. Like she wants to leave and the officer's like, but don't you want your documentation?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

176.227

But Diamond just wants to be difficult. Like whatever is going to make the situation harder for everyone, that's what Diamond wants to do. So eventually officers had enough and she's like, please just come sit down. And telling Diamond to sit down really pisses her off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

18.016

So after the appointment, she asks the receptionist, actually, can I get documentation of everything that was done today? And this turns into a bit of an argument because the staff is like, yeah, that'll take time to compile together, but we'll mail it to you. But Diamond apparently wants her documentation now. And she makes a huge deal out of this and it turns into a fight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

191.833

I'm not sitting down like I'm a dog. I'm not a dog.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

225.232

Now remember, like three minutes ago, Diamond wanted to leave to go on a walk. But now she refuses to leave. And this is where things start to get bad. Get up and go outside.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

262.448

Now, this arrest is a little too violent for me to show you on this platform, but I can show you screenshots of it. Here's one, and here's another, and here's another. And then they perp walk her to the police car, and she fights them the whole way.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

303.137

Because now you're getting arrested for refusing to move. And of course, she still doesn't understand what she did wrong.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

327.403

Now, here's the funny thing. If she had just waited five more minutes, all of this could have been avoided because at that moment, the dentist finally comes out and she has her paperwork.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

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But I guess that's normal for you guys. Meanwhile, back in the car, Diamond still doesn't comprehend what's happening.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

360.13

So, not surprisingly at all, Diamond has apparently been through this before.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

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But unfortunately for her, her crying and screaming isn't persuading anyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

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And eventually, I guess the dentist and her staff, they're fed up with her and they call the police to come mediate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

401.884

Hey, if I have to open that door, you're getting taped. But then she says the most cryptic shit I've ever heard anyone say.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

416.388

Have fun.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

428.34

And when that doesn't work, she, uh, sings to herself? Anyway, so bam, they throw her in jail and she's charged with trespassing and resisting violence. And from what I read, she takes a plea deal and spends around five days in jail. Not a big deal, but also not a big crime. Just kind of fun to watch and gawk at. Anyway, shout out to Florida.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

464.861

And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you make videos and you want to make really badass art for those videos, like this or like this, like look at how cool that is. Sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

52.987

And so the dentist is there, and then she explains her side.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

68.421

So then police, they explain all this to Diamond in simple terms so that she understands.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

77.048

Then Diamond won't give them her address so that they can mail her the documentation she wants so badly.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Entitled Woman Gets a Reality Check

95.635

And so she doesn't give them her address, but whatever. She can come back and get the documentation later. No big deal. Problem solved, right? No, because Diamond isn't going to let this go. She wants to argue with police and make things difficult for everyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

0.129

This is Nate. And Nate has a problem. The Mexican cartel is trying to unalive him and he doesn't know why. So here's how this all started. One day, Nate's at work. He works security for an engineering company. And he meets this woman, who we'll call Z. And Nate thinks Z is foink! And so they start flirting and soon they start hooking up outside of work and secretly meeting at hotels to smash.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

111.869

Now, despite the fact that he's anxious and believes the cartel is after him, he keeps low-key smashing with Z on the side. So Irma Linda's weird plan to scare him isn't actually working because he's still cheating. So after nearly a year of this, Irma Linda has to try something a little different.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

131.751

And so using one of her fake online aliases, she contacts Nate and she tells him not only are these cartels after him, but that Z is actually a spy working for the cartel and that Z plans to unalive him. Now, at this point, Irma Linda is contacting Nate using the fake name Turtle. So Irma Linda, as fake Turtle, tells Nate that the only way to keep Z from unaliving him is to unalive her first.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

161.88

And Nate hears this plan and he's like... Aye. And so Nate and his new online friend, Fake Turtle, they research the layout of Z's house. Because their plan is to break into her house, unalive her, and make it all look like a robbery gone wrong. Now here's where it gets a little confusing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

180.891

After a couple of days of planning out this murder, I guess Nate goes to Irma Linda and he tells her everything. That he's somehow mixed up with the cartel and that they're after him and that he has to unalive this woman Z so that Z won't unalive him first.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

196.558

And Irma Linda's like, oh my god, WTF, knowing damn good and well she's secretly fake turtle and that she secretly fabricated this whole cartel story so that he would stop cheating on her. Regardless, Irma Linda tells him that she will help him carry out this murder. So around 3 a.m. that morning, Nate gets his pew-pew and he and Irma Linda get into the car and she drives him over to Z's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

222.613

So they get there and she waits there in the car while he sneaks up to the house and he enters through the unlocked back door. Now, I guess Nate must have made some noise while doing this because pretty quickly Z's husband wakes up. Because remember, Z's married with two kids. So husband wakes up and he comes out to see what's going on and suddenly, blam, blam, Nate unalives him right there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

247.907

And I guess Z hears these shots go off and she panics and she locks herself and her kids inside the bedroom. Oh, but this doesn't stop Nate. He goes to the bedroom, raises his pew-pew, and blam, blam, blam, he fires right through the door more than a dozen times. And unfortunately, this unalives them all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

26.718

Here's the thing about Nate though. Bro already has a girlfriend. His girlfriend is this woman, Irma Linda. And Nate and Irma Linda have been together for years. And now here's the thing about Z. Z is also in a relationship. She's actually married with two kids.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

267.804

And to make it worse, for some reason, he then takes the pew-pew and blam, blam, he unalives their two dogs. Then he messes up all their stuff, I guess to make it look like a robbery, and then he leaves and he and Irma Linda go home. So the next day, Z's husband doesn't show up for work and people notice and they call the police to go and do a welfare check.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

291.316

So that night, police go to the house for a welfare check and they're looking through the windows and they see the dogs. Oh, oh God. Dogs are dead. Two dead dogs. I need more units here. And then, of course, they go inside and they find the rest of the family. And so, bam, police start investigating and they search Z's phone and they find a ton of messages between her and Nate.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

315.309

And almost immediately, they figure out that these two were secretly smashing. The next day, police show up to Nate's work to question him. And they ask him to hand over his phone and he's like, uh, how about I bring you my phone later? How about this? How about I come see you guys later today? And of course, he denies being involved in any of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

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I gotta ask, do you have anything to do with this? But at the same time, police go and they talk to Irma Linda and they get her in the police car and they question her. And she plays completely dumb and she acts like she's just finding out that Nate was cheating on her. You didn't know what? That he was having an affair. Okay. When did you find that out, right now? I don't know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

380.782

Yeah. You wouldn't be covering for Nate at all? No, he was here. And so Nate and Irma Linda, they wait while police continue investigating them. But they know they're screwed and that they'll eventually be in prison for the crime they committed. So they're like, f*** it, let's skip town. And they flee and they drive from Illinois all the way down to Catoosa, Oklahoma.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

405.472

Meanwhile, police, they launch a nationwide manhunt looking for them. And pretty quickly, they're spotted shopping at a Walmart in Catoosa. And by the time they leave the store, police are on their way to confront them. But Nate and Irma Linda, they see them and boom, they jump into their car and they speed away and police chase after them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

426.485

And so they pull out onto the highway and this high speed chase goes on for a while, but then Nate loses control of the car and kaboom, he crashes into a median. And police pull up and they've got him surrounded. Car's on fire! Get out of the car! And if you zoom in, you can actually see his SUV here crashed up against the median. But Nate isn't about to give up so easily.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

45.063

And I don't know exactly how Irma Linda finds out, but eventually she discovers that Nate's been cheating on her with this woman at work, Z. And she is pissed. But for some reason, she doesn't want to dump his cheating ass. I mean, I guess that would be way too easy and reasonable. Instead, Irma Linda comes up with one of the wildest plans I've ever heard of to get rid of Z for good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

450.082

He knows he's caught, and he isn't sure what to do. So he does the only thing he can think of. He turns to Irma Linda, he points his pew-pew at her, and blam! He unalives her. Then he turns it on himself and blam! He unalives himself too. And at the end of it all, police investigate and they discover that Irma Linda was behind the whole fake cartel murder plot.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

475.274

But from what they found, it looks like poor Nate, he never figured it out. He actually died believing that the cartel was after him. It's wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

70.345

So first she gets online and she makes a bunch of fake social media profiles and she uses these fake profiles and secretly starts messaging Nate. And under these aliases, she tells him he's being targeted by the Mexican cartel and the Bulgarian cartel. And these cartels seem to know a lot about him. They know his name, a lot of his personal information, where he lives.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Tricked Her Boyfriend Into Murder - The Ermalinda Palomo story

93.244

And so Nate is like, what the f**k? He doesn't know how he got mixed into some real cartel shit, but after receiving tons of threats and messages from them, he starts to take all of this very seriously. And he's anxious as hell. And of course, he has no idea that it's really Irma Linda behind this whole thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

0.049

So this turd, he's trying to get internet famous by poisoning a bunch of people. Now the guy, he goes by the name Wolfie and he's 27 and Wolfie apparently doesn't have a lot going on in his life. And one day, I guess he decides, I'm going to be internet famous. So how does he plan to get internet famous?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

103.589

But whatever, Wolfie doesn't seem to care because he just keeps posting more and more of these stunts and he gets more and more followers and a lot of his videos start blowing up and some of them get millions of views. Like this one where he puts a mask on at night and pretends to bum rush an unsuspecting bystander. And it's not just these select videos that I'm showing you.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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Nearly every video he does is just him being a turd to random people. Like here he films himself tossing a cake over a mall balcony. And of course, when this big guy gets mad and he gets up to go after him, Wolfie runs away because why would he face the consequences of his actions? And here he is at some kind of bar knocking down someone's Jenga game.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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And if you slow down the footage, you can see the pieces falling here. And here he films himself putting a bungee cord around the front doors of a Goodwill store with a bunch of people inside it. No. You guys are locked in there forever. And here he sneaks into the back of a fast food restaurant and he throws a watermelon into the deep fryer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

171.384

And here it looks like he goes to a local overpass and sprays some pedestrians with a fire extinguisher. And one of the worst things he does, although not the worst thing he does in my opinion, is that he films this older guy at the laundromat and he waits for the guy to walk away. Then he goes up to the guy's machine and he throws raw bacon and some eggs into the dryer with the guy's clothes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

19.761

Well, he's not going to do TikTok dances and he's certainly not going to live stream himself playing Elden Ring. No, no, he's going to go the Johnny Somali route. He's going to make what we'll call comedy for the unemployed, a.k.a. he's going to film himself harassing people. And that is exactly what he does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

202.711

Which is not just unnecessarily mean, it's also really sad. Old man didn't deserve any of that, he's just trying to wash his khakis for work or whatever. But ol' Wolfie, he doesn't seem to care. Because at some point, he starts making decent money from this. He claims he's making anywhere from six to ten thousand dollars a month doing this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

221.462

I mean, that's a pretty good living for being an a**hole a few days a week. So bro is getting paid, his videos are doing well, and his social media is blowing up. And there just seems to be no real repercussions for him being a jerk to people for just a little bit of internet fame. Until... Now at this point in the story, Wolfie has made all kinds of videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

242.091

Messing with strangers, harassing fast food workers. And I'm only showing you some of them because, like, you know, you get it. He sucks. But one night, Wolfie gets an idea that's going to change all of that. He comes up with this plan to go into a local Walmart and film himself spraying some of the food with bug spray. And that's exactly what he does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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He goes into the store and he starts filming and he picks up a can of bug spray and he starts spraying it on the produce. Now bug spray is poison and this is considered a dangerous act and I'm tired of my videos getting removed so again I'm not going to show you the whole thing but I will show you some screenshots.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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So here he sprays the bananas, he sprays the yams, he sprays the lemons, he sprays the apples, the tomatoes, and the worst for me is when he goes over to the prepared foods and he sprays some rotisserie chickens. And then, of course, he just leaves. And I guess he goes home and he posts the video. And immediately, people who see it are pissed off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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From what I understand, even his own audience is like, what the f***, bro? People eat that. And so Wolfie, I guess he tries to cover his ass. And so he goes back into the Walmart and he puts everything he sprayed into a shopping cart. And he claims that he threw it all away. I mean, you could see it here in the caption in the video. He says, threw them all away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

321.147

Which, I don't know if he really did buy all that food and throw it away, but I kind of don't care. I don't think that necessarily makes the situation better. Like, he sprayed the entire area with basically a poison. And now Walmart employees need to sanitize that whole area so that future food they put there doesn't get bug spray on it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

339.843

Anyway then I guess still trying to cover his ass he allegedly tries to delete that video but unfortunately for him it's too late. People have already copied it and saved it and those copies start blowing the up and this story starts spreading and it makes the news and people see it and they're disgusted and rightfully so. So they start reporting him to the local police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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and through his social media pretty quickly police figure out who he is and they reach out to him and he ends up turning himself in and so bam here's his mugshot and also here's a little footage of him in court if you want to see that and he's charged with introducing poison which is a felony he's also charged with criminal damage endangerment and theft and by the way it was so nice of him to document all the evidence prosecution is going to use against him later in court

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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He films himself doing all kinds of awful stunts, like going into a restaurant and slapping some girl's food onto the floor and then running away. Yeah, he's that kind of influencer. And for some reason, people like to watch this junk, so his videos like this perform really well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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Like, I'm sure they appreciate him getting it all on video for them, including pointing the camera at his own face every time. Now, separately from all that, he's also in trouble for burglarizing this local donut shop at some point. Bro is allergic to being a decent person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

409.76

Now, I'm gonna say something you're not gonna wanna hear, but we've been seeing videos like this on the internet for over a decade now, maybe longer. where an influencer will build up this whole business model of harassing strangers in public. And we've seen them be successful at it. And unfortunately, I hate to say it, but I don't think it's going away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

428.331

Like, Wolfie, he might go away, and Johnny Somali, he might go away, but terrible internet pranksters as a whole, I don't see an end to it. Like, we're going to be like 70 years old, like, ah, these damn internet pranksters, get off my lawn. So even if we get rid of Wolfie, you know a copycat will pop up sometime next month. Womp womp. But there is some good news, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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I can no longer find his TikTok account, so I assume TikTok did the right thing and they banned him once this story blew up. But as of right now, his Instagram account is still up. Hopefully Meta does the right thing and bans him too. But, you know, no one expects much out of Meta.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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Also, I'm sorry, but Bro is 27 years old, which 27 is not old, but it's way too old to be an internet prankster troll. Bro is not a troll. He's just a bum. Anyway, I'm not trying to be rude. I just hope he learns something from all this while he sits in jail. Because, like, this is not cool.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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Not only that, he also gets into doing stunts that are actually pretty dangerous, like this one where he films himself carrying a bag of ice into what looks like a jack-in-the-box. And Wolfie just walks back into the kitchen, and with all the employees watching, he suddenly just dumps the bag of ice into the deep fryer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

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Which I'm not gonna show you the whole thing because I don't want my video getting flagged for dangerous acts, but he dumps the ice into the deep fryer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Worst Guy On TikTok - The Wolfie Kahletti story

83.532

Now, ice being dumped into a deep fryer may not seem like a big deal, but when you do that, when you throw ice into a deep fryer, it creates a sudden reaction that causes hot oil to bubble over and then the oil gets everywhere and it can easily cause a fire. Not to mention that this older gentleman here is probably going to have to spend the rest of the night cleaning that mess up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

0.149

So this woman, let's call her Doocy. And Doocy has a problem. She's a little lonely. I mean, she's single. She's in her 20s living in Bristol, England, and she wants to date. So one day she gets on Tinder and she's swiping around looking for a potential match. And that is when, boom, she matches with this guy, Liam. And she thinks Liam is foint.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

108.469

Doocy reaches down into the toilet bowl and she grabs her turd, wraps it up in toilet paper, and she quickly throws it out the window. Here's the thing about this window though. This isn't no regular window. It's actually a double window with multiple panes of glass. So her turd flies through the first window, but then it's stopped by the glass on the second window.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

132.173

And it slides all the way down and it falls into a crack between both windows. And of course, Doocy starts freaking out. She's like, what the fuck? She didn't realize the window doesn't open to the outside. So now her poop is in plain sight at the bottom of this double window situation. Here's actually what the inside of the window gap normally looks like.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

152.369

So now her turd would be resting way deep down in this crack here. And so Ducey's like, oh bloody hell, now what's she gonna do? She can't just leave it there in between these two windows. I mean, Liam will eventually see it or smell it. And so she decides the best thing to do is to tell him the truth.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

171.46

And so she leaves the bathroom, and I assume she washed her hands, but she leaves the bathroom, she goes to Liam, who is still on the couch, and she tells him exactly what happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

181.107

So like I dropped a load in your toilet and I accidentally clogged it up and I tried to scoop it out and throw it out the window but I didn't know you have a double window and the poop slid down and got stuck between the cracks and I don't know how to get it out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

190.83

And Liam, he seems like a nice guy and he doesn't want to make her feel bad about it so he's like, no worries, we'll just fish it out and throw it in the bin, no problem. But now they have to access the window gap by going outside and opening the window from the outside. So they go outside and that is when they discover the outside window is completely sealed shut. Like it doesn't open at all.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

213.86

So Ducey's turd wrapped in toilet paper is trapped and it's on display for anyone walking by to see. Here's actually a photo of it and if you zoom in you can kind of see it right there wrapped in toilet paper. And so Liam's like, okay, no big deal. I'll just break the window and we'll get the dookie out that way. But no, Doocy actually has a better idea. She just happens to be an amateur gymnast.

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Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

23.385

So Liam and Ducey, they chat a little, they connect, and soon they make plans to go out on a date. And so they go out on this date, and they end up meeting at this well-known chicken place, and they're having a good time, and at the end of the date, Liam and Ducey, they're really feeling each other.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

240.313

No, like really, she's an amateur gymnast. And she thinks maybe she can climb up and reach down and grab it out somehow. So she and Liam they go back to his bathroom and she climbs up and puts her head and shoulders into the shaft and she tries but she can't quite reach the poop.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

259.683

So then Liam gives her a little boost and he's holding her legs as she dives deeper down to the bottom and there she finally grabs it and she passes it up to Liam and he gets it and he throws it away. Boom. Problem solved. Everyone's happy. Until again. When Ducey moves to get out of the crevice, she's unfortunately stuck upside down. Like literally upside down.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

286.382

And Liam, he tries to help her, but he can't get her out. Like she is seriously stuck in there. So to top off this first date that's clearly going so well, Liam has to call the fire department. So Liam calls the fire department and he's like, my date got stuck in the shaft trying to get out her. Uh, her phone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

307.335

Then, sometime later, a whole ass fire brigade shows up, and they all have to cram in the bathroom so that they can rescue Doocy, and this is an actual photo of all of them doing that. And if you think that's embarrassing, someone actually took a picture of her stuck in the window.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

327.561

Now, lucky for her, the firemen do fish her out and she's physically okay, although this might be the worst first date story I've ever heard. And in case you were wondering, like I said, Liam's a nice guy and he and Deucy did end up going out a couple more times on a couple more dates, but ultimately they weren't a match and they did not end up together. Wow, dumbest story we've ever done.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

39.178

So he invites her back to his place to watch a movie, and maybe, I don't know, maybe smash a little, I don't know. And she's like... Aight. And so they go back to Liam's place, and he opens a bottle of wine, and they chill, and they start watching a movie. And so far, everything seems to be going great. But then, about an hour in, Deucy gets an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

61.89

So she's like, uh, yeah, I'm gonna hit up the bathroom real quick. And so, Deucy gets up to go to the bathroom, and she goes in there and she ends up dropping a whole ass deuce in Liam's toilet. But whatever, at least she finally feels better and she can get back to her date. Until... When Ducey's done using the toilet, she goes to flush and the toilet won't flush. I guess she clogged it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Worst First Date In History - The Poop Story

86.899

And so she low-key panics. I mean, this date is going well and she stopped up his toilet? What is he gonna think? This is gonna ruin the whole date. And she doesn't know what to do. But then she notices the bathroom window and she gets an idea. She's like, what if I just scoop it out of the toilet and throw it out the window? And so that's what she does.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

0.169

Is your grandma capable of murder? Are you sure about that? So this woman, let's call her grandma. And grandma has a problem. She has quite a gambling addiction. Like she's in and out of local casinos, losing a ton of money. From what I read, she's lost a minimum of a hundred grand playing slot machines, which is all her money. So she's in a lot of debt.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

119.653

So they keep drinking and chatting and eventually they're like best friends. Like one night they hang out at Pam's condo that she rented, the next night they go out to a brewery, and on one of those nights, Grandma goes back to Pam's condo with her, and once they're alone, she pulls out her pew-pew that she brought, and blam, blam, she shoots Pam, unaliving her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

141.023

The next morning, Grandma goes back to Pam's condo, and she calls the front desk from there, and she pretends to be Pam, and she asks them to extend her stay for a few nights, and this is going to buy her a little time to get away. Then she combs through all of Pam's stuff, taking any clothes she likes, cash, credit cards, Pam's ID, and she loads everything into Pam's car and steals her car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

163.897

And they actually got security footage of that. And from there, she drives from Florida all the way over to Texas, South Padre Island. And of course, she stops at a bunch of casinos on the way, because, you know, she's got to hit up those slots. Regardless, she ends up on South Padre Island. And there, Grandma's on a mission to find another lookalike to steal their identity again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

185.193

And pretty quickly, she finds one. She's at a local restaurant and she spots her next target. This woman, Bernadette. And so Grandma approaches her and they start chatting and drinking and hitting it off. And they have so much in common, what a coinkydink! And just like Pam, Bernadette is just happy to have made a new friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

204.847

And so she and grandma, they get drinks the next night and grandma stays over at Bernadette's. And the next morning they have breakfast together and then they make plans to meet up again in a couple of nights for dinner. But shady ass grandma is about to unalive her too. But here's what Grandma doesn't know, though.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

222.138

Back in Minnesota, Grandpa's employees and coworkers at the worm farm, they hadn't heard from him in a while. So police end up going to his house to do a welfare check, and they find his body. Now, separately from that, in Florida, at the hotel, police find Pam's body. Now, at this point, they know these two murders are connected.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

23.985

Now, Grandma is married to this man, who we'll just call Grandpa. And one day, she and Grandpa are at home, and I guess she needs more money, or maybe she's just ashamed to tell Grandpa that she's in so much debt from gambling, it isn't really clear. But Grandma suddenly gets a pew-pew, and blam, blam, she unalives Grandpa.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

243.49

They also know that Grandma is the one who did it, because she used the same pew-pew in both murders. So they launch a nationwide manhunt looking for her. Now, you know how Grandma really likes to go to casinos? Well, all those casinos she gambles at, they all have tons of security cameras.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

261.354

so police are able to get CCTV footage of her, plus her banking activity, and this helps them track her down to South Padre Island. Meanwhile, this story is getting tons of news coverage.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

274.247

Authorities say that Lois Reese may be targeting women who look like her so that she can steal their identity.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

280.253

And they start posting Grandma's photo all over the news. So right before she's supposed to meet up with Bernadette so she can unalive her, Grandma's sitting at a local bar having a drink. And there, the manager of a restaurant next door to the bar recognizes her from her picture being on the news and they call police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

299.742

Minutes later, US Marshals along with the local police, they swoop in and they surround her and bam, they finally arrest her. This is actually security footage of her being arrested at the bar, but it's kind of hard to make out. Regardless, here's her mugshot. And grandma ends up pleading guilty and she gets two life sentences. Grandma's be crazy sometimes.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

45.211

Then she goes to the employees of the worm farm that they own and she tells them that grandpa won't be coming into work for a while because he's been feeling sick. Now this is supposed to buy her some time before people start getting suspicious. Then she continues living in her home while grandpa's body is there decomposing. for a whole ass 11 days.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

68.676

Then grandma embezzles about 10 grand from grandpa's business account and she flees, driving away in his Escalade. So now grandma's on the run, but she's a gambling addict. So as she drives from Minnesota to Florida, along the way, she's stopping at casino after casino. And as she's driving, she comes up with this crazy plan to escape the law. She's gonna find someone who looks

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Grandma is a Murderer - The Lois Riess story

95.117

kind of like her, unalive them, and steal their identity. Now eventually grandma arrives in Fort Myers, Florida and there she decides to go to a local bar and at the bar she spots a woman who kind of looks like her, kind of. This woman, Pam. And grandma sits down and she orders a drink and she strikes up a conversation with Pam and she and Pam really hit it off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

0.069

So this doctor is about to unalive someone over some negative online reviews. Allegedly. Now the doctor's name is Dr. Tampa Bay. And Dr. Tampa Bay, he's a plastic surgeon. He's trying to build a name for himself, posting videos of himself on YouTube and on his Instagram account.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

112.2

Like, how could his old company mess him over like this? He used to have such a good reputation and bad reviews online could destroy his career. And also, screw that lawyer Steven they hired. And at some point, Dr. Tampa Bay has had enough. And he allegedly comes up with this insane plan to get rid of this lawyer Steven for good.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

132.972

First, he goes and he buys a pickup truck with cash, and he gets a license plate device that allows you to change the plate numbers with the touch of a button. And he also doesn't register the truck. Then he gathers a bunch of supplies, a cart, a blanket, trash bags, and most importantly, a syringe containing a paralyzing drug.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

152.549

And then about a week before he's scheduled to do a virtual hearing with Stephen, he drives over to Stephen's law firm. And then he goes inside and he hides inside a utility closet there and he waits. And supposedly he's waiting for Stephen to walk by on his way to the restroom and he's going to follow him into the restroom and unalive him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

17.053

Hi, Instagrammers. I just wanted to let you all know we hit 4,000 followers last night, which is awesome.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

172.924

But while he's hiding there, boom, someone opens the utility closet door and sees him. And Dr. Tampa Bay says some bullshit like, uh, I was just fixing a power outage. And then he leaves. And the employee reports it to the police. But unfortunately, nothing comes of it. And no one recognizes that it's Dr. Tampa Bay. Oh, but Dr. Tampa Bay's not done. He's going to try again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

196.322

On the day his virtual hearing with Stephen is scheduled, Dr. Tampa Bay does the same thing. He drives over to Stephen's law firm, he hides in the utility closet again, and he waits for Stephen to walk by. Meanwhile, Stephen's down the hall working in his office and eventually he leaves his desk to go to the restroom. So he walks by that utility closet and Dr. Tampa Bay sees him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

219.1

And when Stephen gets into the restroom, Dr. Tampa Bay follows him in. Then, boom, he pulls out a syringe and he stabs Stephen with it. Now this syringe is filled with a paralyzing drug called succinylcholine, which paralyzes your whole body while you're still wide awake. And it only takes about 60 seconds to start working.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

22.614

And bro has a pretty good reputation with his patients and his colleagues. But one day all that changes because one of his patients posts a bad review of him online and Dr. Tampa Bay is like, what the fuck? And then he gets another and another and another and it happens again and again and he keeps getting more bad reviews.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

239.357

So poor Steven, his body becomes completely paralyzed, but he's still very wide awake during this whole thing. And then, and I'm not sure exactly how he does it, but while Steven is paralyzed, Dr. Tampa Bay allegedly unalives him right there in the restroom.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

257.205

Then Dr. Tampa Bay cleans the whole place up with bleach and next he gets his cart from the back of his truck and he puts Steven's body in it and he throws a blanket over it to hide it. And he pulls the cart with Steven's body in it out the front door of the law firm and he loads it into the back of his pickup truck.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

274.443

And it's actually amazing that no one at the law firm noticed or heard anything suspicious. Like it seems like that fight in the restroom would have been really loud. But anyway, now at this point, Dr. Tampa Bay and Steven are scheduled to do that virtual hearing via phone. So Dr. Tampa Bay stops what he's doing and he signs into the virtual hearing using his phone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

294.271

I guess this is to give himself an alibi like, oh, I couldn't have unalived anyone. I was on the phone in that virtual hearing the whole time. But anyway, Stephen obviously doesn't make it to the virtual hearing because, you know, he's no longer alive. While Dr. Tampa Bay waits on the phone for the hearing to start. But obviously it can't start because Stephen's not there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

312.981

So eventually he hangs up and he leaves the law firm parking lot with Stephen's body in the back of his truck. And what he does with Stephen's body after that, we actually don't know because the body is never found. And if you're like, Ray, this brutal murder seems extreme for a lawsuit over 15 grand and a dispute over some bad reviews online, then you'd be right.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

334.578

I mean, this whole motive is absurd and it still doesn't make sense to me and I studied the hell out of this case. Now, inside the law firm, I guess Stephen's boss notices he didn't make that hearing and that he hasn't been in his office for a couple of hours. So he goes to check the restroom and as soon as he steps in, boom, he's hit with an overwhelming smell of bleach.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

355.521

Plus, he notices some sprinkles of what looks like blood. So Boss is like, well, this is weird, and he calls the police. Later, police show up and they search the whole building, but no sign of Steven. Then they check the surveillance cameras, still no sign of Steven, no sign that Steven ever even left the building.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

374.102

The only thing they really find is footage of some strange person leaving the place with a cart full of something that looks like it could be a body, but who knows. And they do see the strange person drive away in his truck. Plus, they find one lone fingerprint on the restroom door. And as police investigate further, they're told about some of the past arguments that Stephen and Dr. Tampa Bay had.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

400.104

And they're told that a few weeks before, some strange guy was seen hiding in the utility closet. And police, they start piecing all of this evidence together and suddenly they have a suspect, Dr. Tampa Bay. And so bam, they get a warrant and they go and search his house. And there they find the truck seen in the security footage parked in his garage. Plus there's blood in the truck bed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

425.988

Not to mention that one lone fingerprint they found on the restroom door, it just happens to be Dr. Tampa Bay's. And later they search his other car and they find a lot of stuff, including that paralyzing drug that was used on Steven. And so bam, they arrest Dr. Tampa Bay. Here's his mugshot. And they throw him in jail and they charge him with first degree murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

43.508

So he looks into it and allegedly some of his patients are upset and it has to do with improper billing. But it's not actually his fault. He doesn't do the billing. It's the fault of the plastic surgery institute he works for. But it kind of doesn't matter because bad reviews like this can ruin a doctor's career. So Dr. Tampa Bay gets pissed off. And he's like, f*** this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

450.737

Now, just to be clear, this story is told from the prosecution's perspective. So it's all alleged. Dr. Tampa Bay, he's in jail, but he hasn't been to trial yet. So he hasn't actually been found guilty. But this will be an interesting trial because the circumstantial evidence against Dr. Tampa Bay, it's not looking good for him. But at the same time, they never found Stephen's body.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

472.796

And it's hard to convict someone for murder when there is no body. But the trial, it's actually later in 2025, and we'll see how it turns out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

66.363

And he not only leaves and starts his own practice, but he sues the old plastic surgery institute for putting his career and his reputation in jeopardy. And he sues them for like $15,000. But in this lawsuit representing the other side is this lawyer, Steven. And Steven, he's a nice guy and he's apparently a good attorney.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Is This Plastic Surgeon Evil? - The Dr. Tomasz Kosowski story

89.414

But as this lawsuit progresses, Dr. Tampa Bay starts to hate Steven, like really hate him. Apparently they're constantly getting into it. Like at one meeting, they're allegedly arguing with each other. And then Dr. Tampa Bay confronts Steven in the law firm bathroom and calls him a scumbag. And as time passes, Dr. Tampa Bay gets more and more upset over all of this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

0.089

So this influencer, one of her fans found out where she lives, went to her house, and tried to set the place on fire. Now her name is JessFoxy, and she's a Twitch streamer, she plays Fortnite, and she's apparently some kind of sniper queen. And JessFoxy actually has quite a few fans, and some of those fans are pretty crazy. Specifically this fan. His name's Farhan.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

114.085

But anyway, once he's in Ohio, he gets a rental car and he drives it to Home Depot and he buys a ceramic pot. Then he goes back to his Airbnb and he uses all these supplies to essentially create like a giant Roman candle. Then around 11 p.m., he drives over to Jess Foxy's house and there he sees his target, her car that's parked right out front.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

137.967

So Farhan just casually walks up and he's in her driveway and he walks up to the car like he's trying to scope it out. And this is actually footage of him on JustFoxy's home security camera.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

148.25

A few hours later, Farhan comes back with all his supplies and he walks up to JustFoxy's car and he puts a little box shaped brick on the hood and then he puts that ceramic pot he bought on top of the little box. Then he lights the fuse and he walks away. which I can't show you because it's arson and I'm tired of my videos getting removed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

169.641

But this sets Jess Foxy's car ablaze and it goes up in flames. Now, I don't know if this was meant to scare Jess Foxy or like teach her a lesson or what, but she's not even home. She's actually on vacation, probably like chilling on a beach somewhere spending all that money he donated to her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

186.485

However, JustFoxy's mom is home and mom looks out the window and she sees JustFoxy's car on fire and she's like, holy and she calls 911. And by this point, the fire starts spreading to the fence and to the side of the house as well. Luckily, firefighters arrive and they put out the fire before it can seriously damage the house. But unfortunately, just Foxy's car is beyond saving.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

211.311

Here's some footage of the aftermath and you can see it's all messed up. Meanwhile, police show up to the scene and I guess mom shows them the security footage and they see this strange guy on camera lighting this fire. And so they start walking around the neighborhood looking for any sign of this guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

228.792

And some of them happen to walk around the corner and bam, there's a random car parked on the side of the road. And in that car is Farhan. And so the officers go up to it and they knock on his window.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

23.127

And Farhan loves watching JessFoxy on Twitch. He's watched her for years, and over time, he appears to be falling in love with her. Like sometimes he messages her in the chat, and sometimes he donates to her stream, like a lot of fans do on Twitch. In fact, he apparently donates over $2,000 to her. And I don't know if he does it all at once or little by little, but $2,000 is a lot of money.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

250.777

And so Farhan tells him, ah, he's just in town for a bit visiting a friend and that he just pulled off to the side of the road because he's tired and needed to sleep. And the officer is already suspicious.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

276.659

So yeah, they're not buying his story at all. They know something's up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

326.497

But police still aren't buying it. So they put him in their car while they bring in the canine unit. And I guess the canine unit is going to try to track the scent from the crime scene and see if it leads to Farhan's car. And so police give him one more chance to be honest with them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

352.366

No. I promise you it's not. Oh, but it does. Of course, the canines track the scent right to his car. So at this point, police have had enough, and they pull up that security footage, and they confront Farhan with it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

399.263

No, that is not me. Man, I don't know what to tell you. That's just not me. Sure it's not, Farhan. So anyway, bam, police arrest him. Here's his mugshot. Meanwhile, not even 10 feet away from Farhan's car, police find a bag stashed under a pine tree. And in the bag is the hat, mask, and latex gloves that he was wearing in the video.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

420.33

So just to be clear, this fool committed arson and then drove literally just around the corner and he stashed the evidence a few feet away from where he was hiding. How did he ever expect this to work out for him? Like think about that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

435.182

If he had driven somewhere else further away, like any other neighborhood, like somewhere that wasn't walking distance from the crime scene, he probably would have gotten away with it. What was he thinking? Like, I don't know, I've never stalked anyone and tried to set their possessions on fire. That seems more like your thing. So you tell me, what was he thinking?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

455.694

But anyway, so he's charged with aggravated arson, breaking and entering, and possession of criminal tools. And eventually he takes a plea deal and he's sentenced to 46 months in prison. And this actually happened over a year ago, but Midwest Safety just released the body cam footage, so that's why everyone's talking about it now. So yeah, shout out to Twitch, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

46.835

And it seems like he's waiting for her to reach out to him to profess her gratitude or her undying love or whatever, but of course, she never does, nor should she. Regardless, he keeps showing up to her streams, hoping she'll notice him. Even though, at this point, thousands of other people are also tuning in to watch her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

475.862

And a huge shout out to Leonardo.ai for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.ai.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

66.5

And I don't know exactly when this happens, but at some point, the worst thing that could happen to Farhan happens to him. He discovers that just Foxy has a boyfriend. And Farhan is devastated. He feels so betrayed. I mean, he sent her all that money. How could she do this to him? And the more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Twitch Streamer Has a Stalker - The JustFoxii story

88.788

And so he comes up with this insane plan to hurt her just like she hurt him. So first he looks her up and finds out exactly where she lives. Then he packs some sparklers and a bag of thermite, which is a powder used to make fireworks. Then he takes a flight from New York all the way over to Ohio. And I don't know how he got the thermite past TSA, but he supposedly did.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

0.089

So this TikToker is in big trouble. He goes by the name Icy. And Icy loves to flex on TikTok. Like here he is showing that his jewelry's real. Here he is showing off his car, showing off his house, showing off his outfit, I guess. I mean, you get it. He's that kind of influencer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

130.04

Put both of your hands out the window, camera. I'll with you. I don't know who I am.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

135.745

So I guess bro thinks he's too TikTok famous to get arrested. So anyway, they arrest him because, you know, it's against the law to pistol whip someone. And they search his car and they find his pew pew. And of course, Icy denies he did anything wrong. And so he's in the back of the police car and he's on the phone with his girlfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

163.485

And I know you're like, Ray, wait, he has a girlfriend? Yes, he has a girlfriend. But he's on the phone with her and police are like, you're being arrested. You can't be on your phone. And they take it from him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

17.561

But one day, Icy's out driving his pink Mercedes and he's in traffic and he gets into some kind of road rage incident with a couple of other people in other cars, particularly with this guy. who we'll just call Joe, because I don't know his real name.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

187.358

And then, Icy starts with the whole, but I'm internet famous thing again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And Icy continues to argue that he's the victim here and that all of this is the result of his online fame.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And by the way, I don't know where he got that 58 million followers number because his TikTok account doesn't show anywhere near that. But whatever, who's counting? So anyway, they get him to the station and he keeps resisting arrest and trying to flex at the same time.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And so anyway, after all that, Icy's finally arrested. Bam, here's his mugshot. And he spends a couple of days in jail and then he gets bailed out. Now, at this point, Icy could lay low. He could keep his head down, try not to make any noise or cause any trouble. Oh, but that's not what he does. He immediately gets on TikTok and he starts spinning his own version of the story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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So Joe and his buddy, they're in his pickup truck, stuck in this traffic jam, and Icy, he's out of his car, he's yelling at someone else, and Joe calls out to him like, dude, just get back in your car. And Icy turns to Joe like, hey, don't f*** with me, I have a pew-pew. And then Icy throws his whole ass drink at Joe. So Joe and his friend, they get out of the truck, and they are pissed.

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This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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Like showing off his jewelry and showing off another Mercedes I guess he owns. Showing off a bunch of Louis Vuitton stuff he bought. Buying his girlfriend an expensive purse. And generally just showing off stacks of cash. Now, where did a guy like Icy get all this disposable income to buy all this stuff? Honestly, I don't know. But my guess is he doesn't have all this money to spend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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My guess is he's in debt, living off credit cards, stuff like that. No one with any real wealth shows off stacks of cash like that. It's a dead giveaway that he's low-key not managing his finances well and probably living in debt. Anyway, eventually his trial gets postponed. So in the meantime, bro is right back to living his best life. Until Icy gets in trouble again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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Allegedly, he gets into it with someone else and I guess he ends up keying that person's car or something? I'm not really sure. And police find out and his bond is revoked and bam, he's arrested again. And before he goes back to jail for a long time, he does whippets while live streaming on TikTok, I guess to send himself off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And so he sits in jail and a year later his trial finally happens and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to a total of five years in prison. And since then his girlfriend, I guess she's now his wife because like I guess they got married, but she has completely taken over his TikTok. Like it looks like she's running all his social media now.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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Also, to top it all off, Icy's mom, like his biological mother, she also makes TikToks. And sometimes she gets on and talks about what a turd he is. Are you a parent and have you raised an a**hole? Because I am and apparently that is exactly what I did. That's just amazing. Good luck to all of them.

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This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And Icy, instead of getting in his car and driving away like a decent human being, instead he gets into the glove compartment and pulls out a pew-pew and he points it right at them. And Joe and his friend are like, okay bro, chill! And they turn around and go back to their car. And when they do, POW! Icy pistol whips Joe in the back of the head with his pew-pew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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So then Joe gets back into his truck and he and his friend drive away. And Icy gets in his car and he chases them. And you can see footage of it here. And he ends up swerving around them and cutting them off. And yeah, and you can see he's clearly the aggressor. And Joe, he's still freaked out. So he calls 911.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Entitled TikTok Star is in Prison Now - The Icy Wyatt story

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And then Icy calls 911 and he tells a different story. Minutes later, police arrive and they talk to Joe, but Icy's already fled the scene. Like, he's gone. Later that night, police roll up to Icy's house looking for him. And he just happens to be pulling out of his driveway. So, bam, police surround him with their pew-pews pointed right at him. And Icy's like, don't you know who I am?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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So this adult dancer is about to make some false accusations against some guys and essentially try and ruin their lives. Now let's call her Precious because that's her stage name. And Precious is 27, she's a college student, and Precious is also an adult dancer at a local gentleman's club.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And they're all angry and they're like, boo, we want our money back. Then a few minutes later, things escalate. And Precious and Kim are yelling at some of the guys to leave them alone. Because at this point, Kim, she just wants to leave. But unfortunately, some of the guys don't want to pay them. They want their money back because the girls didn't finish the show.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And so finally, the guys are like, all right, we'll just pay you $100. Just leave. And so they agree. They agree to that. Then Kim goes out to her car to change her clothes while Precious is still so wasted that she passes out in the house. So then Kim's got to go back in the house to get Precious and she puts her wasted ass in the car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Then she goes back in the house again to get Precious's bag because I guess she left her bag in there. And when Kim gets back to the car, Precious is now up and awake, walking around, stumbling, topless, yelling at everyone and fighting with a bunch of the guys. But eventually, Kim gets Precious into the car and they leave. But while in the car, Precious's drunk ass passes out again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And Kim is like, damn it, I don't know where this woman lives. I don't even know her real name. Where do I even take her? Because remember, they didn't know each other before this party. And so Kim has to pull over to a grocery store parking lot and she finds a security guard and she asks her to call the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And so then police show up and they take Precious to the hospital for detox because she's so wasted. Later, at the hospital, she's awake now and they're processing her and they're asking her what happened and they ask her if she was sexually assaulted earlier that night. I believe that's a standard question they ask everyone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And one day in 2006, Precious gets hired to perform at a local college party for a bunch of the school's athletes. And so she gets to the party and there are like 50 college bros there. And Precious, she likes to party herself. In fact, she's already intoxicated by the time she gets there. I guess she was drinking and taking prescription muscle relaxers.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And for whatever reason, we still don't really know why, Precious says yes. And she tells them this whole story about how some of the lacrosse guys grabbed her and pulled her out of Kim's car and dragged her into the bathroom and SA'd her. And holy sh**, kaboom, that kicks off this whole criminal investigation and suddenly the police are involved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And Precious, she just keeps going with the story. She points the finger at three specific guys at the party who she says did it. And so, bam, police arrest two of them. Here's one guy's mugshot. Here's another guy's mugshot. And the third guy later turns himself in voluntarily. And so, this story blows up. It's all over the news, nationwide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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I mean, three privileged, elitist Duke Lacrosse players essayed a poor, helpless, exotic dancer's single mother? How could they? But then, it gets crazier because the district attorney gets involved. This guy, Nifong. And Nifong decides that he's gonna prosecute this case and send these Duke boys to prison for a long time.

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False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Not only that, it's an election year for him and he's up for re-election and he knows this is now a very high profile case as the whole country is watching. So he plans to leverage all this media attention he's about to get and win his re-election. And so boom, immediately he's out there talking to reporters, publicly dragging these Duke boys names through the mud.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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and saying that he has no doubt that they're guilty. In fact, in his first week on the case, he does over 50 interviews with news media calling these Duke boys out. And around the same time, students on Duke campus are holding big anti-SA rallies and calling out the lacrosse team, sometimes by name. Not only that, Duke University themselves have to respond and take action.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And they eventually ban the three accused lacrosse players from campus. Like they straight up just kicked them out of school over this. Then they even fired the lacrosse coach for some reason. Bro wasn't even at the party. And then also the university suspends the entire season of lacrosse for everyone. Like they just straight up canceled it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Meanwhile, the three accused Duke boys get their DNA tested to see if it matches DNA found on Precious that night. And guess what? It's not a match. In fact, DNA found on her doesn't match any of the 40 players that were at the party that night. And so the lab gives these DNA test results to Nifong, the district attorney. Now this should be the end of the case right then and there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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The DNA says the boys didn't do it. But instead of submitting this to the court or to the defense, Nifong withholds it. He withholds the evidence. Then he orders a second DNA test to see if he can get different results, results more in his favor. But no, the second test shows the same thing. The DNA doesn't match any of the lacrosse players.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And so then Nifong asked the director in charge of the report to leave some of that information off the lab report. And the director agrees to do it. In fact, Nifong withholds all kinds of evidence from the defense, which attorneys are not allowed to do. And to make it worse, Precious's story about what happened that night keeps changing. It changes dramatically each time she tells it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Now, I guess the guys throwing the party had hired two dancers. Because there's also another stripper there. Her name's Kim. And Kim and Precious, they don't know each other. And so anyway, so the guys pay them $400 each, and Kim and Precious start performing for them, like putting on their little show. And so, who are these guys who are throwing this party?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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While the three accused Duke boys, on the other hand, They have solid alibis, as two of them had left the party that night before the alleged essay had even occurred. So none of this looks good for Precious or Nifong's case. Anyway, eventually the defense team catches on that Nifong's been withholding and tampering with evidence, and so they start accusing him of prosecutorial misconduct.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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And so then, Nifong has no choice, and he has to go and drop the charges against all three lacrosse boys, and the boys are finally fully exonerated. Then, Nifong, because he intentionally withheld evidence from the court and other acts of fraud, he gets disbarred, so he's no longer allowed to practice law. He also later gets removed from office over all this, so he's no longer district attorney.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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He also gets found in contempt of court, and he gets sentenced to one day in jail. While the Duke boys, they file a lawsuit and sue Duke University over the way they handled this. And the university ends up settling with them out of court for a large amount of money. Allegedly, each of the accused boys got $20 million each. But that's just alleged because we don't actually know the amount.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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It was never publicly disclosed. While Precious, who made the false allegations in the first place, nothing happens to her. No legal punishment, no jail time, she just moves on with her life. Like later, she goes on to graduate college, she writes a book, and in that book, she still maintains that she was essayed that night.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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But whatever the case, there are no consequences for her, and she doesn't see any prison time. Until... Over four years go by, and it's now 2011. And Precious, she's still out there, living her life. And one night, she's at her apartment, and she and her boyfriend get into a fight. Like a really bad fight. And she ends up stabbing him with a kitchen knife. And so, bam, she gets arrested.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Here's her mugshot. Ten days later, in the hospital, her boyfriend, unfortunately, dies. And so she gets convicted of second degree murder and she's sentenced to 17 years in prison. Then in 2024, Precious does an interview from prison where she finally admits that she lied about the whole lacrosse team essay thing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn't and that was wrong. That is insane.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Well, they're the lacrosse team of Duke University. And they're drunk, and they're rowdy, and they're really just out to have a good time. Meanwhile, Precious is so wasted off the alcohol and pills that she falls over in the middle of the performance. And the rowdy college guys are like, boo, that's so lame.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

False Accusations Destroyed Them - The Duke Lacrosse / Crystal Mangum story

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Then one of the guys grabs a broomstick and he holds it up and he's like, one of y'all ladies should use this as a sex toy. And of course the dancers are repulsed by this and they stop dancing. And Kim is like, nah, this show's over. And they walk away and they go into one of the nearby bathrooms. And so the lacrosse guys are like, where did the strippers go?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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So this is Wanda, and Wanda will do anything to be a cheerleader. Maybe even unalive someone.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Regardless, Shauna's mom, Wanda, keeps her eyes on her ultimate goal. She wants to officially get Shauna onto the school's cheerleading squad, and she'll do anything to make that happen. So in 1989, Wanda puts a plan into motion. See Shauna, she's now in the seventh grade. She's 11 and she's old enough to try out for the cheer squad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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So Wanda transfers her out of her private school to a local public junior high so that she can try out. And at that new school, there's two open spots and only one other girl trying out. So Shauna is guaranteed to make the team. I mean, this is great for them. But then, guess who suddenly wants to try out for that team as well? Shauna's friend, Amber.

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This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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But here's the absolute dumbest part of this whole story. I guess at this school, or maybe in this school district, to make the cheer team, you don't audition. You actually get voted in by the students at the school. So you have to campaign and put up flyers and get the students to vote for you. Which is absurd because it should be based on skill, but like, whatever.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Regardless, both girls campaign for a spot on the team and they try to get the other students to vote for them. And kaboom, Shauna doesn't win. So she doesn't get a spot. And her mom, Wanda, is absolutely devastated and pissed off. And she complains to the other parents and she goes to the school board and complains to them. She threatens to get a lawyer like, it's not fair, I'll sue you.

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This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And of course, Amber makes the team with no problem. I mean, she's popular and people like her. And as time goes on, Amber still outshines Shauna. I mean, she gets voted as the most spirited in the class in the school yearbook. She becomes the class president while Shauna only gets voted vice president.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And a whole year passes and the girls are now in the eighth grade and they're both up to try out for cheer again. Or campaign, because they campaign at this school. It's the stupidest thing ever. But this time, Wanda has a strategy. She is still determined to get her daughter on that team. So during campaign time, they make custom rulers and pencils with Shauna's name on them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Like, vote for Shauna or whatever. And they hand them out to all the students. Here's the problem, though. Handing out branded rulers and pencils actually goes against the school's election code. So it's against the rules. I guess it's seen as, like, bribery. And so Shauna, she finds this out, and she immediately stops giving them to students. I mean, she doesn't want to get in trouble.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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But her mom, Wanda, doesn't. she's still showing up to the school every day and passing them out. And so then, boom, the school disqualifies Shauna from campaigning to be a cheerleader. And so that's it. She is no longer eligible to be on the team. And of course, this absolutely destroys Wanda. She's like, no, this can't be.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And she's like complaining to the parents again and fighting with the school board again. Not to mention it pisses her off even more that Amber does make the squad. Now you would think Shauna would be devastated by all this too. But no, not really. Because at this point, it's 1991. And Shauna is 13 years old now. So now she's a full-fledged teenager and she starts thinking for herself.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And she's like, you know what? Screw cheerleading. She doesn't even want to do it anymore. I mean, it was always her mom pushing her into it anyway. Now her mom, Wanda, has a different plan. She's still determined to get her daughter on the next year's team. And this is where gets really crazy. Because it's here that Wanda comes up with a plan to make sure that her daughter gets on that team.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Then fast forward decades later and it's the 80s and Wanda is in her 30s now and she's still living in the middle of nowhere Texas. But now she's married and she's got a daughter of her own. This girl, Shauna. And Wanda, she's probably still got hang-ups about her dad not letting her be a cheerleader all those years ago. And so she decides to finally do something about it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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She's gonna hire a hitman. She wants to hire a hitman to either take out Amber or take out Amber's mom. Because she thinks if Amber's mom is unalive, then Amber will be too devastated to make the cheer squad. And that that open slot will then go to Shauna. It's a terrible plan all the way around. Here's the bigger problem though. Wanda doesn't know any hitmen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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But she actually does know a guy who like kind of has a criminal record. This guy, Terry. And Terry is actually Wanda's ex-brother-in-law.

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This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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So Wanda hits up Terry and they meet up and she asks him for this crazy favor like, can you help me find a hitman to kill my daughter's cheerleading rival so that she can finally make the cheerleading squad and also can you kill her mom because I really don't like her mom either. And Terry hears all this and he's like, nah. Because like that's murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Like he doesn't want to be involved in all that. But Wanda doesn't let it go. She brings it up again to him at Christmas Eve. And poor Terry, he doesn't know what to do. I mean, he really needs the money, but he doesn't want to murder anyone. Plus, he doesn't want to go to jail again. Like, he's clean now. So now he's in a predicament.

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This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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Because if Wanda hires someone else to unalive her cheerleading rival, and Terry knew she was looking for a hitman, now he's an accessory to a crime. He knows way too much. So Terry, low-key, ends up going straight to the police. And he tells them everything. That his ex-sister-in-law is trying to hire a hitman to unalive her daughter's cheerleading rival and the cheerleading rival's mother.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And so police set up a little sting operation. And they make Terry wear a wire and meet up with Wanda. So he has Wanda meet up with him again, this time in a hotel room. And now Terry, he's all pretending like, yeah, yeah, I can find you a hit man to unalive these people. Sure, no problem.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And he says it'll be $2,500 to unalive Amber's mom, but it'll be $5,000 to unalive Amber because she's a minor. I guess it costs more to unalive a minor. So Wanda, I guess she's cheap because she opts to just put a hit out on Amber's mom because, you know, it's less expensive. And she hands Terry a pair of diamond earrings as a down payment.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And police, who are listening in to all of this because Terry's wired, this is all the proof they need. And the next day, police show up to Wanda's house and bam, they arrest her. Here's her mugshot. And she goes to trial. She actually has two trials and she's ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison. But she only serves six months before she's let out on probation for some reason, some

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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people get off really easy in these situations.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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she's gonna do everything in her power to make sure her daughter Shauna can be one. And she starts pushing her into it. And she starts investing a lot of money into Shauna's future cheerleading career with like modeling classes and private cheer lessons. Later she gets her a spot at this insanely competitive gymnastics studio.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

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And as time goes on, Shauna ends up, I assume, being pretty good at dance and cheer with all this training she's been getting. However, there's one other girl she can't seem to outshine. This girl, Amber. Now Shauna and Amber, they're actually friends. I mean, they go to school together, they run in the same popular girl circles, but Amber is just better than her at dance and cheer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Crazy Cheerleading Mom Who Tried To Murder - The Wanda Holloway story

8.038

Now Wanda is just a kid and she's living in the middle of nowhere Texas but unfortunately her dad is super religious and he thinks cheerleaders skirts are too short for a teenager to wear and he doesn't want her dressing like a hoochie and so he says nah bro can't be a cheerleader and that is the end of her cheerleader dream and this devastates poor Wanda I mean this is all she's ever wanted how could he do this to her but

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

0.129

So this radio host gets catfished by her fiance for almost 10 years. Now her name is Kirat and she's in her 30s and she's a radio host living in London. And one day in 2009, her cousin connects her with this guy on Facebook. His name's Bobby and Bobby's a cardiologist and he allegedly lives in the area.

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She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And you know, he can't tell her much about what happened to him because he's still in the hospital from being shot and also he's in witness protection. Regardless, they start chatting a lot about a lot of things. He tells her he just got divorced and that's been really hard on him. He tells her he's been having all sorts of health issues like stroke and blood clots.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And over time, they grow really close. They chat every day online. She even chats with his medical team and she chats with his ex-wife. She chats with his sisters and his friends on Facebook. And this goes on for years. Then one day in 2015, everything changes because old Bobby, he drops a bomb on her. He tells her that he's always loved her. And Karat tells him that she loves him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And so pretty quickly they're in a full-blown relationship. And now they're talking all the time and they're sending each other sweet messages all the time. Well, actually Bobby's vocal cords are damaged because of the stroke. He's paralyzed on one side so he doesn't talk. He actually texts her and Karat replies to him with audio messages.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And so a year goes by and this long distance relationship is still going strong. Like they're still chatting every day. But now they'll do Skype calls. But his vocal cords are still damaged so he kind of has to talk in a whisper. But they do talk. But not only that, at one point he proposes to her through Facebook Messenger. How romantic.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And so Karat and Bobby, they start messaging back and forth, and Karat does not think he is fine, as they are both currently in a relationship with someone else. So instead, they become friends on Facebook. But then one night, Karat's out at a bachelorette party, and suddenly, boom, she sees Bobby across the room. And she's all drunk, and she goes up to him like, Bobby! And he nods like, sup?

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She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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And then like a dozen or so of Bobby's friends are hitting her up on Facebook, congratulating her. And Bobby and Karat are like picking out wedding venues and outfits and they're looking at engagement rings online together. I guess they're like just sending links back and forth to each other. I mean is getting pretty serious between them.

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She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

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However, unfortunately, Karat is starting to get a little frustrated with Bobby because he keeps saying he'll come visit her at some point in London. However, every single time, he has to suddenly cancel his trip last minute. Like, oh, witness protection is moving me again. Or, oh, I had another stroke. And to make it worse, he's getting a bit controlling.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

256.832

Like he's jealous and he's constantly checking in, making Karat video chat with him to see where she is. But of course, he never turns his camera on. And so this isn't going quite as well as she had wanted. But then one day she gets a little bit of hope because finally Bobby hits her up and he's like, Sugar Plum, I'm coming to London. And Karat's like, oh, snap, I finally get to see him in person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

282.42

And she's all excited and she's so nervous. Oh, my God, what is she going to wear? She's following his flight tracker online to see when his plane lands. However, unfortunately, in true Bobby fashion, right before they're supposed to meet, he hits her up and he tells her that he can't make it. And of course, this makes Kirat really upset and she lets him know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

312.238

Now at some point, she's starting to feel like something's not right about all this. Like he's always canceling his visits at the last minute. I mean, she's been chatting with him online for nine years at this point. And the only time she's ever met him in person was that one night at the bachelorette party all those years ago. So like, what is his deal? Something feels off.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

336.21

So she goes and she hires a private investigator to look into Bobby and private investigator must have some serious skills because pretty quickly, boom, he finds that Bobby actually has a house and oh, He's not living in New York City in witness protection. He actually lives in England, about an hour away from her in Brighton. And Karat is pissed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

358.862

She's like, bro's been living an hour away from me this whole time and lying about it? Oh, hell no. And she drives the fuck over to his house, ready to confront him. And so she gets there and she knocks on the door. And guess who answers? Bobby's wife. He's married. Oh, but it gets worse. Karat tells this woman, I want to talk to Bobby. And so Bobby comes out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

383.196

And Karat's like, why did you lie to me? And Bobby looks at her. And he's like, I don't even know who you are. And so poor Karat drives home in shame. And she's crying. And she calls her cousin. And her cousin tries to console her. But it's no use. She's sad. She's confused as hell. What the hell is going on? Bobby's married? Like, is she ever going to find out the truth?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

410.265

Until the next day, Karat is chilling at home and she hears a car pull up outside. She opens her front door and it's Cousin. And that is when Cousin drops a bomb on her. And this is probably the weirdest bomb anyone has ever dropped on anyone ever. So Cousin has been catfishing Karat this whole time. And if you're confused, let's rewind to the beginning.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

435.84

One day in 2009, Cousin, I guess, she gets bored and decides to make a fake Facebook account. A Facebook account of a guy named Bobby. But here's the thing, Bobby is actually a real guy in the area. He just has no idea someone made a fake Facebook account of him. And so Cousin, posing as fake Bobby, she chats with Karat online for years.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

459.469

They message, they have Skype calls, she makes up stories about how she got shot and how she got put in the witness protection program. And they would talk through Skype and Cousin would disguise her voice by just like talking in a whisper. And Cousin got Karat to fall in love with her. Well, fall in love with the fake Bobby. I mean, they made wedding plans.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

479.905

Not only that, Cousin made up to 60 fake Facebook profiles of fake Bobby's friends and family in order to fool Kirat. It's all so elaborate and just weird. And just by sheer coincidence, Kirat went out to that bachelorette party all those years ago and just happened to see the real Bobby out having a good time. That's why he didn't really talk to her that night. He didn't know her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

48.539

I mean, it's 2 a.m., it's crowded, the music's super loud, so they don't really talk. However, they do keep talking online, through Facebook, and at some point, Bobby tells her he's going to Kenya to visit some family, and he leaves and he goes to Kenya. Sometime later, Karat's at work, and she gets a phone call, and it's her cousin. You know, the cousin who connected her online with Bobby?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

506.533

And that's also why when Karat showed up to the real Bobby's house, he's like, I don't even know who you are. Because he doesn't. He's never met her. Now, why is Karat's own cousin catfishing her and getting into a romantic relationship with her? Unfortunately, we don't know. Cousin never comes forward and gives a valid explanation. So we're just like, I don't know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

528.604

However, Karat does later file a lawsuit against her for all of this, and they end up settling out of court, and Cousin has to pay her an undisclosed amount. So, I guess that's nice?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

71.706

We'll just call her Cousin. And Cousin is a little younger than Karat, but they're close friends. And so cousin is on the phone and she's freaking out like, you know, Bobby's in Kenya and he's been shot and it's bad and I don't know if he's gonna make it. And Karat's like, oh no, he's been shot? That sucks. And you know, she's sad and all, but honestly, she doesn't really know him that well.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Got Catfished For 9 Years - The Kirat Assi story

92.426

But then Bobby dies. And so Cousin breaks this news to Karat. And I guess Karat's like, oh, that's a bummer. But then a few months later, Cousin hits up Karat again and is like, actually we were lied to. Bobby isn't dead. He's actually hiding out in New York City. I guess he's in witness protection for some reason. And so Karat hits Bobby up on Facebook and they start talking again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

0.129

So this Twitch streamer is rich, like she makes millions, and some goons are about to try and steal it from her. Now her name is Caitlyn, and Caitlyn's 31, living in Houston, and she livestreams a lot on multiple platforms. She also has a spicy account over on the OF.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

104.238

And then they apparently try to enter this compound through the front. And not only is this place surrounded by a 10 foot like wall fence with barbed wire on top, but they also have motion sensor lights. So these motion sensor lights start going on and off because they're detecting these goons there. And so they decide to try a different way and they move around to the back of the place.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

127.327

And there, in the back, I guess they're able to pull some boards off the fence wall and create an opening for themselves. Then, the three goons make their way inside. And they eventually go up to a building, and it's like a garage area, and there's a sliding glass door. And suddenly, kaboom! The goons bust through the glass of the sliding glass door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

149.068

Now, Caitlin, she's in a connecting building and she's upstairs and all the lights are out because she's gone to bed a little early, but she hears that kaboom. She hears the sliding glass door breaking and it wakes her up and she's like, what the hell was that? And so she grabs her phone and she calls her husband. Her husband is this guy, Nick Lee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

169.557

Now, Nick Lee is also there on the compound, but he's in a different building. And he's there, and he's just like chilling in his underwear, working on something. And so she's like, sweetheart, I think I heard something. And Nick Lee, he's just trying to play it off. He's like, oh, it's probably just the dogs getting into something. Because, you know, I guess their dogs just be like that.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

18.279

She also owns a ton of businesses on the side, like a couple of gas stations, a pool toy company, a company that produces rubber balls, all kinds of stuff. And Caitlyn doesn't mind being open with her fans about all the stuff she's invested in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

188.784

Meanwhile, the goons, they're inside, and they're making their way through the building. And this is actually a room where Caitlin and Nick, I guess they store a bunch of stuff here, so you can see them climbing over it. And so then they exit that building, and they enter a different one, the one Caitlin's actually in.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

204.555

And you can see them here walking around, you can see them scoping out the place, and they are specifically looking for Caitlin. Then they go upstairs where her room actually is. And they get to the room and her bedroom door is locked. And at this point, I guess one of the goons starts having second thoughts. And I guess he tries to back out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

230.177

And so I guess he gets back on board and one of the goons raises his pew-pew and blam! He shoots the lock of the door. But unlike what you'd see in like an action movie, you can't just like shoot a lock open. And so then they try something different. And pow, they kick the door in. And Caitlyn is still there in bed. And the goons rush in and they start screaming at her. Where's the money at?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

256.026

Where's the crypto? Give me the crypto. And she's like, what? I don't have it. And boom, one of the goons pistol whips her. And they're like, give us the crypto. And they pistol whip her again. And she's like, I don't have anything. What are you talking about? Now, she does actually have crypto. She was tweeting about it months before this. But generally, crypto is stored like digitally.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

278.159

So she can't just grab it and hand it over. And so either these turds have no idea how crypto works or they think she has some sort of cold storage device at her house that holds a bunch of the keys to her cryptocurrency, which is just very unlikely. My guess is they're just stupid and they have no idea how digital currency works. But whatever, they're still screaming at her. Give us the crypto!

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

301.831

Meanwhile, Nick Lee is still in the other building. And he's in the bathroom and he's dropping a deuce. Now, I don't know if she had called him back or if he was on the line the whole time. But the second those goons... Flushed into Caitlyn's room, he's still on the phone. And he can hear everything going on in her room. And he can hear them screaming at her. He can hear them pistol whipping her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

324.306

And as soon as he hears this, he jumps off the toilet and he springs into action. And he goes into another room and he grabs a bulletproof vest he has and he puts it on. Then he gets into his little safe and he grabs a pew-pew. While in Caitlyn's room, at one point, the goons grab her phone from her and they start scrolling through it, looking to see if she has any crypto apps.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

34.167

But one day in 2024, she kind of screws up a little because she tweets a screenshot of her Coinbase earnings showing that she has a lot of Bitcoin, more than $20 million worth. Now, allegedly a couple of local turds in the area, they see her tweet or they hear about it and they decide, oh, she got 20 million in Bitcoin, it's time to rob her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

345.159

I guess so they can transfer the money from her to them? Well, she doesn't have a crypto app like that on her phone. Regardless, at this point, they've pistol whipped her three times and her head is bleeding. So she knows she needs to do something. So thinking fast, she's like, oh, right. I now remember where I put the crypto. Follow me. And she leads them downstairs.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

380.759

And then she leads them out of that structure and across the way toward a different building. And in that building, she knows that's where her husband is, Nick Lee. And Nick Lee, he can see alerts on his phone that his cameras are going off. So from the cameras, he knows she's leading them to where he's at.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

406.564

And so Nick Lee waits there for a moment with his pew-pew waiting for them to show up. And so Caitlin leads them inside and up a staircase and Nick Lee is standing at the top of that staircase and suddenly he sees them and he sees Caitlin first and he yells at her to get down and she does. And as soon as she ducks, blam, he shoots one of the goons and the goons are like, oh shit.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

429.345

And they immediately freak the out and they quickly run away. And then they exit the property, and they get in their car, and they all flee. And after that, Nick Lee takes Caitlin to the hospital, and she had some cuts from all the pistol whipping, but she ended up okay, luckily. But the good thing is, is that police end up later- catching one of the goons, the getaway driver.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

454.672

And he confesses to the crime and he ends up snitching on the other three. And so, bam, they all get arrested. And they haven't released any of their mug shots yet, so I don't have any pictures of any of them. But here's the crazy part. They're all actually teenagers. The oldest goon is only 19. The youngest goon is 16 years old. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

59.7

So they look up where she lives and her address isn't public, but I assume you can find anything on the internet. And so they get her a dress. And one night in 2025, these goons put their plan into motion. First, they dress in all black and they put on black ski masks. Then they grab some pew-pews. Then the four of them get in their car and they roll over to Caitlin's house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Huge Twitch Streamer Got Beat Up - The Amouranth story

84.605

Here's the thing about Caitlyn's house. Homegirl's got OF spicy picture money. So she don't live in just a regular house. She actually lives on a big ass compound, almost like a ranch. And so these four goons pull up to her compound and three of them get out. One of them is the getaway driver. So I guess he just stays in the car.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

0.109

So this woman just joined TikTok and she might already be the most hated TikToker in TikTok history. Let me explain. So her name's Casey and Casey is unemployed, living in Florida with her parents. And one day in 2005, life drops a bomb on her. She's pregnant. Now, why is this a problem for Casey? Well, not only is she unemployed, but she's also only 19 years old. She ain't ready for all this.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

115.901

And this all seems pretty normal behavior from her at the time. But then, Casey suddenly just... disappears like she doesn't come home and her parents haven't seen her in a while and they start to get a really bad feeling that something terrible happened then a month goes by and Casey's parents get a letter saying the car Casey had been driving was impounded

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

138.286

So Casey's dad, who we'll just call Casey's dad, her dad goes to pick it up. And when he gets to the impound lot, something immediately is very wrong. Because there's a really strong odor coming from the trunk of the car. And there's nothing of importance in the trunk right now, but it smells like there had been a body in there.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

158.371

Now, at some point during all this, Casey finally comes home, and baby Kaylee is not with her. And that is when Casey's mom freaks out and calls the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

184.147

And so police bring Casey in and they question her and she tells them, oh, I left Kaylee with a babysitter and the babysitter must have taken her. Her name is Zanny the Nanny. And police are like, your daughter's been missing for 31 days? Why didn't you call us? And she tells them, oh, I've been doing my own research. And so they ask her where Zanny the Nanny lives.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

207.223

And Casey takes them to an apartment building and points at an apartment and is like, she lives there in that apartment. But when police look in the windows, the apartment is completely empty. And not only is it currently empty, but no one had lived there for five months. And no one by the name of Zanny the Nanny had ever lived there. Because Casey never even had a nanny. She lied.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

232.004

And so, bam, police arrest her. Here's her mugshot. But the story's not over because we got to get to why TikTok hates her so much. So anyway, this story immediately blows the up like it's dominating the news, not just in Florida, but nationwide. Every news outlet is talking about it. People want to know what happened to baby Kaylee.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

252.34

And so thousands of volunteers from all around form search teams to go out looking for her. But, unfortunately, they don't find anything. Now, here's what's really crazy. We know that Casey had disappeared for a whole ass month, so there's a month of time in her life unaccounted for. And what did Casey do during that month she went off the grid? Well, that's where it gets interesting.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

276.315

Because at one point, before baby Kaylee goes missing, someone at Casey's house, we don't technically know who, but someone uses the home computer to search for very specific terms, like... chloroform, and neck breaking. Then, two days after baby Kaylee had gone missing, Casey asks her neighbor if she can borrow a shovel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

28.487

So she decides, oh, I'll just give the baby up for adoption. But Casey's mom, who we'll just call Casey's mom, Casey's mom says, absolutely not. So Casey has the baby and she keeps her. And the baby's name is Baby Kaylee. So now Casey and Baby Kaylee live at home with Casey's parents. But here's where we run into problems.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

299.306

She also at one point steals a checkbook from one of her friends and she goes shopping. Now keep in mind, her baby is gone. According to her, baby Kaylee had just been stolen by her nanny and Casey uses this time to steal a checkbook and go shopping?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

314.633

Not only that, but she's also hanging out with her boyfriend every night and she never mentions to him that her baby was just stolen by a nanny or say that anything had happened to her daughter. She doesn't seem worried or sad at all. In fact, quite the opposite. She's going out to bars and clubs with her friends, drinking and partying. At one point she enters a hot body contest.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

337.308

She goes and gets a new tattoo. Like your two-year-old kid is missing and you haven't told anyone, not even your parents, and you're out partying and getting new tattoos? Like it's no wonder the internet's mad at you. And so this tomfoolery goes on for about 31 days before she finally returns back home to her parents' house. And that's where we saw her mom call the police.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

359.927

And that phone call from her mom? That was the first time the police had been notified that baby Kaylee was missing. So, like, it's just a little suspicious, right? Oh, but it gets worse. From there, police investigate, and they look at her car, and the trunk of her car tests positive for chloroform and human decomposition.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

380.606

I mean, there's just so much, I guess, technically coincidental evidence that some foul play went on. But yet, despite that, Casey still insists that baby Kaylee is probably still alive somewhere out there. She's just missing. And so people continue to look for her. But then, several months later, they get some inevitable news.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

403.081

One day, a utility worker is out in a wooded area a little less than a mile from Casey's parents' house, and he comes across a bag. And that bag, sadly, has Kaylee inside. And she has duct tape over her mouth, meaning she had been murdered. And so then fast forward a few years. It's now 2011, and this whole thing goes to trial, with Casey being accused of murder.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

429.076

And of course, she pleads not guilty. And her lawyer actually ends up being a pretty good lawyer. And he argues that Kaylee was never kidnapped. That the day she allegedly went missing, she actually accidentally drowned in the family pool. And that Casey's dad, I guess he didn't want to look neglectful, so he covered it up and made it look like someone kidnapped her?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

452.56

And she later makes a very different argument. But in court, that's what Casey's lawyer argues. So, you know, believe what you want. Anyway, so eventually the jury deliberates and they come to a decision. And keep in mind, 40 million people are watching this verdict live on TV. And so the jury comes out and they read the verdict and they find Casey not guilty.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

476.627

And of course, people are pissed and like fights break out and people are protesting. They can't believe she got away with this. And so then 14 years go by and it's now 2025. And for whatever reason, Casey decides to join TikTok.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

498.272

And even though she was found not guilty of unaliving her daughter, TikTok users pretty much unanimously are like, hey, get the f*** off our platform, you monster. You're not wanted here. And regardless, she only has two videos up, but she has since turned off all of her comments. I guess she doesn't want the hate. Now, I have no idea if she's going to actually post any more videos.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

51.138

According to Casey's friends, Casey is a little jealous that all her friends get to be normal 19 year olds and get to go out and party and stuff while Casey is stuck at home taking care of a baby. So then over the next few years, Casey starts lying to her parents about having a job. She'll tell them, oh, I got to go to work.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

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I mean, she says she is, so I guess we'll see.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

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And her mom will watch baby Kaylee while Casey leaves and goes off to party with her friends. These are actually some pictures of her partying. There's another picture of her partying. You get the idea. And to keep up the lie to her parents that she has a job, she starts stealing from people, from her friends, from her family. She's taking money from her mom's purse.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Casey Anthony Is Back! - The Casey Anthony Story

92.33

She's forging checks, all kinds of stuff. Plus, she keeps making up lies to get other people to babysit for her. I mean, she clearly no longer wants to be a parent. And eventually, she unfortunately gets her wish. Because it's now 2008. And one day, Casey tells her parents she's going on some work trip and that she's going to leave baby Kaylee with a nanny.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

0.189

One night a bunch of friends are in this SUV driving around and they're driving to a friend's party and they're in the middle of nowhere in New York state and it's pitch dark and there's no cell service and they got another car and a motorcycle all following them to this party but as they're driving the roads keep getting sketchier and sketchier and they eventually turn into dirt roads and suddenly it dawns on them they're lost but then in the distance they see something

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

115.757

But one night, it's a normal night, and Kevin is asleep in his bed next to his wife. When suddenly, vroom, a loud noise wakes him up. What the hell was that? It sounds like a motorcycle. And so he jumps out of bed to investigate. Here's the thing about Kevin.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

130.717

Kevin though Kevin doesn't like being woken up in fact Kevin hates a lot of things but this this really startles him and it makes him mad and he can hear something loud is going on outside someone must be out there and so Kevin he keeps a pew-pew by his bed that he uses to shoot squirrels and other animals that get on his nerves And so he goes and he grabs it and he heads to his front door.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

153.011

And once he gets to his porch, he sees a bunch of people he doesn't know in his driveway driving away. A car, an SUV, and a motorcycle. Now here's the other thing about Kevin. He really hates people on his property. He's very protective of his land. So instinctively, he points his pew-pew at the vehicles and he pulls the trigger. Blam! And then a bullet whizzes through the air.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

178.524

And then he pulls it again. Blam! And that second bullet flies through the back windshield, into the SUV, and it hits Kalen in the neck. And that is when the driver, who's also Kalen's boyfriend, asks, is everyone okay? And Kalen doesn't answer. And they know something's wrong, and they're like, oh my god, she's been shot! And so, skrrt, they speed away as fast as they can.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

200.034

And they try to call 911. However, remember, they're in the middle of nowhere. So they can't get any cell service. And so they keep driving. And they drive about five miles before they finally get a signal and they can finally call 911. But unfortunately, by that time, it's too late. And ultimately, Kalen doesn't make it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

222.04

Meanwhile, back at Kevin's house, Kevin is like, oh, I think I shot someone. And he's got to think fast. And so he decides to get rid of the evidence. First, he takes his pew-pew and he wipes his fingerprints off. Yes, you heard that right. He wipes his own fingerprints off his own firearm. Okay. But then he goes and he finds the shotgun shells to the slugs he fired and he hides them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

246.571

And honestly, I'm not exactly sure what his full plan is here. Regardless, pretty quickly police arrive and they're knocking on his door. Boom, boom, boom. But Kevin, he ain't answering. So they beat on it again. Boom, boom. But he refuses to come out. Instead, he stays inside and he calls 911 on the police. And he tells the operator, I wish they would leave. I want to go back to bed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

270.527

And so Kevin and police, they end up in a standoff for apparently an hour. Like Kevin refuses to come out and police refuse to leave until he comes out. But finally, after a long wait, he surrenders and he agrees to come out and police question him and they ask him what happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

29.261

A house. And they're like, oh, maybe that's our friend's house. That's where the party is. So they pull into the driveway. But this driveway, it's really long. It's like a long dirt road. And the closer they get to this house, they soon realize, oh, this isn't it. We're at the wrong place. And so they immediately turn around and they start driving away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

291.653

And so bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And so Kevin definitely shot this woman. No question, no one's arguing that he didn't. But is he going to prison for this? Well, eventually, old Kevin goes to trial, and there he tells a very different version of what happened. Here's what he says really happened.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

324.117

One night, it's a normal night, and Kevin is asleep in his bed next to his wife, when suddenly, vroom, a loud noise wakes him up. What the hell was that? And so he grabs his pew-pew, and he looks outside, and he sees what he believes to be a motorcycle gang. They must be trying to break in. I mean, this must be a home invasion. And poor Kevin, he fears for his life. I mean, what's he going to do?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

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And so he yells to his wife, honey, go hide in the closet while I protect you. And then he goes outside. And to get these scary intruders to leave, blam, he fires a warning shot into the air. And the intruders turn around and they start to leave. But then the craziest thing happens. There just happens to be a nail sticking out of the floor of Kevin's porch.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

367.175

And suddenly, pow, Kevin trips over it and he falls to the ground. And blam, this causes his pew-pew to accidentally go off again. And that bullet flies through the back windshield of the SUV and it hits Kalen right in the neck. And therefore, it was a total accident. And so, yeah, this is actually the story that he tells the jury. Bro's entire defense is, no, I fell over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

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And so the judge hears all this and by this point he has had enough of Kevin's bullshit and he just lays into him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

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Those are some bars. But anyway, the jury finds him guilty as and the judge lays down his sentence.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

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And so Kevin is sentenced to 25 years to life. And as he's escorted out of the courtroom, this is the reaction from everyone sitting there watching. Wow. That is wild.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

48.136

And that is when suddenly, blam, they hear a gunshot and a bullet whizzes by. And one friend yells, someone's shooting at us! And oh my god, they all panic, and skrrt, the driver floors it. And then, blam, a second gunshot, and a bullet flies through the back windshield. What the hell? Who's shooting at them? And so the driver speeds away, and he turns to his friends, and he asks, is everyone OK?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

69.671

And everyone says, yes, they're OK. Everyone except for the girl in the passenger seat. Now her name is Kaylin and Kaylin is 20 years old and she doesn't answer. And so the driver asks again, Kaylin, are you okay? Kaylin? But Kaylin still doesn't answer because one of the bullets had hit her in the neck. And so who the hell just shot Kaylin?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

He Murdered a Girl For Turning Around In His Driveway

95.999

Well, to get to that answer, we need to talk about this guy, Kevin. Kevin, he's 65 years old, and he's kind of a grumpy old turd. All of his neighbors know him as just an angry dude. Like, he drives all aggressively, and he even barks at other people's dogs when he gets mad, like, like, he's just that kind of guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

0.089

So this girl is pregnant and she's in a war zone and she's running for her life and there's gunfire and the sounds of bombs all around her and all she wants to do is get home safely. So the girl, let's call her Sham. She's 15, she lives at home with her parents in London and she's a good student. But for some reason, Sham feels like she isn't loved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

106.656

So anyway, as soon as the girls get to ISIS territory, they're immediately expected to start a new domesticated life. And after only being there for 10 days, 15-year-old Sham is married off to an ISIS fighter, a 23-year-old man who we'll just call husband. And Sham is taught to be obedient to husband and to do whatever he asks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

126.164

And surprisingly, Sham and her new terrorist husband get along well enough. Sometimes he even grants her permission to go out and see her friends. So that's nice of him. But after only 10 days together, husband comes home one day and he's like, I have to go to prison because he's being accused by ISIS of being a spy. So Isis takes him away and they put him in prison and they torture him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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And to make it worse for Sham, her friend Khadiza unfortunately dies in a bombing. So Sham is at home all alone for seven months while Isis' husband is being tortured in an Isis prison. But then I guess they realize he's not a spy, so then Isis releases him and returns him home. But then one day, boom, Sham gets pregnant and she has a baby daughter.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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And now suddenly she starts feeling some of that love she's been missing in her life. And then shortly after daughter's born, boom, Sham gets pregnant again. And this time she has a baby son. Awesome, double the love. But then eight months later, unfortunately baby son gets sick. So she takes him to an ISIS hospital, but they have no meds and not enough staff.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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So son doesn't get the treatment he needs and he dies. And it gets worse. Her daughter, who's now one year, nine months old, also gets sick and dies. And on top of all that, her husband has turned out to be abusive. Shocker. But Sham still has to do whatever he says because those are the rules. And so, boom, she gets pregnant again. And then at some point, Amira goes missing.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

20.641

But then one day she gets a message from a friend overseas and friend is like, it's too bad you live in the UK because it's paradise here in Syria in ISIS territory. And Sham, she's heard about ISIS before. She's heard a lot of bad things.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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And since they live in an active war zone, she's presumed to be dead too. But crazy enough, around this time, ISIS actually starts to collapse and Kurdish forces start taking over ISIS territory. So with all this conflict going on, pregnant Sham tries to flee, and she ends up getting separated from her husband and captured by the Kurdish forces.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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And once captured, they take her to a refugee camp in northern Syria. So now she's 19 years old, she's nine months pregnant, living in this refugee camp with no friends and no husband. But at that camp, she meets a journalist, and they get to talking, and Sham tells this journalist that she's one of the girls from the news, one of the girls who left London to go join ISIS.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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And she also tells him like, yeah, I'm done here. I'd like to go back to London now. So journalists starts reporting on her. And word gets out that they finally located this famous missing girl from the news. And this story blows up. Everyone's talking about it. And Sham wants to come home. But the British government is like, eh, not so fast. And they strip her of her British citizenship.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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mostly because she, you know, joined a terrorist organization. But this is a big news story and Sham has people on her side, including lawyers. And her lawyers fight the decision and they appeal it, arguing that Sham was actually a victim of human trafficking. And during this whole fight, Sham is still in the refugee camp and she gives birth to her third kid. A son.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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But unfortunately, pretty quickly, the son ends up dying of pneumonia. And the whole appeals process about her citizenship takes years. But in the end, the court unanimously upholds the removal of Sham's UK citizenship, and they don't let her back in the country. And to this day, at 24 years old, Sham is still living in Syria, still living in the refugee camp. So, shout out to Syria, I guess.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

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But after weeks of chatting back and forth with her friend, Sham is now convinced she can find the love that her life is missing if she moves to Syria and into ISIS territory. And soon enough, Sham decides that's what she's gonna do. And she convinces two of her London friends to go with her. These two girls, Amira and Khadiza.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

51.771

So Sham packs her bags and she tells her parents that she's going to go study and that they'll be back in a few hours. And then she, Amira, and Khadiza sneak away to the airport and they take a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. And there they meet up with a smuggler at a bus station. The smuggler is a guy who specializes into getting people into ISIS territory.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

68.907

So he takes them and he guides them through a smuggling route. which goes about 700 miles across Turkey and into Syria. Meanwhile, back in England, Sham's parents notice she's missing. And then word gets out that three teenage girls left London to go join ISIS. So this becomes a huge media story.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

90.983

But no one can find them because Sham, Amira and Khadiza are now in Syria and they are officially off the grid. Now, at this point in ISIS territory, Sham would likely be forced to wear a full burqa. But for the purpose of storytelling, I'm not going to put her in that because then you won't recognize her in the pictures.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

0.049

So this influencer, her name's Nassim. And Nassim loves YouTube. So she's 39. She lives with her parents and she's been making YouTube videos for years. She mostly posts weird performance art stuff about veganism and bodybuilding and comedy. And with that, she's doing pretty well. Tens of thousands of subscribers over several different channels. And some of her videos are just strange.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

115.898

So he calls the police in San Diego to file a missing persons report. And he also tells them, like, I think my daughter is really mad at YouTube. So then police, they go out looking for her. And three days after Nassim has left her grandmother's house, police actually find her in Mountain View, which just happens to be near YouTube headquarters in San Bruno.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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And they find her asleep in her car in a Walmart parking lot. And they question her. And she's not doing anything illegal. She's just asleep. So they let her go. So then police call her dad to be like, we found Nassim. She's fine. So we let her go. And dad's like, okay, but just a heads up, she's super pissed at YouTube.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

150.288

And then later that morning, Nassim drives to San Bruno and she stops at a local gun range. And there she spends a little time firing at targets and practicing her pew pew. Once she's done practicing, she gets back in her car and drives straight to YouTube headquarters. And then she gets there and she parks and she walks onto the company campus.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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And then she steps into a patio area full of YouTube employees, probably on their lunch break. And that is where Nassim pulls out her pew-pew and she just starts blasting. Blam! Blam! And people panic and they scream and they run away. I mean, it is absolute chaos. And then a bullet hits a YouTube employee and they fall to the ground. And then another employee is hit and then another.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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Meanwhile, upstairs, other employees are looking out the window and they see that there's an insane person outside shooting people. So they all hide in a conference room and they call 911. But Nassim, she just keeps shooting and eventually she's out of ammo. So she reloads and she starts firing again.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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Now, I'm not sure if she realizes that there's no getting out of this or if maybe she's just satisfied with the destruction she's caused. But eventually, she turns the pew-pew on herself and she pulls the trigger and unalives herself right there at YouTube headquarters. And by the time police show up, the chaos is over.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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A lot of them are pro-vegan and very graphic and showing like slaughtered animals and stuff like that. Regardless, one day Nassim's whole life changes because YouTube changes their monetization policies across the whole platform. And the algorithm starts favoring more family-friendly content.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

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Paramedics come and they take the three shooting victims away to the hospital and one of them is in critical condition. But luckily, all three of the shooting victims survive and they eventually made a full recovery. Wow. Shout out to family-friendly content.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

38.507

And suddenly Nassim's videos are not only getting demonetized, but she starts getting a fraction of the viewership she used to get. So let me start this over. So this influencer, her name's Nassim and Nassim hates YouTube. I mean, they cut off her revenue and her viewership and this really pisses her off. And she starts believing that people who work at YouTube are out to get her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

59.778

Like they're specifically targeting her and her content and trying to suppress her free speech. I'm being discriminated and filtered on YouTube So she's got all this pent up anger and frustration and it starts to spill over into other areas of her life. And at some point she gets into it with her parents. So she moves out of their house and in with her grandmother. And this sucks.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

79.384

And to her, this is clearly all YouTube's fault. So Naseem comes up with a plan. She's going to retaliate against the biggest video platform in the world. So she packs a bag, and in that bag, she includes a pew-pew. So she leaves her grandmother's house in San Diego, and she starts driving north towards San Bruno, California, where YouTube headquarters is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Woman Who Shot Up Youtube - The Nasim Aghdam story

98.738

Two days after she leaves, Nassim's dad, who we'll just call Dad, Dad learns that Nassim is missing. Like she hasn't been at her grandmother's house for a while. And dad remembers how much she's been hating YouTube lately and how she feels they've been discriminating against her. And he gets worried Nassim is about to do something crazy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

0.109

Look, I'm not saying Katy Perry unalived a none, but you gotta hear this story. So this is Katy Perry, the pop star. You know Katy Perry. And one day in 2014, Katy decides to take some of that pop star money and buy herself a big-ass mansion in Los Angeles. So she looks around and she finds one for sale. This monstrosity. Now, Katie apparently really wants this house.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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But the archdiocese is like, whatever, bitches, we own this place. And in 2011, boom, they kick them all out. And this kicks off a whole dispute because, see, the nuns feel like they own the property. Because back in 1971, they originally pooled all of their money together and purchased it themselves, using every dollar they had saved.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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However, for some reason, the Archdiocese feels like the property belongs to them. And because they feel like it belongs to them, they're like, f*** you, we're selling it! And that is when in 2014, along comes Katy Perry, looking to take some of her pop star money and buy herself a big ass mansion. And she sees this convent and she loves it. She'll do anything to get it.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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She wants to turn it into a house. So she offers $14.5 million. And the archdiocese, they accept, like immediately. They don't ask the nuns permission or anything. They just agree and the deal starts moving forward. And so, of course, the nuns are pissed. I mean, they've lived there for decades, and the church is just going to come along and sell it out from under them?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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And to make it even worse, the nuns look Katy Perry up. I mean, they don't know who she is. They're nuns. And let's just say they are not super impressed with her work. Because, you know, she has songs like, I Kissed a Girl and You're So Gay. But specifically, in one interview back in the day, Katy Perry made a joke about selling her soul to the devil.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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It didn't work out, so I sold my soul to the devil. And so the nuns, they can't let this slide. I mean, they can't allow their old home to be occupied by someone who sold their soul to the devil. Meanwhile, the archdiocese, to their credit, they don't want the nuns to be upset. They want all of this to go down smoothly. And so they arrange a meeting at the property.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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between the nuns and Katy Perry. And so one day, in 2015, Katy Perry shows up to the place, and she's trying to charm these nuns, insisting that she didn't really literally sell her soul to the devil, that she's actually a rather religious person herself. And in Katy Perry's defense, she did grow up in an extremely Christian household.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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Like both of her parents were Pentecostal pastors, they were only allowed to listen to gospel music. Her parents were so extreme Christian, she wasn't allowed to refer to deviled eggs as deviled eggs. She had to call them angel eggs. And I'm not making that up. And so Katie explains this to these nuns. Then she shows them the Jesus tattoo that she has on her wrist.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

26.517

Like she'll do anything for it. Maybe even unalive someone. I'm not saying she unalive someone, but you know, just listen to this story. So here's the thing about this house. It is huge, 30,000 square feet. It's even got a pool shaped like a fricking fish. In fact, this house is so big that it's actually not a house at all. Traditionally, it's been a convent where a bunch of elderly nuns live.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

279.979

And I'm not sure how impressed nuns generally are with tattoos, but whatever, she showed them. Then, in order to further convince them of how super Christian she is, she offers to sing Oh Happy Day, a well-known church song. And she's gonna sing it a cappella. But she has to pull out her phone to look up the lyrics, which has the nuns giving her the side eye.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

303.798

Anyway, it's a super awkward meeting, and the nuns aren't impressed, and their minds aren't changed one bit. However, the Catholic Church is very powerful, and they are determined to sell this property to Katie. And unfortunately, there isn't much the nuns can do. Until... At some point, the nuns decide two can play at this game.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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I mean, they feel like they own the property fair and square, and so they come up with a plan to sell it themselves. And that is when this woman steps in. Her name's Hollister. And Hollister's 54, she's a rich businesswoman, she owns a lot of restaurants, and she comes along and offers to buy the place from the nuns and keep it open and running by turning it into a boutique hotel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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And I guess the nuns are cool with that because they agree to sell it behind the archdiocese back. So now you have two competing sales of the same property happening at the same time. But whatever, the nuns, they hand over the deed to Hollister and she moves in right away. And Katy Perry, oh Katy Perry is not going to let this slide.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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she feels like her purchase of the place was already in motion and legal. So she's like, oh, hell no. And she files a lawsuit, but not against the nuns, because that would be terrible PR. Katy Perry sues a bunch of elderly nuns. No, rather, she sues Hollister, claiming that her purchase of the place is not legit. And this turns into an all out legal war.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

392.784

I mean, two wealthy women battling it out in court over this former nun convent. And this legal battle goes for years. And I'm sure it's very stressful for all of them, especially the 80-year-old nuns involved. But in 2017, they finally go to trial. And at the end of it all, a judge rules that the nuns, for some legal reason, do need permission from the Vatican in order to sell the convent.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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Which means Hollister's purchase of the property is invalid. Which means Katie can move forward with buying the house from the Archdiocese. She won. And to make it worse for Hollister, right after that, a jury finds that she's also guilty of malice and fraud in her attempt to interfere with the sale of this property. So now she's ordered to pay Katy Perry and the church $10 million in damages.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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And that is a lot of money. In fact, it's so much money that it literally bankrupts Hollister. Like she has to go to bankruptcy court. And so then one day in 2018, she goes to bankruptcy court and two of the nuns go with her because they're all like friends now. I mean, they've been in this lawsuit together for a long time and they're there to support their friend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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And then on the steps of the courthouse, one of the nuns speaks to the news media. And she pleads for Katy Perry to stop, like stop with all the legal actions against her friend. Please stop. It's not doing anyone any good except hurting a lot of people. And sadly, those words would be this nun's last words. Because hours later, in the courtroom, she collapses and dies from a heart attack.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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She was 89 years old. And one of the other nuns claims the heart attack was caused by stress directly related to this Katy Perry lawsuit. I'm not saying Katy Perry unalived a nun. I'm just saying this other nun thinks so. Anyway, at the end of it all, Katy still needs approval from the Vatican to purchase the property. And they're unable to work out a deal.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

51.121

And we'll get back to these nuns. But first, we gotta talk about Catholic priests, specifically ones who diddle boys. You know what I'm talking about. I mean, abuse in the Catholic Church as a whole was rampant for decades, particularly in the Archdiocese in Los Angeles. And an archdiocese is sort of like a collection of churches.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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And so her option to buy the place expires and everyone just kind of moves on. So in the end, after all that, no one got the property. Wow.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

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So this collection of churches in Los Angeles had some pretty serious schmactual abuse accusations thrown at them in the early 90s and 2000s. And one day, boom, they get sued. And so in 2007, the archdiocese agrees to settle with the victims of the abuse and pay them a settlement of $660 million.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Katy Perry Versus The Nuns

96.211

And so now these churches need to pay off this huge molestation settlement, so they decide to make some money by selling a property they own. That property? The convent. However, there's a problem. Those elderly nuns I mentioned? They live there. And now these nuns, we'll just call them the nuns. There's only five of them, but they've been living there for decades.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

0.109

So this is Ashley and Ashley is about to move overseas to be with the man of her dreams and it's about to go horribly wrong. Now this all starts back when Ashley is 12 and she's a normal 12 year old and she's from Canada and like a lot of kids her age, Ashley likes to chat online with her friends through like social media and stuff and one day she makes a new friend on Facebook. This guy.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

110.023

And this is actually their first photo together. And so they follow through with their plan. She moves into his apartment and they're having a great time together. This is actually a photo of them and this is another photo of them. But then about a month passes and it's Christmas time and Jack, he's being such a good boyfriend.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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He goes out and he gets a tree and he surprises Ashley with a kitten and she really loves cats. And so all of this seems to be going really well, better than they had planned. Until. Okay, here's the thing about Jack. Jack, he's kind of a turd. Like he's unemployed, he lives in public housing on government assistance, he apparently smokes Zaza all day and plays video games.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

150.495

No ambition, no real attempts at getting a job, just not a lot going on for him. And I don't know if any of this bothers Ashley or not, but what does start to bother her is how controlling he's become since she's moved in. Like he'll get mad if he thinks she's talking to anyone else. He'll get mad at her for being on TikTok.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

167.904

Then a few days after Christmas, Jack is going through her phone for some reason, and he finds some numbers that she blocked. And he gets all jealous and he assumes that she blocks these numbers because they're her former lovers or something. I don't know. It's stupid. Regardless, they start arguing and Jack suddenly just snaps and he straight up starts smacking her around.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

188.177

Now, no one should be smacking anyone around. That's horrible in itself, but also he is significantly bigger than her. I mean, you could see them in this picture here. So when he puts his hands on her, it doesn't take much force for him to really hurt her. Now, despite this, unfortunately, Ashley doesn't leave him like I wish she would have. However, from that day, things start to feel different.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

211.075

Like, she still loves him, but maybe Jack isn't the guy she thought he was. Then, a few weeks later, things get crazy again. Like, Jack is all jealous, and he's going through her phone again, and he finds some old messages on her phone, and these are messages that are back from when she lived in Canada, so yeah, they're old. But Jack doesn't care. He gets pissed.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And they start arguing, and he starts yelling. And he picks up a beer mug. And boom, he breaks it over her head. Dude is just trash. And this whole time, all this is going on, Ashley is lying to her mom. Like, no, mom, I'm totally happy here. I don't know. I guess she doesn't want her mom to hate her boyfriend. I don't know. Not only that, as time goes on, Jack gets more and more abusive.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

25.183

Jack and Jack is 16 and he lives in England and Ashley thinks Jack is cool. He's a little older, he's from another country, but they're just friends. So then a few years pass and Ashley is 15 now and she and Jack are still friends and they still chat online. But at this point, they've both grown up a little bit and Ashley is starting to think he's kind of fine. And so, boom, they start dating.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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Like he's been spying on all her texts, and so she has to be careful about all the messages she sends her friends so that they don't get misinterpreted by him. Like some messages she has to send and then quickly delete before he sees them. It's crazy. Also, she slowly stops talking to her family so much.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And her family and friends, they can tell something is off, but they're halfway across the world back in Canada. So they're not like 100% sure what's going on. However, pretty quickly, they start to figure it out.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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Like one day, Ashley is at the apartment talking to her sister on FaceTime and Jack, he gets mad at her for some dumb reason and he suddenly just flips out and he starts throwing things at her and screaming at her and sister's watching all this go down like, hey, Ashley, why don't you just come home? But still, Ashley won't. I guess she's in love or maybe she's afraid. I don't really know.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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But about a week later, Ashley's on FaceTime with her sister again. And Jack, he's all mad at her again and he suddenly flips out again and he runs at her and he tackles her and he starts punching her in the head. And sister, she's still on FaceTime watching all this and she's like, what the f**k? And so at this point, sister has had enough. She can't let this continue.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And she goes and she tells their mom what she saw. And of course, mom is like, oh, hell no. And she immediately calls Ashley and she's like, we're getting you a flight and you're coming home. And so finally, they all agree. Ashley is getting out of that toxic situation. She's getting on the next flight back to Canada. Even Jack agrees. He understands that she's leaving on the next flight.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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However, there's a problem. It's 2022 and the pandemic is still kind of going on. And Ashley is required to get a negative COVID test before she can get on a plane and fly international. And so unfortunately, she can't fly that day. The soonest she can fly is in three days. But then the next day it all goes wrong.

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She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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So they're at the apartment and I guess Jack isn't doing too well and he finally realizes that he's about to lose control of her for good. And so he provokes an argument with her and they start fighting and I'm sure he's like screaming.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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screaming at her and then pow he starts hitting her and he hits her again and again and then he picks up the kitten that he bought and he throws it against the wall and Ashley is horrified and she runs out of the apartment to a neighbor's house and the neighbor intervenes and everyone calms down but Ashley knows this isn't over and Jack isn't done.

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She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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So after a bit, she low-key tries to message her sister back in Canada. But unfortunately, with the time difference, it's like 3 a.m. there. So sister and everyone else there is asleep. And at some point during all this, Jack finally loses it. And he grabs Ashley and she tries to get away, but he overpowers her. Then he reaches out, grips her neck, and he starts strangling her hard.

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She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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Then he goes to his Facebook page and he changes his profile picture to this picture of him and Ashley smiling. And he writes the caption, mine forever. Yikes. Meanwhile, back in Canada, Ashley's family wakes up to all these missed messages from her, but now they can't get a hold of her.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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So they reach out to sort of a friend that Ashley knows back in England, and that friend goes over to Jack's apartment to check on Ashley, and she knocks and no one answers, but she can hear something going on inside the apartment. So she calls 999, the emergency number there. And then police show up. And in the apartment, they find Ashley's body there. And so, bam, police arrest Jack.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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Here's his creepy-ass mugshot. And he ends up pleading guilty to her murder, and he's sentenced to 23 years to life in prison. A British man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a young B.C. woman who'd gone to visit him in England. That's sad.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And it's a long-distance relationship, and they've never met in person. I mean, he's still in England, and she's in Canada. But still, she really likes him. And a few more years pass. And that is when everything changes. Because Ashley is now 19. So, she's legally an adult. And Jack is like 22 or 23 at this point.

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She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And they're still dating and they decide to give this a real shot to see if this relationship can work for real, not just long distance, not just online. And so Ashley, she gets a six month tourist visa and she books a flight to England because she's going to go live with him for six months until her visa expires.

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She Travelled Abroad For Love And Then Got Murdered - The Ashley Wadsworth story

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And of course, her mom is a little concerned that she's going to live with a guy she's never met in person. But unfortunately, there's no stopping Ashley. She is determined to see this through. So she does. She flies from Canada all the way over to the UK. And there, she's finally in England and she meets her boyfriend, Jack, for the first time in person.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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So it's late night and this boat is in the water near the shore. And this family on the boat is being held captive by a bunch of masked goons with pew-pews. And they're scared, really scared. Now the dad, just thinking on his feet, he spots a gas can. And just when the moment is right, bam, he grabs it and he rips the cap off. And he douches one of the goons with gasoline.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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He's an ex-guerrilla fighter, he's kind of a badass, and the whole family just loves him. In fact, the family loves him so much that eventually Jane starts smashing with him. Now I assume Phil has no idea this is going on. He's too busy hiring the rest of the crew. Now to make it worse, Teodoro, I guess Jane just isn't enough for him.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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Because then he starts smashing with one of the cooks Phil hired. And then somehow Jane learns that Teodoro is smashing with the cook and she gets jealous and fires him. And she also bans him from the island. And Teodoro's pissed. Like he leaves and then he comes back a little later and he's demanding his job back and Jane is like, hell no. It's a whole mess.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And I honestly don't know if Phil is mad about the affair. There's no record of his reaction, but I assume he's mad. But Jane, her problems are just beginning. Because local indigenous people are not happy about the family being on the island. They feel like it should be public land. And then local environmentalists, they get mad too because of all the construction work.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And then one day a bunch of boats approach the island and protesters carrying machetes, they storm the whole place. It is wild. But Jane, she isn't budging. I mean, this is her island. And she is invested, and nothing is going to convince her to leave. Until... One night, the whole family is asleep in the shack. And then suddenly, pew, the generator cuts off.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And the family is in complete darkness. And then, boom, the door busts open. And a group of masked goons enter the shack, and they got pew-pews. And the goons, they force the family out. And they start marching them on the beach toward their boat. And they make the family get on it. And they start it up, and they drive away.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And on this ride, they start demanding a million dollars, which neither Jane nor Phil have. I mean, they sunk all their savings into buying this island. But strangely enough, one of the goons, when he talks, his voice sounds familiar. And the family recognizes it. It's Teodoro. But all of them are too afraid to call it out. Like they don't want to get shot.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out a matchbook and he lights a match. And two of the goons go up in flames. So why is this family being held captive? Well, it all starts with this former Playboy model, Jane. And Jane is now a housewife. She lives in England. But honestly, she's miserable there. So one day she gets online and she comes across this website where you can buy an island.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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But Phil, he knows if he doesn't do something soon, this isn't going to end well for them. So he looks around for something to use as a weapon and he spots a gas can and he waits. And when the moment is right, bam, he grabs it and he rips the cap off and he douches one of the dudes with gasoline and he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out a matchbook and he lights a match.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And the whole boat goes up in flames, including two of the goons. And Phil yells at his family to jump off the boat, and swoosh, they all do it. And Phil is the last to jump, and his arm also catches fire, but he jumps overboard to put it out. And the whole family makes their way to the shore, and they sprint into the trees. And bang, bang, gunshots follow them as they run away.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And finally, they find a place to hide in some bushes. But one of the goons, he's following them. And he wades through the trees looking around. And suddenly, he finds Phil there, hiding. And the goon looks right at him. And he points his pew-pew at him. And he pulls the trigger. Click, click. He's out of ammo.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And so Phil and the family, they panic and they get up and they run further into the trees. And when they're tired and they can't run anymore, they hide in a nearby swamp and they wait there for hours until morning. And that's when they spot a passing fishing boat and the fisherman gives them a ride to the hospital. Now the family, they report all of this to the local police.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And about a week later, Teodoro and the goons, they get arrested. And police question them, and pretty quickly, a judge lets them go without charge. And the whole thing is declared an employment dispute. I read that the system there is pretty corrupt, so. But meanwhile, back on the island, the family is traumatized and miserable. And they are just ready to leave this place and go back to England.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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But Jane, this is her dream. She doesn't want to leave. And at her insistence, they all stay and they all suffer. But pretty quickly, Phil develops a life-threatening respiratory infection, and his health rapidly starts to decline. So he and the kids, they beg Jane to leave the island, but she still refuses.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And eventually, Phil's health gets really bad, and that is when he finally convinces her to let the island go. And they leave, and they move over to Bluefields, Nicaragua to be closer to medical services. But unfortunately, about a month later, due to the respiratory infection, Phil has a massive asthma attack and he doesn't survive.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And eventually, Jane and the kids, they sell the island and they end up moving back to England. That's a sad one. Shout out to Phil.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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And on the site, she finds this little private island for sale for only one hundred and seventy thousand pounds or about two hundred thousand US dollars. Now the island, it's small, it's off the coast of Nicaragua, hours away from everything. You have to take like two boats to get there. But whatever, Jane is still like, I want to buy this island. And so she does.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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She takes the money her family has in savings and she buys it. And so soon enough, Jane and her romantic partner, Phil, and her three kids, they all move across the world to this new tropical paradise. Now the island itself, like it's cool, but it only has one shack on it. No running water, no electricity, of course. But this family doesn't care.

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This Woman Bought an Island And It Killed Her Husband - The Jane Gaskin story

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They are going to rough it because Jane and Phil have come up with this whole plan to turn this place into a scuba diving resort. Sounds great. So bam, they get right to work building their dream. And Phil starts by hiring some local workers to help with construction. And they end up hiring this local dude, Teodoro. Now Teodoro, he's gonna run the construction crew.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So this guy, let's call him Hamburglar. And one night, Hamburglar's on the roof of a McDonald's. And it's late, and the staff is still there, but the store is closed. And Hamburglar, he has a bunch of power tools, and he starts drilling and cutting into the roof. And once he has a two by two foot hole big enough, he rappels down into the store.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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But in this McDonald's, an employee is actually able to hit the silent alarm and then boom, Hamburglar gets caught and he gets arrested and here's his mugshot. So he goes to trial, he gets sentenced to 45 years in prison and almost immediately he starts thinking of a plan to break himself out. Four years later, he finally gets his chance. See, Hamburglar is very well behaved in prison.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So they allow him to work in the metal shop where the good prisoners get to work. And while he's there, he secretly uses all their tools to make like a fake undercarriage. And he fastens it to an actual undercarriage of a delivery truck. And then he hides in it as that delivery truck is leaving the prison. And this allows him to escape. So now he's on the run.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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But unfortunately for him, he's got nowhere to stay. So he breaks into a local Toys R Us at night and he stays there. He finds a little cubby hole way behind the bike rack where he can make a little camp and hide and sleep at night.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And then every night during closing hours, he comes out and he gets exercised by riding bikes up and down the aisles and he survives by eating baby food off the shelves and he knows where all the security cameras are so he knows how to avoid them and not get caught. And so he just lives here in this Toys R Us comfortably for like several months.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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Meanwhile, he starts a sort of normal life out in the community. He joins a local church and he's very active in it. In fact, while he's at this church, he meets a really nice woman. This woman, Lee. And Lee's a nice single mother with three kids, and Lee likes Hamburglar, so they start dating. Now, obviously, he doesn't tell her he's an escaped convict who's living in a nearby Toys R Us.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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Now the staff, they're still there, closing up the place. And that is when Hamburglar, he pulls out his pew pew. And he doesn't scream at them or anything. He just politely says, will everyone please get into the walk-in freezer? I'm robbing the place. And he's very calm and he's very nice. He even suggests that they take their coats with them, you know, so that they don't get cold.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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Instead, he tells her he works for the government and that he can't tell her much about his job or his background because he says he has special security clearance and lives in a secret government building. And Lee's just like, all right, cool, because she likes Hamburglar. I mean, she's a single mother, and he's really good with her three kids.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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Like, he's always hanging out with them and bringing them new toys, which he stole from Toys R Us, but whatever. And this whole thing, it goes on for several months. But then, as time passes, it starts to get into the Christmas season. And Hamburglar decides this Toys R Us is getting way too much foot traffic for him to keep staying there, hiding out in his little cubbyhole behind the bike rack.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So he gets some tools and during closing hours, he tunnels through the wall and into the next building over, which just happens to be an abandoned Circuit City. And there he sets up a new secret hideout inside almost a little closet area underneath a stairwell. And he had stolen a DVD player.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So there in Circuit City, he just kind of chills most of the day and he watches a bunch of DVDs and he is completely undetected. Until, as the holiday season ramps up, Hamburglar knows Toys R Us is about to make a ton of money. So he decides he's gonna rob them.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So he waits until the day after Christmas, and when the store is finally closed, and the employees, they're still there, closing up and counting the money, and Hamburglar gets a pew-pew that he had stolen, and he sneaks into the Toys R Us through the tunnel he had made. And then bam, he approaches the employees, and he's polite, but he orders them to please put their hands up.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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But unfortunately for him, during this robbery, two Toys R Us employees quickly managed to slip out the back door. And they run as fast as they can until they get to a phone and they call police. And then police show up and they try to corner Hamburglar. But Hamburglar, he's a bit crafty. And he manages to escape through that tunnel he created. So then police find the tunnel.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And eventually they find his secret hideout under the stairwell in Circuit City. And in his hideout, they find a DVD he had been watching. And from that, they're able to get his fingerprints off of it. And that DVD, coincidentally, catch me if you can. Anyway, once they have his fingerprints, they correctly identify him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And now they know he's the same guy that robbed all those McDonald's back in the day and then later broke out of prison. Hamburglar. So police put out an APB letting everyone in the community know that there's an armed convict on the loose. And then the story makes local news and then they show Hamburglar's mugshot on the screen.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And then some people from the local church, they recognize him like, hey, that's the guy who's dating Lee. So then police, they go talk to Lee. And then they explained to her that this nice guy who's been really great to her kids is actually a wanted ex-con. And Lee is sad and she's devastated and all, but she agrees to help.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And then after they plan a whole setup, Lee calls Hamburglar and she invites him over to her 40th birthday party. And Hamburglar shows up to see her, but instead of a birthday party, he finds the police waiting for him. Womp womp. So they arrest him again and now he's back in prison. Shout out to Charlotte, North Carolina.

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The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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So the McDonald's staff obeys and they shuffle into the freezer and then Hamburglar, he locks them in and then he robs all the money from the store and then he flees. And once he's gone, he calls police so that they can come and let the staff out so that they don't like die in the freezer. Now Hamburglar, he's an interesting guy because he mostly robs McDonald's. Why mostly McDonald's?

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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Well, because he used to work there as a teenager. So he knows McDonald's stores are very cookie cutter. Most of them have the same layout. A lot of them have the same schedule. And when he robs these stores, he always robs during closing time. And he always lowers himself down through the roof so that he won't attract any unnecessary attention trying to bust through the front doors.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Man Who Robbed 40 McDonalds - The Jeffrey Alan Manchester story

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And using this method, he robs somewhere between 40 and 60 McDonald's stores in a two year period. But then one day, Hamburglar gets a little greedy. He robs a McDonald's and then a few hours later, he drives 10 miles away and he finds another McDonald's and he lowers himself in through the roof and he starts to rob it too. So two stores in one day.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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It's 4 a.m. and this young dude, he's on the roof of this luxury car dealership. And he ties off a rope and he opens the hatch to the roof. And then he rappels down into the showroom, Mission Impossible style. And there he looks around at all the luxury cars until he finally sees the one he wants. A banana yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. And he breaks into it by getting the locks open.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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She only talks to him because she wants to buy another fake ID from him. So Eva and Max, they start texting back and forth often enough. And she's always asking him about this fake ID he's going to sell her. But Max, he's decided he wants more. And so he makes his move. And he asks her, So what are you doing on Valentine's Day? And that is when Eva drops a bomb on him.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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She's like, I'mma be with my boyfriend. Now this absolutely crushes Max. He is devastated. He doesn't like the fact that she has a boyfriend one bit. And he gets pissed off and he's like sitting in his room just thinking about it, marinating. Now Eva's boyfriend is this guy, Landon. And Max, he finds Landon on Facebook and he starts talking trash to him and he threatens to fight him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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And of course, none of this wins Eva over. So then Max, he comes up with a plan. He's gonna unalive Landon so that Eva will have to love him. Yeah, I'm not really sure that's gonna work out all that well. So two months later, after Eva had rejected Max's Valentine's Day text, Max sets his plan into motion.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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He goes to a motorcycle shop and he buys a black motorcycle helmet and all black motorcycle gear so that no one will recognize him. The next day, he puts on the gear and he gets a pew-pew and he gets on his motorcycle. Then he rides over to Landon's house. Now at Landon's house, he just happens to be sitting outside in his truck.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So Max pulls up next to his truck and he pulls out a pew-pew and he aims it at Landon sitting in the cab and he's ready to fire. Here's the thing, Max doesn't know this, but Landon isn't the only one in that truck. Eva is actually sitting in the passenger seat next to him, but Max doesn't see her. So Max, he aims the pew-pew at Landon and he pulls the trigger. Blam! Blam! He fires five times.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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And bullets come flying through Landon's window. And he and Eva have to duck down. And at that moment, Max accidentally fumbles and he drops the pew-pew. So Landon, he sees this opportunity and he floors it, speeding away. And they haul ass to a nearby taco shop and they call 911. And then police come out and they investigate and they have no idea who this shooter is.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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And then he disables the alarm on the building. And then he drives the Lambo out of the dealership, speeding away in his brand new car. Now this Lamborghini he stole isn't just a Lamborghini. It happens to belong to celebrity chef and restaurant owner Guy Fieri, who had just taken it to that dealership to get it serviced. Now the dude who stole it, his name is Max.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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But surveillance footage got him getting gas at a nearby gas station right before the shooting. And then two of the detectives investigating, they look at this footage, and they just happen to be motorcycle enthusiasts. And they recognize the brand of helmet that Max is wearing. And only one motorcycle shop in the area sells that brand of helmet.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So they go to the shop, they ask for the surveillance footage, and on it, they see Max. buying the helmet and the black gear he wore during the shooting. Now, detectives, they don't know his name is Max. But remember, Max had been threatening Landon on Facebook.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So police put two and two together, and they realized the guy who was threatening Landon on Facebook is also the guy who was shooting at him. Now, these detectives, they don't want to just roll up and arrest Max right away. No, no. They want to find the pew-pew he used during the shooting and the motorcycle he was riding that day. so that they can tie him directly to the crime.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So they approach Eva and they ask her to help them catch Max. They have her call him and ask him to meet up while they record the phone call. So Eva calls him and she's like, Hey Max, I need a new fake ID. Let's meet up. And then she asks him if he can bring that sweet banana yellow Lambo. And Max is like, all right, sweet.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So he goes to the storage unit and he gets the Lambo out and he drives it over to where Eva is. And now detectives, they're on the lookout and they spot him driving because, you know, a yellow Lambo is kind of hard to miss. And so they see him and they start tailing him. And then other detectives, they instruct Eva to text Max and cancel the meetup. So then Max is like, oh, bummer.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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And he has to turn around and drive his Lambo back to the storage unit. Now, detectives are still low-key following him. And so he leads them right there, right to the storage unit where he had been hiding the stolen Lambo, the pew-pew he used during the shooting, and the motorcycle he was riding that day.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

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So then, boom, they arrest Max, here's his mugshot, and he's charged with attempted murder and a bunch of other stuff, and he gets sentenced to 21 years to life. Shout out to Flavortown, I guess.

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The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

43.28

And Max is 16, he's a high school dropout, but he's kind of a sharp guy. He had learned how to repel and disable alarms by watching YouTube tutorials. So he steals Guy Fieri's Lambo. And he can cruise around the city in it sometimes, but he doesn't really want to get caught. So the car, most of the time, sits parked in a storage unit he rented.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

63.399

Meanwhile, Guy Fieri, he keeps getting phone calls from his friends. Like, hey bro, I saw you driving around town today in your Lambo. Of course, it isn't him driving. It's actually Max. Now, stealing cars isn't the only illegal thing Max does. He actually makes money with a side business selling fake IDs to high school students. And this business is where things start getting crazy for him.

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

The Kid Who Stole Guy Fieri's Lamborghini - The Max Wade story

86.336

Because one day he sells a fake ID to this girl, Eva. Now Max, he likes Eva. He thinks she is foine and he really wants to impress her. And yeah, he's got this cool banana yellow Lambo. What more does he need? Sometimes he'll even pull up to meet up with her in this Lambo. Like he's trying to flex. But unfortunately, Eva isn't really interested in Max.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

The Future of Influencer & Athlete Marketing with Ishveen Jolly

11.959

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

The Future of Influencer & Athlete Marketing with Ishveen Jolly

2006.966

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman

11.593

Oh, wow. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts Right About Now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman

2687.516

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar

11.12

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

The Art of Attracting the Right Clients for Your Business with Dr. Deepak Dugar

2220.262

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Pivoting in Business: How to Thrive Amidst Challenges Like a Pro with Bedros Keuilian

13.276

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Business News: Economic March Madness - NCAA Revenue - NASA astronauts & SpaceX Capsule - Cryptocurrency Trends

0.859

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Business News: Economic March Madness - NCAA Revenue - NASA astronauts & SpaceX Capsule - Cryptocurrency Trends

2589.009

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Navigating Business News: Trump's Tariffs and Market Trends - Trade Wars and Their Impact - Facebook & UFC Sign Partnership

0.859

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Navigating Business News: Trump's Tariffs and Market Trends - Trade Wars and Their Impact - Facebook & UFC Sign Partnership

2178.306

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

NO BS Business News: Top 10 Mother's Day Gifts - Amazon Launches the Age of Robots - Crypto News - Trading Card Series Launch

0.859

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

NO BS Business News: Top 10 Mother's Day Gifts - Amazon Launches the Age of Robots - Crypto News - Trading Card Series Launch

1854.48

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Business News: The Real Opportunity w/ AI - Creating Leverage - Real Estate Market Softening

0.876

This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Business News: The Real Opportunity w/ AI - Creating Leverage - Real Estate Market Softening

2011.169

This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit RyanIsRight.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

SEQUESTERED Podcast

SEQUESTERED: A Juror's Perspective of the Murder Trial for Jasmine Pace

11.325

It's a story that struck the nation. In November, 22-year-old Jasmine Pace was reported missing by her mother. And less than one week later, her body was found, police say, at the hands of her boyfriend, Jason Chen.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

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You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

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Cassidy's arrest and seizure of black book bared by Butts.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

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She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

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Happy days are here again. The skies above are clear again.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

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So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

2662.09

What have been your personal journeys with therapy? We need to be coached throughout our lives. My mom wanted us to be independent children.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

3271.009

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

791.135

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E8: National Hangover

871.17

What have been your personal journeys with therapy? We need to be coached throughout our lives. My mom wanted us to be independent children.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E5: Double Barrel

16.861

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E5: Double Barrel

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So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E5: Double Barrel

2680.412

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E5: Double Barrel

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So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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Mabel Walker Willebrand was a very serious woman. If she woke up every day, the first thing she did was take an ice-cold bath.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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He was a dapper dude. You would have thought he was a general of the most powerful army in the world or something.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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She was a lone warrior.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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Harding drank a lot. Harry Doherty, the attorney general who was the immediate boss to Mabel Willebrand, he was A, a drunk, and B, corrupt.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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She didn't have much in the way of financial support. And one of the things that was indicative of the attitude of the drys is that they passed these laws but gave no money for enforcement.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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The fact that there were only 2,600 prohibition agents covering the entire Canadian border, the Mexican border, and both coasts, it's ridiculous.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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Someone said, about the Canadian border, you know, you can't stop a liquid from leaking through a dotted line, that dotted line on the map.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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Well, she had the power to bring indictments. The power of the courts.

SNAFU with Ed Helms

S3E4: Trust Issues

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No, you can't do this. Remus doesn't get arrested.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Charlie paced around outside her house in the cool night air. It was quiet, which was one benefit of living hours away from the bustling city of Manila. The other was the fresh air she got from being surrounded by lush greenery at the base of a mountain.

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Like a lot of brothers, Max and Josh had their fair share of fights growing up. But if anyone else messed with Max, Josh was always the first to defend him. He just wanted to be with his brother. Like whatever happens, they will be together. Charlie couldn't really tell him he couldn't go. He was an adult, and he was trying to help fix her mistake, which she seemed to be making worse by the hour.

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And so far, Dev had pretty cleanly won every round. But, at least according to Charlie, not only did Josh want to join this losing game, so did two others. First, word got to Max's girlfriend, and she said she wanted to tag along. She insisted. She said that I want to be with him. Then with Max's girlfriend going, Max's girlfriend's brother also wanted to go.

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I don't know what came into their mind for the girlfriend and the brother. I mean, what came into their mind was the girlfriend wanted to be with her boyfriend and the brother wanted to keep an eye on his sister. And while they all knew it was a scam, they also kind of thought they could just hustle their way through it.

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Keep their head down, meet quota, make some money, get the heck out of Dodge at the end of their contract. But for Charlie, this made things much more complicated.

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But it wasn't just Max. Now, it was four people. One she was already worried about, one who was a hothead, and two who were wildcards. Because frankly, Charlie just didn't have the same relationship with the girlfriend and her brother as she did with Josh and Max. And even though she did not know how to solve this constantly expanding headache, she did have an idea.

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Maybe because she'd been such a good employee, Dev would let her go see her brothers just to make sure they were okay.

Scam Factory

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That is exactly what Dev meant.

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If you wanted to see your brothers, do that for me. In order to see her brothers, Charlie would have to cross a serious line. She would have to sell someone on a job that wouldn't be anything like she promised and send them to a place where they would have no way out. She would have to sacrifice one person to the scam factory.

Scam Factory

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I'm Denise Chan, host of Scam Factory, and I have a brand new vintage of podcast for you, fresh off the grapevine. Blood Vines is a full-bodied podcast that uncorks the never-before-told story of the Lachardy family, one of the most powerful wine dynasties in California's history.

Scam Factory

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Jack Lachardy was a patriarch of one of the country's biggest grape suppliers for America's most popular wine, White Zinfandel. But things turned sour when the government began to investigate the business for multimillion-dollar wine grape fraud. The case spilled over into a bloody battle for succession for the family business that almost brought down the entire industry and ended in murder.

Scam Factory

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And Dev had to let him go.

Scam Factory

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If you loved succession, then Blood Vines is the series for you. Grab a glass of your favorite wine and dive into a story that has notes of fraud and betrayal, capped off with a big finish, murder. Listen to Blood Vines exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Charlie was standing outside her family home, smoking.

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Again, it's where she did her best thinking. And Charlie needed her best thinking to solve this problem Dev had saddled her with. How the fuck was she going to recruit someone into the scam factory?

Scam Factory

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At this point, Charlie had given Dev both of her brothers, her brother's girlfriend, and her brother. She really didn't want to end up shipping her whole family off to the compound. She needed someone new, someone she wasn't related to, and someone who wouldn't freak out when she told them what the job was. Which was the challenge, because this wasn't a normal job.

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Who would want to be a scammer on purpose? This was a lot harder than calling up a travel agency and bullshitting about a vacation to Thailand. And a lot more messed up on a conscience level, too. Charlie was going to have to convince someone to take a shady job. But she had no choice. If she wanted to see her brothers, and if she wanted to stay in Dev's favor, she had to do this.

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Dev didn't deny any of this. Yes, the job wasn't the one advertised, and yes, it was a different compound than the one she had visited. But he explained to her that the place she visited was still under construction, and once it was finished, Max would be transferred over.

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She didn't know what would happen if she failed, if Dev got mad or disappointed. And that was a risk she couldn't take. She needed to find someone. I was like, where am I going to find this person? She thought about the qualifications needed for the job. Someone who spoke English well and had experience interacting with customers. Then it came to her.

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In a previous job, Charlie had worked as a customer service representative. She figured someone who worked in a call center would be the perfect candidate. She texted an old coworker. I tried my luck, maybe she knew someone. But Charlie needed to be careful with how she phrased her question.

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This kind of industry. The job she was recruiting for was illegal. The fact that she was recruiting was illegal. Who knew how this person would react to Charlie's casual inquiry?

Scam Factory

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At least as Charlie tells it, her friend was picking up exactly what she was putting down. She said that I know one person who can help you.

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She had her target.

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Now, Charlie says this woman didn't seem fazed by the whole scam part.

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Charlie couldn't believe her luck. She hadn't had to handle any objections or make any earnest promises. And she was about to land not one, but two recruits.

Scam Factory

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In the meantime, Max was placed in a compound that had already been fully built, about 10 minutes away, and Dev would make sure he was being looked out for. Charlie was starting to get desperate. She pointed out that he'd even lied about the salary. And then I asked him, see, even the salary, you also lied to us.

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All this woman really wanted to know was, how much would they be making?

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Charlie told them the salary was $1,000 a month. The women were in shock.

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Suddenly, she had three recruits. And every time her phone rang, the number went up.

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Charlie had only been asked to get one person, and now she had five. And again, according to Charlie, she felt she'd been honest with them or mostly honest with them.

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Charlie is saying that she gave these women enough information to deduce that they were going to Myanmar. They could do the math. You're crossing a river from Massat, which, if you look at a map, means only one thing. You are going to Myanmar. Look, she had five women who she felt were totally fine with taking a year-long scamming job for $1,000 a month.

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She was not about to muck it up by getting into the Myanmar of it all. She left that detail for them to figure out. And sure, Dev had lied to her about Max's salary. So Charlie had no idea if these women would actually make the money Dev promised. And there was also the detail that Charlie was trying to get her brothers out of the same place she was sending these women off to.

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But for Charlie, what she told them was good enough. It had to be. Because she needed to close this sale. She needed to prove herself to Dev.

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For someone who insisted she didn't know how to do this, Charlie had delivered with flying colors on her first try.

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Charlie was proving herself to be very, very good at this. The problem was, she would soon regret every last bit of this victory. Because these women would go to the compound and settle right in. In fact, two of the five quickly started to climb the corporate ladder inside the scam factory. Within a couple months, they were promoted.

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They started a whole new HR department inside the compound that focused on recruiting Filipino workers. Charlie's recruits became recruiters themselves and Charlie's colleagues because Charlie started to arrange travel for their recruits too.

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Max's salary was about $300 a month, more than three times less than he'd been promised. And then he said, don't worry about the salary. The company would give Max's reduced pay, and Dev would provide the rest. And then I would enter my own pocket. Charlie didn't know it, but it was like Dev was reading straight from one of Shana Lucas's scripts. He's always saying, no, don't worry.

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which is how Charlie would find herself in a group chat called God Bless with her two recruits turned recruiters and a young Filipino woman named Jella, coaxing her into the compound. It was already too far from Bangkok. Jella stood with her phone in one hand and the handle of her luggage in the other. She had just gone through an immigration checkpoint on the Thai border.

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She was at one end of a long bridge. Behind her was Thailand. And at the other end was Myanmar. The bridge was called the Friendship Bridge, but Jella was scared out of her fucking mind. Beside her were two Chinese men and a local Burmese woman, her escorts. They didn't speak English, but they encouraged her to step forward, to start walking across the bridge.

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The bridge had pedestrian walkways on either side. In the middle, cars and bikes whizzed by. On both sides of the bridge were colorful buildings and billboards in Thai. Below the bridge was a muddy river. It looked like a totally normal bridge, but Jella did not want to take another step forward. She pulled up the group chat called God Bless with her recruiters and Charlie.

Scam Factory

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She had asked these women multiple times whether the job was in Myanmar. And each time they said no, it was in Tak province in Thailand. But here she was, being pushed across a bridge into Myanmar. They had lied. And now, they were trying to make it seem like it was no big deal.

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Jella asked, is this the way they'd be getting out too? She tacked on a nervous hee-hee. Jella, by the way, isn't the confrontational type. She often masked her fear and softened ha-has and emojis. But despite what she was texting, Jella was terrified. Charlie responded, Jella panicked.

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Charlie didn't answer the question she was actually asking, which was why the hell was she in Myanmar and how the hell was she going to get out? Jella looked around and considered making a run for it.

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When she got to the other side of the bridge, men with camouflage uniforms and guns greeted her. She sent another text to the group chat asking about these soldiers. She asked if she was safe with these men.

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Don't worry, I'll take care of your brother. Pitch, handle objections, make promises earnestly.

Scam Factory

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Charlie and the recruiters kept insisting. It was safe. She should go with the armed men. They would protect her. Jella felt trapped.

Scam Factory

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Jella was facing the same question as every person pulled into the scam factory. What is more dangerous, to do as they say or not? It's the same question Charlie faced when recruiting five women in order to visit her brothers. Keep Dev happy and do as he asked? Or risk the chance that she may never see them again? But choosing to please Dev to get her brothers out of the scam factory?

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would end up costing her more than she could ever possibly repay.

Scam Factory

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That's on the next episode of Scam Factory. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com.

Scam Factory

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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com. From Wondery, this is episode two of six of Scam Factory, a story about a brother, his sister, and the big business of lies. Scam Factory is written, reported, and hosted by me, Denise Chan. Our story editor is Lou Okowski. Senior producer is Claire Chambers. Associate producer is Evangeline Baras.

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Reporting by Wijitra Duangdi. Additional reporting by John Vic Mateo. Additional production assistance from Emily Locke, Malachi Wade, and Mariah Dennis. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound design and mixing by Jamie Cooper. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villapando. Original score by Tangelene Bolton. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frizon Sync.

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Deb would see to it that Max would be able to get out in half the time he was originally contracted for. He said, special treatment.

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Senior Managing Producer is Lata Pandya. Managing Producer is Heather Beloga. Senior Development Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Fact-checking by Jacqueline Coletti. Executive Producers are Julia Lowry-Henderson, George Lavender, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.

Scam Factory

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She didn't want a deal. She wanted to get her brother out of this. And then I told him that I want him to send him back.

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Charlie didn't have anywhere near that kind of money. She sold secondhand clothes for a living. Her bank account only had about $500 in it. It's not like a bank would give her a loan. What would she say? My brother's trapped in a scam factory in Myanmar and I need to pay the people who are holding him? She couldn't ask her parents. They didn't have that kind of money either.

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They are just relying on our support. She didn't dare tell her family.

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And she didn't think she could go to the police.

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Her brother was trapped in Myanmar, a foreign country nearly 1,500 miles away. A foreign country in the middle of its own civil war that felt more or less lawless.

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Charlie was afraid if the local Philippines authorities could do anything, it would take a long time. But she was even more afraid of what Dev might do if he found out she went to the police.

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But Charlie was about to make a big move. One that could get her in serious trouble. Because if Charlie really wanted to get Max out, if she really wanted to make the kind of money she needed to buy his freedom, then Dev had one more offer.

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Less pollution. Which didn't really matter at this moment because Charlie was smoking like a chimney.

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Charlie could work for Dev.

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From Wondery, I'm Denise Chan, and this is Scam Factory. This is Episode 2, Sacrificial Lambs. Charlie sat at her desk in front of her computer. She was surrounded by piles of shoes and clothes that needed to be photographed and posted online. But that would have to wait for another day. Because the office where Charlie ran her online shop was now her makeshift travel agency.

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Charlie was working for Dev. He just said, book the ticket for these people. That's it. She had agreed to help Dev arrange travel for fresh recruits going into the compound.

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Dev could make as much as $10,000 for each recruit he brought over. And for every person Charlie helped with, he promised her a cut. He's giving me $400 each. For her first assignment, Dev told her he had four people he needed her to book travel for. it was Charlie's job to arrange everything. She called a local travel agency and got to work plotting out the perfect three-day Bangkok vacation.

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Temple tours, river boat rides, gemstone factories, But of course, none of these people would ever see any of these sites. They would all be headed to the same scam factory where her brother was working. And by the time they figured out they'd been scammed, it would be too late, just like it had been for her and Max. But Charlie didn't dwell on that.

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She was tense because she'd screwed up big time. How had she gotten it so wrong? I am the type of person that don't easily trust anyone. She had tried to be so careful. She'd gone with Max to that lunch to learn more about the job, to ask all the questions she could think of to the man offering the gig, this guy Dev.

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So when the travel agency sent over the itinerary, Charlie double-checked the names were right, the dates were right, and the tickets were attached. Then she shared it with Dev. Dev was pleased, and Charlie was relieved she'd done a good job. She was keeping Dev happy, but she was still worried about Max. She texted him constantly to check in. Every night, every single night.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

546.726

She wanted to know how he was doing. He told her the food was okay, the hours were long, and he was drinking a lot of beer. Max sent photos of his dorm, and he sent a selfie from his balcony with his new work buddy, Jane. Charlie also wanted to know what he was doing. Max told her he was working with a group of Filipinos. Because they spoke English, they were scamming customers in the UK.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

573.239

But there were people from all different parts of the world. Indonesians, Malaysians, Russians, Ethiopians, Pakistanis. They'd all been brought there to scam people in a variety of languages. He sent her pictures of his training documents, which had elaborate instructions on how to walk a customer through setting up a crypto account.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

594.071

Like making sure the customer sends all their bank info directly to their customer service team. Or reminding the customer to check back in if they're idle for over 10 minutes, just to make sure they're depositing money in the right bank account. He told her about the constant surveillance.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

619.043

The bosses could see everything on their computer screens and their work phones. And when Max clocked in, he had to hand over his personal phone, which they no doubt looked through. He had to be very careful what he sent to Charlie. And Charlie needed to watch what she sent him, too. He said he needs to delete the messages.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

641.291

Working for Dev, Charlie was starting to get a better understanding of what she and Max were involved in. the place seemed to be run by a Chinese syndicate. Dev was Malaysian Chinese. Everyone she'd talked to, who was a boss, spoke Chinese. And she knew that Max's managers were Chinese too. On top of that, the scale of this company was even bigger than she had thought.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

667.979

It wasn't just the one company Max was in. Dev was sending people to a bunch of different companies in different compounds, all in that area. All to scam. It was a huge operation. And Max was just one of thousands. Charlie told Max to do as he was told and he'd be safe. They'd work this out.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

705.99

Charlie sat on the edge of the pool at her family's mango farm. Years ago, her family had the idea to dig out two pools next to 200 mango trees, a place they could gather on weekends. Charlie watched her niece and nephews run around the pool, jumping in and out of the water.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

73.559

She'd even gone as far as flying out to Thailand to see where Max would be working. She'd met other people from the company. She'd learned that Dev worked directly with the owners. So to Charlie, this man seemed legitimate. And so did the company. Boy, was she wrong. I got scum. I got scum by Dev. Anger coursed through her body. She gripped her phone. She was going to confront Dev.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

734.056

Normally, Charlie would be helping out too, having fun, drinking a Corona. But today, Charlie kept to herself, feet dangling in the water, head down, chain smoking. I was worried. I was not enjoying that time. The whole family was there. Charlie's siblings, her kids, her parents, even some extended family. But someone was missing. Max. Max.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

759.659

who, as far as everyone else knew, was off making mad money at his new job in Thailand. Only Charlie knew the truth.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

783.962

As Charlie stared off into the pool, deep in thought, her brother Josh walked over and sat down next to her. Out of five siblings, Josh and Max were the only boys, and they were the babies of the family. Josh was just a year older than Max. He said, you look worried. I said, yeah. Growing up, Charlie had always been a de facto parent for her siblings.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

809.757

Because her dad worked overseas and she was the eldest, she helped her mom out.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

845.899

But now, as she looked at Josh's questioning face, her tough older sister facade started to crack. Then he said, Charlie decided to come clean. Charlie told Josh about everything that happened in the last few weeks, that she and Max had been lied to. His job was not what was promised. He was scamming. It was in Myanmar.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

874.376

And that she tried to confront the guy who recruited him, and it had gone terribly. He told her there was a crazy ransom to get Max out. And so instead, she'd ended up working for him. She was booking plane tickets for recruits like Max.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

903.256

Charlie tried to calm Josh down. Max had a bed to sleep on, food every day, and he was at least getting a small paycheck. He was going to stay there and work.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

921.648

It took a moment for Josh to digest everything Charlie had said. Then he spoke. He told me that I will go. I said, what do you mean you will go? She tried to keep her voice low and her emotions in check in front of her unsuspecting family. She really didn't want this to be how her whole family learned what she and Max had gotten into. And she really didn't know if this was a good idea.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

964.88

Charlie surveyed her 5'11", tatted-up brother. Josh had a temper that went from 0 to 100 fast.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

979.91

And Charlie knew he was likely to get worked up if something or someone he cared about was threatened, like Max. Then they'd both be in trouble. Even more trouble than being stuck in a scam factory. But Josh insisted he needed to go over there and keep an eye on Max, even if it meant he would be doing the same work Max was doing. He said that he didn't care that I will do scamming.

Scam Factory

Sacrificial Lambs | 2

99.683

It was late, but she didn't care. I asked Dad, what's going on? And then he said, what, what's wrong? She couldn't quite bring herself to call him out directly. To say, hey, you scammed us, and now my brother is scamming people all over the world. So she decided to start with every way Dev had lied to them. Because if everything had been a lie, then they never really agreed to this.

Scamanda

Party’s Over, from Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

1.311

Hey, Scamanda listeners, we're bringing you something special this week. Maybe, like me, you've been following the news about the criminal charges and lawsuits against hip-hop mogul Sean Diddy Combs. Well, there's a new podcast that charts Diddy's rise to the top of music, fashion, and culture, and how it all came crashing down. The show is called Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy.

Scamanda

Party’s Over, from Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

26.582

It's a six-part series from 2020 and ABC Audio. For decades, Diddy was one of the most influential entertainers and entrepreneurs in the world. Then, a video came out that showed a very different, violent side of Diddy. It wasn't the first time there were whispers about Diddy's aggression, but for the first time, the evidence was undeniable, and everyone could see it.

Scamanda

Party’s Over, from Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

51.109

Soon, a wave of lawsuits followed with shocking allegations of sexual abuse and manipulation. And now, Diddy is facing federal charges that include sex trafficking. He is scheduled for trial in May, and he denies all wrongdoing. In this episode, you'll hear about the reputation Diddy established at the height of his fame, and how far he's fallen today.

Scamanda

Party’s Over, from Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy

74.823

If you like it, search Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

1.545

This is a CBC Podcast. I want to tell you the story that changed everything I thought I knew about luck. It begins on a serene summer day off the coast of southern England. When two fishermen hauled up something unexpected from the depths. The body of a man. No identification on him. The pockets were turned inside out. There was a cut on his head. That didn't look right.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

104.332

They were unmasking a ruthless villain and one of the most wanted men in the world.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

120.805

All along, police were being led by a miraculous string of luck. Oh, it's an absolute million to one shot.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

140.837

Who was the man at the center of it all? Who lived a life built on lies? I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

31.557

The only clue was the man's watch. The serial number led to a name. The name led to an address. And the address led to a shocking discovery.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

50.257

One name, one address, but two different people. Thinking, what on earth have I turned up here?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 Trailer | Sea of Lies

59.464

What is going on? We need to step it up a level. As the police honed in on their suspect, they had no idea how much things were about to escalate. Nobody really knew from where he came. He just kind of showed up, right? You should be really careful because you don't know anything about this man. As they pulled at the threads, they began to unravel a dark and vast plot.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

126.548

That the pain left behind is still raw.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

146.345

And I believe that there were more victims. So when you went to the police, how long did it take for them to follow up after you said those things to them?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

166.92

I'm Arlene Bynum. From CBC's Uncover, calls from a killer. Clifford Olsen's calling. Will you accept the charge? Yes, I will. Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

32.136

A reporter getting secret phone calls from Canada's most notorious serial killer. He was serving a life sentence for murdering 11 children. His oldest victim, 18. The youngest, nine. Captured only after the police offered him a shocking deal. Cash for bodies.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

57.318

And then the prosecution announced an unusual trade. The location of the missing bodies in return for $100,000. Today, the news that crime does pay was a concern all across the country.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

70.843

I was desperate to understand why he did what he did.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

83.929

And how to stop it from happening again.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S33 Trailer | Calls From a Killer

96.163

For 30 years, these recordings have been sealed away. Secrets kept in boxes in my basement. But it's time to unearth the tapes, because I believe that the police could have stopped him sooner.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Fatal Beauty from Sony Music Entertainment

15.452

She was either the black widow or bad luck.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Fatal Beauty from Sony Music Entertainment

168.739

The police rapidly concluded this guy was probably killed in Dallas.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Fatal Beauty from Sony Music Entertainment

203.246

If he'd been robbed in Dallas... Why would the culprit bother... pushing him out of the driver's seat and then driving his dead body all the way to Oklahoma City.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies

2167.426

So he, as of August last year, is now on day parole in Canada.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies

271.284

On the first day of his murder trial, the key witness against him was his daughter.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

1258.614

I appreciate that you say that you weren't a victim. And I know that it wasn't at all the same way that Jeannie was. But kissing a student on the lips is actually sexual assault.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

1625.999

OK, so as you know, I got in touch with him first to see if he would talk to me. And then he said that he thought about it. He did some soul searching and he decided he wouldn't do an interview because he's been through enough already.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

1673.113

Okay. This is the note I got last night, which I wasn't expecting quite so quickly because I only sent this to him yesterday afternoon.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

1941.872

During those five years, I played the trumpet in multiple bands under the direction of Doug Walker. I just read your article. It left me reeling. I was witness to the drinking and the sexual innuendo. I was never comfortable around Mr. Walker, and I believe he knew that. I was not a victim of his abuse. My heart breaks for those who were. I am gutted. Thank you for bringing these stories to light.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

1962.201

I hope more people come forward and those who let this happen are held accountable.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

2009.694

I'm hoping that we hear from the Port Credit person.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S31 E6: The diaries | The Banned Teacher

345.803

So let's start off. Tell me your name. Tell me where you live, where you're from.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1021.55

With the body now safely in the hands of the coroner and Devon police, they don't know who they have, and they don't know what they have. But lying in their mortuary was the key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that spanned years and continents. An unimaginable web of lies was about to come undone. I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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Episode one, luck or something like it. Since Detective Ian Clenahan was both young and new in town, he'd been partnered up with a veteran of Devon Police.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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Bill is measured with his words in a way that only someone with 30 years of interrogation experience could be. We interviewed him in his purpose-built bird-watching space, where he patiently sits, confident the birds will come to him.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1116.269

After two days passed without anything, MacDonald and Clenahan decided that it was time to take action. So if you were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the name of an idealist man plucked from the bottom of the ocean, Where do you even begin?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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Lacking readily available information from out in the world, the Devon Police naturally were very interested to learn if the results of the post-mortem had a story to tell.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1238.407

The pathologists listed the body as male, 5'9", brown hair, receding, possibly in his 40s. Estimated time in the water? One week. Both noted the tattoo on his hand. But either because it was old or it warped in the seawater, neither pathologist could make out what the tattoo was of. There was bruising on the right hip and on the outside of the knee on the same side of the body.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1264.804

But it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1296.857

And as for the gash on the back of the head, while the first pathologist thought it consistent with being trawled along the seabed and the roughs, the other advised that it was inconclusive what had caused the gash and that they should keep an open mind. But really, there wasn't anything new to go on after the autopsy.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1318.464

And after devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like it was time to scale down the effort. If no one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to come forward with new information, there was little more the cops could do. This was looking like it would be recorded forever as an unidentified person.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1357.643

And that would have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Because I'm telling you, luck or something like it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this person from being forever unknown came in the form of a suggestion, really, from one of the staff members of the coroner. A casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1384.395

Because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little, had a chance conversation with a friend just afterwards.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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Oh sure, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea when the coroner officer says it.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1419.252

No one who handled the watch saw the serial number at first because it's only visible when you take the pin out of the band to expose the side of the casing. So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1445.154

Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from where the body was found. Devon is down in the southwest, and Harrogate is way up in the central north.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

145.598

Craig Coppock was the son of a fisherman, a line of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally incompatible with the sleepy goals of a university kid. So whatever dreams he had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement from his dad.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1491.98

It was only seven letters, but R.J. Platt rolled off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from the sea. He had a name now. It was a start. Clenahan spent the week typing the name into every tool at his disposal, checking registries, council tax receipts, and state records. And he found an address linked to a Ron J. Platt in Essex. Geographically, Essex isn't near Devon either.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1521.106

It's way on the Belgium-Netherlands facing side of England. So they needed a man on the ground in Essex to head to this flat. And they found one.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1554.164

So Redmond headed out, and when he arrived at the place, he was able to confirm that Platt had once lived in one of the flats there, but had moved out a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about the address, and they told him that Platt had written on his termination notice, I'm no longer liable for property tax. I'm moving to France. Platt was moving to France?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1581.378

This detail would light up the imaginations of Clenahan and MacDonald when they heard it. Because a move to France could conceivably place Ron Platt on a boat in the English Channel where his body was found. But the most useful bit of information that Redmond was able to find in Chelmsford came when he spoke to Platt's old landlord. They did give me the name of the chap who stood guarantor for him.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1608.177

When he applied to rent the place, Ron Platt needed to provide a reference. So he gave one. Mr. Davis. David Davis. In an investigation in which they had failed to find a single person involved in Ron's life who actually knew Ron, learning the name and mobile number of a character reference felt like gold.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1631.715

And since this Davis person lived nearby in Essex, Peter Redman was the one who called him up.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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And Davis obviously wanted to know what this was all regarding. So Redmond had to come out with it on the phone.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

166.704

Craig had been helping his father on the trawler since he was 11, so he knew all too well what assisting dad on the boat would look like.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1676.502

Redmond said that if it was okay with him, he would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron in person. And Davis said, sure. I'll come to the police station.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1711.075

After their chat, Redman told him that his colleagues, who were the ones investigating Ron's death in Devon, would be contacting him as well. And they would be able to give him more information about the circumstances of their finding his friend. The first time Ian Clenahan called David Davis, there was no answer.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1734.727

But then, as so often happens in British police procedurals, there was a high-stakes scene involving tea.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1759.932

David Davis began telling Clenahan the story of how he and Ron Platt became friends.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1769.815

They first met up in Harrogate, the northern town where the Rolex was last serviced. And then they both wound up living near each other in Essex some years later. As David Davis launched into the story, Clenahan, standing at the tea station, was unprepared to take notes.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1800.126

The mundane detail of writing utensil was more significant than Clenahan realized in the moment. He had no way of knowing that in two years' time, this very note would become evidence.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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Proof that the man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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When Ron Platt first broke the surprising news about his move to France, David Davis said that he offered to help his friend out financially to make it happen. And while an exchange of money just before someone dies of mysterious circumstances can be a red flag, it didn't sound like it in this case.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1878.732

But ultimately, as to the question of what the hell happened to him, like everyone else, Davis had no idea what his friend would have been doing in Devon. Boarding a boat that would take him to France? That would make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone, Clenahan asked if Davis could point them toward any other people who knew Ron.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1900.921

Davis said he'd never met Ron's family, but he knew that he had brothers. And then notably, Davis told Clenahan that Ron had once served in the military, so maybe they could find his family that way.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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This confirmed that they didn't just have a Ronald Platt, but this Ronald Platt.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1936.963

Finally, with a little wind in their sails, through the army records, they were able to find a family member of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and were out the door to meet Brian, Ronald Platt's big brother.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1960.063

They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office, a zoomed-in shot of the hand tattoo.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

1975.071

The best guess that anyone had at this point was that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2003.35

And then the three men sat down for the tough part.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2024.861

In their conversation with Brian, MacDonald and Clenahan learned that Ronald Platt was the middle child with two brothers, that he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada before coming home to the UK at 17 to join the Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother as being quiet, private, that Ron suffered from depression and dark moods, which pricked up the ears of both detectives.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2059.619

But even here, sitting with a member of his nuclear family, clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three Platt brothers weren't close at all. There had never been a falling out or any animosity. It was just that where their brotherly bond was supposed to be, instead, there was just a vacuum.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2081.035

Brian didn't know much of anything about his little brother's life and certainly knew nothing about the end of it. Clenahan and MacDonald thanked Brian and started their drive back to Devon.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

21.493

I'm Jason Markesoff, bringing the takes and stakes from the West.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2119.639

The mystery of what happened to Ron Platt had consumed water cooler chatter at the police station for weeks.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

214.417

Craig and his dad headed out on their 10-meter rig, the Malkery, to trawl for cod a few miles offshore. And after the first few hours, it was shaping up to be an underwhelming day of fishing. It's fair to say on the first two tows, we weren't catching enough fish to cover expenses. But John Coppock was as experienced a fisherman as you could find in all of England.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2142.113

And in the coming weeks, nothing new would turn up. It was obvious to McDonald and Clenahan that it was time to let this one go. Wind it down and get this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing. They ID'd the mystery man and notified the family so that they could have a proper funeral. That was something, at least. It felt like it was over.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2207.074

How are we ever going to find out what happened?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2273.444

The day that everything changed begins with Clenahan at his desk in the police station. As far as he was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platt was filed and finished. The only minor outstanding thing that remained was for him to make contact with David Davis on behalf of Ron's brother, Brian, to retrieve some of Ron's possessions. So Clenahan had to call Davis.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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But, consequently, there was a hiccup.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2322.441

So he got Peter Redman of Essex Police back on the phone.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2335.895

Peter Redman again, the most low-key cop of all time.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

2343.479

Redmond's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He usually has a million things to do and wouldn't, under normal circumstances, drive the half-hour drive to go and do another detachment a favor right away. But this day, he had a reason to want to make the drive.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

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So Redmond heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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His body seemed like it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on unstable decks. He was solid in stature and sharp of mind from countless years of reading between trawls. And he had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch for the day. A notorious area known to the local fishermen as the roughs.

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As Peter Redman drives his brand new car that day in 1996, he has no idea that he himself has become a vehicle of fate. He and Clenahan and McDonald will spend the rest of their lives thinking about how big a role luck played that day. What would have happened if Clenahan didn't lose Davis' phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades.

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What if Redmond didn't feel compelled to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.

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He was told that Davis' home was a place on Little London Lane that was called simply Little London Farmhouse. When Redmond took my producer Alex on this exact drive, everything looked the same as it did back then, but for one key detail.

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The houses all have signposts with their names on them, but they didn't then.

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And this, Redmond standing on the doorstep with his hand perched to knock, this, dear listener, is the biggest what if from that day. What if Redmond didn't accidentally knock on the wrong door? And Frank and Audrey answered. Frank and Audrey, the neighbors, were both in their late 70s. Charmingly, whenever they met a new person, like the police officer on their doorstep, they'd offer right away.

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We're not married to each other. We're both widows and live together just as friends. Peter double-checked the address for David Davis and asked them if this was...

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David Davis? Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of a David Davis. And he said, oh, no, Ron Platt lives next door. I beg your pardon? The man in that house right there? In the address that David Davis said was his house? To you? He's called Ron Platt? That was the spark. Redmond took a second to process what he just heard. Suddenly, this routine visit felt ominous. Ronald Platt is dead.

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But Davis is Platt? So Platt is alive? And living here? Next to this platonic couple? Redmond needed to find out more.

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As Redmond stands on the exact stoop with my producer Alex today, at the same crooked cottage with the same wooden door, retracing the steps he took nearly 30 years earlier, all of a sudden, a man peers out from the side door of the house, suspicious as to why we're staring at his property, armed with a microphone.

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So what on earth did Audrey and Frank tell Redmond that day that was so memorable, so enduring, that decades later a future owner of the house would be able to recall it? Back to Redmond.

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They'd lived there for about a year. Oh, and one more thing, they had a boat.

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Craig's dad was unafraid of the roughs because he'd modified his nets specifically to traverse the big rocks that the other fishermen were wary of. After a couple of hours in the roughs, they started to bring up the net to see if their third toe would be different. And as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away that this was the catch they were after.

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After chatting for a fair while, Redmond stood up and asked if they would be so kind as to keep this conversation just between the three of them and made his way back to his car, dizzy.

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Redmond drove the new car straight back to the station in Chelmsford because he knew two detectives in Devon who needed to hear about this.

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Clenahan waved over MacDonald and told him that the neighbors in Woodham Walter know David Davis as Ron Platt.

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They knew immediately that this was something they were going to need to bring to the boss.

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Sinkhock finally relented. And after he absorbed the information, he had a plan. He said, we need to learn everything we can about the man living in that house. And we need to do it discreetly.

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Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one person who knows both Ronald Platts.

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Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.

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Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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But then, their fortunes turned.

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Find us in the House's feed, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. This story begins with a miracle. I don't know what else to call it. And when I say miracle, I don't mean it in the religious sense. At least I don't think I do. I mean it in the sense of luck. Luck is a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune.

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Father and son stared at the body in disbelief.

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The man on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a button-up shirt, trousers with a belt, and laced-up shoes. His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.

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The Coppix approached slowly for a closer look when they noticed two key details.

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To young Craig, there was a body on the deck, and with it, a mystery. But to his father, a much more experienced seafarer, all he could see upon the deck was the dilemma now before him. The right thing to do would be for him to go into the cabin and radio the Coast Guard about this. But the right thing in this case, as it often is, would not be the financially savvy thing to do.

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And beyond today, Craig's dad knew there could be a second, even bigger financial hit coming down the road from this. There was an urban legend among the fishermen community that they believed to be true.

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So before they did anything, father and son would need to have a sober talk about their options. In the privacy of the open sea, it was obvious. No one needed to know about this. This could easily be kept between them and the gulls.

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The more they thought about it, the lost money, the lost day, the hassle of inviting cops on board and giving legal statements, it didn't seem worth it to get involved. Even though it felt wrong, this didn't need to be their problem.

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Coppock made contact with the Coast Guard over the VHF radio, and Central Command paged one of their most experienced men.

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Agate was told that the Coppix had a body on their deck, so he headed out on a small Coast Guard sea rider to meet them. And as he crested toward them, he felt confident that he knew the identity of the man upon their deck. He'd been expecting this call.

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It was all over the news. A couple local 20-year-olds found a pedal boat on the beach when they were stumbling home from the pub and took it out into the bay. What they didn't know was that the pedal boat they found was broken. And what the surviving boy didn't know was that his friend never learned to swim. Two weeks of searching had yielded no trace of the kid, except for a single item.

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So Agate boarded the Coppix ship with a body bag, fully expecting to quickly zip inside a single white-shoed lad. But of course, that wasn't a bee when I got there and saw what I saw. As Coppock was steering the ship toward the harbor, on the shore, the police were setting up a perimeter on the customs pier.

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The authorities were hoping to tape off a relatively private part of the quay, where they could deal with the body out of view of the holidaymakers and kids with ice cream cones.

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But then there's a tier of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine. And while the story that I'm about to tell you features the whole spectrum of luck, coincidences, right places, wrong times, million to one shots connecting, there's no story at all, no truth, no justice without the thing that happens first.

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Clenahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a scouser. And on the day he got his first call on what would turn out to be the biggest case he'd ever work, he was still in his 20s and had just been posted in Devon earlier that week.

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Clenahan, like the Coast Guard, was expecting this to be the body of the missing 20-year-old. But on the ride in, Paul Aggett of the Coast Guard became certain of two things. One, this was not the body of the 20-year-old.

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Once the boat was docked, Ian Clenahan and a couple of other Devon police officers climbed aboard to collect the body. When Agate, the Coast Guard, raised his hand.

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As they waited for the team, Clenahan and the other two looked at the body for themselves, when one of the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Coppock and his dad.

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This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want, and partly why they had a moment of pause before they radioed the body in in the first place.

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Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his dad was a bright man who could think on his feet.

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Crisis averted. The accusing officer circled back to the body.

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The time on its face read 1135, the 22nd. Today was the 28th. And it's at this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip of youthful confidence to offer what he thought was something helpful to say.

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While Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector Clenahan continued looking at the body.

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After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body was loaded into the coroner's van. And for the first time in many hours, it was just Craig and his dad on the boat again. But the moment was brief, as they noticed a figure approaching.

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The thing so far beyond the brackets of likelihood, it was a miracle. Because a father and son who weren't even looking accidentally found something. Someone who was never supposed to be found. We begin July 28th, 1996, in the holiday town of Brixham in Devon, England, where a college kid, happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward to two straight months of sleeping in.

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Every night at 8 p.m., the bells of All Saints Church chime the tune to Abide With Me. The hymn was written right here in Brixham in the early 19th century by a vicar whose flock was comprised almost entirely of fishermen. the chimes are thought to call home all the souls of the men lost at sea.

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Which is to say that Brixham and the Devon Coast is a place where finding the body of an unidentified man in the ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It's a holiday town, so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get caught in storms. And Stone's Throw Away is Barry Head, a sea cliff well-known locally as a place where people go to take their own lives.

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A friend of both women told the Vancouver Sun that she couldn't believe that quote, two very kind and gentle people had been murdered in such a brutal way. In the meantime, investigators were also looking into any possible motives for murder. They discovered that Sharon Huneman had launched a lawsuit against a contractor who built her two-story home in Saanich, according to the Vancouver Sun.

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It was an impressive custom build that cost $380,000, but Sharon reportedly wasn't happy with it. Apparently, she had so many complaints that she almost put the contractor out of business. That had nothing to do with her mother, but police soon discovered another possible motive that did. MUSIC

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Doris Leatherbarrow's sister, who was also the executor of her will, gave investigators some very interesting information. Unlike the impressive home owned by Ralph and Sharon Huneman, Doris still lived in a tidy but modest split-level home. From the outside, there was no indication that the 69-year-old may have been wealthy or but she certainly was.

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Through her success with her Renee's Ladies Apparel stores and her shrewd financial management, Doris Leatherbarrow had amassed an estate worth around $3 million, and that was in 1990. Doris's sister told investigators that Sharon was the primary beneficiary of the estate. with Darren next in line.

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But because he was only 18 years old at the time, there were the usual stipulations to withhold the bulk of the estate to give his brain enough time to mature.

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The will stipulated that if both Doris and Sharon died before Darren turned 25, he would receive his grandmother's car, her house and its contents, and the proceeds of a $200,000 life insurance policy, but he would have to wait until he was 25 to access the rest of her estate. And he knew this.

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Doris's sister told investigators that four days after the murders, Darren phoned her and quizzed her over the details of his grandmother's will. At this point, investigators realised that Darren Huneman had a very serious motive to want his mum and grandma dead, but there was no way he could have been the murderer.

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Remember, it wasn't exactly easy to get between where the Hunemans lived on Vancouver Island and where Doris Leatherbarrow lived on the Lower Mainland. The only way to get between them was by boat, that ferry which took 90 minutes.

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His stepfather Ralph had confirmed that Darren was mostly home on the evening of October 5th, apart from the period between about 8pm to 10pm where he and his girlfriend had dinner in downtown Victoria. It was barely enough time to catch the ferry to the mainland one way.

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It would have been impossible for Darren to go to his grandmother's house, kill her and his mother, and then catch another 90-minute ferry ride back. To fully clear Darren, investigators set out to speak to his known acquaintances, starting with the two friends he and Amanda had dinner with in Victoria that night.

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It takes about 90 minutes, arriving at the terminal on Vancouver Island just after 8.30 p.m. She would typically collect her car from the parking lot and drive home to the Victoria area, arriving at about 9 p.m. It's a little past that time and Ralph figures his wife has probably just been held up. It's 1990, well before everyone had cell phones. There's nothing he can do but wait.

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They arrived at the home of Derek Lord, a 17-year-old who attended Mount Douglas High School with Darren and worked part-time at Kmart. Derek was in the yard with some other teenagers when the police pulled up and he came over to the police cruiser. He was told they were investigating the murders of Doris Leatherbarrow and Sharon Huneman and wanted to speak with him.

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Derek got in the cruiser and he was asked if he knew Darren's mother Sharon. He smiled and said she was a nice lady. Derek said he'd never been to Darren's grandmother's home in Tawasin on the mainland, but told police he'd gone shopping to the Tawasin Town Centre Mall about a week before the murders.

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The 17-year-old said he caught the ferry over with a friend called David Muir and pointed to one of the other teenagers in the backyard. The police realized that this was the name of the other teenager who had dinner with Darren and Amanda that night. They would speak to him later.

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The police asked Derek Lord what he was doing the evening of Friday, October 5th, and Derek told them that Darren Huneman and his girlfriend had picked him up, along with David Muir, and the four went to Chinatown in downtown Victoria for dinner at around 8 p.m. Darren then dropped them home after that.

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Derek was asked if he'd heard any talk at school about the murder of Darren's mother and grandmother, or any rumors about who might have been involved. Derek said no. An investigator told him that they were a little suspicious of Darren, but asked him not to mention anything about their conversation to him because they knew he was obviously going through a difficult time.

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and if he heard any rumours about Darren not to spread them around. Before they left, the police asked Derek if there were any other friends they should talk to. He mentioned that he was part of a group who played Dungeons and Dragons, and that Darren was in charge of the games. He gave them the names of some of the other players.

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With that, investigators chased down the Grand Master, or key organiser of the Dungeons and Dragons group, learning that Darren Huneman had answered an ad in the local paper looking for people to play the fantasy role-playing game, which was at peak popularity at the time.

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The Grandmaster was in his early 20s and told police that Darren joined the group the summer of 1989 when he was just about to turn 17. This was just over a year before the murders.

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The Grandmaster told police that Darren started playing with them every Friday night, describing him as confident and clever with a wild sense of humor, an incessant talker, according to a later article in the Calgary Herald magazine by Lisa Hobbs Burney. According to the Grand Master, Darren always played the character of a priest and became somewhat of a de facto leader for the group.

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He soon invited two of his friends from school to play occasionally, David Muir and Derek Lord. Derek and David frequently referred to him as Lord Darren or Commander. As a joke, they even had fake business cards made up that read, quote, Players noticed that Darren seemed to get bored with the game and would try to manipulate the game's role-playing scenarios.

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In one, he would invade Borneo with an army of 10,000 men dressed in double-breasted silk suits. Investigators learned that Darren's suggested scenarios started to end with a character that he said represented his grandmother, and the game would end with him cracking that character's neck. Darren was heard mentioning snapping or cracking his gran's neck many times after that.

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Darren started to mention in passing that his grandmother was quite wealthy, but he never said anything bad about her. In fact, he told the players that his gran had always been good to him, giving him a fully loaded $30,000 Honda for his 16th birthday and making sure he had all the clothes and money he wanted.

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But Darren told the members of the Dungeons and Dragons group that if his grand were out of the picture, he was in line to inherit it all. At one point, he offered one player $10,000 to do the job. That player thought he was joking. They all did. By June of 1990, Darren had been in the D&D group for about a year, but things started to turn sour.

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He wanted to change his usual character from priest to an evil wizard, but the group consensus was that he wasn't allowed to, so he quit the group in a huff. By that point, it was about three months before the murders. But Darren Huneman didn't confine his strange comments about his grandma to the D&D group.

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At about 10pm, someone arrives home. Ralph gets his hopes up, but it's not his wife Sharon. It's Darren, her 18-year-old son from her first marriage, although he was only about four or five when she married Ralph Huneman. The teenager tells his stepdad he's going to bed. He'll catch up with his mum in the morning.

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A classmate at Mount Douglas Secondary School reported that in the months leading up to the murders of Doris Leatherbarrow and Sharon Huneman, Darren frequently mentioned the money he stood to inherit. That part was highly believable to his classmates. They could see that he had money and took a lot of pride in what he wore. He was often seen wearing suits and silk shirts to school.

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The friend told investigators that Darren mentioned he'd get half his gran's money if he killed her, but if he also killed his mother, he'd get the rest of it. All of it. But once again, everyone thought he was joking. It was just too blatant to be anything else. That fall of 1990, Darren began grade 12 and started dating Amanda.

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Classmates described him as a prominent figure in drama class, a gifted actor with a flair for the dramatic. At the time of the murders, he was in rehearsals for the school play. He was playing the lead role of Caligula, the cruel Roman emperor. By this point, the potential motive involving Sharon Huneman's dispute with the contractor who built her home had fizzled out.

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Instead, investigators honed in on Darren Huneman as the prime suspect. But the 18-year-old's alibi was rock solid. If he was involved in any way, he couldn't have been the murderer himself. More people had to have been involved.

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About three weeks after the murders, Delta Police learned that a taxi driver on the lower mainland had remembered picking up two teenage boys who'd just caught the ferry over from Vancouver Island to Tawasin. He picked them up from the terminal just before 5pm and drove them to the Tawasin Mall.

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This happened on Friday, October 5th, a little earlier on the same evening that Doris Leatherbarrow and Sharon Huneman were murdered. The mother and daughter had been seen at the warehouse in Surrey at the time, but would have been close to finishing up work and driving home, so Sharon could get ready for her ferry back to Vancouver Island.

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This new information was notable to the police for a few reasons. The Tawasin Mall was only about a 10-minute walk from where Doris Leatherbarrow lived. That same night, neighbors had reported seeing two teenage boys loitering around her home. And when police spoke with Derek Lord in the cruiser outside his home...

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He had told them that he and David Muir had done just that, caught the ferry to the mainland to go shopping at the Tawassin Mall. But Derek said their trip happened the week before the murders. It was now time to speak with the other teenager, 16-year-old David Muir.

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He and his parents agreed to an interview at their home, where he was asked where he was the night of Friday, October 5th, between 5.30pm and midnight. David Muir echoed a similar version of events already given by Derek Lord. He told the police that Darren Huneman had picked them both up after school in the afternoon and dropped them off in downtown Victoria.

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He and Derek then walked around the shops there until about 8pm when they met back up with Darren and his girlfriend Amanda for dinner. Then Darren drove them all home at about 9.30 or 10pm. Apart from a few minor variances, the alibis given by the four teenagers were largely consistent with each other.

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Growing more worried by the minute, Ralph eventually decides to call Sharon's mother Doris at home on the lower mainland area of Vancouver. Doris usually drives her daughter to and from the local ferry terminal, so she'll at least know if Sharon actually got on the ferry. But the phone just keeps ringing. Ralph continues to wait up, trying Doris's number again periodically,

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Investigators needed to go back to the Delta taxi driver to see if he could identify the two teenagers he picked up that night. They put together a lineup with photos of Darren Huneman, Derek Lord and David Muir, together with photos of other random teenage boys to make it as fair of an identification process as possible.

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The taxi driver picked out the photo of David Muir and tentatively identified him as one of the two teenagers he picked up from the Tawasin ferry terminal and drove to the mall. The same lineup of photos were then shown to Doris Leatherbarrow's neighbors, who pointed to both David and Derek's photos as the teens they saw loitering outside Doris's home in the early evening after that.

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And at around the same time, investigators also received some new information. The taxi company reported that at about 6.45pm that same Friday night, someone using the name Dave had requested a taxi to pick him up from the Tawassin Mall and drive him to the ferry terminal.

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The driver who took the request told investigators that he picked up two young men who were in a hurry to make the 7pm ferry back to Vancouver Island. This was, of course, the very same ferry that Sharon Huneman was supposed to have caught that night. The taxi driver told police he pulled up outside the terminal with only minutes to spare.

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And just before the two young men ran to catch the ferry, one of them tossed over a $10 bill as payment. The driver wasn't able to recall what they looked like. So investigators went to BC Transit to get a list of passengers on that 7pm ferry. One of them was a university student who remembered the journey vividly for two reasons.

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It was the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and the ferry was late arriving at Swartz Bay Terminal on Vancouver Island. And also, she saw a boy she went to high school with on that same ferry, Derek Lord. She told the police that she knew him from Mount Douglas High School.

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It was at this point that 17-year-old Derek Lord and 16-year-old David Muir joined Darren Huneman as primary suspects in the murders of Sharon Huneman and Doris Leatherbarrow. In the meantime, believing the investigation had stalled, their remaining family members, friends and business associates pulled their funds to provide a $30,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

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It was by this point six weeks since the murders and investigators had a theory but they needed to gather more evidence. They obtained a warrant for a wiretap and within a few days they were intercepting phone calls made and received by Darren Huneman, Derek Lord and David Muir. Then they went to speak with Darren's girlfriend Amanda again and told her they thought she might be lying to them.

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panicked she amended her statement slightly while she'd first told police that she and darren had dinner with the boys in downtown victoria that night she now admitted she actually ate dinner at home the police still believed she was lying but it didn't really matter the actual point of their visit was to rattle amanda enough to say something to darren

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They hoped it would motivate a flurry of phone calls they would be listening into. They didn't have to wait long. That very same day, Darren called Derek Lord's mother, Eloise, and asked what time she saw Derek arrive home on what he referred to as the night in question.

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Eloise Lord sounded a little flustered and told her son's friend she wasn't certain given six weeks had elapsed since that night, but she thought it was somewhere between 8.30pm and quarter to nine. Somewhere in there, but she didn't know. Then the police dropped another bomb.

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but there's still no one home. He decides to call the Delta Police on the lower mainland and asks them to do a welfare check at Doris's home. It's now past midnight. Sharon should have been home about three hours ago and Ralph is extremely anxious as he waits for word his wife is okay.

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They went back to the home of David Muir, the youngest of the three suspects, and told him and his parents that they had information that proved the 16-year-old was with Derek Lord in Tawasin on the mainland the same night the murders were committed. David's mum said she was going to be sick and left the room. It worked.

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The following day, David Muir phoned Derek Lord and the police were listening. All of the excerpts from these wiretap conversations have been edited slightly for clarity and brevity. Derek answered the phone. David told Derek, Derek said, Later in the conversation, David suggested,

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He said they needed to fess up and tell police they really were into Wasson that day, picking up a package of knives which they were going to sell to kids at school. Derek said, David replied, Derek said later in the conversation that, At one point, they made a comment about hoping there was no wiretap on the phone.

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Derek Lord immediately called Darren Huneman and asked him to meet in person about a phone call he'd just had with David Muir. Darren told Derek to calm down and just say what he had to say over the phone. Derek said, "...they're insinuating that they have positive ID that Dave was over there.

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And if I was with Dave that night, it means they must have something to do there because Dave, I'm Dave's alibi." Darren said, No, because you weren't over there. Derek replied, No, I know I wasn't there, but I'm Dave's alibi. If they're saying that he was over there, they've got to say that I was over there. They're insinuating I committed a murder, Darren.

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Darren told him, Shh, calm down, calm down. Is that all you had to tell me? Derek said there was more. David had retained a lawyer and had confirmed to that lawyer that he had been into Wasson. Darren said, Darren then phoned David Muir at home to discuss the situation, but David's mother answered the phone and refused to let Darren talk to her son.

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So Darren called Derek Lord back and described David's mum as the Iron Lady and that David was letting the police bully him into changing his story. Derek Lord said, Well, by changing it, he's insinuating that I helped kill them. Darren replied, quote, Oh, well, shh. He hasn't insinuated that at all, thank God. He wouldn't dare, cause then I'd sue the bastards on Dave's case.

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Um, there is no problem. I'm going to laugh in their faces. They are a bunch of idiots. If they push Dave to say anything, I don't care, because I saw myself pick you up and so did Amanda and so did you. If Dave was somewhere else in his own little mind, I don't know. Derek said, Darren said later that, You don't... God, he's out of line. He's out of line.

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Darren, in the same sentence as talking about his shoes filling with rain, said, Dave's the most malleable boy I've ever met. The lead investigator would later say that during these phone calls, Darren was extremely entertaining and would often impersonate various characters, putting on realistic voices for each one.

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The police noticed that he was very skilled at communication and manipulating people. time to drop another bomb. On November 25th of 1990, five days after the wiretap started, the police went to see Derek Lord at the Kmart where he worked part-time. They told the 17-year-old that he had been identified as being in Tawasin the night of the murders.

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As expected, Derek immediately called Darren Huneman and asked him to meet at Mount Douglas High School. A police officer watched as Darren drove into the school and Derek got in the car so they could talk in person.

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After obtaining all of these phone interceptions, the police firmly believed that Darren Huneman was the mastermind, the one who planned the murders of his own mother and grandmother. But they didn't have quite enough evidence to arrest him. What they did have was enough to arrest Derek Lord and David Muir for physically committing the murders.

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On the mainland, officers with Delta Police arrive just before 3am and enter the home of Sharon Huneman's mother, Doris. It looks like it's been completely ransacked. There are scattered dresser drawers everywhere, with the contents dumped and strewn about. When officers enter the kitchen, they're confronted by the lifeless bodies of two women lying on the floor.

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The police hoped that one or both of them would confess and provide them with more evidence that Darren Huneman was the mastermind. 16-year-old David Muir and 17-year-old Derek Lord were arrested separately on the same day. Derek did not confess, and David refused to give any statement to the police on the advice of his lawyer.

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By this point, Darren had made sure that both David and Derek had lawyers and was reportedly paying for them both. But a few hours later, after David Muir's lawyer had left and while his parents weren't there, the police told the 16-year-old they wanted to offer him a deal and asked him if he wanted to hear what it was. David said yes.

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If he confessed to his involvement and agreed to testify at trial, they promised he'd be tried as a young offender and would only serve a maximum of three years in prison. David agreed to the deal and wrote out an eight-page confession that all but confirmed the police's theory about the case.

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But the following day, David's lawyer found out what had happened and told the Crown prosecutor that whatever deal they had made with the 16-year-old was off. He would not be testifying for the Crown at trial. And further, the police had violated David's charter rights by not informing him of his right to legal counsel at the time they made the deal.

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So whatever he'd written down would be inadmissible as evidence anyway. The police had made a huge mistake, but what they did know, thanks to David Muir, was that Darren Huneman's girlfriend Amanda probably knew a lot more than she'd told them. Darren Huneman was a bit of a chameleon. At Mount Douglas High School, Darren was regarded by some as a bright guy who seemed to have it all.

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He had money, drove a $30,000 special edition Honda to school, and took a lot of pride in what he wore. Some thought of him as highly entertaining, flamboyant, someone who made school life easier. Others saw him as more of a quiet, bookworm type who didn't have too many friends. One student described him as a genius. Darren was known as a model student who was liked by teachers.

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He got A's and B's, listened attentively and tried his best. It seemed that no one had anything bad to say about Darren Huneman, until now. Not long after David Muir and Derek Lord were arrested, investigators brought Darren Huneman's girlfriend Amanda back in and told her they'd received information that could see her charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.

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The 16-year-old cracked immediately. She told police that in the months before the murders, Darren had told her multiple times that he planned to kill his mum Sharon, grandmother Doris and his stepfather Ralph. This was news to the police.

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According to Amanda, the reason Darren said he wanted to kill his stepfather was because he thought Ralph Huneman might become executor of the will since he was married to Sharon. Darren wanted to eliminate all possible barriers that stood in the way of his being the sole beneficiary of his grandmother's estate. which he thought was between $4 million and $6 million.

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Amanda told the police that according to Darren, he had arranged for his friends Derek Lord and David Muir to commit the murders in exchange for his promise to give them plots of land, cars and gifts, as well as a monthly allowance of $1,000 from the proceeds of his grandmother's estate. This information all came directly from Darren Huneman, Amanda said.

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Their faces are covered in dishcloths, and they each have a large gash across their throats. There's blood everywhere. The older woman has an 8-inch knife still embedded in her throat. It's 69-year-old Doris Leatherbarrow, and the other woman is her 47-year-old daughter, Sharon Huneman, who has another knife lying on her chest.

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Derek and David never mentioned anything about the plans to her. She then described the development of the plan, which at first included ideas like using a gas line to blow up Doris Leatherbarrow's home at a time where she would be there with Sharon and Ralph Huneman. But Darren decided not to go through with that one because he thought it would look like his grandma had been assassinated.

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Another plan was to blow up his own family home in Saanich, the one his mother had custom built, at a time when his grandmother was staying over. But Darren scrapped that plan because he didn't want to destroy the art in the house. He thought he might disable the burglar alarm in the home so that David and Derek could enter and kill Sharon, Ralph and Doris.

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But that plan came to a halt as well when he realised that his grandmother rarely ever stayed the night at their home. In another plan, Darren thought about tampering with the brakes on either his mother's car or his grandmother's car, but he scrapped that plan when he again realized it would be too hard to get all three people in the same car together.

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Amanda told police she didn't take Darren seriously until mid-August when he told her he realized he no longer had to kill his stepfather Ralph. Turns out his worries about Ralph becoming the executor of the estate were unfounded. But the planning continued with Doris Leatherbarrow and Sharon Huneman as the targets.

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Amanda told the police that after school started for the year in September, she and Darren were in rehearsals together for the school play Caligula, playing the lead role of a Roman dictator who killed people at random. He told her he'd be able to act the part better after he'd killed his mother and grandmother and promised to dedicate his performance to their memory.

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Eventually, Darren told Amanda he'd come up with a new plan that involved his mother's periodic trips to the mainland to help his grandmother out in her stores. He said the plan was for Derek Lord and David Muir to catch the ferry over to the mainland and show up at his grandmother's home in Tawasin, kill her and his mother Sharon, and stage the scene to appear like a robbery.

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They would then catch the ferry back to Vancouver Island. Darren and Amanda would pick them up when they arrived, and they would all establish an alibi. Amanda told the police that she and Darren waited for them at the ferry terminal that evening, but the ferry was late and didn't arrive until almost 9pm.

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She had no way of knowing that the university student on that same ferry had already given that specific detail to the police. Amanda said after Derek and David got in the car, they drove around for a while. The pair confirmed that they had successfully carried out the plan Darren had described to her earlier. His mother and grandmother were dead.

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Based on everything Amanda had just told them, investigators believe she was now telling the truth because what she said matched up with the timeline and evidence they had collected so far. Amanda and her mum were put in protective custody for quite some time. And with that, David Muir and Derek Lord were charged with the first-degree murders of Doris Leatherbarrow and Sharon Huneman.

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As minors under the Young Offenders Act, their names were put under publication ban. But for a crime like this, the prosecution was likely to apply for them to be tried as adults, meaning their names would go public and they could face a longer prison sentence. David Muir and Derek Lord were released on $10,000 bail with conditions.

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They've suffered an extremely violent attack and it looks like it happened right as they were about to serve dinner. The microwave oven door is open with four servings of lasagna ready to be served. There's veggies in a pot on the stove and four plates on the counter with salad ingredients.

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The following day, November 29th, Darren Huneman was arrested at school and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Since he was 18 years old at the time of the murders, there was no discussion needed about youth court. He was charged as an adult and his name was announced publicly.

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If found guilty at trial, he faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. After his arrest, Darren swore to his stepfather Ralph that he had nothing to do with the murders, so Ralph agreed to help pay his legal fees and expenses. Darren Huneman pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

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After the announcement, the press started to look into Darren's childhood and life. Photos showed a young man with red hair and a wide, beaming smile, often in the company of his mother and grandmother. He certainly looked like the perfect son and grandson.

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And according to relatives, Darren's mother, Sharon Huneman, was known to be a perfectionist, someone who was meticulous about her home and appearance. Sharon was described as being on the controlling side. determined to fashion her only child, Darren, into a perfect little gentleman, according to Lisa Hobbs Burney's long-form article in the Calgary Herald magazine.

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Sharon Huneman reportedly monitored all of Darren's activities and didn't allow him to play in the streets or hang out with others in the neighbourhood. All play dates were carefully arranged in advance." by elementary school, Darren felt so much pressure that if he got one answer wrong, he would cry in class.

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and according to relatives, Darren was the perfect child, and the apple of his grandmother's eye. There was reportedly a lot of emphasis put on wealth in his childhood, and Doris Leatherbarrow reportedly spoiled her only grandchild, giving him money when he got good grades, buying him clothes, as well as a special edition brand new Honda for his 16th birthday.

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Relatives described him as spotlessly clean, exquisitely well-mannered, consistently helpful and desperate to be seen as nice. At high school, it was reported that his classmates and teachers spoke highly of him. So when he was charged with the first-degree murders of his mother and grandmother, many who knew him were shocked.

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Darren was 18 years old at the time of the murders, an adult for the purposes of the criminal justice system. But his two friends, 17-year-old Derek Lord and 16-year-old David Muir, were minors under the Young Offenders Act, so their names were put under publication ban.

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Obviously the youngest of all three, 16-year-old David Muir still had a baby face and wore his dark brown hair in a classic bowl cut. David Muir grew up in a stable, affectionate and well-regarded upper middle class family. He was the eldest child of three to parents who were highly educated in plant and forest pathology.

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It looks like the women had two guests over for dinner and someone killed them just as they were serving up. But who were the guests and where were they now? A few hours later, back on Vancouver Island, Ralph Huneman rushed to the front door when he heard a knock.

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David Mule was known by teachers as a quiet, conscientious student with a superior IQ. He was on the honor roll and brought home awards in science and industrial arts. Fellow high school students remembered him as a quiet, studious, nice guy who played the flute in the high school band. Someone who was calm and not easily excited.

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Although he played Dungeons and Dragons with the group that included Darren Huneman and Derek Lord, David preferred reading sci-fi books if given the choice. Both he and Derek Lord really liked knives, and their parents knew they had a collection of ornamental weapons.

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But what their parents didn't know was that they were operating a mail-order business together, taking advantage of an unusual border crossing on the mainland just south of Tawassin, where Doris Leatherbarrow lived.

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The area, which is part of the city of Delta in the Greater Vancouver area, narrows down to a peninsula that is divided in half by the Canada-US border between British Columbia and Washington. Tawasin is on the top half of the peninsula and provides the only road access to the U.S. territory on the bottom half of the peninsula, which is known as Point Roberts.

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David Muir and Derek Lord would order knives from companies in the U.S., where they were much cheaper than buying them in Canada, and have the orders sent to a post office box in Port Roberts, Washington. They would catch the ferry from Vancouver Island across to the mainland, cross the border, pick up the knives and smuggle them back over, intending to sell them to fellow students at high school.

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But at the time of their arrest, no one knew about this little business. Derek Lord, the eldest of the two, had overgrown, dark brown hair and a face with sharp features that perhaps looked even older than his 17 years. Derek Lord was the middle of three children in a family described as stable and quite close-knit. His mother, Eloise, was a schoolteacher.

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According to court documents, Derek had a somewhat strained relationship with his father, David. To avoid confusion with David Muir, we'll call him William instead. Derek Lord's father, William, had worked an unusual number of jobs over the prior 20 years which meant the family moved to various locations around British Columbia.

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At the time of the murders, William was working away from home most weeks, only returning on weekends. Derek was described as shy, someone who had difficulty making friends at new schools, although he got good grades. He attended Mount Douglas High School with David Muir and Darren Huneman, where he was described as an oddball by fellow students, according to the Times-Colonist.

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Some remembered him carrying a knife around the school, occasionally flicking it, and at one point threatening a teacher with it. It was also known that Derek had a green belt in judo and had a great interest in martial arts. One classmate said that Derek was depressed because his girlfriend of a month broke up with him over the summer.

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It was the Saanich police, sent to deliver the distressing news that his wife Sharon and her mother Doris had been murdered on the mainland. Ralph was devastated, and when Sharon's teenage son Darren heard the news, they both collapsed on the floor in a wave of emotion. It couldn't be real, but it was.

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At about the same time, in the months before the murders, a co-worker at his part-time job at Kmart said that after she complained about an annoying co-worker, Derek told her to hire a hitman to take care of it, adding that it would only cost about $10,000 to $50,000.

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Just a month before the murders, another co-worker at Kmart complained to Derek about someone harassing her, and he reportedly pulled out a knife and told her that, quote, She told police she didn't think he was serious. They were assessed by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists to help the judge decide if they should be tried as youths or adults.

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It was noted that Derek Lord had never been in trouble with the law and was of above average intelligence. He had no significant psychiatric or psychological problems, although he was subject to depression and showed a suicidal tendency. As for 16-year-old David Muir, the experts noted that he had very high intelligence and

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he did have a couple of previous misdemeanors, including a minor shoplifting offense. The psychiatric and psychological experts concluded that both Derek Lord and David Muir were less mature than other teens their age, were impressionable and craved peer approval. They were able to be manipulated by Darren Huneman into doing something they otherwise wouldn't have done.

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As such, they were both considered unlikely to re-offend, and it was recommended that they be kept in the youth system. But the judge didn't agree, pointing out that this may have explained why they agreed to Darren Huneman's alleged plan.

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But it didn't explain why they allegedly went through with that plan after they left Darren's sphere of influence when he dropped them off at the ferry that day. They would both be dealt with in adult court, along with Darren Huneman. The Crown's star witness would be Darren Huneman's ex-girlfriend Amanda, with explosive testimony about what she saw and heard.

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Darren would testify in his own defense and give his side of the story. Derek Lord would provide a completely different version of events. His mother Eloise would also testify about an alternative alibi. But there wouldn't be a word from David Muir, the youngest of the three accused, and the public wouldn't hear about his written confession until later.

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There would be multiple court outbursts and details of a plot to escape prison that seemed too strange to be true, but years later would result in national headlines. All that and the aftermath is coming up in part two. It's available right now. Visit canadiantruecrime.ca to see the full list of resources we relied on to write this episode and anything else you want to know about the podcast.

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Thanks for listening.

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Initially, it was thought that they'd likely been dead for up to 20 hours by the time their bodies had been found. Investigators soon narrowed it down to less than nine hours. Sharon and Doris had last been seen at around 5pm at their clothing warehouse in Surrey, a city in the Metro Vancouver area located about 30 minutes drive from Doris' home.

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With this information, investigators formed a theory that the women must have been murdered between about 5.30pm at the earliest and about midnight at the latest. Their bodies had been found just before 3am. Police had no immediate motives or suspects. At first, they thought it must have been a robbery, because the house had been ransacked and money had been taken from both women's purses.

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But there was no sign of forced entry. There was expensive jewellery and other cash in the home left untouched. Investigators had found no forensic evidence at the crime scene, no fingerprints or anything else that could point them to someone who might have done it.

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And with no obvious motive for the murders, investigators began by speaking to the people closest to the mother and daughter to get any information they could. Also a priority was to get their alibis for the time frame in question, Friday, October 5th of 1990, between 5.30pm and midnight.

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In the small community of Tawasin on the mainland, Delta Police were speaking to Doris Leatherbarrow's neighbours, who reported that two teenage boys had been seen loitering about near her home at around 6pm that Friday night. Doris, of course, had a teenage grandson. Maybe it was him and there was a perfectly innocent explanation.

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18-year-old Darren Huneman told the police he was on Vancouver Island the whole night, adding that he was very close to his mother and grandma and would never hurt them. He said that after he finished school that afternoon, he brought his girlfriend Amanda home with him. He recalled giving some polished rocks to a neighbour and made dinner for his stepfather Ralph at about 6.30pm.

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Darren said he and Amanda drank tea and read tarot cards together and then a neighbour phoned to thank him for the rocks and enquired when his mother Sharon would be home. He told that neighbour that she'd be catching the 7pm ferry home as usual. Darren told the police that at about 8pm... He and Amanda drove to downtown Victoria to meet two of his school friends for dinner.

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He then dropped them all home and arrived back at his own home at about 10pm. Ralph Huneman was of course home the whole night and confirmed that his stepson had a loving relationship with both his mother and his grandmother. He also confirmed Darren's alibi. So too did Darren's girlfriend Amanda.

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Investigators had no doubt that Darren was telling the truth about being on Vancouver Island all night, so he couldn't have been one of the teenagers seen loitering near his grandmother's house on the lower mainland. Doris Leatherbarrow grew up in extreme poverty in Saskatchewan during the Great Depression.

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At some point she moved to the Vancouver area and when she was 23 years old she married a local shipyard worker named George. She gave birth to Sharon not long after that in 1943. But when the baby girl was just three months old, George fell 30 feet from scaffolding at the shipyard and passed away.

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With no husband, Doris realized it was solely up to her to provide for her baby, and she decided she would do everything she could to make sure Sharon had a different childhood to the one she experienced. Sharon would not grow up in poverty. As Doris worked as hard as she could to save money for their future, little Sharon spent a lot of time with her grandmother.

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A decade after her first husband's tragic death, Doris found love again. In 1953, she married a lacrosse player named Renee Leatherbarrow, and they settled in the city of Delta in the Greater Vancouver area, specifically in a small beachside community and tourist destination called Tawasin. Located on the ancestral home and lands of Tawasin First Nation, the name means land facing the sea.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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Hi everyone. Today's case has been requested many times over the years. It's a complicated story from British Columbia, and we've pieced it together from multiple court documents and the news archives, particularly the reporting of the Times colonist, the Vancouver Sun, and the province. As always, please respect the privacy of the people involved in this case.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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In 1959, Doris decided to open a local fashion store to sell brand-named clothes to women, and she named it Renee's Ladies Apparel Limited, after her husband. According to some sources, she only started it as a hobby, but others say it was all part of her long-term plan to build a business and ensure Sharon's future. The store took off to the point where it became Doris's full-time job.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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Within four years, she'd opened a second store, one for her to manage and one for her daughter Sharon, who was by this point 20 years old. An article in the Surrey Leader would describe how the mother-daughter duo became known in the community thanks to the charity fashion show they put on three times a year that benefited various causes, including the Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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Doris and Renee ended up divorcing, and she focused on expanding her successful business. Before long, she would have eight stores and a warehouse, all in the lower mainland area of Vancouver. Sharon continued to work at her mother's stores as she got married and had a child of her own.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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That marriage did not last, and when Darren was about five years old, Sharon married Ralph Huneman, a well-to-do economics professor with a PhD from Harvard. He was a widower with two grown children of his own. Darren reportedly adapted well to this change of life circumstance and was known to call his stepfather Ralph, Dad.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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The family lived just a few blocks from where Doris lived, and Darren visited his grandmother all the time. When he was old enough, he mowed her lawn on Sundays. Sharon still worked at Doris' fashion stores, where she gained a reputation for being both friendly and impeccably dressed and groomed. Their lives changed when Sharon's husband, Ralph, got a new job.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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The University of Victoria had appointed him to the prestigious position of Professor of Economic Relations with China, which necessitated a move to Vancouver Island on Canada's Pacific coast. It was an exciting time. Sharon designed a custom-built home for them in an exclusive district in Saanich, just a few kilometres outside of Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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But it was about a 90-minute ferry ride away from the mainland where Sharon worked with her mother Doris, too far for her to commute there every day. But they soon reached an agreement that worked for both of them. Every second Wednesday, Sharon would drive to the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal, leave her car in the parking lot and catch the ferry over to Tawasin on the mainland.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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Doris would pick her up from the terminal and they would work together in the stores with Sharon staying over with her mother for two nights. By this point, Doris had taken advantage of great market conditions and had sold four of her stores so she could focus on the four that performed the best.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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She still ran them all herself and managed the warehouse in Surrey, so she was glad to have Sharon help out for a few days a week. On Friday, Doris would typically drop her daughter back at the terminal to catch the 7pm ferry back home to Vancouver Island. It worked so well that Sharon kept that same routine and would make the trip every week or second week for the next three years.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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That is, until she and Doris were murdered. When news of the murders was made public, everyone was shocked. The autopsy had concluded that when the mother and daughter were at Doris' home cooking dinner, they were ambushed and struck on the head with a blunt instrument, rendering them unconscious.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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It's a Friday night in October in the province of British Columbia, and Ralph Huneman is waiting for his wife Sharon to arrive home for Thanksgiving weekend. They live on the southern end of Vancouver Island, but Sharon has been on the mainland for a couple of days helping her mother, who owns a small chain of clothing stores. Sharon always catches the same 7 p.m. ferry back.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces: Canadian True Crime

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47-year-old Sharon Huneman suffered two skull fractures, a split right forehead and her throat had been cut. Her mother, 69-year-old Doris Leatherbarrow, had a broken right jaw, her ear was torn and the right side of her skull was fractured. There were two deep wounds on her neck where a knife had been thrust into it so deep that it was left there. Neither of the women had any defensive injuries.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces | The BBC’s investigative podcast World of Secrets: The Bad Guru

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This is a CBC Podcast. You're about to hear a trailer for the brand new series of the BBC's investigative podcast, World of Secrets, The Bad Guru. This season investigates a yoga movement which promised spiritual enlightenment. But one woman, Miranda, a university tutor from London, says she was brainwashed into performing on a live pornographic webcamming channel.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces | The BBC’s investigative podcast World of Secrets: The Bad Guru

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For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

Uncover Introduces | The BBC’s investigative podcast World of Secrets: The Bad Guru

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Keep listening to hear how Miranda's search for inner peace through yoga leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking, and exploitation.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E5: Life on The Lam | Sea of Lies

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And as she's cleaning, she comes across a few Rubbermaid buckets. And they look to be filled with blood.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E5: Life on The Lam | Sea of Lies

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It was late, past midnight, when they broke into the farmhouse.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E5: Life on The Lam | Sea of Lies

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They left behind a wall of blood and the key to a secret. It was a very brutal crime scene. One of the worst I've ever seen. Murder in the Moonlight. A new podcast from Dateline. Listen now.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

The hidden story of a notorious serial killer — and his secret calls from behind bars

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And then the prosecution announced an unusual trade. The location of the missing bodies in return for $100,000. Today, the news that crime does pay was a concern all across the country.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies

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The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide. Please take care.

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Is it ok to just work all the time?

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About a minute. We're one minute five into the new show.

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Is it ok to just work all the time?

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Some just regular people telling their own little stories. Some by artists and writers and performers of all different kinds. And the idea is we're going to bring you stuff you're not going to find anywhere else. And there's also going to be music. And tonight's show, we thought we would have kind of a theme. Tonight's show is going to be New Beginnings. And to kick things off, I call...

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The End

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Can you go back to your last or second to last slide? The last slide?

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The End

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I think it's the one where you're talking about all the stakeholders.

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The End

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As Satoshi writes in the white paper, quote, The steady addition of a constant amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.

Serial

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By the end of Keiko's second year in Oregon, one estimate put the figure at around $75 million. Local businesses were just having a whale of a time. So was the Free Willy Keiko Foundation. They had the rights to Keiko's name and licensed it out on everything. Stuffed animals, t-shirts, all manner of black and white plastic doodads, mystical Keiko amulets, and his own brand of root beer.

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PetSmart was selling Keiko adoption kits by the thousands. The toy company Mattel made a handsome donation to the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, and in exchange was allowed to sell a special edition Keiko and Ocean Barbie. In the commercial, Barbie dives in the water and untangles Keiko from a net. And though no one can prove or disprove it, let's just imagine it exists.

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A plastic Keiko doll bobbing somewhere in the great Pacific Ocean garbage patch. A floating reminder of the fact that we can't shop our way out of the many environmental crises we have wrought. Dave Phillips, the founder of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, the guy who spearheaded the plan to move Keiko from Mexico, well, it hadn't escaped his attention that people in Newport loved this orca.

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But Dave's plan had always been to get the whale to the ocean, since before Keiko even left Mexico City. Remember, it was rescue, rehab, release. Oregon was just a waystation, but Dave knew this wasn't going to be easy for the town to accept.

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The way Dave saw it, the healthier Keiko got, the closer he was to leaving.

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And here they were. A year into his rehabilitation, Keiko was objectively stronger, objectively healthier. Everyone wanted him to get better. So great. They'd done it. Now what? That's after the break.

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Those were the stakes as far as Diane remembers them. Life or death. For a small, fairly new aquarium in a town that was hardly a tourist destination, this was a huge opportunity. The kind you don't turn down, even if it was only temporary. It was the chance to tell an irresistible story, the sort anyone could get behind. Sick whale gets a new home. Captive whale moves a step closer to freedom.

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Keiko hadn't been in Oregon all that long when two of his main trainers started to interpret his progress differently. Mark Trim saw Keiko's progress and, yeah, was definitely impressed, but he was not convinced it meant that Keiko was ready for the ocean. During Keiko's first six months in Oregon, the LA Times came to visit Newport.

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They talked to Keiko's press secretary, Diane, to Nolan, who led rehab, to Mark. And the article they eventually published, called Willie Went Free, But Will Keiko, raised serious concerns about the viability of Keiko's return. One of the key quotes in the piece was from Mark. The way he tells it, the reporter took a look at Keiko, how energetic he was, how vocal, and said, He looks great.

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And you wouldn't exactly abandon the family dog in the wilderness and expect him to thrive. It just doesn't make sense. But beyond Keiko's demeanor, Mark had other doubts.

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Not everyone remembers Keiko getting sick this much, but that wasn't the only thing that concerned Mark about Keiko in the wild. It was also unclear to him if Keiko would be able to look after his most basic needs, like being able to hunt and eat live fish. Keiko had had frozen fish dropped in his mouth basically his entire life. He just wasn't used to having to work for it.

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His trainers knew that, and so to accommodate, they made things a little easier. They'd smack the fish on the surface of the pool and then toss them in, alive but dazed, moving just slowly enough to be caught by Keiko, apex predator of his tank. That seemed to work sometimes, but not always.

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A frontline documentary released around this time shows his trainers watching from the window, cheering on Keiko like over-eager parents at a Little League game, desperate for their child not to strike out.

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Keiko's mouth is huge and powerful, and to be fair, he does come pretty close to catching the fish, but not quite. So according to Mark Trim, this is Keiko after his first year in Oregon. A killer whale who's unable to consistently catch fish, even after they've been slapped against the water. Who's, yes, stronger and healthier, but still gets sick with worrisome regularity.

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A good boy, eager to please his humans, a jokester. A one in a million killer whale whose very uniqueness is more of a liability than an asset.

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The ocean, the actual ocean, is nothing like an aquarium with trained staff attending to your every need. The ocean is a cruel place. Every day in the wild is a fight for survival in dangerous, increasingly contaminated waters. Being free is not the same thing as being safe. If he's doing so well in Oregon, is it cruel to push him further?

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Phyllis took it to her board, they signed off, and within a couple of months, construction crews were breaking ground on Keiko's multi-million dollar home, putting the finishing touches on it just days before Keiko landed. And now the big day had arrived. There were 125 news organizations from around the world there to cover the event. And the bad weather hadn't stopped the crowds from coming.

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If Mark had made up his mind one way, Nolan was coming to the opposite conclusion. He felt that Keiko was essentially ready to go. That first year, yeah, okay, sure, the golden retriever thing made some sense. Nolan even told me a story about Keiko misbehaving. He bit through a metal pole attached to a vacuum, snapping it in half.

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And after Nolan reprimanded him, Keiko swam to a corner of the pool and put himself in timeout. Timeout. The aggression, one could argue, is good for a whale who may need to fend for himself in the wild. The contrition, not so much. But a year later, Nolan was feeling more positive about the idea of Keiko going back to the ocean.

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Keiko was in the best shape of his life, able to hold his breath about as long as an orca at sea might. On top of that, he was beginning to sound like a whale. I know that might seem like a small thing, but back in Mexico, Keiko wasn't very vocal. If he vocalized at all, he wouldn't make orca sounds, but would sometimes imitate the calls his dolphin friends made.

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Sometimes he seemed to mimic Mexican ambulance sirens. In Oregon, he was vocalizing more, sometimes even echolocating, using sound to map the space around him, a skill orcas often use to find prey. But the thing that gave Nolan the most confidence was Keiko's willingness to rise to every challenge.

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In this way, the same quality that worried Mark Trim, Keiko's agreeable, down-for-whatever attitude, Nolan saw it as an asset. It made him confident that with the right guidance, Keiko could do anything, including live in the wild. Diane Hammond agreed. By the way, she and Nolan were now a couple, had fallen in love telling the story of Keiko's rehabilitation together, the story of his progress.

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The Keiko they knew was not only ready to move on, but had to move on.

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There actually was an effort to find another orca to live with Keiko, but it didn't pan out. And I suppose that's the other version of this argument. Not safety versus freedom, but boredom versus freedom. One pool can be better than another, but a big tank is still a tank, and an enormous tank is still not the ocean.

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So if you're going to condemn an orca to live alone in a pool for the rest of his life, you better be damn sure there's no other option. By the spring of 1997, the rift between those who thought Keiko was ready to go to the ocean and those who thought he might never be ready was widening.

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On one side was the aquarium's director, Phyllis Bell, who was unsurprisingly arguing Keiko needed more time at the aquarium. On the other side, you had Dave Phillips and the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, saying they wanted to release Keiko back to his home waters in Iceland. Up until now, the two institutions had shared responsibility for Keiko's care.

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They lined the highway to watch Keiko being pulled slowly in what was basically a giant dumpster full of ice water.

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But in June 1997, the foundation sent a memo to the aquarium. From that moment forward, they would no longer need aquarium staff. Anyone who wanted to work with Keiko had to come work for them. The lines were clear now. It was the foundation versus the aquarium. Diana Nolan made their choice. They defected from the Aquarium to accept positions at the Foundation.

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The problem was, everyone on all sides of this conflict still worked in the same physical space. Only now, some of them had a different boss.

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And was there beef, like people wouldn't sit at the lunch table with each other anymore, or was the...

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By early fall, Phyllis Bell, the aquarium's director, had all but declared war against the foundation. She announced to the press that Keiko was sick, too sick, the implication was, to be moved to Iceland.

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The Foundation was appalled. To them, this was a thinly-veiled plot to keep Keiko right where he was. In an attempt to wrest control of the narrative back from the aquarium, Dave Phillips shot back with his own presser.

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All the whale people I've talked to are disarmingly nice. So the tape you just heard from Dave, it's the whale people equivalent of flipping over a table. Make no mistake, this is a fight now. Because yeah, it's true that Keiko had been sick, the foundation was saying, but he was better now. And in any case, they argued, Keiko's health problems were squarely the aquarium's fault.

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They were the ones who hadn't been keeping up with the water quality in his tank." Some people even implied this was intentional sabotage, meant to make Keiko too sick to leave.

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Mark Trim, golden retriever guy, he'd left the project altogether by that point. But he stayed in touch with the people who still worked at the aquarium, and he found allegations like these absurd.

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So with the state of Keiko's health in dispute, the relationship between the two organizations was tense, dysfunctional, even petty. Eventually, the aquarium changed the locks and took away the foundation's keys so that Keiko's staff could only access their whale during normal business hours and otherwise had to fetch someone to let them inside.

Serial

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By the fall, the feud was national news, getting coverage in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, where it was described as a, quote, big money power struggle. How exactly you might explain all this bickering to children, Keiko's first and most devoted fans, is unclear, but it's no longer the same story it once was.

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We're far now from the simplistic but effective emotional punch of the movie's climax. Far from Mexico's noble sacrifice in search of the sick whale they loved. Far even from the consensus of just a few months prior, when everyone was united in the goal of making Keiko well again.

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It's not surprising that in the midst of all this disagreement, someone would try asking Keiko directly what he wanted. Bonnie Norton was an animal communicator, one of several who claimed to speak with Keiko regularly. She transcribed their conversations, which she later published in a book called Keiko Speaks by Bonnie Norton and Keiko.

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According to Bonnie, Keiko seemed to side with the aquarium, saying, quote, I love it here. I am happy here. They know in their hearts I am better off here. They want me to be something I am not. I am not a wild whale. I am Keiko. And Bonnie didn't sit on this knowledge. As Keiko's departure from Oregon began to seem imminent, she organized a protest outside the aquarium.

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She carried a sign that on one side read, Keiko plus Iceland equals too risky. On the other it read, Keiko loves the children. A local news station covered the event.

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The people of Newport may have sympathized with her cause, but no one else joined the protest that day. Literally no one. Maybe they understood it was simply too late. As far as Keiko's health was concerned, ultimately a blue ribbon panel made up of eight consulting veterinarians was convened to make an assessment. They gave Keiko the all clear. He was healthy.

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And now someone had to make a choice. Had to decide once more what was best for Keiko. Legally, that was the foundation. They owned the whale, and they chose home. It was where the story was always leading anyway, what they'd been preparing for since Keiko had boarded the plane from Mexico. He was never going to stay in Oregon. He was going to Iceland, whether he wanted to or not.

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That's on the next episode of The Good Whale.

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New York Times all access and audio subscribers can binge all episodes of The Good Whale right now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Just head to the link in our show notes and subscribe. Or if you're already a subscriber to The Times, link your account. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to see photos of The Good Whale himself. This week, you can see Keiko in his new tank in Oregon.

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You hadn't ever seen an orca before. What was your impression of Keiko as a specimen, as a creature?

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Go to nytimes.com slash serial newsletter. The Good Whale is written by me, Daniel Alarcón, and reported by me and Katie Mingle. The show is produced by Katie and Alyssa Shipp. Jen Guerra is our editor, additional editing from Julie Snyder and Ira Glass. Sound design, music supervision, and mixing by Phoebe Wang. The original score for The Good Whale comes from La Chica and Osman.

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Our theme music is by Nick Thorburn and additional music from Matt McGinley. Research and fact-checking by Jane Ackerman, with help from Ben Phelan. Tracking direction by Elna Baker. Susan Wesling is our standards editor. Legal review from Alameen Sumar and Simone Procas. Carlos Lopez Estrada is a contributing editor on the series. The supervising producer for Serial Productions is Ndeye Chubu.

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Mac Miller is the executive assistant for Serial. Liz Davis-Moore is the senior operations manager. Special thanks this week to Peter Noah, Beverly Hughes, Mark Colson, Bob Ratliff, Craig McCaw, and Dalia Kozlowski. The Good Whale is from Serial Productions and The New York Times.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

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It was a Sunday morning in January 1996, a three and a half ton orca lolled about in a shipping container full of ice, strapped to the inside of a cargo plane, flying thousands of feet above the surface of the earth.

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Diane told me she was struck by a deep, almost apologetic sadness, awed by the scale of what was owed to this animal, at the hubris of what was being attempted, the presumption of it.

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That January day in Oregon, when Keiko arrived, everyone agreed what the right thing was, to get Keiko healthy. But as it happened, just when the goal was in sight, the consensus around that simple story would begin to fracture. From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is The Good Whale. I'm Daniel Alarcón. So the plan for Keiko is rescue, rehab, release.

Serial

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It's the outlandish sort of magic we take for granted, the kind that only happens because we, humans, have scrapped the rules of the natural world and rewritten them to our whims, making the absurd, a killer whale, flying, into something almost ordinary.

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If getting Keiko out of Mexico had been a rescue, Oregon would be all about rehab. To make that happen, the Free Willy Keiko Foundation assembled, at great expense, a kind of dream team of marine mammal experts, veterinarians, and trainers. And in the beginning, they were all very clear on their goal.

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That's Nolan Harvey, who was in charge of Keiko's rehabilitation. He'd moved to Newport, Oregon from an aquarium in Tacoma, where he'd been a staff biologist working with baby walruses, raising them, feeding them by hand. Years later, they're still his favorite. Big dogs with big flat feet, he calls them. He even has one tattooed on his forearm.

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As for whales and dolphins, Nolan had worked with them before too. Training and rehabbing and caring for them, including for 14 years at SeaWorld. So he was prepared for the challenge that Keiko represented. And though he'd heard that the whale wasn't in good shape, it wasn't until Nolan met him that he understood just how dire the situation was.

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After this interview, I took another look at the footage, and it's true. Keiko has a neck that you can see when he swims. Orcas are not supposed to have necks, at least not visible necks. I get that now. So yes, Nolan and the rest of the staff had a lot of work to do. The good news is that in Oregon, at least, there was the space to do it.

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Compared to his pool at Reino Aventura, Keiko's new tank was luxurious. 150 feet long, 75 feet wide, more than three times the size of his previous confines. The new tank was filled with 2 million gallons of filtered seawater, much colder than the water in Mexico, at a temperature they hoped would help clear up the papillomavirus Keiko had developed. The depth was important, too.

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It was Keiko, headed to his new home at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, a relatively small regional facility in Newport, a few hours southwest of Portland.

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At Reino Aventura, Keiko hadn't been able to fully submerge vertically because the pool was too shallow. He couldn't dive or spy hop, meaning he couldn't pop his head out of the water vertically. But in Oregon, his tank was 25 feet deep at its deepest point, more than enough space to pop up or even flip over underwater if he wanted to.

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And there was another important difference between Mexico and Oregon. No more performances. Visitors were still able to see Keiko, of course, and they came by the tens of thousands, but their only view of him was from below the surface of the water, from a wall of windows running along one side of the tank. This setup underlined the mission.

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Keiko wasn't an organ for the amusement of his human fans. It was quite the opposite, in fact. His human team, 25 staff altogether, was there for him, his dedicated personal trainers.

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Keiko had work to do. He needed to improve his muscle tone and mass, his swimming form and endurance, and of course he had to learn to hold his breath. Whales in the wild can hold their breath for a quarter of an hour or longer, a skill they need in order to do deep foraging dives for fish. When Keiko first arrived in Oregon, he could hold his breath for about three minutes.

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To do this, they'd have Keiko swim to a diver at the bottom of the pool, who'd give him the command to stay, like you might do to your dog. And Keiko would stay, in fact, until he couldn't wait any longer and had to race up to the surface for a breath. And then there was the food. In order to adapt to his new, healthy lifestyle, Keiko had to bulk up. New workout, new diet.

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Half the aquarium's food was reserved for Keiko, which meant every morning at dawn, his care team would show up at the aquarium to chop up more than 100 pounds of fish. One of the guys tasked with this rather unglamorous work was a no-nonsense trainer named Mark Trim.

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This is Diane Hammond.

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Mark says the goal with Keiko was to expand his diet, give him new sources of protein. So they introduced him to different kinds of fish. Salmon, he did okay with. Squid and a kind of smelt called capelin, not so much.

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Slowly, over time, Keiko learned to like squid. He was making progress, and the Foundation's team of trainers and scientists were keeping track of it all. Keiko was basically under 24-hour surveillance. There were multiple cameras, above water and below. They recorded the thickness of his blubber, tested his blood, measured how fast and how deep he could swim.

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It's possible there has never been a more studied individual orca in the history of the world. All that care and training yielded results. Within several months, Keiko's appetite had nearly tripled, and he'd put on about 2,000 pounds, grown about 8 inches longer. His papillomavirus had cleared up, and by the end of his first year in Oregon, he could hold his breath for 13 minutes.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

73.776

You were there before Keiko arrived?

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

741.651

Any way you looked at it, this was incredible, more than Keiko's trainers could have imagined, and it had happened so fast. Keiko's remarkable transformation says a lot about the quality of care he was getting, but perhaps even more about Keiko's personality. He was a good boy, through and through.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

771.712

Nolan says he would give him these tests in which Keiko would have to improvise. Swim on his side, spy hop, splash with his flukes, anything.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

80.86

Diane was one of the first staff people at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, hired by the director, Phyllis Bell, when the place was little more than an idea. Phyllis passed away a few years ago, but she was the one who took the call from Dave Phillips' team, the call in which they made her what must have been a pretty surprising, some might even say desperate, offer.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

806.786

He was so malleable, so eager to please, the staff even gave him nicknames to reflect that. McFly, the cowering, bullied father in Back to the Future, or The Dude, the militantly laid-back protagonist of The Big Lebowski. Trainer Mark Trim, who had worked with Killer Whales for more than a decade, had never seen anything like it.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

862.174

And at the end of his long, strenuous days of training, Keiko would unwind by watching television, which is, I mean, totally relatable. Celebrity whales, they're just like us.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

872.382

In Keiko's case, TV was therapeutic, prescribed by one of his veterinarians to keep Keiko stimulated after hours, on those nights when no one was around to dive with him or when he could no longer amuse himself by spy hopping out of the water to scare the security guards, which actually used to happen, by the way. Keiko's taste in TV was pretty middle of the road.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

892.167

Black and white Andy Griffith reruns, pro wrestling and action movies like Independence Day. But as far as we know, not Free Willy. Because of their celebrity resident, the small town of Newport, Oregon was suddenly a tourist destination, with people coming from all over the country and the world to see Keiko. And he had quite an effect on his visitors.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

918.875

One of the trainers told us Keiko caused intelligent adults to dissolve into a kind of baby talk version of themselves. You can hear what he does to this CNN reporter, who's totally fangirling as she's about to record a segment by his viewing window.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

945.525

Diane Hammond, Keiko's press secretary, told me Keiko was known to swim right up to the window, presenting his giant eye to the crowd or to one person, a kind of staring that felt like a connection.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

978.934

Seeing and being seen by Keiko was something people were willing to travel considerable distances for. And they did. They came by the thousands. Ticket sales were brisk, a great windfall for the aquarium.

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

99.541

If we were to pay to build an enormous tank at your aquarium, would you be willing to temporarily house a killer whale?

Serial

The Good Whale - Ep. 2

991.457

But really, everyone was making money, including the town of Newport, where visitors rented cars and booked hotel rooms, aided the local restaurants, poked around the shops overflowing with Keiko paraphernalia. It all added up. Local TV news from the era is absolutely lousy with whale puns about Keiko's impact on the economy.

Serial Killers

The Eleven Who Went to Heaven: The Case Against Ed Bell Pt. 2

200.76

True tales of horror, bizarre happenings, unexplainable events. On our podcast, Disturbed, terror takes center stage. Kidnappings, serial killers, hauntings, and the very essence of your worst nightmares coming to life on this weekly true horror show. Enter at your own risk.

Serialously with Annie Elise

248: Why Did Netflix LEAVE THIS OUT About Gabby Petito & Brian Laundrie?! | American Murder: Gabby Petito

1.061

Gabby and Brian seemed like a loving couple, but behind the scenes, they would get into arguments. It was like every parent's nightmare, just like in a flash of a second. She's gone, she's missing.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

1701.313

Homicide detectives and state crime command are now investigating if threats were made to associates of Ms Tran before she was murdered and whether she was just an innocent target killed because someone known to her had ripped off a drug syndicate. It's the latest in a number of incidents potentially linked to Asian crime.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

1722.872

In December last year, the bodies of couples Sally Lee and Rex Chen were found dumped and wrapped in plastic at Botany. The couple allegedly murdered because they owed money. And in May, four men were arrested after allegedly setting fire to a barbershop and a home in Fairfield West, the wrong targets in an alleged feud between Asian crime gangs in Sydney's southwest.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

2077.228

According to a New York website that aggregates public information about traffic violations connected to license plates, Ms. Yerimi has racked up almost 100 traffic tickets in just the past three years. Quite an achievement. As Yerimi showed off in a TikTok video, her license plate is quite memorable.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

2117.491

Now, in 2023, records show that Yurimi got a personalized license plate that said, wig maker. And not long after, she updated her plate for unknown reasons to say wig maker with an 8 in place of the A. According to the website How's My Driving NY, that plate had nearly 100 traffic violations connected to it between September 2023 and March 2025 when Yurimi was arrested for this crash.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

2142.379

And the site shows that Yurimi's wig maker, again with an eight, that license plate has been associated with 70 parking violations and 21 speeding tickets. And she's been caught on camera running red lights at least five times.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

281.726

He was a blessing and a positive influence to people around the world.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

286.39

A hardworking, self-made man who loved and treasured his family more than anything, who deserved better than to be betrayed by the person he loved and murdered in his own home.

Serialously with Annie Elise

264: New East Coast Serial Killer, TikToker Murders Family, and Celebrity Hairstylist Murder Plot

751.921

He says Monica was giving them the green light to head over to Fabio's home because he was home alone.

Serialously with Annie Elise

251: Lori Vallow on Dateline, Teen Found Dismembered After Social Media Meetup, Karen Read Updates, and More!

1741.604

Gene Hackman was one of three million Americans to have pacemakers attached to their hearts. The battery-powered devices control irregular heartbeats and can even record any unusual activities. The newest models can even alert your doctor in case of an emergency.

Serialously with Annie Elise

256: Super SCARY! Serial Killer in Austin, TX?! What is REALLY Going on at Lady Bird Lake?

1611.348

Jason's death marked the first unusual death of 2023. Within three months, four men had been pulled from Lady Bird Lake. These new deaths were a turning point for local residents. Where they had once merely whispered about a dark force running free in their community, they now began to demand that action be taken to keep them safe.

Serialously with Annie Elise

256: Super SCARY! Serial Killer in Austin, TX?! What is REALLY Going on at Lady Bird Lake?

503.767

"'In the heart of Austin, Texas, lies a tranquil oasis in the form of a picturesque lake that has long been cherished by locals and visitors alike.'" But beneath the surface of its serene waters lies a mystery that has haunted the community for over a decade. Rather than being celebrated as a family-friendly water spot, the lake has come to be feared for much more sinister reasons.

Serialously with Annie Elise

256: Super SCARY! Serial Killer in Austin, TX?! What is REALLY Going on at Lady Bird Lake?

529.649

Since the early 2000s, more than 18 victims have been pulled from Lady Bird Lake after going missing in suspicious circumstances, and many of its other victims have yet to be identified.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

196.05

The more I look into Jerry Lynn Israel, the stranger this all becomes.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

228.568

This is one of those stories that sends you down a rabbit hole of twists and turns, because as we previously reported, this isn't the first time that 66-year-old Jerry Lynn Roby

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3188.47

The more I look into Jerry Lynn Israel, the stranger this all becomes. Not only do Gulfport police say that she's charged with the murder of her son and hid his body and then attempted suicide, she did a shockingly similar crime in the mid-90s. Thursday, detectives raided her home and found the body of her son, John Allen Gaither, stuffed in a wooden box.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3212.001

Officers had to knock down a wall to get the box out of the home. And while all that was going on, police say Israel apparently tried killing herself, swallowed a bunch of pills, and was rushed to the hospital. She was treated and then taken to Harrison County Jail on a first degree murder charge.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3227.455

I knocked on the doors of Israel's neighbors who told me that she seemed like a nice person, casually made small talk, and generally kept to herself. And they also said that her son, John Allen Gaither, was just as pleasant, seemed to be some kind of mechanic, always working on cars at the home. And that's why neighbors were shocked to see police pull out his body inside a box in Israel's home.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3249.935

And get this, she did a similar crime in the mid-90s when police found a body in the trunk of her car, and then while trying to arrest her, she threatened to shoot herself. According to news reports, back in July 1993 in Florida, she shot her drug dealer and hid the body in the trunk of her car.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3267.49

Months later, in December 1993, she had to stand off with police when they found the body and threatened to shoot herself. But she was arrested, charged with murder, then posted bond, and according to Florida news reports, skipped town.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3281.442

In July 1995, she was pulled over by a Florida state trooper, and before an arrest could be made, she claimed to be sick, was rushed to the hospital, where she tried drinking a bottle of scrub solution. But later that year, she was convicted of second-degree murder, sentenced to 17 years in prison. But Florida prison records show she was released in August 2003.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3300.681

And through our search, we found that Jerry Lynn has had a number of aliases through the years, with the last names Bogart, Gaither, Israel, and Roby. So what's next? Well, her case is going before a grand jury in February. Depending on the outcome, the murder trial could start in the following months.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3436.792

This is one of those stories that sends you down a rabbit hole of twists and turns because as we previously reported, this isn't the first time that 66-year-old Jerry Lynn Roby has been accused of murder, hiding the body, and then attempting suicide. More about that in just a minute, but let's talk about the latest developments. Roby had her initial appearance in court and was denied bond.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3459.428

The affidavit submitted by Gulfport detectives alleges she killed her son, 42-year-old John Allen Gaither, with the coroner's office confirming he died from a single gunshot wound around the 10th of December. That's 12 days before police say he was reported missing by out-of-state relatives.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3477.102

And during the investigation, his mom, who was originally identified as Jerry Lynn Israel Roby, gave conflicting statements. And on January 18th, a search warrant of her home at the corner of 16th and 22nd revealed a large box behind a false wall. Inside was Roby's dead son.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3495.779

And while all that was going on, police say that Roby tried taking a large number of pills, apparently trying to kill herself. But she was treated at a hospital and then taken to jail.

Serialously with Annie Elise

236: Bodies Kept Behind Walls in The House?! | The Chilling Case of Jerri Israel

3505.468

Harrison County Coroner Brian Switzer said that Gaither's body was well-preserved, probably because of the cold weather, and that he was around six foot one, 180 pounds, and that the box he was found in was about six feet by three feet.

Serialously with Annie Elise

260: Murdered His Family…Or Did He?! | The Dupont Murders

174.969

On April 21st of 2011, five members of the Dupont de Ligonnès family were found buried under the patio of the family home in Nantes. Dupont de Ligonnès had gone to great lengths to disguise his appearance, even undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Serialously with Annie Elise

260: Murdered His Family…Or Did He?! | The Dupont Murders

3708.244

of murdering his wife and their four children, he was traveling under a false name when he boarded a flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Paris police identified him, but not before the flight took off. So they warned Interpol, and police in Glasgow were waiting for him when the flight landed.

Serialously with Annie Elise

260: Murdered His Family…Or Did He?! | The Dupont Murders

3724.453

Dupont de Ligonnès had gone to great lengths to disguise his appearance, even undergoing cosmetic surgery. Investigators were able to identify him by his fingerprints.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

1.317

Over the course of six days, the Carr brothers embarked on a reign of terror that culminated in the heinous murders of five people.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

14.79

The level of violence, randomness, and cruelty of their actions shocked not only the city of Wichita, but the entire country.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

21.536

The brothers decided they were going to go on a crime spree in Wichita, Kansas.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

226.778

There were five friends together, they were just hanging out at home, watching TV, eating food, talking with each other like friends do, just a really normal evening.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

2596.058

She climbed over a barbed wire fence naked. And she crossed the roadway, the highway.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

2606.761

She covered a little over a mile in snow. She got into this neighborhood and she came to that door and knocked on the door.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

27.141

Because the actions of the two men had escalated substantially in a matter of days, they were likely to strike again and again, with their crimes getting worse and worse each time.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

36.038

Their crimes highlighted the fragility of everyday life, showing how quickly one can become a victim of senseless brutality.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

3890.754

The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the brothers guilty verdicts in 2014, but overturned their death sentences. The US Supreme Court overturned that decision two years later, sending it back to the state Supreme Court. So after hearing arguments in May, the state's high court released its decision today upholding the death sentences.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

3915.819

I don't think that I have jurisdiction to resentence Mr. Reginald Carr or Jonathan Carr on either case, so the motion will be denied.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

44.065

So begins one of the most brutal acts of violence in the history of Kansas.

Serialously with Annie Elise

273: Five Friends Horrifically Terrorized | The Wichita Massacre

8.945

Someone was seeking shelter from these sub-zero winter temperatures. She was completely naked and bleeding from the head.

Serialously with Annie Elise

250: Kevin Franke: “This is A Story of Love” | Is He Still Protecting Ruby Franke?!

4089.629

Both Ruby and Jody pleaded guilty to four counts of child abuse against Ruby's two youngest children and could serve up to 30 years in prison. Kevin recently speaking at a Utah State House hearing advocating for child protections around family blogging, reading a letter from his 11-year-old daughter.

Serialously with Annie Elise

250: Kevin Franke: “This is A Story of Love” | Is He Still Protecting Ruby Franke?!

64.218

But a disturbing reality was revealed after Ruby's youngest son escaped in August of 2023. This chilling 911 call leading to her arrest.

Serialously with Annie Elise

250: Kevin Franke: “This is A Story of Love” | Is He Still Protecting Ruby Franke?!

89.683

Frankie's estranged husband, Kevin, and oldest son, Chad, now opening up in a new Hulu docuseries, Devil in the Family, The Fall of Ruby Frankie.

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

1399.369

Los deputados pusieron a Colin en cuchillos, en el costado de un crucero, y luego hablaron con su madre, Kathy.

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

1420.981

Medics then checked out Kathy Griffith's injuries. No, it stopped from here to about here. When did that happen?

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

1429.888

When he attacked me. Pero Colin y Catherine no fueron las únicas personas que vieron este lucho. La abuela de Colin también estaba allí. Y ella dijo que definitivamente no fue una defensa de sí misma. Colin no quería volver a casa.

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

1859.241

The deputies then questioned Colin about statements he made at the jail.

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

2038.812

¿Dijiste que me ibas a dañar? Aquí en la cámara de cuerpo ese día, puedes oír a los deputados explicando a la mamá por qué está siendo retirada.

Serialously with Annie Elise

240: Did a Florida Teen Get Away With Murder - TWICE?! The OUTRAGEOUS Case of Collin Griffith

293.403

Así que el operador 911 le dijo a Colin que, ya sabes, que necesitaba tratar de detener la herida, que necesitaba hacer CPR.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

0.009

Bei Warbau und Garten finden Sie alles, was Sie für Ihren Frühling brauchen. Weitere Informationen im Markt und online.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

1807.981

Er hat Geld verdient. Das war etwas, das er nicht kontrollieren konnte. Er wollte ein größeres Auto, ein größeres Boot. Er wollte vorne sein. Das war das Schlimmste, was seinen Investoren und den Leuten, die ihn mit Geld vertrauten, geschehen.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

182.688

So, I know I was getting a little bit ahead of myself there.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

27.914

Back in 2005, real estate developer Andrew Kissel was arrested, accused of stealing more than 30 million dollars from his investors.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3071.955

She really thought he was going to kill her. Er hatte ein schlechtes Gehirn. Es gab eine große Argumentation. Er kam zu ihr mit einem Baseballspieler. Es gab eine Herausforderung. Er drehte sie um. Und es war an diesem Punkt, dass sie zurückfliegt. Und er sitzt zurück und schaut sich das Blut an und sagt, du Bitch. Und dann schützt er sie mit einem Baseballspieler. Ich werde dich töten.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3094.455

Ich werde dich töten. Und sie sagte, dann schlägt sie einfach raus.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3365.479

Because the first transaction was unusual in that a mortgage showed up at the last minute that shouldn't have been there.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3372.081

When the second transaction came up and initially there was no mortgage on the record, then there was a mortgage, we ultimately obtained copies of all of the releases in the two chains of title on these properties and noticed that there were the same notary used for multiple banks, which is... Sure.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3391.83

Had you ever seen anything like this before in your experience?

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3394.914

Never. Never. Not in this extent.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3398.018

What was the first thing you did when you realized that something was wrong?

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

34.697

Kissel scammed banks, investors, neighbors.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3402.381

Well, I contacted his attorney and I said, there's a problem here. I had called one of the banks that supposedly had released the mortgage and they said, oh, the mortgage is alive and well and the balance is 5 million and change. And I called his attorney and I said, we have a problem here. We cannot go ahead and fund this loan. It was going to be a new loan of 6 or 7 million dollars.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

3424.893

So it's probably no surprise that by March of 2006, Andrew and his wife were behind on rent, and it was now looking more and more likely like they were going to lose their home entirely.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

37.998

A year later, just days before he was about to plead guilty, Kissel was found brutally murdered.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

42.728

American expatriate Nancy Ann Kissel was convicted of the murder of her husband, 40-year-old investment banker Robert Peter Kissel.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

4264.996

Make sure that Nan gets medical, physical and psychological help from professionals. Because she won't survive if she doesn't.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

4282.012

Shocked at the outcome. Can't conceive of the mindset of the jurors that could listen to that evidence for 10 weeks and come away with that belief. Just can't even comprehend that. But... All in all, I think it was a fair trial.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

474.663

So Andrew, on the other hand, he wasn't as outgoing as Robert.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

49.551

It was the question of was she or was she not an abused spouse.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

53.473

We know Nancy and Robert Kissel because of the milkshake murder.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

58.356

Two incredibly successful brothers, but suffering this same tragic fate.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

701.223

Wenn du im Park bist, musst du nicht wirklich raus. Da ist ein Kindergarten. Da ist ein großer Supermarkt. Da sind zwei oder drei Pools und Tennis-Skates.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

769.363

In der Anfangszeit ist alles sehr überwältigend und fantastisch. Es ist eine tolle Stadt, du hast ein wunderschönes Apartment. Und dann endet der Mann, viel mehr weg zu sein, als er versprochen hat. Und du spielst viele Nachts alleine. Sie hat mir nie darüber gesprochen. Es ist eine Expertengemeinschaft. Die Leute sprechen miteinander.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

785.287

Und wenn es Probleme in der Beziehung gibt und die Leute davon hören, ist es wie Wildfire. Sie waren sehr sozial. Sie waren lustig.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

789.748

Alles war immer perfekt.

Serialously with Annie Elise

258: Rich Brothers, Affairs, and a Bloodbath | The Kissel Brothers

927.078

She said to me something terrible has happened. It's a family emergency. And I said, is there anything I can do? She said, no, don't come over. But she sounded distraught. She sounded very upset.

Serialously with Annie Elise

229: Twisted Obsession: How a Love Triangle Turned Deadly | The Murder of Alyssa Burkett

289.764

Now, by the time that the police and the paramedics showed up, sadly, Alyssa had already passed away.

Serialously with Annie Elise

272: Karen Read Trial Recap Week 3: Solo Cups, Butt Dials & Witnesses Scramble to Cut Ties with the Alberts/Proctor

0.149

Karen Reid, accused of the January 2022 death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, has consistently asserted her innocence, alleging a concerted effort by law enforcement to frame her.

Serialously with Annie Elise

272: Karen Read Trial Recap Week 3: Solo Cups, Butt Dials & Witnesses Scramble to Cut Ties with the Alberts/Proctor

13.733

Charged with hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV early Saturday morning and leaving him in a snowbank. The closely watched murder trial has ended in a mistrial.

Serialously with Annie Elise

272: Karen Read Trial Recap Week 3: Solo Cups, Butt Dials & Witnesses Scramble to Cut Ties with the Alberts/Proctor

24.636

The prosecution is indicating that it will retry this case, and the question becomes one of how will they do it.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

10078.367

Holy shit, you guys.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

10324.79

Poor substitute teachers.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

10673.645

This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

1671.413

Didn't realize she had low standards.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

1680.378

That's a great – For me to hang out with her, yeah.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

222.076

Why is that, James?

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

3327.833

They're already gone.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

3712.99

What the fuck is happening?

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

3972.585

It's been just drained, been drained.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

4017.064

Robert Downey Jr. drove it.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

4239.231

Like Google phones.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

4359.338

She got their mail and was like, well, it was sent to me.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

455.408

Yeah. Sweet spot from all of it. Yeah. Forget.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

5789.475

I'm not looking at cyanide.pdf.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

5852.166

Oh, he broke up, huh?

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

5954.071

Maybe a Visine one, but no coma.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

5970.992

Oh, I was trying to, yeah.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

6127.787

I know that sounds nuts.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

6385.813

Oh, so she's got a narrow, narrow throat.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

6392.037

Or just does it in liquid form.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

6463.105

What's up with that?

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

6674.682

In her chart, those are all she has, though.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

7002.069

Nobody will look at the back of these.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

9357.37

Useless motherfucker.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

958.602

What is she doing?

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

976.294

Never mind Harvestfest.

Small Town Murder

#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

9957.366

So I'm going to end it right now.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1752.216

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1760.141

This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1766.305

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1770.367

I was meant to sow terror.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1771.748

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1773.829

Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1790.178

This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1796.361

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1800.584

I was meant to sow terror.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1801.784

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

1803.866

Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

27.819

When Luigi Mangione was arrested for allegedly shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, he didn't just spark outrage. He ignited a cultural firestorm. Is the system working, or is it time for a reckoning? I'm Jesse Weber. Listen to Law & Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3027.819

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3036.083

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3039.284

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3045.067

He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3047.988

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3052.21

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3055.228

I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3067.219

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3078.911

Listen to Law & Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3087.159

You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3106.396

And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3127.034

Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3142.887

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3151.152

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3154.374

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3160.137

He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3163.059

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3167.301

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3170.296

I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3182.287

He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

3193.976

Listen to Law and Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

4652.73

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

4666.019

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

4686.195

With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure. No, for sure he did it.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

4706.055

Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Small Town Murder

#588 - Four Letter Murder - Falkner, Mississippi

8.009

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

SmartLess

"Vince Vaughn"

1161.345

We'll be right back. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Vince Vaughn"

2241.998

And now, a word from our sponsor. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Jelly Roll"

1243.872

And we will be right back. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Jelly Roll"

2486.937

Yeah. We'll be right back. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Pete Buttigieg"

1254.013

Well, glad you're doing it. We'll be right back. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Pete Buttigieg"

2481.087

That's great. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show.

SmartLess

"Nikki Glaser"

1007.295

We'll be right back. All right. Back to the show.

SmartLess

"Nikki Glaser"

1964.966

And we will be right back. And now back to the show.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1011.839

Detectives search official records for DeAsia Page. They learn she's a recent high school dropout. They also find a local address for the 18-year-old.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

105.589

As investigators scramble for answers, a torrid and desperate romance comes into focus.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1062.879

According to DeAsia's mom, Teenage rebellion hadn't always been a problem. Until recently, De'Asia was a shy and sweet teenager who didn't rock the boat at home or school.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1121.283

According to her mom, the problems had started several months earlier when DeAsia had grown close to an 18-year-old named Jared Kemp.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1153.938

It wasn't long before DeAsia had fallen head over heels for the high school senior.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1175.202

But De'Asia's mom tells police that she had quickly learned Jared was a bad influence on her daughter.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1237.165

Detectives learned that De'Asia's mom had been so troubled by her daughter's relationship, she'd given the teenager an ultimatum earlier that month.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1267.225

Shortly after, De'Asia had dropped out of school.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1286.013

Had De'Asia been involved in Tony Abad's murder? To find out, police know they need to locate the 18-year-old runaway as soon as possible.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1440.221

Authorities in Fulton County, Georgia are searching for 18-year-old DeAsia Page in connection to the murder of local resident Tony Abad. With no insight into where DeAsia is now, detectives saturate the local news and social media with the teenager's photo.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

146.744

In the Atlanta suburb of Fairburn in Fulton County, Georgia, life slows down for its nearly 16,000 residents.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1481.94

Within hours, a promising tip comes in from two security guards.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1501.058

Detectives meet with the security guard and one of his coworkers. They learned that both men had first met DeAsia Page about a week earlier when she had approached them while they were on a smoke break.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1539.919

According to the security guards, DeAsia had returned each night that week But on the night of December 21st, DeAsia had been noticeably upset when she arrived at the gas station.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1608.207

Detectives thank the witnesses for the information. By the time they get back to the station, tips and response to the media's blitz featuring DeAsia's name and picture have begun to pour in.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1633.832

But before police can follow up on any of the rumored sightings, DeAsia herself walks into the Fulton County Police Station and asks to speak with detectives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

165.936

But the town's veneer of peace and safety is shattered on the morning of December 22nd, 2017, when local police receive a call about a suspicious vehicle parked behind a popular restaurant.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1659.894

When detectives sit down with DeAsia, she admits that she had accepted a ride from Tony Abad sometime after 11 p.m. on December 21st.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1691.061

DeAsia says she gave Tony directions to the gas station, but as they neared their destination, she and Tony were suddenly blindsided when two men had attacked them.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1728.884

DeAsia says she watched helplessly as the man beat Tony to death in front of her. Then he ordered her to help him dispose of Tony's body.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1750.545

Detectives are skeptical. If DeAsia had witnessed such a vicious crime, why not call the police?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1786.826

That's when Fulton County detectives get a call from their counterparts in the nearby community of Chattahoochee Hills and learn they've just received a surprise visit from DeAsia's boyfriend.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1837.384

Detectives turn their attention back to DeAsia and press her about her relationship with Jared Kemp.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1874.815

Coming up, police must decipher who's telling the truth in a high-stakes game of he said, she said.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1888.484

But will one of the two suspects disappear before justice can be served?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1907.944

In Fulton County, Georgia, DeAsia Page has just implicated her boyfriend, Jared Kemp, in the murder of Tony Abad. According to DeAsia, it was Jared's idea to steal a car so DeAsia could have a place to sleep.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1972.876

On December 21st, De'Asia says she was hanging out at the Fairburn shopping center when she spotted Tony Abad and her coworker leaving the grocery store.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2001.244

DeAsia tells detectives that she called Jared and told him she was on her way. Ten minutes later, she instructed Tony to turn down Church Street, where she knew Jared was waiting.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2067.496

According to DeAsia, Tony suddenly turned to Jared and began pleading for her life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2099.964

But DeAsia says Jared wasn't about to take any risks.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

213.297

Officers learned the vehicle is registered to a local 58-year-old resident named Tony Abad.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2151.045

DeAsia claims Jared instructed her to wipe the car and dump it.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2185.831

DeAsia says after she dropped off the car, she went to the gas station, dumping her bloody clothes along the way.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2201.119

DeAsia says she continued to communicate with Jared the rest of the night.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2218.587

Despite her claims, detectives suspect DeAsia might be downplaying her role in the violence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2252.256

Still, detectives struggle with the reasoning behind Tony's violent death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2281.943

De'Asia Page is officially charged with murder. News of her arrest stuns her friends and loved ones.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

230.506

The dispatcher's calls to Tony's residence go unanswered. Meanwhile, the officer continues his search of the vehicle.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2302.899

While the Abad family is relieved to learn there's been an arrest in the case, they also have questions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2341.38

But with only DeAsia's statement against her former lover, authorities fear an accused killer might just get away with murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2363.291

18-year-old De'Asia Page has just confessed to her role in the brutal murder of 58-year-old Tony Abad. De'Asia has also implicated her boyfriend, Jared Kemp, as the crime's mastermind.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2396.314

Detectives have been unable to locate Jared since his last statement to authorities.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2423.979

At the station, detectives confront Jared with DeAsia's confession, but he's suddenly tight-lipped.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2443.624

With Jared refusing to cooperate, detectives collect his cell phone and uncover a treasure trove of digital evidence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2486.499

Detectives corroborate DeAsia's story that she spoke with Jared on the phone as Tony gave her a ride.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2514.355

Jared's search history also presents damning evidence against the teen.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2556.036

Unfortunately, authorities are unable to collect any physical evidence against Jared.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2572.894

Even still, the digital evidence combined with DeAsia's confession are enough for authorities to charge Jared Kemp with Tony's murder. Prosecutors offer DeAsia a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Jared.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2603.319

On October 2, 2019, Jared Kemp's murder trial begins in a Fulton County courtroom. Prosecutors use the digital evidence, along with DeAsia's testimony, to assert that Jared and DeAsia had committed premeditated murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2666.48

Ultimately, Jared Kemp is found guilty of felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and hijacking a vehicle, and is sentenced to life in prison. In exchange for her cooperation, DeAsia Page receives a 30-year sentence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

272.566

A crime scene investigation unit arrives moments later.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

286.094

While authorities are unable to visually identify the victim, they do notice a name tag on the front of her clothing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

316.701

As detectives continue surveying the crime scene, it becomes clear that Toni had endured an excruciating death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

356.425

Georgia native Toni Abad was known for her Southern charm.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

384.005

A divorced mother to four boys and five grandchildren, Toni had always valued her family above everything else.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

416.114

While her marriage didn't last, Tony's family always remained her top priority.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

438.185

When she wasn't helping care for her five grandchildren, Toni worked as the deli manager at one of Fairburn's most popular grocery stores.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

469.511

In December of 2017, Toni was looking forward to taking some time off work and spending the upcoming Christmas holiday with her loved ones.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

489.363

But Toni's plans for a happy holiday come to a bleak end on December 22, when authorities find her dead body stuffed in the trunk of her car. The fact that the majority of the broken glass is found inside Tony's car suggests that the attack might have occurred somewhere else.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

529.518

But detectives are having a hard time discerning a motive.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

54.702

A quiet town is terrorized when a beloved grandmother falls victim to a horrific crime.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

549.578

With no evidence pointing to who killed Tony or why, detectives contact her family and break the devastating news.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

596.824

Coming up, police dig deeper into Tony's life and discover an ominous clue about her final moments.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

610.993

And as detectives race to track down a killer, new evidence points to a disturbing romance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

629.702

On December 22, 2017, police in Fairburn, Georgia, have discovered the badly beaten body of 58-year-old grandmother Toni Abad inside the trunk of her car.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

651.62

Given the severity of Toni's injuries, detectives suspect her killer was driven by a personal motive. But that theory doesn't seem to hold water with her family.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

690.529

Had Tony been the target of a random crime? Detectives believe that if they can track down Tony's missing cell phone, it might lead them to the killer.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

739.093

within moments of their arrival. Detectives locate Tony's phone by the side of the road. Just a few yards away, they find signs that a struggle had occurred.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

77.262

With no clear leads, police must face disturbing questions. Was this a random attack?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

770.956

Detectives send the phone off for forensic analysis. While they wait on the results, they next head to the grocery store where Toni worked and the last known place she was seen alive.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

794.222

Toni's coworkers reiterate what her family told detectives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

816.989

But one of Tony's coworkers offers detectives a new lead when she tells them that she and Tony had been approached by a stranger after they had closed the store the night before.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

838.85

The co-worker says after a brief pause, she saw Tony agree to give the young woman a ride.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

884.838

But who was this woman? Detectives review the store's surveillance tapes from the night of Tony's shift and confirm her coworker's story.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

89.529

Or had the victim fallen prey to a monster lurking in the shadows?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

908.255

The video then shows Tony and her coworker exiting the store at 11.30 p.m.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

927.578

Though the surveillance video captured the young woman's physical build, it's impossible to identify her from the video alone. Using a still frame from the video, police canvass the shopping center, hoping someone in the area might recognize the young woman. They catch a break when they speak to the employees of a nearby restaurant.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: De'Asia Page and Jared Kemp (Snapped: Killer Couples)

990.909

When detectives search the bag's belongings, they catch a major break.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1016.626

Questions about Jack's story are still hovering over the case the next day when the medical examiner completes Karen's autopsy report.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

102.93

In the midst of a chaotic investigation, a twisted romance emerges. And at the heart of it all is a deadly conspiracy fueled by desperation and greed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1235.197

24 hours into the investigation of Karen Koslow's brutal murder, police in Fort Worth, Texas, are looking at her husband Jack as a person of interest after he survived the same attack that left her dead.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1261.716

To find out more, investigators dig deeper into the Koslows' marriage and learn that the wealth the couple shared came mostly from Karen.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1291.381

According to most of their family, the couple's relationship had seemed perfect on the surface for many years. But police learned that not long before her death, Karen had confided to some of her friends that she and Jack were having marital problems.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1313.203

Authorities theorize that the expense of Jack's new business venture might have led to some of the tensions between the couple.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1337.128

Further incriminating information is revealed when police ask the couple's family about one of the weapons found at the scene.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1359.812

While police continue to investigate, news of the heinous crime leaves many in the community reeling.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1382.673

Four days after her passing, Karen Koslow is laid to rest.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1424.89

Eager to stamp out the rumors and defend her father, Jack's 17-year-old daughter, Christy Koslow, holds an impromptu press conference on the front yard of the family home. It was scary, you know, almost losing my dad.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1477.941

On March 18th, detectives meet with Jack's ex-wife, Paula, to see if she can shed light on Jack's relationship with Karen. Accompanying Paula to the station is Jack's daughter, Christy, as well as Christy's 19-year-old boyfriend, Brian Salter.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1505.233

Paula tells detectives she wasn't close to her ex-husband or his new wife, but she doesn't think Jack would hurt Karen. Christy agrees with her mother.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1527.711

Detectives ask Brian if he knew Jack and Karen. He tells them he'd met them a few times since he and Christy started dating four months earlier.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1570.98

Brian says the Koslows had always been kind to him. Like Christy, he has no idea who would do this to them. While investigators work diligently to gather evidence for the next week, they continue to receive concerned calls from the community.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

158.827

On the west side of Fort Worth, Texas, lies the affluent neighborhood of Rivercrest.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1608.888

But on March 24th, nearly two weeks after the crime, a man calls investigators with information that completely changes the direction of the case.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1633.666

The caller is a 20-year-old man named Paul Carrillo, and he says he knows who killed Karen Koslow.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1691.906

Also inside the backpack is a bag of bloody clothes, as well as an 18-inch metal pry bar, the same pry bar police believe was used to break into the home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1716.819

But why would 19-year-old Jeffrey Dillingham target the Koslows? According to Paul Carrillo, Jeffrey had an accomplice who knew the couple.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1735.337

Detectives recognize Brian Salter as Christy Koslow's boyfriend. But what could possibly motivate Brian to hurt Christy's father and stepmother?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1755.773

Coming up, detectives confront Brian Salter and Jeffrey Dillingham. They expect this is going to be a tough interrogation. But what one of the new suspects reveals leaves police stunned.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1781.101

Ever since Karen Koslow's body was found on the floor of her master bedroom, the primary person of interest in her murder has been her husband, Jack. But 12 days into the investigation, Jack is ruled out when Fort Worth police get a tip that two 19-year-olds, Brian Salter and Jeffrey Dillingham, are the real killers.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1826.372

In fact, both teenagers had excelled as honor roll students in high school.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1845.206

Detectives secure arrest warrants for both Brian Salter and Jeffrey Dillingham. They set their sights on apprehending Jeffrey Dillingham first. Officers head to the video store where the teenager works and take him into custody without incident.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1879.547

According to Jeffrey, he was recruited by his friend Brian Salter to break into the Koslows' house.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1912.202

Jeffrey confesses to beating the couple with the pry bar, but that it was Brian who found Jack's buck knife in the couple's bedroom.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1939.595

But why had the two teenagers targeted the Koslows in the first place? Jeffrey shocks investigators when he explains that the attack hadn't been his or Brian's idea.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

194.349

But on March 12th, 1992, the community's veneer of safety is shattered when Fort Worth police receive a disturbing 911 call from a Rivercrest residence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

1961.334

According to Jeffrey, Christy told Brian she would inherit millions of dollars if her dad and stepmom were out of the way.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2006.097

Following his confession, police charged Jeffrey Dillingham with murder. They also arrest Christie Koslow and Brian Salter at their homes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2029.869

When questioned by detectives, Brian admits to his role in the crime. He says he was willing to do anything to make Christie happy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2057.935

Brian says that Christy had first brought up the idea of murdering her father and stepmother only a few weeks into their relationship.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2092.654

Brian tells police he and Jeffrey planned to carry out Christy's plan on the evening of March 12th.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2122.625

Brian says Jeffrey was also wearing a bulletproof vest.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

214.507

The dispatcher relays to officers that the caller is the victim's neighbor.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2167.383

Brian says it was Jeffrey Dillingham who kicked in the Koslow's bedroom door.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2247.109

It's clear that Brian Salter and Jeffrey Dillingham are trying to pin the murders on each other. The only parts of their story they agree on is that the crime's mastermind was Christy Koslow. But what will she say when confronted by police?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2279.187

Fort Worth, Texas police have arrested three suspects for the deadly attack that took the life of Karen Koslow and left her husband Jack severely injured. 19-year-olds Jeffrey Dillingham and Brian Salter have confessed to their roles in the crime. Now police are ready to question the purported mastermind, Jack Koslow's 17-year-old daughter, Christy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2341.431

Christy admits to the murder-for-hire plot, but she tells investigators that she never thought it would turn out this way.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2357.616

But investigators don't buy it.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2384.983

But unbeknownst to Christy, she never stood to inherit even a penny.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2459.889

Prosecutors announced the three suspects will face the death penalty if convicted. Jeffrey Dillingham is set to go on trial first.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2483.062

In August 1993, a year and a half after Karen's murder, Jeffrey Dillingham's murder trial begins in a Tarrant County courtroom.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2504.13

Jeffrey Dillingham is convicted on all charges. On August 11, 1993, the 20-year-old is sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

253.439

Police and EMTs arrive on the scene moments later. While one EMT tends to Jack, police rush next door to check on his wife, Karen.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

2536.587

To avoid a similar fate, Brian Salter agrees to plead guilty and testify against his girlfriend.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

302.793

Born in 1951, Karen Koslow came from a long line of Texas oil tycoons.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

326.701

When Karen and Jack Koslow met in the early 1980s, both enjoyed successful careers in commercial banking.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

356.567

The couple married in the late 1980s. While their wealth had made them players at the highest levels of Fort Worth's social scene, the Koslows were known for giving back to their community.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

398.743

At their sprawling brick house in the esteemed neighborhood of Rivercrest, the couple had also helped raise Jack's adopted daughter, Christy, from his previous marriage.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

445.118

By 1990, Jack Koslow decided to retire from the banking industry and pursue a new chapter in his career.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

461.679

Karen was supportive of her husband's new career goals. And the couple, along with Jack's daughter, seemed to be living the good life. Until the tragic night in March of 1992. Karen Koslow has been found dead in the couple's bedroom. It appears that Jack Koslow has also been wounded but survived and has been rushed to the nearest hospital.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

510.666

Around 4.45 AM, homicide investigators arrive at the Koslows' home and try to piece together exactly what happened. They carefully examine Karen's body for possible clues.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

54.196

An affluent community is rocked when a high society couple falls victim to a horrifying crime.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

566.511

Investigators find more evidence as they survey the rest of the room.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

590.279

Inside a nearby hallway closet, police find evidence of ransacking.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

616.109

Behind the residence, detectives find evidence where the attackers entered the property.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

664.075

Coming up, new evidence points to a person of interest.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

679.183

And an unexpected tip exposes dark secrets within the Koslow family.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

700.467

In Fort Worth, Texas, investigators are searching the home of wealthy socialites, Karen and Jack Koslow, after a brutal attack that left Karen dead and Jack fighting for his life. Between the signs of forced entry and the ransacked closet inside the home, it appears that the attack on the Koslows might have been a home burglary gone terribly wrong.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

742.125

But what had the attackers been looking for?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

776.183

Hoping for answers, detectives head to the hospital around 3 PM that afternoon to speak with Jack Koslow. Doctors informed police that, like his wife, Jack had been beaten with a blunt object. His neck had also been cut, but not deep enough to cause a life-threatening injury.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

79.099

Had the couple been targeted for their wealth? There were a lot of disagreements over money. Or were there more personal motives at play?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

808.162

Detectives also get a better look at some of his injuries.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

874.737

Detectives asked Jack to walk them through the events leading up to the attack.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

900.511

Jack says the alarm was quickly followed by a crash and the sound of footsteps running up the stairs.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

922.558

Jack says both men had guns and flashlights, but it was too dark to get a good look at either of the intruders.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

963.052

Jack tells detectives that when he woke up, the intruders were gone.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

BONUS: Kristi Koslow and Brian Salter (Snapped: Killer Couples)

990.712

It's a harrowing story, but detectives can't help but be suspicious. They're particularly skeptical of his explanation for why he didn't call 911.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

103.447

The more they dig, the darker the truth becomes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1031.181

Between the hoodie and the angle of the cameras, investigators can't get a look at the person's face. Authorities are still talking to potential witnesses when they finally get in touch with Michael's family in Ohio. His sister Marley reveals horrifying details about her last conversation with Mike.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1087.511

Marlee tried calling Michael again to no avail.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1149.658

Meanwhile, detectives switch their focus back to locating Michael's ex, Catherine, and look up the make and model of her vehicle.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1167.603

Even so, investigators are still eager to speak with her. That same day, authorities tracked Catherine to a home in Mesa, just a 40-minute drive from where Michael was shot.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1221.755

Detectives request that everyone in the house come outside.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1237.426

When detectives inform Catherine of Michael's murder, her reaction takes them by surprise.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1261.555

When asked about her whereabouts earlier, Catherine tells investigators that she was at the mortgage company where she and Bridget both work all day.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1301.565

investigators move on to Bridget, who explains that she is Catherine's co-worker at the mortgage company and they have known each other for about a year. Bridget corroborates Catherine's alibi.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1354.053

Even though they have no proof Bridget's van is the one in the surveillance footage, investigators aren't taking any chances.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1370.686

But they can't hold on to Bridget or Catherine.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1393.945

Coming up, investigators learn disturbing details about Michael's love life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

143.388

December 16th, 2016.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1542.62

Investigators in Maricopa, Arizona are looking into the execution-style murder of 31-year-old Michael Agater. While Michael's ex, Catherine, is unwilling to talk about their relationship with investigators, they find that his loved ones have plenty to say.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

157.802

The bedroom community of Maricopa, Arizona sits at the edge of Phoenix's sprawling suburbs and the vast Sonoran Desert.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1584.468

But just months into her relationship with Michael, Katherine's behavior took a sharp turn.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1626.317

Michael's friend and former roommate, Chris Grindy, had a front-row seat to Catherine's erratic behavior.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1659.266

Friends and family say Mike held on, even as things started to deteriorate.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1678.178

Michael's loved ones say that the verbal abuse eventually turned physical.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1705.143

In March of 2016, their relationship was hanging on by a thread when Catherine revealed that she was pregnant.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1726.033

Friends and family say that not long after getting the news of Catherine's pregnancy, Michael was finally ready to break it off. Four months after moving out, Chris got a call from Michael.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1756.977

Around eight months before he was found dead, Michael took the dog, Darwin, and moved into a home in Maricopa. Catherine was furious.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1787.283

Investigators learn that Michael had tried to take legal action of his own against Catherine.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

179.525

It's just before 2.30 p.m. in one of Maricopa's many subdivisions when out of nowhere, an unusual sound shatters the midday quiet.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1818.895

However, Catherine refused to let up. Following the birth of their son in October 2016, she launched a vicious and hurtful campaign.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1859.955

In fact, Marley says when she was on the phone with Michael at the time of the murder, he was returning home from taking the test.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1878.797

In light of the new information about Catherine, investigators head to the mortgage company where she works with her friend Bridget. They check in with building security and ask to see surveillance footage from the day of the murder. And they spot a white van.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1904.901

But a few hours later, the van leaves.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1947.044

But who was driving the van?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1986.271

Coming up, investigators uncover the identity of the mysterious driver.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

1998.136

And more evidence surfaces from the mortgage office.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2017.034

December 19th, 2016. Three days after the murder of Michael Agater, authorities visit the workplace of Michael's ex-girlfriend, Catherine Sienkiewicz. Investigators are honing in on Catherine's co-worker and close friend, Bridget, whose key card shows her leaving work shortly before Michael's murder, contrary to what she told police.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2053.829

Investigators view the interior footage of the cubicles.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

209.622

Within minutes, two Maricopa police officers cautiously approach the location.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2098.809

Over the next 24 hours, investigators work to find more evidence connecting Catherine to the murder. Detectives obtain a warrant for her cell phone records.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2134.111

It appears that Catherine powered her phone off during the time the murder was committed, a suspicion that is bolstered by a search of her work computer.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2155.532

Four days after the murder, detectives return to the mortgage company. They learn Catherine didn't show up for work, but Bridget is there.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2198.377

Bridget admits that she and Catherine bonded over their troubled relationships. She says Catherine was determined to keep Michael away from the baby.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2234.438

But now that she sees Catherine's promises were empty, she feels betrayed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2260.504

Detectives listen in as Bridget makes the call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2302.07

After the call, Bridget is released and is not charged with any crime. But Catherine's statements during the call add to the mounting evidence against her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2339.116

Armed with the warrant, Maricopa police set out to arrest Catherine.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2376.553

Coming up, investigators receive a lead on Catherine's whereabouts.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2387.798

But will it be too late?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2403.186

After a five-day investigation into the murder of Michael Agadir, authorities are poised to arrest his ex, Katherine Sienkiewicz. Only Katherine has disappeared into thin air, leaving everyone on edge.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

242.724

The officers slowly advance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2430.663

One day after the warrant is issued, investigators get a break.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2461.809

Law enforcement rushes to the home in Avondale.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2484.529

Authorities also find Catherine's newborn son safe and unharmed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2505.925

Back at the station, Catherine maintains her silence and refuses to give a statement. Thank you

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2573.746

Thank you. Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

2679.167

Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

297.902

Moments later, as Maricopa homicide detectives arrive on scene, a man shows up identifying himself as Chris Grindy, Michael's longtime friend and former roommate.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

330.005

Chris is shocked to learn that Michael has been murdered.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

342.352

Chris tells police that Michael lived alone. His sister and most of his family live 28 hours away in Urbana, Ohio. However, his ex-girlfriend and their newborn son live nearby.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

376.394

Michael Agadir was born on July 26, 1985, in Valparaiso, Indiana. The oldest of four, Michael set an example for his younger siblings.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

399.306

In 2002, the tight-knit Agater family moved to Urbana, Ohio, where Michael's love of sports took hold.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

41.574

He was a hardworking family man who left small-town Ohio to seek his fortune out west.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

421.824

After a year of college, Michael decided he was ready to enter the workforce.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

438.679

In 2010, 25-year-old Michael got an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

468.037

Less than a year later, Michael's friend Chris Grindy also made the move from Ohio to Arizona, and the two became roommates.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

490.833

By 2013, Michael's future looked bright, and he wanted someone to share it with.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

511.211

28-year-old Catherine Sienkiewicz was working at a local call center in Maricopa when she met Michael online. Eventually, they met in person, and their chemistry was undeniable.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

539.593

However, Michael learned that Katherine's carefree exterior masked a tragic past.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

54.754

There, he met a blonde beauty who stole his heart.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

576.904

When it came to her painful childhood, Catherine preferred to keep the details to herself.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

592.757

After dating for several months, Michael took Catherine to Ohio to meet his family.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

608.067

Once back in Arizona, the couple took another big step when Catherine presented Michael with a gift, a dog they named Darwin.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

628.15

In 2013, Catherine moved into the Tempe home with Michael, Chris, and Darwin.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

647.992

By the fall of 2015, after two and a half years together, Michael and Catherine moved into their own apartment.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

664.986

In the spring of 2016, Michael called his family back home in Ohio to deliver some exciting news.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

686.257

But during her pregnancy, Michael and Katherine's relationship took a turn for the worse.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

732.003

But just months later, this new father is found dead from a gunshot in his own garage. Authorities begin a sweep of the crime scene, while investigators track down Michael's family and ex, Katherine Sienkiewicz.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

76.641

But after almost four years, their desert dreams end in a flash of violence. He had said, holy s***.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

767.827

But there's evidence that wasn't the only shot fired.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

777.904

Detectives take a closer look to find where the other two shots landed. They find that Michael was hit not once, but twice.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

806.564

Coming up, the investigation uncovers shocking footage.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

817.371

And authorities learn the details of a harrowing phone call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

836.207

On December 16, 2016, authorities in Maricopa, Arizona, discover the body of 31-year-old Michael Agadir in his garage.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

892.924

But officers do find something inside that gets their attention.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

907.835

In order to view the footage, investigators will need permission from a judge. While waiting on the warrant, investigators talk with Michael's neighbors who have gathered outside. Most report that they don't know Michael, who only recently moved in. However, several do report seeing a vehicle parked in front of his house moments before the shots rang out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

94.615

Investigators unearth an unexpected betrayal.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

947.475

but the accounts of who was driving the van are inconsistent at best.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kathryn Sinkevitch

967.765

With minimal details on the driver from neighbors, investigators switch gears and take a look at the footage from Michael's security cameras.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1002.904

Without much to go on from John and Kim, investigators pour over Rick's client list and find no shortage of potential leads.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1022.458

But those leads all fall flat.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1025.821

The local investigators talked to Rick's family. They talked to Rick's coworkers. And it all led to a dead end.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1046.269

By January of 1999, Rick has been missing for over four months, and the Post family is beginning to lose hope. Then, out of the blue, FBI agents at a field office in San Diego, California, get an unexpected phone call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

106.42

He was putting himself out there as a cartel hitman.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1088.308

Before she will reveal the name of the victim, Colleen attempts to negotiate a deal for her client.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

109.763

She accessed highly sensitive, confidential information and gave it to the KGB.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1115.97

The phone call ends abruptly, but agents follow up with San Diego Police.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1132.075

We had a few facts that they did get from this initial phone call. at a certain date and time, and it matched up with the missing persons report of Rick Post disappearing in Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1158.119

After hitting yet another dead end, in May of 1999, FBI agents circle back to Rick's employee, John Kruger.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1203.501

But whatever John knows, he isn't willing to share.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1218.968

Investigators turn back to the other person of interest in this case, Kimberly Bailey. As it turns out, Kimberly already has her own file at the FBI.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1247.011

Could Kimberly's fraudulent business dealings be linked to Rick's disappearance?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1254.815

The investigation had kind of come to a standstill. They started conducting a surveillance of the ranch that Kimberly Bailey owned up in Fallbrook.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1282.782

They knew that in addition to Kimberly, there were some other people living there. So the case agents finally decided, let's go up and talk to people up there and see what we can find out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1296.317

Coming up, investigators find themselves seeking help from an international spy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1303.619

It was like something right out of a James Bond movie.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1307.9

And an undercover sting reveals a horrifying plot.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1325.208

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1333.473

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1336.694

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1345.379

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1352.617

I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1376.297

Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1398.849

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1406.352

Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1417.063

FBI agents in San Diego suspect that private investigator Rick Post was kidnapped and murdered in Mexico. There are two names in his missing persons file that have garnered their attention. John Kruger and Kimberly Bailey.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

143.74

It's August 21st, 1998 in San Diego, California. 16-year-old Ian Post is at the home he shares with his father, Rick, when the phone rings.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1435.22

Usually in an investigation, you try and talk to your main subjects last. You want to have as much information as possible when you go into that interview, because then it allows you to know if what they're telling you is false.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1454.392

In November of 1999, after seven months of surveillance fails to turn up any new leads, agents pay a visit to Kimberly's Fallbrook Avocado Ranch. When they arrive, they're greeted by two employees, husband and wife, Bruce and Svetlana.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1475.256

This woman identified herself as Svetlana Olgorodnikova. This moment was a jaw-dropper for the agents. Svetlana was someone that is known to virtually every FBI agent who joined the agency during the 1980s and 1990s.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1514.764

Svetlana, like something right out of a James Bond movie, seduced an FBI agent, accessed highly sensitive confidential information, and gave it to the KGB.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1534.997

Svetlana was sentenced to 18 years, served nine, and after that was in danger of losing her status to stay in the United States. and in fact, one step ahead of INS, essentially moved back to Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1560.542

He goes, well, we're investigating the Rick Post murder, and can we talk to you? And Lana and I look at each other, you know, because here's the FBI, she's here illegally, and reporting as if she was still in Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1574.477

Svetlana tells the agents that Kimberly is away at a yoga retreat. She also says that she and Bruce have been working and living at Kimberly's ranch for around six months. In that time, they forged a friendship with the quirky millionaire.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1597.691

On the surface, she's brilliant, she's pretty, but a little bit paranoid. She thought the satellites were listening to her and that people were after her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1608.719

However, Svetlana claims Kimberly trusted her. One day, she began confiding in her about her breakup with Rick Post.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

162.866

Ian tells her he hasn't seen his dad in 24 hours.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1621.326

She was a woman scorned. She was in love with Rick. He dropped her as a girlfriend. The real problem was jealousy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1629.008

What's more, Kimberly told Svetlana money was missing from her business.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1635.509

That she believed that Rick Post was stealing money from her. This was the one-two punch that sent her over the edge.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1645.452

And then Svetlana says Kimberly revealed her darkest secret.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1677.213

They solved it by getting Svetlana to agree to wear a wire recording device. I think she was scared of Kimberly, and I think there was a fear motive in her status in the United States. She was actually back in the United States illegally.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1695.841

A few weeks later, Kimberly asks Svetlana to pick her up from the airport in Phoenix and drive her back to California. the nine-hour car ride presents the perfect opportunity.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1716.602

It takes a little prompting from Svetlana to get Kimberly talking. Kimberly says that John Kruger had called her in August 1998 with some concerning information about his boss, Rick Post.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

175.875

Ian is well aware that his father's work as a private investigator sometimes requires him to leave town at the last minute. But he also knows that Rick never leaves without telling him.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1750.761

Kimberly reveals that she asked John Kruger to help her hire some muscle.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1756.564

John had become acquainted with an individual by the name of Humberto Uribe, Mexican national. who was purporting to have connections to the cartel.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1767.83

Kimberly paid 25-year-old Humberto approximately $40,000 and then lured Rick Post to Mexico on August 20th.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1779.694

The trap was set. Kimberly went down to Mexico with Rick Post. They stopped at a pharmacy. Rick waited in the car. Kimberly got out of the car. supposedly to go into the pharmacy. Two men hired by Uribe approached the car, forced Rick out of the car and took him away.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1804.584

After Richard is kidnapped, Kimberly gets inside of Richard's car, turns around and heads back to San Diego where she drops off his car at his own home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1827.725

According to Kimberly, Humberto and his two associates tortured Rick for the next five days.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1836.249

He duct taped to a chair, and then he took some pliers and pinched his fingernails.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1863.062

After five days of torture, Rick still hadn't confessed to stealing from her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1868.866

Rick, should I admit that I slept with other women He's always denied stealing anything. Kimberly tells Svetlana that she told Uribe to build an underground prison and keep him there for the rest of his life. I said, this is dangerous for us. We don't like staying up all night watching these guys.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1909.289

Then, Kimberly reveals to Svetlana that she is sharing her story with her because she needs her help.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1936.661

So the decision was made, let's put a bow on this. Kimberly Bailey wants a hitman. So the FBI decided, we'll give her a hitman.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1950.387

Coming up, agents set up a sting.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1958.951

And learn of her next plan for bloodshed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1964.062

And she would have been literally the last person standing in the room with a bloody knife.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

1977.236

Over a year after Rick Post's mysterious disappearance, his former client and the lover, Kimberly Bailey, unwittingly confesses to his murder during a secretly recorded conversation with former KGB spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2015.076

She was going down a road where she would have been literally the last person standing in the room with a bloody knife.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2023.832

Svetlana agrees to work with investigators once again in a sting operation on December 22nd, 1999, almost a year and a half since Rick's disappearance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2048.51

So a meeting was arranged in a hotel room. Fortunately for us, the professional hitman was in fact a professional FBI agent.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2059.486

Agent Nick McKean takes on the role of hitman.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2088.4

When she arrives, it's clear that Kimberly's infamous paranoia is in full swing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2105.345

Kimberly refuses to talk about the hits. Instead, she pulls a laptop computer out of her bag.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2113.168

Kimberly tries to type out the death wish, and the laptop does not work.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

212.326

It's as if he just walked out the door and poof, vanished into thin air.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2124.011

Since she can't type her request, Kimberly is forced to say it out loud.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2146.848

Kimberly reveals that her hit list has changed since she spoke with Svetlana. Only one name remains the same.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2173.137

Kimberly is clear that the murders should not look like intentional killings.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2184.901

Kimberly gave the undercover agent $10,000 as a down payment.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2194.065

FBI agents are able to secure arrest warrants for Kimberly and her co-conspirators.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2210.823

On April 4th of 2000, John Kruger is arrested in San Diego.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

222.111

Ian grows more concerned when he finds his father's vehicle out front.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2220.658

Later that month, authorities locate 54-year-old Kimberly at an airport in Mexico City. Armed with 14 pieces of luggage and a Canadian ID, it's clear that she's on the run.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2243.005

Kimberly refuses to talk and maintains her innocence. Meanwhile, Humberto Uribe remains free in Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2256.276

He is a Mexican national. It oftentimes can take a long time to extradite someone from Mexico to the United States when there is a murder case.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2271.908

Prosecutors begin preparing for Kimberly's trial. In addition to Svetlana, they are able to secure another star witness.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2290.169

John tells investigators that it all started when he became upset with Rick for not paying him what he felt he deserved.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2298.534

John Kruger is a bit of a disgruntled employee at the company. He's only making $15 an hour. He sees that Richard Post is reeling in the dough.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2309.295

So John lied and told Kimberly Rick was stealing from her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2332.208

When Kimberly asked him to help her find a hitman, he obliged.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2347.94

Between John and Svetlana, the case against Kimberly is strong. But prosecutors will soon learn that Kimberly Bailey's will to remain free may be even stronger.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

235.504

Ian reaches out to other family members and finds no one else has seen or heard from 52-year-old Rick Post in over 24 hours either.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2362.895

Kimberly is fight to the death. And it just seems so natural for her to say, I'm not making any deal with anybody. I'm going to trial because she thinks she's impenetrable.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2378.449

Coming up, a shocking claim rocks the courtroom.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2383.652

Rick wasn't dead. He was living off her money somewhere in Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2388.494

And the twists keep coming.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2391.175

You could say that that is the ultimate Hollywood movie ending to a twisted story like this.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2406.778

Kimberly Bailey's trial gets underway in 2002. The millionaire and entrepreneur is accused of orchestrating the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her one-time lover and private investigator, Rick Post. For Rick's family, it's been four years since they last saw him, and the trial has been a long time coming.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2450.389

Prosecutors argue that Rick's murder was driven by a deadly combination of revenge and paranoia.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2458.556

He was tortured in an effort to get him to cough up a confession on stealing money from her. Unfortunately, it appears the problem for Rick was he hadn't stolen any money from her, so he had nothing to confess to.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

246.267

His family, his kids, were concerned because they hadn't heard a word from him, and that was not like him. It was a huge red flag.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2475.341

On the stand, Svetlana and John walk the jury through Kimberly's cold-hearted scheme. But Kimberly's attorneys argue that not only are these witnesses unreliable, but Rick Post is still alive.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2494.372

Kim Bailey's position through the entire trial was that Rick wasn't dead. That Rick stole a lot of money from her and he was living off her money somewhere in Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2508.348

In July, the jury finds Kimberly Bailey guilty of kidnapping. But without a body, they deadlock on the murder charge.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2519.562

When it came to the murder, even though we know she said a million times she wanted him killed, there was no body.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2532.386

Kimberly fires her attorney and represents herself at her sentencing on the kidnapping conviction.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2540.432

Never a good move. That's probably the worst type of representation you can have.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2546.917

Kimberly receives a life plus 10 years in prison. John Kruger is rewarded for his cooperation.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2586.949

It takes five more years for the third perpetrator of the crime, hitman Humberto Uribe, to face justice.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2597.395

He got popped in Mexico by the authorities down there on an unrelated homicide case. Arrangements were made for extradition to bring him back up to the United States to face trial in the Rick Post murder. He got 25 years. Is that long enough for taking a human life? I don't think so.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

262.129

Born September 2nd, 1945, Rick Post was a native Californian.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2622.795

Umberto's trial marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the Post family.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2640.127

In 2008, Kimberly Bailey was diagnosed with cancer in prison.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

2661.41

You could say that that is the ultimate Hollywood movie ending to a twisted story like this.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

289.198

Rick served during the Vietnam War and specialized in radio communications.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

307.561

By his late 20s, Rick was out of the Army and married. In 1971, his first son, Orion, is born. And 10 years later, in 1981, he has a second son, Ian.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

331.894

To support his growing family, Rick drew on his military background and opened a private investigation firm.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

359.164

Rick wasn't afraid to take on difficult or even dangerous cases.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

374.007

He worked on issues related to the Mexican cartel. So there's some dangerous territory in his line of work.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

38.892

He was a handsome private investigator living a life of escapades and intrigue.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

383.197

Rick had a gift for talking with people. He had the ability to, in the moment, relate to someone and get them to open up to him. In his line of work, it is a talent that you can't buy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

397.309

Rick's work life was a success, but his love life was a different story. By the late 90s, Rick was twice divorced with four kids.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

420.826

By the late 90s, business was thriving so much that Rick took on a protege. He hired an aspiring young PI, John Kruger.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

446.067

In 1997, Rick landed his most prominent client yet, millionaire Kimberly Bailey. Born in Oklahoma, Kimberly was raised in the quaint town of Stillwater.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

459.474

Kimberly was somewhat enigmatic. She was seemingly a loner. The only thing we know about her private life is that she came from an apparently very troubled childhood in Oklahoma. She traveled the world looking for endangered medicinal plants.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

480.54

Kimberly Bailey bought a ranch in Fallbrook, California with the stated intent to use it as a place to grow natural medicines that she was gathering from all over the world.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

492.219

It was beautiful, you know, 33 acres of avocado trees everywhere, a nice big ranch house. She was very pretty, highly intelligent.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

50.299

He had a gift for talking with people. He had the ability to get them to open up to him.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

503.629

Kimberly also had a second business selling cutting-edge medical devices.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

509.454

She had a business known as AstroPulse. And the idea was that by using electrical currents, you could cure pretty much anything.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

531.718

By 1997, Kimberly was in her early 40s and had amassed a sizable fortune.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

539.033

She was this zen, holistic practitioner who made a lot of money.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

544.895

Business was outstandingly successful. The word of mouth would spread. And she had many, many, many people ordering her black box. She built up hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

560.373

But Kimberly worried that those closest to her were trying to undo what she had built.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

567.037

Kim was rather paranoid. She always believed that somebody was watching her or after her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

574.18

She thought that some of her employees were stealing from her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

58.582

Then he disappeared without a trace.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

587.975

Rick enlisted his new right-hand man, John Kruger, to help him on the case. Rick worked closely with Kimberly. The suave PI and beautiful businesswoman made an instant connection.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

616.854

But after a short and passionate fling, Rick decided it was best to steer clear of anything serious.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

62.063

It's as if he just walked out the door and poof, vanished into thin air.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

637.53

Despite the brush off, Kimberly and Rick maintain their professional relationship. With the holistic guru as one of his most prominent clients, Rick seems to be in his professional prime. Until the PI suddenly vanishes on August 20th, 1998, throwing his family into a panic.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

68.705

In their hunt for the missing businessman, investigators sort through several leads.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

697.846

Then his son Ian gets a troubling phone call from John Kruger.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

724.983

The voicemail was left the day before Rick went missing. John feels confident that the message means Rick is okay. But Ian and other family members have their doubts.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

758.667

With concerns mounting, Rick's family files a missing persons report in August 1998.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

768.291

Missing person investigations can be very intense. The longer someone stays disappeared, the greater the chances that they will never be found.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

781.024

Coming up, police locate the last known person to be seen with the missing PI.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

798.769

And just as local authorities hit a dead end, the FBI receives a bizarre call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

81.522

He worked on issues related to the Mexican drug cartel. So there's some dangerous territory in his line of work.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

836.118

After hearing a suspicious voicemail Rick left at the office, Ian and his brother report the 52-year-old as missing to the San Diego PD.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

848.787

The police must do their due diligence before they decide that an all-out search has to take place.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

869.518

San Diego police visit Rick's private investigation firm in Telesource, where they speak with employees, including John Kruger.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

898.526

John tells detectives that the last time he saw his boss was on August 20th, almost three weeks prior. Rick was leaving the office with his biggest client, Kimberly Bailey. San Diego detectives immediately tracked down Kimberly at her avocado farm.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

90.729

But as more layers begin to unfold, an unexpected cast of characters reveal themselves.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

932.864

Kimberly says that on August 20th, while in Tijuana, she and Rick stopped for a meal.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

943.786

While at a restaurant in Mexico, Rick was approached by two men who had a conversation with him. At the conclusion of the conversation, Rick told Kimberly that he needed to make a business trip to Mexico City.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

972.454

She tells detectives that she's been worried sick since Rick's disappearance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Kimberly Bailey

980.185

The investigators knew that the information they had didn't add up, but all they had was Kimberly Bailey and John Kruger saying, yeah, he left town.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1028.549

Francesca says she went to work that night and continued trying to call Matt. But it seemed his phone had been turned off.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

104.301

When a surprise suspect emerges, the case takes a frightening turn.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1075.557

Francesca claims she doesn't know anyone named Tiffany, but this new revelation gives detectives pause.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1090.726

Not only that, when detectives try to check her story, there's a problem.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1114.211

Coming up, new details emerge about Matt's last known conversations.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1126.141

And can technology bring investigators any closer to the truth?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1257.978

On October 19th, 2017, Francesca Sakulich tells Florida investigators that the day after Matthew Collins disappeared, he sent her a heartbreaking text stating he had left her for a woman named Tiffany.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1290.948

After Francesca's interview concludes, investigators file a search warrant to obtain Matthew's cell phone records.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1315.086

With her story and cell phone records lining up, investigators eliminate Francesca as a suspect.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1332.895

The phone also unlocks a lead on Matthew's last known contact.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1373.194

According to Tiffany, the two were supposed to meet for the first time on the night of the 12th, the same evening Matthew went missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1415.279

In an effort to confirm Tiffany's story, investigators study Matt's cell phone GPS coordinates for October 12th.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

144.358

On the evening of October 13th, 2017, 911 dispatchers in Lee County, Florida, receive a concerning call from 32-year-old resident Francesca Sakulich.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1440.868

The coordinates show Matt never visited Tiffany nor returned home on October 12th. But he did stop at an area convenience store northeast of Fort Myers.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1499.976

When detectives arrive at the home, a man greets them. He claims he is a friend of Matt's, but not the same friend from the gas station's CCTV footage.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1533.607

Investigators continue following Matthew's GPS trail until it suddenly drops off.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1582.014

When investigators knock on the front door of the home, they're greeted by a middle-aged woman.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1603.287

According to Nate's mother, 19-year-old Aria moved in with their 20-year-old son earlier that year.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1630.987

Nathan Ortiz and Aria Armstead met in 2014 and Nathan was easily attracted to Aria's bubbly personality.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1661.614

Aria's effervescent personality was a natural fit in the competitive world of teens and tiaras.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1689.009

But over time, Little Miss Congeniality grew disenchanted with life in the spotlight.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1719.318

In time, Aria began to rebel.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1758.538

For Aria's friends, the more they learned about Nathan, the more concerned they became.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1782.215

In early 2017, when Aria was 18 years old, she moved in with Nate and his parents.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1807.847

That ride has now led Lee County investigators to Aria and Nathan's front door.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1836.616

Coming up, a grim discovery points to a possible final resting place.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1846.05

And later, investigators come face to face with Aria and Nathan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1864.77

October 26th, 2017. 31-year-old Matthew Collins has been missing for almost two weeks. Investigators have just made a concerning discovery at the home of 20-year-old Nathan Ortiz.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1905.634

Authorities procure a warrant for the property, and a forensic team is called in to search for evidence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1925.942

The clandestine gravesite is nothing but a dirt-filled hole. Next, detectives execute a search warrant inside the home and the garage.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

193.373

When Deputy McMenamin arrives at the residence, he learns Francesca's boyfriend, 31-year-old Matthew Collins, had borrowed her car around 3 o'clock the previous afternoon.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1953.47

Investigators send the dirt samples off for testing and make a stunning connection.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1973.934

After wrapping up the search at his home, detectives know they need to sit down with Nathan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

1999.389

Detectives start by asking who she and Nate typically hang out with, and Aria casually mentions Matthew's name.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2019.321

But when investigators press Aria about the last time she saw Matthew, she makes a surprising confession.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2030.122

I'd say October the 12th.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2036.106

He stopped by. Aria claims Matthew stopped by on the very night he went missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2051.175

Aria says that as the night wore on, Matthew began using drugs.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2081.05

According to Aria, the fight between Matthew and Nathan escalated quickly. He pulled a gun out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2111.357

Aria reveals to detectives that as things in the car got out of control, she was not in a normal state of mind.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2190.422

Detectives leave Aria and move to another room to talk to Nathan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2242.492

While skeptical about their account of Matthew's murder, investigators demand to know what followed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2295.229

Uh, the trunk. Aria and Nathan then drove across the street to a wooded area to bury Matt a second time.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

232.274

According to Francesca, by the following morning, Matt still hadn't returned.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2361.098

Aria agrees to take investigators to the unmarked grave, just steps away from Nathan's parents' house.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2401.55

The medical examiner confirms Matthew died of a single gunshot wound to the head.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2424.397

Coming up, a former beauty pageant contestant faces the fight of her young life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2448.115

On October 28th, 2017, former teen beauty pageant contestant 19-year-old Aria Armstead is charged for the murder of Matthew Collins. She and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Nathan Ortiz, also face additional charges of tampering with evidence and desecration of a corpse.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

248.251

Authorities immediately release a bolo on the vehicle Matthew Collins was driving at the time, a maroon Chrysler 200.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2502.859

As the trial approaches, investigators work to understand the real motive behind Matthew's murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2541.446

What detectives eventually prove shoots a hole in an important detail in Aria's story.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2650.772

In the end, Aria Armstead accepts a plea deal. On August 20th, 2018, she pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

2729.477

Aria Armstead is serving her sentence at the Lowell Correctional Facility in Ocala, Florida. Her current release date is 2036. Nathan Ortiz was ultimately sentenced to 42 months in prison. He was released in October of 2020.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

273.607

Authorities spend the next few days speaking with Matthew's friends and family, who confirm that no one has heard from Matthew since he was reported missing. Then, on October 18th, Lee County Dispatch receives a seemingly routine phone call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

319.11

Deputies run the vehicle's VIN number and discover the car is registered to Francesca Sakulich.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

338.032

As detectives arrive and begin to examine the vehicle more closely, they make a disturbing discovery.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

373.677

For Matthew Collins, life began 1,200 miles north in Williamstown, New Jersey.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

397.855

A few years after high school, Matt traded the cold New Jersey winters for the year-round sun and sandy beaches of South Florida.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

413.953

Matt worked a variety of jobs, including construction and landscaping. And when the 20-something wasn't working, Matthew liked to have a good time. Eventually, being the life of the party took its toll.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

42.408

A troubled teen who worked hard to rebuild his life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

445.872

In 2014, Matt was arrested for burglary and trafficking in stolen property.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

471.713

After spending a year and a half in prison, Matt was released in 2016.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

499.907

A few months later, in early summer of 2017, he met 32-year-old Francesca Sakulich through an online dating site.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

527.105

After four weeks of dating, Matt and Francesca moved in together.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

53.979

Vanishes without a word.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

553.348

But all that progress comes to a grinding halt in October 2017 when Matthew Collins never returns home and the couple's car is found abandoned with a bullet hole through the windshield.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

639.69

Coming up, detectives uncover more troubling evidence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

651.694

And Matthew's love life raises suspicions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

671.002

October 19th, 2017. While processing the vehicle, 31-year-old Matthew Collins was reportedly driving on the night he went missing. Detectives make several disturbing discoveries.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

705.481

Investigators brace themselves for what might be inside.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

71.943

When authorities discover an abandoned car in a beachside community, everything changes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

774.582

Now that a bloody car has been located and seven days have gone by with no sign of Matthew, investigators reach out again to Matthew's father, Mike Collins, hoping to learn more. He admits his son has a troubled past.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

880.106

When investigators ask Matt's father about his son's relationship with Francesca, he voices some concern.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

926.033

On October 19th, investigators conduct a formal interview with Francesca.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Aria Armstead

962.831

Francesca again shares details about the night Matt went missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

0.269

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1011.448

Rumor had it that Phil had recently taken Tammy on a date that had gone sideways.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1038.76

What's more, Phil's new love interest, Tammy, was still married.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1049.486

With relationship drama becoming a consistent trend in Phil's life, detectives are left to consider if this led to Phil's murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1073.826

Marvin agrees to let investigators into Phil's trailer.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1086.781

Inside, they find an empty cell phone box. Only investigators note they didn't find a cell phone at the crime scene.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1117.992

As investigators continue to search the trailer, they discover another clue, a post-it note with the name Tammy written on it.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1135.199

Just before they leave, investigators find something else.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1168.223

The letter is dated just two days prior and it demands a response from April by September 18th, just a week after Phil's murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1186.267

Investigators leave the trailer with not one, but two potential leads.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1198.638

Both women are located about an hour away in opposite directions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1214.224

Investigators start the drive 40 miles north towards Tammy's house in Marshfield, Missouri. But just as they reach the county line, they get a call from the phone company, and it's a game changer. Phil's cell phone is still powered on.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1257.448

Coming up, investigators confront their two suspects.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1266.596

And later, could supermarket surveillance footage hold the key to finding Phil's killer?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1287.842

Some people get a wild haircut or book a spontaneous trip when life throws them a curveball. But Molly? Well, she dove headfirst into a world of no-strings-attached sex, secret rendezvous, forbidden affairs, and unforgettable adventures.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1303.846

And together, we tell every juicy detail in Dying for Sex, Wondery's award-winning podcast that's now streaming on a TV near you, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. And to top it off, we're dropping brand new bonus episodes where I sit down with the cast to spill all the spicy secrets. Desire, friendship, self-discovery, and the ultimate bucket list of pleasure.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1327.716

This is a story that had everyone talking. Listen to the original Dying for Sex and brand new episodes on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the original series before anyone else and completely ad-free on Wondery+.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

135.473

Ava, Missouri, a tiny town of just under 3,000 nestled in the picturesque Ozark Mountains.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1376.235

Missouri investigators looking into the murder of Phil Taylor are following two leads. Phil's current love interest, Tammy, and his ex-girlfriend, April Quick. But the investigation takes a sharp turn when they discover Phil's cell phone is powered on and moving south towards Arkansas.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1403.976

While Missouri detectives have yet to rule Tammy out as a person of interest, they also put out a bolo for April Quick. In the meantime, they contact Phil's first wife, Melina.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1446.01

Phil had confided in Melina that April Quick was less willing to let him back into her life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1481.086

Did the letter push April over the edge? Before investigators explore that question, they need to rule out their other lead, Phil's online love interest, Tammy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1512.955

But detectives' previous suspicions about Tammy subside when she explains her whereabouts the night of the murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1532.398

Investigators received Phil's phone records for September 10th, the night of his murder, and immediately noticed two incoming calls at around 9.30 p.m.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

155.709

On September 10th, 2010, a call comes in to the Douglas County Sheriff's Department just after 10.30 p.m. from a roadside park north of town.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1559.594

The Walmart is just minutes from the home of April Quick.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1578.926

When investigators compare the woman in the footage with April Quick's driver's license photo, they are in for a surprise.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1608.226

Hoping to catch a break, the investigators send a still from the surveillance video to the Mountain Home Police Department.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1643.931

The officer has more to share.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1667.133

Between the phone evidence and the stolen .22, investigators feel they have enough to pay a visit to April Quick.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1689.642

On September 14th, four days after the murder, investigators contact April Quick for an interview.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1703.74

When they sit down with April, she is eager to talk about her relationship with Phil, one that she says began when she was only 17.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1737.599

April claims that after they moved to Florida, Phil's drug use escalated and he became abusive.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1760.021

Once she became pregnant for the third time, April dumped Phil and headed back home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1776.912

Once back in Missouri, April found love in the arms of a woman, Amy Herring. For the past three years, she and Amy have been in a relationship co-parenting April's three kids. Investigators ask April about the letters Phil sent requesting to see his kids again.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1830.268

April says before she could respond, she got the news that Phil had been murdered. News that was sad, but not unexpected. When investigators question April on her whereabouts the night of the murder, April states that she and Amy dropped the kids off with her mom so they could go on a date to the movies.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1867.983

That's when they called police and reported some stolen jewelry, money, and a .22 caliber pistol. Investigators seized the opportunity.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1892.833

But instead of changing her tune, April shuts down the interview.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

190.12

Within minutes, deputies arrived to find a man face down in the road in a pool of blood.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1909.28

Coming up, April drops a hint.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1914.142

And a search warrant causes a change of heart.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1940.643

Investigators are interviewing April Quick about the murder of her ex, Phil Taylor, when she suddenly asks for an attorney. Right before she leaves the room, April makes an offhand but revealing comment.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

1978.456

April's girlfriend, Amy Herring, also requests an attorney. Ultimately, both women are charged with Phil's murder, and investigators head to their home to gather more evidence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2025.313

Before heading back to the station armed with even more evidence, investigators do a quick check on April and Amy's alibi.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2042.546

Before investigators can make their next move, they learn that April is ready to talk.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2077.874

April tells detectives that she called Phil after receiving the second letter.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2112.742

Given her past with Phil, April brought Amy and the 22 for protection.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

212.102

Deputies questioned the two people who called 911.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2123.508

The women arrived at the park first. April asked Amy to hang back and stay hidden.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2194.565

April says that Amy yelled for her to get the gun. Fearful now for her lover's safety, April did just that.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2250.62

April says afterward, they took the cash from Phil's wallet to make it look like a robbery. They also took his cell phone.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2275.544

The next day, April grew concerned that someone might find the bag with the burnt evidence. She returned and brought it back home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2355.585

Then investigators learned that they might have one more shot at getting the truth.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

237.95

Police check the man's wallet for an ID and run the tags on the pickup truck parked nearby. Both belong to 43-year-old Phillip Taylor.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2371.546

Coming up, Amy takes the fall for her lover.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2382.119

And investigators must determine, was this self-defense or cold-blooded murder?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2404.142

Four days after the murder of Phil Taylor, April Quick has just confessed to accidentally killing him following an altercation at a roadside park. Then April's lover, Amy Herring, comes forward with her version of what happened that night.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2523.191

Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

268.174

Born in 1966, Phil Taylor was raised in Florida. He grew up close with his brothers and sister, but there was a hole in Phil's life he could never get past.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2722.022

Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

2753.806

Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

301.328

When Phil was a teenager, he developed a love of cars and a passion for learning how they worked. He dropped out of high school to pursue his dream.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

326.007

By his mid-20s, Phil was looking for a change. He left the sunshine and salty air of Florida for the lush, green Ozarks. There, he met Marvin Elliott.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

350.805

While in Norwood, he found himself drawn to a down-to-earth single mother and waitress, Melina Cooley.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

378.483

In 1994, Phil married Melina. He moved in with her and her three-year-old daughter, Ashley.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

397.095

About a year later, Phil and Melina welcomed a daughter of their own, Shelby.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

41.695

He was a man on a mission to get his life back.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

424.821

After a couple of years of playing house with Melina and the girls, Phil grew restless. He started spending time with a younger, faster crowd. While hanging with his new friends, an attractive young woman caught his eye. That's how I met April.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

473.487

It was clear to Phil that 17-year-old April had a crush on him. But it didn't take long for Phil to feel the same, and their affair began.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

516.399

Before long, April was more than Phil's side chick. He was in love with her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

542.589

In 1998, after a year and a half of Phil being unfaithful, Phil and Melina finalized their divorce, and Phil and April moved to Florida on a whim, leaving his family behind in Missouri. There, 18-year-old April became pregnant almost immediately. Phil struggled to transition from party life back to family life.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

581.99

Not long after their first child was born, April became pregnant again. But as their family continued to grow, so did Phil's addiction. And by early 2001, it was worse than ever.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

62.665

But his efforts are cut short one September evening in a peaceful roadside park.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

631.997

After moving back to Florida, Phil spiraled. And in 2007, he missed child support payments and it landed him in a Florida jail cell.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

656.155

A newly clean and sober Phil vowed to Melina and April that he was ready to be the father his five children needed him to be.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

705.894

But five months after his move back to Missouri, Phil's fresh start comes to a tragic end at a remote roadside park.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

726.812

But when investigators take a closer look at Phil's body, they make a disturbing discovery.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

752.317

Was the robbery a cover-up to hide a more cold-blooded motive?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

776.331

Coming up, had Phil gotten mixed up with the wrong woman?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

78.194

Investigators suspect that a complicated love life led to bloodshed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

786.763

And investigators discover that a dead man's cell phone is still on the move.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

809.091

On September 10th, 2010, authorities are trying to determine who stabbed and shot local mechanic Phil Taylor at a roadside park in the Ozarks.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

832.455

The single gunshot wound went directly into Phil's left temple.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

850.065

The location of the stab wounds on Phil's head and torso indicate they probably came before the gunshot, likely in an attempt to incapacitate him. Whoever killed Phil left only one clue behind.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

879.056

Other than that, the remote crime scene yields little information.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

907.142

Early the next morning, investigators head to Phil's auto repair shop and meet with Marvin Elliott, Phil's friend and landlord.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

927.737

Marvin tells detectives while Phil had his struggles in the past, he was currently devoted to two things, his children and his sobriety.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

955.262

Phil had been living in a trailer on his property, but was in the process of buying his own home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

96.718

Ultimately, investigators find one ex-lover with a wicked plot no one saw coming. I didn't even know she had a girlfriend. It was new news.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

969.186

Marvin says he last saw Phil yesterday at around 6 p.m. as he was leaving the shop.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

983.217

As far as a social life goes, Marvin admits that Phil did like to have a lady by his side.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

April Quick

996.465

In fact, he shares that Phil had just met someone new online.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1027.616

In the coming months, Marie turns her attention to rebuilding her family's lives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1042.896

But shortly after Paul's death, the land the Witte's house sits on is earmarked to become part of a national park, and the family is forced to move out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1066.966

Having been widowed 14 years earlier, Elaine is delighted to welcome family into her home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

108.445

In the quaint resort community of Beverly Shores, Indiana, the pace is easy and crime almost non-existent.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1085.931

Over the next three years, the fresh start lifts everyone's spirits.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1104.555

After graduating high school, Eric follows in his father's footsteps and joins the Navy, ultimately relocating to San Diego.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1123.078

Fifteen-year-old Butch stays home with Marie and Elaine to finish school. Three years after Paul's death, the Witte family seems to have settled into a new normal. Until May of 1984, when a concerned citizen contacts the Trail Creek Police Department.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1163.945

Sergeant Skip Pierce is dispatched to Elaine's residence to conduct a welfare check.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1190.034

Coming up, a disappearance raises an alarming red flag.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1205.409

And Marie confronts a ghost from her past.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

129.085

But on the evening of September 1st, 1981, the local police department receives a panicked 911 call.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1312.68

Three years after officials declared Paul Witte's shooting death an accident, law enforcement are speaking with Marie Witte again, trying to locate Paul's stepmother, Elaine.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1336.546

Marie assures Sergeant Pierce that Elaine is fine. But as weeks go by with no sign of her, friends and family grow concerned.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1422.702

It doesn't take Detective Sergeant Boyd long to recognize the name.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1441.92

Sergeant Boyd has long harbored reservations about Paul Witte's untimely death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1463.541

On August 14, 1984, three months after Elaine's reported disappearance, state investigators pay Marie an unannounced visit.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1494.886

Marie sticks to her story.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1524.824

When investigators run Elaine's VIN number, they find something else disturbing. Marie had recently sold Elaine's car.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1546.535

Investigators try to locate Elaine themselves, but make little headway.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1585.026

Authorities return to the home to speak with Marie, only she's not there. So authorities contact her mother, Marcy O'Donnell.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1605.071

With Marie and her family 2,000 miles away, detectives attack from a different angle.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

161.004

First responders raced to the residence to find Marie, her mother, Marcy O'Donnell, and Marie's two teenage sons, Eric and Butch, seemingly in shock.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1639.571

But no one has seen Elaine Witte in her hometown since January, nearly eight months earlier.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1695.586

As more time passes with no sign of Elaine, her family begins to suspect the worst.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1716.783

Investigators still lack sufficient evidence for an arrest, but they keep in contact with Marie's mother, Marcy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1748.816

The tactic works, and Marcy finally buckles under the pressure. On October 26th, 1984, she reveals what really happened to Elaine.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1797.288

Coming up, the hunt for Marie and her sons intensifies.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1806.314

And the details of Elaine's murder grow more horrifying.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1827.825

For the second time in three years, an untimely death has claimed a member of the Witte family. Marie's mother tells detectives that Elaine Witte was killed months earlier in January of 1984.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

186.874

Paul is pronounced dead at the scene.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1886.997

For detectives, it seems too much of a coincidence, especially when there's money missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1918.712

federal authorities begin monitoring banks in california while indiana authorities execute a search warrant at elaine witty's home on november 3rd 1984. we pulled out floorboards wall boards to see if we could find any blood anything like that we didn't find dink we got some questionable hairs we'll send them into lab and see what we can find is that but really we got nothing else

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1948.137

With the search warrant yielding no results, Indiana detectives fly to California to track down Marie. First, they visit Eric at the naval base in San Diego. He agrees to talk to detectives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

1979.688

Investigators believe Eric knows more than he's letting on, and they confront him with Marcy's confession.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2001.132

Feeling the pressure, Eric finally breaks down and admits several months ago his mother called him about a family emergency.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2031.749

Two months later, Eric says he returned home to Indiana.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2046.825

When asked what happened to Elaine's remains, Eric is evasive, but investigators keep up the pressure.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2090.22

After investigators hear Eric's story, they ramp up efforts to locate Marie and Butch. The very next day, on November 7th, 1984, federal authorities spring into action when one of Elaine Witte's social security checks is used in Chula Vista, California, just north of Tijuana, Mexico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2128.117

All three are charged with forgery. But Marie has no interest in cooperating with authorities. Investigators confront 15-year-old Butch about his older brother's allegations.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

215.36

Paul Witte was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1937.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2175.197

According to Butch, the events leading up to Elaine's death had been building for nearly six months.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2195.788

When that didn't work, Butch says his mother demanded his cooperation.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2303.086

Based on Butch's confession, he and his mother are charged with Elaine's murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Eric Witte and Marcy O'Donnell are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Coming up, the witty's youngest son has one last horror story to share with investigators.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2333.632

And two impressionable teens finally come to grips with their mother's murderous manipulations.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2355.777

In November of 1984, 15-year-old John, a.k.a. Butch Witte, admitted to killing his 74-year-old grandmother, Elaine Witte. Butch said that he committed the murder at the behest of his mother, Hilma Marie Witte.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2381.877

Marie and her children are immediately extradited back to Indiana. But less than a week after Butch's shocking confession, he reaches out to investigators again.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2409.465

which tells authorities that much like his grandmother's murder, Paul's murder was all Marie's idea.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

243.054

When Paul was 17 years old, he enlisted in the Navy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2448.155

Finally, on September 1st, 1981, Marie said it was now or never.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2528.061

Eric's corroboration of Butch's confession gives investigators what they need to charge Eric and Marie Witte with Paul's murder. In time, Butch and Eric agree to testify against their mother in exchange for a plea deal.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2563.231

At Marie Witte's murder trials in 1985 and 1986, prosecutors argue money drove Marie's actions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

2626.027

Thank you. Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

266.028

After his discharge, Paul returned to Indiana and settled in Beverly Shores, a popular beach community just an hour south of Chicago.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

305.143

While in his late 20s, Paul took an eye-opening trip to sunny South Florida.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

344.193

Born in 1948, Hilma Marie Christ had a free spirit that matched her unorthodox upbringing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

378.41

Paul and Marie hit it off, so much so that he soon returned to the resort a second time.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

41.882

A horrific accident rips a family of four apart.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

431.288

27-year-old Paul and 16-year-old Marie married in 1964 and settled in a home in Beverly Shores, not far from Paul's father and stepmother, Len and Elaine Witte.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

453.684

In 1966, 18-year-old Marie gave birth to their first son, Eric. His brother, John, also known as Butch, came along three years later.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

507.35

However, the young mother struggled to fill her role.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

526.73

In December of 1980, Marie's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, moved in with them.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

54.376

One family member dead, and three years later, another vanishes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

557.867

But this outwardly happy household crumbles on September 1st, 1981, when officers find Paul Witte dead on his living room couch.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

583.797

Even more shocking to police is who fired the gun.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

604.009

According to Marie, she wasn't home when her husband died. But her 15-year-old son Eric insists it was an accident.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

64.882

What detectives uncover is beyond the pale.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

675.123

Coming up, 15-year-old Eric Witte tells his side of the story.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

685.128

And later, heartache hits the Witte home again.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

710.275

September 1st, 1981. Officers in Beverly Shores, Indiana respond to a 911 call to find 44-year-old Paul Witte dead in his home from a gunshot wound to the head. Indiana state investigators soon arrive at the scene to assist the police force.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

760.259

Investigators collect the .357 handgun as evidence. Although Marie Witte's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, and Marie's youngest son, Butch, were in the house at the time of the shooting, neither saw it happen.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

798.296

The family's whereabouts isn't all that strikes detectives as odd.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

822.46

Detectives want to question 15-year-old Eric, but Marie quickly intervenes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

84.37

And a sickening ultimatum is revealed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

846.304

Six days later, investigators sit down with Eric and Marie at their attorney's office. Eric says the night of the accident, his dad wasn't feeling well and had laid down on the sofa for a nap.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

883.621

Eric tells detectives that this was the first time he saw this particular .357 revolver.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

949.472

Unable to question Eric further, investigators turn to Marie. She corroborates her son's story but refuses to give a formal statement.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Hilma Marie Witte

999.734

The autopsy findings provide no further insight to the officers. With no evidence or eyewitness testimony to refute Eric's claims, Indiana authorities officially rule Paul's death an accident.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1036.335

Soon, Dwayne and Purdy were hot and heavy, despite Purdy's dubious marital status.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1065.367

When police questioned Purdy and Duane, they both deny any involvement in Kim's murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1083.433

A month later, detectives looking into Kim's murder found themselves at an impasse. But the haze of suspicion around Purdy thickened when Dwayne Murphy also turned up dead on October 16th, 2006.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1129.36

The news shocked those who were close to Dwayne.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1145.763

Adding to the mystery, a few days after Dwayne's death, a letter showed up at the San Angelo Police Department, an apparent suicide note from Dwayne Murphy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1169.471

Investigators had strong doubts that Dwayne actually penned the confession.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1189.272

Though Dwayne's autopsy deemed his death as suicide, investigators couldn't shake their suspicions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1221.348

For two years, suspicions surrounded Purdy. But with no clear evidence tying her to Kim's murder or Dwayne's mysterious death, she has remained a free woman.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1258.284

Now, less than three years later, the 31-year-old is back in detective's sights as they learn of Purdy's connection to Bud Phillips and her attempt to cash in on his death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

126.039

San Angelo, Texas, a former frontier town located deep in the heart of the Lone Star State.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1285.607

Coming up, new details emerge about Purdy and Bud's romance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1298.533

And later, the prime suspect goes missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1388.852

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1425.66

On February 18, 2009, two days after Bud Phillips passed away from what appears to be a heart attack, investigators get the results of Bud's blood test back. And the 60-year-old's true cause of death is revealed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1450.931

On West Texas ranches, strychnine was often commonplace.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1490.828

If Bud died from strychnine poisoning, how did he get it into his system?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1508.055

Two days after Bud's death, investigators go back to his house to look for a possible source. There, they find Bud's son, Michael.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

151.937

On February 16th, 2009, all was quiet as usual until just before 9.30 a.m. when a call comes in to the San Angelo 911 dispatch center. The female caller reports that she and a friend were driving when they spotted a man in distress in the front yard of a home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1536.744

Michael tells detectives that he and his wife had done some tidying up when they came back to the house from the hospital.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1582.403

Investigators head outside where they dig through Bud's trash.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1610.47

Next, investigators take the opportunity to get a detailed statement from Michael. He explains that once Purdy moved in with his dad, Bud's disciplined and orderly lifestyle was upended.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1663.506

Michael reports that about a year earlier, while still in a relationship with Bud, Purdy made a bold and underhanded move.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1710.385

Eventually, Bud's family got word of the attempted sale. Since then, they've questioned Purdy's intentions.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1741.673

The next day, test results provide a vital clue in the case.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1763.616

Investigators can prove that the strychnine was in the ice cream, but now they need to prove that Purdy gave it to him.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1785.131

Investigators talk to Bud's neighbors.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1816.135

Approximately 30 minutes later, Bud was spotted by witnesses stumbling out of his house in severe medical distress.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1839.562

Investigators theorize that Purdy delivered Bud his death sentence under the guise of bringing him a treat.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1865.536

The pieces of the puzzle are finally coming together.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1889.386

With the test results in, authorities finally have the evidence they need to place Purdy Clark under arrest for Bud's murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1908.81

That task quickly proves difficult. Purdy is nowhere to be found.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

191.67

The woman reports that her friend is attempting CPR, but despite her efforts, the man is deteriorating by the second.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1928.084

Days pass, and there is still no sign of Purdy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1945.851

Coming up, a tip on Purdy's whereabouts reveals yet another lover.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1957.205

leaving investigators questioning if he is her next target.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

1975.008

Investigators in San Angelo, Texas believe that 31-year-old Purdy Clark poisoned her ex by putting strychnine in his ice cream. But after finally gathering enough evidence to arrest her, investigators can't track her down. They reach out to their counterparts in Collin County, where Purdy is under investigation for another murder.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

20.299

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2021.783

On March 19th, investigators drive 40 miles south to the 2,000-acre livestock ranch. They are met by the ranch's owner, Linda Scroggins.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2045.02

Linda says that Purdy has been in a romantic relationship with her son, Sean, and living on the ranch on and off for around two months. But Linda says that neither Sean nor Purdy are home. Linda contacts Sean and hands the call over to investigators.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2096.515

All of the bottles are coated in dust, except for one.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

211.552

Paramedics arrive and take over the life-saving efforts.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2111.865

Investigators collect the bottle and continue their interview with Shawn.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2167.159

Investigators press Shawn for information on Purdy's alleged crimes.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2191.212

The next thing Sean knew, Purdy was moving onto the ranch, bringing all of her belongings with her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2211.45

Sean explains that he eventually learned that by collecting, Purdy meant stealing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2233.539

Sean says that Purdy was also involved in even more nefarious activities.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2255.878

But Sean tells investigators he hasn't seen Purdy since yesterday evening.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

226.274

But doctors never get a chance to treat him. Just moments after arriving at the ER, the patient succumbs to the mysterious affliction.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2272.429

Investigators don't believe that Sean was involved in any of Purdy's crimes. In fact, they think it's more likely that Purdy's promise of a home-cooked meal could have been his last.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2316.837

As investigators are talking with Sean, his phone starts ringing. Purdy is on the line.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2355.253

Coming up, FBI surveillance spots Purdy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2363.135

But the hunt for Purdy takes a dramatic turn.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2387.622

Purdy Clark has been dodging San Angelo police for more than a week since they got a warrant to place her under arrest for the death of her ex, Bud Phillips. Now, Purdy's new boyfriend shares details with police about a chop shop in Dallas where she may be picking up drugs. As it turns out, the shop is already under surveillance by the FBI.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2423.3

San Angelo police alert the agents to be on the lookout for Purdy. On March 23rd, one month and five days after Bud's murder, they spot her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2480.031

Hours later, the feds in Dallas release Purdy to San Angelo police, yet Purdy appears unfazed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2500.957

Back in San Angelo, Purdy requests an attorney and refuses to make a statement.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2513.01

Purdy is tight-lipped to law enforcement, but she makes the most of her daily phone call from jail and continues to reach out to Sean.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

253.892

Since he wasn't seen by a physician, the patient's passing is categorized as an unintended death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2588.2

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2668.37

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

2743.061

I I I I I I I I I I I

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

284.402

Just then, the victim's son, Michael Phillips, arrives at the emergency room.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

304.654

Michael speaks with the Justice of the Peace, who shares the devastating news that his father, James Budd Phillips, is deceased. Michael is in disbelief. Born in 1948, James Bud Phillips was a native Texan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

362.101

In 2005, when Bud got out at the age of 56, he was determined to stay on the straight and narrow. Bud found one thing he learned on the inside that helped him on the outside, discipline.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

406.849

Bud tried to make up for lost time with his now adult son, Michael, who lived nearby.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

41.883

A widow's second chance at love ends in death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

434.264

Bud was satisfied with his quiet life. But 2007 brought some unexpected and welcomed excitement. A raven-haired beauty named Purdy Clark.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

457.307

When Bud met the mother of three, she was still grieving the loss of her first husband, 42-year-old Kim Clark, who had died just months earlier in September of 2006.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

491.783

The murder was still under investigation when Purdy met Bud Phillips.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

517.641

Despite the almost 30-year age difference, Bud and Purdy were swept away by their romance.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

533.376

Just a few months later, Purdy moved into Bud's home.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

546.286

The couple hoped for a long and happy life with each other. But now, two and a half years after the death of her first husband, Purdy is grieving another loss. After being rushed to the ER on the morning of February 16th, 2009, 60-year-old Bud Phillips is pronounced dead from what doctors believe to be a heart attack.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

586.695

However, Bud's loved ones insist there must be another explanation.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

607.352

Michael requests an autopsy on his father.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

625.427

The following day, before the results of the blood test are back, San Angelo police get a call from Bud's son, Michael. Michael reports that his father's ex, Purdy Clark, is at the house, declaring the house belongs to her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

64.375

The hunt for the truth leads investigators to an alluring seductress.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

659.47

Coming up, a detective makes a disturbing connection between Bud's death and a cold case.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

671.813

And a mysterious letter to police creates more questions than answers.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

699.728

On February 17, 2009, Michael Phillips summoned police to the residence of his suddenly deceased father, Bud Phillips. Bud's son tells officers that his father's ex, Purdy Clark, is trying to claim his home. Ms.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

724.898

Purdy insists to police that her long-term relationship with Bud gives her the right to ownership of his home following his death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

745.282

However, Michael points out that the couple had been on and off for the last four months and had recently separated in November.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

790.286

Purdy is instructed to leave the property. Back at the station, Detective Dye makes a striking connection after pulling Purdy's police file. This is not the first time San Angelo police have encountered Purdy Clark.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

836.869

On September 14, 2006, Kim Clark, Purdy's first husband, was reported missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

86.821

Multiple agencies worked together to expose the dangerous and twisted web the killer created.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

881.587

When police questioned Purdy back in 2006, she claimed the last time she saw her husband was the night before he went missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

909.392

Just five days later, a tractor driver made a horrific discovery.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Purdie Clark

969.93

After finding Kim's body, Collin County investigators teamed up with San Angelo police and took a deep dive into Purdy and Kim's life. They quickly learned that the marriage was anything but traditional.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

0.269

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1026.397

When they ask John for his whereabouts at the time of Frank's murder, he tells them that he was at home all night with his girlfriend.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1050.525

Detectives make a note to come back to John once they have more information. Officers escort Nikki Braun and Frank's young daughter to the police station while investigators break the news to the rest of Frank's family.

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Donna Arroyo

1107.316

Next, investigators call Frank's estranged wife, 37-year-old Donna Arroyo, who had been visiting her mother in Yonkers three hours away. She is shocked to learn of the shooting.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1143.615

Donna's statement supports what her daughter told police earlier, and she's able to provide an alibi for the shooting.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1172.168

When asked about John, Donna doesn't hold back.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1188.959

When asked who else might want Frank dead, Donna says the list of Frank's enemies is quite long.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1216.12

Not only that, Donna claims that Frank recently became involved with the Puerto Rican drug trade.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1242.809

Coming up, did Frank's criminal past make him a target for murder?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1252.978

And later, bizarre details emerge about Frank and Donna's tumultuous relationship.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1274.89

Some people get a wild haircut or book a spontaneous trip when life throws them a curveball. But Molly? Well, she dove headfirst into a world of no-strings-attached sex, secret rendezvous, forbidden affairs, and unforgettable adventures.

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Donna Arroyo

128.22

May 12th, 1997. It's a quiet night in Middleburg, New York, a small rural town nestled roughly 45 miles west of Albany. At 11.50 p.m., the peace is shattered when 911 operators receive a shocking call.

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Donna Arroyo

1290.904

And together, we tell every juicy detail in Dying for Sex, Wondery's award-winning podcast that's now streaming on a TV near you, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. And to top it off, we're dropping brand new bonus episodes where I sit down with the cast to spill all the spicy secrets. Desire, friendship, self-discovery, and the ultimate bucket list of pleasure.

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Donna Arroyo

1314.762

This is a story that had everyone talking. Listen to the original Dying for Sex and brand new episodes on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the original series before anyone else and completely ad-free on Wondery+.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1332.276

Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect. For Patty, that friend was Desiree.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1348.774

Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer.

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Donna Arroyo

1357.887

A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Cat Torres. But who was hiding a secret? From Wondery, based on my smash hit podcast from Brazil, comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat, about a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb. I'm calling to check on the two missing Brazilian girls. Maybe get some undercover crew there.

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Donna Arroyo

1383.189

I'm Chico Felitti. You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1393.044

It's been 24 hours since 48-year-old Frank Arroyo was murdered in his Middleburg home. While awaiting forensic and autopsy results, investigators dig deeper into Donna's allegations about Frank's criminal past.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1436.741

However, investigators find nothing to connect Frank's murder to his time in Puerto Rico.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1453.512

On the evening of May 13th, detectives circle back to John Giacomacus, the neighbor that Frank argued with on the day of his death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1474.977

John confirms that he argued with Frank on the day of his murder, but reveals he wasn't the only one.

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Donna Arroyo

1536.428

John says that Donna eventually left. Unable to shake the incident, he called Donna later to check on her.

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Donna Arroyo

156.164

The call came from a neighbor of 31-year-old Nicole Braun.

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Donna Arroyo

1561.912

The call ended. He didn't hear from Donna again.

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Donna Arroyo

1589.564

Investigators turn to Frank's family for more insight, and they don't hold back when it comes to Donna.

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Donna Arroyo

1612

Frank's family says when they heard that Frank and Donna separated, it didn't come as a surprise.

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Donna Arroyo

1641.556

It's clear to investigators that it's time to pay Donna a visit. On May 14th, two days after Frank's murder, investigators track her down at her mother's house in Yonkers.

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Donna Arroyo

1666.582

Investigators confront Donna with their suspicions, and she shares some alarming new information about her estranged husband.

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Donna Arroyo

1675.985

Donna says she heard that Frank was jealous because she had a boyfriend. Donna believed Frank was putting a hit out on Carrie.

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Donna Arroyo

1692.739

According to Donna, in a desperate move to save her boyfriend's life, she hired two men to teach Frank a lesson.

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Donna Arroyo

1710.531

Despite Donna's stated intent, someone did kill Frank that night. However, Donna stopped short of naming her accomplices.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1738.999

Just as investigators begin looking into Donna's past associates, a call comes in that blows the case wide open.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1772.767

Coming up, who really killed Frank Arroyo?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1787.914

And later, shocking details emerge about the master plan.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1808.837

After Frank Arroyo's estranged wife is arrested for facilitation of murder, New York State investigators receive a tip about a potential informant in Florida, Donna's home state.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1830.927

Within 24 hours, New York State investigators touched down in Florida. and set up a meeting with the attorney and his client, a frightened man named Steve Hannum.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

1858.683

Steve says he and Kerry worked together at a refrigeration company.

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Donna Arroyo

1887.878

On May 11, 1997, Steve arrived to pick Carrie up.

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Donna Arroyo

1925.126

Steve says they arrived in New York on the evening of May 12th.

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Donna Arroyo

1985.408

But Steve says on the drive over, everything changed.

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Donna Arroyo

200.174

With no time to lose, New York State troopers raced to the scene. Upon arrival, they are met by Frank's 13-year-old daughter and his 31-year-old girlfriend, Nikki.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2006.302

Steve tells investigators when he realized what was going on, he felt sick.

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Donna Arroyo

2020.345

According to Steve, once they arrived at Frank's house, Daniel got out of the car and went towards the house with the gun.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2045.546

Steve says the four of them then went their separate ways.

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Donna Arroyo

2059.104

Steve tells investigators as he and Daniel crossed the Hudson River, they made a pit stop.

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Donna Arroyo

2094.804

Now investigators need to determine if Steve really was an unwitting witness, or is he just trying to save himself?

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Donna Arroyo

2131.015

Authorities locate Carrie next.

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Donna Arroyo

2138.854

Both men are arrested and taken to a temporary field office where they are separated and interviewed. First, investigators speak with 29-year-old Kerry McKinley.

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Donna Arroyo

2160.712

Kerry tells investigators he met Donna in Florida only six months earlier.

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Donna Arroyo

2173.466

Carrie says Donna always told him that her ex was dangerous.

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Donna Arroyo

2199.252

Carrie admits that he asked his friend Steve and his half-brother Daniel to come along. But when they got to New York, things spiraled out of control.

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Donna Arroyo

2223.446

Carrie says he had brought his .40 caliber handgun for protection.

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Donna Arroyo

2238.279

Kerry tells investigators his friend Steve is completely innocent.

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Donna Arroyo

2255.485

Next up, investigators speak with Carey's half-brother, 26-year-old Daniel Edwards.

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Donna Arroyo

2294.855

According to Daniel, on the night of May 12, 1997, they drove to Frank's house with one intention.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2322.336

After Daniel and Carrie's interviews, Steve is officially cleared of any wrongdoing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2336.667

Carrie McKinley and Daniel Edwards are charged with murder and transported back to New York. Donna's charge of facilitation is officially bumped up to murder in the first degree.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

234.318

Troopers enter the home, checking each room before finding Frank.

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Donna Arroyo

2365.1

As predicted, the murder weapon is never found. However, investigators are able to verify that Carey purchased a .40-caliber firearm March 2, 1997, just two months before Frank was killed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2393.869

Investigators find no evidence that Frank was abusive toward Donna or that he had taken out a hit on her new man.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2402.958

There was a lie. I don't think there was any thought in Frank's mind to kill anybody. And Carrie believed it because he was in Donna's web.

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Donna Arroyo

2418.43

Thank you. Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

2569.98

Thank you. Thank you.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

285.99

To his family, Frank Arroyo always seemed larger than life.

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Donna Arroyo

297.033

Born in Puerto Rico in 1948, at age three, Frank moved to Queens with his parents and three sisters.

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Donna Arroyo

329.108

Family was everything to Frank, and he couldn't wait to start one of his own. And in 1971, at the age of 23, he fell in love and married fellow Puerto Rican Gladys Rentis.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

360.518

Though Gladys had a six-month-old son from a previous marriage, Frank welcomed her child with open arms. And by 1977, they had grown to a family of five.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

379.293

Frank embraced fatherhood and loved taking family adventures.

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Donna Arroyo

403.201

Frank worked as a handyman to make ends meet and eventually landed a job as a building superintendent.

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Donna Arroyo

416.485

Frank and Gladys seemed to have the picture-perfect life together. But that all changed when Frank met Donna Salerno, a spirited New Yorker 11 years his junior.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

42.544

A loving father is gunned down just steps from his daughter's bedroom.

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Donna Arroyo

459.613

By 1982, Frank had divorced Gladys and married Donna.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

487.758

Frank and Donna relocated to Florida, where they started a successful real estate venture.

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Donna Arroyo

504.877

Frank and Donna eventually had a daughter and son of their own, and Frank loved getting all of his children together.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

524.11

When the couple traveled to Puerto Rico for real estate ventures, they would bring the children along.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

541.325

In 1996, Frank and Donna's lavish life went up in smoke when they found themselves in legal hot water.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

558.712

Donna and Frank were extradited from Sarasota, Florida back to Puerto Rico and placed under arrest.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

576.221

Frank was released after seven months in prison, and shortly thereafter, he and Donna separated. He moved back to New York with the couple's 12-year-old daughter, while Donna and the couple's four-year-old son stayed in Florida.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

604.116

I was just so happy that he was around again. By 1996, Frank and Donna's divorce was pending, and both seemed to be moving on with their lives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

616.38

Donna was living on a 40-foot yacht in Florida with her boyfriend, Kerry, and her five-year-old boy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

643.522

But Frank's third act is snuffed out in an instant when he is gunned down on May 12, 1997. While a forensic team searches for clues inside, New York State investigators speak with Frank's girlfriend, Nikki Braun.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

65.813

Investigators search for a killer and uncover a deceitful past filled with possible suspects.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

729.476

It's a haunting story, but investigators can't take it as gospel just yet.

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Donna Arroyo

745.523

Coming up, investigators look into Frank's new girl.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

755.871

And they uncover a number of dangerous enemies.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

775.487

May 13th, 1997. Puerto Rican native Frank Arroyo has just been gunned down in his girlfriend's home by an unknown assailant. New York State investigators study the crime scene.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

806.48

Amidst the grisly scene, investigators are also able to locate four shell casings.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

820.904

The casings are bagged and sent for processing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Donna Arroyo

85.747

Or was the real danger much closer to home?

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Donna Arroyo

853.197

Investigators circle back to Frank's girlfriend, Nikki Braun, the only eyewitness to the shooting.

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Donna Arroyo

916.707

Next, investigators turn to Frank's daughter.

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Donna Arroyo

932.178

She tells police that her mother, 37-year-old Donna Arroyo, lives in Florida, but is currently visiting her grandmother in Yonkers, New York.

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Donna Arroyo

966.636

Police take down Donna's phone number from the teenager, and they ask if she knows of anyone who would want to hurt her dad. She points to a neighbor, John Giacomacus, a family friend to both Frank and Donna.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1005.785

Judy is his bookkeeper, someone who is close to him. And it starts to be a lot of circumstantial evidence that Judy and her husband Donald were involved in his shooting. I mean, she's disappeared after the crime. We as investigators needed to talk with her.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1027.898

Two weeks after the drive-by shooting, the statewide search for Judy Naylor leads to an area motel.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1064.713

When deputies enter the room, they find Judy is extremely sick.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1070.479

She's tried to harm herself, kill herself, you know, by drinking antifreeze.

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Judy Naylor

1086.555

Coming up... Paramedics race to save Judy's life, while authorities demand answers from Donald MacPhail.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

122.011

January 12th, 2004. It's late afternoon in Robeson County, North Carolina, when dispatch receives a frantic 911 call reporting shots fired outside a local bus company. Sheriff's deputies and paramedics race to the scene.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1229.198

January 26th, 2004. Investigators with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office locate Judy Naylor and her husband, Donald McPhail, at a rundown motel in Robeson County. Donald is taken in for questioning while Judy is rushed to the hospital after consuming antifreeze.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1271.087

We interviewed Donald. He goes ahead and gives a statement to law enforcement. In that statement, he's very forthcoming.

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Judy Naylor

1295.945

On the morning of January 12th, 2004, Donald says Judy contacted the airline to make sure her boss's flight was arriving on time.

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Judy Naylor

1322.131

As soon as he parked his car, Judy drove past him while Donald fired a volley of shots.

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Judy Naylor

1352.654

Sheriff's investigators recover the stolen 12-gauge shotgun in the weeds beside the highway.

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Judy Naylor

1359.337

It appeared to be an accurate representation of what he and Judy did because he implicated himself. He didn't try to put all the blame on her. He said this was a shared idea. When someone is that forthcoming, it can be a mitigating factor that can be used in sentencing and so forth.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1383.809

Four days after Donald's arrest, Judy Naylor's condition has improved enough that she's allowed to leave the hospital. Deputies immediately bring her to the Robeson County Sheriff's Office for an interview.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1450.657

They charge both Judy and her husband, Donald McPhail, with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, larceny of a firearm, and the fraud.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1467.03

Despite her initial confession, Judy pleads not guilty to the charges. The court grants bail, but with no one to pay it, Judy must remain in jail until her trial. And then, on February 7th, 2004, only a week after Judy's incarceration, tragedy strikes again when her mother, Catherine Croxton, dies unexpectedly.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1513.575

Soon after that, Judy's stepfather, her now deceased mother's husband, James Croxton, began visiting her in jail. In the months after Katherine's death, James Croxton eventually received her life insurance proceeds, which was approximately $43,000. Judy became aware of this, and she began trying to encourage James to bail her out of jail while she was awaiting trial.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

154.864

First responders arrive at the scene to find the owner of the bus company sitting in his car, which is now riddled with bullet holes. He's visibly shaken, but fortunately, only his hand seems to be injured.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1548.104

And in May of 2004, he did put up approximately $4,500 to get her out of jail.

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Judy Naylor

1565.578

While Judy's husband, Donald McPhail, remains behind bars at the Robeson County Jail, Judy enjoys life as a relatively free woman in her stepfather's home. Only Judy's life isn't destined to stay peaceful for long.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1596.184

She sounded distraught on that 911 call. She was sobbing. She was upset. She explained that she just found him this way, that he didn't appear to be breathing.

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Judy Naylor

1612.048

Paramedics raced to the scene, but it's too late.

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Judy Naylor

1616.569

It appeared that he had died while he was sleeping.

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Judy Naylor

1621.251

Judy says that her 62-year-old stepfather had been in poor health.

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Judy Naylor

1626.832

She said that he had had several cardiac events. There were no injuries. There was no obvious trauma to the body.

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Judy Naylor

1639.258

Less than an hour later, as medical personnel are preparing to transport the body from the home, one phone call stops everything.

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Judy Naylor

1656.601

Donna Naylor is married to Judy's father, Willie. She claims to have information about James Croxton's death.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1665.733

The EMS were still there on the scene. Apparently what had happened is Judy had called a neighbor before she even called 911, and that neighbor had called Donna, which then caused Donna to call the sheriff's office. Donna said, you need to look at Judy. She's responsible for this.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1692.082

But it was very unusual that they get this type of call from a relative.

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Judy Naylor

1699.4

Donna quickly fills detectives in on Judy's relationship with her stepfather, James.

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Judy Naylor

1706.267

Donna told him that Judy put herself in a position to take advantage of Mr. Croxton. she had moved in with James Croxton, that she had lived rent-free, that she had had an intimate relationship with him, bragged that that intimate relationship was in her mother's bed. This was very troubling and surprising to hear.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1731.875

Not only is she making this type of arrangement where she's agreeing to have a sexual relationship with someone in order to be bailed out and live with them, but this is her stepfather.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1743.956

When deputies in Cumberland County run a background check on Judy Naylor, they discover she is currently awaiting trial for the attempted murder of her former boss.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1767.193

Authorities immediately locked down the home as a possible crime scene and worked to preserve any evidence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1775.044

They wanted the body preserved in the same position and wanted somebody to keep their eyes on Judy the entire time. Investigators with the sheriff's office confronted Judy with Donna's allegations. Her demeanor did not change. She simply denied that allegation and was cooperative.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1801.686

Right away, Judy gives investigators permission to search the home. They study James Croxton's body before moving to other areas of the residence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1829.267

They also found documents that had Jane Croxton signatures traced over several times. as if someone was practicing signatures or something like that. So this was all very suspicious.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1847.148

Coming up, to catch a killer, family secrets must be revealed.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1857.794

He said that she referred to her plan to kill Mr. Croxton as the remodeling job.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1881.681

Less than a year after making bail for the attempted murder of her former boss in Robeson County, North Carolina, Judy Naylor finds herself at the epicenter of an even more heinous crime when her stepfather and alleged lover, 62-year-old James Croxton, is found dead in a neighboring county.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1915.767

An autopsy was performed on November 15th. There did not appear to be a heart attack, a stroke, a simple explanation like that for Mr. Croxton's death. At this point, his death was undetermined. There was more testing that needed to be done.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

193.263

Authorities find a scattering of shotgun pellets that have pierced the vehicle and three plastic shell casings.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1937.853

In the meantime, Judy's stepmother, Donna Naylor, hands over some damning information to detectives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

1946.189

About a week after Mr. Croxton is found deceased in his home, we get a break in the case of Judy's brother. Kenneth was in the Department of Corrections. He had wrote letters to Donna. And in these letters, he talks about how Judy was planning to kill Mr. Croxton. Judy referred to her plan to kill Mr. Croxton as the remodeling job.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2009.046

After reading the incriminating letters, investigators sit down with Kenneth Naylor.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2050.28

One of the chemicals is a powerful paralytic.

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Judy Naylor

2064.369

19 days after the death of his grandfather, Judy's son, Michael, also reaches out to detectives.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2085.763

Michael tells detectives only a week before James' death, Judy had made an unsettling comment.

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Judy Naylor

2183.348

Armed with this new information, the medical examiner runs more tests.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2189.451

Approximately a month later, they came back and told us that not only was chloroform present, that it was present in a fatal amount. They also found two small puncture wounds in one of his arms. And at that point, the death was ruled as a homicide.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2212.375

From there, detectives follow the money.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2225.728

What they discovered is that in October 5th of 2004, James Croxton's credit card had been used to purchase chloroform and succinylcholine. The succinylcholine is a paralytic. We knew that those products were delivered by UPS. to the home of Judy and James Croxton just a couple of weeks before his death on November 14th.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2263.201

Investigators also revisit the legal documents found in James' home.

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Judy Naylor

2318.143

Faced with the evidence, the notary comes clean. She claims she was just trying to do Judy and James a favor.

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Judy Naylor

2335.166

As for James's signature, investigators suspect Judy forged it while out on bail in August of 2004.

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Judy Naylor

2371.021

For the second time in less than a year, Judy Naylor is arrested for her role in an alleged murder plot.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2390.936

Coming up, Judy tells her side of the story.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2398.905

That she was coerced, that she was threatened, this was not her idea.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2417.344

In a shocking turn of events, while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of her boss in North Carolina, Judy Naylor is charged with the murder of her stepfather and alleged lover, 62-year-old James Croxton.

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Judy Naylor

2451.316

While Judy awaits trial for the murder of James Croxton, her husband, Donald McPhail, has his day in court for the embezzlement and attempted murder of Judy's boss a year earlier.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2466.078

Donald McPhail actually pled guilty to attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, larceny of a firearm, fraud. And Donald McPhail received 10 to 13 years in prison.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

247.843

The shooter sped off, and that's when the owner of the bus company says he managed to dial 911.

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Judy Naylor

2482.011

In April 2005, Judy heads to court for her role in the same crime.

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Judy Naylor

2488.874

The theory that she proceeded with at trial was to try to blame it all on Donald, that she was coerced, that she was threatened. This was not her idea.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

2499.739

On April 27, 2005, Judy is convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and forgery. She is acquitted of the attempted murder of her boss.

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Judy Naylor

2511.505

Judy received a 16- to 20-year sentence for her role in the crimes, I guess because she didn't pull the trigger.

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Judy Naylor

2522.759

To this day, Judy claims she and Donald were not in their right minds.

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Judy Naylor

255.339

He said it sounded like a shotgun that caused his injuries, but he was not able to see everything and everyone that was involved in that.

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Judy Naylor

2583.419

On April 2nd, 2007, Judy is back in court, this time for the murder of James Croxton.

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Judy Naylor

2600.697

She received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. This sentence not even to begin until after the 16 or 20 year sentence that she had received for the shooting.

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Judy Naylor

2615.424

While Judy admits to his murder, she still denies that she had a sexual relationship with her stepfather.

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Judy Naylor

263.702

The victim did not see the shooter and claims he has no idea who might want him dead.

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Judy Naylor

2681.875

Those close to the case believe Judy's need for money to fuel her addiction led her to do the unthinkable twice.

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Judy Naylor

2692.562

She had manipulated this whole situation, and her punishment was just and deserving, and Judy is where she needs to be.

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Judy Naylor

283.621

It's very common in the drug trade to have drive-by shootings into the car of someone who's dealing drugs.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

294.951

A quick background check tells investigators that the bus company owner's record is clean.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

301.577

There was no evidence he was involved in drugs. He did not appear to be involved in any type of criminal activity whatsoever.

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Judy Naylor

309.13

However, investigators don't believe this was just a random act of violence.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

315.857

He was shot while getting out of his car. What made sense was it was somebody who knew his everyday activities, knew where he lived, when he would be pulling into his driveway, that sort of thing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

332.333

Once the victim is transported to the hospital, the deputies check the bus company building itself to look for possible signs of a robbery. However, the door is locked and there are no signs of forced entry.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

367.28

The next morning, the recovering owner of the bus company calls investigators in a panic. He is concerned about his employee, 38-year-old Judy Naylor. He hasn't been able to reach her for several days.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

37.848

A successful business owner returns from a dream vacation only to be met with a hail of gunfire.

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Judy Naylor

386.102

This is someone he looks to to run his business, and yet after he is shot, nobody can get in touch with her.

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Judy Naylor

393.729

Her boss is worried that whoever shot at him may have come for Judy Naylor, too.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

404.929

Judy was born and raised in the Cumberland County, Robeson County area. Judy was the older of two siblings. Her younger brother, Kenneth, they had a close relationship.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

417.139

Judy's mother and father separated while she was in her teens.

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Judy Naylor

435.576

I think she had somewhat of a troubled background. I know that her mother at times had some mental health issues.

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Judy Naylor

445.754

Eventually, Judy's mother, Catherine, remarried a man named James Croxton. And Judy decided to leave home in search of independence.

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Judy Naylor

475.948

But Judy and Andrew San Miguel's marriage didn't last long.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

49.409

His valued employee may be victim number two.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

506.92

Judy worked hard to provide for her family, building what would ultimately become a decades-long career in the automotive industry.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

53.071

She's seemingly fallen off the face of the earth.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

532.293

Although Judy left home at an early age, over the years, her mother Catherine and her stepfather became very involved in raising Michael.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

56.233

But did he trust the wrong person?

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

569.833

In 2002, Michael graduated high school and moved away to start his own family. It was around that time that Judy began dating 47-year-old Donald Lee McPhail.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

593.068

After six months, Judy and Donald married. And in 2003, Judy was hired as an office manager at a bus company business in Lumberton, North Carolina.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

607.089

He was impressed by her, impressed by the work that she did. Eventually she became the bookkeeper.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

622.287

But after four months in her new role, that world is turned upside down on January 12th, 2004, when a drive-by shooting nearly kills Judy's boss and Judy herself is nowhere to be found.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

63.437

As the deadly plot unravels, alliances shift.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

638.572

After this happens to him, he nor anyone else can get in touch with Judy.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

654.807

Coming up, detectives learn Judy Naylor isn't the only thing that's vanished.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

676.835

Authorities in rural Robeson County, North Carolina, are investigating the attempted murder of a successful bus company owner when they discover his bookkeeper, Judy Naylor, is missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

690.479

Nobody can get in touch with Judy. For a couple of days, she's seemingly fallen off the face of the earth.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

699.73

The next day, police receive another frantic phone call from the victim to report something else is missing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

717.776

And that's not all.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

732.028

For investigators, that can only mean one thing.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

757.062

He then begins looking at his bank account. He finds that there's been 21 checks, company checks, written out to Judy and her husband, Donald, while he was out of the country.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

76.937

And investigators discover how one crime plants the seeds of another.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

773.993

Judy's boss turns over company bank statements to investigators for them to study.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

788.439

That certainly was an important fact, but there was a lot more investigating to do because she was the bookkeeper. There could have been a valid reason for this, and we didn't know whether or not that was related to the shooting or not.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

804.597

Investigators try to track down a home address for Judy and Donald McPhail, but there's a problem.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

824.682

While investigators dig deeper into Judy's background, they quickly discover this unassuming bookkeeper has had her fair share of trouble.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

836.447

When looking at her criminal record, she had some property crime and drug crime that dated back 10 or so years before this incident happened.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

869.085

Judy's family members tell detectives that her history of bad behavior created a rift long ago.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

921.674

As sheriff's investigators study Judy's file, one recent incident stands out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

93.461

She's agreeing to have a sexual relationship with someone to be bailed out.

Snapped: Women Who Murder

Judy Naylor

987.15

When Judy's boss learns of her previous run-ins with the law, he is stunned.

Something Scary

Buried Screams

892.349

Ihr Geräusch ist jetzt kaum noch ein Geräusch. Es ist nicht die Trees, es ist das Zuschauen. I think I stepped where I should. I picked a branch, dead wood, and thought it was cool. I put it in my pack. Silence. Then, I think that was a mistake.

Something Was Wrong

Data Points: Male Survivors of Sexual Assault (featuring LeRon Barton)

628.601

A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed Cop City.

Something Was Wrong

Data Points: Male Survivors of Sexual Assault (featuring LeRon Barton)

658.945

This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance.

Something Was Wrong

Data Points: Male Survivors of Sexual Assault (featuring LeRon Barton)

667.507

Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest of everybody in my life. And the lengths we'll go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E7: How Did We Get Here?

11.598

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E7: How Did We Get Here?

959.335

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

11.61

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

2200.288

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

2213.55

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

2229.873

And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery and left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

2251.355

No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

735.859

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad, but when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

756.496

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E3: Standards of Midwifery Care with Dr. Amy Giles, DNP, CNM

782.054

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E11: The Moment That Everything Changed

11.598

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E11: The Moment That Everything Changed

815.973

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E11: The Moment That Everything Changed

861.308

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Madison McGhee] Ice Cold Case

2673.639

When the documentary came out, that's when everything changed. It went from like, hey, that's that girl I follow on Instagram who has a podcast about multi-level marketing to this juggernaut that I have not been able to slow down since the day it happened.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

11.61

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1367.529

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1378.995

We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law & Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1402.26

We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1418.618

Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1426.801

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims, all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1447.432

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, Desperate phone calls and dangerous rescue attempts. Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E6: Dignified Maternal Care with Doula Melissa Espey-Mueller

1473.011

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

1084.218

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

11.61

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

1104.877

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multibillion-dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

1130.431

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

3852.111

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

3865.393

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

3881.716

And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those rollercoaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

3903.182

No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

0.329

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

11.598

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

1612.569

How close together have your contractions been throughout this?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

1624.001

With your broken membranes? Yes. They did not instruct you that that could cause an infection? No. No.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

1786.343

Who's in the room with you at this point and what is their mood?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

1882.986

And you're trusting that they're not worried, that this is typical. This is your first birth and not theirs.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

1919.537

Was it reaching the point of absolute exhaustion?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

2314.144

Did they have to give you a cervical check before they gave you the epidural or get you on an IV or anything like that?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

2338.111

What time do you think you get your epidural after you get checked in and everything?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

2401.961

Are you able to get a little bit of rest with your husband before you end up pushing? How does your progress go from here?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

2626.563

How long did she stay after your delivery?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

31.528

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences. This season contains discussions of medical negligence, birth trauma, and infant loss, which may be upsetting for some listeners. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

3126.767

Next time on Something Was Wrong...

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

3182.839

Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, and Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist. Thank you to Marissa, Travis, and our team at WME, Wondery, Jason, and Jennifer, our cybersecurity team, Darkbox Security, and my lawyer, Alan. Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

3206.694

And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and listenership. Special shout out to Emily Wolfe for covering Gladrag's original song, You Think You, for us this season. For more music by Emily Wolfe, check out the episode notes or your favorite music streaming app.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

3226.411

Speaking of episode notes, there every week you'll find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Until next time, stay safe, friends. If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

3254.249

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

51.36

Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, and Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Origins Birth and Wellness owners and midwives Caitlin Wages and Gina Thompson have not responded to our requests for comment.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E10: Terror

91.994

Bye.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

117.751

What Came Next is intended for mature audiences only. Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, animal abuse, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist, nor am I a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com forward slash resources for a list of non-profit organizations that can help.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

143.835

opinions expressed by my guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or Broken Cycle Media. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. J.E. Reich is a journalist, editor, survivor, and victim advocate.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

1873.415

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Next week on What Came Next.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

190.402

They shared their story on Something Was Wrong Season 6, Episodes 5 and 6, which aired on December 6th and December 13th of 2020. The episodes discuss the impact of the devastating 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the impact the hate crime had on J.E. 's community. The episodes also bring awareness to the related, horrific stalking J.E.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

1924.6

What Came Next is a Broken Cycle Media production co-produced by Amy B. Chesler and Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to help support What Came Next, you can leave us a positive review, support our sponsors, or follow Broken Cycle Media on Instagram at Broken Cycle Media. Check out the episode notes for sources, resources, and to follow our guests. Thank you again for listening.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

220.85

and their family would be subjected to in the years following. However, at the time of the episode's release, J.E. and their family had received no justice for the unending harassment and death threats the caller executed over those years. The Broken Cycle Media team is extremely grateful J.E.

Something Was Wrong

(1/3) WCN Presents: [J.E.] S6 Updates

241.639

was willing to return today to share more of their journey to seek justice and about the start of their consequent healing process.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

11.61

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire. Every suspicious text you ignore masks a huge network of compounds where thousands are held captive and forced to scam others under the threat of death. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

1115.894

Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

1136.53

Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion dollar criminal empire operating in plain sight. Told through one family's harrowing account of sleepless nights, desperate phone calls, and dangerous rescue attempts, Scam Factory reveals a brutal truth. The only way out is to scam their way out.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

1162.087

Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Scam Factory early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

2992.862

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

3006.152

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr. Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

3026.325

With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery and left its mark on the community. This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure. No, for sure he did it.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E5: Tragic and Horrific

3046.175

Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

11.598

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

1131.988

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

1148.137

I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

2021.946

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Cat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

2787.906

,.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

2796.355

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

3254.23

Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

3267.501

With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Doctor Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

3283.812

And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare. With Wondery+, you get access to exclusive bonus content, too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love, like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community. This case is one of those rollercoaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E9: Bad Marriage

3305.3

No, for sure he did it. Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before. With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

108.954

What Came Next is intended for mature audiences only. Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, animal abuse, suicide, and murder. I am not a therapist, nor am I a doctor. If you're in need of support, please visit somethingwaswrong.com forward slash resources for a list of non-profit organizations that can help.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

135.035

Opinions expressed by my guests on the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself or Broken Cycle Media. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you so much for listening. Something Was Wrong Season 19 featuring Amy's episodes began airing January 11th, 2024 and finished airing February 8th of the same year.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

186.207

In the five episodes, Amy's tenacity and resiliency became resoundingly clear as she and her loved ones recounted all they faced amidst years of stalking and cyber-stalking. Through what felt like a never-ending criminal justice and legal battle, Amy would eventually put her stalker, Morrison, behind bars, and she would share in hopes of finding more of his victims.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

214.282

She returns today to share about all that's transpired in the parole process since season 19 ended, and all that she continues to work for in honor of other victims of stalking. The Broken Cycle Media team is immensely grateful for Amy's continued candidness and advocacy, as well as the time, energy, and awareness she's offered our listeners.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

2295.939

You've accomplished so much in such a short amount of time amidst being stalked.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

2373.008

I'm motivated. Part of our process too is having those days of deflation as well. You're a human who's live grieving and navigating a lot. You will have that ebb and flow.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

2510.151

Tiffany put everything perfectly, but you are tenacious, but also resilient. I wish you didn't have to be so, but you are a gift to the world.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

2532.817

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. What Came Next is a Broken Cycle Media production co-produced by Amy B. Chesler and Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to help support What Came Next, you can leave us a positive review, support our sponsors, or follow Broken Cycle Media on Instagram at Broken Cycle Media. Check out the episode notes for sources, resources, and to follow our guests.

Something Was Wrong

WCN Presents: [Amy] S19 Updates

2559.704

Thank you again for listening.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

0.329

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

1368.934

Anterior cervix lip means that you're fully dilated, but an edge of your cervix, usually the anterior or front of the cervix, is a little bit swollen and is still in the way of the baby's head.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

1411.431

How are you managing your pain? Were you attempting to do all of that naturally?

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Were they expressing any concern at this point? No.

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S23 E4: Hell House

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Seems like there should be some standards for that. Like, the same standards as hospitals have? Shouldn't that be the same? It should be.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Meconium aspiration syndrome is when a newborn baby breathes in a sticky substance called meconium just before or during birth. It can cause breathing problems and respiratory distress. According to John Hopkins University, meconium aspiration syndrome, a leading cause of severe illness and death in newborns, occurs in about 5-10% of births.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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So did they start antibiotics right away in the IV?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Chorioamnionitis is a pregnancy infection that can lead to complications for both mother and baby. Symptoms include fever, fast heart rate, painful uterus, and foul-smelling amniotic fluid. It's more likely to occur when your water's broken, which is one of the reasons providers may want you to deliver within 24 hours because the risk of infection is much higher.

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Choreoamnionitis can cause serious complications for both parent and baby, including postpartum infections, premature birth, neonatal sepsis, and cerebral palsy.

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S23 E4: Hell House

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Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B. Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High. Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, and Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist.

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Thank you to Marissa, Travis, and our team at WME, Wondery, Jason, and Jennifer, our cybersecurity team, Darkbox Security, and my lawyer, Alan. Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and listenership.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Special shout out to Emily Wolfe for covering Gladrag's original song, You Think You, for us this season. For more music by Emily Wolfe, check out the episode notes or your favorite music streaming app. Speaking of episode notes, there every week you'll find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

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S23 E4: Hell House

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If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

31.52

Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences. This season contains discussions of medical negligence, birth trauma, and infant loss, which may be upsetting for some listeners. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.

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S23 E4: Hell House

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Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, and Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Origins Birth and Wellness owners and midwives Caitlin Wages and Gina Thompson have not responded to our requests for comment.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Caitlyn and Gina, those were the owners and they were both certified midwives, right?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Progesterone is a hormone that supports menstruation and maintaining a pregnancy. Low levels of progesterone hormone can cause complications in pregnancy and can be given as a medication that comes in capsule form.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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And most of the people that you were seeing for prenatal care, were those midwives or were they students? Yes.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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In those appointments, did you feel confident in the care you were receiving at that time?

Something Was Wrong

S23 E4: Hell House

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Jennifer Crawford was allegedly an unlicensed student midwife while caring for Kristen during her pregnancy and labor at Origins Birth and Wellness. However, Jennifer did later receive her certified professional midwife license from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation on May 20, 2022, before Amanda's care.

Something Was Wrong

S23 Preview

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S23 Preview

239.508

If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E8: Life and Death

11.598

When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E8: Life and Death

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I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E8: Life and Death

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Thank you.

Something Was Wrong

S23 E8: Life and Death

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Thank you.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

1399.068

Work takes up most of your time. That's why you should use stamps.com to save time with your mailing and shipping and have flexibility to focus on more important things. Stamps.com can handle all your mailing and shipping needs with rates up to 88% off USPS and UPS. Add flexibility to your day with stamps.com. Go to stamps.com slash program to sign up for a special offer. No contract.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

1424.785

Cancel anytime. That's stamps.com slash program.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

1429.288

A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed Cop City.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

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This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

1463.654

The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

1468.198

Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. And the lengths we'll go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

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Life can be chaotic. If you're running a retail business, don't let disorganized order fulfillment add to the chaos. Use ShipStation instead. With ShipStation, you never have to worry about shipping and fulfillment again. Whether you're running a business out of your garage or you have multiple warehouses, ShipStation is ideal for every phase of your business's growth.

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S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

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Save time with one login for all your stores and by automating repetitive tasks. Plus, you'll save money with the best shipping rates from global carriers. ShipStation's industry-leading features help you deliver a better customer experience. They'll get accurate and faster shipments along with automated tracking updates with your branding.

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S22 E12: Tip of the Iceberg (Finale Part 2)

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And with up to 88% off UPS and USPS rates and up to 90% off FedEx rates, ShipStation is the fastest and most affordable way to ship. Calm the chaos. Switch to ShipStation today. Start a free trial at ShipStation.com. That's ShipStation.com.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

1466.733

This is a mini meditation guided by Bombas. Repeat after me. I'm comfy. I'm cozy. I have zero blisters on my toes. And that's because I wear Bombas. The softest socks, underwear, and t-shirts that give back. One purchased equals one donated. Now go to bombas.com slash wondery and use code wondery for 20% off your first purchase.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

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That's b-o-m-b-a-s dot com slash wondery and use code wondery at checkout.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

1497.307

A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed Cop City.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

1527.648

This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance. The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down. Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest of everybody in my life. And the lengths we'll go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

1549.686

You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

48.695

Creating really great retail experiences is tough, especially with multiple stores, teams of staff, fulfillment centers, separate workflows. It's a lot. But with Shopify Point of Sale, you can do it all without complexity. Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business. It brings together in-store and online operations across a thousand locations.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

75.273

Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient. Endless aisle shipped to customer by online pickup in-store, all made simpler so customers can shop how they want and staff have the tools to close the sale every time. And let's face it, Acquiring new customers is expensive.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

797.344

It's the sound you hear when learning a new language with Babbel. Babbel's quick 10-minute lessons, handcrafted by over 200 language experts, get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. Let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babbel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babbel.com slash truecrime.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

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Get up to 60% off at Babbel.com slash true crime. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash true crime. Babbel.com slash true crime. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Something Was Wrong

S22 E11: Double Down (Finale Part 1)

94.949

With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge. Want more? Check out at shopify.com slash wondery, all lowercase, and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.com slash wondery.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

103.771

This was never good news. Jela and her nine coworkers made their way outside. The yard was kind of like a quad on a college campus, except with the guards around, it gave more prison yard vibes. They lined up, five in each row. Jella stood at the front of the line. She looked around. Two-story concrete buildings all painted in a stark shade of white.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

130.745

Glaring fluorescent lights pouring out of the windows and doors. On the first floor was where they spent long hours, day and night, scamming. On the second was where they slept in cheap metal bunk beds. The roofs were studded with floodlights that only added to the prison feel. She looked down at the concrete beneath her feet.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

152.71

Such a sad contrast to the adventures on Thai beaches she thought she'd be having when she first met Charlie. A hush spread through the group as the boss began to speak. Beside him was a team leader and two translators. The boss started with an announcement. They were changing up the payment structure. It would now be tiered based on how much they were able to scam.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

203.309

But if you were like Jella, this was terrible news. Jella was awful at scamming, like truly awful. She'd never gotten good at the dirty talk. She'd only gotten three clients to take it to video chat. But none of them were successfully blackmailed. She'd been moved over to another group with a new assignment. Scam people into buying things from a fake Amazon store. That hadn't gone any better.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

230.48

So she'd been sent to yet another group. This time, someone else was doing the scamming. Jella just served as a warm body on camera for video calls.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

244.941

Her coworkers would tell her what to say. And using an AI filter to alter her face, Jella would deliver her lines to the target. She didn't like doing this either. And now, she was being told that her already meager salary would be tied to her poor performance. Jella's anxiety shot through the roof. But that wasn't all.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

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Her team leaders told them there would be harsher consequences for not meeting quota.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

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Duck walking, where grown adults are forced to squat and walk across the field while everyone watched. It was humiliating. She did not want to do this. All Jella could think about was how much she fucking hated this place, how angry she was at Charlie, how desperately she wanted to get out. And then, one more update.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

310.815

A different compound? Jella was in a full-on panic now as her bosses explained that they were being transferred to another company. This new company operated out of a compound next door.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

329.51

Jella was freaking out. She'd heard rumors about this other compound.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

338.554

Jella had heard they beat their workers with electric batons and paddles to punish those that didn't meet quota. With her track record, Jella knew she was doomed.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

356.2

She had to get out of this situation, the one Charlie helped put her in, before it cost her her life.

Something Was Wrong

Listen Now: Scam Factory

71.79

Jella kept her eye on the clock. counting down the minutes until 1 a.m. and the end of her shift. She couldn't wait to get to bed. Jella and her teammates began to gather their things to leave. But their team leader told them, not so fast. Everyone needed to go out to the yard.

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made

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Now test free on shopify.de.

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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Why We Love Fast Food & What Will Make You Successful

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I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures?

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Cool Things You Can Do With AI & Surprising Insight in Chance, Probability & Risk

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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Eleven Inventions That Changed the World & The Right Way to Make Love and Money Decisions - SYSK Choice

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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The Surprising Power of Silence & How to Overcome Your Cravings - SYSK Choice

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Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

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Why We Forget & The Amazing Story of Your Body’s Atoms - SYSK Choice

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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How Flavor Has Guided Human History & The Threat of Pseudoscience - SYSK Choice

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice

1604.217

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know

Proven Ways to Boost Confidence & How to Overcome Procrastination - SYSK Choice

910.433

Start your testing today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Something You Should Know

How Things Became User Friendly & Effective Ways to Change People’s Minds - SYSK Choice

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something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carruthers hi and welcome to something you should know we start today with a spoiler alert alert

Something You Should Know

Why Parking is Such a Problem & How Microbes Influence Our Lives - SYSK Choice

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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How Your Mind Changes Over Time & The Upside of Uncertainty - SYSK Choice

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Something You Should Know

The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives

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Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

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The Amazing Things Your Heart Does & The Power You Have to Change Lives

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Something You Should Know

Alone Together: The Decline of Social Interaction & Is the Future in Nuclear?

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1042.677

Listen to Curiosity Weekly and you'll discover things like how neuroscientists are studying TikTok and social media habits to see which chemicals are being released in your brain that make you so obsessed. Or how it is that you can fly from Florida to England on a plane using recycled plastic jet fuel. And how AI can now read hieroglyphics from Egyptian pyramids.

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What's so great about Curiosity Weekly is there's so much to learn about science and tech, and these guys seem to have their finger on the pulse of the most interesting stuff. Food science, the science behind social media, the science of algorithms, computer science, and it's all explained in a fascinating way every week on Curiosity Weekly.

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Listen to Curiosity Weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Think about all the online businesses selling products, ones that you probably buy. Mattel, Gymshark, Untuckit, Magic Spoon, all solid businesses. But a key ingredient to any successful online business is the business behind the business that makes the whole selling and checkout process work.

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And for millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Shopify is the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret secret is something they have called ShopPay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going...

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1138.723

So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling – on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. The fact is, businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Mattel and Gymshark and millions of other companies use.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

115.389

All this today on Something You Should Know. Every time I've had to hire someone, it had to be done fast. But as I've discovered anyway, hiring can be very time-consuming, and even still there are no guarantees. Which is why, when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Right? The trick to finding the right person is to make sure a lot of qualified people know about your job opening.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1163.186

Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash SYSK, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash SYSK to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash SYSK. So doctor, often when you go to a doctor visit, they want you to pee in a cup and they want a stool sample. So what is it that you can tell from that?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1288.604

Yeah, I remember hearing someone talking about this, that it's pretty seldom that if you go to the doctor for your physical, and I think this was in a discussion about how necessary is an annual physical, that very rarely does somebody go to the doctor feeling fine and find out that there's something horribly wrong with them and they had no idea.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1310.232

That if you've got some condition that's fairly serious, you probably have some inkling that something's wrong.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1363.408

Well, I think people feel that a lot because nowadays you go to your physical and the doctor spends a lot more time on his keyboard than he does touching you. And it's like, well, wait, what about me? Wait.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

143.385

And you see, Indeed has this thing called Sponsored Jobs. So your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates. So you can reach the people you want to reach faster. And it works. Now here's what I think is the magic of Indeed.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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From all your experience as a doctor and you've had an interesting career, is there anything or any set of things that you wish people would do that would really help?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Well, I imagine that a big part of a doctor's job, and perhaps one of the more enjoyable parts of your job, is to let people know there's nothing wrong. That, yeah, maybe you have a symptom, but it'll go away, or that you'll be fine.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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They take this process of hiring, which is something you probably don't do a lot or feel really skilled at, and they guide you through it so you end up with the right person for the job quickly. Plus, with Indeed-sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1681.016

What's one thing about the human body that you find so interesting that might surprise me?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Well, in all my conversations, in all the interviews I've done, thousands of them, I've never spoken with anyone about their favorite bodily fluid. So this was fun and unique. My guest has been Jonathan Reisman. He is a doctor of internal medicine and pediatrics, and his book is called The Unseen Body, A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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There's a link to his book in the show notes.

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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And listeners of this show get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash something. Just go to Indeed.com slash something right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash something. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

1891.147

Doctors are supposed to be men and women of science. They would seem less likely to believe in the unexplainable, things like miracles or supernatural events. But perhaps some doctors do experience these things. They're just reluctant to share their stories because for fear of people thinking they're a little strange. That's what Dr. Scott Kolbaba thought.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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So he started talking with other doctors and asked them if they had ever encountered anything that they could not explain scientifically. and he uncovered some rather amazing stories. Scott practices internal medicine in Illinois, and he wrote a book called Physicians' Untold Stories, miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients or anyone. Hi, Scott. Welcome.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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So explain why you, a doctor, decided to look into this and start asking other doctors about the unexplainable. What prompted this?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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So tell me one of the stories that really moved you.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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And so out of the 200 doctors, so you talked to 200 doctors, you got 30 stories. Are you saying that the other 170 didn't have any stories or there just wasn't room in the book or what?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

2232.523

So what's another story that gave you goosebumps?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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I don't know if you can still hear it, but I still have that. I've had a cold and then haven't talked about it a lot, but we were right in the middle of the California wildfires, the Eaton fire. We had to evacuate for several days and the fire came very close to our house.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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So when a doctor tells a story like that, when that doctor told that story, Did he offer an explanation?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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I like the story about Noemi Sigaloff, who was a general surgeon. And just to make a long story short, she was taking care of a woman and her husband, Adele and Ron Ashton. And they had been missionaries and were pretty spiritual people. So pick up the story when Ron and Adele Ashton were in Dr. Noemi Sigaloff's office.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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But ever since then, there's been this like ash in the air that gets in your lungs and it's really, it makes it hard to breathe and hard to talk. Anyway, hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. We're going to start today talking about your IQ. Do you know your IQ? I don't think I know my IQ. Not sure I want to know my IQ. But here are some interesting facts about it.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Well, you're a doctor. Have you had any of these kind of experiences?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Yeah, it wasn't me, but I'm from a family of five kids and my youngest brother, right after he was born, my mother, who was a nurse, felt something was wrong and took him to the doctor and the doctor said, well, he just has a cold or, you know, just keep your eye on him, he'll be okay. My mother took him home and later that night, fairly late, There was a knock at the door and it was the doctor.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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And he said, something's bothering me about this. He made my mother and he drove to the hospital and he was diagnosed with pneumonia. And the doctor at the hospital said he probably would have died that night if the doctor hadn't done what he did.

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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By the age of five, your IQ is pretty much set, and it's hard to raise. People who are taller or had a larger-than-normal birth weight tend to have a higher IQ. Husbands and wives tend to have similar IQs.

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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So since you've talked to these doctors and since you've experienced this yourself, understanding that each thing, each story is very individual, but is there a big takeaway from this? How has it changed you and these people in some kind of general sweeping way, or is it just individual?

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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If you're taking an intelligence test and you want to temporarily bump up your IQ, one study showed that people who chewed on a piece of gum for a few minutes before a test showed a measurable spike in their IQ test results. And that is something you should know. So how about we take a tour together, a tour of the human body and how it works.

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were buried under the snow and froze to death, that if there was this guiding light, how come those people didn't get it?

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Quickly, tell the story of Dr. Steve Graham.

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You must have questions or wondered how it is that all the parts of the human body work and work together to get you through the day, through your life. Today you'll come to understand how some of it all works. Let me introduce you to your tour guide today, Dr. Jonathan Reisman. He's a doctor of internal medicine and pediatrics who has practiced medicine in the world's most remote places.

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Well, what's great about these stories that you tell, you know, people can make of them what they want. You know, maybe it's all just coincidence. Maybe there's something more and you can decide for yourself. But they do make you think. My guest has been Dr. Scott Kolbaba. He is an internist and author of the book Physicians Untold Stories.

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Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients or anyone. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for sharing your stories. Thanks, Mike. Good interview. Worrying is normal. Worrying all the time is not normal. If you're a worrier, here are some things to consider.

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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According to Dr. Martin Rossman, author of the book The Worry Solution, 85% of the things people worry about never, ever, ever come to pass. In the 15% of the time when the things we do worry about do happen... 80% of people say they handled the problem better than they thought they would.

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Experts say that the best thing to do if you're worried is to write down what you're worried about and decide which things you can actually do something about and which you cannot. Then create a plan to do something about the things you can actually impact. Doing something will usually lessen the worry. And that is something you should know. What can you do to support this podcast?

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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It's real simple. We don't ask for money. We don't ask you to do much. But we do like it when you share this podcast with someone else and give them a chance to listen so maybe they become a regular listener too. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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He's author of a book called The Unseen Body, A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy. Hey doctor, welcome to Something You Should Know. It's a pleasure to be here. So why don't we start the tour, if you don't mind, with the throat. A lot of people wouldn't consider the throat a body part, but I guess it is. And so what is it about the throat that you find interesting?

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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And so when, when I take a drink of water and choke and people often say it went down the wrong pipe, is that exactly what happened?

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Can you talk about the liver? Because that's one of many internal organs that most of us don't know much about. We know we have one, and we know it probably does something. So what does it do? Why is it there?

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Well, that's one of the things it's always, there's so many things like what you just described about the liver. And then there's all these other organs. It's a wonder that, things don't go wrong more often. I mean, things do go wrong, but there's so much to us that you would think we would break down more than we do.

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Today on Something You Should Know, how did the Easter Bunny become part of the Easter celebration? Then a fascinating tour of the human body where you'll hear things you probably never knew.

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So since the skin is the largest organ in the body or of the body, I guess we have to talk about that. So what is it you find so fascinating about the skin?

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Certainly if we're going to talk about the human body, we have to talk about the heart, because that's probably one of the organs people think of the most, and the blood, you know, since that's what the heart is doing. So why, and heart disease I think is the number one killer in this country, so what's so special about the heart to you that you find so fascinating?

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How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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Also, why worrying is a waste of time, most of the time, and a doctor who has collected stories from other doctors about miracles and other strange medical happenings.

Something You Should Know

How the Human Body Works & Stories Your Doctor Won’t Tell You

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We are taking a tour of the human body with Dr. Jonathan Reisman. He's a doctor of internal medicine and author of the book, The Unseen Body, A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy. Thank you so much for having me. It's a bit similar to Something You Should Know, which is why I think you'll like it, but it takes a different spin.

Something You Should Know

A Paradox That Makes You Miserable & How We Amplify Our Own Stress

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Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Something You Should Know

The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Something You Should Know

How to Create Real Wealth & The Ways Technology Ruins Relationships

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Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Spotlight: Snitch City

EPISODE 4: Cops & Robbers

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Before we begin, this story contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Take care when listening.

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Just stay away from him. One drug cop, in particular, had his eye on Frank. When's the first time you ever heard the name Paul Oliveira?

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The FBI tells Frank they're building a case against Oliveira and the New Bedford Drug Unit. And they make it clear that if he works with them, his charges will be reduced. Maybe tossed all together. Do you remember what they specifically what they offered you?

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It's a wild stroke of luck for Frank. A winning lottery ticket. And with Frank on board, the FBI tells him their case would be really strong.

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In fact, the FBI found out about Frank because they'd already talked to another New Bedford drug dealer, a guy by the name of Arlindo DeSantos. DeSantos wouldn't talk to me, but his story is detailed in federal court records. Here's what happened. In August of 1999, DeSantos is arrested and charged in federal court with drug distribution and money laundering.

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Federal authorities say he's a key player in a scheme to move thousands of pounds of marijuana through the U.S. mail. But they give him a chance to cooperate by snitching on Paul Oliveira. DeSantos tells investigators that Oliveira and his supervisor in the drug unit, Mel Watton, are notorious in the city.

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DeSantos calls Oliveira and Watton gangsters and says they're worse criminals than he is, that they're known to pocket cash during drug raids, that they call it their green fund. We reached out to the former head of the drug unit, Mel Watton. He denied all of these allegations.

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Meanwhile, Chief Paul Oliveira has ignored weeks of interview requests and hasn't directly addressed the questions I've put to him. Despite knowing other dealers were willing to turn on Oliveira, Frank's still not sure what to do. So he seeks out his trusted associates for counsel.

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Even with the chance to take down a cop he hated, Frank just can't stomach the idea of being a snitch.

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He has his lawyer tell the FBI to shove it.

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Frank's out on bail for almost three years as his case moves through the court. He keeps his head down, tries to stay out of trouble. The other guys in his crew have already done their time and are back out again.

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Then one day, he's sitting at the beeper shack and sees a drug cop he knows coming out of the market across the street.

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It's none other than Bobby Richard, Paul Oliveira's colleague in the drug unit. The guy who says Paul later got him fired for smoking a cigar.

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And on the street, Oliveira had a nickname.

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I'm talking to you man to man. Frank says he lays his cards on the table.

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He tells Richard, the feds are trying to flip me and I'm keeping my mouth shut. But there's something I want in return.

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And it seems to Frank that he was right. It did work that way.

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Just like that, a plea bargain. I reached out to Bobby Richard after hearing this story. He told me he remembers running into Frank, but says he doesn't remember anything about the FBI or what led to the plea deal. Regardless of how it happened, Frank feels like he won. The plea bargain means he'll only go to prison for a couple years.

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But as he heads to court for sentencing, there's one more surprise in store. This is at Superior Court in County Street, New Bedford. Frank's in a holding cell inside the courthouse when Frank says someone that he doesn't expect to see saunters in. It's Paul Oliveira.

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Decades before Paul Oliveira became the city's police chief, he was making a name for himself as one of the most prolific narcotics cops in New Bedford, which put him and Frank on a collision course. It all came to a head one day, late in the summer of 1998.

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I keep thinking about this moment, 25 years ago, inside a courthouse jail cell. Because while Frank's decision not to work with the FBI got him a deal, it also helped clear the way for Paul Oliveira to become New Bedford's police chief.

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The city issued a statement after The Globe published the story online, saying Paul Oliveira, quote, has no knowledge of a formal request by either the FBI or the Department of Justice in this regard. The FBI's investigation into Oliveira and the drug unit ended without charges. And I talked to someone who I thought might know why.

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Why don't you think the feds ultimately did anything about the New Bedford narcotics corruption and Paul Oliveira? Because obviously they were investigating it.

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Barry Wilson is a lawyer who over his career has defended a lot of New Bedford drug dealers. He arranged Frank's plea deal. He was also the guy who told the FBI that his client, Frank, wasn't going to snitch.

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I interviewed Barry one afternoon in a seafood restaurant in Boston over crab cakes and for Barry, a few stiff drinks.

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Like Frank, Barry has a no snitching policy.

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Barry's convictions run pretty deep.

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Robert Mueller chased both of us. Back when Mueller was in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, he was part of a controversial push by federal prosecutors to force defense attorneys to disclose information about their own clients.

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It sounds like something that would be protected by attorney-client privilege, but the court ruled that it wasn't. Still, Barry was convinced that it was wrong. So he defied a court order, was held in contempt, and spent five months in prison. You're obviously, you've got a very strong code, it sounds like. Where does that come from?

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You might be thinking that Barry and Frank's strict code is admirable. But no snitching policies like theirs have consequences. Law enforcement depends on people's cooperation. And when it came to the alleged misconduct in New Bedford's drug unit in the 90s, people's refusal to cooperate hamstrung the FBI. Jeez. Okay, so just got off the phone. Two-hour conversation with Dave Madigan.

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He's a former... FBI agent down there. Dave Madigan arrived in the New Bedford area back in the 90s. And one of the first cases that he gets is when he goes down there is Arlindo DeSantos. Madigan didn't want his interview to be recorded, but he's fine being on the record. So right after I got off the call, I told my editor what he said. And he brought Paul Oliveira up before I even did.

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He was like, you can't trust anybody down there. Everything got back. Everybody knew each other and went to high school with each other. Madigan had heard about setup cases where cops worked both sides of the drug deal. You know, we've been hearing... Time after time after time after time that the FBI was looking into the New Bedford Police Department and Paul Oliveira.

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And this is the first time that somebody from the FBI says, yes, we were doing that. And that's big. And Madigan told me that roughly 25 years ago, he and other federal agents were deep into an investigation into the New Bedford Narcotics Unit. They were developing their own CIs, two New Bedford drug dealers, and working on a plan to catch Oliveira and others in the act.

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He goes, we were going to set up a fake drug bust at this house in New Bedford and have Mel Watton, Paul Oliveira respond to it. And we're figuring it out what we're going to do. But just before the FBI was able to pull the trigger on its plan, the dealers suddenly stopped cooperating. Madigan told me, quote, I think Paul Oliveira went and talked to somebody.

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So this former FBI agent believes Paul Oliveira interfered with a federal investigation. And he's fully on the record about it. I also spoke with another former drug unit officer who didn't want to be identified. And this source told me he believes that the FBI's inability to push forward on Oliveira and the department in the 90s had huge consequences.

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Frank's brother had heard that the cops were keeping tabs on him. Frank's main headquarters, where he kept most of the drugs, was a three-story walk-up in the city's north end.

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He said, quote, had they done their job back in the day, this department would be totally different. But what happened later when the FBI had people almost begging to talk to them? In 2015, former police officer Bobby Richard was contacted by the FBI and says he told them everything.

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And a few years ago, Officer Mark Raposo called the FBI on his own volition and tried to tell them about how Oliveira knew that a cop in his department named George Santos was stealing drugs under the guise of having information from an informant. He says he didn't even get a call back. I reached out to the FBI for comment.

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They said, quote, as a matter of longstanding policy, we cannot confirm or deny the existence of investigations.

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Where does the accountability for all of this land?

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And Barry warns me not to trust him either.

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Indeed, he is the police chief, a public official, someone who's supposed to be accountable to the people of New Bedford. All right, Westport, Massachusetts, home of Paul Oliveira. It's the fifth day that we've tried to reach out. Haven't heard anything. That's coming up on Spotlight, Snitch City. Spotlight Snitch City is reported and hosted by me, Dugan Arnett.

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But it was too late. The police raided the house on Friday.

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Additional reporting by Andrew Ryan and Brendan McCarthy. The podcast is written by Max Green and Kristen Nelson, along with me and Brendan McCarthy. Max Green is senior producer. Executive producers are Spotlight editor Brendan McCarthy and Kristen Nelson, the Globe's head of audio. Additional editing and support from Gordon Russell and Kathleen Goldhaar.

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This is Frank Simmons, Rizzo to his friends. And in the 90s, he was a big-time drug dealer in New Bedford.

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Nancy Barnes is the Boston Globe's executive editor. Sound design and mix by Steven Jackson. Episode artwork by Julian D. Paulson. Art direction by Ryan Huddle. Podcast visualization by Olivia Yarvis and Anush Elbakian. Heather Cyrus is the audience editor. Tim Rasmussen is visuals editor. Legal review by John Albano. Fact-checking by Matt Mahoney.

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Marketing support for this podcast comes from The Podglomerate.

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Is Paul there from the start?

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Along with all the drugs, the cops find a lot of cash.

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Sitting there, handcuffed on the couch, Frank says he watches Oliveira doling out wads of his money to the other drug detectives.

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The Green Fund. According to Frank, police trash his place, seize the drugs, and take his money, even his baseball cards.

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Like, I knew I was fucked. The official records from the raid say the drug unit only found about $2,200. But Frank says there was roughly 15 times that, and the cops pocketed the difference. I know it's a big allegation, but I've been able to verify much of what Frank has told me through search warrants, court records, prison paperwork, and more. Frank knows what's coming next.

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And Paul Oliveira knows this is the perfect time to try and add a new CI to his roster. He's done it many times before. Did he try to turn you? Yeah, yeah, he tried to turn all of us. But cooperating with police is a cardinal sin in Frank's world.

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Frank's in a tough spot, facing a lot of jail time, and he's got a decision to make. But this won't be the last time he'll find himself in the hot seat. And next time, it's going to be harder to stay true to his code. Because next time, he'll be asked to snitch on Paul Oliveira himself.

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EPISODE 4: Cops & Robbers

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I'm Dugan Arnett. From the Boston Globe, this is Spotlight, Snitch City. Episode 4, Cops and Robbers.

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Long before it was legal, Frank moved loads of marijuana.

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EPISODE 4: Cops & Robbers

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Just that little station. Yep, that's it. It's a sweltering summer day in New Bedford, and I'm riding shotgun in Frank's SUV. Who would have worked out of there? Was that drug unit? Yep, they were all over there. Okay. I first came across Frank's name in a 25-year-old federal court file. Frank's in his early 50s. Shaved head, tattoos.

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He's got a Cheshire Cat grin, framed by a goatee, and wears a chunky diamond ring on his pinky finger.

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Frank grew up in public housing. His parents split up when he was young. Things were pretty unstable. And he went to live with his grandparents.

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Like a lot of people in New Bedford, Frank's grandfather spoke Portuguese at home.

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Do you have fond memories of, like, that time?

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Growing up, Frank thought he'd follow in his grandfather's footsteps and go into law enforcement himself. He even had a plan.

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And it might sound crazy, but even well into his career as a dealer, Frank still believed he could do it.

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The trouble started when Frank graduated high school.

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At the time, drugs coursed through New Bedford. And before long, Frank was deep in the weed business, which meant a lot of attention from police.

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Frank's other business helped with that.

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It was called Beeper Shack, and it helped Frank maintain an air of legitimacy. But he knew who his customers were.

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Of course, police knew that too. Including Paul Oliveira, RoboCop. In Frank's mind, Oliveira always stood out from the other cops.

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For the record, I'm under no illusions about the kind of guy Frank was back then. He's open about his drug dealing. Yet Frank says he also lived by a code. his own sense of right and wrong. And what bothered him about Oliveira and the other drug cops was that in Frank's eyes, they didn't operate by a code of their own.

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I've seen the shirt. Frank wore it to one of our interviews. It's pretty faded now. On the front, it says 10 questions to ask a new Bedford narcotics detective. And on the back?

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Yeah, yeah. The t-shirts were actually a direct response to what happened on the day of the raid, when Oliveira and the others showed up at Frank's headquarters in the summer of 98, the day Frank learned about the Green Fund. Frank says that after the police tossed his apartment, seized the drugs, and pocketed his money, he and his crew were taken to the New Bedford police station.

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Frank says the cops are using their cell phones and pagers to catch people looking to buy drugs. When a call comes in, instead of being answered by a drug dealer, there's a cop on the other end. They set up a fake deal and then go out and a bust is made.

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Frank's got one hand cuffed to the wall. But with his free hand, he calls a guy who works for him at the beeper shack.

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Funding this lifestyle, staying in business, meant being careful. In New Bedford, where the drug war was being waged daily, the police narcotics unit was aggressive.

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And what happens next?

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Can I get some cheese? This might not sound like anything of note, but in this context, asking for a slice of cheese has a very different meaning.

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Oliveira knows what a slice of cheese means, too. But Frank's just playing. Jokes aside, in that moment, there was a lot at stake for Frank.

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So Frank stays true. But now he's facing a slew of charges.

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It's looking really bad for Frank. He's lawyered up and bracing for a fight. He's ready to go down instead of becoming a snitch for Oliveira. But then, he gets a call from another investigator who wants his cooperation. Frank is being offered another chance to snitch. And this time, he considers it. Because this time, it's the FBI calling.

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Today, the streets are even more dangerous than you think. So talk to your kids about drugs or somebody else will.

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It takes more courage than ever to wear this badge... And I want to ensure all that I believe in and support the men and women of the department.

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Policing has changed dramatically throughout the careers of those of us standing here. We will take the next steps to continue changing with the times and working together to keep the residents of the city of New Bedford safe.

Spotlight: Snitch City

Trailer Two

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In a nation addicted to drugs, police across the country have become addicted to informants. They're the nameless, faceless cogs of the criminal justice system. Their use has remained almost entirely secret. Until now. Did he try to turn you? Yeah, yeah, he tried to turn all of us. I said, I ain't going nowhere, bro. I got nothing to say to you.

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Trailer Two

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So I could tell you that Dugan Arnett is my informant, but he might not even exist. This is Spotlight, Snitch City, a new investigative series from the Boston Globe. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Spotlight: Snitch City

EPISODE 2: Blind Trust

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Before we begin, this story contains strong language and descriptions of violence. Take care when listening.

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He was just begging me to reach out to his girlfriend and have her call him, uh, tell her it was an emergency and that he needed to talk to her immediately. Daniel worked with New Bedford police for months. He informed on other gang members, at great risk to himself. He's somebody who I guess I feel kind of protective of.

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Daniel, of course, had no idea about how far back Jack's friendship with Alex Polson went. So when Daniel's pulled over that night and tries to use his status as a CI to get out of trouble, he realizes he's just outed himself to one of Jack's friends, the blue-eyed cop.

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Immediately, Daniel calls his handler, an officer named Nate Almeida. Daniel is in tears. Almeida tries to calm him down and promises he'll take care of it.

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But he's not careful enough. Polson doesn't follow that advice. It's clear Polson and Jack have been talking. And now Jack, a guy police call a top-tier gang associate, knows that Daniel's broken the code they're supposed to live by. This dangerous reality hits Daniel when he's with Jack at a neighborhood store. Jack tells him that he's been chatting with his old friend, Alex Polson.

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Daniel remembers this conversation vividly because in it, Jack revealed that Polson gave him an explicit warning. It's in this moment that Daniel says he knows for sure that this cop with the blue eyes has outed him. And now, the only thing Daniel can do is try and convince Jack that his pal Polson was wrong.

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How nervous are you? How worried are you at this point?

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And having seen him in jail and having seen, you know, how young he looks and having seen the details of sort of what he's gone through, that was just a hard thing to listen to. Daniel didn't want to be a CI, but he also didn't want to go back to jail. So he put his faith into a system that promised to protect him. Clearly, it didn't work out that way.

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And once word gets out, Daniel does everything he can to deny it.

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Every conversation, every interaction starts to feel like a test. He says one night, a group of older gang members approaches him with what feels like the ultimate test. Recently, someone from their area had been shot. Now, they want Daniel to take part in the retaliation. It didn't feel like a choice to you?

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They hand Daniel a gun and tell him, don't come back until it's empty.

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So Daniel gets into a stolen car with a group of guys. Their drive is quiet. No phones. Tension in the air. They pull up to a car idling under a street lamp. Get out of the car and open fire. Somehow, miraculously, no one's hit. Nobody got shot. Police did recover 18 bullet casings from at least three different guns. Later, Daniel claims he intended all along to shoot wildly, to miss on purpose.

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Not long after the shooting, an email goes out to the entire New Bedford Police Department. Detectives are looking for three suspects. In the records I obtained, police redacted the names of the suspects, so I don't know if Daniel's name was on the list. But I do know one of them was another member of Daniel's gang and Jack's younger cousin.

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Alex Polson isn't part of the shooting investigation, but he reads the email, sees his friend's cousin's name, and makes a strange call. Polson calls a detective who's working in the investigation and tells this detective that they've got it wrong about Jack's cousin.

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But Polson was wrong. or lying. Jack's cousin previously had been arrested for gun possession. Polson's unsolicited intervention doesn't end there. He tells the detective that he can help. He knows this guy's cousin, Jack, from way back. He can reach out and try to find out more. The detective is clearly uneasy with this suggestion, and he warns Polson, be careful.

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Later that night, Polson and Jack's cousin meet in the parking lot of a waterfront bar. According to Polson, Jack's cousin denies taking part in the shooting. And the cousin offers several names of people he says were involved. One of them is Daniel. Everyone's telling on everyone. All this time, Daniel's been terrified of Jack finding out he was a snitch. But guess what?

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I figured out that Jack, the ruthless gang leader, and his cousin, they snitched too. To take out a snitch, someone else had to snitch. And now, Daniel's a suspect. Within days of Polson's parking lot meetup with Jack's cousin, Daniel's picked up by police for questioning. And he spills his guts.

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Daniel tells police about his work as an informant, about Jack and his close ties to Officer Polson, and about being outed, and about how because of that, he felt he had to prove his loyalty to the gang. Then, perhaps naively, he admits to pulling the trigger, and not just one, but two shootings. In these two instances, Daniel says he had no choice.

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It's Friday night, around 6. This is Daniel. He's calling from a prison in Massachusetts.

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This podcast is about all the ways in which law enforcement exploits, manipulates, and cheats the informant system. I've already told you about the New Bedford cop who tried to explain his illegal boat raid simply by uttering the magic letters CI. It's like the ultimate hall pass. Drop the word informant and it's no questions asked.

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Daniel thinks he's doing the right thing by coming clean. He thinks that because he's a CI and has been outed, police will understand he had no choice, and they'll let him off the hook. But he's just confessed to two shootings. Of course they charge him with attempted assault and battery with a firearm. But New Bedford police can't ignore the other part of Daniel's story.

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Everything he told them about Polson and Jack's relationship triggers an internal affairs investigation. And that's the tape we've been using to tell this story.

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Despite Polson's denials, investigators are skeptical about his relationship with Jack.

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Investigators want to know why Jack takes Polson's calls at all, if they're not close. As he struggles to answer the investigators' questions, Polson says something incredible. That Jack has actually provided information to Polson before, as a kind of off-the-books informant. In fact, what Polson says is that Jack has twice given him Daniel's nickname as someone for police to look into.

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This is an astonishing statement, and it confirms two things. One, that Jack was snitching on Daniel. And two, that Polson and Jack had been discussing Daniel. Lieutenant Robert Holmes also presses Polson about the unsolicited call he made to the detective on the shooting, saying Jack's cousin is not a gun guy.

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Investigators want to know why Polson's phone has been wiped clean.

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Another investigator confronts Polson about specific text messages with Jack that Polson deleted, but that investigators were able to recover.

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It appears to be a warning to Jack that police are ramping up their investigation into a recent shooting. Yeah.

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But now, I wanna tell you about the other side of this game, the people who put their trust in police with a promise that no one will ever find out. That's what they pledged to Daniel, but they broke that promise. Daniel always knew that if members of his gang found out he was a snitch, he'd be in serious trouble. What he didn't anticipate was being betrayed by police.

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Investigators aren't just digging into Polson's relationship with Jack. They're also trying to get to the bottom of Daniel's story. Did a fellow officer really burn Daniel?

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They want to know if Polson shared information with Jack and his cousin.

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Today, Daniel's in prison, navigating that world, knowing that his identity as an informant is out there, and constantly afraid of what's next.

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How do you live with that kind of stress constantly?

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It's a small world. All it'll take is the wrong person showing up.

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So each day, he keeps his head down and keeps watch.

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Each night, he stays up, peering out of his cell and watching as new inmates are marched in.

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Daniel studies each of them.

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But all his precautions haven't been enough.

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Later, he made that desperate call to me.

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He begs me to reach out to his girlfriend. What do you want me to tell her?

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I didn't hear from Daniel for months after that call. I began to worry I never would. But finally, he did reach out to me. He told me that he was doing okay, and said he hoped something would come from him sharing his story. When a police source first tipped me to this case, I was skeptical. But a lot of what Daniel's told me has rung true.

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Much of it is backed up by police reports, court documents, and by Alex Polson himself. Polson called me one night, not too long ago, after I asked for an interview. He talked about being childhood friends with Jack, but said they don't hang out anymore. Polson denied sharing Daniel's name with Jack or sharing any police information.

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In the course of our conversation, he named three people who were informing to police, a clear breach of policy. Polson said it's widely known in New Bedford who's working with police. Quote, He called it common sense. The police department didn't respond to numerous questions from the Globe or interview requests.

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The department issued a statement saying that the allegations flagged by the Globe have been, quote, investigated to resolution and made public or lacked a credible basis to pursue further investigation. New Bedford Police eventually completed the internal investigation. Given the seriousness of the allegations, the scope of the probe is surprisingly limited.

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They didn't speak to Jack or his younger cousin, and they only interviewed four people. Three of them were New Bedford cops. In the end, the IA report doesn't assert that Polson outed Daniel as an informant. But the investigation is clear that Polson had released sensitive police information to gang members. That's a serious breach of policy.

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A former IA investigator told me it could be a fireable offense, one that would put Polson's name on something called the Brady List. That's a list prosecutors keep of problematic officers who might not be trustworthy. But a police higher-up viewed it very differently and overruled the investigator's findings.

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I'm Dugan Arnett, and from the Boston Globe Spotlight team, this is Snitch City. Episode 2, Blind Trust.

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At the bottom of the report, he crossed out the charge with a pin and replaced it with a much lighter one. Ultimately, the only penalty Alex Polson faced was a single counseling session. Polson's still a member of the New Bedford Police today. And the person whose signature is next to the crossed-out charge in Polson's case is a man named Paul Oliveira.

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Oliveira is part of Alex Polson's story. He knew about George Santos on the waterfront, and he knows a lot more. The deeper I've gotten into this investigation, the more I realize how far back all this goes. As a young drug cop, Oliveira was molding the department's CI culture into something no one had seen before.

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After months of trying, I got someone to go on the record and tell me all about it. A guy who served alongside Oliveira in narcotics.

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He and others tell me about informant abuse, crimes, cover-ups, and so much more. That's next time on Snitch City. Spotlight Snitch City is reported and hosted by me, Dugan Arnett. Additional reporting by Andrew Ryan and Brendan McCarthy. The podcast is written by Max Green and Kristen Nelson, along with me and Brendan McCarthy. Max Green is senior producer.

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Executive producers are Spotlight editor Brendan McCarthy and Kristen Nelson, the Globe's head of audio. Additional editing and support from Gordon Russell and Kathleen Goldhar. Safania says the actor who brought Daniel's words to life. Nancy Barnes is the Boston Globe's executive editor. Sound design and mix by Stephen Jackson. Episode artwork by Julian D. Paulson. Art direction by Ryan Huddle.

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Podcast visualization by Olivia Yarvis and Anoush Elbakian. Heather Cyrus is the audience editor. Tim Rasmussen is visuals editor. Legal review by John Albaino. Fact-checking by Matt Mahoney. Marketing support for this podcast comes from The Podglomerate.

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Daniel and I developed a system. When I needed to reach him, I'd text his girlfriend, and she'd get word to him. A day or two later, my phone would ring. Sometimes we talked about mundane things. So if you want to watch a movie, you've got to use your canteen money? Yeah, you have to download them, and they cost like $3 each movie.

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Sometimes we'd spend hours going over the finer details of his story.

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Sometimes we talk about the future. When you get out, what will you do?

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I got used to seeing the prison number pop up on my phone and scrambling to turn on my recorder. Would you have some time to chat a little bit more? I just had like a... I could call a little later. Yeah, that works for me. I'll be in the office until late. So yeah, just give me a ring and I'll make sure I'm here. All right, bye. All right, see ya. Thanks, Doogie.

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I wish I could tell you everything I know about Daniel. But we're protecting his identity because he could face retaliation for talking to me, from other inmates, from members of his former gang, even from law enforcement. You're going to hear a lot from him in this episode. And I want to be clear. Daniel was a gang member. He broke the law. Many of them, in fact.

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Still, the stories he shared, many of the details are backed up by police reports and court documents. While I can't tell you every detail about Daniel, you've probably heard backstories like his before, at least in broad strokes. Daniel's father is in prison when he's born. His mom does her best to raise him and his siblings, but... That was only so much she can do, you know what I'm saying?

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We've been talking for months now, but I've never heard him like this. Can you tell me what's going on? Hello? Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Doogie? Daniel's a former gang member turned police informant, and he has an extraordinary story. Doogie, I'm so stressed out. Can you tell me what's going on? I'm just going through something right now. I just need your help.

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Sports were an escape from some of the unpleasant aspects of childhood, but only kept him occupied for so long.

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His teen years are marked by arrests for drug dealing, assault, gun possession, one for domestic violence, and he spends stretches in juvenile lockup. But on the outside, he's increasingly drawn to the action of gang life. Daniel's introduction to the informant world came a few years back, when he was 19. It happens the way it does for most people. He gets caught doing something illegal.

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He's carrying drugs one night when the police pull him over. He foists the drugs on the young woman in the passenger seat next to him, and she shoves them down her pants.

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They cuff him and take him to the police station. He's gutted. He's only recently gotten out of jail, and he's panicked by the thought of going back. At the police station, Daniels walked past desks strewn with paperwork.

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It becomes clear that they don't really care about the drugs, that they're more interested in making a deal.

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They tell him that no one will ever know, that his name will never end up in paperwork, that it will be a confidential and brief alliance. Did they give you much time to think about it? Like, how long is all this playing out? What's the conversation like?

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Daniel knows what he's supposed to do. It's part of a code ingrained in him and kids like him since childhood. It's in the DNA of the hip-hop he was raised on, the gangland movies he's seen. Keep your mouth shut. But he's hesitating.

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Daniel just wants to go home. And the police are giving him a simple way to do that.

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So he makes a decision. He'll do it. Just this once.

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The officers put some paperwork in front of him, registering him as a confidential informant.

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One week to give cops enough information to get one gun off the street. Then, Daniel's off the hook. But that's not what happens. Daniel says within days, he helps police make an arrest and gun seizure. But they want more.

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Daniel's not his real name, and we're using an actor to give voice to his exact words. Because he says his life is in danger.

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Daniel tries to keep his cool. But this goes beyond the one-gun deal.

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But the demands keep coming. A third, a fourth, a fifth time.

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To Daniel, it's not a choice. And of course, he can't tell anyone or turn to anyone. He fears that if he puts his foot down, they could bring back the drug charge.

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He feels trapped, isolated, and terrible about giving up people that he knows.

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Arrangements like the one Daniel made are everyday occurrences in police departments across the country. Open the file on pretty much any drug investigation, and you're likely to find a confidential informant. But experts say that in Massachusetts and other states, there are no laws on the books to protect informants. It's left to local police departments, even campus cops, to establish the rules.

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As a CI, Daniel was a regular source of information for police. By his own account, he helped officers make several arrests and get guns off the street. Daniel says he was never paid for this work, unlike some informants. And from his point of view, police leaned on him too much. Before long, Daniel feels like all of his energy is going into managing this double life.

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He's seen what can happen to people suspected of working with police.

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But Daniel's holding out hope that no one will ever find out that he's working as a CI. Until one night, when it all comes crashing down. He's out driving around, when again, police stop him.

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He knows that to get out of this, all he has to do is tell the cops that he's a CI and mention the name of his handler. So that's what he does. But then, one of the cops taking notes asks Daniel how to spell his name.

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Immediately, Daniel realizes he's seen this cop before. He remembers the piercing blue eyes. Daniel first saw him several months earlier at a park. The cop was hanging out with one of Daniel's fellow gang members, a guy I'm calling Jack, but that's not his real name. Jack is older than Daniel. His arms are covered in tattoos.

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And Daniel kind of looked up to Jack, who's a heavy hitter with a long criminal record, including arrests for drugs and assault, battery of a police officer, stalking a rival with a revolver in his waistband. So it stood out to Daniel to see this guy Jack chatting so casually with a New Bedford cop. The officer had dark hair and piercing blue eyes.

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Seeing the two of them together was strange enough that Daniel asked Jack about it.

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And there was something else, too.

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That cop tells me everything. And that cop is Alexander Polson.

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New Bedford is a good-sized city that feels a lot like a small town. People on both sides of the law grow up in the same neighborhoods, share classrooms and athletic fields.

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When I got off this call, my editors asked me to tell them what happened. And he just kept saying, like, I need your help. I need your help. You're the only person whose number I know. You're the only person who can reach out. You see, word got out about Daniel being an informant. He was burned. And now he's scared. He's told me about threats.

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Officer Alex Polson grew up near New Bedford and attended area schools.

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Back in high school, Polson was kind of preppy. He played football, soccer, lacrosse, and hockey. In his yearbook, he quotes Wayne Gretzky. I don't skate to the puck, I skate to where it's going to be. In his senior photo, Polson's hair is closely cropped. He's wearing a white collared shirt, a navy plaid tie. He has a square chin, steely blue eyes, and a subtle smile.

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Back then, Paulson and Jack, the older member of Daniel's gang, hung out. They forged a friendship over video games.

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While Paulson was busy playing high school sports, Jack was getting into trouble and becoming a budding player in the local gang world. They were an odd pair, but close enough that once, when Polson was getting harassed by another teenager, Jack stepped in and fought the bully.

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What would you call it back then?

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As kids, they were pals. Jack had Polson's back. But as adults, their loyalties should have shifted. Jack to the gang and Polson to the police. After becoming a cop, Polson says he let Jack know that things had changed.

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Before we begin, this story includes strong language. Please take care when listening. It's a warm summer night in 2018, and there's a strange situation unfolding aboard a scalloping boat docked in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The caller says there's an intruder on board.

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Around this time, a call goes out to police radios across town.

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Santos gets sent back to his hotel room. And from there, he calls Raposo, screaming and threatening to tear the hotel room apart.

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Their boss, the Marine unit supervisor, is there too. So Raposo expects some kind of fallout the next day. I thought that was it. I said, hey.

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There's no way. You know, he's not going to be able to stay here. But there are no consequences. And this wouldn't be the last time police higher-ups let things slide when it came to Santos. Raposo says that's because the department valued one thing above all else, stats. Car stops, citations, arrests, these numbers are the lifeblood of modern policing.

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They make for good headlines, lead to promotions. Bosses can point to them to show they're getting results. And in New Bedford, nobody could fill a stat sheet like George Santos. He was constantly among the department's most active officers. Supervisors raved about his work ethic. His numbers were written up in the local news.

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Many officers told me what Santos really wanted was to be a drug cop. And he tried to turn his cushy Marine unit gig into just that. Searching for pills, squeezing people, and trying to build up a stable of informants.

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Drug cops are encouraged to develop informants, and they do this by finding people who are on the outs and forming a relationship. Of course, it's largely one-sided and fraught in a lot of ways, but still a partnership, one that's shrouded in secrecy. In theory, this protects informants and their identities because it's dangerous to snitch. But the secrecy has another effect.

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It leaves the role of police and the rules they play by completely unknowable and opaque to anyone else. Trust me, I tried. The Globe requested information about informants from every law enforcement agency in the state. We weren't asking for names or identifying information, but basic things. How many do you have? How much do you pay them, if at all?

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And a number of the 400 or so agencies just didn't respond. New Bedford was especially resistant to my questions. For over a year, I requested records that are supposed to be available to the public. Time and again, the department delayed or didn't respond at all. New Bedford's city attorney got involved. Then the Globe's attorney got involved. We're still battling with the city over the records.

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But we're using some of the ones we did receive to tell this story. All told, this secrecy makes accountability almost impossible. Raposo says it was this lack of transparency that enabled Santos to get away with everything.

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10-4 en route. As police try to figure out exactly what's going on, the message reaches an officer in a nearby patrol car.

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Around this time, another person was watching George Santos become increasingly erratic. A fisherman named Freddy Loya, who's been coming into New Bedford's port for nearly 35 years. Wow.

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Freddie's a jovial guy with long salt and pepper hair. He's also captain of the Little Tutti. Tell me about the first time you encountered pastillas.

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At first, Freddy was glad to hear that someone might actually be doing something about the pill problem plaguing the docks. But then Santos pulled him over again and again and again.

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And one afternoon, it all comes to a head. Santos doesn't find anything and sends Freddy on his way. But soon after, Freddy's son-in-law, who was in the truck with him, notices something. There'd been a bottle of prescription pills, Adderall, in the truck, medicine that Freddy's wife had legally. And now it's missing.

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Freddy speeds back to the waterfront and finds Santos parked near the docks.

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Santos says he'll give Freddy the pills back, but he wants something in return.

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So he steals your pills, and then when you go to get them back, tries to basically turn you into an informant for him.

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Yeah, like an exchange. Santos wants Freddy to snitch. To Freddy, it seems more like extortion than a police tactic. Either way, he has no intention of working with Santos. Eventually, he gets his wife's pills and they go their separate ways.

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Immediately, he has a bad feeling because he suspects he knows who might be causing the trouble, a colleague he's spent the past year trying to avoid, a young officer named George Santos. The waterfront is quiet when Raposo arrives. He parks his cruiser, makes his way down to the dock, cautiously steps aboard the boat, and into a scene that defies explanation.

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Freddie's lack of faith in the New Bedford police would turn out to be pretty well-founded. I examined countless police reports, internal affairs files, and department disciplinary records. And I can say, Freddie and the other fishermen I talked to are just the tip of the iceberg. I've identified half a dozen people who say they had drugs taken from them by Santos.

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Not seized as part of a drug arrest, but stolen. Many of their stories are remarkably similar. A questionable car stop, an illegal search, and then a robbery.

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Officer Mark Raposo.

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Santos cast a pall over the waterfront. For decades, the docks had served as a gathering place for immigrant fishermen, a kind of safe haven where they could swap stories or blow off steam. But as his behavior escalated, even those who never touched drugs grew increasingly uneasy. Some began avoiding the waterfront altogether.

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And Freddie says, fishermen began to whisper about taking matters into their own hands.

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There was a suspicious fire at Santos' home.

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George Santos' take-home cruiser was on fire. Authorities said the blaze was likely caused by an electrical issue or equipment failure. But Raposo and a bunch of current and former officers I spoke with don't believe the official version.

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A mysterious fire, threats, illegal search and seizures, it was all getting to be too much for Raposo. At one point, he tells his supervisor he no longer wants anything to do with George Santos.

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But Raposo is complaining about a guy who is a rock star in the department. And he quickly learns that speaking up against a fellow officer can have consequences. Raposo says it happens fast. The schedule he's had for years suddenly changes. He loses his take-home cruiser. His supervisor starts to target him for minor infractions. It's clear to him that this is the price of sticking his neck out.

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Okay, no problem. I'll take the hit. Raposo's a veteran cop. He's seen a lot in his 20 years on the job. But his problems with Santos were far from over. And even he couldn't foresee what was coming.

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He's got a gun. Raposa's colleague, George Santos, is off duty.

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The night of the 911 call aboard the Little Tutti in summer 2018, that's when the stories of George Santos, Mark Raposo, and Freddie Loya converge. So tell us about that night. So you're docked.

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Freddie was exhausted after a day aboard the Little Tootie, captaining a crew of a half dozen. He hopped into his truck to run an errand before bed.

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It was a member of his crew, and the guy sounded panicked.

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What's going through your head when you get this call?

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Within minutes, Mark Raposo steps aboard the Little Tutti and tries to make sense of what he's seeing.

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It's yet another of Santos' questionable searches. Another push for drugs. Vague talk about informants. But this time, Freddie's certain that Santos has taken it too far. As he races back to the boat, he slams the steering wheel. He's elated.

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Dispatch lets the caller know. Okay. Sir, that is an officer. We checked.

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Despite all the chaos and tension aboard the boat, the encounter on the Little Tutti ends pretty anticlimactically. Raposo coaxes Santos from the boat. A supervisor arrives. They tell the fishermen to lock up. Everyone goes their separate ways. Raposo returns to the station and tries to tell a sergeant what he just witnessed.

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In the most blunt terms possible, Raposo advises the sergeant that another officer just tried to rob some fishermen of drugs. In his words, a drug rip. Like Freddy, Raposo is sure that the little Tootie has to be the final straw. Both of these guys, each terrorized by Santos in their own way, think this time police can't ignore Santos anymore. And they were right.

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George Santos. I got my hands on the internal affairs file, as well as recordings of some of the interviews, including this one with Santos, where he struggles to recall even basic details.

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When Raposo boards the boat, he finds a bunch of angry fishermen shouting over each other. They're convinced that this officer with bloodshot eyes is here to rob them.

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I've read a lot of internal affairs reports from many different police departments, and they all tend to follow a similar pattern. But the 230 pages dedicated to George Santos and the little tootie are unlike anything I've ever seen. And what quickly becomes clear with each new interview is that the department's George Santos problem extends far beyond a single night aboard a scalloping boat.

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Kaitlyn Sylvia was working 911 dispatch when the call from the little tootie came in.

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She tells police she immediately had an inkling that Santos might be involved because by then, she'd already had some troubling experiences with him.

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She's not the only one who tells police about his misconduct. A half-dozen fishermen also come forward, saying that Santos took their drugs. Some said they were harassed, searched illegally. And almost all say there are other victims, people who are too nervous to speak up. State your name for the record, please.

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Investigators also interview a former police officer who now works security at a hotel where a lot of fishermen stay. Michael Roussel tells police that Santos was illegally searching hotel guests. They told him he could not be bothering our customers like that. Roussel says he repeatedly heard stories from fishermen about a rogue cop obsessed with pills.

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I don't know why Santos was stealing pills. After the little tootie, he was ordered to take a drug test, and the results came back negative. That surprised some of his colleagues, who told me they believed he had a drug addiction. Either way, it's clear that Santos' behavior was an open secret to almost anyone working on or near the waterfront.

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Nothing about the situation makes sense to Raposo. What possible reason could Santos have to be here?

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That's why when Raposo got that call from dispatch, right away he figured it was Santos on the boat, acting erratically. And he suspected Santos had no good reason for being there, that it wasn't police work. Here's what Santos told investigators about what happened that night. He's home that evening when an informant calls with a tip.

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It's big, 100 grams of opiates aboard a scalloping boat docked in the harbor. Santos says he tells a supervisor, hurries over, boards the boat, and you've heard the rest. But as the investigation unfolds, police records show significant problems with that story.

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After reviewing all these police files, listening to the tapes, and talking to dozens of sources, I can tell you, his account doesn't really hold water. Crew members say they never gave Santos permission to board the boat. Phone records suggest he lied about notifying a supervisor. But the biggest, most glaring issue is the supposed confidential informant.

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The audio from the police department is heavily redacted.

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Santos' attorney jumps in. No. No, sir. Santos repeatedly tells investigators that his story about the CI is true. But when they try to drill down on details, he's evasive and cagey.

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When they try to push him further about his justification for boarding the boat, his answer is pretty telling.

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Santos tells Raposo he's got a confidential informant who told him that there were drugs aboard the Little Tutti. These two words, confidential informant, are like magic. As soon as they're uttered, a cloak of secrecy takes over. What's exchanged between a cop and a CI is known only to them and can open doors that are otherwise closed shut. These words triple wire for Rapoza.

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George Santos said an informant told him there were drugs on the little tutti. But after months of investigating the story, I can tell you. There was no informant that night, at least not by any reasonable definition of the word. In fact, it doesn't appear Santos ever had any registered informants. I wish I could tell you for sure, but the department refused to hand over that information.

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So either Santos invented a CI out of thin air, or he took the word of an off-the-book source. And remember, Santos isn't a drug cop. He's in the Marine unit. So no, Santos' story doesn't hold up. And Mark Raposo? Well, he's blunt about what he saw. A drug rip.

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In New Bedford, as internal investigators work the Santos case, Officer Mark Raposo gets a letter, a subpoena. Prosecutors are considering potential criminal charges against Santos, and a grand jury has been convened. Raposo is asked to testify.

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He's leery. For months, he'd been sounding the alarm on Santos, having his complaints ignored. Now, he's being asked to breach policing's most fundamental code, to testify against another officer, to break the blue wall of silence. In a way, he's being asked to snitch. Think about it. Prosecutors are asking Raposo to work with them. It's a big step, and he wants reassurances.

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Still, a number of anxiety-inducing scenarios play out in his head. Will he be targeted or scapegoated? Is he a whistleblower? Most importantly, Raposo wonders whether he and his family are safe.

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Expecting an indictment, Raposo even makes plans to send his wife and kids to stay with his in-laws.

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Eventually, the grand jury wraps, and Raposo's worst-case scenario plays out. There are no charges, no arrests, and no one gives Raposo a heads-up. He only finds out when he calls the prosecutor for an update. And this is when Mark Raposo, police officer for nearly two decades, seemingly loses faith in the criminal justice system.

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While the criminal case peters out, the internal affairs case is much more definitive. Investigators don't ignore the evidence they gathered. The findings are scathing. They show that Santos essentially turned a mile-long stretch of the waterfront into his own personal pharmacy, systematically targeting and preying upon some of the city's most vulnerable.

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And it makes clear that people in the department knew about it. I found at least four complaints that went directly to the deputy chief. So when it comes time to hand down punishment, it looks like there could be some accountability, something that would send a message. Nope, not here.

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19 months after being put on paid leave, the department took initial steps to fire him, and the mayor set a hearing date on the matter. But then, Santos resigned, before any discipline was handed out. He was free to go on his way. No penalty, no problem. Today, he lives on a quiet street in a small Florida town, not far from the Gulf Coast.

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Shortly before wrapping this podcast, I knocked on Santos' door.

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He answered the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt. He was soft-spoken and polite. He invited me in, and we chatted for a few minutes. I told him what would be in the story, and he made clear that he didn't want to comment at all. The New Bedford Police Department wouldn't make anyone available for an interview. In response to my written questions, they emailed a statement.

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It said that these allegations have been, quote, investigated to resolution and made public or lacked a credible basis to pursue further investigation. The department also pointed to a 2023 audit with roughly 90 recommendations, including two generic ones related to the use of CIs. One recommends that officers be aware of the informant policy.

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As for Mark Raposo, after the Santos court case collapsed, things get complicated.

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He feels ostracized by other officers. The bosses change his job duties and his work schedule. And it's impossible for him to see it as anything other than retaliation.

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Not long after the grand jury and IA cases peter out, it occurs to Raposo there's one last option. One more call he can make. Did you have to sort of talk yourself into making that call, like build yourself up to it?

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This whole situation looks really bad to Raposo. He thinks it's a crime scene. It looks like George Santos is here using his power as a cop and the supposed word of a confidential informant to force his way onto a boat and steal drugs.

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The FBI is his last hope. He's on a side job at a shipyard. He finds a quiet spot, pulls out his cell phone, and dials.

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You would think. After making the call, he waits and waits.

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Yeah, they weren't interested, I guess. I reached out to the FBI for comment. They said, quote, "...as a matter of long-standing policy, we cannot confirm or deny the existence of investigations." Mark Raposo took a huge risk talking to me, going on the record with his name to speak out against the police department where he's still employed today.

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I don't know. He doesn't know what kind of consequences he'll face when this comes out.

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If the saga of George Santos sparked even a hint of departmental soul searching, I haven't found any evidence of it. In fact, I found a lot of other cases like this in New Bedford involving many of the same players. And it goes all the way to the top of the department. Mark Raposo is not the only one who's tried to get the attention of the FBI.

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The feds know a lot about the police department's problems and alleged misconduct, and you're going to hear all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you about an informant whose life is in danger right now.

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He trusted New Bedford police, and they burned him. Now, he's cowering in a prison cell.

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Through the course of this podcast, you'll hear how America's informant system has been corrupted. My investigation has uncovered numerous cases of informant misconduct, lies, corruption, cover-ups of cover-ups, misdeeds that could cast doubt on countless drug cases, with consequences for drug enforcement everywhere.

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That's coming up on Snitch City. Spotlight Snitch City is reported and hosted by me, Dugan Arnett. Additional reporting by Andrew Ryan and Brendan McCarthy. The podcast is written by Max Green and Kristen Nelson, along with me and Brendan McCarthy. Max Green is senior producer. Executive producers are Spotlight editor Brendan McCarthy and Kristen Nelson, the Globe's head of audio.

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Additional editing and support from Gordon Russell and Kathleen Goldar. Thanks also to Taylor Dolvin for her help translating on the docs. Nancy Barnes is the Boston Globe's executive editor. Sound design and mix by Steven Jackson. Episode artwork by Julian D. Paulson. Art direction by Ryan Huddle. Podcast visualization by Olivia Yarvis and Anush Elbakian. Heather Cyrus is the audience editor.

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Tim Rasmussen is visuals editor. Legal review by John Albano. Fact-checking by Matt Mahoney. Marketing support for this podcast comes from The Podglomerate.

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The cop who showed up on the Little Tutti that night, wild-eyed, flashing a gun, and demanding drugs, says he was tipped off by a confidential informant, a claim he knew would grant him, a police officer, certain liberties. You see, informants are the backbone of nearly every drug investigation in America.

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With little more than the word of a CI, cops can launch investigations, break down doors, and upend lives. Today, police are allowed to direct and oversee this vast anonymous army with no oversight, no regulation, and no transparency. Until relatively recently, many departments didn't even have rules in place about using informants. Surprisingly, some still don't.

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How it works is all up to police, and it's nearly all done in secret.

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I'm Dugan Arnett, an investigative reporter with the Boston Globe Spotlight team. I've spent the last two years inside the secret world of police informants, where the stakes can be life and death. And no one wants you to know how it really works. Not prosecutors, not judges, not police. And certainly not the informants themselves, who can pay dearly for cooperating with cops.

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Trying to get to the bottom of all this has taken me to the heart of one small city at the forefront of America's drug war. New Bedford, Massachusetts.

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In a nation addicted to drugs, police across the country have become addicted to informants. And nowhere is that more apparent than in this historic port city, the backdrop of Moby Dick, where police have been empowered to use informants to take down dealers by almost any means necessary.

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My investigation has taken me from the docks of New Bedford to the homes of drug traffickers, to remote parking lots where skittish cops will only meet at night. I'm going to tell you about several cases of police misconduct, all involving informants. And you'll hear from the people on all sides of this, including informants themselves, reluctant to snitch and yet still caught up.

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I've reviewed thousands of pages of court records and internal police documents going back more than three decades. And what I've found in case after case is officers who've exploited this informant system in almost every way imaginable to enrich themselves, break laws, protect kingpins, and attack perceived enemies. And they've done it all with impunity.

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Some crew members are sleeping. Others are making final preparations for the next day's fishing trip down the Atlantic coast. When suddenly, there's a loud banging on the door and a frenzied man pushes his way inside. Does he have many weapons on him? Yeah, he has a system inside. He's dressed in all black. His eyes are bloodshot. And he has a gun.

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This podcast is an unvarnished, behind-the-scenes look at this clandestine world, where total secrecy has allowed corruption and misconduct to fester. From the Boston Globe's spotlight team, this is Snitch City. Episode 1, Officer Pastillas.

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I'm at New Bedford's waterfront with my editor, Brendan, walking the docks where the fishermen made that 911 call. This story begins at the site of the Little Tutti, because what happened here is a glaring example of abuse within the confidential informant system.

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In many ways, the waterfront is the heart of New Bedford, and Officer George Santos was detailed to the city's Marine unit. This was his territory. His job was to check boat licenses, patrol the harbor, that sort of thing.

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I've been told that the fishing community here is tight-knit and that if I want to learn more about Santos, this is the place to start. Brendan and I approach a couple of grizzled fishermen throwing lobster traps.

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New Bedford's fortunes have always been tied to the ocean. If you know anything about the place, it's probably that it was once the hub of the whaling industry. And in the 19th century, that made it one of the richest cities in the world. This is where Herman Melville set off on the whaling voyage that inspired Moby Dick.

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Today, New Bedford still has an old-world feel, with cobblestone streets running through the city center. There are fish houses lining the waterfront, and the scent of briny ocean air is hard to escape. the city's fishing port still brings in the most valuable haul in the country. But few people here actually perceive that, and the city can feel a little down on its luck.

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In this city of 100,000, overdoses are routine. The local drug court is one of the busiest in the state.

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The search for drugs and especially pills draws a lot of folks to the docks, Santos included.

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pills in Spanish.

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And the dispatcher's trying to figure out what's going on. The fisherman is telling the dispatcher that the guy on his boat claims he's a police officer. So you think he's lying, he's not an officer?

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Tony says Santos would pull people over and immediately begin searching their cars, squeezing them for information.

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He wants people to be informants, to tell him and give him information.

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That's what he wants. Yeah. What Tony's describing is wild. Santos stopping people without cause, searching them for drugs, and then pressuring them to become informants. But he wasn't a drug cop, and cultivating informants wasn't part of his job description. When I first came to the story, I had the same sense of how police use informants that you might.

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They build relationships with people who are supposedly in or close to the drug trade and offer them a pass, a plea bargain, occasionally a few bucks, in exchange for information. Now, more than 50 years into America's war on drugs, law enforcement's reliance upon confidential informants has become nearly absolute. Still, it's not supposed to look anything like what Santos was doing.

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George Santos was a local kid. He attended the city's vocational high school. He's short. In photos I've seen, he's got round cheeks, a bit of dark stubble, and a sweet smile. People who know him say he's friendly, hardworking, if a little unpolished. One story I heard sticks out to me, that as a police cadet, he sometimes had to be told not to wear sweatpants to work.

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But as an officer, Santos quickly got a reputation. Other cops were wary of him. Some kept their distance, including Mark Raposo.

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Before his life collided with Santos, Rapoza was part of New Bedford's police marine unit, a dream job.

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Working on the Marine unit was pretty straightforward. Maintain relationships with fishermen and boat owners and provide security on the docks.

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But it also required a lot of training, diving certifications, Coast Guard licenses, years of experience, qualifications that George Santos didn't have.

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Nonetheless, Santos gets the job. And almost immediately, there's fireworks. One night, after a training exercise on Martha's Vineyard, a bunch of cops go out for drinks. Raposo says he watches Santos try to pick a fight with one of the police instructors.

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My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war.

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The FBI went around to all their neighbors and said to them, do you think these people are good Americans? It's got heists, tragedy, a trial of the century, and the goddamnedest love story you've ever heard.

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Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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The Gullibility Episode

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Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter, and their plus one, their ride or die, as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey.

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The Gullibility Episode

3378.424

Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

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Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

15.325

I was in Whole Foods the other day looking for a fun little bevy to go with my lunch, and I found my new obsession. SunSip is a gut-healthy soda from HealthAid, and they just dropped two new flavors. Dr. Bubbles is a fresh take on the doctor's signature blend of sweet fruit and subtle spices, while Cream Soda serves up velvety vanilla and sweet caramel. And the best part?

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

1746.601

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

1761.741

I was in Whole Foods the other day looking for a fun little bevy to go with my lunch, and I found my new obsession. SunSip is a gut-healthy soda from HealthAid, and they just dropped two new flavors. Dr. Bubbles is a fresh take on the doctor's signature blend of sweet fruit and subtle spices, while Cream Soda serves up velvety vanilla and sweet caramel. And the best part?

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

1781.662

SunSip has gut-healthy prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals, all with 40 calories or less. Grab these new SunSip flavors on sale now. Only at Whole Foods in the beverage cooler near HealthAid Kombucha.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

35.25

SunSip has gut-healthy prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals, all with 40 calories or less. Grab these new SunSip flavors on sale now. Only at Whole Foods in the beverage cooler near HealthAid Kombucha.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

47.037

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

603.607

Since 100% fiber internet makes any home upgrade possible, I can finally live my dream of having my own smart office. I was going to say golf simulator.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

614.107

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with auto pay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

631.826

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

633.723

I was in Whole Foods the other day looking for a fun little bevy to go with my lunch, and I found my new obsession. SunSip is a gut-healthy soda from HealthAid, and they just dropped two new flavors. Dr. Bubbles is a fresh take on the doctor's signature blend of sweet fruit and subtle spices, while Cream Soda serves up velvety vanilla and sweet caramel. And the best part?

Stuff You Should Know

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SunSip has gut-healthy prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals, all with 40 calories or less. Grab these new SunSip flavors on sale now. Only at Whole Foods in the beverage cooler near HealthAid Kombucha.

Stuff You Should Know

Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Richard III: Good Guy or Evil Putz?

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Richard III: Good Guy or Evil Putz?

78.013

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Chelsea Hotel

1.457

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Chelsea Hotel

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Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you.

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The Chelsea Hotel

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...he actually is too good to be true.

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The Chelsea Hotel

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To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think?

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The Chelsea Hotel

1251.084

But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take.

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The Chelsea Hotel

1263.12

Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

The Chelsea Hotel

3309.187

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Plant-Based Diets

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Plant-Based Diets

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Scribble on Scrabble

1.457

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Scribble on Scrabble

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

The History of Refrigeration

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Catacombs of Paris

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

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Explosives. Chuck. And Josh. There's stuff you should know.

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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

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Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter, and their plus one, their ride or die, as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey.

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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

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Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my legacy.

Stuff You Should Know

10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

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Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter, and their plus one, their ride or die, as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey.

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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

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Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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Since 100% fiber internet makes any home upgrade possible, I can finally live my dream of having my own smart office. I was going to say golf simulator.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

10.799

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1693.376

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoBay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1708.359

Tariff whiplash is real, folks. And rapidly changing economic policies, they affect all of us to one degree or another. Trump 1.0, so that was more tariff talk. Now we are experiencing the widespread tariff action. Totally scattershot, totally random. The theory, Matt, I think is that we're trading short-term pain for long-term gain. That's the tariff theory, at least.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1727.723

But I have a hard time envisioning the long game rosy outcomes if these policy priorities kind of continue. It can be hard to know how to react to news of accelerating layoffs, increasing stock market volatility. That's why the How to Money podcast exists. We cut through the hype to give you crucial information that can help you to achieve your money goals, no matter what is going on in the world.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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Yeah, it's our goal to help you make wise money choices that will allow you to build wealth over time and reduce anxiety levels so you can sleep well at night. How to Money comes out three times a week, but our Friday flight episodes speak directly to what's happening in the financial news so you can digest this week's headlines without freaking out.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1764.367

Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1770.532

Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1775.775

Or if hypnotism is real. You will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

1786.001

Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This may never work for you.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

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So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

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28.493

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

2832.788

Are your money skills total trash? Well, trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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Think, Matt, if your emergency fund was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now. Ouchies. Investing, it is ultimately a necessity, but you've got to keep that emergency fund accessible. It needs to be cash parked in your savings. It's time to learn, and How to Money is here to bring the knowledge.

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2873.864

Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

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2878.826

Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

2884.069

Or if hypnotism is real. You will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole?

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

2894.275

Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

30.494

Are your money skills total trash? Well, trust me, you are not alone. Personal finance ignorance is as American as apple pie, but you can improve. Think, Matt, if your emergency fund was invested, especially given the volatility we're experiencing right now. Ouchies. Investing, it is ultimately a necessity, but you've got to keep that emergency fund accessible.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

50.75

It needs to be cash parked in your savings. It's time to learn, and How to Money is here to bring the knowledge. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

62.618

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

756.994

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, press for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

771.978

Terraflip Flash is real, folks. And rapidly changing economic policies, they affect all of us to one degree or another. Trump 1.0. So that was more tariff talk. Now we are experiencing the widespread tariff action. Totally scattershot. Totally random. The theory, Matt, I think is that we're trading short term pain for long term gain. That's the tariff theory, at least.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

791.346

But I have a hard time envisioning the long game rosy outcomes if these policy priorities kind of continue. It can be hard to know how to react to news of accelerating layoffs, increasing stock market volatility. That's why the How to Money podcast exists. We cut through the hype to give you crucial information that can help you to achieve your money goals, no matter what is going on in the world.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

812.332

Yeah, it's our goal to help you make wise money choices that will allow you to build wealth over time and reduce anxiety levels so you can sleep well at night. How to Money comes out three times a week, but our Friday flight episodes speak directly to what's happening in the financial news so you can digest this week's headlines without freaking out.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

827.965

Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

834.15

Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

839.393

Or if hypnotism is real. You will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

849.619

Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This may never work for you.

Stuff You Should Know

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II

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So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Forensic Dentistry

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Forensic Dentistry

56.477

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Give My Regards to the Broadway Episode!

1150.864

Stuffed with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should

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Give My Regards to the Broadway Episode!

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Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know

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How Automats Worked

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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How Automats Worked

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You know more about the PayPal debit card than you did at the start of this podcast. You know that the PayPal debit card gives you the ability to pay everywhere. You know that you earn 5% cash back on a category of your choosing on up to $1,000 of monthly purchases. And you know that you get to pick a new category every month. Apparel for back to school, groceries for the holidays.

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How Automats Worked

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Start earning 5% cash back with the PayPal debit card today. Don't just pay, PayPal. Terms apply. See PayPal app. This card is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Pursuant to license by MasterCard International, Inc.

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How Automats Worked

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

How Automats Worked

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1.

Stuff You Should Know

The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

1.457

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

1171.434

This is a con, I'm conning you to get the Delano painting. We could do this together.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this doll.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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Chulito, that painting is ours.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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This is a con, I'm conning you. To get the Dilaudo painting, we could do this together.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this doll.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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Chulito, that painting is ours.

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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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D'oh! Operation Flagship

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

D'oh! Operation Flagship

73.726

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

1003.914

On November 5th, 2018, at 6.33 a.m., a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found, except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were 10... vile, grotesque, horrific stories that to this day have been kept restricted from the public. Until now.

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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

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You feel in this too. A horror anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

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Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life...

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He actually is too good to be true.

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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

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To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think?

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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

1101.379

But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take.

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Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!

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Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

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On Saturday, February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Eastern, it's the Pro Volleyball Federation's first All-Star match. The league's biggest stars will clash in a can't-miss event hosted in the Indy Metro area, home of the Indy Ignite. Catch every serve, spike, and save live on CBS.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

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On Saturday, February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Eastern, it's the Pro Volleyball Federation's first All-Star match. The league's biggest stars will clash in a can't-miss event hosted in the Indy Metro area, home of the Indy Ignite. Catch every serve, spike, and save live on CBS.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

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Don't miss this historic showdown of volleyball's finest, the Pro Volleyball Federation All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there.

Stuff You Should Know

The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

18.006

Don't miss this historic showdown of volleyball's finest, the Pro Volleyball Federation All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there.

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

3007.58

On Saturday, February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Eastern, it's the Pro Volleyball Federation's first All-Star match. The league's biggest stars will clash in a can't-miss event hosted in the Indy Metro area, home of the Indy Ignite. Catch every serve, spike, and save live on CBS.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

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Don't miss this historic showdown of volleyball's finest, the Pro Volleyball Federation All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there.

Stuff You Should Know

The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

816.744

On Saturday, February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Eastern, it's the Pro Volleyball Federation's first All-Star match. The league's biggest stars will clash in a can't-miss event hosted in the Indy Metro area, home of the Indy Ignite. Catch every serve, spike, and save live on CBS.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

833.556

Don't miss this historic showdown of volleyball's finest, the Pro Volleyball Federation All-Star match on February 22nd at 1.30 p.m. Be there.

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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader

89.005

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

The Pinkerton Detective Agency

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

The Pinkerton Detective Agency

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

2213.46

In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen.

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What we know about MI6

2221.102

Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

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What we know about MI6

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Has spent 24 of those years in jail.

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12 years in solitary.

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He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity.

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He was an adrenaline junkie, and he was the star of the show.

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Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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What we know about MI6

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I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my spleen, break my ribs. I had my guts all in my hands.

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What we know about MI6

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only to find himself back where he started.

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What we know about MI6

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Roger's saying is, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Roger.

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What we know about MI6

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From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What we know about MI6

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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What we know about MI6

3445.68

Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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What we know about MI6

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Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

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Has spent 24 of those years in jail.

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What we know about MI6

3460.988

But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What we know about MI6

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Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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What we know about MI6

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Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. That's

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What we know about MI6

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spent 24 of those years in jail.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

55.818

But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What we know about MI6

71.951

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

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In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen.

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What we know about MI6

870.253

Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

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What we know about MI6

872.834

Has spent 24 of those years in jail.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

876.036

12 years in solitary.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

877.096

He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity.

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What we know about MI6

884.38

He was an adrenaline junkie, and he was the star of the show.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

889.753

Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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What we know about MI6

895.841

I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my spleen, break my ribs. I had my guts all in my hands.

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What we know about MI6

902.054

only to find himself back where he started.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

904.556

Roger's saying is, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Roger.

Stuff You Should Know

What we know about MI6

913.442

From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: The Deal With Doulas

87.541

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

1984.534

I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skill through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

2007.407

Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

957.35

I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

980.21

Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: When Mount St. Helens Blew Its Top

93.576

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

1792.697

Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

1808.151

Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This may never work for you.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

1830.921

Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts... break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

1843.625

So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

1858.389

When we're five years into Prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

921.058

Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This may never work for you.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

939.553

Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy-to-understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Seven - No, Wait, Five - Mysteries of the Art World

952.259

So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How the Negro Leagues Worked

115.505

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How the Negro Leagues Worked

3627.578

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

2882.683

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Frances Perkins: Influential and Unknown

78.133

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How the Flu Works

154.516

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How the Flu Works

3490.587

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: The Collar Bomb Heist

103.266

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

115.265

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

1155.632

The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

1172.301

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

2240.01

The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

2256.666

Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Electricity Works

2893.068

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1410.473

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1425.841

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1435.347

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1443.412

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1453.778

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1463.527

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

1469.63

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery

2494.782

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

1038.043

Finally, our Nemo Boards shop also makes a good figure on mobile devices. And the illustrations on the boards are now much, much clearer, which is also important to us and what also makes up our brand.

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Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

1049.631

Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

31.5

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin-producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

3142.953

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin-producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

3153.277

We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years. Starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

3197.378

presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

41.84

We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years. Starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

85.93

Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1105.427

Getting diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, or MBC, which is breast cancer that is spread to other parts of the body, can feel overwhelming. But you have options. Real women across the country with HR-positive HER2-negative MBC are taking Ibran's PalboCyclib, a Pfizer product.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1120.012

Prescription Ibran's 125mg tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR-positive HER2-negative MBC as the first hormonal-based therapy. Eye brands may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. Eye brands may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. Both of these can lead to death.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1135.837

Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough, or trouble breathing. Before taking eye brands, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are nursing, pregnant, or plan to be, all medical conditions you have, and about all the medicines you take. For more information about side effects, talk to your doctor.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1152.623

Talk to your doctor about Ibrance, the number one prescribed FDA-approved oral combination treatment for HR-positive HER2-negative MBC. Visit Ibrance.com or call 1-844-9-Ibrance.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1166.6

Oh, such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I know, right? I was worried we'd bring back the same team. Oh, no, I meant those blackout motorized shades. MVP of the room. Blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it's easy. Even you could do it. Nice. I installed these and then got some for my mom, too. You fly across the country to do the install? Nope.

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Selects: How Itching Works

1188.596

Blinds.com can do it all. All she had to do was pick what she wanted. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install. Look at you, a Hall of Fame son. Oh, I just picked the winning team. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Oh, Blinds.com is the GOAT. The GOAT.

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Selects: How Itching Works

1208.894

Shop Blinds.com right now and get up to 45% off select styles and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Save up to 45% at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1225.472

The new year's here. It's the perfect time to refresh those household essentials and score some cashback rewards with Colgate Palmolive. From toothpaste to dish soap, chances are you've got Colgate Palmolive products on your shopping list and in your house right now. We're talking brands like Colgate, Soft Soap, Palmolive, Irish Spring, Fabuloso, and Tom's of Maine.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

1245.928

And right now, you can get up to a $10 digital Visa prepaid card when you buy up to $30 of Colgate-Palmolive products. Here's how it works. Spend $20 on their products, get $5. Spend $30, get a $10 reward. All you do is shop your favorite brands, snap a pic of your receipt, and upload it to cprewards.com. It's so easy. That's cprewards.com. So grab what you need. Or maybe try something new.

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Selects: How Itching Works

1271.036

And get rewarded just for doing your usual shopping. And start your year fresh by earning cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive. Rewards available while supplies last. Limit supply. U.S. only. 1-125-331-25. For full terms and conditions, visit cprewards.com.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2004.318

Here's to those who have been touched by metastatic breast cancer, or MBC, which is breast cancer that is spread to other parts of the body. Celebrating the patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, scientists, and others who have been part of the HR-positive, HER2-negative MBC community with Eyebrance, Palpacyclib, a Pfizer product.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2021.303

Prescription Ibrants, 125 milligram tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR positive HER2 negative MBC as the first hormonal based therapy. Ibrants may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. Ibrants may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. Both of these can lead to death.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2038.058

Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough, or trouble breathing. Before taking iBrands, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver, or kidney problems. Are nursing, pregnant, or planned to be? All medical conditions you have and about all the medicines you take. For more information about side effects, talk to your doctor.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2055.705

Talk to your healthcare team about iBrands. Visit iBrands.com or call 1-844-9-iBrands for more information.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2064.261

The new year's here. It's the perfect time to refresh those household essentials and score some cashback rewards with Colgate Palmolive. From toothpaste to dish soap, chances are you've got Colgate Palmolive products on your shopping list and in your house right now. We're talking brands like Colgate, Soft Soap, Palmolive, Irish Spring, Fabuloso, and Tom's of Maine.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2084.73

And right now, you can get up to a $10 digital Visa prepaid card when you buy up to $30 of Colgate-Palmolive products. Here's how it works. Spend $20 on their products, get $5. Spend $30, get a $10 reward. All you do is shop your favorite brands, snap a pic of your receipt, and upload it to cprewards.com. It's so easy. That's cprewards.com.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2106.977

So grab what you need, or maybe try something new, and get rewarded just for doing your usual shopping. And start your year fresh by earning cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive. Rewards available while supplies last. Limits apply. U.S. only. 1-125-331-25. For full terms and conditions, visit cprewards.com.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2124.67

During tax season, your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control, stopping off at payroll, your accountant or tax preparer, and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS. Any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W-2, just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

2143.983

No wonder the IRS reported tax fraud due to identity theft went up 20% last year. You need LifeLock. They monitor millions of data points per second and alert you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it, backed by the million-dollar protection package. And restoration is guaranteed, or your money back.

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Selects: How Itching Works

2165.709

Don't let identity thieves take you for a ride. Get LifeLock protection for tax season and beyond. Join now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock and use promo code iHeart or go to LifeLock.com slash iHeart for 40% off. Terms apply.

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Selects: How Itching Works

2182.868

Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Upgrade the whole team at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Win the tech search for business PCs at Lenovo.com.

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Selects: How Itching Works

3212.837

Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Upgrade the whole team at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors, so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Win the tech search for business PCs at Lenovo.com.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

3237.073

Lenovo, Lenovo.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

3242.91

During tax season, your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control, stopping off at payroll, your accountant or tax preparer, and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS. Any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W-2, just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

3262.248

No wonder the IRS reported tax fraud due to identity theft went up 20% last year. You need LifeLock. They monitor millions of data points per second and alert you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it, backed by the million-dollar protection package. And restoration is guaranteed, or your money back.

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Selects: How Itching Works

3283.976

Don't let identity thieves take you for a ride. Get LifeLock protection for tax season and beyond. Join now and save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LifeLock and use promo code iHeart or go to LifeLock.com slash iHeart for 40% off. Terms apply.

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Selects: How Itching Works

3300.831

The new year's here. It's the perfect time to refresh those household essentials and score some cashback rewards with Colgate Palmolive. From toothpaste to dish soap, chances are you've got Colgate Palmolive products on your shopping list and in your house right now. We're talking brands like Colgate, Soft Soap, Palmolive, Irish Spring, Fabuloso, and Tom's of Maine.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

3321.286

And right now, you can get up to a $10 digital Visa prepaid card when you buy up to $30 of Colgate-Palmolive products. Here's how it works. Spend $20 on their products, get $5. Spend $30, get a $10 reward. All you do is shop your favorite brands, snap a pic of your receipt, and upload it to cprewards.com. It's so easy. That's cprewards.com.

Stuff You Should Know

Selects: How Itching Works

3343.538

So grab what you need, or maybe try something new, and get rewarded just for doing your usual shopping. And start your year fresh by earning cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive. Rewards available while supplies last. Limits apply. U.S. only. 1-125-331-25. For full terms and conditions, visit cprewards.com.

Suave

Let The Chips Fall - Ep. 5

579.381

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

Suave

Let The Chips Fall - Ep. 5

590.464

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

Suave

Let The Chips Fall - Ep. 5

598.566

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1058.691

Suavez says he was a witness to multiple deaths while he was incarcerated, and this really had an impact on him. be dead sitting in a hallway.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1219.369

And honestly, hearing this conversation and learning about the mental toll that it takes on people who are already sick and basically dying. I mean, this is when I realized why Suave is so adamant about not disconnecting entirely from prison. Why he has to pick up every single phone call. Because even though most of his friends are not sick... he feels that time is ticking, right?

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1244.159

And even those who are young now inside the prison, they're only getting older and eventually they might die there.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1556.392

And since then, they've built a close bond.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1586.316

For a request for compassionate release to be filed, the incarcerated person has to show not only that they're dying, but that they have someone on the outside who's willing to take this person in and provide hospice care. They basically need to be able to allege that they would have better care on the outside than on the inside.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1790.609

As much as Suave would like to detach from prison friends, because it's a weight on him also, the thing is he just can't give up this responsibility that he feels for helping them.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1825.037

Suave, I checked on Old Head. Unfortunately, he's on the other side of the jail, E Block. I do know he's not in the infirmary. His health has declined. I sent word that you're worried and for him to call you ASAP. I'll keep my ears and eyes open for Old Head. All right, bro. Stay safe. Frank is not doing as well as he pretends to be.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1852.586

And I mean, I just keep on forgetting that Frank is over 90 years old and at that age in prison. I mean, it's a precarious situation.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1909.245

piano plays softly

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

1917.554

For now, Suave does what he can. He keeps his phone ringer on. He sprints to answer every call, kind of like the same way I did for him. And he hasn't given up on Frank, the same way that Frank never gave up on Suave. Even when he was a young, hard-headed troublemaker fighting his way through prison, Frank still believed in him.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

2003.89

You said yesterday that you had actually envisioned and prepared for your return. This has me terrified.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

308.996

Are we good, Benita? Yeah. Oh, I guess we're out of time. Get your phones.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

323.002

I mean, it's ringing all the time. Like, he's teaching at the community college and it's ringing. He's in his studio and he's painting and it's ringing. He's recording this podcast and it's ringing. And it's just like all the time. It's constant.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

372.926

So Frank is someone who I've heard about a lot, but I've never met. And I remember Suave talking about this person who taught him how to read. This person who was like one of the oldest people that Suave knew in prison. And he would talk about this guy, Frank, who helped a lot of guys learn the prison rules and how to stay safe. And he was teaching Suave how to do this.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

399.65

And I know that a lot of guys saw this guy, Frank, like a father. And that included Suave.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

482.924

So it is hard to understand Frank over the phone, right? You can tell that his voice is very kind, but it's also really raspy. It's worn out. I mean, he's been in prison for decades.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

533.962

So once he was sentenced, Frank tried to make the most of his time. He promised himself that he would do something positive on the inside. And he found something to pour himself into.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

582.304

And, you know, Suave, when he first started, he wasn't really the easiest one to approach. I mean, he was a teenage rebel.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

6.758

Season two of Suave was made possible by the Mellon Foundation. Mellon makes grants to support visionaries and communities that unlock the power of the arts and humanities to help connect us all. More at Mellon.org.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

644.421

Little by little and over the years, Frank ended up teaching Suave how to read. So Suave was now reading. He was writing letters home. Then Frank taught him how to read these court documents. And then he opened up the world of literature. All of this ended up opening a literal new world for Suave.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

665.581

Because when he went to court, his lawyer was able to highlight all the good work that Suave had done in prison, especially his focus on education, his writing, the fact that he went from being illiterate to being a college graduate. And then Suave gets out and he was deemed worthy of a second chance. And Frank cheered him on.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

749.206

All you guys stay safe, okay? Okay. You stay safe. Secure us. Goodbye. Wow. That's the first time I've heard Frank Ross's voice. 90 years old. Oh, my God. I didn't understand half of what he said.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

766.067

Wow. That was incredible. As we listened to more of Suave's phone calls with Frank over the next few months, we realized that the clock is really ticking and in more ways than one.

Suave

Old Head - Ep. 4

869.827

But just because the policy exists doesn't mean that it's used as often as it could be, because it's actually not easy at all to be approved for this, even if you're really, really sick, right?

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

102.468

To the complexities of human relationships.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

118.274

This season, we look at the long shadow of prison.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

13.931

It's been seven years since David Luis Suave Gonzalez was released from prison after being sentenced to serve life without parole as a teenager.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

131.059

I just don't want to see your back locked up, Suave. Hearing you say that, like, that scares the fucking shit out of me. I'm Julieta Martinelli, and this is Suave, Season 2. A story about life after incarceration and the search for the true meaning of freedom.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

157.113

You can listen to season two of Suave out everywhere on April 15th.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

28.354

And it was his unexpected friendship with journalist Mariano Rosa that brought this story to a national spotlight.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

48.789

But not everything is what it seems.

Suave

Introducing - Suave: Season Two

69.094

Because life on the outside means a whole new set of problems. From dealing with lifetime parole... I can't drink.

Surrounded

1 Sports Analyst vs 25 NBA/NFL Fans (ft. Skip Bayless)

20.345

From Jubilee Media, this is Surrounded, where one brave soul faces a room full of disagreeers. Today's guest is the popular sports commentator Skip Bayless, who will be debating 25 NBA and NFL superfans. Skip will debate them one-on-one until they are voted out by their peers and replaced by someone new. Let's get into it.

Surrounded

1 Sports Analyst vs 25 NBA/NFL Fans (ft. Skip Bayless)

5289.08

Skip will now choose a challenger that he would like to debate one more time.

Surrounded

1 Sports Analyst vs 25 NBA/NFL Fans (ft. Skip Bayless)

5935.68

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Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)

Ask KT & Suze Anything: Do You Know The Difference Between Aristocrat and King Stocks?

1132.923

No probate. Simple.

Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)

Ask KT & Suze Anything: Do You Know The Difference Between Aristocrat and King Stocks?

1814.272

If you liked it.

Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)

Ask KT & Suze Anything: Do You Know The Difference Between Aristocrat and King Stocks?

1918.797

You should consult your own tax, legal, and financial advisors regarding... your particular situation. Neither Susie Orman Media nor Susie Orman accepts any responsibility for any losses which may arise from accessing or reliance on information in this podcast.

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Ask KT & Suze Anything: Do You Know The Difference Between Aristocrat and King Stocks?

1946.561

And to the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all liability for loss, damages, direct or indirect, arising from the use of this information. The must-have documents discussed in this podcast are legal documents created by a lawyer and distributed by Hay House.

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During the chaos, Elizabeth's child had run too, burning only the bottoms of her feet as she escaped downstairs, out the front door with the other members of the house. No one else had been hurt in the fire except Elizabeth and Frank. And the police were zeroing in on Frank. After all, innocent people don't run and hide. But Frank had been taken to the hospital, not a holding cell.

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Episode 289

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A superficial burn is painful, but tolerable. You've probably suffered quite a few in your lifetime. Think of a really bad sunburn or that fleshy little lump you get when you touch a hot pan. Partial thickness burns are more severe and injure deeper layers of skin called the dermis. This burn will take weeks to heal and is the most painful because no damage has been done to the nerves.

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This kind of burn is pretty agonizing. But a full thickness burn destroys most of the dermis, getting right down to the muscle and bone. The burn part of the body is left with a waxy white appearance. It's completely terrifying. A full thickness burn destroys most of the nerves. There's no blister because the burn has gone so deep it's plowed through all that flesh, blood, and muscle.

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Episode 289

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Frank was a mummified version of the man he once was. Just a day before, he had been a handsome, healthy 33-year-old man. Now, he was a monster, burned on 90% of his body, with stubs for hands and ears that melted into the side of his head. His lips looked like two banana slugs resting on an old leather mask. He would never be the same again. Karma's got a funny way of working. It really does.

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It can be quite efficient, too.

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Paul Simonian, the head fire marshal at the time, was already piecing together what had happened based on the evidence.

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Episode 289

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Frank may have been incapacitated, but Elizabeth's family was unharmed, and they knew far too much about the couple. That 1,300 square foot yellow house in Buffalo wasn't just a home. It was a tight-knit world where no secret stayed hidden, especially between Elizabeth and Frank. Elizabeth Bell was unconventional and eccentric. She was bold, passionate, and impossible to ignore.

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She had a deep love for animals, working at a veterinary clinic and filling her home with strays in need of care. Her aquarium teemed with reptiles and a cage of ferrets rattled with energy. Each one adored her. Her bedroom was like a zoo. In her early 20s, she had a daughter from a previous marriage and was raising her with the help of her mother.

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She was the kind of woman who dyed her hair every color of the rainbow. You know the type. You probably are the type, judging by our demographics data. Anyway... She thrived in Buffalo's alternative scene where music, misfits, and mayhem collided. That's where she met Frank, a fixture in their tight-knit friend group.

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They'd known each other for years, but in 2017, their friendship turned into something more.

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Frank was working in construction, doing odd jobs when he could. He was just as wild to look at as Elizabeth with his long-dyed red beard and alternative clothing. Think punk rock meets medieval tavern vibes with a dash of white guy with dreadlocks. That's the phenotype we're working with here. But he was charismatic and kind.

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Episode 289

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Even Elizabeth's mother remembered how fond she had always been of Frank. He was the type of guy who really locked eyes with whoever he was talking to and made them feel like they were the center of the universe. He had a way about him that was inviting. When he wanted it to be, that is. Elizabeth and Frank were both intense type people.

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Episode 289

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She wielded words like weapons, and he never backed down either. What had started as a blissful relationship full of fun and excitement quickly turned into toxicity. When Frank moved in, things slowly got worse. It was like he'd lost all his charismatic power being in their home. The personality he'd put forth to impress people was washed away by tight living quarters.

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Episode 289

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The real Frank started to show. That fall, Elizabeth's family all had to listen to the couple's fights getting worse. They would be screaming at each other well into the night. Two hard-headed, passionate people, both unwilling to give in. By December, it was all over. Their relationship hadn't even lasted a year before Elizabeth told Frank to get out. He didn't go quietly either.

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On his way out, he put his fist through a window.

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you

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Frank packed up his things and left in a huff to stay with his mom, who wasn't too far away. Though they had separated, Elizabeth and Frank continued their fighting.

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Episode 289

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Through the safety of their cell phones, they argued about bills one party didn't pay, stuff they needed back from each other, you know, that kind of stuff. They hurled insults at one another like petty children via text.

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Episode 289

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Frank's main way of getting around town was on his beloved bike. But this wasn't just any old mountain bike. He'd rigged it up to what he really fancied, a real special machine.

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Episode 289

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In an irritated rage one afternoon, Elizabeth threw Frank's bike on the curb along with his tools, the tools that his father had given him. She took a photograph of the pile and texted it to Frank.

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After the threat, Elizabeth wrote to Frank, Someone already thought your bike was trash. I'll bring everything else inside. Please don't burn our fat selves down. Good thing I paid for that bike. No love lost. He responded, Not a joke.

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Episode 289

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Frank had lost his mind. That bike had pushed him to the point of no return. Elizabeth and Frank were so innately intense that when it was good, it was euphoric. But when it was bad, it was World War III. And when she finally kicked him out, Frank had nowhere to put the wreckage of his emotions. He didn't process it. He didn't grieve. He just flipped the switch.

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Episode 289

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The love and passion he once felt for her all curdled into pure, undiluted hate.

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You can say that again.

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Episode 289

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Elizabeth's brother wasn't privy to all the intense drama between her and Frank. That was going on between the two of them via texts and social media. So he watched Frank walk upstairs and said nothing.

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Episode 289

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Frank went quietly into the room that he used to share. He found Elizabeth asleep in her bed and he undid his satchel.

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Episode 289

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Alcohol knocks you into a heavy sleep. It's like a sleep so deep you wouldn't notice being moved, let alone someone dripping liquid onto your skin.

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Episode 289

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Frank stood over a sleeping Elizabeth. His anger simmered as he emptied the juice bottle, gasoline soaking into the sheets. But like Paul said, the real danger wasn't just the liquid. It was the fumes seeping into every inch of that tiny bedroom, turning the air itself into a weapon.

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Episode 289

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It happened in an instant. Flames roared to life, engulfing Elizabeth as her screams shattered the air. Fire and smoke swallowed the room. Then Frank felt the searing pain. His own skin was burning.

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Episode 289

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Because the gasoline had been poured on Elizabeth, she was on fire. She stumbled out of her room, grasping at anything to help put her out. But it was useless. The second floor was filled with black smoke, and she couldn't breathe or see. She couldn't stop the fire that was taking her life away.

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Episode 289

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But Frank was on fire too. And that was not his plan. He left Elizabeth to burn alive and ran.

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Episode 289

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Elizabeth's brother tried to smother the flames on Frank, but it was useless. That's when Frank bolted out and broke into the house down the street. Elizabeth's mother tried to get up the stairs to reach her daughter, but the smoke in the hallway choked her. the heat driving her back. The fire was too fast, so she had no choice.

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Episode 289

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Leaving her daughter behind was agony, but no one could get up those stairs. Elizabeth was left alone to burn.

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Episode 289

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When the police found Frank on the neighbor's lawn, he muttered the words, motive and opportunity. Multiple first responders heard it. As police, prosecutors, and fire investigators placed the case together, they uncovered the how, but the why remained a haunting mystery. Fire wasn't just a weapon here, it was a statement. A slow, agonizing way to make someone suffer.

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Episode 289

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If Frank truly meant to burn the whole fucking fat family down like he had threatened, why not torch the house? Why make sure Elizabeth was the source? The brutality of all of this set his crime apart.

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Episode 289

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This is Professor Theresa Gannon. She's a forensic psychologist at the University of Kent who specializes in fire setting. She became interested in arson when she was tasked with analyzing a case involving fire as a weapon.

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Episode 289

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It's a cold January morning in Buffalo, New York. The sky is black and clear. The kind of stillness that feels a little unnatural. A little unsettling. Like the city itself is holding its breath. Moonlight casts long shadows across the snowy streets. Not even the wind stirs. Nothing moves in this cold snap except a faint curl of smoke rising in the distance, a warning no one has noticed yet.

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Episode 289

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Teresa started looking into deliberate fire setting. It turned out that the field was vastly ignored by the rest of forensic psychology.

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because Teresa is the go-to specialist when it comes to fire setting. Years ago, she and three other researchers pioneered the multi-trajectory of adult fire setting theory, or as it's known in the field, the MTAF.

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For example, Teresa once worked with a man who had grown up on a farm. The common practice on the farm was to set fire to any pest or rodent that was destroying the crops. Later, in adulthood, when his wife became a pest to him, he decided to get rid of her. Much in the same way.

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Episode 289

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We don't know what Frank had learned as a child when it came to fire. He was never really given a full psychological evaluation due to his year-long hospital stay. He also never claimed insanity. When Frank lived at Elizabeth's house, he had an attitude of taking the law into his own hands. There was that one time when he heard Elizabeth's mom talking about him on a private phone call.

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Episode 289

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So he tore down the fence he'd built for her garden. What a petty and childish way to handle hearing someone talk behind your back. Teresa says that the biggest misconception about criminals who use fire as a weapon is that they're obsessed with it. That they love fire. But that's not really true. At least, that's usually not true.

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Episode 289

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Most people who set fires to cause harm fear it just as much as anyone else.

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The MTAF theory breaks down fire setters into five distinct personality types. Frank would fall under the worst one, the multifaceted fire setter.

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Episode 289

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Frank didn't have a criminal record that we know of. But his responses to things not going his way were unhinged. Like when he broke Elizabeth's mom's garden fence or when he shattered the window after being told to move out. He had no control over himself. He was just running on raw, unchecked emotion.

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Episode 289

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His life wasn't made up of planned actions, but only a chain of knee-jerk reactions to the world around him. He was like a toddler.

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Episode 289

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Beyond Frank's emotional immaturity, he lacked stability in his personal life. Frank was in his 30s, and he had no family, no career, and no home of his own. He was in arrested development, living one day at a time and avoiding adult responsibilities like so many do these days. Not only was Frank vengeful, but he was also stupid.

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Episode 289

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He packed his satchel full of lighters, gasoline, and charcoal briquettes with a loose game plan to murder Elizabeth by setting her on fire. He didn't know anything about the way fumes worked and ended up blowing himself up, too. There's a poetic justice to his disfigurement. Somehow there's art here in all the pain and horror.

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Episode 289

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By the time he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, District Attorney John Flynn and his team had already received a warrant for his arrest and an indictment from the grand jury.

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Episode 289

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At the local fire station, Fire Marshal Paul Simonian cradles another mug of coffee, hunched over his desk, passing the time with paperwork. Then the call comes in. A fire on the east side. Within seconds, his team is pulling on their gear, boots slamming against the concrete. The fire engine roars to life as they tear through the frozen streets towards the house on fire.

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Episode 289

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Frank was facing first-degree murder charges for the intentional death of Elizabeth Bell. When prosecutors visited his hospital room, they gave him a choice. Plead guilty or go to trial. So he lawyered up, ready to go to court, waste everybody's time. And money, I might add. But according to Frank, everyone had it wrong. Only he knew what had happened in Elizabeth's bedroom that night.

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Episode 289

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The End

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Episode 289

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Thank you.

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Episode 289

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Elizabeth Bell had burned alive in her East Buffalo home. For a month, she'd been fighting with her ex-boyfriend, Frank Brett Jr., over their breakup. One afternoon, she took his beloved electric bike and left it on the curb for someone else to take. She texted Frank a photo of his bike, and he lost his mind.

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Episode 289

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He threatened to burn her whole fucking fat family, quote, and even told his boss how angry he was that his bike was gone. Frank had packed a satchel of charcoal briquettes, lighter fluid, and gasoline. Then he went over to Elizabeth's house at 3.30 in the morning. Within minutes, her bedroom exploded. Elizabeth was burned alive and Frank escaped death by the skin of his teeth.

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Episode 289

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Speaking of which, there wasn't much left. After a nearly year-long hospital stay with burns on 90% of his body, Frank was ready for court. He was a disfigured monster with clubs for hands, melted ears, and a big bald star on his head where his hair used to grow. But Frank said that he didn't start the fire. Elizabeth did. He claimed that he only went there to talk about the bike,

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Episode 289

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She woke up, their fight escalated, and then she was the one who threw the gasoline on him. She was the one who struck the lighter. It seemed a little, I don't know, bullshitty? But then Elizabeth's brother said something that cast a dark shadow of doubt on the whole trial.

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Episode 289

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It was such an odd thing to hear. The possibility of it being true lingered in the air. The police may have been focused on the wrong person the entire time, trying to convict an innocent victim instead of a cold-hearted killer. Frank might have been the real victim in all of this.

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Episode 289

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After all, it was Elizabeth's mother who admitted that her daughter had a sharp tongue and she could say things that would cut you to the bone. There were only two people in the bedroom that night, and one of them was dead. The other one was facing life in prison.

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Episode 289

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And that comment was what the defense hung their hat on. Frank's trial didn't start until 2023, almost five years after the murder, and he had acquired very good defense lawyers. They fought hard to create reasonable doubt for the jury. Frank sat motionless in the courtroom. The jurors tried to focus on the case, but their eyes kept drifting towards his grotesque mutilations and scars.

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Episode 289

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Frank's defense not only grossly disparaged Elizabeth by claiming she was on drugs, but it crumbled against the physical evidence.

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Episode 289

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There was another detail, too, besides the threats Frank made telling Elizabeth that he would burn her and her family. He also texted his mother right before he got to Elizabeth's house that night. He wrote, I love you, Mama, always. It was ominous, to say the least.

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Episode 289

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And all those witnesses took the stand in court. The first responders who all heard Frank say motive and opportunity. The neighbor who pulled Frank out of his closet. Elizabeth's brother. Frank's boss. And all the medical experts who examined her body. Oh yeah, and of course... They had Paul Simonian, the fire marshal, who helped crack the case.

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Episode 289

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Paul listens to the radio. It seems like your typical house fire. His men are on it. He turns back to his work, keeping an ear on dispatch.

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Episode 289

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Maybe if Frank had pleaded guilty to the obvious, he might have gained some leniency from the judge. But he stuck to his lie. Forensic psychologist and fire expert Teresa Gannon had some theories as to why.

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Episode 289

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Maybe he was afraid of losing what little love and support he had left in the world, and that is why Frank refused to accept responsibility. Maybe he was just lying to himself for comfort, telling himself something that he knew deep down wasn't true. If he never admits to this heinous thing... then maybe it wasn't his fault that he's a disfigured monster in prison.

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Episode 289

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But by denying his own accountability, Frank lost the little shred of dignity he had left. Now, he's just a pathetic killer. A sick liar.

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Episode 289

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Paul suits up, gets in his vehicle and speeds towards the fire.

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Episode 289

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Frank was sent to Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York. His earliest possible release date is April of 2043. But for now, he sits in that prison in his wheelchair wearing a Star of David and kippah, or yarmulke, claiming he's found religion. We contemplated reaching out to Frank, but then we decided not to after speaking with John Flynn.

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Episode 289

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Frank is so obviously guilty that we didn't want to entertain his lies. But another network did. And we'll just tell you what he claims happened on that very day. Frank says that on the night it all happened, he and Elizabeth had a brutal fight. She had confided in him about being abused by a friend at the age of eight. And in a moment of cruelty, he told her the abuse was her fault.

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Episode 289

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He wanted to wound her, just as she had wounded him, with her words time and time again. He claimed he turned to leave, then something hit him over the head. The next memory he had was waking up on the floor surrounded by smoke and flames.

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Episode 289

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He says he immediately became concerned about Elizabeth's daughter and pushed his way into her little bedroom, heroically grabbing her from her bed and rushing downstairs to safety. Then he fled. But that's all completely untrue, in case you haven't figured it out. Elizabeth's mom, her daughter, and her brother all confirmed that things happened the way the prosecution argued it did.

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Episode 289

3168.339

Despite the cold, hard evidence, Frank continues to deny what he did. He continues to believe his own lie. But we do not. We know what he did. We have brains. He poured gasoline on a 28-year-old mother and burned her alive because she got rid of his bike. It's nothing but pure evil. Demonic, if you really think about it.

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Episode 289

323.88

The victim's family made it out. Now they huddle inside a neighbor's house away from the biting cold. But inside, 28-year-old Elizabeth Bell is dead. Thick smoke curls from the top windows of the little house, twisting into the night like something alive. Red and blue lights slash across the neighbor's windows, shaking the street awake.

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Episode 289

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Fire is a force beyond human control. It's ancient, primal, and merciless. Once unleashed, it obeys no one. Not even the man who strikes the match. Frank thought he was in charge of that fire, but like everything else in his life, it was wrong. Frank's actions that night were like a game where he moved blindly, reacting instead of thinking, never seeing more than one step ahead.

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Episode 289

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Even the contents of his satchel define his stupidity. Charcoal briquettes? I mean, what's your plan? Are you starting a barbecue? You ever like charcoal briquettes? You know how long it takes to light charcoal briquettes? What kind of a fucking idiot brings that to a murder scene? To lay them on Elizabeth and start a campfire on her?

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Episode 289

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I don't know if there's a word in the English language to define how stupid that is. Maybe he thought he'd use them to start a small fire downstairs to in fact burn the whole fucking fat family down like he wanted to, but... changed his mind when he saw her brother was still awake. The lighter fluid, the gasoline, that makes sense, I guess.

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Episode 289

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But I'll never understand why those briquettes were in his bag. Never. The guy must have never started a barbecue in his entire adult life. Interesting. There's another question that lingers, too. He saw that her brother was awake, and yet Frank... went forth with his plan to set Elizabeth on fire. Just really let that ruminate for a minute. Frank was not afraid of getting caught.

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Episode 289

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Because if he was, he would have turned around at the first sight of a witness. Instead, he just plowed ahead. And like every other insane choice he's ever made leading up to that fire, his final move was just as short-sighted. He was a man ruled by unregulated emotion. A creature of impulse rather than intellect. Rage rather than reason. You know anybody like that?

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Episode 289

3389.764

Because there's a lot of people like that around in my day-to-day. Kind of makes you think, doesn't it? Frank, however, didn't think. He didn't understand that fire wouldn't stay contained, that it wouldn't follow his orders, that the fumes would turn that little bedroom into a bomb.

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Episode 289

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He believed he was orchestrating some grand act of revenge over his bike, when in reality, he was just an idiot igniting the fuse to his own destruction. John Flynn was right. Frank wasn't just a murderer, he was a fool. A man too wrapped up in his own bitterness and failures to see the inevitable consequences of his own actions.

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Episode 289

3439.696

A man who, for all his hatred, ended up punishing himself more than anyone else ever could. How Shakespearean is that? Elizabeth Bell died in agony. Her final moments spent in a nightmare no human should ever endure. But at least her pain ended. At least she's free from it. Frank, on the other hand, has to live with the aftermath. He has to wake up every day with the scars and the missing hands of

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Episode 289

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with the mangled face, living in a reminder of his own stupidity. The man who thought he was in control, but ended up losing everything. In his final failure, he created a hell on earth, just for him. And it will haunt him for the rest of his life. Oh, geez, don't leave yet, you lollipops. We're going to load up the store with a bunch of additional merch from my garage, so go check it out.

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Episode 289

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Neighbors step cautiously onto their porches drawn by the unmistakable pull of disaster. Only minutes before, firefighters were barking orders, hauling hoses, and attacking the inferno on the second floor. But now the fire is out, and the smoke is settled. So when Paul arrives, he takes a breath, steadying himself. Then he steps inside.

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Episode 289

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It's going to be on deep, deep discount. I need to get rid of it. Lots of people are shit stuff. Lots of cool stuff. Just go look. Go look. It's like super, super, super cheap. Stay safe.

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Episode 289

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But the little girl's room wasn't the place where the fire originated. So Paul moved over to Elizabeth's bedroom.

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Episode 289

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The fire started on Elizabeth's bed. The mattress was burned into the box spring, black and charred, coiled springs flinging upwards like a broken jack-in-the-box. The fire on her mattress was still petering out.

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Episode 289

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The oily rainbow sheen made Paul do a double take. He stepped closer. He knew what that was. He just couldn't believe it.

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Episode 289

522.286

Paul knew that spray of gasoline on Elizabeth's wall was the beginning of their story. Now he had to find out what the rest of it was. This looked like the aftermath of a terrible accident or a desperate attempt to end it all. The Buffalo Police Department was called onto the scene. Paul racked his brain to figure out what had happened to Elizabeth.

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Episode 289

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It was also strange and unsettling because Elizabeth lay splayed on the floor where she died wearing only a bra. The fabric fused to what was left of her. She had clearly been sleeping when the fire started. And it didn't start around her, it started on her. Her stomach had been the source, and it was charred beyond anything human.

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Episode 289

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It was a grisly sight, something you should probably never see in your lifetime. Elizabeth had hollowed out in the middle. Her stomach was like the pit of a campfire.

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Episode 289

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Paul and the investigators went across the street to talk to Elizabeth's family. The house was rented by Elizabeth's mother, who lived there, along with Elizabeth, her young daughter, and Elizabeth's brother. When Paul and the investigators spoke with Elizabeth's brother, he told them how everything started that night.

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Episode 289

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Elizabeth's newly estranged boyfriend, Frank Brett Jr., had showed up at the house in the middle of the night. Elizabeth's brother said he came in and walked straight up to her bedroom. Her brother heard some yelling and then an earth-shattering boom.

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Episode 289

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Frank fled the house on fire, leaving Elizabeth burning in her bedroom and the horrid smell of smoke billowing behind him. This is former Buffalo District Attorney John Flynn.

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Episode 289

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The flames were still clinging to Frank as he ran like a madman, peeling off his burning clothes and throwing them behind him in the snow. He made it down to the street before breaking into the first unlocked house he could find.

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Episode 289

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The unmistakable smell wafting from the closet had given Frank away.

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Episode 289

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But at the same time, police officers from the scene at Elizabeth's house had noticed Frank's trail in the snow and started following it.

Sword and Scale

Episode 289

82.634

If you support independent media such as podcasts like this one, head on over to swordandscale.com and consider joining PLUS and help keep us alive. This is Season 12, Episode 289 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. When you join Plus, starting at just $10 a month, you get commercial-free early access to a whole ton of extra stuff.

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Episode 289

838.057

Frank lay in the snow on the front lawn, his raw red flesh exposed to the elements. It was a mess of soot and blood. But unlike Elizabeth, he was alive.

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Episode 289

878.267

It was unbelievable. What had started as a routine house fire had spiraled into chaos on the east side of Buffalo. Flame, smoke, an injured child, and then something far worse. A dead woman who looked like she'd been burned alive. Frank was burned badly too. Unrecognizable, actually. But he was breathing. And for investigators, that meant one thing.

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Episode 289

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If he survived, he might be the only one who could explain what really happened inside that house. But by the time that he could speak, a story would already be taking shape. One where investigators wondered if the fire started in Elizabeth's hands, or his. The End

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Episode 289

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27-year-old Elizabeth Bell had been burned alive in her Eastside home in Buffalo, New York. What started as a routine house fire quickly turned into a potential homicide investigation when firefighters discovered that Elizabeth was the source of the inferno. Even more shocking, her former boyfriend, Frank Brett Jr., had also gone up in flames.

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Episode 289

995.816

He fled the scene burning alive only to be caught after breaking into a stranger's home, his scorched flesh giving him away. Elizabeth was pronounced dead at the scene. Fire Marshal Paul Simonian hypothesized that gasoline had been thrown on her torso and ignited. Elizabeth had stumbled and crawled away from her bed into the hallway, where she passed out and perished.

Sword and Scale

Episode 280

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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

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Two days later, Gina's dead body was found 50 miles away from home at a waste management dump in Pine Township, Pennsylvania.

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After Gina's body was found, one of the first things that investigators set out to do was to figure out how Gina ended up at a garbage dump site that was considerably far from her home.

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Investigators concluded that Gina was likely murdered at the Compass West apartment complex where she lived and that her body must have been placed into a dumpster at that location before a garbage truck unknowingly carried her to a landfill in Pennsylvania. Investigators eventually spoke with Gina's mother, Jackie Botcher, and explained all of this to her.

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A coroner later determined the answer to this question.

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Investigators determined that Gina Berger had been stabbed to death, and her killer or someone else threw her body in a dumpster at the Compass West apartment complex. The next obvious question was, who did this?

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You ever look at someone and think, damn, they must have all the luck in the world? Of course you do. You have Insta. In the age of social media, where celebrities and super successful people can share their daily lifestyles, it can seem like some people are just hogging up all the good luck that exists in the universe. And maybe it's true. Maybe some people do have all the luck.

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Gina moved into her mom's apartment about six months before she was killed, and she had not yet been enrolled in school. Gina didn't have many local friends or really any friends at all. Everyone in the area who knew her was only an acquaintance. Also, Gina didn't have any money or valuables on her when she was killed, and the autopsy came back negative for signs of sexual assault.

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In other words, it was a struggle for investigators to determine a motive in this case. Why would someone stab a 16-year-old girl to death for drugs? No reason.

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Investigators turned their attention to other tenants at Compass West Apartments. And they started with the neighbor that Gina was supposedly going to go pay a visit to to ask for tea bags. That neighbor was a young mother named Ronisha Johnson.

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When the police attempted to interview Ronisha, they ran into a little problem. She never seemed to be home. And nobody knew where to find her. Ronisha and her baby seemed to be missing. After several attempts to make contact, the police eventually decided to force their way into Ronisha's apartment.

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Investigators found that a large amount of blood may have recently been cleaned up from Ronisha's living room. And they quickly determined that Gina's murder likely occurred inside of Ronisha's apartment. Of course, an important question remained. You may be asking yourself that question right now. Where the hell is Ronisha and her baby?

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Eventually, and pretty much out of the blue, Ronisha made contact with the police.

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When Ronisha finally spoke with investigators, she told them a harrowing story, and she named Gina Berger's killer. Ronisha claimed that she witnessed Gina being stabbed to death by a 19-year-old man named Ricky Williams IV.

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There doesn't seem to be much information available about the upbringing that Ricky Williams had. But, given the fact that his siblings were also named Ricky Williams as if their mother couldn't be bothered to come up with a different name, all of these Rickys had criminal records.

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It's probably safe to assume that this particular Ricky Williams didn't get the very best guidance when he was growing up. Nonetheless, the local police knew who Ricky was, and so did the tenants and management staff at Compass West Apartments. You see, Ricky didn't live at the complex, but he was there quite often and known for causing a lot of trouble.

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Maybe we spend a little too much time and a little too much energy thinking about and worrying about those very fortunate and privileged people. But how much mental energy, how much thought have you put into those people on the opposite side of that spectrum? What about the very, very unlucky? You can tell who they are because they're usually buying lottery tickets.

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In fact, Ricky was eventually barred from being on the property.

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As for Gina Berger and her mom, they also knew Ricky Williams. They frequently saw him around their apartment complex and assumed he lived there. They thought of him as a neighbor, although he technically wasn't. Ricky had even been invited inside Jackie and Gina's apartment on at least one occasion.

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After Ronisha named Ricky as Gina's killer, Ricky was quickly picked up by police. When questioned, Ricky freely admitted that he was currently dealing with several other criminal charges. What a surprise. Must be that systemic racism or something. When police began questioning Ricky, the pending criminal charges he was facing were pretty much the only admission they could get out of him.

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When the topic of Gina Berger came up, Ricky claimed that he had nothing to do with her murder.

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I was just wondering how the hell my name get run over and shit like that. So what happened on June 23rd at Compass West in the parking lot of 987? I went to Compass West to get my clothes.

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Again, Ricky had been trespassing at Compass West Apartments, but as coincidence would have it, Ricky was on the property on the day that Gina was reported missing. Ricky claimed that the only reason he was there was to pick up the remainder of the belongings that he left behind.

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Ricky admitted that he knew Gina and her mom, and perhaps in an attempt to direct the police elsewhere, Ricky claimed that he had introduced Gina to some random guy that Gina began dating. Ricky couldn't recall the name of Gina's supposed boyfriend, you know, the one he just made up. Which seemed a bit odd given the fact that Ricky supposedly introduced Gina to him.

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I mean, he's supposed to know him, right? Right? Nonetheless, the main takeaway was that Ricky denied any involvement with Gina's murder. He played stupid, which is, you know, not hard of an acting feat. But slowly and surely, detectives did what detectives do. They began poking holes in the claims that Ricky was making. And boy, were they big ones.

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Anyway, we're about to delve into the unlucky side of the universe and tell you a story about a person who seemed to have some serious bad luck follow them everywhere. Roughly 75 miles south of Cleveland and near the edge of the Ohio Pennsylvania border, there's a large apartment complex named Compass West Apartments.

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Somewhere around that time.

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Here's a small tip for anyone who might be interested. If you ever find yourself being questioned by a homicide detective about a murder that they clearly suspect you committed, probably not a great look, you know, to call the murder victim a, quote, little bitch. It's just, you know, it's tact, you know?

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Ricky Williams was questioned by police for several hours, and throughout that time, he made a lot of really, really dumb statements. For detectives, though, perhaps the most important thing Ricky gave them was a confession. After hours of breaking down his denials, his lies, his bullshit... Detectives finally got Ricky to admit that he had plunged a knife into Gina's chest and killed her.

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In June of 2014, the dead body of 16-year-old Gina Berger was found amongst the trash at a waste management station in Pine Township, Pennsylvania. An exhaustive investigation led police to conclude that Gina had been murdered inside her neighbor's apartment in Austintown, Ohio.

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Gina's killer had thrown Gina's body into a dumpster and garbage men unknowingly transported Gina 50 miles away from home to the dump site. As for suspects, the police narrowed their list of potential killers to just one person, 19-year-old Ricky Williams. According to Gina's neighbor, Ronisha Johnson, she had witnessed Ricky stab Gina in the chest inside her apartment.

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Yet when Ricky was questioned, he denied this accusation. In fact, Ricky denied that he was ever inside Ronisha's apartment at all.

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Let's get past that. What happened when you were in the apartment with him? I was never in the parking lot.

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This is what he told me.

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Everything. We had a report going here until you continued to lie. I let you lie for a little bit. Okay? You want to be truthful and talk? We'll talk about what happened. The truth. Not some bullshit made up stuff. I want to know the truth.

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After several hours of interrogation, Ricky finally admitted that he was inside Ronisha Johnson's apartment on the day of the murder, and that he spent the night there.

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This Austintown, Ohio complex offers low-income housing for those that may be struggling financially. And unfortunately, just as many places like it, it's known for being a haven of illegal drug use. At least that seemed to be the case in 2014. That year, a middle-aged mother was living at Compass West Apartments with her two teenage daughters. That mother was 46-year-old Jackie Botcher.

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Ronisha told police that Ricky Williams had brought Gina into Ronisha's apartment and held both her and Gina hostage. Ricky threatened them with a knife and Gina pleaded with Ricky, begging him to let her go home. Tragically, Ricky did not let that happen. Instead, he stabbed Gina in the chest and she died in Ronisha's apartment. Then Ricky forced Ronisha to help him clean up the murder scene.

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It took days for police to get this information because after the murder, Ronisha fled and feared that Ricky Williams was going to murder her and her child if she said anything.

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During his interrogation, Ricky eventually corroborated portions of the story that Ronisha told the police. He admitted that he was inside the apartment with Ronisha and that he had forced Gina into the apartment with him.

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He claimed that Ronisha committed the crime and that he was just an unwilling participant in Ronisha's insane plot to murder Gina for absolutely no reason.

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Ricky also claimed that the murder of Gina Berger was something that Ronisha had been planning to do for some time. Though Ricky couldn't specify why Ronisha wanted to commit this crime, beyond the suggestion that Ronisha simply didn't like Gina.

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Naturally, the police didn't believe Ricky's version of events because it didn't make any sense whatsoever. But for the remainder of his interrogation, Ricky maintained that Ronisha was the killer.

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Much like the police, the prosecutor who oversaw this case didn't believe Ricky's story, and they had plenty of reasons to doubt what he claimed happened.

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of exactly what happened to Gina Berger and who was responsible for her death.

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After Gina was dead, her body was placed into a large baby crate and carried outside to a nearby dumpster. At this point, Gina's mom, Jackie Botcher, had already called 911 and was sitting in a car outside her apartment in hopes of finding Gina. Instead, she found Ricky Williams.

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On Monday night, when you were waiting for the police to come to file that initial report, and you saw Ricky, you said you were sitting in your aunt's car? Yeah. Did she see Ricky?

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So he walked up to her car?

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On the evening of June 23rd, 2014, one of Jackie's daughters complimented Jackie's homemade iced tea. Jackie offered to make more, but the family was out of tea bags, so Jackie suggested that her daughter should go ask the neighbor if they had any tea bags that they might be willing to part with.

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After Ricky brazenly and heartlessly offered to sell Jackie the baby crate that contained Jackie's missing and murdered daughter, he threw the baby crate and Gina into a dumpster. Then he headed back to Ronisha's apartment.

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Hello and welcome to Season 12, Episode 280 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Well, I'm going to ask you once, did you see it? Did you see the latest episode of Sword and Scale Television? Because I'll tell you what, I got a chill. I got a chill. Did you get a chill?

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The murder of Gina Berger wasn't a crime of passion. There was no passion whatsoever. There was no anger. There was no greed. There was no emotion associated with her death whatsoever. This was a completely senseless thrill killing.

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Ricky Williams is a heartless monster, a true sociopath. He just wanted to kill someone. In fact, one day before he stabbed Gina, Ricky assaulted two other women and likely would have killed them as well, had they not been able to escape his attack.

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About five, six times. Okay.

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This assault victim was able to flee, and after she did, Ricky turned his attention and his violent intentions towards another woman.

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Notably, when Ricky attacked these women, it wasn't out of anger. Ricky was calm and calculating. Again, he just wanted to kill someone for the hell of it. That's the kind of criminal we're dealing with in 2024.

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Thankfully, these women were able to flee, and they survived their encounter with Ricky. Unfortunately, though, they didn't go to police and tell their story until after Gina Berger was dead.

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Out of fear that Ricky would seek violent revenge on them, these women decided not to report Ricky to the police. Less than 24 hours later, Gina Berger was dead. Ricky stabbed Gina to death and threw her body into a dumpster. After the police pieced this all together, Ricky was charged with murder and arrested, but this case was not scheduled for trial for nearly four years.

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The state sought the death penalty, and throughout the many court hearings that were held for this case, Ricky Williams maintained a heartless, and just all-around disgusting demeanor.

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Eventually, in 2018, Ricky and his defense team accepted a plea from prosecutors. Ricky pled guilty to killing Gina Berger. And in exchange, the death penalty was taken off the table.

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Jackie's daughter left the apartment in search of tea bags. And Jackie expected that task would only take a few minutes. But an hour went by. And her daughter didn't return. Then another hour went by. And Jackie's daughter still hadn't come home. Jackie became concerned. And that concern only grew when she realized it was pouring rain outside.

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In 2018, Ricky Williams was scheduled to be sentenced for the killing of Gina Berger. Tragically, Gina's mom, Jackie Botcher, was not able to attend the sentencing. Just four months after Gina was killed, Jackie also died. While the cause of death was never officially confirmed, Jackie likely began using heroin again after Gina died and overdosed.

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Still, many of Gina's other family members did attend the sentencing for Ricky Williams, including Gina's adoptive mom.

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After Gina's surviving family members gave their impact statements, it was time for Ricky to make a statement as well, and for a judge to impose a sentence.

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Thankfully, and to the benefit of society, Ricky Williams will never see the outside of a prison facility. Admittedly, there really isn't much to learn from this case. I know we do this little thing where we sum it up with a little bow and send you on your way with a little bit of a positive spin in terms of...

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At least we can learn something from this story, but we can't really learn anything from this story. A story with a murder which has a motive that is so absurd, so unnecessary. I'm left with no words after 11 years of doing this. Gina Berger was just a young girl. who wanted some iced tea. She went looking for tea bags. She went to go ask a neighbor, someone she knew, someone she saw every day.

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And she had the horrible misfortune of crossing paths with a monster, a monster that killed her, just for the sake of doing it. Gina's short life was riddled with misfortune. Gina's biological parents were heroin addicts. And as a result, she was placed into foster care. After being adopted, her new parents got divorced. And then Gina was allegedly raped by her adoptive mom's new husband.

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At least that's what she claimed. If that allegation is true, obviously, it's horrible. But if it isn't, For Gina to make such a serious accusation, she must have been dealing with some overwhelming issues for a teenager. Then, on a rainy night in June of 2014, Gina was abducted from her apartment complex. She was terrorized, threatened at knife point, and stabbed to death.

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And her daughter had left the apartment with no shoes on.

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Then, Gina was just thrown away, like garbage. But Gina wasn't garbage. She was a young girl who wanted to overcome and rise above all of the bullshit, all the past hardships, all the disappointments in life. So many in just 16 years on this planet. Sadly, she never got the chance. Maybe it is true. Maybe some people have all the luck.

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So as you look around the room, see the faces of your family, your kids, your parents, as you look at their faces and their smiles and feel their love coming back to you, take a moment to realize that you are one of those lucky ones. Although it's true that sometimes it feels like some people have all the luck it certainly seems like some people have none of it.

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Jackie's daughter was missing, and at around 10 p.m. that night, she phoned 911 to report the missing teenager. The prosecutor who was eventually assigned to the case is an Ohio attorney named Dawn Cantalamessa.

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In prosecuting this case, Dawn came to learn about all the people involved, starting first with Jackie's missing teenager. She was 16-year-old Gina Berger.

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Gina Berger was born on June 10, 1998, to Kevin and Jackie Botcher, and by age 16, she had endured quite a few hardships. As a child, Gina lived in Florida, and her parents had some really bad habits. Kevin and Jackie Botcher were addicted to heroin, and that addiction resulted in Gina and her three other siblings not getting the care that they needed.

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Gina's parents lost their parental rights, and Gina was eventually adopted by a young married couple, the Burgers.

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Interestingly, Gina's adoptive mom knew Gina's biological mom before she fostered Gina. In other words, this wasn't a closed adoption. And the line of communication between Gina and her biological parents was open, should anyone choose to use it.

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A few years after Gina was adopted, the marriage between her adoptive parents began to fall apart, and they decided to divorce. Gina's adoptive mom later moved to Texas, and she took Gina with her.

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By 2010, Gina was living in Texas with her adoptive mom and her adoptive mom's new husband. Around this time, Gina, who was now a teenager, began acting up. She was having difficulty with school and began skipping her classes. This created some tension between her and her adoptive mom. So, Gina began looking for an escape.

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Gina hoped to leave Texas and move in with her adoptive father, who was willing to take her in. But her plan never came to fruition. So Gina continued looking for other ways to leave Texas.

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Gina claimed that her adoptive mom's new husband sexually assaulted her, which has never been proven and remains a point of contention between Gina's adoptive parents.

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At this point, the communication between Gina and her adoptive dad began to die off. And Gina began reaching out to her biological mother. Jackie Botcher. It was 2013 and Jackie was now a widow, as Gina's biological father had died from a drug overdose in 2007. When Gina and Jackie spoke, the alleged sexual assault came up. So Jackie told Gina to visit her in Austintown, Ohio.

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After years of being passed around from parent to parent, Gina ended up in Austintown, Ohio with her biological mother, Jackie Botcher. During the months that Gina stayed with Jackie, there was a lot of friction between the families and a lot of uncertainty as to where Gina would ultimately end up.

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Needless to say, the adoptive side of Gina's family was concerned, and they doubted that living in a low-income, bad-reputation apartment complex with Jackie Botcher was Gina's best option. But, you know, what are you going to do? Gina claimed she was happy there, and that she didn't want to return to Texas.

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Eventually, Gina also reconnected with her adoptive father, who was living only a few towns away from Austintown.

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Gina's adoptive dad claimed that the last time he saw Gina was when he visited her at Jackie's apartment. And the reason that he was questioned by police was because Gina was missing. On the evening of June 23rd, 2014, Gina left her mom's apartment in hopes of getting some tea bags from a neighbor. But Gina never came back.

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And when she was found, it was not in a good place. 16-year-old Gina Berger was found 50 miles away from her mother's apartment in another state. Her lifeless body was discovered among trash in a landfill. On the evening of June 23, 2014, 16-year-old Gina Berger went missing after leaving her mom's apartment in Austintown, Ohio.

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So anyway, the night before Tristan went missing, Trey had been badgering a different girl from their school to come meet them out in the woods that night. Her name is Lola.

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Episode 288

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It's getting a little warmer out there, so let me take you down to a little place called St. John's, Florida. It's a suburban dreamland tucked between Jacksonville and St. Augustine. Sounds pleasant, doesn't it? This is a place where life feels peaceful, predictable, ordinary. Golf courses blend seamlessly into HOA neighborhoods. Everyone has a pool.

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Tristan had actually told one of her friends about her plans to hang out with Trey and Aiden. Tristan was the only one who thought that sneaking out and hanging out with these boys was a good idea. Even her fellow 13-year-olds told her not to go.

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Despite the warnings, though, Tristan followed through with her plan, walking straight into the unknown. But while everyone was busy pointing fingers, there was one side of the story that no one had heard yet. The boys. The Boys As afternoon turned to evening on Mother's Day 2021, the peaceful St. John's community had become the epicenter of a frantic investigation.

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What began as a simple search for a missing teenage girl had quickly morphed into something dark and strange. All eyes were on three teenage boys. Doffus Absher, known by everyone as Trey, Aiden Fucci, and a third boy, Abton. The rumor mill was in overdrive, and no one knew what to believe. So it's around 4 p.m., and St. John's County cops have Trey and Aiden in the back of a squad car.

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They have to get a statement from each of them before they decide what their next move is. Meanwhile, another deputy drives over to Abdon's house to get statements from him and his family.

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Apparently, Tristan was, quote, banging him and was being provided cases of White Claw along with vapes and whatever drugs she wanted, LSD, shrooms, weed, you name it. Both Trey and Aiden told police they thought she might have been picked up by this guy after she and Aiden had their little fight and parted ways in the middle of the night. They weren't the only ones with this theory.

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Here, parents trust that when their kids leave in the morning, they'll come back at night, before the streetlights turn on. St. John's wasn't always as booming as it is today. In fact, it was barely a dot on a map just a few decades ago. But things have changed, especially in Florida.

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As these stories unfolded, the police were working behind the scenes, gathering hard evidence. All of the kids' houses were within walking distance, but the streets were densely packed, meaning officers would have to knock on a lot of doors. Then after scanning hours of security and doorbell camera footage, someone finds a clip. The truth is about to surface, one frame at a time.

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And it's far more chilling than anyone imagined. You see, when law enforcement first located Aiden, he gave his side of the story. He said that after leaving Trey's house on Telfer Drive at around 1 a.m., he and Tristan walked along North Durban Parkway. He claimed that about a quarter out of the way into their walk, she parted ways and made a left onto Cloister Bain Drive, her street.

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Aiden said he kept walking toward his home on Castledale Court and got home at around 3 a.m. But the detective quickly picked up on a problem. Why had it taken Aiden two hours to get home? The distance from Trey's house to Aiden's home was just under two miles. A walk like that shouldn't have taken more than 40 minutes, tops. Aiden, sensing the shift in tone, tried to adjust his story a bit.

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He told the officer he'd been walking around by himself for a while, for whatever reason. This inconsistency raised red flags, of course. To get a clearer picture, the detective asked Aiden if he'd be willing to ride in the back of a patrol car and retrace the path they had walked together. Aiden agreed and his dad followed behind him in his golf cart.

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As they drove up North Durban Parkway, Aiden's story shifted once again. This time, he admitted that he had an argument during the walk, he claimed Tristan had tried to make a move on him, and because he didn't want to cheat on his girlfriend, he pushed her. Does that sound believable, ladies? I didn't think so. Anyway, he said she fell and he even got out of the car to demonstrate the push.

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saying he thought maybe she hit her head. But he walked away and didn't look back. But something still didn't add up. Surveillance footage obtained from a home on Saddlestone Drive, up near Castledale Court where Aiden lived, showed something entirely different. At approximately 1.45 a.m., two figures were captured walking east along the road.

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One was wearing a light-colored hoodie and wearing Nike shoes, and the other was dressed in black. But by 3.27 a.m., the same camera captured only one figure wearing a light-colored hoodie running west. The footage even captured the sound of his feet slapping against the sidewalk. He was shoeless, carrying his white Nikes. This raised a question.

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Why had Aiden and Tristan been spotted together way past Tristan Street on Saddlestone Drive if he had claimed she parted from him much earlier and headed home? After seeing this footage, investigators knew they had to bring in Aiden one more time for questioning. They now had proof that he wasn't telling the full story. Aiden was the last person to see Tristan. No one else was involved.

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Over the past 10 years, the once quiet community has exploded in size, growing from just over 18,000 people to almost 90,000 today. Despite that growth, there's still a sense of security here. A belief that you know your neighbors, that you know your children. That bad things happen somewhere else.

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Once he's put in the back of a squad car, Aiden's behavior turns desperate.

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As soon as the door shuts and the cop walks away, he tries to FaceTime his girlfriend, whom he has in his phone as, quote, Dream Girl. I mean, I can't even make this shit up, guys.

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These kids are much more technically savvy than the cops that are dealing with them. Did he really think that just putting Aiden's phone in the front seat would keep him from using it?

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While Aiden was being driven to the police station, he lashed out in frustration, kicking the seat in front of him and complaining. I'm going to get arrested for bullshit, he said. At the same time, across town, detectives were at the Bailey residence trying to gather more information about Tristan, hoping to understand what kind of girl she really was.

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Now, at this point, the Bailey's knew nothing of Aiden's story. They were still trying to investigate their mysterious 22-year-old drug dealer, Lead. The officer following up with them instructed Tristan's younger sister to call a girl named Sam. You see, apparently, Sam and her sister, Lena, were closer to Tristan and had more information about this guy.

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Episode 288

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On Mother's Day, May 9th, 2021, it would take only 12 hours for that sense of safety to shatter completely. You're going to have to pay close attention here. We're going to jump around in the timeline a bit. But we'll start at around 3.30 p.m. On the side of one of these beautifully landscaped streets sits a cop car. In the back seat, there are two teenage boys, both about 14 years old.

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Ultimately, this would end up being a fruitless pursuit, but Tristan's mother was desperate.

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As Tristan's mother and sister talked with the detective in the kitchen, someone was walking near Saddlestone Drive, where Aiden and Tristan had been caught on camera the night before. As Tristan's family speculated about different possibilities holding out hope that she may be found alive, this person had just come upon her body.

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As a 911 caller hung up the phone, Tristan's family was ending their call with Sam. Tristan's father was in another room at the time. He was the first of them to hear the news, and I gotta say, brace yourselves.

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Well, one family faced the unthinkable loss of their daughter. Another parent just a few miles away was already trying to protect their own child, no matter the cost. But as the truth started to unravel, it became clear not every parent was grieving. In fact, some were already covering their tracks.

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During the night and into the early morning hours, Aiden and his family were being kept in an interview room. Holding them in a room together was intentional, but this flew right over their heads.

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That's the sound of Aiden's mother, Crystal, entering the room. You're going to love her.

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They live in the area and their parents have money, and ring cameras everywhere. These aren't the type of kids you usually see in the back of a police cruiser. They're laughing, each holding their own phone with one extended arm as they record videos on Snapchat for... He's talking about a missing teen, Tristan. He says, Tristan, if you walk out the damn... And then the video cuts off.

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Everything you say will affect you, she says, right after, you can't act like I don't know. Hmm. What'd she mean by that?

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Before we play the next clip, remember what Crystal had told her son when she came into the room. She basically scolded him for talking to the cops before his lawyer was present, but not realizing there are cameras in every room. She nonchalantly goes on to ask him all the same questions a detective would ask in an interrogation. She does their work for them.

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I remind you that these people are allowed to vote.

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The lawyer she mentioned hiring for Aiden is actually a family member. Crystal isn't married to Aiden's dad. She remarried, and her new husband's brother-in-law is a lawyer, so we're talking about that level of lawyering. The lawyer's wife's name is Victoria, and she knows Crystal did something very bad.

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Then Aiden posts another snap, but he's holding up a peace sign and it's captioned, Hey guys, has anybody seen Tristan lately? You see, as they're laughing and joking in the back of a cop car, their classmate is missing. It's as if the gravity of the situation hasn't sunk in yet, or worse, that it doesn't matter.

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By dinner time on May 9th, 13-year-old Tristan Bailey's body had been found, and 14-year-old Aiden Fucci's guilt seemed undeniable. The home security footage showed him walking to his house in the early morning, wearing the same jeans as Mother Crystal later admitted to washing. But it wasn't just a simple wash. Crystal was doing more than laundry. She was rewriting the truth.

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And as investigators circled closer to the Fucci family, Crystal wasn't just hiding evidence. She was actively trying to reshape the narrative, attempting to coach her son into saying he wore a different pair of pants that night. This wasn't just a mother protecting her child. This was something much more calculating.

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My clothes?

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Aiden tries to tell the truth that he was wearing blue jeans that night, but his mother says, Are you sure? When we checked the security camera, you were wearing khakis. When police checked Crystal's security camera footage, they found something very different. Not only was Aiden seen entering the house in the blue jeans, cameras inside the home caught Crystal scrubbing them by hand in the sink.

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Now she was working overtime to cover both of their asses. Soon, Aiden had to be swabbed for DNA samples. And after that, they're all moved to a different room than the one they were in before.

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What a fucking idiot.

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Earlier that morning, 13-year-old Tristan Bailey's mother had awoken to find her daughter's bed empty. Given Tristan's age and the fact that she's a cheerleader with good grades, her mom immediately called 911.

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Even if he had been high, nothing could have justified what Aiden did to Tristan. Nothing. Nada. His parents babied him, comforted him, and even assured him they'd put money on his books. Aiden was no victim, though. He was not a child. He was a monster. A cold-hearted killer. Someone with absolutely no conscience.

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Remember Dream Girl? Aiden's girlfriend? Well, here she is.

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Along with a series of violent drawings, investigators found bloodstains on clothing and shoes Aiden had hidden in his bedroom. The samples matched Tristan's DNA profile. Slam. Dunk. All the while, Aiden's parents took extreme measures to protect their sweet little angel from a big scary thing called consequences.

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They were, in fact, going to take him away. It was 1 a.m. by this point. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, and he was destined for a jail cell.

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Aiden pleaded not guilty to his charges, even without the support of his family lawyer and under the guidance of a public defender. He was confident enough to take his case all the way to trial. In February of 2023, jurors were selected, but before that could begin, Aiden changed his plea to guilty.

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Episode 288

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Why is there a Sword and Scale on a Tuesday? That doesn't seem right. I should call the manager. This is season 12, episode 288 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Hey, instead of complaining, why don't you head on over to the store and buy something? Store.swordandskill.com. We got Murder Daddy shirts. We got People Are Shit tank tops. We have Sass Hole.

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And that's a good thing that he did, because someone at the county jail had already snitched on him. This guy came forward with no promises made in his own case. Aiden had apparently told him the whole story of what happened that night. I know it's going to be really hard to understand this guy, but he's a, well, he's a criminal. He's a jailhouse informant, a snitch, a rat, not a public speaker.

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So there's that.

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Though there were no sexual assault charges pursued, this one witness says that Aiden confessed to raping Tristan before killing her. It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? Aiden's sentencing hearing occurred over the course of three days. His mother faced charges for her involvement as well. Thank goodness. With her sentencing to occur right after her son's.

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Soon police started to arrive at the Bailey's residence, ready to take statements and launch a full-scale search of their own.

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This sentence means that Aiden Fucci could get out of prison before his 40th birthday if he behaves well. If he's a good boy. So far, he's not really made a name for himself as an obedient inmate. His mother, on the other hand, only spent 30 days in jail for tampering with evidence and will be on probation for five years.

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This murder not only shattered a family, but it made everyone in the community leery of each other. as I would argue you should be in any community, especially small ones. The fact that an adult was involved in the cover-up made it all the more shocking. Parents were slammed right into the face of reality when it came to what their teenagers were doing behind their backs.

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But no one expected a crime so brutal, let alone a cover-up so close to home. After the sentencing, Tristan's father spoke outside the courthouse.

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In a tight-knit community like St. John's, everyone thought they knew each other. Neighbors trusted one another, families felt safe, and parents believed they understood their children. But this case, and cases like it, shatter those illusions. It wasn't just about sneaking out or the dangers of lurking online. It was about realizing how much of their kids' lives parents were missing.

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Episode 288

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As Tristan's father put it, they didn't even know what their own kids were truly capable of. But this case wasn't just about the actions of teenagers. It was also about the choices made by full-grown adults that should know better. Crystal Fucci's desperate attempt to protect her son, to cover up for him in his darkest moment, taught us all a painful lesson.

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When someone is drowning in their own choices, sometimes trying to save them without thinking can pull you under too. Sometimes the instinct to shield a loved one from consequences only drags you down with them. This crime took more than just Tristan's life. It shattered a family and forced a community to confront the uncomfortable truth

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Sometimes, the darkness we fear most isn't lurking out there. It's right in front of us, hidden beneath the choices we make. And when someone is drowning in their own sins, jumping in after them only ensures you both sink. This episode was written and produced by Elena Thomas, one of our senior writers. We're in the future. Something we should have done a long time ago.

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If you enjoyed that show, head on over to sword and scale.com. Consider signing up for plus and getting a whole lot more content commercial free, and also check out store.sword and scale.com. Stay safe.

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After piecing some things together and talking with the parents of some of Tristan's friends, they quickly determined that Tristan had plans to sneak out that night, as did many other kids. Apparently, there were secret tunnels underneath Tristan's neighborhood, which is straight out of a Stephen King novel and, you know, kind of cool.

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Here's one of the other parents talking about the notorious tunnels.

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Sneaking out into those tunnels wasn't uncommon, especially for teens looking for an escape from the ordinary, or the watchful eyes of their parents, and the numerous, numerous security cameras. I mean, I really should buy some ring stock.

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dad hats that are perfect for summer in fact we have a whole bunch of tumblers and things that are great for the beach or the pool why don't you head on over there and support your favorite podcast because i know this is something we do for the love of it but you know we also like to eat every now and then

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Rumors were starting to spread fast. Group chats lit up with speculation, quickly adding new names to the mix.

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As Trey Absher and Aiden Fucci sat in the back of a cop car, broadcasting themselves on Snapchat, rumors continued to circulate. The leading theory was that the two boys had lured Tristan into the woods, assaulting her and killing her. Allegedly, they had even tried to involve a third boy who backed out. Even more suspicious, Tristan allegedly had an ongoing sexual relationship with Trey.

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Keep in mind, folks, these kids are 13 and 14 years old. Prior to Tristan's disappearance, a video had been circulating around the school that depicted the teens were in a sexual act.

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Trey had secretly recorded the encounter and shared it with other boys, which, by the way, can stick your kid with charges in the realm of possession, production, and distribution of child pornography, even if they're a minor in case you didn't know. So, if you're parenting via iPad, I would suggest you get off your ass.

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Episode 287

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As the search pressed on, other deputies followed new leads streaming in from the dispatch center. One caller in particular would deliver a revelation that changed everything. fast-tracking the hunt for Noema's killer or killers. This was the first homicide in Jefferson County in over 10 years. To be continued... The victim was one of their very own respected teachers.

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Episode 287

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After quickly finding Noema at the local Chautauqua Park, the investigation shifted into high gear. Local law enforcement alongside state investigators started piecing together the evidence hoping to make sense of what happened. Leads emerged, calls kept coming in, and a clearer picture of Noema's final hours was starting to take shape. But for detectives, one question loomed largest of all.

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Who could do this, and why? The very person closest to Noema was her ex-husband, who still lived with her part-time. The pair had even discussed getting remarried, something that would make all three of their children happy, but especially their youngest, since he was disabled. Her ex-husband Paul brought out some startling information.

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While Noema was well-respected amongst her peers, she wasn't liked by all the students, especially the students who didn't work hard for their grades. He also noted that there was a history of grade changing at FHS for quote-unquote favorite people. He specifically pointed the finger at Principal Becker.

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Get this, Paul said former Principal Becker wanted his wife fired for not fixing grades, and the current administration immediately fell into the same mindset. the mentality that no child should be left behind, no matter what the circumstances, but especially not if it's their child.

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Paul said his wife was even confronted by the current principal and his wife in order to give their son a better grade. But Noema's standards would never let her do something like this. It's, you know, unethical. Remember ethics? Remember that shit? She rebutted that the only way she would change their son's grade would be if she changed every student's grade too.

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Paul reported that former principal Becker threatened his wife physically by telling her he hoped he'd never meet her alone. Becker tried to get her fired but was unable to, only because of a procedural error. Becker was in the room when the vote was taken. The current vice principal had the same negative view of Noema because of her posture on grades.

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I guess the idea of them being earned and all didn't sit well. If you think our legal system is bad, then don't even bother looking at the educational system. It'll frustrate the fuck out of you. According to Paul, his wife was very old school in the way she thought. You know, earning things and not just being handed them. Boomer shit. Some people don't like boomer shit and they get very angry.

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Paul said if a student wanted a grade, she expected them to put in the work. and didn't believe in just handing them out. He went on to tell police that at one point, their house was egged and windows were broken by a huge group of students who also threatened, we'll get you. Meaning they were going to be violent if they didn't get their way.

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Episode 287

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So, who would have thought that being a teacher, at least one that takes their job seriously, would make you a target? by the very administration who's supposed to be watching over these children. Among the calls flooding into dispatch and the DA's office, one call stood out and led investigators in a dark direction.

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This mother gave two different time frames for when this kid had heard the information. A few days and two weeks. But whether it was days or weeks, this was evidence that some students still had it out for their Spanish teacher. One of those students, who admitted he didn't like her and, quote, wouldn't be surprised if she disappeared, said,

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was named Willard Noble Chayden Miller and simply went by the name Chayden.

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Jaden tried talking to Noema and even talked to the principal about her. The principal's response was to tell him that he was aware of the problem. because so many kids through the generations had trouble and tried to get her fired. The principal took copious notes, and Chayden remarked that he was a good principal who liked the kids a lot, and that made the principal happy.

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Sometimes the most dangerous thing we can do is follow someone's lead without thinking about it. It's easy to get caught up in the movement, swayed by a friend's confidence. Especially when you're young and naive. We all want to belong. We all want to feel like we're part of something. So there are times where we might be distracted. preoccupied with other things.

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But who had so much hatred towards Noema that they would attack her and bash her skull in? That's what police wanted to know.

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it was clear that a lot of people took issue with Noema. Students, parents, and even the principal. Well, both principals, to be fair. She had a history of students vandalizing her house at least once. But, while Chayden felt like his Spanish grade was shitting on the rest of his GPA, he confronted Noema directly and wasn't part of the group that had broken windows.

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Chayden may not have been involved in vandalizing Noema's house with a group of students. But he did know something else about another group and their retaliation against her in the park on the day she went missing. This is what he says happened.

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This is the part where Jeremy Goodale comes in. Chayden was at Chautauqua Park with his friend Jeremy and Jeremy's girlfriend Zoe.

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And that's what every parent hopes their kid will do, right? Leave the scene when shit starts getting shady. But what about his friend Jeremy? Well, unbeknownst to him, Jeremy has already been implicated in one of many phone calls reporting sightings of Noema. From Wisconsin, no less. But Jeremy does not disassociate himself like his friend Chayden does.

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So,

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So, you know how Snapchat's really big because the messages and pictures are immediately deleted with the correct settings? Two warnings. First of all, the receiver can still screenshot it. Na-duh. And of course, the cops can always get their hands on records through a subpoena. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you think it was end-to-end encrypted?

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This begged the question. Since Jeremy admitted he killed someone, did he say when he did this?

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Apparently, Jeremy thought that since Snapchat is anonymous and can be set to delete immediately, it was okay to confess to murder to someone in a different state. Not only did Jeremy confess, but he also gave details like a complete fucking moron. You know, Zoomers. The future leaders of society.

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Imagine you're a parent and your kid lays this on you. Would you believe him?

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In the heartland of Iowa, Fairfield is one of those small towns where everyone seems to know everyone else, and life moves at a leisurely pace. It's the kind of place where neighbors wave from their porches, Friday night football games are packed, and teachers like Noema Graber are not just part of the school, but part of the community.

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Jeremy implicated a whole group of teens, and police were interviewing Chayden, who initially claimed no involvement. But Chayden's story was changing.

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Jaden's story was a slow rollout. Like putting your big toe in a lake to see how cold it is and if you can handle it. Then putting your whole foot in and then your leg. So you realize you're freezing and you should get the hell out of this lake. Anyway, the story kept changing one little bit at a time.

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But as the officer pointed out already, he wasn't buying it. Not for a second. And if Chayden didn't want to immerse himself in the deep waters of truth, he was going to get a shove.

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The kid that sent the Snapchat. Jeremy Goodale.

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People don't think twice about letting their kids roam freely or leaving doors unlocked Fairfield feels safe and predictable. Chautauqua Park lies just on the outskirts, surrounded by thick woods and quiet trails that wind through the tall grass and dense trees. The park is where townspeople often take their morning jogs, children play by the pavilion, and Noe McGraber likes to walk after school.

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Jaden eventually accepted public defense, but Jeremy and his dad hired a lawyer right away and didn't speak. It didn't really matter, though, who spoke and who didn't. The cops had Jeremy and Snapchat admitting the murder and showing a bloody shirt. They had footage of Jeremy pushing a wheelbarrow past the school to Chautauqua Park that night.

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They had the kids at school saying Chayden told them, I caught a body with a baseball bat. With all this evidence and more, there was enough probable cause for search warrants. They uncovered the bat, the murder weapon. The footage at the park during the hours of Noema's murder and concealment showed no other teens in the park. It was down to Jeremy and Chayden.

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All the evidence was pointing to Jeremy as the lead killer, but what didn't make sense was the motive. Jeremy had already taken and passed Noema Graber's Spanish class. He had literally no skin in the game. It was Chayden who was planning a trip to Spain that depended on whether or not he passed or failed.

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It was also Chayden and his dad who went to discuss this grade within hours of Noema's murder. According to her husband, Noema warned him about this meeting with Chayden and his parents. She said it wasn't pleasant and she felt like Chayden legitimately hated her.

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She would even turn from the whiteboard to face the class, and every time, she felt like Chayden's angry stare was burning into her core. Both teens were arrested, and 11 months later, Jeremy offered to give a complete and accurate account.

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So hypothetically, of course, exactly how do you approach another person, especially at school, and ask for help in killing a teacher?

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I mean, I guess it's just like that.

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Just trying to be a good friend. That's what goes through the minds of underdeveloped idiotic brains. Remember that.

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While Jeremy was committed enough to his friendship with Chayden to be complicit in murder, it seems the friendship may not have been reciprocated. It sure felt like Chayden tried to pin everything on first a group of kids and second, Jeremy. Suspiciously, he asked Jeremy to go to get a wheelbarrow from Chayden's house later that night when they moved the body. Was he trying to set him up?

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This ritual wasn't just an exercise, though. It was a means of unwinding after being with students all day long. But on this fall evening, the park would prove to be anything but safe. The trails that provided calm and refuge hid a dark secret. On November 2, 2021, she would go for a walk and never come home.

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This was DA Chauncey Moulding's response.

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This isn't to say that Jeremy wasn't completely in on the plan. He was. And nobody forced him to tattle to his gamer friend through Snapchat either. Remember, the picture was sent showing Jeremy's face with the caption saying that this was the last face his Spanish teacher would see. It didn't feel like there was a lot of remorse.

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Detectives were able to back up Jeremy's story after finding a murder list created by Chayden that detailed every implement they would need down to garbage bags. Then, under a column entitled Procedure, were the damning words of a young killer. Stun. Move off the trail. Empty compartments. Load cargo. Blanket cargo. Deactivate compartment contents. Leave the bag by exit and transport.

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Safely stun. Switch glove. Deactivate the article to bag. Finalize the win. Secure victory. Load into the storage spot. Don't forget to close the door on the ground. And switch gloves. Move the sticks. Wipe down tools. Dispose of articles. And grab bag by exit. Done. Just going to say this once.

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If you're the type of person that has the limited intellectual capacity to where you have to write things down, otherwise they might slip your mind. And one of those things is a list of items you'll need for murder and how to actually murder. And you have to actually write out the word done at the end of it. You know, I hate to say this, but you might not have. what it takes for murder.

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In Fairfield, Iowa, a place with small-town routines and traditions, students at Fairfield High School were used to getting a pass in some classes like Spanish. At least some students were. And it seemed the school's administration condoned the lenient grades given out to some. No student left behind, you know? All that bullshit.

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911 calls started to trickle in as the community's sense of security was ripped apart, leaving them to wonder if any place at all was safe. The first person to notice that Noema Graber was missing was her husband. Actually, her ex-husband. See, the Grabers were divorced, but they still lived together, a lot of the time.

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But Noema Graber's traditional style and strict grading left some students frustrated and resentful. Particularly those who think they're entitled to whatever grades they want. Again, particularly a student by the name of Chayden Miller. Chayden and Jeremy were two ordinary high school boys. Both were, you know, somewhat intelligent, I guess. And neither had a criminal record.

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But Chayden was ambitious and calculating. He led the way by repeatedly venting his frustrations about his Spanish grade and how this was going to fuck up his future. I guess murder wouldn't do that though, right? Moron, right? Jeremy, his loyal friend who'd known him since preschool, was impulsive and easily influenced. So he quickly fell in line with his friend's ideas.

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If you can't lead, follow. That's what they say. Anyway, on November 2nd, 2021, the extent of Chayden's hatred became horrifyingly real when search teams found Noe McGraber's body concealed under a tarp and wheelbarrow in a heavily wooded area of Chautauqua Park. On that day, two ordinary students with hopeful futures became hardened killers.

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Noe McGraber would also not be coming home. She may have been an old school teacher, but she was still loved by many students and certainly loved by her family.

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Chayden was, in fact, the leader, planner, and mastermind behind the killing of Noaima Graber. Though Chayden's parents were separated, he lived with his mother and his father lived around the corner. Provided with a doting mom and a sharp mind, he couldn't bear the idea of anything or anyone standing in the way of his plans. After all, they were his plans, and the children are our future.

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Or so I'm told. Noe McGraber, his Spanish teacher, had become an obstacle. And Chayden didn't like obstacles. Jaden's dream was to join an exchange program in Spain, a plan that he feared his failing Spanish grade would ruin. Ironically, his victim's story started with a similar dream. Noema first met her husband, Paul, in Mexico when he was an exchange student.

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Little did she know that by refusing to give in to the demands of this young man, Chayden, his family, and the school administration, she would lose her life to his ambition. Well, he pled guilty and was given life and the possibility of parole in 35 years. His statement at the sentencing hearing was anything but ambitious.

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Some of Noema's family didn't quite believe in Chayden's sincerity.

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Sadly, Jeremy's dad died of cancer after becoming weakened from the stress of this whole ordeal. His only son committed an act that would stain his life, and he would never see his son as a free man again. The funeral was held the day before Chayden's sentencing, making it all that much sadder. Jeremy Goodale was Chayden's opposite in many ways.

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Whereas Chayden had friends, he was socially awkward. Jeremy was the more popular of the two, but somehow played the role of follower to Chayden's lead. He was easily influenced and quite vulnerable.

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The only boy with four older sisters, you might think there was plenty of estrogen in the household, but his parents separated when he was just 10 and his mother moved to a different state with her boyfriend. This was Jeremy's dad at the sentencing hearing right before he died. What he said through his tears was that Jeremy's mom kind of abandoned him.

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From then forward, their relationship was strained and eventually stopped altogether. Jeremy's dad did the best he could to keep the family farm going, but He had to sell it when Jeremy was 12. Then 2020 came along, and Jeremy's dad attributes the school closings and isolation as playing a role in Jeremy's deteriorating mental health.

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Episode 287

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His dad went on to say that he sought out three different mental health therapists for his son. But weirdly, he never got to have a single session with any of them. Two of them died suddenly before the first appointment, and one lost his license just before the first session. Weird. After the lockdowns and loneliness of 2020, Jeremy came to school hungry for a connection.

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Episode 287

3791.823

In his need to belong, he was easily influenced by Chayden. Maybe Jeremy didn't realize how far things would go. In his mind, it was too late to back out of the dark plan for fear of coming off to his friend as weak. But unlike Chayden, Jeremy was plagued by remorse after fully realizing the horror of what he'd been a part of.

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Episode 287

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Caught between his own sense of guilt and his loyalty to Chayden, he became tangled in a scheme that was never truly his.

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Episode 287

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Jeremy went on to finish with a sincere and poignant apology. He was given life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Jeremy's need for connection made him vulnerable to Chayden's control. Chayden had the charisma to lead, but didn't seem to have the conscience behind it. Jeremy was isolated after years without his mom, a dad who worked long hours, and the loneliness of the pandemic.

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Episode 287

3951.901

So he followed Chayden, likely because he craved the excitement and didn't want to lose the friendship. The problem with following the wrong person is that it can lead you to places that you never wanted to go. The search for connection, approval, or even just something to believe in can cloud our judgment. We are, after all, emotional animals. Reactive and not all that disciplined.

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Episode 287

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All right, we did our part. Now it's time for you to do yours. Go tell a friend about your favorite podcast, swordandscale.com.

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Episode 287

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Noema was the last person who would take off for no reason. I know we say that a lot, but this just simply wasn't in her character. Noema was a very thoughtful, deliberate person who kept her schedule and did not miss school.

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Episode 287

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You can tell by the dispatcher's reaction that that's a weird thing to say. I mean, of course it is. It's 2025. How do you not have a cell phone?

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Episode 287

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In case you didn't hear him say it, Noema was one of two Spanish teachers at Fairfield High School.

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Episode 287

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Didn't expect to hear back from me so soon, did you? I mean, I told you you're getting more Sword and Scale. It's just some people don't listen for some reason. This is season 12, episode 287 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. So from now on, episodes that are only available to Plus members will have a little plus next to the name. Easy, right?

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Episode 287

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That was District Attorney Chauncey Moulding. Fairfield is where he was born and raised. It has a cultural side that feels unexpected for such a small town. Home of Maharishi International University, people from all over the world attend school and live here, making the tiny town exceptionally diverse. This brings us back around to Noema Graber, who was native to Mexico.

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Episode 287

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Although she didn't attend Maharishi University, she lived in Fairfield. That was because she met Paul Graber a few years after graduating high school. She worked as a flight attendant, and he was in Mexico as an exchange student. He flew back to the States, but never forgot about Noema.

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Episode 287

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Meanwhile, being a flight attendant wasn't lofty enough for Noema, who was extraordinarily bright and ambitious. She decided she would be a commercial airline pilot instead. So, she paid her way through flight school and became one of the first women in Mexico to be licensed to fly passenger jets. Eleven years after Paul first met Noema, he was back in Mexico and looked her up.

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Episode 287

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The couple reconnected, married, and raised a family in Fairfield. Only in her 50s did Noema decide she wanted to be a teacher. So, being the kind of person that just does what she wants to do, she earned her degree and certificate. For the next nine years, many Fairfield students would learn Noema's native language directly from her.

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Episode 287

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Almost immediately, residents started calling the dispatch center, detailing where they saw her in the days before and after her disappearance.

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Episode 287

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A lot of people calling in were parents and students who had just seen Noema at school the day she went missing.

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Episode 287

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Calls were coming from everywhere. Like a man who thought he saw Noema and her van in Middletown the day after she went missing. And this doctor leaving the hospital... thought she saw Noema's van in the parking lot.

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Episode 287

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The thing is, the cops located Noema in record time due to the consistency of her routine. She always took a walk at Chautauqua Park at the end of the school day. So that's where they first started looking.

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Episode 287

896.829

The police formed a grid and officers started looking near the northeast side where thick underbrush lined railroad tracks. Keeping the others in view, one went forward and saw a red wheelbarrow hidden in the shadows with a blue tarp strewn over it. Near this was a cluster of rocks showing faint red drops of what seemed like blood.

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Episode 287

923.181

Careful not to disturb the evidence, the two continued walking westward and came to a paved trail deeper into the park. But then, all of a sudden, the officer turned around and spotted a green sweater and dark shirt lying tangled in the brush. The sweater, marked with a brown stain, was twisted amongst branches, and the shirt had a red substance with the unmistakable consistency of blood.

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Episode 287

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Then, a call came in from an officer back where the wheelbarrow was seen. He found what appeared to be a human foot, barely visible beneath the tarp, partially covered by the railroad tie. As they regrouped at that location, they had to climb down a steep hill. This is where they uncovered Noema, about 100 yards east of the trail, under the tarp and wheelbarrow. She had been violently assaulted.

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Episode 287

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Her pants were down around her ankles with her underwear. Her top had slid up or was pulled up and she was wearing only a white bra. Lying somewhat on her side, the back of her head was noticeably battered and bloody, with tiny twigs and broken leaves smashed into the hair strands, along with dried, caked blood.

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Episode 294

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Mark just couldn't understand why it all had to fall apart now. Things were just perfect.

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Episode 294

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Mark explained that after Sherry got home from work, he cooked the family a healthy dinner, watched some movies, put the kids to bed, and then decided to spend some quality time together.

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Episode 294

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As romantic as it was, Mark soon needed to get out of the tub. He gets warm, you know?

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Episode 294

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Mark took his antidepressant and then three of his over-the-counter sleep meds, a diphenhydramine-based medication. Basically, it's like taking a handful of allergy medication like Benadryl. You know how much I love Benadryl. It can make you really sleepy, knock you out for the whole day. It was around this time that the detective got a phone call and he excused himself and left the room.

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When he returned, he had some bad news for Mark.

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After Mark calmed down and stopped crying, the detective made sure to get one thing straight.

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Episode 294

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Everyone was just trying to understand the mysterious way that Sherry had died. Mark may have been the only one the cops knew to talk to. But as news of her untimely death spread throughout her friends and family, others would come forward. And the investigation would change from an accidental death to something much, much worse.

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Episode 294

1354.588

Lawyer and Army Major Mark Eric Pensati had found his wife Sherry Pensati dead on their bathroom floor from what appeared to be an accidental fall out of the tub. The couple's young children were still sleeping down the hall when Mark called 911 in hysterical tears. Now he found himself alone and terrified as to what the future would hold for his family.

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Episode 294

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Mark told the police that he had a happy marriage. He had just received a new job offer in Kentucky, so the family was preparing to pack up and move yet again. They were trying for a third baby and enjoying every day as it came. Very Hallmark, you know? But now, suddenly, Sherry was dead, and the police had to figure out what happened on the night in question.

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Episode 294

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Despite his emotions, Mark composed himself and continued speaking with the detective.

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Episode 294

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Mark said he was groggy from the sleep medication, but after he saw his wife's cold, white feet on the floor, his adrenaline kicked in.

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Episode 294

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When they bathed the kids in the bathtub, he would put towels down to cover it. He was convinced that Sherry had hit her head on that.

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Episode 294

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Mark was an Army major, a trained EMT, and a lawyer. If anyone would be useful in this situation, it was him. Mark said he didn't remember much after he got on the phone with 911. His memory was just a blur of chaos.

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Episode 294

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Now let me ask you a question. If your wife, the mother of your children was lying unresponsive on the floor, cold, white, you know, Don't you think you would maybe, oh, I don't know, um, attempt, maybe, possibly, to save her life somehow? I mean, am I the only one who would actually do that? I don't think so, right? But apparently, Mark is one of the other types.

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Episode 294

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This was all feeling a little off. Mark had painted a picture of a happy marriage and a family life, but Sherry's best friend Danielle had something different to say about Mark. Danielle actually refers to Mark as Eric. He went by Mark Eric professionally, but sometimes just Eric to his family and friends.

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Episode 294

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Danielle's tail lined up with Mark's. But she knew some much darker things.

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Episode 294

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You can say that again. Danielle was like a floodgate of information. And the detective was dumbfounded by this seedy side of Mark that couldn't have been further from the composed, kind, and well-spoken man he consoled at this very same police station. Danielle said that Mark's porn and cheating loomed all throughout the time Sherry was pregnant with their second child.

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Episode 294

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Then things hit a breaking point while they were in Connecticut.

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Episode 294

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After catching Mark in the act with violent child porn, Sherry had had enough.

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Episode 294

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Danielle tried her best to help Sherry get out of her marriage, but Sherry wanted to make it work. She had no money, and leaving Mark wasn't financially viable right then and there.

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Episode 294

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Being a Catholic herself, Danielle figured things were really grim if a priest had agreed that Sherry should leave Mark.

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Episode 294

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The family was dwindling their savings, and between Mark's high student loan payments and cost of living, they were drowning in debt. When they moved from Connecticut to Arizona, they had to take out a loan of $45,000 for closing costs, which put an even bigger strain on their marriage.

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Episode 294

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Then Sherry got a job, which felt like a glimmer of hope, but it only made Mark worse.

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Episode 294

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With his oldest daughter in first grade and just baby Max to take care of, Mark started slipping back into his old online addictions. Mark was a negligent, resentful father who did not want to be at home with his kids while his wife earned money for the family.

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Episode 294

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Mark was an angry, emotional guy. And Sherry felt stuck. But to the outside world on social media, the couple were very active and presented only the very best parts of their family life. Sherry would post pictures of their hiking trips to the Grand Canyon.

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Episode 294

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She'd boast in videos about her daughter going off to school, and she'd give her friends updates on the forts that kids would build when it was too hot to play outside. Mark did the same. He showed off being promoted to major and had recently posted a picture of a meal a civilian bought him at a fancy restaurant after she thanked him for his service. Thank you, ma'am, he wrote.

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Episode 294

240.888

In a tan, two-story house adorned with palm trees and cacti, 36-year-old Mark Eric Pensati crouched next to his unresponsive wife, 33-year-old Sherry Pensati.

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Episode 294

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I feel humbled and grateful. To the world, Sherry and Mark looked like a happy, loving family of four, but inside they were bubbling over with secrets that all stemmed from Mark's disgusting porn habit.

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Episode 294

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But what Danielle did know was that Mark's issues with violence and sexual perversion all stemmed from one person.

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Episode 294

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Oh, and the reason his porn-peddling dad was in prison? It was no big deal. Just for, you know, killing someone in a fit of rage...

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Episode 294

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Just chew on this for a second. Things in Arizona were bad, but then Mark got a job offer in Kentucky, and the family was set to move again. Remember, Sherry had written on her Facebook page just four days before her death,

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Episode 294

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Hints of resentment hung in her post, and behind closed doors, she told Mark she was sick of the instability in her family. But she agreed to go to Kentucky because of one reason.

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Episode 294

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The idea of moving to Oshkosh, Wisconsin was a dream come true for Sherry. Finally, she would be closer to her family and friends. The possibility of leaving Mark was in bloom. But he stomped out that dream. Of course he did. If Sherry was closer to the safety of her family and friends, then she would surely leave him. Mark may have been sick, but he was not stupid.

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Episode 294

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But Danielle and Sherry talked every day, like best friends do. Sherry had an exit strategy, and she told Danielle everything.

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Episode 294

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Danielle had spilled the tea, as they say. And boy, was it potent. Mark had put up an excellent front for the police. He'd come across as believable, kind, and caring. But that, if you haven't guessed it already, was all a lie. Even Sherry's mother, who knew less than Danielle, knew that Mark had made unthinkable threats to his daughter.

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Episode 294

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Sherry's mom broke down into inaudible sobs.

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Episode 294

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But Sherry wasn't ready to leave Mark yet. She made a point of repeating that over and over. She stayed with him for one reason and one reason only.

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Episode 294

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Meanwhile, the detectives had an autopsy performed on Sherry's body and began examining the scene in a new light. Detective Bishop noticed many physical pieces of evidence that did not line up with Mark's story. Mark was now their prime suspect and he was going to have to face the truth. Maybe Mark had been able to keep Sherry physically away from her friends and family.

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Episode 294

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Maybe he was able to make sure she held a brave face to the world, but he couldn't stop her from confiding in the people that she loved and revealing all of his dirty, disgusting secrets. After speaking with Sherry Pensati's best friends and other family members, Maricopa County detectives now realize that the image Mark painted himself as was a far cry from reality.

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Episode 294

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Mark was a porn addicted, violent, angry, jobless man in debt and on the brink of losing his sanity. I think that describes most men these days, actually, but I'll leave it at that. Anyway, Sherry had caught him with child porn, and that's a crime that she should have definitely turned him in for. But she didn't.

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Episode 294

2918.721

Sherry had plans to go, she had to think of herself, and the couple was in a ton of debt. She had to be strategic. Sherry's aunt and uncle had taken the Pensati's children after she died, and they had overheard Mark on the phone, telling a different story than the one he told detectives.

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Episode 294

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Armed with this new information, Detective Bishop began to examine the scene differently and came up with a new theory about how Sherry died.

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Episode 294

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Detective Bishop believed that Mark killed Sherry in the tub, using the sharp edge of the tile between the tub and shower to repeatedly bludgeon her head and back until she bled out. Remember Mark kept saying he thought that corner was dangerous? He relentlessly repeated that he was sure Sherry slipped and hit her head on that tile.

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Episode 294

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Sherry's blood was telling a new story. Not only did luminol testing reveal that more blood had been cleaned up, but it had also been moved around. This sick fuck moved around his wife's blood to stage the scene.

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Episode 294

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The autopsy showed that Sherry had injuries to her head and back, which would not have been possible if she just slipped. She had bruising on her spine consistent with violent shaking, and strangulation could not be ruled out. She had multiple blunt force injuries to the back of her head, upper neck, and back. That would have been one violent, thrashing, and repeating fall.

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Episode 294

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And there were other physical details that Detective Bishop noticed were suspicious.

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Episode 294

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Mark had planned this all out very well, and he was using his legal training to cover his tracks, feeding the same believable story about Sherry slipping on some soap due to her own negligence. Blaming the victim, they call it. I don't think people like it these days. Anyway, here's Sherry's brother describing what Mark told him after she died.

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Episode 294

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Mark even told this story to his six-year-old child, believe it or not, who then relayed it back almost verbatim to the police psychologist.

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Episode 294

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Mark was a certified EMT and a military man. But to see this much blood pooling around the woman he shared his life with was unbearable.

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Episode 294

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Detective Bishop believed that there was no way the soap could have landed the way it did if Sherry slipped on it. Mark's story was good, but gravity's way better.

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Episode 294

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Mark did his best to cover all those tracks. He had a carefully thought-out plan, like some demented version of Gone Girl. But even with his law degree, military background, EMT training, and perfectionism, or autism, Mark could not get one over on the detectives. They were too thorough, and only a week after Sherry's death, Mark was arrested for murder. His bail was set at $1 million.

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Episode 294

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When it came time to pull Mark in front of a jury of his peers, he stuck to his story. He took the stand and added some more elaborate details about how he tried to save her life before he called 911. He said that his EMT training kicked in and he did try to give her mouth-to-mouth, but there was so much blood and, you know, he just couldn't, you know. It's just some people are so stupid.

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Episode 294

3572.239

And they think you're stupid, too. They think they can get away with things because they think you're just as stupid as they are. He even said that he thought about getting a turkey baster to suck the blood out. He said this on the stand. I swear. He also tried to justify the injuries to her face by saying he slipped and fell on her. But he didn't admit that to the police.

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Episode 294

3594.096

He never said that until that moment. So he claimed that was why he refused to try CPR or chest compressions when the dispatcher asked him to. He claimed that he felt like a bull in a china shop after his fall and that he would only make things worse. I mean, his wife was dead, but he would only make things worse. That's what he said.

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Episode 294

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Mark Eric Pensati presented Well to the World, He was handsome, fit, accomplished, and successful. On social media, he bragged about his career advances and his happy family. But behind closed doors, he was a porn-obsessed cheater and a pedophile who slept with prostitutes and threatened his wife.

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Episode 294

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He masturbated to child porn, and he was such a negligent dad that he let his baby fall down the stairs multiple times under his watch. What a piece of shit. He knew that Sherry was going to leave him. I mean, why wouldn't she leave him? I'm sure that he thought that if he were Sherry, he would leave him too. But he was afraid of this, and he wanted control over the situation.

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Episode 294

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Mark had to control his wife like he couldn't control his own life. What he didn't have control over was the people in her life and who she chose to share her secrets to. And his disgusting secrets, too, as well. They knew everything.

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Episode 294

3709.062

Sherry may have been sickened by her husband's perversions, but she wasn't too embarrassed about it to let everyone around her know who was actually hiding behind Mark's smile. So when his perfect little murder plan was missing a few important pieces, the humiliating confessions Sherry had made about her husband became the most powerful ammo for cops.

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Episode 294

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Now, Mark Pensati will be in prison until September 7th, 2042. He received the maximum sentence for second-degree murder. When he gets out, his daughter will be 31 and his son will be 26. I'm sure they will want nothing to do with him. He will be alone, left to sink deeper into his porn addiction and drown in his own loneliness. But I think there's a better way to end this story.

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Episode 294

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There's a lesson to be learned here. Perhaps a little safety PSA. You can hear my voice right now and you're thinking that maybe some of your traits are similar to Mark's. Maybe rethink your life. Maybe rethink a lot of things. We're putting out a lot of free episodes right now, but that's going to stop soon, and they're all going to be behind a paywall. So you might as well join now.

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Episode 294

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Six-year-old Maddie and her baby brother, 18-year-old Max, were asleep in their bedrooms down the hall. Mark continued to cry and struggle as he talked to 911.

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Episode 294

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Mark had seen death overseas. He assured the dispatcher that Sherry was long gone.

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Episode 294

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Mark ran outside the front door to meet the officers as they quietly pulled up the short driveway. He was in a frenzy as he explained what happened and pointed towards the upstairs master bathroom. The police rushed inside. Mark made sure his children were still asleep and begged the first responders to be quiet. He was terrified of traumatizing the kids.

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Episode 294

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Officer Mike Bishop was one of the first on the scene. He found Sherry in the bathroom and immediately bent down and started doing chest compressions. The knees of his pants soon became wet with crimson suds. After 20 compressions, he got up and let the EMTs take over. Sherry was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors assured Mark that she was in good hands.

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Episode 294

574.95

They would do their best to save her life. Mark called Sherry's aunt and uncle to come pick up the kids before he went to the police station. With his head buried in his hands, Mark sat across from the detective in his cargo shorts and flip-flops as his leg bounced up and down while he wept.

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Episode 294

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Mark nodded and also allowed the police to search his home. He said he wanted all the help they could get. He wanted to know why this happened to his wife.

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Episode 294

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Mark and Sherry had met on a dating app back in 2008, when Mark was finishing with his legal degree at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Episode 294

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The Pensades had lived all over the U.S. Alabama, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Georgia. This was due to Mark's career in the Army and his higher education pursuits.

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Sherry had even published a children's book and was working on a second for her publisher. They were flourishing. But after a few months in Arizona, Mark lost his job.

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Mark and Sherry had a role reversal when he was unemployed, and she stepped it up as the family's primary earner. Mark told the detective that he was proud of his wife for doing that. He was grateful and embraced his role as the main parent.

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Episode 294

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This one was produced by one of our longtime producers, Mish Barber Way. This is season 12, episode 294 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.

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Episode 294

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Even though Sherry liked Arizona and her job there, Mark had been offered a new position in Kentucky, and it made sense to move. Sherry had posted on her Facebook page just before her death that

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Episode 294

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Mark said Sherry had been ovulating, and they were trying to have another baby. According to him, things were looking up.

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Episode 282

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At this point, Jenny was becoming more paranoid with each beer. After the others left, Jenny confided in her sister that she feared they too would call CPS on her, since they had seen the state of the house firsthand.

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Episode 282

119.454

You're not going to find out a damn thing until it comes out March... In a family where chaos reigns, it's easy to lose sight of the cracks forming beneath the surface. Born into a world of addiction, mental illness, and unspeakable secrets, one can grow so accustomed to the madness that it becomes invisible. Each day brings a new crisis, a new fire to put out.

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Episode 282

1210.205

So just to summarize all that, Lauren and the others left Jenny at the trailer while they went to pick up Jenny's two daughters, Alexa and Ashley. Jenny must have been suspicious that they were conspiring against her to help CPS take away the kids and literally ran several blocks to the house the girls were staying at under the guise of returning a cell phone.

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Episode 282

1385.369

Other than the frozen pipes, the group had successfully gotten the trailer up to par. Lauren thought she'd fixed the problem. Surely Jenny had no reason to be concerned anymore. Lauren went home that night to take care of her own household and planned to check in on Jenny and her kids the very next day, right after her shift at the local family restaurant.

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Episode 282

1409.756

She expected to see Jenny lounging around, enjoying the day with her girls and their newly cleaned trailer. Lauren certainly hadn't pictured herself Dialing 911.

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Episode 282

1477.708

21-year-old Lauren Kukla had just cleaned up another family crisis. One of her sisters, Lizzie, had already lost custody of her children, and her oldest sister, Jennifer, was about to meet the same fate. That was until Lauren rallied a group together to help Jennifer tidy up her house in preparation for a CPS visit.

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Episode 282

1497.837

The next day, Sunday, February 4th, Lauren planned to drive over and check in on her sister, but she was wholly unprepared.

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Episode 282

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After work, Lauren picked up her kids and drove over to Jenny's trailer to check in. When she got there, the front door was hanging open. This immediately struck Lauren as odd. After all, it was winter in Michigan.

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Episode 282

1582.503

What Lauren meant by when she was being stupid is that her mother used to layer odd, unmatching pieces of clothing during bad mental health episodes. Increasingly, Jenny was starting to act more and more like her mother. She would ramble on about nonsensical things, have bouts of extreme paranoia, and just, you know, act erratic.

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Episode 282

1607.56

Now, Lauren could see a visual representation of the transformation that had been taking place for years as Jenny's mental health quietly declined. She had a khaki shirt layered over a pair of jeans. Her hair was disheveled and, like Lauren said, she looked like a homeless person.

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Episode 282

1749.609

Before her police interview, investigators hoped that allowing Lauren to listen to her own 911 call over again would jog her memory and help them piece together what was going through Jenny's mind.

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Episode 282

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When police arrived at the scene and entered the trailer, they found Jenny pacing around ready to be taken to the, quote, depths of hell. Their eyes were quickly drawn to the first bloody scene. Three dead dogs piled up inside a crate. Jenny hadn't stopped there. She even stabbed the pet mouse inside its cage.

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Episode 282

1858.806

As officers made their way to the back bedroom, they could see that, tragically, Jenny was telling the truth about her kids. Eight-year-old Alexa laid motionless on a makeshift bed next to her five-year-old sister, Ashley. Their throats had been cut.

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Episode 282

190.517

And amidst the smoke and shadows, it's impossible to notice the creeping darkness. closing in. The familiar feels like survival, until it's not. Like the proverbial frog sitting in a pot of water, the rising heat goes unnoticed. There's too much to manage, calming the parents' paranoid delusions, steering a sibling away from another destructive path, trying to hold it all together.

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Episode 282

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In case you couldn't understand her, at the end she said, erase my brain. erase my memory, and I'd love you for that one. We can only imagine what's in there.

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Episode 282

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It's clear that these guys were getting nervous that Jenny may decide not to talk. So they started to employ a little bit of good cop, bad cop. Just before the one detective was able to follow through on his promise of some water and a blanket, the other came bursting back into the room.

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Episode 282

2120.503

They took her back to her cell and planned to try again the next day.

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Episode 282

2169.342

Once Jennifer really starts to open up to detectives in this interview, it's clear that she absolutely needed to be on psychiatric medicine. It's not often that we gain access to police interviews of defendants suffering from severe mental illness. But Jennifer's case is unique. We'll get back to that later.

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Episode 282

221.348

The storms are so familiar that they barely register anymore. And while tending to each fresh disaster, something far more dangerous is below. It's a slow, insidious bubbling. And before there's any time to escape, the water has reached a dangerous boil.

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Episode 282

2281.613

Now keep in mind, the average person would probably freak out upon hearing their sibling talking to themselves as if they're having a conversation. But for Lauren, this was nothing new. She was no stranger to brushing off the nonsensical ramblings. She even said to Jenny, stop talking to those voices or whatever it is that you're doing.

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Episode 282

2304.676

In Lauren's sane mind, addressing her older sister's mental illness was at the bottom of the list of priorities. When Jenny's pipes froze and the trailer descended into chaos, Lauren's first concern was the safety of her nieces. Basically, she thought, okay, Jenny isn't a danger to herself or them. She's made it this far in life. Let's just deal with the issues that we can fix right now.

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Episode 282

2332.625

which, you know, makes a lot of sense.

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Episode 282

2557.554

So the voices in Jennifer's head were apparently telling her that if she didn't kill her kids, people would break into her house, take them away from her, and they'd suffer a fate far worse than death, whatever that is. At this point, she had long stopped drinking beers, hoping sobriety would make all of this go away, but it wasn't working.

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Episode 282

2580.856

At first, Jennifer refused to give in to the voices and follow through with the murders. Instead, she put the butcher knife she grabbed from the kitchen up to her own throat and considered killing herself. After deciding against that, she went and sat in the front room, still clutching the knife, and waited for people to arrive.

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Episode 282

2601.189

If the voices were right and someone did break in, she'd be ready to defend her family. Some time passed and obviously nothing happened. The voices were gone too, so. Thinking the whole ordeal was over, she went back and laid in bed with her girls, eventually falling asleep until morning.

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Episode 282

2693.527

This was clearly difficult for Jennifer, talking about what she did to her own two little girls. You can hear in the audio that she seems to show some remorse, but her train of thought keeps getting redirected away from the worst parts of that morning.

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Episode 282

2799.096

In the footage, the detective shows two different stabbing motions. The first one he demonstrates is an overhead downward motion, while the other is an underhanded swiping upwards.

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Episode 282

2935.285

Jennifer had killed every living being in her small trailer. Her two defenseless girls, three tiny Pomeranians, two of them puppies, and even the pet mouse. And it wasn't just the dog she had to chase down to finish the job. Despite their youngest age, her two daughters knew exactly what was going to happen, and they tried to get away. There's nothing I can say to prepare you for this next part.

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Episode 282

2964.137

It is absolutely heartbreaking.

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Episode 282

303.637

In 2007, 21-year-old Lauren Kukla found herself shouldering the full responsibility of her family's physical and emotional well-being. Though she had small children of her own, their needs aren't what I'm talking about here.

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Episode 282

3058.254

Throughout this part of the interview, Jennifer, with a blanket over her shoulders, is using it to cover her face. She's hunched over in her chair, rocking back and forth.

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Episode 282

3135.56

Jennifer had used four different large kitchen knives to slay everyone in the trailer that morning. She ended her daughter's lives by stabbing them each multiple times in the neck area, effectively severing their windpipes, as well as important arteries. Besides the neck wounds, though, there were no defensive injuries. These poor little girls couldn't even begin to fight off their mother.

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Episode 282

3161.682

All they could do was run and try to find a hiding spot, but even then, Jennifer chased them down.

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Episode 282

317.523

Lauren was not only caring for her immediate household, but also managing the endless conflicts between her late schizophrenic mother and her four older siblings, none of whom could seem to get their lives together for some reason. Conveniently, they all lived in the same area near Macomb, Michigan, and Lauren was stuck carrying a burden far beyond her years.

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Episode 282

3218.471

Through interviewing both Jennifer and her sister Lauren, detectives were beginning to put the pieces together. Jennifer had been on a slow path to mental ruin. She had self-awareness, and she knew she was displaying many of the same odd behaviors her mother had shown as her mental health declined. This wasn't her first rodeo. Jennifer knew how these things eroded.

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Episode 282

3268.253

21-year-old Lauren Kukla loved her family.

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Episode 282

3294.673

Her biggest concern was making sure all of the children were safe, well-fed, and loved. To make this kind of life a reality for her two nieces, eight-year-old Alexa and five-year-old Ashley, this often meant cleaning up her sister's messes. Her oldest sister Jennifer was a functioning alcoholic with constant money problems. And so those are the issues Lauren often helped to address.

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Episode 282

3320.916

These surface issues paled in comparison to the turmoil happening in Jennifer's mind. The Kukla family was no stranger to mental illness, which somewhat blinded Lauren to her sister's worsening mental state.

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Episode 282

3335.159

At the same time Jennifer was trying to hide her mental illness, she often became nervous after saying what she perceived to be the wrong thing, which was basically anything that might indicate she was losing her mind. Lauren was so concerned with these surface-level issues that Jennifer's feeble attempts to hide what was actually going on worked.

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Episode 282

3357.486

Things got quietly worse until February 4, 2007, when Jennifer murdered her two little girls. Apparently, Jennifer's paranoia and hallucinations reached a peak that weekend. She told psychiatrists that voices were telling her that if she didn't kill her children, they'd be kidnapped, sexually abused, tortured, murdered, and then eaten.

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Episode 282

3382.816

In her distorted mind, Jennifer thought slitting their throats and ending it all quickly was an act of compassion. It was, from her perspective, the only way she could save them.

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Episode 282

342.722

Though her siblings' houses were chaotic, messy, and filled with conflict, Lauren's house was different. Though she was young, she and her family lived a white picket fence kind of life compared to her two older sisters and two older brothers. Her sister Elizabeth, or Lizzie, was on drugs and had already lost custody of her children.

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Episode 282

3487.711

So, after killing her children and all of the pets, Jennifer stayed in the house with their dead bodies all day. She paced around until the voices apparently told her to clean it up. With no running water, though, she decided to take the lid off the toilet tank and use the water in there to rinse off before replacing her bloodied clothes with random things scavenged from piles of laundry.

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Episode 282

3517.674

When Lauren came upon the carnage and saw her sister dressed like a, quote, hobo, she suddenly realized what had been happening this whole time. At that moment, Lauren didn't see her sister. She saw her mother. Jennifer had become the splitting image of her mother.

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Episode 282

3639.145

Looking back at all the strange things Jennifer had said and done made so much more sense when compared to her mother's decline. But hindsight is 20-20. Let's rewind back to when Jennifer became paranoid. that the two people who helped clean up her trailer were going to call CPS and turn her in.

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Episode 282

366.434

And her sister, 30-year-old Jennifer, or Jenny, the oldest of all the siblings, was walking that same tightrope. How Lauren turned out to be a normal, functioning member of society after growing up in a household like this is really a mystery. On Saturday, February 3rd, 2007, all while trying to juggle her career and her young children's needs, Lauren got a call from Jenny.

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Episode 282

3712.702

For us, the people on the outside, it's not at all surprising that Jennifer suffered from addiction. But in Jennifer's mind, this all stemmed from her hypnosis as a teenager.

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Episode 282

393.533

As usual, her oldest sister was having a meltdown and needed help.

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Episode 282

4406.361

Their mother's unchecked mental illness had set the stage. Jennifer's life was a perfect storm, and she knew it.

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Episode 282

4442.952

And there it is. Hearing these final words is haunting. Her admission. I should have never had kids. It's not just a regret. It's the very moment of Jennifer's realization about the generational cycle of trauma and mental illness. She saw and experienced the fallout of her own mother's struggle.

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Episode 282

4471.98

lived through it and yet found herself walking down a similar path, trapped by the very symptoms she once feared. Jennifer was raised by someone incapable of loving, protecting and caring for her in the way every child deserves. This was a parent who not only failed to protect but often directly exposed them to traumatic experiences.

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Episode 282

4497.694

After living through that trauma, this same parent deterred her children from seeking mental health services. Perhaps Jennifer was set up to fail from the very start. In September of 2007, about seven months after the tragic murders, 30-year-old Jennifer Kukla went to trial for two counts of first-degree murder.

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Episode 282

4521.001

Three separate psychologists testified on her behalf, stating that she was legally insane at the time of the killings and therefore not criminally responsible. They felt she should be found guilty by reason of insanity and placed in a psychiatric facility. The jury, though, didn't buy it.

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Episode 282

4543.274

They cited the feeble attempt at suicide, the inconsistencies in Jennifer's police interview compared to her psych interviews, and even witnessed testimony from her employer who remembered Jennifer saying she could just kill her kids during a conversation about being late for work because of them. To top it off, even if Jennifer had been suffering an acute psychotic episode that day,

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Episode 282

4570.495

Under Michigan law, if that episode is triggered by drinking alcohol, it's not a defense. The jury rendered a guilty verdict while also acknowledging the obvious mental illness. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but with the promise that she would receive at least some mental health care.

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Episode 282

4595.782

The police officers who responded to the gruesome scene will never get the image out of their heads. Jennifer asked for her brain to be erased, and I'm sure those officers wished for the very same thing. They remember seeing the two little girls laying side by side in their small bedroom, surrounded by their toys, their books, their artwork, and even photos of them smiling with their moms.

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Episode 282

4625.777

One deputy said this. You can only imagine their lifestyle. You could see that they didn't have much. But what they did have, they seemed to appreciate. They seemed like they were happy, cute girls. You have to try hard not to think about it rationally. It was an irrational act. You never let it go. All right, I'll tell you one little thing.

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Episode 282

4700.187

The show that's coming up is called This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me. I know, it's a very long title. Anyway, go find it on Apple and Spotify and subscribe. Do it now. I will say one more thing because I know how you people operate. Yes, the show will be available on Plus commercial free, of course. And it's going to be on every tier as well. So no more mix ups.

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Episode 282

4744.525

But you do help us out tremendously still by subscribing on Apple and Spotify.

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Episode 282

511.715

The whole family knew Jenny was an alcoholic, but her habits had gotten worse over the prior months. Finances were tight, and she was spending any extra money she had on beer and all of her free time drinking it. The kids, three dogs, the pet mouse, none of them were being cared for properly, and the trailer they lived in was an absolute disaster, as you can imagine.

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Episode 282

537.335

To top it all off, they didn't even have running water.

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Episode 282

557.0

Al was Jenny's boyfriend. He lived nearby and the two were still friends.

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Episode 282

628.077

Unfortunately, food in the fridge is not the only criteria CPS looks for when deciding whether a home is safe for children. It looked like Jenny might actually get a visit from a social worker, and it wouldn't be the first time. CPS had taken her kids before, but she knew that if it happened again, she might not be able to get them back. Lauren didn't want to be at her family's beck and call.

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Episode 282

655.197

She knew Jenny's situation was largely because of her own unwillingness to get help for her alcoholism and whatever else was going on in her drama-filled life. Her chief concern were her two nieces. Jenny's eight-year-old daughter, Alexa, apologies if I just activated your devices at home, and five-year-old daughter, Ashley.

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Episode 282

679.383

So Lauren, the family crisis manager that she was, gathered some friends, a guy named Russell and a woman named Jessica. She offered them 10 bucks for their time and drove them over to her sister's house to help her clean it up.

Sword and Scale

Episode 282

72.895

There's a new show coming, so stick around after the music and you'll find out more. This is Season 2, Episode 282 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. Well, I lied. Not about the show that's coming up. It is coming up. But about telling you about the show that's coming up. Because I'm not going to tell you anything. I'm going to keep it a secret this time.

Sword and Scale

Episode 282

806.305

Jenny was probably grasping at straws, trying to find reasons why her life turned out as terribly as it did, and why she couldn't seem to be a good parent like her little sister, Lauren. Gee, I wonder why. Being, you know, hypnotized is an answer that takes the blame off of Jenny herself. It's one of the things that alcoholics do. Just trust me on that.

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Episode 282

834.343

Though she wasn't actually hypnotized, Jenny hadn't had an easy life. Sure, her situation was a result of her own decisions, but decisions are often influenced by past experiences, and Jenny's life had been rather traumatic.

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Episode 282

934.57

Even after a childhood full of abuse, Jenny managed to pull something of a life together. She had full custody of her two young daughters, had a place for them to live, and worked as a manager for McDonald's. She wasn't addicted to hard drugs like her sister Lizzie, But alcoholism can be more difficult to beat because it's normalized in society. I mean, try going out.

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Episode 282

962.168

Just going out on the weekend. Try to do something and not be around alcohol. It's impossible. Plus, you know, no one gives you a side-eye if they see you sipping on a can of beer. How would they know it's your 12th drink? On the other hand, if you have a needle hanging out of your arm like, uh, a lot of the residents of Portland, someone might actually call the cops on you.

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Episode 282

987.044

Probably not a Democrat, though. Anyways, Lauren, Jenny, and their posse of helpers arrived at the trailer and got to work.

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Episode 293

100.933

The house on Byron Avenue was typical of the quiet north Fort Myers neighborhood in Florida. A simple, weather-worn home of only about 500 square feet. This quiet residential home is where Bonnie Nicely had been living with her boyfriend, Joseph Zeiler, since 1990. Their 25-year-old son had also lived on the property. On the night of August 26, 2016, the household erupted into an argument.

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Episode 293

1002.124

Jan told Robin and Lisa that she was going out for the night to watch a football game at a friend's place as she walked out the door. Hours later, Jan had fallen asleep on her friend's couch. Having lost track of time, she rushed home. She only had minutes to get to her job as a nurse at Cape Coral Hospital. When she got home, it was around 4 a.m. Her worldview changed forever.

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Episode 293

1029.828

Both her roommate and her daughter were dead. Jan Cornell had not planned to be out this late. She'd spent the previous day helping her new roommate Lisa settle into her new apartment, but around 10.45 p.m., Jan decided to head to her boyfriend's house to watch the basketball playoffs. She told Lisa and her 11-year-old daughter, Robin, that she'd be home soon.

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Episode 293

1068.973

But Jan fell asleep and didn't wake up until 4 a.m. when she realized she needed to get home and get ready for her morning shift at the hospital. We all hope that emergency operators are trying to do their best in these situations, but ordering someone to calm down when they've walked in on this kind of unexpected horror is just not going to work.

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Episode 293

1093.418

As she approached the front door, Jan realized something was off. The doorknob lock that she usually avoided because it was faulty was locked. She usually used the deadbolt, and she couldn't get in with her key. She knocked, hoping someone would open up. For a minute, she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs, but the door didn't open.

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Episode 293

1120.628

Getting more anxious every time she knocked, Jan walked around the apartment to the sliding glass door. and saw that it was slightly open, and the vertical blinds were moving back and forth as if someone had just walked through. Inside, Jan's eyes fell on something that stopped her in her tracks.

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Episode 293

1202.814

It's a cruel irony, expecting calm from someone who's just found the unthinkable. A dead child. After seeing the framed photographs out of place, Jan made her way up to the second floor, her heart racing with fear and confusion. As she reached the top of the stairs, she rushed into her bedroom, where Robin slept with her. She found Robin, her precious 11-year-old, lying on the floor.

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Episode 293

1231.106

Robin's body was positioned on her stomach, knees tucked beneath her, her buttocks exposed, with a pillow placed under her. The sight was so unimaginable that Jan could hardly process it. Her maternal instincts took over as she rushed to her daughter's side thinking, "'Please, God, let her be alive.'"

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Episode 293

1256.363

Jan immediately turned Robin over, positioning her flat on the floor, and began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. her hands trembling with every breath she forced into her daughter's lungs. Robin's skin was cold, and in her heart Jan understood. But even with that knowledge, she couldn't stop. A mother's instinct would not let her give up. Not while there was even a shred of hope.

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Episode 293

1284.522

All this time, she screamed for Lisa to help her, but Lisa never came. Here's the lead detective on the case.

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Episode 293

131.885

Bonnie was used to the strained relationship between Joseph and their son. Arguments between them had escalated recently, and she could hear them shouting at each other in the hallway. They had all three been drinking. But Bonnie was plenty sober enough to know where this yelling was headed. It was getting out of control.

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Episode 293

1321.077

Within moments, sirens broke the silence and Cape Coral police arrived at the apartment. But for Jan, standing over her daughter's lifeless body, the damage was already done. The horror of that moment was something she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Both Lisa and Robin had been violently assaulted sexually and suffocated.

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Episode 293

1367.325

As investigators arrived and began combing through the apartment, Jan remembered things from the days before that now seemed like signs she'd missed. Leading up to the murders, Janet sensed something was off. For instance, one night, she'd been jolted awake by noises outside her condo, as she was sure that someone was prowling around her place.

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Episode 293

1392.866

On May 9th, she was at her bedroom window, trying to get her cat to come back in. She spotted a man standing near the patio. This was a white male in jeans, a t-shirt, and a hat. He stared at her for an unusually long time. before giving her a creepy smile and walking away.

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Episode 293

1417.586

After Jan's 911 call, investigators from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Cape Coral Police Department came to process the scene in painstaking detail. They captured every corner on video, took fingerprints, and gathered hair samples. This would be an intensive investigation that would leave no stone unturned.

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Episode 293

1441.161

First, detectives talked to everyone living in the neighborhood surrounding Jan Cornell's apartment, asking if anyone saw or heard anything unusual, especially if they had seen the man in jeans and hat. They worked to track down anybody who matched that description, checking records and questioning every person who might have noticed suspicious activity in the area.

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Episode 293

1465.381

But nobody seemed to know anything. Despite ongoing fears of the residents and the immediate community, the case came to a standstill. Cold. This is Robin's mother, Jan Cornell, years after the murders in a 2013 interview with Cape Coral Police.

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Episode 293

153.447

Bonnie nicely gave her account of the night's events in her recorded statement, which was taken at 3.33 a.m. on August 27, 2016. She said her 25-year-old son and his girlfriend spent time drinking at a local pool hall. And after they got home, Joseph and their son began arguing. According to Bonnie, the two men, both drunk, started swinging and grabbing at each other.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

1539.447

It's time. Please come forward. In their search for suspects, investigators first focused on a man named Robert David Jackson. who had lived nearby and had a history of disturbing behavior. Local people knew him and called him a peeping Tom because of the obvious. He was caught looking in through windows around the neighborhood.

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Episode 293

1562.304

His ex-girlfriend gave a statement saying she knew of his weird habits and that he was interested in perverse sexual activities. This was important as a sex toy was found at the scene. She also noted his very nervous demeanor following the murders, making her worry about his potential involvement. She said that Robert allegedly spent the night of the crime with friends.

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Episode 293

1587.455

but was in a hurry to leave town soon afterward and fled to Mississippi. With suspicions mounting, detectives worked with the authorities in Mississippi, coordinating a stakeout to intercept Robert as he returned to his trailer. Robert was cooperative and signed a consent form for searches, including hair and blood samples.

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Episode 293

1608.339

In his interview, he claimed he'd spent the night of the murders with two friends at local bars and had no connection to the crime scene. And you know what? For once, he was telling the truth. When his samples were tested, the forensic results failed to link him to the crime.

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Episode 293

1626.824

In addition to this guy, the investigators had built case files on other individuals in the neighborhood, including known offenders and 19 additional possible suspects who were questioned and asked to give fingerprints and hair samples. But none of these leads matched the forensic evidence from the scene, leaving detectives and the family without answers for years.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

1651.464

Finally, the killer did come forward, but not in the way Jan would expect. She had no idea that just a few years later, this mystery would be solved, this nut would be cracked. This is Joseph talking about the Sonny shot and almost giving away a secret. Listen carefully.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

1690.853

The last 30 years I haven't been violent. I haven't been violent, you know. It was almost 30 years since the murders. 26 years had gone by between 1990 and 2016. The physical evidence collected and meticulously preserved was packed away, just waiting for advancements in forensic science to shed new light.

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Episode 293

1714.237

When Joseph Zeiler was taken into custody for shooting his son, a now-routine DNA cheek swab, something unheard of in 1990, linked him to the 1990 crime scene. reigniting an investigation that had gone unsolved for decades.

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Episode 293

1756.145

But Joseph wasn't prepared to help anyone with anything. Ever since his 1998 accident, he says he basically doesn't remember much. Like, even the fundamentals.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

1781.714

He briefly touches on his current relationship with Bonnie, but he somehow forgets that he has an ex-wife. He also forgets where he was born and where he worked.

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Episode 293

181.466

Bonnie's account was that Joseph followed their son to the bedroom, where he pressed his left forearm against his son's neck, pinning him down on the bed while repeatedly striking him in the face with his right hand. Their son fought back, biting Joseph on the left forearm and right fingers to break free.

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Episode 293

1826.595

Jan, Lisa, and Robin lived about a block away from Cape Coral Hospital where Jan worked.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

1930.094

You have to start with a simple spark and slowly build it up, feeding it just enough to keep it going without smothering it. You push too hard and the fire dies out. You go too easy and it never catches. They know it's all over as soon as a suspect asks for an attorney. Detectives have to pay attention to every flicker.

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Episode 293

1956.363

turning up the pressure just enough, hoping that the truth will finally ignite before the flame is snuffed out.

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Episode 293

201.001

while Bonnie, desperate to stop the assault, scratched Joseph's face as she tried to pull him away. When their son managed to get loose, Joseph retreated to his bedroom, seemingly ending the altercation. Joseph's version was slightly different. It was a more complete version that started at the beginning, long before the night of the attack.

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Episode 293

2053.643

They weren't getting anywhere. Joseph insisted that he stayed out of trouble for a long time, and the only offense he could recall was the one he was just arrested for, shooting his son in alleged self-defense. When they brought up a charge in Illinois for burglary back in the 80s, again he had no recollection. So they asked, was he good at figuring out locks?

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Episode 293

2111.44

Okay. The next round of questions involved his personal and sexual life. They wanted to know if he'd ever cheated on Bonnie, whether he was a one-woman kind of guy, or what his preferences were. You know, like, uh... Do you like children in a sexual way?

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

2142.358

In 2016, Joseph, Bonnie, their son, and their son's girlfriend were living in Fort Myers, not Cape Coral. Even though Cape Coral was less than 10 miles away, you'd think Joseph lived in a cave on the other side of the world. According to him, he didn't watch much TV, didn't go very far, and when he did, he was usually on his bike. Sounds like me, doesn't it?

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Episode 293

2167.537

Anyway, as for 1990, that was buried in the distant past. A year he seemed to have wiped from memory, like an old hard drive scrubbed clean. To hear Joseph tell it, those years were long gone, erased, leaving no trace for anyone to find. But, as he would soon learn, some things don't stay hidden forever, and there are some sins you can't just pray away. Detectives then asked about porn.

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Episode 293

2204.41

He freely admitted using it, explaining that Bonnie knew it and didn't mind. It was just part of life, nothing more, he claimed. But then the conversation shifted a bit. Out came the photos of Robin and Lisa, two young faces that had been frozen in time since 1990.

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Episode 293

2240.818

I am looking at him. Just to jog your memory a little bit. But see, that's assuming he had a memory. And that was the mystery. Because if he's lying, he's damn good at it. I don't know who they are.

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Episode 293

2290.196

I pray every evening. It had to be frustrating to know that they had DNA, fingerprints, and hair strands all connecting Joseph to the murders. And yet, could it be possible that he had no memory of it? You heard him say he prayed every evening. Was it also possible that he remembered the crimes, thought he'd gotten away with it, and actually tried to turn over a new leaf?

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Episode 293

2317.615

That is, until he shot his son.

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Episode 293

2366.416

Robin was a sweet girl, according to her mom, Jan. She was a typical 11-year-old.

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Episode 293

2443.496

She was friendly and had lots of friends at school. More than 25 years later, these friends still think of Robin and stay in touch with Jan.

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Episode 293

2489.499

Do you remember touching her? No. Nothing was making this guy crack. And if they could just get him to admit anything. But he wouldn't. If they could just get him to acknowledge that he gave his DNA and they had him as a match. But he couldn't, or wouldn't, even admit to remembering being swabbed.

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Episode 293

2571.081

Whether he remembered anything or not, he knew exactly what was up when they mentioned DNA.

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Episode 293

2606.642

I'd like to speak to my attorney. For Jan, it was always about the DNA. Even back in this 2013 interview, she hadn't lost hope. She knew that advancements in this research would eventually bring answers.

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Episode 293

2660.68

With that said, no matter how much or how little Joseph Zyler remembered or how many times he insisted on his innocence, DNA doesn't lie. And his DNA was all over the place. including on and in Robin. The probability of it being anyone else was astronomically low. There was no escaping the science.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

2686.961

But would Joseph's head trauma and alleged loss of memory be mitigating factors in a trial, or would the jury see him for what he was? A cold, sexual predator, burglar, and killer. For decades, the brutal murders of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and 32-year-old Lisa Story haunted the quiet community of Cape Coral, Florida.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

2744.978

The two were brutally assaulted and suffocated in their home in 1990, their innocent lives stolen in an act of violence that left officers sobbing as they left the heartbreaking scene. Despite the painstaking investigation, including forensic work and interviews with dozens of potential suspects, The case went cold until 2016.

Sword and Scale

Episode 293

2767.253

It was then, during an unrelated domestic dispute, that Joseph Zeiler's DNA was collected and linked to the 1990 crime scene. Joseph, who had lived quietly for years denying any connection to the murders, was suddenly at the center of a case that had remained unsolved for more than 25 years. It was his third interview. He was already in jail for shooting his son with a pellet gun in an argument.

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Episode 293

2799.407

According to Joseph, his son was a drunken bully who had been belligerent, and Joseph had enough. Now, he was faced with the reality that the police had DNA on him from this incident and were arresting him for the 1990 murders of Robin and Lisa. Joseph claimed to have no memory of anything occurring before a 1998 head injury. But detectives didn't believe him. Still, he confessed to nothing.

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Episode 293

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In his final interview with detectives, Joseph seemed almost resigned. He spoke in calm tones, reflecting on life and morality as if he were an outsider to his own story. Not once during the three interviews did he get mad, yell, or have an outburst.

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Episode 293

2862.264

For someone who would be standing trial for two of the most brutal murders Florida has ever seen, Joseph seemed like he was anything but a monster. He began reflecting on how blessed he'd been to have a home and how he was worried about Bonnie now living there alone with their alcoholic son. He maintained that he knew he would need to let her go.

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It was almost as if he was facing the gallows in these moments and knew he'd come to Jesus soon because he's repented.

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According to Joseph, his son verbally targeted his much older girlfriend, but he treated his parents even worse when he drank. And apparently, this man drank a whole lot.

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It really seemed like this was a confessional. Joseph went on to plead not guilty in the trial, but for now, saying, I enjoyed it while I could. I was blessed. Sure felt like he knew he was never going to go home again. And then the conversation took a bizarre turn into moral speculation.

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For the record, he was using a hypothetical situation about another person. He said they are not a bad person sitting in front of me. Because Joseph was a different story. There's no way the detective is sitting there thinking that the man across from him was anything other than evil, knowing what he did to Lisa Story and Robin Cornell. No, I agree.

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Episode 293

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Did Joseph really believe in accountability? Or was he just setting the stage for sympathy at his trial? During the trial in May of 2023, testimony from a psychiatrist painted a different picture. Zeiler's strict authoritarian father combined with a head injury that caused memory loss and depression created a volatile mix of repression and anger.

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3089.72

To the expert, this wasn't about being born evil, but about how a lifetime of unchecked damage can warp a person's mind.

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3113.746

But for the families of Lisa Story and Robin Cornell, no amount of psychological insight could undo the harm Joseph had caused. Lisa, who had just moved into Jan Cornell's apartment, was remembered by her boyfriend as a kind, thoughtful person with a bright future ahead of her. One of the few gifts she left behind was a watch she was going to give him for his birthday.

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It was engraved with love from Lisa and was never recovered. It was stolen from the crime scene by this killer who also caused unspeakable harm to an 11-year-old girl in her final moments. This was Lisa's boyfriend at the time, remembering what happened in 1990.

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Episode 293

3199.675

Lisa's boyfriend wasn't the only one to take the stand during the trial. Of course, Jan Cornell gave a heart-wrenching testimony. Most of the time, defense attorneys don't allow their clients to take the stand. But Joseph Zeiler was so adamant that he was innocent that there was no stopping him.

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Episode 293

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But, of course, he was not expecting his own incriminating words to, quote, come back and bite him in the ass. Between September 8th and 15th, 2016, Joseph Zeiler made five recorded calls to his girlfriend, Bonnie Nicely, from jail. He focused on directing Bonnie to get him out of jail, telling her to claim he was too incapacitated to flee.

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Episode 293

3246.721

Tell the bondsman you're my caretaker, he said, and get power of attorney so you can access my safety deposit box. As the calls went on, Zeiler's calm instructions turned even more specific. If anything comes down that is upsetting you, if anything embarrassing comes down, you need to pack a bag and run, he warned her. The house is going to be converged on.

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3271.75

Do you understand what we're talking about? Back in 1990, I did go through this before and nothing bit me in the ass, so there's a very good chance it won't. These cryptic references, along with repeatedly saying that he would deal with it if his past caught up with him, gave detectives a window into Joseph's thoughts. On September 22nd, Joseph called Bonnie in a panic.

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Episode 293

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Cape Coral cops are trying to pin some shit on me. Bonnie, who had no idea he was a killer, was visibly shaken and later agreed to meet with detectives. The calls revealed what his interviews hadn't. Joseph wasn't just hiding something. He was terrified of what was about to come to light.

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Episode 293

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He started out calmly, thinking he had control of the courtroom and claiming that an unknown blonde hair found at the scene must have belonged to his brother. But when it was pointed out that blood analysis determined he was the killer, his demeanor shifted dramatically.

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Episode 293

3336.547

The man who had once calmly told detectives that he didn't believe people were born bad now faced the courtroom with defiance and cruelty, and sometimes the middle finger. His testimony was less about defense and more about provoking crime. and blaming.

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Episode 293

3410.848

Whereas the interview room at the police station showed a meek, mild, and well-mannered person with head trauma and memory loss, now his memory was suddenly sharp enough to recall that he had been in the area a few months before the murders and had slept with Jan. For the record, Jan had never slept with Joseph Zeiler in her lifetime. In fact, she'd never even seen him.

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Episode 293

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The prosecutor got rid of any notion that this vile man, Joseph, should be taken seriously.

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Robin and Lisa's family still wonder, even today, about the true motive of the assault and murder. They wonder if he was stalking them, if they had unknowingly met him and caused him to want revenge, or maybe this was just a simple burglary that had gone wrong. Maybe it was all three.

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Episode 293

3510.535

On June 26, 2023, Joseph Zeiler was sentenced to death for the 1990 murders of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and 32-year-old Lisa Story in Cape Coral, Florida. The sentencing followed a jury's recommendation for the death penalty with 10 out of 12 juries in favor. During the sentencing hearing, the once calm man who prayed every evening

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Episode 293

353.098

So fast forward to that night. They all went to a pool hall slash bar, but Joseph says he and his common-law wife left after a couple of drinks, whereas his son stayed there with friends. Joseph says he even warned the friends that his son already had six beers in him, and they better not let him drink much more than that.

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decided to elbow his attorney in the face, further proving that maybe he was inherently evil after all.

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During that same interview, he said one more thing that was both prophetic and chilling.

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Episode 293

3600.37

He sat across from detectives and calmly insisted that he believed no one is inherently bad. But his actions could not have been more demonic. The violence he inflicted, the lives he stole, and the families he shattered painted a picture that even he will never forget, whether he admits it or not. We hope you liked that one. We think it's going to be one of the ones you remember for a long time.

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There's a few episodes of Sword and Scale that just can't get out of your head, you know? I think that was one of them. So, you're welcome! By the way, if you really like the show and you want to help us out, if you want to support the arts... Head on over to swordandscale.com, download our app. It's available on Android or Apple devices, and subscribe to Plus.

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That's how you can make sure that we're going to still be here next week. Hint, motherfucking hint. We also have a store if you want to support us that way. We've got shirts and hats and all kinds of shit. Go look at it. Store.swordandscale.com. This story was written and researched by our producer, Valerie Vernon. That's it. I got nothing else.

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I'm just going to sit here until the music stops because it's a rule, FCC 318. So, oh, look, it's time. Okay, bye. Hey!

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Episode 293

373.191

A couple of hours later, though, his son called for a ride because, you know, he was too drunk to drive.

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410.874

Bonnie's version is that their son bit Joseph, who then went to the bathroom and came out holding a pellet gun. Bonnie couldn't remember seeing him pump the weapon, but she distinctly heard the sound of it firing as he raised it towards their son, who was now standing in the hallway. Joseph aimed the gun, fired, and hit his son on the chest.

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Episode 293

433.957

Stunned, their son Zach clutched his chest because he knew he was wounded. Without a word, he left the house with his girlfriend and drove to Lee Memorial Hospital for treatment, where he was immediately taken into surgery and admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition. But that's not exactly how Joseph says it went down.

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Episode 293

512.216

Next, he says Zach came back for more when he barreled his way past his mom and girlfriend, knocking them over on his way to attack Joseph again. That's when he reached for the pellet gun. He says he attempted to shoot his son in the shoulder, but missed and hit him in the chest. A pellet gun, if you don't already know, is similar to a BB gun.

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Episode 293

535.099

I have one in the glove compartment of my Cybertruck, which I keep there in case the crazies try to mess with it. It operates with the use of air pressure that's built up by a pumping action. It can be in the form of a pistol or rifle. In this case, it was a rifle. And it operates with the use of air pressure via a CO2 cartridge or by pumping it.

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Episode 293

559.642

In this case, it was a rifle-style pellet gun with pump action. The more you pump, the stronger the force of the pellet. And these weapons are marked as non-lethal, but in some cases they can kill you. In fact, they're used for killing rodents and other vermin on rural properties. But they can be very, very harmful when you point them at someone.

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Episode 293

586.499

And you should never do that unless you intend to hurt them and possibly kill them. Joseph was using the Silver Strike, a well-known multi-pump air rifle made by Sheridan Products, Inc. It's been popular since the mid-20th century and can shoot with enough force to damage small targets. In this case, it hit at close range, next to Zach's heart.

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Episode 293

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When officers from the Lee County Sheriff's Office arrived, they found the residents bloodstained with droplets in the hallway and across both bedrooms. After a search of the property, deputies found Joseph hiding in a stand-alone shed outside the main house. He was lying on a cot with a pellet gun and a tin can of pellets beside him.

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Episode 293

661.676

At first, the cops thought he was deliberately hiding from them and refusing to answer their shouts at the door of the house. But he wasn't even in the house, and instead he had run from his own son and was hiding from him, not the police.

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Episode 293

676.565

He maintained that Bonnie had also struck him during the fight with their son, climbing on top of his back and scratching and hitting him in an attempt to break the two of them up. According to Joseph, he listens to his common-law wife. And when she told him to stop, he did. It was their son who pursued him.

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Episode 293

703.314

Regardless of whose story you found more truthful, the fact stood on its own that Joseph had discharged a pellet gun and aimed it at his own son, injuring him. What were the police going to do? Just walk away and let them sort it out for themselves? I mean, they can't. So they found probable cause to charge Joseph Zeiler with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

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Episode 293

730.293

He was formally arrested on August 28th, 2016 and booked into the Lee County Jail without incident. They took him through all the usual procedures, fingerprinting, mugshot, cheek swabbing, all the fun stuff. He wasn't used to being behind bars. For a man who'd lived quietly for so many years, the jail was a cold, unforgiving place with a lot of noise.

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Episode 293

756.922

Noise was exactly the thing he tried to avoid and also the reason he spent a lot of time in his man cave shed because his son and girlfriend were always fighting and he wanted some peace and quiet. Now, noise wasn't really his concern. As he sat in that stark, concrete cell, He had no way of knowing that detectives were uncovering something far beyond a family argument.

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Episode 293

785.852

Something that had been buried in silence, waiting to be found. There were files, details, and unanswered questions that resurfaced in ways no one had expected. As the investigation unfolded, what detectives found would reach beyond Joseph, bringing in people who thought the past was long since buried. For now, though, he sat quietly, unaware of the pieces that were about to fall into place.

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Episode 293

842.338

In North Fort Myers, Florida, Joseph Zeiler had led a quiet life for years. After an incident in 1998 left him with head trauma, a legal settlement allowed him to afford a modest home, where he lived with his longtime partner, Bonnie Nicely. The two met back in May of 1990, and within a month, Joseph had moved in with her.

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Episode 293

866.584

Following the accident, Bonnie became both his caregiver and power of attorney, managing his affairs as he struggled with memory issues. Though his driver's license was valid, he'd been advised not to drive. Bonnie and Joseph weren't the only ones living in the home, though. Their 25-year-old son, Zach, and his much older girlfriend also made a home there in that 500-square-foot house.

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Episode 293

892.955

According to Joseph, their son was a heavy drinker who turned belligerent during binges. So, one August night in 2016, a family argument turned violent. What began as a tense evening at a local bar ended with Joseph's son in the hospital and Joseph behind bars, charged with aggravated battery.

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Episode 293

915.642

To detectives, it seemed like a straightforward case of domestic violence, a regrettable but isolated incident. But as Joseph sat in his cell, the investigation took an unexpected turn. A routine DNA collection linked him to something far more sinister, forcing open the door to a long, cold case that no one, least of all Joseph Zeiler, saw coming.

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Episode 293

944.502

For years, this case had haunted investigators and left two families broken and grieving. And now new questions were being presented. Detectives had to ask, who was Joseph Zeiler, really? And what secrets had he managed to hide for so long?

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Episode 293

982.594

Jan Cornell was a single mom of an 11-year-old daughter named Robin, and she recently invited her friend Lisa Story to move in and become her roommate. Robin had asked her mother if she could have a sleepover with a friend that night, but Jan told her no because she hadn't cleaned her room.

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Episode 292

1013.935

On the morning of June 28th, 2018, seven-year-old Adrian woke up to the sound of his father talking. Even at such a young age, he knew something was wrong. He was confused by his mother's snoring and the boo-boo on her head. He rationalized the events in his mind without being able to draw the connections between them. His mother was hurt. His father was arrested. But he didn't understand why.

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Episode 292

1044.595

Fourteen years earlier, in 2004, Anastasia first traveled to the U.S. from her native country, Belarus. She used the trip to practice her English, and by 2005, she moved to Florida permanently. What better place to pursue her dreams than the land of opportunity? She wasn't alone, though. She had a close friend with her who also moved from Belarus.

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Episode 292

1094.482

This is Hanna Jamorlik, Anastasia's best friend. Anastasia sort of followed her to the U.S. They were so close that after Anastasia gave birth to Adrian, she asked Hanna to be his godmother. Of course, she said yes.

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Episode 292

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The two were both determined women with ambition and goals. Anastasia quickly enrolled in college and started pursuing a degree. By the time she neared the end of her bachelor's degree, she had met a man, Mark Berkowitz.

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A romance sparked between Mark and Anastasia, but she didn't let that distract her from her goals.

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Episode 292

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Anastasia was an achiever. She set her sight on something and didn't stop until she got it. She did more schoolwork than was required because she actually enjoyed it. This was a stark comparison to her husband, Mark. Here's Grandma Barb describing Mark as a child.

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Episode 292

1238.945

Between Grandma Barb's two sons, Mark was the black sheep. He couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. He dropped out of school his freshman year and started working a series of jobs in hospitality. He also struggled with his mental health.

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Episode 292

124.635

But as time goes on, needing someone can become more important than wanting them. And that's when problems begin. The distinction between being needed and being wanted might not seem like a big deal at first, but it can make all the difference in whether a relationship lasts or it falls apart.

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His uncontrollable swings in emotion and his decisions during these swings made him prone to getting into trouble. It wasn't long before the troubled teenager became a convict.

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1298.601

Anastasia didn't care about Mark's troubled past. It didn't matter to her. His past was just that, the past. She was young, in her 20s, by the time she met Mark. He was in his early 30s and had a good job at a luxury hotel. Mark had become wiser with age. He seemed to have calmed his rebellious youth a bit.

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Their romance bloomed, and they both had a sharp eye on their future together. Mark was going to work and support Anastasia as she earned her degree.

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1384.173

Once Anastasia became a doctor, Mark could chase his dreams. Dreams a high school dropout with a record could never seem to afford with a string of dead-end jobs.

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Episode 292

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So their future was set. They had a plan, and Mark and Anastasia could see the path before them. They just had to walk it. But turmoil was just around the corner.

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Episode 292

1442.405

Mark found himself trapped in a cycle of self-loathing. He'd fuck up at work for one reason or another, get fired, and fall into a deep depression. And these bouts of depression would last a while. Then, like a swing of a pendulum, Mark would rebound, get another job, and all was right with the world again. At least in his eyes. The cycle continued until one day, Mark spun out of control.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

146.6

When someone depends on the other for their happiness, their self-worth, and even their identity, it's no longer about love. It's about something else entirely. Control. Control. The fear of losing that person isn't because of love, it's because their whole sense of self is tied to them. It's not about wanting a life with them anymore, it's about being scared of a life without them.

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Episode 292

1472.508

Adrian was about one year old and they were living in Miami gardens. This incident would change everything.

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Episode 292

1536.892

He straddled her body and wrapped both hands around her throat. Her stepfather had to pull him off. Anastasia and her parents grabbed one-year-old Adrian, hid with the neighbors, and called the police. Anastasia was frightened. Mark had never acted so violently before. She didn't know what to think or what to do. Of course, the police didn't either.

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Episode 292

1595.332

Anastasia knew she couldn't raise Adrian and go to school on her own. So she convinced herself that this was a one-time thing and Mark could change. After Anastasia took him back, Mark seemed to turn his life around. He really put in the effort to be a better man for his family. He stopped his illicit drug use, got another job, and actually seemed happy.

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Episode 292

1634.759

And things were okay for a while. All the while, Anastasia kept working towards her degree. By the time Adrian turned six, they lived in an apartment across the street from Grandma Barb. Then something happened. Something that would be the catalyst for change in their relationship.

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Episode 292

1680.844

Anastasia liked to gamble. It was the only thing she did for fun. She spent the rest of her time studying and being a mom, so every once in a while she would blow off some steam at the casino. It's just that she rarely won.

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Episode 292

1712.748

Mark resented Anastasia for what she did. He turned his life around for her. Now he was 42 years old and he relied on his mother for a place to live. Makes you feel like a real loser when you get divorced and have to move back in with mom as an adult male. It can really do a number on your self-confidence if you're not careful.

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Episode 292

1736.025

Mark felt that he should have more to show for his life, being where he was in life. He felt like he was right back where he had started. Anastasia's life was moving forward with lightning speed while his life was standing still. and it was all her fault. But he tried his best to move past it. In March 2018, Anastasia became a naturalized citizen, a milestone she'd been waiting on for years.

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Episode 292

1767.318

She was now a full-fledged citizen of the United States and only a month away from becoming a doctor. Anastasia could not have been happier. She was so close to the goal she'd worked so hard to achieve, and she wanted to celebrate.

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Episode 292

177.696

When someone feels like they have nothing to lose, they'll do anything to hang on and keep their life from falling apart, even if it means crossing lines they never would have thought to cross. This kind of unhealthy reliance doesn't just hurt feelings, it ruins lives. And the aftermath? It often affects the people who least deserve it.

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Episode 292

1808.952

Well, the discount fell through. If you ask Grandma Barb, she'll say Mark quit, but the truth is he was fired. Mark was caught skimming. Skimming is a childish scam of padding the check so the customer pays more, essentially giving the scammer a larger tip. In Mark's case, he was pocketing vouchers for espresso. He would apply the coupon to the customer's bill after they paid.

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Episode 292

1839.704

He'd make like ten bucks each time. He got caught when upper management noticed the vouchers being used when they knew that the espresso machine was broken. Oops. Mark was busted, and it ruined Anastasia's graduation party plans. All for, again, ten dollars at a time. The tension between the two was higher than ever. I mean, what a fucking loser.

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Episode 292

1889.149

Anastasia was pissed. She didn't ask Mark for much, but when she did, she was routinely disappointed. Mounting tensions at home couldn't have come at a worse time. Anastasia was days away from graduation and tried to remain focused. Mark, too, tried to play the role of dutiful husband, but the rift between them was already too great.

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Episode 292

1914.197

As her graduation day approached, she couldn't have been more excited. But when the day came, she didn't seem to want to share it with Mark or Grandma Barb.

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Episode 292

1950.43

It was Anastasia's special day. She spent the better part of a decade working towards that day. But Mark couldn't help but want to share in his wife's success. After all, they were partners. He'd helped her get to where she was. Her success was their success. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. In fact, it was his success. It was Mark. Mark had done it all. I mean, he'd, you know, kept the fork going.

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Episode 292

1981.532

Anastasia couldn't have done anything if it hadn't been for Mark, right? Needless to say, Anastasia didn't see it that way. To Anastasia, her success was despite Mark.

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Episode 292

2015.432

That day, surrounded by all their graduating doctors, Anastasia was embarrassed by her unaccomplished husband. She had a vision for the rest of her life that didn't include Mark. Mark was confused and angry. This wasn't part of their plan. Anastasia's graduation was supposed to be the start of the rest of their lives together. But it wasn't shaping up that way.

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Episode 292

2042.869

Anastasia shunned Mark in front of her friends and his mother. Of course, Mark pitched a fit. He disappeared with the car, leaving Anastasia crying. When he returned an hour later, he gave Anastasia the keys and told her he was walking home. His manipulative attempt at guilting her worked. She and her friends picked him up and took him with them to celebrate.

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2081.971

But Mark couldn't let go of Anastasia's disrespect towards him.

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2096.382

The argument continued and grew until Mark finally saw only one path forward.

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Episode 292

2126.581

Anastasia was secretly thrilled Mark brought up divorce first. And she intended to file even though he changed his mind. there was just one little issue. Adrian.

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Episode 292

2171.452

Anastasia was about to embark on a successful career as a doctor. She wanted to ditch the dead weight of an unaccomplished husband, but she needed his help for the sake of their son. The long hours that the job demanded conflicted with Adrian's school schedule. So Anastasia tried to maintain a good relationship with Mark and his mom. It just wasn't easy.

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Episode 292

2221.445

Mark knew that Anastasia was preparing to move out. She told him as much. But he refused to accept it. Instead, he would pick fights, usually about money, and often very petty. Living in a place he didn't want to be, with a wife who clearly didn't love him was wearing on him. and his mental state was starting to deteriorate.

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Episode 292

2261.921

Mark felt like he was being used because after nine years of marriage, he was about to have jack shit to show for it. He was a broke, 42-year-old, bipolar, unemployed man living with his elderly mother. He had no career prospects and his wife was about to divorce him. So, definitely the kind of guy that they give out popularity trophies to.

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Episode 292

2287.12

After everything he did for her, this is the thanks that he got. He felt like he was owed something. You know?

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Episode 292

2333.072

Three times the police had to respond to that home. One time, Mark was put on psychiatric hold. The most recent time, Mark was arrested on an unrelated outstanding warrant. Anastasia couldn't have been more thrilled.

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Episode 292

235.167

Outside the police department in Plantation, Florida, the parking lot is still dotted with the harsh orange glow of street lamps. It's a little after 4 a.m. on June 28th, 2018. The sun won't be up for at least another couple of hours. Outside it's balmy 78 degrees with 93% humidity. Oh boy do I not miss that. It's like a sauna every day. The humidity makes it feel even hotter.

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Episode 292

2379.013

Anna had read the release date on the sheriff's office website, but it was inaccurate. The outstanding warrant was for unpaid child support. Oh yeah, Mark had another son many years earlier. By this time, the kid was a full-grown 18-year-old man. Anyway, all Mark had to do was sign a promissory note saying he would pay back the child support, and he was released.

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Episode 292

24.5

Who was that weird-sounding woman at the intro? You're about to find out. This is Season 12, Episode 292 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real and literally all around you. It's fucking terrifying. It's enough to make you want to crawl in a hole and just listen to podcasts. Just a reminder that we don't do this for free.

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Episode 292

2423.251

With Mark's return, Anastasia's fear grew. His erratic behavior and outbursts of anger were getting more frequent and more unpredictable. She was frankly afraid of him.

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Episode 292

2454.008

And just when Anastasia thought it couldn't get any worse, Mark found text messages between her and another man.

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Episode 292

2504.721

The proof of Anastasia's betrayal was in writing right before his eyes. He accused her of having an affair, the ultimate betrayal. She tried to explain it was just a work colleague, but Mark wasn't buying it. Needless to say, Mark's anger sent Anastasia's fear and anxiety through the roof.

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Episode 292

2554.008

Despite her fear, Anastasia unlocked the door and allowed Mark to sleep in the room. She was just tired of arguing and gave in. She would be gone soon anyway after her first paycheck. She would have a place of her own. Besides, she never thought he was capable of, well, anything really, but certainly not hurting her while she slept next to their son.

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Episode 292

2598.627

She was mistaken. You know how they say hindsight is 20-20? Well, after Anastasia's untimely death, the events of the days preceding took on a whole new ominous overtone.

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Episode 292

265.593

The air is thick and moist. So much so that it feels difficult walking through it. Inside though it's almost chilly. The fluorescent bulbs cast a uniform light, making the small room feel more impersonal. The little boy sits quietly with curious eyes. He can sense there's something that the adults aren't telling him.

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Episode 292

2654.571

Two nights earlier, Mark was pacing and watching Anastasia sleep. At the time, it was weird, but now it's downright scary. The next night, Grandma Barb also noticed some strange behavior from Mark.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2680.127

And I was like... While Adrian was sitting on the couch watching SpongeBob, Mark was in the background, pacing, contemplating the murder of his wife. When the movie was over, Adrian took his sleep gummy and crawled into bed with his father. Grandma Barb went to sleep around midnight. Mark Herter shut the bedroom door. He lay there in the room with his family, but he didn't sleep.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2710.257

His mind was racing through every little wrong Anastasia had ever committed against him. He played out his future without her. No house, no wife, no kid, no family, no life. With everything gone, he had nothing to lose. His mind was unraveling.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2764.781

At 4 a.m., Mark burst into his mother's room and told her what he'd done. He'd killed Anastasia. Yeah. By this time, Adrian was awake, probably rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he witnessed his father dragging his mother's limp body out of bed and down the hall.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2805.674

After Mark told his mother what he did, he dragged Anastasia further down the hall and into the living room. Barb didn't hesitate for a moment.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2838.026

Grandma Barb took Adrian to the bathroom and locked the door. She wasn't sure what he'd already seen, but she didn't want him to see anything else. She was also afraid of Mark. She clearly didn't know what he was capable of.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2869.119

If you missed it, in the background, you can hear Mark asking for the phone. That cordial and calm voice at the end saying, hi, yes, that was Mark. His voice sounds so much like his mother's that the operator didn't even realize he was on the call.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

2921.747

Mark was calm and matter-of-fact. His demeanor wasn't what you'd expect from a man who just murdered his wife. He almost sounded relieved.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3000.785

Mark said goodbye to his son and walked outside. Officers arrived for the fourth time in as many months and arrested Mark without incident. When detectives got around to interviewing Mark, it was around 8 a.m., The orange glow from the streetlights in the parking lot had since been replaced by the early morning sun, peeking over trees in the east.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3032.585

Inside, Mark sat calmly, as he didn't have a care in the world. But his deep-set eyes stared forward with a terrifying intensity.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

313.3

Adrian was seven years old. The detectives are trying to gauge his understanding of right and wrong and whether he knows how to lie. He just witnessed something horrible, which is impossible for his undeveloped mind to understand.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3177.128

That night, as Anastasia and Adrian slept, Mark got a hammer from his mother's toolkit. It was old and missing one of its claws in the back. Mark held the hammer inches from Anastasia's head, his mind in conflict with itself. Do it. Don't do it. He tried to work up the courage to kill her, but his mind kept backing him out of it each time. Then, suddenly, he swung.

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Episode 292

3229.919

Anastasia's skull cracked open like the shell of an egg.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3259.673

When Mark grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her from bed, a trail of blood was left behind from the gaping hole in her head. He stopped for a moment to show his mother what he did and then continued to the living room. Then he wrapped an electrical cord around her neck and finished her off.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3304.511

Mark was ricocheting between manic explanation and crippling sadness to the point where he could barely talk. Even though he was crying, his words showed no remorse. He didn't feel guilty about killing Anastasia or traumatizing Adrian for life. He confessed to what he did, but his explanation of why would show just how twisted his mind had become.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3363.743

A nightmarish scene unfolded in the early morning hours of June 28th, 2018. Seven-year-old Adrian's innocent mind tried to rationalize the horror, believing his mother simply had a boo-boo and that his father was just trying to help her. Anastasia was an immigrant who moved to this country, learned English and pursued her dream of becoming a doctor.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3388.84

Mark, troubled since youth, struggled with his mental health and addiction into adulthood, but tried to provide for Anastasia and Adrian. But after Anastasia's graduation, everything changed. She acted as if she didn't need him anymore, but she was just really fed up with all of his failures. Mark saw this as a betrayal, and in the following weeks, his mental health started to unravel.

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Episode 292

3417.125

The paranoia took over.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3443.496

Mark is sitting across from the detective, looking tired and speaking softly. His life with Anastasia had fallen apart and he feels like she destroyed it completely. He's trying to explain how everything unraveled and his voice shakes as he does.

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Episode 292

3487.543

Mark expected gratitude on Anastasia's graduation day, a sign that all of his sacrifices were appreciated. Instead, in his eyes, she betrayed him. When she walked past him, with her success in hand, that moment was the final straw. The deep love they once shared had curdled into jealousy and resentment. Mark admits that something inside him was breaking slowly, steadily. He couldn't control it.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3520.328

He paced in the dark, dwelling on her perceived betrayal. His mental state, already fragile from years of bipolar swings, was unraveling faster than he could grasp.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

353.939

Adrian lived with his mother, Anastasia, and his father, Mark. They all lived in his grandmother's townhome. It was nice and spacious, about 1,100 square feet, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. There was plenty of room for Grandma Barb and her three cats, but it got a little crowded when her son Mark and his family found themselves down on their luck and moved in.

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Episode 292

3559.606

The admission comes out slowly, the weight of his words heavy in the room. Mark's mental state shifts between love and violence, need and control. In his fractured mind, killing her was the only way to keep her. If he couldn't have her, no one would. We all know how it goes.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3618.188

Mark's jealousy boiled over. In reality, there was no affair, but Mark's mind twisted the truth, turning innocent texts into evidence of infidelity. Or maybe it's because he can't read that well. Either way, he couldn't control his emotions anymore. The voices in his head grew louder, more relentless, until they drowned out everything else.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3680.327

Mark's confession teeters between self-pity and delusion. He blames his mental illness, claiming to see shadows and black crows. Yet, he can't admit that his possessiveness and fear destroyed everything he wanted. A family, stability, love, everything.

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Episode 292

3729.349

The pain in his voice is real, but twisted by possessiveness. Mark didn't see Anastasia as an independent woman, as an equal. Instead, he saw her as a part of himself, a token, a status symbol. And now that part was leaving him. Her betrayal wasn't just personal, it was the destruction of his identity. Without her, he was nothing.

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Episode 292

3821.394

From the outside, it was clear to everyone. Anastasia could have left Mark long ago, but she stayed. She needed Mark, but she didn't realize how much he needed her.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

3874.382

There's a strange acceptance in Mark's words. He's resigned to his fate, knowing the only thing left for him is punishment. Yet even now, he feels justified, as if Anastasia's betrayal warranted the murder. The conversation shifts to Adrian, the other victim of his actions. Mark, despite his confessions, doesn't fully comprehend what he's done to his son.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

388.345

Grandma Barb gave up the biggest bedroom so the family of three could have a little more space. It wasn't ideal, but they were having a bit of a rough patch after being recently evicted. Of course, little Adrian didn't understand any of this. It was summer and he was living a kid's dream, staying up late and watching TV. He explains that the night before, he had watched cartoons before bed.

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Episode 292

3928.925

He's convinced that Adrian doesn't understand and that he didn't see. But he did. He saw everything. The house they all shared wasn't that big. When Mark dragged Anastasia's body from the bedroom to the living room, he was only five feet away. Adrian had to step over his dead mother to get to Grandma Barb's bathroom. How could he not see everything?

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Episode 292

3959.005

Anastasia's body lay right there, eyes vacant, with an extension cord wrapped around her neck.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4014.915

Mark can't face the truth. The trauma will stay with Adrian forever, but Mark is too far gone to accept it. He loves his son, but his actions have destroyed any chance at normalcy.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4086.447

Mark's greatest fear, that his family would fall apart, became a reality. But not because of Anastasia. destroyed it himself. He did a good job ensuring that Adrian would grow up without either parent present. Mark didn't get the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree premeditated murder for the death of his wife.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4112.735

Adrian was left in the custody of Grandma Barb until 2019 when Anastasia's parents adopted him and took him back to Belarus. Grandma Barb passed away from natural causes on February 9th, 2024 at the age of 90. Mark and Anastasia's relationship was built on a strong foundation. As Anastasia became more independent and needed Mark less, he felt like he was losing his purpose.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4144.124

When he lost his job and saw Anastasia succeed, he couldn't see a future with her and made a drastic decision driven by fear and resentment. He felt that losing her meant losing everything that defined him, leaving him with nothing to lose. It wasn't love, it was toxic dependency that led to Anastasia's death. It blurred the lines between love, control, and possession.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

417.175

He was mesmerized by the colors and the sounds coming from the TV, oblivious to the brooding turmoil in his home.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4173.82

Mark believed it would hold them together, but it ultimately tore them apart, leaving devastation that even Adrian couldn't escape. Adrian witnessed his mother's murder and was caught in the crossfire of his parents' toxic relationship, leaving invisible scars that may never heal. He may never fully understand why his father did what he did,

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

4199.738

but he'll carry the weight of that night with him forever. Every memory of his parents once tied to love and safety will be shadowed by violence and loss. The childhood innocence that allowed him to rationalize his mother's boo-boo is gone, replaced by a reality far too heavy for a child to bear.

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Episode 292

4248.531

The End

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Episode 292

470.541

Adrian didn't know it yet, but that would be the last carefree evening in front of the TV that he would experience in a long time.

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Episode 292

494.402

In the bedroom they shared, there were two beds. Squeezed in next to the full-size bed was a smaller, kid-sized bed. It was obviously for Adrian, but recently, Anastasia had started sleeping in the little kid bed. That night, after watching the SpongeBob movie, Adrian took a melatonin gummy and got ready for bed. He fell asleep in the big bed next to his dad, Mark.

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Episode 292

521.994

Anastasia was already sleeping in the little bed next to the door.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

574.024

At 4 a.m., Adrian woke up because he heard talking in the room. Mark was trying to wake up Anastasia. Adrian thought this was so she could get ready for work. He knew she had just gotten a job.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

6.357

Listener discretion is advised.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

635.31

Even a seven-year-old knows what blood is, and that blood outside your body is bad. But Adrian didn't really understand what was happening, so he tried to make sense of it. Adrian thought his dad was just trying to wake up his mom for work, but she wasn't waking up. When Mark dragged her to the couch, Adrian didn't understand the danger.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

661.167

If any adult had woken up to this scene, they would immediately be filled with fear. But in Adrian's innocence, he just watched with wonder.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

67.766

If you'd like to show and want to support it, head on over to swordandskill.com, download the app on your Android or Apple device and become a plus supporter or a sasshole as we affectionately like to call our fans because we love people so much. In a relationship, it's easy to mix up being needed with being wanted, especially when you're in love. The dependency can feel like a sign of closeness.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

751.058

This poor kid had no frame of reference for what he witnessed. The plots from cartoons don't really prepare a kid for experiencing death. And that's exactly what he saw. His mother wasn't snoring, that was her body losing the ability to clear the mucus from her throat. He heard his mother's death rattle.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

775.552

Seconds after his father dragged his mother from the room, Grandma Barb came in and grabbed him. She took him to her bathroom and shut the door. She left him for a moment to grab her phone beside her bed. When she returned, she called 911. Adrian had to be confused and likely afraid, but he knew 911 was the number to call for help.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

844.962

Adrian explained everything he saw and heard. His mother snoring, his father dragging her, and the blood on the bed and the floor. His grandmother took him to the bathroom so he wouldn't step in the blood. It's difficult to listen to, knowing he didn't fully understand the real reason he was in the bathroom. He tried to make sense of it with a child's rationale.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

873.534

His mother, Anastasia, was a doctor. He knew she had just started a job. The only reason they were up so early had to be for his mom's work. In Adrian's young mind, Mom had a boo-boo, but Grandma called an ambulance. So, the ambulance would take her to the hospital and fix her up just in time for her to start her shift. The poor kid didn't get it.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

901.076

He was an innocent, in the purest sense of the word.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

929.256

Adrian didn't know that his mother was dead. He didn't understand his father was arrested for her murder. Maybe it's better that he didn't get it. He was too young to process the full nature of what happened, which is a blessing in his case. But he's not likely to forget his mom and dad anytime soon. And the memory of them, I imagine, will haunt him for years to come.

Sword and Scale

Episode 292

957.963

He'll never see his mother again or fall asleep next to his father. They won't be there to wake him up and take him to school. The events of that night, the trauma... he experienced will eventually shape his understanding of death. It'll shape him as a person. His whole personality. The lasting impact which only the adults involved understood will be the loss of his innocence.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1003.753

Rodney doesn't do Zoom interviews. Some people are very particular about very random things, so... We sent one of our producers to Stanley, New York to interview him in person. Back in the 1980s, Rodney Miller was a patrol cop for the better part of the decade and led the county in DUI arrests.

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Episode 283

1031.769

But despite years of dedication to serving his community, the veteran officer was fired after refusing to go back to working overnight shifts.

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Episode 283

1055.549

After he was let go from the force in 1986, Rodney began working mostly on insurance fraud cases as an independent PI. Fast forward years later to the summer of 2012, After returning home from a case he'd been tackling out in Pennsylvania, Rodney learned that the person who'd been missing for more than two weeks by that point was a local man he'd known personally for quite some time.

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Episode 283

1101.011

Rodney's son went to high school with Adam. He's known the Chase family for years. Rodney also knew what kind of person Adam was, an introvert. So when he heard that the sheriff's department was treating the case like a missing persons investigation, it didn't make sense.

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Episode 283

1118.74

Already with a bad taste in his mouth and grievances towards the Ontario County Sheriff's Department, he decided to drop by the Chase family home on July 4th, 2012.

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Episode 283

1135.37

During that first meeting with Adam's family, Sylvia showed Rodney a photo. It was a picture of Adam's wife, Rose, and she was with another man. The picture was taken in a local park roughly one week before Adam disappeared. Rodney also learned that Adam had long suspected Rose of cheating before he went missing and had expressed those suspicions to his loved ones.

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Episode 283

1162.708

In turn, Adam's sisters, Jessica and Becky, decided to follow Rose that day, only to find their brother's wife cozying up to another guy on a park bench. They quickly snapped the photo without being seen before running home, printing out the image and giving it to Adam.

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Episode 283

1202.571

But Adam's mother was worried and had already reported all this to the police. But Adam's family didn't feel like they were treating this investigative lead with any sense of urgency. Before Rodney left the Chase family home that day, he promised Adam's parents that he would find out what happened to their son. And from that moment on, he began working the case independently, free of charge.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1324.297

Following a heated argument with his wife in June of 2012, 31-year-old Adam Chase walked off his front porch in Stanley, New York and never returned. But when Rodney Miller, a former deputy turned private investigator, heard the news, it didn't sit right with him. He was close to the family and knew that Adam wasn't the type of guy to just disappear.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1348.118

Not sure if I know the type of guy that just disappears, though. Anyway, that's when he began an investigation of his own, working on the case pro bono and without the help of police. Several weeks after Adam went missing, Rodney Miller drove to the place where he was last seen to speak with his wife, Rose.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1396.595

Rodney never stepped foot inside of Rose's house that day. But he wasn't shy in letting her know that he was fairly certain she had something to do with her husband's disappearance.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1453.404

Naturally to Rose, these allegations were outlandish. and she just denied being involved in anything of the sort. But that was all it took for her to opt out of the conversation altogether. Rose said her goodbyes to Rodney Miller before shuffling back inside her house.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1472.792

After departing from Rose, Rodney was on his way back to pay someone else a visit, a former colleague of his, Ontario County Sheriff Phil Pavero.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1494.182

Imagine having good reason to believe that something is true, screaming it from the rooftops only to have your words fall on deaf ears. I can relate, but that's exactly how Rodney Miller felt working this case. Even so, he chose to push forward and urged the sheriff to start looking at Adam Chase's disappearance from a different angle.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1517.922

But according to what Rodney told us, the sheriff wasn't interested.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1550.865

By this point, investigators had already visited over 10 hotels in the area, as well as a local cemetery where one of Adam's friends had recently been buried, thinking maybe the missing 31-year-old father had been distraught and took his own life in that very location. But just like the searches of his home, nothing was found at the cemetery.

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Episode 283

1574.502

Despite his suspicions of Adam's wife Rose, the sheriff essentially ignored Rodney and told him to let the police handle it. In the eyes of law enforcement, Rose had been cooperative up to that point, and there was reason to consider her a suspect. With that being said, authorities did stop by Rose's residence a second time that July.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

159.031

Adam J. Chase was born in October of 1980 to his parents, Lyndon and Sylvia, in Gorham, New York. Growing up, Adam wasn't exactly the outdoorsy type. He spent most of his days inside playing computer games on his PC, while his peers sped past his bedroom window on their BMX bikes, enjoying the beautiful nature that the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York has to offer.

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Episode 283

1596.288

When Rose invited the deputies in, they noticed a man sitting on the couch. And it sure as hell wasn't Adam.

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Episode 283

1607.293

It took a moment for authorities to realize that the man sitting there had a striking resemblance to the individual seen in the photo from the park weeks before, aka Rose's gay friend, Mark. During that police visit, Rose started to vent more openly to the officers. She told them that Adam had stopped paying attention to her romantically in the days leading up to his disappearance.

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Episode 283

1632.984

She went on to say that all he ever wanted to do was play video games on his computer, that she was fed up with him, and if Adam were to walk through the front door at that very moment, she wouldn't take him back. Rose then asked the deputies something rather strange when she inquired about the process of filing for divorce.

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Episode 283

1653.733

Rose also said she was going to sell Adam's motorcycle, almost inferring that he wouldn't be coming back to get it. The officer then flat out asked Rose if she killed her husband, to which she said no. The deputy then suggested she call a lawyer regarding the divorce before leaving the residence.

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Episode 283

1675.073

On July 10th, 2012, Rose was interviewed by the Daily Messenger, a local publication in town, and was quoted in the paper stating the following.

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Episode 283

1692.779

Rose Chase began popping up on virtually every local news station in Ontario County and never seemed to pass up an opportunity when it came to press. During almost all of these televised appearances, Rose pleaded for her husband Adam to come home in hopes that he might be out there somewhere watching.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1736.291

While Rose was seemingly reveling in the local media spotlight, behind the scenes she continued to speak with law enforcement on several occasions. But to the frustration of Adam's family, nothing seemed to come out of it as a result. Then, on Saturday, July 28th, Rodney Miller drove back to Rose's house for another visit. At which point he asked her if he could search Adam's car.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

1763.834

that hadn't left the driveway since the day he disappeared.

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Episode 283

1789.127

Rose took Rodney upstairs first, and the two proceeded to walk every square inch of the second floor.

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Episode 283

1811.399

Before leaving the house that day, Rodney had one last request for Rose, and that was to look around the basement.

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Episode 283

1837.228

Before Rodney even got halfway down the basement stairs, the foul odor of decay hit him like a ton of bricks. When he asked Rose about the smell, she pointed out several dead animals scattered among the concrete floor.

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Episode 283

1864.105

He couldn't see much. It was extremely dark. Though there was one light working in the basement, an entire corner remained unlit.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

187.83

By high school, Adam's introverted personality hadn't changed much. In short, he was a nerd. Not in a bad way, but you were more likely to catch him at the local renaissance fair, dressed up in costume and festering on a fried turkey leg, than you were to spot him at, let's say, a sporting event or a party.

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Episode 283

1881.975

Just then, Rodney stumbled upon an oversized freezer, the kind big enough for a body.

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Episode 283

1900.225

After failing to find anything when it comes to physical evidence, Rose walked Rodney out to his car.

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Episode 283

1938.314

And that was that. From there, Rodney drove to Sheriff Pavero's house, just like last time. Except now, he had new information. That information was that he was fairly certain something was rotting inside Rosa's basement.

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Episode 283

1973.923

The sheriff thanked Rodney before telling him that they'd already been in the basement with the dogs, and Adam wasn't there. Disappointed, Rodney Miller then drove back to his wife across town, feeling a bit more hopeless than he had before. Several months would pass, and as the leaves begin to change, there's still no sign of Adam. His 32nd birthday eventually came and went that October.

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Episode 283

2006.4

On the fifth month anniversary of his disappearance, the Ontario Sheriff's Department held a press conference on Wednesday, November 14, 2012. Adam's mother, Sylvia, and his sister, Jessica, were seen sitting at a long table to the right of the sheriff and the lead investigator. At the opposite end of the table was Adam's wife, Rose Chase.

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Episode 283

2029.864

Unlike her prior on-camera appearances, Rose sat silently for the majority of the press conference with her eyes glued to the floor. During the broadcast, authorities urged anyone with information regarding Adam's whereabouts to come forward. But these press conferences and news headlines were becoming redundant.

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Episode 283

2052.25

Regardless, the sheriff expressed his optimism, stating his personal belief that Adam was out there, still alive, and the investigation remained in full swing. Out of the family members present that day, Adam's mother was the only one to speak. Sylvia scanned her eyes across the sea of local journalists and begged her son to come home, just like she had countless times before.

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Episode 283

2092.8

Meanwhile, Rodney Miller was working around the clock on his own, without the help of law enforcement. He never once believed Adam walked off on his own accord. In his gut, there was only one person responsible for whatever happened to him. And that was Adam's wife, Rose Chase. But he had to prove it.

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Episode 283

2116.12

In the eyes of the local sheriff's department, any evidence Rodney brought them was circumstantial. Eventually, the independent investigation into the disappearance of his family friend began to weigh on him. And for his own sanity, Rodney had to step away.

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Episode 283

2147.502

As the winter frost began to settle in that year, for the first time since getting involved, Rodney Miller began to fear that Adam might never be found.

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Episode 283

2171.688

But that feeling of defeat shifted when Rodney got a call from an old friend.

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Episode 283

219.54

So when he met Rose, a girl one year younger than him, while attending Marcus Whitman High, Adam welcomed the attention from the opposite sex, something he hadn't exactly known prior. Adam was by no means the popular kid in school, but he did have a few core gaming buddies he hung around with. Rose, on the other hand, was much more of an outcast and struggled in school due to her dyslexia.

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Episode 283

2206.252

That was all it took for Rodney to pick himself up and dive back into the case, remembering the promise he'd made to the Chase family.

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Episode 283

2223.796

With a newfound rejuvenation, the former deputy turned private detective Rodney Miller decided to play his last hand and executed a final trick that he had up his sleeve. In mid-December of 2012, he devised a plan. A plan that involved a little help from Rosa's new babysitter.

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Episode 283

2263.736

Essentially, Rodney came up with the idea to have the babysitter tell Rose that she'd heard rumblings around town. Rumors that authorities were ramping up to make an arrest regarding her husband's disappearance in the coming days. Which, in actuality, was bullshit.

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Episode 283

2287.25

When Rose came to pick up her son from Sandy's house just after 5pm the evening of December 13th, the babysitter followed through with her end of the plan, as instructed. But unfortunately, no dice in terms of a confession from Rose Chase. She appeared nervous when Sandy made mention of an arrest.

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Episode 283

2308.874

But ultimately, Rose kept her mouth shut, picked up her son, and was soon on her way back home in Stanley. As soon as Rose left, Sandy texted Rodney to let him know she'd planted a seed of fear in Rose. But if we've learned anything from our communications with Rodney Miller, it's that he's great at a lot of things, but texting isn't one of them.

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Episode 283

2363.482

After getting off the phone with Sandy, Rodney Miller rushed over to his number one suspect's residence, located just a few miles away.

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Episode 283

2378.15

That evening, he confronted Rose and he informed her that for her, this was the end of the road.

Sword and Scale

Episode 283

2424.627

Before Rodney Miller called the sheriff to let him know Rose Chase had just confessed to murder, she walked back inside to say goodbye to her new boyfriend, Mark.

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Episode 283

2461.263

It didn't take long after that for the local authorities to come knocking on Rose's door with a search warrant in hand. Rose was in tears when police showed up. She knew it was over. While a team of investigators searched the property once more, Rose broke down to one of the detectives and told him exactly what she'd just told Rodney Miller, that she had killed Adam and burned his remains.

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Episode 283

247.327

As a result, she was subjected to more than her fair share of bullying. Adam came to her rescue on more than one occasion, and after learning that they shared an interest in sci-fi movies in particular, it wasn't long before the two began dating. It seemed as though he'd found his fair maiden.

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Episode 283

2490.543

Before she was placed in the handcuffs, Rose knelt down to her son, Tristan, who had been playing with his toys on the carpet.

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Episode 283

2507.668

Rose was then transported to the Ontario County Sheriff's Office for questioning. where she'd reveal all of the shocking details surrounding what really happened to her husband of 11 years, Adam Chase.

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Episode 283

2534.074

Rose was questioned for nearly two and a half hours, but it wasn't much of an interrogation. just like she had to Rodney Miller hours before, Rose began confessing to the murder of her husband, Adam, almost as soon as she sat down.

Sword and Scale

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2565.626

The more she continued to speak, the detectives began to pick up on two main aspects. Number one, the end result of this tragedy was much more grotesque than they could have anticipated. And number two, they fucked up. Rose was quick to tell detectives that on the morning of June 14th, her husband Adam confronted her about having an affair.

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This was warranted, considering the fact that Mark, the man who was photographed with Rose in the park, wasn't her gay friend at all, but instead her new boyfriend. Well, one of them, anyway. By now, investigators had already seized Rose's computer back at her residence, and And it didn't take long for them to find several romantic emails she'd been sending to various men behind Adam's back.

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During that fatal argument, Rose admitted to Adam that she'd been cheating on him. Adding insult to injury, she told him that it was his fault. Why, you ask? Well, because all that Adam ever wanted to do was play video games. Clearly Rose is an extremely reasonable woman, but what really sent Adam over the edge was when his wife told him... that their four-year-old son, Tristan, wasn't his.

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Rose was just as eager to dress up in ornamental attire and accompany her new Prince Charming to his favorite historical events, celebrating the days of yesteryear. Just a couple of geeks, young and in love. How sweet. But in terms of academics, Adam wasn't quite the stereotypical bookworm. In fact, he was pretty much the opposite, and ended up dropping out right before his senior year.

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Rose called out to Adam, but he didn't respond and he wasn't moving. According to her statements to police, it's quite possible that he broke his neck.

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Okay. It's unclear how long Adam was alive following the traumatic injury. But in all likelihood, he could have been saved. Instead, Rose made the decision to leave him there at the bottom of the steps to die. She didn't call 911. She didn't render any aid to her husband. She just... left him there.

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Rose then described what happened the following day. She told investigators that she originally planned to hide Adam's body in the crawlspace, but he was too big.

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When authorities first called Rose on the phone the day that Adam's mother reported him missing, he was still in plain sight at the bottom of the stairs. And more likely, he was still alive. After hanging up the phone, Rose realized she needed to get moving and moving quickly to hide the body.

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He eventually earned his GED before bouncing from one menial job to the next, while his girlfriend Rose remained in high school. To the frustration of Rose's mother Patty, Adam tried to convince his girlfriend to drop out along with him, hoping to jumpstart their new life together. Unfortunately for Adam, Rose's mother wasn't having it, and insisted she finish school.

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Rose can be seen in the interrogation footage getting out of her seat to demonstrate how she folded Adam's body up like a pretzel into a fetal position.

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Okay.

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Again, it's unclear exactly when Adam died. But from what Rose was saying, it was a long and excruciating process. Rigor mortis sets in within a couple of hours of death and lasts up to four days. If Adam's body was able to be manipulated in the way Rose had demonstrated for detectives, he was likely still breathing helplessly in the basement.

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It may be hard to believe, but Adam having been left paralyzed potentially for days before he took his last breath is only the beginning of the horrific manner in which he lost his life.

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Rose told authorities she left Adam in the basement for about two weeks. before she dragged various pieces of lumber from her backyard down through the bulkhead. Those pieces of wood were ultimately used to conceal Adam's body along with the other items. But according to Rodney Miller, law enforcement should have already known this.

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That's because they interviewed Rosa's neighbor who saw her doing this. But for some reason, they never took down his statement or evidence. made any sort of official report.

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Weeks after Adam went missing in June of 2012, Rose's neighbor Timmy noticed her doing some landscaping. Approximately five days after that, the neighbor was interviewed by police.

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Shortly after graduation, the now 19-year-old Rose and 20-year-old Adam wasted no time trying to tie the knot and got married in 2001. They moved into Patty's house while saving up to get a place of their own. By this point, Adam worked more low-paying jobs than anyone would care to admit, selling anything from windows to used cars. Meanwhile, Rose secured a position working at a local factory.

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One would think that this is pretty important information. But to law enforcement, it apparently wasn't. This crucial investigative lead, which would have led to recovering Adam's body early on, was essentially thrown to the wayside. Bad police work. The house smell?

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After telling investigators how she simply lit candles in the home to cover up the stench of her decomposing husband, investigators went on to ask her a pretty obvious and simple question. If Adam's death really was an accident, why didn't she call for help? Her answer, well, it's pretty remarkable.

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Mm-hmm.

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was because the family of the man she killed treated her poorly in the six months that followed. So, she sure does know how to take accountability, doesn't she?

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Unfortunately, Adam was long gone and unable to provide his side of the story. Given the fact that Rose destroyed his body, determining an official cause of death was virtually impossible. With all that being said, it was at this point in the interview when Rose Chase really began to tread a thin line.

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And that line, of course, was whether or not she'd eventually be charged with second or first degree murder.

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Between their two incomes, the newlyweds eventually managed to squirrel away enough cash to buy a small trailer in the nearby town of Bristol, New York. It wasn't much, but, you know, it was theirs. And after years of trying, Rose became pregnant with their first child. Their son, Tristan, was born in 2007.

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It had been almost six months to the day since 31-year-old Adam Chase went missing after allegedly storming out of his home in Stanley, New York, following an argument with his wife, Rose. In the public eye, Adam was considered a missing person from the very beginning. Aside from some internal dialogue theorizing that he was a missing person, that he may have committed suicide.

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But when former local deputy turned PI Rodney Miller caught wind of the story, he knew Adam wasn't missing. That's because he knew him personally. Rodney Miller also knew that Adam was somewhat of a loner, and chances of him just taking off and starting a new life were slim to none.

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Over the next several months, there were almost no substantial developments in this case until the evening of December 13, 2012. With the help of Sandy, the babysitter, Rodney Miller managed to get the so-called grieving wife to confess, not only to pushing her husband down the stairs and killing him, but to destroying his remains as well.

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During her interrogation, Rose told detectives about a conversation Adam had with their son when he recorded four-year-old Tristan talking about Mommy's new boyfriend.

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Rose specified that she didn't need tools to dismember her husband. Instead, she decided to let the summer heat do the work for her.

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Despite police dogs, sheriff's deputies, and even Rodney Miller himself having stepped into the basement, Adam was never found. Thankfully, Rose couldn't keep her secret to herself forever. And after Rodney convinced her to give it up from her interrogation chair, she seemed eager to finally get things off her chest.

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From that moment on, Adam dedicated his life to fatherhood and quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad full-time. As for Rose, she was eventually given a promotion at the factory and soon became the sole breadwinner. A few years later, the couple was finally able to put a down payment on their first home in Stanley, New York.

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About midway through her police interview, Rose explained what happened after those two months of decomposition and what she did next with her husband's remains. The callous nature in which she lays it all out is astounding.

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Rose's neighbor across the street heard the commotion. She came over to see if she needed help while holding the bags of Adam's remains in her hands.

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Long after Adam had inevitably separated into human soup, a bouillon of sorts, a hearty meal, definitely chunky, Rose came up with the idea of scooping what was left of him into her car before picking up her four-year-old son from the babysitter and transporting three clear trash bags of flesh and bones to her mother's house in the nearby town of Potter.

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All the while, her four-year-old son, Tristan, followed close behind.

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After Rose Chase was arrested for the murder and mutilation of her husband's body, she agreed to take investigators to his final resting place at her mother's home, just 12 miles south of where the victim was killed. During the search, investigators were led to three separate locations, all of which were dump sites containing Adam Chase's remains.

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a big white colonial farmhouse with an oversized porch overlooking half an acre of remote land. Adam's mother and father also lived in Stanley, which meant baby Tristan got to spend quality time with his grandparents whenever Adam needed a break from his duties as Mr. Mom. Lyndon and Sylvia Chase were happy to take Tristan whenever they had the chance.

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The first and perhaps the most obvious site was a burn barrel in Rose's mother's backyard. Upon peering down into this metal garbage can sitting directly on the surface atop a mound of soot and ash were two distinct foot bones. Rose's mother, Patty, was home at the time and tried to suggest that the bones could be that of a deer and not of her son-in-law.

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While Patty was uttering this insane theory to police, Rose cut her off mid-sentence and said, If it was just deer bones, I wouldn't be here confessing. As forensics teams continued to sift through the burn barrel, they collected an additional section of human vertebrae more unidentified skeletal remains, and partial remnants of soft tissue.

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When questioned about the burn barrel specifically, Rose informed investigators that she, quote, cremated Adam there. Because that's what he would have wanted, to be cremated in a burn barrel in her mother's backyard.

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The second burned site Rose showed investigators was just several yards away. On top of a section of grass were approximately nine trash bags, most of which contained burned leaves, but several contained human bones as well. The bones inside the trash bags were eventually determined to be a human pelvic bone, a shoulder blade, as well as the partial skeleton of a cat.

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Whether or not Rose Chase was responsible for the death of said cat is unknown. During her interrogation, she claimed the cat had somehow died inside her mother's house and that she disposed of it as a favor. But again, Rose just very rarely tells the truth, you know, so who knows? Rest in peace, Kitty.

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Lastly, authorities examined an area a bit further away from Rose's mother's home in a nearby field. There, authorities located approximately six human arm bones that were damaged but had not been burned. Forensic anthropologists would later determine that not one of the bones found on the property had been severed by the means of a cutting instrument such as a blade or saw.

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Episode 283

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Criminal analysts ultimately theorized that damage to the arm bones specifically had more likely been the result of local wildlife. As if Adam's remains couldn't be desecrated any further, His body ultimately became a snack for raccoons and coyotes in upstate New York, while the rest of him was burnt in a crude metal trash can in his mother-in-law's backyard. What a way to go.

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In February of 2013, Rose Chase was formally charged with second-degree murder, evidence tampering and endangering the welfare of a child concerning her and Adam's four-year-old son. When her murder trial began a few months later in October, Rodney Miller was there to testify. He took the stand and told the jury everything he saw and smelled before getting Rose to confess to murder.

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And after a two-week trial, Rose Chase was convicted of second-degree murder. She was also found guilty of tampering with evidence and endangering the welfare of a child. After she was found guilty, Adam Chase's mother, Sylvia, met with the media outside of the courtroom where she spoke of just how instrumental Rodney Miller was in bringing her son's killer to justice.

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This was helpful because Adam and Rose now had a hefty mortgage payment to take care of. As a result, Adam was forced to look for a job, but struggled to lock down anything full-time. Even so, he and his wife Rose found a way, as life does. And around the time their son was about to start kindergarten, Adam finally landed a low-paying gig, working as a student loan debt collector.

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The state's district attorney, Michael Tantillo, apparently agreed with the sentiment that without Rodney Miller, Adam Chase may have never been found. And that Rose may very well have gotten away with it.

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Rodney was also interviewed by local journalists, where he shared his general thoughts on the finality of this bizarre and ruthless case, before getting a little emotional on camera.

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Roughly one year after Rose Chase was convicted, the now 36-year-old woman was sentenced to 24 and a half years to life in prison in January of 2014. Following the proceedings, Adam's mother and his sister Jessica spoke with the local reporters where they expressed their relief that it was finally over.

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District Attorney Michael Tintillo offered his thoughts as well.

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What both the DA and Adam's family are referring to here is what Rose said when she was provided the opportunity to speak in court, which was essentially an awkward tangent where she reflected on the good times she had with Adam before she killed him, such as the day he proposed. Here's a verbatim quote from Rose before she learned her fate from the judge.

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Clearly, she hasn't lost any sleep after murdering her husband. Regardless, now that Rose was no longer allowed to do interviews as a free citizen, her family figured they'd carry the torch of embarrassment for her. Shortly after Rose was taken away in shackles, Patricia Mooney, her class act of a mother, got busy online, commenting on a dead man's Facebook page.

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The kind of guy I'm sure we all love. From the outside looking in, things seemed to be fine for Adam Rose Chase. That is, until midsummer of 2012 rolled around. On the evening of June 14, 2012, Rose Chase showed up at Adam's parents' home to pick up their son, Tristan.

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Poor Patty misspelled the word of in her post and typed the word if. Happens to the best of us. Spellcheck can be a real bitch. But, you know, it's funny. To her credit, at least she managed to use the correct form of the word. With two O's. Whether Patty's claims of her son-in-law being a closeted homosexual were true or not, it seems irrelevant. Seems almost childish.

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What, I'm mad at you so I'm going to call you gay? It's just weird, you know? Especially when you consider that he was left to liquefy in his own basement during the summer heat for two months. Not sure we're really concerned with his sexual preferences anymore. Patty?

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What is relevant, though, and perhaps most noteworthy in this case, is the fact that Rodney Miller, the former Ontario County Deputy, solved Adam Chase's murder without ever receiving a dime for his services.

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Not only was it a win for the victim's family now that Roe's chase was behind bars, but it was a gratifying win for Rodney as well, proving to his former colleagues that he's not such a bad cop after all.

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The same year that Rose was sentenced, Rodney Miller ran against Phil Povero to take his spot as the Ontario County Sheriff. Unfortunately, Rodney got swept in the polls. But it was never political power that he was after. Rodney ran for sheriff based on principles and to make a point.

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You gotta love Rodney. Now he spends his days tending to his farm and enjoying retirement. I look forward to that too. Anyway, he is unfortunately battling cancer. The real killer. One thing we just had to ask him about this case was how the hell did the canines not hit on Adam's dead body when they searched the basement? I mean, they're freaking dogs.

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Episode 283

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Apparently, the dogs used to search the basement weren't cadaver dogs. Instead, they were tracking dogs, which was just one of the many mistakes investigators made during this case. People do fuck up. We are human, even cops. Speaking of mistakes, the courts made some pretty questionable decisions of their own. when Rose Chase's child endangerment conviction was overturned in February of 2018.

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Before Sylvia could even open her mouth, Rose explained that she and Adam had gotten into a fight earlier that day and that she hadn't seen him since. Rose claimed that in the midst of a heated argument, Adam punched a hole in the upstairs wall before storming down the steps and out of the house.

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Despite Rose openly admitting to driving her son with her husband's dead body in the car, the Supreme Court ultimately decided to throw out the misdemeanor charge upon appeal. A few days after the ruling was amended, Adam's father, Lyndon, passed away on February 19, 2018.

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adding yet another layer of topsoil to the pile of shit that the Chase family had been forced to trudge through over the years. We reached out to Adam's immediate family members, but they declined to be interviewed, something we can certainly appreciate.

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With that said, Adam's loved ones have since gone on record to say that they're convinced Rose's mother played some sort of role in the murder, or at the very least was complicit in destroying his remains. As for Mark, the new boyfriend, Rose told investigators that he never knew about the killing, nor did he know that Adam's body was in the basement.

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Rose also said that Mark was actually with her at the time she lit Adam's body ablaze at the bonfire in her mother's backyard. But somehow, he didn't know Adam was in the burn pit. Huh. She must be really strong, you know?

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Let's agree to disagree on that one. But who knows? During her interrogation, Rose did say that she smashed Adam's skull in the fire while it was burning with a shovel before her boyfriend Mark could catch a glimpse of it. But forget about Marky Mark for a second. What about Rose's mother, Patty Mooney, and her potential culpability in this crime?

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It's important to note that neither Rose's sweetheart of a mother, Patty, nor Mark, the boyfriend, was ever charged with a crime, despite all of our suspicions. As for Rose Chase, she'll be eligible for parole as early as 2037. Whether or not Mark will be waiting for inmate 14G0057I, well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Don't turn it off. Don't turn it off. I fucking know you people.

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Rose said that she was certain Adam would be back in no time, thinking he'd simply be gone for a walk around the neighborhood to cool off. According to Rose, that was around 11 a.m., roughly seven hours before. In addition, he'd left his cell phone behind.

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Coming up next, we're going to play part of our new show, the show that's coming up March 3rd. It's called This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me. Yeah, I know it's a very long title. I know. It's kind of done on purpose. You won't forget it. Anyway, stick around for just a second, if you don't mind. We think you're really going to like the show.

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It's going to take over the entire Sword & Skull website over the coming month of March, and we'll be back in April. If you like the following preview, please subscribe to This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me on Apple or Spotify. On December 12th, 2021, a 77-year-old woman was rushed to Hannibal Regional Hospital in Hannibal, Missouri. Her name was Tina.

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Tina was a kind, generous, and smart woman. Alongside her husband, she owned and operated a successful business. But what was most important to Tina was her family. Tina had four children, 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. This is Tina's granddaughter, Carly.

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All of Tina's children and grandchildren loved Tina dearly. And when they got the news that she was in the hospital, many of them immediately began making their way to see her. This included Tina's daughter, Ilsa.

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After night fell over Stanley, New York, and Adam still hadn't returned home, it was at that point that Rose said she drove to Sylvia's to inform her that her son had disappeared. After delivering this troubling news, Rose quickly gathered up her own son and was at the door. Sylvia's head was spinning.

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Unfortunately, not all of Tina's loved ones could go to her because in December of 2021, the COVID pandemic had just started to wane.

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All we knew at that point was they were still working on her. Tina's family waited for the hospital staff to give them more information about Tina's condition. And when a doctor came to see them, the news was all bad.

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Tina's family was devastated and they were caught off guard. As far as they knew, Tina was a healthy woman. When she last spoke to her daughter, Heidi, the day before, Tina seemed completely fine.

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Tina's family gathered around the hospital bed to say their goodbyes. They found themselves in a situation that, unfortunately, many have experienced. their eldest family member was dying. From the outside looking in, this likely seemed like a common occurrence. Tragic, yes, but common. Old people die every day and their loved ones have to say goodbye. That's just how life goes sometimes.

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Though, this situation with Tina and her family was anything but common. The doctor told the family that Tina was dying from heart failure, but they all knew better. They all knew that this wasn't a case where an elderly woman's life was simply coming to an end. They knew that Tina didn't just end up in a hospital bed. She was put there.

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About a month before this tragic day at the hospital, Tina had been assaulted. And there's no word in the English language to describe just how horrific that assault was. Putting it mildly, what Tina experienced was beyond brutal and extremely cruel.

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She tried to convince herself that her son was somewhere safe, but when morning came and there was still no sign of Adam, that anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach began to tighten.

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Tina and her family were traumatized by what had happened to her. The depravity of what Tina endured was more than any of them could bear. This is Tina's oldest grandson, Joshua.

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How could you have done that to my grandma? The evil that Tina saw and experienced was beyond comprehension. And her family knew why her heart was failing. Tina was dying because she was brutally assaulted. Tina was dying from a broken heart. The assault she endured was killing her. And Tina's family wanted the people responsible... to pay. They wanted justice.

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Unfortunately, Tina's family would come to find that the justice they were seeking was elusive, and the struggle to get it became a never-ending battle.

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I don't know if we ever will be. Many of you know, or at least you can imagine, the pain and the grief that comes with losing a parent or a grandparent. It can be the most tragic thing that a family can experience. This was the case for Tina's family, but for them things were much worse. They were saddled with the burden of fighting for justice and the fight became another tragedy all on its own.

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Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

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After a sleepless night, Sylvia was forced to begin her shift at the local public school where she worked, with no indication of where her son had gone. Shortly after arriving, she spoke with a resource officer at the school to express her concerns.

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Given the fact that it had been roughly 24 hours since Adam was last seen or heard from, the officer encouraged Adam's mother to file a missing persons report right away, which is exactly what Sylvia Chase did on the morning of June 15th, 2012. Later that same day, a deputy with the Ontario County Sheriff's Department called up Adam's wife Rose on the phone.

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Provided that she was the last one to have seen Adam, naturally Rose was the person authorities wanted to speak with.

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During that telephone conversation, Rose told officers that the day Adam went missing, their four-year-old son was staying with Adam's mother Sylvia, which was true. But Rose expanded on the original story she'd told Adam's mother by informing police that before Adam walked off, he'd called out of work. Adam's boss later confirmed to police that he had called in sick, but...

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that it was hours after his shift had already begun, which, according to his employer, was uncharacteristic of him. Rose went on to explain to the officer that Adam wasn't actually sick, but had taken the day off so that he could discuss some marital issues they'd been having. Rose alluded to the deputy over the phone that there had been some infidelity going on in their relationship.

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This was obviously a red flag, or at least it should have been. Without going into further detail at the time, Rose told the officer about the argument that broke out, causing Adam to punch the wall and angrily walk out of the house. A few days later on June 18th, investigators arrived at Rose's residence on Stanley to meet with her in person for the first time since Adam mysteriously disappeared.

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During that visit, Rose consented to a search of her and Adam's property, at which time police dogs began scouring the woods surrounding the farmhouse. While all of that was going on, investigators sat down to chat with Rose face to face. She reiterated that the last time she saw her husband was four days prior, on June 14th.

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While in the home, Rose was kind enough to lead officers upstairs to show them the hole that Adam had allegedly punched his fist through. While canines circled in the backyard, Rose suddenly produced a typewritten note to police that she claimed Adam had left behind. The exact contents of this note are unknown, but it was something to the effect of, I'm never coming back, good riddance.

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After hours of searching outside, the dogs ultimately failed to pick up any trace of Adam outdoors. Authorities then asked Rose if the dogs could search inside the home. At first, she was hesitant. She told officers she was worried about the canines dragging mud inside. She also said that her dogs don't play well with others. But after some brief hesitation, Rose eventually complied.

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The dogs proceeded to lead authorities through the second story of the home. But when it came time to check the basement, Rose became even more apprehensive. She told police that the basement was somewhat of a mess due to the rodent infestation and There was also some flooding caused by a bad sewer pump.

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But despite her reluctance, she eventually gave in to authorities once more and allowed them to continue the search. When they asked Rose if there was a light to the basement, she told them that there was, but that it had been broken. As officers walked down the cellar steps with their two canines leading the way, they found a light switch on the wall, and weirdly enough, it worked.

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It worked just fine. In addition, the basement wasn't flooded at all. The one thing Rose was right about, though, is that the basement was disgusting. The dogs proceeded to roam through the bottom dwelling of the residence, which was filled with piles of junk, including kids' toys, rotten pieces of wood, an old door, and, you know, other crap.

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While there was a slight musk in the air, the canines made no significant hit in the basement whatsoever, and all that they found were some dead rodents. After returning back upstairs, Rose delivered some alarming news. She told police that she believed Adam had returned to the house in days following his disappearance to retrieve his cell phone, which was now missing.

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final sword and scale until April so this is 283 season 12 let's go all right no reason to further delay let's get right into it make sure to subscribe to this doesn't happen to people like me on Apple and Spotify and we'll see you back here in April here's the show

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That was all the information Rose had to offer during this particular visit. And after the canines and deputies alike came up empty-handed, they eventually left the home, seemingly no closer to solving the disappearance of the young father. The following day, Adam's family began receiving some strange text messages sent from Adam's phone.

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These texts were sent to both Adam's father, Lyndon, and his mother, Sylvia. At the time, Sylvia tried to call Adam's phone back immediately. But by the time she did... It had already been turned off. And Sylvia's call went directly to voicemail.

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Episode 283

939.05

After notifying the police about the texts, investigators were able to ping Adam's device to an area in Canandaigua as its last known location, just like the text message said. But after searching the area roughly 12 miles north of where Adam was last seen, there was no trace of him or his phone. Adam's face was seen on virtually every telephone pole and corner store window in upstate New York.

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Episode 283

967.633

At the footer of his missing persons flyer was an address to a Facebook page, Help Bring Adam Chase Home. It had been created by his sisters as a public space dedicated to any updates or developments regarding his whereabouts. Eventually, the overwhelming publicity of this case caught the eye of Rodney Miller, a former Ontario County deputy turned private investigator.

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Episode 281

1199.728

We needed paramedics out here. Detectives took the information they had gathered at the crime scene from the victims' bodies and Thomas' interview and walkthrough, and they got to work putting together the pieces of this puzzle. May 8th, 2008 was the evening of Thomas Randolph's final date with his wife Sharon. They had only been married for two years and their relationship was a whirlwind.

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Episode 281

1261.814

Sharon was born in New York and moved to Las Vegas in her late 20s. By the time Thomas met her, she had a lot of baggage. She'd been married twice before. Her first marriage ended in divorce and her second husband passed away from cancer after more than 20 years together. Soon after her second husband's death, Sharon's family became increasingly concerned about her behavior and spending habits.

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Episode 281

1291.789

This is Sharon's son-in-law. She liked to gamble.

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Episode 281

1308.0

What better place for an avid gambler to live than just 25 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip? On top of all of this, Sharon began dating again very quickly after her husband's death, which bothered her daughter and further damaged their already fragile relationship. Within mere months of her husband's death, Sharon had met someone online. Someone she wanted to get serious with.

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Episode 281

1334.701

His name was Thomas Randolph. He was a few years younger than Sharon, but that didn't matter. Thomas, as she called him, was cool. Objectively, he looks a lot like someone's grandmother. But he looked like a rock star to Sharon, for some reason. Bitch is blind, I don't know. Though he was into his mid-fifties, Thomas still had a full head of hair. And he made use of it, that's for sure.

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Episode 281

1369.497

Throughout the decades, Thomas had experimented with various hairstyles ranging from a mullet to pigtails. He liked classic rock, so I guess that's the inspiration, but man, that was a long time ago, you know? As soon as Sharon connected with Thomas online, their relationship moved quickly.

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Episode 281

1392.509

At the time, Sharon worked on and off as a hairdresser and forged a few very close friendships throughout her career. Here's her friend, Deirdre.

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Episode 281

1436.058

These few women were the people she shared everything with. She may have had an unstable relationship with her daughter, but Sharon spoke to her salon friends multiple times a day, every day. One woman in particular, Alice Wolfe, knew all the ins and outs of Sharon's life. In fact, she was one of the first to meet Thomas Randolph.

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Episode 281

1564.516

He seemed a bit antisocial, but Alice didn't think much of it. What Sharon's friends didn't know was that Tommy Randolph... was hiding a lot more baggage than they could have ever imagined. By the time he started dating Sharon, Thomas Randolph had married five times before. Not two, not three, not four, five! Five! There were five Mrs. Randolphs before her.

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Episode 281

1594.645

This is Thomas's first wife, Catherine Thomas.

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Episode 281

1620.176

Katherine married Thomas when she was only 18, and she gave birth to his only two children. Pretty quickly, she found out that Thomas was not a good husband. So she left him and remarried, moving from the state of Utah to Washington to get away from him. The very day Thomas and Catherine's divorce was finalized, Thomas said his vows and tied the knot with a new woman, Becky Galt.

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Episode 281

1668.62

With so many failed marriages under his belt and something being a little off in his personality, you know, Sharon's friends and family were concerned.

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Episode 281

1729.393

Sharon, of course, didn't want her friend's advice. And Thomas made the move from his home in Utah to Las Vegas. It wasn't long before things went visibly downhill.

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Episode 281

1791.718

The constant calling became so burdensome to Sharon while she was at work that she eventually had to quit her salon job.

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Episode 281

181.8

We've all had that one friend, right? The one that dives headfirst into messy, toxic relationships or forms of friendship with people that are clearly a bad influence. Brushing aside every warning sign, brushing aside every thing we try to say to help them get off this track. It's like they're stuck there in a perpetual loop of disappointment.

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Episode 281

1824.126

Thomas harassed Sharon. Once he moved in, the goalposts shifted and he began to push the idea of marriage, even laying down an ultimatum.

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Episode 281

1860.339

Did Sharon take this advice? Of course not. She and Thomas flew to Cancun in 2006 to have a wedding ceremony. But they also made it legal in the States. Pretty quickly, things got even worse. If it seems to you like Thomas had a little bit of an addiction to women... Well, you'd be right. Things got tense.

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Episode 281

1961.392

It seems that Thomas' romantic relationships were strung together with quite a bit of overlap. He made no effort to keep his girlfriend Lizzie a secret from Sharon or her family. In fact, he was sort of flippant about his repeated and ongoing infidelity.

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Episode 281

2008.53

Apparently, Lizzie was a girlfriend Thomas had lived with in Utah. They had an on-again, off-again relationship. And during one of their breaks, Thomas met Sharon online, began dating her, and eventually married her. Through all of this, he continued having regular phone calls and visits with Lizzie.

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Episode 281

2029.972

He called her 30 to 40 times a week, sent greeting cards one after another, and drove out to her house at least once a month, including all the important holidays. Every time he arrived at Lizzie's, he told her he was in the process of leaving Sharon.

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Episode 281

2046.917

I got very tired of it and told him it's not going to work anymore for me. He needs to make a decision.

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Episode 281

2074.805

He said he was going to go out and deal with Sharon so we could be together.

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Episode 281

2081.069

This guy's life was a certified shitshow. Wouldn't it be interesting to get every single wife's take on what it was like being married to Thomas Randolph? Yeah, I know, right? Shit, we should do that. Oh wait, we already tried, but there's only one problem, you know? Four out of the six wives are dead. It's kind of hard to interview in a cemetery. Not sure our mics are good enough.

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Episode 281

2108.871

Thomas' first wife, Catherine, even offered to help his second wife, Becky, escape her marriage to Thomas. Catherine was genuinely scared for her. And then Becky died.

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Episode 281

2162.369

Supposedly, Becky had a cocaine addiction and she'd attempted suicide before. At least, that's what Thomas' defense attorneys argued when he was prosecuted for her murder. That's right. Thomas went through a full-blown murder trial two years after Becky's death was ruled a suicide. That's why it's important to look up anybody you're potentially thinking about dating and On insert ad here.

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Episode 281

2191.834

I don't know, why haven't we gotten one of those background check companies as a sponsor yet? Seems like a no-brainer. Although Thomas was a killer, he was also a bit of a pussy. He had a hitman. And 13 days after Becky's death, Thomas' prospective hitman came forward and told police Thomas had offered him $10,000 to kill Becky and make it look like an accident.

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Episode 281

2217.657

and he felt pressured by Thomas to carry it out. Thomas collected $250,000 in life insurance payouts, by the way. Once this guy came forward, Thomas found himself sitting in a jail cell. During his time incarcerated and awaiting trial, he was caught trying to put a hit out on a guy who ratted on him to the police so that he couldn't testify. Well, the guy did end up testifying.

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Episode 281

2247.608

but the jury wasn't allowed to hear information about the attempted hit on the hitman. Despite this, the prosecutors laid out a solid case. At one point, they played a song for the jury. It was Rod Stewart's Foolish Behavior. A witness took the stand and testified that Thomas had been playing air guitar and singing along to the song while he plotted his wife's demise.

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Episode 281

2275.219

In case you're unfamiliar with the lyrics, here's an excerpt. I am a man of panache and wealth, sound in mind, body, soul, and health. Why I want to kill my wife? I have this urge to take her life. Been planning for years to get rid of her. No divorce. I really do mean to kill her. She's so full of useless information and trivia. Should I string her up or strangle her in bed?

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Episode 281

2303.908

Suffocate that little venomous head. Or perhaps I'll just whip her to death. Do it for mankind. Take her life. Or should I act quite cold and deliberate? Or maybe blow out her brains with a bullet. They'll think suicide. They won't know. Whodunit. I'm gonna kill my wife. I'm really gonna take her life. Yeah, that's Rod Stewart's tune. I hear he's a really nice guy.

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Episode 281

2333.194

Even with all the evidence stacked against him, Thomas was ultimately acquitted. The jury had to choose between the death penalty and a not guilty verdict. Based on the evidence presented to them, they decided they could not convict him beyond a reasonable doubt. So, Thomas then went on to marry wife number three, Gayna Allman.

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Episode 281

2360.185

She recalled when Thomas was cleaning his gun one night, it accidentally went off. She thinks he was actually trying to kill her.

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Episode 281

2489.855

There's some confusion about the order of Thomas' fourth and fifth wives. One of them was a woman named Frances Randolph. She passed away suddenly after a successful heart operation. It was much later that a witness came forward claiming that Thomas had recruited him to kill Frances and injure Thomas to make it appear like a robbery.

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Episode 281

2514.534

The guy said he declined because he had a feeling Thomas was going to kill him after he carried out the hit. Well, when that plan didn't work, Thomas made sure he was the last one to see Frances after her heart surgery. He told Frances' daughter that he wanted to be alone with his wife, and when he came out of the hospital room, he announced that her mother was dead.

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Episode 281

2542.045

The other wife was named Leona Stapleton. We don't know much about her other than Thomas telling people she had passed away from cancer. What are the odds that that wasn't the case? This brings us to Thomas' sixth and hopefully his last wife, but who knows, because you ladies like to date dangerous, you know?

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Episode 281

2676.633

When 53-year-old Thomas Randolph and his wife, 57-year-old Sharon, arrived back at their Las Vegas home after a date night on May 8, 2008, the couple's friends and handyman Mike Miller was already in the house waiting for them. When Thomas entered the house several minutes after his wife had gone inside, he found her lying face down in a pool of blood.

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Episode 281

2700.685

Mike had shot Sharon in the head, so Thomas shot Mike. Make sense? That's what I thought. After police did a detailed walkthrough of the crime scene with Thomas Randolph, they took time to pour over the information and realized that many of the details Thomas gave them didn't quite add up. During the walkthrough, Thomas stated that he had to turn the light on in the house when he came inside.

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Episode 281

271.84

Centennial Hills emerged in the early 2000s as a suburban paradise in the sprawling landscape of Las Vegas. Driving 25 minutes outside the city brings you to a place where the vibrant energy of the strip fades into quieter outskirts.

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Episode 281

2731.615

Does that mean that Sharon entered the house in the dark? See how that doesn't make sense already? Thomas also told police that he shot and killed Mike Miller in the same hallway Sharon was in, but there was no blood evidence supporting that story, and Mike was found in the garage. To top it all off, Thomas did not attempt to resuscitate his wife during the 911 call.

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Episode 281

2757.947

We didn't play the whole call for you earlier, but the last half features dispatchers essentially begging Thomas to get back to the phone and resume CPR.

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Episode 281

2832.577

It's almost as though he hoped his wife would die. Like many of the other wives, Sharon's death killed two birds with one stone for Thomas. On the one hand, he had a hefty life insurance payout. On the other, he was freed up for his girlfriend Lizzie. This wasn't Thomas' first rodeo, though.

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Episode 281

2854.375

He learned after his wife Becky's suspicious death that he had to make it a lot less suspicious if he wanted to avoid the courtroom. In the months leading up to Sharon's murder, Thomas and Michael Miller exchanged more than 300 phone calls. Thomas was trying to forge a relationship with Michael, who was down on his luck.

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Episode 281

2875.575

The two would have private conversations lasting hours on end, ultimately giving Michael the impression that he was coming into some money. Remember him telling his aunt that he had met a girl was going to happen into some money and plan to move away? Thomas had found himself another hitman, but this time he wouldn't let him live long enough to snitch on him.

Sword and Scale

Episode 281

290.799

Modern family homes line the streets, and on top of being one of the newer suburbs, Centennial Hills is one of the safest places to live if you want to be only a short drive from the Strip, which everybody knows is littered with crime. In fact, I don't even know why anyone would go to Vegas these days. But let's get back to the story.

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Episode 281

2900.379

In Thomas' mind, this would be the perfect crime. A week before Sharon's murder, she called her friend Deidre.

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Episode 281

3058.299

Sharon had no idea that it wouldn't even be Tommy she'd need to watch out for. Their new friend Michael Miller was now doing Tommy's bidding. And Sharon was none the wiser. The night of the murders, Thomas pulled into the driveway and allowed Sharon to go ahead of him, with enough time to encounter Michael Miller.

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Episode 281

3080.373

Though Thomas claimed he couldn't hear the shot due to hearing loss, he likely waited for the sound before going inside to kill Michael. After giving statements to police, Thomas sat back, waited for his life insurance payout, and hoped Sharon's daughter wouldn't give him too much trouble.

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Episode 281

3136.359

A few days after this conversation, Sharon's closest friend Alice, the one who offered to take her in while she got a divorce, stopped by Sharon's daughter's house and dropped off an envelope. This envelope contained a secret that threw a wrench into Thomas' plans. Inside that envelope... was Sharon's most recent updated will.

Sword and Scale

Episode 281

314.133

On May 8th, 2008, crimes in the city were already beginning to intensify in preparation for the weekend. It was only Thursday, but the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department expected an influx of calls as usual. By the evening, cops had been going in and out for hours, mostly focusing on crimes happening closer to the city center. Certainly not places like Centennial Hills.

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Episode 281

3161.106

In the meantime, Thomas was completely unaware of this second will and made phone calls to Sharon's family to save face.

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Episode 281

3262.481

Yes, those conversations never happened again. At first, Thomas hoped to charm Sharon's family with promises of money from her estate. He thought he had control of everything, but that wasn't the case. Sharon's second will was written up with the help of her friend Alice. Alice said in a confessional, she writes it out. I'm watching her do it. and we go to the notary and have it notarized.

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Episode 281

3288.83

And she gives it to me and she says, If anything happens to me, Alice, please give this to my daughter, Colleen. She had left the house to Colleen. Once he became aware of this other will, Thomas began leaving numerous nasty voicemails for Colleen and her husband, saying things like, No wonder your mother didn't like you.

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Episode 281

3312.844

Thomas' true colors emerged when his control over the situation started to disintegrate. Soon, police were taking a much closer look at Thomas. In addition to all the inconsistencies in his story and the conflicting evidence at the crime scene, they looked into Thomas' past and discovered that he'd been married a total of six times. Then they saw that only two of those wives were still alive.

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Episode 281

3342.128

That is some stellar police work right there. Imagine if they had done that previously. In January of 2009, police tracked Thomas down at his parents' house in Clearfield, Utah. Clearfield police, as well as members of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, knocked on the front door, and Thomas answered.

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Episode 281

3365.947

When they showed him the warrant and tried to make an arrest, Thomas resisted and had to be tasered. Are you surprised? I'm not. When they finally got him into custody, he was officially charged with conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder in the first degree for the deaths of Sharon Randolph and Michael Miller. He pleaded not guilty and took it to trial.

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Episode 281

3393.578

The jury on the case spent very little time deliberating before reaching a verdict in June of 2017. All right, Ms.

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Episode 281

344.46

As the clock approached 8.44 p.m., dispatch received a call from the peaceful suburban oasis. It was their 3,131st call of the day.

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Episode 281

3566.368

The verdict was a relief for everyone except Thomas and his defense team. Though the first jury decided they didn't think he murdered his second wife, Becky Galt, the second jury finally got it right. Next came sentencing. for the man now known across the country as the Black Widower. This was a death penalty case, like his first trial and the stakes were high.

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Episode 281

3645.191

the jury unanimously voted on a sentence of death. Thomas destroyed so many kind-hearted women, ruining or taking their lives entirely, but his era of evil is over. There will be no more girlfriends, fiancées, or wives. At least, that's what everyone thought at the time. Fast forward to December of 2020.

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Episode 281

3701.454

In a bizarre turn of events, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed Thomas' conviction on the basis that any mention to this jury of his first trial and acquittal or any other prior bad acts were violations of his right to a fair trial. I love it when they use your own rules against you, don't you? Of course, the Clark County DA's office immediately sought to retry him.

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Episode 281

3729.918

Thomas Randolph's third trial, at taxpayer's expense, I might add, took place in the summer of 2023. This time, prosecutors weren't allowed to talk about either one of the trials or really provide any negative character witnesses. Weird, right? The jury wasn't allowed to hear about his five other wives or that three of them were dead. The raw evidence against Thomas was stacked against him though.

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Episode 281

375.014

Do you know what it means?

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Episode 281

3761.921

Prosecutors built a strong case that Thomas had befriended Michael Miller just months before Sharon's murder and had hired him to kill her so that he could collect the life insurance money and be with his ex Lizzie again. On August 24th, 2023, a verdict was reached.

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Episode 281

3840.973

Thomas Randolph stared ahead with a blank expression as his final verdict was read. Sentencing was to take place just a few months later, but Thomas, now very elderly, was still pulling out all the stops to weasel himself out of prison.

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Episode 281

3914.606

These are just tactics to delay sentencing. This seemingly never-ending case finally came, though. In April of 2024, despite a 15-minute monologue and a proclamation of his innocence, the judge sentenced old Tommy to 60 years to life in prison. Some may say he got let off easy compared to his prior death sentence. But he'll live out his few remaining years trying to appeal this conviction also.

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Episode 281

3949.205

He won't live in peace. He won't live in comfort. But he'll be alive, unlike all those poor women that had the misfortune to meet him. There's a lot of collective evidence that Thomas Randolph is not a good guy. Even when Sharon first met him, everyone told her the same thing. This is not a good idea. What are you doing, girl? Get out of this shit.

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Episode 281

407.149

This caller was an older gentleman, and in case you didn't hear him, apparently this guy Mike was trying to rip him off in some way. The caller knew the intruder, but not well enough to give his last name.

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Episode 281

448.019

Sharon, oh, God. Blood is streaming everywhere. You can't move her? I can't get her over. When the caller tried to turn his wife over, he saw her bloodied distorted face.

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Episode 281

477.093

911 dispatchers walked him through the CPR process while police officers made their way to Rancho Santa Fe Drive.

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Episode 281

503.083

The first few officers on the scene walked in through the front door, walked through the home, and came upon 57-year-old Sharon Randolph.

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Episode 281

566.06

One officer looked at the other and confirmed that Sharon was beyond help. Any attempt at resuscitation had been unsuccessful. The dead man in the garage was Michael Miller. someone Sharon and her husband had met a few months prior. They had befriended him and hired him to do handyman work around their home. Sound familiar? Seems like we repeat the same story over and over again.

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Episode 281

594.349

It's called human behavior, and it happens all around you. By midnight, the house was secured, and Sharon's husband, 53-year-old Thomas Randolph, was taken to the police station to give an official witness statement.

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Episode 281

640.272

In case you couldn't understand, the detective asked Thomas, who knew he and his wife would be away that evening. And Thomas listed quite a few people. One of them was Mike Miller. Mike was a guy in his late 30s, trying to get his life together. In December of the previous year, he'd moved from Rockville, Maryland to Las Vegas to stay with his aunt, uncle, and cousin.

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Episode 281

666.848

He had no job, no car, and no money. He did a few odd jobs here and there, like helping his cousin detail cars or janitorial work for his aunt and uncle's business. But a few weeks after moving to Vegas, Mike met Thomas Randolph, Tom not only gave him handyman work around his own house, he saw Mike as a friend, took him under his wing and vowed to help him find more work.

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Episode 281

694.958

Mike even ended up doing some projects at Sharon's daughter's house. Just before his death, Mike got a girlfriend, but he still had no steady job, no car, and of course, no money. Here's Mike's aunt.

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Episode 281

721.579

Thomas's witness interview went into the wee hours of the morning. Police wanted to learn everything they possibly could about Mike Miller. The next day, police conducted a walkthrough of the crime scene with Thomas.

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Episode 281

763.502

Correct. Thomas then gets into his car and reenacts the night from the moment he and Sharon pulled into the driveway.

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Episode 281

799.657

Thomas and Sharon had spent the night out on the town for an early Mother's Day celebration. One of Sharon's favorite date night activities was going to the movie theater. So the couple went to dinner and a movie before returning home around half past eight.

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Episode 281

938.611

Thomas is describing to police how Michael accosted him in the same hallway where Sharon's body was lying.

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Episode 290

1035.154

The detectives continued pulling video from businesses and churches all up and down Aliana's bus route. They kept thinking they would see the man in the white hoodie again. But then something strange happened. Another man appeared in the surveillance footage from her second bus stop. And it was not the man in the white hoodie.

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Episode 290

1056.451

Outside the True Gospel Mission Baptist Church on East 93rd and Fuller, only a few blocks away from where she was murdered, camera footage showed a black male pacing back and forth across the parking lot at around 7am. Then, Aliana gets off her bus and crosses the street towards the church. The black male then goes up to Aliana and starts talking to her. She takes a cautious step back.

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Episode 290

1085.069

Even from the grainy video, you can sense the fear in her body language. Then she scurries away. A few seconds later, the video catches him following her up the street. It's chilling. Meanwhile, the community continued to make sure Aliana was not forgotten, like the other murdered women before her.

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Episode 290

1121.245

The church video was released to the public and tips soon came flooding in, but they would prove unnecessary because the killer had left his DNA all over the crime scene. In that cold, disgusting house, Aliana had not only been viciously murdered, tortured with tools, but also raped. The killer's DNA was like a white flag all over the abandoned house.

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Episode 290

1150.728

When the police sent what they had out for forensic testing, they found the culprit was already in the system. His name was Christopher Whitaker. He wasn't hard to find, either. 44-year-old Christopher was an ex-con who'd been living and working in the 93rd Street area. He had a 19-year-old daughter to himself, but he was a negligent father. You know, being in and out of jail and all.

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Episode 290

1180.17

Can't be a good father if you're locked up, you know? Anyway, Christopher had listed his aunt's house as his last known address. But he was staying with a girlfriend while he worked when he could. And when I say he worked, I mean he did random construction-like tasks on homes for a buddy. I'll explain in a sec. Anyway, he couldn't do much else given the lengthy criminal history.

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Episode 290

1302.947

But the police knew that he was involved. His DNA was literally everywhere. Instead of bashing him with the cold, hard evidence right away, they wanted to see him squirm a bit. It's fun. And cops need to have fun, too, sometimes.

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Episode 290

1360.595

Oh, and by construction work, I also mean that Christopher and his friends would go into abandoned houses and dismantle whatever parts they could use, like hot water heaters, sinks, pipes, or scrap metal. They were scrounging, you know, like rats, like vermin. Where did you guys park the vehicle to load all this stuff up?

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

14.519

All right, don't get used to this. This isn't going to be the new norm. We aren't going to do two episodes a week, every week, forever. I mean, do you want to kill me? This is Season 12, Episode 290 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters... Ah, I missed it. Dammit. Alright, let me try that again.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

1406.372

Just three grown men stealing metal from abandoned houses and lugging it out in a also-stolen shopping cart. then trading it in at a scrapyard for a measly $37 to split three ways. Instead of just, oh, I don't know, flipping a burger or maybe even delivering a burger these days. For way more. But nah, nah, just keep doing what you're doing. Why would anyone resort to such a low-level cash grab?

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Episode 290

143.672

Even though Denisha was weary of sending her daughter to school this way, it had never been a problem before.

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Episode 290

1435.316

Oh, right, right, right, his criminal record. Keeps coming back to that, doesn't it? Let's just keep all of this in mind while we listen to Christopher spin his little web.

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Episode 290

1535.002

Christopher said that they walked around poking their heads in each dilapidated room trying to salvage anything of value that someone else hadn't already ripped from the home's carcass. But he was jittery as he spoke, a little nervous. What's wrong, Chris?

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

1621.444

Christopher sat there across from the detective with his broad shoulders slumped forward. He looked like a gigantic toddler, being punished in his naughty chair. The flyer of Aliana was on the table in front of him, her smiling, innocent face looking in his direction, but instead he just stared at his hands.

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Episode 290

165.774

Every weekday morning, Aliana would get on the bus at 6.45 a.m. and ride halfway to school to 93rd Street and Kinsman. Then she would transfer onto another bus, which would take her all the way to school.

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Episode 290

1682.326

Christopher refused to look up. The detective pushed the picture of Aliana closer to him and tapped her pen on it.

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Episode 290

1717.939

The scrap metal scrounging makes a little more sense now, doesn't it?

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

1815.256

As a taxpayer, aren't you sick of this shit? Just asking. You do pay your taxes, right? Christopher tried to say that this all happened because of his addiction to crack. He was out looking for drugs when he met some guys who took him back to the house. It was someone else, not him. Aliana was already there, naked. He was being very vague about the whole thing. How did she get into the house?

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Episode 290

1871.479

He just happened to be cruising around town looking for drugs on, yep, you guessed it, a stolen bicycle. And what bike were you riding?

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Episode 290

188.829

Denisha never heard anything from Aliana's school about her not showing up. Normally they would send her a text message through the school's messaging service, but Denisha received no notifications or telephone calls. So she assumed her child was safe in her classroom with her teacher and peers. But then Aliana never returned home.

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Episode 290

1894.537

Chris went on for a long time, spinning a story about two random men. who he described in great detail. They were the ones who had done this, not him. He just happened to be there, and yes, sure, he had sex with her. I mean, why not, you know? She was there, and she also wanted to get high, and, you know, she's naked and stuff, so whatever.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

1919.584

Imagine being so stupid that you think other people are this stupid. The whole thing was completely unbelievable to anyone who knew Aliana. Actually, it was completely unbelievable to anyone with a brain. But Aliana was a good kid. The detectives knew this, yet they sat and listened as Chris went on and on.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2022.351

Can you imagine what a piece of shit you have to be to show up at an abandoned house, see a naked teenage girl, and think, this is a party? I mean, that's some straight-up ditty shit. I mean, you're basically Ashton Kutcher at that point. This man is so beyond scum of the earth that this is the story he's willing to admit. This is what he thinks is acceptable to tell detectives.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

210.508

Denisha called the school to check to see if her daughter was still there. She had a parent-teacher conference scheduled for 5pm that evening. Maybe Aliana had decided to stick around for some reason.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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So this is how 44-year-old Christopher had been living his life. He stole scrap metal for crack cocaine. He worked random drywall jobs. And his only mode of transportation was with friends or on stolen bikes. Quite frankly, his life wasn't worth living. And it hadn't been for some time. A long, long, long time. Chris grew up the youngest of seven kids.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2178.803

His father was not around when Christopher was eight years old. His mother died of kidney failure. Fearing the state would try to separate the kids into foster care, Christopher's eldest sister moved the family to Cleveland to be closer to their aunt. Christopher grew up and, like his older brothers, turned to drugs and petty crime.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2199.652

So you're telling me the Nancy Reagan say no to drugs thing didn't work? Weird. Christopher was arrested throughout the late 90s and early 2000s for burglary, felonious assault, and other drug-related crimes. Years went by. He stayed in the drug world and had a daughter of his own. But by the time his little girl turned six, Chris would be behind bars.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2225.581

When he was 32 years old, Christopher attacked a female friend when she came over to use his bathroom. He sprang open the door, stabbed her in the neck with a pair of scissors, and then strangled her.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2242.537

Then he raped her repeatedly. When she woke up, she was naked and bleeding out. She barely survived. Chris was charged with third-degree felonious sexual assault and attempted murder, but he pleaded down the murder charge. He only got four years in prison. Four. I mean, what kind of judges are we putting on the bench? Four years for a violent rape and attempted murder?

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2277.285

Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on in Ohio. Christopher has been a registered sex offender since his release in 2009. On post-release control, he offended again, but managed to slip through the cracks of the legal system for some reason.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2323.552

Her death was so violent and sick. Her throat had been slashed with a box cutter. Her face had been stabbed with a screwdriver. Then he had wedged her eyeball out of its socket. Then he left the tools on display on the windowsill before discarding her body like trash in the corner of the room. Now here Chris was, his DNA all over the place, his criminal history chock full of violence and rape.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2352.864

And he was still trying to convince the detectives that he did nothing wrong to hurt Aliana. Sure, Chris. Sure.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2384.875

Oh, did you believe Chris? You should probably rethink some things. A lot of stuff. There were more problems with this story than just the footprints, though.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2487.001

Chris had been caught, literally red-handed and red-footed. It was almost as though he had no foresight at all when he killed Aliana. I guess crack does that to you. It was almost as though the slap on the wrist he had received for raping a woman and stabbing her in the neck... enabled him the power to do this again, except get it right this time. This wasn't about drugs.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2514.423

This was about the fact that his urges of torture and rape were bubbling up to the surface yet again, and he was powerless to stop them. 44-year-old convicted sex offender, rapist, drug dealer, and user Christopher Whitaker. had been taken into custody for the heinous murder of 14-year-old Aliana DeFries.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2565.674

Despite the overwhelming DNA evidence at the scene and on her body, Christopher continued to try to blame the crime on other men and, of course, his disgusting drug habit. Maybe his mind was so warped from decades of crack use that he thought there were two other men with him. Or maybe he was just a seedy, worthless rapist and murderer, lying his ass off to try and get away with it, yet again.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2634.673

But the surveillance video from the church showed Christopher pacing back and forth, confronting a timid Aliana and then stalking her as she walked away. Christopher then changed his story and said two guys didn't actually go into the house with him. They just helped walk her to the house. He'd gone through about four different versions of the events at this point.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

271.96

She was innocent and inexperienced. The panic of where Aliana could be did set in. Here's one of the administrators at the E-Prep.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2722.759

Christopher said it was all consensual, but then Aliana flipped on him.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2862.178

Of course, he would not recall. Christopher was selectively forgetting everything about the gruesome butchery he committed with those drywall tools. But Aliana's corpse told a different story. Her body told the detectives what a vile monster her killer really was. Before throwing him in jail, the detectives asked him about five other missing women from 93rd Street.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2889.944

He admitted he knew one of them and said they used to get high together. She was, quote, good people.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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With Christopher behind bars, Aliana's family felt a little relief. But this tragedy was far from over. Here's Aliana's father.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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Aliana's mother was determined to stand strong when the court proceeding started.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2962.567

Christopher was given 10 charges, including aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. He admitted that he was involved, but his defense argued that it was crack cocaine that actually caused the crime. Not Christopher. Isn't it funny how you can just skate responsibility like that? Just point at another thing and go, no, that did it, not me.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

2988.938

So everyone who loved Aliana, including her family, her friends, and teachers, had to endure a very public trial. They had to sit there and watch CCTV footage of Aliana on a bus, smiling her last smile as she exited onto 93rd Street. They had to watch Christopher stalk her outside the church. They had to look at pictures of the crime scene and the unthinkable ways she had been tortured.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3018.561

They had to hear the medical examiner explain how it was most likely that she was in fact alive when Christopher stabbed her face with a screwdriver and plucked her eye out of its socket. They had to hear how after he murdered Aliana, Christopher went to a local church and helped a pastor unload food pantry items with a calm smile on his face. The jury found him guilty on all charges.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

304.115

This administrator had a special relationship with Aliana.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3053.497

They recommended the death penalty. The judge agreed. Christopher Whitaker was sent to death row. Finally, where he belongs. Before he was locked away, Christopher told the judge he wanted to say something to Aliana's family.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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Outside, the media buzzed, and Aliana's family stood strong.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3141.289

Aliana DeFries' family did not stop fighting, even after the trial. Her father and stepmom made it their mission to see that the house she was killed in be torn down. This cluster of forgotten homes attracted seedy activity, drug use, and crime. Five women had been killed there already, and Aliana was the last girl the city was willing to lose.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3167.531

Standing outside in the rain, Aliana's father spoke to a crowd.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

320.544

So when she heard she was missing, she sprung into action.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3224.487

The house was destroyed on December 2018. Aliana's family felt that her death was preventable. I think they're right. I think it was. The school she attended had an alert system in place where a text message could go out to a parent whose child didn't show up to school. But on the day Aliana was murdered, Denisha received no text message, no phone call, nothing.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3250.963

Remember, the only reason she found out her daughter was absent was when she called the school office. Aliana's family sued the school and the city. After a lot of back and forth, the case was finally settled and the DeVries family was given a $1 million settlement. Not much, if you ask me, for a life taken.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3275.137

Aliana's family took it a step further and advocated for a new law to be put in place that required schools to make contact with parents if their child is absent from the school within the first two hours of the school day starting. This bill was brought to the House of Representatives in early 2019, and it was promptly signed and passed. It's called, of course, the Aliana Alert Law.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

33.726

This is Season 12, Episode 290 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real! It was a cold January in Cleveland, Ohio. Then again, isn't every January cold in Cleveland, Ohio? A thick layer of snow covered the ground and the sky was gray. Inside the modest downstairs apartment of a turn-of-the-century house, 35-year-old Denisha Cooper was pacing through her living room.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3302.062

This year, Aliana De Vries would have been 21 years old. She had so much ahead of her. The way she was taken from this earth is the kind of tragedy that makes your heart hurt. It makes you worry about the future. Hell, it makes you worry about the present. To die alone in that freezing house, in the dark and snow, with a sexually depraved monster plucking her apart as she lay there dying.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3333.151

It's just too awful to think about. You can't let it sit in your head too long without doing some damage. She was an innocent, beautiful child who was beloved by so many. Her family did everything they could to make sure her death served a higher purpose for the community at large. But like Aliana's father said, monsters like Christopher Whitaker are out there. We hear about them every day.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3360.786

They slip through the cracks of the legal system and often blame drugs for their actions. But I think we all know better. We've talked about so many of these monsters, these former human beings. They're all cut from the same cloth.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3376.73

Narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, the inability to empathize with the pain of others, and the uncontrollable need to satisfy one's own carnal gratification above all else. Christopher blamed drugs for what he did to Aliana and his other previous victim. but it had little to do with drugs. Christopher had depraved urges inside of him and he spent most of his adult life repressing them.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

339.446

She checked the library, but no Aliana. However, there were other places and other libraries that she might be at.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3411.999

He pushed them deep, deep down inside. The deviant killer in Christopher came out when he was 32, when he stabbed and raped a woman in his bathroom. Who knows what set him off then? He was able to keep his urges at bay for another 12 years until the day that he murdered Aliana. Like an aerosol can near a fire, he finally exploded. This time, he couldn't stop it, just one stab to the neck.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3441.993

He had to keep going. After he raped Aliana, he treated her like she was a dead animal in a science lab. I think Christopher willingly gave up his self-control that cold January morning. He wanted to do this. He got sexual gratification from not only the rape, but also the torture, the murder. It made him come, to be frank about it.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3472.753

He is one of the most wicked and vile men that exists, but certainly not the only one. There is no forgiveness for this type of crime. There is no forgiveness for what Christopher has done here. No sentence suitable to fit his crime. Only Christopher knows what's waiting for him when he finally crosses over to the other side for all eternity. If you believe in that sort of thing.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3501.133

I hope he does, and I hope that his final days on Earth are filled with fear as to what's coming. I hope he's a man of faith, and I hope he believes in eternal damnation and hellfire. Because I think that if he's right about that, there may be a very warm future waiting for him. A future much warmer, nay, hotter than the freezing cold house Aliana died in.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3545.339

I'm sure this will come across as bitching, but it's just me explaining to you why there are so many episodes all of a sudden. I don't want you to get used to it and think it's going to be the normal schedule. You see, we make our money by selling advertising or premium subs and... If there are fewer of you coming in the door than there are leaving, then we can't really do that anymore, can we?

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

3570.755

And Apple loves to hide us, even though we've been a top premium channel ever since they launched their premium channels service. So we're going to just put out a shitload of episodes and try to capture more eyeballs that way for the time being to see if we can turn around this trend and get some more people coming in the front door.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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I'm only telling you this because you're going to complain eventually, and I'd rather just deal with it now. Stay safe.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

370.878

Back at the school, the staff talked with the police as concern grew. Everyone who knew Aliana could tell something was very wrong.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

426.434

Nobody slept that night. Not Denisha Cooper, not any of the school staff, not any of her friends or extended family. Everyone was busy making a plan for how to find her. And the next day, they got to work.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

495.862

Every weekday morning, Aliana would catch the number 14 bus and ride it to 93rd and Kinsman. Then she'd transfer to another bus, which took her down 93rd to her school. This was not the best area. Between Kinsman and E-Prep, 93rd Street was home to a few churches, auto shops, vacant lots, and some houses.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

521.343

The officers searched every location for Aliana and took note of where they could collect surveillance footage along her bus route. But they started with the video footage from the bus she got on the day she went missing.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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The man in the video footage did more than just talk to Aliana on the bus.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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The man in the RTA bus footage sat facing the front with his white hoodie pulled up. As Aliana exits the bus, he looks up, grabs his two bags, and gets off the bus behind her. He yells something as they both cross the busy intersection, but Aliana keeps walking until she gets to the other side of the street. That's when the footage ends. The bus continues its route.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

639.47

So they kept searching. Soon the FBI got involved. Denisha handed over her daughter's phone just in case there was something on it, which she'd found in her bedroom dresser. Anything on there could help. Still, no Aliana. The whole neighborhood was on high alert in search of this beloved teenager. It felt like she had just vanished into thin air. Then, police found a body.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

684.497

On Sunday, January 29th, 2017, only three days after she'd been reported missing, officers searched an abandoned house just off 93rd Street. Inside the cold and crumbling home, the police used their flashlights to follow bloody footprints and smears towards a room. Inside they found a training bra, some clothes, a ripped condom wrapper, and the body of a young black female.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

717.482

She was naked, except for a pair of socks. On the built-in window bench next to her was an assortment of torture tools, a drill, a Phillips head screwdriver, a nut driver, and a box cutter.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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The body looked like Aliana, but there had been several missing women reported in the area, so they had to be sure. After securing her dental records, it was confirmed.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

820.891

Now, the police had to follow the breadcrumbs of video footage to find the person who killed her. 14-year-old Aliana DeFreeze had mysteriously disappeared one January afternoon on her bus ride to school. The entire community had banded together to find her, but it was the police who eventually discovered the dead body of Aliana in an abandoned home just off her bus route on 93rd Street.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

85.568

Her hands were shaking as she called 911.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

881.21

This area of Cleveland, Ohio was littered with abandoned and crumbling homes. Over the past few years, five women had gone missing near 93rd Street, their bodies mutilated and dumped like trash. All the murders had remained unsolved. Like we said before, this was not a safe area.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

903.441

Crime had started to fester there among the abandoned homes, and the women who were killed before Aliana were adults caught up in that dark world. But after what happened to Aliana, an innocent school kid, officials started to perk up. Some members of the city council feared the worst.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

936.714

This city councilman was convinced a serial killer could be targeting the Eastside neighborhood. But the cops didn't agree.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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Well, like I said, I just want them to prove me wrong. Meanwhile, Aliana's family grieved publicly. And the entire community decided enough was enough. This was a teenager who had been taken from her family. And residents who rode the bus every day with Aliana and kids like her decided to take turns guarding the last place she had been seen. Her bus stop.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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As much as it was about preventing future tragedies, this was also a way to honor Aliana.

Sword and Scale

Episode 290

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Police continued pulling surveillance footage from around her first bus transfer, where the man in the white hoodie had followed Aliana across the street.

TED Talks Daily

How to tame your advice monster | Michael Bungay Stanier

1101.471

That's N-O-V-O-N-O-R-D-I-S-K dot com.

TED Talks Daily

How to tame your advice monster | Michael Bungay Stanier

911.061

Dr. Catherine Saunders is a leading obesity specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Flight Health, a software and clinical services company democratizing access to medical obesity care. One of her goals as a physician is to create a long-term relationship with her patients and break down stigma surrounding obesity.

TED Talks Daily

How to tame your advice monster | Michael Bungay Stanier

931.297

She recently sat down with one of her patients, Barbara, to talk about what an empathy and science-based approach to healthcare actually looks like.

TED Talks Daily

Collagen's dirty secret — and its clean future | Fei Luo

508.516

Neuroscientist Ethan Cross says you may think it's healthy to vent about what's bothering you, but... The problem is you often leave that conversation feeling really good about the person you just communicated with, but all the negative feelings are still there. Sometimes they're even more activated.

TED Talks Daily

Sunday Pick: Cancelling cancel culture with Loretta Ross | ReThinking with Adam Grant

2309.654

Dr. Catherine Saunders ist eine leitende Obesity-Spezialistin bei Weill Cornell Medicine und Co-Founder von Flight Health, einer Software- und Klinik-Services-Firma, die den Zugang zu medizinischem Obesity-Bereich demokratisiert. Eines ihrer Ziele als Physikerin ist es, eine langfristige Beziehung mit ihren Patienten zu schaffen und Stigmas um Obesität zu brechen.

TED Talks Daily

Sunday Pick: Cancelling cancel culture with Loretta Ross | ReThinking with Adam Grant

2330.251

Sie hat vor kurzem mit einem ihrer Patienten, Barbara, darüber gesprochen, was ein Empathie- und wissenschaftsbasierter Ansatz auf die Gesundheit eigentlich aussieht.

TED Talks Daily

Will AI make us the last generation to read and write? | Victor Riparbelli

1010.506

This is Maya Williams. She is a chief operating officer at a research hospital. In a slam poem shared at the TED and Novo Nordisk salon event, Maya advocates for everyone to recognize healthcare as a fundamental right that must be delivered equitably. Maya has lived with obesity, survived two heart attacks, and an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

TED Talks Daily

Will AI make us the last generation to read and write? | Victor Riparbelli

1031.512

Today, we sat down with Maya to hear more about her story.

TED Talks Daily

Will AI make us the last generation to read and write? | Victor Riparbelli

1096.94

Since the staff dismissed her, she wound up having to call a colleague in order to get the care that she needed. It turns out Maya was having an abdominal aortic aneurysm, or AAA, a life-threatening condition.

TED Talks Daily

Will AI make us the last generation to read and write? | Victor Riparbelli

1204.3

To listen to Maya's TED Talk and learn more about her story, go to TED.com slash NOVO. That's TED.com slash N-O-V-O.

TED Talks Daily

Feeling stuck on climate change? Here’s what to do | Kris De Meyer

854.213

Dr. Catherine Saunders is a leading obesity specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Flight Health, a software and clinical services company democratizing access to medical obesity care. One of her goals as a physician is to create a long-term relationship with her patients and break down stigma surrounding obesity.

TED Talks Daily

Feeling stuck on climate change? Here’s what to do | Kris De Meyer

874.455

She recently sat down with one of her patients, Barbara, to talk about what an empathy and science-based approach to healthcare actually looks like.

THREE

Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer

0.603

It was just a few minutes after four on the day before Christmas that Dana took off down this country road on her bicycle. Based on the evidence, someone in a pickup truck forced her off the side of the road and then abducted her.

THREE

Murder in Vacationland | Season 2 Trailer

240.427

I have a brief statement about some recent developments in the Dana Ireland case, and then I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

0.55

Now, district attorneys, like all lawyers in the United States of America, take an oath that allows them to practice law. According to the National District Attorneys Association, DAs are tasked with ensuring justice is served by, quote, "...prosecuting individuals accused of committing crimes."

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1097.438

Whatever semblance of a relationship existed between the Hawaii Innocence Project and HPD became non-existent from here on out. Tensions arose with the chief and the Hawaii Innocence Project, each pointing to each other as the reason for the demise.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1252.959

At the end of the day, there are a whole lot of questions we wish we could get answered, truthfully. But even so, there are so many things we know to be true. First, Ian Schweitzer spent over 20 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1271.696

And if we're using the same logic Hawaii PD used when determining if they had probable cause to arrest Albert Laurel Jr., then you could say Ian and Sean's arrests arguably lacked probable cause. Second, there is factually zero forensic evidence connecting Ian Schweitzer, Sean Schweitzer, or Frank Pauline Jr. to the murder of Dana Ireland.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1295.362

All the prosecution ever had were Frank's obviously unreliable statements. Chief Ben Moskowitz wasn't part of the original investigation into Dana Ireland's murder. And even as of today, he is not the primary investigator on this case. More like the spokesperson. But he assured us during our interview with him that those in charge are on it.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1352.079

We asked Chief Moskowitz about connecting Laurel to the other forensic evidence at the crime scene, such as the treadmarks. And while they are no longer able to question their newest prime suspect, they do have an important item of his they were able to gather at the site of Laurel Jr. 's death.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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That was as of July 2024. And as of today, we are still waiting for answers. At the same time as the Chief's press conference in July of 2024, Ian and Sean Schweitzer are headed back into the same courtroom they had been in several times by this point.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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And this time, their hope is to get a little closer to proving factual innocence so Ian and Sean can file a civil suit and receive compensation from the state.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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Remember, the state has already dismissed the charges against Ian and Sean, and the world now knows the identity of unknown male number one. So you'd think it wouldn't be too much of a leap for the prosecution to go along with a finding of factual innocence. But the state stands firm in their opposition to it.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1485.966

They require proof of factual innocence, they say, not merely legal insufficiency or procedural flaws. And this is where I get triggered. The presumption of innocence is one of the bedrock principles of any reputable justice system. The burden is on the state to prove guilt, and that's where it should be.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1508.5

But once a conviction has happened, the burden of proof shifts, and it's now on a defendant to prove, by meeting various technical legal standards, like a preponderance of the evidence, that they are innocent.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1522.009

This makes sense in the abstract, but when a wrongful conviction is based on junk science, bogus eyewitness testimony, or a false confession, even after all that bogus evidence is refuted, an innocent person is still often put in the near impossible position of having to prove their innocence. It's incredibly difficult to prove a negative because of another bedrock principle of justice.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1549.38

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It is possible to commit a crime and for investigators to fail to pick up your DNA traces. This gives the prosecution lots of room to explain away inconvenient facts. In my case, after my acquittal, when I was retried for the same crime, there was no longer any DNA to hang the case on.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1573.018

That supposed evidence had already been ruled lab contamination by independent experts. And so the prosecution argued a case based entirely on character evidence, that I was the kind of person who would orchestrate a murder orgy. It didn't matter that there was no forensic evidence linking me to the crime. I was found guilty again.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1595.271

It was like my guilt was presumed as a default state of affairs, and I had to somehow convince them out of that. This happens frequently in wrongful convictions, and it's the same position the Schweitzer brothers find themselves in when trying to convince the state of Hawaii to declare them factually innocent.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1615.979

On Tuesday, July 30th, 2024, Ian, Sean, their mom and dad, and other members of their family walk into a courtroom once again, alongside their legal teams, and our team, who traveled back to Hawaii as soon as they heard this press conference was happening and the hearing was confirmed. As we've mentioned in previous episodes, factual innocence is a long process.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

1643.24

Everything involving a wrongful conviction takes a lot of time. And time is more precious than ever before, when you've already lost so many years fighting for your freedom. The July 30th hearing lasts almost two hours, and many members of the Schweitzer's legal team speak in front of the judge.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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The same judge, Judge Peter Kubota, who overturned the brothers' convictions back in 2023, presides over the hearing.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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In her arguments, Shannon Kagawa from the prosecution team is leaning in hard that the statements made and the confessions that were given should be considered credible.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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But what about the DNA? Well, the prosecution has a theory for that.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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That's in Chapter 9, which you can listen to next week.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

21.033

And in my experience, DAs are typically eager to do just that, especially when they have strong evidence, like a DNA match, and especially when the crime is as brutal and shocking as the murder of Dana Ireland. But with wrongful convictions, the egos of law enforcement come into play. DAs like to protect their conviction record and are too often reluctant to admit they got it wrong.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

231.497

Lynn Kawano from Hawaii News Now breaks the news of the suspect the night before the press conference, sending shockwaves throughout the island.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

277.102

On July 29th, the Hawaii Police Department holds a press conference, and the chief of Hawaii PD, Ben Moskowitz, notifies the public that, yes, there was a DNA hit. And they did, in fact, go question Albert Laurel Jr. specifically on July 19th.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

380.969

Chapter Eight, Probable Cause.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

402.56

According to Chief Moskowitz, investigators asked Laurel to come in for an interview, to which he agreed. And during this hour or so interview, they obtained a direct swab for comparison from him. At the time, investigators say they didn't arrest him because they believed there was insufficient evidence to prove he intentionally or knowingly contributed to the death of Dana Ireland.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

426.417

Once Laurel indicated he wanted to leave, they let him. And shortly thereafter, Albert Laurel Jr. died by suicide, taking whatever truth he carried with him to his grave, leaving the same cloud of doubt hanging over Ian and Sean Schweitzer. Knowing everything we know up until this point, it feels like Laurel Jr. was the key to finally solving Dana's case once and for all and getting true justice.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

457.68

If Hawaii PD had arrested him instead of letting him leave that day. Chief Moskowitz, however, doesn't view this situation as black and white.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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And it's hard not to note that in this case, had they brought Albert Laurel Jr. to trial, there would have been massive media attention on the fact that he'd acted alone, shining a persistent spotlight on the three wrongful prosecutions that preceded it.

THREE

Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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Probable cause. A phrase you're going to hear a lot from the chief of police, as well as the Hawaii Innocence Project. It's a principle enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

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The founders left the definition of probable cause vague, just like many terms in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And it was left to the courts to work out and refine the definition through case law over the last 250 years. And other legal systems around the world have followed suit. There's a version of probable cause in Italian law, for example.

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Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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My arrest required probable cause, and the police got it after coercing me into making false statements. Despite how incoherent and self-contradictory those statements were, and how they were contradicted by the physical evidence at the crime scene, my arrest was still validated.

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It's not unlike this case, where Frank Pauline's twisting and contradictory stories were obviously unreliable but still sufficient for the police to issue an arrest warrant. That's because, with terms like probable cause, the police walk a fine line. It's often less about what's legal and more about what they can get away with.

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Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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If the public is out for blood and they want somebody to be held accountable, as was the case for Dana Ireland's murder, and after the murder of my roommate in Italy, then the courts are less likely to hold police accountable for stepping over the line of what truly constitutes probable cause for arrest, and the police are more likely to take action without sufficient evidence.

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This might explain why, during this Zoom call between the judge, the Hawaii Innocence Project, and the DA's office, the prosecution is not forthcoming about what they knew and when, and the judge is forced to press them for information.

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What's baffling in this case is that the police had rock-solid evidence, a DNA match, and yet they erred on the side of being overly cautious when it came to probable cause and issuing an arrest warrant for Albert Laurel Jr.

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Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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We of course wanted to hear Chief Ben Moskowitz's perspective on this, as well as answers to several other questions. To our surprise, he agreed to sit down with us during the same trip to Hawaii.

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Chief Moskowitz claims that the risk they would have been taking by arresting Albert Laurel Jr. at this stage of the investigation was too big a risk to take, one that would have tanked their case down the line if they went to trial.

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Probable Cause | Chapter 8

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Ken says that on the Zoom call, Shannon Kagawa is present, but Michael Kagame is tuning in via speakerphone through Shannon, which the judge isn't exactly thrilled about.

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Chief Ben Moskowitz wears several hats for the Hawaii Police Department.

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This is an interesting point because, yes, it does differ state to state. Some coroners are elected, kind of like sheriffs, but then in other states they are appointed, like police chiefs. Now, if you're a police chief and a coroner, that's a fraught combination.

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Coroners are responsible for determining cause and manner of death, and whether they rule a death to be a homicide or suicide or accidental or medical can lead other agencies, like police, to take action against potential perpetrators. In an ideal situation, there would be a firewall between these occupations.

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Otherwise, information available to or determined by the coroner can bias an investigation. That's why an independent review, like Chief Moskowitz referred to, is super important.

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And along with that responsibility comes access to information. So when Albert Laurel Jr. dies by alleged suicide, Chief Moskowitz is immediately made aware. So he has issues with Ken Lawson calling the morgue in Honolulu.

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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6

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So you didn't know that going in that she was going to do the stipulation?

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It's just it's a very sad case. There's just no winners here. There's no winners. While it's celebratory for the Schweitzer's, I'm so happy for them to have to wait all this time and to finally get this day to see Mama Schweitzer, who's undergoing chemotherapy, to see that her boys are finally both home for Christmas and free and clear of these criminal charges.

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This is going to be the best Christmas for them. But she has now breast cancer. She's fighting that and she's going through a lot. And so it's hard. It's, you know, you can't get that time back. But also for Dana Ireland's family, for her sister, it's heartbreaking.

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Unknown Male #1 | Chapter 6

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Although both have been exonerated, Knox says that doesn't always mean feeling free.

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Both Knox and Schweitzer hope sharing their stories in their own words will help inspire change with these law students and the entire community.

Table Read

Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

1.352

Today we'll read Pablo's Rhino.

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Charlie and Marcus sit at the bar flanking Sam, who holds a bottle of wine over his swollen eye. They all look like they've been through the wringer. So, uh, that went well. Charlie pats Sam on the back.

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I've been living a lie. Charlie and Marcus exchange a look, a beat, they crack up.

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A barman comes over and whispers into Marcus's ear. He downs his drink and makes his way towards the kitchen.

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Refill? Sam holds up two fingers. OK, I better go see where Marcus ran off to. Charlie makes his way to the kitchen. He's about to push through the swinging doors when he sees Marcus through the portal window in a heated discussion with two South American 40 mob guys. One of them shoves Marcus up against the wall before exiting past Charlie. Marcus sucks in his gut and follows them out.

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Sam walks up to them waving an empty glass.

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Marcus throws an arm around both of them.

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She gestures with her hand, mimicking a surfboard, as if to say, do you surf? Charlie raises a coy eyebrow. Doesn't everybody win? An 18-wheeler pulls up behind Charlie and honks for him to speed up. Charlie crooks an eyebrow at the surfer girl who bites her lower lip and beckons him to follow. She drives off. He steps on the gas but quickly swerves to avoid the truck that just cut him off.

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No, no, no, no. Count me out. Fuck you mean you're out? Charlie shrugs like it's common knowledge. Counts on his fingers.

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Sam nods in agreement. Charlie looks back in the direction of the kitchen and crooks an eye at Marcus. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This wouldn't have anything to do with your backer, by chance. Marcus waves off the thought. He whips out a pamphlet and hands it to Charlie. Ah, forget him.

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Charlie considers this before coming to his senses.

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Charlie picks up the empties and walks off.

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Well, let me know if you see him. He's got some explaining to do. Off Sam and Marcus watching him go, cut to exterior Audrey's house day. Charlie parks his car and steps out, shocked by what he sees in the driveway. Ben, in full goalie gear, is duct taped to a hockey net like a drill dummy, while Carla takes slap shots. One ball hits Ben in the chest. Ben winces. Dad! Benny, what the hell is this?

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Carla turns to see Charlie approach.

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Carla offers Charlie the stick, expecting him to back down. No, no, no.

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charlie can feel ben's eyes on him he grabs the stick feels the balance of it in his hands he winds up for the shot carla next time an eight-year-old tells you to tie him up charlie releases top left corner nothing but net think like a grown-up and don't another shot nothing but net just as charlie goes to release his third shot audrey comes out of the house charlie what the are you insane

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The ball flies and hits Ben square in the groin.

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He grunts. He grunts and falls forward with the net falling on top of him.

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The ball flies and hits Ben square in the groin.

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He grunts and falls forward with the net falling on top of him. Charlie drops the stick. They rush to Ben.

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Now he's stuck staring at this jerk's giant bumper sticker that reads, move it or lose it. Charlie honks. He tries to pass, but the truck blocks him at every turn. The trucker chuckles and flips him the bird.

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Oh, Benny, I am so sorry. Audrey rips through the tape.

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Charlie is flummoxed. Really irresponsible, Chuck. You could have seriously hurt the boy. Charlie seethes but decides not to turn it into a thing. I'm sorry, buddy. Are you all right?

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Charlie takes a knee. Ben doesn't want to show he's really not all that disappointed.

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This one cuts deep, but Charlie concedes for Ben's sake.

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Ben nods and they hug before Charlie heads back to his car.

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She cackles. Charlie walks off, set to blow. Voices swirl in his head.

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Bang! Charlie turns back and walks right up to Carla. Projecting all the swagger a man in cargo pants can muster.

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Ben's mouth drops. This is the coolest thing ever.

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Let's play. Charlie fakes left, moves far right. The truck swerves to block him. Charlie yanks the steering wheel left and veers into oncoming traffic. He shrieks as the car is about to crash. Interior, exterior, Charlie's Volvo, day. Charlie opens his eyes. He is not about to die. The red convertible passes him without incident.

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Carla is stunned. Charlie puts his shades back on, surprised with himself. He walks back to his car. Audrey catches up with him.

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Don't mention it. You know, I kind of felt bad for Carla. So awkward. She smiles. There's still some sweetness left between them.

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Research my new book. It's a thriller. Audrey is impressed. She tries to hide a smile and laugh.

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Maybe it's time to change lanes. Charlie smiles, turns to walk to his car.

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Charlie looks back.

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Charlie winks and turns. His confidence descends into dread. Pre-lapped screaming jet turbines take us to exterior Cartagena Airport runway day establishing. The plane screeches down onto a heat blurred tarmac. over traditional cumbia music. Exterior, Cartagena Airport. Arrivals, exit, day. Slow-mo. Marcus swaggers like Don Johnson. Hair slicked back.

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Sam, sporting a neckerchief, struts like a peacock. Charlie straggles, covered in sweat, looking green. The front of the airport bustles with fruit vendors, beggars, and touts pushing taxis and brothels.

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through a camera map from a distance. The guys are oblivious. They are being photographed. Click, photo of Marcus.

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Click, photo of Sam.

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There's a good man. Marcus flips on the bird as he walks off. Exterior, streets of Cartagena, continuous. A couple big sweaty men standing around an old van snicker at Marcus' approach.

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Sure, we take you there, marica. The second trucker reaches behind his back for a pistol.

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The truckers get in their truck and apologetically drive off.

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Exterior, Streets of Cartagena, convenience stand, continuous. Charlie glumly watches a few street kids playing soccer while he waits. The ball rolls over Charlie's way. He stops it and passes it back to a kid. The kid arcs the ball back to catch it in the nape of his neck. Charlie nods, suitably impressed. The kid smiles and rubs his index finger and thumb together.

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More honking cars pass as Charlie realizes his daydreaming is holding up traffic. Offscreen. Charlie checks his rearview mirror.

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All right, kid, that's worth a peso. Charlie takes out his Velcro wallet. The kid kicks the ball right at Charlie's nose. Stunned, he drops the wallet. The kid grabs it and takes off. He gets about 10 feet when he's yanked back hard seconds before a speeding truck almost hits him.

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Charlie comes running to find Lucia, a stunning Colombian woman, 34, dressed like a female Indiana Jones with no-nonsense attitude. A police badge dangles from her neck.

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Charlie, still seeing stars, looks up and gets a glimpse of her, backlit by the sun, looking like an angel.

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The kid unwillingly hands her the wallet. She lets him go and he runs off. Lucia opens it and checks Charlie's ID.

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Thanks, I'll remember that. Marcus and Sam come running up to them. Lucia eyes them all, tosses back the wallet.

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Definitely. Sam shakes his head and leaves Charlie staring off, smitten. Exterior, Cartagena streets, day. We follow the street kid as he walks past a man, 40s, gobbling a hamburger at a curbside cantina. The man sticks out his foot and blocks the kid. This is Agent Knowles with the DEA, a Miami Vice throwback with perma-stubble.

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The kid tries to grab a fry. Knowles pulls them away.

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A cop car is pulled up in front of him. Behind the wheel is a no-nonsense female cop, 38, we will come to know as Audrey, Charlie's ex-wife. She exits and approaches. Charlie curses his life.

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Knowles slides a plate of fries back with 2,000 pesos under it. The kid grabs it all and takes off. A thin man in a straw hat comes out of the cantina, the camera slung around his neck. This is Agent Martinez, 40s.

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Exterior, Cartagena Airport, day. An Eldorado convertible pulls up in front of the guys. Ernie, a skinny kid, 20s, in cheap sunglasses, flashes a wide grin.

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Call me Ernie. Ernie pops the trunk, hops out, and opens the doors. Ah, what did I tell you?

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I'd hate to see last class. Ernie grabs their bags and throws them in the trunk. As Charlie gets in, he spots Lucia across the street. Hey, Charlie, isn't that your dream girl?

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Ernie laughs as they pull out and drive off.

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Exterior, Colombian countryside, driving day. Ernie switches on some reggaeton music as the guys take in the colorful Colombian cityscape.

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Are you kidding? Escobar, you tit. I knew that. Who's Pablo Escobar? They all look at Sam like he's got nipples for eyes. Only the richest, most notorious drug lord in history. Ernie's megawatt smile is momentarily replaced by a haunted expression. Mira, escuche.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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He crosses himself. Sam is still confused.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Cut to exterior, finca hideaway, day establishing. Angle on an idyllic pastoral scene of a country farmhouse until we notice the armed guards in full-on camouflage. Interior, finca hideaway, front hall, day. Maria Chung, 42, a five-foot-nothing, spunky, big-haired ball-buster of an Asian woman carrying her yappy lasso-opso like a clutch handbag and a rolled-up newspaper in the other hand.

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She opens the front door, pushing aside an armed guard. Move!

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Rudy, a henchman, comes out to greet her smiling nervously.

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Maria swats in with a paper and then storms down the hallway.

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Smack. Maria swats in with a paper and then storms down the hallway. Interior, Escobar Hideaway, kitchen, day. Pablo, 54, the instantly recognizable mustachioed bear, wears a frilly apron over his safari shirt. He stands in front of a hot stove, chomping on a cigar, making grilled cheeses.

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Why were you following me? She lowers her mirrored sunglasses and peeks in the back seat. We see a pile of accounting for dummies type of books with Charlie's nerdy face on the cover.

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Pablo's eyes go wide. Uh-oh. He takes the cigar out of his mouth, chucks it out an open window, and waves his hand to clear up the smoke.

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The door pushes open. In walks Maria, fit to be tied.

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She slams the paper down on the counter. Angle on front page. The headline reads, Escobar dead or alive above a grainy photograph of Pablo in a ball cap and sunglasses walking through a forest like Bigfoot.

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He grimaces, the word stuck in his throat.

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He waffles. Technically on paper.

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Maria storms out of the kitchen. Pablo tastes his grilled cheese.

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Okay, bad. Cut to exterior front gates, . The car drives to security station flanked by armed guards. Ernie waves and the car is allowed to pass. Exterior, . As the sun dips below the trees, we arrive at an old colonial villa framed by exotic floral topiaries.

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As the sun dips below the trees, we arrive at an old colonial villa framed by exotic floral topiaries and fountains framed by fruit trees and palm fronds.

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Interior, Pariso Perdido, Villa's Day. Ernie opens the doors to an enormous room. The guys are dumbstruck. The luxurious suite is decked out in a tropical motif with marble floors and gold fixtures. It screams money. You like it, huh?

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Oh, so magnanimous. Charlie rolls up his window, but Audrey blocks it.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Charlie salutes her and drives off. Cut to interior, Terrence Coleman's mansion day. A wall of mounted animal heads stare down at Charlie. They've all been stuffed to look like they're smiling. Charlie stares at a mount that has a mirror in place of a head. Beneath it is an engraved plaque that reads, You could be next.

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Charlie turns to meet Terrence Coleman, 70s, an imposing man in a smoking jacket with a rifle tucked under one arm.

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, , , , , ,, P. P. P. P. P. P,實 ac la, ac , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 100 didnt la e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e out P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la ,Gத gi la ,Gத gi la la la la la ,G ay g ,G

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Terrence holds up a finger to gesture he's on a call. We notice he has an earpiece in. Charlie shuffles awkwardly.

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, , , , , ,, P P P P P P P P P實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a a a a a a to P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P GGGGGG generà generà generà generà generà generà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà grà gr en gr en gr hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair g hair ger

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Terrance hands Charlie the rifle. I'm not really into... Charlie holds it like a dead fish.

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All three move in for a closer look. Ernie checks his head and confirms it. One clean shot right between the eyes.

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Ernie notices a tag on the rhino's ear and stumbles back, does the sign of the cross. Santa Maria, venido de Dios. Marcus reads the tag.

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Terrance steps behind Charlie and positions his arms to show him how to hold it.

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He slaps Charlie on the back. The gun fires, hitting a statue, blowing off its giant cock.

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Terrence turns heel and walks out. Charlie follows. Exterior, cliffside terrace, continuous. Terrence walks up to his butler and hands him his robe.

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A middle-aged white guy in a short-sleeved button-down collar shirt and brown tie. Handsome if he tried harder. Charlie hums along with his hands gripped firmly at 10 and 2.

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Beneath the robe, he's wearing a full leather body harness with a studded codpiece and nothing else. His nipples are pierced with large bull rings. Coleman Publishing has decided to drop you. What? Why? The butler holds out gloves and marksman sunglasses on a tray. Coleman puts these on.

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Coleman steps to the edge of a cliff. Charlie peeks. It's a long way down. I can do danger. He recoils at the height, clenches his heart.

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Coleman gives a nod to the butler who hands him one of Charlie's books. He flips to a marked page.

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The butler yanks the skeet lever, shooting off a disc. Coleman falls backwards off the terrace and fires, smashing the clay pigeon to bits.

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Good luck, John!

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The bungee cord snaps back. Minus Coleman. Charlie and the butler casually peer off the ledge and cringe. We see a parachute open up. Cut to exterior, Alta California Public School, day. Charlie pulls up to the front of the school, hits a drive carefully sign. He gets out in a rush to stand it back up. His cell phone rings. Charlie fumbles to answer it.

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Intercut with exterior, Tropicalli Club, alley, day. Marcus, 42, every part the hairy-chested, gold-chain-wearing club owner is on the other end supervising a delivery of kegs being unloaded. Marcus, I can't talk right now.

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Charlie hurries into the school.

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Pablo's Rhino. Written by Craig Goodwill and Sam Ruano. Inspired by a true story. Fade in. Exterior Pacific Coast Highway, California. Day 2003. A sensible Volvo cruises down an open stretch of California highway. Windows are rolled down. Wouldn't it be nice plays over the stereo. We move in closer for a look at the driver. Interior, exterior, Charlie's Volvo, day. Good old Charlie Bleeker, 42.

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Alleyway. A car pulls up at the other end of the alley. Two burly Latino guys get out. One holds a bat. Back on Marcus.

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Marcus walks away slowly at first, then briskly, the guys follow.

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Marcus takes off running.

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Charlie hears heavy panting on the line, so he hangs up. Interior, Alta California Public School, hallway, day. Charlie stops in front of a classroom and peeks in, spotting his cherubic son, Ben, eight. He waves. Ben looks up like he's just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The teacher, 28, comes over and opens the door for Charlie. Hi, am I too late?

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Donor? A very confused Charlie is led inside to find... Interior Classroom Day. Carla 42, an attractive albeit hulking woman in a security guard uniform, addresses the class beneath a banner that reads, Career Day.

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The kids giggle. Charlie's about to protest, but he looks over at Ben, who begs him with his eyes to keep quiet.

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Informer by Snow comes on. Charlie knows every word. Kinda.

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Carla lifts a pant leg to reveal a taser. She takes it out of its ankle holster and holds it up for everyone to see.

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Teacher scrunches a no smile. Carla shrugs and holsters it.

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Carla leans in like it's a secret. The class leans in too.

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A few kids in the back are already trying.

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Thank you, Mrs. Bleeker.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Carla sits and gives Charlie the old finger guns. Charlie stands and coughs expectantly.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Charlie nods and walks up to the front awkwardly just as the bell rings. The kids dash out before Charlie can even say hi. Carla swats Charlie on the back as she leaves.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Ben runs off after his friends, leaving Charlie alone. Cut to exterior, Tropicalli Club, night. A bouncer lets a few people in through the double doors past a sign that reads, closed for private event.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Interior, Tropicalli Club, night. Sam, 41, stylish with boyish good looks, gives a speech while Stacy, 38, his frisky and perpetually drunk new fiance, keeps fondling his ass, making it even tougher for him to speak.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Stacy sloppily nibbles on Sam's ear.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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The crowd cheers for the story until he relents.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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People in the crowd snicker. Stacy flashes a devil sign.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Sam's husky dad steps in and grabs a mic as Sam hands a drunk Stacey off to one of her friends.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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People cheer. A voice from the back calls out over the crowd.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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The crowd turns to see Philippe XXX, a flamboyant, albeit tiny, French man storming in from the back.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Charlie and Marcus exchange looks. Oh shit. Crowd turns back to, sorry, do you want to say Philippe or Philipe? Do we have preference?

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Several car lengths behind him, we see a cherry red convertible. The driver is a beautiful sun-kissed surfer girl. Her surfboard is propped up in the passenger seat. She pulls up alongside Charlie, catching and bopping along, and smiles. Charlie's sunglasses flip down unintentionally, but it gets him a laugh. He plays it cool.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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I'll keep calling him Philippe then. Okay, great. Charlie and Marcus exchange looks. Oh shit. Crowd turns back to Philippe, then to Sam, then to Stacy.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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I, I, what I meant was... Sam marinates in everyone's stares, takes a deep breath.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act One

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Drunk Stacy smashes Sam with a right hook. Philippe jumps on Stacy's back. She swings him around, knocks Charlie in the gut. He goes crashing into the drink table. Marcus tries to intervene and gets smashed in the face by Stacy. People stand back and gawk. That's my boy. Dissolve to Interior Tropicali Club Later. Everyone's gone, balloons deflated and the banner torn.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Okay, but where?

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pre-lap. Indigenous music rings out.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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exterior lucia's abuela's house night establishing the sun sets over a modest cinder block house painted in bright colors there's still rebar sticking out of the roof a few chickens peck about the front yard next to a pot-bellied pig lush gardens frame the house on either side interior abuela's house night marcus and sam are clearing off the dinner table while charlie is at the sink washing a few dishes lucia and her abuela grandmother sit at the dinner table

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Abuela looks up at Sam, smiles, and nods.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Abuela calls Marcus over and pinches his cheek.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Thank you. Abuela gestures for Lucia to hand her a box off the shelf. Inside is a pipe with some coca leaves. The grandmother starts stuffing her pipe and lights it. She offers some to Marcus, who accepts out of politeness.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus coughs up a lung.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie is done with the dishes. Lucia grabs a bowl of food scraps from the counter.

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Meet? Exterior, Abuela's house, twilight. Charlie and Lucia are silhouetted by the waning sunlight as they lean against the pig pen. Lucia feeds them slop.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie nudges her flirtatiously. Not everything. Lucia smiles. The pig is pretty cute. She playfully punches his arm. He turns and winces.

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Lucia takes a long look at Charlie, trying to figure out if this is a line.

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They draw closer, studying each other. Sam walks out, high as a kite.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Lucia withdraws and goes back inside.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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So what did I miss? Charlie smacks him in the shoulder.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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We hear the click of a gun being loaded. The victim whimpers.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Cut to interior DEA apartment day. Martinez studies a pinup board of photos. Manny Rojas is prominently identified at the top. His picture branches off into several low-level captains and thugs. Martinez tacks up pictures of Charlie, Marcus, and Sam to the wall next to a photo of Manny Rojas. Agent Knowles enters, loading his pistol.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Find us some cheese. They fist bump. Knowles nods at the map on the wall.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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You ready for this? Martinez smirks, grabs two shotguns from a cabinet and tosses one to Knowles. Martinez pumps his shotgun, thinks a beat.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Knowles pumps his shotgun. Fuck yeah. Exterior, private airstrip, day. A police truck pulls up to an old Cessna passenger plane with Charlie, Sam, and Marcus in the back. Lucia rides up front with Victor, the cop Charlie puked on, behind the wheel. They get out to open the door for the guys. Charlie has tape over his mouth. He screams when Victor peels it off.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Lucia nods to her partner. Victor begrudgingly uncuffs them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Well, now we'll never know. She's charmed by this. Lucia takes the keys from her partner and undoes Charlie's cuffs herself.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Hasta luego, Lucia de mis sueños. They share a brief moment. Marcus and Sam roll their eyes. Hate to break up this, whatever this is, but great to meet you. You're extremely hot. Charlie, get the fuck on the plane. The plane door opens. Out steps Manny Rojas, a gangster in a white pinstripe suit. Several of Manny's henchmen follow, cocking their guns. One puts a gun to Lucia's head.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Victor puts his gun down.

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Cartel Guy spins the pistol's chamber and snaps it shut. Act 2. Exterior, deep jungle, day. Sam is still trying to process. Charlie's in shock, and Marcus Pace is trying to think it out.

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Marcus, what is he talking about? One of the henchmen steps forward and puts a black bag over each of their heads. Manny walks up to Charlie.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Manny's voice trails off as Charlie loses consciousness. You've been traded. Cut to interior, Finca hideaway, Pablo's private study later. Charlie's vision slowly adjusts as he starts to come around. He sits up, still handcuffed.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The room is decked out, top to bottom in rhinoceros paraphernalia and tchotchkes, including a big velvet painting of a naked cigar-chomping Pablo straddling the now-deceased rhino over the mantle. Pablo pops his head into Charlie's field of vision. He's always smiling. There he is. The famous rhino killer.

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Pablo covers his face like he's playing peekaboo.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo walks over to Charlie and takes a knee. Shakes his head.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo stands, walks over to the rhino portrait.

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Charlie is silent and terrified.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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His face still squeezed.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo whistles. The double doors swing open. Marcus and Sam, still wearing hoods, get tossed in by a gargantuan thug. They stumble around like idiots bumping into each other before the thug pushes them to their knees next to Charlie and removes their hoods.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo takes a cigar from his inside jacket pocket and snips the tip with a pair of gold-plated shears. His henchman lights the cigar for him.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo reluctantly puts out the cigar. Charlie is confused.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus looks worried. Sam and Charlie both look at him. Well, I... I, uh... Pablo catches a look on Sam and Charlie's face.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Your obligation to Manolo Rojas has been... The henchman brings Pablo a box and opens it for him to reveal the head of Manny Rojas.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The guys ponder the thought, simultaneously looking around the jungle, noticing at last that Ernie has taken off. Okay, we should get out of here. Ernie? Ernie? Ernie? Luis?

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo turns to leave. The henchman steps forward, menacing. Wait! Pablo turns back. I'm sorry, Charlie. Did you have something to add? I'll replace your rhino. Pablo is intrigued. He motions for the henchman to hold off.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo, Marcus, and Sam are all surprised by this. There's an uncomfortable silence in the room. Sorry about that. Sometimes it's like I can't even take a piss.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pablo snaps his fingers as he turns to leave again. I know that sound.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus and Sam look over at Charlie. Pablo drums his fingers.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The henchman returns with Lucia bound and gagged. It's a pistol to her head. Lucia! The henchman pulls the trigger, but the gun isn't loaded.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The black bag goes back over his head. End of Act Two.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus takes off running. Charlie is right behind him. Guys, come on. I think if we just stay calm, we'll see that this is just... And Sam starts screaming for them to wait up.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Exterior, Jungle Road, night. They reach the clearing. There's no sign of Louise or Ernie.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Sam and Charlie look at one another. He may be right...

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Now we get the fuck out of this country, and I mean now. Exterior, deep jungle, later. Knowles and Martinez pull up next to the dead rhino. Martinez hops out and checks the ear tag, displays it for Knowles.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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As Knowles and Martinez drive off into the jungle, three menacing-looking men step out of the brush. The men scan the area, guns raised. One of them checks the bullet hole in the Rhino. The two others cross themselves at the mere notion. Exterior, country road, day.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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An old ranchero on a burrow clip-clops along lazily, towing another larger horse upon which sits Marcus, Charlie, and Sam, covered in mud and twigs, exhausted. The ranchero brings the horse to a stop, points down a side road. They dismount and pay him a few bills. Exterior, front gates, . The guys stroll past the guardhouse. The guard inside is hunched forward, eyes closed.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Some people take no pride in their work. Bet your ass heads are gonna roll when I take over the joint. Sam snaps a photo. They keep walking, oblivious that the guard has three bullet holes in his chest. Exterior, Paraiso, villas, day. The guys reach their villas and find the doors are open. They rush in to inspect. Oh my God, we've been robbed. Charlie comes out a beat later, panicking.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Which makes it so much worse. Sam comes out riding on a postcard.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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What'd they take from you? Sam lifts his shirt, reveals a bulging money belt. Nada.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus comes out with his bag slung over his shoulder and two handfuls of hotel toiletries.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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They all stop and look around. The grounds. What few people remain, mostly wait staff, are all lying face down, permanently. Must be siesta time. All check their watches. Perfectly plausible. They leave. Exterior jungle road day. The guys walk backwards by the side of the road, bags in tow. They manage to flag down an old yellow school bus. It pulls over a few feet ahead of them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus runs up first. The door swings open.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The apathetic driver looks them up and down and waves them in. Exterior, steep mountain pass, day. The bus spews a giant puff of blue diesel smoke as it careens precariously around the edge of a steep cliff. Interior bus, day. The bus is packed with sweaty indigenous laborers, old women fanning themselves, and mothers with young children. Sam sits next to an old man in a straw cowboy hat.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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He's got a squirming rooster on his lap. Sam looks down at the rooster and back at the man.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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May I stroke it? The man smiles, clueless as Sam pets his rooster. Charlie smacks him in the back of the head. The hell's the matter with you?

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The stress triggers my sass. Marcus returns and takes a seat.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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They all turn at the sound of a batshit-looking, one-eyed man slowly sharpening his machete, staring back at them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The old woman seated next to Charlie gnaws on a dried chicken talon. She offers Charlie a nibble, and you're the gags.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The bus comes to a stop. The driver opens the door. A cop with an assault rifle steps on and gives a cursory glance at everyone on the bus. Marcus has on the farmer's straw hat pulled over his eyes. Sam has a shawl wrapped snugly around his head while Charlie gnaws on a chicken talon. What's the problem?

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The cop steps off the bus. The driver turns back to everyone to let them know what's going on. In Spanish. Naturally, the guys don't understand any of this. People start getting off the bus to stretch their legs. Sam gets up to follow.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie and Marcus look at each other left alone with the smiling machete man still sharpening his blade. Exterior, mountain road, day. Charlie and Marcus step out into the blinding sun. People mill about in front of the bus. Some sit, fanning themselves. Fruit, flour, and barbecue pork stands line the road. Sam stands in a long row of men peeing against a wall.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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He checks out what the other guys have to offer, mildly impressed. The accident. The collisions between an overturned Jeep and a fruit truck. The driver of the fruit truck appears banged up, but otherwise unharmed. There's fruit everywhere. Marcus curiously steps in for a closer look and instantly recognizes Ernie and Louise. Their bodies are riddled with bullet holes.

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Marcus freaks out at this and starts scanning the crowd. He turns to Charlie, who is at this moment dry heaving into a ditch.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus drags him over to try and get a closer look. Charlie gasps before spotting Lucia, the woman they met outside the airport.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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They move in for a closer look, but she doesn't see them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Lucia glances over at Marcus, and for the first time, they realize she's a cop. Lucia is too preoccupied to react. Charlie grabs Marcus and muffles him. Look at that. Classic.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie's looking queasy again. What's the matter? A police officer steps in and tries to push the crowd back. Charlie doubles over again.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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I think I'm going to be sick. That other cop's coming this way. Be cool. The police officer moves in and tries to push them back. He looks at Charlie, who won't move. Charlie smiles and blows chunks all over the cop. A beat. He looks up apologetically in time to catch the butt of a rifle as it knocks him out. Interior police station later. Over black. Wake up, sweetie. You'll be late for school.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie's POV. His eyes slowly adjust to the face of a toothless old drunk picking chunks of puke out of his hair. Charlie uprights to find he's in a jail cell. Packed in with miscreants, drunks, and dirtbags. Please let this be the airport lounge. Guess again. Charlie tries to sit up.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Before or after they removed your kidney? Charlie rips open his shirt and feels around. Oh, God. Marcus laughs.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus gestures toward the other inmates, cowering in the corner, keeping their distance from them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Pan over. We see Sam chatting up a prison guard. He winks coquettishly and walks back to Marcus and Charlie.

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Sam smiles deviously at one, then the other. Watch what? What are you talking about?

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Marcus clues in.

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They all look at the guard who gestures suggestively with his tongue. Sam holds up a finger. Un momento.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Charlie weighs options after a beat. I'm thinking, fine, let's get this over with. Charlie and Marcus shut their eyes. Neither makes a move.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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They both glance over at the guard who's watching closely. Marcus and Charlie slowly lean forward, as repulsed as if they were about to swallow a live cockroach. They knock heads, rub faces, everything they can do not to touch lips.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Get in there. Marcus's tongue slowly pokes out through clenched lips. The guard and all the other prisoners are really enjoying this when a second guard comes in to Lucia. She smirks, but doesn't stop them.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

94.479

Three clueless friends on a guy's trip to Colombia accidentally kill Pablo Escobar's beloved pet rhino, luring the notorious drug lord out of hiding after years of being presumed dead. Now, the hunters become the hunted. SFX of a creaking door slowly opening, then closing with a metallic clank. Heavy boots scuff across the floor, followed by a chair scraping as cartel guy sits down. Shh, hey.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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Marcus looks up and sees Lucia. He shoves Charlie off him.

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Pablo’s Rhino – Act Two

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The guard unlocks the cell.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1004.466

Bernie looks down the chimney. Santa, annoyed by her hemming and hawing, pushes his magical bell button, and once again, Bernie is sucked down the chimney. Shoo! Interior, Indiana Orphanage, moments later. Bernie lands on her toughest. What are you doing here? Cool. Peasy peasy. Hello, orphans. Hello.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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A child, Demetrius, grins ear to ear as he looks up at Santa.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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We see Santa from Demetrius' POV. He's right. Santa's black. Bernie is confused. So is Cassandra, a little girl wearing glasses and a long dressing gown.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie looks down at herself, nervous. They are seeing the real her. From Cassandra's POV, we see a female Santa who looks like Betty White.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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The kids argue over what Santa looks like. Bernie thinks for a moment and smiles. She bends down to give a speech.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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From one child's POV, Santa becomes a Cuban woman.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie stands and starts backing up towards the chimney.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie notices a reflection of the perfect Coca-Cola Claus in the mirror.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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She is sucked up through the chimney. Exterior, rooftop, orphanage, moments later. Bernie shoops out of the chimney and this time lands in a squat, her butt touching the snow.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Santa jumps around to face Bernie, dukes up. He wields a sharpened candy cane like a shiv.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Donner leans over and chomps on the butt cane. Bernie throws the sack into the sleigh.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie hops into the sleigh.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Mel is on the naughty list.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Santa gets in the sleigh, and they take flight. Bernie's screams fill the night. Exterior night sky, Midwest montage. An upbeat Christmas song slaps as we see in record speed the sleigh soaring from house to house. Insert shots of the list. Multiple names get checked off in between flights. Weather shots of flurries and drizzles.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Clear night skies and shooting stars as they fly over the map of the Midwest. Roof shots of Bernie repeatedly pulling Santa back from ledges as he tries to fight anyone passing by. Belt shots of Santa pushing his belt buckle over and over. Shoop shots of Bernie entering and exiting multiple chimneys. The last shoop lands Bernie inside of an interior middle-class house, Texas, later that night.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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The song fades as Bernie enters a dark living room. She heads to the tree. Suddenly, a string is pulled and a light illuminates a little girl, Jeannie, sitting on the couch. Bernie startles. Falling backwards into the tree, she catches her breath.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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The little girl stares blankly at Santa. From her POV, Santa looks like our traditional Coca-Cola Claus.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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The little girl doesn't move. Bernie tries to finish delivering presents, but can't.

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Bernie uncomfortably nods yes.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie puts her hand in the sack and a present shoots up. She checks the list.

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Bernie heads back towards the chimney.

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The little girl blinks up at Bernie with innocence.

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Bernie thinks and decides to take a seat on the couch. Without prompt, Jeannie immediately jumps on her lap.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Jeannie thinks and then sadly shakes her head no.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Jeannie looks up, hopeful.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie holds up the LOL doll. Genie smiles and grabs the doll, holding it to her chest lovingly. Bernie stands up and Genie falls off her lap hard.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie holds in a big cry. She heads up the chimney. On the mantel, we focus in on an elf on the shelf. The eyes glow green and the head turns to follow Bernie's ascent.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Episode 2, Interior, O'Hare Airport, later that night. An asleep Santa, sporting a Wisconsin Dells bucket hat and sunglasses, is haphazardly strung over a baggage cart, being pushed by Bernie.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Exterior, Los Angeles sky, later that night. Bernie and Santa are sailing through the smog, and when it clears, Bernie gets a closer look at the temperature. It's 85 degrees.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie takes off the Santa hat and glances at still angry, red-eyed Santa.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Angry Santa turns a dial and they are blasted with AC. They suddenly land atop of... Exterior, lit loft, TikTok house. Continuous. The house is a McMansion. Bernie hops out of the sleigh. In the front seat, Bernie's phone, filled with missed texts from Eve, glows with a FaceTime call. Bernie tries to hit ignore, but accidentally picks up. Intercut with... Interior, Eve's apartment. Same.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Eve is in Christmas jammies on her bed. She erupts with worry.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie hangs up on Eve, ending the intercut.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Interior, lit loft, later. Bernie creeps around a dimly lit living room. Every square inch is Instagrammable. There are neon signs, retro arcade machines, and cotton candy dispensers. Bernie hears the party happening outside, but for now, she's alone. She spots a Christmas tree in the corner.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie drags the sack over. She opens the list and reads.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie sticks her hand in the sack, and a gift flies up.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Another gift flies to Bernie.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie unpacks more and more gifts until... Santa! Bernie looks up, startled. Is she caught? There's no one around. If they're not talking about her, well, who must they be talking about? Fuck. Bernie sets down the sack and heads towards exterior lit loft backyard moments later.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Bernie takes in a laser-lit trendy Gen Z Christmas party, handfuls of adult-looking teens TikTok dance to the beats, a DJ mans the stage, and sexy elf dress cater waiters hand out festive cocktails. Bernie spots angry Santa holding the hat Bernie left behind. Bernie realizes she is not protected by her Santa identity and is standing in the middle of a party in her Jewy PJs.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

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Eve looks on in confusion as Bernie wheels Santa to the Spirit Airlines counter. Bernie hops over and goes nuts on the computer. Eve looks back and forth from Bernie to Man in Red.

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The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1701.304

She looks like a choogy narc. Bernie passes through overheard in LA convos on her way to Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1710.009

I'm gonna drip in guava.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1713.552

A stressed assistant approaches angry Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1723.861

You need to deliver so that my boss... The assistant points to a literal 11-year-old with rainbow hair.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1734.824

The assistant shoves Santa onto the stage. The DJ stops the music. All eyes turn to Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1742.671

The Maccabee Miracle has given Santa Terminator vision. We cut into his POV as he scans the crowd for Bernie. He spots her right as an e-boy douche slithers up, shooting a shot. He immediately gives Bernie the ick.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1767.099

The e-boy douche puts his arm around an uninterested Bernie.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1772.711

The douche isn't listening to Bernie and continues to invade her space. Santa's Terminator vision flashes with threat detected and his hands ball into fists. Santa leaps off the stage. Everyone gasps in fear as Santa slow-mo flies towards e-boy douche. As he sails through the air, Santa's eyes suddenly shoot open. Smash zoom into Santa's eyeball.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1795.264

We enter and see a blonde head slowly rotating, wearing a Christmas cracker crown. As the head spins, the hair turns. Brunette! A bald patch forms in the center of the head. A yarmulke slaps down over the bald spot. A menorah's fourth candle gets lit, and Benjamin's floating head appears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1823.564

We zoom out of Santa's eyes and find him behind the DJ booth. He grabs the mic.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1836.69

Air horns! Santa drops a fat beat. The crowd erupts with uniform party vibes. Santa grabs a champagne bottle from a nearby server and showers the crowd. These underage kids love it.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1854.889

Bernie fights through bumping and grinding to meet Santa, just in time for him to jump off the stage and crowd surf away.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1862.858

Bernie tries to follow Santa, but gets danced in the opposite direction. She gets booty popped by Juicy Caboosey and falls to the ground, where she spots... Boots with fur. As Bernie army crawls towards the boots, a lacy thong lands atop her head. Bernie peels the undies off.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

187.233

Bernie types vigorously. Eve looks at Bernie's screen.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1883.035

Suddenly, a white glove hand reaches down and hoists Bernie to her feet.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1916.669

Bernie grabs Santa's hand and drags him towards the exit, but he doesn't budge.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1952.352

Give or take. Bernie pauses, thinking.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1962.824

As Bernie and Santa slap fives, cue pursuit of happiness, or whatever this podcast can afford. epic party montage. Bernie takes a shot. Dance break. Bernie and Santa throw gifts back into the crowd. Dance break. Santa whispers into Jake Paul's ear and his life is forever changed by the magical secret Santa bestowed. Dance break.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1983.373

The debauchery is cut short when Bernie notices a man in a janky Santa suit enter angrily and spot the real Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

1997.09

When Bernie sees hired Santa and the stressed assistant approaching, she has to think fast.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2005.412

But... Bernie ignores Santa's protesting and lifts his belt buckle. The e-boy douche misreads what's happening.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2013.953

The e-boy douche eagerly unbuckles his belt. As Bernie pushes Santa's button, she junk punches e-boy before. Hey e-boy, I need that reaction to you getting punched.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2026.759

Okay. Bernie and Santa fly towards the roof. Everyone stares in shock at the magic that just happened before erupting into cheers.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2044.276

Hired Santa throws his hat on the ground in frustration.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2051.457

Exterior, night sky, west coast, later. Santa and Bernie soar through translucent clouds past the yellow moon. The sleigh bumps with a little turbulence.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2064.588

Santa sees Bernie white-knuckling the side of the sleigh.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2090.811

Santa claps over his head repeatedly as he sings.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2095.975

Santa does the sleigh ride TikTok dance. Bernie can't help but laugh. Ha ha!

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

217.793

Bernie grabs her tickets and wheels Santa towards security. Interior, boarding tunnel, later. Bernie struggles to figure out the brakes on Santa's wheelchair. She kicks the chair multiple times, making out cold Santa jerk back and forth. She bends down to nonchalantly whisper into his ear.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2179.521

Santa's eyes spring open. We enter and land on the night before Christmas. The book morphs into a Torah that aggressively rolls up. A menorah's fifth candle gets lit and Benjamin's floating head appears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2220.922

We zoom out of Santa's eye. Bernie continues her speech, not realizing anything's happened.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2232.252

Bernie notices Santa's quiet. Too quiet. In the silence, sleigh bells begin to jingle-jangle in rhythm. Bernie knows something's up.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2247.822

Magically, music swells. Accompanying Santa's song, Bernie looks around for the source. The radio's on.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2311.431

Bernie swings her arms out in musical theater majesty and unaware, knocks the sleigh's lever to autopilot.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2367.498

The reindeer harmonized blues. The song ends with Bernie and Santa in a hug, best friends who are now touched down in the middle of nowhere. Exterior. Middle of nowhere. Daylight. Nothing but ice and glaciers as far as the eye can see. Bernie looks around, confused by her surroundings and the sunlight.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2399.404

Bernie gets out of the sleigh and wanders. As she inspects her surroundings, she doesn't notice the sleigh with Santa in it moving through a portal before it slowly disappears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2410.472

Bernie turns around and realizes she's completely alone.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2415.599

Barbra Streisand? This isn't funny!

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2420.442

What was that? She peels herself up. Curiously, Bernie stretches her hand out and slowly reaches a weird ripple in the air. When she pushes her hand through the ripple, it disappears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2455.785

Bernie lets her body follow through the ripple and enters the looking glass. She emerges inside of, interior, exterior, the real North Pole, continuous. Bernie looks behind her in the icy field she came from, gone, panicked. Bernie checks to make sure her whole bod made it through in one piece. Her bod's there, but it's decked out in Dutch Christmas attire. Bernie Gold has gotten a merry makeover.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

247.827

Hello, yes, what? Why are you yelling? I'm surprised you're even awake. Thought you'd for sure have smoked yourself into a pot coma. Funny you should say that. Why is that funny? You haven't even asked how anyone is. Right.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2486.516

Bernie takes in the stupendous North Pole. It has cobblestone roads made of gingerbread and snow-capped crooked roofs. Bernie, in clogs, awkwardly shuffles down the street. She passes by a tavern serving hot chocolate on tap. There's a farmer's market with candy cane tastings. A fruitcake bakery's automatic machine spits out everyone's least favorite sticky cake.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2507.768

Bernie lands in the town square and runs directly into Sotnick, the head elf. He is surrounded by his brethren, whose names also mean elf in different languages.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2519.757

Bernie looks down to the CGI elves. Think elf on the shelf, but run through AI that has given them extra fingers and teeth.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2546.071

Bernie gasps. Terrifying. Sotnick gets down to business.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2553.809

Sotnick points at Santa, who is humming and swinging around a licorice lamppost.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2570.717

Another elf, Alva, jumps atop Alfer's shoulders.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2581.502

The elves gasp and mutter in terror.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2591.147

The elves blink back at Bernie in confusion. Hiroto slides under Sotnik's legs.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2602.073

The elves all agree, nodding at each other and murmuring.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2610.27

The elves are confused.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2624.638

The elves take a large beat and then...

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2644.421

The elves lose their shit once again.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2653.764

Santa may be a little... She looks over at Santa, who is doing the Tevye dance.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2706.344

Bernie trails off when she looks at her phone and sees time passing normally.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2737.941

The two elves take off, hopping on their hands and cartwheeling to grab Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2762.553

As Sotnick and Bernie argue, we see Santa evade the elves via breakdance.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2799.743

Bernie and Sotnick are nose-to-nose. Through their profile, we see Santa suddenly freeze mid-Hava Nagila. Santa's eyes spring open. We enter as a sea of red holly berries turn beige and soften into soggy matzo balls. A menorah six candle gets lit, and Benjamin's floating head appears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2826.246

We zoom out of Santa's eyes as he falls to the ground. The elves look at him with concern.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2835.948

Santa sniffs the gingerbread cobblestone before taking a giant bite.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2845.231

The huge pile of reindeer poop proves his point. Suddenly, Santa makes a mad dash towards the shop. Santa runs into Interior Coco's Tavern Continuous. He slide dives across the counter and hits each tap's lever. He streams steaming hot chocolate into his mouth. He recovers from the burn and immediately goes for more. The elves are in shock. They talk into a walkie.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2880.057

Exterior, town square, moments later. Harodo's call rings over the loudspeakers. All elves rush after Santa. Bernie is left alone. She calls out after them.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2904.994

Bernie's phone vibrates with a text from Rami.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2917.637

Couldn't agree more. This ain't over. Bernie takes off towards the sleigh. Exterior, North Pole. Time jumps. Sneaky music plays as Santa and Bernie in vignettes creep about, both trying to dodge the elves. On a roof, Santa eats gumdrop shingles, the elves' bottom. On the ground, the elves run past. Letters to Santa mailbox. With the coast clear, Bernie peeps out from the slot.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

294.535

Bernie rolls her eyes.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2950.337

Her feet shoot out of the bottom as she tiptoes towards the barn, bringing the mailbox with her. In a toy shop, two elves on their work break snack on M&Ms, not noticing a white-gloved hand sneakily partaking in their snack when they grab Santa's hand instead of their treat.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2968.604

In the town square, the elves chase Santa towards the clock tower, not seeing Bernie die rolling into the barn. Ending the vignettes, Bernie is beckoned by the shiny red sleigh. She approaches and pats the reindeer.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2982.609

Bernie climbs into the sleigh, flips off autopilot, and takes a deep breath.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

2992.838

Bernie doesn't notice Santa's approach. He's eyeing the reindeer feed and chomps a dangling carrot one bite at a time until it lands him in the sleigh bed. Dasher glares at Santa for eating his carrot. The elves continue their hunt from a distance.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

3009.446

Bernie whips the reins and the reindeer lunge forward, charging. The sleigh glides out of the barn. On the North Pole runway, the elves spot Bernie about to take off.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

3020.811

Bernie turns around to find her Santa stowaway.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

3024.676

He smiles up at her, teeth covered in chocolate. The elves are gaining on them, flipping, tumbling, using each other as springboards to catch up. The sleigh tips back. Sotnik jumps into the air, reaching for the rail. In slow motion, Sotnik's fingertips graze the sleigh as it takes off. The sleigh exits the magical force field of the North Pole and leaves the elves in its dust. End of episode two.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

305.383

Everyone in the tunnel stares at Bernie, who just screamed...

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

353.889

Bernie startles when she notices a bundled boy staring at gold pixie dust swirling out of Santa's open mouth every time he snores.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

366.725

The line starts to move as everyone boards the plane. Interior, Spirit Airplane, later. Bernie finishes buckling a snooze Santa into his seat. A flight attendant approaches.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

394.133

Bernie pops open her Ativan bottle. The doors shut loudly. Bernie coolly adjusts her position.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

402.7

As the plane starts to taxi, Bernie grabs Santa's hand. She shuts her eyes tight.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

417.771

As Bernie continues to mumble to herself, Santa's eyes bust open, smash zoom into Santa's peeper. We enter his eye and dive through a stocking to emerge in a boiling pot of oil. A menorah's second candle gets lit and Benjamin's floating head appears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

441.909

We are sucked out of Santa's iris. His eyes are now vibrating. Bernie feels Santa shaking.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

456.713

Santa tries to get out of his seat. He flings around, not understanding he's restrained by his seatbelt. He uses the Santa's strength to rip through. He stands up. A buckle flight attendant leans out. Sir, we're still taxiing. The seatbelt light is on.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

476.622

Santa bangs on the window. The passenger doesn't like what's happening. Take it easy, buddy. Sit down. Bernie grabs Santa's leg.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

500.16

Santa takes off down the aisle towards the emergency door.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

504.465

Bernie chases after him. Heroic passengers try to restrain him, but Santa's shifty. A bald air marshal enters the aisle. He whips out his badge. Sir, I am an air marshal. You need to sit down. Bernie struggles to get through the looky-loos to reach Santa.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

527.993

Santa reaches into his coat. The passengers gasp. He pulls out a toupee. The air marshal's eyes widen.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

555.109

Smash 2, interior, TSA interrogation room, later. Bernie sits across from Agent Gimble. She's glancing towards a two-way mirror, intercut width, interior, behind the mirror, same, where Santa is being strip searched by police. They pull endless Christmas fun from his person. Back in interrogation room, Agent Gimble smacks the table to get Bernie's attention.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

616.141

From holding, the police have just pulled a candy cane from Santa's nethers. They are horrified. Agent Gimbel kicks his feet up on the table.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

641.046

Agent Gimbel tosses an ID towards Bernie. She looks down and takes in Santa's driver's license. It reads, Nicholas Claus, North Pole, 0315, 270 AD. Bernie takes a deep breath. She's exhausted.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

671.941

Gimble slaps the table.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

730.188

From holding, Santa's hands are pressed against the two-way mirror. The strip search gets personal and makes Santa's eyes string open. We smash Zoom into Santa's eyeball, busting through day 25 on an advent calendar. Instead of chocolate is the golden hand of Hamsa. A menorah's third candle gets lit, and Benjamin's floating head appears.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

758.757

We are sucked out of Santa's iris, and now his eyes are glowing red. Santa slowly turns around. All energy spinning out is now replaced with pure rage. The policemen take a terrified step back. Santa beats the ever-loving shit out of them. Gimble, unaware of what's happening on the other side of the mirror, finishes his speech.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

789.987

On cue, Santa headbutts the window and smashes it to smithereens. Bernie screams and covers herself from the glass shower. The blow forces Gimble to the floor. Gimble grabs his radio.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

807.307

Agent Gimble grabs his taser and aims. He shoots at Santa's private parts.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

816.607

Santa reaches into his pants and pulls out an icy snowball. It's huge. He launches the ball at Gimble. Upon impact, Gimble spits teeth and goes down. Bernie's eyes widen in fear as Santa turns his attention to her. She scoots backwards in terror.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

837.522

Bernie flinches and then realizes Santa has reached his hand out to her as if to help her up.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

849.184

Santa yanks Bernie up like a rag doll as he presses his belt buckle that is blinking red and green. The two are shot up through the ceiling. Exterior, O'Hare Airport, moments later. On the roof of the airport, faraway screams are accompanied by the sound of drywall being busted through. Bernie and Santa emerge through the roof. Shingles, glass and dust fly everywhere.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

873.62

Bernie is covered in the powder as Santa's eyes glow red through his dirt-covered face. As Santa and Bernie fly through the air, they suddenly drop. They're about to crash into pavement when... Santa and Bernie land perfectly inside Santa's sleigh. The reindeer trot in place. Bernie startles as a giant commercial airplane passes them to take off.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

897.348

She opens her eyes and realizes they're on the runway. Bernie looks at Santa, who is still in Maccabee mode.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

907.921

Santa smiles with clenched teeth and prompts the reindeer.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

920.325

The reindeer turn around to look at Santa and see his evil form and... They turn back around and use the tarmac to take flight. Bernie holds on for dear life. Through the hole in the roof, we... Through the hole in the roof, we see Agent Gimble gain consciousness right in time to see the sleigh fly by. In shock, Gimble grabs his cell phone and dials. Mommy, about Santa, you were right.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

957.962

Exterior rooftop, orphanage, Indiana. Later that night, the sleigh lands atop the roof with a thud. Bernie opens the gate door, falls to her knees, and vomits. Santa grabs the list and presents before marching to the chimney like a possessed zombie.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

976.315

Santa tilts his head like a confused dog.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

984.477

Santa turns to the reindeer and growls. Donner growls back.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

992.481

How do I... Bernie gestures to the chimney. Santa takes off his hat and hands it to her.

Table Read

The Jew Who Saved Christmas - Act 2

999.404

I'll keep watch for Greeks.

Table Read

Feed Drop: I Am Echo – Sci-Fi, Secrets & Shalhoub

103.403

But is he dead? Or is he reaching out from beyond the grave?

Table Read

Feed Drop: I Am Echo – Sci-Fi, Secrets & Shalhoub

143.628

From Voyage Media, producer of the number one hit fiction podcasts Someone is Killing the Wolfhounds, Elucidity, and Sanctuary. Season two of I Am Echo. Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Table Read

Feed Drop: I Am Echo – Sci-Fi, Secrets & Shalhoub

63.331

The hit sci-fi thriller podcast I Am Echo returns for season two. Catch up on season one and listen to season two, available now, starring Tony Shalhoub from TV's Monk and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Table Read

Feed Drop: I Am Echo – Sci-Fi, Secrets & Shalhoub

85.923

Catherine's mother, billionaire narcissist Barbara, is imprisoned. Catherine has always believed her mother was responsible for her father's death.

The Action Catalyst

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If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.

The Action Catalyst

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If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.

The Action Catalyst

From Overlooked to Overbooked, with Luis Baez (Sales, Intrapreneurship, Social Media, Tech)

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REMASTERED: Values Driven Leadership, with Dina Dwyer-Owens (Franchising, Business, Morals, Ethics)

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If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe and to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And as always, thanks for listening.

The Action Catalyst

REMASTERED: Values Driven Leadership, with Dina Dwyer-Owens (Franchising, Business, Morals, Ethics)

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top leaders, meaningful conversation, actionable advice, bulldoze complacency, ignite inspiration, create impact. Produced by the Southwestern family of companies, this is The Action Catalyst.

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REMASTERED: Protect Your Time, with Christy Wright (Business, Time Management, Success, Author)

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REMASTERED: Protect Your Time, with Christy Wright (Business, Time Management, Success, Author)

781.727

If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.

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Passion Struck, with John Miles (Leadership, Self Improvement, Business, Mindset)

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Are you interested in advertising with the Action Catalyst? Our listeners could be hearing about your brand right here, right now. For details, shoot us an email at info at theactioncatalyst.com.

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Crowd Surfing, with Cassie Petrey (Social Media, Music, Marketing, Business)

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Today's guest is Cassie Petrie, CEO and co-founder of social media and music management firm CrowdSurf and a Forbes 30 Under 30, as well as a Billboard 30 Under 30 recipient. Her clients include heavy hitters like the Backstreet Boys, Camila Cabello, and Pink, as well as Apple, Google, and top labels like Universal, Sony, Disney, and more.

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Connection Over Perfection, with Matt Abrahams (Communication, Speaking, Behavior, Business)

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Connection Over Perfection, with Matt Abrahams (Communication, Speaking, Behavior, Business)

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Today's guest is Matt Abrahams, the host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart business podcast from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. as well as an acclaimed strategic communication lecturer and author of the new book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter, which focuses on actionable skills to help even the most anxious speaker under the most frantic circumstances communicate successfully.

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Possibility, Redefined, with Ron Alford (Leadership, Vision, Confidence, Focus, Running)

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Appreciate the time. If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.

The Action Catalyst

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Redefining possible will inspire you to get outside of your box and live a happier, healthier life. When you order redefining possible today at redefiningpossible.com.

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Grammy Winners on The Action Catalyst

331.602

Hear his full interview in episode 258 of The Action Catalyst. Next, we welcome Dennis Scott, a former member of the New Christy Minstrels and a two-time Grammy Award winner for his work in children's music, first on an album of country songs for Sesame Street and second for a collection of music from Mr. Fred Rogers. Dennis is also the recipient of two Emmys, a Parents' Choice Award, and a Telly.

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Grammy Winners on The Action Catalyst

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Dennis shared his experience of coming up through the music industry and winning a Grammy on his first try.

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Grammy Winners on The Action Catalyst

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We're taking a look back at a pair of Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning artists that we've had the pleasure of welcoming to The Action Catalyst.

The Action Catalyst

Grammy Winners on The Action Catalyst

47.628

We begin with Freddie Revelle, a virtuoso piano player and more, who has performed with some of the biggest names in music, and co-produced and wrote the title track, as well as performed on the George Benson and Al Jarreau album, Given It Up, which won four Grammys in 2007 and was nominated for a fifth.

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Grammy Winners on The Action Catalyst

599.761

You can hear Dennis' full interview on episode 367 of The Action Catalyst. We hope you've enjoyed.

The Athletic NBA Daily

Nuggets shock Warriors without Jokić + Knicks surviving without Brunson

1028.353

The new audiobook by Sebastian Fitzek. Now only on Audible.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2164 - The Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner Is…AOC?!

798.721

A packed house at Mullet Arena listened as Sanders and AOC underscored the need to come together and be united to fight against a Republican-controlled Congress and president.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3541.124

When the world is getting cold.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3548.599

Honestly.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3550.46

Why is this about him? I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have you and these kids.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3570.195

I will live.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3602.864

Good God, no.

The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2143 - The True Faces Of Evil

3606.408

Sit down.

The Bible Recap

Day 072 (Deuteronomy 5-7) - Year 7

571.092

Tragically, Jesus has now forced us into a situation where to protect our people, we must consider drastic measures. The people are following a man falsely claiming he raised Lazarus from death. We make sure he's dead.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 120: David Mourns Saul (2025)

244.076

The second book of Samuel, chapter one.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 120: David Mourns Saul (2025)

772.734

These are the chiefs of Edom. Psalm 13. Prayer for Deliverance from Enemies.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 120: David Mourns Saul (2025)

826.212

Father in heaven, we give you thanks and praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 113: Broken Trust (2025)

224.488

Chapter 22 David and his followers at Adulam

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 113: Broken Trust (2025)

449.628

With me you shall be in safekeeping. Psalm 52. Judgment on the deceitful.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 113: Broken Trust (2025)

526.223

Father in heaven, we give you praise today.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 141: The Life of David (2025)

347.099

The first book of Chronicles, chapter 28, Solomon instructed to build the temple.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 141: The Life of David (2025)

565.488

Also the officers and all the people will be holy at your command. Psalm 42, longing for God and his help in distress.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 141: The Life of David (2025)

663.711

I shall again praise him, my help and my God. Father in heaven, we give you praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 50: Sacrificial Offerings (2025)

1086.466

Psalm 82. A plea for justice. A Psalm of Asaph.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 50: Sacrificial Offerings (2025)

1140.202

Father in heaven, we thank you for sharing your heart with us.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 50: Sacrificial Offerings (2025)

687.984

The book of Leviticus chapter 26.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 353: Sharing the Gospel (2024)

465.55

Peace to all of you that are in Christ. The first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, chapter one, salutation.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 353: Sharing the Gospel (2024)

789.488

The book of Proverbs chapter 30 verses 15 and 16.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 353: Sharing the Gospel (2024)

813.444

Father in heaven, we give you praise. We thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 106: Saul Is Chosen (2025)

638.084

But he held his peace. The Book of Proverbs, chapter 6, verses 23 through 35.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 106: Saul Is Chosen (2025)

722.028

Father in heaven, we give you praise and thanks. Thank you for this day.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 15: Leah Feels Unloved (2025)

631.331

Job chapter 19 and 20.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 15: Leah Feels Unloved (2025)

929.731

This is the wicked man's portion from God, the heritage decreed for him by God. Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 through 8.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 71: The Source of the Law (2025)

700.007

You shall not forget. Psalm 106, a confession of Israel's sins.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 43: The Ark of the Covenant (2025)

1247.432

This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 43: The Ark of the Covenant (2025)

686.217

The Book of Leviticus Chapter 19 Ritual and Moral Holiness

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 43: The Ark of the Covenant (2025)

978.383

I am the Lord. Psalm 119 verses 1-56 Psalm 119 The Glories of God's Law

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 127: Kindness for the House of Saul (2025)

185.31

Now he was lame in both his feet. The first book of Chronicles, chapter 12, David's followers in the wilderness.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 127: Kindness for the House of Saul (2025)

572.48

Be their shepherd and carry them forever. Father in heaven, we give you praise and thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 64: Consequences of Sin (2025)

390.181

I am the Lord your God. The book of Deuteronomy, chapters 13 and 14.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 64: Consequences of Sin (2025)

798.007

Psalm 96, praise to God who comes in judgment.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 64: Consequences of Sin (2025)

876.34

He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 92: Jephthah's Vow (2025)

102.008

The book of Judges, chapter nine.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 92: Jephthah's Vow (2025)

1098.533

The Book of Ruth, Chapter 4.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 92: Jephthah's Vow (2025)

1367.509

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 119: David's Wisdom (2025)

177.698

But the Philistines went up to Jezreel. Chapter 30 David Avenges the Destruction of Ziklag

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 119: David's Wisdom (2025)

435.39

the death of Saul and his sons.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 119: David's Wisdom (2025)

541.724

Psalm 18, royal thanksgiving for victory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 119: David's Wisdom (2025)

826.874

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 112: True Friendship (2025)

434.267

And Jonathan went into the city.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 112: True Friendship (2025)

499.324

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 140: David's Prayer of Thanksgiving (2025)

423.909

The first book of Chronicles, chapter 27, The Military Divisions

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 140: David's Prayer of Thanksgiving (2025)

686.365

Assurance of God's help and a plea for healing.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 140: David's Prayer of Thanksgiving (2025)

763.354

Amen and amen.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 42: Moral Laws (2025)

289.022

the book of Leviticus chapters 17 and 18.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 42: Moral Laws (2025)

657.769

I am the Lord your God. Psalm 78, God's goodness and Israel's ingratitude.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 91: Gideon's Story (2025)

1057.148

The Book of Ruth, chapter three.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 91: Gideon's Story (2025)

1212.27

Psalm 135. Praise for God's goodness and might.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 91: Gideon's Story (2025)

1322.181

Praise the Lord. Father in heaven, may your name be praised.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 58: A Chosen People (2025)

1014.495

He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us here again today.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 58: A Chosen People (2025)

665.499

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 7, A Chosen People.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 114: David Saves Keilah (2025)

182.018

David eludes Saul in the wilderness.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 114: David Saves Keilah (2025)

299.965

And David went up from there and dwelt in the strongholds of Ein Gedi. Psalm 54. Prayer for Vindication.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 114: David Saves Keilah (2025)

361.226

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 114: David Saves Keilah (2025)

424.689

Amen.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 114: David Saves Keilah (2025)

57.504

1 Samuel chapter 23. David saves the city of Keilah.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 142: Whole and Joyful Hearts (2025)

343.035

The first book of Chronicles chapter 29, provisions for building the temple.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 142: Whole and Joyful Hearts (2025)

745.979

Father in heaven, we do give you thanks.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 51: Israel's Worship of God (2025)

1009.069

Psalm 83 Prayer for Judgment on Israel's Foes A Song A Psalm of Asaph

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 51: Israel's Worship of God (2025)

1115.031

Father in heaven, thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 51: Israel's Worship of God (2025)

723.945

The book of Leviticus chapter 27, votive offerings.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 107: Samuel's Speech (2025)

475.509

The book of Psalms, chapter 55.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 107: Samuel's Speech (2025)

620.742

But I will trust in you. Father in heaven, we do trust in you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 135: The Counsel of Hushai (2025)

330.014

The first book of Chronicles chapter 22.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 135: The Counsel of Hushai (2025)

520.99

Psalm 36, human wickedness and divine goodness.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 135: The Counsel of Hushai (2025)

591.398

They are thrust down, unable to rise. Father in heaven, we give you thanks.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 44: Priestly Garments (2025)

1216.094

My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments. Father in heaven, we give you praise, and we thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 44: Priestly Garments (2025)

1655.981

Thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 44: Priestly Garments (2025)

637.938

The book of Leviticus chapter 20, penalties for violations.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 44: Priestly Garments (2025)

880.807

Their blood shall be upon them. Psalm 119 verses 57 through 120.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 347: Witness to Unbelievers (2024)

300.871

A letter of Paul to the Ephesians. Chapter 1.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 347: Witness to Unbelievers (2024)

723.882

The Book of Proverbs, chapter 29, verses 18 through 21.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 347: Witness to Unbelievers (2024)

746.603

He who pampers his servant from childhood will in the end find him his heir. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 128: Mighty Men of Valor (2025)

232.221

So the Syrians feared to help the Ammonites any more. First Book of Chronicles, Chapter 13.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 128: Mighty Men of Valor (2025)

358.072

Psalm 31, prayer and praise for deliverance from enemies.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 128: Mighty Men of Valor (2025)

524.76

Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord. Father in heaven, we give you praise and we thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 65: Revolt Against Moses (2025)

486.078

the book of Deuteronomy chapter 15 and chapter 16.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 65: Revolt Against Moses (2025)

918.973

Psalm 97, the glory of God's reign.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 65: Revolt Against Moses (2025)

986.035

Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name. Father in heaven, we thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 37: The Mystical Works of God (2025)

425.307

The Book of Leviticus Chapter 12 The Purification of Women

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 37: The Mystical Works of God (2025)

503.396

Psalm 73, Plea for Relief from Oppressors, a Psalm of Asaph.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 37: The Mystical Works of God (2025)

653.263

Father in heaven, we thank you. We thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 121: Cycle of Violence (2025)

325.896

And Joab and his men marched all night, and the day broke upon them at Hebron. The first book of Chronicles, chapter two.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 121: Cycle of Violence (2025)

677.577

Psalm 24, entrance into the temple, a Psalm of David.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 121: Cycle of Violence (2025)

737.864

He is the King of glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 117: Reverence and Faithfulness (2025)

321.305

Psalm 56.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 117: Reverence and Faithfulness (2025)

408.018

Father in heaven, we give you praise and we give you glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 145: Solomon Builds the Temple (2025)

308.056

The Second Book of Chronicles Chapter 4 Furnishings of the Temple

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 145: Solomon Builds the Temple (2025)

612.952

Psalm 64, prayer for protection from enemies, to the choir master, a psalm of David.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 145: Solomon Builds the Temple (2025)

670.136

Let all the upright in heart glory. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 54: The Tribe of Levi (2025)

452.045

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 3. The defeat of Og, the king of Bashan.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 54: The Tribe of Levi (2025)

724.361

So we remained in the valley opposite Beth Peor. Psalm 87, the joy of living in Zion.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 54: The Tribe of Levi (2025)

774.395

Singers and dancers alike say, all my springs are in you. Father in heaven, we give you praise and we thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 357: Truth and Love (2024)

1210.745

you and I have ever been given. So we fight to not lose it, but to take hold of it.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 357: Truth and Love (2024)

1240.711

It's been great. It's been great to walk with you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 357: Truth and Love (2024)

278.676

Greet the friends, every one of them. The First Letter of Paul to Timothy, Chapter 4.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 357: Truth and Love (2024)

738.15

Grace be with you. The Book of Proverbs Chapter 30 Verses 29-33

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 357: Truth and Love (2024)

782.045

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 110: David and Goliath (2025)

556.518

And David answered, I am the son of your servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite. Psalm 12. Plea for help in evil times.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 110: David and Goliath (2025)

628.482

Father in heaven, we give you praise and we give you glory and honor.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 138: The Effect of Sin on Others (2025)

310.068

The First Book of Chronicles Chapter 25 The Temple Musicians

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 47: The Golden Calf (2025)

101.998

Exodus chapter 32, the golden calf.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 47: The Golden Calf (2025)

440.151

The book of Leviticus chapter 23, the Sabbath.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 47: The Golden Calf (2025)

830.902

Thus Moses declared to the sons of Israel the appointed feasts of the Lord. Psalm 79 A Plea for Mercy for Jerusalem A Psalm of Asaph

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 350: Faith and Works (2024)

423.408

St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter three, loss of all to gain Christ.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 350: Faith and Works (2024)

739.576

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. The book of Proverbs chapter 30 verses 1 through 6.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 350: Faith and Works (2024)

787.83

Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. Thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 350: Faith and Works (2024)

837.554

Amen.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 131: Hope for the Future (2025)

406.06

First Book of Chronicles, Chapter 17, God's Covenant with David.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 68: The Waters of Meribah (2025)

519.008

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 21, concerning the slain.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 96: Hannah's Prayer (2025)

704.062

Psalm 149. Praise for God's goodness to Israel.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 96: Hannah's Prayer (2025)

754.257

Praise the Lord. Father in heaven, we do give you praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 124: King David Rules (2025)

257.014

The First Book of Chronicles, Chapter 7.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 124: King David Rules (2025)

779.752

All these were Benjaminites. Psalm 27, triumphant song of confidence, a Psalm of David.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 124: King David Rules (2025)

887.703

Yes. Wait for the Lord. Father in heaven, we give you praise. We thank you and we give you honor and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 356: God Is Love (2024)

385.988

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. The first letter of Paul to Timothy.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 356: God Is Love (2024)

755.106

The book of Proverbs chapter 30 verses 24 through 28.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 137: David Mourns Absalom (2025)

505.341

But the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel. The first book of Chronicles, chapter 24.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 137: David Mourns Absalom (2025)

713.004

Psalm 38, a penitent sufferer's plea for healing.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 137: David Mourns Absalom (2025)

828.215

Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation. Father in heaven, give you praise today and every day.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 74: Joshua Appointed (2025)

1139.166

But no man will buy you. Psalm 112 Blessings of the Righteous

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 74: Joshua Appointed (2025)

1259.035

Amen.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 74: Joshua Appointed (2025)

265.239

Chapter 28, Daily Offerings.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 74: Joshua Appointed (2025)

76.377

The Book of Numbers, Chapter 27.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 46: Set Apart for God (2025)

549.133

The book of Leviticus chapter 22, the use of holy things.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 349: Holy Indifference (2024)

296.573

The letter of Paul to the Philippians, chapter one, salutation.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 349: Holy Indifference (2024)

708.154

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 102: The Death of Lazarus (2025)

1092.031

The book of Proverbs chapter six, verses one through five.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 102: The Death of Lazarus (2025)

1130.987

Father in heaven, we give you praise, we give you glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 102: The Death of Lazarus (2025)

80.543

The Gospel of John, chapter 10. Jesus, the good shepherd.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 67: God's Justice and Refuge (2025)

404.505

The Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 19 and Chapter 20 Chapter 19 Cities of Refuge

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 67: God's Justice and Refuge (2025)

779.011

Psalm 99.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 67: God's Justice and Refuge (2025)

849.008

Father in heaven, we give you praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 60: Intercessory Prayer (2025)

343.646

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 9.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 60: Intercessory Prayer (2025)

643.643

Psalm 10, prayer for deliverance from enemies.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 90: Ruth and Boaz (2025)

626.167

and the land had rest for forty years.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 90: Ruth and Boaz (2025)

853.979

Psalm 134, praise in the night, a song of ascents.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 90: Ruth and Boaz (2025)

878.959

Father in heaven, we give you praise. We give you thanks.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 118: King Saul Despairs (2025)

465.022

Psalm 34. Praise for deliverance from trouble.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 118: King Saul Despairs (2025)

588.157

Father in heaven, we give you praise and we honor you today.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 146: The Universal Church (2025)

287.969

The Second Book of Chronicles Chapter 6 Dedication of the Temple

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 83: The Gibeonite Trickery (2025)

337.051

Joshua sacrifices and reads the law at Mount Ebal.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 83: The Gibeonite Trickery (2025)

636.178

Psalm 126, a harvest of joy, a song of ascents.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 83: The Gibeonite Trickery (2025)

679.045

Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 55: Obedience to God (2025)

1094.171

My companions are in darkness.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 55: Obedience to God (2025)

493.024

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 4, Moses commands obedience to God.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 55: Obedience to God (2025)

969.471

Psalm 88.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 139: Reparation to the Gibeonites (2025)

293.047

The first book of Chronicles chapter 26, the divisions of the gatekeepers.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 139: Reparation to the Gibeonites (2025)

558.539

Psalm chapter 40, thanksgiving for deliverance and prayer for help.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 139: Reparation to the Gibeonites (2025)

699.508

Father in heaven, we thank you and give you praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 76: War Against Midian (2025)

449.482

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, God's fidelity assured.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 76: War Against Midian (2025)

654.845

Psalm 116, thanksgiving for recovery from illness.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 76: War Against Midian (2025)

752.452

Praise the Lord. Lord God, we do give you thanks and praise today. We thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 351: Draw Near to God (2024)

493.429

The Letter of Paul to the Colossians Chapter 1 Salutation

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 351: Draw Near to God (2024)

861.516

The book of Proverbs chapter 30 verses 7 through 9.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 351: Draw Near to God (2024)

889.687

Father in heaven, we give you praise. Thank you so much.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 69: The Bronze Serpent (2025)

377.008

The book of Deuteronomy chapter 22, miscellaneous laws.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 69: The Bronze Serpent (2025)

644.471

Psalm 102, prayer to the eternal King for help.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 69: The Bronze Serpent (2025)

802.666

Their posterity shall be established before you. Father in heaven, we give you praise and we thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 41: The Day of Atonement (2025)

331.415

For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you. Leviticus chapter 16, the day of atonement.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 41: The Day of Atonement (2025)

640.097

And Moses did as the Lord commanded him.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 41: The Day of Atonement (2025)

773.849

Father, you are good and you do lead us.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 125: Covenant with David (2025)

1132.898

Amen and amen. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 125: Covenant with David (2025)

505.724

And with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever. The first book of Chronicles chapter nine.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 125: Covenant with David (2025)

847.915

These were the sons of Ezel. Psalm 89, God's covenant with David, a mascal of Ethan, the Ezraite.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 62: Spies Sent to Canaan (2025)

433.171

And so we seemed to them Deuteronomy chapter 11, rewards for obedience.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 62: Spies Sent to Canaan (2025)

719.011

Psalm 94, God the avenger of the righteous.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 62: Spies Sent to Canaan (2025)

836.063

The Lord our God will wipe them out. Father in heaven, we give you praise and we thank you for your word.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 24: Tears of Joy (2025)

1229.419

What breaks your heart today?

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 24: Tears of Joy (2025)

618.95

For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians. The book of Job chapter 37 and 38, the greatness of God.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 24: Tears of Joy (2025)

971.686

The book of Proverbs chapter four, verses 20 through 27.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 143: Solomon Asks for Wisdom (2025)

525.562

The second book of Chronicles chapter one, Solomon requests wisdom.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 143: Solomon Asks for Wisdom (2025)

68.015

We're praying Psalm 43. The first book of the Kings chapter one, the struggle for succession to the throne.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 143: Solomon Asks for Wisdom (2025)

688.519

Psalm 43, Prayer to God in Time of Trouble.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 143: Solomon Asks for Wisdom (2025)

736.894

Father in heaven, we give you praise. We do give you glory and honor.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 52: Israel Continues to Journey (2025)

1120.6

Psalm 84, the joy of worship in the temple.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 52: Israel Continues to Journey (2025)

1204.702

O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in you. Father in heaven, we glory in you, we praise you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 52: Israel Continues to Journey (2025)

736.104

They did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses. The fifth book of Moses, commonly called Deuteronomy.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 355: The Things of This World (2024)

544.693

by the spirit which he has given us. The second letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, chapter one, Salutation.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 355: The Things of This World (2024)

882.274

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. The book of Proverbs chapter 30 verses 20 through 23.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 355: The Things of This World (2024)

908.343

An unloved woman when she gets a husband and a maid when she succeeds her mistress. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you today.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 136: Absalom Is Defeated (2025)

380.083

The first book of Chronicles, chapter 23, families of the Levites and their duties.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 136: Absalom Is Defeated (2025)

595.069

Psalm 37, exhortation to patience and trust, a Psalm of David.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 45: Pray for Priests (2025)

1042.768

Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 45: Pray for Priests (2025)

568.383

I am the Lord their God. The book of Leviticus chapter 21, the holiness of priests.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 45: Pray for Priests (2025)

759.28

Psalm 119 verses 121 to 176.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 129: David Commits Adultery (2025)

305.727

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. The first book of Chronicles chapter 14, David established in Jerusalem.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 129: David Commits Adultery (2025)

664.048

Psalm 32, the joy of forgiveness, a Psalm of David, a Maskell.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 129: David Commits Adultery (2025)

745.552

Father in heaven, we give you praise and thank you.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 66: Forbidden Forms of Worship (2025)

169.438

Are we all to perish? Deuteronomy chapter 17 and chapter 18, chapter 17, forbidden forms of worship.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 66: Forbidden Forms of Worship (2025)

563.512

You need not be afraid of him. Psalm 98. Praise the judge of the world.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 66: Forbidden Forms of Worship (2025)

634.451

Father in heaven, we thank you and give you praise.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 38: The Ten Commandments (2025)

477.765

The book of Leviticus chapter 13.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 38: The Ten Commandments (2025)

94.696

Exodus chapter 19 and 20.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 3: Noah's Ark (2025)

393.848

He did all that God commanded him.

The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Day 3: Noah's Ark (2025)

524.349

Father in heaven, thank you so much for giving us your word.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

0.189

This podcast is brought to you by June's Journey, an exciting new procedural detective video game. Use your observation skills to find hidden clues and uncover dark secrets. Explore stunning hidden object scenes from New York parlors to Parisian sidewalks. Join June as she unravels the truth behind her sister's mysterious death and you can get creative

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1013.697

Billy Corey and Danny Joe Carter write to the parole board and reveal what they believe to have been a secret deal constituted among Tex MacGyver and the attorneys that will give everyone involved exactly what they want, with the exception of Diane and those who loved her.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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July 1st, 2024, the parole board rescinds its intent to release Tex McIver, determining, quote, release would not be compatible with the welfare of society, end quote. It works.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Billy Corey's behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles via his and Danny Joe Carter's confidential letters that only we have obtained stopped Texas early parole at the last minute and assures he'll remain in prison until September 1st, 2025. I showed Don Samuel the letter Billy Corey sent to the parole board.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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But Tex will get out. How do you feel about Tex getting out of prison?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1275.583

Have you been spending too much money on takeout apps like me? No judgment. I just received my first every plate order and I'm loving how affordable and flavorful everything is. My current fave is the creamy mushroom steak and Tex-Mex marinated pork tacos. Absolutely delicious.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Recently, I have been focusing on adding more protein to my diet, so the ability to add on a side of steak or chicken breast is a lifesaver. Every plate can help you dish up better habits with delicious, easy recipes delivered to your door, including calorie-smart, carb-smart, and protein-smart options.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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This was all about his son. So when the topic of Austin came up, Craig instantly perked up.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1332.29

Everyplate offer valid with auto-renewing subscription.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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It's December 9th, 2024, just a few weeks before this podcast is set to come out. We've created quite a stir over the last few months in our investigation, no more evidenced by today's events. The camera turns on and we see and hear Tex McIver. He's dressed in the standard prison uniform of white top, white pants.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1365.981

Inside a conference room in the Augusta State Medical Prison, Tex McIver is set to give a deposition today surrounding the details of Diane's inheritance. As the various legal teams get set up, Tex talks football.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Tex is just about ready to turn 82, and it's been a sad few years living in prison.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1430.27

Though his term in prison will end in his release in September of 2025, Tex shares a surprising update. He says he's just days from being released on parole. Looks like my parole's going to be granted at long last.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Lawyers from all sides are here. Bob Cheely, representing Craig Schwall, the lawyers for at least five of the cousins of Diane, Mary Margaret Oliver, and her attorney, and Tex's attorney, who he says he's never met before today. Today is a significant reversal of fortune for Tex.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1482.523

what once looked like a promising inheritance of millions for him once he gets out of prison, is now a highly contested legal fight amongst a wide variety of parties, all with wildly differing interests. Bob Cheely, representing the Schwall family, kicks things off.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Cheely is looking to establish Austin's close relationship with both Diane and Tex.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1566.37

100 plus. The MacGyvers would often throw extravagant parties out at their ranch for Austin and his friends.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1609.309

Later on, the proceedings get a little chippy as Cheely and Tex's lawyer get into it. Even Tex seems to revel in the back and forth of this legal one-upsmanship.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1681.135

If you recall, Diane had an original will that did not include naming Austin Schwall. He hadn't even been born yet at that time. She had intended to update it, but it never happened before her death. Here's Tex.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Tax then makes it clear that Diane did not have designs on leaving her blood relatives any of her inheritance.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1830.776

During the deposition, Tex said he was clearly in favor of the Schwalls receiving the millions from Diane's estate and not the Cousins. But if no objections, Tex will once again get paid, this time over $300,000. Let me turn to...

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1895.019

So, after all of this, there are three parties staking their claim to the millions from Diane's inheritance. There's a lot riding on the decision for each of the three, each feeling they deserve the money. The Schwalls, the Cousins, and Texx. While we now wait to find out the results of the disputes around Diane's fortune, one thing seems clear. That Tex is removing himself from the millions.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1925.415

He stated that he now wants Diane's fortune to go to Austin Schwall, except for that $337,000. Why? We didn't get a clear answer. Well, no matter who ends up winning this complicated case once it's decided, what actually happens to the money from there is that person's business. You see, the public will never know.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

1951.513

Though Tex finally did acknowledge that he killed his wife Diane with his gun in the backseat of the SUV that night... The personal, emotional, and financial damage continues to follow so many of us that were close to the McIvers back when things felt, well, normal.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2000.088

How badly does Billy Corey want Tex to stay in prison?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2076.8

Do you think he can have a happy life moving forward?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2083.181

Here's Judge Robert McBurney again on the case from his perspective.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

21.724

By designing a luxurious island estate complete with sprawling gardens and stunning architecture, you can join a detective club to chat and play with other gamers or compete in the detective league, escape reality, and immerse yourself in a gripping tale where every clue brings you closer to the truth. And you can enjoy seasonal content with changing challenges and exclusive rewards year round.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2191.471

The interview with Judge McBurney occurred on December 17th, 2024, just days before the wrap of the podcast. We also reached out for comment to the offices of Fonny Willis, Adam Abate, and Mary Margaret Oliver, but received no response. And that same afternoon, as Jason was waiting to start the interview with the judge, I received notice that Tex MacGyver is indeed going to be a free man.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2219.557

The parole board has approved his release. Just like Tex had said in his deposition, he's going to be a free man very soon. And me? My Nick Carraway experience in this great Gatsby-like story continues to stick with me as I think of Diane's death, her legacy in the community, and the unanswered questions that may take years to answer.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2249.418

Having spent so many years as an investigative reporter, I never imagined that the story that would have such a massive impact on me would be the one I've been in the middle of now for years.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2264.17

I've observed a sentiment among our former circle that though we can't bring Diane back and even though it's painful talking about the events publicly like this, our voices together shining a light on the secret deals in this case far outweigh our own squeamishness about it all. Texts may be released any day now. Maybe before this series even comes out. Maybe in the months after.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

2290.736

But most definitely by September 1st, 2025, if nothing else changes. And that means he will be a free man again. But the burden of not only Diane's death, the smell of money, scandal, and never really knowing what led to the tragic events of that night in September 2016 will no doubt follow him well beyond his last days here on Earth.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

235.267

From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, you're listening to Deadly Fortune. This is Episode 8, Mommy Die.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Deadly Fortune is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road. I'm your host and reporter, Dale Cardwell. Jason Hoke wrote and produced the series. Our associate producer is Marnie Zambri. Production support provided by Tim Millard. Audio engineering by Shane Freeman. The original score for Deadly Fortune is by Thomas Avery.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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Jason Hoke is the executive producer on behalf of Waveland Road. Executive producers for Sony Music Entertainment are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. If you love the show, tell your friends and don't forget to leave a review. Thanks for listening.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Judge Craig Schwall and the Schwall family are making the legal argument that the money from Diane McIver's estate should go to them and not Tex and not to any of Diane's blood relatives.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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I asked Bob Cheely about the blood relatives, a collection of over 20 cousins, and why they wouldn't have standing in their claim to Diane's inheritance.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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If the judge rules that the cousins should receive the money and not Austin, what's next for the Schwalls? And forgive me, this is very personal. This is why I didn't want Billy in here. But does Craig believe it was an unintentional act?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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I love this game as a fan of true crime, mystery shows, procedurals. It has these incredibly detailed scenes and takes me on the hunt through an investigation. Do you think you can unmask the truth? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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And the Schwalls are asking not just for the original $1.4 million insurance settlement money, they're asking for another $3 million from Diane's estate. And in their eyes, they say that no amount of that money should go to tax.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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I pressed J. Tom Morgan about how this could have been orchestrated between all parties back in the courtroom that day, when Texas' plea deal agreement was finalized.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

60.253

Listen to all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feature true crime obsession.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Do you think there's any chance at all that Judge Craig Schwal didn't have a conversation with Tex MacGyver about how this could all play out?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

637.44

Because you've got to go along with it. Yeah, you're right. Since Austin Schwall had no standing to inherit Diane's estate or wrongful death settlement, some wonder if there was a secret deal between Craig Schwall and Tex McIver to assign the settlement to the Schwalls in trade for Craig Schwall to secretly share the proceeds with Tex. The Schwalls' attorney doesn't just say no, but hell no.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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So if I may, did, to your knowledge, did Judge Swall and Tex ever discuss this insurance settlement and the remaining money in the estate?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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This case is so unusual because of the close, intertwined friendships that existed before Diane's death tore everything apart. I know that Craig, the judge, and Tex were very close. I was close with Tex. This has to be difficult for the judge.

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It's my understanding there's roughly $3 million in the estate, and the insurance settlement is $1.4 million after attorney's fees and so forth. Is that essentially the understanding?

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And it's your client's position that Diane would want all of the estate to go to Austin and Craig Jr. ?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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It's summer of 2024, and Tex is getting close to serving out his full term. Here's Don Samuel again, his defense attorney, in his original trial.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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After the Board of Pardons and Paroles indicated that they were going to grant parole... suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, they denied parole.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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But the Board of Pardons Parole said he's going to have to serve his entire sentence to September of 2025.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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Austin Schwall, the godson to Tex and Diane McIver, and the boy who has since become a young man, a young man at the center of this wild case. In October of 2024, I met Bob Cheely, the attorney for Judge Craig Schwall, to ask him about the events that had transpired since the discovery of the millions in Diane's estate that Tex now stood to inherit. Craig Schwall was in the room that day, too.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 8. Mommy Di

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The Georgia Parole Board grants preliminary parole to Tex MacGyver, intending to release him in March of 2024, with the caveat that those who oppose can write letters stating their reason.

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Introducing: Deadly Fortune

0.39

Tex and Diane had it all, a sprawling estate, deep pockets, even deeper connections. Until the night neither of them wished to relive, the night only one of them can.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Deadly Fortune

17.797

Tex's wife, Diane, was dead. Their storybook marriage was unraveling.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Deadly Fortune

30.049

Because Tex had blood on his hands. Blood he says got there by accident. But he's going to have to prove it to a jury.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Deadly Fortune

46.336

The tragedy of Tex and Diane became one of the highest profile criminal cases in Atlanta history. The power brokering lawyer in a cowboy hat kills his wife. There's a million things in life that are hard to explain. And everyone has questions. I mean, people do dumb shit all the time. Because Tex isn't just fighting for his freedom. He's fighting for his fortune. Well, Diane's fortune.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Deadly Fortune

76.717

Join us as we dive deep into a world of power, money, and greed, and one man's secret quest to grab the million dollar fortune of his deceased wife.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Deadly Fortune

94.442

From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, this is Deadly Fortune, coming January 1st to the binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

0.169

Listen to all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feature true crime obsession. September 29th, 2016.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Diane's most precious hats, clothes, and elegant furnishings were now gone from the estate sale held by Tex. And Wendy discovered that Diane's cremains were set in a cardboard box.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1162.844

Bill Crane is a legendary public relations expert in Atlanta, who locals will also recognize from his frequent television appearances talking about local and national political races. 2024 has kept him particularly busy, to say the least. Bill and Tex McIver have a long history together.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Among the people in this room, I'm the least qualified person to hold this honor. I'm humbled, but Diane loved me. And I love Diane, but there's so many people here that she's known far longer, had so much life with. Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Corey.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1453.398

Black Lives Matters protests comes up in a conversation between Bill and Tex.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

159.526

Tex, her husband, was there. But something was off. It was thick and palpable. Bill Crane, longtime friend of Tex's, remembers that day.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1678.733

Despite all the turmoil and all the confusion of what really happened that night near Piedmont Park, no one's under arrest and no one has been charged. Tex now has the vehicle back in his possession and it's set to be cleaned, eliminating all the ballistic evidence for good.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1697.846

I decided to look closer at the clues left at the scene and detectives grew more suspicious of Tex and what really happened that night. I talked to Danny Jo and she told me what happened in the vehicle. I said, you need to check the angle of that bullet. I called a friend of mine, an Atlanta homicide detective named Danny Stevens, and I said, Danny, you gotta get that car back.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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I told him, you've got to do some kind of plumb line test for the angle of that bullet, because it seems completely illogical that that bullet would have traveled straight ahead at a 90 degree angle through that seat. And next, Billy Corey orchestrates a secret purchase of Tex's vehicle to preserve it before it can be cleaned.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1746.118

Billy has been informed that Tex plans to have the Corey Company handyman detail the SUV in preparation for selling it. Billy wanted to preserve any evidence that was still in the vehicle, so he attempted to buy the vehicle himself. But before any of this went down, law enforcement stepped in.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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It turns out that my call to the Atlanta Homicide Squad on top of Billy's operations manager, Jay Grover, talking to the Fulton County DA's office results in a warrant being issued to retrieve the vehicle.

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With Tex on the prowl, constantly looking to reshape the story, Billy Corey calls me and asks me if I can hide Danny Jo and her husband at my house for the time being so that Tex can't influence her to change her story.

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He was trying to find you.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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And even with all of this, another bombshell drops as Friends of Diane close ranks. Tex, it seems, is nearly broke. Next time on Deadly Fortune.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Unlock all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad-free.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

1979.669

Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes, all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Deadly Fortune is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road. I'm your host and reporter, Dale Cardwell.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

2013.395

Jason Hoke wrote and produced the series. Our associate producer is Marnie Zambri. Production support provided by Tim Millard. Audio engineering by Shane Freeman. The original score for Deadly Fortune is by Thomas Avery. Jason Hoke is the executive producer on behalf of Waveland Road. Executive producers for Sony Music Entertainment are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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He was a dead man walking in Billy Corey's eyes. As I acted as the event's MC, I saw an orchestrated dance keeping Tex from jumping onto the podium to speak about Diane. Billy simply did not want him to have the stage. The body language.

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If you love the show, tell your friends and don't forget to leave a review. Thanks for listening.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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It wasn't spoken out loud that day, but there was a strong message sent to Tex.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Three days after Diane McIver's death, the digital billboard on Corrie Tower displays the photo of Diane used in her obituary and is seen by the million-plus drivers that pass by every day. Her obituary reads in part... Diane McIver, a brilliant and inspiring force of nature, died on September 26, 2016. She is survived by her beloved husband and life partner, C.L.

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From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, you're listening to Deadly Fortune. This is Episode 3, Hiding. Danny Jo Carter is struggling to come to grips with what just happened to Diane and wants answers from Tex.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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It's December of 2016, just over two months after his wife's death. Tex McIver sets an estate sale on their 85-acre Eatonton Ranch. An ad from Peachtree Battle Estate Sales and Liquidations tells of a very unique collection of a prominent Buckhead socialite and CEO, comprising of over 2,000 designer couture items from Jimmy Choo, Prada, Chanel, and Valentino, to name a few.

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The photos of the sale are like nothing you've ever seen. Rugs, chandeliers, sterling silver, purses, ski apparel, and of course, quote, hundreds of hats for every season. This was odd behavior for someone that had just lost his wife. Why was Tex doing this?

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This is Wendy Adson. She works at the crematory where Diane's body was brought.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Wendy knew Jay Grover. He worked for Billy Corey. And of course, side by side with Diane.

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Wendy received Diane's corpse from the county and was pleasantly surprised by the obvious care that went into preparing Diane's body.

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Tex McIver, with whom she shared 16 happy years in Atlanta, at their Putnam County cattle ranch, and on the golf courses of Reynolds Lake Oconee. When not at work, they were always at each other's side. She epitomized love and loyalty in action and lived a life out loud. One of her many godchildren was 10-year-old Austin Schwall of Atlanta, who called her Mommy Di and whose wish was her command.

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Diane's arrangements were now in the hands of Tex.

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Here's Danny Jo again.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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With encouragement from her, he has become a straight-A student and an all-star athlete. She regularly demonstrated her role in his life as an ardent fan, tutor, disciplinarian, and pushover. He loved her for it. Instead of an official funeral, she had a celebration of life ceremony held at the Corey Company's headquarters. Hundreds of people attended. I was asked to be the emcee.

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Deadly Fortune | 3. Hiding

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Tex had waited months to pick up Diane's cremains. Why?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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The jury had been instructed that involuntary homicide was the felony version of the offense and required a finding that Tex had acted with criminal recklessness. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the jury should have also had the option to find that Tex was only guilty of a misdemeanor version of involuntary homicide and that he had acted only with criminal negligence.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Our producer, Jason Hoke, had an opportunity to sit in person with Judge McBurney on a wide variety of topics around this case in his quarters and on the record. Here's what Judge McBurney had to say about the Georgia Supreme Court ruling.

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Here's more from my conversation with Don Samuel on the Georgia Supreme Court ruling. So the jury leapfrogged a lesser charge, went for a more serious charge, but did not go for the most serious charge. That's right. Beyond the instruction error decision, which is very clear and I think makes sense. I think it's debatable, but I saw the logic of the Supreme Court saying you should have.

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That's right. He should have offered involuntary manslaughter.

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Right. But the reversals seem to carry a good bit of opinion from the justices. Like, as you mentioned, the mode of evidence was weak. It didn't make sense for Mr. Kiver to shoot Diane downtown Atlanta. I was kind of surprised by the personal or the personal opinions in that decision. Did you find that interesting?

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Why such a dramatic ruling? Was there some other influence happening amongst the legal and political players tied to this case? I'll just say it, Diane's friends believe the Georgia Supreme Court handed a get out of jail free card to their once prominent and powerful legal colleague, a black robe back scratch.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Regardless, the prosecution would have their hands tied with a retrial of Tex, but they pressed ahead anyway. Bonnie Willis tells Billy Corey the DA's office is ready to prosecute Tex again and they move forward. The retrial of Tex MacGyver was set to begin.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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On the first day of jury selection, Judge McBurney issues an order that says to the prosecution, because of the opinion of the Supreme Court that the evidence was insufficient, you're not going to be able to allege that he did this intentionally. And number two, you can't bring up his finances as a motive either. So, that order by the sitting judge after jury selection had started is a mystery.

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Why did Judge McBurney wait until jury selection started to issue these orders that came from him, not the Supreme Court? Now, some might say that he thought that if that evidence was introduced again, the Supreme Court might very well reverse him again. There's an argument that he was removing what led to the reversal in the first place.

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In the ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court, they argued the Slayer Statute, which would have prevented Tax from gaining access to Diane's fortune because he had intentionally killed her, did not pass muster.

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They said, "...if he were trying to avoid the effect of the Slayer statute while intentionally killing Diane for financial gain, would do so in a circumstance where there could be no question that he shot Diane in the presence of her best friend.

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Without more, this evidence was not relevant to demonstrate a motive for McIver to murder Diane or his intent to kill her, and it should have been excluded." But right as the jury was being seated and the retrial of Tex MacGyver was set to begin, Tex took a plea deal.

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And along the way, the Slayer statute provision, the one that would have prevented Tex from inheriting Diane's fortune, was mysteriously removed. The plea deal Tex MacGyver cut that day is the reason why I'm here today, telling this story.

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Because unbeknownst to anyone who loved Diane, including Billy Corey, a variable called the Slayer Statute had been removed from the new plea deal Tex took January of 2024. Back in 2018, former District Attorney Paul Howard offered Tex a deal if he pled guilty then. That plea included the provision that Tex could not gain financially from Diane's death. He could not inherit her estate.

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He could in no way benefit financially from shooting Diane. That provision was mysteriously removed from the 2024 plea deal without anyone's knowledge other than the prosecution, the defense, and the judge. As I sat in the courtroom that day, and as the plea deal evolves,

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The court, the prosecution, and the defense make a point of saying that there had been a substantial wrongful death award during the process when Diane's estate sued Texas Insurance Company for wrongful death. They settled out of court, and it was a large sum of money, $2,250,000. I remember watching Judge McBurney confirm that Tex McIver was waiving his right to that settlement.

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Both Don Samuel and Adam Abate agreed.

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Next, Tech stood in front of the judge and addressed the courtroom, where he finally acknowledged his responsibility in the death of his wife publicly.

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The jury returned its verdicts, finding McIver not guilty of malice murder, the first count that was read in the courtroom to everyone, including Tex. For that brief moment, it was possible Tex was going to be found innocent and become a free man again.

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That day in court, when Tex finally had something to say, still sticks with Danny Joe Carter.

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The judge directed the proceeds of that settlement to go to Tex and Diane's godson, Austin Schwall. But what happened next seemed to take everyone by surprise. Judge McBurney went on to say that he was appointing Austin's father, McBurney's fellow Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall, to be the trustee of all that money.

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Georgia law gives the trustee 100% confidential control, so the public will most likely never know how that money is spent.

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But the jury surprised everyone by returning a guilty verdict of felony murder, aggravated assault, influencing a witness, and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

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Billy Corey is sitting there also and realizes that, okay, something's not being said here. They've made such a big deal out of saying that Tex is waiving what we believe to be two and a quarter of a million dollars of insurance proceeds to go to his godson. And it was arguable that that's what Diane would have wanted. But the hanging chat, the elephant in the room, is, well, wait a second.

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What about all of Diane's other money that's left in her estate? After the proceedings, I go out into the hall and Mr. Corey is standing there, Danny Joe's standing there, with a handful of people that were there to support Diane. And Mr. Corey asks the prosecutor, Adam Abate, what happens to the rest of the money in Diane's estate?

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And Adam says, quote, well, I think there's only about $70,000 and I'm pretty sure the attorneys are going to gobble that up, end quote. Billy Corey was placated. I guess he felt a little better. He's like, well, 70 grand's not a lot of money, and if that's all there is, then that'll definitely go to the attorneys. End of story.

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Billy was stinging from the fact that Tex is going to be released from prison after serving six years for killing his wife. The jury's saying murdering his wife. But at least he's not going to benefit from her death. except for one small, incredibly important, and nearly overlooked detail. The trustee of Diane's estate, Ken Rickert, works for Mr. Corey.

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The verdict form provided blanks for each count of the indictment, and the jury was instructed that under count one, murder, and count two, felony murder, it had the option for finding of guilty of involuntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense, and both counts contained such a blank. The jury did not mark either of those blanks. This would become important once the proceedings wrapped.

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He's an in-house attorney for Corey Companies. By law, Ken Rickert is allowed to know how much money is in Diane's estate, as well as how it's going to be distributed. Imagine Billy Corey's shock when Ken Rickert found out the actual value of Diane's estate is not the $70,000 discussed that day outside the courtroom. Instead, her fortune is estimated to be worth between $1 and $4.5 million.

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After his original conviction, Tax had been removed as the executor of Diane's estate because of an obvious conflict of interest. The jury found that he killed Diane so he couldn't get her money, even if he was named heir to her fortune.

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To resolve any conflicts of interest with the distribution of Diane's finances, the state appoints a non-partial, neutral party in Mary Margaret Oliver to be the executor of the estate and to distribute the proceeds of the estate as to the directions of Diane's will, since Tex is no longer the heir.

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Well, with Tex's verdict reversal and the new plea deal that has now removed the Slayer statute, guess who's first in line for Diane's estate? Tex MacGyver is. Next time on Deadly Fortune.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Unlock all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes, all at once.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

2194.276

Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Deadly Fortune is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road. I'm your host and reporter, Dale Cardwell. Jason Hoke wrote and produced the series. Our associate producer is Marnie Zambri.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Production support provided by Tim Millard. Audio engineering by Shane Freeman. The original score for Deadly Fortune is by Thomas Avery. Jason Hoke is the executive producer on behalf of Waveland Road. Executive producers for Sony Music Entertainment are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. If you love the show, tell your friends and don't forget to leave a review. Thanks for listening.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Don Samuel reflected on the case during a visit to my office in late summer of 2024.

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At the district attorney's press conference following the verdict, Billy Corey stands next to the prosecutors.

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Tex is going to prison for the murder of his wife, Diane, for the rest of his life. But this story is far from over. From Sony Music Entertainment and Waveland Road, you're listening to Deadly Fortune. This is Episode 6, Unspun. The fallout from the case cut deep.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Danny Joe Carter, who had been a star witness at the trial, also discovered new information about the day Diane died that still sends chills down her spine. Danny Joe had been out at Tex and Diane's ranch earlier that day before they met for dinner at Longhorn.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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You guys shot guns a lot.

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Was there a target range at the ranch?

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Perhaps that's where it was supposed to happen.

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Craig Stringer, also with Tex and Danny Joe that night at Longhorn, absolutely believes his old friend Tex intentionally killed Diane.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Listen to all episodes of Deadly Fortune ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feature true crime obsession.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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Rachel Stiles, for one, still believes tax.

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With the trial and headlines now seemingly behind everyone, the Georgia Supreme Court stepped in and made a shocking ruling, overturning Tex's conviction.

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Tex had been given a life sentence for murdering Diane, but the Georgia Supreme Court reversed his conviction. The state would be allowed to retry texts, but the Georgia Supreme Court also prevented some aspects of the prosecution's case to be used as evidence in any new trial.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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The court held that the jury should not have been told about the Georgia Slayer Statute, the law that prevented Tex from inheriting Diane's estate if he was found guilty of intentional homicide. The state had argued that the Slayer Statute demonstrated Tex's financial motive for the killing. But the Supreme Court reasoned that the existence of the law actually cut against such a motive.

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The state failed to explain why Tex killed Diane under circumstances where he was clearly responsible for her death if he had done so intentionally for financial gain. A new jury in a retrial would not be allowed to hear the state argue that Tex tried to make Diane's death look like an accident to avoid the Slayer statute.

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Nor would the new jury be allowed to hear about Diane's purported second will, which was never found. Brett Zimbrick, who was an investigator on this case, shares his experience with convictions being overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court.

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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How many of those were overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court?

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Deadly Fortune | 6. Unspun

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In reversing the conviction, the Georgia Supreme Court walked back some of its own reasoning from previous cases, reasoning Judge McBurney had specifically relied on in setting up the instructions and the verdict form for the jury. Remember how the verdict form had given the jury the option to find Tex guilty of involuntary manslaughter instead of murder?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Finding Mom's Killer

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Collier Boyle was lying awake at night when he heard something horrible. Two bangs and a scream. What was going through your mind at that time? What were you thinking? Where's my mother? Collier was just 12 when his mother went missing.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Finding Mom's Killer

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Collier wanted answers. His best hope, to team up with a middle-aged detective with a chip on his shoulder. I got a partner now, somebody who's gonna help me find out what happened to my mother, me and Dave. This is the story of the most unlikely detective duo the world has ever seen and the shocking crime they solved.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: Finding Mom's Killer

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His whole life is a lie. What if the call was coming from inside the house? From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer. Coming March 1st to The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door

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For a brief moment in the year 2000, the city of Phoenix was on fire. You could see a glow in the sky. The flames were looking up probably 40, 50 feet in the air. There's nothing natural that could have started that fire. An arsonist was on the loose, but who the hell was it?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door

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Some pointed the finger at a group of radical eco-terrorists. Or was it a lone wolf with a thirst for revenge? Nobody could crack the case. It was chaos.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door

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The culprit will shock you.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door

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From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is The Arsonist Next Door. Coming May 1st to The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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In other words, the group lit this fire to prove to James they were the real deal.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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And did you think that this is someone from an environmental radical group? I remember not being sure. The man is eager to convince James that CSP is not out to hurt anyone.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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This whole thing sounds kind of absurd. Obviously, once a house starts burning, there's no way to control it.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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It's the same greeting that CSP, the coalition to save the preserves, has used to open some of their threatening letters left at the arson sites. but this one is addressed directly to James.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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As they continue to talk, the band setting up on the Patriot Park stage begins to play.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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At this point, James is pretty sure the man sitting next to him is either the arsonist or one of them. But there's one more thing he wants to know about.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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James can already imagine the last line of the article he's about to write.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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Did you feel played by him at all? Did you feel like you were one of the media puppets that he's trying to manipulate?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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James gets a front-page scoop, and in the process, he's giving CSP exactly the kind of attention they're after. When the man leaves, James has to process what just happened.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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After the interview, the real work begins. James's editors want to publish immediately. I was a bit wary because there was still so much we didn't know. James is personally convinced that the man on the bench is the real deal. But in the journalism game, that doesn't quite cut it.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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James recently published an article about the arsons with the headline Burn, Baby, Burn, and it's caught the attention of CSP. The letter ends with a peculiar sign-off.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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First, James confirms that there was an arson the night before his interview, just like the man said. Next, we called the Phoenix PD. He asks whether any notes were left at the scene of that fire.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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One of those details was the signature of the note. It was signed, Coalition to Save the Preserve, McDowell-Sonoran Preserve Unit. That's a reference to the new North Phoenix cell of CSP. The cops are floored. Until now, they haven't told the public what CSP stands for, let alone this new detail about another unit forming.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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When the word reaches Lieutenant Rob Handy that the New Times has interviewed the arsonist and an article is on the way, he goes into crisis mode.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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James' interview could not be coming at a worse time for Rob and his team. The cops are out there with night vision goggles, they're chasing down leads, they're searching through trash bins, they're conducting interviews, and they still don't have anyone in custody. And now, a 28-year-old reporter from a liberal alt weekly interviewed the guy they're looking for right under their noses.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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From Rob's perspective, if someone is committing a crime, don't promote them in the media. The New Times knows the man they interviewed might not be trustworthy. And they know he's using their platform, using James, to promote his own narrative.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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The New Times wasn't the first news outlet that this so-called arsonist had tried to contact. Letters had arrived at other newsrooms across the city, too. And these had been promptly handed over to the police. They were checked for clues, traces of DNA, which didn't bring up any matches, and added to the pile of other letters left at the arson scenes by CSP.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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James and the New Times, on the other hand, bypassed this process entirely.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 3: The Big Scoop

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So as the publishing deadline approaches for James and the New Times, Phoenix PD is breathing down their necks. It's crucial that they nail the journalism and present the story as transparently as possible.

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James' boss outlines their next mission. Let's get this motherfucker on the phone. From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. You're listening to The Arsonist Next Door. Episode 3, The Big Scoop.

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A week after the interview, editor Mike Lacey finally signs off on the article. Tomorrow, it will be on the front page.

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The next morning, the bomb is dropped. A simple headline glaring from every newsstand.

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Remember local jogger Warren Jeroms? He's slightly misremembered the headline there, but he does remember very well how the article shocked the community. He tells me how the ripples were felt in church.

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Usually, Warren and his buddy Mark are enraptured by the angelic voices of their daughters at choir practice. But this particular evening, those voices reverberating through the church are the last thing on their mind.

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— This story feels very close to home. And it's not just because it's happening in their backyard.

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— The New Times' rival, the Arizona Republic, included this sketch in their paper about a week before.

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Warren laughs off the similarity, and they continue poring over the article. It's filled with details about the arsonist that have never before been made public, including the meaning of that mysterious acronym, CSP.

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— And there's details about the other CSP members, too. The interviewee told James one of the group's members works at an outdoor equipment store. Another member is a woman who works in healthcare. A third works at a local government agency. All of them, he claims, love mountain biking. But the thing Warren's most fascinated by is the sheer brazenness of the interview.

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Everyone I spoke to in Phoenix remembered exactly where they were when they first read the article.

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Danielle Sink's home was burned to the ground just a couple weeks earlier, leaving behind nothing but a tiny Santa Claus, charred to a crisp.

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The article is also making waves in the Phoenix Fire Department.

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This is Deputy Fire Chief Bob Kahn. When he arrives at work that morning, he takes a copy of the New Times from the newsstand right outside the fire station.

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When Lee Benson hears about the article, he has some choice words for the Phoenix New Times. I didn't think it was a serious news publication at all. He also doesn't buy what the arsonist is saying about the wider CSP group. There's no way it can be true.

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Over at the task force headquarters, Lieutenant Rob Handy and his team have their hands on the article too. They knew the story was coming, but it's even worse than they thought.

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— When you see that headline, what's your gut reaction?

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Even the unflappable FBI case lead Terry Kearns is unhappy.

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Now that he's reading the actual article, Rob and his team are more angry than ever that James and his editors didn't work with them to catch CSP as soon as they received that first letter.

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James is confident that he wrote the article as responsibly as he could. He verified everything he could verify, he provided context, and he informed his readers that this guy might be an unreliable narrator.

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If you've listened to as many true crime podcasts as I have, you know exactly what happens when you piss off the cops.

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James is sitting in the office of the New Times attorney. Three cops from the task force are there to speak with him. I think that the tone was friendly. This is Sergeant Trent Crump. He's been on the investigation with Lieutenant Rob since the beginning. And he's one of the officers interviewing James.

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They start with the basics, clarifying the beats of the story as told by the arsonist to James in the park bench interview.

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To understand how James Hibbard found himself in that conference room, surrounded by editors holding a letter from a self-avowed arsonist group, you have to understand a little bit about the Phoenix New Times and what it was like to work there. We're liberal. Go fuck yourself.

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Lieutenant Rob Handy is there too.

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— James is trying to figure out where his journalistic line is, how much cooperation is too much. He's wrestling with what he owes to his source versus the cops versus the public. Keep in mind, this is his first job as a reporter.

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Eventually, Rob and Trent are satisfied that James isn't holding anything back, that he's given them all the information he has.

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But there's one more thing they want James to do.

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This puts James in a bad position. One of the first rules you learn as a journalist is that you don't give up a confidential source to the authorities. And you certainly don't walk them straight into a trap set up by police.

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But when people's lives are at risk, does that change the rules?

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James puts on his best poker face while he wrestles with this moral dilemma.

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It's not lost on me that Rob is also feeling the weight of the world bearing down on him in this moment. He's only a few years older than James, and for him, the stakes are a lot bigger than getting a good scoop. Phoenix is counting on him to solve this case. But Rob has a huge joint task force and the weight of the FBI backing him up.

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James Hibbard is just a cub reporter whose editor seems to have decided not to show up for this extremely important meeting with the cops. What about Lacey? How come he didn't show up to the meeting?

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Whatever the reason, James is on his own. The interview grinds on. Rob and Trent press James to cooperate. Inside, James is conflicted, but he keeps his mouth shut. That's when the detectives try a new approach.

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That's how James describes the culture of the paper in the early 2000s.

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— The cops figure if they can't pressure him to cooperate, maybe they can convince him with visions of hero status and a big payday. He can have his cake and eat it, too. All he has to do is help. — This was a massive amount of money they were offering. Next time on The Arsonist Next Door, James has to make a choice and live with the consequences.

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Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more.

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The Arsonist Next Door is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. This series was written and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was produced and reported by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. Research by Zayana Youssef. Additional production from Tom Wright and G. Stiles. Our editor is Dave Anderson. Additional story editing from Max O'Brien.

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It was popular with the more left-leaning types in Phoenix.

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From Novel, our executive producers are Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Our original theme song was composed and performed by Nicholas Alexander.

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Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact Checking by Dania Suleiman. Story Development by Nell Gray Andrews. Novels Director of Development is Selina Mehta, and Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development.

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Special thanks to Jen Fifield, Libby Goff, Bob Kahn, Xander Adams, Anthony Wallace, Steve Ackerman, Carolyn Sher-Levin and the team at Reviewed and Cleared, Mario Cacciatolo, Isaac Fisher, Kevin Lee Carras, Jess Swinburne, Sonny Marr, Carly Frankel, and the team at WME.

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It's his first job as a reporter, and he's having a blast. He's on the counterculture beat.

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Just as James is getting into the flow of his new job, the arson spree hits the headlines.

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By this time, there's a 40-person multi-agency task force with millions of dollars at their disposal. They're conducting mass surveillance. The preserves are crawling with undercover agents. And yet, these houses are still going up in flames. And the only evidence they've got are a couple of notes just taunting them.

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Listen to all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession.

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Everyone is reporting the story, but the New Times editors are looking to stir things up with a different angle. And that angle is that maybe these CSP guys have a point.

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And who better to take that task on than their resident counterculture reporter, James Hibbert.

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But that's kind of irrelevant, because if he doesn't write it, he'll have to contend with chief editor Mike Lacey.

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To paint you a picture, Lacey's got Hold Fast tattooed on his knuckles.

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So whether James likes it or not, he's got this new assignment. Go forth and find out how the city of Phoenix really feels about the arson spree. James quickly discovers that the arsonist isn't the only one who's pissed off about urban sprawl. Rival newspaper The Arizona Republic used the phrase an acre an hour to describe how fast the city was eating the desert.

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A lot of the people James talks to are angry about it. He digs up some numbers showing how Arizona developers outspent their opponents five to one to destroy a bill that would have capped growth. And he references the members of Earth Liberation Front who are using arson to wage a war against sprawl all across America in Indiana, Colorado, and New York.

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The ELF and CSP are both targeting unfinished luxury homes that are encroaching on environmentally sensitive areas. Could they be two parts of the same group? CSP and ELF both say they are nonviolent, and it's true that no one has died so far, but that's down to pure luck.

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It's a well-rounded article that gives fair play to all sides of the debate, but it does include a few provocative lines, including this one.

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To be clear, James does not support arson.

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When the article is published on January 11th, 2001, the front page of the New Times is covered with a splashy photo of a mansion going up in flames. The way it's presented seems intended to do one thing, piss off the establishment.

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A letter signed CSP. That's how James finds himself crammed into that conference room of the New Times, with a bunch of senior editors brainstorming their next move. The supposed arsonist seems to be a fan of James' article. He said he liked the story. He was complaining about some of the other media coverage.

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What the editor Mike Lacey wants now is for James to get in touch with this letter writer and land an exclusive interview. Now, a lot of news organizations out there, if they got a letter from a purported arsonist, would probably contact the police. But this is no ordinary paper, and the Phoenix New Times is not about to give up the story.

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But there's a problem. The letter writer, for obvious reasons, hasn't left a return address. So they have no way to write back. Lacey's got a plan for that, too.

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A direct quote from the letter. CSP's favorite line hasn't been released to the public, by police or journalists. So the editors figure only the letter writer will understand the message they're sending back.

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The next day, the calls start pouring in. At first, it's just random readers, curious about why a phone number was printed on the front page.

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The man on the phone is preoccupied with the media coverage the arson spree is getting. He's concerned about certain assumptions that are being made about the group responsible.

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The letter writer insists that the Coalition to Save the Preserves is a group, and they're organized enough to have different units. And then he offered an in-person interview.

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In January of 2001, James Hibbard is 28 years old, a reporter at the Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly newspaper. He's sitting in a conference room attached to a bustling newsroom surrounded by editors and senior staff.

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Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free today and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today.

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It's a beautiful sunny day in downtown Phoenix. James is sitting in a little plaza in Patriot Square Park, which is basically the center of downtown. It's full of trees and benches and office workers on their lunch break, eating sandwiches and sipping lattes. There's a stage where a band is prepping to play. And right across the street is the Maricopa County Superior Courthouse.

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It's kind of the last place in the world that you'd think an arsonist, who's the target of a citywide manhunt, would want to meet.

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In his hands, a copy of his article.

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And of course, the biggest question.

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Did the legendary Lacey give you any sage advice before you embarked on this journalistic mission?

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In my first journalism job, I was interviewing elementary school teachers in New Jersey for the Teacher of the Year Award. Can you imagine interviewing a serial arsonist who's basically on his way to becoming the FBI's most wanted? I would be terrified.

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In the paper that morning, another arson attack, the eighth fire that CSP has claimed responsibility for, this time in North Phoenix.

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James is shook, but there's still a chance the guy sitting next to him could be a fraud. That's when the man drops some very specific information that only someone who set this latest fire could know.

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The man is telling James to call the local police precinct and ask about the latest CSP notes left at the scene of last night's fire. notes that nobody else would know about, since they haven't been reported in the news.

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The arsonist tells James that the Coalition to Save the Preserves got together to discuss meeting with him.

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She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

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She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.

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I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

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This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

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Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Binge.

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Standing before the burnt remains, Lee gazes across at the neighboring streets, full of single-family houses in neat rows.

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In the days after the second fire, another message is found at the scene of the crime, this time in the form of a letter. It contains a chilling message for Lee. Thou shalt not desecrate God's creation. Lee Benson, take your dream house out of the preserve.

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It's 1138 on a Sunday night in April. Battalion Chief Brian Parks leaps out of his bunk at a Phoenix fire station. Get dressed quick.

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It's springtime, and so that means our family's outside more, playing in the yard, running errands. It also means we're away from the home more often. FBI data shows break-ins are more likely during daylight hours than at night. It was time for us to up our protection game. We chose SimpliSafe. The outdoor basic package is also called the Lighthouse System, was exactly what we needed.

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Smart cameras, motion sensors, entry detection for the perimeter of our home, without any complicated installation. If someone's lurking outside, SimpliSafe's professional monitoring team is on it fast. They can speak through the camera, activate spotlights, even alert the police before anyone gets near the door. No contracts, no hidden fees.

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Monitoring starts at around a dollar a day, and there's a 60-day money-back guarantee. Visit simplysafe.com slash crimes to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com slash crimes. There's no safe like Simply Safe.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free today and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for The Binge Channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Lieutenant Rob Handy is sitting in his office at the Phoenix Police Department headquarters. He's a big, serious-looking guy with a buzz cut. He's only in his early 30s, but he already has a reputation for being intense and pretty competitive when it comes to catching bad guys.

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In his hand is the note left behind at the scene of the second fire, proof that Lee Benson's new home has been deliberately burnt down again.

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The fire department can't handle something like this alone, so they've called in the police. And Rob is tasked with leading the investigation. But so far, he only has one lead, the piece of paper in his hand. Whoever wrote the letter has taken steps to conceal their identity.

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The letter goes straight into the ominous, thou shalt not desecrate God's creation line.

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The two biblical passages it refers to are kind of on the scarier side. Quote, they too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.

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The glow is getting brighter and brighter, like a red dawn breaking over the mountains. But sunrise is still six hours away. What Brian's team is heading towards is something much more dangerous.

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At least this fire and brimstone arsonist is polite. Rob's eyes are drawn to the wheat. Is there a group behind this attack? And what's up with the signature? CSP, again.

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CSP is not an acronym Rob or his team have heard of before.

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An environmental group with a sprinkling of religious extremism.

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Rob's got a hunch that their perp is a lone actor, someone who lives nearby, someone who just does not like Lee Benson and his gaudy mansion. Probably a man, Rob thinks. After all, the vast majority of arsonists are men. And Lee, he thinks the same thing.

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But as you've gathered already, Lee isn't the type to give up.

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But then news reaches Lee Benson that changes everything for the whole neighborhood.

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A third fire. And this one didn't target Lee Benson. It was just a couple miles away, along the preserve border. Another new home under construction. This one was owned by a family with young kids. And another house fire overnight may be the work of a serial arsonist. CSP strikes again. A fourth fire. This one was near Warren's place, the guy who would go running in the preserves.

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the neighborhood is buzzing with speculation.

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By now, the pattern is crystal clear. All the half-built homes that have been burned are big and fancy and situated along the edge of the mountain's preserve. And it's not long before the letters, with all their religious fury, are leaked to the press. A frightening narrative begins to take shape in the local media.

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There's some radical, God-fearing environmentalists on the loose, and they're exacting revenge on anyone who dares to build too close to the preserve. A new letter appears, this time mailed directly to journalists who forward it to the police. The letter says, quote, We enjoy watching the surveillance activity. No trap works unless you walk into it. Don't bet on it.

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And there, in the signature of that letter, is the answer to a question Lieutenant Rob Handy has been asking for months.

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CSP stands for Coalition to Save the Preserves.

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Eco-terror campaign of arson. We may have an eco-terrorist on our hands.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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The fire truck careens through a winding neighborhood onto a narrow dirt road before coming to a dead end. Beyond is nothing but desert, a rugged valley covered in cactus and creosote bush.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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It's probably been a while since you heard the phrase eco-terrorism. It doesn't happen very often these days. But there was a time not too long ago, in the late 1990s, when this was a big deal.

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At this particular moment in history, before 9-11, one of the biggest threats the feds were worried about wasn't terrorists flying airplanes into buildings, but left-wing environmentalists, and one group in particular, the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF.

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— If you're somebody else who's destroying the natural environment, you may be considered the next target of the ELF or a group like them. — By December of 2000, local journalists are really starting to run with the eco-terror story. because you know what the ELF's favorite tactic was?

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One of the group's most famous acts of protest occurred just a few years earlier, in 1998.

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At the time, Vail was expanding its ski resort, encroaching on hundreds of acres of pristine wilderness that was home to endangered wildcats. The attack became the costliest act of so-called eco-terrorism in U.S. history.

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And before long, ELF starts burning things down all over the country, always following an ideology of protecting the environment through property destruction, without the loss of human life. And when the ELF burned down a building, they became known for leaving a particular catchphrase behind. The words, you build, we burn. It's the exact same phrase included on the letters from CSP in Phoenix.

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Looking at all these similarities, it seems a pretty good bet to journalists and investigators that the ELF is somehow involved in the Phoenix fires. The only problem is the ELF signs their letters ELF, not CSP. Could this be a splinter group? Lieutenant Rob Handy is painfully aware of all this speculation.

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But despite the intrigue of a national activist cell emerging in Phoenix, he still has a hunch that the culprit might just be a local with a grudge against new houses, an extreme act of nimbyism.

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Which theory is right? Well, there's not much hard proof either way. The funny thing about fire is that it tends to destroy the evidence. So for now, Rob focuses on canvassing the neighborhood.

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So far, whoever's behind these fires has managed to get in and out without being seen.

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Rob has spent hours just staring at the map of the fires, searching for a pattern. Where will CSP strike next?

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Is it frustrating knowing that one guy or group of people is outsmarting like a whole police department?

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The community is restless. It's December, around nine months since the first fire at Lee Benson's. The people living around the preserve are frustrated with the cops, who haven't made a single arrest and seem totally incapable of protecting them from future attacks.

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Lieutenant Rob decides to call a community meeting.

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Tim and his wife Peggy are victims of the fourth fire. Their $1.5 million home was nearly complete when it became a target of CSP. A room upstairs burned, but the rest of the house was saved by the quick work of firefighters. After the fire, Tim and Peggy installed barbed wire fencing, motion sensors, and a lighting system.

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The whole structure's ignited and burning at this point. Brian has to make a decision on whether to send his people inside the building. Rolling the window down, you could actually feel the heat. Because this is a construction site, Brian is hopeful there's no one inside to rescue. But even if there was, there's no way he can order his team into a fire like this.

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They started warning hikers out in the preserve to be on the lookout for strange behavior. Lieutenant Rob decides to hold a community meeting at Tim and Peggy's place, where the acrid smell of smoke still lingers.

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It's Saturday morning. About a dozen community members gather around the empty room to learn whatever they can from the police. Everyone is waiting for Rob to speak.

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Some neighbors complain about slow response times from investigators. Others say not enough resources are being devoted to the case. One neighbor spells it all out. We're all threatened. It's not just neighbors building homes. Rob tries to reassure everyone that the case is a top priority. He's trying his best, but it's not going well.

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I imagine the neighbors exchanging paranoid glances. Any one of them could be an arsonist. Lieutenant Rob can't share everything his team is doing in front of this crowd of neighbors.

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A blonde-haired woman lingers in the back of the crowd. She's not one of the neighbors.

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This is Terry Kearns, at the time an FBI special agent. She's young and new to Phoenix. Terry was a nurse before the FBI recruited her. She's confident, with a reassuring presence. But not to Rob.

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Anyone who's ever watched a cop movie knows they hate it when another agency moves in on their turf.

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Houses have been burning for nine months by this point, and the Phoenix PD has basically nothing to show for it. So I'm not sure it's Rob's forte either. But Rob tells Terry he doesn't want to form a task force with the FBI. Phoenix PD can handle it on their own. But it's not long before things start spinning out of Rob's control.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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It's a mild and perfect day in December. Amy Gittler and her friends gaze out at the lush green golf course, which I'm sure consumes an absolutely obscene amount of water. But this is of no concern to the leading ladies of Phoenix, who I like to picture snacking on tiny triangle-shaped sandwiches served on a silver platter.

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Amy is a seasoned lawyer who once argued a case in front of the Supreme Court. She has short-cropped red hair and a serious but friendly personality. During the luncheon, one of her friends approaches, looking concerned.

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He tells his firefighters to stay back and try and contain the blaze from the outside. The air is filled with the smell of wood smoke.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Amy and her husband are in the middle of building their new home. It's on a plot of land that happens to be located right on the edge of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve. But Amy tells her friend she isn't so concerned about these arson attacks.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The fires are happening on the other side of the mountain from where Amy's new house is being built.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Back at home around 9 p.m., Amy has just put her two kids to bed when the landline rings. It's a relative who lives nearby. They can see the red glow of a fire in the direction of Amy's new place. She rushes over.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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When Amy gets to the front of the crowd, she realizes those huge flames aren't from her own property, but the one next door.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The neighbor's place is reduced to ash. Amy's house was set on fire too, but firefighters were able to put it out before the fire really got going. Luckily, only the bathroom is affected. But Amy is still shaken by what happened.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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After all, CSP burned Lee Benson's house twice. And Amy's place was saved and shown on the news. So the cops set up camp inside Amy's construction site. In order to catch him if he came back. And keep in mind, there's no roof. It's just framed. Lieutenant Rob Handy and his team aren't just camping in this site. They're camping all over the place.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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Undercover cops are posted up in unmarked cars throughout the neighborhood, trying their best to not look like cops. But Rob's team is spread pretty thin. They don't have unlimited resources. And there's a huge area to cover. Meanwhile, someone or a group of people is sneaking around, somehow getting past you guys to light these houses on fire.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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But Rob is hopeful because his team has finally uncovered a suspect.

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This guy had a sign in his window protesting development. Someone had called in to the police to report him as suspicious. And not only that.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

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Keep in mind, the Sonoran Desert is being rapidly gobbled up by developers at this time. A report in the Arizona Republic uses the phrase, an acre an hour, to describe how fast the city of Phoenix is expanding into the surrounding desert.

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For the first time since this case began, Rob is starting to feel hopeful that he's onto something. But then...

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Another house goes up in flames.

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Things are about to get a lot more complicated. I'm glad you guys are doing this story. This is a story about fire and betrayal with world-changing consequences. I believe it really had some consequences on world events.

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That's coming up on The Arsonist Next Door. Don't want to wait for that next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. The Arsonist Next Door is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. This series was written and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was produced and reported by Leona Hamid.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. Research by Zayana Youssef. Additional production from Tom Wright and G. Stiles. Our editor is Dave Anderson. Additional story editing from Max O'Brien. From Novel, our executive producers are Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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As the flames leap into the sky, fiery embers rain down over neighboring houses, igniting small brush fires in the surrounding desert. If this fragile landscape burns, it will take decades to recover. At 5.30 a.m. the following morning, the owner, Lee Benson, is woken up by a phone call.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Our original theme song was composed and performed by Nicholas Alexander. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact Checking by Dania Suleiman. Story Development by Nell Gray Andrews. Novels Director of Development is Selina Mehta.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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And Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Jen Fifield, Libby Goff, Bob Kahn, Xander Adams, Anthony Wallace, Steve Ackerman, Carolyn Sher Levin and the team at Reviewed and Cleared, Mario Cacciatolo, Isaac Fisher, Kevin Lee Carras, Jess Swinburne, Sonny Marr, Carly Frankel, and the team at WME.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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When he arrives at the scene, the road is lined with trucks, their lights flashing red and white.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The fire investigation team arrives to assess the damage. They're looking for clues to how it began, the point of origin.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Sure, as someone who used to sneak into construction sites to smoke blunts with my friends when I was 16, I appreciate this theory.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The word burn is underlined. And the message is signed with a mysterious acronym, CSP. Okay, this was intentional.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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It's going to be a long time before Lee gets those answers, because CSP is far from done. There are dark times ahead for this quiet suburban neighborhood.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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This is just the beginning of the most notorious arson spree Phoenix has ever seen.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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CSP's crimes will ignite a firestorm of media attention.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. This is The Arsonist Next Door.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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I've come to the sweltering city of Phoenix to investigate this story that began a quarter century ago with that first fire at Lee Benson's place. Why? Because it's a story about going to the extreme, about the crazy things that seemingly ordinary people do under the right circumstances. And I want to understand what it takes to make someone go there, to send them over the edge,

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Holy moly.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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My producer Leona and I have perfected a mad dash from the air-conditioned apartment to our air-conditioned car, a bright red Mini Cooper. Oh, that's delicious. But the Mini takes a while to cool down. I don't know if I've ever eaten a hot banana before. We're parked on a suburban street in North Phoenix, an area called Heritage Heights.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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It's just around the corner from Lee Benson's house, the scene of the crime, where it all began. I'm actually feeling kind of paranoid. You know when you're in a picture-perfect neighborhood and get that feeling like you're not supposed to be there? That's exactly the sort of place we're in right now. It's an affluent suburb where dozens of cul-de-sacs wind around each other.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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I'm seeing Spanish-style houses painted in desert colors, some with lawns neatly trimmed and well-watered, despite the heat, which makes no sense for the desert. We exit the car and start knocking on doors.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Lee Benson is a local businessman. He's building his dream house. It's enormous. A custom-designed mansion close to the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, an area of wilderness set aside for conservation. This bumpy brown patch of desert is being transformed.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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We want to understand what kind of place this is and what happened 25 years ago when that first house went up in flames.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Nestled between Freeway 51 to the north and a panoramic view of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve to the south, this area is filled with wildlife.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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And with an active homeowners association, everyone seems to have a pretty good idea of what everyone else is doing around here.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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These folks aren't afraid to spill the tea about what their neighbors are up to.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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From what I can tell, not a lot of bad stuff happens here.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The most shocking thing that ever happened in this neighborhood was that fateful day in April 2000, when the residents of Heritage Heights woke to the sound of sirens to find Lee Benson's soon-to-be mansion burned to the ground.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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This is Warren Jerrams. At the time of the fire, Warren also lived nearby. An accountant in his 40s, Warren was tall, wiry, and physically fit, built like an antelope. He lived with a wife and two young daughters. Before the fire, he'd frequently jog through the preserves with his running buddy, Mark, passing Lee Benson's construction site along the way.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Warren and Mark watched as Lee's house sprouted up and out over the desert landscape, all 10,000 square feet of it, complete with a four-car garage and even a martial arts studio.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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At the time, urban sprawl was a pretty big issue in Phoenix.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The particular preserve that borders Heritage Heights is one of many scattered across the city, like desert islands emerging from a sea of residential housing. If you live next to one, it's like having a little bit of nature right on your doorstep. So Lee Benson's construction plans ruffled a few feathers. The locals are protective of these places.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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But was it really so out of place that someone would try to burn it down? It's my property and I get to do whatever I want with it.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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What Lee is saying is true. The problem is, it's not always clear to locals where exactly the preserve ends and private land begins. It's easy to mistake a vacant desert lot right by the preserve as part of the preserve, when actually, it's just private land that no one's gotten around to building on yet.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Technicalities aside, what mattered to Lee Benson's new neighbors was that an enormous mansion was being built directly between their homes and their previously uninterrupted view of a beloved mountain landscape. And Lee Benson himself, well, he didn't quite fit in with the neighborhood either. This community was mostly upper middle class.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Doctors, real estate agents, quiet professionals raising families. Lee was and still is a high-powered CEO. He's middle-aged with a buzz cut, bright blue eyes, and a charming smile. He's a business owner, an author, a martial arts teacher, and he even achieved that most glorious title we all aspire to, a podcaster.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The point is, the man is successful and he's definitely perceived as a bit flashy.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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His life was so full and amazing that when his custom dream home got torched, he refused to let it set him back.

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The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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Rebuild, same as before. Put up a little security fencing, hire a security guard, but not a professional security guard, just someone he connected with through his Taekwondo studio.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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The security guard would drive over to Lee Benson's after work to sit in his car and watch over the place all night. He'd do this after working all day at his day job. Can you imagine working a desk job all day just to sleep in your car while anxiously waking up every couple hours to make sure a mansion's not burned down? Sounds exhausting.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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That's probably why on the morning of October 1st, six months after Lee's house burned down, the guy decides to leave a little bit early, around 5.15, about an hour before sunrise.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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By 5.34 a.m., Lee Benson's house is on fire again. Brian Parks and his firefighters rush to the scene.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn

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And again, Lee shows up to see his grand vision reduced to a smoldering wreck.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 2. The Stories We Tell

304.062

Smartphones enrich our lives. They open up countless possibilities for us. We stream our favorite songs, share special moments and are available everywhere. But often we lose ourselves in endless scrolling. Use the network again to inspire you from new places. To plan real experiences and to connect you with your loved ones. Go We Live. Live in the now instead of in the network. Vodafone.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 2. The Stories We Tell

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Together we can.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 3. The House on Wolf Road

0.754

Alan Rarig was found dead in a parking lot in Oklahoma.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 3. The House on Wolf Road

28.803

people began to wonder, who was Sandra Bridewell?

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 3. The House on Wolf Road

35.305

This is the unbelievable story of a femme fatale with a trail of bodies in her wake and a lifetime of deception that has never been fully aired until now.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 3. The House on Wolf Road

48.329

From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Fatal Beauty, coming April 1st to The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 3. The House on Wolf Road

6.439

He'd been shot twice, once to the head. It was a baffling tragedy. You'd think his wife would be devastated. But a far more frightening set of circumstances eventually came to light.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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Twelve-year-old Collier Boyle is expected to testify tomorrow.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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Boyle told me he definitely wants to take the stand and tell his side of the story.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

153.663

When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search. The trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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Boyle has appeared unaffected by any of the testimony and preoccupied scribbling notes.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. When influence turns into control, how far would you go to get everything you always wanted? Follow Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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Good evening, everyone. This was the moment of truth in Mansfield today.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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Hi, David.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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A standing room-only crowd filled the hallway, and the courtroom was packed two hours before the trial started. You'll find a television monitor outside the jam-packed courtroom.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Finding Mom's Killer | 4. The Trial of the Century

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It's actually better than a soap opera because it happened right in our own town. It's just like a movie.

The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer

Deadly Fortune | 7. Extended Family

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Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free today and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today.

The Brett Cooper Show

The 5 Biggest Highlights of Trump 2.0 | Episode 11

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Why don't you say what I'm saying? Sure. The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda, and others.

The Brett Cooper Show

The 5 Biggest Highlights of Trump 2.0 | Episode 11

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Next, this is an executive order relating to the use of paper straws.

The Briefing with Jen Psaki

Real purpose of Trump's Mideast trip comes into focus as his explanations fall apart under scrutiny

1878.191

Have you ever heard of the Library of Congress, Tim? It's the most important library in the country. And one of the things it does nowadays is keep records and proofs of all the copyrights that are issued by the United States. Two copies of almost every book that is published are sent to the library at Washington.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

88: Left My Gallbladder in Italy

5.703

Direct from the Broski Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Broski Report with your host, Brittany Broski.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

84: Started My Period in Churchill’s War Room

1223.896

1099.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

84: Started My Period in Churchill’s War Room

20.745

Direct from the Broski Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Broski Report with your host, Brittany Broski.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

0.389

Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy? That's because pregnant women are often excluded from clinical studies. Ritual is aiming to set a new standard with their essential prenatal multivitamin. It's the number one best-selling prenatal and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

26.365

Essential prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Moms taking essential prenatal had a lower overall cortisol level during pregnancy than those taking a leading prenatal. Plus, it's designed to be gentle on the stomach. Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

3802.145

You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve. Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

3827.586

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

53.661

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

93: F1 & The New White Boy of the Month

65.766

Direct from the Broski Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Broski Report with your host, Brittany Broski.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

87: Gabagool & the French Revolution

5.703

Direct from the Broski Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Broski Report with your host, Brittany Broski.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

86: Red Bull Turned me into Iron Man

23.378

O, O, O, O'Reilly. Auto Parts. Direct from the Broski Nation headquarters in Los Angeles, California, this is the Broski Report with your host, Brittany Broski.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

86: Red Bull Turned me into Iron Man

3.745

Check engine light on? Take the guesswork out of your check engine light with O'Reilly Veriscan. It's free and provides a report with solutions based on over 650 million vehicle scans verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we can recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

89: Stuck In Purgatory

15.406

Your eyes, I will drive them home. I am by your side when time is up. I'm free Hey guys, welcome back to the Broski Report.

The Broski Report with Brittany Broski

89: Stuck In Purgatory

2028.186

Will I ever be free? Free me!

The Charlie Kirk Show

What's Driving the Democrat Death Spiral?

118.012

Newsom is obviously setting up for a run for the presidency in 2028. And I'm not so sure that his current strategy is really going to work because what he's doing is he's trying to appeal to the right. But what I see is people like AOC and Bernie Sanders, who are further left than politicians we've seen in the mainstream in modern American history.

The Charlie Kirk Show

What's Driving the Democrat Death Spiral?

139.341

garnering so much support, breaking records with attendance at rallies. What the left may need right now is possibly somebody further to the left, not further to the right.

The Charlie Kirk Show

What's Driving the Democrat Death Spiral?

1626.53

What we've heard from lawyers representing some of these people is that they deny that they're members of this gang, or either Trend de Aragua or MS-13.

The Charlie Kirk Show

What's Driving the Democrat Death Spiral?

2048.988

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust,

The Charlie Kirk Show

Gay Conservatives and Jew-Hating Liberals: More Charlie at the University of Wisconsin

2406.767

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Gay Conservatives and Jew-Hating Liberals: More Charlie at the University of Wisconsin

358.29

Hey, Charlie. Just for context, I'm Persian Jewish. Both my parents are born in Iran. I'm from L.A. Okay.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Gay Conservatives and Jew-Hating Liberals: More Charlie at the University of Wisconsin

367.515

Yeah, yeah. You know, it just kind of puts me in a hard situation with my entire family. Like I'm kind of torn between two parts of my heritage. I just wanted to know what you think the war in the Middle East is going to turn into if Trump is elected versus if Kamala is elected.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

104.467

Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1071.496

We see it all the time when I visit college campuses. Young adults demonize the concept of free markets and think government is the solution to every problem. How do we change this? By teaching our kids the foundational principles to counter what they are taught in public school.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1085.367

Parents want to teach their children about liberty, limited government and free markets, but often wonder, where do I start? That's where Tuttle Twins can help. They empower parents by providing quality resources that break down these ideas in a way children can understand. Take their book, The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1103.24

In this story, the twins learn about their rights, that true laws protect people, and that we should help others, and that stealing is always wrong. Children can only change the world for the better if they learn these important principles now. Go to Tuttletwins.com slash Charlie today and purchase their 14-book children's series for your family.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1123.191

They'll learn to think for themselves, to stand for liberty. Go to TuttleTwins.com slash Charlie today. TuttleTwins.com slash Charlie.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1802.964

With the stock market at record highs, are you confident your portfolio can weather the next big downturn? Market corrections are quick and unforgiving, wiping out hard-earned gains in an instant. Smart investors know the key to financial security is diversification.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1818.24

That's why Noble Gold Investments makes it easy for Americans to help hedge market volatility and diversify their investments with gold. Since 2010, central banks have steadily increased their gold reserves. And in 2024, gold prices soared over 25%. Gold is simple. You buy it, you own it, you control it.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1835.237

Over $2 billion in precious metal sales, Noble Gold Investments has helped thousands of investors diversify their portfolios with gold IRAs and physical gold. And now when you open a qualified account, Noble Gold will gift you five ounce silver America the Beautiful coins as a thank you. Don't wait for the next downturn to catch you off guard.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

1854.534

Visit noblegoldinvestments.com today and see how easy it is to incorporate gold into your investment strategy. That is noblegoldinvestments.com, noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

62.179

incredible here.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

671.852

private student loan debt in the United States totals about $300 billion. About $45 billion of that is labeled as distressed. YREFI refinances distressed or defaulted private student loan debt that others will not touch. They provide you with a custom loan payment based on your ability to pay. That is YREFI.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. If you are a private student loan borrower,

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

695.718

This could be a great solution for you. Many clients are not even able to make the minimum monthly payment on their private student loans when they first contact YRefi. YRefi is also the sponsor of our campus tour. They have helped sponsor America Fest and more. So go to YRefi.com. Do you have a co-borrower? YRefi can get them released from the loan. You can give mom or dad a break.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

719.234

So check it out at YRefi.com. You don't have to ignore that mountain of student loan statements on your kitchen table anymore. That is YRefi.com. When the payment's on, your distressed or defaulted private student loan is so big that you can't even get a hold of your finances. That is YRefi. It may not be available in all states. So check it out at YRefi.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

DOGE Potential and SOTU Predictions

82.132

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

100.197

Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

1415.475

We see it all the time when I visit college campuses. Young adults demonize the concept of free markets and think government is the solution to every problem. How do we change this? By teaching our kids the foundational principles to counter what they are taught in public school.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

1429.326

Parents want to teach their children about liberty, limited government and free markets but often wonder, where do I start? That's where Tuttle Twins can help. They empower parents by providing quality resources that break down these ideas in a way children can understand. Take their book, The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

1447.218

In this story, the twins learn about their rights, that true laws protect people, and that we should help others, and that stealing is always wrong. Children can only change the world for the better if they learn these important principles now. Go to Tuttletwins.com slash Charlie today and purchase their 14-book children's series for your family.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

1467.166

They'll learn to think for themselves, to stand for liberty. Go to Tuttletwins.com slash Charlie today

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

1767.073

Patriot Mobile isn't just about providing exceptional cell phone service. It's a call to action to defend our rights and freedoms with Patriot Mobile. We'll be right back. I really wanted to ask you a question specifically because you and I were texting back and forth when this news sort of happened originally.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

57.041

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

60.686

I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

645.312

If pain is affecting your life, make 2025 the year of feeling good again, the year of moving better, sleeping better, feeling more alive, and do it with Relief Factor. Relief Factor is a daily supplement that fights pain naturally. It doesn't just mask pain temporarily, helps reduce or even eliminate it. Over a million people have turned to Relief Factor.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

665.842

Feel the difference it can make in your life. Give their three-week quick start a try. It's only $19.95, less than a dollar a day, and just takes a phone call. Call 1-800-4-RELIEF. That is 1-800-4-RELIEF. Remember, every day you feel better is a day you live better. So wherever you're hurting, back, neck, joints, or muscles, make 2025 the year of feeling good again. Try Relief Factor right now.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

688.042

That is 1-800-4-RELIEF, 1-800-4-RELIEF.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Are Biden's Autopen Pardons Null and Void?

77.867

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1074.875

Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here. Brand new year, brand new opportunities to change the world for the better. It's easier than you might think. You can save babies by providing ultrasounds with Preborn. Together with the Sanctity of Human Life Month, we're going to save 35,000 babies to show the world that not only do we believe life is precious, but we're going to do something about it.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

108.777

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1093.708

Your gift to Preborn will give a girl the truth about what's happening in her body so that she can make the right choice. What better way to start this new year than to join us to save babies? and $28 a month will save a baby a month all year long. A $15,000 gift will provide a complete ultrasound machine that will save thousands of babies for years and years to come.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1112.8

It will also save moms from a lifetime of pain and regret. I am a donor to this organization, and you should be too. Start this new year by being a hero for life. Call 833-850-2229 or click on the preborn banner at charliekirk.com. That is charliekirk.com and click on the preborn banner. I'm a donor. You should be too. charliekirk.com preborn banner.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

131.102

Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1809.721

Go to YRefi.com. That is YRefi.com. YRefi does not care what your credit score is. When the one-year payment comes up with student loans, boy, YRefi can be there for you. YRefi can save you thousands of dollars by refinancing and even lowering your total cost. You can finally take control of your student loan situation with a plan that works for your monthly budget.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1829.915

Call 888-YREFI34 or log on to YREFI.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. May not be available in all 50 states. Go to YREFI.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. Do you have a co-borrower? YREFI can get them released from the loan. So go to YREFI.com. Many clients aren't able to make the minimum monthly payments on their private student loans when they first contact YREFI. So go to YREFI.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

1855.687

Check it out. You can finally take control of your student loan situation with a plan that works. for your monthly budget. So go to it right now at Yrefy.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

689.448

We're honored to be partnering with the Alan Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture and Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Alan's biblical perspective.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

700.918

He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues that we're facing today, gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge, Trump, and the White House, issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss the problems. In every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference. His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

719.554

Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today. The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to get biblical truth back into our culture.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

740.229

You can find out more about Pastor Alan and the ministry at alanjackson.com. That is alanjackson.com. Again, that is alanjackson.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

ANTIFA, Canada, and Rogue Judges

87.947

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Vivek's Vision for Ohio

186.545

Action News 5's Bria Bolden joining us live now from the University of Memphis to explain, Bria, why Rittenhouse has been allowed to be back on campus despite all the pushback.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Vivek's Vision for Ohio

25.668

Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

The Charlie Kirk Show

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 73 — Does Flying Stink Now? MAHA Day 1? LOTR = Gay?

30.176

Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

The Charlie Kirk Show

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 73 — Does Flying Stink Now? MAHA Day 1? LOTR = Gay?

4392.35

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

The Most Shocking Installment of the Trans Insanity Yet?

2184.479

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

The Most Shocking Installment of the Trans Insanity Yet?

68.758

Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1054.625

History, economics, the great works of literature. Did you study these things in school? Probably not. Or even if you did, maybe it's time for an enjoyable refresher. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses, including their newest course on totalitarian novels.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1070.459

In this free eight-lecture course, you'll learn from Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn as he goes in-depth on four novels, 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and That Hideous Strength. I love all four. Even though these novels were written in the 1930s and 40s, they're highly relevant today as they show what a tyrannical government does to human nature.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1089.729

More importantly, they can show us that faith, family, and friends are worth fighting for. Maybe you read these books a long time ago in school. Maybe you've heard others talk about them, and they seem a little intimidating. Let Hillsdale College, America's greatest college, help you make the most of them. Go right now to charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1106.539

There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That is charlieforhillsdale.com, C-H-A-R-L-I-E, forhillsdale.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1857.481

If you are a patriot in this audience and you have private student loan debt or your brother does or your niece does or your nephew does, maybe you're just thinking back to Christmas or Thanksgiving and someone's like, oh my gosh, I have these student loans and I took them out and I shouldn't have and it was a private loan. And boom, you're just thinking like, wait a second. I remember that.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1876.724

Well, that's why refi. That's where they come in. They are not a debt settlement company, but they help you work with each borrower, you individually. Why refi does not care what your credit score is. It may not be available in all states and bad credit is accepted. Do you have a co-borrower? Why refi can get them released from the loan. You can give mom or dad a break.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

1894.868

You can even skip a payment every six months up to 12 months without penalty. You don't have to ignore. Go to 888-YREFY34 or log on to YREFY.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. YREFY.com may not be available in all 50 states. YREFY refinances distrust and defaulted private student loans, which are different from federal loans. Go to YREFY.com. Y-R-E-F-Y.com. That is YREFY.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

659.141

Gentlemen, let's get real for a second. Are you frustrated with today's woke dating scene? The apps, the games, the endless swiping, it's a waste of time. Finding a woman who shares your values, faith, family, and patriotism feels nearly impossible, but it doesn't have to be. Selective Search, America's leading matchmaking firm, is changing the game.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

679.428

They connect strong, successful men like you, men who love God, love America, and want a family with incredible women who share your values. These are intelligent, faith-driven women who put family first and still believe in traditional values. Imagine that. If you're single, 35 to 40 years old, conservative man in Southern California, listen up.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

697.633

Selective Search has an exclusive network of women ready for the real thing. Here's the best part. Their candidate program is 100% free and confidential. Some of my closest friends have used Selective Search. And let me tell you, they're meeting incredible women. This is your chance. This is not an app. It's your answer. The perfect conservative woman is out there waiting for you.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

717.86

Visit SelectiveSearch.com slash California today. Let the professionals introduce you to women already looking for someone like you in Southern California. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Take action now. Go to SelectiveSearch.com slash California and start building the future you deserve.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

74.077

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Who Rules: Judges or the President?

96.411

Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

1231.997

History, economics, the great works of literature. Did you study these things in school? Probably not. Or even if you did, maybe it's time for an enjoyable refresher. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses, including their newest course on totalitarian novels.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

1247.842

In this free eight-lecture course, you'll learn from Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn as he goes in-depth on four novels, 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, and That Hideous Strength. I love all four. Even though these novels were written in the 1930s and 40s, they're highly relevant today as they show what a tyrannical government does to human nature.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

1267.113

More importantly, they can show us that faith, family, and friends are worth fighting for. Maybe you read these books a long time ago in school. Maybe you've heard others talk about them, and they seem a little intimidating. Let Hillsdale College, America's greatest college, help you make the most of them. Go right now to charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

1283.928

There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That is charlieforhillsdale.com, C-H-A-R-L-I-E forhillsdale.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

20.908

We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

2652.378

If you are a private student loan borrower, which, by the way, private student loan debt totals about $300 billion, you guys should take a look at it. You can finally take control of your student loan situation with a plan that works for your monthly budget. Because of private student loan debt, so many Americans feel stuck, and they feel helpless, and they've even lost hope.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

2671.546

If your private student loan debt is keeping you up at night and ruining your life, it doesn't have to. Just call YRefi. Can you imagine being debt free and not living under this burden anymore? Be unburdened by what has been. Many clients aren't even able to make minimum monthly payments on their private student loans when they first contact YRefi. Go to YRefi.com. That is Y-R-E-F-I.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

2694.659

YRefi can reduce your monthly payment and guarantees interest rates under 6%, ensuring affordability and financial relief. Go to Yrefy.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. That is Yrefy.com. So take a look right now at Yrefy.com. Wonderful people. Available not in all states. So check it out, Yrefy.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

3711.13

Senator, I don't know if you're in the Oval Office. Am I?

The Charlie Kirk Show

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump/Vance v. Zelenskyy

43.238

Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Donald Trump, the Greatest Pro-Life President

1076.73

Immigrants have come to America from around the world for many reasons.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Donald Trump, the Greatest Pro-Life President

1093.339

The promise of freedom and opportunity continues to be a powerful draw for those who make their journey to America.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Elon Musk: Public Enemy #1

2075.829

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Elon Musk: Public Enemy #1

46.363

Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Elon Musk: Public Enemy #1

881.708

I know how it works.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Elon Musk: Public Enemy #1

885.229

How about this?

The Charlie Kirk Show

Hello Kash Patel, Goodbye Mitch McConnell

28.965

Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Hello Kash Patel, Goodbye Mitch McConnell

693.602

Adam Schiff is the worst criminal in Congress in the last 250 years. And what's broke that we're going to talk about right now is Adam Schiff met with a whistleblower. Adam Schiff went to the podium day after day after day saying, I know nothing about this. We're not going to discuss it. We're going to protect it. And then he, Adam Schiff,

The Charlie Kirk Show

Hello Kash Patel, Goodbye Mitch McConnell

714.179

led the prosecution of the impeachment trial in the Senate of President Donald Trump. Talk about someone who was conflicted out of the game because he was part of the hoax that brought Charmella in, manufactured that false accusation, and then peddled it out to the world. And he continued, you know, not surprising. He's lied about almost everything in his life.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Hello Kash Patel, Goodbye Mitch McConnell

736.485

But now he lied just to set up a presidential impeachment. And that's what I was talking about, these disinformation campaigns.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Is "Mohammedanism" Compatible with the West?

28.852

at tpusa.com buckle up everybody here we go charlie what you've done is incredible here maybe charlie kirk is on the college campus i want you to know we are lucky to have charlie kirk charlie kirk's running the white house folks I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country.

The Charlie Kirk Show

Is "Mohammedanism" Compatible with the West?

46.528

He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

The Daily

Can the Cease-Fire in Gaza Hold?

1630.831

We'll be right back.

The Daily

Can the Cease-Fire in Gaza Hold?

917.365

We'll be right back.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

117.597

This season, take an incredible journey through 5,000 years of culture with Shen Yun.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

129.026

It's the beautiful culture and wisdom of China before communism.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

139.955

See it at least once in your lifetime. Shen Yun, an all-new production every year.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

519.83

The Chinese government has been concerned at how Falun Gong has gained adherence within the political establishment.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

580.996

Police and paramilitaries have been drafted into railway stations and bus depots to prevent members of the sect traveling to Beijing to protest.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

606.307

The leadership is now trying to discredit Falun Gong with a barrage of propaganda aimed at showing that devotion can lead to insanity, suicide or murder.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

622.004

The group has followers in the Communist Party and the military, and many of them have now been sent for so-called re-education in Marxist ideology.

The Daily

Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

98.746

Every once in a while, something comes along so masterful, it leaves you in awe.

The Daily

Trump’s Showdown With the Courts

1713.561

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

The Daily

Trump’s Showdown With the Courts

643.578

We'll be right back.

The Daily

Qatar Force One

59.408

Donald Trump is set to accept a very pricey gift from the royal family of Qatar taking delivery of a Boeing 747 that will be used as Air Force One during his second term.

The Daily

Qatar Force One

81.562

A super luxury Boeing jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar. The very lavish gift is raising substantial ethical and legal questions.

The Daily

The Growing Danger of Measles

937.637

As increasing numbers of children are vaccinated, We will be well on the way to eradicating a disease that down through the centuries has killed millions of children and left others impaired mentally and physically.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1004.814

When there's a lack of water, in general, what it does is create an awful lot of tension, an awful lot of antagonism and hatred and the kind of environment in which it's very easy to foment violence. And I couldn't even believe it until I went and talked to some of the people in those villages and understood how it worked. And it's pretty straightforward.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1032.105

Upstream villages in places that are water-stressed will... build like a little dam or put in a gate that stops the water from flowing downstream. And then they take the water until they've taken as much as they need. And then there's not so much to go to the next downstream village and even less for the village after that. And after this happens several times over,

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1057.324

people get angry and they're willing to attack people in the neighboring village who are doing that. Another piece that feeds into conflict is that because people are poor and it's hard to find jobs, and especially young people, they're at the beginning of their lives, but they don't have much to hope for. It's very fertile ground for recruitment by different kinds of armed groups and extremists.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1084.773

These are groups that are, you know, they will pay to have you work as a soldier essentially. And that's at least something people can bring home. And if you don't have other options, you're willing to consider that.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1127.737

Well, what they have been trying to do for years is to get their upstream neighbors to allow more water into Iraq through the rivers. And both of those very large rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, begin in Turkey, but the Tigris is also fed substantially by Iran. And Both Iran and Turkey, both of them are part of this same water-stressed region of the Middle East.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1157.936

And both are, like Iraq, countries with growing population. And like Iraq, have large farming sectors and need the water more. themselves in a time of climate stress and faster rising temperatures, those are all true of those two countries as well. So you have, in a sense, too much demand on those two rivers now from the region as a whole.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1198.232

More and more. And a couple of years ago, Iraq threatened to take, I think, Iran to the world court. They never did. They have threatened and tried to negotiate in varying amounts with Turkey, mostly trying to negotiate. And sometimes Turkey will allow a small amount more water in for a short period, but it doesn't really resolve the problem.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1230.691

Well, one thing they could do is conserve more water, especially in their farming methods. Right now, about 75% of Iraq's water is used for farming. And the reason for that enormous amount is that their irrigation techniques go back to Sumerian times when it was the Fertile Crescent. So they still flood their fields and it's hotter now. More water evaporates. Water runs off.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1264.387

But getting people to change how they farm, how they've done something for generations is really difficult. So Iraq's been trying. But it's probably going to take at least a generation. Right. And there are other options in the region that are not so available for a variety of reasons. One of those is what smaller countries like the Gulf countries are able to do, like cloud seeding.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1291.579

They have a lot of money. They put chemicals into the clouds and that helps sometimes briefly produce more rain. That's something Iraq hasn't been able to do.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1305.046

It's quite expensive to set that up. And it works a little bit if you can do it in a small area. Iraq's a big country. So that's not a particularly fruitful avenue for them. Another avenue is desalination. That's something a lot of countries in the Gulf do. Saudi Arabia does it. More and more countries in the Mediterranean are doing it now, too. Israel does it.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1330.457

Yeah, but Iraq, if you look at the map, remember, Sabrina, it has a very, very small coastline. Right, there's not much coast. It's tiny. Where would it get that water? It's largely a landlocked country. And desalination plants are expensive, very expensive. Right. So that's not easy for them.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1380.487

Well, what I felt as I watched it was that it was a window on my future, wherever I might be living, because this is happening in places all over the world, in smaller places. Maybe it's The hottest areas of California or the wildfires that we just recently saw there or the increase in hurricanes in Florida. Right. There are many places now that are having periods that are very hot.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1416.485

And there are countries now which are almost completely without any freshwater resources at all. And that is true really almost across the Middle East. There are a few exceptions, but not many. This is like more than the canary in the coal mine. It's just a little ahead of where a whole raft of places in the world are going to be. And...

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1443.186

Some places, the United States might be one of them, will figure out ways to muddle through. They're organized. They have a government that more or less works. They have money. And they're able to focus on making changes.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1459.864

Countries that are poor, countries that have weak government or very nearly failed states, or if you look at the Middle East, countries that keep having conflict, Syria, Lebanon, they can't do long-term planning. It's just not part of what's possible when you have conflict. So they are going to become harder and harder and more and more awful to live in.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1486.751

And people will get poorer, the places become more unstable, and that spills over into neighboring countries, into various kinds of climate migration, and leads to a rather, not just a poorer future, but one with an awful lot of suffering. Living in heat with too little water is a recipe for instability, but also disease and a complete lack of hope for large areas.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1529.144

A less stable world and a more selfish world, Sabrina. That's the way I would think of it.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

1571.263

We'll hope that's true. Thank you.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

182.842

Well, as the wars wound down, there was something still deeply unsettling. And it wasn't just the aftermath of war. There were cities where people weren't leaving their homes during the day. Villages that were half empty or even villages where I saw people leaving. Animals abandoned by their owners and just left to die. And really overcrowded hospital emergency rooms in some places.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

217.404

These are things I expect to see during a war. But this was about something else. It was actually about hotter temperatures and ultimately an increasing lack of water. It was making it impossible to have a kind of civilized, normal life. And yet it seemed like almost no one was talking about it.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

251.303

Yes, and that that across the Middle East was going to be the big problem. And it has to do with the changing climate. We can see in the last couple of years, in 2023 and 2024, there were record temperatures around the world. But in the Middle East, it's getting hot faster, about almost twice as fast as other parts of the world. Wow, twice as fast. Yes.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

277.276

And if you think about it for a moment, that means water's evaporating more quickly in any place, any lake, any river, any irrigation canal. And this is true in many places, but it was just so stark in the Middle East. And what really struck me is that this used to be a place called the Fertile Crescent.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

3.843

So it's Saturday in Baghdad, and we're driving east and a little south. It's supposed to reach 121 degrees today, tomorrow, really for most of the next week. When I was doing this reporting in Iraq, we would leave sometimes at 5 a.m. before first light in order just to be able to bear the heat. Everything is dusty. And everyone's pretty tired of this level of heat.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

302.524

It was Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, two of the rivers that many, many people have heard of. from their history books, from reading the Bible, from reading all kinds of mythology, and it had changed profoundly.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

322.475

So I wanted to see what it would mean for the people who were living at the edge of these changes, where it was most severe, and what it meant for them and their families, but more than that, for the region as a whole. What does it mean when a country doesn't have enough water? So where did you go to answer that question?

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

349.841

Well, along with my translator, Ahmed Salah, I went to the edge of Diyala province, which is known as the fruit basket of Iraq, or it used to be. Good morning. And that's where I met a man named Hashim Kanani and some members of his family. And they had farmed there for generations.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

400.39

They grew vegetables for his family. We had about 1,500 cattle. And they grew the fodder for the cows and the sheep and the goats. We had buffaloes before. You had buffaloes?

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

416.914

Because they need a lot of water, don't they?

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

421.561

And his family made a good living off farming. They were modest farmers, but surrounded by other farmers.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

43.868

As you drove out of Baghdad, there seemed to be no respite to the brownness of it. We're driving by large stands of dead palm trees with no leaves left, just the trunks standing up. And along the road, usually, you would see people herding sheep. You'd see quite a few animals. And what we began to see was carcasses of cows, bloated and covered with flies. And this wasn't just one or two cows.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

435.304

The water from the Diyala River, which fed these irrigation canals that crisscrossed his land, that was a big part of his life. Before, we used to drink from the canal. And all through his childhood, this had been a place of bounty, of plenty for him.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

467.263

The water has become less like the rain. The rains that usually arrived in the winter stopped coming or were very meager. It affected the cultivation.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

481.148

And the droughts became more frequent and they lasted longer and were more severe. And now it's gotten to the point where he still plants, but hardly anything grows.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

509.013

He showed me his corn. He wanted me to actually feel the kernels so that I would understand how much effect the years of drought and heat had had on his crops.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

534.277

And it was shriveled and withered.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

538.601

And the okra, which was another big crop of his, was shrunken and the leaves were all brown.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

550.117

And the irrigation canal was now really, it was shallow and brown. It had a kind of a green algae lying on top of it.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

565.21

It's nothing but sewage water, he said. You can't feed it to animals even. You can't water your crops with it. Even the fish that was in it died. And that meant they couldn't grow enough grain to feed the cows or the grass didn't really come up for the sheep because there just wasn't enough water.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

592.802

He recalled watching as the buffalo began to scrape at the earth, trying to find more water. Because of the lack of water, we sold the buffaloes. That's when his family started to sell off their cattle and their sheep. And by the time I was visiting him, their 1,500 head of cattle was down to only three.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

624.594

Hashem told me that he didn't know how to keep this farming life that he's had going and how to pass it down to his children. And yet it's part of who his family has been. It's part of who he is. And it's part of what that whole area of Iraq was like until now. Do you think your children will want to stay on the farm?

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

672.052

What has become of Hashim? He's hanging on right now. But there are areas where it's just been too hard for a family for too many years. And that's when people begin to consider moving. And they take everything with them. So they take the bricks of their house. They take the window. Because windows are valuable.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

702.256

They disassemble their house. So you come to villages which look as if they had been bombed, Sabrina. Wow. People did this themselves. I saw people loading up a pickup truck with basically everything they had. Wow. everything will be gone. It's this sort of deconstruction of a life, of a way of life right in front of you.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

730.578

Well, I went to a village that, well, it used to be a village that had been quite agricultural at one time, apparently, which was hard to believe because what had happened there was that the desert had begun to encroach. And the way it works is that literally sand begins to blow and it begins to blow over the roads. And then gradually, it actually is like snow. It covers the buildings. Mm-hmm.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

759.042

And we drove sort of through this more and more sand. And there wasn't a big sandstorm that day. This was just happening anyway because there were no plants anymore because of the heat and the drought to hold the earth. And this was a little community that had had at one time 5,000 people, but there were only 80 people left.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

798.151

And I wondered, where do people go? And what is it like for them when they get to wherever they're going? Is it really any better? Or are the problems just different ones?

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

81.066

I started to try to count them, but I stopped counting because there were too many. There was a feeling of something almost apocalyptic that was happening. What did you think when you were looking at this, Alyssa? I thought that this was what would happen at the end of the world.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

843.82

Well, my expectation had been that people might go far away. But in fact, what I found is that first people's instinct is to stay close to home. They move a few miles to a place where they think there might be either more water and they could do a little farming if they're farmers or where they think they'll be able to get jobs.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

863.216

But where they tend to end up is on the periphery of, in Iraq's case, its largest two cities, Baghdad and Basra. And around the periphery of those cities, what's developed are very, quite large, sprawling, informal settlements that are not officially part of the city. So they're kind of the worst of both worlds. The streets are not paved. The houses are makeshift, sometimes patched together.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

895.204

They're made of mud and concrete and whatever people have been able to put together. And there's a very strong smell of sewage because, in fact, ironically, people were looking for water. But if anything, there's less water because... In poorer countries, you might find pipes and some kind of sewage system, but in these informal settlements, there's not even that.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

920.653

The chance of education is less, probably less than if they'd stayed in their village. And many people have trouble finding work. They end up in manual jobs like construction, where you're paid a small amount and a day rate, and it may not last. Or there are brick factories, which are horrible because they're so hot.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

954.039

They're impoverishing themselves and they are severed from a landscape they knew and often community networks that at least supplied a sense of solace and familiarity. In the new place, it will work differently. And urban areas are not kind. They're difficult places to know how to maneuver.

The Daily

A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent

975.888

So people in rural areas, in the countryside, they are aware that life on the edges of big cities will be difficult. So what you get is people were actually taking up arms in some of these stressed villages and fighting to make sure they don't have to move and even killing each other, like war over water. Right.

The Daily

How Trump Is Scaring Big Law Firms Into Submission

284.13

So as Trump is coming into office, BuzzFeed, of course, published the entire contents of that dossier.

The Daily

How Trump Is Scaring Big Law Firms Into Submission

293.317

This is for that infamous dossier. It's all over the news media. Correct. It is widely thought to be pretty scurrilous.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

358.314

Okay, so we're in a fentanyl lab. Finally, we made it into a kitchen. We're watching them cook, and they've just started the beginning of the process.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

401.454

And I saw one of the cooks just blend it all together using, like, a regular hand blender, Black & Decker, that you could just buy at a store. And the pots look like any pots that you would find in any Mexican kitchen.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

437.037

So right now he's adding blue to the powder mix because it's going to be pressed into those blue M30 pills.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

946.178

There's a police car and like a kind of military style tank like car.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

958.149

officers just all along the streets. We're watching them arrest a guy, it looks like, or they're at least searching the guy.

The Daily

How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl

972.518

And like, here is a raid looking for whatever, either a lab or a person or whatever.

The Daily

He Was America’s Highest-Ranking Military Officer. Then Came the War on D.E.I.

1360.271

I'm walking down and I'm looking down and I see these central casting people. According to Trump, Dan Cain looked straight out of central casting.

The Daily

He Was America’s Highest-Ranking Military Officer. Then Came the War on D.E.I.

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we'll be right back here's what else you need to know today

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1000.014

He's more of a wise fool in the Shakespeare tradition. Another hit. Then, in 1986, came Top Gun, and after that, everyone knew who Val Kilmer was. Because how could you not?

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1014.105

Iceman, the fighter pilot Tom Cruise's Maverick is trying to best for the best of the best of the best position, has maybe 17 words in the whole movie, but it is there that you can see Val Kilmer's greatest gift, which is to make something out of nothing. to breathe real life into a character who was only there to set the volleyball so that Maverick could spike it.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1044.031

If you asked me then what beguiled me about Val Kilmer, I wouldn't have had the words for it. Instead, I would have pictured a man without a shirt. I am still hard-pressed to picture young Val Kilmer in a regular shirt, but it wasn't his body that stuck with me when the lights came on.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1061.523

No, it was his awesome physicality, him spinning that volleyball on his finger, him offering the most fraught 80s masculinity-soaked condolences ever when Maverick's radar intercept officer, Goose, buys it during a flight exercise. There was something in his immense focus and his full-bodied commitment to just plain being in the scene that took my breath away.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1086.559

I read somewhere that Kilmer was so dedicated to inhabiting the role that he created Team Iceman and Team Maverick factions in the Top Gun movie cast. What I also remember is Iceman's snapping his gum with his mighty jaw in non-response to Maverick's admitting that, yes, he's dangerous.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1106.176

In that jaw snap, which is my absolute favorite gift to send to people, there's so much more than a weird way to end a conversation. It's arrogance and pathos, frustration and whatever the emotion is where you know that laughing at someone will hurt them more than insulting them. The next few jobs came relatively quickly.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1127.579

The crazed, greedy, delightful Mad Mardigan in Willow, shouting epithets at the hero of the story with a vitality and electricity that makes you somehow root for him. Kill Me Again, in which he plays a dumb investigator who becomes the mark of a con woman, played by his wife at the time, Joanne Wally.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1146.753

The Doors, an Oliver Stone movie made extremely watchable by Kilmer's method performance as Jim Morrison, so methody and deep in the role, it's not so long into any kind of rewatching of that movie that I realize I can no longer remember what real Jim Morrison sounded or looked like.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1165.154

Then the beloved tombstone, in which he once again went deep method on the tubercular dentist Doc Holliday, sweaty and yellow, gasping for breath through his puffs on his cigarette. It was around this time that both Kilmer and his viewing public ran into a problem.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1183.536

If you're good at acting, and you're super hunky, and you look good with your shirt off, and also are willing to take it off, you are an excellent candidate for a promotion. And so Val Kilmer leveled up. Pretty soon, he was cast as pure leads of what were, or were designed to be, blockbusters. Batman Forever, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Saint. He didn't do badly in any of those roles, exactly.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1210.332

It's more as if all the elements were there, but they couldn't unite to make a real person. The whole was less than the sum of its parts. His Jack Andrews in Kill Me Again is supposed to be some kind of everyman, but he's really the absence of a person, a body without a soul.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1228.67

In Thunderheart, Kilmer plays a regular guy FBI agent with some Native American lineage, and I couldn't really get through the rest. In Batman Forever, he barely moves his face, and, well, here were the reviews. Janet Maslin in this newspaper said Kilmer was "...hamstrung by the straight man aspects of the role," while Roger Ebert raved that he was "...completely acceptable."

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1255.775

There came reports of problems on sets, that he was complaining constantly and making impossible demands, that he was rude to his co-stars and stayed in character all the time, never bothering with even small courtesies to the other people on set, that he fought with Oliver Stone about glorifying substance abuse in a movie that was literally about Jim Morrison.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1277.421

that Kilmer, committed to the method even through casting, became too aggressive with a woman during an audition in front of Stone and the casting director as he became swept up in an emotionally charged moment.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1290.314

The incident resulted in a settlement, though he maintains it was the actress who attacked him, and the casting director has said that both actors were physical with each other in the heat of this moment. Joel Schumacher called him psychotic in an interview after directing him in Batman Forever, whose sequels Kilmer was supposed to star in.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1310.334

There are several different versions of why George Clooney replaced him. Kilmer says it was because of scheduling difficulties with the other movie he had a contract for, The Saint, but one factor was surely this assessment by its director. Multiple sources have claimed that on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, Kilmer touched his lit cigarette to a crew member's sideburn.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1332.731

He claims this was an accident that resulted from the cinematographers asking him to blow smoke from off-camera very close to where a member of the camera crew was standing. What kind of person would singe a fellow worker he spends 15 hours a day with, often less than a foot apart? Madness. This all begins to explain why it's hard to make sense of who exactly Val Kilmer was.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1359.866

His whole thing is telling stories, but at this point, he didn't yet know which story he was telling. He can put it all together now far better than he ever could back then. He'd had his pick of roles. He was being offered lucrative franchises, His talent was in doubt by absolutely no one.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1379.444

His gift was both so overt and so subtle that he was the most memorable part of the movies he merely supported.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1395.475

He'd gotten into acting because he wanted to perform serious roles. But the bigger they came, the more empty and cavernous too. It was all silly to me, he said to me in his office. I'd been preparing to do Hamlet for ten years. He always thought of himself as a character actor. He could do a hundred different voices and a million different impressions.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1420.015

I would have loved to have been on Saturday Night Live as a regular, Kilmer said. Fame wasn't my priority, and I had it. If you read his press around the time of Batman, all those interviews are mostly just him complaining about the suit. He liked to say it was a battering experience because he loves wordplay.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

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In interviews, he brought up Tom Cruise often, particularly his inclination for movies where instead of running from their oiled volleyball playing forms of yesterday, Cruise ran back toward them. I have very definitely had a different kind of career than Tom. You never know if a job has commercial success written all over it. I just think life's too short to worry about that.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

1466.339

The Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1993. I have nothing against Tom Cruise, but he must have a large capacity to deal with the business side of movies. Details, June 1995. Interviewer, how about Tom Cruise? You make fun of him sometimes. Kilmer, you can't make fun of Tom Cruise. Poor thing. Interview, March 24th, 2011. Maybe he was jealous that Cruise was getting all those leads.

The Daily

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Maybe he really couldn't take the leading man pressure. Maybe he was burned out already from all that methoding. But that doesn't seem right. The burnout theory ignores that he was still doing smaller roles on the side in the same magnetic way he had before. His Elvis-inspired cameo in True Romance, a movie in which he shines in a tiny role where they don't even show his face.

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His bank robber in Heat, Forget that amazing shootout sequence that everyone talks about. The movie's most mesmerizing moment is the 40-second micro-scene in which he watches a clerk verify that his fake license is real. No. The problem was that he had been trained to inhabit any role he could find himself in. He just couldn't find himself in a normie.

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And by the time Kilmer came online as a movie star, normie roles were all there were. The 90s standard issue regular guy in extraordinary circumstances. Kilmer's greatest roles were always supporting characters, The roles of troubled men with broken souls went to the other guys, because who would believe that a guy who looked like him had real troubles or a broken soul?

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But he couldn't reverse course and bow out either. By then, he had been seduced by a lifestyle. Look at his face in a tabloid photo of him and Cher circa 1984. Look at the pride. Look how much he enjoyed being on Cher's arm. It reminds him of something he heard once. God wants us to walk, but the devil sends a limo.

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He was invited to go to Toga by Tadashi Suzuki, whom he calls the Japanese Stanislavski, but he turned it down. He didn't want to say yes to Hollywood, but look at that picture again. How could you say no? By the time he realized how miserable he was, it was too late. He tried to supplement these movies with other artistic endeavors that nourished his soul.

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He began working on a documentary about nuclear disarmament in 1983 when he was doing Real Genius. When he was filming Wonderland in 2003 as the porn star John Holmes,

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He holed up with Ali Al-Burzi, who had been a protege of Kilmer's friend, the wildlife photographer Peter Beard, to photograph the set and then make collages of the photographs and pages from the film's script all over the walls of the Chateau Marmont, and also spill blood all over them. A complex art project I don't fully understand.

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He took the roles, always imagining that when he had enough money, he could get out with enough to support both that giant Santa Fe ranch with its animals and staff, and the artists he wanted to invite to it. I was gambling with being able to maintain the status, and I would have won my gamble, except for 2008.

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Not only did he lose his status in Hollywood, but the one spoil he escaped with, his ranch, lost half its value, and he was forced to sell most of it away. I just lost my home like a million other people. It was pretty awful. His casting problem was solved for him when no one wanted to work with him anymore.

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The roles went to people who, presumably, were not known for unkindness toward movie crews. The phone stopped ringing. In his book, he sums up this period like this.

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In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors, and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzuki and life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio. He says this in an attempt not to apologize, clearly, but to make clear why he behaved the way he did.

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Everyone has to work out their own salvation, he told me. How to live and by what morality, and I found that the part that I feel bad about is hurting somebody in the process. He remembered a story from his time as Batman. One day he was filming and about to take off the Batsuit when Warren Buffett and his grandkids came by.

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They wanted to see Batman, so Kilmer stuck around in the suit, but they didn't want to talk to him. They wanted to try on the mask and ride in the Batmobile. He understood then that Batman isn't meant to be a real guy. Batman is meant to be so anonymous that the person who is looking at him can see himself in him. That's why it's so easy to have five or six Batmans, he says now.

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It's not about Batman. There is no Batman. And so what kind of thing is that to play? A person whose job is to be as nonspecific as possible. He looked good in the Batsuit, but wearing it was torture. When he took it off, he was finally free. See what he did there? See how it all worked out? That's a pretty happy ending to a sad story.

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The lesson here is Val Kilmer's perpetual lesson, that if you have enough faith, if you can take the long view and remember that things will work out, destiny takes over. I say that to prepare you for the story of what happened to his body.

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Because if you think that turning the story of a blown up career into a best case scenario is impressive, wait till you see what the Val Kilmer Story Optimizer does with cancer. So. By 2014, he was living a life he loved. He was no longer under contract for franchises he couldn't put his heart into.

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He had some money, he had a place in Malibu, his kids nearby, and he could finally do what he wanted. He began to pick the projects that mattered to him. It so happens that the animated short Mark Twain Dreams of the Resurrection is not the first movie Kilmer has made about Mark Twain.

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It's not even the second, and I've heard there's an additional screenplay for a feature-length script out there, too. But the main Mark Twain event is a film called Citizen Twain, and it was conceived as a live performance in which Val Kilmer dresses up as Mark Twain and does Mark Twain and Christian science-related stand-up comedy. Take a minute with that sentence.

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I went to see Citizen Twain one rainy Friday night at the College of Staten Island, a half-filled theater which I remember a little like a fever dream.

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There's not a lot of marketing copy that can prepare you for its strangeness, and also its elaborateness, and also its sincerity, and also the delightful warmth of Val Kilmer, whom you will never see happier than when he is presenting this film of his—

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Though it started out as a half-filmed, half-live performance, it is now, in light of his vocal condition, a totally filmed performance that Kilmer merely introduces. The subjects of Citizen Twain range from sarsaparilla to congressional representatives being idiots, from Mark Twain quotes to Mrs. Eddy quotes to quotes Val Kilmer only wishes either of them had said.

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Here he was, using his celebrity and his talent, along with some heavy rubber prosthetics — Mark Twain was many things, but he was not a person who looked like Val Kilmer — to finally do something he wanted, which was to work out for himself the relationship of two people he absolutely worshipped, but who were at odds in almost every way.

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Samuel Clemens was a Christian and a rational man who seemed fairly appalled at Mrs. Eddy's interpretation of the Bible and its assumptions that healing from illness was something resulting from prayer rather than medical treatment. He wrote a book about it called Christian Science, in which he clearly mocks all of it. But Kilmer believes he did this only because he was so drawn to it.

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With each project, Kilmer gets a little closer to making the universe conform a little bit more to what he wishes it were. A place where the two historical figures he loves most, Mark Twain and Mrs. Eddy, are finally no longer polar opposites, but magnetically aligned. Val Kilmer can't remember when it was that Mark Twain first re-entered his life.

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And he certainly doesn't know when he first realized that his life's work would be about trying to meld the visions of Mark Twain and Mrs. Eddy into one. And he certainly can't remember the year he started having symptoms of what other people, the ones with medical degrees who evaluated him, called throat cancer.

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Partly, this is because he gets tired when he talks now, but mostly it's because it's hard to track time and mark space when you don't believe in them. As near as I can tell, in 2014, as he was touring with Citizen Twain, Kilmer found himself in Nashville with a big lump in his throat. He was having a hard time swallowing. He canceled the show.

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He'd been having symptoms for a while and had woken up in a pool of his own blood a time or two back in Malibu. A doctor eventually told him it was throat cancer. or as Kilmer told me Christian science calls it, the suggestion of throat cancer. Meaning that in Christian science, the idea is rather than say I have it or possess it, there is a claim, there is a suggestion that this is a fact.

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He knew the cure for him would be to work with his practitioner, Christian Science's version of a spiritual advisor, to pray his fear away so that his body would no longer manifest outwardly what can be diagnosed as a malady. Meaning, it's not really cancer. It's just his fear expressing itself. Think of what he'd just been through, losing all his land, reckoning with his career.

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He had to go away and pray to relocate his faith within himself. But it wasn't so easy. He has kids, a grown son and daughter he had while he was still married to Joanne Wally, and they're not Christian scientists. His family couldn't let him go heal by himself. Cancer, as they know it, is a thing that spreads. He relented.

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I just didn't want to experience their fear, which was profound, Kilmer said. I would have had to go away, and I just didn't want to be without them. He had surgery that year, which was followed by chemotherapy and radiation, that zapped my whole throat, and it's still dry as a bone, and left him with the tracheostomy tube and a feeding tube.

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Shortly after, Kelmer was spotted wearing scarves, his head slightly askew, as if his neck couldn't properly hold it up. In 2016, Michael Douglas was doing a press junket after his own bout of cancer, and a reporter asked him about the ghost in the darkness. Douglas mentioned that Kilmer, his co-star in that movie, was suffering from the same illness he had suffered from.

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Kilmer denied this, posting on Facebook that he had no cancer whatsoever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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P P P P P P P P實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a a In just two weeks, the palm trees against the bright blue sky that hung over Hellmell seemed like something I made up, as weird to think about as a Batman figure with a Mark Twain head. Was that even real? I searched my phone and found a picture of it. Phew.

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By now, I understood that the story I was telling about Val Kilmer, which I'd thought had been about a man's relentless faith and optimism, was really about reconciliation. The squaring of two opposing things into something we swear is true, despite all evidence to the contrary. Your beauty can sentence you to misery. Val Kilmer uses a tracheostomy tube, but he can talk.

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His brother is dead, but only to our senses. Mark Twain despised Mary Baker Eddy until you can will him into a dream where he doesn't. God is good, and there are no ventilators. My beautiful friend has cancer, and the treatment exists, but it's unavailable to her right now. Here's the thing.

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Mark Twain, Kilmer's favorite storyteller, thought that storytelling couldn't, and shouldn't, try to capture an entire life, to draw its arc, to determine its meaning. He was suspicious of the kind of autobiography that Ben Franklin had done.

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He thought it should just be a mishmash of remembrances, told not even in the right order, lest a person be tempted to force a story into a certain direction and make themselves a more sympathetic character than they deserve. Here's another thing.

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I spoke to his daughter, Mercedes, who told me that she did have a miraculous recovery, but that a bone in her face had been broken and that she was in a wheelchair for a month and required major surgery. I spoke to Val Kilmer one more time. While we were on the phone, I stared at my painting, the divers diving in over and over. What is Hell Mel? What is Ocean?

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And I tried to remember how I felt when it was beside me in Los Angeles, in the passenger seat of the rental car. Kilmer told me that he and Alborzi were going to get in a car and drive to New Mexico, where he still has 160 acres of land.

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Meanwhile, Tom Cruise tweeted that the Top Gun sequel was moving to December, two of my colleagues were in the hospital, and another's husband lay in his bed gasping for breath. I attended a Zoom shiva for a friend's mother who was buried alone. Peter Beard lay in the woods, weeks away from being found. The Val Kilmer gif snapped its jaw over and over forever in a text message.

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Lydia waited by the phone, though she had not been told to expect a call, and Val Kilmer planned his road trip into the desert.

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It's hard to believe now, as I write this, but just two months ago, when we were allowed to roam free, when we could board planes and delight from them and wander into rental cars and check into hotels, when we could chase down and replenish the beauty and wonder our very selves need to survive, I went to Los Angeles, where I was asked this question by Val Kilmer.

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Do you think South by Southwest will be canceled? But Val Kilmer no longer sounds like Val Kilmer, the movie star of the 80s and 90s who has mostly vanished from screens. He hasn't since his tracheostomy. He can still squeeze air up through his windpipe, however, and past the hole that was cut into his throat and the tracheostomy tube in a way that makes him somewhat understood.

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Not very, but somewhat. The sound is something between a squeak and a voiceless roar. He says the fact that I can understand him is a result of the endless vocal exercises that he was trained to do when he went to Juilliard after high school, that he was taught to work his voice like it was a trumpet. He hated the authoritarian rule at Juilliard while he was there.

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He hated those stupid vocal exercises. Now look at him, still using his most beloved instrument, when really, by all rights, it should be useless. See how it all turned out for the best? All Val Kilmer's stories are like that, told with that same dash of preordained kismet. He was traveling in Africa in 1994 when he decided to spend a morning exploring a bat cave.

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Later that day, literally, seriously that day, he was inspired to call his agent, who had been trying to contact Kilmer for weeks to see if he was interested in playing the role of Batman now that Michael Keaton was hanging it up. Another story?

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In the days before he set eyes for the first time on his now ex-wife, Joanne Wally, he dreamed that he met the woman he was destined for, and woke up and immediately wrote a poem called We've Just Met, But Marry Me, Please. Then, right after that, he went to London, and while he was there, he saw a play, and Wally was in it.

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He was so taken with her that he followed her to the pub after-party, just so he could look at her. This was crazy even for him, so he made no move. But two years later, in 1987, she would be randomly, coincidentally, serendipitously cast opposite him in Willow, and they would end up married. So, yes, he can talk.

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And it's such a miracle that he has these abilities, because if you have enough faith, you'll see how every part of your life is just a piece of a bigger part of your life, and nothing is an accident, and everything is good.

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We were in his office at Hell Mel, an office space slash art gallery slash artist studio slash retail museum for Val Kilmer's movie career that takes up several storefronts and more than half the block of Melrose Avenue between Edgemont Street and Heliotrope Drive in Hollywood.

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Officially, according to Brad Kopanik, his childhood friend and adult business associate who was in the room to help me better understand Kilmer, Helmel's mission is to serve as a fun, sacred space where eclectic artists gather with novices to collaborate and, through new technology, inspire change and spark giving in our local underserved community.

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Of its storefronts, one is a traditional art gallery. Another is a dark window display with three black cubes that say God stenciled in white paint, behind which is an inventory of merch from Kilmer's long and storied movie career.

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Socks that featured his Tombstone character Doc Holliday, and Jim Morrison coasters from his role in The Doors, and some paintings that Kilmer himself created, some of which are about his film career. A rendering of his Top Gun character, Iceman, with the word love stenciled across it, and some that aren't, a hummingbird in a forest.

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The final storefront is a door that leads to the Willy Wonka core of Hellmell. Inside, there's a podcasting studio, a cafe area, and a screening room. Hellmell also houses a foundation Val and Kopanik created called Twain Mania, which aims to send its Mark Twain curriculum into schools.

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Twice a week, high school students from South Central Los Angeles practice Hamlet and other plays there as part of a program called Inner City Shakespeare. Helmel started holding events last February, a screening of Tombstone, an Echo in the Canyon concert.

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It is the creative incubator of Kilmer's dreams, the fruition of a vision he had always hoped his 6,000-acre New Mexico ranch would be before he lost most of it in the 2008 housing crash. The idea is to create kind of a life that's active, Kilmer told me. It's active. It's alive. I want the feel of it being alive. You feel the electricity. He sat at his desk.

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Behind him was a replica of a painting he had sold to Robert Downey Jr., and on the other side, a maybe two-foot-tall Batman figure with a Mark Twain head. Elsewhere were Apple computers from the 1980s and 1990s dipped in glossy red paint, a tumbleweed bathed in gold paint.

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There was a box of newly shipped hardcovers of his new memoir, I'm Your Huckleberry, which debuted on the bestseller list in April, a brooding photo of the Val Kilmer of your 1990s matinee memories on its cover. On the walls were more of his paintings, swishes of paint and resin and oil, and sometimes spray paint, on sheets of repurposed aluminum.

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He makes them by swirling around the chemicals and paint until they look like an emotion or an element to him, at which point he adds a photograph, solidifying his theory into fact. I stood and admired a rectangle of blue-gray haze that he had determined looked like ocean waves, and so he had added photos of swimmers diving into the waves one after another.

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Of all the projects going on inside the studio at that minute, it was a short animated film about Mark Twain that concerned him most. In it, Mark Twain falls asleep and dreams of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, resulting in his waking up and realizing that Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science,

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The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened to Val Kilmer?’

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Val Kilmer is a lifelong Christian scientist, was correct about God's eminent perfection and the theories of Mrs. Eddy, as Kilmer calls her, about God's capacity to heal. Kilmer loves a lot of things, but two of the tops are Mark Twain and Mrs. Eddy. Kilmer wanted to debut the short at South by Southwest in a few weeks. It was early March.

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There were rumors that festivals and concerts and even air travel might be canceled. Kilmer believed that even if he and his team couldn't take an airplane, they could just drive to Austin and still screen Mark Twain Dreams of the Resurrection and, I don't know, will the festival into existence.

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He was undaunted by all the signs and portents that made it feel as if the world were dropping to its knees. He believed if he could get the film done and over to Austin, the rest would take care of itself. So when he asked me if South by Southwest would be canceled, I told him I didn't know.

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The Surgeon General had started asking the public not to hoard surgical masks, and just that morning, Los Angeles had declared a state of emergency. You don't think we will be going to Cannes? Kilmer asked. How about the Olympics? The Olympics has never been canceled except in time of world war. You can't cancel the world, right? Bad things happen, but you still need art.

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And I thought, right, right, you still need art. You still need forward momentum. You still need to believe that all your effort wasn't for nothing, that we could, we will survive a dark moment in history. And that when that happens, we won't be left without the things that made those moments decipherable and meaningful and therefore tolerable.

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The world outside had seemed to be getting so, so bad for so, so long, and this was the first whiff of overarching hope and positivity that I'd witnessed in, I couldn't remember how many months or years now. So much so that I almost couldn't identify it when I saw it. The last glowing embers of hope coming from Val Kilmer?

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The movie hunk of my youth who disappeared unceremoniously and now presented with an entirely different appearance and a bizarre accounting of where he'd been? But there was something familiar about it, like a faint knocking that came from inside me. It was the special kind of optimism that maybe only the faithful have.

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The enduring belief that some force will come along and save us from the centrifuge of despair we found ourselves in. When is the last time you saw that up close? Before you can understand the story of what happened to Val Kilmer, you have to determine for yourself who he was in the first place. Trying to compare him to any movie star working either now or then will fry your mental circuit board.

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He was an upwardly mobile, conventional movie star. He was equally a fringe weirdo who would soon disappear. His first movie, Top Secret, 1984, about a rock star in East Berlin, was the follow-up to Airplane by its creative team, and it was so funny and such a strange thing to see this extraordinarily handsome young kid

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a jaw like the sharp-cut bottom half of a stop sign, that true Swede golden hair, a Cupid's bow that lays in shadow of the plump, convex swoop of his upper lip, who also seemed to be in on the joke. The 80s were a time when a handsome young man with blonde hair was mostly the butt of it. He'd been on the road to something slightly more, say, classical when he was at Juilliard.

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He starred in Orestes and in The Wood Demon. He wrote a play with his classmates called How It All Began, which went on to run for a month at the Public Theater after Joe Papp himself saw it at the school. He starred in Slab Boys with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. He did As You Like It in Minneapolis with Patti LuPone.

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But once Hollywood got a look at him, he was on too fast a conveyor belt to safely step off. The success of Top Secret begat a somewhat starring role in Real Genius, meaning that his Chris Knight, the apathetic, irresistible prodigy who helps something, laser, chemical, transmitter, radio, something, is the guy on the poster, but he's not the character with the clearest narrative arc.

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As a result, even officials whose instincts tend toward rehabilitation often resort to it instead of providing other options to adjudicated youth. This was my biggest surprise working as a juvenile public defender in the 1990s. I was prepared for racism and punitive instincts. I was prepared for judges who would treat my clients as menaces, as beyond redemption.

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But I wasn't prepared for how often judges would tell me they were locking up teenagers because they cared about them. In saying this, I am not referring to teenagers convicted of murder or other serious crimes who made up less than 10% of my caseload. Instead, I am thinking of clients who were locked up for lesser offenses, like selling drugs or stealing cars.

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At their sentencing hearings, I made the best arguments I could to keep these young people out of prison. I told their stories and put their lives in context so that judges would see them as worthy of a second chance. I pointed out how awful Oak Hill was, insisting that any time there would only be harmful.

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And I presented the judges with alternatives to prison, typically a vocational, educational, mentoring, or drug treatment program. Nonetheless, I sometimes failed to persuade the sentencing judge. Why? Most often it was because judges believed they could help young people by sending them to prison.

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Washington's juvenile court was full of judges who saw young people as salvageable and believed that they and the juvenile system could do the saving. A stint behind bars might scare my clients straight, the judges said, or give them a chance to reconsider their life choices. These judges weren't easily pigeonholed.

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They often resisted prosecutors' efforts to transfer teenagers to adult court, and their sentences were more often measured in months than in years. They would have been appalled by people like John DiIulio Jr., who rose to prominence in the 1990s by calling for sweeping crackdowns on teenagers he called super predators. But they still defaulted to prison.

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When my colleagues and I argued for leniency, the judges would frequently say something like, look, we're not talking about a decade or even a year. We're talking about a couple of months inside to let him understand that his actions have consequences. Everything in moderation. It's such an appealing idea. It might be true for ice cream, bourbon, and staying up till 3 a.m.,

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But what if juvenile prison isn't like those things? Some things, heroin, say, or Russian roulette, are dangerous even in moderation. Maybe prison is, too. Anna Iser started considering that question when, after college, she worked at a New York program called the Court Employment Project. The six-month program offered an alternative to incarceration for teenage offenders.

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Iser's job was to evaluate them for eligibility. The youth she screened fell into two groups. Some had been jailed for a few weeks or a month, while others were allowed to go home and avoid incarceration entirely. Except for the time behind bars, the two groups looked identical to Iser. Yet those who were locked up, even briefly, were less likely to succeed than those who were released.

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Everyone in the program recognized this, Iser recalls, even if no one really knew why. More than a decade later, Iser, now an economist at Brown University, found a way to test how juvenile incarceration affected young people. She learned that another economist, Joseph Doyle, had access to an unusual data set from the Chicago court system.

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Confidentiality rules mean that juvenile court data is hard to get, and even if you find it, you can't typically connect it to education or adult criminal court outcomes because that data is held by different agencies.

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But Doyle's data overcame those problems, allowing the two researchers to follow people from juvenile court to see whether they ever graduated from high school or were incarcerated as adults. Iser and Doyle were helped by one other fact. Chicago's courts randomly assigned juveniles to judges.

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To understand why this matters, remember Iser's initial reaction to the disparate outcome she saw in New York. When she noticed that the young people who were incarcerated did worse than those who were released, she thought the two groups were otherwise identical. But what if they weren't? Maybe those who were locked up for a month were already worse off in ways that she couldn't observe.

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If so, their poor outcomes might have been due to those existing disadvantages, not to prison. The random assignment of judges let Iser and Doyle control for that. They could compare one juvenile assigned to a tough judge to one with a similar background and charges who appeared before a lenient judge.

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Through such comparisons, involving thousands of teenagers, they could assess the impact of youth incarceration. The young people in their study were typically locked up for just a few weeks. As a result, the researchers were able to test the hypothesis I had heard from some judges in Washington that a relatively brief prison stint would help set a wayward youth on the right path.

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But Iser says, we found the opposite. The kids who were locked up did worse. They were 12% less likely to graduate from high school, and they were 23% more likely to be incarcerated as adults. Published as a working paper in 2013, Iser and Doyle's analysis is lauded for its sophisticated design. Duke University's Jason Barron told me it was a classic read in economics.

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A major national criminology organization gave it its annual award for applied research. But Isa recalls that her mother wasn't all that impressed. My mom asked me, so what are you working on? I said, oh, I'm doing a paper on whether detaining juveniles is bad in terms of their future life outcomes. She's like, do you need a PhD for that? Why would it be good?

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When I asked Iser if she had talked to judges or juvenile justice administrators about her research, I was surprised to learn that she hadn't. In my field, she said, you have to stay objective. You can't be seen as having a horse in the race. You hope the right people will read it, but I'm not an advocate. The right people did read it.

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Susan Burke, director of Utah's juvenile justice system from 2011 to 2018, remembers encountering Iser's research, along with other papers that reached similar conclusions, at a conference of juvenile justice administrators. Burke was intrigued, but she also found the findings challenging. Consider it from her perspective.

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Because she ran a juvenile system, part of Burke's job was to keep young people in jail. She wasn't prison's number one booster, but she thought it had its place, especially if the kids weren't locked up for too long. She remembers, early in her tenure, defending the state's juvenile work camps, facilities for young people who mainly committed property crimes.

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She recalls, These kids were vandalizing and stealing, and I saw the work camps as a way for them to make restitution. So what was Burke to make of research suggesting that even a short stay in detention might make it more, not less, likely that a young person would steal or vandalize again? Burke did something that should be common, but isn't.

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I sat down and talked to some kids that had gone through work camp and asked them about their experience. They didn't report violence, abuse, or inhumane conditions, she says. But they did remember the experience as profoundly dislocating. They said it was difficult to go back home and try and integrate with their friends or return to their school community.

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People would look at them asking, Well, where have you been? What did you do? Why were you there? They were total strangers. Shortly after these conversations, Burke confronted the same issue in her own family. Her son was struggling, and she decided to send him to a day treatment program. He was never locked up and never had to spend a night away from home.

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The program lasted less than three months, but even that removal, Burke recalls, was traumatic. Her son found it difficult to return to school. He never felt like he fit in after that, she recalls. People didn't understand him. He was somehow different now, and it just hurt his ability to make friendships and connect with people.

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And that was a short period of time, and he was coming home every day. These experiences transformed Burke. She championed efforts to close the work camps. She also ended the practice, common in Utah and elsewhere, of removing kids from their homes after arrest for a period of observation and assessment.

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In Utah, Burke recalls, judges would say, Well, I'm going to send you to ONA because I can't decide whether I should lock you up or put you on probation or do something else with you. And they're going to do a full workup on you, your family, everything that's going on with you, and give me information that can better inform my decision.

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When Burke asked her research director what happened to juveniles after the assessment, she learned that 75% of them were sent home. The old Burke would have considered that a success. Look at us. We aren't especially punitive. We send most kids home after assessment.

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But the new Burke, the one who learned of Iser's research, talked to kids from the work camps and saw her own child suffer after returning from day treatment, saw it differently. If we're sending most kids home anyway, why remove them from their homes at all? She asked. Why not do observation and assessment while the kid is at home?

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It took some time, but Burke eventually got her way, and Utah closed all seven of its residential observation and assessment programs. It wasn't an easy victory. Burke remembers that when word of her plans got out, some judges were supportive, but I had to deal with many others who worried that crime would rise.

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The threat of rising crime is, of course, at the heart of almost all opposition to justice reform, especially proposals to imprison fewer people.

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When Gladys Cajon, the reform-minded commissioner of New York State's Office of Children and Family Services, set out to close juvenile justice facilities, she was opposed by Republican legislators from the communities where many of those facilities were located.

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One warned that "...the safety of the public has been compromised because extremely violent and dangerous youths are being released into the community." Another said that if Carrion got her way, crime rates will undoubtedly increase and the safety of our communities will be jeopardized. Carrion's opponents could not have been more wrong. Beginning in 2008, New York State closed 26 juvenile jails.

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Over the next 12 years, juvenile crime in the state declined 86%. The story is the same everywhere. Remember that graph showing the decline in juvenile incarceration? Well, its companion is below, and it shows an 80% decrease in juvenile arrest rates since 1996. Even more significant, arrests for serious violent crimes by juveniles have fallen 78% from their peak in 1994.

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Plunging crime rates helped make reform efforts politically feasible, says Nate Bayliss, who heads the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. I've been at KC since 2007, and I've had the wind at my back for much of my career, he says. Burke sees it similarly.

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When judges worried that crime would go up if we closed the assessment centers, I could show them data that it was already dropping. Then I could go back and show them data a year later that it was still declining. At that point, what could they say? Falling arrest rates also reduced the incarceration rate more directly.

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Because most juveniles are locked up for a year or less, a big drop in the number entering the system has an immediate impact on the number locked up. In fact, the first time I looked at the graph documenting the crime decline, I wondered, is this the whole story? When I suggested as much to Baylis, he resisted.

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Even with crime declining, it's not inevitable that we would see declines of this magnitude in incarceration rates. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he reminded me, many reform advocates said that as long as the system kept building and operating juvenile prisons, judges would continue filling them, even if that meant locking up young people charged with minor offenses. But that's not what happened.

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Part of the story over the last 25 years is that those facilities were still there, and yet systems weren't filling them up with as many kids, and that's a real achievement. I remember the, if you build it, they will fill it, argument because, for many years, I made it myself. In the early 2000s, I was part of the Close Oak Hill Coalition in Washington.

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We fought to persuade the city to shut down the 200-bed facility and replace it with something much smaller. We prevailed, and a 60-bed facility, New Beginnings, opened in 2009. Then judges and administrators surprised us. Although they had the power to fill this new prison, they chose not to.

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The number of teenagers locked up at New Beginnings dropped to as few as 12 in 2018, and for most of the past decade, the facility has held only 30 to 40 residents. Bayless offers another reason to see the declining incarceration rate as more than a function of declining arrests.

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Crimes that once accounted for a large share of the juvenile incarceration rate are no longer prosecuted as vigorously as they were 30 or 40 years ago. This is especially true of drug offenses.

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In the crack-dominated early 1990s, a teenager arrested for selling drugs or possessing enough that it was reasonable to think he planned to sell it was just as likely to be locked up as someone charged with aggravated assault or burglary. Today, Bayless says, the odds that a kid would be locked up when they've been arrested for drugs have gone through the floor.

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He points out that from July 2020 to June 2021, Baltimore authorities referred only three young people to the juvenile system in cases where a drug offense was the most serious charge. Montgomery County, Maryland, with over a million people, referred only four. When Bayless brings up numbers like this, he says people aren't surprised.

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They treat it like, well, yeah, of course we don't want to lock up kids for drugs. But just 30 years ago, we made a very different choice about drugs. We locked people up, and we acted like doing that was the only reasonable approach. For Bayless, understanding our reaction to crime as a choice, not a given, opens a new set of possibilities.

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When we stopped locking young people up for drug crimes, the sky didn't fall. Instead, crime kept declining. We could make that same choice about guns, Bayless says. We could make that same choice about stolen cars and assaults. These are real problems, but we can be as creative as we are willing to be about the solutions we choose.

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If declining juvenile crime helps explain falling youth incarceration rates, could the reverse be true as well? What if closing prisons for juveniles has actually helped reduce crime? Most of the researchers, advocates, and administrators I spoke to were hesitant to embrace this claim.

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The researchers were cautious because they've been trained to guard against making causal claims based on a correlation. As for the advocates, some worried about pinning their prison-closing agenda on something as unpredictable as crime rates. Others believe that locking up youth is wrong, full stop, so whether it reduces crime is simply irrelevant. Fair enough.

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But I think that opponents of youth prisons, and I'm one, should take up the crime-fighting mantle. After all, some causal theories are more plausible than others. If, as Iser and others have shown, even a short stint in juvenile prison increases a person's risk of dropping out of high school and being arrested, wouldn't not putting them in prison necessarily reduce those bad outcomes?

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If that's correct, maybe we should think of this century's first two decades as a virtuous cycle. Less crime meant fewer prisons, and fewer prisons meant less crime. David Muhammad was one of the few reformers who volunteered the argument that closing youth prisons cuts crime. His reasons were a mix of logic, doing less of a harmful thing has to help, and personal experience.

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What Muhammad most remembers about his own involvement in the juvenile system is how lucky he was. None of his three arrests led to more than five days of detention. Most kids with my charges would have been sent to camp, he recalls, referring to California's county-run prisons. If I had, I'm not sure we'd be having this conversation. I saw what happened to my friends who got sent to camp.

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Same charges as me, just not as lucky. To a person, they ended up in the adult system. I flourished because I wasn't touched. Can doing nothing really be enough? For some teenagers, the University of Miami criminologist Alex Piquero says the answer is yes. Piqueiro ran the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2022 and 2023.

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Before that, he was an author of the landmark Pathways to Desistance study, which tracked over 1,300 teenagers who went through juvenile systems in Philadelphia and Phoenix into young adulthood. One of the things that people don't understand is how many young people who commit delinquent acts will simply grow out of that phase on their own, Piquero says.

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They mature, their brains develop, and they learn to make better decisions. But others need help, and in the past three decades, there has been a remarkable, if largely unacknowledged, explosion of initiatives designed to provide it.

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Some, like MST Services, with its awkwardly named Multisystemic Therapy Program, provide counseling and mental health services to young people and their families with the goal of helping them address the factors that have led them to break the law.

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Others, like the National Youth Advocate Program and Boston's ROCA Inc., pair young people with histories of violence or delinquency with mentors and advocates who offer therapy and connect them to education and employment services What these programs have in common is evidence to support their effectiveness.

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As the Sentencing Project's Richard Mendel explains, the research is clear that kids who are placed in one of these programs tend to do better than those who are sent to a juvenile facility, and the group that does best of all is those who are diverted from the system entirely.

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Mohamed didn't have the benefit of a formal evidence-based program, but he found something else that for him was just as powerful. Not long after his third arrest, his girlfriend told him about a program that worked with young people in trouble. Muhammad had his doubts, but he agreed to go once.

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The group, the Omega Boys Club, now called Alive and Free, was founded in 1987 by a San Francisco middle school teacher, Joe Marshall, and a school counselor, Jack Jackwa, who sought to create a haven amid the violence and turf wars of the crack epidemic. Their motto was, from the jailhouse to the schoolhouse, Muhammad recalls learning at his first meeting.

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I liked the sound of that, and I liked their energy. He returned for a second meeting, and a third, and it soon became a habit. Omega promised college scholarships to teenagers who stuck with the program, which clinched the deal for Muhammad. He stopped selling drugs and started attending school, where an English teacher introduced him to black studies and a football coach noticed his athleticism.

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By senior year, his dismal sophomore 0.6 GPA had become a 3.8. Omega kept its commitment and helped pay for him to attend Howard University. Muhammad has no doubts about whom to thank for his turnaround. Not his parents, not his friends, not his brothers. I thank my English teacher, my coach, and Omega. There are more Omegas than you know. As Donovan X. Ramsey chronicles in When Crack Was King...

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One of the least acknowledged legacies of the crack era is how many ordinary people looked at the madness and the carnage and, like Marshall and Jacqua, decided to do something about it.

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They started after-school tutoring programs in church basements, enlisted friends to join them as mentors to struggling teenagers, led marches and rallies and vigils against community violence and organized car washes and cookouts to fund scholarships like the one that sent Muhammad to Howard. Some of these efforts were one-off affairs, after which people returned to their busy lives.

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Others blossomed into neighborhood organizations, local non-profits, and community-led schools. Collectively, such initiatives have contributed significantly to the decrease in crime rates, says the Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey, who has long been interested in how violence affects young people and their communities.

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While conducting the research for his 2018 book, Uneasy Peace, Sharkey noticed the proliferation of neighborhood nonprofits beginning in the 1990s. He found that for every 10 organizations focused on community development or violence prevention, the murder rate in a community dropped by 9%, and violent crime dropped by 6%. Sharkey's research is never far from Muhammad's mind. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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David Muhammad's middle school in Oakland, California labeled him gifted and talented, but classes bored him. The streets were more appealing, and by ninth grade, he had found a group of friends to skip school and sell drugs with. He remembers it as easy money. There were a lot of people who wanted drugs in East Oakland and South Berkeley in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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As long as you avoided joining a crew or getting involved in neighborhood beefs, you could make money without much violence. Muhammad's parents had little to say about how he spent his days. The couple met while registering voters in Georgia in the 1960s, but they were never as passionate about parenting as they had been about civil rights.

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When Muhammad was three, his parents split up, and he was raised in a household with his mother and two older brothers. When he was 15, his mother moved to Philadelphia with her boyfriend, leaving Muhammad in the care of his brothers, ages 20 and 21, both of whom were involved in Oakland's drug scene. This worked out pretty much the way you would expect.

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Over the next two years, Muhammad says, he was arrested three times for selling drugs, attempted murder, and illegal gun possession. The first two cases were dismissed. He received probation for the gun charge. We've seen this story too many times, Muhammad reflects. A black kid from Oakland with absentee parents and a juvenile record. It's not supposed to end well, right?

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But for Muhammad, it did. He wound up graduating from Howard University, running a nonprofit in Oakland called the Mentoring Center, and serving in the leadership of the District of Columbia's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Then he returned to Oakland for a two-year stint as chief probation officer for Alameda County in the same system that once supervised him.

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As Muhammad says, I went from being on probation to the head of probation, and I went from being locked up on the second floor to a corner office on the fourth floor. Muhammad's unlikely elevation came during a remarkable, if largely overlooked, era in the history of America's juvenile justice system.

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Between 2000 and 2020, the number of young people incarcerated in the United States declined by an astonishing 77%. I mean, the graph says it all, Muhammad said, when I showed him the results of an annual survey by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

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This federal agency asks states and counties around the country to report the number of young people locked up in juvenile facilities on a single day each October. While this one-day count isn't perfect, because of reporting delays, for instance, the most recent figures are almost three years old. It is the best measure we have to track juvenile incarceration rates over time.

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You don't have to look at the graph for long to grasp the story. First, the part that won't surprise you. Given the well-chronicled rise in incarceration rates since the 1970s, the number of young people behind bars increased steadily in the 1970s and 1980s, and then rose more sharply in the 1990s. What comes next is surprising.

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Beginning in 2000, each year for the next two decades, there was a decline in the number of young people locked up. If you think of juvenile incarceration as a mountain, we reached the summit in 2000, and until 2020, we sprinted straight downhill. In the last two years for which we have data, 2021 and 2022, the number of incarcerated juveniles rose 10%, which worries Mohamed.

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But even factoring in that increase, the country locked up 75% fewer juveniles in 2022 than it did in 2000. When he speaks to public officials or community groups, Mohammed tells me, he shows them the same graph I showed him.

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And whenever I do, I always tell people, if you had told me in the 1990s that our juvenile incarceration rate would be this low today, my first thought would have been that you were crazy. And once I got over that, I would have said, great, we did it. Our work is done. I share Muhammad's surprise.

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I represented young people in Washington's juvenile court system in the 1990s when incarceration rates were at their peak. I spent more hours than I can count meeting with teenage clients in the dingy visiting room at the Oak Hill Youth Center, Washington's youth prison. Infested with rats, roaches, and even snakes, it was a shameful, brutal place.

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Each visit left me heartbroken for my clients, furious at the judges who ordered them there, and hopeless that things might change. And yet, ever since I first saw that graph in the early 2000s, I have been watching juvenile incarceration rates decline. Red states and blue states alike lock up fewer kids than in 2000, and in most, the drops have been precipitous.

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29 states have experienced declines of 75% or more, As the number of young people held in juvenile facilities has gone down, so too has the number of youth charged as adults. By 2020, 56% fewer young people were transferred to adult court than in 2006. With fewer juveniles behind bars, many states have shuttered youth facilities. Today, America has 58% fewer of them than it did in 2000.

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Large facilities, those holding more than 100 juveniles, have closed at an especially rapid clip. In 2000, there were 264 youth facilities of that size. By 2020, there were just 42. Because of these trends, says Richard Mendel, a senior research fellow at the Sentencing Project, by 2020, America incarcerated fewer young people than at any point since the 1920s.

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But the figures alone don't explain why this happened. How can it be that a country as punitive as ours reduced its juvenile incarceration rate to a level last seen when Calvin Coolidge occupied the White House and silent movies sold out theaters? And can that progress be sustained? Or is America about to reverse course and embark on another juvenile incarceration binge?

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A good place to start looking for the answer is California, which led the race to first fill and then empty its youth prisons. In the 1970s, California's youth system incarcerated about 5,000 of the state's young people on any given day. By 1987, that figure had grown to over 8,000, on the way to a peak of 10,122 in 1996.

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Rather than build new youth prisons, the state filled existing ones beyond capacity. By the mid-1990s, California youth prisons were overcrowded and violent. The public remained largely unaware of what was going on behind bars. This is no accident. Prison walls keep incarcerated people in, but they also keep the rest of us out. This secrecy fosters ignorance.

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When was the last time you thought about what life is like for people in the prison or jail nearest to where you live? Juvenile prisons are especially good at hiding their true nature. Even those that feel like dungeons are festooned with pleasant names like Children's Center, Camp, or in Washington's case, Youth Center.

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The situation began to change in the early 2000s as lawyers and journalists exposed horrific abuses in the system. In 2003, the California-based prison law office sued the state over conditions in its juvenile facilities. In early 2004, a series of expert reports documented rampant violence and cruelty. One item in particular caught the attention of local and national media.

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Custom-built individual cages where youth deemed violent received their school lessons. An attorney for California's Youth Law Center told the Los Angeles Times that the cages made her think of Barnum and Bailey tiger cages and dog kennels. A clergyman at one of the facilities called them demonic.

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Two months after pictures of the cages came to light, video footage from a facility in Stockton showed counselors kneeling on the backs and necks of prisoners, beating and kicking the motionless young people. Six months later, the San Jose Mercury News published a multi-part exposé revealing that youth were regularly tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and forced into solitary confinement.

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While conditions in California's juvenile facilities were especially egregious, that state wasn't the only one to mistreat incarcerated youth. Texas's juvenile justice system was rocked by scandal in 2007 as revelations of sexual abuse and cover-ups led to the resignation of the board of directors of the Texas Youth Commission.

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In New York in 2009, a federal investigation revealed that excessive force by guards had left youth with concussions, broken teeth, and fractured bones. By 2011, an influential Annie E. Casey Foundation report, No Place for Kids, revealed that violence and abuse had been documented in the juvenile facilities of 39 states.

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As David Muhammad recalls those years, expose after expose piled up to prove to the public what many insiders already knew. The biggest recidivists in the system were the institutions. Alongside revelations of abuse came evidence of just how much money was being spent on juvenile prisons.

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In 2008, the American Correctional Association estimated that it cost, on average, $88,000 a year to incarcerate a young person. Some states spent much more than that. Costs in California, for example, exceeded $250,000 a year. State funding for K-12 education, by contrast, was roughly $11,000 per student.

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States might have been willing to tolerate such outlays when coffers were flush, but these figures came to light during the Great Recession of the late 2000s, causing more states to doubt the merits of lavishly funding abusive prisons. Proving that juvenile prisons were violent and expensive won some allies to the cause of closing them. But by itself, it wouldn't have been enough.

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After all, adult prisons are also violent and expensive, yet it has been extraordinarily difficult to close them. During the same period in which the juvenile prison system shrank by 75%, the adult prison population fell by only 12%. Prison is deeply rooted in the American consciousness. As Angela Y. Davis has written, we treat it as an inevitable fact of life, like birth and death.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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residency, a grueling process that was based in part on a judgment of his character. Jennifer had begun collecting dozens of letters from people in Rome to help his case, and now she took out a folder and started to read a few to Jaime. "'He strives every day to live as a man of God,' wrote a leader from his church. "'He has a deep integrity and a huge giving heart.'"

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Many of his customers only want to deal with him because he has the biggest smile, a co-worker wrote. He's been the friend I counted on going back to middle school. Jennifer stacked the letters together and put them back in the folder. You matter to people here, she said. Their politics might not show it, but they care about you. Jaime turned away from the TV and looked at her.

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How many letters do you think we need? As many as we can get, she said, because maybe her husband could be saved by some of the same people whose votes had put him at risk. What about Sky? she asked. A few days later, Sky drove across Rome to visit Jaime and Jennifer and babysit his grandchildren.

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He brought along some candy for the children and his, quote, go bag of survival gear, which had traveled with him everywhere for the last several years. It contained all the supplies he thought he might need to be self-sufficient in a power outage or a societal collapse.

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Tourniquets, binoculars, knives, whistles, flashlights, water filters, fire starters, a snake bite kit, a firearm, a slingshot, a Bible. He drove by the small house where he'd grown up on the west side of Rome. The yard was overgrown, and a group of men idled on a corner. Probably drug traffickers, Skye said. I don't have much faith in humanity anymore.

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He continued past an abandoned Baptist church and then a pizza parlor decorated with a Mexican flag. MS-13 is starting to operate out of there, he said, repeating a rumor he'd heard from a friend in law enforcement. They're trying to take over the whole neighborhood. Drugs, sex trafficking, you name it.

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This was how he'd come to see Rome through his work as an animal control and corrections officer, as a city of instability and increasing danger. Thousands of immigrants had moved into the area from Mexico and Central America over the last decade, helping to boost manufacturing and revitalize the downtown. But Sky had also encountered other impacts of immigration as a part of his work.

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He captured free-range pit bulls whose owners came from countries that didn't have leash laws and dealt with local cockfighting rings with ties to cartels. He dealt with drug overdoses that traced to fentanyl from Mexico. He learned to recognize the gang colors and graffiti tags popping up across Georgia. Norteños, Mexican Mafia, Latin Kings, MS-13.

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He didn't think of the border issue as some faraway abstraction. It was the gangs, drugs, and sometimes also the inmates he dealt with every day. Just a few months earlier, an undocumented immigrant had been trying to flee the police in Rome at 2 a.m. in a supercharged Dodge Charger when he hit another car, killing two people and critically injuring a one-year-old.

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The blood of these innocent Americans is on the hands of every open borders Democrat, Representative Greene had said then. And Sky believed that was true. Illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs, replacing your kids' schools, replacing your culture, Greene said.

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And even though the mainstream media dismissed her comments as part of a racist conspiracy theory, Sky wondered if she might have a point. His former elementary school now served dozens of students who spoke English as a second language. The old wedding shop downtown was starting to specialize in dresses for quinceaneras.

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About an hour up the freeway, the textile town of Dalton, Georgia, had become majority Hispanic with an annual parade to celebrate Mexico's independence. Sky pulled into Jaime's cul-de-sac and carried his go-bag into the house. Nowhere could he sense the country's political tensions escalating like inside his own family.

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He shared a house with his father, but they hadn't spoken for 13 months, ever since his father accused Sky of being a, quote, radical foot soldier for Trump. His sister-in-law was transgender, but Sky refused to use new pronouns or change the way he talked because, he said, he didn't believe in that PC crap.

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In the kind of reporting that I do, I might in the end write about one person or one family's experience. But I begin that process by talking to a lot of people to try to understand a situation better and to try to begin figuring out who it is that I'm going to go spend time with.

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His wife, a Democrat, had briefly considered moving out a few days after the election, accusing Sky of betraying their Hispanic grandchildren with his vote. And now he was navigating another divide with Jaime, who Sky said he cared for like a son. Sky had been skeptical when Jennifer first introduced him to Jaime, worrying that she would complicate her life by marrying an undocumented immigrant.

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But Jaime had proven himself, Sky said, as a devout Christian, a great father, a model family man. Jaime handed his one-year-old son to Sky and told him about his latest long-shot plan before Trump took office. To travel back to Mexico, wait for paperwork, re-enter the United States, and then apply for legal residency.

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He and Jennifer had an appointment with an immigration lawyer in Atlanta, and Jaime said they might need help with childcare, legal fees, and letters of support. "'It's stupid that they make it this hard for someone like you,' Sky said." We agree, Jaime said. I know it might not always seem like it, but I've got your back, Sky said. I like Trump, but he's a blowhard. He's a salesman.

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He'll toughen things up on the border, but he's not actually coming after people like you. Nobody's putting you on a bus unless they get by me. Jaime and Jennifer drove out of Rome, past the MAGA souvenir stand, and toward the suburban Atlanta law office of Uriel Delgado. They gave him Jennifer's binder of evidence, the routine artifacts of a life in the United States.

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Tax forms, school report cards, letters of support, car payments, mortgage documents, credit card bills. Super organized, Delgado said. It's cut and dry, a perfect case. So, it's easy? Jaime asked. Not exactly, Delgado said.

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He explained that Trump had equivocated over the years about how to treat DACA recipients, but now he was stalking his new administration with officials who were eager for mass deportations. Right now, in terms of how alarmed I am about the next four years, I'd say the situation is a 9 out of 10.

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He told them about some of his other clients in the last few weeks, the daily panic he witnessed in his office, the desperation, the devastation when all he had to offer were consolations and dead ends. So, yeah, he said, make that a 10 out of 10. Even an easy case just got very hard.

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In Jaime's situation, Delgado said the first step was to apply for advance parole, essentially a travel document that would allow Jaime to leave the United States and re-enter lawfully.

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And that means I'm searching through people's Facebook pages, through Twitter, through GoFundMe sites, through people's comments in the local media to try to understand who might be in this situation where they live in a community and love a community that now has voted in a way that may result in their deportation.

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The wait time for approval could take anywhere from six to 24 months, unless Jaime had a reason to apply on an emergency basis, in which case he might be able to make it back into the country before Trump's inauguration. A lot of my clients might have a relative in Mexico who's sick or dying, Delgado said. They say they need to go visit, and that's how they get emergency permission.

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I don't have anything like that, Jaime said. My family is all here. No distant relative that might have some kind of illness? No, Jaime said. Okay, what about a medical issue yourself, Delgado said. Maybe a dental problem, something where you need to go to Mexico to afford the treatment. Not really, Jaime said. And Jennifer sighed and nudged his shoulder.

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She knew that her husband sometimes cost himself a sales commission at work because he refused to exaggerate or take advantage of a customer. He believed in following the rules, even when they were stacked against him. We'll figure something out, Jennifer said. But what's holding us back is finances. What number should I be aiming for? Like a total from now until he gets his green card.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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Let's see, Delgado said, and he took out a calculator and started adding up the numbers. There were the government costs of renewing his DACA, $555, filing for advanced parole, $630, adjusting his status, $1,440, and applying for a new work permit, $410. Then we have the legal fees, Delgado said. I'm under market, but that's still about $4,500. And then there's my airfare, obviously, Jaime said.

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Right, Delgado said. And my airfare, Jennifer said. I'm not going to be separated because if something goes wrong and they don't let you back in, her voice trailed off and she started to cry. plus hotel, plus travel expenses, plus the time it will cost me at work, Jaime said. Jennifer leaned her head on the table and started to pray, and Jaime reached for her hand.

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And even if we find all this money and go through with it, there's still a risk it might be for nothing, right? Jaime said. There's always a risk, Delgado said. You might not get approved. There could be delays. It could drag on. And before anything happens, I might get deported. You might get deported, Delgado agreed. But the longer you wait, the bigger that chance gets.

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Jaime and Jennifer gathered their paperwork, thanked him, and said they would seek out a loan and send over a deposit once they got back to Rome. Rome, huh? Delgado said. That's where I grew up. Small town. Real conservative. There's still a lot of that, Jaime said. Apparently, Delgado said.

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He told them about his parents, who immigrated from Mexico to Georgia as children and later were given amnesty under President Ronald Reagan. They worked in menial jobs, saved, and eventually managed to buy a building in the center of downtown Rome, where they opened a restaurant and a nightclub. It was a popular place, especially among the city's growing number of immigrants.

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But neighboring business owners kept creating new obstacles, challenging their liquor license, citing arcane building codes, filing noise complaints, and eventually resorting to outright racism by accusing Delgado's family of a far-fetched connection to a Mexican cartel. The Rome police kept showing up at the restaurant. The city council got involved.

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One of the dozen or so people that I found and began talking to was a guy named Jaime Cachua, who is 33 years old and has lived in Rome, Georgia, a relatively small town in North Georgia, ever since he was 10 months old.

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Eventually, his parents decided to close the business and follow Delgado to Atlanta, where he'd become a lawyer in part so he would be able to defend his family if they suffered discrimination again. Every time I drive up that way, I still feel this anger, this thickness in the air, Delgado said. I get that, Jaime said. It's a complicated place. It's that small-town mindset, Delgado said.

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Yeah, but it's not all bad, Jaime said. There's a lot of goodness underneath. You think so? Delgado asked. I hope so, Jaime said. And then he followed Jennifer to the car and started driving home.

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Jaime loves Rome, went to high school there, got his first job there, met his wife there, is raising four children there, loves his church, and is in so many ways seen as like a pillar of this community. He works at a car dealership, and his job at the dealership is essentially to be like a mascot.

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They want him in the front of the dealership because Jaime smiles and knows everybody and makes everybody else feel good. And now he's looking around this place and trying to understand, what do they really think about me? And so what he's struggling with is, in many ways, a sense of disorientation about the community he loves and the place in which he grew up.

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So I decided I wanted to write about Jaime. Jaime is in a situation where he has a lot to lose. One of the things that Jaime said to me over the phone in an early conversation was that he didn't understand how so many people who said that they loved him could have voted in a way that put him at such imminent risk.

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For today's Sunday read, I'll be sharing an article that I wrote about an undocumented immigrant who is now scrambling to stay in the United States, in part because many of his friends and even close family members voted to support President Trump and his plans for mass deportation.

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Those people for Jaime included his father-in-law, a person who had officiated his wedding and who he really cared for and trusted. That made me want to know, how did people make sense of this immigration situation in the country? And how did these relationships that were so central to Jaime impact people's votes? So I went along with a photographer, Aaron Schaaf.

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We traveled to Rome, Georgia, and we spent many days inside his house with him and with his kids, with his father-in-law who had voted for President Trump. I followed them to an appointment in Atlanta with their immigration attorney. But also, I spent enough time there to establish a trust where they were comfortable with me.

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And they started having some of these difficult conversations in my presence. And I got to ask them about what they were experiencing and watch them try to untangle this huge and complicated and for them very scary crisis. One of the things that was interesting and surprising to me in Rome was seeing that so many people are capable of voting to support mass deportation.

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And yet at the same time, they are caring and loving and appreciative of some of the undocumented immigrants who they know and who exist around them. And that duality is a really complicated and interesting thing to explore. And I think also will be a really important difference if, in fact, mass deportations begin in the coming months. So here's my article.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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Our audio producer today is Tali Abacasis. And the original music you'll hear was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. Thanks for listening. His wife was spiraling into insomnia and his children were afraid to go to school. So Jaime Cachua sought out the person he trusted most in a crisis.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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He sat at his kitchen table in rural Georgia across from his father-in-law, Skye Atkins, the family patriarch. Jaime, 33, hadn't seen his own father since he was 10 months old when he left Mexico in a car seat bound for the United States.

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It was Sky, 45, who had stood by Jaime at his wedding, helped him move into his first house, and stayed at the hospital overnight when one of Jaime's children was sick with pneumonia. "'We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,' Jaime told him. "'There's a chance we could lose everything.'" "'Isn't that a bit dramatic?' Sky asked. "'How? Help me understand.'"

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Jaime muted the football game on TV and began to explain his new reality as an undocumented immigrant after the election of Donald Trump, who had won the presidency in part by promising to deport more than 11 million people living in the country illegally. Trump's aides were discussing plans to build detention camps and enlist the military to carry out mass deportations beginning on day one.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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In the weeks since President Trump was elected back to office, he has begun making plans, as he's said repeatedly, to begin mass deportations on day one in office. At the same time, more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States have begun scrambling to try to figure out how they might be able to stay in the country.

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Their local Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, was saying she couldn't wait to see it happen. Jaime's best chance to become a legal U.S. resident was a new program for immigrants like himself, people who were married to U.S. citizens and had lived in the country for at least 10 years without committing any crimes.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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But just a few days earlier, that program had been struck down by a Trump-appointed federal judge. There's nothing to stop them from rounding me up once he takes office, Jaime said. Sky had spent much of his adulthood preparing to protect his family in a crisis. He'd learned survival tactics in the Army and had trained in hand-to-hand combat as a Georgia corrections officer.

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In the last few years, as he sensed the country becoming more polarized and volatile, he'd built up a small collection of firearms and a cache of emergency supplies. He'd been anticipating a moment when the government might rise up against his family, but this particular crisis was one he'd helped to create. I'm going to be straight with you, he told Jaime. I voted for Trump.

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I believe in a lot of what he says. I figured as much, Jaime said. You and just about everyone else around here. It's about protecting our rights as a sovereign country, Sky said. We need to shut down the infiltration on the border. It's not about you. It is about me, Jaime said. That's the thing I don't understand.

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More than anger or even fear, what Jaime had experienced most in the last several weeks was a rising sense of disorientation about the people he loved and the place he considered home. He'd lived all but the first year of his life in Rome, a riverside town of 40,000 in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

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He was a customer service specialist at the local car dealership, a worship team volunteer at church, and the host of family barbecues in his neighborhood cul-de-sac. But lately, the trucks at his dealership were festooned with Trump flags. His pastor was delivering sermons about the, quote, sanctity of borders.

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And his neighborhood was lined with political signs, including one that read, start shipping off illegals now. More than 70% of voters in surrounding Floyd County had chosen Trump and his mass deportations, including many of Jaime's friends and family members. When Trump was elected for the first time in 2016, Jaime had been single and childless, with no real attachments.

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Now his wife, Jennifer, was up all night on the computer, researching the intricacies of immigration law and trying to hire a lawyer, even though they were thousands of dollars in debt. His seven-year-old twins were sorting out clothes so it would be easier to pack in an emergency.

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Jaime and Jennifer had considered moving their family to Canada or Spain or even Mexico, but Jaime didn't know anyone there, and his rusty Spanish came out in the thick southern drawl. "'I've never felt like a foreigner until now,' he told Skye. "'I'm not going to let anything happen that puts your family at risk,' Skye said. "'It already did,' Jaime said."

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All those criminals that Trump's been talking about, the rapists, the gang members, that's not you, Skye said. He had heard Trump say that he would deport, quote, the bad guys first and possibly show leniency to immigrants who had been brought to the country as children. You deserve to be here, Skye said. To me, you're basically American. But I'm not, Jaime said.

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He had done whatever he could to pass as American ever since he was about five, when his grandfather first taught him some of the rules of assimilation in the Deep South. No baggy clothes, no bandanas, no lowrider cars, no accent, no speaking Spanish outside the home when he could help it. Instead, he became conversant in the language of salvation and hunting rifles and Georgia Bulldogs football.

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He asked his teachers and later his bosses to say his name not as Jaime, the typical Spanish pronunciation, but as Jamie. His younger brother, who was born a few years later as a U.S. citizen at a hospital in downtown Rome, took advantage of his government benefits and kept getting in minor legal trouble. Meanwhile, Jaime had never broken a law of any kind.

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Many of these people have been in the United States for decades, since they were children. And they live in communities, in many cases, that voted heavily for a president who has promised to deport them. And these immigrants are struggling not only with a sense of fear about what's going to come next, but also with a sense of betrayal and confusion.

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He worked 50 hours each week at the dealership, drove below the speed limit, paid his taxes on time, and smoothed the creases out of books before returning them to the library.

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But no amount of adherence to the rules made up for the one he'd broken before he was old enough to walk or talk when his family drove him across the border because his mother had found work at a chicken processing plant outside Rome. More than 30 years later, his presence remained illegal.

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He wasn't eligible for social security or food stamps or unemployment benefits or any kind of health insurance he could afford. All he had was a temporary work permit because of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects some immigrants who arrived in the country as children from being deported.

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Recently, Trump had signaled a willingness to work with Democrats to help DACA recipients stay in the country as a matter of the heart. But he had also targeted DACA for cancellation during his first term, and his allies were continuing to challenge the program with a pending lawsuit that seemed destined for the Supreme Court.

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Jennifer didn't know what to believe or whom to trust, so she had started spending her evenings on a Facebook page for DACA recipients, trying to crowdsource ideas about what to do next. Some people are going dark and hiding, she told Jaime one night as she scrolled online after all four of their children were in bed. Should that be us? How? Jaime asked. I'm registered because of DACA.

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They know our address. They know where I work. If they want to start grabbing people, I'm the easiest one to get. You might lose your work permit, she said. We should save, scrounge, prepare for poverty. He laughed and kept his eyes on the TV. They'd just bought a $120 car battery on installment, spreading the payments out over four months. We can deal with being broke, he said. We're good at that.

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This isn't a joke, she said. Why am I the one doing all of the work? Jennifer's family had lived in Rome for generations, and she had barely stopped to consider Jaime's immigration status in their first months together. She assumed it was a simple paperwork issue that would be fixed by their marriage or by having children together who were born in the United States.

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But instead, they'd spent years running up against the obstacles and expenses of the country's narrow pathway to citizenship. She had been manic ever since the election, often forgetting to eat or sleep. She was making to-do lists, researching legal codes, starting fundraisers, and leading prayer circles, even as Jaime sometimes seemed increasingly withdrawn.

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Hi, my name is Eli Saslow, and I'm a writer at large for The New York Times. I write in-depth pieces about how the big issues in the country, the big tension points, impact people's lives.

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Is there any point fighting what people clearly want? He sometimes wondered. Rome had chosen this outcome, and now there was a MAGA souvenir stand off the interstate and a parade of trucks with Trump flags honking their way through downtown. Jaime had taken a few weeks off from going to the church that he loved.

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He'd slept through his alarm and laid in bed on his phone, scrolling through news stories about Trump and his appointees speculating about reforms to keep immigrants from, quote, "...poisoning the blood of the country." such as deporting families together, taking away people's green cards, and ending birthright citizenship. Jaime believed the only way to ensure his safety was by becoming a U.S.

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The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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citizen. And in his case, that process was expensive, protracted, and improbable. A lawyer had told him that he would first have to leave the United States, return to Mexico, possibly wait weeks or even months, and then risk detainment by re-entering the country with a legal inspection. Only then could he even begin to apply for U.S.

The Daily

The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

99.5

about the people around them in the communities that they love. It was their former teachers who voted in this way. It was their bosses at work. It was their friends. And in many cases, it was even their family members. And so I began having conversations with some of those immigrants about what that felt like and how they were making sense of this country that they've lived in for so long.

The Daily

'The Interview': Denzel Washington Has Finally Found His Purpose

0.769

And how do your colleagues feel about them? Basically, what's it like? Details are really helpful. When was the moment that you realized things were changing? Where were you? What happened? How did you react? How'd you feel? We understand that a lot of people are nervous about going on the record.

The Daily

'The Interview': Denzel Washington Has Finally Found His Purpose

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We can keep names anonymous and we can limit identifying information, but we are a podcast, so people will hear your voice. Just to be clear, we won't disclose your information to anyone. If you want to share your experience, even just a few lines, record a voice memo and email it to us at thedailyatnytimes.com. That's thedailyatnytimes.com with the subject line, Federal Worker Experience.

The Daily

'The Interview': Denzel Washington Has Finally Found His Purpose

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Or you can reach out through the New York Times anonymous tip form at nytimes.com slash tips. If you use that method, please mention The Daily. And if possible, please let us know which federal agency you work for. Okay, now, here's this week's episode of The Interview.

The Daily

'The Interview': Ben Stiller on 'Severance,' Selling Out and Being Jewish Today

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The question of basically, is democracy good or bad, is I think a secondary question to, is it what we actually have?

The Daily

‘I Felt Ashamed.’ Why One Lawyer Resigned When His Firm Caved to Trump

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The president signed an executive order singling out Perkins Coie.

The Daily

‘I Felt Ashamed.’ Why One Lawyer Resigned When His Firm Caved to Trump

28.107

Those who made the list are a real murderer's row, including Covington and Burling. Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, big law, white shoe firm, some of the best lawyers in the country.

The Daily

‘I Felt Ashamed.’ Why One Lawyer Resigned When His Firm Caved to Trump

59.497

President Trump yesterday rescinded an executive order targeting prominent law firm Paul Weiss. Milbank joins firms Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, which also cut a deal. The question left in the air, of course, is who's next?

The Daily

Stephen Miller’s Return to Power

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President Donald Trump's second term in the White House began with a flurry of unilateral actions, and he's showing no signs of slowing down.

The Daily

Trump Takes Aim at the Department of Education

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The fields are empty, the playgrounds deserted, and all across the United States, school buildings sit empty.

The Daily

Trump Takes Aim at the Department of Education

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Here's what else you should know today.

The Daily

Trump, Europe and the New World Order

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It is a great honor to be in Tokyo. the first stop on my first visit to Asia as President of the United States.

The Daily

Trump, Europe and the New World Order

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China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.

The Daily

Trump, Europe and the New World Order

715.7

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia. We took these steps in close coordination with our European allies. And so the partnership was still functional.

The Daily

The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges

20.57

Ruffo is likely the reason your conservative uncle knows the phrase critical race theory to begin with. He's the reason that Trump became obsessed with it as a buzz term for pretty much anything to do with race.

The Daily

The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges

42.314

After weeks of intense scrutiny, Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned today. Critics allege she plagiarized some of her academic writings. Chris Ruffo led a coalition of mostly right-wing opponents in a plan to remove Gay as Harvard's president.

The Daily

The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges

84.013

$175 million at UPenn. $9 billion at Harvard. $790 million for Northwestern. And dozens of grants at Princeton University reportedly totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

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Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

1034.596

Khan going viral this season for leading his team out to play carrying a boombox.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

1156.048

Every year around this time, doctors see a surge in men scheduling vasectomies. Men figure if they're going to be laid up on the couch for a couple of days, it might as well be at a time when there's something to watch on TV, like 48 basketball games in four days. Urologists are catching on, even offering deals with slogans like, it's hip to get snipped. Others offer basketball-shaped ice packs.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

128.993

This morning, following from that stunning lapse in national security, Secretary of Defense Pete Hagsath, along with other top members of President Trump's national security team, sharing details about a planned large-scale attack on Yemen earlier this month on the commercial message app Signal. and inadvertently including journalist Jeffrey Goldberg on that chain.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

1288.868

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

1309.48

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

153.379

Hegseth shared operational details of forthcoming strikes, weapons deploying, and attack sequencing.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

261.825

According to Goldberg, the administration officials reacting after the strikes, excellent, a good start. Waltz even sending several emojis.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

749.022

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Desperately Spin Yemen Group Chat Fumble | Mayor Michelle Wu

769.633

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Black History Month

1946.149

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Black History Month

82.369

February 1st, 1965. It's the Black History Month Daily Show.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1005.847

The mess they use is dumb mess. They've been calculated in a way that makes back of the envelope Crayola crayon scrawlings look like the work of Isaac Newton.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1064.456

Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated writer and comedian who'll be out on the road soon with a new stand-up comedy tour. Please welcome my good friend, it's Nimesh Patel! Look at us, two guys on TV. We did it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1114.094

So people know, when I came to New York City as a civilian in 2011, and I wasn't living in America even. I came over, and I came to New York City for the first time, and I was trying to do stand-up comedy in New York City. And I went to open mic night, and there was three people at this open mic night, one of them was like some white dude, some other dude.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

112.489

This is like every customer service call I've ever been on. Oh, I'm sorry, this is billing. You're looking for technical support. Let me transfer you. Hello, this is technical support. Oh, sorry, you need billing. Can someone just help me cancel my cable? Except for Comedy Central, which is a vital service for American society.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1139.392

Yeah, forgettable. The third person was you. And you hosted the show, and you gave me some stage time. And now here we are. And here we are, yeah.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1151.516

We did the show. And you were super nice to me. And you didn't care that I had an accent. You didn't treat me like some foreigner, which is more than I can say for the last Indian guy who was on this show. So thanks for being a cool person.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1192.531

Yeah, but even the homeless guys in New York know what's up. They know enough to be specific with the racism.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1206.156

I was studying for the bar exam.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1221.344

Why are you cheering that? None of them worked out. Dude, pre-med finance is like the most, pick a side.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1245.012

Sorry, I love that pre-med finance is like, I can't decide whether I want to help people or kill people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

131.216

But the Trump administration isn't just enjoying their fun new constitutional loophole. They're also going on offense. That's why Stephen Miller, Trump advisor and multiverse's most whiny Lex Luthor, was also on the driveway asking questions he did not want the answer to.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1345.366

I'll stick to the jokes. Okay, yeah. So what's going on with Indians and MAGA? As the Indian representative. No, look, I mean, there is something interesting.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1408.699

Let's end affirmative action, guys. All right, dude.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1473.481

That's me, dude. All right, well, you're going on tour, a stand-up tour soon, right? Can you tell us about the tour?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1526.557

Inside the trading has become very open now. Basically, all you need to do is join Truth Social.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1548.749

We don't mind the racism, but don't disrespect the SEC. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

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It's a dictionary term for it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

1593.067

Thank you so much for being my first friend in America. Thanks for always being very cool to me. Even though I came all the way from Australia at the time, you didn't treat me like a foreigner. And I'm very happy to be your friend here. Thanks so much. Thank you, man.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

173.823

You asked a question, man. You can't be mad that they're trying to answer you. It's like if a teacher said, OK, class, who can tell me the capital of Norway? Anyone? Anyone? Shut the up. Now answer the question. I said shut up. But it's not just Stephen Miller. The entire Trump administration is getting frustrated with how these dumb libs are whining about this one guy from Maryland.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

196.717

Oh, it's so awful. We accidentally sent a guy to the world's worst prison without trial or due process. Shut the up, okay? Because according to Homeland Security, he wasn't that great.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

219.602

This tween influencer is right. It's the position of this administration that all fathers are basically Osama bin Laden. I mean, seriously, this guy has no criminal record at all. If he's a terrorist, he might be the worst terrorist ever. I mean, he's been in America for 14 years and hasn't done any terrorism. So maybe Trump is right. Maybe immigrants really are lazy. What?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

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Like, what is happening here, okay? This is America. We don't just send someone to prison without evidence. We plant the evidence on them. It's called due process. But at least one Democrat is actually going to do something about this.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

276.007

This is a trap. It's a trap. Do not go. This guy's gonna go there and the prison guards are gonna be like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, Senator. Yeah, he's right inside that cell over there. Yeah, go on in. It's all the way in the back there. Just keep going. I mean, good for the Senator for what he's doing, but it's gotta be at least a little disappointing for Garcia.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

296.432

He's like, someone's coming to break me out of prison? Is it still Team Six? Is it the guy from Prison Break with the tattoos? No, it's me, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen. But maybe this is the beginning of a new resistance to Trump because other people are starting to fight back wicked hard.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

316.078

A showdown is now taking shape between the Trump administration and America's oldest university. The federal government announcing it will freeze more than $2 billion in grants for Harvard and $60 million in contracts after the school refused to comply with demands to limit activism on campus, eliminate its DEI programs, and make other changes.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

335.105

Holy shit, we finally found a force more powerful than Trump's hatred, Harvard's love of sending rejection letters. But look, I don't usually root for Harvard because they're Harvard. They've got everything. It's like rooting for Jeff Bezos to win the lottery. But in this case, I have to give them credit.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

35.876

Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Roy Chang. We got so much to talk about tonight. The Supreme Court gets left on red. Democrats are hitting up El Salvador for spring break. And someone at Harvard does not like them apples. So let's get into it. Yesterday was a big day in American history. A group of women finally met society's expectations to weigh zero pounds.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

353.714

They're standing up for their principles and for everyone's right to free speech, even if it means possible financial ruin.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

369.719

Okay, I hate them again. But the best part about Harvard's resistance to Donald Trump is that it gives people the chance to go on TV and let you know where they went to school.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

425.473

Oh God, the only thing worse than people bragging about going to Harvard is people pretending to be embarrassed about going to Harvard. It's like, oh, my darkest secret, please don't make me tell anyone, please, no, I went to Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard. My favorite guy is Lawrence O'Donnell. He's really embarrassed he has to talk about this.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

447.619

I mean, it's definitely not something he will bring up all the time over the course of many years.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

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So I know we're trying to bring people back from the El Salvador mega prison, but do they have room for one more by any chance? For more on Harvard's resistance to the Trump administration, let's go live to the White House with Josh Johnson.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

508.344

Uh, right. And since he's so powerful, he can also get Kilmer Garcia back from El Salvador.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

533.858

Okay, okay, wait. But since when does Trump respect sovereign nations? I mean, he's been talking all month about invading Greenland.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

551.635

Okay, so he should do that with El Salvador.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

571.422

Okay. Josh, Trump can't have it both ways, okay? How can he be fighting a trade war with China if he's so weak? Who you calling weak, bitch? All right?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

585.729

Okay. Okay, I think I'm getting it here. Okay, so when it comes to China, Trump is powerful. He's God on Earth. And Canada. He's Zeus.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

640.405

Okay, I'm sorry. I guess I just don't understand the power dynamic.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

65.086

And also, Donald Trump figured out that when the Supreme Court tells him to do something, he can just ignore them. Which is why I'm always saying the Supreme Court needs nukes, okay? That's way more effective than that little hammer. Because right now...

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

696.673

I have some disturbing news. America is not the only country in the world. But what do these other so-called countries think of America? To find out, we turn to Desi Lydic.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

78.536

It's been five days since they told Donald Trump to help bring back Kilmer Garcia after they, you know, accidentally deported him to the mega prison in El Salvador. And it doesn't seem like anyone's in a rush to bring him back.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

804.701

A viral AI generated video is making fun of U.S. China trade relations tensions escalate.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

859.394

We need to punish Mr. Trump a little bit.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

89.861

The Trump administration says it cannot return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Trump officials argue that since Abrego Garcia is locked inside a prison in El Salvador, it's essentially not their problem anymore and they can't do anything about it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

949.338

In a country known for its politeness, this morning, growing outrage.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

954.059

Many of them now boycotting American goods and travel here. This is my last day with an American product.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Harvard Rejects Trump Order, SCOTUS Gets Left on Read | Nimesh Patel

963.062

Social media erupting with calls to buy Canadian and boycott USA.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

1025.646

With brain power like that, it was no wonder Hegseth decided he didn't need his grad school diploma anymore. By the way, Harvard University? Let's see, let's do that. And there were still some challenges along the way, like the time Hegseth was banned from an assignment with his National Guard unit because someone noticed what looked like a white nationalist tattoo.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

1044.151

But soon, this recipient of two Bronze Stars earned the respect of America's greatest Bronze Star. And when Trump was reelected in 2024, He knew where to find a secretary of defense who was willing to get his hands dirty. I don't think I've washed my hands for 10 years.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

1095.754

The allegations of Hegseth's debauchery were overwhelming. Nothing now would be able to persuade the Senate that he was fit for... I intend to support Pete. He made the pledge to me that he will not touch a drop of alcohol as secretary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

1114.075

Oh, well, never mind then. And so America's war on woke is now truly ready to begin. With Pete Hegseth at the helm, the Department of Defense will finally have a true leader. Maybe if I do well, I'll get a pint. And one can only assume absolutely insane Christmas parties.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

818.191

Across the globe, the enemies of Uncle Sam are on the march. And the biggest war of all is the culture war. Taking on these kinky booted thugs demands a hero like no other. A man who will fight for America. for MAGA, and most of all, for his right to party. This is the Daily Showography of Pete Hegseth, over-served with honor. Pete Hegseth grew up in the Midwest, the most American part of America.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

846.965

He was the all-American boy, the varsity athlete who married his high school sweetheart, his best girl, who would then go on to be his second best girl, and then his third best girl. A family man through and through, he went through several families. It was at Princeton University that Pete first enlisted in the culture war. I ran the conservative publication on our campus.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

869.998

We were like bomb throwing. Fighting valiantly against the forces of diversity and gay, he championed traditional relationships between men and women, even if the woman is passed out drunk. I mean, technically, being unconscious is as anti-woke as you can get. After graduation, Hegseth joined the military, having given the matter careful consideration. I didn't know the Army from the Marine Corps.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

892.673

I mean, I didn't know anything. Back home in 2012, he decided to serve his country in another way. My name's Pete Hegseth, and I'm running to be your next United States Senator. Sadly, it was not to be, and Pete dropped out of the race to spend more time with whichever wife and family he was up to back then. Honestly, it's hard to keep track.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

912.458

Instead, Pete landed a job as the head of a small non-profit veterans group, which became even more non-profit after he nearly drove it into bankruptcy. Don't worry, the money went to a good cause. Cardigans! He was once again a man with a mission, and the stories of his exploits became legendary with the organization's HR department.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

936.806

Passing out in party buses, urinating on hotel lawns, leading a bar in chants of kill all Muslims, and getting kicked out of a strip club for trying to dance on stage. Eventually, his luck ran out, and Pete found himself dishonorably discharged from his nonprofit platoon. He was now almost completely without friends. Almost. Come on up, Pete. You're next on Fox & Friends.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

963.662

And while even Fox News had a few employees who quietly complained about Hegseth's habit of showing up drunk for work at 6 a.m., the network was mostly a perfect culture fit.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Pete Hegseth Grilled in Senate Hearing, Boyd Holbrook on Playing Johnny Cash

991.797

Who better to fight terrorism than the only soldier who's been waterboarded with champagne? More importantly, Fox brought Hegseth back to the front lines of the culture war.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

193.449

Saudi Arabia had a McDonald's mobile truck come on site so that President Trump could have his favorite McDonald's.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

326.36

Joe Biden. The guy can fall asleep instantly with the press watch. Who the hell wants to sleep with these people watching? And he's out cold. You see the dribble coming down the side of his cheek.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

417.813

Corruption! His sons, who now run the Trump Organization, have lucrative real estate deals in the works in all three countries the president is visiting.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

453.386

We turn to the uproar over the $400 million gift from the government of Qatar tonight, a luxury 747 jumbo jet to be used as Air Force One until the end of Trump's term when the White House says it would be decommissioned and donated to the Trump library.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

502.208

Attorney General Pam Bondi says the gift is, quote, legally permissible and not a bribe because Trump isn't giving Qatar anything in return.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

527.474

We should point out that Bondi previously worked as a foreign lobbyist for the nation of Qatar, earning about $115,000 a month.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

58.793

International humiliation, one after another.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

86.021

Overnight, President Trump touching down in Saudi Arabia, escorted by military jets, a lavish welcome for his first visit to the Middle East since his reelection.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

94.804

The Saudi prince greeted him at the airport, and he got a horse escort into the Saudi palace.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Saudi Arabia Gives Trump the Royal Treatment With McDonald's & a Mid-Meeting Nap | Matt Wolf

950.345

You said male baristas aren't masculine. I think you and I can both agree that male baristas are not exactly high, usually high on the testosterone. They are. Wait, pause for a second.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

1565.489

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

1586.083

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

1606.357

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big dill.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

1996.129

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

2019.397

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

950.063

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

970.674

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Interviews Trailblazing Women

990.927

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

1372.335

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

1392.945

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

2275.464

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

2298.731

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

43.109

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

66.385

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

84.97

Finally, our Nemo Boards shop also makes a good figure on mobile devices. And the illustrations on the boards are now much, much clearer, which is also important to us and what also makes our brand.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

880.851

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

901.442

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, melty mozzarella cheese, and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Caulipower, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

921.713

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

95.993

Start your test today for 1 euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

951.719

Finally, our Nemo Boards shop also makes a good figure on mobile devices. And the illustrations on the boards are now much, much clearer, which is also important to us and what also makes our brand.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's Tariff Boredom, Hegseth Goes Diet Woke, Sports War: Super Bowl | Jesse Eisenberg

962.748

Start your test today for 1 euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Escalates China Trade War, Fox News Ignores Market Slide | Mallory McMorrow

22.156

from the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central. It's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

1002.801

We want to create an environment where everyone is welcome, to make everyone else feel unwelcome. So.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

1014.864

Hey, Edward. You did a great job on that presentation.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

1027.037

Hey, Edward. You did a great job on that presentation. Can I touch your hair? I don't want to be in the video anymore.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

1045.452

For example, if you work in a department with less than four guys named Todd making good money, please call 911 immediately. Yep, me again.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

1072.097

Just like my dad intended, we founded this company.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

966.093

Over the last four years, you've been learning tools to fight racism, sexism, and other hateful behavior in the workplace.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Musk's Gov't Purge, Trump's J6 Revenge, Is Any of This Legal? | Nicole Avant

975.338

Let's get going. You come too, sugar tits. Getting rid of DEI in your office starts at the top. We've already fired your chief of diversity, as well as any other executives we suspect of secretly doing DEI.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1305.453

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1320.826

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1330.33

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1338.936

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1348.763

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1358.51

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

1364.632

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

175.728

A reporter from The Atlantic says he was mistakenly added to a group chat with top members of the Trump administration as they were texting back and forth about highly sensitive war plans.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

186.217

Jeffrey Goldberg. says he was included in a group chat full of our nation's top security officials discussing what we can only assume to be top secret plans to bomb Houthi targets across Yemen on March 15th. Everything from the weapons America would be deploying to the timing and the attack sequences. Oopsie poopsie!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2217.518

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2232.886

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2242.412

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2250.999

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2260.827

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2270.575

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2276.697

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2447.13

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2458.946

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

2466.311

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

32.213

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

43.297

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Which Speech Is Free in Trump’s America | Paul Rudd

51.401

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya

542.439

The FDA is looking to rehire around 300 people. The Trump administration will reverse staffing cuts to the 9-11 health fund.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya

585.182

We don't need to be wasting money on ridiculous items like seeing how fast shrimp can run on treadmills.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Earth Day

0.189

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months at AutoBay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Earth Day

1248.973

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Earth Day

783.8

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Earth Day

801.508

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Stewart Talks to Comedy Icons - Part 2

954.85

The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

1601.192

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

1621.8

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

2856.567

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

2877.155

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

2897.429

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

3061.403

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

3084.679

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

43.109

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Heel Turn on Zelenskyy & Elon's Interview Challenge | Matthew Desmond

66.381

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1306.34

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1321.712

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1331.235

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1339.821

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1349.648

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

1365.519

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

28.966

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3153.05

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3168.419

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3177.924

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3185.99

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3196.359

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3212.206

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3380.659

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3392.481

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

3399.843

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Jon Stewart on Trump’s 3rd Term Plans & Signalgate Lack of Accountability | Oren Cass

36.328

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1248.49

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1263.857

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1273.364

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1281.43

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1291.781

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

13.916

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

1307.659

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

2.091

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

21.279

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

300.001

11.44 a.m. Eastern, that time. Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with CENTCOM, we are a go for mission launch. 12.15 Eastern, F-18's launch, declaring this first strike package. 13.45, trigger-based F-18 first strike window starts. Target terrorist is at his known location, so should be on time. 14.15, strike drones on target. This is all caps. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

458.411

There were no war plans in any of this stuff.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

464.053

I would characterize this messaging thread as a policy discussion, a sensitive policy discussion, surely. What is a war plan?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

692.759

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

708.124

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

717.634

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

726.241

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

736.069

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Republicans Play "War Plan" Semantics as Journalist Brings Receipts | Steve Coogan

751.915

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

1456.387

You guys are way too young to remember this, but in the 1960s, early 70s, there was a show called Gilligan's Island.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

625.854

Hello, astronauts, and welcome back to Earth. You got to see dolphins before they went extinct. How cool is that? As you are flown back to the US, this video will re-acclimate your mind on what you missed while you were in space. First, the Gulf of Mexico you landed in is now the Gulf of America. But don't worry, the name change is symbolic. We're not going to war with Mexico.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

647.853

We're going to war with Canada and Greenland, maybe Panama, also Mexico. Oh, speaking of wars, when you left, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine. Now it's the other way around. Don't worry about it. For now, just focus on resting. And after you enter U.S.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

663.962

territory, your space capsule will face crippling steel tariffs, and you will be deported to an El Salvadoran prison, just until we're sure that you're not Venezuelan gang members. And after your release in 2026, you will be honored at the White House, which is now run by Fox News anchors. Also, the anti-vaccine guy is now in charge of vaccines. The anti-FBI guy is now in charge of the FBI.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

689.215

And the lady in charge of the WWE runs the education department, which is gone. These great leaders will welcome you all back, except for astronaut Sonny Williams. See, when you left, you were a female astronaut. Now you're a DEI astronaut. And also, you're fired. But don't worry, you'll find another job. Although just a heads up, the stock market is down and eggs are $400.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

DOGE Protestors Turn on Tesla & Astronauts Make It Home | Anthony Carrigan

711.029

But those are both good things and also Joe Biden's fault. At this point, you're probably wondering, when can NASA send me back up to space? Well, it probably can't. NASA just got doged, which is a real sentence now. So from all of us here in America, welcome to hell. Earth, welcome back to Earth.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

China Strikes Back at Tariffs by Roasting JD Vance & Selling Out Luxury Retailers | Sen. Tammy Duckworth

119.875

Vice President J.D. Vance is caught in a firestorm of his own making, calling the Chinese peasants.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

China Strikes Back at Tariffs by Roasting JD Vance & Selling Out Luxury Retailers | Sen. Tammy Duckworth

155.922

Tonight, we are seeing China trading insults with the vice president, J.D. Vance, in the latest knock against President Trump's trade war. That went so hard.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Greeted By Sword Dancers in Qatar & RFK Jr. Swims Up S**t Creek | Colum McCann

0.089

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Jordan Clever.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Greeted By Sword Dancers in Qatar & RFK Jr. Swims Up S**t Creek | Colum McCann

1676.303

Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Stock Market Meltdowns

773.072

Let's start with a $100 bill sitting in a bank. In a good economy, a banker is going to lend that $100 to, say, a farmer, who says, now that I've got the money, I can buy seeds from the seed people, a tractor from the tractor people, spray from the pesticide people. But then this year, a bunch of housing loans went bad, and bankers got nervous. Ah, very nervous.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Crashes the Oval Office, Trump Pushes Gaza Takeover | Colman Domingo

1004.464

And that's what I call high-quality tools.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Crashes the Oval Office, Trump Pushes Gaza Takeover | Colman Domingo

659.605

Live from the Oval Office, it's the must-see comedy special that will have you dozing in your chair. It's Elon Musk, Lologark.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Crashes the Oval Office, Trump Pushes Gaza Takeover | Colman Domingo

678.171

He's the CEO of comedy. I have detractors? You do, sir. You'll want to Neuralink these jokes straight into your brainstem. Featuring an opening act by the Balding Brothers. Order now and you'll get even more of Elon's most hilarious bits. Blackmailing with money? Go yourself. The one thing he's not cutting is the laughs.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Elon Crashes the Oval Office, Trump Pushes Gaza Takeover | Colman Domingo

715.921

Sponsored by Doge. Doge, we use the HIV prevention money to pay for this.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Lies in Joint Address & Rep. Al Green Leaves Early | Julien Baker & TORRES

234.431

Democrats interrupting just four minutes into the speech. Texas Democrat Al Green heckling the president, shaking his cane at him. Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson stopping the speech, ordering Green be removed from the chamber.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Proposes Gaza Takeover, Ko$ta Doin' Business | Julia Stiles

139.979

This morning, a stunning proposal from an American president. Donald Trump with the Israeli prime minister by his side, declaring that the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Proposes Gaza Takeover, Ko$ta Doin' Business | Julia Stiles

230.136

Donald Trump calling for the permanent resettlement of roughly two million Palestinians.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Proposes Gaza Takeover, Ko$ta Doin' Business | Julia Stiles

240.34

And he says he's willing to use the U.S. military to do it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1300.726

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1316.096

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1325.62

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1334.207

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1344.035

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

1359.905

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

2121.565

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

2132.648

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

2140.751

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

32.213

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

43.297

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

51.401

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

739.073

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

754.445

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

763.948

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

772.014

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

782.381

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump's "Liberation Day" Tariffs & Booker's Speech Breaks Senate Record | Melissa Arnot Reid

798.23

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1002.894

Miller became the Bronze Lord's most trusted minion.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1010.617

He conjured dark utterances for the new president's speeches.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1019.883

And fed him a constant stream of diabolical talking points.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1028.252

Never. Unless it was a joke to make fun of how girls are lame, obviously. Ha!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1036.187

Miller's ability to hold followers in his thrall became the stuff of legend.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1048.295

Indeed, this 39-year-old man doesn't look a day over 53. It seemed he could convince weak minds of anything. Whether it was that his master didn't wear terrible, ill-fitting clothes.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1061.104

or that he didn't actually lose the 2020 election.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1069.991

Okay, Miller's brief attempt at pretending not to be bald was taking it too far. But anything else... So now the creature stands astride his defiled kingdom.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

1088.324

And we must ask ourselves, is it truly he that is the monster or is it us? But no, seriously, he's the monster. It's like not even debatable. What an asshole.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

738.111

Come gather round the dying embers of democracy and attend my chilling tale. The legend of a pale wraith who haunts the soul of an entire nation. A vampiric fiend with an insatiable urge to suck.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

759.185

This is the Twisted Chronicle of Stephen Miller. What he does in the shadows. By now you surely know of the plague wrought by the bald monstrosity.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

781.932

This is how democracy dies. But what of the being's hideous origins? I first became aware of the wretched creature through tales told of him in the American West, in a cursed land called Santa Monica, a festering evil village with not even that great of a Ferris wheel. Even as a child, Stephen Miller struck fear into the hearts of the innocent, as his third grade teacher would later recall.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

823.692

Yes, while some creatures thirst for blood, this one had the taste for paste. But Miller's cravings could not be sated by glue.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

835.216

He began studying the dark teachings of his era's most demonic figures and was soon penning mad screeds to the local newspaper about the horrors at his liberal high school.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

865.345

Come on, buddy. Save something for your manifesto. The still-gestating monster was determined to wreak havoc any way he could.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

874.688

Whether it was jumping out of the stands into a girl's track meet to prove he was faster than them, or running for student government on a platform of being a total dick. By stepping out of the sunlight to run for office, Miller learned he was perhaps more suited to lurking in the shadows. Breaking the shackles of Santa Monica, Miller sojourned for a time at Duke University.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

911.118

Once again, beasting on every conceivable controversy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

938.313

I would say he probably wasn't much fun at parties, but I'm pretty sure he never got invited to any. Miller's facility with arcane maledictions soon caught the eye of America's greatest master of the dark arts. Joining us now from Raleigh, Stephen Miller, columnist for the Duke Chronicle, a student newspaper. And so the tiki torch was passed to a new generation.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Fights ABC Interviewer Over Photoshopped Image | Presidential Biographer Jon Meacham

961.656

With the notoriety he had achieved, Grosferatu insinuated himself into the entourage of some of the most repellent figures in America's hellmouth. During these years, he sent nearly a thousand emails planting stories in right-wing media. They didn't all cite well-known white nationalists, but it was more than you would like. And then, in June 2015, he found a master truly worthy of his devotions.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

0.189

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months at Auto Bay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1163.342

What items would be on your bucket list? What do you need to check off before you go to Mars? These people are really going, everybody.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1293.763

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1310.214

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1325.582

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1335.091

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1343.697

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1353.524

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1363.251

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1369.373

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1403.174

Suspects tried to start a fire with spaghetti sauce. Was karate kicking those birds? Attacked two people.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1792.883

A dog shoots its owner at the emoji.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1849.602

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1861.425

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

1868.788

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

28.966

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

36.31

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

773.527

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

791.244

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

794.463

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

809.851

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

819.358

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

827.965

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

837.793

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

847.52

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Desi Lydic

853.642

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Ronny Chieng

1.107

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Ronny Chieng

1197.495

Ronnie knew pizza this good wasn't meant to be caged. He also really loved prison escape movies.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Ronny Chieng

1223.513

In October 2017, Ronnie Chang smuggled thin crust pizza out of Cook County jail. Oh, Ronnie loved pizza, but he also hated Chicago deep dish. He had to find a way to get thin crust pizza to the people of Chicago. All it takes to get pizza out is cheese, dough, and time. That and a big ass poster. Ronnie Chain, who crawled through a river marinara and came out smelling like basil.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Josh Johnson

270.477

Congestion pricing is official.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Josh Johnson

884.817

I'm being indicted for you, the black population.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Josh Johnson

906.43

Good. These lights are so bright in my eyes that I can't see too many people out there, but I can only see the black ones. I can't see any white ones, you see? That's how far I've come. That's how far I've come. Oh, .

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Josh Johnson

940.921

Black conservatives understand better than most that some of the greatest evils in our nation's history have come from corrupt systems that try to target and subjugate others. You understand that? I think that's why the black people are so much on my side now, because they see what's happening to me happens to them.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Josh Johnson

973.567

But I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing. And a lot of people said that that's why the black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against. It's been pretty amazing.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

0.189

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months at Auto Bay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1082.449

Ah!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1391.451

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. Install a carrier's price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1409.159

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1412.398

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1427.772

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1437.276

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1445.881

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1455.707

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1465.455

Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1471.578

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1783.322

Come on! Liquid! Knockout! Liquid! Knockout! Hey, let's start the wave, starting over here! Whoo! Watch the stairs. Watch the stairs.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1814.877

Woo! Number one! Team Liquid!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1858.79

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1876.503

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1880.217

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1892.039

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

1899.4

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

28.966

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

36.311

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

46.738

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

657

Shot, shot, shot!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

669.035

We got beer, we got guns, we got food. I feel like I'm growing another testicle down here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

689.929

I was going to say golf simulator.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

693.552

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

711.264

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

714.48

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

729.872

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

739.375

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

747.962

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

757.79

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

767.537

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

773.659

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Michael Kosta

906.894

Goddamn, that's good.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1133.878

Roy Wood Jr., everybody. Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1156.682

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, melty mozzarella cheese, and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Caulipower, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1176.952

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1278.887

For performance by an actor in a supporting role. Mahershala Ali in Green Book. Adam Driver in Black Klansman. Sam Elliott in A Star is Born. Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? And Sam Rockwell in Vice.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1455.311

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1468.115

Paramount Podcasts. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

1496.344

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

285.387

Thank you to the Academy. Our heroes unite us, you know, the best among us who inspire us to find the best in ourselves. You know, when they unite us, when we look to our heroes, we agree.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

307.353

Venus and Serena and Selena, Bob Dylan, Scorsese, Fred Rogers, Harriet Tubman, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Dolores Fuerta.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

31.31

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

473.595

I love it up here. Turn that clock off, it's making me nervous.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

778.991

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

79.119

The producers of the Oscars are slimming down the broadcast in an effort to boost slumping ratings. Eight awards will now be presented off-air, including the Oscars for film editing, makeup and hairstyling, and music original score. The ceremony for those categories will begin an hour before the telecast. The winners will then be sprinkled into the three-hour broadcast.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

799.6

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

886.828

With 774 new Academy voters in the mix for 2018. Said to be younger and more diverse in gender, ethnicity, and geography than in years past. A more inclusive group of nominees across the board may be the result. the aim of the Academy's membership initiative in the wake of 2016's Oscars So White protests.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Oscars

98.896

The president of the Academy says the changes are necessary for the future success of the Oscars.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1230.525

The curse is dead. Chicago erupting overnight. Thousands celebrating in the streets. The Cubs win the World Series!

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1451.767

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1467.13

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1476.651

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1485.252

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1495.074

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1504.817

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

1510.933

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

2220.712

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

2232.549

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

2239.913

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

32.213

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

393.859

Unless you've got an attack ad to go with it. Barack Obama says he's sworn allegiance to Tampa Bay. Then why does he pal around with this fanatic from Philadelphia? Barack Obama, wrong on baseball, wrong for America.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

43.296

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

51.399

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

783.081

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

798.449

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

807.958

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

816.564

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

826.391

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

836.138

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Baseball

842.26

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Troy Iwata

280.695

Would you like to just sit down and ask some questions?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Troy Iwata

297.548

The most important thing is that if at any point she is uncomfortable, that she will let me know. If I'm uncomfortable, I will let her know. So how do we break down the stigma and negative connotations for all those closed-minded oafs?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

In the Field with Troy Iwata

46.255

One of those booming businesses, professional cuddling.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Tax Day

515.146

We'll be right back after this.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Tax Day

901.013

No.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jimmy Carter on the Rise of Fundamentalism

0.089

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jimmy Carter on the Rise of Fundamentalism

306.115

Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Fashion

27.475

The Met Gala began with a bang from the Brooklyn United Marching Band, and from there, the steps became a who's who of fashion, movies, and music. The theme is celebrating American fashion, and these guests understood the assignment. Hosts Billie Eilish and Naomi Osaka stunned in their larger-than-life outfits, and Lil Nas X shut down the steps with his costume changes.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Fashion

57.456

Even Mayor de Blasio made his first appearance. Red, white, and blue were the colors of the night, as was anything sparkly, with the exception of Kim Kardashian, who came in all black everything.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Fashion

631.502

Mo Rocca, ladies and gentlemen.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

1003.506

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

1023.777

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

1383.142

Paramount Podcasts Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

1404.351

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

42.872

Drake has released a video for his hit song Hotline Bling.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

562.079

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

582.669

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Oh, Canada...

982.898

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

1324.451

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

1345.061

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

1783.502

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

1806.778

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

43.109

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

66.378

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

668.803

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

689.41

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Women's History Month

709.682

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Stewart on Immigration Over the Years

412.309

The single greatest nation in the history of all mankind. The greatest country ever.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Stewart on Immigration Over the Years

548.68

It makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. Legal immigrants must carry paperwork proving their status.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Jon Stewart on Immigration Over the Years

573.749

What's the fuss? Police are required to check anyone they have a reasonable suspicion is illegal. And people can sue local governments if they think immigration law is not being enforced.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

13.917

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1872.569

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1887.935

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1897.466

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1906.053

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1915.881

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1925.626

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

1931.749

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

2.091

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

21.281

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

2394.827

This is some third world bullshit right here. Let me say it again, third world bullshit.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

31.681

You're listening to Comedy Central. Let's begin with explosive news.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

785.404

Oh, no, there's spam. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

803.945

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

813.453

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

822.06

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

831.888

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

841.613

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | It's Classified

847.736

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1253.06

The truckers are bringing in customers. They're bringing in tourists from Montreal, from all across Canada. Everybody wants to check this out.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1733.712

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1749.082

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1758.59

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1767.197

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1777.005

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1786.749

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

1792.872

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

2155.982

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

2167.825

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

2175.168

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

32.213

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

43.297

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

51.401

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

913.251

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

928.614

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

938.146

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

946.733

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

956.561

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

966.308

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

972.432

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

119.671

Yes, he's the Techno King, but as a joke. And soon we'll all be his servants, but in a funny way. Because while he may be an eccentric, satellite-launching, terminally online billionaire who wants to plug people into computers and build a vast network of underground tunnels, it's not like he's some kind of supervillain.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

143.799

Well, maybe a little. So strap in, turn on the autopilot, but keep your hands on the steering wheel in case of pedestrians. Because this is the Daily Showography of Elon Musk, Visionary Future Man. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in Earth Year 1971. His father made a fortune in construction and emerald mining because Africa's resources are like free money for white people.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

171.489

Badly bullied in school, Elon overcame many hardships. Although unlike other South African celebrities, he didn't make his childhood into a whole thing. By age 10, he was learning to program computers. At 12, he built a video game he called Blastar, which started his lifelong love of inventing things that already exist.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

192.444

Soon after, he left South Africa and made his way to a booming Silicon Valley, where he launched his first company, Zip2, which he eventually sold to Compaq Computer for $305 million. Like so many tech entrepreneurs, he earned his unimaginable wealth by doing something invaluable for society, selling a startup you've never heard of to a company that doesn't exist anymore.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

213.67

Musk celebrated by buying himself a million-dollar supercar. There are 62 McLarens in the world, and I will own one of them. Yes, Musk was so rich, he could afford to have a midlife crisis while he was still in his 20s. Sadly, his new toy wouldn't last long.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

246.113

Musk's McLaren crashed worse than Dodge coin after Saturday Night Live. For his next act, Musk created X.com, which would later become PayPal, the app your uncle had to use because Venmo and Cash App won't work on his Nokia. Musk took the money he made from that business and built an empire of cool-ass shit.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

264.184

Rocket ships, electric cars, solar farms, artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and underground highways, all while dating celebrities and starting a record label to release his own EDM track. a banger all the more impressive considering Musk had clearly never heard music before. Yes, Elon Musk refuses to stay in his lane, much like a Tesla on autopilot. Tesla's groundbreaking cars.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

300.458

brought unprecedented power range and sexiness to electric vehicles, a market previously reserved for nerds who cared about the environment. And Musk even promised the dream of full self-driving technology.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

359.312

But Musk can't stop dreaming big, even when he probably should. Like when SpaceX made history with the world's first reusable rocket technology and then used it to launch the first car into space. Technically the second, if you count Elon Musk's McLaren. Musk's special brand of achievement has won him a totally normal and healthy fan base around the world. But success didn't come easy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

382.75

He had to overcome a lot of doubters, starting with himself.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

396.523

Musk could have gone from being a multi-billionaire all the way down to the very lowest rung of society. Millionaire. But through the years, Musk kept his many ventures going with little more than his can-do attitude.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

410.627

And billions of dollars in government subsidies. Today, Musk isn't merely the richest man in the world. His net worth is higher than the GDP of most countries. Should Musk be a country? Well, he does have a national anthem.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

440.652

And he's not just great at making money, he's also an expert at saving it by paying almost nothing in taxes for three years and then actually nothing in 2018. Of course, there's always haters who like to nitpick Musk's business methods.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

475.838

Exactly. Does Musk seem like a man who is inhaling toxic fumes? But Elon Musk also understands that all work and no play make X-Ash A-12 a dull boy. And like any well-adjusted person, his favorite pastime is spending 12 to 14 hours a day on Twitter. So it made sense when Musk announced that he would buy the social media platform.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

498.833

And even more sense when the deal spun out of control and crashed into an embankment. But Musk doesn't only use Twitter for fun. He uses it to make the world a better place. Or at least promise to. It's where he promised to solve world hunger. end traffic, fight COVID, and fix Flint's water.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

516.419

And when a Thai soccer team was stuck in a cave, Elon even promised to rescue those kids from the guy who rescued them. That's why Musk is such a champion of free speech. If you can't randomly accuse someone who's saving people's lives of being a pedo guy, does civil discourse even exist? Elon Musk is dedicated to building a brighter future for all humanity.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

538.969

It's why he backed the most futuristic presidential candidate of 2020. It's why he's so dedicated to turning every aspect of our lives into a platform for his dumb jokes. From robots, to cybernetic implants, to AI, to space travel, to unfettered social media, Elon Musk is building a future that humanity only imagined in the movies. And who wouldn't want to live there?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

568.24

And that's why Elon Musk truly is a visionary future man.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | President Elon

82.166

What do you think of when you think of the future? Is it space travel? Robots? Trucks with the word cyber in front of them? Whatever your vision, there is one man working to make it a reality. He's part Thomas Edison, part Iron Man, part annoying dude in the group chat... and is anything but your standard CEO.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | St. Patrick's Day

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | St. Patrick's Day

1084.032

Paramount Podcasts. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | St. Patrick's Day

1105.266

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | St. Patrick's Day

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | John Oliver on Gun Control

1.087

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | John Oliver on Gun Control

1090.484

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

1686.383

Paramount Podcasts. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

1714.579

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

738.786

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of John Oliver

759.395

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1123.564

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1144.173

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, melty mozzarella cheese, and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Caulipower, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1164.443

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1232.669

Across the country, public education is failing. But in Arizona, lawmakers have found the solution to the biggest problem facing their schools...

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1241.664

Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, just approved a bill banning ethnic studies classes in public schools.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1247.312

And using this new law, the Tucson school board banned the K-12 Mexican-American studies program. School board member Michael Hicks.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1273.715

When you sat in on these classes, what types of... I chose not to go to any of their classes.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1325.086

I'm a black kid. Try to teach me about slavery without me feeling resentment towards white people.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1393.542

In 2008, Louisiana came to its senses and outlawed the barbaric sport of cockfighting. And the chickens of that state finally had some peace.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1541.084

Do you think you can keep this enthusiasm up until November?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1552.527

Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding me? I come here all the time.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1707.049

Oh, yeah. I've been places where everyone spoke Spanish.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1828.536

Alabama and Mississippi. So who's it gonna be? Cletus or Betus? It was time to see which one of these backwoods inbred homophobic states will swim the longest against the tide of history. First, let's meet some locals to see whose state has the intolerance edge.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

1950.656

All right, that's it. We'll settle this the old-fashioned way.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

2108.991

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

2129.6

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1010.526

After watching the movie, two men discovered Mississippi was the last state which had not officially ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1186.075

Former President Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 election now have him calling for the Constitution to be terminated. With the revelation of massive and widespread fraud and deception in working closely with big tech companies, the DNC and the Democratic Party, do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the rightful winner, or do you have a new election?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1212.248

A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1355.419

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1370.814

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1380.313

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1388.919

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1398.726

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1408.476

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

1414.599

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

2008.374

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

2020.196

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

2027.557

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

29.106

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

698.744

You don't narrate.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

776.187

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

791.556

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

801.081

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

809.668

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

819.496

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

829.244

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | The Constitution

835.366

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

0.189

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months at Auto Bay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

1005.575

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

1011.678

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

153.587

calling for rain. A hundred million dollars. That's how much money could be spent on a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. And that would make it the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

166.713

The race pairing Judge Susan Crawford from liberal hotbed Dane County against conservative Judge Brad Schimel from Waukesha has big money outside donors like George Soros, J.B. Pritzker and Elon Musk opening their wallets.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

1665.1

Someone's... Oh, we can't applaud.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

179.878

Trump's close ally and financial backer, Musk, has gone all in on Schimel's campaign. The tech billionaire and groups aligned with him have poured more than $20 million into the state.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2122.693

Thank you. Thank you so much for the movies you did. You're one of the people that my mom is excited that I'm interviewing. If when we were kids in Manchester, New Hampshire, we would watch your movies.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2180.335

We appear to be heading into a Trump slump. I think that's because of a little bit of a Trump bump.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2184.339

Do you agree that we're heading into a Trump slump? I called it the Trump pump. What was a Trump bump is now a Trump slump.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2191.446

You still got that Trump pump on, brother. Many are seeing what is now the market Trump slump as the risk of a looming Trump session.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

222.759

This street's like any other in Wisconsin, but the new neighbor is a pedophile, thanks to Judge Susan Crawford's sweetheart sentence.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2223.359

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months at Auto Bay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired. Actual average Wi-Fi speed varied.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2240.286

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2252.123

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

2259.474

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

231.763

How corrupt is Brad Schimel? Schimel gave a plea deal to a man caught with child porn.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

236.905

Crawford let the predator out in just four years.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

240.086

Brad Schimel let a sex predator loose on our kids.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

243.228

Letting the rapist walk free. While rapists walk free. Wow. Why is SVU wasting his time in New York? I mean, you got at least 20 seasons down there in Wisconsin. I mean, if you got this many pedophiles in Wisconsin, maybe the problem is Wisconsin.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

28.966

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

316.884

An attack ad against Supreme Court Justice candidate Susan Crawford is using a picture of a different Susan Crawford. An ad launched by a group backed by Elon Musk instead used a picture of Susan P. Crawford, who's a Harvard University law professor.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

36.333

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

369.541

The Elon Musk-backed America Political Action Committee asking Wisconsin voters to sign a, quote, petition in opposition to activist judges. The reward for each signature, $100. Yo, $100?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

390.569

Elon Musk's political action committee has handed out $1 million to a voter in Wisconsin just for signing a petition.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

545.448

All right. Don't hurt him. Grace Kuhlensmith, everyone. All right? When we come back, America goes after its 51st state, so don't go away.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

565.233

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier Fiber Internet. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for Fiber 200 Internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

581.681

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

597.051

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

606.559

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

615.165

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

624.992

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

634.718

Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

640.86

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

697.167

After weeks of speculation that he wants to take over Greenland, President Trump is doubling down on his suggestion that the U.S. will play a larger role in the island's future.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

706.773

We need Greenland for national security and international security, so I think we'll go as far as we have to go. We need Greenland, and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark. Denmark has to have us have Greenland.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

741.57

New this morning, Second Lady Usha Vance will go to Greenland this week, the White House announced. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will join Mrs. Vance as part of the American delegation.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

751.676

She's a brilliant woman. She's a very nice woman. And she loves the concept of Greenland.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

822.742

When the vice president and a high-level U.S. delegation flies in tomorrow, there will be no big grand welcome, no American flags flying in the streets, and no photo ops with locals.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

833.446

85% of Greenlanders do not want to be part of the United States, according to a recent poll. Would you like to be American?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

844.07

The leaders here have been clear. Greenland is not up for grabs, and the American delegation is not invited.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

871.309

The idea prompting protests, along with a different kind of MAGA hat. This one reading, make America go away.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

921.081

Since 100% fiber internet makes any home upgrade possible, I can finally live my dream of having my own smart office. I was going to say golf simulator.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

931.587

Get the upgrade you and your devices dream of. Switch to Frontier and experience reliable 100% fiber internet powered by the speed of light. Plan starting at $29.99 per month for fiber 200 internet. Hurry now and get free premium Wi-Fi and free expert installation. Frontier Fiber. Good to go. In select areas, price for 12 months with AutoPay. ETF terms apply. Max speeds wired.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

949.298

Actual average and Wi-Fi speed vary.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

952.521

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

967.89

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

977.395

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

985.461

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Billionaires Intervene in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race | Bill Murray

995.83

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Democrats' Cringey Opposition, DEI Ban Black History Quiz | Gabrielle Union

1650.914

Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Democrats' Cringey Opposition, DEI Ban Black History Quiz | Gabrielle Union

173.188

We need to change the conversation. And that's why I'm launching a new podcast.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Democrats' Cringey Opposition, DEI Ban Black History Quiz | Gabrielle Union

7.34

From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

1197.315

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

1217.927

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

1238.178

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big dill.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

179.505

Some serious security concerns over the newly released JFK files and real anger after social security numbers and other private information of more than 200 people were made public on Tuesday. The Washington Post reports that among them are former congressional staffers and one of Donald Trump's most vocal defenders, his former campaign lawyer, Joseph DeGeneva.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

202.115

He is furious, telling the Post, it's absolutely outrageous. Adding, it's like a first grade elementary level rule of security to redact things like that.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

2287.254

Paramount Podcasts. Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

2315.398

Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

2327.256

Don't wait. Start with Indeed. Accelerate your recruiting now at Indeed.com. With a premium positional ad, your offer will be placed at the very top of the page for more visibility, so that you can find and adjust the right employees faster. And the best part? It all works without a monthly subscription or long-term contracts. You only pay for results.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

2351.38

Sicher dir jetzt 75 Euro Guthaben auf eine Premium-Stellenanzeige auf Indeed.com. Es gelten die AGB.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

67.617

From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Jordan Cleveland.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

696.943

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

717.532

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

GOP Shills for Tesla, Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | Peter Wolf

737.804

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of Steve Carrell - Part 2

1.104

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | Best of Steve Carrell - Part 2

745.979

Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

115.632

Comments from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that are raising eyebrows. During his first news conference as the nation's top health official, he addressed rising autism rates while calling the disease preventable.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

250.131

So you think you're going to have a pretty good idea, huh?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

332.252

According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk followed cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong on X and began liking and replying to her tweets. Around November of last year, Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child, according to people familiar with the matter. The two had never met in person.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

398.392

The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has been ordered to purge its library of books related to diversity. equity and inclusion, along with some topics related to race and gender. The Naval Academy Library tossed out nearly 400 books, including titles on feminism, civil rights history and the Holocaust.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

416.61

Speaking of, at the Naval Academy, Hitler's Mein Kampf made the cut and is still available to read. That's where you draw the line?

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

496.869

Hey, movie fans. Do you wish your favorite films had less DEI? Introducing the Whiterian Collection, a new home video service from the Trump administration. Get ready for 12 years of what have you, Marvel's Panther, and really hidden figures. They're behind the arm wall. And Brokeback Mountain, the inspiring story of two Wyoming cowboys who herded cattle and nothing else.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

520.345

And hey, sports fans, we've got all your favorite films from the gridiron and the court, like White Men Can Jump the Best, Remember That One Titan, and Cool Runnings, the inspiring true story of an Olympic bobsled with no one in it. And of course, who can forget Disney's Encanto? You can. It doesn't exist anymore. Get your favorite Trump-approved movies from the white-tearing collection today.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

RFK Jr. Sparks Outrage Over Autism Remarks & Elon Musk Slides Into DMs and Wombs | Nancy Kwan

541.456

And act now, because watching the originals will soon be considered domestic terrorism. When we come back, we'll fight about sports, so don't go away.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1037.726

In Mexico, many remain angry over reports the NSA hacked into the former Mexican president's email. The Brazilian president said she was forced to postpone a planned trip to the US following reports the NSA spied on her personal communications. Complaints from nearly 40 other countries over revelations that the National Security Agency has been spying on their internal communications.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1244.517

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1265.126

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Kali Power, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1285.399

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Kali Power's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1709.56

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

1732.852

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

494.919

And what did our new president, Give in return. Well, he gave the prime minister 25 DVDs.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

618.203

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

TDS Time Machine | International Diplomacy

638.814

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein. And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Gets "Hot" for Kennedy Center, RFK Confirmed, Eggflation Rampant | Brady Corbet

2014.863

That's our show for tonight. Now, here it is. Above and above.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Gets "Hot" for Kennedy Center, RFK Confirmed, Eggflation Rampant | Brady Corbet

693.496

Sign up now for an all-new season designed by Chairman Trump. Screw off, twinkle toes, because all ballet will now be done by pole dancers. Talk about a nutcracker. And join us for our cinema series featuring every movie where a babe climbs out of a pool. Donald Nike. And you bet your ass we'll have culture. Better culture. Like Hamilton, but with white people.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Gets "Hot" for Kennedy Center, RFK Confirmed, Eggflation Rampant | Brady Corbet

720.795

A Raisin in the Sun, but with white people. And Chen Yun, but with white people. Plus, we'll award the Mark Twain Prize to Michael Richards. But not for Seinfeld. For his stand-up. And you know why. And next fall, we'll have an evening with Joni Mitchell. Boxing Jake Paul. So come to the hot new Kennedy Center, where even the building is hot. That's right, we gave it boobs. Not just two, like 20.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Gets "Hot" for Kennedy Center, RFK Confirmed, Eggflation Rampant | Brady Corbet

751.637

The Donald Trump Kennedy Center and Casino. We got your culture right here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Gets "Hot" for Kennedy Center, RFK Confirmed, Eggflation Rampant | Brady Corbet

941.889

I know that right now they're like eight and up, which is insane.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Enters War on Showers & Kristi Noem Takes "Photo Shoot" Literally | Bowen Yang

1.092

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Enters War on Showers & Kristi Noem Takes "Photo Shoot" Literally | Bowen Yang

1788.73

Now here it is, your moment of truth.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Enters War on Showers & Kristi Noem Takes "Photo Shoot" Literally | Bowen Yang

1808.658

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

First American Pope Makes History and MAGA Catholics Already Have Issues | Michelle Buteau

0.089

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Desi Lydon.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

First American Pope Makes History and MAGA Catholics Already Have Issues | Michelle Buteau

1713.419

Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount+.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

0.289

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1022.591

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1043.183

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, Melty mozzarella cheese and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Caulipower, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1063.454

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1570.235

I mean, did... So interestingly... I knew it would... I knew something would happen.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1852.302

New episodes are coming. on Sundays on National Geographic and all episodes are streaming now on Disney Plus and Hulu. Anthony Karofsky. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. That's our show for tonight.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1936.983

Introducing pickle lovers' newest obsession, Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Think luxurious bechamel sauce infused with dill pickle brine, roasted garlic, melty mozzarella, and fresh dill on Cauliflower's stone-fired cauliflower crust. And because it's Cauliflower, you know it's made better for you. Packed with 14 grams of protein, and you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

1960.279

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

23.585

Don't miss the flavor everyone's talking about and grab Cauliflower's Dill Pickle Pizza. Now available at Whole Foods Market.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

563.786

Josh Johnson, when we come back, we get guns off the streets. Don't go away.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

578.666

Cauliflower has done it again, and pickle lovers, this one's for you. Introducing the first and only frozen dill pickle pizza, and it's going to blow your taste buds away. This one-of-a-kind creation starts with Cauliflower's iconic stone-fired crust, made with real cauliflower florets, now topped with the number one trending flavor of the year.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

599.258

Picture a luxurious creamy white sauce infused with savory dill pickle brine, garlic roasted to perfection, melty mozzarella cheese, and fresh dill. It's a flavor explosion that's as unique as it is craveable. And because it's Caulipower, you know it's made better for you. It's gluten-free, clean label, and packed with 14 grams of protein.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Pauses Tariffs, Crashes the Stock Market & Threatens China | Antoni Porowski

619.529

And best of all, you can eat half the pizza for just 400 calories. Find Caulipower's Dill Pickle Pizza now at Whole Foods Market nationwide. It's time to taste the buzz everyone's talking about, and it's kind of a big deal.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Gaza Backtrack, Trans Sports Ban, Garden of American Heroes | Ke Huy Quan

1.095

You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Gaza Backtrack, Trans Sports Ban, Garden of American Heroes | Ke Huy Quan

1848.825

And now Strawberry the camel also picked the eagles.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Gaza Backtrack, Trans Sports Ban, Garden of American Heroes | Ke Huy Quan

955.007

I am going to stand with you in this fight, and we will win.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Gaza Backtrack, Trans Sports Ban, Garden of American Heroes | Ke Huy Quan

961.271

We will win. We will win. We will win. We will win. We will win. We won't rest. We won't rest.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1178.286

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1193.661

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1203.18

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1211.766

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1221.593

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1237.465

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

17.143

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1903.647

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1915.469

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

1922.83

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

28.966

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

36.33

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

420.178

I just don't know if they're going to be negotiations.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

692.572

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

707.94

And they had secrets of their own to share.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

717.466

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

726.053

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

735.881

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.

The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Trump Tariffs Send Markets Plunging, Penguins Waddling to a Trade War | Scott Glenn

751.749

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

The Dan Bongino Show

President Trump Joins The Show | Episode 08 - 03/26/25

2955.216

First, we have a pardon for Devin Archer. Devin Archer was a former business partner of the Biden family. He was prosecuted relating to a fraud investigation, but notably the tone and tenor of that prosecution changed dramatically after he began to cooperate with congressional investigators and serve as a witness against Hunter Biden and the Biden family.

The Dan Bongino Show

President Trump Joins The Show | Episode 08 - 03/26/25

2979.153

We believe that was an injustice, and therefore we're asking you to pardon him.

The Dan Bongino Show

What Did Zelensky Know? When Did He Know It? (Ep. 2426)

2490.394

Republicans are asking the DOJ to take a fresh look at evidence against Lois Lerner, the former IRS employee accused in 2013 of targeting Tea Party groups over their political views. Lerner called to testify to Congress, but pleaded the fifth.

The Dan Bongino Show

What Did Zelensky Know? When Did He Know It? (Ep. 2426)

2521.944

In 2015, President Obama's DOJ refusing to file criminal charges. Then, Lerner resigned.

The Dan Bongino Show

What Did Zelensky Know? When Did He Know It? (Ep. 2426)

785.765

Congratulations on installing the new prosecutor general. It's going to be critical. Folks, I know many of you, especially the P1s, have heard this before, but you can't hear this enough. Again, hat tip, New York Post.

The Dan Bongino Show

The Deep State Purge Intensifies (Ep. 2439)

1870.612

There was a cyber attack on X today, which shut it down and may have been foreign sourced. It's a big story. You want to give us a moment on that?

The Dan Bongino Show

The Deep State Purge Intensifies (Ep. 2439)

1952.352

They're setting fire to various Tesla charging stations near Boston. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon. Various nonviolent... Shots fired. Not a metaphor. Shots fired, yes. Downtown New York, marching against the Tesla showroom. Your stock is way down. You've been criticized left and right. But look on the right side. I mean, why are you doing this?

The Dan Bongino Show

The Deep State Purge Intensifies (Ep. 2439)

1984.123

Always look on the bright side of life. Yes, I'm an optimist.

The Dan Bongino Show

The Deep State Purge Intensifies (Ep. 2439)

2.771

Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.

The Dan Bongino Show

Tucker Carlson on Deportations, Epstein Files & Dictators - Pt. 1 | Episode 1

1297.808

uh this you can't criticize him announcing that uh he has sold his tesla and bought a chevy tahoe to protest donald trump take a listen all right here i am with my new ride chevy good old chevy tahoe uh here in washington dc got one of these in tucson as well this one was made by Union Labor, United Auto Workers in Arlington, Texas. Always good to buy union cars. Incredibly reliable.

The Dan Bongino Show

Tucker Carlson on Deportations, Epstein Files & Dictators - Pt. 1 | Episode 1

1326.612

And I'm looking forward to driving this for many, many years.

The Dan Bongino Show

Tucker Carlson on Deportations, Epstein Files & Dictators - Pt. 1 | Episode 1

1331.454

No more EV. I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that's going to end the destruction of your country.

The Dan Bongino Show

Following The Money In This Growing Scandal (Ep. 2419)

1027.585

Back in March, Comer sent this letter to Biden, quote, the committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates. The committee has identified no legitimate services to merit such lucrative payments.

The Dan Bongino Show

Following The Money In This Growing Scandal (Ep. 2419)

1043.153

You have repeatedly denied playing any role in your family's business activities, but the committee has amassed evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, that wholly contradicts your position on these matters. The committee has identified and successfully traced money from foreign transactions, including from China, straight to your bank accounts.

The Dan Bongino Show

Following The Money In This Growing Scandal (Ep. 2419)

1061.157

Certain checks have been described as loan repayments. However, the person who provided you free bookkeeping during your time as vice president did not remember any evidence of a loan from your accounts.

The Dan Bongino Show

Nightly Scroll - Critics Give Disney’s Feminist “Snow White” a Rotten Apple

2121.198

Also that first one was from Anita McGroin.

The Dan Bongino Show

Nightly Scroll - Critics Give Disney’s Feminist “Snow White” a Rotten Apple

737.985

But there was a person who used Latinx. It was actually a really important person. It was him. Uh-oh. Yeah, that's right. And look, these aren't minor shifts. These are progressive issues that Gavin Newsom used to champion until fairly recently. And now he's not just walking away from them. He's sort of acting like they were never legitimate with that clip talking about Latinx.

The Dan Bongino Show

Nightly Scroll - Critics Give Disney’s Feminist “Snow White” a Rotten Apple

758.251

in the first place, but let's just, let's take Latinx. We did find somebody who used it repeatedly in his office. Let's take a listen to this.

The Dan Bongino Show

Deranged Libs Go All In For Ukraine War and Govt. Corruption (Ep. 2423)

3370.401

The most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It's manually calculated and written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine. I'm like, what do you mean a mine? Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.

The Dan Bongino Show

Deranged Libs Go All In For Ukraine War and Govt. Corruption (Ep. 2423)

3394.605

And you look at a picture of this mine, we'll post some pictures afterwards. And this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like it's like a time warp. And then the speed, the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government.

The Dan Bongino Show

Deranged Libs Go All In For Ukraine War and Govt. Corruption (Ep. 2423)

3418.015

And the elevator breaks down sometimes and then nobody can retire.

The Dan Bongino Show

Deranged Libs Go All In For Ukraine War and Govt. Corruption (Ep. 2423)

3596.086

You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.

The Dan Bongino Show

Deranged Libs Go All In For Ukraine War and Govt. Corruption (Ep. 2423)

449.77

We're at the starting line for the 100-meter dash in the Dopey Media Talking Head Olympics.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

1.573

Now's a good time to remember where tequila's story truly began. In 1795, Cuervo invented tequila. Cuervo. What are you doing here?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

1807.789

What are you talking about?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

1968.595

Hey, audience. You know, it's that time of year where everyone is debating who the number one pick is going to be. Well, let me tell you something that is undebatable. Who the world's number one vodka is. That is Smirnoff.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

1979.181

And as fun as it is to debate whether or not the team with the number one pick goes pass rusher, wide receiver, quarterback, one thing that we all know is we're going with Smirnoff as our number one vodka pick. Isn't that right, Dano? Smirnoff rules! Smirnoff rules. So while you're over there hosting your draft parties, you know one thing in particular you need.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

1999.35

Well, there's two things that you absolutely need. The draft on TV, that's a must. But number two, what is it, Dano?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

2013.234

And thanks to Smirnoff, God Bless Football is doing their first ever watch-along live stream in front of a live audience in Nashville, Tennessee. Join God Bless Football during round one of the draft on the Levitard Show YouTube channel on April 24th. More details to come. Please drink responsibly. Smirnoff, number 21 vodka, distilled from grain, 40% alcohol by volume.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

2033.071

The Smirnoff Company, New York, New York. Please do not share with anyone under legal drinking age. Woo-hoo! Hey everybody, it's Mike. 50 incredible years of Miller Lite. That is right. It is Miller Lite's 50th anniversary. And I know, speaking personally, Miller Lite has been by my side through weddings, birthdays, even a couple of sports championships that I'm really lucky to have enjoyed.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

2056.701

Miller Lite has made all those perfect moments happen. Even more perfect. So cheers to you. I know I'm speaking to a fellow fan of Miller Lite. And cheers to Miller Lite for providing great memories and a beer with a taste you know you can depend on. A great beer trusted by beer lovers for 50 magical years. Miller Lite is brewed for taste. Simply put, it just hits different.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

2076.676

And at just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces, Miller time is always a good time. The original Lite beer since 1975 and still iconic 50 years later. Miller Lite. Great taste. 96 calories. Go to MillerLite.com to find delivery options near you, where you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller time. Celebrate responsibly.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Hour 1: Atop Dan Le Batard's Ivory Tower

2098.394

Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1.573

Now's a good time to remember where tequila's story truly began. In 1795, Cuervo invented tequila. Cuervo. What are you doing here?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1145.345

Hey listeners, it's Mike Ryan, and if you've listened to this show for 20 years, you know one action movie franchise that I believe stands head and shoulders above the rest. That's right. The Mission Impossible series is one of the few franchises that gets better and better, consistently raising the bar with set pieces, story, location, and character.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1165.436

This is a franchise that I've argued in the past should have won the Best Picture award. Tom Cruise consistently is upping himself and raising that bar with each Mission Impossible film as the real. Practical stunts continue to push the envelope in new record-setting ways.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1182.085

Tom's passion for entertaining audience has him, along with a dedicated cast and crew, pulling out all the stops to deliver the most thrilling, unbelievable feats yet. I simply cannot wait for this film. Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning in theaters May 23rd. Hey, folks, it's Mike Ryan.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1205.853

And if you're watching our show, you probably know your boy has undergone a little bit of a body transformation. And I got to tell you, Peloton has helped me on my fitness journey. It got the ball rolling for me because I watched my wife on the Peloton. She takes all these great classes. She has her favorite instructors. I listen to the music. I'm a big music guy.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1222.887

gets me fired up, makes me want to take part in this fitness phenomenon known as Peloton. Peloton offers a variety of challenging classes, from four-week strength building classes to running, cycling, and everything in between. Peloton will help you achieve your goals, and maybe you'll have some fun along the way. I know I have. It's backed by thousands of members whose lives have been changed.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1245.494

Be part of that group. I'm telling you, I'm better for it. Have it in my office. Sometimes I can put on the baseball game. Sometimes I can put on a soccer match. Some other times I'm totally locked in on an emo playlist. Find your push. Find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.com.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

1269.852

Oh, can I go? This isn't my question, but I did. Jessica Rabbit. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Yes, yes. She was married to Roger Rabbit, even though he was a bunny and she was a humanoid. But they were both cartoons.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

The Big Suey: The Story of Four Jasons (feat. Jake 'The Snake' Plummer)

29.863

The tequila that invented tequila. Proximo. Cuervo.com. Please drink responsibly.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1.718

You're listening to DraftKings Network.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1397.327

Tim Kalashaw.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1407.312

Bob Ryan? Bob Ryan?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

145.012

Oh, I have a, I have a theory, but I'm not sure.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1475.286

Yeah. Guys, don't sound so excited. All right.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1490.857

It's almost like Billy knew you were going to get frazzled before the show when he decided to do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, just saying. So these are about NFC teams, anonymous executives talking about NFC teams after the draft.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1509.093

NFC teams. Okay. Quote. They had conviction and confidence, and then they had the execution as well. So you have to give them credit. They had a good draft, whatever it all comes together. Whether it all comes together, who knows?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1526.885

I know. I got to be honest. It was a hard one.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1548.581

Tell him you'll fly up.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1596.076

Sam Donald Spleen.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1611.208

They had conviction and confidence and then they had the execution as well. So you have to give them credit. They had a good draft, whether it comes together, who knows?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1623.417

That might be the worst one. But it's an easy team. Chicago Bears.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1641.035

How'd you get that?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1643.758

Because he's good at it. Billy is fantastic at this game. All right, here's another one.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1651.893

Let's just mess with around the horn. Yep. Here you go. Quote, they are realizing that they lost their way a little bit in the past year or so. It is more of them retooling that defense with the guys that fit what has made them really good in the past. The draft led them to defense, and an offensive coach like theirs thinks he can manufacture it enough.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1684.771

You're all wrong. Think tattoos.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1702.149

The draft led them to defense, and an offensive coach like theirs can think he can manufacture it enough.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1795.53

Do it for his trip to Ibiza. Yes. Quote, they are confidently aggressive. Maybe that is the coach just saying, we're going to kick ass and take names forever.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1817.958

Say it again. Let me hear the quote again. They are confidently aggressive. Maybe that is the coach just saying, we're going to kick ass and take names forever. Yeah, Lions. Detroit Lions, man. Eagles.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1833.106

No, Billy, you're off. The other two got it. It is the Detroit Lions.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1842.81

See, my problem is I read the wrong one to start, and I gave you guys the really hard one as opposed to the ones that I should have started with.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1854.942

Yeah, you should get two points.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1865.291

All right, so this is for everything.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1867.633

This is it? The last one? Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Quote, I have to hand it to their GM. They have upgraded in a lot of ways this offseason. Your first pick is in some way a statement about what this team needs and how they're going to play and how they are going to win. The pick is an interesting choice, and I think you can tell it was coach-driven.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1903.375

They're all sitting around watching it. Watch what he's going to say.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1907.298

This is just looking at his phone.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1918.321

That's what he's doing. There's a bunch of people standing around looking at his phone, seeing what you're going to say.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1925.063

He knows I'm on the air. I told him I'm on the air with you guys doing this.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1929.784

This is almost cyberbullying. Yeah, exactly.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1942.188

Yeah, pay attention. I have to hand it to their GM. They've upgraded in a lot of ways this offseason. Your first pick is in some way a statement about what this team needs and how they're going to play and how they're going to win. Their first pick is an interesting choice, and I think you can tell it was coach-driven.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1975.518

Go ahead and A to Z sports.com slash New York Jets. That's a loss. That's a loss.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

1999.265

NFC teams, buddy. NFC teams.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2011.224

Jesus Christ.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2016.927

Half of these have just been the Bears. You guess the Chicago Bears every time except the time that it actually was the Chicago Bears.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2214.226

Even though the GM had a meeting with Jaden Reed, the number one receiver, and said, guess what?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2253.676

Stability is availability. Put him at five.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2385.362

I'm going to put him at six just so I'm a little different than Billy right now.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2424.048

I'm happy to put Derrick Henry at one, and if I get Saquon and put him at two, I can justify it.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2544.84

I'm going to put him at four. He could give me two names now that could ruin my day.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2555.825

Because of how Fuentes plays it.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2578.163

I like my list so far. Got to tell you, I like my list. I don't like my list if he gives me Saquon.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2586.149

There's two names he could give me, and I'll feel really bad if I have to put one of them at seven.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2599.421

All right.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2638.738

Yes! Look at that. The only name I was fearful there that I was going to get is Jameer Gibbs. Because if I got Jameer Gibbs and I had to put him at seven, I'd have felt better.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2656.308

Honestly, Jameer Gibbs.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2657.929

Dobbins not on a team.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2665.21

No, Jameer Gibbs at one, I wouldn't hate that.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2691.394

I was Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, Kyron Williams, Bijan, Christian McCaffrey, Bucky Irving, Najee Harris, James Cook, Brian Robinson Jr., Kenneth Walker. The only one I hate is Najee.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2717.017

Other than that. Yeah, you sold low on Bucky Irving, and I think you got CMC too high.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2825.497

I mean, technically they're all games, but not a game. I mean, that's a game.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2854.626

Of all of them, you're going to start with the Colts? I can already tell you it's not a game.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2865.418

Give me Lions Week 7.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2906.52

Just a game.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2911.804

I mean, we have that. We have a game.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2915.186

And then we have something to watch a commercial.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2954.897

Rams week 14.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2964.468

That's a game.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

2970.152

Bird gang, Billy.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

3022.216

This might be my new favorite game, by the way.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

326.864

But, I mean, at some point, right, just the way he runs and how much he runs, at some point, right? Yeah, both. I don't want to say it, but you know what I'm saying. Like, at some point.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

344.276

I'll be so upset when it happens, though, because he is so much fun to watch.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

39.309

The schedule came out yesterday, and I had to go through the Jets' schedule and go, oh, week one, Pittsburgh. That's a win. Oh, you gave him a win there, huh? No, I didn't, but I was just doing my thing.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

430.086

Maybe the ones that weren't getting paid really weren't worth it. Oh, wow. I mean, you can make an argument.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

537.205

I will go to war for Mel Kiper every day.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

540.987

And even if he's wrong, and I think he was probably wrong about Shador Sanders, but I will go to war for Mel Kiper every day. The best part for Mel Kiper is the draft is over. College football doesn't start for 100 days. And he is not thinking one iota about anything that's happened. He's just enjoying the boat life.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

591.138

I've been invited. What? I've been invited on Mel Kiper Jr. 's boat several times. Well, what's up to you? You haven't been? Well, because he doesn't necessarily live down the block. It's not... Oh, my God. It's a trip. It's a trek.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

636.194

It's in the Baltimore area.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

726.36

So wait a second. Neither of you answered the question. I want to know who you're going to go to war for. Who are you going to war for?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

744.919

If Billy says something on Twitter and people start attacking Billy, you're not jumping in the way I did for Mel Kiper.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

78.232

Six and 11. Really? That good, huh? Six and 11. I had to stretch for it. Wow. I had to stretch for it, but I got one. Billy, what did you make of the Dolphins schedule?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

795.299

There's depends on if he was right or wrong.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

855.047

Go, Joe. Go, Joe. Go, Joe. Gojo maybe. Better chance with Gojo. Mike's too old to fight wars.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

875.969

Here's a headline. Trey Hendrickson will not play on his current contract. I saw that. I did.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

GBF - That's a game

933.508

At some point, they'll do the olive branch. Hey, we're going to give you this. So it looks like we gave you something, but we're not really going to give you that much. And then you can play and then we'll figure it out later.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

4740.757

And now, Bobby reads a passage from Fifty Shades of Grey, page 277.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

52.771

Now drop that joke. With 24-month bill credits for eligible trade-ins and four new lines of auto-pay, well-qualified customers get taxes and fees and $35 per line connection charge. Contact us before canceling entire accounts to continue remaining bill credits or credit stop and balance on required finance agreements due 999.99. Credits end if you pay off device early.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

5673.793

And now, Boppy reads some text messages from the Wells Report. October 17th, 2014.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

5703.078

Oh, really?

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

5713.785

Go on.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

65.216

See how you can save on wireless streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

6536.21

And now, Boppy reads some text messages from the Wells Report, October 21st, 2014.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

7149.797

And now, Boppy reads some text messages from the Wells Report, October 23, 2014.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

7195.062

And now, Bobby reads a passage from Fifty Shades of Grey, page 186.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

Oral History of the Dan Le Batard Show: Episode 7

7687.852

And now, Papi reads a passage from Fifty Shades of Grey, page 487.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

1.644

You're listening to DraftKings Network.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

11.889

This holiday at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor. What up, everybody? It's your boy, Big Snoop D-O-double G. Snoop, let's talk about T-Mobile. Okay, cool. This holiday, get four lines for $25 a line, plus four iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence and the all-new camera control on us. Let's get cracking like a breakfast egg. You can use those eggs to make some eggnog, Snoop. Respect.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

113.7

From Thanksgiving to Black Friday and Christmas, Smirnoff and the NFL are with you every step of the way. So this holiday season, when you're enjoying the game and your cocktails, please make sure you drink responsibly. Take a minute, make a plan, never drive impaired. Smirnoff, we do game days. Please drink responsibly. Smirnoff, number 21 vodka, distilled from grain, 40% alcohol by volume.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on eBay where I go for all kinds of things I love, and there it was.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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That hologram trading card. One of the rarest. The last one I needed for my set.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. eBay had it. And now everyone's asking, ooh, where'd you get your windshield wipers?

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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This episode of the Dan Levitard Show with Stu Gatz is sponsored by Liquid IV. The holidays are not a sprint, ladies and gentlemen. They are a marathon. It's a stressful, busy weekend, right? There's a lot of traveling, a lot of kissing babies, shaking hands, a lot of stuff. I'll see you next time. True to fruit flavors that keep you hydrated.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

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One time Joe fell off a ladder and he le rompio la pinga. His esposa says it's broken in their sex life. D.O.A. He's so mad at meetings that his head just might explode. Commissioner, come and get us. Oh, and did I mention that he cannot get it up? Sociopathic bully Joe, el es culo de burrito. No one talks to him on Christmas cause his daughters hate his guts, hate his guts, hate his guts.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Both his daughters hate his guts, hate his guts, hate his guts. Feeble, evil little putts. Oh, my dad's hurting my mom. What happened? Oh, my dad's hurting my mom.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Billy's Navidad, everybody. Merry Christmas. Christmas week is upon us. And many of you are hosting family gatherings, having friends over for the holidays, and you're wondering, how do I make this holiday time a special time? Well, you make the holiday time a special time by making it Miller Time.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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That's right, a beer with taste that you know you can depend on, no games, no gimmicks, just great beer for people who like beer. You put out the Miller Lite, you set it, you forget it, and everybody is all happy during the holiday season. You'll take that first sip, and you'll know right away you made the right call, whether it's around the

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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fire pit or around the Cajacina, you know that Miller Lite is going to hit the spot because Miller Lite is brewed for taste. It hits different than other light beers with simple ingredients like malted barley for rich, balanced jalapeno flavors and that iconic golden color. The original light beer since 1975 and still the best one. Making memories at year-end gatherings tastes like Miller time.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Go to MillerLite.com slash Dan. Find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Fewer calories and carbs in premium regular beer.

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And people do love T-Mobile, where you can save on every plan versus the other big guys when you switch. You know, y'all can take some of those savers and buy some Snoop merchandise. Always a great stocking stuffer, Snoop. We up out of here. Hold your horses, Snoop D-O-double G. Let's remind people one more time. Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on us.

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The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Power, prestige, celebrity and money is what authorities in South Florida and New York say the Alexander brothers used to lure women and sexually assault them. The siblings known for their ties to very high-end real estate. The Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office says three South Florida women in three separate cases have come forward.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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The twins and older brother Tal Alexander are also being charged to New York.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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The Alexander brothers worked together and with others to repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault, and rape dozens of female victims.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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See how you can save on wireless streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.

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This episode is brought to you by Bleacher Report. How do you follow sports? From college football to the NBA, Bleacher Report brings you the latest news, live scores and epic highlights from your favorite leagues, teams and athletes all in one app.

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#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich

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Folks, listen up. Smirnoff knows there's no I in football. Football's a we thing, an experience that is best joined together with good drinks and good folks. Smirnoff is the world's number one vodka and is the official vodka partner of the NFL. And this year, there are more opportunities to watch football and make delicious Smirnoff cocktails than ever before over the holiday season.

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You're listening to DraftKings Network.

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This episode is brought to you by Bleacher Report. How do you follow sports? From college football to the NBA, Bleacher Report brings you the latest news, live scores, and epic highlights from your favorite leagues, teams, and athletes all in one app.

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This episode is brought to you by AWS. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI assistant from AWS. Many tasks can make business slow, like wading through mud. Help! Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data to help you streamline tasks, like summarizing quarterly results or doing complex analyses in no time. Q got this.

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#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today

47.037

Attorney General Bondi says this is just phase one. She's promising to open the government files on Jeffrey Epstein. But despite the hype, most of what she released so far had been made public years ago. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on TV to trumpet the release of this material, teasing a big reveal.

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#BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today

69.665

But much of the material had been circulating in the public domain for years, including pilot logs from Epstein's plane and his so-called black book of names and addresses. Several conservative media figures were given early access during a visit to the White House, showing off binders and posing for pictures, some later posting how underwhelmed they were.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1002.466

But they didn't find anything, which isn't that surprising because three years had passed since Sandra's disappearance. The property didn't belong to Freddie or his immediate family. But in conversation with the landowner, Thompson did find a connection.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1042.284

This was a viable possibility because the property owner said the lake had been dug after Sandra was reported missing, although we don't know the exact timeframe. When our team reached out to the property owner, we didn't get a response. Now, it's unclear if Freddie's property was ever searched.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1060.987

The case file didn't indicate that a search warrant was ever obtained for his business property, and Detective Thompson said he couldn't personally recall ever searching the business. Major LeBlanc said if detectives were to search Freddie's home or business, they would have needed a warrant.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1077.232

And the tips that they got in through the jail letters and other sources, like those just weren't enough to get one. After that 2008 search, the case went stagnant and it stayed stagnant. until our team started reporting at the beginning of this year. And now, we've uncovered a new lead.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1098.571

And it came about when our reporter Emily Enfinger reached out to Sandra's now-adult daughter, Kelly, who you heard at the beginning of this episode. Kelly was only about 13 years old when her mom went missing.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1111.065

And like I said at the top, she thinks her grandparents likely kept police from interviewing her, either to protect the girls or because they didn't feel like the girls had anything of value to add since they were so young at the time. And after Sandra never returned home, they didn't really talk to each other as a family about Sandra's disappearance. But Kelly knew a lot about her mom.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1131.678

She knew her mom did cocaine. She knew that her mom did sex work. And she was familiar with some of the places her mom hung out. And Kelly also had information that had never made its way to police. And a new theory from a stranger about what happened to her mom. And all of this has led the sheriff's office to take a fresh look at Sandra's case.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1162.11

When Kelly sat down with our team, she shared a startling story. In 2017, she received an unprompted Facebook message. It came from a stranger, a man who claimed that he spent years trying to find her.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1198.811

This tipster told Kelly that a man named Richard confessed to killing Sandra. Now, we're using a pseudonym for him at the request of detectives as they are actively working this lead. The tipster told Kelly that Richard and Sandra had gone to a party and that Sandra later went back to Richard's place where they did cocaine.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1235.633

To me, this lead sounds eerily similar to the scenario that Mary had described to Candy. That Sandra had an intense reaction to drugs and then ended up dead. Of course, the difference between the two accounts is the identity of the alleged killer. And unfortunately, the tipster never reported this to police. And Kelly thinks it's because he feared becoming a target.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1258.211

And Kelly didn't go to police with this information immediately for that reason too. And because she felt like nothing would be done to investigate this new lead since her mother's case was so cold. It was the interview with our team that prompted her to finally go to investigators.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1274.691

And now Sandra's case can move from a file on a shelf to a detective's desk, which has given new hope to Kelly and her younger sister. When we reached out to the St. Landry Sheriff's Office, they confirmed that Sandra's case is active. And they wrote, quote, or the events in relation to Sandra's disappearance, end quote.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1302.541

In a text message to our reporter, Kelly said that she and her sister wish their grandparents were alive to witness the renewed investigation. She also said she and her sister are, quote, end quote. Now 33, Kelly is almost the same age as her mother was when she disappeared. But in a sense, she was always the adult.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

131.138

That didn't ease her worry. Kelly knew her mom had used drugs in the past, cocaine in particular, and she didn't trust the friend picking Sandra up. But at 13, there wasn't much Kelly could do, so she left with her friend, her friend's mom, at the wheel. And the whole drive to Gulf Shores, Alabama, she thought about her mom.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1359.707

Her childhood wasn't all darkness, though. And she remembers other sides of her mother as well.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1427.765

Many of the people who Sandra knew have died, including Candy, Sandra's parents and grandparents, and even her boyfriend, Dimmick. But investigators believe there are still people who have information that could help them close the case and bring a sense of peace to Sandra's daughters. Kelly said she now just wants to know what happened.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1489.52

But even without a body and physical evidence, even after 20 years, Major LeBlanc said that the case is still open and waiting for the right clues to come along.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1510.276

If you have any information about the disappearance or whereabouts of Sandra Burris, you're asked to contact the St. Landry Parish Crime Stoppers by visiting their website at stlandrycrimestoppers.com or you can call their hotline, 1-337-948-8477. The deck will be off next week, but we will return the following week with a brand new episode.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

1547.065

The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

174.963

Kelly wasn't the only one trying to reach Sandra. Her parents had been too, as well as Justine, Sandra's grandmother, who Sandra lived with. It wasn't uncommon for Sandra to spend a few nights away from home, but it was uncommon for her to be out of touch when she did so. The days stretched into nearly two weeks with no word.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

195.562

And finally, on August 8th, Sandra's father reported his daughter missing. Sandra lived outside of Opelousa's city limits in an area of St. Landry Parish called Port Berry. Parish is the Louisiana equivalent of a county, which means that it's the sheriff's jurisdiction. But they knew they needed help on this one. So they tapped the Opelousa's police department to help with the investigation.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

221.289

Police never interviewed Kelly or her younger sister about their mom's disappearance. Kelly thinks that was at the request of her grandparents. But police did talk to people close to Sandra, starting with her best friend, Alberta Young, who went by Candy. And by the way, Sandra had a nickname too.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

240.935

Now, there weren't many notes in the case file about that first interview investigators did with Candy in 2005. But police did record an interview with her in 2007 that lays out her story. Candy told detectives that Sandra had been dropped off at her house that afternoon by a friend. Sandra had $10, so she and Candy went to the store where Sandra purchased a 40-ounce beer.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

264.084

And then the friends walked to meet a dealer where they bought $8 worth of cocaine. From there, Candy said they returned to her house to smoke and fold laundry before going out that evening. And they went to this area of Opelousas called The Hill, which has multiple nightclubs. It was a regular haunt for Sandra and Candy, and they pretty much knew all the regulars.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

285.805

Candy said that she left with a guy and told Sandra she would be gone for a little while, no more than an hour, but that she would be back and told Sandra to wait for her. The last place Candy remembers seeing Sandra was outside of a club called Added Attraction. Like Sandra's family, Candy said she wasn't too worried at first when she couldn't find Sandra later that night.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

29.002

But it turns out, you get the right reporter dusting things off, asking questions, and you just might surface new avenues of investigation. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. On Tuesday, July 26, 2005, Sandra Burris and her 13-year-old daughter Kelly were parting ways.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

306.356

She told police that she figured Sandra went off to do her own thing, but she'd come back like she always did. Candy even asked around that night to see if she could find out where Sandra had gone. She said someone told her Sandra had left with a guy, and in that moment, Candy hadn't worried. But Candy did become worried a few days later when Sandra's grandmother stopped by looking for her.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

329.909

I mean, that's when Candy knew something was wrong because no matter where she went, Sandra would always call her grandmother. I mean, they were very close. But aside from law enforcement, someone else came knocking at Candy's door. That person was Sandra's boyfriend, a man named Dimmick Guidry.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

350.868

Candy told police he had seemed worried about Sandra and that he told Candy he'd been looking all over for her. Police talked to Dimmick too in August, the month after Sandra disappeared. It took a minute to get in touch with him because he had been offshores in the Gulf of Mexico for work.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

367.561

He told investigators he and Sandra had been dating for two years and mentioned that she liked to drink and would sometimes have periods of heavy drug use. Dimmick said that the last time he saw Sandra was on his way out of town when he stopped by the restaurant where Sandra worked, Ryan's Steakhouse. This was two days before Sandra was last seen by Candy.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

388.325

Dimmick also told police he had tried calling Sandra when he was offshore, but he was unable to reach her. He learned Sandra was missing when he returned home two weeks later.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

398.848

We don't know if investigators called Dimmick's employer to confirm that he was actually at work on a boat the night Sandra vanished, and there are no notes in the case file about whether investigators checked Dimmick's phone records or listened to the numerous voicemails he claimed Sandra had left him in the days before she disappeared.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

4.099

Our card this week is Sandra Burris, the Five of Spades from Louisiana. On a hot summer night in 2005, Sandra and her best friend went clubbing in their small Louisiana town. The night started out like any other, but the friends went separate ways later in the evening, and sometime after that, Sandra vanished. And there has been no trace of her in 20 years.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

416.494

But what we do know is that Dimmick was able to give police a lead. He told them that he was under the impression that Sandra had been afraid of a man named Kearney Alsandor. Kearney was a scary dude who had been charged with murdering a man named Robert Rumback.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

437.665

Dimmick told police that Sandra had made a specific comment to him about Robert's murder, that she was glad she wasn't armed when Kearney committed the homicide in Opelousas. And other people mentioned Kearney to police too. Candy said that Sandra had warned her that Kearney could be dangerous.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

457.602

Candy also said Kearney's ex-girlfriend had claimed Sandra had been in the room when the murder happened. but that couldn't be confirmed, and the girlfriend later recanted. It all raises the question, did Sandra see something, and did that lead to someone wanting to harm her?

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

479.318

It's really just rumors at this point, and police did tell us that there's no record of Kearney being interviewed in relation to this case. It's also worth noting that the local paper, The Daily World, reported that Kearney was arrested at the beginning of June and released in August, and therefore in police custody when Sandra went missing.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

498.175

While we weren't able to independently confirm the dates for when he was in custody that summer, Kearney was later convicted of Robert's murder. He didn't get back to us when we reached out to him in prison for comment. The Kearney lead didn't have legs, but there was one tangible lead, Sandra's phone bill. Her July bill had been mailed to her grandmother's house and investigators took a copy.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

521.397

It shows that calls had been placed from Sandra's phone on July 30th. That's four days after she was last seen. Sandra's phone bill showed two outgoing calls placed 43 minutes apart shortly after midnight on July 30th. Both calls were only a minute long, and there's nothing in the case file to show whether detectives followed up on this lead.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

551.968

Although it's worth noting that cell tracking data wasn't available to the St. Landry Parish law enforcement at the time. And there's no indication in the case file that her cell phone was ever found. Sanders' case file lacks a lot of information about the early investigation, and it's frustrating to not have these answers. But slim case files aren't rare in decades-old cold cases.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

575.467

As the public information officer for St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office wrote in an email to us, quote, end quote. Luckily, investigators did get a few more leads. In the months after Sandra went missing, police started to get letters from people who had spent time in the local jail and claimed to have information on Sandra's disappearance. Some of those letters arriving as early as January 2006.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

605.815

One of the tipsters told police that he had heard a woman named Cash had been killed for refusing to perform a sex act and that somebody was paid with drugs to cover up the crime. And this stuck out since Cash was the nickname that many people knew Sandra by.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

623.102

The informant's account was gruesome and alleged that Sandra's body had been wrapped in garbage bags and duct tape before being buried and that a blood-soaked mattress was burned to destroy evidence. When police followed up on this, everyone they spoke to had heard the story from someone else, a long chain of telephone. But this lead did introduce two new suspects, Freddie and Marcus.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

649.778

Now, we're using pseudonyms for both at the request of police since these men have never been publicly identified as suspects in this case. Freddie was a local businessman. His family owned a landscaping and dirt moving company. And according to police, he was known to use drugs. And Marcus was one of Freddie's employees.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

669.681

The rumors surrounding the duo indicated that Marcus wasn't responsible for killing Sandra, but that he may have helped hide her body. Now, in addition to these tips from jailhouse letters, Freddie's name had come up in passing in early police interviews. Candy said someone saw Sandra with Freddie the night of her disappearance. And even Dimmick had vaguely heard that they had been together.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

694.284

And at the end of January 2006, police brought Freddie in for questioning. During that interview, Freddie told police that he had only met Sandra once. Freddie said he had only known Sandra as Cash when they met through mutual friends about seven months before Sandra went missing.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

711.204

Police records don't indicate if they ever formally talked to Marcus, but I do know that both men did eventually take polygraph tests. And one of those tests raised more questions. This is Major Mark LeBlanc, the public information officer for the sheriff's office.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

779.252

The untruthful response came from Marcus. But police records don't say if he was further interviewed after the polygraph. And the new detective on the case didn't know if the early investigators did further digging on him. When our reporter tried to reach out to Freddie and Marcus, she didn't get a response.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

799.79

Now, it's not clear what came of all of this, but by all appearances, the investigation stalled without any direct connection between Freddie, Marcus, and Sandra. There wasn't any movement on the investigation until the fall of 2007. That's when Candy reached out to investigators again with new information this time.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

819.301

Candy had ended up in jail on some drug charges and asked correctional officers if they could put her in touch with the detectives investigating Sandra's disappearance. She told investigators that an acquaintance had approached her in 2006, the summer after Sandra's disappearance. This acquaintance is a woman we're calling Mary because detectives didn't want to release her real name.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

82.205

Kelly was going on an overnight trip to Gulf Shores with a friend's family, and Sandra was planning a regular night out with friends in nearby Opelousas, Louisiana. The two were each standing in the driveway waiting for their respective rides, and for some reason, Kelly remembers she had a bad feeling when she said goodbye to her mom.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

841.812

Mary had a run-in with Candy at a truck stop and gave her a ride to the hill, and they chatted along the way. That's when Mary told Candy that she knew what happened to Sandra. Mary said that Sandra was at Freddie's house along with Marcus and possibly some other people to cook drugs. But things went sideways. It was a bad batch and someone there injected Sandra with the drug.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

867.25

Now Candy emphasized to police that Sandra didn't like needles, so she believed Mary when she told her that someone else injected Sandra. But then apparently Sandra started having a bad reaction to the drugs and Freddie strangled her to death. In Mary's telling, Marcus helped cover up Sandra's murder. He dug the hole to bury her in.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

887.59

Obviously, this was a lot of information for Candy to process about her best friend. But Candy said that she believed that Mary only knew this because she was there when it happened. I mean, to Candy, the details just sounded too specific for Mary to not have been there. Here's the catch though, Mary was never gonna cooperate with police.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

907.856

She said she was only telling Candy this because she was Sandra's best friend and she thought she'd wanna know what happened to her. But that left investigators with another game of telephone and therefore another lag in the investigation. But sometime around 2008, detectives had a tip come in from a totally new person with a potential lead to uncover Sandra's remains.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

933.399

This is Detective Donald Thompson, or D.T., as some people call him. He was part of the original team on this case.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

959.997

Detective Thompson is with the sheriff's office now, but when Sandra went missing, he was a lieutenant with the Opelousas Police Department. So after that call, he went over to the city court and talked with the woman. Detective Thompson said that she told him Freddie had killed Sandra and that he had buried her on a property out near DeFeo Road.

The Deck

Sandra Ann Burris (5 of Spades, Louisiana)

980.543

Thompson drove out and got the property owner's consent to do a ground search of the property, or as much of it as he could since there was a lake there too.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Shaolin Warrior Monk: The Hidden Epidemic Nobody Is Talking About! This Modern Habit Is Quietly Killing Millions! Prediction For The Collapse Of The West!

18.172

He uses his decades of knowledge and techniques to help people control their minds and overcome society's biggest problems.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Keto Diet Specialist: What The Keto Diet Is Really Doing To Your Body! Can It Cure 43% Of Mental Illnesses? The Truth About The Keto Diet!

28.556

Dr. Georgia Ede is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in nutritional science and mental health. She was one of the first psychiatrists to offer nutrition-based approaches as an alternative to psychiatric medications to optimize brain function and enhance performance.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

MrBallen (Former Navy SEAL): I Wasn't Sleeping, I Became A Raging Alcoholic! I Was Disowned By The SEALS! This Will Turn Your Life Around In 2025!

21.186

Mr. Bullen is a former Navy SEAL turned master storyteller and content creator who uses his battlefield experiences and personal failures to inspire, educate, and help people overcome challenges to achieve their goals.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

*NEW* Body Language Expert: When You Do This You Look like A Loser...(Sorry But You Do)! This Is The Real Reason You're Still Single!

39.477

Vanessa Van Edwards has helped over 400,000 students crack the code on human behavior.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

*NEW* Body Language Expert: When You Do This You Look like A Loser...(Sorry But You Do)! This Is The Real Reason You're Still Single!

44.58

Decoding universal body language and sharing science-backed secrets for better dates.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Former First Lady (Michelle Obama): This Is A Scam! People Were Running From Us Because We Were Black! I Was Bitter About The Racism I Received!

11.516

the former first lady. And her brother, Craig Robinson, are sharing their rare perspectives into a world very few ever get to see.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Behavioural Psychologist: We're Not Having Enough Sex! Fat Makes You Attractive & The Poorer You Are The Friendlier You Are!

25.04

Interesting. Dr. William von Hippel is the world-renowned evolutionary psychologist who has spent decades studying and finding the answers to how instincts that once helped our ancestors survive still drive us today, often in ways we don't even realize. As a species, what are we getting wrong?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder: It’s Time To Quit Your Job When You Feel This! Selling LinkedIn For $26 Billion Taught Me This About Life! Trump Is Going To Punish Me!

12.444

Um, Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, playing pivotal roles in the success of influential companies, including PayPal, Airbnb, Facebook, and OpenAI. And now he is a leading voice in AI, helping people utilize this new technology to empower themselves in their life and careers.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Public Speaking Expert: This Speaking Mistake Makes People Ignore You! These Small Mistakes Make You Unlikeable!

28.413

And we all have access to these tools. Let's go through all five. Vin Jiang is the award-winning speaker and communication expert who helps people harness the power of their voice and body language in all areas of their life.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Public Speaking Expert: This Speaking Mistake Makes People Ignore You! These Small Mistakes Make You Unlikeable!

8812.178

Start your test today for 1 euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Woman That Makes Millionaires: They're Lying About Work Life Balance! I Built SKIMS Without Fashion Knowledge!

24.201

Emma Green has rewritten the fashion business rulebook.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Woman That Makes Millionaires: They're Lying About Work Life Balance! I Built SKIMS Without Fashion Knowledge!

26.786

As the co-founder of multi-billion dollar brands like Good American and Skims with the Kardashians.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Woman That Makes Millionaires: They're Lying About Work Life Balance! I Built SKIMS Without Fashion Knowledge!

31.195

She's now revealing the secrets behind her unstoppable success.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

1027.984

Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learned just how crucial having the right systems in place is. One which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

1047.736

Through their streamlined platform, you'll find all of your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio, as over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale-up mode.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

1063.021

We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite.com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. That's netsuite.com slash Bartlett.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

3.902

I read in your book that 60% of poop is bacteria, which just blew my mind.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

373.44

And how is this pertinent to our gut microbiome, our health? What does this tell us about our health?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

409.169

So if this type four poop, which is kind of like a sausage, it's kind of like a smooth sausage, is optimal... How does one do that? What is turning it into a type four? What are they eating, doing?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

42.256

So let's close off on this subject of poop. My team actually prepared some poop samples earlier on because I was wondering, as a gastroenterologist, I wondered that if you could look at someone's poop and determine whether they have good gut health, and if you can understand what's going on in their body just by how their poop looks, because poop comes in many shapes and sizes.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

511.687

And the gut transition time, how does that relate to these different types of poop? As you were saying that, I was thinking the one in seven, the type one and the type seven, the type one being those sort of hard nuts and the type seven being basically diarrhea. I was assuming that those are the poop types that would happen... With a lower and a super high gut transition time.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

557.258

So diarrhea comes out fast and these sort of hard nuts, they take typically a long time. That's right.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

592.746

Okay, so that's the shape and size of the poop. But what about colors of poop? I've got some different colors of poop here. I've got some red, some blue, some black, some green, some whites, and some yellows. Yes. Wow. How is color pertinent to health and everything we've been discussing?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

62.705

So what I have here... is a variety of different shapes and sizes of poop. Yeah. For anyone that can't see, look at the screen if you're listening to this podcast on Spotify or YouTube. Different shapes and sizes of poop here. This is real human poop. So I'm going to pass you that so you can play around with it. Yeah. And why does the shape and size of our poop tell us anything?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

89.007

Why does it matter? And how is it indicating something that's pertinent to our overall health?

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Key Moment: 10 Things Your Poo Says About Your Health: The No.1 Poo & Gut Scientist

997.165

Oh, now we got to start smelling our own poop.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Top Moment: 5 Warning Signs Your Body Needs More Nutrients: Mindy Pelz

659.501

We are Theresa and Nemo and that's why we switched to Shopify.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Top Moment: 5 Warning Signs Your Body Needs More Nutrients: Mindy Pelz

666.724

The platform we used before Shopify needed regular updates that sometimes led to the shop not working.

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Top Moment: 5 Warning Signs Your Body Needs More Nutrients: Mindy Pelz

674.881

Endlich macht unser Nemo Boards Shop dadurch auch auf den Mobilgeräten eine gute Figur und die Illustrationen auf den Boards kommen jetzt viel, viel klarer rüber, was uns ja auch wichtig ist und was unsere Marke auch ausmacht.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

0.169

Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Thank you so much for being a loyal listener to The Doctor's Pharmacy. For the holidays, I've decided to give my team a little break to rest up and prepare for more content and the new year ahead. So The Doctor's Pharmacy will be replaying some older episodes for the next two weeks.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1012.918

I think it's true there are a lot of side effects if you take it in a way that actually is prescribed currently. But there are other ways of using the drug. We're going to talk about with Tina that mitigate a lot of the side effects, that avoid a lot of the problems you're talking about, and that aren't using the product that's from the pharmaceutical industry.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1030.355

It's from compounding pharmacies, which is kind of a left field thing that people don't know about. But what's really striking is you can get these drugs for $20 a month if you get them from compounding pharmacies and at doses that are far lower that may be effective without a lot of the complications and side effects and combined with a lifestyle.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1049.813

You know, it made me think about the MAPS work, which is psychedelic research. And probably this year, MDMA therapy with psychotherapy is going to be proved. So it's bundled. You can't get MDMA without also having psychotherapy.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1064.688

You shouldn't be able to get Ozempic or any peptide like that that's driving this problem without actually having a bundled service of an aggressive lifestyle change, including dietary and exercise training and services.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

110.987

In the past year, he's met with 50 members of Congress and presidential candidates advocating policies to combat the corruption of pharma and food industries. He's a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School. And this podcast is going to be a doozy. It's a bit long, but I encourage you to stay with us the whole time.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1183.302

Let's look at this from a different perspective, because I think all the things you're saying are accurate. And I think we need to look at this from the perspective of the paradox between

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1192.625

an incredibly toxic food environment because you're saying eat better exercise but if 67 of kids diets is ultra processed food some estimates by some studies show it's 73 and we live in a toxic nutritional landscape where it's almost impossible to do the right thing we live in a society that fosters sedentary lifestyle that has no incentives in school for healthy eating or for movement for kids

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1217.332

We have to change the structural phenomena that are driving this. Paul Farmer talked about structural violence. What are the social, political, and economic conditions that drive disease? That has to be dealt with.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1228.397

But at the same, and that's what we're doing, that's what you're doing in Washington, that's what I'm doing in Washington with the Food Fix Campaign is trying to change the policies that are driving this from marketing of junk food to kids, to subsidizing the commodity crop that are turned into junk food, to food stamps that are paying for junk food. I mean, the list goes on and on.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1244.004

They're paying for nutrition services in medicine, for changing Medicare reimbursement, changing all the things that we know need to be changed to actually drive a bigger societal systemic change. But there is a paradox here because we are already metabolically, as you say, busted, Tina.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

125.955

We get into all of it from the macro, what is causing our obesity epidemic, our metabolic crisis, and what we can do about it from the social and political level, but also on the micro. What about that person sitting in our office or struggling with weight and struggling with being obese and not knowing how to get out of that pickle? And what is the right way to do it?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1261.051

And when you have someone who's metabolically screwed up from being in this toxic soup of processed food and junk food and sugar and starch that has caused them to become metabolically obese and metabolically busted, it's really hard to kind of get people out of that. It's like they're stuck.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1278.036

One of my professors, Sidney Baker, who's one of the, I think, most brilliant scientific minds in medicine in the 20th century and 21st century said, you know, sometimes you need a hundred horses to get people who are really stuck unstuck.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1289.221

So when you have these really chronically ill patients with multiple dysfunctions, metabolically inflammatory issues, gut issues, immune issues, it takes a lot of effort to pull them out of the mud. And sometimes you need a whole team of a hundred horses. And so the question is, how do we, how do we both deal with the things you're talking about, which is the

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1309.715

The corruption of pharma and the corruption of medicine. And this has happened, by the way. You talk a lot about this, Callie Howe. $27 million spent by Ozempic company manufacturer Novo Nordisk to fund doctors and other others who are promoting this drug. So there's a lot of corruption in the system.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1324.424

They're funding the NAACP, so they come out in favor of Ozempic and they say it's systemic racism if you don't prescribe it. But at the same time, we have to deal with all the corruption from the pharma industry and from internally in medicine, how things are done.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1339.512

We have to also accept that we're in this incredible crisis where people are struggling and they can't get better, even if they want to and they try.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1386.494

True, that can work. But for some people, it still doesn't. And as a doctor seeing patients with all the best intentions, people struggle. Even if they know what to do, even if they're educated, even if they're doing it, I've seen people struggle. And so the question is, is there a way to think about this class of drugs differently?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1402.967

Is there a way to think about it not from the pharma point of view, which is lifelong drugs, which is high doses, which is pharmaceutical injections that cost $1,700 a month that nobody can afford, that's going to bankrupt society, Is there another way to actually think about using these drugs to help people who really struggle? And what are the pros and cons? And what is the science behind it?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1424.445

And how does this work? And I think this, I would love sort of, Tina, do you start by talking, and we're going to get into all the details, because I see you like in your chair waiting to get going. And I'm going to get you like going in a minute.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1436.474

Because I think Callie laid out beautifully how we're in a really screwed up political system, a corporate corruption system with pharma, how they operate.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1446.563

and how they fund things like the promotion of these drugs at wide scale through co-opting professional societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics by funding Harvard and other institutions to do the studies, which they get huge amounts of money from. I mean, there's so much corruption in the system.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

145.23

What are the pros and cons of these new drugs, GLP-1 agonists? Are their side effects real? Do they have benefits beyond weight loss? Should we be using them? How should we be using them? Are the regular pharmacological approaches

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1464.559

But there is another way to think about helping people who really struggle with their weight and with the metabolic consequences. And as I was sort of reading your stuff, Tina, and thinking about what your perspective is, we talked briefly yesterday on the phone. It really brought up the question of why are so many people having trouble?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1491.386

And is there something that is regulating the appetite that's so dysregulated, the GLP-1? And we're going to talk about what is GLP-1? What does it do in the body? How does it work? Because I think this is important for me to understand. We're going to get a little sciencey here. But if you understand that maybe...

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1506.991

I mean, just maybe like we have a crisis of hyperinsulinemia, we also may have a crisis of low GLP-1, which is a peptide in the body naturally occurring that helps to regulate appetite. Why are people unable to control their appetite? Why are people so stuck in knowing what to do and not being able to do it? Is there...

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1527.933

merit here to this concept that maybe because of factors that we're going to talk about that have come recently in the last 50, 60 years that have influenced our biology, that have made us low in GLP-1, that's driving us to overeat and overconsume and accelerate this obesity crisis. So Tina, why don't you start by helping us and we're going to let you kind of wind up and... I did a home run here.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1551.864

But why don't you start off by telling us, like, what is GLP-1? What does it do? Why is it important in the body? And how does it work? Because I don't think most people understand what this is about. And then we can get into the idea of, well, maybe there is something going on really with this GLP-1 deficiency concept. And we'll talk about why.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

156.281

wrong is there another way using microdosing or compounded pharmaceutical versions of these peptides that might be actually safer and better used with a 360 approach for lifestyle so we're going to get all of these and you're going to be in a very robust sometimes heated discussion about ozempic and the glp-1 agonist so stay with us for the whole thing and i know you'll love it let's dive in right now all right welcome tina and welcome callie it's great to have you both on the show pump the beer thank you

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1575.896

I mean, I just read a paper yesterday that the GLP-1 deficiency is... is really common in people with fatty liver disease. Now, fatty liver disease is a consequence of our high sugar starch diet and ultra processed food. It affects probably 90 million Americans, which is a precursor to heart disease and cancer and diabetes and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1596.45

Even kids as young as 15 are needing liver transplants from fatty liver disease. So we know that at least in fatty liver disease, there is a GLP-1 deficiency. So let's talk about what is it, unpack it, what does it do? And then let's talk about this concept of GLP-1 deficiencies.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

16.198

But don't worry, we'll be back with more content and brand new episodes starting Tuesday, December 31st. So for now, here are some of my favorite past episodes of The Doctor's Pharmacy and see you next year. Coming up on this episode.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1616.985

I think we're all saying- Wait, I just want to say, we don't have to agree on everything, but we actually like each other and we're all friends. So this is good, this is good.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1623.011

This is like what America's missing is nuanced conversations that take different perspectives and actually come up with a place where we can all learn from each other and actually be open to each other's ideas and have a conversation that isn't just black and white.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

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Okay, so this is such a rich topic, and it's so deep, and I spent probably 15 hours preparing for this podcast, my reading, everything that both of you read, reading study after study after study, looking at the data very carefully.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1825.219

Clearly that's misinformation, right? Eating healthy and exercising and being in the sunlight. God forbid.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1869.113

Yeah. Just for people background, peptides are things that our bodies make and they're the communication networks. And there's tens of thousands of these molecules and insulin is one of them. And people are using peptides like thymus and alpha-1 or BP-157 for sports injuries. These are things that are available. Some of them are in a prescription like Ozempic.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1886.946

There are other ones like Mylesia, which is a prescription for sexual arousal in women and men. So there's a lot of things out there that are used. As in traditional medicine, over 70 of these peptides have been approved. And they're things that the body uses naturally. So they're not things that are pharmacological agents.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1903.396

They're actually things that the body has and uses as part of its normal physiology. So GLP-1 is that. And so when we say GLP-1 agonist, which is what these class of drugs are, it means they work to stimulate the GLP-1 receptors to have the effects of GLP-1.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

193.828

And I can honestly say that after not just reading the headlines, but between the lines, reading the research, I've come to understand that this is a very nuanced conversation. It's not just good or bad. It's not just we should do it or we shouldn't do it. It's really about understanding, one, the bigger social context in which this is happening.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

1982.992

Or high doses of insulin, which was one of the first peptides ever synthesized and has been around for a long time.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

2050.283

Then I started- So ghrelin doesn't work because ghrelin seems to make you hungry. So people are hungry even when they're overweight and maybe GLP-1 deficient.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

210.435

The bigger social context is we are facing a metabolic health and obesity crisis that's never been seen before in the history of humanity. There's over a billion people who are obese, up two billion people who are overweight in the world.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

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So... And does that mean like 75% of the people who are overweight in America have this mutation?

The Dr. Hyman Show

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It seems like probably a larger portion of maybe the severely obese might have that, right? What were you going to say, Kelly?

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Genetic changes. I think it's, genes are complicated. There was Darwin, which is, you know, genes change by natural selection over millennia. And then was Lamarck, who said traits can be passed from generation to generation. And Lamarck was kind of dismissed and Darwin won the day.

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But the truth is they're both right because Darwin is about gene changes and Lamarck is really talking about epigenetic changes, which can happen from generation to generation. And I think one of the things we're seeing now is generations of kids who are born to obese parents. Yes.

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And the consequences of that, the epigenetic changes in the womb that happen from the environment that the baby is bathed in, from processed food and sugar and starch and lack of exercise and stress and all the things, environmental toxins, all of that is programming these children.

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We have in America, it's even worse, we have 42% obese, we have 75% overweight, and 93.2% metabolic and healthy, meaning they're on the spectrum of some poor metabolic dysfunction, which is making them on their way towards prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. And the costs are staggering. We know our health care costs are now $4.3 trillion in direct costs.

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And we know this data from many, many epigenetic studies is programming these children to be obese, have heart disease, have diabetes, end up with cancer and many other problems. And they're kind of screwed before they were even born. So these kids come into the world and then they're,

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more likely to be obese or more likely to have these programmed epigenetic changes that maybe are affecting the expression of the genes. So genes don't change, but the expression changes. And that's, I think, that's an important point.

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I'm up for giving kids six years old. Does that make sense? That's another conversation. I think that's a little extreme.

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You're thinking from public policy, social. I'm a doctor. Tina's a doctor. We're both thinking about the patient we see in our office who's stuck as you know what. And how do we help them? And I've had patients who have lost 200 pounds, 150 pounds, 110 pounds, 116 pounds, 138 pounds just using food as medicine. But it's tough for them. They can do it.

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But the question is, is there something else that could be done in a way that actually is, like Tina was saying, is physiologic that doesn't use this kind of heavy-handed pharmacologic approach to actually help people with fixing some of the metabolic and biochemical things that are going on? And I think this is an open question. I think we need more data on this.

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But I think what you're saying, Tina, is really interesting, that there are effects of this natural peptide. that are different than just regulating weight. And they may be working through other mechanisms. I had a patient once say to me recently, can I just take Phentermine? And that's basically an appetite suppressant.

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It's basically speed or crack. And basically, yeah, it's like crackheads are so skinny because they don't want to eat because they're appetite suppressed. But it's basically speed. And I said, no, no, no. This is really not good because it's going to cause you to be anxious, palpitations, and have all these issues of sleep. I think it's not a good idea.

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But then we talked about Ozempic maybe being a solution because it can be done in a way that is different, that works physiologically and works on some of these other pathways that I think people aren't aware of. Like the neuroinflammation is a big one. And I think what we're seeing is sometimes decreased suicide rates. We're seeing decreased depression.

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We're seeing a lot of other things with these drugs. And I think, well, how is that happening? And what's probably happening in my view is people are eating less of the crap because they don't want it. And so their brain and their body inflammation is going down. And maybe some of the effects of the GLP-1 drugs are anti-inflammatory by mechanism.

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And probably 80% of that is for chronic disease, mostly caused by our food and primarily driven by this phenomenon of insulin resistance, which is part of what Ozempic and these drugs purport to fix. So...

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They are. And so if that's true, then the neuroinflammation crisis, and again, I've talked a lot about this on the podcast and written a whole book about it called The Ultramind Solution. is our brains are on fire and our brains on fire lead to depression, anxiety, suicide, aggression, you know, societal division, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. I mean, the list goes on and on.

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Anything that affects the brain is about inflammation. So these drugs may modulate that. It's fascinating. So they're being studied for Alzheimer's and many other things. Now, I think the idea that we should just like fall in love with this drug and it's great for everybody and we should put it in the water, I don't think Tina or anybody I think who is smart about this thinks that.

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But for the select patient, given in a way that can actually regulate some of these pathways, I'm not so sure it should be thrown out. It's like any tool. It's like any tool we have in medicine. It's for the right person at the right time, the right dose.

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as we start to think about how do we solve this problem you know i've been thinking about it from the very macro view which is how do we deal with the food environment the toxic food environment has caused us to be in this situation this is not a genetic problem there may be genetics that load the gun but the environment pulls the trigger and the environment has changed in the last 50 years so dramatically that it's led to an abundance of toxic food ultra processed food high starch and sugar in our diet

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So why is pharma starting the dose so high? I mean, the injection first dose is 0.5 milligrams and it goes to one and two. You're talking about using 0.1 or 0.08, which is a fifth of that.

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But what if you had someone who was... But the median American is metabolically healthy. What would you do if you had someone come in who was like 350 pounds, who would you start them off with?

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You have to have a license to put them on and to take them off.

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What if they're, for your patients who are not really doing it for weight issues, I understand.

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But what about for people who are like 300 pounds? Did you start with the same dose?

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So this compound, which our body makes, maybe is deficient because of why? Why is it because of epigenetic programming? Is it because of our microbiome changing? Is it because of toxins in the environment?

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ingredients we've never had before that are destroying our microbiome, that are destroying our nutritional resilience, that are causing poor metabolic health, and are really at the root of so much of what's going on. So I focused on policy issues. I wrote my book, Food Fix, which is an attempt to kind of lay out why this is happening. Because I realized I couldn't cure diabetes in my office.

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And my daughter... That was what I lived on when I was a kid.

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Kelly, do you see a world in where it's not either or? There may be a role for using these drugs in patients to help along with an intensive lifestyle intervention and a functional medicine approach to correct some of the problems that may have been driving the GLP-1 deficiency and not have them on it forever.

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I agree. In a perfect world, we'd have a healthy environment in the country where we had all the defaults being healthy, where there wasn't processed food, where people were moving naturally. where we had lower stress or weren't having being sleep-deprived, where we weren't exposed to a load of environmental toxins, I want that world 100%. We don't live in that world.

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And I see patients, for example, who have had complications from conditions. For example, we're doing clearly heart scans, looking at AI-interpreted coronary angiograms. And we're seeing people with lots of plaque and dangerous plaque and risk plaque. And those people I will put on medication. It's not the solution to someone who's younger who doesn't have a solution to problem to prevent it.

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It's cured on the farm. It's cured in the factory where they make the food. It's cured... you know, in the grocery store, in the kitchen. That's where diabetes is cured. And ultimately, I realized I had to go upstream to deal with the root causes, which is our bigger food system.

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But there may be a time for medications in people's lives that actually can be used in a way that helps reverse the problem.

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I think we're on the same page here because I don't think anybody believes that you can use a drug without lifestyle change. And sometimes people need a bridge. For example, some people need like a leg up who are just so stuck. And I am humbled as a doctor because, you know, it's one thing to have, you know, a philosophy based on a really a very pure idea of what we should be doing.

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But the reality is there are real people with real issues who struggle and it's and even with their best efforts, they can't succeed. And so that's a problem I see. And it may be because of the things that are not within their control.

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In other words, there may be things that are going on biologically with the drastic change in our microbiome and environmental toxins, which I think are the two biggest things going on, that make it hard for people to actually correct those things without some help.

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And we're going to get to talk about that with Callie because he's been talking about it and thinking about it for a long time. And I think his new book, Good Energy, addresses a lot of these issues around metabolic health. It's his sister, Casey Means, who's been on the show. No, I often get them confused. Callie, Casey, I don't know what their parents are thinking about it.

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And I would say Callie has PEP just to understand pharmacology versus physiology. So, someone has a thyroid dysfunction. They have low thyroid hormone. We give them thyroid hormone for life. Now, some people can get off it if you change a lot of things. And some people can't. Some people can't.

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I think I've sorted it out, you know? And Tina has a very different perspective, which is really around the micro, not the macro, which is how do we deal with individuals struggling with metabolic dysfunction who tried everything, done everything, hit the wall, can't make it work, struggle, white knuckle, and just can't get their bodies back into a state of good metabolic health.

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If you take a pharmacologic substance, it's working in ways that are inhibiting, blocking, or somehow interfering with normal physiology. Peptides are things that our body uses to regulate its function. I personally use peptides for my own health. I use peptides in my patients for all sorts of different things, from tissue repair, to hormonal support, to...

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immune support to anxiety and brain health, and they're quite effective. And I don't shy away from using those in the right patient in the right way. So as a class of compounds, they're different than pharmacologic compounds, even though they've been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry. Now the FDA is trying to shut down the use of peptides because they're so effective and they're physiologic.

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So I always think of something when I treat somebody, is this nature-made or man-made? If it's nature-made, I tend to think that it's working with the body rather than against the body. And the question is, you know, if you give something like vitamin D, which is nature made at massive doses, it's going to cause a lot of harm.

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But if you give vitamin D to those who are deficient in it and a physiologic dose, it may actually help them function better. So I'm always kind of thinking about medicine in that perspective. I've worked, for example, with a woman who has struggled for a long time with for decades with weight. And she tried, she tried, she knew what to do.

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She'd been the victim of terrible trauma when she was younger. She saw her mother literally stabbed to death in front of her by her stepfather. She was kidnapped and thrown in a car. She was raised by an abusive aunt. I mean, I saw the amount of trauma she had and she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and she was very successful. but she struggled with her weight around this.

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This is what we call adverse childhood events. And for her, you know, I think she tried this medication and it really helped her to kind of get back to a level where she could get off the 50, 60, 70, 80 pounds that she needed to get off.

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And so, you know, it's humbling as a doctor to know, you know, when you can't get people to do the right thing for some reason, whether it's their trauma, whether it's their emotional state, whether it's their brain functioning or their brain inflammation, Sometimes these compounds can be helpful.

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So I kind of like to kind of not just do all good, all bad and go, I think we can all agree that the way that the pharmaceutical industry is doing this is bad. I don't think any of us have any argument about that. I don't think any of us have an argument that, you know, pharma shouldn't be driving all the research. It shouldn't be driving all the marketing.

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It shouldn't be driving all the co-opting of the research institutions, the professional associations, physicians promoting it, you know, the government lobbyists. You know, I mean... You know, they're trying to get proof for Medicare. I'm like, well, gee, you know, for Medicare Part D, which is the drug benefit, the total benefit for everybody and all drugs in all America is $145 billion.

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If just the obese people in Medicare got this, it would be, I think, $267 billion, which is You know, more than all the rest of the drug benefit put together. So that is not a solution. We're working, for example, in Washington to try to get food as medicine covered. We're going to get there, but it's a decade-long fight.

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In the meantime, we're heading into some crazy period of metabolic disaster in America that we need to do something. So I would like to kind of go back to Tina and talk to Tina about her approach with her patients. Because I was, to be just honest, I was pretty skeptical. I was like... I don't know.

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And we're going to talk about how she does that, why it's different than the traditional approaches to the use of these drugs and why we need to rethink how we're doing this. So this is going to be a very interesting conversation. I'm really excited to dive in.

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I think I've described it maybe one or two times in very select patients who really had to get the weight off. They had Alzheimer's or they had something really serious, and I used it very carefully. But I really had a very similar perspective to you, Callie, that this is something that we should really not be using, that lifestyle works better.

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If you look, for example, at the studies of gastric bypass, which is the other treatment, which is, by the way, far cheaper if you're paying retail for these things. If you give someone a gastric bypass and then you have someone eat the same diet as if they had a gastric bypass, there was no difference in the outcomes. So to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's the food's stupid, right?

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And I was like, wait a minute. If people just did a study, and I've never done this study because I looked to see if there was a study done. Was there a study comparing... diet, aggressive dietary intervention, the same diet people would eat on a GLP-1 agonist with a GLP-1 agonist, and looked at all these effects. Would neuroinflammation go down? Would fatty liver improve?

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Would heart failure reverse? I think it would. I don't know how this study would work, but I had a patient like this. She was 66 years old. She had heart failure, fatty liver. She had diabetes. She had all these problems. We didn't use a Zempric. We just used food. And she was off all her medications in three months. She lost 43 pounds in three months, 116 pounds in a year.

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And she got reversal of all these inflammatory things. So would she have been helped even more with those impacts? I don't know. So this is a question I have. And I kind of want Tina to talk through how you use this with your patients. Because it's a very different approach than I think we're talking about with what's happening wide scale in the country. It's like...

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And so first we're going to start with the macro and start with Callie, because I want you to set the stage for the situation we're in around our poor metabolic health and obesity. and what this is doing to us as a society, economically, socially, politically, even in terms of our social divisions and conflict, all driven by the effect of these things on our physical and mental health.

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You go to the doctor, you give Ozempic. Now you can buy it online. You can go to Ozempic websites and they talk to you for five minutes. They give you the drug and it's like a prescription meal that I think should be illegal. But I think in the right patient, in the right way, tell us what you're seeing.

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Well, let's talk about this because I think what's in the literature and concerns me is some of the side effects, right? And I think, Kelly, maybe that's what you were about to say.

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What she was saying was peptides work better in metabolic... All peptides.

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Now, GLP... If someone's very insulin-resistant and type 2 diabetic, they need a lot of insulin to lower their blood sugar. But if someone's insulin-sensitive, they need a tiny bit of insulin, right?

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So can you kind of unpack For us, Callie, how do you see the current state of affairs in the realm of weight and obesity? I really just read an article this morning that said it's not okay to say someone's obese. You have to say they're someone with obesity. I get it. But we've got to have to sort of take a hard look at this.

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That's an interesting concept because, for example, I use BP-157 when I work out and I get a little strained muscle, I just pop it in there and it's better. So, it regenerates tissue, it repairs tissue. I had a guy who was an elite athlete and he pulled a muscle on his cap and he couldn't do all the things he had to do and he just popped a peptide in there.

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Someone else said, Dennis Elbow, I popped a BP-157 GHK peptide in there. and I did maybe a couple of times, and it resolved the problem. Now, I think GLP-1 agonists may be a little bit different, I don't know, but they do have a regenerative capacity. That's what these peptides are meant to do in the body. So they're different than drugs.

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And I think that the pharmaceutical approach is concerning to me because it doesn't include a holistic approach. You and I do that, obviously, and there are some doctors around the country who are focused on that. But most of the people getting these drugs are just getting them, and then they have some significant issues.

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At the dose that we're seeing that people are getting, there's very high rates of nausea, very high rates of diarrhea, constipation, like 20, 25%, probably 67% of nausea. It tends to go away after a little bit, but it still is a problem.

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And 80% discontinue them after, I think, a couple of years or a year or two, which is an interesting phenomenon, whether it's cost or side effects or maybe I don't know what. And then there's the risk of some of these other issues. Now, the absolute number is small because these are rare conditions.

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But when you look at the data, published data, there's 450% increased risk in bowel obstruction and 900% increased risk in pancreatitis. They seem not that trivial. And if you scale it out on the population, And the incidence of this, it might be if, I don't know, 100 million people are taking it, it might be 500,000 people with it, which is not trivial.

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So how do you think about these side effects? How do you see these being different in the patients that you use the microdosing, as you call microdosing? I wouldn't call it microdosing, I'd call it low dose. Yeah, it's low dose. Microdose is like micro. But low dose, I think you're using low dose, which is, I think, an interesting concept.

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And by the way, people, you cannot get low dose through the drug companies. You have to go through compounding pharmacies. And we're going to talk about that and the challenge with that. But there's a way to get it and do it, but it's tricky and you need to be with the right practitioner. But given these side effects, can you talk about what you think about these? Are they as bad as we think?

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Are they just in the people who are on high doses? Do you see this in the population who are using smaller doses as you're talking about?

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And so tell us from your perspective, how should we be thinking about this problem at a macro level?

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You mean when your stomach kind of stops working, if you stop the drug, it'll come back to its normal.

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I think that's an important point, Tina. I think we have to do it in the right way, in the right context for the right patient. I always say, you know, there's a Buddhist concept called the right medicine. What is the right medicine for this person? Is it a motherectomy if they're 50 years old living with their mother that's driving them crazy? Or, you know, or do they need exercise?

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Or do they need the right nutrient they're deficient in? Or do they need to have some support for their metabolism? And I think This conversation is hard because we're threading a very tight needle here, which is at scale in the population, the way it's being done now, I think is problematic.

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But is there another alternative to think about this that we can basically encourage people to think about that includes an aggressive lifestyle intervention with some peptide support which I use across many, many other peptides. I use many peptides in my practice for just general therapeutic treatments that support the body's own endogenous functioning, which is what I love about peptides.

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I love things that nature made, not that God made, not that man made, because they tend to be more problematic. That doesn't mean that these don't have side effects when you use them in huge doses. It looks like vitamin D, right? So one of the things that also is a problem is muscle loss. And there's a lot of the data is very clear on this.

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There's been DEXA scans in some of the studies showing significant weight loss. But the truth is, if you just lose weight without exercising and eating protein, you're going to have the same result.

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So if you calorie restrict and you don't eat protein and you don't strength train, you are going to lose muscle and you'll lose muscle and fat at about 50% each. And when you gain the weight back, you gain back all fat. And so you script your metabolism if you do the weight cycling, which is a real problem. So how do you address some of the concerns?

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Because aside from the protein increase needs, when people are on these drugs, they tend to have suppressed apocyte. So they don't want to eat as much protein and they don't want to eat as much food. And then they may be at risk for nutrient deficiencies. So, how do you deal with those kinds of issues?

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So they need to have their Fitbit or their Apple Watch or their Oura Ring data pumped directly to you so you can see.

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It's not a bad idea, right? It's not a bad idea to support people and have them track and be accountable as they're doing this because, you know.

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I think it's important to talk about what we call pleiotropic effects in medicine, which is the multiple kinds of effects on the body from one compound that's in the body.

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I think there's mixed data, right? I think, you know, there's some data that show there was a study looking at antidepressant effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists. It was a meta-analysis with 2,000 people, five randomized trials, one prospective court study, and it was about 24 to 60 weeks. And they found that actually it reduced depression in adults and both adults and adults with type 2 diabetes.

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There's an interesting conversation here about dopamine because I think... We have dysregulated dopamine, and I do genetic testing with my patients, and we see polymorphisms or variations in DR dopamine receptors, DRD2 receptors, which affect pleasure. So some people may need a lot of a substance, whether it's alcohol or sugar or... or gambling to actually feel pleasure.

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And so there are people who are at risk for increased obesity that's based on this sort of low hedonic drive to pleasure. And I think the question is, do these drugs modify that in some way? Do they actually not... do it in a bad way, but maybe they do it in a good way.

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Because I think if there's something that can actually help people reduce their addiction and reduce that drive and actually have pleasure from things that are just things that we all get pleasure from, that would be better.

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I think that's a serious concern. My joke always is that there's a study in the New England Journal years ago that said we should start to use these new drugs as soon as they come out before the side effects develop. We don't know if it's going to happen in 5, 10, 15 years. We really don't.

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Yeah, I mean, there's mixed data on the suicide thing. And some of its population data, the clinical trials don't show that. There's Big horror studies of 240,000 people, 1.6 million patients with diabetes prescribed Ozempic, 240,000 on Wigobi. And there's a lower incidence of suicidal thoughts in patients. So I think, you know, I don't think we know. We just have to keep tracking it.

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I think you're right. It's good to be concerned. And we do need to do post-market surveillance of what's going on with these drugs and how they impact people's health. But that's sort of, you know, like I'm sitting here, honestly, like kind of in the middle and also confused because part of me is like, God, wouldn't it be great to have a leg up?

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Because I've been treating people with obesity and overweight issues for 30 years, and it's tough. It's really tough for them. They really struggle. They wanted the right thing, and they're highly motivated patients, and it's still tough. And so... I wonder, you know, this is not a miracle drug. I don't think Tina would say it's a miracle drug. I think, you know, like any compound, it has a role.

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And so is there a role? How do we use it? Does it make sense to actually think about this differently from how the traditional pharmacological medical approach is doing something? and just not dismiss it wholesale as a part of an overall solution. So I think, you know, in the perfect world, we'd totally fix our food system. We would get rid of all the junk.

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I mean, I had this crazy idea that if we actually gave Ozempic everybody's overweight, all of a sudden people would stop eating junk food and the industry would collapse and everything would be great. The CEO of Novo Nordisk who makes Ozempic was getting calls from people in the fast food and junk food industry really concerned about this.

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McDonald's is concerned about this because it's cutting into their stomach share, we call it stomach share, which I think is a good thing.

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That's true, Tina, but there is no incentives to do that. I understand that. If there were, I agree with you. It would be amazing if we all start with that.

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They don't know. They're not in the system. They don't know. that allows them to do it. Every doctor I know would want their patient to exercise and eat more and do... Oh, yeah.

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Sure, there are perverse incentives, but I would push back a little bit on doctors kind of being evil in that way.

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Yeah, maybe. But I think if you talk to most physicians who are dealing with this, they would love to sort of magically snap their fingers and have some place to send their patients to an intensive, immersive lifestyle change program. I know that's true.

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When I was in Washington in 2008 and 2009 during the Obamacare development of the legislation, I was really working hard to insert in the legislation something called the Take Back Your Health Act. where we basically got the government to pay for intensive lifestyle change with a multidisciplinary team over a long period of time to create sustained behavioral change.

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Because we know how to change behavior, and what you're talking about is behavior change, but we don't have any mechanism in our healthcare system to support behavior change. And that's really the problem. We don't pay for it. We don't incentivize it. We don't have it. No one has how to do it. I mean, I met with Kathleen Sebelius, who was the head of health and human services at the time,

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And I proposed this idea to her during this time. She says, this is a great idea, but who's going to know how to do it? Because doctors aren't trained to do it. They don't know how to do it. They know anything about nutrition. I'm like, you're right. But let me tell you something.

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When somebody invented angioplasty and you reimbursed it, you didn't have to worry if they were going to figure out how to do it. If you paid them $10,000 to do that, they'd freaking learn how to do that. And I think we're in the same situation. It's all about perverse financial incentives.

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Do you know why this happens, Callie, is because... Doctors are stuck in a system that's like a black box, and what they don't realize is that most of their education is pharmaceutical-driven. I was sitting on a chairlift once skiing at a resort, and this woman was next to me. She's like, so what do you do? I'm in, you know, I'm in, you know... pharmaceutical education. I'm like, what do you do?

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She's like, well, we put on continuing medical education conferences for doctors. So there really is a corruption of our medical education system. My daughter's in medical school now. I see it. There's a corruption in the research infrastructure and how it's done. And we don't fund the right types of research to support lifestyle intervention. So we have a very screwed up system.

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And doctors don't necessarily know they're in it. It's like the matrix.

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I think, though, what Tina was saying before is really key. If you link the prescription of these drugs to certain behaviors and track them.

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I'm not sure I agree with you because I said to the CEO of Cleveland Clinic once, I said, well, we were at the World Economic Forum, Toby Cosgrove, and I said, listen, Toby, and I was kind of joking, I said, how would you like me to empty out half your hospitals and cut your bypasses and angioplasties in half? And he said, that would be a great idea.

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I said, but when you're making $8 billion a year, what if you're making $4 billion? He says, we'll figure it out. We'll figure out what the right thing to do is. So not everybody, obviously, is like that in medicine. But I do think that people in medicine generally want to do the right thing. And if they could get rid of all obese kids, I think they would do it.

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Now, there are businesses and private equity in medicine now.

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Why? Because they're funded by pharma and the food industry, that's why.

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But those are the doctors. No, they're not. They're the professional associations.

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Who set the standard of care, true, but doctors aren't necessarily... Why aren't doctors speaking up?

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I'm going to work with Tina for a minute on this because I think what you're doing is so unique and I think we can learn from it because you're not practicing metabolic medicine in the same way that most endocrinologists are or doctors are who are prescribing Ozempic or similar drugs. And you're including a very different set of things that you look at, that you treat, and that you manage.

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And you're not finding the same complications, side effects, weight regain, muscle loss, stomach issues, gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting. You found a way through to do this in a way, in a very different way that I think is worth talking about because, you know, we all agree that the traditional pharmacologic approach is a bad idea.

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And I agree getting a 12-year-old in a Zympic and just sending them on their way for the rest of your life is a bad idea. What is the right idea? Like, if we could create a, you know, blue ocean and say, okay, what would be the perfect use of these peptides in the world to deal with a really serious crisis that we all agree is happening, which is a metabolic crisis?

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So in a real scenario, in a perfect world with a blue ocean, how would we create a 360 treatment approach, which you've done, to help people regain their metabolic health when they're metabolically busted, which is arguably between 42% and 93% of America's?

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And I think that this- That's important because what we were saying before was that these are perceived as lifelong drugs, but maybe they're not if we use them properly.

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In a sense, what you're talking about is taking someone who's metabolically busted, as you call it, to what I call metabolically resilient. So when I take a patient who's type two diabetic, who's on 100 units of insulin, I'm like, no, you can't have any sugar. Of course. You probably can't have any fruit for now. you can't have any flour. This is just a hard no.

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If you want to get reversing your diabetes, you just need, like Benjamin Franklin said, you need a pound of cure, not an ounce of prevention. And then when we get them metabolically resilient, then yeah, you can add that stuff back and you can try to have a little, see how it affects you, have some more fruit. You want to have sugar or dessert once in a while? Okay, at the end of a meal.

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Become more metabolically resilient. What you're talking about is shifting people from metabolically busted to metabolically resilient and using a holistic approach that may include peptides, right?

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Like your dad, for example. My dad's a mess. He's got diabetic.

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I mean, I'm really curious about what we call these sort of non-weight loss effects. And I've been reading some papers around Ozempic or not Ozempic, but GLP-1 agonists and longevity. And I'm really interested in longevity. I'm like, wow, this is really interesting. It reduces inflammation. It reduces oxidative stress. It improves mitochondrial function. It helps neuroinflammation.

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All the things that we know cause aging. Now, I do have the thought, well, what if you just lost weight? Would that be enough? I don't know. But it's interesting. And I think there's really interesting mechanisms that we're kind of just learning about. And I think, like you're right, we can't throw the baby out with a bathwater. And I think one of the challenges is that people can't get...

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therapy in the way that we're talking about easily and i just want to dive into that for a minute and this is this whole world of compounded peptides so for those who are not listening there's prescription drugs you can get at the drugstore um that are fda approved and that um are our brand name usually or generic versions of those

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There's all kinds of compounds, whether it's B vitamins or whether it's glutathione or other things that we use in medicine that have to be made by non-traditional pharmacists called compounding pharmacies. And they produce things like peptides or intravenous nutrition or different formulations of hormones that you might like that you might not get in a prescription like a cream or a gel.

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So compounding is tricky because compounded drugs are not well regulated. And so you have to know what you're doing. You have to find the right pharmacy. You have to make sure they have proper testing for the dosage, the purity, the potency. And the FDA has come out really hard against these. Now, maybe because they're just includes the pharma, I don't know.

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But basically, I've been using these compounded peptides for a long time, and I find them extremely effective for myself personally, for my patients. for all sorts of different reasons. And semaglutide is just a peptide. And what's really striking is you can get it for like literally pennies a day. And instead of costing you $20,000 a year, it might cost you a few hundred dollars a year.

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In fact, a study came out just last week in JAMA talking about the price of these GLP-1 drugs maybe going between 75 cents a month to $72 a month. Even in Canada, it's $300 a month. But here, it's like $1,700, $1,800 a month. So these compounded things are not easy to get. They're not easy to use. You have to mix them up yourself.

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You have to draw them up like a doctor with putting water in the bottle and sterol and then drawing it up and then injecting it yourself with a needle. It's like a diabetic... you know, diabetics do. They take, you know, an insulin bottle and they pull up the insulin and they, but now they have insulin pumps and different things.

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So just to give you a little more detail on our guest today, Dr. Tina Moore has nearly three decades of experience in the medical field. She's a leading holistic expert in regenerative medicine and resilient metabolic health. She fixed people who are metabolically busted. She's trained in alternative science and medicine as a naturopathic doctor and chiropractor.

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They don't have to do that anymore, but it's kind of a little bit tricky to use it, right? And then you have to find a doctor who knows what they're doing. So can you speak to this sort of, this version of peptides you're using, the compounded peptides and why you use those, why they're different and how you kind of navigate this tricky world?

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These peptides... There's not a... The pre-filled syringes, like the Ozempic is a pre-filled syringe. You can't screw it up.

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If you drop too much and you don't know what you're doing, you think it's supposed to be 100 units, but it should be 10 units, you're kind of screwed.

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It's the biggest contributor to GDP in Denmark, the country that...

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Is it true they don't allow Zempik to be sold in Denmark? Is that true?

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so so it's kind of at a high level just to kind of summarize we kind of agree that we have a toxic food environment that's driving this that we have uh a world in which our microbiome has been completely destroyed that affects our metabolism weight that there is a flood of obesogens in the environment that are are contributing to our metabolic dysfunction that 95 of americans are somehow screwed up in their metabolic health and that our current solutions don't work

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We're also in agreement that we should be fixing our food system so kids are eating healthy stuff in schools and that people aren't exposed to a food carnival everywhere they go of junk food. And that people are actually in a medical system that can support nutrition education, that supports intensive lifestyle therapies, that funds all those things.

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And you and I are working on that in Washington County and we're working hard. But again, it's like ending slavery or civil rights or women's rights. It's going to take a minute. In the meantime, we're seeing a crisis of poor metabolic health and our current solutions aren't working. Now, is the ozempic revolution the solution? I don't think so. Is the smart use of peptides in the right patients

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a potential solution done in a different way with a 360 view of lifestyle change and lower doses that mitigate the side effects that can be done in a way that don't lead to rebound weight gain, that don't lead to the muscle loss, that increase protein at a gram per pound, that make you hit the gym and pump iron four times a week, that are included with aggressive lifestyle behavioral change support and coaching.

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I think there's a role for it, but I don't think it's how it's being done now and I think we all kind of agree with that.

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If you are a patient in the kind of middle America... I mean, the mantra of the medical establishment is that this is a lifetime drug.

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Although, it's interesting that about, you know, 50% to 75% of people quit after a couple of years.

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I'm in a curious, open-minded, but skeptical kind of moment around these GLP-1 agonists. And I'm doing a lot of work in researching what they do, how they work, the complications, the side effects, but also the beneficial effects. And I think the thing about peptides is so fascinating is, and Tina, you hit on this, is they're regenerative. They help to regenerate and repair.

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So it's a miracle to me. I could take an Advil and ensure my whatever won't hurt for that night, but the next day it's going to freaking hurt. If I take a shot of a peptide, I'm like, damn, that is went away and now I can lift weights again. And I'm like, that was pretty cool. And so I'm like, these are really different in their biological actions.

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And so they become drugs not because they're patentable, but because the delivery system is patentable. So what's patentable is a little auto injector, not the actual compound. That's why you can get it in a compounding pharmacy for pennies. Right.

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They're talking about using this in kids. But we're filling the schools with ultra-processed junk food that these kids are eating for lunch, and that the school lunch program is so messed up that these kids aren't getting healthy, nutritious food that's helping them be metabolically healthy or mentally healthy.

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Well, Callie, I agree, and I thank you for working on this issue so diligently. You're going all over the country.

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you're everywhere now i'm i'm really inspired by your your voice and your mission to you know get people to wake up to what's going on i i've tried to do it for a long time you're you're a bit more uh passionate and and uh vocal and and uh compelling than i am so maybe you're gonna help push it i'm reading from your hymnal i've been like i've been like

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Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6726.357

Like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill for like 30 years or 40 years. I think you're like Superman. You're going to push over the edge and it's going to fly down. So your book is amazing. Good energy. The surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. People should definitely get that. You wrote it with your sister, Casey Means.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6741.204

And it lays out a lot of these issues around metabolic health and our social and political issues. It's a must get book. It's out now. So make sure you get it. And Tina, you know, your work is so important.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6752.709

I think both of you are some of the most thoughtful, committed people I've ever met who are thinking about these deeply and not just sort of at the surface and trying to find real solutions both on the macro and micro level. And I'm so grateful to both of you and your work. Tina, you have a wonderful free GLP-1 video training series, Ozempic Uncovered.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6772.939

If you want to get deeper with Tina, for sure go there. It's drtina.com forward slash ozempic uncovered. That's drtina.com forward slash ozempic uncovered. Be sure to look at it. We'll put it all in the show notes. We're going to put all the studies in the show notes we talked about. We're going to put more studies in there. We did probably 20 hours of research that I did.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6794.191

My team did 20 hours on top of that. You guys have done so much. All that's going in the show notes. You can click through and read the studies yourself. You can make a decision for yourself. But I think...

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6802.156

What we're talking about is a very different and nuanced view of how to approach this problem of both poor metabolic health, and I love this concept of metabolically busted, and also the macro issue of how do we deal with this at a social level so we don't have to give people Ozempic or anything else.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6817.599

Somebody sent me a video of somebody walking around in the 70s, everybody on the beach in the 70s, and there was not a single person overweight in the 70s. So now it's like we're all in this together. So thank you both. Any last thoughts or words from either of you?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6849.078

That makes sense. That makes sense because if you're improving metabolic health, you're lowering your risk.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6904.172

Well, we didn't get to talk about it enough, and we'll put it in the show notes, and Tina, you talk about it a lot, but there are ways to naturally increase our GLP-1. For example, if you are testosterone deficient, if you hit the gym and you pump iron, your testosterone will go up. If you stop eating sugar and starch, your testosterone will go up. It's the same thing with GLP-1.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6921.118

If we're low in GLP-1, there are natural ways to do it by eating more protein, by exercising, by taking certain herbs like berberine and cinnamon. There are other things that actually work to help. And I want you to just for a second talk about TrueMed because it's a way for people to get access to these kinds of treatments with tax-free dollars.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6938.49

So tell us about TrueMed for a sec because I think it's important. If people are wanting to make lifestyle change but they can't afford it or they think they don't have money, there's a way to get access to these things with dollars that are pre-tax dollars.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

6987.436

I use my HSA card to buy supplements with TruMed. I use my HSA card to buy things when I go to get an acupuncture or get a massage or do things that actually help my body.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7051.593

Thank you, Kelly, for doing that and making it available. It's such a great thing. And I think you both are providing education, training, doing such good things in the world. I'm really honored to have you on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. Maybe we'll have you back to go deeper. It was a great conversation.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7064.688

I think people hopefully got the sense of what we're talking about and have a little bit more to think about when it comes to this and get out of the binary black or white conversations and talk about more of the nuance and be able to actually get deep into a topic that matters for all of us, which is getting America healthy, getting us as individuals healthy and creating a solution that works and includes all the potential levers we have to pull because sometimes we need a pound of cure.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7088.199

So thank you both and we'll see you again soon. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at DrMarkHyman. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7109.426

I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at drhyman.com forward slash Mark's Picks.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7122.13

I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com forward slash Mark's Picks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7141.3

This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7158.464

This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7176.675

Just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

719.183

So the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't have first-line therapy as lifestyle?

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

7192.114

Keeping this podcast free is part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to express gratitude to the sponsors that made today's podcast possible.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

77.928

And she's a podcast host, a speaker, kettlebell devotee, a mother, an advocate for health autonomy. She's got a great podcast called The Dr. Tina Show. She's passionate about making people actually better. And Callie Means, who has been on the podcast before, is the founder of TruMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

94.955

He's also the co-author with his sister, Dr. Casey Means, of Good Energy, The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, which is available right now. Earlier in his career, Callie was a consultant for food and pharma companies and is now exposing those practices that they use to weaponize our institutions of trust.

The Dr. Hyman Show

Encore: The Shocking Truth About Ozempic & The Effects It Has On The Body | Calley Means & Dr. Tyna Moore

962.734

I looked at that data, and I think there's some questions about it.

The Dr. Hyman Show

How to Choose the Right Supplements (and Avoid the Wrong Ones)

9.94

Steve Martosi is a serial entrepreneur and tech innovator who turned his own health journey into a mission to revolutionize the supplement industry.

The Glenn Beck Program

It's Time We Treat the Cartels the Way They Treat Us | Guests: Sen. Mike Lee & Vivek Ramaswamy | 2/26/25

0.169

Constitution Wealth is a registered investment advisor. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Before considering their services, you should carefully review Constitution Wealth disclosures at constitutionwealth.com to understand all material risks, conflicts of interest, and fees. All investing involves risk, including the risk of loss.

The Glenn Beck Program

It's Time We Treat the Cartels the Way They Treat Us | Guests: Sen. Mike Lee & Vivek Ramaswamy | 2/26/25

11.998

This is a paid endorsement and Glenn is not a client of the firm.

The Glenn Beck Program

It's Time We Treat the Cartels the Way They Treat Us | Guests: Sen. Mike Lee & Vivek Ramaswamy | 2/26/25

3872.642

NMLS 182334. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5 starts at 6.799% for well-qualified borrowers. Call 800-906-2440 for details about credit costs and terms.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Liz Wheeler | 2/19/25

0.669

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. Mit dem Galaxy S25 Ultra kannst du einen Schritt voraus sein.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore & January Littlejohn | 3/5/25

117.486

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore & January Littlejohn | 3/5/25

2626.398

Stephen, let's get into the really salacious content here and talk about washing machine tariffs. Yeah. This is an interesting example, I think, of the tariff strategy here, right? They put on a 20% tariff back in, was it 2017, 2018 on incoming washing machines.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore & January Littlejohn | 3/5/25

2645.176

Correct me if I'm wrong on the understanding of this, but basically prices almost immediately went up by 20%, which is kind of what you'd expect. However, there was a laudable goal in mind, which was to bring jobs back to America. It does seem like a lot of studies show about 1,800 jobs in the washing machine industry were created by Samsung and other companies that moved business here. However...

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore & January Littlejohn | 3/5/25

2669.404

at a cost of $1.5 billion to consumers annually. That's a cost of $800,000 per job. And isn't this really consistent through the literature on tariffs, that this is kind of what plays out?

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore & January Littlejohn | 3/5/25

685.976

The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegal. And one more misunderstanding.

The Glenn Beck Program

What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

2280.205

NMLS 182334. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the five starts at 6.799% for well-qualified borrowers. Call 800-906-2440 for details about credit costs and terms.

The Glenn Beck Program

What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

6059.369

Democrats, your party leaders have a foolproof plan to stop Trump by boldly doubling down on everything that has never worked before.

The Glenn Beck Program

What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

6075.842

And your fellow Dems on social media are doing their part.

The Glenn Beck Program

What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

6085.75

Welcome to the resistance. Trump is screwing over some of his own supporters.

The Glenn Beck Program

What Trump MUST Say in His First Address to Congress | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

6115.148

I'm no longer rocking with Trump. So Democrats seize the opportunity.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

1.164

Was ist, wenn die Lösung für unsere Probleme dort lauert, wo Menschen normalerweise gar nicht hinkommen? Ein Schatz aus der Tiefsee, Millionen Jahre alt, den es aber wirklich gibt und den manche jetzt heben wollen. Der Kampf um die Tiefsee, der hat längst begonnen. Das ist Enten, Land unter, von Andan und dem Futurium. Ab sofort auf Spotify.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Carol Roth | 3/4/25

1529.976

You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck. To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Anson Frericks | 2/20/25

0.67

Du bist immer am Puls der Zeit und gerne up to date? Dann ist der NowBrief des neuen Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra genau das Richtige für dich. Stau auf dem Weg zur Arbeit? Dann wird dir automatisch geraten, früher loszufahren. Es regnet am Zielort? Dann empfiehlt es dir, den Regenschirm mitzunehmen. Mit dem Galaxy S25 Ultra kannst du einen Schritt voraus sein.

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

122.987

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. This is...

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

2378.769

You ever seen a liberal's hands smoother than a snake on oil? Guess they're more worried about the meaning of the word retarded than the word work. Glenn Beck will be right back.

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

2626.224

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. This is the Glenn Beck Program.

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

3369.815

Doesn't he look like a Minecraft character?

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

5112.689

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment. This is the Glenn Beck Program.

The Glenn Beck Program

Senate Republicans Just Caved on Cutting Inflation | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

6956.491

You want the truth unfiltered? Pull up a chair, my friend. You're in the right place. This is Glenn Beck.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

117.523

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

1509.058

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck podcast. Hear more of this interview and others with the full show podcast available wherever you get podcasts.

The Glenn Beck Program

Best of the Program | Guest: Daniel Horowitz | 2/21/25

1534.232

President Trump has spoken about replacing income tax with tariff revenue, especially with all this waste, fraud, and abuse that we're seeing cut. Is that a possibility? Absolutely.

The Good Whale

Trailer

1.161

His name was Keiko, and everyone agreed he was a good whale.

The Good Whale

Trailer

116.82

This is the story of a high-profile, high-stakes science experiment whose goal seemed almost impossible, to teach a captive orca to be wild. At the center of it all was Keiko, an orca with fears and limitations that no human could ever hope to interpret with any certainty. Not that they wouldn't try. We wanted to see how far he could go.

The Good Whale

Trailer

138.271

From Serial Productions and the New York Times, I'm Daniel Alarcon, and this is The Good Whale, coming November 14th, wherever you get your podcasts.

The Good Whale

Trailer

24.977

Keiko was good at performing, beloved by the crowds at the Mexican amusement park where he lived for more than a decade, most of his life since he was captured as a calf. He was good with his trainers and with the kids who came to visit.

The Good Whale

Trailer

4.804

Keiko was one of a kind. Keiko had this personality, completely different from any other orca.

The Good Whale

Trailer

46.104

And Keiko was good when he was cast in the movie Free Willy. He played the part of Willy, of course, a captive killer whale who's befriended by a 12-year-old boy and then set free.

The Good Whale

Trailer

57.069

Afterwards, when the world decided Keiko himself should be set free, that he should learn how to be a wild whale, how to hold his breath and hunt for his own food and live in the ocean, Keiko, like always, was eager to please his humans. So everyone agreed he was good. But there were some things no one seemed to agree on. Like, can good whales be wild whales?

The Good Whale

Trailer

83.237

It felt like bringing your pet dog out to the forest and then running away. And the dog being hungry and scared and wanting to go home.

The Good Whale

Trailer

95.082

We played God at that point. Was wildness even something Keiko wanted? Or was it something we needed from him? A chance to redeem ourselves for the harms we'd caused, not just to Keiko, but to all captive whales. I always ask people that are the detractors, where would you have stopped it?

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Unlocking the Secrets of Real Estate Success with Patrick Francey

14.628

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan

29.812

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Building Trust in a Digital Age with Marcus Sheridan

3454.672

They cancel.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Re-Air: Buying Back Your Time with Dan Martell

68.999

Welcome to The Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, The Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Mastering the Art of Franchising with Jeff Dudan

28.492

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership. to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

From Convict to CEO - A Journey of Transformation with Weldon Long

24.781

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host. the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Hustle vs. Leadership: The Right Moves that Change Everything for Your Business

51.77

welcome to the home service expert where each week tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing sales hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business now your host the home service millionaire tommy mellow

The Home Service Expert Podcast

The Art of Building Trust in Marketing with John Jantsch

19.611

welcome to the home service expert where each week tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing sales hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business now your host the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Building a Winning Culture: Lessons from a Former Addict and Elite Athlete

42.754

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Unlocking the Millionaire Mindset with Brian Kaskavalciyan

31.275

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4876.023

I'm going to play it for y'all, but I do disagree with it. Yeah, let me hear it. All right, fuck it. Which is the dirtiest place to live in New Jersey? Most New Jerseyans know that the cleanest place to live in New Jersey is Ridgewood. So, which is the dirtiest place to live in New Jersey?

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4893.419

It's Patterson. Patterson struggles with trash disposal, abandoned buildings, poor sanitation enforcement, illegal dumping, and industrial pollution. Water and overall cleanliness issues. Fourth place, Passaic, which is the dirtiest place to live in New Jersey. Passaic's aging infrastructure, high population, and poor sanitation cause trash buildup.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4920.04

I don't know enough about Passaic to know where to call it. Littered streets and flooding that worsens waste problems. Yeah, there's different parts of Passaic, for sure. Third place, Elizabeth.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4928.631

Elizabeth's industrial activities overcrowding and poor waste management cause air, water, and stormwater pollution. littered streets, and declining local environmental quality. In the second place, Jersey City. Oh, shit. Watch your fucking mouth about Jersey City. Littered streets, industrial pollution, traffic congestion. I think he's wrong about Jersey City. Jersey City's nice, though.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4952.574

What part? That's true, too. Hold up, number one. Before announcing the first place, comment in the section. No, nigga, we're not commenting. We're not liking and subscribing. Yeah, just give us number one.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4963.283

The place ranks first with air pollution, litter, industrial waste, illegal dumping, aging infrastructure, and high crime worsened sanitation issues, smog, and neglected public spaces across the city. That's Newark.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

4979.68

Get the fuck out of here, man.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 803 | "One More Dance"

7474.537

He got it, man.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

0.469

The thoughts, views, and opinions expressed by this podcast, as well as its hosts, are for entertainment purposes only. I repeat, it is not serious. It is not real. No one is exposing, revealing, indicting, or telling you anything about themselves. Also, we do not encourage you to try this at home. We are trained professionals. Do not have your best interests at heart or our own. Enjoy the show.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10407.74

Yeah, but Play Heat went to issues here, too, though.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10410.26

Say it again.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10413.221

What should you have won?

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10423.861

But congratulations to Ish. I said it.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10651.845

I'm down to get out there for a little bit.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10654.067

Before these tariffs get crazy. Spend some of this money.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10722.806

I might as well let it cook for a little bit.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10728.409

Fuck it. Fuck it.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

10754.688

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

1429.944

Shout out to all the subgroups out there.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

1470.656

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

4149.686

That's what I got for you guys this week.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

5440.979

Thank you.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

6587.095

Well, no such thing as a failure. Because a failure, we're not counting failures. Like Giannis said, every failure leads to the next success.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7109.08

I fuck with you.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7448.809

Yeah, I ain't gonna, sometimes you're just rebellious. You're not thinking of it that way.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7853.197

Talk to them.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7927.149

She about to go off the ledge.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7932.154

Always start from the comments. She about to go off.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

7988.14

I got a headache.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

803.56

No, I am retired, boy. It's over for that.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

8062.068

Then don't big up.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

8067.724

I was like, oh, wow, she's really beautiful. She does look good. Yeah.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

8076.349

Do you like her voice? Mm-hmm. You know me, I like the voice.

The Joe Budden Podcast

Episode 814 | "Fight or Flight"

9433.992

Yeah, I want to hang out with people Mel and Isha age. Yeah, like Melo and them, right, Mel? Yeah.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2272 - Mike Benz

5559.383

The Mujahideen.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2272 - Mike Benz

5621.604

national security adviser brzezinski flew to pakistan to set about rallying resistance He wanted to arm the Mujahideen without revealing America's role. On the Afghan border near the Khyber Pass, he urged the soldiers of God to redouble their efforts.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2261 - Warren Smith

4770.569

In a few roaring minutes, what families had taken years to acquire.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2282 - Bill Murray

814.955

Grab the headphones.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2282 - Bill Murray

818.698

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime. The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle 60s was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanations.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2282 - Bill Murray

844.471

No mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world, whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2282 - Bill Murray

882.455

That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2282 - Bill Murray

911.077

And with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2301 - Ben Lamm

1135.031

These rare animals have a knack for holding a tune, even to an exact key.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2301 - Ben Lamm

5992.807

I had my toilet water shaking the other day. Fuck that, Jamie. No.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2301 - Ben Lamm

7241.312

They're just not scared. They're like piranhas in the world. It's so cool that they're not even remotely scared of people.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2301 - Ben Lamm

7278.988

Oh, right in the middle of the devil fight. No, I mean like...

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2301 - Ben Lamm

8551.798

Right. It's just, and so they're not getting NIH funding. Right.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2266 - Brian Simpson

6712.486

Once Mr. Talbot has witnessed that the full moon holds no sway over him, that he remains a perfectly ordinary human being, he will have taken his first small step down the long road to mental recovery.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2266 - Brian Simpson

6877.05

It seems to be locked sir.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

530.04

significant of a discovery this is. Dun dun dun.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

541.301

Project Unity. What has just been announced in relation to the pyramids at the Giza Plateau and the plateau itself is so incredible, so awe-inspiring and narrative-shattering that I have been sitting here for the last hour trying to wrap my head around the implications of what we were just told.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

563.376

So this is pretty much breaking news because the new findings were announced on the 16th of March at a press conference held by the team who was studying the Great Pyramid of Giza with a non-invasive technology that was first developed by Filippo Bionde and Corrado Malanga called Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

583.552

This was used to explore the internal structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza. and this method leverages the analysis of micro-movements typically generated by background seismic activity to achieve a high-resolution, full 3D tomographic imagery of the pyramid's interior and subsurface components.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

605.068

The recent findings from deploying this technology are nothing short of mind-blowing because what's been discovered is that there are huge structures coming down from the base of the pyramid deep into the bedrock. In fact, over 600 meters deep, which then connects to structures that extend up to two kilometers below the surface of the ground. Two kilometers.

The Joe Rogan Experience

#2293 - Chris Williamson

631.381

Massive internal structures connected to the base of the pyramid and extending deep, deep down. This is what we know so far.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

119.622

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, April 16th. Coming up on the show, how Elon Musk pulled off a comeback for X. It didn't take long after Musk's takeover of Twitter for the company to stumble. One of his first moves, besides renaming the site to X, was to lay off many of the company's workers.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

161.85

As part of that, he dismantled the platform's content moderation team. And soon after, X began to lose revenue, in part because advertisers started to flee.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

191.169

Soon after Musk took over, he said that the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. In 2023, the company was valued at roughly a third of what Musk paid for it. But while his business was on a downturn, Musk himself was growing closer with someone who was on the rise.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

208.221

Come on up here, Elon. Donald Trump.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

216.041

Musk officially endorsed Trump and showed up to a number of his rallies. He also donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to the re-election effort. When Trump took office in January, Wall Street was excited about his expected pro-business policies. And Musk, with his close relationship to Trump, also got a boost.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

258.632

What did all this mean for X and its finances? Like, did advertisers get excited again?

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

294.175

While some advertisers have been returning to X on their own, Musk has also started to flex his connections with the administration.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

322.082

In one incident last December, one of X's lawyers called up a big advertising firm, Interpublic, which was in the middle of a big merger with another ad company. According to Wall Street Journal reporting, X wanted to see Interpublic spend more on ads on the platform.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

374.369

At the time, a spokesman for Interpublic said the company does not make spending commitments on behalf of its clients. Representatives from X did not respond to requests for comment. With some advertisers returning to X, revenue has started to tick back up, according to the journal's reporting. The aggressive cuts Musk had made early on also helped the company's finances to recover.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

395.62

For the banks that invested in the original deal, this was all great news. It meant they might be able to offload some of Musk's debt.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

42.645

To buy Twitter, which Musk renamed X, he and a small group of investors spent some $30 billion of their own money. But Musk also had to borrow $13 billion more from big banks like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. And as the platform started to struggle, those banks felt the pain. Here's our colleague, Alexander Saidi, who covers banking.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

434.846

And earlier this year, the banks tried to finally make that sale. In January, a crowd of investors gathered in an auditorium at the Morgan Stanley office in New York. The banks were there to sell about $3 billion of Musk's debt.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

462.788

And things went really well, better than the banks even expected.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

482.213

The debt sale shows just how far X has come in the past year. And recently, Musk made an announcement that builds on that success. It has to do with another one of his companies, XAI. That's after the break.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

5.666

The platform formerly known as Twitter has had a tough couple years. The difficulties began in 2022 when Elon Musk purchased it for $44 billion.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

525.14

In 2023, Elon Musk founded an artificial intelligence company. And he named it, of course, XAI.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

537.425

Like, you know, space X. It's his favorite letter, right?

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

550.285

XAI is best known for its AI chatbot, Grok. Its most notorious feature is that when it answers questions, it might swear. And overall, Grok has an edgier attitude than your typical chatbot. XAI isn't the world's biggest artificial intelligence platform, but investors see it as a startup with potential. And one key advantage XAI can boast is its connection to Musk's other companies.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

576.428

First of all, when it comes to creating an artificial intelligence model, engineers have to feed that model tons of data. And thanks to X, there's a lot of available data for XAI.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

618.207

According to people familiar with the matter, XAI has paid X hundreds of millions of dollars for that data, which is helping the social media company pay its bills. And that's not the only financial tie between the two. X has given XAI computer chips and other crucial hardware. And in return, X got a bunch of stock in this increasingly valuable AI company.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

639.711

This close relationship extends to employees as well.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

670.017

Would you say that Musk is using or has used XAI to maintain X's success or X's viability?

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

700.882

X's growing ties to XAI made the social media company more and more attractive to new investors. And then, last month, Musk announced something that really got them excited. In a post on X, he said that he was bringing the two companies together. X would be folded into XAI. So Musk announced the merger. How did he go about doing that? What do we know about the deal?

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

757.812

In the announcement, Musk said that the combined valuation of the two companies was over $100 billion. He said it was, quote, just the beginning. Alex says the merger marks a significant step towards fulfilling one of Musk's most well-documented ambitions, creating what he calls the Everything app.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

824.547

What does this story say about the way Elon Musk does business?

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

86.087

While another one of Musk's big-name companies, Tesla, has been in a slump recently, X has seen a huge turnaround. Last month, the company reached its highest valuation since Musk took over. And he said that X is now worth more than the $44 billion he paid for it.

The Journal.

How Elon Musk Pulled X Back From the Brink

894.386

That's all for today, Wednesday, April 16th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Peter Rudiger, Lauren Thomas, and Suzanne Vernizza. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

0.799

Hey, it's Jess. I'm here to say that my colleague, Alison Poley, is here again to guest host today's episode. Enjoy. In the glittering financial center of Hong Kong, a land known for its concentration of ultra-rich, one billionaire outshines them all. Billionaire entrepreneur Li Ka-shing.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

1022.543

That's all for today, Tuesday, April 15th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Costas Paris. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

108.325

For a long time, Li was prominent in both Hong Kong and mainland China. He was an early investor in China's economy, and Beijing courted him for his money and fame. And for decades, he's rubbed shoulders with Chinese leaders. Which is why, in recent weeks, attacks from Chinese media on Li Ka-shing have been so jarring.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

134.567

Pro-Beijing newspapers have aggressively criticized Li.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

147.478

Yeah, it really sounds like it. Why are they suddenly attacking someone who's been the superman of investing?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

174.505

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Alison Poley. It's Tuesday, April 15th. Coming up on the show, how Hong Kong's richest man ran afoul of Xi Jinping. In Hong Kong, Li Ka-shing has become so famous, there's a meme about him. That his deal-making prowess is so powerful, it can stop typhoons.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

233.769

Lee began his career in the 1950s by manufacturing decorative plastic flowers. He eventually turned into a savvy real estate investor and bought low-priced land in 1960s Hong Kong.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

275.546

Lee and his family were part of a new rising class of wealthy locals in Hong Kong. For decades, Hong Kong's free market economy allowed tycoons like Lee to prosper while the island was still under British rule, turning Hong Kong into an economic powerhouse.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

292.85

When the British transferred control of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, China pledged to keep Hong Kong's capitalist system for at least 50 years. In the years that followed, Li's empire only grew. His flagship company, C.K. Hutchison, became a global conglomerate with interest in real estate, drugstores, and telecoms.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

319.408

His assets were in Hong Kong, mainland China, and around the world, including dozens of trading ports.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

32.234

Li Ka-shing is an investing icon. The 96-year-old tycoon is worth $36 billion and is the richest man in Hong Kong. A businessman so revered in Asia, he's earned an epic nickname.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

338.842

It is those two ports on the Panama Canal that have become the center of Li's current headache. Because lately, U.S. President Donald Trump has become very interested in the Panama Canal.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

362.86

To Trump, Li Ka-shing's Hong Kong company controlling key ports in the canal was a problem, just as if Beijing was controlling those ports. Trump saw that as an unacceptable economic and geopolitical risk.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

397.544

To clarify, C.K. Hutchison owns two of the five ports on the canal but doesn't control it. The government of Panama owns and operates the canal. All of which brings us to Lee Cushing's latest and possibly most controversial deal.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

439.324

It would be the biggest deal of Li Ka-shing's career, worth nearly $23 billion. And as Trump continued to threaten tariffs, it looked like a savvy business move. It meant Li would be dumping a bunch of his shipping ports ahead of a possible global trade war.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

464.109

At first, China's reaction to the agreement was muted. But within weeks, things got a lot more complicated. Because President Trump loved the prospect of this deal, since the company leading the purchase of those ports was BlackRock, an American company. Trump saw that as a win against the Chinese.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

515.354

What looked like a win for Trump looked like a loss for China. After Trump's statements, how did Xi Jinping's reaction change?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

539.332

U.S.-China relations are at their lowest point in decades, and Chinese officials saw Trump's desire for the two ports as a crucial piece of leverage.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

567.236

In public remarks, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that the growing tariff rift between the U.S. and China could complicate the deal. Li and his son Victor, who now chairs Hutchison, pressed on with the deal anyway. But China would amp up the pressure to block the deal from being finalized. And its tactics are starting to present a real challenge.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

591.767

And so now what's the big question looming over this deal?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

636.351

Li Ka-shing was in a bind. His deal to sell two Panama Canal ports had landed him in the middle of a global dispute between two of the world's most powerful men, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping didn't like the deal, but he had to proceed with caution. Why can't China's leader simply say, nope, this isn't happening? Why can't he just kill this deal?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

680.372

He's been aggressive in the trade war with the U.S., but he's also trying to put on a charm offensive to bring foreign investment into China. Xi's message? China is a safe, fertile ground for business.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

707.214

So we know that Xi Jinping is not happy with this deal. What options does Beijing have to actually put a stop to it?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

73.731

Frequently, reporters would quiz Li Ka-shing about his economic forecasts.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

758.231

The Chinese government likely can't fully block the deal through this antitrust review, but they can significantly tie it up with red tape.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

781.935

The delay tactics appear to be working. The BlackRock-led consortium had planned to have the deal finalized by April 2nd. That didn't happen. Now, members of the consortium are exploring breaking off the Panama ports into a separate deal. In recent weeks, Beijing has also been working to line up alternative buyers should the deal fall through, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

809.847

China's pressure tactics continue, but the biggest challenge so far has come from Panama. Last week, in the latest twist, Panama's top auditor accused C.K. Hutchison of misconduct.

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

856.718

In a statement, Panama Ports Company, the unit of C.K. Hutchison that operates the two ports, denied wrongdoing. A senior Panama official said that the legal process could take between six months and a year. So, given all those challenges, what's going to happen to this deal?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

924.73

What does this say about Li Ka-shing's legacy?

The Journal.

The Billionaire Caught Between Trump and China

948.735

So if other tycoons are watching the so-called Superman get punished this way, what message does that send to them?

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

0.569

A quick warning. This episode discusses suicide. Please take care while listening.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

1019.644

There is no company. There is no project. It's a joke.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

1024.268

So they say meme coins, not our problem.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

1032.975

After reporting and writing this story, what sticks with you the most?

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

114.288

The cryptocurrency named after Haro skyrocketed in value to $2 million. Our colleague Kevin Dugan covers the culture of finance. He heard about Haru's suicide earlier this year. And it surprised him how easily a tragedy like this could be transformed into an asset.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

1145.979

If you or anyone you know is struggling, you can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 988. That's 988. That's all for today, Thursday, May 1st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

165.714

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Thursday, May 1st. Coming up on the show, the seedy underbelly of meme coins, where anything is for sale. Arnold Haro lived in Central California. He worked in the solar industry and had a one-year-old daughter with an ex-girlfriend.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

19.115

In late February, a man started a live stream on X. He's on his phone.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

223.322

To get a better picture of Haro's life, Kevin spoke to his family and reviewed police records. Haro's sister disputes some of the information in those police records, but declined to get specific. A few things from those interviews and records stood out to Kevin. According to police reports, Haro's ex-girlfriend said that he was a part-time drug dealer and user.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

244.493

And according to his family, Haro struggled with depression.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

254.141

That was offline. But online, on X, Haro's life was also pretty volatile.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

303.211

On X, Haro often posted about trades he made on the crypto market, particularly meme coins. Meme coins are a fast-growing part of crypto. They first started way back in 2013, with an image of a smiling, animated dog.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

341.585

You might have bought Doge as a joke, but today the price is no joke. Dogecoin hit a record high. It's now a top 10 cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of about $40 billion.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

362.349

By some estimates, meme coins have grown to over $60 billion in value. They've become so mainstream that even President Trump and the First Lady have meme coins. They launched them earlier this year. Kevin says many traders create and buy meme coins in the hopes of striking it rich fast.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

441.772

Well, and presumably, if you were hip to the fart joke early, you could buy your farts and sell them, and maybe you'd have like a nice little bag of change then. Yes, exactly. Since I talked to Kevin, Fartcoin's market cap has actually grown to over a billion dollars. The coin was created on a particularly popular site in the world of meme coins.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

45.686

Then Harrow holds a bullet up to the camera.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

470.626

PumpFun is a marketplace where people can sell, buy, and make meme coins really quickly.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

506.558

Within seconds? Yeah, just about. Can you show me what this looks like?

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

515.816

The first thing you see on PumpFun is a pop-up asking you to certify that you're at least 18 years old before entering the site. Once you're in, the site itself is pretty lo-fi. It has a black background with bright green accents. There are moving GIFs, emojis, and colorful tickers logging new transactions.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

534.883

And the site is littered with offensive user-generated images and slurs, like the N-word, it's everywhere. It's like I need to wash my eyeballs now.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

547.774

I mean, it's incredible just the number.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

579.135

We know Haro spent a lot of time on Pump Fun. He hoped to become rich from trading meme coins, but wasn't very successful.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

605.959

In January, about a month before the livestream, Haro lost money on Trump's meme coin. On X, he posted, quote, Haro also bought a copycat of Trump's coin. That tanked. About a week later, he messaged another trader on X that he'd lost his last $500 on a meme coin supposedly associated with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Haru's dream of getting rich was going nowhere.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

639.502

But soon, other traders would be making money on him. That's next.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

64.061

Haro was playing Russian roulette. And then he made a request to his followers.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

682.327

About an hour after Haro killed himself, his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, called the police. How can I help you, ma'am? Hi, I'm calling.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

710.362

She didn't know if it was a stunt. And the 911 operator soon sent out police to check on the residents.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

755.177

According to those records, earlier this year, Haro sold two cars to a Mexican drug dealer.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

778.354

Soon after the livestream, meme coins referencing Haro's suicide proliferated on PumpFun. The most popular coin traded under the ticker Mista, a reference to Haro's ex-account. It also used his profile picture, an image of Haro with his hand over his face. For a short time, Mista was a hit among meme coin traders.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

856.06

And do you know if Haro's family has seen any money from these coins?

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

888.14

Haro's sister told Kevin that the family had no comment on the events leading up to Haro's death. She said, quote, my brother's death will no longer be anyone's news line or entertainment. Is Pump Fun moderating this site in any way? Like, what have they said about that?

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

918.382

In a statement, a spokesman for Pump Fund said, quote, Mr. Haro's death is a tragedy. Pump had no role in the series of events beyond being the platform on which someone created and launched a crypto token related to the news, clearly in poor taste. As for the government, the Securities and Exchange Commission, one agency tasked with regulating crypto, has so far declined to regulate meme coins.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

92.15

Haro killed himself on that live stream. He was 23 years old. And in a matter of hours, his dying request, turn this into a meme coin, came true.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

942.99

Six days after Haro's death, the SEC said, quote, meme coins typically are purchased for entertainment, social interaction, and cultural purposes.

The Journal.

In Crypto’s Darkest Corner, A Suicide Became a Meme Coin

978.639

of that, this distinction between something that's a security and something that's entertainment? Because it feels like it could be a bit squishy.

The Journal.

Inside DOGE's Campaign of Secrecy

62.972

shutting down USAID. The CFPB. About 5% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are being let go. Already, more than 200 have been fired from FEMA, around 400 from the Federal Aviation Administration, and more than 1,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Magnus Archives

RQ Network Feed Drop – Not Quite Dead S1: I:The Girl on the Gurney

1315.054

Not Quite Dead is written, performed and edited by Ava Major under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution license. Live. Laugh. Bite. Not Quite Dead

The Magnus Archives

RQ Network Feed Drop – Not Quite Dead S1: I:The Girl on the Gurney

241.499

This is Not Quite Dead. Episode 1. The Girl on the Gurney.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 31 - Compartmentalising

1964.011

This episode was written by Jonathan Sims and edited with additional materials by Alexander J. Newell. with vocal edits by Nico Vitesi, soundscaping by Meg McKellar, and mastering by Catherine Rinella, with music by Sam Jones.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 31 - Compartmentalising

1998.278

It featured Billy Hindle as Alistair, Shahan Hamza as Samama Khalid, Anusha Battersby as Gwen Bouchard, Laurie Ann Davis as Celia Ripley, Ryan Hope Veer Anderson as Colin Becker, Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker, with additional voices from Jonathan Sims and Beth Eyre. And Megan Nice. To subscribe, view associated materials or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 31 - Compartmentalising

2043.517

Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Thanks for listening.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 31 - Compartmentalising

7.368

Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Protocol Episode 31 Compartmentalising

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 international license. The series is created by Jonathan Sims and Alexander J. Newell and directed by Alexander J. Newell. This episode was written by Alexander J. Newell and edited with additional materials by Jonathan Sims.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

1178.194

with vocal edits by Lorianne Davis, soundscaping by Tessa Vroom, and mastering by Catherine Rinella, with music by Sam Jones. It featured Billy Hindle as Alice Dyer, Anusha Battersby as Gwen Bouchard, Lorianne Davis as Celia Ripley, with additional voices from Alexander J. Newell, ... und Megan Nice. ...

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

1227.108

To subscribe, view associated materials or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com Thanks for listening.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

247.89

Fine, but I'm going to keep using the office systems. Just as long as you do your cases. Right. Liverpool Integrated Care System Patient Record ID NICS-2015-36584B The following information is confidential and legally protected. Unauthorized access, disclosure, copying or distribution of this document is strictly prohibited and may result in legal action. Personal information as follows.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Name, Kyla Barber. Date of birth, 17-11-1974. NHS-Nummer 698-588-3912. Sex, Female. Address, 45 Gardner Lane, Wavertree, Liverpool, L15, 3HA. Occupation, Environmental Health Officer. Emergency Contact, Violet Weaver, Partner, 07439183375. Medical History as follows. Primary Care Provider, Dr. Micah Volkova, Sycamore Drive Medical Center.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

313.764

Mental Health Provider, Dr. Alan Cello, Mersey Care NHS Trust. Chronic Conditions, Hypertension, Type 2 Diabetes. Allergies, Trimethoprim, Nickel. Medications, Metformin, 500 mg, Bicinopril, 10 mg, Sertraline, 100 mg, Diazepam, 100 mg, Olanzapine, 10 mg.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

335.257

RECENT ADMISSIONS 01-06-2012 ACUTE DEPRESSIVE EPISODE TREATMENT PROVIDED COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY MEDICATION ADJUSTMENT 15-03-2015 A10 DETENTION UNDER MENTAL HEALTH ACT FOR ADMISSION FOR ASSESSMENT APPROVED MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL JOSEPH BLOCK

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

353.75

Reasons for Detention Patient admitted to Clockview Hospital under Section 136 Police Detainment Observations Indicators for visual and auditory hallucination, distress, paranoia, confusion, transient global amnesia, dissociative amnesia Initial diagnosis Acute psychosis, schizophrenia, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder Recommendations Immediate inpatient admission for safety and further assessment due to immediate risk to self and others

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

38.549

The Magnus Protocol The Magnus Protocol Episode 32 Restructuring

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Initial Treatment Plan to include antipsychotic medication and psychotherapy. Recent Notes. Assessment delayed due to missing patient. Recent Documentation. Partial Transcript of Counseling Session 18-03-2015. Transcript as follows. K. Sand into water, water into stone, stone into wood, wood into cotton, cotton into blood, blood into gold, gold into fire, fire into steel. J. Kyla?

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

408.247

K. Plastic trees in rings of glass, no wind for wings, no birds, no birds. J. Come back, Kyla. K. I'm sorry, I don't... J. That's alright, Kyla. Why don't we take a moment for a reset? K. Reset. Yes. J. My name is... K. My name is Kyla Barber. I am in Clockview Hospital. J. And... K. And... And... And I am safe. J. And now breathe in. Hold. And breathe out. And again. J. Better? K. Yes.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

456.805

Yes, sorry. J. No need to be sorry. Are you ready to continue? K. Yes. J. Alright. Now, Kyla, I'd like you to try and tell me what happened at, uh, at the Man Island developments. K. I can try, but I don't... It doesn't make sense. J. That's alright. It doesn't have to make sense. It's about what you experienced, what you felt. Not about any sense we might try to make of it right now.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Just start at the beginning. Okay, yeah. Yeah, okay. Sand. Sand silent but for the winds caress of red dunes. Dry iron dancing beneath a thousand, thousand sunrises and sunsets. Calm. So calm. Until... A drop. A single drop that crashes down, herald to the floods that follow.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Then a trickle, a torrent, earth's blood and water scattering the dancers, then locking them in an embrace of sand and stone as the land roils beneath, bucking and heaving, untamed and unseen until... One becomes two, two becomes four, and four becomes innumerable. Der bräuchte Frucht der Leben schmiert sich über die Wälder, bildet sich in immer mehr unmöglichen Designen.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

546.268

Fragmente in Zellen, in Cilia, in Spuren und Pflanzen und Füßen und Hüften und Lippen und Blut und Zähne und Klauen und Haare und Hände. Und endlich wird überall irgendwo hier. Dieser Ort, der in den neu geminten Meilen ist, der durch mich und um mich wandert. Ich bin hier.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

567.853

They mark my heart with carven stone, frozen dancers now standing in six exaltations, changing me, turning me once more into somewhere new. I am home. More minds are born, grown, aged and lost in a new and faster dance of happiness, tragedy, love and loss. They know me and love me for sheltering, nourishing and nurturing them until blood is spilled.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Fresh water for my river, new bones for my earth and soon I have a name. Not home, but Leopold. Now enshrined in ink and pigskin. Six become seven as those long frozen dancers are regimented into the foundation of untold footfalls. New veins of prosperity branching from my river's artery which now ebbs and flows with trade and exploration.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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The quiet is gone now, replaced by shared purpose and disquiet. Sie versuchen, die Berge wieder und wieder zu zerstören, neue Flächen zu bauen, die ich mit Wind und Regen und Meer waschen muss, aber sie sind industriell. Das Blut wascht sich wieder einmal über meinen Boden, verletzt von Stahl und Sulphur, um mich in eine Stadt zu fordern. So ein großer Name für so eine schmerzhafte Wunde.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Mehr Zuhause zu Stock und Cargo als Fleisch und Blut. They are so industrious. Their choking trade clogs me with the filth of their endeavor and the silt of their constant contempt, which turns to theft as they steal from my river's depths until... Sie füllen diese Schmerzen mit Blut wieder einmal, aber jetzt ist es nicht ihr eigenes.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

662.188

Stattdessen spült eine unendliche Flasche von Tobak, Kotten und geschlossener Schmerz in sich, gefuehlt von gestohlenem Schmerz und gestohlenem Stahl. Sie sind so industriell und ich bin wütend. Der Meer stottert, als sie frisches Land aus den Dunkeln drücken und mich innerhalb befinden, von mir ausgeschnitten und von einer Stadt in eine Insel ausgeschnitten, die für Menschen gemacht wurde.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

684.72

Und was für Männer sie sind. Die Wälder bluten auf den Körpern der Verbrechenen, sie lachen ohne Schmerz. Die Wälder der Leidenschaft und der Leidenschaft, die mit Regret zwischen dem sauren Teppich der weit entfernten Wilden fliegen. Und immer noch sind die Kinder dieser anderen Wälder zu mir gedrängt.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

699.926

Seine Träume sind in den Wäldern der griechischen Karnel-Wälder, die desolationieren und langweilig schweigen, bis das letzte Schiff seinen wütenden Halt auf meinen Schuhen verblüht. Vielleicht hat sich dieses imperialistische Fetisch endlich verbreitet, aber nein. Die grünen Häuser werden zu spät gebrannt und zu früh zurückgekehrt und mit ihnen kommen die Tränen.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

721.56

Metall, das von meinem Land zerbrochen wurde und in die Todeszeit gebetet wurde. Schmutziger Schmutz, der in mein Herz zerstört wurde und gefüllt wurde mit gestohlenem, rollendem Licht. Ich bin wütend. Ein weiterer Fluss von Blutschäden, dieses Mal gefangen von Skyfire. Und endlich gibt es einen Moment von Rettung von ihrem unendlichem Erfolg.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Stattdessen bin ich wieder ein Haus, ein müdees Haus, voll von Schwierigkeiten, aber auch von Kinderlachen. Ich hatte fast vergessen, wie es sich fühlte. Aber dann sind ihre heiligen Räume versperrt, für den Vorteil von Trams, Busen und mehr. Außerdem bin ich wütend.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Und jetzt wächst ein Schmuck aus Glas, ein leerer Luxus, ein Monument der Verbrechung, das die Lande verhindern würde, während sie die Prosperität versprechen würden. Aber ich werde dich nicht mehr abhängen. Deine Böden, die von Meinen und von denen, die mich zu Hause genannt hätten, gebrochen sind und unter dem Gewicht deiner kapitalistischen Ehrfurcht fliegen.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

780.886

Die metallischen Wände, die meine Wälder verdrängen für deine gebluteten Worte, brechen und brechen, überflüssig mit der Leidenschaft deiner Vorhäufer. Die Kabel, die du in meinem Blut so gruselig gestrichen hast, schnappen nun und spüren ihr Licht auf den gestohlenen Wachstum deiner fremden Marble-Flächen.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Die Stämme aus Stahl, die deine Ambitionen bewegen, weinen und verlieren und fallen, überwältigt von dem Gewicht deiner schrecklichen Intente. Die Dancer, die du durchschaust, aber nie sehen, schattern und stürzen so scharfe Schaden in dich, wie ein Ausdruck für deine Unwissenheit.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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Deine beliebigen Wohnungen, die du verkauft hast, aber nie gekauft hast, wachsen kalt und schwarz, unverliebt, wie die Häuser derjenigen, die vor deinem Blick kamen.

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

821.46

Die Offiziere, die Sie so laut und sauber wie sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauber und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sauer und sa

The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Protocol 32 - Restructuring

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J. Kyla, I asked what happened to you, not what happened to the place. K. And all who dwelt within me will feel the weight of it. Their bones will be my bones, colonized as is my right. J. I don't know if this is helping. K. Let me go home. Let me be home. Transcript ends.

The Matt Walsh Show

Ep. 1545 - The 'Mass Graves' Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

336.607

Last year, when archaeologists detected what they believed to be 200 unmarked graves at an old school in Canada, it brought new attention to one of the most shameful chapters of that nation's history. Starting in the 1880s and for much of the 20th century, more than 150,000 children from hundreds of indigenous communities across Canada were forcibly taken from their parents by the government

The Matt Walsh Show

Ep. 1545 - The 'Mass Graves' Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

3408.612

President Joe Biden has been portrayed by his political opponents and even some of his allies as too old to be president. I'm not asking for your political opinion here, but how does he seem to you?

The Matt Walsh Show

Ep. 1545 - The 'Mass Graves' Hoax Is Officially Dead, And No One Will Be Held Accountable

361.095

and sent to what were called residential schools. Funded by the state and run by churches, they were designed to assimilate and Christianize indigenous children by ripping them from their parents, their culture, and their community.

The Matt Walsh Show

Ep. 1521 - Trump Wages All Out War On DEI

1212.369

So you see there, some fine police work, some very fine police work.

The Matt Walsh Show

Ep. 1521 - Trump Wages All Out War On DEI

3217.683

Let me just make sure that I understand what you're saying, because at first you said that the first targets are those with criminal records. But you are also saying that those who are undocumented in the U.S., also who don't have criminal records, people who are working in their communities, maybe even have spouses who are American citizens, they could be swept up with ICE today as well?

The Megyn Kelly Show

Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama, Newsom and AOC, and Fentanyl Crisis in America, with Billy Baldwin and Dr. Robert Marbut | Ep. 1060

3002.724

In a world where anyone with big money or big breasts can reach the stars. Three women.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama, Newsom and AOC, and Fentanyl Crisis in America, with Billy Baldwin and Dr. Robert Marbut | Ep. 1060

3022.307

Their dream, to inspire humanity. Or at least grab a few good selfies. This Friday on The Megyn Kelly Show, the launch of Blonde Origin.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama, Newsom and AOC, and Fentanyl Crisis in America, with Billy Baldwin and Dr. Robert Marbut | Ep. 1060

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This is Fentanyl. This is your brain on fentanyl. This is your friend's brain that was doing fentanyl with you. This is the guy down the street, also doing fentanyl. These are your kids, who thought they were taking a Percocet they got from a friend who got it off the internet. But the pill was laced with fentanyl, and now they're unconscious and unresponsive. This is the Mexican cartels.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama, Newsom and AOC, and Fentanyl Crisis in America, with Billy Baldwin and Dr. Robert Marbut | Ep. 1060

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This is the Mexican cartels working with Chinese chemical companies to make pills by the millions, destabilizing the border to traffic enough fentanyl to kill the entire population of a country many times over.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Tucker Carlson on Michelle Obama, Newsom and AOC, and Fentanyl Crisis in America, with Billy Baldwin and Dr. Robert Marbut | Ep. 1060

5406.904

This is the ports of British Columbia, where chemicals to make fentanyl are smuggled in by the tonnage, and Canadian super labs are producing fentanyl to export to countries around the world. or gangs and drug dealers near you haphazardly mixing fendyl powder with other chemicals like xylosine, which is a horse tranquilizer, causing the user's skin to fall off.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Andrew Schulz on Why Trump Dominates Culture and Politics, Becoming a Dad, and Dating Red Flags | Ep. 1020

6069.8

12 years later, we're still trying to solve it. All right, let's get moving.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Trump Zeroes in on Greenland, Mysterious Former US Attorney Death, Snow White Bombs: AM Update 3/24

340.577

The Democratic Party has been facing growing backlash and calls for a new leader as it tries to find its footing in the new Trump administration. And two prominent progressives are now taking that momentum on the road.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Trump Zeroes in on Greenland, Mysterious Former US Attorney Death, Snow White Bombs: AM Update 3/24

352.114

Senator Bernie Sanders, whose anti-oligarchy message is resonating around the country with crowds that have exceeded the turnout of some presidential rallies, despite there being no election anytime soon.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Trump Zeroes in on Greenland, Mysterious Former US Attorney Death, Snow White Bombs: AM Update 3/24

362.238

There is clearly an appetite for this message. The Democratic establishment cannot afford to ignore this energy center of the party.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Elon's Email Drama, Trump vs. Maine Governor, and a German Election Surprise: AM Update for 2/24

479.861

Brown has become a target for the Trump administration as they seek to rid the government and the military of leaders who support diversity and equity efforts.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Trump Takes On Big Pharma with Historic Drug Prices Exec Order, and Michelle Obama's Bitterness, with Walter Kirn | Ep. 1070

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This portion of CBS This Morning sponsored by Pfizer. on how to find the hidden sugars in the American family diet, sponsored by Pfizer.

The Megyn Kelly Show

Disturbing Idaho Murders 911 Call Released, and New Bryan Kohberger Selfie Revealed, with Howard Blum | Ep. 1032

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Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

1018.067

That is a very mom answer. They also didn't want him to stop physical therapy in the U.S. That was a non-negotiable.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

1041.01

Hisham and I were talking in Ramallah just before President Trump's inauguration. The Awartanis could see what was coming.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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And since January, a series of Israeli attacks on the northern West Bank has led to the largest displacement in the territory since 1967. Around 40,000 Palestinians have fled their homes. The idea of a political solution that would include a Palestinian state seems farther away than ever. But after the long discussions with his parents, Hisham went back to Brown for the spring semester.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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And once he recovered from the trip, he settled back into college life.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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How was it seeing your cats?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

1137.783

Sitting back in his dorm at school, it's been more than a year since Hisham and I first started talking. And when this semester started, I saw a lightness in him that felt new. Being home changed him in some ways. After a year of watching violence in the West Bank on the news, seeing life go on, at least in what he calls the bubble of Ramallah, was comforting.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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And his friends are helping him put his situation in perspective. One of Hisham's suite mates at Brown is from Ukraine. Another is from Syria. They've all lived through horrific disruptions in their countries.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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So he's focusing on the practical.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

1229.585

Do your parents know that this is the plan if that were to happen?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

1238.736

I keep returning to something Hisham told me early on, about majoring in archaeology. He likes the field because it isn't about the big headlines of history, kings declaring war and so on. He likes a more intimate view of how people lived normal lives. Annexation of the West Bank would have huge consequences, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Middle East.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

125.106

How often do you go back to the school since you graduated?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

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But Hisham is also seeing it as a fight to keep living a normal life during one of the most unsettled and deadly historical moments in this long conflict.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

133.291

It seems like you're very close with the teachers.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

136.633

In January, I went to visit Hisham Awartani. He's a senior in college, and when he was home on break, he went to visit his high school.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

157.36

Hisham's mother, Elizabeth, drove him.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

166.423

The school is Ramallah Friends School. It's at the top of a steep hill overlooking the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. It's a cluster of beautiful old stone buildings. Two of Hisham's best friends from school met him there, Kinan Abdelhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmed. And the three of them were almost giddy.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

190.688

The boys go to college in the U.S., and so people are excited to see them. Five different teachers are gathered around, fawning over them and saying embarrassing things. We really missed you. You guys were the best class. No, really, you were older than your years. You understood things way above your age. That kind of thing.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

223.36

And she wants to greet them, too. And while we were there, one of the boys, Tahseen, got a job offer. But I can't really tell if it's serious or not.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

245.779

Do you want to do that?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

252.05

And of course, they got to reminiscing about the times they got in trouble. Messing around in chem lab.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

290.43

And that for U.S. high school?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

297.192

Even from the grounds of the school, you can see directly across a valley to the Israeli settlement town of Sagot. But the West Bank has changed since Hisham left for college. It's grown far more dangerous for Palestinians. And nostalgia is especially complicated.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

335.049

Hisham has lost a lot. Part of the reason the teachers were so emotional about greeting the three boys was what happened while they were away at college, a little over a year ago.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

352.586

Hisham's grandmother lives in Burlington, so he, Tahseen, and Kinan had all gone there from their respective colleges to spend Thanksgiving.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

364.415

The 20-year-old students are all graduates of a West Bank... Kinan, Tahseen, and Hisham were shot on the street. The man accused of the shooting is named Jason Eaton. He's awaiting trial. It seems he didn't speak to them or start a fight, just shot them as they walked by.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

419.582

The shooting in Vermont was big news. It was seven weeks after Hamas's October 7th attack in Israel shook the world. Kinan and Tahseen made full physical recoveries. But Hisham...

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

450.276

Hey. Hello. I was just checking in to see Hisham Orotani. Six. I first met Hisham in January of last year, in a physical rehab facility in Boston. He spent two months there, recovering from surgery and adjusting his body to using a wheelchair. His legs remain paralyzed. I spent the year getting to know him. Hisham is a shy, academic kind of guy.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

481.433

He's double majoring at Brown University in math and archaeology.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

512.725

When Hisham went back to Brown, in a wheelchair, he got involved in the movement for Brown to divest from companies that students said facilitated the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. He became a symbol of anti-Palestinian violence.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

533.312

No others like Hisham.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

542.591

But the spotlight was hard on Hisham. It's something that came up a lot in our conversations. Is it weird that people are invested in you?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

554.655

Yeah. So what did this do to that, I guess? Do you feel like you can have any sort of privacy at this point?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

579.501

It's also not that easy when you're now like a national news story. I feel like even on Brown Campus have become quite a point of topic.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

590.87

The divestment movement was a big part of his life. And if, after all that work, the school didn't divest...

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

616.914

Eventually, in October of last year, the university board voted against divestment. It was pretty demoralizing for Hisham. He was done. By that point, he was watching from afar as violence surged in the West Bank.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

664.197

The survivor's guilt was eating at him. He was attending classes, going to physical therapy, but in every lecture, every new workout, the desire to return to the West Bank and be with his family hung over him.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

693.684

Since Donald Trump was elected in November, the possibility of annexation has felt even more imminent.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

728.601

So when the fall semester ended in December, Hisham returned to Ramallah for the first time since the shooting. At that point, he told me he might not return to college. He was too worried about what might happen in the West Bank.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

798.786

Getting to the West Bank is even harder in a wheelchair, so his grandmother from Vermont went with him. It takes three flights, multiple border crossings, and hours of waiting to go through Israeli immigration, with no guarantee of being let in.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

821.926

In the West Bank, too, the shooting in Vermont had made big news. Hisham had a steady stream of visitors.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

836.663

By the time I made it to Ramallah, he'd been home for a few weeks. One night, I went over for dinner. Hisham's younger brother and sister were there. And I wanted to talk about what was on everybody's mind, the prospect of annexation. On the news in the U.S., annexation is a hypothetical, a major world event that might happen.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

860.967

But sitting in Ramallah, the Awartani family talked about annexation as a fact of life. Yes, I mean, I think annexation is definitely happening.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

882.031

In case you didn't catch that, he's making a joke about the Israelis killing everyone in the West Bank. It was surprising to me to hear him talk like that. Somehow, he seemed more carefree than when we talked about this before. And you'd think it would be scarier to contemplate from within the West Bank.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

901.126

When we were sitting in Providence, there was such a present fear of losing your connection to home. And like the escalation of the war and what that would mean to your connection to home. And it feels almost like that's evaporated.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

985.754

Hisham broached the idea of graduating school early. He didn't want to risk returning to the States for too long, in case Israel made a sudden move that cut him off from his home in the West Bank. But his folks weren't buying it.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis

2.662

From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis

30.56

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts for an episode on what can only be described as Pope Week. New episodes of Critics at Large drop every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

48: Our ‘Harlequin’ Q&A, more great stories from local volunteers, the sound of steam on local train tracks… and more

3576.294

And speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Woodlands Lettings, connecting landlords with tenants for over 20 years. If you have a property to let, pop into our office on Station Road by the Belfry Main entrance for a coffee and a chat, or call 01737 372 797. Planet Reigate Stars, thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

48: Our ‘Harlequin’ Q&A, more great stories from local volunteers, the sound of steam on local train tracks… and more

3850.102

Planet Reigate is the North Downs Way and the Pilgrims Way. And this is the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

48: Our ‘Harlequin’ Q&A, more great stories from local volunteers, the sound of steam on local train tracks… and more

3989.525

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

48: Our ‘Harlequin’ Q&A, more great stories from local volunteers, the sound of steam on local train tracks… and more

4574.434

The Planet Reigate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

48: Our ‘Harlequin’ Q&A, more great stories from local volunteers, the sound of steam on local train tracks… and more

530.583

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

1111.519

From Reigate and Redhill, Buckland, Betchworth and Brockham, great stories from places you love and people you know. This is the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

1138.447

This is the Planet Reigate podcast with Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

114.872

This is the Planet Reigate podcast with Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

1905.306

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate Podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

2190.353

Planet Reigate stars, thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

2283.073

The 60-second soundscape. Local natural sounds uninterrupted.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

2421.038

The Planet Reigate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

4.005

This is the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

77: The Reigate kids’ group with members from across the south-east… and more

862.508

MUSIC The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Ditch the click for hassle-free local shopping in a welcoming environment. See, touch, smell and try before you buy and speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

2094.493

The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Ditch the click for hassle-free local shopping in a welcoming environment. See, touch, smell and try before you buy and speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Woodlands Lettings. Connecting landlords with tenants for over 20 years.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

2117.792

If you have a property to let, pop into our office on Station Road by the Belfry main entrance for a coffee and a chat. Or call 01737 372797.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

261.061

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

3078.675

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

3661.522

Email hello at theplanetreigatepodcast.com Find out more at theplanetreigatepodcast.com Leave a text or voice message on WhatsApp 07917 874572 and leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Support us at buymeacoffee.com slash theplanetreigatepodcast

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

4354.755

Planet Reigate Stars. Thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

4699.982

The 60-second soundscape. Local natural sounds uninterrupted.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

41: The Light’s first birthday, a look back at Reigate’s Summer Festival and Horley carnival… and more.

4821.328

The Planet Reigate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

66: 1/4 - The story of Bancroft Road, Reigate 1 – the intriguing story of what was built there, why and who by… and more

176.017

This is the Planet Reigate podcast with Peter Stewart. And speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

66: 1/4 - The story of Bancroft Road, Reigate 1 – the intriguing story of what was built there, why and who by… and more

2691.48

Woodlands Lettings. Connecting landlords with tenants for over 20 years. If you have a property to let, pop into our office on Station Road by the Belfry Main entrance for a coffee and a chat. Or call 01737 372797. Planet Reigate Stars. Thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

66: 1/4 - The story of Bancroft Road, Reigate 1 – the intriguing story of what was built there, why and who by… and more

2804.511

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

66: 1/4 - The story of Bancroft Road, Reigate 1 – the intriguing story of what was built there, why and who by… and more

3113.762

Planet Rygate is... the castle at Betchworth and the castle in Reigate. And this is the Planet Reigate podcast. The 60-second soundscape. Local natural sounds uninterrupted.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

66: 1/4 - The story of Bancroft Road, Reigate 1 – the intriguing story of what was built there, why and who by… and more

3230.034

The Planet Reigate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

152.321

This is the Planet Reigate podcast with Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

1821.109

The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Ditch the click for hassle-free local shopping in a welcoming environment. See, touch, smell and try before you buy and speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Woodlands Lettings, connecting landlords with tenants for over 20 years.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

1844.061

If you have a property to let, pop into our office on Station Road by the Belfry Main entrance for a coffee and a chat, or call 01737 372 797.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

313.877

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

3614.764

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Rygate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

4.534

This is the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

4466.755

Planet Reigate Stars. Thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

5093.705

Support us at buymeacoffee.com slash theplanetreigatepodcast The 60-second soundscape. Local natural sounds uninterrupted.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

5228.881

The Planet Rygate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

44: Reigate's Inner Art and our summer holiday clubs' listing… and more

794.956

Planet Reigate is the North Downs Way and the Pilgrims Way. And this is the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

154.404

This is the Planet Reigate podcast with Peter Stewart.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

2212.558

The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Ditch the click for hassle-free local shopping in a welcoming environment. See, touch, smell and try before you buy and speak to real people who can advise you. The Belfry Shopping Centre, Redhill. Woodlands Lettings, connecting landlords with tenants for over 20 years.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

2235.34

If you have a property to let, pop into our office on Station Road by the Belfry Main entrance for a coffee and a chat, or call 01737 372 797. Music

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

282.239

Email hello at theplanetreigatepodcast.com Find out more at theplanetreigatepodcast.com Leave a text or voice message on WhatsApp 07917 874572 and leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Support us at buymeacoffee.com slash theplanetreigatepodcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

3144.918

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Rygate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

324.491

The Good Time Guide. Things to do and places to go on the Planet Reigate podcast.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

3705.814

Planet Reigate Stars, thanking local heroes who are out of this world.

The Planet Reigate Podcast

43: A little bit of France in Redhill, Reigate’s rogue MPs from history… and more

3995.714

The Planet Reigate podcast was produced and presented by Peter Stewart.

The Prosecutors

Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore

25.991

Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kalen take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes ever, where a single clue can crack a case wide open. From shocking murders to high-stakes trials, Clues unpacks the forensic evidence and obsessive sleuthing behind the investigations that still have people talking to this very day.

The Prosecutors

Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore

46.275

Kalen is your true crime expert, breaking down the cold, hard facts of these cases. And Morgan is your internet detective, going into full Reddit mode to uncover the theories and weird details you definitely haven't heard. So whether you're obsessed with the details, deep into internet theories, or love a good forensic twist, you have to check out Clues.

The Prosecutors

Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore

66.584

Check out this clip from their very first episode.

The Prosecutors

Killer Minds

25.712

Along with Vanessa's immersive storytelling full of high-stakes twists and turns, Dr. Ingalls will be providing expert analysis of the people involved. Not just how they killed, but why. Charles Manson. Jeffrey Dahmer. Griselda Bianco, a.k.a. the Cocaine Godmother. These are just a few of the names they will be covering. It's about so much more than their crimes. It's about their minds.

The Prosecutors

Killer Minds

52.161

And now, here's a sneak peek of Killer Minds.

The Prosecutors

293. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 1 of 2 -- Mountain Sound

0.049

For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

293. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 1 of 2 -- Mountain Sound

17.606

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new Ancient Aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

293. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 1 of 2 -- Mountain Sound

46.485

Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Prosecutors

302. West Memphis 3 Part 4

0.069

For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

302. West Memphis 3 Part 4

17.606

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new ancient aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

302. West Memphis 3 Part 4

46.505

Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Prosecutors

306. The West Memphis 3 Part 7 -- The Timeline Concludes

0.069

For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

306. The West Memphis 3 Part 7 -- The Timeline Concludes

10.499

UFO sightings the military can't explain. Congressional hearings. Pentagon whistleblower. What does it all mean?

The Prosecutors

306. The West Memphis 3 Part 7 -- The Timeline Concludes

17.606

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new ancient aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

306. The West Memphis 3 Part 7 -- The Timeline Concludes

46.505

Listen to the Ancient Aliens Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Prosecutors

300. West Memphis 3 Part 2

0.129

Podcasting isn't just about talking, it's about growing, engaging, and monetizing, and that's where Podcast One Pro comes in. Whether you're an independent creator or a major brand, Podcast One Pro gives you the tools you need to take your podcast to the next level. We're talking about premium hosting, advanced analytics, dynamic ad integration, and expert distribution.

The Prosecutors

300. West Memphis 3 Part 2

28.772

all designed to maximize your reach and revenue. Plus, with access to Podcast One's industry-leading network, you'll be connected to top-tier advertisers and a massive audience. It's time to go pro and turn your passion into profit. Visit podcastonepro.com to get started today. Podcast One Pro, the power behind the podcast.

The Prosecutors

300. West Memphis 3 Part 2

4920.649

Stream all the movies and shows you love for free on Pluto TV. Say what now? Showtime. That means drama is free with heart-wrenching stories from love and basketball, power, and Greenleaf. In this family, we live by the spirit. And laughter is free with gut-busting comedies like Key & Peele, The Neighborhood, Everybody Hates Chris, and Boomerang.

The Prosecutors

300. West Memphis 3 Part 2

4941.625

Watch all the hits, all for free, from all your favorite devices. Oh, my God. I love it. Feel the free Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

0.069

For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

10.499

UFO sightings the military can't explain. Congressional hearings. Pentagon whistleblower. What does it all mean?

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

1312.495

If you're looking to streamline your audio advertising buys and maximize your revenue, look no further than Triton Digital's Programmatic Audio Advertising Exchange, A2X. The private exchange consists of only licensed broadcasters and top-tier internet radio publishers, assuring the quality inventory and brand safety you can trust. Visit www.tritondigital.com to learn more.

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

17.606

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new ancient aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

46.505

Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

4741.755

Are you looking for your next case? Pluto TV has all your favorite crime dramas streaming for free. You're going to need some backup. Which means suspense is free. Very cool. Watch CSI New York, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Tracker, FBI, and Swap all for free. You can't outrun this. Someone is going to pay for all this crime, but it's not going to be you. Take care of business, fellas.

The Prosecutors

304. West Memphis 3 Part 6

4763.012

Watch all the cases all for free from all your favorite devices. We got you. Feel the free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

The Prosecutors

294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

0.049

For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

10.039

Right. UFO sightings the military can't explain. Congressional hearings. Pentagon whistleblower. What does it all mean?

The Prosecutors

294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

17.606

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new Ancient Aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

4548.09

I did get a haircut.

The Prosecutors

294. The Aconcagua Mystery Part 2

46.485

Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

1.01

If you're looking to streamline your audio advertising buys and maximize your revenue, look no further than Triton Digital's Programmatic Audio Advertising Exchange, A2X. The private exchange consists of only licensed broadcasters and top-tier internet radio publishers, assuring the quality inventory and brand safety you can trust. Visit www.tritondigital.com to learn more.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

34.555

Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

47.361

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new Ancient Aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

478.299

You could do that as well.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

5704.127

Are you looking for your next case? Pluto TV has all your favorite crime dramas streaming for free. You're going to need some backup. Which means suspense is free. Very cool. Watch CSI New York, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Tracker, FBI, and SWAT all for free. You can't outrun this. Someone is going to pay for all this crime, but it's not going to be you. Take care of business, fellas.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

5725.379

Watch all the cases all for free from all your favorite devices.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

5729.542

Feel the free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

The Prosecutors

305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

76.229

Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims

2163.578

Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! 13,000 employees at the CDC. A lot of the work they do is duplicitous.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims

847.718

Protesters rallying against the cuts the Department of Government Efficiency made to the medical field. These cuts mean cancer patients left without hope. Emilia Ventriglia, researcher at the National Institutes of Health, says it's more than just people losing their jobs.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims

870.737

Hours earlier, workers recently laid off by the federal government took their complaints directly to the Hart Senate office building on Capitol Hill.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

1555.164

ABC10 asked Kiley if he plans to have a town hall anytime soon. He says because his district is so large, teletown halls have been more convenient for him and his constituents, and that one is in the works.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

1573.348

But Kylie's congressional website shows there are no scheduled upcoming teletown halls or in-person meetings. ABC 10 reached out to his office to get a comment regarding town hall meetings and a response to the criticism, but his spokesperson did not provide an update.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

1692.455

Karen and Mark Essex live in Van Orden's district and say that they're upset at the representative for not being transparent with them.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

180.539

I like your tie. Oh, you like my tie? Hey, Hey. So there you have it. That is a thing that happened.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

578.898

They proclaimed that between now and the end of this Congress, that is just one long day. That's just one day.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1.092

Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. So Michigan State University is in beautiful East Lansing, Michigan. It's a really big school. More than 40,000 undergrads enrolled at any one time. Another 7,000 or so people enrolled as graduate students. And Michigan State is a really big name school.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1014.847

In Burlington, Vermont, a protest outside the detention hearing for Rumesa Ozturk. She's the Tufts University doctoral student, the Fulbright scholar, who was snatched off the street and taken to a prison in Louisiana by masked Trump agents who didn't show their names and didn't show their faces. Put her in an unmarked car.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1037.901

Yesterday, also in Louisiana, a protest outside that immigration prison, which is holding Ramesa Ozturk, and also holding Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University, and frankly, thousands of other people whose names we do not know. People protested at the Tesla dealership in Chicago yesterday, including these kind of cute signs that are shaped like Cybertrucks.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1060.36

I've never thought Cybertrucks were cute, but the signs shaped like Cybertrucks are cute. People protested at an announcement by the Indiana governor, Mike Braun, when he announced yesterday that he's going to try to do to health care in Indiana what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to national health care for Trump. Oh, boy.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1078.909

Indiana residents turned out at the state capitol to tell Governor Mike Braun what to do with that idea. Signs saying things like, Governor Braun, why ask a lawyer for medical advice? And hands off our vaccines. and simply clown show.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1099.306

The resounding no that you are hearing, or the resounding clown show raspberries, or the resounding ovation for the this doesn't look like Trump country, this looks like our country comment from Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, what I just showed you is just a snapshot of a day.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

110.166

to help that school defend itself and fight back, which would mean lawyers and experts and advocacy and lobbying and public relations, they would all do it together. They would treat Trump attacking any one of those schools as an attack on all of those schools. So no matter which one Trump picks first to go after, no school would have to fight alone.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1119.451

But that kind of resistance, that kind of saying no, that kind of rejection of what Trump is doing and are willing to protest it and say no to it, it's taking every different form, right? I mean, the pro bono legal defense network for federal workers, more than a thousand lawyers joining that to work pro bono for federal workers. The mutual academic defense agreements for colleges.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1142.777

The big rallies, the small handful of brave protesters making sure dissent is visible at local congressmen's offices, local Social Security offices, local IRS offices. We also saw yesterday in something I've never really seen before, a very unusual show of support for judges and for the judiciary.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1163.267

A very small group, including a sitting judge and a retired judge and a number of legal academics, legal professionals. asked people to convene online yesterday to show support for judges and their families and stand up in a nonpartisan way against threats to judges and their families.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1185.074

Among the judges who participated in this was Judge Astor Salas, whose husband was grievously wounded and whose son was murdered in New Jersey. I first heard about this, I thought, one, this is a very unusual thing. You don't hear about the judiciary asking people to stand up for them very often.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1205.342

And two, because the threats that judges and their families have received right now are so terrible, I thought, you know, even though this is a very unusual thing that they're asking people to do, I thought, you know what, I bet they are going to get a pretty good response to this. I bet they're going to get... you know, like 200 or 300 people to show up online in this Speak Up for Justice event.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1226.715

I thought they'd get, you know, I thought they'd get a couple hundred people. I thought they might get like 500 people. They got more than 7,000 people joining that event in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat

1241.089

So the ways people are standing up and saying no and standing up and saying they reject this and standing up and giving the administration the one-finger salute, put it in blunt terms, they are innumerable and unpredictable. And they surprise me every day that we cover this stuff. But today we saw something from a U.S. senator that we never thought any U.S. senator would ever have to do.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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And so add this to the pantheon of things that people are doing to stand up to this administration and to try to stop some of the worst that they are trying to do.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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As one federal judge started contempt proceedings against the Trump administration, and a second judge threatened them over the Trump administration refusing to comply with court orders, insisting that there's no law that can constrain Donald Trump from sending people from this country to a foreign prison indefinitely with no legal process at all. Today, a U.S.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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senator, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democratic senator from Maryland, he himself flew alone to El Salvador to try to get back one of his constituents, to try to get back a Maryland resident who Donald Trump sent to that foreign prison in El Salvador, even when the Trump administration admitted that trying to deport him in the way they did had been an administrative error.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Residents of Maryland have been protesting every day at the courthouse as a federal judge in Maryland has been ordering the Trump administration that they really do need to go get him and return him. Senator Van Hollen says he promised Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's wife and his mother that he would do everything in his power as a senator to get Mr. Abrego-Garcia back.

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Michigan State's faculty voted last night for their school to join and help create such a compact. And they are not the first. They are just the latest. They join Rutgers in New Jersey and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Indiana University

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Well, today, the senator went to El Salvador himself to try to get him. And Senator Chris Van Hollen joins us live from El Salvador, next. The prison in El Salvador, where Kilmar Abrego-Garcia was sent, the Trump administration says, by mistake, is one of the largest maximum security prisons in Latin America.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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In recent weeks, that prison has become a kind of photo op for members of the Trump administration and his Republican supporters in the U.S. Congress. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured the prison in March, posting an Abu Ghraib-style video and photos of herself in front of a crowded cell.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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This week, Republican Congressman Jason Smith of Missouri posted his own photo from inside the prison in El Salvador. So did Republican Congressman Riley Moore of West Virginia, who shared this photo. Double thumbs up! in front of the cells of the prison. Today, another lawmaker arrived in El Salvador, this time a Democrat, and he's there for a very different reason.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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He is the senior senator from the state where Kilmar Abrego-Garcia lived with his family until the Trump administration had him arrested and took him to this foreign prison. And a move the administration, again, admitted was what they called an administrative error.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland landed in El Salvador today with the hope that he might see Mr. Abrego Garcia or be able to talk to him.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Senator Van Hollen landing in El Salvador today, hoping for a chance to meet with Kilmer Abrego-Garcia in that prison. Senator Van Hollen says the vice president of El Salvador told him he would not be able to do that when he met with him today. Joining us now for the interview is Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who joins us from El Salvador.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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excuse me, Indiana University at Bloomington, also outside the Big Ten, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, all those schools have taken the same or similar steps thus far. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education and our own reporting, we are expecting votes along these lines soon at the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Senator, thank you so much for what you're doing and for being here with us tonight. I know it's been a very long day.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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What are—what's sort of the range of potential outcomes here that you think are possible? What are you hoping to accomplish on this trip? And how did those expectations match up with the experience that you had today meeting with the country's vice president and hearing what you did from him?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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I just want to underscore what you just said there, that you were told by the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador that they have received no request from the White House or from the Justice Department, from any other entity in Washington, asking them to take any steps to obtain the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia. Presumably, it's the local U.S.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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officials at the embassy there who would be the relevant point of contact, first point of contact for the U.S. government trying to attain that outcome, correct?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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We believe a vote like that is under discussion already at the University of Minnesota and at Penn State. We've also had faculty at Northwestern and the University of Oregon already pass similar but sort of more mild statements saying that they are generally in favor of this kind of idea. But, you know, a statement is just a statement. All that and a dollar will buy you a scratch ticket.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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You mentioned that other— Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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You mentioned the possibility, and now it seems like the likelihood, that other members of Congress are going to make their way to El Salvador. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has expressed interest in going. Congressman Maxwell Frost, the young congressman from Florida, has formally requested a congressional delegation, a CODEL, to El Salvador.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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A couple of Republican members of Congress who are supporters of what Trump has done using this prison have somehow gotten into the prison and been able to take photo ops there, given that the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, was able to get in and do a photo op there.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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I wonder what you make of the El Salvadoran government sort of opening the door to allow Trump administration officials and Republican supporters of President Trump in there to make essentially social media content while still denying you the opportunity to get inside.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, joining us live tonight from El Salvador. Sir, thank you again for making time to be here and helping us understand this and explain it to our audience. Please keep us surprised.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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I know a lot of people are worried about you being there, given what's going on between our government and the government of El Salvador and the kind of language used by their president in talking about this standoff. So please be safe, keep us surprised, and we'll look forward to having you back on soon.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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All right, more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders, especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.

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And frankly, time is short. But I'm telling you, this is a movement that is nevertheless picking up steam. Today, we've got grad student unions at a whole bunch of universities asking for their schools to join in a mutual academic defense compact like this as well. Grad students at the University of Minnesota, which I just mentioned, again, may have a faculty vote on this matter soon.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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To permit such officials to freely annul the judgments of the courts of the United States would not just destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, it would make a solemn mockery of the Constitution itself. Defendants provide no convincing reason to avoid the conclusion that appears obvious. They deliberately flouted this court's order.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Rather than offer a mea culpa, an attempt to explain this grave error and detail plans to rectify it, defendants offer various imaginative arguments for why they nevertheless technically complied with the order. None of their positions withstand scrutiny. Defendant's conduct, moreover, manifests a willful disregard of the court's legally binding prescriptions.

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Given the evidence at this early stage in the inquiry and offered no persuasive reason to conclude otherwise, the court finds that there is probable cause that defendants acted contemptuously. When the judge says acted contemptuously, he means in a legal sense, as in the defendants acted in contempt of court.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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If you want to know where contempt of court is on the map of the death of the Republic, it's that thing right on the edge of the abyss. You get up to the—you're approaching the cliff. There's the signs telling you you're getting close to the edge. And then you go past the signs, and then you get right up to the edge. It's contempt of court. It's right there.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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When the Trump administration started shipping people off to a foreign prison in El Salvador, a judge in Washington ordered them to turn around the planes that were in the air at that moment flying to that prison. The administration did not do that. Instead, they sent those people to that prison in El Salvador anyway.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Ever since that same federal judge in Washington has been demanding answers about who exactly made the decision to defy his legally binding order, and when, and how, and who else is implicated in this mess, today in this ruling, that Washington judge made clear that he is done playing games. They are on the edge of contempt, which is on the edge of the end.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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He gave the Trump administration until Wednesday, next week, one week, to either fix this mess by having the U.S. government retake custody of all those people it shipped to El Salvador or start handing over the names of Trump officials for the judge to hold in criminal contempt. We are getting to it here. We're going to talk to the lead attorney who is suing the government in this case next.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Stay with us. Last month, the Trump administration appeared to defy a court order when a judge ordered them to turn around planes that were taking people from the United States to a prison in El Salvador. After the planes didn't turn around and landed in El Salvador, the president of that country mocked the judge's order by tweeting, quote, Oopsie! Too late! He literally used the word oopsie.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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That was then reposted by America's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Well, today, the judge in that case wrote that there is probable cause for contempt charges against Trump administration officials. He cited that instance specifically, quote, boasts by defendants intimated that they had defied the court's order deliberately and gleefully.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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The secretary of state, for instance, retweeted a post in which, above a news headline noting this court's order to return the flights to the U.S., the president of El Salvador wrote, oopsie, too late. Life comes at you fast, Marco Rubio. Joining us now is Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrants Rights Project and the lead attorney in this case against the administration.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Mr. Gelernt, thank you very much for being with us tonight. I appreciate it.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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This is one of those rulings from a federal judge that gets read on nightly news shows because it is narrative and it is written in a way that is designed to make clear to all people, not just lawyers, how serious the stakes are here and how badly, in this judge's estimation, the administration has messed up on something very serious.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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It gets a lot of national attention, in particular for its sports teams. The most high-profile college sports are obviously football and basketball. Michigan State almost always has really great teams in both football and basketball. They've also got a pretty good hockey program. Because Michigan State is a Division I school and because they are very, very good at the sports that get on TV,

The Rachel Maddow Show

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What's your reaction to this ruling and what do you think it will mean for this case?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Also, grad students at Cornell University and Stanford University. University of Chicago, Northwestern, University of New Mexico, New Mexico State, North Carolina State, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Iowa, grad students in all of those places speaking out, asking their universities to form a mutual defense compact with other schools. Tomorrow, this is one to watch for in Wisconsin.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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And to be clearly, what the judge is signaling here is that the Trump administration does not need to set all of these people free or release them or do any other specific thing. The judge is simply saying that these men must be brought back into the custody of the United States.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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that they must be under the control and custody of the United States so that the proceedings on any number of their cases can proceed along the lines that are afforded under the Constitution, right? He's not telling the administration that they need to do any one thing with any of these men other than put them back under U.S. control.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Do you expect, I guess the way to ask this is, do you expect a predictable outcome if this case does happen? results in Trump administration officials being held in contempt. I feel like that is something that is very rare in U.S. history.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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It's certainly very rare on a matter like this, where the government has been given lots and lots and lots of opportunity to remedy its compliance with the court's orders. Is there anything that we should sort of be preparing ourselves for if contempt proceedings do proceed here?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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In Madison, we're expecting a big rally at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to demand that that school join such a compact. as well. So this is something that is really picking up steam, but it ought to. Vice President J.D. Vance gave a keynote speech to a national conservatism conference a couple years ago, and the title of his speech was literally, The Universities Are the Enemy.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Yeah. I mean, even if they do go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court tells them to bring these guys back, they're going to bring these guys back. They are, because they have to, because there's no other choice. There's no choose-your-own-adventure in our country where an order like that from the Supreme Court is defied. It just doesn't.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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They may hem and haw, but it's just not going to happen. We're not going to be there. Deputy Director for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, the lead lawyer in this case against the Trump administration. Lee, I know it's been a long and very intense day. Thanks for your help tonight.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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I'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9pm Eastern.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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The title of the speech was literally, The Universities Are the Enemy. He ended the speech with a quote from Richard Nixon, Professors are the enemy. And he didn't mean it ironically. They're really not kidding about this stuff. Part of their mission is to use their power in the U.S. government to destroy American higher education, to destroy U.S.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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colleges and universities, not because of any particular thing that colleges and universities are doing, but just because they think they're bad and they shouldn't exist and they are going to try to destroy them. They have been saying this for years. Now it is clear we should believe them.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Tonight, CNN and The Washington Post are reporting that President Trump has directed the IRS to strip tax-exempt status from Harvard University after Harvard said this week that it would not accede to Trump's threats. It would not enter into some kind of receivership where Donald Trump gets to dictate the school's internal policies and academic decisions.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Now, there are, of course, laws about tax-exempt status. The IRS can't legally take it away from a university or from any entity just because Trump pounds his chest and says so. So we'll be talking about that more on tonight's show. But the fact that Trump is trying it tells you, I mean, tells anybody paying attention that, yeah, now's the time. Move fast, right?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Any school that wants to survive what Trump and Vance are doing here, what their agenda is here for American universities and colleges, any school that wants to survive what's coming their way better find a way to not have to fight alone. And so, yes, now we are seeing all kinds of colleges all across the country move toward mutual defense pacts with other schools.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Basically little NATO treaties for all the colleges. An attack on one is an attack on all. I will tell you, I have no connection to any of these efforts, but I would just say as an observer, just speaking strategically, my only note on this might be, go faster. Once he's targeted you, it's too late to have a mutual defense treaty. in position.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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You have to have these things in place ahead of time before he signs that executive order or yanks your funding or does whatever he's going to do to you. Time is short. River rises. So we're going to stay on this. We're going to keep you posted. While we are on this subject, though, may I also introduce you to the Federal Workers Legal Defense Network. This is brand new.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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More than a thousand lawyers in 42 states have completed training now to defend federal workers from all aspects of what Trump is doing to them in the federal government, not just in lawsuits to challenge Trump's mass indiscriminate and in some cases illegal firings of huge swaths of people who work for the U.S. government, but also to

The Rachel Maddow Show

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And most especially because they're part of the Big Ten, which is a big, highly televised, lots of attention athletic conference in this country. Whether or not you got any connection to Michigan, people all over this country know Michigan State and the Michigan State Spartans.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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training on how to provide individual guidance and legal support to individual federal workers who have been fired or otherwise mistreated by the Trump administration. This was convened by civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and advocacy groups like Democracy Forward.

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You keep hearing their name in the news because they've been suing the bejesus out of Trump in this second term. It was also pulled together by unions, including especially the AFL-CIO. They have all now come together to put together this very large thousand-plus lawyer effort in 42 states, this federal workers' legal defense network.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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And they say their lawyers are trained, and it is now up and running. And again, I would just say, speed matters in an attempted authoritarian takeover that is trying to go as far as it can, as fast as it can, before the country can properly organize its defenses. Speed matters. That said, even if it hasn't been done already, still do it, right?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Even if the best time to have done something like this Federal Workers Legal Defense Network was probably yesterday or a month ago, the second best time to do it is right now. And so, yes, as of today, we've got one. And that means that federal workers are better off today than they were before.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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In terms of the country standing up its defenses against the authoritarian takeover, The Washington Post tonight was first to report on Trump's plans for what he's going to do to health care.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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And these plans are draconian enough that I can't help but think that they may have an impact on how many Americans think they've got some skin in the game in terms of whether or not they want to participate in a protest or otherwise take part in some sort of civic activity to say no, to show their dissent, to register their disapproval of what Trump is doing.

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Because what the Washington Post is reporting on Trump's plans for healthcare, this is Trump's plans for healthcare after the 10,000 people that he just fired from HHS. On top of those 10,000 people fired from HHS, Trump's new plan is reportedly to cut another $40 billion from U.S. healthcare and health research. That's fully a third of what the United States spends on healthcare and research.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Trump wants to cut... all of the CDC's work, for example, on heart disease and obesity and diabetes and smoking and HIV. You think that might galvanize people in this country? He's not—he's not saying—Trump is not saying he wants to trim these programs or make them more efficient. The plan, according to this document published by The Washington Post, the plan is to eliminate

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Well, last night, the faculty senate at Michigan State voted that their school should join the other schools in the Big Ten in a totally non-sports-related agreement. The faculty at Michigan State voted last night that their school should join with all the other schools in the Big Ten in what they're calling a mutual defense compact, a mutual academic defense compact.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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The CDC's work on heart disease, obesity, diabetes, smoking, HIV. Yeah, because it's not like any of us know anybody who has any one of those issues, right? No one within the sound of my voice right now has any connection to anyone with heart disease, right? Have you ever even heard of that? Heart disease? Does that sound like a foreign concept?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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I mean, Americans will sure be glad that Donald Trump forced the United States of America to stop working on heart disease altogether because, yeah, none of us have ever heard of anybody having a heart attack, right? None of us have anybody in our families or anybody we're connected to who's got problems with cholesterol or high blood pressure, right? That's really exotic stuff, right?

The Rachel Maddow Show

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Yeah, obesity. Americans have no idea what that is. We've got no personal connection to that. Thank God Donald Trump is going to save us from the waste of the U.S. government working on those woke liberal problems like diabetes. This was Missoula, Montana today.

The Rachel Maddow Show

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In deep red state Montana, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders turning out more than 9,000 people today. Look at this. Look at that crowd. Middle of the day on a Wednesday in Montana. Yesterday in California, AOC and Bernie turned out over 10,000 people in Bakersfield, California, and 26,000 people in Folsom, California.

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This is not like San Francisco or Oakland or Berkeley. This is not a liberal enclave in California. And they turned out 26,000 people in Folsom.

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It was Folsom, California, in a Republican congressional district yesterday. This was the day before that, Monday, in Ruby Red, Idaho, a sold-out capacity crowd of 12,500 people. Look at this in Nampa, Idaho. This was the day before that in Ruby Red, Utah, 20,000 people turning out to see Bernie and AOC in Salt Lake City. This was the day before that in Los Angeles.

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Senator Bernie Sanders, his office saying that this crowd that turned out in—drop the chyron there so people can see the crowd. Thank you. Senator Bernie Sanders' office saying this crowd of 36,000 people that turned out to see him in AOC in Los Angeles on Saturday was the biggest crowd that Senator Bernie Sanders has ever spoken to anywhere.

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These are just massive, massive, massive events that the two of them have been holding in—yes, in California, but not in the—not necessarily in the blue state caricature parts of California. and also in Utah and Idaho and Montana. And these crowds are out there for two of the most dynamic and most unapologetic fighting progressives in all of U.S. electoral politics. The Fight Oligarchy Tour.

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Senator Sanders' office says of the people who've been RSVPing for these events, yes, most of them are Democrats, but they say 21% of people turning out for these events are independents, and they say 8% of people turning out for these rallies are Republicans.

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And 8%, I know, 8% sounds like single digits, but 8% when you're talking about like 200,000 people they've spoken to at these events thus far, that's saying something.

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And huge events like these that are being done by Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, huge events like these are definitely saying something about how the country feels about this political moment and about Donald Trump.

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And I will say, just in terms of the media, the sheer size of these events and the fact that most of them are in red states means that they're starting to get a ton of press and a ton of attention from the mainstream media. And that, of course, is starting to rattle everyone in politics on all sides, which is always fun to see.

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And what that means is kind of what it says. When Trump inevitably comes after one of the schools in the Big Ten, be it Michigan State or Rutgers or Ohio State or UCLA or USC or University of Washington or any of the other schools in that conference, the idea is that all the other schools would agree

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But I'll tell you, you know, seeing those big events and seeing all the press they're now getting is fantastic to watch. But look around. Because when it's not an event with thousands of people, which obviously is going to get a lot of attention, what we're still seeing is thousands of events, thousands of protests, protests that are happening every day and in every state.

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I mean, here's just a snapshot. Yesterday, protests to save Social Security from what Trump is doing to it at the Social Security field office here in Peekskill, New York. and at the Social Security office in La Crosse, Wisconsin. And in East Vancouver, Washington, people, again, protesting to protect Social Security.

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In Baltimore, Maryland, people protesting against Trump letting his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, access everyone's personal data at the Social Security administration. This was outside the Social Security headquarters in Washington, D.C. yesterday. You see the sign there. Elon has your SSN. Elon has your Social Security number. Protests in Atlanta against Trump's mass firings at the CDC.

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These protesters in Atlanta joined by Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson. In Kansas City, Missouri, people turning out protesting against Trump's mass firings at the IRS. In San Francisco, protests against Trump turning the IRS into a weapon to be used against immigrants.

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At Florida International University in Miami, protests against Trump's attacks on immigrants and on international students. No ICE on campus. At the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, a protest against students' visas being revoked. More protests against Trump's attacks on immigrants and international students at Emory University in Georgia.

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You know what tomorrow is? Tomorrow's Friday Eve. Hang in there. But I'm happy to have you here tonight because tonight it is time for us all together to do some spelunking. That's right. It is time together to explore some caves.

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But, you know, as before, we now live in a partially burned house. Because they're still messing everything up. They're just trying to make sure that we find out less about how badly they're messing it up. Because look at what else they're doing here. This is back to the Washington Post today.

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Quote, as beleaguered employees work to understand the latest announcement about changes, some employees were hit with an additional puzzling change as to how they do their jobs. A new rule preventing communications with Congress or advocates for the elderly and disabled.

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An email went out to Social Security technicians on Monday, instructing them to cease all written responses to congressional inquiries and inquiries from advocates. A similar email went out to employees in other divisions, affecting a wide range of staff members, including benefits authorizers, claims specialists, and customer service representatives.

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The second email obtained by the Post read simply, quote, effective immediately, do not respond directly to any public or congressional inquiries. After a surge in questions, another employee sent a follow-up email clarifying that staffers should continue to pick up the phone if Americans call for help.

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Actually, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. So it overlapped in time with these demonstrations. But this poll is a nationwide poll of how the American public is feeling about Trump and how he's doing as president. From the results of this poll, you'd almost think that they just polled the demonstrators, because what people were saying in the streets and at state capitals and on the

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But definitely don't talk to anyone else about how we're destroying this agency and the kind of chaos that it is wreaking among Americans who have, in many cases, no other options to pay for the basic necessities of life. Oh, I guess we're going to fix this one part that people have really been squawking about. But definitely don't answer any questions from Congress.

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Definitely don't answer any questions from anybody trying to make the system work. Don't pick up the phone. You know, pushback works. Pushback is the only thing that works. It's not like they're going to do good stuff if we start ignoring them, right? When left to their own devices, things get very, very bad very quickly. Pushback works. It's the only thing that does.

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But even when they cave in response to pushback, they still are messing up new stuff all the time. Luckily, I will say, the appetite for pushing back against them in the country appears to be growing and not shrinking. I mentioned at the top of the show the massive protests we saw this weekend.

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You might think that could have, like, tired people out a little bit, might have exhausted the American people's appetite for getting out and standing up and protesting and pushing back against this administration, even just for this week, many, maybe because there was those huge protests on Saturday. Maybe that would quiet everything down for the rest of this week. Quite the contrary, apparently.

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Those protests at college campuses all over the country yesterday, kill the cuts protests. This was Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz last night, not in Minnesota, but in Ohio, in Lorain, Ohio, in a congressional district that's held by a Republican congressman named Bob Latta. Bob Latta is not holding town halls in his Ohio district, so Democrats will do it for him.

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Democrats are meeting with his constituents instead. In this case, nearly 2,000 people came out in Lorain, Ohio, last night for a town hall with Democrat Tim Walz. Pushing back matters. I mean, if you do fight, you don't always win. But if you don't fight, you always lose. The Trump administration is deep into its caving phase right now on matters high profile and low.

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is pretty much in keeping with what the public at large was telling pollsters who were in the field at the same time.

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They also appear to be getting a little desperate. Trump tonight issuing bizarre executive orders, ordering the U.S. Justice Department to launch investigations into individual people who he has decided are his enemies. Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who both served in the Trump administration in his first term.

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A president ordering the Justice Department to open individual investigations into people he deems his enemies? is Banana Republic stuff, and I don't mean the clothing company. We're also seeing Trump and his administration taking some wild and hard-to-explain swings at the IRS, of all places, with consequences that at this point seem very, very unclear.

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We're also seeing Doge try to grab a whole bunch of money for themselves to put in their own pockets. Get it while you still can, maybe they're thinking. It is a really wild day in the news today. We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us.

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here's what i mean quote do you approve or disapprove of the way donald trump is handling his job as president disapprove by a margin of twelve points do you approve or disapprove of the way donald trump is handling the federal workforce disapprove by a margin of thirteen points do you approve or disapprove of the way donald trump is handling foreign policy disapprove by a margin of fourteen points do you approve or disapprove of the way donald trump is handling the economy

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An administration as chaotic as this one, it can sometimes be hard to tell on a day-to-day basis when things are going bad in just kind of a run-of-the-mill way versus when things are going bad in a not-at-all-run-of-the-mill, maybe-actually-consider-panicking kind of way. It's hard to tell sometimes on a day-to-day basis.

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But one of the good indicators that something really big is going wrong is when you get news that people who have really big jobs in one part of the government, they all leave. They all quit or are fired suddenly, all of a sudden and without warning. And it's because they had been trying to stop something from happening.

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They weren't able to stop that thing from happening, and so now they have left the agency. They have left the government. That is a pretty reliable sign that something quite big and quite bad is happening. And you only see these things every so often, even in an administration as disastrous as this one.

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For example, there were the senior prosecutors who resigned after the Justice Department ordered them to drop the corruption case against New York City's mayor. There was the longtime official who resigned from the Treasury Department after people working for the president's top campaign donor demanded access to the most sensitive payment systems in the whole U.S. government.

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There was the top official for vaccine safety in the whole U.S. government who said he would not give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his new team access unrestricted read-write access to a very sensitive central vaccine database.

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And again, I'm no expert, but I feel like I can measure the size of the splash that's being made by this particular cannonball at the IRS by the news of who is leaving the agency all of a sudden and without warning because of something going wrong there. This news started to come in last night, just as we were getting off the air, when we got news that the acting head of the IRS was gone.

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She had resigned over a Trump administration plan for the IRS to give sensitive tax data to immigration authorities so the Trump administration can use it to target immigrants. This woman had been acting commissioner for less than six weeks. She had been appointed after Trump's previous acting head of the IRS also abruptly resigned in another controversy. That alone is a bad sign.

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But apparently, she was not the only senior person at the IRS who left because of this standoff. The New York Times then reported that the IRS's chief financial officer, the IRS's chief of staff, the IRS's chief risk officer— All have also resigned in recent days. Same with the IRS's chief privacy officer.

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The top lawyer at the IRS was also reportedly demoted recently, as this plan to use tax data to target immigrants was starting to come together. Now, that's a lot of people to have to fire your way through, right? Whatever the reason for all these high-level resignations, whether it's to stop this plan for using tax data to go after immigrants, I don't know.

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I feel like I need to understand why that is so dangerous and why so many people, including people elevated during the Trump administration, might feel like that was the hill they needed to die on. That was the reason they needed to leave the agency. So I have questions about that.

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The other thing going on—happy April, happy tax season—is that they appear to just be also kind of wrecking the IRS wholesale, in the same way they've been taking apart the Social Security Administration. And I understand the implications of that for Social Security, right? It means

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Disabled people and old people are not going to get the checks they need that pay their rent and pay for their food and pay for their medicine. And in some cases, that's the only income they have.

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That's why the dismantling and the wrecking of the Social Security Administration is such a five alarm moral fire for everybody, five alarm, a five alarm moral fire for everybody in this country who has a drop of empathy or understanding as to our obligations as citizens to people who have paid into Social Security and deserve those benefits and deserve not to be messed with.

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I get it at the Social Security Administration. At the IRS, we are seeing a similar kind of wrecking ball start to level that administration. I mean, the Trump administration is cutting a quarter of the people who work there. That has implications, among other things, in terms of how much tax revenue is expected to be brought in by the IRS.

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disapprove by a margin of 15 points. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Trump is handling trade? Disapprove by a margin of 16 points. All right, well, you know, how about this one?

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If tax revenue nationwide drops by 10% because of the way they are wrecking the IRS, what does that do to the country? This happens alongside the Justice Department, talking about now about effectively closing the whole tax enforcement division at the Justice Department, which is the part of the Justice Department that prosecutes tax crimes. So we're wrecking the IRS.

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Following this weekend's big protests, more than 1,400 protests in all 50 states, some of them in big cities like Chicago and New York and Washington, D.C., each of those topping 100,000 people. at simultaneous protests. It was crazy.

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We're doing something so controversial at IRS that it has caused the mass exodus of all of the top executives at the agency, including some of whom came on board or got their current jobs during Trump. And we're going to stop prosecuting tax crimes. I should mention tax day is less than a week away, right? What happens to our country if the Trump administration breaks the IRS?

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If we don't have an effective and functioning system for collecting taxes or just for enforcing the rules and tax laws, what happens to our country then? What's the end game there? Why would you do this? Joining us now is Nina Olson. She's Executive Director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights.

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She previously served as the National Taxpayer Advocate of the United States, which is an independent organization within the IRS. Ms. Olson, thank you very much for being with us tonight. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for having me. So I'm no expert in these matters.

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I am an interested observer watching these things just as a layperson reading the news and trying to understand it here. I have to ask if you feel like I'm focusing on the wrong things, if I'm being unduly alarmed by some of the things that I'm seeing in the news that to a tax professional such as yourself maybe should seem more benign.

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How about his signature issue, a thing that he actually did run on when he campaigned for president, a thing he really most wants to be associated with, the policy that he most wants you to identify with him and his name. Do you think, American public, do you think it is a good thing his signature issue. Here's the way the question was phrased.

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On this point of confidentiality and the seriousness with which this has been greeted by senior IRS personnel, when Nixon tried to weaponize the IRS, the IRS commissioner at the time refused. Even Nixon didn't try to Saturday night massacre the IRS and go through person after person and after person to get his way. Even he was rebuffed here.

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With all of these people resigning, with the confidentiality concerns that you describe, I feel like

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Again, just as a layperson looking at this, the immediate next place I go here is to the law, because as far as I know, the confidentiality of tax information isn't just a nice thing that we like because it encouraged people to pay their taxes because they believe they can trust the government to keep all their data safe.

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I mean, violating the confidentiality of tax information is illegal, isn't it? It's criminal.

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Nina Olson, Executive Director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you for your clear speaking on this. This is, I think, an intimidating topic for a lot of people because we all get intrinsically fearful when we start thinking about the IRS. The destruction of it, though, the dismantling of it is a totally different matter.

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And you've really helped me understand it better. Thanks for being with us tonight. Thank you. I will also say that, you know, to the extent, as Ms. Olson says, this is a criminal matter to violate the confidentiality of tax information, of sensitive tax information.

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Anybody in the Trump administration, any Trump administration official who's considering sharing tax information in a way that violates the law that makes this a crime to do it, you should know that Donald Trump is not going to be president forever. And the statute of limitations for most crimes is, in most cases, about five years. So maybe you're counting on not getting prosecuted.

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for doing this, for breaking these laws about the confidentiality of tax information because you think Donald Trump's president, so who's going to prosecute you? Donald Trump won't always be president, and if the statute of limitations hasn't run, somebody else will. We've got a lot more to come tonight. Stay with us.

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So there's been no shortage of jaw-dropping headlines in the last couple of months. But for a sheer bang for your buck, for the ultimate combination of, oh, and, oh, that characterizes the current Trump administration, I think it's hard to top this story, which you will remember, about Elon Musk's Doge kids from Wired magazine.

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Headline, Doge teen owns Tesla.sexy LLC and worked at startup that has hired convicted hackers. "...a young technologist known online as Big Balls, who works for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has access to sensitive U.S. government systems.

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The proportion of Americans who say Trump's tariffs will hurt us is 72%. So by a 50-point margin, Americans believe that Donald Trump is deliberately hurting us. with his big signature policy idea of these genius tariffs. By a 50-point margin, Americans say what he's doing is hurtful to us deliberately.

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Security experts tell Wired that the 19-year-old's professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances." Good times, right? Do you remember where you were when you learned that America's most sensitive government computer systems and databases were in the hands of big balls?

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Wired was also first to report that another young member of Mr. Musk's Doge team had direct access to Treasury systems that are responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. Wired reported that he had the ability not just to read the information in those systems, but to write and modify documents.

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information inside those systems, which potentially gave him the power to modify and delete files to cut off payments at will. It was Wired that figured out that Trump administration officials appeared to be lying to Congress and possibly lying to the courts when they claimed that that Doge guy never had that kind of read-write access to the systems.

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Wired was at the forefront of identifying the young engineers who Musk was bringing in to dismantle the government, and they have been at the forefront of reporting out exactly what those guys have been doing.

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Stories have proliferated about the chaos inside the Social Security Administration, for example, the increasing problems that Social Security recipients have been having accessing their benefits.

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Wired has reported exactly who from the Doge team is inside the Social Security building and how their plans for a rushed, ill-planned rewrite of the entire Social Security system's computer code could crash the entire operation.

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The weird, chaotic, nihilistic, frightening confluence of politics and technology and tech bro oligarch culture in this administration means that Wired magazine has turned out to be really the perfect outlet to cover some of the scariest stuff in this moment. And now today they have something new. Headline. U.S. Doge Service Agreement with Department of Labor shows $1.3 million fee. Fee?

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and details its mission. Quote, an unsigned agreement between the U.S. Doge Service and the Department of Labor obtained by Wired calls for the Labor Department to reimburse Doge up to $1.3 million. The contract apparently specifies that that $1.3 million would be for the work of four Doge employees over an 18-month period. Wait, wait, we're paying the Doge?

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Wired calculates that, quote, paying Doge an estimated $1.3 million for the services of four employees over that time span would establish an implied annualized pay of about $217,000 a year, which is over $20,000 more than the maximum salary for any career civil servant. So under this contract being reported by Wired, the labor department, the U.S.

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Department of Labor would have the privilege of paying over a million dollars to the Doge kids, paying the Doge kids for their acts of dismantling the U.S. Labor Department. They're dismantling the U.S. Labor Department and taking some of its budget to pay themselves more than other civil servants are allowed to get paid. One of the reporters who broke that story joins us next.

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Wired Magazine's Leah Feiger and Tim Marchman have this scoop today. Quote, Doge has spent the last few months ripping through the government, gutting agencies and pushing out tens of thousands of federal workers in an effort, Elon Musk has said, to eliminate waste and fraud. As part of this plan, Musk has previously stated that Doge staffers would cost taxpayers nothing.

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But now Wired has discovered what appears to be like a bill for services-ish in which the U.S. Labor Department is apparently expected to pay $1.3 million to Doge employees for their work. As Ms. Feiger and Mr. Marchman report, quote, this $1.3 million figure and previous Wired reporting about Doge salaries tells a different story. Joining us now is Leah Feiger.

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She's senior politics editor at Wired. Ms. Feiger, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. So you obtained an unsigned contract under which the Labor Department is expected to pay Doge employees a lot of money for their work. What do you make of the fact that this is an unsigned contract?

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Which brings us to what I mentioned at the top, our spelunking expedition together this evening, our exploration of caves. The incident of Donald Trump caving today that's getting the most attention, understandably so, is his panicked cave, his panicked U-turn on tariffs. For all his famed and supposed attention to the stock market—

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Do you know if this is something that has actually been agreed to?

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In terms of the implications of this reporting, as you note, Elon Musk has said, sort of pounding his chest, that all the work of Doge employees would be free of charge to the American taxpayers. What is it in this document that Doge employees are expected to be paid for? And to be clear, it's to be paid to them as individual employees, not paid to Doge overall as an institution, right?

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Leah Feiger, senior politics editor at Wired. And again, I know you guys have received a lot of kudos for your work thus far in these past few months. But let me just add to those congratulations. All of us in the news business have really been treading in your wake a little bit, especially when it comes to reporting on these guys at Doge and what they've been up to and who they are.

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And we're really, really appreciative for the big assist to what we do and everything that you've explained to the country. So thank you to you and all your colleagues at Wired. Thank you so much for having me. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that's gonna do it for me for now. See you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.

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I got to tell you, Donald Trump has been very happy to preside over huge off-the-cliff plunges in the stock market repeatedly. In fact, in history, if you look at the Dow Jones, if you look at the 10 largest single-day point drops in the Dow in history, of the 10 worst point drops ever on the Dow, Donald Trump was the president for nine of those 10 days.

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Somewhere in his first term, somewhere this past week with the tariffs debacle. Yeah. He was president for nine of the ten worst one-day point drops on the Dow.

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And you might say the takeaway message there is, wow, why would any Wall Street person, any business person, anyone with a single share of stock, anyone with a retirement account, why would any of those folks ever support this particular person for president? Reasonable question. But the other takeaway here is about him and not just how good or not he is for stocks,

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The other takeaway here, I think it's fair to say, is that he doesn't much care about tanking the stock market all the time. It's like a day that ends in Y for him. He's famous for doing it. What happened today that was different? After all his remaining tariff threats went into effect at midnight last night, what happened today was not that the stock market tanked.

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After that big, big show of resistance to Donald Trump's presidency and what he's doing to the country, tonight, interesting news out of Washington, interesting news out of Congress. Tonight, Republicans in the House had expected to pass their budget blueprint for the whole government, for all the spending in the government. Republicans, of course, control the House.

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It did at the beginning of the day with the tariffs in place, but that's, again, normal for a day with Donald Trump at the wheel. What was different today was not that the stock market tanked again, right? It was that the bond market tanked at the beginning of the day.

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And you don't have to know that much about the markets to know that when things go crazy economically, even sometimes when things just go crazy in other ways, people rush to put their money somewhere safe. And for decades, for the entire span of America's global economic dominance, the safe place that people have run to when stuff is crazy is has been U.S.

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bonds, American treasury bonds, because when the world is going nuts, for whatever reason, you can at least count on the full faith and credit of the government of the United States of America, right? So usually, bad economic times mean that people want to buy lots of T-bills, lots of treasury bonds. That's the safe harbor. But we're in a new environment now.

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Because it turns out something different happens when the reason things are crazy is that the U.S. government itself is crazy. It's that the U.S. president has grabbed the wheel and he doesn't drink, so we know he's not drunk, but boy, he sure is driving like he's drunk. I mean, when the problem is the actions of the U.S. government, instead of fleeing to the U.S.

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government for safety, now people flee away from the U.S. government to find safety. And so unlike every other economic crisis in modern history, people in this economic crisis, induced by Donald Trump, people today, at the beginning of the day, started selling their T-bills, started selling their U.S. treasuries. A lot, a lot, a lot. And that is not just an inversion of typical economic behavior.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

466.293

That indicates an inversion of America's role in the world as the dominant economy. Also, in practical terms, a sell-off like that in the U.S. bond market, I mean, that portends a way bigger economic disaster for the United States than Trump tanking the stock market over the past week.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

493.393

The bond market falling apart is a much bigger deal than the stock market falling apart in terms of the fundamentals of who we are in the world and how our money and our economy works. Because the stability of the U.S. bond market is what we depend on, essentially, for the spine of our economy.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

510.577

Everything from mortgage rates in the housing market to the integrity of our multi-trillion dollar national debt. So, yes, the stock market stuff under Trump has been scary. But if the bond market blows up, say goodbye to the U.S. economy. And today, what happened is, the bond market started blowing up. When that happened, at the opening of the bond markets today,

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

539.721

That's apparently what turned things around. That's how we discovered this lovely cave that Donald Trump led us into today on his tariff policy. NBC News reports tonight that Trump caved, Trump reversed course on his tariff gambit today because of, quote, deep concern bordering on panic from his top economic officials regarding the bond markets.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

56.078

They only need a majority to pass it, so they can pass it just on their own party's say-so. But just within the last hour or so, they have had to pull that tonight because Republicans in the House apparently don't have support to get it done. So they have canceled their budget vote tonight, expecting that it would have failed had they put it up.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

561.514

Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, not always allies in the various tariff debates at the White House, nevertheless presented a united front today to the president, urging a pause on what he was doing on tariffs, a pause, quote, over concerns about the bond markets. My colleague Chris Hayes, I think, nutted up what happened here very well today.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

585.614

He posted this on Blue Sky. Quote, you set the house on fire, watched it burn, and then lost your nerve and put it out. You now have a partially burned house. Great job. Exactly. But don't lose sight of some of the other lovely caves on our spelunking tour today.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

607.892

For example, this one, headline, Associated Press, Trump administration says it cut funding to some life-saving UN food programs by mistake. Quote, the State Department says it has rolled back an undisclosed number of sweeping funding cuts to UN World Food Program emergency projects in 14 countries, saying it had terminated some of the contracts for life-saving aid, quote, by mistake.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

652.344

Yeah, we have no idea. So I guess we'll put them back. We don't even know how we're making these mistakes. We know it's a mistake, but we don't even know what the mistake is. But rest assured, we know what we're doing. And if you criticize us, watch out.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

670.64

But, you know, just as Chris noted, as he said, even after panicking and putting out the house fire you started, you still have a partially burned house. There's still damage done, even as they try to reverse all these mistakes they're making. You still have a partially burned house, just as Chris noted there. The New York Times is reporting tonight that even some of the critical programs that the

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

697.369

apparently are still cut. Quote, last week, some officials were given lists of contracts and awards that remained active. But by the weekend, many of those projects had been axed. Then on Tuesday, yesterday, some of the programs were restored, with little explanation. But now, still, the administration has, quote, slashed many of the programs it had pledged to preserve.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

720.731

They cannot explain what they're doing. They cannot defend what they're doing. They cannot commit to what they're doing. But they also can't even reverse what they're doing when they try to reverse it because they are so incompetent they can't even fail properly.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

737.011

They're like a baby just mashing down the buttons on a keyboard with no idea what the buttons do, except the keyboard isn't hooked up to like a, you know, I don't know, a word processor or a video game. The keyboard is the controls to a life support machine that has a patient on it. What do these buttons do? Oops. Still, though, the caves keep on coming.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

76.075

And again, they can pass it only with their own members because they have a majority in the House. They've canceled that vote tonight. They may try again in the morning. We shall see.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

761.809

Last night we reported over a couple of different segments of the show on the disturbing, seemingly calamitous collapse. of Social Security. These have been just some of the headlines just in the past couple of days. Washington Post, long waits, website crashes, Social Security is breaking down. The New York Times, quote, just a mess. Staff cuts, rushed changes, and anxiety at Social Security.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

787.675

Quote, the system is groaning under the pressure. This was Business Insider yesterday afternoon, quote, AARP, American Association of Retired Persons, sounds the alarm on Social Security's, quote, startling and sudden decline in customer service and warns of more to come. This was the LA Times today, quote, it's a shambles. Doge cuts bring chaos and long waits at Social Security for seniors.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

819.414

The wrecking of Social Security, Donald Trump's wrecking of Social Security, Trump's wrecking of the Social Security system that tens of millions of Americans rely on, many as their primary source of income, when they don't have other options to supplement it with anything else. It is just a practical and moral catastrophe.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

840.748

It also ought to be a political catastrophe for those who have brought this on the American people. The failings at Social Security are now finally becoming the focus of press coverage. It has long been. Now, as long as people have been protesting what Trump has been doing, it has been a resounding rallying cry for regular Americans protesting all across the country.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

86.263

Meanwhile, in the wake of those demonstrations this weekend, we've also got some new polling in from Quinnipiac University, which essentially validates the criticism of Trump that we saw on display in such large numbers this weekend. The big protests this weekend were on Saturday. This latest Quinnipiac poll was in the field on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

861.895

People protesting in blue states and red states, in cities and in rural areas. Social Security is such a core practical and moral concern for Americans. And they are gutting and destroying that agency. That said, today, they caved on that, too. Headline, Washington Post, quote, Social Security abandons Doge-led phone service cuts amid chaos and backlash.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

892.895

The shift amounts to a wholesale retreat by Musk's team and the Social Security leadership in their bid to dramatically curtail telephone access to services.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

901.799

After the Trump administration announced last month that the Social Security administration would, quote, scrap many of its claims services over the phone, Social Security beneficiaries began lining up at field offices across the country, clutching driver's licenses and asking if they must prove who they were in person.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

917.766

Phone wait times ballooned, and the agency's website started crashing almost daily under a crush of panicked callers and visitors. Besieged by angry constituents, lawmakers demanded that the administration end the chaos. Now, after nearly a month of chaos and backlash, the Doge plans are dead.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

935.253

According to an internal memo obtained by The Post, plans to force people awarded retirement, disability, and Medicare benefits to set up direct deposit payments online or in person have been canceled. Those applying for benefits can also continue the process by phone without the need to go online or visit an office in person.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

951.957

That's according to a Monday memo from the acting deputy commissioner of the agency to the acting commissioner. Starting Tuesday, emails and training started to go out to field staffers, informing them that they won't have to curtail phone service after all. Managers told other employees verbally in meetings that the proposed changes were dead.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

971.347

One Indiana field office employee said, quote, So, back to where it always was. What a waste of our time. Quote, the shift amounts to a wholesale retreat by Elon Musk's Doge team and their bid to dramatically curtail phone access to services.

The Rachel Maddow Show

Trump caves on tariffs: One economic indicator made even Trump realize he'd gone too far

988.354

Their new system would have removed a phone option in place for years, which has come to be a mainstay for these 73 million Americans who rely on Social Security for retirement, survivor and disability benefits and Medicare claims. So, caving. Yes, they are caving on this, on this part of what they are doing to Social Security. Right? So we've put out this house fire.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law

23.68

Protesters were outside of the federal building on Main Street in Springfield, chanting. We say fight back. Holding signs that read, hands off our social security. The group made up of concerned citizens and advocacy organizations believe social security that supports 73 million Americans is in danger.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law

48.314

Their concerns are centered around the Doge cuts to Social Security and the modernization of online systems, as well as the threat of a cutoff of telephone services that was scheduled to take effect April 14, but has since been pushed back.

The Rachel Maddow Show

'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law

71.183

The Social Security Administration plans to cut over 7,000 employees and to close regional offices, which people worry could create an even bigger problem. Seniors and disabled residents tell 22 News this could break the system and interrupt benefit payments.

The Ramsey Show

Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”

5063.612

Hey, what's up, guys? Episode two of 90 Day Money Makeover is available right now on YouTube. This series follows real people as they take on the challenge of transforming their finances and their lives in just 90 days. In this episode, watch as they face new obstacles, celebrate wins, and push forward on their journey. And of course, I'll be walking alongside them every step of the way.

The Ramsey Show

Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”

5086.891

Okay, now here's a little sneak peek of what the new episode is all about.

The Ramsey Show

Hope Is the Difference Between Victim and Victor

1813.464

I hate to admit this, but I don't always eat right. I know, I need to eat more fruits and veggies, but sometimes I just have to pound some chips because they taste so good. That's why I love my Field of Greens. It helps me eat healthy when I don't have much time. And each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for a specific health benefit.

The Ramsey Show

Hope Is the Difference Between Victim and Victor

1833.678

Heart, lungs, kidney, metabolism, even healthy weight. And folks, I ain't getting any younger. It's super easy to mix with water. And here is the great part of it. I thought it might taste like grass, but it tastes great. And only Field of Greens makes this promise. Your doctor will notice your improved health or your money back.

The Ramsey Show

Hope Is the Difference Between Victim and Victor

1854.25

So go to fieldofgreens.com slash Ramsey for 20% off your first order. That's fieldofgreens.com slash Ramsey to save 20% on your first order.

The Ramsey Show

Hope Is the Difference Between Victim and Victor

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The Ramsey Show

Money Stress Is Real, But So Is The Solution

1236.189

It's Holy Week in Jerusalem, and the city is restless. The people of Israel welcome Jesus as king, his followers ready for revolution. But instead of taking the throne, Jesus turns the tables.

The Ramsey Show

Money Stress Is Real, But So Is The Solution

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The Ramsey Show

Money Stress Is Real, But So Is The Solution

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The Ramsey Show

Money Stress Is Real, But So Is The Solution

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The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

1195.049

You know, one of the first things I discovered working in the financial world is how absolutely devastating it is when the breadwinner of a family dies.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

1204.244

there's too little life insurance or none at all grieving families are suddenly left behind scrambling to pay bills and trying to make ends meet i also discovered that there are a lot of rip-offs in the life insurance world like that whole life crap posing as an investment opportunity what you need is level term life insurance usually 10 to 12 times your income

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

1226.417

which is the smartest, most affordable way to protect your family. The key is finding an independent broker who represents a ton of companies and works for you, not for the insurance company. This is exactly what my friend Jeff Zander and his team at Zander Insurance are all about. They shop the term life companies to find you the best options, and they've been around for over 95 years.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

1250.117

so you know they'll be there when you need them. Zander is the real deal, and that's why they've handled all my personal insurance for over 25 years. I trust them, and you can too. Visit Zander.com for instant online quotes or for a more personal touch. Give them a call at 800-356-4282.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

3118.7

Hey guys, our two-night virtual event, Investing Essentials, is almost here. There's a lot of confusion out there about building wealth. So George Campbell and I are breaking it down and teaching you how to invest with confidence. You'll learn how to maximize your 401k and mutual funds. Plus, I'll be sharing my personal playbook for real estate. But hurry, time's running out.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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Investing Essentials is March 4th and 5th. Tickets start at $199. Grab yours today at ramseysolutions.com slash events.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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where we share the proven system that helped us break through those challenges and build Ramsey Solutions from a card table in my living room to a $250 million company in the process.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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When you pre-order today, you're going to get more than $350 in bonuses for free, including an enhanced audiobook experience, early access to the Build a Business You Love eBook, and instant access to our hiring playbook, so you can start transforming your business right now. Build a business you love.

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Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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The essential guide for every business owner like you that wants to grow yourself, lead your team, and scale your business. To reserve your copy, go to RamseySolutions.com slash store. RamseySolutions.com slash store.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

531.539

What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

548.15

That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite, and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next.

The Ramsey Show

Break the Cycle of Financial Self-Sabotage

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And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash ramsey.

The Ramsey Show

Normal Is Comfortable, but Comfort Doesn’t Build Wealth

3060.478

Listen, I know a lot of you would rather watch paint dry in slow motion than file your taxes. But thankfully, you don't have to dread filing when you've got Ramsey Smart Tax. It comes packed with everything you need to file online before the big deadline. That means all major federal forms and deductions are covered with no hidden fees.

The Ramsey Show

Normal Is Comfortable, but Comfort Doesn’t Build Wealth

3076.888

Plus, with Ramsey Smart Tax, you can save up to 70% compared to other tax software out there. It's a no-brainer. Just go to ramseysolutions.com slash smart tax and see how simple tax filing can be. That's ramseysolutions.com slash smart tax.

The Ramsey Show

Normal Is Comfortable, but Comfort Doesn’t Build Wealth

533.527

Hey guys, I'm super excited to announce that two of the goats of sticking to a budget have finally teamed up. That's right, Ramsey and Aldi are partnering together because, well, groceries cost a lot of money. And besides that, most stores are designed to trap you in a maze, a sad, expensive maze. But Aldi is different.

The Ramsey Show

Normal Is Comfortable, but Comfort Doesn’t Build Wealth

551.773

Aldi gives you simpler, better food choices that save you money and get you in and out so you can focus on what really matters. From affordable, high-quality must-haves to grass-fed meat, organic produce, and yes, even name brands, Aldi has what you need at prices that won't steal your joy. So stop paying more and start shopping smarter at Aldi. Find a store near you today at aldi.us.

The Ramsey Show

Face Debt Head-On Before It Destroys Your Family

556.521

It's Holy Week in Jerusalem. Crowds welcome Jesus as King. Rebellion is in the air. Jesus operates outside our jurisdiction. Rome will descend on us all! But instead of taking the throne, Jesus turns the tables.

The Ramsey Show

Face Debt Head-On Before It Destroys Your Family

576.826

the world will never be the same. Now in theaters, The Chosen Last Supper. Get your tickets now.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1162.665

What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 different answers. Economic growth or a recession. Business taxes will go up or down. AI will help us work or it will replace us all. But there's no such thing as a crystal ball.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1179.256

That's why more than 40,000 businesses have future-proofed themselves with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud enterprise resource planning system. Ramsey Solutions uses NetSuite, and you should too. Whether your company's earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1204.415

With one unified business management suite, there's only one source of truth for the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting help you see into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you can spend less time looking backward and more time focusing on what's next.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1230.83

And speaking of what's next, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash ramsey. It's free at netsuite.com slash ramsey.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3155.586

If you own a small business and you like The Ramsey Show, then you're going to love the Entree Leadership Podcast. Almost 200,000 listeners tune in every Monday to hear me take calls from real business leaders and give tactical advice based on my 30 years of experience leading. This is not a podcast about business theory. It's real insight from a practitioner who actually does this stuff.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

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Find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. Or if you're listening on YouTube or Podcast Now, just click the link in the description.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3749.159

You know, one of the first things I discovered working in the financial world is how absolutely devastating it is when the breadwinner of a family dies. and there's too little life insurance or none at all. Grieving families are suddenly left behind scrambling to pay bills and trying to make ends meet.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3767.484

I also discovered that there are a lot of rip offs in the life insurance world like that whole life crap posing as an investment opportunity. What you need is level term life insurance, usually 10 to 12 times your income. which is the smartest, most affordable way to protect your family.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3784.032

The key is finding an independent broker who represents a ton of companies and works for you, not for the insurance company. This is exactly what my friend Jeff Zander and his team at Zander Insurance are all about. They shop the term life companies to find you the best options, and they've been around for over 95 years. so you know they'll be there when you need them.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3807.135

Zander is the real deal, and that's why they've handled all my personal insurance for over 25 years. I trust them, and you can too. Visit Zander.com for instant online quotes or for a more personal touch. Give them a call at 800-356-4282. Hey, guys, good news. Pre-sale is on now for my new book, Build a Business You Love. If you're a business owner, you know running a business is hard.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

3834.373

That's why I wrote this book, to share what we learned over the last 30 years so business owners can grow your business faster with fewer mistakes. Pre-order your copy today, and you'll get access to over $350 in bonus items only at RamseySolutions.com slash store. RamseySolutions.com slash store. Pre-order today.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

4432.253

Listen, guys, I've heard just about every excuse for why folks think they can't get ahead with money. So let's go ahead and settle this right now. You get the final say on what happens with your money. That's why you have to start telling your money where to go so you can stop wondering where it went. So if you're going to start winning with money, you have to get on a budget.

The Ramsey Show

The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

4453.685

The easiest way to get started and stick to it is with the EveryDollar budget app. It'll help you make a plan for every single dollar coming in and every single dollar going out every single month. And guess what? It's free, so no excuses. Download EveryDollar in the App Store or Google Play today.

The Royals of Malibu

S3 E3 - "Crashing a Funeral"

481.499

What if one moment you were just trying to survive high school, the next you're the key to saving an empire in a parallel universe? I'm Ella Jane, EJ to most. I thought I had it all figured out. But one night at a pool party, everything changed. I wake up in a world called Estanesia, an empire on the brink of collapse. Turns out, I look exactly like a missing military general.

The Royals of Malibu

S3 E3 - "Crashing a Funeral"

512.274

Posing as the general is my only shot at surviving. Oh, and there's a seriously complicated interdimensional crush involved, too. I never wanted to be a hero, but now I'm stuck in a fight to save the empire, solve family secrets, survive assassins, and face terrifying beasts. Listen to The Infinite Worlds of Ella Jane on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, or any major streaming platform.

The Royals of Malibu

S3 E7 - "Friends to Lovers"

1755.466

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The Royals of Malibu

S3 E7 - "Friends to Lovers"

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S3 E7 - "Friends to Lovers"

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The Royals of Malibu

S3 E7 - "Friends to Lovers"

706.816

What if one moment you were just trying to survive high school? The next, you're the key to saving an empire in a parallel universe. I'm Ella Jane, EJ to most. I thought I had it all figured out. But one night at a pool party, everything changed. I wake up in a world called Estanasia, an empire on the brink of collapse. Turns out, I look exactly like a missing military general.

The Royals of Malibu

S3 E7 - "Friends to Lovers"

737.596

Posing as the general is my only shot at surviving. And there's a seriously complicated interdimensional crush involved, too. I never wanted to be a hero, but now I'm stuck in a fight to save the Empire, solve family secrets, survive assassins, and face terrifying beasts. Listen to The Infinite Worlds of Ella Jane on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, or any major streaming platform.

The Russell Brunson Show

Introducing The Side Hustle Show

122.784

Whether you're looking for ways to make extra money in your spare time or build a side hustle to replace your income, The Side Hustle Show is helping thousands of listeners just like you reach their goals. Make about $1,000 a day. We have a net profit of three grand.

The Russell Brunson Show

Introducing The Side Hustle Show

140.636

It was doubling my income from my nine to five job. And I said, I got to quit. Since 2013, I've been studying the best legit side hustle ideas and learning what works and what doesn't from real side hustle entrepreneurs, not the high ticket gurus. Success leaves clues. At some point, they all made the decision to start something, something that changed their lives for the better.

The Russell Brunson Show

Introducing The Side Hustle Show

163.502

Even if you have no idea what side hustle you should start, The Side Hustle Show shares tons of different options so you can find the ones that work for you. Here are three recommendations. A great episode to start with is number 603 that shares 17 side hustles you can start even if you have, quote unquote, no skills. Would an extra $100 a day change your life?

The Russell Brunson Show

Introducing The Side Hustle Show

183.032

Check out the $100 a day challenge in episode 594. And if you can't be bothered with low paying side hustles, check out our top 10 most profitable side hustles in episode 624. We've collected more than 1200 five star reviews and would love to earn one from you as well. So follow the side hustle show and your favorite podcast app today, or get your own free personalized playlist at hustle.show.

The School of Greatness

7 Steps To Achieve Your Wildest Dreams (No Matter How Stuck You Feel)

55.673

From high school math teacher and basketball coach to founder of a billion dollar global company.

The School of Greatness

7 Steps To Achieve Your Wildest Dreams (No Matter How Stuck You Feel)

62.716

A leader, innovator, and game changer in the business world. Mark Pentecost.

The Startup Ideas Podcast

I built an AI startup in 65 minutes (using ChatGPT, Leonardo AI, Kling AI, ElevenLabs)

1028.857

AI robots, cool inventions, and ways to make the world a better place.

The Startup Ideas Podcast

I built an AI startup in 65 minutes (using ChatGPT, Leonardo AI, Kling AI, ElevenLabs)

991.131

Greg and his magic cup. A teeny tale's tale. This is Greg. Greg loves exploring new ideas in his magical treehouse. Today, something extraordinary caught his eye. A golden cup glowing with a rainbow light. What could this be? He wondered. Greg took a sip from the magical golden cup and whoosh! A vibrant rainbow glow surrounded him. Suddenly, bright ideas started swirling in his mind.

The Trial of Diddy

He Was So Interesting To The Hilfigers, The Trumps, The Winfreys

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

The "King" on Trial

1.926

Seriously popular. The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Certainly Not A Four Seasons

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Certainly Not A Four Seasons

16.679

The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all has finally been revealed to the world.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Not Their Shame, It's His

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

A Marvel Supervillain

1.926

Seriously popular. The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

A Marvel Supervillain

76.748

The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all.

The Trial of Diddy

All He Has Is Kanye in His Corner

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1003.172

We have to explain that in order to get access or have a conversation or call an inmate, your number, person on the outside, has to be on their list, right?

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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We have so much more coming up, but for now, let's pause for a break.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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And you know, last Friday, his lawyers just announced that they're going to abandon their attempts to get him out of jail, according to... documents. And I believe that they actually told the second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that they were drawing his appeal. So I guess for now, they're going to stop trying to get him out of prison.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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Are families allowed to add more money to his commissary?

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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Who determines the limitations? The warden. I want to ask you, going back to the facility where Diddy is right now, do you have any clients there right now and have they heard anything about Diddy?

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

134.153

What's up? How are you doing? Been quite busy as always. There's something new every day with this case. Always. And cases now that there's even more civil suits to have been filed against Sean Combs. And we'll get into that.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1375.762

But that particular facility is infamous. As you mentioned, Jeffrey Epstein, that's where he was. You know, he was in the shoe.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1460.906

That's a good point though. You said it's, it's a place where they're supposed to move on after they'd gone through the trial. But a lot of these cases are taking years.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1481.135

These cases take forever. Can you talk about also what this does mentally for somebody like Aditi, who's always had this glamorous life and access to everything and having now to spend his holidays in a jail facility?

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

155.347

That's right. We have friend of the pod, Larry Levine, back with us later. Larry's a director and founder of Wall Street Prison Consultants. He spent 10 years in federal custody for narcotics trafficking, securities fraud, racketeering, obstruction of justice, and machine guns. And now he helps prepare people for when they're going into federal prison.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

1571.28

Thanks again for the ever insightful Larry Levine, our friend of the pod. Always good to hear from him. We love having him on, right Marge? He's great. He's great.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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And as ever, thank you for listening. Please share all your comments, suggestions, and thoughts on The Trial of Diddy on Apple or Spotify and follow us on TikTok at Daily Male Crime. Do follow The Trial of Diddy as we will be back in the new year with fresh information, new insights, and some expert guests. Happy holidays!

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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At the end of last week, three more men accused Diddy of rape and sexual assault in a string of new lawsuits, which were filed separately in New York Supreme Court on Thursday, December 12th. These events allegedly occurred between 2019 through 22.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

213.33

Now, two of the accusers alleged they went to parties with Diddy, where he, quote, personally offered them alcoholic drinks, which made them unconscious. before they said he raped them. One man says he met Diddy back in 2006 and began working for him. The allegation here is that in February 2020, he met Diddy at a hotel to discuss unpaid wages.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

235.642

And during that meeting, the John Doe alleges Diddy prepared him a drugged drink, which caused him to lose consciousness, only to wake up to find Diddy assaulting him.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

25.774

At the height of his career, Sean Diddy Combs had it all. It seemed like everything Diddy touched turned to gold. Now the once untouchable hip-hop mogul is fighting for his life as he faces multiple federal charges in New York, including sex trafficking and allegedly running a criminal enterprise.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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There are now over 30 civil cases filed against Diddy, a number of which allege sexual assault dating back over 30 years. The three men have all decided to file their lawsuits anonymously, and they say they're afraid of Diddy's reach and his influence. Diddy is, of course, facing federal criminal charges in sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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He's alleged to have orchestrated a long-running scheme involving sexual abuse and exploitation.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

304.795

That's right. Now, there's also been a couple of updates to the Jay-Z allegations that came up last week. Claire Harder at the LA Times wrote a piece this week entitled, Jay-Z Accuser Admits Inconsistencies But Stands By Her Rape Allegation.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

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This all follows on from an interview on NBC News with the Alabama-based woman who accused Jay-Z and Diddy of raping her when she was 13 years old. You'll remember that this lawsuit was initially filed against Diddy back in October. which accused him of assault at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in September 2000.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

347.063

Then on Sunday, December 8th, the original complaint was amended in the U.S. District Court in New York and added Jay-Z as a defendant. This filing alleges that both he and Combs, quote, took turns assaulting the minor.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

392.603

Sure, Kayla. So the woman claimed she spoke with Benji Madden from Good Charlotte at the after party, but a representative said neither he nor his brother Joel actually attended that year's VMAs. Indeed, they were touring the Midwest at the time. She also said that her father picked her up after the alleged rape, but he has since told NBC News he has no recollection of doing so.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

416.147

There are also some photos of Jay-Z and Diddy taken on the night of the alleged incident and now the do not match description of the location where the woman alleges the assault took place. Again, this was 24 years ago. Again, this doesn't mean she's not telling the truth.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

468.516

Busby hit right back and said, quote, our client remains fiercely adamant that what she has stated is true to the best of her memory. Busby went on to say that she has even agreed to submit to a polygraph and that the whole experience has been so distressing for her that she's experienced seizures and had to seek medical treatment.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

504.464

But just before we recorded this on Wednesday, Busby announced on Instagram that he was suing Roc Nation and lawyers Marcy Croft. and law firm Quinn Emanuel for, quote, violation of various state laws, including barratry.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

535.817

Right. And Busby's also suing for impersonation of a public official. He says his case has been brought on behalf of a former client of the firm who he alleges was illegally solicited by agents working on behalf of the defendants. These agents, Busby claimed, pretended to work for the state of Texas and offered his former client money to sue the Busby law firm.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

55.795

And over the last six months, I've been investigating this incredible story and speaking to the people in the eye of the storm. Welcome to the trial of Diddy.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

559.379

The conduct, he says, was caught on tape and was targeted at his firm specifically, so they would not pursue cases related to the Diddy litigation.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

583.038

And just last Friday, Diddy announced via a new court filing that he had abandoned his attempt to get released on bail. His attorney sent word to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals withdrawing Combs' appeal of several decisions denying him bail.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

640.544

Welcome back to the show, Larry. Glad to be with you.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

697.174

Right. So now that we think that he's staying in prison, what do you think his Christmas will look like behind bars? Well, what's that like? It's a question.

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

834.516

Now let's step back for a moment. So Larry, you mentioned this was information in the U.S. Attorney's document, which alleges that Diddy had access to other inmates' code, like you mentioned. And again, you said we're not sure whether or not he's in the SHU. Can you explain what the SHU is for people who don't know?

The Trial of Diddy

Lonely This Christmas

958.3

Right. But you said you're questioning rather whether or not he is in the shoe.

The Trial of Diddy

Trials Are a Crapshoot

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1073.176

We have so much more coming up, but for now, let's pause for a break.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

111.101

Hi, I'm Marjorie Hernandez, DailyMail.com's West Coast news editor.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1121.875

I'm David Patrick Karikos, and on this week's episode of Apocalypse Now, as Donald Trump heads to Doha, we discuss Qatar, a small state at the center of a world increasingly ridden with faction and conflict. Listen to Apocalypse Now wherever you get your podcasts.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1150.649

Welcome back, and we're still here with attorney Lisa Bloom.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

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Jay-Z's legal team went further and actually have filed a lawsuit against the Jane Doe in that case. And I was just wondering what you thought of that. And also the fact that somebody like Jay-Z can sue an alleged victim. I mean, does that kind of concern you as well? Would that prevent other folks who might have a substantiated claim that might prevent them from doing so?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1354.768

I mean, what is the optics of that though? Somebody like a Jay-Z or somebody like a Diddy. Diddy has not filed any lawsuits against any of the victims, but somebody who was famous like that to go after an alleged victim, the optics of that, what do you think of that in general?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

150.369

Rivers, who was included in the show as part of their group, The Band, described her experience in an enormous 148-page complaint filed on the last day of February, just as the look-back window was set to close on otherwise expired claims linked to New York City's Gender-Motivated Violence Act.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1524.343

Do you have a good percentage of or any percentage of your clients who actually refuse to take that settlement and actually want to take the individual to court?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1593.409

What made him finally come forward and file?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

16.678

The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all has finally been revealed to the world.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1667.628

And it took years and years to even speak up. Right. It's the process of getting through that fear.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

169.793

Rolling Stone has said that more than a dozen other plaintiffs filed separate claims against Diddy on the same day to make the same deadline. Rivers, who was known then as Sarah Stokes on the show, has claimed the following, that Diddy controlled her sleeping schedule, that Diddy mocked her eating disorder, and that Diddy yelled at her and forced her to do, quote, menial manual labor without pay,

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1823.769

And also I'm curious to see is who will be on that witness list.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1856.744

And of course, Daily Mail has reached out to Didi's team for comment on both of the cases that Lisa mentioned.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1863.609

So for now, that's it. Thanks again to this week's guest, Lisa Bloom. Great to have her back on the pod. And as we prepare for Didi's trial in May, which Lisa seems convinced will actually happen, what other trials would you like us to cover? Let us know by email, thetrialatdailymail.com, or you can WhatsApp us on plus44-7796-657512 and start your message with trial.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

1926.204

I'm David Patrick-Aricos, and on this week's episode of Apocalypse Now, as Donald Trump heads to Doha, we discuss Qatar, a small state at the center of a world increasingly ridden with faction and conflict. Listen to Apocalypse Now wherever you get your podcasts.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

194.17

including that infamous time he insisted Rivers and her bandmates walk all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back just to bring him cheesecake.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

202.992

Now, Rivers went on to claim that Diddy created inhumane working conditions and that Combs sexually harassed her and allegedly made humiliating comments about her physical appearance, including, according to a Rolling Stone story, the time he inspected her rear and said, quote, everything needed to get firmed up.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

224.144

Rivers has also accused Diddy of cornering her in his recording studio, raising his right arm to block her movement and asking, quote, in a low, sensual voice if she needed anything before he allegedly, quote, ran his left hand across her breasts while repeating the phrase if she needs anything to let him know. Rivers had stated she ran away from the encounter in shock and in disbelief.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

25.774

At the height of his career, Sean Diddy Combs had it all. It seemed like everything Diddy touched turned to gold. Now the once untouchable hip-hop mogul is fighting for his life as he faces multiple federal charges in New York, including sex trafficking and allegedly running a criminal enterprise.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

251.255

The complaint names more than two dozen defendants, including Combs' mother Janice, Universal Music, MTV, and several other bad boy officials. Daily Mail has also reached out for comment. And just yesterday, Jay-Z filed his own defamation suit against the Alabama woman who claimed he raped her when she was 13.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

272.17

That civil lawsuit has, of course, since been withdrawn after Sean Carter questioned the truth and accuracy of her account. Carter's attorney has since sought sanctions against the woman's attorney, Texas-based Tony Busby. The filing claims Jane Doe has, quote, admitted that Mr. Carter did not assault her.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

292.705

and that indeed it was Busby himself who pushed her to go forward with the false narrative of the assault by Mr. Carter in order to leverage a maximum payday. But the extortion and abuse of Mr. Carter by Doe and her lawyers must stop. Busby released a statement to us at DailyMail.com, which I'll read some of it here.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

314.873

The statement adds, This is just another attempt to intimidate and bully this poor woman that we will deal with in due course. We won't be bullied or intimidated by frivolous cases. Diddy has always, and it's important to say, vehemently denied all the allegations he's faced and he's pleaded not guilty after charges were initially filed.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

348.046

His lawyers told DailyMail.com, quote, Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone, man or woman, adult or minor.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

373.055

Now, Lisa, you again, big friend of the pod here. We've had you on before talking about your other client, Dawn Richard, who was also suing Diddy and you're helping her with that case. Can you give us an update on what's going on with Dawn's case?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

451.792

And are there any deposition dates with Diddy so far in Dawn's case?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

471.983

Right. You know, as they say, sometimes the wheels of justice are very, very slow. So slow. And so how is Dawn coping with that?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

568.228

Now, she is definitely a very public person, but you also recently are representing another individual, just this time a John Doe. Can you tell us how that case is going and what have you told him as well in terms of protecting himself?

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

640.07

From what I recall from your complaint that it took place for a period of five years. Is that correct? Yes, that's that's what he alleges.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

77.372

Welcome to the Trial of Diddy.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

819.409

I remember viewing those episodes. It was almost like, I don't know if it was a badge of honor or kind of like his way of training his artists is how it was played on the show.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

89.799

I'm David Patrick Karikos, and on this week's episode of Apocalypse Now, as Donald Trump heads to Doha, we discuss Qatar, a small state at the center of a world increasingly ridden with faction and conflict. Listen to Apocalypse Now wherever you get your podcasts.

The Trial of Diddy

It's Rough Out There

969.807

We're talking about Sierra earlier. A lot of her claims are the same again as your client Dawn's claims. And I was wondering, are you thinking of possibly calling Sierra onto your case as well as a witness? Sure.

The Trial of Diddy

Diddy’s Life Is On The Line

1.906

The following episode explores a number of allegations regarding the artist Diddy. He denies all charges and has pled not guilty to sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The Trial of Diddy

Diddy’s Life Is On The Line

16.679

The biggest secret in the entertainment industry that really wasn't a secret at all has finally been revealed to the world.

The Trial of Diddy

Diddy’s Life Is On The Line

46.072

Music mogul and rapper Sean Diddy Combs has faced four different lawsuits in recent weeks alleging sexual assault. You can be seen grabbing Ventura and throwing her to the ground.

Therapuss with Jake Shane

Session 49: Finneas

0.089

Solving your problems with the famous person on the couch.

Therapuss with Jake Shane

Session 49: Finneas

1216.461

What are they called?

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1014.229

Daniel Radcliffe, reading the short story The Present by Simon Rich. Rich's latest book is called Glory Days. Radcliffe also starred in Rich's TV show Miracle Workers for four seasons.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1045.333

The obstacles can be big or little. Tom Hanks isn't over his dead ex-wife in Sleepless in Seattle. In Notting Hill, a guy falls in love with somebody who's too famous for him. In Bridget Jones, she's going after the wrong guy, which, of course, is Pride and Prejudice and, I don't know, so many films. It's one of the most common.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1061.55

And when Harry met Sally, they each are involved with other people for a lot of the film. But the real obstacle is that they're friends. Which in this film has a special meaning because, if you remember, when Harry met Sally on that car ride originally, he told her that he didn't think that men and women could ever just be friends. So this is new for him.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1079.514

Billy Crystal has a scene in the film with a sidekick character, a best friend played by Bruno Kirby, where they talk about this.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

11.572

Did we travel back in time?

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1104.66

We went out looking for a real-life couple facing some obstacle that kept them being together, and that's not actually very hard to find. But one of our producers, Elna Baker, heard about a couple where the obstacle that confronted them once their relationship got going was pretty unusual. It was a couple one of her friends was in years ago.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1121.842

Quick warning to everybody who's listening to this podcast version of our show. There are some words that we have unbeaped in this and other stories in the program. If you don't want to hear that, maybe you're listening with kids. You can get a beeped version at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Anyway, here's Elna.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

129.062

That's Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline with a fake French accent in the movie French Kiss.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

135.088

I am festering.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

16.613

They do not advertise hiking properly at all.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

181.309

That's key for Neo. In Neo's personal ranking of these films, which has the 2009 film The Ugly Truth at the very, very bottom, the three rom-coms that sit at the very top, like the tousled hair above Hugh Grant's head, are French Kiss, Two Weeks Notice, which is a real estate rom-com, and his very favorite, lots of people's favorite, When Harry Met Sally.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1883.962

Eleanor Baker was a longtime producer on our show. Michelle Buteau is the author of Survivor of the Thickest. Second season is streaming on Netflix. She's going on tour this fall. You can find out more at michellebuteau.org. Coming up, a real-life rom-com that involves Shakespeare, real kisses that are like stage kisses, and the police.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1903.892

That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. This is American Life, Myra Glass. Today's program, rom-com. Stories mostly taken from real life that mimic things that we have seen in romantic comedies. We've arrived at act three of our show, act three, The Run.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1922.635

This, of course, in a romantic comedy is the scene where somebody has to cross town at some point, literally sprinting to chase down the person they love and stop them from either marrying somebody else or winning them back somehow. It doesn't always end up at the airport, but lots of these do. And honestly, I have to say I was surprised we found this ever happened in real life.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1942.339

But here is one story like that. Marissa Cohen's dad used to like to tell this story. It was about his own marriage. He died a couple years ago. His name is Ron. The story goes like this. When he was getting together with Marissa's mom, Marissa's mom, Debbie, drove across the country to move in with Ron in Florida.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1959.6

And before she left, she had the post office forward her mail to his house in Florida. And he saw a letter arrive from her ex-fiance.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1973.12

This is Marissa.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

1992.076

He decided this is it. It's now or never. He decides he's going to meet her in Dallas, which is where she is on her car trip, and also is where the ex-fiancé lives. He hurries to the airport.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

201.837

And they're all at the top of the list for this very reason. Because of how much time the couple spends together talking. Take when Harry met Sally.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2033.635

is Marissa's mom, Debbie. She had no idea the ex-fiancé had written a letter or that Ron had opened it. All she knew was that he had offered to drive the rest of the way across the country with her and was going to meet her in the Dallas airport.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2067.157

Yeah.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2074.686

I have to say, that is my favorite part of the story.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2079.974

No, what I love about it is that in the movies when somebody does a gesture like that, like often it's way crazier than what he did.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2088.439

And kind of stalkerish. But the movie just acts like, oh, that was a totally lovely thing for a person to do because true love will out. And I like that you had the normal human reaction that a normal person would have would be like, are you nuts?

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2112.156

Jukebox eventually did win out, though, at their wedding. In addition to a regular ring, she also wore the Mickey Mouse one. ¶¶ There was another story we heard about somebody running to win love, which actually kind of paralleled the run that happens at the end of Neil's favorite rom-com, When Harry Met Sally. When Harry met Sally, the way it goes is that it's New Year's Eve.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2135.289

Harry's wandering around the streets of New York, and he realizes that he loves Sally, has to tell her now, breaks into a run to go tell her.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2148.919

David Kestenbaum has our real-life version of this story about a guy named Steve Snyder.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2622.719

David Kestenbaum is our show's senior editor. Act four, you had me at hello. So after Harry does his run across New York City on New Year's Eve and reaches Sally, he explains to her that he ran because once you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

2641.446

And he tells her all the things about her that he notices and loves about her That's the final thing you need for a rom-com. You need for somebody to declare that they see you in ways that you are usually not seen. Maybe you don't even know yourself. And it does happen in real life sometimes after some obstacles. Diane Wu has a story like that.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

299.173

Okay, romantic comedies are contrived. The people are way more clever and way better looking than real life. The stories are full of things that would be ridiculous and sometimes maybe even on the stalkery side, if they happened to any of us. But this totally artificial form, when it works, reminds you of what it feels like to be in love.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

317.598

And if somebody who wants to listen to what you say and who says things that you want to listen to And so today, we're devoting our whole show to rom-coms. Today's episode, by the way, is a rerun. We thought we would bring it back today because, frankly, we all wanted a break from the news and the current events. It was a good time for an hour of fun.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

33.739

Thank you all so much for having me here.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

335.971

In each of our acts today, we found a story that reminds us of some aspect of a movie rom-com. And yes, we did go on a search for stories of people running, sprinting down the street in real life in an urgent rush to tell someone that they love them. Stay with us.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

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Diane Wu, she's one of the producers of our show. Jillian and Jeffrey dated for a few months, and then they broke it off in real life. New jobs, her expired visa from Canada got in the way. She says she's glad it ended before anything bad happened. Keeps the memory sweet, just like a movie. These days, Jillian Walsh is an actor, writer, and comedian in Toronto.

This American Life

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A version of this story first aired on the Risk podcast.

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638: Rom-Com

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Our program is produced today by Neil Drumming and Diane Wu. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergersen, Ben Calhoun, Dana Chivas, Sean Cole, Whitney Dangerfield, Aviva de Kornfeld, Stephanie Fu, Damian Grave, Kimberly Henderson, Conor Joppy-Walt, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Alvin Melleth, B.A.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

3694.434

Parker, Ben Phelan, Robin Semien, Alyssa Shipp, Christopher Sertal, and Julie Whitaker. Senior producer for today's show, Brian Reed. Managing editor, Susan Burton. Help on today's rerun from Michael Kamate, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, and Angela Gervasi. Thanks to the podcast Two Dope Queens for the recording of Michelle Buteau performing on stage.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

3712.022

Also thanks to Linda Obst, Guinevere Turner, Jeffrey Barnes, Paul Fitch, Ron Funches, Ayesha Harris, the folks at Mikey's Burger, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers. Neil Drumming, who you heard earlier talking about when Harry met Sally and who produced this episode, is no longer working at our show. And he has released an album where he raps.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

3731.431

And the thing that I love about it is that Neil's real-life personality is all right there. It is funny and self-critical and contemplative and definitely has a bit of romantic comedy there. It is called Writing on Airplanes, available on most streaming platforms. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

3755.021

Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Troy Malati. You know, he and I were reminiscing about that taxi ride we had years ago in England with Margaret Thatcher.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

3767.111

I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

407.918

It's his American life. Act one, meet cute. So the first thing a rom-com needs is for the couple to meet in an appealing way.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

422.526

There are so many ways to do this. In The Wedding Planner, Matthew McConaughey saves Jennifer Lopez from a runaway dumpster that is rolling down the street. In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere gets lost in a very fancy car and Julia Roberts gives him directions. bringing a baby. Katherine Hepburn picks up Cary Grant's golf ball on a golf course. Reality bites.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

442.128

Winona Ryder throws her cigarette into Ben Stiller's car. And Neil's favorite, When Harry Met Sally.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

505.218

Meet-cutes do happen in real life, but for this first story in today's show, we have a piece of fiction. A story where the meet-cute plays an important role in the story as a turning point for one of the characters. The story is by Simon Rich, the actor Daniel Radcliffe. Write it for us.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

51.428

This is American Life from WBEZ Chicago. I'm Ira Glass. And here at our radio show, we were talking about romantic comedies and how they don't get a lot of respect. I think it's maybe because of the bad ones. Every part of them just feels too obvious, you know? The couple meets, but they hate each other at first.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

68.057

They go through some things that make them, you know, learn some important lesson about themselves. You know from the very beginning they're going to end up together, and then no surprise, they do. When it's not done well, it's all too obvious and tired, and you can feel the gears working in the thing.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

83.066

One of the producers on our show, Neil, he wholeheartedly really loves romantic comedies, has favorite cities watched over and over dozens of times. He once collaborated with the producer of Sleepless in Seattle on a rom-com script that never got made. He has all kinds of thoughts about them.

This American Life

638: Rom-Com

97.748

And he realized this thing about rom-coms and what's so satisfying about the good ones that I really think is true.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

1360.918

Tina thought if she got to the house, she might be able to defend herself a little bit better because she knew that there were loaded firearms in her house. Obviously, her husband was an avid deer hunter.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

1385.951

Schmidt testified that his wife told him that the man who was in the car told her that if your husband's there, I'm going to kill you both.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

258.248

Tim Schmidt lived on basically, it's called North Bottom Road. When you live in Quincy and you sort of understand the layout of the town, most of the city is up on a bluff away from the river. However, Bottom Road is literally a road that you could walk across the road and you could go dip your toes in the Mississippi River. I mean, he was right next to the river.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

37.783

And that's kind of when her nightmare started.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

644.166

Tim Schmidt was about 63 years old. He had run a business called American Builders Supply. He had been friends with Tina Lohmann for more than three decades, but they had only just recently gotten married a couple of years earlier.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

723.95

Tim Schmidt left the family business, the American Builders Supply, at around 5 o'clock that evening and drove to Farm and Home Supply, and he went there to go look for equipment for deer hunting season. And then he drove... to his home on North Bottom Road, probably about a 15-minute drive, and he saw that the garage door was open when he arrived.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

748.042

His wife's car was missing, and there were wheel tracks from a car in the front lawn. He checked around his home. He saw that there were some items missing from the garage. And then he saw that the door from the garage leading into the house had been kicked in. There were shoe prints left on the door. And that's when he went inside and found his wife and she was in tears.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

2. Nowhere to Run

777.32

And then he went on to ask her basically, hey, what happened?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1064.067

And on November 9th, 2021, she was looking forward to celebrating the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with her family. She was looking forward to spending those holidays with her husband, her children, her 14 grandchildren, and her 17 great-grandchildren.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1269.901

Sergeant Lohmeyer, did you learn that her name was Tina Lohman?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1274.864

And did you ask her what had happened?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1410.388

Did she also, Ms. Lowman also indicate to you there was another individual present with the white man with the scruffy hair?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1418.872

Did she know who that individual was?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1420.993

Did you ask her about that person as well to try to get information to find that person as well?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1426.757

What did she tell you about the person that was with that white man with the scruffy hair?

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1460.07

How do you think she felt? Was she relieved? Did she think she was going to get help? Was she scared? Was something bad about to happen? But she was 77 years old. And this is Quincy. Nothing bad happens in Quincy, right? In Quincy, when you have trouble, people stop, they pull over, and they help you.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1705.055

When you went into the residence further, did you observe an individual inside of that residence? Yes. Tina's husband, Tim Schmidt, arrived home. He found Tina on the floor, crying and bleeding. Crying that she'd been raped, bleeding from her body. Tim, her husband, had a gun because Tina was so terrified the defendant and his accomplice were going to come back.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

1729.073

Did she appear to be emotional to you? Yes, she did. Did she tell you that she was worried they were going to come back? Yes, she did.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

705.7

At 77 years old, Tina Lohman had raised four children. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She ran a successful hot business. But to Tina, what was most important was her family.

This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me

1. Nightmare in Quincy

875.144

Tina was the matriarch of what became a very big and very close family.

Throughline

The Kingdom Behind Glass

1876.696

A dozen 7-pounder RML mountain guns.

Throughline

The Kingdom Behind Glass

1883.622

14 Maxim guns to be carried across the land.

Throughline

The Kingdom Behind Glass

1889.066

24 Maxims on the warships. Six rocket tubes.

Throughline

The Kingdom Behind Glass

1895.992

1,200 rifles. More than 3 million brass bullets.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

1700.892

Come spring, Nader's Raiders will be swooping down. For now, they're lying back in the shadows of Ivy League universities, gathering ammo.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

2561.489

Thank you, Ralph, for the Iraq war. Thank you, Ralph, for the tax cuts. Thank you, Ralph, for the destruction of the environment. Thank you, Ralph, for the destruction of the Constitution.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

26.127

Hi, nice to meet you. Come on in.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

30.928

Now, what kind of car are we looking for today?

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

641.168

We're at the scene of a pretty bad smash-up here on US Highway Number 1 near Laurel, Maryland.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

700.13

I've sent to the Congress today a special message on protecting the consumer interests. All of us are consumers.

Throughline

Ralph Nader, Consumer Crusader (Throwback)

739.658

All of us deserve the right to be protected against fraudulent or misleading advertisements and labels.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1011.095

In fact, Titanic's designers are planning several steps ahead. They are determined that the new Olympic-class ships should be future-proof. That's why the davits, or cranes, installed on the ships to lower the lifeboats are actually designed to be double-banked. You can easily fit two lifeboats onto each, doubling the overall capacity.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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That way, when the Board of Trade do get round to updating their rulebook, passing the new building code will be a cinch. But in the meantime, The idea of adding extra boats is not a popular one. In fact, when Titanic's chief designer, Thomas Andrews, suggests doing so, he's shot down.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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As far as White Star chairman Bruce Ismay is concerned, more lifeboats would be just an eyesore, spoiling the sleek look of his new liners, as well as limiting the amount of space on deck for first-class passengers to stretch their legs. Board of Trade Inspector Morris Clark disagrees. He comes on board early in the morning of April 10, 1912, to conduct the final safety check before departure.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Although it's not a legal requirement, Clark strongly recommends that they increase the number of boats on board by 50%. But the request is rejected by White Star. Clark can't press the issue any further, for fear he might lose his job.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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What he can do is watch as a handful of crew members rehearse lowering two of the lifeboats they do have, swinging out the davits so they hang precariously over the starboard side of the ship, and then teasing out the ropes at each end until they reach the water below. The procedure goes smoothly. Clark passes the ship fit for departure.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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At 12.43 p.m., Olympic makes the turn to port, signaling her intention to any other ships in the vicinity with two sharp blasts of the whistle. Captain Smith orders an increase in speed from 11 to 16 knots. But another ship is traversing the same narrow stretch of water on a parallel course, a naval warship, HMS Hawk. And the Hawk is equipped with a battering ram.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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It's the only lifeboat drill that will ever take place on board Titanic. And there's something else that Clark doesn't know about. An inconvenient truth, buried deep in the bowels of the ship. One that if it came to light would almost certainly delay the maiden voyage. Almost a hundred feet below deck, one of the cold storage bunkers is on fire.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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It'll be the ship's tremors. Among them, my own great uncle, Jimmy McGann, who are responsible for putting out the fire during the voyage.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Ultimately, the fire in the coal bunker will have little impact on Titanic's fate, beyond the fact that its discovery by the Board of Trade Inspector could have delayed the voyage long enough for the ship to miss the iceberg. But it does mean that even before the fatal impact, Titanic is already taking on water.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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On Wednesday morning, with Titanic due to depart in a matter of hours, few of those who will be traveling on the maiden voyage are aware of the fire raging down below. One man who does know about it is Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line. But he is not concerned, and he certainly sees no need to inform the passengers. Some of them might start asking for refunds on their tickets.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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It's 9.30 a.m. when Ismay steps aboard Titanic at Southampton, dressed in a smart double-breasted suit with his handlebar moustache carefully waxed. Ismay will be representing White Star throughout the voyage, so it's important that he is as finely turned out as the ship is. He's brought two servants with him, William Harrison and John Richard Frye.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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While their boss steps off the gangplank on B deck and is greeted by the glorious sight of the grand staircase, they are the ones charged with unpacking his luggage in the magnificent parlour suite just metres away. Cabins B52 to B56 are the most expensive set of rooms on the Titanic. Decorated in Louis XVI style, with walnut and sycamore panelling,

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Ismay has his own living room for entertaining guests, a luxurious roll-top bath with bespoke cigar holders, and even a private promenade deck, complete with wicker deck chairs and pot plants. The furniture is all top-drawn. A card table, sofas, sideboards, and two walk-in wardrobes. Even a fake fireplace. Enough to make you forget you're actually on a ship at sea.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Little does Bruce Ismay know that in less than a week's time, it'll all be resting at the bottom of the ocean, along with 1,500 men, women, and children. He won't be among them. His decision to take up a place in a lifeboat rather than go down with the ship will dog him for the rest of his life, earning him a popular nickname, the Coward of the Titanic.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Right now, though, danger is the last thing on Bruce Ismay's mind. What he's focused on is selling tickets. Titanic's return journey from New York to Southampton is almost fully booked. But, with only hours to go until departure, the outward leg still has room for a thousand more passengers.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Ismay's been doing his best to drum up interest in his new ship, especially among the wealthiest first-class travellers. But many veteran transatlantic tourists feel like they've seen it all before.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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As Olympic gains on Hawk and begins to overtake her, the narrow waterway grows increasingly cramped. The Hawk's commander, William Blount, takes evasive action, ordering his helmsman to turn the warship to starboard. But something goes wrong. Rather than moving away from the Olympic, the Hawk begins drifting towards her.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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To make matters worse, White Star's main rival, Cunard, is being heavily subsidized by the British government. White Star might have the ships to compete with Cunard now, but in business terms, that's only part of the equation. For Bruce Ismay, helming the company his father built four decades earlier is far from easy. Keeping White Star afloat means taking some tough decisions.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Specifically, for this maiden voyage at least, New York royalty. Financier Benjamin Guggenheim, whose brother founded the famous art gallery. Ida and Isidore Strauss, the owners of Macy's department store. And at the top of the tree, John Jacob Astor IV, who gave his name to the Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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One of the richest men in the world, and certainly the richest on board, Astor's net worth is estimated at $90 million. In today's money, he'd be a billionaire. But as Titanic prepares for departure, there is one man missing from this fabulously wealthy group. The owner of the ship, J.P. Morgan. The bullish 74-year-old financier has changed his travel plans at the last minute, citing illness.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

169.962

She's turning alright, but to port, her arm at bow swinging round towards the liner. After a few anxious seconds, Hawk drives headfirst into the side of Olympic. Her battering ram crumples flat. It leaves a 12-foot triangular hole in the side of the liner. Olympic starboard propeller shaft is crippled. Mercifully, there were no injuries reported on either ship.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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In fact, he's extended his stay at a spa hotel in Aix-les-Bains so he can spend more time with his 30-something French mistress. For Bruce Ismay, who is not only chairman of White Star, but also president of Morgan's International Mercantile Marine, the boss's decision means a significant upgrade. It's Titanic's owner who was originally supposed to occupy the deluxe parlor suite on B deck.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Now that privilege goes to Ismay instead. The two men have worked together for the best part of a decade, but their professional relationship hasn't always been easy. Especially for Ismay, who at 49 years old is still struggling to live up to his father's legacy.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Clifford Ismay is Bruce's fifth cousin and the author of Understanding J. Bruce Ismay, the true story of the man they called the Coward of Titanic.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Ten years earlier, when Morgan first proposed incorporating White Star into his new shipping consortium, Ismay was understandably apprehensive.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1805.424

To sweeten the deal, Morgan agreed to make Ismay president of his international mercantile marine. A generous offer, but one that, to Ismay at least, felt like a poisoned chalice.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1839.86

Unlike his late father, Bruce Ismay is not a natural businessman and certainly not a tycoon in the mold of J.P. Morgan. For such a powerful man, he cuts a surprisingly awkward figure. He's tall, cool, reserved. Those who work with him find him difficult, detached, aloof. And for those who work for him, it's even worse.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1891.149

When Bruce's father was still alive, the two of them never quite saw eye to eye. Thomas Ismay was a brutal domineering figure. When Bruce first began working for him as an apprentice at White Star Headquarters in Liverpool, his father insisted on referring to him as the new office boy.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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After one long day at the office, Bruce returned to the family home in Crosby and saddled up his father's favorite horse for a ride along the sands. The horse stumbled and fell, breaking one of its legs.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1941.3

A decade later, Bruce was married and living in New York with his wife and children. His father didn't attend the wedding. It clashed with a dinner invitation from Samuel Cunard.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

1956.905

But when Thomas Ismay's thoughts started turning to his succession, he summoned Bruce back to Liverpool to take over his company, threatening that if he didn't come right away, he would hand the reins to his younger brother instead. Bruce, his wife Florence and their baby boy Henry boarded a ship for England.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Just after midday on Wednesday, April the 10th, Titanic clears her moorings at Southampton Harbour and begins to move slowly away from the quayside. There's jaunty music from the band stationed on deck. But the next few minutes will prove anything but plain sailing. As the giant liner makes her way through the busy harbor, she starts to suck other ships moored there towards her.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Just like the scientists at the National Physical Laboratory predicted.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Both limped back to harbor for repairs. Olympic's passengers are transferred to an older White Star vessel, Adriatic. They continue their journey to New York in less stylish environs. It'll be another two months before Olympic is seaworthy again. And the emergency patch-up will mean plundering parts from her sister ship, Titanic, including her propeller shaft.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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One ship in particular, ironically named the New York, is pulled so hard that the stays holding her in position are broken.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Captain Smith has seen this scenario before, seven months earlier, just before the collision between HMS Hawk and Olympic. It looks like history is about to repeat itself. The New York comes within four feet of Titanic's hull before quick thinking on Captain Smith's part saves the day.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Just minutes into Titanic's maiden voyage, already the what-ifs are beginning to multiply.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Captain Smith may have avoided a second nasty collision for the Olympic class. But as Titanic leaves one New York in search of another, questions about the size and maneuverability of White Star's new vessels remain. After all, as Oscar Wilde almost wrote, crashing one 45,000-ton vessel may be regarded as a misfortune. Crashing two looks like carelessness.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Within a week, Captain Smith will find that bad luck comes in threes. In the next episode, Titanic stops off in France and Ireland to pick up more passengers, along with some overpriced souvenirs. Several hundred economic migrants come on board, ready to begin their passage to America.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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And as the ship sets sail across the Atlantic, questions remain about Bruce Ismay's judgment, Captain Smith's competence, and how ready Titanic's crew are for an unexpected disaster at sea. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Titanic Ship of Dreams right now without waiting by subscribing to Noisa Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description to find out more.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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The result of that is that Titanic's maiden voyage will be delayed. Just a few weeks, but long enough for an ice shelf off Greenland to begin to melt, disgorging hundreds of bergs into the Atlantic. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is Titanic Ship of Dreams, part two. The collision with HMS Hawk leads to a costly legal battle for White Star.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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While Titanic is still in Belfast, being fitted out with all the bells and whistles that will turn her into a floating five-star hotel, her sister ship, RMS Olympic, is ready to set off for New York. Olympic has been plying the transatlantic route for three months already. A total of eight crossings, back and forth, without incident.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Although most press coverage at the time blames the Royal Navy for the accident, the official inquiry holds Captain Smith responsible. But White Star don't take the judgment lying down. Author Tim Moulton.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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It's September the 20th, 1911. We're in Southampton, on the south coast of England. In seven months' time from this exact spot, RMS Titanic will depart on her ill-fated maiden voyage. Right now, though, it's another almost identical vessel that's about to weigh anchor.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

315.669

On March 13, 1912, less than a month before Titanic departs for New York, White Star take the Navy to court, arguing that Hawke's Captain William Blunt steered his ship into the side of Olympic. But the Navy's lawyers introduce an intriguing new theory to account for the collision. Suction. Suction.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Using a pair of wax models, scientists at the National Physical Laboratory in Tellington demonstrate that a ship the size of Olympic, traveling close enough to the Hawk, could displace enough water to literally suck the smaller vessel into it.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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To be fair to Captain Smith and his previously unblemished safety record, White Star's new Olympic-class vessels are very hard to steer. They're one and a half times as heavy as their closest rivals, Cunard's Mauritania and Lusitania, and almost three times the weight of Smith's previous command, the Adriatic. Forget too big to fail, the Olympic-class may be too big to succeed.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Professor Stephanie Botchewski.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Unless you count a minor scrape with a tugboat in the Hudson River, which left a few scratches on her paintwork. Her commander, White Star Commodore Edward Smith, is regarded as the safest possible pair of hands. When asked by a reporter to describe his 40-year career, he can honestly reply, Uneventful. But Smith is about to receive a rude awakening. At 11.25 a.m., Olympic weighs anchor.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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When it comes to the general public, the collision with the Hawk actually makes the Olympic-class vessels seem safer. Rather like parents who do the school run in hulking Range Rovers, confident that if they hit anything, it's the other car that's going to crumple. White Star's passengers might reasonably conclude that the bigger the ship they're on, the safer they'll be if anything goes wrong.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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After all, photographs of the two ships after the incident make it clear that the Hawk suffered the brunt of the damage. A warship, equipped with a battering ram no less, struck the Titanic's elder sister at speed and failed to sink her. Not for nothing are the Olympic class referred to in the trade press as unsinkable. Susie Miller.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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But neither Harland and Wolfe nor White Star do anything to correct the exaggerated claims made in the press. In the public imagination, the idea of an unsinkable ship takes hold. At a time when technological progress is at its zenith, it seems relatively plausible.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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And in the case of Titanic and her sisters, it's supported by a number of well-publicized new safety features shared by all the Olympic-class ships. A double hull to prevent them from scraping open along the bottom, and a series of transverse bulkheads

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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dividing them up into separate compartments, each one capable of being sealed at the press of a button to prevent water from moving around the ship.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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If Titanic's designers are guilty of anything, it's a lack of imagination. A failure to think outside the box. Or rather, outside the sealed compartment.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Screenwriter Julian Fellowes.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Curator Klaus-Johann Wetterholm

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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There's another reason that passengers in 1912 aren't particularly worried about a disaster at sea. Because at the time, a liner going down in the Atlantic is known to be eminently survivable. Three years before Titanic sets off on her maiden voyage, another White Star vessel, the Republic, sank following a collision with another ship.

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2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Only three passengers were killed, and all of them as a result of the initial impact. The ship's 739 survivors, rescued thanks to a distress call from the Republic's new Marconi wireless set, were seen as proof of the relative safety of modern sea travel.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

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Some of her 1,300 passengers gather on deck, watching the quayside slowly recede into the distance. Others remain in their cabins. It's a wet, windy morning. Not the best time to take the sea air. Before long, the giant ship approaches the Solent, the strait of water separating mainland Britain from the Isle of Wight. It's a busy passage, with clear shipping lanes marked out by buoys.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

832.575

The Republic's young wireless operator, Jack Binns, was hailed as a hero, thanks in no small part to Mr. Marconi's press contacts, and I for a juicy story. Bin's distress call summoned a dozen other ships to the scene of the accident, long before the Republic eventually sank 40 fathoms beneath the surface. Plenty of time to ferry the passengers across in lifeboats to the rescue vessels.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

860.504

The fact that the lifeboats only had room for half the Republic's passengers at the time was never an issue.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

2. Bad Luck Comes in Threes

928.427

Nonetheless, by the early 1910s, when Titanic and her sisters are under construction, the question of how many lifeboats a ship should carry remains an active one. In Britain, the minimum legal requirements are set by the board of trade. And for now, at least Titanic's 20 lifeboats providing seats for approximately half those on board are more than enough to satisfy the inspectors.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

5. The Moment of Impact

585.996

Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1054.81

Did you know that the team behind Titanic Ship of Dreams makes other podcasts too? Discover them all at Noisa.com, the home of the Noisa podcast network. Real Dictators, also hosted by me, Paul McGann, returns on April the 30th with the story of Fidel Castro. Head to Noisa.com to find out more.

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7. Women and Children First

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By half past one in the morning, it's not just passengers who are appearing on the increasingly crowded boat deck. Firemen, like my great uncle Jimmy McGann, are emerging from the bowels of the ship as well, and they are causing quite a stir.

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7. Women and Children First

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On Titanic's upper decks, the assembled masses are a motley bunch, sporting a wide variety of outfits. Financier Benjamin Guggenheim has emerged from his cabin in his best evening dress, declaring that he intends to die as a gentleman. White Star boss Bruce Ismay, meanwhile, is still in his pajamas, with a suit and coat hastily thrown on top of them.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

113.976

Water is pouring in through a two-foot gash in the wall. It's coming from boiler room six, which is already completely submerged. Now the engineers are trying to stop the same thing happening in number five. But thanks to the clouds of steam coming off the boilers, they can see only a few feet ahead.

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7. Women and Children First

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As first-class passenger Helen Candy writes, it was a fancy dress ball in Dante's hell. Normally, men like my great-uncle Jimmy would never be sharing deck space with the ship's wealthiest passengers. Titanic has always been carefully segregated, a microcosm of Edwardian society, from the ultra-rich luxuriating upstairs to the dirt-poor migrants down in steerage. And never the twain shall meet.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1178.804

But now, in extremis, cracks are beginning to show.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1244.52

For the 150-odd Lebanese migrants on Titanic, the situation is even more dire. Dr. Josiane Abisab.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1297.825

Overall, first-class passengers have the highest survival rate, at 62%. That's compared to 41% for second class, and just 25% for steerage. And what about the famous women and children first? Female passengers do survive at a rate of about 3 to 1, 73%, compared to just 19 for men. But among the 135 children on board, just over half of them survived the disaster.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1335.037

And all but one of the children who dies is from steerage.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

135.52

Leading fireman Fred Barrett hauls open a manhole in the floor, attempting to access the pump valves. But when assistant engineer Jonathan Shepherd runs over to help, he falls into the hole, breaking his leg. Shepherd's colleagues carry him into the adjoining pump room before returning to their work. The pumps help a little, but it's not enough.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1463.737

By half past one in the morning, the orderly atmosphere on the boat deck is giving way to something more charged.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1483.884

Eva Hart and her mother are still sitting in lifeboat 14, waiting for it to be lowered down to the ocean. But 5th Officer Lowe, in charge of filling the vessel, is having trouble maintaining order. As he steps into the boat and gives the command to lower away, a boy of about 16 jumps in after him. Several of the women make space for the stowaway.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1509.454

He crouches by their feet, and they do their best to hide him with their long skirts. But Lowe has spotted the teenager. He pulls out his Browning revolver. I give you ten seconds to get back onto the ship before I blow your brains out, he warns him. A girl not much older than Eva tries to intervene. Please don't shoot the poor man, she begs low.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1535.925

He lowers his weapon, then quietly addresses the teenager. For God's sake, be a man, he tells him. Reluctantly, the boy clambers back onto Titanic. The lifeboat begins moving down again, faster this time. Several of those on board are weeping. But now another male passenger decides to try his luck. He leaps over the guardrail into the lifeboat.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1565.45

Lo grabs the interloper by the collar and forces him back on deck. A group of angry men set upon him, landing heavy blows. Lo fires his gun down the side of the ship. The bullet whizzes into the water. If any man jumps into this boat, I will shoot him like a dog, he shouts. The lifeboat crashes onto the ocean, showering the occupants with ice-cold water.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1611.624

Lowe begins rowing Lifeboat 14 away from Titanic. Up on the port side of the boat deck, his boss, Second Officer Lightoller, is enforcing the rules as strictly as ever. Though so far, he hasn't had to use his pistol. At 1.35 a.m., John Jacob Astor, the richest man on Titanic, and one of the richest in the world, is helping his wife Madeline into lifeboat number four.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

163.709

The bulkhead between boiler rooms five and six is failing. In less than 15 minutes, it gives way altogether. Thousands of gallons of water pour in. The engineers race for the ladders that lead to the deck, clambering up as the water level rises beneath them. But no one thinks of poor Jonathan Shepherd with his broken leg. He is still down below in the pump room, unable to move.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1643.215

She is four months pregnant, and her health is precarious. Astor asks if he might be allowed to accompany his wife, the same request Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon made 40 minutes earlier on the other side of the ship. Lightoller respectfully refuses.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1668.254

As far as Lightoller is concerned, there must be no exceptions.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1690.612

John Jacob Astor is not a man who's used to hearing the word no.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1740.183

And yet, right now, faced with the implacable second officer Lightoller, all the money in the world won't do Aster a bit of good. Titanic's wealthiest passenger will have to take his chances on deck, along with the lowliest greasers and stokers.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1790.526

When it comes to the Astors, Lightoller is spared any pushback. But on the question of whether teenage boys count as children or men, Lightoller's position is more controversial, and other passengers are willing to challenge him on it. As John J. Gabasta retreats from boat number four, Emily Ryerson and her children step forward.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1815.261

The Ryersons are rushing home to New York to bury their eldest son, who died in a car accident six days earlier. There's no question of Emily's husband, Arthur, getting into the boat with her. He stands back, watching his wife, their two daughters, and their youngest son, John, approach the railing. Lightoller stops them, holding up his arm. The boy can't go, he declares.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1841.558

Arthur Ryerson is furious. The boy goes with his mother, he insists. He's only thirteen. Reluctantly, Lightoller backs down. Young John climbs into the lifeboat. But as he does so, the passengers hear Lightoller muttering to himself. No more boys.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

1984.716

A hundred years on, it's hard to sympathize with Lightoller's brutal inflexibility, regardless of the social customs of the time. Some commentators have gone so far as to call his behavior psychopathic. But there is another possibility, that his incredibly strict approach is actually a response to stress.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

204.561

At 1.10 a.m., Shepherd drowns. the first victim of the iceberg that sinks the Titanic. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is Titanic Ship of Dreams, part seven. While chaos reigns down in the boiler rooms, up on deck, Titanic's senior officers are doing their best to calmly usher passengers into the lifeboats.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2130.47

Lightholder's dogmatism undoubtedly costs many lives, but the strict social mores of the time also explain why Titanic doesn't descend into outright chaos. Women and children first may be patchily applied in practice, but the ideal is one that everyone can get behind.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2150.808

Many of Titanic's male passengers willingly give up their own chances of survival to help those whom they believe to be more deserving of being saved.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2247.472

Benjamin Guggenheim has been traveling with his French mistress. Now, while she makes her way to a lifeboat, he and his valet Victor Giglio appear on deck, dressed in their finest white tie and tails. Guggenheim asks a steward to pass on a message to his wife in New York. Tell her, I've done my best in doing my duty.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2290.037

Then there's Isidore and Ida Strauss, the owners of Macy's department store. At 67 years old, the white-bearded Isidor is one of the oldest passengers. Old enough that the usual rules might bend to accommodate him. I'm sure nobody would object to an old gentleman like you getting in, one of the other passengers tells him. But Isidor refuses to accept special treatment.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2316.901

I will not go before the other men, he replies. When he tells his wife of four decades to get in a boat, she too refuses. She intends to stay on board with him.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2336.777

Ida takes off her warm fur coat and gives it to her maid, telling her to get into the lifeboat. She and Isadora last seen holding hands on the boat deck, waiting for the end.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2385.68

Marine archaeologist James Delgado.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2442.6

At 1.35 a.m., Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews is in the first-class smoking room, staring blankly at a painting above the fireplace. Ten minutes earlier, he was hurling wooden deck chairs overboard, attempting to provide rafts for any passenger who might find themselves floating in the ocean. Now, all that energy has deserted him.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2467.453

His life belt, which he was wearing earlier in the evening, lies draped over a chair.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2499.124

Whether he realizes it or not, Andrews is consigning himself to a much quicker death than he would otherwise endure floating in the ice-cold water. He'll be dead within a couple of minutes of the ship going under, rather than suffering the agonies of hypothermia on the surface.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2518.168

In fact, the first-class smoking room where Andrews is last seen will be comprehensively destroyed when Titanic goes down.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2585.106

In the next episode, the final lifeboats depart as desperate passengers scramble for the last few places. Those left behind must decide what to do with the few precious minutes remaining. And at 2.20 a.m., less than three hours after hitting the iceberg, the largest ship in the world plunges 4,000 meters beneath the surface. That's next time

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

259.051

On the starboard side, First Officer William Murdoch has already lowered two boats into the water, numbers five and seven. But his counterpart on the port side, Second Officer Lightoller, has yet to launch his first. In the absence of clear instructions from Captain Smith, the two men are approaching the same job very differently.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

2633.212

Just hit the link in the episode description to find out more.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

27.461

As crew members coax anxious women and children into the small wooden craft, Titanic's giant funnels are still venting exhaust. The noise is deafening, overwhelming. The crew have to use hand gestures to communicate with each other. And then, suddenly, as the last gasps of steam escape from the rapidly cooling boilers, a deathly silence falls over the ship.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

280.758

Specifically when it comes to the old seafaring mantra, women and children first. Closhio and Vetterholm.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

3.263

It's a few minutes before 1 a.m. on the night of April the 14th, 1912. RMS Titanic is stopped dead 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The ship's passengers, wearing bulky cork life jackets over their clothes, are now thronging the boat deck where the procedure for loading the lifeboats is underway.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

316.69

For Murdoch, the priority is getting the boats lowered as quickly as possible. Sometimes that means allowing male passengers in, to encourage their wives and children to go with them.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

353.211

Each man believes he's interpreting Captain Smith's order correctly. And in fact, there's no formal naval rule governing the treatment of women and children in an emergency. Allowing them to leave a sinking ship first is more of a custom.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

386.865

Six decades before Titanic, HMS Birkenhead went down with the loss of almost 700 lives. But thanks to the noble sacrifice of the men on board, every single woman and child survived.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

447.22

What Titanic senior officers did discovering, however... is that getting people into the lifeboats isn't as easy as it sounds. Even now, not everyone wants to take their chances bobbing around all night on the pitch-black ocean, especially if they can't bring their husband along. One of those resisting calls to disembark is first-class passenger Lucy Doff Gordon.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

470.364

She's been spooked by the firing of Titanic's distress rockets and is refusing to leave her husband's side. Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon makes a suggestion. Perhaps he might be allowed to enter the boat too, and reassure his wife. I wish you would, First Officer Murdoch tells him.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

494.272

Officially, the Duffcordons have been traveling under aliases as Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, but their identities aren't much of a secret as far as Titanic's wealthiest passengers are concerned. Sir Cosmo is a baronet, educated at Eton, his wife a famous lingerie designer with a shop in London's West End.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

515.367

She and her sister Eleanor are used to moving in society circles, even if their blood doesn't exactly run blue. Eleanor is the Jilly Cooper of her day, known for her outrageous romantic novels. Julian Fellows, creator of Downton Abbey and of the novel Snobs.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

57.378

Everyone can hear themselves think again. The cheery strains of ragtime music performed by Titanic's band are clearly audible for the first time. The instructions given by the officers loading the lifeboats can be understood. For now at least, the passengers are behaving in an orderly fashion.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

579.205

The Duffgordons flee the sinking Titanic in a boat carrying only 12 people. Its stated capacity is 40.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

610.482

But Lifeboat One isn't the only one lowered well under capacity. Professor Stephanie Boczewski

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

633.271

To be fair to those loading the boats, it may also be hard to tell when they're fully loaded.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

679.695

Unfortunately, the lifeboat drill scheduled for that morning was cancelled by Captain Smith. And these boats have never actually been lowered with people in them.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

724.326

As more and more lifeboats are deployed, Titanic's upper decks are getting more cramped. An hour has passed since Captain Smith ordered the women and children to abandon ship. Many of them took a while to get the memo, but gradually a sense of urgency is brewing.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

766.236

At 1.23 a.m., seven-year-old Eva Hart clambers into lifeboat 14.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

78.05

The officers may have armed themselves with revolvers ten minutes earlier, but it doesn't look like they'll have to use them. By 1 a.m., Titanic has taken on more than 15,000 tons of water. Mathematically, her designer has calculated, the ship is doomed. But she's sinking so slowly that there's little sense of panic up on deck. Eight decks below in boiler room five, it's a different story.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

810.215

Boat 14 is on the port side of Titanic, under the supervision of Second Officer Lightoller, meaning there's no room for Eva's father.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

843.639

By now, it's not just first and second class passengers like the Harts who were hoping to board the lifeboats. Some steerage travelers too have made their way up onto the boat deck, very much against the odds.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

872.868

Professor Jerome Chertkov, author of Don't Panic! The Psychology of Emergency Egress and Ingress.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

934.963

The first group of steerage passengers have taken an elaborate route. Starting from their cabins on E deck, they've made their way along a small passageway and up two flights of stairs to C deck. Then out onto the aft well deck. And from there, up to the boat deck. Without help, that's a tall order.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

7. Women and Children First

974.965

It's thanks to third-class steward Jonathan Hart that two large groups of steerage passengers do manage to find their way up. But before he can lead any more of them, Hart is pulled into a lifeboat himself.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

1. The Biggest Ship in the World

1287.427

Start your testing today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1020.847

It's around half past one on Sunday afternoon that one of the most controversial moments in the Titanic story either does or doesn't happen. A conversation between Captain Smith and White Star Chairman Bruce Ismay. First-class passenger Elizabeth Lines will later testify that she heard the two men discussing Titanic's speed, specifically in comparison to her sister ship, Olympic.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1049.856

According to Lines, Ismael Smith, we will beat the Olympic and get into New York on Tuesday. That's a day earlier than scheduled. Lines describes the chairman's demeanor as dictatorial. It's a claim that has puzzled historians for more than a century.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1146.277

Whatever their aspirations, the relationship between Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay is critical to what happens next, and who is to blame for it.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1160.927

Does Ismay push Captain Smith to drive the ship even faster on Sunday, just as Titanic is entering a part of the ocean already known to contain icebergs? And if he does, is it an order the Captain is bound to follow? In the years to come, Ismay's role on Titanic will be hotly debated.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

117.368

Even in the dark, she can see that he's annoyed at being woken. But when she begs him to go on deck and investigate the sudden strange movement, there's no hiding how terrified she feels. Reluctantly, her husband pulls on his trousers and exits the cabin, taking care not to wake little Eva. Mrs. Hart waits anxiously for him to return.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1219.485

Clifford Ismay, Bruce's fifth cousin and biographer.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1257.838

Ismay's ambiguous position harks back to an old White Star tradition, started by his father four decades earlier. In 1872, Thomas Ismay received a complaint from a passenger on his ship Oceanic. In response, he sent one of his men undercover to find out what life was really like on board.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1307.964

Obviously, on Titanic, Bruce Ismay is hardly traveling incognito. He's one of the most recognizable faces on board, but he is making it his business to chat with as many passengers as he can. A detached, awkward man, Ismay is not a natural conversationalist, but he shows flashes of compassion and kindness.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1330.171

He's already had one couple, Emily and Arthur Ryerson, upgraded to a better cabin when he learned the reason for their last-minute voyage. The Ryersons are rushing home to New York to arrange a funeral for their son, Arthur Jr., who died in a car crash six days earlier. On Sunday afternoon, after finishing up with Captain Smith, Ismay spots Emily Ryerson seated outside the companionway on A-Deck.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1358.242

His attempt at small talk is typically awkward. We are in amongst the icebergs, he tells her cheerfully. To prove his point, Ismay plucks a wireless message out of his pocket, one that Captain Smith gave him to look at during the conversation overheard by Elizabeth Lyons. The message is from another White Star liner, the Baltic,

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1380.97

Greek steamer Athena reports passing icebergs and large quantities of field ice today.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1408.922

the message from the Baltic isn't the only iceberg warning that's come in that afternoon. At 1.49 p.m., Harold Bride picked up a transmission from the America, reporting that they'd just passed a pair of large bergs. There was no MSG, or Master's Service Gram, attached to it, the prefix that means a message should be brought to the captain's attention. So Bride never passed it on to Captain Smith.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

143.39

When he does, the irritation on his face has given way to a more patient expression. Everything's all right, he reassures her. The sea is calm. The ship is traveling smoothly. Mr. Hart undresses and climbs back into bed. Within minutes, his wife can tell he's asleep again. She knows perfectly well what he thinks of her. The same thing the rest of the passengers at the breakfast table think.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1444.73

At a quarter to six that evening, Titanic changes course. The ship has reached the corner, the point where the northern and southern Atlantic shipping lanes diverge. At this time of year, all vessels will be taking the longer southern route, the one that's supposed to be free of icebergs. But even on the southern route, it's getting colder.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1468.996

Titanic's outdoor spaces have been all but abandoned, as passengers throng to cozier spots indoors. Someone who has braved the chilly evening air is journalist Edith Rosenbaum. She's on the boat deck, taking in the stunning view off Titanic's bow. She vividly describes what she sees that evening. The foam whirled in a great cascade, made blood-red by the rays of a setting sun.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1500.191

It looked like a crimson carpet stretching from the ship to the horizon. By 7pm, the sun has disappeared altogether, and Edith Rosenbaum has retreated inside. As the light fades, First Officer William Murdoch orders the foc'sle hatch to be closed. The glow from the hatch is making it hard to see what's ahead. Out on deck, the temperature has dropped to 6 degrees Celsius.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1535.758

Meanwhile, eight decks below, things are hotting up. Titanic's last three boilers are ready to come online. They've been gradually warming up over the past few hours. Now the time has come to connect them to the engines.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1583.7

Down in the bowels of the ship, men like my great uncle Jimmy McGann are hard at work. My brother Stephen has researched Jimmy's story.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1632.196

As a trimmer, Uncle Jimmy's job is to bring the stokers, who feed the giant furnaces, a constant supply of coal.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1725.692

And it's not just food breaks that men like Uncle Jimmy don't have time for. When you're on duty, there's no time to pop to the toilet either.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1758.024

While men like my great-uncle toil away on the lower decks, Titanic's richest passengers are living the high life.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1780.814

Veronica Hinckley.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

180.579

That she's a silly, superstitious woman, obsessed with the idea of impending disaster. Like Cassandra, prophesying the fall of Troy, or in this case the sinking of a so-called unsinkable ship. Perhaps they're right. But then, Cassandra turned out to be correct. And in less than 24 hours, Mrs. Hart's fears will also come to pass.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1828.846

for many travelers, Titanic is not just a booze cruise, but a schmooze cruise. And the pecking order among the richest guests is a complex one.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1857.699

First class on Titanic is dominated by wealthy Americans. Richest of all is John Jacob Astor IV, a man whose family have topped the New York rich list for generations.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1885.933

By the turn of the 20th century, the Astors have amassed a vast property empire, including the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue. John Jacob IV has grown up in the lap of luxury, but all the privilege in the world has done nothing to protect him from scandal.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1951.593

Shunned by New York society, Astor and his new wife have been lying low, taking an extended honeymoon across the pond.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

1977.583

One first-class passenger unfazed by the Astor's scandalous reputation is Margaret Brown, a woman who struck it rich much more recently when her husband developed a new technique to mine for gold. The so-called unsinkable Molly Brown will become the subject of a 1960 Broadway musical, so no prizes for guessing whether or not she survived the disaster.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

2028.041

On Sunday evening, the Astors are joined for dinner by Ida and Isidore Strauss, the elderly owners of Macy's department store. They've forsaken the sprawling first-class dining saloon for the more intimate à la carte restaurant. Just a few tables over, another top-drawer dinner party is in progress.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

2048.992

This one has been scheduled to celebrate Captain Smith's upcoming retirement, and it's very much invitation only. The hosts for the evening are George Widener, heir to the largest fortune in Philadelphia, and his socialite wife, Eleanor. And aside from their guest of honor, Captain Smith, they've been joined by the great and good of Titanic's first class.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

208.969

This time tomorrow, many of those who laughed at her superstitions will be dead, and RMS Titanic will be lying, torn in half, at the bottom of the ocean. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is Titanic Ship of Dreams, part four. As dawn breaks on Sunday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Hart receive a delivery in their cabin. The latest edition of Titanic's regular news sheet, the Atlantic Daily News.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

2102.082

footing the bill for such a meal is quite an undertaking. Fortunately, the Wideners have deep pockets.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

4. Iceberg Dead Ahead

2121.673

Not for nothing is Captain Smith known as the millionaire's captain. His years of service to the White Star Fleet have seen him mingle with some of the world's wealthiest people, and all of them seem to love him.

Titanic: Ship of Dreams

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A little before 9 PM on Sunday, Captain Smith does return to the bridge, but not for long. He has a brief conversation with Officer of the Watch, Charles Lightoller. Lightoller is an experienced sailor with quite the personal history. He's been shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, worked as a cowboy in Canada, even walked the American railroads as a hobo.

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He's a hard nut, but also an extremely competent officer. By now, the air on Titanic's bridge, which is open to the elements on both sides, has dropped to just one degree above freezing. And that's not the only thing that's happened while Captain Smith was dining with the wideners. Telegraph operator Harold Bride has received yet another iceberg warning, the sixth of the day so far.

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This one is from Captain Lord of the Californian. Three large bergs, five miles southward of us. Titanic's lookouts haven't spotted any icebergs, but in these conditions they aren't always easy to make out. It's a still, cold night. No wind. That means no ripples at the base of the bergs, one of the usual giveaways. Lightoller doesn't like it. He tells Captain Smith as much.

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But Smith seems relatively unconcerned. If it becomes at all doubtful, let me know at once, he tells his second officer. I'll be just inside. He then retreats to his cabin, leaving Lightoller in charge on the bridge.

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Knowing what we do now, it's hard not to question Captain Smith's judgment. But by the standards of 1912, it's unclear whether he actually does anything wrong on Sunday evening.

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Having signed off for the night, Captain Smith is relaxing in his cabin, just metres away from the bridge. Meanwhile, down below, a number of lively events are taking place. There's an Irish party in the third-class dining room on Aftek, with music courtesy of pipe player Eugene Daly. And two floors above, a more sombre gathering.

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The second-class dining room is playing host to a hymn service, organized by Reverend Ernest Carter. It is Sunday, after all.

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though nobody has seen one yet. Titanic has been sailing past icebergs for over an hour, ever since Captain Smith was at dinner with the Wideness. The lookouts in the crow's nest can smell them. The telltale mineral odour that signals a berg is nearby. First-class passenger Elizabeth Schutz has noticed it too. She remembers the sinister aroma from a visit to the Eiger glacier in Switzerland.

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By now the temperature on deck has dropped below freezing. There are ice crystals forming on the portholes of empty, unheated cabins, as well as around the lamps at the front of the ship. The effect is strangely beautiful.

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At 9.52 p.m., Titanic's wireless room receives another warning. It's from a freighter, the SS Masaba. Saw much heavy pack ice and a great number large icebergs. Wireless operator Jack Phillips is too busy to take it to the bridge. He's still trying to clear his backlog of passengers' messages. He puts it under a paperweight to deal with later.

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There's a little printing press down on D-Deck where the menus for the dining saloons are produced. And when they're not busy laying out the latest offering of consomme Olga or apricot Bordalou, the men who work there turn their hands to a bit of journalism. Their daily newspaper is delivered by stewards to everyone in first and second class.

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At 10pm, the pipe party down in Steerage wraps up, as stewards arrive to turn off the lights. Most of the third-class passengers go to bed. In first class, meanwhile, lights out won't come for another hour and a half. Actress Dorothy Gibson is in the reading and writing room on A-Deck, enjoying a game of bridge with her mother and a couple of New York bankers.

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At 10 past 11, Jack Phillips receives another message on the wireless. It's the Californian again, the same ship that issued an iceberg warning two hours ago. Now the Californian's captain, Stanley Lord, has been forced to stop for the night. His path is blocked by an impassable ice field.

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But when Lord's wireless operator Cyril Evans tries to communicate this to Titanic, he receives short shrift from Phillips. Titanic's chief Marconi operator has recently established communication with the shore station at Cape Race in Newfoundland. He has the volume on his headset turned up to the maximum.

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Annoyed, Phillips taps back a reply.

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Suitably chastened, Evans does as he's told. 20 minutes later, he shuts down his machine for the night and goes to bed. The Californian's final message never makes it to Titanic's bridge. It lacks the emergency MSG prefix, so Philip sees no need to pass it on. He goes back to his own passenger's messages instead. We tend to think of Titanic as hitting a random, rogue iceberg.

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In fact, she's sailing through a sea of them, and they're creating an unusual microclimate.

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It includes the latest news from both sides of the Atlantic, as well as other information of interest to the ship's passengers, stock exchange prices, horse racing results, and more. That Titanic can stay so up to date, even in the middle of the ocean, is testament to the work of the ship's two wireless operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride.

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Beautiful it may be, but these strange conditions are also highly dangerous. And at the time of Titanic's maiden voyage, they're poorly understood. In fact, it's not until relatively recently that experts have managed to piece together an exact account of what happened, atmospherically speaking, on the 14th of April 1912. an account that helps explain what caused the sinking of Titanic.

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So far in this series, we've followed the famous ship all the way from Belfast via Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown, and most of the way across the Atlantic Ocean. But now we need to consider the movement of the iceberg as well, because it too has been on a journey.

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Since the ship left Southampton, she's refused to sleep a wink at night, gripped by an irrational fear that something terrible is going to happen. Mrs Hart kips during the daytimes instead, while her husband takes their daughter Eva around the ship, exploring. Right now, the two of them are sound asleep in their bunks.

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The Labrador current flows down the east coast of Canada and out to sea, where it meets the warmer Gulf Stream.

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From their little office on the boat deck, one of the highest spots on the ship, these young men are in almost constant contact with the outside world. Either through direct communication with wireless stations on shore, or piggybacking messages via other vessels plying the same transatlantic route.

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It's not much, but those few seconds could be enough to make all the difference. At 11.39 on Sunday evening, all is quiet on RMS Titanic. Captain Smith is asleep in his cabin, as are most of the passengers on board. On the bridge, First Officer Murdoch is taken over from Lightoller. So far, it's been an uneventful watch. But then, suddenly, a harsh sound pierces the cold night air.

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Three dings from the bell in the crow's nest, as clear as day. Murdoch's blood runs cold. He knows what that signal means. The lookouts have sighted an obstacle, dead ahead. In the next episode, Murdoch takes evasive action, attempting to swerve around the iceberg. As Titanic sustains multiple hull breaches, water starts flooding in.

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And the ship's two Marconi operators broadcast their first ever SOS. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Titanic Ship of Dreams right now, without waiting, by subscribing to Noisa+. Just hit the link in the episode description to find out more.

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The Marconi Wireless Company has placed its operators on dozens of transatlantic vessels. Though Titanic is unusual in having two of the young whiz kids on board.

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These Edwardian tech bros even have their own professional banter. In their messages, they jokingly call each other Old Man. In fact, Mr. Marconi almost exclusively hires bright young 20-somethings. At 25, Titanic's Jack Phillips is a veteran. He's been working for the company for six years. His assistant, Harold Bride, is just 22. For these young men, Titanic is a plum assignment.

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It's April the 14th, 1912, the early hours of Sunday morning. RMS Titanic is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, plowing through the black night at more than 20 knots. Most of the passengers aboard the ship are sleeping soundly. But in her second-class cabin on EDEC, Esther Hart is wide awake.

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But it's the Marconi Company, not White Star, that pays their wages. And, as will prove crucial, they are on board to serve the passengers, not the crew. Most of their time is spent transmitting short messages to family back home or instructions to business colleagues at a rate of nine pence a word. Delivering weather warnings to the bridge is very much secondary responsibility.

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On Sunday morning, Titanic's wireless men are playing catch up. There have been some teething problems with their equipment, and they now have a huge backlog of messages. The Marconi manual forbids operators from interfering with the machines themselves. That's a job for experienced technicians on shore. But Phillips and Bride have just spent seven hours carrying out repairs.

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At 9.12 on Sunday morning, Phillips is at his post in the telegraph office when a message comes in from a Cunard liner, the Caronia. Captain Titanic, westbound steamers report bergs, growlers and field ice in 42 degrees north from 49 to 51 degrees west. A growler is a small iceberg, roughly the size of a grand piano. Extending only a foot or two above the surface, they can be hard to spot.

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Mrs. Hart, exhausted from her repeated nocturnal vigils, has forsaken her reading table for her own bunk underneath her husband's. She won't sleep, just rest her head a little. The night is as quiet and still as the previous three have been. Only the throbbing of the ship's engines and a gentle creaking noise that she's heard every night of the voyage

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Phillips takes the coroner's message to the bridge. Not that an iceberg warning is a particular cause for concern.

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The coordinates given in Coronia's message won't be reached until this evening at the earliest. In the meantime, Captain Smith has more pressing business to attend to. He's conducting a Sunday service in the first-class dining saloon. Some of the hymns are eerily appropriate to a sea crossing.

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Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home. Ironically, Captain Smith's service clashes with the original plan for Sunday morning, Titanic's first and only lifeboat drill at sea. Smith presumably thinks his sermon will be more edifying. Professor Jerome Cherkov

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Did you know that the team behind Titanic's Ship of Dreams makes other podcasts too? Discover them all at Noisa.com, the home of the Noisa podcast network. Real Dictators, also hosted by me, Paul McGann, returns on April the 30th with the story of Fidel Castro. Head to Noisa.com to find out more. At 11.47am, Phillips and Bride receive a second iceberg warning.

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this time from Captain Kroll of the SS Nordam, sailing from New York to Rotterdam. Captain SS Titanic, congratulations on new command. Had moderate westerly winds, fair weather, no fog. Much ice reported in latitude 4224 to 4245, and longitude 4950 to 5020. Compliments, Kroll. Captain Smith instructs Phillips and Briar to send a reply. Captain Nordam, many thanks.

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Add moderate variable weather throughout. Compliments, Smith. Professor Stephanie Baczewski.

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Screenwriter Julian Fellows.

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too subtle for anyone to notice in the bustling daylight hours. But at night, even the tiniest noises are magnified. Mrs. Hart jolts upright in her bunk. Was she asleep? She can't be sure, but she's certain she just felt the ship move in an unnatural way. Ben, she hisses, get up. Something dreadful has happened. Groggily, Mr. Hart slides down from his own bunk to join her.

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In the official inquiries that follow the Titanic disaster, a central question will be what speed the ship was travelling in the run-up to the collision, and specifically whether Captain Smith should have slowed down. But at the time, slowing down for icebergs goes very much against the White Star Handbook.

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Titanic might not be chasing the Blue Ribbon, the prize for the fastest Atlantic crossing. That's very much Cunard territory, with their streamlined Mauritania and Lusitania. But White Star are invested in making speedy progress. And it's not just the captain who has his eye on how fast they're going.

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Shortly after noon, a crowd of first-class passengers gathers outside the purser's office on Seadeck, just off the grand staircase. Here, the latest figures are posted daily, giving the distance travelled in the past 24 hours. Some of them are even gambling on the results.

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The figures posted on Sunday afternoon are impressive. An average speed of 22 knots over a distance of 546 miles. That's a 5% improvement on the previous day. But what about the next 24 hours? So far, only 26 of Titanic's 29 boilers have been lit. With the other three online, she should be able to go even faster.

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Linda sagte, dass sie sich jetzt auf die Aufmerksamkeit der Sicherheitsleute, die sie verabschiedet hatte, verlangt.

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Einige der Sheriff-Departement-Staff versuchten noch einmal, Linda zu helfen, obwohl sie nicht für eine Verwaltungsverwaltung vertreten würde. Nach einer Stunde, nachdem sie die Uhr ausgetauscht haben, haben sie sich geholfen, Linda zu helfen. Hier ist Sergeant Gene Davis.

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Ich habe eine selbst. Linda wollte einen Hund, der nicht von Mark trainiert wurde und mit ihm keine Verbindung hatte. Erinnere dich, sie hat nur Mark getroffen, weil sie ihn benötigte, um einen ihrer Hunde für Schutz zu trainieren. Und jetzt trainiert sie einen Hund gegen den selben Mann. Aber Linda beendete, das war nicht genug. Sie wollte noch mehr Sicherheit.

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Linda got into a routine of checking her cameras every day and reviewing footage. Her instincts proved to be right. Während der Verabschiedung beendet wurde, sagte Linda, es würde nichts stoppen, Mark von ihr zu verabschieden. Linda sagte, eine ihrer Kameras habe eine schreckliche blaue und weiße Bildung von Mark in der Mitte der Nacht entdeckt.

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Wir haben die Fotos angeschaut und man kann sehen, dass ein Mann Linda's Haar übernimmt, um ein Shirt aufzunehmen, um seinen Gesicht zu schließen. Sie sagte, dass Mark angefangen hat, sie zu rufen, dass sie ihre Gebetsfotos zurückgeben. Hier ist ein Wortmeldung von Mark, der Linda bedroht.

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Es ist ein bisschen schwer zu hören, aber Mark sagt, ich schwöre Gott, wenn ich ever find out, that you're in possession of those wedding pictures, you know I'm a guy who can hold a grudge. At one point, Linda was convinced that Mark tapped her phones and was listening to her calls.

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Fehlend, dass Marks Harassment-Kampagne nun gegen Gewalt auslösen würde, begann Linda, den Kampf und die Flüchtlingspläne zu beherrschen. All diese Feuerwaffen, waren das Verbrechen oder Paranoia?

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To her, Mark had proven he was willing to cross any boundary she set. Linda decided to turn her house into a fortress.

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Verzweifelt, sagte Linda, dass sie so ruhig wie möglich bleibt und versucht hat, die Temperatur zu reduzieren, indem sie zu sprechen gibt. Aber sie konnte sehen, dass sie gehen musste. Sie ging in ihr Suburban und fuhr zurück in die Gästehause.

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She gave me a tour of her hidden arsenal.

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We walked from room to room as she pointed out the spots where she was hiding her guns. There's this magnet right here. Yes. So there was a gun hooked onto that.

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She had one in her office, one next to her bed, and one in the hallway, another behind a wall hanging. It seems she was never more than six feet away from a firearm.

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Als sie mich durch ihr Sicherheitssystem geführt hat, konnte ich mir nicht helfen, zu denken, wie mir das etwas aus einem James-Bond-Film erinnert hat. Ich hatte nie so viele Waffen in einem Haus in meinem Leben gesehen.

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Linda fühlte sich sicher, dass Marc schließlich versuchen würde, sie zu verletzen, vielleicht sogar zu töten. Aber bis sie hartes Beweis hatte, einen Anwesenden oder einen Sicherheitsbefehl eingeführt hatte, konnten die Sheriff's Deputies ihn nicht verletzen. Dann, am 18. März 2008, um ca. 10 Uhr, war Lindas Nachbar, Ruthie Hegmeister, auf der Weg, um zu besuchen.

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Right across the street.

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Ruthie was immediately suspicious and pulled her car right up to this man's white station wagon.

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You're not buying it.

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Als sie ihre Dinge gesammelt hat, konnte Linda Mark in ihre Richtung sehen.

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While Ruthie was on the phone, Mark got back in his car and drove off.

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After more than two years of what Linda described as a campaign of harassment and fear, the county finally had enough evidence to charge Mark with stalking and theft. Mark hat einen Alford-Plea eingeführt. Das ist, wenn jemand, der ungewiss ist, genug Beweise hat, dass ein Judge oder ein Jurist sie wahrscheinlich schuldig finden wird.

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Mark wurde zu zwei Jahren Probe und zwölf Monaten Anger-Management verurteilt. Der Gericht hat auch eine Schutzordnung gegen ihn eingeführt, was bedeutet, dass Mark alle seine Waffen übernehmen musste und nie vor Linda oder Ever again. Linda was not satisfied with the sentence.

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Throughout 2008 and into 2009, Linda repeatedly called the sheriff's office to report suspicious activity she thought could be Mark. But she was never able to link those situations to him, but stayed vigilant about her security. And in the summer of 2008, Linda made a decision that would forever change her life. She hired a former security consultant to do an assessment of her house.

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His name was Michael Oakes. He was a gun and safety enthusiast. Wie ihre Beziehung zu Mark begann es professionell, aber bald wurde es etwas mehr. Warst du mit ihr verliebt? Ja, ich war verliebt. Das selbe Sommer ging Mark nach Kickett Island nach Anacortes, Washington, etwa zehn Meilen entfernt.

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Er hat mehrere Äcker und ein neues Haus auf Thompson Road gekauft, wo er sein neues Geschäft geöffnet hat. Seine Schwester Viktoria sagte, dass Mark sogar angefangen hat, jemanden zu verheiraten. Theresa Vox-Michael.

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Für diejenigen, die um ihn herum waren, schien Mark wirklich aufgewachsen zu haben.

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Dann, im Oktober 2009, hörte Linda von einem von Marks Mitarbeitern.

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Aber Detektivs hatten eine andere Theorie. Sie glaubten, Mark sei tot. From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard. Produced by Sony Music Entertainment. I'm your host, Peter Van Sant. Judy Tigard is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Original reporting by 48 Hours producers Ryan Smith and Liza Finley.

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Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio and Maura Waltz is the senior story editor. Recording assistance from Alan Pang and Reginald Baziel. Special thanks to Paramount Podcast Vice President Megan Marcus. It is written and produced by Alex Schumann. Stephanie Serrano is our editor. Our executive producer is Shira Morris. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin.

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Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shee. Cedric Wilson is our sound designer and mixed the episodes. We also use music from APM and Epidemic Sounds. Fendel Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Tamika Balans-Kolasny. I'm Peter Van Sant. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting.

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You can listen to Trained to Kill early and ad-free right now by subscribing to 48 Hours Plus on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.

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This is war. This is goddamn war. You're working for me. You've worked my life enough. Linda hat den Sommer und den Fall 2006 in Sisters, Oregon verbracht. Im Dezember hat sie sich zu der westlichen, thematisierten Stadt Winthrop, Washington, gegründet. Die Unterkunft enthielt eine antike Bordwache und alte Saloons. Linda hat ein Haus außerhalb der Stadt.

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Sie hat mehr als 250 Meilen von Wandern und einer Bergstrecke zwischen ihr und Marc.

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She tried everything to avoid leaving a trail.

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But Mark, an avid hunter, still managed to track Linda down. Am 16. Oktober 2007, um 7 Uhr, sagte Linda, dass sie bereit war, ihren Tag zu starten.

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Linda scannte den Himmel über ihr Haus.

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Laut Linda war der Mann, den sie verlassen hat, wie ein Hühner, bereit, sich auf sein Tier zu bewegen.

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Das wäre einer der vielen Fälle gewesen, in denen Linda sagte, dass ihr Leben bedroht wurde. I'm Peter Van Sant. From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard. Episode 2, The Hunter.

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Im Frühjahr 2006 war Linda Updike perfekt in Ordnung, alles hinterher zu lassen, wenn das bedeutet, sich von ihrem Mann Mark Stover zu entfernen. Wir haben über das in 2010 gesprochen. Wie viel Geld war das Geschäft? Wie erfolgreich war es?

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Das ist unglaublich. Das ist es wirklich. Linda sagte, sie hat nichts davon mitgebracht, als sie weggegangen ist.

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According to Linda, Mark demanded she return one of her dogs to the island.

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But Linda said that wasn't enough either. Karen Lundgren arbeitete in einem Salon nahe Lindas Haus in Winthrop. Sie erzählte mir über einen furchtbaren Moment, als Marc dramatisch in den Salon kam.

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Das Geschenk für ihr 41. Geburtstag war etwas, was Linda Updyke schon lange gewünscht hatte. Eine Verschiebung von ihrem Mann Mark Stover.

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Was hast du gemacht?

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Richtig, richtig. Karen war sicher, dass Mark nicht nur auf Lindas Auto stürmte. Er hätte auf irgendeiner Art und Weise eine Bergstrecke übernommen und sie heruntergetragen. Die beiden sprachen. Und Karen sagte, dass Mark nach ein paar Minuten weg war. Aber Linda sagte, dass Marks stürmische Verhalten nicht am Beauty-Salon stoppte.

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Linda sagte, er hätte eine ungewöhnliche Fähigkeit, in ihr Zuhause zu kommen.

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Sie hat versucht, ruhig zu bleiben und hat mit ihm gesessen, bis er entschieden hat, zu gehen. Linda hat gesagt, anstatt die Polizei anzurufen, hat sie versucht, diese Art von ungewöhnlichen Besuchen selbst zu behandeln.

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But she didn't think her tactics were working. She found herself feeling increasingly paranoid. So you'd hear any noise and you're wondering, is it Mark? The phone would ring, you're wondering, is it Mark?

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Am 2. November 2007 konnte Linda ihre Angst nicht mehr verstecken. Sie hat 911 angerufen, nachdem Mark zu ihrer Wohnung kam und sie in seinem Chevrolet Suburban führte, als sie versuchte, wegzudrehen.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

The Hunter

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Aber während Linda etwas Raum zwischen sich und Mark hat, hat sie nicht Kicket Island verlassen. Zuhause in ihrem profitablen Hundtraining-Business, Island Dog Adventures.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

The Hunter

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Linda sagte, dass die Polizei Mark kontaktierte, aber nicht einen Anruf machte. Wie war Mark, nach all diesen Fällen, immer noch frei zu gehen? Bald danach entdeckte Mark etwas über Linda, das ihn wirklich über die Ecke gedrückt hat. Es betraf Marks Freund und Hundepartner. Es war mehr als zwei Jahre her, seit Lindas Entscheidung, Mark zu verlassen.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

The Hunter

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Linda hat mir erzählt, dass Mark sie auf einen furchtbaren Weg gezwungen hat. Sie hat sich von seinem Verbrechen gehalten. Aber es gab jemanden in seiner Runde, der Linda's Angelegenheiten nicht glaubte. Jemand, der Mark länger als Linda kannte. Seine Schwester, Victoria Simmons.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Sie sagte, dass Mark von der Verschiebung bewundert war.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Viktoria glaubt nicht, dass ihr Bruder so gefährlich war, wie Linda Updike es bezeichnete.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Mark hat herausgefunden, dass Linda einmal ein paar Trinken bekommen hat und nach dem Haus von John Bonica ging. Marks bester Mann bei ihrer Geburt.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Ja. Eine romantische Beziehung?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Linda said she got a call from Mark the day after she and John were together. He told her that he knew what they'd done.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Was it accurate?

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Glaubst du also, dass jemand bei John Bonicas Haus... ...schaut? Du wärst intim mit John?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

The Hunter

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Zu diesem Punkt waren sie seit 14 Jahren zusammen, die letzten drei als verheiratetes Paar. Nach fast sieben Monaten hat Linda endlich entschieden, dass sie bereit war.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Als Mark über John herausgefunden hat, war er so wütend, dass Linda mit ihrem Vater in Hawaii bleiben wollte, bis sich alles kühlt. Sie kam mehrere Wochen später zurück, im Januar 2008, als Mark die Divorzpapiere beendet hat. Linda glaubte noch nicht, dass das Verheirat zu Ende sein würde und dass es Mark stoppen würde.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Sie rief also an den lokalen Sheriff's Office an, um zu sagen, dass sie sich überrascht hatte.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Hier ist der damalige Bundesvizepräsident Dave Rodríguez mit der Okanaganer Städte Sheriff's Office. Er hat Linda gesagt, dass, wenn sie eine Befreiungsordnung bekommen hat, die Staatsanwaltschaft mehr entscheidend sein könnte.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Hat Linda es ausgesucht?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Michael then left again. Where he went and what he did is unknown. He returned about 30 minutes later. It was the end of a very long day. A long day that police later learned may have been months in the making.

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Two days after Mark's disappearance, the Skagit County Sheriff's investigators question Michael's second wife, Jennifer Thompson. There is some noise in the background since they are recording at her home. This is Chief Will Reichardt.

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The first thing they wanted on the record was concerning a call Jennifer claimed Michael received back when they were still married.

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If true, that woman could only have been Linda Updike. Jennifer said Michael then revealed details of a sinister plan.

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Once Mark Stover was fooled into threatening Linda, Jennifer claimed the plan was to violently end that threat.

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Jennifer claimed that it was after this bitter argument their marriage quickly fell apart.

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One month later, she said Michael told her that he wanted a divorce.

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But then, in October of 2009, Jennifer reached out to Michael. She wanted to give him one last chance to reconcile.

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Jennifer said after a few emails between them, Michael wrote that he'd soon be on the west side of the mountains and suggested they meet. This was October 24th. which is the same day Michael said he met Mark Stover at that church in Anacortes.

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Michael told me that he showed up to that October 24th meeting without the wedding photos and that Mark demanded Michael return later in the week The following day, Michael messaged Jennifer.

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Three days after that October 25th message, on the same day Mark was killed, Michael and Jennifer met again. The day that they met at that Starbucks, when Michael mentioned that he was afraid of getting arrested.

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But there was one final interaction with police that convinced Jennifer that Michael was the hunter in all of this.

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Michael said he did as he was told, walked to Mark's, and was greeted at the front door by Mark along with his specially trained attack dog, Ding. From there, Michael described Mark leading him through the living room, down the hallway, and oddly, into the bathroom. That's where he claimed Mark confronted him. once again with his never ending obsession with those wedding photos.

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A month after Jennifer was questioned, the detectives came back to her house. They wanted Jennifer to listen to a CD. She told me her reaction after hearing the anonymous tipster's voice telling the 911 operator about a drug deal involving Mark Stover.

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Jennifer instantly recognized the voice.

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How do you know it's him?

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It was devastating for her. Everything she had suspected suddenly clicked.

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Jennifer thought back to that job Michael mentioned and remembered something else Michael told her. something he said on the day Mark Stover was shot.

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So, who could be helping Michael? Well, when Jennifer was being questioned by detectives in those early days after the murder, she shared an intriguing detail.

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That would be multi-millionaire business tycoon Wally Updike, Linda's father. Later, when I got to sit down with Jennifer, she explained this further.

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That she either paid or manipulated Michael to kill?

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Meaning?

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Jennifer's testimony to police suggested that Mark's murder was a premeditated, hired hit. In our interviews, Linda and Michael both denied that her father had anything to do with Mark's death.

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Detective Dan Levera never called Linda Updike a suspect, but he has always wondered if she was involved.

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When I spoke to Michael, he told me that he just spontaneously put on the hat after he spotted it in Mark's car that morning.

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You're telling me you just decided to put this hat on? You hadn't been told by Linda that that's a hat that Mark Stover would wear?

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Detective Levera told me that he wanted to ask Linda about this and many other aspects of the case. Have you received cooperation from Linda Updike? No. As is common in a case like this, Linda and her father, Wally Updike, hired lawyers after Michael was arrested.

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While Linda declined to take questions from Luvera, she was willing to answer mine. Investigators believe that You must have given Michael details of Mark Stover's life that would aid him in attacking Mark Stover, knowing when he got up, what hat he wore during the day, what car he drove with the dogs. What do you say to that?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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In other words, did you brief Michael Oakes on the intricacies of Mark Stover's life, right down to the hat that he liked to wear during the day, to aid him in an assassination?

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The suggestion is out there. Did your father have anything to do with the killing of Mark Stover?

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Both Linda and Michael refused to answer most of the authorities' questions until they took the stand at trial. There was, of course, one big question Michael still had not answered. What did you do with Mark Stover's body?

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From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. Produced by Sony Music Entertainment. I'm your host, Peter Van Sant. Judy Tigard is the executive producer of 48 Hours. Original reporting by 48 Hours producers Ryan Smith and Liza Finley. Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio. and Maura Waltz is the senior story editor.

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And what did Mark Stover say to that? He didn't say much. Instead, Michael claimed Mark suddenly turned around and walked away.

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Recording assistance from Alan Pang and Reginald Bazile. Special thanks to Paramount Podcast Vice President, Megan Marcus. It is written and produced by Alex Schumann. Stephanie Serrano is our editor. Our executive producer is Shira Morris. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shee. Cedric Wilson is our sound designer and mixed the episodes.

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We also use music from APM and Epidemic Sounds. Fendall Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kolasny. I'm Peter Van Sant. If you're enjoying the show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. Follow and listen to Train to Kill and other 48 Hours podcasts on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Thanks for listening.

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Michael said when Mark returned, he raised a gun he was holding in his left hand. The longer and the shorter it was, moments later, I was shot in the chest. But Michael had prepared for this moment. As a self-described security expert, Michael said he was wearing a bulletproof vest that allowed him to safely take the hit to the chest.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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He said he then quickly lunged at Mark, grabbed the gun, and returned fire. He started a gunfight, and I won. But the fight wasn't completely over. As Michael exited the house, he said Mark's dog, Ding, attacked.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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But detectives on the case soon came to a very different conclusion about what happened that morning.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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I'm Peter Van Sant. From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. Episode 5, Put Up or Shut Up.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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This is Detective Dan Luvera with the Skagit County Sheriff's Office. Now retired, Luvera said he spent nearly 2,500 hours investigating Mark Stover's killing.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Luvera thought major parts of Michael's story simply weren't true. That included the meetings over the months that Michael described having with Mark Stover. Michael Oakes claims he met with Mark Stover at the Northgate shopping mall in Seattle. Do you believe that meeting occurred? No, not at all. He claims he met with Mark Stover at a church parking lot in Anacortes.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Do you believe that happened? No, not at all. He claims Mark Stover comes out of a Costco in Kennewick, Washington, and basically has a threatening conversation. Do you believe that happened?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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You think this is all made up? I do. I first met Detective Luvera at Mark's house back in 2010. He was a sharp detective who was meticulous and tried not to leave any stone unturned.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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I most certainly did not. In the wee hours of October 28th, 2009, Michael Oakes was seen on Linda Updike's surveillance footage getting in his SUV and leaving. Why were you going to Stover's house at 2.30 in the morning?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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It was dusk as we started the interview. Soon, it would be dark, just as it was when Michael said he arrived that morning. Luvera brought a big flashlight to show us the crime scene.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Way he steps here. First, we went through what Michael Oakes said happened.

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Mark lets him in. Luvera and I went inside. Mark's place was like a high-end cabin with dark wood floors and exposed oak beams. He said Michael claimed that Mark brought him into that bathroom and then left before coming back with a gun.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Where I'm standing right now.

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Boom. Right into Michael Oakes' ballistic vest. It's then, Michael said, he grabbed the gun from Mark's left hand and fired back at point-blank range, killing him. The whole thing doesn't make sense. After he told me Michael's version, Luvera then broke down for me why the evidence doesn't match Michael's story.

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First, he said investigators discovered that on October 28, 2009, Michael didn't drive directly to Anacortes from Linda's house. Luvera said Michael drove west for nearly three hours before he made a pit stop.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Luvera believed Michael bought those items not to have a talk with Mark Stover, but to hide evidence of a murder.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Interestingly, Luvera said Michael also purchased a pair of soccer shin guards.

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Luvera said after his Walmart shopping, Michael headed to Anacortes.

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Luvera then demonstrated for us what he thought actually happened at Mark's house that morning.

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Luvera thought a worried Mark then let Ding out of the house to confront whoever or whatever was out there in the darkness.

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It's during that encounter that Luvera believes Michael Oakes first shot Mark Stover. Spent shell casings were found outside.

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Luvera believed Mark only made it as far as the hallway just inside the door leading from the carport. And Michael likely fired again and finished Mark off with one final shot. There was blood splatters on the wall here, on the wall here. When you come into Mark's house through the carport door, immediately on your right is that bathroom.

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This is where, in Michael's dramatic telling, he said Mark shot him in the chest, a bullet stopped by a bulletproof vest. Michael said he wrestled the gun away from Mark and shot him dead. But Luvera is skeptical.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Luvera believed Michael cleaned up the bloody scene at Mark's house with bleach and put on Mark's trademark hat, just in case anyone saw him leave in Mark's station wagon. Investigators suspected the driver seen speeding down the driveway was Michael, with Mark's body in the back, and that Michael then moved Mark's body from the station wagon to his SUV later.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Louvera said Michael's plan worked, fooling employee Stephanie Poore.

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Michael would continue to cover his tracks. But how long would he be able to evade authorities?

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After Michael left Mark's house at around 10 that morning, he was seen stopping at a store where, for some reason, he bought a pair of bolt cutters. And then a couple of hours later, just before noon, that's when Tammy Gilden made that call to report a trespasser.

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She told me it seemed like the man was moving what looked like a body.

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Then, at around 1230, we now know that Michael was pulled over in Anacortes, Washington by that Skagit County Sheriff's deputy. Knowing what we know today, what was in Oak's vehicle when he was pulled over?

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It was in the back, yes. Luvera said from there, Michael left Anacortes to go meet with his ex-wife, Jennifer Thompson. She already told us how they met at a Starbucks, went to the beach, and how, before long, she realized Michael had a body with him that day.

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As Michael told it, Mark instructed him to park about a quarter mile away from his house at the same church where they had met four days before.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Investigators said Michael left Jennifer at about 4 p.m., returned the bolt cutters to that store, and drove back east over the Cascade Mountains to Linda's house.

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Surveillance video showed Michael arriving at Linda's at about 11.30 that night. He parked his SUV. I asked Michael about the evidence they found inside that vehicle.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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Nestled in the far reaches of Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, you can find a chain of gorgeous, tranquil islands.

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and her new lover.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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Throughout this case, detectives wondered, who was the hunter and who was the hunted?

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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We don't have the truth yet. We have some of the truth, but we don't have all of it.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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I'm Peter Van Sant. From 48 Hours, this is Trained to Kill. The dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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The scene was at the house of a popular dog trainer named Mark Stover.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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Mark was known as the dog whisperer of Anacortes and the dog trainer to the stars. He could speak dog. They knew that he knew them.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

Who Was The Hunter & Who Was The Hunted? | Trained to Kill

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There was blood on Mark's driveway and blood on the floor throughout his house, but there was no sign of Mark.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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They soon discovered a story tangled in obsession.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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It's so beautiful, but it's changed for me now. I don't... It's marred.

Trained to Kill: The Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard

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A love triangle between Mark Stover. He couldn't control his obsession. You know, he chronicled his obsession. This is war. This is goddamn war. You've worked my life enough. An heiress who wanted a new life.

True Crime with Kendall Rae

Life360 App Helps Police Find Missing 13 Yr. Old: Justice for Savannah Copeland

1085.174

Within hours, detectives named a suspect, 15-year-old Malachi Harris. He was a friend of Savannah's and her family.

True Crime with Kendall Rae

Life360 App Helps Police Find Missing 13 Yr. Old: Justice for Savannah Copeland

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Do you have any indication why? No.

True Crime with Kendall Rae

Life360 App Helps Police Find Missing 13 Yr. Old: Justice for Savannah Copeland

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And the Copelands were constants at Powell Middle Games to cheer on their girl, Van, as they called her.

True Crime with Kendall Rae

Life360 App Helps Police Find Missing 13 Yr. Old: Justice for Savannah Copeland

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The morning after Powell Middle's first basketball game of the season, Michael was on his way to work. A call from his wife brought silence. Savannah was missing. The family used an app to trace her digital tracks up until her phone died. They scoured the area before Knox County deputies launched a search.

True Crime with Kendall Rae

Life360 App Helps Police Find Missing 13 Yr. Old: Justice for Savannah Copeland

923.979

Twelve hours later, a detective knocked on the Copeland's door. Savannah's body was discovered along a trail.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

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The assistant manager asked her why her car was parked that way and why she wasn't able to open the door and Monica didn't have much of an answer. But later, we would find out that Monica didn't want to leave the apartment because she heard noises in the ceiling and thought that people were coming to get her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

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eventually the assistant manager did get monica to open the door leave the apartment and move her car and she watched tori and lily as monica did this monica would later say that she trusted the apartment's assistant manager to watch the girls while she moved the car even though she thought that you know the apartment was setting up operations to kidnap her and her children

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

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She trusted this woman in particular because she was pregnant and the majority of people who hurt women are men. That is what she said for why she trusted this woman. If it was a man who came to the door, she probably would not have opened her door at all.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

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Then, that same morning, the manager at the apartment complex noticed that Monica had submitted a work order to have the locks on her door changed. A few hours after that, Monica called the office to see if the locks had been changed, and on that phone call, the manager heard the twins crying in the background.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

1083.819

At that time, Monica asked the staff members if they could help her take care of her girls. Obviously, They were not going to help her with this though. That same day, Monica began messaging different people saying a bunch of different bizarre things. So first, that same evening, she was texting Robert saying that he needed to come home and that she missed him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Mother "Butchered" Her Twin Daughters with a Samurai Sword: THE TRAGIC MURDERS OF TORI AND LILY BALL

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This progressed to her talking about robot butterflies, which Robert said made no sense. Then she started telling him that he was never going to have her again. In another message, she gave Robert a message that she wanted him to tell Michael, the father of her children.

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She told Robert to tell Michael, quote, Apparently, according to Robert, he thought that Monica was trying to say that Michael needed to give up parental rights of the girls so that Robert could adopt them. Later in the evening, Monica then messaged Robert saying, TikTok, And after that, she sent a message saying, read James Patterson.

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However, it appears that Monica may have been actually misdiagnosed, which I think is pretty common with these types of disorders that Monica had, unfortunately. So sometime between 2003 and 2005, she had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder.

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A bit after that, Robert and Monica finally had a chance to talk on the phone. In that phone call, Robert said that she sounded absolutely incoherent. She was rambling, her words were all jumbled around, and she sounded like she was in a hurry, running around the house and doing God knows what. She would hang up and then he would call her back and this happened over and over and over again.

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During one of those calls, one source reported that Robert heard fire alarms going off in the background. When asking about the fire alarms, she told Robert that it was okay, they were just making some fire, so her and the twins were making some fire in the apartment.

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After several times of him calling her back and her picking up and rambling nonsense to him and hanging up, she hung up this last call and eventually stopped picking up his further calls. Apparently, after this last call, Robert called his mother and told her that Monica has absolutely lost her mind.

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Then, by around 10pm that same day, on October 12th, 2010, a downstairs neighbor started hearing the sounds of a very loud thumping sound coming from his upstairs neighbor, Monica's apartment. This was located on the third floor. About an hour or two later, he heard the fire alarm going off along with other neighbors who started to see smoke coming from the windows of her unit.

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The downstairs neighbor immediately ran upstairs to check on his upstairs neighbor trying to kick in the front door to get inside, but the door was blocked. He did actually get it open just a little bit, but as soon as he cracked it open, he said that he felt such immense heat that it actually pushed him back.

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He wasn't able to get the door open enough to actually get inside, but he did actually find a window on the backside of the apartment and was able to break in through the window. And upon walking in, he found a katana-style Japanese fighting sword on the floor, which was covered in blood, and then he saw a bottle of pills laying on the ground.

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Now, after seeing that, the neighbor decided that he needed to get out of there as soon as possible because who knows what could have been going on. Somebody could have been in that apartment to kill Monica and set a fire and he could still be in there and... might want to get rid of any witnesses. He had no idea what was really happening.

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So, of course, firefighters were also called to the scene immediately and all of this was reported to first responders. When firefighters got to Monica's apartment, they obviously had a hard time opening the door because, again, it was blocked. but they were able to force the door open and enter inside. They then found the source of the fire, which had been lit in the closet near the front door.

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It seems to me that a lot of times adults with undiagnosed ADHD may be wrongly diagnosed as depressed, and some adults with depression may present as having ADHD and be prescribed medications that are not suitable for them. So, by the age of 12, Monica started using drugs and alcohol to cope with her mental health issues.

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They were able to put that fire out, but when they got inside and put the fire out, they saw a horrific scene. They quickly found the bodies of three-year-old little Tori and Lily. One of their bodies had been blocking the door, which is why everybody had such a hard time getting in.

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both girls suffered obvious severe lacerations to their tiny bodies and both girls were pronounced dead at the scene then in the kitchen they found 28 year old monica lying on the ground unconscious also with lacerations to her throat and wrists but she was still alive. So the firefighters carried her out of the apartment and got her into an ambulance for treatment.

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After assessing the scene and taking care of the bodies, first responders then took a look around the scene. First, they found an assault-style rifle in the living room, as well as a box which contained a loaded handgun with more live rounds in the box. In the hallway, they found a straight-bladed sword, which was covered in blood.

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Then there was a lighter with blood next to that as well on the floor. They found that the two high chairs had been knocked over in the dining room, both of which had their food trays removed, and both high chairs were absolutely soaked black. in blood. Then there was a table facing the high chairs. On that table, there was a laptop open and it was playing a children's cartoon.

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In the kitchen, there was a landline phone on the counter, but the phone and the countertops were covered in blood. In the bathroom, the sink faucet had been left on, so the water was still running from it. The counters and the sink in the bathroom were all covered in blood as well. There was a cell phone on the floor in the bathroom as well. And then there was a stool in the bathroom.

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And on that stool, they found a James Patterson book called Double Cross. Double Cross is a thriller suspense book about a crazed serial killer where each killing becomes more and more complicated as the detectives try to solve the crime. This book was opened and turned to a page that read, my daughter is dead, somewhere on that page.

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Then after finding these tiny bodies, of course, they were sent off to the medical examiner for an autopsy. The medical examiner found that three-year-old Tori had 11 cutting wounds on her face, two cutting wounds and a gaping wound on her neck, nine superficial cutting wounds on her chest, two deep stab wounds to her chest, one of which penetrated her heart, with the other penetrating her lung.

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Then they found that she had three small superficial cutting wounds, as well as one deep stab wound to her abdomen. They found several wounds on her arms and hands, which were consistent with defensive wounds. Lily had five cutting wounds to her face, four cutting wounds to her neck, and nine to her chest.

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She had one large gaping wound on her neck as well, which severed her larynx and cut her carotid artery, almost decapitating her. She had multiple defensive wounds to her arms and hands and a six-inch deep wound to her abdomen. Neither girl had inhaled smoke so that meant that they were both dead before the fire was started. Obviously this is just tragic.

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She started using weed, LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy, and by age 14, she was using cocaine, and then by the age of 18, she was using methamphetamine. From the age of 18 and well into her adult life, Monica continued using meth. She claimed that she didn't use it while pregnant with her twins, but that's just her word. I don't know what to believe.

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The fact that they had these defensive wounds says to me that they were alive obviously when their mother was attacking them and they were aware of what was going on. They knew that their mother was hurting them but they had no idea why. I can't even imagine how this entire thing started and progressed with one girl who had to sit there and watch as her mother attacked her twin sister

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being able to do nothing about it until she turned around and attacked her as well. It's just awful to think about. The level of injuries these poor children had is just brutal and I can't even begin to describe how disgusting it is. there was a lot of questions as to why, you know, there was a gun sitting right there.

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Not that it makes it any better, but why would she choose to inflict this level of injury on her children to the point that they were still alive and they probably felt so much pain as their mother was slashing them and brutalizing them when she could have just shot both of them in quick succession and made it painless and

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quick as possible again not that it makes it any better not that that wouldn't make the situation any better but I have no idea why she went this way of wanting to cut them and hurt them and do all of this to her children to kill them and put them through this much pain and this much brutality it just does not make any sense.

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Then, when Monica arrived to the John Muir Medical Center for treatment, she was in critical condition. She had two large lacerations to her throat, as well as multiple cuts and lacerations on her arms and wrists. On one of her arms, she cut so deeply that the tendons that flex your wrist and fingers was completely severed, so about right here.

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She had a large laceration on her thigh, as well as lacerations to each ankle, both of which had completely severed her Achilles tendons, which is unimaginably painful. Can't even imagine what that was like. At that time, she was tested for drugs, and it was actually negative for alcohol, cocaine, and meth, or any other drug for that matter.

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At the time, to police, it appeared like this was a murder-suicide attempt. It looked like Monica had murdered both of her daughters by slashing and cutting and stabbing them before carrying their bodies to the door to block the door shut.

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Then she cut herself all over the place and set the apartment on fire, either to make sure that she and her children had died or to cover the evidence of what happened in that apartment. While receiving treatment in the hospital, police charged Monica with two counts of murder, two counts of child abuse resulting in death, one count of arson, and one count of destruction of evidence.

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By October 14, 2010, it appears that Monica was released from the hospital and booked into Solano County Jail. She pleaded not guilty to her charges by reason of insanity, and from there, she went through multiple psychiatric evaluations to determine if her mental health is to blame for her actions and if she truly knew that what she was doing was wrong.

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So there were three different doctors who evaluated Monica and they all had similar findings, but they kind of had different ways of getting there and different evidence that they brought forward when writing their evaluation. So I'm going to sort of try to combine and summarize what each doctor said without getting too repetitive or redundant. First, we have Dr. John Shields, PhD.

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Dr. Shields spent a total of 20 hours with Monica over the course of nine sessions. As we heard from before, he talked about how she had mental health issues from the time that she was a preteen. By 12, she was drinking excessively and was involuntarily committed to the hospital for mental health treatment after self-harming.

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At this point, after we get through more of the details in this video, you guys can make your own assumptions about what really happened. But either way, according to Monica, she used meth almost every day from the time that she was 18. until she was 25 years old. Because of the drug use, Monica became paranoid, she would act out, and sometimes she could even be violent with Michael.

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By 14, she was diagnosed with ADHD, but Dr. Shields believes that she should have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features as well as delusional disorder. He believes that her misdiagnosis contributed to her polysubstance abuse. Between 2003 and 2005, that is when Monica first reported having delusions and excessive paranoid thoughts.

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It was also around that time, as we know, that she was using all sorts of drugs. She did meth pretty much every day until she was 25, and text messages from the days surrounding the killings indicate that she was using again in October of 2010. Again, she did test negative on the day of the killings, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't using in the weeks or days before that.

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In one text message to Robert sent on October 10th, she wrote, you wanted me to stay thin and said it was important and okayed me to use to do that. Most likely referring to meth use, which does suppress your appetite and makes you not want to eat at all.

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So people who use meth regularly will be very underweight, will be very skinny, and you can sort of see like they have like a gauntness to their face because they just don't eat. Now, as many of us know, especially if you've watched Breaking Bad or any of the other drug shows for that matter, One of the biggest side effects of meth use is paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations.

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This is especially prominent in long-term users, and these effects can continue happening long after someone stops using meth. Dr. Shields concluded that she was highly intelligent, but she did not show any significant probability that she was faking her mental illness. She was clearly suffering from severe mental illness. She wasn't faking it. She wasn't exaggerating it.

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He thinks that her long-term drug use contributed to her delusions that she was being stalked. She thought that someone was going to take her and her daughters, separate them, and put them into a slave encampment where they would all be raped, tortured, and killed. She believed that this UPS driver had keys to her apartment and that he was a part of the conspiracy to kill her and her children.

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She believed that she was seeing messages warning her of the kidnapping embedded in the TV shows and cartoons that her children were watching. That is how deep her delusions went. She basically saw everything in her day to day life as confirmation that people were trying to kill her.

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Again, she thought that Robert being sent to Alaska confirmed that he was a part of this conspiracy to kidnap her and send her to a camp in Alaska. Then we know about how she thought Roxanne was in on it and poisoned the pizza that they were eating.

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Dr. Shields concluded that she was so delusional that she thought that the only way to save herself and her children was to kill them and herself before they got the chance to capture them and enslave them. He believes that in the time of the killing, she was unable to recognize the moral or legal wrongfulness of her actions. Therefore, she was insane at the time of the killings.

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The next doctor to evaluate Monica was Dr. Pablo Stewart, M.D. He also pointed to her significant meth use between the formidable years of 18 to 25 years old. And he does think that this contributed significantly to her paranoid delusions. He believed that Monica was in a state of psychosis and was suffering from delusions when the killings took place.

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He said that Monica reported using meth only once a week in the weeks leading to the killings. So he doesn't necessarily think that meth withdrawal was responsible for the delusions. He thinks that her depression got significantly worse after moving to California and that her mental health contributed to her psychosis.

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Once again, he concluded that she did not understand that her actions of killing her children was legally or morally wrong. The last doctor to evaluate Monica was Dr. Janice Nakagawa, Ph.D.

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There were claims of domestic abuse throughout their relationship. She had been arrested on several occasions for drug use and domestic violence as well. So because of her severe issues with drugs and accompanying mental health issues, her relationship with Michael, the father of her children,

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Monica told her that in the days before the murders, she armed herself with a gun and a sword and sat in front of the door and just stared at it for hours on end, waiting for someone to come inside and take them. She also said that she had packed up all of the stuffed animals and teddy bears because she thought that they had cameras in their eyes.

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So she wanted them put away somewhere else so that they couldn't watch her. Dr. Nakagawa described how her paranoid delusions were also in part because of the book Double Cross. This book describes multiple ways in which the killers hunt people and one of them is by taking women to an island and hurting them. Monica believed that this is what Robert was planning on doing to her.

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She told Dr. Nakagawa that she burned the apartment down because she didn't want Robert or her family to know what she did. If they found out that she killed her kids and herself, that her family would become involved with the people who were plotting to kidnap and kill her.

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basically saying that if they found out, Robert was going to go after her family next, so she didn't want it to be obvious that she was the one who killed her kids and killed herself, so that's why she set the apartment on fire. Now, there were texts to Robert in the days before the killings, which showed that she was acting normally and not paranoid at all.

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However, Monica told the doctors that she was acting normally towards Robert on purpose because she didn't want him to know what she was about to do. She said that she decided on October 10th that she was going to kill the girls.

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So for the two days after that, she didn't want Robert to figure out what she was planning so that he could come back and kidnap her before she got the chance to kill her kids and herself. Once again, this doctor did not believe that Monica knew her actions were wrong when she committed these murders.

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However, there were other things about Monica that maybe the psychiatrists didn't consider that maybe show she was a little bit more coherent and maybe had different motives than anybody thought. While awaiting her trial in jail, there were some things that Monica did that concerned those involved in her case.

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And at the same time, the prosecution was working very hard to try to prove that Monica was not insane at the time of the killings and that she did understand what she was doing. Now, at that point, she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and adjustment disorder. She had been medicated for these disorders, which said to all the psychiatrists,

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did not last so about a year or so after the twins were born by 2009 Michael and Monica split up after the breakup Monica moved from California to Pennsylvania for a change of scenery there she lived with one of her aunts and things seemed to be pretty calm for a period while she lived there it was a new change in pace and things were going really well for her and her children

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that she truly was psychotic. But while in jail, apparently she told another inmate to cut herself and start hearing voices so that she could go to the hospital and meet her there and not take accountability for what she did. That is concerning because that kind of shows that she knew exactly what she was saying to those psychiatrists.

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Then there were text messages that came out which showed that Monica may have known what she was doing, that she was still doing drugs, and that maybe she saw her children as an inconvenience to her, not as much as the little girls who she so desperately wanted to save. In one text message she sent to Robert, she basically said that she's overwhelmed with the girls

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and that she wishes that she was young and free again so that she could go out and party and not have so much responsibility. Then, in September, she texted Robert again saying, "...I am dying to smoke. I'm leaving them alone here. They probably won't wake up, but I can't help it. It's too hard to bring them everywhere."

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Then in another text, she wrote, They also brought up how, like I just mentioned, Monica told Dr. Nakagawa that she packed up all of the stuffed animals because they had cameras in their eyes. But when the girls were found, one of them had been wearing a teddy bear harness.

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So, if she truly thought that these animals had cameras in their eyes and she packed them all up, why did one of the girls have a stuffed animal at the time of her death? All of the psychiatrists also conceded that they did not think that Monica was actively using drugs at the time of the killings.

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but multiple text messages indicate that she was actively using meth in the weeks before the killings. They also conceded that they didn't consider the text messages, like saying that she needs to smoke, saying that the children are such a big inconvenience for her, that she, you know, needs some free time to herself.

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The psychiatrist said that they did not see those messages when writing their evaluation, so those are not things that they took into account. Now, meth is a drug that acts very quickly and therefore leaves the system very quickly.

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Depending on the dosage, the user's metabolism, the frequency of use, and other factors, meth can be detectable in your system for up to three to five days at most, depending on the drug test that is used. Some other sources say that it can be out of your system in as few as two days. So, if we are to use the higher end of the scale to be fair,

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she could have smoked meth five days before the murders and the drug test could have still come back clean that would fit if she really was using meth once a week and was starting to use again and even if the drug is out of your system people can still experience long-term side effects again even if you don't have an accompanying mental health disorder

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one of these biggest side effects is paranoia and delusions according to court documents a defendant cannot be found insane solely on the basis of addiction to or abuse of intoxicating substances this provision quote makes no exception for brain damage or mental disorders caused solely by one's voluntary substance abuse but which persists after the immediate effects of the intoxicant have been dissipated

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Rather, it erects an absolute bar prohibiting use of one's voluntary ingestion of intoxicants as the sole basis for an insanity defense, regardless whether the substance caused organic brain damage or settled a mental health disorder which persists after the immediate effects of the intoxicant have worn off.

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So based on the fact that the courts believed that her reason for these delusions and paranoia was mostly because of her drug use, and even if it was an underlying mental health disorder, the Matthews obviously made it come out and made it a lot worse.

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The jury felt that Monica did not meet the burden of proof necessary to show that she was insane at the time of the crimes and that it wasn't because of her drug use. So, she was found mentally competent to stand trial. Which just as a side note, I absolutely appreciate and agree with that rule.

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I already think that the insanity plea is stupid because you should be held accountable no matter what if you are responsible for the taking of another life. But even more so if you ingest something that you know is going to alter your mental state. Because again, when you do drugs, it's not because you think that it's going to make you feel exactly the same.

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But in November of 2009, Monica had been on Facebook when she reconnected with an old friend of hers who was living back in California. This man was Robert Paulson, who had a pretty rough history of his own. Robert had previously been dating a woman named Jill. And I believe the two were broken up when Robert and Monica started talking again.

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You know it's going to have an effect on how you're thinking and what you do and your actions. Whether it be weed, cocaine, alcohol, meth, mushrooms, whatever. I don't care how these drugs affect you. I don't care what drugs it is. I don't care if they're legal like alcohol or weed.

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If you kill someone because you were really drunk or really high or you were paranoid or you were on drugs or whatever, I don't care. You still took someone's life and you still should be held accountable. Case closed. So because of this, by June of 2012, Monica's trial for two counts of first-degree murder started. The jury heard the evidence that we've been talking about throughout this video.

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So the case that I have for you all today is definitely a very tragic case. It's really awful how this entire thing was able to happen, and I do feel like things could have been done to prevent it. There is also an element to this case of whether or not the person responsible could be held accountable for her actions because of mental health,

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The Matthews, the mental health issues, the paranoid delusions that she experienced. The big question was, did she kill her babies because she really thought she was saving them or did she just see them as inconveniences? Was she just overwhelmed, wishing that she could be free to party and do drugs without the burden of her two twin girls weighing her down?

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After hearing all of the evidence, which is pretty much what I've been discussing throughout the entire video, I don't want to go over all of it again because that would be redundant. After hearing all of the evidence, she clearly did murder her children and she did use drugs. She clearly had some sort of mental health issues, but at the same time, even though she was paranoid.

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Even though she was telling, you know, all these friends and family members that she was paranoid that Robert was going to hurt her, she also showed evidence that she simply was getting tired of being a mother and that she needed either a break or she just didn't want to be a mother anymore.

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So, by June 15th of 2012, the jury found that Monica McCarrick was guilty on two counts of first-degree murder as well as assault on a child causing death. By October 4th of 2012, the jury sentenced her to two life terms without the possibility of parole for the murders, as well as two additional sentences of 25 years to life for the charges of assault causing death.

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According to sources reporting on the trial and sentencing, Monica expressed her deepest sorrow for what she did. I'm using air quotes because that is an actual quote. She said that she felt really bad for what she did and that she was deeply remorseful to the courts as well as to Michael, the father of her children.

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She went on to say, Michael also took the stand to express to the judge that he doesn't want leniency for Monica. He referred to her only as the defendant, never saying her name or addressing her. What she did is just inconceivable and unforgivable, and he is devastated at what she did.

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He said that he is going to miss the joys of being a father and that nothing will ever bring his twin girls back. So that is pretty much where the case ends. Obviously, this is one of the most devastating crimes that you can imagine. I cannot express how awful I think these girls' deaths must have been.

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But I will say that I am so happy that she had to take responsibility for what she did to those girls. Like I said, I don't think smoking meth is a reason to be able to say that you aren't responsible for murdering your two daughters in such a brutal way. And I personally think that the reason for this wasn't just one or the other.

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When someone is so paranoid and delusional, it's not like they only have that one way of thinking all of the time. So I personally think that it was a little bit of both. I do think that she really did have times where she thought she was being watched and hunted. But I also think there were other times where she was frustrated and felt overwhelmed and got sick of being a mother.

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But after the breakup and after Monica and Robert started talking again, in April of 2010, Jill took her own life. She had actually used one of Robert's guns to shoot herself. So obviously this was very tragic and devastating for Robert to go through. So Robert and Monica continued their relationship long distance until May of 2010 when they became engaged.

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I think both can be true at the same time and I think both did contribute to the crime. I don't know what state of mind she was in when she murdered those girls, but I don't think anybody is ever in the right state of mind when they kill someone. So do I think she was in the right state of mind and a proper state of mind when she murdered her daughters? No, obviously not.

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Do I think something made her snap and act out? Yes. Do I think she is regretful and remorseful? Yes. But I also do think that she knew what she was doing and for whatever reason, she thought that her life would be better without them. I also do think that she might have fully intended on killing herself She did give herself some pretty gnarly injuries.

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Like, she literally severed her Achilles tendons. She severed other tendons. She had very deep wounds. It's not like other cases where someone's trying to fake that they got attacked and, you know, have all these superficial scratches all over their bodies. I do think that she...

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wanted to die and I think that she cut herself all over with the intention of doing that but regardless Monica knew that she had other options I don't know why she had to take her girls down with her if she truly wanted to die herself I think that's just Something I will never understand when people like this will kill their children and then either kill themselves or try to.

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It just doesn't make any sense to me. It obviously doesn't make sense to anybody else except for the people that do these things. I don't think any normal person could understand why this happens. But regardless, Monica had other options. She knew that she could have given the children back to her ex if she really thought that they were such a burden or that Robert was going to take them.

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Her ex's mother literally said that they would take the children from her and that they would take care of them. And I'm sure it could have been a completely cordial and normal situation if she really didn't think that she could handle the children.

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Or if she thought that their lives were in danger, she could have given them to Michael and his mother and let them take care of them while she was figuring out, you know, what these people were doing to try and kidnap her or whatever.

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i just think that there were so many things that went into this crime but i do think at the end of the day that monica knew what she was doing but i do think that she knew what she was doing to an extent i think that she knew it was wrong and i do think that that is why she tried burning the house down because

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If she got rid of all the evidence, then no one could see what she did and nobody would know that she's the one that murdered her children or, you know, that she cut them and hurt them in such a horrific way. I don't know what her mindset was. I don't think we will ever know.

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I don't think any, you know, person that kills their kids or kills another person, I don't think we'll ever know like what is going through their head when they are doing it and when they think that this is the right thing to do. But at the end of the day, this is what she chose to do. And she is serving time for it and I'm very happy about that. But that is all I have for today's video.

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And now I really want to hear what you all think. Do you think that she was insane when she killed those girls? Do you think that she really thought she was saving them? Or do you think she got sick of being a mother and wanted them out of the picture? Let me know any thoughts that you have in the comments below.

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If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. All are going to be linked down below.

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If you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which also will be listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

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And by the end of August of 2010, Monica packed up her things and moved herself and her twins back across the country to California to live with Robert, her new fiance. Once she was in California in her new apartment with Robert, things seemed to be going very well. She had gone to school and got her driver's license to work as a dental assistant and started working at a dental office after that.

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She seemed to be pretty stable and happy for the time being. Anytime she needed extra money or extra help with anything, Robert was happy to help. Robert saw Monica as a very good mother who loved her young daughters and and just wanted to do her best to take care of them.

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At the same time, Monica did her best to help Robert cope with the recent loss of his ex-girlfriend, and she understood that even though the two were broken up when this happened, this was a very tragic situation and this was someone that he once cared about, so he needed to grieve through it. However, Robert's job actually required him to travel quite a bit, which did put some strain on Monica.

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By September 9th, only a few weeks after Monica moved in with Robert, she had to leave and go to Minnesota for a month-long work assignment. Obviously, this wasn't ideal, but for the time being, Monica seemed to be doing okay with the distance.

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The two spoke on the phone regularly, and Robert made sure to assure Monica that things were going great, that they were happy, and that these work assignments weren't going to last forever. Again, Monica didn't love the distance, but she seemed like she was okay with it at first. But as time went on, Robert and other friends and family members started to notice a shift in behaviors from Monica.

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Friends said that it was obvious that Monica was struggling. In California, she had a lot less support than she did back in Pennsylvania. She was having a lot of trouble taking care of her twins on her own. She was struggling to sleep. She was very irritable and often went on rambling rants that people could barely understand.

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According to Robert, about two or three weeks into his work assignment, Robert started to notice that Monica seemed to be deteriorating. She seemed to be very paranoid and was getting upset about a lot of random things.

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So apparently, Robert and a friend had been writing a script for a slasher horror movie and the script was apparently about a man who stalked children on a beach and in the end, everybody in the movie dies. Monica found this script and she became very, very upset, telling Robert that he had written this story about her and that he was planning to kill her and her daughters.

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So I'm really looking forward to hearing what all of you think about this case after hearing the details. Today we are going to be discussing the tragic murders of Tori and Lily Ball. Tori Ball and her twin sister Lily Ball were born on September 12, 2007 in San Diego, California to Monica McCarrick and Michael Ball. These twins were known to be loving, sweet, and full of life.

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I don't really know what to make of this script. It is a little bit unusual that a normal person like Robert and a friend would be writing a horror movie together, but there is a lot of people that are just into that kind of thing. Doesn't mean that they're bad people, doesn't mean that they're violent in their personal lives.

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They could just be into horror movies and it could be like one of these things where You and your buddy want to write a movie, you think you're going to go big time, you think you're going to send it off to Hollywood and they're going to, you know, pay you millions of dollars to produce it. It's a dream that a lot of people have. So this totally could have been what the situation was.

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But like I said, when Monica found it, she did not like it one bit and she was very suspicious of the entire thing. Then Monica started to say that the only reason Robert started his relationship with Monica and had her move out was so that he could hurt her. Like the only reason he dated her was so that he could hurt her. Then she started accusing Robert of cheating on her with another woman.

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And this even got as far as her suggesting that maybe Robert was the one who drove his ex Jill to suicide. Then she started to tell him that all of her friends hated him. But Robert wasn't the only person that Monica became paranoid about. She expressed to Robert that she was afraid of a UPS delivery driver who she claimed had entered their apartment.

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There were times that she refused to leave her apartment altogether because she thought that somebody was sitting in a car outside stalking her. It seemed that Monica's mood would jump up and down, and in one moment, she would be upset and paranoid. Robert would try his best to talk her down, calm her down, and make her happy, which sometimes did work.

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Sometimes she would end these calls happy, content, and calm, but then the next day, she would go back to being upset and paranoid all over again. There was one night where Monica had taken her three-year-old twin daughters to visit Robert's mother, Roxanne. Monica, Lily, and Tori all spent the night at Roxanne's place, but right from the jump, Roxanne noticed that Monica was nervous and anxious.

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It was clear to Roxanne that Monica was having a very rough time managing things while Robert was away. That same night at around 2 or 3 in the morning, Monica took her daughters and put them in the car, telling Roxanne that there was someone parked outside of the house that was watching them. Roxanne told Monica that her car belonged to a neighbor who went to work early in the morning,

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but she didn't believe her. Monica got into the car with the girls, sitting there texting Roxanne. She asked Roxanne if they were safe to leave until she did ultimately left and took the girls home. At the same time, during the month of September, again for about the first month of living with Robert, Monica was also texting her friends about some of her concerns.

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There was one friend from Pennsylvania, Maritza, who she would text regularly after the move. She told Maritza that she was worried about whether Robert and his mother would accept her. She said that she was worried that they wouldn't accept her or her children, saying that she was jealous of the Facebook friends that Robert had.

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She also added that her and Robert were not getting along at that time. On September 25th, Monica texted her friend, quote, Then she told Maritza about the slasher screenplay that Robert was writing, saying that she was afraid that the story was about how he was going to kill her, Lily, and Tori. On September 29th, she texted, quote, they want to steal the girls and kill me, I think.

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But Maritza wasn't the only friend that Monica was expressing these types of fears to. Monica had another friend, Pamela, who was living in Los Angeles at the time. She would also tell Pamela that she was afraid of Robert and his mother, saying that Robert wanted to hurt her. In one text on September 25th, Monica texted Pamela saying, He scares me. I feel like he's going to hurt me.

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As twins, they had a special bond that only a twin could understand. But the girls were born into a rough life from the start. Monica, their mother, had always struggled with mental health and drug use for basically her entire life. When Monica was 12 years old in 1995, Monica was hospitalized for self-inflicted wounds and suicidal ideation, as well as intoxication.

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I never meant to hurt him. I need to know I am safe, so hopefully this is a paranoid delusion, but I'm telling you, if I end up missing or dead, or they say that I tried to commit suicide, it is a cover-up. In the days after that text message Pamela continued talking to Monica and tried helping her through her situation. She suggested that Monica visit her mother.

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She also helped her set up a phone counseling appointment for October 6th to try and help her out with her situation and to talk about her worries and to talk about what she was paranoid about. Then in the beginning of October, Monica told Pamela that she was rereading Jill's obituary. Remember, Jill is Robert's ex-girlfriend who died by suicide.

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And she said that she thought that Robert actually murdered Jill, that it wasn't a suicide at all. She did use his gun to take her own life after all and so it could be possible that Robert was actually responsible.

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These thoughts and fears only heightened when in early October, Robert called Monica to inform her that he was not going to be returning home after his Minnesota assignment like he was supposed to. He was actually going to be staying in Alaska for an additional 10 days on another work assignment after the Minnesota one ended.

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So not only was he not going to be able to come home and see her before his next work assignment, but he had to go straight from Minnesota to Alaska, so he wasn't going to be able to see her at all. When Robert told her this, she became very upset, and her and Robert fought about it over the phone. After this, her concerns and worries got worse and worse.

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Now, I do believe this was a different day than the day that Monica and her children left Roxanne's house at 2 or 3 in the morning.

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it's not totally clear with the sources that i read but i believe it was after finding out about the alaska trip monica and the twins were at roxanne's house again hanging out and eating pizza so she was just there for dinner this time monica said though that the pizza made all three of them sick so this confirmed her belief that roxanne and robert were trying to kill her

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She was convinced that this pizza was poisoned. At that point, Monica started to believe that Alaska wasn't a work trip. Instead, it was a plan by Robert to kidnap her, Lily, and Tori and put them into a sex enslavement camp. in Alaska.

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Then, after suspecting pretty much everybody close to her in her life of wanting to harm her, she started to see other people wanting to harm her pretty much all around her. Everybody that she saw in her day-to-day life, she was suspicious of.

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On October 10, 2010, Monica had gone to the front office at her apartment complex to talk to one of the managers, but it was a Sunday, so the office was closed. But to her, the fact that it was closed was very suspicious. She thought that it was closed because this is where people were congregating and setting up operations to kidnap her and her daughters.

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She was convinced that there were helicopters watching her outside and she thought that they were coming for her. By October 11th, 2010, Monica had called Tori and Lily's paternal grandmother or her ex Michael's mother, Faye, to ask them who was going to take the girls. In that phone call, Faye said that Monica sounded irrational and erratic.

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To Faye, she thought that Monica was probably trying to ask her for help with caring for the twins. So she said that if Monica brought the twins to her home in Southern California, that she would start proceedings to get custody of them if that's what Monica wanted. But she ended up telling Faye that her current fiance Robert was kicking her out because he had some sort of vendetta against her.

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At 12 years old, she had already started drinking alcohol. This was nothing new, though, as she had been self-harming from even a younger age. Then, by the age of 14 years old, Monica was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and was prescribed medication to treat it.

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But from what we can tell, that wasn't true. It doesn't seem like Robert was kicking her out. it seemed that she either made this up or, more likely, that she thought this was true even though it wasn't actually true. She might have just thought that Robert was trying to kick her out even if he actually wasn't.

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Then, on the morning of October 12, 2010, the assistant manager of the apartment complex where Monica lived asked her to move her car because it was blocking some of the other parking spots. However, when the assistant manager arrived, Monica would not open the door.

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It's always so horrifying when a child murders, especially when they take the lives of family members who loved them. Sometimes it can be for mental health reasons that the parents either didn't know about or didn't realize were as serious as they were.

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However, just two weeks before her death, Irena gave birth to a baby girl who is fathered by Derek's stepfather and the family lived together in an apartment in Hialeah, Florida. As far as I have been able to find, we don't know the name of the baby girl. I also haven't seen the stepfather's name listed anywhere.

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But again, he continued stabbing her until he knew she was dead.

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he said that his stepdad has two guns that he keeps in the home but since he's a truck driver he carries one of them with him at work at all times but he still had another gun at the home so after killing his mother he went into the closet and found the other gun he explains that he initially wanted to shoot himself but after putting in the magazine and pulling up the slide he decided that he couldn't shoot himself

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After that, he said that he called his friend Sweden to tell him what he had done and to say goodbye. Once again, he admitted that he sent those photos of his mom as well as that selfie to Sweden. After hanging up with Sweden, he immediately called 911 to report what had happened.

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When police asked him why he killed his mother though, he got up to go to the restroom and then he came back and he immediately asked for a lawyer. He was now refusing to answer questions as to why he did what he did and to this day, I still don't think he's told anybody why this happened. Here is a video of that confession. I want to note that there are a few things that are redacted.

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So if there are parts that are fading out or you can tell that he's talking but there's no sound, that's because those parts are redacted. It's not like an editing error or anything like that. Those parts just haven't been released to the public.

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We do hear it in the 911 call, but I can't really make the name out, and I do want to respect his privacy anyways, given the awful, immeasurable tragedy that he's just gone through. By all accounts, it appeared that Irena, her husband, and Derek were all excited for the arrival of their newest addition into the family.

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Irina and the family can be seen smiling in her maternity photos, cradling her stomach, excited for the baby's arrival. According to one friend, Irina could be described as a beautiful person on the inside and out. She was so warm and kind, and by all accounts, she was a good mother.

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Of course, even after hearing that confession, police still needed to conduct a thorough investigation. They found that Irina actually had a baby cam in their room and that baby cam captured the footage of a violent, brutal attack. On that footage, at 10.23pm, we see Irina in her bed, cradling her two-week-old baby girl.

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She falls asleep and she puts Irina back in the crib, which is located right next to her bed. By 11pm, investigators found actual footage of what they described as a brutal, frenzied attack carried out by Derek on his mother, where again, he stabbed her over 46 times. That is just an insane amount of times to stab your own mother.

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Of course, they have not released a full video of the attack, and even if they did, I wouldn't play it anyways, but they did release this still image of Derek standing over his mother's body while she lay in bed as he stabs her to death. It is such an eerie and disturbing image, especially knowing that the little baby girl is right there.

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Based on that footage, investigators believe that the baby was asleep for the entire attack. Thank God. After hearing his confession and seeing the evidence that we have up to this point, initially, Derek was charged with second-degree murder. At that time, he was held at a Miami-Dade juvenile detention center.

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13-year-old Derek was in the eighth grade at the iMatter Academy, which is a tuition-free charter school, and there he was known as an honor student. Meanwhile, Derek's stepfather worked as a truck driver, so it appears that he had a schedule that kept him away from the home for extended periods of time.

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However, after looking through his internet activity, police found some extremely disturbing internet searches. They found searches for what is the best place to stab someone? Is a small knife good for killing? Is it easier to kill someone with a small knife? And can a knife cut through bone? Because of this, of course, police felt that this absolutely was a premeditated murder.

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Sometimes they lash out at abusers or again, family members who didn't take them seriously when they found out that they were being abused, possibly by a family member. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a reason at all. Either way, it's always just so unfathomable and so jarring when any child commits a crime as brutal as murder.

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So they upped his charges to first-degree murder and transferred him to a juvenile wing at an adult prison. In the state of Florida, first-degree murder is automatically placed into the adult felony court system. While he will not face the death penalty, though it is legal in Florida, he very well could be sentenced to life behind bars.

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At his initial hearing, his family submitted a not guilty plea on his behalf. At his bail hearing, family members of Derrick's showed up in droves. His father, Jose Rosa, said that he had sent over 20 letters to the court which described Derrick as a good, respectful kid who was on the honor roll in 8th grade.

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They said that Derek was beloved by his mother and his friends and his family still love and support him. Jose himself had spent 22 years in the military prior to this, and he said that he instilled good moral values in his son. Derek's family asked that he be allowed to await his trial at home. His father said, quote, it's hard for us to explain how this occurred.

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I guess what we're asking for is another opportunity, a second chance to help him grow and become mature as a grown man to put this behind him and say, we have your back. We're here to support you. It's hard to take back what already occurred. so we can only move forward and try to give him more support and let him know that we love him.

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He said that this incident was very out of character for his son. He continued, quote, it's very unfortunate that this tragedy occurred, but this child is still very humble, very peaceful, and no one could imagine that this would ever happen. Another family member described Derek as affectionate and loving. They said, quote, This is not like Derek. No one knows Derek like we know him.

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However, by October 12, 2023, at around 11.30 p.m., 911 received a very disturbing call from the residence where Irina, her husband Derek, and their new baby girl lived. In that call, we can hear Derek requesting police to come to his house because he had just stabbed his mom.

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However, ultimately, he was denied bail. They also asked that Derek be transferred to a juvenile facility, saying that the juvenile wing in the adult facility is not equipped to handle children. They said that he's not given meals until 1 or 2 in the morning.

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They said that he can't even wear his glasses unless he directly requests them and that he's not on any specific educational class schedule. A family member told the courts that it is very important that he goes to class. He's a 13-year-old boy. He needs to be getting some sort of education and he needs to be treated like a child, not an adult.

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He is also the youngest of all the 34 juveniles being held in the juvenile wing in the adult prison. So beyond him not being treated properly in the adult jail, they argued that because he's just a 13-year-old boy, that he shouldn't even be considered an adult in the justice system. Derek's attorneys agree and are also fighting for him to be transferred to a juvenile facility.

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At this time, through all of the hearings that Derek has been through up to this point, it's been said that he's shown no emotion and has remained oddly calm throughout the entire process, though family members claim that he has become emotional at some points.

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In the first five-ish minutes of the call, he's explaining that he doesn't know his address, so he looks around for mail so he can tell them their address. He said that it was just him, his mom, and the baby sister in the home because his stepfather was out at work driving his truck far away that day.

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He has not explained why he did what he did and neither have his attorneys. They also have not argued about anything with mental health or anything like that up to this point. As of right now, Derek remains in the adult prison and is being charged with first degree murder as an adult. If convicted, he could be facing up to life in prison.

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So that is all of the information that we have up to this point. For me, this is a very, very tough case. Obviously, Derek is still a child. He's only 13 years old. And when children commit crimes like this, it's natural to almost feel bad for what he's now going through. This is definitely going to be a controversial conversation. so feel free to sound off with your opinions in the comments.

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But some people strongly believe that children should never be sentenced to life no matter what crime they commit. Some people believe, on the other hand, that if you commit an adult act, then you deserve to be treated as an adult. And I, for one, I'm somewhere in the middle.

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I think that each case should be looked at differently and that all the factors at play in each individual case should determine whether a child is charged as an adult. Again, this case is hard because Derek isn't even in high school yet. That is how young he is. But at the same time, the level of violence that he was able to enact on his own mother, that is terrifying.

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Anybody capable of stabbing someone that many times has something seriously wrong with them. And I don't think that they are someone who can be trusted to be out in society. So as of right now, I think with this case in particular, we need to consider the safety of Derek's friends, family, loved ones, his community, and society as a whole.

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rather than thinking only about what a 13-year-old deserves because I think that Derek is a danger to everybody around him and will continue to be, possibly for the rest of his life. So again, as of right now, I do agree that Derek should be charged as an adult because if he were charged as a juvenile, there is a chance of him being released at 18 years old

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and I just don't think that's safe for anybody, including those around Derek. It most likely wouldn't happen given the severity of the case, but I don't even want that to be up for debate. I do hope that Derek receives a lifelong amount of therapy. He obviously really needs it.

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He explained that there was a gun in the home in the other room, but he did also have a knife nearby. It's kind of interesting because as he's going through this and looking through the mail, he said that he couldn't actually read the mail, like he couldn't read the address that was listed on there. So the dispatcher just told him to read off the numbers and letters if he could.

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Again, his attorneys have not brought up anything in relation to mental health, but I've said it once and I'll say it again, Anybody who commits this type of crime, especially with this level of brutality, especially against his own mother, that is somebody that has something severely wrong with them. I am also looking forward to finding out more. I want to know why this happened.

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What are his lawyers going to argue? Are they going to claim mental illness? If so, why haven't they said anything about that yet? If they don't claim mental illness, what else could they possibly argue to defend him in this? Was his mother abusive? I haven't seen anything about that either, and of course, I'm not going to make any baseless accusations against anybody.

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For now, I will say that we don't know nearly enough to even question if she was abusive. I don't think she was, and based on what other people have said about her, Doesn't seem like she was in the slightest, but there does have to be something that explains why he did this. So as soon as we find out more, especially if more comes out at the trial, I will share any and all updates with you all.

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But for now, that is where I'm going to end today's video. And now I want to hear what you guys think. What do you think led Derek to killing his mother? What do you think about his actions after? Do you agree with him being charged as an adult? What do you think of his family asking for a second chance? Sound off with anything that you have to say in the comments below.

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If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. All will be linked down below.

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And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

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That was a little bit confusing to me. He obviously could just be in a state of shock and just like isn't processing anything right now. That's totally possible. But I just thought that it was interesting that he said that he couldn't read off the mail to her. He then mentions that he has other family members who can take care of his sister.

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And after that, he told the dispatcher that he took pictures of his mother and what happened after he stabbed her and sent those pictures to his friends, asking the dispatcher, is that bad? The dispatcher asked him why he killed his mom, but he just avoids those questions. Eight minutes into that 911 call, he does start sounding emotional, saying that he is sad and he's sorry for what he did.

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When the police arrived, he started asking if they were going to kill him. He actually stayed on the line for a total of 18 minutes until we hear police arrive, but obviously I'm going to edit down the call to make it a little bit more digestible and not quite as long.

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And in this case, we genuinely do not have the answers for why this happened. Everyone who knew the family are just shocked and devastated at what happened here. I will warn you that this case is very difficult to listen to. They have released certain images of the crime scene as well as images of the attack actually taking place.

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I'm not going to show you any images that I think are extremely graphic, unnecessarily graphic, but even the images I do show, just knowing what occurred before, during, and after these images are taken, just makes them so much more disturbing to look at. So that is what I will say about that. Without any further delay, let's get into today's case.

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This is the story of Irina Garcia and her son, Derek Rosa. As of right now, there's not a lot known about 38-year-old Irina Garcia or her 13-year-old son, Derek Rosa. What we do know is that Derek was born to Irina and his father, Jose Rosa.

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By the time police arrived to the scene, of course, they immediately arrested Derek and they went inside to inspect the scene and what they walked into was just horrific. They went into Irina's room and found her lying splayed out on the floor with over a dozen stab wounds to her neck and chest with one slashing wound severing an artery in her neck.

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Upon later autopsy, it turned out that Irina had been stabbed over 46 times.

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times in the bedroom police found a kitchen knife with a pink or purple handle and a six inch blade sitting on the dresser and it was still covered in blood and hair also in that room the two week old baby who was unharmed was still asleep in her crib after discovering this grisly scene police went through Derek's phone and on that phone they found even more disturbing things

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They found that Derek, just as he told the dispatcher, took photos of his dead mother after he stabbed her as well as a selfie of himself allegedly after killing his mother. In the selfie, he's sticking out his tongue and holding up a hang loose sign and you can see that there is blood all over his hand.

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He then sent a selfie as well as two photos of his mother to a friend only named in his phone as Sweden with a text message saying goodbye accompanying those pictures. I don't know if police know the identity of this friend yet, but we do know that his or her name has not been released publicly.

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After being taken into the police station for questioning pretty much right away, Derek admitted to investigators what he had done. He said that that night he went to bed at 10 p.m. and so did his mom. But then he woke up, went into the kitchen, grabbed a large-sized knife, and stabbed her. He first started stabbing her while she was asleep, but then she woke up and started screaming.

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today we are going to be discussing the horrifying case of calyx and beau two young vibrant teenagers whose lives were tragically cut short by the one person who should have loved them the most their own mother julie and when you hear about how she planned these murders carried them out and then the reasoning she gave afterwards your jaw will be on the floor. I know mine was.

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When the officer asked what happened with her suicide attempt, basically why it didn't work, Julie said that she kept hearing noises from the kids, like gurgling noises. So she went back to their bodies to cover both of them in blankets and to apologize for her behavior. She also mentioned at one point that she tried manipulating Calyx's face into a smile, but obviously it didn't stay that way.

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She said that she was going to shoot herself too, but she fell asleep instead, being rudely awoken by the officers who found her. She mentioned that in the weeks before the murders, she had been writing a journal about how she was feeling and what she was planning to do. The last entry she wrote was shortly after she had shot them.

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Then, as we know, she had taken some of her medication, including Oxycontin, and fell asleep on the back porch where she had gone to smoke. After this interview, of course, officers charged Julie with two counts of first-degree murder. It was clear that she was not mentally well. She had been suffering with some sort of mental illness.

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But the question was just how much of a role did it play in what she did? And was it so bad to the point where she didn't realize what she was doing? That is what psychiatrists work to figure out as she awaited her trial in jail. Also after finding the bodies of the children, officers did contact Parker in Qatar telling him that he needs to come home immediately.

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He did just that and of course he was met with his new reality. His wife murdered their two children who he loved so very much. He had always known that Julie was struggling with life, struggling with her children, but there was no way that he could have known just how far she would take it. He was obviously devastated and wanted to do anything he could to understand what happened

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and to help investigators get a deeper look into the disturbed mind of his wife. Of course, as all of this was going on, officers went back to the home to continue their investigation, and there, they found a lot that gave them much more insight into Julie's state of mind leading to shooting her children. Upon entering the home, investigators first found two sticky notes that Julie left behind.

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They were addressed to friends, and the other was addressed to carpool. After moving to Tampa, Calix and Bo started carpooling with their neighbors, who would take turns driving the kids to practices and events. In the weeks after the accident, the neighbor was the one driving them around most of the time.

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The note informed friends and carpool that they had gone on a trip to New York, so they weren't home. There was then a third note left in the home as well, which read, donate my body to science. Then they found that in the family day planner, Julie wrote a note on the day of Tuesday the 1st, which said, Bo is in the van on the way to practice. Calyx is in her bed. Try to make her more comfortable.

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She was known as having an energizing, uplifting spirit. She was a tenacious athlete, excelling at both cross country and track. She always just had this intense desire to learn and work hard towards her goals. She absolutely loved Harry Potter, which led her to establish a Harry Potter club in her high school in Tampa, Florida, where she was living at the time.

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This was most likely a note to her husband so that he could find their bodies once he returned home. On her computer, they had also found a bunch of emails that Julie had been writing back and forth between Parker, her brother, and her mother in the months and weeks leading to the murders.

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Some of the emails sent by Parker outline just how bad Julie's mental health had gotten over the course of their 20-year marriage. Parker wrote about how Julie was broken long before he met her. She had always dealt with alcohol and drug abuse.

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She was prescribed all sorts of medication for her bipolar disorder, which led to other issues such as tardive dyskinesia, which is a movement disorder caused by long-term use of certain medications and can explain why some of her emails were so jumbled and incoherent. He lived with her and supported her even though she spent weeks or months at a time in bed not moving and not speaking.

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She would allegedly abuse Parker, slapping and hitting him in front of the kids. Then she could hit or slap her children as well. She often drove recklessly. Oftentimes her children didn't feel safe having Julie driving them. There were times when Beau would flat out refuse to ride with Julie to practices because she'll almost hit mailboxes and turns out right in front of cars.

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Some of the emails also detailed how strained her relationship was with her daughter. Again, Calyx was starting to act out, talk back, and give attitude. Julie was having a hard time dealing with that and took it very personally. She never really understood that Calyx was a teenager and most teenagers will act out and may say some hurtful things. That's just a part of life.

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Then, as I stated before, it was the one email to her brother and mother on the night of January 27th that alerted them into thinking that something was wrong. Her complaining about Calyx and Bo saying that she was at her wit's end, but that it would all be over soon. That is what led to Julie's mother calling 911.

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But they also found that on that same night on January 27th, she also emailed her husband Parker, who again was in Qatar on deployment. She first wrote, In another email she sent a few minutes later, she continues, Calyx has all A's and B's. Beau has two C's, which will cross out a couple A's he has, but still a three. It's thought that these emails were sent after she murdered her children.

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Along with the information found on Julie's computer, they also found her journal lying on the bed where she wrote multiple entries in the weeks and days leading to the murders, as well as immediately after. Once again, they give us a lot of information about what she was going through mentally at that time. On one page, she wrote a list of all the things she didn't like about Calyx.

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She wrote that Calyx once sprayed her with Lysol after coming in from smoking. Calyx apparently told Julie, if I commit suicide, it's your fault. She wrote that Calyx was a bully and that Beau had become her ally. On another page, she wrote only, you're a failure. Another entry warns of the coming massacre, which she planned for Thursday.

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She also wrote some pages about what to do with her and the kids after they were found dead. She said that she had no idea where the funeral services should be done but offered a few suggestions. She said that she wanted their bodies to be donated to science but asked that she later be cremated and have her ashes mixed with her children's.

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She wanted her clothes to be given away and wanted Parker to inform her friends and family of her passing before it made the news. Then, in another entry, she wrote out her meticulous plan for how she was going to murder her children, including purchasing the gun, in what order she will shoot the kids, and how she plans to take her own life. Once again, it's a little bit hard to read this.

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When she wasn't running for sport or reading Harry Potter, she worked hard to put her efforts towards making a positive impact on the world. She helped the school raise money for the American Cancer Society and often spoke of how badly she just wanted to help her fellow human. Beau was known as a very likable and easygoing person.

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No, it is in her handwriting, so there was a couple words that were difficult to make out. So I did my best, but here's what I got from the note. I was hoping it would be tonight. I can't stand it waiting for five days. I will purchase the gun on Thursday, then get Bo into my room for sleeping in good night, sleep in daybed. Kellex, she will get it first.

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Don't know whether I'll first turn on the light to blind or just react to having me in her bedroom. I'm nervous. She took too many bullets. I don't want to have to reload bullets for Beau's. If Beau sleeps upstairs, I don't know if he'll hear the shots at Calix. Hopefully he'll sleep in my bedroom then upstairs. Can't took Beau to be woken up by guns gunshots. Lastly, I'll take my own life.

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I'll have my oxys maybe with some white wine. Then she writes about how the murders went down after going through with it. In one part, she wrote, I have really lost my mind. I'm sad, my two babies. It was too easy to take them out. Continuing, I offed Bo on the way to practice. I accidentally shot the window, then shot him.

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One in the side of the head and one in the mouth because he became so mouthy, just like Calyx. I walked up without Calyx reacting and shot her in the right temple. Then I shot her in the mouth, her sassy little mouth. Another page details how she was feeling mentally. This entry also appears to have been written after the murders, but I'm not completely sure.

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She also writes about how she wanted to save her own children from the mental illness they likely inherited. It says, I am so tired and sick. I have to get psyched up for a shower before track pickup at 4.30. Parker, I'm sorry. So sorry. I didn't know what to say, but I sensed a divorce was inevitable. I can't live alone.

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In my last seven weeks in bed, no one came into the bedroom to see how I was. You didn't teach the kids to become compassionate. Neither were you. I just needed a little chat. My meds never kicked in. Might have made a difference. I thought the doctor tried hard and Beth was tough, held me accountable. Ma. Couldn't do it. I'm not an alcoholic.

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Didn't need a detox and used oxys one or two for pain as prescribed. I should have went to a psych ward instead of alcohol slash addict ward. I admit my brain is trashed. Going on to say, if you wonder why I decided to take out the kids is to protect them from embarrassing them for the rest of their lives. It was my time to go. Heaven is waiting for me. I have done my job on this earth.

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The best job I ever had was having slash bringing up my babies. This is why I had to bring them on with me. It's too possible they've inherited the DNA and their lives depressed or bipolar. I believe I saved them from the pain." Now, I get a few things from this part of her journal.

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It's honestly hard to tell if she's being genuine or not because, as we saw before, the first thing she said was that she shot them because they were too sassy. Now, all of a sudden, she shot them because she was trying to save them.

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To me, I think part of the reason she wrote this part was because after shooting her children, she might have realized like, oh my God, everyone's going to think I'm a monster. Even if she did kill herself, everybody's going to see me so negatively. Everyone's going to think I'm a terrible person.

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So she wanted to make sure she also wrote this part so that maybe people would look at her more as a hero and less as a villain who just murdered her children because they were sassing her. But let me know what you think about this part. Do you think that she's being genuine or do you think she's kind of writing it as a cop-out? Let me know.

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He made friends easily, making sure to maintain his relationships even with friends from overseas. He was very intelligent, with this unique ability to retain any information that came his way. He was known to be empathetic, intuitive, and funny. He loved video games, but you would most often find him outside playing soccer, street hockey, or football.

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Now, along with the journal and emails on her computers, detectives also found over 500 different prescription pill bottles in the home, including antipsychotic medication, lithium for bipolar disorder, oxycodone, and a blood thinning medication. which was one of the medications she had taken after shooting her children in this, I guess, attempt to take her own life.

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Now, clearly, we can see based on all of this that Julie is fighting a battle in her own head. She is obviously mentally ill and has a lot of conflicting thoughts. She's clearly struggling. However, while we know this to be true, it still appears that she was coherent enough to plan the murders. think logically about how to do it, when to do it, and what could go wrong.

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This wasn't some spur of the moment break in insanity that drove her to go on a rampage. This was a thought out objective, which she planned out over the course of multiple days. At this point, detectives had a pretty good idea of what happened and why. She murdered her children partially because she was tired of them. She was tired of the disrespect, tired of the attitudes.

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At the same time, she felt that her marriage with Parker was crumbling. She thought that divorce was inevitable and she resented him. She hated him. She had every intention of him coming home to discover what she did, making him suffer immeasurable amounts of pain and anguish.

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The investigation lasted for about three years, all while Julie was evaluated by mental health experts to determine her capability to stand trial. because even though she admitted to officers what she did and why, she still pleaded not guilty due to reason of insanity. But it was ultimately determined that Julie was mentally fit to stand trial.

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So by May of 2014, Julie's trial for the murders of her two teenage children, Calix and Beau, began. The prosecution in this case decided not to go for the death penalty, instead opting for life in prison. They argued that there was enough evidence to prove that she was mentally ill, but not legally insane.

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In order to say that she was legally insane to the point that she can't be held accountable for her actions, it had to be proven that Julie didn't know that killing her kids was wrong. Clearly, she did know that it was wrong, as we can see via her own journal entries and the police interview.

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At the trial, the prosecution argued that Julie meticulously planned the brutal murder of her two teenage children out of anger and resentment towards them and her husband. One, again, because they were mouthy and she was tired of dealing with it. But she was again also resentful towards her husband and had every intention of him coming home and finding his entire family dead.

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We can see that because she literally emailed him after murdering the children saying, can't wait for you to come home. The prosecution went over the emails and the journal entries which painted a picture of a severely depressed mother who is having a lot of trouble dealing with this stage in her children's lives. They were no longer the sweet, adorable little babies she once knew.

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they were growing up and just as a lot of other teenagers do they were going through a rebellious stage they developed an attitude and you know what if you've ever dealt with teenage girls especially they're mean I don't know if I was that mean I hope I wasn't I guess I'd have to ask my mom I remember certain times where maybe I was a little bit rude to her one time I told her that she had a mustache

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He was a natural born leader, always making a positive impact on his teammates over the years. Overall, both Calyx and Bo were known to have positive spirits with so many special and unique personality traits due to them growing up in all sorts of different places around the world. They were loved by so many people from all walks of life.

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and I think about that almost every day and I feel so bad about it but like almost every teenager is kind of mean you just have to deal with it and God bless every parent who goes through that stage because I know it's difficult but you get through it but either way for Julie instead of seeking therapy asking her husband to get someone to come in the house and help with the kids or the house while he was gone or literally asking for any other type of help

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She chose to murder her kids and then herself so that she could just be done with it all. She bought the gun and was frustrated with the waiting period but that didn't stop her. She wrote out exactly how she was going to do it and followed through with at least a similar version of her original plan except she didn't actually end up killing herself.

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Instead, she fell asleep which leads me to question whether she actually intended to kill herself or if she kind of just backed out at the last minute. I think she did have thoughts of taking her own life, but I don't know if she actually wanted to go through with it in that moment. The prosecution brought forward her husband who testified about how, yes,

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She had been mentally ill all throughout her life. It was something that he dealt with all throughout their almost 20 years of marriage. She had bouts where she would abuse him and the kids and her behaviors often got out of control.

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He tried getting her into therapy and as we discussed earlier, he did get her into a drug rehab program, but it seems that maybe that's not what she needed per her own journal entries. He knew that she was struggling, but again, never knew just how badly or what she would do because of it.

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There was also mention that he never had access to any of her records, any of her psychological records or anything to do with her mental health care because of HIPAA regulations, she would never put him down as someone who was allowed to have it. So it did seem that there was this aspect of her at least trying to hide part of what she was going through from her husband.

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The prosecution also brought forward some forensic evidence, which showed that her children's blood was on her bathrobe. Her DNA and prints were on the gun as well as, you know, we don't really need to question that, but it's just to sort of tie everything together. The medical examiner also testified about the brutality of Kalix and Bo's injuries.

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Again, they were each shot twice, once in the head and once in the face. Based on how the bullets landed and how they were shot, the ME felt that they were both completely taken by surprise when they were shot. They never saw it coming. The prosecution said that Julie is a cold-blooded killer who viciously murdered her children to shut them up.

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On the other hand, of course, the defense argued that Julie was mentally insane at the time of the murders. They brought forward court documents which showed a long history of mental health struggles. They said that Julie was abused as a child, being molested by an adult when she was around six or seven, I believe.

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They were your all-American, hard-working, dedicated teenagers who made it a point to live their lives with purpose. By 2011, the family was stationed at the McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. At the time, 16-year-old Calix and 13-year-old Bo were known to be active, responsible students.

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This led her to developing unhealthy coping mechanisms and obviously lifelong trauma. All the way back in the 90s she was diagnosed with depression and bipolar and was medicated for it. She's been on that medication for years, only stopping when she was pregnant or nursing. By 2001, she suffered such a severe bout of depression that she was hospitalized for nine months.

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Around that time, she was also diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in addition to her existing severe depression and bipolar. Along with her struggles with mental health, she had also struggled with substance use. She was taking oxycodone to deal with her pain and drank heavily. Again, as we saw from her own journal entries, she didn't think very highly of herself.

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She was bedridden for weeks at a time, feeling that her family didn't care about her. She had a very negative self-image, calling herself a failure. She couldn't handle the pressures of being a mother to growing teenagers. To me, I do think that Calyx and Bo may have been acting out or defying their mother maybe even more than the average teen. Maybe their attitudes got really bad.

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But from a teenager's perspective, they're seeing their mother lay in bed for days at a time. She's hitting them and their father. She's driving recklessly and putting their lives in danger. She's abusing drugs and alcohol. I'd imagine she didn't always have the nicest words for them either.

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So yeah, a teenager whose brain isn't fully developed may respond with insults or acting out as a defense mechanism. They don't understand that she's got her own struggles, her own mental health issues, because again, As a teenager, you may not be thinking about that.

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All you're seeing is that your mom is kind of mean to you, is hitting you and abusing her husband and your father, and is just a difficult person to be around. So they may have been acting out because of that. Maybe they were acting out to get attention from their mother who didn't seem to care. Maybe they were trying to fight back against someone who was hurting them physically or emotionally.

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It may not have been the right way to cope. but they're teenagers and Julie is the adult. As a full-grown woman with two children, it doesn't matter how bad your mental health gets. You should be able to self-reflect enough to understand when you are too overwhelmed to ask for help.

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I don't blame Julie for having trouble coping with motherhood, but she had so many options and so many people willing to step in. From my understanding, it seemed like Parker dealt with a lot over 20 years and he always stayed by her side. So, she had options. She had people that were willing to step in.

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Basically, in their closing arguments, the defense claimed that her mental health was so horrible that she truly didn't understand the gravity of her actions, and she only killed her children because she was mentally insane. They said, quote, her mind is clouded. She didn't choose this illness. It chose her. When she wasn't sick, she was a good mother.

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The prosecution closed by saying that Julie was desperate, depressed, angry, but very determined. She was tired of her children while also feeling that divorce from her husband was inevitable. So she wanted revenge. She wanted to make him and them suffer. They continued quote, these were deliberate, well planned, well implemented and well concealed homicides.

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Bo played soccer at Liberty Middle School while Calyx was in the pre-international bachelorette program at Kings High School where she also ran cross-country. On the outside, they appeared to be this idyllic military family.

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After closing arguments, the jury was off for deliberation and it only took them two hours to come back with their verdict. They found that Julie did know what she was doing and did know that it was wrong. As a result, they found her guilty of both murders. At her sentencing hearing, Julie apologized for her actions.

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She acknowledged that she destroyed so many lives, not just her family and friends, but the community as a whole. She admitted that she shot her son and daughter but said she didn't know why, though she's going to have plenty of time to think about it. She said that she's ready to accept whatever sentence comes her way.

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A husband and wife working hard to raise their children in a happy loving home while also getting to be a part of so many things in the world that other children will never get the chance to experience. But of course, with Parker's active military status, he would often be deployed for long stretches of time, leaving Juliet home alone to raise the kids on her own.

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Julie Power Shinneker was married to Army Colonel Parker Shinneker, who she met in Germany in the late 1980s. Julie was there working as a Russian linguist, collecting intelligence for European agencies by interrogating refugees coming from Eastern European countries. Meanwhile, Parker was stationed there on active deployment, where he too was working for intelligence.

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At the end of the hearing, she was handed two concurrent life sentences. After being handed her sentence, Julie's husband, Parker, spoke about how grateful he is that this long process is now over. He thanked the justice system and wanted to remind everyone that this case is about his two children, Beau and Calyx.

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When he speaks, he does so in a very matter-of-fact way, but it's said that he's always like that, which definitely makes sense. He is a military man, and they're not known for being the most expressive emotionally.

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This was no easy task, but she always tried her best. By early January of 2011, that is exactly what happened once again. Parker received orders to head to Qatar in the Middle East, where he would be stationed for a few weeks. This, again, wasn't anything out of the norm for the family, but the timing wasn't ideal.

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The family had been going to group counseling for a few weeks due to some growing tension within the family. Calyx and Bo were getting older and were growing into their own people with their own opinions and attitudes. Meanwhile, they were under a lot of stress while Parker was gone and Julie was left on her own to care for these growing teens.

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So, before Parker left, he asked Julie if she needed help with watching the children while he was gone. He knew that she had been struggling a bit and wanted to offer support somehow, some way, but she said no. She said, I've got this. Little did he know, though, that she had other plans in mind, something that she couldn't do if there was anyone else around.

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something that would get rid of all the stress she was facing once and for all. By the morning of January 28th, 2011, Julie's mother, who was living in Texas at the time, called the Tampa Police Department to request a welfare check for Julie and her kids. She said that Julie had been experiencing a very serious bout of depression and had been complaining non-stop about her children.

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When she woke up that morning, she found some very concerning emails sent to her by Julie. By around 9pm on the night of January 27th, she sent an email to her parents, brother, and sister with the subject of, I love you all. The message was pretty incoherent and full of typos, but from what Julie's mother could make out,

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julie was thanking her family members for their support and guidance but there were also undertones of something more sinister in part she wrote you've always been there for me giving me support and guidance that i've needed and couldn't have lived 50 years without going on to say it's really difficult because i'm so sick mentally i do the jobs to do i minimally take care of the kids sadly to say

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If some of this email didn't make total sense, it's because I was reading directly from the email, which was relatively incoherent and kind of hard to read. But obviously, this immediately set off red flags when her mother read it, so by 7.39am, shortly after receiving the call from Julie's mother, officers arrived at the Schoenecker home.

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As soon as they arrived, they found Julie lying unconscious on the back porch. She was wearing a white bathrobe, which appeared to be covered in dried blood. Officers managed to wake her up, helping her up to her feet before asking where the children were. She replied, they're inside. She then apparently asked one of the officers for their gun or to go get hers so that she could finish the job.

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At that time, it was believed that Julie was passed out after trying to overdose on medication. Those officers then took Julie inside to speak while other officers went around the house to search for the children.

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After meeting and beginning their relationship, as you can expect with a military couple, they moved around a lot for work. Now, all throughout her life, Julie was known as a high energy, high achiever who could always get the job done. She was a star athlete in high school who always achieved good grades. She went to a good college where her stellar academic performance continued.

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Officers made their way into the garage of the home where the family's minivan was parked, and to their shock and horror, they found then 13-year-old Beau sitting slumped over in the passenger seat of the car. He was not moving and was covered by a blanket. Upon removing the blanket, they found that Beau had been shot two times, once to his head and once to his face.

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of course he was already dead at the scene they then made their way throughout the rest of the home and upstairs to calyx's bedroom there they also found her body which was lying in her bed and also covered by a blanket She too had been shot twice in her head with one of the shots going directly through her teeth and tongue.

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Upon further examination, they found that Calyx also had some scrapes on her shins. There was also a trail of blood that led from her computer in her room to her bed. suggesting that she had been shot while sitting at the computer before she was dragged to her bed and covered with a blanket.

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While still at the home, officers asked Julie what happened, and she immediately admitted that she killed her children, though she didn't give too much detail as to why initially. All she said was that they had been mouthing off to her. At that time, Julie was arrested and taken to the police station for further questioning.

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During this interview, officers made sure to ask her if she understood them and understood her rights. She agreed, saying that she was ready to talk. However, throughout the interview, Julie fluctuated between sounding relatively alert and coherent to sounding slurred and confused.

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She started by telling officers about how she had a long, long-standing history of depression and bipolar disorder, for which she took about 10 different medications. She said that she had spent the past eight weeks in bed after suffering from a car accident. Back in early November of 2010, she was under the influence of her medications including Oxycontin when she crashed.

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After the accident, Parker took her to rehab for her drug habit which is what led to her accident in the first place. She spent 21 days there before returning home. After returning home, she spent the following weeks from late November up until January of 2011 lying in bed.

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At some point, she asked the officers if her kids are coming in later, to which the officer said they'll talk about that later before guiding her back to the topic at hand.

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my kids coming in later well we'll talk about all that they asked her what happened the prior day january 27th at this point she said that she picked calyx up from school that day before dropping her back off at track practice she went and picked calyx up from practice before taking her home after dropping off calyx she got beau in the car to drop him off at soccer practice but while in the car

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She said that Beau started getting mouthy so she got pissed and pulled out a gun. Beau yelled at her to put the gun away but she didn't. Instead, his mother turned the car around and started heading home before she shot him in the side of the head. She then shot him once again in the mouth. After shooting her son, she parked the car back in the garage leaving his body in the passenger seat.

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She then headed inside the home intending to do the same thing to her daughter. When speaking about Calyx, she said that she just toppled over. It was the last straw. Her 16-year-old daughter was so mouthy it was just ridiculous. She said that Calyx called her stupid for forgetting to get the mail. Calyx has been so nasty, so mouthy, so disrespectful.

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Once starting work with the military, she stayed driven and motivated. At the same time, she was always known as having an easy time making friends and keeping up with anything and everything life threw at her. She and Parker were married by 1991, and by September 12, 1994, they gave birth to their first child in Rosenberg, Germany, a daughter who they named Calyx.

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She had completely changed within the past two years and was really upsetting her. Now, once they had returned home from track practice, Calyx went upstairs into a room where she sat on the computer to do some homework. As she did her homework, after returning back from shooting Beau, Julie said that she went up into the room, came up behind her daughter with her .380 pistol in hand.

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She then shot her in the back of the head first, before then shooting her in the mouth. Julie went on to explain that as Kellick started to become more nasty, Bo started doing the same. They both had such bad attitudes, always talking back. She was tired of it. She explained that she shot both of them in their mouths because she was tired of their sass.

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They grew too sassy for her to handle, so she shot both of them in their mouths to shut them up for good. She also said that if her husband was home, she probably would have killed him too. After explaining this, she said that she wanted to kill herself and had wanted to for a while.

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When officers asked her what should happen to her because of what she did, she just said that she didn't want to go to jail. She doesn't want to go to court. Then, after a bit of small talk, the officer checked in with Julie to check if she was still understanding the situation. He asked if she knew where her children were, what their condition was.

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She answered that Beau was in the car and Calyx is in bed. They are in horrible condition. When he asked if they were alive or dead, she said that she didn't know but hopes they are dead. He then confirmed to Julie that they are, in fact, dead.

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Three years later, on September 29, 1997, they went on to have their son, Powers, who went by his middle name Bo, in Honolulu, Hawaii. After having their children, Julie made the decision to stay home full-time to raise the kids while Parker continued working with the army. Growing up, Calix was known as a model student and an amazing artist.

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Carly Gousset lived in Chalfont, California with her dad, Zach Gousset, her stepmom, Melissa Gousset, and her two younger brothers. Carly's mother, Lindsay Farley, and Carly's father, Zach, got divorced when she was about two years old. Now, until she was six years old, she actually lived with her mother, but then her mother decided to move to Nevada.

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When Melissa appeared on the Dr. Phil show, she changed her statement again and said that the last time she had seen her, Carly was wearing just her t-shirt and her underwear because that's what she wore to bed. Now, obviously, it's very possible that she could have been wearing skinny jeans.

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When she got home, she went to bed in her underwear, and then when she got up, she changed into these gray sweatpants. But it is just a little bit strange that she would have told police what she was wearing when she didn't see her leave and she didn't know for sure.

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You'd think that maybe she would say that she wasn't sure what she was wearing because she didn't see her before she left and, you know, you can just assume that she's not gonna just walk out in her underwear, so I'm just not sure why she would say that as fact. Instead of just being like, she might have been wearing skinny jeans, but I'm not sure.

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Now Melissa was asked, you know, well, does she have a pair of gray sweatpants missing? You know, are her skinny jeans in her hamper? Maybe these sightings weren't really of Carly if you know what she was wearing or if you can see what's missing. However, Melissa was kind of like, I don't know, do you know everything that your kids own and what your kids wear all the time?

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Which is understandable, but you'd think that they would maybe look around, try and figure out what was missing, really try to pin down what she was wearing, but this didn't really seem like that important to her. They were asked a couple of different questions about what clothing items were missing, what were there, but they didn't really have any answers.

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Now, when police got a hold of phone records, it came out that around 2 a.m on October 13th, the morning Carly went missing. Melissa sent a text to Carly's boyfriend Donald saying pray for her. There was no response from Donald to this text message, so we don't really know what this means. There's no real context to this message.

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We don't really know how often they communicated, how often they said things like this to each other, so we don't really know what it means. We couldn't really get anything from Carly's phone or basically any of her personal belongings because she had left them all at the home when she left. Now Donald did show up to the house the next day, I guess the same day because it was 2 a.m.

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So the day that Carly went missing, he showed up and he said that Carly's phone was sitting on her nightstand. But Melissa is adamant that the phone was sitting on the kitchen counter and it had been there since the night before. So this is just another kind of weird inconsistency. Now, when Melissa was questioned about Carly's paranoid behavior, Melissa was being pretty vague.

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Melissa said that she didn't know what Carly was afraid of, why she was acting paranoid. She didn't really give any much details of what Carly was actually doing or saying, just that she was being scared and paranoid, which can mean a lot of things. It can mean that she's pacing. It can mean that she's saying absolutely crazy things.

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It could mean that she's shaking or sitting in a corner and rocking. We don't really know because they won't let anyone else hear the tape that was recorded, so we don't know the exact details from that night. Now, something else that was a little bit strange is that she was seen wearing just a t-shirt and jeans.

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Now, even though California is pretty warm most of the time, the morning temperatures in October can drop as low as 40 to 50 degrees. so it would have been a little bit chilly for her to just walk around in a t-shirt without a jacket.

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So when she was six, she actually decided to move in with her father because, you know, Nevada was pretty far from where she lived. She didn't want to have to move schools. She wanted to stay by her friends. So she just decided to stay in California with her dad. By all accounts, Carly had a very good childhood growing up. She maintained a pretty good relationship with her parents and her stepmom.

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Again, she could have just still been in this delusional state or maybe she just didn't care or maybe she, you know, didn't think that it was that cold or anything like that, but it's just a little bit strange. Additionally, there are a little bit of inconsistencies with the timeline. As I said before, Melissa last saw Carly at around 5 45 that morning.

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Then a neighbor saw her an hour later at 6 30 that morning. And then she wasn't seen again for another hour when she was seen on the side of the highway at 7 30. But this highway was only a 20-25 minute walk from her neighborhood, so it's a little bit strange that it would have taken her an hour to walk there. Now, we don't necessarily know what was going through Carly's head when she was walking.

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Maybe she was just wandering aimlessly, didn't take a straight path, and just kind of ended up strolling onto the highway. Maybe she was walking over to the highway with a purpose of going somewhere. But either way, there's a decent amount of time that just goes completely unaccounted for between witness sightings. we don't really know exactly what happened or where she went.

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I do want to point out that to me it is a little bit strange that the time she was seen, so around 6 30 and 7 30, is the exact times that Melissa said that she was sleeping. But then the time that she said she woke up around 7 30, she was never seen again. Now, I'm not trying to make any weird connections that aren't there.

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I'm not trying to say that Melissa, you know, did something to her after this time or anything like that. I just think that that's a little bit strange and that's just stuck out to me a little bit. Ever since the day Carly went missing, Melissa has been extremely active on social media. The same day that Carly went missing, she went live on Facebook to talk about everything that happened.

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She had a lot of friends growing up. She did well in school and was liked by pretty much everyone she knew. She was described as happy, sweet, funny, and popular. Lindsay said that her and Carly were best friends and told each other everything. They really did have a very close relationship despite Lindsay living so far away.

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Ever since then, she's been reaching out to people like Sean Hannity, Dr. Phil, and she has not stopped posting about Carly on social media. Now, before I get into the theories in this case, I want to talk about what Lindsay, Carly's mother, has said about this entire situation. She said that when Zach first called her, it stuck out to her that Zach used the word gone.

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She says that this is something that you say when someone's gone for good. She said that he very well should have said something like missing or something like that but he said gone and that stuck out to her. She also said that the night before Carly went missing, Zach had been drinking and was intoxicated and was just kind of drifting in and out of sleep the entire night.

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She says this is probably why Zach and Melissa have been inconsistent with their stories and kind of have been lying. She thinks that they know a lot more about Carly's disappearance than they're letting on.

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One of the biggest things, again, that sticks out to Lindsay is the audio recording of Carly that night. Lindsay is still very adamant that Carly did call out for someone to call 911. She said that Carly called out mom, so she was calling for her. and that Melissa said, I'm not mom, I'm Melissa. And Carly said, I'm sorry, I'm just really scared.

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Lindsay said that at first, Melissa said, yes, I'll call 911. But then there was a long pause. And then Carly said, so are you gonna call 911? And Melissa said, no, there's nothing wrong.

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In the beginning of October of 2018, Carly moved away from her house in Bishop to a new town about 10 miles away in Chalfont, which is where she was living at the time that she went missing. Now, Carly wasn't really bothered by this because it's not like she had to move schools or anything like that, so it wasn't really that big of a deal to her.

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Now, again, we know that Dr. Phil did confirm what Carly really said. But either way, it could be interpreted that Carly was trying to get someone to call 911. I completely understand why Lindsay heard it the way she did. What she heard was her daughter begging for Melissa to call 911 and Melissa saying no.

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You can interpret it whichever way you want, but either way, this was a girl who was asking for some sort of help. Lindsay does believe that Melissa does have something to do with Carly's disappearance. This is what Lindsay believes is exactly what happened to Carly. She believes that Carly had a drug overdose.

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Carly knew that something was wrong, so she asked Melissa for help, but Melissa just kept saying no. Then in the early mornings of October 13th, Melissa saw Carly laying there with her eyes open and then she passed away. That's what Lindsay happened and if you want, look up the video of her saying this because she is just absolutely heartbroken.

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She does not want to point fingers or just blame people aimlessly or just drag people's name through the mud. She just wants to figure out what happened to her daughter and this is what she thinks all of the signs point to. So that is what Lindsay believes happened. Now I'm going to get into some of the other main theories that a lot of people believe in.

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First, people believe that Carly could be a victim of human trafficking. Now we all know that human trafficking is a massive problem all around the world and in this country. It could be very possible that Carly woke up and was still delusional and completely paranoid and then just walked off onto the highway.

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This is when she could have been picked up by someone and then was sold into sex trafficking. Now, there have been a lot of different sightings of Carly. None of them have been confirmed, but it's possible that people may have seen her, but we don't really know because again, these sightings have never been confirmed.

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Being sold into sex trafficking can also explain why she's been off the grid and why she's never turned up or been found. However, again, none of the sightings have been confirmed, but I do think that this is a very unfortunately possible and very plausible theory. The next theory is that Carly just decided to run off on her own and has been hiding ever since.

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Melissa, her stepmother, said that she was still the happy kid that she always had been. Now, on Friday, October 12th, 2018, Carly asked her parents if she could go to her high school's football game, and of course they said yes, so she went. However, she didn't actually end up going to the high school football game, and instead she went to a party with her boyfriend, Donald.

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Now there are two parts to this theory but honestly neither of them sounds very plausible to me so I'm just going to go over them very briefly. The first theory within this theory is that maybe she just woke up that morning, was completely normal, and just decided to go missing. Now obviously I don't think this is very likely at all because there was no reason for her to go missing.

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I mean, she could have maybe just felt so bad and so embarrassed about her behavior when she was reacting badly to these drugs, but I honestly don't think that that's the case, that she would feel so bad that she decided to run off or anything like that. Honestly, what I get from this, to me, her parents seemed relatively fair.

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They recorded her so that the next day when she was in a good state of mind, she could hear herself and how she was reacting to these drugs, how she was behaving, and

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Kind of teach her a lesson to hopefully steer her away from doing drugs in the future They didn't seem like super strict people that would be extremely harsh and unforgiving It didn't seem like you know, she would be really punished really badly and that you know Maybe she was trying to avoid that Or maybe she was trying to run off because they were so ashamed of her.

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I don't think it was anything like that. Again, they seemed like pretty fair and understanding parents to me. Before this, she did seem like a very happy person in general and just really had no other reason to leave. The next theory, which is absolutely completely ridiculous, is that Carly is actually a drug addict and then ran off and is homeless somewhere just doing drugs all the time.

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People point to the fact that she's a little bit skinny and that, you know, maybe she just is doing drugs and that's why she's so skinny. But I mean, how many 16 year olds have you seen that are skinny? That have fast metabolisms and, you know, she was active. She loved dancing. She had every reason to be skinny. I mean...

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again she's a teenager with a fast metabolism like all teenagers have so this theory is just kind of absolutely ridiculous to me and so i'm not gonna be spending any more time on this one now the next theory just kind of like the first theory is that she woke up in the early morning was still disoriented and out of it and that she walked off onto the highway and was taken however rather than being sold into sex trafficking maybe she was just kidnapped by some random person

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Maybe this random person is holding her captive or maybe they murdered her. Now this is a more rural area of California so it's possible that she could have been taken without being seen and possibly drove with her in the car and took her somewhere without anyone noticing. Maybe he killed her and they just haven't found her body yet or maybe she's alive and someone's just keeping her captive.

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I definitely do think that this is a plausible theory. It's not unheard of for some sicko to just see some pretty young girl who's really small and just decided to take her. Again, she was only about 115 pounds so it's not like you know she would have been super difficult to take. Or maybe she was still very confused and out of it and someone just drove up

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offered her a ride and she willingly got into the car with someone. Either way, I do think that this is a very plausible theory and it's definitely more likely than the theory that we just got done talking about. Now, the last theory, which is a theory a lot of people believe in, is that Melissa and possibly Zach had something to do with this.

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Now I do want to say that police are looking at Melissa, but I don't think she's really a suspect or anything like that, but people are kind of looking at her. So again, Melissa was extremely inconsistent with her stories and what she told police. It is extremely strange for someone who just lost a child like that to not be very forthcoming with information or statements.

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Now around 8pm, Melissa texted Carly to ask her if she needed a ride home and at first she said no. But then she quickly changed her mind and actually called Melissa to ask her to come pick her up immediately because she wasn't feeling well and as she was kind of driving she asked her not to hang up the phone. She seemed very urgent, like she needed to be picked up right then and there.

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We do know that her stories changed multiple times and when she was asked why, she didn't really have any answers. Most parents in this situation would do absolutely everything that they could to come forward and share absolutely everything that they knew so that someone would see her or maybe come forward with more information.

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It is a little bit weird to me that she said kind of like it was a fact that she was wearing jeans when she didn't see her leave and she really didn't actually know what she was wearing. It very well could have been that she really did think that she was wearing skinny jeans. I mean, if she wears them pretty much every day, it makes sense why she would say that.

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But again, if she wasn't 100% sure, didn't actually see her wearing skinny jeans, Why would she even say that? Again, she could have just been like, I think she was wearing skinny jeans. She normally wears skinny jeans. I didn't necessarily see her, but this is what I think she was wearing. It honestly just, if nothing else, makes her look better.

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I mean, when you come out with a statement that turns out to be false and you admit that you knew that it was false, it just makes you look bad. And if she really is out there, it kind of turns the attention towards her and and not towards looking for her. That's kind of just what I take from it. Again, people could just be looking into this way too much, but It's just something to think about.

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It's also strange that in her first interview with Dateline, her story changed. Most of the inconsistencies can be explained in one way or another. Again, the jeans thing very well could be explained, but it doesn't really make sense to me why she would lie about this story. I just don't understand the reasoning for lying about what happened that night.

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Even if this is the very beginning, even if you're nervous or shocked, it just does not make any sense to me why you would just make up this story. I mean, this seems like something that is so important that is kind of a big part of the story that you wouldn't want to lie about this. The timeline of the night before she went missing is so incredibly important.

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to get down to exactly what she remembers. Why would she lie about it at first? Even if she came out and said, I know it's false. This isn't actually what happened. This is actually what happened. It still doesn't make up for the fact that she lied about it at first. And even after saying that, how do we know that the second story she came out with is the real one?

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How do we know that just because she says, oh, the first one was false and this one is the real one, we don't actually know that that's true. Now, with that being said, I don't think Melissa ever had any ill intent. I don't think that she just had it out for Carly. I don't think that she was planning on doing something to Carly and just wanted to wait till the perfect time.

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I think what is most likely within this theory is along the lines of what Lindsay believes. I think that maybe they realized they weren't being as responsible as they should have been. Again, Zach was drinking beer. Lindsay said that he seemed completely intoxicated. Maybe he wasn't paying attention enough or wasn't taking this seriously enough because he was intoxicated.

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Maybe Melissa just, again, wasn't taking it as seriously. And maybe in retrospect, they realized that they weren't being as responsible as they should have been. Maybe in retrospect, they realized that she really was in danger. and she should have been taken to the emergency room. Maybe she was acting so erratically and completely out of control in these audio recordings

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that if we listened to them, we would hear exactly how bad she really was. Maybe they don't want people judging them or blaming them for not doing anything when they clearly should have. Maybe her marijuana was laced with something really bad. Maybe she was offered a different drug at this party. I mean, she was young. Maybe she was just in party mode.

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She told Melissa that she was at the back of Highlands, which is a mobile home park. Melissa said okay she's on her way and tried staying on the phone but they didn't have the greatest service so the call dropped.

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wasn't thinking about the consequences and just kind of took what was offered to her. She, again, was very small. She was 5'7 and weighed 115 pounds.

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It's very possible that if something was given to her, that it was just too much for her, especially if it was given to her by a bigger guy or maybe her boyfriend, someone that's bigger than her and they gave her the amount that they would take, that it easily could have been too much. Maybe she knew that she had these drugs in her system She wasn't quite feeling right.

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She knew that something was wrong and she called Melissa right away to come pick her up. Maybe as Melissa was driving to get her, these drugs really started to kick in pretty bad and that's why she was acting so bizarrely all of a sudden. Maybe when she got home and was exhibiting these crazy behaviors, Zach and Melissa just thought that this was something that she could just sleep off.

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It's not crazy to think that they didn't think that this was life-threatening.

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that maybe they underestimated how much or what she had in her system someone who's not really familiar with drugs doesn't know how it affects your body doesn't know the side effects very well could just think you know oh she'll just sleep it off she'll be fine in the morning you know that's what you do with alcohol that's what you do with marijuana maybe they just didn't realize that you know she can't just sleep it off maybe when they got her to go to bed that's when she possibly fell asleep or passed out

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and maybe that's when she died from a drug overdose. Maybe at this point Melissa didn't realize what happened. Maybe at this point she thought Carly was just asleep or maybe Melissa even was asleep herself and didn't even see what happened. Maybe she didn't realize this and then when she woke up she realized what happened. She could have called over to Zach, told him exactly what happened.

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She called back and eventually got a hold of Carly again but at this point she was no longer at Highlands and she was actually about a mile away running down the street on Dixon Street with her phone in her hand. When Melissa arrived and Carly hopped in the car, Melissa said that Carly seemed kind of frantic and agitated. She asked Carly why she needed to be picked up right away.

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They probably very obviously felt extremely guilty about this but did not want to lose their two other children over this. If they were thought to have completely neglected her when she was acting very erratically, they could have been charged with something like manslaughter for not taking her to the hospital and not doing more.

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Maybe they hid her body somewhere or buried her somewhere and she just has never been found. Again, I do not think that they would have put her to bed knowing that she was going to overdose. I do think That if they thought that she was going to overdose or that if these drugs really were that bad, I do think that they would have taken her to the hospital. But I just think that they were naive.

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I just think that they didn't realize what was happening and so they just put her to bed and didn't take her to the ER. I absolutely do not think that there was malice behind anything. anything, but they didn't want to go to jail for the rest of their lives and lose their sons and leave them without parents. Again, this is just pure speculation. I could be completely wrong.

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I mean, again, we don't know exactly what happened. We really don't know anything, honestly, besides the timeline that Melissa gave us and that audio recording. I do trust what Dr. Phil says that he heard and I do obviously think that it exists. I think that they don't want to release it again. I think that A lot of people would judge them.

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I think a lot of people would point the finger at them if they heard this recording and that's why they don't want to release it. But again, we could be way off or we could be spot on. It's very possible that these drugs didn't cause her to overdose and that she did wake up one morning, wandered off still with the drugs in her system, and got picked up by someone that had ill intent.

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It's possible that she did die of a drug overdose and that they did something to her. It's possible that something completely different could have happened. I mean, again, we only know the timeline that Melissa gave us, so we don't know for 100% fact if it even happened the way that she said it did.

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Either way, until she is found or someone comes forward, we will probably never know exactly for sure what happened. Carly Gousset is a beautiful young girl with a lot of life left to live. She is 5 foot 7 inches and weighs about 115 pounds. She has blue eyes, dark blonde hair, and was thought to be wearing a white t-shirt, dark gray sweatpants, and Vans shoes when she went missing.

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If you know anything, Carly has been missing for six months and there's not much information to go off of. I know if you watch a lot of true crime videos, you might hear this a lot, but even if you know something, that sounds extremely small or minute or insignificant to you, it could be exactly the piece that investigators need to put this whole thing together.

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You never know what even the smallest tip can lead to. I do think within the next coming months, I really think that we're going to find out what happened. I hope that we find out what happened. I do think that it is really good that they went on the Dr. Phil show because it's giving this case so much publicity.

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If she really is out there somewhere, I really hope that someone sees her and recognizes her. I hope that if someone knows something that they're not saying, that they come forward. Again, she did not deserve to die. She did not deserve to go missing. She deserves to be found. She deserves to be brought home. Thank you guys for watching this video.

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Again, if you know anything, please do not be afraid to tell someone. I will be putting the contact information in the description below. So that is all the information I have in this case. So what do you guys think happened? Do you think that Melissa had something to do with this? Do you think that it was a tragic accident? Do you think that she was taken into sex trafficking?

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And this is when Carly told Melissa that they had been smoking weed at the party. She said she was sorry. She said, please don't be mad. And she just wanted to go home. Now, like I said, Carly was acting very frantic and

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Do you think that she was kidnapped by some random person? Or do you think something else happened? Please let me know your theories in the comments below. If you guys did like this video, please make sure to leave me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. With that, I hope you guys have a great week and I hope to see you next time.

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I've been following it for the past couple of months, but the family actually just recently went on Dr. Phil and we got a lot from their time talking to Dr. Phil. So I thought that I would go ahead and make a video about it. Now, I feel like this is one of those cases where after hearing all of the information and the theories, you tend to believe one pretty strongly.

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paranoid and melissa was really confused why she was acting this way because apparently carly had smoked pot before so it's not like this was the first time she smoked it's not like this could have been some bad reaction some people do have bad reactions to pot it's very possible but in this case it didn't seem likely because she had smoked pot before and never had this kind of reaction

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Melissa said Carly was acting extremely erratically and it actually took her 15 minutes just to calm her down a little bit. Melissa was still pretty confused and concerned, but she did not think that her physical health was in danger. She didn't think this was urgent enough to take Carly to the emergency room or anything like that because she still seemed pretty aware.

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She was still kind of there having a conversation, able to hold a conversation. So she was just acting pretty strangely, but nothing that was crazy enough to take her to the ER. Carly and Melissa got back to the house around 9 p.m. At this point, Carly's dad, Zach was already at home. He was just hanging out, drinking some beer after work. He too said that Carly was acting very paranoid.

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He said that this did not seem like she had been smoking pot and it must have been something else because she was just acting so strangely. And he said that her pupils were completely dilated. He thinks that she was either given something else at a party, like a different drug or that the marijuana had been laced.

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He said that she was just standing in the corner acting afraid, but when he asked her why she was so scared, she just kept saying, I don't know. She kept acting like she was afraid of her parents, but then would go from that to just saying, I love you guys and you guys are the best and things like that.

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So she was just going from acting completely bizarre and paranoid one moment to kind of normal the next moment. Apparently this is when Melissa decided to make a recording of Carly to kind of show her the next day, show her what happens when she was on drugs, how the drugs made her act, and just let it be a little bit of a lesson.

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Now Melissa put it on video but then she put the video in her pocket so she just took an audio recording so that Carly would not know that she was recording. Now, I have not personally heard this recording. It has not been released, but it's been reported certain ways. So I'm just gonna tell you what I read, what I heard. But again, I haven't actually heard this recording myself.

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So apparently in this recording, Carly just kept saying that she was scared. Melissa kept trying to get Carly to eat a salad, but she wouldn't. She wouldn't eat anything. And when Melissa asked her why she wouldn't eat the salad, Carly apparently said that it was the devil's lettuce. Melissa said to Carly, you know, maybe you should just go to bed.

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But Carly was like, no, Melissa, you are going to kill me. Of course, Melissa was like, what are you talking about? What's going on? And Carly said, I don't know. I just... and having these demonic thoughts. Now apparently, Melissa tried showing this recording to Lindsay, Carly's mother, but she didn't really listen to the whole thing.

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However, they apparently gave this recording to Lindsay's private investigator and that's when Lindsay actually heard this recording. Lindsay claims that Carly was begging Melissa to call 911, but that Melissa was refusing. But Melissa came back and said that this wasn't true. According to Melissa, Carly said, if something were to happen, would you call 911? And Melissa said, of course.

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However, at first, Melissa would not let anyone listen to this tape. She said they didn't want to release this tape. And when Melissa and Zach appeared on the Dr. Phil show, he asked why he wasn't allowed to hear the tape. And they just said that, you know, they didn't think that it would help. It's an ongoing investigation. Things like that.

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And I really do think that depending on how you look at it, it really does look like it all points in a certain direction depending on how you interpret it. But for me, there are so many things that I think could have happened. I really don't know what to think about this case. It is still a very recent case and it's still ongoing, so with that being said, let's just get right into today's case.

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She said there's no reason for anyone else to hear this recording. But Dr. Phil was like, you know, I'm an expert. I would be able to help if I heard this recording because I know about the different drugs, their side effects, what areas of the brain these drugs are affecting.

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But she really just did not want to let anyone hear this tape. However... There was so much argument between Lindsay and Melissa about what was said on the tape that they actually did let Dr. Phil listen to this tape. Dr. Phil did say that it was very obvious that Carly was acting extremely paranoid and delusional. He said that she was clearly on some other drug like LSD and not marijuana and that

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Melissa was not really doing the greatest job of calming Carly down. He also agreed with Melissa that Carly said, would you call 911? And Melissa said, what do you mean? And Carly said, like, if I needed you to call 911, like if I was dying, would you call 911? And Melissa said, yes, of course I would if you needed me to.

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So that just kind of clears up this whole argument on what was actually said on the tape. Now, jumping back to the night of October 12th. After making this audio recording and finally getting Carly to calm down a little bit, they finally got Carly to bed. Now, at first, Melissa reported to Dateline NBC that she put Carly to bed. and then went off to her own room and slept in her own room.

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She said then the next morning around 5.45 AM, she went into Carly's room and saw her sleeping, went to check on her other children who were also in bed, and then she went back to bed and then woke up again around 7.30. She said she went back to Carly's room again to check if she was there, and this time Carly was not in her bed. She went back into her room and told Zach, honey, she's not here.

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And Zach said, what do you mean she's not here? And Melissa said, she's gone. She's not in her room. She's not outside. She's not in the backyard. She's not anywhere. However, Melissa later changed her story and said that she actually spent the entire night in Carly's room and slept in her bed because Carly asked her to stay with her.

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She then woke up around 5.45 AM, saw Carly still sleeping next to her, then fell back asleep still in Carly's bed, then woke up around 7.30 to see Carly missing. Now, when she was asked about these inconsistencies, she basically said that she didn't really know what to say in the beginning. She admitted that it was a false story and she said she regrets even doing the NBC Dateline interview.

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Today, we are going to be talking about the unsolved disappearance of Carly Gousset. Carly Gousset is a 16-year-old girl who went missing from Chalfont, California on October 13th, 2018. She is 5'7", she is 115 pounds, she has blue eyes and dark blonde hair. Carly has been missing for about six months now.

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Now, after realizing that Carly was not there, she noticed that the bedroom door was still cracked like it had been all night. So she got up, looked around in the living room and noticed that the front door was slightly open. And this is when she went and told Zach, honey, she's gone. At first they were a little concerned, but they thought that Carly maybe had just gone for a walk.

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They were worried because of her state of mind the night before, but it wasn't all that out of the ordinary for Carly to just kind of get up and go take a walk. However, they noticed that she left her cell phone at home and this is when they were really alarmed because she always had her cell phone with her. This is when they started looking around the neighborhood for Carly.

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melissa went in her car and zach went in his truck and they drove around separately to try and find her again they assumed that maybe she had just gone out for a walk and that they'd find her pretty quickly i fell asleep and then i had woken up around 7 15 and i had spent the whole night with her in her room and when i woke up she wasn't next to me anymore i looked over and i'm like carly

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Now, apparently someone in the neighborhood told Melissa that he saw Carly at around 6.30 that morning. He was looking out of his window when he saw Carly walking around, looking at the sky with a piece of paper in her hand. At around 7.30 a.m., a man claimed to see Carly walking behind a fence on the side of the road on Highway 6.

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Zach and Melissa continued to search for Carly, but they went back home at around 9 30 because they just could not find her. This was when Zach called Lindsay and told her that Carly was gone. He basically said that she just went to a party and now she's gone. She kept asking him all of these questions and he's like, I don't know, she just went to a party and now she's gone.

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Lindsay immediately started her nine-hour car drive to the Guse home in Chafont, California. After getting off of the phone with Lindsay, Zach then called the police to report Carly as missing. Police showed up to the house a few hours later, and when they looked around, they noticed that there was no sign of a struggle or foul play.

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At first, they just assumed that she was a runaway, which I know a lot of people will kind of bash police for doing in situations like this, but really in this case, that's just what it seemed like. It really did seem like she had just walked off. They really just did not think that there was any sign of foul play, so they didn't treat the house like a crime scene or anything like that.

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Police kind of asked the family what they thought happened and they said that they were very confident that she just walked off because she had been seen by multiple witnesses. But then after that, after she was never seen again, they have absolutely no idea what could have happened.

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Now, even though she was just considered a missing person, they were still treating this as a missing endangered person. This disappearance was just so strange, so it prompted a multi-day intensive search with helicopters, sniffer dogs, a search and rescue team, off-road vehicles. They tried searching as thoroughly as they could, but they found nothing.

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Now, when Melissa originally spoke to police, she told them that Carly was wearing a t-shirt and blue skinny jeans last time she saw her. However, witnesses say that she was wearing dark gray sweatpants, a white t-shirt, and Vans shoes. When asked about this inconsistency, Melissa said that she had just assumed that Carly was wearing skinny jeans because that's what she was always wearing.

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Dann, wie wir von vorhin erinnern, als Kenneth von seiner Freundin den Anruf bekommen hat, dass sie Christine nicht aufhören konnte, hat Kenneth gesagt, dass er auch versucht hat, sie anrufen zu lassen. Aber Telefonnummern aus dem Homephone und Christines Telefon zeigten, dass er an jeder Zeit nicht versucht hat, Christine anrufen zu lassen.

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Natürlich, mit all diesem, fühlte die Polizei, dass sie genug Beweise hatte, um zu sagen, that Kenneth was the one responsible for the murder of his wife. By the evening of May 19, 2000, 56-year-old Kenneth Fitzhugh was arrested and charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, 53-year-old Christine. The trial for murder started in late July of 2001.

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When it comes to murder, especially of your significant other, you have to ask why. You have to ponder what could cause someone to murder their loving wife of over 30 years. Well, the prosecution in this case pointed out a few different reasons for why Kenneth may have wanted his wife dead.

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Like I said earlier, the family was known to have a lifestyle that anybody on the outside could be envious of. They lived in a two million dollar home, they had good jobs, they drove nice cars and all of that. But investigators found out that in the months before Christine's death, Kenneth found himself in some serious financial trouble.

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It turned out that they had almost no money in liquid assets despite their flashy lifestyle. They had less than $20,000 in liquid assets despite the fact that the family spent that much almost monthly.

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Es kam heraus, dass Kenneth nur vier Tage bevor Christines Tod eine Lohnanzeige gezeichnet hat, die bestätigte, dass sein monatliches Einkommen 16.500 Dollar war, obwohl sein Taxi-Statement das Jahr vorher zeigte, dass er rund 30.000 Dollar das ganze Jahr gemacht hat. In that loan he put up the home as collateral.

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They also found multiple checks that previous year that had bounced and he fell behind on tax payments. Now, Kenneth explained that he would be making $16,500 had he worked full time and charged his normal hourly rate, but he didn't work full time that year because he had other obligations.

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Although I don't know why he was able to lie about that, because clearly he wasn't actually making that much, even if he was supposed to make that much. But nonetheless...

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Die Berichterstatter sagten dem Gericht, dass innerhalb von zwei Jahren vor Christines Tod die drei Investitionskonten der Familie von fast 400.000 Dollar in Investitionen im Jahr 1998 bis zu nur 11.000 Dollar im Mai des Jahrhunderts. Für Menschen, die innerhalb von zehn Jahren des Vertrauens sind, ist das bemerkenswert niedrig. Das ist nicht mal so nah an genug Geld, um zu vertrauen.

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So, the prosecution brought forward how Kenneth would have benefited financially from his wife's death. Per her death, he would stand to get the majority of Christine's estate, which included $20,000 in personal property, such as furniture, jewelry, etc.,

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und dann 870.000 Dollar in Real Estate, was Christines Teil des 2-Millionen-Dollar-Homes, in dem sie lebten, beschrieben wurde, dann würde er 96.000 Dollar in Lebensversicherungsgeld erhalten. Aber Geld ist nicht der einzige Grund, warum Kenneth Christine tot wollen könnte.

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She read the newspaper and drank some coffee like she always did. Christine and Kenneth went for their morning jog at around 7 a.m., returning back home by 7.45 a.m. They changed, took showers and went on with their days. Christine left the house at around 10 a.m. in her silver BMW to teach her music class at the elementary school, which started at 10.20 a.m. Then Kenneth left the house at 11 a.m.

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Bei der Begründung wurde die Begründung ein bisschen von der Information abgerissen, und das war, dass Christines ältester Sohn, Justin, tatsächlich nicht der biologische Sohn von Kenneth war. Er hatte einen anderen Vater. Also, zurück in die 1970er Jahre. Es wurde herausgefunden, dass Christine eine Begründung mit der Familienarztin oder Familienfreundin Robert Brown hatte.

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Christine hat Robert kennengelernt, als sie natürlich mit Kenneth verheiratet war, aber bevor sie Kinder hatte. Die beiden haben angefangen, ab und zu Abend zusammen zu gehen, aber das kam zu einem Habit und bald verbrachten sie Wochennähte und Wochenende zusammen. Christine und Robert hatten Verabredungen zusammen und sie investierten sogar in Geschäftsveranstaltungen zusammen.

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Sie haben ein Boot, Realität und Geld zusammengekauft. Aber es kam heraus, dass Robert ein wenig von einem Drogenproblem leidet. Laut Dokumenten wollten Christine und Kenneth, die natürlich nichts über das Verhältnis wussten, ihren Freund mit seinem Problem helfen. Also haben sie ihm 19.000 Dollar bezahlt, um sich in die Reha zu schicken.

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He did his rehab, but by 1995, they found out that Robert was still using, so the family cut ties with him. At that point, Robert had been disbarred from his law license and he moved to Placerville. But during the time that the two were having their secret affair, Christine became pregnant with Justin. Now,

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Robert said that he never actually knew for sure if Justin was his biological son, but he said that he always knew in his heart that Justin was his. Robert even put Justin in his will, listing him as my son Justin and Christine calling her the mother of Justin.

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Aber Robert sagte, dass obwohl er mit der ganzen Familie auf Verabschiedungskämpfe gehen würde und mit ihnen alle Zeit verbringen würde, haben weder er noch Christine Kenneth über das Verhandeln erzählt. Sie sagten wieder, dass die ganze Zeit, die Familie und er Freunde waren, haben sie immer versucht, ihn von Drogen zu helfen.

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During the trial Justin actually took the stand to talk about his experience with all of this. He was away at college at the time that all of this happened. He talked about how he learned about his mother's death that one day while talking on the phone with his dad. Kenneth hat Justin erzählt, dass es einen schrecklichen Unfall gab und dass seine Mutter tot war.

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Auf dem Stand hat Justin gesagt, dass er nie wusste oder sogar die kleinste Überraschung hatte, dass Kenneth nicht sein biologischer Vater war. Er hat gesagt, dass er aber bemerkt hat, dass er eine besondere Verbindung mit Robert erinnerte, als er erwachsen war. Er hat gesagt, dass er bemerkt hat, dass er ein bisschen mehr mit Robert verbunden war als sein jüngerer Bruder John.

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But he never really made the connection. He said that growing up he didn't get any special treatment from Christine, Robert or Kenneth though. Justin said that he remembered the day that him and his mom cut off contact with Robert. He said that the two of them went to go visit him, but they found him heavily under the influence of drugs to the point that he was hallucinating.

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Sie mussten ihn in eine Ambulanz anrufen und danach stoppten sie den Kontakt. Aber im Dezember 1999 sendete Robert der Familie eine Postkarte, die sagte, dass er geflogen war, gab ihnen sein neues Telefonnummer und sagte ihnen die gute Nachricht, dass er jetzt sauber war.

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Also, nachdem er die Postkarte bekommen hat, fünf Monate bevor Christine ermordet wurde, hat sie Robert kontaktiert und ihm gesagt, dass er, nachdem Justin die Schule beendet hatte, planned to reveal to Justin who his true biological father was. That would have been on May 20, 2000. So, only two weeks before she allegedly planned on telling Justin, Christine was murdered.

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Natürlich hat die Verteidigung versucht, zu sagen, dass Robert es so gemacht hat, dass Christine nicht eigentlich geplant war, Justin zu erzählen. Aber er hat gesagt, dass sie durch Justins gesamte Leben immer darüber gesprochen hat. Christine hat immer gesagt, dass sie wollte Justin erzählen, sobald er alt genug war, um zu verstehen.

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Natürlich gab es einen DNA-Test und es kam heraus, dass Robert wirklich Justins biologischer Vater war. Nun, es ist nicht hundertprozentig klar, ob oder nicht Kenneth über Justins echte Paternität vor diesem Zeitpunkt wusste. Manche sagen, dass er es wusste, aber es ist spekuliert, dass sie Kenneth in den Tagen, bevor sie ermordet wurde, erzählt hat.

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He drove to a vacated lot and walked around the lot for about an hour. He was trying to determine if the lot was suitable for a construction project that a client wanted to complete on that lot. He didn't see or talk to anybody while at that lot.

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Es ergibt Sinn, dass sie es Kenneth anbieten würde, bevor sie Justin und alle anderen dieses große Geheimnis erzählen würde. It even turned out that during one of the police interviews early on in the investigation, Kenneth referred to Justin as her son rather than our son. Police caught that and asked him, is he not your son? And he corrected himself and saying, no, he is our son.

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But during the trial, Kenneth claimed that he did not know about Robert being Justin's father until he had already been arrested. He said that the whole time he thought Robert was actually gay and he said that he even thought that Robert was interested in him.

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So that is why he was always cool with him being around the family and being close with his wife and sons because he didn't think that there was ever a threat. But either way, I think it's absolutely possible that he found out and attacked and murdered Christine to prevent her from telling Justin about the paternity.

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Maybe he wanted to protect his reputation or maybe he didn't want his relationship with Justin to change. Who really knows?

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But I do think that it's probably true that for the entirety of their friendship, Kenneth probably did think that Robert might have been gay because why else would he be cool with, you know, her going to visit him by herself and her spending so much time with him if he thought that there was a possibility that anything was going on.

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But I do think that either the same day or in the days before Christine's death, I think that is when he found out. Of course, during the trial, the prosecution talked about all of the inconsistencies with Kenneth's timeline and his lack of alibi. They talked about all of the blood evidence found within the home and the blood evidence found in Kenneth's

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Die Verteidigung sagte tatsächlich, dass Christine von einem Verbrecher getötet worden war und dass die Polizei Tunnelvision hatte und dass sie eine schlappere Befragung durchgeführt haben und andere Befragte nicht beobachten konnten, weil sie so überzeugt waren, dass Kenneth verantwortlich sein musste.

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Kenneth behauptete, dass er wirklich glaubte, dass Christine unter den Stiefeln gefallen ist, als er sie gefunden hat. Er sagte, als er die Schuhe sah, die sie trägt, hat er ihr viele Male im Vergangenheit erwartet, diese Schuhe nicht zu tragen, weil er Angst hatte, dass sie fallen würde. Und er sagte, dass das genau das war, was er dachte, wenn er sie gefunden hat.

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Christine taught at the school and during her lunch break, she stopped at Pete's Coffee Shop in Palo Alto sometime before noon, where she got two muffins and a coffee. However, that same afternoon, just after 12 p.m., a FedEx employee tried to deliver a package to the Fitzhugh House, Aber niemand hat die Tür geöffnet.

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Also hat er gesagt, dass er sie nicht gewonnen hat. Es muss ein Verrückter gewesen sein gewesen, der sie in diese Position gelegt hat, der auch wollte, dass es sich wie ein Fall aussieht, weil das wirklich das war, was er dachte, als er sie gefunden hat. Natürlich wissen wir, dass die Autopsie herausgefunden hat, dass diese ganze Idee, dass sie auf die Stiefel gefangen hat, unmöglich ist.

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Also, die Verteidigung argumentierte, dass Christine im Wohnzimmer war, als sie von einem Verrückter konfrontiert wurde, der das Zuhause robben wollte. Sie sagten, dass dieser Verrückter war derjenige, der Christine getroffen hat und sie ermordet hat. He probably didn't end up taking anything from the home because he was just afraid of being caught after somebody in the house was just murdered.

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The defense said that it was because of Kenneth's valiant efforts to save his wife's life that caused him to track blood all throughout the house and get blood all over his clothes and his shoes. Wenn wir über das blutige Shirt sprechen, sagt Kenneth, dass er das Shirt benutzt hat, um sich nachdem er seine Frau CPR gegeben hat, um sich aufzunehmen. Das ist so, wie das Blut aufgenommen wurde.

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Als er gefragt wurde, warum er das Shirt unter dem Vorderseite seines Autos steckte, sagte er, dass er es eigentlich für unabhängige Verwendung als Rack versichert hatte, jetzt, dass es bereits beschädigt wurde. This kind of shocked the prosecution, who said, you were gonna keep this shirt that had blood of your precious wife on it as a rag? And he said yes.

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Near the end of the trial, during their closing statements, the defense said, quote, Either intentionally or through negligence or incompetence, the Palo Alto police let their conclusions lead them to the facts, rather than the facts lead them to the conclusions. Which we have seen in a lot of cases, where they already think that something happened, and they'll just...

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Sie sehen die Beweise und denken, oh, das ist definitiv Beweise, dass, du weißt, was wir bereits gedacht haben, wahr ist. Versus alle Beweise zu sammeln und jeden Weg runter zu gehen. Aber am Ende der Trial, die Jury von sechs Männern und sechs Frauen ging auf für ihre Deliberationen. They deliberated for three days before they came back with their verdict.

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They found Kenneth Fitzhugh guilty of the second-degree murder of his wife, Christine Fitzhugh. The jury believed that he acted without premeditation. They believed that the motive was because he was not the biological father of Justin. Because of that, he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

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Es wurde gesagt, dass Kenneth im Laufe des Triales absolut keine Emotionen und keine Enttäuschung gezeigt hat. Es sah so aus, als würde er keine Furcht in dem, was passiert war, anerkennen wollen, aber er fühlte sich auch nicht so schlecht darüber.

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Aber nach dem Begründung, nach dem Spenden von etwas weniger als zwölf Jahren in Dail, wurde Kenneth im Februar 2012 mit einer unerlässlichen Terminal-Erkrankung verabschiedet. Doch ich habe in einer Suche gesehen, dass es war, weil er Parkinson-Bedrohung hatte. Das war ein sehr kontroversialer Entschluss. Viele Leute wollten, dass er im Gefängnis sterben würde.

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Dann, kurz nach 1 Uhr, hat die Schule Kenneth angerufen, um ihn zu notifizieren, dass Kristen nicht für eine Klasse aufgehört hat, die sie am gleichen Tag um 12.50 Uhr unterrichtet hatte. Kenneth hatte später in der Nacht ein Abenteuer um 1.30 Uhr, um zwei Freunde zu besuchen und ein paar Arbeiten in Palo Alto zu machen. Er war also mit den beiden Freunden, als er den Anruf bekommen hat.

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Sie dachten nicht, dass er die Zufriedenheit des Todes in einem Krankenhaus oder zuhause verdient hätte, wenn er das Leben seiner Frau von über 30 Jahren beendet hätte. Sie bekam keinen kompetenten Tod. Sie bekam einen furchtbaren, brutalen, furchtbaren Schmerz, der sie ermutigt hat, zu sterben. Aber egal, er wurde ausgelöst und er lebte in Palo Alto für acht Monate, bevor er am 27.

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Oktober 2012 sterbte, bei 69 Jahren alt. Das ist alles, was ich für heute habe. Es ist definitiv eine verrückte Sache und ich weiß, dass viele Leute ihre Meinung darüber haben werden und Christine's Affair und all das. Offensichtlich sollte das Affair nie geschehen haben. Offensichtlich sollten Justin und Kenneth viel früher wissen, weil sie es wissen sollten.

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Sie wissen, dass Robert der echte biologische Vater von Justin ist, obwohl Kenneth ihn als seinen eigenen Sohn die ganze Zeit geboren hat. Obviously Christine made mistakes in her life, but obviously she didn't deserve to be murdered over it. I absolutely can put myself in Kenneth's shoes and feel compassion for him after finding out. I'm sure it was devastating.

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I can't even imagine what that must have felt like. Even just finding out that your partner had an affair... Let alone that the child you've been raising your entire life is not your biological son. But there are so many other things that could have happened besides Kenneth murdering Christine and spending the rest of his own life in jail.

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This case is overall very sad and I honestly don't know what Justin is doing now or how he is doing in the aftermath of all of this. I can only hope that he has found ways to heal from this and move on with his life. But either way, that is all I have for today's case. And now I want to hear anything that you guys think about this case in the comments below.

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If you did like this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to go ahead and turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you go ahead and follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Both will be linked down below.

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And if you have absolutely any case suggestions, please make sure to go ahead and fill out the Google form that I have listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

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Zuerst hat er zu seiner Freundin geantwortet, dass sie Christine's neue Telefonnummer probiert hat, und das hat sie getan, aber die Freundin konnte noch nicht Christine anrufen. Kenneth hat also versucht, Christine's Telefon selbst zu anrufen, und sie hat es nicht geantwortet. Er hat also auch das Homephone probiert, aber sie hat keine Antwort auf seine Anrufe bekommen.

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So without any further delay, let's just get into the case today. Today we are going to be discussing the case of Christine Fitzhugh. Christine Fitzhugh married her husband Kenneth Fitzhugh in 1966. Together they had two children, Justin and John, and they lived for 18 years in a nice home in Palo Alto, California.

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So he and the two friends immediately dropped what they were doing and they went to the house to go check in on Christine. Right away when they got to the house, they noticed that Christine's car was still parked in the driveway and the front door was left open. So Kenneth went inside the house alone while the two friends waited in the car.

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They watched as Kenneth went upstairs in the home yelling out Christine's name. Then he went on the first floor to look for her. And while he was on the first floor, Kenneth noticed that the door to the basement was open. So he looked down the stairs and into the basement.

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Immediately after, he ran out to the car where the two women were waiting and he told them that he needed help because Christine was injured. Both women went inside the home, but only one of them went into the basement to look at what happened.

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The friend described that Christine was laying at the base of the stairs, with her head on the landing and her legs extending up the stairs, with her head lying right next to a large brass ship bell. Unter ihrem Körper standen mehrere Stücke Kleidung in einem Kleidungsschrank sowie Schulpapiere unter ihrem Körper und dann standen noch einige Sachen in ihren Händen.

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Dann fanden sie, dass ihr Schuh an vielen Stufen oben war. So, right away, the other woman called 911 to report that their friend had been injured in the home. While 911 was on the way, Kenneth and the friend moved Christine's body so that she was lying flat on the ground in the basement. And the friend began CPR and her and Kenneth switched off with CPR until help arrived, which was at 1.40 p.m.

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Als die EMTs kamen, versuchten sie Christine zu zerstören, aber leider war sie bereits tot auf der Szene. Als die EMTs Kenneth beantworteten, erzählte er ihnen in erster Linie, dass sie schlief, fiel und ihre Hände zerstörte, während sie ein paar Drehverschlüsse auf den Stühlen nahm. Danach wurden Kenneth und seine beiden Freunde in die Polizistation genommen, um weiter zu beantworten.

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Während sie warten, hat Kenneth einige Freunde und Familienmitglieder angerufen, um ihnen zu informieren, dass Christine gestorben sei, weil sie sich auf die Stiefel geschliffen hat. Als sie ihre Körper auf die Szene beobachtete, sagte der Bewerber, dass es eine Flasche Blut gab, aber es war meistens um ihren Kopf herum.

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Auf dem Boden neben ihrem Kopf, wie ich gesagt habe, gab es einen großen, schweren Brustbeutel. Damals wurde der Beutel von dort, wo er ursprünglich war, entfernt, weil CPR getötet wurde. Aber laut dem Freund war der Beutel direkt neben Christines Kopf, als sie ihn ursprünglich gefunden haben.

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Die Investitionen fanden dann heraus, dass sie in der Küche ihre Kisten, den Koffer und ihre uneressenen Muffin und eine Wasserbottel auf der Diningstube verlassen hatte. Dann gab es einen halb gegessenen Muffin, einen halben Kaffee getrunken, ein Notbuch, Schulbücher und einen Marker auf der Küchentasche.

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Also, für die Befragten sah es so aus, als ob sie direkt vor ihrem Tod am Tisch sitzen würde. Also sah es so aus, als ob sie rein kam, einige ihrer Sachen auf der Diningtasche setzte und dann die Dinge, die sie arbeitete, und den Muffin, den sie isst, und den Kaffee, den sie trinkt,

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Christine worked part-time as a music teacher at the Palo Alto School District and she volunteered for various community organizations. Kenneth war als Real-Estate-Konsultant selbstständig, wo er sein Geschäft aus seinem Zuhause verbracht hat. Außerdem arbeitete er als Part-Time Parallel. Diejenigen, die die Familie kannten, sagten, dass sie diese bildungsvolle Leben hatten.

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Dann, während sie an der Station waren, haben die Bewerber Kenneth gefragt, ihnen zu erklären, was er an diesem Tag in großem Detail gemacht hat. Also, er hat ihnen die Zeitung erzählt, die ich vorhin erwähnt habe, darüber, wie sie aufwachen.

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Die beiden sind auf der Runde gegangen und dann hat Christina an der Schule gelernt, während Kenneth das Haus verlassen hat und in das vacante Laden gegangen ist, um zu entscheiden, ob es gut für seinen Klienten war. However, Kenneth wasn't able to tell police officers any specifics about what he did at the lot.

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He couldn't tell the officer what kind of project his client was going to build on that land. He couldn't describe the building layout. He couldn't even describe the layout of the vacant lot and where things were supposed to go.

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Those are all obviously things that you'd need to know about the building that the client wants to build if you're determining if they're going to be able to use that land. And like I said, he didn't see or talk to anybody while he was there, so he couldn't really have anybody confirm and he couldn't totally explain what he was doing on that lot for that entire hour to begin with.

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Then police officers asked Kenneth if they could have his permission to search the home to see if anything had been stolen. Of course, they first wanted to see if she had been murdered and if this was a robbery that had gone wrong. Kenneth agreed and he filled out the entire form that was needed for consent to search the house, but he then would not sign it.

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Kenneth sagte, dass er nach dem Füllen der Form seine Meinung verändert hat. Also hat der Officer den Raum verlassen und ihm ein wenig Zeit gegeben, um darüber nachzudenken. Und als er zurückkehrte, hat Kenneth seine Meinung wieder verändert und gesagt, dass die Polizei die Heimat suchen könnte, so lange Kenneth mit ihnen sein könnte. Police agreed and Kenneth signed the form.

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As officers and Kenneth were arriving back at the home, another officer notified this original officer that they had found a pair of bloody running shoes and a bloody paper towel inside of Kenneth's car. So, this officer asked Kenneth if he could show him where his running shoes were supposed to be located and he did.

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Kenneth brachte den Anwalt in den Klosterschrank, wo die Runterschuhe normalerweise gehalten werden, aber stattdessen zeigte er dem Anwalt, dass es einen leeren Raum in einer Reihe von Schuhen gab, die auf dem Klosterschrank eingeladen wurden. Kenneth sagte, dass die Schuhe in diesem leeren Raum sein sollten und er wusste nicht, warum die Schuhe nicht da waren.

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Also hat der Anwalt ihm gesagt, dass die Schuhe tatsächlich in seinem Auto gefunden wurden und ihm ein Bild von ihnen gezeigt. He could not explain why they were in the car or why they had blood on them. He also could not explain the bloody paper towel. Police also noted that there was no sign of forced entry into the home and they found no evidence that anything from the home had been stolen.

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So, this did not appear to be a robbery or anything like that. It didn't appear that anybody had broken into the home either. So either she let the person in willingly because she knew them or it was someone who was already in the home. After that, Kenneth left the house because he was picking up his son from the airport.

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His son at the time was in college, so he was flying back as soon as he heard about Several hours later, the officer had Kenneth come back into the station for another interview. In this interview, Kenneth did come up with an explanation for why Christine's blood may have been on his running shoes.

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Sie fuhren schöne Autos, hatten eine sehr gut behaubte Wohnung in einem schönen Nachbarschaft. Und Kenneth wurde in der Nachbarschaft bekannt für sein Geschäft mit Real-Estate. kristin hat sich sichergestellt, sich in Form zu halten, indem sie sich herausgearbeitet hat und diejenigen um sie herum sagten, dass sie immer großartig aussah, auch wenn sie sich herausgearbeitet hatte.

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He said that maybe it got there after she had cut her hand while gardening about a week or two beforehand. Er sagte, dass er, wenn sie sich während des Gardens ausgeschnitten hat, um sie zu helfen ging, und er hat Druck auf ihre Wunde geübt. Das ist also wahrscheinlich so, wie die Blut auf seine Schuhe kam.

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Aber er konnte trotzdem nicht erklären, warum die Schuhe im Auto waren und nicht in seinem Klosthaus, wo er sagte, dass sie da wären. Dann, für die Papiertasche, sagte er, dass er sich vielleicht ausgeschnitten hat, nachdem er seiner Frau die CPR angetan hat. Und dann, nachdem er das gemacht hat, ging er, um seine Hunde zu beurteilen, die damals noch im Auto waren.

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Er sagte, während er auf die Hunde schaute, dass das vielleicht war, als er in den Auto die Wolle mitgezogen hat, ohne es überhaupt zu erkennen. Danach wurde Christines Körper natürlich dem Mediziner für eine Autopsie angeboten. Nach seiner Behandlung fand der Forensische Pathologen einige sehr interessante Schmerzen an Christine.

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Sie fanden drei Schmerzen auf der Oberfläche ihres Kopfes und dann drei weitere Schmerzen auf der Rückseite ihres Kopfes. Diese Schmerzen indizierten, dass sie mit einem Art von blunten Objekt aus dem Hintergrund getroffen wurde. Danach fanden sie, dass es eine Pulsierwunde war, direkt hinter Christine's rechten Ohr, die sich über ihr Gehirn und in ihr Gehirn gesteigert hat.

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which indicated that the blunt object struck her with enough force to fracture her skull. Then they found injuries to her neck, indicative of being strangled. Then they found injuries to her face, including two black eyes, which told the pathologist that she had been punched or slapped multiple times to her eyes, mouth and face.

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Sie fanden auch defensive Schmerzen an ihrer linken Fingerfläche, die in einer Versuchung, einen Schuss zu blockieren, hinsichtlich ihrer Hand hergestellt waren. Die medizinischen Bewerber beurteilten, dass die Ursache des Todes das Ergebnis von Kopfschmerzen war, die sie mit manuellem Strangulationen als Beitragsfaktor verursacht hatte.

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Die Pathologin stellte dann die Situation dar, in der sie glaubten, Christine sei gestorben. Sie sagten, dass sie mehrere Male in den Kopf getroffen wurde, als Christine versucht hat, ihren Anwalt, zumindest kurz, auszuhalten. Dann sagten sie, dass der Anwalt sie an den Nacken genommen hat und sie mit einer Hand zerstört hat, während sie sie zerstörte und sie mit der anderen Hand zerstörte.

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They believe that her injuries are not at all consistent with the fall down the stairs. In fact they believe that she was already dead before she was moved to the basement. So she was attacked and murdered somewhere else in the house before someone moved her to where she would later be found. um es wie ein Fall zu machen.

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Dann, als man das Haus suchte und Beweise sammelte, fand man, dass es kleine Spattern von Blut in verschiedenen Bereichen in der Küche waren. Einige der Blut war unter Objekten und insgesamt fand man über 70 Stücke Blut über der Küche und einige mehr Blut in der Waschmaschine.

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ihr Haar, Make-up und Kleid waren immer auf Punkt. Christine wurde als abhängige Frau genannt und Kenneth wurde als charmant, freundlich und charismatisch genannt. Die Nachbarn fragen oft Kenneth für Hilfe mit dem Programmieren ihrer Computer und er würde immer alles tun, was er konnte, um ihnen zu helfen.

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Es wurde bestätigt, dass dieser Blutspattern-Pattern abhängig war von Christine, die mit einem Objekt getroffen wurde, und dann das Blut, das von dem Objekt ausgelöst wurde, als sie es wieder nach oben bringen, um wieder nach unten zu gehen. Das war also der Grund, warum der Blutspattern über die Küche und in den Waschzimmer fliegte.

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Aufgrund dieses Ereignisses haben die Investitionen einen Luminol-Test über das Haus gemacht. Sie fanden Beweise von Blut, das auf dem Kühlschrank neben dem halb gegessenen Muffin befand und aus Christine's Papier, das sie auf dem Kühlschrank auf dem Kühlschrank befand. Sie fanden Blut auf den Kühlschrankwänden und dann ein großes Bereich von Blut auf dem Kühlschrankflur.

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Dann gab es einen Weg von Blut, der von der Kühlschrankfläche bis auf die Steine führte, der in den Wohnzimmer führte. und dann gab es eine Flasche Blut auf der Oberfläche des Wohnzimmers. Dann fanden sie Schuhdaten im Blut, die sie sagten, dass sie consistent mit Kenneths Rennschuhen sahen. Dann fanden sie einige Beweise, dass jemand versucht hatte, das Blut mit einem Kleid zu reinigen.

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Mit diesem Beweis bekam die Polizei einen Suchverkauf, um Kenneths Auto zu suchen, das ein Chevy Suburban war. In the car they found a dress shirt stuffed under the front seat of the car. And on that shirt they found a large red round stain that appeared to be blood on the front. Of course, this shirt was consistent with the other shirts that they found in Kenneth's closet.

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So they can reasonably assume that this shirt did belong to Kenneth. Then using DNA testing, investigators were able to officially confirm that the blood in the kitchen, the blood on the shirt, and the blood on Kenneth's running shoes, they were all a match to Christine's blood. So, of course, Kenneth was asked if he was able to provide an alibi for the time between 11 a.m.

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and 1.41 a.m., which is between the times that Christine was last seen teaching her class and stopping for coffee and muffins to when police arrived. As we know, Kenneth did pick up the two friends just after 1pm. But when he said that he left the house at 11am and was at that vacant lot for an hour, there is absolutely nobody that can confirm this alibi. No one saw him between 11 and 1.

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Nobody talked to him that entire time. They did find one woman who worked in a building adjacent to the vacant lot that Kenneth said that he was looking at. The woman said that her and Kenneth had an ongoing working relationship and they would often communicate back and forth about permits and what was going on with said land at any given time.

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She said that anytime he visited the lot, he would talk to her. She said that if he visited that lot and didn't talk to her, it would have been very strange. So she did say that on the day of May 5th, when he said that he visited that empty lot... Sie hat ihn dort nicht gesehen, und sie hat auch nicht mit ihm gesprochen.

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Die Familie ging oft auf Ausgaben, wie Campingtrips, und Kenneth war immer derjenige, den die Familie zählen konnte, um den Tent zu platzieren, den inflatablen Boot zu füllen und ihre ATVs zu prägen. Life for the family seemed almost picture perfect. The morning of May 5th, 2000 started as any day would. Christine got up for work at around 6 a.m.

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Being a single mother is one of the hardest jobs in the world. So many of us know at least one single mother who does everything she can to provide for her children. She would give them the shirt off of her back if it meant that they would be happy. Many of us come from single mothers who gave up everything to raise us.

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After carrying out this heinous plot to murder their children, Sarah then devised a plan of her own to place the blame on Brandon for the murders. But before I explain that part of the case, I want to pause for a minute and go back just a bit.

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I am not exactly sure when, but sometime after being arrested, both Sarah and Brandon admitted to what they did, and both of them described in detail how they drugged the children, strangled the oldest two, and tried drowning the third oldest. It was also at this time that Sarah finally admitted to police who the father of her children really was.

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It was someone that was involved in their lives, and someone that nobody would have suspected. It was her own half-brother, Brandon Machin, who lived just down the street from them. Like I said, he provided a lot of financial support for the family. He was at their home every single day. He would spend most days at the home with the children, then return back to his own home at night.

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Despite this, though, the children never actually knew who their father was.

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They were told their entire lives that their father died when they were young, which makes no sense, again, because one of them thought that he died in the Second World War, and they also had a seven-month-old sibling, so it would make no sense that for 14 years the dad was dead, but then somehow he was also still procreating. these other children.

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None of this made any sense, but I guess the children didn't really question it because why would you question what your mother is telling you? You're not going to think that she's lying to you about your father being dead. But either way, obviously this is very, very disturbing. As most people probably know, this can cause significant disabilities in children conceived out of incest.

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Again, as I stated earlier, Tristan was diagnosed with autism and I believe four of their other children were diagnosed with ADHD. They had six children total and one of them was only seven months old, so too young to be diagnosed with autism or ADHD, so it's possible that every single one of their children had some sort of disability. Now, I feel like I don't have to say this, but I will. Just

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for those of you who want to question what I'm saying. Obviously, disabilities happen in a multitude of different ways. Having a disability does not make someone any less deserving of life than someone without a disability. People with disabilities still contribute so much to society and nobody should be treated differently because of their diagnosis.

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I work with children who have disabilities and let me tell you, The kids I work with are my entire world. It is pretty much my life's work to help children who have disabilities. So again, I'm not saying that disabilities are a negative thing, but even beyond autism and ADHD, there are a plethora of very severe disabilities that can happen out of incest. And that is why it is illegal.

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There is a huge difference between happening to be born with a disability and your parents causing your disability. There's a difference between having cerebral palsy because you came out of the birth canal a little bit funky and you had a lack of oxygen to your brain and you just happened to be like that and cerebral palsy that's caused by abuse from a parent.

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There is a difference between having a cognitive disability because that's how you were born and you having a cognitive disability because your parents gave you shaken baby syndrome when you were a baby. Those are two very, very different things. But having a disability does make life a lot harder. Having a disability can result in being completely dependent on your caregiver

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which obviously does make life more difficult. But either way, this was a huge reason, probably the reason why Sarah was so afraid of social services and so convinced that they were going to take her children away. She knew that incest is wrong and illegal and immoral.

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So she felt that if she told anybody about the paternity of her children, that they would be taken away from her and they probably would have been. So now going back to the days around the murders. Like I said, after attempting to kill all six children and strangling the life out of their oldest two, Sarah carried out her own plan of trying to place the blame on Brandon.

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On the morning of the 24th at 7.08 a.m., Just minutes after Tristan and Blake's death, Sarah made a series of notes on her phone. They are as follows. The first one reads, The next note read, She continued, He's tried to drown a third child. It's not working. I'm so scared.

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to those on the outside it appeared that sarah was the single mother to six children ages seven months three years old 10 11 13 and 14 years old she was seen as a loving devoted mother who was doing everything in her power to raise her children She was known to be her children's biggest advocate and did everything to help them and support them.

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Her final note, which was written at 7.16 a.m., reads, Less than 10 minutes after making these quotes, Sarah texted a friend. She wrote, quote, He's trying to kill us and Tristan and Blake are already dead. After receiving that text message, the friend called the police and asked them to check in on the family home. And after that, again, as we know, police arrived shortly after by 7.45 a.m.

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And again, at that time, all six children were unconscious and two of them had been strangled to death. Immediately after being arrested and taken into custody, Sarah handed a police officer a notebook which had different funeral arrangements that she made for the children.

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In that notebook, there were also messages to friends and Brandon stating that she had no choice but to do what she did because she could not bear to be separated from her children. But after both were separated and placed into different interrogation rooms, Sarah initially started by placing all of the blame solely on Brandon. She stated that her brother killed her children.

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She said that he fed her kids sleeping pills after they couldn't sleep and that he killed them after they woke up the following morning. Brandon also started off his questioning by saying that he was solely responsible, that Sarah had no part in this. He was even willing to sign a confession stating this. But after some time, Sarah and Brandon started to tell the police what really happened.

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Sarah said that the social worker got too close to finding out that Brandon was the father to all of her children. Brandon said the same, saying that they tried to get more of the ADHD tablets on the 22nd to make sure that they had enough to kill the children. This was confirmed by the doctor's office, who said that Sarah tried repeatedly that day to get refills of her kids' ADHD meds,

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but she was denied because the requests were placed too early. If it's anything like meds here, you can only get them monthly. They are a stimulant and a controlled substance, so they are very strict on when and how much you can get. During Sarah's confession, she said that she would rather see her children dead than in social services camps.

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It was stated that she and her brother had very rough childhoods themselves, probably children of the system, so she didn't want the same fate for her own children. She added that she gave them life so she could take it away. In Brandon's confession, he said that his reaction was after getting the news of Tristan's alleged sexual assault.

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He said that after getting that phone call, his, quote, instant reaction made him want to, quote, rip the heads off of Blake and Tristan. He continued saying, how do you describe that feeling you want to get a hold of them and strangle the life of them? Again, it was after that that they forced the kids to take all of those stimulants, hoping that it would kill them.

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So after all of this, obviously, police knew exactly what happened here and Both of them ended up confessing, so there wasn't really any questions about what happened.

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Because of that, both Brandon and Sarah ultimately decided to plead guilty to all charges that they faced, including two counts of murder for Tristan and Blake, conspiracy to murder their six children, and attempted murder for Blake, Tristan, and the other child that we discussed earlier.

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For this, each of them was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after a minimum of 35 years served. After the sentencing, a family friend spoke about the children and the whole tragic case.

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That was made clear when in November of 2018, Sarah reached out to their local child and family services agency to ask for help with her second oldest child, Tristan. It was reported that Tristan had been diagnosed with autism, and I believe both him and Blake, as well as a few other children in the family, were also diagnosed with ADHD.

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Of course, in the aftermath of all of this, the surviving children are just broken. One of the older children, I don't know if it was the one they tried drowning or not, but they said that they were afraid of becoming a murderer themselves. One of the prosecutors in this case said at the sentencing hearing, quote, She continued, quote,

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Both of the older children are emotionally broken and don't know why this happened. They repeatedly asked why and how. We don't have the answers. Both keep saying that they just want a nice family home and say that they want their brothers back because it's too hard without them.

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They said that the younger children really struggle every day with the fact that they will never see their older brothers ever again. Of course, they will need therapy and a lot of support to get them through everything that they went through. The most recent article I could find was actually from a few years ago.

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It mentioned that the kids were being cared for by family and social services, but that could have changed by now. Hopefully, they are with family members who stepped up to care for them. But honestly, I'm not sure. I truly am just hoping for the best for those kids.

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As for the motives in this case, at her sentencing hearing, it was argued by Sarah's defense that she was so desperate to keep her kids out of social services care that she felt that she had no option but to kill them. but some people don't actually buy that. Other criminologists who have looked into the case believe that Sarah may be a lot more sinister than we initially imagined.

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Either way, when Sarah reached out for help, she stated that both of the oldest boys had an unhealthy obsession with pornography. She stated that 13-year-old Tristan specifically was showing a lot of behavioral issues, constantly accessing internet porn, and there was even a time where he stole an aunt's car without permission.

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Growing up, both Sarah and Brandon were known to kill pet mice for fun, and they were very fascinated by vampires, blood, and gore. As many of us know, a huge red flag for future serial killer behavior is starting by killing animals. Sarah was also known to post dark quotes on Facebook, one post stating, quote, murder is just like potato chips, you can't stop with just one.

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That is a quote from a Stephen King novel. She also once posted an image of a Grim Reaper with the caption, coming for you. Obviously, these posts do not indicate that Sarah was planning to murder her children. A lot of people make dark jokes and say things like this and make, you know, weird Facebook posts and never go on to do anything.

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A lot of people are into gore and vampires and just violent movies and things like that and don't actually behave that way in their real lives. But when we do see those things in hindsight after someone commits a crime like this, that can be significant. One criminologist wrote that they believe that Sarah is a narcissist who could have been planning this for a long time.

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They said that it's possible that both Tristan and Blake were getting to the age where they would start asking more and more questions. They would probably want to know who their father was, as would any child of a single parent. They were getting close to the age where they could expose the secret if they found out.

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So, one criminologist thinks that Sarah killed them out of control, so she could control the narrative and what people found out about them. She wanted to keep up with this image that she was trying to portray of a nice, normal family. And when her family was at risk of being exposed, as any narcissist would, she thought of herself first, thinking, poor me, I can't cope.

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And because of this, she made the calculated decision to engage in the violent behavior that ended the lives of her children. She was not suffering from psychosis or a mental illness that clouded her judgment. She is pure evil and would do anything to cover her disgusting dark secret.

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From the outside, that is exactly how friends and family members saw Sarah Barras. Having six children to care for on your own is no joke. With an absent father who never even bothered to meet any of his six children, life is a struggle. But Sarah's family was not all that it seemed.

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We can see that she sent out those frantic text messages and just started creating those notes in her phone in the hours around the murders. According to what I could find online before the murders, there was never any indication that Sarah was struggling with the boy's behavior. All of this could be a way to cover up her true motives for the murders.

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That is just the opinion of one criminologist who looked into this case, but I definitely thought that it was interesting. I do agree to some degree, she is the one who made the choice to get sexually involved with her own brother. And she knew that it was wrong. She chose not to just have one child with him, but to have six children, all of whom she knew she had to hide from social services. Why?

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Because she knew that incest is wrong. The choices that she made were wrong. Yet she continued to do it. It is her actions and Brandon's actions that led to this whole situation. It's not social service's fault. It's not the behaviors of her children. It is her and Brandon's fault. So when it comes to the idea of control, I do agree that that is probably the main motivator in this crime.

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He was also starting to show some aggression towards his younger siblings. Sarah was getting to her wit's end with Tristan's behaviors and she just didn't know what to do. So a social worker was assigned to her case and went into the home to do an investigation into Tristan and his overall home life.

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I think that it wasn't just the control of people finding out about what happened, but I also think it was control of her children. She didn't want social services to be able to raise her children because she wanted to control what happened to them, which makes some sense. As a mother, you do want to control what happens to your children.

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You don't want to see them being taken away, but I don't think that Sarah did that because she cared for her children so much. I think it truly is because she cared about herself and what other people felt about her and her children. Another one of Sarah's siblings also came out and said that she believes that Sarah and Brandon were evil since birth.

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She said, quote, those two have been evil since birth. They are both as bad as each other. They are both murdering evil psychopaths. Continuing to say, quote, I witnessed Brandon's violence towards Blake years ago and I knew that something wasn't right. I visited them when Tristan was still in his push chair and Blake was only a toddler. He must have been three or four.

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We were out walking when Brandon grabbed Blake's arm really roughly and dragged him across the floor. It was enough to know that something wasn't right, so I called social services and asked them to look into that. if they had, the boys might still be here today. Which is very sad that the sibling did attempt to get social services involved and they didn't get involved at that point.

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Something could have been done a lot earlier to figure out the situation and maybe even prevent them from having more children. Not that those other four children didn't deserve to be born, but again, children born out of incest, it's just such a higher possibility that they are going to have a lot of problems with their lives.

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As for the allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of Tristan and Blake, obviously, I don't want to speak ill of the dead. I don't want to make them out to be bad kids or deviants. So I want to preface this with saying that I don't know if the allegations are true or not. They could be totally fabricated or they could be real. If these boys truly did do these things, obviously they needed help.

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But I do think that their home environments and how they were being raised has a lot to do with it. Again, for the sake of not throwing out baseless accusations, I don't know if I think they were sexually abused in the home. But we do know that having sexual relations with family members is not out of the question for Brandon and Sarah, clearly.

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So, it could be possible, allegedly, that they abused their children and may have sexually abused them, which led to the behavior from Tristan and Blake. Because in a lot of cases, not all, but I will say that most cases, children don't exhibit sexually deviant behavior for no reason. most of the time the cause can be found in the home or with people close to them.

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So take that with what you will. I don't again know if I believe these allegations, if they are true. I do think that there was more going on behind the scenes than we know about and I don't know if we will ever find out if those younger children will ever come out with what they know or even if they knew that the older two were being sexually abused if they were.

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In that situation, the social worker found that Sarah truly was doing her best to support her kids. Sarah played an active role with social services, attending all of the meetings and advocating for her children's needs. So it didn't seem like there was any sort of underlying issues going on in the home.

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We may never know that part of this case. I do also want to note that after all of this happened, none of the kids asked for Sarah or Brandon. I feel like even in cases where parents do something horrible to siblings, the kids will still request their parents for comfort in times of trauma. But after being taken away, none of those kids wanted comfort from their parents.

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They just wanted their older brothers back. So, that says something to me, that they didn't find comfort in their own parents. They found it from their older brothers. What does that say about how the parents raised their kids and if, you know, Tristan and Blake were truly abusing them? You can decide that on your own.

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After this case all went down, social services did do an internal investigation into the case that they took out with the family. I touched on this a bit before, but they did find a few problems. This included the social worker not initially looking more into the paternity of the children.

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They found issue with the lack of resources and the amount of time it took to provide the family with those resources. All in all, even though they found Sarah to be a loving, competent mother, they felt that they could have improved in those areas. Hopefully, after they see this case, they will make those changes accordingly.

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But they did say that after reviewing the case, they didn't find that there was any way that they could have predicted any of this or prevented it from happening. There was no way that they could have thought that Sarah would take this drastic action to

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cover up what was going on in the home and again they didn't even know that brandon was the father they didn't even know that sarah had something like this to hide so they said that there's no way that they could have prevented any of this but after that that is all i know for today's case i know this was an absolutely wild one but as soon as i saw it i knew i needed to cover it it's a case where you truly don't believe what you are reading it truly doesn't feel real

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but it is and it's devastating and my heart absolutely goes out to the children who survived this whole mess, especially the one that they tried drowning. I can't imagine the kind of trauma that this child has to live through. I just hope that all of those children turn out okay and that they make the most out of their lives from here.

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But that is where I am going to end today's video and now I want to know what you all think. I really want you to sound off in the comments on this one. Do you think that Sarah killed her kids because she truly feared them being taken away? Or do you think she was just desperate to cover for her own secret?

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Do you think she's a loving mother who just survived the system and didn't want the same for her children? Or do you think she's a narcissist? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts that you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week.

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It didn't seem like Sarah was causing him to act out and it didn't seem like the way he was being raised was to blame for how he was acting. Now, the social worker didn't know who the father of her children was, but Sarah did have a brother living nearby, 39-year-old Brandon Machin, who was always there to help with whatever the children needed.

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Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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He even spent most days in the home with Sarah and the children to help out. So, even though the social worker noted that there was no male influence in the home full-time and Sarah wasn't very forthcoming with who the father of her children was, she was doing her best. Over the course of several interactions, Sarah did eventually develop a good working relationship with the social worker.

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The worker felt that Sarah was doing her best and assured Sarah that social services recognized how hard she was trying. However, it didn't appear that at least at first, the social worker did that much to actually help Sarah take care of the problems that she was dealing with.

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When the social worker did reach out to other agencies for Sarah to access additional resources, there were significant delays which limited the family's access to those resources. They also initially referred the Barras family to the multi-agency support team referred to as MAST.

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This is an integrated team made up of different disciplines which works together to use psychological and therapeutic methods to support parents and families. These teams are made up of counselors, therapists, teachers, and mentors.

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They work on improving behavior in the home and at school and manage disabilities in children such as ADHD and autism and then help children after serious events like parental divorce or death and things like that. So they're basically an all-encompassing team to help children deal with the things that they may not be dealing with in the most healthy ways.

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However, because of how well Sarah was working with social services, they closed the referral feeling that this was no longer necessary. Overall, the social worker did appreciate what Sarah was doing for her children, but didn't necessarily do what was needed to help Sarah resolve the issues that she reached out to social services to fix to begin with.

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But behind closed doors, this was a home full of dark, disturbing secrets that built up for almost a decade before leading to the end of many young lives. Tristan and Blake Barras were the oldest of six children born to their mother, 35-year-old Sarah Barras. The family lived in a home located on Gregg House Road in Shergreen, Yorkshire, England. 14-year-old Blake was described as sweet and kind.

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And as time went on, it seemed that Sarah was getting more and more worried about her children and their behaviors. By early in the year in 2019, it seemed that now both Tristan and Blake had been accused by Sarah of sexually inappropriate behavior towards a younger sibling. It seemed that Tristan and Blake's behaviors were getting worse and worse, and Sarah didn't know what to do.

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By May 21st, 2019, a social worker told Sarah that they were going to hold a strategy meeting concerning the family, but she was not allowed to attend. That really scared Sarah. She felt that the lack of action at first was a sign that social services really wanted to help her and the family and wasn't going to be taking the children away from her.

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But after being informed of this meeting, she started to worry that more serious action was going to take place, and she worried that the children may be taken away. At the time, Tristan, who the original social services report was made for, was considered the status of a child in need.

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According to the Children Act of 1989, a child in need is defined as a child who is unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable level of health or development or whose health and development is likely to be significantly or further impaired without provision of services or a child who is disabled.

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Under this status, the child is considered for special education services, therapeutic intervention, and basically help with day-to-day life if needed. However, after the meeting on May 22, 2019, Tristan was moved to the status of child in protection.

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This means that the child is in a situation where they are likely to be harmed or has suffered significant harm and needs to be closely monitored or even removed from the home to prevent further harm. The reason that Tristan was moved to this status was because a few days prior, Sarah had been questioned extensively about the paternity of her children.

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The more they questioned her about who the father was, the more defiant and uncooperative she became. This was concerning to child services because they needed to know who the father was to establish whether it was possible that the children had been exposed to sexual behavior or abuse, which makes absolute sense.

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Because in many situations, when young children and teenagers are exhibiting overly sexual behavior, inappropriate behavior, Many times it can be because they suffered from sexual abuse themselves. But that's not how Sarah saw the situation. She refused to tell police who the father of her children were, and even the change in status did not convince her.

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However, everything came to a head by the morning of May 24th, 2019. By 7.45 a.m. that morning, South Yorkshire police received a call from someone reporting that they were concerned for the safety of the children who lived in the Barras home. Shortly after, 15 police cars arrived to the home on Gregg House Road.

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When police entered the house, they found that all six children who lived there were lying unconscious. Tristan and Blake were each found in their beds with plastic bags over their heads. Also in the home, they found 35 year old Sarah and her brother, 39 year old Brandon, who were promptly arrested while police and the forensic team investigated the scene.

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At the time, all six children were transferred to the Sheffield Children's Hospital for treatment. And unfortunately, shortly after arriving to the hospital, both Tristan and Blake passed away. Meanwhile, the other four children remained in the hospital for several hours for treatment, but they survived. I will discuss exactly what happened to them in just a minute.

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He wore his heart on his sleeve and made everyone around him feel loved. He had this natural ability to make those around him smile, even if he was having a bad day himself. He cared about everyone around him and he was known to just have the biggest heart. His little brother, 13-year-old Tristan, was described as being mischievous and lovable. He always wanted to stand out and be different.

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Now, of course, after the initial raid of the home and the arrests that resulted, police needed to continue their investigation to figure out what was going on here. I want to note now that, of course, after the children regained consciousness and were able to speak again, they were questioned. One of the children told the police officer that his father was not around.

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He told him that his father had died in the Second World War. Obviously, this made no sense because all of the children were ages 14 and under, so there was no possible way that their father could have died sometime in the 1940s. So still, the identity of their father was a complete mystery.

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Next, police were able to look into Sarah's cell phone records and social media messages that she had sent out just days before the deaths and in the hours surrounding the deaths. And these uncovered some very dark, disturbing things.

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Sometime in May, as social services were getting more serious about the allegations being made within the home, Sarah messaged one friend, which showed her frustration with her children, as well as a strong desire to find a solution to her problems. She wrote, quote, In another message, she wrote to the friend, quote, I've thought of every possible solution to this mess.

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Mass murder, putting them all in care, checking into the local nut house. I love my kids too much to kill them. I can't put them into care for the same reasons. Then by May 23rd, the day before the children were all found unconscious, Sarah received a phone call. This was a call from an individual who informed her that Tristan had allegedly carried out another sexual assault against another child.

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this person told Sarah that she intended to report the incident to police that following day. According to police, it was either on the 22nd or 23rd that Sarah and her half-brother Brandon hatched this plan to murder her children.

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Either they thought of it on the 22nd after the meeting with that social worker where she was afraid of her children being taken away, or on the 23rd after becoming enraged after finding out about Tristan's alleged behavior. Either way, on the night of the 23rd, after receiving this call, Sarah and Brandon carried out their plan to murder their children.

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He dyed his hair multicolored to stand out from the rest and people loved him for it. He was known to be brave and self-assured. He always did what he wanted, no matter what anybody thought of him. You just look like every other person.

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That night, the two gathered a bunch of ADHD medication that had been prescribed to four of the six children. So they had access to quite a bit of this medication. That night, Sarah and Brandon forced all of the children to take copious amounts of the medication, hoping that it would kill them overnight.

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That night after taking all of that medication, one of the brothers messaged a friend on Nintendo Switch to say that they were feeling sick. Sarah also reportedly told friends and neighbors that the kids were suffering from some sort of stomach bug and weren't feeling well.

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But when all of the children woke up on the morning of the 24th, Sarah and Brandon realized that the medication did not kill them. So they went online and started researching other methods to kill their children. they decided to strangle Tristan and Blake to death. Sarah started with Tristan strangling him with her bare hands.

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He fought with everything he had, fighting against her and yelling at her to stop. Blake actually witnessed this, yelling at her to stop killing Tristan. But that is when Brandon stepped in and strangled Blake, also with his bare hands. Then they placed plastic bags over their heads to make sure that they died and then placed them in their beds.

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After that, they took their next oldest child, who was 11, and attempted to kill him by drowning him in the bathtub. That child also struggled violently and fought with everything they had. As they were being drowned, the child yelled out, "'Why are you trying to kill us?' But thankfully, this child did survive. It was reported that two of the other children also witnessed these attacks.

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März begann Kelly, Olivia's Ärzte zu beurteilen, dass Olivia's Lebensqualität nicht akzeptabel war. Dies betrifft, wenn sie von Nahrungsverlust leidet, wenn sie von zu vielen Opioiden im System leidet oder von irgendeiner anderen Gründe für ihre Todesstörung. Sie soll nicht resizitiert werden.

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Sie hat auch beantragt, dass Olivia von der TPN entfernt wird und zum Hospiz für die Palliativschutzschutzschutz schickt. Dies bedeutet, dass jede Behandlung, um das Leben zu verhindern, aufhört. Stattdessen wird die Fokussierung darauf gelegt, Olivia komfortabel zu machen, sobald sie langsam stirbt. Nun möchte ich bemerken, dass einer der Ärzte, die Olivia gesehen haben, Dr. Thomas Walker war.

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Nach dem Divorz im Jahr 2012 schlug Kelley und ihre drei Kinder nach Littleton, Colorado, wo sie für die folgenden Jahre geblieben waren. Olivia war bekannt, dass sie sehr nahe zu ihrer Familie war, besonders ihre Großeltern, die in Texas nach dem Weg geblieben sind, aber versucht haben, die Mädchen so oft wie sie können zu besuchen.

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Er hat sie zweimal gesehen, einmal im Dezember 2016 und im Juli 2017, als diese End-of-Life-Rechte gemacht wurden. Er hat gesagt, dass alle medizinische Geschichte und Symptome, die sie für Olivia hatten, von Kelly berichtet wurden. He didn't necessarily think that all of these procedures were totally necessary and did not believe Olivia to be a terminal patient.

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He described that she was active, talkative and social anytime he saw her, even while undergoing TPN. So he did not think that a DNR was necessary. He did not think that she should be transitioned to end-of-life care. Again, he didn't think that she was a terminal patient.

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He did report this to the higher-ups at the Denver Children's Hospital, but the ethics team actually voted against him and voted in favor of not wanting to save the life of this 7-year-old little girl and made the decision to transfer Olivia out of his care and into the care of Dr. Jason Sodden.

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Based on what he saw, Dr. Sodden agreed that Olivia was not able to sustain life based on her condition, so... He did sign off on the hospice paperwork and the DNR. From there, by August 1st, 2017, Olivia was placed into hospice, where she was taken off any and all treatments. She received enough pain medication to take all the pain away and keep her barely conscious.

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She was only given juice and popsicles for the three weeks that followed. And tragically, devastatingly, Am 20. August 2017 ertrug Olivia, was sie als Intestinalverletzung bezeichneten. Olivia's Tod war natürlich schmerzhaft für alle, die sie kannten.

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Kelly musste ihre Tochter schmerzhaft durch viele Arten und Arten für Jahre betrachten, sie zu sehen, wie sie in Schmerzen von ihrer Krankheit leidet, sowie von allen Arten und Prozeduren. Das ging für Jahre, für die gesamte Lebenszeit. bevor ihre Krankheit sie endlich von denjenigen, die sie am liebsten liebten, entfernt hat.

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Für das Jahr danach scheint es so zu sein, dass Kelly und ihre Familie den Verlust der siebtenjährigen Mädchen bemerkt haben, während sie versuchen, mit ihren Leben weiterzugehen und sich wieder hoch zu packen. Aber im Oktober 2018 scheint es so zu sein, dass Kelly durch noch einen emotionalen Rollercoaster wird, nachdem ihre ältere Tochter, Olivias ältere Schwester, auch krank wurde.

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Ich möchte anmerken, dass ihr Name nie öffentlich veröffentlicht wurde, weil sie noch lebendig ist und sie noch draußen ist. Also werde ich sie nur als Kellys ältere Kind oder als Olivia's ältere Schwester bezeichnen. Damals hat Kelly ihre Tochter in den Krankenhaus geholt, viele Male mit Beratungen von Blutschmerzen.

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Kelly hat ihre Tochter zum gleichen Krankenhaus genommen, um andere kleine Gefühle anzunehmen, erst nachdem sie von Texas aus 2013 geflogen ist. Es war nicht bis 2016, als Kelly berichtete, dass zwischen den Ängsten von zwei bis fünf Jahren alt war, While they were still living in Texas, she had been treated for lymphoma with chemotherapy and radiation.

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Olivia wurde als eine glückliche, glückliche, positive kleine Mädchen beschrieben. Sie war imaginativ, sprachlich und klug. Olivia liebte die Schule. Sie war glücklich, wenn sie bei ihren Lehrerinnen und Freunden war. Zuhause liebte sie, auf ihrem iPad zu spielen, mit ihren Toiletten zu spielen und Filme zu sehen.

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Lymphoma is one of the most common types of cancer seen in children. Lymphoma is a cancer of the white blood cells. It happens when these cells, called lymphocytes, start growing in an uncontrolled way, causing the lymph nodes all throughout the body to swell.

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Well, back in 2016, when she first reported this, the girl's doctors reached out to the hospital back in Texas to confirm that diagnosis, but they stated that she never received any treatment there for any type of cancer. Es scheint eine Geschichte zu haben, die natürlich ein roter Flagg für ihre Ärzte in Colorado war.

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Nichts mehr kam von diesem für die Jahre, die danach folgten, obwohl sie nicht wirklich zum Krankenhaus gekommen ist, um andere Gefühle, also wurden keine weiteren Berichte über diesen Lied gemacht. Aber dann, im Oktober 2018, war sie wieder im Krankenhaus, jetzt mit Berichten von Blutschmerzen für ihre ältere Tochter. Blutschmerzen sind ein sehr normaler Side-Effekt von Chemotherapie.

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Chemotherapie funktioniert im Grunde genommen damit, alle Zellen in deinem Körper zu attackieren, um die schlechten, kanzlerlosen Zellen zu lösen. Natürlich kann dies einen negativen Einfluss auf das Wachstum und Entwicklung eines Kindes haben und die Art und Weise, wie deine Beine sich zu reparieren und sich zu reparieren, die sie stärker machen.

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Dies ist nicht nur ein Hintergrund für Kinder, es passiert vielen Menschen, die Chemo untergebracht haben. Egal wie, mit diesen Berichten von Beinschmerzen, ist natürlich die Überzeugung, dass es ein Ergebnis der Chemo ist, die diese kleine Frau als Kind erhielt.

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Aber wieder einmal, als die medizinischen Mitarbeiter ihre medizinische Geschichte angeschaut haben, haben sie herausgefunden, dass sie nie wirklich Kanzer hatte und nie Chemo verursacht hat. Das war ein riesiger roter Flagg für ihre Betreuungsmitarbeiter, also haben sie mehr nachgeguckt.

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Sie sind online gegangen und haben viele Artikel, Blogs, Facebook-Page und News-Story gefunden, die ihre andere Tochter, Olivia, über die folgenden Krankheiten in der Gesundheit berichten. They found out that Olivia died from her issues at the young age of seven from intestinal disease. Kelly was receiving tons of attention from the media reporting on Olivia.

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She received thousands of dollars from that GoFundMe. And now, all of a sudden, she had yet another sick daughter all of this information set off a light bulb for these medical professionals who felt that maybe olivia's battle wasn't all that it seemed it is very rare that a child dies from intestinal issues especially when they're receiving treatment

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Plus, there were multiple doctors involved in Olivia's care who felt that she was not a terminal patient, yet she died anyways. We now see that Kelly is willing to lie about her other child's past medical history. So, was it possible that she had also been making up Olivia's medical issues?

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Laut ihrem Großvater würde Olivia einen Film mal sehen und dann, wenn sie ihn wiederholt, würde sie Wort für Wort sagen, was die Charaktere sagten. Sie hatte auch eine unglaubliche Vorstellung und konnte sich und ihre Schwestern für Stunden unterhalten, nur um mit den meisten elaboraten und kreativen Geschichten zu kommen. Einige ihrer Lieblingsplätze waren der Zoo und Dinosaur-Richt.

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Aufgrund der Überzeugung hat die medizinische Staffel endlich die Behörden angerufen, um ihre Gefühle zu beurteilen. Nachdem die Polizei ihre Untersuchung begonnen hat, haben sie wieder einmal bestätigt, dass Kellys ältere Tochter nie für irgendeine Form von Krankheit behandelt wurde.

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Die einzige Sache, für die sie jemals ins Krankenhaus ging, waren Dinge wie Ohreninfektionen und Sportverletzungen. Es war klar, dass sie versucht hat, ihre vorherige medizinische Geschichte zu fabricieren und versucht hat, unnötige Betreuung für ihre Tochter zu bekommen.

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Dann ging die Polizei weiter und hat ein Interview mit Kelly gemacht, in dem sie die extensiven medizinischen Bedingungen erklärte, mit denen ihre Tochter getötet hat. Sie bestätigte, dass ihre ältere Tochter als Kind Schmerzen hatte. Sie ging dann in Detail über Olivia, erklärte fast alles, was ich euch bis jetzt erzählt habe.

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Wie sie Schmerzen, Autismus und schlussendlich auch Ernährungsprobleme hatte. Sie sprach auch darüber, wie sie versuchte, zu essen, was ihre Bedingungen verringert hat. Dies führte sie zu all diesen schmerzhaften, schmerzhaften Prozeduren während ihrer kurzen Zeit auf der Erde. In diesem Interview brachte sie dann das Munchausen-by-Proxy-Syndrom auf, völlig unerlässlich.

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Sie sagte, dass sie weiß, was es bedeutet, wenn ein Vater oder Anwesender sein Kind auf den Grund macht, um Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen. Sie hat weiter gesagt, das sei nie mein Fall gewesen, überhaupt nicht. Du kannst mit jedem sprechen, der an meiner Seite stand, über all das. Nach diesem Interview mit Kelly haben die Anwesenden einen Zertifizierungs-Test mit der älteren Tochter gemacht.

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Im Grunde hatten sie jemanden in der Wohnung für ein paar Tage, um das Kind zu beobachten, während Kelly auf dem Weg war. Sie wollten sehen, ob ihre Krankheit überhaupt verändert hat, von ihrer Mutter weg zu gehen. Lo und behold, with Kelly gone, the girl had no further complaints of bone pain and her condition seemed to drastically improve.

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Just as it had with Olivia with that ostomy bag situation. Based on this, investigators felt that it was very likely that Kelly had fabricated many of Olivia's health issues too. They decided to exhume Olivia's remains and send her to the medical examiner for an autopsy.

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Dort hat die Medizinerin bestätigt, dass sie keine anatomischen Fähigkeiten gefunden hat, um einen von Olivia's bestätigten Diagnosen zu unterstützen. Natürlich gibt es bestimmte Dinge, die man in einer Autopsie nicht finden kann, z.B. Autismus oder Inflammation des Digestivtraktes. However, like I said, Kelly wrote that Olivia had a brain malformation, a heart malformation.

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Neither of these malformations were found in the autopsy. She also found no anatomical cause for Olivia's digestive issues. Based on her findings, she certified Olivia's cause of death as undetermined, which is different from what the original cause of death was supposedly supposed to be, which was intestinal failure. She just could not find evidence to prove it was intestinal failure.

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The next step in this investigation, of course, was to interview other members of Olivia's family, as well as doctors who took part in her care. Now, according to Olivia's father, Jeff, Er hatte sich selbst und die drei Mädchen auf seiner Gesundheitsversicherung von der Zeit, in der sie geboren wurden, und über die ganze Zeit. Sie wurden nie von einer Begründung enttäuscht.

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Seine Versicherung war ziemlich gut. Aber nach dem Weg nach Colorado, hat Kelly Jeff ausgesucht, die Mädchen von seiner Gesundheitsversicherung zu entfernen, indem er sagte, dass das Colorado Children's Hospital eine bessere Planung für die Mädchen bietet, die günstiger wäre als die Planung, die sie aktuell durch Jeffs Arbeitgeber haben. However, that was not true.

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Kelly instead enrolled the girls in Colorado's Medicaid program, even though Jeff's insurance was able to cover them. And again, his insurance was reportedly better than what the state offered. Now, you might be wondering, how did Kelly get the kids covered under the Medicaid program if they already had insurance? Well, she did that by lying on the applications.

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Ihr Lieblings Tier war ein Lion und sie konnte dir nur über Dinos und Schafe erzählen. Sie liebte auch Dairy Queen, wo sie ihren Lieblings-Vanilla-Ice-Cream-Kon.

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Im Grunde gesagt, in einer der Anwendungen hat sie gesagt, dass sie und Jeff verabschiedet waren und dass Jeff ein absenter Vater war. Also haben sie keine Sicherung. In einer anderen Anwendung hat sie gesagt, dass Jeffs Mitarbeiter keine Sicherung bietet, was wir wissen, nicht wahr ist.

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So, based on the fact that Kelly was so desperate to get Olivia and the other girls off of the insurance, could indicate that Kelly did not want Jeff to know about all the medical procedures and appointments Olivia was going through. If he found out about her illness and about the thousands of claims she had been making, he would have started asking questions. And?

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Next, like I said earlier, Kelly said that Olivia was hardly eating due to her food aversions and allergies. However, at one point during all of this, Olivia saw an occupational therapist to try and address her eating problems.

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An occupational therapist is a medical professional trained to help people with their everyday tasks such as feeding, showering, toileting, gripping and grasping objects, brushing their teeth and things like that. They will do an assessment to identify possible underlying causes of the deficit and use that to get the person back to their normal daily function through therapy.

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When Olivia was assessed, the OT found no medical issues contributing to Olivia's feeding problems. Meaning that she chewed, swallowed and tolerated food just fine. Over time, she helped Olivia explore all sorts of different foods until she got to the point of eating an age-appropriate diet. After achieving her goals, Olivia was discharged with no recommendation for further therapy.

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Because again, Olivia was eating just fine. Yet still... Kelly beklagte, dass Olivia nicht essen wollte. Nachdem das, haben die Investitionen mit den verschiedenen medizinischen Professionellen gesprochen, die mit Olivia gearbeitet haben, insbesondere Ärzte in Texas und das Team, das sie in Colorado beteiligt hat.

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Sie haben von mehreren Texas-Ärzten gehört, die Olivia als Baby gesehen haben, und sie haben sie nie mit Autismus, Hydrocephalie oder anderen Bedingungen, die Kelly bezeichnete, beurteilt. They said that she was a healthy baby who was growing appropriately and meeting all of her expected milestones.

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She may have had some mild developmental delays, but they were all within her age range and nothing was ever severe enough to warrant a diagnosis. They then heard from almost every single person who treated Olivia in Colorado that they never considered Olivia a terminal patient, meaning they never considered any of her issues severe enough to cause her death.

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In fact, as I stated earlier, one of her doctors, Dr. Walker, refused to sign the DNR. Many others were very surprised when they learned of her death, saying they never thought she was ever that sick. They talked to her neurologist, who, as I stated earlier, said that Olivia did not suffer from seizures and ordered Kelly to get her off of the medication. But Kelly refused.

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They spoke to the pain management team and the anesthesiologist. Alle, die sagten, dass jedes Mal, wenn es einen Schmerzreport gab, kam es von Kelly, nicht Olivia. Viele ihrer Ärzte sagten das Gleiche über ihre gesetzliche medizinische Geschichte. Es kam alles von Kelly und es gab nicht viel Dokumentation, um es zu beurteilen.

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Als sie Olivia in ihren Besuchern sahen, sah Olivia immer glücklich, ausgehend, sozial, redlich und aktiv aussehen. Nun, der Arzt, der die G-Tube-Iliostomie und die zentralen Lärmschmerzen verantwortlich war, war der Generalpädiatrische Arzt Dr. John Beeler. He told officers that he was referred by another doctor due to Olivia's severe constipation problems.

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He was aware of the conditions for which she was being treated, hence why he did the surgeries. He said that none of the conditions Olivia was being treated for were terminal illnesses. He explained that death from intestinal failure occurs for only two reasons. Malnutrition and liver failure.

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He said that malnutrition simply does not happen to anyone being treated in the United States because it's a relatively simple thing to treat. You feed through different types of tubes. The other cause, liver failure, occurs from the liver not being utilized during normal organ functions when someone has a GJ tube.

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A GJ tube bypasses the stomach so that the liver doesn't get a chance to break down the food it receives to send out the enzymes to the rest of the body. But this takes years of having a GJ tube for that to happen. So Olivia wasn't anywhere near liver failure by the time her surgeries took place.

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However, Olivia's life from the jump was anything but easy. Starting from the time that she was just a baby, Olivia started experiencing a number of health issues. She would spend the following years in and out of the hospital, suffering through countless doctors visits, medical testing and undergoing numerous procedures.

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Another doctor who treated Olivia twice while she was on TPN, Dr. Belkind, told investigators that he believed Olivia could be taken off TPN and have all of her tubes removed and that she could live a normal life. But when he suggested this to Kelly, once again she refused. She said that they already tried it and it didn't work.

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He was flabbergasted when he found out that Kelly took Olivia off of her care and transitioned her to hospice. So based on the information we have gathered up to this point, it seems clear that Kelly was making up all of these symptoms to get Olivia diagnosed with various conditions so that she could undergo these surgeries and treatments.

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Sie bekamen ihre Sympathie und Aufmerksamkeit von Familie und Freunden. Dann, als die News-Outlets Olivia's Geschichte aufgenommen haben, bekam sie noch mehr Aufmerksamkeit. Mit dieser Aufmerksamkeit bekam sie Donationen. Es ging weiter und weiter, und je mehr Aufmerksamkeit sie bekam, desto schlimmer wurde Olivia's Situation. Sie konnte sich einfach nicht helfen.

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Und schlussendlich starb Olivia tot. Welcher bessere Weg, die höchste Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen, als ein totes 7-jähriges Kind zu haben. Aber dann, als diese Aufmerksamkeit runterging und die Leute weitergegangen sind, brauchte sie es zurück. Sie verpasste die Aufmerksamkeit, die sie von ihrem ersten kranken Kind bekam, also versuchte sie, das Gleiche mit ihrer älteren Tochter zu tun.

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Aber dankbar für ihre ältere Tochter, haben die Ärzte endlich die Teile zusammengelegt und bemerkt haben, dass etwas falsch war. Für mich, denke ich, dass Olivia's Situation aufgrund vieler anderer Faktoren geschehen ist. Und während ich über diese Teilung des Videos spreche, gehe ich auf meine eigene Erfahrung.

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Ich arbeite in der Pädiatrie, also behandle Kinder jeden Tag und das bedeutet, dass ich mit ihren Eltern und Familien umgehe. jeden Tag, also habe ich Erfahrung mit der Behandlung von medizinischer Geschichte, der Behandlung basierend auf dieser medizinischen Geschichte und der Benutzung davon, um ihre Ziele weiterzuentwickeln und einen Plan der Behandlung zu schaffen.

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Also während dieser Teil der Video, werde ich meine eigene Erfahrung und Informationen aus diesem Fall verwendet, um zu erklären, wie ich denke, dass dies passieren könnte.

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Also erstens, sie haben sich über die Staatslinien gewechselt, sodass es einfach war, dass Kelly die medizinische Geschichte von Olivia beurteilt und dass sie sie glauben, weil es eigentlich sehr selten ist, dass ein Vater lügt über solche Dinge.

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In meiner Erfahrung kannst du sagen, wenn ein Vater versucht, dir über ihre Kindesdiagnose oder ihre berufliche medizinische Geschichte zu erzählen, kannst du sagen, ob sie es verstehen oder nicht, basierend darauf, wie viel Informationen sie dir geben. Sometimes they kind of misinterpret what they were told by their previous provider.

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Sometimes they know exactly what they're talking about because this is their child and they've been dealing with this issue for however long they've been dealing with it. So after they tell you, of course, the provider will put it in the system. And then as Kelly goes to the next provider, that next provider will look in Olivia's chart and see that she now has a documented history of illness.

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So let's say I see a child. Ich nehme ihre Geschichte, stelle sie in den Computer ein. Sie gehen und sehen einen anderen Anwalt, der das gleiche System wie wir hat. Sie schauen in ihre alte medizinische Geschichte und sagen, oh, Rachel hat berichtet, dass dieses Kind diese Krankheit hatte, also das ist ihre alte medizinische Geschichte.

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Mit Olivia begann es mit ihr zu sagen, dass sie eine Sehnsuchtskrankheit hatte, die sie vielleicht mehr Aufmerksamkeit bekommen würde, aber es war nicht so. Ich denke, es gab einen Zeitpunkt, in dem Olivia wirklich Hilfe brauchte, um ihre Schmerzen zu lösen. As I stated, the doctor who assessed her said it was a quick fix.

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Most of it started in January of 2013, when Kelly took Olivia to the Colorado Children's Hospital with reports that Olivia was having trouble digesting food and was severely constipated. The doctor performed their assessment and found that Olivia was a normally developing, social, outgoing little girl

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So, once again, when you do the treatment, you put exactly what you did for that person or child in your chart. The next provider will see that this treatment was done. Aber für Kelly, glaube ich, brauchte sie noch mehr. Als sie weiter mit den Stomachproblemen ging, wusste sie vielleicht, dass es einfach zu lügen war.

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Denn ehrlich gesagt, es wäre einfach für sie, Olivia zu verletzen, wenn sie einen verletzten Stomach hätte. Ob sie ihre Füße geben würde, die die Verletzung verursachten würden. Vielleicht hatte sie echte Ernährungsintoleranz, die Kelly wusste, würde ihren Stomach verletzen. Oder, meiner Meinung nach, basierend auf dem, was wir in diesem Fall wissen,

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Ich denke, straight up, I think Kelly was starving Olivia. I do, I'll get more into that in just a minute, but I do think that Kelly was just withholding food completely. Either way, each time she went in with these ongoing complaints, The next doctor would look at the previous note and see that this is an ongoing issue.

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If I see a patient and I'm seeing them for, you know, tummy troubles and I see that, oh my gosh, this child has been coming in for a long time for the same issue, maybe we need to take a different approach. Ich denke, das ist das, was die Ärzte in diesem Fall gedacht haben.

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Also wiederum, nach genügend Besuchern und ihrer medizinischen Geschichte, kann ich sehen, wie diese Ärzte in all diesen Proceduren manipuliert wurden. Ich sage nicht, dass es richtig ist. Ich sage nicht, dass das der Fall sein sollte. Ich denke, der erste Ärzte sollte die echten medizinischen Rekorde aus dem Krankenhaus in Texas bekommen haben. Das wäre das richtige, was zu tun wäre.

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Wenn ich ein Kind sehe und sie haben eine passende medizinische Geschichte, ich behandle gerade ein Kind, das gerade eine Surgery bekommen hat, So I'm going to request the documents from their surgeon to see exactly what happened in that procedure. I'm not just going to take the mom's word for it, even though I believe her, obviously, I think she's telling the truth, but she's not a surgeon.

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She's not a medical doctor. She doesn't know everything about the surgery. I want to know more. So I'm requesting those documents from the surgeon. That's what a competent provider would do when they're taking a medical history. So again,

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I can kind of see how doctors were manipulated into doing some of these procedures, but what I can't see is how they let her die, how they let her transition to hospice. Dr. Walker was the only one to report his concerns to the hospital, but he never actually called child welfare services or the authorities. Why?

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Und dann, als sie durch all diese verschiedenen Prozeduren ging, glaube ich, dass, als der Arzt sie sah, nachdem sie all diese Türen platziert hat, nachdem sie TPN begonnen hat, glaube ich, als sie sie beobachtet haben, waren sie wirklich so, oh mein Gott, dieses Kind bekommt keine Nutriente, die sie braucht. Warum absorbiert sie die Nutriente nicht? Was ist da los?

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Natürlich denke ich, dass, wenn niemand schaute, wenn sie zu Hause waren oder wenn niemand im Raum war, Ich denke, dass Kelli mit den Tüben verabschiedet war. Entweder hat sie ihr die Formel nicht gegeben, wie sie es gebraucht hat, oder vielleicht hat sie es abgelöst oder etwas anderes.

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Ich weiß nicht genau, was sie gemacht hat, aber ich denke, dass sie etwas gemacht hat, um ihr Kind zu fressen, um es so zu machen, als ob sie keine Nutriente bekommen. Denn ich denke, dass sie, als sie auf die Besucherstattung kam und ins Krankenhaus ging, wirklich beschäftigt war und sich fragte, warum dieses Kind keine Nutriente absorbiert hat.

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Das Problem wurde von einem Doktor beantwortet, der den geheimen Stuhl von ihrer Kolonie entfernt hat. Schnell und einfach. By April that same year, Olivia returned to the hospital with the same complaint. This time, the doctor felt that Olivia was exhibiting stool withholding behaviors, meaning that Olivia was refusing to use the bathroom for one reason or another.

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Aber sie haben nie aufgehört zu denken, dass vielleicht Kelley es mit ihm verabschiedet hat, auch nachdem sie sie mit ihrer Ausstimmungsmaske gesehen haben. Es macht keinen Sinn. Einerseits, nachdem all das entdeckt wurde, fühlten die Polizei, dass sie genug hatte, um Kelley Renee Turner zu verabschieden und sie mit 1. Klasse Mord, Verbrechen, finanziellen Verbrechen und Verbrechen zu beurteilen.

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Die Verletzungen und andere Verletzungen sind zu ihrer Anwendung des Gesundheitssystems verbunden, um all diese unnötigen Tests und Prozeduren zu machen, die Hunderten von Tausenden von Dollar kosteten. Sie haben Medicare über 500.000 Dollar kostet und das Krankenhaus hat über 3 Millionen Dollar für alle Therapien bezahlt. plus das Geld, das sie auf der GoFundMe erhielt.

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Sie hat auch mit den Events, die sie für Olivia vorgelegt haben, tausende Dollar von Make-A-Wish ausgeliefert. Zuerst war Kelly nicht schuldig für ihre Anzeigen und war erwartet, im Februar 2022 zur Behandlung zu gehen.

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Jedoch, vor der Anzeige, dass sie anfangen würde, hatte Kelly tatsächlich einen Befehl erhoben, in dem sie schuldig war für eine Verbrechung von Kindesabsturz, um für sie die Anzeigen des Erstausdrucks des Mordes zu verlassen. Sie kamen auch zu einem Vertrag auf ihre Entschuldigung, das ein Total von 16 Jahren hinter den Bars endete.

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In Bezug auf diese Entschuldigung blieb sie auch schuldig für Verbrechen und Verbrechen, für die sie eine 13-Jahre-Prisonentzündung erhielt, die mit der 16-Jahre-Entzündung zusammengehört wurde. Es ist wild für mich, dass das Stehlen von Geld und das Verbrechen von Menschen fast die gleiche Satzung wie das Mörder von einer siebenjährigen kleinen Mädchen bekommen hat.

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Mentalhilfeprobleme oder nicht, Munchausen durch Proxy oder nicht, ich glaube wirklich, dass sie diese kleine Mädchen für Aufmerksamkeit ermordet hat und ich denke, dass sie wirklich ein fischierter Monster ist, weil davon. Nun, der Berichterstatter in diesem Fall kam heraus, zu sagen, dass es wirklich schwierig wäre, so einen Fall zu probieren.

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Es gibt Tens von Tausenden von Seiten an medizinischen Dokumenten, die die Zeitlinie der Behandlung von Olivia und der Progression ihrer Krankheit zeigen. Und es ist unmöglich, den richtigen Punkt zu beurteilen, an dem es sich von legitierter Behandlung zu Verbrechen geändert hat. So that's something that would be difficult for a jury to agree on.

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But I think at the same time, the last few weeks of Olivia's life, she was starved. She was only given juice and popsicles. Obviously that is not enough to sustain life. And I think that right there. ist genug, um zu zeigen, dass sie von ihrer Mutter verurteilt wurde.

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Gleichzeitig sind Familienmitglieder, wie Olivia's Großvater, furchtbar, dass das Krankenhaus ihre kleine Mädchen vorbeigeholt hat, ohne irgendwelche Gefühle zu erheben. Viele Ärzte hatten die Überraschung, dass Olivia während dieser Zeit von ihrer Mutter verurteilt wurde. Viele von ihnen fühlten, dass sie nicht so krank war, wie Kelly bezeichnete, sie war.

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Doch niemand hat aufgehört, zu sagen oder etwas zu tun. Und außer der Polizei-Erfahrung habe ich keinen von den Ärzten gesehen, die aufgehört haben, sich zu erklären. All we really know is that they've said that medical abuse is so rare and they want to tread lightly when they think it might be happening. These doctors don't want to take a child away from their parent if it isn't warranted.

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That is why they hesitate to call CPS or the authorities even though it's their mandated duty. Which is something I don't understand because when you call CPS, they are now responsible for the investigation or at least up to a certain point. So it's not like when you call CPS you're immediately getting the kid taken away from their home.

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I've had to call CPS before, nothing came of it because maybe what I saw was an abuse or maybe what I suspected to be abuse wasn't or maybe it was and the investigation is ongoing. We really don't know what's happening through the investigation unless we become more involved, unless there's a court case obviously. Aber calling CPS bedeutet nicht, dass du ein Kind von ihren Eltern entfernen wirst.

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Also lasst das ein Lektion für jeden Pflegebetreiber sein. Wenn ihr glaubt, dass etwas los ist, ist es eure Aufgabe als Pflegebetreiber, als menschlicher Mensch, das zu informieren und versucht, dem Kind Hilfe zu bekommen, wo auch immer du kannst. Lass nicht solche Dinge durch die Kräfte fliegen.

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Ich denke, dass auch wenn diese Ärzte Angst hatten, dass ihr Kind von ihren Eltern entfernt werden würde, sie könnten noch einen Zertifizierungs-Test mit der älteren Tochter machen. Und wenn sie Kelli mit dem Osteopathen-Tuch gefangen haben. Aber auch dann hat niemand any action taken.

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Es ist verrückt, dass sie Olivia besser sahen, nachdem sie das 24-Stunden-Monitoring gemacht hat, aber sie nicht dachten, hm, vielleicht ist es, weil wir die Mutter angeschaut haben und sie nicht gemacht hat. Es schlägt mir einfach in den Kopf. Ich weiß, dass die Familie absolut enttäuscht und traurig ist, wie sich dieser gesamte Fall ausgab.

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Und obwohl Kelly absolut viel mehr Zeit verdient für all die Schmerzen und Schmerzen, die sie ihrer Tochter durchgebracht hat, bin ich froh, dass sie zumindest gefangen wurde. Denn ehrlich gesagt, wenn sie ihre andere Tochter nicht für diese Beratungen von Blutschmerzen mitgebracht hätte, glaube ich nicht, dass sie das wäre.

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Das war ein relativ normales Verhalten für ein Kind, das Olivia alt war. Ich habe mit Kindern gearbeitet, ich habe auch diese Verhältnisse erlebt. Also, wieder einmal, es scheint nichts ernsthaftes mit ihr zu tun zu haben. Nach diesen Besuchern über Olivia's Schmerzprobleme, kam sie wieder zum Krankenhaus, dieses Mal mit einer neuen Begründung. Kelly berichtete, dass Olivia Schmerzen erlebte.

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Fälle wie diese fangen mich irgendwie verrückt an, wenn Leute darüber reden, nichts über das Gesundheitssystem zu wissen oder nicht in dem Gesundheitssystem gearbeitet zu haben, genau zu wissen, wie es funktioniert und wie diese Dinge passieren. Ich fühle mich, dass viele Leute viele Überraschungen machen und einfach

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Ich verstehe nicht genau, wie all das funktioniert, also hoffe ich, dass ich es in Ordnung gemacht habe, es zu erklären. Aber ihr habt alle meine Gedanken über das Video gehört, also möchte ich jetzt von euch hören. Was denkt ihr über diesen Fall?

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Warum denkt ihr, dass diese medizinischen Profis diese roten Flaggen so oft verpasst haben und keine Aktion gemacht haben, wenn sie etwas verpasst haben? Do you think she would have been caught if not for the older daughter? And what do you think of the sentence she got? Do you think Kelly purposely murdered her daughter or was it a tragic consequence of all the medical abuse?

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With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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Zuerst wurde Olivia Kepra versprochen, um ihre Symptome zu behandeln. However, after some time passed without any new reports, the doctor ordered that Olivia be monitored over a period of time to see if there was any further seizure-like activity. They found that there was none, so she told Kelly to take Olivia off of the medication.

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Heute geht es um viele verschiedene Emotionen.

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Nach drei weiteren Besuchern hat Olivia's Doktor informiert, dass Olivia noch auf Keppra war. Auf jeder Besuchung hat sie Kelly gesagt, die Medikamente zu stoppen. Sie hat erklärt, dass Keppra nur für eine Diagnose von Schmerzen behandelt wird, die Olivia nicht hatte. Die Medikamente können negative Auswirkungen haben, wie Psychose, Mood swings und Verhältnismäßigkeit.

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Also ist es am besten, dass sie sie alle zusammen stoppt. Aber trotz alledem scheint es so zu sein, dass Kelly wirklich glaubte, dass Olivia die Medikamente benötigte, also hat sie es ihr weitergegeben, obwohl es unklar ist, wo sie die Verschiebung für sie bekommen konnte.

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Nun, nach diesen initialen Besuchern, die zu den Verbrechungen der Verbrechung gehören, sind Olivia's Verbrechungen weiter und werden über die Zeit schlechter. Anschließend wurde Olivia mit gastrointestinalen Motilitätsproblemen beurteilt. Das bedeutet, dass das Digestivsystem nicht richtig funktioniert, um das Essen auf dem Digestivtrakt zu brechen und zu bewegen.

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Wegen dessen wurde Olivia im November 2014 ihre erste Surgery durchgeführt, um ihre starke Schmerzen zu beurteilen. Sie bekam eine Iliostomie. In diesem Procedure hat der Arzt ihre kleine Intestin zurückgeroutet zu einer körperlichen Öffnung, die im Abdomen geschaffen wurde, um das große Intestin zu überwinden, das den Schlauch durch die Höhle und in eine Osteopädie auszutreten.

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Diese Prozedur hat Olivia' Verstärkung geliefert, aber Kelly sagte, dass Olivia noch andere Ernährungsprobleme hatte. Während dieser Zeit unterhielt Olivia mehrere Allergietests, die zeigten, dass sie allergisch war zu Päckchen, Blüten, Schokoladen, Milchprotein, Katzen und Pollen.

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Kelly hat auch berichtet, dass sie mit Autismus an einem Punkt verurteilt wurde und viele Menschen mit Autismus eine Ernährungsversorgung erleben werden. Die Sensibilität zum Geschmack, der Texturen und dem Geruch von Lebensmitteln, was dazu führt, dass sie wirklich furchtbar sind. Also, Olivia hat so viele Ernährungsversorgungen plus alle ihre Allergien. led to her having a very limited diet.

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It was incredibly difficult for Kelly to get Olivia to eat much of anything, leading to very poor nutrition. Doctors found that her nutrition was so poor that she needed supplemental nutrition. First, she had an NG tube placed, which is a tube that's inserted into the nose and directed into the stomach to deliver the nutrients directly into the stomach.

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Dies ist eine temporäre Behandlung für Menschen, die die Supplementation kurzfristig benötigen. Aber nach Kelly konnte Olivia die NG-Tube nicht tolerieren, also unterwies Olivia im Januar 2015 noch eine klinische Präzision, um eine G-Tube direkt in ihren Stomach durch ihren Abdomen zu stellen. Dies ist eine mehr permanente Behandlung für Menschen, die die Supplementation langfristig benötigen.

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Aber trotzdem, selbst mit diesen Nahrungstüben, fühlten die Ärzte, dass Olivia nicht die Nahrung, die sie benötigte, bekam. Kelly berichtete, dass Olivia diese Behandlungen nicht tolerierte und nichts ihr helfen sollte. Wegen dessen fühlten die Ärzte, dass sie mehr drastische Aktionen nehmen mussten.

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By June of 2015 they performed yet another surgery to install tubes that would deliver nutrients directly into her veins, bypassing the digestive system altogether. This is a process called total parenteral nutrition or TPN.

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This treatment is an option for anyone who has a disease or condition which affects their ability to eat and absorb nutrients, such as someone with cancer or severe intestinal issues. The catheter is placed so that it delivers the formula over about 12 to 16 hours per day. This also requires upkeep for the catheter to ensure skin integrity and prevent infection.

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Zuerst fühlst du dich stolz auf diese kleine Mädchen, die so viel durch ihr Leben durchgegangen ist, aber trotzdem einen Lächeln auf ihr Gesicht gehalten hat. Dann fühlst du dich vielleicht schuld vor ihrer Mutter, die durch den schmerzhaften Stress des Betrachtens für ihr krankes Kind durchgegangen ist, das sich nicht besser machen würde.

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Vor etwa einem Jahr und einem halben Jahr nach der Arztpraxis, von Juni 2015 bis Anfang 2017, hat Olivia Therapien erholt, um ihre Fähigkeit, Essen zu essen, zu verbessern. Sie hatte verschiedene Nachkommunikationen mit Ärzten und sie hatte Ärzte, die das Haus auf der Angelegenheit besucht haben, um ihre Linien zu beurteilen. Es gab ein paar Probleme mit, glaube ich, ziemlich kleinen Infektionen.

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But they were always resolved. During this time, she was on various pain medications to manage those symptoms and help her tolerate her TPN. Also throughout that year, Olivia and her mom Kelly created a poster with all of Olivia's bucket list wishes of all the things she wanted to do before she died.

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Some of those wishes included taking care of a hurt animal, be a fireman, ride a balloon, catch a bad guy with the police, Be a princess with her teacher and see the helicopter at the hospital. After making that list, Olivia and her story were picked up by local news outlets with reporters taking videos and writing articles about just how much of a fighter Olivia was.

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She was going through so much in her short life, but she was not going to let it take away her smile. Kelly also took to the internet to write blog posts about what her daughter was going through, an outlet to let out her emotions as a mother of a sick daughter. Auf diesen Posten hat sie erklärt, dass Olivia medizinische Probleme hatte, seit sie nur neun Monate alt war.

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Und sie hatte alle Art von Diagnosen, von Hydrocephalus, Sehnsucht, Autismus, Sensory Processing Disorder, Herzprobleme, Gehirnmalformationen. und natürlich auch Intestinalprobleme. Sobald ihre Geschichte ein bisschen Träumung gewonnen hat, waren so viele Leute in ihrer Gemeinschaft einfach überrascht, dass diese kleine Mädchen kämpft hat.

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So viele Leute haben sich involviert, um ihre Wünsche wahrzunehmen. Sie hat eine 11.000 Dollar Bat-Prinzessin-Party gespielt, wo sie sich als Mischung zwischen Batman und Prinzessin ausgestattet hat und Gäste hatte, die Batman selbst und Ariel von Little Mermaid beteiligten. This was funded by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

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A bunch of officers from the Denver Police Department teamed up to give Olivia a day to remember, bringing her for a ride along with an officer so she could catch a bad guy like she always wanted.

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Aber sobald du einen tieferen Blick in diesen Fall beobachten und die Details beobachten, wird das Gefühl in Schmerzen werden, wenn du merkst, dass so viel mehr vorhanden ist, als das, was das Auge trifft. Mit dem gesagt, gehen wir in die Details dieses schrecklichen, tragischen Falles. Olivia Gant wurde am 21.

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Am gleichen Zeit hat Kelly eine GoFundMe-Page gestartet, um ihre medizinischen Kosten zu helfen, die über 22.000 Dollar erhöht haben. Auf dieser Webseite hat sie auch die Donorinnen auf ihre Aufmerksamkeit gehalten und alles, worüber Olivia kämpfte. Das Publikum hat geschaut, wie Kelly ihr Bestes getan hat, um ihre Tochter durch ihre Probleme zu helfen.

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Sie war interessiert und proaktiv mit ihrer Aufmerksamkeit. Sie war eine unglaubliche Mutter, aber trotz ihres besten Efforts sah es aus, als würde Olivia wieder einmal zurückkehren. Am 1. März 2017 verhielt Olivia noch eine weitere Surgery. Diese Zeit wurde Olivia zum Krankenhaus eingeladen, nachdem Kelly berichtete, dass ihr Blatt nicht richtig funktionierte.

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In dieser Surgery haben die Ärzte eine Tüte geöffnet, die von ihrem Blatt zu einer Öffnung in ihrem Abdomen führte, um Urin durch einen Katheter auszudrücken. Bis zu diesem Punkt haben die Ärzte berichtet, dass siebenjährige Olivia nie wirklich gelernt hat, wie sie den Restraum selbst benutzt hat.

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Sie war immer noch mit Schuhen an und hatte wenig oder keine Kontrolle über ihre Bauch- und Blattfunktionen. Nach der Erkrankung wurde sie nach Hause zurückgekehrt, aber kam wieder zum Krankenhaus, am 24. März 2017. Kelly berichtete, dass Olivia ihre TPN-Treatmenten verweigerte.

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By this point, medical staff had discussed weaning Olivia off these treatments and transitioning her to a more sustainable diet. But Kelly refused this, saying that they already tried that and it didn't work. She could not tolerate a regular diet. At this point, doctors noted that Olivia was not absorbing enough nutrients to survive.

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Juni 2010 in Pasadena, Texas geboren zu Jeff und Kelley Gant und sie hatte zwei ältere Schwestern, die sie absolut liebte. Es wurde berichtet, dass die Beziehung zwischen Jeff und Kelley eine schwierige war, die letztendlich im Divorz endete, als Olivia um zwei Jahre alt war.

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She was only absorbing about 30% of what was needed to sustain life. Medical staff were also concerned with how little stool Olivia had been producing. Basically, while she was in the hospital, they tracked how her intestines were working and how much nutrition Olivia was absorbing, partially based on how much stool she was producing. Basically, how much she was pooping.

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They were able to track that via her ostomy bags, which again contained very little stool any time they checked. However, by March 27th, they noticed that Kelly was removing the ostomy bag from Olivia and dumping out the contents whenever the nurses were gone. I'm not sure exactly what they knew that she was doing, but basically they caught her holding the ostomy bag and were like,

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What are you doing with it? That was obviously suspicious and they wondered if that was why she was seemingly producing so little. They decided to put a 24-7 monitor in her room for the day that followed and during this time, the amount of stool Olivia produced drastically improved. Das könnte ein paar verschiedene Dinge bedeuten.

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Entweder hat sie sich auf ihre eigene Art und Weise verbessert, die Medikamente, die sie ihr gegeben hat, haben angefangen zu funktionieren, oder sie, die sie monitoriert haben, haben die Ausstimmungsmaske nicht verhindert. An diesem Punkt wussten sie nicht genau, was sie davon machen sollten. Während dieses Aufstehens am 29.

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As of right now, Tony McClure has been charged with murder, criminal confinement, and battery. Ryan is facing three counts of neglect leading to death, as well as criminal confinement. Tammy is being charged with neglect as well. I believe there are more charges in the works for Tammy.

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Police have hinted at that, but the investigation is still ongoing, so we don't know when or if those charges will be applied.

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She went out of her way to make sure that everyone around her was happy and she just wanted to make others laugh. She loved causing little bits of mischief, taking her dad's hat off as a little joke. She also loved singing You Need to Calm Down by Taylor Swift with her grandparents. Her favorite shows were Paw Patrol and Bubble Guppies, and she loved playing dress-up and getting her hair done.

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All children deserve to be in a home where they will be loved, cared for, and have all of their basic needs met. They deserve to live in a clean, safe environment where they will be free from harm and protected from any dangers that come their way. But tragically, not every child is afforded that right.

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Of course, in the aftermath of this, family, friends, and the community are all absolutely outraged at how this could have happened. And their rage is absolutely understandable. And I'm sure you all feel the same way.

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Somehow, over the course of five years, DCFS received numerous reports and saw how dangerous and unsanitary the living conditions were, yet five children were still allowed to live in the home.

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Family members begged DCFS to do something, literally saying that Kinsley was going to die and she was still allowed to live with her mother in a home covered with trash, feces, insects, sharp objects, and moldy food. Kinsley's paternal grandparents are devastated at the loss of Kinsley, saying that they would have taken her in. In fact, they did twice.

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She was safe with them, she would have been fed, and she would have had a warm bed to sleep in. Yet, every time Kinsley was in their care, she was returned to their mother.

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She was your typical girly, sweet, five-year-old little baby. However, Kinsley's life was incredibly rough from the moment she was born. When Kinsley was first born, she lived with her mother and father, but according to family members, from the literal day Kinsley was born, her mother abused and neglected her.

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Many people are calling for a change in the system, specifically with how reunification of families is handled. Right now, anytime a child in the system is taken away from their family, the main goal is reunification. That is the number one goal in any case.

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That is how so many of these children are just returned back to parents who have proven themselves time and time again to be abusive, neglectful monsters. The goal shouldn't be focused on the parents getting their child back. It should be on the child's safety.

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And if a parent has proven themselves to be neglectful or abusive, especially multiple times and show absolutely no signs of improving, and there is other family members willing to take the child, then why are these children still being forced to live with their abusers? That is something that I find wrong with our justice system as a whole.

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Many cases are focused on ensuring fairness for the defendant, the person accused of the crime. Sentencing is sometimes given leniency because of the struggle somebody faced. Yet the person that is victimized, they don't get the same respect. The same thing is echoed in our child welfare system.

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The focus is on the parents being able to have their children, being able to improve their parenting, not on the children being in the safest environment possible. We shouldn't be focused on the people who are hurting others. We need to be focused on the victims. And we need to make sure that DCFS workers are doing their jobs.

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We need to stop having all of these children slip through the cracks because nobody is checking in on them. Something needs to be done. More people need to be hired. More government resources needs to go into these programs instead of Whatever else the government wants to spend their money on, that makes absolutely no impact in the lives of the people who are paying the taxes.

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But as of right now, DCFS has not made any public comment. They're actually not allowed to until the case is resolved, though I don't expect any government entity to take any accountability for their actions because...

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they never do so why would they start now it's 2024 things like this have been happening for decades and still children with parents that are so clearly neglectful who don't even try to hide it who don't even try to hide the fact that they hate their children are just allowed to keep them i'm so sick of children being victimized by disgusting monsters who never should have had children to begin with i'm so sick of our child protection system

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doing everything except protecting children. I'm so sick of hearing, well, we couldn't get a hold of her for years, so I guess there's nothing we can do. That is literally empowering abusers to just make the lives of everyone around them harder because if they do it enough, they'll just continue getting away with it.

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I don't know what needs to be done to change the system, but something needs to be done because I'm so sick of hearing child protection workers not doing their damn jobs. I really hope that Tony, Ryan, and Tammy all get the absolute max sentences possible. I hope that Tony spends the rest of her miserable life in jail and never sees the light of day again.

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When she was three weeks old, family members reported that Kinsley appeared to be malnourished. she straight up wasn't being fed. When officers followed up on the reports, they said that the state of the home in which baby Kinsley and her siblings were living were some of the worst conditions they had ever seen. Officers said that it appeared that the trash had never been taken out.

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I hope that sad excuse for a man spends as much time in jail as possible and same thing with that poor excuse for a grandmother. And I hope the other inmates know what they all did and I hope they fully pay for it. That's all I'll say about that. As of right now, that is all of the information that we know about this case. Tony's trial is scheduled for June of this year.

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So if any new information comes out, I will keep you all updated either by updating the description of this video or if there's a lot of new information, I'll make a new video with that new information. But that is where I'm going to end today's case.

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obviously you all know how i feel about this case how infuriating it is and how upsetting it is that this all keeps happening but now i want to know what you all think what do you think could have been done to prevent this what do you think of dcfs returning her home every time do you agree with me that tony went out of her way to torture her daughter

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What do you think of Ryan and Tammy's involvement? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts that you have in the comments below. If you like this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week.

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Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week.

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Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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There were flies and gnats flying all around the kitchen and the living room. In the bathroom, there were feces all over the toilet that hadn't been cleaned. The couch and the mattresses were covered in dirt. Kinsley's toddler-age sibling and a one-year-old baby were running and crawling around on floors that were covered in garbage, dirt, and cigarette butts.

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There were full ashtrays, moldy food, and sharp objects all within the reach of the children. Rooms within that home were described as, quote, hazardous nightmares for an adult, let alone a toddler and a newborn. At the time, it was clear that little Kinsley was extremely malnourished and dirty.

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She was covered in dirt and filth and had a dry mouth and pale lips and was determined to be in a failure to thrive state, losing weight despite being a tiny baby whose only job is to eat and grow. At the time, both Tori McClure and Bradley Welty were arrested. Tony was charged with four counts of child neglect while Bradley was charged with two counts.

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For this, Toni would eventually plead guilty and was sentenced to 900 days in jail. However, for some unknown reason, her sentence was suspended after just six weeks. She was then given 540 days of probation. During that time of Toni being in jail, Kinsley and her siblings were obviously removed from the home.

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I'm not sure what happened with all of the siblings, but Kinsley was placed into the care of DCFS and eventually was set to stay with family members. Ultimately, she lived with her paternal grandmother, Bradley's mother, Trisha Welty, after this first arrest. But after Tony was released from her 21 days in jail, DCFS ordered for Kinsley to return back to her care.

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I haven't been able to find any information on why or how this decision was made. If you know more about that, please let me know. After being returned to Tony's care, as you can imagine, Kinsley's life only continued to get worse and worse.

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Some articles say that DCFS continued to get reports about Kinsley and how she was being treated, and they tried following up on the reports numerous times, but I guess they just couldn't get a hold of Tony and weren't able to locate Kinsley, so not a whole lot was done.

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Some children are born to parents who not only don't care about them, but who want to see them suffer. Parents who will go out of their way to make sure that their children are in pain and torment. It's so tragic, but what's even worse is when these parents are investigated, the red flags are waving in the faces of DCFS workers, yet nothing is done. That is what happened in this case.

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Now, it's not exactly clear when this happened, but there was a time in which Kinsley was removed from the home again and placed into the care of her grandmother. According to Trisha, when they got Kinsley the second time, she was covered in bruises from head to toe. She had chunks of hair missing all throughout her head.

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She was filthy and the living conditions within the home were just as bad as they always had been. I want to note that at this time, Bradley, Kinsley's father, was no longer living in the home with Tony and Kinsley.

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After this second time being removed from the home, however, it was reported that the case wasn't properly investigated by DCFS, so by the time it was brought in front of the courts, they didn't have the proper evidence to keep Kinsley out of the care of Tony. So, because of this, the case was dismissed and Kinsley was sent back to live with her mother.

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For the years that followed, once again, DCFS continued to get calls regarding the horrific conditions that Kinsley had to live through. According to Trisha, in 2021, they called DCFS with multiple concerns for her safety, saying that they were afraid that Kinsley was going to die. She pleaded with DCFS, but all of her concerns were flat out ignored.

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They were much more worried about the reunification process and making Kinsley live with her mother than actually investigating how she was being treated and then making a decision based on what was best for the child and not the parent. Then in April of 2024, for some unknown reason, Tony had another child.

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At this time, the newborn tested positive for THC, meaning that Tony had been smoking weed while pregnant. After this was discovered, a caseworker did pay Tony a visit at her home. They weren't able to locate Kinsley during this visit, but Tony said that Kinsley was at her

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didn't follow up with anything and they just ignored the fact that they were never able to see kinsley during these visits not bothering to do anything about it or looking further into it the children were not removed from the home despite the numerous other dcfs reports workers seeing the disgusting and unlivable conditions of the home and now it being clear that tony was doing drugs while pregnant

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Everything in this case would come to a head on April 9, 2024. Just before 5.15 p.m. that day, the Indianapolis Police Department were called to report an unresponsive child within the home where Toni McClure and her children lived. When officers arrived, they found five-year-old little Kinsley unresponsive in the home. Officers actually located Kinsley within a townhouse. tiny closet.

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The closet was covered in feces with handprints in those feces. There was a dresser placed in front of that closet, obviously as a way to prevent Kinsley from leaving the closet. Upon inspecting little Kinsley, officers could immediately tell that she was extremely malnourished, her eyes were sunken in, and her skin and lips were pale and dry, and she was covered in bite marks.

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She was dirty, she had fecal matter all over her head, hands, and feet. She also had lice in her hair, which was extremely matted and unkept. First responders took little Kinsley to Riley's Children's Hospital in an attempt to save her life. However, their efforts were not enough. Five-year-old Kinsley Welty died in that hospital.

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According to later autopsy, it was found that Kinsley died of starvation. At the time, it was found that Kinsley weighed just 21 pounds, literally half of what she was supposed to weigh at her age. Her weight put her in the zeroth percentile, far, far below what she should have been. It was clear that she had been starved for a prolonged period of time, leading to her death.

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Five-year-old little Kinsley Welty was born into a dirty, disgusting home with parents who neglected her. And even when workers with the Department of Child and Family Services saw the horrific living conditions, nothing was done. Kinsley's mother was allowed to continue her abuse and neglect until her little body just couldn't take it anymore. This is the story of Kinsley Welty.

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Of course, after seeing little Kinsley in that closet, the condition she was forced to suffer, and her dying in that hospital, 29-year-old Toni McClure was arrested and taken into the station for questioning. When she first started talking to the police, she told them that Bradley, Kinsley's father, was actually the one responsible for abusing and neglecting Kinsley.

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However, that story quickly fell apart because Bradley didn't even live in the home. At the time, Tony actually had a boyfriend, 27-year-old Ryan Smith, who I will talk more about in just a minute.

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But after some pushing, Tony ultimately cracked and told investigators some of the horrific, brutal things that little Kinsley went through throughout her life and especially in the months leading to her death. Starting on Thanksgiving in 2023, Kinsley spent most of her time locked inside a tiny closet which was barricaded by a dresser to prevent Kinsley from getting out.

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Toni said that she hardly ever fed Kinsley, even though Kinsley was constantly complaining of being hungry and begging for food. She wasn't allowed to eat. Tony went on to explain that she was worried that doing this would ultimately lead to her death, but she didn't care enough to do anything about it. She really just wanted Kinsley out of her life. She didn't want to deal with her.

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At the same time that investigators were speaking with Tony, they were also questioning her live-in boyfriend, Ryan. He said that he knew Kinsley was being kept in that closet and he knew she was losing weight. He also was worried about what would happen, but he loved Tony too much to do anything about it, such as letting her out or even reporting the abuse to police.

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Ryan then told investigators that he believed that Kinsley had been let out of that closet 10 times since Thanksgiving. That means that for days, if not weeks at a time, she was forced to stay in that closet. She had to go to the bathroom on herself. She had to sleep in her own urine and feces. She wasn't allowed to eat or drink. She was just stuck in that tiny closet for days and days and days.

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That is five months or about 22 weeks that she was kept in that closet, only being let out 10 times. That is less than every two weeks and that is even if we believe Ryan. He could have been rounding up or guessing so who knows how often she was actually let out. Toni clearly did not want her daughter in her life. She clearly wanted her dead and she wanted her to no longer be her problem.

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That's obvious. But she had ample opportunity to get Kinsley out of the home if that's what she wanted. There were two times where Kinsley was taken and lived with family who actually wanted her. Yet, she always took her back. So to me, it's not just that Toni didn't want Kinsley. She didn't just want her out of her life. She wanted to make sure that Kinsley suffered as much as possible.

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She wanted her daughter to starve to death. In the weeks after this tragic, horrific death, police continued their investigation to see how this could have happened and if anyone else was involved. And as if Kinsley's treatment by her own mother wasn't bad enough, turns out there was more. Police ended up questioning Tony's mother or Kinsley's grandmother, 53-year-old Tammy Halsey.

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In an interview with police, she admitted that she knew Kinsley was being kept in the closet. She knew for months that Tony wasn't treating her right because she watched as Kinsley's condition grew worse and worse over the course of five to six months. But she didn't do anything about it. In fact, she helped Tony get away with it.

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Like I mentioned earlier, there were several times in which DCFS tried getting a hold of Tony but weren't able to. There were numerous reports about how badly she treated Kinsley, but DCFS never did anything because Tony was making it difficult for them. Well, Tammy actually knew about this and knew where Tony was and where Kinsley was, but wouldn't tell DCFS.

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Kinsley was born on December 30th, 2018 to parents Tony McClure and Bradley Welty in Mooresville, Indiana. She also had five siblings, Jordan, Jaden, Jordine, Bradley, and Philly. Those who knew little Kinsley described that she was loving, caring, and sweet towards everyone in her life.

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Instead, she told Tony that DCFS was looking into her and wanted to give her time to get everything together to show that she was competent. As she watched Kinsley get more and more malnourished and sickly, she thought about calling police, but she never did.

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She didn't want to put Tony at risk of losing her children, which I know all of these children lived in horrific, disgusting conditions, but that statement makes me believe that it was just Kinsley who is being abused and neglected to this extent. Not only did Tammy not report the abuse, but she participated in it.

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According to Tammy, she would watch Kinsley a lot during the summer of 2023, and Kinsley would occasionally spend a night or two at her home after that. However, these nights at grandma's would not serve as a break for Kinsley. When at Tammy's, she would duct tape Kinsley to the bed.

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At first, she would duct tape her arms and legs to the covers, but when that didn't work, she put more and more tape over her shoulders, upper legs, upper arms, until basically her entire body was covered in duct tape. This was an effort to prevent Kinsley from getting out of bed and eating or drinking anything. The duct tape didn't always work, though.

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A starving little Kinsley would rip the duct tape to get out of bed, so eventually, Tammy started tying her down to the bed. Again, she was preventing Kinsley from getting up to get something to eat. She was fully participating in the starvation torture of this five-year-old little girl.

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Again, this just shows that not only did Toni want Kinsley out of her life, but she actively wanted her to be tortured. Because even when she wasn't under Toni's watch, even when Toni got a break from her daughter... she was still being abused by Tammy. And we don't exactly know why.

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We don't know if Tony asked Tammy to do this or if Tammy had done this to Tony and it was just one of those things where it just runs in the family, I guess. And because Tony was treated that way, she treated her kids that way. There's really no explanation for any of this. But after finding out this new information, 53-year-old Tammy Halsey was also arrested.

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Today's case involves the story of two low-life pathetic excuses for human beings who never should have had the chance to be around an innocent 12 year old little girl. Melinda Hoagland experienced things straight out of a nightmare and even though there were so many red flags, so many adults in her life who could have stepped in, no one did.

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They also noted that there were blank security cameras located within every room of the home, though Cindy told officers that they didn't actually record any video. As I stated, Cindy had handed over her cell phone the prior day but they also recovered a few additional cell phones in the drawers of their bedroom.

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In the home, officers noticed that Cindy's son had a large TV, a video game system, as well as a bed and any other items you'd expect in a child's room. However, there was no form of entertainment or games or really any comfort items in Melinda's room at all.

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When searching the family car, officers recovered a pair of Crocs that appeared to have blood on them, as well as a key that belonged to a set of handcuffs. I also want to note that during that interview with Rendell, officers noted a brown stain that looked like blood on his t-shirt.

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As that was happening, officers were also sent to the camper van at the Jellystone campground to search there as well. In the trash, officers recovered a pair of pants that appeared to have blood on them, as well as a pair of girls' underwear, of course, thought to belong to Melinda. Those were really the only items of interest found at that camper.

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Then, of course, as I stated earlier, officers started searching the cell phones that were within the home and the phone that Cindy handed over. Immediately, officers noticed that all the text conversations between Cindy and Rendell prior to 9.30pm on May 4th had been deleted.

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This was obviously strange because Cindy herself said that she regularly communicated with Rendell via text, so what was she trying to hide so badly that she deleted all text conversations? But even with those missing text conversations, initial searches of the phone showed that there was a video taken on the doorbell camera but was saved to the phone via a screen recording.

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In this case, it was reported that they would lock Isaiah in his bedroom for hours on hours at a time as punishment. When he wasn't locked away, they would beat him with a belt or force him to walk up and down the stairs repeatedly with his hands over his head.

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The video, dated January 31st, 2024, showed Melinda standing on the porch outside and crying. She tells the camera that she's scared, and a voice coming from the speaker on the camera, believed to be Rendell, can be heard laughing and saying right away, it's always someone else's fault, as Melinda continues crying. In the video, she's wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up,

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and she appears to be black and blue, covered in bruises. Then investigators went ahead and looked into the camera footage saved from their Blink security system. As I stated, Cindy tried saying that the cameras didn't actually save any of the footage, but that wasn't true.

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Investigators ended up finding numerous videos that show a horrifying insight into how Melinda was being treated within that home. The videos are dated back as far as July 24, 2023. Many of these videos show Melinda being chained to various furniture while being forced to do exercises, all while being verbally berated and threatened.

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They found over 100 videos that show similar situations, but I want to highlight a few that really stood out to investigators. In a video dated January 27, 2024, you can see Melinda chained to an air hockey table. She, at one point, was forced to do marches in place while shackled.

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You then hear Cindy's voice over the camera saying, "'Keep moving and don't look for breakfast or lunch tomorrow because you're not getting it. And you won't get dinner either because I'm not getting up.'" Later that same day, while Melinda is still shackled, you see Cindy enter the room and tell Melinda to shut up before calling her an effing idiot.

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On February 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, and 13th, there are more videos of her chained up while being forced to do squats, marches, running or walking in place, among other exercises. In one video, she's told to stand in place with her arms over her head, maintaining that position for five

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hours straight all the while she's being screamed at belittled and taunted by both cindy and rendall in one video she's doing her squats while chained up before cindy says over the camera you look a little tied up at the moment and because of like you i have pains in my cooter hole and won't move melinda's heard responding please i'm sorry i know i can't move and i'm sorry in another video melinda is caught kneeling down while chained up instead of standing like she was supposed to

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Cindy eventually told the courts that her husband, McKinley, was the one doing most of the abuse, but she watched it happen and never did anything about it. I'm not sure exactly what her punishment for this was, but it appears that Cindy did eventually regain custody of Isaiah. but that's not all these people were involved with.

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Cindy is heard over the camera saying to Melinda, if you kneel again, I will come and kick you in the teeth. In another video on the 13th, time stamped 7.50am, there's a video of Melinda chained to her dresser while she did her homework. While doing her work, Rendell can be heard calling her a jackass and telling her to put her hands on her legs.

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By the 28th, there's another video of her chained up to the air hockey table. All throughout the month of February, there are other videos that show her sleeping on the floor while still chained to that table and being denied food. She hardly ate that month. By April 3rd, video shows Melinda chained to the hockey table while picking at her hands and eating the dead skin.

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Weeks later, on April 25th, video shows Melinda chained to a desk while Cindy yells at her to keep moving. She then says, "'Have a nice life. Bye, bitch.'" The last video is dated May 2nd, and once again, the video shows Melinda chained up at a desk while doing her homework. Again, as you can see, Melinda was being treated horrendously. That is obvious by those videos.

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I would think that she was probably being denied food for months before these videos even start because as we said earlier, she was caught hoarding food in her locker and was selling it. My assumption is that she probably was not eating at all at home and was only eating when she was at school.

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So she was most likely taking any and all food she could, keeping it in her locker and might have been even taking it home to hide there and eat when she wasn't being given food at home. So she probably wasn't losing weight as quickly. But once they started homeschooling her, they probably just didn't feed her altogether. Based on those videos, it appears that she almost never ate.

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which makes sense how she would lose weight that quickly over the course of about six months. But to make matters even worse, beyond what we see in those videos, investigators did end up recovering some messages on Rendall's phone between himself and Cindy where they discuss Melinda's final moments.

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On May 2nd, Cindy sent a photo to Rendell of Melinda where she has snot coming out of her nose and there is an abrasion to her right eye. There's no other context other than that from this message. But then, at 12.52am on the morning of May 4th, Several hours before 911 was called, there are messages that discuss Melinda's worsening condition.

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They discuss how Rendell went out and shopped for smelling salts, likely to wake her up as she got worse. By 5.32 that same day, Rendell suggested that they call an ambulance, which Cindy told him not to. Instead, she said he should run.

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These messages had originally been deleted from both of their cell phones, but thankfully, again, officers were able to recover them when executing the search warrant on their phones. At this point, there is a very clear, disturbing picture emerging. Cindy and Rendell were torturing poor Melinda for months, if not longer.

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We know that it started about at least a year ago, but that's just based on the video evidence they were able to uncover. No one truly knows how far back the abuse goes. She was humiliated, starved, and forced to do uncomfortable, painful, and exhausting physical demands. All the while, Cindy relished in her treatment, enjoying every second of watching this 12-year-old little girl suffer.

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It was reported that once investigators looked into Isaiah's case, they were able to gather more evidence regarding a prior case involving McKinley's then two-year-old daughter, Jessica, who he had from a previous relationship, but who was living with McKinley and Cindy when they were together. Back in 2000, McKinley had beat his

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And I do want to note that I absolutely believe Rendell when he says that he pulled her out of school because he was so mad about her situation.

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selling food but I don't think that's why he was actually mad I think it was because they were starving her they didn't want her to eat they didn't want her to have any food at school either they wanted to maximize her suffering so that's why they pulled her out of school and then once they knew that nobody was going to be watching her or seeing her outside the home I think the physical punishments got even worse and they started beating her by that point

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Now after finding out all of this information, Rendell Hoagland and Cindy Warren were both arrested and charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault, among other charges. but shortly after Melinda succumbed to her injuries and more of this information came to light, their charges were upgraded to first-degree murder and conspiracy.

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We still don't know with absolute certainty how Melinda died or who is officially at fault, but with what we do know about how both Melinda and Rendell treated her and the fact that Rendell had blood on his shirt, allegedly, There were bloody crocs found. I really don't think it matters. Given what we know about how they both treated her, I think they most likely beat her while at the campsite.

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She probably went unconscious long before they headed home, but they just didn't do anything about it. Instead, they tried figuring out what to do and how they could get out of it before finally putting her in the car and returning home.

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Once they had their story straight, or at least thought they did, and felt that they had deleted enough off their phones and security system, they called 911 to report her condition, saying that she just fell off her bike. And they were both stupid enough to think that police would just buy their stories despite the horrific condition she was clearly in.

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And as of right now, that is where the case sits with regard to the charges against Cindy and Rendell. They both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting their trials in jail as investigators continue their efforts in gathering enough evidence to get a conviction and send these two monsters to prison for good.

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Of course as with any other case like this one, after information came out about how Melinda died, everyone who had known her were devastated and pissed. Her older sisters, Emily and Jamie, had been very open in the public about how they believed Melinda was failed. There were so many red flags that were just missed.

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So many opportunities for the proper authorities to step in, but it just never happened. The very first red flag was Cindy and Rendell dating in the first place. Rendell's older daughter tried to get her out of their lives, tried to get Melinda away from her, tried to talk sense into Rendell.

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Cindy had a very disturbing history of being involved with horrific child abuse, yet Rendell let her into his home anyways. Not only that, but he cut off his other daughters and moved away from them to make sure they couldn't do anything about it. Then the courts did decide that Cindy wasn't allowed around Melinda, yet they never actually followed up to make sure it was enforced.

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She was able to live with Melinda for years after the ruling was made, and yet no one did a thing about it because I doubt anyone even knew. I will never understand how or why cases will go to court again. for a ruling to be made, and the courts just expect people to listen without anyone enforcing the ruling.

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If Rendell is allowing Cindy into their lives to begin with, knowing her history, of course he's not going to listen when he knows that nothing is actually going to be done about it. Then, when the school was concerned about her constant absences, CPS reached out, but they never actually met with Rendell or Cindy. never physically checked on Melinda.

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After charging him with child abuse from Isaiah's case, there was enough evidence to charge him with little Jessica's death as well. McKinley pleaded guilty to both charges and is currently serving 25 to 30 years for little Jessica's death. But from this, we can already see that this woman is bad news.

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And to make it even worse, after CPS was called, she was removed from school, and yet still, no one did absolutely anything. That is literally the biggest red flag you could have waving directly in your face, yet none of the school staff, none of Melinda's teachers, no one who worked her case at CPS,

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no one did anything to inquire if they had if they actually visited the home and looked into everything they would have seen that melinda was living with a woman with a documented history of violent abuse against children and maybe something could have been done to save her but as we've seen far too often and as we will continue to see

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None of that was done and now we have a 12 year old who suffered endless hours of abuse and torture before her body just couldn't handle it anymore. She suffered so very much before she died and I'm sure her death was very slow and painful. A horrific ending to a horrific story. All because no one stepped in to help her. Right now, Melinda's sisters are out there fighting for justice for Melinda.

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They ended up filing a wrongful death suit against multiple agencies, including Chester County CPS and Melinda's school district, who they believe missed obvious red flags and failed to step in to stop the abuse.

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The suit states that the warning signs missed were, quote, We don't know the status of this lawsuit, but I hope that they're able to push it as far as they can to force them to take accountability for their lack of action. They absolutely should have stepped in to help Melinda, and with a lawsuit like this,

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the hope is that cases like this are not able to continue slipping through the cracks because one child going through this is enough and when children are suffering at the hands of their parents it's up to their school and child protective services to step in and when they fail to do so as it happens so often The consequences are devastating. But that is where the case sits as of right now.

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As I stated, Rendell and Cindy are awaiting their trials in jail, but I will keep you all updated as more information comes out about this case. If there is a lot more information that comes out with the trial, I will make an update video or update the description for this video. But that is all I have for you all today and now I want to hear your thoughts.

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How do you think Cindy so easily slipped through the cracks? Do you think DCYF and the school district will be held accountable? And do you think this case will go to trial?

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She had a history of at the very least standing by and watching as the man she's with abuses and even murders their children. and at worst, she may have participated and just minimized her role in this. Then again, after this man murders his daughter, she goes on to have a child of her own with him and once again, she stands by, participates as he's being neglected and abused.

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And as a result of this inaction, these adults turning their cheek away from the signs that were right in front of them, Melinda is no longer with us. Melinda Hoagland was born on July 4th, 2011, to Rondalyn Smith and Rendell Hoagland in Strudesburg, Pennsylvania. Melinda had three older half-siblings, Emily, who is 15 years older, Abby, 11 years older, and Jamie, who is 10 years older.

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So of course, after Melinda's sisters found out this disturbing information about Cindy, they told Rendell that he is not who he thinks she is. she should not be allowed to be around Melinda. But these warnings didn't shake Rendall at all. In fact, they only made him upset at his daughters.

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From that point on, according to Melinda's sisters, Rendall made it as hard as possible for them to see Melinda. Then, soon after, Rendall moved with Melinda to Westtown Township about two hours from the Poconos. With this move, Rendell told his daughters that they were no longer welcome in their home, nor were they welcome around Melinda.

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As all of that was happening, Rendell was in the middle of a custody dispute with Melinda's mother, Rondalyn. She made complaints to the courts about Melinda always smelling like cigarettes all the time. It was clear that they were smoking around her, and that wasn't healthy for her. She also knew about Cindy's concerning history and obviously didn't want her around Melinda either.

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Unfortunately though, custody of Melinda remained with Rendall, though Sydney was not allowed near her. This was the decision the courts made, but of course, there was no way they could actually enforce it. So, as you could have guessed, they didn't listen. In fact, after the decision was made, Cindy and her son moved into the home with Rendall and Melinda in West County Township.

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For the years that followed, Emily said that she was officially cut off from seeing Melinda so she had no contact with her at all. Jamie did have some contact seeing her every few months and sometimes on the holidays, but they never really got much time to themselves to truly bond as sisters. And with that limited contact, those who loved Melinda had no idea what was going on within the home.

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We don't hear much else about how Melinda was doing until December of 2023 when teachers and staff at her school realized that she hadn't been there that entire month. These unexplained absences prompted them to call Childline, which is a state hotline in place for them to report suspected child abuse.

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As a result of the call, a staff member within the Chester County Department of Child and Family Services reached out to Rendell to inquire, though we don't really know the details of that call or a lot of the excuses Rendell gave. What we do know is that no one from the county actually visited the home, and it's unknown whether they were aware of Cindy living there.

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Then, about a month after the report was made, Rendell withdrew Melinda from school and enrolled her in an online program. Once again, no follow-up was made. No one reached out to see why she was pulled from school. No one even seemed to realize that this was done right after CPS called. If that wasn't a massive red flag, I don't know what is. And yet, no one did anything.

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Once again, we hear nothing about Melinda until May 4th, 2024. That day, at around 7.48pm, 911 received a call with reports of an unconscious 12-year-old female located in the backseat of a pickup truck in front of their home.

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When first responders arrived to the area, they were met with Rendell Hoagland who reported that his daughter Melinda had struck a tree while riding her bicycle several hours ago. And now, all of a sudden, she went unconscious and would not wake up. When first responders began their examination of Melinda, they were immediately concerned with her condition.

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She had a very weak pulse and was barely alive. She also looked emaciated. She was clearly very underweight for her age. Based on her condition, paramedics at the scene knew that there was likely more to the story, so they got the police department involved. As paramedics rushed Melinda to the hospital, officers stayed at the home and spoke with Cindy.

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I believe they all had the same father, but different mothers. According to her sisters, Melinda lived her early years with her father in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, while her sisters lived with their mothers. Melinda was always known as a bright, bubbly child who absolutely loved springtime in the Poconos, always catching butterflies and lightning bugs.

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Cindy identified herself as Melinda's stepmother, who lived in the home with her, Rendell, and her nine-year-old son. She explained that they had been renting out some camping space at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Camp Resort for about three weeks, going back and forth between the camp and home on the weekends.

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They had been at the campsite on Friday, May 3rd, but returned home on the 4th due to rain, leaving their camper and other buildings at the campground with plans to return on the 5th. Cindy said that on the drive home that day, Melinda was in the back passenger seat while Randall drove and she was in the front passenger seat

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and her other son was in the back behind the driver's seat as they drove home melinda was quiet she didn't speak a word so they just assumed that she was probably sleeping until they got back home and realized that she was not responding to anything and she would not wake up the officer asked cindy if melinda had been injured and she explained that there were a few incidents at the camp

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The prior day, May 3rd, Melinda had slid down a water slide, but she didn't move out of the way fast enough, so another, larger kid came down and slid right into her. But they didn't think that this was anything serious, saying that she only got a small injury to her chin as a result.

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After the slide incident, Cindy explained that she and Rendell were sitting around a fire pit at around 12.30am, now going into May 4th. They were listening to some music, not totally paying attention to what was going on. All of a sudden they saw that Melinda had gotten on her mountain bike and started going down a slope.

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They then heard a loud crash and saw that Melinda had fallen off her bike after hitting a tree. She wasn't used to using the brakes on the bike handles so she wasn't able to fully stop herself in time. So as a result of this fall, Cindy noticed that Melinda had sustained a small bump on the side of her head, as well as a small cut to her nose.

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They gave Melinda a bag of ice, telling her to sit down at the picnic table and ice her head for at least five minutes. After icing her head, though, she seemed perfectly fine. She got back up and started playing some cornhole and then hung out with the dog. She was up until around 5am and slept until around 2pm. When she woke up on May 4th, she was alert and acting like her normal self.

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She sat down and ate some pancakes for a midday breakfast. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, the concerning head injury on Melinda wasn't the only thing that concerned investigators about her presentation. As I stated, it was clear that she was severely underweight for her age.

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When officers asked Cindy about this, she said that Melinda had been losing weight for about two and a half months, but she didn't know why. She started giving her pediatric shakes twice a day to help her gain weight, as well as a daily kids vitamin to keep her healthy.

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but they did have a doctor appointment scheduled for May 16th to officially discuss her weight because they realized that her weight was concerning. At that point, though, officers knew that something was up. First of all, there was no way that Melinda was so emaciated and underweight for no reason.

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The only thing that would cause her to be so thin was either she was not being given much food or she was so sick that she wasn't able to eat for whatever reason and was rapidly losing weight. And if she was that sick, waiting that long to take her to the doctor is neglectful. The story about the head injury also didn't seem all that solid.

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She saw her sisters on a regular basis, especially on holidays and during the summer months. Melinda loved her sisters so very much, and they loved her just as much. However, it seemed that the close relationship Melinda had with her sisters all changed once Rendell got a new girlfriend, Cindy Warren, who he met through Facebook dating in 2019.

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It's totally possible that she hit her head after falling off of a bike. It happens to children and adults all the time. But then saying that she was perfectly fine before going to bed and then perfectly fine the next day, only going unconscious on the drive home, that just didn't make any sense. At that point, officers asked Cindy if they could search her phone.

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She agreed, handing it over to them to search back at the station. As all of that was happening with officers speaking with Cindy, looking around the property, and bringing the cell phone back to the station, Melinda was being transported to the hospital. Upon her arrival, hospital staff immediately noticed that Melinda had bruising and abrasions all over her neck, lacerations to her forehead, and

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bruising and abrasions to her chest bruising and a deformity to her right arm and both legs it was found that 12 year old melinda weighed only 70 pounds at that time that is about 30 pounds less than the average girl her age putting her below the fifth percentile for weight. Again, she would only get this thin if she hadn't been eating enough for a very prolonged period of time.

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Further examination and imaging also revealed that Melinda had fractures to both wrists and ankles, her L3 vertebrae, and to her pelvis. As I stated before hospital staff noted deformities to her arms and legs that were likely caused by those fractures. I also want to note that the pelvis is one of the hardest bones to fracture in your body.

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It takes a significant amount of force for that to happen, so just keep that in mind as we go throughout the rest of the video. They also found that Melinda suffered bilateral chest contusions, she had fluid in her abdominal cavity, as well as severe damage to her liver caused by multiple lacerations. which is actually what they believed caused her to go unconscious.

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Trauma surgeons attempted to repair the damage done to her liver through emergency surgery, but unfortunately, their efforts were too late. 12-year-old Melinda Hoagland died from her injuries at the hospital. Of course, after finding all of these horrifying injuries to this little girl, officers took her father, Rendell, back to the station for further questioning.

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Rendell repeated the story that we heard from Cindy. She fell off her bike after crashing into a tree, but she seemed perfectly fine the rest of the day. He said that he didn't know why Melinda was so emaciated, explaining that he did have a lock on the snack cabinet of the home so that the kids weren't constantly eating snacks, but they did have access to the rest of the food in the home.

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He went on to explain why she had been pulled from school and why no one outside the home ever saw Melinda after December of 2023. He said that during the fall that year at a parent-teacher conference, he had demanded to search Melinda's locker. When he did, he saw that she was hoarding food and was apparently selling it to other students.

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Rendell reported this to the school and was absolutely pissed when the school didn't take her actions very seriously. This is why by December of that year, Melinda started missing school because he was frustrated with the staff. He said that he's aware that DCFS was called, but that him pulling her out of school had nothing to do with that.

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As soon as Cindy entered their lives, the sisters felt that something was off, so they looked into her past and what they found was concerning, to say the least. They found that about 10 years prior, in 2009, Cindy Warren and her then-husband pleaded guilty to charges of child abuse regarding their then-three-year-old son, Isaiah.

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After pulling her from school in January of 2024, she did online classes. Through these classes, she would go on Zoom calls and there she could interact with friends and classmates, though he said that her friends never actually saw her in person. Officers then asked to see a photo of Melinda and he showed them a photo he took on January 5th, 2024.

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In this photo, Melinda looked drastically different than she did by the time she died. And this was the very last photo Rendell said he had of his daughter. So for the almost six months that followed, he didn't have a single picture of her. And I wonder why. They then asked Rundle about how he would discipline Melinda, and he admitted that he did have some physical tactics.

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He could have her stand in the corner, march in place, or run in place. But that was the full extent of his physical punishments. He said that Cindy also would discipline Melinda, but he didn't always know exactly what she did to discipline her or what even Melinda was in trouble for.

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For example, Cindy had taken away Melinda's phone about two or three weeks prior to her death, but he didn't know why. Nor did he seem to inquire. He did confirm that he communicated regularly with Cindy via text about the kids and about anything else.

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After this interview, officers were able to obtain a search warrant to search within the home where Melinda lived, as well as any electronic devices they had. They collected a laptop and a couple of tablets, all of which had been locked inside a gun safe in the home.

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The first responders who had to bear witness to this horrific bloody scene later described it as the worst, most bloody and violent scene they ever saw. It truly traumatized them for the rest of their lives.

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While this was happening, as Marina had to bear witness to her children lying dead, covered in blood in a bathtub, and the person she entrusted with their care stabbing herself, Kevin had been out of town in California on a work trip. In fact, as Marina was finding her children, Kevin was on a flight headed home.

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He describes that as he landed, he turned his phone on only to see a barrage of messages and voicemails, which sent him into an immediate panic. He listened to the voice messages and he heard the sounds of Marina screaming and crying.

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absolutely hysterical he was able to gather from these messages that two of his children were dead but didn't know which ones and didn't know how as soon as they landed flight crew notified the passengers that one person needed to get off immediately that was when new york police officers escorted kevin off the plane when exiting the plane kevin said that he just collapsed onto the floor

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Everything after that was a blur. He doesn't even remember if he walked out of that airport or if police had to carry him out. Once he arrived to the hospital where his children were he was immediately met with news reporters before being ushered into a room by himself. That is when he was met with medical staff who notified him that his two children Lulu and Leo were dead.

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Of course this sent him into a hysteria of crying screaming and just falling to the ground. When Marina entered the room with him, they just held each other and cried. They wanted to be there for one another. In that moment, Kevin told Marina that they weren't going to let this tear them apart. Eventually, Kevin asked the staff to see his kids so he could say goodbye.

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When they took all the kids to the playground, they could all be found playing together. When they went to birthday parties with all sorts of different kids, the three would stick together. Even when they got into fights and arguments as siblings do, they would always end with a hug and an I'm sorry. Lucia, who went by Lulu, was born May 25th, 2006.

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The bodies had been cleaned the best that they could be at that point, but again, they were so bloody that parts of their body and especially their hair were stained with blood, but they cleaned them the best they could. And Kevin and Marina were able to say their goodbyes. After finding the bodies of these two young children, they were taken to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.

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And I'm sure you can guess, but just as a warning, the details of what the ME found are absolutely horrific and really hard to hear. What these children went through is just so heartbreaking and brutal, so this is your warning now. It was found that two-year-old Leo was stabbed five times all over his little body with one fatal slash to his throat.

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It was said that he was either surprised by the attack and just couldn't fight back or he was too little to fight back. Meanwhile, his sister, six-year-old Lulu, was stabbed over 30 times. She had been slashed in the throat, but it was clear that she tried to fight back with everything she had.

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She had stab wounds and slashes all over her arms, torso, and back, all indicating that she was trying to get away. According to the ME, both of their throats had been slashed so deeply that it appeared that both of them were almost decapitated. It was a frenzied, violent attack carried out by a woman who those kids loved, a woman who was supposed to care for them and protect them.

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Now, like I said, when first responders arrived to the scene, they found Yaslin had also attempted to take her own life by cutting her own throat and wrists multiple times. She, too, landed herself a hospital visit where she was in a coma for two days after. She woke up on October 27th, and by that time, police met with her for an interview.

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At the time, she was intubated, so she couldn't speak, so she had to write down what she had to say. Like I said earlier, the relationship between Jocelyn and the rest of the family appeared to be a very good one. She was happy, she only had positive things to say about them, and the family was happy to have her.

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In the weeks before the murders, there had been some issues, but the Krims felt that they were doing everything they could to bend over backwards to support her. However, this is not how Joslyn saw the situation at all. She said that the relationship she had with the Crimms, specifically Marina, was crumbling in the weeks leading to October 25th, 2012.

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She said that the issue started with Marina giving her grief about giving the kids junk food and not spending enough time with them. Then, once her son came and she told the family that she needed some extra money, they offered her five extra hours a week to clean the house. The Crimms felt that this offer was a way of doing something nice for her.

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trying their best to give her extra hours and therefore extra pay. However, this isn't how Yaslin took it. She said that she was angry that they were asking her to clean the house, writing, She said that it interfered with her doctor's appointments and time to see her son. She also said that the soap they had at the apartment was burning her skin.

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She was described as a star in everything she did, having this infectious and innocent energy. She was enthusiastic about everything, big and little. She was adventurous and brave. She was nurturing and a natural-born leader, always rallying her little brother and sister to a new task or game.

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Although Marina did buy organic cleaner to try and accommodate her sensitive skin, this still did not make Yaslin happy. In fact, she was pissed about this offer and she stewed about it for weeks, unbeknownst to Marina. Then when the Crim started recommending her to other families to pick up extra hours nannying, She saw that as a slight, a way to get rid of her and make her work even more.

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It seemed that with her increasing financial strain, Jocelyn basically wanted the Crimps to pay her for extra hours she wasn't working. The kicker is, though, is that Jocelyn never sat down with Marina or Kevin and asked for a raise. She just got upset about the suggestion that she clean and never really did anything else about it until she absolutely freaked out.

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Basically, it seemed that yes, the Crimms knew that Yaslin was struggling and they wanted to help her in any way they could. They also saw that Yaslin was starting to slack a bit and was not performing her duties as she normally had over the past two years they worked with her. However, everything they did to try and help, Yaslin took that as an insult. Again, unbeknownst to the family.

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According to Joslyn, the big event that really pushed her over the edge happened on the night before the murders. When she left their home on the evening of October 24th, Joslyn said goodbye to Marina, but apparently Marina ignored her. This made Jocelyn very, very angry. She sat and stood about it until she returned to the apartment for her shift the next day.

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As I stated earlier, on the afternoon of October 25th, Jocelyn put Leo in the stroller and picked up Lulu from school. She was supposed to take Lulu to her ballet lessons, but she didn't. She went to the apartment instead. When she got there, she asked the doorman if Marina was home, which she wasn't. She then went upstairs and into the apartment.

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According to Joslyn, she does not remember anything that happened after that. After she was finished at the hospital, of course, Joslyn was very quickly arrested and charged with the murders of these two innocent, adorable children. And although she admitted to murdering the children and despite being caught basically in the act, she pleaded not guilty to her charges. Why?

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Due to reason of insanity or mental defect. That's right, she was blaming her mental health for the murder of these children. Of course, because of this, an investigation into her past and mental health was done. And let me tell you, pretty much everything that I've told you about Jocelyn up to this point is just the absolute tip of the iceberg.

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The information I'm going to tell you comes from a combination of investigators speaking with various family members, as well as through interviews with psychiatrists working to evaluate her competency to stand trial. So now going back a bit into more of Jocelyn's family history. Like I said, she's originally from the DR before she and other siblings moved to New York.

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Even when Lulu was feeling shy or uncomfortable in situations, she took it in stride and worked her way through it. Lulu was intuitive and empathic, feeling things deeply and expressing her love freely. She was a little artist who took art classes at the Met and always spent time painting at home. She was creative. And if you knew Lulu, you knew that creating art was like breathing for her.

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There, she lived with several siblings and worked a couple different jobs before moving and living for a few months in Texas where she took care of a family member's children. Meanwhile, she had a son back in the DR who was raised by her sister after she moved. Now, according to family members, Jocelyn first started experiencing mental health issues when she was around 16 years old.

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One of her sisters unfortunately died around this time, which sent Jocelyn into a depression. She went to the doctor, who prescribed her medications, which she took until she felt better and no longer needed them. Obviously, something like a death in the family, especially of a sibling, can cause anyone to have a depressive episode.

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But as we will hear later in the video, apparently Yaslin was still dealing with other mental health struggles that she kept to herself for the most part. After having Jesus, she did raise him for the first years of his life. According to Jesus, his mom was always very paranoid. She didn't want him to go outside.

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She was constantly worried about intruders coming into their home, which made Jesus feel like he needed to like lock the apartment windows and like sleep with a bat and things like that. She was so worried about something happening to Jesus that she made him quit the baseball team. However, Jesus never heard anything about her seeing things or hearing things.

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So even though she was paranoid, it never seemed like she was delusional or anything like that. Again, yes, she was really worried about her child's safety. Yes, she might have gone overboard with how worried she was and how much of, like, I guess a helicopter mom she was, but that doesn't mean that she was delusional or suffering from a severe mental health issue.

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After moving to New York, like I said, Jocelyn carried a number of different jobs. Her sister Celia took up work as a nanny, which was a job she enjoyed. The family Celia worked for went to the same preschool and ballet classes as the Crim's daughters and that is how they met. As we know, Celia recommended Yoselin to Marina to be their nanny, saying that she had tons of experience in the field.

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Yoselin even sent Marina her resume which had glowing references. However, turns out these references were pretty much all fabricated. She did list the family members whose children she had cared for for those months in Texas who raved all about Yaslin. However, another one of the references she listed was her niece, Yaclin.

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When Marina reached out to her, she sent her a detailed letter about the two years Yaslin spent caring for her two-year-old son. When Marina asked her how she met Yaslin, Yaclin said that she was recommended to them by another nanny. Right off the bat, we know that was a lie. Of course, Marina didn't know that Jacqueline was just a family member.

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What Marina also didn't know was that Jacqueline didn't even have any children. Yes, she completely made up the whole story about Yaslin caring for a two-year-old child that does not exist. Now, going back to the first one I mentioned, that was her family member of the kids that she took care of.

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She did actually take care of their children, but she did say that it was a family she was not related to, so that part of it was also a lie. There were a few other references listed, all of whom were her family members who all lied about the experience they have with Jocelyn as a nanny.

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Then, about two months before the murders, family members of Jocelyn report that they noticed her mental health getting worse and worse. She often complained of this man who was following her around and trying to separate her from her family. Another friend talked about how Yasin reported seeing shadows all around her.

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Each Halloween, when Marina was making the kids Halloween costumes, Lulu would be right beside her, making her own costumes for her dolls out of paper and tape. Inez, who went by Nessie, was born December 28, 2008, and she was the middle child with an older sister and a younger brother. She is known to be the tough one of the three.

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At this point, though, none of her family members ever mentioned her hearing voices or seeing the devil or anything like that, but obviously... These visions are concerning. Family members said that what they think caused her mental health to tank again after years of getting better was her son moving to New York.

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Again, there was this enormous financial strain placed on her by her trying to get her own apartment and then losing it. She enrolled him in a school she couldn't afford. During that time, family members who lived with Jocelyn said that she was prone to bouts of crying. She was facing all of these stressors at one time, her son's arrival, stress at work, and financial trouble.

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All of that culminated in her becoming so overwhelmed that she felt she could no longer take care of her own son. This may have caused her to snap and black out, causing her to lash out on those two children. The process of evaluating her mental health and preparing for this trial actually took over five long years. Ultimately, she was found competent to stand trial.

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So finally, by March of 2018, Joslyn's trial for the double murder started. She was being charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution painted Joslyn as an evil criminal. cruel, cold, calculated murderer.

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This was a woman who came from humble beginnings, a woman who immigrated into the United States having to find work where she could to get by and lived with several other family members who all worked together to support one another. By the grace of good luck, she was able to find employment with this rich, affluent family on the Upper West Side as a nanny.

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But during her years of working with Marina and her children, she grew envious. Here was this woman who seemed to have it all, a rich husband who supported her. She was a naturally gifted mother who effortlessly loved and cared for her children, taking them on trips to the park and the pumpkin patch, made their own Halloween costumes by scratch.

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She lived in a ritzy apartment in an upper-class neighborhood just a block away from Central Park and the historical museums. Meanwhile, Jocelyn was struggling. She didn't even have the money to have an apartment with her own son. She didn't have the money to send him to private school. And she made that the Crim's problem. She didn't want to work the extra hours.

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She didn't want to be referred to another family. She just wanted them to pay her more and more money simply because they could afford it. it was their fault that they weren't being more generous with their money.

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After months of this growing disdain for Marina, after I guess being ignored by her that one time that really just sealed the deal for Jocelyn and she planned out this murder as a way to hurt her in the worst way possible. As we heard from earlier, her not saying goodbye to her that previous night made her very upset.

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So she went to the apartment and checked in with the doorman to make sure she wasn't home. She specifically chose a time where she knew Marina would not be home so she could be alone with the children. She then went into the kitchen, grabbed two large kitchen knives before bringing the children to the bathroom where she carried out the violent frenzied attack.

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She's the athletic one, being fast, agile, determined, and fearless. She can read people intelligently and listens intently. then knows exactly how to talk to people and charm her way into their hearts. She's intelligent, quick-witted, with an incredible memory and attention span. Lastly, Leo was born September 30th, 2010. Leo was known to be very smart and curious.

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She waited in the bathroom for who knows how long before Marina got back to her apartment. Jocelyn waited for Marina to find the bodies of her dead, brutalized children so she could relish in her pain and anguish. It was only after seeing Marina's shock and horror that Jocelyn started hurting herself. The fact that she waited for the opportunity to be alone and made sure she was going to be alone.

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The fact that she grabbed the knives and went into another room. The fact that she had all of these complaints about Marina the second she woke up in that hospital. That all shows that she planned this and carried it out because she hated Marina and wanted to see her suffer, not because she had this random, uncontrolled mental health crisis that caused her to lash out at the children at some

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random, unpredictable time. On the other hand, the defense argued again that Yaslin did this due to a mental defect which caused temporary insanity. She didn't know what she was doing and she had no control over her actions.

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The defense explained how Yaslin had a mental disorder from the time that she was a child, but she was really good at hiding it because mental health help just wasn't good back then. It wasn't as accepted to have mental health issues as it is today.

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They argue that she started experiencing paranoid delusions and visual and audio hallucinations from the time that she was a child, but she just couldn't tell anybody about it. In her sessions with the psychiatrist after the murders, she brought up hearing voices which demanded her to do things, including these murders.

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She also mentioned that she can see Jesus and the devil and that she can hear the devil talking to her. At the time of the murders, she told the psychiatrist that she felt the devil penetrate her body and she heard voices demanding her to kill. She said the devil made her do this.

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But something the prosecution pointed out was that no one, including Jocelyn, brought up those hallucinations until after the murders. In fact, Jocelyn only brought up the devil when prompted by her psychiatrist who was evaluating her after the murders. He specifically asked her if she saw the devil and ever felt possessed. It was only then that she ever brought this up.

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Even when telling her family members about her symptoms, she never mentioned hearing or seeing the devil or anything like that. But even so, I do want to say that even if her family members support her story of having a mental health disorder, even with them saying that she, you know, had struggled with her mental health since the time she was a child, it's absolutely possible they're lying.

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We know several of Yaslin's family members lied to the Krim family about her qualifications. They lied to investigators all throughout this investigation, even admitting to lying under oath. So again, even if they report her having mental health issues, these people just are not credible and we don't know what to believe if anything that comes out of their mouths.

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The court also heard from a psychologist who actually saw Yoselin just three days before the murders. This was someone who had just started seeing her due to her worsening mental health. This psychiatrist is actually one of New York's experts in how and when to report dangerous patients to authorities. And he said that he found absolutely no sign of a serious mental defect in Yoselin.

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He just saw a stressed out woman who was dealing with a lot. She was only diagnosed with anxiety and mild depression. Again, just going directly against this thought that she was delusional and out of control. I do also want to note that a lot of people do hide their mental illnesses, but people with delusions... are called delusional for a reason. They don't know that they're delusions.

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He saw the world clearly and loved what he saw. He loved going on stroller rides with his family, always observing and soaking in the people and tall buildings, the construction cranes, trucks, and taxis. He absolutely loved going to the park, collecting acorns and balls with him. Leo was known to be serious at times, deep in thought with a longing look on his face.

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A lot of times when they're having hallucinations and hearing the voices telling them to do things and seeing things, they don't know what's real and what's not. When they're delusional, they truly believe in their delusions again, which is why they're called delusions to begin with. They wouldn't know that they should hide them.

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So that whole thing to me just does not make sense and is not credible. At the trial, the jury heard from numerous witnesses, including psychiatrists Marina and Kevin, several of Yaslin's family members, including her son, neighbors of both families who spoke on Yaslin's behaviors, as well as first responders who spoke about the brutality of the scene they discovered.

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While testifying, it was clear that Marina was still so traumatized from what happened. She called Jocelyn evil and disgusting several times in the courtroom and broke down into tears multiple times. At one point, she screamed at Jocelyn saying, you're evil, you love this, you like this, before having to be escorted out to take a break.

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Today's case is one out of every parent's nightmares. These parents thought they took all the right steps in ensuring they found the most competent caretaker they could. They felt they found someone they could trust with what they held most precious in the world.

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On the other hand, Kevin was able to talk in a very matter-of-fact way, wiping away tears as he spoke. It's clear that he's also still very traumatized from all of this, and they both probably will be for the rest of their lives.

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It was said that all throughout the trial, Through all of this testimony, seeing the evidence, including seeing pictures of those dead children and Jocelyn herself with those self-inflicted injuries, Jocelyn did not show any emotion. She was actually trying to make eye contact with everyone who testified, including Marina and Kevin, but nobody wanted to look in her direction.

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She just had this blank stare on her face, looking stoic and flat the entire time, almost as if she was trying to intimidate everybody in that courtroom.

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But most of the time, he was a little clown. He loved making his parents and older sisters laugh whenever he could. His father would go on to say that one of his favorite things to do with Leo was their bedtime ritual. he would always pick his favorite book out of the stack and would have his dad read it to him.

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Many people who have observed the trial and who looked into this case can see that Jocelyn is just a cold-blooded narcissist who only cares about herself and takes everything that anyone tries to do for her as a slight and takes everything in the worst way possible. The worst kind of person, if you ask me.

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After a month of trial, both sides made their closing arguments and the jury of 12 were sent off for deliberations. And thankfully, when they came back, they made it clear that they did not buy this load of BS that Yaslin was selling. They found her guilty on both charges of first-degree murder, and she was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

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At her sentencing, Yaslin actually spoke up and apologized to Marina and Kevin for what she did. and showed her first bit of emotion that she had shown the entire time. I'm very sorry for everything that happened.

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To me, this just shows even more how much of a selfish narcissist she is given that the only time she showed a hint of emotion was after she could no longer hope for her defense to go through. She was hit with the harsh reality that she will be in prison forever, surrounded by other women who do not take kindly to people who hurt children.

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Both Kevin and Marina made their victim impact statements where they each recounted memories of their children and spoke about just how special each child was in their own way. In their remarks, they also spoke about Jocelyn herself. Kevin said, quote, The defendant is evil and utterly dangerous narcissist and a complete failure.

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It is right that she should have to live and rot and die in a concrete and metal cage like the ugly dark shadow of Lulu and Leo's bright shining lights.

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Sometimes, Kevin would even end up reading through a book two or three times because of how much Leo loved listening to those stories. Of course, given that this family worked hard to make their children into the most successful versions of themselves, They were all signed up for all sorts of different activities.

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The girls were both signed up for ballet and it was at one of their classes where Marina met a woman named Celia who worked for a nanny for one of the families who lived near the Crim's and whose children went to the same school as their children. At the time, Marina was still pregnant with Leo when Celia approached her at one of these ballet classes.

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After her conviction and sentence, Joslyn tried to appeal her conviction, but it has since been upheld and she remains behind bars. hopefully for the rest of her life. Of course, the Crimms are and always will be devastated by this tragic, heartbreaking loss, but they have decided to use this tragedy to do something positive.

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This is something I always find so incredibly impressive and inspiring when people are able to take the worst possible tragedy and use it to make something positive. Since the brutal murders, Kevin and Marina have created the Lulu and Leo Fund, which helps to fund Choose Creativity.

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The fund is a nonprofit organization that aims to inspire, heal, and grow children through engagement with art, nature, and creativity. Children from disadvantaged areas are 50% less likely to participate in arts programs than those from upper class families.

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So this organization aims to bring art and science programs to schools in disadvantaged areas, serving thousands of kids each year in honor of these two lost souls gone far too soon. After this tragedy, the family knew that they needed to start over. Thankfully, Kevin and Marina found a way to stay together and work through this as a family. They ended up moving away from that apartment.

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They went on to have two more sons, Felix who was born about a year after Lulu and Leo's deaths and Linus who was born two years after the deaths. They have been able to find joy and happiness in their lives saying that Nessie especially has shown such incredible strength through all of this. Somehow, she's able to live in the present and enjoy life despite everything she's gone through.

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Celia asked Marina if she needed a nanny, saying that her sister, Yaslin, is looking to nanny. Yaslin Ortega is one of seven children born to her parents in the Dominican Republic. However, two of her siblings actually died in childhood due to illness. Once she was an adult, some of her siblings started moving to New York.

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This was definitely a really difficult case to get through. The facts of this case are just horrific and the way this happened is unimaginable. I'm glad that this monster is behind bars and will never see the outside of a prison ever again.

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I'm happy that the Krim family were able to build themselves back up and move on while honoring the memory of Leo and Lulu through servicing so many children in need.

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It started with the siblings all living together in an apartment, with Yaslin visiting once or twice a year and sending over some money to help get them by. Eventually, though, after finishing college in the DR, she joined her siblings in New York, living in an apartment in Harlem with her sisters and several other family members. There, she worked all sorts of different jobs.

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She worked at a doll factory, a book factory. She never really actually worked with children until Joslyn moved to Texas and lived with her niece, who had three children. From what I understand, she only lived in Texas for a few months before returning to New York. But at the time, this isn't the impression Celia gave Marina when she introduced Joslyn to her.

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When Celia told Marina about her sister, she said that she nannied for a few other families over the years. Now, by this point, before even moving to New York, Kevin had suggested that Marina get some help part-time with the kids.

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However, the woman who appeared to be kind and compassionate on the surface turned out to harbor some disturbing dark secrets that culminated in the most horrific traumatic scene imaginable. Just a warning, this case is a very disturbing one. The details are absolutely horrific and this case will make your stomach turn.

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At first, this wasn't something she felt she needed, but after moving from San Diego to New York City and now being pregnant with their third child, it was something that she thought about. After all, Being in the city with three children is a lot. You can't just drive your kids around different places like you can in the suburbs. You have to walk and take the train and take taxis.

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Plus, Kevin traveled a lot for work, so not only was he working full-time while Marina was at home with the kids, but there were several days at a time where Kevin would be out of town completely and unable to help with the kids. When Marina met Yaslin for the first time, she seemed like your typical, sweet, caring, middle-aged woman who just wanted to lend a helping hand.

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Yoselin provided Marina and Kevin with a few references, all who spoke very highly of her and her capabilities when it came to caring for children. According to Kevin, they did their due diligence when it came to hiring a nanny. He had hired many employees over the course of his 18 year long career, so he knew what he was doing when it came to hiring.

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He looked up a bunch of questions to ask a potential nanny, sent them to Marina, who then carried out the interview. They followed up with her references, who all gave absolutely glowing reviews of Jocelyn and her work. So just after little Leo was born, Marina and Kevin hired then 50 year old Jocelyn on as their nanny. At first, things went well with Jocelyn serving as a helping hand.

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She drove the girls to their ballet and art classes and helped out with their day-to-day tasks. And as time went on, she basically became a part of their family. The children called her Josie and would be excited to see her every day. Those who knew Jocelyn and the family said that she was always talking about those kids and how much she loved and adored them.

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She loved her job and the Krim family loved her. Of course, the Krim family knew that Jocelyn had a life of her own and given her background, they were more than happy to help support her through everything. They made sure that they always found something for Yaslin to do to ensure that she was never working fewer than 25 hours a week.

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They didn't ever want to leave her high and dry without work and without pay. When they went on vacation and didn't need her to care for the kids, they would always find other families in the area who also needed nannies. Again, so that even when they didn't need a nanny, they weren't leaving Joslyn with no way to make money.

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Over the course of Joslyn's employment with the Crimms, the family grew really close with her and with even her own family. Once the Crimms went to the Dominican Republic with Joslyn and met one of Joslyn's sisters, who hosted them in her home before the family went to their own resort.

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There was also one occasion where Kevin and Marina purchased plane tickets for Joslyn to go to the DR so she could visit her son and family. The Crim's loved Joslyn and her family, and it seems like Joslyn was very happy with the Crim's and how they were treating her from the start.

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Now by early 2012, Joslyn was finally able to help her son then 17 year old Jesus move from the DR to New York to finish out high school. Upon his arrival, Joslyn moved out of the apartment owned by her sister and into her own apartment in the Bronx with Jesus. I want to note that the sister who owned that Harlem apartment also helped raise Jesus until he was 17, so she owned that apartment.

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Kevin and Marina Krim were the proud parents to their three children, Lucia, Enos, and Leo. Kevin, a Harvard graduate, was a successful CNBC executive at the time. Marina once worked as a kindergarten teacher who sometimes taught art classes as well, but ultimately became a stay-at-home mom after having their children.

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A bunch of different family members lived there, but the sister that owned the apartment split her time between New York and the DR. However, after getting her own apartment with Jesus in the Bronx, the financial burden quickly caught up with Joslyn, and she could no longer afford it. So she returned back to Harlem into that apartment where she lived with several other family members.

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Upon his arrival in New York, Jesus enrolled in summer classes at the public high school before switching to a private Catholic school where he could finish out his senior year. Now, the reason for this was because the public school wanted to start his use on as a junior. So he'd have to do an extra year of high school before graduating.

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Meanwhile, the private school allowed him to just do his senior year. So obviously. That was the preferred option. But as you can imagine, this private school was really expensive. And once again, the financial burden was growing and growing for Yaslin. At this point, they had already lost their apartment in the Bronx, but now Yaslin was having to pay thousands of dollars per semester in tuition.

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It was a lot for her to handle. Noticing the financial strain that Joslyn was under, the Crimms wanted to help out in any way they could. They offered Jesus a job dog sitting and house sitting whenever they were on vacation. He would also come over on a regular basis to walk the dog.

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Anytime there were big events where maybe the work was too much for Joslyn to handle herself, the Crimms would always hire Joslyn's family members to help out. For example, during Marina's sister's wedding, Jocelyn's sister went with Jocelyn and the family to help watch the kids. Little things like that were ways that the Crimms were always trying to help out Jocelyn and her family.

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As the weeks passed, though, with this financial strain getting heavier and heavier for Jocelyn, she discussed with the Crimms more ways she could make some extra money. She basically asked them to pay her more so the Crimms offered that maybe she could do five extra hours per week of some housework like cleaning and they could pay her for that.

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The family really thought that they were doing her a solid by offering her some extra hours in exchange for some extra pay. They also started referring to Yaslin to some other families who were in need of child care so she could work with extra families when she either wasn't needed by the Crimms or she could just pick up extra hours in general because she was only working about 25 hours a week

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And that way, she could make some extra money. But it seems like this isn't really what Jocelyn was expecting when she spoke to the Crimms about her money troubles. She started to become unhappy with her job and life in general. So her and Marina started butting heads a bit. Apparently, Marina started to become concerned at Jocelyn's job performance in late 2012.

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saying that she wasn't really doing what she was supposed to do she was feeding the kids junk food behind marina's back and wasn't spending as much time with them as marina was expecting marina and kevin eventually had to tell yaslin that if she didn't improve her work they may have to start considering replacing her and just to note i'm sure the crims telling her this was not easy

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The family was originally from San Diego, California, but eventually moved into a ritzy $10,000 a month apartment in a high rise in the Upper West Side of New York City. Those who knew the family said that Marina put her all into being a mother. She absolutely doted over her children and did her best to raise them into the most caring, kind humans she possibly could.

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Again, she was basically like a part of the family. They spent almost every day together. The kids loved her. So her performance must have been slipping very severely and for a long time for the Krims to even consider starting over with a new nanny.

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The family were hoping that with how generous they had been with her and her family as a whole and with how much they'd been going out of their way to find ways to pay her for extra work, soon things would look up. But that is not what happened at all. By October 25th, 2012, Yasin started her day by eating some breakfast with her son, Jesus.

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By 3 p.m., she went to the Crim's apartment, putting Leo in his stroller before picking Lulu up from school. In the meantime, Marina took her second oldest, Nessie, to her swim lessons. After the swim lessons, Marina was then going to take Nessie to meet Lulu at their ballet lessons. However, when Marina and Nessie arrived to the ballet class, they found that Lulu wasn't there.

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Yaslin had never dropped her off. This immediately sent a panic through Marina. She started texting Yaslin, where's Lulu? Where are you? but she got no response. Of course, after being unable to get into contact with Joslyn and having no idea where her daughter was, Marina headed back to the apartment to find her. When she got there, she described that it was dark and quiet.

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She opened the door and first saw Lulu's ballet bag and Leo's stroller empty and untouched. Marina held Nessie's hand as they walked from room to room through the apartment in complete silence and darkness. It was the most eerie and uneasy feeling. Once they made it to the back of the apartment, Marina saw that there was a crack of light coming from under the bathroom door.

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She opened the door and was immediately horrified at what she saw. First, she saw her six-year-old daughter, Lulu, lying face up in the bathtub, absolutely covered in blood, with her eyes wide open, staring off into the distance. Lying next to her in that bathtub was two-year-old Leo. Both were covered in so much blood that they were both almost unrecognizable.

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Marina said that right away, just by the looks on their faces, the way that they were both just staring off. She knew that both of her children were dead. As soon as Marina saw those kids, she then saw Jocelyn standing in the bathroom covered in blood with her eyes bugging out. The two then locked eyes and suddenly Yaslin started stabbing herself over and over and over.

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Marina ran out of that bathroom, clutching then three-year-old Nessie in her arms, screaming, my babysitter killed my kids as she ran. First responders were called by a neighbor who heard the screaming, which was described as a blood-curdling, bone-chilling scream. Shortly after being called, first responders arrived.

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When they entered the scene, they found Marina, who was screaming, "'They're dead! They're dead!' When they got to the bathroom, they saw Jocelyn lying on the floor holding a cloth up to her neck to stop the bleeding after stabbing herself in the throat multiple times. There was a bloody knife lying next to her on the floor. It was kind of wrapped in a cloth with a second bloody knife in the sink.

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The first responder stepped over Jocelyn, who at that point was moaning and calling out for help to check in on the children that were both in the tub. He tried to find any signs of life in those two babies, but he found nothing.

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Even though Marina was a stay-at-home mother though, her and Kevin both placed such a large emphasis on the family working together as a unit. One of their priorities as parents was to teach their kids to take care of one another. They wanted their children to become best friends with one another. And that's exactly what happened as the children grew up.

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When first responders started preparing to pick up the bodies of the children to get them onto a stretcher, the medic said that they were so bloody that they were worried they would slip out of their arms when they picked them up. They also helped Joslyn into an ambulance as well.

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But most of all, Callie loved being a mother to her two daughters, six-year-old Jaylee and four-year-old Erin. Erin Nicole Brunette was born on October 28th, 2019 in Covington, Louisiana. Erin was described as being a little fireball.

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Now, after Daniel's arrest and finding that evidence at the scene which pointed towards a possible sex trafficking ring, police announced another arrest in the case. 31-year-old Victoria Cox has been identified as a co-conspirator of Daniel's, saying that she helped him kidnap the two sisters and bring them to Jackson.

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Because of this, she too has been arrested and is now charged with one count of capital murder, one count of kidnapping, and one count of sexual battery. As of the most recent article I have found on this case, Victoria remains in Jackson, Mississippi, while Daniel has been extradited back to Louisiana to face his charges.

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As of right now, that is pretty much all of the information we have on this case. I know that it's a shorter one and a very recent case, but when I saw this case in the headlines, I felt compelled to speak on it. Obviously, this whole thing is so tragic and so, so very disturbing.

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even at her young age she could be a little bit spicy at times always having a sassy comeback for anyone trying to tease her but at the same time she could also be so very sweet and loving she had this little stuffed elephant ellie who never left her side she was absolutely full of life starting to become her own little person she had a very special bond with her big sister jaylee and she always wanted to do everything she was doing she really looked up to her big sister and mother overall

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Daniel is truly a very disturbed man who I think is going to plead insanity based on his current behaviors, but I guess we will have to wait and see. I'm also so curious to see if we learn more about Victoria's role in all of this. I haven't really been able to find too much detailed information on what exactly she did.

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This case truly serves as a reminder that we all need to be very, very careful of who we let into our lives. Again, we know that Daniel and Callie apparently dated over a decade ago, but we still don't know why 13 years later he decided to do this. I wonder if they reconnected in some way or if he's just been watching her secretly all this time.

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I'm so, so curious to see what new information will come out because I know that what we do know is just scratching the surface of this case. I still have so many questions that I'm hoping we get answers to. I will be following this case as time goes on, so if there are any new updates as we move forward, I will let you all know. But as of right now, that is where I'm going to end today's video.

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Of course, my heart breaks for little Erin and her sister who now has to live with this trauma that will follow her for the rest of her life. Not only was she abused, but she lost her little sister and her mother. I just hope that she's surrounded by family who love and support her and will help her navigate life after all of this.

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But after hearing all of the details, I want to know what you all think. Why do you think this happened? Do you think it had something to do with Callie and Daniel's past relationship? Or was she just an easy target for him to carry out his disgusting sexual desires on a child and to have people for this apparent human sex trafficking ring?

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Do you think he's going to plead insanity or just plead guilty or will he go some other route?

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Callie, Aaron, and Jaylee were a part of a family who were very close to one another and their extended family. They had deep roots in their small town of Laranger and they were very proud of who they were. By the morning of Thursday, June 13th, 2024, Callie's mother, Debbie, became concerned after trying to contact her all morning and getting no response.

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She hadn't heard from Callie since that previous afternoon, which was a red flag. This was very out of character for Callie to just stop responding to her family members, so Debbie headed over to the home where Callie lived with her two daughters. However, when she got there, she was met with a horrifying scene.

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When she first pulled up, she saw that Callie's car, a 2012 Chrysler 200, was missing. Then, when Debbie made her way inside, she found Callie, who was lying dead in her bedroom within the home. It was clear that Callie had suffered from a brutal, vicious attack. According to later autopsy, Callie was murdered as a result of multiple sharp force injuries.

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She had been stabbed multiple times to her head, neck, chest, and back. Of course, this is just the most horrific discovery someone can make, especially when it's your own child. It's such a punch to the gut. It's got to be the literal worst feeling in the world. It's so traumatizing. After finding her daughter's body, she went around and searched for her granddaughters, Erin and Jaylee,

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only to realize that they were missing. Right away, Debbie contacted the authorities to report what she had just found. Immediately, an Amber Alert was issued for the two missing girls, along with a description of the missing car. At this point, it's believed that someone entered the home, murdered Callie, and then kidnapped both of her young, vulnerable daughters.

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We all know that the unfortunate reality is, is that we live in a world full of monsters, people we need to protect ourselves and our children from. If you're a regular viewer of this channel, or if you consume a lot of true crime content, then you know that each and every one of us needs to practice a certain level of caution to prevent ourselves from becoming the victims of crime.

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The first thing investigators did was run the license plates for the missing car. Pretty quickly, they found that the car had been traveling north in the direction of Jackson, Mississippi. Using that, they were able to find out that the car had been in Byram, Mississippi by 6.05 p.m. that previous evening, June 12th.

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Using that, police were able to obtain security footage from a McDonald's, which was located near where the license plate reader picked up that car. The footage was from the 12th, and on that footage, they saw the car, which was being driven by an unknown white man. At the time, the man was attempting to change the car's tire in that parking lot.

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Upon looking closer at the footage, investigators then spotted what looked like two small individuals sitting in the rear seats of that car while the man tried changing the tire. Right away, investigators just knew that these were the two missing little girls. As that was happening still on June 12th, a woman named Dixie Hemphill started receiving messages from Callie's Facebook account.

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The messages told Dixie that it was actually her brother, Daniel Callahan. He said that he was using Callie's account to message her saying that he did something bad and needed some gas money. He asked her to send some money over via cash app but she just had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

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She knew her brother well so instead of giving her brother money she notified the authorities of these messages. At this point investigators started connecting the dots and figured out that Daniel Callahan may have been the one who murdered Callie and abducted her two daughters.

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They also realized that this case was now crossing multiple states, so police got the FBI and the United States Marshal Task Force involved in the investigation. By June 13th, just hours after the girls were reported missing, the U.S. Marshals started their searches in Byron, Mississippi, which was the last known location of Callie's car.

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Pretty quickly, actually, an undercover officer spotted Daniel Callahan walking along Terry Road in Jackson. It looked like he was going around and checking houses, according to that officer. Once he noticed the officer, he did try to flee, but the officer was able to catch up to him and managed to apprehend him.

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At that time, officers saw that the little girls were not with him, so the desperate searches to find those girls continued. After apprehending Daniel, officers started searching down a nearby road, Boozier Drive.

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While on that road, they were approached by two civilians who said that they recently heard two children screaming from the woods about 50 yards behind a residence located on that same road. The Good Samaritans directed officers to that home where they zeroed in on their searches. The home appeared to be old and mostly unfinished with no permanent resident living inside.

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It appeared that a bunch of different people would use that home as a place to stay from time to time, but there was no one permanently living there. Once at the property, they searched all along the outside areas. And there, they found Erin and Jaylee inside of a pit on that property. Of course, authorities were elated that they were able to quickly find these two girls.

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They had been holding their breath the entire time, hoping they would both be alive. But, unfortunately... That was not the case. Six-year-old little Jaylee was alive, but next to her was the body of four-year-old little Erin. She was unfortunately deceased. Also on that property, about 20 yards from the house, authorities did find Callie's missing car.

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but sometimes it happens so suddenly without any warning that we are left with no way out. It's so tragic when this happens, but for people like Callie and her beautiful daughters, it doesn't seem like there was much they could have done to prevent this. And that is the scariest reality to face. This case is an exceptionally disturbing one.

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Now, while investigators started to block off and process the scene, an adult male approached the officers to tell them that he had been at the house in the prior days. He said that he saw Daniel, Aaron, and Jaylee on the property and inside the home on both June 12th and June 13th. He doesn't know exactly what happened, but the girls did not appear to be happy to be there with this man.

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They clearly wanted to go home and they clearly did not belong there with him. Now, after spotting Daniel on the road, he was arrested and taken into custody for questioning. Meanwhile, Jaylee was also removed from the scene and taken into the station for family to come pick her up.

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Of course, she was traumatized and what we will soon find out about what she went through is completely heartbreaking. Once Daniel was taken into the station for questioning, he pretty much admitted to what he did right away. Daniel told officers that he stabbed Callie about 30 times in her home.

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He mentioned that he had wanted to kill Callie for quite some time, but as far as I've been able to see, he didn't mention why, so we still really don't have a reason for that yet. According to Daniel's sister, the two had dated about 13 years prior,

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But we really don't know why he would still have any sort of resentment or ill will against her, especially again because it seems like they hadn't been together in 13 years. In that interview, he continued that after stabbing and murdering Callie, he grabbed the two girls and put them in the car.

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He then drove himself and the girls over 100 miles to Mississippi, where he went to that house on Bousier Drive. When they got to the house, he said that Aaron and Jaylee were crying. They were very upset, saying that they didn't want to stay with Daniel. Eventually, Daniel realized that law enforcement were on the way and were searching for him. And it was then that he decided to kill Aaron.

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According to the Mississippi police chief, he believes that Aaron was suffocated to death. However, they are still awaiting the results of the autopsy. So they aren't 100% sure yet on how she died. But that's kind of what the assumption is at this point. Either way, no matter how you spin it, it's absolutely horrific.

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DISGUSTING: Man MURDERS Mother then Kidnaps Daughters to use as “Sex Slaves”

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Meanwhile, Daniel admitted that he decided not to kill six-year-old Jaylee because he wanted to keep her as a sex slave. Yep, you heard that right. He wanted to keep that six-year-old little girl around so he could molest her, which this whole thing doesn't really make any sense to begin with.

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DISGUSTING: Man MURDERS Mother then Kidnaps Daughters to use as “Sex Slaves”

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Why he would kill the four-year-old because he knew police were on the way, but then he would keep the six-year-old around. That doesn't really make any sense. I'm not sure if I necessarily believe that's why four-year-old Aaron was killed. I think it might also have something to do with his sexual deviancy, but again, this is what we know as of right now.

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DISGUSTING: Man MURDERS Mother then Kidnaps Daughters to use as “Sex Slaves”

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It's a very recent case that is very much ongoing, but I felt like I needed to speak on this because of how it all went down. It's truly heartbreaking and disturbing, but I wanted to share this story so we can remember these victims who suffered so severely. With that being said, let's get into the case. Callie Jo Brunette is originally from Larondre, Louisiana.

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Also, as of right now, we know that although Jaylee was described as alive and unharmed when she was found, we still don't know all the details of her condition. It's very possible and probable, in my opinion, that she was harmed in some way. But obviously and thankfully, she survived.

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She was examined at the hospital after she was recovered, but the results of that examination have not yet been released. We can speculate about what probably happened to the two girls while with Daniel, but for right now, nothing is confirmed, especially about Jaylee's condition. So I'm not going to say what I think happened, but I do think more has happened than what we know.

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After that initial interview with Daniel, of course, he was arrested and charged with two counts of murder and sexual battery. As he was being taken into custody, he actually spoke with media where he admitted openly to what he did. He said, unfortunately, sober, on Lexapro, with no drugs in his system, he did kill Aaron.

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DISGUSTING: Man MURDERS Mother then Kidnaps Daughters to use as “Sex Slaves”

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He said that he had no reason for doing what he did, but he said that he had borderline or multiple personality disorder. He kept talking about the Lexapro and his mental health. He also said that he's on suicide watch, though he's not suicidal. But then he said that he completely regrets what he did and that he deserves lethal injection.

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As all of this was happening, with Daniel being booked into jail, him making all of these admissions, law enforcement continued to investigate the scene of where little Aaron was found dead. They announced that where this home was located was somewhere you would really only go if you knew the area.

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It's a dead end and kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it's not somewhere a person would just stumble upon. Knowing that, it's thought that Daniel knew the area and had been to this home on prior occasions. Then, within the home, authorities announced that they found signs of a possible human trafficking operation. They found small cages on the property as well as other wired enclosures.

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She attended Larondre High School and was a part of the flag team. After graduating, she attended Hammond Technical School for barbering and medical technology. She was from a proud family of farmers that goes back multiple generations. Callie was known as loving to be a country girl. she loved her hometown and going to Old Farmer's Day.

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Based on that, they do believe that trafficking was going on there, but of course, there needs to be more investigation done. According to Daniel's sister, Daniel had been troubled his entire life and is a mastermind at crime. She said that she actually went to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation a year prior to report that she believed he took part in the death of a missing man.

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She also said that he confessed to her to molesting a child. That case was taken to a grand jury at some point, but there wasn't enough evidence to actually get the charges to stick, so he was let go from that. I guess Daniel's father is a serial killer of some sort and Daniel said to his sister multiple times that he wanted to be like his dad.

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He wanted to be a successful killer and wanted to write a book. But again, when Dixie reported this, it was not taken seriously.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He took the knife and started to carve something into her arm. She said that he had carved the word boy into her arm because he knew that she had struggled with her identity in high school. She said that he would call her boy all the time and she tried telling him that she just does not identify that way anymore, but he refused to use her proper pronouns and continued calling her a boy.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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She said that he pretty much just did this to be mean to her and to demean her.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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The two were married at some point, but the two divorced by the time Ezra was 12 years old. But even after that, she did maintain a close relationship with her adoptive father. Once she reached high school, Ezra, still named Monica... sort of struggled with her identity.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagte, dass sie weiter kämpften und mit dem Knife kämpften, als sie in der Rückseite ihres Autos endeten. Sie sagte, dass Alex sie weiter attackierte, indem er ihre Arme öffnete. Sie sagte, dass er versuchte, sie sexuell zu töten, und sie war absolut verärgert und wusste nicht, was zu tun. So she grabbed the knife by the blade and just started stabbing him.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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She said that she was just stabbing anywhere that she could to make him stop attacking her. However, once detectives started investigating the scene, they found that her story just did not make sense. First

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Erstens, die Art und Weise, wie die beiden im Auto sitzen und die Art und Weise, wie sie den Schwung beschrieben hat, machten keinen Sinn für ihn, dass er die Worte Junge in ihre Arme so perfekt beschrieben hat. Wenn er es gemacht hätte, wäre es aufwärtsgegangen und es wäre nicht so perfekt gewesen, weil es ein Schwung wäre.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Also, indem sie das gemacht hat, haben sie ihr ermittelt, dass sie die Worte Junge in ihre eigene Arme beschrieben hat. Nach diesem Unfall, hast du dir für dich selbst etwas getan?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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She felt like she didn't really identify with the name that she was given and she played around with the idea of maybe changing her pronouns. This is also when she made the decision to legally change her name from Monica Carlin to Ezra McCandless.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Dann ging es davon aus, dass Ezra keine tiefen Verletzungen hatte, um zu unterstützen, dass sie den Knopf mit ihrem dreckigen Blatt gefangen hat. Alle ihre Wunden waren sehr überflüssig und waren mehr so wie Schmerzen. Zudem sagte Ezra, dass sie Alex die meiste Zeit innerhalb des Autos verletzt hatte. However, most of the blood found at the scene was outside of the car.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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So, they initially thought that he was stabbed outside of the car and then tried to get into the car, possibly to get away from her. Also, Alex had absolutely no defensive wounds on his body. They believed that this all happened because the two got into an argument and she snapped or she went to his house planning to do all of this.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They thought that she was in a state of mind where she believed that sie brauchte, um Alex aus dem Bild heraus zu bringen, um endlich mit Jason wieder zusammen zu kommen. So, wegen alledem, wurde Ezra am 6. April 2018 verhaftet und verurteilt mit einem Vorwurfsversuch. Dann begann ihr Trial am 15. Oktober 2019 am Dunn County Judicial Center.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Also zuerst, beschreiben wir alles, was die Verteidigung sagen musste. Die Verteidigung beschrieb also eine Situation, in der Ezra eine sehr verletzte Gefängnis von Alex war, der tatsächlich ein sehr zerstörter Individuum war, der absolut mit Ezra besessen war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Die Verteidigung beschreibt eine Situation, in der Alex eine Geschichte hatte, dass sie Azra zu sexuellen Tätigkeiten zerstört hat, die sie nicht wirklich tun wollte. Am Tag, an dem sie mit Alex getroffen hat, hat sie gesagt, dass sie dort mit der Intention war, mit ihm zu sprechen, damit die beiden nach all dem vielleicht Freunde bleiben könnten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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She says that on the day of the murder, the two were just driving around their car aimlessly while talking when the car got stuck in the mud. At that point, the defense claimed that Alex said that he deserved to sleep with Ezra one more time. They said that Alex had Ezra in the car and began attacking her because she declined his sexual advances.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagte, dass der erste Name Azra einfach besser mit ihr passt und sie hat den letzten Namen McCandless nach Chris McCandless ausgewählt, dem fremden, geistigen Mann, dessen Leben in dem Buch und Film in die Wilde beschrieben wurde. Nach der Hochschule ging sie in die Universität, aber sie droppte aus und endete in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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The defense says that she was just absolutely frozen in als er sich von ihr gewünscht hat. Sie hatte Kleider in ihren Kleidern, um zu unterstützen, dass er sie gekleidet hatte, damit er sie weiterattacken konnte. Dann hat die Verteidigung die Geschichte verändert, wie sie den Knife von ihm genommen hat. Anstatt ihn mit seiner hübschen Klappe zu nehmen, als er sie attackierte,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagte, dass sie ihn in den Bein so hart anstrengen musste, dass er tatsächlich den Knopf gedroht hat. Dann hat sie ihn sofort aufgenommen, nachdem er ihn gedroht hat, und aus Selbstverdienung hat sie ihn angefangen, ihn so weit wie sie konnte zu stürzen. Aber selbst als sie ihn anstürzte, ging die Angriff und sie musste sich immer noch verteidigen, bis sich der Angriff endlich beendet hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Als sich der Angriff endlich beendet hat, sagten sie, dass Alex noch lebendig war, also kam er endlich aus dem Auto und Sie sagten, dass Alex ziemlich versucht hat, einen Weg zu finden, um wegzugehen, und deshalb war er draußen, und deshalb war all das Blut da.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagten, dass er, als Alex herumgeflogen war, Ezra für Hilfe gefragt hat, und sie hat vorsichtig geglaubt und versucht, seinen Leben zu retten. But as she was trying to help him, he grabbed her again and continued to attack her. And that is when she made the final blow to the back of his head.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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After this, she knows that she had just killed her friend and she goes into absolute shock and everything just goes black. And that is when the defense says that she mindlessly... sie hat das Wort Junge in ihren Arm geschraubt, weil sie nicht mehr wusste, was los war und sie hatte die Situation, dass er ihr schrecklich fühlte, sie als Junge zu nennen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Vielleicht fühlte sie sich in diesem Moment, als ob sie sich mit dem Wort Junge beschädigen musste. Danach, nachdem all das passiert ist, konnte sie sich genug sammeln, um zurück auf den Berg zu gehen, von wo sie kamen und auf die Farme zu kommen, von der sie am Ende die Tür geschlagen hat. Das ist alles so, wie die Verteidigung sagt, dass das geschehen ist.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Dann kam natürlich die Verwaltung zurück und zeigte die gesamte Zeitung des Tages, bis zum Mord, wie wir vorhin diskutiert haben. Mit ihr geht sie zu Jason und Alex und dann alles, was da passiert ist. Und Jason bestätigte über die Rache in ihren Augen, die er sah und wie furchtbar sie den ganzen Tag gearbeitet hat.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie haben auch erwähnt, dass sie, als sie die Polizei gesprochen hat, nur Stunden vor dem Mord, Sie hat selbst gesagt, dass sie sich von Jason oder Alex überhaupt nicht bedroht fühlte. Nachdem die Anwesenden die Location gefunden haben, an der Alexs Körper letztendlich gefunden wurde, hat die Verwaltung gesagt, dass die Verletzung kein Kampf oder Schwung war, wie es Ezra bezeichnete.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagten, dass Ezra einen Knife benutzt hatte, den sie von ihrem Vaters Haus vor ein paar Tagen vor dem Mord genommen hatte und dann mit Alex treffen wollte, um ihn zu töten. Und der Fakt, dass sie diesen Knife so viele Tage vor dem Mord genommen hat, shows that she had full intention of killing him. They said that she went over to his house to confront him and argue with him.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Eau Claire wird als eine kleine große Stadt beschrieben, in der jeder alle kennt. Es ist eine freispirituelle Stadt, in der man lebt und Ezra konnte sich vollständig ausdrücken. Ezra war ein Künstler, der liebte es, im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit zu sein und sie schrieb ihre Designs überall über ihr Auto, damit sie ihre Kunst jedem zeigen konnte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They said that the two had gotten in the car and drove around to talk and that she brought him to this location where they would be more isolated. They said that the two had gotten out of the car to continue arguing.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They said that she then stabbed him in the back of the head as soon as he turned his back to her and then she continued stabbing him over and over again so deep that it pierced his organs. Es war ein sehr intensiver Akt. Danach, nach dem Mord, hat sie das Wort Junge in ihren eigenen Arm geschnürt, weil sie sich schuldig fühlte und weil sie nicht vergessen wollte, was sie gerade getan hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie hat dann ihr Shirt und ihre Tröte geschnürt, um einen Angriff anzuzeigen. Dann, natürlich, ging sie auf die Farm und verarbeitete die Geschichte, dass sie nichts erinnern konnte. Ein bisschen seltsam, dass sie ihren eigenen Namen nicht erinnern konnte, dass sie den Angriff nicht erinnern konnte, aber Magisch könnte sie Jason Mangels Namen erinnern.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Dann, natürlich, zeigte die Verwaltung die Krimi-Szene, wie alles so unabhängig war von dem, was Ezra sagte. Wie die Blut meistens auf der Außenseite des Autos war, nicht auf der Innenseite, was nicht Sinn macht, wenn die Stabbingen innerhalb des Autos angefangen haben. Selbst wenn er draußen stürmte, macht das keinen Sinn, warum es fast keine Blut im Auto gab.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie sagten auch, dass sie sehr klein war, keine tiefen Schmerzen hatte, wie man erwartet hätte. Als sie gefragt wurden, warum Alex nach dem Angriff in den Auto zurückgehen würde, sagten sie, dass er nur versucht hatte, in den Auto zurückzukommen, um von Ezra wegzukommen, als sie ihn angriffen. Sie sagten, dass der Grund, warum er aus dem Hinterseite des Autos hing,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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was because after he had crawled in, she tried to pull him out of the car so that she could drive away. But she wasn't able to, so she just left on foot. They also said that after the attack, Ezra had actually taken Alex's phone with her, threw it on the ground and smashed it so that he would have no way to contact anybody for help.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They also said that after she was seen and spoke to police, they asked her about where all of this took place. Now, she did say that she couldn't remember where it happened, but she did give a description of a park that was totally different from the one it actually happened in. They said that this was done to intentionally mislead police to delay them finding her car.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They argued that by her own words, she didn't feel threatened by Alex, so why would she feel the need to defend herself? Why would she go alone with him in the car if there was this history of him abusing her and pressuring her into sexual favors? Warum hat sich die Szene nicht mit allem, was sie gesagt hat, verbunden? Warum hatte sie keine Schmerzen?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Alle Schmerzen waren so überflüssig, dass das nicht wirklich die Anzahl der Gewalt war, die sie ihm zurückgegeben hat. Absolut nichts davon machte Sinn für ihre Argumentation von Selbstverdienung. Natürlich hatte Ezra auch den Stand genommen, ihre eigene Geschichte zu teilen. Während der Trial zeigte sie sich aber keine Verleumdung. Ich habe persönlich alle Erklärungen von beiden Seiten gesehen.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Jetzt, im Sommer 2017, hat 19-jähriger Ezra einen 34-jährigen National Guard Mediziner namens Jason Mingle getroffen. Die beiden haben sehr schnell angefangen zu verheiratet und im August des selben Jahres, 2017, sind die beiden in ein Apartment zusammengekehrt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Ich habe die Polizei und die EMT-Vorschläge und auch die Bescheid von Jason gesehen. Ich habe ihre Demeanour während all dessen gesehen und für mich sah es so aus, als hätte sie die einzige Reaktion gehabt. was when they showed the very gruesome pictures of what Alex looked like after the attack. And she didn't even show that she was very sad, she just sort of looked away from it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He looked horrific and she knew that she was the one who inflicted all of those injuries, so... Sie fühlte sich nicht wirklich überrascht darüber, aber sie war einfach nur ein bisschen überrascht. Sie war auch sehr feminin, mit einem roten Blazer, mit ihren Haaren unten und kalt. Einige Berichter sagten, dass sie das auf den Grund gemacht hat, um mehr mehkundig und ungewöhnlich zu erscheinen.

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SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Vielleicht wäre die Jury ein bisschen kräftiger auf sie, wenn sie nur so aussieht, als wäre sie nur eine kleine, schmerzhafte, kleine ungewöhnliche Mädchen, die nicht wirklich all diese Schmerzen machen könnte. Wie könnte sie das möglicherweise jemandem tun, wenn sie so kräftig und ungewöhnlich ist? Sie würde auch nicht wirklich Augenkontakt mit jemandem durch das gesamte Ding machen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Aber während Jason sprach, war es klar, dass sie versucht hat, für ihn gut zu sehen. Sie war mit ihrem Haar zu messen, ihre Augen auf und auf zu nehmen, wenn sie an ihn schaute. Es war mir offensichtlich, dass sie sich immer noch so beschäftigt war, dass sie diese Vorstellung von sich selbst für Jason hatte. Andere sagten sogar, dass sie in bestimmten Teilen des Trial genossen hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Ein Freund sagte, dass sie, wenn sie sie für ihren Namen fragte, Sie hat aufregend gesagt, dass ihr Name Ezra war und sie hat es für alle bezeichnet, um klarzustellen, dass sie sehr glücklich war, sich selbst zu bezeichnen und ihre echte Identität bekannt zu machen. Jason hat gesagt, dass sie sogar anscheinend genossen hat, darüber zu sprechen, was mit Alex passiert ist.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Er hat gesagt, dass es in ihren Augen einfach keine Angst gab. Ihr gesamtes Verständnis war einfach so aufgeräumt und es hat wirklich alle gefreut. Also, nach dem Hören an all das Testimony und Beweise, The jury finally went into deliberation. They only deliberated for three hours before they reached their verdict. They found Ezra McCandless guilty of first degree intentional homicide.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Laut Jason war er mit Ezra in Liebe, als sie sich getroffen haben und sie wussten, dass sie eine Beziehung schaffen könnten, trotz der großen Erwärmung. Er hat gesagt, dass sie sehr auf der Zeit war und energetisch war und ihn einfach weitergehalten hat. Esra beschreibt die Beziehung als eine so mächtige alte Liebe, dass es sie beide erschreckt hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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After Ezra heard the verdict, Jason said, quote, When she heard the verdict, I think she almost didn't believe it herself. She looked like she was going to faint. Almost. There was like actual fear. No one believes me anymore. I'm caught. And this was the only time that she actually showed emotion.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Wanderer kommentierte auf den Verdacht und sagte, dass die Sache, die wirklich ihre Entscheidung gelandet hat, war der Fakt, dass sie Alex zuerst in den Kopf gesteckt hat. Das ist ein intentionaler Akt, um jemanden zu töten. Sie haben auch bemerkt, wie emotionlos sie war. Sie sagten, dass sie Esra erwartete, um etwas Emotion zu zeigen, ein bisschen Wunsch, aber es gab absolut nichts davon.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Aber durch ihr Beurteilungsgespräch Apparently, she did show some remorse and she directly apologized to Alex's family. She said, quote, I want to say how sorry I am that they have lost their son. But sorry doesn't cut it in my mind. I loved Alex very much and I also feel a great loss. I am so sorry. And Alex's family, most of all, Alex's parents.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Despite this, Judge James Peterson said that he did not feel that her apology was genuine. So he went through and sentenced her to life in prison. She must serve a minimum of 50 years before she will be eligible for parole. As for Alex's family, I am disgusted with how they portrayed Alex in the trial.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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It's horrific and it honestly was very uncomfortable for me to watch just how they portrayed him. It made me really feel for his family because I can't even imagine having to sit there and listen to someone who didn't even know him try to make the argument that he was this sick, twisted sadist who strangled women and raped Ezra.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Ein Ort, an dem das Paar verabschiedet wurde, war Races Kaffeeshop, ein sehr populärer Ort für junge Menschen, um in der Stadt zu hangen. Währenddessen haben die beiden Alex Woodworth getroffen und befreundet. a 23-year-old barista who worked there. Alex Woodworth also worked as a substitute teacher in his spare time.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Of course, his family was so upset with this portrayal and it's just sickening and I do truly feel so bad for his family. At the end of the day, pretty much everybody involved strongly believes that Jason was Ezras motive for this. That she wanted him so badly, that she was doing whatever it takes to get there. Even if it meant murdering someone who was supposed to be one of her best friends.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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And of course, Jason feels absolutely horrible about all of this too. He said, quote, It didn't have to end this way. You didn't have to hurt all of these people. There have been so many people hurt by Ezras actions and it's just so despicable. She wanted to make herself out to be the victim from the very beginning.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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I think anybody who lies about someone sexually assaulting them is just so low and it just breaks my heart because it's just such a huge slap in the face to every real victim who actually had to live through that. I think it's obvious that she was struggling. I mean, she had it pretty hard from the very beginning, but that is absolutely no excuse for what happened.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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It's just truly tragic and unbelievable. But at the end of the day, I'm just glad that Alex got the justice that he deserves. So that is pretty much where the case ends. This case was one that literally just sucked me in. When I tell you I watched at least 10 hours of that trial, I am not exaggerating.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Ich habe alles gesehen, was ich mit meinen Händen machen konnte und ich bin wirklich froh, dass ich so viel davon gesehen habe, weil ich die Gelegenheit bekommen habe, dort zu sitzen und Ezras Körpersprache und Gesichtsausdrücke zu sehen habe, als sie durch das Trial saß.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Und ich denke, es gab mir eine sehr gute Perspektive darauf, was ich glaube, tatsächlich in diesem Fall passiert ist, um euch den absolut besten Eindruck von diesem Trial geben zu können, den ich möglicherweise hätte. Aber dieser Fall ist immer noch zu diskutieren, also ich möchte wirklich hören, was ihr denkt. Do you think that this was planned by Ezra?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Do you think that this was a spur of the moment type of thing? Or do you think that this really was in self-defense? Please leave your thoughts and theories in the comments below. But either way, that is where I'm going to end today's video. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn on the notifications to be notified of any future videos that I make. Don't forget to go ahead and follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Both will be linked down below. And if you have absolutely any case suggestions, please make sure to go ahead and send them over to my email at rachelshannoncases at gmail.com.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He was a graduate from UW-Eau Claire and had a bachelor's degree in philosophy with a minor in biology. And he was starting to apply to graduate school with the hopes of earning a PhD in philosophy and hoped to one day become a philosophy professor. Alex wurde als ein netter Kerl beschrieben, der auch ein Nerd war. Er war ein tiefer Denker und er war absolut devotiert an Philosophie.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Er hat Stunden nach Stunden Bücher gelesen und über Philosophie geschrieben. Er wurde auch als ein Familienmann beschrieben. Alex war der älteste von vier Brüdern und er liebte es, seine jüngeren Brüder und Schwestern zu kümmern. Er war super süß und hatte einen Wunsch, Dinge zu kümmern, die niemand anderes kümmern wollte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Also, das Video, das ich heute habe, ist eines, das ich fühle, dass es ein paar gemischte Emotionen auflöst und ich freue mich wirklich darauf, zu hören, was alle darüber denken am Ende des Videos. Aber bevor wir in den Fall kommen, wollte ich nur einen Moment nehmen, um meinen Patronen einen großen Applaus zu geben. Jade, James, Robin, Stephanie und Angel.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Er liebte es, Bugs und Spiegel zu schützen, weil er wusste, dass andere sie nicht lieben. Und er war nicht anders als sein neuer Freund Ezra. Als Ezra Alex kennengelernt hat, ging sie durch einige wirklich emotional schwierige Dinge. In Oktober 2017 hat Ezra tatsächlich herausgefunden, dass sie mit Jasons Kind verheiratet war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie wusste, dass sie nicht bereit war, ein Kind zu haben, also fuhr sie nach Minneapolis, um eine Abortion zu bekommen. Natürlich ist das eine wirklich schwierige Sache, die man durchführen kann und nicht viele Leute verstehen, wie stark sich das verursacht. Also fühlte sie sich wirklich schuldig für das und sie fühlte sich komplett isoliert.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Laut Jason nahmen ihre emotionalen Probleme eine Rolle in der Beziehung ein, aber er wusste genau, wie gut Alex es war, Menschen zu helfen, die einige schwierige Zeiten durchgehen. Also hat er Ezra gezwungen, mit Alex nahe zu kommen, weil sie eine Freundin brauchte, die sie verstanden und ihr helfen konnte. Jedoch endeten Ezra und Alex zu werden mehr als Freunde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Soon after her abortion, her and Alex began a secret relationship behind Jasons back. Then, around the same time, Jason had gone off for two weeks for work with the National Guard. While he was gone, Ezra started another sexual relationship with another man named John Hansen, who was also a friend of Jasons.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Nun, nachdem Jason zurückgekommen war von seiner Begegnung mit der Nationalen Guards, eine Nacht nachdem Ezra schlief, hat Jason durch ihr Handy geschaut und alle ihre Textmessagen gelesen und Beweise von beiden dieser Beziehungen gesehen. Natürlich hat Jason Alex und John über diese Beziehungen konfrontiert. Er ging zu Alex und sagte, wie könntest du das machen? Ich dachte, wir wären Freunde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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und dann hat er John angerufen und ihn auch geäußert. Letztendlich hat Ezra Jason gesagt, dass diese Beziehung zwischen ihr und John nicht konsensual war und dass John sie tatsächlich sexuell verabschiedet hatte. Sie sagte, dass die beiden eine Nacht zusammen getrunken haben, als sie sich verabschiedet hat, und er hat sie sexuell verabschiedet, während sie verabschiedet wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Of course Jason freaked out and immediately went to police to file a police report. Police interviewed Ezra of course and she told them pretty much the same thing that she told Jason, that the two had been drinking and she blacked out and that is when all of this happened. However, as police started to look into this and started reading through all of her text messages,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Turns out, Ezra had actually confided in Alex and told him that the sexual encounter was consensual, but she had just regretted it. So of course, this entire case was dropped. So after this, the relationships with both Alex and Jason ended. I have seen some sources that says that Ezra had ended it with both of them.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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I've seen some that say that Jason ended it with her and then she ended it with Alex. It's also been reported that she claimed that Jason actually took advantage of her While Jason claims that she was manipulative to all of these men that she was involved with, including him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Jason also claimed that after the two had broken up, she was the one who was continuously trying to get back together with him. But either way, the two did keep talking after the breakup. But she did end up moving out of the apartment that they shared together and she moved back home to Stanley to live with her mother. At this point, Ezra felt like her whole life was crumbling.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie fühlte sich, als ob Jason von diesen beiden Männern weggerissen worden wäre. Sie fühlte sich wirklich, als ob Alex derjenige war, der verantwortlich war, dass sie und Jason verletzt waren. Also, im Februar 2018 hat sie Alex tatsächlich getextet, um nie wieder mit ihr zu sprechen. Und Alex hat das verabschiedet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Er hat sie überhaupt nicht kontaktiert, nachdem sie ihm gesagt hat, dass sie es nicht tun würde. An diesem Punkt hat sie alles getan, was sie möglicherweise tun könnte, um mit Jason wieder zusammen zu kommen. Sie hat Jason all diese Bücher gesendet, in denen sie geschrieben hat, wie schlimm sie sich darüber gefühlt hat, ihn zu betreiben. Aber trotzdem.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Jason wollte absolut nichts damit zu tun, und er hat sie trotzdem in Person nicht gesehen. Also, um ca. 10.30 Uhr am 22. März 2018, kam Ezra unerwähnt zu Races Kaffeeshop, um Jason zu sehen. Als Jason sie sah, beschrieb er sie als extrem agitiert zu sein und komplett außergewöhnlich auszuwählen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Vielen Dank, dass ihr alle Mitglieder der Patreon-Familie seid. Ich bin sehr, sehr dankbar für eure Unterstützung. Ich kann gar nicht anfangen, zu erklären, wie viel eure Unterstützung für mich bedeutet. Nochmals, vielen, vielen Dank für alles, was ihr tut, um mich zu unterstützen und mich zu helfen, diesen Kanal zu halten. Okay, also damit kommen wir zum Video.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie hat Jason gesagt, dass sie geplant hatte, zurück in Alexs Haus zu gehen, um ihm ein paar Sachen zurückzutragen. Diese Sachen enthielten eine Heizungspatze und ein Buchstaben. Sie hat ihm auch gesagt, dass sie nach vorne gehen wollte und einige ihrer Journal-Einträge Alex lesen wollte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Diese Journal-Einträge sagten ziemlich viel darüber, wie sie fühlte, als ob sie verabschiedet worden wäre, als ob ihre Stimme von ihr entfernt worden wäre und sie nur wollte, dass ihre Stimme zurückkommt. Also hat sie den Kaffeeshop kurz danach mit dem, was Jason beschreibt, als Rage in ihren Augen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Die Art und Weise, wie Ezra agierte, war einfach so seltsam für Jason, dass er einfach dieses Gehirn hatte, He knew that Ezra and Alex hadn't spoken in weeks before that since Ezra had told Alex to stop talking to her. So he just thought that it was really bizarre that all of a sudden she was trying to go back to Alex's house.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He followed his intuition and as soon as Ezra left, he took off towards Alex's house on his bike. When he got there, he saw Ezra's 2003 Chevy Impala parked outside with the engine still running, with the driver's side door still open, with music still playing. He just had this pit in his stomach, but he didn't enter the house right away.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He was actually seen by a witness pacing back and forth in front of the house for around 40 minutes, and then he entered the house without knocking. This witness found this very unsettling, so he went ahead and called police. After Jason went inside, he saw that Ezra and Alex were having a conversation, but he said that when he walked in, their faces were like masks.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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He said that he could just tell that something was happening, like he could feel the tension, but they were both acting like everything was okay. He told the both of them that something just didn't feel right and told them that they needed to go outside and find a public space to talk. So all of them went outside but by this point police had shown up.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Police questioned the three of them and initially Jason told police that he was worried about Ezra because she just was not acting like herself. He said that he had just gotten the vibe that something just isn't right. So police spoke to Ezra and she told them that everything was fine. She wasn't afraid or threatened by any of these men.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Das Video für heute ist ein geschlossenes Video, aber es ist ein bisschen kontroversial und es gibt viele Leute, die denken, dass diese Person falsch verurteilt wurde und dass es wirklich einen Tätigkeitsakt betrifft. Also mit dem, lasst uns einfach mal rein. Heute werden wir über den Fall von Alex Woodworth und Ezra McCandless diskutieren. Ezra McCandless wurde am 6.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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So, um 10.05 Uhr hat die Polizei beurteilt, dass nichts seltsames oder ungewöhnliches passiert ist, also sind sie einfach weg. Als sie weggehen, können wir einen Schuss von Jason sehen, der Alex spricht, während Ezra noch im Auto ist. Ezra hat geäußert, dass die beiden in die Natur gehen, um ihre Gespräche zu fortsetzen, also sind sie weg, um wo auch immer zu gehen, um es zu beenden.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Dann, nur drei Stunden später, um 4.15 Uhr an dem gleichen Tag, John Sippel, ein Dairy-Farmer in Springbrook, hatte einen Knall auf seine Tür gehört. Als er öffnete, sah er Ezra dort stehen. Seine Kleidung war zerstört und verdorben, sie hatte keine Schuhe an und sie war in Müll, Blut und Schmerzen. Sie war in vollem Schmerz und er sagte, dass sie ihren eigenen Namen gar nicht kannte und

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie fragte ihn, den Arzt zu rufen und sagte, dass sie gerade verhaftet worden war. Aber John Sippel rief den Arzt nicht an. Er rief die Polizei an. Als die Polizei kam und sie fragte, was passiert ist, erzählte sie, dass sie wusste, dass sie sehr Angst vor Alex Woodworth hatte, aber nicht viel über den Angriff erinnert. Sie erinnerte sich nicht einmal an ihren eigenen Namen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Aber als die Polizei fragte, ob sie jemanden hatte, den sie rufen könnten, Sie hat sofort gesagt, Jason Mingle. Sie wurde also ins Krankenhaus genommen und sie haben alle ihre Verletzungen beobachtet. Sie hatte drei superficielle Schrauben an der Palme und Schrauben an ihrem Vorderarm. Diese Schrauben wurden so gemacht, dass das Wort Junge in ihrem Vorderarm gefärbt wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Sie hatte ein paar Schrauben an ihrem Hals und ein paar sehr scharfe Schrauben an ihrem Hals. Und wiederum, ihre Kleidung war alle zerstört und zerstört und es sah so aus, als ob sie durchgeschnitten worden wären. Now, of course, seeing a boy carved into a young lady's arm, the hospital staff was very concerned and confused.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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When they initially asked her how this got carved into her arm, she told them that Alex Woodworth had done that. However, after examining her further, according to the hospital staff, all of these wounds appeared to be self-inflicted. Also begannen die Polizisten sofort, nach Alex Woodworth zu suchen, aber er war nirgendwo zu finden.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Die Detektivs riefen sein Haus an, riefen sein Telefon an und fragten seine Familie, wo er war, aber niemand konnte ihn befinden. Also, am nächsten Tag, das nächste, was sie tun wollten, war, Don Sibyls Farm zu suchen. As they were driving, they spotted a muddy side road.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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They stopped and saw footprints coming from the top of the hill down to the road until they had spotted a car that was stuck in the mud. Detectives were standing at the top of the hill and at this point, they couldn't exactly see the car very clearly. So they took out their binoculars and saw that there was a bloody body hanging out of the back of this car.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Oktober 1998 in Stanley, Wisconsin geboren zu Rosalina Gunnleston und sie wurde eigentlich ursprünglich Monika genannt. Nun war Ezras Mutter nur 14 Jahre alt, als sie zu ihr geboren wurde und ihr Vater war nicht im Bild. She really didn't have any contact with him at all. By the time she was 4 years old, she was legally adopted by Rosalina's partner at the time, Josh Carlin.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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Immediately, police knew that this was Ezras car and immediately they knew that this body belonged Alex Woodworth. Sobald sie ihn sahen, riefen sie sich zu seinem Körper, um Hilfe zu bekommen, aber nichts mehr konnte gemacht werden, weil er bereits tot war. Diese Szene war absolut furchtbar und zeigte Zeichen eines sehr gewaltigen Angriffs.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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24-jähriger Alex Woodworth hatte 16 Mal in seinem Kopf, Nacken und Immediately, police returned to the hospital to confront Ezra with what they had just found. And as soon as she was confronted with this information, her memory returned. She admitted to stabbing Alex, but said that this was in self-defense.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Shocking Case of Ezra McCandless and Alex Woodworth

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She said that the two had began arguing when she was in the driver's seat and Alex was in the passenger seat. Sie sagte, als die beiden argumentierten, hat er ihr Vorderarm gefangen, was für sie eine große Angelegenheit verursacht hat, also hat sie angefangen zu paniken und alles ging schwarz. Sie sagte, er hat angefangen, ihr Junge zu nennen und er war sehr wütend mit diesem Argument, also

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Jealous Ex Hires a Hitman to Murder her Ex's New GF The Case of Kendra Hatcher

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You will go down in history as one of the most hated women in Dallas. Kendra had been in her parking garage when a man just all of a sudden walked up to her and shot her in the back of her head. The shooter was most likely driving a black Jeep Cherokee. Jose Ortiz reached out to the police saying that this was actually his car. car.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Jealous Ex Hires a Hitman to Murder her Ex's New GF The Case of Kendra Hatcher

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He loaned his car to a couple of friends, Brenda Delgado and Crystal Cortez. Turns out, Brenda and Ricky had been in a long-term relationship before Ricky got together with Kendra. Brenda did not take the breakup well at all. She promised Christopher that if he helped her take out Kendra, that she would be able to pay him the equivalent of $3,000 in drugs and cash. Ricky went back to the police.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Jealous Ex Hires a Hitman to Murder her Ex's New GF The Case of Kendra Hatcher

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He told them that it almost looked like Brenda was the one who was driving the Jeep. They found Brenda guilty of capital murder and they sentenced her to life without the possibility of parole.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

His Cries for Help IGNORED: How MONSTER Parents BRUTALLY Murdered Their Son After Systemic Failures

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The ceiling was falling down and there was so much stuff in there that it looked like a hoarding situation. DCFS, of course, found out about the roommate situation, but nothing was done about it. By July of that year, Joanne found herself pregnant once again. At that time, they were now requesting unsupervised visits of AJ.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

His Cries for Help IGNORED: How MONSTER Parents BRUTALLY Murdered Their Son After Systemic Failures

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but that was denied, citing that AJ, who is now one year old, was happy and healthy in his current home. But by November of 2014, a judge did grant unsupervised visits, but denied the request for overnight visits. By December 30th, 2014, Joanne gave birth to her third child, a baby boy who was born without drugs in his system, so Joanne and Andrew were allowed to take him home.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Months passed and the visits with AJ while having their new baby at the home were going well. Each time AJ would do these unsupervised visits, a family member would make sure to drop by the home to make sure he was being well cared for. Both Joanne and Andrew stayed sober during this time.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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And although family members reported ongoing concerns for their ability to stay sober, things were looking up. By April of 2015, Joanne and Andrew were approved for overnight visits. By this time, family and caseworkers saw that Joanne and Andrew were putting in the work. They weren't perfect, but they loved AJ and their other son and they wanted to have AJ back.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Meanwhile, his foster mom was starting to have to face the reality that AJ was going to be taken away from her. He was going to be placed with his parents again and she wasn't ready for that. She loved AJ so much and wanted to make sure he was safe and happy. So she requested that she be allowed to continue visiting AJ after he returned back to his parents.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

His Cries for Help IGNORED: How MONSTER Parents BRUTALLY Murdered Their Son After Systemic Failures

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Finally, by June of 2015, a judge ruled that 20-month-old AJ can start living with his parents and his baby brother. However, with this arrangement, DCFS did still maintain custody of AJ. They would continue sending state workers to monitor his progress, making home visits twice per month. After getting AJ back, the financial situation for the family started to improve as well.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They were able to raise some money for local resources to get some of their debt paid back. Then Andrew went in front of the bar panel and opened up about his struggles. He admitted his addictions and how they affected his life and his ability to practice law. But he said that he is working so hard to improve himself for his family.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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He's doing everything in his power to become a responsible caregiver to his two sons and a good partner to Joanne. He pledged to continue working to improve himself so he could provide for his family and be a good role model for his two young boys.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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By January of 2016, Andrew was allowed to go back to practicing law on a probationary basis with the stipulation that he remains sober and continue treatment. For the months that followed, things seemed to be going really well. Random drug screenings proved that they were sober for a year and a half.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They enrolled the boys in a kinder care program four days a week while Andrew continued working and they both attended their counseling. They allowed AJ's older foster mom to watch him on the weekends when they were out. They brought the boys to their grandmother's house to visit with her and his older brother.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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After losing that job, Andrew did seek treatment for his issues and went on to practice law out of his home for the 15 years that followed. But those who knew Andrew said that even after going and getting help for his addiction issues, he still struggled with substance use behind the shadows.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Now, while in treatment for their sobriety, both Andrew and Joanne were taking Suboxone to help control their cravings and to keep them off heroin. There was one time in which Andrew tested to have taken more than his prescribed dose, So AJ was taken away temporarily while DCFS investigated this.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They wanted to make sure that Andrew was still following the guidelines and not taking the drug in an amount that would impair his mental ability or his capacity to take care of AJ. However, in the investigation, they spoke with Andrew's psychiatrist who said that even if he did take an extra dose of Suboxone, it won't cause a high.

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It just stops the effect of withdrawal from heroin, so this extra Suboxone in his system was not an issue. The doctor said that it's actually recommended that people coming off heroin take Suboxone basically as long as they need it, with some patients taking it for several years to prevent relapse. After all, taking this medication is definitely better than going back to heroin.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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After this, AJ was returned back to their care. By April 21st, 2016, AJ's case with the state was closed, citing that Andrew and Joanne had been sober since December of 2013, two and a half years. The state found that it was no longer in AJ's best interest to be in the care of the state, so they relinquished custody back to his parents and closed the case altogether.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

His Cries for Help IGNORED: How MONSTER Parents BRUTALLY Murdered Their Son After Systemic Failures

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According to family members, for the months after custody was given to Andrew and Joanne, things were going well. Even with DCFS no longer checking up on them, it appeared that they remained competent parents. But by late summer going into early fall in 2017, almost two years after AJ returned home, signs of trouble started to emerge.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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On Halloween of 2017, one neighbor said that AJ went to her house to trick-or-treat. She saw that he was wrapped in a substantial amount of medical tape all over his head and torso, so naturally, she thought that AJ was a mommy for Halloween. But when she said this to Joanne, Joanne actually told the neighbor that his medical tape wasn't a costume.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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AJ had spilled boiling water all over himself and the bandages were there to treat the burns. Joanne assured the neighbor that AJ went to the hospital for the injuries. However, later review of the case showed that there was no hospital visit. Then Joanne let her cosmetology license expire, meaning that she could no longer work.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Joanne Cunningham seemed to have a rough start in life, but by all accounts, things in her life did improve as her mom worked to get her life back on track. Joanne's father was in and out of prison and her mother had to take out an order of protection against him. But after Joanne's birth, her father was actually never involved in her life.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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after that in the fall they did not enroll aj in school joanne and andrew cut off contact from the rest of the family members refusing to return their calls or let family see aj or his little brother then more financial hardships started to sneak back in so andrew and joanne started taking in roommates again some of which were from their drug addiction counseling groups.

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So they were letting people into their homes with criminal records, not knowing much about them. And as you can expect, it appears that both Andrew and Joanne slipped right back into drug use. One day in March, Joanne was found sleeping in her car in North Lake, about 40 miles away from their home. When officers found her, she was crying saying that she had no idea how she got there.

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She claimed that she had gone to a friend's house the prior night and someone must have slipped something into her drink causing her to black out. She was then taken to the hospital for treatment where Andrew, AJ and their youngest son met up with her. While there, hospital staff called the DCFS hotline to report that AJ had odd bruising on his face.

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Both the boys appeared very dirty and their clothes were on inside out. The children didn't seem very happy and they appeared to be very guarded. The hospital staff also noted that Joanne had very recent track marks all over her arms, feet and neck, indicating that she had recently used Of course, the story of someone apparently slipping something into her drink seemed to be untrue.

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At that time, she also refused to take a drug test. The same day that the DCFS report was made, a worker, Kathleen Gold, tried to locate AJ. She first went to a house that she believed he lived in, but it was the wrong address. Then she went to the correct house, but nobody was home. She tried to call over the next few days, but no one was returning her calls.

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It actually took a month for this caseworker to actually see AJ. She spotted him at the home playing outside with his brother. In her report after seeing the kids, Kathleen reported that the kids were lucid and stable. They were well cared for, appropriately dressed, and clean.

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By then, she spotted no bruises on AJ, but of course, this is a problem because she should have spotted him the same day that the report was made. A month later, of course, those bruises are going to be healed. By May 17th, 2018, Kathleen finally went to the home and went inside, setting up an appointment to meet with Joanne and Andrew.

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In that meeting, Joanne admitted to Kathleen that she had relapsed after more than four years of sobriety. She then underwent a five-day detox program and started treatment on methadone. She was continuing counseling and doing random drug screenings. At the time, the house appeared well-kept and there was no sign of mistreatment to either boys, according to the report.

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Kathleen's report went on to say that Andrew was a very protective father who wouldn't let anything happen to the boys. He was practicing law out of his home and did care for the boys when Joanne was out relapsing. Kathleen determined that the allegations of abuse were unfounded. However, the records show no indication that Kathleen ever asked Joanne or Andrew or either of the boys

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And according to her mother, she was able to provide Joanne with a happy life without her father in it. Then when Joanne was seven, her mother remarried and it was said that Joanne had a good relationship with her stepfather. Growing up, Joanne wanted to be an artist. She spent her time sketching and going to art camp over the summers.

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about the bruises to AJ's face. After this check in, Joanne's behaviors continued to go downhill. She was admitted to the hospital for suicidal thoughts after saying that she wanted to walk in front of a bus to kill herself. At the hospital, she was charged with battery after allegedly scratching a nurse who was treating her. At that time, she was showing signs of opioid withdrawal.

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She admitted that after her relapse, she started using again daily, doing 10 to 15 bags of heroin total, costing her about $100 per day. Another neighbor reports calling DCFS three times in 2018. One time, she noticed that AJ had two black eyes, as well as bruising to other parts of his face, neck, and both arms.

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When the neighbor asked Joanne about this the first time, she said that AJ had fallen down the stairs. About three weeks after that, the same neighbor noticed more cuts and bruises on AJ. This time, Joanne said that AJ went into the basement and tried using power tools, but hurt himself while doing so. The third time, the neighbor noticed more bruises to his face.

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But Joanne didn't give an explanation for this. Another neighbor called the police to report that they noticed the home had been dark for several weeks, saying that they were worried that there was no electricity in the home. Officers responded to the call to see that the outside of the home was in disarray. The grass was overgrown, the paint was chipping from the house.

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And Joanne admitted that the power had been turned off and she was trying to get it back on. The officer did not step foot inside the home at that time, but he said that he saw AJ and his brother and they both appeared healthy. A report was made with DCFS regarding the utilities being shut off, but no further action was taken.

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After this and the months that followed, neighbors continued to report things that were going on around the house. They would see Joanne and Andrew screaming at each other and having intense heated arguments. They saw one time that their younger son was inside a parked car with only a diaper on while the parents fought inside.

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As the neighbors were making those DCFS calls, Joanne would come out and yell at her neighbors asking them to stop calling. She told one neighbor that she had no electricity and no food for her kids, that things were hard enough already without them calling DCFS. Neighbors would often offer to help, but she never accepted the help.

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By December 18th, Joanne went to a nearby Taco Bell, telling an employee to call 911, saying that her roommate had stolen her phone and prescription medications. This was a roommate that they had met through their drug counseling, who was sort of their on and off.

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he too struggled with his mental health so he would leave to get help and then come back police responded to the call and located the roommate who did not have any of joanne's property at that time police actually found out that joanne was driving on a suspended license so she was arrested for that because of this officers made a visit to the home which they described as cluttered dirty and in disrepair

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But when Joanne was 16 years old, she found herself pregnant by her boyfriend who was 21 years older than her. So clearly, not the best situation going on here. She ended up dropping out of school and she moved in with her much older boyfriend. She gave birth to her son in 2000 and then went on to obtain her GED.

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There were clothes, boxes, and trash bags everywhere. The children's rooms smelled strongly of dog feces and urine. They also noted a large bruise on AJ's right hip. Police called DCFS to report these findings, saying that Joanne is a recovering heroin addict who does not look good. She isn't clean and probably hasn't been in a long time.

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Officers took temporary custody of the boys and took photos of the home and of AJ's bruises. With this report, the DCFS caseworker Carlos Acosta followed up. With his mom present, Carlos asked AJ how he got the bruise. Joanna said for AJ, you got it from the dog, right? And AJ said yes. Carlos agreed to let Joanne take AJ back as long as she took him to the hospital immediately, which she did.

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At the ER, the doctor was unable to determine the exact cause of the bruise. She said that it could be the result of a dog, belt, or even a football. When the doctor took AJ into a room and interviewed him alone, AJ reluctantly admitted that maybe someone did hit him with a belt. He said, maybe mommy didn't mean to hurt me.

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The doctor informed the caseworker of this, but no further investigation was done, and Carlos allowed AJ to go back home, given that Andrew would be present when picking him up and would stay at home with him. The following day, Carlos followed up at the home and interviewed Andrew. Andrew assured him that Joanne does not abuse the kids, only occasionally spanking them with an open hand.

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Carlos then looked into the previous case taken out against Joanne, where Kathleen wrote that the abuse allegations were unfounded. So, by January of 2019, he too determined that the abuse allegations were unfounded. founded. It was also put in the report that the reports of the home being in bad conditions were also unfounded.

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By now, you know that all of this information is incredibly concerning. Clearly, Joanne was continuing to use drugs despite being sober for years and doing her counseling. Their house was disgusting, filled with mold, trash, and dog feces and urine. Both her and Andrew were showing increasingly erratic behaviors, making those around them concerned for AJ and his little brother's well-being.

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AJ had bruises on his face and body and even told a doctor that he was being hit by his mother. But still, his caseworkers deemed the reports of abuse unfounded. All of these red flags being ignored resulted in the most horrific, heartbreaking end for little Andrew. AJ. By around 8 a.m. on April 18th, 2019, Andrew called 911 to report that they have a missing child.

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He spoke in a very calm, collected manner, saying that he went to check on his son that morning and he wasn't there. He last saw his son at around 9.30 p.m. the prior night when he went to bed. He said that they've canvassed the neighborhood, went to a local park and a local gas station where they normally buy treats to see if he was there,

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He spoke with school staff, but no one has seen him, and he has no idea where he could have possibly gone.

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By all accounts, at this time, Joanne was known to be a good, involved mother who worked hard to provide for her son and improve herself. Her relationship with her then boyfriend lasted 10 years total. However, this relationship was reportedly not a healthy one. There were some issues of domestic violence.

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After the call, police responded, immediately deploying a massive search effort. They looked all around the neighborhood, spoke to family members and any neighbors who could have seen or heard anything. Joanne's mother asked police if they were on drugs when AJ left, saying that he might have gotten scared and ran off. Maybe he hid under a bush or tree and got stuck there.

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By the following day, however, it was clear that the police officers were not focused on the surrounding areas anymore. They brought sniffer dogs into the home, which again was described as having disgusting hoarder-like conditions full of mouse and dog poop and dirt and filth.

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When officers went into the basement, there was so much trash that they had to move it out of the way to make a walking path for them. When they moved the trash, they saw cockroaches all over the floors. When they made it to AJ's room, they found a sliding chain lock on the outside of the door, meaning that AJ could be locked in from the outside.

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Inside, they found mouse droppings all over the room and found that AJ's windows had been bolted shut. The sniffer dogs indicated that AJ had actually never left that home on foot. There was no scent of him anywhere outside around the home, which would be expected if he left the home by walking away and hiding somewhere.

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Her boyfriend was charged with domestic battery in 2003 when Joanne was 20 years old, but those charges were eventually dropped. By the time she was 23, she did end up breaking up with the father of her child. After that, she went on to cosmetology school and continued raising her son with the help of her mother and stepfather.

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So he was either picked up and taken out of the home or he never left that home. At first, Joanne and Andrew were very cooperative with police. They went along with the police to aid with searches. They hung up posters and held a vigil to get the word spread about the disappearance.

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Even though they had problems with drug use and weren't the best parent, no one who knew Joanne or Andrew thought that they would ever harm their son. Joanne took to the media, appearing on Good Morning America with a desperate plea asking for her son's safe return. She said that her boys are her life. She is nothing without them.

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Andrew also did a news interview outside of the home, begging AJ to come home.

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and what police would discover in the weeks after this missing person's report is absolutely horrendous. By April 24th, 2019, six days after he was reported missing, the body of five-year-old little AJ Friend was discovered. He was found in Woodstock, about seven miles away from his home in Crystal Lake, Illinois. He was found buried in a shallow grave with his body wrapped in a plastic bag.

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Turns out, during the investigation and searches for AJ, police confiscated Joanne's and Andrew's cell phones, and what they found on the cell phones told them everything they needed to know. They found a video recording taken of AJ on March 4th, a month before he went missing. The recording was two minutes long and later deleted, but they were obviously able to recover it.

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The recording showed AJ lying on a mattress in a crib in his room. He appears to be naked, except that he has some bandages around his wrists and hips. There is an ice pack on AJ's face, which he removes to reveal that AJ had two black eyes, as well as bruising to his upper chest and neck. Then they heard the sound of Joanne's voice in that video berating AJ for peeing the bed.

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They think that this video was taken and shown to Andrew as a way of Joanne to show him how bad AJ was behaving. There were multiple other images on that phone that showed AJ with bruises to his face, torso, neck, and arms. There's other videos where Joanne is berating AJ for apparently lying to her. In one video, she grabs AJ and pushes him against the wall by his throat and chokes him.

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By 2006, Joanne met a man named Craig Sommerkamp and the two started a relationship, eventually marrying in 2009. Around that same time, Joanne started taking prescription painkillers to treat her chronic back pain caused by fibromyalgia. That same year, Joanne filed for a foster parenting license so she could take in her godson who needed a good home.

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In that video, she is questioning AJ if he loves his family. He said yes, but she doesn't believe him. In another video, AJ says that he doesn't want a family. To this, Joanne responds that this is why he's in his room all day. She then screams at him saying that he doesn't have a family, daddy included. She said, you really think daddy would choose you over me and your little brother?

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She then calls AJ a liar and manipulator. She then puts her mouth to his ears and screams in his ears.

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There is a fundamental problem with the way children are treated in our country and honestly all around the world. Every child deserves to be with the person or people who will care for them, love them, and give them everything they need to thrive. I understand that the goal of our child welfare system is to have a child be with their biological family.

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In addition to the videos of abuse found on Joanne's phone, on Andrew's phone, police found that at around 3 AM on April 15th, 2019, a Google search was made for child CPR. It was after they were confronted with this video and that Google search that Joanne and Andrew were backed into a corner.

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It was clear that they were horrifically abusing AJ and police knew based on these videos that they were responsible for his disappearance. At that time, Joanne and Andrew directed officers to the location of AJ's body.

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After leading investigators to AJ's body, both Joanne and Andrew were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery, aggravated domestic battery, and failure to report a missing child or death, among other charges. After this, Andrew sat down with officers and spoke about what really happened to AJ in his final hours.

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He told officers that on the evening of April 15th, 2019, AJ was in trouble because he hid a pair of underwear that he had soiled. Which just as a side note, the fact that AJ was peeing the bed is a red flag that he was being abused. A lot of times when children are being abused, especially sexually, they will start peeing the bed even after they're potty trained.

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But either way, AJ had apparently hidden a pair of underwear that he had soiled, probably because he didn't want to get in trouble, but AJ found it and began hitting AJ before placing him into a cold shower as punishment. When asked about this, Andrew said that Joanne would often hit AJ so severely that he had to step in and stop her.

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She was approved and the boy came and lived with her and Craig. By January of 2012, the marriage between Craig and Joanne fell apart when Craig filed for divorce. In those documents, Craig claimed that Joanne could become violent. When she got angry, there were times where she punched him in the face, threw hot coffee on him, and tried kicking him down a flight of stairs.

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That night in particular, he said that to prevent Joanne from hitting AJ more, he suggested a cold shower as a punishment instead. That is how he ended up in that cold water. But with the cold shower, Joanne questioned AJ about the soiled underwear and

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And every time AJ tried saying anything, according to Andrew, Joanne would put the shower nozzle right up to his face and spray him into the face until she was satisfied that he was telling the truth. The shower lasted about 20 minutes before Andrew eventually took him out. He then put him to bed still naked and wet. After that, he went to sleep. But then by around 3am, now going into April 16th,

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Joanne woke Andrew up to tell him that AJ was not responding. So that is when he made that Google search for CPR. After realizing that AJ was dead, Andrew told Joanne that he would handle it. He then placed AJ's body into a large plastic bag in the basement. By April 17th, he then took AJ's body and drove out to a rural area in Woodstock where he dug a grave and buried his body.

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After finding the body, AJ was sent off to the medical examiner for an autopsy. The medical examiner found numerous blunt force injuries to his head, torso, and extremities. They found severe swelling of the soft tissue surrounding AJ's head, severe brain swelling, multiple abrasions and contusions on all four extremities. they found blood inhaled in his lungs.

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Then on his forehead, they found multiple small circular abrasions, which are consistent with the head of the shower nozzle used in his punishment. So no, Joanne was not just spraying him in the face as he was trying to give his mom answers as if that's not bad enough. She was beating him in the head with the shower head.

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The medical examiner determined that AJ's cause of death was cranial cerebral head trauma due to multiple blunt force injuries to his head, consistent with child abuse. His manner of death was determined to be murder.

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Of course, based on everything we know up to this point, it's clear that both Andrew and Joanne were horrifically abusing AJ until that fateful night when Joanne took it way too far. It was only after she beat him so hard with such brutal force that his brain bled and swelled that she was satisfied with her punishment.

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She then put him to bed, acting surprised that he died from his horrific injuries. They tried bringing him back to life, but his little body could not take it any longer. So after finding that they had beaten their son to death, Andrew decided that the best course of action would be to hide his body, drive seven miles away from the home, and bury him in hopes that nobody will find him.

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Then they report him missing, hoping that they could convince police that maybe he was kidnapped. Maybe someone else took him and murdered him. But them inflicting the abuse wasn't enough. Joanne had to record it, which led them to discovering what really happened.

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After all of this, 36-year-old Joanne Cunningham was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, four counts of aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated domestic battery, and one count of failure to report a missing child or death.

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Meanwhile, Andrew was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated battery, one count of aggravated domestic battery, two counts of concealment of a At the time of her arrest, Joanne was actually seven months pregnant. She gave birth to her fourth child in jail. Initially, both Andrew and Joanne pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

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But in a turn of events that shocked everyone in the courtroom, on December 5th, 2019, Joanne pleaded guilty to her charges. In her sentencing hearing, she asked for mercy, saying that she loved her son but was disabled by drug addiction, as if she had no other options such as, I don't know, giving her son to the cousin who took good care of him.

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It is thought by this time, Joanne's prescription pain use started to get very out of hand and she became dependent. Before the addiction, she was a decent person according to Craig. It was after she started the pills that something switched in her and the relationship went downhill fast.

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Her addiction and disability led her to beating AJ over the head with the shower faucet, hiding his body, and then pretending like she didn't know what happened. In the end, she was sentenced to 35 years behind bars for the murder of her 5-year-old son,

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After learning of the sentence, the rest of AJ's family were appalled by the audacity of Joanna saying that she didn't mean to do this, blaming her horrific behavior and violence on her addiction. Then 63 year old and your friend also came to a plea agreement. He pleaded guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery of a child, and concealment of a homicidal death.

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He technically was not the one who murdered little A.J., although he participated and stood by as it happened. So it seems like I guess these changes in charges are relatively appropriate. For this, he was sentenced to 30 years behind bars. After these two were sent to prison, a case was actually opened against the caseworkers in A.J. 's case.

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Specifically, 57-year-old Carlos Acosta, who was the one who saw the bruises on AJ, heard from the doctor that AJ said it was from being hit, yet determined that the allegations of abuse were unfounded. Now, it was said that Carlos, as well as the other caseworkers on AJ's case, did have caseloads far beyond what they were supposed to have according to Illinois law.

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But that is no excuse for literally seeing a child with a bruise, seeing the numerous other reports of bruising all over his body, being told that the bruises were caused from being hit, yet determining that no abuse was happening. That was just appalling.

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By the time she and Craig divorced, she was taking a mix of 12 to 15 painkillers including Norco, Percocet, and morphine just to get through the day. Eventually, she was no longer able to get a doctor to prescribe them for her, so she eventually turned to the streets to buy them illegally. When Joanne first started appearing in court for the divorce proceedings, she was devastated.

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This case did go to trial and in the opening statements the prosecution said quote, when your job is to protect children and you don't do that job because you are lazy and heartless, you are necessarily and by definition endangering children.

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They said that Carlos should have recognized the red flags saying that blaming the family dog after AJ was literally prompted to say that and the doctor determining that it wasn't caused by the dog is just lazy and heartless. They said that if this case had gone to court, DCFS likely would have taken AJ out of their custody.

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They basically said that him closing the case like that prevented so many other adults from being able to help AJ. It was lazy, and it was because of this that AJ continued to be viciously abused, leading him to losing his life. Because of this, Carlos Acosta was charged with two counts of child endangerment and reckless conduct.

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This was actually the first time that child endangerment charges were successfully brought against a child welfare worker in the state of Illinois, and I can definitely see why. The prosecutor in this case said at the trial, quote, unfortunately and fatally for AJ, he had two DCFS workers who couldn't have cared less.

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And after reviewing the information from the case and just how badly it had been mishandled, Carlos was found guilty of two counts of child endangerment, but not guilty on the charge of reckless conduct.

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One day, she was in the hallway crying when she was approached by Andrew Friend, who was 25 years older than her. He talked to Joanne about what was going on and she admitted that she was getting divorced and that she was heavily addicted to pain medications. This was something that Andrew could relate to. So, he actually offered to represent Joanne for free during the ongoing court proceedings.

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Carlos' supervisor was also given the same charges, but it was found that it couldn't be determined with certainty how much the supervisor knew about the abuse, so the charges were dropped. However, the supervisor was fired from his position and he now works in a different field. So that is all of the information that I have on today's video. Obviously, this was such a horrific and tragic case.

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AJ was failed by so many people whose only job was to protect him. He had so many people in his life who loved him and would have cared for him and wanted to care for him. But instead, he was placed into the care of his mother and father, both of whom continued to exhibit concerning behaviors that showed that they were not fit to be parents.

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I do believe that when AJ was taken away, Joanne wanted to better herself and get clean. Same thing with Andrew. But once they both started slipping back into drugs, that should have been an indicator that she wasn't ready to be a mother. She easily could have visited her children if they were with her cousin if she truly cared about them, but she clearly didn't.

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One thing that really stands out to me is how everyone knew how violent and aggressive Joanne was when she was on drugs. Yet when she was back on them and admitted to it and tested positive, no one thought that this aggression could turn towards her kids. She literally beat her husband and boyfriend when she was using, yet no one thought that this could be translated to the children.

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That is just ridiculous. Then, of course, the fact that AJ and his brother were both seen with numerous bruises on so many different occasions. They both lived in a disgusting, filthy, unlivable home. They had been reported to DCFS numerous times by concerned neighbors, yet some people said that the home was just fine. Some people said that the bruises weren't there.

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It's just, there's no continuity in the system. One person says one thing, another person says another, and it's just left there. it's just left that these children are just fine and so nothing is done. Obviously, that is a very frustrating and disheartening aspect to this case.

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But this might be the first case that I've ever looked into where the DCFS worker actually had to face charges for their negligence and it's really nice to see.

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I am glad that this man is taking accountability for what he did because he did straight up just ignore the allegations and just wanted the case closed as fast as possible, ignoring everything that was glaring in his face, screaming at him that these kids are being abused. Because I do understand having an unmanageable caseload. I understand being overwhelmed at work.

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But when you are staring in the eyes of a bruised and battered child who just admitted to a doctor that they were being hit, who is probably terrified to even mention that to the doctor, it is a no brainer. Do the bare minimum and keep that case open for further investigation. I get that they want to get these cases closed and off their caseload, but come on.

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He saw this little boy covered in bruises and then closed the case and went home and slept in his own bed, safe and sound. It makes me wonder how often he worried about AJ, how he must have felt knowing that he just left a little boy in an abusive household. How did he feel after AJ was found dead?

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After filing for divorce, Craig moved out of the home he shared with Joanne, telling her she could live there until her son and foster son finished out the school year. At the time, she was requesting that Craig continue to financially support her, citing her fibromyalgia and the fact that she was raising two children. For the months that followed, Joanne's behaviors continued to escalate.

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She complained to the police, saying that she thought her home and cell phone were bugged. She started selling Craig's stuff in a garage sale against his wishes. She started yelling at neighbors and accusing them of calling CPS on her and of wanting to kill her. Joanne's mother, who helped her out with some finances and for things like groceries, said that her mental state was terrible.

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She was hallucinating, paranoid, and just going mad. Those around her encouraged her to go to rehab for her drug use, but she always just refused. Now, there was one neighbor who had in fact called CPS, so she was getting bi-weekly visits at the time. Her caseworker noted that she was struggling with her circumstances, but reported no concerns regarding the safety or well-being of her children.

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By August of 2012, it was time for Joanne to move out of Craig's home. She had nowhere to go and had been developing a relationship with Andrew. So that same month, Joanne moved in with Andrew. Once she left the home, Craig reported to the court that Joanne caused upwards of $20,000 worth of damage before she left.

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There had been kitchen appliance fires, the house was covered in dog feces and urine, and there were mold and insect infestations all around the home. At this time, after moving in with Andrew and leaving behind that disgusting mess of a house and failing to uphold her duties as a foster parent, the seven-year-old foster son was removed from her care.

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However, so often that goal seems to take precedent over the safety and well-being of the very child the system is supposed to protect. To me, it doesn't matter if a child is with their biological parents if those biological parents are abusive and neglectful.

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She also voluntarily surrendered her foster care license. The trial for divorce from Craig started in October of 2012. At that time, she was found guilty of indirect criminal contempt for selling Craig's belongings. That was a direct violation of her court order.

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For this, she received a 14-day jail sentence with the judge citing that he didn't think Joanne would follow through on any lesser punishment. After that, the divorce was finalized, citing that Joanne had caused physical harm to Craig during their marriage. The judge also decided that he would not have to financially support Joanne, saying that she was unemployed for no stated credible reason.

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At that time, when Joanne went to serve her time, her now 12 year old son went off to live with Joanne's mother. After Joanne got out of jail, her addiction continued to worsen. She was now turning to heroin after meeting a woman in prison who gave her a connection to get it. Now, while living with Andrew, things were chaotic.

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Andrew had another roommate at that time who watched as the two argued and fought. Joanne threatened to kill herself multiple times. She would have the police call on her numerous times. She would have the police called on her numerous times. She would hang out with these drug addicted teenagers who would come by at all hours of the night.

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Andrew did start to get tired of all of this and at times he would kick Joanne out, but then she would just come back the next day and it would be forgotten about. Police were called for multiple domestic disturbances where it was claimed that Joanne would hit or throw things at Andrew. In another incident, this time Andrew was caught beating Joanne.

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When the roommate tried to intervene, Andrew pushed him down the stairs. After this, the roommate did ultimately move out of the home because it was just too chaotic for him. During all of this, Joanne was trying to fight her mother to get her 12 year old son back and living with her. However, Joanne's mother knew that he needed to be protected. The house was in squalor.

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It was a disgusting, filthy mess. There were constant domestic violence issues and the son didn't want to go home either. He knew that his mom had some really severe issues and didn't want to be around to deal with them. In the end, Joanne's first son was ordered to stay with his grandmother who raised him for the years that followed. When this decision was made, Joanne was absolutely devastated.

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She wanted her kid back no matter how bad her living conditions were or mental health was.

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she didn't want what was best for her son she just wanted him in her care but thankfully he stayed with his grandmother and by all accounts he flourished in high school played sports and is a well-adjusted kid he is an adult now who again by all accounts continues to do well that same year in 2012 andrew actually suffered a stroke and was no longer able to practice law temporarily

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If there's someone unrelated to the child who is willing to give them everything they need, then that is who should be caring for that child. But in today's case, as we see far too often,

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After the stroke, he also didn't do anything to try and maintain his law license. He failed to keep up with the requirements and eventually his license was suspended. He then got a job doing manual labor for a friend. but he actually suffered a severe injury to his hand and was no longer able to do that job either.

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After that, he started receiving disability checks, which is what the couple were living on for the months that followed. I also want to note that all throughout all of this, both Andrew and Joanne were on drugs. Their close friends and family members watched as they turned into monsters. After starting using, they lacked empathy. They were angry and fighting all of the time.

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They were abusing each other physically and verbally, living in squalor. They actually also had cats locked in the basement who peed and pooped everywhere and they just left it and left the cats down there to suffer until eventually the roommate came back and let the cats out.

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Then, to add to everything that was going on in their lives, in early 2013, 30-year-old Joanne found herself pregnant with a baby boy. By October 14, 2013, Andrew, or AJ Friend, was born via C-section in Crystal Lake, Illinois. When he was born, he was struggling from the moment he took his first breath. He had tremors, was sneezing, crying excessively, and had an overreactive startle reflex.

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To doctors, he showed clear signs of drug withdrawal, so they went ahead and tested the blood in his umbilical cord. And sure enough, it tested positive for traces of heroin as well as opioids. Joanne's mother was present for his birth and after seeing his condition, she took the doctors aside and told them that they can't let Joanne take AJ home.

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the parents wants were put before the child's needs and tragically this mistake had the most devastating tragic consequences today is going to be a long one it's going to be a wild ride so just strap in and get ready for this one and your friend was a graduate of the university of illinois at urbana-champaign later going on to attend john marshall law school in chicago

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She expressed concerns about both Joanne and Andrew saying that neither were fit to raise him. Joanne even admitted at one time that she was on heroin during the first trimester, but after learning she was pregnant, she stopped. But eventually, it seemed that she switched to opioids.

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After his birth, AJ remained in the hospital for almost a month as he was treated for his condition and given the proper nutrition to ensure growth. He was discharged by November 12th, and at this time, DCFS placed him into the care of a cousin of Joanne's, who stepped up to the plate to raise this little boy. After the cousin took AJ, he thrived.

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He grew into a healthy baby boy who is being well cared for by his alert, attentive foster mother. AJ was known as a fun-loving, energetic little boy who had a big smile and a big personality to match. He was intelligent and social, making friends easily at school. He was loving, affectionate, and outgoing. AJ loved drawing, having books read to him, and playing with his Thomas the Train.

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He was fascinated with fire trucks, bulldozers, cement mixers, and he loved watching Ninja Turtles. He was curious and wanted to learn about everything. He also loved doing puzzles and made sure to take a picture of them after he was done to show off his achievement. With his foster mom, he was enrolled in gymnastics and went to a library program twice a week.

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He went to regular doctor's visits, which always came back as clean and healthy. He was starting to reach his milestones at appropriate ages and was living his best life. While AJ was living with his foster mom and thriving, Joanne went right back to her old habits. Five weeks after giving birth, she overdosed on heroin and was back in the hospital for that.

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At the time, Andrew also admitted that he was using alcohol, cocaine, and opioids right after AJ's delivery. A witness reported that the condition of the home they lived in was just getting worse and worse. The house was filled with trash everywhere. There were more animal feces all over. there was black mold everywhere, which is extremely dangerous to be living with.

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Within the first few months of his life, AJ's parents did try to see him, but they didn't try to gain custody of him until early 2014. In January of that year, Joanne sat down with a caseworker with DCFS and talked about her struggles. She said that yes, she had problems with drugs, but she didn't have any sort of mental health issues that would get in the way of her caring for AJ.

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She said she was loving and was able to provide the love and care her baby needed. She said that she's well aware that she has a disease, which is her addiction, but she was taking the steps to become sober. She loves having her kids around and wanted to raise them in a safe, happy home.

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She said that she would do whatever it took to get AJ back, so she agreed to do drug treatments, counseling, random drug testing, and parenting classes. This was the start of the process for working with DCFS to get AJ back. The goal was that within a year, AJ would be reunified with his biological family given that they could provide him a happy, safe home.

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After that started, a judge ordered that Andrew and Joanne could see AJ once a week under supervision. During those visits, a caseworker reported that they were loving and appropriate towards AJ. Then both Andrew and Joanne completed an intensive outpatient drug treatment program. After that, they went to ongoing individual and group counseling sessions.

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And by spring of 2014, it appeared that Joanne and Andrew were making great strides. But of course, they did run into some issues.

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where he earned his law degree. From there, Andrew worked for years at various law firms. However, all throughout his life, Andrew was known to struggle with substance abuse issues. He was known to use alcohol and opioids to deal with his struggles. And once it got to the point where he was asked to leave one of his earlier jobs because the substance use issues were getting in the way of work.

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while going to group sessions they met another couple who were in need of a home so they rented out their basement to them this was against the advice of their caseworker who told them that they were not allowed to have roommates however they moved in anyways but after they moved in the couple said that it was a Horrible, terrifying experience.

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They were originally told that the basement was a fully furnished basement room in a sober living home. But when they got there, they realized that it was just a dark moldy basement with a disgusting old mattress that looked like it had been taken out of a dumpster. There was no bathroom, no kitchen in there as promised.

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And even though he also had a heavier set girlfriend, she was also white. So that didn't completely match the description. They also were able to figure out this man's cell phone number so they compared it to Amanda's cell phone but they didn't find a match. The second man that they found was a man named Denna Rosa Roman.

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He had lived only four blocks away from Amanda's apartment and he too had a heavier set Hispanic girlfriend as well as a four-year-old son at the time. They were also able to get a hold of this man's phone number, and lo and behold, it was actually a match to Amanda's cell phone records. The cell phone records showed a total of nine calls between their two phones.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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Four of these calls were made from Amanda's phone to Dennis' phone, while five of them were from his phone to her phone. The calls lasted anywhere from a few seconds to 89 seconds, and all nine calls took place on July 28th, 2011, with the last calls being from Dennis' phone at 11.26 a.m. The problem with this though was that Seth was actually shown a photo lineup of a bunch of different men,

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One of these photos being of Dennis, but he said that he didn't recognize any of them. But either way, police still wanted to talk to Denna Rosa Roman. So on October 29th, 2013, police were able to track down Dennis when he was in an area in Westerfield.

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So they tried to do that whole casual walk and talk thing where, you know, they walked up to him and said, you know, you don't have to talk to us, but obviously he kind of did. So one officer walked with him with two other cops following a few feet behind. This officer asked Dennis if he could go down to the station to talk, but Dennis declined.

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He then lit himself a cigarette and according to these police officers, he appeared to get very nervous. Dennis asked them what this was all about and told them that he would meet with them in a few days if he knew what this was all about. So they asked him if he knew a girl from Chicopee named Amanda. He said that he knew a lot of girls from Chicopee and that a couple of them were named Amanda.

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One of her regulars named Marlene said that she would go to Friendly's three to four times a week and said that Amanda was always so kind and energetic and said that her along with so many other patrons of the restaurant would request to be seated in her section because that's just how loved she was by everybody who had the pleasure of being served by her.

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He then asked, did something happen to this girl because I don't ever go to Chicopee anymore? The officer said that it was the Amanda with tattoos on her chest and he did admit that he knew her. When he was asked when the last time that he was in Chicopee was, he said it had been a very long time, probably a couple of years.

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At this point, he asked the officer for his phone number and said that he could talk later because he was busy and had to go. At this point, I guess they were standing in front of his apartment because a woman with a child walked out and he said this was his girlfriend and his kid. He then threw his cigarette on the ground and walked off with these two individuals.

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So then, by November 1st, 2013, the same officer received a phone call from someone saying it was Dennis, saying that he needed to talk to an officer as soon as he possibly could. because he had something to tell them about Amanda from Chicopee. Something that had been bothering him for two years, so they went to the Westfield police station to talk.

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This officer and a couple of other officers started heading that way, and as they were driving, Dennis had called them again and told them that he was waiting outside of the police station and said that he is starting to get very nervous. Once the police officers arrived at the police station, Dennis participated in a recorded interview and provided a DNA sample.

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Something else that was interesting that police noted in this interview is that Dennis was actually wearing Nike Air Max shoes, but this time with a different tread pattern than the ones that were at the crime scene two years earlier. So after this, a lot of the meat of the actual interview was redacted from the version made available to the public.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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But as we found out later, Dennis basically said that he actually was a witness to Amanda's murder. He said that he saw the man who killed her but is afraid of revealing this man's identity because he's scared that this person will come back and kill him. he tells anyone.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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However, after this initial interview, his story had changed several times over the years and there was pretty much nothing that was consistent about it and it definitely does not fit the evidence that investigators had uncovered. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, police had collected DNA evidence from underneath Amanda's fingernails.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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They went ahead and tested that DNA against 20 different samples from 20 different men including a Dennis's DNA sample and as you probably could have guessed by now the DNA under Amanda's fingernails was very similar to Dennis's DNA profile. Now, When all of this was brought forward to Dennis, he claimed that he had a younger brother who this DNA probably belonged to and that it wasn't him.

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So he's just throwing his little brother under the bus for being involved with a murder, but obviously there was nothing pointing to this random younger brother. So on November 5th, Dennis was placed under arrest.

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Not only that, but she was the aunt to an adorable little three-year-old nephew who she absolutely loved. Her sister Emily's boyfriend said that she was so good with their little boy and he was always so happy to be around her and she was so happy to be around him. Amanda was so absolutely loved by everyone around her, especially her family.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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police came to the conclusion that contrary to Dennis's claim that he had not touched Amanda on the day that she died, the DNA proved that he did in fact come into contact with Amanda on August 26, 2011. So the trial for Amanda's murder started on July 7, 2016 for first-degree murder. which carries the mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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Of course, Dennis pled not guilty. The prosecuting attorney was Assistant District Attorney Karen Bell, and she argued that Dennis Rosa Roman had killed Amanda as a part of an armed robbery attempt to get her marijuana, her cell phone, as well as Seth's knife, which we know was missing from the table when police initially arrived.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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So the prosecution discussed the fact that Dennis actually had quite the record, including a history of domestic abuse and battery charges against his fiancée at the time, burglary, and distribution of drugs. They discussed the shoe prints that were found at the scene, which matched his size 7 youth sneaker.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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Dennis had changed his story four times throughout the retelling of his story to police, where he initially admitted that he was there for Amanda's murder, but said that he didn't actually do it. and he was scared to give away the name of who actually did do it.

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SOLVED: The Case of Amanda Plasse

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Obviously, they brought up the DNA match and they had mentioned that Dennis's palm print was found on the broken porch window at the apartment building. Dennis' defense lawyer was Donald Frank. He admitted that Dennis was at Amanda's murder again, but said that he was not the one responsible.

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He said, like I mentioned earlier, that he witnessed the murder, but he was too afraid to give away the identity of the real killer because he feared for his and his family's safety. He also said that police kind of botched this investigation and failed to look into other suspects, which I I kind of agree. They did a pretty terrible job in this investigation.

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I mean, it somehow took them two entire years to figure out that, you know, this man who was right in front of them matching their exact description with a lengthy criminal record with his literal phone number on Amanda's whiteboard after saying that he had broken in could have been responsible. It took him two years to figure this out.

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They were probably so focused on these pictures of Amanda's dead body that were floating around that they forgot that they were doing an actual investigation into a real murder. I truly believe that if Dennis didn't willingly give up his DNA and if they hadn't called police to say that he knew what happened to Amanda, that it would have taken a hell of a lot longer to pin this entire thing down.

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Dennis literally handed them the investigation on a silver platter. But either way, the jurors went into deliberation with over 160 pieces of evidence to discuss. After eight days of testimony at trial and five hours of jury deliberation, the jury came out with a verdict which found Denna Rosa Roman guilty of first-degree murder for the stabbing death of Amanda Plass on August 26, 2011,

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and they were absolutely devastated when she was just ripped away from them. Now, at the time of Amanda's death, she had just recently started dating a 27-year-old man named Seth Green. The two had only been dating for about a week or so, but he had been staying at her apartment almost every night the entire week.

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and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. So that is where the case is at today. Now, in my opinion, this case took way too long for an investigation where the victim literally told them who it was And what happened? I don't know exactly what took them so long. I don't know if it was actually because of the pictures that were circulating, that's just my speculation.

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There were a lot of other things that seemed to have sidetracked them, so I really don't know why it took them so long to figure this entire thing out. but I am glad that there was at least some justice for this beautiful young woman. She did not deserve what happened to her whatsoever.

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I have no idea how stealing someone's weed, which I imagine probably wasn't even worth that much, turned into her being murdered in the most brutal way possible. Amanda's family had to fight so hard to make people listen to actually solve their daughter's murder, but unfortunately, all of this other nonsense got in the way.

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And I know that they are at least trying to get a law in place which does make it illegal to take pictures of a victim's body at the crime scene, which should have been illegal in the first place, but at least they are trying to fight for other victims who might fall

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to these inappropriate behaviors of the people that are supposed to be protecting and serving and protecting the integrity of the crime scene. These people took advantage of their position to take photos of a woman's body after she had just been brutally murdered and was in the most vulnerable state that a human can ever even be in and then showed them to whoever wanted to see them.

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Then on top of that, we find out that this man killed her for literally no reason at all. I am struggling to figure out how this was all worth this. How someone can lose their life because some random dude stole something of such little value after she was being so nice to him and literally just saying, hey, if you took my bowl, just give it back.

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It's just, I cannot understand what goes through people's heads like this. It's not like these were drugs that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, like, you know, 50, 100 pounds of weed. It's not like these were drugs that were hard to come by and were worth a lot of money.

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it was just off of marijuana and a bowl that someone's life was ended it's just unbelievable and somehow he still refuses to take responsibility for what he did he won't admit that he killed her and somehow thinks that people are just going to believe him i don't even know i don't know why you wouldn't admit to it it's it's doesn't even make sense to me none of this makes sense to me

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At the end of the day, a beautiful young woman who had so much life ahead of her lost her life for literally zero reason at all. And that is just so absolutely heartbreaking and my heart goes out. to her and her family and everyone who was affected by this. So that is where I am going to end today's video. Thank you so much for listening to Amanda's story.

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The two had very often smoked pot together, and the night of August 25th, 2011 was no different. According to Seth, the two had a very quiet night together that night. He spent the night at her place that night just as he had the past week, then got up the next morning and went to his job as a construction worker.

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If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Also, if you are interested in 33% off of Native deodorant, make sure to check the link down below and use code RACHELSHANNON to get three bars of deodorant for only $24 plus free shipping.

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Don't forget to head over to my Twitter and Instagram and go ahead and give those a follow. And if you have absolutely any case suggestions, please feel free to email them to me at rachelshiningcases at gmail.com. With that, I hope you guys have a great week and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

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Later that day, August 26th, Seth had called Amanda to tell her that he was going to be back late and was not going to have time to drive her and pick her up for her shift at Friendly's. That was for 5 p.m. that evening. Now, I don't know if this was their normal arrangement, if he had always taken her to work, or if this was just something that they had agreed upon for that day in particular.

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But either way, Amanda had also been in contact with her friend Mercedes. So they had been texting back and forth pretty much all day until around 4 20 p.m. when Amanda asked her if she could give her a ride to work, to which Mercedes agreed. Just before 5, Mercedes called Amanda saying that she was going to be picking her up for work, but Amanda did not answer her calls or her texts.

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She arrived at Amanda's apartment and just waited outside for about 5 minutes before just leaving. She didn't think much of this because she just assumed that maybe Amanda had just gotten a ride from someone else. But after still not hearing from her all day, Mercedes texted her again asking her if she was mad at her for being late to pick her up for work, but she never got a response.

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So after getting off of work, Seth actually drove over to Friendly's to pay Amanda a visit, but she actually was not there. He went over to his grandmother's house and then headed over to Amanda's apartment. He noticed that the window on the porch to the building was broken, which was pretty strange, but he didn't think too much of it at first.

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turns that it is so very frustrating. It's one of those cases that I am very happy to see solved, but it took way too long for it to happen and the things that were allowed to happen are truly just so frustrating and ridiculous and you'll see why in just a minute. With that being said, today we are going to be discussing the murder of Amanda Plass.

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But he went up to the third floor to Amanda's unit anyways. When he got to her unit, I don't know if the door was unlocked or if he had to kick it open or anything like that, but to me, it sounded like it was unlocked. But... What Seth walked into was a sight straight out of a nightmare. So immediately when Seth walked into Amanda's apartment, he did see some red in the kitchen.

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Now at first he wasn't totally horrified or panicked or anything because he actually initially thought that this was just red paint since Amanda had been painting that entire day. However, he then saw Amanda just laying there in the kitchen covered in blood, and this is when he realized that this wasn't just paint. He went into an immediate frenzy and immediately started CPR, but it was too late.

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No matter what he did, she just was not moving, and he realized that it was of no use, so it was at this point that he decided to call 911. When police arrived, Seth was very visibly shaken and very, very frantic and upset. When police got inside to see what was going on, what they walked into was a horrific scene.

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There was blood all over the apartment and Amanda herself was absolutely covered in blood and laying in a pool of blood. She was wearing just a bra and her long pants. She had been stabbed six times, including in the chest, throat, and abdomen. There were very clear signs of a violent struggle.

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Police had also noted that there were bloody footprints next to Amanda's body that were consistent with women's Nike Air Max shoes with a non-marking sole, size 9.5. Police used this to say that it was possible that these could have been men's Air Max shoes size 7.5 using the general rule of thumb that you can just add two sizes and make it into a woman's size and then vice versa.

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Police took several samples off of Amanda's body including skin cells, sweat, and scraped under her fingernails for DNA. Now, when talking to police, Seth did mention that the marijuana that they had left on the coffee table the night before was gone and there was also a knife that was missing as well.

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At this point, they believed that Amanda must have been attacked while she was getting ready for work. Now, before we get more into how this case was investigated, something else happened at the crime scene that was absolutely inappropriate and uncalled for. We will get a little bit more into it later, but for the sake of keeping this in chronological order, I will mention this part now.

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So at the crime scene, a senior officer

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that was assigned to supervise and protect the integrity of the crime scene sergeant keith lemay decided that it would be a good idea to take pictures of amanda's body lying on the floor covered in blood on his personal cell phone he showed the photos to sergeant jeffrey goddier who i couldn't find a picture of apparently explaining the importance to him of not contaminating a crime scene

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then he sent these pictures to jeffrey after jeffrey had asked him to. jeffrey then forwarded these pictures to patrolman chad levesque. so then chad decided it was appropriate to then show these pictures of amanda's dead body to several other people including several football coaches at a youth football game the day after the murder took place.

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he had showed these pictures to people apparently saying This is the stuff that I have to deal with at work." Then another officer at the scene, patrolman Terry J. Deck, who was just there to log the people coming in and going out of Amanda's apartment for the state police, also took a picture of Amanda's dead body and then went ahead and individually emailed these photos

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Amanda Plass was only 20 years old when her life was taken from her on August 26, 2011. Amanda grew up in Chicopee, Massachusetts. She was described as being a very positive, bubbly, down-to-earth, free-spirited, and beautiful young woman. She absolutely loved sunflowers and was really artistic and talented.

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to six Chicopee police officers. All six of these police officers went ahead and deleted the emails right away because they knew that it was inappropriate for these pictures to be in their email, but as far as I know, they did not report him. This situation was not discovered until two months later when the district attorney learned of the photo sharing.

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The district attorney then expressed his concerns to the mayor at the time, Michael Bissonnette. Police Chief William Jebb started an investigation into the incident for the following four months after that. At the end of this, they were given very light punishments. All four officers were cited for incompetence and failure to conform to work standards.

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Deck and LeMay, who took the pictures, were required to work three unpaid shifts and were sent letters of reprimand. People were upset that the mayor, Michael Bassanet, did not handle the situation very seriously. Now, Taking these sorts of pictures at crime scenes and sharing them apparently is not against the law, which is just so surprising and disturbing to me.

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But it's obviously still so inappropriate, so disrespectful, so disturbing, and if nothing else, These police should be fired for it, but they just seem to get very, very light punishments. But now let's fast forward a little bit. By 2018, a new mayor named Richard Koss was elected and he was very disturbed with how the situation was handled.

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There was an unrelated investigation into the behaviors of other officers that I won't get into because it's not, you know, important to this case, but that sparked them to look more into Jeffrey Goddier again and he was actually fired.

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The reasoning for this was because during the initial investigation about these pictures, Goddier had not been honest about his involvement in sharing the pictures and they questioned his credibility and reliability. Goddier basically told them that He didn't know who sent him the picture and then he couldn't remember who he then sent the picture to.

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So obviously they did not believe him and assumed that he was just lying to avoid getting another officer in trouble. But then at the end of all of this he appealed and he actually won the appeal and he got his job back. Now this whole scandal didn't I guess take over the entire investigation but

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Amanda's family was still very bothered and disturbed by this, rightfully so, and this entire thing kind of took the attention completely away from Amanda's case and it acted as a distractor and it led them off of the path of just being concentrated on who killed Amanda.

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If you are to search Amanda Plass in Google, you will get mostly articles about the police officers and the scandal rather than pretty much anything about Amanda or who she was or the investigation or anything along those lines. I had to do a lot more digging to find out exactly what happened to Amanda and what kind of person she was and things like that.

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She loved jewelry, so she would make these really beautiful earrings with all sorts of different colored feathers. She was a bit of a hippie and a flower child, and she absolutely loved attending music festivals, especially folk and bluegrass music festivals. Amanda attended Chicopee Comprehensive High School. She actually did drop out of high school, but she did earn her equivalency degree.

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than I did to find out about the actions of these disrespectful, careless men who decided to take pictures of Amanda's body after she had been brutally murdered. It just really bothers me when things like this distract from what's really important, which is this young woman who lost her life. And it's just so annoying to me that people will go and Google her and all you see

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Jeffrey Goddard, you know, the Chad guy and just everyone who was involved in this instead of articles about Amanda. So now let's go back into the details surrounding Amanda's murder. So for quite a while after the murder, they were following a ton of different leads and the family was getting understandably frustrated with the investigation because it was taking a while.

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However, there was one lead that police had been following for quite some time that proved to be very substantial in this case. So, just after the murder, Seth, Amanda's boyfriend, had told the state and Chicopee police that Amanda's apartment had actually been broken into several times in the past. and Amanda thought that she knew who it was.

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So in one interview with investigators, Seth said that Amanda thought that the man who was breaking into her house was a short Puerto Rican man who lived a walks distance down the street and whose name started with a D. He also said that she would see him around the neighborhood and she recognized him. He then said that in August of 2011, just a few days after this man had broken in,

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Seth stayed at her apartment. So I'm not sure if maybe he was staying at her apartment because she felt unsafe because this guy kept breaking in. or if this was just the timing and how things happened out that he just started staying at her apartment because they were dating.

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But either way, when he was staying at her apartment, he actually learned that Amanda and this Puerto Rican man had actually hung out before and she had his phone number. So she called him to make a meeting with him so that he could come over and they could talk about the break-in. So this man came over about 15 to 20 minutes after she had called.

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This was sometime in the morning and Amanda and Seth had been waiting for them to show up on the back porch. Seth gave police the following description of this man. He was Spanish, probably 21 to 23 years old. He had short hair. He had trimmed facial hair and he was thin.

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He said that he spoke pretty good English and that when he was there, he was with his wife or girlfriend and a child who was around three or four years old. He described the woman as also being Spanish and more heavyset than him. So of course when these people came over to their apartment, Amanda brought up the break-in and of course he told Amanda that it was not him.

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But she told him that a neighbor on the third floor saw him and was waiting for him when he came a different time.

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so it sounded like maybe this neighbor knew about the break-ins and he was maybe keeping a watch for him maybe amanda had told this neighbor you know this guy keeps breaking in or asked him hey is your apartment getting broken into um so this neighbor either wanted to figure out who it was for amanda or he was just watching to see if anyone was going to break into his apartment but either way she told him that this other neighbor had seen him going in and so she knew it was him

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but he was very upset that she was just calling him out without actually asking him if he did it apparently he had stolen a bowl that you use to smoke weed and she pretty much just said hey if you stole this i want it back she wasn't threatening to call the cops she wasn't threatening

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She had worked either as a waitress or a hostess at several different restaurants and most recently before her death she worked at Friendly's on Memorial Drive in Chicopee. And she absolutely loved her job. She was very social and she loved talking to people so being a waitress is a job that suited her very well.

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know to hurt him or his family or anything like that she literally just said hey if you have my bowl please give it back to me so at this point seth had mentioned that there was a whiteboard in the apartment with his phone number written on it so police went to check this out and sure enough there was a phone number on the whiteboard with the message Dennis was here 8-11-11.

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So police went and tried to figure out who this small Hispanic man could have been, but it took them quite some time to do so. So by 2013, two years later, they identified two men that could have fit the description. One was a man who lived in the area and had an extensive board of probation record, which included several violent crimes. However, this man was white.

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Then, according to one friend and co-worker, Corey, in July or August of 2015, Michael showed up to work with bruises all over his face, chest, and arms. Michael told Corey that Lori had become irate and blew up about something, though he didn't say exactly what, and started punching Michael all over.

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Corey asked why he didn't at least defend himself from the attack and Michael said that it just wasn't worth it. According to Corey, this wasn't the first time that Michael told him about Lori blowing up and being physical towards him, though this did seem to be the worst of it. Then, as we know, by November of 2015, he stopped all contact with friends, family, and coworkers.

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Well, turns out that in September of 2015, Lori actually started a new relationship with Jeremy Townsend, telling him that she left her husband. Jeremy was also married at that time, but he apparently told Lori that he too was leaving his wife. The two seemed to have a pretty normal relationship until February of 2016, when it seemed that Lori found out that Jeremy was still with his wife.

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That month, Jeremy's wife, Vanessa, started receiving Facebook messages from Michael's account. Vanessa didn't actually see the Facebook messages at first, though, until April, when she received a flower delivery at work with a note that read, "...roses are red, violets are blue, my wife is a whore, and your husband is too. Sorry about this. Check your Facebook messages. We need to talk. Mike."

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This, of course, prompted her to check her Facebook messages where she found messages from Michael's account saying that he had installed a spy app on Lori's phone and found out that she had been texting, calling, and sending explicit photos back and forth with Jeremy. He then sent photos to Vanessa as proof of his wife's affair with her husband.

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with hopes that she would leave her husband because he was cheating on her. Him and Vanessa chatted back and forth for a bit, and she alluded that she wasn't going to be leaving her husband. To that, Michael responded that he thought Lori could be pregnant by Jeremy. Michael then told Vanessa that he knows a good divorce attorney.

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By November 7th, 2015, Michael, Lori, and their two children met up with Michael's coworker Frank and his wife at a tractor show. There, Frank noticed that while Michael was acting relatively normally, his wife Lori seemed a bit standoffish and cold. The two clearly had some tension going on between them, so the two left the tractor show early and went home.

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After these conversations with Michael's profile, Vanessa confronted Jeremy about the affair, which he admitted to. That same month, in April, during one of Jeremy and Lori's hookups, Lori showed Jeremy that she had gotten a tattoo of his nickname, Jay, in a heart over her vagina. This made Jeremy realize that she was a lot more serious about the affair than he was.

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He said that he was just in it for the sex while clearly Lori wanted a lot more. This, along with him being confronted by his wife, prompted him to end the affair with Lori and start working towards patching things up with his wife. According to text messages found between Jeremy and Lori between the dates of February 23rd through the 26th,

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Lori started confronting Jeremy via text, asking why he's still wearing his wedding ring, asking why he's not moving forward with the divorce, and asking if he was still in love with his wife. The first time that Michael's profile reached out to Vanessa about the affair was February 25th.

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They then found that Vanessa had received text messages from someone claiming to be Michael, but the phone number used was not Michael's known number. It was a number that had only been active for 10 days and Lori's name was listed under the account. Then it was found that the flowers that were sent to Vanessa at her work

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were purchased with Lori's checking account, although the name of the order was Mike Shaver. It was stated that on the day that the flowers were delivered, Michael's Facebook account sent Vanessa a message stating that he's excited for her to receive the special delivery. This indicates that whoever sent those flowers was also the person messaging Vanessa from Michael's Facebook account.

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Of course, investigators believe that Lori is behind the flowers and the Facebook messages. Clearly, Lori was trying to pose as Michael to get Vanessa to leave her husband so that she could have Jeremy all to herself, but that totally backfired and only caused Jeremy to leave her and patch things up with his wife, leaving her high and dry just like she said Michael did.

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But her single life didn't last for long because by early 2016, Lori was in a new relationship with Travis Filmer. She told Travis that she had been married, but her divorce was finalized. The two went on to get married in a small ceremony, which took place in her backyard. They then got a joint bank account and did everything else a married couple would do.

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Of course, after finding out that Lori was married to a new man, police questioned him about his relationship to Lori. According to Travis, nothing all that crazy happened, unlike what we heard from her relationship with Jeremy. However, she had made a few concerning statements to Travis.

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One of which was when she was talking about Michael saying, it's not that he's missing, he's no longer walking this earth. Lori went on to tell him that something bad happened and there was a body on the property. We don't know exactly the context for these conversations. We just know that it was mentioned that that was said at one point.

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He then got talking about that concrete slab in the backyard, which he actually helped to lay. As I stated earlier, it's believed that the fire pit was initially constructed in March of 2016. According to Travis, by the summer of that year, he and Lori had rented a cement mixer from Home Depot.

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The following day, Frank texted Michael asking him if everything was okay, but he got no response. Frank texted Michael once again on November 9th, asking again if things were okay. This time, Frank did get a response. Michael texted him saying that he was actually quitting his job at Epcot to focus on saving his marriage.

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They used that to mix 42 bags of concrete, which they poured into a hole on the property, which had already been dug, as I stated earlier. Travis did say that it was odd because the hole was only 3-4 feet deep, but there was a mound of dirt on another area of the property that looked to be from a hole that was much deeper than that.

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Either way, by February of 2017, Lori posted to Facebook a photo of the completed concrete slab. By this point, we can see that not only was the relationship between Michael and Lori tumultuous, But right after the time in which Michael was last seen, she allegedly started using his accounts to reach out to people, including the wife of the man she was trying to date.

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Based on everything we've discussed up to this point, by March 9th, 2018, officers were able to obtain and execute a search warrant at the home of Lori Shaver. They brought cadaver dogs as well as ground penetrating radar equipment to search the yard.

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They quickly focused their efforts on that concrete slab, bringing in heavy equipment to carefully and methodically break apart that fire pit as well as the surrounding concrete. This took several hours to the point that it got dark and officers decided that they needed to take a break until the following day.

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By March 10th, they continued digging until they came into contact with a blue tarp located about three feet beneath that concrete slab. Upon removing that tarp, they discovered a human skeleton. The body had been wrapped tightly in ratchet straps and a fitted bed sheet. Once those items were removed, it was found that the body had been wearing socks, shorts, and underwear.

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Of course, these remains were sent off to the medical examiner for examination. At the time of this discovery, Michael Shaver's father had arrived to the family home. He found out about the excavation starting the prior day, so he made his way to Florida from Georgia to find out the status of the investigation.

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At that time, he gave investigators a sample of his DNA, which was then compared to the skeleton found in that grave. And after completion of that DNA testing, it was confirmed that the body found in that grave was a familial match meaning that he was in fact Michael Shaver.

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Along with testing the DNA, of course, the medical examiner worked to determine a cause of death which became apparent very quickly. There was a single .38 caliber projectile lodged in Michael's skull indicating that his cause of death was the result of a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. There was no evidence of any further injury

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no further gunshot wounds were found anywhere else on his body. Based on the size of the projectile found in Michael's skull, he could have been shot with a .38 caliber revolver, a .380 caliber pistol, or even a 9mm pistol due to how similar in size the projectiles from each of those guns are. As I stated earlier, Laurie Shaver did own a .38 caliber revolver.

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It was found that after Michael's death by October of 2017, Lori had sold that revolver to her neighbor, Robert, who turned it over to the police after discovering what happened to Michael. The gun was then compared to the projectile found in his skull, but it seemed that the results were inconclusive. The projectiles from this gun cannot be excluded or included as the gun used to kill Michael.

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So, by the time November 10th rolled around and Michael was scheduled to work, he didn't show up. He didn't call his boss or anyone else to notify them of his absence, which definitely was odd to those who worked with Michael. According to his boss and coworkers, Michael was a very responsible employee. He never missed a day of work without at least calling or texting someone to let them know.

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However, based on everything that we've discussed up to this point, it seems pretty obvious that Lori has to be the one responsible. Michael was last known to be seen with Lori before returning to the property where they both lived. Just days after he was last seen, Lori lied to Michael's friend Scott about him going to Georgia.

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He said that a friend Robert drove him there, but Robert denies having done so. She continued lying to friends and family of hers and Michael's, coming up with all sorts of stories to explain his absence. During that time, she used his Facebook account and bank account for varying reasons.

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It seemed that she most likely killed him, then placed him in that hole that Michael had previously dug to make that pond. She then covered him in sheets and a tarp before burying his body with the dirt. Then he remained in that grave while Lori went about her life dating different men until she built that fireplace and got her new husband to help pour concrete over the grave of her ex-husband.

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As you can imagine, everything that was discovered in this investigation took a very long time. I know I spelled it out to you over less than a half hour, but it actually took over a year to finally bring charges against Lori. But finally, by September 17th, 2020, Lori was finally arrested and charged with second degree murder, domestic violence, and accessory after the fact.

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At her bail hearing, she actually did post bond, which was set at $50,000. So she returned back to her home with her children. Then just after Lori's arrest, a shocking discovery was made. Lori's daughter, who was about 12 at the time, but would have been seven at the time of the murder,

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came forward to investigators and told them that she was actually the one who shot and killed her father and she was ready to testify to that. Of course, her statements were taken by the defense and prosecution and over the course of the investigation, the story changed a few times.

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But by the time trial started, she and Lori had their final version of the story, which I will get into in just a minute. Finally, after years and years of waiting, wanting answers, and a painstakingly long investigation, the trial for Michael's murder started in September of 2024.

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The prosecution laid out everything I've discussed up to this point, arguing that after years and years of a tumultuous toxic relationship, Lori and Michael got into one final fight that ended in her grabbing the gun and shooting him in the head. Then, she disposed of his body in that hole in the backyard, burying it there before eventually covering him in concrete alongside that fire pit.

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Then, for the months and years that followed, she did everything she could to pretend he was still alive. It seemed like she didn't know exactly who he worked with or who his boss was or who his friends were. so she couldn't reach out to anyone at first to quit his job.

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But when his boss or coworker would text him, that is when she told them that Michael was quitting and focusing on his family because obviously that is the person to reach out to. Then she went on his Facebook, occasionally adding photos and updating his status, doing so until around January of 2018.

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She replied back to Facebook messages, used his bank card to make random purchases, and lied to friends and family members about him. She said that he left his family and wouldn't pay child support. She then claimed that he was stalking and harassing her. All these things to make him look as nasty as possible, all after she knew he was already dead at her hands.

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that following day november 11th once again he failed to show up to work without letting anybody know by november 12th after not hearing from him again michael's boss texted him asking him what was going on at that time michael finally responded saying that he was having issues at home and won't be returning to work anytime soon because he was in georgia

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Then she even used his Facebook profile to try and get her new man to break up with his wife for her, which as we heard earlier, totally backfired. But finally, after years of not seeing Michael face to face, a family friend finally decided that enough was enough and called Lori out. He got police involved who finally uncovered what Lori had been hiding for so many years.

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On the other hand, the defense argued a totally different version of events. As I stated earlier, Lori's daughter, Isabelle, came forward to testify about what she said happened. At the time of the trial, she was 15, but at the time of the shooting, she was only 7.

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She did end up testifying at trial, and again, her story changed multiple times, but the story she ended up sticking with is as follows. She claimed that her home was filled with constant domestic violence towards Lori at the hands of her father, Michael.

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On that day back in 2015, she was with her mom and Michael in the home when a fight broke out between the two of them and Michael started beating on Lori. He starts screaming at her, I'll kill you. So she heard a lot of commotion, some banging before hearing Lori screaming, leave me alone, leave me alone.

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This prompted her to walk into the room her parents were in where she saw Michael kicking her on the ground before he sat in a chair with his foot on Lori's head as she's pinned to the ground and gasping as Michael is continuing in his threats to kill her.

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In desperation, the then seven-year-old girl runs away and grabs a gun before firing a shot off, believing that she shot Michael in the back of the head. But almost simultaneously as that was happening, Lori's then boyfriend, Jeremy, walked in as well. He also saw what was going on with Lori still on the ground under Michael's foot. As Jeremy walked in, he grabbed his own gun, then shot Michael.

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After Michael was down, Jeremy yells to Lori, telling her to get the kids and get out. He said that he'll take care of this, but if anyone says anything about this, he'll kill Lori too. She went on to say that she was like a deer in headlights, just going into autopilot, grabbing her kids and taking them to school like routine.

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Lori was so numb in that moment that she couldn't speak and neither could her kids. After Jeremy shot and killed Michael, he dumped his body in the hole on the property, unbeknownst to Lori. When she returned, she knew that Jeremy must have done something with the body, but she didn't know exactly what.

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After all that happened, she immediately broke it off with Jeremy, saying that she no longer wanted to be with him. So she broke it off with him, not the other way around. She was so scared that she maintained her silence for the years that followed, but she wasn't too scared to break up with him.

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he said to either fire him or he'll just quit. Of course, this was very unlike Michael to just walk out on work like this, not even telling anyone until they reached out to him. So by November 13th, Frank actually went to the home where Michael and Lori lived hoping to see Michael so he can come check on him.

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Of course, police questioned Jeremy about this and he denied that it ever happened. In fact, he denied ever even meeting Michael or having any interactions with him while he was alive. I also want to note that according to the medical examiner, Michael was only shot one time to the head.

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If you believe the story that Isabelle and Lori are telling, then you have to wonder where the second bullet went. Even if Isabelle missed her shot to her father, there would have been a bullet somewhere in the home. There would have been damage either to the wall behind him or the furniture or whatever the bullet went into.

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I don't know how extensive of a search was done on the home if again the shot was missed and went into a wall. You could also argue that the bullet might have gone into soft tissue which was decomposed by the time he was found, but the excavation done to his burial site was very tedious.

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And if it had been lodged in, in let's say his abdomen, the bullet would have been found among the other items with his body. But within this entire thing, no additional bullets were ever found. Then you have to explain why Lori would go on her husband's accounts and pretend to be him for so long if she truly wasn't the one who caused his death.

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Especially if he was using Michael's account to talk to Jeremy's wife. You'd think there'd be a chance that Vanessa would tell Jeremy where she was getting the information about the affair from. Then obviously that would put a huge red flag for Jeremy if he knew that the man messaging his wife was actually dead because he shot him.

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He would know that Lori was the one talking to his wife, exposing their relationship. If Lori truly was scared of Jeremy, I just don't believe she would have done all that. Because again, she said that she broke it off with him, so why would she want to expose the relationship so bad? That doesn't make any sense. Everything that I've discussed up to this point was presented at trial.

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After hearing all of the evidence from both sides, the prosecution and defense each made their closing arguments and the jury was off for deliberations. They deliberated for less than four hours before coming back with their verdict. The jury did not believe Lori and Isabel's crazy story and they found her guilty on all charges.

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But once he got there, Frank was met with Lori, who told him that she and Michael had gotten into a fight over him apparently talking to another woman, so he up and left and went to Georgia. Frank noticed that Michael's car was still parked in the driveway and it actually seemed to have a flat tire, so he asked how he drove to Florida without his car.

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Then, at her sentencing hearing, she was handed life behind bars for the murder of her husband.

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And that is where the case ends. This one was definitely a wild one from start to finish. It's unbelievable that in this day and age, someone can go missing for years before anyone realizes. I'm not blaming his family by any means because they were receiving Facebook messages and texts and his social media was being updated.

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but it does break my heart just a little bit that someone can go so long without hearing their loved one's voice and not raise more of an alarm. Of course, his family is completely devastated, and I'm sure they wish they would have recognized what was going on sooner, but in hindsight, there really is nothing they could have done. They also have adamantly denied Michael being an abuser.

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They say that Lori was the one who abused Michael and that he's just an innocent victim in all of this. Of course, we truly don't know who to believe because obviously Michael's family isn't going to believe that he could be abusive, but at the same time, Michael isn't alive to defend himself, so I don't want to say either way.

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However, I do lean more towards Lori being the abuser based on what we know about this case. I also do believe that the jury got this one right. I think that Lori did shoot her husband for one reason or another. I think she's shown herself to be crazy and unstable, clearly unable to handle her emotions.

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Maybe Isabelle was a witness to this, or maybe she really just believed in her mom's innocence, so she went along with saying that she shot her father. But in reality, I don't think she did. I don't think she took any part in this. I think this was a story they put together to make it seem like Lori was less culpable, especially once they dragged Jeremy into it.

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Lori said that Michael's friend Robert Mercado picked him up and drove him there. At this time, Frank really didn't have anything else to go off of. He had no choice but to take Laurie at her word and just continue following up with Michael to make sure things were okay. For the days and weeks that followed, Frank, along with other friends of Michael's, texted him to see what was going on.

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By the way, I totally think they messed up by adding the whole thing of, I'll kill you if you tell anyone. Why in the hell would Jeremy threaten that when he only shot this man to protect his woman? Why would Lori be afraid of Jeremy for shooting Michael when Isabel admittedly also shot him that day? That story made no sense.

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And if they had just thought it through a little more, they could have made it a little bit more believable. But I think that they felt they needed a reason for why they didn't come forward. So that was the only thing that made sense. So that's what they went with. But either way, that's what I think and now I want to know what you all think. Do you believe Lori's story?

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Do you think Isabelle shot her father to protect her mother? Do you think Michael was abusive or do you think Lori was the abuser who lost her temper and shot her husband? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which will be listed down below.

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With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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Michael would sometimes respond to messages and other times he would ignore them. At one point, Michael told Frank to just keep his personal tools because he wouldn't be picking them up for work. Then, Robert, the friend and coworker who apparently drove Michael to Georgia, texted Michael to ask about Thanksgiving plans.

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Apparently, he had plans to go to the Shavers' home to celebrate Thanksgiving with them and a few other coworkers, but at first, he got no response. He texted Michael a few more times trying to confirm their plans until Michael finally responded, Then, by January of 2016, Michael's sister Christine reached out via Facebook.

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But in hindsight, they realized that they could have done more. They could have called him, heard his voice, checked in to truly see how he was doing. But years passed, and by the time his loved ones realized they hadn't heard his voice in a long time, it was far, far too late.

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Still, it seems like Michael couldn't be bothered because he responded saying, everyone just needs to leave me alone just like they did my entire life. For the months that followed, various family members and friends continued reaching out to Michael over Facebook and text, all checking in with him to see how he was doing.

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But he usually didn't respond to these messages, and when he did, he either told everyone to leave him alone, Or he said that he was traveling to different states such as New York, California, and Georgia. He would say that he's taking a break from everything to work on his marriage.

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He even told one individual that he was off living in Afghanistan and when that person asked him about his kids, he just stopped responding. Those close to Michael also reached out to Lori who had all sorts of different stories about where Michael was. She said that Michael left her and the children and was off somewhere starting a new life.

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She complained that she wasn't getting child support from him, that he just left his family high and dry. Other times, she told friends that Michael had actually been following her and stalking her and she was afraid for her safety.

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She told her best friend at one point that she actually had to call the police on Michael after she caught him stalking her and so the police took her cell phone and her vehicle to search for any tracking devices or software.

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Eventually, she then told another friend that she actually had been able to get Michael accountable for child support by law, but he still wasn't paying, so he was actually sent to jail for non-payment. Also around this time, starting in December of 2015, Lori started selling off a bunch of Michael's belongings.

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She sold his tools that he used for work when he was an aircraft mechanic, as well as several of his firearms. She sold one man nine different guns, as well as some ammo, reload equipment, and cleaning supplies. She tried selling his car and his tractor and even put up the house for sale.

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Anytime people would come over and buy those items, Lori told them that yes, they belonged to her husband, but said that he left months ago and didn't take anything with him. So she just assumed he wasn't coming back. So she had every right to start selling his stuff. However, all throughout this time, not a single person ever spoke to Michael over the phone or saw him in person.

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Anytime someone reached out to him, they either got no response or got a very odd response from Michael that didn't really sound like him. either telling them to leave him alone or telling them that he was off somewhere living this whole new life. But as years started to pass and no one was seeing Michael or hearing from him, those who knew him started to get more and more worried.

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Most of us are very busy adults who don't always have the time to call family members or check in as often as we would like, so it can be easy to let that kind of communication slip to the back burner.

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Finally, by February of 2018, a friend of Michael's, Scott, realized that he hadn't seen Michael in over two years. Scott had actually grown up near Michael, so he was a friend of the family. He ended up reaching out to Michael's family, asking what was going on with him, and that's when he learned that no one else had physically seen or heard from Michael in years.

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Of course, this prompted Scott to go to Lori, who once again had all sorts of stories to tell regarding Michael's whereabouts. She told Scott that Michael had left years ago in a black SUV and she never heard from him again. He found out about the odd way he quit his job via text and how he was texting friends and family members to leave him alone. All of this felt very odd to Scott.

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Then Scott found out about a concrete slab that had been laid in Michael's backyard. Now, back in 2015, after Michael returned to the home to live with his family again, he started digging a pit in his backyard to turn it into a duck pond for his kids to enjoy.

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But he never got around to finishing it, and by March of 2016, Lori started posting to Facebook about a new fire pit she built in that pit. Then, by February of 2017, she poured a large concrete slab near that fire pit to complete the work in her backyard. But when Scott saw that concrete slab in the backyard in 2018, he thought that it was odd.

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That plus all of the other circumstances surrounding Michael's disappearance were just too much to ignore. Scott and the rest of Michael's family all agreed that there was no way that Michael would ever pick up and leave his family to start a new life. It just wasn't like him.

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but truly no matter who you are or how busy you are, try and take the time to talk to those who mean the most to you even if it's just for a few minutes every couple weeks because you never truly know what could be going on in their lives and checking in on them could be exactly what they needed. With that being said, Let's get into today's case.

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So, by February 16, 2018, Scott called the Lake County Police Department requesting a welfare check for Michael, specifically asking them to check out that concrete slab in the yard. When deputies arrived at the home to speak with Lori, she said that they were separated and that Michael left the family and was staying in Georgia.

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She said that the last time he was at their home was in September of 2014 when he picked up his belongings after he had moved out. Then, the last time she saw him was in 2015 when they had a DCFS hearing related to a domestic incident that happened the year prior. At that time, deputies asked Lori to search around the property, which she allowed.

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She was very cooperative, answering any and all questions they had and allowing them to do whatever was needed to figure out what was going on. When searching the area, deputies made it to the backyard where the concrete slab was located. Immediately, the slab really stood out to them because they noticed that it actually had a dip in the middle.

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According to investigators, when a body is buried under concrete, as the body starts decomposing, the concrete will start to compress into the earth, causing a dip to happen. Knowing that they were doing a welfare check for someone who hasn't been seen or heard from in a very long time, The dip in the concrete really raised suspicions for investigators.

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They wondered if this slab could actually be a grave. At that time, investigators asked Lori if they could bring a cadaver dog onto the property to sniff the yard, but Lori said no and asked investigators to leave. So they left and started to look more into Michael's records to see if there was any proof that he had left and was living anywhere else.

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they found that Michael had no current driver's license in the state of Florida or any other state. Both his US passport and his pilot's medical certificate had expired. There were a few transactions on his credit and debit cards, but every transaction since November of 2015 could be traced back to online orders placed under Lori's name.

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His credit and debit cards were eventually overdrawn, at which time they were never used again. He had been sued by his credit card company for nonpayment of these cards, but that lawsuit had been dismissed because the credit card company couldn't find him.

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Once again, after speaking with friends and family members of Michael's, they learned that not a single person besides Lori had physically heard from him. Not only that, but the stories Lori was telling everyone were not backed up with any evidence. Lori had never requested child support from Michael.

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There were no police reports regarding any stalking incidents involving Michael, and he certainly had never been in jail for non-payment. His car had been repossessed because Lori couldn't sell it without the title, which she didn't have.

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They found that Lori never once tried to make contact with Michael after November 3rd, 2015, which was odd given that she somehow knew where he was after he left. And just given the fact that he was her husband and she had two kids with him, she likely would have tried calling him at least a couple times after he just up and left the family.

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Based on all of that information, investigators knew that this situation was suspicious, so Michael was officially entered into the system as a missing person. Upon starting their investigation, detectives continued talking to those within Michael and Lori's circles and finding out any information they could.

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Lori Shaver was married to her husband, Michael Shaver, and together they had two children. The two had been together for quite some time, meeting as teenagers in upstate New York before ultimately settling in a home in Clermont, Florida. Michael worked as an aircraft mechanic at one point. He was a pilot as well.

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They found a lot, and I'm going to tell it to you in chronological order to hopefully avoid any confusion. First, they found that on September 4th, 2014, the two were involved in a domestic violence incident. When police were called to their residence, it was reported that the two got into a very heated argument which escalated into physical violence.

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Each of them had a different story of what happened, both blaming the other for running and grabbing Lori's .38 revolver and brandishing it at the other. They both said that they had to wrestle the gun out of the other's hands. But in the end, Lori was able to get the gun and ended up hitting Michael over the head with it, causing a laceration to his head.

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The gun was taken in for investigation, as was Michael's own personal gun, though it was not used in this incident as far as I could tell, and this second gun, Michael's gun, was returned to him the day following. At the time, though, it was determined that Michael was the main aggressor, so he was arrested for simple battery.

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It was after this in which he moved out of the home and the two separated. Michael ended up pleading guilty to his charges in exchange for a plea deal that allowed him to enter a 12-month intervention program, which he completed in six months. After he left the home and the two separated, each of them started dating other people.

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In November of 2014, Michael started seeing a woman he worked with at Disney, Kendall. while Lori was also seeing someone else during that time. However, according to Kendall, all throughout her relationship with Michael, she was constantly harassed by Lori. She said that even though Lori was seeing other people, she was not cool with Michael doing the same.

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There were times in which Kendall heard Michael on the phone with Lori, who told him that he would never see his kids again if he didn't do what she wanted. Then, Lori started sending Kendall numerous messages on Facebook calling her all sorts of different insults, threatening to expose her to her family as a homewrecker, specifically naming her grandmother by name.

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And once, she even called Kendall's grandmother at 3 in the morning to harass her. In March of 2015, Michael called Kendall and told her to park in a different parking lot than where she normally did at work because Lori was on her way to Disney with a gun. Then in April, Lori called Disney HR and sent them photos from Kendall's Facebook to try and report her.

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Then once Kendall blocked her, she started making a bunch of other Facebook accounts and started sending requests to her over and over and over again. It got to the point that any time Michael would stay over at Kendall's place after work, he would first go to his own place to make sure he wasn't being followed.

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but just before his death, he had been working as a ride mechanic at the Epcot Center in Disney World. By 2014, Michael had moved out of the family home due to issues within the marriage, but by 2015, he moved back in, seemingly in an attempt to try and work things out with his wife.

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Finally, by May of that year, Kendall broke up with Michael because she just couldn't handle the harassment anymore. She was afraid that she would lose her job if Lori kept making complaints, and of course, she feared for her safety. After this relationship ended, as I stated, at some point in 2015, Michael returned to the home with Lori to try and patch things up with their relationship.

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Kamari Holland was born on November 23, 2016 in Columbus, Georgia to Corey Holland and Christy Sippel. Corey and Christy also had another son together who was two years younger than Kamari. Then Christy had an additional two sons from a different father. Those who knew Kamari described her as having the biggest heart a little girl could have.

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That is when he forced her to perform sexual acts on him before raping her. As he did that, he kept saying Komari's name. He then bragged to this woman about how he taught a five-year-old to do sexual acts. She was then forced to stay in that home the entire night. The following day, this woman told Jeremy that she knew about this place where he could get drugs.

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Throughout her time with him, she realized that he was an addict, so this was the best way she knew to get him and herself out of that home. At that point, Jeremy had taken all of her personal belongings, including her phone, preventing her from calling for help. But she did end up taking Jeremy to the location where she had previously hid another cell phone in cases of emergency.

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So once they got to that location, she ran into the bathroom and used that phone to call for help. She waited in that restroom until someone came to help her, which is crazy. The foresight she had to like have a safe place where she could hide a phone and call someone for help. That's actually really smart.

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So clearly, we can see that Jeremy is a disgusting monster who thinks that he is entitled to whatever and whoever he wants. Initially, after his arrest, Jeremy actually pleaded not guilty due to mental defect. And that is where the case sat for two years, trying to figure out if he was mentally capable to stand trial. And in my opinion,

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anyone who can do such horrific things to a child is not mentally well. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't take accountability for their actions. That doesn't mean that they don't know it's wrong and that doesn't mean that what they did doesn't warrant them being behind bars for the rest of their life. But by March of 2024, a little over two years after this horrific crime,

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Jeremy Williams actually pled guilty to the kidnapping, rape, sodomy, and murder of five-year-old Kamari Holland. For these charges, he was facing the death penalty. So under Alabama law, there still actually needed to be a jury trial for jurors to determine if the death penalty will be used.

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Before leaving, Kamari ran up to her dad, kissed him goodbye, saying that she would see him the next morning. However, by December 13th, 2021, Christy called 911 to report that Kamari was missing. She told the operator that she had her two kids over for a sleepover that night.

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During that trial that lasted three days, multiple people testified about Jeremy's character, saying that he was a monster. He was soulless. He had no heart and no regard for anyone but himself. In the process of this, Jeremy asked that his lawyers not object or cross-examine any witnesses. Investigators spoke about finding Kamari's body. They showed the videos that Jeremy took on his phone.

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They showed his confession. During all of that, several family members of Jeremy's had to leave the courtroom because of how disgusted they were with this. There were several jury members who openly sobbed or teared up at the evidence. Overall, this was just a horrifying, gruesome case for anyone to have to sit through.

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Many of the investigators said that this was the worst case they have ever worked. At the end of this trial, which again I'm sure was just the worst thing any of these jurors had ever seen... They went off for deliberations and after deliberations, they came back and decided to sentence Jeremy Williams to death. And if I do say so myself, I couldn't agree more. This man does not deserve to eat.

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He doesn't deserve to breathe. He doesn't deserve to live after all of the trauma and suffering he has put so, so many people through. Some of you may disagree with me, but that is where I stand on this. Now, when it comes to Kamari's mother, who in my opinion is just as much of a low-life piece of trash as Jeremy, like I mentioned earlier, she was charged with rape and murder.

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However, the state did ultimately drop the murder charges and instead charged Christy Stipple with human trafficking. After the murder charges were dropped, she did plead guilty to human trafficking. There was no plea deal in place, meaning that she pled guilty not knowing what sentence she would be serving.

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As of right now, we don't know the official sentence for Christy, but she could be facing up to 20 years in prison. She will have to register as a sex offender and pay up to $10,000 in fines. which to me, I think is not even close to enough for what she did to her own baby. Do I think she wanted her daughter to die? Not necessarily. Do I think that she planned on him murdering her? Not at all.

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She put the kids to bed, but when she woke up by 5.50am the next morning, she saw that Kamari was missing and the front door had been left open. Immediately, officers responded to the home and began their searches for the missing little girl. They did notice right away that there was no sign of forced entry, so they felt like the door had either been left unlocked or

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So I guess I do agree with them dropping the murder charges. However, she willingly subjected her daughter to the most brutal and painful torture a child can experience and she knew that it could cause her death. And for what? Drug money? I don't think human trafficking describes what she really did even a little bit.

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This was a five-year-old little girl who her mom cared so little for that she sold her to be tortured. That might be one of the worst things that's ever come out of my mouth. So I think that she should also be charged with reckless homicide in addition to human trafficking.

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Reckless homicide basically means that they know their actions create a significant risk of bodily harm to the victim, but the perpetrator ignores those risks and does it anyways, killing that person. That sounds like the perfect charge to me, and I believe it carries a sentence of up to 10 years in Alabama. So it could really lengthen her sentence if run consecutively.

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So that is a charge that I think is appropriate in this case. I do think 10 years is pretty low for someone who causes the death of another person because of their

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own irresponsible actions but that's a totally different conversation I really hope that Christy gets the absolute maximum time behind bars and if she doesn't it's going to be an absolute slap in the face to her little daughter who suffered so so very much in the last moments of her life But with that being said, that is all the information we know on this case as of right now.

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Of course, in the aftermath of this, Kamari's father, Corey, is absolutely devastated. He's happy that Jeremy was sentenced to death, but obviously, that isn't going to bring his daughter back. With this, obviously a big question a lot of people have asked is why he let his daughter go with her mother when the courts ordered her not to see her. I had that question as well.

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As far as I've seen, he hasn't given a great answer for that, but what I've gathered from the interviews I've seen and the articles I've read is that he probably just felt bad that Christy couldn't see them. He wanted to offer a little bit of time for her to see her kids.

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he probably thought that she was doing better with the drugs he probably didn't think that anything bad would happen there's a big difference between doing drugs and raising kids and doing drugs and seeing your kids occasionally most people can clean up their act for at least a day or two when in the presence of their children we see it in so many cases most of the time people will clean up their act for a month or whatever

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get their kids back, and then they do end up slipping up and neglecting their children. But again, they can at least keep up the act for a little bit. So in this case, I'm sure that Corey felt that nothing could go wrong within the 12 hours that they were with her.

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Little did he know, she cared so little for her children that she subjected her five-year-old to the worst kind of torture anyone could endure without a second thought or a care in the world. Obviously, the details in this case are horrendous. This is one of the worst cases I have ever looked into. But at this point, all I can do is hope that both Christy and Jeremy are suffering in prison.

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I hope that every inmate around them knows exactly what they did and are making them pay. Either that or they are in solitary, constantly alone with their thoughts, having nothing but time in the world to reflect on what they did. But with that, that is where I'm going to end today's video.

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or the abductor was someone known to Christy. Once starting their investigation, they looked into the people who Christy had been in contact with and could have possibly had access to the home and who may have wanted to take Kamari. Police found that on the night of December 12th, 35-year-old Christy had been in contact with 37-year-old Jeremy Williams.

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Police ran a search of his name, and immediately, red flags went up. Just before Kamari's disappearance, Jeremy had been let out on bond in Muscogee, Georgia for simple battery, family violence, and third-degree cruelty to children.

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Beyond that, back in 2009, Jeremy had been arrested for aggravated child abuse after a three-year-old boy in his care was put into a pot of boiling water from the waist down, obviously causing serious injuries to the child. However, in this case, I guess there was a lack of evidence, so Jeremy was acquitted of these charges.

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She was always happy and smiling, always talking, singing, dancing, and recording videos. Everyone who knew little Kamari said that she was just the most genuinely loving and affectionate kid you could know. She was intelligent and confident, wanting to be the boss of her little brother and even her dad.

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A few years after that, there was a case in Alaska where Jeremy's own one-month-old daughter had been beaten to death while under his care. Once again, in this case, there was a lack of evidence, so although he was named as a suspect, he was not arrested for her death. So based on all of this very concerning information, police knew that they needed to look into Jeremy as a possible suspect.

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They were able to use his cell phone number to ping his location, and they found that he was staying at the Bamboo Motel in Phoenix City, which is where Kamari lived with her father. Police tracked him down and when they found him, he was smoking meth with his uncle. At that time, he was taken into police custody.

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After taking Jeremy into custody, they confiscated his phone and took it for forensic examination. They looked into his cell phone pings and they were able to locate his current residence. They then went to his home to execute a search warrant, but while searching the home, officers were met with a woman who introduced herself as Jeremy's wife.

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Officers told her that they were investigating a missing persons case, and to this, the wife responded with a horrified look on her face, saying, "...if anything happened to that little girl, she'll be at an address in Phoenix City." She then gave them an address to an abandoned home owned by Jeremy.

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Officers knew immediately just by the look on this woman's face that they needed to investigate that address immediately. So investigators went to the home to search and that is when they made a sickening discovery. It was in that abandoned home where investigators discovered the body of five-year-old little Kamari Holland. She was found naked lying on the floor in the basement.

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Upon initial examination, it was clear that she had marks all over her body indicating that she had been tied up and sexually abused. She had been bleeding and had injuries all over her little body. After her body was discovered, Kamari was sent off to the medical examiner for an autopsy and just a warning, it gets really bad from here.

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It was there that it was discovered that she had been violently sexually abused with horrific damage to her genital area. She also had bruising to her forehead, nose, around her mouth, and to her backside. There was also bruising around her neck and wrists that matched up with the way she was tied up.

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The medical examiner determined that Kamari's cause of death was actually the result of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. The toxicology report also showed that Kamari had methamphetamine in her system at the time of her death, so this five-year-old little child had been drugged, tied up, beaten, and horrifically raped.

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After this horrific discovery was made, of course, Jeremy was officially arrested and charged with counts of kidnapping, sodomy, and murder. Then, of course, Christy, Kamari's mother, was notified about her daughter's heartbreaking and disturbing death. After finding this out, Christy went on the media to speak about just how hard all of this has been.

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Corey referred to Kamari as his little princess because that is exactly what she called herself, a princess. By August of 2021, Kamari had just started preschool at Just for Kids in Phoenix City, Alabama. She absolutely loved school and learning. She was just such a curious little girl.

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In one interview, she called her daughter a blessing. She was the most caring, sweetest little girl who wanted to help others. She then said that the media is out there making her look like a monster, but really, she's just a mommy who had nothing to do with her daughter's death. She said that Kamari was her life. She lived for her daily.

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At the time, Kamari's parents were not together, and Corey had full custody of both Kamari and her little brother. Some sources state that Christy was actually not allowed to have any contact with her kids after the initial custody hearing, but Corey did allow Christy to see the kids on the weekends under direct supervision. This was because Christy was a heavy drug user.

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she was perfect. However, just two weeks after Kamari's body was discovered, police arrested Christy on charges of sodomy, rape, and murder as well. At that time, police believed that she and Jeremy knew each other and that they had some sort of friendship where Jeremy would sell her drugs.

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And then it was after her arrest when Jeremy decided to call one of the investigators on the case by December 25th, 2021. He told the investigator that he had been doing a lot of praying and wanted to get some information off of his chest. Of course, the detective immediately went in for the interview and it was at this time that Jeremy confessed to so, so many horrific, disturbing things.

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He started by talking about the death of his one-month-old Nadia in Alaska. He said that the medical examiner ruled her cause of death as a medical emergency within her intestines, but he knew that she died because of something he did to her.

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He explained that whenever the baby would cry, he would become enraged, so he would often punch his one-month-old baby in the head and threw her down the stairs. After this shocking confession, the case into Nadia's death had been reopened in Alaska. In the interview, he also admitted that he molested his five-year-old stepdaughter on a daily basis. Then he started talking about Kamari.

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Jeremy said that he met Christy through a mutual friend in April or May of 2021. The two would frequently smoke meth together and have sex. At the time, he was using PPP loans that he got from the government due to COVID to afford his meth. While the two continued to get to know each other and smoke meth together, Jeremy told Christy openly that he enjoyed performing sexual abuse on children.

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Despite this, Christy started asking Jeremy to babysit Kamari while she went out and did sex work. Eventually, this progressed to Jeremy and Christy coming to an arrangement. Just before December 13th, him and Christy arranged that Jeremy would pay Christy $2,500 in exchange for taking Kamari for one hour. and doing whatever he wanted to her.

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He said that he never actually intended on paying her for this, but he knew that obviously Christy wasn't going to be calling the police because she's not going to tell the police that someone didn't pay for her services provided when those services are horrific child abuse.

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When December 13th arrived by around 2 a.m., Jeremy went to Christy's home to pick up the unsuspecting five-year-old little girl from Columbus. then headed back to the abandoned house in Phoenix City. On the drive, he showed Kamari a porn video and told her that she was going to be doing those acts on him. However, she refused and said she was not going to be doing that.

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At the time, Christy was living in Columbus, Georgia, and there, she was known by those around her as abusing drugs like meth, so she was in no condition to take care of her kids. But on the evening of December 12, 2021, Corey allowed the two children to sleep over at their mother's house.

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This response caused him to become enraged, so he punched her in the head. When he got home, he parked in a spot that he felt was inconspicuous so no one would see him. I guess his aunt also lived either in the area or in that home, so he didn't want her to see him in that car with the child. In the car, he smoked meth and forced Kamari to smoke with him.

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He then raped her over and over and over again for an hour within the car. After an hour of this horrendous abuse, he suddenly became enraged and started to strangle her until his hands went numb. He said that once she was unconscious, he started looking for somewhere to bury her, but then Christy started calling him over and over and over again.

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When he got the call, he would answer and say that he was stuck in traffic and would be back soon, but obviously... That wasn't the case. After this, that is when he brought Kamari inside of the home. In the home, he tied her up and continued to sexually abuse her.

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From the bruising that we've seen on her wrists and around her neck, it makes me think that she was alive and maybe just unconscious during the first part of this at least, but then at some point in all of this, she did pass away. When examining Jeremy's phone, they found that in yet another sick turn of events, he recorded the abuse.

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He took a total of six different videos where he is actively abusing Kamari. Investigators said that they knew it was him beyond a reasonable doubt in those videos because at one point, he drops the phone and you can see his face. According to phone records, it was about three hours after Jeremy took Kamari when Christy called 911 to report her missing.

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According to later review of CCTV footage, by around 6 a.m. on the 13th, Jeremy was seen back in Columbus before heading back to the abandoned home in Phoenix City. He then stayed in Phoenix City until just before 10 a.m. At the location of the abandoned home, police also found tire marks leading up to where Jeremy described pulling in and bringing Kamari in.

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It turned out that after bringing Kamari into his home and killing her, he changed the tires on his car so that they wouldn't match up, but they were able to confirm that the tire marks were a match to his old tires.

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Now, as all of this information was coming out about what Jeremy had done to this sweet, innocent little girl, a new victim came forward to investigators to talk about what she had experienced at Jeremy's hands. This 31-year-old woman said that on the night before Kamari's body was found, so around the same day that he had murdered her, she and her boyfriend had a huge fight.

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She said that she had nowhere to go after that, so she reached out to a friend who gave her Jeremy's number, saying that she could stay with him. But when she arrived to his place and went inside, she got a really bad feeling. She felt that something was off, so she tried leaving. But when she did so, Jeremy blocked the door with a deep freezer and told her to get down on her knees.

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He was under the impression that she was not going to be on drugs while they were under her care, that she was capable of taking care of her kids for just one night on her own. So, Christy left her home in Columbus, driving just over the border into Alabama to pick up Kamari and her younger brother.

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Today's case is one that I've been following since it very first happened. On the surface, it appears to be yet another case of a mother who allowed her boyfriend to abuse her daughter, leading to a horrifying tragic end. But this case is so much more than that. Today we are going to discuss the devastating consequences of the bystander effect.

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This 15-year-old had been dating then-23-year-old Destiny. You heard that right. an adult in her early 20s, was dating a child. Now, it hasn't been confirmed for sure that she was dating him. I don't think she ever stated that, but officers do believe that that is what was going on, which even shows to me even more that Destiny knew that this was wrong. She never admitted that she was dating him.

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but she was, so the fact that she wouldn't admit to it, that just tells me that she knew that it was wrong. Either way, when they found Christian, he was taken to the Hillcrest Youth Services for emergency residency, but he quickly escaped. Officers set out to search for him, and once again, he was located at Destiny's Place.

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He was detained once again, this time being placed into the Youth Care Center in Evansville before he was transported back to Fort Wayne and back into the custody of his grandmother. At that time, Destiny was also arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

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But just two months after returning home, once again, he left and his grandmother reported him missing by April 11th, 2024, around the same time in which Destiny's roommates say that she and Alex moved in with them. So back at the station, officers are sitting there with a young man who identifies himself as Alex. They asked him multiple times if that was his real name and he said yes.

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So then they straight up asked him, so you aren't Christian Gonzalez, the same Christian Gonzalez that is reported missing out of Fort Wayne and was already caught once with Destiny Roads? And still, he said that he wasn't. So this must have just been some other random teenager that was with her.

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In response, officers told him that they were going to go back and check the body cam footage from the original incident when they found that he was with Destiny in February to see if, you know, this person was really him.

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So at that time, he lowered his head and quietly admitted that he was Christian Gonzalez, the now 16-year-old teenager who ran away from home to live with his 23-year-old girlfriend. As all of that was happening, for the two days that followed Octavia's admittance into the hospital, she remained on life support.

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But like I said, she had been in very critical condition and there was very little brain activity. So just two days later, by June 16th, 2024, on Father's Day of all days, four-year-old little Octavia died from her injuries. Her grandmother Linda and her father Brandon were absolutely devastated and heartbroken. They just wanted justice for their little girl.

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So maybe Octavia was living with Destiny before then in Fort Wayne but moved in with her father after Destiny moved. Maybe after she moved, Brandon and her switched off caring for Octavia every week or so. I don't for sure know what the living situation was, so if you know more about her living arrangements, please do let me know in the comments.

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They never could have guessed that dropping her off with her own mother would result in such horrific consequences. They did know that Christian had abused Octavia in the past but they had no idea that he was staying with her in that apartment. She lied to them and he hid from them. If they ever knew that he was there, they never would have allowed Octavia to stay with them.

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They knew that Christian had to be the one responsible for their little girl's death. After being pronounced dead at the hospital, Octavia was transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. There, it was discovered that the four-year-old little girl died as a result of blunt force trauma to her head and neck.

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Based on the reporting from the roommates of Octavia's strange behaviors, her spacing out and throwing up, it appears that at some point on June 13th, Christian gave Octavia a severe head injury and strangled her. We don't know for sure if it was this injury that caused her death or if there was another beating while he was alone with her while Destiny was at Sonic.

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Either way, 16 year old Christian beat and strangled this little girl to death. At that time, then 16 year old Christian Gonzalez was arrested and charged with Octavia's murder, while 23 year old Destiny Rhodes was arrested and charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death, as well as another charge of contributing to the delinquency of a child.

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After these charges were filed, Christian initially appeared in juvenile court. But he was then transported to adult court, where he was now facing his charges as an adult. He also filed a motion for a speedy trial, basically forcing prosecutors to try the case within six months.

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This was most likely done with the hopes that they wouldn't have enough time to gather the proper evidence to build their case, but This definitely backfired. Christian's trial for murder started in January of this year. Now, with this case in general, the reporting is very spotty.

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It took a lot of digging to even find what I've told you up to this point, and let me tell you, there is no information about the trial. I would literally click on an article saying, you know, prosecution opening statements in Christian Gonzalez's trial. And then I would click on it and like, that's the article that the opening statements have started.

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It's like one sentence and then the article is done. Like, I'm not kidding you. Most of the articles I found about this case were a couple sentences and were literally just that the case is going to trial or that...

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know christian has been charged things like that so if that tells you anything about how difficult it was to find information about this case that's basically what i had to go through with all of these different articles but basically with that all we know is that the trial lasted for four days

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We obviously have the testimony from the roommates, the bruises and the bite mark they found on her, the fact that he admitted to abusing her, but we actually don't know what the defense was. In my head, the argument was most likely made that anyone in that apartment could have been responsible, especially Destiny.

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with that being said by june of 2024 brandon drove four-year-old little octavia down to evansville to stay with her mother destiny for a few days now destiny lived in an apartment with a bunch of other people the two individuals who actually rented the apartment sisters carly and sydney allowed destiny to stay with them for a few months the

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There isn't any actual camera footage that shows him hurting her, only the words of witnesses. And if one of them are responsible for her death, then they have a hell of a motive to lie and pin this on Christian. But in my opinion, I think that Christian was a very troubled teen.

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According to Facebook posts by Linda, Octavia's grandmother, Christian has a history of violence and getting into trouble at school ever since he was a kid. He was known to abuse Octavia in the past and even admitted to it. I think that he most likely strangled her when he bit her. I want to note that when Octavia told her mom about Christian biting her, she also said that he covered her mouth.

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So it's possible that he was strangling her at that time that he bit her and that's just what she took it as. So either that or he was mad about everyone confronting him about the bite, that the second he was alone with her, he beat her to death then. But we do know that she was showing those strange behaviors all day after the biting incident, so she likely was suffering from head trauma.

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So again, her death was either from that or a second beating that finished her off. Either way, I think that once she finally went to sleep, having sustained an untreated traumatic brain injury, I think she slipped into a coma, never waking up. I think that Destiny again cared so little for her that she didn't even check on Octavia before leaving for work, so she likely didn't notice.

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but I think that Christian did notice when he woke up and just didn't do anything about it, seeing as how he was sitting there next to her when she was found and tried saying that she just sleeps with her eyes open. I don't know what he was thinking in that moment, but he was trying to delay the inevitable. But no matter what the arguments in the trial were,

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We do know that the trial lasted for four days, and at the end, the jury found 16-year-old Christian Gonzalez guilty of murder. For this, he was given a sentence of 60 years behind bars before he will be eligible for parole, so he will be in his late 70s by the time he's released. Hopefully that's enough time, but honestly, I hope that he never is released.

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As of right now, Destiny is still awaiting her trial for charges of child endangerment. As soon as I find out more about that aspect of this case, I will update the description down below. So as of right now, that is where the case sits. Obviously, as we heard all throughout the video, Octavia was failed by everyone in that apartment.

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She was first failed by her mother who failed to protect her, but she was also failed by the three other women who lived there, all who knew that she had been hurt by Christian or Alex as they knew him.

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It's one thing to not want to report child abuse if you see maybe some iffy bruises but have never seen the parent be aggressive or violent, but the fact that Christian admitted to harming her, that should have immediately caused someone to report it, but nobody did. At least Destiny admitted that she just didn't want to get in trouble.

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She didn't want law enforcement to know she was harboring a 16-year-old again. But what are the other women's excuses? Were they nervous to report it? Were they not sure if it was really abuse? Like, come on. If one person in that home had stepped up and done absolutely anything, I likely wouldn't be reporting on this case to you right now. And I'm not the only person who thinks that.

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Then there was another girl, Megan, who had also been staying with them for about a week at that time. Also living with them at the time was Destiny's boyfriend, who I will discuss in just a minute. Like I said, this was an arrangement that Octavia's father and grandmother were expecting to go well. She would be with her mother, who she loved.

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Octavia's grandmother, Linda Alvarez, has been very outspoken about her outrage at those roommates not doing anything. She started a Change.org petition hoping to enact Octavia's law.

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octavia's law would make it so that anyone who witnesses any sort of child abuse or neglect is legally obligated to report it to police or cps to be silent in the face of witnessing abuse is almost as bad as the abuse itself these young children can't cannot speak up for themselves. They are trapped in their circumstances. They cannot do anything themselves to stop the abuse.

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It is up to us as the adults to help them step in when needed. I absolutely love that Linda is using her voice to enact change, and I hope that through promoting the petition, we can help make that change possible. happen. If you agree that we adults should be required to act in these situations, please consider signing the petition.

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They are almost to 2,000 signatures, so please, let's help get those numbers up so we can be active true crime consumers and be the change that we want to see. I also do want to note that after Octavia's death, the family made the decision to donate her functioning organs, giving hope to others. giving her own life to help save another.

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The family actually got to meet one of the recipients of her organs in July, a man from New York who was saved by Octavia's kidneys. The wife of this man reached out to Linda, thanking her granddaughter for saving her husband. They have a special needs little boy of their own who needs his father. And Octavia is the reason that this little boy will have his father around.

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So if anything positive comes out of this horrific case, it's that. I just love when we can see things like this happening in such horrific cases. These stories are so, so difficult to hear. But knowing that a little boy will now have his father around least we can end this one on a positive note.

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She had all these other women around her who I believe, at least most of them, they had met in the past and seemed like good people. But when Linda and Brandon found out what was really going on within that apartment and what happened to Octavia as a result, they were heartbroken. By 8.50 a.m.

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on the morning of June 14, 2024, the Evansville Police Department received a call from one of the women living in that apartment who reported that she found her roommate's 4-year-old daughter unresponsive and not breathing. When officers arrived, they immediately made contact with Octavia, who was unconscious and barely breathing.

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They immediately began examining the little girl, who was already reportedly cold to the touch. Right away, first responders noticed that Octavia was covered in bruises. She had multiple what they described as finger-shaped bruises to her left jawline and neck area, as well as red marks on the right side of her neck. There also appeared to be a human bite mark on her right forearm.

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So many people in Octavia's life could have stepped in, but no one did. And when you hear about the numerous chances the adult in her life had to step in but didn't, you will be just as furious as I am about this case. Octavia Aspen Aquino was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020, to Brandon Aquino and Destiny Rhodes.

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Paramedics did everything in their power to stabilize her before they loaded her up in the ambulance, transporting her to the nearest hospital. Once she arrived, she was in critical condition and had very little brain activity. She was placed on life support while hospital staff did everything they absolutely could to try and save four-year-old Octavia's life.

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In the meantime, as that was happening, other officers at the scene started questioning all individuals present to see what was going on. Destiny, Octavia's mother, was the first to be interviewed at the scene. She told them that when she left for work that morning at around 6.55am, she saw Octavia asleep by herself on the mattress they shared in the living room.

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She explained that Octavia had been dealing with her runny nose the past few days, but other than that, she was in good health. After speaking with Destiny, officers then spoke with the other women who lived in the apartment, who gave them some very disturbing information. They first spoke to Sydney, who said that she had been upstairs and asleep when her sister Carly woke her up in a panic.

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She frantically told her that Octavia wasn't breathing. They then woke up Megan, who had been sleeping in Carly's bedroom at the time, before all running downstairs and into the living room. There, they saw little Octavia lying on the mattress in the living room while Destiny's boyfriend, who they knew as Alex, was sitting on the bed beside her.

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Sydney told the officer that Alex lived with them as well. He had moved in around the same time that Destiny did back in April. Immediately, Sydney mentioning Alex raised alarms to officers because at no point during their conversation did Destiny mention having a boyfriend. She mentioned all of the other roommates she had, so why did she leave out Alex? That seemed to be intentional.

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Either way, after finding Octavia, Sydney described Alex as eerily calm, given that Octavia was very clearly in bad condition. But according to Sydney, Alex acting nonchalant and uncaring isn't all that new to him. She explained that in the days prior, she did notice some bruising on Octavia's body.

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She went on to say that on June 13th, the day before, she and Destiny went to work at around 11 a.m., leaving Octavia downstairs with Alex while Carly and Megan were upstairs sleeping.

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Before leaving, she noticed a small scratch on Octavia's left cheek, but she wasn't all that concerned about the scratch, saying that she got it when their friend's dog jumped on her while visiting their home the prior day. Sydney left work and came home by around 2 p.m., while Destiny had to stay until 4.

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When she got home, she said that Alex had asked her to look at Octavia because she had woken up crying, saying that the cat scratched her neck. Sydney noticed some red marks on her neck, but she grew even more concerned when she saw bruises on her face and a bite mark on her arm.

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She pointed these injuries out to Alex, who said that he hadn't noticed those other bruises, but the cat must have caused those too. But Sydney knew that at least the bite mark was not caused by a cat. It was the exact shape of a human mouth, and it was too big for Octavia to have done it herself. She asked Octavia what happened to her, and she just kept saying that the cat did it.

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By that point, Megan had woken up, so when she came downstairs, they decided to take Octavia to her mother's work, which was their local McDonald's. They showed Destiny Octavia's injuries, which made Destiny start crying and gave Octavia a hug. When Destiny asked her what happened, she finally admitted that Alex had bitten her.

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By the time they returned back to the apartment, they woke up Carly and gathered everyone to sit Alex down and make him admit to what happened. Of course, Alex initially denied biting Octavia, but Destiny pressed him further, saying that she knew it wasn't caused by the cat. They then told him that there was a hidden camera in the living room and they were going to check it to confirm his story.

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Octavia was described as the sweetest, kindest, most full-of-life little girl you could ever meet. She was a spunky girl who always had a huge smile on her face. She loved going to the zoo and getting ice cream. She also loved coloring and drawing, and her favorite shows to watch were Paw Patrol, Jurassic Park, and the Powerpuff Girls, My Little Pony, and Cocomelon.

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After that he finally admitted that he did bite her. He explained that Octavia bit him first, so she bit him back to show her what it was like. Destiny told him to never bite her again, saying that if he did, the camera in the living room would catch him.

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Sydney went on to say that after discovering those injuries on the 13th, for the remainder of the day, she did notice some odd behaviors from Octavia. She spent some time with her on the back porch and noticed that there were multiple spells where she would just stare ahead blankly and not respond to anything or anyone. She thought that maybe they were some sort of absence seizures.

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She also mentioned that Octavia threw up that day. When she went to work and arrived back home, she saw that there was a towel on the mattress in the living room. Alex told her that he gave Octavia some Kool-Aid, but she threw it up on the mattress.

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Sydney explained to the officer that she had never actually seen Alex abusing Octavia, but said that Destiny told her that Alex hit her and left a mark before they moved into the apartment with them. So, based on this, it seems that Destiny knew that Alex had abused Octavia in the past so badly that it left a mark on her. Yet, she still chose to allow Alex to live with them in that apartment.

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Keep that in mind as we go throughout the remainder of this case. After speaking with Sydney, officers then interviewed her sister, Carly. She explained that she worked overnights, so she arrived home at around 8.30 a.m. on the morning of June 14th. When she walked into the apartment, she immediately noticed Octavia lying on the mattress. Her eyes were wide open and her lips were blue.

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According to Carly, she looked obviously dead. In a panic, she ran upstairs and woke up Sydney and Megan before calling 911. As she called 911, she told Sydney to go to the McDonald's to get Destiny and bring her home. She also explained how Alex lived with them as well and would often watch Octavia while Destiny was at work.

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She too said that Alex was sitting on the mattress next to Octavia when she got home. When she asked Alex what was wrong with Octavia, he appeared calm and collected. He said simply, sometimes she sleeps with her eyes open. Absolutely ridiculous. She went on to say that the day before, June 13th, after the whole incident with Alex admitting to biting her, they took Octavia to the park.

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There, she seemed spaced out and not like herself. When the adults spoke to her, she barely responded. She was also barely playing at the park, which was very unlike her because she was normally a very energetic and playful little girl when they took her to the park. When they returned back to the apartment, these odd behaviors just continued.

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That night after returning back from the park, Megan and Destiny left the apartment to go get dinner at Sonic, and they were gone for about two hours for some reason, getting dinner at a fast food restaurant. My thought is that maybe they were chilling in the car and smoking or something like that, but regardless, while they were gone, Alex stayed home with Octavia.

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When they left initially, Carly was sleeping, but she eventually left for work that night before Megan and Destiny returned home. So there was a period of time in which Alex was home alone with her for at least about an hour. When Megan and Destiny returned, they saw that Octavia was playing on her tablet in bed. Octavia is believed to have gone to sleep at around 1 a.m., now going into June 14th.

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Now, as much as I tried digging, I couldn't find that much information about Octavia's living situation or background around her family. Some sources say that she was living with her mother, Destiny. However, in later interviews, Octavia's paternal grandmother, Linda Alvarez, said that she would see Octavia almost every day at her home in Fort Wayne.

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Now, Megan also knew about the bruises and the bite mark, as well as Alex admitting that he bit her. She said that she had seen Alex become angry before, but never witnessed him abusing or being aggressive towards Octavia. Again, not that that matters because she knows that he literally bit her.

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With that being said, after hearing from the others within that home, officers continued speaking with Destiny, who at that point, they already told her that they knew she had a boyfriend living in the home.

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They also told her what their roommate said about how they all knew that Alex was causing injuries to Octavia, and they asked her why she allowed Octavia to continue staying with Alex, especially on the night of June 13th when there was no reason for her to be left with him. If they just went to get dinner, she could have taken Octavia with her.

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She could have asked Megan to go pick it up for them. If they really wanted to smoke weed, they could have gone out on the back porch after going and grabbing the food from Sonic. But instead, she chose to leave Octavia alone with him after he was known to have abused her earlier that day. Destiny went on to explain that she thought Alex was remorseful.

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He apparently cried in the bathroom for two hours after they found out about him biting her. Which, side note, he didn't cry after biting her. He cried after they found out about him biting her. So, just take that with what it is. She also said that Alex now believed that there was a camera in the living room, so she felt that this would deter any further abuse.

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When asked why she didn't call the police to report the abuse to begin with, she said that she wanted to, but was worried about what would happen to Alex. Eventually though, she did admit that she just didn't want to get herself or Alex in trouble.

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She did say though that after the biting incident she told Alex that he needed to leave the apartment but apparently he's very manipulative and she loved him so he ended up convincing her to let him stay. Again this very much contradicts what she just said about how She didn't think Alex would do anything again because there was a hidden camera but yet she also tried to get him to leave.

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A 4 Year Old's DESPERATE Cries for Help Ignored by EVERYONE: The Tragic Case of Octavia Aquino

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Pick one. To me it sounds more so like Destiny just didn't care. She knew about the abuse prior to this and that day and she just didn't give it a second thought. She only cared about herself and her relationship with Alex. despite how poorly he treated her daughter.

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A 4 Year Old's DESPERATE Cries for Help Ignored by EVERYONE: The Tragic Case of Octavia Aquino

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By this point, after speaking with Destiny, Sydney, Carly, and Megan, none of the officers found any sign of Alex or any male at the scene for that matter. They asked Carly and Sydney where he was, and both of them said that they didn't actually know, but they said it's possible that he's still hiding somewhere inside, so maybe they should go look for him.

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A 4 Year Old's DESPERATE Cries for Help Ignored by EVERYONE: The Tragic Case of Octavia Aquino

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At that point, officers went into the unit to search. Officers made their presence known asking anyone inside to make themselves known though they got no response. They made their way through the rooms until they reached the bathroom. They started forcing the door open until finally a male came out of the room with his hands up.

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The longest she had ever gone without seeing Octavia was when her father Brandon would take her down to Evansville about a five-hour drive south to visit her mother. So I don't know if they shared custody or if she lived mostly with her father. We do know that Destiny had only been living in Evansville for a few months and it was more of a temporary thing.

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He then confirmed to officers that he was Alex before they placed him into handcuffs. At that time Alex was transported to the police station where he was taken in for questioning. There, he told officers that his name is Alex Gonzalez, but he went by his last name, Gonzalez. He gave them his date of birth, but officers weren't able to confirm his identity.

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A 4 Year Old's DESPERATE Cries for Help Ignored by EVERYONE: The Tragic Case of Octavia Aquino

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By this point, other officers had also looked into Destiny's background, and they found some concerning yet revealing information. Turns out, about six months prior to this, a 15-year-old teenager named Christian Gonzalez was reported missing from Fort Wayne, Indiana by his grandmother, Maria. About a month later, he was located in Evansville with Destiny.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So with all of that being said, let's get into today's case. Today we are going to be discussing the murder of Sydney Loof. Sydney Irene Loof was born August 21st, 1993 to her parents George and Susie Loof in the town of Arcadia, Nebraska. She spent the first seven years of her life growing up there before moving to Neely. She had a big brother named Levi and a younger sister named Mackenzie.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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At this point, as all of this was going on, police didn't really know where they were. They were unable to track them, but they were able eventually to get a hold of their cell phone data to track their movements, and they were located in Taney County, Missouri. Both Bailey and Aubrey were then arrested and charged with things unrelated to Sydney or her case.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They were being charged in relation to a scheme where they defrauded a couple in Kansas out of $400,000 to buy some fake gold coins. They were also charged with transporting stolen goods across state lines. They'd been jumping in between states and their cell phone records proved that.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They were both being held in Missouri for these charges, but for the time being, police didn't have anything else to say that these two were definitely responsible for Sydney's disappearance. Again, they were just named as persons of interest and police say that they just wanted to talk to them to find out more information about what happened that night.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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At this point, Sydney had been missing for two weeks and searches were continuously happening to try and find her. So now going back just a bit. When police initially found that Sydney was tracked to have last been at Bailey's apartment, they did go there to interview them, but they weren't there. As I just stated, they were in Missouri being involved in these other schemes and theft charges.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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But police did go ahead and speak to others who lived around the apartment complex, and they found out that Bailey and Aubrey had been living in that complex since June of 2017, so only a few months. Those around them said that the two portrayed themselves as antique dealers who were engaged. They were known to be pretty quiet, pretty much keep to themselves.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They always paid rent in cash and on time. Sometimes they even paid for multiple months in advance. But their landlord did notice something odd. Their landlord, who lived in the unit above them, reported that she smelled a very strong smell of bleach so strong to the point that it made her nauseous.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She also noticed that the two were running their AC unit on full blast, which was really weird because it was November, so there was really no reason for them to be running their AC that high. The landlord also confirmed to police that she did see an unknown female going into their apartment on November 15th around midday.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So based on all of this information, police were able to obtain a search warrant to search their apartment unit. When they started their search, police immediately noticed the very strong smell of bleach. It was overpowering. And they noted that one of the rooms in the apartment had been meticulously cleaned. The walls were scrubbed and everything was perfectly spotless.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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while the rest of the apartment was very cluttered and dirty. They also said that things were kind of thrown around haphazardly and it looked as if the two had left the apartment in a hurry. Additionally, police had found a dog leash, which stood out to them and was strange because they didn't have a dog. They also found duct tape and a sauna suit with the crotch cut out,

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They found zip ties, a hatchet, they found a plastic drop cloth smeared with blood, and a book on anatomy. Obviously, all of this looked very, very concerning, so police were now going off of the assumption that this might be a murder case, so police started focusing their searches on the rural areas and ponds in Wilbur.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So, like I said, police were able to use Bailey and Aubrey's cell phone data to track and arrest them in Missouri. But they were also able to use this cell phone data to track their movements in the days before and after Sydney's disappearance.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Police discovered that on the same day that Sydney was reported missing, Bailey had driven around 200 miles on various dirt roads in rural areas of Clay County, Nebraska. They used this data to go ahead and search around this area. And here their worst fears came to fruition. They came across a ditch in the rural area on December 4th, 2017.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Growing up, she was described as a tomboy who loved being outdoors. She loved sledding in the winter, swinging on the tree swing, riding her bike to the pool with her siblings in the summer, and she loved fishing. According to her mom, she could outfish most of her family. They often went fishing when they went on vacation in Valentine or Sioux Falls in South Dakota.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They looked in a ditch next to an isolated dirt road and they noticed what looked like a human arm sticking out of a trash bag. When they looked further in and around the ditch, they discovered more human remains. which were all scattered within 13 different trash bags. All of these human remains were found near roads that Bailey's cell phone had pinged from.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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However, they noted that not all of the remains of a human were found within these bags. The left upper arm had never been found and neither were the internal organs, including the tongue, heart, esophagus, and most of the left lung. With the remains, they also found latex gloves that were pretty much covered in blood.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Of course, these remains were sent to the medical examiner for an autopsy, and using the distinctive tattoos found on the body, these remains were positively identified as belonging to 24-year-old Sydney Loof. The autopsy found that her cause of death was actually strangulation. They also found a lot of defensive wounds that showed that she fought off her attacker.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Additionally, they found bruising on her hands and wrists, which occurred before death, which were signs of her being restrained. Upon toxicology screening, they found that she had traces of antidepressants in her system as well as small amounts of alcohol. They said that her body had been dismembered with a thin, fine-toothed saw such as a hacksaw.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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After it came out that Sydney's body had been discovered on January 3rd, Aubrey had called into a World Herald newspaper reporter to tell him that he had information about Sydney's death, but that does not mean that he's necessarily guilty. But then after this, in just a few days before his hearing for his theft charges, he admitted responsibility for Sydney's death.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He told police that he, Sydney, and two other women who were not Bailey had engaged in consensual BDSM. Then he said that the other two women had paid him $150,000 to film them in these acts. He initially admitted that he had strangled her in an act of erotic asphyxiation during consensual rough sex.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He said that the whole thing got completely out of hand, that of course he accidentally killed her, so he panicked, and he cut up her body and hid it so that he wouldn't get in trouble. But he maintained that Bailey had absolutely nothing to do with Sydney's death, saying that all she did was help him hide her body and then wash off the walls of the apartment with bleach.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Then when police went ahead and spoke with Bailey, she also said that she had nothing to do with it. She said that she had actually fallen asleep on the couch while Aubrey, Sydney, and the two other women engaged in sexual relations in the bedroom without her being there. She maintained that this was all an accident and an otherwise consensual act.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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However, police uncovered even more evidence that showed that this probably was not true. So first of all, we know that Sydney had texted who she thought was Audrey trying to make sure that it was only going to be the two of them and that nobody else was going to be there. She had texted her friend saying, I hope she doesn't have a boyfriend.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So that already shows that Sydney did not want to participate in sexual acts with anyone other than her. and not with this nasty 51-year-old man. They also said that there was absolutely no evidence of anyone else besides the three of them being in that apartment at that time.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She also always wanted to tag along on the fishing trips that her father and her brother went on. Her brother went on to say that whenever he would start liking something, she would like that same thing too. She was also very athletic in her childhood years. She was on the junior high basketball team, being described as a great baseline jumper.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Then there was more evidence that came out that showed that not only was Bailey a willing participant, but that this entire thing was a premeditated murder. So, like I said, police had used their cell phone data to show their movements around the time that Sydney was known to have been murdered. They also used a local surveillance video that they found based off of these cell phone pings.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So one video shows both Bailey and Aubrey going into a local Home Depot just a few hours before the date at 10.35 a.m. on November 15th. They were seen on this video purchasing various items such as a hacksaw and blades, a drywall blade, plastic sheets, and a box cutting knife.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They were also seen at the Aardvark Antique Mall, which is somewhere that they frequented since, like I said earlier, they told others that they were antique dealers. At this store, they purchased two meat grinders, a hand weed cutter, and a folding saw. Cell phone records showed that Bailey's phone was also near Sydney's home just before noon on November 15th,

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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around the same time that Sydney had been home indicating that they had been following her. Later, Aubrey was seen on surveillance video at the North Lincoln Menards store that Sydney had been working at. Video shows him walking right past her as she walked outside to go work in the outside lumber area.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He was also seen stopping to look back at her two times while Sydney was completely unaware of his existence. Then Bailey's phone was tracked back to Wilbur where she was seen on surveillance video at a Dollar General where she purchased bleach, trash bags, and laundry detergent. She then returned the next day, so November 16th, the day after the date, to buy more bleach and two bottles of Drano.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She then went to yet another store called Food Mezzo to buy yet another bottle of bleach, more trash bags, and a small trash can. So both of them were extradited back to Nebraska and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and improper disposal of human remains. Aubrey pled guilty to charges of improper disposal of human remains, but not guilty on the other counts.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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And then Bailey pled not guilty on all charges. The two were set to have their trials separately and prosecution in both cases, were considering the death penalty. Although Bailey filed a motion to rule out the death penalty for her trial, stating that they maintain that this death was an accident, but this request was denied.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So the trial for Aubrey started in June of 2019 for charges of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. And he entered the courtroom in a wheelchair. The prosecution was arguing that Bailey and Aubrey had planned out this murder for weeks.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They said that they lured Sydney into their apartment with the intention of recruiting her into their cult, which we will get more into in just a minute. They said that all of this was premeditated and intentional. The defense maintained that Sydney was a willing participant in dangerous sex acts with both Bailey and Aubrey and that she died an accidental death.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So of course, the prosecution brought forward all of the digital evidence and the surveillance videos that we had just discussed. They also said that there was evidence that Sydney had been strangled with a cord. This was based on marks that were found on her body in addition to a cord that they had found in the apartment.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She also loved golfing and excelled in that sport as well. However, as she got older, she developed a scoliosis, which made it very painful to participate in basically any sport. So when she reached her teenage years, she was no longer as active in sports as she was when she was growing up. Sydney was also incredibly close with her siblings.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They also found a latex glove at their apartment and it had blood on it that matched Sydney's DNA. There was also a pair of pajama pants that were found at the crime scene and there was also blood on these pajama pants which also matched to Sydney. Then the prosecution brought forward three witnesses who were women who also had experiences with both Bailey and Aubrey

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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these women have chosen to keep their identities anonymous. So all three of these women were in their early 20s. They all said that they first met Bailey through Tinder, but then they said that after meeting her, she later introduced all of them to Aubrey, who she described as being her sugar daddy and her boyfriend.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They all said that each of these three women all met up with them separately, so the three women didn't really actually interact with each other very much, only really, you know, separately with Aubrey and Bailey. They said that Aubrey had given them manicures, expensive clothes, cell phones, drugs, and weekly allowances of $150 to $200.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They said that in exchange for all of this, they had group sex with both Aubrey and Bailey, They were also expected to help Aubrey with their scams involving selling and stealing these antiques. But as time went on, things got really bad in these relationships, as you can pretty much expect.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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These women were not allowed to see or interact with other men, even though both Bailey and Aubrey were seeing other women. And then they had to ask them permission to pretty much do anything. and there were times where they were locked inside of their home or different motel rooms for extended periods of time.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Then, when these women were not with them, they were expected to check in with them via text message every three hours. If they were to disobey their commands or act out of line, they would be punished by things such as being forced to wear no clothes in the apartment and accept whippings.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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These women also said that when they would participate in sexual acts with them, Bailey liked inflicting harm on them. This is about to be very cringy, but they were also ordered to call Opry daddy and Bailey mommy. I feel awful and dirty just saying that. It's weird. Really weird and I cringed really hard when I read that.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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These women testified that both Aubrey and Bailey spoke on more than one occasion about their desire to torture and kill someone. These women said that Aubrey would describe himself as a vampire and called the women his witches who all belonged to his cult.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Aubrey claimed that he had supernatural powers and said that they should all participate in killing someone with him so that they too could become real witches and gain powers such as reading minds and being able to fly.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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The women said that they often heard the two of them talk about how they wanted to dismember a body and said that they wanted to break someone's fingers one by one as a form of torture.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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One of the women actually said that Bailey and Aubrey intended on making a video of them apparently torturing and killing someone and then selling it for a million dollars, which they would all split equally among the five of them. There was even a discussion of which of these three women were going to be responsible for taking these victims.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They said that the reason they wanted the women to take the victims and participate in killing them with the couple was to show their loyalty towards them. Now, these women did say though that although Aubrey had discussed killing and torturing someone, they didn't think that either of them would ever do it and they never witnessed them actually really harming someone before.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Every Christmas Eve, Sydney would go and sleep in her big brother's room until her younger sister started joining them and it became their Christmas tradition. Kenzie and her spent so much time together that they actually had a lot of mutual friends. So they'd often drive around the town together and hang out at different friends' houses.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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So by early November of 2017, all three of these women claimed that they wanted to leave this cult. Two of them said that they left it for good and one of them was still sort of being strung along, but she really did have intentions of trying to leave. But it was after these women left that Bailey started to try and lure in other people, including Sydney, into their little cult.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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One of these women testified that after Sydney's murder, so on November 18th or 19th, that Bailey called her and wanted her to come to the casino with her, and she did. but that when they went to this casino, she got a weird vibe from their behaviors.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They stopped at multiple different motels and said that she went with them on multiple drug runs and their cell phone data pretty much backs up this claim. This was around the same time that Aubrey and Bailey were traveling to different states before being located in Missouri and being arrested.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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The woman testified that as they were driving, both Bailey and Aubrey started to talk about going to Kearney so that they could find a victim to torture and kill. someone who wouldn't be missed. Because apparently they messed up the first time by taking someone who had such a loving and close family with people who absolutely adored her and were desperately looking for her.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She testified that Aubrey said that he wanted to watch both Bailey and the woman participate in killing this helpless victim. The woman said that she obviously didn't actually want to partake in this, but because of this whole thing of her wanting to be obedient, she just sort of went along with it for the time being.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She said that the three of them had checked into a motel in Kearney, but then she noticed on Bailey's phone that Lincoln police were actually trying to get a hold of her. Bailey explained to her that they were being harassed by police and that they were being blamed for a young woman's disappearance, But Bailey said that they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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The woman said, though, that at this point, this was the very first time that she got really scared. And she realized that they weren't just talking about killing someone. They weren't just coming up with this idea, this thing that probably would never happen. She realized that they were actually capable of it.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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She said that after this, she left the motel and went back to Omaha and did not contact them again. So during all of this, during this testimony, bringing forward evidence for the first two weeks of the trial, Aubrey sat quietly in his wheelchair. He didn't make much commotion or really any issues throughout this time.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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But after these women finished up with their testimony and the last witness was getting up to leave, all of a sudden, without warning, Aubrey started shouting, Bailey is innocent. I curse you all. before he slashed his own throat with a makeshift blade. He then fell out of his wheelchair to the ground with blood being visible on his neck.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Sydney went on to graduate from Neely Oakdale High School before working as a cashier at Menards and North Folk for two years. She then transferred to another Menards and Lincoln so that she could be closer to her siblings who also had moved there. Even as adults, Sydney maintained her close bond with her siblings.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He appeared pale and his eyes were closed and he wasn't moving, so emergency personnel were called in to take him into an ambulance and get him treated at a hospital. Then a cleaning crew entered the courtroom to clean up blood off of anything that it got on.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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The jurors were quickly escorted out and so were the people that were covering the case from, you know, the news, reporters, everyone like that. After being taken to the hospital and treated for his injuries, he was there for, I believe, a day before returning back to court.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Of course, after saying this, there were questions as to whether the jurors could remain neutral after witnessing him in this outburst. But the judge determined that they were still able to have a fair trial and that Aubrey can return to court in handcuffs for quote obvious reasons.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They said that each of the jurors would be questioned in relation to this outburst and ordered that they not consider the outburst when reaching their verdict. So clearly this seemed like to be a stunt that you know he wanted to do to maybe get you know a mistrial and maybe the next trial would go differently or something like that. I don't know.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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I think this clearly was an attempt to try to get this trial to end and so maybe it could start over and whatever, he didn't have to face the same witnesses. I don't know. I really don't know what he was trying and all this. Clearly he's not very mentally stable because when he returned back to the courtroom, he came back and recanted all of his previous statements. He called it all BS.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He admitted that there was no video, no sexual fantasy, and that there was no one else in the room with him when all of this took place. So basically, earlier we know that he called into reporters and basically admitted that he was the one who accidentally killed Sydney and all that, but now he was saying that all of it was untrue.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He did maintain though that Sydney's death was in fact an accident. He said that he uses people for money, that he used people for sex, but purposely killing someone? that would be counterproductive.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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However, agents from the FBI testified that they found out that while Aubrey and Bailey were in jail awaiting their trials, they were passing encrypted notes back and forth, making sure that all of their stories would match up. So again, clearly, if you have to figure out your story with someone and make sure they match up, you're lying.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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There's no reason to have to do that if both of you actually have the same story. So overall, this trial lasted a total of three weeks. During this time, Audrey had two heart attacks and a stroke while waiting in his jail cell. This just shows how stressed and worried he was, how fricked he knew that he was.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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But at the end of those three weeks, after less than three hours of jury deliberation, Aubrey Child was found guilty on counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He of course appealed and asked for a new trial, but the judge denied this. His sentencing hearing was in June of 2021. In his sentencing hearing, Aubrey put forth yet another story of how Sydney's murder occurred.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Kenzie would often come over to watch Netflix, make dinner, and Kenzie would help Sydney tidy up her place because Sydney hated cleaning.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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In a statement that he read to the court, he admitted that he killed Sydney on purpose, but maintained that it was not premeditated. He said that Bailey had brought her back to their apartment because, again, they both wanted to recruit her into their little cult. But he said that they totally misjudged her and that once she found out about what they were doing, Sydney freaked out.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He said that he tried for 30 grueling minutes to try and calm her down, but she just wouldn't. So he feared that she would go to police and tell them about, you know, their money-making schemes and how they were doing group sex and all of the other sketchy things that they were involved with.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He said that he wanted to protect his good life with Bailey and that he had no doubt that she would tell other people if he let her go. So, Because of this, because he apparently didn't want his secrets to be out there, he decided that the better idea would be to strangle her with an electrical cord and then dismember her body so that it would be easier to dispose.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Sydney's parents were also at this hearing and they had to just sit there and listen to everything that this monster had to say. In his statement, Aubrey actually addressed her parents and said, I can't say I'm sorry because that would be an insult for what I put you through. I've done some terrible things in my life, but this is the only thing I feel regret about.

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she could also depend on her brother to come and get her and help her out anytime she had car issues she also had a cat named mimsy who she had for about four years and she absolutely adored him she raised him since he was a kitten and the two were so attached to one another now sydney did face her own internal struggles with depression and anxiety but this did not stop her from being a truly giving and kind-hearted person

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But this did not change the minds of anybody. The three-judge panel sentenced Aubrey to death by lethal injection. Judge Vicki Johnson qualified this murder as cold, calculated planning, going on to say that Ms. Loof was needlessly mutilated by Mr. Trail as a part of a plan to satisfy his intellectual curiosity or his sexual desires.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He also ended up being sentenced to 50 years for the conspiracy charge and then two years for improper disposal of human remains. The judge said that even though he acknowledged that Aubrey had a rough life growing up, he was raised in the foster care system, he was poor, and he was in and out of juvie when he was younger, The depravity of this crime outweighs those mitigating factors.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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So before we get into today's video, I just wanted to go ahead and give a huge shout out to my patrons, Diane, Sally, Jewel, Otterpop, Shannon, and Chelsea. I wanted to thank you guys so much. I truly can't put into words how much I appreciate each and every one of you being here for me and supporting my channel. So again, thank you so, so very much for your support.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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So again, I don't believe any of that. I think that all of this was premeditated. I don't think that Aubrey just killed Sydney because she was gonna go tell their secrets about how they like to be freaky. I don't think any of that's true.

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I think that this entire thing was planned and I believe these other women who are saying that they were just curious and that they just wanted to do this because they wanted to and for no other reason. In September of 2020, Bailey was next to stand trial Her trial was initially scheduled to be held in Wilbur, Nebraska, but she did request to have the location changed.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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This was because Aubrey's trial created so much media attention that she thought that it would be impossible to find a jury that could stay impartial. So this was in fact granted and her trial was moved to Lexington. In Bailey's trial, the defense said that Bailey was forced to participate in Sidney's murder by Aubrey.

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The defense said that Bailey had a history of physical and sexual abuse growing up, so this made her the perfect victim to be taken advantage of by Aubrey. But of course, the prosecution continued to argue that this entire thing was all planned and premeditated by the both of them. Much of the evidence brought forward in her trial was the same that they brought forward in Aubrey's trial.

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However, they had additional DNA evidence to show that her DNA was actually found on the latex glove that was found near Sydney's remains. Throughout this entire trial, she appeared upset and tearful, taking off her glasses to wipe away tears as they discussed Sydney's remains being found. To me, that just shows that she's very upset, not about what she did, but about the fact that she got caught.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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By the end of the trial, after only three and a half hours of jury deliberation, Bailey was found guilty on counts of first-degree murder conspiracy to commit murder and improper disposal of human remains. As this verdict was being read, Bailey showed absolutely no emotion. Her sentencing hearing was in July of 2021.

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And the prosecution was also going for the death penalty in her case, but she cried and she begged for her life at the sentencing hearing saying that she had a seven year old daughter who needed her, which is just mind blowing to me that we were just now finding out about her seven year old daughter and her sentencing hearing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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The fact that she even had a daughter in the first place is just very concerning to me. I just don't know how someone can have a daughter and still be involved in all of these very disturbing things. I do know that her daughter was staying at Bailey's mother's house during all of this, so during the trial and all of that, but I don't know what the situation was before all of this.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Clearly, she didn't care much about her daughter to just not be an absolutely disgusting and depraved person. Clearly, she... didn't raise her daughter because she was spending too much time with Aubrey and meeting up with these different women and being in this weird cult. But either way, Judge Peter Battalion actually did end up sentencing her to life in prison and not the death penalty.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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He said, quote, I could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that the state of Nebraska had met its burden of proof. Nothing in this decision diminishes the senselessness of the murder of Sydney Loof and the great pain that it's caused her family and her friends. This did really upset Sydney's family. They said that if it wasn't for Bailey luring her in, that she might still be here today.

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SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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They say, and I would have to agree, that Bailey is equally, if not more guilty than Aubrey. Again, I think that Bailey going out and making this fake Tinder is exactly what lured her in. There's no way that she would have met up with them if she met Aubrey. He's disgusting and so is Bailey, but obviously she wasn't into that. She was into Bailey. So the fact that she got a lesser sentence

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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There were three occasions that her parents recalled where Sydney helped people who were down on their luck by letting them come and stay at her place while they worked through their own issues. One person in particular was one of her co-workers from Menards.

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because they couldn't meet the burden of proof, I think it's ridiculous. I honestly think it's because she's a woman, which is disgusting to me that, you know, they were more easy on her because of that. Again, that's just my opinion.

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It's not proven, but I think the fact that there was clearly evidence that she too was involved in all of this and somehow she got a lesser sentence, I think that does show a little bit of bias. But either way, that is all of the information that I have for today's video. My heart goes out to Sydney's family. They were all clearly so, so very close to one another.

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I truly think that Sydney was just trying to find someone to be with. She was so excited to just hang out with this new girl who took advantage of her in the most deprived and disgusting way. I don't believe anything either of them have to say. This was definitely premeditated and the evidence shows that. I'm just so sad for Sydney. She was young and unfortunately she trusted the wrong people.

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this is really a difficult case to discuss because clearly Sydney was trying to be careful I always say that when you're meeting new people off of dating apps that you should meet up with them in person first to make sure that they are who they say they are I always say to let your friends know where you're going I always say that you need to be careful when you go into someone's home

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but Sydney did most of those things. She told other people that she was going on a date and she even posted it on Snapchat. She went to Bailey's house after meeting her.

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And after making sure that she was the person in these pictures, obviously she didn't actually know what her real name was, but there's no reason to think that someone's just putting up a random name on Tinder, especially when, you know, they match their picture and everything they say online matches what they do in person.

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I do honestly believe that even if she didn't go to their house on that specific day, that Bailey and Aubrey would have waited until Sydney trusted Bailey enough to actually go to their house. So that's just an absolutely terrifying thing because I always say, you know, and I did the same thing, you know, don't let someone come over to your house.

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She let him stay with her, helped him find his own apartment, and taught him how to save money and take care of himself until he found his own place. She truly cared about others even more than she cared about herself. So on November 15th, 2017, 24 year old Sydney decided to go out on a date with another woman named Amber, who she had met through Tinder.

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Don't go to their house until the third or fourth time of meeting them so you can make sure that they're not a weirdo and that they're not having weird intentions. But in this situation, I don't think... that would have gone any differently, which is just so terrifying because as you guys know, I always say, you know, and I practice this too, when you're meeting someone, don't go to their house.

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Don't let them come to your house until, you know, the second or third or fourth time of meeting them just to make sure that, you know, they are who they say they are and they're not a weirdo. But in this situation, I don't think things would have gone differently because again, she had already met her. I don't know if they initially met in person.

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I do think that she picked her up, which obviously I think is not the greatest idea, but Still, she met her in person. The two hung out and everything went really well. So the fact that she went to her house after the second date,

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that's there's no way that she could have predicted this there's no way that she could have known again i don't think that her going there on the second date or the third or fourth date would have made a difference in this case because i think that they knew what they were going to do and they were planning and they were waiting but obviously i think you still should follow the precautions that we always talk about in these videos sharing your locations with family or trusted friends letting your friends and family know where you're going if you're going on a date and all of

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But I do want you all to understand that for Sydney, she was trying to be careful. Not everyone can follow these precautions and not everybody knows that it's even a thing. Not everybody is as I guess cautious and paranoid as a lot of us might be because we're into true crime. We watch it all the time. I researched these cases and I know what can happen, but not everybody knows that.

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Not everybody understands that. So even though Sydney may not have followed all of these different precautions that we're always talking about, she was trying to be careful. She may not have done everything perfectly and just right, but she tried. So please, again, no judgmental comments.

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This isn't a case of her just going to someone's house willy-nilly after never meeting them and after having no idea what they look like. This was a case of her meeting someone, knowing that they're the person that they say they are, or at least thinking that you know that, trusting them, having a great time with them, and then deciding to go to their house

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after they had already spent some time together. So again, she was trying to be careful and I don't want to hear any hate comments about the choices that she made. She was such a bright young woman and she did not deserve any of this. She was just trying to find someone to hang out with, someone to have a good time with. And that's it. And she got taken advantage of. And again,

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she tried her best to be careful and she still got taken advantage of. Again, she didn't deserve any of this and neither did her family. So please, again, just keep her family in your thoughts. They have enough to deal with with all of this. Thank you all so much for listening to Sydney's story. I really hope that those of you who watch these videos can learn from these cases and take it to

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make your own precautions and take those extra steps to keep yourself and your friends and your family safe. Please do whatever you can to take those extra steps to protect yourself. I want you to be safe. I want you to return home after that date that you were so excited about. I want you to meet someone who not only makes you feel amazing, but makes you feel safe and secure.

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But again, don't be afraid to stand your grounds. Don't be afraid to let your date know that your friends know your location and that they know where you are. and that they know who you're seeing. Don't be afraid to casually bring up, you know, oh yeah, I share my location with all my friends and I told them how excited I am to go on this date with you.

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She had already previously met this woman on November 14th. So this date on November 15th would have been their second date. She was so, so excited about this new girl that she had started dating. even texting a friend after the first date to say, I just got done chilling with a super cute girl.

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Before you meet someone, don't be afraid to say, hey, I don't really know you that well yet. I'd prefer for my own safety if we meet in public. It's nothing against you. I just want to take the personal steps for my own safety. And if taking these precautions scares them away, then they probably didn't have the best intentions anyways.

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I personally know from experience that no one wants to sit here and hear you say, Oh, I'm scared of you. I, you know, I'm going to take these precautions to stay safe. So obviously you want to say it in a way that's not offending towards them. You know, if you really do like this person, but just let them know, Hey, like we don't know each other very well. You don't know me.

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I don't know you very well. Let's meet somewhere in public. And again, if that scares them away, if that pisses them off to the point that they don't want to see you, then so be it. You didn't need them in your life anyways. So again, I know I get on my soapbox about this all the time, but please just remember that Unfortunately, people are capable of some very terrible things.

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And the only, only, only person that you can rely on to protect you is you. So again, please just stay safe. You know, go out, live your life. Don't be paranoid. Don't, you know, look at everybody and think that they're going to hurt you, but just stay safe. Take those extra precautions, have fun, but you know, let people know where you are.

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Let your friends and family know who you're seeing and let them know when you should be back. That's it. I don't think that that's too much to ask. But either way, that is where I'm going to end today's video. Thank you again for listening to Sydney's story and my little soapbox at the end.

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Again, I really, really hope that you take these cases, learn from them, and help keep yourself and your loved ones safe. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up. and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos.

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Make sure to go ahead and follow my Twitter and Instagram. Both will be linked down below. I also recently just made a Facebook page. Haven't done too much on it yet. Don't really know exactly where that's gonna go yet, but

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If you want to follow different cases and, you know, stay up to date on different videos that I make and cases that I cover, make sure you go ahead and follow the Facebook page as well. If you have absolutely any case suggestions, please make sure to go ahead and send those suggestions to my email at rachelshannoncases at gmail.com. With that, I hope you guys have a great week.

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But even though Sydney was really excited for this date, she had had past issues with meeting girls through Tinder. She had past experiences where the girl that she was meeting through Tinder wanted Sydney to join with, you know, the girl and her man who the girl was with. But this was not something that Sydney was into, so she was cautious.

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She had even texted a friend before the date saying, I hope she doesn't have a boyfriend. I didn't ask. So before going on the second date, Sydney had messaged Audrey through Tinder to say, it's just going to be me and you, right? And Audrey replied with, okay, yes, of course. So she posted a selfie online to Snapchat with the caption, ready for my date.

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However, by November 16th, 2017, so a day after this date, Sydney did not show up for her work shift at Menards. When she didn't show up for her shift, her coworkers immediately knew that something had to be wrong. Sydney was responsible. She would never no-call, no-show into work. Their concerns grew even more when they tried contacting her via phone calls and texts, and she just didn't answer.

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This was very out of character for her. So the coworkers contacted her family, and they realized that she wasn't answering them either. So right away, her parents reported Sydney missing to the Lincoln police. So the first thing that police did was to go over to Sydney's apartment to see if anything looked out of place and nothing did.

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Everything seemed orderly and in place and there was no sign of a struggle. They then went ahead and looked at her digital records and they found out that the last thing that she had posted online was this selfie to Snapchat saying that she was ready for a date. Police did immediately find this as a red flag, the fact that she went out on a date the night before and just didn't return home.

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But for the time being, they didn't have much more to go off of. But still, right off the bat, police knew that Sydney probably was in danger.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE SYDNEY LOOFE CASE

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Susie, Sydney's mom, posted to Facebook to say, Police also went ahead and shared pictures of her and information about her case, and they also said that she had a distinctive walk because of her severe scoliosis, and they showed pictures of her distinctive tattoos. One tattoo said, and then she had a yin-yang sign. As time passed with no answers in the case, the FBI soon got involved to help.

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They were soon able to gain access to her cell phone records and her Tinder account which did show that she had been messaging back and forth with this girl named Audrey and shown that they had gone on a date together. They were then able to track her cell phone pings, which showed that her phone last pinged in an area about 40 miles south of Lincoln in a small town called Wilbur.

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So the case that I have for you guys today is yet another very disturbing case and it does involve the world of online dating. But it's a case that we can learn from and hopefully use to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. As always, I won't tolerate any sort of hate or negativity towards the victim.

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They were able to eventually track down her exact location as being at the home of a 24-year-old woman named Bailey Boswell, who was the woman she actually went on a date with. Then Bailey had a roommate, 51-year-old Aubrey Trail. So this is a bit confusing just because of the names. Bailey is the female, the one who had her name under Audrey on Tinder.

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And then Aubrey is a male who at this point has nothing to do with the date or anything like that. He is just a roommate of Bailey who lives with her and probably knows something about Sydney. Now, both Bailey and Aubrey have extensive criminal records, including writing bad checks, theft, drug charges, and scams. But they did not have any sort of violent criminal history.

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But either way, based on the things that they had found, police put a blowout for the both of them, naming them as persons of interest in Sydney's case. Police said, quote, When the two found out that police were looking into them as potential persons of interest, both Aubrey and Bailey posted to social media to proclaim their innocence.

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They posted a video to social media saying that they know that they are persons of interest, but that they didn't do anything, so they're not running from anything. Aubrey said, He said, He said, In the video, Bailey did admit that she went on two dates with Sydney.

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She said that on the first date, the two of them drove around Lincoln and smoked marijuana before she dropped Sydney back off at home. Then she said on their second date, she provided with Sydney with, you know, the marijuana. And again, they just drove around town and smoked weed. She said that after driving around, they went back to Bailey's house to smoke some more.

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And then she said after this, she dropped Sydney off at her friend's house after Sydney had asked her to. She added that she had given Sydney her phone number and then they had plans to go to the casino together where, again, Bailey would provide Sydney with money to go ahead and gamble with. But she said after the second date, she had not heard from Sydney.

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She said that she doesn't know what else to say. Both Bailey and Aubrey said that they hope that Sydney is found soon and that she's a sweet and amazing girl. They went on to say that their lives have been destroyed because of the media reports, because of the way that police are mishandling this case.

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So many people are involved in the world of online dating, and I was at one point too, and it can be very, very difficult. I get a lot of comments in other videos when I make these kind of disclaimers saying, oh, so we can't use what they do to learn from ourselves, and we can't use their mistakes as ways to keep ourselves safer, and obviously that's not what I mean.

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What I'm talking about is negative comments towards the victim. That's pretty black and white and it won't be tolerated here on my channel. My purpose for covering any solved case on this channel is so that we can learn from the case and we can share information and advocate for the victims and their stories. So again, I will not tolerate any hate or negativity towards the victim in this case.

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"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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So, as we can see, for God knows how long, Kaylee was made to live in absolute squalor. She had to lay on a mattress covered in urine and feces while her skin broke down. As that happened, maggots started finding their way to her, nestling in her skin and eating away at the rotting flesh. Nach dieser horrifizierten Erfindung wurde Kayleys Körper an die Mediziner für eine Autopsie gesendet.

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Dort wurde herausgefunden, dass Kaylee an der Zeit ihres Todes sehr obese war. Sie hat 146 Kilogramm, also über 300 Pounden, mit einer BMI von ca. 70. Die ME bestätigte, dass sie durch Inflammation und Infektion in extremen Bereichen von Ulceration, Obesität und ihre Komplikationen, sowie ihre Mobilität, gestorben ist.

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So, jetzt gehen wir zurück zu der Szene, als die Anwesenden Kaley's Körper erstmals gefunden haben. Sie sprachen mit ihren Eltern, die sagten, dass sie Kaley am letzten Abend um 11 Uhr die letzte Nacht gesehen haben. The next morning, Alon said that he was woken by his wife, who let him know that Kaylee was in her bed, dead. His first move was to call his mother, informing her of what happened.

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She, of course, was baffled by this, by the fact that he called her first, and she told him to call 999 to report it, not her, and she too also called 999 herself. Sie sagten dann beide, dass sie nicht wussten, wie schlimm die Situation für Kaylee war. Ich werde in ein paar Minuten mehr dazu sprechen. Aber Sarah und Alon taten so, als ob sie keine Ahnung hatten, was Kaylee durchgegangen wäre.

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Das ist das, was Kayleigh Titford hatte. Mit dieser Form der Spina Bifida kommt der Nervfluss-Sack durch die Öffnung und die Rückseite, die einen Teil des Spinalchords und der Nerven enthalten. Dies schädigt die Nerven, was zu einer stärkeren Behinderung führt. The level in which the nerve damage occurs will determine which nerves, thus which muscles, are affected.

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Von dort an verabschiedeten die Arbeiter weitere Untersuchungen, um zu sehen, wie genau all das passiert ist. und wie Kayleigh in der Position war, in der sie geblieben wurde. Sie haben herausgefunden, dass Sarah und Alon nach den Lockdowns leise waren und keine Art von Aufmerksamkeit für Kayleigh verabschiedeten.

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In den Monaten, in denen sie gestorben war, traten sie Fastfood etwa fünfmal pro Woche, spielten über 1.000 Pfund auf Fastfood während dieser Zeit. Allerdings verabschiedeten sie Kayleigh und verabschiedeten sie in ihrem Raum, um für sich selbst Sie wusste sehr gut, dass sie Hilfe benötigen musste, um in ihr Rollstuhl und in die Toilette zu kommen. Aber wie gesagt,

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Die 16-jährige Kaylee war nicht völlig unabhängig. Sie war klug und sie wusste genau, was passiert war. Für die drei Monate, die zu ihrer Todeszeit führen, hat sie gebeten, ihre Eltern zu helfen, und sie haben sie einfach ignoriert. Die Untersuchenden haben mehrere Texte von und über Kaylee in der Familie gefunden.

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Etwa zwei Monate vor der Todeszeit von Kaylee, hat ihre ältere Schwester Sophie ihre Mutter getextet, um über die Situation in Kaylees Zimmer zu klagen. A few weeks after that, they found Kaylee had also texted her mom, begging her for help. Im September schrieb sie, kannst du nachschauen, ob ich gepoopt habe, weil es riecht, zu dem Sarah antwortete, FFS, was für Fs sache bedeutet.

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Wenn jemand von der Oberfläche verletzt ist, kann er die Ballenblätter meistens nicht kontrollieren, aber viele der Zeiten können sie auch nicht fühlen, wenn sie gehen. Also verbindet all das, weshalb sie einen Katheter und Briefen brauchen, um zu fangen, wenn sie gehen, weil sie es nicht immer zur Toilette machen können, weil sie nicht immer wissen, wann sie gehen werden.

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Natürlich müssen diese periodisch geändert werden, um sicherzustellen, dass du sauber und frei von Infektionen bleibst. Durch diese drei Monate gibt es auch viele Texte von Kayla zu ihrer Mutter, die sich für Hilfe in der Kleidung ihrer Füße interessiert hat, weil ihre Beine zerbrochen sind. In einem anderen Text schreibt sie, dass es in ihrem Raum alle Bugs gibt, die sie verrückt haben.

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Und alles, was ihre Mutter gesagt hat, war, dass sie dich sehr lieben, lol. Dann, nur Stunden bevor sie tot war, gab es ein paar Texte von Kayla zu ihrem Vater, die ihn für Hilfe gebeten haben, aber sie wurden ignoriert. Um 10.30 Uhr am Abend des 9.

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Oktober, den Tag bevor sie tot war, hat Alun Kaley getextet, dass sie, wenn sie einen schlechten Körper hat, stoppt, schreit, schickt einen weiteren Text, kurz danach, dass sie fragt, warum man immer noch schreit. Aber bis zu diesem Punkt hatte ihr Telefon bereits aufgeschaltet.

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Klar ist aber, dass wir sehen, dass Kaylee ihre letzten Stunden alleine in ihrem Zimmer verbracht hat, in so viel Schmerz, dass sie ausgerutscht hat, um Hilfe zu bekommen. Aber wiederum, sie wurde einfach verabschiedet. Natürlich, nachdem sie all das herausgefunden hat, wollten Investoren Antworten von ihren Eltern. When questioned, they each basically pointed the finger at each other.

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Sarah basically said that after COVID hit, she became depressed and stopped having the energy to cook or do much around the house. She did have a documented history of depression, which only got worse after she was locked in her home.

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Sie und ihr ganzes Familienleben hatten alle immer Fast-Food gegessen und obwohl sie wusste, dass Kayleigh viel Gewicht verdient hatte, dachte sie nie daran, weil sie alle auf der schweren Seite waren. So weit ich es sehen kann, hatte sie nicht viel zu erklären für die schrecklichen, schmutzigen Bedingungen, in denen ihr Zimmer war.

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Sie versuchte auch, zu negieren, dass sie diese Textmessungen Kayleigh geliefert hat, indem sie sagte, dass jemand anderes ihren Telefon bekommen muss. Aber natürlich wissen wir, dass das nicht wahr ist. Auf der anderen Seite hat Alain für das auf Sarah geblieben. Er hat gesagt, dass er, als Kayleigh aufgewachsen war, sehr involviert war in ihrer Aufmerksamkeit.

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If it's higher up on the lumbar spine, then it's likely that the person will be pretty much paralyzed from the waist down. If it's lower, they may have partial nerve innervation to certain muscles, meaning they may still be able to walk with some assistance. Mit Myelomeningocele Spina Bifida kommt oft Hydrocephalus.

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Aber nachdem sie auf Puberty getroffen wurde, war er nicht zufrieden mit ihrer Aufmerksamkeit. Das bedeutet, dass Sarah die einzigartige Verantwortung für alle von Kaylees Bedürfnissen trägt. Was, glaube ich, ein bisschen verständlich sein könnte. Wenn ich Kaylee wäre, würde ich meinen Vater nicht sehen wollen, auch wenn es mir helfen würde, mich zu waschen oder einen Katheter zu verändern.

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Aber alles andere, von dem, dass sie ihr adaptives Equipment verwendet hat, bis zum Reinigen ihres Wohnbaus oder sogar einfach Zeit mit ihr verwendet hat, gibt es keinen Grund dafür, warum er das nicht konnte oder nicht gemacht hat. Egal wie, er hat gesagt, dass er lange Stunden an seinem Job gearbeitet hat. In den Wochen bevor Kailies Tod, hat er 15 Tage lang ohne Pause gearbeitet.

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Er hat gesagt, dass der letzte Mal, dass er Kailie gesehen hat, zwei Wochen vor ihrer Todeszeit, an ihrem 16. Geburtstag war. Er ist in ihr Zimmer gegangen, hat ihr einen Hüpfchen und einen Kuss gegeben und hat ihr einen glücklichen Geburtstag gewünscht. Dann glaube ich, dass er sich nicht einmal darauf verabschiedet hat, sie nach Wochen zu erinnern.

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Er sagte, dass er von dort aus nie einen Geruch von Kailies Zimmer gesehen hatte. Er bemerkte, dass sie tatsächlich am Abend vor ihrem Tod schreien musste und dass er es ignorierte, aber das war etwas, was sie wahrscheinlich sehr oft gemacht hat.

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Sie war bekannt, in ihrem Zimmer zu sitzen und immer für Hilfe zu schreien, ob es darum ging, dass sie Hilfe mit ihrer Fernseher brauchte oder dass sie eine Brüderin für ihr Telefon berührt hatte. Sie könnte über fast alles schreien. Deshalb hat er sie die meiste Zeit und am Abend ignoriert. Er dachte, dass es nur ein weiterer Fall war, dass sie für keinen Grund schreit.

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Er hat auch gesagt, dass er, obwohl er wusste, dass Kaylee Gewicht hatte und obese geworden ist, auch dachte, dass es nichts zu beachten war, weil die ganze Familie etwas überwältigt war. Er hat nie gedacht, dass es zu ihrer Gesundheit schädlich sein könnte, bis es das war.

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Er sagte also, dass er keine Ahnung hatte, was da passiert war, also sollte die volle Begrüßung nur Sarahs Schultern befassen. Aber natürlich war es offensichtlich, dass jeder, der in diesem Haus lebt, völlig sicher gewesen wäre, was Kayleigh durchging. Der Geruch alleine hätte Alain bemerkt, dass etwas falsch war. Aber noch mehr als das.

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Obwohl er sagte, dass er Sarah vertraut, um Kayleigh zu kümmern, zeigt die Tatsache, dass er sie nicht für zwei Wochen bemerkt hat, nur, wie wenig er bemerkt hat. Obwohl du lange Stunden arbeitest, obwohl deine Frau die Kinder am meisten für den Vater kümmert, ist es immer noch dein Job, sie zu bemerken, zumindest.

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Wegen dessen wurden Sarah und Alon mit grossen Verbrechen in Bezug auf die Todesgeschichte von Kayleigh Titford verurteilt. Natürlich, da dies in der Mitte der Covid-Pandemie war, dauerte dieser Fall eine Weile, um durch die Gerichtssysteme zu kommen.

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So, it wasn't until December of 2022 when 39-year-old Sarah Lloyd-Jones pleaded guilty to her charges, accepting responsibility for the gross negligence that led to her daughter's death. She admitted that she fed her daughter so poorly that it led her to gain significant amounts of weight, which contributed to her diminishing ability to move and care for herself.

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All the while, she completely neglected her duties as a mother, leaving her alone in that room to quite literally rot to death. Meanwhile, Alun pleaded not guilty to his charges, maintaining that Sarah is to blame for everything. Nach zwei Jahren nach dem Tod seines Sohnes, ging er endlich zur Behandlung für seine Angelegenheiten im Januar 2023.

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Hydrocephalus ist das Bilden von Fluid in den Ventrikeln, die tief in dem Gehirn befinden. Dieses exzessive Fluid erhöht die Größe dieser Ventrikeln, um mehr Druck auf das Gehirn zu geben. Wenn zu viel Druck auf das Gehirn ohne Behandlung gelegt wird, kann es Gehirndrohungen verursachen.

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Die Verwaltung hat alles ausgesprochen, was ich euch bis jetzt erzählt habe. 16-jährige Kaylee war ein unabhängiger, gedrehter Teenager, der die Schule liebte und sich jederzeit kümmern musste. Aber sie brauchte Hilfe. Trotzdem, nach den Lockdowns, gaben ihre Eltern einfach auf sie auf und stoppten, ihr jede Hilfe zu geben, die sie brauchte.

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Sie gaben ihr nur unnötige Nahrungsmittel, die sie gegessen hat, weil was soll sie sonst noch haben? Wenn du verletzt bist, bildest du viel Oberkörper und Körnchenstrengung, um dich zu erheben und dich zu überwinden. Einige Menschen können das selbst machen, besonders mit viel Praxis, aber andere brauchen Hilfe.

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Und wie bei jeder Person, je mehr Gewicht du auf deinem Körper hast, desto schwieriger wird es, diese Tatsachen zu machen, desto schwieriger wird es, deinen Körper zu bewegen. Also als Kayleigh immer mehr Gewicht erhielt, wurde es immer schwieriger für sie, sich für sich selbst zu kümmern. All the while, her parents ignored her and refused to help her in any way.

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So there she was, stuck in her room, fully aware that her body was breaking down. Fully aware that she was stuck living in a bed of filth, maggots, urine and feces. Fully aware that no matter how loud she screamed... wie sehr sie für Hilfe gebeten hat. Sie wird ignoriert werden. Und ich möchte auch nur sagen, dass sie ihre eigene Telefonnummer hatte.

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Sie hätte technisch die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe an die Anrufe Sie hat vielleicht einfach nicht geglaubt, dass niemand um sie kümmert, nicht mal die Polizei, nicht mal ihre Lehrer. Sie hat ihre letzten Tage und Stunden von unvorstellbarem Schmerz verleugnet.

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Sie wurde verletzt, weil sie in diesen Bedingungen leben musste. Sie wurde von all ihrer Dignität, ihrem Recht, in einem sauberen, sauberen Zuhause zu leben, gezwungen. Und ihre eigenen Eltern, die sie einmal liebten und für sie gebeten haben, konnten sie nicht weniger gebeten. Natürlich, auf der anderen Seite, sagte die Verteidigung, dass dies Sarahs Schuld war.

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Sie war vollständig verantwortlich für Kailies Behandlung, während, ich glaube, Alon vollständig abgehängt wurde. Er wollte nicht, dass sie eine Vaterin war. Er hat nicht gebeten, dass er manchmal auf sie kümmern würde. Er war vollständig unbewusst darüber, wie schlimm sie getötet wurde, weil, in seinen eigenen Worten, er leise wurde.

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Die Grund, weshalb diese Bedingungen oft zusammenhängen, ist, dass mit Spina Bifida das Blut aus der Spine-Kolumne nicht richtig verdrängt wird, das das Blut aufbaut. Aber mit einer richtigen und zeitgemäßen Behandlung kann das Hydrocephalus festgestellt werden und die Person kann keine langweiligen kognitiven Probleme haben. Und das scheint mit Kaylee der Fall zu sein.

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zu müde, um sich zu kümmern, aber wiederum, wie ich vorhin gesagt habe, der Geruch, der aus ihrer Wohnung kam, war unvermeidbar, es war unmöglich, es nicht zu bemerken, nicht nur das, aber Alain hat sich selbst ermutigt, dass er sie ganz literally schreit, um Hilfe zu bekommen, aber nichts darüber gemacht hat,

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So, no matter what he wants to claim, he's just as responsible as Sarah for the death of his 16-year-old daughter. After both sides presented their evidence and made their closing arguments, the jury was off for deliberation. And when they came back after about five hours of deliberating...

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Sie haben herausgefunden, dass 45-jähriger Alon Titford in Kaliyas furchtbarer Tod gleichgültig verurteilt war. Er wurde auch verurteilt für neglige Mord. Nach beiden Vergewaltigungen im März 2023 wurden Alon und Sarah an einem gemeinsamen Gericht verurteilt.

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Als er seine Entscheidung über Sarah verurteilt hat, hat der Gericht festgestellt, dass Sarah Depressionen hatte, die zu ihrem mentalen Zustand zu kommen hätten. However, he determined that she did not suffer from any sort of mental disorder or learning disability to the extent that it affected her decision making, therefore holding her fully accountable for her actions.

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He also considered Alun's past history of mental disorders, but once again he found that he was not suffering from anything severe enough to explain away his actions either. Alun stated himself and the judge agreed that he just got lazy. So in the end, Sarah and Elan were each given a sentence of seven years and six months behind bars.

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But due to Sarah's guilty plea, she was given credit for 20%, reducing her total sentence to just six years.

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However, after these sentences were handed down, the court ended up reviewing the case. They didn't feel that enough emphasis was placed on the horrific conditions under which Kaylee was forced to live. They called this a deeply unsettling and distressing case, saying that this kind of child abuse and neglect should never be tolerated and they want to show that.

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So as a result, they actually upped their sentences. As of May of 2023, Elan will now be serving 10 years behind bars, while Sarah will be serving 8. Of course, I'm very happy that their sentences were increased, but even after this, it still isn't enough. The amount of torment and suffering Kaylee went through in her final hours is nothing any human, let alone a child, should ever face.

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Sie hatte völlig normales Gehirnverhalten, was bedeutet, dass sie keine Art von intellektuellen Veränderungen hatte. However, Kaylee's spina bifida caused her to be unable to move or feel much sensation in her legs, so she relied on a wheelchair to get around.

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I can't imagine the feeling of knowing your body is breaking down, smelling the horrendous stench coming from your own wounds, seeing the bugs infesting your skin, and knowing you can't do anything about it. She cried, literally screamed out for help, but no one came for her. Ich weiß, das war ein wirklich schrecklicher Fall. Es war so schwierig zu hören, die Fotos zu sehen, die sie durchlebt.

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Aber ich bin froh, dass ihre Eltern zumindest die Auswirkungen gemacht haben, auch wenn es nicht fast genug Zeit ist. Aber das ist alles, was ich in diesem Fall habe. Und jetzt möchte ich hören, was ihr alle denkt. Glaubt ihr, dass Sarah und Alun gleiche Teile in ihrer Todesgeschichte gespielt haben, oder glaubt ihr, dass es Sarahs Verantwortung war?

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She was also unable to control her bowel and bladder movements, so she wore a catheter and a brief, which needed to be changed any time she went to the bathroom. Her mother, Sarah, had previously worked as a caretaker throughout most of her life, but at one point... Sie begann, zu Hause zu bleiben, um für Kayleigh zu helfen.

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In der Zwischenzeit arbeitete Alun als Verschmutzungsarbeiter, also jemand, der schweren Sachen wie Kleidung von einem Ort zu einem anderen transportieren würde. Es wurde gesagt, dass Alun oft sehr lange Stunden arbeitete, manchmal für eine Woche oder zwei ohne Abbrüche, manchmal 50 oder 60 Stunden. Now, Kaylee was described as funny, determined and fiercely independent.

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She could be quite chatty and loved making new friends with anyone who gave her the time of day. She loved playing card games, board games and strategy games. She could be just about anyone in Jenga or even pool, which was one of her favorites. Sie hatte einen Lernassistent, um ihr mit Dingen zu helfen, die sie einfach nicht in der Schule machen konnte.

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Aber außerhalb davon war sie bekannt, dass sie stürmisch war, sich niemandem für Hilfe zu verlassen, ohne dass sie es absolut brauchte. Sie ging zu einer normalen Hochschule, wo sie sich in ihrem Rollstuhl drückte, versuchte, niemandem eine Tür für sie zu öffnen, weil sie es selbst machen konnte.

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Kayleigh Titford wurde 2004 geboren zu Eltern Alun Titford und Sarah Lloyd-Jones und sie hatte fünf Brüder, alle von denen lebten zusammen in einem Haus in Powes, Wales. Kayleigh wurde mit Hydrocephalus und Spina Bifida geboren, zwei Diagnosen, die sehr stark mit einander verbunden sind.

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Sie war auch bekannt, ein guter Student zu sein, eine nahezu perfekte Aufmerksamkeit zu haben und immer 100 Prozent von ihren Klassen geben zu können. Kaylee begann, Basketball zu trainieren, als sie zehn Jahre alt war, und von dort an spielte sie durch alle ihre frühen und frühen Teen-Jahre. Her coach went on to say that Kaylee was an impressive player.

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She took to wheelchair basketball like a duck to water. She was highly competitive and determined, standing out among her peers. With the right push, she could have even gone on to compete in the Paralympics. But as she got older, those around her started to notice a shift in her personality and how she looked. She started to become quieter and more withdrawn and started to gain a lot of weight.

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Nun, es wurde gesagt, dass Kayleigh mit ihrem Gewicht über die ganze Zeit gestorben war. Seit sie drei Jahre alt war, wurde sie als überwältigt bezeichnet. Medizinische Mitarbeiter, die mit ihr gearbeitet haben, haben einen Plan gemacht, um ihre Diät und Nahrung besser zu verbessern, um ihr Gewicht zu stabilisieren. For a while, this seemed to work.

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She was eating better, was pretty active and overall healthier. Even when she was playing basketball, she had always been a little bit overweight, but it did seem to be under control, at least for a while. But by the time COVID hit, everything in Kayleigh's life took a turn for the worst.

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By March of 2020, when lockdowns were starting to take effect, Kaylee lost virtually all contact with the outside world. She stopped going to school in person. She could no longer play on the basketball team. Her weight gain snowballed and got out of control due to her lack of physical activity and inability to leave the house.

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Das zusammengestellt mit dem Fakt, dass Kaylee keine medizinischen Abläufe hatte. Nun möchte ich bemerken, dass als Kaylee in die Puberty geraten ist, ihre Eltern sie zu weniger medizinischen Abläufen genommen haben. Sie hatte ein Care Team bis 2017, um alle ihre Bedürfnisse zu beantworten.

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Sie bekam physische Therapie, Nahrungstherapie und verschiedene andere Tätigkeiten, die sich um ihre Gesundheit und Lebensqualität beteiligten. Aber um 2017 sagte Sarah ihrem Care Team, dass sie nicht fühlte, dass sie sie nicht mehr benötigt hatte.

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Von dort an hat sie sich nicht mehr zu beschlüsselten Abläufen eingelassen, sodass die verschiedenen medizinischen Anbieter sie nicht mehr beschlüsselt haben. Sie fiel aus ihren Beschlüsse und sie haben festgestellt, dass Kaylee ihre Hilfen nicht mehr benötigt hatte.

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So, there was a gradual decline before COVID, but by the time the lockdowns took effect, she stopped seeing any medical professionals altogether, and her parents started to decline any and all efforts for help, even if it was just over the phone or even if it was someone coming to their home.

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By May of 2020, Kayleys' mother Sarah had a phone appointment with a doctor at the Birmingham Children's Hospital. During this call, she assured the doctor that she did not need any assistance for Kaylee. Things were going just fine. By August of 2020, others who specialized in care for youth and teens also reached out to the family to offer help, but Sarah and Alon continuously denied.

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Spina Bifida ist ein relativ normaler Geburtsteil, wo der Neuraltubus nicht richtig entsteht oder sich auf den Weg schließt. Spina bifida passiert im Uterus in den ersten Phasen der Gestation. Wenn der Neuraltube nicht voll geschlossen ist, formen sich die Vertebrate, die den Spinalchord schützen, nicht voll. Es gibt drei verschiedene Typen von Spina bifida.

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So, even though Kaylee did have some specialized needs and required at least some level of skilled care, No one outside of her family was checking on her. Then, by September of 2020, schools started opening back up and allowing students to come to class in person. But Kaylee didn't return.

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School staff reached out to Sarah and Alon to inquire about Kaylee, but they were always given various excuses as to why she couldn't come in. One time Sarah said it's because Kaylee was sick. Another time it was because of her appointments. Another time it was because, you know, she said that Kaylee was anxious and didn't want to come back to school in person because...

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Sie wurde von ihren Feiern verhaftet. Aber das stand wirklich an den Mitarbeitern an, die Kayleigh kannten. Denn sie war immer bekannt, dass sie eine gute Aufmerksamkeit bei der Schule hatte. Und sie war immer bekannt, dass sie sich genossen hat, als sie dort war. So it was very unusual and concerning that she didn't show up even after the schools reopened.

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This continued for months and even though no one had seen or heard from Kaylee, including medical professionals and school staff, no one called Child Protective Services. No one thought to go and check in on her. Denn wenn sie es hatten, hätten sie herausgefunden, dass Kaylee leidet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Für Monate leidet sie Tag in und Tag aus, als ihre Bedürfnisse kontinuierlich verabschiedet wurden und ihr Körper zerbrach. Am Morgen des 10. Oktober 2020 erhielt 999 einen Anruf von Alon Titford, der berichtet, dass seine Tochter, dann 16-jährige Kaylee, Okay, is the patient awake? I don't know, I just had a photo of my son.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Spina bifida occulta, die meiste Form, passiert, wenn es einen kleinen Gap in der Spine gibt, aber es gibt keine Öffnung und der Fluidsack und der Spinalchord und die Nerven sind typisch nicht beeinflusst. As many as 15% of all healthy people have spina bifida occulta and have no idea. There are typically no symptoms, but it can sometimes cause pain in some people.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Um 8.10 Uhr kamen die ersten Anwesenden nach Hause und als sie da waren, wurden sie mit den horrendalen, furchtbaren Bedingungen, unter denen Kaylee für die letzten Monate ihres Lebens gelebt hatte, getroffen. Als die Paramediker ihren Weg in Kaylees Zimmer fuhren, wurden sie sofort von einem feuchten Geruch getroffen, der sie schluchzte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Sie sahen dann Kaylee, die in ihrem Bett sass, aber es war offensichtlich, dass sie bereits tot war. Um sie herum gab es in diesem Raum Müll, Müll, Müll und Dreck. Es gab Wasserbotteln und Kathedren voller Urin rund ums Bett, sowie viele verwendete Junkfood-Kontainer, McDonalds-Köpfe und Soda-Botteln, plus Taschen und Boxen aus Take-Out-Restauranten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Es gab eine alte Küchenappliance in der Raum, auf der ein dreckiger Frier saß, mit Fett, der an den Seiten drohte. gab es auch einen großen Kuchen in einer Box auf der Tafel. Sie sahen, dass Kaylee in einem adaptierten Raum gelebt hatte, voller Equipment, um sie umherzukommen. Aber es war klar, dass dieses Equipment in einem sehr langen Zeitraum nicht genutzt worden war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Es gab eine Menge Stoffe, die sich an Kaylees Fahrrad befanden, das sie lange ausgewachsen hatte. Sie fanden auch einen Heuer-Lift in der Raum, der benutzt wird, um jemanden zu helfen, der nicht mobilisiert ist, aus seinem Bett zu kommen. aber es war in Cobwebs gesperrt, das bedeutet, dass es sich wieder einmal nicht lange lang nicht genutzt hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Seine adaptive Toilette war umdrehen von Hähnchen und Schmutz. Ich möchte bemerken, dass die Rest der Haus und alle anderen Wohnräume viel sauberer waren als Kailies. Sie waren nicht präzise oder so, aber es war klar, dass Kailies Raum als Schlafraum für den Hund benutzt wurde, und ein Dumpfplatz für all ihre Müll und Schmutz.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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The second type is Meningocele, which happens when a sack of nerve fluid pushes through the opening in the baby's back, but the spinal cord is not in that sack and the nerves are typically not affected. With this type, there may be mild disabilities or some pain. Die stärkste Form ist Myelomeningocele. Wenn man über Spina Bifida spricht, ist das typisch der Typ, den sie bezeichnen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Als sie sich näher an Kayleigh beobachteten, fanden sie, dass ihr Haar vermattet und schmutzig war und ihre Haare in mindestens sechs Monaten nicht ausgeschnitten wurden. An dieser Zeit wurden sie mit dem schlimmsten Geruch, den sie jemals gespürt haben, getroffen, dass einige der Offiziere, sogar die am stärksten erfahrenen, physisch krank waren.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Der Geruch kam von ihren Beinen, die in absorbenten Puppe-Pads verpackt waren, die vollständig gesäubert waren. Als sie diese Pads entfernten, fanden sie, dass Kayleys Beine in Ulzern verpackt waren. Wir haben in so vielen vorherigen Videos über Ulzern diskutiert, also gehen wir heute nicht zu weit in die Details, aber für diejenigen von euch, die einen Erinnerung brauchen,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

"Lazy" Parents Leave Disabled Daughter in DISGUSTING Room to ROT to Death: The Kaylea Titford Case

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Eine Druckschmerzen ist durch eine längere Druckschmerze auf einem Bereich der Haut ohne Rettung verursacht. Jemand wie Kaylee, die ihre Beine nicht bewegen kann, ist viel mehr verursacht, Druckschmerzen zu entwickeln. Seine waren so schlecht, dass ihre Haut sich über die Haut, über die Füße von Fett, über die Muskeln, über die Tendenzen und ihre Beine bewegte. Es ist 12.19 Uhr auf

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Earlier, Alison had actually offered to drive one of her friends, Kim, home, so she went ahead and did that and then returned back to her apartment. Now, normally, Alison had a pretty nice parking spot in her apartment complex, which was only a short walk away from her unit.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Also, es war ziemlich offensichtlich, dass die beiden diese Panik und Medienverrücktheit verwendet haben, um Begrüßungen dafür zu machen, was sie getan haben, und versuchen, es an irgendwelche Dämonen zu beurteilen, aber niemand glaubte ihnen. Danach, nachdem die Männer verhaftet worden waren, gingen sie natürlich zur Trial. Offensichtlich hatte die Verwaltung einen sehr starken Fall gegen sie.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie hatten all die Beweise von der Nacht. as well as Allison's testimony. By August of 1995, both of them were found guilty of eight charges, which included two counts of kidnapping, two counts of indecent assault, two counts of rape, one count of aggravated robbery, and one count of attempted murder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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The two were being charged with Allison's assault and then the assault on the pregnant woman that we discussed earlier. Franz de Tweet was handed three life sentences and Franz Kruger was handed a life sentence plus 25 years. Der Gericht hat es sehr klar gemacht, dass er diese beiden Männer hinter den Bars für den Rest ihres Lebens wollte. Also, jetzt noch ein wenig zurück.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Alison hat drei Wochen im Krankenhaus geblieben und sie war von ihren Verletzungen zurückgekommen. Während sie dort war, gab es Nachrichten über ihre Angriff, die überall in Südafrika verbreitet wurden und Unterstützung für sie kam absolut in. Tausende von Menschen haben ihr Karten, Schriften und Blumen gesendet. Alle haben ihren Stolz und ihre Stärke geniefert.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Leute kamen zu ihr ins Krankenhaus und sie waren absolut überrascht von ihrem Zustand. Aber anscheinend war sie nur da und hat so positive Geschichten und so eine positive Attitüde. Es war absolut unglaublich. Nachdem sie das Krankenhaus verlassen hat, konnte sie nach Hause gehen, aber ihre Behandlung war nicht fertig.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie musste fast jeden Tag nach dem Krankenhaus zurück zur Behandlung für ihre kognitiven Behandlungen, damit sie keine Infektionen oder weitere Komplikationen haben würde. Es war ein sehr langsamer, schmerzhafter und gruseliger Prozess, aber sie hat es durchgekommen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber obwohl sie sich zurückgezogen hat und die Verantwortung der Männer hinter den Bars gelegt wurde, hatte Alison noch so viele Dinge, die sie durch den Angriff beurteilen musste. Sie konnte nicht arbeiten und fiel in eine sehr schwere und tiefe Depression. Sie wusste nicht, wie sie mit ihrem Leben danach weitergehen würde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie hat also entschieden, das, was ihr passiert ist, zu nehmen und ihre Geschichte zu erzählen. Sie verabschiedete ihren Job mit der Sicherheitsfirma und begann, weltweit ihre Geschichte in so vielen anderen Ländern zu erzählen. Sie war tatsächlich eine der ersten Frauen aus Südafrika, die öffentlich über Rape gesprochen haben.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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However, when she got home, she realized that the spot had actually been taken, so she had to drive around and search for a new one that wasn't too far away. And eventually, she did find a spot, but the spot was right under a big tree. And the area was already... und dieser Baum schlug die Lichter noch mehr, also war es ziemlich schwarz, wo sie parkieren musste.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Ihre Geschichte hat so viele andere Überlebende inspiriert, sich voran zu bringen und ihre Geschichten zu teilen. 1995 gewann sie den Rotarian Paul Harris Award für Courage Beyond the Norm sowie den Femina-Magazin Women of Courage Award. Sie wurde später auch als Poor Elizabeths Citizen of the Year verehrt. Sie wurde auch im Februar 1997 mit Tani Botha verheiratet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie und Tani hatten sich schon seit vielen Jahren kennengelernt, aber etwa ein Jahr nach ihrem Angriff The two had met again at a friend's house. The two connected because both had experiences of trauma. T&E had unsolved childhood trauma that he was still battling and Allison was battling her own depression.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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The two were able to help each other out of their own personal darknesses and through that they fell in love and they knew that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. Dann, am 14. November 2003, hat sie ihren Sohn Daniel geboren und hat dann noch ein anderes Babybein namens Matthew, ein paar Jahre nachdem. Sie hat auch zwei Bücher veröffentlicht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Einer war namens I Have a Life, Alice's Journey as told by Marion Tham, und wurde 1998 veröffentlicht. Sie hat dann in 2002 ihr Buch For the Tough Times veröffentlicht. Sie hat auch einen Film über ihre Angriff, der im Jahr 2016 herausgekommen ist. Sie hat über die ganze Welt geflogen, um ihre Geschichte zu erzählen und so viele Leute haben ihr erzählt, dass ihre Geschichte sie inspiriert hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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And some people have even said that her story has saved their life because they feel less alone in their own personal experiences of violence and rape. She once said, Life can sometimes make us feel like the victim. Problems and hardships and traumas are dished out to all of us and sometimes they can be divided very unfairly. People have often asked me, well, what made you survive?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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What made you fight?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber an diesem Punkt war sie ziemlich müde und war bereit, einfach nach oben zu gehen, einen Schauer zu nehmen und zu Bett zu gehen. Sie hat also in ihr Auto reingezogen, um den Kühlschrank aus dem Passagierseite ihres Autos zu holen, bevor sie zum Wohnzimmer ging. Währenddessen hat sie sich in den Passagierseite gelegt, den Kühlschrank zu holen, she suddenly felt a warm gush of air.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Alison Botha ist wirklich so eine Inspiration und ich kann nicht mal vorstellen, wie viel Mut es braucht, um so einen horrifizierten Ereignis vor Millionen von Leuten zu sprechen, wie sie es hat. Selbst alleine, nur der Fakt, dass sie diese ganze Sache überlebt hat, ist absolut unglaublich und zeigt, wie sehr sie ein verdammter Kämpfer ist. Sie wird nicht aufgeben und sie bleibt

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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bis heute, um zu zeigen, wie stark sie ist. Aber sie hat auch so viele Menschen mit ihren eigenen Erfahrungen vorgebracht und hat Millionen von jungen Frauen gelernt, wie sie mit dem, was sie persönlich durchgegangen haben, umgekehrt. Und das ist wirklich großartig. Das war's für heute. Ich freue mich sehr, was ihr zu diesem Fall und zu Alison und ihrem tollen Wunsch zu sagen habt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Ich freue mich sehr, diese Diskussion in den Kommentaren zu haben. Wenn euch das Video gefallen hat, dann gebt diesem Video einen Daumen nach oben.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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and subscribe to my channel i put out new true crime and mystery videos every week don't forget to turn on the notification bell to be notified of any of my future videos also don't forget to go ahead and follow me on twitter and instagram and if you have absolutely any case suggestions please make sure to go ahead and send them over to my email at rachelshannoncases gmail.com every single case that i cover here on my channel comes directly from there or my patreon so make sure you go ahead and send those suggestions over with that i hope you guys have a great week

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Stay safe, stay healthy and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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She looked over only to see that a tall, skinny white man with blonde hair had swung the door open and was now standing there with a knife. And it was her driver's side door, so she was faced away from him when he opened the door. So after this, he leaned over to her and said in a quiet but very serious tone, move over or I'll kill you. So she did exactly that.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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She moved over to the passenger seat of her car. After she moved, this man got into the driver's seat of the car and just started driving. Of course, Allison was absolutely terrified and completely frozen in fear. But after a few minutes of driving, this man introduced himself as Clinton and assured her by saying, I don't want to hurt you. I just need to use your car for an hour.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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And of course, Alison really didn't know what to think, but she wanted to believe him. She went through all of these different scenarios in her head. She thought of maybe just... Sie kam aus dem Auto, machte etwas, aber sie war einfach gefroren. Sie begte den Mann, sie aus dem Auto zu lassen. Sie sagte, sie könne das Auto nehmen, um sie wegzulassen. Aber er sagte nein.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Er sagte ihr, er suchte jemanden, der ihm Geld verdient hatte und er würde nicht lange bleiben, was er tun musste. So the man drove for a little bit longer before arriving in a different area of Port Elizabeth. Once he got there, he finally found the person that he had been searching for. He pulled over and told this man to get into his car.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Er hat diesen Mann zu Alison als Thun und hat Thun erzählt, dass das sein neuer Freund Alison war. Nachdem Thun in den Auto kam, fuhr Clinton nach dem Ausgleich von Port Elizabeth in ein Gebiet, das völlig isoliert war. Es war ein sehr desolierter Gebiet im Busch mit absolut nichts umsonst.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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An diesem Punkt wusste Alison, dass etwas Schreckliches zu ihr passieren würde, aber niemand konnte erwarten, wie brutal und gewaltig sie sich verletzen würde. Clinton, dessen echter Name eigentlich Franz de Tweet, und Thuns sagten Alison, dass sie mit ihr Sex machen werden würde und fragten, ob sie sie kämpfen würde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Natürlich war sie enttäuscht, sie war isoliert, es gab absolut nirgendwo für sie zu gehen und sie war absolut furchtbar, also hat sie ihnen gesagt, nein, sie wird sie nicht kämpfen. Was danach passiert, ist sehr bedrohlich, es ist sehr grafisch und sehr gewaltig, also wollte ich nur vorhersagen, weil es sehr schwierig zu hören ist.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Heute werden wir über den sehr bedrohlichen Fall von Alison Botha sprechen. Alison Botho wurde am 22. September 1967 in Port Elisabeth, Südafrika geboren. Sie scheint eine relativ normale Kindheit zu haben, so wie ich es gesehen habe, aber ihre Eltern wurden verheiratet, als sie zehn Jahre alt war, also lebte sie die meiste ihrer Leben mit ihrer Mutter Claire und ihrem Bruder Neil.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber nachdem das, haben sie beide Alison brutal verabredet, eine nach der anderen. Danach versuchten sie, sie zu beheben, bis sie unbewusst fiel. An diesem Punkt versuchten sie, sie zu töten, aber Alison war noch lebendig, obwohl sie versuchten, sie zu beheben. Also, die beiden wurden sehr frustriert und begannen, sie zu stürzen.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie stürzten sie um die 36-mal in den Abdomen und versuchten tatsächlich, ihre reproduktiven Organe zu beheben. Nach dem Stab dachten sie, dass sie tot war, aber dann war ihr Bein gezwitscht und sie bemerkten, dass sie noch nicht tot war. Also haben sie es einen Schritt weiter genommen und haben ihr Brot 17 mal geschliffen.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Es wurde später beschrieben, dass als sie dort auf einem Haufen gebrochenes Glas und Sand lag, der Mann einfach über ihr stand und alles, was sie sah, war, dass seine Arme nach links und nach rechts und nach links und nach rechts über ihr Gesicht schlug, als er ihr Brot geschliffen hatte. Diese ganze Zeit war sie völlig bewusst von allem, was von diesen zwei Männern gemacht wurde.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Endlich stürmten die zwei Männer weg und die zwei Männer sahen auf sie und sprachen miteinander in afrikanischen Händen. Ein Mann fragte, ob sie tot ist und der andere Mann antwortete, dass niemand das überleben kann. An diesem Punkt war Alison noch wach und als sie sie hörten, hörte sie immer noch dieses Ratschen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Das Geräusch kam tatsächlich aus ihrem Mund und blutete aus ihren horrifischen Verletzungen. Für sie klingelte dieser Geräusch so laut. Sie versuchte also alles zu tun, um diesen Geräusch zu stoppen, weil sie Angst hatte, dass sie ihn hören würden. Aber sie wollte auch darauf achten, dass sie komplett still bleibt, weil sie nicht wollte, dass sie wissen würde, dass sie noch lebendig war.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber dann, als sie dort lag, fühlte sie etwas, das auf sie gelegt wurde. Sie wusste nicht, was es war, aber an diesem Punkt hat es nicht wirklich geholfen. Und so hat sie nur gehalten und lag dort und hat keine Muskeln bewegt. Sie lag dort, bis sie hörten, dass sie weggingen und hörten, als ihre Stimmen feiner wurden.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Und zum Schluss hörte sie die Männer in ihr Auto kommen und wegfahren, leaving her completely alone to just die there. At this point, she was sure that she was going to die, so she took every last ounce of strength that she had to leave some clues around her about who did this to her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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She had actually caught the names of both of these men throughout the attack because they just kept talking to each other. Sie wusste zumindest die Namen dieser beiden Männer. Sie schrieb ihre Namen in den Sand und darunter schrieb sie, dass sie ihre Mutter liebt. Sie war nur da und fragte sich, wie sie das überleben würde. Aber dann sah sie die Lichter in den Bäumen fliegen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Es war ein Auto auf der Straße, das nach ihr fuhr. Das gab ihr die Motivation, dass sie wusste, dass es noch eine Möglichkeit gab, dass jemand da war, der ihr helfen konnte. Sie hat versucht, sich hoch zu bringen, aber sie hatte so stark getötet, dass ihre Intestine tatsächlich aus ihrem Abdomen fallen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber sie hat bemerkt, dass das Objekt, das einer der Männer auf ihr gestellt hat, eigentlich ihr Denim Jacket war. Also hat sie es aufgenommen und hat es benutzt, um das Gebiet zu kompressieren und alles zu kontrollieren, was los war und alles wieder reinzunehmen. Dann konnte sie irgendwie aufstehen. She managed to crawl through the dirt and all of the broken glass.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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As she was doing this though, she just kept getting more and more exhausted until she collapsed into the ground. But through this exhaustion, she just kept thinking of her mother and that gave her the strength to keep going. She kept crawling, but that was just taking way too much strength and way too much energy.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie wurde als andere beschrieben, als traurig und ehrgeizig, aber sie beschrieb sich selbst als ordentlich, nicht wirklich viel ausgestattet, und sie hatte nicht wirklich eine bestimmte Richtung in ihrer Leben, in die sie für eine Weile gehen wollte. Sie ging zur Schule und war die Hauptfrau an der Collegiate High School for Girls in Port Elizabeth.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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So, she managed to get up onto her feet to start walking, but when she was on her feet, she just fell back. Und an diesem Punkt hat sie sich erkannt, wie schlimm ihr Gehirn getrocknet wurde. Seine Hände fielen zurück und sie verlor ihre Vision. Sie hatte fast von den Schmerzen in ihrem Gehirn entdeckt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie hat also eine der freien Hände benutzt, um ihre Hände nach vorne zu drücken und sie hat ihre Vision zurückgebracht. Sie hat literally eine freie Hand benutzt, um ihre Hände auf ihrem Nacken zu halten. und die andere, um ihr Denim-Shirt auf ihrem Abdomen zu halten, um alles kompressiv zu halten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Aber sie hat es geschafft, und sie hat es geschafft, den Weg nach vorne zu treten, aber während sie das gemacht hat, war ihre Vision nur in und aus und in und aus, bis sie am Ende auf den Weg kam. Als sie den Weg erreicht hat, ist sie einfach auf die weiße Linie gelaufen. Sie wusste, dass ihr bestes Wettbewerb war, einfach dort zu stehen und hoffentlich von jemandem zu bemerken, der sich fährt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Es gab eigentlich zwei Autos, die sie gesehen haben und dann neben ihr gedreht haben, aber dann einfach weggefahren sind. Es ist ein bisschen schmerzhaft. Aber dann, glücklicherweise, gab es noch ein Auto auf der Straße, das Alison gesehen hat und sich entschieden hat, zu stoppen. Ein 20-jähriger Mann namens T.N. Ellard ist aus dem Auto gegangen, um zu sehen, was los war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Tien war ein Vetschstudent von Johannesburg auf Verabschiedung mit einigen Freunden in Port Elizabeth an dem Zeitpunkt. Er hat aus seinem Auto gegangen, um diese Frau zu helfen und hat gemerkt, dass sie noch lebendig war. Er hat dann seine veterinäre Erfahrung genutzt, um alles zu stabilisieren und sie bewusst zu halten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Er hat sie aufgeführt und hat sie die ganze Zeit gesprochen, um sie wach zu halten. Glücklicherweise hatte ein Freund von Tien eine Telefonnummer, sodass sie eine Ambulanz für sie anrufen konnten. Sie haben eigentlich 45 Minuten bis eine Stunde gedauert.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Es wurde ein bisschen anders berichtet, also weiß ich nicht genau, wie lange, aber sie haben für eine Weile gedauert, bevor eine Ambulanz endlich kam. Also, an diesem Punkt sah es so aus, als wäre sie einfach tot, sie würde nicht überleben und es gäbe nichts, was jemand für sie helfen könnte. Once she arrived at the hospital, doctors were absolutely horrified at her condition.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Dr. Alexander Angelov went on to say that in his 16 years as a doctor, he has never seen anybody with such severe injuries. She was on the brink of death and they were confident that there was no way that she was going to pull through. They described her condition as being absolutely filthy. Her entire body was covered in a thin layer of black dirt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie ging zur Universität für ein Sekretariat und als sie graduierte, verbrachte sie etwa vier Jahre, bevor sie nach Port Elizabeth zurückkehrte, um sich zu befinden und eine Karriere als Versicherer zu starten. Sonntag, Dezember 18, 1994, begann als ein ziemlich normaler Tag für 27-jährige Alison.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Her eyes were just bloodshot, her hair was matted, her feet were lacerated and her fingernails were completely black. Her neck had been cut all the way across and like I said earlier, her head was barely hanging on. And also like I said earlier, she had been stabbed 36 times in her abdomen and her pubic area. Sie war drei Stunden lang in der Surgery.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie mussten ihre Intestine in eine Saline-Solution waschen, bevor sie sie wieder in ihr zurückorganisierten und sie aufgesteckt haben. Sie haben ihren Nacken wiedergebaut und dankbar, irgendwie, durch die Gnade Gottes, hatten ihre Attacker ihre karotten Arterien und ihr Esophagus verpasst. Deine Karotten-Arterie ist deiner Lebenslinie.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Wenn das getrennt wird, wird dein Gehirn nicht das Blut und Öl, das es braucht. Wenn das getrennt wurde, würde sie das definitiv nicht überleben, aber glücklicherweise haben sie es nicht bekommen. Es war absolut unglaublich und sie hat ihre Arztpraxis überlebt, mit minimalen restlichen Verletzungen, aber

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Die Ärzte dachten, dass sie wahrscheinlich nicht mehr Kinder haben werden können, weil der Schmerz an ihren reproduktiven Organen zu groß ist. Aber egal. Sie war bewusst und sie konnte alles über ihren Angriff erinnern, insbesondere wer die Männer waren und wie sie aussahen.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Die Polizei brachte Alison ein Buch voller Bilder von einigen verschiedenen Verbrechern aus dem Bereich und sie konnte sie sofort herausfinden. Nun, diese beiden Männer hatten tatsächlich eine sehr interessierende und faszinierende Geschichte von sexuellem Gewalt gegen Frauen. Also, jetzt werde ich weiterhelfen und über die Geschichte der Dinge reden, die nach Alisons Angriff kamen.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Im Februar 1994 tat Franz de Tweet eine ähnliche Sache mit einer 19-jährigen Mädchen. Er überraschte sie auch, indem er die Tür ihres Autos öffnete und ihr sagte, dass sie sich in den Passagierseit bewegen. He then drove to a secluded area and proceeded to rape her. He then drove to a nearby cafe and then got her dinner and gave her a rose.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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However, after this attack, he got her back into the car, drove her to another secluded location and assaulted her once again. After that, he drove her back to the city and let her go. Of course, this young woman reported the rape and he was arrested. But he was released on bail.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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By early December of that year, both him and Duns had approached a 21-year-old pregnant woman and then they threatened her with a gun, made her walk to a secluded area and then they both raped her. They ended up letting her go too and she also reported the rape and they were both arrested. But of course, they were both released shortly after.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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An diesem Punkt hat der Gericht gesagt, dass er nicht wusste, dass Franz die andere Rape-Frage hatte, aber es hat nicht wirklich geholfen, weil sie niemals in den ersten Ort geliefert werden sollten. Das war ein gewaltiger Angriff. Es ist egal, ob es ihre erste Zeit war oder nicht.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Sie war am Strand am Tag mit einigen Freunden, bevor sie nach Alisans Wohnung zurückgingen, um Pizza zu essen und ein Spiel zu spielen, das Boulderdash heißt. Alle Freunde hatten einen ziemlich lustigen Tag, bevor ihre Freunde eine Nacht anrufen wollten, um 1 Uhr.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Ich kann es einfach nie verstehen, wie ein Gericht zwei Männer sehen kann, die literally eine Frau am Angriff behalten, besonders eine schwere Frau, und dann sie verabschiedet und dachte, hm, sie werden es wahrscheinlich nicht wieder tun. Also, lasst uns einfach

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Denn dann, wie wir wissen, zwei Wochen nach dem Ausstieg, im Dezember 1994, wurden die beiden verabschiedet, verabschiedet und versuchten, Alison Botha zu töten. Als sie Alison verabschiedeten, wussten sie, dass sie sie nicht nur lebendig verlassen können, weil die anderen zwei Frauen ihre Verabschiedungen beurteilt hatten, und sie wollten nicht, dass sie getötet werden.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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They figured, we need to kill her this time to make sure we don't get caught. It's absolutely ridiculous and it's very predictable. Yet somehow this judge didn't think that that would happen and just let them out. It's absolutely appalling and I really hope things have changed in South Africa.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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So, now going back to when Allison had woken up from surgery, she was able to remember exactly what her attackers looked like and she identified them right away. So, shortly after this, police were able to locate them and they were arrested. So, Vince Krueger was the first to be interviewed and when he was given the news that he was being charged with attempted murder and rape,

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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He was very surprised. The two were very confident that they had killed her, but as we know, they hadn't. So right away, Thuns handed over the knife that they used for Allison's attack, as well as the jewelry that they had stolen from her. Franz was then questioned as well, and he too admitted everything.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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They both showed absolutely zero emotion or remorse for anything that they had done, and they actually informed police, dass sie am nächsten Tag eine andere Frau verabschieden wollten und sie sie auf eine Brücke werfen wollten.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Dann kamen die beiden raus und sagten, dass der Grund dafür, dass sie all diese schrecklichen und horrifischen Verbrechen verursachten, war, weil sie in Satanismus involviert waren. Sie sagten, dass sie von Dämonen besitzt wurden und diese Dämonen waren diejenigen, die ihnen sagten, all diese Verbrechen zu machen. Und natürlich ging die Medien wild damit.

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ALISON BOTHA: A SURVIVAL STORY

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Das war in den frühen 90ern, als der satanische Panik in Südafrika langweilig war. 1992 haben sie tatsächlich eine Angelegenheit geschaffen, die spezifisch für Verbrechen zu der Okkultation verantwortlich war.

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41: She MURDERED Her Baby and Still Walks Free?!

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This case is one that seems to be very polarizing depending on what side you want to believe.

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It could also match up with she was alive, she was killed, and then maybe she dropped her or being in the ground and having the weight of that planter pot on top of her fractured her skull. Baby's heads are of course very, very fragile so there's so many different possibilities for how she could have sustained these skull fractures.

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After the autopsy was complete by July 20th, Skylar was taken in for a second interview. There, officers told Skylar that they know there's more to the story. They held her hand and asked her to tell them exactly what happened because the autopsy revealed more information. They said that they know what happened to the baby, but now they need her to tell them the truth.

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41: She MURDERED Her Baby and Still Walks Free?!

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They said they knew there had been some signs that she was alive when she was born. By this point, they're referring to the baby by her given name, Annabelle. They said that her parents are asking for the baby's remains because they want to give her a proper burial. but they aren't able to until their investigation is over. The investigation can't be over until Skylar tells them what happened.

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After some pushing, Skylar eventually started to talk more. She ultimately admitted that when Annabelle was born, she fell into the toilet and may have actually hit her head. At the same time, she also may have made a little bit of noise. She may have let out a little gurgle sound as she was coming out, but Skylar wasn't sure.

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This started as her restricting her food intake. Then she started starving herself. Even things like chewing gum and toothpaste, she refused to consume because it had a few calories in it. Then, when she did inevitably eat because she was starving her body, she would feel extreme guilt and would make herself throw up. This became a vicious cycle for the years that followed.

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41: She MURDERED Her Baby and Still Walks Free?!

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She then said that she may have seen the baby moving her arms a little bit, but also was not sure. She said that when she picked the baby up out of the toilet, she's afraid that she may have squeezed her a little too hard on her chest when she was trying to check her heartbeat, that maybe it did hurt her, but she isn't exactly sure what ended up causing her death.

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She hardly looked at Annabelle after the birth, so there's a lot of information Skylar truly just doesn't know. Then, officers told Skylar that the bones they found had been burned in some spots. They said that there had to have been a fire of some sort, some sort of heat applied to the baby's bones. Skylar denied having burned her, saying that she was sure of that.

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She denied setting fire to that baby numerous times throughout that interview. But the officers suggested that maybe it wasn't done out of malice. Maybe she burned her so she could have her ashes. Lots of people will have loved ones cremated so that they can keep their loved ones close. At that point, Skylar said that maybe she did try to burn the baby just a little bit.

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She became consumed with her body image. It's all she thought about 95% of the time. It was a constant battle for her, and those around her, especially her family, they started to notice. Of course, it was said that her family wanted to help Skylar with her issue, but this is such a sensitive topic and you obviously need to go about it the right way when you're trying to help someone.

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then a little over an hour after the interview started officers left and her parents came in to speak with her at that time she told her parents that she may have tried to cremate the baby just a little bit her father scott was obviously shocked at this and asked her if the baby was alive when she delivered her and Skylar said that she was.

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Based on the second interview and everything else they've discovered up to this point, Skylar was then arrested and charged with reckless homicide. She posted bail, then spent the following weeks at home with her parents. But then, by August 4th, Skylar went in front of a grand jury where she was now being indicted on charges of aggravated murder,

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involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. At this point, she was held in jail for the weekend until her family was finally able to gather the $50,000 for her bail, which they eventually posted once again. For the two years that followed, life for the Richardson family just got harder and harder.

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They were the subject of a media storm with people from all over the area showing up at their home and trying to get a glimpse of this 18 year old teenager who murdered her own baby in cold blood. It was just a mess. Finally, by September of 2019, the trial for murder started. There, the prosecution outlined the timeline of everything that happened in this case.

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In August of 2016, Skylar was dating Trey Johnson, with whom she had sex two times, once without protection. That is when she fell pregnant. She then went about her life for the following months, having no idea she was pregnant because, as we stated earlier, she had a severe eating disorder.

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If you say the wrong thing or go about it the wrong way, it can have the opposite effect. It can make someone's eating disorder worse. Kim and Scott noticed that even bringing up anything related to food made Skylar shut down. She was very guarded and kept a lot to herself. Skylar's parents started taking her to different doctors who sent her to therapists and nutritionists.

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So yes, she was missing periods and was probably experiencing some symptoms of pregnancy, but it didn't concern Skylar because the side effects of being underweight and lacking nutrition can also cause missed periods and feeling sick all the time. But then by April 26th, 2017, Skylar's doctor confirmed that she is pregnant.

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Her doctor told her that she was about 32 weeks at the time, saying that she would be delivering the baby within weeks. Her doctor, Dr. William Andrew, testified at trial about how that conversation went. He said that when he broke her the news, Schuyler just kept saying that she could not have this baby. She was adamant about no one knowing she was pregnant.

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Dr. Andrew said that he then did an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy. Now, the reason they even did the pregnancy test, of course, is because when you're going to prescribe birth control, you want to make sure they're not already pregnant. So that's how she found out. But then the ultrasound was to confirm the pregnancy.

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41: She MURDERED Her Baby and Still Walks Free?!

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Dr. Andrew said that sometimes he does this to allow the expecting mother to hear the heartbeat, which can sometimes help people to accept that they're pregnant. But Skylar was still upset after the ultrasound and kept repeating that she cannot have a baby because she's going to college in the fall. He assured her that just because she has a baby doesn't mean that she has to keep it or raise it.

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There are so many other options for her. He told her to please call him if she had thoughts of harming herself or the baby, but she never followed up with him, despite him trying to get a hold of her multiple times after that appointment. In the days following this appointment, Skylar told no one of her pregnancy.

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She was determined to keep the secret from everyone, including her boyfriend at the time. She had even lied to him, telling him that she had cramping due to her period, even though she knew she didn't have a period. No one in her life even suspected she was pregnant because she was still so small.

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She had tried on her tight red prom dress all the way back in February, six months into her pregnancy, and that same dress still fit her by May, just days before she gave birth. Then just two days after attending prom with her boyfriend, Skylar secretly gave birth to her daughter in the bathroom. She did it alone without waking up her parents or brother.

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She then grabbed the newborn and smothered her to avoid making any sounds. She then carried the baby into the backyard where she then buried her.

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The prosecution pointed out how even though she initially tried saying the baby was a stillborn, she did ultimately admit that her baby may have been alive for a few minutes after the birth and that she may have accidentally killed her by squeezing her too hard. She then tried to burn the body to do some sort of cremation.

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But the prosecution argued that this was actually an attempt to conceal the evidence rather than trying for a cremation. Then the prosecution discussed text messages between Skylar and her mother the day after she gave birth. In that text, Skylar texted her mom saying, I am never, ever, ever letting it get like this again. You're about to see me look freaking better than before. OMG.

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In the weeks that followed, the prosecution said that she regularly texted her mother about her body and weight, with her mom encouraging her to lose weight, exercise, and restrict her eating. About 10 days after giving birth, Skylar told her mom that her stomach was shrinking and that she had lost 20 pounds. Her mom said, I could cry. You are my hero.

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Yes, Skylar struggled with an eating disorder, but it appears that her mom encouraged it. Skylar wanted to be as skinny as possible because she wanted her mother's approval. This was something that had gone on for several years. The two regularly texted about Skylar's weight and it was clear that Kim cared a great deal about Skylar being as skinny as possible.

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Through that, she was diagnosed with body dysmorphia, which is when someone obsesses over a perceived flaw within their body and may take on some unhealthy behaviors to cope with it. This was something that Skylar has struggled with for years and still struggles with to this day.

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This was a family that was obsessed with outward appearances and they would do anything to maintain a certain image. So yeah, Skylar hid her pregnancy to keep up with these expectations. There was also some evidence that Kim may have known about the pregnancy.

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Apparently, she received an email about the pregnancy and Skylar tried telling her mom that it was just a mistake, that she wasn't actually pregnant.

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so I don't know if Kim believed her at that point or if she was just convinced because her daughter said so but obviously she had a belly and then all of a sudden lost it and her mother noticed that so she could have known she may not have based on how she interacted with Skylar after you know this whole thing came out it doesn't seem like she knew but

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She could also be acting, or it could have just been confirmed. Maybe she was in denial, and once this all happened, it was more confirmed. Who really knows at this point? The prosecution then continued with their timeline, saying that by July 12th, 2017, Skylar returned to her gynecologist for a follow-up appointment.

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There, she saw another doctor, Dr. Casey Boyce, who inquired about her pregnancy. In response, Skylar started crying and said that she had it alone in her house and buried it in the backyard. Of course, Dr. Boyce was stunned. Skylar went on to say that no one else knew about what happened, that Dr. Boyce was the only soul who knew.

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She explained that she cleaned everything up, buried her in the backyard, and that no one ever even knew she was pregnant. Skylar asked Dr. Boyce not to tell anyone, but after the appointment, she consulted with Dr. Andrew, and together, they did decide to notify police. Then, as we know, police followed up with Skyler, found the body, and sent her to the medical examiner.

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Again, the ME said that she couldn't determine whether the baby was born alive or not and didn't know the cause of death, but still felt that it was a homicide. They argued that Skylar Richardson murdered her baby because she didn't want to raise a child. She had too much to look forward to.

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She didn't want anyone to know about the pregnancy because she too wanted to keep up with outward appearances. So when she gave birth, she smothered her baby and buried it in the backyard. Then she told everyone that she was already dead when she was born to avoid getting in trouble. On the other hand, the defense argued that Skylar gave birth to a stillborn that night.

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Yes, she was in denial about the pregnancy, but when she gave birth, She only realized what happened after the baby arrived. It's not like she went to the bathroom knowing the baby was coming. The baby was born without the umbilical cord attached and the baby was already pale white. She grabbed the baby out of the toilet to check on her but realized there was no sign of life.

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But by July of 2016, the summer before her senior year, Skylar started dating another teenager, Trey Johnson, who was the cousin of one of her close friends. This relationship only lasted a month before the two broke up. Then by January of 2017, she started another relationship with a junior named Branton. According to Skylar's parents, after starting this new relationship, Skylar seemed happy.

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So she went to the backyard where she buried her in a grave. She put flowers over her body and made sure to mark it so that she could visit the baby when she felt she needed to. She didn't just throw her baby away like trash. She was trying to do the right thing by burying her. The defense reminded the jury that Skylar has had a severe eating disorder from the time she was 12.

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After finding out she was pregnant, she was in denial, and once again, even if she was experiencing symptoms that confirmed she was pregnant, it wasn't out of the ordinary for Skylar. They also said that women who have such eating disorders are at higher risk of having a stillborn. They said that yes, Skylar was afraid of what her family would think if they knew she was pregnant.

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She was embarrassed to tell them what happened after she birthed a stillborn. So yes, she wanted to keep it to herself, but that didn't mean she killed her baby. They emphasized that during her first interview with police, she repeated the sentiment that she didn't kill her baby. The only time she admitted that she killed her baby was after being hounded for an hour by investigators.

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They asked her numerous times if she burned the baby's body and she had said no 17 times until after they suggested that she tried cremating her. They were the ones who suggested that the baby made a gurgling sound when she was born because that's common. There were many times in the interviews when the investigators suggested certain things to Skylar, and only then did she admit to it.

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She was pressured into these confessions, so they're unreliable. They also pointed to the medical examiner's findings that they could not determine whether the baby was born alive or not. So there was no reason she should have determined that the manner of death was homicide. She came to that conclusion based on Schuyler's confession. not based on any scientific findings.

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They also discredited the whole idea of finding her bones charred. They said that that's just simply not true. They even said that the medical examiner wasn't positive of these findings either. So this was just such a loose thing that could not be confirmed. So they said that really the bones were not charred and it was just a false diagnosis. finding.

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After each side made their arguments, they made their closing statements, and the jury was off for deliberations. And after just four hours of deliberation, they came back and actually found Schuyler not guilty on charges of aggravated murder and involuntary manslaughter, but they did find her guilty of abuse of a corpse.

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After hearing this decision, the judge made his feelings well known. He believes that if Skylar made different choices during and after her pregnancy and delivery, that Annabelle would still be here. He thinks that sometimes people don't really consider how valuable life is when making decisions in cases like this.

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And he thinks that throughout this case, Skylar has shown a grotesque disregard for life. He is disappointed that certain things were left out of the trial, leaving the jury unable to consider those factors in their decision. But at the end of the day, she was acquitted by a jury of her peers, so there's nothing else that can be done.

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her and Brandon seemed to click and Skylar really liked being with him. It was around this time when Kim and Scott noticed that Skylar was finally starting to put on some weight. This made them so happy to see, thinking that Skylar's mental health was improving, which was helping her get her eating disorder under control.

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So for the charges of abuse of a corpse, she was sentenced to seven days behind bars, which she had already served during the whole process, so she was given credit for that. Then she was sentenced to three years community service.

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A few months later, by March of 2017, Skylar went on a vacation with her family where she wore a swimsuit. Once again, her parents were happy to see that she looked healthy. She seemed to be really happy. She was in a healthy relationship with Brandon, who she cared deeply about as well. But this ongoing relationship with her high school sweetheart prompted Kim to have a talk with her daughter.

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the sentencing i'm going to order as a term of your community control that you spend seven days in the county jail i'm going to credit you the seven days that you have already done which means that you are going to be going home today and that's where the case sits according to the family schuyler continues to struggle with her eating disorder to this day life has gotten significantly harder for them as they are surrounded by a community who believes that schuyler killed her baby

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Some people hear the details of this case and think that this teenage girl is a cold-blooded killer. Others think this was all an accident and believe that she was desperate and in way over her head. But regardless of what you think, this is a tragic case that never should have happened the way that it did. and I'm very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one.

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but they simply don't think their daughter is capable of that. Nevertheless, this continues to be a point of contention for many people, and there are people who believe both sides. I do personally believe that the baby was born alive. I think she hid her pregnancy because, again, she didn't want to get in trouble. She didn't want to disappoint her family. She didn't want her life to be ruined.

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She clearly isn't mentally healthy, and I think that in desperation, she either squeezed the baby too hard, or put her hand over her mouth to stop her from crying and breathing. I don't think that she did this out of malice or because she's evil, but I do wish she had been held accountable for these actions. But at the same time, I understand how the jury came to their decision.

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The prosecution simply did not have enough proof to concretely say that the baby was born alive and that Skylar killed her. But that is where the case sits and now I want to hear what you all think. Do you think Skylar killed her baby or was she a stillborn? Why do you think she hid her pregnancy instead of telling her parents?

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And what do you think of her mother seemingly encouraging her eating disorder? And if you were on that jury, do you think you would have found her guilty or would you have acquitted her? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn on notification bell too on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below.

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And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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Kim was well aware of what high schoolers do together when they're in a relationship like this. She wasn't naive to the fact that her daughter was probably sexually active, so she scheduled her an appointment with the gynecologist to get her started on birth control. By late April, Kim and Skylar went to her first appointment together.

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By this point, Skylar was freshly 18, so she got to go in by herself while her mom waited outside. The purpose of this visit was to get a general checkup and to get her a prescription for birth control. But after Skylar came out of that appointment, Kim noticed that she had been crying.

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She asked her what made her so upset, but Skylar just said that she was overwhelmed and stressed out from her first gynecologist appointment. After all, your first of these kinds of appointments can truly be terrifying. So Kim chalked up the crying to her just being emotional after her first appointment.

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Almost a week later, by May 5th, 2017, Skylar excitedly put on her tight red lace-up dress, she did her hair, makeup, and nails, and went off to prom with Brandon. The night went as expected. Even though Skylar complained of a stomach ache that night, it wasn't so bad that it kept her from participating in prom.

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Then, the following day, Skylar and her family took Brandon to a baseball game for his birthday. Once again, Skylar said that her stomach hurt, but she still went to the game because she still wanted to celebrate Brandon's birthday. A few weeks later, Skylar graduated from Carlisle High School with plans to attend the University of Cincinnati that fall.

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She was so excited about her future, looking forward to all of the amazing things she had ahead of her. But then by July 14th, 2017, everything in Skylar's life and the lives of her family would forever be changed.

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Police contacted Skylar's father, asking him to bring her into the station in relation to something she may have witnessed, saying that she wasn't in trouble, they just wanted to talk to her. So Scott drove Skylar to the station where she was interviewed by police.

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Skylar asked why she was there, and officers told her that it was in relation to a call they got regarding a stillborn that may have been buried in the backyard. Immediately, Skylar started crying. They explained to her that they got a call from the gynecologist saying that on April 26th, she found out she was pregnant.

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She then went back to the gynecologist later and told the doctor that something happened. At this point in the police interview, Skylar just started telling officers everything that happened. As I stated, when she went to that appointment with her mother to get birth control, she actually found out she was already pregnant.

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But she was embarrassed and didn't want to tell anyone, so she came out of the doctor's office after crying but didn't tell her mother why. She then went about her life going to prom as normal, trying to ignore the fact that she was growing a baby. Then, by around 3am in the early morning hours of May 7th, 2017, Skylar said that she got up because she thought she had to pee.

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With that being said, let's get into the case. Skylar Richardson is the daughter of Kim and Scott Richardson, and she has a younger brother, Jackson. The family were living your typical middle class life in Carlisle, Ohio. Most people knew each other, and if you were born there, chances are you stayed there, worked there, and raised your family there.

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She sat on the toilet, but that is when she gave birth to a baby girl in that toilet. She sat there in shock for a few minutes before turning around and grabbing the baby from the toilet. She wrapped her in a towel and held her, but at that time, she realized that the baby wasn't breathing. She cradled her for hours and waited to see if she would breathe or open her eyes, but she just wouldn't.

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She wasn't breathing, and she didn't have a heartbeat. She was a stillborn. Skylar emphasized in this interview that she didn't hurt the baby. She didn't kill her. She was already gone when she was born.

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Once she realized she wasn't going to be able to save her baby, she made the decision to bury her in the backyard. She cleaned up the bathroom as best as she could, then carried the baby downstairs and outside. She went into the garage and got a small shovel, then dug a shallow hole in the backyard near the edge of the yard in a spot where she'd be able to see it from her room.

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She placed the baby in that hole, burying her. She then put a flower on her body before placing a planter pot over the grave to mark the spot. At this point, she didn't want anyone to know what happened, but she was faced with the reality that her parents were inevitably going to find out what happened.

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Both Skylar and Jackson played sports growing up with Jackson in football and Skylar on the cheerleading team. It was said that Skylar excelled in her sport. She was a flyer, meaning that she would be the one lifted into the air doing those cool poses and stretches before being lowered to the ground. Those around Skylar felt that she was the perfect flyer.

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She was tiny and skinny, easy to lift up and toss up into the air. But as much as Skylar loved her sport and loved doing it, she felt a lot of pressure to maintain her small stature and stay as thin as possible. By the time she was in middle school, as so many young girls do, Skylar became obsessed with her weight and would do anything possible to become smaller and smaller.

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Based on this interview with Schuyler, that same day, officers went to the home to exhume the body of the baby that had been buried there. They found the planter pot and underneath it, they found a shallow grave. They described that the hole was very shallow and the dirt had basically just been dusted on top of it.

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There, they could smell that something had been decomposing and there wasn't much left. They removed the skeletal remains of a newborn baby out of the ground That's all that was left of this little girl. After this horrific discovery, the remains were sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.

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There, it was found that the baby suffered a total of six skull fractures, which had been sustained after the baby had died. Other than that, however, the medical examiner didn't find any other evidence to determine exactly

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how the baby died or even if she was alive when she was born what she did end up discovering was that it appeared that small parts of the bones appeared to be charred in some places as if she had been burned based on the previous interview schuyler did with police as well as the results of the autopsy

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The medical examiner determined that the manner of death was homicidal violence, though she could not determine exactly how that baby died. Something that did stand out to me was the fact that the baby had six skull fractures after she had died, so that could line up with Skylar's story that she was not alive when she was born and fell into the toilet. that could match up with that.

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In the past few years, it seems that we keep seeing these cases where a husband or wife will want out of their relationship by any means necessary, except divorce. For whatever reason, people seem to think that murder is easier to get away with than going through a divorce, and because of that, we keep seeing these innocent people losing their lives for absolutely no reason.

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So, possibly like a subscription service or something for people who enjoy tactical weapons. Well, upon searching Tracy's phone, detectives found that she had sent an email to the support email for that brand back in April. She was requesting that the brand stop sending those subscription boxes to an individual located in California because the person subscribed had passed away.

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After this, they found that Tracy had traveled to California in April to help a friend's estate planning because the friend's husband is the one that had passed away. The person subscribed to those tactical boxes was the husband. So...

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It's possible, based on this information, that Tracy could have obtained this Eve Attack knife from that box when she visited the friend and then brought it back with her to Utah. Then, knowing that it was a tactical knife that a man might use, she decided to put it in Matt's hand as his choice of weapon to frame him.

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At this point, the evidence against Kate, her mother Tracy, and her brother Kevin does not look good. But Kate's behaviors in the days after the shooting made things look even worse. Just one day after Matt's death, Kate was on a video call with one of her closest friends. This was the same friend who she had texted about wanting to murder Matt back in May.

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Well, on that video call, the friend reported that she gave Kate her condolences as any friend would after learning that their friend's husband died. But Kate responded by saying it was okay, that she was actually happy.

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Then, in another video call later that day with another friend, she said that her husband had died and she wanted to show them the area where he died, including the blood he left on the carpet.

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The day after that, so now two days after Matt's death, Kate was talking to that original friend again and she said this time that she was getting ready to go on a date and then showed her the blood on the carpet from where Matt died. She said that she would have sent her a photo earlier had she known that her friend was into true crime.

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It's like she couldn't wait to tell everyone around her that she was free of this man who had been such a big inconvenience to her for so long. She couldn't even pretend to be a mourning widow in the literal days after her husband of seven years and the father of her two children was shot.

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Based on everything we've discussed up to this point, Kate Ristelli was arrested and charged in connection with her husband's murder. So now, police have Kate, her brother Kevin, and her mother Tracy all in custody, charged with Matt's murder, along with charges of obstruction and two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child.

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They seemed to have a lot of tension in their relationship at this time, though it's not believed that there was any sort of domestic abuse in the relationship, at least not at that point. Either way, due to the issues between the pair, by June of 2024, Kate decided to take her kids and drive all the way to American Fork, Utah to stay with her mother, Tracy Gist,

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Police said that all of this evidence and these arrests came after a long, extensive, exhaustive investigation. But as of right now, they feel like they have enough to get these charges to stick at the very least. Where it stands, I believe that each individual have pleaded not guilty to their charges and are now awaiting their trials.

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The investigation will continue and due to just how wild this case already is, I'm sure they're going to uncover a lot more and are going to do everything they can to get them convicted on these charges. But that is all of the information we have on today's case and let me tell you, as I researched this case, The more I found out, the more intrigued I became.

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It seemed like this was something that was carefully planned for so long, yet the way it was carried out was so poor. It never fails to amaze me that people don't think their phones are going to be searched and they just have all of these Google searches and damning text messages right there. It also amazes me that they literally made so many Google searches for Dan Markell's case.

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They know that the people responsible were arrested and some have been convicted, yet they did it anyways. I have no idea why they thought they were smarter than them. They did a better job than them. I have no idea. But finally, it still blows my mind that people will take such drastic measures to just avoid divorce.

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Instead of just facing the courts and figuring out what to do in the most fair way possible, these people think that they can just get rid of the problem and they can just go about their lives normally, as if there won't be an investigation, as if police are just going to take their word for it. All I can say is that Matt did not deserve this.

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He just wanted his wife and kids to come home and they could have figured it out from there. But at the same time, I have to be thankful for dumb criminals like them because they make it easy to solve these horrendous crimes. But that is all I have for you today and now I want to hear your thoughts.

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Do you think police have enough evidence to convict all three on murder charges or do they need more? Why do you think this whole family went in on this plot together? Do you think any of them will turn on one another or will this end up just like Dan Markell's case? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below.

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Of course, as with any other case with open ends, I will keep you all updated. If a lot more information comes out, I will either make another update video or if there's not that much, I'll update the description. But with that, if you like this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up. And subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is listed down below.

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while Matt stayed back in California. This arrangement lasted several weeks, but throughout that time, Matt was asking his wife to come back to California with the kids. He even offered to send her money so that she could get a rental car to drive back. But this isn't what she wanted. She wanted to be done with her relationship with Matt.

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She wanted to just keep the kids with her, forget about him, and just move on with her life. According to text messages later recovered by police, when Matt first suggested she get a rental car and drive back, Kate's mother said that she should fake a sprained ankle. She said that she knew how to wrap it up and make it look swollen under the wrap.

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She texted her, can't drive with that sprained ankle. So Kate did just that. She told Matt that she can't come to California because she wasn't able to drive with her bad ankle. To this, Matt said that he could drive to pick her up. At this point, Kate finally gave in and told Matt that he could come get her.

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But as that was happening, Kate was trying to figure out a way to get herself out of the situation with Matt. She was desperate to get out of the marriage and was going to figure it out one way or another. So by July 11th, Kate scheduled an appointment with the divorce attorney to discuss her rights. After that meeting though, Kate was just left frustrated.

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She expressed to a friend that she was pissed and felt hopeless. She didn't know what to do. By the following day, July 12th, Matt texted his wife that he was about to head over to her mother's house to pick her and the kids up. She texted him her address and then sent her a photo of the house so he knew exactly where to go.

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It's such a wild phenomenon and when you hear the details of this case, you will be just as blown away as I am by how stupid some people can really be. With that being said, let's get into the case. Matt Rastelli was born in Houston, Texas on May 4th, 1982. Matt was known as having a deep love for the outdoors. He was an avid mountain biker and fisherman.

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He told her that his truck was leaking some oil and was worried about it getting on their driveway. So Kate laid down a piece of cardboard for him to park on.

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He also said that once he got there he was worried that his truck wouldn't turn back on if he turned it off so he planned on leaving it running for the about 15 minutes he expected it to take for them to load up the kids and all of their stuff into the truck. She asked him if he would be coming inside once he got there and at first he ignored the question so she asked him again and he said yes.

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He would come inside for just a minute. She let him know that the door was always unlocked, suggesting that he could just let himself in whenever he got there. So based on the conversations between Kate and Matt, it seemed that Matt would be driving several hours over to Utah to pick her and the kids up.

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He would come inside for a minute to help her grab their things, but wanted to drive back to California that same night so they wouldn't be staying at the house for long. According to security video from a neighbor's house, Matt pulled into the home's driveway by 10.06 p.m. He got out of the truck and went to the front door heading inside.

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But almost immediately upon entering the home, neighbors heard multiple gunshots going off from inside the home. Immediately, those neighbors called the family, but no one answered. So by 10.09 p.m., literally three minutes after Matt arrived, the neighbors called 911 to report those gunshots. By 10.15 p.m., Kate's mother also called 911 to report a shooting.

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Police arrived shortly after, and when they did, they found Matthew Ristelli unresponsive, lying face down on the floor just past the entrance of the home. He had been shot multiple times, one time in the chest and two times in the back. At the scene, they found that Kate and her two children were still upstairs in the home.

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Meanwhile, her brother, 33-year-old Kevin Ellis, was standing near the front of the home, immediately admitting that he was the one who shot Matt. Paramedics arrived shortly after police, but by that point, it was too late. 42-year-old Matthew Ristelli died as a result of these gunshot wounds.

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Now, of course, police immediately started questioning everyone inside that home, including Kevin, who admittedly was the one responsible for Matt's death. They also spoke with Kate's mother, 59-year-old Tracy Gist, who pretty much gave the same story as Kevin. They said that Matt was coming to Utah all the way from California to pick up his wife because he thought she wanted to go back home.

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But Tracy said that they were going through a separation and Matt was not handling it well at all. When he got to the house, he entered the home without their permission, taking Kevin by surprise. Kevin said that when he first saw Matt in the home, he was holding a knife and appeared agitated. Of course, this made Kevin fear for his life.

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So he apparently went into the garage, opened the safe where he kept his gun, and then returned to the front room to shoot Matt. At the time, investigators started examining the scene and Matt's body to get a clearer picture of what happened and see if it matched up. But very quickly, the story that Kevin gave just was not adding up.

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they saw that Matt was in fact holding a tactical knife in his right hand when his body was found. However, what immediately stood out to police was that the blade of the knife was actually facing his hand.

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He could spend hours on end exploring various nature trails, whether he was alone or with his kids. Loved ones said that Matt's profound love for adventure and nature were evident to everyone who knew him. At the time of his death, he was married to Kate Rustelli.

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If you're going to use a knife for pretty much any reason, whether it be chopping vegetables or brandishing the knife to attack someone, you're going to be holding it in a way that faces away from your own hand. And if you're holding it like this, it's going to be facing your wrist, not necessarily your hand.

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So the way that it was facing just did not make sense for any way anybody would hold a knife. They also noted that the handle of the knife also had finger indentations, which a lot of knives will have to make them more comfortable to hold. Well, those indentations were also facing towards his palm, which again is opposite of how you would naturally be holding a knife.

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Then they found that Matt was actually left-handed, not right-handed, so he wasn't even holding the knife in his dominant hand, which also didn't make sense. Now, there were a total of eight shell casings found at the scene, meaning eight shots had been fired off. Of those eight shots, one of the bullets went through his right wrist.

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He had both an entry and an exit wound on that wrist, meaning that the bullet went clear through his muscle, tendon, and nerves. This would have caused such extensive damage to his wrist that he would be completely unable to grip with that hand, meaning that he would not have physically been able to hold the knife at that point.

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He would have dropped it after he was shot, yet somehow it was still in his hand. after he was shot. Finally, even the position in which Matt was found didn't add up to what Kevin claimed. As I just stated, he said that he saw Matt enter the home holding the knife. This prompted him to go all the way to the garage, get the gun out of the safe, and then return back to the front room to shoot Matt.

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Even if you're sitting right next to the garage, that would take at least 30 seconds to a minute. But when Matt was found, he was lying right next to the front door as if he had just entered. If there was really that much time from when Matt initially entered the home to when Kevin returned back with the gun, chances are Matt would have made it a lot farther into the home.

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So he either stood by the doorway with the knife waiting for someone to come up to him or he was shot almost immediately when he opened the door and came inside. Based on this information alone, police believed that Matt was shot and then the knife was placed into his hand after he was already dead. The scene had clearly been staged.

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It's been reported that the couple had two children, though his obituary lists three of them and one of them appears a bit older, so I believe his oldest son is from a previous relationship. Either way, those who knew Matt said that his family was the most important part of his life.

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At this point, police knew that further investigation was needed to figure out what was really going on. At the scene, both Kevin and Tracy were taken into the station for further questioning. At that time, police also seized their cell phones as well as Kate's cell phone for further examination.

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In their phones, police found evidence that showed that Matt and his wife, Kate, were in a really rough spot in their marriage. As I said, after growing tired of the marriage, Kate went out to Utah to get away from her husband and while there, tried to get a divorce attorney involved to see what her options were. But as I said earlier, according to texts that she sent her mom and a friend,

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It seems like she felt out of options. She felt hopeless. So when Matt insisted on coming to pick her up, she agreed. And from there, she and her family formulated a plot to get Matt to come inside to the home so they could kill him and claim self-defense. So going back all the way to May, investigators found texts on Kate's phone to a friend, which said, quote, I'm trying to wait.

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I just might murder Matt today, though. Obviously, this shows that Kate was not happy in her marriage. Now, to me, it doesn't necessarily prove that she truly killed him, in my opinion, just because I'm sure statements like this are made all the time when people are having relationship issues, and most of the time, the spouse doesn't end up dead.

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But beyond that text, in June and July, it showed that Kate's mother had been searching online for various topics involving Kate's parental rights, gun laws, and getting a passport. These searches included Utah gun registration, Utah shot break-in. How does private sale of firearms work in Utah? How to establish Utah residency?

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How to file for divorce if wife is a Utah resident and husband is a California resident? How to get my U.S. passport fast? Apply for child's U.S. passport. What if mom takes kids for over state line visit and dad doesn't agree? What are the legal implications of taking your kids on vacation without the other parents permission? So it seems like initially the plan was for Kate to just

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take the kids and run, go somewhere out of the country with them, but as they probably realized, you can't get a passport that fast. It takes several weeks even if you expedite it. In addition to those searches, there were also multiple searches done relating to Dan Markell. For those of you who don't know, I covered the case of Dan Markell on my channel quite a while ago,

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and in that case it's believed that dan's wife wendy her mother and brother charlie all plotted together to have dan killed because his wife wanted the kids all to herself if you want to hear more about that case i will have the video i made on it linked below But in Dan's case, it's believed that Charlie plotted the whole thing and hired hitmen to get the job done.

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His commitment to his family was unparalleled, not just giving them boundless love, but also bringing them on so many adventures that brought them closer together. At the time, Kate, Matt, and their children were living together in California, However, after around seven years of marriage, the marital issues they had been facing were really coming to a head.

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These hitmen have since been tried and convicted for the murder, and so has Charlie Adelson. Wendy's mother, Donna, has also been arrested in the plot, but has not yet been tried for her murder charges. Specifically, Tracy had searched for the following items. How old were Dan Markell's kids when Dan was killed? And Kate McBanwa's second trial defense charts. Adelson Donna.

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Adelson Donna movies and TV shows. New Dateline episode January 19th. Donna Adelson arrested at the airport. And when was Donald Adelson arrested? Obviously, this having been searched on Kate's mother's phone is very suspicious because it doesn't take a genius to see the parallels between these two cases.

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But what confuses me is that it's known that Wendy's family have been implicated in this, yet I guess this family felt that they were smarter. I don't know. Either way, as I stated earlier, two days before the shooting, Kate texted her mother that Matt wanted her to drive back to California, but they came up with the excuse of the sprained ankle.

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Well, the following day, Kate texted her mother again, confirming that Matt would now be driving out to them. After sending this text, Tracy called Kate and had a five-minute phone conversation with her. It appears that this was part of a plot to lure Matt to their home.

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Then by the morning of July 12th, they found that Kate had posted in a Facebook group she was in saying that she has to do big girl things that morning, just hours before Matt arrived at the home. Then, by around 2pm the same day, detectives found that Kate's mother, Tracy, searched for a meme of Stephen Carell's character, Michael Scott, from the office, excitedly shouting, it's happening.

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This was around the same time that Kate was texting Matt the directions on how to get to her home. Going back just a bit, they also found that on June 20th, Kate's sister texted her saying, I'll be watching the AirTag and let you know as soon as it updates. With that text, they found a screenshot of Apple Maps with a blue dot showing the location in California where Matt was living.

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This made investigators believe that they had been tracking Matt's whereabouts for quite a while. By 10pm on July 12th, again the day of the shooting, they found texts from Kate to her brother saying, keep an eye on Find My, which is the app used to track locations on the iPhone. Then, as we know, just minutes later, police receive reports of the shooting.

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After searching Kevin, Tracy's, and Kate's phones, they found that all three individuals had access to the AirTag's location, which had been listed under truck with a poop emoji next to it in their phones. Then, upon searching Matt's truck, they found a cloth storage drawer sitting on the passenger side of the truck.

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They found that the air tag had been placed at the bottom of this drawer, which was filled with random things like papers, receipts, magazines, snacks, and drinks. It was in a location that would have been difficult to spot unless you were specifically searching for it.

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First, the two were said to be experiencing financial issues, which can definitely put strain on a marriage. Then, according to a family member of Kate's, her and Matt both seemed to have a kind of short fuse. they had a way of getting under each other's skin and getting into arguments that just were not necessary.

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So again, it appears that Kate and various family members all had access to Matt's location and were tracking him in the weeks leading to the shooting. Then in the hours before, as he was driving to Utah, they were closely watching his location so that they would know exactly when he arrived.

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In addition to the cell phone evidence, police also started looking into the knife that Matt was found holding when his body was found. The knife itself was from a brand called Evatac, and upon looking into the brand, they found that this knife was one that they put into mystery boxes sent to My Tactical Promos.

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For basically the entire time that Thomas lived with them, he would physically punish Jeremiah. This started with having him stand in the fireplace or stand up in a locked closet for hours at a time so that Thomas could always keep an eye on him, always knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.

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Eventually Tracy's boyfriend, 42 year old Thomas Ferguson, as well as Thomas's son, 19 year old Jordan Nunez moved in with the family. Jeremiah was described by loved ones as fearless, active, and outgoing. He was definitely a handful full of energy. He made the most of every day. He was known to be really sweet and helpful and not shy around anybody.

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At one point, Thomas removed every single item from Jeremiah's room and then forced him to stay in that room for prolonged periods of time. But then, around Halloween time, the abuse and torture escalated drastically. Every single day for an entire month, Thomas would beat Jeremiah in one way or another. Thomas would beat Jeremiah with brass knuckles.

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He would use Jeremiah as target practice for his homemade spear throwing it at him and poking and stabbing him with it. Then he would drop a five pound sledgehammer on his hands, hence all of those broken bones in his hand. He also forced Jeremiah to wear a shock collar.

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According to his sister, Jeremiah constantly had to wear the shock collar either around his neck or legs and everyone within that home would take turns using the remote to shock him. Then Thomas started locking Jeremiah in a small plastic dog crate and leaving him in there for hours upon hours at a time, leaving him without food or water.

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He was also forced to wear adult diapers because he wasn't let out to use the bathroom either. While in there, the men in the home would sometimes urinate on him just to torture him further. Thomas had also installed bars on the windows and padlocked the doors to prevent anyone from leaving.

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He also put up security cameras all around the place so he could constantly watch what was going on in that home. It got to the point that by November of 2017, Jeremiah was so malnourished, so weak from being immobilized for so long that he could barely walk. He hobbled around using a cane, hardly even being able to stand up straight. Again, despite the fact that he was a 13 year old little boy.

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By November 26th, Jeremiah's sister explained that they were all about to leave the home to go pick up Tracy from jail. But then Thomas got angry at Jeremiah for whatever reason and locked him in that dog cage. There, Jeremiah eventually fell asleep, but then Thomas started flipping the dog cage and tossing it all around, trying to wake Jeremiah up.

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Eventually, Thomas pulled him out of the dog cage and gave Jeremiah a beating. By the end of the beating, it appeared to the sister that Jeremiah was unconscious and at that point Jeremiah was in horrible condition. He had a black eye. The cuts on his body were all infected and nasty. He had a tooth knocked out after being punched in the face.

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It's thought that this beating is what caused his jaw to break so bad that the bone protruded through his gums. But by that point, Jeremiah was still alive. After the beating and shaking around the dog cage, Jeremiah was put back inside the crate. By that point, according to Jeremiah's sister, Jordan joined in and started flipping the dog crate and rattling it around.

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It was after the dog crate was flipped by Jordan that Jeremiah actually died from his injuries. That is what sent him over the edge. After realizing that Jeremiah was dead, he and his father took Jeremiah's body to the tub and washed him before putting him into the bed. According to investigators, there was no blood on Jeremiah due to him being washed after the beating.

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However, there was a small amount of blood near the door in Jeremiah's bedroom as well as around the fireplace of the home. This is probably where the majority of the beatings took place.

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He would walk up to just about anyone and introduce himself, making friends very easily. He loved Batman, cars, sports, getting messy, and building things. He was an intelligent kid with a bright future ahead of him.

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So as of right now, according to Jeremiah's sister, not only did Jordan take part in the abuse, but him flipping the crate over is what caused Jeremiah's death. To go even further, as a part of the investigation, detectives also took a look into the digital forensics from Thomas' and Jordan's devices.

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Specifically, they found two Facebook accounts registered to Jordan, another two registered to Thomas, and then one registered to Tracy. By January 7th, investigators found messages from Thomas to Jordan that talk about how Jordan doesn't respect Thomas and makes reference to Jeremiah being gone.

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Now, I do want to note that these messages are written with a lot of typos and are pretty difficult to read, so bear with me. In one message, Thomas wrote, Jordan, the troublemaker's gone. You got rid of his expletive, and now you're starting to get like him. And you have started lying to me, son, about things that you have been doing and done. Jordan replied, I do respect you.

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I'm just unwanted here, and that's cool. But I can see in yours and Tracy's and my sister's eyes, you all don't want me here ever since that expletive happened. They look at me like I did it all by myself. They did it too. He continued, I miss that expletive too. I feel bad for what I did and if I could do things differently, I would have, but I can't. I have nightmares.

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I think about that kid every day because I looked in his eyes as he left. I see that look every day. Of course, it can be gathered from these messages that Jordan is in fact the one who took Jeremiah's life. Thomas bears most of the responsibility for beating him within inches of his life, and the rest of the family do bear responsibility for how poorly they treated him.

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But Jordan was technically the one who ended Jeremiah's life. After finding out this information, Jordan was charged with child abuse resulting in death. So now, all three individuals who played a role in Jeremiah's appalling and disturbing death have been charged. As they awaited their respective trials in jail, they all continued to deny responsibility.

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each pointing the finger at the next person. Tracy couldn't do anything because she was abused by Thomas and was scared of him. Thomas was straight up denying abusing Jeremiah, saying that he died after they innocently roughhoused. Jordan also denied ever doing anything to Jeremiah.

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Despite this, each individual was scheduled to get their time in courts to decide what really happened to this sweet, innocent little boy. That was until Thomas took that opportunity away in his one final act of selfishness. By the evening of April 30, 2018, a guard was making his round in the Santa Fe County Jail when he made it to Thomas' cell.

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But unfortunately, everything that Jeremiah was looking forward to in life would be brutally and violently ripped away from him by the very people who were supposed to care for him and protect him. Jeremiah never stood a chance, and when you find out what happened to this poor, sweet, 13-year-old boy, you will be absolutely disgusted. This case starts in January of 2018.

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There, he found Thomas Ferguson dead after he hung himself from the cell's window. After finding Thomas' body, the guard found an envelope lying on a small desk in that cell. In that envelope, there was a letter which Thomas had apparently written to profess his innocence.

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The letter has not been released to the public, but I can only imagine that he probably spewed the most pathetic BS imaginable. And instead of just taking accountability for his role in torturing an innocent child, he took the coward's way out and took his own life before he had to face responsibility for what he did.

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After this, the prosecution in this case really started gearing up for the trials against Tracy and Jordan. It was said by Jordan's defense that the only reason prosecutors started pinning the murder on Jordan was because Thomas was now dead. But as we heard from earlier, there is evidence to prove that he did kill Jeremiah.

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There was a witness, plus those messages make it pretty obvious what happened. So now going into what happened with each defendant in their respective cases. By November of 2018, Tracy actually worked with prosecutors to come to a plea agreement. 36-year-old Tracy Pena pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse resulting in death and three counts of conspiracy to traffic controlled substances.

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She had been facing around 13 other charges at the time, but they were all dropped in exchange for her guilty plea. When it came for her sentencing, the prosecution argued that Tracy could have done so much more than she did to stop Jeremiah's death. She had ample opportunity to remove her children from that abusive household. but she didn't.

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At the time, both 35-year-old Tracy and her boyfriend, then 42-year-old Thomas, were in jail after violating their probation. Thomas's probation was from a past case back in 2014, where he had pleaded guilty to kidnapping and battery of a family member. Already, we're seeing the type of person Thomas was.

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According to Tracy's sister, Tracy was a drug addict who seemed to care more about getting her drugs than protecting her kids. There were plenty of times where Tracy would escape the home and escape Thomas's abuse, but she would leave the kids behind knowing what Thomas would do to them.

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There were times where she would stay locked in her room for days at a time doing drugs, not caring to protect them or remove them from Thomas's abuse. This aunt said that she always told Tracy that the kids could stay with her whenever they needed, but Tracy wouldn't allow that. She knew what was happening to her son and she allowed it to happen.

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Yes, she may have been scared, but she had plenty of opportunities to get help and never bothered to. Therefore, she is responsible for the abuse, torture, and death of her son, 13-year-old Jeremiah. And again, the defense was basically claiming that Tracy was under Thomas' thumb, she was being horrifically abused, and was so scared that she felt she couldn't do anything to save Jeremiah.

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She could have been killed if she tried doing anything. After hearing from multiple witnesses and hearing arguments on both sides, the judge came to their decision for Tracy's sentence. They did acknowledge that Tracy was not an active participant in Jeremiah's abuse. She never laid a hand on him. She just allowed the abuse and torture to happen.

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They also talked about how Jeremiah's body was found with Tracy's help. She did eventually tell investigators what happened and without her confession, who knows how long it would have taken to even realize that Jeremiah was missing. They also acknowledged that she was abused. She was also a victim. However, that didn't mean she couldn't do anything.

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If she truly wanted out of the situation, if she truly cared enough about her kids, she would have done so much more to protect them. With all factors considered, at the end of this, Tracy was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role in Jeremiah's death.

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Now, onto what happened with Jordan Nunez. By late 2020, Jordan also pleaded guilty to one count of permitting child abuse resulting in death and two counts of tampering with evidence. The prosecution stated that Jordan was an active participant in the torture and abuse of Jeremiah. He witnessed Thomas beating Jeremiah and keeping him in that dog crate, yet did nothing to help him.

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Meanwhile, Tracy had been on probation after pleading guilty in August of 2018 to charges of concealing evidence in relation to drug possession. While in jail, Tracy confided in another inmate about a secret she had been keeping. A very dark, disturbing secret. What Tracy told this inmate was shocking, so she brought this information to a prison guard.

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Then, on the day of the murder, he witnessed Thomas beating Jeremiah within inches of his life, yet he didn't do anything. Not only that, but he joined in and landed the final blow to this terrified, helpless child. For the weeks leading to Jordan's sentencing hearing, there was a lot of different discussions regarding his mental health. He was abused from the time he was an infant,

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He had suffered similar physical abuse as Jeremiah did at the hands of the same man. However, he was removed from the home and went off to live with his grandparents who loved him and raised him in a stable home. Yet once he was 18, he left that loving home and returned to the same father who abused him as a child. Why? We really don't know.

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Jordan chose to live in that home with his father and continued to make that choice even after seeing how people were being treated in that home. Jordan said that while in the home, Everyone was terrified of Thomas, which I don't disagree with. He said that he suffered from PTSD from his past abuse and would often get flashbacks from when he was a child.

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He said that he was way too scared of his father to ever stand up to him, so that is why he never did anything. But again, we don't know why he made the decision to leave his grandparents home and move in with his father. Again, he made that choice. He went out of his way to make that choice.

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When it comes to the day of Jeremiah's death, the defense was basically saying that yes, shaking and flipping the dog crate was unbelievably cruel and reckless, but Jordan never meant to hurt or kill Jeremiah. I don't know what he was trying to do if he wasn't trying to hurt him, but I guess he wasn't trying to hurt him.

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Again, even though Jordan knew that Jeremiah was just beaten within inches of his life, it obviously doesn't make any sense. Either way, at the end of Jordan's sentencing hearing, the judge decided that Jordan did play a massive role in Jeremiah's death. He had access to phones, social media, and was able to leave the house, yet he did nothing to help. And again, he did partake in the abuse.

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At the end, Jordan was sentenced to 21 years behind bars for his part in the death of 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia. At the end of the hearing, Jordan did face the court to apologize. He said that he doesn't know why he never called 911, but now he wishes he did. However, family members did not think that he was being genuine.

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They believe that he is more upset that he was caught and is having to take responsibility, not that he's sorry for how he treated this child.

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This inmate told the guard that Tracy said that back in November of 2017, she came home to find her son dead and was blaming her boyfriend for his death. She said that her boyfriend forced her to help dispose of his body and keep his death a secret. Those are the main details Tracy gave this inmate, but of course this inmate was disturbed to say the least.

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But at this point, that is all of the information we have on today's case. I know I say this a lot, but this has got to be one of the worst cases I have ever covered. It's not just the fact that Jeremiah was abused so horrifically, but the fact that so many people knew So many people saw, yet nobody did anything.

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I think it's just crazy that he wasn't enrolled in school and nobody bothered to follow up or check on him. I don't know how a kid can just slip through the cracks like that without anyone ever checking. It's really disheartening to know that people like this can get away with abusing children for so, so long and nothing will be done. And it's true.

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The real reason why Jeremiah's case was even investigated was because of Tracy. Not that it makes anything better with how she allowed this to happen, but I'm glad she at least said something. And knowing that, knowing that if she didn't say anything, that this case might still not even have been investigated. Nobody might have even known that Jeremiah was missing. That's so, so true.

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so disturbing. Now the main person responsible for inflicting so much terror and so much pain on so many people is gone and I'm not mad about it. The two people are still living behind bars right where they belong. Now I do think both individuals should have gotten much longer sentences. I don't know what it is with I guess New Mexico and giving these people ridiculously short sentences and

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That's absolutely ridiculous. They should have gotten a lot more time, especially, honestly, both of them. I won't even say especially either of them because Tracy allowed this to happen and Jordan partook in it. Both of them should be in jail for the rest of their lives. But at the end of the day, I guess they are still behind bars. They're paying for what they did.

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And I certainly hope that every single person in those prisons knows exactly what both of them did. But that is where I'm going to end today's video. And now I want to hear from you guys. Do you think Tracy truly was too scared to do anything about the abuse or was she just too wrapped up in drugs to care? Do you think Jordan was also too scared or was he a fully willing participant?

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What do you think of him technically causing Jeremiah's death? Do you think he bears that responsibility or is it Thomas's fault due to the beating? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below.

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The guard then took this statement to other prison officials who started an investigation into the claims. Of course, rumors like this can run rampant around jails, people confessing to random things they didn't do, sometimes to cop a deal, or sometimes to make themselves look tougher to the other inmates.

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Sometimes, people will make things up and put the blame on someone else who they have beef with to make them look bad. But still, these claims were worth looking into because this was a very serious situation if it were true. First, prison staff did confirm that Tracy did have a son as well as a younger daughter.

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Today's case is one that I know is going to stick with you for a very long time, if not for the rest of your life. On this channel, we shed light on some of the most sick, twisted, and brutal things human beings are capable of. But truly, words can't come close to describing how horrific this case is.

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From there, staff started listening in on Tracy's prison phone calls, and they heard one call that piqued their interest. They heard Tracy on the phone with her boyfriend, Thomas, saying that she was crying about something that happened.

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She wasn't specific with it, but she was clearly distraught when speaking with Thomas and he was trying to sort of calm the situation down and making it not seem like a big deal. But Tracy obviously thought that whatever was going on was a pretty big deal. After this call, investigators took Tracy in for an interview where they asked her about her son.

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At first, she said that Jeremiah had run away from the home and she didn't know where he was. That is what she was upset about. But after some pushing from investigators, Tracy gave them more information about what was really going on. Tracy told them that back in November of 2017, she was getting out of jail for a previous charge. When she returned home, she found that Jeremiah was dead.

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She found him lying on his bed, unresponsive, wrapped up in a blanket. She confronted Thomas about this, asking her what happened to her son. She mentioned that Thomas had abused Jeremiah in the past, so she knew that Thomas was probably the one responsible for this. But according to Tracy, Thomas forced her to help him put Jeremiah's body into a plastic storage container.

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which they then placed into Thomas' car. From there, Thomas drove with Tracy and his younger son along New Mexico 503, where they stopped and picked an isolated area in Nambe where they wouldn't be seen. There, they buried that container in a shallow grave before driving off. For the weeks that followed, nobody noticed Jeremiah's disappearance.

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He hadn't been enrolled in school at the time, so there was no one at any school to notice his absence. Anytime family members or friends would reach out to the family or ask about Jeremiah, Tracy and Thomas just made themselves impossible to reach. Either that or they always had their excuses. Thomas's younger sister was told to tell others that Jeremiah was staying with other family members.

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There was basically an entire plan in place to cover for Jeremiah's murder. In that interview, Tracy told investigators that she didn't report what happened because she was scared of Thomas. He was abusive. He had been abusing her and her children for years, and now she truly knew what he was capable of. If she said anything, he was going to hurt or even kill her too.

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After making this startling confession, Tracy took investigators to the area where Jeremiah's body was dumped. Tracy didn't remember the exact location of where he was buried, so investigators brought out cadaver dogs to aid in the search. Pretty quickly, investigators found a spot in the ground just off the highway which looked recently disturbed.

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This child suffered so much pain and torment at the hands of people who were supposed to protect him. It's heartbreaking, sickening, and again, just as a warning, this case will absolutely infuriate you. But with that being said, let's just jump right into the details of this case.

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It was clear that the ground had been dug up and the area had been covered with tree branches and other debris. Investigators uncovered the area and began digging, and there they discovered a relatively small plastic container. When they opened up that container, they found that 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia's body had been crushed. crammed inside.

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Upon examining his body at the scene, they found that he was wearing a diaper at the time of his death, again, despite the fact that he was a teenager. His body also showed clear signs of being abused. Although there was no blood present on his body, it was obvious that Jeremiah Valencia had been brutally beaten and tortured before his tragic death.

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Immediately after the discovery of little Jeremiah's body, both Tracy and Thomas were charged with child abuse resulting in death, tampering with evidence, and conspiracy to tamper with evidence. Then, Thomas' adult son, Jordan, was also charged in connection with Jeremiah's death.

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They said that since Jordan was an adult at the time, he could have reported the abuse or at least done something to try and stop it, but he did nothing. And I also want to mention that he went with Thomas to help dispose of Jeremiah's body. At this time, investigators knew that Jeremiah had been abused to death.

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However, as the investigation continued, the devastating truth of just how much Jeremiah suffered before his death was uncovered. And let me tell you, it's so, so much worse than you could ever imagine. First, after Jeremiah's body was found, he was sent off to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.

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There, they found numerous old and new injuries which indicated that Jeremiah had suffered physical abuse and torture for months before he was beaten one final time. resulting in his death. Some of the injuries Jeremiah suffered included multiple jaw fractures, one of which was so bad that the bone was protruding through his gums. The fracture was likely sustained on the day he was killed.

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He had suffered multiple broken ribs and multiple bone fractures in his hand. He had a displaced eyeball as well as tears and abrasions to his scalp, cheek, and ear. According to the medical examiner, there were injuries consistent with a sexual assault as well, though that couldn't be definitively stated. They also stated that there were parts of his body that appeared to have been burned.

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Then, according to the toxicology report, Jeremiah had both alcohol and meth in his system, so he was most likely forced to consume these substances. I will note that the state of decomposition he was in by that point made the autopsy difficult, so there were some answers that they couldn't give definitively. We don't know for sure if he was truly sexually assaulted.

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We also don't know if he was actually burned, but it does appear that way. Though again, we don't know 100%. Jeremiah's cause of death was determined to be the result of blunt force trauma and his manner of death. As the autopsy was being conducted, of course, detectives also started their investigation into what was really going on within that home.

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Jeremiah Valencia was born on December 6, 2003, to Tracy Ann Pena and Andrew Valencia, and he was living in Nambe, New Mexico, which is just north of Santa Fe. From the time Jeremiah was born, he had a rough life. Both his mother and father were in and out of jail for various reasons, with his father being sent to prison when Jeremiah was just six years old.

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First, they looked into Thomas Ferguson's background and what they found was disturbing, yet, I must say, Not all that surprising given what we know now. Turns out Thomas Ferguson had a long history of criminal behavior starting back in 1997 when he was convicted for possession of methamphetamine. After that, he has numerous other offenses relating to domestic violence and abuse towards animals.

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In 2003, he was convicted of beating his then wife. In this case, it was stated that Thomas punched, choked, and kicked his wife, while she was holding their eight-month-old daughter. Now, turns out Thomas was married to a woman named Amanda Nunez for 16 years. Amanda had married Thomas when she was just 14 years old, and for the following almost two decades, she suffered constant abuse.

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Amanda would later say that Thomas never even treated her like a person. She was an obsession for him, this object that he liked to beat up on. Throughout their relationship, Amanda suffered from three miscarriages because of how badly Thomas would beat her. There were also several times where he would beat her within inches of her life.

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Amanda did end up having five children with Thomas, one of which was a son named Julian. But even after having all those children, the abuse just continued to get worse. When Julian was only two months old, Thomas was convinced that he was not the father, so he punched this baby in the chest in a fit of rage. He would always tell Amanda that he wished this little son of a bitch would die.

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After those 16 long years, Amanda finally took her children and ran. At that time, Amanda changed Julian's name to Jordan so that Thomas wouldn't be able to find him. For a time after Amanda moved, she would have a police officer go to the home with her every night to check under the beds and in the closets before she went in to make sure Thomas wasn't there.

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For the years that followed, Jordan and his siblings would be moved around to different homes. When he was a teenager, he ultimately did end up living with his grandparents. By the time he was 18 though, Jordan actually left his grandparents' home and reconnected with his father. More on this aspect of the case later in the video.

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Now, after the relationship with his wife was over by 2014, Thomas moved his rage and violence onto other victims. As I alluded to earlier, he was convicted of kidnapping and battery after he held his girlfriend captive for four days. However, despite these convictions, Thomas always found a way to weasel his way out of jail and back into society where he had this cunning ability to pick up women.

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According to the sister of the victim I mentioned from his 2014 conviction, Thomas was very charming and had this ability to identify and prey on the most vulnerable women. The sister said that her sister was vulnerable when she met Thomas because she had a history of domestic abuse and she had five children.

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The two were together for four or five years, and of course their relationship was riddled with domestic violence. He would often beat her and physically abuse her. Thankfully in her situation, the children were typically with their fathers, so they weren't abused like she was.

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That was the last time Andrew saw his son. For the years that followed, Jeremiah and his younger sister lived on and off with their mother. There was one time in which Jeremiah and his sister were removed from the home and placed into the care of their grandparents while DCFS investigated Tracy. However, they were ultimately placed back into her care.

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But Thomas would often abuse their animals, with the woman frequently having to take her pets to the vet for things like broken legs and other injuries. which is just horrible to even picture. Then on Valentine's Day in 2014, Thomas took the woman to a home which he had prepared with bars on the doors and windows. This is where he held her captive for four days.

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Eventually, she was able to escape and ran to a nearby Walmart where family picked her up.

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it was clear when they picked her up that she had been strangled and severely beaten but the woman was too afraid to tell her family the real details of what happened after this incident he was charged with kidnapping and rape but the woman was too afraid of thomas to go to trial and testify against him so she agreed to thomas taking a plea deal of lesser charges of kidnapping and battery

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For this, he was sentenced to nine years with seven years and seven months suspended. If he messed up at all during his probation, he would return to jail for the full nine years. This was a ridiculously light sentence for someone who literally kidnapped and beat someone if those are the charges that he pled guilty to.

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I don't know how he only spent a year and a half in jail for this, but I digress. While he and this victim dated, the sister of the victim said that those two never got along because she was a strong woman with a big personality and he hated her for that, being the sister, not the victim. Instead, he would always choose women who weren't in the best places in their lives.

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women with criminal backgrounds who used drugs and had children. He found that these women were easy to manipulate and control, and if they didn't comply with what he wanted, he could use their children as leverage, hold them over their heads to get what he wanted. And according to Tracy Pena, that is exactly how it was in her relationship with Thomas. He abused her and controlled her.

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Eventually, he and his son Jordan moved in with Tracy and her children, and while there, he abused the children within the home. Despite the fact that Tracy was aware of this, she was too afraid to do anything. However, there would be some information uncovered that led investigators to believe that neither Tracy or Jordan are as much of victims in this case as they'd like you to think.

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Now, as officers continued their investigation, they spoke with Jeremiah's younger sister, who was 12 years old at the time, and what she had to say was disturbing. She said that living with Thomas was miserable. He was always angry, always taking it out on everyone in the home. He would hit Tracy, her, Jeremiah, and the dogs. But it seemed that Jeremiah got the worst of it.

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I don't know about you, but I, along with many of my friends, often joke about wanting to find a sugar daddy to pay for all my stuff and send me on nice vacations and all of that. But obviously, most of us are joking. I know I am. I enjoy being an independent lady who doesn't rely on a single person to fund my life.

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These were messages that were trying to get information on her bank accounts, but he should have already known that information, so Judy was very suspicious. She tried calling him multiple times, but each time, the call was always going to voicemail. Now, according to Judy, Thomas had been struggling with dementia in the weeks before his death.

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where he would ultimately end up working and where he spent 40 years of his career. Thomas never went on to have children of his own, but he was known to love children. He was passionate about his job as a child psychiatrist and he was good at it too. He was a part of the Los Angeles' Magic Castle, which is a club of pro-level magicians and illusionists.

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Getting lost in grocery store parking lots, getting lost in crowds, and forgetting things that he normally would never forget. So Judy was worried that Thomas forgot his flight or that maybe something happened to him. She wondered if maybe he got lost somewhere. Given that this was somewhere he was unfamiliar with, it would be pretty dangerous for him if he got lost.

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So Judy did contact police after a day or so of not hearing him, and they did attempt to make contact, but they weren't able to get ahold of him. But after not returning from his flight, that is when police took the situation a lot more seriously.

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By March 5th, police went to Kelsey's home to do a welfare check, but they didn't get an answer at the door and they couldn't gain entry, so they left for the time being. By the following day, March 6th, Jeremy returned back to the house to get some of his belongings. But when he got there, he couldn't enter the house because it was locked.

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At that point, he sat outside of the house waiting for a bit to try and figure out how he was gonna get inside. But while there, police showed back up to conduct another welfare check for Thomas. When speaking with police, Jeremy did confirm that Thomas was at the house in the previous days. But at the time, Jeremy had no idea where everyone was or what could have happened.

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Once again, police had no way of entering the home at that time, so they left. After speaking with police, Jeremy contacted Kelsey and asked to get the garage opener from John so he could get inside. He went and got the garage opener and made access into the home.

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At that point, he noticed that there was a strong smell of cleaning supplies and noticed right away that the entire home had been cleaned. That was very unusual because he said that the house was usually pretty dirty and no one really cleaned around the place. He then went upstairs and noticed that one of the doors to the bedrooms was broken.

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Jeremy contacted Kelsey again, asking her if she could fix the door because he assumed that it was her who did it and it was her son's room. And she replied saying that he could use Thomas's credit card to buy a new door. This really weirded Jeremy out saying that he wasn't about to use someone else's credit card information to start buying things. That made him way too uncomfortable.

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At that time, Jeremy was convinced that something weird was going on. It was very strange to him that everyone had cleaned the house so well and then everyone just left and were not coming back. Days passed without much happening in the case with Judy still not hearing from Thomas and Jeremy having no idea where anyone in that house went.

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However, by March 7th, 911 received a call to report a suspicious vehicle abandoned on a dirt road about two miles off the highway, about 20 miles northeast of the Las Vegas strip. This vehicle turned out to be Kelsey's 2017 Mercedes-Benz. When they got there, the car's two front windows were rolled down.

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In the front passenger seat of the car, they saw that there were several pairs of latex gloves and there were burn marks throughout the front seat, which suggested to police that there was a small fire in the car. They also noticed stains that appeared to be bloodstains on the driver's seat headrest as well as in the back seat.

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Thomas took his skills to work, impressing the children he worked with with magic tricks and illusions. Back in the early 2000s, Thomas met a woman named Judy Earp, who was 12 years younger than him and had four children of her own. Both Thomas and Judy previously had been married, but of course they were single when they met.

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Because the windows were down, officers gained access pretty easily and they were able to turn the car on and open the trunk. Upon opening the trunk, they found a pile of clothing and blankets, but from that there was a foul odor emanating. So they moved the blankets and under the pile, they found a human body. And next to the body, there was a baseball bat.

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Of course, after seeing all of this evidence in the car and finding a body, the body was removed and sent off to the medical examiner and the car was towed and transferred for further forensic examinations. When the body was found, there was actually a wallet that contained several debit cards as well as an ID.

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So using that, the body was ultimately identified as belonging to 71-year-old Thomas Burchard. It was found that Thomas appeared to have suffered from blunt force trauma to his head after being struck with an unknown object multiple times. He had bruises, cuts, scratches, and scrapes all over his face, neck, back, and chest. Even part of his ear was missing.

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There were also defensive wounds all over Thomas's body, which said that he tried fighting off his attacker. His manner of death was determined to be the result of homicidal violence due to blunt force trauma to his head. With the Mercedes back in the forensics lab, they were able to find further evidence. In the car, they found several prints, DNA, those blue latex gloves with blood on them,

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clothing with blood on them, Thomas's vest that he had been wearing, as well as his house keys. There were also several cleaning supplies in the car, along with evidence of an attempted cleanup. Based on the blood evidence they found, it appeared that Thomas was attacked in the backseat of the car and then moved to the trunk via the passenger side door.

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Of course, given the fact that Thomas was last known to be at Kelsey's house and now her body was found in his car, It doesn't take a genius to make that connection and think that maybe Kelsey had something to do with his murder. By March 8th, police were able to obtain a search warrant for Kelsey's home and executed it that same day.

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In the home, first police found a pile of laundry which contained blue and white striped towels that matched some of the towels found in the car. Upstairs, again, they found that one of the bedroom doors had been damaged. It looked like it had literally been ripped off of the hinges and then broken into two pieces. Upon looking further at the door, they found blood on both halves.

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When looking in the garage, officers found blood, shoe prints, cleaning supplies, and signs of an attempted cleanup. According to officers, there were swirl marks all over the floors, indicative of somebody trying to clean the place up with a towel. After seeing all of this evidence, it was clear that Kelsey, or at least somebody in that house, had something to do with Thomas' murder.

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But nobody in that house, except for Jeremy, like I mentioned earlier, could be located. To locate Kelsey, police were able to get a warrant to look at her cell phone records. Turns out that after police showed up on March 6th and Jeremy asked John for the garage opener, they also found out that police had paid the house a visit.

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The two met through mutual friends while they were on a trip to Vegas together. These two were the only people in the group who didn't drink or gamble, so the two ended up spending a lot of time hanging out by the pool together, having conversations and just enjoying each other's company. That is how the two got to know each other.

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This freaked Kelsey out, so her, Deanna, as well as Kelsey's son all stayed at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Vegas for a day. Now, while at the Mandalay Bay, according to what Deanna would later tell police,

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at the time kelsey still had her blue mercedes but on march 6th after hearing that police visited the house kelsey drove off with the car and deanna never saw it again then police found out that on that same day march 6th kelsey hired a cleaning service to clean the house Kelsey told the cleaning crew that they had thrown a party, which got out of hand.

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There were red stains all over the place, but Kelsey assured the cleaners that it was red wine. The cleaners also noticed the busted door and Kelsey told them that someone had locked themselves in that room and there were bunk beds in the room and I guess the person was drunk, so they were afraid of the person hurting themselves or something like that, so they busted in.

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That was the story they gave the cleaning crew. The cleaning crew did their best and cleaned the house before leaving. According to cell phone records, in the early morning hours of March 6th, Kelsey's phone also pinged in the area near Lake Mead, which is right near where Thomas's body was found in the trunk of her car.

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After the home was cleaned, by March 7th, Kelsey, her son, and Deanna moved to the Rio Hotel in Vegas. By that point, the news came out to the public regarding Thomas' murder, so according to police, Kelsey turned her phone off and it was never turned back on. Using the cell phone records, police did follow up to see if she was still at the Rio Hotel, but she wasn't.

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When they got to her room though, they knew that she had just been there. It was clear that she left in a hurry, leaving her fingerprints behind as well as several personal items that belonged to both Kelsey and Deanna. By March 13th, after still being unable to locate her, Las Vegas police did issue a warrant for her arrest.

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Because she was originally from California, that is where police believed she was headed. So Vegas officers worked with the task force in Stockton, California to locate Kelsey. A few weeks later, they were able to locate her and they finally arrested her. A few weeks after finding Kelsey, police were also able to locate her boyfriend, John Kennison, and take him in as well.

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Then, after learning of the arrests of Kelsey and John, Diana Pena turned herself in, showing up to the police station alongside her lawyer. At this point, Diana Pena told officers that she was ready to tell them everything she knew. As I stated before, the whole situation starts on March 2nd, 2019, the day after Thomas arrived to Kelsey's house.

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Like I said, Kelsey was really upset at Thomas and Chelsea for going off to the store in her car. When they got back, Chelsea and her boyfriend Jeremy left the house and did not come back for several days. Well, according to Deanna, after Thomas returned back to the house, Deanna asked Kelsey for a ride home from work.

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After meeting and starting a relationship, Judy moved to Salinas, California into Thomas's home in the country to live with him. There, they shared the home with three of Judy's children. They raised goats together, horses, mini pigs, donkeys, and chickens. They were living a simple life while Thomas worked as a doctor and Judy worked as a real estate agent.

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So, Thomas drove the car with Kelsey in the passenger seat and went to pick Deanna up. After picking up Deanna, Thomas got a little bit lost, so Kelsey went on his phone to use the GPS. At that point, Kelsey went through Thomas' phone and found text messages between Thomas and Kelsey's mother.

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In some reports, Deanna told the police that the messages were discussing Kelsey's ability as a mother, discussing possibly having her young children taken away from her, Other reports say that Kelsey found pornographic images sent back and forth between them.

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After finding the messages, Kelsey threatened to report Thomas to his hospital for having explicit images of children if he didn't pay her money, meaning that he would obviously lose his job. Now, like I mentioned earlier, some of the allegations that Kelsey made were that Thomas had these explicit photos of children on his phone.

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These allegations were never confirmed and Deanna said that she didn't see anything like that on his phone. But either way, while Kelsey was yelling at Thomas, he seemed genuinely confused and he said that he didn't know why Kelsey was acting so crazy.

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Again, just to clarify, there was an investigation done into these allegations and they were unfounded, so I do not believe that Thomas had these images on his phone whatsoever. There might have been other explicit images of grown women and maybe Thomas and Kelsey's mother were sending images back and forth and that made her upset.

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But either way, there was nothing involving children on his phone. Now, Kelsey yelling at Thomas like that caused Thomas to want to remove himself from the situation. So once they got home, he went upstairs and locked himself in Kelsey's son's bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Once again, as a reminder, Kelsey's four-year-old was not home at the time. He was staying with a friend.

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Deanna described that everything that happened next happened so fast, saying that after Thomas went and locked himself in the room, John, Kelsey's boyfriend, followed him upstairs, kicked down the door, and barged in, yielding a baseball bat. She heard as John then wrestled Thomas to the ground before seeing the bat go into the air.

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So what I'm picturing is you could probably see like the stairs that go up to the room. There might have been like a balcony with like the railings where you could kind of see what's happening in the room, but you're not like right there. So you can just see the bat going up and not actually see the actual beating that was happening.

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But as that was happening, Deanna was screaming for them to stop before she ran upstairs to see what was going on. And that is when she found Thomas lying on the ground with a large reddish-purple bump on his head. She didn't physically see John hit Thomas, but it was clear what happened. She said that she grabbed the bat from John, who then ran downstairs and sat with Kelsey.

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Deanna then went over and got Thomas a glass of water. Thomas was still alive, but he knew at that time that he needed to get to a hospital. So Deanna helped him off the floor and got him down the stairs of the house. At that time, he told Kelsey, John, and Deanna that he didn't want to get anybody in trouble.

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He told them that he was going to tell the hospital staff that he was mugged by some random assailant. He then got in the car with Deanna's help and the two sat in the back seat. Once in the garage, Kelsey and John said that they needed to grab Thomas's jacket So they went back in the house to grab it. In the car though, Thomas was terrified.

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He whispered to Deanna that he was scared Kelsey and John were going to kill him. But Deanna didn't believe that. She assured him that he was going to be okay. After going inside and getting the jackets though, Kelsey came back out to the garage and told Thomas and Deanna that they wanted to clean the house before they went to the hospital.

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According to Judy, Thomas was one of the most generous men that you could meet. He had a lot of money, but he hardly ever spent any money on himself. He was always buying things for her and her children and even spending money to help out many of his patients anytime they were in need. Particularly, Thomas had a soft side for helping women who were down on their luck.

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She said the house was a mess, there were clothes everywhere, and there was blood everywhere. So she wanted things to be straightened up first and then promised that she would drive Thomas to the hospital. Deanna then went inside to help clean. She stripped the bed that Thomas had been sleeping in and started cleaning the blood off of the linens.

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Again, this all happened in that room, so there was blood pretty much everywhere from being hit in the head. As Deanna was upstairs cleaning, Thomas remained in the garage, refusing to come back in the house. Then inside the house, Deanna heard an argument between John and Kelsey. Kelsey started yelling at John, telling John that he was a bitch, saying that he needed to knock Thomas out.

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She said that she's seen people knock each other out before, so it shouldn't be that hard. So why can't John just

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buck up and knock Thomas out she was basically instigating him and egging him on calling him all sorts of names trying to get him to just go and hit Thomas some more Deanna then heard as John headed into the garage so Deanna ran downstairs to try to stop whatever was about to happen she told Kelsey to stop but just as she was doing so Kelsey ran into the garage to see what was happening

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Kelsey then came back into the house and told Deanna that it was too late. Deanna asked Kelsey what she meant and that is when John came back into the house from the garage now covered in blood and holding a gun. John had blood all over his hands and arms and blood splattered all over his face. it was clear that John had just beaten Thomas with this gun.

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However, there are still so many women out there whose lives are completely funded by older men who like to provide a life of luxury to younger women. Sometimes there is a sexual relationship. Sometimes it's a fully transactional relationship. Sometimes there may even be a real connection between the two. If you're in any of these situations, more power to you.

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This was a fact that was confirmed by the medical examiner, stating that whatever killed Thomas was small and cylindrical, similar to the barrel of a gun. Once Deanna saw that, she started panicking and crying, so Kelsey told her to get started cleaning. So, that's what she did. She said at that point, she didn't know what else to do.

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And I can see how she was in a state of extreme stress and shock. And after seeing the level of violence that these people are capable of, I probably would have done whatever they said in that moment too. Either way, It was most likely at that time that John put Thomas's body in the trunk of the car and left him there while they figured out what to do.

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That night, after witnessing the murder of this 71-year-old man, Deanna stayed at her boyfriend's house along with Kelsey's four-year-old son. The following day, Kelsey and Deanna returned back to the house to continue cleaning. Once again, as I stated before, that is when they started staying at different hotels and got that cleaning crew to clean up the house.

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At this time, Kelsey told Deanna that the cover story that they would tell for why Thomas was gone was that he returned back to California with some random men that they didn't know, but allowed Kelsey to continue using his bank information to pay for the hotels and pretty much anything else they needed.

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It also appears that they used Thomas' phone for a few days, once again texting Judy to try to get more bank info out of her, but she knew that it was not Thomas, so she didn't give that information up. Then, once Kelsey and everyone found out about the police poking around the house once again,

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Kelsey drove her car with Thomas's body in the trunk and then left the car abandoned on the side of a dirt road. Some of the evidence, like I said from before, like the gloves and the cleaning supplies, were also in that car. And then, as we heard from before, there was evidence of a fire in the front passenger seat.

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Homeless women or women on the verge of homelessness, drug addicts or sex workers. He wanted to help these women turn their lives around and make something of themselves. That leads me to introducing 25-year-old Kelsey Turner. Kelsey Turner was born in Norfolk, Virginia before her family moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas where she grew up. Kelsey went on to attend Arkansas State University.

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Most likely, she tried setting the car on fire to get rid of the evidence, assuming that it would just go up in a blaze, but she obviously did not stick around long enough to make sure that the car actually burned. She then probably got driven back to the hotel by John.

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i don't know if that's 100 confirmed i don't know who drove her around that day but either way kelsey returned back to the hotel before contacting a friend to come pick them up and they started heading towards california then as we know police found the car with thomas's body they also found tons of dna and fingerprints that belonged to kelsey john and deanna this led them to the home which again confirmed a lot of what deanna had told them

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based on the blood evidence that they found. Upon issuing the arrest warrant for John, Kelsey, and Deanna, they were all charged with murder. However, after Deanna turned herself in and spoke with officers about what happened, her charges were reduced to accessory to murder.

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She said that she only went along with Kelsey and John because she was afraid for her life, but she could have reported things a lot sooner than she did, so she accepted that part of her role in this. Meanwhile, both Kelsey and John pleaded not guilty to their murder charges.

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In the preliminary hearings, Kelsey was seen wearing an oversized prison jumpsuit because she was actually pregnant when she was arrested. While in jail awaiting her trial, she did give birth to her daughter, But I'm not completely sure of what happened with her daughter or her other children for that matter after she gave birth.

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I'm assuming that John is the father, so obviously the daughter is not in his custody. Her other children are probably with their father, but I don't know exactly. unfortunately what happened with this new daughter. Deanna testified at the preliminary hearings though for everything that she witnessed and obviously it was clear exactly what happened.

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Obviously, the defense could just say that Deanna was lying, but it was argued that even if she was not telling the truth, Kelsey couldn't possibly be the one who murdered Thomas because based on where he was hit with the baseball bat, and given that Kelsey's size is significantly smaller than Thomas, there was no way that she could have been the one responsible for the physical beating.

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But she did seem to be the one who egged John on, and obviously she took part in everything else that happened, So she definitely had a huge amount of responsibility in this. But by June of 2022, after working with the prosecutors in this case, John Kennison actually pleaded guilty to charges of second degree murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder.

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For this, he was sentenced to 18 to a max of 45 years in prison. Then after working with prosecutors as well, Kelsey also entered a new plea, but she did not plead guilty. She actually entered an Alford plea, which means that she can maintain her stated innocence, but she understands that there is plenty of evidence to convict her on charges of second-degree murder.

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So basically, she's pleading guilty to second-degree murder, but she is technically able to say that she is maintaining her innocence. For this, Kelsey ended up being handed a 25-year prison sentence for the murder of Thomas. Of course, in the aftermath of this, Judy is just heartbroken. She is disgusted that such evil exists in the world.

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However, during that time, Kelsey was recognized for her natural beauty and her ability to pose for the camera. So she started modeling for lingerie and swimsuit shots for different racy magazines. While doing this work, Kelsey moved away from her hometown in Arkansas and moved to California, where the opportunities were more plentiful.

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Someone who took advantage of Thomas' kindness for so many years, got so much money out of him, just left him in the back of a trunk to rot after he was brutally, violently beaten to death. Not only that, but she made some of the worst kind of allegations that you can make against someone. To falsely accuse someone of being a child predator is just despicable.

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And again, there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever to prove that he did anything of the sort. And based on what we do know about Kelsey, I absolutely would not put it past her to make false allegations like that to try and keep the money coming and blackmail him into paying her.

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From there, Kelsey worked her way up in the industry, going on to work as a model for magazines such as Maximum, Players Magazine, Fire and Ice, and even Playboy Magazine. During this time, she started gaining some traction in the modeling world, landing her appearances in movies such as The Promise in 2011, as well as WALL-E Got Wasted in 2018.

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Judy expressed fear that if Kelsey is ever released on parole, that she will have to spend her life looking over her shoulder in fear of what Kelsey could do to her. And after seeing what Thomas went through, I absolutely see where she's coming from. He was killed in such a horrendous, brutal way for absolutely no reason.

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Overall, no matter what you think about Thomas, he obviously didn't deserve this. Kelsey told her friends that he wasn't a sugar daddy, but it kind of seemed like that was the situation here. But even if this was a situation where he was romantically interested in Kelsey or if he just liked sending her money and spending time with her, it genuinely does not matter.

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She is a full-grown adult who is clearly taking advantage of him, especially when he started to show signs of dementia. And for whatever reason, he continued to fall for her BS. And it's just devastating. My heart breaks for Thomas' loved ones, the patients he helped, and everyone else who knew and loved him. His life is gone so brutally because of someone who fell into a rage for God knows why.

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Because at this point, we really don't even know why Thomas was killed. We know that an argument happened. We know that John and Kelsey were angry. But Kelsey was the one making threats and spewing accusations. While according to Deanna, Thomas was just trying to calm things down. To me, if there were messages about trying to get Kelsey's kids away from her, that could explain the rage.

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I think she could have been looking for something to be angry about because she was afraid that Thomas was about to cut her off. I could also see if John was enjoying the life that Thomas financially provided and the threat of that being taken away sent them both into a rage. I guess that makes sense.

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But with cases like this, of course, the level of violence that people escalate to makes no sense and it is always awkward.

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heartbreaking but that is all of the information that i have for today's video and now i want to hear what you all think about this wild ride of a case what do you think kelsey actually found on that phone and why do you think she got mad or do you think she was just looking for a reason to be mad because she was afraid of him cutting her off financially Why do you think John was so upset?

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Why do you think Deanna went along with all of it? Do you think she really feared for her life? Also, what do you think of Kelsey's Alford plea? What do you think of what Judy has been saying about the entire thing? Let me know any and all thoughts that you have in the comments below.

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If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. All will be linked down below.

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Kelsey would later describe herself as being impulsive. She loved thrills and having fun. She said that she knew she only had one life to live, so she was going to live it to its fullest. She went on to say that she was just a Russian-American blonde trying to change the world. On Instagram, she can be seen posing in various suggestive positions in swimsuits and other revealing clothing.

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And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

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She also posted herself on magazine covers as well as with her friends on fun nights out. She was clearly a confident young woman who loved to show off what she had to offer. Nothing wrong with that. It is believed that it was sometime back in 2017 when Thomas met Kelsey online.

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According to Judy, she doesn't know exactly how the two met, but we found out from past divorce papers from Thomas's first marriage that he did have a history of meeting beautiful women online who had suggestive screen names. Sometimes he would meet these women in person, sometimes they were just online relationships.

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While Thomas always claimed that none of these relationships were romantic or sexual, we don't know the full story. We do know that Thomas liked to send these women money, but he said that he just liked helping people out. As you could probably guess, Thomas's ex-wife did not believe him, hence why it was listed in their divorce papers. But Judy didn't seem to mind.

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Now, I do want to note that there are some men out there who get gratification out of sending pretty women money. Whether they get sexual gratification from the act of sending money or they just enjoy sending money, there are men out there who will send money without any sexual favors in return. But it is still a sexual thing for some of these men. So...

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If that makes sense, some of these men will send money and get sexual gratification just from the act of that. So these women don't actually have to like do any sexual favors or, you know, exchange sexual messages and things like that. Some men just enjoy sending money while others do get sexual gratification out of it.

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So I don't want to sit here and say that I know Thomas better than Judy, the person who knew him best. I don't want to say that I know his motives or anything like that. But I do just want to point out that it is always a bit strange when these men are over here sending these young, beautiful women money for no reason. I'll just put it that way.

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But with Kelsey Turner, she fully sunk her claws in and wouldn't let go until she got everything she possibly could out of her sugar daddy. And when he threatened to cut her off, things took a devastating turn for the worst. This is the tragic case of Thomas Burchard.

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Either way, from how Judy understood the situation, when Thomas met Kelsey, he was under the impression that Kelsey was the single mother of two children, she had nowhere to live, and she couldn't qualify for a lease to rent a house. Because of that, Thomas offered to sign a lease for her to live in a house in Salinas, California with her mother and children.

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But he ended up paying for her rent altogether, which cost him $3,200 a month. After that, this progressed into him helping her buy a BMW by signing the loan for the car. But once again, he ended up paying for the entire car by himself. It was said that through all of the different women that Thomas had financially supported throughout his life, none of them had a hold on him like Kelsey did.

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He was constantly sending her money and no matter what Kelsey did, it seemed like Thomas was addicted to her attention. She would message him all of the time asking for money for rent, prescription, drugs, and things like that. She would message him and be like, where are you? I need money for this right now. You better get over here. If you want my love, you better get over here.

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Over the course of them knowing each other for about a year and a half, he spent a total of $500,000 on her. The way that this relationship progressed was something that Judy was not happy with. She knew all about Kelsey, but she did not like him spending all of that money on her. In fact, Judy referred to Kelsey as a white trash whore.

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Judy was pretty much always encouraging Thomas to cut Kelsey off, and after some time, after realizing how Kelsey was treating him, He was leaning towards the idea of stopping his payments to Kelsey. When Kelsey caught wind of Thomas possibly trying to cut her off, Kelsey started to get pissed.

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She knew that it was mostly Judy who was behind the idea and she started to say that Judy was on her shit list and if she ever got her evicted, that she'd kill her. Then that turned into threats against Thomas himself. According to what Judy would later tell police, Kelsey started to threaten Thomas that she would go to the police with accusations that could ruin his career working with children.

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According to Judy, Kelsey made allegations that he was inappropriate towards children. However, these allegations were completely unfounded and Nothing of the sort was ever found in his phone or records or anything like that. So it really just seemed like an empty threat made by Kelsey to hopefully get him so afraid that he would continue paying her rent and her car payments.

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and it seemed to work for at least a while because no matter how baseless these threats seemed thomas didn't feel comfortable going to the police which i can totally understand if you know that you're not guilty of something but you are afraid that you know maybe kelsey told some people to go forward with false stories or maybe kelsey's gonna claim that she saw something that she didn't actually see it can be hard for him to dismantle any false allegations without any proof

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71-year-old Thomas Burchard was originally from Boston, Massachusetts before he and his family moved to Virginia, where his father started to work as the dean of Virginia Tech's College of Architecture and Urban Studies. Thomas was always known to be very motivated and driven, and that was clear in his career choice.

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And I can see why he wouldn't want to go to the police with fear that he may be going to jail for something that he genuinely did not do. By the end of 2018, almost two years into knowing Thomas, he finally kicked Kelsey out of the house that she was renting in California and took away her BMW. After that, Kelsey decided to move to Las Vegas, Nevada with her then four-year-old son.

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I will note now that she had custody of the four-year-old, but she did have another son who she did not have custody of. Now, both Thomas and Judy seemed happy with the fact that they were no longer going to have to deal with Kelsey, especially with her living so close to them, so Judy suggested that Thomas help fund her move, so he did just that.

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By early in 2019, Kelsey arrived to her new home in Vegas. There, she lived in a four bedroom home with her four year old son and several roommates. After she moved, Thomas cut her off and tried to stop all contact with her. He said that he would no longer be supporting her and her child, that she needed to figure things out on her own. However, after settling into her new home in Vegas,

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she sunk her claws right back into him. By March of 2019, she told Thomas that she was sick and could no longer work, so she wasn't able to afford to take care of her son. It was also reported that Kelsey told Thomas that her boyfriend at the time had been physically abusing her. So, she was using whatever she could to get sympathy from him and to get more and more money from him.

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So, eventually, he did start paying for the rent for her new four-bedroom home and bought her a new Mercedes to replace the BMW that he took away. Now, this next part is reported differently depending on what source you look at.

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Some reports say that Kelsey was keeping Thomas in the dark about a lot of things and was lying a lot, so he got suspicious of her and wanted to see her in person to figure out what was going on. Other reports say that he felt bad for her situation and wanted to visit her.

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Either way, Thomas booked a ticket and flew over from California to Las Vegas, Nevada to visit Kelsey, arriving to her two-story suburban home on March 1st, 2019. When Thomas arrived, he was met with a very full house. He actually had no idea that Kelsey lived with people, but again, she had multiple roommates.

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Kelsey lived in the master bedroom on the second floor with her then 27-year-old boyfriend, John Kennison. Next to her room on the second floor lived her son in his room, and then in another bedroom on the second floor was one of her other roommates, a 30-year-old woman named Deanna Pena. Then, Kelsey had a fourth roommate, Jeremy Eskridge, who slept downstairs on the first floor.

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During Thomas's stay, apparently a friend of Kelsey's took her son and babysat him for a few days so that he would be out of the house for that time. Then to sort of talk about the dynamics between the roommates for a second.

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Thomas went to medical school to become a doctor, and while in school, he realized that he wanted to become a child psychiatrist. He ended up doing some of his residencies at some of the top colleges in the country, such as Cincinnati Children's Hospital, UCLA, and the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula in California,

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Like I said, Deanna was a little bit older than Kelsey and the others, and it was said that she was living at the house for free because she acted as a part-time nanny for Kelsey's son. And again, Kelsey was pretty much paying the rent because Thomas was giving her the money for it.

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She was probably making money from the other roommates to live there while she pocketed it, not actually paying the rent because again, she was being given all the money for the rent. Either way, Deanna worked as a bartender at the Coliseum Theater at Caesar's Palace. And again, when she wasn't working nights during the day, she helped watch Kelsey's Son.

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Meanwhile, John was a former gang member who was known to use drugs in his past, but I'm not exactly sure how he met Kelsey or even how long they had been dating. While there, Thomas stayed in communication with his girlfriend back home, Judy. By March 2nd, he texted that everything was okay, but apparently there was a bit of an incident that day.

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This next part comes from one of Kelsey's roommates, Jeremy. On the evening of March 2nd, it was said that Jeremy's girlfriend, a woman named Chelsea, who was also a beautiful young blonde woman, showed up to the house drunk. When she got there, she struck up a conversation with Thomas, which apparently Kelsey was not happy about.

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Then Thomas offered to take Chelsea to the store, driving Kelsey's car, which was a blue Mercedes. This made Kelsey even more upset. Once they left, Kelsey and her boyfriend John burst into Jeremy's room and started screaming at him, saying that Chelsea was trying to take Thomas away from her and demanding that Jeremy go get Chelsea and bring Thomas back.

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But by the time Jeremy went outside, Chelsea and Thomas had already left. But when Jeremy tried going back inside, apparently John stopped Jeremy from getting back in the house, shoving him back outside and then punching him in the face.

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According to Jeremy, John started making some vague threats towards him, saying things like, you better find out where they were going or something bad is going to happen to you and things like that. At the time, Jeremy didn't take it seriously.

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It seems to me that maybe John was the type of person who flew off the handle frequently and said things like that often because this was such a small thing that he was punching someone in the face over. So it seems like maybe that was just in his character.

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By the time Thomas and Chelsea got back to the house, Jeremy had been waiting for her outside, and the two of them left in a taxi, and according to them, they did not return back to the house for four days. Now, like I said, Judy had been staying in contact with Thomas while he was in Vegas. However, after March 2nd, she hadn't heard anything from him.

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By that day, Thomas had expressed to duty how excited he was to return back to California and be done with this whole ordeal. His flight back home was scheduled for March 4th. but that day came and went and he never returned home. Around that time, Judy also started receiving text messages from Thomas' phone, but the way they sounded did not sound like Thomas.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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It took over 90 minutes for an officer to arrive and by the time they did arrive, they told Catherine and Brian that they couldn't do anything without a search warrant. However, that didn't really make a lot of sense because knowing the situation, the officer could have made a judgment call. The pertinent information was that Jeff was supposed to drop Caden off by 6 or 7 p.m. that day.

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It was several hours later and he wasn't answering. He was directly violating a court order. According to later remarks from their homicide detective, the officer absolutely could have entered the home at that time. Of course, though, Catherine and Brian didn't know that. They believed what the officer told them because why wouldn't they trust an officer who knows the law better than they do?

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So they went home that night and waited. That night, according to Catherine, she kept telling herself that Jeff would not hurt Caden. She assured herself that Jeff loved Caden and that no matter what mental health issues he had, that he would not hurt his daughter.

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The following morning, after being up pretty much all night and posting her on Facebook to see if anybody had seen Caden, by around 10.50 a.m., Brian, along with Catherine's father and Caden's grandfather, returned back to Jeff's home to check things out. They looked around and realized that the back door was actually open, so they went inside the home and went into the living room.

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And that is when Brian made the most horrific, heartbreaking discovery that he could have possibly made. Brian and Catherine's father found Kayden's little lifeless body lying on the ground right by the front door. She was found with her shoes on as well as a plastic bag over her head. Sie wurde verurteilt. Katharines Vater ging dann nach oben in den Master-Bedraum und dort fanden sie Jeff.

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Er war auch tot, nachdem er sich mit einem Knie in einem offensichtlichen Verurteilungsmord verletzt hat. Nach der Erfindung der Körper, versuchte Katharines Vater, auf der Szene zu bleiben, um sicherzustellen, dass die Behörden ihre Körper richtig behandelt haben.

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Sie können sehen, in den Klips, die ich euch zeigen werde, dass Krimenszenen-Investigatoren ihre kleine Körper herausziehen, in eine Schicht befestigen und dann sie in den Krimenszenen-Van laden. Brian, who was also at the scene, was just inconsolable. He was collapsed on the floor, just in shock after what he had just found.

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Two years after that, Catherine started dating a new man named Brian Sherlock, and by 2017, the pair was married. From that marriage, Caden had two little brothers, Kyler and Blake. Kaden war in der zweiten Klasse an der Edgewood Elementary School in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. Kaden war bekannt als deine typische 7-jährige kleine Mädchen.

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Sie ist gestorben, weil sie von Blutdruckverletzungen an ihrem Kopf gestorben ist. Jeff hat Kaden viermal über den Kopf geschlagen, mit einem 35-Pound-Dumbbell. Es wurde gesagt, dass Kaden so hart wie möglich zurückkämpft hat, aber es war nicht genug.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Nach seinem Tod schlug er ihr lebenslose Körper über und schlug eine Plastik-Tasche über ihren Kopf, die sie mit einem iPhone-Charger versorgt hat, um sicherzustellen, dass sie nicht und nicht überleben würde. According to Catherine, she told Caden that if she was ever scared of her dad, that she should run away as fast as she could and get to a trusted adult who could call 911 or Catherine.

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She believes that Caden was by the door with her shoes on so that she could get out. But before she got that chance, she was murdered. Then after violently beating his daughter to death, Jeff went upstairs and washed his hands. It's been reported differently depending on what source you look at, but he either wrote the suicide note right after killing his daughter or right before.

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But either way, he went upstairs to at least grab the pre-written suicide note before returning back downstairs and throwing the note next to his daughter's lifeless body. The contents of the note have not been released publicly, but according to Catherine, the note said something along the lines of, you get what you deserve.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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After this happened, Catherine had the heartbreaking duty of explaining what happened to Caden to her little brothers. Natürlich waren sie zu jung, um das zu verstehen. Sie wussten nicht, wo Kayden war oder warum ihr Vater sie schaden wollte. Es war einfach so eine schreckliche Situation für die Familie.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Und natürlich, im Nachhinein dieser schrecklichen, schrecklichen Situation war Catherine auch an den Geräten verpisscht. Es ist absurd.

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Sie liebte Emojis, Unicorns, Mermaid, LOL, Überraschungs-Dolls und sie und ihre Familie waren große Philly- und Eagles-Fans. Sie liebte zu drehen, ihr Freundeshaar und Make-up zu machen und sie liebte zu singen und mit ihren kleinen Brüdern und Cousinen zu spielen. Kaden war auch bekannt, in der Athletik zu exzellieren, selbst bei so einer jungen Zeit.

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But Catherine isn't the type of person who just sat and did nothing. She wanted to make a change. She knew that there is so much fundamentally wrong with the courts and the child protection services as a whole. By June of 2019, Catherine made her argument in front of policy makers at the Capitol, opposing a bill that would favor a 50-50 presumption custody between both parents.

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She argued that the parental rights should not come first, the child's rights should. She argued that passing a bill that gives a presumption of 50-50 custody right off the bat puts many children in danger.

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She wrote about everything we heard in this case up to this point, about how he was known to have such a violent past and the courts heard from multiple people how Caden was in danger every time she spent time alone with him. Sie sprach auch über das Thema, das Jeff vorhin in ihren Gerichtsschrecken erwähnt hat, nämlich parental alienation.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Jeff hat Katharine von parental alienation verurteilt und gesagt, dass sie Caden von Jeff alieniert hat, um sie nicht zu schützen. He claimed that she was being rotten and spiteful by keeping her away from him, by not allowing 50-50 custody. However, Catherine stated that he only used this as a tactic to distract from the real issues, which were Cadens safety and well-being.

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She argued in her rebuttal to that 50-50 custody bill that so many abusive parents will use alienation as a bogus argument to get the protective parents less time with their child. So she argued that passing this bill would only give more power to bogus arguments like this and more power to abusers that shouldn't have children to begin with.

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Sie wurde auf die 10U Pensbury Gems Softball-Team gesetzt, sie hat Fußball gespielt und sie hat auch Gymnastik gemacht. Kaden war bekannt, enthusiastisch und glücklich zu sein, mit einer sparklernden Persönlichkeit. Sie wurde von allen um sie herum lieb. Sie wurde von ihrer Familie genutzt und sie berührte die Leben aller um sie herum.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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To go further, Catherine, alongside many people who helped and backed her, decided to propose a new bill in front of Congress. It is estimated that thousands of children every year are court ordered into the custody of an abusive parent, often without supervisions or safeguards in place. Even further, some dangerous parents even use the court systems to harm children or the other parent.

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Despite how often this continues to happen, courts still make these mistakes every single day. Over 900 children have been killed by their abuser within the past five years when the safe parent either tried to leave or already left. and the child was placed back with their abuser.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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So, Catherine helped to push Congress to pass a new law in their state called the Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act or Cadence Law against the Violence Against Women Act or VAWA. Cadence Law incentivizes states to ensure that their child custody laws adequately protect children at risk by restricting expert testimony to only those who are appropriately qualified to provide it.

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Evidence from court, appointed or outside professionals regarding alleged abuse may be admitted only when the professional possesses demonstrated expertise and experience in working with victims of domestic violence or child abuse, including sexual abuse. Limiting the reunification camps and therapies which cannot be proven to be safe and effective.

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No reunification treatment may be ordered by the court without scientifically valid and generically accepted proof of safety, effectiveness and therapeutic value of the particular treatment.

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Providing evidence-based ongoing training to judges and court personnel on family violence subject matter, including child sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, coercive control, implicit and explicit bias, trauma, long and short-term impacts of domestic violence and child abuse on children, and victim and perpetrator behaviors."

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By March of 2022, Catherine actually got to go to the White House and meet President Biden to sign the new title under the VAWA Act. The reason that I'm making this video is actually because I was contacted by an advocate with the Arizona Parents Against Court Corruption.

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She provided me with links to some great resources, including the website which describes Caden's Law, nationalsafeparents.org. This website allows you to do your own research into the issue and even become an advocate yourself. You can join the fight at their website if you want to.

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If you are from Arizona, the Arizona Parents Against Court Corruption also has a Facebook group where they will post how you can get involved with helping protect our state's children. I also have listed down below a website called loveourchildrenusa.com. That website provides pretty much step-by-step instructions on how you can become an advocate in your community.

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Those sources will be listed down below. With this video, I highly encourage each and every one of you to share any and all resources that you know of for your state specifically. I will have as many resources and information listed down below that pertains nationally and to my state. But I know that you guys are from all over the country and all over the world.

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Von der Zeit an, als Kayden sehr jung war, lebte sie primär mit ihrer Mutter Katherine und dann, als sie Brian verheiratet hat, lebte sie mit ihnen und ihren zwei jüngeren Brüdern. In der Zwischenzeit wurde Jeff besucht. Katherine wollte die Behandlung von Kayden, weil seit 2009 hat Jeff sich als unabhängig, gewaltig und im Allgemeinen eine gefährliche Person gezeigt.

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So if you have any other information or resources that you would like to share, please do down below in the comments. Viele von euch wissen das bereits, aber ich arbeite mit Kindern im Gesundheitswesen. Ich bin ein großer Vorschläger für die Sicherheit und Gerechtigkeit von Kindern.

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Ich möchte, dass jeder und jede von euch so aktiv ist, wie ihr könnt, wenn ihr echte Kriminelle verwendet, vor allem Dinge, die Kinder betreffen. Also hört bitte nicht auf Kaden's Geschichte und geht mit eurer Leben weiter. Listen to her story and help us do something about it. Look into your local resources at your state or even your county or community to see how and if you can get involved.

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Even if it is just reading about the massive problem that we are facing with children's rights or signing a petition. Or literally just being aware of the issues that are facing your community so that you can be vigilant. Anything is helpful and I encourage each and every one of you to check out the listed resources down below and share anything that you have that may be helpful for others.

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But that is where I'm going to end today's case. I know that this was a really, really tough case to listen to. I personally had to stop researching multiple times to take a break because this was a lot to handle. Aber ich bin wirklich froh, dass Kadens Mutter die Schmerzen und die Schmerzen, die sie hatte und hat, und sie hat es geschafft, tolle Dinge zu tun.

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Ich hoffe wirklich, dass Kadens Gesetz hilft. Ich hoffe, dass es einen Unterschied macht. Und auch wenn es das Leben von nur einem Kind von einem Abusern rettet, dann würde ich sagen, dass es seinen Job tut. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, wie der Herzschlag, die Frustration, die Schmerzen, die Kadenes Mutter und die restliche Familie nach all dem durchgehen mussten.

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Sie haben alles getan, um das nicht zu passieren und es war noch nicht genug. Also wiederum bin ich wirklich sehr beeindruckt, wenn eine Familie eine Tragedie wie diese verwendet, um eine Veränderung in ihren Gemeinschaften zu machen. Und vor allem, wie Kathrin es tut, tut sie es für die gesamte Nation.

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According to Jeff's sister, from a young age, Jeff was troubled. For the 10 years that followed 2009, Jeff was charged with various levels of assault as well as multiple charges of trespassing, harassment and inappropriate behavior. Now, according to Jeff's sister, he grew up as a loving, normal child.

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Their parents divorced when he was just three years old, so the two of them were raised primarily by their mother. But they did still manage to maintain a close relationship with their father. But by the time Jeff reached high school, very concerning behaviors started to arise. He started getting into fights all of the time, even punching one teacher, which got him expelled.

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He got into a car accident at one point, which landed him a brain injury, which can help explain some of his behaviors. And then after that, he started drinking very heavily. He continued drinking and fighting all throughout his time in college, but he did manage to graduate with a degree in business from Townsend University in Maryland.

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As an adult, as I stated, his bad behaviors and heavy drinking continued. After graduating college, he got himself a job at a headhunting firm in Cherry Hill, but after only a few months of working there, he was fired after having a dispute with his boss. After that, he started his own business where he found jobs for people in architecture, engineering and construction.

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Now, going back a little bit to talk more about Jeff's concerning behaviors as it relates to Kayden. Als Katharine mit Kayden verheiratet war, gab es einen Fall, wo Jeff Katharine übergedrückt hat und sie aus einem Schlauch gefallen ist. Und dann gab es noch einen schwereren Fall, wo Jeff Katharine verheiratet hatte, bis zu dem Punkt, wo sie fühlte, als ob sie gestorben hätte.

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Every single child has the right to be free from abuse. Every single child has the right to be with a parent who will love and protect them from any harm that comes their way. However, as we see far too often, that is not what always ends up happening. Far too frequently, we see the courts handing children over to their abusers.

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2009 schlug er eine Bierbottel an einen Mann und seine Frau, nach dem Kampf in einem Bar. The bottle broke and cut the woman's face. At this time he was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and possessing an instrument of crime. He ended up pleading guilty to simple assault in exchange for dropping the other charges.

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And at that time he was sentenced to two years of probation. Then there was yet another incident back in 2012. This incident was really the breaking point for Catherine. In this incident, Jeff had gotten into a bar fight with another man at a Philadelphia bar and Jeff bit the man's ear off. Jeff would later go on to tell a psychologist, quote,

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I beat him up, he put me in a headlock, I bit down on his ear and took off the top part of his ear. After that incident, he was arrested once again and charged with recklessly endangering another person, aggravated assault and simple assault. He was found guilty on all charges and he was sentenced to home arrest with an ankle monitor.

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He also had to submit to random alcohol and drug testing and attend anger management counseling. Wie gesagt, das war der Ausgangspunkt für Katharine, also packte sie sich auf und ging weg, nachdem ihr Mann jemanden ins Ohr geschlagen hat. Das ist einfach absurd. An diesem Zeitpunkt wusste Katharine, dass Jeff gewaltig und abhängig von Aggressionen war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Aber sie dachte nicht, dass er seine eigene Tochter verletzen würde. For a while, Caden was the only positive thing in Jeff's life. He adored Caden and Caden looked up to her father and loved spending time with him. So, when the separation first happened, Catherine and Jeff set up an informal custody agreement, where he would see Caden every other weekend. And for a while...

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Things worked out really well. Like I said, for the time being, Jeff was a really great father. Caden trusted him. He treated her well. And he followed the informal custody agreement very well. And there were never any issues about his behavior towards Caden. However, Jeff's behaviors outside of his parenting did continuously get worse. He continuously did whatever he wanted.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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And he made it clear that no matter what, no one was going to get in his way. This behavior continued for years. Then, like I said, he was a heavy drinker as well, which definitely did not slow down during this time. By 2017, he was arrested for DUI. He also had multiple probation violations, but none of the reports I saw specified exactly what he did.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Dann, wie gesagt, wurde Katherine mit Brian verheiratet im Jahr 2017. Aber nach diesem Verheiratet hat Jeff Katharine für eine Partizipation gefeuert. Katharine beschreibt die Situation, als wäre Jeff auf einer Rampage gegangen. Er hat Angelegenheiten nach Angelegenheiten an sie gegeben, alle von denen unbegründet waren.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Katharine sagte, dass sie glaubte, dass dies nach der Verheiratung mit Brian passiert wäre, weil Jeff nicht die Gedanken hatte, dass Kaden in einer anderen Familie glücklich ist. And as things didn't go exactly how Jeff wanted, he got restless. He sent her hundreds of life-threatening emails and even stalked her at her job, where she worked as an emergency room nurse.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Despite the warnings, despite testimony from those who want to see the child thrive, courts will show leniency towards parents who have proven themselves to be dangerous. That is what happened in Kayden's case. She had a mother and stepfather who loved her to no end, and a father who was violent, impulsive and mentally unwell.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Jeff was once seen blowing up at Catherine outside of the courthouse after one of their court appearances. Dann begann Jeff, gegen seinen eigenen Hund zu schlagen, mit Kaden beobachtete Jeff, den Hund in die Füße zu schlagen, mehrere Male. Jeff schlug dann seine eigene Mutter vor Kaden und schlug sich selbst in die Füße, während er in Rache war.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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It was at that point that Kayden started telling her mom that she was afraid of her dad. She told her mom that her dad would always make her talk about court when she was with him. She said that dad tells her to tell the judge that mom is trying to take her away from dad.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Then there was one time where Catherine found Kayden in tears and when she asked Kayden what was wrong, she said that her dad called her and when she answered, he yelled at her for not answering earlier. Er sagte, dass er sie an diesem Anruf hassen musste und dann aufhörte. Natürlich war das sehr schmerzhaft und traumatisch, um die kleine Mädchen von ihrem eigenen Vater zu hören.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Ein Jahr nach dem Anruf, hat Catherine einen Befehl gegen Jeff verabschiedet, nachdem sie von ihm all diese immer stärkeren Verbrechen gesagt hat. Und das wurde erlaubt, aber sie konnte keine Befreiung gegen Kaden erheben. Die Polizei in der Situation sagte, dass weil Jeff Kaden oder Catherine nicht aktiv verletzt hat, dass sie nicht viel tun konnten.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Jedoch waren Kadens Mutter und Großvater nicht die Einzigen, die sich um Kadens Sicherheit kümmern. Even teachers from Kaden's school were concerned with Jeff's behaviors. There were times that he would belittle her teachers and left them threatening comments on online forums. In one incident, Jeff had brought Kaden late to one of her soccer games.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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And this caused an argument between Jeff and Brian. According to Caden's coach, he saw Jeff getting all up in Brian's face, trying to provoke an altercation. This behavior concerned the coach so much that he genuinely felt that Jeff needed to seek psychological help.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Through all of the court hearings, the judge heard from so, so many witnesses, including Jeff's own family members, teachers, Brian and Catherine, all talking about Jeff's evolving erratic concerning behaviors. Not one person took the stand to speak on behalf of Jeff. Catherine eventually got the feeling that the judge, Judge Jeffrey G. Trauger, just was not listening.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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She begged and begged him to consider what she had to say and listened to even what Caden was saying about being afraid of her dad. Even Catherine's own attorney wasn't of much help to her. She begged that if she did get visitation with Jeff, that they at least be supervised because she truly believed that he was going to hurt her or Catherine or Caden whenever he got time with her to be alone.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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However, At the time, Catherine felt like the judge just considered her to be a toxic mom who was just trying to get back at an ex. So, the judge decided that both Catherine and Jeff needed psychological help and ordered the both of them to undergo psychiatric evaluations. In Catherine's evaluation, she was determined to have anxiety, which is absolutely understandable in her situation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Yet somehow Caden was allowed to spend time with her father unsupervised and that would have detrimental consequences. Today's case is a very rough one, so let's just get right into it. This is Caden's story. Caden Mancuso wurde von den Eltern Catherine Giglio-Sherlock und Jeff Mancuso geboren. Catherine und Jeff haben sich im Sommer 2009 auf der Jersey Shore getroffen.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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She probably was anxious 24-7 worrying about her daughter. But other than that, she had no serious ailments that could prevent her from being a competent, loving mother. Jeff, on the other hand, he was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety with narcissistic and antisocial personality traits. He was said to have suicidal thoughts and feelings of hopelessness.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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For those of you who do not know, antisocial personality traits doesn't mean that he's like socially awkward or really introverted or whatever. Antisocial personality traits, according to the DSM-5, So, probably not somebody who should be raising a child, in my opinion.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Either way, after undergoing the mental health evaluation, the courts decided that each parent should have access to her school and medical records, they should be able to participate in all of her school and social activities, and they should make an effort to allow Kayden to stay in communication with the other parent. So, if she was with Jeff...

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Sie sollte Katharine kontaktieren können und wenn sie mit Katharine ist, sollte sie Jeff kontaktieren können. Dann, für die Besucherstattung, regierte der Gericht, dass Katharine die primäre Behandlung von Kayden hätte. Jeff würde die Behandlung von ihr jeden anderen Wochenende erlauben, wo sie den Samstag und Sonntag mit ihm von 10 Uhr bis 6 Uhr verbringen könnte.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Jeff did not have to be supervised as long as Jeff received mental health treatment. However, the courts did not set up a mandated mental health program. It was pretty much up to him to go find a therapist and go get treatment.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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According to some sources, apparently the judge didn't feel like they could force Jeff to get mental health treatment or take any prescribed medication in family court cases. The judge noted that Caden hadn't previously been harmed by Jeff and that Caden didn't appear to be afraid of him during the hearings.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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She was deemed to be a happy child who had a good relationship with both parents, despite the bad relationship the two had with each other. Looking back, of course, Catherine said that she wishes that she could have stepped up more and done more to make sure that the courts heard just how dire the situation was.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Whether she went into contempt of court or even if she was arrested, she wishes that she would have done even more to prevent Kayden from being with her father unsupervised. Because again, she did voice over and over and over again her concerns, but that wasn't enough. They just were not listening.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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By August 2nd, 2018, Kayden went up to Ocean City, New Jersey with her aunt, Jeff's sister, Allison, as well as her paternal grandmother. They all just had a relaxing few days at the beach, spending time as a family. But Jeff was not invited. In fact, he didn't even know about this.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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At this point, again, Allison and Jeff's mother knew that Jeff was a violent man who honestly shouldn't even be allowed to have a daughter. But they still loved Kayden, so obviously they wanted to spend time with her. By August 3rd, Allison got a text from Catherine saying that she could bring Kayden to Jeff's house on Saturday for his court-ordered time with her.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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But once Kayden found out about that, she expressed that she didn't want them to drop her off because she said, "...Daddy will be mad." She was afraid that Jeff would be angry if he found out that his sister and mother spent time with Kaden without telling him and without inviting him. Allison will later say that Jeff would call them traitors anytime they spent time with her behind his back.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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Und laut Catherine war ihre Beziehung zu Jeff mehr ein Fliegen. Aber als sie herausgefunden hat, dass sie mit Caden verheiratet war, hat sie versucht, es mit ihm zu machen. Sie hat mit ihm eingeladen und versucht, ihre Tochter zusammenzubringen. But it didn't work out. The pair separated when Caden was one year old.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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So instead of dropping her off straight at Jeff's house on August 4th, they brought her back to her mother's house in Langhorne. That same day, Kaden's stepdad Brian dropped her off at Jeff's house for their court-ordered visit. However, when Sunday evening came and Jeff did not drop Caden back off like he was supposed to, Brian and Catherine got really worried.

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She WARNED Them About her Violent Father. Then he MURDERED Her. The TRAGIC Case of Kayden Mancuso

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They tried giving him the benefit of the doubt at first, hoping that he was just late. But by 10.30pm that night, they got panicked and decided to head over to Manioc, which is just over a 30-minute drive away. They knocked on the door, but they got no answer. Immediately, they called the police.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He said that after the two were done, he went up to go to the bathroom and then he fell asleep in the shower. He said that he then remembers waking up in the shower, but it was still really dark, so he just crawled back into bed and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. At this point, he said that he didn't see anything, so he just assumed that Grace had left, but she hadn't.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She had actually died and was still laying on the floor of his apartment. She had died of strangulation. So he claims that she accidentally died during their rough sex and that he didn't actually know somehow.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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he said that when he woke up the next morning he saw that grace was still laying on the floor and said that blood was coming out of her nose he said that he tried screaming for her and moving her to see if she was okay but of course she wasn't so

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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that is his entire story but of course police didn't buy this and they believed that this was a intentional murder not an accident and there is a lot of evidence and even more cctv footage that tells exactly what happened after this night so now let's get into the timeline of things that happened after grace had died so first this man had made some google searches

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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At 1.29 a.m., he searched for Waitakere Ranges. I'm so sorry if I butchered that, but that is a mountain range in New Zealand near Auckland. Then at 1.31 a.m., he searched for the term hottest fire. Then after those two searches, he went to a porn website and watched several videos. Then between 1.45 a.m. and 1.49 p.m., he took pictures of Grace's naked body.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Remember, he said that Grace was alive when he took this picture, so that can mean one of two things. First, he's lying and he took pictures of her dead body in this photo, and he's just a sick pervert who just wanted pictures of her dead naked body for some sort of trophy.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Or he took the pictures of her while she was still alive, but he had already planned to kill her because we know that the Google searches for the mountain range and the fire are clearly indications that he was looking for some ways to dispose of a body or burn her body.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So he either searched these things after killing her or before killing her and he either took the pictures of her dead naked body or he took them of her while she was still alive but after making all of these searches on how to hide a body Neither of these things look good for him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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But if this is something that you are very sensitive to, which I know a lot of people are, please go ahead and either skip those details or just click off of this video altogether. The other thing about this case was that I actually spent about a month researching this case because there's just so many videos to watch.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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By 6 a.m., there was another Google search for rigor mortis, then a search for extra large garbage bags, and then for carpet cleaner. By 7.50 a.m. that morning, this guy was back at it again on Tinder and was messaging another woman that he had been chatting with before. He initially said, good morning, how are you?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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And then he messages her again saying it was okay if she didn't feel like going on a date with him anymore. But she did message back and say that she did still want to meet up with him. By 8 a.m., we can see him entering the elevator by himself. Then we see him leave his apartment. He then went to the warehouse on Elliott Street and bought a large gray suitcase.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He can be seen browsing around, trying to decide which one to buy before picking one out. By 8.14, he can be seen going back to his apartment with this gray suitcase. At this point, after returning to his apartment, he told police that he tried overdosing on medication. He said that he just wanted to end his own life because he had just had enough.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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he said that as he was still in shock he tried putting grace's body into the suitcase but he couldn't fit her whole body in so at 8 35 a.m he once again goes back into his apartment's elevator and this time he went out to a countdown supermarket there he bought a carpet cleaner a pack of gloves and a pack of gum

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He paid for all of these items in cash at a self-service checkout and got back to his place at around 8.40. We can once again see him on his apartment's elevator with all of these items. So by 10.33 a.m., he left his apartment once again. He goes outside, walks towards Queen Street, and catches a taxi.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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While in the taxi, he appeared relatively calm and happy, though he did show some subtle signs of being nervous. A short time later, by 10.40 a.m., He got to Apex Car Rental Shop and rented a car to use for 24 hours. Here, he paid with a credit card, then drove back home.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Once he got back home, he was on Google once again, and this time he searched for the term flesh-eating birds and are there vultures in New Zealand? Then, at 2.53 p.m., he left his apartment once again. About an hour later, at around 4 p.m., he is seen on CCTV footage at the Revelry Bar, This is where he met up for a date with the woman that he had been messaging on Tinder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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During this date, the woman said he appeared like he had gained some weight compared to his pictures, but she said that he had very big distinctive eyes and was very clean and well groomed. She said that she had asked him a couple of questions about himself, but all of the questions that he asked her were very basic surface level questions. So she had asked him where he had met his friends.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He told her that all of his friends are cops and said that his closest friend is coming to New Zealand to become a Crown Prosecutor. She said that he told her that his friends were having a tough time because a lot of bodies were going missing at the Waitakere

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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ranges he also told her a fun fact that police dogs could only smell four feet deep so if a body was buried deeper than that the dog wouldn't be able to smell it the woman had actually been a former journalist so their conversation got steered towards a murder trial that she had once been to

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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so many articles to read, and so many details to figure out as you're going through. I spent a ton of time with this case and as I was researching, but before you guys are seeing it now and before anybody knew I was covering this case, I actually kept getting comments on my videos saying that I actually look just like Grace.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He then said to her, it's crazy how a guy can make one wrong move and then go to jail for the rest of his life. He then went on to explain about how he had heard about this guy who asked his girlfriend to have rough sex, but then it went wrong and so she died because of it. She said that he told her that this guy was charged with manslaughter and that he went to jail for a very long time.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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At this point, the woman said that she felt very uneasy about the conversation, so she tried changing the subject. He could also tell that she was uncomfortable, so he did try to steer the conversation away from murder and cadaver dogs. But again, she was still feeling very uneasy about this entire situation. By around 5.25 PM, the two ended their date.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Before they said goodbye, he pointed out where his car was and said, my car is this way. And she had actually parked on the same street as him. But she said that she was just feeling so uneasy that her instincts just kind of kicked in and told her to walk a different way.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So she walked down a different road, even though it was in the opposite direction of where her car really was, just because of how uncomfortable he made her. After the date, he went back home before leaving once again at 7.20. By 7.30 p.m. that night, he is spotted again with his red rental car in the parking garage at the Countdown supermarket. Here, he was browsing a rug doctor's stand.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He went back home at 7.45, empty-handed, but headed out once again to go and rent a rug cleaning machine. We can see him bringing the rug cleaning machine and some cleaning soap to his apartment. After taking it to his apartment about an hour later, we see him go back into the elevator with the cleaning machine and then went back to the store and he returned it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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By 9.26 that night, he goes back to the hotel lobby. Remember, he lives in a sort of hotel apartment complex combo, and then he got a luggage cart and took it up to his room. He is then seen leaving his apartment with the luggage cart. On the cart, there are two suitcases and he has a black sports bag.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He then leaves the apartment complex with the luggage carts and then puts the luggage into his rental car. He then went and parked his car in the Wilson's parking lot and left it there overnight. After this, he once again goes to the store and this time he bought gloves and stain remover. By 6.14 a.m., he's back up.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He got back to his rental car and then started heading towards the mountain ranges. By 6.50 a.m., he stopped at the Western ITM hardware store and buys a shovel with an orange head and four bolts. He then continued onto Scenic Drive, buried the suitcase, which contained Grace's body in a shallow grave and then he covered it in branches. By 9 30 a.m he returned to Auckland.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He went to his apartment to grab a bag and headed out once again. After this he dropped his bags off at the mint dry cleaners then headed to the warehouse again to buy another suitcase. After this he goes to the car wash to clean out the inside and outside of his rental car and he also cleaned a pair of shoes. He then took the shovel out of his car and left it there, leaning it against the wall.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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I didn't really see it myself and I still kind of don't really see it myself, but I did show a picture of her to my roommates and they said that I look like her too. She's also pretty close to being the same age as me and we have a lot of the same dreams and aspirations in common, so I don't know if it makes me weird that

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Then, by 4.50pm, he took all of the belongings that Grace left at his apartment to Albert Park and put them in the trash. The next thing we know is that on December 6th at 5 18 p.m., he left once again and took an Uber down to Mission Bay.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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We still don't know the exact reason for this trip, but it's thought that it was done to get rid of Grace's phone because to this day, her phone still has not been found. He got home at 5 58 p.m., Then at 8.43 a.m., he left once again, this time wearing a suit. Then we can see police officers in the lobby of the apartment complex talking to the front desk people.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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We then see the man walking around outside of the complex while police are still inside. After he walked off, police went out and started chasing him until they eventually caught up with him. This is when he spoke to police in person for the first time and told them that him and Grace went their separate ways at 10 p.m. that night.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Once they caught up with him, police took him into the station for his official interview. At this interview, he was asked to give a DNA sample and he happily agreed, saying, "'Yep, 100%, I haven't done anything wrong.'"

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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After this interview on December 7th, this is when police came out and made it known that they did have a suspect in the case and by December 8th, he finally admits that Grace was actually dead.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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This is when he told them the story that we discussed earlier about how it was all an accident and how he went to go get these cleaning supplies and everything that he did to get rid of Grace's body and all of the evidence. Then he actually told police where she was buried and led them to her body. But when he was asked if he killed Grace, he said no. But this didn't matter.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He was under arrest for Grace's murder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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looking like her or finding things in common with her made me feel so connected to her, but it really put this entire case into a new perspective for me. It's just so crazy and just talking about it right now is giving me chills. I felt so close to a girl that I don't even know just because I feel like I have such a connection with her. what happened to her can literally happen to anybody.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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By that next day, police came to the press to let everybody know that their search for Grace had come to an end. The entire family and police were all in complete shambles and they were all just so disappointed with this outcome. But for quite a while, they still did not release his identity and blurred any surveillance video with him in it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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By the time he was charged with Grace's murder, his identity was still being withheld, but finally, after a few months of being held, his identity was finally made public. Turns out, the man who murdered Grace Mullane was 28-year-old Jesse Kempson. Jesse Kempson was born in December of 1991 and was raised in New Zealand.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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When he was three years old, his parents separated, so he was raised mostly by his father and his grandfather. since his mother had moved pretty far away. In 2013, he had ended up moving to Australia for unknown reasons. He told people that it was to take care of his sick grandmother, but I don't think that that's true. I think that turned out to be a lie.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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But while he was in Australia, he worked as a bartender and a builder for a bit. He then came back to New Zealand in 2016, then went on to attend Aotea College and played softball there. So it turns out the main reason why his identity was not being released was because he was actually facing two other sexual assault charges.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. So the case that I have for you guys today is one that is solved, but it has a lot of uncomfortable information that is very difficult to listen to, all of which I will explain in just a minute. So the case that I have for you guys today, like I said, is very uncomfortable, but it's interesting for many reasons.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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it is just so terrifying. and even just the fact that we look a little bit similar and the fact that we like a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same dreams just makes it feel that much more real to me. but with that being said, if at any point you feel like you can't continue with this video or you need a break and to come back later, please do so.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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One of these cases took place only eight months before Grace's murder, and this victim also was a British tourist in New Zealand visiting family for a couple of weeks. While she was there, the two met on Tinder and it was pretty much the same type of situation. The two had drank and then went back to his apartment where he raped her because she refused his sexual advances

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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and he thought that she owed him her body because he bought her drinks. This victim actually had not initially reported the attack because she was so terrified of him and was scared that he was going to track her down and hurt her once again. But when she saw the headlines of what happened to Grace, she reported her sexual assault immediately.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Then he was also accused of sexually assaulting his girlfriend This case was an ordeal that lasted for months and we didn't find out the exact details of this case because they weren't released. But it was said that these details were just so sickening and that's the reason that they just weren't released. So now let's discuss the trial for Grace's murder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The trial started on November 4th, 2019, with a jury that consisted of five men and seven women, and Jesse put in a plea of not guilty. The prosecution argued that Jesse Kempson purposely strangled Grace Mullane after the two had slept together, then did several internet searches on how to dispose of her body rather than dialing 111, which shows that he had absolutely no intentions of helping her.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Then the defense argued that Grace's death was just a tragic accident from sexual misadventure. They said that Grace was into bondage and then asked him to choke her really hard and then things just went terribly wrong. They said that his actions following were that of a man who was in a state of panic and shock. So let's get into what the prosecution argued about Jesse Kempson.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So they painted this picture of a man who is a sexual deviant who used Tinder to lure in young women for sex. There were several witnesses who went to the stand to say that they had also gone on dates with Jesse, which included sleeping together and choking. Another woman had said that the two had spoken for a couple of weeks

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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and in their conversations, Jesse had told her that he likes feet dominating and strangulation. But the two never ended up meeting up because this woman did not feel comfortable doing the things that he was asking her to do as they were messaging back and forth. Another woman took to the stand to talk about her experience with Jesse.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She said that she went on a date with him expecting just to go to the bar and get some drinks, but instead they ended up going to his apartment, where she straight up told him that they were not going to be sleeping together. At this point, he grabbed her, held her down, and tried laying on her so that she couldn't breathe until she just kicked and kicked and eventually got him off of her.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Again, just like what I was telling you about what happened with him and Grace, There are a lot more very uncomfortable details about what he did to this young woman, and if you do want to find out more, check the resources below because that is all outlined there, but I am not comfortable talking about everything that she said.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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i absolutely understand and i would never be mad for someone clicking off a video if they needed to. and the last thing that i want to know is that i don't want to see any negative comments about grace or anything about her case. i promise those comments will be deleted immediately. please, as with every case, comment as if the family is watching. if you wouldn't say it directly to them,

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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This woman also told the jury about all of the lies that he told her, and this is very similar to many of the lies that he had been telling to many different women.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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so throughout all of these tinder dates at some point he told one of the girls that he was this owner of a big company making upwards of $150,000 per year he told another woman about how he had cancer this lie actually came after a woman refused to sleep with him he went into the bathroom and then came out and tried guilting her by saying that he felt really bad and that he had cancer.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He told another woman that he had a law degree. He said that his parents died and he was adopted by a rich family. Then we know that he told Grace that he was a manager of this big oil company. That was a lie. The thing he told this journalist that he went on a date with right after Grace's murder, that all of his friends were cops. That was a lie.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He just kept lying and lying about literally everything. Of course, the next thing in the trial was all of the surveillance video that they had of Grace and Jessie's night and then everything that he did after her murder. Buying the suitcases, going on this date with this other woman, getting carpet cleaner and a rental car, and then cleaning out the rental car.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The journalist he went on a date with also took the stand to talk about her experience with Jesse. Again, we know that he was talking about how a guy can make one wrong move and end up in jail forever. And that he knows somebody who went to jail for accidentally killing his girlfriend when they were sleeping together.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The prosecution claimed that he was actually testing out his story on this woman to see if she would buy it, how she would react before trying it on police. And we know that he did end up trying the same story on police later. The next thing they did was talk about the crime scene. As we know, he tried his best to clean everything off of his carpet.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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but after being sprayed with luminol, it showed a very different story. There was a decent amount of blood or some sort of other bodily fluid and this type of thing doesn't just happen over an accident. Then they discussed all of the inconsistencies within his story.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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This entire time, he was sticking with his story that this entire thing was an accident and he had no idea that she had died until that next morning when he saw her laying there. He said that he was asleep with the light off

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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after the sexual encounter however as we saw from before he was doing a good amount of internet searches on his phone when he said that he was actually sleeping then as we discussed earlier he took those intimate photos after making these internet searches so again it's either Did he already kill her at that point or was he planning on killing her? Either one, neither of these look good.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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But I will also note that these pictures were taken with the light on. So if we remember from earlier, he told this story about how Grace had asked him to turn off the TV and turn off the lights before they started. Then as they were going, they ended up on the floor and that's when they took these pictures of each other.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So, did they turn the light on again and then take the pictures and then get up and turn it back off? He never mentioned that. He said that it was dark the entire time, so dark that he didn't see her dead body laying on the floor for some reason. That also didn't add up. We also know that in the middle of the night, Someone looked up pornography on his phone.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He literally didn't even have an answer for that. Then, they spoke about the autopsy that was completed for Grace's body. Of course, the cause of death was strangulation from prolonged pressure on her neck. So, a pathologist first argued that it would take a good five to ten minutes before she would have actually died.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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don't say it here. It's possible that the family may see it. Maybe the family won't see this video, I don't know, but some families do end up seeing my videos and some families talk to me about the videos and I would never want them to see anything disrespectful about their daughter or sister on this video.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The pathology expert argued that he had not heard of another single case in New Zealand of someone dying from a consensual sexual encounter. They also pointed out how she had several bruises on her shoulders and arms that were consistent with somebody being restrained. So That's pretty much what the prosecution was arguing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The defense then came back and upheld their story about how all of this was just a horrible accident. Their main focus was on the state of Grace's body and her previous sexual history. They said that Grace had a decent amount of alcohol in her system before her death so that could have affected her breathing, making it much less time that it would take for her to die from strangulation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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They also said that the bruises on her body weren't necessarily from restraints, but they could have been love bites since as we know from before, Jesse told police that she had asked him to bite her.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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They also said that she had no other defensive wounds on her that could indicate that she was trying to fight him off, which this doesn't really make sense to me at all because if she's being restrained by a man who is significantly bigger than her, she may not have even been strong enough to have those defensive wounds on her

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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while he was restraining her because again, if someone's restraining you so much that you can't even move, you're not going to have any other defensive marks on you. So to me, that just seemed like a pretty stupid argument. They then called some people to the witness stand of people who knew Grace. One of her previous partners said that the two would experiment with bondage and asphyxiation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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They said that they had a safe word and that Grace would tap out if she got too uncomfortable. Another friend came to the stand to say that the two had previously had girl talk where they talked about their sex lives and Grace admitted that she liked it when men put their hands around her neck.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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They had also read off over 400 messages dating all the way back to 2017, all of which talked about bondage and other things like that with various men. And there was evidence that she had met up with at least one of these two men to do the acts that she was talking about.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The defense also talked about Jesse's past and how his grandfather was an alcoholic and he was estranged from his dad and that his dad had left his family and that was all really hard on him and caused him to be a drunk himself and he had confidence issues and that is what caused him to lie about who he truly was.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So making a bunch of excuses for why he was lying to woman after woman about who he truly was. All in all, it seemed like much of their argument was based on Grace's character rather than actual evidence.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So again, I know I don't really even have to say this, but if you were thinking of commenting anything rude or negative about Grace Mullane, Do not do it. It will be deleted and you will be blocked from this channel. Okay, I know that that was the longest intro ever and I already know that people are going to be giving me crap about it in the comments, but it's whatever. It had to be said.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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We have very clear evidence of every single one of his movements before and after her death, so it's really hard to argue that this was an accident for someone who went to such great lengths to conceal her body. All in all, this trial lasted for three weeks. After hearing testimony and closing statements from the prosecution and the defense, the jury went into deliberation on November 22, 2019.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The jury only deliberated for five hours before they came back with their verdict. They found Jesse Kempson guilty of intentionally murdering Grace, and he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 17 years before he'd be considered for parole.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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after this he appealed his sentencing multiple times but all were denied then in october of 2020 he also went to trial for charges related to the physical sexual emotional and financial abuse of his ex-girlfriend In total, there were eight charges brought forward against him.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Two charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, three charges of male assaults to a female, two of assaults with a weapon, and one of threatening to kill. Thankfully, he was found guilty of all of these charges. For this, he was sentenced to seven years.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Then in November of 2020, Jesse appeared in front of a judge once again for the rape charge of the woman that he raped after meeting her for a Tinder date. For this, he was charged with rape and he was sentenced to three and a half years. But unfortunately, all of these sentences will be served concurrently rather than being stacked on one another.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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To this day, Jesse Kempson still hasn't said exactly why he ended up killing Grace. As far as I have seen, he still says that it was a complete accident, pretty much puts all of the blame on Grace, and will not say exactly what ended up happening that caused all of this.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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We have no idea if she did anything that made him mad or if she turned him down or what really happened to cause him to strangle her to death. Like, I can't even imagine how terrified she must have been, but whether he was strangling her because he was angry at her and didn't actually mean to kill her or whatever it was, it does not matter.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He strangled her to death and I am so happy that they actually found justice for this. I will say that I am a little bit upset that he only has to serve 17 years before being considered for parole, but it's not a guarantee that he actually gets paroled.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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I'm just hoping that after seeing his extensive and very, very disturbing and violent history, that the parole board will realize that he is and will continue to be a danger to society and every single woman that he comes into contact with.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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I'm also really glad that they didn't just quit after they got the murder conviction and actually took the effort to bring justice to the women that he abused for so long, even before the murder. Being raped or sexually assaulted is literally one of the worst things that can happen to a woman. And it's something that sticks with her for the rest of her life.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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And after this happens, she is changed forever. So I'm just glad that he actually had to be held accountable for this. Grace's family was very happy with this sentence and were happy to see justice be served for their beautiful young daughter. Grace was so young and had such huge aspiration for herself. I absolutely admire her motivation to just get out there and see the world.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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But without any further delay, let's get into the case. Today, we are going to be discussing the murder of Grace Mullane. Grace Emmy Rose Mullane was born on December 2nd, 1996. Grace was from Wickford, Essex in England and her parents were Jillian and David Mullane and she had two brothers, Michael and Declan.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She was so brave for taking that step, even if it meant going it alone. I know that I wouldn't travel by myself and the fact that she did has my respect 100%.

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so that is all i have for today's video and now i want to know your guys's thoughts in the comments below but if you did like this video please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel i put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week don't forget to turn on the notifications to be notified of any future videos don't forget to go ahead and follow me on twitter and instagram both will be linked down below

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And if you have absolutely any case suggestions, please make sure to go ahead and send those suggestions over to rachelshanoncases at gmail.com. With that, I hope you guys have a great week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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Grace was such an outgoing and artistic girl and just loved adventure and trying new things. She created such beautiful artwork, including sketches of various animals with absolutely beautiful watercolor. She also loved music and was very talented at playing hockey growing up.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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After graduating from high school, Grace went on to attend the University of Lincoln, graduating in September of 2018 with a bachelor's degree in advertising and marketing. After graduating, Grace decided to take a gap year to just get out there and backpack and travel and see what the world had to offer.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She went with one of those organized groups who was set to travel with her, but she was technically traveling alone since she wasn't bringing anybody that she knew with her. This was her first time traveling alone, but she was absolutely ecstatic to be setting out on this new adventure. First, she spent six weeks in South America.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She traveled around many different areas, such as Chile and Peru, the same places that her own mother had visited when she was her age. Her next stop was New Zealand, and she was set to be there for two weeks. She arrived on the upper North Island of Cape Ranga on November 19th, then headed to Auckland, their largest metropolitan city, on November 30th.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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She checked into a backpacker's hostel, sharing a room with four other people. During her trips, she made sure to constantly send her parents and her two brothers photos of what she was doing several times a day, every single day. After being in New Zealand, she had planned on exploring Thailand and the Philippines and Australia. However, she never was able to make it to those destinations.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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First, it's one of those cases that truly resonated with me and evoked such an emotional response as I was researching. I do want to first warn each and every one of you that this case does involve a lot of sexual assault and there are a lot of details that are very, very difficult and uncomfortable to listen to.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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While she was in New Zealand, Grace was using Tinder to meet up with different guys and go on dates with them. This just seemed like a casual thing that she was doing to get out there and meet different people as she was traveling. She first matched with a man who she had been messaging with on Facebook and after talking for a bit, she met up with him on November 30th.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The two ended up going back to the man's apartment in downtown Auckland to watch a movie and she did end up staying the night there. But other than that, the date didn't really seem too remarkable and nothing really out of the ordinary happened. Then on December 1st, Grace matched up with another man on Tinder.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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This guy sent her a message and the two started chatting pretty much just about how their days were going. He ended up asking her if she had plans for that day and she said no. So he ended up asking her if she wanted to meet up with him for a drink at Sky City and she agreed. So at this point, a lot of the date with this man was captured on CCTV footage.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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We know a lot of the things that she did that night and we have a pretty extensive timeline. I will mention though that for quite some time, we did not know the identity of the man who she went on a date with. So for now, I'm just going to be referring to him as the man that she went on a date with because again, during this specific time, nobody knew who this guy was.

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So by 5.37 p.m., Grace is seen leaving base backpackers and heads towards Federal Street. By 5 45, she arrived outside of Sky City wearing a black dress with white tennis shoes. Once she got there, she took a photo of a Christmas tree that she saw outside and then texted the picture to family members. On CCTV footage, we see her date show up.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The two greeted each other with a hug and then went inside. They took the escalator up to Andy's Burger Bar where they ordered drinks and chatted for about a half hour before leaving Sky City at 7.12pm. After this, they headed to Mexican Cafe which was right across the street. Once they were at the Mexican Cafe, Grace ordered a sangria and the pair sat in the corner.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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The two just sort of people watched those around them and talked about themselves and got to know each other. At this point in the date, Grace appeared to be enjoying herself. She was seen walking with her hand on his lower back and touching him as they were talking. Also, throughout the date, Grace was texting her friend about how the date was going. She wrote to her friend, And texted,

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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And then she texted, he was like, it's my birthday tomorrow. We're getting smashed. So her birthday was December 2nd, so the very next day. And her date was basically saying that they were going to drink a lot and get smashed for her birthday. Her last message to her friend was, I click with him so well and I will let you know what happened tomorrow.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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These were the last text messages that she sent to her friend about the date. So the two had stayed at the Mexican cafe and drank a good bit before they went up to the counter at 8.27 p.m. to close their tab. Her date paid the bill, which included two jugs of margarita and one of sangria. Still, at this point, Grace appears to be in a great mood. She was happy and chatting with the waitress.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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I tried my best to leave out certain details that are just unnecessarily graphic, but even with those details left out, it can still be so uncomfortable to listen to and very triggering for anybody who has gone through a similar experience.

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Once they left the Mexican cafe at 8.30 p.m., they went to the Bluestone Room on Durham Lane and the two sat down at a table. And still, both of them looked like they were having a great time. They were talking and laughing, and after sitting together for around 15 more minutes, the two started kissing.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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After the two had been kissing for a while, by 9.01pm, Grace's date bought them both shots of tequila and brought them back to the table. They cheered their glasses and took their shots. By 9.20pm, Grace got up from the table. It's not exactly sure why she did this, but it's thought that she just got up to go to the bathroom.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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However, while she was gone, her date picked up her purse, rifled through it for a bit, and then put it back on her seat. Again, not exactly sure why he did that or what he was looking for. After a few minutes, Grace returned and they left. After leaving, at 9.29pm, her date left a comment on her Facebook profile picture saying, "'Beautiful. Very radiant.'"

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then by 9 40 pm they arrived at city life auckland this is a hotel and apartment combined complex type of thing this is where her date lived and it was right across the street from the bluestone room once at the complex the two got into an elevator and rode up to the third floor and again grace appears to be happy and comfortable once they got off they walked down the hallway and were no longer seen on cctv footage

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After this, we don't really know what for sure happened that night. What we do know is that this is the very last time that Grace was ever seen alive. Now, like I said, Grace's birthday was on December 2nd. Also, like I said, Grace stayed in contact with her family every single day while she was traveling.

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However, when her parents texted her happy birthday, she was not responding, and her family was automatically concerned, but they did wait a little bit longer to see if they would hear back from her. When yet another day passed without hearing anything from Grace, her parents knew that something had to be wrong. So, they got into contact with the Auckland police and reported her missing.

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The first thing they did was check the hostel that she was staying at and questioned those who were with her when she was there and they told them that she had not returned back to her room on December 1st. Initially though, they did not suspect any foul play in her case.

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there was part of this when i was reading testimony from a woman involved in this case and the details literally made me so uncomfortable that i physically felt my chest get tight and my stomach just was in knots and i almost felt like i couldn't breathe i had to take a break from this case and just separate myself from the situation for a few minutes because honestly that reaction has never happened before

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They said that they were keeping an open mind and they were going out and trying to examine any surveillance video that they could They also released a picture of her and asked for anybody in the public who saw her that day to come forward. They said that they were still very hopeful that they would find Grace, but her family was not comforted by this at all.

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At this point, she hadn't posted on any of her social medias for days and hadn't been in contact with anybody. That was so out of character for her and hadn't happened at all since she left to travel. She had not gone a single day since she left without at least contacting somebody or posting on her social medias.

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SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So, her family and many others took to social media to speak out about her disappearance. Her father also flew out from England to New Zealand to speak with police directly. By the time he arrived, police conceded that the longer she was missing, the more concerned they were.

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At this point, police said that they had grave fears for Grace's safety, and by December 8th, they started to investigate her disappearance as a homicide investigation. Now, like I said, the police came out to the public to ask anybody to come forward if they thought that they had seen Grace.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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One witness claimed to see her alive and well at a grocery store while another one said that they saw her hitchhiking on the southern motorway. But these sightings were not able to be confirmed and the more police looked at surveillance video, the more suspicious they got of the man that she was last seen with.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So police used all of the surveillance video that they were finding to finally pin down the apartment complex that she was last in and they searched it. This is when police came out and said that they found evidence that Grace was no longer alive. They took a vehicle of interest and had a man in custody as their prime suspect.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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But like I said at the beginning, for quite some time, police would not reveal who this man was. Apparently, they had found out who he was pretty easily because of this comment that he had left on Grace's profile picture. So when police initially found this man, they actually sent him a message over Facebook to ask to speak to him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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this was a very informal interview and he told police that he was with grace that night but that they went their separate ways at 10 p.m that night and he doesn't know what happened to her after that and he hasn't seen her since so then after exchanging these messages another detective planned to go ahead and get in contact with him for another interview they actually went over to the city life complex and just to their surprise they actually did see him there but

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He also noticed police so he started running. Police chased him until they caught him at a nearby store. So this is when they took him in for a real interview and he was sticking to his story that the two parted ways at 10 p.m. But he was confronted with the fact that police had CCTV footage of his complex. So he changed his story.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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So this is what this man said happened the night that the two went to his apartment.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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so according to grace's date once they got into his apartment the two were pretty drunk and they started kissing for a bit while doing so the tv was on so grace had asked him to turn the tv off as well as all of the lights after this he says that the two started talking about 50 shades of gray he said that she was telling him all sort of these

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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sexual things that she used to do with her exes he said that there were a lot of explicit things that she was talking about so after this the two started to have sex once they started getting into it according to him grace brought up bondage he said that she started biting him and asked her to bite him so he did he said that he stopped and asked her is this really what you want me to do and she said yeah and she said that she wanted him to get really rough with everything

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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He said that she was the one pushing him down, making things very violent, but it was consensual. I am trying to be more vague. I'm not trying to be graphic, but you sort of know what I'm talking about. There is a lot more detail of what I'm talking about in a lot of the sources below, and you can go ahead and read that if you want to get more into it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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I'm usually able to separate myself from these cases, but this one is just different. I was just so uncomfortable and it almost made me not want to cover this case, but then I realized that the cases that are the most uncomfortable to talk about are sometimes the most important to talk about.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Grace Millane Case // CAUGHT ON CCTV

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specifics, but for the sake of this channel, I'm not comfortable talking about that sort of detail, so I'm not going to. So this guy said that the two then ended up on the floor and started taking intimate photos of each other. After this, he said that she asked him to hold her throat as hard as he could.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He got a minivan and went to the local liquor store, where he sat and waited and watched Katie and Tony leave their home. At this point, Katie and her dad were on their way to Katie's cleaning job at her adoptive grandmother's house. As Katie and Tony drove away from their home, Stephen followed them from Wingdale to New Milford until they got to a stop sign at the intersection of Routes 7 and 55.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Just minutes later, witnesses called police reported seeing someone open fire on two people. Stephen Playdell had pulled up next to their truck and fired several rounds from his rifle, which was similar to an AR-15, into the passenger side of the truck. Both Katie and Tony had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to their upper torso and heads.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He would pinch Denise until her skin was just purple and black and blue. When she would cry, there were times that Stephen would just lock her in a cooler so that he could go away and not hear her. Sometimes he would even cover her mouth while she was crying to the point of almost suffocating her. And Alyssa did try to help her daughter, but whenever she did, Stephen just would not let her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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After he shot the two at around 8 45 a.m., he called his mother and reported that he had killed Katie, Tony, and their seven-month-old baby. Bennett. So of course, after receiving this call, Stephen's mother called 911. In the call, she said, quote, my son just called me and told me that he killed his baby.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I just got off the phone a couple of minutes ago and he told me to call police that I shouldn't go over there. He said he put a key under the front mat, a key into the house. His wife broke up with him over the phone yesterday. He killed his wife. He killed her father.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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When police arrived, both Katie and Tony were dead and their truck was absolutely covered in bullet holes. When police went to Stephen's home, police did find baby Bennett's body in Stephen's closet and he too was unfortunately dead. Then they started their manhunt to find Stephen, but this did not last long as they found him pretty quickly.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He physically stopped her from helping her daughter. It was very clear that Alyssa was very scared of him and she didn't want to be in this situation, but Stephen would threaten her and tell her that if she ever tried to leave him, he would take his own life. He had also been very cruel to animals right in front of Alyssa, so she knew that he was very capable of being violent.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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at 9 15 a.m that same day police in dover found stephen's minivan he was inside in the driver's seat slumped over and he too was dead he had shot himself inside of that car taking his own life after taking the life of both his son and his daughter and the man who adopted her so That is pretty much where the case ends.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Alyssa has come out and talked a lot about this case and obviously this entire thing was incredibly traumatic for her and her children. She had said that throughout her entire time knowing Steven, he was physically and verbally abusive, but he was never sexually abusive towards any of their children. So, she never expected him to be involved in any sort of relationship with his child.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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However, we do know that when Steven was 20 years old, he groomed a 15-year-old girl into having a relationship with him and giving up her whole life and moving in with him in New York, over a thousand miles away from her family. She had also said that he had always shown an interest in collecting guns.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She said that he had a closet full of guns and would often threaten her with violence, as we know. She said that after leaving him, she would pull up to an intersection and if someone had slowed down next to her or stopped next to her, she was always paranoid that it was him showing up to harm her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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So, when Steven was originally arrested for incest, they did seize his guns, but Alyssa said that she thought that it was possible that maybe Steven used her information to buy himself a gun online, or maybe he built one himself, since according to her, He is a very talented carpenter. But either way, Alyssa believes that he felt that all he had left in his life was Katie and Bennett.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She had said that he could always hold on to the hope that, you know, one day Katie and him would be back together and they would have Bennett and they would be a family. But once Katie made it very clear that that wasn't going to happen, he snapped and decided that nothing was worth it anymore. If he couldn't have them, then no one could. He couldn't live without her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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and she didn't want her living without him. It's just so disturbing and unfortunate that it all happened this way and how this entire thing played out. So this does bring up the last bit that I want to talk about in this video. Obviously, this was a very disturbing case and pretty much everybody watching this would be disgusted at the thought of all of this.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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But one idea that did get brought up with this case was the idea of genetic sexual attraction. It's basically an attraction that develops between blood relatives who meet for the first time as adults. This is a rare thing, but there have been several cases of relatives wanting to be together after reconnecting as adults.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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It's really bizarre and it makes me question is this something that's common between people who met and don't know their relatives or you know is it more common with people who know their relatives and just meet up after a while because I guess if you don't know your relatives it's understandable but I obviously think that if you know your relatives it makes it a lot worse especially for Steven seeing his daughter being born and

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Also, throughout their entire time together, Stephen wouldn't get a job and he left Alyssa with the sole responsibility of raising their daughter, having a job, and making money, and taking care of him. even though he was an adult and she was still technically a child. It got to the point where Alyssa knew that she needed to remove her daughter from the situation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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wanting a relationship with her. It's just so disturbing. I do personally believe that Stephen did a lot to pressure Katie into this. It may not have been him overtly pressuring her, but it was definitely him covertly pressuring her. He changed his entire image to fit what he knew Katie would like, and he inserted himself into her life in a very inappropriate way.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I know that Katie was a legal adult and obviously she took part in this relationship too, but I have a lot more sympathy for her. I can't even imagine how confused she must have felt through all of this, especially meeting this man who was supposedly her father who was all of a sudden just acting this way towards her. It must have been so confusing to her and

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I think she sort of fell into this relationship and thought that she was in love with him, but as soon as she was separated from him and living back with her parents, realized that this was wrong and realized that she maybe was not in love with him and that's why she wanted to break it off with him. And that is ultimately what cost her and her son's life.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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This is just such an unfortunate case and it was definitely preventable and it's just really sad and unfortunate how all of this played out. But that is where I'm going to end today's video. I'm really looking forward to hearing all of your guys' thoughts in the comments. Do you think that Katie was pressured into this? Or do you think that she took part in this willingly?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She thought that if she didn't act soon, that Stephen was going to kill Denise. So she did what she thought was best for her and she put up eight-month-old Denise for adoption. She just wanted to give Denise the best life that she possibly could and she thought that this was the best decision for her. Denise ended up being adopted by Tony and Kelly Fusco.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Small prices, great fun. and uncomfortable and I'm actually really surprised that I haven't heard more about this case until someone went to my email and suggested that I cover it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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They took her home to Dover in New York, which was around 80 miles north of New York City, and raised her alongside their biological son, Carrie, as well as other biological siblings. They renamed Denise to Katie Fusco, and by all accounts, they gave her a great life. They lived in a small trailer park community that was described as a sleepy town with a lot of good people and families.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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The community did have their problems, but overall it seemed like a pretty decent environment for her to grow up. Neighbors around the community also commented and said that the Fusco family just seemed like your average family. Katie was described by her friends and family as a reserved, shy, yet happy girl. She absolutely loved animals and she was passionate about them.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She was a vegetarian and was a foodie who was always eating. She went to Dover High School and was on the cheerleading team. She was also known by her peers for her artistic ability, specifically with drawing comic strips. Katie absolutely loved art and had planned to attend college and eventually pursue a career in digital advertising. She once wrote in a blog post,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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A pen and something to draw on became a safe place for me. Ink became my weapon against rules and regulations. There wouldn't be a corner in a classroom or a park that I didn't have a little secret character living on it. Ask an artist why creating is important to them and they won't ever stop giving out reasons. To be short, for me, a life without art is no life at all."

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I didn't want to cover this case at first and I kind of went back and forth with whether I wanted to talk about this case but I think this is a very interesting case despite how disturbing it is so I did decide to go ahead and cover it here on my channel. It's honestly such a wild ride so let's just jump right in.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Now, according to the Fuscos, Katie did know that she was adopted growing up. She never seemed bothered by the fact that she was adopted, but of course, she was always curious as to who her biological parents were. Now, Alyssa and Steven, Katie's biological parents, did end up staying together despite the stress and the problems that they had.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I don't know if things in the relationship ever really got better at any certain point, But as we will kind of see throughout this case, it does seem like Stephen just has a way of intimidating women and making them stay. Either way, in 2007, Stephen and Alyssa had their second daughter.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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This time, Alyssa said that they were much more grown up and they were in a stage in their lives where they were much more ready and prepared for a child. Then in 2012, They gave birth to their third daughter and of course these two other daughters they did end up keeping. So by the time Katie was 18 in 2016, she set out to social media to find her biological parents.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She did end up finding them and so she sent them a message on Facebook and they were actually really happy to hear from her and they welcomed her with open arms. She was actually supposed to attend college in August of that year,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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but she had just grown so close with her biological parents through her time that she had spent messaging them that she decided that instead of going to college, she was going to move to Henrico County, Virginia, in with Alyssa and Steven.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Now, of course, Katie's adoptive parents, Kelly and Tony, weren't too sure about her decision to go and move in with them, but they thought at this point she was old enough to make her own decisions, so they reluctantly let her move in with them. By the time Katie joined her biological parents in their home, Her two younger sisters were 11 and 6 years old.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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They were incredibly happy to have Katie move in with them in the home, but things between Alyssa and Stephen weren't so great. Stephen and Alyssa had started sleeping in separate rooms and shortly after that, Stephen and Alyssa did decide to separate from each other. Alyssa said that they were at a point in the relationship where she had just decided that enough was enough.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She said that she had suffered a lot of emotional abuse over the years at the hands of Stephen. She said that living in the home with him was like constantly walking on eggshells. If he was in a bad mood, Everyone else around him had to suffer the consequences. He would even yell at her and break things in front of their two daughters.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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There was honestly a lot of uncomfortable tension in the house, so it honestly kind of makes me wonder why they let Katie come in and live with them in the first place. It just makes me question why if Alyssa knew how Steven acted in front of her and their daughters, why they would let Katie come back into that situation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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To me, it seems like Steven was maybe the one who was more interested in letting her come back and maybe they both honestly wanted to get to know Katie and they thought that, you know, she could come in and maybe things would be okay with her even if things between Steven and Alyssa weren't so great.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Now, this case starts in 1995 when a 20-year-old man named Steve Plato went online and met a 15-year-old teenager named Alyssa on the internet. At the time, Stephen was living in New York City while Alyssa was from San Antonio, Texas. The two chatted online for a while, sending messages back and forth.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I honestly don't really know, but it does make me question why they wanted Alyssa to come live with them so bad. But either way, when Katie was living with them, Alyssa found a moment to kind of pull Katie aside and explain to her why she was put up for adoption.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Alyssa told her that Stephen had abused her as a baby and that she was worried for her safety, so Alyssa thought that putting her up for adoption was what was best for her and she knew that living with a different family would have given her the best life possible.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Naturally, of course, Alyssa was sort of expecting this intense reaction from Katie as anyone would hearing this kind of news, but to Alyssa's surprise, Katie honestly didn't really have much of a reaction at all. She wasn't really concerned with any of this and she wasn't afraid of Stephen at all. In fact, the two got along very well.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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It really seemed like the two had bonded during her time living there and things were going really great for Katie and Steven. However, around two months after Katie moved in with them, Steven's behaviors started to change. All of a sudden he was this man in his forties wearing skinny jeans and skin tight t-shirts.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He shaved off his beard and let his short hair grow all the way down to his shoulders. He opted for this new style that better matched Alyssa's, whose was a little bit darker and edgier. Then Steven decided that he was going to start sleeping on Alyssa's floor in her bedroom. Now, this behavior did not go unnoticed by Alyssa.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She immediately saw what was going on and she immediately wanted to put a stop to it. After the second night that Stephen went in to sleep in Alyssa's bedroom, Alyssa confronted him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He asked him, of course, what he was doing and why he was sleeping in there and said that it's just not appropriate, but this turned into a heated argument and Stephen told Alyssa to mind her own business and then he just stormed out of the house taking Katie with him. By November of that year, Alyssa had just had enough of him and she finally moved out of the house.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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They were, I think, legally separated. I'm not sure if it was legally separated or if they were just saying that they were separated, but they weren't divorced yet at this point. So Alyssa shared equal custody with Steven of their two children, but she did take the two children with her to live with her in her new house.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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However, Katie decided to stay back and she continued living with her biological father. And this is when the case gets very, very disturbing. Around six months after moving out of the home with Stephen, Alyssa learned of the very disturbing relationship that Katie and Stephen had.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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One night, Alyssa was reading her 11-year-old daughter's journal and she happened upon a page where she wrote that Stephen had told her to stop calling Katie her sister and to start calling her her stepmom. She had also drawn a picture of a girl who was supposedly Katie with a big pregnant belly.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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They wrote each other love letters and even visited each other in person a couple of times before Stephen actually convinced Alyssa to leave her life in Texas to go move in with him in New York. So, she did that and it wasn't long before Alyssa was 16 years old and she found herself pregnant. By January of 1998, she went on to give birth to her daughter who she named Denise.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I do have a picture of this journal entry but it's honestly difficult to read so I will do my best to read a couple of sections. So it says, but now she is pregnant and gained weight and my dad calls her baby also his baby. Did he make her pregnant? My dad even says she's my stepmom. WTF? He doesn't even want me to call her sister, but Katie is my sister. She probably is his wife now.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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But in nature, she's only my sister. Does she see me as a daughter or a sister? Alyssa was absolutely frantic and hysterical after reading this, so she immediately called Stephen and asked him if Katie was pregnant with his child and he said yes, she is. He was totally casual about the entire thing and said that the two were in love and that he thought that she knew about it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Katie and Stephen had started their sexual relationship as soon as Alyssa had moved out and the two had plans to get married as soon as him and Alyssa had divorced. Katie's sisters had also said that when they would sleep over at Stephen's house, that they did see Alyssa and him sleeping in the same bed.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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And they said that Stephen told them not to tell any of their friends about Katie and his relationship, saying that their friends would make fun of them if any of them found out. Of course, Alyssa tried processing all of this, but holy cow, I cannot imagine what was going through her head when she was finding all of this out.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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She started cursing at Stephen, saying that he was sick, that she's just a child, your child. And also, of course, she immediately called police. Police arrived and interviewed Stephen, Alyssa, and the two girls, but at the time, no arrests were made. Also, around this time, Alyssa and Stephen had finalized their divorce, so Katie and Stephen had packed up and moved to Knightdale, North Carolina.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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By July of 2017, Stephen and Katie applied for their marriage license. Of course, they lied on the application and didn't mention the small minor fact that they were related and that they were father and daughter. So, by July 20th of 2017, Stephen and Alyssa got married in Parkton, Maryland in a small lakeside wedding. They were accompanied by Tony and Kelly, Katie's adoptive parents,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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who smiled alongside the couple as they tied the knot. Stephen's mother was also present at the wedding. Apparently, Tony and Kelly thought that there was nothing that they could do to stop the two from getting married, so they thought that it was best to just put all of their emotions aside and support their daughter through whatever she was doing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I do wonder if they even tried to do anything, though. Like, did they even try to talk her out of it? Clearly, Steven had a lot of power and control over Katie and she was probably in a very vulnerable place by the time she went over to go meet her biological parents. She was happy to finally meet the people who gave birth to her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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As an adopted child, I'm sure she's always just had the thought looming over her of, who her biological parents possibly were. I'm sure that she always wondered what they looked like, what they acted like, what their life was like. Then she met them and they accepted her with open arms.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Steven seemed like this amazing guy who was doing everything that he could to try and get to know her and try to impress her. He even changed his image to look exactly what he knew that Katie would like. I imagine he probably gave her everything that she wanted and more. I'm sure that he kissed the ground that she walked on and groomed her until she absolutely fell for him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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At this point, Alyssa was 17 years old. She had a daughter who she absolutely loved and adored. but she was away from her family and things just weren't easy for her. Alyssa tried her best to try and make the best life possible for her daughter, but Stephen made that absolutely impossible. He was incredibly abusive towards both Denise and Alyssa.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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To her, she didn't know this man. She had just met him and when you meet someone who definitely does not act like a father and only acts like a friend or a lover, it's probably very confusing. She probably did not see him as being related to her, But as a father, Stephen saw her being born.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He abused her tiny little baby body to the point where her own mother didn't feel comfortable or safe for her being around him. He knew that she was his daughter and he was in a position to control her in any way that he saw fit. And to me, this is how he took advantage of her and just ran with it. By September 1st, 2017, Katie gave birth to their baby boy, who they named Bennett.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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They lived in a home in a cul-de-sac in a suburban area and things seemed to be going great. But by January of 2018, police showed up on their front door and arrested the both of them for incest, adultery, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. After appearing in front of the judge, the two were released on bail.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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Stephen's lawyer claimed that there were absolutely no allegations of Stephen pressuring Katie into this relationship. He said, quote, This is a case of an 18-year-old girl who shows up at the doorstep of a 40-year-old man who's going through difficult times with his wife. They have a bond because they're biologically related, but they never knew each other before they had a sexual relationship.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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He was head over heels in love with her, so much so that that outweighed the issue of them being biologically related. But then, after the two were released, Katie went home to live with her biological parents in New York. They were ordered to have absolutely no contact with each other, and little Bennett was handed over to Stephen's mother.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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At this point, Stephen was starting to show his unstable, unaggressive side more and more. And Katie started to want out of the relationship. So in April of 2018, Katie got into contact with Stephen despite their no contact order. She wanted to talk to him and break it off with him for good. And this is what set off the catalyst of the tragic events that would happen next.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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On April 11th, Stephen went to his mother's house to pick up Bennett and brought him back to his own home. As we would later find out in a frantic 911 call placed by Stephen's mother, once he brought seven-month-old Bennett home, he took his life, most likely by suffocating him. We don't know the exact cause of death as far as I've seen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Katie Fusco and Steven Pladl

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I don't think they ever released it, but we would later find out that he had no visible signs of trauma on him when they did the autopsy, so it is believed that he most likely was suffocated. After this, on April 12th, he left his home and drove around 500 miles north to Wingdale, New York, where Katie lived.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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We are going to be discussing the murder of Alice Ruggles. Alice Ruggles was born on Christmas Eve on December 24th, 1991 to her parents, Sue Hills and Clive Ruggles. She had two older siblings, Nick and Emma, and a younger brother, Patrick. Alice and her family grew up in the very small town of Turlington in Leicestershire, England. I do apologize if I pronounced that town name wrong.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She graduated by 2014 and went on to get a job with the UK broadcasting company Sky in Newcastle, England. She absolutely loved city life in Newcastle so she decided to stay there for the time being, living with a couple of roommates in a flat in Gateshead. she was independent, intelligent, and confident, and she could hold her own and take care of herself.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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After explaining the situation, the dispatcher basically said that this does count as harassment and he basically gave her two options. He explained that she could either take out a restraining order against Harry or that she could make a report to police.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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If she made the report to police, this meant that police could give him a police information notice, which means that if he contacted her again, that he would be arrested. She told the dispatcher that she would like to go with the second option. An officer then showed up to Alice's flat on the next day on October 2nd. They were very sympathetic and understanding towards her at first.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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They let her know that they were taking this issue seriously and they reassured her that she was not wasting police time. The officer went on to tell her that if Harry contacted her again that she should go to police straight away. This interaction with the police officer definitely made Alice feel a lot better and she felt a total weight lifted off of her shoulders.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She went on to tell her sister that night that she felt like this could finally be over. The officer also completed a risk offender checklist using this information and they labeled him as a medium risk offender. For those of you who saw my video on Shanna Grice,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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This same sort of checklist was done for Michael and he was labeled as a low risk offender, which was absolutely absurd given all of the things that he had done. But in this case, Harry's actions were considered as medium risk, which meant that he did have the potential to cause serious harm. but is unlikely to do so unless circumstances change.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So on October 3rd, 2016, an officer contacted a superior at Harry's barracks in Edenburg and notified them that he was being issued a pin and told them that he was not to have any contact with Alice. Now a P I N or pin does not mean that he will get in trouble. If he contacts Alice again, really it's more so just a verbal warning.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Also, there wasn't an actual officer who actually spoke with Harry directly. Instead, the officer spoke indirectly to one of his supervisors to kind of give all this information to Harry. So this officer explained to the supervisor that if Harry did not comply with the pin, that that is when he would be charged with harassment.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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The officer also requested that Harry destroy all of the intimate pictures that he had of Alice. During the meeting with the supervisor, he denied all accusations. He said that Alice blows hot and cold and said that Alice physically abuses him, but in the end, he did agree to stop contacting Alice.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Which, just to pause for a moment, I think it's absurd that police just asked him to delete the photos of Alice. Clearly, his behavior shows that he will say one thing and then do another, so the fact that no one was even there to make sure that he deleted these photos is absolutely ridiculous.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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By 2015, Alice met a 25-year-old man named Tremond Dillon, who went by Harry, so that is what I will call him for the rest of the video. So Harry was born in India, and he was the only child to his parents, However, him and his parents often moved around because his father was in the army, so he ended up moving to the UK.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Either way, with everything that happened, neither an officer with the Royal Military Police or the Scotland Police ever actually spoke with Harry directly. These officers also were never informed about the PIN that Harry was being issued, so really to me, all of this just seems like a very quick reminder that he needs to chill with the stalking and harassment, but really...

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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nothing was actually being done. Unsurprisingly, Harry did not listen and he continued with his obsessive and stalking behavior towards Alice. He started telling people around his barracks that he was feeling very depressed and he felt like he had no one to talk to about the breakup.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So, he decided to put together a care package to send to Alice full of notebooks and photos that he said reminded him of her and he wrote a letter to her. She received this care package on October 7th, and in the letter, he started off by apologizing for everything that he's done to her. He said that he knew Alice called police on him, and he said that he was in a lot of trouble for it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He said that his phone, laptop, and his iPad had all been taken away because of her report, but this wasn't even true. He said that he came down to give her the flowers and chocolates to emphasize that he would never hurt her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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he then said that he knows that alice belongs to another man he then repeatedly said that he knows that alice isn't sad she's happy she's stronger and she's moved on with her life with another man at the end of the letter he wrote quote i'm in a lot of shit now but i hope you feel happy i'm sending you everything i have that reminds me of you as you belong to another man

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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wishing you two a happy life i will never come in your life again then at the end of the letter he wrote i haven't been able to say goodbye and then he wrote i love you two times but he crossed both of them out this absolutely terrified alice because he was trying to find any possible way that he could to get into contact with her

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So she called police once again to let them know that she had been contacted by Harry again after being issued this notice. But rather than focusing on the fact that she had been contacted again by someone who was stalking and harassing her, the operator more so focused on the items within the care package. The operator said that the letter did say that he was going to stop contacting her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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but she emphasized that he told her time after time after time that he would stop, but he didn't. She kept talking about how bad the stalking and harassment was, but it felt to her like nobody was taking her seriously.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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After the call, an officer did end up calling Alice and he asked her straight up if she wants Harry to be arrested, but she was still so scared and she just didn't know what to do at this point. And he seemed to kind of ask it in sort of a condescending way. This is not something that she should have to decide. She should not be ordering police to arrest anyone.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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It's their job to look for the information, do their investigation and make their decision on whether he can legally be arrested. I can't go up to police and say, hey, you need to arrest this person because they just cut me off and they really pissed me off and that should be a traffic violation. You just can't do that.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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When he graduated from high school, he went on to study strategy management at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh in Scotland. Then, once he was finished with his degree, he graduated and decided to enlist in the British army. Once he was in the army, he was stationed in Afghanistan and he served a non-combat position.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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You can't tell police to arrest someone if you don't even know if they're able to be arrested. That is up to the officer to gather all of the relevant information and then make that decision. All she wanted was for Harry to stop harassing her. She was terrified, but she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what he was capable of. So she said, no, she didn't necessarily want him arrested.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She just wanted to be taken seriously. And she just wanted him to stop contacting her. That's it. That's all she wanted. As we said from before, Alice is a very empathetic person who just wants the best for everybody in any situation.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So after saying that no, she doesn't necessarily want him to be arrested, she realized that no one took her seriously anymore and she was going to have to deal with all of this on her own. So by October 8th, Alice's mother Sue had received two Facebook messages from Harry at 3.39am and 4.38am. He addressed her as mom and he sent her pictures of him and Alice together

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He said that he was still very upset and all he wanted was to be with Alice. He said that yes, he's lied, but Alice has also lied. He said that everyone just focused so much more on his lies and that just wasn't fair. He admitted to Sue that he had in fact changed Alice's social media passwords to prevent her from getting with anybody else

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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and then he begged sue to take him as her son so that she could feel his pain and loneliness that alice has caused he said that he was starting to feel helpless and depressed he said that he was starting to feel lonely and anxious he said quote please don't ignore my messages and listen to what i have to say i beg you he went on to say that his heart has been ripped out by alice

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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But at the same time, as he was sending these messages to Sue, Alice also received multiple phone calls from him, all of which went unanswered. So Alice and her mom spoke on the phone about this on October 9th, and they discussed all of the possible options for dealing with this. They said that maybe Alice should move into a new flat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Maybe someone should go up to where she was and stay with her to make sure that nothing happened. but by the end of it, they just agreed that they were going to continue to report this and let police deal with it. So anytime something happened, she made sure to notify police right away.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She said that she doesn't know what her next step should be, but she wanted to make sure that she logged absolutely everything. Sue was still hopeful that if Alice just didn't give in, if she just continued to ignore Harry and make it very, very clear to him that he had absolutely no chance, that maybe Harry would stop, but this did not ease Alice's concerns at all.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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While there, he often used Facebook to stay in contact with friends and family who lived back in India as well as Scotland. By 2015, he had been scrolling through a friend's pictures on Facebook and that is when he noticed Alice. It was a picture of her that her friend had posted of her while they were on vacation in Sri Lanka.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She had spoken with her sister via text and October 11th, Alice had told her sister that she had just spoken with police, but she said, "'They're not helping me,' They'll effing respond when he's effing stabbed me. Then as all of this was happening on October 10th, Harry had contacted his supervisor in the army, who he was also friends with.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He told the officer that things had gone very bad with Alice, that they've been arguing a lot, and he told him that Alice has gotten physical with him a couple of times. He said that he believed that Alice was purposely trying to set him up to be arrested, but the sergeant could tell that he was frazzled.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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and upset, and he reiterated and told him once again to stop contacting Alice and to never talk to her again. Another officer at his barracks threatened disciplinary action if he continued to contact Alice, just like so many other officers had threatened him, but

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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as it turned out repeated threats of disciplinary action will not stop someone when they're showing this obsessive behavior that they have continued to show the only thing that might have stopped him was oh i don't know actual disciplinary action after it had been threatened one time it's literally just like dealing with a child if you tell a child after they've done something bad that hey next time you're gonna be disciplined for this and then the child goes on to do it again and then you say again

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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hey, next time you're going to get in trouble. And then the kid does it again. And you say, next time for real, you're going to get in trouble. The kid's just going to keep doing it because eventually they're going to learn that these threats mean nothing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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They're going to learn that no matter how many times you are threatening them, that disciplinary action will be taken, that it won't actually be taken, that it's just a threat. So again, the only thing that might've actually stopped him was disciplinary action. Stop with threats. Stop telling him that, hey, something is going to be done after nothing has been done for the other

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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you know, several times that you've told him that something will be done. Then that same day on October 10th, once again, Harry had driven the two and a half hours over to Alice's flat. He had been there without Alice's or Maxine's knowledge. He had just gone there to take pictures of the backyard and the windows probably as research to find out the best entry points.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Neither of them had any idea that he had shown up that day. By Wednesday, October 12th, five days had passed since Alice's last response from police. She had been emailing them repeatedly, trying to log absolutely everything, but she literally was not getting any responses.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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alice was scared of harry at this point and she was trying to do anything that she could to stay safe this included having someone walk up to the door to pick her up you know when she would go to work and then walk her to the door again when they were dropping her back off from work that same weekend alice had plans to hang out with her current boyfriend mike

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He was supposed to be visiting from Germany that weekend and so she was really looking forward to it. He would be someone that would be near her to make her feel safe and it was honestly just a good distraction to get her mind off of everything that was going on in her life.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Her kind smile and bright face immediately caught his eye, so he left a comment on this picture to point out just how beautiful she was. It read, Alice noticed the comment, and she decided to go ahead and look at the profile of the person who left this comment. And what she saw when she looked at his profile was a guy who was very good-looking,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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That same day on October 12th, Alice had left for work as usual that day and throughout the entire day, Mike and Alice had been texting back and forth about how excited they were for their upcoming plans. By 5 15 p.m, she was driven home by a male co-worker And then shortly after, Maxine had finished up her work and arrived shortly after Alice had at around 6 30 p.m.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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However, once Maxine got home, she realized that she was unable to enter through the front door because it was locked and she had realized that she had forgotten her keys. So then she went around to the back of the flat and then climbed over the fence to get into the backyard.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She started calling for Alice to let her in, but she didn't get a reply, but she had seen that a window had been left open, so she decided to climb through it to enter the home. However, once Maxine entered through that window, she was in the bathroom and she was absolutely shocked.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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horrified at what she saw maxine had found alice's body laying on the bathroom floor covered in blood surrounded by a pool of blood immediately maxine said that she could tell that alice was dead her skin was translucent blue she wasn't moving and she wasn't responding immediately maxine called 999 which is equivalent to the us's 911 to report that she had just found her roommate

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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laying on the floor, covered in blood. In the call, she immediately named Harry as someone who could have been responsible. I'm going to play the 999 call now, but I will warn you, it is very upsetting.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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And just by the way he looked in his photos, she could tell that he cared about his appearance and he took care of himself. She thought that he must be a nice guy to leave such a nice comment about her on a friend's photo. And given that they had mutual friends in common, it's not like he was some totally random dude who was just stalking this profile and left this comment.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So, she decided to send him a message and introduce herself. Very quickly, the two started chatting back and forth and started video chatting several times per week. Harry seemed like he was sweet, attentive, and charming, and Alice fell for him pretty quickly. By January of 2016, the two had finally had the opportunity to meet up in person when he returned to the UK.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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otherwise you're there now maxine yes the police are here the police officers there okay um close your phone down for me maxine okay thank you bye when police arrived on the scene they could tell just how brutal this entire thing was unfortunately though there was nothing that they could do because she had already been deceased at this point immediately everyone around alice knew that harry was probably the one responsible for this

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So pretty quickly, police found him back at his barracks in Edinburgh, and he was quickly arrested. Of course, he tried to deny knowing anything about Alice's death, but police already knew at this point that he was the one responsible. They had immediately noticed blood on his Help for Heroes bracelet,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He had blood on the steering wheel of his car and he had already been seen on CCTV footage that showed his car driving towards Alice's flat before the murder and then away from her flat after the murder. When her body was sent to the medical examiner, they found that her neck had been stabbed multiple times with such force that it severed her voice box.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Her family was described as being very close-knit. They had a family group chat on WhatsApp that they used to text back and forth every single day, even after all of the Ruggles children grew up and moved out of the house. Even after doing so, they all stayed in constant contact.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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her carotid artery, and she had several injuries all the way back to her spinal cord. She also had several cuts and bruises on her nose, back, arms, wrists, hands, and her feet. She also had multiple defensive wounds, which showed that she fought for her life with everything she had. So the trial for Alice's murder took place in April of 2017. Of course, Harry continued to plead not guilty.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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His defense said that Alice was actually the one who was the aggressor and said that Harry had killed Alice on accident in self-defense. So, the defense talked about how Alice was still, in fact, Harry's girlfriend and that he had only entered her flat that day to talk to her and to reason with her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He said that during this conversation, Alice suddenly started shouting and crying and became hysterical and very distressed. He said that he was trying to talk to her and calm her down, but at some point, she went and grabbed a knife. He said that his back was turned when Alice came up behind him and tried to stab him with the knife, but he was able to stop her and put her into a chokehold.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He said that after this, he pushed Alice into the bathroom to contain her and to stop her from hurting herself. He made sure to point out that she had issues with previous relationships where she had threatened to kill herself. So in the situation, he described that she had the knife and then she crouched under the sink as she was in the bathroom

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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and then she launched herself forward to try and stab him, but as she did so, she hit her head on the sink. He said he then held his arms out to stop her from stabbing him, but a struggle ensued. As they were struggling, the defense said that he tried to get her in a position to restrain her from behind.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Then he put his hand on the knife over her hand, and he, you know, tried to stop her from killing herself or him. but in the process of doing so, she accidentally stabbed herself multiple times. he said that when the knife was in her neck, she fell on it to make it go much deeper. he then said he removed the knife and doing so made blood go absolutely everywhere, so he panicked.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So they spent a total of two weeks together. They spent the first week together in Newcastle and then the two of them went to Edinburgh together because that is where his barracks were located. During these two weeks, it was basically what you would expect for the honeymoon phase of a relationship. She was so happy and excited to finally meet him in person and to spend all of this time together.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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harry described a situation where he had gotten into a helicopter crash when he was in the army and he saw some injured colleagues where there was blood everywhere. So he said ever since then he's had this phobia of blood. He said that he saw that Alice had lost her life and he just panicked and didn't know what to do.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So he left grabbing Alice's phone on the way out and he did not report anything. When asked why he didn't report anything, he said that he thought about it, but he didn't have his phone with him. But after grabbing Alice's phone, he decided that instead of calling emergency services, he actually just called his dad.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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But the prosecution brought forward a forensic expert who completely went against this and said that it was absolutely impossible.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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possible for this to have occurred the way that they explained she said that alice's injuries suggest that she was knelt on so she said the person could have either been kneeling on her back or her chest to hold her down she said that after suffering the initial wound to her neck she would not have survived she would have died within seconds of getting that injury

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So her accidentally stabbing herself multiple times in the neck just would not be possible. She explained that there were a total of six wounds to her neck and two of them were in the exact same place. So she explained that there's a very low probability that two injuries would occur in the same exact place. if this were really an accident.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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It was so obvious to everybody that this was a violent, brutal attack at the hands of Harry Dillon because he was jealous that he no longer had complete control over Alice. And the jury pretty much agreed. Literally everybody in the courtroom knew that this entire story was absolutely ludicrous and completely made up.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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now i will tell you how it really went down so it turned out that on the afternoon of october 12 2016 harry had made the two and a half hour drive to alice's flat and waited in her car for alice to get home as he was doing so he was messaging another girl on tinder setting up a time to meet up for a hookup that same evening.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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When Alice got home, she had continued texting with Mike and was looking through her closet and was asking him about what outfits she should wear when he came over that weekend. The last text message that she sent to Mike was at 6.05 p.m. and then as we know, her body was found at 6.30 p.m. by Maxine.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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so we know that within that very small window of time harry had entered her flat by climbing through the window remember like i said earlier he had been to her flat the previous night to scope out entry points and take pictures then he grabbed a knife from her kitchen and then hid until he saw alice enter the bathroom

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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This is when he followed her into the bathroom, cornered her and stabbed her multiple times. He then left completely unharmed, suffering absolutely no injuries. Again, if there was a struggle to the extent that he explained, he would have been pretty badly injured, but he literally barely even had scratches on him because he's a coward.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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And instead of facing her, he snuck up from behind and attacked her from behind. Then he left taking Alice's phone with him and returned back to the barracks.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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he at some point discarded the knife and i'm not sure if that had ever been found but either way this is the timeline of events outlined by the prosecution then obviously the prosecution discussed all of the behaviors that we pointed out earlier the fact that he had driven two and a half hours each way just to stalk alice all of the phone calls text messages emails letters not just to her but to her friends and families

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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But these happy two weeks came to an end and he was deployed back on his final two-month tour back in Afghanistan. However, after these two months ended and he returned back to Scotland in April, friends and colleagues of Alice started to notice a distinct shift in her behavior.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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They talked about him hacking into all of her social media accounts and changing her passwords. And then they talked about how he ignored several warnings to stop contacting her. Then, of course, leading up to the murder, we know that there are numerous mistakes made by police with them ignoring her and failing to protect Alice.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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But it also came out that the army had also failed in their duty to record that Harry actually had a past history of domestic violence. Back in 2012, Harry had started dating an 18 year old girl named Inigo. This relationship was much of the same as with Alice. He treated her pretty much the same. He was controlling. He was jealous. He was manipulative.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He would put her down with mean comments and pick apart her appearance. and he would do whatever he could to isolate her away from her friends and her family. She tried for two years to break things off with Harry. She had broken up with him multiple times, told him to stop contacting her, but he persisted.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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After they were broken up, he even proposed to her at one point, but obviously she said no. Then of course, when she had officially broken it off with Harry, he started showing up at random times in public wherever she would go. One of these random appearances also happened one time when she was with her new boyfriend and he started throwing insults his way.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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When she told him to leave both of them alone and threatened to contact police, he spat in her face and called her a bitch. After this, he was charged with assault, but after he agreed to accept a restraining order that she had placed against him, these charges were dropped. So clearly he had history of the same type of violence against other women in his life.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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We saw the same exact scenario in Shanna Grice's case. These men who will stalk and harass women to the point of murdering them, all of them have a history of doing this before. Yet somehow it seems that these charges are constantly being dropped, hidden, or unreported.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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I think if there's one thing that we should learn from all of these cases is that if a man is showing stalking and obsessive behaviors towards a woman, he's probably not going to stop. Maybe we should stop giving these men the benefit of the doubt and make sure that we can do something so that these women can know just what kind of men they are dealing with.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Or at least leave it on their record, at least the restraining order on his record, so that when someone like Alice reports him,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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police will see his record and be like hey this guy has a restraining order out against him he's probably done the same type of thing in the past so maybe we should actually do something about it because clearly we see it time and time again these verbal warnings and threats of punishment over and over and over again don't stop these animals.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Like I said earlier, Alice was normally happy, cheerful, and very animated when she would talk with her friends and colleagues.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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So after 11 days of testimony, a jury of eight women and four men went into deliberation. They only deliberated for an hour and a half before they came back with their verdict. They found Tremendillon guilty for the murder of Alice Ruggles and he was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison. When being read this sentencing, he did not show an ounce of emotion.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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The sentencing judge, Peter Sloan, went on to say that this was an act of utter barbarism. He said, quote, Of course, after all of this, Alice's family is left with absolute heartbreak and devastation. Her family is in incredibly upset about how her case was handled. She was ignored by police and she was treated like she was just overreacting and like there was nothing that they could do.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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By October of 2017, the Independent Office for Police Conduct launched their investigation into how Alice's case was handled. Almost a year later, they released their report. They found two instances of misconduct on the part of the North Umbria police. They found that the first officer failed to properly investigate Alice's reports of stalking.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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but those around her started to notice that she was becoming withdrawn and distracted she seemed very distant and anytime a co-worker or a friend would talk to her they could tell that it seemed like her mind was always elsewhere people around her started to notice that she was losing a lot of weight in a short period of time and she stopped socializing or going out with her friends she also started to have difficulties at home she started getting into different disagreements and arguments with her roommates

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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They also found that the police sergeant did not properly supervise the police constable during the investigation. The IOPC's report said, quote, After Northumbria police agreed with our findings, both officers were dealt with via management action in the form of words of advice and further training to develop their awareness when dealing with stalking and harassment.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Then Alice's family used her death to create the Alice Ruggles Trust. As I say in all of these cases, I am so unbelievably impressed with families who are able to take this unspeakable tragedy and turn it into something positive and try to create change.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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The Alice Ruggles Trust website says, "...the Alice Ruggles Trust exists to raise awareness of stalking, including coercive control, to ensure that relevant legislation is effective and adhered to, and to bring about lasting improvements in the management of perpetrators and the protection of victims."

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They have been able to work directly with the Northumbria police to bring improvements to how these cases are handled. The assistant chief constable of the Northumbria police, Rachel Bacon said, quote, the honest for making an arrest should never be placed on the victim. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that we have a victim focused culture embedded across Northumbria police.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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What I mean by this is we must recognize someone who is vulnerable may not be the best place to make a decision over what is the best course of action to take. and when it is right to do so, that must not stop us pursuing appropriate action.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Our number one priority is to protect those in our communities who are vulnerable, and we are committed to ensuring we continue to improve how we deal with these types of offenses. When speaking on the trust's accomplishments, I will read directly from their website. It states,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Since the trust came into existence in 2017, we have taken part in numerous professional training events throughout England and Wales involving the police, CPS, judiciary, probation officers, domestic abuse caseworkers, and social and health services. We also provide a range of training packages, often in cooperation with other agencies and charities.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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In addition, we have held three annual conferences, bringing together professional practitioners and academics to discuss advances in understanding stalking and best practice in tackling it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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We have established a major collaboration with TEAS, ESC, and Ware Valley NHS Foundation Trust to develop and deliver training and resources for their healthcare staff and for children and adolescent mental health services staff and users. and quote, end quote. and hence the best possible risk management.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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By telling Alice's story, the trust works to ensure the victim's voice is the heart of all campaigning. They also have many things listed on their website in terms of how they raise money, more ways they help their community, and ways that you can donate if you would like to.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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their website of course will be listed down below so i do strongly encourage you to go ahead and check it out even if it's just to find out more about alice, her family, and everything else that they've been able to accomplish but that is all of the information i have in today's case i know that i've been covering a lot of these types of cases

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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but i feel that these are some of the most important to cover i was actually talking to my roommate the other day and she asked me what my favorite type of case was to cover and obviously i don't have a favorite type of case because you know if it were up to me i'd be out of the job and i wouldn't have any cases to cover but i told her i am so very passionate about discussing the issues of domestic violence

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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It's an issue that I think can be improved just by spreading awareness. I truly believe that there are some issues that can be improved by spreading awareness more than others. What I strive to do with this channel is to spread awareness about domestic violence so that victims and their loved ones can recognize the signs.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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I want people to recognize that these certain behaviors by these abusers is not normal. I want people to realize that they shouldn't wait to address these behaviors because we can see how they can escalate.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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i am so passionate about domestic violence because so many people don't even realize that they or a loved one are being abused until it's far too late so many people try to help themselves by calling police but nothing is done until it's too late so by spreading awareness through all of these cases i hope that people realize that they need to do something before it's too late that they shouldn't wait until it escalates

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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that became so severe and volatile that she had to move out. She then moved into a flat with her co-worker named Maxine into a flat in Gateshead, but very quickly it became apparent to those around Alice that the reason for these different behavior changes, they were all because of Harry.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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that when you see these behaviors, you need to nip it in the bud right away. You need to do something about it before it gets to this level. It's never a waste of police time to report harassment. It's never an overreaction to completely cut someone out of your life because of their abusive and toxic behaviors.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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It's never overstepping to check in on a friend who you think might be going through something like this in their relationship. It's never a problem to help. Just do what you can and that's it. Just do what you think is right. Try to recognize the signs and try to do something about it. And I think a lot of improvements can be made just by doing that.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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I hope that anybody who is watching my videos who does happen to work in law enforcement can see these cases and realize that they can be the person to help these victims escape these situations. they can be the ones to enforce the law to its full extent that they can.

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SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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the final things that i want everybody to take away from this video is please believe victims and please please do not wait until it's too late. so thank you for listening to alice's story and my little tidbit at the end, but i do truly think that talking about these cases and spreading awareness can make people realize the signs and hopefully

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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get something to change in these situations but either way that is where i'm going to end today's video if you like this video please make sure to go ahead and give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on if you don't want to miss out on any of my future videos.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Make sure you head over to takecareof.com and use code rachelshan to get 50% off of your first order. Make sure to go ahead and follow my Twitter and Instagram, both will be linked down below. And if you have absolutely any case suggestions, please send those suggestions over to my email at rachelshanincases at gmail.com.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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with that i hope you guys have a great week stay safe stay healthy and i hope to see you next time bye

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He started to become very critical about her appearance and he would start nitpicking little things that he didn't like about the way she looked.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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whenever she would go out with friends you know she would get dressed up and do her makeup and all that harry would get very upset he also would start making comments about and start degrading her friends and family probably as a way to isolate her and to try to convince her to stop wanting to be around them then he started going through all of her text messages and all of her social media and anytime she would talk to a guy whether it was a friend or co-worker or whatever

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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he would accuse her of flirting and of cheating. It got to the point where he went on her Facebook and locked her out of her own account by changing her password, so she had to completely start over and make a whole new profile. He did anything and everything he could in his power to isolate her and make her feel as miserable as possible. And it worked. She became withdrawn.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Then every year around Christmas time, all of the kids would come up to celebrate Alice's birthday, even though everyone lived scattered across the country. Alice was described by her family as having an outgoing and happy personality. She was the type of person who would always make her presence known.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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lonely and miserable she was distracted at work and she pretty much just kept to herself the entire time that harry and alice were together he would constantly accuse her of cheating on him and talking to other guys like i said but this entire time he was the one who was on dating apps he was the one who was messaging different women and meeting up with them for casual hookups

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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And he didn't even make it much of a point to hide this from Alice or any of the other women that he was seeing. He sort of used this as a tactic to make Alice jealous and to sort of show her that he could do better than her. By late July or early August in 2016, a woman had sent a message to Alice to let her know that she had been seeing Harry.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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At this point, Alice decided that enough is enough and she finally decided to officially break up with Harry. But this was not as easy or as smooth as she had thought or hoped it would be. The more distance she tried to create between herself and Harry, the more upset he became and the more he harassed Alice.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He would send her text after text after text, and if she didn't answer, he would go as far as emailing her over and over and over again. he would call her multiple times. And if she didn't answer, he would just leave her multiple voicemails. In one moment, he would sit on the phone and just beg her to take him back.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He would talk about how he was going to change and how much he still loved her and how he was going to try and work things out with her. And then in the next moment, he would try to manipulate her. He would tell her that he's crying and that if she didn't get back together with him, that he was going to kill himself.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He started to say that he was going to take his own life and it was going to be her fault. He went as far as saying that he's just not used to being denied something that belongs to him. Then these messages and desperation turned into threats.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He said that there were compromising, illicit pictures of her that he had secretly taken of her and if she didn't take him back, he was gonna post them on the internet. He was starting to become absolutely obsessed with her and he just would not leave her alone. Now, according to Alice's family, she was trying really hard to be nice to him and let him down gently at first.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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It just wasn't in her nature to drop someone and let them deal with it on their own. It wasn't like her to be rude or mean or disrespectful towards anyone, no matter what they were doing to her. But she started to realize that no matter what she did, he just was not going to change. So instead of responding and trying to get things to calm down, she started ignoring him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She was known to make jokes and make everybody around her laugh and play little mischievous pranks on her siblings. She was known to be witty, smart, and come up with jokes on the spot. She wasn't afraid to be the center of attention, being a natural entertainer. She sang at school concerts and performed in numerous plays.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She ignored him and ghosted him, but This didn't do anything. The second that Alice started ignoring him, he started calling Alice's friends and families and trying to beg them to reason with her. Obviously, they knew that he wasn't a good person, so they all told him to leave her alone. They weren't going to help him out with this weird obsession that he has with Alice.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Then Harry started writing her letters where he would write poems, writing about how much he loved her and how much he needed her. They started off like this, but just like the text messages and emails and all of the other pleas that he made, these letters eventually grew to become much more threatening and he would say things like, I am going to make you my wife.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Then he found another way to get back into her social media and hack it and he started reading through all of her messages. So he was able to figure out what she was doing and who she was talking to. By September of 2016, Harry had discovered that Alice had been talking to somebody else. She had started a new relationship with another army officer named Mike.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Alice had actually met Mike when she was in Germany visiting her sister Emma. The two had spent a couple of days together and they really hit it off. According to Alice's then-roommate Maxine, the two got along really well. They had a really nice connection and he really seemed to make her happy.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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Obviously, this made him very, very upset, so he started messaging Mike directly to tell him all about how awful Alice is. He told Mike that Alice was still talking to him, so Harry, and telling him that she still loved him and was cheating on him with Harry. But thankfully, Mike already knew about Harry.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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He knew that Harry was obsessed with Alice and he was going to do anything in his power to try to get her to come back. He knew that Harry was going out of his way to separate her from anybody in her life who made her happy. So he didn't take anything that Harry said seriously.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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The relationship between Alice and Mike continued and Harry continued to stalk her and get more and more upset as time passed. Things continued to escalate from there. One afternoon on September 30th, 2016, he had contacted Alice again. He left her a voicemail pleading with her to get back together with him. Of course, she didn't respond to the call and she just ignored him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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But as we know, he would not take no or a lack of response as an answer. So he got in his car and started the two and a half hour drive from his barracks in Edenburg to Alice's flat in Gateshead. He rang her doorbell several times and then went and hid in the garden so that she wouldn't be able to see him on the doorstep.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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For her senior year, she chose to move schools to attend the Leicester High School for Girls, where her mother Sue worked. This transition was easy for her though, because she was very good at making friends. When she was younger, she had started on the fencing team, and it became a big part of her life, competing in many competitions over the years.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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so alice went to the door and looked out of the peephole to see who was there and obviously she didn't see anybody because harry was hiding but she is a very smart lady and she knew that it was definitely possible that this was harry so she didn't answer the door she did decide to call him though and asked him where he was and he said that he was in edinburgh but that he was very happy to hear from her so a few more hours passed as harry was just hiding

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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but then he decided to jump the fence into her backyard and started knocking on her bedroom window, which was on the first floor. She had been laying in bed in her bedroom at the time, so she got up and looked out of the window and she saw a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates sitting on the windowsill.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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She also saw Harry backing away from the window, still facing her with his hands up in sort of a you know, surrender position, and then he left her yard. So he left and he made the two and a half hour drive back to his barracks in Edenburg, but as he did so, he continued to call Alice and leave her voicemails. He left her a total of five voicemails that day.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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In the first one, he just asked her to call him back, but obviously she didn't. Then he texted her to let her know that he had been hiding in her garden for six hours. She had been home alone at the time and obviously him telling her that he had been there that entire time while she was alone really freaked her out.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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So she decided to call a friend and ask the friend to come stay with her at her house that night. According to Alice's sister, this is the first time that Alice really started to fear for her life. So by midnight that next morning on October 1st, he left her another voicemail. This one was very concerning and it absolutely terrified Alice.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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In the voicemail, he said that he knew Alice didn't want to talk to him on the phone, so that is why he drove all the way down to Gateshead to leave her all of these gifts. He said he was sorry for not leaving her alone, but then he went on to say, quote, "'You said that guys like me end up killing people.'" That's why I just left from there and walked straight out.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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To prove a point that killing you is something that I've never ever ever thought about and will never ever even think about. If you want to go to police, go to police, but think about what we're talking about. I've literally done nothing. I've never hurt you, never done anything to physically hurt you. No, I don't want to kill you. I'm not intending to kill you.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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That's all I wanted to say, that I didn't want to kill you and that's why I gave you those chocolates and flowers and walked straight away. He ended these voicemails by telling her goodnight.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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When she was 18 years old and it was time to start university, she was choosing schools based on how good their fencing team was. Ultimately, she chose Northumbria University about 200 miles north of her hometown of Turlington. She joined their fencing team and even became the captain of the team. She did this at the same time as she worked towards her degree in product engineering.

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So obviously, these voicemails are pretty much threatening her that, you know, you can't contact police. They're not going to do anything. I didn't physically hurt you, so there's nothing that they can do to help you. But either way, that is when Alice decided to contact police.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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She told them about how this man had been stalking her, hacking into her social media, and how he had been hiding in her garden since 5 30 p.m. that same day. She was clearly shaken up in the call, but she was trying her best to stay calm and explain the entire situation to police the best that she could.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Horrific Murder of Alice Ruggles

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She even apologized for calling police and said that she hoped this call wasn't an inconvenience to them. Here is that phone call.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Wie ich vorhin erwähnt habe, wurde Jordan sehr ermutigend für Sean. Jetzt war seine Freundin mit dem Mann verheiratet, der ihn verheiratet hat. Doppel-Whammy. Aber noch mehr als das, laut Textmessungen von Sean zu Niall, glaubte er, dass Jordan Ricky verletzt hat und ihn zu seinem eigenen Leben genommen hat.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Wie gesagt, Ricky war ein Freund von Niall, Leigh und Sean, aber er war offensichtlich besonders nah an Sean. Also ist jetzt nicht nur Liv mit jemandem zuhause, der ihn ermutigt hat, sondern auch jemand, der er glaubte, seine Freundin totgeschlagen hat. So after the death of their beloved friend Ricky, of course, there was a funeral being planned for him.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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This caused Ashley to become even more worried about the rising tensions within the group. She was afraid of what would happen if Niall and Lee both attended the funeral and saw each other there. Talking about this, Ashley sent a text over to her friend Mal. It reads, quote, Don't want to have to go to Lee's funeral next. Just had a bad, bad feeling about everything, Mal. It's horrible.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Me heart's in my mouth constantly. Feel like I'm looking over my shoulder all the time. After this text, Ashley sent over a voice message to another friend named Charlotte.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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In der Geräuschmessage sagte sie, wenn mein Freund ihn sieht, wird es so aussehen, als wäre es schlecht, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so, als wäre es so,

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Es gibt so viele bewegende Teile, so viel geht an, so viele verschiedene Leute spielen verschiedene Rollen, alle zusammengekommen, um zu erklären, warum Ashley Dale ermordet wurde. Mit all dem gesagt, gehen wir einfach direkt in den Fall. Das ist die Geschichte von Ashley Dale.

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In another voice memo to Sophie, she said, "...is he gonna end up doing something to Lee and whatever? Like, I just couldn't cope with that. If something happens to him, because obviously Niall is effing saying he's gonna come and do something. I know if they see each other or Niall goes to his funeral, because like Niall has just popped out of the woodwork now."

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ashley went on to send another voice memo to Sophie again, saying, quote, I can just see how it's gonna pan out. It's gonna be a disaster. It's all just stress. Like, it's all proper doing me head in. I've got a bad, bad feeling about everything, to be honest. I just don't even know what to do. So me head's just been chocka. Like, I don't know. I'm just effing and then she sighs.

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I do want to pause here and just take a note. Obviously, I am not British. I obviously don't have an accent. I don't use a lot of the same words and verbiage that people in the UK use. So, if it sounds a little bit awkward, I do apologize. I'm trying my best. I just don't know all of the slang from the UK.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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It took me a little bit to figure out what they were saying in some of these texts and voice memos, so... If it's a little bit awkward and it doesn't quite sound right, I do apologize. I am trying my best here.

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Either way, after this voice message, she told Sophie that she was going to sit Lee down once and for all and make him be honest about his ties with the world of crime that he is involved with. She said that they need to speak about it properly. She needs him to tell her everything. Denn normalerweise wollte sie gar nicht wissen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie hat die meiste ihrer Beziehung total im Dunkeln über das, mit was Li beteiligt war. Aber jetzt fühlte sie sich, als hätte sie sich für das Schlimmste vorbereitet. Nachdem das, kam endlich der Tag des Feierabends und des Wachstums. Die Leute, die zum Feierabend und zum Wachstum gingen, gingen zu einer Bar, die 10 Straßen genannt wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Wahrscheinlich für das Nachmittagessen oder eine Mahlzeit, die oft mit Feierabenden passiert, um das Menschenleben zu feiern. Aber bevor sie dort war, wurde Ashley von einem Freund erzählt, dass Nile auch am Feierabend war. Natürlich hat sich das Ashley erschreckt. Lee hat ihr erzählt, dass er auf seinem eigenen Weg ins Wachstum gehen würde, aber Ashley wollte ihn nicht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie wollte mit ihm gehen, um sicherzustellen, dass nichts passiert. Als Ashley an der Bar kam, hat sie ihren Freund Lois gefragt, um draußen zu kommen und sie zu holen. So würde sie nicht alleine gehen müssen. Sie hat das gemacht und die Freunde sind drinnen gegangen, während Lee im Auto draußen wartete. Ich denke, er hätte separat gefahren.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ich weiß nicht, ob er an der eigenen Bar war, aber er ist nicht an der gleichen Zeit gekommen, als Ashley. Einmal drinnen hat Ashley Lee getextet und ihm gesagt, dass alle da waren, insbesondere Niall. Sie hat Lee gesagt, dass sie nicht dachte, dass er überhaupt in den Pub kommen sollte. So, she left the pub and met back up with Lee later.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Lee and another friend apparently went off and did their own thing because they still wanted to celebrate Ricky, but they didn't want to have to be around Niall, obviously. At that point, Ashley texted a friend named Lydia to say that she was happy that Lee didn't go. In the text, she wrote in part, something was gonna happen, so they done the right thing, like not going.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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But just a joke that you can't go to your own mate's funeral. After that incident, the disgusting messages from Sean to Liv continued. In one text he wrote, As she was getting those messages, Liv continued to text Ashley, who assured her that she was not at fault for Sean's behavior. All Ashley wanted to do was make her friend feel better.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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As you can see, a lot was happening around all of the different people involved. Things were heating up, things kept happening and it seemed like Niall and Sean were getting more and more out of control, especially Sean. But in the three weeks that followed the funeral and wake, things seemed to calm down at least a little bit.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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However, everything came to a head in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 21st, 2022. On the evening of August 20th, Ashley had been chilling at the home that she shared with Lee, lying on the couch in her pajamas with her little dog, Darla. Then by 11.40pm, she heard her car alarm going off. At that time she texted her mom, the rain just set off my car alarm.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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A few minutes after that message, Ashley noticed that Darla was getting more and more nervous and was focusing on something outside of the house. Ashley then took a photo of herself and Darla, who was all cuddled up to her. and she sent that photo to a friend. At 11.51pm, she wrote to the friend, "...any need for my child. I've never known anything like it.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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She is scared of something outside before in a black cat or rat. She's got me nerves gone, cause I'm scared of both. And now she won't leave me side like an actual baby." You can tell at that point that Ashley was at least feeling relaxed to a certain point.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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She didn't think that anybody was out to get her and she just thought that her dog was being adorable and scared and she was happy to provide her with comfort. Almost an hour passed after her car alarm went off and things remained calm and normal for that time.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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However, by 12.30 a.m., neighbors of Ashley's heard a loud crashing sound coming from her home with the sound of screaming coming from inside. After that, the neighbor saw Ashley exiting the home and made her way into the back garden where she collapsed onto the ground. The neighbor was obviously concerned, so they immediately dialed 999.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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I don't have the audio of the 999 call, but according to one source, the neighbor said, Minutes later, officers arrived to the home and they found a horrible scene. Inside the home, they found Darla in Ashley's bedroom, cowering in the bed, which was in the corner of the bedroom. The lights and TV were still on, and there were bullet holes in the walls, with the floors littered with shell casings.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Officers then made their way to the back of the home, and there they found Ashley lying in the garden, surrounded by a pool of blood.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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When Ashley was a teenager, tragedy struck her family. Her little brother, Louis, was murdered when he was only 16 years old. In November of 2015, Louis, who was described as sweet and gentle, was walking down the Leeds-Liverpool Canal in Maryside. It was then that he was mistaken for a member of a rival gang by three gang members.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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According to a later autopsy, the bullet had passed through her abdomen and then went through her liver and the right chamber of her heart. First responders attempted CPR and transferred her to the hospital, but unfortunately, by 1.48 a.m., she was pronounced dead.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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It turned out that on the night of the 20th, the suspect had slashed the tires on Ashley's car in order to set off the car alarm in hopes of luring her outside. They lied in wait outside, waiting to see if she would come out, but she didn't. So, by 12.30 am, the intruder kicked down the front door.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Wearing a mask, the man came into the house carrying a scorpion machine pistol, which is classified as a fully automatic pistol. That means that with just one trigger pull, multiple bullets will come out one after another. As the gunman entered Ashley's home, she screamed at them to get the F out as she ran for her life through the living room and into the dining room and then out the back door.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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But as she was desperately attempting to flee, the gunman was aimlessly firing 10 rounds in her direction. und sie wurde mit einem der Runden zu ihrem Abdomen getroffen, schaffte schreckliche Schmerzen, schloss sie letztendlich ihr Leben. Nachdem das, fuhr der Schütze nach oben und führte fünf weitere Runden in einen leeren Wohnraum.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Natürlich, als die Polizei dort war, war der Schütze weg und so war auch die Waffe. Natürlich, nach der Erfindung von Ashleys Körper und der gewaltigen Szene, begann die Polizei ihre Investition. Natürlich sahen sie auf Ashleys Telefon und das war dann, als sie alle Textmessungen zwischen Ashley und all ihren Freunden gefunden haben, die wir über das ganze Video gesprochen haben.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie sahen diese sehr klare Bildung dieses Feuds zwischen diesen Rival-Gangmitgliedern und den letzten Freunden. Sie entdeckten auch, dass sie, nachdem Ashley geschossen wurde, Lee an 12.33 Uhr anrufte, aber er antwortete nicht. So she left him a 43-second voicemail. Most likely she was telling him that she was afraid, but to my knowledge, we don't exactly know what the voicemail said.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Either way, obviously text messages alone are not enough to prove that Sean, Niall or Lee or anybody else was involved in such a horrific crime. So police relied heavily on information from the public.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Turns out, police received numerous tips from many different individuals, including one witness who saw a vehicle entering the street that Ashley lived on at the same time that Ashley's tires were slashed. Then a witness also saw a car driving fast down the road right after the time of her murder. The car was identified as a Hyundai i30N Performance.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Zusammen mit den Tipps von den Anwesenden hat die Polizei fast 2.000 Stunden Überwachungskamerausgabe durchgeführt, um die Bewegungen der Menschen herauszufinden, die involviert sein könnten. Anhand der Tipps hat die Polizei einen Nationalen Registrier verwendet, um die 1.036 Autos dieser Art durchzuführen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Anschließend haben sie es zu einem Hyundai aufgenommen, das nur sechs Tage vor Ashleys Mord aufgenommen wurde. Laut CCTV-Fotografie und anderen Beweisen hat Nile sein Auto, das ein Audi war, gefahren und dieses Auto für eine grüne Hyundai i30N-Performance gehandelt. Mit ihm, als dieses Verhandeln gemacht wurde, war sein Freund, 41-jähriger James Witham.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Dann konnten sie CCTV-Fotos finden, die zeigten, dass James und Niall in einem Flur in Hoyten fahren. Dort haben sie Telefonnummern benutzt, um zu bestätigen, dass am Abend des 20., der Nacht bevor Ashley ermordet wurde, Niall, James, Sean und ein anderer Mann, 29-jähriger Joseph Pierce, alle zusammen im Flur in Hoyten waren. The flat turned out to be where Nile lived.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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The same car that was seen near Ashley's flat just before and after the murder was also seen on CCTV footage heading to Niles' flat that night and then driving away right before Ashley's murder. I will come back to these other two men, Joseph and James, in just a few minutes.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Es war genau deswegen, dass er kurze Haare hatte, dass es ähnlich war, wie der Mann, den sie tatsächlich beherrscht hatten. Aber egal, Louis wurde mit einem Schotten in der Rückseite verletzt und er starb aufgrund seiner Verletzungen. Glücklicherweise wurden die Menschen, die ihn getötet haben, später verurteilt und verhaftet und sie sind jetzt hinter den Bars.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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In addition to the witness statements, CCTV footage, as well as cell phone data, police were also able to collect tons of forensic evidence from the scene as well. Die Polizei hat herausgefunden, dass James DNA auf einem Waffenkartoffel gelegt hat, das an der Szene gefunden wurde.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Außerdem hat die Polizei herausgefunden, dass James nur zwei Tage vor Ashleys Mord ein Paar On-Cloud-Gym-Schuhe gekauft hat. Nun, sie haben eine Schuhdose gefunden, die genau an der Szene an James' Schuhe passt. Die Polizei sagte, dass James diejenige war, der die Tür gedrückt hat und so viele wie 15 Runden ins Zuhause getötet hat.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nun, natürlich, während der Investition, brachten die Polizei zuerst Ashleys Freund Lee in die Station, um ihn zu fragen, was er an dieser Nacht wusste. It seemed very convenient that he happened not to be home when some violent offender broke into the home and gunned Ashley down. When questioned, Lee said that on the night of the shooting, Lee had been in a taxi on his way to a party.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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As he was heading there, he did see police tape on his street, but he continued to the party anyways. An diesem Punkt waren die Polizei ziemlich sicher, dass Niall und Sean zumindest etwas damit zu tun hätten. Die Polizei brachte das also zu Lee und er sagte, dass er keine Ahnung hatte, warum er oder Ashley getarget worden wäre. Er sagte, dass es keine Probleme mit der Gruppe gab.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Er sagte, dass er nicht dachte, dass Niall die Möglichkeit hatte, Ashley zu töten, auch wenn er Niall als alten Freund bezeichnete. According to police, Lee was very uncooperative and refused to answer any further questions about the shooting. He said that he didn't think that there was any threat to himself or his or Ashley's family. That is all he was willing to say.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Die Polizei ging weiter, um Lee als nonschalant und unhilfreich mit der Investition in den Tod seines eigenen Freundes zu beschreiben, was sehr, sehr zerstörernd und kalt war für Lee. Du würdest denken, dass er alles und alles tun würde, um zu versuchen, herauszufinden, was mit seinem lieben Freund passiert ist. But he wasn't cooperating at all.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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At this point, police felt that they had enough to at least take Sean and Niall into the station. When looking into the whereabouts of Niall, they actually found out that he was in the middle of attempting to leave the country. It turned out that the day after the shooting, Niall had made contact with someone in his phone whose name was saved as Gus.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Gus has actually never been identified even by police to this day. Either way, they found text messages that showed that by 3.09pm on August 22nd, he sent a text to Gus, which was followed by Gus calling him immediately. After that, they had a text exchange, which reads as follows. Gus, sound, I'll speak, kid, tell him need on next one and drop ye F or Ams.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Police believe that F means France and Ams is Amsterdam. After that, they talked about pick up and drop off with Gus telling Niall that he needed to only travel with a kit bag. After that, Niall called Sean, which police believe is Niall telling Sean about his plans to leave the country. By August 23rd at 5.43am, Gus texted Niall, have info today, what's what, bro.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Aber auch durch all diese Tragödie hat Ashley sich stark gehalten und getan, was sie tun musste, um ihr eigenes Leben gut zu machen. She went to university, graduating in 2017 with a degree in environmental studies, going on to work as an environmental health officer with Knowsley Council.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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The following morning, Niall texted Gus, okay son, nice one, thank you. On the night of August 24th, Niall was seen on CCTV footage traveling to the Formby Hall Golf and Spa Resort by taxi. Dort hat er seine Freundin Lucy kennengelernt, die separat fuhr. An diesem Punkt fühlten die Polizei, dass es jetzt oder nie war. Sie mussten ihn verabschieden, bevor er die Chance hatte, zu verlassen.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Die Polizei fühlte, dass er in diesem Hotel mit seiner Freundin war, damit sie eine letzte Nacht zusammen haben können, bevor er wegging und ein neues Leben anderswo begann. By 10.45pm on August 24th, police arrived to the hotel and arrested him. Upon searching his room, police found 10,250 pounds or 12,953 US dollars as well as his passport.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nachdem er in die Station geholt wurde, laut Polizei, gab Nile eigentlich einige Informationen, aber er war sehr wütend und versuchte, die meisten polizeilichen Fragen zu beantworten. Er sagte der Polizei, dass er die meiste Nacht am 21. auf dem UFC-Spiel mit seinen Freunden Sean und dann einem Mann namens Michael Kershaw und einem anderen Freund Ian Fitzgibbon verbrachte.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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At the time, police were also able to locate Sean and he too was arrested. After the arrest of Sean, police uncovered some very disturbing messages between Sean and Niall that uncovered even more criminal activity that they were involved with. Both Sean and Niall had been using a communication service called EncroChat.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Those who work with Ashley spoke very highly of her, saying that she was a very hard worker who was not afraid to get her hands dirty. Ashley war jemand, der deutlich viel über ihre Aussehung gehofft hat, aber das hat ihr nicht von der Arbeit heruntergekommen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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EncroChat is a Europe-based communications network that offers modified smartphones with encrypted communication among users. Of course, it is mostly used by those involved in organized crime. One source reported that French officials hacked the EncroChat servers and were able to obtain access to information of the users.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Das entdeckte, dass Niall den Service unter dem Namen Better Trunk benutzt hat, während Sean als Frosty Socks genannt wurde. Mit Messungen, die auf der App entdeckt wurden, kam es heraus, dass both Sean und Niall Teil einer organisierten Kriminellengruppe waren, die massive Mengen hartes Drogen anbietet. In der ersten Hälfte von 2020, Niall, oder Better Trunk,

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie verkauften 40 Kilo Kokain, 0,5 Kilo Heroin, 28 Kilo Cannabis, 1 Kilo Ketamin und 1 Kilo Amphetamine. Laut Polizei-Offizieren waren diese Drogen etwa 1,5 Millionen Pound wert. Und von dem Nile hat 100.000 Pound in einem sehr kurzen Zeitraum verdient. Meanwhile, Sean, aka Frosty Socks, supplied 15 kilos of cocaine, 6 kilos of heroin, 13 kilos of cannabis and 2 kilos of ketamine.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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This was estimated to be about 680,000 pounds worth of drugs. Using the information gathered from the chats as well as other witnesses and investigation, they found that Sean and Niall were supplying mostly heroin and crack cocaine in the North Wales area. The two used burner phones to contact each other and others involved in organized crime to make deliveries and use others to make contacts.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Insgesamt ist es glaubt, dass sie über 165 Kunden hatten und dass ihre Sachen als die besten im Bereich bekannt waren. Auch auf EncroChat haben die Polizisten Botschaften gefunden, die sie glaubten, dass sie eine Plutze unterschiedlicher Feuerwaffen erhalten. Back in April of 2020, there were messages between Niall and Sean, where Niall told Sean to get a .380 pistol from another user.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Then later in April, he messages a different user, this time to obtain a bunch of different firearms, including an AK-47, a Tech-9, a Grand Power with a suppressor, a Star-9, a Walther PP handgun, as well as a Scorpion machine gun. von dem die polizei sah, dass sie deutlich Zugang zu vielen Waffen hatten.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nicht nur das, aber sie hatten die Beziehung zu demselben Art von Waffe, die Ashley Dale verurteilt hatte. Die Polizei fühlte, dass sie an diesem Punkt genug hatte, um zu zeigen, dass Niall und Sean nicht nur mit organisierter Kriminalität involviert waren, sondern sie wurden auf CCTV-Fotografie gezeigt, dass sie bei Nialls Zuhause mit ein paar anderen Männern an der Nacht des Verbrechens waren.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ihre Mutter hat einmal gesagt, wir haben gejagt, weil sie offensichtlich in der Wäsche-Seite von Dingen begonnen hat, die glänzendste Person, die man je sehen würde, wie man von all den Fotos sieht, und sie hat diesen Job in der Umweltmedizin gemacht, durch Bindbäcker und solche Dinge. Ashley was known to love food.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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They had access to the same type of gun that killed Ashley. But, like I mentioned earlier, James Witham was the one who got the car that was seen on CCTV footage and his DNA and shoe print were at the actual scene of the crime. With him, when he got the car, was his friend Joseph Peers. So, police arrested both Joseph and James as well.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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After arresting James, he was confronted with all of the damning evidence that they had against him and pretty quickly he broke. But he had many, many different stories about what he claimed happened and it was clear to police that he was lying. After arresting James, he was confronted with all of the damning evidence that they had against him and pretty quickly he broke.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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But he had many, many different stories about what he claimed happened and it was clear to police that he was lying. First, he told police that him and his buddy were all at Niles' house watching the UFC fight on the night of Ashley's murder. He said that he had been smoking weed and consuming cocaine for days at that point and by that night, he hadn't slept in several days.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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When her family would go out to eat, Ashley was usually the one to pick the restaurant because she knew all of the best places and she had the best taste. She was known to have a very active and thriving social life, getting along with pretty much anybody who crossed her path. She was busy pretty much all of the time, spending time with friends and loved ones as often as she could.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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He said that he asked the group to get more cocaine, but no one else wanted to do more drugs other than him. So, he decided to go out and get some, taking Joseph along with him. But as they were driving, James went the wrong direction. He started heading towards Ashley's house. It was at that point that he said he wanted to go to Lee's home and send a message to Lee.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Joseph said that he was not a willing participant in all of this. He was dragged along. When they got to the flat in a drug-fueled craze, he busted into her flat and shot aimlessly into the home. James claimed that he did not see Ashley in there at all. He didn't chase her down with a gun or anything. He thought that nobody was home.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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So, he continued shooting into the home before going up to the bedroom and shooting five rounds into the room. He said that he was sending a message to Lee that if he had been home, he would be dead and that they wanted him dead. James said that he returned back to Niles' flat and told everybody about everything. He said that both Sean and Nile were shocked and horrified at what he had done.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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He said that they wanted nothing to do with the situation and at no point did they want Lee dead. However, the story continued to change after that because nobody believed it. Based on everything they found, police believed that Niall and Sean had been planning to murder Lee for a long time, that they planned the entire thing from Nialls flat.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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They then got James and Joseph involved, most likely those men were also involved in organized crime with Niall and Sean. Again, we know that there were rising tensions between Niall, Sean and Lee. They were all feuding and mad at each other, so they believed that this is why they wanted Lee dead.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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So, they sent James and Joseph off to murder Lee, knowing that police would immediately suspect Niall and Sean. What better way to cover for what they did? als nicht auf der Szene zu sein und sich keine Beweise davon hinter sich zu lassen.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Auf der Szene, wie wir wissen, haben die Männer Ashleys Schuhe ausgelassen, um Lee draußen zu fressen, aber das hat nicht funktioniert, also hat James eine Maske gesetzt, um seinen Gesicht zu schließen, und hat die Tür eingeklopft und angefangen zu schießen. Every time that James told his side of the story, he claimed that he did not see Ashley inside of the home.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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He thought that nobody was home, so he put bullets all around the home to send a message. However, as we would later find out in the trial, ballistics taken from the scene show that the shooter was following Ashley, getting closer and closer to her as she ran away. So, it does appear that the shooter saw her and was targeting her. Why? We still don't fully know.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Then James went up to the bedroom once again to shoot it up and send a message. After that, they fled in the Hyundai and put a fake license plate on the car to cover it up. Then they parked the car in a driveway of a property in St. Helens to hide the car. A week after that, James and Sean then moved the car to another driveway in St. Helens.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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The car was not discovered until October 9th, a month and a half after the murder. So, based on all of the information that I have discussed up to this point, police charged 41-year-old James Witham with murder. And eventually, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. However, all four men, including 28-year-old Sean Zeese, 26-year-old Niall Berry,

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie liebte es, in Musikfestivals rauszugehen, als sie in ihren frühen und mittleren Zwanzigern war. Aber als sie 28 war, hat sie mit ihrem Vater darüber gesprochen, eine Familie zu starten und irgendwann zu verheiratet zu werden. Als sie nicht mit ihren Freunden raus war, war sie zuhause mit ihrer Familie und ihrem liebsten Hund Darla.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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29-jähriger Joseph Pierce und James Witham wurden mit einer Verbrechung verurteilt, um den Mord von Lee Harrison und Ashley Dale zu verurteilen. Sie wurden auch mit einer Verbrechung verurteilt, um eine gefährliche Waffe zu besitzen, um das Leben zu beschädigen. Zweitens, in einer anderen Trial, waren Niall und Sean auch verhaftet mit druckrelevanten Offensiven, zu denen sie beide schuldig waren.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Einer der Freunde, den ich vorhin erwähnt habe, der auch an der Nacht des Mörders war, Ian Fitzgibbon, sowie ein anderer Partner dieser Männer, Callum Radford, wurden auch verhaftet mit Verbrechen, aber sie wurden schließlich gefunden, dass sie nicht mit dem Mörder beteiligt waren. Nach diesen Verbrechen waren Sean, Niall, James und Joseph alle zusammen verhaftet. Seine Trial war im November 2023.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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In der Trial diskutierten sie den Feud, den sie alle am Musikfestival begonnen haben. Sie brachten alle diese Botschaften zwischen Ashley und verschiedenen Freunden vor, alle von denen zeigten, wie schlimm der Feud war, wie sie für Lee und ihre eigene Sicherheit gefreut war. Sie wussten die Grenzen, die einige dieser Leute gehen könnten.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie sprachen über alle Forensik-Eigenschaften, die CCTV-Fotos, die Textmessagen, die Telefonnummern, sowie die EncroChat-Daten. Sie argumentierten, dass dieser Feud alles begonnen hat. Nile und Sean wollten Revenge auf Lee für alles, was mit den Drogen, Seans Ex-Frau und alles passiert ist. Dann, als ihr geliebter Freund Ricky gestorben ist, hat das die Hassflamme wieder aufgewärmt.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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They said that Niall was the ringleader in all of this. He had plentiful access to drugs and guns. He was the one who orchestrated this entire thing. They brought forward various witnesses who could vouch for the tensions between the group, including Ian, who witnessed the thing with Niall pulling out the knife und sagte, dass er Lee am Musikfestival stürmen wollte.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nach dem Trial, nachdem er alle Beweise gehört hat, alles, was wir besprochen haben, was, wie wir wissen, bis jetzt ziemlich langweilig und mühsam war, wurde der Gericht für Verleumdung eingeladen. Und am 20. November fand der Gericht fest, dass alle vier Männer schuldig sind. For murdering Ashley, the conspiracy to kill Lee, as well as the firearm possession charges.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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For these charges, 28-year-old Sean was given a life sentence with a minimum of 42 years served. Niall was sentenced to life with a minimum of 47 years. Joseph was given life with a minimum of 41 years. And James was given life with a minimum of 43 years.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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After these men were convicted, obviously Ashley's family was happy to finally have some closure in this big mess of a case. There are so many moving parts, so, so many people involved and so much going on. But at the end of it all, they are left with a massive problem.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Die Familie sagte, dass Lee nicht sogar die, mit der Ashley enden wollte, war, aber sie stand da und sie wurde ermordet, weil sie mit der falschen Person verliebt war. Und um das noch zu sagen, nach allem. Lee war unkooperativ. Er war unglücklich. Er hat absolut keinen Hilfe mit dem, was er wollte.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Meiner Meinung nach ist es wahrscheinlich wegen des organisierten Verbrechens, mit dem er beteiligt ist. Er will nicht als ein Schnitzel gesehen werden oder so etwas. Aber auch so fühlte Ashleys Familie, dass seine Unklarheit ein großer Schlag in die Füße war, nach allem, was passiert ist. Dann, um dazu noch etwas zu sagen, wurde ihr anderer Sohn auch unter fast denselben Verhältnissen getötet.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Louis wurde von Gangmitgliedern ermordet, die ihn für jemand anderes verletzt haben. Ashley was murdered by gang members who thought that Lee would be home. It makes absolutely no sense. It's just horrific and senseless and my heart absolutely goes out to the family because I know that they are going through it. Aber das ist alles, was ich auf dem heutigen Fall habe.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ich weiß, es war ein wilder Fall. Ich weiß, dass es ein helles Vieles gab, aber ich bin froh, dass wir diesen Fall diskutieren konnten. Es ist einfach so furchtbar, zwei junge Leben verloren zu hören, weil sie eine verletzte Identität verletzt haben. Und die Tatsache, dass Ashley ihre Leben in Angst gelebt hat, bevor sie getötet wurde, macht alles so viel schrecklicher.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Aber das ist alles, was ich für heute habe. Und jetzt möchte ich hören, was ihr alle denkt. Glaubt ihr James, wenn er sagt, dass er nicht wusste, dass Ashley dort war? Oder glaubt ihr, dass er sie getötet hat, um eine Botschaft an Lee zu senden? Ich denke, dass es eine Botschaft zu Lee war.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Warum glaubst du, dass dieser Feud so einen Sturz in diesen Gangmitgliedern verursacht hat, nach drei Jahren von der Verschmutzung? Was glaubst du von Lees Unklarheit? Lass uns darüber diskutieren und die anderen Gedanken, die du in den Kommentaren unten hast. Wenn dir dieses Video gefallen hat, bitte lasse das Video einen Daumen nach oben. and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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At the time, Ashley was dating a man named Lee Harrison. We will talk more about Lee in just a few minutes, but Lee and Ashley had been dating for about five years, and at the time, Ashley sort of knew that Lee was not her forever person. She worked a stable 9-to-5 job, she had her degree, while Lee sort of did whatever. He didn't have a job, yet he still made money.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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She never was actually sure of what he did, and her parents...

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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didn't necessarily approve of their relationship overall he just wasn't the person that she saw herself marrying or having kids with but she couldn't quite get herself to make that permanent break just yet so the two stayed together for the time being by june of 2022 28 year old ashley and her boyfriend lee attended the glastonbury festival together

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Das Glastonbury Festival ist ein fünf-Tage-Musikfestival, das nahe Summerset, England, befindet sich. Das ist ein riesiges und weitgehend besuchtes Musikfestival mit Headlinern wie The Arctic Monkeys, Guns N' Roses, Lizzo, Lana Del Rey und sogar Elton John, die Sets spielen. Es sollte ein wunderschöner, lustiger Zeit sein, Musik zu hören und vielleicht trinken und Party zu machen und solche Dinge.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Aber für Ashley war es ein Wochenende von Dramatik und Kampf. Nun, ich werde viele verschiedene Menschen in diesem Fall bezeichnen, viele von denen haben ihre Strecke-Nickname, also wird es von dort her noch komplexer. So for the sake of keeping things straight, I'm going to refer to everybody by their first name, their birth name.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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But if there are any certain quotes with the nicknames or any clips that I show and people talking about different individuals using their nicknames, I will try to remind you of who is being spoken of. So Lee Harrison, whose nickname was Saz, was known to run around with a group of gangsters known as the Hill Siders.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Vor etwa drei Jahren haben die Hillsiders von einem alten Freund von Lees, Niall Berry, Drogen gekauft, die von Branch verwendet wurden. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt wurde gesagt, dass Lee mit den Hillsiders zusammengearbeitet hat und das natürlich Niall beängert, weil

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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The two had been friends for a little bit before that, but it seemed like things calmed down and they remained acquaintances after this whole thing happened. However, at the festival, one of Niles' friends, Sean Zeese, who went by Zest, was attacked by another member of the Hillsiders, a man named Jordan Thompson, who was a friend of Lee's.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nach dem Angriff hat Shawns Freundin Olivia McDowell, die von Liv ging, sich von Shawn ausgeschlossen und mit Lee und Ashley verabschiedet. Laut Anwesenden hat der Angriff auf Shawn ihn ermutigt und noch mehr ermutigt, dass Liv mit den Freunden des Mannes, der ihn verabschiedet hat, verabschiedet.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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So, I know this is a bit confusing, it's a lot of names, but it appears that all of the men that I just mentioned were a part of the same wider circle of friends, but Niall and Sean ran with a different crowd of gangsters than Lee did.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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I know that at least Lee and Niall hadn't spoken in a few years before running into each other at the festival, but they had been pretty close friends at one point before the robbery. I don't know if Lee was a part of the Hillsiders, but he seemed to at least be friends with a lot of people from that gang.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Someone that just isn't good for them and everyone on the outside can see it, except the person in the relationship. Whether their partner is a bum with no job or goals. Or, like in Ashley's case, it's someone with a very sketchy connection to drugs and organized crime.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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And then I will talk more about Sean later in the video, but he is also known to have a short temper and to not handle situations very well. Egal wie, nachdem Liv mehr mit Ashley und Lee verabschiedet wurde, wurde Shawn, ihr Freund, wirklich verärgert und laut Anwesenden war er ziemlich in einer Stärke. Ashley hat also viel Zeit am Festival verbracht, um Liv durch all das zu ermutigen.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Es war auch an dieser Zeit, dass laut Anwesenden, Nile hatte einen großen Knall am Festival herausgefunden und fragte Leute, wo Lee war, weil er ihn aufsteigen würde. Nach dem Festival schauen wir später, wie Ashleys Leben war und was sie mit Textmessungen, Noten, die sie gemacht hat, und Wortmessungen, die sie für sich selbst gehalten hat, und auch die, die sie ihren Freunden gesendet hat.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Wiederum, nach dem Festival kamen sie nach Hause. Liv war immer noch über alles verärgert. So, Ashley sent her a voice message to try and comfort her. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to listen to the voice messages, but I was able to find them transcribed. The voice message to Liv is as follows. He's obviously just fuming, isn't he? Because of everything. Like, he's taking it out on you.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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You tried your best over the weekend to try and keep the peace and then like, obviously, it's all kicked off. But you haven't done nothing wrong. Obviously, yeah, you might have been around us for what, an hour on Sunday. But like, you went back to the tent, do you know what I mean? You didn't stay out with them.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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After that, Ashley continued texting friends about the weird things that Niall had been saying at the festival. We continued to learn more about his behavior and it was very concerning to Ashley. As we just heard, Niall had pulled out a knife and said that he wanted to stab Lee. Again, this was very, very strange behavior to Ashley.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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None of those men had any problems for the three years prior, so it was very bizarre to her that this feud with Sean and the man who beat him up caused such rage between Niall and Lee. I will note that I think Niall and Sean were pretty close, but we can see that clearly none of these men had much control over their temper.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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By July, we hear from text messages a little bit more about the feud between Lee and the other men. In dieser Zeit können wir auch sehen, wie Ashley immer mehr mit der ganzen Situation beschäftigt wird. Am 3. Juli hat Ashley einen Freund namens Sophie geteilt, der Ashley gefragt hat. Niall ist für Lee raus, ist er nicht? Es gab Mörder.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ashley antwortete, dass sie noch ein paar Jahre vor dem Mörder waren, als sie rausgingen. Niall ist zurück auf seinem hohen Pferd. Ich weiß nicht, von wo er zurückgekommen ist. Er war in Glatzow, hat einen großen Knopf auf Ian Fitz genommen und hat gesagt, wo ist Lee? Er wird gestoppt. Sophie, OMG, what the hell? Is that over when he got robbed?

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Natürlich hatte Ashley keine Ahnung, aber schlussendlich begann Ashley eine schreckliche Gefühle, dass etwas Schlechtes ihr passieren würde. Durch Textmessagen und Gespräche mit Freunden hat Ashley irgendwie ihren eigenen Tod verursacht, weil sie mit der falschen Person verliebt war.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Ashley, so like, yeah, if he's gonna do something, it's been three years. Yeah. Sophie, I don't know the full story. I just heard years ago the Hillsiders robbed him. But like, why not do something about it three years ago? Ashley dann ging weiter, um den Feud zu erklären, indem sie sagte, Ashley hat Sophie dann erzählt, dass Niall sie berührt hat, um zu kommen zu ihrem Zuhause.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Sie ging weiter zu sagen, dann ist er einfach für Jahre weggeflogen und jetzt hat jemand natürlich seine Kugel gerettet. Es ist furchtbar, weil er auf einer puren Rampage ist. Sophie antwortete, natürlich ist Lee mit den Hillsiders, also ist es so, dass Niall sie alle auf sich selbst nehmen wird. Because Sean won't back him up. Ashley, that's what Lee is saying.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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That's why he hasn't really done anything. Because he knows Lee has everyone backing him and they aren't asked. Sophie, that's just all madness. He's horrible. He used to knock me sick. Freak. After this conversation, we see that Ashley continued comforting Liv through everything that her boyfriend Sean was putting her through.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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In einem Wortmessage hat sie gesagt, dass sie nur versuchen würde, die nächsten paar Tage durchzuführen. Sie hat gesagt, dass Sean herkommen würde und wenn er nicht wäre, dann f*** ihn. Nachdem sich die Dinge in Lees Welt weiterentwickelt haben, mit all den Gangstern, mit denen er herumschlug, hat Ashley angefangen, sich um ihre eigene Sicherheit zu kümmern.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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In one voice message she sent to Liv, she said, By the end of July going into August, as you can see, things were sort of heating up. Um es auf jeden Fall zu beschreiben, hatte Niall und Lee ein Verlangen vor etwa drei Jahren, da einige von den Hillsiders Drogen von Niall stehlen. Lee ist mit den Hillsiders verabschiedet.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Nach dem ursprünglichen Unfall fiel Niall aus dem Radar und tat niemandem etwas. Aber nach dem Festival sah es sich so aus, als ob der ursprüngliche Feud für irgendeinen Grund wieder eröffnet wurde. Zum gleichen Zeitpunkt wurde Sean von Jordan, einem Freund von Lees, aufgeworfen. Niall und Sean waren Freunde, während Jordan und Lee Freunde waren.

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She PREDICTED Her Own Murder: The TERRIFYING Killing of Ashley Dale that Lead to MULTIPLE Arrests

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Aber kurz vor Ende Juli, im August, wurde es noch schlimmer. Am 21. Juli, ein mutterlicher Freund von diesen Männern namens Ricky Warnick, ist verurteilt worden, nachdem er sich vor einem fliegenden Flugzeug verletzt hat. Das war etwas, das die Dinge noch mehr mit den Freunden aufgelöst hat und ich komme darauf zurück in nur einem Minuten.

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Heute's Case is a tangled web of a case that involves so many different players, so many different names all connected to Ashley, her boyfriend or somebody in their outer circle. You might want to grab a notebook and a pen to keep track of this one because let me tell you,

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Um die gleiche Zeit war Liv ziemlich voll mit all dem Drama zwischen Sean und dem Rest des Gruppes. So, after some time of trying to repair things, Liv did ultimately break up with Sean. By the end of July, Sean actually found out from a mutual friend that Liv's car had been parked in the driveway of Jordan Thompson, the man who apparently beat the crap out of Sean at the festival.

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Naturally, Sean was very, very upset by this and it was confirmed that Liv was now seeing Jordan, who went by the nickname Dusty. So, by July 22nd, Sean messaged Niall, asking him to go and smash Liv's car. He texted him, quote, Sean sent multiple more texts after that, asking him to brick her window, saying that he would do anything for someone to smash up her car.

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It isn't reported whether her car was actually vandalized. If you do know that part of this case, let me know. But either way, after that, Sean sent some very, very nasty, threatening texts to Olivia. He called her things like vomit and rat, C-U-N-T. In one message, he texted her, quote, Watch, your tits are getting it. Gonna cut your tits off. Mom's life, rat.

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HORROR Unfolded at Family Campsite: The Harrowing Survival Story of 4 Year Old Cleo Smith

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Today's case is one that puzzled investigators from the start. Its bizarre beginning led to one of Australia's largest scale searches ever.

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I'm not exactly sure when this information was discovered, but at some point after Terrence's arrest, detectives uncovered a lot of information about his past, what led him to kidnapping Cleo, and what he did to her while she was there.

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Terrence Darrell Kelly is an Indigenous man born in Naluma country in the Pilbara town of Wickman, Australia, but he grew up in the Midwest area of Western Australia. It was said that Terrence faced significant challenges and trauma as a child. According to one source, many Aboriginal people suffer from higher rates of incarceration.

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They are 22 times more likely to end up in prison than the non-native populations, and a 2018 study found that almost every child in detention had severely impacted brain function. This is partly attributed to trauma experienced as a result of colonization in that area. Terrence Kelly, unfortunately, is part of that statistic.

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It was reported that he was born to parents who were addicted to drugs and alcohol, and as a baby, he was even fed alcohol in his bottles. By the age of two, his parents completely abandoned him, leaving him in the care of a maternal aunt. As he grew up, he had speech and hearing issues, probably at least partially due to the alcohol that he was given as an infant.

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Once in school, he faced social isolation due to his disabilities, though he refused to wear hearing aids because the other kids would bully him if he did. His home life wasn't too different. He was surrounded by violent uncles who absolutely terrified him. By the age of 12, he was wetting the bed and facing severe mental health issues.

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The family all shared one tent, but there was a divider on the inside so that Ellie and Jake were sleeping on one side and the girls were sleeping on the other. By around 1.30am, Cleo woke her parents up asking her for some water, which Ellie gave her, before tucking Cleo back into bed.

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He was hospitalized for suicidal behavior before he was even a teenager. By high school, he was exhibiting violent and disruptive behavior himself, which resulted in his expulsion his senior year. At that point, he was moved from his aunt's home back in with his father, who physically beat him for causing trouble at school.

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As an adult, he was diagnosed with complex PTSD, depression, anxiety, and possibly fetal alcohol syndrome. He was also said to have paranoid schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic personality traits. At some point, we don't know exactly when, but Terrence also started using drugs such as methamphetamines.

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Terrence would go on to tell officers that by the early morning hours of October 16, 2021, he was high on meth, headed towards the Blowholes campsite with intentions of stealing a handbag to get some money. At some point between 3 and 4.40 a.m., he unzipped the family's tent looking to score, but instead, he saw four-year-old Cleo sleeping soundly in her sleeping bag.

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In that moment, he decided to grab her and take her with him. When he was there, his cell phone was on, but as he was leaving the campsite, he turned it off, probably so that he couldn't be tracked. But as he was leaving, as soon as he left the campsite, he turned the phone back on.

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According to a psychologist who examined him, the motive for Terrence taking Cleo was apparently because he had always wanted a little girl who he could dress up and play with. He had created this fantasy world in his head, which included children and women, all who did whatever he wanted. For the three weeks that she was with him, Cleo was locked inside a room with just a mattress on the floor.

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He first tried tying her up and restraining her hands, feet, and mouth to a chair with tape, but she was, quote, a bit of a fighter. He said that he wanted to be nice to Cleo, but there were times that he had to smack her or roughen her up for being bossy or for asking him for chocolate. He never wanted to hurt her badly. but he needed for her to stop with the attitude.

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That's basically what he said. Whenever Cleo would cry out or scream, Terrence would drown out the sound by playing music on the bathroom radio very loudly. Then there were times where Terrence had to leave his home, at which times he would leave her alone in that home for hours on end.

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He took part in various work meetings, went shopping, did arts and crafts activities, and visited relatives, all with this little girl locked up in a room. This is what Cleo suffered for 18 excruciating, terrifying days until she was finally rescued. After Terrence's arrest, he was charged with child abduction, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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From there, the family of four slept peacefully as they listened to the waves crashing and the sound of nature buzzing. By 6 a.m., Ellie woke up once again, knowing that baby Isla would be up and hungry for her bottle. She opened the internal divider to look into the other side, where she saw Isla in her cot where she had been asleep all night next to Cleo's mattress.

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After spending a few months in jail, by January 2020, Terrence did actually plead guilty to his charges. At a sentencing hearing, the judge considered all of the mitigating and aggravating factors when deciding on the sentence. Of course, Terrence's childhood trauma and mental defects played a role in why he did what he did, but so did his drug use.

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Terrence's attorney argued that given his diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome, it can be argued that he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't understand the consequences of his actions. But the judge came back and argued that, yes, Terrence may have wanted a child of his own, but she doesn't think that he would have acted on these desires if it wasn't for his drug use.

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She believes that it was the drugs, not delusion, that caused him to steal a child. She went on to say, quote, you would have been far less likely to have ever stolen a child. She also pointed out the severe psychological impact his actions have had on his victim and her family. Cleo suffered from nightmares for years and wasn't able to sleep for weeks after she was returned home.

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Her parents were terrified and exhausted while she was missing. And then once she was returned home, they felt disgusted after hearing what she went through. It was incredibly painful to hear that he roughed her up all while her parents were right down the street having no idea what was happening.

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Ellie and Jake have also described being too scared to sleep, fearing that their daughter will be taken from them again. Cleo's abduction has left lifelong trauma that will scar each and every family member for the rest of their lives. And that is something that needs to be considered when sentencing the man responsible.

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In the end, Terrence Kelly was sentenced to 13 years and six months behind bars for his charges with eligibility for parole after 11, which is far below the maximum sentence. But I guess his own rough upbringing was factored into the decision. But to me, it seems like his upbringing outweighed the trauma and pain that Cleo and her family are left with, which always just makes me so freaking angry.

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But at the end of the day, this case does have a positive ending. She went through something so horrific, but at least she came home, which, given the situation, is all we can hope for. Cleo went on to join ballet and tap dancing which she loved. As she got older, she also did gymnastics and I believe she still does. She started school which was also such a positive thing for her.

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It seems like the family is doing their best to heal and move on from this horrifying tragedy, not letting their fear prevent them from living. All I can do is hope that Cleo can heal and live a fulfilled, happy life, which is exactly what it seems she is doing. But as of right now, that is all of the information I have on today's case. You all heard my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours.

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What do you think of the police response to Cleo's disappearance? What do you think of Terrence and his apparent motives? Do you think his sentence was enough? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below.

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But Cleo herself was not in her bed, and neither was her sleeping bag. Not only that, but the zipper that led outside the tent was left unzipped about three quarters of the way open, and there was a mysterious footprint just outside the tent. Of course, this immediately startled Ellie, who woke up Jake so they could start searching for Cleo.

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And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, And I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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They were absolutely panicked right off the bat because not only did they not hear anything, but they knew that there was no way that Cleo would have walked off on her own. Not only that, but they quickly noticed that there were no drag marks from her sleeping bag. Cleo was a four-year-old little girl.

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There was no way she would have been able to carry that entire sleeping bag without dragging it on the ground. And if she had dragged it out, it would have left marks in the sand. Plus, the tent had been left unzipped, again, three-fourths the way open, to a height that Cleo would not have been able to reach herself. Their minds immediately went to the worst case scenario.

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As they frantically searched around the campgrounds, other campers joined in to help. But still, Cleo was nowhere to be found. Ellie called the police by 6.30am, who arrived shortly after. Within minutes, officers knew that they needed to take this case seriously.

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They put up caution tape around the tent itself and created a roadblock searching any and all vehicles that were entering or leaving the area. As that was happening, more and more people joined in on the search efforts. Family and friends made their way to the area, volunteers came out in droves, and more officers all worked together to search along the rugged coastal area.

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They brought in divers to search the ocean and a helicopter to search from above. A specialty search and rescue team was also brought in along with heat detection equipment. At this time, officers felt that she could have been abducted from the site but as the searches continued, they were still considering the possibility that Cleo could have walked off.

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Even though this didn't seem all that likely, they couldn't rule anything out at first. They estimated that it was possible that Cleo could have walked up to 5.2 kilometers in that amount of time, so that is about the size of the area they were searching. By the second day of the search, October 17th, police started deploying drones to survey the area.

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Yet still, it was like finding a needle in a haystack. The disappearance of this little girl gripped the nation with everyone doing their part to find her. Yet it was a stroke of luck and one small piece of evidence that led to the harrowing discovery of what happened to four-year-old Cleo Smith.

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There was a 100-person task force formed of officers, plus the Australian Defense Force Army also aided in the search efforts by this time. They were desperate to find Cleo and were very concerned for her safety and well-being. Like I said, anything was possible at this point. Back in Carnarvon, local volunteers and friends of the family were putting up flyers with Cleo's information.

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Ellie also took to Facebook to beg everyone she knew to please keep on the lookout for her daughter. She had been last seen in her pink pajamas with flowers and butterflies on them. They also released a photo of her sleeping bag which was green and red. Anyone with information needs to come forward so they can bring their precious baby home.

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For the two days that followed, the searches continued and the areas in which they were searching got larger and larger they just were not finding her. By now, the possibility that Cleo was abducted was seeming more and more likely. There was no way that Cleo could have walked off and made it this far without anyone finding a single sign of her.

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With the searches that were happening, officers also started questioning everyone who had been at the campsite that weekend as well as collecting DNA samples from them. One common story they heard from a few different campers and someone that was driving in the area at this time was that between 3 and 3.30 a.m.

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on the morning of October 16th, they heard or saw a car making a screeching turn at the intersection of Blowholes Road before heading south onto Northwest Coastal Highway. This told officers that there could have been a suspicious vehicle in that area, and this was right around the time that Cleo would probably have been kidnapped.

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By Tuesday, October 19th, after finding still no sign of Cleo, police felt that it was time for Ellie and Jake to make a public appeal for information. They sat for an interview with TV news crews where they begged for their daughter's safe return. They said that these four days have been excruciating. They have absolutely no control over the situation and have started to feel hopeless.

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They said that Cleo is a delicate, beautiful little girl with a big heart and an amazing sense of humor. She loved to collect rocks, play dress-up, and wear makeup. She loved wearing princess dresses, with Ellie calling her her little princess.

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After this public plea aired, police announced that the state would now be offering a $1 million reward to anyone who provided information that led to locating Cleo or those responsible for her disappearance. Around this same time after that interview came out, A lot of people were suspecting Ellie and Jake for being involved in their daughter's disappearance.

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Cleo Smith was living with her mother, Ellie Smith, and her stepfather, Jake Glidden, and her little sister in Carnarvon, Australia. Carnarvon is a coastal town with a population of about 5,500 people. This is where both Ellie and Jake grew up, spending their summers swimming in the lagoons at the Blowholes Campground in Western Australia.

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Even the initial body cam footage when they were talking to Ellie about the disappearance, she seemed a little bit calm. A lot more calm than you would think a mother would be. But that just goes to show that you truly cannot judge anybody on how they act after going through some sort of traumatic event like this.

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I do also want to note, I didn't mention this earlier, but after that public interview aired with Ellie and Jake and after they were starting to get some public scrutiny, police did make the announcement that they were being very cooperative and they are not considered suspects in this investigation.

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Either way, by the seventh day of her disappearance, the land searches for the areas surrounding the campsite came to a close. This obviously devastated Ellie and Jake, but by this point, detectives were confident that Cleo was most likely kidnapped and was probably not near the campsite any longer. If she had just walked off, there is no question that they would have found her by now.

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Now, after the searches near the campsite closed, detectives were focused on the town nearest the campsite, Carnarvon. They searched all around the town, going to any and all local businesses, asking if they had any tips, and for CCTV footage that they may have had from the days prior. Everyone in the area wanted to help in any way they could, but again, it was like finding a needle in a haystack.

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Officers did everything they could to encourage the community to keep an eye out for this little girl. That is a part of this case that I really want to emphasize, how much effort was really put into finding Cleo, as well as how much police relied on the public to help them.

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Now, like I said just a minute ago, detectives received multiple reports of a car leaving the Blowholes campsite at around 3 a.m. the morning Cleo disappeared. Of course, police made a public statement asking for the driver of this vehicle to come forward, but no one did.

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They also started combing through hundreds of hours worth of CCTV footage from the surrounding areas and that highway, but this led them no closer to identifying the driver of the car. Once the CCTV footage came up empty, they started analyzing satellite imagery and data collected from the cell phone towers from around the area.

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Then, by the late night hours of November 12th, 18 days into their search, police received a tip regarding a suspicious vehicle in the area of the blowhole campsites. We don't know exactly what the tip was, but it gave them a lot more information than what they originally had regarding the car.

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In addition to that, police officers found that there was a phone that pinged off the tower right near the campsite at 3.05 a.m., This was a huge deal because most of that area was wilderness, no cell phone service for miles around. But this cell phone tower gave that specific campsite pretty good service.

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So they knew that this ping had to belong to someone who was visiting the campsite at that time. This ping also showed that the person pinged and then turned their phone off until the phone pinged at a different location after leaving the campsite, so they were only there for a short period of time.

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That, in addition to the tip relating to the car, is what brought this entire case together and what led to the discovery of what happened to four-year-old little Cleo. By 1245 AM, now going into November 3rd, this information led officers to a locked-up house in Carnarvon. They immediately busted inside, and quickly after entering the home, They were stunned at what they saw.

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This is a popular destination for tourists and campers attracted by the blowholes, a natural phenomenon where ocean swells force water through the sea caves and up out of the holes in the rocks. So it's no surprise that as adults, Ellie and Jake wanted to take their kids there to experience the same things that they got to as kids.

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The inside of the home was filled with dolls. Then they found a little girl alone in a room playing with a toy car. At first, she was terrified. She didn't know who these people were just busting into her room like that. But officers made themselves known, trying to speak as gently and kindly as possible as they asked for her name. And in that moment, the little girl said, my name is Cleo.

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Four-year-old little Cleo was found alive and unharmed. Officers would later describe a feeling of euphoria, knowing that their searches are coming to an end. knowing that they will soon get to bring this little girl back to her family. The audio of that first interaction with officers was captured on audio and has been released. I will play it for you now. I got it.

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but each and every time she was left disappointed, but not this time. When she answered the phone, the detective on the other end said, we've got someone here that wants to speak with you and handed the phone to Cleo, who was safely in the hands of the officers who had just rescued her from that home.

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I can't even imagine the overwhelming feelings of relief and excitement and joy that Ellie felt in that moment, hearing her daughter's voice, now knowing that she was okay. The home she was found in was actually just a few miles from where Ellie and the family lived, so they were reunited right away.

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Then, by 4.15am that same morning, Western Australia police made the announcement that Cleo had been found safe.

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By Friday, October 15, 2021, they packed their camping gear, and Ellie, Jake, then-4-year-old Cleo, and her sister, 7-month-old Isla, made their way to the Blowholes campgrounds. The drive was only about an hour, and they arrived by 6 p.m. that evening. They set up camp in the sandy grounds as they watched the sun set before making dinner and heading to bed.

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Once again, a feeling of relief spread across the entire community who had been holding their breath as they waited for answers in this little girl's disappearance. At this point, you're probably wondering who is responsible for kidnapping Cleo and locking her in that home. And you might be wondering what happened to her while she was there.

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Well, like I said, police found the location based on that singular cell phone ping from that cell tower. That cell phone number led investigators into looking into a 36-year-old man, Terrence Durrell Kelly. After looking into him, he quickly rose to the top of their list as their prime suspect, just before making their way into his home by 11-24 on November 3rd.

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Police pulled Terrence over as they saw him driving his car away from the house. At that time, police actually hadn't yet been planning to arrest him. They were going to interview him that following day. But they knew that something was up based on how erratically he was driving.

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they knew in that moment that they needed to detain him while they searched his home to prevent any possible chance of him fleeing. Of course, though, after discovering Cleo in his home, he was officially arrested and charged for the kidnapping of this four-year-old little girl.

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After the meeting, they noted that Tanya was now accepting help from a dietician and a language therapist and was now providing better nutritional support for the children. Für die folgenden Wochen sahen sich die Dinge in der Wohnung in Ordnung, aber das änderte sich im Mai und Juni 2013. In dieser Zeit hatte Olivia in der Krankenhauswohnung ein paar Mal für Atemschmerzen gearbeitet.

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Während dieser Besuche wurde Tanja bekannt, dass sie sich agitiert fühlt, oft an die Ärztinnen weint und weint, sie nicht erlaubt, neben Olivia zu kommen. Während eines der Besuche schlug ihre Atmosphäre-Alarm auf, bestätigend, dass Olivia's Atmosphäre niedrig war. Tanja schlug es aber auf, weil sie die Ärzte nicht wieder anrufen wollte.

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An diesem Zeitpunkt hat Tanja Olivia's Atmosphäre-Maske mit einer Nasenkannula gewechselt, die die komfortablerste Option ist, aber es ist nicht in der Lage, so viel Atmosphäre wie eine Fascialmaske zu erzeugen. When the doctor came into their room the following morning, he noticed the switch and became upset.

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After the pair tied the knot, they moved to London, England. At the time, Tanya started working in graphic design, while Gary worked as an investment banker. By 2005, after months of trying, Tanya finally became pregnant with her first daughter, Taya, who was born on April 21, 2006. After having Taya, Tanya quit her job to be home full time.

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He felt that it was inappropriate for Tanya to switch the oxygen delivery without permission. Due to this, the hospital staff noted their concerns about medical abuse. By mid 2014, all four children were attending public school. By this point, Olivia was four and Ben and Max were three.

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According to school staff, Olivia was described as a shy child when you first met her, but when you asked her about school or her favorite color, she would just light up and talk nonstop. She loved pink and fairies. She had a good sense of humor and had a strong will about her. She enjoyed school and being with friends, always ready to play and learn.

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She was bright, bubbly and inquisitive and always seemed so very happy. Her quality of life was good and she loved her family. Ben and Max had just started school as well, but they made their impressions on staff quickly. They were happy and chatty boys. They said what they wanted and weren't afraid to make themselves known. They were always particularly interested in playing with trains and cars.

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As they spent more time at school, those around them started noticing their differences in personalities. Each of these little boys was his own person, with his own thoughts, feelings and attitudes. They all seemed to be doing okay when they first started school and Tanya and Gary continued to seem like supportive, concerned parents who just wanted what was best for their children.

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Their care team even noted a shift in Tanya's behavior. She seemed happier and calmer. Sie war froh, dass die Kinder so gut in der Schule waren und sich genießen konnten. Bis zu diesem Punkt habe ich viel darüber gesprochen, wie die Kinder sich beteiligen und wie sich das verändert und weiterentwickelt hat in ihren Leben.

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Um es zu beschreiben, scheint es so zu sein, dass Olivia, die älteste und am längsten in ihrer Diagnose war, die größte Unterstützung benötigte, aber Max und Ben waren nah dran. Jedes von ihnen benötigte mehr und mehr von Spinalbraceln, um ihre Skoliosität zu korrigieren. Atemmittel, jedes Mal, wenn sie krank wurden, sogar mit etwas so mild wie einem Kälte.

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Sie brauchten Nahrungs- und Nahrungssupport, wegen der Schwierigkeit mit Zuckern und Zuckern. Je weniger sie bewegen konnten, desto mehr Unterstützung brauchten sie. All the while, Tanya was struggling. She was the one responsible for their care while Gary worked long hours and often had to travel for days if not weeks at a time. She felt overwhelmed by all of the appointments.

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She was bothered by the constant people coming in and out of her home for all these different therapies, feeling that her privacy was being invaded. Sie und Gary fühlten sich both hopeless at times, especially as healthcare providers were presenting them with all of these different interventions to consider. If they didn't accept certain interventions, they felt judged and scrutinized.

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They had their two nannies, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, neurologists, health visitors, nurses, general practitioners, Social Workers and Consultants. In total, they had about 60 professionals involved in the family, all of whom tried their best to support the family, but who often made Tanya feel very overwhelmed and judged.

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I also want to note that several months after moving to Kingston in February of 2014, their main social worker was switched. The social worker they had been working with for all those months was highly experienced and specialized in families with children under five years old. Tanya trusted her more than anyone else and she truly believed that she had her best interest at heart.

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Gary continued working, but his job kept him at the office for long hours and often required him to travel for stretches of time, often internationally. This meant that while they enjoyed an upper-class lifestyle in their nice homes, Tanya was left alone to care for her baby for long stretches of time. Through this, though, Tanya was known to be a loving, doting mother to Taya.

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But she had been switched out because social services believed that this woman was too close to the family to stay objective. The social worker was then replaced with basically a new hire, a woman who had only been working in the field for about six months at that point. She wasn't quite yet equipped to handle the complicated nature of Tanya's family situation.

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Ihre Interaktionen waren zuerst relativ freundlich, aber Tanja fühlte, dass sie zu viel beobachtet hat. Sie hat zu viele unnötige Fragen gefragt und erscheint zu patronisieren. Es gab einen Tag, an dem der Sozialarbeiter ihr eine sehr tiefen emotionalen Frage gefragt hat. Dies hat Tanja überwältigt und verärgert.

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Und anstatt auf die nächste Interaktion zu warten, um das nächste Thema zu bringen, hat sie mit einer anderen, sehr emotional verärgerenden Frage gefolgt. Im Grunde sah es so aus, als würde sie einfach nur folgen, was sie in der Schule gelernt hat.

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Sie wollte versuchen, einige Karten zu beobachten, die sie wusste, dass sie darüber sprechen musste, anstatt die Situation mit Hand zu lesen und ihre Aktionen davon zu basieren. Das ist etwas, was man nur durch Erfahrung im Bereich bekommen kann. Durch all das, bemerkten ihre verschiedenen Gesundheits-Teams, dass Tanjas mentale Krankheiten sich verbessern.

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Und sie waren besorgt, dass sie ständig für ihre Kinder und sich selbst verurteilt wurde. Aber am Ende des Tages, durch all das, durch alles, was ich dir bis jetzt gesagt habe, konnte niemand erwarten, By April 8th, 2014, Gary went away to the United States for a golfing trip, returning back April 18th.

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The same day, he grabbed their oldest daughter, Taya, and off they went to South Africa for another short trip. In the meantime, one of the nannies, Jade, took the twins to her home on the 18th to care for them until Monday, the 21st of April. During that time, Tanya's mother and her partner visited with Tanya and Olivia at the home.

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By later in the evening that Monday, Jade returned the twins back to the home and into the care of Tanya. Shortly after, Tanya's mother also left the home. However, by the early morning hours going into April 22nd, Jade received a call from Tanya's mother who said that she hadn't heard from her since she left her home. In response, Jade and a friend headed back over to the home to check on them.

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They entered the home and found that it was dark and quiet. On the banister at the bottom of the stairs, Jade had found a folded up note which had been addressed to Gary. She opened it and it read, ''Gary, don't let Taya go into the kids' rooms or our bedroom.''

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After reading the note, they used the light on their phones to guide them as they made their way up into Tanya's bedroom, where they opened the door and found Tanya, who appeared to be in the middle of a panic episode. She was holding a towel and turned to them, asking them to leave over and over and over again, but the entire time she was saying it in a whisper.

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They asked her what they can do to help her, and all she said was that it was too late to help. Eine von ihnen fragte, ob sie etwas genommen hatte und sie sagte, dass sie es gestern gemacht hat, aber es funktionierte nicht. An dieser Zeit war es offensichtlich für die Gruppe, dass Tanja versucht hatte, ihr eigenes Leben zu nehmen.

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An dieser Zeit hat einer der Freunde 911 angerufen, um die Situation zu informieren. Auf dem Anruf hat der Operator ihn gefragt, um die Kinder zu beurteilen, also hat er seinen Weg in das Zimmer der Twins gemacht. Und dort haben sie beide Jungs in ihren Schuhen entdeckt, die nicht bewegen und nicht atmen.

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Er ist schnell in eine Situation von Schock gekommen, sofort zu der Erkenntnis gekommen, dass diese kleinen Jungs tot waren. The operator asked him to go check on Olivia, but he was frozen. He was too stunned and terrified that he couldn't bring himself to go and check on her because deep down he already knew what he was going to find.

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Nach Taya, wussten Tanja und Gary, dass sie ihre Familie weitergründen wollten. Die nächsten zwei Jahre versuchten sie weiterhin, sich verheiratet zu machen, aber das war kein einfaches Fehl. Tanja hat tragisch von mehreren Verletzungen getroffen, bevor sie 2008 wieder verheiratet wurde. Ihr zweites Kind, Olivia, wurde am 15. Juni 2009 geboren.

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As that was happening, Tanya handed Jade a letter, which read, When officers showed up to the scene, they found that 3-year-old Ben and Max and 4-year-old Olivia were all dead in their beds. When officers went into Tanya's room, they found another note on top of a pile of clothing. It said, Gary, I don't want to be saved. Please, I can't live with the horror of what I've done.

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I thought the pills would work. They didn't. Okay. Als sie gefragt hat, was sie gemacht hat, hat sie gesagt, dass sie sie verletzt hat. An dieser Zeit wurde Tanja in den Krankenhaus genommen, um ihre Verletzungen zu lösen. Als sie geschlossen wurde, wurde sie dann in die Polizistation genommen, um ein Interview zu machen, wo sie im Grunde gesagt hat, warum müssen wir das tun? Ich bin schuldig.

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Von dort wurde sie an ein Psychiater-Hospital eingeladen, wo sie von einem Forensik-Psychiatrist beurteilt wurde. In den nächsten Wochen wurde ein Investitionsprozess durchgeführt, um herauszufinden, warum es geschehen ist. Sie fanden heraus, dass Tanja jahrelang vor Tagen geplant hatte, ihre Kinder zu töten. Die Anwesenden glaubten, dass es am 18.

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April war, vier Tage bevor die Mörder, in denen sie ihre Meinung gemacht hat, sie zu töten. Sie hatte eine To-Do-Liste für ihren Mann geschrieben, die sich bezeichnete, Dinge zu tun und zu erinnern. Items beziehungsweise, dass Tejas Geburtstag kommt, leaving a draft of an invitation for her birthday party.

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Sie hat auch Instruktionen dazu gegeben, wer Gary informieren sollte über ihre Todesfälle und die nächsten Schritte. Es wird gedacht, dass die Mörder am Abend April 21st, ab April 22nd, zwischen 12 Uhr und 3 Uhr stattfanden. Sie hat einen Stiefel genommen und das verwendet, um ihre beiden Jungs zu vermuten, damit sie sie nicht riechen würden, als sie sich über sie bewegen, ihre Leben zu nehmen.

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Sie ging dann zu Olivia, die sie viel schwieriger zu töten fand. Sie hielt einen Schein über ihr Gesicht, schmutzig sie auch zu Tod. Sie positionierte dann beide ihre Körper in ihren Schuhen in Feierabendpositionen, bevor sie sie mit ihren Lieblingstüten umdrehten.

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Sie versuchte dann, ihr eigenes Leben durch die Behandlung von Pillen zu nehmen, was nicht funktionierte, also versuchte sie, sich selbst zu verletzen, was auch nicht funktionierte. Now, four days before the letters, she wrote her husband another letter, dated April 18th. This letter spoke of her intention to kill her children and explained why.

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It reads, I cannot face going down this path watching Liv and the boys continue to get weaker. Most importantly, the interference in our lives. You know, GOSH, NHS, Kingston, Morlane. I'm tired of it all. No matter what we have overcome, no matter what we do, it will never be enough.

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Diese Botschaft spricht von ihrer Frustration, die sie mit den vielen medizinischen Professionellen, mit denen sie sich befasst hatten, befasst hatte. Wiederum fühlte sie sich von ihnen beurteilt und beurteilt, und sie konnte es nicht länger nehmen. Es wird nun von Untersuchungen gelesen, dass all diese Individuen wirklich das war, was sie über die Ecke gedrückt hat.

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Dann gab es noch eine Note, die nach dem Tod der Jungs geschrieben wurde, aber bevor Olivia getötet wurde. Es schreibt, Gary, I need to tell you how difficult it is for me to take Liv's life. I'm so ghastly and I feel every ounce of it for doing this. The boys were bad enough. I'm struggling with Liv. I waited until the boys were asleep. The same with Liv.

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Dann, sechs Monate später, fand Tanja sich wieder verheiratet, This time with twin boys who made their dramatic entrance into the world while Tanya and Gary were on vacation. By June 19th, 2010, the couple were in Portugal when she gave birth to her twin boys prematurely at just 26 weeks gestation. For those who don't know, 26 weeks is incredibly early.

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If I could take my own life and leave her to wait for you, I would. But the wait will be as traumatic. This is so bad and I'm so, so sorry. This life is better without me. I am nothing. The only thing giving me motivation to continue is the belief that the boys are already up playing in heaven like they never could play here. I can see them all running around.

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This letter speaks to why Tanya did this, of course. She just couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't continue watching the children slowly die in front of her. She couldn't handle the stress anymore of caring for them. Ich weiß nicht, warum es so aussah, dass Tanja so eine schwierige Zeit mit Olivia hatte als die Jungs.

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Ich will nicht spekulieren, aber es hat mir wirklich das Herz gebrochen, zu sehen, dass einer ihrer Kinder schwieriger zu töten war als der andere. Ich verstehe nicht, warum das so war, aber so fühlte sie sich. Egal wie, nachdem all das gelaufen ist, wurde Tanja verhaftet und wurde mit drei Mördern verhaftet.

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Natürlich hatte Gary bemerkt, was passiert ist, also flogen er und Taya zurück in die USA, sobald sie es tun konnten, um etwas zu tun. Das erste Mal, als Gary Tanja gesehen hat, war bei ihrer ersten Gerichtssitzung. At that time, Tanya was sobbing and she couldn't handle sitting through the entire thing. The two locked eyes while Gary silently sobbed in his seat as well.

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At that time, Tanya was held without bail as she awaited her trial for her charges. But during this time, she was examined by the psychologist who determined that she had been suffering from severe major depression. Sie gingen in ihre Hintergründe, die Details dazu führten, dass ihre eigene Großmutter ihr eigenes Leben verwendet hat, als sie ein Kind war.

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Als sie erwachsen war, hatte sie eine Menge von mentalen Krankheiten, die sich nur im Alter verringert, als sie sich in eine toxische Beziehung befand. Als sie mit Gary war, haben sich die Dinge enorm verbessert, aber sie fand sich immer noch in depressiven Episoden. Things, of course, only got worse after having three children with severe degenerative diseases.

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She felt alone, stressed, overwhelmed, judged, criticized and hopeless. As I outlined throughout this entire video, things reached a breaking point and she couldn't handle it any longer. Some have said that she killed her children to end their suffering, while some believe it was to end her own. I think it was a combination of both. Sie hatte den Stress des Ganzen und des Schlafs ihrer Kinder.

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Das hat ihr dazu gebracht, den Ausbruch zu erreichen und ihre eigenen Leben zu nehmen, bevor sie ihren eigenen nehmen wollten. Wegen dessen, nach Monaten psychischer Bewertung, kam die Verwaltung und Tanja zu einem Vertrag, ihre Mordschulden zu verlassen und sie stattdessen mit Mordschulden verurteilt zu werden, wegen ihrer verletzten Verantwortung, wegen ihrer mentalen Status.

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The prosecution in this case called it one of the saddest they have ever seen. Going through all the details that I brought you up to this point, family and friends as well as her husband Gary all spoke at her sentencing hearing to discuss how doting and loving of a mother Tanya was.

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Through all of this, Gary continued to support her, saying, My wife Tanya dedicated her life to loving and caring for our children and she always put their well-being before her own. The overwhelming responsibilities of this care took its toll on Tanya and led to feelings of despair and hopelessness, culminating in severe depression at the time of the incident.

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Some babies may not even survive being that premature. But thanks to advances in healthcare technology, many preemie babies can still live and grow outside the womb, eventually growing into happy, healthy children without many complications. Wegen dessen, wie früh sie waren, waren die Twins, Ben und Max, in intensive Care in Portugal für drei Monate, bis zum Oktober dieses Jahres.

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Ich kann sehen, warum sie fühlte, als hätte sie keine Privatsphäre. Ich kann sehen, warum sie depressiv war. Jedoch, die Argumentation der verringerten Kapazität bedeutet, dass sie nicht richtig von falsch wusste. Sie wusste nicht, was sie machte. Für mich wusste sie genau, was sie machte. Und sie wusste, dass es falsch war. Sie hat ihren Mann und Nanny gewarnt.

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Sie hat sich für ihre Aktionen verabschiedet. Ja, sie war in einem sehr vulnerablen und emotionalen mentalen Zustand, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass sie nicht wusste, was sie machte.

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Egal wie, wegen dessen wurde sie zu einem Psychiatriehospital gegeben, dem alten Bailey, wo sie bleiben würde, bis Profis glaubten, dass sie genügend mentale Unterstützung bekommen, die laut Mitarbeitern nur vier Monate nach der Erhöhung dieses Satzes kam. By March of 2015, she was seen at her home in New Malden with her only surviving child.

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The last I was able to find, she returned to living in the very home where she suffocated three of her four children to death.

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Und so abrupt wie es aussieht, ist das, wo der Fall heute steht. Und ich habe viele vermisste Gefühle über diesen Fall, wie ich sicher bin, dass viele von euch auch. Zuerst möchte ich sagen, dass es sehr schwierig ist, ein Kind mit einer Behinderung zu kümmern, auch wenn es drei ist.

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Und das kommt von jemandem, der für Kinder mit Behinderungen bei meinem Job kümmert, aber zu einem ruhigen Zuhause mit meinen Pferden kommt. Die Eltern, mit denen ich arbeite, kümmern sich um die Kinder, Ich verstehe den Stress. Ich verstehe die Unabhängigkeit von Privatsphäre. Ich bin selbst auch eine Pflegerin. Es gibt einige Familien, in denen ich alles über sie weiß.

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Ich verstehe und kann mit allem sympathisieren, was Tanja beschrieben hat, während dieses Verhältnis. Aber gleichzeitig denke ich, dass dieses Verhältnis zu einem gefährlichen Vorgang führt, das einfach nicht akzeptabel ist.

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People with disabilities are not just an inconvenience who need to be gotten rid of because they're suffering or because someone else doesn't understand them or what they're going through or because they're just too much to care for. Those children had a lot of issues, but it's not up to anybody else to decide whether they live or die. And that's what it comes down to.

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Stabil genug, um zu reisen, wurden sie dann zurück nach den USA transportiert, wo sie im Krankenhaus für einen weiteren Monat geblieben waren. Während all das passierte, stand Olivia und Thea mit Garys Eltern in Südafrika. Es war, als sie dort waren, als Baby Olivia mit spinal muscular atrophy oder SMA behandelt wurde.

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Because yes, they had severe disabilities. Yes, they were going to die prematurely. Aber was es in meinem Kopf hervorbringt, ist, dass niemand anderes die Entscheidung für jemand anderes machen kann. Ich kann nicht entscheiden, ob jemand anderes lebt oder stirbt. Ich habe diese Macht nicht und niemand anderes sollte das tun.

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Diese Kinder waren glückliche Kinder, die nur spielen und zur Schule gehen wollten und bei ihren Feiern waren. I feel like these children have been forgotten about in this case because all anyone wants to talk about is how Tanya was feeling and why she did this, including at her own hearings.

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And at the hearings that were supposed to be about the kids, they were talking about Tanya and why she did this and how she was feeling. I don't understand why she refused to get mental health help for herself. I don't understand why she didn't at least give the support groups a try.

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Es gibt Rettungskämpfe, es gibt Häuser für Kinder mit besonderen Bedürfnissen, wenn sie wirklich nicht für sie kümmern konnte. Es gibt Eltern, die bereit und bereit sind, besondere Kinder zu adoptieren, egal wie schwer sie sind.

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Ich weiß das, weil viele der Kinder, mit denen ich arbeite, mit adoptiven Eltern sind, die sie mitgenommen haben, weil sie eine Behinderung hatten, weil ihre Geburtstätten sie nicht kümmern konnten oder nicht kümmern würden. Es gibt so viele Möglichkeiten und es gab so viele Möglichkeiten.

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And I just feel like this was not considered enough when everyone was all, oh, poor Tanya, she had so much to go through, which again, she did. She was going through it, but she had a lot of other options. And I feel like when they were sentencing her, when they were considering the case at hand, they didn't think enough about what her other options were and why she continuously denied them.

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Again, I can agree with everything she felt, while still believing that what she did was wrong and still feeling that she deserved viel mehr Zeit als sie bekam. Sie hat drei Leben verloren und hat nur ein paar Monate im Gefängnis verbracht, dann ein paar Monate in einem psychischen Krankenhaus. Das ist nicht akzeptabel.

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Es gibt noch eine Sache, die ich bringen möchte, und es fühlt sich wie ein sensibles Problem an, ich kann es vielleicht heilen, aber es ist etwas, das ich denke, es ist wichtig, darüber zu sprechen, und es ist etwas, was ich euch alle wissen möchte, und das ist, dass es Möglichkeiten gibt.

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Zuerst, wenn du und dein Partner verabschiedet bist, solltest du eine Genetik-Testung machen, um herauszufinden, ob du oder dein Partner eine Genetik-Kondition haben solltest. Wenn du es bist, aufgrund dessen, was diese Genen sind und wie sie aussehen und wie sie verabschiedet werden, kannst du eine gute Idee haben, was zu erwarten ist, wenn du verabschiedet bist.

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Und wenn du verabschiedet bist, können sie eine Testung machen, um zu sehen, ob das Kind diese bestimmte Kondition haben wird. If you are at risk for having a child with a genetic condition, you can also get that child tested during pregnancy to see if the fetus will have any of those conditions. The choices you make based on that testing is your own. I won't get into that.

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But if you find out that you are going to have a child with any sort of condition, at least you will have more time to prepare and understand the complications of said condition. And it gives you time to consider any treatments for that child. Die medizinische Technologie verbessert sich sehr, sehr schnell. Es kommen so viele neue Medikamente, neue Therapien für bestimmte Bedingungen.

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SMA ist ein genetisches neuromuskuläres Verhalten, das die Muskeln im Körper verursacht, sehr schwach zu werden und zu starten, wegzuwerfen oder zu atrophieren. Es betrifft die Verlust von unteren Motorneuronen oder anteriösen Hornzellen, die verantwortlich für die Kontrollierung der Bewegung sind.

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Bei SMA gibt es bestimmte Medikamente, die man nehmen kann, die die Qualität des Lebens für jemanden mit dieser Bedingung drastisch verbessern können. Auch wenn du ein Kind mit einer bestimmten Bedingung hast, Wenn du es während der Geburt findest und wenn du die Kindheit behalten möchtest, wird es nicht eine totale Überraschung sein, wenn sie geboren werden und du wirst nicht verabschiedet sein.

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Und du wirst wissen, was du erwarten sollst. Du wirst wissen, was deine Optionen sind. Und wenn es bestimmte Medikamente gibt, die du versuchen kannst, kannst du sie so schnell wie möglich anfangen. Again, this case happened over 10 years ago and since then there have been so many advances in healthcare technology and pharmacology. Ask a doctor about your options.

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There are always new medications, new medical procedures, new techniques that can drastically improve the quality of life for many disabilities and other conditions. I admire you as well and I appreciate what you do every single day for your child because it is not for the faint of heart.

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But if you find yourself in a similar position as Tanya, just know that there are options and there is help out there. You just need to find it and accept it. But that is where I will leave that. You all heard the details of this case and my thoughts about all of it, so now I want to hear from you all. What do you think of this case and what do you think of Tanya's motive?

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Do you think she got the appropriate sentence or was it too light? Should she have been charged with murder and sentenced to prison? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week.

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Don't forget to turn that notification bell too on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google Forum, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week.

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Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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Ohne diese Neuronen können die Nerven nicht die richtigen Signale erzeugen, um die Muskeln zu bewegen. Was viele Leute nicht verstehen, ist, dass Muskeln für jede Art von Bewegung und Stabilität in deinem Körper verantwortlich sind.

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Und ich weiß, das klingt offensichtlich, als würdest du dein Arm oder dein Bein bewegen oder, weißt du, dein Körper generell, aber das betrifft Atmen, essen und nur still sitzen. Mit SMA hat die Spine nicht die Muskulatur, um sie in der richtigen Position zu halten, also beginnt sie manchmal zu kurven, als sie von der Gravität gedrückt wird, oft zu Skoliosen.

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Zerstören und Zerstören wird sehr schwierig, weil diese Muskeln sehr schwach sind. Außerdem denke ich auch, dass manche Leute denken, dass ihr Rippenbein sich nur wegen eurer Lungen bewegt, was wahr ist, aber es gibt auch viele verschiedene Muskeln, die mit Atrophie betroffen sind, z.B. eure interkostalen Muskeln, Skalinen und euer Diaphragm.

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Das größte Problem mit SMA ist, dass, wenn diese respektiven Muskeln anfangen, sich zu atrophieren, The respiratory system can no longer function normally. SMA is classified into five different subtypes, numbered 0 through 4, becoming less severe as you go up. Type 0 affects a fetus before birth, leading to limited movement of the fetus within utero.

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These babies will often go into respiratory failure within the first month of life. Typ 1 betrifft mehr als eine Halbzeit von SMA-Fällen, in denen Symptome in den ersten sechs Monaten des Lebens entstehen. Diese Kinder sterben oft vor dem Alter von zwei.

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Typ 2 entsteht zwischen sechs und 18 Monaten und diese Symptome betreffen progressive Muskelverlust, der eher ihre Beine als ihre Arme beeinflusst. Viele Kinder mit SMA2 werden sitzen und bewegen können, aber sie werden nicht bewegen können. Die meisten Kinder mit SMA2 werden bis 25-30 Jahre alt bleiben.

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SMA-Type 3 wird um die gleiche Zeit wie Type 2 auftauchen, aber diese Symptome sind weniger schwer. Sie erleben Schmerzen in den Beinen und Schwierigkeiten beim Gehen, aber sie entwickeln meistens keine Schmerzen beim Atmen, also ist ihre Erwartung auf das Leben ziemlich normal. Und letztendlich ist Typ 4 die mildeste Form von SMA, nicht bis nach dem Alter von 21.

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Muskelschmerzen prognostizieren sich sehr langsam, also haben die meisten Leute mit Typ 4 einen relativ normalen Lebensstil und die Erwartung auf das Leben ist nicht beeinflusst. So, Olivia, she was diagnosed with SMA Type 2, meaning that her legs will be the most affected. She may never be able to walk and is not expected to live past 30.

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This was already devastating news to hear about their precious new baby. Aber dann wurden sie mit yet another devastating blow getroffen. Im November 2010, als die beiden Jungs, Max und Ben, ihre Behandlung am Krankenhaus beendet hatten, wurden sie auch mit SMA-Type 2 verurteilt. Also, innerhalb von etwa einem Jahr, sind Tanja und Gary viel durchgegangen.

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Sie wollten ihre Familie wachsen, wollten ihre Kinder in die Erwachsenheit bringen, wie jeder andere. Aber jetzt haben sie sich mit der verdammten Realität befasst, dass drei ihrer vier Kinder mit einem schweren degenerativen Muskelschmerzen leben werden, das ihre Leben so bald nach dem Anfang nehmen wird.

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Nach diesem Zeitpunkt kamen die Familie alle nach Hause mit all diesen unerwarteten Veränderungen. Sie wussten, dass sie für eine Herausforderung tätig waren, aber sie waren bereit, alles zu tun, was für sie gekommen wäre. Im August 2011 wurde die Familie von ihrem kleinen, leisen Zuhause in ein größeres, schöneres Zuhause in Wadsworth gewechselt.

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Sie brauchten viel medizinisches Equipment, um ihre Kinder zu unterstützen, aber sie wollten nicht, dass ihr Zuhause wie ein Krankenhaus aussieht. So optierten sie für eine bessere Wohnung mit mehr Raum, um ihre Bedürfnisse und Wünsche zu akkordieren. Sie hatten auch zwei Nannys, beide von denen als wunderschön und sehr hilfreich beschrieben wurden.

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Ihre erste Nanny war bekannt, um in allen Aspekten der Kinder zu helfen. Sie wuchs sehr nah an die Familie, manchmal hat sie die Jungs in ihrem eigenen Zuhause gesorgt, um Tanja eine Pause zu geben. Die zweite Nanny war ein Pflegeberater, der von der Pflegeagentur trainiert und überwiesen wurde.

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Das bedeutete, dass ihre Fee via den Regierungsabgaben bezahlt werden konnte, anstatt direkt von der Familie. Bald wurde ihr Leben ständig von Doktoren, Krankenhäusern und Therapiebescheinigungen, wo sie alle Art von Therapien und medizinischen Tätigkeiten bekommen würden. Tanja nahm ihre Kinder auf fünf Bescheinigungen jeden Tag, fünf Tage pro Woche.

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Sie wurden auch oft in Krankenhäusern befestigt. Jedes Mal, wenn eines dieser drei Kinder krank wurde, konnten sie in den Krankenhäusern für Wochen lang sein. In den meisten Tagen konnte Tanja nicht wirklich gute Zeit mit ihren Kindern verbringen, weil sie sich immer mit medizinischen Profis in ihrem Zuhause oder bei Abläufen befindet.

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Being the parent to one young child is stressful enough. But when you end up with four children, three of which who have very high needs, it can be absolutely overwhelming. That is how Tanya Clarence felt in her life. But what makes this case so unbelievable is that Tanya turned down countless offers for help. She put out a smile and told everyone around her, I've got this.

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Die einzige Zeit, die sie wirklich mit ihren Kindern verbringen konnte, war abends, wenn sie regelmäßig aufwachen würden, wenn sie mehr Aufmerksamkeit brauchten. Sie hat weiter gesagt, dass sie jahrelang keine volle Nachtszeit hatte und dass sie sogar vier Stunden Schlaf hatte, war ein rarer Luxus in ihrer Leben.

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Gary hat weiter gearbeitet, wieder einmal lange Stunden, oft auf Reisen, also war die größte Anwendung ihre Verantwortung. Als sie mit der Unterstützung von SMA in Kontakt kam und von einem Unternehmensmanager besucht wurde, Sie sagte, sie fühlte sich alleine und kämpfte. Aber sie sagte, sie wolle keine weiteren Heimreise, weil das Haus zu besitzt war.

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Die Leute um Tanja begannen zu fühlen, dass sie einige sehr niedrige Löhne in ihrem Gehirn erlebte. Sie wurde überwältigt, weit zu dünn gestresst und war ständig entspannt. Im Frühjahr 2012 sagte Tanja ihrer Generalpraktizistin, dass sie mit der Welt kämpfte und sich enttäuscht fühlte. Dieses Gefühl ging bis zum Ende von 2012 weiter, als sie ihrem Sozialarbeiter erzählte, dass sie überwältigt war.

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Natürlich wurde ihr die Therapie immer durch alles empfohlen, aber sie ging nie weiter damit. Dann, im Laufe des Jahres 2012, wurden diejenigen, die in der Kindertagesstätte beteiligt waren, wegen Tanjas Unkonsistenz mit Appointements und Meetings beschäftigt. Zum Beispiel hatte sie sechs Nachfolgebesuche in der Reihe für Olivia mit ihrer Generalpraktizistin verabschiedet.

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Nachdem das, waren die Jungs auch nicht für etwa acht Monate nicht gesehen. Jedoch wurde gesagt, dass Tanja und Gary die Therapien und Interventionen, die sie für die Kinder notwendig fühlten, auswählen wollten. Ihr Fokus war auf die Qualität des Lebens zu verbessern, nicht ihre Leben so lange wie möglich zu überwachen.

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Währenddessen werden viele medizinische Profis weiterhin alle möglichen Interventionen empfehlen, um ein Problem zu korrigieren, auch wenn das bedeutet, dass sie Zeit nehmen müssen, um sich zu retten. Im Grunde genommen, wenn es die Kinder schmerzen würde, wollte Tanja es nicht erreichen.

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Wenn sie nur ein paar Jahre auf dieser Erde hatte, wollte sie nicht einen einzigen Moment von einem Arzt heilen, zum Beispiel. Natürlich führte das zu einer großen Bedeutung zwischen Tanja und Gary und ihrem medizinischen Team. Als medizinisches Profi versuche ich immer, die Sicht der Eltern zu sehen, wenn es darum geht, für ihre Kinder zu behandeln.

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Ich verstehe nicht, dass ich ein Kind in Schmerzen sehen will. Das ist eigentlich etwas, mit dem ich viel in meinem Tagesjob beschäftige, weil ich primär mit Kindern arbeite, die Behinderungen haben. I am all for waiting it out to see if something improves or weighing the pros and cons of how much a certain procedure will improve quality of life.

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But I can say that I've definitely butt heads with some parents who refuse to get something done that I believe is needed. So I can see how this would happen in Tanya's situation and I can see how this would cause a lot of tension between her and her medical team. Around that time, by October of 2012, the family made another move into a home in Kingston.

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During their transition, the family worked with all the medical professionals involved in the children's care to transfer clinicians, appointments and make sure they kept up with all of their medical interventions. They also started setting up all sorts of adaptations in the home. They built a wheelchair accessible ramp, a chairlift to the stairs and an accessible door.

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Once they were moved in, care responsibility for the children's social care transferred to Kingston, which meant changes in basically the entire care team, including the general practitioner, lead professional and community pediatric team. The following month, they had a multidisciplinary meeting to get the ball rolling with their new care team.

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When the children were examined by the new clinicians, they noted that all of them appeared to be a bit underweight. They noted that Gary and Tanya were still grieving and Tanya especially appeared depressed, but was still refusing her own treatment. They noted that they needed to keep an eye on the children's weight as well as on the mom's attitude towards caring for her children.

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But she didn't have it. In fact, she started pushing people away for the sole purpose of carrying out the unthinkable against the very children she claimed to love so, so very much. Tanya and Gary Clarence are originally from South Africa. The pair met as university students, starting a loving relationship with one another before marrying three years later.

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A few weeks later, Olivia and one of the twin boys, I'm not sure exactly which one, it's not clear in the reports, but they were both admitted to the hospital for bronchitis and a chest infection respectively. At that time, it was noted that Olivia was severely underweight, being within the .4th percentile for children her age.

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Due to this, she was given a nasal gastric tube for feeding, which allowed her to gain some weight while in the hospital. Wegen dessen, wie untergewachsen sie war, haben die Ärzte eine Gastronomie für Olivia empfohlen. Das ist eine Prozedur, bei der ein Schmerz in den Stomach geschaffen wird, damit sie durch eine Tüte gefüttert werden kann.

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Das würde dafür sorgen, dass sie die richtige Nahrung bekommt, da sie klar nicht genug gegessen hat. This was not something that Tanya agreed to, though.

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She believed it was unnecessary and felt that the doctors were just treating Olivia like a guinea pig, trying to just do more and more surgeries, while her healthcare team noted that they felt that Tanya and Gary were unable to appreciate the long-term benefits that a gastronomy would have. For the weeks that followed, Tanya continued to reject the various therapy options being offered.

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Sie hat therapeutic play verabschiedet, um sie zu enrichieren und mentale Stimulation zu bieten. Sie hat den Nutzung von HKAFOs oder Hip, Knee, Ankle, Fuß Orthotics verabschiedet, die Braceletten sind, die man auf den unteren Beinen tragen kann, um jemandem mit schwachen unteren Beinen zu helfen, zu stehen oder zu gehen.

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Once again, she was butting heads with her care team, feeling that they were judging her and pushing for all these treatments that were just prolonging suffering rather than improving her current quality of life. Also during that time, a risk assessment was done to determine how Tanya was doing.

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During one of her visits to the GP, she acknowledged the stress that she was under, especially involving all of these medical appointments and constant therapies for the kids, people coming in and out of the house, all of that. But she assured them that she was happy. She was feeling stronger than ever.

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She didn't want medication, she didn't want therapy, and she didn't want to join a support group. None of this would be of any help to her and she was feeling just fine. By February of 2013, after meeting with the family multiple times and Tanya continuing to decline care, an interdisciplinary meeting was held to discuss concerns of neglect.

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They put together a letter and an information packet to provide further information regarding the care they needed and any support they could offer. A few weeks later, a team member went into the home where they discussed the concerns with Tanya and gave her this information booklet.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. So the case that I have for you guys today is definitely a wild one. It's definitely one of the most wild cases that I've ever looked into and you will understand why in just a bit, but I do want to warn you that it does get pretty bad. You are going to get very frustrated and you will honestly want to throw up

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He spent some time in jail before he was released on bond on November 19th. He spent some time in jail before being released on bond on November 19th. Now, I want to mention that John's lawyer was actually upset that he was held for a total of 11 days in jail because apparently it isn't considered to be a danger to society.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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And since he wasn't arrested in relations to Stephanie's actual disappearance, that this should not be considered when holding him in jail for these other charges. It's just crazy to me that a man who is found to have these disgusting images on his phone with a history of several domestic abuse allegations and is a suspect in a missing persons investigation somehow is not a danger to anyone.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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But thank goodness that the judge decided to monitor John and told him, don't use the internet while you're out, don't do drugs while you're out, and make sure to look for a job. Obviously this is atrocious, but it gets even worse as we go on with this case.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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So he was facing up to five years in jail for this, which is definitely not enough time, but police returned to his home about nine more times to continue searching. They took two electronic devices and were seen carrying out several more bags of items from his home.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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She was a part of a very close-knit family and even had grown up in the same house that her own mother was raised in. She and her family were pretty much always together and even when she was in her 20s, She loved hanging out with her parents and her sisters. When Stephanie was in high school, she played as Catcher on her school softball team.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, I don't know exactly what other items he took or what they found on these two electronic devices, but honestly, I don't even want to know because it was probably horrible. So, police also went to Facebook to investigate some of the disturbing things that were posted from John's account or an account thought to be John. The name on the Facebook was John Oz.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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But on Facebook, it had a profile picture of John Osbogen. So on July 5th, John Oz had posted a meme to a group called My Couch Pulls Out But I Don't that said, when she says, choke me daddy and you get carried away and now she's dead. And then it had a picture of Arthur with a shovel. Sorry, this screenshot is so blurry. It is the best one that I could find.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Another post from him to this Facebook group was a screenshot of text messages with the caption, how selfish is this girl? Again, I'm so sorry for how blurry these photos are, but the messages read as follows. Person one, I don't want to do anything. If you come, I want to watch TV and go to sleep. I'm exhausted. Last night you wore me out too much. Person two, that sounds horrible.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Person one, what do you mean? Sounds normal to me. Two, you know I hate that. I don't care. I hate that you want it every day. You don't give me a break. We don't have to have sex. No, but something has to happen to you. So? Exactly. Yes, this just sounds so selfish to me that she wanted to sleep after being exhausted from a very long day.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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But anyways, police, friends, family, and volunteers continuously searched everywhere that they could to try and find Stephanie.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, if you're kind of confused with the timeline, the search of John and having all of those other charges with the investigation into the Facebook messages and all that was happening simultaneously while all these people continued searching and police continued other routes in the investigation. They scoured the densely wooded areas between Stephanie's house and Tottenville

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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based on information that they had received early in the investigation. They had then moved on to search Long Pond Park in Richmond Valley in Staten Island with the help of the NYPD. So now the search had expanded across two states from New Jersey to New York. They decided to search a specific area because after tracking John's phone,

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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They had found that his phone was in this wooded area at about 3 a.m. and he was there for several hours on the night that Stephanie went missing. They used sniffer dogs, boats, helicopters to aid in the search but They didn't really find anything useful, but they went back to the same place several times to search over the months that followed.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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The family also went around trying to see if anyone knew anything and posted missing persons flyers with her face on them absolutely everywhere. Everyone still had a tiny sliver of hope that maybe she was still out there somewhere, but this entire time it was pretty much assumed that John did have something to do with it. and they were probably looking for a body.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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They still hadn't found anything connected to Stephanie whatsoever, but he obviously looked so suspicious that this was the only thing that even made sense. Officials were very public, with saying that he was their key suspect and John knew it himself.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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After graduating, she went to school for cosmetology and art. Eventually, after finishing up her schooling, she got a job as a waxing specialist at European Wax Center in Freehold Township

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He knew that what he was saying and what he did looked very bad, but they hadn't found quite enough evidence to move forward with any murder charges. They searched these areas several times and really did a thorough job. and did not waste any resource in doing so.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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They just needed to find something to finally go forward with the charges to make sure that they could actually get these charges through and not have a very flimsy case. However, like I said, this case just keeps getting worse and police would never get the chance to charge John with anything. On November 22nd, less than a month after Stephanie went missing,

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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John Osbogen's father found his 29-year-old son deceased in the garage of his parents' home after he had taken his own life by hanging. Police had actually been surveilling the home for quite a while and were stationed outside of the home already when his body was discovered, so his dad ran over to police to ask for help. but they could not revive him.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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And near his body, they found two notes that he had written. One was to his ex-girlfriend and the other was to his parents. So I will do my best to try and read these, but they are a little bit hard to read because the handwriting is kind of crazy. I also want to say that this one is incredibly upsetting, just like everything else in the case.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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The note to his ex-girlfriend reads, I love you so much, little lady. I miss you so much. I don't know what I was thinking when I effed up our relationship. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I tried to move on many times. I will never for another lady feel the way I feel for you. Recently, I tried to reach out to you. You got a restraining order. Why?

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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as a makeup artist at la artistry in jackson new jersey now stephanie was small but feisty she was only 4 feet 11 inches tall but that did not stop her from having an attitude stephanie was described as being tough strong-willed hard-headed and stubborn yet funny, sweet, and welcoming.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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At the moment, I felt my entire world ended. I really needed you in a huge way.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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look at the mess i created don't believe everything in the news i hope you're doing well i hope you're having an amazing life you deserve it not a day goes by where i don't think about you and ben the girl in the news with me was such a piece of s she hurt me over and over when i was already at my lowest she was a horrible person please help my parents with my funeral you're the only person that i've ever loved

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Sorry for everything. I wish I could go back in time and correct my mistakes, but I can't. Frowny face." So let's quickly talk about this note. He sits there and his last ever thoughts are to gaslight his ex-girlfriend into making her feel guilty for not wanting to get back with a man who abused her physically and probably emotionally.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He tried to guilt her into not being there for him when he was at his lowest, which was probably him referring to him killing his ex-girlfriend or the child but who knows. Then he asked that she help with his funeral when she clearly wanted nothing to do with him but now he's forcing her into an incredibly uncomfortable situation.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Then he went on to say only horrible things about Stephanie as if killing her wasn't enough. He had to go on to make sure this woman knew that Stephanie was a piece of who just hurt him. Yep. So the next note he wrote to his parents and I think his siblings, I'm not exactly sure who the other people are, I'm just assuming, But again, this note will make you angry.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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And it really just shows how much of a coward he was. So the note to his parents reads, Sorry about all of this craziness. I've been miserable for so long now. I had enough. Thanks for everything. I can't do life in prison. Most of what you hear is true, except for the child blank. I would never do that. I used the pics with me and blank for the funeral.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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That was the only time in my life that I was truly happy. I want to help plan everything with you. Tell her I'm sorry and I love her. She was so good to me. We had an amazing life. I effed it up. She really did do good for me. I dug myself into a deep hole. This is the only choice. I love you guys. Smiley face." So with this one, he kind of admitted that he killed Stephanie.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He didn't come out directly and say it, but he knew what was on the news. He also admitted that he's a coward. He then went on again to try and force his poor ex-girlfriend into helping him with the funeral. He then tried to lie about the other horrendous thing that he did, saying that he would never do that.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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So, for some reason, he was cool with everyone knowing that he killed a woman, but not with this. Now, I will mention that when he was being charged with this, his lawyer claimed that These pictures were somehow on his phone unintentionally. That's the extent to what I've seen reported, but I don't know about you, but I've never accidentally had pictures like this on my phone.

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I've never randomly had really disgusting internet searches like this. pop up on my phone. I don't think that pictures and internet searches like this ever just appear on someone's phone. I'm not great with technology, but I'm pretty confident that that's not how it works. He was a very sick, disgusting person and I feel bad for his family, but I don't feel bad for him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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She was a natural leader who was tough, but she had an ability to just make everyone feel like they belong no matter who they were. She was so inspirational and always did her best to try and acknowledge everyone's accomplishments and make them feel good and special. She loved children and animals and cared for them so much.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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I'm sorry if that's offensive to anyone, but I'm happy that he's not walking on this earth anymore breathing the same air as us. Although I bet he would have a pretty horrible time in jail because even prison inmates, even the worst of the prison inmates, don't take kindly to someone who is responsible for abuse of children and people who murder women.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Plus, of course, I think it's incredibly responsible for people to take responsibility for their actions and it bugs me so freaking bad when people just squirm out of having to face anyone and facing the people that they wrong. So I guess I'm very conflicted with that, but I don't know.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, on the morning of January 27th of this year, authorities announced that the body of Stephanie Parrs had been found. She had been found in a forested area called Old Bridge, which is off of Route 9 and about 20 minutes away from her home. I guess this area had been previously searched without them finding anything. I'm not sure how.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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But it was two teenage boys who stumbled across her body and alerted authorities, giving even more people horrendous traumatic experiences to have to deal with for the rest of their lives. So I guess these two boys were 17 and 18 years old and had been walking down Route 9 to go to work. when they spotted something that appeared to be a mannequin about six feet away from the guardrail.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They said that her body was face down and was really close to the road, but it was not visible to drivers, only pedestrians. So you can imagine that not many people would have seen it because not many people are probably walking down that road. But of course they were horrified when they realized that it was in fact a real human body and not just a mannequin.

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They called police who showed up within minutes. her body was partially decomposed so they needed to perform an autopsy to confirm that it was her but of course it was actually her during the same press conference where they announced this on the 27th they announced that they are pretty certain that john alone is responsible for the death and that no one else is thought to be involved whatsoever.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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It was said that they haven't determined an exact cause of death yet, but I do think that it will be very telling when we do find out this information. So using John's past history with women and those text messages that he posted to Facebook where it's assumed that he was texting Stephanie, which we don't know for sure, but this person is saying that they don't want to sleep with him and then

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How does he respond? He says that she's selfish and he can't possibly see her side. He only thinks of himself. I think that he possibly could have gone to Stephanie's place to sleep with her, but she didn't want to. I think that he may have gotten angry and then tried forcing himself on her.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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I think that when he did so, he was too violent and accidentally killed her, or maybe he did it on purpose, or maybe he just got angry that she wouldn't sleep with him. And then just got angry and hurt her straight up. That's why I wish that we knew the autopsy results, which I know we will be getting eventually. And I hope they release them soon.

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And if they do, I will let you guys know as soon as I know. But either way, whether we know exactly how it went down or not, we know his history. We know that he is a sick person. disgusting person. I think he probably got angry about something that she did.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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She loved art and makeup and was just so creative and talented at what she did. Now, on Wednesday, October 30th, 2019, Stephanie and her family went to a psychic medium in New Brunswick for a girls' night out. They got home to where her parents lived at around 10 p.m.

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I mean, we know how disgusted he was with her and how little he thought of her according to the note that he wrote, and then I think he hurt her. Whether it was out of anger or because he just wanted to, it really doesn't matter. My heart absolutely breaks for Stephanie's parents. I cannot even imagine what they've gone through.

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They were so close and after Stephanie's disappearance, her mother did everything right, but there was nothing more that she could have done. I have watched her dad talking about all of this and you can just feel his devastation. He lost his firstborn daughter.

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This man that she was seeing who, by the way, her family barely even knew, he ripped her away from her family who she was so close to and everyone else who loved her. And for what reason? We don't know. He never had to face them. He never had to stand in front of a judge and and take responsibility for what he did and explain why he did it.

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He never had to take responsibility for the things that he did to children. Until his last breath, he sat there and bashed Stephanie and blamed her for everything. It was clear to me at least that he did have feelings for Stephanie or at least something because he wouldn't let her break up with him and he wouldn't take it off of his Facebook that he was in a relationship with her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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I mean, obviously it does go to a point where he could have just wanted to control her and he does seem like that type of person. But either way, he obviously didn't think so lowly of her that he didn't go out of his way and want to see her and send her multiple text messages saying, you make this relationship suck when there was no relationship.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He is the one that wanted to force her to stay with him. yet he acts like she was such a terrible person who just did these awful things to him. That's why it pisses me off so bad that he doesn't have to take any responsibility. He doesn't have to sit in jail and think about how disgusting he is.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Again, not only for killing this beautiful young woman who had so much potential, but for his disgusting repulsive sexual crimes against innocent little children. He never has to take responsibility for either. He is selfish for taking his own life, and I don't care if anyone disagrees with me.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Then, Stephanie left by herself to go to her grandmother's house on Meadowbrook Lane, which was about a 10-minute drive away from her parents' house and where she had been living since her grandmother passed away the previous year. Her mother told her to call and text her when she got home safe, and as she was driving home, She sent a Snapchat to her family, which was of her driving home.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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I said it earlier that I'm glad that he is not a breathing, living waste of human life, and I am, but it still pisses me off that he never even had to face anyone, and he took the coward's way out. And I'm sorry again if that offends anyone, and that is not the case for every person who takes their own life, but for this case, it definitely is.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He didn't take his own life because he was struggling with something internally. He did something horrible and he didn't want to have to take responsibility for it. He died thinking that what he did wasn't that bad and that this woman just wouldn't accept him when he was at his low point.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He died thinking that Stephanie was in the wrong because she was mean to him, not even acknowledging that he hit multiple women and that he was a horrible person. It pisses me off that our justice system, who knew that he was a woman abuser and a child predator, let him out of jail and allowed all of this to happen.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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It's a colossal slap in the face to everyone, including his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie, and those children that he was let out and considered not a danger to himself and not a danger to anyone else. I just wish his ex-girlfriend got a chance to tell him, no, I will not be a part of your life because you hit me. Your actions are wrong. I wish that Stephanie's parents got the chance to tell him

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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how much of a piece of actual human garbage that he is for what he did to their daughter. I wish that he had to hear everything that everyone had to say about him, about how much of a monster he was, so he could finally realize that no, it's not everyone else that's in the wrong. It's him. It's not these innocent women that he abused that are in the wrong. for not accepting him.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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I wish his family had to sit there and see him getting charged with the child so they know how disgusting he is. So he had to live with the fact that his parents know how repulsive he is. But no, he took his own life. He doesn't have to watch his parents find out what he's done.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He just died hoping that his parents believe him about the child porn stuff and he died thinking that he didn't do anything wrong and that his parents still saw him a certain way. He doesn't even have to face Stephanie's family for what he did to their daughter.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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It just breaks my heart for Ed and Charlene, not only because of what he did, but because he will never receive the consequences that he deserves. Ed and Charlene are so very strong to this day they are happy that they at least have her body to put her to rest.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Ed called those two boys that found her bodies angels sent from heaven and he is so grateful that they just happened to find her, which just goes to show how strong they are, how appreciative they are of everything. Ed said, quote, Stephanie is home. She's coming home at last right where she belongs and we have God to thank. There are just so many injustices in this case and so much heartbreak.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He had been accused of assault from multiple women and he was found to be a child predator and he was a suspect in a missing persons investigation. He should have been in jail long before Stephanie even went missing for beating so many women. He also shouldn't have been let out of jail when awaiting for his trial. This should have never happened to Stephanie.

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But as abruptly as this is, this was the very last time that her family would see her alive ever again. Now, when I say that Stephanie and her family were extremely close, I am not exaggerating. Her and her parents would be in constant communication every single day, texting back and forth throughout the day.

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Again, my heart goes out to Stephanie's family and everyone who loved her. I know that Stephanie was an amazing, creative, and kind woman who just had so much potential to do so many great things in her life. And it's just so heartbreaking that she's gone. So that is all I have for today's case.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Obviously, I could rant on forever about how many things could have been done in this case that could have prevented this from even happening in the first place. but I'm sure you guys know by now and I'm sure hopefully you agree with a lot of it.

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This was actually a quite difficult case to look into and when I got the suggestion from the person who emailed this to me she actually gave me quite a nice rundown of everything in the case and I knew it was going to be a difficult one but I was just not expecting it to be this bad.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Thank you guys so much for listening to Stephanie's story and for sticking through with it with me, even though I know it was very hard to listen to. But that's where I'm going to leave it for now. If you liked this video, please make sure to leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put up new true crime and mystery videos every single week.

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Don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram. Both will be linked down below. If you have absolutely any case suggestions, please make sure to email them over to me at rachelshriningcases at gmail.com. With that, I hope you guys have a great week and I hope to see you next time. Bye!

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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So when Stephanie never texted her mother that night that she had made it home safely and still hadn't responded to her mother's text messages by October 31st the next day, Charlene immediately began to worry. She started frantically calling her and texting her all day that day, but they were all going unanswered.

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because I felt sick the entire time that I was researching, so I just wanted to put out a warning to you. If you're sensitive to more, I guess, graphic cases, then you might not want to watch this one. There's not a lot of violent details per se, but there's just a lot of information in this case that is just not pleasant to listen to whatsoever.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Charlene stopped by Stephanie's house twice that day to go in and check on her, but both times she saw Stephanie's white Hyundai Sonata sitting in her driveway. This was very strange to her mother because the first time that she drove by,

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It was about 4pm, but Stephanie was supposed to be at a babysitting job from 9 to 6, and she clearly wasn't there because her car was sitting in her driveway at home. The second time that she went by the house at around 8pm, she decided to actually go inside to see what was going on. This is when she found Stephanie's phone sitting on the side of the couch,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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which was already alarming because just like most of us, she didn't go anywhere without her phone. Her mother had also noticed that she had gotten a text from her babysitting job asking her if she was okay because she hadn't shown up. This pretty much confirmed that she missed her job and didn't even call into work to let them know that she would be missing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, real quick, I do want to mention that a few months before all of this happened, Stephanie was actually hospitalized from pneumonia, apparently from vaping. So because she had gotten so sick, she was out of work for cosmetology for a while and was doing a nannying job. taking care of a little eight-month-old baby girl. So this definitely is not something that she would have missed.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Not only was it her primary method of income at the time, but like I said earlier, she actually cared about this little girl. She loved children and she loved taking care of them. Plus, she had just started this job two weeks prior. So she would be getting her first paycheck that very same day.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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So she definitely would not have no call, no chode and miss her first paycheck when she was already low on money and hadn't been making money for quite some time. So anyways, Charlene did try to get into Stephanie's phone, but she wasn't able to. She wanted to see if there was anything strange in her phone, but she didn't have the password.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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So she just started reaching out to all of Stephanie's friends to see if anyone had seen her. and no one had except for one person. One of Stephanie's sisters had actually reached out to Stephanie's on-again off-again ex-boyfriend at the time, John Osbludgeon, to see if he had seen her and he did.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He said that he went to Stephanie's house the night that she went missing at around 10 pm and then he spent the night there and then he said when he got up the next morning to leave for work he said that she was still there. But after that, he said that he hadn't seen or heard from her all day and he too was very worried about her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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But the thing about John was that he actually had a very extensive history of domestic abuse. One of his past girlfriends had a restraining order out against him and he had been charged twice with domestic violence and Stephanie herself had reported him for domestic abuse that previous September saying that she had tried to break up with him, but he hit her in the head.

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and she was scared that he was going to hurt her again. And at the time of Stephanie's disappearance, he was in the middle of another court battle with yet another accuser. Also, with his story, it seemed a little bit strange because Stephanie's mom found her phone on the side of the couch. It was actually between the couch and the wall in the crevice.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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She always had her phone with her and probably used it as an alarm So she probably would have taken it to bed with her that night. So why would she have left her phone in the living room? This is also something that Charlene noticed when she went through the house. So that very same day, Charlene called 911 to report Stephanie missing.

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Also, this is a very recent case, so there are still bits of information that are missing. but we do pretty much have everything that we need to know. I also want to try something new where I cut out some words, some of the more graphic words. I've seen some other YouTubers do it where they just kind of cut as soon as they say, you know,

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, I find this 911 call very interesting and you will too when you listen because she sounds like such a smart woman and does not hold back when telling 911 exactly what she thinks and everything that she knows.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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a certain word, but then you can still understand what I am saying. That way I won't get filtered through and automatically demonetized. I don't know if that will work, but I just wanted to try it for at least one video. So if there are random little times where the sound cuts out for just a second, that's why, and I just wanted to let you know.

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So because of the fact that Stephanie had gone missing so abruptly and was involved with this man who had such an extensive history of domestic violence, investigators immediately set out to search for Stephanie and named John as a person of interest pretty quickly to get all of the warrants that they would need as fast as possible.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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Now, John Osbogen was a 29 year old stock broker who worked at a Staten Island brokerage firm. but was fired and was out of work at the time of Stephanie's disappearance. Due to all of the suspicious circumstances and because of the fact that he was the last person who claimed to see her alive, police were able to pretty quickly get a search warrant to dig through his phone.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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It didn't take long before police discovered that John had sent 10 very angry texts and Facebook messages over a span of nine minutes to Stephanie the night that she went missing while she was just out trying to enjoy herself with her family. I couldn't find exactly what all of these text messages said, but as you can imagine, these text messages were very nasty.

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But with all of that being said, let's just get into today's case. Today, we are going to be discussing the case of Stephanie Pars. Stephanie Pars was only 25 years old when her life was selfishly ripped away from her. She was the oldest of four sisters and grew up with them and her parents, Charlene and Ed Pars, in Freehold Township, New Jersey.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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He called her some very horrible names and basically said, like, you are just making this entire relationship suck. Why do you have to make everything suck all the time? Which, with that, I want to mention that he still had himself and Stephanie listed as a relationship on Facebook, but Stephanie listed herself single on her Facebook.

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I also saw that when questioning John, detectives noticed that he had marks on his neck. So obviously that stood out as very strange to them. So the next thing that they discovered on John's phone is absolutely horrific. And I know a lot of you will be very upset when you hear it. So I just want to warn you now that even just reading this made me absolutely sick to my stomach.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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So, while searching John's Google search history, detectives found two searches on his phone related to child pornography. They found images like this on his phone with nine images showing children as young as three years old being sexually abused in his phone.

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SOLVED: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie Parze

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I'm sorry, but that just makes me so freaking upset and I literally just want to throw up just saying it and I can't even imagine how freaking disgusting you have to be to want to have that on your phone. Sorry. I just, I can't even imagine because it's just so freaking horrible. But because of this, on November 8th, he was arrested in his home and charged with having these images.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Sie hat mehrere Schmerzen zu einem Vertebrat, einem Rippen und ihrer Skapula getroffen. Sie hat auch eine Bluttransfusion benötigt und hat mehrere Arbeiten durchgeführt. Sie hat auch menschlich stark beeinflusst, wie ich weiß, dass alle, die daran beteiligt sind. Sie sagte aber, dass sie jeden Tag mit der Leidenschaft lebt, dass sie überlebt hat, während drei Kinder nicht überlebt haben.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Jetzt, dass ihr die horrifizierten Auswirkungen dieses Angriffs kennt, gehen wir zurück zu dem Moment, als der Offizier sich drinnen gesteckt hat und den Anwalt über B.B. Kings Körper gestanden hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Natürlich wurde er sofort verhaftet und in die Gefängnis genommen, wo er die Fragen des Offiziers nicht beantwortet hat, obwohl er reportedly einige Kommentare gemacht hat, wie ich froh bin, dass diese Kinder tot sind. Es macht mich glücklich und es ist eine gute Sache, dass diese Kinder tot sind.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Zuerst wurde seine Identität nicht öffentlich veröffentlicht, weil die Person, die für diesen Angriff verantwortlich war, damals eigentlich ein Miner war. Ja, das ist richtig. Ein Teenager war verantwortlich für diesen horrenden Angriff. Aber nachdem er offiziell verurteilt wurde, hat ein Gericht beurteilt, dass der Verurteilte öffentlich identifiziert werden könnte, weil sein 18.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Geburtstag nur eine Woche nach dem Angriff war. So again, a week before this kid's birthday, he carried out the attack. Either way. Then 17-year-old Axel Rudicabana was identified as the person responsible for the attack and was charged with three counts of murder, ten counts of attempted murder, and possession of a weapon.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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By this point, many people who were reporting on the case had been spreading false information. Es wurde berichtet, dass die Person, die in den Angriffen war, ein Asylbeherr war, der ein Jahr vorher ein kleines Boot in das Land eingefahren hatte, aber das war tatsächlich nicht wahr. Trotz dessen wurde eine Demonstration am 31.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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Um 11.45 Uhr am Morgen waren die Kinder am Tisch, singten und machten Freundschaftsbraceletten, als plötzlich ein Mann in den Raum kam, mit einem grünen Hoodie und einem Gesichtsmaskin. Er war mit einem 20 cm langen Küchenknife und ohne ein Wort zu sagen, Er nahm das Kind am nächsten zu ihm und begann, sie immer und immer und immer wieder zu töten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Juli gehalten, in der Protestierende Flaschen und Kanten an Offiziere begonnen haben. Diese Demonstration resultierte in über 100 Angriffe. Für die folgenden Tage brachen mehr Proteste und Demonstrationen in vielen anderen Städten mit dem gleichen Wort, genug ist genug.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Proteste glaubten, dass der verantwortliche Mann ein illegaler Immigrant war und beantragten, dass die Grenzen geschlossen werden. While I do understand why so many people were so pissed at the situation, I would be too. I am pissed. The information about it being an illegal immigrant just was not true. Turns out, Axel Rudacabana was born in Cardiff, Wales on August 7th, 2006.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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He is the son of a refugee from Rwanda, but he was born and raised in the UK. When he was six or seven years old, his family then moved to Banks, Lancashire, which is located near Southport. Als Axel ein Kind war, war er beruflich ein Modellstudent, der gut in den Klassen gearbeitet hat und an Stage-Performanzen teilgenommen hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Er starb einmal sogar als Dr. Who in einem Trailer für Kinder in Bedrohung. Jedoch, als er nach der Hochschule kam, begannen sich einige interessierende Verhältnisse. Als er nur 13 Jahre alt war, wurde er mit einem Kniff in die Schule gefangen, weil er sagte, dass er verhaftet worden war. Dies wurde den Polizisten berichtet, zu denen er mit dem Kniff verhaftet worden war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Als Resultat arbeiteten die Offiziere mit der Schule, um ein körperliches Kind zu anderen Organisationen zu informieren. He was then expelled from the school and sent to a referral unit called the Acorn School in Ormskirk. According to their website, the Acorn School was developed to provide an enriching educational environment for students who experienced difficulties in regular school.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

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They are focused on allowing students to assess their difficulties, build self-esteem and develop meaningful relationships. However, by December of 2019, he actually showed up unannounced to his old high school range high school with a hockey stick and started hitting other students with it, causing one student a fractured wrist.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Es brauchte einige Lehrer, um ihn zu überwachen und ihn von mehr Studenten zu stoppen. Als er endlich stoppte, wurde herausgefunden, dass er auch einen großen Küchenknopf in seinem Backpack hatte. Außerdem wurden andere Studenten berichtet, dass Axel Kommentare über einen massiven Schuss gemacht hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1263.867

Als Resultat dieses Attacks wurde er verhaftet und verurteilt mit Verbrechen, die körperliche Schmerzen verursachten, der Beziehung zu einem Waffen und der Beziehung zu einem bladed Artikel. Er war verurteilt für diese Angelegenheiten und verabschiedete die Anforderungen für seine Entschuldigung im Jahr 2021.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1279.574

Auch im Zeitraum dieses Angriffes wurde ein Anruf an die Kinder- und Sozialhilfe und den Kinder- und Jugendlichen-Mental-Hilfe-Service gemacht. Im April 2021 begannen andere Schüler und Lehrer, von Axel mehr über Internet-Aktivitäten zu bemerken.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1294.619

Eine Lehrerin hat bemerkt, dass Axel zwei Internet-Tabeln geöffnet hat für Suche nach den 2019en London Bridge Terrorismus-Attacken, bei denen Usman Khan zwei Cambridge-Universitäts-Studenten verurteilt hat. Wegen dessen hat die Lehrerin einen Anruf gemacht zu der Nationalen Anrufsform PREVENT oder PREVENT.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1315.076

PREVENT ist eine Form, in der man Menschen informiert, die ideologische, persönliche oder soziale Faktoren zeigen, Das kann jemanden zu einer Radikalisierung verursachen. Im Grunde ist der Ziel, Menschen zu stoppen, die Terrorismus unterstützen oder Terroristen werden. Nach der Beobachtung ging es aber nicht weiter, weil Axel keine terroristische Ideologie unterstützt hatte. Am 30.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1337.592

November 2021 kamen die Polizei zu der Wohnung, in der Axel mit seinen Eltern lebte. Es wurden Berichte gemacht, dass Axel während eines Arguments seinen Vater geschlagen hat und sein Auto beschädigt hat. Sein Vater wollte nicht, dass sein Sohn für den Fortschritt verurteilt wird, aber ein Offizier hat ein weiteres Verletzter-Kind-Referent gemacht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

135.377

Nachdem er die erste kleine Mädchen töte, ging er um die Zimmer und begann, jede und alle Kinder so violent und so schnell wie möglich zu töten. Natürlich hat dies einen absoluten Freizeit verursacht, mit den Älteren in der Zimmer versucht, ihre Besten zu retten, um so viele Kinder wie sie können. 36-jährige Leanne Lucas war einer der Organisatoren des Events und war in Bezug auf die Kinder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1356.585

Im März 2022 hat Axels Mutter die Polizei wieder einmal angerufen, um ihn zu verurteilen. Er wurde schlussendlich auf einem Bus gefunden, nachdem der Busfahrer die Polizei angerufen hat, dass er die Rechnung nicht bezahlen wollte. Als die Offiziere ihn konfrontierten, war er anscheinend verabschiedet und ließ den Bus ohne Anruf.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1374.095

Aber als die Offiziere seine Tasche nachgefragt haben, fanden sie wieder einmal, dass er einen Knall besitzt hatte. An dieser Zeit wurde der Offizier zurückgekehrt, der seiner Mutter sprach, dass er vielleicht vorsichtig war mit Axels Zugang zu Knallen in der Wohnung. Once again, with this incident, a vulnerable child referral was made.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1395.745

After this, there were a few more calls to police regarding Axels increasingly volatile behavior in the home. They were also called because he stopped attending school for a while, so concerns were raised there. More referrals were made concerning his mental health. Then finally, by around 11.10 a.m.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1413.424

on the morning of July 29, 2024, Axel hails a taxi, requesting to head to Hart Street near a spray shop. But once he arrives, he refuses to pay the driver. The driver asked once, cash or card, and is ignored by Axel, who is just looking down at his phone. The driver asks twice more, before Axel just gets out of the car.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1437.543

Nachdem das, kann man ihn direkt vor das Gebäude, wo das Tanzstudio ist, ansehen. An dieser Zeit trägt er einen grünen Hoodie mit der Hütte auf und einem Gesichtsmaskin. Er geht dann in das Gebäude, hört sofort die Taylor Swift-Musik, zusammen mit dem gläubigen Schreien und Lachen der Kinder. Es ist glaubt, dass er von diesem Event wusste und es spezifisch für den Angriff beantragt hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1503.177

Ich bin sicher, dass das Event veröffentlicht wurde und er wusste, dass er nahe gelebt hat, er hat es wahrscheinlich gesehen und er wusste, dass der Raum mit Frauen und Kindern gefüllt werden würde. Er hat sich davon gewöhnt, die am stärksten verletzten Ziele zu wählen, um seinen Angriff auszuhalten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1518.95

Er ist dann in den Tanzstudio eingestiegen und hat sofort das erste Kind, das er gesehen hat, gestoppt. Wieder einmal ist es glaubt, dass er dort mit dem Wunsch, so viele Menschen wie möglich zu töten, reingegangen ist. Menschen zu wählen, die sich nicht wirklich in seinem Geist verteidigen können. Er ist also im Grunde ein Verrückter.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1537.873

Wenn er nicht von den Lehrern und anderen guten Samaritäern gestoppt worden wäre und wenn niemand weggegangen wäre, dann hätte er alle 26 Kinder getötet. Das ist, was er gemacht hat und das ist, weshalb er dieses spezifische Event wählt. I won't rehash the details of what he did in those 15 minutes, but as we know, it was horrific. It was a brutal, frenzied, violent attack.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1560.91

After he was arrested and taken into custody, officers started searching his home to find any evidence they could. On the property, they discovered a machete, a knife that was identical to the knife used in the attack, as well as two tablets and an HP laptop. Auf diesem Laptop haben sie mehrere Suche- und Lesungsmaterialien über Gewalt und Genozid gefunden.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1584.293

Aus bestimmter Interesse haben sie Kopien des Al-Qaida-Trainings-Manuals gefunden, das Methoden des Tötens mit einem Knife beschreibt, z.B. wo die Verletzten attackieren. Dies zeigte, dass man mit dem Kopf und dem Nacken anfangen sollte, um schneller zu töten. Das ist genau das, was Axel getan hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

159.109

Sie begann, so viele Kinder wie sie konnte, und versuchte, aus diesem Raum mit diesen Mädchen zu kommen, aber als sie das tat, kam der Mann nach ihr und begann, sie auch zu stürzen. Sie wurde in den Kopf, Nacken, Rücken, Schulterblatt und Arm gestürzt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1600.891

Es gab auch ein PDF-File, das sich mit den Militärstudien und der Jihad gegen die Tyranne bezieht hatte. Unter seinem Bett fanden die Offiziere dann einen Tupperware-Kontainer, der eine unbekannte Substanz enthalten hatte. Dies machte die Anwesenden, ihre Suche zeitgleich zu stoppen, weil alles, was drinnen war, sehr gefährlich sein könnte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1619.669

Es wurde sofort für die Testung von Biologischen Kriegsexperten gesendet. Aber fast sofort nach dieser Erkenntnis wussten die Anwesenden, was es sein könnte. Auf Axels Laptop fanden sie ein Manual, das die Instruktionen dazu gab, wie Rizin zu produzieren, eine sehr gefährliche Toxin, die viele, viele Todesfälle verursachen kann, auch mit einer kleinen Anzahl und keine gewissen Heilungen hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1642.481

Based on Axel's internet history, it was discovered that on January 19th, 2022, he purchased castor beans, which contain ricin. Ricin can be extracted from the beans and turned into a powder or can be combined with liquid. It can kill someone if injected, ingested or even inhaled. Axel hatte ca.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1663.223

150 Kastorbeeren gekauft und die Bewertung bestätigte, dass er in der Prozesse war, die Ricin zu extrahieren. Es gab Kastoroil und Ricinpulver in diesem Tupperware-Kontainer. Die Verwaltung sagte, dass laut ihrer Expertin mit nur ein bisschen weiterer Purifizierung es von 1200 bis 2000 Leuten, wenn inhaliert,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1684.821

though I saw in one article that an expert argued that it could have killed more than 10,000 people if extracted properly with the amount he had. Just insane to think about. It also came out that about a week before the attack on the dance studio, Axel tried getting into a taxi to go to his old high school.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1705.353

He was wearing the same clothing he wore for the attack on the studio, but before he could leave, his dad came out and asked the taxi not to take him. We don't know if he planned on attacking students at the high school, but he was wearing the same clothes that he wore during the attack he did carry out.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1723.906

Then on the morning of the attack, he made sure to leave his family home before hailing a taxi to prevent his family from stopping him. After finding all of this evidence at the home, police announced that terrorism may have been the motive for this attack, but it's not 100% confirmed. I'll get more back into this later.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

174.821

Sie hat es geschafft, mit ein paar der Mädchen rauszukommen, aber sie hat sich gegen ihr Auto auf der Straße verletzt, sobald sie das Gebäude ausgeschlossen hat. Als das passiert war, hatte ein anderer Junge in der Raum, Heidi Little, mit den Mädchen auf dem Boden sitzen, Braceletten zu machen, als das Chaos ausbrach. As she saw Leanne being stabbed, she tried pulling her away but wasn't able to.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1743.741

Nach seinem Anruf, zusätzlich zu den Mörder- und versuchten Mörderverfügungen, wurde er mit der Produktion eines biologischen Toxins und der Besitzung eines Dokuments verurteilt, das möglicherweise nützlich für jemanden ist, der einen Terrorakt vorbereitet hat. Insgesamt verurteilte er 16 Verfügungen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1761.568

Am Anruf von Axel verabschiedete er sich, also wurde ein nicht schuldiges Anruf auf seine Behauptung eingeführt. Am 20. Januar 2025 begann sein Behandlung. An dem ersten Tag des Behandlungsdienstes änderte Axel seine Begegnung. Er war nicht schuldig für alle 16 Begegnungen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1781.013

In seinem Behandlungsgericht sprachen die Familien, die ein Kind verloren haben, über den schmerzhaften Schmerz, den sie erfunden hatten. Drei Familien haben eine so horrifische, tragische Verletzung erlebt. Siebenjähriger Elsie Stancombe, sechsjähriger B.B.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1795.355

King und neunjähriger Alice da Silva Aguirre hatten alle Familien und Freunde, die sie liebten und sie liebten und sie wurden permanent traumatisiert durch seine Aktionen. Diese drei kleinen Mädchen hatten ihre Leben von ihnen in so einer furchtbaren Weise zerbrochen. Ich kann nicht mal vorstellen, wie schrecklich sie sich in ihren letzten Momenten fühlten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1814.869

Dann die acht anderen Kinder und die zwei Ältesten, die von schweren Verletzungen verletzt wurden. Ihre Leben werden immer verändert. Viele von ihnen mussten durch viele Arten und Therapien durchgehen, um ihre normale Funktion zurückzubekommen, aber einige von ihnen werden nie wieder normal sein können. Einige werden von permanenten Schmerzen, Schmerzen und Verletzungen verletzt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1836.189

Und alle von ihnen werden sicherlich von dem emotionalen und mentalen Trauma, von dem sie durch das Leben leben müssen, verlassen. Sie müssen jeden Tag leben mit der Angst, dass sie getötet werden, ständig fühlen, als ob sie sich über ihre Schulter schauen müssen, von jeder Person, die vor ihnen kommt, Angst haben, weil man nie weiß, ob jemand dich verletzen wird.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1854.48

Selbst wenn sie überlebt haben, sind ihre Leben permanent beeinflusst und so sind auch ihre Familien. All das, weil jemand so viele Menschen wie möglich verletzt haben wollte. Nach dem Hören der vielen Verletzten in diesem Fall, sprach der Gericht auch über die Verbrechen. Wiederum ist es klar, dass Axels Motiv war, Schmerzen und Schmerzen zu verursachen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1874.147

Er wollte so viele Menschen wie möglich töten und hat dieses spezifische Event entschieden, weil er dachte, dass es am einfachsten wäre, nach den stärksten verletzten Verletzten zu gehen, Frauen und Kinder. Again, had he been allowed to fully carry out his attack, he would have murdered all 26 children and two adults in that room.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1891.319

They went on to say that Axel's actions are not considered terrorism under the legal definition because the attacks weren't carried out with the purpose to advance any sort of political, radical or religious ideology.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1902.79

Sie sagten, dass radikale Ideologien seine Entscheidung beeinflusst haben, den Angriff zu beheben, aber sie können nicht beobachten, welche Glauben ihn dazu führten, das, was er getan hat. Was er getan hat, hat Terror, Schock, Revolsion für das gesamte Land verursacht. Was er getan hat, hat Rituale, Proteste und Demonstrationen verursacht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1923.792

Was er getan hat, hat einen langfristigen Einfluss nicht nur auf die Familien, sondern auch auf die Gemeinschaft. Wegen all den aggravierenden Faktoren, waren die einzigen medizinischen Faktoren wirklich sein Alter und sein Gebet. Er war nur 17 Jahre alt an der Zeit des Verbrechens, nur eine Woche vor seinem 18. Geburtstag. Es ist jedoch nicht auf jemanden verloren, dass dies geplant war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

1947.259

Er wollte dies vor dem Erwachsenen vornehmen, um die leichteste Beurteilung zu bekommen. Und es sah so aus, als würde es funktionieren, weil sein Alter in seiner Verfügung war. Für die Mordbeschwerden erhielt er Lebensbeschwerden mit einem Minimum von 52 Jahren. Die versuchten Mordbeschwerden für die Kinder landeten ihm mit einem Minimum von 18 Jahren. This is my sentence for Axel Rudicabana.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

196.127

She and another little girl were able to escape the room and they went to a nearby bathroom where they hid. There were also a few other businesses nearby as well as a few houses. Natürlich begannen sie zu hören, die Verbrechung, insbesondere die schmerzhafte Schreie all dieser Kinder.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

20.372

Picture this, it's a warm summer morning. Your kids are up and they're excitedly getting ready for an afternoon of arts and crafts, music and playtime with their best pals. Sie haben sie verlassen, aufgeregt darüber zu hören, wie es später am Tag ging. Aber wenn Sie zurückkehren, finden Sie, dass Ihr Kind nicht eine lustige Party mit Freunden hatte. Anstattdessen wurden sie getötet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

211.873

Laut einem Beobachter, der nebenan arbeitete, waren das nicht die Geräusche von Kindern, die glücklich schreien und schreien, wie sie sie alle Morgen gehört hatten. Diese Schreie waren voller Schreie. Einer der ersten Anwesenden auf der Szene war 63-jähriger Jonathan Hayes, der direkt neben der Tür in dem selben Gebäude arbeitete.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2186.838

I don't know why it continues to surprise me how lenient the UK is in their sentencing, but come on. This man inflicted terror and violence on so many people, yet he will still have a chance at release one day. Yes, it will be when he's in his 60s or 70s, but guess what?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2205.443

Those three children will never get a chance to live that long, and the rest of his victims are left with permanent emotional and physical scars from what he did. Und noch dazu, er hätte tausende mehr Menschen getötet, wenn er die Chance hatte. Doch dieser Typ ist der Typ, den wir eventuell auslösen. Er verdient nichts weniger als Tod für das, was er getan hat, und ich stehe bei dem.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2225.976

Und ich hoffe wirklich, dass er in der Gefängnis stirbt und niemals, niemals mehr Menschen getötet wird. Was die roten Flaggen vermisst, ist natürlich, dass die Leute überrascht sind. Er hat so viele bemerkenswerte Verhältnisse gezeigt, aber noch nie etwas davon gemacht wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2239.389

According to the sources I found on this case, a review of the prevent program is underway, but we don't know the results of that yet. I also haven't seen anyone comment on how or why these red flags were missed, but clearly more should have been done.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2254.297

As for the more specific motive, I personally think that he probably was bullied growing up and this caused some deep-seated resentment and hatred towards others.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2266.284

i think that's where it started then he started getting more and more into these reading materials that just fueled his hatred and violence he started acting on it and getting in trouble but it really never led to much i think he truly wanted to hurt as many people as possible because he was hurt by others Ich denke, das Terrorismusmaterial hätte ihn zu einer radikalisierten Ideologie geführt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2292.37

Oder er hat es einfach gelesen, um zu finden, wie man so viele Menschen wie möglich schaden kann. Egal, ich denke, er hätte vielleicht an seine Hochschule gegangen, um sie zu schaden. Aber nachdem sein Vater ihn stoppte, hat er vielleicht mehr darüber nachgedacht und realisiert, dass er nach mehr körperlichen Gefühlen gehen muss.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2309.787

Menschen, die es einfacher sind, zu töten und zu töten, in so hohen Zahlen wie möglich. Und das ist das, was so wirklich zerstörerisch ist in diesem Fall. Und das ist das, was diesen Mann, oder Kind, ich glaube, oder Teenager, oder was auch immer, er ist jetzt ein Mann, glaube ich, aber das ist das, was ihn so ein Verrückter macht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

232.569

Er sagte, dass sobald er den Anruf hörte, er rief, um zu sehen, was los war, und sobald er die Tür öffnete, sah er eine kleine Mädchen, die komplett auf dem Boden lag, in Blut gefüllt und deutlich verletzt. Dann wurde er mit dem Anwesenden getroffen. Er beschreibt, dass der Mann sich umgekehrt hat und die zwei geschlossene Augen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2327.381

Wie ich schon gesagt habe, haben seine Aktionen so viel Schmerz und Schmerz geführt, dass ich es nicht mal in Wörtern sagen kann. I just hope that this case can serve as an example to others that red flag behaviors need to be taken more seriously. I hope the people who have been impacted by his actions can find a way to heal and move on with their lives despite what they've been through.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2349.224

Aber ihr habt alle gehört, was ich denke, und jetzt möchte ich eure Gedanken hören. Was denkt ihr über diesen Fall? Was denkt ihr, was sein wahrer Motiv war? Und was denkt ihr über die roten Flaggen, die verpasst wurden? Und was denkt ihr über seinen Satz? Glaubt ihr, dass er jemals entlassen wird? Lass uns darüber diskutieren und welche Gedanken ihr habt in den Kommentaren unten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2367.532

Wenn euch dieses Video gefallen hat, dann lasst gerne einen Daumen nach oben und abonniert meinen Kanal. Ich veröffentliche neue Verbrechen und Geheimnisse jedes Wochenende. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. All will be linked down below.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

2386.901

And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

251.808

Und obwohl der Attaker-Face meistens geschlossen war, konnte er nur diesen bedrohlichen Blick in seine Augen sehen. Das nächste, was John weiß, ist, dass der Mann an ihn kommt und sie beginnen zu kämpfen. The attacker is flailing his knife around while John is just trying to get him off of him. In the midst of it, John felt a sharp shooting pain in his leg, which caused him to fall backwards.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

276.345

He had suffered a deep stab wound to his leg. He tried kicking at the attacker, but he ultimately did get away. But as John was grappling with the attacker, many of the children in that room managed to escape. Währenddessen hat einer von Johns Kollegen sich auch in den Raum gerufen, wo er begonnen hat, die Kinder unten und draußen zu holen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

301.201

Die Nachbarn in der Gegend sind auch angefangen, rauszukommen, um zu sehen, was da los war und was sie sah, war furchtbar. One witness described seeing children lying on the ground, also covered in blood with horrific injuries all over them. Multiple people came out to carry the girls away from the scene, with one of the neighbors harboring a few girls within their home.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

325.446

Others started bringing towels, water and whatever other supplies they could think of to help the situation. And of course, many of them had already called police by this point.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

43.52

Unabhängig von einem Maniac, dessen einzigartiges Ziel es war, Ihr und jedes andere Kind dort zu schaden. Das ist, was fast 30 verschiedene Familien am 29. Juli 2024 erlebt haben. Heute ist wahrscheinlich einer der am meisten tragischen und schmerzhaften Fälle, die ich jemals besprochen habe. Ich weiß, dass ich das oft sage, aber vertraut mir, das wird ein hartes Hören sein.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

435.089

Another witness, Joel, describes hearing the chaos and noticing that men were carrying children out of the building. Some of the children appeared unconscious and again they were covered in blood. According to him, he went to run inside the building when he saw the woman slumped against the car. She told him what was happening and she said that she had managed to call 911 who was on their way.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

459.261

Er schaute dann in die Fahrt, auf der sie verletzt wurde, und dort sah er vier oder fünf Mädchen, alle in der Rückseite, auf dem Weg, um Hilfe zu bekommen. Dann sah er eine andere kleine Mädchen, die auf dem Boden war, klar in Bedürfnis von Hilfe. Er beschreibt, sie zu holen und zu versuchen, das Blut zu stoppen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

478.229

Sein Freund kam dann ein und versuchte CPR auf die kleine Mädchen, als Joel seinen Weg in das Gebäude machte. Once on the staircase he met eyes with the man responsible for this disaster. Joel describes that after the man saw him, he scurried away back inside the room. Once again he described the attacker as wearing a hoodie and carrying a knife.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

500.84

Joel sagte, dass er für einen Moment, nachdem er den Anwalt gesehen hat, gefroren ist. Er sagte, dass er wünschte, dass er sich nicht befreien würde, aber du weißt nie, wie du in einem Moment so reagierst. Aber nachdem er gekommen ist, hat er das Gebäude verlassen und rausgefahren, um etwas zu suchen, das er als Waffe verwenden könnte. Aber bei diesem Punkt kamen die ersten Anwesenden endlich.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

525.132

Es dauerte 15 Minuten, um dort zu kommen. Als die ersten Anwesenden in das Gebäude kamen, sahen sie den Anwesenden, der auf den Körpern eines der Kinder stand. In diesen 15 Minuten konnte der Anwesende drei Kinder töten, noch acht Kinder zerstören, sowie zwei andere Ältere, die versucht hatten, die Kinder zu retten. Nur zwei Mädchen schafften es, im Chaos zu fliehen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

550.08

Es scheint, dass nachdem alle anderen geschlafen sind, der Anwalt zurückgekehrt ist und die beiden Mädchen, die drin geblieben waren, weitergegriffen hat. Die dritte Verletzte, die gestorben ist, hat es geschafft, draußen zu kommen, aber leider konnte sie nicht gerettet werden. Nun werde ich euch über einige der Verletzten in diesem Angriff erzählen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

565.369

Die drei Mädchen, die verletzt wurden, waren siebenjährige Elsie Stancombe, sechsjährige Bibi King und neunjährige Alice Da Silva Aguirre. 7-jährige Elsie wurde von ihrer Familie als eine außergewöhnliche kleine Frau beschrieben. Sie hat sich jeden und jeden Tag mit ihrer Mutter, Vater und kleinen Schwester Rosie entschieden, ihre Leben zu genießen.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

589.521

Sie war freundlich und hat ihre Mission gemacht, sich für die Menschen um sie herum zu kümmern. She was talkative, outgoing and loved parties and celebrations. She was the type of child who connected so well with others and was able to hold a meaningful conversation even with adults. She was wise beyond her years, emotionally intelligent and an absolute joy to be around.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

611.221

Elsie hat von mindestens 85 Schmerzschmerzen zu ihrem Kopf, Nacken, Gesicht, Torso und oberen Beinen getroffen. Sie wurde so, so viele Male gestabbt. Sie war in einer Art und Weise furchtlos.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

68.278

Es war ein wärmer Sommerstag am 29. Juli 2024, als 26 Kinder, alle zwischen den Jahren 6 und 13, an der Heart Space Studio auf Heart Street in Südport England für einen Taylor Swift-themed Tanz- und Yoga-Workshop zusammenbrachten. Die Kinder kamen alle um 9.30 Uhr am Morgen, alle glücklich und aufgeregt, ihre Körper zu ihren Lieblingsmusiken zu bewegen.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

683.336

6-jähriger B.B. King hat die größte Brutalität in diesem Angriff erlebt. Ihre Eltern beschreiben sie als ihre Licht und Freude. Sie war eine spezielle kleine Mädchen, die sie wusste, dass sie so viele tolle Dinge mit ihrem Leben machen wird. Sie war reich, furchtlos und so, so süß. Sie hat ein Total von 122 Schmerzschmerzen auf ihr Kopf, Nacken, Gesicht, Torso und Arme getroffen.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

708.507

Es war die Meinung des medizinischen Bewerbers, dass der Anwalt tatsächlich versucht hat, sie in den Angriff zu beheben. Nur horrifisch. Sie war eine wunderschöne, lustige, verrückte, wunderschöne Frau.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

780.232

Since day one, we've said to each other, we have to live for her. Nine-year-old Alice Da Silva Aguirre was known to be a happy, bright little girl. She loved spending quality time with her parents whenever she could. She was the only child, so she truly was the light of her parents' lives. They would go to friends houses every weekend and go out for meals in the evenings.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

806.047

She had started ballet dancing when she was just 16 months old and continued on from there. Outside ballet, she started cheerleading and once she was in school, she joined the choir. She was truly so, so very loved by everyone who knew her.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

845.663

Alice war die kleine Mädchen, die es schlug, das Gebäude auf der Wand zu zerstören. Sie bekam CPR und wurde in den Krankenhaus gerettet, wo sie für mehrere Stunden unterging, jede und alle Tätigkeiten möglich. Aber leider, so sehr tragisch, hat sie es nicht geschafft. Um 1.20 Uhr am nächsten Tag, ist sie von ihren Schmerzen gestorben.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

869.642

Sie wurde viermal zu ihrem Rücken gestoppt und hat eine Schmerzschmerze an ihrem Kopf erlebt. Die anderen Kinder im Angriff wurden nicht genannt, aber ich werde euch einige ihrer Verletzungen erzählen, damit ihr die Schwierigkeit des Angriffs vollständig verstehen könnt. Die nächste Verletztin, C1, war nur sieben Jahre alt. Sie wurde drinnen gestoppt, aber es gelang ihr, zu fliehen.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

890.401

But as she got outside, CCTV footage captured the attacker grabbing her and pulling her back inside. How truly terrifying that must have been. She suffered a total of 32 stab wounds, 23 of them being to her back and arms. After being stabbed, she managed to escape once again, collapsing outside on the sidewalk. Thankfully, again, she did survive.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

90.774

Für die fast zwei Stunden, die folgten, war jeder in dieser Party, insbesondere die Ärzte, die die Kinder überwacht hatten, sich zu genießen. Aber diese Spaß und Freude würden bald mit absolutem Schreck getroffen werden. Eine gewaltige, brutalen Situation, die aus jeder der schlimmsten Träume herauskommt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

916.673

C2, 10 Jahre alt, wurde achtmal gestabbt, einmal an der Front ihres Körpers und sechsmal an der Rückseite, bevor sie es schaffte. C3 war neun Jahre alt und sie hat drei Stabschmerzen an der Rückseite getroffen. Sie hat auch von Schmerzen an ihrer Skapula, Rippen und zwei Spinalvertebraten getroffen. C4 ist acht Jahre alt und sie wurde viermal gestabbt.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

940.365

C5, 10 Jahre alt, hat zwei tiefen Stabschmerzen an ihrem Rücken und Schoß verursacht, die eine substanzielle internen Schmerzen verursachten. Sie musste eine Bluttransfusion und eine Surgerie durchführen, um ihre Spine zu entfernen, aber glücklicherweise hat sie es überlebt. C6 war 13 Jahre alt. Sie hat zwei Stabschmerzen verursacht, eine an ihrer rechten Schulter und eine an ihrem Rücken.

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SOLVED: THE LOST BOYS OF BUCKS COUNTY

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Sie hat auch zwei Spinalvertebrate verursacht und eine Bluttransfusion benötigt. Once again, all these children had managed to escape. Dann 36-jährige Leanne Lucas, die ich vorhin erwähnt habe, war einer der Organisatoren dieses Partys. Sie hat einen Total von fünf Stabschmerzen zu ihrem Nacken, Rückseite, Schulterblatt und Arm getroffen.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

1019.221

Sie hat auch gesagt, dass sie die Babys noch nie weinte, nachdem sie sie geliefert hat. Aber wie wir schon gehört haben, waren diese Babys gesund geboren, ohne Komplikationen. So, Detektives told Lindsay that the medical examiner was going to be performing an autopsy on those babies. And if anything else happened to them, the ME would find it.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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If they were hit, if they were drowned, shaken, smothered. The medical examiner would know. The detective told Lindsay, if there was more to the story they should know, she needs to tell them right away. She had been cooperative up to this point. They know she's a good person who maybe has made some mistakes. Wenn sie das Vertrauen zwischen ihnen behalten will, musste sie ihnen alles erzählen.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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By 2005, Lindsay went off to college at Western Kentucky University. But while there, her mother, Paula, was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that was the size of an orange. Obviously, this is a devastating diagnosis and required surgery to remove. After her mother had her surgery, her entire personality changed.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Es war an dieser Zeit, als Lindsay beurteilt hat, dass, als die Babys geboren wurden, sie tatsächlich einen Blick auf sie machte, und sie wusste ihr Gender. Sie hat sie nicht einfach rausgepumpt und sie in den Toiletten verlassen, ohne zu schauen. She said that when the first baby was born, he was crying a lot. So she put her hand over his mouth to try and keep him quiet.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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She said her hand wasn't there for too long and she specifically said that she didn't smother him. She just wanted to keep him quiet. So she put her hand over his mouth until he stopped crying. She then did the same with the second baby, though the second baby didn't cry as long as the first one. After saying that out loud, the detective basically summarized what she said.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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And she agreed at that time that she did kill those babies. She knew that putting her hand over their mouths would stop them from breathing. Sie wusste, dass sie sie nicht weinen lassen, weil sie sie nicht atmen lassen. Sie hat zwei sterbliche Babys getötet. Wie ich schon gesagt habe, wurden diese beiden Babys für eine Autopsie an die Krankenhausaufsicht gesendet.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Die ME hat herausgefunden, dass das gestationäre Alter dieser Babys 40 Wochen war. Das bedeutet, sie wurden sofort getötet. Beide Babys zählten 6,5 Kilo, wurden gesund geboren ohne Any Birth Defects oder andere Probleme. Seine Lungen waren gesund und aeriert, das bedeutet, dass sie wohnen und atmen, als sie geboren wurden. Sie waren nicht noch geboren oder so etwas.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Der medizinische Bewerber sagte, dass wegen der Tatsache, dass sie beide gesund geboren wurden, die Mannerung des Todes wahrscheinlich Homicide ist. Er glaubt, dass die Babys zum Tod geschmissen wurden. However, the lack of injuries to the twins made it so he couldn't say this definitively.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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It's possible that the way the babies were lying on top of each other in that toilet caused them to suffocate. It's also possible that the prolonged exposure to that cold toilet water could have caused them hypothermia, leading to their deaths. Babies can't regulate their body temperatures well, so that's also a possibility.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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However, the ME does believe that they were most likely smothered to death based on the autopsy as well as using what Lindsay told investigators. The ME also completed a DNA test and found that Jeremy Smith is in fact the father of these twins, not Lindsay's fiancé Jonathan. To me. In meiner Meinung, denke ich, dass Lindsay sehr gut wusste, wer der Vater ihrer Kinder war.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Und das ist Teil der Grund, weshalb sie ihre Geburt verabschiedet hat. Weil ich denke, wenn es Jonathan, ihre Freundin, war, würde sie wissen, dass ihre Eltern viel mehr akzeptieren würden, dass sie mit dem Mann, mit dem sie sich verabschieden, Babys hat. Natürlich hätte Jonathan wahrscheinlich ziemlich gespannt gewesen.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Aber ich denke, sie wusste, ob sie es sicher wusste oder nur in der Rückseite ihres Herzens. Ich denke, sie wusste, dass Jonathan nicht der Vater war. Aufgrund von allem, was wir bis jetzt diskutiert haben, war Lindsay letztendlich verhaftet und verurteilt, mit zwei Zähnchen jeweils von vordergrößtem Mord. and aggravated child abuse. The trial started by September of 2013.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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She had once been a homemaker who took care of the kids, the house and her husband while also working her own job. But after the surgery, she could no longer take care of basic household duties such as cooking, cleaning, organizing or even making financial decisions. Sie ging durch starke Mood swings und war einfach nicht die gleiche Person, wie sie vorher war.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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The prosecution was arguing that Lindsay found out that she was pregnant and instead of doing anything about it, she chose to ignore it, pretend that it wasn't happening. She hid her pregnancy from everyone until she simply couldn't hide it anymore. While pregnant, Lindsay never intended on caring for those babies. As I stated before, despite knowing she was pregnant,

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Es gab kein Zeichen einer Präparation in ihrem Haus. Keine Stiefel, keine Kugeln, nichts. Als die Präparation weiterging, wusste sie, dass sie diese Babys in einem oder anderen Weg entfernen würde. Als die Zeit kam, dass sie ihre Präparation nicht mehr verstecken konnte, hat sie diese Babys getötet, weil sie nicht wollte, dass sie verheiratet war.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Several friends, co-workers and family members all testified at trial. Her sister said that she did notice Lindsay gaining a little bit of weight during her pregnancy, but said that she had always fluctuated with her weight all throughout her life, so she didn't think anything of it. She had no idea she was pregnant. Same goes for co-workers. She was always wearing scrubs and a jacket.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Und auch wenn sie Gewicht bekam, sah sie nicht krank aus. Dann, als es um das Gebäude ging, in dem sie war, hat sie das Kleid, das sie vor neun Monaten angetrieben hatte, noch immer angetrieben, obwohl sie neun Monate krank war. Sie hat sich auch vor den anderen Bridesmaiden verändert und hat den ganzen Wochenende mit ihrer Freundin verbracht, sogar ein Bett mit ihr zu schlafen. Aber immer noch.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Nobody could tell that she was pregnant. However, as we heard from before, Lindsay did admit that she knew she was pregnant pretty much the entire time. This is also confirmed with some Google searches Lindsay made on her phone. In September of 2011, she made searches for things like pregnancy calculator, things to make you go into labor, and how to make yourself go into labor.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Lindsay knew that she was pregnant, but hid it from the world. She didn't want to disappoint her parents. She didn't want to lose her fiancé. And she probably just simply didn't want to be a mother. For all of those reasons, instead of putting them up for adoption or saying if the biological father wanted them, Sie hat die seltsame Art und Weise genommen und diese Babys getötet.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Nach ihrer Mutter-Schleimhaut, während sie ihr Degree beendet hatte, würde Lindsay so oft wie möglich nach Hause kommen, um ihre Mutter und Vater um die Haustür zu helfen. On the weekends, she would pick up groceries, clean, and do any other chores that needed to be done.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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giving them absolutely no chance at life. However, the defense was claiming that Lindsay is not guilty due to reason of diminished capacity. It's pretty obvious in this case that Lindsay had those babies and then she was the one who caused their deaths. She was the one who left them in the toilet and then put them in the laundry basket. She didn't feed them.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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She didn't take care of them in any way. She is the reason that they are dead and there's no way around that. Aber die Verteidigung sagt im Grunde, dass sie das nicht auf Wunsch gemacht hat. Es war nicht aus Leidenschaft. Sie hat die Babys nicht ermordet. Es war, weil sie die mentale Kapazität verursacht hatte, sie zu kümmern.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Wegen dieser Verteidigung wurde Lindsay von mehreren Psychiatern untersucht, einer davon hat sie für über 13 Stunden interviewt. Dieser Psychiater war Dr. Kenner und er hat an der Begründung bestätigt, dass Lindsay ein ruhiger, timider, passiver Mensch ist, who freezes or becomes numb in challenging situations.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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He explained that Lindsay was born with a bladder malformation, which led to her dealing with bladder infections, spasms and incontinence from ages 3 to 13. She underwent multiple surgeries for this and was constantly in pain. This was also something she was embarrassed about growing up. Of course, being a kid at school with a bladder issue is never fun.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Due to the pain and embarrassment, Lindsay would often go into a disassociative state. When in this state, Sie fühlte, dass diese Probleme jemand anderem geschehen sind. So hat sie sich gekämpft. Selbst nachdem ihre Blätterprobleme beantwortet wurden, hat Lindsay weiter mit der Verschleißung zu kämpfen.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Sie würde ganze Klassen in der Hochschule durchgehen und diese Klasse verlassen, ohne die Erinnerung daran zu haben, dass sie in der Klasse war. Jedes Mal, wenn sie eine stressvolle Situation erlebte, würde sie sich verabschieden und sagen, dass es nicht geschehen ist. Dr. Kenner endete, sie mit PTSD, chronischer Depression und Dysassoziationen zu diagnostizieren.

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During this time while in school, Lindsay met and started dating a man named Jonathan Brooks, and by 2008, the two were engaged. That same year, Lindsay graduated from college with her degree. Once she graduated, she moved back in with her parents so she could help her mother full time. According to Lindsay's father, Mark, Lindsay was the model daughter. She was everything you could ask for.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Bei der Begründung sagte Lindsay auch, dass ihr Verhältnis mit Jeremy tatsächlich nicht konsensuell war. Sie beklagte, dass er ihr Date verabschiedet hat. The first time they got together, she said that Jeremy pressured her into sleeping with him, despite her telling him no.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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She said that she eventually gave in to get it over with, but she has spotty memory of the entire thing because she was disassociating during it. Die zweite Zeit, als sie zusammengekommen sind, hat sie gesagt, dass sie an einer Party war, als er aufgehört hat.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Sie hat gesagt, dass sie nichts erinnert hat, nachdem er aufgehört hat, aber sie weiß, dass sie zusammengeblieben sind, weil sie sich die ganze Zeit verabschiedet hat. Ich möchte jedoch bemerken, dass es Textmessungen zwischen den beiden gefunden wurden, in denen sie darüber sprechen, dass sie verheiratet sind und wie sehr sie sich für einander interessieren.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Mit all dem gesagt, wenn du jemanden interessierst und sie schluchzt und mit ihnen verabschiedest, bedeutet das nicht, dass du ihnen Sex mitnehmen kannst. However, I do imagine that if someone was pressuring you and forcing you to have sex, you might not be open to texting them as much after. You might want to cut them off. She did eventually cut him off, but she also was engaged to another man.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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So, did she cut him off because he was assaulting her or because she realized that she needed to focus on her fiancé and that this was just a big mistake? We really don't know. Obviously, Jeremy denied the rape accusations. und ich bin nicht in der Sache, falsche Begrüßungen zu machen oder nicht Frauen zu glauben.

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Ich wollte euch beide Seiten zeigen und ich werde euch alle eure eigenen Abschlüsse dazu geben, was ihr glaubt, passiert ist. Auf jeden Fall, basierend auf all dem, hat Dr. Kenner an der Begründung bestätigt, dass Lindsay von Begabungsvergütung getroffen hat, was in Fällen von Trauma und Rape üblich ist. Begabungsvergütung ist eigentlich ein bisschen verrückt, weil es nicht nur psychologisch ist.

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aber es kann auch physische Symptome haben. Zum Beispiel kann eine Frau in Beleidigung das Baby so tragen, dass es vorderlich im Uterus sitzt, sodass sie nicht so viel zeigen kann. Sie könnte auch nicht so viele Begegnungssymptome haben, wie Nausea. Bei jemandem in Begegnungsbeleidigung hat Dr. Kenner gesagt, dass sie lucide Momente haben, in denen sie erkennbar sind, dass sie verheiratet sind.

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Aber 99% der Zeit hat Lindsay sich wahrscheinlich nicht mal verheiratet. Es gab Zeiten während der Verheiratung, in denen Lindsay einen Moment hatte, in dem sie sich verheiratet hatte. Vielleicht, wenn sie diese Google-Searches gemacht hat. Aber die restliche Zeit hat sie sich verheiratet, als ob sie nicht verheiratet war.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Dr. Kenner hat sich darauf eingelassen, dass Lindsay zu Offizieren ermittelt hat, dass sie die ganze Zeit verheiratet war. Aber diese Erkenntnis wurde nach dem Faktum wahrscheinlich im Hinterkopf gemacht. Sie könnte es tief unten wissen, aber sie war die meiste Zeit in Bedrohung. Als sie den Babys geboren hat, wollte sie nicht unbedingt ihre Babys zerstören.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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Als sie ihre Hand auf sie hielt, versuchte sie nicht unbedingt, ihren Mund zu öffnen. Sie konnte nicht wirklich fühlen, genau wo sie das Baby betrug, weil sie nicht sah. Dann, als sie geliefert wurden, ging Lindsay in einen hypovolemischen Schock wegen des Blutverlustes. As Lindsay said earlier, after giving birth, she felt dizzy and laid on the floor, shaking, unable to move.

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This could be due to blood loss while giving birth. Dr. Kenner said that someone with this kind of blood loss can suffer from delirium and confusion, similar to what a dementia patient can experience. At the time of the births, Lindsay did not have the mental capacity to knowingly commit the crimes she's being accused of. At the trial, Lindsay's defense made the choice for her not to testify.

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Again, she is very much withdrawn. She is meek and introverted and would rather have a doctor fill in the gaps and tell her story than recount anything from her own memory. She told the courts earlier that she couldn't emotionally handle testifying, which honestly was probably true. Sie hatte viele Momente, in denen sie schlug und weinte, in Hysterik, während der Trial.

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Die Verteidigung brauchte mehrere Pause, um Lindsay aufzuhalten. Nach dem Hören des Testaments von beiden Seiten, machte die Verteidigung und die Verteidigung ihre Schlussfolgerungen. Danach wurde das Gericht für Verschuldung eingeladen. Und sie versuchten eigentlich nur zwei Stunden zu verschulden, bevor sie zurück kamen mit ihrem Verdikt.

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She was selfless, caring and just wanted to do her part in making sure her mother was cared for. By 2009 her fiance Jonathan graduated from his college program and moved out on his own. Während der gleichen Zeit wurde Jonathans eigene Mutter krank, also wollte er auch mit ihr umgekehrt sein, um sie zu kümmern.

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BARBARIC: Mother Murders Newborn Twins to Cover her DISTURBING Secret

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They found that 26-year-old Lindsay Lowe is guilty on all charges, including two counts of child abuse and two counts of first-degree felony murder. After sentencing, Lindsay received an outpouring of support from friends and family members. They had sent the courts 86 letters of support, all talking about how Lindsay is an amazing, kind, caring person who just made a mistake.

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Sie war selbstlos und vertraut, immer zu ihrer Familie, Freunden und der Kirche beteiligt. Sie hatte nie eine Geschichte von kriminellem Verhalten. Sie war nicht ein Risiko für das Publikum. Sie hat die Fähigkeit, eine volle Rückkehr zu machen, wenn die richtige Rehabilitation gegeben wird.

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Trotz dessen, am Ende des Stimmungsgerichts hat der Gericht ihr zwei weitere Lebenssentenzen für ihre Verbrechen gegeben. Nach dem Verdacht hat Lindsay ihr Verbrechen verabschiedet. Und nach neun Jahren hinter den Börsern, hat der originale Gericht in Linsies Trial tatsächlich entschieden, dass sie ein neues Trial bekommen sollte.

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The judge determined that there was a juror who had already made up their mind about Lindsay's guilt before getting onto the jury. Someone who wanted to get onto that jury so she could influence the other jurors to get a guilty verdict. According to Lindsay's father, he witnessed this juror fist pump when she was selected.

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As a result of this stealth juror, the judge felt that Lindsay deserves a new trial. The verdict was vacated and a new trial was ordered. For the time being, Lindsay was given a $75,000 bond, which she posted. She was then released and returned to living with her parents for the time being.

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Natürlich, als sie in separaten Städten lebten, beide mit so viel Familienstress beschäftigt waren, begann ihre Beziehung zu werden mehr entfernt. Aber trotzdem standen sie zusammen und versuchten, für ihre Beziehung zu kämpfen, während sie auch alles andere in ihren Leben kümmern. Im Frühjahr 2011, leider, verletzte Jonathans Mutter von ihrer Krankheit.

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However, two years after this decision was made, the Tennessee Court of Appeals actually reversed the decision. They felt that there was not enough evidence to prove that this juror was biased or that they could have influenced the verdict. Damals haben sie ihre Verurteilung bestätigt und im Juni 2024 wurde Lindsay zurück in die Gefängnis geführt für den Doppelmord.

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Überall durch das Trial, mit diesem Hin und Her, mit dem Befehl, hat Lynseas Familie ihre Unterstützung für sie gezeigt. Sie sagen alle, dass sie psychisch schlecht war und nur einen schrecklichen Fehler gemacht hat. Sie glauben immer noch, dass sie eine gute Person ist mit einem kindlichen Herzen. Did you know that she was pregnant? Did she ever contact you? Never. Not once.

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All because she saw them as an inconvenience to her. She had so many options, so many things she could have done. But instead, she chose the most violent, selfish and disturbing route possible. And for that, I am glad that Lindsay is in jail and hopefully will stay there for the rest of her life. As of right now, that is where the case sits.

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I think that Lindsay is an incredibly selfish person who not only didn't want to be a mom, but also didn't want to admit that she cheated on her fiancé. So that is why I think she did what she did. Aber das ist, was ich denke. Und jetzt möchte ich wissen, was ihr alle denkt. Was denkt ihr überhaupt über diesen Fall? Glaubt ihr, dass Lindsay diese Babys angeblich getötet hat?

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Around that same time, Lindsay's mother also received the devastating news that her brain tumor was back. By this point, Lindsay was still living with her parents and helping out around the house. She also never got the chance to work in her field with her degree during this time. Instead, she worked at a dental office near home doing insurance and billing stuff.

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Oder glaubt ihr, dass sie eine geringere mentale Kapazität hatte? Glaubt ihr, dass sie für den Rest ihres Lebens hinter den Bars stehen sollte? Lass uns darüber diskutieren. Und welche anderen Gedanken habt ihr in den Kommentaren? Wenn euch dieses Video gefallen hat, dann lasst gerne einen Daumen nach oben. und abonniere meinen Kanal.

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Ich veröffentliche neue Videos von True Crime & Mystery jede Woche. Vergesst nicht, die Notifikation-Klammer anzuschalten, damit du keine weiteren Videos verpasst hast. Bevor du abonnierst, folge mir auf Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Spotify und Apple Podcasts. Alle werden unten verlinkt.

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That way, she could always be near the home while driving her mom back and forth to hospital visits for radiation therapy for her children. By the weekend of September 10th, 2011, Lindsay was a bridesmaid in her friend's wedding, which took place in Kentucky. There, she had a great time with friends, getting all dressed up, getting her hair and makeup done.

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The wedding went as planned, or about as planned as any wedding can go, and Lindsay and a friend drove home from Kentucky back to Hendersonville on that Sunday, September 11th. That night, the friend slept over with Lindsay before the two women got up the next day and went to work. That Monday, September 12th, went as any normal day at first.

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Lindsay was texting her sister about going to a concert together. She was also talking with her fiancé about a trip they had coming up. By that evening, Lindsay came home complaining of a stomach ache. According to family, she pretty much spent the entire evening just sitting in the bathroom.

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Lindsays Mutter und Vater kamen alle und kontrollierten sie mehrere Male in der Nacht, um zu sehen, ob sie okay war. Jedes Mal erzählte Lindsay ihren Eltern durch eine geschlossene Tür, dass sie okay war. But she wasn't feeling well and thought that she might have a stomach bug, asking to be left alone. This was how Lindsay was when she was sick, even from the time she was a kid.

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She just wanted to be left alone, to be sick in silence. I totally understand that feeling. By around 10.39pm that evening, Lacey, Lindsay's sister, texted Lindsay from inside the home, saying, let me know if you need anything, love you, good night. Von dort an ging die meiste der Familie ins Bett.

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Am nächsten Morgen, am Dienstag, September 13, um 6.03 Uhr, hat Lindsay ihren Superviseur getextet, dass sie die ganze Nacht krank war und noch nicht gut fühlte. Sie sagte, dass sie an diesem Tag nicht zur Arbeit kommen konnte, aber sicher war, dass sie am nächsten Tag besser werden würde. By that point, Lindsay had returned to her bedroom, still lying in bed and feeling like shit.

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Lacey got up around that same time, went to the bathroom that she shared with Lindsay, and then got Lindsay a glass of water before leaving for work. Soon after, Lindsay's mother and father both also left for work, leaving Lindsay alone in the home all day to recover from her stomach bug. All throughout that day, Lindsay was just chilling and relaxing.

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Die meisten Menschen würden agieren, dass Infanten geliebt und geschenkt werden sollen. Sie sind ein Geschenk für jede und jede Familie, die die Fähigkeit hat, ein neues Leben zu schaffen. Some people see these miracles as nothing but inconveniences. Something that is getting in the way of them living the life they want to live, which doesn't involve caring for another life.

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She was watching some TV, spent some time texting various people. She texted her fiancé, telling him she loved him. She sent messages to a friend who was pregnant and due at any moment, talking about how excited they were for the baby's arrival. She also texted her sister about the concert they had planned. And of course, they talked about the flu she was dealing with.

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She actually told her sister that she never went to bed that prior night, Stattdessen war sie die ganze Nacht auf dem Kühlschrank. Klar, sie fühlte sich überhaupt nicht gut. Einen Tag später ging Lindsay zurück zum Arzt. Um 8 Uhr hat sie mit ihrem Vater nach und nach geholfen. Dann, um 8.30 Uhr, hat sie ihre Feierabend noch über die Reise nach Hause geteilt.

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Aber als Lindsay arbeitete, waren beide ihre Eltern noch zuhause, bereit für ihre Tage. Als Linsdes Mutter Paula bereit war, ging sie in Linsdes Zimmer, um für sie etwas Läden zu machen, so wie sie es manchmal macht. Besonders jetzt, nachdem Lindsay für diese zwei Tage krank war, wollte Paula helfen. Aber als sie das so machte, laut Marc, hörte er plötzlich ihren Namen schreien, in panischem Ton.

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He rushed over to see what was going on and that is when Paula told him that she had found a tiny little infant in Lindsay's room. Mark went in to look a bit closer and he saw that there was in fact According to Mark, in that moment, he just went into a state of shock. He stared at this child for 15 minutes, just standing there, not knowing what to do.

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I'm sure those 15 minutes felt like 2 seconds in that moment. Once he came to, he first dialed a friend, who worked as an attorney, who then told Mark to call his pastor. He did just that, and the pastor told him that he would head over to the house, but said to call the police in the meantime. After hanging up, finally by 8.30 a.m., Mark dialed 911 to report what he had found.

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On the call, Mark told the dispatcher that his daughter had gone to work, but that there was a child in her room, and this child was not alive. Bei diesem Punkt sind Mark und seine Frau nach unten gegangen und warten auf die Behörden, um zu kommen. Als der erste Anwalt gekommen ist, hat Mark ihm gesagt, dass seine 25-jährige Tochter Lindsay den ganzen Tag krank war.

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Am Morgen, als seine Frau ihre Wohnung für sie gekleidet hat, haben sie dieses Baby gefunden. Der Anwalt ist nach oben gegangen, um sich selbst zu kümmern. Und dort fand er einen kleinen Babybocken, der in einem Kühlschrank neben dem Bett liegend war, in einer Schicht und einem blöden Stoff. Der Officer bemerkte, dass das Baby kalt war und bereits gestorben war.

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Er war ohne Hilfe, also wurden Resuscitation-Efforts nicht versucht. Als er sein kleines Körper beobachtete, war er nicht fest. Er war eigentlich bereits in einem Riggermordis-Stand, das bedeutet, dass er über zwölf Stunden vorher gestorben war. Das Baby sah nach einem vollen Termin gesund zu sein. Es gab keine Zeichen von Bedrohung während des Anstiegs.

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Es wurde beobachtet, dass dieses Baby etwa fünf Pounden groß war. Nach dem Beobachtung des Babys in der Tasche, begann ein Offizier, das Baby aus der Tasche zu entfernen, um es aufs Bett zu stellen. Aber als sie den Schlauch entfernten und ihn aufhielten, fanden sie, dass das Baby's Umbilical Cord an etwas in diesem Schlauch verbunden war.

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Dies führte den Arbeiter dazu, in diesem Schlauch zu suchen, einige der Kleidung und Schlaufe zu entfernen, um etwas anderes in diesem Schlauch zu finden. Es war dann, dass dieser Arbeiter einen zweiten Babybein in diesem Schlauch gefunden hat. Es war der twinne Bruder, der ein bisschen kleiner aussah als das erste Baby, nur um drei Pounden.

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And instead of giving that child to a family who will love and care for them, some people simply want to get rid of them in the most selfish and brutal ways possible. That is what happened in today's case. Two tiny little babies who never got a chance at life, who were born to the wrong person and were killed because one woman didn't want them around.

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An diesem Punkt haben die Anwesenden die Babys aus dem Haus entfernt, um sie an den Bewerbungsantrag für eine weitere Bewerbung zu senden. An diesem Punkt haben die Anwesenden eine Suche-Warnung erhalten, also haben sie angefangen, mehr Bereiche in diesem Haus zu suchen. Das erste, was den Anwesenden stand, war, dass es kein Zeichen gab, dass etwas mit einem Baby in diesem Haus zu tun hatte.

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Es gab keine Baby-Tüten, keine Tüten, keine Schnauze, kein Essen, keine Schnauze, nichts, was für ein Baby gebraucht werden sollte. Dann haben sie herausgefunden, dass es eine kleine Menge Blut im Bad war, wo Lindsay die Nacht auf dem Boden zwei Nachts vorher verbracht hatte. Es gab auch Blut auf einer kleinen Schachtel in Linsys Bett. Dann in Linsys Klosthalle.

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Die Offiziere haben mehrere blutige Stiefel und Stiefel gefunden, mehrere Paare blutiger Unterhaut und Pajama-Panzen, sowie eine blutige Shirt.

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Als das passiert war, ging ein anderer Officer zu Lincys Arbeit, um mit ihr zu sprechen und zu sehen, ob sie willens in diese Station kommen würde, was sie gemacht hat. Zuerst haben die Arbeiterin gefragt, ob sie wusste, warum sie eingetreten wurde. Und sie war lachend, glücklich und kooperativ, so als hätte sie keine Ahnung.

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Ihr Gesicht und Demeanor haben sich schnell verändert, als sie ihr Wäschebasket gefunden haben. Am Anfang der Interview hat Lindsay dem Arbeiter ermittelt, dass sie wusste, dass sie die ganze Zeit krank war. Also die ganzen neun Monate, die es dauert, ein Baby zu wachsen. Sie wusste, dass sie krank war.

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Sie sagte, dass sie bemerkte, dass ihr Zeitraum stoppte, dass sie Gewicht bekam und dass sie sogar kurz bevor sie geboren wurde, laktierte. Sie sagte, dass sie niemandem erzählte, nicht ihrer Familie, nicht ihrer Freundin, über ihre Krankheit, weil sie Angst hatte, dass sie enttäuscht werden würden.

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Sie grew up in a conservative Christian household, so she felt like they would be really upset if they knew. She told detectives that the babies belonged to her fiance, Jonathan. But then... The officer pushed her a bit and asked her if there was any possible way the babies could belong to anybody else. And at that point, she admitted that she had cheated on her fiancé.

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Sometime around April or May of 2010, Lindsay met a man named Jeremy Smith through her cousin's husband. The two started texting back and forth and eventually they started going on dates despite the fact that Lindsay was engaged And Jeremy had a girlfriend of his own. They went on a total of three dates and ended up having sex two times.

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The first time they wore protection, but the last time, which was around December of 2010, they did not. But after this final time by January of 2011, Lindsay stopped returning Jeremy's calls. Sie hat ihm gesagt, dass sie sich nicht mehr interessiert und zurückgekehrt hat, sich auf ihre Freundin Jonathan zu konzentrieren.

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Natürlich hat sie dem Detektiv gesagt, dass sie Jonathan nie über diese oder ihre Begegnung erzählt hat, weil sie ihn nicht verlieren wollte. Still, she was pretty sure that Jonathan was the father. Lindsay explained that on the weekend of September 10th, she went to that wedding in Kentucky, as I mentioned earlier. There, she also didn't tell anyone about her pregnancy.

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I also want to note that throughout this entire time, not a single person noticed her pregnancy. At work, she typically wore scrubs and a jacket. At home, she always wore baggy t-shirts. Then, at this wedding, the dress she had tried on in January...

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With that being said, let's just get right into today's case. Lindsay Low was born and raised in a well-off family in Hendersonville, Tennessee, with her mother, father and younger sister, Lacey. Growing up, Lindsay was involved in all sorts of school activities, such as swimming and dance. She was always extremely close with her family, she did well in school, and mostly kept to herself.

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still fit her even though she was nine months pregnant she even changed in front of the other bridesmaids laughing and posing for pictures no one having a clue that she was literally nine months pregnant and about to pop after the wedding she went to work that monday

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Während sie am Arbeiten war, hat sie einen Schmerz, als sie nach Hause kam, hat sie das Abendessen verpasst und ist direkt in den Kühlschrank geraten. Um 6.30 Uhr hat sie einen intensiven Schmerz am Rücken. Um 10 Uhr hat Lindsay gesagt, dass sie den Restraum benutzen musste, weil sie denkt, dass sie einen Bauchdruck haben wird.

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So she went, but instead of having a bowel movement, a baby popped out and fell in the toilet. When that happened, Lindsay was shocked, I guess. She immediately laid on the bathroom floor and started crying, leaving the baby in the toilet, not checking on him or seeing if he was underwater. Nach seinem Geburtstag schrie er für weniger als einen Minuten, bevor er einfach stoppte.

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Nach ein paar Minuten auf dem Boden, kam sie wieder hoch und ließ ihr zweites Baby in den Toiletten, auf dem ersten Baby. Dieses zweite Baby schrie nie. Lindsay dachte, dass er vielleicht seinen Kopf auf den Busch oder so etwas hielt, als er geboren wurde. Either way, after giving birth a second time, she went and lied back on the floor. After giving birth, she did not look at either baby.

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She didn't even know the gender of each baby. She didn't see if they were moving. Nothing. For the hour that followed, Lindsay just lied still on the floor, not knowing what to do, while those babies stayed in the toilet bowl. During that hour, her parents came to the door several times to check on her. And each time she asked to be left alone again, she spoke to them through a closed door.

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She lied on the floor until 3 a.m. when finally she got up, grabbed a towel and took the babies out of the toilet and put them into that basket. She then cleaned up the bathroom and washed herself off before going in her room and laying in bed. She basically lied around all day the following day, switch between the couch and her bed. During that time, she didn't check on the babies.

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She didn't look at them a single time. She then went to work the following day, leaving those babies in that basket. At that point, she had absolutely no plan for what she was going to do with the babies. She also mentioned that even though her mom does her laundry for her Sie dachte nicht, dass ihre Mutter diese Babys finden würde.

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Nun, als Lindsay die Geschichte den Detektiven erzählte, gab es einige Teile, die ein bisschen schwer zu glauben waren. Und die Art, wie Lindsay agierte, wie sie sprach, all das machte Detektiven glauben, dass Lindsay sich schuldig fühlte. Sie fühlten, dass sie einige Dinge auslösen musste. Natürlich scheint es nicht richtig zu sein, dass sie die Babys in der Toilette noch nie gesehen hat.

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Picture this. It's a warm summer morning. Your kids are up and they're excitedly getting ready for an afternoon of arts and crafts, music, and playtime with their best pals. You drop them off, excited to hear how it went later in the day. But when you return, you find out that your child didn't have a fun-filled party with friends.

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Of course, he was immediately apprehended and taken into custody where he refused to answer any of the officer's questions. Though he reportedly did make a few comments such as, I'm glad to see those kids are dead. It makes me happy and it's a good thing those children are dead.

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At first, his identity was not released publicly because the person responsible for this attack was actually a minor at the time. Yep, that's right. A teenager was responsible for this horrendous attack. But after he was officially charged, a judge ruled that the perpetrator could be publicly identified because his 18th birthday was just a week after the attack.

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So again, a week before this kid's birthday, he carried out the attack. Either way, then 17-year-old Axel Rudicabana was identified as the person responsible for the attack and was charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder, and possession of a weapon. By this point, many people who were reporting on the case had been spreading false information.

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It was reported that the person involved in the attacks was an asylum seeker who had entered the country just a year prior by a small boat, but that actually wasn't true. Despite this, a demonstration was held by July 31st where protesters started throwing flares and cans at officers. This demonstration resulted in over 100 arrests.

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For the days that followed, more protests and demonstrations broke out all across the area in multiple other cities with the same message, enough is enough. Protesters believed that the man responsible was an illegal immigrant and were demanding that the borders close. While I do understand why so many people were so pissed at the situation, I would be too. I am pissed.

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The information about it being an illegal immigrant just was not true. Turns out Axel Rudacabana was born in Cardiff, Wales on August 7th, 2006. He is the son of a refugee from Rwanda, but he was born and raised in the UK. When he was six or seven years old, his family then moved to Banks, Lancashire, which is located near Southport.

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When Axel was a child, he was reportedly a model student who did well in classes and participated in stage performances. He once even starred as Doctor Who in a Children in Need trailer. However, once he reached high school, some concerning behaviors started to emerge. By grade 9, at just 13 years old, he was caught bringing a knife to class because he said he was being bullied.

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After stabbing the first little girl, he went around the room and started stabbing any and all children as violently and as quickly as possible. Of course, this caused an absolute frenzy to break out with the adults in the room trying their best to save as many children as they could. 36-year-old Leanne Lucas was one of the organizers of the event and was in charge of the children.

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This was reported to police, who he admitted to to bringing the knife. As a result, officers worked with the school to make a vulnerable child report to other agencies. He was then expelled from the school and sent to a referral unit called the Acorn School in Ormskirk.

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According to their website, the Acorn School was developed to provide an enriching educational environment for students who experienced difficulties in regular school. They are focused on allowing students to assess their difficulties, build self-esteem, and develop meaningful relationships.

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However, by December of 2019, he actually showed up unannounced to his old high school, Range High School, with a hockey stick and started hitting other students with it, causing one student a fractured wrist. It took a few teachers to overpower and stop him from attacking more students. When he finally stopped, it was found that he also had a large kitchen knife in his backpack.

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In addition to that, other students reported that Axel had been making comments about a mass shooting. As a result of this attack, he was arrested and charged with assault causing bodily harm, possession of a weapon, and possession of a bladed article. He pleaded guilty to these charges and completed the requirements for his sentence by 2021.

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Also, at the time of this attack, a referral was made to Children's Social Care and the Child Adolescents Mental Health Service. By April of 2021, other students and teachers started to notice more concerning internet activity from Axel.

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One teacher noticed that Axel had two internet tabs open for searches relating to the 2019 London Bridge terrorist attacks where Usman Khan murdered two Cambridge University students. Due to this, the teacher made a referral to the Prevent National Referral Form, or PREVENT.

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Prevent is a form where you can report people who are showing ideological, personal, or social factors that may make someone susceptible to radicalization. Basically, the aim is to stop people from supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists. After review, though, the concerns went no further because it was deemed that Axel did not support any terrorist ideology.

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By November 30th, 2021, police showed up to the home where Axel lived with his parents. Reports were made that during an argument, Axel kicked his father and damaged his car. His father didn't want his son to be charged for the incident, but an officer did make another vulnerable child referral. In March of 2022, Axel's mother called the police once again, this time to report him missing.

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He was eventually found on a bus after that bus driver called police to report that he was refusing to pay the fare. When officers confronted him, he was apparently compliant and left the bus without incident. But once officers searched his bag, they found yet again that he was in possession of a knife.

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At that time, he was returned home by the officer who spoke to his mother about maybe being careful with Axel's access to knives in the home. Once again, with this incident, a vulnerable child referral was made. After this, there were a few more calls to police regarding Axel's increasingly volatile behavior in the home.

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They were also called because he stopped attending school for a while, so concerns were raised there. More referrals were made concerning his mental health. Then finally, by around 1110 a.m. on the morning of July 29th, 2024, Axel hails a taxi requesting to head to Hart Street near a spray shop. But once he arrives, he refuses to pay the driver.

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She started grabbing as many children as she could and tried to get out of that room with those girls, but as she did that, the man came after her and started stabbing her as well. She was stabbed in the head, neck, back, shoulder blade, and arm. She did manage to get out with a couple of the girls, but she passed out against her car on the road as soon as she exited the building.

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The driver asked once, cash or card, and is ignored by Axel, who's just looking down at his phone. The driver asks twice more before Axel just gets out of the car. After that, you can see him heading straight for the building where the dance studio is located. At that time, he's wearing a green hoodie with the hood up and a face mask.

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He then walks into the building, immediately hearing the Taylor Swift music along with the cheerful chattering and laughter of the children. It's believed that he knew about this event and specifically targeted it for the attack. I'm sure the event was advertised and knowing that he lived nearby, he probably saw it and knowing that the space would be filled with women and children,

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He took advantage of that, choosing the most vulnerable targets to carry out his attack. He then entered the dance studio, immediately stabbing the first child he saw. Once again, it's believed that he went in there with the intent of killing as many people as possible.

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choosing people who couldn't really defend themselves in his mind so he's basically a coward if he hadn't been stopped by the teachers and other good samaritans who stepped in and if no one managed to escape then he would have killed all 26 children that is what he set out to do and that is why he chose that specific event

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I won't rehash the details of what he did in those 15 minutes, but as we know, it was horrific. It was a brutal, frenzied, violent attack. After he was arrested and taken into custody, officers started searching his home to find any evidence they could. On the property, they discovered a machete, a knife that was identical to the knife used in the attack, as well as two tablets and an HP laptop.

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On that laptop, they found several searches and reading material related to violence and genocide. Of particular interest, they found copies of the Al-Qaeda training manual, which described methods of killing with a knife, including where to attack the victim. This outlined that you should start with the head and neck for a faster killing, which is exactly what Axel did.

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There was also a PDF file located called Military Studies and the Jihad Against the Tyrants. Under his bed, officers then found a Tupperware container which contained an unknown substance. This made officers stop their searches temporarily because whatever was inside could be very dangerous. It was immediately sent off for testing by biological warfare experts.

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but pretty much immediately upon this discovery, officers knew what it could be. On Axel's laptop, they found a manual which provided instruction on how to produce ricin, a highly dangerous toxin that can cause many, many deaths, even with a small amount, and has no known cure. Based on Axel's internet history, it was discovered that on January 19th, 2022, it

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As that was happening, another adult in the room, Heidi Little, had been sitting on the floor with the girls making bracelets when the chaos broke out. As she saw Leanne being stabbed, she tried pulling her away but wasn't able to. She and another little girl were able to escape the room and they went to a nearby bathroom where they hid.

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He purchased castor beans, which contain ricin. Ricin can be extracted from the beans and turned into a powder or can be combined with liquid. It can kill someone if injected, ingested, or even inhaled. Axel had purchased about 150 castor beans and testing confirmed that he was in the process of extracting the ricin. There was castor oil and ricin pulp in that Tupperware container.

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The prosecution said that according to their expert, with just a little bit further purification, it could have killed anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000 people if inhaled, though I saw in one article that an expert argued that it could have killed more than 10,000 people if extracted properly with the amount he had. Just insane to think about.

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It also came out that about a week before the attack on the dance studio, Axel tried getting into a taxi to go to his old high school. He was wearing the same clothing he wore for the attack on the studio, but before he could leave, his dad came out and asked the taxi not to take him.

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We don't know if he planned on attacking students at the high school, but he was wearing the same clothes that he wore during the attack he did carry out. Then on the morning of the attack, he made sure to leave his family home before hailing a taxi to prevent his family from stopping him.

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After finding all of this evidence at the home, police announced that terrorism may have been the motive for this attack, but it's not 100% confirmed. I'll get more back into this later.

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After his arrest, in addition to the murder and attempted murder charges, he was charged with production of a biological toxin and possession of a document likely to be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism. In total, he faced 16 charges. At Axel's plea hearing, he actually refused to speak, so a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf.

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By January 20th, 2025, his trial was set to begin. However, on the first day of trial, Axel actually changed his plea. He was pleading not guilty to all 16 charges. At his sentencing hearing, of course, families of those who lost a child spoke about the utter heartbreak they faced. Three families suffered such horrific, tragic loss.

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Seven-year-old Elsie Stancombe, six-year-old Bebe King, and nine-year-old Alice De Silva Aguirre each had families and friends who loved and adored them and have been permanently traumatized by his actions. These three little girls had their lives ripped away from them in such a horrifying way. I can't even imagine the terror they felt in their final moments.

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Then the eight other children and the two adults who were left with severe injuries. Their lives are forever changed. Many of them had to go through countless surgeries and therapies just to get their normal function back, but some of them will never be able to return to normal. Some are left with permanent scars, pain, and disability.

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There were also a few other businesses nearby as well as a few houses. Of course, they started hearing the commotion, including the blood curdling screams of all these children. According to one witness who worked next door, these were not the sounds of children happily yelling and shouting as they had heard all morning. These screams were filled with horror.

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And all of them are certainly left with the emotional and mental trauma from having to live through this. They have to live every day with the fear of being attacked, constantly feeling like they have to look over their shoulder, feeling distrust from every person who walks by because you never know if someone's going to hurt you.

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Even though they survived, their lives are permanently impacted and so are their families, all because someone wanted to hurt as many people as possible. After hearing from the multiple victims in this case, the judge spoke on the crimes as well. Again, it's clear that Axel's motive was to cause pain and terror.

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He wanted to kill as many people as possible and chose that specific event because he thought it would be the easiest to go after the most vulnerable victims, women and children. Again, had he been allowed to fully carry out his attack, he would have murdered all 26 children and two adults in that room.

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They went on to say that Axel's actions are not considered terrorism under the legal definition because the attacks weren't carried out with the purpose to advance any sort of political, radical, or religious ideology. They said that radical ideologies may have influenced his decision to carry out the attack, but they can't pinpoint what beliefs led him to doing what he did.

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However, what he did did cause terror, shock, revulsion to the entire country. What he did caused riots, protests, and demonstrations. What he did will have a lasting impact, not just on the families, but the community around them. Given all the aggravating factors, the only mitigating factors really were his age and his plea.

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He was just 17 years old at the time of the crime, just one week before his 18th birthday. However, it's not lost on anybody that this seemed intentional. He wanted to get this done before he was an adult with hopes of receiving the lightest sentence possible, and it seemed that it did work because his age changed. did work in his favor.

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For the murder charges, he received life sentences with a minimum of 52 years served. The attempted murder charges for the children landed him a minimum of 18 years with the adult attempted murder landing him 16 years. He then got 12 years for possession of the ricin and 18 months for the terrorism documents and possession of the knife. Each of these sentences will run concurrently.

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Instead, they were attacked, randomly selected by a maniac whose sole purpose was to hurt your and every other child there. That is what almost 30 different families experienced on July 29th, 2024. Today's case is probably one of the most tragic and gut-wrenching cases I've ever discussed. I know I say that a lot, but trust me, this one is going to be a rough listen.

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One of the first witnesses on scene was 63-year-old Jonathan Hayes, who worked right next door in the same building. He said that as soon as he heard the commotion, he ran over to see what was going on, and as soon as he swung the door open, he saw a little girl lying completely still on the floor, covered in blood and clearly injured. Then he was met with the attacker.

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I don't know why it continues to surprise me how lenient the UK is in their sentencing, but come on. This man inflicted terror and violence on so many people, yet he will still have a chance at release one day. Yes, it will be when he's in his 60s or 70s, but guess what?

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Those three children will never get a chance to live that long, and the rest of his victims are left with permanent emotional and physical scars from what he did. And to add to that, he could have hurt thousands more people if he had the chance to. Yet this guy is the guy we're letting out eventually. He deserves nothing less than death for what he did, and I will stand by that.

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And I truly, truly hope that he dies in prison and is never, ever released to hurt even more people. As for the red flags missed, of course, people are pissed. He showed so many concerning behaviors, yet nothing was ever done about it. According to the sources I found on this case, a review of the PREVENT program is underway, but we don't know the results of that yet.

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I also haven't seen anyone comment on how or why these red flags were missed, but clearly more should have been done. As for the more specific motive, I personally think that he probably was bullied growing up and this caused some deep-seated resentment and hatred towards others.

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i think that's where it started then he started getting more and more into these reading materials that just fueled his hatred and violence he started acting on it and getting in trouble but it really never led to much i think he truly wanted to hurt as many people as possible because he was hurt by others

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I think the terrorism material could have led him to developing a radicalized ideology or he read it simply to find out how to hurt as many people as possible. Either way, I do think he may have been headed to his high school that day to try and hurt them, but after his dad stopped him, maybe he thought about it more and realized that he needs to go after more vulnerable victims.

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He describes that the man turned around and the two locked eyes. And even though the attacker's face was mostly covered, he could just see this menacing look in his eyes. The next thing John knows, the man is coming at him and they start wrestling. The attacker is flailing his knife around while John is just trying to get him off of him.

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people that are easier to hurt and kill in as high numbers as possible and that is what is so truly disturbing about this case and that is what makes this man or child i guess or teenager whatever he's a man now i guess but that's what makes him such a coward as i've been saying his actions have led to so much hurt and turmoil i can't even put it into words

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I just hope that this case can serve as an example to others that red flag behaviors need to be taken more seriously. I hope the people who have been impacted by his actions can find a way to heal and move on with their lives despite what they've been through. But you've all heard what I think and now I want to hear your guys' thoughts. What do you think about this case?

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What do you think his true motive was? And what do you think about the red flags that were missed? And what do you think about his sentence? Do you think he'll ever be released? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below.

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And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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In the midst of it, John felt a sharp shooting pain in his leg, which caused him to fall backwards. He had suffered a deep stab wound to his leg. He tried kicking at the attacker, but he ultimately did get away. But as John was grappling with the attacker, many of the children in that room managed to escape.

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During that time, one of John's colleagues had also run over to the room where he started helping to carry out the children downstairs and outside. Neighbors in the area also started coming out to see what was going on and what they saw was horrifying. One witness described seeing children lying on the ground also covered in blood with horrific injuries all over them.

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Multiple people came out to carry the girls away from the scene with one of the neighbors harboring a few girls within their home. Others started bringing towels, water and whatever other supplies they could think of to help the situation. And of course, many of them had already called police by this point.

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Another witness, Joel, describes hearing the chaos and noticing that men were carrying children out of the building. Some of the children appeared unconscious and again they were covered in blood. According to him, he went to run inside the building when he saw the woman slumped against the car. She told him what was happening and she said that she had managed to call 911 who was on their way.

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He then looked inside the car she was slumped on and inside he noticed four or five girls all in the backseat waiting to be taken for help. Then he saw another little girl lying on the sidewalk clearly in need of help. He describes picking her up and trying to stop the bleeding. His friend then joined in and attempted CPR on the little girl as Joel made his way inside the building.

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It was a warm summer day on the 29th of July in 2024 when 26 children, all between the ages of 6 and 13, gathered at the HeartSpace Studio on Heart Street in Southport, England for a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga workshop. The children had all arrived by around 9.30am that morning, all happy and excited to move their bodies to their favorite music.

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Once on the staircase, he met eyes with the man responsible for this disaster. Joel describes that after the man saw him, he scurried away back inside the room. Once again, he described the attacker as wearing a hoodie and carrying a knife. Joel said that for a moment after seeing the attacker, he froze.

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He said that he wishes he didn't freeze, but you never know how you're going to respond in a moment like that. But after coming to, he left the building and ran outside looking for something to possibly use as a weapon. But by that point, first responders were finally starting to arrive. It took them 15 minutes to get there.

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Once first responders entered the building, they saw the attacker who was standing over the bodies of one of the children. Within that 15 minutes, the attacker managed to murder three children, stab another eight children, as well as two other adults who had been trying to save the kids. All but two girls managed to escape among the chaos.

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It appears that after everyone else escaped, the attacker went back in and continued stabbing the two girls that were left inside. The third victim who died did manage to get outside, but unfortunately, could not be saved. Now I'm going to tell you about some of the victims in this attack.

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The three girls who were murdered were seven-year-old Elsie Stancombe, six-year-old Bebe King, and nine-year-old Alice Da Silva Aguirre. Seven-year-old Elsie was described by her family as an extraordinary little girl. She spent each and every day determined to enjoy life with her mom, dad, and little sister Rosie. She was kind-natured and made it her mission to care for those around her.

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She was talkative, outgoing and loved parties and celebrations. She was the type of child who connected so well with others and was able to hold a meaningful conversation even with adults. She was wise beyond her years, emotionally intelligent and an absolute joy to be around. Elsie ended up suffering from at least 85 sharp force injuries to her head, neck, face, torso and upper limbs.

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She had been stabbed so, so very many times. She was fearless in a sense.

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Six-year-old Bebe King suffered the most brutality in this attack. Her parents describe her as their light and joy. She was a special little girl who they just knew was going to go on to do so many amazing things with her life. She was pure, fearless, and so, so sweet. She suffered a total of 122 sharp force injuries to her head, neck, face, torso, and arms.

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It was the opinion of the medical examiner that the attacker had actually tried to behead her in the attack. Just horrific.

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For the almost two hours that followed, everyone in that party, including the adults who were watching over the children, were enjoying themselves. But that fun and joy would soon be met with absolute horror. A violent, brutal situation literally out of anyone's worst nightmares.

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Nine-year-old Alice Da Silva Aguirre was known to be a happy, bright little girl. She loved spending quality time with her parents whenever she could. She was the only child, so she truly was the light of her parents' lives. They would go to friends' houses every weekend and go out for meals in the evenings.

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She had started ballet dancing when she was just 16 months old and continued on from there. Outside ballet, she started cheerleading, and once she was in school, she joined the choir. She was truly so, so very loved by everyone who knew her.

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Alice was the little girl who managed to escape the building collapsing on the sidewalk. She received CPR and was rushed to the hospital where she remained for several hours undergoing any and all treatments possible. But unfortunately, so very tragically, she didn't make it. By 1.20 a.m. the following day, she died from her injuries.

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She had been stabbed four times to her back and suffered a chop wound to her head. The other children in the attack were not named, but I will tell you some of their injuries so you can fully understand the severity of the attack. The next victim, C1, was only seven years old. She had been stabbed inside but managed to escape.

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But as she got outside, CCTV footage captured the attacker grabbing her and pulling her back inside. How truly terrifying that must have been. She suffered a total of 32 stab wounds, 23 of them being to her back and arms. After being stabbed, she managed to escape once again, collapsing outside on the sidewalk. Thankfully, again, she did survive.

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C2, aged 10, was stabbed 8 times, once to the front of her chest and 6 to her back before she managed to escape. C3 was 9 years old and she suffered 3 stab wounds to her back. She also suffered from fractures to her scapula, ribs, and 2 spinal vertebrae. C4 is 8 years old and she was stabbed 4 times.

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By 11.45 that morning, the children were gathered around a table, singing and making friendship bracelets, when all of a sudden, a man entered the room wearing a green hoodie and a face mask. He was carrying a 20 centimeter long kitchen knife and without even saying one word, he He grabbed the child closest to him and began stabbing her over and over and over again.

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C5, aged 10, suffered two deep stab wounds to her back and chest, causing substantial internal bleeding. She had to undergo a blood transfusion and surgery to remove her spleen, but thankfully she survived. C6 was 13 years old. She suffered two stab wounds, one to her right shoulder and one to her back. She also suffered fractures to two spinal vertebrae and required a blood transfusion.

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C7 had a single stab wound to her back which reached her spine, but thankfully it did not cause any damage to her spinal cord. C8 was 7 years old and she suffered one deep wound to her arm and a laceration to her chin. Once again, all these children had managed to escape. Then 36-year-old Leanne Lucas, who I mentioned earlier, was one of the organizers of this party.

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She suffered a total of five stab wounds to her neck, back, shoulder blade, and arm. She suffered multiple fractures to one vertebrae, a rib, and her scapula. She also required a blood transfusion and had to undergo multiple surgeries. She has also been deeply affected mentally, as I know everyone involved has.

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But she went on to say that she lives every day with the guilt of knowing that she survived while three children didn't. Now that you know the horrific consequences of this attack, let's go back to the moment when the officers stepped inside and caught the attacker standing over B.B. King's body.

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Time and time again, we see these cases that involve parents who never should have been allowed to have children. This case involves a set of parents who had some very dangerous beliefs, which of course they pushed onto their children. Beliefs they would later use as excuses for the horrific treatment one of their children suffered.

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When they noticed how small she was about a month or two before her death, he did start getting more serious about all the solid foods she was getting. He started giving her heavier foods like potatoes and chicken, trying to get her protein and calories up, trying to get her to gain weight.

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Seth went on to say that Mary would sleep for long periods of time, sometimes as much as 15 or 16 hours a night. The investigators interviewing him asked him if he was concerned that she was sleeping that much paired with how skinny she was, but he didn't seem worried at all. He did say that if he knew she had some sort of serious illness, he would have taken her to the doctor as a last resort.

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Then he started talking about how God decides if someone is sick or healthy. He didn't have any control over her weight. Yeah, he was worried that she was so thin, but it was God's choice. He went on to say, she died. It's a tragedy. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh.

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Around this time is when Tatiana became pregnant with their first child, a daughter. Then, by March of 2015, Tatiana and Seth got married. Two years after the birth of their daughter, the couple went on to have another child, This time, a son. Then, as I stated, in October of 2017, they had Mary.

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Based on everything I've told you up to this point, both Tatiana Fusari and Seth Welsh were arrested and charged with felony murder. Both Tatiana and Seth were absolutely shocked when they heard the news of what they were being charged with.

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Seth pleaded not guilty to his charges, and at first, Tatiana pled no contest, but shortly after, she changed her mind and changed her plea to not guilty. Seth's trial for murder started in January of 2020. The prosecution argued that Seth and Tatiana starved Mary over the course of several weeks, if not months, leading to her death.

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They left her in that crib alone for hours upon hours, as we can see from Seth's own report to investigators. The prosecution said that there's no way to know just how long she was left in that crib, but they showed the jury photos of just how malnourished and emaciated Mary was. She had no muscle mass. She was incredibly fragile, too weak to cry or even move her arms above her head.

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She was left on a filthy mattress covered in urine, feces, and mold. She was left there to suffer for who knows how long. The prosecution said that Seth allowed his daughter to die because he felt that she would grow up to be too small and too weak to help on their farm and he saw her death as natural selection. He saw her as an inconvenience to him rather than a child to nurture and care for.

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During that time, the couple lived their lives taking care of their farm, selling their products, and raising their kids. It seemed like a really great environment for the kids to grow up in. Tatiana made the kids homemade meals, even making their own baby food purees from their produce.

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He purposely stopped feeding her or providing her any sort of care, just waiting for her body to finally give up. It was clear that she was starving to death. There was no way you could look at that little baby and think that nothing was wrong with her. They heard from family members who testified how they noticed that Mary was looking sickly thin but no one did anything about it.

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They did tell Seth to feed her but that was it. She was failed by everyone around her. They played that disturbing 911 call for the jury where it's apparent that Seth literally could not care less about the death of his daughter as we can tell by the way he speaks. Then we know that he waited almost two hours to call the authorities after finding her body.

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In the trial, we found out that not only did he wait so long because he wanted to call his lawyers and his parents first, But it turned out that also during that time, Seth had been doing Google searches for a rapper and was texting back and forth with a man trying to sell a goat.

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Any other loving, caring parent would have one thing on their mind after finding their child dead, and that is getting help for their child. But not Seth. He was doing a million other things as his child was laying in her crib, dead. On the other hand, the defense continued their claim that Seth did not know how bad his daughter's condition truly was.

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Again, yes, he knew she was skinny, but he never thought that she was sick. They brought up his religious beliefs and his distrust of doctors, which is why they refused to get any medical treatment for their children. They argued that, yes, Seth neglected his daughter, but it wasn't intentional.

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He was starting to feel overwhelmed by his responsibility of having to take care of Mary along with her two older siblings. He was at home trying to raise the kids, trying to do farm work, trying to take care of the house, and he just couldn't handle it all. His wife, Tatiana, was away at work in the months leading to Mary's death, which just added to the stress.

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Yes, again, he was a neglectful father. Yes, he had a warped belief system, but that didn't mean he intentionally killed his daughter. Yes, he was an incompetent and bad parent, but that doesn't make him a murderer. If anything, he should be given lesser charges.

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The prosecution came back and said that while in jail, Seth actually demanded medical treatment for himself which completely contradicts his testimony of being against medical care and believing in the survival of the fittest because Seth clearly was not that. They also pointed out how his home was a mess. It was filthy. The farm was in disarray with overgrown weeds and grass.

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Tatiana was the main caretaker for those kids, although she did continue working while doing so, but anytime she had to leave the home, let's say to go to the farmer's market, the kids went with her. They went with her everywhere. By April of 2018, the family started experiencing financial issues, so Tatiana started working second shift at McDonald's while Seth continued working on the farm.

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He clearly wasn't cleaning, clearly was not working on the farm. It clearly was not taking care of his children. So what was he overwhelmed with? Another thing that was sort of pointed out at trial was that Seth was clearly eating pretty good as he was overweight at the time of this case. Meanwhile, he allowed his own daughter to starve to death.

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Obviously, that's not something that sat right with the jurors. Then when it came to the pantry being fully stocked, as I stated earlier, when authorities first got to the home and searched around, the pantry was fully stocked, full of food.

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It's thought that it's possible that during those two hours before calling the authorities, he may have gone out and bought food to make it look like he was feeding his children. Either that or he did have all that food and he just kept it all to himself. Having food in the house does not equate to feeding your children. At the end of the trial, both sides made their closing arguments.

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This was a really tough trial for the jury and prosecution alike, with jurors needing to take multiple breaks after seeing just how horrible of conditions Mary was left in. Even the prosecutor in the case almost broke down into tears when discussing the case. But at the end, the jury still had to deliberate and make their decision.

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When they returned, they decided that they were not buying what Seth was trying to sell, and they found him guilty on his charges of first-degree murder.

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For his conviction, he was given a sentence of life behind bars. After Seth's trial by October of 2021, it was time for Tatiana's trial. Once again, the prosecution was arguing that Tatiana knew what she was doing to her baby daughter. She was her main caretaker, so there's no way she could argue that she didn't know how bad of conditions her daughter was in.

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Even if she wanted to say that, you know, Seth wasn't feeding her, Seth wasn't doing what he was supposed to do while she was gone, she was home enough and was her primary caretaker when she was home. so she would have known how bad of conditions she was forced to be in.

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She willingly and knowingly neglected her daughter, leaving her in that crib all alone for extended periods of time, left to sit in her own urine and feces all while her body slowly broke down as she starved to death. There was no way she could have been oblivious to what was happening.

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As you could have guessed, Tatian's defense also claimed that she didn't know just how bad Mary was because she was trying to feed her as much as she could. She knew that she was small and skinny, but never thought that she was sick. She just thought that she was smaller than average because she had been born prematurely. She said though that even if she did want to take Mary to the doctor,

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seth actually wouldn't let her she went on to say that yes she knew she didn't take as good of care of her as she should have but it's not because she didn't want to it was because seth wouldn't let her her defense claimed that her husband seth was abusive and controlling and was not allowing her to provide care for her children tatiana testified at her own trial saying that she met seth pretty much immediately after moving to grand rapids

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As I stated earlier, the two moved in together right away, soon getting married and having kids. But almost immediately after she moved in, he started abusing her. He became demanding and controlling, often berating her and talking down to her. It started with him outwardly cheating on her, going on inappropriate video calls with other women right in front of her.

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During this time, Tatiana continued as the main caretaker for the children, But when she would work at McDonald's, like physically away from the home, the children were Seth's responsibility. He would feed them, change them, and take care of them while they were alone with him.

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If she ever had anything to say about it, he would shove her and tell her to mind her own effing business. It was his place, his rules, and he could do whatever the eff he wants. This progressed to physical violence. He sexually assaulted her at one time, slapped her across the face, and made threats to kill her.

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After moving onto the farm, she only grew more and more isolated, being unable to see her own friends or family. This only increased the amount of control he had over her. He would tell her that she was right where she belonged and if she ever cheated on him, he would kill her. Once he pulled his gun out on her, telling her to get on her knees and putting the gun to her head,

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He even pulled the trigger, firing off through the wall with the bullet going through their oldest daughter's room, so obviously did not hit her. But she said that obviously it was such a terrifying experience. She never knew what caused him to get so angry, so she was constantly walking on eggshells, always afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

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Then, once she was pregnant with her second child, his religious rantings grew more and more extreme. He tried to do an exorcism on her, reading her verses from the Bible and smacking her between the shoulder blades, screaming, demon be gone, again as she was pregnant with her second child. Then, as I stated, when Mary was born, Seth prevented her from feeding her or taking care of her.

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And when you hear the details of this case, it will be up to you to determine if these misguided views are what led to this little girl's death, or was it an intentional murder from two parents who simply didn't want their child anymore? With that being said, let's get into today's case. Mary Ann Welsh was born on October 23rd, 2017 in Solon Township, Michigan to Southwesh and Tatiana Fusari.

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Tatiana wanted to take Mary to the doctor after realizing how skinny she was, but Seth's religious beliefs prevented him from doing so. She is not to blame for Mary's death. Seth is.

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However, those around Seth and Tatiana started to become concerned for the children's well-being due to some beliefs they apparently had. Seth Welsh had a very active Facebook account where he was constantly posting rambling videos of himself talking about his religious views and his views on the medical and healthcare systems.

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And I dropped it. Just like in Seth's trial, the jury was shown photos of little Mary's emaciated, malnourished body, as well as the conditions under which she was forced to live. It was just gut-wrenching and absolutely unacceptable for anyone to put their own child through.

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And I also want to note that it seems like this trial was a little bit back and forth with, yes, I knew she was skinny, but I didn't think she was sick. But also, I wanted to take her to the doctor, but Seth wouldn't let me. So which one is it? It doesn't seem like a great argument, but that is the argument that they went with.

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At the end of her trial, the jury was off for deliberations, and once again, they found that Tatiana Fusari is, in fact, guilty for the first-degree murder of her baby daughter. For these charges, Tatiana was handed a life sentence.

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He called doctors priesthoods of the medical cult and he said that he doesn't believe in vaccines because God is sovereign over diseases and deaths. He believed in survival of the fittest. The weak should die off as God intended. So why are we vaccinating our children to give them a better chance at survival? God should decide who gets sick, not the doctors.

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So that is where this case sits. They both did appeal their convictions, saying that there wasn't enough evidence to show that this was a purposeful murder, but as far as I've seen, any appeal has been denied. Obviously, I do think that this was intentional. They left their baby daughter to starve to death in that crib, covered in her own urine and feces.

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There's no possible way that any parent could do that unintentionally. I do think that it's possible that Seth was manipulative and controlling, seeing as how he didn't do shit around the house or the farm, all while Tatiana had to get a second job and still take care of the kids. I think he was the main driving factor in Mary's death, but I also think Tatiana allowed it to happen.

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I think they both saw her as an inconvenience who wasn't strong enough to survive, so they both left her to die. And I think the jury got it right in both trials. But that's what I think, and now I want to hear from you guys. Do you think this was an intentional murder?

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you think both seth and tatiana played equal roles in it or is someone more to blame than the other or do you guys believe their stories that they're just terrible parents who didn't know they were neglecting her to death let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below if you like this video please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel i put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos

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Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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He said that he would love to see a commune of Christian disciples living off the grid somewhere, just living free. He even had painted signs hung outside of his home, which said, repent, believe, obey.

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Based on his views, Seth was adamantly against having his children vaccinated. According to him, shortly after his first daughter's birth, someone called CPS on him to report him for not having her vaccinated. Same thing happened with his two younger children after refusing to get them vaccinated as well.

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Seth claimed that anytime he did seek medical help for his children, which by the way, he really only took his oldest child to the doctor, he didn't take his younger two to the doctor at any time, but he said that when he did take his oldest to the doctor, they basically just confirmed his beliefs.

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They ran all sorts of unnecessary tests on his child, once even telling Seth that his daughter had a breathing problem and requested to keep her in the hospital for testing. But Seth said that she didn't have a breathing problem. This was just a sneaky way of getting their money at the expense of his daughter. He said that they also forged medical documents at one point.

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So after experiencing these issues with their first doctor, they actually decided to take their child to a different doctor. However, according to Seth, that first doctor called CPS on them for switching doctors.

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All of these issues he experienced in the healthcare system really just confirmed his belief that the medical system takes advantage of people and doesn't do any actual good to the people they're supposed to help. Due to this, the couple opted to raise their three children without any medical intervention.

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At one point, CPS did try and open a case against them stating that their two older children were not receiving the medical care they needed. But the case just fell through and was never really acted on. I haven't been able to find any clear sources as to why it was never acted on, just that the case was never officially opened.

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From there, Tatiana and Seth continued to raise their children on the farm. But as time went on after Mary's birth, friends and family members became concerned with her physical condition. When loved ones would visit, they started to notice that Mary looked a little bit small for her age.

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Tatiana was originally from New York, but she ended up moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan when she was around 20 to reconnect with her mother. The plan was to live with her mother, but her mom actually ended up kicking her out shortly after she moved in, so she was kind of left to her own devices after that.

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She looked a bit gaunt in her face, which is concerning because babies usually look chubby and have a full face. When they picked her up, they felt her spine and she looked thin with her onesie looking pretty baggy on her. Seth would go on to say that his mother would often make comments about her appearance, asking them if they're feeding her, but they assured her they were.

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She was eating plenty of good food. Her appearance was obviously concerning, but Tatyana and Seth seemed not to be worried. They felt that she was getting plenty to eat and that she was just a little bit smaller than average and there was nothing wrong with that. but that was until around 10 a.m. on the morning of August 2nd, 2018.

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According to Tatiana, that morning, she went into 10-month-old Mary's room to check on her, only to find that she was unresponsive in her crib. She tried picking her up to wake her up, but she would not respond. Immediately, she tried CPR to bring her back but she just wasn't responding.

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According to her, she then let Seth know what happened and he immediately decided to call his lawyer to see what action he should take and then he called his parents to ask them for advice on what to do. It was almost two hours later when they finally decided to call 911 to report what happened. And let me tell you, this 911 call was disturbing, to say the least.

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The call started with Tatiana explaining that Mary was cold and unresponsive and wasn't breathing. She then handed the phone to Seth, who spoke in a very calm, matter-of-fact way. Seth said that he wasn't sure if this was the right place to call. He didn't know if he should call the police or what, but he needed to report that he believed his daughter was dead.

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He explained why he waited so long to report the death, again saying that he called his lawyers and his parents first. He said that he fed Mary at around 2.30pm the previous day, then put her to bed by 3pm and didn't check on her until 10am the following day. She was alone in her crib that entire time, neither him or Tatiana had checked on her.

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Even the dispatcher sounded dumbfounded when Seth was explaining all of this. The dispatcher had a few follow-up questions, including asking if he believed she was beyond help when they found her, which he said yes. Then he asked if he was sure she was dead, and Seth responded, yes, dead as a doornail.

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The dispatcher went on to ask how he was holding up, and he responded, you know, it's just another day, right? It is what it is. Seth literally couldn't even pretend to care. He also was not picking up on any social cues when speaking with a dispatcher.

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There, she attended Grand Rapids Community College to study early childhood education and development. Tatiana said that she always had dreams of opening up her own daycare someday, which really spoke to how much she loved children. While studying there, in September of 2011, she met then 20-year-old Seth Welsh.

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The dispatcher clearly sounded concerned for his overall parenting style, lack of attention to his child, and how long it took him to call the authorities, yet it didn't seem like Seth was picking up on any of that. He just continued to act very nonchalant and uncaring.

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When first responders arrived to the scene and found Mary in her crib, they were confused. They were told that this baby was almost 10 months old, but she certainly didn't look it. To them, she almost looked like a newborn baby with how small she was. Once they started examining her, they realized that this baby was absolutely emaciated. She was skinny, frail, and her face looked sunken in.

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According to Tatiana, when she first met Seth, he was charming, engaging, and flirtatious. He made her feel good and being that she was new to the area, it was nice to have someone who was interested in her. The two only went on one date before they made the decision to move in together.

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It was found that there was dried blood coming from her nose, foam coming out of her mouth, and she was soaked in her own urine. At the time she was wearing a dirty diaper filled with feces. When removing her from her crib, it was obvious that the mattress was also in horrible condition.

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It was torn and it was soaked all the way through with urine to the point that the urine had pooled in a baby tub located under the crib. The mattress was also so moldy that the mold had spread to the wooden parts of the crib. That is what she was lying in when she was found.

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In the rest of the home, investigators found that the pantries were fully stocked with regular food, but they only found one usable container of baby formula, along with two more containers which had expired five months before the baby's death. They found that there were parts of the house which were infested with flies and mice.

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There were mouse droppings found in several drawers within the home as well. After this horrifying and heartbreaking discovery, little 10-month-old Mary's body was sent to the medical examiner for an autopsy. There it was found that she weighed only 8 pounds at the time of her death, which is almost half of what is expected a healthy child to weigh at her age, which is around 14 to 15 pounds.

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It also meant that she gained less than two pounds in her 10 months since she was just over six pounds when she was born. The medical examiner found that Mary had suffered injuries to her lungs, heart, and abdominal organs. She had a shrunken thymus, which can be the result of malnutrition in children as young as her.

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Her stomach was completely empty, which indicated she hadn't eaten in multiple days. Her muscles had pretty much completely wasted away, and her bones were so fragile that her bone marrow stopped producing white or red blood cells. It was determined that her cause of death was the result of chronic malnutrition and dehydration, which would have occurred over several weeks.

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This was not something that happened overnight. Now going back just a bit to when Mary's body was found. Of course, both Seth and Tatiana were taken into the station for interviews with police. There, Tatiana said that she had no idea how her baby could have died. She said that she knew she was a little thin, but never thought she was malnourished.

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She just thought that she was growing a little bit slower than expected. She did mention that she didn't get medical care for her due to their overall religious beliefs, but also because they were worried that CPS would get involved if they took her to the doctor. Seth said much of the same in his interview.

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Like I said, Tatiana was already down on her luck after her mother kicked her out, so it seems like this may have contributed to her decision to move in with this man so quickly. Sometime after the two moved in together, the two purchased a farm near Cedar Springs where they lived and operated their business, Black Acre Farm Products, selling produce, raw honey, maple syrup, and other items.

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He also knew that she was thin but his other children who were two and four years old at the time were also on the smaller side as babies so he didn't think much of it. He admitted that he didn't get his children any sort of medical care because of his religious beliefs saying quote, in the bible it says that good food is our medicine, we fed her.

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He went on to say that when Tatiana started working she would breastfeed her when she was home but when she was gone, Seth would give her solid foods. He talked about the schedule they had been doing for a while and it seemed to work for them. He said that he noticed she was skinny, but there was no other health indicators that something was wrong.

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At the time, 24-year-old Jenea was dating a man named Albert Williams. Meanwhile, she was also taking classes at CCAC Homewood, a community college to work towards an associate degree. Obviously, taking classes and being a mother is hard, so sometimes Charlotte would be left with Albert to watch her. This is what happened on April 5th, 2018.

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The question of why a mother would choose to hurt her child is one that I don't think we will ever have an answer to, whether it be postpartum psychosis or because the mother is stressed and overwhelmed. Those are frequently the reasons people will give. But in cases like this one, we don't have those answers.

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In my opinion, in the interview, Jenea was very cold and unemotional. She isn't surprised that somebody intentionally murdered her daughter. She doesn't try to ask any questions or suggest any other possible scenarios for what could have happened. All she said was that there was no way that she could have done this.

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Of course, with so many of these cases where we see parents being interviewed, we can say that we can't judge how someone responds to trauma when their own child dies such a tragic death. However, as you could all see, she is not acting like someone whose child was just murdered. She was not acting like this was a shock to her.

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According to later reports, Jenea had classes that day, and while she was gone, Albert was watching Charlotte. That afternoon, he gave her some fish sticks for lunch and gave her some juice in her pink sippy cup. After lunch at around noon, Albert and Charlotte left home to go and pick Janaya up from school.

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She was not acting like someone who was just told the worst news of her entire life. She only cared about pushing the blame away from herself rather than worrying about her daughter's murder. At this point with the whole timeline, I want to point out that Jenea said that Albert gave her the juice before they picked her up from school.

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She may or may not have drank any, but by the time Jenea got home, she still didn't see her drink it. She then laid her down for her nap with her sippy cup, and it was then that Charlotte died. With that being said, once ingested, fentanyl will start taking effect very quickly. As I mentioned earlier, according to both Albert and Janaya, the juice was given to Charlotte at noon.

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Janaya wasn't back home until about 2 p.m. If she had drank the fentanyl when she was first given the sippy cup, the effects would have started much sooner. and she probably would have died in Albert's care. I will mention that Janaya tried to make it a point to say like, oh, she didn't drink it right away when Albert first gave her the sippy cup.

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She didn't take any until I got home, but none of us saw her drink any of it. I don't believe that for one second. With that being said, I don't think that that's what happened at all. It wasn't until after Albert left that Charlotte apparently drank the juice, which was laced with fentanyl. We know that because, again, she didn't die until she went down for the nap.

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Again, Albert was not present when she took the nap. If Albert truly was the one who put fentanyl in the cup, it makes sense that she would have died before they went to pick Jenea up from school. He would have given it to her, put her down for a nap, and then acted surprised when it was time to pick Janaya up.

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I doubt he would have put her in that car and took her with him if he knew she was about to die. I also don't believe that when a child is given a sippy cup that they're not just going to sip it right away. Even if they don't like what's in it, they're probably going to try it first because they can't see what's inside.

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So they're at least going to take a little sip when you give them the cup initially, and then if they don't like it, they just won't drink anymore. but I do not believe for a second that she didn't drink any of her juice when Albert gave it to her. All of this makes so much more sense that after Albert left, Jenea put fentanyl in that cup and then laid her down for a nap knowing what would happen.

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I don't think Albert knew about any of this at all. In my opinion, I think that Jenea had everything to do with this, again, specifically waiting for Albert to leave before killing Charlotte with Albert being none the wiser. Otherwise, the only other way this could have gone, in my opinion, is if they were both in on it.

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But if that were the case, I don't see why Jenea would have let Albert leave because knowing that they were both about to kill Charlotte. That gives him an alibi and makes it so he wouldn't be there when her body is found. If they were both in on it and clearly Jenea doesn't want to take the fall, why would she let Albert off the hook?

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After picking her up, the three of them made a few stops before returning home at around 1.30 to 2 p.m. At that time, Albert left the home, but he came back only a few minutes later because he realized that Janaya's phone was still in his car. He came back to return the phone, and at that time, he also dropped off some marijuana for Janaya to smoke when she felt like it.

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She clearly is trying to pin this on him during that first interview, so if they were in on it together, I feel like she'd make this story a lot more believable and wouldn't have let him leave after they gave her the fentanyl. The reason she did it after he left, in my opinion, is because she didn't want him to know what she was doing. But that's just my opinion. What do you guys think?

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Either way, based on the evidence they found up to this point, police strongly believed that Janaya was the one who murdered her own baby girl, so she was arrested on charges of first-degree murder. While in jail awaiting her trial, according to the other inmates in the jail, Janaya talked a lot about her case. She told multiple other inmates that she didn't kill Charlotte.

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She also said she didn't mean to kill Charlotte. She said that she didn't die while Albert was caring for her, so he couldn't have been responsible. Then, in one of the most disturbing statements, she told one inmate, "'I didn't want a damn girl anyways.'" If that doesn't scream guilty, I don't know what else does.

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By May 28, 2019, a little over a year after the death of 18-month-old Charlotte, Jenea's trial for murder started. The prosecution argued that Jenea murdered her baby daughter because Charlotte was getting in the way of Jenea's lifestyle. Jenea wanted to relax and smoke weed all of the time, and having a daughter gets in the way of that.

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So, she murdered her daughter so she didn't have the responsibility of caring for her so that she could spend more time to herself. The prosecution argued that there is no way that anybody else could have put the drug into her juice. Albert had absolutely no motive to hurt Charlotte, a child that is not his and whom he has no obligation to care for.

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If he didn't want Charlotte around, he could have just left the relationship altogether. But even beyond the lack of motive, as we discussed earlier, the prosecution also said that it wasn't even possible for Albert to have been the one to drug her. If he was, she would have died almost immediately. long before Janaya even got home.

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And then if somehow Albert did it after picking up Janaya from school before he left, there was only a few minutes where he was even around, so there's a good chance she would have seen him slipping something into her sippy cup and would have been like, hey, what did you just do? So again, there's really no way Albert could have been the one who did this.

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So the only person who could possibly be responsible is Janaya. This was not an accident. There was enough fentanyl in that baby's cup to kill a horse. That is an intentional homicide. On the other hand, the defense continued to try and place the blame on Albert, arguing that Janaya would never want to hurt her daughter.

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Janaya was working, she was in college to improve herself, and she did her best to care for Charlotte. She was not the one who put fentanyl in her daughter's sippy cup. After a week of trial and hearing arguments from both sides, the jury went in for deliberations. And after deliberating, they actually decided that charges of both first or third degree murder weren't appropriate in this case.

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Instead, they found that Janaya Pratt was guilty of involuntary manslaughter. I haven't been able to find really anywhere how they came to that conclusion. My guess is they couldn't say for sure whether she intentionally killed her child with the fentanyl.

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I will note that throughout this whole thing, we've been saying that she had enough fentanyl in her system to kill a horse or a thousand times the lethal dose for an adult. But even that is a very, very small amount. It does not take much fentanyl at all to kill somebody. So that's how overdoses happen so often.

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Once settled in at home, Janaya and Charlotte sat on the couch together and relaxed until Charlotte ultimately fell asleep. At that time, Jenea moved Charlotte to her bed where she laid her down with her sippy cup. For the next hour, a friend came over and smoked some weed with Jenea before leaving again. After that, after that hour of smoking, Jenea got back up to check on Charlotte.

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That is why it is such a huge problem in the country right now because people will take such a small amount not knowing how potent it is and still have it be way, way too much. It's not like they poured an entire gallon of fentanyl into this baby's sippy cup to get her to overdose on it. It really does take a very tiny amount. That being said,

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I could see how a jury would think that maybe Jenea just wanted Charlotte to sleep without actually intending on killing her. Yes, she drugged her and that isn't okay, so she should be held responsible for that, but you can't say for sure whether she actually meant to kill her. I'm not saying that's how I feel in the slightest, but I could see that being an argument in the jury room.

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The other argument they could have made is that maybe Albert was the one who put fentanyl in it and it just so happened that Charlotte didn't take any sips until after Albert left. And so it just so happened that he wasn't there when she died. I guess I could also see that being an argument. Either way, at her sentencing hearing, the judge expressed just how disgusted she is with Jenea.

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In her remarks, she stated, quote, I am considering the violation of trust that you held towards your daughter. Charlotte is essentially just a forgotten victim here, but she looked to you and only you as her source of safety and protection and support.

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She said that any remorse Jenea has shown is quote, nothing more than a box to be checked on your list of things to do when you show up at a sentencing. I find you to be a callous, cold-hearted, and remorseless person.

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With that being said, the judge issued 24-year-old Jenea Pratt a sentence of 5 to 10 years behind bars, which to me, and I'm sure most of you will agree, is not nearly, nearly enough. In my opinion, I do think she intentionally killed her daughter.

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I think she probably was just tired of being a mother and somehow obtained the fentanyl and decided that she was just going to get rid of her, thus allowing her to live the carefree, relaxed life she wanted. I don't think anybody would give a child fentanyl with any purpose other than murder. If she just wanted to put Charlotte to sleep and make sure she stayed asleep for a couple hours,

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You can literally use Benadryl, cough syrup, or over-the-counter sleep aids. Literally so many other things other than fentanyl. You have to jump through so many hoops to get your hands on fentanyl and then administer it to a child versus you could just go to the store and get an over-the-counter sleep aid if you really just want her to go to sleep.

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I am not condoning drugging your child to put them to sleep in any way, shape, or form. I think it's wrong. You should not be doing that. But if you're going to, you're not going to use fentanyl. So in my opinion, this was 100% an intentional murder. Again, I understand how the jury came to their decision, but I do not agree with it in the slightest.

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It's very disturbing to know that regardless of if Jenea serves 5 or 10 years, she will be out in her 20s or 30s. And that, to me, is just so, so unfair. It is unfair to her child that no longer gets to live a life because Jenea was simply tired of being a mother. Even though Jenea was given an incredibly light sentence given the crime, she still appealed her sentence saying it was

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too harsh, which is absolutely absurd and continues to show that Janaya does not care about anybody but herself. Five to ten years for the death of your child is literally less than a slap on the freaking wrist. Thankfully, her appeal was denied, so she'll at least be spending half a decade behind bars for her crime. But that is not nearly enough for the horrific crime that she has committed.

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But it was at that time that Jenea realized that something was horribly wrong. She realized that Charlotte's lips looked blue and she wasn't breathing, so she immediately called 911 to report that her daughter was unresponsive. When police arrived, they walked into the home and were immediately hit with the smell of marijuana.

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But that is all of the information I have on today's case. You all heard my opinion that this was 100% an intentional murder and Jenea didn't get the right conviction. But after hearing all of the details, I'm so curious to hear what all of you think. Do you think this was an intentional murder? Do you think Albert could have had something to do with it? Do you agree with the jury's findings?

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If so, why? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts that you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn the notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos.

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Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any other case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below. With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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They then found baby Charlotte, who was lying face up in her bed, unconscious. Her lips were blue, her skin was cold to the touch, and there was no pulse. Police also observed that there was what looked to be a small amount of blood coming out of her mouth and nose. Of course, first responders attempted lifesaving measures to try and bring this baby girl back.

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As they tried CPR, a thick red liquid started to come out of Charlotte's mouth, which may have been what was blocking her breathing. At this time, nobody had absolutely any idea what could have happened. One moment, Charlotte was alive and happy. She went down for a nap, and the next moment, she was unresponsive.

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While first responders were attempting to save Charlotte's life, they heard as Jenea became absolutely irate. She exclaimed that if her daughter was choking, she would have cleared her mouth and she kept yelling, this isn't my fault, this can't be my fault, and I can't get in trouble for this.

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While providing CPR, they had also cleared off the coffee table and in the commotion of moving her body and doing chest compressions, the officers broke the coffee table. That also made Janaya absolutely furious. She was very upset that they broke her beloved coffee table while trying to save Charlotte's life.

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After beginning CPR, Charlotte was then rushed to the nearest children's hospital where medical staff continued to work tirelessly to save her life. But after just an hour at that hospital, 17-month-old little Charlotte passed away. As this was going on, of course, police wanted to speak with Jenea to figure out what was going on. What could have caused this baby to go unconscious?

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Instead, it appears that this mother simply grew tired of having a child and decided to take her life away from her to make her life easier. Not only that, but she won't even admit that she was the one who did it. Today, we will be discussing the tragic murder of Charlotte Knapper Talley. Charlotte Knapper Talley was born on October 21st, 2016 to her mother, Jenea Pratt and Ramir Talley.

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Did she choke on something? Did she get into something dangerous without her mom's knowledge? Maybe she accidentally swallowed a battery or something else that can happen if a child isn't being watched closely. Things like this are unfortunate, but it can happen with even the most attentive parents.

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There was no obvious sign of trauma to Charlotte, so it's not like there was any clear signs of abuse. This seemed totally and completely out of the blue. But Janaya was not having any of police's questioning. According to hospital staff, she was uncooperative, hostile, and combative at the hospital.

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When detectives tried speaking with her, she stormed out of the hospital and started walking down the street, making it a third of a mile away before finally being stopped by an officer. Once they spoke with her, she expressed frustration that she was being treated like a criminal while her daughter was fighting for her life.

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This feeling is definitely understandable to a degree, but I feel like her behavior was very concerning to officers because most mothers would want to be by their child's side even in the moments after their death. Most mothers wouldn't initially be worried about looking like a criminal,

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most mothers first concern would be the well-being of their child they would be the ones trying to figure out what happened they would be talking to the police and asking questions not running away from them after charlotte's sudden and tragic death police started their investigation into what was really going on here

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By the following day, April 6th, police executed a search warrant at the home where Charlotte first went unresponsive. Some of the evidence recovered from the scene included nighttime cold medicine, children's pain reliever, a small grape children's drink, a yellow sippy cup, a cigar wrapper containing marijuana, a marijuana grinder, and a pink sippy cup, which was found in Charlotte's bed.

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Now, while executing the search warrant, I want to note that Jenea was home and when police went into Charlotte's bedroom to recover that sippy cup, Jenea was once again very volatile and angry. She was so insistent on keeping officers out of that room that she had to be physically restrained. At this point, there was nothing in the home to indicate what happened to baby Charlotte.

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At least, nothing was obvious. So, all of these items were sent off for testing and in the meantime, Charlotte's body was sent to the medical examiner for an autopsy. The medical examiner found that the bottom of Charlotte's feet were dirty and her fingernails were extremely long for a child of her age. There was also a small abrasion to the right side of her nose.

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These findings could indicate that maybe Janiyah didn't pay the closest attention to Charlotte for getting to clip her fingernails. It's possible that the small abrasion to her nose could have been from her scratching herself with her long nails.

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But, other than this, it appears that Charlotte was a healthy weight, she wasn't physically abused or neglected, there was no signs of trauma to the inside or outside of her body, so it appears that she was well cared for. They also found that there was a large amount of a very thick syrupy liquid in her stomach, which is consistent with the fluid that came out of her mouth while receiving CPR.

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At first, her cause of death was left as undetermined once the autopsy was complete. But then, the toxicology report came back with very disturbing findings. Turns out, there was an incredibly high dose of fentanyl in Charlotte's system. In fact, the amount of fentanyl in Little Charlotte's system was about a thousand times the fatal dose for an adult.

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Imagine that amount in a child that is literally not even two years old yet. That is so, so much fentanyl to be found in that small of a body. With that being said, your next question probably would be, where did this baby get the fentanyl? How did it end up in her system? Well, after confiscating that pink sippy cup that Jenea was so hellbent on officers not taking, it was sent off for testing.

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At the time, 17-month-old Charlotte was living with her mother in East Hills, Pennsylvania. Not a lot is known about the relationship between Janiyah and Ramir or how involved Ramir was in Charlotte's life. But unfortunately, in December of 2019, 24-year-old Ramir was killed in an officer-involved shooting.

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And it turned out that there was fentanyl in that sippy cup. So someone put fentanyl in that baby's sippy cup, she drank out of it, and then died as a result of fentanyl poisoning. Knowing all of this information, the medical examiner determined that the fentanyl poisoning was her cause of death and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.

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Fentanyl doesn't just end up in a baby's sippy cup by accident. Someone had to have put it in that cup with the intention of harming that baby girl. After finding out all of this information, Jenea was taken into the police station for an interview. Once again, Jenea was hostile and defensive.

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When talking to detectives, she made it clear that Charlotte was in the care of Albert in the hours before her death. When talking to detectives, she made it clear that Charlotte was in the care of Albert in the hours before her death. She said that she was at school when Albert gave her a sippy cup full of a liquid, specifically happy juice from Huggies.

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She said that she tried giving Charlotte a different juice in another sippy cup earlier, but Charlotte didn't want it. The only juice Charlotte drank that day was the juice that Albert gave her out of that pink sippy cup. She didn't put anything in that sippy cup that day before or after school, and she didn't know exactly what was in it. She completely left it up to Albert.

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So, that being said, she could not have been the one to put fentanyl in the cup.

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Police asked her about any purchases she made, seeing if she got anything shipped to her internationally, because that could be how she got fentanyl, if she ordered it from somewhere like China or Japan. But she denied having anything unusual shipped to her.

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In this case, 911 received a call to report that Ramir was threatening another man with a gun. When police arrived, Ramir ran. There was a chase, but as Ramir was running away, he attempted to shoot at police, prompting the police to return fire, killing him. So, this definitely was an unfortunate situation, but it does sort of give us some insight into who Charlotte's father was.

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In the interview, they told her that Charlotte was murdered, that this was not an accident. Fentanyl doesn't just get into a sippy cup by accident. It's not like it was left out while the adults were doing it and Charlotte got into it. It's not like Charlotte found it on the streets and decided to eat it and put it in her own sippy cup.

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It was intentionally placed into her sippy cup and the only two people who could have done it are Albert or her. Wynne told this she didn't act surprised at all. she wasn't surprised that officers were suggesting that she was murdered. She acted more surprised when the officer suggested that she might have put the drug in the cup than when they told her that her baby was murdered.

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As the interview went on, she grew more and more defensive, saying that she would never hurt her daughter. But she also wasn't trying to figure out what happened. She wasn't asking questions or worried about who could have had access to her daughter and wanted to hurt her. She was very much more concerned with being accused and trying to push the blame away from herself.

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Obviously, not all parents whose children go without food are suffering from poverty. Some parents just don't care enough about them to pay for their lunch. Some parents specifically want to prevent their children from eating lunch, as we see in this case.

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After these staff members continued paying for Gavin's lunch, at some point, Nicole found out that there was money in his school account which was being used for his lunch. And as you could have guessed, this made her absolutely furious.

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She went to the school really upset, telling school administrators that they needed to stop paying for his lunch, saying that if she wanted him to have school lunch, she'd pay for it. A few days after the incident of Nicole coming to school angry, Gavin showed up to school with a chipped tooth. Obviously, this was very concerning.

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We can guess how this happened based on what we know about this case so far, but school staff thought that he probably just fell and broke his tooth that way. It happens. By the 2022-2023 school year, Gavin was in the fifth grade. At this point, a starving and malnourished Gavin started stealing lunches from the other kids.

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Staff started noticing that the boxed and packed lunches were going missing, and eventually they realized that it was Gavin. At that point, staff and even other students would share their lunches with Gavin. Again, staff was not allowed to buy his lunch at this point, but it was clear that he was starving and he was desperate.

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So they did what they could, sharing their own food with him to make sure he at least got to eat something. Which, as a side note, the fact that the school administrators didn't raise the alarm when Nicole said that Gavin wasn't allowed to eat is so far beyond me. I used to work at a camp counselor over the summers, and I know that's a lot different than working at school.

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but the kids would be at camp all day so they either needed to bring a lunch or pay for one to be provided. If I saw a kid that never got food who I then started providing lunch for just for their parents to say that they weren't allowed to eat for the eight hours that they were at camp, I would immediately report it.

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He was your typical preteen boy who loved Pokemon and the Nintendo Switch, and his favorite color was blue. He was kind to everyone around him, and despite everything he went to in his short life, he absolutely loved his family.

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There is no reason why a kid should be denied food while they're at school or some event that is taking place all day. Obviously, there are religious and cultural exceptions, but those are usually temporary and are for certain periods of time. There is no reason why kids should go multiple school years being denied food every single day.

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Over the course of several months during that 2022-2023 school year, multiple staff members in that cafeteria tried helping. At first, when they called the Department of Child and Family Services to report their concerns, they were told that the principal needed to make the report. So, they reported their concerns to the principal who said they'd take care of it.

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After that though, it didn't seem like anything was being done, so staff called DCFS directly multiple more times to report. The cafeteria worker I mentioned earlier, Jan, said that at first she didn't know what exactly to make of Gavin's situation. Was he a kid with an eating disorder and that's why he was eating out of the trash? Or was he starving?

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She also wondered why he missed so much school. Was he really just sick all the time or were his parents keeping him home? She felt that school was a safe haven for Gavin, so when he missed, she was really concerned. She wondered why school administrators weren't following up more with these absences, seeing how frequent they were.

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But, as I said, over time, the more she got to know Gavin, she was really concerned that he truly was being starved, and she knew he was suffering. But despite her best efforts, nothing was being done about it. In fact, she was prevented from helping. By August of 2023, Nicole ended up pulling Gavin out of school completely to homeschool him.

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This was just such a tragedy for Gavin who loved school and felt safe there. At school, he had other people watching him. In my opinion none of these people did even close to enough but he at least had other adults keeping an eye on him. He got to eat food given to him by other students and staff. He was free from abuse while at school.

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He got time to socialize with other kids and learn all about the subjects he loved. But now, he was pulled out and spent all of his time at home. No escape from everything he was going through. After Gavin was pulled from school, no one saw him or heard anything about him for almost a year. There were no updates to his case.

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And let me say, hearing just how much he loved his family and wanted to spend time with them really makes his case that much more heartbreaking knowing what they did to him in return.

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It didn't seem like anyone bothered to check on him after being pulled from school. None of the DCFS reports were followed up on. Even the staff at school, they all wondered what happened, but no one was giving them answers. Jan, the cafeteria worker, said that she really hoped that maybe he stopped attending that school because he was pulled from the home with Nicole and Shane. She was hopeful.

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She wasn't getting any answers and she wanted to know what happened, but she wasn't getting those answers. So she was just hoping for the best. But unfortunately, that was not the case. Nothing happened in this case until July 9th, 2024, when officers were called to the home of Nicole Scott and Shane Peterson with reports of an unresponsive child.

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According to first responders, when they arrived to the home, they found Gavin lying on the bathroom floor unconscious. They were told by Shane and Nicole that Gavin had been sick for several days. He was vomiting repeatedly and now was not breathing. He was then rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. He was pronounced dead at that hospital.

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Immediately upon examining 10-year-old Gavin, it was clear that he was extremely malnourished and underweight. According to examination by doctors, it appeared that he was malnourished to the point that his internal organs shut down completely. At this point, it's too early to know an exact cause of death. However, I think it's pretty clear what happened.

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I don't have too many details surrounding the relationship between Melanie and Shane, but I do know that they were once married for quite a long time, and both of Gavin's older siblings were born to Shane and Melanie. At some point, when Gavin was pretty young, the pair split up and Shane got remarried to Nicole Scott.

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This poor, sweet 10-year-old little boy was starved to death. After finding Gavin's body, of course, an investigation into his death began. As you could imagine, they found that Gavin was being forced to live under horrific conditions. They found that he was locked in a room all by himself while being monitored on surveillance cameras.

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Upon looking into those cameras, investigators found footage of Gavin in his room curling up on the cold hard floor without any blankets or bedding or anything he also was not wearing any clothes just a diaper which was soiled for long periods of time and was not being changed he wasn't allowed to move wasn't allowed to eat wasn't allowed to use the restroom.

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When he was given food, he got the same thing that Maloney described earlier, a piece of bread covered in mustard because he didn't like mustard. He was only allowed to drink a third of a cup of water per day. They also uncovered various text messages between family members which also proved the allegations of abuse and neglect.

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Of course, investigators also spoke with various people, all who knew Gavin, Nicole, and Shane. They spoke with Miloni, who opened up about all of the abuse she faced at the hands of her father and stepmother. She said that once she finally left the home and stayed with her mother, she was terrified of what would happen to Gavin.

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She said that while living there, she was experiencing the brunt of the abuse. They weren't treating Gavin nearly as harshly as they treated her. But once she left, she knew that they would turn their violence towards him. Now, up to this point, I haven't made too much mention of Miloni and Gavin's older brother, Tyler.

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He was an adult by this point, but still living with Gavin and the rest of the family. You'd think that maybe he would have a similar story to tell as Miloni, but that isn't the case at all. According to Miloni, when the two were younger, they were basically best friends. But after the abuse started, that all changed. Tyler was allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

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He wasn't abused or deprived of food. In fact, he was encouraged to take part in the beatings. Shane and Nicole told Tyler that if he wanted, he could beat his sister and brother, and he sure did. Miloni said that she didn't know what was going through his head at the time, with her thinking that Shane and Nicole probably brainwashed him.

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But nonetheless, he fully took part in the abuse of his siblings. Investigators also spoke with co-workers of Shane. Now, Shane and Nicole had a child of their own who is about a year younger than Gavin, who isn't spoken of too much in reports, but I feel like we can probably assume that this child probably wasn't being abused.

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It's known that Melanie had some issues with drug use, specifically with marijuana use, which some would say isn't that big of a deal. But it is illegal in Utah, so using it, especially around children, is going to get you in trouble. And me saying that is not making light of the situation I'm about to tell you about Melanie at all.

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Coworkers of Shane's said that he had a photo of this child on his desk and was always talking about this child. Meanwhile, coworkers didn't even know of Gavin's existence. He never once mentioned him. he didn't talk about him at all, so it's like he didn't even exist.

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So to me, this shows that Shane and Nicole had some weird resentment towards the children that weren't biologically related to Nicole. As Miloni said, as she looked more and more like her mom, that is when the abuse started. Once she was gone, the abuse was turned to Gavin. And in my opinion, I think maybe they felt that Tyler was too old to abuse by that point.

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By the time Miloni was 13, that's when the abuse started and Tyler would have been like 16 at the time. So maybe they just thought that he was too old or maybe he didn't look enough like the mother. Maybe he was always super loyal to Shane. I don't know, but for whatever reason, they didn't bother with Tyler.

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So to me, it seems like Nicole was pissed that Shane had three other kids with another woman and wanted to make them suffer as much as possible because they were an extension of Melanie. That's just what I think at this point based on the limited information we have.

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Of course, investigators have spoken to school staff, Melanie, and everyone else who saw Gavin during the course of the abuse who were all concerned for literal nothingness. years before this happened.

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After the discovery of Gavin's body, investigators had a pretty clear picture of the abuse he suffered. He was being abused and neglected over the course of two long grueling years, if not longer. Finally, after suffering so, so very much, his body couldn't handle it. And as a result of his mistreatment, Gavin lost his life.

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So 46-year-old Shane Peterson, 50-year-old Nicole Scott, and 21-year-old Tyler Peterson were all charged with one count each of child abuse homicide, two counts of aggravated child abuse, and one count of child endangerment. Then, Nicole is facing an additional two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of drug possession.

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According to court documents, back in August of 2014, a police officer found a then two-year-old Gavin walking around alone outside the home unsupervised. The officer picked him up and eventually located his home and spoke with Melanie. Inside the home, the officer found a full marijuana pipe sitting on a shelf out in the open in the front room.

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Tyler is also facing a charge of obstruction, which to me, again, just blows my mind that Nicole was also caught with drugs. She could have been caught with them earlier had DCFS followed up. And maybe they would have taken it as seriously as they did with Melanie. I mean, the drugs were the reason they were with Nicole and Shane to begin with.

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So the fact that Nicole also had drugs just makes this whole situation that much worse. That Melanie was being kept from her kids for years, even after completing multiple, multiple steps to better herself and her parenting. Yet, Nicole was actively abusing those children and also had drugs, which I guess in Utah is the worst thing you could possibly have, and she was still allowed to keep them.

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It's just absolutely shocking and devastating and doesn't make any, any, any sense. Of course, this is yet another case of a clear crime. failure by the system. Family members and school staff are all furious at the lack of action from DCFS despite the numerous calls. The fact that Miloni herself was brave enough to report the abuse

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yet was told that no one can be charged over a bad haircut is just insulting and it is such a slap in the face. This is yet another state, Utah, where whatever the system is doing is just not cutting it. They are lazy, incompetent, and do not care about the welfare of children and that is made crystal clear in this case.

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They would rather keep a mother who smokes weed and yes, was irresponsible, but took the steps to improve herself. They would rather keep her from her children than someone who is actively abusing and starving her children. After Gavin's horrifying and absolutely preventable death, lawmakers in the state of Utah have been demanding answers from DCFS.

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Two lawmakers from the state said that they will be questioning DCFS about the lack of response to the multiple reports filed with them. As we heard, school staff made numerous reports of the abuse before he was just removed from the school altogether. He was locked away for an entire year with no contact with the outside world whatsoever.

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suffering alone in silence as his body shut down from starvation. Lawmakers say that they're asking things like how many times was this truly reported? Was it multiple caseworkers who all dropped the ball? Or was it one person who failed to do anything? Was it a group of people who all collectively ignored a starving child? We truly don't know at this point.

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One state lawmaker, Christine Watkins, says that she's working on a bill that would enable social workers to get a warrant to ensure a child's well-being. She said, quote, DCFS wants the right to be able to get a warrant to be able to put eyes on a child. They don't have that right now. We don't have that anywhere in the law.

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There are rules in place that say parents have a right to raise their children in the way that they want, and the state can only step in at certain times. With this, she also wants to include a clause that would automatically trigger a welfare check on a child after a certain number of red flags are raised or complaints are filed.

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By November of 2014, she ended up pleading guilty to drug charges as well as charges of exposing a child to drugs. For this, Melanie was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and she owed a $600 fine. She was also ordered to complete a mental health evaluation and treatment, complete a parenting program,

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She continued, quote, When DCFS have so many reports that people think a child is being abused or neglected or hungry, that after so many of those reports, they have to act. We're not going to let them off the hook.

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She said that the bill is in very early stages, so obviously there's a lot to iron out, but she hopes that this kind of bill can bring positive change in the way child endangerment cases are handled.

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Obviously, this is a tragic case that was mishandled so, so severely. Yet another case where many social workers have ignored or failed to follow up on ongoing reports of abuse. It's so frustrating, so disheartening, and just heartbreaking for little Gavin who suffered so much for so long.

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However, I will say that it is refreshing to see a lawmaker who is out there and trying to make change, trying to actually do something about this rather than just letting DCFS slip it under the rug. I genuinely hope that change happens and I genuinely hope that DCFS takes accountability for this, but I'm so jaded at this point. I don't feel like that's going to happen, but I guess we'll see.

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At this time, Melanie also lost custody of all three children pending completion of her sentence. By February of 2015, she completed all of her community service hours and paid her fine. She then officially completed her mental health and drug abuse treatment in July of 2015. She also had a job and was able to maintain her employment.

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As for Shane, Nicole, and Tyler, they recently had their first court appearance for their charges where all three were held without bail.

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As of right now, that is where the case sits as we await to hear back about their pleas and if there will be a trial. I just hope that they all suffer behind bars and get the worst possible treatment while there because that is what they deserve. They're all just complete monsters who looked in the face of an innocent, adorable, kind little boy and continued to abuse and neglect him for years.

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Cases like this will never fail to amaze me. The fact that Nicole had so much hate in her heart for these children, yet instead of just giving them back to her mother so she didn't have to deal with them, she kept them so that she could abuse them. She wanted them to suffer. She wanted to watch them in pain and so did Shane.

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I'm also confused by what these parents think is going to happen in these cases. Like you think starving a child for years isn't going to cause their death? These people always act surprised when the child dies from the abuse. Like what did you expect?

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Clearly, these people are idiots and savages to begin with since they can inflict such abuse on a child, but still, it will just never make any sense. But with that, that is where I'm going to end today's video. This was such a heartbreaking one, and I know we've been covering a lot of these types of cases recently. But these truly are the cases that we need to be sharing the most.

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We need to see it change in these systems. We need to hold the systems accountable for how they treat children. And most of all, we need to remember the names and faces of those children who lost their lives far, far too early.

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she did everything she was told to do everything she did was to better herself for her own mental health and so that she could be the best mom she possibly could she took the treatments and classes seriously doing everything she could to get her children back despite this though she actually never was able to get custody back years passed before melanie was even able to see her children again

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Today, we have yet another case that highlights the many failures in our child welfare system. A child who never had a chance from the very beginning. He was first failed by his parents, the first line of defense for a child. After that, he was continuously failed by the system despite numerous adults in his life trying to help him, trying to do what was best for him.

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For those years, she had no idea of the conditions her children were being kept in. She didn't know that they were suffering under Shane and Nicole's care. I'm sure she hoped for the best, never thinking that a human being the father of her children could harm them. But that isn't what was actually happening.

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By 2018, Melanie apparently got a text from Shane offering for Gavin to live with her, but that never went through. Then by Memorial Day in 2019, Shane randomly dropped their second oldest, Miloni, off at Melanie's house and then drove away without saying a word. According to Melanie, when she saw Miloni for the first time, she appeared malnourished and her hair had been buzzed off.

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It was during that weekend when Melanie learned of the horrific conditions under which she and Gavin had been living. Miloni told her mom that for the first two years she lived with Shane and Nicole, things were pretty normal, except for the fact that they totally manipulated her into hating her mom, constantly bad-mouthing her, making her seem like the worst person in the world.

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Because of that, she cut off all contact with her mom during that time. But after two years, when she was around 13 years old in 2018, she started noticing a shift in her father and stepmother's attitude towards her. As Miloni got older, she started looking more and more like Melanie and Nicole resented her for it.

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She started calling her names every day, constantly talking down to her and making her feel awful. Nicole started berating her and beating her over absolutely nothing. They trapped her in her room for hours on end up to days at a time with the lock being on the outside of the door so she couldn't get out. Sometimes they would even zip tie her to the bed preventing her from even getting up.

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Then she said Nicole had installed security cameras in the bedrooms so she could keep tabs on Miloni every second of the day. If Nicole ever saw her move too much while she was tied up, Miloni said that Nicole or Shane would beat her over and over and over again. Most days, Nicole would beat her with a belt or a wooden spoon, sometimes even throwing things at her.

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Most of the time, the punishments were carried out by Nicole, but sometimes Shane would also participate, or at the very least, he would watch, So that just shows again he was very well aware of what was going on and not only that but he was fully complacent and allowing it to happen and even encouraging it to happen.

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Miloni had to ask permission to do absolutely everything including showering, using the restroom, and brushing her hair. One time, Miloni found a comb on the floor and started brushing her hair with it because her hair hadn't been cared for in a long time. Well, Nicole caught her brushing her hair and was absolutely pissed that she dared to brush her hair without asking permission.

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As a punishment, Nicole shaved her head. In addition to that, Miloni said that Nicole and Shane treated her like a maid. She would be forced to spend long hours outside doing yard work at their home as well as at their great-grandmother's house who lived across the street. There were days where she was put outside in the morning and forced to work all day without breaks until dinnertime.

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Even with all of the physical labor she had to do though, she was only being given one to two meals per day. And it's not like they were full hearty meals at the end of the day either. She was given one or two slices of bread which were smothered in mustard because Nicole knew that Miloni hated mustard.

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But no matter what anybody did to try and save poor Gavin's life, the red tape that is our government system prevented anyone from being able to actually help. And because of that, a 10-year-old boy suffered the worst kind of torture imaginable and

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By March of 2019, Miloni said that a friend noticed her condition and reported her concerns to the school counselor who then brought in a worker from DCFS to do an interview. In that interview, at first, Miloni told her that she was fine because she was afraid of what Shane and Nicole would do to her if she told them what was really going on.

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But eventually, she did open up about some things that she was experiencing in the home. She showed her some of the bruises she had and told her about some of the punishments she was receiving. At that time, a safety plan was created for Miloni. Apparently, it was decided that Nicole cannot be alone with Miloni.

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Instead, she would go to her great-grandmother's house across the street until Shane got home. Then, she was allowed to go home. After this was set in place a few weeks after the case was closed, DCFS said there was nothing more they could do. As you could imagine, knowing that DCFS got involved and knowing that Maloney told the worker about Nicole... Nicole just got angrier and angrier.

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By April, the abuse started to get worse, so she tried running away to her mother's house, but Nicole and Shane caught her at a gas station. They put her in the car, and according to Miloni, Nicole strangled her so badly that she thought she was going to die.

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After that, she wasn't allowed to go to school for the last two weeks of school, probably because of the bruising this attack left on Miloni. Nicole also told her that she just didn't deserve to go to school. During those weeks, she was left outside pretty much all day, every day.

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And as a side note, that is one thing that I want to talk about is that I feel like this is something that a lot of DCFS caseworkers just do not understand, is that when you confront the parents about accusations that their child has made,

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if they are abusing them these accusations and meeting up with them and having to go through all of this is just going to make the parent matter and matter at that child it's most of the time going to cause the abuse to get worse knowing that the child is going out and ratting on them

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so the fact that these safety plans are put in place where nicole is still allowed to be in the home with her just because shane is there it makes absolutely no sense and then again the fact that the case was closed so quickly after and then it was just left like nothing we could do about it is just ridiculous because again you're just leaving that child so much more vulnerable because now their abusive parent

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knows that they're telling people. And we see that very clearly in this case because I don't think Nicole was strangling Milani before this. This is the first time we've heard of her going that far.

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and he is now dead i want to use now as a warning that the details in today's case are horrendous they are gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and i know this is going to be a really tough one for a lot of you to hear so if you are extra sensitive to these types of cases this may not be the video for you but with that being said let's get into the case This is the horrendous story of Gavin Peterson.

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Either way, by Memorial Day in 2019, Milani was mowing the lawn when she ran over a sprinkler and broke it. At the time, Nicole was sleeping and Shane was the one who caught her. She was absolutely terrified of what would happen as a result of this. But at the time, Shane told her to get in the car so they could go buy a replacement.

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However, instead of getting that replacement, Shane drove her over to Melanie's house and dropped her off. Without any word, without any explanation, he just dropped her off and that was that. And that is when Melanie saw how underweight Miloni was and was immediately concerned.

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Now, after being dropped off with Melanie and telling her of the abuse she endured all that time, of course, Melanie reported this to the police department, who then referred her to the Department of Child and Family Services. When she first tried to make the report, it was a holiday weekend, so the offices were closed.

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Eventually, she was able to make a report and DCFS workers did come to interview Maloney. But, as you could have guessed, nothing was done. One of the officers Melanie originally spoke to really downplayed the accusations. He basically told her that, you know, Shane might have been a bit too strict while Melanie was a little bit too lax in her parenting style.

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The officer said that he couldn't arrest someone over, quote, a bad haircut. Then, when interviewed by the DCFS worker, they basically told Maloney that there was nothing they could do without physical evidence, even though she had a bruise from Nicole's beating. even though she was very clearly underweight. They said there was nothing they could do.

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No real investigation was done, and the case was closed, leaving Gavin and Tyler in that home with the two abusers. By November of 2019, Melanie fought harder than she ever did before to see Gavin, especially now knowing what they were going through. By now, she was finally granted visitation rights and was allowed to see Gavin every other weekend.

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During these visits, she also noticed signs of malnourishment on Gavin. This time, Melanie decided to document her concerns so that there would be proof of this if the case was ever investigated. So by February of 2020, during one of these visits, she took a photo of Gavin shirtless, looking very clearly emaciated and underweight.

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However, Melanie taking that picture only caused Nicole to get pissed. According to Melanie, Nicole found out that she took this photo, and in response, she made a false complaint to DCFS, which ended her visitation rights while DCFS investigated the complaint. This investigation was super dragged out though, because the timing of it just couldn't have been any worse.

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Gavin Hansen Peterson was born January 15, 2012, to Melanie Peterson and Shane Peterson in Ogden, Utah, and he had two siblings, a then 21-year-old brother named Tyler and a 19-year-old sister, Miloni. Gavin was known as such a happy boy with a contagious smile and laugh. Gavin was intelligent, funny, and curious. He loved science and enjoyed learning all about the solar system.

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This was all happening right at the start of the COVID pandemic. Most things were starting to shut down around March and April of 2020, so this case just sat in limbo for years. Because of this, that February 2020 visit was the last time Melanie saw Gavin.

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Meanwhile, as Melanie was being blocked from seeing Gavin and Shane and Nicole were allowed to continue this alleged abuse, those at school were also starting to notice red flags from Gavin. During the 2021-2022 school year, teachers and staff were concerned with how small Gavin looked. He definitely looked small for his age. He was quite thin and his hair was buzzed.

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He was also missing school quite frequently. That obviously in and of itself is not a huge problem. Some kids are just small. Some like having short hair and some get sick a lot. However, there were some behaviors that stood out to staff, especially one school cafeteria worker, Jan. Jan got to know Gavin pretty well during his time at school.

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She reported that Gavin would come up and grab a cup of water and then would casually take this cup of water and throw it in the trash where the other kids would dump their lunch trays. Then, he would start digging through the garbage and eating the food out of the trash. He tried to hide what he was doing, but it was pretty obvious that he was so, so hungry.

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Seeing this absolutely broke Jan's heart, so she and another cafeteria worker started paying for his lunch. Once she started doing that, apparently the school discouraged her because they wanted to encourage the families going through rough times to fill out a form for reduced or free lunch. But that isn't what was going on.

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Genius MIT Grad Turned Delusional Stalker Realizes Police Discovered his TINY Mistake...

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Today's case unravels the shocking details of how one man turned from a genius MIT grad to a delusional stalker who planned a near-perfect murder.

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But according to what Ellie would later tell police, throughout her life, she went through some of the most horrific things a person can go through. Ellie's story starts back in November of 2017 when Ellie was only 16 years old. Now, one night that November, Ellie reported that she was attending a little get-together with some friends at the home of Cameron Bibby.

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She wrote that she was put into the back of a car and taken to an address where she was forced to have sex with three Asian men. She was then beaten because she was in debt to these men for not attending sex parties for several weeks due to COVID. She said that these men tried to cut her finger off to teach her a lesson.

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Then they dumped her naked body in the middle of nowhere with broken ribs, bruises, and countless other injuries. In the post, she went on to write about how she had been sex trafficked for a number of years. She was trafficked all around different areas of London by a ring of sex traffickers, mostly made up of Asian and Pakistani men. She wrote that some local business owners were also involved.

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She then told parents to stay vigilant and keep on the lookout for their children's safety. She doesn't want what happened to her to happen to anybody else. Of course, this post shocked the internet. Her injuries were gruesome. She had clearly been through something horrendous. This post ended up being viewed over 100,000 times.

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This resulted in people creating a Facebook group called Justice for Ellie. They made t-shirts and posters and took to the streets to protest in Ellie's name. People were pissed that such a young, innocent girl went through something so horrific and it seemed that nobody cared. Police weren't doing anything. People in their own community were abusing and torturing young girls.

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Living amongst them and their children, people were scared for their own safety. Due to the claims that a Pakistani business owner is involved, multiple Indian restaurants in the area had bricks thrown through their windows. One business owner said that he lost 90% of his customers after people claimed that his business was involved.

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other business owners were receiving death threats especially muhammad ramzan who had been exposed as taking part in the sex trafficking ring his children were harassed and his family was torn apart now at this point you might be wondering why and how it seems that all of these accusations and stories from ellie were just allowed to continue happening this all happened over the course of years and

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and even when Ellie was reporting everything, it seemed that she just kept being abused, and it seemed that nobody was really doing anything about it. However, it turned out that as police were investigating all of the different claims that Ellie was making, they started to uncover a picture almost as disturbing, arguably more disturbing than the allegations she was claiming happened to her.

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Police realized that pretty much everything that ali was telling them were straight up lies none of the stories were true which is just crazy that someone can injure themselves in the way that ali apparently did it didn't seem reasonable in the slightest so that is why police truly didn't know what to think at first because when you have someone with this many horrendous and violent stories

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and you've seen the injuries, you've seen how bad she looked, you've seen how miserable she is, you don't want to think that someone could be capable of making all of that up. Especially with how detailed she was, you just don't want to think that someone is capable of coming up with all of that themselves.

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So I'm sure that's why it took so long for police to realize all of this, but when they did, it was like the floodgates just opened. So let's get into the investigation that happened into all of the claims that Allie made and how police came to the conclusion that it was all just a web of elaborate lies. So going back all the way to the first accusation from 2017 which involved Cameron Bibby.

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She said that she had been smoking weed and drinking alcohol that night, but she started to feel sick. At that point, Cameron and his friends contacted Ellie's mother and older sister, who came to pick her up. They took her to the hospital to get checked out, but once at the hospital, Ellie confided in her mother and sister that she had been raped by Cameron that night.

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There wasn't a ton of evidence to support or deny the claims in this case but her petition was withdrawn so so charges were never filed. But with the second, third, and fourth rapes from the March 9th and then the May 6th and May 18th, 2019, police found evidence that proved that Jordan Trenkov was never even at her apartment during any of the times that she claimed she was raped.

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she also gave herself those bruises to support her story. Now, like I said, she did show officers messages sent between them that did prove her account of the story, but when police looked further into it, they found out that she actually sent those messages to herself.

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She had used different accounts to send herself messages to which she would reply and then reply back to herself using the other account. The problem was, however, was that all of the messages sent back and forth were using the IP address of her home's Wi-Fi network. So there was no way that she was texting back and forth with Jordan in her own home. That made absolutely no sense.

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They also found evidence that Jordan could not have been at Allie's home when she claimed. I'm not exactly sure what the evidence was, but they were able to confirm that he was elsewhere during those times. So police were confident that Jordan never raped Ellie. She made up the entire thing. Now onto the biggest lie of all.

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When Ellie told the trafficking story, she provided lists of every girl who had been trafficked as well as other men who were involved in the trafficking. she had detailed descriptions of each and every person involved. Names, physical descriptions, what each person was like and what their role was.

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Again, she described incredibly graphic accounts of what happened when each of these women were brutally raped and abused. But when detectives questioned the women that Ellie had listed, every single one of them denied having ever been trafficked. There were actually some women that were really upset at the fact that someone else was using their name and making up such horrific things about them.

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They also looked into other parts of her story, such as her being trafficked in Amsterdam. It turned out that she did in fact visit Amsterdam, but it was with her sister and her sister's partner for a vacation. They all stayed in a hotel room together, basically being together the entire time. There was never a time that Ellie was away from her sister for long enough to have been trafficked.

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When confronted with this evidence, Ellie would later claim that Muhammad trafficked her while she was on the trip with Lucy. But Lucy told detectives that this just wasn't possible due to how much time they had spent together on this trip.

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As if that wasn't enough, CCTV footage did also confirm that during the time that Ali was in Amsterdam, Mohammed was seen in his local area in England, far away from Amsterdam. After hearing the initial stories that Ali had told, Mohammed Ramzan was arrested and questioned.

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But after extensive investigation, police found that Mohammed had never even met Ellie, never been alone in a room with her, let alone had sex with her. He was not in Blackpool or Leeds or anywhere else she said he was when she was forced to leave the hotel police provided.

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Of course, this immediately concerned her family and hospital staff, so they called the authorities to report this. She then went into the police station to make her statement. In that statement, she said that Cameron had forcibly kissed her. He then followed her into the bathroom and watched her urinate, making comments about her pubic area.

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It turned out that Ellie would start messaging different people on Snapchat and it got to the point where they would exchange sexual messages. But she would change these people's name on Snapchat to match the names of people she named as being involved in a sex trafficking ring.

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So that way, when she screenshotted these sexually explicit messages, it would appear that they were sent from somebody else. Some of the people she came up with were real names. One name she gave was of someone she vaguely knew in high school who was into her back when they were in high school, but they never actually dated.

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Another man was someone she had made friends with, but they weren't all that close and never really talked. So I guess they were more like acquaintances in the past, not currently, but I guess they had talked occasionally. Then some of the names she gave were completely made up.

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She even went as far as getting two different phones so she could send messages back and forth to make it look like traffickers or some of the other trafficked women were texting her. In one of those messages, she made it look like someone named Nicole, another trafficking victim, had texted her angry at Ellie for leaving her alone in Leeds after she apparently escaped.

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So that whole Leeds situation where she got out because she saw the plane ticket... Apparently, this Nicole girl was mad at her because she left her alone in that house, but that situation never happened. Once, she even wrote herself a fake letter and signed it as being from someone else and then mailed it to herself. That is just insane behavior.

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After she started staying at that hotel that police provided, each time she went out and said that she was forced to go by traffickers, obviously that was a lie. With the Blackpool incident, she was taken by police around the town to tell them where the men had taken her. But she wasn't able to point out anywhere even close to where she had been taken when she claimed she was raped.

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That was the first red flag. But officers were able to find CCTV footage that showed exactly what she did that day. She took the train to Blackpool by herself. Then she was seen on video walking alone on foot. Then she went to a shop, bought some food, and returned back to her hotel where she watched YouTube videos. The next day, she woke up and continued on with her day.

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When she was confronted with this evidence, she told officers that her traffickers forced her to make up the story she told. Yes, her traffickers would force a victim to make up a story about abusing their victim so police would look even harder for them and feel even worse for the victim. It makes perfect sense, I guess. The story from July 18th was also completely discredited by CCTV.

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Footage showed her walking around Leeds by herself. She then met up with a man who she hung out with and according to text messages, she met up with him and they had consensual sex. After that, they planned to meet back up for another date. She then left and went back to borrow in furnace and returned home.

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According to the CCTV footage from her walking home after taking the train, she was unharmed with no visible injuries. She was walking just fine, no apparent signs of intoxication at the time. However, 20 minutes later, when police were called to her home, she appeared drugged up with visible bruises and abrasions all over her face and body.

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She said he then started touching her inappropriately before sitting on her and taking her clothes off without her consent. Ellie continued that she told Cameron to stop, but he threatened to set his dog on her to attack her and that he would bury her in the garden or put her in the sea if she didn't comply. Obviously, hearing what this poor 16-year-old went through was horrific.

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It was after this last lie in July of 2019 that police finally realized that none of what Ellie had been telling them was true. It was after that story of her being forced to go to Leeds that police really started to get suspicious.

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Again, they took her around Leeds in the car, trying to figure out where exactly she was taken by the man she called Salsa, but for some reason, she wasn't able to give any information or point out anywhere she had been. That is really what prompted them to take a look at the CCTV footage and put the pieces together.

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By May of 2020, she had been arrested and charged with making false statements to police. But after being released on bail, that is when she went home to her family. And then that is when she claimed to have been taken to a house and raped by three Asian men before being found naked and injured in a field. She then went and made this Facebook post.

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Little did anybody online know, she was in the middle of being investigated for false allegations when she made that post. So all of those people were going out and protesting and making a big stir about this girl who was being investigated for lying about the exact claims that she was making online.

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Of course, the whole story of her being taken to that house and being raped by three Asian men and then her being found in the field, that story was also false. which again is hard to believe when you see the horrific injuries that she had. But after finding her in that field, police were also able to locate a hammer that was hidden against a fence near where she was found in the field.

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On that hammer, police found her DNA and traces of her blood with no other DNA found. Using the hammer, they were able to trace where it was purchased to a local Tesco and Barrow and Furnace. After visiting the store, investigators found that the same hammer had been purchased using a debit card just days before Ellie's attack on May 11th.

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So, by November 27, 2017, Cameron was arrested and interviewed. He denied all of these accusations, but regardless, he was charged with sexual assault. He was released after this pending investigation, but by January of 2018, Ellie actually withdrew her support for prosecution, basically meaning that she was dropping the charges.

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That led them to checking CCTV footage from the store and lo and behold, Ellie was seen buying that very hammer that was used in her attack at that store. I also do want to mention that in this attack, she claimed again that she was beaten with a hammer, but that they tried chopping her finger off to teach her a lesson and

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but it was found partially severed and it was her pinky finger so if you ask me this proves that it was an attack that she did on her own because a pinky finger is easy to chop off like if you're angry enough and you're gonna try to chop someone's finger off you're gonna do it all the way you're not just gonna stop halfway through and make sure they keep their finger

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you're going to completely cut that sucker off and make sure that they suffer for the rest of their life with no finger. So the fact that it wasn't completely cut off shows that Ellie didn't actually want permanent damage to her finger. She didn't want to lose a finger. She just wanted to make it look really convincing.

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Also, during that last hospital stay in May of 2020, when she was apparently found in a field after suffering from those hammer injuries, she was examined by a forensic pathologist. and they found that the only areas of her body that were injured were areas that she could reach herself.

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There was not a single bruise, scratch, or mark on any part of her body that she wouldn't be able to reach herself with a hammer. Everything was on the front of her face and body, so that led the pathologist to determine that it was very likely that her injuries were self-inflicted.

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So of course, police arrested Ellie and charged her with eight counts of perverting the course of justice for all of these false stories that she was telling. That also prompted Jordan Trenkov to be released from jail, where again, he served 73 days due to the allegations made against him.

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As Ellie awaited her trial in jail, she actually wrote to her sister Lucy asking her if she could tell prosecutors that a hammer was found in her bedroom. Basically, trying to get her sister to lie to officers and make her story look more believable. Due to this, Ellie was charged with an additional count of perverting the course of justice.

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However, when she was first arrested, supporters of Ellie's flew into a rage. Once again, more demonstrations, more vandalizing of Asian-owned properties, more death threats towards the men thought to be involved. People thought that Ellie's arrest was victim-blaming at its worst. But when her trial started in October of 2022, the truth would come out.

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The prosecution in her case called Ellie a serial liar and that each and every one of her accounts were fabrications and lies. They talked about how there was no evidence to support any of her claims and in fact, there was evidence to the contrary. They talked about the fake messages she sent herself, the fake Snapchat names.

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For Jordan, they said that he had an alibi for each and every night that Ellie claimed he showed up in her home. Same thing with Mohamed Ramzan. He wasn't in Amsterdam when she claimed. Travel records confirmed that Ellie had never even been to Ibiza. They talked about how some of the traffickers and victims she named didn't even exist. She just made the names up.

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But the tragic series of events of Ellie being the victim of abuse did not stop there. By March 8th, 2019, 18-year-old Ellie went out for the night with a man named Jordan Trendgrove and a few other friends. That night of the 8th turned into the early morning hours of March 9th.

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They talked about the CCTV footage that showed each and every time she was trafficked, where really she was just out and about by herself. However, during the trial, Ellie completely denied all accusations. She stood by her claims saying that she was abused. She was trafficked. Everything she said was true.

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Anytime there was a lie that was confirmed as not being physically possible, she just said that she was forced to say it by an abuser. She adamantly denied hitting herself with a hammer, saying, I'm not a psychopath. But in the end, the evidence against Ellie was damning and showed a very clear picture of a young woman who lied and lied and lied over and over and over again.

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It was said that throughout the trial, she showed no remorse. gave no explanation for her behavior. At the end of the trial, the jury was sent off for deliberations and after just a few hours, they came back with their verdict. They found that Eleanor Williams is guilty on all eight counts of perverting justice.

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She did end up pleading guilty to that ninth count from her writing that letter to her sister.

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When it was time for the courts to decide her sentencing, Ellie's defense argued that Ellie actually has complex post-traumatic stress disorder. They argued that she had a lot of difficulties in her childhood. She began self-harming when she was younger. but her doctor couldn't really provide much detail into what difficulties she actually faced.

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Like they didn't give really any examples or any specific instances or anything to actually support their claims. The judge did say that given the significance of the story she came up with, there has to be some sort of mental impairment to be able to come up with this and lie like she did. To go to such great lengths to create these false accusations against men she didn't even really know.

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But really, there is no explanation for this. The judge also has to consider all of the hardships that her accusations caused on the victims in this case. Jordan's house was spray painted with the word rapist. His mother was being harassed so badly that she had to move out of her home. Again, he spent 73 days in jail. He was harassed on the streets by strangers. He got death threats.

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He's also a father now, and CPS would randomly get anonymous calls saying that Jordan is not fit to be a father. When he moved, his neighbor called him a rapist and blatantly said that he wasn't welcome there. It got to the point where he fell into a deep depression. Jordan even tried to take his own life because of the significant impact these allegations had on his life.

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Throughout the night, Ellie had been drinking, becoming so intoxicated that those around her felt the need to take her home. But in the days after that night, Ellie confided in a few friends claiming that she was taken by Jordan to someplace she didn't recognize. There, she said that Jordan raped her before taking her back home.

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Thankfully, he is still alive but he suffers every day and has to take antidepressants.

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Then when it came to Mohamed Ramzan, his life was ruined. His children and wife were harassed. His business vandalized. He was sent death threats and told that he was not welcome in his community. Mohamed also attempted to take his own life. Thankfully, he too survived, but that wasn't the end of the impact on his family. His son also tried to take his own life.

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His own children said that they don't want to be known as the kids of a pedo, a rapist. Everyone around town called them horrible people and made life for them unbearable.

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The following day, she received some very derogatory and vile messages from Jordan which she screenshotted to make sure that she would have them saved if she needed them. At that time, she didn't want to report what happened to the police, which happens in a lot of these sexual abuse cases.

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Then there's the young man who Ellie met up with in Leeds who she also accused of rape. He has not been named publicly, but he also suffered consequences of his name being out there as a rapist when these accusations were first made. He fell into a depression, unable to complete his studies in school, unable to work. He also tried to kill himself.

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He also survived, but to this day, he has constant anxiety. He doesn't trust anybody. Then we have those demonstrations and property destruction and hate crimes that took place after that Facebook post. Many people in the Asian community were attacked, harassed, and had their properties vandalized. all because of these false allegations that were completely made up.

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And even though Ellie was found guilty, you know that these men will have these accusations looming over their heads for the rest of their lives. In cases like this one, there's so many people that will hear the original story that's been reported, where they were accused of rape, but then never actually follow up to see what really happened.

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So people read a headline, oh, this man is a rapist and the leader of a sex ring, and then people read that, get upset, but then never actually look further into it or never return to the stories when they see it being reported on again or seeing the story being corrected. Or saying that this was all just a lie. Or people do come back and see it and they just don't believe it.

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So there are going to be people out there who got half the story and will believe for the rest of their lives that these men are violent rapists. Then, last but certainly not least, her lies will have an effect on any and all women who have suffered sexual abuse and rape. The real victims.

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While false reporting of rape is incredibly rare, cases like this have a major negative impact on the real victims. People will hear her story and use it as a way to be like, "'See? Women make false reports all the time. Who's to say that she isn't lying too?'

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Her lies have hurt every single woman out there who has been raped or sexually assaulted, especially those women who were not believed or did not get to see their attacker being held accountable. Because cases like this one give people the excuse to say, well, some women do lie. And I can't even begin to explain how badly that hurts real people. victims.

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But even with this case, I urge you, I implore you to still believe all women. Yes, cases like this happen occasionally, but almost every other woman out there who has made claims like this are real victims and they deserve to be believed because yes, cases like this ruin lives. But women who were raped or sexually assaulted, their lives are also irreversibly damaged.

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For far too long, women have been ridiculed and called liars when they come out with genuine accusations against the men who have hurt them. But in some rare cases, we hear stories like this one where one woman decides to come up with lie after lie

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So please, again, even with cases like this, I implore you to just believe all women. But either way, with all of these factors considered, the judge in Ellie's case came to his decision regarding her sentence. Ellie will serve a total of eight and a half years behind bars for her crimes.

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Men or women won't go to the police because they're embarrassed and blame themselves or they fear retaliation. So they just keep it to themselves and hope that nothing happens after that. However, two months later, by May 6th, 2019, Jordan had apparently come over to Ellie's apartment. She let him in, but once he was there, he would not leave.

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Now, obviously, the falsely accused men in this case are happy that she's in prison, but they do not think that eight years is long enough given just how much they have suffered because of what she did. And the fact that Ellie is still not admitting to lying. She is still trying to say that everything she said was true. She has shown no remorse, and in fact, she has appealed her conviction.

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Jordan believes that she should be behind bars for life and the detectives investigating this case have said if she wasn't behind bars, they truly believe that this behavior wouldn't have stopped and it may have even escalated further. Some investigators believe that she could have killed herself in the midst of trying to make up these false allegations.

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So it's really for her own safety that she remains behind bars.

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After all of this, there's never really been any explanation for Ellie's behaviors. Family members, including Lucy, Ellie's mother, and her father have all been outspoken about their support for Ellie. They've all said that they don't know why she would have come up with such elaborate lies.

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However, her father and the rest of her family have said that they don't actually believe that all of her stories are made up. They truly believe that she was abused at some point in her childhood and that when she tried to tell her story, she wasn't believed. And that may have led her to telling the stories after that.

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Her mother has also said that she believes that her trafficking stories are true. They do not believe that she would harm herself in the way she did. She had such severe injuries that her family simply didn't think she could have caused them herself. She had a cut finger, her throat cut at one point. They do not believe that she would have done that to herself.

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She tried forcing him to leave her place, but that just caused a fight to happen between the two. At that point, Jordan pulled out a pocket knife and began threatening her with it. After that, he stripped her naked in the living room before forcibly pulling her into the bathroom by yanking her hair. He then ripped the shower head off the wall and started beating her with it.

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They said that yes, they do believe that some of the stories she made up are lies, but they don't think that the injuries were self-inflicted. Her sister Lucy also said that there is absolutely no chance that her injuries were self-inflicted. She said that she saw them in person and there's no way that someone could have done that to themselves.

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She also said that she has seen Ellie being harassed by different men in bars and club settings, so she believes that one of those men could have hurt her. And maybe something happened in her past where, again, she wasn't believed and that caused her to make up all of these lies so that she would be believed.

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And obviously she would get attention from all of this and she could see all of these people acting out and demonstrating and all of this attention was going to her because of the claims that she made.

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I've never seen anything like it. Either way, as of right now, that is all of the information we have on this case. Now, when it comes to all of the stories that Ellie told and why she would lie, I do believe that there may have been some event in her past that made her feel like she wasn't believed for whatever reason.

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Whether it was abuse, whether it was a mental illness, whether it was sexual assault or something like that. I do think that something happened in her past that made her feel like she needed to act out. I do think that there's also some sort of mental illness there because no mentally healthy person would go to the lengths that Ally went to.

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But I do think that all of the stories we talked about here were fabricated. Obviously, there is evidence to prove that she made up these stories and in doing so, she ruined the lives of so, so many people. And to me, the fact that she blamed men that she hardly even knew, some of which she had never even met, is beyond me.

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It was said that she google searched some random people in her area and that is how she chose some of the men to blame. I just don't get, like, if you have this grudge against someone, why not choose them? Obviously, that's also wrong. But why are you choosing to blame random men that you've never met and that have nothing to do with you?

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My big questions are, why did she choose Muhammad for the sex trafficking story? That is such a... Such a massive lie. Why wouldn't she just say that he raped her? Why did she have to bring in all these other people, all these other victims, make up this huge elaborate story of years and years and years of sex trafficking? That makes no sense.

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During the altercation, the two ended up on the floor, so Jordan started to rape her. And during the rape, he threatened to kill Ellie. Once the whole ordeal was over, he finally left, but Ellie was left with injuries. She had bruises all over her legs. And of course, she was traumatized. Finally, after the second rape, Ellie reluctantly decided to call the police to report what he had done.

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I also want to know why did she say that Asian men gang raped her? God knows. I, personally, this might be a hot take, but I do think that racism played part in that. In some sick way, maybe she thought that blaming minorities would make her stories more believable, or maybe she simply didn't like these populations, which makes things even worse. The fact that she went racist with it...

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That's just like the cherry on top of everything else that she did. But at the end of the day, there's truly no explanation for why someone would do something as horrific as Ellie did. And honestly, I don't know if we're ever going to find out because I think that Ellie will live the rest of her life claiming that these things really did happen to her.

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I don't think she's ever going to at least publicly admit that she was lying. But at the end of this case, I do want to hear what you all think. Why do you think she did this? Why do you think she chose to blame the people she did? Do you agree with her family and that some of what she told is actually true? Or do you think it's all lies?

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Do you think something happened in her past that caused her to come up with all of these lies?

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She went to the police with those screenshots in hand, which showed that Jordan had messaged her saying some derogatory things, basically proving what he did to her on March 9th. She also showed them the bruises that she sustained from the horrific May 6th attack. Of course, after this report, Jordan was arrested and questioned about both incidents. Once again, Jordan denied all accusations.

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But he did end up being arrested and charged with the sexual assaults. But shortly after being arrested, he was released on bail. But it seems that him being released on bail only made things worse for Ellie. By May 18, 2019, Ellie called the police once again to report that Jordan returned to her apartment and violently raped her once again.

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She explained that after a night out, she arrived home when Jordan entered the apartment through an unlocked door. At the time, she was expecting a friend to come over so that is why the door was unlocked. She tried pushing him out of the apartment but once again, he hit her and a fight broke out. He proceeded to hit her on her face and body.

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Once she had fallen to the floor, he got on top of her and raped her again before fleeing. After this took place, Ellie mustered the courage to call 911 again to report what happened right away. By the time police responded, they found Ellie unconscious and naked on the floor of her apartment. She was clearly injured at that time.

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falsely accusing so many different people of so many horrific violent things and when things like this happens it harms not just the people involved but every single woman who has suffered abuse in her life this is the disgusting story of Eleanor Williams

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Once again, police arrested Jordan and this time he was not released on bail. He spent the following 73 days in jail as a sex offender. During that time, as Jordan was awaiting his time in jail, by June 18th, 2019, Ellie spoke with detectives about another horrific situation she went through. At this point, Ellie had been through so much and had to tell detectives all of these horrible stories.

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She was seeing the men who attacked her being held responsible for their actions. So, she finally felt comfortable enough to disclose further information to a detective with whom she had been working. Ellie told this detective that she was the victim of sex trafficking since the age of 12 or 13 years old, and she knew who was responsible.

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She named then 40-year-old Mohamed Ramsan, married father of four and local businessman, as being the leader in this sex trafficking ring. Ellie said that when she was 12, Muhammad befriended her and shortly after, he groomed her into having sex with him. After that, this started happening on a regular basis. Then, Ellie said that he convinced her to sleep with yet another man.

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This turned into her being taken from place to place all across the area to have sex with tons of random men, all against her will. She described that she wasn't the only girl being abused, she was one of many. And even though this whole thing started with Mohammed, other men started to join in. And soon, it was a whole group of men who were abusing and trafficking the girls.

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All of the sexual acts she was forced to perform were being recorded and sold for money. And that wasn't all. After this all started, the girls were being treated worse and worse. If the girls didn't do what they were told, they were beaten. There was one girl who was beaten so badly that she almost died as a result. And another girl was thrown down the stairs and beaten.

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Another girl had a dog set on her. The girls were also forced to watch videos of other girls being violently raped. This went on for years. Ellie went on to describe that Muhammad took her on a trip to Amsterdam, and there Muhammad forced her to work at a brothel. On the same trip, Muhammad tried to sell her for $25,000, but I guess the buyer didn't go through with that deal for whatever reason.

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This isn't really explained more, but he didn't go through with it. He also attempted to take her to Pakistan, but that also didn't work out. Then, after the Amsterdam trip, he forced her to live in a camper van for two weeks, which was driven all around the UK.

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During that time, she was forcibly injected with heroin to make her more easily subdued so that more men could have sex with her for money. She was forced to attend party after party after party. Constant parties where she and other young women had to dress in certain clothing and provide sexual favors for any man who wanted it.

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Eleanor Williams, who went by Ellie, was born to parents Allison Johnston and Peter Williams, and she grew up in Walney Island in Barwon Furnace, England, with her mother and her stepfather. Eleanor has an older sister named Lucy and a brother who has not been named publicly as far as I've seen. Eleanor's mother, Allison, was known locally as a pillar in the community.

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Then one of the girls she was trafficked with got pregnant and she was forced to take this girl to get an illegal abortion. After that, she was taken to Ibiza for two weeks where once again different men would pay Mohammed to have sex with her. To support her claims, Ellie showed the officer messages on Snapchat that she had screenshotted.

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The messages were sexual in nature, and according to the screenshots, they had been sent back and forth between Ellie and multiple men that she had listed as being involved in this sex trafficking ring. Of course, after hearing all of these details, the detective on her case was deeply troubled.

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she felt that ellie was the victim of serious sexual exploitation only now being brave enough to tell her story she was so descriptive in everything she said she gave detailed accounts of some of the horrendous abuse that she and some of the other victims went through some of which I did leave out because they were that horrific and graphic.

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This detective was concerned that there was this highly dangerous and violent group of sex traffickers operating in the Borough Infernus area. After this account by Ellie, detectives got together and began a multi-agency investigation into this ring. The detective also offered for Ellie to stay in a safe house or go into witness protection.

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At the time, Ellie declined participation in witness protection, which does make sense because you kind of have to have a completely new life, a new identity, and everything. Not everyone's going to want to do that, but she did agree to stay in a hotel provided by the police near the police station, somewhere that would be guarded and where she would be safe.

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They even lined up a job for her at the hotel so she could make money and live her life, never having to leave the hotel while police investigated her claims. After starting her stay at the hotel, there were a few times where Ellie would leave the hotel and would cause her family and officers to panic and worry about where she was and what could have happened to her.

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On June 30th, 2019, she left the hotel and went to Blackpool via the train. There, she checked herself into a hotel room. She went to various places in Blackpool, not answering messages being sent from the police or her family. Everyone was worried about her. Finally, after several hours, officers were able to track her down and met up with her to find out what happened.

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That is when she told officers that her traffickers found her at that hotel and ordered her to go to Blackpool. So she did. She said that she met with Mohammed who threatened to murder her if she didn't comply. So she did. And she went to four different hotels with him, riding with him in a car to each place where she was brutally raped by multiple different men.

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Then, as we know, police officers tracked her down and were able to take her back to the hotel safely. A little over two weeks after that, on July 18th, Ellie left the hotel again, this time catching a train to Leeds, spending some time there before heading back to Borough Infernus.

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Once again, everybody was worried about her while she was out, and as she was out, her brother actually happened to see her walking in the area, so he picked her up and took her home, calling the police to let them know what happened.

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When police spoke with her about this incident, this time she said that on July 17th, a man named Salsa, one of the traffickers, came to her door, slapped her in the face, and pinned her against the wall by her neck. He told her that she caused him to lose money, so she needed to go out and earn them £10,000. They told her to go to Leeds, which she did.

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She worked as a labor counselor for the community and was well respected by those around her. She was known to be very community oriented who put her all into representing the people of the town. By all accounts, Ellie grew up in a normal middle class home in a nice neighborhood with a family who loved her.

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There, she was taken to a house where she had sex with two men. At that home, there were other girls who were also there being trafficked. After that, she was taken to a few more houses where she had sex with a total of six more men against her will. But at one of the homes, she saw a passport sitting on the table along with a plane ticket with flight details to Bangladesh, so she ran.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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She didn't want to give these men the chance to get her out of the country and away from safety. After running, the traffickers contacted her again and told her to go to Preston, which she did. There, she met with another trafficker who then forced her to do cocaine. Then this man met up with two Asian men at the park where they both gave him money to rape her.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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One of the men took her to a back alley and raped her there. After the rape, she was allowed to go back to Barwon Furnace. There, she was picked up by Salsa, who slapped her in the face and raped her again, telling her that she needed to sort herself out. Then after that, she went home where she was met with police. When police saw her, she was clearly injured again and was barely conscious.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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She was then taken to the hospital for treatment. After this, it was decided that it was best if Ellie had just returned home to Walney Island where she would be with family. But the abuse and rape did not stop. By May 18, 2020, Ellie left her home and did not return back for her curfew. So, Ellie's mother reported her as missing.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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It turned out that Ellie intended to catch a bus to Barrow, but one of her traffickers ordered her a lift, which I guess she accepted for whatever reason. Then, she was taken to a house in Barrow-in-Furness. There were 10 men within that home, most of whom raped her. One of them also beat her and tried to cut her finger off. She was also beaten in the face with a hammer.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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She suffered the most horrific abuse and injuries imaginable at that home. After that, one of the men drove back to Walney Island. Then she walked off into a field where police later found her after suffering from countless injuries. She was unconscious at the time that she was found and she had bruises all over her face, legs, and abdomen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

Her EVIL Lies Ruined COUNTLESS Lives: The Horrific Crimes of Eleanor Williams

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One eye was swollen shut and part of her pinky finger had been partially severed. By May 20th, Ellie took to Facebook to expose all of the injuries that she had suffered at the hands of her abusers. She took photos of her face and what she had gone through was clearly horrendous. In that post, she started by saying that this was the hardest thing she had ever had to write.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Dann, wie wir von vorhin erinnern, hatten die beiden tatsächlich das Party zusammen am 19., wo sie wirklich glücklich waren. Aber nach diesem Party hat Laurie Mark über all seine Lügen konfrontiert. und das ist, wo alles zu Beginn gekommen ist.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sie hat ihren Freunden erklärt, dass er zu ihren anderen Zeiten in der Vergangenheit verliebt hat und dass sie einige Probleme hatten, aber dass alles andere perfekt war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Was mich macht, dass ich glaube, dass seine Verliebtheit wahrscheinlich etwas ist, mit dem sie schon lange geredet hat und sich einfach verlassen lassen, vielleicht einige der Verliebtheiten glauben und sie einfach fragen und nicht wirklich wissen, was zu tun. Wie ich vorhin erwähnt habe, Er war wirklich gut am erzählen von Geschichten und darauf, dass Leute ihn glauben. Er war gut am Lügen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Ich möchte euch auch daran erinnern, dass sie beide Mormen sind. Mormen sind sehr ernsthaft über das Verheirat und das Verheirat. Einer ihrer Hauptbedingungen ist Familie. Wenn sie verheiratet war, auch wenn die Zeiten nicht so perfekt waren,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Es würde Sinn machen, dass sie in der Beziehung bleiben würde, zum einen für dieses ungeborene Baby, das sie nur gerade herausgefunden hat, aber auch, weil in ihrer Religion Divorz nicht cool ist. Aber egal, obwohl wir nicht genau wissen, was Lori gesagt hat, als sie Mark konfrontiert hat, weil die meisten von dem, was wir wissen, ist von dem, was Mark gesagt hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Lori's Bruder Paul, auf der anderen Seite, war in seinen späten Teenagern und er war auf dem Weg auf seine Missionsreise, also hat er einfach in Kalifornien mit seinem Vater geblieben, weil es für sie einfach viel einfacher wäre. Weißt du, anstatt dass der Bruder die Schulen am letzten Moment verändert hat, weißt du, vor der Graduierung.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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uns erzählt hat, dass sie es gesagt hat, aber sie hat fast gesagt, dass sie krank von seinen Lügen ist, dass jetzt jeder herausfinden wird, dass er nicht eigentlich zur Med-Schule gehen soll. Er hatte nicht nur Lügen mit Lori über diese ganze Sache, sondern auch seine gesamte Familie.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sein Vater war sogar mit ihm mitgehen gehen, zum UNC Chapel Hill, als sie da rausgekommen sind, um ihn zu helfen, sich zu befinden. So this was this entire big lie that he had set up. So this was a pretty big deal. He said that Lori said that his child was going to be growing up without a father in the household and that she's done with him.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Of course, he tried to calm her down with even more lies. Sie sagte, dass es eine Computerverletzung war, dass er weiß, dass es ein Problem ist, aber natürlich hat sie nichts gekauft, was er verkaufen wollte. Die Nacht, an der sie ihn konfrontiert hat, sind die beiden in einen nahen Verkaufsstall gegangen und sind dann nach Hause gekommen. Lori ging dann in den Bett und schrieb Mark eine E-Mail.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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In der Letterschrift hat sie geschrieben, dass sie darüber nachgedacht hat, ihn zu verabschieden. Sie hat gesagt, dass sie wusste, dass er nicht so viel hatte, wie er sein Untergradschulabschluss gemacht hat. Also hat sie die ganze Sache von der Graduierung Das war auch eine Lüge, die erklärt, warum er so viele niedrige Jobs verbracht hat, anstatt von jemandem mit einem Degret zu erwarten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er war nicht mal zwei Jahre in der Schule. Die ganze Zeit, in der er in der Schule war, hat er es einfach gefeuert. Er hat sie auf der Kampagne für den Abend zusammen getroffen. Er hat Papier geschrieben und sie Lorie und seiner Mutter gezeigt. Er hat sogar Textbücher gekauft. Er hat eine Kappung gekauft, aber wie gesagt, er hat gesagt, dass er zu krank war, um tatsächlich zur Zeremonie zu gehen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er ist einfach so krank. in dieser Lüge, dass er vielleicht einfach nur zur Schule gegangen wäre. Es wäre wahrscheinlich einfach einfacher gewesen, aber er hat es nicht getan. Er hat diese ganze Sache gemacht, um sich als eine völlig andere Person auszusehen, als er eigentlich war. In diesem Brief hat Lori gesagt, dass sie alles erzählen würde, was los war. Als sie da saß, schrieb sie das Brief.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sie weinte. Sie war komplett traurig, aber Mark war draußen im Wohnzimmer, hat sein Nintendo gespielt, hat einfach nur seine Angriffe gespürt. Aber trotzdem, nachdem er das Buch geschrieben hat, fuhr Lori schlafen. Jedoch, nachdem er das Buch gelesen hat, hat Mark fast alles für Lori verurteilt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er dachte, dass es ihre Aufgabe war, bei ihm zu stehen, egal was, ihn für alles zu verabschieden und einfach mit ihren Leben weiterzugehen. Klar, er nahm keine Verantwortung dafür, dass sie zurücksteigen wollte und nicht mehr eine Teil dieser Beziehung sein wollte. Er dachte, dass es all ihre Schuld war, dass ihr Beziehung fehlte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er war so narzisstisch, dass er wirklich glaubte, dass es ihre Schuld war, weil er diese ganze Geschichte gebaut hat, aber weil sie alle erzählen würde, dass sie diejenige war, die alles zerstört hat. Also, als er diesen Brief lesen konnte, wurde er immer angrierlicher für sie. was sie mit ihm gemacht hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Anstatt sein ganzes Leben aufzubauen und ihn zu einem anderen Staat zu bewegen, vor der Graduierung, hat er und sein Vater entschieden, in Kalifornien zu bleiben. In Utah haben die 11-jährige Lori und ihre Mutter Thelma sehr nahe verbunden, weil es nur die beiden waren und sie waren ziemlich auf ihrer eigenen Seite. Lori ging nach Orem High School, nahe Salt Lake City, in Utah.

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er wusste, dass er am nächsten Tag wahrscheinlich aufwacht und mit seinen Eltern, ihren Eltern, seinen Brüdern auf den Telefon kommt. Er sagt ihnen alle, dass Mark hacken ein komplettes Verbrechen ist. So, als sie schläft, als er immer mehr wütend wird, hat er seine 22-Kaliber-Rifle genommen stand über ihr und schoss ihr in den Kopf.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Für irgendeinen Grund, das ist, was er glaubte, würde seine Probleme lösen, aber es war klar nicht sehr gut durchgeführt. Hier war sie. in einem Pool von Blut auf ihrem eigenen Bett. Und er musste etwas tun, um seine Rechte zu schützen. Also, das erste, was er macht, ist, zurück in den Convenience-Store zu gehen, an dem sie gerade an der Nacht waren, bevor all das passiert ist.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sie haben einen Pack von Zigaretten gefragt, glaube ich, damit er schminken und seinen Kopf klären konnte. Nun, in der Beobachtungsfotografie, die sie gefangen haben, Sobald der Verkaufsführer die Zigaretten holt, kann er sich sehen, wie er sich fragt, was er gerade gemacht hat. Vielleicht hat er für Blut oder andere Marken auf seinen Händen geschaut. Ich weiß es nicht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Egal wie, er geht zurück in das Wohnzimmer nachdem er das gemacht hat. Und natürlich ist die Schnauze in Blut versteckt, also hat er die Schnauze weggezogen, um sie mit seinem Hundeknife auszuschneiden.

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er hat Lori und diese Schnauze in einen Plastik-Garbage-Bag gelegt, dann hat er diese Sachen mit seinem Pult und den Schnauzen selbst in den Auto gebracht und hat den Kühlschrank auf dem Auto aufgetragen und fuhr zu einem Dumpster hinter dem Warenhaus, das ist im Grunde ein Haus der Weisheit. um die Klamotten zu entfernen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Dann fuhr er dann zum Psychiaterhospital, wo er arbeitete, um Lori's Körper dort zu versorgen. Nun, dieses Krankenhaus hatte Motionssensoren-Kameras rundherum, die Marc tatsächlich mit etwas mitgebracht haben, das sehr deutlich wie ein Körper in den Dumpster sah. Was einfach nur so ein dummer Fehler ist und einer der sehr vielen dummen Fehler ist, die er dankbar gemacht hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Ich meine, wie kannst du... irgendwo arbeiten und nicht wissen, dass sie Kameras haben, die alles aufnehmen. Nun, sie konnten nicht sicher sein, ob das in der Kamera-Fotografie bemerkt wurde, weil es ziemlich niedrig war. Es war nachts, also ist es nicht so, als ob es ein Koffer im Kofferraum war, aber immer noch ziemlich schlecht.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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So, das war, als er zurück nach seinem Wohnzimmer ging und den Hundeknife gekleidet hat. klar nicht sehr gut, weil wir vorher wussten, dass Detektivs es gefunden haben mit Blut noch dran und dann, nachdem er es gekleidet hat, hat er es zurück in seinen Schlauch gelegt. Es gab auch Spots mit Blut, wo ihr Körper war. Also kam er mit der Idee, dass er sagen würde, dass sie einfach

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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und nie wieder zurück kam. Um 5 Uhr am Morgen hat er ihr Auto verlassen, wo es später am Creek Canyon gefunden werden würde. Aber er hat das Seat verlassen und sich zurück gedreht. Es war also sehr offensichtlich, dass es jemand war, der viel größer war als Lori. der 5'4'' war, der das Auto gefahren hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sie wurde von ihren Klassenmitgliedern beschrieben, als kindisch und ehrgeizig und die, die um sie herum waren, lieben sie absolut. Sie wurde sogar als Klasse-Präsidentin im Frühjahr ausgewählt. Sie spielte Baseball in der Hochschule und bekam einen Job bei der Car Wash, um etwas extra Geld zu verdienen während ihrer Schulung.

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Aber egal, er dachte, dass er die meisten von seinen Tracks geschlossen hat, ging er zurück in sein Apartment um 6 Uhr am Morgen, um den Rest des Ortes zu sauber zu machen. Dann, um 9 Uhr am Morgen, ging er zum lokalen Kühlschrank-Store. Anwesende des lokalen Kühlschranks sagen, dass er überhaupt nicht nervös aussah.

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er ging einfach rein, zahlte seine Schnauze, die ihm etwa 500 Dollar kostete, und dann ging er weg. Er zahlte das auf seine Kreditkarte, die später bestätigt werden würde, weil die Polizei natürlich große Statementen geschaut hat und herausgefunden hat, dass er, um irgendeinen Grund, eine neue Schnauze gekauft hat, am gleichen Tag, als seine Schwester verletzt wurde. Aber dann, um ca.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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10.30 Uhr, hat Mark Thelma angerufen, um zu wissen, dass Lori auf diese Schnauze ging und nie wieder zurück kam. So then him, Thelma and a bunch of other friends went around looking for Lori before Mark called police to report her missing at around 10.40 am. Which brings us to where we left off with Mark running around naked.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Wie gesagt, die Polizei hatte das vorher schon gesehen, also wussten sie nur, dass es ein Show war. Aber egal, sie haben ihn in die Psychiatrie-Unit der University of Utah gesendet, um zu sehen. Jetzt sind wir an dem Punkt, wo, trotz von Marks Fähigkeit, zu lachen und eine überzeugende Geschichte herauszufinden,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Er hat so viele Fehler gemacht, um seinen Verbrechen aufzunehmen, dass es es einfach sehr offensichtlich gemacht hat. Nachdem sie alle Beweise innerhalb des Hauses gesehen haben, haben sie tatsächlich den Brief gefunden, den Laurie zu Mark geschrieben hat. Und in der Dumpster hatten sie den Kühlschrank gefunden, den er gedumpft hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Sie fanden das Beobachtungsvideo vom Psych-Ward, wo er Lori's Körper abgeliefert hat und die Fotos aus dem Convenience-Store beobachteten. Sie konnten also die Zeitung der Events, die an der Nacht geschehen sind, beobachten. Aber an diesem Punkt wussten sie noch nicht, wo Lori's Körper tatsächlich war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Marks Brüder gingen also in die Psychwart, wo er war, um zu fragen, ob sie die Behörden, wo sie war, erzählen könnten. Sie gaben Mark die Nachmittagszeit, um darüber nachzudenken, und als sie am Abend zurückgekehrt sind, hat Mark alles zu ihnen verabschiedet. Er hat den Brüdern die ganze Zeitung von dem, was wir gerade besprochen haben, erzählt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Das heißt, sie hat die Lüge über die Computer-Malfunktion, die Mark ihr gerade erzählt hat, gewählt. Oder sie war in etwas Vergnügung. Oder sie wollte nur einen glücklichen Gesicht für ihre Freunde. Aber egal. Wie wir wissen, konfrontierte sie ihn ein paar Tage später, als er alles zu ihr verabschiedete. Das war dann, als sie das Brief geschrieben hat, dass sie nicht zu diesem

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Orem High School ist auch dort, wo sie ihren soon-to-be-husband Mark Hacking kennengelernt hat. Mark Hacking wurde in einer sehr großen mormonischen Familie geboren. Er hatte sechs Brüder und Schwestern und sein Vater arbeitete als Pädiatrist, was ihn in der Gemeinschaft sehr gut gefühlt hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Giant, Liar, und dann ging er nach all dem ins Bett. Das war dann, als Marc sagte, dass er alle seine Schuhe packen musste. Und er sagte, als er das gemacht hat, kam er zu seinem Pfeil und laut ihm war das dann, als diese ganze Idee in seinen Kopf rief. Aber offensichtlich ist es viel mehr möglich, dass er diese Idee bereits in seinem Kopf hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Dann hat er entschieden, dass er seine Waffe holen wird und sie dann benutzen wird. Dann, um 1 Uhr, hat er seine Frau getötet. Er hat sie in Trash-Tüten verpackt, den Mattresstopf entfernt und alles entfernt. Sehr schmerzhaft, würde ich sagen. Nach diesem Vertraut von der Psych-Ware, sind Marks Brüder in die Polizei gegangen und er wurde am 2. August verhaftet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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und wurde in den Stadthaus geflüchtet. Das war der Zeitpunkt, an dem er mit dem ersten Kurs des Mordes und drei Tätigkeiten des Verbrechens der Gerechtigkeit verurteilt wurde. An diesem Punkt wurden alle Suche nach Lori komplett ausgeschlossen. und sie suchten nun einen Körper.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Am Oktober 1st, 2004, nach einer massiven, exhaustiven Verbrechung auf zehn Äcker des Landfills mit der Hilfe von Kadaver-Tüchern, waren Loris Erlebnisse im Salt Lake County Landfill gefunden. Mark ging zum Trial und blieb tatsächlich verurteilt für erste-Grundmörder, um die Angelegenheiten der Verbrechung des Rechtssatzes zu verlassen. Am Juni 6th, 2005,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Mark wurde bis zu sechs Jahren verhaftet, das war die höchste Angelegenheit, die der Gericht unter Utah-Law geben könnte, was einfach verrückt ist. Die eigentliche Angelegenheit ist eigentlich nur fünf Jahre verhaftet für Fälschungsbegriffe, aber weil er einen Pfeil verwendet hatte, wurde die Minimum-Angelegenheit ein ganzes Jahr verbracht.

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SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Aber dann, ein Monat später, im Juli 2005, hat die Utah-Bürgerpartnerin tatsächlich entschieden, dass Mark was not going to be receiving his parole hearing until 2035, which means that he will be serving at least 30 years. But this case was very highly publicized and there was a massive public outcry when people realized just how lenient Utah's maximum sentence is. They said that most people

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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enden 18-35 Jahre auf Parole zu warten. Aber egal, das hat ein Problem mit der öffentlichen Perzeption erzeugt, das ich glaube, ich bekomme. Es gibt nicht wirklich Mörder, die nach fünf oder sechs Jahren verletzt werden, hoffentlich. Aber die Möglichkeit, das zu haben, ist furchtbar. Und diese Möglichkeit sollte nicht mehr da sein.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Marks Vater war ein sehr guter Arzt, der für seinen Patienten wegging, also war die ganze Familie generell gut bekannt in der Stadt und sie waren sehr gut gefühlt. Sie hatten ein sehr großes Haus, das die Familie natürlich teilt, weil Er als Physiotherapeut, die waren sehr gut. Mark wurde als athletisch beschrieben und er ging immer Hiking auf den Utau-Trailen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Wir wissen alle, dass es möglich ist, sich für gutes Verhalten und andere Dinge auszulassen. Also sollte es nicht mehr möglich sein. Aber auf jeden Fall, weil wir das tun, am 20. März 2006, Die Utah House Bill 102, auch bekannt als Loris-Law, wurde zur Gesetzgebung eingeführt. Dies erhöhte die Minimum-Penalität für jemanden, der 15 Jahre nach dem ersten Mord verurteilt wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Nachdem all das gesagt und getan wurde, hat Loris' Familie tatsächlich das Name Hacking aus Loris' Headstone entfernt, weil er natürlich nicht mehr in ihrer Leben sein wollte. They didn't think it was appropriate for her to be considered a part of their family anymore. In my research, it seems as if Mark at least feels bad for what he did and knows that he's right where he belongs in prison.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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And as he puts it, he's trying to right the wrongs that he's done in his life. Which is great and all, but again, he's right. He's exactly where he belongs and there's no reason that he should ever be let out. Auch wenn das etwas war, um seine Lüge zu öffnen oder was auch immer. Auch wenn er es niemals wieder tun wird, ist er genau da, wo er gehört. Aber egal, dieser Fall war so seltsam.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Und die Forschung war sehr interessant, weil ich es mir gar nicht vorstellen kann, und dann jemanden verurteilen, weil er nichts damit zu tun hatte. Er hat klar Narzissismenprobleme und sollte nicht verurteilt werden. At this point, Lori's mother has accepted what has happened and has decided to forgive Mark.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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She will never be okay with what he did, but she just needs closure and to be at peace, which is so incredibly strong and mature of her to do. So that is pretty much all I have for today's video. I know that this is such a ridiculous case and I'm really glad that he did

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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such a bad and sloppy job of covering everything up so that you know justice could be served pretty much right away but honestly it is just crazy what some people will do to keep up with this perception of was sie sich in der Welt präsentieren wollen. Ich frage mich einfach, wann wird dieser Lied enden? Wird er nur noch 10 Jahre in den Krankenhaus gehen? Wird Laurie beide unterstützt?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Was passiert, wenn er auf dem Grad kommt? Wird er einfach wieder krank? Wird er nur noch als Physiotherapeut arbeiten? Wo kommt dieser Physiotherapeut von? Wie erwartet er, dass er ein Kind zu kümmern, nur auf Loris Arbeitsplätze, während er sich für Stunden und Stunden und Stunden verletzt hat, während er in der Schule pretendierte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Ich verstehe einfach nicht, welches Endgame er im Kopf hatte, aber klar, er hat es nicht sehr gut durchgedacht. Er wird irgendwann herausgefunden werden und er muss das gewusst haben. Ich glaube, er hat nicht sehr viele Dinge durchgedacht, weil jetzt Anstatt nur als Familienvergnügung bekannt zu sein, ist er als Mörder bekannt. Ein viel schlimmerer Titel, wenn du mich fragst.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

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Marks Familie ist mit ihm enttäuscht. Sie haben ihn nicht so geboren und sie lieben Lori. Sie wollten nichts Schlechtes zu ihr passieren. Sie denken nicht, dass sie das verdient. Sie haben nicht Marks Seite genommen. Und es ist so, als ob er einen anderen Teil ihrer Familie getötet hätte. Und wir sehen das auch mit Marks Brüdern, die versuchen, ihm zu verzeihen, weil sie Lori liebten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2070.114

Sie war Teil der Familie. Und es ist einfach so faszinierend, dass dieser aussehbar normalen Kerl all das kann. Lori hat das nicht verdient. Sie hat es nicht verdient, in einer Beziehung mit jemandem zu sein, der ihr die ganze Zeit verliebt hat. Sie deserved to be the mother that she always wanted to be.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

209.957

Er war der klassische Clown in der Schule und war generell gut geliebt von seinen Feiern. Er versuchte immer, Leute zu lachen, durch sein ganzes Leben in der Jugend. Eine bemerkenswerte Charakteristik von Mark Hacking war seine Fähigkeit, eine Geschichte zu erzählen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2094.79

She deserved to go on and live her life, but Mark selfishly took that away from her to cover up his lie, to cover up his mistake, to cover up the life that he was trying to portray, when in reality he was a complete liar. Aber das ist etwas, das er für den Rest seines Lebens leben muss. Also, das ist es, wo ich das Video beenden werde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2124.905

Ehrlich gesagt, ich könnte immer mehr darüber reden, wie seltsam und schrecklich Mark Hacking ist. Er ist ein Fraud. Es ist einfach... Es war so bizarr, dass das ganze Ganze passieren konnte. Niemand sah es kommen. Niemand dachte, dass er es kann, aber er sagte so eine große Lüge, dass er einfach dachte, dass er tun musste, was er tun musste, um es aufzuheben.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2151.368

Klar, er hat vermutlich eine Art Druck von seiner Familie gefühlt. Wir wissen, dass sein Vater ein Arzt war. Sein Vater und Mutter haben ihm wahrscheinlich die Hände auf den Arm gesetzt und ihm gesagt, dass er erfolgreich sein muss, besonders nachdem er von seiner Reise zur Mission nach Hause gebracht wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2168.59

Er wollte nicht die Familienverzweiflung sein, er wollte erfolgreich sein, aber er dachte, dass die Art, das zu tun war, einfach alle zu erzählen, dass er all diese fantastischen Dinge gemacht hat, anstatt sie tatsächlich zu machen. Und wegen seiner seltenen Lüge wurde ein anderes menschliches Leben verloren. Aber egal, wie gesagt, das ist, wo ich dieses Video beenden werde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

2186.563

Wie gesagt, ich könnte einfach Ich werde immer noch darüber reden, aber das ist es für heute. Wenn dir das Video gefallen hat, lass dir gerne einen Daumen nach oben schicken und abonniere meinen Kanal. Ich veröffentliche jedes Wochenende neue Gerüchte- und Geheimdienste-Videos. Vergesst nicht, mich auf Twitter und Instagram zu folgen. Beide werden unten verlinkt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

226.387

Auf seinen Reisen zur Mission war er wirklich gut dabei, raus zu gehen und Menschen zu überzeugen, in die mormonische Kirche zu transferieren. Das war nicht eine einfache Aufgabe für jeden. Natürlich geht man da herum, versucht, Menschen in ihre Religion zu konvertieren und versucht, sie in seine Ideologie zu abonnieren, aber

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

23.922

Also, heutes Fall wird ein geschlossenes Fall sein, aber es ist ein sehr schrecklicher und unfreundlicher Fall, den wir hoffentlich lernen können. Es ist etwas, was völlig aus dem Nichts passiert ist. Und die Familie des Mannes, der für all das verantwortlich ist, ist einfach... überrascht und überrascht, dass all das sogar möglich war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

246.465

Mark hat einen sehr guten Job gemacht, einfach nur mit Leuten zu sprechen. Er klingt unglaublich und hat die Leute einfach nur hören wollen. Aber auch während er an seiner Reise in Winnibig, Kanada war, begann er, einen anderen Lebensstil zu nehmen. Er begann, Zigaretten zu trinken, zu trinken und zu feiern. Und das waren Dinge, auf die die mormonische Kirche definitiv aufhört.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

272.956

Es sah so aus, als ob der Moment, an dem er in die echte Welt eingestiegen wurde, er all diese Temptationen gegeben hätte und sie einfach direkt weggegeben hätte. Also wurde er früh nach Hause von seiner Messungstour gesendet. Was nicht gut aussieht für die Familie. Aber wie gesagt, Marc war ein guter Redner und war sehr überzeugend.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

294.287

Also als er nach Hause kam, sah es so aus, als hätte er einen Unfall gehabt. Nicht, dass er nach Hause ging, weil er Probleme hatte oder sich verletzte. Nun, manche Leute sagen, dass seine Eltern nicht wirklich wissen, warum er nach Hause gebracht wurde. Aber in Wahrheit denke ich, dass sie wahrscheinlich wussten und natürlich überrascht waren, dass

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

316.002

ihr Sohn hatte so ein schlechtes Verhalten, dass er früh nach Hause gebracht wurde. Also denke ich, dass sie wahrscheinlich nur ihre Sohn unterstützt haben und, weißt du, was er gemacht hat und der echte Grund, warum er von seiner Reise früh nach Hause gebracht wurde. Nun, wie ich gesagt habe, haben Lori und Mark in der Hochschule getroffen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

332.351

Und als sie tatsächlich Lori im Jahrhundert getroffen haben, Das war nur seine Persönlichkeit. Er war der klassische Clown, aber er war auch ein bisschen schmutzig und schmutzig. Er machte die Leute immer lachen. Lori hat ihm geholfen und hat ihn als ersten Hilfe gegeben. Die beiden haben die ganze Nacht zusammengehalten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

364.324

Sie haben sich die ganze Nacht verbunden und sind seitdem schon immer verheiratet. Es gibt Gerüchte, dass, als Mark auf seine Reise ging, er mit einer anderen Frau schlief, während er draußen war. Das ist ein riesiges No-No in der mormonischen Kirche. Es geht nicht nur um Verletzungen, sondern auch um premaritalen Sex im Allgemeinen. Das ist ein riesiges No-No in der mormonischen Kirche.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

385.467

Die Leute denken also, dass das ein weiterer Grund ist, warum er nach Hause gebracht wurde. Egal wie, nachdem er nach seiner Reise nach Utah zurückgekehrt ist, hat Lori und Mark weiter getreut und das ist dann, als ihre Beziehung viel ernstere wurde. In 1995 ging Lori zum Universitätskollege in Weber und wurde dann zur Universität von Utah in Salt Lake eingetreten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

407.159

Sie war ein wirklich guter Student. Sie bekam gute Grätschriften und hatte viele Freunde. Sie war extrem alt, und obwohl sie gerne rausging, und mit ihren Freunden zu haben. Sie ging auf diese Mini-Trips mit all ihren Freundinnen und Freundinnen. Sie hat sich sehr an Mark bemüht. Dann, vor einem Jahr bevor sie von der University of Utah in 1999 graduierte, verabschiedeten sie sich mit Mark.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

431.125

Sie hatte einen tollen Job. Sie verabschiedete sich mit der Liebe ihrer Leben. Und alle um sie herum waren so glücklich für sie. Und sie sah auch so glücklich aus. Sie sah den perfekten Beruf aus. und Loris Freunde beschrieben Mark als unglaublich klug, lustig und verabschiedet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

45.864

Es ist einer dieser Fälle, wo wir sehen können, dass wir wirklich nicht wissen, was hinter geschlossenen Türen passiert. Und es zeigt uns, dass wir wirklich nur ein besseres Auge auf unsere Verliebten halten müssen. Aber mit all dem gesagt, gehen wir einfach direkt in heute's Case. Heute werden wir über den Fall von Lori Hacking sprechen. Lori Sorras Hacking wurde am 31.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

453.017

Sie wollten eine Familie mit vielen Kindern haben und es sah so aus, als ob ihr Leben in die richtige Richtung gehen würde. Thelma sagte, dass Lori und Mark dieses wunderschöne Paar waren, die einfach so perfekt für einander waren und Thelma liebte absolut Mark. Thelma sagte, und ich schreibe, dass ich ihn wirklich liebte, dass wir sitzen und Crossword-Puzzle machen würden.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

476.459

He always came and put the lights on my Christmas tree every year. He would stop by the freeway if he saw people whose cars had stopped. I would tell him it was dangerous, but he was just a kind young man who would help anyone in need. A good kid. Now, Mark had also graduated from the University of Utah. Not actually attending graduation though, because he said he was sick that day.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

497.673

But even after graduating, he seemed to have kind of just bounced back and forth to different low-paying jobs and nicht wirklich etwas, was du von jemandem mit einem Degret erwarten würdest. Ich weiß, dass es in diesen Tagen häufig ist, jemanden zu sehen, der gerade mit einem relativ niedrigeren Job aufgewachsen ist, weil das so ist in diesen Tagen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

517.753

Aber damals, als du in der Schule aufgewachsen bist, du würdest einen Job in deinem Degree bekommen und das ist das. Und du solltest nicht von verschiedenen niedrigen Arbeitsplätzen wackeln. Aber das ist es, was Mark gemacht hat. Also hat Lori viel Unterstützung für eine Weile gegeben. Sie arbeitete in Wells Fargo als Vertreterin, also machte sie die meisten Geld.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

541.285

Sie lebten in einem sehr kleinen Apartment mit vielen Familienbildern, die sich über das Apartment verteilt hatten. Und auch in diesem Zeitpunkt sahen sich die Dinge ziemlich gut aus. Im Juli 2004 arbeitete Mark als Psychiaterin im Psychiater-Karrierezentrum in der Universität in Utah.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

559.018

Mark hatte zu diesem Zeitpunkt eine Planung, in die Krankenklinik zu gehen, also waren die beiden sehr beschäftigt. mit Lori arbeitete in Wells Fargo, Mark machte seine Pläne zur Medizin und arbeitete als Psychiater und beide waren immer noch aktiv in der mormonischen Kirche. Dann, am 15. Juli 2004, rief Lori aufgeregt ihre Freundin Holly, um ihr zu erzählen, dass sie fünf Wochen verheiratet war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

584.72

Auch während dieser Zeit planten sie und Mark, in August nach North Carolina zu gehen, damit Mark die Medizin starten konnte. Sie waren wirklich gespannt auf dieses neue Kapitel in ihren Leben. Das ist fast genau das Leben, das Lori für sich selbst erwischt hatte. Und es war wirklich erst mal anfangen zu fallen. Jetzt, am 18. Juli, hatten die beiden ein Party zusammen und alles sah gut aus.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

610.23

Die Leute um Lori sagten, dass Lori sehr glücklich aussah und auch wenn Mark etwas kräftiger als normal aussah, war er ziemlich glücklich. All das änderte sich aber, als um 10.49 Uhr am 19.07.2004 die Polizei einen schrecklichen Telefonanruf von Mark Hacking erhielt, der sagte, dass seine Frau nicht mehr da war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

632.498

Mark hat den Polizisten erzählt, dass Lori in Salt Lake einen Jog über Memory Grove und Creek City Canyon gegangen ist, but hadn't returned home and hadn't gone to work. Now, going on these jogs was a very normal routine for Lori to do before going out for work, but she never returned home for this day, so Mark was really worried and had absolutely no idea where she was.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

658.696

She would normally wake up, go on these jogs, and then come home before going to work, so before people at her work even noticed that she hadn't shown up, Mark wusste bereits, dass sie weg war. Plötzlich begannen Detektivs, Lori zu suchen. Sie fanden schnell ihr Auto, das außerhalb des Entrenns des Parkes parkiert war, aber sie fanden absolut kein Zeichen von Lori.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

67.034

Dezember 1976 in Kalifornien geboren. Sie wurde von ihren Eltern Thelma und Harold Sorras verabredet, als sie vier Monate alt war und einen älteren Bruder namens Paul hatte, der auch verabredet wurde. Sie wuchs in Kalifornien, aber 1987 bekam ihre Eltern tatsächlich einen Divorz, sodass sie nach Orem, Utah zurückgekehrt wurde,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

680.716

Initial glaubten die Polizei und Loras Familie, dass sie verabschiedet worden war. Mark ging auf die TV, um seine Frau sicher nach Hause zu bringen, und er sah komplett schmerzhaft und sehr überrascht aus. Dieser Fall erhielt schnell nationales Aufmerksamkeit und es wurde eine riesige Suche um die Gegend gemacht, aber es gab kein Zeichen von Lori irgendwo.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

701.641

Jedoch, sehr schnell begann die Polizei ihre Sicht zu wechseln zu einer anderen Möglichkeit. Während der Suche nach dem Zuhause, bemerkten sie einige sehr seltsame Dinge. Das erste, was die Detektivs wirklich bemerkten, was dieses riesige Bouquet von Blumen, das auf dem Tisch satt war. Detektiv sagte, dass diese sehr deutlich waren, ich habe mich verletzt und du bist verrückt an mir, Blumen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

729.22

Sie waren in diesem teuren und wunderschönen Vase, also war die Beziehung klar nicht total perfekt an dem Zeitpunkt. Auch hat ein Detektiv bemerkt, dass Loris Tasche und ihr Wallet immer noch zuhause sitzen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

743.206

aber ich glaube, dass das nicht zu viel aus dem Allgemeinen war, weil sie nur auf einem Jogging gegangen ist und laut Mark sind das nicht Dinge, die sie normalerweise nehmen würde, wenn sie auf diese Joggingen ging.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

752.471

Aber ein Detektiv hat auch bemerkt, dass der Kühlschrank präzise und viel wie Blech riecht und sie haben auch bemerkt, dass die Flaschen auf dem Bett perfekt gewaschen und perfekt krispen waren als ob sie sich vor kurzem gekauft hätten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

769.801

Auch in ihrer Jewelrybox auf ihrer Nachtstande war ihr Gebetsring, also war es sehr klar den Detektiven, dass hier etwas falsch war und dass dieses Verheirat nicht so perfekt war, wie jeder dachte, dass es war. Danach, nach einer weiteren Beobachtung, haben sie herausgefunden, dass Marv tatsächlich vor kurzem, also fast am selben Tag, eine neue Klammer gekauft hat.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

792.971

They found a hunting knife with blood still on it sitting in his drawer. They noticed little bits of blood all around the walls and the floors. Then on top of it all, on top of all the weird things that they were finding, Lori's keys were still in the apartment when the car was at City Creek Canyon. So,

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

814.465

Es war fast so, als hätte sie dort gefahren, aber dann nach Hause ging, um die Schlüsseln zurückzugeben und sie wieder auf den Konto zu stellen, weil sie die Schlüsseln zu diesem Auto teilen mussten. Es gab keine zwei Sets von Schlüsseln für dieses Auto, also gab es keinen Grund. dass ihre Türen noch dort sitzen würden, nachdem sie das Auto führte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

833.448

Also, zu diesem Punkt waren die Detektivs ziemlich sicher, dass Mark etwas damit zu tun hatte, dass seine Frau weggegangen ist. Während ihres Untersuchungsausschusses bekam die Polizei tatsächlich einen Anruf von einem Anrufer, der sagte, dass jemand, der Marks Beschreibung bezieht, running around naked near a motel.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

854.309

When police went to go see what was going on, sure enough, Mark Hacking was running around completely naked and absolutely hysterical, screaming different things and just acting completely crazy, but he was still wearing flip-flops.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

868.599

Now, I feel like at this point Mark knew that the walls were closing in on him and he took a page out of Walter White's book, even though this was all before that, let's just forget about that, but Er wollte wahnsinnig aussehen, weil er wusste, dass er gefangen werden wird.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

87.415

Die Familie war Teil der mormonischen Kirche und Thelma dachte, dass sie mehr Unterstützung als Einzelmutter von der Kirche in Utah bekommen könnte. Natürlich hat Utah eine sehr große mormonische Gemeinschaft und sie sind alles um Familie da. Sie hatte die richtige Idee, sich dort zu bewegen, um mehr Unterstützung zu bekommen. Das war, als Lori nur 11 Jahre alt war.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

886.107

Aber die Detektivs wussten, dass wenn er wirklich rumläuft und diese verrückten Dinge macht, wegen einer Art mentaler Verbringung oder einer Art mentaler Krankheit, dass er wütend genug war, dass er nicht vergessen hat, Schuhe anzunehmen. Also wussten sie, sie hatten das mehrere Male gemacht und sie wussten die Zeichen, die sie aussehen sollten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

903.237

Aber egal, Mark dachte, dass das sein bestes Wettbewerb war. um in eine mentale Institution zu kommen, anstatt dafür verurteilt zu werden, was er seiner Frau getan hat. Aber selbst nach all dem, wurden die Polizisten mit so vielen Fragen überlegt. Warum?

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

920.108

Warum würde dieser scheinbar liebende Mann einfach einen Tag entscheiden, um das Leben seiner wunderschönen, liebenden, verheirateten Frau zu nehmen? Well, police found out that not only was Mark not enrolled in medical school, but he never even completed his undergraduate degree. Now, let's backtrack just a little bit.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

942.971

So, on July 16th, the day after Lori had called her friend with the exciting news that she was pregnant, Lori had actually discovered that Mark was completely lying to her about everything. Alles. Sie hatte die Universität North Carolina Chapel Hill angerufen, um Haus und Finanzhilfe zu beurteilen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

964.222

Und sie wurde erzählt, dass nicht nur Mark nicht zur Medizin ging, sondern er hatte auch nicht so viel als eine Anzeige eingeschickt. Diese ganze Zeit hatte er Laurie erzählt, dass er zur Medizin ging, dass er Haus aufgebaut hatte, dass er Finanzhilfe herausgefunden hat. Er hatte alle diese Boxen geklappt.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

SOLVED: The Case of Lori Hacking // A Lie to Die For

984.447

Selbst wenn sie diesen großen Weg geplant hatte, hatte Lori ihren Job verabschiedet, den sie wirklich genossen hat, um diesen großen Weg mit ihm zu machen, aber es war alles nur ein flacher Lüge. Natürlich, als Lori all das herausgefunden hat, hat sie Arbeit verabschiedet und war in absoluten Träumen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

107.476

Sie war auch der Art von Person, die einen Herausforderung liebte, die sich an fast alles, was sie sich in den Kopf gestellt hat, ausdrückte. Als sie geboren wurde, liebte Lili, Sport zu spielen, besonders Tanz und Waterpolo. Sie war Teil der Waterpolo-Team an ihrer Schule, die von ihrem Vater Jamie gecoacht wurde.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1124.517

Nach der Erfindung des Körpers und der Entscheidung, dass sein Tod ein Suizid war, waren natürlich Pauls Eltern, Esther und Steff, die noch in den Niederlanden lebten, informiert worden über den Tod ihres Sohnes und darüber, was er vorhin getan hatte. Das wäre eine furchtbare, furchtbare Nachricht für alle Eltern, die lernen sollten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1142.108

But at this point, everyone in this case were left with so, so many questions. What could have caused this? How did Paul go from being a normal, decently well-liked sports coach to this depraved murderer? Well, some investigators and criminologists who have looked into this case had the same questions and they gave their insight into why this could have happened the way that it did.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1166.671

Again, Paul was known to love sports. He was social, he loved hanging out with his friends. Aber nach dem Start von Covid haben die Leute bemerkt, dass er viel mehr Zeit alleine verbracht hat. Er wurde viel mehr ausgedrückt. Sein Raum war ein Schmuck und er sah viel mehr introvertiert und unfreundlich gegenüber anderen aus. Und das zeigte, dass er mentale Schwierigkeiten hatte.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1188.821

Wie ich vorhin gesagt habe, haben einige Leute gesagt, dass Paul in eine sehr kontrollierende, manipulierende und gefährliche Person geworden ist. He hadn't always been that way, but after returning to Australia after graduating high school, more and more people found issue with him and how he treated others.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1206.212

Even though the relationship between him and Lily was brief, and even though Lily most likely tiptoed around him to avoid offending him, after she ended things with him, he realized that he lost control. And Paul was not able to deal with that loss of control. Stattdessen hat er es auf die arme Lilly genommen und ihr Leben beendet.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

122.568

Jamie war bekannt, dass sie sehr involviert war in Lillys Sport, also hatten sie eine besondere, nahe Verbindung durch das. Sie war bekannt, als Schwimmer-Championin zu sein, nachdem sie in 2019 ein Unter-17-Event gewonnen hat. Sie hat auch als Teenager Wettbewerbe und Dance-Kompetenzen gewonnen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1227.35

Es wurde gesagt, dass er, nachdem er sie getötet hat, auch wenn er die Mordwaffe besitzt hat, seine Körper für einen oder anderen Grund gefunden haben wollte. Wie wir vorhin diskutiert haben, hat er ihr Telefon gebraucht, um Lilly's Vater anrufen zu können, um sie aus der Schule zu holen. Usually we see murderers using the victim's phone for the exact opposite reason.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1249.51

Usually they'll use the phone to text their loved ones something like, hey, I'm gonna be out tonight, don't wait up, to prevent their loved ones from getting worried about them or looking for them. Dann, vier Stunden nach dem Mord, hat er die Polizei selbst angerufen und sie direkt zu ihrem Körper gedreht. Für einen oder anderen Grund wollte er, dass ihr Körper gefunden wird.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1272.058

Dann, wie wir wissen, hat er sein eigenes Leben beendet. Also, einige Menschen, die mit diesem Fall beteiligt sind, denken, dass er irgendwie verrückt war und Lilly getötet hat, weil sie mit ihm Dinge beendet hat. Aber die meisten Menschen, die in diesem Fall geschaut haben und die Beweise gesehen haben, denken, dass er klar geplant hat, sie zu töten.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

1289.701

He borrowed that car and brought a hammer to the school on the morning of the murder. That very clearly shows premeditation. Other experts who have looked at this case say that the way that it went down is very unusual. There was no build up to this happening, at least not that we know of. Er hat sie nie getroffen oder sie nie physisch verabschiedet oder jemand anderen, den wir kennen.

True Crime with Rachel Shannon

She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Die Beziehung kam nie zu dem Punkt, dass er ihre Finanzen oder Lebenssituation kontrollieren konnte. Sie verabschiedeten sich so kurz und er war so besorglich für die Kontrolle über Lilly, dass er ihr Leben und sein eigenes Leben über einen fünf Wochen lang beendet. Es ist absolut nonsensisch. Danach, nach dem Mord, hätte er sich enttäuscht.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Oder er wollte sich nicht für das, was er getan hat, oder beides kümmern. Ich weiß nicht, warum ich denke, er wollte, dass ihr Körper gefunden wird. Manchmal, wenn Mörder es einfach machen, dass ihr Wesen gefunden wird, ist es für einen kranken Grund. Sie wollen, dass Leute wissen, dass diese Person an ihren Händen gestorben ist.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Jedoch, einige Leute werden das, was sie getan haben, ausdrücken, weil sie sich enttäuscht fühlen. Without knowing Paul, without him being here to speak for his actions, we truly do not know why he killed Lily or why he wanted her body found after or why he took his own life.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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To me, I think he took the coward's way out and I think that he just didn't want to take accountability for the awful, awful, awful thing that he did. So, I know this case was a bit of a shorter one, but I still wanted to make sure that I covered it.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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This case is such an important one to discuss because it shows that no matter how long you are with someone, they still may want every ounce of control over you possible. Even if you barely know this person, if they want to control you and the relationship you have, they will do anything to make you stay for as long as they can get you to.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Nach der Graduierung von Dane Pack Anglican School for Girls 2020, ging Lilly in die Technologie-Universität in Sydney, Australien, um Sport zu studieren. Während sie dort studierte, arbeitete Lilly auch part-time an der präzisen St. Andrews Cathedral School als Waterpolo-Coach. Sie war fast immer beschäftigt mit ihren Klassen, während sie auch ihren Job als Coach ausübte.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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So, if you are out there and dating and you meet someone new and even if you think things are going great, always be vigilant. Always be aware and cognizant of the red flags that someone is showing you. And if you get even the smallest feeling that something is off, Es ist besser, auf deinem Geist zu hören und zu verlassen, als lange genug zu stehen, um herauszufinden, wie schwierig es ist.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Alles, was ich sagen möchte, ist, vorsichtig zu sein und immer auf deine Intuition zu hören. Es ist da für einen Grund. Und wenn deine Intuition dir sagt, dass etwas falsch ist, auch wenn du es gar nicht auf den Finger stellen kannst, wenn du sagst, dass etwas ein bisschen seltsam ist bei dieser Person, ich weiß nicht genau, was es ist, aber wenn etwas dir sagt, dass etwas falsch ist,

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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dann ist es wahrscheinlich etwas. Und ich bitte dich, zu tun, was du kannst, um sicher zu bleiben. Dieser Fall ist wirklich ein wilder, denn normalerweise sehen wir Dinge wie dieses mit Leuten, die jahrelang zusammengekommen sind, Menschen, die zusammenleben, Menschen, die in Ein-und-Auf-Verhältnissen für lange Zeit gelebt haben oder jemanden, der seit zehn Jahren verheiratet war.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Aber in diesem Fall ist es jemand, der sie für fünf Wochen kennengelernt hat. und er fühlte so eine Bedrohung, sich über sie und ihr Leben zu kontrollieren, dass er, wenn sie ihre fünf Wochen lang nicht-seriöse Beziehung beendet hat, er fühlte, dass er sich für ihr Leben beteiligt hatte. Und in meiner Meinung, denke ich, dass er sie getötet hat.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Ich denke, er war eine kontrollierende Person und ich denke, dass, als er bemerkte, dass er sie nicht mehr kontrollieren konnte, He took her life and then I think he took his own life because he didn't want to take accountability for what he did. He didn't want to face his parents who loved him. He didn't want to face her parents who loved her and he just didn't want to take accountability for it.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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That is what I think happened in this case. But that is where I'm going to end today's video and now I want to know what you all think. Warum glaubst du, dass Paul Lilly verurteilt hat? War es Kontrolle? Glaubst du, dass er immer diese Gewalt in sich hatte und er sie Lily ausgelassen hat? Warum glaubst du, dass er seinen eigenen Krimi verurteilt hat und seine Leben genommen hat?

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Sie liebte ihre Schüler zu coachen und sie liebten sie als Coach. Seine energetische, ermutigende und vibrante Persönlichkeit hatte einen so langweiligen Einfluss auf diese Schüler. Einer der Eltern eines Studenten, den Lilly gecoacht hat, sagte, dass sie ein Licht war, das alle ihrer Schüler interessiert hat.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Sie hat die Zeit genommen, eine Karte für jede und jeden Teil des Teams zu schreiben, spezifisch auf ihre individuellen Persönlichkeiten, Schönheit und Talente zu konzentrieren. It was a short time with her, but it was meaningful and joyful. A light bright like the sun first thing in the morning or a full moon glowing at night. She truly was a gift to everyone who knew her.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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However, on the evening of Wednesday, October 25th, 2023, 21-year-old Lily's parents, Jamie and Peta, realized that she hadn't returned home from her shift at school that evening like she normally did. So, they called the police to report Lilly as a missing person right away. I don't think there was too much concern from police at that point because there wasn't much of a search done initially.

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But what we do know is that just before midnight on that same day, police received a second call. This time, the caller told authorities that there was a female body in the St. Andrews Cathedral School that needed to be investigated. The caller gave very specific directions as to where the body could be located.

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So, police headed there and searched around the school before they did end up finding a body. They found the body of a young woman in the bathroom of the school's gymnasium, the exact location where the caller said it would be.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Right away police knew that this young woman was murdered because she had such serious head injuries from being beaten to death that she was almost completely unrecognizable. She died a horrific, violent, brutal death. Of course, after finding this body, the investigation into the murder began.

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In the days after, the school sent out texts to the community to inform them that classes at the campus would be paused and the campus was closing down due to the incident, so many students were moved to a different campus so that they could complete their studies there. From there, police closed off a perimeter around the campus as well as in the areas directly surrounding the building.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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They conducted line searches to scour the area to see if there was any evidence that would come up. They combed through everything they could find, desperate to solve this depraved, savage murder. By the morning of Thursday, October 26th, the badly beaten body that was found at the school was positively identified as 21-year-old Lily James.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Eine neue Beziehung kann eine spannende Zeit sein, die Butterflys zu fühlen, wenn du diese Person siehst, an deinem Telefon zu lachen, wenn du von ihnen einen Text bekommst. Aber natürlich enden so viele Beziehungen sehr kurzfristig, wenn du realisierst, dass du einfach nicht richtig für die andere Person bist. Und das ist völlig okay.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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According to the later autopsy, it appeared that she had been beaten to death after suffering multiple blows to the head, most likely from a hammer. Of course, after finding out the news that Lily had been brutally beaten to death, her parents, brother and everyone else who knew and loved her were devastated.

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Family, friends, students and staff all came out in droves to show their support for Lily and talk about just how amazing of a person she truly was.

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Now, as a part of the investigation, police looked into the CCTV footage from inside the school as well as in the surrounding areas. From that, they were able to put together a little bit of a timeline. So, by around 7pm on October 25th, cameras picked up Lily walking into the gym's bathroom with a man following closely behind her, entering the bathroom just after her.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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It appeared that both of them are in the bathroom for about an hour before only the man is seen walking out. Lily never emerged from the bathroom, so it is believed that that is when Lily was attacked. und das war der Mann, der sie getötet hat. Und glücklicherweise, als die Polizei das CCTV-Foto gesehen hat, konnten sie schnell den Mann, den sie gesehen haben, identifizieren.

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Dieser Mann war 24-jähriger Paul Thyssen. Paul kam ursprünglich aus den Niederlanden, bevor er und seine Familie in 2015 nach Australien geflogen sind. At the time, Paul attended St. Andrew's School for years 10 through 12. While there, he was also a sports captain before he graduated and returned back to the Netherlands for a few years.

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But he did ultimately return back to Australia after he obtained a working holiday visa. Dort arbeitete er für die St. Andrews-Schule vollzeit als 13-Jähriger, sowie als Cricket- und Hockey-Coach. Menschen, die Paul wussten, hatten viele unterschiedliche Dinge zu sagen über ihn. Viele seiner Schüler, als er in der Schule teilnahm, sagten, dass er leistbar, klug und ein guter Student war.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Besonders wenn die Beziehung nur ein paar Wochen dauert, kann man die meisten Menschen mit der Erwartung ausbrechen, dass die Dinge schnell gehen werden und dass es nicht zu viele Schmerzen auf jeder Seite gibt. Aber für einige Menschen sind Beziehungen im Allgemeinen nicht darum, den perfekten Partner zu finden, mit dem du Zeit verwendest. Es geht um Kontrolle.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Er war faszinierend über Sport, er war talentiert und ein ziemlich glücklicher Kerl. However, those who knew him as a coach, including a few students, described him as arrogant and unpleasant. Some said that those who had negative views of Paul were usually men, while women seemed to like him more.

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So I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean, but he seems like the type of guy where you either loved him or you hated him. At least that's sort of what I got from what people were saying about him. In August of that year, Paul moved into a semi-detached flat with two other roommates, a young female and a fellow male hockey player.

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There, people around him said that he mostly kept to himself and didn't cause much trouble. Now, it turned out that just five weeks before Lily's death, Her and Paul actually started a relationship together. Those who knew them said that they weren't public yet. Some reports even calling it a secret relationship, though those closest to Paul knew that he was seeing Lily.

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So to me, it didn't necessarily seem like it was a secret relationship that they didn't want anybody to know about. It seemed more like it was a very new thing, so they weren't just like, sie erzählten noch nicht alle von sich, sie posteten noch nicht Bilder von sich auf Facebook oder so etwas, denn es war eine ganz neue Beziehung.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Aber kurz bevor sie tot war, sagte Lily's Freund, dass sie tatsächlich die Beziehung beendet hat. Es wurde gesagt, dass Paul ein bisschen kontrollierbar war, während Lily mehr ein Menschenfreund war, also wollte sie niemanden schaden sehen.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Es wurde also gedacht, dass vielleicht Lily versucht hat, Paul einfach zu lassen und wollte nicht einfach mit ihm Dinge mitmachen, und deshalb war sie bereit, mit ihm weiter zu sparen, nachdem das Verhältnis beendet wurde. Mehr darüber in einer Minute. Nun, diejenigen, die Lily und Paul kennen, als sie in einer Beziehung waren, sagten, dass es nie eine offizielle rote Flagge gab.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Sie argumentierten nicht und es gab keine offizielle domästische Gewalt. In Wahrheit sah es so aus, als hätte Paul zu Beginn keine Geschichte von Gewalt. So, finding out what happened after Lilly was found in that bathroom really shocked everybody who knew the both of them.

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Going off of that CCTV footage from the school which identified Paul, police were able to create a more solid timeline of his movements from before and after the murder. On the morning of the attack, so October 25th, Paul was seen on CCTV footage purchasing a hammer from the hardware store, located just down the street from his home.

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Dann haben sie herausgefunden, dass Paul tatsächlich einen 2003 Lexus-Sedan von einem Familienmitglied gekauft hat und das Auto an den Tag des Mordes zur Arbeit gebracht hat, was anders war, als er es normalerweise machte, um zur Schule zu kommen. Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob er normalerweise öffentlichen Transport verwendet hat oder ob er ein anderes Auto hatte oder ob er normalerweise ging.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Es wird nicht wirklich klar gemacht in den Berichten, aber es wurde berichtet, dass er das spezielle Auto anwesend führte, dass es ein verkauftes Auto war, es war nicht sein Auto und es war nicht normalerweise das Auto, das er zur Schule führte.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Das war also anders an dem Tag und es wird gedacht, dass er das wahrscheinlich gemacht hat, weil das es ermutigte, dass er so schnell von der Schule weg kam nach dem Mord. Dann, wie wir wissen, am 7 Uhr an dem Tag, sind er und Lilly zusammen in den Gym-Bathroom eingeschlafen. Wie ich schon gesagt habe, endete Lilly ihre kurze Beziehung vor einem halben Monat.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Und wenn dieser Art von Person ihre Kontrolle über den anderen verliert, können Dinge schmerzen. Das ist leider das, was Lily James passiert ist. Und lass mich dir sagen, was ihr passiert ist, ist furchtbar. Lily James wurde im Mai 2002 mit den Eltern Jamie und Peeta geboren und sie wurde mit ihrem kleinen Bruder Max in New South Wales in Australien geboren.

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Wie sich das Ganze auf den Weg gebracht hat, könnte in einer der beiden Gründe sein. Zuerst wird gedacht, dass Paul vielleicht Lilly in den Waschzimmer mit ihm bringen konnte, um mit ihm darüber zu sprechen, ob er ihm eine andere Chance geben würde.

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Wenn sie sagte, nein, dass sie ihre Beziehung nicht weitergeben würden, hätte er sie einfach verloren und das war dann, als er sie mit dem Hammer geschlagen hat. Entweder das, oder er ging an der Schule an dem Tag mit der Intention, sie zu töten. Er hat sie in den Kühlschrank geholt und dann in den Kühlschrank geschlagen und sofort den Hammer ausgeworfen und sie zu Tod geschlagen.

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She Thought she was Safe, but Actually Walked into a TRAP: The SAVAGE Murder of Lilie James

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Wahrscheinlich, weil er mit ihr verabschiedet war, um ihre Beziehung zu beenden. Während es glaubt wurde, dass Lilly tot wurde, wurde herausgefunden, dass Lillys Telefon tatsächlich benutzt wurde, um ihren Vater zu schicken, um ihn aus der Schule zu holen.

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Also ist es offensichtlich, nach dem Zeitpunkt der Textmessage, glaubt es sich, dass Paul ihr Telefon aufgenommen hat und ihren Vater von ihrem Telefon getextet hat. We don't exactly know how he did this. It's possible that he memorized her passcode from the time that he was dating her. That's possible if he truly was a very controlling person and he demanded that he have her passcode.

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It's also possible that he picked up her hand after beating her to death and then used her fingerprint to access the phone and send out the message. We don't know for sure either way, but I will come back to this text in just a minute. Nachdem das, haben die Polizei die Telefonnummern von Pauls Handy benutzt, um seine nächsten Bewegungen zu beurteilen.

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Gleich vor Mittag, am selben Tag wie der Mord, wieder am 25., hat Paul eine Telefonrunde in der Gegend nahe der Gap in Vucluse gemacht, genau über dem Diamond Bay Reserve-Klifftopf. Dies ist ein Bereich, der bekannt ist für Multimillionen-Dollar-Häuser mit großartigen panoramischen Füßen. Und es ist so passiert, dass Paul einen Freund hatte, der dort lebte.

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Eigentlich, nur Wochen bevor Lillys Tod, besuchten sie und Paul den Freund, der in diesem Bereich lebte. Aber dieses Mal kam er zurück in das Gebäude für einen viel sinnvollere Grund. Nach der Investition in das Gebäude, fanden die Polizei CCTV-Fotos, die mehr von Pauls Bewegungen entdeckten. Um 8.47 Uhr am 25.

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Oktober, fast zwei Stunden nachdem er Lily in den Kofferraum führte, wurde Paul gefangen, als er mit dem roten 2003 Lexus in die Gegend führte, bevor er es nahe dem Ende der Straße parkierte. Um 9.04 Uhr wurde er aus dem Auto gesehen und dann ging er zurück auf die Straße, bevor er einen Ort gefunden hat, um den Hammer, der Lily verwendet wurde, zu töten.

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Danach sieht er Paul zurück in sein Auto und sitzt dort für zwei Stunden. Danach ruft er Triple Zero an, um sein Verbrechen an die Polizei zu informieren. Wie gesagt, es war vor Mittwoch, als jemand die Polizei anruft, um einen Körper zu informieren, der an der Schule war. Es wurde bestätigt, dass Paul derjenige war, der diesen Anruf gemacht hat.

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Und das ist der Anruf, den die Polizei benutzt hat, um seine Location in diesem Bereich zu beurteilen. By the time police made the trace and found that CCTV footage, which confirmed that Paul was there, Paul was nowhere to be found.

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So the authorities deployed air searches as well as ground searches to scour the area to see if they could pick up on any more clues that could lead them to Paul's whereabouts. Während der Suche fanden sie den weißen Lexus, den Paul fahrte, und führten ihn weg für weitere Investitionen. Sie fanden auch einen Garbage-Bin, der mit einem Set von Apple-Airpods, dem Paul bezeichnet wurde.

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Lili wurde von den Leuten, die sie kennen, als ausgehend, kompensativ und bequem beschrieben. Sie war leidenschaftlich, intelligent und voller Energie und Enthusiasme. Sie war kinder zu allen und ging immer aus ihrem Weg, um diejenigen, die sie nahe zu ihr waren, lieb zu fühlen.

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Andererseits fanden die Polizei an dem Tag nichts weiteres, das Pauls Location hinzufügen könnte. However, by 8 am on Friday, October 27th, workers at a construction site in Vucluse called the police to report what they thought looked like a body lying on the rocks being pounded by the waves just off of the Diamond Bay Reserve.

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The same area where police had been searching for Paul just that previous day. Police arrived and they worked with a rescue helicopter as well as a jet ski to retrieve the body from that water. It turned out that the body actually belonged to 24-year-old Paul Dyson.

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It appeared that after killing Lilly, he drove to that cliff, got rid of the murder weapon, and then sat in the car for two hours before calling police on himself. Then he walked to the edge of that cliff and jumped off, ending his own life.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Social media is designed to be misleading. Most people only post the most positive parts of their lives, leaving out their struggles to make themselves seem like the best person or the best parents with the best family.

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After arresting Tiffany, detectives conducted an interview that lasted about three hours long. During that time, she told officers that she was in such a bad shot, saying that the shooting was actually an accident. She went on to say that she would never do anything like this unless someone gave her a gun and manipulated her.

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She said that she must have been controlled through Facebook, the internet, or through Wi-Fi for doing what she did.

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The day following the murders, November 9th, Tiffany appeared for her bond hearing where she pled not guilty. She was given a $2 million bail and it was said throughout all of her hearings, Tiffany showed absolutely no emotion. She didn't show any remorse. She didn't apologize for what she did and she didn't take any accountability.

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They both loved playing video games, especially with Darrell, who again is Jaden's older brother. Maurice, who family members call little Reese, loved playing soccer. He loved being outside and riding his bike around. Both boys were so precious and were so loved by everyone around them. I love you.

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She was stone-faced through everything and refused to even speak a word.

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Of course, after the murders of those two precious boys, their families are left stunned and devastated. No one knows why this happened. No one can speak to possible motives here other than to say that she was always mentally unstable and not fit to be a mother. But even with that, we don't know if she was using drugs at the time. We don't know if she snapped.

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We don't know if she did this out of malice towards their father's sides of the families. We truly don't have those answers right now. We also don't know if she was abusing those children.

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One thing that stuck out to me when I was reading these articles was that she was frantically cleaning the carpet while the boys were playing outside on the lawn and then it was just hours later that they were killed. I don't know if there's a connection, but I'm sure there is.

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I wonder if something happened where she hurt one of the boys and there was maybe blood on the carpet or something like that, or maybe someone had an accident. I don't know, and she was just cleaning the carpet, frustrated and upset for whatever reason, and... All of it came to a head and she took it out on those boys that day. That is one thing that stuck out to me.

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We don't really know any information about that because police haven't released any information related to that. In fact, police have not released a lot of information to begin with. So again, there are still so, so many questions that just do not have answers right now. However, with that being said, family members do believe that she intentionally killed those kids.

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It wasn't an accident, like she claimed. You can't be manipulated into doing something so awful and so horrific. People have also said that they are frustrated with CPS's lack of care when they tried reporting their concerns. Again, they never did anything. There was so much they could have done to prevent this from happening, yet they did nothing.

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As for the investigation and what, if anything, Tiffany has said in addition to what I have told you is being kept very close to the vest by investigators. We also don't have a lot of information regarding evidence or if there was a history of abuse

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or things like that we don't know what they found in the home that could have been of significance i'm sure they went through her social media and her phone to look at what she was telling people in the days before so there could have been some sort of indication there we don't have a lot of the answers and police are not releasing a lot as of right now all we know is that tiffany lucas murdered her two young children by shooting each of them in the head for seemingly no reason

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She won't accept responsibility and she has pled not guilty. She has no known history of mental illness besides the substance abuse according to the family and neither of the boys reported concerns to any other family members about her behaviors besides what we talked about.

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So again, in a lot of these like abuse cases, if there is abuse going on, one of the younger children might go to the other parent's house and be like,

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i saw mommy do this or mommy hit me or mommy hurt me or something like that there was never anything like that according to other family members other than little maurice saying that you know mom left us in a car by ourselves mom left us home for a long time by ourselves we're watching each other the two brothers things like that that i mentioned earlier where you know they were left at home for long periods of time to fend for themselves

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which is neglectful, but I don't know if there was any physical abuse going on or any mental or emotional abuse or anything like that. Of course, the way she treated the boys was unacceptable, but unfortunately, just based on what I know about personally working with CPS and the system and

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taking courses on how it works and what can and cannot be investigated i can see how cps wouldn't see it as being abusive enough to take them away or to really look into the case very much further because if the only issues are drug abuse then i can see them being like well as long as the kids are being taken care of as long as they're alive basically and don't have bruises all over them then

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They're fine. I could see that being the rationale for CPS not saying it's right, not saying that it should be that way, but I think that when it does come to these CPS reports and them not doing anything, that is what I think their rationale might have been. I also don't know why the courts weren't more involved with visitations with the fathers or their sides of the families.

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I don't know the extent of Tiffany's drug use or inappropriate parenting styles. These are answers that we will just have to wait on until we learn more from the trial that is probably going to take place. But that is all I have for today's video. This is a very recent and ongoing case. Like I said, we don't have nearly close to all of the answers in this case.

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So as I hear more, I will keep you all up to date. If there is a trial and more information comes out, I will probably make another video on this case. But for now, I want to hear what your guys' thoughts are on this devastating, awful case. What do you think the motive was? Do you think that we are going to find out more about possible abuse or something else going on?

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Do you think that Tiffany is going to try to claim insanity? What do you think of her claims that she was manipulated or tricked into doing this and that it was an accident? Let's discuss these and any other thoughts that you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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We have seen even when parents actively abuse their children, all they post on Facebook or social media is photos of them all smiling and laughing together, portraying the image of a happy, uncomplicated family. But as we know, there is almost always so much more behind the scenes that people don't want those on the outside to see, and that rings true especially with today's case.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also linked down below.

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With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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Now if you were to look at Tiffany's social media, you would see that all she posts about is her children, self-love, and her journey to self-improvement and fitness. But most of all, she's constantly posting about just how proud she is to be the mother to her amazing little boys who are her entire world.

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For Jaden's sixth birthday, Tiffany posted to her Facebook, quote, Jaden is seriously the strongest and sweetest, most incredible little king I have ever met. And I'm not saying that because he's my child. Everyone who has ever met Jaden, loved Jaden, and been around Jaden will tell you. God took his time with Jaden. God knew what he was doing with this one.

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I'm so blessed every day I get to spend with Jaden. The countless hugs, cuddles, and conversations we share. I could never take for granted. I love and admire Jaden every day, not just on his birthday. I love my Kings different and that's why Jaden and Peanut are different types of children.

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They are God sent and every wrong I have ever done or any hurt I have ever caused, I am so focused on correcting and loving them longer and deeper. I strive every single day for them, their happiness, their future, and their well-being.

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I cannot guarantee a lot of things in life, but I can guarantee the mother I will always be, the love I will always share, and the best I can ever give and do will be promised to you, my love, Jaden and Peanut. My whole heart and my whole existence is Jaden and Peanuts forevermore.

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In another post in April of 2021, she posted another photo of her two little boys with the caption, Upon watching them sleep, all the pain I endure in life is nothing compared to the blessings and love I get from them. Nothing can make my good day bad. True wealth is happiness. Smile, love, be happy, and thank God. Finally, in this year of May of 2023,

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For Mother's Day, she posted another appreciation post for her sons. She wrote, quote, Even on our bad days, they shower me with an abundance of love. Always together, never apart. Three souls, one heart. Along with these posts, she has other shorter posts where she is constantly thanking God for her family and for how wonderful her children are.

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Her final post to her Facebook account was on Halloween of this year, 2023. with all three of them dressed up in Star Wars costumes. Even her bio on Facebook is Jay and Peanut's world forever. Peanut is what the family would often call little Maurice. So clearly, on the outside, it appeared that she was a loving mother who literally put every ounce of her being into her babies.

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She loved them to bits and only wanted what was best for them.

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Tiffany was also once known as someone with a lot of ambitions who worked hard to achieve her goals and overcome whatever obstacles came her way. Back in 2016, Tiffany opened up her own small business called Miss Tiff's One Stop Shop, which was a convenience store located in Louisville, Kentucky.

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She had been interviewed by local media about her business and she talked about the struggles of being a small business owner. Basically saying that Walmart opened up nearby and was driving customers away and it was really hard for a small business to operate when those big companies are so close by.

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Today's case is going to be a rough one. It's one that I've been following since the very beginning but I haven't wanted to cover it too early because I wanted to understand more about how and why this happened before sharing it with you.

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Unfortunately, her business did not last long with the doors closing back in 2017, only a year after the doors opened.

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However, what Tiffany chose to show the outside world isn't necessarily what was happening behind closed doors. First, Tiffany did have some struggles that she didn't necessarily want to share with the world. She appeared to have a past history with drugs, spending at least one month in jail at one point for drug possession back in 2018.

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Other than that, between the years of 2014 and 2018, she had at least three interactions with police for drug violations. But again, she was only ever given one criminal charge of drug possession, which she pled guilty to, and again, she spent one month in jail. Since 2018, she hasn't been charged with anything else.

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However, when the boys were a bit younger, family members say that they were actually taken away from Tiffany for a short time due to her problems. She had tested positive for drugs, so the boys were taken away. But she always found a way to game the system, according to family members, and always was able to get those boys back. Other than that, we don't exactly know what drugs she was using.

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We don't know if she was clean at any point during this time. We don't know how recently she had used. As so many of us know, people can struggle with substance abuse, especially, in my opinion, opioids, and people around them will have no idea. People can hide certain drug problems pretty well, so I haven't been able to find anywhere what kind of drug she used or how often.

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And while we still don't have all the answers that I would want to have in a horrific case like this, I still wanted to bring this case to you all and share the stories of these two sweet, adorable boys who lost their lives far, far too soon. This is the story of Jaden and Maurice.

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However, according to Maurice's stepmother, Michelle, basically throughout Maurice and Jaden's entire lives, things were never normal. Tiffany always struggled with substance use and And when it came to Maurice's father saying him or other family members saying the boys, she was super inconsistent with what she would allow. He had a home with his father.

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He had his own room and he had a little half brother at the home. He had everything he needed over there. but Tiffany would never allow Maurice to see them. She would even keep Maurice away from family events on his dad's side.

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There were times that Maurice's father would throw him big birthday parties and have big Christmas parties, but Tiffany never allowed Maurice to go, even if the birthday party was for Maurice. It would either be that Tiffany made herself impossible to reach by ignoring phone calls and refusing to answer the door, all the way to her flat out refusing to let his dad's side of the family see him.

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She didn't want Maurice to have a relationship with his dad, his stepmother, or even his little half-brother. According to Michelle, Tiffany was incredibly selfish. Essentially, when it came to her posts on social media, according to Michelle, Tiffany was nothing like how she portrayed herself. She didn't want what was best for her sons. She didn't do everything she could to be a mother to them.

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She wouldn't get a job, she wouldn't work, and she struggled with drugs. According to family members, they didn't really know exactly how she made her money because she did live in a house and she lived on her own with her boys. But they thought that maybe she worked in escort type services or something like that.

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Michelle would later say that they found some emails on Tiffany's computer that she would just leave open that sort of proved that she was working as an escort of some sort to make some money. She didn't seem to be interacting with the best types of people either. people who could provide her with weapons and drugs and things like that.

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In addition, family members say that she would leave the boys at home alone for extended periods of time while she was out. Not only that, but she would also leave them in the car and lock them in while she went out and did things. The house was dirty and the boys just were not well taken care of by Tiffany.

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According to family members, they did try to reach out to CPS multiple times from the time that the boys were very young, but CPS never did anything.

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They told Maurice and Jayden's families that there was never enough evidence to prove that Tiffany was not a fit mother, despite the fact that she was actively using drugs, would leave them alone for long periods of time, and didn't keep a clean or sanitary home.

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Nine-year-old Jaden Howard and his little brother, six-year-old Maurice Baker Jr., were born to their mother, 32-year-old Tiffany Lucas. Both were born to different fathers, but they were living with Tiffany in Shepherdsville, Kentucky at the time and for most of their lives growing up. Jaden's father unfortunately passed away back in 2019, but Jaden did have a much older brother named Darrell.

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So obviously, many family members are very frustrated with how CPS handled this or how they didn't handle it at all and for their lack of care with these boys. Even a few friends of Tiffany's felt like something was off with how she just was as a person and how she treated her sons.

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According to one friend, Talia, she and her two children were with Tiffany and the boys just a few days before they were killed. They actually spent Halloween together. She said that things were totally normal that day. She said that Tiffany had always appeared to be a competent mother to her and she believed that she treated those boys well.

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She did believe that how she portrayed her life on Facebook was pretty close to accurate. She called them kings every day and constantly reminded them of how loved they were. However, outside of their children playing together and then being friends through that, Talia said that there was always something about Tiffany that rubbed her the wrong way.

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She said that Tiffany could get upset and angry very, very quickly, almost like flipping a switch. So if the kids weren't around, Talia didn't necessarily always get along with Tiffany just as her own person. And she said that she felt bad for those children who had to deal with Tiffany's angry outburst firsthand.

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Now on the morning of November 8th, 2023, Tiffany was seen with her two boys outside of the house as the boys played in the front lawn. According to neighbors at that time, Tiffany appeared to be frantically cleaning the carpet. However, a few hours later that morning, a neighbor was pulling into his driveway when he saw Tiffany outside by herself walking down the driveway before she collapsed.

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At that point, he was concerned, so he went over to her and asked her if she was okay. That is when she told the neighbor that the boys were inside the house dying. Of course, the neighbor immediately went inside the house to see what was going on, and when he entered, he walked into a horrific scene.

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He saw Tiffany's two boys, six-year-old Maurice and nine-year-old Jaden, lying dead on the bed in a bedroom. Both boys were covered in blood, and lying next to them, there was a gun. Tiffany had shot both of her adorable, sweet babies in the head. Police arrived to the scene by 11 a.m. and when they got there, they found Tiffany lying collapsed in her driveway.

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Of course, these officers went inside where they were met with these two deceased children as well as that gun lying next to them. Now, when police went inside that home, they found that the home was in a state of chaos. It was filthy on the inside. Several of their utilities had actually been shut off and there was an eviction notice on the home.

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So clearly things were chaotic and clearly Tiffany was not taking care of the home. After finding this horrific, brutal scene, of course, Tiffany was immediately arrested. Authorities then went around the neighborhood to see if they could find any cameras that picked up the incident, and they actually found someone who had a Ring doorbell camera that faced Tiffany's home.

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I haven't been able to actually see the footage for myself, I've only seen it described, but in that video, you can hear the sound of four gunshots going off, one after the other, for about 30 seconds total. About five minutes after those shots ring out, Tiffany can be seen running out of her home before collapsing and yelling for help. Then we see her speaking with the neighbor as I described.

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This footage confirmed that Tiffany was the only person inside the home when the boys were shot, so she had to be the person responsible. She couldn't claim that some intruder came in or

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something like that and shot them and then left because this footage clearly showed nobody else entering or leaving the home when neighbors and police found those boys they were actually still alive so first responders did anything and everything they could to save their lives they attempted cpr and rushed them to norton's children's hospital in louisville where they were taken into surgery

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I'm not exactly sure how old Darrell is, but he looks to be at least in his late 20s. According to Darrell, when their father passed away, he became a lot more involved in his little brother's life and in Maurice's life as well. According to family members, both boys were just so sweet, polite, and happy.

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However, unfortunately, that was not enough. Both boys succumbed to their injuries and passed away at the hospital.

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We hear way too many stories about children who are failed by the system. Children who are born to abusive, neglectful parents who prove time and time again that the children are in danger under their care, yet they are not removed from the home and nothing is done until it's far too late. That's usually how it goes, but not in this case. This case is even more disturbing than that.

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For older kids, they don't have to do this as intensively because older kids can speak to the abuse, but again, young kids cannot. During this November 2nd visit, because Layla was sleeping, instead of doing a full physical inspection for signs of abuse, she just pulled back Layla's covers and took a quick look at her. Because again, she didn't want to wake her up.

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Jennifer told her that she'd had trouble sleeping so she didn't want to disturb her when she finally fell asleep. Based on this visit, Samantha wrote in her report that Millie bumped her head on the faucet but other than that, the children had no signs of injury or abuse. The girls were being well cared for, so no further intervention was needed.

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However, this would all change on November 17, 2015, when Jennifer called 911 to report that Layla was unresponsive. She reported that Layla had choked while eating a piece of chicken. She said that she first tried the Heimlich but was now doing CPR to save her life.

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she said that she got the piece of chicken out of her throat but leila still wasn't getting better as she was talking she just kept saying that leila's eyes are closing and her eyes are rolling to the back of her head she's turning white she said that she's going to keep trying she's going to do everything she can but she doesn't want to break her ribs and she has no idea what she's doing

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She loved eating chicken nuggets, playing with her toy kitchen, and watching the show Yo Gabba Gabba. But Layla was no stranger to chaos in her very short life. At first, Layla and her sister Millie lived with their mother Tessa. However, Tessa was known to struggle with drug abuse from the time that she was a teenager. Tessa was known, to put it bluntly, as being a neglectful mother.

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When first responders arrived, they immediately attempted life-saving efforts to hopefully bring Layla back. But as they were doing so, first responders noticed that Layla had many other injuries that could not be explained by Jennifer or first responders trying CPR. They noticed bruising to her face, neck, abdomen, back, pelvis, wrists, and legs.

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They noticed that her left arm looked deformed, almost as if it had been broken. It was like bowing out.

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he checked to see if the arm had been broken in that moment with them trying cpr and things like that but based on his quick assessment he felt that it had been broken previously and was in the process of healing obviously when you are doing cpr especially on a small child things are going to happen bruises can happen broken bones can possibly happen

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Because when you are trying to save someone's life, you aren't worried about breaking their bones or causing bruising. You just want them to survive. But the injuries they noticed were things that they knew were not caused by CPR. Many of them they noticed before they even started life-saving measures. So they knew that something very wrong was going on here.

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As they tried saving her life, she was transported to the hospital to be examined and put on life support. However, unfortunately, none of what first responders did was enough. They were unable to save Layla's life, so on November 17th, 2015, two-year-old little Layla was pronounced dead. At this point, officers knew that Layla's death was suspicious.

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She would leave her young daughters unsupervised at times when they weren't home alone and They were being moved from house to house, living with different family members for short periods of time while she went out and did drugs, mostly meth. Other times, Tessa would even leave the girls with people she had only known for a short period of time.

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She had been examined by hospital staff post-mortem, who found extensive external bruising. But of course, her cause of death needed to be further investigated, so after pronouncing her as dead, by November 18th, her body was sent off to the medical examiner for an autopsy. And what they found is absolutely phenomenal. horrific.

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At this point in the case, I do want to give you all a warning that what this little girl went through is beyond comprehension. It's honestly making my stomach hurt now knowing what I'm about to tell you. It's very difficult to hear because it would be putting it very lightly to say that her injuries were devastating.

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they were horrible and honestly when I saw what these injuries were and what this little girl went through I had never heard anything like it before I had never heard of such horrible injuries being suffered by anybody, let alone a two-year-old child. So just take that as your warning.

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The medical examiner found that there were numerous bruises all over her body, spanning all the way from her head down to her legs, with the most prominent bruising being on her back. She had a massive bruise on her back that extended from her neck all the way down to her bottom. They found a total of 22 injuries on her head and neck alone. She also had a fractured leg, which we know from earlier.

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The fracture was on her tibia, very close to her knee though, which is very unusual for a child her age. She was also found to have a fracture to her ulna bone in her arm that was in the process of healing. Specifically, it was referred to as a nightstick fracture. This term is coined from back when law enforcement would carry nightsticks.

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This fracture happens when someone puts their arms up in front of their face in defense when someone is attacking them. Your ulna bone is the closest bone to your pinky, so when you hold your arms up, this is the first bone that will take the blow. This type of fracture is almost always caused by somebody being hit. This is the fracture that paramedics noticed when they first arrived to the scene.

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It caused her arm to look deformed, which makes sense because if she had a fracture in her arm and it was never taken care of, there was never casting done, then the way it's going to heal is how it was broken. So if the bone is sticking out like this or going in,

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and it's never put back in place, it's never put in a cast or anything to promote healing, then it's just going to heal like that, and it's never going to straighten back out. So again, this just shows that she had a fracture that was not being taken care of. In addition to that, Layla had several broken ribs on the posterior side of her rib cage, not in the front like you'd expect from CPR.

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They also found several injuries to her internal organs. They found that Layla's pancreas had ruptured so bad that it was transected in half. She also had a laceration to her liver, which would have been incredibly painful for Layla and would have caused internal bleeding. That kind of injury is caused by a significant blow to the abdomen, which is a lot lower than where you would perform CPR.

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And obviously, that is very dangerous, leaving your children with someone that you hardly know, you don't know what their intentions are, or if they could be bad people who want to harm your children. Meanwhile, Anthony Daniel was in and out of jail, never really being a part of his daughter's lives. Their lives were unstable, unpredictable, and chaotic.

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Even if you have absolutely zero experience in BLS and CPR, you would just know intuitively that you want to do test compressions on the chest, not on the stomach or on the lower ribs. So the CPR does not explain the significant blows to the stomach that caused such severe damage to her pancreas and liver.

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I also want to note that some of the injury to Layla's liver was thought to be about three weeks old at the time of her death, So even if you want to argue that the Heimlich or CPR caused some of her injuries, one of the injuries on her liver was much older. The medical examiner went on to explain that the way Jennifer described Layla's death is indicative of her having a deadly seizure.

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She pointed out how Jennifer said that Layla was shaking at one point and then her eyes rolled to the back of her head. She said, quote, the whole scenario is a description of a child going into shock as opposed to a child who has a foreign object such as food. The description is not consistent with that at all. The medical examiner explained that when you have blood loss, i.e.

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internal bleeding, this causes the body to go into shock. And that blood loss and shock can cause a seizure because your body is trying desperately to, you know, achieve homeostasis, but it's not able to. Your body is dying. In her professional opinion, the medical examiner stated that Layla suffered some sort of traumatic event about an hour before she started exhibiting these symptoms.

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So, to summarize and to sort of make sense of what the ME is saying, basically, an hour before that 911 call was made, Layla suffered a significant blow to her abdomen that caused some of the lacerations to her liver and pancreas. That caused internal bleeding, which then caused the body to go into shock. As a result, she had a seizure, which was explained during that 911 call.

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To go even further, the ME stated that she found no food or food particles in Layla's esophagus or trachea that would indicate choking. If she truly had been choking and something was lodged in her throat right before death, there would have been food debris. It's not like Jennifer got the piece unstuck and then, you know, she chugged down some water to get rid of the crumbs.

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There should have been some sign of the food being in her throat. but there wasn't any. Due to all of these findings, the medical examiner did not believe that Layla died as the result of a choking accident. Instead, she died as the result of blunt force trauma to her abdomen that caused internal bleeding and the seizure, which ultimately ended her life.

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She ruled that Layla's manner of death is homicide. Clearly, Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum caused her death. They abused that poor little girl, beating her until she died. Not only that, but they found that Millie suffered abuse as well. After Layla was transported to the hospital and her suspicious injuries were noted, nurses also took in Millie to examine her.

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They found that Millie had extensive bruises on her hip, head, arms, and her back that were all in various stages of healing. She also had extensive bruising all over her groin and buttocks area. These injuries were less severe than Layla's, but were definitely indicators of abuse. So by December 4th, 2015, both Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum were arrested.

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Meanwhile, DCFS was on Tessa's tail for a long time. But each time they would receive a complaint and would show up to Tessa's residence, she would slam the door in their faces. Rather than following up and forcing Tessa to cooperate, they would just close the case. Another time when they opened a case, Tessa moved to North Carolina, not leaving a forwarding address.

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Jennifer was charged with a 49 charge indictment, including malice and felony murder, child cruelty, assault and battery in connection with the death of Layla and the abuse of Millie. Meanwhile, Joseph was being charged with the second-degree murder, stating that he knew about the abuse and let it happen.

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Now, for the years that followed, police continued their investigation into this case as a whole. Obviously, the fact that Jennifer and Joseph abused these little girls in such horrific ways is just tragic and heartbreaking. But it was the Georgia DCFS system that let them care for the girls in the first place. There were so, so many warning signs, so many red flags that were missed or ignored.

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So, after this horrific death, an investigation was also done into DCFS and how this whole thing happened in the first place. First, they uncovered more about Jennifer's background that should have prevented her from getting guardianship to begin with. Now, like I said, when Layla and Millie's caseworkers were looking into Jennifer, they knew that she had grown up in the system.

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Apparently, this wasn't looked farther into because at the surface, like I said, Jennifer looked like a young woman who picked herself back up after a tough life and was determined to succeed. She was a pillar in her community. But it turned out that Jennifer and Joseph had actually applied to be foster parents two times before getting Layla and Millie into their care.

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Both times they were denied because of Jennifer's background. Yes, she was a child of the foster care system and they knew that and it turns out that it was due to her parents being homeless. But she also had been physically abused as a child. And when growing up, she also showed concerning behaviors such as anger outbursts and violence against other children.

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Those things automatically disqualified her from being a foster mom. but of course when she was looked into for fictive kin they didn't look that deep into her history and thus she was approved they actually only ran the background check on her married name they did not run it for her maiden name which is what they did previously when she applied to be a foster mom

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So that is how she got denied because in her maiden name, they found out this more extensive history that does not show up when you only look into her married name. So she never should have even been considered for kinship in the first place. But okay, that red flag was missed. I guess it happens. But after that, there were even more glaring red flags that were ignored.

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Millie suffered a black eye, or as stated in some reports, a bruise under her eye. There was a story to explain it away, but Samantha never looked further into it. What, do you expect the adult to come right out and be like, yeah, I hit my kid and caused her to have a black eye? That black eye should have been reported and she should have pulled Millie into another room and asked her separately.

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Millie was old enough to talk and to explain what happened, so Samantha should have at least asked her to see if she would confirm the story about the faucet being responsible for her black eye. Then, when it came to Millie's broken leg, Once again, there was a story to explain it away. Yes, Samantha followed up with the doctor.

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And yes, the doctor also seemed to miss the red flag of the broken leg being in an unusual place. In the report, Samantha said that there was concern from the parent given that she was taken to the hospital for treatment for the broken leg. However, it turned out that Jennifer actually waited two days to get care for Layla's leg.

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So, once again, DCFS closed the case. They were pretty much telling her that if she just didn't cooperate and made things really hard for them, that they would just leave her alone. That is not the end of the failures of the system in this case, but we will get more into that later in the video. By January of 2015, Tessa was charged with conspiracy to distribute meth.

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Not only that, but when following up with the gymnastics gym, it turned out that neither Layla or Millie had ever even taken classes there. Millie had been signed up and I believe maybe they went to the gym at some point, but she never actually took classes. And Layla herself was never even signed up. So no, she did not break her leg at gymnastics and that was confirmed.

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Jennifer also mentioned that the broken leg could have happened at their Nana's house, but when they followed up with the Nana to see if they even visited on the day that they said she broke her leg,

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she hadn't even visited and apparently there was this whole story of leila falling into a hole that had been dug that never happened either had her case manager taken the time to call the gym real quick or talk to nana she would have caught this immediately not only that but regardless of how leila got her broken leg even if samantha truly thought it was an accident you know followed up with her gymnastics gym followed up with nana and they confirmed the stories

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she is still required to write a serious injury report. She did not do that. Nobody was notified that this little girl had a broken leg. Then, as we know, there were home visits where Samantha did not do full inspections on Layla to check for injuries. We don't know how many bruises to her stomach and back could have been missed in that November visit because Samantha never checked.

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She was more worried about waking Layla up and believing Jennifer's story than just... checking under her clothes really quick. So putting everything together, we discussed earlier that Layla would have some random bruises on her legs. No big deal, right? She's clumsy and she gets into fights at daycare. Okay. But then Millie has a black eye. accident. Then Layla has a broken leg, accident.

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I completely understand not raising the alarm when a kid has a couple of bruises a couple times. I've had kids walk into my clinic where they have a little scratch on their hand or on their foot or a bruise on their shin or on their arm, and I'm not just immediately calling CPS because it's one time or or happens occasionally, and I know how clumsy this kid can be.

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But when there is incident after incident after incident of finding bruises and injuries, that should raise the alarm. but it didn't. I get that DCFS workers are underpaid and overworked. I get that sometimes small things can slip through the cracks, and it is so unfortunate. But when there are this many mistakes made, it's unforgivable.

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At some point in all of this, I do believe it was Layla's biological mom, Tessa, that tried to open a lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Human Services, but as far as I have seen, that case was dismissed. Now going back to the trial for Jennifer and Joseph. After delay, after delay, after delay, in July of 2019, the trial for murder finally started.

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The prosecution came out strong, calling the Rosenbaums liars, abusers, and manipulators, saying that Jennifer's entire life is a facade. She talked about how, yes, their biological mother struggled with drug abuse. Yes, she was neglectful. But no matter how much they went through with Tessa, nothing was as bad as what happened to these poor girls when they were placed with Jennifer and Joseph.

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Then after only a few short months, the whole facade came crashing down and they were exposed for the abusers they are and always were. Both girls were abused horrifically. They had bumps, bruises, broken bones, and injuries. Constant injuries. And each and every time these injuries were noticed by social workers or doctors, Jennifer would lie about how they happened.

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After her case was tried, she spent three months in jail. Then, finally, by April of 2015, the Department of Family and Child Services stepped in and removed Layla and Millie from the care of their mother, and from there, they were placed into foster care. At the time, Layla was 21 months old, so almost two, and Millie was four years old.

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The most egregious lie then came on November 17, 2015, when Jennifer called 911 to report that Layla was choking. She was on the phone with the dispatcher, making it clear that she doesn't know what she's doing and she doesn't want to hurt her, already trying to come up with her story of how Layla got all those bruises.

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Then, when first responders got to the scene, they found that there was nothing lodged in her throat. She was never choking. Then, when trying to work on her, they immediately saw the bruises. They immediately knew that this was not a choking. This was the result of a horrific, brutal beating.

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It was a beating so bad that she had broken bones, heavy bruising head to toe, organ damage, internal bleeding, All so bad that she had a seizure that ended her life. Then once Layla died, the doctors examining her found even more severe bruising. She had bruises on her abdomen way lower than you would ever try CPR.

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Even if you are completely inexperienced at any sort of healthcare, you know not to do CPR down by your belly button. She had bruises on her groin as well, most likely from being kicked between the legs as we would later hear from Millie. Millie said that being kicked between the legs and on the butt was a common punishment in their home. Layla also had abrasions and bruising to her inner thighs.

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She had bruises not only to the sides and back of her head, which could be explained by her just being clumsy, but she also had bruises to the very top of her head, most likely from suffering blows directly from above. No one's just gonna fall directly on their head. That does not make sense.

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Even further, the bruises she did have were not consistent with a bruise that a two-year-old would suffer from falling. She had bruises to her hips, back of her legs, and down towards her knees. Then, the most extensive bruises were to her back, most likely from blows to the back. These bruises were all in completely different stages of healing. So no, they weren't all caused from CPR.

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If they were caused from one instance of pressure, they would all look fresh. But again, They didn't. Some were old bruises, some were new. It was from long-term abuse. Then, as I stated before, Layla had suffered multiple fractures. She broke her tibia, which we know didn't happen at gymnastics. She was never even signed up for gymnastics.

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We know she had a nightstick fracture in her ulna, which doctors testified are almost always from being hit. blunt force trauma. Then after her death, we found out that she had several fractures in her posterior ribs, which again, you could argue that when you're giving CPR, you might break a few ribs.

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However, it is usually expected that you would break the anterior ribs or the ribs in front, not the ones on the posterior side or her back. Then to go further, those ribs were actually in stages of healing when she was murdered. So no, they were not from CPR. They were from a prior episode of abuse. Then again, as you know, her internal organs were damaged.

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Your liver is located behind your ribs and then your pancreas is just behind your liver. The bruising on her abdomen shows that she was hit, kicked, or stomped on with such force force that the blow went through her ribs, your bones that are literally there for the specific purposes of protecting your organs, and went to the liver and pancreas and literally transected it.

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I cannot stress that enough. Again, your ribs are designed to protect your organs. To be hit so hard that your pancreas transects is an unbelievable amount of force exerted on this two-year-old little baby. Not only that, but she had organ injuries that were actually healed. So no, this wasn't just caused from really, really intense CPR. It was from a long history of abuse.

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At first, the girls were placed with a couple named Patricia and Dexter Lamber, who were foster parents working with the system. They were experienced, competent foster parents by all accounts, but they were strangers to the girls and Tessa. Now, as a child, Tessa had been in the foster care system herself. As a child, she had briefly lived with another girl, Jennifer Rosenbaum.

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She had several other organs damaged from past episodes of abuse. So if I'm not making myself clear enough... she was horrifically abused. And again, Millie was also covered in bruises. She had bruises on one side of her face and then on her neck on the other side. So again, that proved that she didn't get the bruises from falling on one side of her face and

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Like if you fell and hit your head or your face or something like that and you had bruises like all on one side, that would kind of make sense. But she didn't. She was smacked on one side and then hit again on the other. She had bruising all over her forearms. She had severe black and blue bruises all over her hip, buttocks, and the insides of her legs. Again, all in various stages of healing.

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This case involves a child born into a family unfit to raise her. She is sent to a loving foster home, but soon after, a monster disguised as a woman steps in and insists on caring for the little girl. And almost immediately, she is murdered. Why? How did this happen? How did the system miss so many red flags?

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not something you would get from a fall. She also had bruises to her groin from being kicked in between the legs. She also had a healing fracture to her elbow. So, did she get all those bruises from CPR too? Did Jennifer give Millie CPR while she didn't really need it? No, it's obvious that they were both abused.

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At the trial, multiple doctors who had seen Layla prior to her death, as well as emergency staff, all testified about the bruising and other injuries she had. All of these injuries pointed to abuse. I won't go through too much of what they said because we already discussed the injuries in great detail, but just to reiterate, they noticed that all of the injuries were in various stages of healing.

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They knew that the types of fractures the girls suffered were unusual and not typically caused by accidents. The injuries and bruising were not in places that are typical in children who are just clumsy and getting into spiffs at school. Trust me, even if another kid had beaten the absolute crap out of Layla at school,

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No child would be able to exert the amount of force required for the injuries she had. Little Millie, now seven years old at this time, also testified at trial. So she was seven at the trial, not right now. She talked about how Jennifer and Joseph would yell loudly at her and Layla whenever they got mad. She said that Jennifer got mad about a lot of things.

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They would get hit or kicked for things like falling asleep in the car or not getting dressed fast enough. Then Millie talked about the night that Layla died. She said that she finished up dinner and went upstairs to watch Paw Patrol. Jennifer called her from the bottom of the stairs to come down.

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When she came down, she saw that Layla was sleeping and immediately she got into the car with Jennifer and went to the hospital. That was the night that Layla had died. She said that she gets really sad when talking about Layla's death. At trial, they also had a supervisor of the workers from the CPS case talk about all of the missteps that happened in the case.

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She talked about how, yes, they missed a lot and none of this should have ever happened. Jennifer never should have been approved as a fictive kin parent. She talked about how the staff did not screen Jennifer under her maiden name and if they had, they would have seen the red flags from her childhood.

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She also said that the home authorization done for the Rosenbaums was signed by someone who was not authorized to sign it. Samantha's supervisor, Tamara, said that Samantha White was inexperienced and didn't report things like she should have, such as the broken leg. The girl's great-grandmother also testified at trial.

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She talked about how she fought to get custody of those little girls from the time that they were babies and still in Tessa's care. She was the one point of stability the girls had in their lives, but she was living in an assisted living facility and I don't think she had the ability to live on her own and the assisted living facility did not allow children.

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Jennifer was a third-year law student interning at the juvenile court in Henry County, which shared the courts with DCFS cases. Well, while working there, she found out that Tessa's two girls were taken and put into the foster system. She talked to Tessa's grandmother, the girl's great-grandmother, briefly, and the interaction just stuck with her.

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So, eventually, she had to give up the fight for custody. and that is when these girls were placed into foster care. She said that initially, when the girls were placed with the Rosenbaums, she was excited because they looked good on paper. However, the Rosenbaums started limiting the interaction that the girls could have with their great-grandmother.

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When she did see them, she was concerned because she did see some bruising on them. She started the process of fighting for them back again, even getting the senior living facility to allow them to live there for two years. But as soon as she started contacting DCFS, it was too late because Layla was dead.

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And that is something else that I want to point out, is that Jennifer and Joseph literally only had Layla for a few months, literally less than four months before she was killed. So really, the abuse started immediately and got progressively worse. The rate at which this abuse got bad is just gut-wrenching and sickening.

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On the other hand, like I've been mentioning all throughout the video, the defense came in and said that all of the injuries Layla suffered were from CPR. They said that the Rosenbaums are a kind, loving family. They reiterated that Joseph is a good provider working two jobs. Meanwhile, Jennifer is a third-year law student. Jennifer would take the girls to her law school any chance she got.

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The court showed the jurors pictures of them smiling with the girls at home and in those professional family photos that you would get at JCPenney. They showed pictures of the girls with Jennifer at school, smiling children in photos,

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that doesn't happen with parents who abuse their kids ever it's obviously a sign that they were not abused because they were smiling for photos they said that all of this was just a horrible accident that started with leila choking and then jennifer trying cpr and having no idea what to do i guess she thought her heart was in her low stomach and then in the mess of it all

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She accidentally broke her arm and her leg, several ribs, gave her bruising to her head, arms, legs, groin, neck, and back, and also transected an organ and damaged several more. Guys, Jennifer was just trying CPR on every single one of Layla's body parts to make sure that she got the right one, Because she doesn't know where your heart is. She has no idea what she was doing.

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If the stomach doesn't work, why not try CPR on her head? Surely that will get her breathing. If that doesn't work, why not try it on her arm? Maybe that'll get something going. If it sounds stupid and ridiculous, that's because it is. Friends and family members of the Rosenbaums testified at trial, all confirming just how great of people they are.

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friends said that they trusted jennifer to babysit in the past and they still would if they needed it i guess they really hate their kids huh basically everyone who knew them said that they were surprised about all of this and that they just did not seem like the type who would hurt these little girls The defense also tried really hard to make Millie look like a liar when she testified.

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Those little girls were in need of help, so she decided she wanted to step in. Although her and Tessa were never the best of friends, she did spend a bit of time with her growing up, and she knew that she could provide better care for those girls than foster parents could. Knowing what the system was like, she didn't want those little girls to suffer like she did.

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Which, yes, her counselor and therapist did say that Millie would make up stories and embellish stories as a way to cope with what she went through. She was literally four when all of this happened, and that is what little kids will do. but that doesn't mean that she made up the abuse.

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She is clearly a traumatized, abused little girl, and I think it's disgusting that the defense chose to take the route of making Millie out to be a little seven-year-old liar. It's really disgusting. At the end of the trial, both sides made their closing arguments, and let me say that this prosecutor was fun to watch throughout the entire trial, because she is a spitfire.

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She takes no bullshit, she says it how it is, and I can just hear in the way she talks that she is as disgusted as the rest of us are with Jennifer and Joseph. After the closing arguments, the jury went in for deliberations, and it didn't take long before they came back with their verdict. They found Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum guilty on almost all 49 counts the two faced.

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For Jennifer, this included felony murder, aggravated assault, and cruelty to children. For Joseph, he was found guilty for second-degree murder, aggravated assault, and first-degree cruelty to children. Again, there were multiple counts of each charge, and one of the charges for Jennifer was malice murder, but she was actually found not guilty for that one.

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At the sentencing hearing, Layla's birth mother, Tessa, testified about just how hurt she was from this. She knew that she wasn't in the best place to raise her children, so she was happy when they were placed with Jennifer. And she has blamed herself for four years because of how her actions led them to being in the care of these monsters.

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So, by May of 2015, 26-year-old Jennifer Rosenbaum sent Tessa a Facebook message offering to take Layla and Millie into her care. She explained how she found out about the situation to begin with, saying that her girls were just so beautiful. They looked just like their mom. Now, when she messaged Tessa, it went to the request box because they weren't actually friends on Facebook yet.

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On the other hand, the family of Jennifer and Joseph are in complete denial. They have heard the details of this trial, yet they still believe that they were loving foster parents and that they cared about Layla. They even said that they are so broken about the horrible accident that caused Layla's death.

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Joseph's mom said that they were both good parents, that they would never do anything to hurt Layla, and that this was an accident, and she does not care what anybody says. She doesn't care what evidence there is. She doesn't care, you know, what glaring red flag she is seeing. She's ignoring it. She's choosing to ignore all of it.

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So she asked for leniency, saying that she's worried that her son will die in prison because he's not getting the care that he needs for his health condition. And all I have to say is good. I hope he suffers every single day. You don't want your son to die? What about that two-year-old little baby that died under their care?

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I am not going to play their speeches because it's infuriating and this whole case has been frustrating enough, so I'm not going to put you through that. After hearing from the different family members, it was time for the judge to speak. In the sentencing, he said that it is deeply frustrating to hear how the Rosenbaum's family members disagree with the verdict.

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He said that the case was carefully tried and he is concerned at the lack of recognition for the scope of this case. It was not an accident, and it is mind-blowing how you can hear these details in this case and still be that delusional. The judge said that this was one of the worst, most horrific crimes that he has ever experienced.

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The look on his face when he's speaking about the family just speaks for himself. He is dumbfounded.

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But Tessa found out from the girl's case manager, Samantha White, that Jennifer was interested in taking the girls. Jennifer had expressed to Samantha that she had empathy for what Tessa was going through, and she knew how tough the situation was. So, after finding out that there was a potential interest in the girls, Tessa went on Facebook and found the message so she could send a message back.

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In the end, Jennifer was handed down a life sentence plus 40 years behind bars. Then Joseph was given a sentence of 30 years behind bars.

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For those of you wondering, after all of this, Millie is now in the care of an adoptive mother who, by all accounts, loves her and treats her well. She takes her to therapy. She seems kind and patient and fully willing to take on all that comes with a child who lived through what Millie did. All I can do is hope for the absolute best for Millie and hope that she turns out okay.

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So that is the information that I have on today's case. It's obviously a horrific one. One of the most horrific that I've covered to this date. But one thing I did want to talk about and point out again is that they only had these girls for four months before Layla died. Jennifer went out of her way to get these girls from Tessa. So to me, I have to wonder why.

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As I stated, Jennifer remembered Tessa from their time in foster care, but Tessa didn't remember Jennifer. We also heard from the neighbors of Jennifer that before getting the girls, she mentioned to the neighbor that Tessa is a meth head, So now she's taking care of her meth babies. Obviously not a way you should be talking about the two little girls you are so excited and proud to get.

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So with that said, I wonder, did Tessa do something to Jennifer in foster care that Jennifer's just been stewing about all these years? Did Tessa say something to Jennifer or treat her in a way that she's upset about? Because maybe Tessa did something to Jennifer that was significant for Jennifer and but insignificant to Tessa. And that's maybe why Jennifer remembered her and Tessa didn't.

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Now, at the time, Tessa didn't necessarily remember Jennifer all that well. Again, they had lived together briefly, but they were never like best friends or sisters or anything like that. But she took a look at Jennifer's Facebook photos and what she saw was a put-together woman. She was married, dressed well, and had a home and a dog.

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Maybe Tessa made an offhand comment. Maybe she bullied her or made fun of her. Who knows? But I wonder, did Jennifer take those girls and abuse them to get revenge on Tessa? I think it's possible. Or did Jennifer just have this deep insecurity where she hated herself so much that she wanted to take it out on someone smaller and weaker? As we heard from before,

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they did try to be foster parents before Layla and Millie. Was it her plan all along to have someone in her house to take all of her anger out on? Did Jennifer just feel so insecure and so insignificant that the only way to take it out was on someone weaker than her? Because to me, you don't just immediately get kids and start abusing them right away for no reason.

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It's never okay, but in some cases like this, you hear about how it happened slowly over years, that the child got out of control and they didn't know what to do, so they took their anger and frustration out on the child. Again, it is not okay. That does not make it okay. That does not make it any more acceptable, but it at least explains how it happened.

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with this case it seems like she went out of her way she did not have to take these girls she went out of her way found someone messaged them on facebook and then she took in those girls and to me i feel like she had the full intention of hurting them the entire time And I don't think she would have stopped until one of them died.

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I think that it was just getting worse and worse and she was trying to figure out what she can get away with. Because another part to this case is that Jennifer did grow up in this system. She knew what those CPS workers were going to be looking for. So she specifically chose areas to abuse these children and

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in ways that she knew cps would not catch if she played her cards right she knew that it was harder to find those bruises if she kicked him between the legs or smacked him on the back or on the top of the head she knew that these bruises were not going to be obvious and i think she meticulously chose where she was going to hurt those children i think she was calculated

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I think she did all of this on purpose. I think she wanted those girls to see what she could get away with. Maybe she was abused herself. Maybe her foster parents also harmed her in the same way that she harmed those girls. It doesn't excuse it. It doesn't make it okay. But I think that might have something to do with why she chose to hurt these little girls in the way that she did.

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I also think that the more she got away with it, the worse it got and the more confident she got. It's just crazy to think that she abused these girls so badly and that it was not caught by the caseworkers and I think that just made her more confident, more cocky and made her feel better, made her feel like she was more able to hurt these girls even worse.

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And again, I just think it really just boosted her ego every time she wasn't caught. That being said, I think she took joy in all of this. I think she enjoyed hurting those girls. I can't think of any other explanation. And for Joseph's part, I don't know if he partook or not.

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Based on the trial, it seems like most of the abuse came from Jennifer, but obviously Joseph had to know about it and went along with it. If he wanted it to stop, he could have stopped it by reporting it.

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He is just as culpable as her and I'm really happy that the courts took this case seriously enough that they gave him second degree murder as well instead of just like child abuse or something like that because that is setting a precedent that if you do not report abuse that you are witnessing, that if you take any part in it whatsoever, that you are also just as responsible.

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She felt that if Jennifer remembered her and wanted to help, then she must be a good person. It felt almost like a message from God that someone wanted to help her and cared enough to take her babies in.

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Neither Lila or Millie deserved any of this. It's absolutely tragic and heartbreaking how these bottom-feeding, low-life pieces of trash were ever even able to get those girls and their care. And just as with any case like this, there isn't much that we can do about the past. We can't go back and change what happened.

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But I sincerely hope that cases like this one encourage social workers and mandated reporters to do better. Recognize the red flags and do what you can to prevent this from happening children that you care for. My heart absolutely breaks for Millie and Layla and everyone who loved those little girls.

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Layla deserved so much more in her life and I just wish she could have gone on to survive this and went with the family who is actually going to care for her. But there's nothing we can do to change it now." But that's what I think about all of this. I've shared my thoughts. Now I want to hear what you all think about all of this. Why do you think this happened?

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Do you agree with what I said or do you have another explanation? What do you think of their families sticking by their sides through all of this? Let's discuss this and any other comments that you have in the comments below. If you like this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.

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I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure you follow my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is also listed down below.

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With that, I hope you guys have an amazing week. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

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even though tessa did have a very rough past and did not take care of her children the way they deserved tessa still cared about her girls and still wanted what was best for them and by all accounts what tessa saw on facebook was true jennifer was put together in high school she was a part of the georgia national guard and then was accepted into clayton state university for undergrad

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after that she attended emory university school of law where she was known as a hard worker and took on a no-nonsense attitude like i said at the time she was a third year law student she had aspirations in politics actually announcing herself as a candidate for henry county's district one commission seat in the upcoming election she had big aspirations for herself she

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Meanwhile, Jennifer's husband, Joseph, who worked as a corrections officer, was born with a severe and fatal genetic disease called cystic fibrosis. This is a condition that is caused by a genetic defect that causes the mucus in the respiratory system to become thick and sticky. This causes incredible difficulty to breathe and requires lifelong treatments to manage.

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Because of this, even though Joseph and Jennifer had always wanted to raise a family, they didn't want children of their own. They didn't necessarily want to pass on this disease to a child. Not that they would definitely get it, but obviously there was a pretty big chance that the child would get cystic fibrosis. But again, they wanted children and throughout Joseph's time battling this disease,

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We may have some of those answers as we progress throughout this case, but no matter how you spin this story, you will be left with even more questions than answers. It's heartbreaking, it's tragic, and simply unbelievable. But before we get into the case, just a quick note. I know I sound stuffy and congested. I've been fighting a cold the past week. I feel fine. Honestly, I felt fine.

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Jennifer was always right by his side, always taking care of him, doing everything she needed to be a supportive, loving partner. She was mother material. By all accounts, it seemed like Layla and Millie would be lucky to be in the care of the Rosenbaums.

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So, Layla and Millie's case managers, Samantha White and Tamara Warner, started the process of getting the girls into the care of the Rosenbaums. First, they ran background checks, which came back giving positive reviews of both Jennifer and Joseph. No red flags. So, they were approved for having Layla and Millie going into their home for a trial.

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Now, I want to note that Jennifer and Joseph were not applying to be foster parents for Layla and Millie. They were approved by the system as being fictive kin. In Georgia, fictive kin means someone who is not related to the child by marriage or blood, but has a substantial positive relationship with the child and is willing to take care of them.

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So maybe like your best friend who you've known for years and has been a big part of the child's life for years and is willing to take your child if, you know, something were to happen and you died or, you know, you also couldn't take care of your children like in Tessa's situation and

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you know that the care they're going to get under that friend is going to have a positive impact on their lives because they had already started growing up around this person and knows and loves them. Being a fictive kin home also has a lot less requirements than being a foster home. it's much easier to get approved because the background checks are not as intensive.

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But given the definition, it's not actually really known why the Rosenbaums were being considered for fictive kin. Because again, Tessa didn't really know Jennifer. She had just briefly interacted with her as a child and the girls had never met her. She was a stranger to those girls. So we don't really know why they were considered for that.

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I think maybe Tessa put the okay on it and was like, I guess I knew her well enough as a child that I trust her. That could have been why. But otherwise, the Rosenbaums weren't really a part of the children's lives before taking them in. So again, we don't really know exactly why they were approved for this.

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But despite this, the girls' case workers still thought that the Rosenbaums were a good fit for them. They were the ideal situation. So they went ahead with the process of transferring care over to them. This started by doing overnight stays with the Rosenbaums while still under the care of the Lamberts.

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So they lived with the Lamberts, but would just spend the night with the Rosenbaums like every other day or for a couple days in a row, and then would go back to the Lamberts. During these overnight stays, though, Patricia Lambert expressed to DCFS that they were concerned that the Rosenbaums were not watching the girls closely enough.

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Patricia told DCFS about a bruise she found on Layla's leg, but Jennifer explained how she got the bruise, saying that it was from when Layla got into a fight with another little girl at daycare.

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Jennifer was informed of the complaint against her and Jennifer promised that she would take their advice and would be sure to watch the girls more closely while in their care again Jennifer she did not have a child of her own she had never had a child so this was something that was new to her so this wasn't a huge red flag it was more of just like hey she tripped and fell or

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Something happened, you need to keep a closer eye on her, but that was really it. There was no other, like, major red flags. The process continued, and although Leila would sometimes show up with minor bruises, none of them were reported in incident reports because they didn't seem very serious.

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I thought it was allergies, but because of how long it's lasted, I'm pretty sure it's a cold. But I just have a lot of congestion up in my nose. Makes me sound a little bit different, but otherwise I feel fine. So I do apologize in advance for how my voice sounds, but there's really nothing I can do about it. But without any further delay, let's get into the case.

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They were usually caused by fights between Leila and other children at daycare, which honestly made sense. Leila would sometimes act out because of how unstable her life was. She had thrown tantrums and pulled her sister's hair in front of caseworkers, so they knew that she was prone to behavioral issues.

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Samantha and Tamara even contacted the school to confirm the stories, and they confirmed that Layla sometimes got into altercations. So, despite the minor worry from the Lamberts, everything seemed to be going relatively smooth with the Rosenbaums. So, by late July of 2015, Jennifer and Joseph Rosenbaum were officially approved to take the girls in as fictive kin.

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For the months that followed, as Layla and Millie's caseworkers continued to follow up in monthly visits, they found no issues. They wrote in their reports that Layla and Millie seemed happy. Jennifer and Joseph are reliable and stable and greatly love the children. The two girls shared a bunk bed in the home where they lived in a nice, quiet neighborhood.

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They were even helping the girls with their school and learning. Reports from the caseworkers say that Layla has already come a long way even after only a few months. She can count better thanks to help from Jennifer. She appeared happy and comfortable. She felt safe in her new environment.

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Once again, Layla was continuing to act out at school, so she would have some bruises here and there, but kids get bruises sometimes. It happens. As a mandated reporter myself, there are specific places that we're supposed to be looking out for to see if there's bruises. And having a leg bruise isn't all that big of a deal, especially when the child is known to have behavioral problems.

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Some of my kids are super clumsy and they're not really coordinated and they have issues with motor planning. So the occasional bruise or, you know, little cut on their hand or foot isn't going to raise a red flag for me. But then by October 19th, 2015, Layla broke her leg. She suffered from a fracture close to her knee at her tibia.

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Jennifer took her to an urgent care facility where she told staff that Layla had fallen at her Nana's house as well as at her gymnastics class. While at the hospital, she texted her caseworker, Samantha, saying that Layla broke her leg at gymnastics, continuing that Layla is in good spirits.

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She had such a positive attitude, and if you saw her at the hospital, you wouldn't even know that anything was wrong. She was singing and laughing and playing, and she didn't even cry once. Samantha did briefly follow up on this, speaking with Layla's doctors, who said that Layla was going to be okay.

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He didn't mention noticing any signs of abuse and they believed the story that Layla had broken her leg at gymnastics. However, she did not follow up with the gymnastics gym to confirm the story. She also did not write an incident report for this injury.

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Today we will be discussing the horrific case of Layla Daniel. Layla Marie Daniel was born on July 18, 2013, to parents Tessa Clendending and Anthony Daniel in Hampton, Georgia, and she had an older sister named Millie. Layla was known as being the sweetest little girl with a big, loving smile. She loved everyone and would always tell people around her that she's a big girl.

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Even though they gave an explanation for the injury, if a serious injury like a broken bone happens, no matter what, a caseworker is required to write a report. But Samantha didn't. I want to note that Tamara Warner had been supervising Samantha at the beginning of this case, but by this point, only Samantha was on Layla's case. I believe she was new and inexperienced, so...

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I guess after the hard part was over, just the part of her checking up and things like that, that was handed just to Samantha. By November 2nd, Samantha paid the Rosenbaums a visit where she noticed that Millie had a bruise on her face. Some reports say that it was a black eye, while Samantha writes in her report that it was a small bruise under her eye.

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Jennifer explained that she left Millie in the bathroom by herself while she went and grabbed her phone in another room. While she was gone, Millie bumped her head against the faucet. Meanwhile, while Samantha was there, Layla was asleep. Jennifer said that Layla had been trouble sleeping because she was teething.

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Now, when completing these home visits and checking for abuse, caseworkers are supposed to undress the younger children to look for signs of abuse. Obviously, parents can put their kids in long slave shirts and long pants to easily cover up bruises so that when the caseworker looks directly at them, it doesn't look like anything happened. So, these caseworkers need to check under their clothes.

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Then, as the interview went on, he started referring to the couple as Chris and Taylor, not Tyler, so he couldn't even keep the names straight. After detectives picked up on this error, they called him out on it. It was at that time when Ryan admitted that this couple was made up and he said, you won't understand when I tell you what I did with Maddox.

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As this interview went on, he called himself a good father multiple times. He referred to Maddox multiple times as an amazing, beautiful child. Then after quite a long time, he did start opening up and being more honest. He mentioned that he had issues with facing his emotions and always felt like he needed to be in charge.

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He opened up about the death of his dog, which had a profound impact on him, though I want to warn you now what I'm about to say is upsetting, but some reports say that Ryan actually killed his dog. Apparently the dog was also sick so Ryan took him outside and strangled him to death to stop his suffering. Now this was not something that Ryan mentioned in the police interview though.

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He just said that the death really affected him and I just happened to see that other articles mentioned that he might have killed his own dog. Either way, finally after hours of talking with investigators and dancing around the subject, not wanting to fully admit to what he did, Ryan admitted that he hurt his daughter and gave police all the details of what happened to Maddox.

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It turned out that in the days before Maddox's disappearance, Ryan was busy preparing for what he was going to do. He went to the store and purchased a bat, a wig, sunglasses, and that bandana, all which he used for his disguise attempt. Then, he went to an area near Tinker Falls to dig a burn pit in preparation for what he planned to do.

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On the day of February 20th, after dropping Morgan off at work, instead of going home, Ryan drove himself and Maddox to Tinker Falls in central New York. This was known as one of Ryan's favorite places to visit. It's a very popular tourist spot in the summer, but it's pretty isolated during the winter.

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After bringing her to a spot where Ryan knew he would be alone, he grabbed the baseball bat that he brought with him. As he raised the bat to his daughter, he said to himself, God, if I'm not meant to kill her, make her stumble. Before he started beating Maddox in the head with the bat repeatedly until he killed her. Then he placed her body in that fire pit that he had previously prepared and

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In the meantime, Ryan took up work at the mall, which is where he would ultimately meet Morgan, who is originally from Liverpool, New York. Both of them worked on and off at the same tea store, while Morgan also worked at a few different clothing stores. After dating for a bit, Morgan fell pregnant with Maddox, so her and Ryan got married so they could stick together and raise their baby.

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burning her body for hours. After this, he put his daughter's charred remains in a container and brought them with him to an area near the inner harbor in Syracuse. He then threw that container into Onondaga Creek, which was near where Morgan worked. He then dropped the car off in that parking lot before walking off. After that, he walked from Syracuse to an abandoned house in Clay,

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After staying there for a night, he then walked all the way back to Baldwinsville, now wearing his disguise. He tried staying outside and out of the eyes of the public for as long as he could, but by February 22nd, as temperatures dropped and he had nowhere to go without a car, he walked into that thrifty shopper store on Downer Street in his hometown.

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He was there to buy a comforter to shield himself from the cold weather conditions, but as we know, this is where he was recognized and apprehended. However, obviously, him being caught like that wasn't part of the plan. He actually had this whole escape plan in mind. The book he was caught with is called 100 Deadly Skills and is basically a survival guide written by Navy SEALs.

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It details how to elude pursuers, evade capture, and survive any dangerous situation. He also had a handcuff key with him and a camper stove. He planned on surviving the elements as long as he could, wearing his disguise and avoiding capture for as long as possible. Maybe he could even escape the area once the heat was off and go about living his life somewhere new.

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Now, as he was telling these details to the investigators, he did get emotional when speaking about what he did to his daughter. Also, as a part of the interview, police took him in a cruiser to have Ryan retrace his steps and show them exactly where he went. After finding out where Ryan threw the remains of his daughter, police started their efforts to recover them.

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And by around noon on February 23rd, around 36 hours after the initial Amber Alert was issued, police did retrieve the container in which Ryan kept his daughter's body. And as they expected, her tiny little body had been badly beaten before her body was burnt. After the discovery of her remains, police charged Ryan with second degree murder.

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At his first court appearance, he pleaded not guilty to his charges. Then, about a month after his initial arrest, his charges were upped to first degree murder. The reason it was upped from second degree to first degree was because he clearly had planned and premeditated this. He dug that burn pit ahead of time. He purchased a bat to use to beat Maddox.

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He got that book on survival and supplies for his disguise. It was clearly a planned murder. After all of this came out, with Ryan being charged with the murder and family and friends finding out about just how brutal and violent her death was, people were shocked and devastated. Of course, Morgan was absolutely heartbroken and so were the rest of Maddox's family members.

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Even Ryan's own siblings came out to express just how disappointed and disgusted they are with Ryan, saying that no one could have ever expected this level of violence from him. At the same time, of course, those around Ryan wondered what caused this.

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What could drive a man who was once a loving, doting father genuinely caring about his child to then kill his own baby who he was supposed to love and protect? Well, as I mentioned earlier, Ryan did have a history of mental health problems. He was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and as it turns out, there were a few times in which police got involved with Ryan because of these issues.

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At the time, both Morgan and Ryan were working relatively low-paying jobs. They worked hard to make things work, but they lived a very simple life together. They lived in a small rented home in Syracuse, New York. They shared a car between them, figuring out arrangements to get both of them to and from work.

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In the years before Maddox's murder, Syracuse police had been called to deal with Ryan after different incidences involving his mental health. We don't know the exact details of these incidents. Police have not released what these were all about or if he was violent in any way.

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It seems that he might have been just because of the fact that police were involved, but he also could have been threatening to harm himself or something like that. Not necessarily something that involves hurting another person, not necessarily domestic violence, but still warrants police involvement.

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Either way, Ryan was never charged as a result of these calls, but obviously having the police called on you for mental health issues is always a concern. His family members also came out to say that they knew he had severely struggled with mental health for pretty much his entire life. But again, they really thought that Maddox was such a positive thing in his life.

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They really thought that the amount of joy she brought him and the amount of joy that Morgan brought him was enough for him to be able to cope because again, they can help him through these issues. They can be a source of light in his life even when he's in his darkest moments. They never imagined that he would ever reach this level of violence and just mental instability.

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But still, even through this confession with knowing about his mental health, no one could figure out why exactly this happened. For the months that followed, Ryan sat behind bars awaiting his trial while the prosecution and defense both built their cases. But then seven months after the murder of 21 month old Maddox, Ryan actually changed his plea.

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He was now pleading guilty to kidnapping and the first degree murder of his daughter. After his plea, it was time for sentencing. At the sentencing hearing, the prosecution brought forward their theory for why they believed Ryan murdered his child. They said that Ryan was jealous of all of the attention baby Maddox was getting after recovering from her cancer.

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She was taking all of the attention away from him and no one was acknowledging his role in the whole thing. No one showed him any appreciation for how he cared for his daughter during her treatments. No one talked about how strong he was. All of the attention went towards Maddox. Everyone was talking about how strong she was, how brave Maddox was. how much of a fighter this little baby was.

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Morgan was probably also paying much more attention to the baby than to Ryan. And according to the prosecution, that is what led to this gruesome murder. Ryan took his jealousy and pent up anger out on this little baby to get rid of her and bring the attention back on him. Meanwhile, others talked about how young Ryan and Morgan were when they had Maddox. They were in their early 20s.

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They were already struggling financially when they had their baby. But when she was diagnosed with cancer, that burden just got heavier and heavier. This took a massive toll on Ryan's already struggling mental health. So for whatever reason, he just snapped instead of allowing Maddox to make her full recovery.

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Despite their financial constraints, though, those around Ryan and Morgan said that they had the best relationship. They absolutely loved each other. They were inseparable. They loved spending time together, especially going outdoors. They loved camping and hiking and Morgan loved doing nature photography. And by all accounts, after having Maddox, their love for each other didn't change.

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Instead of getting to watch her live and thrive past this disease, he took those chances away when he murdered her. At the sentencing hearing, Morgan spoke for the first time publicly since that press conference. And let me tell you, watching that video of her speaking is heartbreaking. She's still so devastated. Again, this was just months after the murder. She can barely get the words out.

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She's violently shaking and hysterical, trying her best to compose herself. I can't even imagine being in her shoes. She called Ryan selfish and irrational for what he did. She didn't get any answers, no closure in this. She started questioning herself in this and how she could have trusted and once loved the man who would be responsible for the murder of her child.

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Other family members of Maddox also spoke at the sentencing hearing. Maddox's grandparents, aunts, uncles all spoke about how devastated they are, how disgusted they are with Ryan's actions. No one could possibly understand how Ryan could have done this. Ryan's own brother, Rich, called Ryan a stranger and a murderer.

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In fact, Maddox's arrival just filled their hearts even more. Maddox was described as having the cutest little chunky round face with the biggest round brown eyes. She had the best laugh erupting in her happiest moments, making everyone around her smile and laugh right along with her. She loved making these little monster noises and acting silly. She was healthy, full of energy, and so, so happy.

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And finally, after hearing it from all the different family members of Maddox, Ryan spoke at his own sentencing hearing. There, he apologized for what he did. He apologized for taking away Maddox's chance at life and for the pain and sorrow he caused the family. He said that he misses Maddox and talked about how she was the best thing that ever happened to him.

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He said that he isn't jealous of his daughter and that his family knows that he only ever loved and supported her. He then spoke about his mental health, saying that he dealt with negative emotions. He was constantly dealing with the uncertainty and fear of what would happen to Maddox while she was going through her cancer.

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He said that he had no reason for why he did what he did and he doesn't even understand it himself.

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When Maddox was born and for the first months of her life, both Morgan and Ryan absolutely doted over her. They were dedicated, caring, and did everything they could to raise their beautiful daughter in a warm, loving home. Their hearts were full, and they loved every moment they got to spend with her.

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At the end of the sentencing hearing, the judge also expressed his intense disgust and disbelief for what Ryan did. He said that he cannot fathom how a father can take the life of his own child, especially in the way that Ryan did.

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At the time, Ryan worked as a delivery driver, delivering pastries for all of the Freedom of Espresso stores around Syracuse in the early mornings before the sun came up. And while on the job, baby Maddox went right along with him. He would carry the box of sweets in one hand and then the baby's car seat in another.

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The judge said that he wants Ryan to spend the rest of his life in prison for what he did, but due to the fact that he made this plea deal, he was ultimately sentenced to 25 years behind bars.

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At the time, Ryan was only 24 years old, so this means he will be out in his 50s, which of course is just devastating and basically means he has a whole life to live once he's out. The rest of Maddox's family wanted to see him behind bars for life with no possibility that he could live the rest of his life when he is released. But that's not what's happening here.

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After starting his prison sentence, Ryan did an interview from the prison. In that interview, he said that he has created hell for himself in that prison, living with what he did. He also spoke about what he did and said in the moments before he beat his daughter with the baseball bat. And this time, instead of telling you exactly what he said, I will let you watch that interview for yourself.

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He never left her in the car, even if he was only running into the store for a second. After the delivery, he would put her back in the car and drive on to the next door until sunrise. In the meantime, Morgan worked as a barista for the same shop that Ryan delivered sweet treats for. For the time being, both Ryan and Morgan were dedicated to making a living to support their daughter.

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It's pretty clear that Ryan is living in a world of self-pity. He really only has ever spoken about how this whole thing has affected him and how he has to live with what he did for the rest of his life. How badly he is suffering. To me, I think it's obvious that Ryan is a very selfish person. Whether it was because he was jealous of that baby, I don't really know.

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But I do think that he blamed her for their financial troubles. I think he blamed her for all the stress he was under. I think he was overwhelmed and was tired of dealing with it all. So he decided that he was going to solve the problem by taking Maddox completely out of the picture, rid himself of the stress that she was causing him. Truly, I do think that that is why he did this.

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But at the end of the day, we will never have any clear answers for why this happened. Ryan truly is the only person who knows why he did what he did, and I don't think he will ever really admit to why he did what he did. All we know is that this precious little baby, this absolutely

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fighter and such an inspiration for so many other children is gone she was getting better from her cancer she was going to live a hopefully long healthy life but instead her father took that chance away from her he took her life and caused so much immeasurable pain and suffering to so many people and that is unforgivable but that is all i have for today's case i know this was an absolutely

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heartbreaking tragic case I know this was such a horrifying case to sit through but as soon as I saw Maddox's story I knew I needed to talk about her share her story and hopefully give her a voice since her own voice was taken from her far far too soon

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They made their schedules for work so that someone was always with Maddox. They made just enough to make ends meet and they couldn't afford a babysitter, so that is how they made things work. However, just before Maddox's first birthday, Ryan and Morgan noticed a brown spot in one of Maddox's big brown eyes.

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Today's case is one that literally happened out of nowhere and no one, even those closest to the perpetrator, saw it coming. It was literally so unexpected and shocking and to this day, we still don't have any clear answers for why this even happened. This case serves as a reminder that you never truly know what's going on in someone's mind.

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There were these dark patches forming around the iris of her eye, growing bigger and bigger, covering the whites of her eyes. Obviously, they knew that this was abnormal, so they took Maddox to the doctor, who delivered some devastating news. Baby Maddox had a rare form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma, which is cancer in her retina.

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After this diagnosis, of course, baby Maddox immediately started intensive treatment to get rid of the tumor. Every week, Maddox had to travel the four hours down to New York City to receive treatments. There, she sat for hours on end, undergoing intensive chemotherapy treatments that targeted the tumor in her eye, as well as the blood vessels that were feeding the tumor.

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Some of these treatments were as long as six hours. And of course, with these intensive treatments came medical bills. After family and friends found out about baby Maddox's diagnosis and the course of the treatment she needed, they wanted to help out in any way they could. Maddox's aunt and Ryan's sister, Shaylin, set up a fundraiser to help the family pay for the expenses.

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She reached out to various extended family members, all asking for help with paying the medical bills. In the fundraiser, she wrote, And it seemed that the family had a pretty decent support system. Friends of the family, Maddox's grandparents, aunts, uncles, all came together to offer their love and support.

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They all loved taking Maddox to the park whenever they could, watching her play in the fall leaves. Family members would watch Maddox for periods of time while the couple worked, always enjoying every second they got to spend with her. They also helped the best they could financially, raising around $9,000 total to help towards her medical expenses.

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With that, Maddox continued her treatments and things were looking up. Almost a year after the diagnosis, Maddox was starting to recover. Treatments were helping and Maddox was on the tail end of her recovery. She was going to beat her cancer. But still, after receiving this diagnosis, having to drive so far to these appointments and having to pay for it all...

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really put a strain on the family before the cancer diagnosis morgan and ryan were already struggling to make ends meet but now things were 10 times harder the family were struggling because not only was there this financial burden of the medical bills and then the gas to get to and from the appointments and i'm sure there were times where they had to stay overnight in a hotel because you know these treatments were really long and it was a four hour drive both ways

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but obviously the stress of just not knowing if their daughter is going to make it, seeing her struggle, seeing her suffer from these treatments, all of that was putting such a huge strain on the family. As Morgan worked as a barista at the coffee shop, regular customers and coworkers all heard her talk about Maddox's problems and how she was dealing with them.

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She was doing everything humanly possible to save her daughter while also working hard to make her bills. One of the customers actually got Morgan a gig taking photos at their local salt city horror festival, which gave her a chance to make some extra money. But after that, it seems like Morgan suddenly lost interest in doing photography. And after that, she quit her job at the coffee shop.

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Everyone is fighting their own internal battles and some are better at fighting than others. But when someone suddenly acts so out of character in such an extreme way that we see here, it makes you question if you truly know anyone as well as you think you do. This is the tragic, devastating story of Maddox Lawrence.

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This seemed like such a sudden change for Morgan. No one knew what caused that, but it was clear that Morgan was struggling not just financially, but mentally. By around 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday, February 20th, 2016, Ryan dropped Morgan off for her shift at Francesca's Boutique. Baby Maddox was riding in the car along with them.

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After being dropped off, Morgan watched as her husband drove off with the baby in the car. Morgan's shift was until around 10 p.m. that night, so she was expecting Ryan to come get her then. But instead of Ryan returning to pick her up, he sent her a text saying that the car was in the parking lot of her work.

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This confused her at first, but she went out and found her car in the lot with the keys in it, so she drove home. But When she got home, she was horrified to see that the house was empty. Neither Ryan nor baby Maddox were home like they were supposed to be. She searched around the house for any signs of where they could have possibly gone.

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And that is when Morgan found a terrifying video message that Ryan left for Morgan. In the video, he told Morgan that he wanted her to live a better life without him. He said that he took Maddox with him, but he didn't say where or what he was going to do with her. Immediately, a panicked and hysterical Morgan dialed 911 to report her daughter as missing.

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In the report, she said that Ryan had a history of mental health problems. He had a history of depression and anxiety, and he was dealing a lot of personal issues beyond his daughter's cancer.

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I'll get more into his mental health later in the video, but obviously knowing this history, knowing that he was struggling with their current situation, Morgan felt that Ryan was very unstable and unpredictable, having no idea what he was capable of at that time. By 11 30 p.m. that same night, officers arrived to Morgan's home to speak with her and start their investigation.

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Morgan told them that Ryan was most likely last known to be in that parking lot of her work since they didn't have another car. He had to have dropped the car off and walked away from it with Maddox. She described that Maddox was around two feet tall with blonde hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a white t-shirt with brown puppies and a pink collar on it.

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She was wearing pink pants and a blue coat with pink on the inside. She had on these little brown suede shoes and a gray knit hat with pom-poms on it. Knowing this, and knowing that Ryan was most likely the person who took her, authorities issued a statewide Amber Alert so that the public could keep on the lookout for this adorable, sweet baby girl. From there, police started their searches.

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They searched the immediate areas via helicopter. They also brought searches to all the nearby lakes and creeks. They checked the abandoned homes in the area, the airport, train, and bus stations. They found that no one with Ryan's name purchased any sort of train ticket, no plane tickets. They looked at different surveillance videos from those bus and train stations and found nothing.

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At this point, police and the family were absolutely baffled by this bizarre disappearance. Morgan told officers that yes, they were struggling financially, they were coping with the cancer diagnosis. But through that, she felt that they were strong. They stuck together through it all. He wasn't known to use drugs or alcohol.

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Maddox Mary Lawrence was born on April 24th, 2014 to parents Morgan and Ryan Lawrence. Ryan Lawrence is from Baldwinsville, New York. He graduated from C.W. Baker High School in 2009, but just before he graduated, his mother, Mary Lawrence, unfortunately passed away from kidney cancer in 2008. This obviously devastated Ryan.

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There was nothing that could give them any direction or reason for why this was happening. However... They did say that based on that video Ryan left and the sudden nature of this situation, it was clear that Ryan was emotionally unstable and was not thinking clearly.

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By February 21st, by the second day of searching for Ryan and Maddox, Morgan went in front of the cameras at a press conference to beg Ryan to bring their daughter home. She said that she loves Maddox and just wants to know that they're both safe. It's clear that Morgan is emotionally drained and exhausted from all of this. Her voice is shaking, hoarse, and full of panic.

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For two days, there were massive search efforts done to find this baby girl and Ryan. However, there was no way they could have known that all this time, their efforts were not going to lead to Morgan reuniting with her baby. Because her baby had been dead this entire time. And the truth of what happened to 21-month-old Maddox is so much more tragic and horrifying than anybody could have imagined.

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As I stated, after the search efforts for Maddox began, the police and media were pushing Maddox's story and face everywhere they could. The public were all to be on the lookout for this little baby as well as for Ryan, who they knew took her. Well, by February 22nd, there was a former employee of a thrifty shopper store on Downer Street in Baldwinsville who believed that they spotted Ryan.

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As I stated earlier, Ryan is from the town of Baldwinsville, so this was a store that he frequented growing up. So this witness who used to work there and just so happened to be shopping there at that time recognized Ryan in that store despite the fact that he was wearing a disguise. At the time, he was wearing a wig, hat, bandana, and sunglasses.

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This witness was also suspicious when he saw Ryan because at that time, Ryan smelled strongly of smoke. It seemed that this worker must have seen him enough times in that store to see beyond his disguise. Of course, this former employee had seen Ryan's face all over the news and knew he was connected to his daughter's disappearance. So they called 911 to report the sighting.

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After that, she followed him out of the store to make sure she knew where he was by the time police arrived. When police pulled up, they spoke with Ryan, who initially tried giving them a false name of Rilo Rivers or Rio Rivers. I'm not exactly sure which one he gave, but based on how it was spelled, it could have been either one.

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But turns out he hadn't really prepared the name he gave to officers because he couldn't spell the name correctly. He also told police that he was 21 years old and gave his birthday as August 22nd, 1989. but officers told him that this age and the year he was born did not match up, so they knew this was obviously a lie.

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Losing your mother at such a young age is so incredibly difficult and this was his first ever loss from the devastating disease that is cancer. After graduating high school, Ryan enrolled in Monroe Community College but dropped out after taking two semesters. By 2011, he took a few more classes at Onondaga Community College, but once again, he dropped out.

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Finally, after being caught in all of his really terrible attempts at lying, he finally gave officers his real birthday, removed his wig, and said, you got me. After this, they put him in the police car and brought him to the station for questioning. When they picked him up, they looked in his backpack, which contained camping gear as well as a book on how to avoid capture.

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And police noticed immediately that he did smell of campfire smoke. In that interview with police, which ended up lasting a total of 15 hours, Ryan started off by saying he didn't do anything to harm Maddox. She was safe. He assured police that he actually gave his baby to another couple, Chris and Tyler, who are now caring for Maddox.

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He stuck with this story for hours in that interview, but he couldn't keep any of the details straight. He said that the couple took her to another country, but at one point he said that they took her to Mexico, and at another point he said she was in Bolivia.

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I felt physically and psychologically shattered. At some point during this dark stretch, I thought back to how I had loved hiking as a kid. I hadn't been out in years, so I bought some boots and a backpack and started exploring. I went to the mountains or the desert, often alone. Soon, I learned a wild river and the song of a canyon wren helped calm the chaos in my head.

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I've hiked in some amazing places over the years, and by the time I went to New Zealand to follow Eric's footsteps, I wasn't intimidated at the idea of going alone. But it turns out the southern Alps of New Zealand are quite different from my home turf in the Rocky Mountains of North America. The seasons are backward, the night sky doesn't look right, and the climate's all wrong.

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At the top of the Rees Valley, Eric ascended a pass and crossed into the neighboring valley of the Dart River, home to a cheeky, kleptomaniac breed of parrot called Kia. It's a beautiful, exotic, wild place. Eric stayed a night in a hut along the Dart River, kind of like a hostel for hikers.

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So is the wildlife.

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You might be able to hear some squawking. I'm pretty sure that's kia, birds notorious for their inquisitiveness and also willingness to destroy tents, steal gear, and generally harass hikers.

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The way to Cascade Saddle is well marked, but I did lose the trail a time or two and had to rely on my skills and experience to get back on track.

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Man, that's like vertical.

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Well, I found it in any case.

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Problem solving is part of what I enjoy about hiking. Some problems, though, are worse than others. A couple hours into my hike, I looked down at my phone and saw a notification.

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The phone had dialed emergency services using satellite because I had supposedly pressed and held the power and side buttons together for like five seconds, whatever that setting is.

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It seemed I'd made a butt dial to space calling for a rescue I didn't need. I couldn't see any way to cancel it. So that's frustrating. And hopefully there's no big search and rescue happening because again, I am fine. It was the middle of the night back home in the US. I wondered if my emergency contacts were waking to pings on their phones, telling them I was in trouble.

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I don't like this feeling of anxiety over whether or not somebody at home is worried about my welfare.

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Worse yet, I realized Marilyn might be receiving a phone call, telling her I needed rescue from the same place as Eric. I felt terrible at the thought of putting her through that. When I first sat down to interview Marilyn for this story, she held her hand out to show me it was trembling. Look, see?

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Yeah, yeah, so deep breaths.

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I understood why she felt nervous. We were about to relive the worst moments of her life. But you might have noticed by now, Marilyn has an almost British stoicism about her.

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Right. She keeps her emotions in check. I needed to pierce that shell. We recorded hours of interviews and have spent many more hours in unrecorded conversation about some very personal stuff.

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The story of Eric's disappearance is Marilyn's story too. To tell it right, I need to share a bit of what she said when the tape wasn't rolling. Marilyn grew up with an authoritarian father in a family where young ladies were expected to follow the rules, no questions asked. She didn't get her first taste of independence until she reached college.

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She joined a hiking club and started taking trips with the other members to destinations outside of Melbourne.

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Don't worry if you're not familiar with this geography or any of the other places we will visit throughout the story. What matters is how it made Marilyn feel. She loved visiting new places, but those opportunities dwindled when she married a man who had no interest in hiking. They soon had a couple kids, a son, Marty, and a daughter, Rachel.

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The following morning, he struck out for the Cascade Saddle, a steep, exposed stretch between the head of the Dart and Matuketuki River valleys. This section becomes dangerous when it rains because the slopes on the Matukituki side are covered with grasses that become slick when wet. Multiple people have died while attempting to cross Cascade Saddle. Eric didn't mind a little bad weather.

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The demands of motherhood and the disapproval of her husband stifled the sprouting seeds of Marilyn's independence. Her only real outlet during this period was her job. She worked as a primary school teacher, specializing in literacy. But even that career was derailed after only a few years. Marilyn lost a pregnancy at full term. That loss devastated her. She was consumed by grief, unable to work.

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As a result, she became entirely dependent on her husband. They had two more kids in the years that followed, Jonathan and David, making a total of four. Marilyn believed she had done everything she was supposed to, but fractures were forming in her marriage. Her husband started drinking more and staying out late. She told me one time he came home drunk after the children's bedtime.

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He wanted to wake them. She tried to stop him. The next day, a purple bruise showed around one of her eyes. Marilyn's husband soon told her he was leaving for another woman. They separated in 1990. After two decades with a patriarchal spouse, Marilyn suddenly had her independence restored. It was a struggle.

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She went back to work, resuming her teaching career. The kids pitched in too, taking turns preparing meals.

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Eric was also going through a difficult period at this same time, following the death of his first wife.

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By the time Marilyn met Eric, she had resolved to never become so dependent on another man. Eric saw that as a virtue.

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Eric and Marilyn were opposites in many ways, but they complemented each other where it mattered most.

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But she didn't yet comprehend just how deep Eric's passion for hiking went. So let's talk about how that passion came to be and those three wounds that shaped it. Eric's roots trace back to the UK. His father, Victor, was English and served as a private in the Royal Army during the Second World War.

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Here is something of the gigantic naval armada assembled to transport the Allied armies across the English Channel.

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Eric's mother Margaret was the daughter of a Scottish coal miner. She had taken a job serving coffee to soldiers and sailors. That's how she met Victor. Their romance played out during a pivotal moment in history.

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Another of the great decisive battles of world history has been joined. This is the day for which free people long have waited. This is D-Day.

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He had a saying.

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Victor and Margaret married just weeks after D-Day. Following the war, they moved to a small village in England, and on March 19, 1947, they welcomed their first and only child, Eric Joseph Robinson. But Victor died unexpectedly a year and a half later. Little Eric was too young to have any memory of it. He only knew his mom, Margaret, swept him away to Scotland.

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She cut Eric off from his father's side of the family, never telling him why. So although Eric was born English, he grew up a Scotsman in a little village called Glen Craig.

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That's the voice of Eric's wife, Marilyn Kulstra. Eric and Marilyn lived in Australia, in the suburbs of Melbourne. Eric was a few weeks shy of his 61st birthday, and he had just retired.

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Margaret remarried after a few years to a man named William Copeland.

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Eric's stepfather worked in the nearby coal mines until that industry collapsed in the late 50s. But opportunity was calling from the far side of the world. Australia's government was begging British citizens to resettle there, to build up the Australian workforce. So in February of 1963, William, Margaret, and 15-year-old Eric boarded a plane bound for Melbourne.

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British émigrés were promised work and affordable housing in Australia. All they had to pay was a £10 processing fee.

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POM is Australian slang for a British person.

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Soon after arriving, William signed Eric up for an internship with a manufacturing company. Then William walked out on Margaret, leaving her destitute. Eric hated him for it.

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The apprenticeship taught Eric valuable skills. He trained to be a fitter and turner. That's a technical trade skill, a kind of mechanical engineering. Eric wasn't content to just work and survive, though. He was a young man eager to explore the world around him and inspired by cultural influences like the songs of the Beach Boys.

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Eric and his mates went to rock and roll dances on the weekends. At one, he met a pretty young woman named Helen. She, too, had immigrated to Australia as a child, but her parents were refugees, survivors of Nazi oppression in Poland. Eric and Helen shared strong anti-war convictions. The Vietnam War was raging, and many young men in Australia were being drafted.

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Eric's number was never called, but he helped at least one friend evade the draft.

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Eric and Helen dated for three years, then married in August of 1969. The wedding had an unintended consequence. It isolated Eric's mom, Margaret. She lived alone, with no other family in Australia, and soon decided to move back to Scotland. Eric escorted her to the dock on the day she left, waving as she boarded an ocean liner. not realizing it would be the last time he ever saw his mom.

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Eric applied for a job with a company called Dynavac at the start of 1970. He showed up for the interview in surfer attire, shorts, and a blue tank top. The guy who interviewed him, a young man named Russ Inkle, looked past the casual outfit.

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With his newfound free time, Eric pursued his one aspiration, to walk the world's greatest trails.

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Eric felt drawn to this company because it prioritized the rights of its workers. Russ hired Eric, and they became fast friends.

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Eric pinned a note to a corkboard in the Dynavac break room one day, inviting his coworkers to come along on a camping trip over an upcoming holiday weekend.

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Eric wasn't interested in the Melbourne Cup. Instead, he, Russ, and several others drove out into the bush. They spent time around a campfire, talking, relaxing, and enjoying nature. And Cup weekend camps became an annual tradition for Eric and his friends.

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Another of Eric's work friends was a guy named John Sidwell. John and his wife Jeanette joined Eric on several of these off-roading adventures.

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These camping trips left a deep impression on Eric. They were the foundation for a growing sense of environmentalism.

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The intensity of his budding passion sometimes surprised his friends.

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Eric became an Australian citizen at the end of 1973. He and his wife, Helen, planned to fly to Scotland a few months later to visit Eric's mom. But Margaret died unexpectedly from stomach cancer. She was just 51 years old. Instead of visiting his mom, Eric flew to Scotland to bury her. He couldn't afford a headstone, so Margaret was interred in an unmarked grave.

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Growing up, Eric had never pressed his mom for the story of what happened to his father. Now that he was an adult, eager to understand, her death deprived him of an opportunity to ask. By age 26, Eric had lost his father, stepfather, and mother. His wife, Helen, was all he had left. But even that relationship started to fray.

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They didn't expect to have kids. Helen was diabetic, and doctors told her the odds of her getting pregnant were one in a million.

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It was a complicated pregnancy. Helen delivered at 26 weeks, giving premature birth to a boy they named Glenn.

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The pregnancy worsened Helen's diabetes. Her kidneys were compromised. She went on dialysis. Still, all through the 1980s, she joined Eric and their little boy Glenn on camping trips. Russ Inkle told me Eric was an enthusiastic but impatient dad.

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Yeah, Eric wasn't going to win Father of the Year. Losing his own dad so young had deprived him of a strong example.

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Helen went to the hospital in May of 1990 for treatment of peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdominal wall. She had an infection. It turned septic and killed her in a matter of hours. She was only 44 years old. Helen's death came just weeks before her son Glenn's 12th birthday. And Eric was reeling.

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Eric didn't intend to die anytime soon. He and Marilyn were in the prime of their lives. Both figured death lay far, far in their future.

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Russ and his wife Marg were planning a long road trip through the Simpson Desert up to Kakadu National Park at the far northern end of Australia. These were familiar and favorite places for Eric. Russ invited Eric and Glenn to come along, hoping to take their minds off Helen's death.

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Eric spent those evenings peering into the campfire.

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I don't know what went through Eric's mind, but I imagine the beauty of the desert drew his thoughts away from his grief. Eric's friends John and Jeanette Sidwell also invited him on a trip in the wake of Helen's death. He joined them on a trek in Tasmania.

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The overland track crosses through scenic wilderness, and it's usually done over several days. Eric hadn't done many long multi-day hikes like this before, carrying all his food and gear on his back. But he loved it.

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Look, I don't want to oversimplify by suggesting a couple campfires and one long hike completely closed the wound of Helen's death. They didn't. But these experiences taught Eric nature wasn't just a place to play. It held a healing power, an ability to soothe his sorrow.

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This helps explain why, soon after Helen's death, Eric sold the house they had shared and bought that small plot of land a bit farther out in the suburb of Heathmont, where he built his new house on a secluded dead-end street next to a nature preserve.

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Marilyn, at age 55, wasn't yet ready to retire. She had a job she loved. It made it difficult for her to get away with Eric for the long walks he wanted to take. So Eric often went out alone.

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I mentioned this garden once already. It became Eric's hideout, a haven where he went to heal when he couldn't escape to the wilderness. Marilyn quickly learned her new boyfriend, Eric, took every opportunity to get outside. And he brought her along as often as her work schedule allowed.

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They traveled all over eastern Australia, road tripping in Eric's 4x4.

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He took Marilyn up past Brisbane one time to a place called Kigari, also known as Fraser Island. To get there, they had to ferry the 4x4 across the water on a barge. Eric was out of the car when the barge landed on the sandy beach. Marilyn was at the wheel. He had taught her to keep momentum when driving on sand, so she floored it. I drove off and left him there.

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Marilyn knew how to take Eric's sarcasm and dish it right back.

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They were well matched in this way.

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Eric and Marilyn hiked all over New Zealand together.

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Eric even took Marilyn and a couple of her kids to Tasmania, one of the places he had confronted his grief after his first wife Helen's death. He led Marilyn up a ridge.

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The pet name was a sure indication Eric was in love.

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Eric gave her a different nickname in private. Hen, a Scottish term of endearment. He used it whenever he most wanted to show his affection. Good morning, hen. You can do it, hen.

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Marilyn remained at home in Australia while Eric went out adventuring in Aotearoa in early 2008. No sooner had he left for New Zealand than she received a delivery.

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They daydreamed of the future they might share, growing old together, traveling the world, hiking side by side.

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Eric introduced Marilyn to his friends, who went months thinking her name was Marlin, like the fish, because of how Eric's Scottish accent squashed the middle syllable in Marilyn. His best friend, Russ Inkle, told me Marilyn changed Eric for the better. He seemed happier with her than he'd ever been. Eric's closest friendships were all born at work, at that company Dynavac I mentioned earlier.

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So it hurt Eric when he lost that job in the late 90s.

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Eric bounced around for a bit, eventually landing at a factory that packaged toilet paper for the Aussie brand Sorbent. Not the most glamorous gig, but an important one, because it's where Eric made a critical new connection.

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And Eric's new co-worker Alan loved climbing mountains.

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They began going on hikes together and bonded over their love of the outdoors. Over the next decade, that friendship would take the two men around the world and lead to a tragedy neither of them saw coming. because this is the same Alan who would eventually call Marilyn with the news Eric was overdue.

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The Historical Society in Heathmont, where Eric Robinson lived, profiled 200 of the suburb's residents in the year 2000. Eric contributed a brief autobiography. He introduced himself and his son, Glenn. One of the reasons we chose to live here is the diversity of flora and fauna in the area, Eric wrote. Our garden is planted out with Australian natives.

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You've already heard him showing off the garden in this home video recorded by Marilyn.

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The strategy is to have shrubs and trees flowering, as well as seeding all through the year to encourage birds, Eric wrote.

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Marilyn had bought her own house in East Bentley, about 40 minutes away from where Eric lived in Heathmont, a year into their relationship.

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So they lived separate lives during the work week.

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Life had taught Marilyn not to surrender her hard-fought independence.

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Eric's reluctance had a lot to do with the problem of integrating his and Marilyn's families. Marilyn had introduced Eric to her kids early in their relationship.

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Eric had built bonds with each of them. Marilyn had likewise tried to connect with Eric's son, Glenn, but with very little success. I have one of Eric's home videos from 2002, eight years into his relationship with Marilyn. It shows them at Eric's house, celebrating Glenn's 24th birthday.

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Marilyn placed the blooms in the same spot she always did.

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Glenn still lived at home with Eric, and the two of them didn't always get along. Eric disliked his son's friends and suspected Glenn was using drugs. Marilyn wasn't willing to move in with Eric so long as Glenn lived there. And Eric wasn't going to move in with Marilyn because that would require kicking his son to the street. They were at an impasse.

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This same home movie includes another bit, where Eric and Marilyn travel to Yarra Ranges National Park with some friends.

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Janie was Eric's aunt, his mom's sister-in-law. Janie lived in England and was about to turn 70. Eric devised a plan to surprise her. He told Janie he was going to visit Scotland to go trekking in the Cairngorms, the highest mountains in the Scottish Highlands.

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In reality, he was going to drop in on Janie unannounced to wish her happy birthday and give her a copy of this video.

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A symbol of Eric's love, respect, and devotion. The flowers were still there in that crystal vase when Marilyn arrived home from work a few nights later. She was in her evening routine, making dinner, maybe decompressing with a little TV, when her phone rang. She answered, and on the other end came the voice of Alan Beck, a friend and former co-worker of her husband's.

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Australia's mountains just don't rise that high. Donabewang tops out at 1,245 meters above sea level, or 4,100 feet. Marilyn noted that's just as high as Cairngorm in Scotland, where Eric did plan to hike after dropping off the surprise birthday video to his aunt Janie.

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Eric had spent his whole life wondering why his mom cut him off from his father's side of the family. Since he was already going to the UK to deliver this birthday video to his Aunt Janie, he decided to also go in search of his lost Robinson relatives. And he was able to find them.

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Eric's birth certificate listed his father's occupation as painter, and it had the address where Eric was born, in the town of Ross-on-Wye. So Eric went to that town while in England and stopped at the local library to get directions to the house. While there, he saw an ad for a business called Robinson Painters. It couldn't be a coincidence. Eric went to that business and knocked on the door.

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A young boy answered, took one look at him, and shouted over his shoulder, It's Cousin Eric! Eric had found his long-lost family. In the conversations that followed, he learned the heartbreaking story his mother had never told him, the story of his father's death. On an August evening in 1948, Victor Robinson walked home from a movie with his dad and brother.

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The three men could hear a motorcycle in the distance, wending its way down some distant path. The rumbling seemed to come and go due to tall hedges along both sides of the laneway that sometimes blocked the sound. The Robinson men were nearing home when all at once the motorcycle sound roared into their ears from directly behind.

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The bike whipped around a bend and plowed into Victor, hitting him square in the back. He never regained consciousness and died at a hospital two days later. An inquest placed blame for the accident on Victor and his father. They had been walking on the wrong side of the road.

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And that might explain why Eric's mom Margaret rushed back to Scotland so soon after her husband's death, cutting young Eric off from his Robinson relatives. I suspect she blamed her father-in-law for what happened. Eric returned to Australia with a newfound respect for the transience of life. It could end at any moment, so don't waste a single day.

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Going forward, he intended to seize every opportunity to venture into the wild. Eric yearned to travel the world with Marilyn, taking on longer and more challenging treks in exotic locales. But Marilyn had received a promotion at work, becoming principal of Volkstone Primary School.

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So instead, Eric turned to his work friend, Alan Beck.

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Alan was even more experienced than Eric when it came to mountains. He was a rock climber and mountaineer, comfortable in more extreme terrain than Eric was used to traveling. But they'd already done some hikes together.

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Both men wanted to take their adventuring to the next level. One of them proposed, what about Patagonia?

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They flew to Punta Arenas in Chile in February of 2003, then traveled north along the Argentinian border to Puerto Natales.

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Eric and Alan spent a week trekking around a mountain group called the Cordillera del Paine, walking a path called the O Circuit. It's a trek of about 120 kilometers, or 75 miles. Eric carried a film camera, and I viewed the pictures he took. They show gorgeous scenery. Granite towers slicing into puffy clouds. A rainbow breaking across the expansive ice of the Great Glacier.

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There are frames that show Eric and Alan posing on piles of shattered rock, and others where they're huddled in tents, sheltering from wet weather. They appeared to get along well.

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Alan was in Wanaka, a resort town on the South Island of New Zealand. Wanaka was also where Eric planned to stay after his Cascade Saddle hike. He'd made plans to meet Alan there, but Eric hadn't arrived. Alan told Marilyn torrential rains were at that moment pounding the Southern Alps, the mountains that run the length of the South Island.

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Alan pushed Eric a bit beyond his comfort zone during the trip. He scrambled up a steep, rocky slope to the foot of a high-angle snowfield in an area called the French Valley. Eric hated snow.

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But Alan prodded, so Eric braved it.

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Patagonia impressed Eric beyond anything he had ever seen.

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There was just one problem. Eric and Marilyn weren't married. If Eric were to die, Marilyn wouldn't have any authority to carry out this final wish. Eric and Marilyn marked the 10-year anniversary of their first date in May of 2004. They'd both matured during that decade together, but Eric remained reluctant to take the next step.

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Eric had by this point sent his son Glenn off to live more than 20 hours away by car, hoping to break Glenn away from bad influences.

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Marilyn's kids were all grown and out of the house as well. So Eric and Marilyn owned two empty nests.

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A prelude to a long overdue proposal.

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Marilyn said yes. They kept their engagement quiet. Then in March of 2005, they invited friends and family to a garden party at Marilyn's place in East Bentley. Midway through the evening, Eric and Marilyn surprised their guests by standing before a minister and exchanging rings. Their friends, John and Jeanette Sidwell, were among the guests.

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That's how you know something is up.

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They exchanged vows and rings. Then... Marilyn announced she was moving to Heathmont. No more would she and Eric live apart.

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They integrated their lives at long last.

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They traveled to the UK together later that year and visited the cemetery where Eric's mother Margaret was buried in Scotland. Her grave had sat unmarked for more than 30 years. Eric purchased a headstone and had the words, in loving memory of my dear mother Margaret, inscribed in gold lettering.

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Eric had lost nearly everyone he had ever loved, but he finally found peace in two places, in nature and with Marilyn. We started our story with Marilyn, learning Eric was overdue on the Cascade saddle. That happened in 2008, three years after their wedding. I'm going to take you back now to my walk on that same track, after I accidentally triggered an emergency alert on my iPhone.

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Alan knew the risks of mountain weather as well as anyone. He also knew Eric was a competent backcountry traveler. Still, Marilyn heard concern creeping around the corners of his words.

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I kept hearing helicopters in the hours that followed.

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Hopefully they're just going on a sightseeing tour and not looking for me.

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They didn't swoop low like they were searching, so I figured the satellite call must not have gone through. The false alarm meant I was free to continue on without worry. I originally planned this walk to be four nights, five days. I came prepared to spend all of that time alone, but hiking's a popular pastime in New Zealand, so I did run into people along the way.

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Hello.

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How you doing?

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Good, how are you?

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Great. Here I had paused to take a picture of a sign that read, danger, multiple fatalities have occurred on this route.

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Oh, thank you.

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Just a sign.

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Oh, get out of your way, yeah.

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We chatted a bit. I said I was going to stay in a tent atop Cascade Saddle. Most trampers don't do that, opting to instead stay in a warm, dry hut.

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Yeah, as long as the weather's good.

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Yeah, yeah.

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You too, thanks.

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There are plenty of ways to die out here, aside from falling. Drowning is a risk too. When heavy rain hits glacier ice, it can cause flash flooding. The track to Cascade Saddle crosses several streams that flash regularly. I saw a weather report scrawled on a whiteboard at one of the huts I passed. It said heavy rain was on the way.

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At some point, you have to ask yourself, is it worth the risk?

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I pressed on, marching up the Dart River under ominous skies. At the head of the Dart, I started up a steep slope toward the saddle, weaving through tussocks, gaining elevation with every step. Glimpses of blue sky through the clouds goaded me on, but I could see the storm on the horizon blowing my direction.

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And there's the wind. Okay.

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All right. An echo of what happened to Eric Robinson. I was only about 45 minutes from the top of the saddle where I could shelter in my tent. But how long would the storm last? And how high would the creeks rise? If I was delayed more than a day, I'd miss my flight back to Melbourne. I thought about Marilyn. I couldn't make her relive this experience.

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So I will sign off.

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I gave up on my goal and retreated to safety. But Eric Robinson did not turn back during his walk over the Cascade Saddle. When our story resumes, I'll tell you exactly how his walk ended. Uinta Triangle includes immersive field recordings made in real outdoor locations. For the best listening experience, please consider using a good pair of stereo headphones.

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The department is New Zealand's government agency responsible for managing backcountry trails. It would likely launch a search and rescue mission for Eric at first light the next morning.

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And if you'd like to build a better picture of the places we visit, you can find maps, photos, and video at uintatriangle.com. That's Uinta, spelled U-I-N-T-A, triangle.com. Find us on social media using at Uinta Triangle. Bringing you this story has been an effort years in the making. To support this kind of work, please follow the show and share it with your friends.

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You can also help us by subscribing to Lemonada Premium right in your podcast player. It gets you access to exclusive bonus episodes. Here's producer Andrea Smartin with a peek at the latest bonus.

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Uintah Triangle is researched and written by me, Dave Cauley. Andrea Smartin is lead producer and sound designer, with contributing producers Ben Kebrick and Jenny Amint. Our main score and original music are by Allison Leighton Brown. Uintah Triangle is a production of KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media. My personal thanks to the following past and present members of the KSL Podcasts team.

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Aaron Mason, Amy Donaldson, Felix Bunnell, Josh Tilton, Nina Ernest, and Ryan Meeks. Lemonada executive producers are Jessica Cordova-Kramer and Stephanie Wittleswax. And for KSL Podcasts, our executive producer is Cheryl Worsley. Finally, from me to you, please remember... Wherever your life's trail takes you, none of us ever truly walk alone.

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DFAT is Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs. It's equivalent to the U.S. State Department. Marilyn's mind raced, picturing all the possible scenarios. She pushed the most intrusive out of her head, refusing to believe anything bad could have happened. Eric had gone prepared. Tent, waterproof jacket, extra food, all the essentials.

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But Marilyn knew none of that would make any difference if he lost his footing on soggy grass and somersaulted over the edge of a cliff. She hung up and glanced across the room at the flowers in the crystal vase, pausing to wonder if they might be the last she would ever receive from the man she considered her soulmate, Eric Robinson.

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Autumn arrived in Aotearoa, carrying a gift of rain.

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Then, Marilyn picked up the telephone again, dialed DFAT, and reported her husband missing. You are listening to Uinta Triangle, an audio documentary from KSL Podcasts about the disappearance of Eric Robinson. This is the first episode, and it's called Overdue.

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I haven't moved from this economy class seat for 16 hours, minus one brief trip to the lab.

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Drought-busting storms descended on Taiwaipounamu, the South Island of New Zealand, at the beginning of March 2008.

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I decided to fly partway around the world because I'm trying to solve a mystery about what happened to Eric Robinson. I first learned about Eric's story more than a decade ago while working as a radio news reporter. It left me with so many questions, like what drove a man in his 60s to hike alone on challenging or even treacherous tracks with no way to call for help?

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How could someone as experienced and well-prepared as Eric just disappear? My search for answers led me to Eric's wife, Marilyn. I first spoke to her in 2016.

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I've talked to Marilyn many more times since, but our conversations were always over the telephone, across time zones. Every call left me feeling there was more to the story, some deeper truth I could sense, but not quite grasp. That's why I finally decided to fly to Melbourne and meet Marilyn in person.

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The story Marilyn shared launched me on an even deeper journey of discovery.

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I soon found myself on another plane, crossing the Tasman Sea, going to New Zealand.

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on the Dart River side. I traveled solo, just as Eric did, with all the risk that entails.

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Erik Robinson was a few days into what was supposed to be a month-long vacation trekking, or tramping as the Kiwis would say, all across New Zealand. He planned to tackle several ambitious routes. First on his list, Cascade Saddle, a long walk through some of the most beautiful terrain New Zealand has to offer. Think of those sweeping shots of snow-capped peaks from the Lord of the Rings movies.

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Because I wanted to learn what compelled Eric to adventure in wild places alone, and to answer the question why, one time, he didn't return. Eric Robinson met Marilyn Kulstra at the perfect time.

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And how did you meet?

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An introduction agency is a dating service.

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The Rivoli Theatre is an old Art Deco building with neon signs and a facade of orange brick. The pizza place sat right across the street. That's where Eric and Marilyn first met face to face.

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Marilyn asked about the accent. Eric said he had grown up in Scotland.

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Both were a bit shorter than average. Marilyn was 41 years old and just dipping her toe back into the dating pool after separating from her first husband a few years earlier. She wore her hair in a pixie cut. Eric was 47. He had a broad smile and deep-set blue eyes. He was balding on top and going gray, giving him a bit of a Jean-Luc Picard look. Marilyn found him attractive.

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Eric's face lit up when Marilyn said she enjoyed hiking. Eric loved to hike. At the end of that first date, Eric asked Marilyn if he could take her out again.

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School camps are a part of Australian culture. They allow kids to build skills and experience in the outdoors under the supervision of their teachers. Marilyn was teaching sixth grade at the time and was going to be unavailable while with her students at camp.

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Eric had hedged his bets while Marilyn was at camp, lining up three dates with three women on three consecutive nights.

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And he didn't let on?

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Marilyn only learned of this later from some of Eric's friends. But whoever those other two women were, they didn't leave a lasting impression on Eric. Marilyn did. And she soon canceled her account with that introduction agency because she was falling for Eric. Starting a romantic relationship in your mid-40s can feel a lot different from falling in love in your early 20s.

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Those were filmed in this part of New Zealand. Eric started from the sheepherding town of Glenorchy, going up the braided meanders of the Rees River through a grassy valley bounded by towering mountains. The water of the Rees flowed a brilliant robin egg blue, burdened with sediment from glaciers on the slopes far above.

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As their conversations deepened, Marilyn learned Eric had been married before as well, and he was a single father to a teenage son.

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Eric had built this new house in Heathmont, about 30 minutes outside of Melbourne. The yard backed up to Dandenong Creek, a natural waterway surrounded by tall trees, thick brush, and several walking paths. Eric could sit out in his garden and listen to the cockatoos and kookaburras. Marilyn shared an old home movie with me where Eric showed off a bit of his garden.

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That's Eric's voice.

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Marilyn didn't at first understand the significance of this garden. She didn't realize for Eric, nature was a sanctuary, a place where he found comfort from the three great losses of his life, the early deaths of his father, his mother, and his first wife. Eric and I are very different people, but I feel a sense of kinship with him over this. He has his wounds, and I have mine.

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I grew up a long way from Australia, in the mountains of the western U.S.

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My family went on camping trips every summer when I was a boy.

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My dad would haul this giant VHS camcorder around on his shoulder.

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I'm about five years old in this video, with blonde bangs, chubby cheeks, and a habit of wandering off on my own.

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It's hard for me to watch these old home movies, knowing that curious little boy is about to go through abuse at the hands of someone he trusts. No one around me knew it was happening. I carried the burden of that abuse through my childhood alone. Life didn't get easier as an adult. Doctors discovered a tumor in my chest when I was 21. They sawed my rib cage open to remove it.

Under Yazoo Clay

Introducing: Under Yazoo Clay

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These graves hold real people, and their descendants are looking for the real story.

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It's a story about secrets.

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In a place where even the ground wants you to forget.

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But this is also a story about how we reckon with the past. We don't see the shame, but we see the effects of the shame.

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In Mississippi, keeping secrets is as old as the soil itself. So can the truth ever really be uncovered? The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Over the years, Yazoo clay has held and destroyed a lot of Mississippi's secrets. But in 2012, a construction crew uncovered a big one. Graves. Thousands of them. On the site of the old state asylum.

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And all this begs the question, just how do you lose track of 7,000 graves? The Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum closed its doors back in 1935. It didn't take long for the asylum cemetery to fade from memory.

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Dig below the surface in central Mississippi, and odds are good you'll find a burnt orange color looking back up at you. It's called Yazoo clay, and there's one thing it's known for, wreaking havoc on anything buried in it.

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Today, the cemetery... It's just a sprawling green island in the middle of what's now the biggest medical center in the state. But the graves might not be there much longer.

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The Southern ethos, the reverence for the grave, it ran deep in Kim's family. Cemeteries have been part of her life since childhood.

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Kim's grandmother had no grave to point to. Just one memory, one story of her mother she could pass down to her own children.

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I mean, that's really interesting because I feel like we've talked to so many or, you know, a fair number of people at this point who had relatives who were in there. And it's kind of the reactions I've heard have been a little bit different in that I think there's a lot of shame associated.

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Her family never tried to hide her, but Zennie got lost anyhow. Part of the confusion was bureaucratic. In Mississippi these days, when people say asylum, they mean Whitfield, the current state hospital. Kim and her family, like many Mississippians, never even knew there was an old asylum in Jackson.

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So when Kim went to search for her great-grandmother's records, she contacted Whitfield. Every time, they'd just say they had no records of Zennie. Because Zennie was never there. For Kim, it felt like the asylum had just swallowed her whole. But Zennie hadn't vanished. She was closer than anyone knew.

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Tougaloo College is in Jackson, just six miles from the old asylum. And for decades, Zenni's daughter, and then her granddaughter, and finally her great-granddaughter, passed right by that cemetery like ships in the night. Until, remember back in Episode 2, that PR roadshow that the Asylum Hill Project went on? The one where they spoke in rotary clubs and put out newspaper ads?

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Oh, no.

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Over the course of the old asylum's life, it grew. Jackson grew around it. Its story unspooled, threads joining the tapestry of ever-expanding daily life in central Mississippi. Back at the State Hospital Museum, Donna Brown and Kathy Denton showed us around a room full of photos and memorabilia from the old asylum.

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What is it about connecting these dots? What does it, as the person who's still alive today, what does it give you?

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Kim has something a lot of other descendants have been looking for. She can just about point to the spot where Zinni is buried.

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So Kim checks in with her. She fills Zinni in on what's become of her family.

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Come as the poster child for what the Asylum Hill Project is hoping to pull off.

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By the way, Dr. Deadlake says that any descendants who may be listening can contact the Asylum Hill Project through its website, asylumhill.org.

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But of course, the Asylum Hill project isn't just about connecting descendants with information about their loved ones. It's about that land, the land that the medical center needs to build more vital medical infrastructure, the land currently occupied by thousands of former patients. As they've talked to more people like him, the folks at Asylum Hill have begun to formulate a plan

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but it's one that will take time.

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And, of course, the cemetery exhumations, the process of removing the remains to make space for the medical center's expansion.

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We've talked a lot about final resting places here. That's what cemeteries are, right? Except for this one. An important thing to realize is that if we say there's 7,000 graves, then at the end of all this, there will be 7,000 sets of remains removed from the clay. And that brings up an awkward truth. There's a fine line between being taken care of and being treated like a burden.

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It's hard not to worry that what these former patients are, more than anything else, is in the way. And if there's one clear takeaway from talking with descendants, it's that the first and foremost duty of care owed to these patients is just respect. And sometimes that looks like acknowledgement, which Dr. Didlake says is a part of what will happen next.

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So what does it mean to make remains more available? Well, for starters, they're not going back into the ground anywhere. Instead, the Asylum Hill Project will build a standalone mausoleum to house the remains above ground. This is partially in service of the budget. If they wanted to rebury the remains, they'd have to buy more land to do it on.

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But it's also in service of the core aim of the Asylum Hill Project, to learn all they can about the old asylum, including its patients. This whole thing is part of a university after all. And keeping everything above ground does keep the remains more available for research. There is the specter of spectacle with this plan. So Asylum Hill did what it does best.

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After the old asylum shuttered its doors when its buildings were torn down in the 50s, the stories died down for a bit, too. But with the rediscovery of the Asylum Hills Cemetery, the lore is also coming back to life. Asylum Hills' Lyda Gibson even has her own.

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They went out to the descendant community and got their buy-in for this stage of the project, too. Amazing.

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That paradigm is acceptable. It all ties back to that Southern ethos. Because maybe, just maybe, building a new home for these remains in the heart of the city is the best chance for finally reintegrating these former patients with their community. interweaving the threads of their lives once again with the fabric of the city.

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Nothing is done. None of it is finished. The family story goes on because the family does. A little more whole than before.

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The story of Asylum Hill is one of discovery, memory, pain, and catharsis. But most of all, the story of Asylum Hill is unexpected. A crew of scientists, historians, artists, school counselors, professors, and gravedowsers, all digging deeper in search of understanding.

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For the most part, the stories that survive are the ones that lean into the Southern Gothic of it all. Here's Bill Lee, Wayne's cousin.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you.

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The final years of the asylum did not leave a great impression on Jackson. That shifting Yazoo clay had done a number on the foundation, which was then doing a number on the walls and ceilings. Plaster was literally crumbling onto the patient beds. But repairs were out of the question. Any state funds flowed to the new state hospital being built, the one out in Whitfield.

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, , , , , , , ,, in P P P P P P P P P P P P G ay z, ac , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a a , , , , , , , ,, P P P P P P P P P,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a a . . . .

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.. a, set, men P P P P P P P P seg , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . a in Special thanks to Betsy Bradley at the Mississippi Museum of Art, as well as Lyda Gibson at the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Visit Jackson and Jay and Dini Stein.

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When the new state hospital, Whitfield, opened its doors, the old asylum shut its own. And there wasn't a lick of overlap between the two.

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Woodfield was about as blank of a slate as you could find. If there were a way for the state to sanction forgetting, this was it.

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Well, except the old crumbling history is right there, a cemetery taking up 12 acres of this town. So the real question is, what kind of space will Jackson make for the people interred there? I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay. When we sat down with Lyda for one of our mini-chats, her phone rang mid-interview. Most days, that would be a pretty big bummer, but not this time.

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The person on the other end of the line was Kimberly Jackson, a descendant. Hey, Kimberly.

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Kim is a lot of things to a lot of people. She's a school counselor.

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She's a caregiver for her mother, for her aunt, and for her uncle. Kim is dedicated to doing it all.

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The day we met her, she'd driven a little over an hour from her home in Carthage, Mississippi. She was in Jackson to bring her aunt and uncle to their doctor's appointments. And so that's where we did the interview. On a couch, outside the doctor's office, right next to the vending machines and the elevator bank. So if you hear a clank or a ding, Now you know. This is good.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

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And that might be the fourth floor up there, in which case it doesn't look like they have as much area as we do. So, perfect.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

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As she swooped in for a hug hello, I clocked her light pink long-sleeved shirt with the slogan, Love Yourself. It's abundantly clear that to Kim, family is everything. Almost straight from the moment we arrived, she waxed poetic about a whole slew of relatives, from her grandmother's dating history.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

643.917

The cloth of her life is made up of these memories of these people. But like all the descendants we spoke to, there was that familiar blank spot, a rent in the fabric. So if you would, yeah, I mean, tell us about your, it's your great-grandmother, right?

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

723.612

Pilgrim Rest was a small community, not too far away. Zennie's whole family was nearby. But then things went south for Zennie. Her mom died. It shook everyone in the family, but no one more than Zennie, a young mother herself.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

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Kim's grandmother was Zenny's youngest child, not even 10 years old yet.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

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But Kim's great-grandfather, Zinni's husband Monroe, remained devoted. His wife was his wife, in sickness or in health.

Under Yazoo Clay

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Thank you.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

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The largest art museum in the state, the Mississippi Museum of Art connects Mississippi to the world and the power of art to the power of community. Located in downtown Jackson, the museum's permanent collection is free to the public. National and international exhibitions rotate throughout the year, allowing visitors to experience works from around the world.

Under Yazoo Clay

Threads

973.861

The gardens and expansive lawn at the Mississippi Museum of Art are home to art installations and a variety of events for all ages. Plan your visit today at msmuseumart.org. That's msmuseumart.org.

Up First from NPR

Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant

25.586

A second-grade student called 911 to report a shooting...

Up First from NPR

Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant

431.937

Don't let that soak in for a minute. A second grade student called 911 at 1057 a.m. to report a shooting at school.

Verdict with Ted Cruz

Bonus Pod: Democrats hold Government Hostage plus Trump vs the Department of Education

43.945

You're listening to a 47 Morning Update, special government shutdown edition with Ben Ferguson.

Verdict with Ted Cruz

Bonus Pod: Democrats hold Government Hostage plus Trump vs the Department of Education

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Thank you for listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in-depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson podcast. And we will see you back here tomorrow.

Very Scary People

Introducing Very Scary People: A Family to Fear

21.936

This was about vengeance.

Very Scary People

Introducing Very Scary People: A Family to Fear

27.893

David had upwards of a million dollars plus a two-week head start. What became clear to us was that the kidnapping was not the end.

Very Scary People

Introducing Very Scary People: A Family to Fear

59.003

They said Christine planned to sell David's three white, blonde, beautiful girls to pedophiles for $50,000 apiece. They're crazy, twisted, evil people.

Very Scary People

Introducing Very Scary People: A Family to Fear

82.472

You cross the family and you end up dead. Everything, all of it, led to this.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

107.349

Christine weiß, dass sie vielleicht paranoid oder hysterisch werden könnte. Aber sie glaubt, dass etwas nicht richtig ist und ihre Mädchen in Gefahr sind. Das Spazieren in ihrem leeren Haus hilft nicht, ihre Töchter nach Hause zu bringen. Christine entscheidet also, sich an die Newcastle Polizei zu bewegen.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1073.052

Das Mindset würde die meisten entscheidenden Entscheidungen in Toms Leben in seiner Kindheit in seine älteren Jahre beeinflussen. Lenores Ursprung könnte nicht mehr anders gewesen sein. Sie wollte nicht über ihre Kindheit sprechen. Aber es ist klar, dass sie als Kind ihre Heimwohnung sehr unabhängig hatte.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1089.855

Lenores Tochter Amy erinnert sich an die Schwierigkeiten, die ihre Mutter zu Beginn ihrer Leben beschäftigte. Meine Mutter Lenore wurde sexuell verletzt von einem Onkel.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1122.018

Tom and Lenore started dating in high school. Although they come from different backgrounds, they are instantly drawn to each other. Tom sucht einen Partner, der ihm das Zentrum ihres Universums machen wird. Lenore sah Tom als einen Mann mit großem Potenzial. Jemanden, der helfen kann, die Familie zu bauen, die sie so besorgniserregend schützen und kontrollieren will.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Tom und Lenore hatten eine gemeinsame Vision für das Zukunft, von Anfang an. Sie wussten ihre Rolle und es ging ihnen jeweils darum, den Ende ihres Vorgehens zu halten.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1221.802

Es ist sicher zu sagen, dass Tom O'Toosewitz ein bisschen ein Jack of all Trades und ein Master of None war. Bob Romano erinnert sich an die sechs Jahre, in denen er und Tom Brüder der Batsche waren.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1355.838

Unabhängig davon, sich in die Augen zu schauen, entwickelt Tom eine tiefe Enttäuschung der Regierung. Er fühlt sich, als wäre er unvergültig getargetet und aus seinem öffentlichen Arbeitsplatz gezwungen, in Plätzen wie der Post Office und der Polizei. Toms erotisches Verhalten und Unabhängigkeit von Impulse-Kontrolle starten ein Verlust auf sein Verheiratung.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1387.522

Lenore wird nicht eindeutig sitzen, als Tom ihre Familie in Gefahr macht. Es scheint, dass nur die unabhängige Kraft das unbewegbare Objekt bewegen kann.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Lenore kann die Kräfte in ihrer Familien-Foundation multiplizieren. Mit jedem von Toms neuen Karrieren, neuen Verkäufen oder neuen Fehler. Sie lässt niemanden in ihrem Weg stehen, wenn es darum geht, ihre Familie zu bilden, wie sie sich befindet. Nicht mal Tom.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Lenore successfully entranges herself as the shot caller in the Matusowitz household. However, she knows this family needs a true provider. It's clear Tom is too unpredictable, too undisciplined. She needs someone who is able to take her direction without questioning her authority.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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As the children grew, Lenores' focus shifts more and more towards the family's rising star, David. A hardworking and studious young man, David is Lenores' last hope at securing her family's future. Lenore muss alles tun, was sie kann, um David nicht in der gleichen Weise zu verletzen, wie Tom. David war immer sehr klug.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Er hat in der Schule überlebt und sogar seine eigene leistungsvolle Optometrische Praxis verkauft. Seine Puppetierung ist ein besonderer Erfolg geworden. Sie war nicht begeistert, als David und Christine verheiratet wurden, weil sie die Idee nicht mag, dass jemand anderes ihre Golden Boy beeinflusst hat. Aber für Lenore war nichts wichtiger, als David Kinder zu haben.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Und dafür brauchte er eine Frau. Nichts war wichtiger, als dass die Matusowitz-Familie weiter in die nächste Generation gehen würde.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Lenors relentless desire for control over the next generation of the Matusowitz clan has led directly to David and Christine's divorce. Die Entscheidung des Gerichts, dass die Mädchen mit David leben, bis Christine an ihren Beinen kommt, hat nur Lenore mehr Macht gegeben.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Und jetzt, fast elf Monate nach dem Schluss ihrer Verabschiedung, realisiert Christine, dass Lenore nichts stoppt, um ihre Familie unter ihrer Regen zu halten.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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An diesem Punkt haben Christine und David seit acht Monaten separat gelebt. Christine hat sich immer darauf konzentriert, die Kinder zu erstellen und eine Familie zu finden, die für sie am besten funktioniert.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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David hatte keine Chancen und schlug alle seine Räume. Der Geld aus der Wartefraude würde die Leben auf dem Weg leichter verlassen. Aber wenn David für immer weggehen wollte, brauchte er noch viel mehr.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Es wurde auch entdeckt, dass er seine Praxis verkauft hatte. Er verkaufte seine Optometrie-Praxis an die Optometrische, die dafür arbeiteten.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1773.387

Mit dem Verkauf seines erfolgreichen Unternehmens sind Davids Geldversuche zu einem schockierenden und gefährlichen 1 Millionen Dollar gestiegen.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Er hat definitiv ein Verheiratungskrieg. Er hatte keine Pläne, zurückzukommen.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1821.301

Next time on Very Scary People.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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However, the divorce proceedings could take a while and there needs to be a temporary plan in place for parenting the girls.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

1854.574

Very Scary People is produced by Lionsgate Alternative Television for ID. I'm Donnie Wahlberg. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts. And we'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

213.997

Christine hat schon zu einem Verabschiedungssatz gearbeitet und weiß, dass Stabilität und Konsistenz die größte Bedeutung für Kinder während dieser schwierigen Übergänge sind. David, aber, ist mehr auf die Verabschiedung von Christine konzentriert, weil er zuerst für einen Verabschiedungssatz verabschiedet ist.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

241.836

David wollte alle Entscheidungen machen und ohne ihre Einführung. Wir hatten im März 2007 eine Beteiligung, um zu diskutieren, wer die temporäre oder interne Behandlung der Kinder haben würde. Er wollte alle Entscheidungen machen und sie wollte ihn an diesem Punkt nicht kämpfen. Also hat sie an diesem Punkt, temporär, mit ihm die Entscheidungen gemacht.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

269.705

After filing for divorce, Christine and Katie had moved in with Christine's grandmother. She needs to find a permanent residence before she can have the girls come to live with her part-time. And on top of that, she needs to find a new job.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

283.569

David fired her from her job at his clinic at a time in her life when things weren't going really well. Her goal was to eventually get on her feet financially. Und dann, wenn das Gericht auf die ultimative Verwaltung der Verwaltung regiert, dann würde sie eine gute Wohnung haben, in der sie leben könnte und ihre Kinder dort leben können, wo ich mit ihr bin.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

307.835

Das war ihr Ziel und das ist, worauf sie gearbeitet hat.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

311.38

Es war Christiane klar, dass David das Verheirat nicht gut aufgenommen hat. Aber es ist nicht ungewöhnlich, dass Verheiratungen unabhängig werden. Egal, wie beschädigt und mature Christine ist während der Verhandlungsverhandlungen, David versucht ständig, Wege zu finden, um ihre Kindheitsrechte zu unterbinden.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

328.527

Um dir eine Idee über Kontrolle zu geben, habe ich Chris gesagt, dass es nur fair ist, dass du ihm die Kinder mitbringst, um ihm ein Kind zu unterstützen. Das wäre nicht sehr viel, weil er viel mehr Geld gemacht hat, als sie. Also habe ich gesagt, hier ist ein Ausgleich, was du bezahlen kannst. Und so hat sie... Ich wollte ihm einen Schein schicken. Sie schickte ihm einen Schein.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

33.574

This is a story that involves stalking, psychological torture, alleged sexual abuse, kidnapping and murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Und wir haben eine Antwort von seinem Arzt, der sagte, er wollte keine Geld. Er wollte keine Geld von ihr. Und du siehst das immer wieder in Kustodien, wo ein Vater die Kontrolle über die Kinder durch den Kustodienprozess haben will. Und sie sagen, ich will die Geld nicht, ich will nur die Kinder. Aber so ist das Gesetz. Du zahlst nicht für das Recht, deine Kinder zu haben.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

372.732

Und das war effektiv, was er machte. Er wollte alle Entscheidungen machen, dass die Kinder mit ihm immer leben.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

378.946

Christine's stepmother, Eileen McDermott, can remember the palpable tension during this time. David wasn't the only one driving this aggressive custody stance.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

414.474

Christine ist ein offenes Buch mit Behörden über die Verbrechung ihres Verbrechens und die Events, die den Disney-Welttrip führten. Sie spart keine Details, die die Eskalation in David und Lenores Behörde beweisen, die sie dazu geführt hat, zu glauben, dass dies eine emergency-Situation ist. Die Behörden werden von ihrer Geschichte bewegt. In einer Art von Urgenz.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

437.453

Detektiv Schreiner glaubt, dass etwas falsch ist.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

474.853

Das Haus, das David und die Mädchen geteilt haben, war im Herzen einer kleinen suburbanen Nachbarschaft. Der Art von Straße, auf der Kinder ihre Bikes fahren würden und alle zusammen für Barbecues im Sommer gehen würden. Menschen können feststellen, dass etwas mit einem eigenen ist. Routine ist der König der Städte.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

491.037

So können sogar kleine Änderungen mit einem der Residenzen von der Gemeinschaft erhoben werden. Journalist Chris Barish erinnert sich an einige der subtilen Ungewöhnungen, die die Nachbarn erhoben haben, während des Fortschritts der Familie.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Christine's concerns are starting to gain traction. Investigators are finding puzzle pieces that match her narrative. The investigators need to gather more evidence, though, before they can say for sure that the Matusowitz girls are officially missing.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

55.081

He had no plans to come back.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

582.954

David refinanced the house to take all of the remaining equity, $249,000, out of the house. He was able to get a notary public um eine Signatur zu akzeptieren, die er oder jemand unter seiner Richtung auf Christine Belfords Namen auf dieser Morgensprache geformt hat.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Und obwohl Christine zu diesem Geld verantwortlich ist, so viel wie David, ist er jetzt der, der auf dem Weg ist. Mit fast einem Viertel von einem Millionen Dollar wird es klar geworden, dass David das als viel mehr als eine lange Verabschiedung sieht.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Die Anwesenden hoffen, dass das Familienhaus Hinweise gibt, die ihnen zeigen werden, wohin David und Lenore sind. Aber sie werden bald lernen, dass nichts mit der Matusowitz-Familie immer so einfach ist.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

694.511

Es war nur ein Haufen Trash. Das Haus von Matuszowicz, das früher das wunderschöne Zuhause von acht Leuten war, ist jetzt sauber und ehrlicherweise leer. Bewerber gehen in jedes Zimmer ein. exactly what they found in the room before. Nothing. It was clear the family had no intention of returning to the house in this state. But so far, there is nothing to explain why they left.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Until something in the living room catches Detective Schreiner's eye.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

748.923

Detective Schreiner is grateful for this one piece of evidence that points to a potential motive for David and Lenore skipping town. But if David and Lenore left town because of the divorce, Detective Schreiner still has no evidence telling him where they were heading. The family seems to have vanished into thin air.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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With Christine completely in the dark, detectives turn to the only other people who might be able to help find David and Lenore.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

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Detektivs wissen, dass Zeit wert ist. Und mit Tom, der nicht hilfreich war, wurden sie zu den nur noch bleibenden Matusowitz, die sie helfen konnten.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

85.953

Es ist September 8th, 2007 und Christine Belford lebt ihr schlimmstes Schmerz. Seine drei Mädchen waren zwei Tage zu Hause von einer Reise nach Disney World mit ihrem Vater und Großmutter. Aber die Kommunikation mit ihrem Ex-Husband David Matusiewicz ist auf Radio silent gegangen. Jede Sekunde fühlt es sich an, als ob die Mädchen weiter und weiter weg fliegen.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

897.21

Wir sind gewohnt, dass Leute sagen, Familie ist das Wichtigste. Das ist nicht das Wichtigste. Was richtig ist und was falsch ist, ist das Wichtigste. Und wenn Familien sich in falsches Verhalten engagieren, dann tun sie es falsch. Und das ist keine gesundheitliche Familie.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

917.066

Die Matusiewicz-Familie ist nicht am Morgen aufgewacht, um die drei Mädchen zu abducken. Das sieht immer mehr wie eine bemerkenswerte Verschwörung aus. But how did it come to this? Looking back one generation earlier, it turns out David is not the first to be crowned the family's golden boy. And Dr. A.J. Marsden believes this winding road weaves all the way back to the birth of the original.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

954.995

Jill Matusiewicz ist die Tochter von Toms Großvater. Sein Vater hatte keine wunderschönen Erinnerungen an seine Kindheit mit Tom. Er warf in ihr ein, dass sein Ursprung eine traumhafte Veränderung nahm, als Tom in die Bildung kam.

Very Scary People

Ep.2: The Root of Evil

993.438

It seems that Tom was born basking in his parents' light, leaving his step-siblings in a cold shade. Tom's status within the family would quickly reach truly bizarre extremes.

Video Gamers Podcast

Voicing Legends: Alicyn Packard on Acting, Animation & Monster Hunter Wilds - Gaming Podcast

1.896

Jeder Läufer kennt diesen Moment, wenn es einfach klickt. Wenn deine Beine einfach mitgehen, der Schmerz nachlässt, die Zweifel weg sind und du nur noch das Runners High spürst. Das ist der Grund, warum du so früh aufstehst. Warum dich ein bisschen Regen nicht auffällt. Warum Laufen zum Ritual wird. Also laufe und fühle das Runners High.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1015.392

Don't worry, we're going to be talking about the music in this game, but we just got done talking about some of the best music soundtracks in a game. Dude, Expedition 33 will forever belong in that conversation now for games that have incredible soundtracks. The graphics in this game are incredible. The world is incredible. I am going to come out and say it right now.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1037.96

This game exceeded every expectation that I possibly could have hoped for. It is one of the best games I have played in years, dude. Like years. And I don't say that lightly. People know I do get hyped. But then I'll be like, nah, man, this game wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be. I cannot tell you how good Expedition 33 is.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1061.795

And the thing I love is there are people that are in our community that were like, dude, you're freaking hype levels that you guys had for this game and talking about it all the time. I finally picked it up. And we have people that have literally said, dude, this might be my favorite game ever. Like ever. And it is like it is that caliber of game. So we're going to get into why.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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But Ryan, the people are here for you, man. I mean, John and I have not hidden our thoughts on this game. You know, it's one of those things that people that are in our Discord server, they know because they've been obvious about it. But everybody in the world has been like, yeah, well, I want to hear what Ryan thinks about it. Can I predict? Can I make a prediction? Go ahead, lay it on me.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1105.593

Because if I get it right, then you're going to just sound really dumb if you echo what I say. Lay it on me, lay it on me. All right, so my prediction is Ryan is going to say, I can see why this game's incredible. I can see why people love it. I can see how beautiful it is, and the music's great, and the characters are neat. But man, the turn-based combat really just kind of throws it off for me.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1129.261

So I appreciate it for what it is, but it's not for me. So if I nailed it, now you look silly, Ryan. And if I didn't, well, then people are going to be excited.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1294.281

That's fair. I mean, here's the thing, right? We say all the time that there's different games for different people, right? I'm not a fan of cozy games or sim type games. They just don't resonate with my brain. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those games. It's just that for whatever reason, my brain likes a different style of game.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1311.816

We have people in our community, you know, Patrick, one of them that was like, dude, I tried it. He was exactly like you, Ryan. He wasn't forced to play this game. So he kind of went in and said, I tried it. Turn-based combat really doesn't do it for me, man. I can appreciate the story and the game and all that stuff, but I just can't get past this. And I think that's a valid point.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1337.91

Here's the funny part, and this is why I love this too. Patrick, play it again, bud. Well, he is. That's the thing, right? So everybody that's been chiming in on this game being like, oh my gosh, this game is amazing. I haven't played a game like this in years. It just keeps getting better and better.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1355.669

I can't believe a 30-man development team made this game that will compete with the best of the best AAA titles in existence, dude. That blows me away. I still can't believe it. So Patrick was like, maybe I need to give this another try. Am I missing out on something? So I don't know Patrick's final verdict on this, but I do know that he has jumped back in and said, I need to experience this.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1381.476

I need to kind of get past this. My... of turn-based combat to kind of see what this game is as a whole. So again, maybe he's just going to come back and be like, yeah, never mind. But I think if you are the type of person that generally does not like turn-based combat, it is interesting for me to hear that the quick time elements, this dodging and parrying, that you have to time very, very well.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1407.304

I think the best analogy of this is a turn-based Souls-like game. Now people go, what the heck? A turn-based Souls-like game? But it kind of is because you have to dodge at the right time. And if you're going to parry, you have to parry. That window to parry is even smaller than the dodge window, but it comes with a huge reward at that point. But... That being said, it is still turn-based combat.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1432.392

So even though they try to add that flavor, the heart of that turn-based combat is there. And if you're not a fan of that, it might be hard for you to overcome, which it sounds like it was for you, Ryan. A little bit. All right. I'll tell you what. Let's take a quick break, and then we're going to actually get into the story and the combat and what makes this game what it is.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1450.208

So we'll be right back to talk about that. All right, we're back. Okay, it's time to actually get into the nitty gritty here, boys. We have to start with the story in this game. For people that aren't aware of the story, this is all in the trailers. This is no spoiler stuff here. But I freaking love this premise, dude.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

1474.04

The overarching story in this game is that the people in the world are... They're like... they're at the mercy of this being called the paintress. Every year, the paintress arises from sitting down in front of this monolith, and she paints a number on this monolith, and everybody that was older than that number fades away like being Thanos snapped into just dust, and they call that the gommage.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

148.755

Oh my goodness. Okay. I know John just said this, but listen, we have video on Spotify. I don't know if you've listened on Spotify or not, but you need to go this here. You need to go and watch the video on this. We're also on YouTube if you want to watch it there. But oh my goodness, Ryan.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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So this is the event where if she had 34 on there and she paints 33... Everybody that's 34 just fades away into nothingness. And this is how the game starts off. Like your very first hour in the game is knowing that the gommage is about to happen. You meet the main characters. It's very sad. It's very kind of gripping as in like, man, you know what's coming on this.

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Um, what are y'all's thoughts as far as the, how they set up the story in the first hour of this game? Because it is a lot of cut scenes. It is a lot of talking to characters. I mean, it's kind of by nature required, but what are your thoughts on that?

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What about you, Ryan? How does this beginning of the story and how they set it up, how did that strike you?

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Yeah, we talk a lot about games that want to exposition dump on you, and they kind of like try to catch you up on the story and tell you why you should care about something, you know? And it's like a lot of times that misses because it's like, I don't know these people. You haven't developed these characters.

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I know you're telling me that I should care about them, but I just don't care about them, man. Like, you've given me no reason to. And the way that Expedition 33 goes about their storytelling...

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is is a combination of cut scenes character interaction like mood like the beginning of this game is somber like like you said it is it's it's this weird like celebration or beautifully somber yes yeah yeah it's not like depressing somber it's just like you said it's this for this is just the way life is and these people have accepted it to a degree and

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And you see that acceptance, but then at the same time, they haven't accepted it because they're sending this expedition of people out to go try to kill the Pinterest so she'll stop writing these numbers on the monolith and wiping out an entire age of people. And so you get that weird, like, juxtaposition of people have accepted this. They know it's going to happen. Kids have lost their parents.

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People have lost their friends because nobody is immune to the gommage. You're poof. That's it. If you're that age, there is no exception to this. And so you see that, but then at the same time, it's, hey, we're going to fight this. And that's why it's called Expedition 33 because everybody that is 33 years old

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Ryan's got the mustache going. He's got the full. Now, you had to kill a mime to get that, Ryan. I did. So maybe my intro for you was not very accurate.

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Knows that they only have a year to live until the Pinterest wakes up and wipes their number off the monolith. And so we're going to go try to fight her. And so that is where the game kicks you forward into the world and says, OK, now go play the game.

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And my goodness, dude, you get, again, we're not going to spoil anything because this is the first kind of like jaw hitting the floor moment in the game. But things don't go great for you. They kind of hint towards this in the trailer. So again, this is very, very minimal spoilers here. Things don't go well. And now all poop has hit the fan. And now you are left going, what the heck do we do now?

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And this is where you're kind of dumped into the gameplay world and you start adventuring and you start doing combat and things like that. So you hit him with a soccer blue. Yeah. Oh, man. So. So let's talk about the gameplay elements here, guys, because, you know, the story. We're not going to spoil anything else. It's incredible.

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And I will say this before we before we step off story for for a little bit here. This game and the storytelling will absolutely gut punch you. I mean, in ways that I have not seen a game do in a long time. John, you mentioned it in the beginning about it'll make you emotional. I have not had a game do this before.

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I mean, honestly, since I'm going to put it up there with Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 in the weight that this story can affect you as the player. I mean, I don't know that I can say any higher praise to a video game than that because people that have played those two games understand. But that's how good it really is. So, all right. Gameplay wise. Sure.

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The story is great, but man, it's turn based combat. Ryan, you know, you know, gameplay portion. Let's kind of break this down into a couple things. I want to talk about the the exploration in this game because there is a lot of that to be done. It is an RPG. It is a somewhat linear experience in a way.

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It is also a very refined experience because they have come out and said the campaign in this RPG, which normally have 60 to 100-hour epic campaigns, is a tight 30-hour campaign. There is a lot of side content you can do if you want, but to beat this game, it's going to be about 30 hours. That's kind of unheard of for an epic RPG. So...

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I attempted that for about 10 minutes. So, so this is not, this is again, not spoiler. It's an optional thing, but it's basically the, they, they give you a little mini game. That's like the game only up where you are just climbing and trying to jump on platforms at one point. And I did that for about 10 minutes and I was like, oh man, I'm making great progress.

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So, Ryan, take the people through because, John, you touched on this, but as far as exploration goes, this game does a neat thing where they give you zones where you are running around in this zone that is its self-contained kind of environment, whether it's a biome or something like that. These zones are beautiful, dude. I mean, absolutely.

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The visuals and the world that this team has crafted is unlike anything I have seen. Like, legitimately, dude. And later on in the game, I am at a point where I got to a level and I just stopped and went, oh my goodness, this might be one of the coolest levels I have seen in a game. Legitimately. I mean, it's insane.

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But you have these zones that your main gameplay is in, but then you have an overworld that you can kind of run around in where that's how you get to these different zones. So Ryan, can you kind of touch on...

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The other day, Greg makes a reel, you know, that's a little bit about Expedition 33. And he DMs me and he's like, Josh, I got an idea. Do you have a baguette laying around? And I'm like, do people have baguettes just laying around all the time? And he was like, well, I figured I'd ask. Like, I can Photoshop one on you, but I just wanted to see if you had a baguette.

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I will say I think they did a masterful job of keeping this game somewhat linear, but giving you that exploration option at the same time. That's a hard thing to balance. But in the overworld, like you said, you'll come across little groups of monsters, right? And you're like, well, I know I have to fight these guys.

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But in the middle of that group of monsters, you see a little glowing thing that says, hey, there's loot right here. So it's kind of like, well, do I want that loot? Because then I got to take these guys out. One of the things that this game does that I absolutely love is sometimes you'll come up against a guy who absolutely just wipes the floor with you. And you're like, well, what the heck, man?

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He's in the overworld. Am I not supposed to be there yet? So this overworld rewards you for exploring. Like you said, Ryan, it gives you that glimpse that there's going to be a lot more of this game that you are going to experience. But what the overworld does is it also leads you to these zones. Now, some of these zones are part of the main campaign.

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And some of these zones are just optional for you to go into and explore and fight new monsters and find loot. And it's just optional side content that exists for no other reason than to just give you something to do, which I freaking love, dude.

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You know, like I went into a zone and I was like, what's this? And it was like there was nothing there other than some loot and some monsters that were way too tough for me to fight. But it was just rewarding to find it, to go in there. It's a beautiful zone all on its own.

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And again, it was just this finely crafted little 20-minute experience of me getting my butt kicked by guys that I shouldn't be fighting at the time.

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This is what this game is doing to us, man.

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Yeah. So this is kind of how they set up the structure of the worlds. And again, the zones themselves are very, very well done. And again, this is where a ton of the beauty in the game comes from. The zones all feel beautiful. drastically different to me. I mean, they are their own little worlds, and they are crafted so well, it's ridiculous.

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Let's get into the combat, because this is another major aspect of this game where this is what's going to put some people off. Admittedly, I think the combat is absolutely spectacular. It might be my favorite combat system in a turn-based RPG that is more like your classical You can't really compare this combat to Baldur's Gate 3 combat.

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While they are both turn-based, they are different in a sense. This follows the much more typical JRPG, your party facing the enemies that you're fighting, that kind of thing, a la Final Fantasy or any classic RPG that you are used to. But... Oh my goodness. Number one, the animations in this game are incredible.

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That's the best surprise I have ever seen, Ryan. Oh, my goodness, man.

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When your characters attack, I mean, you see this trail behind their weapon that just makes it seem like they are swinging this thing at a thousand miles an hour. The impact sounds, the spells, the skills, the combos. I mean, even when you parry or a monster attacks you, There is I can't think of a game off the top of my head that has the weight behind the combat that this game does.

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And it is masterful, man. Like, you know, the way that you feel when you attack an enemy or the way that you cringe when an enemy hits you and you're like, oh, that hurt because you just feel it, man. Yeah. Combat system in this game is absolutely top-notch. I don't think it reinvents the wheel in any way other than throwing in the parry and dodge system into a turn-based combat system.

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So while it is insanely flashy and good-looking, do you feel, John, because you're nodding and you're kind of like, do you feel like it changed or added anything that we haven't seen before?

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So, John, just so you know, Ryan DMs me right before recording, and he's like, hey, can you introduce me second? And I'm like, dude, that's going to throw off the whole, we don't introduce you second. And then he's like, trust me, just do it. And I'm like, all right, man. Well done. Well done, guys.

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I find the combat in this game to be absolutely incredible. It's engaging. The timing of the dodge and parry system adds that risk-reward factor that my brain just absolutely loves. I do think the Souls-like turn-based combat makes sense, honestly. Absolutely. And I know that's... That's hard for a gamer brain to kind of wrap our heads around and go, like, what are you talking about?

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But it is, man. Like, you're fighting these fantastical creatures, these giant boss fights. And it's like, if you're going to with a dodge, you are going to pay for it, man. Like, this game says you need to know how to dodge. Now, you don't necessarily need to be good at parrying. Because the dodge window is much more lenient than the parry window is.

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But if you are like... See, this is where I thought it might get you, Ryan, because it's like that risk-reward, that gamble, because we know you're a gambler.

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oh man all right well welcome into the video gamers podcast people this is this is what we do man we uh we we have fun we love talking video games and we love being stupid and i can't look at ryan's face while okay okay i can do this i'm a professional

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So to give people an idea, it's easy to dodge something and you just don't take damage. If you decide to parry, you have to time the parry much more tightly. But if you pull it off, not only do you get what's called an action point because your characters spend action points to perform moves, to use skills, to just a basic attack kind of thing.

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So you get an action point, which is very necessary component in combat, but you also get a counter attack and the game, the feeling of like parrying that attack and then getting that counter attack because it's a unique animation. The game kind of goes like, it like comes in and slows down.

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It's freaking amazing, man. It makes it feel so good. And so it's like, you want to parry, But, like, 60% of the time you're going to whiff your parry and then just get punched in the face by some epic monster. And you're kind of like, oh, I whiffed that. And I love that risk-reward that it gives you. And it's funny because I ask because this is what we see people asking.

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Like, oh, are you a dodger or are you a parry? And we have people like, parry only, baby. If I whiff, I whiff. And other people are like, I ain't going.

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And then you have people just going, nah, man, I'm just dodging. I ain't risking that parry. Combat, to me, the other thing before we move on from the combat is it is supremely entertaining to me. I love the combat in this game. The builds... We could talk about the builds that you can do in this game for an hour straight.

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You get... You get your party. It's an RPG. So your party might vary. And every person in your party has unique kind of systems that they use that play into a very unique making each character feel.

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They're all cool. I actually really struggle with my party composition because it's like, oh, but I want to play this person. I want to play that person.

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The other thing that I'll say is there is a fantastic mix in combat of just easier mobs that let you kind of just practicing your dodging and your parrying and leveling up and just getting that XP to get stronger. You don't have to grind this game, but I think it is helpful if you enjoy the combat to do more of it to kind of level up. you know, in that system.

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And then I love the fact that there are more challenging fights where maybe it's not even a boss fight. Maybe it's just a tougher monster that might take you a little bit longer, that hits a little bit harder or has a unique skill where it's like, dude, if I miss this dodge, this character is probably dying. I'll still win the fight. But man, watch out kind of thing.

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And then you get into these massive 20 minute long epic showdown boss fight type battles where I am just all clenched up sitting forward. My hands are sweaty and I'm going like, don't miss this, Perry. Don't miss this, Perry. And then I whiffed the Perry and I'm like, you know, it's just brings up six shields. No, come on.

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And so I love that they give you that variety in the combat itself too, right? Where it's just the, you know, you're going to get easy fights, short fights, you know, crazy fights, these epic long boss battles, those sorts of things.

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yeah yeah i she's the one that that i don't really ever pull out of my party i tried for a little bit and then i went very versatile yeah and then i went right back to her like like 30 minutes later and i was like no i really need her in my party you gotta stay you gotta stay yeah um so my my l and c l for for for me man uh

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And I use her for that because the running and the arms flailing while my character's running, that would throw me off. But she's just gliding peacefully.

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I don't think she's faster. It just looks, she's just smoother like moving around. I don't know.

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Yeah. All right. So combat's fantastic. If you, you know, if you're a fan, you're going to absolutely love it. If you're not a fan, I think it's so good that it, you know, like, you know, even with Ryan, it's, you know, it's, Hey, this is the best one I've ever seen for somebody that's not a fan of it. The music in this game, oh, my goodness, dude. Oh, my goodness.

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Quit gawking, bro. Okay, I'm just going to not look at Ryan while I'm talking here. All right, so we are covering Expedition 33 today. We have been playing it. We have been playing it a lot. Our community is abuzz with Expedition 33 chatter. Social media is abuzz with it. I mean...

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I'm trying to think of a soundtrack in a game that will emotionally impact me like the soundtrack does in Expedition 33, and I'm not sure I can think of one, dude. Not off the top of my head.

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Like, I know people are like, you guys are just gushing over this game. You're just gushing over it. The soundtrack in this game is absolutely top notch. And you hear it from the very beginning and you hear it all throughout the game. To where there are, like, songs where I'm like, dude, this song is incredible right now.

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It's beautiful. It goes along with the feeling. If it's a somber part, you get this kind of haunting piano melody. If it's a kind of goofy, happy part, it's just this perfect music that accompanies that. If it's a danger or battle, you get this rousing concerto type. It is insane, man. I need to look up who the composer was for this, but oh my goodness. They killed it.

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I'll go so far as to say this. We're going to talk about, you know, is this game a Game of the Year candidate right at the end of the show, which is coming up pretty soon because we're running low on time. But if Expedition 33 doesn't win Best Music at the Game Awards, I will be amazed, dude. Amazed.

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Can you think of two games that have such incredible music that could be so different? That double bass. And the Paul Newton guitar. And then you have this slow, haunting violin and piano going in Expedition 33. Oh, my goodness. The graphics, I mean, people have seen this in the trailer. I love the graphics in this game. We don't really have to spend a lot of time on this.

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The worlds are beautiful. We've talked about this kind of already. The animations, the style is just top-notch to me. I could not be more thrilled with the way this game just presents itself graphically. whether it's through the environments, the characters, the animations, the spell effects in combat.

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If anybody has been listening to this show for any time over the last six months, you have heard us or me and John hype this game. Ryan has been cautiously optimistic. Admittedly, this is not his type of game. So we're all very curious to hear Ryan's take on this as well. So we're going to get into that.

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It looks like they have hay on. The reason for that is that there are a lot of cosmetic unlocks in this game, and you can unlock a lot of hairstyles for the characters, and that's why.

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Well, on today's episode, we're breaking down our time with Expedition 33, and we're finally ready to give our thoughts on it. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh, and joining me, he's got a fear of missing out on epic games crafted with passion and love that happen to have amazing combat, incredible stories...

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All right, guys, we're running low on time. I want to, you know, we have been gush. We're going to give our scores on this game here in just a little bit, too. But, you know, as much as we can gush on it, John, you and I. But, you know, there's there's got to be parts of this game that don't work. We always say what works for you, what doesn't work for you.

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So, Ryan, I'm going to start with you because I have a feeling I know what you're what doesn't work for you is. But what what works for you the best in this game and what doesn't work for you?

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So is it just the combat that doesn't work for you?

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We do have one tiny bit of housekeeping to do, and that is a huge thank you to a new supporter of the show. Juan Massari signed up for rare status. Juan, thank you so much. Listen, you know, this podcast exists because of the support of our listeners. We would not be here if it wasn't for that support.

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It's fair. John, what about you? I mean, what...

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Yeah, I can understand that. So I think for me, what works for me is I don't know that I have played a game that is a complete and total package like Expedition 33. I mean, normally if you have incredible combat, you're giving me pixel graphics or something like that. Or if you've got a great story and great combat...

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the music and the sound is atrocious or something along those lines like for me expedition 33 has literally perfected almost every aspect of the game and put it together in this package that i have not seen in a game Like I said, I'm going to put it up there with games like Red Dead, with Cyberpunk, with God of War, where it's like every part of those games is incredible.

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There's not like this one glaring weakness that holds those games back. It's like those games have the perfect combination of gameplay, story, characters, world building. I mean, everything that you want to touch on. And Expedition 33 does that in absolute spades, in my opinion. I kept waiting for something to be like, Oh, okay.

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Well, this is the part that lacks or really drags behind and it doesn't exist. Like it doesn't exist for me. What doesn't work for me. I'm like, I'm legitimately struggling to try to like figure this out. And that's not to be lame, but I mean, like, I think if I had to say what doesn't work is like,

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So if you love this show and you think that this podcast should continue to happen and continue growing, to do really dumb things like Ryan has done today, you know, come support that. You can head over the, there's a link in the episode description. You can just click that and you can sign up for as little as five bucks a month to help this podcast keep going. So Juan, thank you once again.

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I mean, sometimes I just, I'm not a hundred percent sure why I go to a certain zone or like why this boss is one shotting me. Like there's optional bosses and stuff like that. And I'm like, is this guy part of the story? Because they give you this, this kind of open world. And I come across things that absolutely obliterate me. And then I kind of go like, I'm going to forget about that.

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There's not a quest tracking system in this game. There's not a mini map in this game.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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Like, The thing that doesn't work for me is unless I keep a notepad that says go back to this zone and fight this mime because you couldn't kill him at the time or remember this boss is in this corner of this area, I'm going to forget. And so I think to me it's like what doesn't work is I'm afraid of it.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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gonna miss some content man like that's legitimately like the only thing I can think of man that's a good point the game would certainly benefit from a quest tracker yeah absolutely yeah yeah so okay we gotta wrap this up boys we're going way too long on this is do is this a game of the year candidate I feel like I'm asking this question so many times in 2025 already I mean we've had kingdom come to I mean you know is is this a game of the year candidate

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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I fully agree that I cannot see a world where Expedition 33 is not nominated. I can't see it, man.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

3903.597

have as much depth as something like this i think that without a doubt it's going to be for sure nominated and it has a really good chance to win yeah um okay so i'm gonna put you guys on the spot because i want to i want to score i want to score this game um i will start off And I want to preface this by, yes, I understand I was insanely hyped for this game.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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I understand that it was like, you know, hey, I wanted this game to be everything that I dreamed of and more. And that's a very hard bar to meet. Expedition 33 for me is, is the definition of a 10 out of 10 game. Like I, I, you know, again, I don't say that lightly and I don't give tens out very often at all. But, oh my goodness. If,

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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I cannot think of a game that is more perfect for what it is, you know, and part of that might be and I said it for a long time was I was really, really hungry for this style of game. So there might be a little bit of that right game at the right time kind of thing. but this game has so few flaws and it is so impressive in almost every single aspect that it throws at you.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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Like this is the definition of a 10 out of 10 video game for me. I am like you, the second we're done recording, I'm going to play, you know, like I, I, I gotta see where this goes. I got to like experience the end of this game and people know I don't finish video games. I am just compelled to, to play expedition 33 and, I am enamored of it. It is almost flawless in my opinion.

Video Gamers Podcast

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Yeah, let's let's let's get the guys. We got to get into this because we have so much to cover with Expedition 33. I want to start with the pre-release hype on this because, you know, there's a lot of people that have gone, Josh, I don't know that I've ever heard you hype up a game quite this much.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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It's a 10 out of 10, dude. And again, I don't say that because I was biased. I don't say it because I was hyped about it. I say it because it is really that good of a video game in my opinion. So for me, it's a 10.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I've seen so many people say this, and this is what I love is that, like, again, people in our community that this wasn't on their radar, you know, and this is one of our joys. It's one of the reasons we do this podcast is like legitimately I could probably name 10 people in our community right now that went, OK, so I heard you guys talking about this game. I picked it up. Oh my goodness.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I mean, we have people that said, dude, this is my favorite game. This is literally my favorite game that I have played. Like, I mean, that is insane, but it's like, this is what we want to do is we want to put incredible video games in front of people and say, Hey, this is a game that needs to be played. Guys, the craziest part about all of this is this is an indie developer, a 30-man team.

Video Gamers Podcast

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This is a $40 game. $40 or $50. This is not a $70 AAA title or a $100 quadruple-A title. You know, it's included in game pass. It's included in game pass.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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Yeah. Like the fact that this is an indie studio, that they had this kind of game and they just said, Hey, it's 40 or 50 bucks, you know, and it's, it's doing so well. I could not be happier. I'm with you, John. I really wish I could like shake the hands of this development team and be like, number one, thank you for giving me a game that I don't France guys.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I love this game more than a game that I had. Like, honestly, like I played a lot of games, but this game has me so enamored and so in love with it that it's like I haven't felt this in a while. So if you have been on the fence, this is your your call to action to say you need to experience this.

Video Gamers Podcast

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John, you were so excited for this game that you went... Before you joined the podcast, you went legendary and said, I am making Ryan play Expedition 33. This was before we knew very much about this game at all. And so, John, you have been extremely excited for this game as well. Ryan...

Video Gamers Podcast

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Even if you maybe aren't a fan of the turn based combat, you know, see if you can get over it if you can't. We get it, man. Ryan, you said it best. I don't like mushrooms. Gordon Ramsay might make the best mushroom stew in the world, but I just don't like mushrooms, man. I'm not going to like it. And I think that's fine. But I think that everybody should experience this game. It is worth it.

Video Gamers Podcast

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And you might just find one of your favorite games that you have come across in years and years and years, because that is exactly how I feel. It's exactly how John feels. That is magic, man. That is the gaming magic that we all hope for. All right. That's going to do it, boys. I want to go play this game some more. I've always been saying this.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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I've got two weeks until Doom the Dark Ages comes out. I'm going to do all the side content. I'm going to beat this game. I'm going to do everything that I need to do so that I can just say, hey, I got the full experience out of it. So definitely going to keep putting in the time.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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Listen, if you are new to this show and you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to follow us in your podcast app. It's a plus button. It's a follow button. But that way you get all of our episodes the day that they release. If you are not part of this community that we always reference, we are almost 1,000 gamers strong. It is the best gaming community on the planet. We say it all the time.

Video Gamers Podcast

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It's not just us. People come in all the time and be like, yes. yo, like this place is awesome, man. Like people actually talk about games. They suggest games. They hang out together. We do community nights together where we all play games together because that's part of what makes gaming awesome. There is no toxicity. It's family friendly. People of all ages, men, women.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I mean, it's welcome to everybody. If you are a gamer and you think that that sounds awesome, then you're the kind of person that we're looking for. The link's in the episode description there as well. And if you want to go the extra mile to support the show, there is a link in the episode description that you can click to sign up to support the show. We'll give you a shout out.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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You get ad-free episodes, early episodes, and all that. All right, boys. That's it for this episode. Listen, I'm going to say it one last time. Go check out video if you haven't done it, man. Oh, my goodness. Ryan's... You're ridiculous, Ryan. All right, that's it, everybody.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I'm not, I'm not, I'm not picking on you because to your credit, you have said, listen, I do not like turn-based combat at all. And I worry that this game is going to have turn-based combat and it's going to ruin it for me. And so like, where was your hype level? Like legitimately now that we're in the episode and we're going to be talking about this, like, where were you at with this?

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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And John, you are you I mean, I feel like you're a fan of this genre in particular. I mean, you you've played Persona recently. You played Metaphor Refantasio. You're a huge fan of Final Fantasy. And I feel like this game was just a perfect blend of like that kind of, you know, neat art style of the Final Fantasy series. Some of the turn based combat and the story of the Persona series.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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So like where was your hype meter at for this game?

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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beautiful worlds and interesting characters it's john hey what's up expeditioners happy to be here check out my sweet shirt oh 40 i like it and joining us he told us he's got a fear of mimes and that's why he couldn't keep playing it's ryan oh come on you know what i tell you what hold on one sec let me see if you like this

Video Gamers Podcast

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And this is going to give people a very clear view on how excited I was for this game. Cyberpunk 2077 is the most hyped I have ever been in my entire extended life for a video game. I mean, I requested days off of work, and then it kept getting delayed, and I had to keep pushing those. Expedition 33, as we got closer to release, my hype level was... I'll say almost equal to Cyberpunk 2077.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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It was legitimately that high. Now, the reason that I say that is that's an unhealthy level of hype. Legitimately. I'm just going to be fair. At least for me, it's fun to be excited about something. But when your hype level gets to a certain point, you kind of go, there's no way this game can live up to these expectations, man. It's not fair to the game at that point.

Video Gamers Podcast

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Cyberpunk was a kick in the old berries because it didn't live up to the expectation. You know, I mean, it failed miserably at release and it was like that was crushing disappointment. And it's like, you've been down this road. Don't do it again, man. Don't get so hyped up over a game release because it's like there's no way that a game can live up to that.

Video Gamers Podcast

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And so as much as like my brain would go, yeah, that makes sense. You know, my gamer brain was like, no, man. Like, no. So I just I kind of wanted to set the stage a little bit for this because, you know, that's where we kind of were at with going into Expedition 33 before we even started playing it. And so it's like it's one of those things where, you know, obviously we're going to talk about it.

Video Gamers Podcast

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Does it live up to that level of hype? Was there disappointment involved? You know, that kind of thing. So. One thing I want to be very clear, because we're going to start getting into some of the details of the game and the combat and the world and the music and all of the stuff that is Expedition 33. We are going to do our best to avoid any kind of story spoilers.

Video Gamers Podcast

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This game has an incredible story that really needs to be experienced, and we don't want to spoil that for people. We actually had a long conversation about this before we started recording because it's like, listen, sometimes we do spoil games and we talk about that later on and we'll say, hey, spoiler warning.

Video Gamers Podcast

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This is the kind of game where if you are on the fence about playing it, you'll make that decision after this episode. But if you choose to play it, we do not want to spoil that. And I know there's people that will listen to the spoilers and go, I'll play it anyway. No, this game needs to be experienced kind of blindly. So we're going to not spoil things. We will talk about combat.

Video Gamers Podcast

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We will talk about monsters and some skills and things like that. So there will be very minimal spoilers, but nothing that will ruin the experience or the gameplay or the story or something like that. So if you want to go in completely blind, you shouldn't be listening to this episode, you know, because we're going to talk about the game. But don't worry, we're not going to spoil things for you.

Video Gamers Podcast

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All right. Guys, I kind of want to just say what we think, man. I want to build up the gameplay and the story and the music and all that stuff, but I know that there are people that want to know what we think about this game.

Video Gamers Podcast

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Hello fellow Expeditioners and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. Expedition 33 looked glorious from the first trailer up until its launch. Just after Oblivion Remaster shadow dropped on us, hype levels were astronomical and it seems like there was no way a game can live up to that level of excitement.

Video Gamers Podcast

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I we're just, we're just doing this now because I know there's people that said like, Hey, we just, you know, what are your thoughts? But then I might play the game based on that. So we're going to just do this. It kind of in backwards order. I, I, Whereas Cyberpunk 2077 was a huge letdown and it really disappointed me. And again, that's partly my fault for my hype level.

Video Gamers Podcast

Final French-asy? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Deep Dive | Gaming Podcast

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Expedition 33, for the people that know this show and know me and the amount of hype I had for this, Expedition 33 has literally exceeded my expectations for it. I cannot think of a game that has captivated me like this game has. That is better in every aspect than I thought.

Video Gamers Podcast

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We knew the story was going to be good, but it was kind of like the Pinterest and all this stuff, and these people are disappearing, and they're going on this expedition, and can it really work? Oh, baby, does it work? The combat turn-based combat, but with quick time, like, you know, action elements to block and Perry. Oh my goodness. The combat in this game is freaking spectacular. The builds.

Video Gamers Podcast

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Okay. So it's like, well, you know, what about the RPG elements and there's different party characters and their builds and the build crafting goes so far beyond what I thought that this game could put in front of somebody. It's bananas, dude. The music?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Early creators figured out that Vine's simplicity demanded precision, even when chasing mass appeal. Posting at the right time, collaborating through re-Vines, and doubling down on trends was part of the unspoken rulebook of engagement that was forming in real time. Over in the UK, Aaron had finally ironed out his technique and he had posting down to a science.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Nowadays, content creation is considered a relatively normal career path, unless you're speaking to my mum. But back then, the term influencer wasn't mainstream. It was mostly confined to bloggers, YouTubers and a handful of fashion it girls. But Vine creators were connecting with their audiences daily through quick, unfiltered videos, shifting the focus to brevity, spontaneity and personality.

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That roar immediately forged loyal followings.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

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the influencer revolution had begun okay so some people got popular on an app who cares you can't see mary right now but she's she's screaming at the top of her lungs she's going who cares why is this important well mary first of all check your tone calm down okay put down the knife mary it's important for two reasons first of all it's important because i say so but also

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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because you know you think since the dawn of showbiz celebrity as a concept has been gatekept by hollywood by insiders you know people in boardrooms and suits if you wanted to maintain your fame you've got to be in the tabloids you've got to have access to those things basically if you wanted to make a name for yourself as a creative you had to work your way up the greasy pole of the traditional media industry and that's just not the case anymore

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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You mean beautifully?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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And do you maybe have a little bit of luck in that people actually see it? Now, on the other side of the coin, there are no barriers at all. So you are also able to more quickly destroy yourself if you want to, if you want to go online and make a stupid video of them.

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3. Subway to Stardom

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And there's something kind of beautiful about that. It means that creators can be so much more agile. We completely take this for granted now. With TikTok, people just throw a video up. They're like, I've had a funny idea. I'll film it in 30 seconds. Put it on TikTok like it's nothing.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Yeah, you haven't let down advertisers. You haven't had 15 script meetings that have been wasted.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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When did you start to notice any actual change to your life? Like when did Vine start to bleed through?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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And of course, at that point, there's no money in Vine. Nope. So you're just doing it for the buzz, right? Absolutely.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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That's lovely.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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What did that mean to you?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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This was just the start of Vine, but its simplicity was already redefining who could claim the spotlight. It was changing ordinary people's lives. But despite the digital adoration, Jasmeet was still in med school. Manon was still waiting tables. Aaron was a new dad juggling shifts at the bookies and struggling to make rent. And Brandon was still stuck making sandwiches at Subway.

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3. Subway to Stardom

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It's a rare place to be, that famous and that broke. But the million-dollar question remained. How do you turn popularity into paychecks? Keep your hands and feet inside the podcast, folks, because the cash is about to come rolling in. And with all the money and the status on offer, things might start to get a little nasty. We're climbing towards the dizzying heights of Peak Vine.

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3. Subway to Stardom

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When it came to chaos, Aaron was king, making him one of a quite small pool of British creators who found global success among the great sea of American Viners.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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And remember, no matter how thrilling things get, what goes up must always come down. Stick around for a tease of what's to come at the end of this episode. The next installment of Vine, Six Seconds That Change the World, drops next week. That's Wednesday, the 30th of April.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Just search for Vine, Six Seconds That Change the World on the Global Player app, globalplayer.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next time on Episode 4, on fleek, on top, and underappreciated.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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How a platform that began as a quirky creative playground became a meritocracy, a battleground, and a cultural powerhouse.

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Before being overrun with content theft, cozy cliques, and big business.

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You can listen to Vine's Six Seconds That Changed the World on Global Player. Download it from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com. Vine Six Seconds That Changed the World is a Global Original podcast, created and hosted by me, Benedict Townsend, and produced by my co-creator, Mary Goodheart.

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Narrative and creative by producer Kevya Cardoso, score and sound design by Patrick Lee, and mix by Chris James. Sophie Snelling is the executive producer, Al Riddell is head of factual podcasts, and Vicky Etchells is director of podcasts at Global. This is a Global Player original podcast.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

2.492

This is a Global Player original podcast. Vine is loose. It's unchained. It's broken free. It's out of the bag, out of the bottle, out of control. Or at least the control of its inventors. From the minds of tech masters into the hands of ordinary people. And Vine's biggest stars were often the most ordinary people you could meet.

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3. Subway to Stardom

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In the sea of initial experimentation, certain faces began to rise to the top, cutting through the noise and the odd stop motion to become Vine's first wave of stars. The key was finding a niche, nailing it, and viewers would keep coming back for more. And in the sleepy town of Dover, Kent, Aaron Kraskle was carving out a very particular niche all of his own.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

235.455

California native Brandon Calvillo was one of those American Viners. His content was definitely a different flavor to Aaron's public outbursts, but that doesn't mean it was any less chaotic. What are you doing on the roof, Uncle Alec? I lost my Frisbee. Are you smoking crack up there?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Are you selling crack to kids?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Pretty surprisingly, Brandon's struggling to get his video going. It's been a decade since he was a regular face on the tiny screen of my iPhone 4, but as he pops into view, he looks like he hasn't aged a day. When we reached out to you, you seemed quite happy and enthusiastic to talk about Vine, which was lovely. It must hold a pretty special place in your heart.

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Fresh out of high school, Brandon was hungry for something new.

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Up north, in Toronto, Canada... I'll write, sir, and what's your name? That's Jasmine. Jasmine. Actually, no, it's Jasmine.

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YouTuber Jasmine Rayner had a similar passion, but was reluctantly pursuing a career in medicine. Imagine that, choosing to be a doctor when you could be doing something worthwhile like making vines.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Better known by his username Just Rain, Jasme established a loyal following for his comedy skits about his life as a South Asian Canadian.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Have you ever guys been shopping with your parents and stuff like this happens? What did you get? Okay? Okay. Okay? Okay?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Deadloss. Yo, do you guys even listen to Drake? Guys like don't even listen to Drake. Uncle, do you even listen to Drake? Uncle like doesn't even listen to Drake. Do you even listen to Drake?

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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but he'd hit a bit of a ceiling. There wasn't much space left to grow on YouTube, and he'd saturated the platform's South Asian audience, who would complain when he experimented with different styles of content. But then, on a trip to India, too busy for the faff of long-form video edits, he decided to try out Vine.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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If you remember Just Rain on Vine, it's probably from these videos. With just six seconds and a niche take on a trend, he'd hit that sweet spot. His videos quickly rose to the top.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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Yeah, I know, I know that. That sucks, but I wanted a son anyway, so... Three million dollars or your daughter's gonna be dead, you hear me? Oh man, that's way too high. You have like a discount, anything like that? Gee, you've got 24 hours. 24 what? 24 hours till we kill your daughter. Oh, yeah, that's okay, man. I'll make another one.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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If you're British, you'll know Aaron Craskell's face. And because his fame was built on his willingness to shout out the most inappropriate thing he could think of in a public place while pretending to be on the phone, you'll probably know his voice as well.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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The chalky white cliffs of Dover couldn't be more different from the sprawling suburbia of Orange County or the glassy skyline of Toronto. But Aaron, Brandon and Jasmeet still had a lot in common. Artistic spirits, uninspiring jobs and a restless yearning for a creative outlet.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

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By contrast, Manon Matthews, best known on Vine for her spot-on Christian Stewart impressions, was already committed to the life of a performer.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

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These days, her dry, irreverent humour has evolved to explore the joys and chaos of first-time motherhood. Congrats on the baby, first and foremost.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

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Manon found her comedy calling early. By the time Vine launched, she was in her early 20s and staying afloat through waitressing, but she still hadn't changed course.

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3. Subway to Stardom

753.83

35 miles away in Orange County, Brandon was already getting hooked on Vine.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

813.195

Aaron's first encounter with Vine happened, naturally, in the pub. And when presented with the app's clean, efficient, revolutionary design, he wasn't really that impressed.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

928.157

Okay, he might not have been the next Scorsese, but Brandon's dark, off-color brand of comedy quickly built up a big fan following.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

973.906

Brandon, Jasmine, Aaron, Manon, just four among thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, and then millions of users that flooded to Vine. Just 76 days after it launched, Vine was the number one free app on the US App Store. Two months after that, it had reached 13 million registered users. Another two months later, that leapt to 40 million.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

3. Subway to Stardom

997.13

But most were watching, not creating, meaning there was a huge potential audience for those willing to put their time and talents into making vines.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

2. Vine Street Confidential

1861.669

It was more dangerous, I think. That was fun about it. You needed to make sure that was perfect. You had to get it. You had to get it. If you didn't, you were screwed.

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

2. Vine Street Confidential

70.164

Excuse me, man in the muscle shirt. Did you get any muscles with that shirt? Help me first!

Vine: Six Seconds That Changed The World

2. Vine Street Confidential

96.752

The guys you're about to meet have more followers than the biggest celebrities, and just one post can earn tens of thousands from advertisers.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: One Last Gift to Unwrap

1787.806

Ready.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: One Last Gift to Unwrap

2580.141

What a pleasure to talk to you again. Take care. Awesome.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: One Last Gift to Unwrap

3027.12

Now, let me, before I answer this question, I'm just going to say this. There was a lot of fallacy that's been spoken. A lot of things.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: One Last Gift to Unwrap

3102.367

It's not your fault.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: One Last Gift to Unwrap

709.04

Give it up for a living legend, everybody.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

1927.386

The scary new movie Sinners from the director of Black Panther finds Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers. It's got vampires, it's got great music, and it's a fun one to see with a big crowd.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

1941.82

We'll tell you why you should see Sinners on the biggest screen you can. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2186.134

What was yours?

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2265.08

Hey, this is Celine calling from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Wow.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2270.264

That's great.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2277.122

Yeah, and, you know, Steamboat's a great place for, you know, a landlocked mountain town, so.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2313.785

Yes.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2544.884

Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

2563.415

Yes, that is what it is called, wherever you get your podcasts.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

5.758

If this story had never happened... All of us wouldn't be here right now. Sammy wouldn't be here. Nana wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here. Anyone that we know wouldn't be here.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

764.918

At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

771.763

But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

781.509

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

788.174

And hopefully make you see the world anew.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

789.715

Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

793.637

Wherever you get your podcasts.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

795.058

At NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we sort through a lot of television. And we've found some recent TV comedies we really like that you don't want to miss. And we'll tell you where to watch them in one handy guide. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

812.679

If buying a home feels out of reach, you might have more options than you think. You might be able to, especially if you have a little bit of money saved up. And if you qualify for a low down payment mortgage, maybe even with some down payment assistance, it definitely could be a possibility for you.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Brian Tyree Henry

826.804

Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR for first time home buyer tips.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown

5.313

If this story had never happened... All of us wouldn't be here right now. Sammy wouldn't be here. Nana wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here. Anyone that we know wouldn't be here.

Wall Street Breakfast

Tariffs, tech sluggishness, gold, bitcoin, and inflation

984.717

Look for links for stories in the show notes section. Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at seekingalpha.com slash WSB. And join the highest level discussion of any stock or ETF with our community of serious investors like you. Find us at seekingalpha.com slash subscriptions.

Wall Street Breakfast

Recession risk and pockets of strength

626.771

Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at seekingalpha.com slash WSB. And for a full suite of news, analysis, ratings, and data on stocks and ETFs, go to seekingalpha.com slash subscriptions.

Watch What Crappens

#2662 RHOSLCS5E14 Part Two: Todd Bedfellows

4058.846

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, There were many questions surrounding his death.

Watch What Crappens

#2662 RHOSLCS5E14 Part Two: Todd Bedfellows

4082.47

The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

Watch What Crappens

#2662 RHOSLCS5E14 Part Two: Todd Bedfellows

4106.133

Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Watch What Crappens

#2686 Southern Hospitality S03E02 Part Two: Post Traumatic Dress Misorder

175.312

Hi everyone, welcome back. This is part two of a two-part recap. If you're wondering where part one was, well go check in the feed and be sure to subscribe.

Watch What Crappens

#2701 Southern Charm S10E07: It Takes Tuba To Tango

5311.167

UFO lands in Suffolk and that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980, when US servicemen saw mysterious lights in the forest near RAF Woodbridge and claimed to have had a close encounter with an actual craft?

Watch What Crappens

#2701 Southern Charm S10E07: It Takes Tuba To Tango

5359.091

Are we alone? Encounters is a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters exclusively in ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts.

We Can Do Hard Things

Who Said What in that Group Chat Debacle & Is MAGA Starting to Fracture? | Jessica Yellin

3520.399

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts,

We Can Do Hard Things

Who Said What in that Group Chat Debacle & Is MAGA Starting to Fracture? | Jessica Yellin

3545.134

spotify odyssey or wherever you listen to podcasts and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow this is the most important thing for the pod while you're there if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend we would be so grateful we appreciate you very much

We Can Do Hard Things

Who Said What in that Group Chat Debacle & Is MAGA Starting to Fracture? | Jessica Yellin

3565.58

We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren LaGrasso, Alison Schott, and Bill Schultz.

We Can Do Hard Things

Inside Trump’s Personal Profits: His Abuse of Power for Private Deals & Who is Paying the Price | Jessica Yellin & Amanda

3056.966

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts,

We Can Do Hard Things

Inside Trump’s Personal Profits: His Abuse of Power for Private Deals & Who is Paying the Price | Jessica Yellin & Amanda

3081.701

Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much.

We Can Do Hard Things

Inside Trump’s Personal Profits: His Abuse of Power for Private Deals & Who is Paying the Price | Jessica Yellin & Amanda

3102.15

We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren LaGrasso, Alison Schott, and Bill Schultz.

What Happened to Holly Bobo?

Introducing "What Happened to Holly Bobo?"

12.439

An army of volunteers have searched every day for the missing 20-year-old nursing student on foot and on four-wheelers, hoping to find a sign.

What Happened to Holly Bobo?

Introducing "What Happened to Holly Bobo?"

22.787

And a heartbreaking journey for Holly's family, who would never see her alive again. The search for Holly became the search for Holly's killer and one of the biggest investigations in Tennessee history. Investigators start finding answers bit by bit. And even though the case is now considered solved and closed, For some, the question of what happened to Holly Bobo remains to this day.

What Happened to Holly Bobo?

Introducing "What Happened to Holly Bobo?"

3.191

Nearly 15 years ago, a young nursing student disappeared from her home in Tennessee. What followed was a years-long search for her.

What Happened to Holly Bobo?

Introducing "What Happened to Holly Bobo?"

70.595

From ABC Audio and 2020, What Happened to Holly Bobo follows the winding paths through the woods of Tennessee and the twists and turns of a case that continues to haunt to this day. What Happened to Holly Bobo? Coming May 6th.

What Happened to Talina Zar

Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2

1333.876

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

What Happened to Talina Zar

Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2

16.861

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

What Happened to Talina Zar

Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2

2505.249

So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.

What Happened to Talina Zar

Small Town, Big Secrets — Talina Zar E2

3449.866

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.

What We Spend

Trying, Really Trying, to Enjoy Spending

0.785

A heads up before you listen. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. We are not financial advisors. You should always do your own research and consult your own financial advisor before spending or investing your money. Please note that all income, financial information, and expenses in what we spend are self-reported.

What We Spend

Getting by as a Teacher's Assistant

0.751

A heads up before you listen. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. We are not financial advisors. You should always do your own research and consult your own financial advisor before spending or investing your money. Please note that all income, financial information, and expenses in what we spend are self-reported.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

1086.278

Okay, audio diary day three.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

1229.789

OK, so I am now at my show.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

1613.449

I'm at the show now. There's about 30 minutes left to the show. I'm in my dressing room, took the train here, $2.90. You can hear the show kind of in the background on the loudspeaker. Yeah, that's it. And then later tonight, I might go to bowling, but I'm going to go home first. So we shall see, because Broadway Bowling doesn't start till 11 p.m.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

1913.473

So I'm at my show.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

1982.825

okay i had some friends at the show so i went out for a drink afterwards with them and because it's new york a glass of wine is 22 so i spent 22 and now um i've just gotten back on the subway which is 290 and um gotten off the subway and i'm just walking the two blocks to get to my house and then i'll be home and uh

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

74.249

This is Olivia. I'm 38 and I live on the Upper West Side. Are you from New York City? Born and raised in Manhattan, yes. Olivia is an actor.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

885.303

OK, audio diary. Day two, it's early-ish in the morning.

What We Spend

At the End of a Broadway Run

931.684

I was anticipating all that, so there was definitely enough money in there. Another thing I'm thinking about is that I should probably explain that I have a lot of credit cards.

What We Spend

Introducing: What We Spend

106.581

I'm also stressed that I found love, but I cannot afford marriage or children. What I need is a car. What I want is to buy myself Mary J. Blige tickets.

White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse

Introducing White Hot Hate Season 2: Agent Pale Horse

1.545

This is a CBC Podcast.

White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse

Introducing White Hot Hate Season 2: Agent Pale Horse

142.285

Here's what I tell people when they ask me, like, how did you cope living with an undercover? And I said, well, I did get some training through the movie of Donnie Brasco. That was my training.

White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse

Introducing White Hot Hate Season 2: Agent Pale Horse

196.854

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

115.055

And we even come up with our own criminal nicknames. Cunning Crone. Luce the Noose. Luta Lucy and Robber Roz.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

124.978

Our guest detective team is expanding too. This season, we're joined by broadcasters, barristers, authors, activists, a psychologist and even an artist.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

144.751

We tried to understand these women.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

153.76

We relate to them.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

165.293

Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers, where true crime meets history with a twist. Available now. Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

18.973

Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men. These were women who traded in crime, but who were ahead of their time. History calls them criminals. Society calls them frauds. But here on Lady Swindlers, we call them ordinary women who lived extraordinary lives. And we're still talking about them today. MUSIC

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

48.846

Meet a swindler with ever so many names.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

78.069

But deep down, all she really wants is her dream home. And you don't have to just take our word for it.

You're Dead to Me

Happy Christmas from Greg and the team!

89.715

This season, we're chasing fake mediums, a lady burglar and the infamous Yorkshire witch from England and Scotland to the US and beyond. Our Lady Swindlers are truly international. She moved from Scotland to England to Italy, later to New York to New Zealand and Australia. As always, we're travelling back in time with our in-house historian, Professor Rosalind Crone.

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

1353.075

Witness the destruction of Earth, stumble upon the ancient planet of Magrathea, and dine at the restaurant at the end of the universe. Enjoy this dynamic remastering of the original BBC Radio 4 full-cast serial, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

1380.374

Start listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Primary Phase. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

33.204

Start listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Primary Phase. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

3598.914

enjoy this bbc dramatized tale of middle earth tolkien's epic the lord of the rings this classic radio production boasts an outstanding cast with ian home michael horden robert stevens and bill nye where is baggins what's mr baggins's business to do with you a friend of his is looking for him

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

3620.771

Start listening to The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, a full cast BBC radio dramatisation. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.

You're Dead to Me

Arctic Exploration: the fatal quest for the Northwest Passage

5.912

Witness the destruction of Earth, stumble upon the ancient planet of Magrathea and dine at the restaurant at the end of the universe. Enjoy this dynamic remastering of the original BBC Radio 4 full cast serial, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

You're Dead to Me

Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system

0.089

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be.

You're Dead to Me

Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system

1578.165

Yeah. This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com.

You're Dead to Me

Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system

27.734

Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

You're Dead to Me

Cuneiform: the world’s first writing system

3562.366

This podcast is sponsored by Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies. If you're sending or spending money abroad, you should use Wise. You'll have up to 40 currencies in the palm of your hand. Wise gives you the real exchange rate, which means you'll spend less on fees and more of your money gets where you need it to be. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

You're Dead to Me

Catherine de’ Medici: the real Serpent Queen of France

14.373

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.

You're Dead to Me

Catherine de’ Medici: the real Serpent Queen of France

1876.621

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.

You're Dead to Me

Catherine de’ Medici: the real Serpent Queen of France

3543.519

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.

You're Dead to Me

Hernán Cortés and Malintzin: the Spanish conquest of Mexico

14.373

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.

You're Dead to Me

Hernán Cortés and Malintzin: the Spanish conquest of Mexico

3509.987

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent. She will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot.